But battles between drivers and the sanctioning bodies in charge of Formula 1 are tales old as time. The topic of these ideological collisions has evolved, but their nature is the same: Drivers disagree with the sanctioning body so wholeheartedly that they’re willing to go to bat over it. Today, we’re going to dig into that contentious history.
F1 drivers vs. the FIA
Since its founding in 1950, Formula 1 has stood as the pinnacle of international open-wheel racing — but that doesn’t mean its rulesets were written in stone and universally accepted by everyone competing in the sport. After all, Ferrari boycotted the first F1 British Grand Prix in large part due its dissatisfaction with the prize purse on offer.
But many of those early concerns were largely kicked off by teams. It wasn’t until the 1970s that drivers themselves really began to take on Formula 1 and its sanctioning bodies in an effort to create much-needed change.
As the late 1960s gave way to the 1970s, F1 technology was making leaps and bounds that saw the cars grow faster due to innovations in aerodynamics and car construction. It was a stunning era of exploration, with one critical limiting factor: Tracks.
Back then, race organization was taken on by the tracks that F1 competed at; that meant that the track owners and personnel were responsible for ensuring the track surface was safe and that there were adequate medical facilities and emergency staff on hand.
As the cars grew ever quicker, it was critical that a track pay serious attention to its facilities. The Nurburgring, Spa-Francorchamps, Zandvoort, and Montjuic Circuit all fell under heavy scrutiny for being ill-prepared to handle the then-contemporary race cars.
Jackie Stewart and several other drivers of the era banded together to begin advocating for safety improvements, including the addition of barriers, repaved track surfaces, the introduction of chicanes, and the development of more robust emergency response and care facilities. Tracks like Spa and the Nurburgring were so long that they were almost impossible to staff with marshals, while the racing surfaces at Zandvoort and Montjuic park began to crumble.
Drivers of this era used their collective power to advocate for change, threatening that they wouldn’t race until their demands were met — which put them in direct opposition with F1, the tracks themselves, and the FIA.
Those early efforts at protest were largely centered around personal safety, but in the 1980s and 1990s, drivers grew more political in response to sanctioning body efforts to place further limitations on their ability to race.
In 1982 and 1995, F1’s sanctioning body, FISA, introduced new superlicense regulations that placed serious limitations on drivers.
At the 1982 South African Grand Prix, Niki Lauda and Didier Pironi gathered drivers together for what was effectively a sleep-in protest ahead of the race. At the time, FISA had introduced a clause to F1 drivers’ superlicense contracts that would have tied drivers to a single team for up to three years — something that the drivers wholeheartedly opposed. All 30 drivers hung out at their hotel and locked themselves in a single room to protest the clause, and in turn, it was subsequently removed.
In early 1995, something similar happened. The FIA once again attempted to add a new clause to its superlicenses, this time giving the FIA leverage to demand drivers make promotional appearances and also to limit their criticism of Formula 1. While no official boycott actually took place, the mere threat of it was enough to convince the FIA to amend its rules before the season began.
While it can be tempting to claim that those older protests carried far more heft than, say, Max Verstappen’s refusal to speak in a press conference or carry out community service, that’s only because the sport has evolved.
Racing is still dangerous, but drivers are no longer consumed by the knowledge that several of their compatriots are guaranteed to die before the end of the year. And thanks to things like the Concorde Agreement, teams — and by proxy, their drivers — have more sway in establishing the rules that dictate F1 than ever before.
In the modern era, then, the biggest threat comes to a driver’s personal expression.
In late 2022, for example, the FIA banned drivers from making “political, religious, or personal” statements without prior approval — which meant that Lewis Hamilton was no longer allowed to wear shirts emblazoned with phrases like “Arrest the cops who killed Breonna Taylor,” and Sebastian Vettel couldn’t wear shirts protesting key political issues like anti-LGBTQ+ hate, tar sand mining, and more.
The backlash to that was fierce, as drivers like Hamilton argued that he should be allowed to use his platform to speak out on critical issues he finds concerning. The FIA was forced to walk back its ban on political statements, ultimately allowing drivers to express their views “in their own space.” However, they would still face sanctions for sharing those statements at the race track.
In 2023, attention turned from political statements to fashion statements. The FIA’s International Sporting Code featured a clause forbidding the wearing of jewelry while driving, though it wasn’t strictly enforced… until 2023. At that point, the FIA began to clamp down on the wearing of jewelry, which once again placed Hamilton at the center of controversy.
Hamilton had long raced with nose and ear piercings, while other drivers competed wearing their wedding rings or other sentimental adornment items. Heading into the Miami Grand Prix weekend, Lewis Hamilton stated he’d be more than willing to miss the race if he were to be sanctioned for wearing jewelry, and offered to sign a waiver accepting liability for any injury caused by his jewelry in a crash.
That same weekend, Vettel protested against a rule that would ban drivers from wearing non-regulation underwear under their firesuits. Vettel donned a pair of briefs overtop his firesuit to call attention to the issue.
In both cases, the FIA did have certain rights when it came to enforcing its rulebook — but the drivers also had a right to push back against it.
Now, we have Max Verstappen facing censure for swearing in an FIA press conference after President Mohammed Ben Sulayem spoke out against the use of cursing in broadcasts.
Autosport asked Verstappen if the community service penalty for swearing could impact his decision to stay in F1, and he admitted, “For sure. Yeah.
“When you can’t be yourself, you have to deal with these kinds of silly things. I’m at a stage of my career that I don’t want to be dealing with this all the time. It’s really tiring.”
It may seem trivial compared to the protests regarding safety and the ability to freely compete in F1, but at its core, recent concerns with Verstappen’s language are only the latest example in a trend that has seen the FIA seek to censure drivers for things these drivers deem as minor offenses. It’s yet another example of F1’s competitors pushing back against regulations that feel unfair — and we’re likely to see more instances of drivers defending their ability to express themselves in the future.
