Aston Martin’s F1 team has announced a partnership with LGBTQ + representative Racing Pride to bring their logo to the teams’ cars for the French Grand Prix for Pride Month. It’s not the first time the Pride Rainbow has been seen during a Grand Prix weekend (Holden Commodore drove it as a paint job in a support race in 2017), but it’s the first time on a real F1 car and an extremely welcome sight to explicitly support LGBTQ + people in motorsport and worldwide.
F1 as a series has sent seriously mixed messages about pride. Last year it made a rainbow “We Race As One” which supposedly shows the collective efforts of teams to support key forces in the fight against COVID-19. it was more of a mix of team colors than the rainbow of pride. It was a mess of a diversity initiative that went so far as to not represent LGBTQ + people. McLaren went a step further, however, by putting a neon version of the proper pride rainbow on their cars (and drivers), but there was still a bit of muttering that it was for medical staff more than what it was? has been a pitifully underrepresented group in motorsport for decades. McLaren kept the rainbow on its racing suits, but the series as a whole has given up its cumbersome repurposing and is making way for the Racing Pride logo to show what it actually means.
Therefore, it is extremely important that Aston Martin’s partnership with Racing Pride is specifically designed to represent LGBTQ +. No kidding, it’s not just a logo, this is the team that comes out saying they support LGBTQ + equality and are working with Racing Pride to promote more inclusion and diversity within their organization.
The team’s communications director, Matt Bishop, is openly gay and wrote when he first worked in Formula One last year a driver called him a “fat f * got”. Although Bishop tells it with distinctive humor and candor, it is now very good to see Aston Martin drivers being quoted in the specific, open support of LGBTQ + people.
“I want to help highlight the positive message of inclusion and acceptance,” said four-time F1 champion Sebastian Vettel in a press release. “I congratulate the people who drove the discussion that led to broader inclusion; but I also understand that more needs to be done to change attitudes and remove much of the remaining negativity.”
“It’s great to see Aston Martin support this problem – there is a long way to go, but I’m really excited that we can play a positive role,” added Vettel.
There was only one known gay driver in Formula 1; Mike Beuttler, who competed in the early 1970s and tragically fell victim to the AIDS crisis in 1988. The only female driver in F1, Lella Lombardi to score a (half) point, was a lesbian, but there have been no open drivers since Beuttler and Lombardi, who both stopped racing over 40 years ago.
There are a lot of wrong thoughts about it; that an open LGBTQ + racer, for example, would lose sponsors, as if the size of the global brands featured in Formula 1 could get away with dumping someone because of homosexuality or transsexuality. The motorsport media need to take some degree of responsibility for the hostile environment towards LGBTQ + individuals, but it is also true that it is more convenient for the majority of people in Formula One not to have to think about inclusion to keep doing their job to do.
F1 races in several countries (Russia, Saudi Arabia) where homosexuality is illegal and others (Great Britain, where most of the teams are based, and Azerbaijan, where the Grand Prix is held this weekend) where LGBTQ + – Rights have experienced serious challenges in recent years. Undoubtedly there are LGBTQ + people who work in sports; Bishop is great, prominent evidence of this, and Aston Martin’s newest driver signing, Jessica Hawkins, has an extremely “life goals” relationship with her racing driver Abbie Eaton. But it’s rare that it is spoken of with real pride outside of the small, openly LGBTQ + motoring community.
So it’s very cool that this isn’t just a sticker – Aston Martin will be posting things celebrating the LGBTQ + motorsport community with Racing Pride inclusive workshops and reviews throughout the month. And it’s going to get it on the cars right there, on a Grand Prix track, so people like me don’t have to hide in the sport.
Are you celebrating the pride month on your racing car? Email me at [email protected]
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