Why re-energised Vettel isn’t just making an impact at Aston Martin

Remember the buzz about “a secret meeting” between Sebastian Vettel and Otmar Szafnauer last summer?
 A four-time world champion, left a free agent by Ferrari, was spotted in a parking lot at the Silverstone circuit jumping in the car belonging to the boss of the soon-to-be Aston Martin team, just a few hundred meters away from its factory.

In a peak period of a Formula 1 silly season, it was seen as a clear sign: these two are edging closer to making a deal.

It did eventually happen. Vettel moved to Aston Martin for 2021. But on that particular occasion it was just a chance meeting between two old friends. He didn’t hop into Szafnauer's car to sign a contract. In fact, these two had already signed one by that time. Well, sort of…

“I met Sebastian, gosh, I can’t remember when…” Szafnauer exhales, trying to reconstruct the circumstances of his first meaningful meeting with Vettel in a chat with GP Racing. “[It happened] when he was in between contracts with BMW and Red Bull. Long, long time ago.”

It was in 2007 in the restaurant of a small hotel, Hullen, in a place called Barweiler around eight kilometres away from the Nurburgring. Vice President of Honda Racing Developments Szafnauer met young BMW Sauber test driver Vettel and a couple of other Germans – BMW hospitality chef Joschi Walch, who became a long-time friend of Vettel and his family, and Michael Schmidt, a veritable guru of the German motorsport media. They had dinner together and shared some drinks. It was around the time Vettel was deciding whether to leave BMW and accept Red Bull’s offer to drive for Toro Rosso.

Vettel was a BMW tester in 2007 while racing in the Formula Renault 3.5 championship, but wanted a shot at a race seat in F1 - when he first had dinner with Szafnauer

Photo by: Motorsport Images

“It was, I think, already decided,” recalls Schmidt. “It was, let’s say, almost like an open secret that he is going there. We knew something was going on, because BMW said, 'we cannot keep you unless you are a test driver' and he didn’t want to be a test driver. And we were joking that night: ‘We do the contract now, here.’ So we took that carton thing you put your beer on, and everybody signed it. Sebastian signed it, Otmar, me, Joschi. That was his contract to drive in F1.”

Later Szafnauer, who worked with Honda for almost a decade, organised a dinner in Tokyo after the Japanese Grand Prix at a restaurant called Mon Cher Ton Ton in the Roppongi district, inviting now-Toro Rosso driver Vettel, Schmidt and one of the leading Honda F1 engineers 
Takeo Kiuchi for a Teppanyaki.

"He’s a good friend, he’s an honest guy, he’s a genuine person. It’s just the type of friend that you want" Otmar Szafnauer

“Kiuchi,” Otmar says, “was Ayrton Senna’s engine engineer at Honda back in the day. 
He told us stories about Senna coming to his house with his girlfriend. And Senna’s girlfriend didn’t speak English or Japanese and Kiuchi’s wife only spoke Japanese. So the translation for the two ladies to talk was Senna’s girlfriend telling Senna, Senna then in English telling Kiuchi [to translate] in Japanese to his wife.”

No wonder Vettel, being a huge fan of F1 and its history, loved such stories and enjoyed the company. The group rallied and kept those meetings up as annual events, gathering together – with attendees varying – at race weekends for the next several years.

“As a young guy I thought he was super nice,” says Szafnauer of Vettel. “Ambitious, he wanted to do well, wanted to be a complete racing driver, which he still wants to be today. He’s a good friend, he’s an honest guy, he’s a genuine person. It’s just the type of friend that you want.”

Eventually the tradition lapsed.

“I mean, he was always busy. I was busy,” explains Szafnauer. But their friendship meant there was no need for a planned parking lot meeting to sign something, something more meaningful than a cardboard coaster.

Long-standing friendship between Vettel and Szafnauer means their relationship is more than the conventional driver-team boss relationship

Photo by: Glenn Dunbar / Motorsport Images

Pushed before he could jump?

