The nature of media coverage in 2020 sees the opinions of Formula 1 drivers vacillate between hot and cold in a way they simply wouldn’t have 15 years ago, says Ferrari’s Sebastian Vettel.
A driver who has earned his fair-share of praise and criticism over the years, Vettel believes that in recent times, the swings between the two have become more frequent due to the way the sport is covered.
“The questions change every day, they change after every result,” he told Autosport. “So in this regard I feel like it’s a lot more short-lived nowadays.
“If you have a bad day, things are a disaster for the next weeks. If you have a good day, you are the greatest for the next weeks.”
“It has always been like that in a way, but just the velocity of change has [increased].”
“But that is probably something that not just F1 experiences, that’s probably something the whole world experiences.
“I’m not a finance guy at all, but you just need to follow the finance market, the stock market for a day and it goes up and down.
“If you take the same behaviour 15 years ago, people would panic, and now it’s completely normal to have 2 percent up, 3 percent down. 20 years ago 3 percent up was like: ‘We have a problem here, we need to …’, you know [stop].”
At least in the past year, many of the swings in sentiment for Vettel can be traced back to his rivalry with teammate Charles Leclerc, but the four-time world champion maintains he is more concerned with helping his team than beating the Monegasque.
“It is not so important whether I have five points more or less [than Leclerc],” he said. “The important thing is that we are heading in the right direction as a team.
“Then five points up or down, for sure in the moment I care, but really what all of our target is here, is to make sure that Ferrari comes back to the top.”