Vettel calling it a day? Hulkenberg confirms he will be ready for Aston Martin in Jeddah

Reports from Saudi Arabia suggest that Sebastian Vettel may not return to Aston Martin's disaster F1 team. It is not yet clear if Vettel will be returning to his cockpit this weekend in Jeddah. Nico Hulkenberg, who replaced the quadruple world champion on short notice in the Bahrain season opener, says he will "definitely" be in Jeddah.

"I won't know until Thursday or Friday if Seb is driving or me," said the German. Team boss Mike Krack revealed that Vettel still has a "hoarse" throat as he recovers from Covid-19, and it will depend upon the 34-year-old testing negative.

"Honestly, I'm not 100% sure of the rules in Saudi Arabia but let's hope," he said.

No incentive to return to track?

One unflattering take on the situation may be that Vettel is not overly incentivised to return to full health this weekend to race the uncompetitive 2022 Aston Martin.

"The team has lost the thread," former F1 driver Ralf Schumacher told Sport1.

"You can't just take a lot of people and a lot of money, put them in a pot, stir them briefly and then hope something good comes out of it in Formula One.

Read: 5 things we learned as F1's new era made an action-packed start at the Bahrain GP

The team owner is considered the problem

"The team wanted to use the bulldozer method, which didn't work at Toyota either," he insisted.

Ralf says he has heard Aston Martin team members refer to the new green car as a "disaster" - and thinks the problem may be the billionaire owner Lawrence Stroll.

"I hear that the team owner is sitting in on all the meetings and saying how things should be. If that's the case, then it will get really, really difficult," he said.

Schumacher is also scathing of the performance in Bahrain of Lawrence's son Lance.

"He needs to ask himself