General
"It can only go downhill from here with Vettel"
- GPblog.com
No less than four times he became world champion. Sebastian Vettel could not repeat the trick at Scuderia Ferrari and in 2021 he will say goodbye at the Italian race stable. Vettel was already on top and even went to Ferrari. According to Damon Hill it can now only go downhill for the German.
Hill, the world champion of 1996, is gloomy for four-time world champion Sebastian Vettel. Vettel has been outcompeted by his younger teammate Charles Leclerc and will no longer be seen on the grid in red after 2020. His next step is still unknown, but many connoisseurs are critical.
In the Autosport podcast Hill discusses this: "The situation Vettel is in is alarming. Everyone is currently looking at his future in the sport. When you're at the top in a sport it's particularly difficult, because there's only the way down".
Possibilities for the German are McLaren, Renault or Aston Martin. "But why would he do that?", Hill wonders out loud.
Should Vettel stop?
A well-known credo in top sport is "stop at your peak". For Sebastian Vettel, this wouldn't be so bad. The German looks back on a beautiful F1 career. Hill discusses his own memories of when he quit racing in 1999.
"It's extremely difficult to know in advance that, for example, you only have five races left to drive. When I made my choice, I wanted to stop right away. If you don't feel it anymore then you should stop right away and not hold on to it until the end of a season".
Although Hill doesn't say out loud that Vettel should stop after this season, the Brit seems to be hinting very clearly at that. For Hill, Jackie Stewart and Niki Lauda were two good examples of drivers who left the sport at the right time for the right reasons.