17/05/2022
NEWS STORY
Grand Prix Drivers' Association chairman, Alex Wurz says he supports the FIA's ban on jewellery and non-conforming underwear.
With Lewis Hamilton having agreed a two-race exemption from the forthcoming jewellery ban, all eyes are on Monaco when the seven-time world champion will be expected to comply with the FIA's crackdown.
However, two weeks before the anticipated showdown between the sport's governing body and arguably its most popular driver, the chairman of the 'drivers' union' has come out in support of the ban.
"It is a rule for the right reasons," Alex Wurz tells Reuters.
"I would have probably liked a slightly different approach of how to deliver the message," he admits. "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."
While it is the jewellery ban that has dominated the headlines, the Austrian, who raced in F1 with Benetton, McLaren and Williams, and twice won at Le Mans, gave his support to the crackdown on underwear that doesn't conform to FIA-approved standards.
Citing a talk given by Danish racer Kris Nissen in 1988 following a crash at Fuji in which the sportscar driver was burned, Wurz says: "He showed his body and said 'look at this'. For him the absolute most painful thing after fire, and it wasn't a long fire, was the rubber in his normal pants being burnt into the skin. He said it was for years agony and pain. And it educated me.
"At this moment I said I don't want to live these consequences, only for not taking my pants off and putting fireproof underpants on, the same with jewellery."
Asked about the ongoing debate over safety standards in Miami, and whether Tecpro barriers should have been more widely used, the 48-year-old, said: "Strictly speaking we didn't have an injury, so maybe you can say it is not necessary.
"But we want to say that if we had it, it would improve the situation," he added. "No research in the world can tell me it would have been a downside to put it there."