The 2022 F1 season was filled with enormous important events, from Red Bull‘s domination to Mercedes’ setback. To Ferrari’s lost spark to multiple driver retirements. One such retirement was of the four-time world champion Sebastian Vettel.  The sudden retiral announcement left everyone shocked, including Red Bull driver Sergio Perez, as no one saw it coming. Perez, like everyone else, was aware of the hesitation Vettel had towards social media. Hence, the announcement left Perez flabbergasted, as it had done to everyone else.

As per Netflix’s latest Drive to Survive season 5, the sudden announcement on social media left Perez scratching his head in disbelief. In episode 5 of DTS, the Mexican said, “Seb has Instagram? What am I missing?” McLaren CEO Zak Brown’s comments followed this, “Anytime you have a driver of Sebastian’s pedigree retire, it’s a big news.”

As soon as Vettel’s announcement picked up the pace, a major tremor hit the driver market, and it became instantly active. “This is gonna kick off a merry-go-round of driver changes,” said Christian Horner on Seb’s retirement. The major shakedown, what came to be known as the silly season after Vettel’s retirement decision, woke up the dull season.

On this, Will Buxton, an F1 journalist, shared, “Negotiations go on behind the scenes all the time. However, these come to light around the August break and because there are so many rumors, it has widely known as silly season.” Jennie Gow, a British journalist, said on this, “It’s like a giant game of musical chairs. You never quite know who’s gonna be a big winner, but someone who always loses out.”

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Vettel debuted on Instagram to share his retiral decisions during the mid-2022 season and it instantly picked up to be the most important development in the F1 paddock. The man who hardly had his presence on top social media sites, one day woke up and shared his retirement through Instagram was strange to many. And what’s more intriguing was the sudden eruption in the driver market and the formation of a silly season after Vettel left Lewis Hamilton alone in the chaos of F1.

Sebastian Vettel triggered a tremor in the driver’s market

The four-time world champion’s retirement call indeed triggered a massive tremor in the driver market. As he was about to vacate the Aston Martin seat, the Silverstone-based team pulled in two-time world champion Fernando Alonso.

Since Alonso decided to leave, Alpine needed to fill their seat, and they went in for Oscar Piastri. However, McLaren had other ideas over the Australian, as they were looking to replace the Honey Badger with the prodigy. Hence, the McLaren-Alpine legal battle over Piastri, which ultimately the British team ended up winning.

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On the other hand, Alpine we’re bestowed with the then AlphaTauri driver Pierre Gasly to take Alonso’s seat in the team and that resulted in the AlphaTauri seat being empty. Helmut Marko and Co. then decided to put Dutchman Nyck de Vries in the Red Bull sister team’s seat.

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All in all, Vettel’s departure from the sport triggered involved four teams, two driver switches, a legal tussle between teams, and a new joinee. On this Zak Brown was right to say when someone like Sebastian Vettel retires, it’s indeed big news.