What we have observed over the past few days this week has a long history, reports The-Race.com.

Events began with the unexpected news of the four-time world champion Sebastian Vettel’s departure from his "dream team" Ferrari. After five years of cooperation, the parties decided to stop working and trying to win the championship.

Indeed, to a greater extent, the breakup of the once-perfect union of Vettel and Ferrari can be called unexpected. However, in April, the first prerequisites for this outcome appeared – the media published news that the German did not agree to the terms of a new contract with the Italian team. In the end, this story ended with the departure of the champion from Ferrari. However, a few days later the publication The-Race.com turned out that Ferrari never offered its driver a cooperation for season 2021.

According to the sources of the publication, the Ferrari principal made a decision about Vettel at the end of last season, when the crack in the pair of Vettel-Leclerc became obvious. At the end of 2019, the team announced the extension of Leclerc until the end of 2024, while there was no information about Vettel's contract.

Thus, it becomes clear that the decision to leave Ferrari was made at the end of last year, but the situation was made public only 5 months later. As for the rumors about "rejected" by Vettel contract (April news), the sources of the publication claim that they were groundless, although Ferrari did not reject this information in its official statement.

What was happening at this time in McLaren? The McLaren's boss Zak Brown confirmed that during the winter their driver Carlos Sainz asked for his permission to negotiate with Ferrari.

By the way, Ferrari has always been aimed at getting Carlos into the team, which is why Daniel Ricciardo did not get into the Italian team, although he also negotiated with it.

But back to McLaren and Sainz. The team gave permission to their driver to negotiate a collaboration with another team, but kept their finger on the pulse and kept in contact with Ricciardo, whom they missed out on signing in 2018.

"I’ve come to learn in Formula 1, don’t expect anything other than the unexpected," said Brown.

"We had a sense. We started talking to Carlos in the off-season about his future with us, whether he wants to drive from McLaren or Ferrari. You can understand the reasons why. And we stayed close to Daniel ever since he left Red Bull."

"We kind of had a good sense we were going to end up with one of those two guys in our racecar."

Well, it is obvious that several participants in this "transfer chaos" worked clearly – Ferrari decided to get rid of Vettel, immediately starting to negotiate with Carlos Sainz; McLaren, at the risk of being left without a driver, began negotiations with Daniel Ricciardo. All came out ahead, except for two participants in this story – Vettel and Renault.

Most likely, Renault knew about the plans of Daniel, and had to prepare a replacement for him. As for Sebastian Vettel, it is strange if he, knowing that he does not have a contract with Ferrari for next year, would not have found a place in the championship. Although this may still be, in the case if the German decides to end his career in Formula 1.

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