F1 | Minardi on Vettel: "He should retire, he will never win again"

The Italian entrepreneur, currently President of the Board of Directors of “Formula Imola”, believes that the time has come for four-time world champion Sebastian Vettel to retire from Formula 1.

His rather harsh comment comes after the German's disastrous weekend in Australia: problem in FP1, he missed FP2 due to the damage to the car and was fined 5000 euros for having returned to the pits using the track marshals' motor. In third free practice he was involved in an accident which delayed his entry into qualifying, where he only achieved 18th place. He ended his race hitting the barriers on lap 23).

“He was unfortunate to have missed two Grands Prix due to Covid-19 -Giancarlo Minardi declared to “Il Corriere della Sera”- but he should retire. He has a lot of money, he's won titles and he'll never win again.".

In the meantime, rumors have begun to circulate of a possible hiring of Fernando Alonso in Aston Martin, since the Alpine team would be strongly interested in the Formula 2 champion, Oscar Piastri.

However, the new team principal of the British team, Mike Krack, defended Vettel after the Melbourne weekend:

“Everything is fine with Seb. The fact that a driver like him, a four-time world champion, has so many problems in one weekend has little to do with his driving performance. It's not normal when a driver of his caliber is off track so often during a weekend”.

Former Formula 1 driver Timo Glock also thinks the German could make a decision on his future soon:

“It will be a difficult road for the whole team -he declared to Sky Deutschland- I can imagine that Sebastian Vettel will lose patience at some point because he knows very well how long it takes to get out of a situation like this. We will have to wait for the next races to see how he can motivate himself and what he will decide for his future.".