Hamilton talks about the difficulty of working in motorsport and Formula 1

Lewis Hamilton thinks he wouldn’t have made it to Formula 1 if he had to start his driving career now. The sport has become much more expensive than it was when Hamilton started karting.

This isn’t the first time Hamilton has spoken of the “Billionaire Boys Club”, as he once called it Formula 1. He doesn’t think he would have made it to F1 if he had started karting now. “We won’t be able to get there now if we start where we started,” the Mercedes driver said in an interview with the Guardian.

“I know how hard it is for my dad to get new tires at the weekend for my car. It affected me so hard. I can’t just think, ‘I deserve to be here.’ I can’t miss this opportunity every time I get in the car,” continued Hamilton.

For years, Hamilton has been committed to bringing more ethnic minority people into motorsport. In doing so, it looks beyond twenty drivers on the grid. “There are only twenty seats for passengers. That is not important to me,” he said.

But there are more than 40,000 jobs in motorsports in the UK, and less than 1% are held by people of black origin. Hamilton concluded that there are many opportunities in many different categories, not only in engineering but in other roles as well.