NASCAR and Formula 1 have thrived in recent years due to the affinity diehard fans have developed for certain teams and drivers and the rivalries that developed across their paddocks.

At times, though, those series have seen the dark side when diehard fandom crosses a line into abuse. Sunday, on the heels of a dramatic, and at times testy, race between a combination of some of the series' stars and its up-and-comers, multiple drivers grabbed their phones post-race to see abusive comments – to the level that IndyCar officials elected to speak up.

“Over the last 24 hours, some of our drivers have been the target of disrespectful and inappropriate online abuse. There is no place for this behavior in our sport,” read a statement posted by the series late Monday night to its Twitter and Instagram pages. “While fierce competition and rivalry will always be a mainstay of IndyCar racing, it’s important to showcase and celebrate these attributes with ultimate respect and concern for the well-being of our competitors.

“IndyCar is a community that should always strive to build upward with support and appreciation for one another.”

Notably, the series turned off comments on both posts. At least nine full-time drivers, as well as three of the 10 teams, either retweeted or reposted the statement on their various platforms or posted similar notes of support to their competitors.

The statement follows at least two notable waves of hate-filled online banter – the most extreme of which was directed at second-year driver Callum Ilott, delivered by the enraged supporters of his Juncos Hollinger Racing teammate Agustin Canapino.

What led to the hate messages Callum Ilott received

The opening of Sunday’s race was chaotic for JHR’s two-car operation, with the team pitting both cars during the Lap 1 caution to get off the quickly-degrading alternate tires and run the better-performing primaries the rest of the way while risking very little from starting from the back. Just a couple laps later, Ilott hit the wall and suffered a damaged wheel that required another tire change, putting him a lap down.

But when the caution flag came out on Lap 20 with Scott Dixon in the Turn 8 tire barrier, Ilott could go a couple laps longer than the bulk of the field – virtually all of which pitted on Lap 22 – before needing to make his first truly regular stop. It appears his No. 77 JHR team held him out of that busy run of stops to allow Ilott to unlap himself, in hopes that he could wait and make his stop a couple laps later and still take the green flag on the lead lap.

It didn’t go down so cleanly.

Whether JHR thought they had one more caution lap to work with, thought the stop would be quicker or just made a strategy error, Ilott emerged from the pits and merged onto the track right as the race had gone back green with teammate Canapino at the front. Canapino also declined to pit with the bulk of the field, likely hoping for another quick caution that would shake things up and let him not lose nearly as much ground on his own second stop. So when Ilott sped onto the track, he inadvertently bunched up the hard-charging field as he tried to get up to speed.

The accordion effect put Helio Castroneves, who at the time was a lap down but at the front of the pack and trying to unlap himself, right on the heels of Canapino. While jockeying for position, the two made contact – eventually ending the Argentine’s race.

Swiftly, dozens of the rookie’s angry fans swarmed to Ilott’s social media, commenting on old Instagram posts and tweeting at him with messages that, in some cases, reached the level of death threats. Ilott singled out Argentine journalist Martin Ponte, who tweeted shortly after the incident “44 million enemies” (in reference to Argentina’s population). In a series of statements, the young British driver was unafraid to reveal the barrage of hate sent his way.

“(This is) an important reminder to all new and old fans/people. Respect goes both ways. Although I have thick skin and am used to this behavior occasionally, one day it will go too far to someone who can’t deal with it as well as others,” Ilott tweeted Monday. “It’s unacceptable on any level, and those who encourage it should have a real think about the consequences of their actions.

“I would like to thank everyone who supported me. It means a lot.”

To try to take the situation in stride, Ilott also wrote in a separate tweet, “Really appreciate the effort to help me learn all these new Spanish words. I’m going to the beach now. Hasta luego.”

Both Canapino, as well as JHR, posted messages voicing their support for Ilott. “Our drivers and team have faced an exponential amount of disrespectful online abuse. This is beyond inappropriate and we as a team are very disappointed in the behavior of everyone involved,” the team said in a statement. “This is no place for that on our team and there is no place for that in our sport

“We are in a sport where split-second decisions make or break the weekend. We learn, forgive and forget. We as a team are grateful to have fans as passionate as we do, but we need to remember that our community is built on respect for everyone on our team and in the series.”

