Alpine vow to take action after "severely toxic" São Paulo sprint online abuse

Sam Hall
Sunday 13 November 2022 01:10 - Updated: 01:12

Alpine has vowed to take action against online trolls after recording over 800 "toxic" interactions following the São Paulo Grand Prix sprint.

The team endured a tough Saturday with both Fernando Alonso and Esteban Ocon slipping down the order following early contact with one another.

For the second of two lap-one incidents, Alonso was handed a five-second penalty and dropped to 18th on the grid for Sunday's grand prix proper, one place behind Ocon.

Team principal Otmar Szafnauer was strong in his criticism of the actions of his two drivers and demanded to "do a better job" across the remainder of the weekend.

But not for the first time, sadly, the on-track action prompted a large number of "wholly unacceptable" reactions on social media.

Tired of this continuing problem, Alpine tracked the comments and published a strongly worded response aimed directly at the trolls.

"Whatever happens on track, there is absolutely no excuse for hateful comments, abuse or toxicity to be directed towards our drivers, team members, fans or indeed anybody online," read a team statement.

"Of all 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.

"What we have seen today is, unfortunately, not an isolated incident. We continue to see hate and discrimination online, and as a team, we will not tolerate this.

"We will take action against individuals or groups who produce or disseminate social media posts that contain or encourage online abuse of our drivers, team members, and fans."

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— BWT Alpine F1 Team (@AlpineF1Team) November 12, 2022