Lewis Hamilton was shocked by Bernie Ecclestone’s praise for Vladimir Putin, saying the world doesn’t need to hear from someone who “believes in war and killing people”.
The former F1 supreme champion appeared on Good Morning Britain on Thursday, F1 fans were disturbed by his views on Putin’s invasion of Ukraine.
The 91-year-old said of the Russian president that he “would still take a bullet for him.
“I’d rather not be in pain, but I’d still take a bullet because he’s a first-rate guy and what he’s doing is something he believes is the right thing, he’s doing it for Russia.”
“Unfortunately he’s like a lot of business people, certainly like me, we make mistakes from time to time and when you make mistakes you have to do the best you can to get out of it.”
Ecclestone went on to blame the war on Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, saying he “absolutely” could have done more to prevent it.
Bernie is on UK Morning TV and it’s like a car crash as you can imagine 🥴 pic.twitter.com/snFI5244W8
— EngineMode11 – Lord of the Fraud (@EngineMode11) June 30, 2022
Hamilton says the world doesn’t need to hear from someone like Ecclestone.
“We don’t need any more of this, to hear from someone who believes in war and evicting people and killing people, and supporting this guy (Putin) is beyond me,” the Mercedes driver said ahead of the weekend’s GP in Great Britain.
“I can’t believe I heard that.
“It will set us back decades and we still haven’t seen the true severity of the pain.
“Why? We don’t need to support this, we need to look to the future.
“If you have nothing positive to contribute, don’t give them space.”
Formula 1 was quick to distance itself from the opinion of its former boss.
Releasing a statement on Thursday morning, the sport said: “The comments made by Bernie Ecclestone are his personal views and are in very stark contrast to the contemporary values stance of our sport.”
Formula 1 canceled its contract with Russia in March, and Ecclestone asked why then.
“It doesn’t make sense any way you look at it,” he told AFP. “As far as I know, there is no war in Russia, so if it happens, it won’t matter to anyone.
“It won’t affect anyone at all.
“This idea of trying to punish Russia in this way in a sporting sense is not going to punish Putin at all.”
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