Lewis Hamilton labelled the radio exchanges Max Verstappen has “far worse” than the communication troubles he had with Ferrari in the Formula 1 Australian Grand Prix.
Hamilton and race engineer Riccardo Adami, who worked with Sebastian Vettel and Carlos Sainz previously, had a baptism of fire at the Albert Park Circuit last weekend.
Adami, keen to guide Hamilton through the mixed conditions on his Ferrari bow, was consistent in his delivery of information, only for the driver to ask for less interaction.
The awkward discussion highlighted the work the two have to be on the same page, but Hamilton insisted post-race that there wasn’t a deep-rooted problem emerging.
Instead, the Briton feels the coverage of the interactions was overblown and drew a comparison to his ex-F1 title rival Verstappen’s fiery chats with Gianpiero Lambiasse.
“I was very polite in how I had suggested it,” Hamilton said via Sky. “I said: ‘leave it to me, please’.
“I wasn’t saying ‘F you’. I wasn’t swearing. So it was just at that point, I was really struggling with the car and I needed full focus on these couple of things.
“We’re getting to know each other. He’s obviously had two champions or more in the past and there’s no issues between us still.”
He added: “Go and listen to the radio calls with others and their engineers, far worse.
“But unfortunately, you [the media] make… the conversation that Max has with an engineer over the years, the abuse that the poor guy’s taken and you never write about it, but you wrote about the smallest little discussion I had with mine.”
