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…
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