Charles Leclerc was driving Sebastian Vettel to retirement: the revelation

Retirement will occur at the end of this season, but it could have occurred three years in advance.

Charles Leclerc has made Sebastian Vettel seriously consider saying goodbye to Formula 1 as early as 2019. This was confessed by the same driver now in Aston Martin to the compatriots of ‘Der Spiegel,’ just weeks before the actual retirement that will instead take place at the end of the 2022 season.

2019 was the first year in which Vettel shared the Ferrari pit box with the rampant Charles Leclerc. And the internal confrontation at the Cavallino struck him deep as early as that championship. “Charles got behind the wheel and pressed the accelerator. I watched him and saw that he drove like I did in my first years in Formula 1,” the German revealed. “That triggered something in me that I couldn’t immediately understand.

“I was coming back from two consecutive years in which I had spent so much energy, also psychologically. Getting out on the track without being able to get results, however, can cause you to have doubts,” Vettel confessed. “What does that mean? I felt I still had questions to ask myself, accounts with myself that I still wanted to close. I wondered if I was still able to race and live up to the best drivers on the track on Formula 1 circuits.”

The move to Aston Martin, however, allowed him to come full circle. “This time it was crucial for me to answer the open questions I still had. And the knowledge that I was driving a single-seater that in its current state does not allow me to show my full potential helped me make the decision to retire,” Vettel explained.