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Alpine has issued a stern warning to the abusive groups and individuals on social media after the French team became the target of abuse for Fernando Alonso fans.
In the 2022 F1 Brazilian GP Sprint, both Alpine drivers Alonso and Esteban Ocon had a coming together on the first lap at turn 4 with Fernando Alonso coming off worse in the exchange. What followed was an overtake attempt on the main straight by Alonso that damaged his front wing and ruined his race.
The coming together of the two drivers and then subsequently Alonso inherently placing the blame on Esteban Ocon infuriated his fans. This resulted in a string of abusive posts against Alpine and Esteban Ocon.
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Looking at the frequency and toxic nature of the comments, Alpine have come out with an official statement specifying that no driver or team member can be subject to abuse. The statement read:
"Whatever happens on track, there is absolutely no excuse for hateful comments, abuse or toxicity to be Direct towards our drivers, team members, fans or indeed anybody online. Of all of 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."
Alpine specified that it would take action against these individuals or groups, the statement further said:
"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 discriminate social media posts that contain or encourage online abuse of our drivers, team members, and fans."
Alpine disappointed with both drivers
After the sprint, team principal Otmar Szafnauer was quite vocal against the kind of performance the two drivers had put together and said:
"We are extremely disappointed with today’s Sprint result, which has put us in a worse position on the grid for tomorrow’s main race. We are in a very tight and competitive championship fight for fourth place in the Constructors’ Championship; an objective for which over 1,000 staff are tirelessly working and striving towards."
Szafnauer added:
"Frankly, both Esteban and Fernando must do a better job to compliment the fantastic efforts of everyone in the team by avoiding on-track incidents and compromising the entire team’s performance."
"Today, both drivers have let the team down. I expect more from them tomorrow where we must do everything we can to recover some points from the weekend for the Championship. We aim to ensure we go to Abu Dhabi next weekend in a position where we can reach our season goals."
The car certainly has good pace and it will be interesting to see how much the two drivers will be able to extract out of it in the 2022 F1 Brazilian GP race.
