BY FABIO MARANGON AND ALAN DOVE
With heightened concentration in recent months, we have witnessed the declarations of several F1 stars on the high costs of karting. From champions Vettel and Hamilton to our Giovinazzi, their considerations seem unanimous: the costs of access to karting are becoming unapproachable, jeopardizing those who possess the talent but not the resources to run one or more high-level seasons - and even win - before moving on to racing cars. Fresh from his 6th world title, Lewis Hamilton has added to the chorus, referring extensively to his own personal experience and how his father, a common worker (“worker class” the term used by Lewis, ed.) financed the beginnings of his career via enormous economic and family sacrifices. LH dwelt on how today such a path is no longer actually feasible for children of the ‘worker class’, so to speak, suggesting that access to professional status is now a chimera, a prerogative of the young offspring of the planet’s richest families. Given that this is not exactly news, on the one hand we allow ourselves to wonder what drives a character like Hamilton - who has always been a proud ambassador of karting - to expose himself so much in speaking such an obvious truth, and on the other, we also ask what kind of commitment he, and others, intends to put into the karting world to change things.