World champion Lewis Hamilton reacted sharply to the statements made by former Formula One boss Bernie Ecclestone regarding racism. These are “ignorant and uneducated”, wrote the six-time champion on Instagram: “If someone who has been involved in the sport for decades understands so little about the deep-rooted problems that we black people have to deal with every day, how can we help them? People below him expect to understand it. It starts at the top. “
Ecclestone said in a CNN interview that blacks are in many cases more racist than whites. As an explanation for his claim, Ecclestone cited things that “have occurred to him over the years”. Ecclestone praised Hamilton’s commitment to racism, but rejected the allegation of discrimination in Formula One. Hamilton, who had recently campaigned for the “Black Lives Matter” movement, sees the comments of the long-time boss as confirmation of “how far we still have to go as a society before there is real equality”. In his view, it now makes sense “that nothing was said or done to make my sport more diverse or to address the cases of racial discrimination against me during my career”.
Formula 1 immediately distanced itself from Ecclestone’s words. “At a time when unity is needed to fight racism and inequality, we absolutely disagree with Bernie Ecclestone’s statements that have no place in Formula 1 or in society,” said a statement by the Premier class.
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