Sebastian Vettel believes that the global fight against climate change and global warming could lead at some point to widespread government bans on motorsport events.
Vettel, who retired from F1 at the end of last season, championed environmental issues in his final years in the sport.
However, the four-time world champion's passion for tackling motorsport's environmental impact is burning brighter than ever as his commitment to carbon neutral fuels proves through his 'Race without Trace' campaign.
Speaking at Goodwood's Festival of Speed last weekend, where the German rolled out two historic F1 cars from his personal collection, an ex-Nigel Mansell Williams FW14B and an ex-Ayrton Senna McLaren MP4/8, Vettel made clear that climate change is no hoax.
"Imola got cancelled, obviously, the event [at Goodwood on Saturday] got cancelled. I think there is a direct relation between extreme weather and the changing world, the warming world," he said.
"So provided you are not completely looking away, I think you see the climate crisis has an impact on a lot of people already today, a lot of places around the world.
©GoodwoodFOS
"Imola got cancelled... you had a massive drought in Italy and then all of a sudden seemingly never-ending rain and obviously the rain couldn’t get into the ground, so it was just pushed to the next place and obviously collected in a place like Imola and caused massive floods.
"You had the race in Miami this year - that was a threat, because two or three weeks prior, it was flooded and the actual track was underwater, so the race could have been cancelled if it happened three weeks [earlier].
"You had the forest fires in Canada, which, with different winds lasting a bit longer, probably Montreal would have been kicked off the calendar.
"So it is a real threat. It might be the next year, none of the races are threatened, but that’s not how it works."
As nations across the world implement policies destined to fight global warming, Vettel believes that there are no reassurances that motorsport will not be targeted at some point in the future, not only by activists but especially by governments.
"You need to recognise that the world is changing and it does have an impact on our lives," he added.
"It’s not so much that the threat or risk that people might glue themselves onto the track on a race day or maybe at Goodwood, I think it’s more a threat that at some point governments will be looking at things that they can cut and ban, and maybe motorsport is a threat and might be one of them. That’s how far I’m thinking.
"And I don’t want that to happen, to be clear, because I think it’s a great sport.
"You will see a lot of people turning up, loving being here, having a blast, so it will be a shame if we would lose that because we just simply can’t afford it anymore.
"When you look at something maybe as boring as a carbon budget and you just say: OK, well, these sort of events fall off first.'"
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