Ex-F1 driver Timo Glock says Sebastian Vettel's plight at Aston Martin could lead the four-time world champion to give up the ghost and walk away from F1.
Vettel kicked off his second season with Aston last weekend in Melbourne, having missed the first two races of 2022 due to contracting Covid-19.
But it was a disastrous return to the grid in Australia for the German who suffered from technical issues and a pair of crashes at Albert Park, not to mention a €5,000 fine for borrowing a scooter after his engine failure in Friday's first practice session.
Aston Martin's AMR22 is one of slowest cars on the grid, and the team's prospects currently look gloomy, which is doing nothing to boost Vettel's motivation.
"I can well imagine that Vettel will lose patience at some point, because he knows how long it takes to get out of such a low," Glock told Sky Germany.
"That's why the question is whether he still wants to do this to himself.
"Now we have to wait for the next races to see how he can motivate himself and what he then decides for his future."
©Formula1
Sky F1 pundit Paul di Resta echoed Glock's view and interpreted Vettel's body language in Melbourne as that of a man who no longer fancies his day job.
"He just looks disinterested," said di Resta. "I don’t know, that’s the impression I get.
"I've known Seb for a long time, we were team-mates in 2006 and that’s not the body language when you get the best out of him."
Vettel's off-track excursions in Melbourne were equaled by those of teammate Lance Stroll who added to Aston's expensive repair bill with two crashes of his own, including a daft run-in with Williams Nicholas Latifi in qualifying.
Overall, the Silverstone-based team's trip Down Under was ultimately a costly and useless affair.
"The only ones who can be commended are the mechanics, who knuckled down to get the cars back on the track time and time again," commented Glock.
"Both Vettel and Stroll had a completely out-of-sorts weekend with numerous mistakes.
"Especially Stroll's completely unnecessary accident in qualifying with Latifi – something like that simply can't happen."
Keep up to date with all the F1 news via Facebook and Twitter
