Sebastian Vettel: Will Aston Martin driver race in Saudi Arabia?

Aston Martin Team Principal Mike Krack says that Sebastian Vettel is feeling a bit better but it is still hard to say whether or not the German is going to be racing in the Saudi Arabia Grand Prix this weekend.

The four-time Formula 1 world champion had to miss out on the curtain-raising Bahrain Grand Prix after testing positive for covid-19, a matter of days after Daniel Ricciardo who missed testing at the same track – though he was negative by the time it came to the race weekend.

It’s a reminder that the virus is still a pest, then, and we’ll have to wait and see if Vettel is fit enough to compete in Saudi, with his team saying they’re unsure on that yet.

Speaking post-Bahrain, Krack revealed Vettel sounded a bit better via videolink as they debriefed the weekend but only time will tell with him:

“He was participating in the debrief, he was sounding less rough than he was sounding a couple of days ago.

“But we do not know. We will see how he goes for the next days. We hope he will be back soon.

“[It’s] a bit of both, but to be honest I am not 100% aware of the Saudi regulations,” Krack said when asked about covid protocols.

“If he has a negative test, it will be easy. Better to get it now than in two weeks’ time.”

We’ll just have to see how things clear up for Vettel, then, in what has been a frustrating time for him at the start of the season.

Aston themselves will feel frustrated, too, after a first race of the campaign that yielded nothing in the way of points.

Indeed, they looked a little off of the pace – something that other Mercedes-powered cars shared on Sunday – and both Nico Hulkenberg and Lance Stroll couldn’t do much else than run around outside the top ten.

Hulkenberg looked up to speed from the off,