Sebastian Vettel extends his Ferrari contract by three years.
Mercedes, Ferrari and Red Bull set to field unchanged driver line-ups in 2018; Vettel’s new contract to run until 2020
Sebastian Vettel has signed a contract extension with Ferrari and committed to the Scuderia until the end of the 2020 season.
The four-time world champion, who was due to become a free agent at the end of the season, has agreed a new three-year deal with the team.
There are, however, likely to be performance-related clauses in the deal which would enable Vettel to leave the team before the contract’s full duration – just as he did three years ago when he left Red Bull to join Ferrari.
“To save Ferrari’s embarrassment in terms of Vettel not wanting to commit himself to the project, they will say it’s a multi-year deal but that doesn’t mean that we know absolutely everything within the contract and that Vettel will not be able to get out of that if and when he wants, because 2019 is the game,” commented Sky F1’s Ted Kravitz.
“2019 is when everything is going to be changing and that’s when all the big moves are going to be in the transfer market.”
Ferrari announced earlier this week that Kimi Raikkonen, Vettel’s current team-mate, had signed a one-year extension to stay for 2018.
Vettel has been linked with Mercedes throughout the year, although title Lewis Hamilton has expressed his doubts Vettel would be willing to accept equal status with him at the Silver Arrows.
“I think it’s highly unlikely that [Seb] will be here,” Hamilton said. “I don’t think he wants to be my team-mate.
“I know Seb doesn’t want to be my team-mate. He wouldn’t be in the position he is now in his team, in terms of how the team operates, if he was here.”
However, ahead of this week’s Belgian GP, Mercedes confirmed they did hold talks with Vettel this summer.
“We discussed briefly once with him but the more the competitive the Ferrari goes the less the reason he would to leave,” Mercedes non-executive chairman Niki Lauda told Sky Sports F1.
“So, therefore, we stopped it right away a couple of months ago.”
But team boss Toto Wolff later insisted: “We never once had contractual negotiations with Sebastian.”
