Five is the hopefully lucky number for Sebastian Vettel. In his fifth year at Ferrari, he will be behind the wheel of car number 5 seeking to become Formula One world champion for a fifth time.
The Ferrari driver will be hoping to follow in the footsteps of record champion and fellow German Michael Schumacher, who also needed five attempts before he won his first title with the Italian F1 team. Four more titles then followed.
A world championship with Ferrari would be the “ultimate,” Vettel has said before the season-opening race in Melbourne on March 17.
With impressive best times in test drives, Ferrari go to Australia full of optimism at the start of another marathon season with 21 races as the team tries to challenge the dominance of Mercedes. World champion Lewis Hamilton, who won his fifth drivers’ title last season, is gearing up for an even stronger Ferrari challenge amid some uncertainty over the current strength of Mercedes.
“There is a winner, the second is the first extra. That’s not always fair, but Formula 1 is not a children’s birthday,” Vettel told Germany’s Sport Bild recently.
Only Michael Schumacher and Niki Lauda have won more races for the Scuderia than Sebastian Vettel. But in order to really earn a place of honour in the ancestral gallery of the traditional marque from Maranello, Vettel must finally obtain a title. The memory of Kimi Raikkonen’s 2007 championship win, the last for Ferrari, is faded.
After much change and some setbacks, Vettel is certain that Ferrari has “all the ingredients together”. Mattia Binotto, who has replaced team principal Maurizio Arrivabene, was involved in Schumacher’s title series as an engineer and knows the sensitive soul of F1’s most famous racing team: “We know what we have to do and how we have to do it,” Vettel said.
In his 13th Formula One year, the four-time champion also has to face a new challenge internally.
His new team colleague Charles Leclerc, 21, from Monaco is considered a great talent and could already embody the future after Vettel, if the German does not finally fulfil the title aspirations of the Tifosi.
Already in his last year at Red Bull, Sebastian Vettel had in Daniel Ricciardo a youthful challenger, who showed no respect.
It was the only season so far in which Vettel lost a duel with a stable-mate Although Vettel retains internal status, he will have to sharpen his senses if he wants to conquer first Leclerc and then Hamilton.
Schumacher once showed what it takes.
The diligence, meticulousness and precision of the seven-time world champion was legendary, as was his unconditional loyalty to the team, but also his ruthlessness on the race track.
“Michael took Ferrari on his shoulders and led the team out of the crisis.
He was a leader,” said former Formula 1 boss Bernie Ecclestone at the end of the pre-season training, adding: “Vettel is not like that.”
Sebastian will have to prove the opposite, so as not to end up as a failure in the Ferrari story. At stake is also the Scuderia’s record of six team titles in series from the years 1999 to 2004, which Mercedes could equal this year. Others may hope to be challenging.
Max Verstappen in Red Bull will, however, first have to see how the new engine partnership with Honda evolves. And Ricciardo, now at Renault, and Kimi Raikkonen, who has moved from Ferrari to Alfa Romeo, are probably good for no more than the odd surprise.
It all points to another showdown between Hamilton and Vettel in a season in which Formula One will chalk up its 1,000th Grand prix, in Shanghai on April 14.
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