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It was a dark day for Formula One racing on Saturday when verbal attacks launched at McLaren driver Lewis Hamilton forced track officials to eject fans from the Barcelona circuit and close the gates. The abusive fans of Fernando Alonso, reportedly believing their hero had been treated unfairly by McLaren last year, took their frustration to xenophobic depths by shouting racist slurs at Hamilton. (We won't go into details, but the exact language can be found at the links below.)

In addition to ejecting the abusive fans from the premises, track officials responded by putting up additional barriers around the McLaren garage and placing extra security guards in the grandstands. The FIA, however, unsatisfied with the reaction of officials at the Circuit de Catalunya, threatened unspecified sanctions if the incident were repeated. While we certainly agree that this sort of behavior cannot be tolerated, we're not sure that the track officials or the Spanish motorsports associations are the ones to blame.

[Sources: Autosport and F1-Live, Photo by Jasper Juinen/Getty]

Racist fans target Hamilton at Barcelona test originally appeared on Autoblog on Mon, 04 Feb 2008 09:20:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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