Formula One Grand Prix champion Lewis Hamilton may face a ban from China after he celebrated his win in the country’s Grand Prix by spraying champagne directly into the face of a nearby race hostess.
The celebration, which has been called sexist and inconsiderate by commentators on Twitter and campaigners against sexism, was caught on video. The video and a series of images show Hamilton turning the champagne bottle and opening it directly in the woman’s face, spraying a stream of it towards her eyes and ear.
The race hostess’s face is telling – she looks shocked and disgusted.
“The photographs appear to show that the woman is not just being splashed, but that the champagne is being very specifically directed into her face, which does not look like a voluntary piece of horseplay on her part,” said Roz Hardie, CEO of Object, an organisation that campaigns against sexism in the media.
“For most people, it would be apparent that she is not enjoying it. It is surely a very difficult position to be a grid girl and she would have had little option but to stand there and take it. That is something of which he should be aware. But instead, he appears to have abused her position.”
The organisation has called for Hamilton to apologise, and these demands have been echoed across the globe on social media. So far, he has not obliged.
Twitter’s Chinese equivalent Weibo has been inundated with demands that he be banned from returning to the country after his disrespectful celebration.
Hamilton has been criticised for a similar incident once before, after he won the Grand Prix in Spain in 2013.
“Man please stop spraying Champagne on the Podium Ladies. They don’t like it”, one Twitter user wrote. Another called him a “scumbag – an embarrassment to UK”.
“Shame on you F1 and Lewis Hamilton for disgraceful treatment of women during champagne celebration #sexism,” wrote another.
But since the incident on Sunday, there have also been a number of Formula One fans that have come out in support of Hamilton.
The popping of champagne after a Grand Prix win is a tradition dating back fifty years, since a bottle broke by accident one the podium. So some fans are simply saying that the celebration is tradition and that the race hostess should have understood that she might get sprayed with champagne. As if she should consider getting struck in the face by a strong stream of champagne from close range a likely occupational hazard.
But targeting a hostess with the spray has never been part of this tradition, and it evidently changes the nature of the celebration. Popping champagne into the air is celebratory and harmless, but popping it into someone’s eyes in violent and dangerous. You only need to see the look on the hostess’s face to know that.
Perhaps the real problem is that she was standing on the podium in the first place. The concept of race hostesses in Formula One and other racing sports is archaic and sexist. Having women stand on the podium for purely aesthetic purposes speaks to a bygone era in which it was considered acceptable for women to be treated as objects. As a society we now know that this is unacceptable, and practices like these should have been done away with long ago. Their continued presence only sends the message to men like Hamilton that this kind of sexist, derogatory behavior is acceptable. It isn’t.