Lewis Hamilton ready to DEFY ban on F1 drivers making political statements

LEWIS HAMILTON will defy the FIA ban on drivers making political and personal statements.

Hamilton launched the new Mercedes car for 2023 as he prepares for his 17th season in F1.

He was quizzed on the FIA’s controversial decision to change the rulebook to allow them to punish drivers who make protests or statements without prior approval.

This week, Lando Norris called on the FIA to rethink the rules, claiming that F1 drivers are not school children, and Hamilton says it will NOT stop him from highlighting causes that are important to him.

He said: “It doesn’t surprise me. But nothing will stop me from speaking on the things that I’m passionate about, and on issues that there are.

“The sport does have a responsibility still to speak out, to create awareness on important topics, particularly as we travel to all these different places. So nothing changes for me.”

When asked if he was willing to accept a penalty for ignoring the ban, he added: “It would be silly to say that I would want to get penalty points for speaking out on things.

“But I am still going to be speaking my mind. We still have this platform and there are still a lot of things we need to tackle.”

“The support from Stefano [Domenicali – F1 CEO] has been amazing. All of the drivers have been very much aligned on freedom of speech.”

Mercedes have unveiled an all-black race car for this season as the team has tried to keep weight at a minimum by leaving the carbon fibre unpainted.

After a difficult season last year where Hamilton went winless for the first time in his F1 career, both he and Mercedes are hoping to be able to take the fight to Red Bull this season.

Hamilton again hinted that he would like to extend his contract with Mercedes, which expires at the end of the year, but says that having a competitive car is not a deal-breaker.

He added: “I don’t feel like I need them to prove to me. We’ve proved time and time again over the years that we have strength in depth.

“We still have all these incredibly talented individuals within the team, you don’t lose that ability.”

“There’s the best harmony within the team that I’ve seen in all these years, and we’ve got a really fresh young group of engineers.”

“So it’s an exciting time for the team and I don’t plan on being anywhere else.”

Hamilton was asked about the prospect of joining Sir Jim Ratcliffe’s bid to buy Manchester United.

The seven-time F1 champion was part of a consortium that failed in an attempt to buy Chelsea.

Ratcliffe’s company, INEOS is a one-third equal shareholder in the F1 team alongside Mercedes-Benz AG and Toto Wolff, but Hamilton says he has not had too much information on the attempt to buy United.

Complete F1 2023 race calendar – every Grand Prix from this year

He said: “I’m very close with Jim so I’m aware of where he is at and we talk a lot about football as he’s very passionate about it. We have great discussions about whatever his team is doing.

“We talk about how Arsenal is playing, obviously, he’s from Manchester so that’s his dream home, it’s where he’s come from, but there’s no further information I can give you on that.”

Meanwhile, Wolff said the black livery was poignant given Mercedes’ origins in motorsport.

He said: “When you look at where the story of the Silver Arrows came from, it is that the Mercedes was put on track and was painted white but it was overweight.

“They scratched off the paint and it ended up in aluminium and the car made the weight.”

“We really tried to get the weight off the car so we committed to [reducing] the grams by leaving the car in matte carbon.

“So history repeats itself, just in this case, it is modern materials like carbon and not aluminium. It just came together and it feels right.”

Meanwhile, George Russell says the team’s goal for this season is simply to win the championship.

Russell, who turned 24 on the day of the launch, said: “Knowing how last season panned out and the challenges we had with the car, I think we can be pretty proud of the job we did.”

“There were a lot of positives to take away from that season. The reliability of the car was great. The strategy on many occasions was really, really strong.”

“In the personal learnings we all went through and the technical learnings, that’s all gone into [this year’s] car.

“We’re all here to win. It’s as simple as that. The motivation and the fire within our factory is immense because people don’t want a repeat of what happened in 2022.”