Aston Martin experienced racism in his workplace earlier this year. Aidan Louw has come out publicly via Sky News to speak out about what happened. The now former employee claims that he was the victim of racist comments from his colleagues at the time.

Louw holds both British and South African passports. He worked as a laminator to build parts for Sebastian Vettel's car. Louw, 25, started working at Aston Martin in February 2022 as a temporary employee. From the first moment, he was discriminated against and cussed at.

"Before I even got into my work environment, that's when I was told 'look, if you have a problem with how we talk here, it's just how we talk.' It went from brownie to darkie - I wasn't called Aidy...or anything like that. I was called darkie and brownie - it was like that. It was at the end of the contract that I finally processed what was going on," says Louw.

Louw has since left Aston Martin, but not because he decided to leave. The British team terminated Louw's contract because of "poor performance." This would be unrelated to the discrimination he faced. Louw says that his performance and punctuality suffered because of poor working conditions.

Sky News received a statement from Aston Martin: "AMR and its supplier operate a zero tolerance policy towards racism, homophobia and all types of discrimination. We deal with all allegations of this unacceptable behavior seriously, including full investigation of such allegations and sanctions for any individual who fails to meet our standards."

"In this case, the complainant was rightly credited, his complaints were immediately addressed, and appropriate sanctions were imposed in accordance with our zero tolerance policy. We are in ongoing discussions with him," he added.

Meanwhile, all those involved in the racist and homophobic comments no longer work at Aston Martin. Lawrence Stroll's team therefore intervened when the damage had already been done.

By going public, Louw hopes to ensure that even more attention is paid to racism within Formula One. According to him, even more needs to be done to prevent this type of behavior and language.