08/11/2022
NEWS STORY
FIA president, Mohammed ben Sulayem has called for action on social media abuse, following the targeting of COTA steward, Silvia Bellot.
Ms Bellot was one of the four stewards who upheld the protest by Haas of Fernando Alonso's car following the United States Grand Prix last month, handing the Spaniard a 30s penalty that dropped him from seventh out of the points.
Though the decision was subsequently ruled inadmissible and Alonso handed back his seventh place, in the aftermath of the original decision Ms Bellot was the target of extreme online abuse.
A Spaniard, in 2019 Bellot, who has been an F1 steward since 2011, became the FIA's youngest ever Race Director when she qualified to oversee F2 and F3 events.
Countryman Alonso and his team were quick to hit out at the abusers at the time.
"I strongly condemn the recent online abuse which has been directed at FIA race steward, Silvia Bellot," said the Spaniard. “This type of hateful behaviour is unacceptable in sport and society.
"It is particularly deplorable that these comments are aimed at one of our sport's volunteers and officials," he added. "I will continue to support the FIA and F1 in their efforts to drive out such harm and harassment and I call on others to do the same.”
Today, FIA president, Mohammed ben Sulayem has called for action, insisting that volunteers, officials and employees of the FIA must not suffer such abuse.
"Recently one of the FIA female stewards, Silvia Bellot, was the subject of death threats," he says in a statement today. "It is utterly deplorable that a volunteer such as Silvia or any of our marshals and officials, who volunteer their time to allow us to go racing, is the subject of such hatred.
Indeed a number of FIA staff have also been targeted with harassment and hate posts over the past few years.
"It is totally unacceptable that our volunteers, officials and employees are subjected to this extreme abuse. It has no place in our sport. It has a devastating effect on our mental health and that of our loved ones.
I will always stand up for my staff and volunteers. And let me be clear - without these people there would be no racing. We have to ask ourselves, who would want to pursue becoming a top official in this environment? The reality is obvious - if this continues it will destroy our sport.
As the referee, and as the President you of course expect people to disagree with the decisions you make. But you should expect that those opinions and comments are respectful. This is increasingly rare.
Only through a collaborative approach will we achieve a measure of success in combatting this scourge on our sport.
We have already initiated that process through the following actions:
We have entered into dialogue with social media platforms to play their part and we are beginning work with governments and fellow sports governing bodies to bring them together to make strong commitments for joint action.
We are commissioning research via the FIA University into digital hate and toxic commentary specific to sport. This will provide a platform for knowledge sharing, education and prevention.
We have partnered with Arwen.ai to utilise their AI software to detect and eradicate abusive content on our own channels.
In the coming months we will be launching a concerted campaign by leveraging the power and reach of our entire federation which numbers 244 motoring and sporting organisations in 146 countries on 5 continents.
This campaign will build on the collaborative work by the FIA and Formula 1 through the Drive It Out initiative. I will be talking more about this at the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix later this month.
Passions run high in sport, but online harassment, abuse and hate speech must not be tolerated. Everyone in our sport, from the media, teams, drivers and fans has a role to play. We cannot ignore this. I urge the entire motorsport ecosystem to take a stand. We must call it out. It has to stop.
In Mexico, podium finishers, Max Verstappen, Lewis Hamilton and Sergio Perez hit out at online abuse.
"It's not great that they are allowed to write these kinds of things," said the Dutchman, "I hope we can come up with a kind of algorithm that stops people from being keyboard warriors, because these kind of people... they will never come up to you and say these things in front of your face, because they're sitting in front of their desk or whatever at home, being upset, being frustrated, and they can write whatever they like because the platform allows you to. That can be really damaging and hurtful to some people and it's not how it should be."
"I think social media is getting more and more toxic as the years go on," added Hamilton. "I think we should probably get off it, ultimately. So many people... mental health is such a prominent thing right now. I know so many people reading their comments and the stuff that people say and it is hurtful.
"Fortunately, I don't read that stuff but the media platforms definitely need to do more to protect people, particularly young kids and women. But at the moment, they're not doing that so I think it will just continue."
"It's a shame how are these people can feel how they feel," said Perez, "because you are just a public figure and they feel they can insult you, insult your family and just sitting behind the desk, they don't understand that we are also human beings.
"I think this has got to stop. And, obviously, as a sport, we need to also be responsible of what we post, by ourselves. We all have a lot of followers so it's very important that we try to get the sport in the right way because Formula 1, it's a great sport and has great values, but has to do more in that regard. And just in general, the social media world is getting far too toxic."