{"id":580814,"date":"2026-04-02T13:49:09","date_gmt":"2026-04-02T13:49:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/580814\/"},"modified":"2026-04-02T13:49:09","modified_gmt":"2026-04-02T13:49:09","slug":"alpine-condemn-hateful-abuse-of-colapinto-and-ocon-over-f1-crashes-formula-one-2026","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/580814\/","title":{"rendered":"Alpine condemn \u2018hateful\u2019 abuse of Colapinto and Ocon over F1 crashes | Formula One 2026"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Alpine Formula One<\/a> team have condemned on Thursday online abuse of their Argentinian driver Franco Colapinto for an incident in the Japanese Grand Prix as well as death threats directed at the team\u2019s former racer Esteban Ocon over prior events in China. They also dismissed suspicions from some fans of \u201csabotage\u201d and claims that Colapinto was not being given the same quality equipment as his teammate Pierre Gasly.<\/p>\n

Colapinto was caught up in Oliver Bearman\u2019s 308kph crash<\/a> at Suzuka on Sunday, with the Haas driver swerving to avoid the Argentinian\u2019s much slower car and hitting the barriers with a force of 50G. Ocon, now Bearman\u2019s teammate at Haas, accepted blame for a clash with Colapinto in Shanghai last month. The Renault-owned Alpine condemned \u201chateful messages\u201d aimed at Colapinto and Ocon after the two incidents.<\/p>\n

\u201cEsteban took full responsibility and apologised to Franco, actively seeking him out in the media pen and also apologising on social media. The resulting abuse that followed was not in the spirit of the sport and was an oversight not to call it out sooner,\u201d it said.<\/p>\n

\u201cAbuse of any kind to all drivers is unacceptable and it was especially disappointing that it comes from a minority of fans of the team towards a driver who has given so much to the team in the past and is a grand prix winner for Alpine.\u201c<\/p>\n

Alpine also condemned \u201chateful behaviour\u201d towards Colapinto after Suzuka.<\/p>\n

With Formula One now on a break owing to the cancellation of races in Bahrain and Saudi Arabia as a result of conflict in the Gulf region, Alpine said they also wanted to address concern about their treatment of the drivers.<\/p>\n

Gasly has scored 15 of Alpine\u2019s 16 points this season, with Colapinto\u2019s lone point scored in China.<\/p>\n

\u201cAny questions about sabotage or not giving Franco the same car are completely unfounded, which is why the team felt the need to speak out,\u201d said Alpine. \u201cThere might be times this year when pushing in the development race that upgrades come to one car first, which the team will communicate and be completely transparent about. That being said, the aim will always remain to bring upgrades to both cars where possible.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s absolutely not in the team\u2019s interests to not score points and any suggestion of self sabotage isn\u2019t conducive to that ultimate end goal \u2026 there\u2019s no withholding of information or keeping performance tricks hidden away.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Alpine Formula One team have condemned on Thursday online abuse of their Argentinian driver Franco Colapinto for…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":580815,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[573],"tags":[64,63,817,813,816,85],"class_list":{"0":"post-580814","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-formula-1","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-f1","11":"tag-formula-1","12":"tag-formula1","13":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/580814","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=580814"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/580814\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/580815"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=580814"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=580814"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=580814"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}