Home F1 Vettel undertakes Suzuka special project with F1 community’s help

Vettel undertakes Suzuka special project with F1 community’s help

21/09/2023

Sebastian Vettel once again got the F1 grid together for his ‘Buzzin Corner’ event at Suzuka ahead of the Japanese GP this weekend.

Following his Red Bull return at Nordschleife, Vettel revealed during that event that he will be travelling to Suzuka for the Japanese GP weekend. But his purpose of visit was not to be related to any racing programme or any racing related activity.

He noted it to be creating a bee hotel at Turn 2 named as ‘Buzzin Corner’. The circuit painted the kerbs in black and yellow as the current F1 grid took out time to be present in numbers. In fact, all of the 20 drivers were present at 16:00 local time.

Several of the F1 team bosses were present too along with Stefano Domenicali as reserve drivers like Mick Schumacher and Robert Shwartzman took time out as well. All 10 teams erected their own bee hotels and painted them with Vettel helping them out.

“I’m very, very excited,” said Vettel. “I want, with this project, to create awareness about the importance and the subject of biodiversity. [The bee is] the perfect ambassador for us around this project and idea to highlight the importance of biodiversity, because it stands not just for the bee but for all the other insects, so we see the bee as our ambassador. She will help us stress this very important message.

“It’s very exciting and a lot of work and passion went into the project… Hopefully this is just the beginning of an initiative and projects around the world… standing up for biodiversity, which is not just insects, it’s all types of animals. But it’s more than that as well: it’s all types of plants, all types of organisms, bacteria. And even more than that, we have to celebrate variety, not just in human beings, but also in nature – and we have to protect it.”

Speaking about Vettel and his project, Mercedes’ Lewis Hamilton felt pretty good of the work the German is doing. “It’s great, firstly, to have Seb back this weekend,” he said. “He sat down and told all the drivers of his plans. It was great to see that he’s found his purpose and – to be honest – in the history of the sport, I don’t know any other driver that’s ever had… or who’s ever been so outspoken and showing real compassion for the world outside of this little world that we’re living in and it’s really great that he’s utilising his platform.

“I always just hope that with the things that he’s doing, for example, that he inspires the other drivers to do something along, maybe, in their own lane. But we all need to come together in this world to have a positive impact, to spread love, to spread compassion, to raise awareness for a lot of the problems that are.. and there’s obviously millions of problems that we need to address, but biodiversity for sure, is… when he’s working with the bees here, raising awareness this weekend I think is a great, great way… just sparks a bit of interest and raise awareness for people to understand exactly what and how important they are in terms of our ecosystem.”