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LONDON, England - Mercedes team chairman Niki Lauda ordered that a video of Lewis Hamilton firing a machine gun be removed from the Briton's social media accounts.
On Saturday (August 22), controversy emerged when the video emerged depicting the Mercedes driver firing the weapon at a shooting range, just one day after news broke of a gunman opening fire on a passenger train from Amsterdam to France.
On Sunday (August 23) Hamilton won the 2015 Belgian GP from pole to stretch his lead over Mercedes team mate Nico Rosberg to 28 points with eight races remaining.
Hamilton said a "friend" had posted the video, not him.
AFRAID OF COMMENTS?
Nonetheless, it triggered outrage among some of his fans, but Hamilton played that down by insisting: "There never is any good comments on there, to be honest, so it doesn't really matter."
Watch the video here:
F1 legend Niki Lauda begged to differ, even though he defended Hamilton, whose lifestyle has been increasingly under the microscope recently.
Lauda told Bild newspaper: "I know Lewis well and know that he means well but I'll ask him to remove the video from the internet."
The German news agency SID, meanwhile, quoted Hamilton's boss Toto Wolff as saying: "Lewis is a rock star, but at the same time you also have to see what is happening in the world."