In 2019, Lewis Hamilton took a photo with the Mercedes team in Abu Dhabi on the night of the final Grand Prix of the season. The British pilot later realized that he was the only black person in the photo, and as he explained in the Wall Street Journal, it made him feel sad that he was fighting for diversity.
Lewis Hamilton did not realize this at the time. Obviously, at the end of the 2019 Formula One season, the British driver took a photo with all the Mercedes team staff, which allowed him to win his sixth world championship title. One of the photos was taken by the official F1 Instagram account. At that time, the star saw the obvious: he was the only black person in the photo.
“I magnified it. I stayed there for 14 or 15 years. Why hasn’t anything changed? I’m really sad. Depressed and sad”, confided Lewis Hamilton In an interview announced on Wednesday Wall Street Journal Magazine.
“Why am I the only black pilot to break through?”
Because of his impressive dominance in the main disciplines of motorsports, Lewis Hamilton speaks loudly and clearly against racism and discrimination. This made him doubt the diversity of himself and F1. According to a study by the British National Academy of Engineering, less than 1% of people participating in Formula One are black. “Why am I the only black pilot to break through?” “Ask the champion.
Before becoming the spokesperson of the F1 Black Lives Matter movement, Lewis Hamilton had to make up his mind to take it up in the past.Also in this interview Wall Street JournalHe remembered the 2008 Spanish Grand Prix. The audience made a black face (face painted black) and wrote “The Hamilton Family” on their T-shirts. “I remember the pain I felt that day, he recalled, according to Daily mail. But I didn’t say anything. I do not have. No one said anything. I have seen people stay silent”.