How mental strength let Vettel down in 2017

He might be Ferrari's man now, but they can't speak highly enough of Sebastian Vettel down at Red Bull. That's hardly surprising given he won four consecutive Formula 1 world championships for the team. But there's more to it than that. Like all truly great drivers, Vettel left a lasting impression.

"Sebastian is mentally very strong - he's very committed, very determined; he's very sharp, he misses nothing, so his complete package is astonishingly good," says Red Bull's chief engineer Paul Monaghan.

"He has the general things that each great driver has," adds Red Bull motorsport boss Helmut Marko. "He's focused, he's into detail. All his life is, more or less, focused on racing."

Commitment, determination, focus, mental strength. These are the words synonymous with Vettel. These qualities helped make him a quadruple world champion, and he has taken them with him to Maranello, as he bids to transform Ferrari into champions once again.

There can be no doubting Vettel's commitment, determination and focus in this year's title battle with Lewis Hamilton.

Vettel has driven very well for much of the year. He has come up short ultimately, but he has so far won four races in the second fastest car, and some of his qualifying performances to get onto the front row of the grid in tough circumstances have been outstanding.

But what's troubling is how his mental fortitude and composure deserted him at key moments.

Vettel is usually so iron solid and impossible to destabilise - unlike Hamilton, who has often displayed episodes of fragility outside the car, and basks in newfound calm now Nico Rosberg is no longer around to upset his internal applecart.

At the start of this season, Vettel looked every bit the man on a roll. Hamilton said so himself: "All I know is Vettel is on a championship-winning road: one-two-one-two-one-two," Hamilton told Autosport ahead of June's Canadian Grand Prix, adding that Vettel is "massively strong mentally".

In that race, Vettel had his nose chopped off by the brute force of the Max Verstappen hurricane, but Vettel recovered well and finished fourth. A few extra points lost to Hamilton, but no major harm done - certainly nothing Vettel could take blame for, save for a slightly sluggish start.

"Once that spike of adrenaline comes back down, he has a pretty good approach to things" Daniel Ricciardo on Vettel

Then Baku happened. Where was Vettel's famous mental strength then? With a moment of red mist, a complete loss of composure behind the safety car, Vettel threw away 13 crucial points and condemned himself to a disciplinary hearing with F1's governing body.

Given Vettel was already skating on thin ice with the FIA thanks to the last time he totally lost his cool in the car in Mexico last season, his behaviour in Azerbaijan was particularly ill-advised.

"He's German, but doesn't have this attitude of being calm and just focused, so he's far more, in a race car, Italian," offers Marko. "More than you'd expect from a German - especially when you talk to Vettel normally - but it shows how much he puts into his efforts.

"Michael Schumacher was also very focused, but he never had this emotional thing like Seb has sometimes. He has his belief of honesty and justice. I wouldn't say that makes it a vulnerability, but if he doesn't feel guilty he wouldn't admit just for diplomatic reasons."

Vettel certainly didn't admit fault in the immediate aftermath of that Baku incident. Only later, when the FIA called him to Paris to review the incident, did Vettel issue a written apology for creating a "dangerous situation" through his driving. Later in the year, he admitted he felt he let Ferrari down with his actions in that race.

"From what I've seen with him, I think that instant, that spur of the moment, he can obviously get quite reactive or emotional," says Vettel's former Red Bull team-mate Daniel Ricciardo. "But once that spike of adrenaline comes back down, he has a pretty good approach to things.

"Mexico last year and all that, with the radio and the incident, I'm sure he was pretty vocal at first, but then he was like, 'Alright, maybe I'll re-assess what just happened'. [He's] fairly emotional, but I think the emotion comes from the passion. He's one of the most passionate guys on the grid, and I know he lives F1 probably more than most of us."

Passion is all well and good. Admirable even. But an elite driver, embroiled in a close title fight with one of the greatest F1 drivers who ever lived, cannot afford to let his emotions get the better of him inside the car.

