When social media turned a teammate block into a manhunt

There are moments on the track that I have to rewind multiple times to believe I heard correctly. In the final three laps of a major Grand Prix, Pierre Gasly pressed the radio button and told his team: don't talk to me anymore. On the other side of the radio, Franco Colapinto had just requested to be let past his teammate. Behind them, Oscar Piastri was entering the DRS zone at a speed the telemetry clock did not bother to hide. One can debate the strategy, the old tyres, who was right or wrong in a classic modern F1 situation: a slower teammate on worn rubber blocking a faster one right in front of a rival's nose. But I am not writing this article about the final three laps in Madrid. I am writing about what happened after the chequered flag — when the screens on Gasly's computer and his family's phones began flashing with messages that no decent person should have to read. The context needs to be told accurately. The Madrid Grand Prix took place in a context where Alpine was having one of those rare weekends where both cars could fight for scoring. Gasly was on old tyres — he still had one pit-stop to make, an offset strategy imposed by earlier race developments. Colapinto was behind on significantly fresher rubber, and Piastri of McLaren was closing the gap at an alarming rate. This is one of the most classic F1 scenarios any tactical writer has had to solve: the slower car on old tyres becomes an obstacle for the faster one ahead of an external rival. Colapinto requested a position swap over radio. Gasly refused, telling the team he did not want to be bothered. Then at the end of that lap, Gasly pitted, naturally releasing the position. Result: Colapinto finished P7, Piastri behind. Team objective achieved. The tactical equation closed with a clean number. But that is only the shell. The core lies in what both Gasly and Colapinto confirmed in the days that followed in Baku: the wave of online abuse targeting Gasly, extending to his family, his girlfriend, and those close to him. This is not a normal fandom dispute. These were threats, hateful messages, an organised campaign sufficient to make a hardened 30-year-old driver speak out publicly. And this was not the first time. Tsunoda after Austria, Colapinto after Zandvoort, Gasly in Madrid — a pattern repeating itself at a worrying frequency. I have sat in editorial meetings in Hamburg long enough to know that stories like this should not be simplified into the question of "who was right or wrong on track". But they also should not be pushed into a dark corner just to preserve harmony. The running track and the football pitch are not opposed to the racing circuit; they are two rhythms of the same heart — and that heart's beat is being poisoned by something that in 2026 I never imagined would become a top-tier strategic variable in sport: the culture of violent digital fandom. When the stands are empty, sport sheds its skin and exposes its skeleton — and that skeleton now includes anonymous accounts sending threats to a driver's family simply because he did not yield to his teammate for three racing laps. Let us isolate each variable. First, on pure tactics, this is a problem with multiple solutions and no single answer. Gasly on old tyres was slower than Colapinto on fresh ones enough to create a three-car DRS train — exactly the scenario the team needed to avoid. The swap request was mathematically reasonable. But Gasly also had the right to hold his position until his pit, because that was the strategy agreed from the start, and a driver unilaterally changing race pace mid-stint can affect tyre temperature, pit-window targeting, dozens of variables outsiders cannot see. The truth is both approaches had merit, and the team chose the least tense resolution: letting Gasly pit himself, naturally releasing the position, achieving the P7 target without needing a formal team order. That is how a mature team handles a potential crisis. Second, on the human side, this is the part that cannot be solved by diagrams. Gasly told Motorsport.com and several other outlets that he received threats targeting himself, his family, his girlfriend. Colapinto — the sporting beneficiary of the situation — spoke out strongly against the abuse and stressed that it was not only his fans who were the problem, a remarkably mature statement from a young driver at the centre of the storm. Two men, two generations, two different reactions to the same phenomenon — but sharing the same weariness. Spectators see the play; I see an entire chessboard in motion — and on this board there are invisible pieces no one on the track can control. Third, structurally, this is a systemic issue, not an isolated one. Austria with Tsunoda, Zandvoort with Colapinto, Madrid with Gasly. Each time a driver received a penalty or an incident occurred involving drivers with large fan bases, a wave of abuse rose. I do not believe in luck; I believe in numbers lined up straight — and the numbers here are lining up in a clear direction: exponential growth. Argentina is present at almost every race this season, a national fandom phenomenon rarely seen in F1 since the heyday of Barrichello and Massa in Brazil. That is a massive commercial asset for Colapinto, for Alpine, for F1 as a whole — but it is also a debt to be paid in the mental health of the driver himself and his teammate. Look at the athletics track to see this model is not exclusive to F1. When Marcell Jacobs became Olympic 100m champion in Tokyo with 9.80 seconds, he received both adulation and suspicion from a faction of fandom — not because he ran poorly, but because he was the outsider in a race where people had already chosen the winner. When a footballer misses a penalty in the 88th minute, the online hatred can last multiple seasons. The greatest failure is learning to read the match before it begins — and that lesson applies to tournament organisers, platform managers, and viewers like us. The contrarian angle here: the Madrid story is not really about Gasly or Colapinto. It is about a sport growing faster than its own ability to protect itself. Netflix brought F1 to hundreds of millions of new viewers — an undeniable commercial success. But that growth formula carries a consequence Liberty Media probably calculated but did not fully calculate: the larger the fandom, the more polarised it becomes, the more tools it has to cause harm. The defeat at Luzhniki taught me what victory never tells — that the worst moments on pitch and track are often the cleanest lessons. The worst moment in Madrid was not the final three laps. The worst moment is what happens when the car door closes and Gasly opens his phone. The FIA has precedent. After Zandvoort, the stewards went to see drivers involved following the abuse incident. That is a sign the governing body no longer treats this as a private matter. But a sign is not action. Gasly has called on the sport to "find a way to make it a healthier place" — a legitimate call but one at risk of being swallowed into nothing without structure. Social media platforms need clearer legal obligations. Teams need more professional psychological care processes for drivers and their families. F1 needs a fandom governance framework, not a press release. I am not standing here to condemn any national fandom — Colapinto was right to emphasise that, and the truth is this plague has no national borders. But I am demanding a shift in awareness: a teammate block in the final three laps is not legitimate grounds for a family to receive threats. A driver refusing to yield before pitting is not the enemy of fandom. And a sport proud of its global growth must take responsibility for the shadow that growth casts. The question I pose for the next race is not whether Alpine will change its team-order procedure — that is an operational question and will be answered in a closed room. The real question is: does F1, with all its commercial resources and global attention, have the courage to confront a problem that many other sports are also avoiding? I have no answer. I only have a list of targets to monitor — and the recent Baku round just added a new line to that list: the fandom response procedure, this time with structure or not.