Here in the hills of Provence, the only outward difference about Sebastian Vettel is his wedding ring. He married Hanna Prater, his teenage sweetheart and the mother of his two daughters, in a small family ceremony at home in Switzerland last week. Prater, whom he first met during a World Cup group game in Dortmund in 2006, is rarely seen at races, but has become a crucial steadying influence away from the remorseless scrutiny of Formula One.

If only his sporting life were so straightforward. Vettel started this season full of quiet optimism, confident that Ferrari’s winter pace would enable him to break Mercedes’ five-year stranglehold, but the reality has turned into a nightmare. With only a third of the campaign gone, he lies 62 points adrift of Lewis Hamilton, his nemesis the past two years, he has not won a race since Belgium last August, and there is a growing school of thought that he could soon be tempted to quit F1 altogether.

This month’s debacle in Montreal has proved a tipping point. Vettel was leading comfortably at one stage in Canada, but at the first sign of pressure from Hamilton, he slid off a dry track, rejoining in such a way that stewards deemed dangerous to his rival. Deprived of a likely victory, he seethed at the injustice of it all, lambasting F1 officials for their Byzantine rules and refusing to clarify questions about his immediate future in the sport.