Lewis Hamilton: F1 boss addresses Hamilton’s statement regarding the racist incidents he has observed and faced while being in the sport.
Post George Floyd incident, Lewis Hamilton ended his silence on racism and was highly vocal about the racism prevailing around him and also criticized F1 fraternity of not standing up against it on time.
Few days after the incident, F1 boss Ross Brawn has claimed that the F1 is with Hamilton and they absolutely support the 6-time World Champion in this fight.
“Lewis is a great ambassador for the sport, and I think his comments are very valid,” Brawn told Sky Sports. “We support him completely.”
Brawn says F1 is working to increase diversity, starting at the grassroots level in terms of driving opportunities but also working across the spectrum of roles involved in F1.
“We as F1 have recognised for a few years now that we want to strengthen our diversity programme and both internally as a company and externally, we started work on this a few years ago,” he said.
“Our thoughts were that the reason why we don’t have more diversity in Formula 1 starts at the grassroots level, it even starts in schools with the appeal for STEM topics – science, technology, engineering and maths. How can we get involved in that?
“We’ve been involved in F1 in Schools, we have always supported it, but we became far more involved in the last year or two, and that has a very strong diversity in terms of the kids who get involved in it.
“Forty per cent of the kids who get involved in F1 in Schools are girls, so that’s a good start. It’s an international competition, so we get competitors from all groups. We are looking very strongly at how we can support grassroots racing.
“I’ve spent the last weeks and months working with a group to look at how we can have a basic karting initiative to get kids involved in karting at a very early stage.
“F1 is a very strong meritocracy, it should always be that way. It should always be the best who win. We can’t force that but we can give greater opportunity to minority and ethnic groups to get involved in motorsport, not just driving but engineering and other activities. That’s where we are with Formula 1.
“We support totally what Lewis has said. What happened was dreadful, it happens far too often. You’ve seen the public reaction to it. It’s almost the straw that broke the camel’s back and we support him totally.”
Last week, even Mercedes decided to support Hamilton and released a statement backing the British driver after he released his thoughts on social media.
