Sebastian Vettel

Vettel agrees with Hamilton over 'BS' regulations

Should the FIA make a change?

Matthew Scott

Sunday 3 November 2019 15:00

Sebastian Vettel agreed with Lewis Hamilton's assertion that placing a limit on drivers changing their helmet designs is "BS" and suggested he knowingly ignores the regulations.

Vettel is well-known for switching designs on his lid from race to race, especially in his Red Bull tenure, where LED lights and other trinkets were in play.

The limits came to the fore earlier this year when Daniil Kvyat was told he would not be allowed to use a special design in his home race in Russia as he had already hit the limit of design changes in the season.

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Hamilton recently polled his Instagram followers on whether they agreed with the rule, which came out with an overwhelmingly negative response.

Asked for his views on the rules, Vettel said: "Well, I change it anyway so… I think it's our helmet and we should be free to do what we want, so I think the rule is major BS.

"We have very little room left to sort of express ourselves and the helmet is probably the only one and if people like it, that's great, if they don't like it well it's not their helmet so I think we should be in charge for designing which way and which colour our helmet has."

Max Verstappen is another driver who often changes design, seemingly without sanction, and the Dutchman said Vettel's penchant for something new was something that had inspired him.

"I agree," he said, sat next to Vettel after United States GP qualifying. "I always loved when Seb was at Red Bull and changing his helmet every race, almost, more or less. It was cool because you were just like 'what is he coming up with now?'

"I do a few but I'm not going to say I will do a different helmet every race because it's just too much effort in designing the helmet but I think if you want to make it blue or red, the next race, why not?

"It's your crash helmet and you should be able to do what you want and of course in the past, there have been drivers who have always had the same helmet and then they say 'yeah, but that's how we can distinguish the drivers' but at the end of the day we have massive numbers on the side, we anyway have a halo on the top so let us do what we want with the helmet now."