How Hamilton’s commission is aiding diversity in Extreme E · RaceFans

Extreme E teams are broadening the diversity of their staff through a scheme being run with the Hamilton Commission.

The commission was set up by Lewis Hamilton to look into the reasons why certain black people are under-represented in motorsport, and more broadly in science, technology engineering and mathematics subjects, and address them.

Speaking at the launch of McLaren’s Extreme E and Formula E teams yesterday, senior principal race engineer Leena Gade described the efforts made by the off-road series to become more diverse through its work with the Hamilton Commission.

“Extreme E has got two programmes that encourage all of that,” Gade explained. “There’s obviously the element of the drivers, that you have a 50-50 [gender] split.

“But also they partnered with Lewis Hamilton’s organisation to make sure that you’re getting more people in who are coming from diverse backgrounds. And I think that’s not spoken about quite so much.

“Sometimes motorsport can be seen as quite elitist and that there’s only people who have tons of money who get into it, engineering included. But there’s lots of different ways of getting into motorsport and encouraging people from socioeconomic backgrounds that wouldn’t necessarily be the first port of call to go and look for engineers or drivers.

“That’s really important. I think they could probably push that and work more on it because there’s definitely room for making sure that it’s much more inclusive.”

Extreme E imposes strict limits on the number of team staff allowed on-site during events, in order to keep its carbon footprint to a minimum. However teams can supplement their nine on-site staff with a tenth member through the Hamilton Commission scheme.

“At the moment, dealing with the Hamilton Commission, you get to have an extra team member. So instead of having nine, you can have ten because you’re bringing somebody in who wouldn’t normally get the opportunity,” said Gade.

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“Then they’re not just a token gesture coming in, they’re actually there with a function. They are coming from schools or organisations where the Hamilton Commission has been to say ‘think about motorsport as a career’. There’s all these different aspects to it and they’re bringing people in that way.”