Interview With Lewis Hamilton: Why The Ritz-Carlton Is My Favorite Hotel Brand

For Lewis Hamilton—the most successful driver in the history of Formula 1—getting a good night’s sleep, especially around Grand Prix weekends, is top priority. Having circled the globe virtually nonstop since his game-changing debut in the sport in 2007 at age 22, Hamilton knows a thing or two about hotels—and what elevates a brand above the rest.

“I’ve been traveling for so long now—we’re at 24 races this year in F1—and The Ritz-Carlton always makes me feel at home,” Hamilton said. “Sometimes I’ll arrive at the hotel and there will be a picture of Roscoe and Coco [Hamilton’s dogs] next to my bed. It’s really about the way The Ritz-Carlton welcomes you—it’s not the same at other hotels.”

Hamilton and his Mercedes-AMG Petronas teammates have spent many nights at some of The Ritz-Carlton’s more than 100 hotels worldwide since June 2019, when the storied hotelier became the first Official Hotel Partner of the legendary team. For members of Marriott Bonvoy—the award-winning travel loyalty program of Ritz-Carlton parent Marriott International, the world’s largest hotel company—the partnership offers exclusive access to F1 Grand Prix events and packages that they can bid on through Marriott Bonvoy Moments. Each package is tailored to highlight the best facets of the destination, in addition to unique experiences tied to each race.

The Ritz-Carlton’s decision to partner with the Mercedes-AMG Petronas team nearly four years ago looks especially prescient in light of Formula 1’s seemingly unstoppable momentum in the U.S. Last year’s season set new viewership records stateside, averaging 1.21 million viewers per race—smashing the previous record, set in 2021, by 28%. The inaugural Miami Grand Prix last May—where the buzzing Ritz-Carlton Silver Arrows Lounge welcomed an array of VIP guests, including Michelle Obama—garnered a record 2.583 million average viewers, making it the most-viewed live F1 telecast ever in America.

Meanwhile, the volume of U.S. brands inking sponsorship deals with Formula 1 teams increased 66% between 2020 and 2022, as F1 fever continues to sweep the nation—fueled in large part by the runaway success of the Netflix sports docuseries “Formula 1: Drive to Survive,” which debuted in March 2019 and attracted legions of housebound viewers during the pandemic. According to Formula 1, Season 4 of the show, which premiered in March 2022, became the most-watched Netflix series in 33 countries, including the United States.

This year’s calendar features three races in the U.S.—more than any other country—thanks to the addition of the upcoming Las Vegas Grand Prix on November 16-18, 2023. The race—which will cut through the neon heart of Sin City on the iconic Las Vegas Strip—is already on track to be the hottest ticket in U.S. sports in 2023, with hotel packages for the three-day event selling for millions.

Against this backdrop, last month The Ritz-Carlton unveiled an array of exclusive, F1-related packages (including 11 VIP experiences at the Miami Grand Prix 2023 on May 5-7, which promptly sold out), with additional Moments to be released throughout the 2023 season—allowing members to fully immerse themselves in the high-octane world of the Mercedes-AMG Petronas Team. Members can use points to bid on unique experiences—including a lap around a race circuit in a high-performance Mercedes-AMG car driven by a team driver; a sleepover on the Mercedes-AMG Petronas F1 Team yacht during the Monaco Grand Prix; and an insider tour of the team’s cutting-edge factory in Brackley, UK. The Ritz-Carlton Ultimate Weekend packages in Montreal and Mexico City, where VIP race access comes with hotel stays and spa treatments, and up-close and personal experiences with drivers Hamilton, George Russell, and Mick Schumacher, as well as Team Principal & CEO Toto Wolff, are also on the auction block.

For his part, Hamilton—who placed second in the April 2 Grand Prix in Melbourne, Australia, where The Ritz-Carlton, Melbourne, the brand’s 111th hotel worldwide, opened its doors two weeks ago—is a big proponent of the program.

“Bonvoy Moments offers an opportunity to engage F1 fans in a different way,” he said. “I think it’s really quite cool because we have some very serious fans that travel everywhere to attend our races.”

