Sebastian Vettel Says The F1 Radio Rule Changes Are ‘Complete Bullsh*t’

The FIA, Formula 1’s governing body, has made further tweaks to the already confusing (for teams, drivers and fans!) team radio restrictions. Sebastian Vettel has had his say on the changes, calling them “complete bullsh*t”.

The radio rules returned to the spotlight after the last race at Silverstone, where Nico Rosberg breached the regulations in the closing stages while trying to sort a gearbox problem out with his Mercedes team. After hours and hours of investigating he was given a 10-second penalty for the regulations breach, which when added to his race time and dropped him from second to third.

It means he is now just one point ahead of his team-mate Lewis Hamilton in the championship. Tasty for us but all these radio rules have once again kicked up a whole lot of fuss. That continues in Hungary.

The FIA has a list of permitted messages and sent a technical directive to F1 teams on Wednesday with some crucial changes, particularly to number two which now reads:

“Indication of a problem with the car. Any message of this sort must include an irreversible instruction to enter the pits to rectify the problem or to retire the car.”

Previously it had said that “any message of this sort may only be used if failure of a component or system is imminent and potentially terminal” but now a driver must pit to rectify any issue.

So it’s now switched from a 10-second time penalty (which teams could have just gone with if it meant sorting out the car issue by breaching the rules) to a much higher penalty - a trip through the pits without stopping takes around 20 seconds.

Here’s what Vettel had to say when asked about the changes by Autosport:

“Complete bullsh*t! All the radio issues we have are a joke. I looked at the race after and I found, as a spectator, it was quite entertaining to hear a driver panicking a little bit on the radio, and the team panicking at the same time.

“It puts the element of human being into our sport that arguably is very complicated and technical. We’re going a little bit in the wrong way, and that’s why it’s bad and we should just go back to being able to say what we want.”

Meanwhile a few other changes have been made. Number three says “information concerning damage to the bodywork of the car” rather than just stating “damage”.

Also number four has been tweaked to focus on reliability. The messages refer to the time a car is out of the pitlane, rather than the garage – as it was previously.

Yeah, it’s all a bit confusing isn’t it? Far from easy to follow for the fans. While driver coaching was previously an issue and isn’t welcome in F1, a finer balance needs to be struck between what can be said, what can’t, and the penalties given out.