McLaren have confirmed that they have launched an investigation into the behaviour of one of their employees after a string of tweets aimed at Sir Lewis Hamilton.
Katie Cumper, who since the emergence of the comments has deleted her Twitter and Facebook accounts, has taken to social media over the last 16 months to hurl abuse at the seven-time world champion, describing his title successes as “luck,” and calling him a “sour little cry baby” for his understandable heartbreak at the manner in which the title was decided last year.
After it was revealed that he was receiving “specialist” treatment for an injury sustained after his scary crash with Max Verstappen in Monza last year, she sarcastically stated that “he was alright to go to the Met Gala.”
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Other vulgar remarks about the 37-year-old include expletive insults in what has been described as “harassment” and “cyber bullying.”
Her social media posts were pointed out to McLaren by a Twitter user, and the Woking-based team responded to the revelation and condemned the actions of Cumper, affirming that an investigation into her conduct is underway.
“We consider these comments to be completely at odds with our values and culture at McLaren,” they replied.
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“We take the matter extremely seriously and are investigating it as a priority.”
On a lighter note, McLaren seem to have overcome the majority of the gremlins that plagued them in the opening round of the season in Bahrain, and their progress was exemplified by Lando Norris’ P3 at the Emilia Romagna Grand Prix last weekend.
Team boss Andreas Seidl affirmed that various issues during the second test in Sakhir had deprived them of vital information, but they have since been able to gain a better comprehension of the car, hence the strong result in Bologna.
“We now believe that Bahrain was just a slip-up. We simply didn’t have enough data on the new car due to the problems during the test drives,” he said.
McLaren will be hoping for another strong points haul at the upcoming Miami Grand Prix, as they look to make up some of the ground they lost in the first couple of races of 2022.