{"id":1984,"date":"2021-03-15T10:09:46","date_gmt":"2021-03-15T10:09:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thewitnessexet.wpengine.com\/?p=1984"},"modified":"2021-03-16T17:00:08","modified_gmt":"2021-03-16T17:00:08","slug":"formula-1-weraceasone-conditions-may-apply","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thewitnessexeter.co.uk\/?p=1984","title":{"rendered":"Formula 1: #WeRaceAsOne, conditions may apply"},"content":{"rendered":"
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2020 saw a great deal of things happen: wildfires, a pandemic, Trump losing the election. Another thing that happened was a whole host of global brands making anti-racism pledges, promising to do more to have a positive impact. One such brand was Formula 1.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Formula One happens to have an established history of\nracism, mostly\nfrom the fans themselves, and also mostly targeted at Lewis Hamilton<\/a>.\nHowever, where F1 hasn\u2019t necessarily explicitly denied opportunities based on\nrace, they haven\u2019t ever really done much to address the racial inequalities in\naccess to motorsports that stop many black drivers from having access to the\nsport.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As part of the We Race As One campaign in 2020, Formula One started to speak up more on racism, however, this was done very inconsistently at best, and not at all at worst. #WeRaceAsOne saw drivers kneel before each race, record a video saying they oppose racism, and plaster a rainbow over a lot of promotional material<\/a>. What this campaign didn\u2019t see was any commitment to actually addressing the race-based issues in F1, instead, Lewis Hamilton stepped up and did everything that Formula One should\u2019ve been doing. The Hamilton Commission<\/a> aims to increase representation of black people in UK motorsport by identifying the barriers to entry and provide solutions to them. If one driver can set up all of that, you\u2019d surely think that Formula One as a whole could do better than a few rainbow stickers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Instead of supporting Hamilton\u2019s advances in anti-racism, they instead have fought him on it. Notably, they created a whole new rule<\/a> just to ban him from wearing a Breonna Taylor t-shirt, which he wore with the intention of highlighting human rights issues.<\/a> Lewis Hamilton has been practically tackling racism and using his platform to amplify the voices of people like Breonna Taylor, whereas Max Verstappen was accused by the country of Mongolia<\/a> of racism after using a racial slur, and yet only one of these drivers faced any negative outcome, and it wasn\u2019t the racist one.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Formula One isn\u2019t only demonstrably racist, the sport also\nhas a problem with sexism that persists to this day. There\u2019s the obvious issue\nof there not being a single female F1 driver at the moment, but there\u2019s also a\nmassive problem where the women who do have a role in motorsport get criticised\ndisproportionately for any minor issue, where men in the same role are fine.\nFor example, former Williams team principal Claire Williams has been criticised\nfor bringing her child to races<\/a>, with fans acting like that somehow has an\nimpact on the performance of the team. This is despite the fact that most of\nthe other team principals also have children. Similarly, Susie Wolff, former\nWilliams reserve driver, shared that she was too embarrassed to even share some\nof her experiences with F1 sexism because it makes\nthe sport look bad<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Once again, there are attempts by individuals to address\nthis, but next to nothing from F1 themselves. In particular, Susie Wolff\nestablished Dare\nTo Be Different<\/a> to encourage more girls to gain an interest in motorsports.\nAdditionally, W\nSeries was established as a women-only racing series similar to F3 to create\nmore places for women in motorsport<\/a>, highlighting the talent of female\ndrivers like Jamie Chadwick. However, there is still a lack of effort being put\nin from the top of F1, which arguably slows down progress massively.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

More than just slowing down progress, F1 have actually recently actively taken steps backwards, by adding Saudi Arabia to the calendar. They already go to China, Bahrain, and Azerbaijan, so F1 were already ignoring human rights issues in their calendar, but the fact that the Saudi Arabia announcement came after a whole season of the #WeRaceAsOne campaign has solidified the fact that F1 have to concrete commitment to any social cause. Saudi Arabia offered the most money and have a lot to gain from sportswashing, so of course, F1 could overlook human rights issues.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Additionally, F1 are also gaining a driver who was recorded sexually harassing a woman<\/a> at a party and are seemingly doing nothing to punish him for his actions, despite many fans sharing that they feel unsafe and uncomfortable having him in the sport. It isn\u2019t even as if it could be argued that Mazepin is a particularly talented driver, given that he only finished fifth in the 2020 F2 championship, meaning that excluding Mick Schumacher, there are three drivers who can be seen as better placed to take up a seat in F1. For example, Callum Ilott has been left without a seat despite finishing second. Even if he had won the championship, his success shouldn\u2019t excuse his actions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Overall, #WeRaceAsOne is an ideal that F1 completely fails\nto live up to, and responsibility for any progress at all is consistently being\nplaced on individuals within the sport do to things that realistically need to\nhave a response from the sport as a whole. A commitment has been made to continue\nthe campaign in 2021<\/a>, with new initiatives like an intern programme and\nsupporting female participation, though information on these ideas is scarce so\nit is unclear how great this commitment will be, especially when considering\nthat F1 with not only going to Saudi Arabia, but also now has a driver who sexually\nharassed someone on camera.<\/p>\n

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2020 saw a great deal of things happen: wildfires, a pandemic, Trump losing the election. Another thing that happened was a whole host <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":1985,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,30],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1984","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-featured","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thewitnessexeter.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1984","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thewitnessexeter.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thewitnessexeter.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thewitnessexeter.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thewitnessexeter.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1984"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/thewitnessexeter.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1984\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thewitnessexeter.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/1985"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thewitnessexeter.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1984"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thewitnessexeter.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1984"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thewitnessexeter.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1984"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}