I think everyone who reads Jalopnik can appreciate a nice, fast car—but I’d also hope we all know that there’s a time and a place for that kind of speed, and it’s not a public road. Being a race car driver doesn’t exempt you from that.
This reminder specifically goes out to Formula 3 driver Alessio Deledda, who has been frequently posting videos on social media of himself driving like a real asshole on public roads. We’re not just talking about speeding on an empty highway—he’s tailgating people at night and driving one-handed to... I don’t know? Impress his Instagram followers?
Seriously, scroll through the Twitter thread above. There are five different clips showing Deledda driving recklessly, which I can only imagine do not encompass the entirety of his driving oeuvre. Not only is he slaloming through traffic and speeding up behind a motorcycle, but at one point, he reaches 330 kph, the equivalent of 205 mph.
25-year-old Italian-born Deledda signed on with Campos Racing for the 2019 and 2020 Formula 3 seasons. His best finish in the overall championship standings is 29th, while his best finish is 16th.
Deledda responded to the backlash against his videos on Twitter with the following statement, translated from Italian:
I’m sorry they associated that video with my name. My intent is always and only to sensitize my followers to similar acts of villainy. My mistake was probably not to specify that it was a complaint.
Or, essentially, that he condemns that kind of behavior and was only sharing it with his followers to tell them they shouldn’t do it. To that point, one of his video captions read (again, translated from Italian), “How not to go shopping.”
That said, filming and posting videos of yourself driving recklessly is never a good idea—not to “raise awareness” and certainly not when you’re a racing driver.
Personally, I don’t have much sympathy for the guy. The first video in that thread, of a car slaloming through nighttime traffic at high-speed, is very similar to a driver that very nearly wiped my husband and I out coming back from the race track one evening. A BMW driver doing over 100 mph in a 35 mph zone flew up behind us so quickly that I hardly had time to react. He passed us, two wheels in our far right-hand lane, fast enough and close enough that I had to steady the wheel against the turbulence.
There’s a real simple answer to this problem: don’t post videos of people driving like assholes. And if, for the love of god, you’re going to claim you only did so to raise awareness against reckless driving, make sure you state that before you get caught.