This time I’ll be brief. Barcelona is approaching and instead of the battle over technical developments I would like to talk about a topic that is almost closest to my heart. When I think of the Circuit de Catalunya, noodles come to mind. They were a full-bodied dish, seasoned with a fairly imaginative ragù, and brandishing them with a threatening manner was indignant Sebastian Vettel. “I’m not going there now”, he told me, pointing to the prefab where a crowd of reporters, TV and photographers was waiting for him. It was a day in February, during the 2016 tests, and the reason for his indignation – it seems to me – was the fact that the FIA had approved a new qualifying criterion (which in the test of the facts of criterion had very little) without consulting the pilots. Out of spite, Seb did not want to attend the press conference, but I finally managed to convince him, not really with a good deal of luck. I was impressed, however, by this rebellious attitude, so unorthodox for the canons of today’s F1, in the face of what he considered an injustice and an outrage to his professional category. A feature that I later found on other occasions.
Years have passed and Seb is no longer in Ferrari (neither do I, but that doesn’t matter). I feel I can say that where he is now, that is, in Aston Martin, the pressure is less and the expectations too. The protocol of the green team seems to me even less rigid and allows it to externalize a little on all current issues; from the invasion of Ukraine, to which he dedicated the colors of the helmet, to the defense of the environment, to the defense of LGBTQ + rights (if I miss a letter you will forgive me) and so on. The impression he gets is that he is paying more and more attention to the world around him, as if he were to hunting for alternatives. And this led, on the one hand, a Formula E team to offer him a test with one of its cars: and on the other hand a former driver and commentator on permanent duty, Marc Surer, to take his retirement for granted at the end of this season.
On the threshold of 60 I still want to delude myself and I am determined to believe that Sebastian Vettel, a man not devoid of intelligence, has the energy and skills to combine his social battles with the job that gives him a living (well). He has always been a hobby grower, from the Beatles vinyl collection to the restoration of old motorcycles (on the first I don’t know, on the second they tell me that the passion is a lot and the skills a lot less). He has also always liked good gestures to effect: only once, just after winning a world championship, he helped the mechanics to dismantle the garage and now he goes to clean up the stands after the race (not won). But today not a day goes by without reading a statement of his on a topic of his choice, as if it were a virologist from tv. And at the cost of being unpleasant and unpopular – which, given my age, I can’t care less by now – I must say that I am a worried delusional. Because I have already seen in other pilots these attitudes, these diversifications of interest; and I wonder how compatible they are with a profession that today is all-encompassing and totalitarian. I also think back to the Ferrari Vettel, his obsession with detail, his debriefings that lasted six times those of Raikkonen; and I wonder if he’s found the formula to get twenty-nine hour days, or if he’s just close to pulling the plug.
I know: it would be nice if famous people, actors, rock stars, sportsmen, really had the way to engage full-time in social causes. There are those who do it, of course: but if for a Bono Vox (mentioned for example) this can be a driving force for a career, for a Sebastian Vettel it risks becoming a brake. And don’t tell me “but Hamilton does too“ because it is not the same. In the sense that Lewis has always given voice to his interests and managed them in an organized way, not neglecting the media exposure, in the years in which he won world championships: while Sebastian his polemical and dissociative vis has cultivated it especially since has stopped winning and being at the center of the drivers’ market. Very bad to say, I know: but it is not the same thing.
And then I still delude myself and I hope, indeed I believe, that on the track where five years ago he took his foot off the gas so as not to show Ferrari’s potential in testing, Sebastian Vettel finds himself and runs as he knew and perhaps still knows how to do. Whether it’s for a first or eighth place, it doesn’t really matter.
#Journey #Metavettel #FormulaPassionit