#kinda want to thank you anon bc it felt good to solidify my own understanding

[xiaoluclair]

no one hates max because he is a good driver and wins races. people hate him because hes used ableist slurs on the radio and refused to apologise, the team surrounding him are - to put it nicely - utter scum accusing lewis of all sorts last season, he crashed and ended up with his car on top of lewis’ head and rather than check if he was okay he said well that’s what you get and if these last few races have shown anything it’s that a portion of his fanbase are homophobic/racist/misogynistic etc and he won’t condemn them for it which in turn is enabling them even more. his sheer existence in this sport makes it dangerous for other fans to go and support.

quite honestly, this was educational to reply to. and i sincerely hope it is educational to read. 

we’ll address this in parts and i’ll try to be as neutral as i can.

no one hates him bc he’s a good driver and wins races

truthfully, that is good to know, although i wouldn’t expect anything less.

using ableist slurs and then not apologizing

[x]

the team surrounding him making accusations

my knowledge may be lacking on this, i will admit even with the research. but as far as i know, max’s entire team is not made up of solely helmut marko and jos verstappen.

the accusations made by those two (lewis overplaying ‘neck-tightness’ after monza and using performance-enhancing drugs) are baseless and i’d even take the second one as a compliment because evidently lewis and merc’s brazil charge was too wild and glorious even for jos’s little racer brain.

and of course we have the classic ‘their car is too good to be allowed!’ (aka christian and every other team principal) but what’s new in that.

also if people would kindly stop using things other people say as reason to hate someone, that would be lovely. it may come as a surprise, but max does not have puppet strings on marko and jos, telling them what to do. 

monza incident

"i mean i jumped out of the car and i looked to the left. and he's of course still trying to reverse, shaking the wheel, trying to get away under my car. so i think he was absolutely fine." [x]

no condemning the portion of his fanbase who are homophobic/racist/misogynistic 

"of course, it is not good. all the things that happened, these things shouldn’t happen. i read a few shocking things so that is clearly not okay. i shouldn’t even need to say this – there should be a general understanding that these things shouldn’t happen. a normal human being should think like that and should behave like that." [x]

max addressed and condemned the abuse in a press conference and said he will speak out about the situation whenever asked. he also feels the sport as a whole should be taking more action rather than just himself as an individual driver due to the impact it would have. [x]

to me, max has always been in it for the racing and will be open about standing up against things that are wrong and that he does not agree with when asked. but also, i think he isn’t giving himself the credit he deserves when it comes to what impact he could have in speaking out on social media directly against the part of his fanbase that is abusive. of course it wouldn’t have as big of an impact as the movement of the entire sport, but truthfully i do hope to see him speaking out more on social media in the future because it would have an impact.

his sheer existence in the sport makes it dangerous

oh, the urge to say “lay off the dramatics” and leave it there. 

but then. i’m not sure what else to say. so maybe i will just leave it there.