Said Canapino: “Beyond passions, anger, rivalries, etc., nothing allows us to transmit hate and disrespect another person. Not only during a competition but also in life in general. It is the only and best way to be better as a society – wherever we are, whatever we do.”

Sunday’s on-track incident follows the “hate mail” Long Beach winner Kyle Kirkwood said he received after making contact with Alexander Rossi in pitlane at Texas in a crash IndyCar race control deemed he shouldered no fault. And since Sunday, Pato O’Ward has also spoken up about those “using their words to purposely hurt, disrespect, threaten and degrade others.” Though perhaps not at the level as Ilott weathered, it’s understood the young Mexican driver received more than just a handful of hate-filled messages after his run-in with Dixon on Sunday that ended the six-time champ’s race, as well as his own spin that nearly took out multiple cars later in the race.

“We are all human, and to judge us as anything OTHER than that is absolutely mind-blowing to me,” O’Ward wrote. “As if we are not allowed to make mistakes? To drop the ball? To make a bad call? In what world are these standards reasonable? They aren’t, and they will never be. I encourage everyone to choose their words wisely and to seriously consider the damage they are capable of inflicting before speaking them.”

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Moving past a disappointing trend

With Thursday’s testing for the Indianapolis 500, IndyCar is set to enter the most important two-month stretch of its 2023 calendar. Cars will be on-track at the Racing Capital of the World for more than a dozen days before June. IMS will hope to inch toward a sellout of well over 300,000 fans for the 107^th Indy 500. IndyCar will debut a six-episode docuseries on the first chunk of the season on primetime network TV, in hopes it can attract hordes of new fans from a younger, untapped demographic as it battles Formula 1 for the second spot on the American racing pedestal.

It will do so while now having to closely monitor how that expanded fanbase interacts with its drivers. IndyCar and its longtime fans have been looking for rivalries that might bring some spice and off-track intrigue into the sport that unquestionably hosts the most competitive high-level racing on the planet. But as fame spreads, fans grow in their passion and the general online discourse grows uglier by the day, more attention and a higher profile isn’t always good.

Other nuggets from Long Beach

>>It was still a far cry from a great race day, but Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing managed to piece together its most complete race weekend of the season Sunday in Long Beach. Graham Rahal and Christian Lundgaard’s 6^th- and 9^th-place finishes in St. Pete to open the season were solid, but they were somewhat overshadowed by Jack Harvey’s crash with Rinus VeeKay and Kirkwood, the injury the British driver sustained and that he wasn’t cleared to test a couple weeks later and was replaced by ex-F2 driver Juri Vips.

The team’s complete lack of competitive pace at Texas was concerning, considering how much it mirrored issues they suffered a year ago at the track and how those bled into May at IMS. But a productive test with two drivers on the 1.5-mile oval the day after, combined with Sunday’s runs to 12^th, 13^th and 14^th for a clean weekend, keeps RLL without any major headaches that might prove distracting for the time being. They, though, will be a team to watch Thursday at IMS.

>>There was hope Alexander Rossi’s might shed his almost improbable level of bad luck in his major move from Andretti Autosport to Arrow McLaren. If the last two races are any evidence, he has some voodoo work left to do.

Sunday, Rossi was running a comfortable 6^th down the stretch in Long Beach – with 5^th-place Alex Palou more than 15 seconds ahead and 7^th-place Will Power more than 2 seconds back. But on Lap 84 of 85, Rossi suffered a suspension failure that left his No. 7 Chevy helpless in the tires. With the mechanical failure, he dropped to 22^nd, losing 20 championship points that currently make up the difference between 15^th and 9^th.

>>The easiest way to display how crazy a start to the year we’ve seen? Sunday, we started with just nine of the 27 full-time entries that had yet to fall victim to some sort of mechanical failure, crash or serious contact. After 85 laps on the street of Long Beach, only four remain: Marcus Ericsson, Alex Palou, Will Power and Christian Lundgaard.

Even with just two yellow flags, we saw nearly double-digit drivers Sunday involved in some sort of serious mess that either ruined or poorly affected their days. As Will Power proved a year ago, this series has increasingly become about staying clean and finishing races – and those with the most speed among that group able to consistently finish in the top-5 (even with just a single win) can come away with a title if their cards fall right.

This article originally appeared on Indianapolis Star: IndyCar: Why driver Callum Ilott received death threats Sunday