Alpine has shared exact number of toxic and hate comments they received after the F1 Brazil GP sprint race where its drivers came together.
Already at Turn 4 of Lap 1 in F1 Brazil GP sprint race, Alpine’s Fernando Alonso and Esteban Ocon had a coming together where the Spaniard took the kerb and his front wing hit the sidepod of the Frenchman punching a hole into it.
Few corners later, Alonso tried to pass Ocon in the final corner and misjudged slightly and clipped the rear of the Frenchman. His own front wing was damaged and he was forced to pit. Post-race he was handed a 5s time penalty which dropped him further.
At the same time Ocon’s car damage left him with no pace as Alpine rivals McLaren scored handy couple of points in the fight for fourth. Both the drivers were certainly unhappy along with team boss Otmar Szafnauer who stated that they led the team down.
On social media, the hate comments seemingly took centerstage as Alpine had to address them by even mentioning some statistics. It is unclear how they derived it but last week the FIA noted about a AI platform which may have been used in this case.
“Whatever happens on track, there is absolutely no excuse for hateful comments, abuse or toxicity to be directed towards our drivers, team members, fans or indeed anybody online,” the statement from Alpine read. Of all the comments that we received across our social media channels during and after today’s sprint qualifying, we received 882 toxic comments, 162 of which were severely toxic.
“This is wholly unacceptable. What we have seen today is, unfortunately, not an isolated incident. We continue to see hate and discrimination online, and as a team, will not tolerate this. We will take action against individuals or groups who produce or disseminate social media posts that contain or encourage online abuse of our drivers, team members and fans.”
Here’s the two Alpine drivers fighting: https://www.formula1.com/en/latest/video.2022-sao-paulo-gp-sprint-alonso-picks-up-damage-after-fighting-on-track-with-alpine-team-mate-ocon.1749322168277134647.html
Here’s how F1 Brazil GP sprint race panned out
Here’s FIA latest move on social media hate
Here’s drivers on social media toxicity
