"I remember Sebastian Vettel going karting to get the love of F1 back" - Pundit reminisces how disillusioned with F1 the German driver was in 2014

F1 pundit Ben Anderson has claimed that four-time world champion Sebastian Vettel had become disillusioned with the sport during the 2014 season and had to do karting to get the love back.

The-then Red Bull driver headed into the 2014 season on the back of four consecutive driver's championships but the new engine regulations meant that he didn't even get a single race win that year. Mercedes were the team to beat, with his then-teammate Daniel Ricciardo regularly outperforming the German.

While appearing on the Bring Back V10s podcast, race pundit Ben Anderson opened up about Sebastian Vettel feeling discontented with F1 and reverting to karting during the Spanish GP weekend of that year. He said:

"The Red Bull was a good car but it was let down by compromise mainly to do with the Renault engine. To Vettel it wasn't the car that he was used to, it was a step back definitely and the competitive step back affected his mentality.

"I remember even asking a question to Vettel about going karting in Spain secretly just to get the love of driving back because he was hating F1 so much."

Sebastian Vettel chimes in on his potential return to F1

The former four-time world champion retired from F1 at the end of the 2022 season but refused to completely close the door on a potential return.

In an interview with Sky Sports last year, Sebastian Vettel spoke about his probable return, saying (via F1.com)

“I can’t say no, because you don’t know. I think it's something that if you asked all of them, probably some of them would have said, ‘No’, and some of them, ‘I don’t know’, but in the end, all of them came back, so I can’t exclude it.

"It probably will depend much on when, and obviously, it’s not endless, because at 36 it’s not like, ‘Yeah, in 10 years’ time, maybe I think about it’, then the time has passed. It will depend on the challenge, whatever, but it’s not in my head right now. I’m enjoying the sort of outlook of the challenge of what to do next.”

Recently, Sebastian Vettel was linked with a possible return to the grid in a Mercedes to replace the departing Lewis Hamilton for the 2025 season. But Mercedes team principal Toto Wolff shut down any such reports by stating he will not announce Hamilton's successor any time soon.