Adrian Newey said that he believes Max Verstappen has been the target of "demonisation" from portions of the media during his championship-winning run with Red Bull.
Formula 1 design legend Newey, who this week was confirmed to be joining Aston Martin in 2025, has been at Red Bull for almost two decades and has built cars for its two world champions, Sebastian Vettel and Verstappen.
Newey said that he sees similarities between the two as to how they have been perceived.
"From the outside, I'm not sure people fully appreciate and understand Max, just like they didn't with Sebastian," Newey told the "High Performance" podcast. "There's this sort of demonisation both of them suffered at times, which is very unfair.
"And maybe that's also a little bit of the British media, if I'm honest. Sky [Sports] have a huge influence around the world. Although viewing isn't truly international, their coverage is quite nationalistic, dare I say, and that can have an influence.
"It's this thing that now with journalism, typically... There is that trend to sort of either put people on a pedestal or knock them down."
Verstappen has won three straight titles and holds a 62-point lead in this year's championship with eight races left.
On Verstappen's strengths, Newey said: "I think that he's very intelligent, and he's got an incredible ability to... It feels as if he can drive the car automatically.
"He doesn't, of course, but he can drive the car and has so much processing power left over that he can then think a lot about how he's driving the car, how he's looking after the tyres, what he might need to do on the settings.
"Or if he doesn't, if he's not sure, ask GP [Gianpiero Lambiase, Verstappen's race engineer] on the radio what he should be doing, but highlighting the problems."
Newey also reflected on the controversial way Verstappen won his first title at the 2021 Abu Dhabi Grand Prix, where race director Michael Masi did not properly enforce the rules in order to force a late race restart.
Verstappen duly overtook Lewis Hamilton in dramatic circumstances to clinch the title.
"I think, honestly, Max is so self-assured," he said on that race. "This is in a positive way. It's not in a negative way.
"There's arrogance and there is self-assured. Max is not arrogant, but he is very self-assured and self-confident, and he's a deep thinker. But he doesn't let things like that, I don't think -- they don't really get to him. He's able to shut that off and just get on with his job and get on with his task and do what he loves doing, which is driving racing cars."
Newey suggested Hamilton and Mercedes have been unable to put it behind them.
"Actually, I think it got to Mercedes. And instead of saying OK, well, accepting it and moving on, it started to affect their psyche, which is an interesting one. That's from the outside, and I might be completely wrong.
"They just couldn't let it go. Psychologically, they couldn't let it go."