Mercedes driver Lewis Hamilton has been left rather disappointed after seeing a team photo from the Silver Arrows paddock ahead of the 2024 season.
The seven-time world champion may be taking an eager role as far as the development of his W15 is concerned, but in the overall scheme of things in F1, he feels there is “still a long way to go”.
Hamilton was left disappointed after feeling underwhelmed at the lack of representation of ethnic minorities in the sport, which is one of the main things he has been striving towards.
Seeing the Mercedes team photo, Hamilton argued that the sport still has a long way to go to fulfil its diversity requirement.
An estimate from the Hamilton Commission, which deals with creating pathways for candidates from ethnic minorities, detailed that less than one per cent of the workforce in F1 is from these minority groups.
“It’s been a long process that started really here in 2019,” said Hamilton.
“I’m not going to lie we did a team photo, I was looking and I’m like ‘Damn, we still have so much work to do’ there is three people of colour [in the photo]. There are a lot more [in the background], but that needs to shift.
“If I contrast that to 2019 I’m going to be pretty sure that it’s not moved anywhere near as much as it should have. So the challenge is going see how we shift that.
Hamilton has been quietly working to tackle this issue at the grassroots level.
Along with Mercedes, he launched the Ignite initiative in July 2021, which works at securing grants for talented individuals from minorities to have a realistic chance of entering motorsport.
“The work that I’m doing is really targeting kids and creating a future pipeline,” Hamilton added. “It starts from grassroots. It’s been really great to see the team finally coming together and starting to see that we’re starting to have real impact.
“It makes me really proud, we were in Austin and we had the young women come and in UK we had a real diverse group of kids come.
“It was really cool to be in a position to open up the door for these kids to see what is possible, spark interest and create dreams that they perhaps never thought that were possible. So I’m excited for the future, it’s just a long slog.”