The last race of the 2022 Formula 1 season was also the final stage of the Circus career of Sebastian Vettel. The four-times world champion said goodbye to the sport that made him a legend with a points finish, a tenth place finish which, however, was not enough for Aston Martin to be able to overtake Alfa Romeo in the race for sixth place in the manufacturers ranking. The second half of the championship was particularly positive for Vettel, who – despite a vehicle that was anything but competitive – managed to score points in six of the last 10 races, closing the championship with the same points as Daniel Ricciardo and more than double of those obtained by his teammate in Aston Martin, Lance Stroll (37-18 reads the comparison).
However, it was precisely the poor performance of the car at Silverstone that forced the Heppenheim veteran to cut short – in the last year of a career full of triumphs – a record streak special: that of consecutive seasons spent with at least one podium finish. Vettel had in fact always finished in the top-3 in at least one race during the year since 2008, his first ‘full’ year in F1. In 2007, in fact, his debut took place in the middle of the season with BMW to replace the injured Robert Kubica. Seb then moved to Toro Rosso from the following race, completing the championship with the team from Faenza and collecting a fourth place in the Chinese GP as his best result.
From the following year always – even in the most troubled seasons – Vettel was able to score a sharp. He happened in disastrous 2020 Ferrari driver, when he was third in Turkey thanks to an overtaking in the final corners against his teammate Charles Leclerc, and last year, in his first season in Aston Martin. In fact, the German arrived in 2021 second to Baku, at the end of a crazy race. 14 consecutive seasons in F1 with at least one podium finish is an incredible achievement that only two other drivers have surpassed: Lewis Hamilton, who reached 16 this year, and Michael Schumacher. The Kaiser stopped at 15 between 1992 and 2006, the year of his first retirement. For him a 16th season topped off with a podium would then come in 2012, the last year of his ‘second career’, with third place collected in the Valencia race.
Vettel’s (and Mick Schumacher’s) failure to achieve a podium also ended a streak of 30 consecutive years of German podiums in F1. It was Kaiser Schumi himself who opened it, needless to say, in 1992. Finally, Vettel, for just one GP, did not become part of the restricted circle capable of taking part in 300 races in his career. The #5 finished at 299. There are three ‘missing’ races in the career of the four-time world champion: the 2016 Bahrain GP, in which Vettel retired before the start due to a problem with his Ferrari, and the first two races of the championship just ended. In fact, the former Red Bull driver did not race in Bahrain and Saudi Arabia this year due to his positivity to Covid.
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