Sebastian Vettel says he received “a lot of energy” from the support given by fans during the build-up to the Singapore Grand Prix, as his barren spell came to a conclusion.
The German has endured a difficult 12 months as his 2018 title bid collapsed amid a sequence of incidents and setbacks, while his 2019 campaign has also been beset by problems.
Vettel, who finished first on-the-road in Canada prior to a time penalty, had not taken victory since last August’s Belgian Grand Prix, but in Singapore used the undercut to vault from third to first.
It netted Vettel victory for the fifth time around the streets of Marina Bay.
“[I received] a lot of little notes, handwritten letters, which… obviously, if people make the effort to write something, when you find a bit of time in the evenings to go through, it’s really encouraging I have to say,” explained Vettel.
“Years ago when you start it’s very difficult to imagine that people follow you and these kinds of things but recent years, especially here, especially in Asia, I have a lot of support, a lot of fans that come over and over again.
“As I said, I just got a lot of energy in the last couple of weeks, just from messages that I received from the racing world, from people that I know, from a long time ago but especially fans.
“After Monza, and then coming here, so, as I said, people sharing their own story of when things are up and when things go down which obviously… for us everything is centered around racing but really it’s not the most important thing and, when you read through some of the notes and people’s struggles in life, some very intimate and private, you know it gets to you.
“It gave me a lot of belief and confidence to just keep trying.
“Obviously nothing was wrong in the last couple of weeks. I knew that we weren’t really far away from a breakthrough moment, sort of, but surely, you know Charles [Leclerc] has been very strong and was right to win the last two races.
“But I knew on our side that we just need to keep doing our job and sooner or later things will fall in to place. So obviously I’m happy that it was rather sooner than later.”
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