Bianca Bustamante apologizes to Lance Stroll

In October, Filipina Bianca Bustamante joined McLaren’s youth program and will represent the team in the women’s F1 Academy series next season. The day before, she was involved in a scandal, which forced her to apologize to Aston Martin driver Lance Stroll.

After Bustamante’s contract with McLaren was revealed, fans took a closer look at her social media and discovered that some time ago she liked an offensive post calling Lance Stroll an autistic person.

After a wave of outrage, Bianca Bustamante published an apology post, saying she accidentally “liked” the post.

“My sincerest apologies,” Bustamante wrote. “I acknowledge my mistakes in liking an inappropriate tweet and realize that I have hurt many people.”

I was scrolling through my feed and accidentally gave him a like, but as soon as I found out later I immediately deleted the like.

As someone who has a brother with autism, I completely understand these people’s concerns. I would never support incompetence, let alone support incompetence against a fellow racer. I take the issue of autism very seriously because it affects me personally.

I sincerely apologize to Lance Stroll and anyone offended by this as I do not support such comments. I hope the racing community understands that what happened was 100% an accident. Please accept my sincere apologies for this major mistake.”

A few minutes after publishing the text of the apology, Bianca posted a short video with her brother, which caused an even more negative reaction. One of the comments under the video received twice as many ‘likes’ as the video itself: ‘Just admit the mistake. You didn’t like the post before the author deleted it. Anyone can check this, so there is no need to lie.

Don’t involve your brother. There is no need to expose him to this situation.”

The McLaren team has not yet commented on the incident.