Hamilton: Mercedes team photo shows still 'long way to go' in diversity drive

Lewis Hamilton believes there is "still a long way to go" beforeFormula 1 meets its diversity goals. The seven-time World Championset up the Hamilton Commission, which produced a report in 2020after 10 months of research which identified barriers to therecruitment and progression of black people in UK motorsport. F1itself revealed details of how it plans to improve diversity in thechampionship as part of their 'We Race as One' campaign, which ranacross the 2020 season. Engineering Scholarships in F1 were madeavailable for students from "underrepresented groups" as part ofthe plan, while several other plans were outlined as part of theinitiative. But Hamilton still feels there is a long way to gobefore these commitments are delivered, pointing towards a recentteam photo when speaking to media, including RacingNews365 , aboutthe matter. "It's been a long process that started really here in2019. I'm not going to lie we did a team photo, I was looking andI'm like 'Damn, we still have so much work to do' there is threepeople of colour [in the photo]. There are a lot more [in thebackground], but that needs to shift. "If I contrast that to 2019I'm going to be pretty sure that it's not moved anywhere near asmuch as it should have. So the challenge is going see how we shiftthat." Hamilton: We're creating a future pipeline Hamilton believesmuch of the work to improve diversity needs to be done usinggrassroots initiatives, which is why he launched the Ignite charityto promote science, technology, education and maths for youngpeople. "The work that I'm doing is really targeting kids andcreating a future pipeline," said Hamilton. "It starts fromgrassroots. It's been really great to see the team finally comingtogether and starting to see that we're starting to have realimpact. "It makes me really proud, we were in Austin and we had theyoung women come and in UK we had a real diverse group of kidscome. "It was really cool to be in a position to open up the doorfor these kids to see what is possible, spark interest and createdreams that they perhaps never thought that were possible. "So I'mexcited for the future, it's just a long slog."