Vettel’s time in F1 is drawing to a close

OUT of the second Lesmo, down the back straight, beneath the banking and under the canopy of trees you pick up a tremendous amount of speed as you hare down towards the Ascari chicane.

At the last minute – second really, or millisecond even – you slam on the breaks for the left hand part of the left-right sequence. Balancing the car, trying to carry as much speed through as possible, it’s very easy to make a mistake.

When us mere mortals watch a Formula 1 race and it looks to all the world as though those cars are on rails. The truth is rather different, of course. Those cars are on the very edge of adhesion.

As Sebastian Vettel touched his breaks and pitched his bright red Ferrari into the first part of the Ascari everything looked pretty normal, until... well until it didn’t. Until the rear seemed to get away from him and until he lost control.

The mistake itself is forgiveable. The German wasn’t the first to lose it at Ascari. He won’t be the last. Mistakes happen, even to the very best, even to four time world champions.

The problem for Vettel is that it came at the end of eighteen months of his making fairly regular errors in race situations. If what happened last Sunday afternoon was a one-off you’d hardly pass any heed, it’s the cumulative effect that makes it so damaging.

It adds to the impression of him as a man in a tailspin, figuratively as well as literally. The man who looked so imperious and impervious during his Red Bull days has lost all of his cool.

His reaction to his spin, the cack-handed way he attempt to return to the track (collecting Lance Stroll) seemed like further evidence for his disintegration. When Vettel was punished for that with a ten-second spot-go penalty and emerged a lap behind his team-mate it signified a real changing of the guard at the Scuderia.

Race-winner Charles Leclerc is now ascendant, Vettel clearly yesterday’s man and not just because of the mistakes. Leclerc is licking Vettel for pace easily at the moment as well.

With the way things are going it would be no surprise were Vettel to call it at day at the end of the season. No four time World Champion would want to accept the role of a number two driver and that’s the way it’s going. Time to go.