Lewis Hamilton: Marco’s comments are unacceptable

After the Italian Grand Prix, Red Bull motorsport consultant Helmut Marko explained on Servus TV that Sergio Perez cannot show the same results as Max Verstappen driving an identical car as cultural factors.

The general public condemned Marco for such comments, and the Austrian was forced to apologize – first publicly and then personally to Sergio Perez. In Singapore, the Mexican racer said that this story is a thing of the past for him, but Lewis Hamilton believes that an apology alone is not enough.

Lewis Hamilton: “What he said is completely unacceptable. While we say that there is no place for any discrimination in our sport, people of such status, leaders, allow themselves such comments that harm our progress.

I think an incident like this just shows how much we still have to do. In the background, many are trying to fight such manifestations, but it is difficult to do anything when there are people at the top with such a way of thinking that simply prevents us from making progress. But honestly, I’m not surprised.

I don’t think it’s enough in this case to simply apologize and pretend everything is fine now. We have to do something more. Whenever anyone on a team, especially the riders, says something wrong, the teams always have people who delete those quotes or at least publicly state that the teams do not support that view. Interestingly, none of this happened in this case.

This isn’t about my team, that’s not how we work. This story shows how important it is to continue doing the work I am trying to do with the team and the sport. We still have a lot to do to ensure a more inclusive environment.”