Hamilton would swap seventh F1 world title for diversity change

Lewis Hamilton says he would happily trade a seventh Formula 1 world championship to be successful in his push for greater diversity in the sport. 

Hamilton has the opportunity to equal Michael Schumacher’s all-time record, which has stood unrivalled for 16 years, if he wins this year’s world championship. The Briton currently holds a 30-point lead over Red Bull’s Max Verstappen after the opening five races.  

But Hamilton, who is also on target to beat Schumacher’s wins record of 91 victories this season, is combining his quest for a seventh world title alongside the global campaign against racism and to improve diversity in F1, with the six-time world champion stating that 2020 is the “most important year” of his life. 

“When you retire from racing and you have one or two, or god knows how many world championships, what does it really mean?” Hamilton said in an interview with the official Formula 1 website. 

“It doesn’t mean anything. It’s what you do with it. It’s the impact that you can have with it that really means something. 

“I feel like I would be doing a disservice to my people, to my family, to my followers if I didn’t… Okay go and win these races and yes we can have a good time and be uplifting, but over here we can drive this message of change, and that’s how I am.” 

Asked if he would swap a seventh world title to ensure that change happened, Hamilton replied: “Sure”. 

The 35-year-old explained how his boyhood idol, three-times world champion Ayrton Senna, has inspired his desire to have a lasting impact and legacy on the sport. 

“As you get older, you empathise more, you start to understand people and everyone going through their own journey,” he said. “I watched Ayrton as a youngster and I definitely, as a kid, didn’t understand or could appreciate where he was in life because I hadn’t been there.

“He had such a huge impact, he moved the whole nation. And not only a nation, but people around the world, touched me so deeply and motivated me to want to go and do what he did.

“Now I’m of a similar age to him when he passed and I’m more aware of my surroundings and I see everything that’s happening around the world. And what I don’t know, what we don’t know, is how how many days we have left. I don’t assume that I’m going live to 90 years old. So I want to make sure I maximise every single day.”

Hamilton has been at the forefront of F1’s campaign against racism and to increase diversity in the sport this year and has founded his own commission with the aim of doing exactly that.

“If I was to have retired a year ago maybe nothing would have changed,” he explained. “But what I love to see right now is there is this awakening. Still not everyone, you still have a lot of these teams that are not saying anything and holding themselves accountable, there’s still a lot of people out there, but it’s finding the balance in how you engage those people.

“I hope in 10 years - I don’t want it to be 20 years’ time - I hope in a short space of time we can see change. Already you’ve seen Chase [Carey] and the sport, you’re seeing Jean [Todt] who I’ve had a chat with who’s hired a lady from Jamaica who is now working on the diversity campaign for the FIA, so you’re seeing things.

“But we need to stay on them. And that’s, I guess, part of my job being here. And that means more to me because if I’m able to look back in years’ time and think ‘Yeah, I won championships, but I helped, I was a part of helping shift the outlook of the sport and making it more accessible to people all over the world’, I think that would be a great thing to be a part of.”