“F**k! You are a fool. Take a police car and leave F1.” Ouch! That bit of binary bile was directed at Lewis Hamilton, the 2014 F1 World Champeen. What grievous online misconduct provoked that kind of ire from racing fans? mirror.co.uk reports that “The Formula 1 star, who qualified to take pole position in tomorrow’s Belgian Grand Prix at Spa, posted the footage of himself relaxing at a gun range on Instagram.” Bad enough, given the generally hoplophobic vibe in Europe and the UK, where the Brit was born. But his real offense was one of timing . . .
From dailymail.co.uk:
The video was posted just hours after a a gunman attacked a train in France but was stopped by US military man Spencer Stone who was traveling on the train.
Shockingly insensitive! Amazingly obtuse! This kind of offensiveness cannot be allowed to stand!
He was ordered to remove the video from Instagram by Mercedes team boss Niki Lauda after a number of fans were offended by it.
After backtracking enough to claim that he wasn’t the one who posted the video (top-ranked drivers apparently have social medial lackeys to do that for them “during race weekends”), Hamilton was, in the end, refreshingly unrepentant.
He simply said: ‘I went to the shooting range, shot some fun targets. It was a lot of fun.’