Sky’s ‘nationalistic’ F1 coverage caused ‘demonisation’ of Verstappen

Red Bull’s departing chief technical officer Adrian Newey said Sky’s British-centric coverage of Formula 1 led to “demonisation” of the team’s two world championship-winning drivers.

Newey said Sky’s coverage is excessively “nationalistic” and made villains out of champions Max Verstappen and Sebastian Vettel.

“From the outside I’m not sure people fully appreciate and understand Max, just like they didn’t with Sebastian,” Newey told High Performance. “Because first of all, there’s a sort of demonisation that both of them suffered at times which I think’s very unfair.

“Maybe that’s also a little bit of the British media, if I’m honest, Sky have a huge influence around the world, their viewing is truly international but their coverage is quite nationalistic, dare I say, and that can have an influence.”

Red Bull boycotted Sky’s coverage during the Mexican Grand Prix in 2022 due to its dissatisfaction with their coverage. This was believed to refer to a segment in which a Sky presenter referred to Lewis Hamilton being “robbed” of the 2021 world championship, which Verstappen won.

Newey believes the three-times champion Verstappen is underestimated by many followers of F1. He compared him to Fernando Alonso, whom Newey will work with at Aston Martin following his move to the team which was announced today.

“It almost feels as if [Verstappen] can drive the car automatically,” said Newey. “He doesn’t, of course, but he can drive the car and have so much processing power left over that he can then think a lot about how he is driving the car, how he is looking after the tyres, what he might need to do in the settings or if he’s not sure, ask [his race engineer] on the radio what he should be doing, but highlighting the problems.

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“Reading the race still fascinates me – Fernando is another one that can do that, he seems to be able to read the race but [they] haven’t got all the stuff in front of them.”

However Newey admitted Verstappen showed signs of cracking in the second half of the 2021 season as his championship fight with Hamilton intensified following the collision between the pair at the British Grand Prix.

“Particularly after Silverstone, on-track between Lewis and Max, it became so intense,” he said. “I think Max had very strong feelings on that Silverstone accident.

“Of course he’d been the clear championship leader going into Silverstone, then out of the race and was more or less out of the race in Hungary when he got hit by Valtteri [Bottas] – not intentional at all, but still got hit and pretty much hardly scored any points. To go from easy championship leaders to now feeling a bit more pressure.

“Mercedes managed to find quite a lot more pace out of that car towards the end of the season. It’s always easier for the hunter than the hunted and Max was starting to just feel a little bit of pressure from the hunt.”

Newey said he Verstappen was fortunate to avoid a penalty for his driving at the Brazilian Grand Prix that year, where he drove off-track at Subido do Lago to force Hamilton wide and prevent him overtaking.

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“In reality he was probably lucky not to get a penalty from his driving in Brazil. In Saudi Arabia they had a bit of a ding-dong that was a little bit more – I think that was not clear, but Max was probably a bit out of order in Brazil in truth.

“So I think he was feeling it a bit. And indeed Checo [Perez], it’s the usual thing, if the team mate that they’ve been beating suddenly starts to get closer, it’s not that suddenly the team mate’s got better. It was the same with Fernando and Felipe Massa towards the end of 2010, suddenly they get closer because the lead driver is feeling the pressure.”

Red Bull unsuccessfully attempted to force the FIA to review the penalty they handed Hamilton for the Silverstone collision. Afterwards Mercedes accused them of attempting “to tarnish the good name and sporting integrity of Lewis Hamilton”.

Newey admitted his view of the collision has changed since then. “At the time, I was absolutely incandescent with Lewis because I felt he did a deliberate, professional foul.

“I think now, with the benefit of hindsight and time, then I think they’d been banging wheels all the way round the lap up to that corner. Lewis went through an opportunity which he thought was there, misjudged it, and what happened, happened.

“We were lucky that Max didn’t get badly hurt. So I understand how it happened now perhaps better than and I was probably a bit harsh – I was too harsh on Lewis at the time. That’s perhaps one of the things of Formula 1, you get sucked into everybody else being the enemy very easily.”

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Verstappen recently revealed he suffered vision problems following the crash which he did not disclose at the time. Newey said the team was deeply concerned about their driver in the moments after the impact.

“Max’s one at Silverstone is the last one where we thought ‘is he okay, is he badly hurt in there?’” he said. “Then when he did come on the radio, because he was so badly winded he was just grunting. And you don’t know what that means.

“He was very sore, he had quite a nasty concussion, he was very sore for a week after but he was okay.”