Since it is their belief, and since everyone is entitled to his/her beliefs, we respect it and accept it.

i should add that i saw the post on grandprix.com almost two days before autosport made any effort. in fact i’d suggest they maybe tried to hide from it, until it became to big to hide from.

as ever autosport report the story but fail to do any analysis whatsoever.

@Sidey: Sorry man, your comment went straight to spam. I blame Akismet but I managed to recover it before taking out the trash. And I completely agree with your statement. They seem to post lots of stories, all essentially the same and with little background to them. And then hide them behind annoying adverts which makes them unreadable.

As regards growing a beard, you’re too late, I’m afraid. Grew one over the winter just to remind myself of what it looks like – turns out it’s somehow become white in the years since it last made an appearance. Weird things happen to me…

Would we have her given warnings that she has to have a full face of makeup and perfect hair when she removes her helmet after a race?

Sheesh

BTW I think Loeb’s dishevelled looks are HOT ! I’d be veeerrrryyyyy disappointed if he shaved !
Button on the other hand……..

Limiting individuality in sport is bad PR, not good PR.

Introducting a ruling to halt these personalised visuals would harm certain audience’s impressions of the character of such sports and the pilots behind them.

Oh, and interesting point. The way Autosport wrote their piece raised a lot of questions in my mind as to how Reuters got the emails and why they were privvy to them. And allowed to publish them. But as the post was more of a funny haha, the FIA are stupid I chose to not get into the whys and hows. It will be interesting to see if anything further is made of this, either with Loeb or your point about discrediting those involved.

As a quick aside, I’ve suggested on Twitter that all the F1 drivers who are old enough to grow a beard should do just that in protest.

Met Moss yesterday by the way!

Everyone has their own opinion about facial hair on a public figure, but those are personal and should be left personal.

I quite agree. In some sports it helps to be clean-shaven (swimming, for example), but I don’t see how it would affect Loeb. And being smartly dressed may help with sponsors, but really all they care about is their logo being visible.

Clearly he [Moss] was an encouragement to small boys to avoid soap and water at all costs.

He still is, Clive, he still is!

The emails just show how the outdated old farts appointed to the FIA must scratch around for anything in their attempts to increase their own importance. Max has collared all the big stuff long ago, obviously.

Weather an athlete is clean cut or not, it shouldn’t be an issue. In fact, often it enhances the appeal of that athlete. He get talked about, put on the covers of magazines etc.

Everyone has their own opinion about facial hair on a public figure, but those are personal and should be left personal.

grandprix.com have a better take:

The suspicion is that [the email exchange] has been leaked in order to paint Chandler and Thatti in a poor light. This is interesting as both are important figures in Max Mosley’s FIA.

http://www.grandprix.com/ns/ns20321.html