Mercedes boss Toto Wolff has challenged others in Formula 1 to make a “really meaningful” financial contribution to anti-racism causes, as the team holds a charity auction to support the foundation it launched with Lewis Hamilton.
Seven-time world champion Hamilton is the only Black driver in F1 history and has stepped up anti-racism and diversity campaigning in recent years.
He launched the Hamilton Commission with the Royal Academy of Engineering (RAE), which sought to understand the reasons for the lack of BAME representation in motorsport, then set up his own foundation called Mission 44 and launched an initiative together with Mercedes called Ignite.
On Thursday ahead of the British Grand Prix, Mercedes and Hamilton announced the first recipients of seed money from Ignite – half a million pounds awarded to Motorsport UK and the RAE, which respectively aim to help increase female participation in grassroots motorsport and focus on Masters-level motorsport engineering scholarships for Black students.
That announcement came in a week that it emerged Hamilton had been racially abused by three-time world champion Nelson Piquet in late 2021, and on a day former F1 boss Bernie Ecclestone criticised Hamilton for not ‘brushing it off’.
“I think we’re just living in a time where there’s been a lot of people that have said they’re supportive through these last couple of years, but a lot of [it is] lip service, and we are not doing that,” said Wolff.
“We’re actually about action. We’re putting our money where our mouth is.
“So, I’m really proud. I think we need to get everyone on board to do something, because we can’t do it alone.”
Hamilton has put £20million of his own money into Mission 44, while Ignite has a multi-million-dollar fund created by Hamilton and the Mercedes team – which stemmed from his negotiations with Wolff over a new contract for 2021.
Mercedes also has its own project called Accelerate 25, which aims to increase the number of people from underrepresented groups in its F1 team.
“I think what we’ve launched, we’ve put the money where our mouth is,” said Wolff.
“We have put $6.2million into Ignite, that Lewis personally committed and the team.
“So it’s not small. And then we have partners like IWC with an immediate reaction – ‘OK, I’m part of this, the first thing we’re going to do is we’re going to take one watch, we’re going to auction it, and this goes right into Ignite’.
“And for sure, it’s not the last thing we’ve done together in that project.
“It’s not only talking, especially putting money in and setting standards that hopefully others will follow.
“Because we are so much in our little microcosmos here, everybody from the other teams in their little pursuit, but we’ve got to do something.
“This is a global platform and we need to utilise it.”
Asked if other teams needed to do more of this, Wolff said: “I think so, yes. Because each of us can make a contribution.
“We are in a sport that generates billions of dollars of revenue and hundreds of millions of revenue for each of the teams.
“The drivers are millionaires, and everybody’s, like, hiding away. When we should be role models and saying we are actually really doing something rather than saying ‘we are working on it, and yes, we are against discrimination and we are against racism’.
“That’s great, but you can afford it to do something that’s really meaningful.
“What we’re doing here is real money. And I think that hopefully we can trailblaze for the community overall in doing something.
“Because I’m not aware, apart from Instagram posts, [that] anybody’s done anything else.”
Ignite will also be the beneficiary of a charity auction held this weekend, with Mercedes and its partner IWC hoping to raise a six-figure sum from selling a rare watch.
The watch is one that IWC made in collaboration with Wolff, is numbered 50 out of 100 and is the last available. IWC has also announced an annual €50,000 donation towards Ignite.
Chris Grainger-Herr, the CEO of IWC, said the auction was not a reaction to this week’s events, calling it “timely” but the result of something “planned from the beginning” designed to contribute funds to the team’s diversity and inclusivity causes.
“If we don’t actively pursue that, nothing is going to change,” he said.
“Because we’ll all turn around and say we don’t actively discriminate, we don’t do this, we don’t do that – but ultimately, if we don’t put the firepower and the funds and the human resource behind bringing about change it’s not going to happen.
“A project like that which gives visibility, but where every single cent in the end goes into the charitable foundation, that hopefully makes a little bit easier that job of bringing about change that Lewis is quite rightly fighting for every day.”
