How do you define success in racing? Aside from the usuals—championships, race wins—I think Sebastian Vettel has introduced us to a new one: having so many damn trophies that it stops being cool receiving them and instead actually kinda sucks because this one is ugly as sin.

After starting from third on the grid, Sebastian Vettel ultimately brought his Ferrari home to nab the second step on the podium. A decently successful race, right? But the whole ‘celebration’ thing got spoiled by some otherwise terrible decisions.

From :

“You have such a great race and they put so much effort into the race and then you get this shitty trophies that look boring.

“We could have for the future maybe something nice, traditional Mexican, because it’s a bit of a shame,” said Vettel.

“There’s Heineken written everywhere! You don’t need to have the fricking star on the trophy as well.

“Get something nice like they had when F1 used to race here before we came back.”

Add to that the embarrassingly rebuked selfie attempt by Mario Achi, the Mexican Grand Prix’s mascot, and you’re in for a pretty unenjoyable podium celebration.

Honestly... I can’t really argue with Vettel here. I wanted to play devil’s advocate (some of those backmarkers would be thankful to even get a trophy!!!!) but... yeah. Taking home a sponsor-branded hunk of glass that you don’t even want to display sounds more like a hassle than a joy. I’m sure George Russel back there in the Williams would be stoked to have a trophy to take home, but it’s also pretty lame that he’d be stuck advertising Heineken any time he wanted to show it off.

While not everything can be the sick , I’m actually kind of hoping the FIA listens to what Vettel is saying here and changes up the trophy mindset. It’s very minor in the grand scheme of things—but that’s all the more reason why it should be easy to change.