Grace Influential launched its Positive Impact Award on Thursday in the lead up to the 2022 Monaco Grand Prix weekend.
The annual accolade will be given to a Formula One team that displays the most positive impact over the course of a season. As Brisa Carleton, CEO of the Princess Grace Foundation-USA (PGF-USA) explains, “This includes diversity and inclusion, sustainability, philanthropy, excellence...all the values that Princess Grace championed during her lifetime.”
Prince Albert and Greg Maffei, president of Liberty Media which owns Formula One, were among the hundred or so guests who boarded the 48-meter Azzurra II in Port Hercule on Thursday for the official kickoff of the Impact Award.
“F1 is proud to have been involved in many positive initiatives around Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion, trying to build a broader group of drivers and trying to be socially responsible,” Maffei told invited guests. “We have a path to be completely carbon neutral by 2030—not only for our own self but for people who attend the event. It is important part of what Formula One has been about.”
The head of the mass media company valued at $13.33 billion as of May 04, 2022 (they own the 2021 World Series championships Atlanta Braves) added, “We do have an ambitious plan. We are trying to be completely transparent about the work we are doing including the next generation of engines, working on much more sustainable fuels and working on making the whole program around such an event a positive experience.”
Maffei reflected that the impact award serves as an example of how people can recognize and amplify efforts being in made in motorsport. “Many teams have undertaken great initiatives on their own and the work they are doing is important, as least as important as the stuff we are doing at parent level,” he shared. “The fact that the Grace Influential Impact Award will recognize that is a wonderful added effect.”
The first Grace Influential Impact Award will be given out at the 2023 Monaco Grand Prix. In the coming months, PGF-USA will be “building an illustrious judging panel and communicating with the F1 teams to get the competition underway.”