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Pride and emotions have no place in a sport like F1. Whenever anyone lets emotions dictate terms, he loses. Even at the pinnacle of motorsports, that has some of the best drivers in the world, not everyone is immune to emotions.
Even the best of them, the F1 world champions, have caved to emotions. In the history of the sport, there have been instances where a driver has given in to emotions and made decisions that ruined his career.
This has happened to multiple F1 world champions as well. In this feature, we will take a look at these F1 champions that let emotions dictate terms and hence ended up ruining their careers
#1 Jacques Villeneuve (1998 F1 season, moved to BAR)
Jacques Villeneuve arguably had one of the best starts to an F1 career with Williams in 1996. The Canadian started his career with a pole position and ended his rookie season as a runner-up in the championship. In 1997, he went one step better and won the title against Michael Schumacher.
Ironically, Villeneuve's title was the last time Williams won a championship. It was during this time that Adrian Newey decided to switch teams. He left Williams for McLaren and instantly, the form guide saw Williams suffer from a dip in form while McLaren surged.
The 1998 F1 season was a disaster for Williams and Villeneuve. The team lost the Renault engine as well. As a result, the car was just not good enough to fight for the title.
Near the end of the 1998 F1 season, Villeneuve was offered a huge deal with a brand new team 'BAR', which was going to be led by his acquaintance Craig Pollock.
With Williams going nowhere and in a bid to honor his friend, Villeneuve made the move to BAR. As soon as he did that, his career nose-dived. The cars were not good enough and his performance too suffered because of that.
He wouldn't win another race, let alone challenge for a title after that, as his career wound down with one-off F1 race appearances with teams like Renault and BMW Sauber.
Had he stuck around with Williams, a BMW partnership was already in the works. If Juan Pablo Montoya could fight for the title in 2003, then Villeneuve could have been able to do that as well. In the end, his decision to move out of Williams at the end of the 1998 F1 season ruined his career.
#2 Fernando Alonso (2007 F1 season, the McLaren implosion)
Fernando Alonso's career changed tracks when he completely lost the plot in 2007. The Spaniard joined McLaren in 2007 with expectations of being the team leader. This included being the favored driver at any point of the season.
However, once Lewis Hamilton started putting together one impressive performance after the other, Alonso was rattled. He was so rattled that he confronted Ron Dennis about it.
The 2007 season was not your vintage Alonso. He was erratic, he was not in the right space of mind and, more often than not, he did not drive to his potential. Despite of all this, Alonso was level on points with Hamilton at the end of the season. The equation against Lewis could arguably have been even better if Alonso had not blown his lid in mid-season.
What was an even worse decision was to just pack and leave McLaren. He went to an inferior Renault team and his career unravelled since then. He's fought for multiple titles but hasn't won any. Right now, as Aston Martin Driver, the likelihood of him challenging for the title is minimal at best.
Could a calmer and more mature Alonso have done better against Lewis than the almost paranoid version of 2007? Arguably yes, and that paranoid version could have even secured the title in 2007 and 2008. That one decision to get too emotional and leave McLaren played a key role in Alonso's career downslide.
#3 Sebastian Vettel - Ferrari (Desperate to win with the team)
Sebastian Vettel had a dream of being successful in F1. He also had another dream of emulating what his idol had done in his career - winning the championship with Ferrari.
In 2014, when he discovered that Red Bull did not have the package to compete for wins and that the power unit issue was going to stick around for a while, he had a decision to make.
Being a four-time world champion, he was already successful. However, the other dream of winning a title with Ferrari was still not achieved. Vettel took the punt and switched to Ferrari. Within three years, as he revealed years later in an interview, Vettel knew that a title with Ferrari was going to be tough.
He was even approached by Niki Lauda to switch teams and join Mercedes in 2018. However, at the time, the love for Ferrari was just too thick for Vettel. He later revealed in an interview that winning one title with Ferrari was bigger than winning multiple titles with Mercedes.
As a result, Vettel persevered and what we saw was the German crumbling under Ferrari's pressure only to be dropped by the 2020 F1 season.
