Racing Pride celebrates Pride month with Aston Martin Aramco Formula 1 Team

To celebrate Pride Month, Racing Pride and Aston Martin Aramco Formula 1 Team brought together community members from across the motorsport sector and local area for an event at the team’s Technology Campus at Silverstone. This celebration also offered an opportunity to discuss Racing Pride’s LGBTQ+ Travel Guidance for travelling team personnel in Formula 1.

Attendees enjoyed the hospitality of the Aston Martin team at their state-of-the-art Technology Campus, with some time for networking before group tours around the factory with fascinating insights into the journey from technical designs to manufacturing a racing car.

The event also featured a panel discussion, hosted by Racing Pride Ambassador, Chris Stevens, a commentator and broadcaster. Matthew-Harriet Randall, our CEO, was joined in the panel by Ian Shaw, Global DEI Manager at Arm, and Sofia Gemelli, Senior Aero Performance Engineer and Pride ERG Chair at Aston Martin Aramco Formula 1 team. The conversation explored how teams, organisations and allies can contribute to creating environments where everyone feels able to participate fully and authentically — wherever they race and work.

The Racing Pride LGBTQ+ Travel Guidance was produced for the 2026 Formula 1 season calendar, to support LGBTQ+ people, allies, and leaders as they navigate the realities of travelling within a global sport. The guidance aims to help individuals feel informed, prepared, and supported while travelling internationally.

The panel discussion and following Q&A session was a great opportunity to share reflections, insights and ideas from the community which can help shape the future development of the travel guidance and wider support mechanisms for LGBTQ+ individuals across motorsport. 

We were also grateful to The Paddock Journal for joining us at the event, and writing a great article based on the insights of the panel about what Racing Pride does and why we created the Travel Guidance. You can read more in The Paddock Journal here.

Many thanks to the Aston Martin team for facilitating a welcoming, collaborative, and community led event, and to all of the community members who joined us.

Matthew-Harriet Randall, Racing Pride CEO, shares:

“The biggest reason for us to put together the travel guide was that a lot of teams were asking for it. That’s always a good sign for us to do something. The other side is being proactive – one of the biggest things that I find as someone who uses they/them pronouns, is not needing to ask to be able to find advice which is relevant to me. That is such a big part of allowing people to feel included, who may be travelling for work and LGBTQ+.” 

Ian Shaw, Global DEI Manager at Arm, adds:

“There's no guidance or job description around being an ally. It's different for different people. I think ultimately it's about just being a nice person, and actually fundamentally just caring about another individual, a colleague, a friend, and thinking of things from their perspective. That's how a great ally shows up.”

Sofia Gemelli, Senior Aero Performance Engineer and Pride ERG Chair at Aston Martin Aramco Formula 1 team, reflects:

“When I try to describe my job, I always talk about time scales. The time scales are seconds, hours, compared to some other jobs [where it might be weeks, months or years]. In such situations, belonging is very important because you cannot be distracted. You cannot have something in the back of your mind that leaves you unsure if the colleague next to you fully trusts you or appreciates you. You just cannot have that distraction, because otherwise you're not going to have the mental capacity to perform and deliver with the timescales that we are required to. 

To answer the question on how inclusion is built, it's as simple as seeing in the eyes of your colleagues that they value you for the person that you are, for the engineer that you are. By seeing that you are given exactly the same chances and opportunities as everyone else, and by seeing that life goes on every day as normal, and that you can be comfortable in the space around you.”