F1 supports Hamilton “completely” in fight against racism

Formula 1 supports Lewis Hamilton “completely” in his recent involvement in anti-racism campaigning, according to the sport’s managing director of motorsport, Ross Brawn.

In the wake of the murder of George Floyd by a white police officer in the United States, Hamilton has posted a number of strong anti-racism messages on his social media channels expressing his outrage at racial injustice and discrimination.

Hamilton has been backed by his Mercedes team and fellow drivers and Brawn says that F1 also fully supports the six-time world champion’s stand against racism.

“I think Lewis is a great ambassador for the sport, and I think his comments are very valid and we support him completely,” Brawn said on Sky Sports F1.

“We support totally what Lewis has said. What happened [to Floyd] was dreadful, it happens far too often.

“And you’ve seen the public reaction to it, it’s almost the straw that broke the camel’s back, and we support [Hamilton] totally.”

Brawn stressed F1 is trying to do more to help increase diversity in the sport and revealed a plan of action to address the problem, starting at a grassroots level.

“We as F1 have recognised for a few years now that we want to strengthen our diversity, and 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 very beginning. It’s at grassroots level.

“And it even starts in the schools with the appeal for STEM topics – science technology engineering maths. And how can we get involved in that.

“So we’ve been involved in F1 in Schools now. We’ve 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 that get involved in that – 40% of the kids that get involved in F1 in Schools are girls. So that’s a good start. And it’s an international competition, so we get competitors from all groups.

“We’re looking very strongly at how we can support the grassroots racing level. I spent the last weeks and months working with a group to look at how we can have a really, really basic karting initiative to get kids involved in karting at a very early stage.”