Mercedes F1 cars - the legendary ‘silver arrows’ - are no longer silver. They’re painted black this year. A symbolic gesture of support for the ‘Black Lives Matter’ movement, at Mr Hamilton’s behest.

They will race for the very first time in this new, emblematic non-color this weekend. Mr Hamilton and his team-mate will race in corresponding black overalls this year, as well, and the ‘End Racism’ message will be displayed on both cars.

Mr Hamilton said: "It’s so important that we seize this moment and use it to educate ourselves whether you are an individual, brand or company to make real meaningful changes when it comes to ensuring equality and inclusivity."

Real and meaningful changes when it comes to ensuring equality and inclusivity. These buzzwords are straight from the social justice warrior handbook, I’m pretty sure. To which I would respectfully retort:

Equality and inclusivity are essential for any truly free and enlightened society. Ending racism is an admirable objective. But two black cars and matching jumpsuits, plus a slogan, does not constitute ‘meaningful change’ in this area. It just doesn’t. Or, if it does, I don’t see how. It does not even illuminate a path, in that broad direction, in my estimation.

This new non-colour scheme is hardly a turnaround for repressed groups anywhere. It’s just not. It’s a shallow, virtue-signalling token in my estimation - and you are of course free to make your own determination on this.

Certainly black lives matter. All lives matter. Ending racism is admirable. I got no problem with the theory here - just the execution in this case.

I say this because … well, let’s set the scene. I say it because Mercedes is owned by Daimler AG, in Chermany, which was founded 94 years ago. In 2019 Daimler enjoyed revenue of 173 billion Euros, it produced 3.3 million vehicles and it employed almost 300,000 people.

I find this whole ‘charge towards inclusivity … led by black race cars and matching jumpsuits’ … this F1 sideshow to be unbelievably shallow and incredibly tokenistic because … well, because that’s the board of management of Daimler. Out of 300,000 people on the payroll, these are the six dudes and duos dudettes who rose to the top.

I’m not a sociologist, or a genealogist, or a geneticist, or any other kind of expert on race, heritage or ethnicity, so I could be dead wrong, but as far as the superficial optics go … it seems fair to say that perhaps Daimler could try just a little bit harder to represent, on the ‘diversity’ front, in the boardroom. If they really do care about this issue.

Because they sure as shit seem to be cut from the same cultural cloth to me. Perhaps they are, in fact, the eight best people for the job. Perhaps there is a wide-ranging cultural diversity in the boardroom, which is less than apparent. And perhaps other non-ability-related criteria factored into their selection, because of a latent and less than enlightened defect in the selection process. I’ll leave that to you to debate.

Perhaps this is a challenge to be embraced by the Daimler AG board, once they get society more broadly back on track with those vital black race cars and matching driver jumpsuits. I wish them good luck with that, but i do fear it will be ineffective.

If one wanted to make real change here, vis-a-vis inclusivity, I’d suggest that boardrooms of this nature would not be a bad place to start. So long as the best-qualified people get the job, ultimately.