Lewis Hamilton denied Sebastian Vettel his Ferrari title dream on more than one occasion when they were Formula 1 rivals and now the German has given his take on the Brit’s new project
Sebastian Vettel hopes his great rival Lewis Hamilton can achieve his Ferrari title dream. The German spent six seasons chasing glory with Ferrari during his career but was so often thwarted by that devastating Hamilton and Mercedes combination.
But Vettel, 37, has his “fingers crossed” that the Brit can go one better than he managed. He told the BBC: “Lewis is a competitor and he has very high expectations about himself so I think he’s probably very ambitious to be in that seat right now and not so focussed on the noise around, but more to make it work.
“For me, it didn’t quite work because Lewis was there so let’s see now how he will get on. But, yeah, my fingers [are] crossed. I obviously raced him a long time, we get along really well, and he’s by far the most outspoken driver on the grid at the minute, his on-track skills don’t need to be repeated.
“I think the numbers, statistics speak for themselves but it’s great to see he’s still on the grid and still has that influence and he uses it in a positive manner. So naturally my fingers are crossed for him to win the championship.”
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It will be tough for Hamilton to manage that this season with Ferrari stuttering and McLaren already flexing their muscles. Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri have already won one race each and look set to battle only each other for the drivers’ crown unless their rivals can make swift performance gains.
Hamilton won the sprint race in Shanghai but, otherwise, his Ferrari career has got off to a wretched start. He scored just one point on a miserable debut in the Melbourne rain before both he and team-mate Charles Leclerc were disqualified following the main race in China.
Hamilton is ninth in the championship as a result, one place ahead of Leclerc, both of them still on single-figure points totals after two Grands Prix and a sprint. But although Ferrari clearly have issues to iron out, Vettel still believes his former team-mate Leclerc and rival Hamilton have the quality to drag the Italians into a championship charge.
He added: “Also Charles is there, I raced with him. I think it’s a strong line up and in the end it takes a lot of things to come together to be there in the last couple of races to fight for the championship. We will see. It will be close, but I’m definitely not ruling anybody out.”
Vettel may not have won the title with Ferrari but he still enjoyed 14 race wins and plenty of success with the Scuderia. He remains their top points-scorer in history having amassed 1,400 over those six seasons – a record which briefly fell last weekend.
That was until Leclerc’s disqualification saw the 10 points he thought he had won stripped from him. As a result, the Monegasque’s career tally for Ferrari remains at 1,399 meaning he will have to wait until the Japanese Grand Prix on April 6 to surpass Vettel’s total.
