Lewis Hamilton says he welcomes protestors and activists in Formula 1 but doesn’t want to see them interrupt proceedings.
Last year’s British Grand Prix was marred by protestors getting onto the track with the return to Silverstone coming up after the Austrian round this weekend. Other high-profile events to be affected by protestors include the World Snooker Championships, the Grand National and even Formula E’s recent event in Berlin.
On Wednesday 28 June at Lord’s, England cricketer Jonny Bairstow had to carry a protestor off the field himself in the second Ashes test after a trio of people ran onto the pitch to deposit orange dry paint, but Hamilton still wants people to be loud in expressing their opinions on major issues.
“I welcome protestors or activists,” Hamilton told the media ahead of the Austrian GP. “Always had a really positive change we just don’t want to see them on the track.
“That’s part of the conversation and the dialogue and sometimes things are not done in the right way as a part of change.
“We need change, we need to become more sustainable, there are always things we need to do more of but I hope we don’t have the same scenario as we had last year.”
Progress… Finally
Hamilton is the first to admit that while some performance was found with Mercedes‘ previous ideology, a big change was desperately needed for performance purposes.
Even though the path has been re-routed this year, the W14 is still not where the drivers want it but Hamilton believes the new upgrades could make a difference.
“We did bring a lot of upgrades last year and we found some performance but we found with this generation of cars, finding performance is not easy,” Hamilton added.
“Finally this year we’ve started to make changes to the car that actually improve the car and we’ve taken a step in the right direction but it’s not completely to where we want it.”
