The rumour likely exploded because of one man: David Coulthard. In his autobiography, the Scotsman casually mentioned that he used a catheter bag for long races in the early 2000s. The media turned this into “Coulthard wears nappies.”
Then, there’s the famous Sebastian Vettel radio message from the 2011 Canadian Grand Prix. After a race that lasted over four hours due to rain, Vettel asked his team, “Do I have to pee? Or is that just my seat getting wet?” The internet went wild, but he was making a joke about a dry seat, not wetting himself.
Even in the Netflix series Drive to Survive, we see drivers chugging water right before the race. They drink hyper-hydration formulas to stay cool, but they schedule their bathroom breaks with clockwork precision about 15 minutes before the formation lap.
