McLaren has downplayed the presence of ex-United States President Donald Trump in its Formula 1 garage during the Miami Grand Prix, with the politician claiming he was Lando Norris’ “lucky charm” amid the British driver’s maiden win.
Politicians are commonplace at an F1 race, but few are as divisive as Trump, loved and hated in equal measure.
Amid F1’s stance on gender equality and inclusivity, Trump’s presence drew criticism due to his long history of problematic comments.
And after posing with CEO Zak Brown and visiting the McLaren garage, the team issued a statement in response to social media discussions surrounding Trump’s appearance.
“McLaren is a non-political organisation however we recognise and respect the office of President of the United States,” the statement read.
“So when the request was made to visit our garage on race day we accepted alongside the president of the FIA and the CEO’s of Liberty Media and Formula 1.
“We were honoured that McLaren Racing was chosen as the representative of F1 which gave us the opportunity to showcase the world-class engineering that we bring to motorsport.”
Still, it’s hard to ignore the negative aspects of political culture that come in Trump’s wake, especially given he is still embroiled in a hush-money legal trial in New York.
Perhaps McLaren should have pulled an Andretti and said Trump’s request ended up in the spam folder to save itself a PR hassle.
But, based on McLaren’s reasoning, the Woking-based outfit would have equally accepted President Joe Biden’s request to visit its garage, thus prompting outrage from people of a different political persuasion (you can’t please everyone).
Trump’s visit coincided with McLaren’s first win since the 2021 Italian GP at Monza and saw Norris claim his long-waited maiden win on his 110th F1 appearance.
Speaking post-race, Norris commented on Trump being in the McLaren garage: “I didn’t see him in the garage, to be honest.
“I was busy prepping for the race. But he saw me after, and he came up to congratulate me.
“So I guess an honour, because whenever you have someone like this, it has to be an honour for them to come up to you, to take time out of their life, to pay their respect for what you’ve done.
“He said he was my lucky charm because it’s my win. So I don’t know if he’s going to come to more races now.
“But yeah, there’s a lot of special people or cool people that have been here this weekend. Donald is someone that you got to have a lot of respect for in many ways.
“And yeah, for anyone like that who acknowledges what you can go out and do and acknowledges the work ethic that goes into things, you got to be thankful for that. And I was. So yeah, a cool moment.”
