He's not my favorite driver, but saying he's shit or badmouthing his former performance is silly tbh. Since he joined Ferrari he finished the championship on 2nd place 2 times, and one time each on 3rd and 4th against some pretty severe competition. Last year, he ranked 5th, 24 points behind Leclerc who is (I will readily admit) a very good driver too. Even if Vettel stayed with Ferrari and they closed the gap to Mercedes, I doubt he'd be able to become Champion again, he's too old for that and Leclerc is clearly better than Vettel's performance of the past two years. But the Ferrari Tifosi were always pretty quick to talk badly about a pilot that they feel keeps the team back - no matter what that driver achieved in the past and how objectively awful the car is in that season.
For sure they've gone too far too suddenly, but I do personally hold that Seb was never especially good a driver - not absolutely terrible, but masked in his mediocrity.
That Red Bull he won in was best car on the grid, constantly trying new rules-breaking/pushing features to make the car faster, and it was also more to his liking as a driver (extremely stable in corners, rather like a ground effect car) which made him fantastically quick, and when you have Mark Webber for a teammate you're pretty well certain to win in that situation because Mark was getting older, Seb was obviously the marketable RB Golden Boy (Max now), and Mark I don't feel ever was actually that good.
Seb then leaves when that Red Bull isn't to his liking, despite being built around him, when the other guy (Ricciardo) is faster than him and the team naturally opts to favour the faster driver.
In joining Ferrari he's paired with Kimi, a driver who is not exactly secret in his passiveness, and he is coming in as the less experienced but more accomplished driver, so Ferrari do the only thing they can - pick one car to be the primary car, and run that one to win, which they did.
The result of this is Seb again gets masked by a decent Ferrari which is clearly second fastest overall with him being put in front of the other unless absolutely impossible to do.
Leclerc has then come along, and the same as with Ricciardo has happened somewhat in that he is faster, but even then Ferrari have only
this season stopped favouring Seb for both car design and pit priority and yet he was still being beaten by the kid every opportunity he got.
I have held the opinion that Vettel isn't that good for a while, but the Italians only noticing now have taken it to the extreme, or at least the vocal ones on Twitter which I will remind you, is of course the only place to get a balanced, reasoned, and well thought through opinion which is representative of all.
What did Leclerc say that pissed them off?
Afaik, Leclerc went out of his way to take the blame for his crash, but I really can't see how it was a drivers error. He didn't shunt over a curb, he didn't get on slippery ground, dirt or gravel, if anything, he took the turn far less aggressive than some of the other drivers and his tyres should have been warm enough to handle it. The car has atrocious balancing and that's it. It's like the driver has to fight the car in every turn, little wonder Ferrari is shit this season.
After his brake failure, Vettel said that Ferrari is in no position to make a comeback this season and joked about the car, so the Tifosi are butthurt over his mean words, but I didn't hear anything like that from Leclerc... well, aside from admitting that the aerodynamics make the car hard to drive. Was that it?
Leclerc's crash at Monza isn't what has prompted the complaining, his crash I got the impression was a slight moment of over-eager right foot which made an issue with the car arise - because he never counter-steered yet veered left after starting to rotate right.
What Leclerc has done is complain about aspects of the car during the course of race over the radio for most of the season - I think we will agree validly so, inferior power unit and atrocious aerodynamics will get a driver complaining regardless of what car he's in, even beyond F1.
The issue comes from the way Liberty Media have made all of the radio communications publicly available and there are now people who dedicatedly upload pieces of radio which FOM probably won't upload to the F1 channel on YouTube, which makes even when trying to frame it as him stating fact - for an example (which I don't think has happened, but demonstrates the sort of statement) I think this gear box is too long, we're losing time on acceleration - as him moaning and whining. People I talk to are starting to immediately leap to the conclusion of
oh he's just crying about the car again and I suspect it's the same with the Italian Twitter lot.
The issue comes where the diehards are saying he should be fired because he's criticising a Ferrari, which is flat out absurd.
The more reasonable people - although not too much more, it is Twitter remember -are just wanting him to stop doing it publicly (which officially the radio communications aren't public, but obviously are) because it, in their view, doesn't benefit the team, doesn't improve the car, and makes them sad personally because it proves to them that their beloved red car - which to quote F1's official newsletter from Spa weekend is 'all horse, no power' (still a great line) - is terrible and they don't like it being that way.
