IndyCar: Ilott threatened by Argentine fans

Callum Ilott, a 24-year-old British IndyCar driver for the Juncos Hollinger Racing team, had a tough race at Long Beach last weekend, after which, as he noted on social networks, he received a record number of threats.

Ilott’s weekend in California started with a crash in practice and he only finished 19th in the race. The threats he reported are related to this: on lap 26 of the Long Beach Grand Prix, which took place on the famous California highway, Callum unwittingly turned out to be one of the participants in the incident that took place around the 11th turn.

Shortly before, after a pit stop, Ilott entered the track just in front of the car of his partner, the Argentinian Agustino Canapino, who was leading the race for the first time in his short IndyCar career at the time.

Unlike Ilott and the rest of the riders, Canapino was not yet in the pits, but after the restart he crashed into Callum’s car and lost some time behind him. Then the Argentine tried to get ahead of Elio Castroneves, and there was contact between their cars.

This episode was not included in the race broadcast, so the circumstances of the incident remained unclear, but after that Canapino began to lose ground rapidly. He made it to the pits and the mechanics tried to fix something on his car for a while, but eventually he stopped.

After the race, Argentine fans blamed Ilott for what happened, and they did it without choosing expressions and descended to openly threaten his life.

“I was really impressed with the amount of death threats and insults I receive,” Callum shared on social networks. – Absolutely, this is a new record. I appreciated the efforts of these people as they helped me learn all these new Spanish words! I’m going to the beach, maybe! ..”

The American press, commenting on what is happening, writes that this is completely atypical behavior for IndyCar fans, but Canapino only appears in this series for the first year and it must be assumed that his Argentine fans simply do not know her traditions and culture.

Of course, this does not justify the rampant behavior of this part of the audience, which certainly cannot be considered acceptable, which Kanapino himself hinted at after the finish.

“Unfortunately we had to stop, but I want to make it clear that Callum Ilott’s actions were not intentional,” he said. “It just happened that way. But we have a good team, for which I am very grateful.”