Has Vettel’s armor cracked?

315 days. It had been exactly 315 days, or 10 months and 12 days, since Sebastian Vettel had last left the front row of a Grand Prix, spanning 14 consecutive races. It had also been 8 months and 17 days since he last left the podium since his victory at the last Brazilian Grand Prix. And yet, in Germany, on his home turf, the Red Bull driver stumbled and had to settle for 3rd place in qualifying and 4th place at the checkered flag, marking his worst result since the Italian Grand Prix in 2010—except for the Korean Grand Prix where he had retired.

The German driver himself acknowledges, in the columns of the newspaper The Sun, that he had experienced a somewhat strange weekend. “I was never 100% comfortable in the car. There were moments when I thought it would get back to normal, but in the end, that wasn’t the case, and the problems persisted.”

Some, however, claim that the Red Bull driver reconnects with some of his old demons once he is in the pack, as soon as he is no longer comfortably leading a Grand Prix. “He wasn’t really under pressure,” tempers Martin Whitmarsh, the Team Principal of the McLaren team. “He wasn’t in the race for victory when he made his mistakes. People might see it as a sign that he collapses under pressure, but, in all honesty, I don’t think that’s the case. They were just mistakes, drivers make them, teams do too, all human beings do.”

The Red Bull driver recently demonstrated that he knows how to withstand pressure, whether in Spain, facing the ineffective attacks of Lewis Hamilton, or in Monaco when he resisted the comeback of Fernando Alonso and Jenson Button, even though his tire laps seemed endless, although he was saved by the red flag at the end of the race.

During the post-Grand Prix conference, Lewis Hamilton, the only driver besides Sebastian Vettel to have won two races this season, was not under any illusions. « One cannot expect him to be perfect all the time. He has won a good number of races since the end of last year. It’s easy for everyone to criticize him for just one race, but he has been exceptionally consistent for a long time. »

Same sentiment from Martin Whitmarsh. He simply made a few mistakes. One could even say he made them at the right time when he wasn’t going to win. I would have liked to see some of these mistakes when he was leading the race. […] We cannot rely on his failures, explains Martin Whitmarsh. All we can do is put pressure on him. At the start of the season, Sebastian was at the peak of his confidence, making no mistakes at all. We just need to focus on our own actions, on improving our performance, reliability, everything we do. If that’s enough to win races, then that would be great.

In his column in the De Telegraaf, Jos Verstappen believes that it is not so much Sebastian Vettel but Red Bull who seems to be slowing down. Alonso said that Vettel was making mistakes because the pressure has increased, but I think it’s just that the car is slightly less good, which forces you to take risks as a driver. If Vettel shows his usual good sense, nothing can go wrong for him and he will win another championship.

The fact remains that the Red Bull driver does not seem more downcast than that – even if the competition is rejuvenated – and sets off, knife in teeth, to attack the Hungaroring, where Niki Lauda considers him the favorite. « If temperatures are normal, and if everything goes as planned, then yes, he is clearly the favorite, » explains the Austrian, who also assures that the German « does not have to worry » about the championship.