McLaren
Lewis Hamilton’s bid to become Formula One champion has been soured by a Spanish website targeting the McLaren driver with vitriol and racist abuse.
The website, called Pincha la Rueda de Hamilton (Burst Hamilton’s Tyre) invites visitors to place a virtual nail on the track at Interlagos, the setting for Sunday’s title showdown with Felipe Massa in the Brazil Grand Prix.
Thousands have targeted Hamilton on a voodoo style website, taunting him about the colour of his skin in a vile campaign that reprised the abuse he received at the start of the year in Barcelona.
More than 16,000 racist messages using terms like “nigger” and “half-breed” have been posted on a Spanish website.
It encourages visitors to leave imaginary nails for Hamilton on a computer mock-up of the Interlagos racetrack. Spanish fans of Hamilton’s rival, Fernando Alonso, are believed to be behind the outrage. One, calling himself David, left a message saying: “---- you -------. Monkey.”
Another, dubbed Hamilton a conguito – a type of chocolate sweet with racist overtones – and wrote: “Conguito, you are going to die.”
One left a nail out near the finishing line on lap 12. Other messages read: “Half-breed, kill yourself in your car,” and “I hope you run over your dad in the first pit stop, Hamilton.”
The sport’s governing body the FIA and McLaren jointly condemned those who had posted the comments.
An FIA spokesman said: “The FIA’s position is very clear - discrimination and prejudice can have no place in sport or in society.
“Everyone in our sport will join us in condemning these abusive and hateful comments.”
In February Hamilton was subjected to racial abuse during testing in Barcelona, where a minority of Spanish fans turned up with their faces blackened.
