What are your thoughts on the matter? Personally I have zero issues with booing. At least in North America, booing is part of the experience. Home crowd advantage means cheers for the home team, boo's and heckles for the visitors. The line gets crossed once people use vulgar language (their are kids at these events), talk about families or personal lives, or use any form of discrimination or racism. Obviously you can't make it physical by throwing things or using violence. Cheers for crashes. I'd be lying if I didn't cheer for a crash here and there, but all the crashes were tame and gave no reason to suggest injury. Of course if an even mild crash suggested the driver or somebody else was injured, then the feelings immediately go to concern. If it's a major crash like Grosjean or Zhou, there is absolutely no cheers and complete concern that nobody is hurt. For me, I don't have a problem with it unless people are cheering when something suggests a driver could be hurt. I found it interesting that SkySports are making huge deal out of the Orange Army cheering at Hamilton's relatively mild crash, but didn't say anything about when the British fans cheered Verstappen's terrifying Silverstone crash in 2021. I also remember Johnny Herbert pleading to the crowd booing at Hamilton, but nobody really cared when Verstappen was being booed.
No problem with cheering crashes at all. I don't think the fans are cheering the crash as much as cheering the benefit the crash provides to their favored driver. It's also as you said pretty safe to assume these days that drivers are unhurt unless/until you hear otherwise or the crash is really violent (e.g. Kubica in Canada way back when). Booing someone/something you don't like is what it is. Not my favorite, but it's neither my circus nor my clowns. The commentators are absolute hypocrites, though, and long ago gave up any pretense of objectivity. That bothers me more than anything the fans do.
Booing has been involved with sports for decades. I don't think it can be narrowed to modern society. I'd say it's more accurate to say modern society is at a point where booing is being considered as awful as a violent attack.
I think we would all be lying if we didn't give it a "yes" at the exit of "our" Team rival. Whether mechanical break down, bad strategy call or the unfortunate off track crash/wreck. Of course no one would be wishing injury on another human.
I think it's not the best thing, but I will say, I find it absolutely hilarious that the Brits that booed their loudest from thursday to sunday (and of course last year) are now crying that Hamilton was cheered on today after his crash. Especially Crofty and Ted, who didn't utter a single word on the matter at all, were making a huge point of it. Martin Brundle said it perfectly: Not nice but it's happened for decades, what will you do about it?
This will devolve into P&R rather quickly and should be closed. This forum has enough toxicity. The original post sets the tone only to be escalated further into uselessness.
No. Sportsmanship is not politics or religion. The discussion is not toxic. My thought is this discussion is overblown. It's no big deal. Offended by booing? Sports fandom has always been like this. Grow some thicker skin.
Drivers throw the fingers at each other on track........alot of drivers......that's pretty normal. So what's a little booing.......please people.
Joe, next step ? Physical assault on driver ? Just take a look the differences between Rugby and Football crowds. We need to educate people to respect each other not the dull and stupid speech coming from the woke ideology. A difficult task I know..
I've heard several reports of people in RBR shirts last week where verbally abused by Merc fans. 1 (English) fan brought his wife on Friday and he said she was abused so much she refused to come back the next 2 days. But that's different from booing. I don't really agree with booing, but it's not the first time it happened and now that it happens against the British driver suddenly it's a news story. THAT I don't agree with. Where was the British press when Schumacher got booed years on end? Or for Vettel? Or for Rosberg? And indeed for Max? Absolutely ****ing nowhere. Hell, David Croft last week thursday was laughing about it AS it happened then cracked jokes. And now he was one of the loudest voices condemning it. Please. I have no time for such blatant hypocrisy. I wish the Max fans kept the honour to themselves and clapped as he got out of the car or something, but I kinda understand it especially given how Max was received last week. Every lap he drove passed, he was booed. Spin in quali? cheered. 50 thousand fans are in Austria to support Max this weekend, 1100km from home. And boy are they making their voices heard. Lewis has the booing crowd working for him in Silverstone. Max has them everywhere else...
You got Max fans intermingled with Lewis fans in the stands AND YET no fights have broken out in the stands. I'm not going to compare soccer and rugby fans to F1 fans.
Booing is no different than cheering during the course of an event. The idea being to either encourage 'your' team/player or discourage your opponent. Funny thing about motorsport is the drivers can not hear any of that while on the track.
You are wasting your time: these days there are always be people to condone bad behaviour and say it's the norm. But I know different, and remember the time when drivers and spectators displayed sportmanship.
Many people wouldn't go there even if you pay them !!! This precisely the kind of rowdy atmosphere many people prefer to avoid !
They happen to be two of the most popular sports franchises ever. The trash talk, in my opinion, is quite fun and entertaining.
Why compare motor racing, and F1, the Pinacle of motor sport with ball games? It's like comparing the opera with pop-music, or rap . They are at different levels. And I don't agree that trash talk is fun at all; it's encouraging mediocrity and debasing. I am frankly appaled at the direction F1 is taking, with its new uneducated "audience" lowering the tone.
Sport is sport. Baseball, Hockey, Football, Soccer, Nascar, or F1. It's competitive sports where people cheer for their favorite, and typically boo their rivals. Just as the music examples you gave, it's not different levels, it's just different types. To suggest that F1 is for a different class of people is extremely pretentious.
