© Steve Etherington for Mercedes-Benz Grand Prix Ltd.
Lewis Hamilton discusses his push for equality and racial justice, and recalls how he came up with his 2021 T-Shirt poem.
During 2021 race weekends Lewis Hamilton has worn T-Shirts with printed messages that are a part of a larger poem. For this Lewis collaborated with a young up-and-coming Black designer and George the Poet, a Peabody award-winning British spoken-word artist, poet and rapper.
“It was just before the beginning of the season and I was thinking, we’ve gone through a period, Black Lives Matter, taking a knee, what’s the next step and how do we continue to spark conversation?” Hamilton explained to Sky Sports F1’s Rachel Brookes.
“And so I came up with this idea – how about working with some up-and-coming Black designers to create the shirts, and then work with a young Black British poet and come up with something meaningful, and by the end of the year we’ll have a real story to tell.
“And that’s what it’s about, it’s about a story and sparking that conversation. Because we go from one race to another, and people are talking less perhaps about Black Lives Matter and inclusivity.
“But we’ve got to keep that at the tip of people’s tongues because that’s still a conversation that needs to be had. Things haven’t been fixed; we’ve got to fix it.
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“It’s all well and good the sport talking about end racism, about diversity and inclusion, sustainability and all these things, but we’ve got to make sure we’re actually following through with these things.
“That takes lots of conversation. I feel like we’ve got to take our audience on that too, because we can all keep learning.”
Lewis also reveals what he wants to accomplish before he retires from Formula 1.
“What will make me proud is when I leave this paddock, to really see this journey of taking action, seeing more women here, seeing more people of colour here, seeing it more reflective of the outside world and see it continue to progress.
“That’s what will make me proud. I’ve already seen that within my team and I’m already seeing that here.
“One thing that I experienced, when we started coming out of lockdown we started going back to the factory, I walked in and I saw the marketing department. A bigger team than I’d ever seen before, a more diverse than I’d ever seen.
“I was really, really shocked and it was really emotional for me because most often you’re the only person of colour in the room and you always wonder why,” concluded the Briton.
