Berger competed in Formula 1 for 14 seasons, and he finished 3rd in the overall championship twice (both times with Ferrari), but that was the closest he ever got to the championship title. Speaking on Austrian TV, Berger said it would be “best for both parties” to switch to the 2021 lineup already. 

There has been a lot of stir up especially after the 70th Anniversary GP, where Vettel spun in the opening lap and then openly called out his team over the team radio for “messing up” his drive with a poor strategy decision. It has been basically made clear in the post-race interviews that the stunt of Vettel in the race was compromised over Charles Leclerc’s strategy, that eventually allowed him to finish the race in 4th position. The weekends that led to this one were only building up the tension, as Vettel expressed his frustration by saying that ‘something doesn’t stack up’, that he “ran out of answers” and even saying, somewhere among many interviews that he “doesn’t know” if him and Leclerc have the same cars. 

📻 Vettel: "It is in the gap that we didn’t like. We spoke about it this morning. I’ll hang in there, but we know that you’ve messed up”#F1 #F170

— Luke Smith (@LukeSmithF1) August 9, 2020

Vettel is currently 13th in the championship, nine places and 35 points behind his team mate Charles Leclerc, who’s been able to squeeze into 4th position in the overall standings, despite the massive struggles of Ferrari this year. Carlos Sainz, who’s set to replace Vettel by 2021 is currently only two places above Vettel, on 11th. 

With the massive problems of Ferrari this year and the departure of Vettel by the end of it, the atmosphere at Ferrari began to get more and more toxic. Many believe Vettel might decide to leave even before the end of this current season. So far that has been no indication of Ferrari approaching McLaren to get Sainz faster into their car. As for the future of the driver, it is believed Vettel is very close to a seat at Aston Martin (Racing Point), that will most likely compromise the drive of Sergio Perez. 

The ex-Ferrari chief Ross Brawn thinks the team and Vettel should sit down and have a talk, to not let the situation spiral out of control. Brawn is a former technical director of Ferrari, who engineered Michael Schumacher’s five consecutive championship run. 

As he said: “It’s going to be a measure of Sebastian and the team how they deal with the rest of the season. They clearly have a very frustrated driver, and they need to find ways of keeping it together for the rest of the year for the interests of both of them. They need to try to turn a lose-lose into a win-win. When I met these situations in my career, I’d sit down with the driver one-to-one and understand what the issues are.”

He added: “Then you look at bringing people into the discussions, engineers etc, that are going to be helpful to improve things.

Will Sebastian Vettel finish the season or decide to leave? Or will the team ultimately decide to replace him mid-way with another driver? As of now, we are heading into the Spanish GP at the Barcelona track by the end of this week, and we’ll have to wait a little bit more to see how the situation unfolds.