Lewis Hamilton’s “World Champion” Jab at Max Verstappen Gains Fresh Perspective From Fred Vasseur

Lewis Hamilton asked Max Verstappen to act like a World Champion following the latter’s heated radio exchange with race engineer Gianpiero Lambiase at the Hungarian GP last week. However, Hamilton’s future boss Fred Vasseur came out with a fresh perspective on the Briton’s comments.

Unlike Hamilton, the Ferrari boss did not ask Verstappen to hold back. He said,

“We have also to keep in mind that we are the only sport in the world where the guys are speaking on the radio during the effort or the race. I’m not sure that if you put a microphone on a football player, it would be much better”. 

Hamilton says Verstappen needs to “act like a world champion” and “be a team leader” after his radio outbursts in Hungary pic.twitter.com/FrfcgeU2lK

— Motorsport.com (@Motorsport) July 26, 2024

Vasseur suggested that to prevent others from hearing F1 drivers’ language unfiltered, radio transmissions should be switched off. But then, it would affect F1’s entertainment aspect, which is why he was in favor of keeping things the way they are.

Verstappen called out Red Bull’s strategy team several times on the radio in Hungary, but Hamilton felt he should have thought about the hundreds of employees back at the Milton-Keynes factory, who worked hard to field a car for him.

Hamilton makes sure to appreciate his team’s efforts even when things aren’t going his way, and rarely uses cuss words on the team radio. When he does, he has people standing up for him.

Sebastian Vettel once defended Hamilton’s “d*ckhead” jibe

Verstappen and Hamilton came together at Bahrain 2018, and the Briton used the word d*ckhead on the team radio. Surprised, a journalist asked Hamilton about his language in the post-race press conference. However, it was Sebastian Vettel who jumped in to defend his then-rival.

He said,

“Do you think compared to football, if you have a microphone on a football player’s mouth, that everything he says is nice? And it’s a nice message when the guy tackles him or maybe sometimes he fouls him or not. If we are just racing, we are full of adrenaline, sometimes we say these things.”

Vettel uses the same logic as Vasseur while defending cuss-words on the team radio, and the majority of the F1 grid agrees to this because swearing is not an uncommon occurrence mid-races.