Analysis: Verstappen shows his petty side as FIA foolishly penalises him for swearing

Max Verstappen said a bad word — It started with F — at an official press conference to explain the performance of his race car. The man who called for Verstappen to be penalised also faced harsh criticism for his own choice of words.

Verstappen’s punishment for excessive behaviour? The three-time Formula One champion was banned by the sport’s governing body community service day because the FIA ​​seems to have banned swearing.

There were precursors to the harsh intervention; Ferrari team boss Fred Vasseur and Mercedes boss Toto Wolff were summoned to speak to the race stewards at a press conference in Las Vegas last November and FIA President Mohamed Ben Sulayem publicly condemned the blasphemy earlier this month.

Motorsport.com The FIA ​​reportedly asked Formula One’s administration to better limit the use of foul language during races. While profanity – uttered on team radio, which is accessible to the public – is censored on television, Ben Sulayem found the frequency of bad language disturbing.

“We have to differentiate between our sport – motorsports – and rap music,” Ben Sulayem said. “We’re not rappers, you know.”

Lewis Hamilton, who felt personally targeted by Ben Sulayem after Ben Sulayem banned the wearing of jewellery in competitions during the election, He thinks the comments have a racist element.

“I don’t like the way you phrased it. ‘Rappers’ is such a cliché,” said Hamilton, the only black driver in F1. “If you think about it, most rappers are black. It’s like, ‘We’re not like them’. So I think it’s the wrong choice of words and there’s a racial element there.”

So it should come as no surprise to Verstappen that the FIA ​​slapped him on the wrist for swearing. The Dutchman responded with his own form of protest by trolling every remaining press conference of the Singapore Grand Prix.

Verstappen’s handling of his media commitments was akin to Marshawn Lynch saying “I’m just here to avoid a penalty”. but gave very short answers. He made it clear that he did this because he felt he could no longer speak freely in official F1 settings.

Inviting reporters to the track on Saturday and Sunday, he launched into an unsupervised, unfiltered discussion, adding that excessive policing was among the reasons why the 26-year-old’s F1 career was so short.

Verstappen was the youngest driver to race in F1, the youngest F1 race winner and has made it clear he has no plans to stick around to become the oldest winner in the sport’s history. This latest drama could accelerate his retirement timeline.

“Of course, these things definitely determine my future,” Verstappen said. “When you can’t be yourself or you have to deal with these stupid things, I think I’m at a stage in my career where I don’t want to deal with that all the time. It’s really tiring.”

He also criticised Carlos Sainz Jr.’s penalty for entering the track as a pedestrian under a red flag after his qualifying crash.

“I mean, what are we talking about? He knows what he’s doing. We’re not stupid. That kind of thing, when I saw that it was noticed, I said, ‘Oh my God’,” Verstappen said.

F1 sees its drivers as the world’s elite, so it’s not wrong that Ben Sulayem wants to hold them to a high standard, but his standards are likely based on his own beliefs and do not match the realities of professional sport.

Around the world, viewers are used to hearing the occasional profanity caught on a live microphone during a sporting event. Sometimes words are said casually because what is considered an insult in your country is generally accepted slang in another country.

But most of the time, swearing comes from anger or frustration because of the high stakes, low margin for error, and the amount of effort each athlete puts into what they do.

And swearing is rarely done openly for the whole world to hear. It is a privilege, especially at races, for spectators to be able to listen in on team communications over the radio. The FIA ​​could remove that ability if they were really worried about offending listeners.

In Verstappen’s case – or even Wolff and Vasseur’s – his expletives came at press conferences that were not designed to be consumed by the general public. F1 could at any time cut the clips and stop posting them online, making the sessions truly media-only.

But F1 is now owned by a media company and Liberty Media knows exactly what they are doing when it comes to delivering content in every way possible.

Verstappen is right. This all seems pretty ridiculous, even childish, especially coming from an organisation that has refused to comment on the complaint against Red Bull boss Christian Horner all year. Statement by a suspended employee to the FIA ​​Ethics Committee.

The same ethics committee is the committee that investigates and clears the matter. a couple of whistleblower complaints a month A lawsuit has been filed against Ben Sulayem. Susie Wolff, the Mercedes boss’s wife and head of F1’s all-female F1 Academy, has also been Files criminal complaint against FIA in France It is part of a brief conflict of interest investigation launched in December over allegations that confidential information was shared between the husband and wife.

Ben Sulayem has made progress in cleaning up online abuse, fighting to get Michael Andretti and Cadillac back on the grid, and addressing other legitimate issues facing motorsport and F1. But some of the struggles he focuses on seem petty, and Hamilton has every right to question whether they are personal.

It seems that if Verstappen says a bad word, the champion is punished to make an example out of it. Verstappen made sure it backfired to make it look stupid.

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AP auto racing: https://apnews.com/hub/auto-racing