Sebastian Vettel announces retirement from Formula 1
On the eve of the Hungarian Grand Prix, Sebastian Vettel announced that he would retire from Formula 1 at the end of this season, after 15 full years in the sport.
The 35-year-old from Heppenheim in Germany announced his retirement on Instagram – his debut on the social media platform - with a long, carefully-worded video message in which he expressed that while he still loves Formula 1, he now wants to focus on spending more time with his young family.
Vettel made his start in karting at just three years old and would progress through the usual (European) ranks of Formula BMW, Formula 3 and Formula Renault before joining the BMW Sauber F1 team as a test driver in 2006.
After a single race start for Sauber in 2007, Vettel was released from his contract with BMW and joined Red Bull Racing’s feeder team, Scuderia Toro Rosso. The following year, he achieved his first race win, at the Italian Grand Prix.
Stepping up to Red Bull Racing in 2009, Vettel really began to make his mark, finishing second in the Drivers’ World Championship that year, then taking four successive world titles. Vettel’s dominance during this period included eleven race wins in the 2011 season and thirteen in 2013.
After one more year with Red Bull Racing, Vettel joined Scuderia Ferrari in 2015 and would spend six years with the famous Italian team. Although unable to replicate the success he had with Red Bull, Vettel achieved multiple race wins in his first four years with Ferrari and finished runner-up in the championship on two occasions.
After his final two seasons with Ferrari delivered just one race win, Vettel signed with the Racing Point F1 team, which had been rebranded as ‘Aston Martin Cognizant Formula One’ for the 2021 season. Vettel’s best result with Aston Martin at time of writing has been a second place at the Azerbaijan Grand Prix in 2021, although another podium at Hungary that year was disallowed due to a technical infringement.
Beyond his four world championships, Vettel will leave Formula 1 with 122 podiums from 300 race starts (at time of writing) and over 3,000 championship points. While he’s unlikely to add to his race win tally in the handful of starts he has left, the German’s 53 race wins places him third on the all-time F1 winners list, only behind Michael Schumacher (91) and Lewis Hamilton (103).
Beyond spending more time with his family, Vettel’s immediate future post-F1 is unclear, but many are expecting him to remain a regular sight around the paddock, possibly in a commentary role.
