Aston Martin to look into 'abnormal' Sebastian Vettel performance

Aston Martin

Aston Martin to look into 'abnormal' Vettel performance

Vettel endured one of the worst weekends of his F1 career

Ian Parkes

Monday 11 April 2022 18:45

New Aston Martin team principal Mike Krack is to look into why Sebastian Vettel was 'so off' across the Australian Grand Prix weekend that led to an 'abnormal' display.

Vettel endured arguably the worst weekend of his 280-race career after missing the first two grands prix of the season after contracting the coronavirus.

In FP1 at Melbourne, Vettel's Aston Martin sustained a power unit issue, forcing him to park up on track before the entertaining sight of him using a marshal's scooter to return to the garage. The FIA took a dim view, though, and fined him €5,000.

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After missing all of FP2 due to the team replacing the power unit, in final practice on Saturday morning, Vettel crashed into a barrier, severely damaging the front of the AMR22.

Vettel only made it out for the last few minutes of qualifying thanks to a red-flag delay sparked by team-mate Lance Stroll's incident with Williams' Nicholas Latifi.

After starting from 18th on the grid, Vettel crashed again during the race to cap a weekend to forget for the team and the four-time F1 champion.

Vettel later suggested his lack of time with the car prior to Melbourne was partly to blame, an excuse Krack did not agree with.

Insisting his team could "really take something out of" what unfolded, Krack added: "First of all, I'm happy Seb is fine after all these incidents.

"But if someone like him, a four-time world champion is having these issues he was having over the weekend, this is not down to not driving because he has driven the car.

"This is really something that we need to really look at, at what car we provide him, what feedback he gets from the car.

"Because he would agree with me that him being off so much as he was at the weekend is not normal, and I do not think it is related to him having missed two races."

Pointing out Vettel was previously a three-time winner in Melbourne, as recently as 2018 with Ferrari, he said: "He knows where he is.

"He has had some tests with the car, so it would be easy to say 'Ah, he was not there for two weekends'.

"A driver of that class, we really need to check what tools we are giving him."