In 2023 Aston Martin saw an unprecedented rise in its performance and declared itself the second-fastest team on the grid based on the last two races. This wasn’t the case when the Silverstone-based team was with Sebastian Vettel, who decided to retire at the end of the last season.
Fernando Alonso was hired in his place, and since then, the Spaniard has won two successive podiums. Many consider that Vettel must be regretting leaving his seat at Aston Martin, which could have proved to bring a renaissance in his career.
However, Aston Martin boss Mike Krack reveals Vettel does not feel like that. Instead, he decided to leave the sport for a reason, and that phase of his life is more important to him than adding laurels to his career.
Sebastian Vettel doesn’t regret leaving Aston Martin
Krack names Vettel as one of the reasons for Aston Martin’s impressive form in 2023. Despite playing a key part in the Silverstone-based team’s unprecedented rise, Vettel doesn’t envy Alonso fetching all the podiums.
“He brought us one step up over the previous two years,” said Krack on the F1 Nation podcast. “He has a part in where we are now. He’s comfortable with it. He wasn’t in any kind of regretting or whatever because he was very conscious about his decision.”
In fact, Vettel reached out to several people from his former team to congratulate them on their success in Bahrain. This selfless act by Vettel has only made the personnel at Aston Martin admire the four-time-world champion even more.
Had to honor Vettel’s decision
Right before the season started, Lance Stroll injured his wrist due to a bike accident. Initially, the Canadian race driver appeared to miss the first race of the season, and there were even talks of him missing the Saudi Arabian GP too.
Thus, there were murmurs that Vettel could be approached to fill in the possible vacant seat at Aston Martin. However, Krack reveals they didn’t even reach out to Vettel and ask him to put a cameo.
He believes that asking Vettel to come back would have been a dishonor to his retirement decision. Moreover, he didn’t even want to put the Gemrna race driver in a difficult position. Nevertheless, in the end, Stroll arrived in Bahrain right at the last minute to take part in the first Grand Prix of the season.
