How Vettel's Ferrari mission ended on a sour note

"The mission is still there and the target is still there to achieve the mission - to win with Ferrari."

Sebastian Vettel spoke those words only nine months ago, during the aborted Australian Grand Prix weekend. At the time, just before the COVID-19 pandemic brought Formula 1 and the world to a standstill, it looked near certain that he would be re-signed to a fresh Ferrari deal and continue striving to achieve his dream: winning in red, just like his childhood hero, Michael Schumacher.

But eight weeks later, Vettel's Ferrari exit was announced, and Carlos Sainz Jr revealed as his replacement. The dream was to end, the mission in mortal peril.

This time 12 months ago, Ferrari signed Charles Leclerc to a long-term contract, sealing his place at the team until the end of 2024. His star had risen tremendously since he replaced Kimi Raikkonen at the start of 2019, his heartbreaking near-miss in Bahrain and victories at Spa and on Ferrari's home patch at Monza quickly kickstarting his tale at Maranello. Leclerc's rise brought him level with Vettel and conflict was coming, culminating in that crash between the pair in Brazil.

But despite that, ahead of the expected start of the 2020 season, when observers were eagerly awaiting the next intra-Ferrari eruption, team boss Mattia Binotto was still calling Vettel the team's "first choice" when it came to joining Leclerc beyond 2020. By the time of Vettel's Melbourne words, both sides were insisting that talks over a new contract had yet to really get going.

Once the news of Vettel's exit had broken during the ensuing spring lockdown, it was later revealed that he was never even offered a contract. He'd insisted during that Melbourne interview that his future happiness was a more important consideration than anything to do with money, with suggestions following the news of his upcoming departure that Vettel had wanted a firm and lasting commitment from Ferrari, which was not forthcoming. Such a preference is understandable - at 33, Vettel is entering the swansong years of his illustrious career. But Ferrari had found a new star, and new love.

Leclerc is the team's latest hope for returned F1 glory, Vettel the latest high-profile signing to fail to recreate the success steamroller that Schumacher brought to the team at the turn of the century. Vettel, Fernando Alonso - even Kimi Raikkonen, Ferrari's most-recent world champion, who won with the team arrangement that had taken Schumacher to his five titles in red - were cast aside in favour of a bright new hope.

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The divorce was announced, the replacement already secured, but Vettel's mission had one last chance of succeeding in the 2020 campaign. The problem was it was already a faint chance at best.

In pre-season testing, the SF1000 had been exposed as severely lacking compared to its 'Class A' rivals. In fact, the car was so far behind Mercedes and Red Bull that it would be a midfield challenger at best. It was slow on the straights, and the "extreme" design the team had outlined at its launch - a bid to match Mercedes' downforce levels and make Ferrari a challenger on a greater range of tracks than in the previous seasons, when it had relied on its controversial power unit making the difference - was creating drag problems.

The Melbourne withdrawal meant F1's 2020 campaign did not kick off on time, and so the true scale of Ferrari's deficit was not fully revealed until July, when the season finally got going at the Austrian GP. In qualifying at the Red Bull Ring, Leclerc led the way in seventh, Vettel dumped out in Q2 - 11th.

A new, negative feature of Vettel's final Ferrari campaign was his underperformance in qualifying. Only once, at the Hungaroring, a track where power is not the decisive factor, did he break into the top five in qualifying

A year before, Leclerc had taken pole by 0.259 seconds over Lewis Hamilton, and only narrowly lost the race to Max Verstappen. The distance Ferrari had fallen was stark.
The biggest single reason behind its sudden pace deficit was down to its power output. What had once been Ferrari's key strength was suddenly gone - removed by a series of FIA technical directives at the end of 2019, with the governing body announcing in the final moments of 2020 testing that it had reached a private settlement with the team regarding that year's engine.

The power problem had a knock-on effect. The aerodynamic intricacies that Ferrari had added onto the SF1000 to go faster in the corners suddenly didn't have the grunt required to overcome the drag they added on the straights, or make them work to their best in the turns. It was a vicious circle that Ferrari could not escape before the season got under way.

When it did, Leclerc immediately rescued something from what would be a painful season overall with his stunning second place in the season opener (aided by Hamilton's penalty). In the same race, Vettel came home 10th after making another unforced error - he spun while running behind Sainz, an unfortunate twist of fate given the upcoming crossing of their Ferrari paths.

It was the latest in a long line of Vettel mistakes that had blighted his F1 record in recent years. And it wasn't the last in 2020. He spun at the first corner of the 70th Anniversary GP, after which former team-mate Daniel Ricciardo would call his own unforced loop-around later in the same race a "Seb spin", which rather sums things up.

Vettel produced another one while running behind Antonio Giovinazzi's Alfa Romeo in the Eifel GP as they scrapped over 10th - a legacy of works and customer Ferrari-powered cars grappling with the engine deficit down the order. And Vettel also crashed in qualifying for the Russian GP when he couldn't catch the rear coming around, wiping the right-front off his car ahead of a race he would go on to finish in a lapped 13th.

A new, negative feature of Vettel's final Ferrari campaign was his underperformance in qualifying. He was of course hindered by the engine deficit, but only once, at the Hungaroring, a track where power is not the decisive factor, did he break into the top five in qualifying (it should be noted that Vettel finished a creditable sixth in the race too, as he kept his tyres in better shape than Leclerc, who finished out of the points).

