F1 working at 'grassroots racing level' to improve diversity

Formula 1 managing director Ross Brawn says the sport is seeking to address its lack of diversity by tackling the problem at racing's "grassroots level".

The clamors and protests in the past week over racial injustice following the murder at the hands of a US police officer of George Floyd have brought to the forefront once again F1's lack of diversity, a flaw called out again amid the social unrest by six-time world champion Lewis Hamilton.

Brawn qualified Hamilton's comments on social media and the Mercedes driver's support of the 'Black Lives Matter' movement as "very valid", while several of Hamilton's colleagues issued supportive messages on the same theme.

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"I think we as F1 have recognised for a few years now that we want to strengthen our diversity, and our diversity programme, both internally as a company and externally, we started work on this a few years ago," Brawn told Sky Sports F1.

"Our thoughts were that the reason why we don't have more diversity in Formula 1 starts at the very beginning. It starts at grassroots level, and it even starts in schools with STEM topics, science, technology, engineering and maths.

"We've been involved in Formula 1 in Schools. We've become far more involved in the last year or two. And that has a really strong diversity in terms of the kids that get involved in it, 40% of the kids that get involved in Formula 1 in Schools are girls, so that's a good start."

Brawn revealed F1's plans of getting involved at the karting level to promote and improve diversity in the sport.

"We're looking very strongly at how we can support grassroots racing level," said the F1 chief.

"I've spent the last weeks and months working with a group to look at how we can have a really basic karting initiative to get kids involved in karting at a very early stage.

"The fact is that Formula 1 is a very strong meritocracy. It should always be that way, it should always be the best who win.

"We can't force that. But we can give greater opportunity to minority and ethnic groups to get involved in motorsport, not just driving, but engineering, other activities," added the Briton.

"We are helping with these initiatives. Clearly as a company we've got a lot of initiatives in terms of a gender pay gap and looking at other pay gaps within our companies, making sure we're doing everything we can.

"I think Formula 1 is helping, and I think you can see with some of these karting initiatives that we're working on that will be a great opportunity and Formula 1 will support it."

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