Seven-time Mercedes world champion Lewis Hamilton, F1’s only black driver, said he was “disgusted and disappointed“.
“Whoever these people are, they should be ashamed of themselves and banned from racing for life,” Aston Martin driver Vettel told reporters. “I think there should be zero tolerance.”
The head of the Mercedes team, Austrian Toto Wolff, said that the abuses had to be stopped and the culprits dealt with, but that the public as a whole should not be condemned.
He added that true fans of any team or driver could not be racist, sexist or homophobic because otherwise “they don’t fit in Formula 1 and we don’t want them.”
“On the other hand, just because there are a few drunks and fools out there who haven’t understood how the world is today, we shouldn’t condemn 99.9% of the fans who come here.”
We just gotta target these guys and take ’em out
“There will always be those idiots,” he added when asked if F1 had become more “tribal”.
“Sport polarizes and triggers emotions. A few amoebas, people with a (brain) cell, let’s not make it a general thing… We just have to target these guys and get them out.”
Mercedes said it invited a Czech fan to watch the race in its garage, who wrote on social media how she was harassed by drunken male spectators who lifted her dress and told her she didn’t deserve any respect for being a Hamilton fan.