Clarkson’s Colapinto joke revives Top Gear’s Argentina controversy

Jeremy Clarkson’s joke that Franco Colapinto should get a grid penalty “for being Argentinian” brought the presenter’s 2014 Top Gear trip to Argentina back into focus. The remark divided fans during the United States Grand Prix weekend, when Clarkson was an Alpine guest at the Circuit of the Americas and spoke with Sky Sports F1 presenters Martin Brundle, Naomi Schiff and Simon Lazenby.

Colapinto was due to serve a 10-place grid penalty in Austin, but the reason was his use of a fourth control-electronics unit of the season. Clarkson linked his joke to what had happened when he travelled to Argentina with Top Gear.

Clarkson, Richard Hammond and James May travelled through Patagonia for a Top Gear special in 2014. Clarkson drove a Porsche 928 bearing the plate H982 FKL; locals took it as a reference to the 1982 Falklands War. Protests broke out in Ushuaia, where war veterans demonstrated outside the crew’s hotel. After the crew was pelted with stones, it abandoned its cars at the roadside and fled across the border into Chile. The BBC said the plate was a coincidence; executive producer Andy Wilman rejected suggestions the Porsche had been chosen for its number plate or that the plate had been swapped.

The conversation also turned to Kim Kardashian. Lazenby asked about Brundle’s Singapore grid-walk interview with her, after she had blanked him in Monaco. Clarkson said he had not watched it and was not interested: “I’m here to watch Formula 1, not Kim Kardashians.”