F1 Star Unfollowed By Fans On Social Media After Supporting Black Lives Matter Movement

A Formula One star said he lost a huge number of social media followers after he expressed his support for the Black Lives Matter movement.

On May 25, 46-year-old black American George Floyd died at the hands of a white police officer in Minneapolis. This has put the spotlight once more on the Black Lives Matter movement and triggered protests across U.S., and now, the entire world.

Several prominent people from the sports world have been actively taking part in the international human rights movement. However, not all of them got support from their fans after speaking out on what they believed in.

This is what happened to F1 star Lando Norris, who represents McLaren. After expressing his support for anti-racism protests in the wake of the death of Floyd, Norris said that many of his fans unfollowed him.

The 20-year-old boasts over 400,000 followers on each of his social media channels – Twitter and streaming platform Twitch. But in a recent interview Evening Standard, Norris revealed that he lost most of them after urging them to take action and sign petitions to fight racial discrimination and social injustice.

According to Norris, he was just trying to do what’s right given his platform as an influential personality. Despite noticing that most of his followers didn’t appreciate what he had done, Norris said that he is actually happy they unfollowed him if they didn’t believe in what he stood for.

"It's the biggest day in terms of the most people that have unfollowed me on all my social media channels. You try to do what's good and what's right, but also so many people don't believe in it. If they don’t believe in it, then I'm happy they unfollowed me," Norris said.

"But I’ve got to make the most of the opportunities to show people to believe in what's right. Whatever way I can try to persuade them to believe in the right thing, I will try and do that,” he added.

Formula One is no stranger to racism. In fact, Lewis Hamilton was the sport’s first black world champion, and even he experienced the racial discrimination in F1. The six-time world champ previously revealed that during the early days of his career, white people often made him feel like he didn’t belong in the sport because of his skin color.

“When we got to races I remember people looking at us like, 'What are they doing here?’ Because it was a white-dominated sport,” Hamilton recalled.

Hamilton previously called out F1 for being silent about racial discrimination and has been constantly vocal about his thoughts regarding the subject.