Ricciardo's funny mistake when he saw the protesters

As soon as the red flag period was established due to Guanyu Zhou’s terrible accident at the start of the Silverstone race, a group of environmental activists jumped onto the track and sat on a straight where some drivers passed.

Most of them did not know at first that they were protesters, and Daniel Ricciardo had a funny mistake. Asked by Motorsport.com if he had seen the activists on track, he stated: “I saw it out of the corner of my eye. I think they were wearing orange so I thought they were Max fans.”

Ricciardo thought that it was some members of the orange tide that populates practically every European circuit in support of Max Verstappen. And when told that McLaren, his team, is also wearing orange, he replied: “Or McLaren fans! But to be honest, I saw a bit to the left, maybe off turn 5 or something, but that was the last thing I heard.”

“I’m not sure what happened then or what it was. To be honest, it got me thinking about that year, was it with Webber? Yeah, I think Webber was pretty close. That was one of the thoughts I had. But I’m not sure.” what was it, what was it about?

In that chat with the media, Ricciardo still did not know what the protest was about, and several of his fellow grid members admitted the same. However, the police had received the boycott threat in the previous days and the media echoed it.

“I had no idea. I don’t read much, so I didn’t know.” In fact, he said that neither the police nor Formula 1 warned them: “I was not aware of this.”

And after that answer, the following question arose: should F1 have warned the drivers so that they knew the risk they could take?

“I don’t know. I don’t know if it changes much for us,” replied the Australian. “Obviously, if we see something on the track, we’re good enough to slow down or avoid any kind of risk. But as to whether I could have done something if I’d known about it beforehand, I don’t know. But to be honest, I wasn’t To the”.

Formula 1, through its CEO Stefano Domenicali, hit back at the activists, with police reporting seven arrests at Silverstone on Sunday.

Sebastian Vettel, who always raises his voice for the defense of the environment, said that he empathized with the reasons that led these people to protest, but recommended that they not do so within a circuit. In a similar vein, Lewis Hamilton ended up giving his opinion, although after a change of heart…