“We [larger drivers] have to lose so much weight,” he said. “There is not much we can lose anyway, so we can’t even train because we have to lose the small muscles. It is a difficult situation and I don’t think it’s fair. Small drivers can eat what they want but we are just naturally heavier and we get a penalty of half-a-second a lap, or more, just like that. Not because the smaller ones are better drivers, they are just lighter. That is not how it should be in F1. No drinks bottles in the car is one thing,” he continued. “For Bahrain it’ll one and a half hours in the car, no drink. In Malaysia I had a little bit of tea, but no more. There is a danger [of fainting and dehydration]. We are driving more than 300km/h on the straight, so it’s not so easy any more. You can’t guarantee that every driver is 100 per cent from a physical point of view.”
Adrian Sutil has branded his weight disadvantage compared with other F1 drivers as ‘unfair’, claiming the pressures on drivers to keep their weight down is forcing them into compromising situations.
However, while the issue has been raised in drivers’ meetings, Sutil, who says he lost four kilos over the winter, reveals a selection of the lighter drivers have blocked attempts to change the regulations: “[Some of] The lighter drivers have a problem with it. They block it and think differently. I think it’s unfair. I wouldn’t like to win against a driver who is 20kg heavier. If you are here because of the sport because you want to win and be the best driver, this cannot be the case. This is not fair, this is not sport.”
FIA already gave quite a few additional kg allowance this year. If a team wants to employ a heavy driver, they must build him a lighter car, because FIA does not weigh the drivers alone, but the maximum weight applies to car + driver. How much more must FIA allow? If drivers weigh 70 kg on an average (for example) where does the FIA draw the line? At 85 kg? 95 kg? 135 kg? You will always find somebody heavier who will feel discriminated against. If Adrian Sutil wants to “eat anything he wants” like the small-built drivers do, because otherwise “it is unfair”, then his team must put less ballast in his car. I feel sorry for Adrian Sutil, he’s a nice chap, but that’s life. What he wants it’s like everybody would now be forced by law to lower the basketball loop height from 3 m to 1.5 m because short people with good ball skills and who can jump well could be excellent players but cannot compete in the NBA and that’s discrimination. Fact is we are not all built the same, don’t have equal talents and therefore we can’t have identical chances to success in every single possible activity. I love rugby, I wish I could play it in a club at provincial level, because I am bloody strong and tough for my size, I run fast, pass and kick the ball well. Except that I can’t play at that level, because I my skeleton is too thinly built for this sport and an impact with a 120 kg forward player at full speed will snap me in two. That’s the advantage of being heavy, which I don’t have. So I play cricket and ride horses instead. It never occurred to me that I should constantly complain to the Rugby Federation about unfair and discriminatory rules, asking them to limit the maximum weight of the players to 85 kg or allow me to carry 25 kg of body armour so that I can “fairly” compete in the national team.