Vettel arrived at Aston Martin after two difficult seasons with Ferrari in 2019-2020, when he was overshadowed by Charles Leclerc. Vettel knew his contract with Ferrari wouldn’t be renewed even before last season started, and Szafnauer’s team became his only viable option to stay in F1 to compete at a serious level.

“I think he started to get a little bit tired 
after the two lost championships in ’17 and ’18,” says Schmidt. “And he couldn’t really see a 
bright future. I think in the end, if it had to
 be his decision whether to stay [at Ferrari] or not, maybe he would have even decided by himself not to stay. Because he kind of didn’t believe in them anymore.

“He had problems with setting up the Ferrari his way. You know, he’s one of the old-style drivers, who is turning in and braking at the same time, and the Ferrari in a way developed more, let’s say, to the direction of Leclerc,
 who brakes and then turns in.

“Ferrari fell in love with Leclerc, because they saw that’s the future. Seb is the older one, he’s more and more struggling with these tyres, with the car or whatever. And then obviously 
Seb realised that his time was over. But the
 decision was taken by Ferrari. He was caught by surprise when [Ferrari team principal Mattia] Binotto said, you know, “we don’t need you anymore”, more or less.”

But Aston Martin wasn’t just a last resort for Vettel. It is now probably the fastest-growing team on the grid, with announcements of new signings in the management and technical structure coming one after another.

“He wanted to know about the team, what the team was like, what our ambitions were, did our ambitions match his ambitions,” says Szafnauer of the Vettel negotiations. “After four world championships, you look for different things.

“And the further we talked, the more he said, ‘you know, I want to be part of this, of what you’re starting here, and it looks like our ambitions for the future are aligned’.

“But also he wanted to have fun in racing again. We too are a team of racers, that just want to go racing and do the best we can. All that stuff aligned. And so he said, ‘yeah, I want to join’.”

Desire to have fun helped convince Vettel that Aston Martin was the right team for him, post-Ferrari

Photo by: Glenn Dunbar / Motorsport Images

Compromised preparation

Did Vettel’s expectations match the reality? Probably not 100%. As the start of the season showed, changing F1 teams during a pandemic isn’t the easiest exercise. Not only Vettel, but also Daniel Ricciardo, Sergio Perez, even Fernando Alonso all struggled, at least at the beginning.

Coronavirus-related restrictions definitely didn’t help Vettel get acquainted with the team
at the outset. Virtual conference rooms just aren’t the best place for that.

“It was in January,” recalls Szafnauer of Vettel's first factory visit. “It was unfortunately in the height of COVID. So it was difficult... You know, everybody had to wear a mask, we had [to do] a test and all that stuff. Normally he would come to the factory and then go see everybody. He couldn’t do any of that.”

"He’s got some of the qualities that Michael [Schumacher] had in building a good team around him. I see Sebastian doing the same. The guys absolutely love him. And they want to support him to the nth degree" Otmar Szafnauer

The fact F1 limited itself to just three pre-season test days also wasn’t in Vettel’s favour – especially given that for much of the track time designated for him the AMR21 was in the pits in a state of undress due to mechanical issues.

“We only had three days of testing in the winter, and of these three days we probably lost a day and a half,” says Vettel’s new boss. “And Sebastian lost most of it. So he really didn’t
 have any winter testing.

“All his acclimatisation to the car and to the differences had to be on race weekends, which is harder to do, because you want to get acclimatised to the car, but you also want to perform to the highest level. So you have to do some trade-offs.”

Vettel didn’t score in the first four races for Aston Martin. That wasn’t really his fault – in Bahrain qualifying he was compromised by one of Nikita Mazepin’s early F1 spins, while at Imola he started from the pitlane when his brakes overheated. But it’s not that Vettel himself was flying. It took him some time to get up to speed – but Szafnauer says it was never in doubt that he’d eventually crack it.

