How Austrian GP fan behaviour debates overlooked a key point

“I like a drink as much as the next man. Unless the next man is Mel Gibson…”

The words of Ricky Gervais sprang to mind as I surveyed the debauch in and around the Red Bull Ring: folk swaying around with pints of lager at 8:30am as if we’d been transported directly from Stansted Airport, where the bar seemingly never closes. And what to say of the fellow I spied vomiting in a bush as we left the circuit on Saturday evening? Oh the humanity!

“During all these lockdowns,” opined a colleague with singular perspicacity, “people have got terrible at being people.”

Seldom have truer words been spoken. Call it pent-up demand, call it lads on tour, call it oi-oi-saveloy, but certain aspects of the Austrian Grand Prix weekend were odiously redolent of football matches in the dog days of the 1980s. Boorishness prevailed, word circulated of individuals being subjected to verbal harassment of the sexist, racist and homophobic kind, one female fan was left in tears after being ‘upskirted’ – it was uglier than a kebab shop fist fight. Formula 1 said it would discuss this “unacceptable” behaviour with the race promoter, though quite what these discussions entailed, or whether they came to anything productive, is anybody’s guess.

Certainly it hasn’t been possible to discuss this matter in public without being subjected to a fusillade of logical fallacies. The debate, dispiritingly, has fractured along national, political and fan-allegiance lines – as may have been expected given the substantial Dutch contingent visiting the Austrian GP. To comment upon the conduct of any of this number, therefore, is to incur the haughtily defensive ire of the Verstappen fan massive, particularly those resident online.

Luke Smith composed a column for Autosport.com in which he pointed out, among other things, that with more women and children coming to races these days, such behaviour isn’t a good look. Some of the responses were incredibly dim-witted. There were those who denied it even took place – “video or it didn’t happen” – while others suggested that since British tourists are notorious for booze-fuelled beastliness abroad, British journalists are automatically disqualified from sitting in judgment upon others (file that one in the debating bin marked ‘ergo decedo’).

Perhaps most laughable of all was the argument that such hijinks were all rather mild considering what used to go on in ‘The Bog’ at Watkins Glen, so it was therefore a veritable storm in a teacup. Yes, someone really did try to excuse a misdemeanour because it was ‘acceptable in the 1970s’…

Events at the Austrian GP involving fans behaviour was slammed by F1 and the drivers

Photo by: Mark Sutton / Motorsport Images

The question of what country the miscreants hail from, whose merch they happened to be wearing, or what driver or team they identify with are red herrings here. What matters is the behaviour and the message it sends out. It is not enough for F1 to issue a statement saying “Down with this sort of thing” and then quietly forget about the whole affair.

It has responded, launching a new campaign called ‘Drive It Out’ to combat fan abuse both online and in person, with all 20 drivers joining F1 boss Stefano Domenicali and FIA president Mohammed Ben Sulayem. Their joint statement, expressing that “those who hide behind social media with abusive and disrespectful views are not our fans”, showed an acknowledgment that if left unchecked, loutishness at races will actively dissuade respectable punters from buying tickets. The bad fans will drive out the good.

Inevitably there will be those who view this issue through the prism of a perceived assault on their personal freedoms, particularly the much-cherished freedom of speech, lamenting the influence of “woke liberal snowflakes” who “can’t deal with banter”. But rights must be balanced with responsibilities, no? Whatever happened to civility and politesse?

Words are important. And I’m not just saying that because I spend my working days trying desperately to wrangle them into some sort of order. Words have the power to stir emotions, to form and change opinions, to galvanize the spirit, to unite… or divide.

Words permeate our culture and set the frames of reference. Otherwise innocent nouns can be co-opted and weaponised to stoke divisions

That’s why people remember Winston Churchill’s “We shall fight on the beaches” speech (imagine if he’d sidled towards the dispatch box, shuffled his feet and muttered, “Er, ah, spiff spaff, we’ll do the best we can, eh?”). It’s why Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address, a pithy two-minute oration consisting of 10 sentences, remains cherished; less so the contribution of Edward Everett, who preceded Lincoln on the stand and blithered on for a bum-numbing two hours.

In our connected world, words cross borders pretty much instantaneously. It’s therefore never been more important to choose them carefully.

In the wake of Nelson Piquet seeking to excuse his use of a racially derogatory term in reference to Lewis Hamilton by suggesting he had been mistranslated, there were those who sprang to his defence. Indeed, I was astounded at how many experts in Portuguese colloquialisms were present in the media centre at the British Grand Prix, where the story broke. There are those who regard the opprobrium heaped on individuals such as Piquet and Lionel Froissart (the Belgian TV commentator suspended for describing Lance Stroll as “autistic” during the Austrian GP) as mind-policing cancel culture presided over by illiberal liberals. Freedom of speech is no longer a thing, they cry.

Nelson Piquet claimed he had no racial derogatory intent with his comments about Lewis Hamilton

Photo by: Rodrigo Ruiz

Well – while pretty much every democracy constitutionally enshrines the right to express an opinion, I challenge you to locate in the relevant statutes any legally binding entitlement to be wrong, offensive, or a total arse. Words permeate our culture and set the frames of reference. Otherwise innocent nouns can be co-opted and weaponised to stoke divisions. When Hamilton spoke of “daily microaggressions” he wasn’t being a ‘snowflake’ (to use one such recently repurposed noun), he was describing his lived experience of encountering discriminatory language.

How topical, then, that as the grand prix circus relocates to Hungary this weekend, that country’s charming president Viktor Orban is busy claiming the media has “misrepresented” comments about immigration and race he made in a recent speech. A speech which prompted one of his own ministers to resign, decrying it as “purely Nazi”. And yet Orban has been invited to appear alongside the likes of Donald Trump at the Conservative Political Action Conference in Dallas next month. An Associated Press report described this as “the most dramatic indication yet of how a leader criticised for pushing anti-democratic principles has become a hero to segments of the Republican Party”.

It was the Polish social psychologist Henri Tajfel who first began to codify social identity theory, and whose experiments revealed the almost frightening speed with which in-groups form based on perceived shared characteristics – and how they then identify and discriminate against out-groups, often unconsciously. Pretty much every discussion (or, online, screaming match) surrounding issues as theoretically diverse as big-ticket politics, sex, sport – hell, perhaps even knitting – now divides along spurious lines of identity, and generally into name-calling between in-groups and out-groups.

Words and the terminology we use to describe each other underpin this process to an even greater extent than the flags we wave or the merch we wear.

With all this in mind, then – how about minding our language? Step by step, from this humble starting point, we can make the world a nicer place for all. It’s not difficult – and, really, there’s no need to shout about your ‘rights’. To steal a line from another well-known comic: “Political correctness gone mad, innit? I mean, you can’t even climb in the bath with a toaster these days…”

F1 has launched a new campaign to address fan behaviour and abuse, called ‘Drive It Out’

Photo by: Mark Sutton / Motorsport Images