Four-time Formula 1 world champion Sebastian Vettel made an incredible comeback in an F1 car at the Goodwood Festival of Speed.
The former Red Bull star driver completed his run up the renowned hill climb in Williams’ classic FW14B while running on e-fuel.
Since his retirement from Formula One at the end of the 2022 season, Vettel has been pushing the usage of synthetic fuels by demonstrating that both old and contemporary cars can “race without a trace.”
“Well, it’s just to demonstrate to people that you can literally race without leaving a trace,” he said in an interview after his hill climb. “Obviously, we used synthetic fuels and yeah, as you can see, it’s a really old car and it wasn’t built around those fuels, but it worked.
“So you’ve just got to adjust the ECU a tiny bit. But it works for this car, works for modern Formula 1 cars, it works for your road car. It just shows that there is an alternative.”
Vettel believes “responsible” racing is the way forward: “I think the world is changing. So we don’t have to give up on these things, we can still hold on, but do it in a more responsible way.”
With his trademark ear-to-ear smile and a mischievous crook, he said that with good reason. Seb handed the ecstatic Festival of Speed crowd a gift: smoking CO2-free doughnuts accompanied by that magnificent Renault V10 engine, which can rev up to almost 11,000 rpm. This highly valuable car is also infamously fragile.
We fully support this if it means having fun in a more responsible manner. He has not yet run up the Hill in Ayrton Senna’s 1993 McLaren, another piece of his own collection, but we certainly hope he puts on just as much of a show this time.
The former Aston Martin driver also spoke on doughnuts his did on his run: “I wanted to know whether it works and it was fine.”.
“We’re getting a bit hot with the temperatures in the end, but it’s all good.”
With the reunion of both old friends and adversaries, Sebastian Vettel’s appearance at the 2023 Festival of Speed has been memorable. Recently, Jenson Button accompanied Sebastian Vettel in his Williams around Silverstone, and the two were seen talking over “Red 5.”
