In Sakhir, Bahrain, Lewis Hamilton has announced his commitment to furthering diversity efforts in Formula 1 as he transitions to Ferrari next year.
As the sport’s sole Black driver, Hamilton shared during the preseason testing on Friday his pride in the initiatives he spearheaded with Mercedes, and his intention to make diversity a focus of his tenure with Ferrari.
Hamilton reflected on the progress made at Mercedes since 2020, stating, “I’m immensely proud of the work that we’ve done within Mercedes. Since 2020 we’ve made some really great strides in improving diversity within the team,” he remarked.
“I think we are ahead of every other team in that respect, and there’s still a huge amount of work within the whole sport. I’m speaking to (F1 chief executive) Stefano (Domenicali) constantly and looking to work more with F1.”
“And of course you look at Ferrari, they have a lot of work to do, so I’ve already made that a priority in speaking with (Ferrari executive chairman) John (Elkann) and they’re super excited to get on and work on it also.”
After clinching six of his seven world championships with Mercedes since his move there in 2013, Hamilton’s upcoming switch to Ferrari has been met with widespread astonishment.
Fulfilling what he describes as a “childhood dream,” his departure marks a significant milestone in his career.
While with Mercedes, Hamilton was instrumental in launching a commission aimed at identifying strategies to enhance diversity within motorsports and STEM fields.
Additionally, he co-founded the Ignite partnership with Mercedes, a program designed to support organizations committed to promoting diversity and inclusion within motorsports and STEM through financial grants.
All this DEI/ESG stuff, focuses to much on the gender/ethnicties of groups as priority, not getting the best skilled people for the job, (I was annoyed earlier how Hamilton tried to use F1 as a political platform, with the whole Black Lives Matter (ergo Buy large Mansions) look at how disastrous this effect is on the Hollywood Entermaint scene, how many movies are bo mbing, even security and tech crew are hired on these characteristics, not on talent or experience, result it may already have costed a few lives. I fear the same will happen on F1, which may lead to less performaning tech-crews if they really focus on hiring people based on the selection of the 1000s of pronouns people use nowadays and focus on anything not being a while man. (I mean how many black people or woman take this deep interest in working in this field? compared to the majority of white men)