Sky Sports F1 film highlights the need for diversity and inclusion in motorsport
Lewis Hamilton with the group of young people and their RC Vision cars
During the live coverage of the Japanese Grand Prix on October 9th 2022, Sky Sports showed a film highlighting the work of RC Vision with a group of young people from South London.
To demonstrate how RC Vision makes a difference the film featured a group of young people from south London visiting Silverstone, racing legend Sir Lewis Hamilton and RC Vision founder Andy Hyde.
Hamilton famously started his motorsport career in radio control car racing. In 1992, aged 6 years old, Hamilton appeared on the BBC show Blue Peter driving a Kyosho ⅛ scale off-road racing car. Speaking 30 years later Hamilton said:
“I was in love with (RC) and my dad couldn't believe that I could do it, he entered us into some local RC races, a little racetrack, and I was the youngest there, by at least 10 years. And it was the most fun thing ever.”
Before surprising the young people to join them for some RC car racing in the Silverstone, Lewis added
“I'm excited for these kids that they're into something like RC because there are so many different things that are attached. If you get into this, you can get into, you know, mechanics and engineering and all sorts to.”
Lewis and the young people went on to race each together on a makeshift RC track, kindly loaned by Eastbourne Electric Car Club, using Xray T4 1/10 scale electric racing cars.
After broadcast during the live race coverage, the Sky team posted the 6-minute film on their YouTube channel. The film quickie went viral in the motorsport and RC community. Sky Sports F1 Assistant Producer Georgina Salder, the project owner within Sky, commented:
“I’m a little emotional right now. It's a nice feeling seeing something you've produced go out live on TV, it's quite nother when it's for such a good cause as RC Vision. I can’t wait to follow up on this and see change happen in this space”.
The full feature can be seen on Sky Sports F1 and on YouTube now.
