Vettel packt aus: Die bittere Ferrari-Wahrheit – während Hamilton im roten Team neues Leben findet!
To drive for Scuderia Ferrari is to carry the weight of an entire nation on your shoulders.
It is a seat that guarantees racing immortality, but it is also a psychological pressure cooker that has broken some of the greatest talents in Formula 1 history.
Four-time world champion Sebastian Vettel knows that burden intimately. After retiring at the end of the 2022 season, the German driver has had ample time to reflect on his legacy. But speaking on the official F1 Beyond the Grid podcast, Vettel made a brutally honest admission about the singular failure that still haunts his career: falling short of a world title in Maranello.
Vettel’s Heartbreak of 2019
Vettel arrived at Ferrari in 2015 as the anointed savior, tasked with replicating the Michael Schumacher era and ending the team’s long championship drought. Over six seasons, he poured his prime years into the project.
The closest he came were the grueling 2017 and 2018 campaigns. Ferrari built genuinely competitive championship contenders, but high-profile operational errors and brutal development wars ultimately saw Mercedes pull away in the second half of both seasons. By the time the 2019 season rolled around, the internal dynamic began to fracture.
“’17 we started off really well… ’18 we were more complete, our car was better… we didn’t make it. Mercedes was stronger at the end of the season,” Vettel admitted on Beyond the Grid.
But it was the failure to capitalize on their machinery in 2019 that ultimately broke his spirit. Despite possessing a highly potent power unit, the team was plagued by inconsistency.
“I really, really wanted to win the championship with Ferrari. Trust me… I really wanted it so bad, and it didn’t happen,” Vettel confessed. “2019 was sort of the break year I would say for myself, ’cause for myself I started to feel like we’re not making it, we’re not good enough.”
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Nov 2, 2019; Austin, TX, USA; Scuderia Ferrari Mission Winnow driver Sebastian Vettel (5) of Germany during practice for the United States Grand Prix at Circuit of the Americas. Mandatory Credit: Jerome Miron-USA TODAY Sports
Compounded by the arrival of a young, hungry Charles Leclerc, the 2019 campaign marked the beginning of the end for Vettel’s time in red. He would eventually leave for Aston Martin in 2021, his childhood dream of a Ferrari championship unfulfilled.
Vettel’s reflections highlight a fundamental truth about Ferrari: the team operates entirely on emotion. When things are going well, the Tifosi make you a god. But when the development race stalls, the Italian media and internal politics create an incredibly toxic environment that can drain a driver’s confidence.
Interestingly, we are watching that exact emotional rollercoaster play out in real-time with the current occupant of Vettel’s old seat: Lewis Hamilton.
When Hamilton made his blockbuster move to Ferrari for the 2025 season, the partnership was supposed to be a fairytale. Instead, it was an unmitigated disaster. Hamilton struggled massively to adapt to the Ferrari architecture and culture. By the time the 2025 Hungarian Grand Prix rolled around, the seven-time champion was suffering through painful Q1 exits and publicly describing himself to the media as “absolutely useless.” Rumors even began to swirl that he wouldn’t see out his contract.
Hamilton’s 2026 Redemption
However, unlike Vettel’s trajectory—which slowly trended downward after the heartbreak of 2019—Hamilton has seemingly managed to banish the ghosts of Maranello.
Fast forward to the summer break of the 2026 season, and Hamilton is in the midst of a massive career renaissance. After working tirelessly behind the scenes with Team Principal Frederic Vasseur to overhaul the car’s setup, the Briton is flying again. He secured a highly emotional victory at the Barcelona-Catalunya Grand Prix in June, completely erasing the nightmare of his 2025 campaign.
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Source: Ferrari
As F1 heads into the second half of 2026, Hamilton currently sits second in the Drivers’ Championship with 169 points. While he is currently 50 points behind the runaway championship leader, Mercedes prodigy Kimi Antonelli, Hamilton has racked up five podiums in 11 races and proven he can still run at the very front.
Vettel’s confession serves as a stark reminder of just how agonizingly difficult it is to reach the summit with the Prancing Horse. Hamilton survived the emotional meat grinder of his first season and has put himself back in the hunt. Now, he faces the ultimate test: achieving the elusive red championship that slipped through Sebastian Vettel’s fingers.
