Roberto Merhi actually has fans, and they're angry

"StingrayJake" (stingrayjake) 09/18/2015 at 10:06 • Filed to: Alexander Rossi

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Probably more so after Alexander Rossi [SPOILER ALERT] crashed during FP1, but this went down on Wednesday.

Wednesday, after Manor announced that Rossi would take Merhi’s seat for five of the last seven races, Rossi’s Wikipedia page became the target of some perturbed Spanish F1 fans.

There were 18 changes to Rossi’s page after the announcement was made, which is a bit remarkable considering there had been only 15 changes in the three months prior.

Obviously the first several edits were made to update Rossi’s F1 and GP2 status as news broke, but things took an interesting turn about 16 minutes after the first edit.

That’s when an IP address from Spain changed Rossi’s nationality to “Italin,” because what’s more offensive to us rabid American F1 fans than to suggest that Rossi isn’t American? (That’s not to mention the typo.)

He was born in California, in case anybody is wondering. No idea about his parents (Rossi isn’t exactly a common American name) but I don’t really care either. Mario Andretti was born in Croatia and is considered by many to be the greatest American driver ever.

The nationality section under Rossi’s picture went back and forth between American and Italian as Wikipedia users worldwide battled for his soul.

About 25 minutes into the war, the same Spanish IP address threw another jab by swapping out Rossi’s photo for Merhi’s.

Eventually a couple brave souls, including one from Finland, took a stand. Rossi’s picture was corrected as was his nationality both in the sidebar and in the intro.

Rest easy, my American friends. The rest of the world is looking out for us.

Except France, who quickly made an edit this morning to let the world know that Rossi crashed during practice.

[Photo credit: Fox Sports and Wikipedia]

R Saldana [|Oo|======|oO|] - BTC/ETH/LTC Prophet > StingrayJake 09/18/2015 at 10:10

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Damn you just beat me to posting about Rossi binning it under the stadium

StingrayJake > R Saldana [|Oo|======|oO|] - BTC/ETH/LTC Prophet 09/18/2015 at 10:26

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Well mine isn’t about the crash so much. I wanted to write this post last night but I didn’t get around to it. The crash kind of made this less interesting.

R Saldana [|Oo|======|oO|] - BTC/ETH/LTC Prophet > StingrayJake 09/18/2015 at 10:40

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Do you think we will see mehri on the grid again?

My vote is nope

StingrayJake > R Saldana [|Oo|======|oO|] - BTC/ETH/LTC Prophet 09/18/2015 at 11:16

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Isn’t he still on contract to race the two races that Rossi can’t because of his GP2 commitment? After this year though, I’d say he’s definitely finished.