F1 News
FIA: 'Demand for insight from GPDA comes from emotion'
- GPblog.com
The Grand Prix Drivers Association (GPDA) demanded more insight into where the money raised from fines goes. Although the drivers have not yet received any information about this from the FIA, Nikolas Tombazis responded to the GPDA's request.
The first thing single-seaters director Nikolas Tombazis wanted to make clear is that the governing body is not a profit-making organisation. "We don't have shareholders who are looking at some numbers in the stock exchange and hoping for share price to go up or get more dividends or anything like that," he told Motorsport.com.
Tombazis stated that all the money is spent on useful things, such as training youth and other projects around motorsport.
FIA states that F1 drivers' demand comes from emotions
However, the director did state that the drivers want insight into things out of frustration. "I think this question is sometimes slightly influenced by the emotions of the moment, of whatever fine is being discussed and so on. I realise that anyone who is paying a fine is always slightly annoyed about it and may feel somewhat aggrieved, but for sure there are so many different levels of projects that you can never come to the conclusion that this money is somehow spent for Christmas parties and so on," Tombazis said.
The whole situation surrounding the GPDA statement posted to the recently created Instagram account of the association itself, with the drivers expressing their discomfort with a number of FIA related things.
The actions of FIA president Mohammed Ben Sulayem was one of them. In addition, the drivers disagreed with Max Verstappen's and Charles Leclerc's penalties for swearing during FIA press conferences and they also disregarded the governing body's jewellery ban. However a request for clarity on the allocation of the FIA's funds, and their opposition to drivers being fined were also present in the GPDA's statement.
Although an official response from the Paris established organisation failed to materialise, the FIA president did respond to the statement in the media. According to Sulayem, drivers should be concerned with racing and not with FIA matters and decisions.
This article was written in collaboration with Sandy van Wijngaarden.
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