It’s happening again.  Yesterday’s British GP at Silverstone had an interesting opening lap in which the diversity-boy, having been humbled for several GPs by Red Bull’s Max Verstappen, duly sent his nemesis spinning into the tyre barrier at Copse Corner at around 190 mph.

Not all the fans were charmed to see the perp suffer no significant penalty for his wrecklessness.  Because the race had to be stopped to recover Verstappen’s badly damaged car and repair the tyre wall, the BLM-boy got a free change of nose for his Mercedes in the pits.  The race marshals then awarded him only a ten second hold in the pit at his forthcoming tyre change.  Ten seconds means nothing given that the Merc is so much faster than every other car in the race except the surviving Red Bull of Perez, who was out of contention.  To absolutely no one’s surprise, the kneeling-boy duly won, and celebrated as if he is someone who might not possess large reserves of self-awareness.  All in all, it did not go down incredibly well with some folks who are sick to death of the antics of this person.

The DM picks up the story in suitably indignant mode:

Mercedes demands Facebook take action against racist users after Lewis Hamilton was abused with monkey and gorilla emojis following his controversial British Grand Prix win against Max Verstappen

Facebook is today under even more pressure to ‘eliminate’ racist abuse on Instagram after Lewis Hamilton was bombarded with monkey emojis and called a gorilla after winning the British Grand Prix in controversial fashion yesterday.

Mercedes has hinted that police should investigate some of the vile slurs aimed at their star driver and called on social media companies to do more to stop racist posts before they go online - and close the accounts of the culprits. 

Seven-time world champion Hamilton, 36, was involved in a crash that saw championship leader and rival Max Verstappen plough his Red Bull into a wall and out of the race at Silverstone.

Hamilton, who is a vocal supporter of the BLM movement is leading a campaign for more racing drivers from black and ethnic minority groups, was hit by a 10 second penalty but went on to win the race and close the gap in the title race to just eight points. 

Following the race, Sir Lewis received a slew of racist abuse including monkey and gorilla emojis on Instagram - the platform of choice for racists who abused Bukayo Saka, Jadon Sancho and Marcus Rashford after their penalty misses in the Euro 2020 final this month.

Today Mercedes, Hamilton’s team, released a joint statement with Formula One and the sport’s governing body, the FIA, condemning the abuse, and piled more pressure on social media giants to take steps to filter comments, ban racists and help police punish them if necessary.

Well, first let us state here and now, for the benefit of kneelers everywhere, that it is very, very, very, very wrong, indeed terribly, terribly wrong, in fact, so wrong that it’s as wrong as wrong can ever be, to claim some equivalence between a monkey and an African.  The claim is based on a total misreading of physiognomy and intelligence, and even when obviously retailed by Africans themselves as a self-effacing joke, for example thus:

... it can never be acceptable in liberal company.  Members of every race do some extremely stupid things.  The equality-boy, for example, is said to have two rooms of his ultra-luxury Monaco home filled with his shoe collection.  No sign of narcissism there then.  No, no, all perfectly normal for anybody with two hundred million quid in the bank.

One imagines that it will be even tougher for the media to turn the mad knight of Copse Corner into a Person of Suffering than it was with the multi-millionaire black penalty-failures of the Euros final.  That won’t stop them trying, though.