“I mean, money talks”– Lewis Hamilton calls Belgian GP a farce; F1 responds to Briton’s comments

Tanish Chachra | 30/08/2021
"I mean, money talks"– Lewis Hamilton calls Belgian GP a farce; F1 responds to Briton's comments

“I mean, money talks”– Lewis Hamilton called out the Belgian Grand Prix organizers for preferring their commercial interests.

The fans at the Spa Francorchamps waited in the rain for four hours to witness a race, but the rain had different plans, as the race never started and instead declared results based on the standings of the cars behind the safety car after a course of four laps.

Lewis Hamilton was agitated by the situation and saw many fans soaking themselves in the rain, called the Grand Prix a farce and accused the stakeholders of choosing their commercial interests.

“I mean, money talks,” Hamilton told Sky Sports F1. “It was literally the two laps to start the race, it’s all a money scenario. So everyone gets their money and I think the fans should get theirs back too because unfortunately, they didn’t get to see what they came and paid for.”

“It’s a shame we can’t do the race tomorrow and I love this track as well, so sad that we couldn’t do this. But today wasn’t a race. I think the sport made a bad choice today,” the Mercedes driver added.

F1 defends its actions

To defend the decisions made by the officials, F1 CEO Stefano Domenicali insisted that they were not preferring their commercial interests and were only working on their will to run a race.

“To be honest, as I said, there was really the will to race, but the weather started to be even worse,” Domenicali said, as quoted on Planet F1. “And with the comments that race control was receiving.”

“It was really wrong to keep on doing that [racing] because it was clear that unfortunately after that gap, the weather would not improve,” he added. “So that was the reason behind that so it’s not really commercial, I can guarantee to you.”

Post Edited By: Tanish Chachra
Lewis Hamilton Mercedes

About the author

Tanish Chachra

Tanish Chachra is the Motorsport editor at The SportsRush. He saw his first race when F1 visited India in 2011, and since then, his romance with the sport has been seasonal until he took up this role in 2020. Reigniting F1's coverage on this site, Tanish has fallen in love with the sport all over again. He loves Kimi Raikkonen and sees a future world champion in Oscar Piastri. Away from us, he loves to snuggle inside his books.

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