Aston Martin team principal Otmar Szafnauer said that Sebastian Vettel is “hungry to perform” following his arrival at the Silverstone outfit.

Vettel left Ferrari after six years at the end of last season and replaces the Red Bull-bound Sergio Perez at the newly renamed Aston Martin Formula 1 team.

The 33-year-old endured a difficult final campaign with Ferrari in 2020 but has clearly impressed his new team during his early visits to the factory.

Speaking this week, Szafnauer said that the German was asking all the right questions upon his arrival.

“The way I look at it is at 33 years old you don’t forget how to drive a Formula 1 racing car fast,” he told Sky Sports F1. “He definitely hasn’t forgotten how to do that, and the work ethic is still there.

“He’s really, really hungry to perform.

“We’ve started working with him this year already and you can see it. He asked all the right questions and a lot of them. He’s really hungry for knowledge.”

Aston Martin will hope Vettel can tap into his vast experience within F1 and Szafnauer said that the four-time world champion wants to know as much about the car as his performance engineer.

“He wants to know as much, if not more, than the performance engineer you have working on the car, whose job it is to understand every little aspect of car performance,” he added.

“Seb wants to know that much – plus more.

“That’s a good trait to have, he has that, he carried that with him to our team. We see it and he is really, really hungry, as he said, to have fun again in Formula 1. But fun to him means being competitive.”