Italian media slams Vettel after Bahrain spin

The notoriously unforgiving Italian media has again taken aim at Sebastian Vettel after another high-profile mistake effectively cost the German and his team race victory.

After teammate Charles Leclerc's bitterly heartbreaking engine breakage with a handful of laps to go, the misery was compounded as Mercedes' Lewis Hamilton went on to assume the lead and take the race win.

Had Vettel not spun earlier in his wheel-to-wheel battle with Hamilton, it would have been crisis averted at Ferrari, with the four-time champion taking over the lead from his teammate.

La Gazzetta dello Sport summed the race up in a rather scathing sentence: "Ferrari have one certainty and two problems. The certainty is Charles Leclerc, and the problems are reliability and Sebastian Vettel."

Another outlet, Corriere della Serra, didn't shine any mercy onto the experienced driver either, adding Vettel had been humiliated in just the second race against his 21-year-old teammate.

La Repubblica got a final blow in by announcing Leclerc as Ferrari's true number one and best chance at dethroning Hamilton and Mercedes.