F1 News: Lewis Hamilton Believes Sebastian Vettel Will Return To The Sport
F1 legend Sebastian Vettel will be retiring after the season finale Abu Dhabi Grand Prix this weekend. Vettel's long-time rival and friend, Lewis Hamilton, believes we will see Vettel back on the grid after his retirement, though.
Vettel is a four-time world champion with a 16 year F1 career and 53 race wins. The German driver has said he might make a return to competitive motorsport, but has not mentioned anything about Formula 1 specifically.
Vettel said ahead of his retirement:
"I think naturally you do look at other stuff. I don't know yet is the answer.
"I think I quite look forward to the idea of nothing at first, and then see what it does to me. There's a lot of other things in my head as well, other interests and ideas outside racing.
"Obviously, I've done this for so long and it's central to my life, so it will be difficult to say that I'm not going to miss it, but how much and whether then I start to look at something else, we'll see.
Vettel continued:
"I always liked for some reason rallying, but I can see it's a major challenge because it's so different to what we do in classic circuit racing."
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Hamilton made his F1 debut at the same time as Vettel and they have grown close over the years of racing against won another, even though they have been rivals for so long on the grid. Hamilton said:
"We always had such great battles. I was just sitting here thinking most drivers are coming back. You're probably going to come back. You'll be back. Formula 1 has a way of sucking you back in.
"I don't think it's 'a goodbye show', it's 'see you later', because he'll come back. I'm going to put my money on that he's going to come back, just take a sabbatical, like one year, maybe two years maximum, and then come back."
Vettel responded, jokingly:
"Maybe we can make a deal, when you want to get away, I can come back. I don't know. "