Why Sebastian Vettel Believes Modern Racing Can Retain Its Soul
Sebastian Vettel walked away from Formula 1 at the end of 2022, but four time champions don’t lose their voice just because they’ve hung up the helmet. He has since signed up to compete in ROC New Zealand, and he’s been just as willing to speak his mind on where grand prix racing goes next.
He laid out his thinking in a wide-ranging interview with Motorsport.com. His central argument is simple, even if the debate around it never is. He believes the sport already has the technology to chase sustainability targets without losing the thrill that pulled most of us in as fans in the first place. That’s a more measured tone than his previous identity warning, when he cautioned that F1 could lose sight of what makes it special.
The point he keeps coming back to is that pairing green ambitions with proper racing isn’t a compromise. It’s a design problem, and he thinks Formula 1’s engineers already have the tools to solve it.
One doesn’t have to exclude the other. I think we need to find practises with everything so we are able to combine things that we love.
That’s a striking line from a driver who spent over a decade wringing every last drop of performance out of hybrid power units, often while telling anyone who’d listen exactly what he thought of them.
From V12 Nostalgia to Sustainable Fuels: The Shifting Driver Perspective
Rewind to the 2019 Russian Grand Prix and Vettel’s mood was rather different. His Ferrari’s hybrid unit failed mid race, and he let his frustration fly over team radio in a moment fans still bring up years later.
bring back the f***ing V12s
It was raw and completely understandable in the moment. A driver losing performance to a piece of hybrid machinery, wishing for the simplicity and the noise of the old naturally aspirated engines. It captured something a lot of fans felt too, especially those who missed the drama of the V12 era.
Seven years on, Vettel’s tone has shifted from nostalgia to something more constructive. He isn’t asking for the clock to turn back. Instead, he’s pointing forward, towards sustainable fuels as the technology that can carry the sport’s identity into its next phase.
I think sustainable fuels are the step forward
He goes further than framing this as an F1 problem alone. Vettel sees the same fuel technology carrying weight well beyond Formula 1, with the potential to inspire other racing series too.
That’s the shift in a nutshell. The driver who once wanted his old engine back now sees fuel technology, rather than engine capacity, as the thing worth fighting for.
Analyzing F1 Technological Transfer and On-Track Performance Balance
Vettel’s thinking on this isn’t abstract. At the Italian Grand Prix this year he got back behind the wheel of Michael Schumacher’s 2002 Ferrari, a car with real history behind it. It’s the sort of experience that puts the current technical debate in useful context.
Driving a two decade old grand prix car didn’t leave him wishing for the past. If anything, it sharpened his view of where the car needs to go next.
I think it is exciting
He expanded on the comparison between eras, and it’s worth quoting at length because it gets to the heart of his argument.
There’s so much more to unpack when you look at Formula 1. Of course, from a driver’s point of view I want to drive the best car and I want to win races. But then what is the best car? The car of 2002 has been the state of art car at that time and represents so much for what Formula 1 stands for.
His point is that “best” has never been a fixed target. The 2002 Ferrari was the state of the art then. Today’s cars carry a different kind of pressure.
The cars today do the same and I think it’s about performance, precision, discipline, hard work but also responsibility and caring about the future, which these cars are trying to do.
That word responsibility does a lot of work in that sentence. Vettel sees today’s hybrid machinery as carrying the same demands for performance and precision as anything that came before, just with an added layer of accountability for where the technology ends up once it leaves the track. He’s made a similar point when discussing road-relevant performance technologies, arguing that F1 innovation only matters if some of it eventually reaches ordinary drivers.
If you shape the next generation of car, there’s a lot of potential to do so responsibly because some things that may be incredible from a technology point of view might not be transferable to the streets. I think there’s also a responsibility to do that.
The 2026 Regulation Challenge and F1’s Global Environmental Role
None of this means Vettel is fully signed up to every line of the 2026 technical regulations. He’s been careful to draw that distinction himself.
I’m probably not agreeing on everything that we currently have in the regulations from a driving point of view, but looking forward I think that’s where there’s a huge chance to take people on board.
That’s an important qualification; Vettel isn’t giving F1’s rule makers a blank cheque. He’s saying the direction of travel, sustainable fuels, smarter hybrid systems, a genuine attempt to make the sport relevant beyond the paddock, is the right one, even if the fine print of how drivers experience the car on track still needs work.
It’s a fair position for someone who no longer has to drive the thing. Vettel spent his career at Red Bull and Ferrari chasing the same lap time as everyone else, and he understands better than most what gets lost when regulations change too fast for teams and drivers to adapt. His measured tone here reflects that experience rather than distance from it.
Since stepping away from full time competition, he’s kept a foot in racing through appearances like his race of champions appearance lined up for ROC New Zealand. That’s not a route back to a grand prix seat. It’s a driver who still loves competing and still cares about the championship’s direction.
His closing thought, from the same interview, is the one worth holding onto.
I look forward to what the future brings, because I think F1 has so many nice values that shaped me and inspired me in my life and touches a lot of people around the world. It has that power to do so on many other things that are meaningful and impactful.
Vettel isn’t asking Formula 1 to choose between passion and responsibility. He thinks the sport is big enough, and clever enough, to deliver both at once. For a driver who once demanded his V12 back over team radio, that’s a considerable shift in perspective, and one built on genuine belief rather than nostalgia.
