In motorsport, cash is still king

One and a half million people watch each Formula One race, and that number is growing. Be it the raw power of the machinery, the intricacy of the engineering, or just the heated drama, Formula One has plenty to offer. In the UK, the sport’s appeal has risen with national stars like Lewis Hamilton, George Russell, and Lando Norris. And Netflix’s popular Drive to Survive series has given those who have never engaged with the sport a new and easy route into its complexity. As polished and fantastic as Formula One may look on the screen, though, there’s another story taking place behind the scenes.

If you examine the current Formula One grid, it is a hotspot of nepotism. Drivers whose dads either own the teams they drive for or give millions in sponsorship to their teams. Drivers who come from a family of steel tycoons or racing giants. Only one driver is a person of colour, and only six were born outside Europe. But it’s not just at the highest level that motor racing has a problem. The high cost of participation—the price of karts, spare parts, helmets, and transport—introduces discrimination from the outset. “I think if I had to start if I was seven again today, I’m not sure I would make it,” said fourtime world champion Sebastian Vettel last year, “just because you need to have the financial backing at a very, very early age.”

As a long-term fan of the sport myself, I want to examine the world of competitive karting and how it has impacted Formula One as its feeder of world-class drivers. To do that, I spoke to members of the University of Birmingham Motor Racing Club (UBMRC), who shared their insight into the price of racing and the idea of equality of opportunity in the sport.

“It’s costly to get into and only goes up as you progress,” club vice-captain Ben Boros told me. His own annual budget for karting reaches £10,000. I’m not convinced many parents can afford to spend that much a year on their children’s hobbies. “The cost limits talent,” Ben agrees, “and sponsorship is rather limited.” So where are all these costs are coming from, and is anything being done to help lower them?

Max Wade is another veteran karter concerned about the cost of access to his sport. “Motorsport UK tries to reduce the costs,” he says, “but it hasn’t worked. In karting, they will allow companies to make new tires that are allowed to be very soft compound, and they cost a fortune because they are so soft, they wear quick, and you have to keep paying for new ones.” These are costs that could be brought down with new regulations, but it’s not happening right now. “There are a few committees out there that have tried,” Ben Boros told me. “Some championships allow for the reuse of tyres, which is much cheaper. But those championships are looked down on by the others.”

Even if you do have the money, there are then the issues of social discrimination. In an interview in 2021, seven-time world champion Lewis Hamilton recalled the racist abuse he encountered at the Spanish Grand Prix in 2008, where fans turned up in blackface and wore t-shirts that labelled them as part of Hamilton’s family. Formula One’s response was… nothing. “No one said anything,” Hamilton recalled. “I saw people continuing in my industry and staying quiet.”

After he finished his race with a blistering pace, I chatted with UMBRC Media officer Nathan Styles about his experience as a person of colour in the karting and motorsport community. What he told me was incredibly insightful. In his four years of competitive karting, he can’t recall meeting another person of colour at events. He wouldn’t have entered the sport himself, he says, without his friends’ encouragement. Not coming from private education made him feel like an outcast in a sport that seemed dominated by “trust fund babies” with “silver spoons in their mouths.” If his family had a spare few thousand pounds to throw at something, Nathan told me, it would be education rather than racing. It’s clear that economic inequality directly shapes the demographics of the sport.

Nathan’s own experience in the sport, though, has been nothing but positive. He’s “never been made feel worse because of my skin,” he says, “or for sometimes being slightly worse than my competitors due to me have less experience.” Still, when I asked about Formula One, his response was simple: “cash is king.” It’s a phrase Lewis Hamilton used back in 2020, shaking the foundations of the sport. Nathan told me to look at the Russian Grand Prix, a circuit that recently had its rights to race revoked by the Federation Internationale de l’Automobile, supposedly over the Russian invasion of Ukraine. But Nathan doesn’t think that’s the real reason. He argues that the other sanctions from world governments on Russia had crippled their economy so much that other countries could outbid them for the race spot. Racing, this line of thinking suggests, is more business than sport. Whoever pays the most is allowed to host a race.

South Africa-born Sarah Smith, the UBMRC social secretary with seven years racing experience, echoed that sentiment. She spoke passionately on how she feels the campaign “We Race as One,” a movement started by Formula One drivers in 2020 to promote equality, is just a façade. “If we race as one,” she says, “then they don’t see Africa as one with them. No races are ever given to any African country anymore. I understand the economic situation in most of Africa, but where I’m from, we certainly have the facilities to hold a race. Just think what good it would do if they let us race now and then.”

Motorsport is expensive. That’s a sad reality of the sport. To start karting, you need the money, and no matter how good you are, the higher level you are, the more you pay. It’s a shame to think of all the talent wasted due to this barrier. But there is some hope we might begin to make this wonderful sport more accessible. Formula One says its mission is to “create a diverse Formula 1 that reflects the world in which we race.” Perhaps they will live up to that goal.

I leave my reader with a message. If you’re interested in motorsports, look out for a young local racer and perhaps help them in any way you can. You can offer them finance, transport, sponsorship, or just a friendly word. This sport lives because of the community’s passion, and that’s something anyone can be part of.