Spanish F1 pundit apologises for vile joke about Schumacher’s condition

Antonio Lobato has faced backlash and calls to resign in the wake of a comment he made about the legendary seven-time world champion’s condition during coverage of the Japanese Grand Prix. 

Schumacher suffered severe head injures in a skiing accident in December 2013 and has not been seen in public since. 

Updates on the German’s condition have been rare, with his family keen to keep his health out of the public eye. 

In a five-minute video posted on X [formerly Twitter], 58-year-old Lobato issued an apology and blamed his “clumsy mistake” on jet lag. 

“I made a mistake without any bad intentions,” Lobato is quoted as saying, as per Marca.

“It was simply a mistake of pure clumsiness, of pure inability to express myself correctly, maybe because of too many hours up, jet lag in Madrid, or whatever – which is not an excuse for those of you who didn’t see it.

“What happened is that I went too far and made an expression that is not good, it is not accurate, it is not fine.

“I didn’t mean to make a joke, I didn’t mean to make fun of Michael Schumacher.

“I think that everyone who knows me and knows what I’m like knows perfectly well that I would never make a joke about something like that. Never, but I was clumsy.” 

In April this year, the editor of a German magazine was sacked for publishing an artificial intelligence-generated ‘interview’ with Schumacher.