Though Lewis Hamilton may effectively grow to be the tifosi’s favourite black knight, the seven-time F1 world champion gained’t request a black Ferrari from the Scuderia when he strikes to Maranello subsequent 12 months.
Buying and selling within the glossy silver arrows of Mercedes for the Italian outfit’s prancing horse is a daring transfer in itself, however sure traditions are sacrosanct.
Hamilton has been a vocal advocate for variety and inclusion in F1 and was instrumental in convincing Mercedes to modify from silver to black forward of the 2020 season to advertise the producer’s anti-racism stance and as a part of F1’s wider #WeRaceAsOne marketing campaign.
Mercedes returned to silver in 2022 after which reverted to black final season, basically to save lots of weight. This 12 months, the Brackley outfit’s automobiles characteristic a mixture of each colours.
Nonetheless, Ferrari’s signature pink is as deeply ingrained in F1 historical past because the checkered flag itself.
Due to this fact, a black Ferrari can be a radical departure from custom, and Hamilton clearly understands the importance of the Scuderia’s heritage.
“I haven’t pushed a black automobile for some time, so I most likely gained’t be pushing for that too early on,” the 39-year-old replied when queried on black doubtlessly turning into the brand new pink.
In 1998, Michael Schumacher was seen testing an all-black Ferrari F300 forward of the F1 season.
Nonetheless, Hamilton has each intention of continuous his variety push when he joins Ferrari, in full collaboration with the producer and its president, John Elkann.
“We’ve undoubtedly spoken about influence work and John and the workforce have lots of philanthropy work that they do, so we’ll be working very intently with Mission 44 and with the influence stuff that they’re doing,” he defined.
“I believe inside the sport, we now have to proceed to do extra, however extra outdoors we’ll be doing fairly a bit collectively, in order that’s actually thrilling.”
Fueled by his personal experiences and a need to see a extra inclusive future in motorsport, Lewis Hamilton has by no means been content material with simply profitable races.
In 2021, he took a stand by launching Mission 44, a non-profit group devoted to tackling variety points inside Components 1 and the broader motorsport world.
This wasn’t only a symbolic gesture – Hamilton put his cash the place his mouth was, investing a staggering £20 million of his personal funds to kickstart the initiative.
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