Formula One: Lewis Hamilton may have baited the media and succeeded

Formula One driver Lewis Hamilton is no stranger to controversy. Did he know exactly what he was doing when he posted a video of his nephew?

Lewis Hamilton, who sits third on the all-time Formula One titles list with four championships and second on the all-time Formula One wins list with 62 victories, recently came under heavy fire for posting an Instagram video that many people deemed as controversial.

This video showed Hamilton, 32, messing around with his four-year-old nephew Kaiden, who was laughing and having a good time with his uncle. What set people off was the fact that Hamilton poked fun at Kaiden for wearing a princess dress by stating that “boys don’t wear princess dresses”.

Here is the video that has made people so upset.

Yes, because of the nature of society, he did open a can of worms. But could it be that he did it intentionally? I wouldn’t put it past him.

Being a world-class Formula One driver, Hamilton is no stranger to the spotlight. But he is perhaps no stranger to the spotlight even more so when it comes to controversy. He has been ridiculed for his social media presence, his flamboyant outfits and pretty much everything else he does that gets him attention, be it on purpose or not.

He was even ridiculed for dumping an alcoholic beverage into a gold Maserati — before critics discovered that the man doing it was a rapper called Slim Stunta, who looks like Hamilton, and not Hamilton himself. He was then ridiculed for saying that he might kneel for the national anthem during the United States Grand Prix, which he did not end up doing.

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When he went under investigation for failing to pay value-added tax on his £16.5 million private jet, he also came under fire. Whether it is justified or not doesn’t really matter since the people slamming him for it had no idea of the circumstances beyond what they read online.

If the picture isn’t clear yet, let me make it clear — people love to hate this guy. He’s the Tom Brady or the LeBron James of the racing world.

Seeing as how his stance on social justice has been evident, namely through the fact that he didn’t rule out kneeling for the national anthem at the United States Grand Prix, is it possible that Hamilton knew what would happen when he posted this video and only did it to see the reaction of people, particularly to see how hateful the Twitter trolls would be?

It is possible. Plus, he even “liked” several tweets saying that he didn’t nothing wrong and had no need to apologize. There is no reason to believe that he didn’t know exactly what he was doing.

Some of the fake news stories that have been made up as a result of this just to make Hamilton look bad have actually been semi-entertaining. Did Hamilton see it coming?

We saw a similar situation when Boston Celtics point guard Kyrie Irving proclaimed that he believed Earth is flat. After that exploded and social media went crazy, he admitted that he was just doing it to get people talking — and it worked.

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Lewis Hamilton is not a stupid guy, but he has been known for getting attention, many times intentionally. Could this whole situation have been used as bait to see how the media and the social media trolls would react? Don’t rule it out.