WARNING: Swear words will appear in full in this article as per the topic, if you are easily offended then please click away.
And so it came to pass that Max Verstappen has become the first victim of the FIA’s bizarre decision to eradicate swearing from the F1 paddock.
The Dutchman, who, alongside Yuki Tsunoda, would have been top of the betting charts to break the rule first, described the Red Bull car as “fucked” which put him in the the crosshairs of an FIA investigation – powered by president Mohammed Ben Sulayem to make F1 an entirely sanitised environment.
The crusade was first revealed to Autosport in the build-up to Singapore when the president said F1 needed “to differentiate between our sport – motorsport – and rap music” and that the FIA would look to curb broadcasts of swear words.
It is not the first time the FIA has blurred the lines of their jurisdiction
The broadcast of events is a FOM matter and all 20 drivers’ radio is heard in a room at Biggin Hill where it is duly censored and prepared for broadcast. But of course, it is FOM ultimately who decides what gets aired and what does not, so why is a driver who is travelling at 200mph in one of the most pressurised sporting environments on the planet asked to watch his language?
Of course, the incident that Verstappen has been penalised for came in a press conference, but show me the young children that are watching a broadcast of the press conference live during a Thursday in school time.
There is also the context behind this particular decision. For starters, English is Verstappen’s second language and even though he is clearly fluent, that is still a mitigating factor, but also, his homeland is one of the most liberal countries in the world when it comes to swearing. You can swear as often as you like on Dutch TV and that is just part of everyday life.
Ben Sulayem’s determination to cut out swearing is a problem that absolutely no one was talking about and made all the more hypocritical by his own past.
In 2022, he said that he would never impose his beliefs on other people in disagreement with Sebastian Vettel and Lewis Hamilton standing up for causes they believe in, and yet now he is trying to do exactly that.
More on the FIA
In December of that year, he prohibited drivers from making “political, religious and personal statements or comments” in a further clampdown on the liberties of the drivers, bringing the likes of Sergio Perez and Pierre Gasly into question for their private religious acts during a race weekend.
And let us not forget January 2023 when comments attributed to him from his personal website said he does not “like women who think they are smarter than men, for they are not in truth.” Ben Sulayem, who denied he ever made these comments, received no punishment and was not asked to “accomplish some work of public interest” as Verstappen has been.
This is also not the first instance of Ben Sulayem’s regime going after rules that no one had an issue with. Hamilton was threatened with a race ban when he refused to remove his jewellery (Kevin Magnussen wears his wedding ring but that did not get as much attention) and, all the while, we have F1 racing in countries where human rights issues are often called into question.
So when he is being hauled in front of the stewards midway through a Friday, is it any wonder Verstappen is considering jacking it all in? The Dutchman is one of the greatest drivers to ever race and yet fans may be prevented from seeing more of him in the sport due to an inflated schedule and, how he would say, bullshit like this.
These drivers are all adults and, despite as much as Ben Sulayem may claim, no child is watching a press conference on a Thursday during the typical school term. These drivers are risking crashes every time they step in the car and who of us can say they have not sworn when frustrated behind the wheel?
Broadcasting of these moments is down to FOM so if the sport really has an issue with, that is who the FIA should be talking to – not the drivers.
Banning words that are natural to many citizens is an impossibly high standard to ask of adults and the FIA should look to clean its own house before coming after the sport’s main attraction.
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