Whitmarsh agrees to repeal Vettel’s ‘crash kid’ jibe

With Sebastian Vettel now among F1’s great back-to-back world champions, the ‘crash kid’ label of 2010 should be formally repealed.

That is the view of Red Bull team boss Christian Horner, referring to the label coined last year by his McLaren counterpart Martin Whitmarsh after a spate of incidents for Vettel.

A year on, it is 24-year-old Vettel’s consistency that is winning the praise of the F1 world, while McLaren’s Lewis Hamilton – who is two years older than his German rival – who might now be referred to as a ‘crash kid’.

“I think he’ll have to eat his words, don’t you think?” AS newspaper quotes Horner as saying.

Asked by British reporters if he will be eating his words about Vettel, Whitmarsh smiled according to the Mirror newspaper: “I’ll eat them.

“Sebastian has driven fantastically this year.”

But Whitmarsh also has high praise for Adrian Newey, the brilliant designer of Red Bull’s single seaters.

He told Spain’s AS: “I think Sebastian has driven flawlessly a car that was designed very well by Adrian Newey.  At all times it was evident that he was driving a car that should easily win the title.”

And as for the unkind ‘crash kid’ label of 2010, he explained: “I think it was taken out a context.  We were talking about a particular moment in which Jenson was wronged.”

© RIF | GMM