Reliability hiccups in testing compromised early grands prix as Vettel tried to adjust to his new environment

Photo by: Glenn Dunbar / Motorsport Images

“At the beginning, where it wasn’t going so well, and he had to get more acclimatised with the car and understand it better, he just worked harder and harder. He wasn’t discouraged. He just said, ‘I have to do better’.

“He is highly motivated; he pushes the team and pushes himself. When he underachieves, like in qualifying [in Austria], where he had one of his lap times deleted, you know, he’s hard on himself. He expects more. He says, ‘I’m really sorry, I expect more of myself’. Which is a good quality to have.

“Of course we wanted to help him. But yeah, he’s a great driver, and we knew that at 34 years old he didn’t forget how to drive a Formula 1 car fast. He’s proven that. And of course, we wanted to help him. But we wanted to help him because it helps us. That’s a selfish thing.”

The right atmosphere

Vettel opened his Aston Martin account with fifth in Monaco, not least because of some superb strategy. And there was a dash of luck to his podium next time out in Azerbaijan – but Vettel himself was flawless on Sunday in Baku.

It would be an exaggeration to say he’s back to his best now. But his body language hints he’s in a much happier place. He starts a press conference with a silly joke about a matchstick meeting a hedgehog on a mountain; he puts a souvenir Azerbaijani hat atop a Pirelli cap on the podium, and gives practical advice on Dutch TV to those in the country who didn’t enlist in the Max Verstappen fan army and head to Austria: “If you want to do a robbery, now is the time!”.

It is a striking contrast to the guy who is told “we cannot be too funny” by a Ferrari PR in Episode 4 of Drive to Survive Season 3 on Netflix.

“I think for him it’s kind of a relief, because the whole situation at Aston Martin is much more relaxed than it used to be at Ferrari,” says Schmidt. “Obviously there are too many restrictions also at Ferrari on what you can say, what you can do, and some of them were really stupid, you know. He was always fed up with it.

Vettel was in a mood to enjoy himself after securing his first Aston podium in Baku

Photo by: Zak Mauger / Motorsport Images

“This is a smaller team and at the moment there’s much more freedom for him. And he feels that he can give the team something to help them to grow into a top team. He feels he has a role now, a role which has been lost at Ferrari.”

When Vettel is happy there is no better person to have around in the F1 paddock. And as Szafnauer points out, the bond between driver and team is already strong, on and off the track. After the Baku podium, the German went back to the factory to finally meet people he couldn’t meet during the winter.

“We had an event out on the front lawn, because it was summer,” says Otmar. “And all the people were outside, still wearing masks, but at least you were outside. And they all came up, took pictures with Sebastian, with the trophy. He said a few words to everybody, he introduced himself. He said: ‘Hi, my name is Sebastian’. 
And it was really, really nice.

"He’s just much more experienced in how to win, and how to go about winning. He doesn’t have to learn it. He’s learned it already. So now he can impart that knowledge on the team and on Lance and on all of us" Otmar Szafnauer

“I think he’s got some of the qualities that Michael [Schumacher] had in building a good team around him. I see Sebastian doing the same. The guys absolutely love him. And they want to support him to the nth degree.

“He’s got that ability to get everybody on side. And I think that comes from how you treat everybody and your honesty, and all that. The engineers and the mechanics love when he comes in and genuinely wants to help them tear down the car after a race. Sometimes he brings them a case of beer after a good race.

“It goes a long way with people. And he does it from the heart. Once you know it’s genuine, it’s even more meaningful.”

The impact of a world champion

In his three years with Mercedes, Vettel’s hero and compatriot Michael Schumacher didn’t much improve his career statistics. One podium and a single pole wasn’t quite what his fans were expecting from his F1 comeback. But ask Mercedes engineers and they’ll insist the German played a huge role in the team’s development.

Vettel can do the same at Aston, and is still young enough to be able to benefit from his own efforts. His influence is already felt – for example, according to Szafnauer, in the team’s debriefs.