The past master of emotional control, Jackie Stewart, will tell you this is where composure is needed most. It is especially important when you consider how Vettel was fighting for the championship in a slower car. In such a scenario, you must maximise every opportunity: Monaco, Azerbaijan (thanks to Hamilton's wonky headrest), Hungary and Singapore were all nailed-on chances for Ferrari to win big. Taking two out of four isn't good enough.

Which brings us to Singapore - a race Vettel should have won, but instead finished in the wall, with his Ferrari damaged beyond repair barely three corners after the start.

He had pole; Hamilton was starting down in fifth. Vettel botched the start, having chosen to do it in second gear. A mistake is a mistake - we all make them - but instead of reacting with the calm assurance of a multiple champion, conceding the inevitable on the run to the first corner and living to fight another day, Vettel chose to defend position aggressively regardless.

Vettel's take on Baku now pretty much chimes with the rest of us - that he made a silly mistake and paid the price. No one to blame but himself - and the ability of current F1 aerodynamics to slow a car suddenly and unexpectedly without need for the brake pedal.

There is not much difference in the move Vettel made on Verstappen in Singapore compared to the one Hamilton tried on Vettel at Austin

But it's interesting to learn he would "probably not" do anything different should the Singapore scenario reoccur. Vettel's argument is that you cannot make allowances for the brilliant start his Ferrari team-mate Kimi Raikkonen made from the second row of the grid.

"I've looked at it plenty of times," Vettel says. "I do understand the people that say, 'Ah, it's all wrong!' Do I agree? Not necessarily, because put yourself in the car, how much mirror you have to watch - all I could see was Max. If you then think about another guy, another guy, another guy; well, where do you stop?

"Then people try to interpret it - a lot of intelligence in that moment, where other people went OK, then stupidity when it ended up in a crash. But then you could also argue it's just luck, or no luck, or just how it came together.

"Then there's other reasons - I had an average start, Kimi had a great start. In theory, Kimi should have a worse start than I had, but it happened that the grip was so good that he had a better start.

"So, in the end, it is a racing incident. It went bad for me. It went super well for Lewis because he didn't have to do anything and he found himself in the lead after three corners. But that's how it goes sometimes.

"That's unfortunate if it hits you, [but] it can be [in] our sport. If it works in your favour, you don't spend so much time thinking about it. It all comes down to would you do much differently? Probably not, because I don't think my move over to Verstappen was overly aggressive.

"I stopped in the moment where I got the hit to give him the room to dive into Turn 1 to cut back on the inside, but it never came to that point."

In fairness to Vettel, there is not much difference in the move he made on Verstappen in Singapore compared to the one Hamilton tried on Vettel at the start of last month's United States Grand Prix. It has become common practice to swerve across the track to cover the inside line after starting from pole, regardless of what else is happening, and the fact is a car accelerates faster in a straight line than it does when steering lock is applied.

But Hamilton could afford to take risks when leading the championship by 59 points. At the start of the race in Singapore, Vettel trailed Hamilton by three. In other words, everything was still to play for and Vettel was caught between conservative and aggressive choices.

Big-picture thinking would prioritise conceding the battle to win the war later. Had Vettel finished second or third in Singapore, with Hamilton fifth or fourth at best, Vettel would have closed the gap to Hamilton by a couple of points at worst.

Short-term, Vettel would have known in the back of his mind that Singapore presented one of the few cast-iron chances left for Ferrari to win a race in the second half of the season. That creates pressure to win at all costs, because this was one of the few occasions Ferrari knew it could score big points over Mercedes. 'Fail to win here and you might as well hand Hamilton the championship trophy now'.

But by not reconsidering his tactics in the heat of the moment that's exactly what Vettel did. Ferrari's reliability failings he could do nothing about - those 38 potential points subsequently lost by not winning in Malaysia and Japan he was going to lose anyway.

But another 38-point swing - 28 at worst if Vettel had finished behind Verstappen and Raikkonen at Marina Bay - he threw away all by himself. For a four-time champion possessed of such formidable qualities, that's not good enough.

And it's also a major reason why this championship battle is over far sooner than it should be.