Sebastian Vettel says the return of ground effect Formula 1 cars to Imola this weekend feels like a “throwback”.
The Italian circuit made its debut replacing Monza for a one-off race in 1980, during the height of the first ground-effect era in F1.
However, so successful was the event that Imola established itself on the calendar, hosting the San Marino Grand Prix from 1981 until 2006.
Its recent history tells a similar story, returning for a supposed one-off race in 2020 as part of the ‘Covid calendar’ but now Imola has a contract until 2025 under a new race moniker of the Emilia Romagna GP.
Known for his love of old-school F1, Vettel is thrilled to see the track back where it belongs.
“Imola is a real test of driver and machine, and that’s what every F1 circuit should be,” he said.
“It’s hard to imagine we’d ever be racing around Imola in ground effect cars – that’s really something special, and a bit of a throwback to the 1980s, which is cool.
“I’m looking forward to getting back into the car and getting up to speed. Imola has never hosted a sprint race before, so I’m also excited to see how that plays out.”
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Vettel will certainly be hoping for a better weekend than in Australia where he crashed twice on Saturday and Sunday after engine issues had limited his mileage on Friday.
More broadly too, the four-time world champion’s Aston Martin team has struggled for pace and is the only constructor yet to score a point in 2022.
With team boss Mike Krack admitting there is a mountain to climb.
“I had a lot of questions when I was approached for this position, and when I got the answers for these questions, I knew that this was going to be a big challenge,” he told Motorsport.com.
“It would have been easy to run away from it, so I was never going to expect that it was easy, but I’m not the kind of guy that looks for excuses here.
“The first three races were not easy, really,” he admitted. “The whole thing is not together at the moment.
“We have to really work hard to get there. There’s no magic at the end of the day. F1 is F1, it’s hard. You have to have a quick car, you have to make no mistakes, you have to have good drivers.”