Vettel to replace Perez at Aston Martin
Formula 1’s worst-kept secret was made official last Thursday morning ahead of the Tuscan Grand Prix – Sebastian Vettel is joining Aston Martin for 2021. And it was an even worse-kept secret since Sergio Perez, the man Vettel will replace, had announced the previous evening that he will be leaving the team currently named Racing Point at the end of this season.
Vettel therefore moves from Ferrari, where he has become surplus to requirements since Charles Leclerc showed sensational form in his maiden season with the squad in 2019, to a team that feels it needs him and where he will partner Lance Stroll, the son of Racing Point/aston F1 squad owner Lawrence Stroll.
“It’s a new adventure for me with a truly legendary car company,” Vettel said in the team’s announcement. “I have been impressed with the results the team has achieved this year and I believe the future looks even brighter. The energy and commitment of Lawrence Stroll to the sport is inspiring and I believe we can build something very special together.”
Beyond the Pr-speak, committed Anglophile Vettel probably really does mean it. He is a sucker for car history, and the chance to be part of Aston Martin’s future will have been hugely attractive. There is a real commitment from Stroll to build Aston Martin into a success story in F1, with the signing of a four-time world champion being the latest statement of intent.
The construction of a new factory at Silverstone and upgrade in facilities shows this is a team that will not be afraid to spend big and push to the limit of the upcoming budget cap. It may currently lack the resources of a Red Bull or a Ferrari, but the foundations are being laid to build something mighty.
When Vettel joined Ferrari in 2015, the aspiration was to get a team built around him in a similar fashion to Michael Schumacher in the early 2000s. But those plans never came to fruition, with attention finally shifting to Leclerc amid his 2019 emergence.
At Aston Martin, Vettel will be expected to lead the team from the very start, and help Stroll build upon his 2020 campaign. As experienced as the outgoing Perez is, he has not been embedded within operations capable of winning championships for the past 10 years.
At 33, Vettel is hardly near retirement age. Despite his suggestion that he could spend next year “on the couch” or even retire completely – something few would have begrudged him, given his young family – he has remained eager to keep racing and keep fighting for trophies. As difficult as his final year with Ferrari is proving to be, Vettel is showing no signs of throwing in the towel at Maranello. It’s a strength of character that has won him praise from Lewis Hamilton.
There is also the short-term gain that is on offer to Vettel. Rather damning evidence of Ferrari’s difficult 2020 campaign is that joining Aston Martin will actually be a step up in terms of pure performance, given Racing Point sits two places and 26 points further up the constructors’ championship classification.
The ‘pink Mercedes’ may have been controversial, but there is no denying it is a quick car, with the carryover into 2021 meaning Vettel will get the chance to race the RP20 himself. As much as joining Aston Martin is about long-term thinking, with real success not possible until the new regulations come into force, the
same would have been true had he remained at Ferrari.
Vettel has been friends with team principal Otmar Szafnauer for many years, and Stroll Sr’s hands-on approach with the team means Vettel won’t have an array of senior figures to answer to, as he does now at Ferrari.
It is also welcome news for F1 that one of its biggest names and most influential figures will remain on the grid. Vettel is a director of the Grand Prix Drivers’ Association, and is one of the most active members of the field on important matters, as seen in the recent anti-racism demonstrations he was eager to continue.
But what of Perez? The Mexican is still in the first year of a three-year contract with the team he has raced with since 2014, initially as Force India. He even played a role in saving the team by triggering administration proceedings for Force India in 2018, which led to Stroll’s takeover and the renaming as Racing Point.
His best hope of remaining in F1 appears to lie with a move to either Alfa Romeo or Haas, neither of which is tied down to its existing driver line-up for 2021. But Mclaren boss Zak Brown has also stated that he would be keen to discuss expanding the Arrow Mclaren SP Indycar squad to three cars next season if Perez and his backers were interested in a move to the series.
“He’ll probably end up in Formula 1, that is my guess, at either Haas or Alfa Romeo,” said Brown. “But if he had an interest in Indycar, I think he’s a great race car driver, and we’d definitely be interested in talking to him. In between the backing that he’s historically had, and the commercial activity that we’ve got going on, and the excitement someone like Sergio would create, we would certainly look to see if we could put it together.”