Max Verstappen dropped an F-bomb during a formal news conference, expressing frustration over his race car's performance. Ironically, the individual advocating for Verstappen's punishment faced backlash for his own choice of words.
As a consequence for his "egregious behavior," the three-time Formula 1 champion was mandated by the sport's governing body to complete a day of community service, as the FIA has seemingly instituted a ban on cursing.
This crackdown had been anticipated; last November, Ferrari team principal Fred Vasseur and Mercedes boss Toto Wolff were called in by stewards for their language during a news conference in Las Vegas. Moreover, FIA President Mohammed Ben Sulayem publicly admonished inappropriate language earlier this month.
Motorsport.com reported that the FIA had asked Formula One Management to better limit inappropriate language broadcast during races. While the curse words – said on team radio that is accessible to the public – are bleeped out on television, Ben Sulayem found the frequency of poor language unsettling.
"We have to differentiate between our sport – motorsport – and rap music," Ben Sulayem said. "We’re not rappers, you know."
Lewis Hamilton, who already felt he had been personally targeted by Ben Sulayem when the president banned the wearing of jewelry during competition, believed the comments had a racial element to them.
"I don’t like how he has expressed it. Saying ‘rappers’ is very stereotypical," said Hamilton, the only Black driver in F1. "If you think about it, most rappers are Black. So it says, ‘We are not like them.’ So I think those are the wrong choice of words, and there is a racial element there."
So Verstappen shouldn't have been surprised when the FIA actually slapped his wrist for cursing. The Dutch driver responded with his own form of protest by trolling every remaining news conference of the Singapore Grand Prix.
It felt a bit "I’m just here so I won’t get fined," in that Verstappen showed up to his required media obligations but offered only the briefest of answers. He made clear he was doing so because he no longer felt he could speak freely in official F1 settings.
He invited reporters to follow him out to the paddock for an unmonitored and unfiltered exchange both Saturday and Sunday, adding this over-policing to the list of reasons why the 26-year-old may have a very short F1 career.
Verstappen was the youngest driver to ever start an F1 race, the youngest F1 race winner, and has made clear he doesn't plan to stick around to become the oldest winner in the sport's history. This latest drama may hasten his timeline for retirement.
"For sure, these kinds of things definitely decide my future," Verstappen said. "When you can’t be yourself, or you have to deal with these kinds of silly things, I think now I’m at the stage of my career where I don’t want to be dealing with this all the time. It’s really tiring."
He was also critical of Carlos Sainz Jr. being sanctioned for crossing the track on foot under a red flag after Sainz crashed in qualifying.
"I mean, what are we talking about? He knows what he’s doing. We’re not stupid. These kinds of things, like when I saw it getting noted, I was like, ‘My God,’" Verstappen said.
F1 considers its drivers the most elite in the world, so it isn't wrong for Ben Sulayem to want to hold them to a high standard. But his standards are likely rooted in his own beliefs and not in sync with the realities of professional sports.
Globally, audiences are accustomed to hearing an occasional curse word caught on a live mic during a sporting event. Sometimes the words are said casually because what's considered a slur in one country might be commonly accepted slang in another.
But many times, the cursing is out of anger or frustration due to the high stakes, minimal margins for error, and intense effort put into each athlete's craft.
Moreover, the cursing is rarely done openly for the entire world to hear. In racing, specifically, it is a privilege for spectators to eavesdrop on team communications over the radio. The FIA could eliminate that capability if it were truly worried about offending listeners.
In the case of Verstappen – or even Wolff and Vasseur – their cursing came in news conferences that aren't designed to be consumed by the general public. F1 at any time could stop cutting clips and posting them online, making the sessions media-only.
But F1 is now owned by a media company, and Liberty Media knows exactly what it is doing in delivering content any way possible.
Verstappen is right. This all seems rather silly, to the point of childish, especially from an organization that has refused all year to comment on the complaint against Red Bull boss Christian Horner filed by a suspended employee to the FIA ethics committee.
The same ethics committee, mind you, that investigated and cleared within a month a pair of whistleblower complaints filed against Ben Sulayem. Susie Wolff, the wife of the Mercedes boss and head of F1's all-female F1 Academy, has also filed a criminal complaint in France against the FIA over its brief December conflict of interest investigation into the alleged sharing of confidential information between husband and wife.
Ben Sulayem has made strides in cleaning up online abuse, has fought to get Michael Andretti and Cadillac onto the grid, and tackled other legitimate issues facing motorsports and F1. But some of the fights he's honed in on seem small, and Hamilton has a right to question whether they are personal.
In the case of Verstappen saying a bad word, it seems the champion was punished to make an example. Verstappen made sure it backfired to look as silly as it is.