Lewis Hamilton’s response to the racist phrases uttered by Nelson Piquet at the end of last year and which became public in the last few hours was not long in coming.
The three-time world champion in commenting to the microphones of a Brazilian media on the events that characterized the last British GP – and specifically the contact between Max Verstappen and Hamilton himself at the Copse – used racist expressions towards the driver of Mercedes.
The reaction came immediately from Formula 1, the FIA and Mercedes itself who, through their social profiles, expressed their contempt for the language adopted by Nelson Piquet by siding alongside the seven-time world champion.
Lewis Hamilton, Mercedes W13
Photo by: Steve Etherington / Motorsport Images
Hamilton himself wanted to be heard using his Twitter profile. Lewis, at first commented with a simple “Imagine” a tweet of a user who read: “What would have happened if Lewis Hamilton had written ‘who the f *** is Nelson Piquet’?” and shortly after, tweeting in Portuguese so as to immediately make it clear to whom his message was addressed, he wrote: “Let’s focus on the change of mentality.”
It wasn’t long before the Mercedes driver wrote again taking a clear stance on the incident.
“It’s not just about language. These archaic mentalities must change and have no place in our sport. I have been surrounded by these attitudes and targeted all my life. There was a long time to learn. The time has come to act “.
After the killing of George Floyd in the United States in 2020 Lewis Hamilton has become a leading voice in the fight against racism. Lewis set up the Hamilton Commission which conducted a report on the representation of people of color in motorsport. The report found that only 1% of F1 employees were from black backgrounds.
Together with Mercedes, Hamilton launched the Ignite charity last summer, a joint initiative to support greater diversity and inclusion that works in tandem with Lewis’s Mission 44 personal foundation.
There have been many teams that have expressed their support for Hamilton through social profiles. Scuderia Ferrari tweeted: “We stand alongside F1, Lewis Hamilton and the Mercedes AMG-F1 against all forms of discrimination”, while Aston Martin added: “We stand alongside Lewis Hamilton and all those who in all the world are affected by racism or discrimination of any kind. There is no room for this repugnant behavior in our sport or in our society. “
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