Lando Norris has been the victim of a wave of online abuse, having stated that the Alpine driver Franco Colapinto should not be in Formula One, after the Argentinian caused an accident that knocked the defending world champion out of the Azerbaijan Grand Prix on Saturday.
Such was the level of abuse on social media, which appears to be from fans of Colapinto, his Alpine team were prompted to issue a statement condemning what is only the latest incident in a host of occurrences of fan abuse associated with the Argentinian driver.
The race in Baku was won by Mercedes’ George Russell, but Norris was forced to retire when Colapinto went into turn one too hot on a safety car restart, locked up and drove into the side of his teammate Pierre Gasly, who was shunted into the side of Norris, ending the race for all three drivers.
Afterwards Norris was unequivocal that he felt Colapinto’s driving was not good enough. “I just got taken out. There are some drivers who shouldn’t be in Formula One to be honest,” he said. “If you cause a crash on a restart like this, you should have at least a one-race ban. It is not driving that deserves to be in Formula One.”
Colapinto, who has been given a five-place grid penalty for the next round in Malaysia, apologised after the race and accepted he had been at fault but Norris was nonetheless subject to a wave of abuse, such that Alpine issued a statement.
“As a team, we feel it’s necessary to speak out once more about the hate and abuse online following the Azerbaijan Grand Prix. Not only aimed at one of our own drivers, but also members of the Formula One community, including media, and to our racing counterparts who we respect, admire, and revel competing against in the pinnacle of motorsport,” it read. “As we have said in previous instances, we strongly condemn the reaction of some fans online and stand in solidarity with Formula One, the FIA and other teams in wanting to stamp it out. It has become a regular occurrence in recent races and cannot be condoned.”
Before the race in Azerbaijan Gasly had condemned what he called the “disturbing” abuse he had received online after he had held up Colapinto in the late stages of the Spanish GP. “There is a certain line that should not be crossed just because you’re behind a screen and a keyboard and these lines are crossed too many times,” he said.
The problem had reached such a level that in the buildup to the race in Baku the Alpine executive adviser, Flavio Briatore, issued a warning that he would stop Colapinto speaking to the Argentinian media if the abuse toward Gasly continued.
“If the Argentinians want to support Franco, they support Franco clean, loyal. Not what I see on social media,” he said. “If not, at one point Franco will stop talking with everybody because if I see every time we have a lot of anger from the fans and this and that for no reason, if the people are like that then we will stop the interviews with the Argentinian television. We will stop everything, because it doesn’t make sense what I’m reading on social media.”
The 23-year-old, who made his F1 debut with Williams in 2024 before joining Alpine midway through the 2025 season, has had to repeatedly condemn instances of fan abuse.
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Before Colapinto replaced Jack Doohan at Alpine the Australian said he had received serious death threats and “six or seven threatening emails that all my limbs would be cut off”, if he was still at Alpine by the time of the Miami GP and had to ask fans to stop “harassing my family”.
Yuki Tsunoda was the target after last year’s Emilia-Romagna Grand Prix; then Esteban Ocon received death threats after the Chinese GP this year. After the Dutch GP last month the FIA stewards were the targets after Colapinto was given a penalty, while Gasly’s perceived transgression made him the target after the race in Madrid two weeks ago.
In 2023 the FIA, F1’s governing body, founded the United Against Online Abuse campaign to counter online harassment across all sport and in January this year it secured €400,000 in funding from the EU.
Last week, before the race, Colapinto once more stated he deplored all instances of abuse. “Hopefully, they can stop it. The same happened to other drivers – Yuki last year, it was quite bad as well at one point, I talked about it,” he said. “The stewards, after Zandvoort, I went to see them as well. They had some abuse after the penalty they gave me. It happens a lot with fans in Formula One, in any sport nowadays, it’s something very common. Unfortunately, that shouldn’t be common.”
