Max Verstappen has come to the defence of racing driver and F1 pundit Naomi Schiff after she received abuse from a Twitter user this week.
The online hater questioned Schiff’s credentials to be on Sky Sports’ Formula 1 presenting team, and indicated that she purely landed her punditry position to make up inclusivity numbers.
Schiff finished second in the Cup-X class for True Racing in the 2018 24 hours of Spa, and she won seven races on her way to championship success in the Clio Cup China Series in 2014.
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The Rwandan-Belgian competed in the W Series with Hitech in 2019, taking part in six races and scoring points twice.
The 28-year-old has, as a result, developed as sound a knowledge as anyone else of motor racing, so the comments from a low life on Twitter hold little water with anyone.
Nonetheless, it was another example of the ignorance and discrimination that drivers such as Sir Lewis Hamilton and Sebastian Vettel have been fighting against in recent years.
The German described the comments as a “horrible testimony” of the existence of people who lash out at others because they are “extremely unhappy” with their own lives.
The seven-time champion, meanwhile, called the Twitter user’s remarks “disrespectful and unacceptable.”
Verstappen joined his fellow world champions in condemning the abuse, assuring Schiff that the hate stems from jealous keyboard warriors.
“Most of the time, the people hating on you are frustrated people in life or work or whatever,” he said.
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“So, they are at home, on their keyboard, they don’t have the person in front of you and they can say what they want and I think that’s not correct.
“But, most of the time, these people meet you in real life, they would not even dare to say these kind of things.
“I mean, of course it’s bad, I didn’t even read the comments but I picked up a bit on the lines, it’s not nice.
“But we all receive hate, I mean I receive hate, but do I really care? No, because these people, they don’t even deserve the attention to be honest, you know, in the end ignorance is more painful than responding back at them, because that’s what they like.
“Because then they actually have a bit of a platform, so I never really pay a lot of attention to them.”