Sebastian Vettel says even Michael Schumacher had doubts: “What! You?”
Sebastian Vettel has never been one to pad a narrative, so when he says he joined Aston Martin in 2021 searching for reassurance, it lands. The four-time World Champion thought he was “probably not at the peak anymore” by the end of his Ferrari stint, and he wanted to prove—to himself more than anyone else—that he could still bring it on Sundays.
What surprised him wasn’t the uncertainty. It was learning who else had felt it.
“I was speaking to Michael about this many years ago, and even he had it,” Vettel said on the Beyond the Grid podcast. “For me, when I say even, it’s because he is the greatest. I grew up with posters of him on the wall. He was the best in everything I could imagine with racing. And he was insecure. What! You?”
That line hangs in the air because it strips away the mythology. Seven titles. Ninety-one wins. And still, the quiet voice that second-guesses. Vettel isn’t romanticising it; he’s connecting dots from his own late-Ferrari and Aston Martin years.
The 2020 season was the hinge. A pandemic, a stop-start calendar and a hard recalibration of life outside the car. “Really awkward year with COVID,” Vettel said. “We’re not racing. I get this fantastic break that I never had, and enjoy it so much with the family. At the same time, becoming aware with the kids growing of problems in the world, and how they started to affect me.” Add the realities of a difficult final season at Maranello, and you get a driver who, by his own admission, wasn’t climbing into 2021 at full wattage.
Aston Martin—freshly rebranded from Racing Point—offered a reset and a challenge. Vettel delivered flashes of the old ruthlessness. He stood on the podium in Baku in 2021, then crossed the line second in Hungary before being disqualified when the car couldn’t provide the required fuel sample. And while the project didn’t deliver the fairy-tale surge up the order, he found something else in the grind.
“I think I was ultimately looking for this reassurance that, ‘Can I still do this?’ Which sounds silly, because of course I can do it. I’ve proven it so many times,” he said. “But it ties into this uncertainty or insecurity that we all have. All the drivers have it on the grid today.”
It’s rare to hear a driver frame a late-career chapter like that, without the usual deflection. Vettel didn’t airbrush the timeline. Over two seasons with the Silverstone outfit, he took the highlights, accepted the limitations and—in his words—recovered comfort behind the wheel. “I would have loved to see the team growing faster,” he admitted. “But they were important years for me, because I started to feel really comfortable again with my driving. I did have peak performances, even at a later stage. But overall peak, probably not anymore.”
There’s a subtle bravery in admitting you’re not operating at your 2011 level, the year he steamrolled the field, and still finding joy in the craft. That mirrors the Schumacher anecdote—a reminder that self-doubt isn’t a rookie condition but a companion that follows even the most accomplished into every braking zone and balance change.
Vettel retired at the end of 2022 with 53 grand prix victories and four titles, numbers that cement his place in Formula 1 history. The Aston Martin years didn’t change that ledger much, but they did round out the portrait of a driver who grew more candid as the helmet came off more often. There was purpose in the struggle: to check if the instinct, the feel, the ability to thread the car through a race’s shifting logic, was still there. On the days he caught it, he knew.
And if Schumacher could feel the wobble and keep winning, there’s comfort in that for anyone who’s ever looked in the mirror after a rough weekend and asked the same question Vettel did. Can I still do this? The answer, for both men, was yes—maybe not every lap of every season, but often enough to matter.
