"The Wave"

Sooner or later it was going to come up, so I figured I’d post it with the video vs still image. Plus I trust the folks here to keep a good discussion.

I’m not convinced he intended this to be what the world seems to have made of it, but I’m a bit of an optimist at times…

Here’s the video of the incident:

Driver’s response on Instagram (Reel):

Sucks for karting that this is the coverage we get on main media and motorsport channels, not to mention colberi’s incident appears in “related” on some websites

I literally waved like that (minus the chest pound) at a friend coming into the pits at New Castle a couple weeks ago…

Pretty sure I wave at people like that while driving my truck 90% of the time unless you just get a finger lift from me.

I guess I’m a Nazi. :man_shrugging:t2:

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What was he thinking? I’d like to hear what he has to say.
I think that it’s inappropriate and should reprimanded by the FIA.

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It does not matter what he is thinking. He should not be driving anyway as he is skirting the regulating bodies sanctions by racing under Italy. Then, he supports “his country” during his reasoning. Ward racing should be punished along with him being banned.

Good point, I just added a link to his Instagram Reel response in the main post.

I’ll always give the benefit of doubt, I don’t believe the kid meant it as a nazi salute. It’s called Roman salute and yeah it’s used a fair bit in Italy amongst other countries, notably not Russia. Italians have a whole language of hand gestures. I once told my Italian colleague in Milan who was 50m away wheel no2 was unserviceable and needs to be replaced with hand gestures only. Off he went to get a new wheel :joy:

Bit of a faux pas nonetheless

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Not a good look, but I doubt he meant it as a Nazi salute. Sometimes kids need to be given a little leeway when they do stupid things. Their brains aren’t developed, they don’t understand the context of what they do sometimes. And I hardly think this kid is a Neo-Nazi.

Same @CrocIndy, I waved like that (minus the chest bump) to someone at the track the other morning and then saw this article and was like oh damn, I wonder if people think I’m Nazi saluting…

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You can change “kids” to “males” and be spot on, too. I’m 37 and do stupid inappropriate stuff all the time still.

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How old is this kid?

I tend to give the benefit of the doubt here too. If he was taking a political stance, he would not have been laughing while doing it. He did something stupid. He apologized. Hopefully, he has learned his lesson. End of story.

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Kids mess up, but in doing so must still face the consequences. He should have known better in this case, and the laughter makes it tough to understand what his intentions may have been. Ward is a Swedish team, so the whole Roman salute angle seems like BS to me. I can think of plenty of other gestures that would have been better suited to this scenario. When competing on the world stage, one has to behave accordingly.

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The FIA have a child safeguarding problem. The progressive move towards making karting a junior sport with all the bells and whistles of FIA European/World Championship status has meant we basically have children being at risk of these kind of incidents. He’s 15 years old and is on the highest stage of world karting. He’s a child still and thus it’s a stupid error, but a lot of kids make stupid errors.

I would fully support a drive to make any competitions under the age of 16 amateur off the radar competitions. It won’t happen of course, but in terms of child safeguarding I think it’d be far more healthy for karting to separate out junior and senior competition. Senior racing gets the bells and whistles, and juniors can be off the radar where they can make errors that don’t destroy their entire life. Might help with the insane budgets too.

Whether it be the non-red flag thrown incident in 2020, or the Brasil cancellation and now this… it’s a shame we don’t have a situation where the FIA has to start facing serious questions about its credibility.

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My take on it, the kid was having “fun” with being a Roman.

Russian kid racing under the Italian flag and went out and won/dominated like the Romans. :man_shrugging:

If the kid clicked his heels, yelled Heil Hitler, we may have something to talk about.

We live in a world that is far too hyper political. The internet and Ward Racing just ruined this kids life.

I’m just glad we didn’t have social media when I was a kid. 100% chance I never made anything of myself because I wouldn’t have been allowed to by the public with some of the dumb stuff I did sub 20 years old.

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Trust me it gets more as you get older :joy::joy::joy:

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FIA has launched an investigation and WARD has terminated his contract.

I don’t think that he intended to do the Nazi salute, but his grim smile surely is not helping him.
I think that he has learned his lesson.

https://www.vroomkart.com/news/40590/severiukhin-under-fia-investigation-for-the-gesture-on-the-podium-in-portimao

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Ukrainian kid should’ve been on the podium with him but got tangled up with another driver on the last lap n finished 10th instead of 3rd.

That’s not a nazi salute, and it is just a kid

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Travisanutto’s response seems measured to me:

What a strange society we live in…
Is a single mistake enough to judge someone?
Never a bit of humanity, always having to pick a side, always feeling the need to publicly blame and ostracize the wrong even when the wrong is a 15 years old adolescent, who probably (surely!!) didn’t mean what social media is pushing us to believe and was naively living one of the best moments of his life, which will turn out to be one of the worst.
Please be kind, remember on the other side of the screen there’s a person like you.
Artem should’ve surely deserved to open and read an history book, not to be marginalized from society.

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I was gonna post this and then I saw the full footage and was like, nah, that’s not a nazi salute. I can see how it got blown up to be one from the still image but the double heart bump and the point at family makes me think this was all blown out of proportion. Also, the kid doesn’t seem to have a history of running off at the mouth about this kind of stuff.

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If his video response hadnt been a clearly read script, including eye wipes, and he’d condemned the invasion of Ukraine then I’d have accepted the “stupid kid” argument and his apology.

As it is he didn’t.

What does Ukraine have to do with it?

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