I swear, if there is any further punishment handed out to Formula 1 drivers for swearing, I’m going to lose my…
It was one of the stranger topics to take over an F1 weekend in the midst of an increasingly tight title battle and significant focus on the future of one of the sport’s most popular drivers in Daniel Ricciardo.
But FIA president Mohammed Ben Sulayem’s comments to Autosport that he was asking the drivers to try and refrain from swearing in the cockpit took off. Mainly because it is a ridiculous request.
Ben Sulayem had raised the issue with Formula One Management (FOM) too, because it’s FOM who gets to choose what goes out on the world feed broadcast, and regularly it will opt for the most emotionally-charged radio clips that feature expletives and outbursts from drivers.
And so they should. It’s raw. It’s authentic. And it’s the reality of what it’s like for an F1 driver trying to handle the emotion of fighting for the best possible result at over 200mph, often in the knowledge that they can get seriously hurt if something goes wrong.
There have been many areas in recent years where the FIA and FOM have not been on the same page, and there has been a power struggle going on between the two sides behind the scenes. It often is borne out of one camp trying to have an influence on what the other does, when sometimes it isn’t their place to do so.
Admittedly, the complex nature of F1’s setup – with the FIA focusing on the sporting and regulatory side, and FOM (owned by Liberty Media) handling the promotion and entertainment as the commercial rights holder – always means there will be topics that the two clash on, but this seemed to be a surprising subject for Ben Sulayem to stake out ground on.
And it was very much an overreach to ask the drivers to watch their language in the heat of battle, as it led to the extremely predictable, and fair, response that if their messages being broadcast is a problem, then just don’t broadcast messages with swear words in them.
It was often joked in the past that teams and drivers would drop expletives into messages relating to strategy or rivals during a race, because they knew those interactions then wouldn’t be broadcast. But for some time offensive language has been censored, both in terms of the audio version of the message and the transcribed offerings that appear with increasingly regularity on-screen.
Now don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying all language should be excused or go unpunished, but there’s got to be a tolerance for when a driver is giving their team a very strong assessment of how their race is going, or how their car is handling. The same applies to matters between drivers, because these are elite sportspeople operating at the very top of their profession and in direct competition with one another.
Ben Sulayem tried to equate the use of swear words with rapping, but just listen to some of the team radio between NASCAR drivers, or the pain in Pato O’Ward’s voice when he missed out on the Indy 500 this year – this is the reality of what racing drivers say and how they react.
Given that ongoing debate, and the fact that Max Verstappen had not even been asked about Ben Sulayem’s request yet, it was both perfect and terrible timing when he used the f-word to describe the state of his car in qualifying at the Azerbaijan Grand Prix.
Ben Sulayem’s crackdown on drivers using colorful language has widely been seen as overreach. Sam Bloxham/Motorsport Images
The use of the word certainly hammered home just how bad he felt the car’s handling was. And while you can certainly make an argument for it being slightly unnecessary in the context of a relaxed Thursday press conference when Verstappen is not under the pressure of driving the car, it also came in response to someone pressing on the fact that Sergio Perez had beaten him all weekend in Baku.
It was also a more telling answer than just saying “I knew the car wasn’t very good”. The second answer is totally fine, too, but the point is Verstappen was being honest and his usual self, and you want the different characters of different drivers to be on display as much as possible, especially in what can often be a pretty sterile environment.
Both Fred Vasseur and Toto Wolff were given warnings relating to their language at the Las Vegas Grand Prix last year, when Vasseur was extremely angry at the damage caused to Carlos Sainz’s car by a loose cover on the circuit. Wolff had less of an excuse, snapping at a comment from a journalist in the press conference room, but the rarity with which it happens means a warning should suffice before any form of punishment.
Verstappen has not had such a warning for his language during an FIA press conference, so while the summons was understandable, the demand for him to “accomplish some work of public interest” was surprising.
And I’ve got full respect to his response to it.
If the FIA president wants to limit the language a driver might use, then for that driver to limit their responses overall is a fair riposte. Verstappen did the bare minimum but completed his duties in the following press conferences he had to attend, and then spoke openly and eloquently about the situation – and other topics – outside of the room where he has no fear of reprisal.
These are the stars of the sport and because of the scrutiny they are under they will always be open to criticism for the way they act and behave, but to actively look to punish them because you don’t agree with it is a step too far.
Verstappen’s post-race suggestion that the topic could play a part in how long he stays in F1 felt like a slight overreaction, but at the same time the mere fact that it was such a major topic in Singapore is frustrating.
All of the drivers would love to just drive the cars and do nothing else, but there are plenty of additional commitments that are completely acceptable to ask of them. ‘To try not to swear at all’ is not one.
F1 might be a global championships that millions watch, and the drivers are heroes that so many look up to, but they are still humans and should be allowed to show human emotion. Sometimes it will be by making mistakes, others it will be by being particularly outspoken and losing their cool. And that’s fine, because it’s normal.
You might never swear, or you might despise swearing, but you and I know that the world is not full of identikit people walking around with the cleanest vocabulary. It’s full of humans, who all have their own way of communicating and expressing emotion, feeling or being descriptive.
Let’s allow the drivers to stay that way, too, for **** sake.
