Sebastian Vettel jumped to rival Lewis Hamilton's defense following the Bahrain Grand Prix after the Briton called Max Verstappen a "dickhead" upon watching a replay of their contact.
Verstappen overtook Hamilton in the opening laps but closed the door too early and his left-rear tyre clipped Hamilton's front-wing, causing a puncture which ultimately forced Verstappen to retire from the race.
In the pre-podium room, Hamilton saw the incident on a television screen and uttered the word "dickhead", which was later picked up in the post-race press conference, in which Vettel defended his rival.
"I don’t know what Lewis did," Vettel said after asking if he could answer the journalist's question. "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 adrenalin going.
"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.
"So I don’t think it’s justified to give us these kind of shit questions and making up a story out of nothing, if we are just racing and we are full of adrenalin 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. Sometimes I feel it’s all a bit blown up and artificial if we have these questions, trying to make a story out of nothing. So, it’s not personal, don’t take it personal. So I think we should cut it right there, so now if Lewis can answer."
Hamilton pinned the blame on Verstappen, calling the contact "unnecessary" and "silly" as it forced the Dutchman out of the race.
"Ultimately, I had a coming together with Max and it was an unnecessary collision," he said. "There needs to be a certain respect between drivers and ultimately… maybe I need to go and watch the manoeuvre again, but it didn’t feel like a respectful manoeuvre.
"It was a silly manoeuvre for himself, because he didn’t finish the race. And obviously he’s tending to make quite a few mistakes recently, so it was just unnecessary for him to do that. I can't really remember at what stage of the race it was or why we were even in that position, but yeah, I don’t really care to be honest."
