Sebastian Vettel’s 2020 comments to Lewis Hamilton’s race engineer have now resurfaced amid Ferrari woes

Follow us on Google Discover

Lewis Hamilton said in a recent press conference that he was determined to avoid the fate of Sebastian Vettel at Ferrari. Vettel won plenty of races with the Scuderia, but never a championship.

Between his arrival in 2015 and his enforced departure in 2020, Vettel won 14 Grands Prix. Only Michael Schumacher (72) and Niki Lauda (15) can beat that record.

Ferrari built a car fast enough to contend in 2017 and 2018, but their superstar driver couldn’t dethrone the mighty combination of Hamilton and Mercedes. Charles Leclerc would then force Vettel out of the team, albeit inadvertently, by outperforming him in 2019.

While Hamilton ‘refuses’ to miss out on the title like Vettel and Fernando Alonso, he’s a long way from even winning a race. The seven-time champion hasn’t scored a podium in his first 14 weekends, and even an in-form Leclerc can’t drag the SF-25 to the top step.

F1 fans question whether anything has changed at Ferrari after hearing Sebastian Vettel’s 2020 complaints

The 2020 season was the low point of Ferrari’s soon-to-be 18-year title drought. They dropped into the midfield, finishing sixth in the championship.

At the Spanish GP, round six of 17, Leclerc and Vettel qualified ninth and 11th respectively. The Monegasque would retire with around 30 laps of the race remaining due to a mechanical issue.

Vettel, the sole remaining Ferrari, nonetheless complained about a lack of strategic support. A memorable exchange with race engineer Riccardo Adami (who now works with Hamilton) went as follows.

Adami: “What do you think about going to end with these tyres?”

Vettel: “Ha ha! I asked you this before! Now I’ve been pushing for three laps.

Adami: “Understand. We are just checking.

Vettel: “It depends. Okay, here’s the task for you. What do I have to do to stay ahead?

Adami: “Need 23.4, 23.5 until the end.”

Vettel: “I can do that. Well, let’s try, we’ve got nothing to lose.”

These comments have now resurfaced on Reddit in a post that has been ‘upvoted’ three and a half thousand times. The consensus was that the same operational problems remain at Ferrari.

‘Nothing seems to have really changed,’ one fan wrote, while another quipped: “I’m starting to think Ferrari has a problem of extremely incompetent people protected by money or politics or something.”

The Italian marquee were also rather brutally described as a ‘dumpster fire’, with a separate user suggesting that ‘all the politics and power plays prevent them from taking action on the issues’. The hope is that ‘Hamilton doesn’t suffer the same fate’ as Vettel and Alonso.

“Some say they are still checking,” a final comment read.

Lewis Hamilton could emulate Michael Schumacher in the worst possible way

Ferrari’s season hasn’t been a complete disaster. They’re second in the constructors’, and Leclerc qualified on pole position at the Hungaroring.

But the criticism is so intense because expectations were higher than ever following an excellent 2024 season and the signing of Hamilton. Clearly, fans feel that the team are trapped in a cycle.

In Budapest, Leclerc appeared to be controlling the race before an issue – later revealed to be chassis-related – cost him significant lap time. He fell to fourth place, well over 40 seconds adrift at the chequered flag.

Meanwhile, Hamilton started and finished 12th as his one-stop strategy backfired. He made a number of overtakes on fresh medium tyres, but stalled out on the fringes of the points.

Having joined Ferrari in what is likely to be the final chapter of his F1 career, Hamilton could suffer the same reputational damage as Michael Schumacher, who struggled through three seasons at Mercedes after making a comeback in 2010.