Lewis Hamilton, Formula One’s voice and conscience

Editor’s Note: This article was first published ahead of the start of the F1 season in July. “There’s a downhill section on this track into a hairpin bend and there was little Lewis Hamilton, and he was small in those days, coming down, leading the pack of these little karts that sing along like bumblebees and he was just extraordinary even in those days,” David Richards, chairman of Motorsport UK, tells CNN Sport of the first time he saw Hamilton – who was on the same karting team as his son – race. Willy T. Ribbs, the first Black driver to test an F1 car and compete in Indy 500, describes Hamilton as “the band leader.” “He’s broadened the sport worldwide to people of color. This is a sport where the wheels of change turn painfully slowly and, as Hamilton himself has said, “the institutional barriers that have kept F1 highly exclusive persist.” Perhaps it wasn’t too much of a surprise then, that when recently asked by CNN Sport whether F1 should have done more to address the issue of diversity and inclusion, the sport’s former supremo Bernie Ecclestone said: “I don’t think anyone bothered about it before.” In the same interview, Ecclestone said, “Black people are often more racist than White people,” comments F1 condemned and Hamilton described as “sad and disappointing.” “It makes complete sense to me now that nothing was said or done to make our sport more diverse or to address the racial abuse I received throughout my career,” wrote Hamilton in an Instagram post. “That was a sign that he had not just the ability to do that and not have the car spin off the road, but also the confidence to take him on, to say ‘no, I can be ahead of you, I don’t care who you are, I’m going to pass you,’ and he did and he just went on from there and just got better.” Hamilton did not need time to find his feet, finishing championship runner-up in his debut season before becoming, in 2008, the youngest F1 world champion in history as he secured the crown by a point in a dramatic season finale.