Hamilton notes that the partnership between The Ritz-Carlton and his team has helped lay the foundation for relationships that endure well beyond a race weekend.

“I’ve met fans of our team who met during a Grand Prix weekend through a Marriott Bonvoy F1 experience, and ended up getting married in front of the garage,” he recalls. “And I recently was introduced to a couple ladies who’ve followed my career for years and also met through the program—they’ve become best friends and now travel to races with one another. It brings people together, and it’s a beautiful thing to see.”

Besides his singular skills behind the wheel—where he’s won 103 Grands Prix during his unparalleled career, making him the only F1 driver in history to reach three figures in race wins—Hamilton’s legacy will undoubtedly be his high-profile crusade to bring much-needed diversity to Formula 1. As the sport’s only Black driver, he’s been unrelenting in his efforts to expand the sport’s rarefied world to include more women and people of color.

One notable recent victory: a Formula 1 diversity charter—based on the findings of a commission Hamilton created in 2021 to investigate the lack of diversity across the entire motorsport industry—which Hamilton reports all 10 teams have “finally” agreed to sign.

The charter follows a slew of initiatives spearheaded by Hamilton over the last few years to make diversity a top priority for both the Mercedes-AMG Petronas team—which he joined in 2013—and F1 as an organization. At Hamilton’s urging, the team launched Accelerate 25 in December 2020, which aims to hire 25% of new team starters from underrepresented groups through 2025. The 2020 season also saw the team change its livery from silver to black, a symbol its burgeoning focus on diversity. In summer 2021, with a personal donation of £20 million (around $28 million), Hamilton founded Mission 44, a foundation dedicated to improving the lives of underrepresented children by creating pathways not only into Formula 1 jobs, but also careers in science, technology, engineering, and math.

Most recently, The Ignite Partnership—a joint, Mission 44-led initiative between Hamilton and his team to increase diversity and inclusion within motorsport—announced its inaugural grants to Motorsport UK and the Royal Academy of Engineering, who will receive over half a million pounds ($620 million) to support programs focused respectively on increasing female participation in grassroots motorsport, and on Masters-level motorsport engineering scholarships for Black students.

“I am really, really proud of what we have done as a team,” Hamilton says. “I’ve held difficult conversations with my teammates over the last few years, but before that, I would always ask, ‘Why am I the only person of color in the room?’ We’re doing quite a lot—for sure, way more than any other team in F1.”

Hamilton’s conversations have sometimes extended to the team’s sponsors—though in Marriott, Hamilton has a partner whose unwavering devotion to diversity, equity, and inclusion mirrors his own. In its 2022 Serve 360 Report, the hospitality giant—whose industry-leading portfolio includes 30 brands and more than 8,000 properties across 139 countries—offers a detailed overview of its myriad DEI initiatives. Among them: to achieve gender representation parity for global company leadership by 2023, and increase representation of people of color in executive positions in the U.S. to 25% by 2025. As part of its 2025 Sustainability and Social Impact Goals, Marriott also aims to invest $35 million in programs and partnerships that develop hospitality skills and opportunity among youth, diverse populations, women, people with disabilities, veterans, and refugees.

Last year, Marriott launched the “Marriott’s Bridging the Gap” Program, with the goal of achieving 3,000 diverse- or women-owned hotels in the U.S. & Canada by 2025. The new, multifaceted owner incentive program aims to assist historically underrepresented ownership groups including Black, Native American/First Nation, Hispanic/Latino, and Women owners in the U.S. & Canada overcome specific obstacles to hotel ownership by offering financial incentives to qualified, historically underrepresented owners and franchisees, who will have a controlling equity interest in select branded projects. Marriott expects to commit $50 million to continue building a more diverse owner and franchise community through the program.

For his part, Hamilton is similarly laser-focused on his DEI mission within F1, whose and audience—and influence—only continues to grow.

“We’re definitely seeing change—I’m starting to see more women within the paddock, for example,” Hamilton says. “But what you’ll see—probably across a lot of organizations—is the higher you go up in the tier, the less women and people of color you find. So I’m trying to continue to have difficult conversations with people who say, ‘Oh, it’s been done.’ My reply to that is, ‘No, we need to do more.’”