Lewis Hamilton has criticised the shocking state of Formula One trophies, having complained to Bernie Ecclestone! He may well be disappointed again should he collect the winner’s award in the British Grand Prix on Sunday.
An image of the trophy was posted online recently and to Hamilton’s dismay it will again be made of plastic rather than the traditional gold, Royal Automobile Club bauble. Hamilton, 30, feels so strongly that he has even protested to F1’s chief executive, and has personally criticised the man in charge of trophies at Formula One Management.
“We just need to make better trophies – it’s shocking how bad the trophies are,” Hamilton said on Tuesday night. “The trophies are as good as… at go kart level, it was really bad. Formula Renault was just little boxes with a car in the middle. Formula Three was good, and at the beginning of my Formula One career the trophies were really good. But now they are just terrible man. They are so bad. I told Bernie and he got the trophy guy in the room and I just said, ‘you know’.”
Hamilton keeps hold of all the originals we wins while his team keep replicas at their factory in Brackley, Northamptonshire. Nowadays the interest of sponsors is taking priority, and some of the historic trophies have been relegated to secondary prizes once the podium ceremony is over. Hamilton is especially fond of the British Grand Prix famous gold trophy the Royal Automobile Club Trophy first awarded in 1948. When presented with the Santander trophy after winning the race last year, he said: “Where’s the gold trophy, man?”
“That is the only trophy there is for Silverstone,” Hamilton added, speaking at a Petronas event this week. “Last year they gave me this plastic thing and I’m like, ‘This is not the trophy, it’s like a GP2 trophy, not the Formula One trophy. The gold one is really special. It would be great if each country had a real trophy like that, with character that grew over the years because of the history. I don’t know why they don’t make them the same any more.”
And it wasn’t just Silverstone’s prize which came in for criticism! “Did you see the Monaco one? The last one in Austria was wooden, the whole thing was wooden. The base was like lead. I mean, what. It is supposed to be silver.”
Head over to the Premier Trophies website to view an extensive range of motorsport trophies.