Attention to detail in debriefs is already helping Aston move forward, Szafnauer says

Photo by: Glenn Dunbar / Motorsport Images

“He’s much more precise and more detailed around the lap,” says Szafnauer of the differences between Vettel and drivers the team used to work with in the past, “as to how he describes and what he describes, you know, the three segments of the corner, the entry into the corner, the middle phase and the exit. He describes all that to a very high level of detail, more than the other drivers.

“It’s looking for the nth degree of detail to ensure we get all of it right. All those little things add up to something bigger. That’s the difference. And Lance [Stroll] is learning from that. Lance appreciates it, he learns from it too, and Lance’s debriefs are getting better as well.”

But that is exactly the way it should be. After all, Vettel is the first world champion racing for the Silverstone team since Damon Hill parked his car in a Jordan garage at Suzuka after 21 laps of the 1999 Japanese Grand Prix.

“We’re very happy with him,” says Szafnauer of Vettel. “He fits in very well with the team. You know, we’ve got to do a little bit better job on the car. But he’s gotten used to the car now. And you can see, his qualifying performance has increased, his race pace has increased. He had absolute great races in both Baku and Monaco [and Hungary]. So we’re happy.

“He understands the car now. He’s helped develop it to this point. He’s changed some things for drivability on the engine and some other things to make it easier for him to drive
to his style. And it shows on track.

“Like I said, he’s just much more experienced in how to win, and how to go about winning. He doesn’t have to learn it. He’s learned it already. So now he can impart that knowledge on the team and on Lance and on all of us, which is different than trying to learn it yourself.”

The same, but different

So much has happened in the nearly 15 years since Szafnauer and Vettel met close to the Nurburgring. Vettel claimed many of Formula 1’s records, and fulfilled his childhood dream of racing for Ferrari.

He is married, a father of three. And his life is not anymore just about racing. In his interviews, Vettel increasingly touches on topics well beyond the world of Formula 1.

Vettel sports a T-shirt urging fans not to litter at the British Grand Prix. He'd later spend time in the grandstands helping to fill rubbish bags

Photo by: Andy Hone / Motorsport Images

It’s almost as if there’s a double meaning to his new green overalls. These days, Vettel tries to get to European grands prix by train, avoids flying as much as he can, and rides a bicycle from the hotel to the track where possible.

Vettel’s Swiss home is equipped with solar panels and he always carries a backpack when he goes supermarket shopping. And he’s calling on F1 to do its part in helping the world reach a sustainable future, for example, by aiding the development of synthetic fuels.

"There’s nothing wrong with being a Formula 1 driver, but at the same time being conscious of the environment and trying to help it get better for the future" Otmar Szafnauer

“I think that’s admirable,” says Szafnauer. “He’s a racing car driver in Formula 1. But you know, there’s 19 other ones too that don’t do what he does. At home, he doesn’t have plastic bottles anymore. He drives an electric car. He did some bee awareness [campaign in Austria], and at Silverstone he volunteered to help with litter collection after the race.

“You know, he means it. And there’s nothing wrong with being a Formula 1 driver, but at the same time being conscious of the environment and trying to help it get better for the future.

“That comes with age, and it comes with the world we live in. Ten years ago, we weren’t really worried about it that much, about plastics and some other things. But now that it’s been brought to his attention, he wants to make a difference. And he’s working the best he can at it.”

Vettel is no longer that 20-year-old boy Szafnauer met, but instead one of the most successful drivers in F1 history. But did this success really change him?

“Not as a person,” Szafnauer says. “I’m sure it changed him as a racing driver. You know, he won in Toro Rosso, and then went to Red Bull and won a lot of championships. I’m sure it changed, you know, the way he works, [his understanding of] what you have to do to win, and he learned all that.

“But as a person, he’s still the same guy.”

Vettel tries a different form of horsepower in Austria

Photo by: Mark Sutton / Motorsport Images