On Sunday, May 5, former President Donald Trump headed to the Formula 1 Miami Grand Prix in the Hard Rock Stadium and, when he made his appearance, was loudly cheered by the crowd as he said hello to them and some of the drivers. This sporting appearance follows Trump’s wild reception at UFC fights he has shown up to, such as when he appeared, to much fanfare, alongside Kid Rock, Tucker Carlson, and Dana White.
Trump was not the only high-profile attendee of the Miami race. Also involved were famous tech CEOs like Space X CEO and X owner Elon Musk and Amazon founder and Blue Origin owner Jeff Bezos. Further, other celebrities like Kansas City Chiefs Quarterback Patrick Mahomes were in attendance.
In any case, on Sunday, X (formerly Twitter) was overrun with videos showing Trump at the Formula One event, doing everything from saluting during the National Anthem to getting to know some of the drivers. He also took a look around the McLaren garage with McLaren Racing CEO Zak Brown. Also with them were FIA president Mohammed Ben Sulayem, F1 CEO Stefano Domenicali and Liberty Media CEO Greg Maffei.
Commenting on Trump’s visit in a statement, McLaren said that it is not political. In its words: “McLaren is a non-political organisation however we recognise and respect the office of President of the United States 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.”
Continuing, however, the team’s statement added that it was honored to have been the representative for the sport during his visit. “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,” the team went on to say.
One of the best videos of the day was posted by Margo Martin, the Trump 2024 deputy communications chief. Martin posted a video that showed Trump entering a pit lane on the racing track as the massive crowd thundered out a “USA!” chant. Captioning the post, Martin wrote, “Crowd chants “USA!” as President @realDonaldTrump arrives outside the McLaren Garage on Pit Lane 🇺🇸”
Watch that video here:
Posting about the event on Truth Social, former President Trump wrote, “It was a great honor to see my friends at McLaren win the big Miami Formula 1 race. It was the car I visited before the race, and Endorsed—that’s what we need for our Country—WINNING!”
McLaren driver Lando Norris, commenting on meeting Trump, said, “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.”
Continuing, Norris said, ““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.”
Featured image credit: screengrab from the embedded video
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