Sebastian Vettel’s 2021 F1 season with Aston Martin was faced with much difficulty. A new team and uncompetitive machinery meant that the German couldn’t be as high up the grid as he would have wanted. And while he was a long way off from championship contention, he did manage to take a trophy home. He managed to take the inaugural Crypto.com Overtake award and earned himself an unusual gift.

Sebastian Vettel receives a jar full of jellybeans

Finishing P11 in the final Grand Prix in Abu Dhabi, Sebastian asked, “Did we get the overtaking thing?”. To which his engineer replied, “Yep you did apparently, you did, well done.” 

To this, Sebastian jokingly asked, “What’s the prize? One million jelly beans”. Well, the four-time world champion couldn’t be far from accurate about his prize.

A couple of months later, Aston Martin and Crypto.com managed to get him exactly that. Posting a video and recording his reaction, Vettel was surprised to see himself getting rewarded with a jar of jelly beans.

“Is it actually one million?”, the former Red Bull driver asked.  

“No that’s good, that’s a nice trophy actually,” he said while shaking the jar. “I am not sure but is that a million though?” 

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Beating the likes of Fernando Alonso and Kimi Raikkonen; the Aston Martin driver made a total of 132 passes over the course of 22 races in 2021. Despite the overtakes that showed his skills; Vettel only managed to score 43 points by the end of the season. It seems like his hope of winning the fifth world championship has to be kept at bay for some time.

Why Vettel makes a point to stay in Formula 1

Sebastian Vettel hasn’t had quite the start he hoped for in 2022. Catching COVID at the beginning and returning to Australia meant he lost out on a lot of running time in the AMR22. The car hasn’t been great either and among many things, the AMR22’s porpoising has been costing a chunk of lap time. 

However, Vettel manage to turn things around in Imola and was able to put AMR22’s wet race pace to good use. In Miami, a series of overtakes put him into the top 10, only for it to be ruined by his German compatriot, Mick Schumacher, later on.

And while he had to take it easy in Spain, the new aerodynamic package introduced made its effect known in Monaco. Slipping into Q3 and finishing in P10 in the race, Vettel proved the point that he has a lot more to offer. 

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But as he ages, there have been questions regarding his retirement. When asked about it in April of 2022, he replied, “My contract ends at the end of this season. Obviously it’s not the year everyone in the team had hoped for, at least not the start of the season, but I think it would be bad to write it off already.” 

While Aston Martin continues to be a backmarker team, there seems to be potential in the car. Unlocking the performance in the upcoming races could decide whether Vettel would want to continue with Aston Martin or F1 at all.