Sebastian Vettel: The four-time world champion is retiring from Formula 1 at the end of the 2022 season

Vettel won his four drivers’ world championship titles with Red Bull

Four-time world champion Sebastian Vettel will retire from Formula 1 at the end of this season.

The 35-year-old said the decision was “difficult” and that he had “spent a lot of time thinking about it”.

The German said he will “take more time to think about what I’m going to focus on next” at the end of the year. He said spending more time with his family is a priority.

Vettel will leave the sport as one of the most successful drivers in history.

Only Lewis Hamilton, Michael Schumacher and Juan Manuel Fangio have won more world titles than Vettel, and only Hamilton and Schumacher have more than his 53 race wins.

He added: “Today is not about saying goodbye. Rather, it is about saying thank you – to everyone – not least to the fans, without whose passionate support F1 could not exist.”

Vettel, who won four consecutive drivers’ titles with Red Bull from 2010 to 2013, said he “really enjoyed” his time at Aston Martin in 2021 and 2022, adding: “Although our results weren’t as good as we were we had hoped, I’m quite aware that everything that a team needs to drive at the highest level for years to come comes together here.

“I hope that the work I did last year and will continue to do this year will help in developing a team that will win in the future and I will do as hard as I can until the end of the year working with that goal in mind, I’ve done my best as always in the last 10 races.”

Aston Martin wanted to keep Vettel for the next season but decided he wanted to retire from the sport.

In recent years he has become an outspoken activist on social and environmental issues.

Vettel has always avoided social media, but he launched an Instagram account on Thursday, shortly before announcing his retirement, in whose bio he describes him as a “public figure”.

In a video on the account, he said of his retirement: “My best race is yet to come.”

Aston Martin has not announced a replacement for Vettel next season.

A stellar career

Vettel, who has driven full-time in Formula 1 since 2007, has had a two-part career.

His most successful era was with Red Bull, joining in 2009 and for which he won 38 Grands Prix and four consecutive titles from 2010 to 2013.

The second and fourth of those titles were seasons of exceptional dominance.

In 2013 he won 13 races in the season, equaling Schumacher’s record set in 2004, including the last nine in a row – the longest streak of consecutive wins in a single season and the longest streak ever. Alberto Ascari also won nine times in a row in the 1952 and 1953 seasons.

But his triumphs in 2010 and 2012 came at the end of intense, season-long struggles.

His first title was won in exceptional circumstances and in a battle with four other drivers throughout the year – his Red Bull teammate Mark Webber, Ferrari’s Fernando Alonso and McLaren pairing Hamilton and Jenson Button.

Vettel went into the final race in Abu Dhabi third in the championship behind Alonso and Webber, having never led in points all year.

But after Ferrari made a disastrous strategic blunder and called Alonso into the pits in response to Webber, the Spaniard was unable to climb back through the field and Vettel dominated the race to overtake his two rivals and clinch the title.

In 2012 the battle was even more intense as the season turned into a head-to-head battle between Vettel and Alonso.

In a slower car, Alonso built up a huge lead as Vettel and Red Bull encountered a series of problems in the first half of the season, leaving Alonso 39 points clear with seven races to go.

But intense development of the Red Bull car saw Vettel win four straight races in Singapore, Japan, South Korea and India in the final third of the season. Assisted by Alonso, who was knocked out by Lotus drivers Romain Grosjean and Kimi Raikkonen on starts in Belgium and Japan, Vettel overtook the gap and held his own in the final three races to clinch his third title.

A less successful second chapter

Vettel’s winning streak ended in 2014 when new engine regulations ushered in a period of Mercedes dominance and a period of unexpected contradictions for him.

He was surpassed by new teammate Daniel Ricciardo in his final year at Red Bull and then switched to Ferrari for 2015, openly saying he wants to follow in the footsteps of his childhood hero Schumacher, who had won five titles with the Italian team from 2000 -2004.

Vettel won 14 races for the team between 2015 and 2019, making him the third most successful driver in its history in terms of wins.

But he and the team fell short of the title he craved despite having the most competitive car in the 2017 and 2018 seasons.

There were reliability and operational issues on Ferrari’s part, but throughout 2018 Vettel also began making a series of errors, the frequency of which was highly unusual for a driver of his caliber and which have never been fully explained.

Ultimately, the team lost faith in Vettel. In 2019, they signed Charles Leclerc as a benchmark for him in just the Monegasque’s second season in the sport.

Leclerc surpassed him in his first year with the team. With the 2020 season being delayed by the pandemic, Ferrari made the decision in time before it started dumping Vettel in the end.

A great off-track figure

After leaving Ferrari, Vettel’s true character has become clearer as he has felt freer to speak his mind.

He has been the director of the Grand Prix Drivers’ Association for several years and has become an increasingly influential spokesman on important global issues, most notably the climate crisis.

Appearing on the `’s Question Time earlier this year, he came across as an eloquent and intelligent figure who was more than able to address the contradictory position he found himself in as an environmentalist and Formula One driver.

He admitted it made him a hypocrite and said it made him question whether driving in Formula 1 was the right thing to do.

“Driving is my passion,” he says. “Every time I get in the car, I love it. Of course, when I get out of the car, I also think, ‘Should we do this, travel the world and waste resources?'”

In his own case, he now has an answer.