Sebastian Vettel has jumped to the defence of Lando Norris by demanding the media praise the Briton for openly discussing his mental battles.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Norris leads the F1 drivers’ title by three points to McLaren team-mate Oscar Piastri ahead of the Saudi Arabian Grand Prix, but has endured a mixed start to the season.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The McLaren driver was incredibly hard on himself in Bahrain, where he recovered to finish third after qualifying in sixth.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Norris is known to focus on the negatives and has never shied away from discussing his mental struggles with the media.\u00a0<\/p>\n
In the past, the Briton has been criticised for this, although Vettel wants to see the championship leader praise instead for addressing his mental health so publicly.<\/p>\n
“Aren’t we all having good times and bad times, whether we are Formula 1 drivers or having a regular job?” questioned Vettel, speaking to Sky Sports F1. “And what is a regular job anyway?\u00a0<\/p>\n
“But aren’t we all like that? We have better days and worse days. And I think the threat now is that people talk about what he’s maybe going through and interpret this as a sign of weakness, like, why is he doing that?\u00a0<\/p>\n
“You know what’s going on with him, what’s wrong with him? Nothing’s wrong with him. I think everybody’s going through the same things in different phases of their life.<\/p>\n
“Self-doubt is the most natural thing there is, but it’s the most unnatural thing to talk about, and that is wrong.\u00a0<\/p>\n
“So I think it is completely fine, and I think it’s very courageous of him to open up and talk about that side of him.<\/p>\n
“I wish, and I hope, that the media picks it up and turns it a little bit around.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Sebastian Vettel has jumped to the defence of Lando Norris by demanding the media praise the Briton for…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":33146,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4103],"tags":[859,4199,1076,1074,1077,1075,997,707,4200,998,1073,1072,1071,79,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-33145","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-f1","8":"tag-daniel-ricciardo","9":"tag-f1","10":"tag-f1-calendar","11":"tag-f1-live","12":"tag-f1-results","13":"tag-f1-standings","14":"tag-ferrari","15":"tag-formula-1","16":"tag-formula1","17":"tag-lewis-hamilton","18":"tag-max-verstappen","19":"tag-motorsport","20":"tag-racing","21":"tag-sports","22":"tag-uk","23":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114365088748212956","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33145","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=33145"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33145\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/33146"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=33145"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=33145"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=33145"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}