"I feel the media need to show a little more respect for Sebastian Vettel"- When Lewis Hamilton defended the 4x F1 champion from media backlash

In 2018, Lewis Hamilton defended Sebastian Vettel from media backlash after the German driver's spree of on-track mistakes during the season. Hamilton, through his social media post, reflected on how hard one needs to work to get to that level, and as a human one cannot avoid mistakes.

Hamilton and Vettel were Championship protagonists in the 2018 F1 Championship. This was Vettel's third year as a Ferrari driver after he jumped ship from Red Bull to the Prancing Horse in 2015. The switch came one year after the German former driver secured four back-to-back F1 titles from 2010 to 2013 with Red Bull.

Like numerous other drivers, Vettel moved to Ferrari to get the taste of winning a championship in red. However, Hamilton and Mercedes were the bone of contention for Vettel. After losing the title to the Silver Arrows drivers in 2015, 2016, and 2017, he started the 2018 season afresh.

Nevertheless, it wasn't meant to be as Vettel made repeated mistakes on the track during the season, something that put him 88 points behind Hamilton by the end of the season. As a result, the German former driver received heavy criticism from the media.

"I feel the media need to show a little more respect for Sebastian," Hamilton wrote on his official Instagram account (via Sky Sports). "You simply cannot imagine how hard it is to do what we do at our level, for any athlete at the top of their game that is. It is to be expected that being humans we will make mistakes but it is how we get through them that counts."

Several renowned media houses called out the former Red Bull man and pointed out how his mistakes basically handed the title over to Lewis Hamilton.

---

When Sebastian Vettel defended Lewis Hamilton amid Max Verstappen row: "I think it's not fair"

During the 2018 Bahrain Grand Prix, Sebastian Vettel defended Lewis Hamilton from the media after the latter was asked about his action against Max Verstappen during the Bahrain race. Speaking to the media, Vettel said that making assumptions based on the radio was not fair.

Sebastian Vettel of Germany driving the (5) Scuderia Ferrari SF1000 leads Lewis Hamilton of Great Britain driving the (44) Mercedes AMG Petronas F1 Team Mercedes W11 on track during the F1 Grand Prix of Turkey - Source: Getty

Hamilton had allegedly uttered an expletive against Verstappen following his Lap 2 collision against the Red Bull driver. One of the journalists in the media picked up the ordeal and questioned Hamilton if the words used by the driver were correct.

"I think it's not fair," Vettel told the reporter during the press conference (via Sky Sports). "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 adrenaline 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?"

"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 adrenaline 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."

In Sebastian Vettel's six-year stay with Ferrari, he failed to defeat Lewis Hamilton in the Championship fight. In 2021, he moved to Aston Martin and retired from the sport at the end of 2022. On the other hand, Lewis Hamilton continued with Mercedes till 2024 before moving to Ferrari in 2025.