After a whopping 392 days, Sebastian Vettel has finally managed to step on top of the podium. 2019 has been nothing but a disaster for the German with just one pole and zero victories up until the Singapore Grand Prix 2019. Meanwhile, he saw his teammate, the Charles Leclerc take 5 poles, 2 victories including the prestigious Italian Grand Prix. He was out. Done and dusted. Or so many people thought.
Marina Bay Circuit has always been good for Vettel. He’s had four victories and five pole positions. So, everyone expected him to be strong over the weekend. Even though he had provisional pole at one point, he was only able to take third while his young teammate took his fifth pole of the season and third consecutive one.
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On the race day, things went smooth for the top six. They retained their positions and it seemed business as usual. However, Vettel and Ferrari executed a perfect undercut that not only managed him to overtake Lewis Hamilton, but also Charles Leclerc. Three safety cars came after that and a very angry Charles Leclerc kept buzzing on the radio how it was unfair and he wants the position back.
However, even if the soul of late Enzo Ferrari would have come down to ask Vettel to give the position back to Charles, he wouldn’t have done it. He needed this victory more than anyone. Over the course of the past few months there have been so many doubts over his future in Formula One. Fans were sick of the spins and the failed overtakes. However, some kept their faith. Some kept supporting him.
Today, breaking his bad luck and managing to take the victory, the first thing Sebastian Vettel did was thank the fans who kept their faith in him.
“The last couple of weeks have been not the best,” he said, “but it’s been incredible, to be honest, to get so much support, so many letters, so many nice messages, people telling their own stories when things might not go well and so on so it gave me a lot of strength, belief, and I tried to put it all into the track today, into the car and it’s nice when it pays off.
He then went ahead and thanked his team and engineers who managed to get the aero package ready which managed Ferrari to take their best result of the season so far.
“Big congratulations to the team,” said Vettel. “Obviously, the start of the season’s been difficult for us, but recent weeks I think we started to come alive. So really proud of everyone’s work back home.”
Grazzie Ragazzi. Vettel said on the radio post the race. Something that we were very desperate to hear.
As the Singapore Grand Prix comes to a close, the next is the Russian Grand Prix in Sochi, the very next week itself. Ferrari will have the momentum having taken the last three victories.
