F1 worker suffered racist and homophobic abuse at Aston Martin

A Formula 1 worker who was repeatedly racially abused by colleagues at the Aston Martin F1 team has told Sky News the sport has to do more to confront racism in motorsport.

Aidan Louw, 25, who is mixed race and was born in South Africa, worked as a laminator, building parts of the cars driven by Sebastian Vettel at the prestigious F1 team's base next to Silverstone.

The verbal abuse started after he joined the team as a supplier's agency contractor this February.

"Before I even walked into my working environment that's when I was told, 'look if you've got a problem with how we speak here, it's just how we speak'."

Mr Louw claims the abuse then started almost immediately with multiple, offensive racist nicknames.

"I wasn't referred to as Aidy…or anything like that. I was called [racially offensive slurs] - that is what I was referred to."

"It was towards the end of the duration that I had finally processed what was happening.

As a dual citizen of both South Africa and the UK, Aidan holds two passports. He says the abuse included an apartheid-era insult that is also extremely offensive.

On top of the racism, Aidan also suffered homophobic abuse: "I disclosed to someone that I had a boyfriend in my teen years and that was it - in that split second everything switched…

"As soon as they found out about that sliver of information that was it, they were trying to claw me down to break me down as a man, as an individual and a human."

While Formula 1 has very publicly demanded an end to racism within the sport, this season Sir Lewis Hamilton has been forced to continue calling out incidents of discrimination.

The seven-time world champion was angered by a racial slur that former F1 driver Nelson Piquet was accused of using