Ahead of his final race in red, Sebastian Vettel still believes his six-year stint at Ferrari has been a failure.
The four-time world champion made his dream move to the Scuderia in 2015, after Red Bull’s dominance came to an end with the introduction of hybrid engines.
And with aspirations of repeating the feat of Michael Schumacher, their partnership started well with victory in just their second race together in Malaysia.
However, since then Vettel would only manage another 13 wins, with his last coming in Singapore last year.
And though that has been due to Mercedes remaining the dominant force, Seb believes that isn’t an excuse for him not adding a fifth F1 title with Ferrari.
“It still doesn’t change anything,” he told ESPN. “We still failed.
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“We had the ambition and target to win the championship, and we didn’t. I think it’s just an honest reflection. I don’t think saying it out loud changes anything.
“We were up against a very strong team-driver combination, but our goal was to be stronger than that and in that regard, we failed. There are reasons for it; we had good races, bad races, sometimes were close, sometimes were far away.
“There’s a lot of reasons why, but in the big picture… I don’t think it’s unfair, it’s just the truth, nothing wrong with saying it out loud.”
New cars in 2017 brought Ferrari very close to Mercedes, and Vettel would lead the championship both in that year and in 2018 only to fall away.
In 2017, a start crash in Singapore was seen as the turning point, while the following year, another off, this time at Hockenheim while leading appeared to turn the tide towards Lewis Hamilton.
However, asked if the latter was the fatal moment his Ferrari career, Vettel replied: “No, I think it was pretty much a roller-coaster ride over the years with a lot of things happening. In terms of momentum in that year, it wasn’t helping.
“The mistake was a little mistake, with a huge outcome, a huge penalty. There were definitely more things happening.
“In the ’18 season, we had the passing of [Ferrari president] Mr. [Sergio] Marchionne, the changing of leadership from Maurizio [Arrivabene] to Mattia [Binotto], so maybe the ’18 season was decisive for many things, but I don’t know if you can really break it down to only one thing.
“In 2016 we parted ways with James [Allison, then Ferrari technical director who later joined Mercedes] because of personal conflicts at the time. Looking back, there were a lot of things that we should have and could have done better. Everything happened for a reason, so the main thing from my side was to make sure I learned from it.
“I think I have grown from it. Some were moments on the track, Germany in Hockenheim, other moments were off the track. Overall I feel much more comfortable or in a better place now than those years ago, but certainly, at the time it hasn’t always been easy and straightforward.”
