It is no secret that motorsport has a severe race issue (no pun intended), but why even with all the awareness and calls for action, do we still see these despicable acts and displays of racism at even the top flights of the sport?
Racism is deeply rooted in motorsport from the confederate roots of NASCAR to the massive diversity issue within F1, but even after almost a century of the existence of both organizations, we have yet to see an evolution in how these issues are handled.
Lewis Hamilton is massively famous for many reasons whether it be his 100+ career win and poles or his 7 world championships or even his outside business ventures, but it is also no secret that he is the only black F1 driver in the sports history.
In a perfect world, his ethnicity or skin color wouldn’t be an issue to anybody, but we don’t live in a perfect world… unfortunately.
Lewis has been the victim of racist attacks throughout his entire career but for the longest time it was from the fans almost exclusively which, while that is still extremely wrong, it had no bearing on the racing aspect.
That was until recently when former F1 driver and Brazil’s lesser loved stepchild Nelson Piquet sat down for a podcast following the announcement of Lewis gaining dual citizenship to Brazil. In the podcast Piquet called Lewis a derogatory term followed by laughter.
Now, it does not take a specialist to explain how horrific this was and its implications on the topic of race in motorsport because now it’s not only being alienated by fans, but now also by your fellow competitors both current and former.
This incident happened less than a month after F2 driver Juri Vips was suspended by the Red Bull Driver Academy for saying a racial slur like the one used by Piquet while livestreaming with fellow F2 driver Liam Lawson.
Vips was suspended almost immediately after the incident occurred, but he was able to keep his seat with HiTech and was kept by the Academy despite his heinous remarks.
These are just two examples of people with close ties to F1 openly using racial remarks, with one of them even being used to dehumanize a driver who has used his career to make sports more inclusive and facing no real punishment or repercussions for their actions. So, what must change?
One thing that must change is the parties involved have to be held accountable. You can’t just say change has to be made if you hold a position of power, you have to force the changes and put actions into effect that eradicate the issues at hand. Thoughts and prayers can only get an issue so far before actual actions have to be taken and after 70+ years with no change, it’s about time we start to see those actions. Thank you.
Feel free to contribute your opinions and suggestions on what efforts can be made to resolve this issue in motorsport in the comments below.
The Fastest Sector 