Lewis Hamilton Reveals Hopes for Fine Paid for Sitting Out FIA Gala

It doesn’t matter if you are the seven-time world champion, the rules are the same for everyone. The FIA will fine Lewis Hamilton for missing the FIA Gala last season.

Lewis Hamilton failed to lift his record-breaking eighth world championship last season after losing to Max Verstappen in the Abu Dhabi finale. Many believed that the Silver Arrow driver lost because of race director Michael Masi’s controversial decision.

Furthermore, not winning the eighth title must have been heart-breaking for Hamilton; therefore, he didn’t attend the FIA Prize-Giving Gala. Because of his absence, the FIA might penalize Hamilton. The Briton is willing to pay the fine for his behavior. That said, Hamilton would like this money to go into helping unprivileged youth access motorsports engineering.

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“There will be some sort of fine r.e. the [FIA] gala, but we’ll work together to make sure the money will be put together towards youth from underprivileged backgrounds getting into motorsports engineering,” Hamilton shared in Bahrain.

Lewis Hamilton wants F1 to be transparent

The FIA will have a meeting in the race week in Bahrain, where they will discuss the Abu Dhabi incident. Moreover, the Mercedes driver Hamilton met with FIA president Mohammed Ben Sulayem and the two talked about the Abu Dhabi race. The FIA president talked about the inquiry report of the Abu Dhabi race. Hamilton shared that FIA will publicly release those reports for fans. And it was evident that he was a fan of transparency.

Hamilton shared, “I had a good meeting with Mohammed and there is a report. We agreed that it’s important to have transparency. People will get to see this and know that the sport is moving in the right direction.”

“[I’m] looking forward to seeing it come out and for people to know that the sport is transparent and we are learning from what happened in the past and we’ll make improvements moving forward,” Lewis continued.

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Currently, the seven-time world champion is in Bahrain for the season-opener. Although the driver previously revealed after pre-season testing that Mercedes isn’t ready to win Bahrain. However, the German constructor had a similar scenario last season too. They had poor pre-season testing and then won the first race in Bahrain last season.

Fans should keep their eyes on the nail-biting season-opener in Bahrain on Sunday; it will be thrilling to see whether Lewis Hamilton will win or lose the first race.