It was against the clock that Leclerc was able to show his class again in 2020, despite the car problems, which Ferrari attempted to cure with a trickle of updates it knew would not be a magic-bullet fix. At the first Silverstone race, the Nurburgring, Algarve Circuit and the second Bahrain event he took fine fourth places, the first and last coming on tracks that very much did not play to Ferrari's strengths.

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In the British GP, he was able to hold his position - a rare thing overall given the Ferrari was very vulnerable on the straights when it qualified ahead of its midfield rivals running other power units - which became his second shock podium of the season when the late-race tyre dramas hit Mercedes and McLaren. He also drove magnificently to go from eighth to fourth in the 70th Anniversary GP, executing a one-stopper so fine that he was unable to explain why he was so fast, a result he repeated in Portugal.

But Vettel, who struggled throughout the year to generate much confidence behind the wheel of his SF1000, failed to make it through to Q3 on 14 occasions. This may have been a more accurate reflection of where the 2020 Ferrari deserved to be against its new rivals in the pack, with Leclerc able to elevate it on occasions - much like Verstappen could do against the Mercedes - but it also condemned Vettel to regular battles to make the points.

There were places squandered to slow pitstops, which Ferrari blamed on wheelnuts being too easily stripped during tyre changes and equipment it needs to upgrade. But on several occasions Vettel came home rather anonymously. At the end of the year, he trailed his replacement as Ferrari's new love by 65 points in the standings - Leclerc was eighth, Vettel 13th.

But there was at least one final moment of glory for Vettel to take away from his six-year spell in red. This came at the Turkish GP, a thrilling race where the low-grip track surface and wet race conditions let the best shine. Vettel started 11th but finished third - his 55th podium result for Ferrari. The key was a brilliant start, and he then kept eventual winner Hamilton behind for a long time, finally sealing third when Leclerc slipped wide three corners from home while battling Sergio Perez.

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As 2020 draws to a close, Vettel's time with Ferrari will fade into memories. He completed 118 races for the famous marque - behind only Schumacher, Raikkonen and Felipe Massa. But when it comes to considering his Ferrari legacy, Vettel says he "doesn't work like that".

"Everything that happened, happened for a reason. The main thing I think, on my side, is to make sure that I learned from it, and I think I have grown with it" Sebastian Vettel

"I'm not so worried about myself and don't take myself so seriously," he said ahead of the Sakhir GP. "I don't want to sound arrogant saying, 'I don't care how I will be remembered'. But I think the people who know me - they will remember and will remember the good and also part of the bad, I guess.

"I've no regrets. I think it was a privilege to drive for the team, to work with the people who have such a high level of passion for the brand, and for their job. It's always a privilege to work among very excited people, excited about what they do in their lives, and I've learned a lot. Coming out of Ferrari, I'm for sure further up than coming into Ferrari and the results are only one measure. But I think in life there are more measures than just results.

"I will miss those people but the good thing is that I will not lose these people. They're still around and I know how to get to them if I want to. I've never worked on a colour basis in this regard. You put the people first.

"And that's why, for me it's not that important how I will be remembered. The key people that I have let into my head or in my heart, I think they know. So, I don't think there's anything to state or to prove there."

The main takeaway from Vettel's Ferrari tenure is that together they were unable to unseat Mercedes as F1's top team. Four times the squad finished as runner-up in the constructors' championship, while Vettel trailed Hamilton in 2017 and 2018. That latter season is one that really got away, with Vettel leading at the halfway point before sliding back, famously going off while leading in the wet at his home race in Germany.

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He has hinted at having fights he should not have had behind the scenes. There has also been plenty of change in the make-up of the team during Vettel's time - and only really in two seasons, 2018 and 2019, did it manage to produce the car package capable of possibly stopping Mercedes.

It's little wonder that he calls his Ferrari career a "rollercoaster ride over the years with a lot of things happening". But when looking back on that golden opportunity in 2018, he doesn't single out the Hockenheim off as the one moment that swung his Ferrari destiny ultimately to an earlier exit than he perhaps desired.

"In terms of momentum in that year it wasn't helping," he said ahead of his final Ferrari race. "The mistake was a little mistake, but a huge outcome, and a huge penalty. But I think there were definitely more things happening in the 2018 season.

"We had the passing of Mr [Sergio] Marchionne, the change in leadership from Maurizio [Arrivabene] to Mattia, so maybe the 2018 year was a decisive year for many things. But I don't know if you can really break it down to only one thing.

"Obviously in 2016 we parted ways with James [Allison, who went on to join Mercedes], because of personal conflicts at the time. And I think that looking back there were a lot of things that we should have and could have done better.

"But everything that happened, happened for a reason. The main thing I think, on my side, is to make sure that I learned from it, and I think I have grown with it. Some moments were on the track. Other moments were off the track.

"So overall, I think I feel much more comfortable or in a better place now than those years ago, but certainly at the time, it hasn't always been easy and straightforward."

Vettel's final Ferrari season might have finished with the four-time world champion down in 13th in the drivers' standings - of the 'Class B' drivers, only AlphaTauri's Daniil Kvyat finished behind - but his F1 career will continue into 2021. Vettel joins Racing Point and hopes to "contribute as much as I can to help the team grow" as it transitions into its Aston Martin guise.

As his Ferrari era drew to a close, Vettel selected his first win for the team (Malaysia 2015, his second race in red), Monaco 2017 and the following year's Canadian GP as his best moments with the team.

"We had a couple of wins to choose from," he concluded. "Not enough."