As comments made by former drivers and others appear to overshadow the on-track action, Lewis Hamilton hits out at "older voices".
It began with Jackie Stewart advising Lewis Hamilton to retire, then another world champion, Nelson Piquet used a racial slur when talking about the Mercedes driver, and just as you thought it couldn't get any worse, up pops Bernie Ecclestone on Breakfast TV - Breakfast TV for God's sake - to add to his two-penn'orth.
Barely had his words of support for Vladimir Putin and his advice to Hamilton to "brush aside" the racial slurs left his mouth, than the 91-year-old was trending on Twitter, headlining in the media and consequently being distanced by the sport's current management.
While we are used to the former F1 supremo's quips and flippancy, today's comments were ill thought out and totally at odds with majority opinion.
Consequently, and sadly, not for the first time, Formula One is headline news before a wheel has so much as turned, with talk over the Silverstone weekend set to be about pretty much everything else bar the on-track action.
Understandably, and no doubt a portent of what to expect over the coming days, as the official FIA press conference returned to Thursday, Hamilton was the centre of attention.
"I've been on the receiving end of racism and criticism," the Briton told reporters, "and that negativity and archaic narratives for a long, long time, and undertones of discrimination. So there's nothing really particularly new for me. I think it's more about the bigger picture.
"I don't really know why we are continuing to give these older voices a platform," he continued. "Because they're speaking upon our sport, and we're looking to go somewhere completely different and it's not representative of who we are as a sport now and where we're planning to go.
"We're looking to grow in the US and other countries, South Africa, and we need to be looking to the future and giving the younger people a platform that are more representative of today's time, and who we are trying to be in the direction that we're going.
"It's not just about one individual," he insisted, "it's not just about one use of that term. It's the bigger picture.
"It's about actual real action. We've got to actually start acting. It just comes back down to F1, to the media, we should not be giving these people a platform. These old voices, whether they're subconscious or consciously do not agree that people like me should be in a sport like this, whether women should be here.
"Discrimination is not something we should be projecting and promoting, and giving a platform to create and divide people.
"The last couple of weeks, I don't think there's been a day go by where there's been someone who has not been relevant in our sport for decades, trying to say negative things and starting to bring me down.
"It's all well and good standing on the grid and talking about inclusivity," said the Briton, who last year announced a joint initiative with Mercedes to increase diversity and inclusion within motorsport, and which today revealed the first recipients of its grants. "But they're just empty words if we're not actually putting action in.
"This is a growing business. Teams are making more money than they've ever made before, and they'll continue to grow in doing so. I'm not aware of all the other funds that have been put towards D&I. I'll be willing to bet it's not as much as we've already put in and are planning to put in.
"I've been on calls with all the F1 teams who have agreed to be part of this F1 charter and they have still not signed, and it's still not under way. No more can we be amplifying these voices that are just creating that divide out there."
Of course, in a world where we appear to be increasingly divided, increasingly polarised, is it actually right to focus all the blame on "older voices", especially as we arrive at Silverstone, the circuit owned by the British Racing Drivers’ Club, a bastion of blazer wearers according to a certain Bernard Charles...
Check out our Thursday gallery from Silverstone here.
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