Ferrari and Sebastian Vettel did not extend their alliance after 2020, and an internal team source told German site Auto Motor und Sport that the reasons for this were essentially the creation of a hierarchy between the two drivers.
“Charles Leclerc is our future. In the future, we will play in 4-4-1-1 and not in 4-4-2” a source within Ferrari said to make a football analogy explaining that a driver would be designated to be in front.
For this person not mentioned, Mercedes was able to restore this balance in 2017 when Valtteri Bottas joined Lewis Hamilton, after Nico Rosberg decided to retire, once the world title acquired.
“If Hamilton and Rosberg had raced together again in 2017, it could have turned against Mercedes. We had a car that was good enough to benefit from it.”
The same source admitted that Vettel should have taken on a supporting role for Leclerc in 2021 and that it was better to entrust him to Carlos Sainz: “In 2021, we would have needed him to make hard-to-accept sacrifices for him.”
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