Vettel needs to improve

Sebastian Vettel gives a downbeat assessment of his Formula 1 season. The four-time world champion won just one grand prix in 2019 and finished fifth in the drivers’ championship, his worst result since joining Ferrari in 2015, and fronted up with an admission that he was not as good as he could have been.

“I know that there’s more from my side so clearly I look at myself first,” he says. “There’s things that I can do better, that I know I can do better.”

Vettel made several mistakes that cost him significant results at a number of grands prix this year, resulting in his defeat to young team-mate Charles Leclerc in the championship.

He spun while battling Lewis Hamilton in Bahrain, a race Leclerc was leading from pole position until a late engine problem. In Canada, an error while leading led to an incident with Hamilton while rejoining and a time penalty that surrendered victory, while in Britain

Vettel crashed into Max Verstappen’s Red Bull.

After the summer break, Vettel spun at the Ascari chicane under no pressure in the Italian Grand Prix – which

Leclerc won – and rejoined unsafely as Lance Stroll rounded the corner, leading to a penalty and meaning Vettel non-scored. Vettel did win the Singapore Grand Prix, although that was aided by strategy hurting poleman

Leclerc, and he had a team-orders controversy in Russia before instigating the race-ending contact with Leclerc in Brazil.

Vettel believes he was not helped by Ferrari’s poor start to the season, when its car was not competitive enough to fight Mercedes. He also argues that there’s no

“rocket science to be changed” in his approach for next season, pointing to his ‘evolution’ since he made his debut in F1, which he thinks is for the better.

Nobody could claim that this Vettel is worse than the one from more than a decade ago, but is he as good as the one who dominated F1 with Red Bull? It appears not. Vettel knows he must put that right next season.