Vettel has admitted that his new-found environmental concerns make him conflicted about being in F1. For all that the sport has contributed to the advance of green technology, it also generates an awful lot of flights and he acknowledges this makes him feel hypocritical. His helmet and t-shirt message calling Alberta’s mining of tar sands a climate crime made it easy for the Canadian Premier to call that an ‘almost cartoonish’ hypocrisy when he drives for a team sponsored by Aramco, which has “probably a higher carbon footprint than virtually anybody on the planet.”
Vettel’s conflicts on this matter are an extreme version of those facing almost everyone, in that we’ve been born into a fossil fuel-based economy where just to exist involves participating in that economy. Therefore anyone suggesting the need for the world to get off that system – which it surely does – will stand accused of hypocrisy at some level. But to use that as a reason to do or say nothing is not helpful. That way the planet’s ecosystems are destroyed as anyone who objects is accused of hypocrisy. It’s a system we’ve been born into and benefitted materially from, but that doesn’t make it wrong to object to the system in which we are all trapped.
That paradox is what Vettel is wrestling with. Meantime the team is really hoping he can resolve that conflict for a few more years as his impact there has been an eye-opener for them.
Vettel has made his feelings increasingly known on various climate issues
Paolo Pedicelli ATPImages/Getty Images
Last year technical director Andy Green said, “He’s moved us on. He’s shown the level of detail required to win and sustain performance. Literally no stone is left unturned. He has even caused us to change some of our processes because of his way of working. It’s been an incredible education. Continual work rate and exploring every opportunity, every area of the car in the utmost detail every session, every event and never giving up. It was a real eye opener.”
Vettel’s openness and willingness to inconveniently speak out on many matters, not just environmental, is a breath of fresh air in F1. It will be losing a lot if he decides he can no longer stand the hypocrisy.