F2: Nikita Mazepin’s Covid-19 birthday joke follows Valtteri Bottas’ Wuhan bat comment
- ‘One year since the guy in Wuhan ate a bat,’ writes Russian Mazepin, two days after F1 driver joked about the same thing at Turkish GP
- The 21-year-old’s since-deleted post divides social media users
Russian Formula 2 driver Nikita Mazepin has caused controversy by wishing Covid-19 a “happy birthday” in a post on his social media.
The 21-year-old son of Uralchem billionaire Dmitry Mazepin wrote “1 year since the guy in Wuhan ate a bat”, with the word “bat” replaced by a bat emoji.
“Happy birthday, Covid,” ended the post, along with a kissing face emoji.
While Mazepin deleted the Instagram post it had already been screenshotted and shared on other social media platforms such as Twitter and community-based site Reddit, where it was posted in the F1 Feeder Series subreddit.
Mazepin’s post and its subsequent shares opened a debate as to whether it was right to joke about the deadly pandemic, with social media users divided.
Of course, the young Russian is not the first driver to make a joke about the coronavirus.