Those who watched the Bahrain Grand Prix broadcast heard Lewis Hamilton express his frustration in regard to Max Verstappen’s lap two contact, calling the young Dutch driver “a d*******”. When a Dutch reporter attempted to question Hamilton about his words in the post-race press conference, Sebastian Vettel jumped to his defense.
Hamilton was upset about Verstappen’s dive up the inside in the first corner on the second lap of the Bahrain Grand Prix. The incident caused the duo to collide when the Red Bull driver ran the Mercedes of Hamilton out of space on the exit of the corner. Hamilton was fortunate enough to escape the incident without any major damage, while Verstappen suffered a rear puncture and eventually retired from the race. After finishing in third place, Hamilton was caught calling Verstappen “a d*******” in the cooldown room, which is broadcast live.
Louis Dekker, a Formula One correspondent for the Dutch news network the Nederlandse Omroep Stichting (better known as NOS), asked Hamilton a question about his use of the inappropriate word and what he thought of the incident in the race. Surprisingly, Sebastian Vettel jumped on the question to come to Hamilton’s aid. His response was this:
“I think it’s not fair… I mean, I don’t know what Lewis did. We’ve all been in that situation, we fight someone, we go sometimes wheel-to-wheel, it’s close and you have a lot of adrenalin going, do you think comparing to football, if you have a microphone on a football player’s mouth, that everything he says is something nice and is a nice message when the guy tackles him and maybe sometimes he fouls him or not. So I don’t think it’s justified to give us these kind of s*** questions and making up a story out of nothing, if we are just racing and we are full of adrenalin and sometime we say these things. I mean if I hit you in your face, you’re not going to say “oh, Sebastian, that wasn’t nice”. It’s a human reaction. Sometimes I feel it’s all a bit blown up and artificial if we have these questions, trying to make a story out of nothing. So, it’s not personal, don’t take it personal. So I think we should cut it right there, so now if Lewis can answer.”
Hamilton ignored the part of the question related to the use of the inappropriate word, since it had been adequately covered by Vettel on his behalf, but did respond to his thought on the collision. And I think we should all give props to Vettel for defending Hamilton because this is a prime example of someone attempting make a story out of nothing.
Hamilton has not been the first one to call his competitor a name and he certainly won’t be the last. The use of profanity is actually very common in Formula One these days over the team radio. Verstappen used some when he hit the wall in qualifying and Kevin Magnussen used some against his teammate in the race, just to name a few recent incidents.
Vettel was a victim of such a situation at the 2016 Mexican Grand Prix when he made some angry remarks directed at Charlie Whiting. The story of Vettel using inappropriate words was a top story for a while and there was even a point in which the FIA considered fining Vettel for his radio message, although they fortunately didn’t.
At the end of the day, the whole point of broadcasting the cooldown room to get the pure reaction of the driver and it did its job in today’s race.
What are your thoughts? Was Hamilton’s comment towards Max Verstappen ok?
