Daily Mail journalist loses accreditation after insulting Leclerc. Newspaper announces boycott

British tabloid journalist Jonathan McEvoy demonstrated after the race in Mexico exactly what many F1 veterans mean when they talk about “British bias”. The Daily Mail writer assessed the battle between Charles Leclerc and Lewis Hamilton in his column in a way that prompted justifiable outrage from many. The FIA took the unusual step of banning McEvoy from the paddock for the rest of the season.

These days, the myth of “British bias” — if it can even be called a myth — is no longer as contentious as it once was. Teams have become increasingly multinational, and Formula 1 has lost figures such as Ron Dennis, who liked to feed information to the British media to gain an advantage for his team. The British media did not always make life easy for men such as Michael Schumacher and Fernando Alonso.

In recent years, however, the biggest British media outlets have not lived up to that reputation. There are still exceptions, though, and the Daily Mail is one of them. McEvoy provided a perfect illustration in his article after Mexico, calling Charles Leclerc a “sneaky little bastard”.

The FIA responded by taking fairly decisive action. It revoked McEvoy’s accreditation for the rest of the season over the insult. We do not know whether the governing body acted on its own initiative or under pressure from Ferrari. At present, we have no evidence that the Italian team was involved, but that did not stop the Daily Mail and McEvoy from accusing Ferrari, without evidence, of pulling the strings and “arranging” the ban.

“As set out in the 2026 FIA Formula One World Championship Guidelines, media accreditation is granted at the sole discretion of the FIA and may be revoked at any time without notice. The Guidelines state that the highest standards of fairness and professionalism are expected as a minimum requirement for media accreditation,” an FIA spokesperson said in a brief statement to the media.

McEvoy and co then showed their “class” by claiming in another article that Ferrari team principal Frédéric Vasseur was behind the ban, even describing him as a “tubby little nobody”. Well, they evidently only reinforced the justification for the FIA’s decision to revoke his accreditation.

The Daily Mail responded to the FIA ban with a strongly worded statement, claiming that the governing body’s decision was an attack on the freedom of the press. The newspaper’s sports editor, Chris Dean, also announced that the Daily Mail would boycott Formula 1 and publish no news about the sport.

“This is an unprecedented and outrageous attack on the freedom of the press,” said Dean. “We are in dangerous territory when the FIA react in such a heavy-handed way to some mild and fair criticism of one driver.”

“Jonathan McEvoy is a fearless and first-rate journalist who takes readers behind the curtain of F1’s shiny exterior. The FIA should reinstate his accreditation immediately,” he added.

At this point, we would like to indulge in a little irony by saying that we genuinely have no idea how we will manage without the wonderful information and articles the Daily Mail supplies us with. In recent years, this outlet has proved unreliable, with no verified inside information.

Now, in all seriousness: we will manage perfectly well without the Daily Mail. We cannot condemn attacks on drivers by Argentinian fans, for example, while defending insults such as “bastards” and “tubby little nobodies” as legitimate criticism, or even absurdly linking them to freedom of speech.