McLaren's Lewis Hamilton suffered racist abuse from Spanish Formula One supporters in China last year as well as at the recent Barcelona test, the head of the sport's governing body revealed on Sunday.
International Automobile Federation (FIA) president Max Mosley told Britain's Sunday Times newspaper that he had been told by Hamilton's father of incidents at the Chinese Grand Prix in Shanghai last October.
"Anthony Hamilton told me that there were some people in China who were also appallingly abusive; not Chinese fans, but people who had travelled from Spain," he said.
The FIA warned Spanish circuits and the Spanish authorities after Hamilton was insulted by the crowd at the Circuit de Catalunya this month that the country risked being stripped of its races if such behaviour continued.
Mosley reminded Spanish fans that they too could be punished. "If they went to Australia and did something like that, they could get arrested and we would know their names and passport numbers and they wouldn't get into another country," he said.
"If, as appears to be the case, a very small number of people are involved, it ought to be possible to stop it immediately," he added. A spokesman for the FIA said the governing body was developing an anti-racism campaign which it planned to roll out early in the season, which starts in Australia on March 16.
Hamilton, the sport's first black driver, has become a hate figure in Spain because of his rivalry with former McLaren team mate and double world champion Spaniard Fernando Alonso, who now drives for Renault.
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