Red Bull technician Calum Nicholas has shed light on a private meeting he held with Lewis Hamilton two years ago.

Hamilton and Red Bull’s star driver, Max Verstappen, built up a sizzling rivalry during their epic Drivers’ Championship battle in 2021. Verstappen prevailed on that occasion and went on to win the next three world titles, with Hamilton still plugging away in search of what would be a record-breaking eighth.

When the feud was at its peak, the sight of a Red Bull employee in any way lending a hand to their Mercedes foes would have been unthinkable. But Nicholas admits he was ‘humbled’ to be consulted by Hamilton about his experiences as an ethnic minority in the paddock.

The seven-time world champion, who now drives for Ferrari, launched the Hamilton Commission in 2021 as a means to research the lack of diversity in motorsport. And Nicholas, as one of the only other black men working in F1, proved to be a valuable sounding board.

“When Lewis first asked if I would come and have a chat about the Hamilton Commission and my own experiences, it is quite a humbling thing to have a multiple world champion interested in how you found the same environment, or at least a similar environment,” Nicholas told The Times.

“It was quite an honour, I must say. There is not a great deal that makes me think, ‘Oh my God, this is really important,’ but that certainly did.

“I remember leaving that meeting feeling really inspired, that ultimately Lewis took a massive risk, he used his personal profile, he used his leverage and he forced the whole industry to take note.”

Nicholas first broke into F1 as a mechanic with Marussia in 2011. He spent nearly four years with the team before joining up with Red Bull in 2015, and has since worked his way up to become a Senior Engine Technician.

But Nicholas hopes his achievements do not take away from the need to push for greater diversity at the top of the sport.

“It is a difficult one,” he continued. “Because my ethnicity isn’t something I did, it is just me. It is a hard one to cope with and it took me a little while to appreciate that a huge part of trying to make the paddock a more inclusive place is just giving people representation.

“What I didn’t want was for people to say, ‘Oh well, F1 must be really inclusive, look at Calum.’ My success within the sport, in many ways, was against the odds.”