F1 | Hamilton attacks Verstappen on the back podium: "He's a hothead"

Despite the third place achieved in today's race, Lewis Hamilton couldn't stomach the extremely aggressive attack carried out by Max Verstappen at the end of the first lap of the Bahrain GP. In the rear podium room, in fact, the cameras captured it a World Champion extremely nervous towards the Dutch talent, who, according to him, would have squeezed him to throw him off course.

We cannot report the words used verbatim, but, generalising, let's say that Lewis called the Red Bull standard bearer an "extremely hot" head. So far everything is normal, especially if we consider the Dutchman's history with his colleagues. The real surprise, however, came in the post-match conference.

A journalist, intrigued by what happened, asked the Englishman for confirmation of the words used just before the podium, asking if the sentence picked up on the TV was correct. The answer, however, came from Sebastian Vettel, who immediately spoke up and defended the Mercedes driver.

According to the German, in fact, post-race is an extremely delicate moment and every journalist should realize that certain questions, asked in certain contexts, are inappropriate and above all out of place. A driver experiences a race with a lot of competitive spirit and at the end, when tiredness takes over, certain comments can be made that certainly wouldn't be uttered with a cool head.

Here is the discussion between the journalist and Sebastian Vettel.

QUESTION: “Hi Lewis. In the retropodium, if my ears do not deceive me, you used an expression against Max Verstappen for the contact in the first laps. Obviously I'm referring to the overtaking episode. I'm right?"

REPLY: *Vettel intervenes* “Can I answer this question? We all find ourselves in that situation where we fight with someone. Sometimes we are wheel to wheel and very close. Sand give a microphone to a player during a football match and you start listening, do you think he exclaims nice words?”.

“Or maybe messages of affection while someone else attacks him and knocks him down? Honestly, I don't think it's right to ask ourselves questions like this, much less build stories about nothing. We drivers compete and at the end of the race we are full of adrenaline. Unfortunately, it can happen that statements of this type are stated. If I hit you in the face now, I don't think you would say, “Oh, that wasn't nice,” but rather you would have a reaction. Sometimes I think it's all a bit artificial and inflated, especially when you ask us questions like this" he added.

Roberto Valenti