Someone Started A Petition To Ban Nurburgring YouTuber Misha Charoudin From The Track

Besides appearances in video games and being lionized in more mainstream automotive media, much of the Nürburgring Nordschleife’s growing popularity has come from YouTube channels. Multiple channels such as Auto Addiction share clips of cool cars and occasional driver slip-ups on the track. Another channel is that from Misha Charoudin. As he notes in his channel description, he lives near the track and spends an enormous amount of time there while documenting his adventures. He both competes in professional races, and takes a huge variety of interesting street cars out for test drives on the track during public days. He’s become a fixture of the track, and has managed to attract 1.77 million subscribers. He even went out on track with Ben Collins, Top Gear‘s former Stig, and has driven the Bugatti Bolide at the track. Not everyone is apparently happy with his activities, though, as a petition has surfaced looking to ban Misha temporarily from participating in public driving days.

The Aggrieved Parties Think He’s Dangerous

The petition was posted on Change.org, which allows just about anyone, anywhere, to create an online petition about anything. While there isn’t anything binding or compulsory about petitions on the site, it can be a way to get attention for a cause. That cause is to keep Misha off the track for one year due to what the signed parties deem dangerous driving. The petition cites previous crashes involving Misha. In fact, Misha had a wreck just a couple of weeks ago, which he takes time to talk about on his channel (though without crash footage per Nürburgring operators’ rules). It also cites two particular close calls on track with Misha behind the wheel, one with a Tesla, and one with a Porsche Cayman. It goes on to say that the crashes and close calls combined with Misha’s popularity with visitors encourages visitors to also drive aggressively and dangerously during public days. So far, the petition has 690 signatures over the course of two weeks.

Misha’s Not Worried

Misha recently went onto the automotive-themed podcast called Road To Success, and he spoke a little bit about the petition. His feelings are summed up well with this quote: “This petition doesn’t scare me at all.” He defends his videos, noting that his videos aren’t about trying to set fast times (which are prohibited on public driving days), or trying to achieve certain speeds or overtake a certain number of cars. Basically, his content is more about experiencing the cars, not trying to drive them in a way that would be particularly dangerous on track. He does admit things can go wrong and have occasionally. We would add that there’s always a risk of something going wrong either with your vehicle, yourself, or another person on track, no matter how careful everyone is. He also says that he could easily pivot to doing other kinds of videos if somehow he were banned. You can see the whole podcast below.

Source: Change.org, Road To Success / YouTube, Misha Charoudin / YouTube