After performing doughnuts on the start-finish straight to celebrate his Indian GP win and fourth world championship, Sebastian Vettel has been reprimanded by the FIA for contravening a rule which says that a victorious driver “must show no human emotion whatsoever”.
The ruling, known as article 43.7, clearly states that upon deployment of the chequered flag, the winning competitor must “emit a small, distorted sound” on the radio and then proceed directly to the parc fermé where they must “put on a large watch and engage in awkward small talk with the second and third placed competitors”.
The regulation goes on to state that a victorious driver is required “to say that the team did a good job in a flat monotone and then enter into an uninformative discussion about tyre strategy with someone who used to be a Formula One driver (or similar)”.
Crucially, article 43.7 ends with the clear directive that victorious drivers “must show no human emotion whatsoever and must not engage in any post-race activities that may endear them to Formula 1 fans”.
An FIA spokesman confirmed that for 2014 the article will be clarified with the addition of a reminder that drivers “must not, under any circumstances, appear to enjoy their jobs at all”.
