The Australian Grand Prix weekend might just be the worst weekend for Sebastian Vettel and his illustrious career. The four-time world champion returned to racing after contracting Covid-19, which meant that he missed the first two races of the season.
So the expectations were low from the Aston Martin driver for the Australian GP. But even he could not have predicted such a difficult weekend for himself. It all started when his car failed in the FP1 session, which meant that he had to miss the whole FP2 session on Friday.
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In FP3, both he and teammate Lance Stroll crashed their cars on the track. He almost missed the qualifying but put on a lap that took him P18 for the race.
During the race on Sunday, he first went on to the gravel complaining about the brakes in the car. Then he crashed the car altogether to bring out the safety car.
Now recently, Former F1 team owner Minardi mentioned it might be time for the four-time world champion to call it a day.
Former F1 team owner suggests Sebastian Vettel ‘retires’
Minardi stated Vettel has achieved everything there is to achieve in Formula One and should consider retiring at the end of the season. He mentioned he should not have had to experience weekends like Melbourne anymore in his career.
Giancarlo Minardi on Sebastian Vettel: "He should retire. He has a lot of money, he's won a lot of titles and he won't win any more [races]."#Corriere #F1 pic.twitter.com/uYVEpvttrg
— PlanetF1 (@Planet_F1) April 14, 2022
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“He was unlucky to have missed two GPs with Covid, in the third one he went out. But he should retire. He has a lot of money, he’s won a lot of titles and he won’t win any more [races],” said Minardi.
Vettel too revealed that he felt a bit off before the Australian GP as he was starting the season from the third race. “After testing positive and missing the first two races, it feels a bit like arriving late to school, so I’m really keen to get going again,” said Vettel.
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It would be interesting to see how Seb will bounce back from the horror weekend in Melbourne. He needs time in the car and also might also need to make sure to not damage the car too often in the era of the budget cap. Hopefully, he will get to the grips of the car ahead of the fourth race of the season.