The Mercedes U-turn that came too late to avoid an uncomfortable lesson

Gill Kernick well remembers chatting to Yasin El-Wahabi. They would sometimes share the lift together, chatting about her work and his ambition to one day start a business. He borrowed her bike pump. A sociable young man with a bright future.

Yasin died together with his 16-year-old sister Nur, eight-year-old brother Mehdi and their parents in the Grenfell fire disaster of June 2017 – just five of the 72 residents to die in the UK’s worst residential fire since World War II.

Last September, this writer shared the stage with Gill at a safety conference in Denmark. She spoke to the audience about Grenfell while I described F1’s safety journey since Imola 1994.

Gill lived in Grenfell Tower between 2011 and 2014, later moving to the nearby Trellick Tower. She is a renowned safety consultant working in ‘high hazard’ industries, specifically to develop their culture and leadership to prevent accidents and catastrophic events.

The original press release link on Mercedes’ Twitter account now takes you to a holding page which advises ‘Please make a U-turn’. Fortunately, the team followed that same advice once it witnessed the hostile reaction to the Kingspan deal

To listen to her presentation of the horror which unfolded in West London is to have little doubt that those who perished were betrayed by a host of planners, contractors and suppliers. They built a 24-story chimney shrouded in flammable material for people to live in. While we discussed the parallels between the lessons of Grenfell and Formula 1’s own safety story, little did we realise these two worlds would soon collide.

When Mercedes announced its deal with Irish group Kingspan – a ‘global leader in high-performance and building envelope solutions’ – on 1 December, 2021, the soon-to-be eight-time world constructors’ champion team couldn’t have anticipated the storm which would soon envelope it. While Kingspan’s CEO Gene Murtagh smiled for the camera, the controversy surrounding his company’s involvement in Grenfell landed on Toto Wolff’s desk.

Wolff came under fire after agreeing to the deal, which was subsequently cancelled

Photo by: Steve Etherington / Motorsport Images

Kingspan’s K15 insulation material might have made up only 5% of the insulation layer on Grenfell’s facade, apparently fitted without its knowledge, but the ongoing inquiry into the tragedy heard that company employees knew the product was unsafe, hid the results of fire safety tests and behaved deceitfully in order to drive sales.

While the company condemned ‘historical conduct’ and apologised for the actions of a ‘small group of employees’, we can only wonder how its executives came to the conclusion that now was the time to launch a high-profile deal with F1’s most dominant team. Particularly one which features Lewis Hamilton: F1’s first black driver, a Black Lives Matter campaigner, and the championship’s pre-eminent figure.

As Leslie Thomas QC, representing the bereaved families, pointed out to the inquiry, “A majority of the Grenfell residents who died were people of colour. Grenfell is inextricably linked with race.”

Media headlines quickly juxtaposed the conflicting image of Kingspan branding on Hamilton’s car. When Grenfell United, representing bereaved families, penned an open letter to Wolff urging him to rethink the deal, it was obvious Mercedes had only one route to follow. Wolff said he would sort it, and he did. The deal was cancelled within a week of being announced.

The original press release link on Mercedes’ Twitter account now takes you to a holding page which advises ‘Please make a U-turn’. Fortunately, the team followed that same advice once it witnessed the hostile reaction to the Kingspan deal, making it one of the shortest agreements in F1’s history.

The Kingspan saga will serve as a salutary lesson for companies eager to embrace F1 without fully understanding its scale, as well as for teams too eager to sign new partners.

For Mercedes, the Kingspan saga was an important lesson

Photo by: Steven Tee / Motorsport Images