Formula 1: Sebastian Vettel’s options dwindling for 2021?

Are Sebastian Vettel’s options for the 2021 Formula 1 season already dwindling? One former driver believes they are limited to Ferrari and just one other team.

Four-time Formula 1 world champion Sebastian Vettel recently turned down a contract extension from Ferrari. He reportedly called the offer a “joke”.

Vettel, who his currently the second highest paid driver in Formula 1, would have taken a massive pay cut by signing this deal, and this deal was reportedly only for one year.

Before the offer was publicized, he had stated that his deals in the past had usually been for three years. He most recently signed an extension back in August of 2017 for three years.

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Additionally, this deal would have effectively made him the team’s number two driver. Charles Leclerc arrived at the team ahead of the 2019 season, and in his first year as Vettel’s teammate, he beat him in wins, podium finishes, pole positions, laps led, average finish, lead lap finishes and points.

He also signed an extension through the 2024 season over the offseason, and his deal is the longest deal among those of the sport’s active drivers.

There is still a chance that Vettel will end up re-signing with Ferrari for the 2021 season, despite rumors that there are several other drivers waiting in the wings who the team could opt to sign and despite the fact that unforced errors have cost him a boatload of points in recent years. However, if he doesn’t, his options may be very limited.

He has been rumored to join McLaren if Carlos Sainz Jr. leaves the Woking-based team to replace him at Ferrari, and he has been rumored to join Renault if Daniel Ricciardo leaves the French marque to replace him at Ferrari, with the former seeming like a more realistic scenario.

But neither of these scenarios are feasible options, according to former Formula 1 driver Ralf Schumacher.

Ralf, the brother of seven-time world champion Michael Schumacher, believes that the 32-year-old German has just one option aside of Ferrari for the 2021 season, and that option isn’t McLaren or Renault.

It’s Mercedes.

Here is what he had to say.

"“I think there is even an example of a German who went somewhere else after Ferrari, if I remember correctly. If he commits himself to Ferrari, then that’s the way it will be. Switching back from Ferrari to another team is always difficult in Formula 1. Ferrari has a special relationship with its drivers.“If he feels the support of the team, the subject of money should simply play a secondary role for the time being. If he achieves his goals this year, he can easily ask for more money afterwards. Otherwise, the only option for Sebastian would be to swap cockpits with Lewis Hamilton. Then he would get a car that he knows he can become World Champion in right away.”"

Schumacher is, of course, referring to his brother, who stepped away from Formula 1 after spending 11 years for Ferrari from 1996 to 2006, winning five of his seven world championships in the process. The German driver returned to the sport in 2010 and spent the final three seasons of his career competing for Mercedes before he was replaced by Lewis Hamilton.

Both of Mercedes’ current drivers, the six-time world champion Hamilton and Valtteri Bottas, have contracts that expire at the end of the 2020 season, and the former has been linked to Ferrari should Vettel leave the team.

Those rumors have recently quieted down, with Hamilton having been tipped to return to the Silver Arrow for at least another year, but there are no guarantees that Bottas will sign an extension with the team, either.

Will Sebastian Vettel be back at Ferrari for the 2021 Formula 1 season? If not, will he end up at Mercedes, or will he go elsewhere? Given the fact that the 2020 season hasn’t yet begun, it may be a while before the answer is confirmed. But it could come down to those two teams.