The Ferrari driver’s misjudgements continue to prove costly, but Mark Hughes explains why it isn’t all Vettel’s fault. Sebastian Vettel’s first-lap incident with Lewis Hamilton at Monza is just the latest in a litany of errors and misjudgements from the multiple world champion in the last couple of seasons. This year alone he has lost crucial points in Baku (locking up trying to take the lead and finishing fourth instead), France (locking up and sliding into Valtteri Bottas on lap one), Austria (blocking Carlos Sainz in qualifying and receiving a grid penalty that cost him any chance of victory) and Germany (sliding off into the barriers while leading). That’s a loss of 63 points – in addition to the extra points Hamilton has scored as a result of Vettel’s mishaps. So he’s currently 30 points behind when he could be more than that in front. It follows a similar pattern to last year (Baku, Singapore, Mexico). So it’s all Vettel’s fault?
Actually, no. No, it’s not. It is also Ferrari’s fault. In fact, the root of the pressure that is behind these accidents almost certainly originates from the operational shortfalls of the team. Prior to his joining the Scuderia, Vettel’s career was almost blemish-free. Pressure errors were not part of his game. Which implies that there is something about driving for Ferrari which is triggering them. Listening to his radio messages during his Ferrari years reveals a lot. Whether it was his outburst amid the chaos of a sudden downpour in Spa qualifying – “Lift the car up for ***’s sake, you’ll crush the floor,” – or his frequent questioning of strategy, it is clear he feels the need to oversee the operation of his car. At the more smoothly-drilled Red Bull team, usually all he had to do was drive. Much as Hamilton does now at Mercedes. At Ferrari, Vettel finds himself trying to manage the team from the cockpit – clearly because he feels he needs to.
Much as Ferrari have been perhaps the most technically-creative team of all in the last couple of seasons (for the first time in a decade), it is still operationally a shaky one on a race weekend. So Vettel is driving the best car being run by less than the best team. With his mind thus split between roles, amid the constant concern about whether everything has been thought through in a fast, ever-moving environment, he’s feeling the pressure in a way he wasn’t at his previous teams. That’s quite aside from the pressure of representing Ferrari as the lead driver when it has given him a potentially title-winning car. That was the case last year and it’s even more so this season.
