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F1 has often been one of the sports where everyone involved tends to treat each other with respect. While there are other sports where you see rivalry spilling over into public disrespect between the adversaries, it is not often the case in Formula 1.
One of the major reasons behind this is the amount of media scrutiny of everything a driver or team personnel says or does. More often than not, this is something that tends to keep everyone on good behavior, especially with the kind of global sponsors that make their way to F1.
Having said that, there were certainly moments this year when we saw slip-ups. There were instances in the 2023 F1 season when F1 personnel or people related to the sport had a 'foot in mouth' moment, so to say. Let us take a look at the top 3 such cases.
#1 Helmut Marko's remark against Sergio Perez
Helmut Marko overstepped miserably with his remarks against Sergio Perez earlier in the season. The Austrian was giving an interview in which he claimed Perez could not perform to Max Verstappen's level because he was South American and hence too distracted.
The comments were way off the mark and were in line with the barrage from the Red Bull advisor towards the Mexican driver after every race. It almost appeared as if Marko was the one who fuelled the media speculation and hence was the one responsible for Perez seemingly losing his way midway through the season.
The consequences were quite obvious. We saw Lewis Hamilton, Toto Wolff, and others weighing in critically on Marko's comments. Marko himself apologized to the Mexican driver and the story died down eventually. It does however remain to be seen if the incident will have a lasting impact on the Austrian's career as his F1 future seems somewhat uncertain at this stage.
#2 Bianca Bustamante liking posts calling F1 driver Lance Stroll autistic
The more recent case was McLaren's latest Driver Development Programme signing Bianca Bustamante completely losing the plot on social media and liking multiple posts calling Lance Stroll autistic. The amount of social media backlash the driver received was immense as there were fans coming after McLaren for signing her.
What made things even worse for Bustamante was her first apology where she completely missed the point of why she was facing so much hate. The social media storm only died down after she issued another detailed apology.
#3 Felipe Drugovich liking posts abusing Lance Stroll
Felipe Drugovich was fortunate enough that his liking the social media posts abusing Lance Stroll did not catch the eye of any publication. At the start of the season, Stroll had injured his wrist and it looked highly unlikely that he would be able to race in Bahrain. Drugovich was the one who did the testing on Lance's behalf on the first day.
For the most part, it did appear that the Canadian was going to miss the first race of the season and Drugovich would get the opportunity to do his first race. Unfortunately for the Brazilian, that didn't happen as Lance made it to the first race and it was at this moment that screenshots surfaced of the Aston Martin reserve driver liking tweets abusing Stroll in Portuguese. The news died down quickly as neither Drugovich nor the team brought it up.
