Secret Mechanic: How it feels when your star driver leaves

So Sebastian Vettel's finally flying the nest, leaving the team that's raised him from small child into fully grown, quadruple world champion, adult.

Further along the pitlane, Fernando Alonso also seems to be splitting up the family, albeit his adoptive one rather than the one that brought him into this Formula 1 world.

Both drivers are leaving their respective teams for different reasons, and the effects on the guys in each squad are also likely to be quite different.

I've been fortunate to have worked in F1 for a long time. I've seen many drivers come and go - some who I've really connected with, others who had minimal impact on my life. Some made my working environment a far better place to be, others actually made it more difficult.

The truth is that when they moved on, each drew a different emotional response from my colleagues and me inside our team garages.

Red Bull has witnessed Vettel grow up into a four-time world champion © LAT

Sebastian Vettel's grown up at Red Bull; he's been with the company from a very young age, and those working at the F1 team have watched him wearing their colours all the way through.

Many of the mechanics, engineers and truckies at RBR have grown up with him, joining as relative youngsters, learning and perfecting their own specialist trades, just as he has done.

Together they've achieved the kinds of success normally only dreamed of. Make no mistake, those four constructors' titles mean as much to the team as the drivers' crowns do to Seb.

They've enjoyed each other's company, worked perfectly together for a long time and for a number of people in the organisation it feels like the natural end of that particular journey. An opportunity for people, up until now vested in the relationship, to move on, upwards, or to call it a day having achieved what they set out to do.

There's little doubt in my mind that Vettel's chosen this as his time to leave because of the ultra-competitive performance of his current team-mate, but I don't think the team is likely to hold that against him.

He's done his job for Red Bull and he's done it well. He's paid back everyone - with interest - for their hard work, their commitment, their sacrifice and not least the company's financial investment in his career, and they appreciate that.

That's all you can ask of a driver, that he does his job on track with the same level of dedication that you give to yours as a mechanic and that he appreciates what people do for him every day.

I've worked with drivers like this. Some are still good friends many years later and when they announced they were leaving, it was sad, but I wished them well and thanked them for everything, just as they did to me.

At Ferrari, Fernando Alonso is leaving too, but he still hasn't told the world (and therefore almost certainly his mechanics) where he's going or why.

We (and his mechanics) all know it's basically because he's frustrated at not being given a winning car by his Ferrari team and that he feels he's running out of time to claim the third world title he thinks he deserves.

I guess there are two schools of thought as to how his current team members in the garage will feel.

I've been in a situation where I've worked with a driver who came very close to winning the world title on a couple of occasions, but circumstances, some of which were reliability related, conspired against us. In the end he left to chase his dream somewhere else and I backed him all the way.

He was a great servant for us, nothing would've made me happier at the time than to win the title together, but it didn't happen and part of that was because we as a team hadn't given him the tools to do the job. Part of me felt like we'd let him down.

He was world champion material and he went on to prove it, and when he did, I was the first under the podium, even if I was wearing different colours, congratulating him.

Conversely, you could also be forgiven for thinking that Fernando looks like he's jumping ship and abandoning those who've done all they can to give him what he wants.

Will Ferrari's crew members feel like Alonso is abandoning them? © LAT

In 2010 and 2012 Ferrari gave him everything to get that world title and he came within three and four points respectively at the last race of each campaign.

He had unequivocal number-one status and a team-mate who knew his job was to move out of the way, even to give up his superior and well-earned place on the grid for him (Austin 2012), whenever asked to do so.

There isn't another team in the world that does that for one driver.

Working in that team then, particularly for those not on his side of the garage, why would you not feel like this guy, who demands all before him bow submissively to his contracted hierarchical position, is about to throw the whole lot back in your face?

Does it not come across as "I'm better than this team and will now grant someone else the coveted opportunity to make me world champion"?

It could do.

Few F1 drivers are real team players. They want to win their own races and world titles and any constructor's success comes as a fortunate spin-off. That's just the truth.

However, there are different ways to handle it and I'm pretty sure if I worked at Ferrari, I'd feel pretty put out if I was on the side of the garage that simply wasn't allowed to win because Fernando thought it was his right to do so.

If he then left the team, despite my colleagues and me compromising our professional competitiveness to give him every chance of a third world title, to switch to a struggling upper-midfield outfit with an unproven new engine partner, suggesting they would give him a better chance, I might well feel a little aggrieved.