“Lost control”
Vettel curses absolutely screwed up season debut
April 11, 2022, 2:00 p.m
Sebastian Vettel does not give a happy picture at his late start to the season and curses a “very difficult” car to drive. This is all the more true for his ambitious team: Aston Martin becomes the sweeper car of Formula 1 and reaps “pity” instead of recognition.
Sebastian Vettel just wanted to get away. The crisis team Aston Martin is now used to grief, but a new low was reached on a black weekend in Melbourne. “It can’t get any worse,” Vettel said after his botched debut at the Australian Grand Prix. However, there is hardly any improvement in sight.
The ex-world champion’s frustration ran deep. On his first appearance of the year, he didn’t even make it halfway through – Vettel’s race ended in the course wall. The lack of routine in the AMR22 after two race weekends missed due to Corona was one reason for a business trip full of problems – the technology, however, was another.
“The car is very difficult to drive,” complained Vettel, “maybe I’m running over it at the moment, I just lost control.” The Aston Martin is stubborn and slow, but that’s not a good mix in Formula 1. “It’s so bad now that you almost feel sorry,” commented ex-pilot Ralf Schumacher on Sky.
Probably not “the next big thing” after all
Because the English team with the big plans is at the bottom of the World Championship standings: Vettel and Co. are the only ones of the ten racing teams who have not yet scored a single point. This is particularly difficult to convey because the billionaire team owner Lawrence Stroll has rarely missed an opportunity to describe Aston Martin as “the next big thing” in the premier class. This season it should be about podiums and sometimes victories, in the coming years it will be about the title.
But Aston Martin has not yet arrived in the new Formula 1 era. Lance Stroll, the owner’s son, now knows the car much better than Vettel, but can’t get more out of it. “We see a lot of things that we need to improve, but we don’t have any solutions yet,” says the German. For him, everything that could go wrong went wrong: Already on Friday in free practice he had to reach for the fire extinguisher to work on the smoking car.
He then rode the scooter back to the pits – and received a fine for this “unauthorized use of a scooter on the track”. On Saturday, Vettel then lost control in the final practice session and hit the barriers. It shouldn’t be the last time.