Incident in Australia

Alonso penalty: race steward received death threats

Fernando Alonso (l.) boxed George Russell out of the race.

(Bild: APA/AFP/Paul CROCK, AP)

After Fernando Alonso was handed a 20-second penalty in the Australian Grand Prix, the Spaniard's fans took their frustration out on race steward Johnny Herbert, even sending him death threats.

Background: Alonso's sudden braking maneuver at the Albert Park Circuit caused an accident involving Mercedes driver George Russell, which ended the Briton's race. The fact that Alonso received a 20-second penalty for this displeased the Aston Martin driver's fans, and Herbert revealed: "I received a flood of death threats on social media. There were messages with dagger emojis, people saying: 'We know where you live, we're coming for you'. Most of them were Spanish. They should have understood, because the reasoning clearly explained how the decision had been reached."

Opinion without facts
However, comments like these bounce off the Brit. "Unfortunately, that's also part of the job," says Herbert about the series of threatening letters that have continued for two weeks, "and there are still some coming in. Unfortunately, that's part of social media, where everyone has an opinion but no facts to back it up."

He criticizes social media platforms in particular for not doing anything about messages of this kind. "They do nothing about it and allow it to happen, which I can't understand. Measures should be taken against it. They say there is no way to fix the problem, but I don't believe that. I can laugh about it, but it hits a lot of people hard and something has to be done about it," says the former Formula 1 driver.