#not to mention the PR at the team is clearly slanted towards canapino already this year

[schulott]

on principle i hate doing opinion text posts on tumblr because it clogs the tag and no one cares, but i just want to organise my thoughts a little re: the JHR mess at Long Beach. It’s long, and under the cut:

JHR called a bad race

That is the root cause of how the races for both drivers turned out. Pitting and releasing Callum into the path of Canapino in the #78 without clueing Callum in on the situation, nor telling #78 that Helio was not on the lead lap both led to the incident that put the #78 out of the race. The Argentine commentary incited the abuse

On a level you could understand Canapino’s frustration (without knowing Callum was given no info by the team), but the commentator (Martin Ponte) who is supposed to be watching the race, knows how racing works and the driver has little to no input on strategy and pitstops, and have a clue of what’s going on just decided to call on air that Callum is the enemy of the whole of Argentina. Because of something that is of no fault of his own.

Ponte “apologised” on Twitter afterwards, but it was along the lines of “I did not mean to cause hatred and if it is taken this way I apologise”. Which, non-apology really. Callum bore the brunt of the abuse - directly or indirectly

The fact that Callum felt the need to address it at all just about tells you how bad the abuse was. Even if the team’s accounts were on the receiving end of the vitriol, the root cause is the same - they are convinced Callum screwed over his teammate (and the team let it happen, or whatever).

Ricardo Juncos did speak with a journalist to clarify that Callum was not given the information, but even then, the reaction under that tweet was along the lines of it being a weak excuse to help Callum, or that of course JHR would not say a bad word about their number 1 driver. JHR’s silence and obfuscation

Get this - Callum addressed the abuse soon after the race. Even Indycar came out with a statement on Monday addressing the social media mess after Long Beach.

JHR only came out with a post within the last hour or two (on Tuesday after the race) well after everything happened. There is no excuse to such a delay in taking on the very visible storm on social media, that you come out with something well after your driver and the racing series itself said something. It is well overdue.

When you dig into the statement though, it gets more problematic.

It talks about “drivers and the team” receiving abuse. The bulk of the abuse was at Callum, directly. If those comments are found on JHR’s accounts, the target is still Callum. Or along the lines of it’s the team’s fault that Callum is at JHR. Is the “drivers and the team” in the room with us? Call a spade a spade, it is not that hard.

The statement talks about the drivers respecting each other and then goes straight to them in a sport where split second decisions make or break weekends, and they learn, forgive and forget. How does this read to you? My read is this - it did nothing to dispel the misguided belief that Callum was at fault for something the team screwed up, and somehow Callum is to be forgiven. Since, you and I know, the genesis of this statement was the reaction to a situation where the Argentine fanbase believed Callum screwed Canapino over.

Sure, there are things to forgive and forget. Both drivers can “forgive and forget” for whatever happened in the strategy box and on the engineering stand that got us here. But only Callum has the perogative to forgive all the abuse he got.

It is disingenuous to obfuscate the failings as a team on the strategy side with the online abuse that was hurled Callum’s way and then wrap it all up and say we learn, forgive and forget.

Then Ricardo Juncos goes and tells a Motorsport.com journalist that Callum does not understand the passion of Argentine fans which drove the reaction on social media. Bear in mind that Callum got a lot of death threats. Can you really handwave that away as passion? The long term deal, in fact, is just for 2023

Just some final thoughts - Callum was extended on a “multi-year” contract last year when the big teams start coming knocking. However, it emerged that it in fact is only for the 2023 season. I would entirely avoid the discussion on whether Callum enabled the team to grow since they started together in 2021 on his own with no teammates to help him, but I hope the bigger teams are back in for him this year, and that this incident opens his eyes to seriously consider moving on. Cause, as this turn of events tell us, the team does not really have his back.