When Aston Martin and Lawrence Stroll took the decision to replace Sergio Perez with Sebastian Vettel for the 2021 Formula 1 season, they were taking a gamble.

The gamble, in essence, was that the problems Vettel had experienced in his final two-and-a-half years at Ferrari – effectively ever since he slid into the Hockenheim gravel on that dark, damp day in 2018 – were merely a product of his environment.

The car’s lack of rear-end stability and Ferrari’s falling out of love with him against the backdrop of years of underachievement were both perfectly valid reasons for Vettel’s poor performances across 2019 and ’20, in which F1’s youngest-ever World Champion aged almost beyond recognition.

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