F1 drivers’ association chair backs jewellery ban after Hamilton’s protest
The Hindu
Grand Prix Drivers’ Association (GPDA) chairman Alex Wurz said that the jewellery ban from the cockpit of a Formula One car is for the right reasons after Lewis Hamilton refused to comply with the FIA rule
Formula One is right to ban jewellery from the cockpit but the governing FIA could have enforced the rule in a less confrontational way, according to Grand Prix Drivers' Association (GPDA) chairman Alex Wurz.
Seven-time world champion Lewis Hamilton and the FIA were in a standoff at this month's Miami Grand Prix over piercings the Mercedes driver has raced with for years and said he could not remove.
Hamilton has been told to take them off by the Monaco Grand Prix on May 29 but has said he has no intention of doing so.
"It is a rule for the right reasons," former Benetton, McLaren and Williams driver Wurz, who is heavily involved in driver safety and education, told Reuters.
"I would have probably liked a slightly different approach of how to deliver the message.
"I don't want to end up in football where there are more hands in the air and verbal abuse... you have to work together. It's a style I would have preferred in this case."
The ban on jewellery, as well as the wearing of non-compliant undergarments, has long been in the rules but rarely enforced until the FIA clamped down this season.
Asian Games champion Avinash Sable opened his season in the 3000m steeple chase with a silver in the Portland Track Festival, a World Athletics Continental Tour bronze event, in Oregon on Saturday. He clocked 8:21.85s. Asian champion Parul Chaudhary took the bronze in the women’s 3000m steeple chase in a season-best 9:31.38s. Former Asian bronze medallist Sanjivani Jadhav struck gold in the women’s 10,000m in 32:22.77s, a time which was a second off her personal best, while Seema was sixth in 32:55.91s.