F1 drivers’ association chair backs jewellery ban after Hamilton’s protest

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.