Know that I will not win my last race

(Motorsport-Total.com) – The signs point to the farewell of Sebastian Vettel, because in just a few days the Formula 1 career of the four-time world champion will end after the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix 2022. And after some good races of Finally, the question remains: How important is it for Vettel to say goodbye to Formula 1 with the best possible results?

Before the Brazilian Grand Prix, his penultimate race, Vettel is quite indifferent and says: “I thought a lot before making the decision. Maybe foreigners think a lot too. It’s important to have a good one to have races ?”

“Of course it would be nice if I won my last race. But if you are realistic, it will be very difficult,” says Vettel. In the Aston Martin AMR22 he must hope to get another chance to score points in the remaining Grand Prix.

Why Vettel won’t say goodbye at the top

There probably won’t be a “goodbye in a big way” for him. Vettel is aware of this. He says: “The more I thought about it, I came to the conclusion: I’m the only person who cares. You can certainly say it’s a beautiful story, a better summary.”

“But who has to deal with the resignation in the end? It’s just me, so to speak, without wanting to be selfish. But that’s how I see it. And I’m fine with it.”

“I understand that my last race probably won’t be the peak of my number of races. It doesn’t really matter.”

Vettel is grateful for the career development

However, sixth place in Austin and eighth place in Suzuka were “excellent”, emphasizes Vettel. “Like I said, I enjoyed these races a lot more than, for example, Mexico, where it just went backwards because we were too slow. That’s clear.”

“But overall I can consider myself lucky to have had so many races in which I went ahead and not behind.”

Winning the title in 2012 as an emotional reminder of Brazil

He becomes aware of it again in a place like Sao Paulo, because “a lot of memories come back there,” says Vettel. He specifically refers to his title win with Red Bull in the 2012 season. For him, the decisive race in Brazil was an “emotional roller coaster ride” and very “intense”.

“I remember the morning when I came to the track very tense and nervous. There was something in the air. You didn’t know what was going to happen with the weather,” says Vettel.

“The race then somehow had everything there could be in it. One had the impression that everything that normally happens in a full season happened in this race.”

Because Vettel crashed only after a poor start and after a collision with another vehicle still at the end of the field, and that already at turn 4 on the first lap. In the end, however, after reaching P4, Vettel secured another title win, his third in a row.

“It was certainly wonderful how it turned out,” he says. “But I can also remember the evening and the finish. It seems like there’s something special here overall. I can’t remember too many boring races here.”

More special Brazil moments for Vettel

Sao Paulo has always surprised him in the past. In 2008, for example, he even heard the spectators there at the last race of the season, over the roar of the engine.

“I didn’t know what was going on because there was a lot of confusion around Lewis on the last lap. [Hamilton]Felipe [Massa]with Tim [Glock] and with me. But that was a moment when I really heard the people in the car.”

No wonder: for a few seconds, the Brazilian public thought Brazilian Massa was the new Formula 1 world champion, before Hamilton overtook Glock in the final meters to swing the decision in Hamilton’s favour.

But scenes like this prove, according to Vettel: “You love Formula 1. As far as our sport is concerned, the fans in Brazil are really perfectly informed. They know Formula 1 and Brazil has a great history of Formula 1. .”

Vettel’s career: Always on top of the racing calendar

And Vettel himself can look back on a similarly interesting past in Formula 1. What the “top class” of motorsport has meant to him over the years is “very hard to pin down”, he says.

“But of course sport was my life. I drove my first race at the age of seven. Since then there has been a calendar of races every year that someone somehow connects with, that somehow set the course. So it always went from year to year. One was always on the ground [das Auto] got bigger and faster.”

It’s completely “madness” to think about it again, says Vettel. “I usually look forward, but there will certainly be a time when I look back more. When things settle down. The years have been crazy in that regard, my whole life so far.”

From now on, the family is in pole position

And in a few days, a whole new chapter in Vettel’s life will begin. One in which motorsport doesn’t set the pace, but perhaps family does. “And of course we as a family look forward to what’s to come,” says Vettel.

“It will be different. I can certainly imagine how different it will be. But I have to see how it feels first.”

Is a comeback really impossible?

This is perhaps one of the reasons why Vettel does not have a definitive answer to the question of whether a comeback is forever unthinkable. He says: “I think the moment you resign, you resign. But you can’t rule anything out.”

“I don’t think I can answer the question in that sense. Today I can answer it with no, but maybe next year or two years from now I’ll think about it completely differently. Time will tell.”

And time can change a lot. He learned this, Vettel explains: “When I was 20 years old, I had nothing else in my life. I don’t want to sound disrespectful, but there are many other things that happen in life. I realized how privileged I was, even from birth is something that very, very few people have.”

“In rich countries like Germany or Great Britain it is a different kind of privilege. That is why I also feel a kind of responsibility compared to other countries in the world. The bottom line is that we only have one world. We are all human, we’re all equal. And we’re all in the thick of it, one way or another.”