Formula 1 has extended its funding commitment to its Engineering Scholarship programme through 2025.
The scholarships were launched last year, aimed at increasing diversity within motorsport, and it was initiated by a donation of $1m from Non-Executive Formula 1 Chairman Chase Carey.
So far 10 students have begun placements in engineering degrees at universities in the United Kingdom and Italy, and each scholarship covers the full cost of tuition and living expenses for the duration of the course.
On Tuesday it was announced that the programme has been extended from 2022 through 2025, allowing scholarships to be offered to 10 more students each year.
Formula 1 is also working with the Black Collective of Media in Sport and The Blair Project to offer apprenticeships and internships across the sport.
“We are committed to increasing diversity and opportunity within this incredible sport and I am pleased to confirm that we will be expanding our programme for scholars until 2025, providing fantastic opportunity for some incredibly talented students to begin their journeys with Formula 1,” said CEO Stefano Domenicali.
“We want to continue to ensure that talent from underrepresented groups has meaningful opportunities, with the first ten scholars already beginning their studies following Chase’s incredible donation to fund the scholars in their first year.
“We want to continue and build on the foundations of the programme in the years ahead.”
The photo for this article is ridiculously cringey and so transparently phony. Look at how carefully calculated it is by cramming every skin color and gender they could find, just like every commercial on TV today. I would bet anything before entering this program, most these people couldn’t have told you the difference between F1 and IndyCar, if they even knew what either of those were. And in the future, just how many life-long white Europeans who live and breathe F1 will lose out on a chance in the sport just because their skin isn’t dark enough? We are seeing this same problem in other areas of the world right now, for example white kids are having to lie and claim to be non-white just to get into a university (over 70% in the US had to do this last year because universities have to meet new racial quotas or else they lose funding). These types of staged politics are what will lead to F1 finally crumbling and abandoning it’s core audience, just as we are seeing with other sports and entire industries.
F1 has never had a diversity problem. F1 does now however have a tokenism problem.
I agree entirely with your assessment and description of the situation.