Issues between Sebastian Vettel and Charles Leclerc, Jean Alesi explained, were down to the coexistence of massive charisma and reputation in the German: “When you have a world champion, when you have a charismatic driver, it’s very tough to make him soft”. There lies, according to the Frenchman, Ferrari’s decision of betting on current McLaren driver Carlos Sainz Jr: “[Ferrari will] have two young kids, they have two professional drivers. Carlos, I understand, is a very hard worker and he has the experience with McLaren and Renault. He is coming from very experienced teams. So for the management it’s going to be easier to control these two drivers.”
What hasn’t worked then between Sebastian Vettel and Maranello is no secret for Jean Alesi, who labelled their relationship as “a failure neither are in fault for”.
Jean brought to the table a comparison with Michael Schumacher’s legendary campaign with Ferrari to show what compromised Vettel’s success in red: “If I take the Michael Schumacher example, he took my place but he arrived with a full technical team. He worked with the same people he used to work [with at Benetton] to be World Champion. It took him four years to be World Champion, but it happened. Sebastian’s situation was different. He arrived in a team and he tried to teach and to bring the technical team to work as he wants. But he didn’t bring with him Adrian Newey, so that changed a lot.” – he explained.
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