Vettel considered retiring: "I was close to quitting"

On Wednesday evening it was announced that Perez will not be competing for Racing Point in 2021 and on Thursday it was announced that the team has recruited Sebastian Vettel. The four-time world champion will be competing for Ferrari for the last time this year and he is currently not having a great year. However, the fact that his future is secured does him good and he is looking forward to the new project he will start.

The right step for the German

At the press conference, attended by Formule1.nl, the German says: "It feels like the right step. I think this is now the best I can do and it feels good that this news is now known. The performance of the team is encouraging and of course the new regulations also offer opportunities. Hopefully the team will then be able to show what it is capable of when everyone is working on equal budgets."

From this we can conclude that the intention is to keep the German at Racing Point for more than one year. After all, the new regulations will not come into force until 2022. For the time being, it is only fixed for 2021 at Racing Point, so how that will develop remains to be seen. He didn't want to say anything else about his contract, Vettel: "I'm not talking about contracts."

"Mercedes is the one to beat and that won't change next year, but it is a great challenge. I want to drive at the front, not at the back, and Aston Martin is giving me that chance." An opportunity he seized, because he considered stopping in Formula 1, he says: "I was close to stopping. I had to look at myself first, and that's what I did with this decision."

Finally, the German says that the whole copy discussion that Racing Point is involved in was not a reason for his decision. For Vettel it was more a question of potential and he sees that there is potential at Racing Point, which eventually made him sign his contract.