Race row puts brakes on F1’s equality drive EX-ASTON MARTIN CONTRACTOR CALLS FOR END TO RACISM IN MOTORSPORT
A FORMER Aston Martin contractor has said more action is needed to tackle racism in motorsport after he was allegedly abused by colleagues.
Aidan Louw, 25, revealed he was repeatedly called the N-word by coworkers at the firm, Sky News reported.
Louw was born in South Africa and is of mixed race.
He added that the abuse started after he joined the company as a laminator, building parts for the cars driven by Sebastian Vettel in February in Silverstone in England.
According to Louw, he was given nicknames from “brownie to darkie”, adding that he was never called his real name by colleagues.
He told the TV channel the abuse included an apartheid-era insult that is also extremely offensive.
When Louw revealed that he had a boyfriend in his teen years, he also suffered homophobic abuse.
“As soon as they found out about that sliver of information, that was it. They were trying to claw me down to break me down as a man, as an individual and a human,” he was quoted as saying by Sky News.
According to the Aston Martin F1 team, Louw’s contract was terminated due to “poor performance” and “poor timekeeping”. It clarified that the termination was not connected to the discrimination he claimed he had experienced, and said the company had a zero-tolerance policy when it came to racism, homophobia and all types of discrimination.
But Louw said his “poor performance” was the result of the abuse he had faced.
He told Sky News he did not want to be seen as a victim and instead was asking for an equal opportunity.
“I don’t want to be viewed as a victim. That’s not who I am, but the fact is this (abuse) is not right – it’s not just me that’s the victim, it’s my community. We’re not asking to be given those opportunities, things to just be dropped on our plate because of ethnic origin or sexual orientation,” he added.
Louw was 16 years old when he started out in motorsport as a cleaner at the Silverstone track. He then went on to work his way up in the F1 supply chain before joining the Williams team, Alpine and then McLaren, the report said.
Earlier, British driver Sir Lewis Hamilton continued to call out incidents of discrimination after reports of a racial slur that former F1 driver Nelson Piquet was accused of using during a podcast.
Last month, Red Bull’s reserve driver Juri Vips was fired after it was found he had posted racist messages online.
During the Austrian Grand Prix earlier this month, some fans reported being racially abused in the stands. There were also reports of sexist and homophobic behaviour from a small number of F1 supporters.