Sebastian Vettel, Aston Martin, Imola, 2022

Vettel finding “different sort of motivation” at Aston Martin

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In the round-up: Sebastian Vettel admits he’s having to find new forms of motivation racing in the midfield

In brief

Vettel having to find “different sort of motivation” at Aston Martin

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Sebastian Vettel admits he’s having to find new forms of motivation while racing in the midfield with Aston Martin.

Vettel joined Aston Martin from Ferrari and has only raced once this season, in Australia, where he retired. Vettel admits that racing has a “different taste” when not fighting for wins.

“In all honesty, I had an amazing 15 years or so looking back and I was in a position to win championships, win a lot of races, fight for positions, get a lot of podiums, and obviously the taste was great,” said Vettel.

“It’s not a secret that if you’re not in a position to be there that it’s a different taste. You need to find a different sort of motivation. But I think, ultimately, I’m willing to be tasting the same again. That’s the nature of the sport.”

Mercedes porpoising broke stay on Russell’s car – Wolff

Toto Wolff revealed that George Russell’s Mercedes suffered so severely from porpoising on the straight at Imola in practice that it broke a floor stay designed to increase the rigidity of the car’s floor.

Mercedes have struggled most visibly from the bouncing phenomenon experienced by 2022 ground effect F1 cars and are still developing solutions to the problem.

“We had George bouncing so much that he broke the stay, actually, on the floor,” Wolff explained to Sky. “You can’t drive here, you have to lift on the straight.”

Asked how the effect would impact on drivers Russell and Lewis Hamilton physically, Wolff said he did not know. “I don’t know, but I think they are trained,” he said.

“I have never experienced in my life bouncing like this, but it’s clearly not drive-able.”

“Everyone was panicking” before F2 qualifying, says polesitter Vips

Jüri Vips, who took pole in Formula 2’s heavily delayed qualifying session, said that despite a disrupted and wet practice session teams had been predicting dry weather.

“The most important thing on days like this is just to keep calm,” said Vips, describing the way sessions had been postponed, moved, rescheduled and red-flagged. “Two hours before qualifying, we had literally the full dry set up on the car because we didn’t expect any more rain.

“And then it started raining all of a sudden and everyone was panicking. We changed the set up immediately. If you go with a dry set up on a wet track, you just be last no matter how good of a job you do. So there was that factor.”

F2’s qualifying start was dependent on the end of Formula 1’s, which was significantly elongated by red flag periods.

“We didn’t know what the weather was going to do, maybe it was going to dry,” explained Vips. “There were a lot of questions, a lot of things that you can’t really predict, it’s out of your control.

“But you just have to make the best of the situation because in the end, the weather and all these other factors are just the same for everyone. So you just have to remain calm and do your job.”

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Comment of the day

After multiple drivers voiced unhappiness with the revised race weekend format for 2022, @bernasaurus sympathises with those unhappy at having to answer the same questions from multiple television broadcasters in a single sitting…

I’ve often thought this with F1. I know the drivers do try, but you can tell when they’re repeating what they’ve just said 20 seconds earlier. It often makes them appear insincere, or removed in some way. Presumably the interviewer hears them answer the same question, but sometimes there really is only one or two questions to ask, and you can’t really alter the wording of it.

I imagine after Lewis and Max came together at Monza, there is no real way for any interviewer to ask anything other than the obvious, and it can’t be fun for the drivers to walk around in a semi circle saying the same thing repeatedly.
@bernasaurus

Happy birthday!

Happy birthday to Wonderduck, Hydro, Rylan Ziegler, Kadir Issa and Benh!

Author information

Will Wood
Will has been a RaceFans contributor since 2012 during which time he has covered F1 test sessions, launch events and interviewed drivers. He mainly...

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13 comments on “Vettel finding “different sort of motivation” at Aston Martin”

  1. Profile Photo

    Darryn Smith (@darryn)
    23rd April 2022, 1:20

    You guys have to be the worst spellers on the internet.

    1. Profile Photo

      EffWunFan (@cairnsfella)
      23rd April 2022, 1:37

      Eye undestanned yore poynt, but shorley itz a byt ov an eggsagerasion.

    2. Profile Photo

      Tristan (@skipgamer)
      23rd April 2022, 3:39

      Don’t need to spell when you just embed twitter links 🤷‍♂️ The single column twitter doom scroll on some of these articles is untennable.

      1. jff
        23rd April 2022, 7:48

        I still long to the days when the round-up was “your daily digest of F1 news, views, features and more from hundreds of sites across the web”.
        The strength of the round-up was to be a digest of what others published rather than creating own snippets of stories.

  2. Initially
    23rd April 2022, 6:52

    I wonder if the Mercedes suffers the most from porpoissing because it generates the most downforce? The extreme design ”looks fast”. But maybe it doesn’t create more downforce and it’s just more sensitive? Just speculating. Just a bit surprising they struggle the most when they’re arguably the best team.

  3. Mayrton
    23rd April 2022, 7:05

    Vettel is a funny man. He should be glad some people still fall for the multiple WDC status. Haven’t seen a decent season from him since he left RB.

    1. Just a Fan
      23rd April 2022, 9:13

      Then you must be new to F1. Not a fan myself, but his 2015 and 2017 seasons (latter as a whole overall) were brilliant

    2. Gmacz
      23rd April 2022, 9:18

      I partially agree, his skills were flattered by the dominant RB but he is a competent driver and seems a likeable fellow. He is though too keen to be seen as an advocate of the latest “fashionable cause” and should do more to understand the backstory before quickly showing himself as a crusader.

    3. Profile Photo

      HT Onk (@pweb87)
      23rd April 2022, 9:28

      I think 2018 and especially 2017 were great seasons by vettel… even though he was a bit hot-headed sometimes, but to be honest i actually quite liked the emotions and the straight talk.

      He battled Hamilton and Mercedes in what i believe to remember was an inferior car, so he had to overdo it sometimes to stand a chance. Plus the pressure cooker environment that is (used to be?) Ferrari, i think it‘s only human he lost it sometimes.

      1. Profile Photo

        Esploratore (@esploratore1)
        23rd April 2022, 12:18

        2018 great season? He lost the title uniquely for his mistakes! 2017 was decent, he made some mistakes but hamilton also had some underperformances, they were up there, I think only really 2015 was a great season post red bull for vettel.

    4. Manto
      23rd April 2022, 9:33

      Let’s see if Hamilton will have decent seasons since the end of mercedes cycle

    5. Profile Photo

      Qeki (@qeki)
      23rd April 2022, 9:59

      He is only racing this seasson to fund his bee farm

  4. Profile Photo

    Jere (@jerejj)
    23rd April 2022, 9:21

    Imola became Silverstone.

    COTD is spot-on.

Comments are closed.