Lewis Hamilton has said that he will not be removing his personal jewellery despite the FIA's recent clampdown on drivers wearing items such as body piercings and neck rings during a race weekend.

After years of leniency from Charlie Whiting and Michael Masi, new race director Niels Wittich has demanded that all drivers remove all forms of jewellery before a race weekend because of the FIA’s view that it is a driver safety issue.

But Hamilton, who has endured his worst start to a season for 13 years, openly admitted to selected media outlets which included MotorLAT, after last weekend’s Australian Grand Prix that he had no plans to remove his jewellery, whilst also explaining that even if he wanted to remove it some of it is welded to his body.

“I don’t have any plans on removing (my jewellery). I feel there are personal things (that) you should be who you are. There (is) stuff that I can’t remove. These ones (earrings) on my right ear, they're literally welded in, so I (would) have to get them chopped off. They will be staying.”

Hamilton also has no opinion of Wittich or Eduardo Freitas’s new stricter regime, which has seen Max Verstappen’s safety car restart tactic banned and Lance Stroll receiving a five-second penalty for weaving during the race in Melbourne.

“Honestly, I don’t have an opinion on it; I don’t really know enough about it; nothing’s really affected me so far with whatever they’re doing; I have not really paid much attention to it. I don’t know what the scenarios are; I can’t really comment on it; they’re doing the same as always I would imagine.”

Despite being unable to challenge for a podium after an overheating issue forced him to back off, Hamilton was pleased to finish fourth in Melbourne after a troublesome weekend that saw Mercedes once again struggle with Red Bull and Ferrari.

“It's an amazing result for us as a team; honestly, it’s such a positive. We were 1.2 seconds off on Friday, and it wasn’t looking spectacular at the point; we did some great work overnight to qualify on the third row, and then a great start, and I was up into third it felt amazing to be fighting for a podium in that moment, but we couldn’t hold it because of the pace of the Red Bulls but whilst we haven’t necessarily improved the car over these three races I think we’ve extracted the most we could pointwise.”