A Formula 1 driver dropped from his team has spoken out about abusive social media posts directed at his family.
Alpine dropped Jack Doohan after just six races of the 2025 season, replacing him with Franco Colapinto after he was forced to retire from the Miami GP within the first lap at the start of the month.
Colapinto made his first appearance of the F1 season at Imola but crashed out of qualifying and was unable to record a time in Q2.
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Combined with a one-place penalty, it dropped Argentina's Colapinto to 16th for Sunday's Emilia Romagna GP.
In the aftermath, a social media account that "propagates fake and false Formula 1 and motorsport news" according to RacingNews365 posted a doctored screenshot of what it claimed was a post from Doohan's father, Mick.
The fake post included an image of Colapinto's crash with a sarcastic 'Very impressive' caption.
Formula Fakers later stated: "We'd like to clarify this tweet was a joke... We'd like to once again restate that this account posts FAKE news."
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Hilarious.
The real impact of the fake tweet – which, again, was doctored to look exactly like a post from Doohan's father – was made clear by the Australian's subsequent plea.
"As you can clearly see, the story circulating above is completely false," he posted on Instagram Stories.
"It was fabricated by Argentine fans attempted to portray me and my family in a negative light.. They edited the original content to make it appear as if my father posted it, which is entirely untrue.
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"Please stop harassing my family. I didn't think I would have to get to this point."
Colapinto's fans are developing a nasty reputation.
Doohan is "regularly subjected to abuse" and an incident during practice at Imola put Yuki Tsunoda in their sights too.
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"While on a push lap during practice, Tsunoda encountered Colapinto and was forced to back off in order to avoid a collision as his lap was compromised," reported Planet1.
"Tsunoda wasn’t impressed by the actions of the Argentinean driver and gesticulated in Colapinto’s direction, with some social media commentary incorrectly suggesting that he had shown Colapinto his middle finger in anger.
"The incident enraged a minority of Colapinto’s extensive fanbase, who took to Tsunoda’s social media pages to flood it with cruel and nasty remarks in Spanish – quite a lot of which could only be described as racist in nature."
Alpine's statement in the aftermath of Doohan's post asked fans to "be kind and respectful."
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Chris Nee