Verstappen shows his petty side as FIA stupidly punishes him for swearing | Analysis

By Jenny Fryer, The Associated Press

Max Verstappen used the wrong word – it started with an F – at an official press conference to describe how his race car was performing. The man who called for Verstappen to be punished also came under fire for his own choice of words.

Verstappen sanctioned for his egregious behaviour? The three-time Formula 1 champion has been ordered to do a day of community service by the sport’s governing body as the FIA ​​apparently banned swearing.

There have been threats of a crackdown – Ferrari team boss Fred Vasseur and Mercedes boss Toto Wolff were summoned to a news conference in Las Vegas last November to speak to stewardesses about their language – and FIA president Mohammed Ben Sulayem publicly condemned swearing earlier this month.

Motorsport.com reported that the FIA ​​has asked Formula 1’s board to curb foul language during races. While swearing – uttered over team radio, which is available to the public – is muted on TV, Ben Sulayem found the frequency of the foul language worrying.

“We have to differentiate our sport — motorsport — from rap music,” Ben Sulayem said. “We’re not rappers, you know.”

Lewis Hamilton, who previously felt he was targeted by Ben Sulayem when the president banned the wearing of jewellery at competitions after the election, believes the comments were racist.

“I don’t like the way he worded it. It’s very stereotypical to say ‘rappers’,” said Hamilton, the only black driver in F1. “If you think about it, most rappers are black. So it’s like, ‘We’re not like them.’ So I think that’s a bad choice of words and there’s a racial element to it.”

Verstappen shouldn’t have been surprised when the FIA ​​effectively slapped him on the wrist for swearing. The Dutch driver responded with his own form of protest, trolling every remaining Singapore Grand Prix press conference.

It was a bit like Marshawn Lynch’s “I’m just here to avoid getting fined” as Verstappen turned up to meet his media obligations but gave only the briefest of answers. He made it clear that he was doing so because he no longer felt he could speak freely in official F1 contexts.

On both Saturday and Sunday he invited reporters to follow him into the paddock for an uninhibited, unmonitored exchange, adding his excessive control over the situation to the list of reasons why the 26-year-old’s F1 career could be very short-lived.

Verstappen was the youngest driver ever to start an F1 race, the youngest ever F1 race winner and has made it clear he has no intention of staying to become the oldest winner in the sport’s history. This latest drama could hasten his retirement.

“Certainly, this type of thing definitely determines my future,” Verstappen said. “When you can’t be yourself or you have to deal with this type of stupid stuff, I think I’m at a point in my career now where you don’t want to deal with it all the time. It’s really tiring.”

He also criticised the imposition of a sanction on Carlos Sainz Jr. for walking across the track under a red flag following Sainz’s crash during qualifying.

“What are we talking about? He knows what he’s doing. We’re not stupid. Things like when I saw someone notice it, I was like, ‘Oh my God,'” Verstappen said.

Formula 1 considers its drivers to be the most elite in the world, so it’s no mistake that Ben Sulayem wants to hold them to a high standard. However, his standards are likely rooted in his own beliefs and are out of sync with the realities of professional sport.

All over the world, audiences are used to hearing the occasional swear word caught on a live microphone during a sporting event. Sometimes, these words are spoken freely because what is considered an insult in your country may be widely accepted slang in another.

Often, however, swearing stems from anger or frustration due to the high stakes, small margin for error, and enormous effort put into each athlete’s skill.

And curses are rarely spoken openly for the whole world to hear. In racing, especially, it is a privilege that spectators can eavesdrop on team radio communications. The FIA ​​could eliminate this possibility if it were really concerned about offending listeners.

In the case of Verstappen — and even Wolff and Vasseur — their curses were uttered in press conferences that are not intended for the general public. F1 could stop cutting the clips and posting them online at any time, and the sessions would become truly media-only.

However, Formula 1 is now owned by a media company and Liberty Media knows exactly what it is doing, providing content in every way possible.

Verstappen is right. It all seems rather silly, even childish, especially from an organisation that has refused to comment all year on a complaint against Red Bull boss Christian Horner lodged with the FIA’s ethics commission by a suspended employee.

The same ethics committee, remember, that investigated and, within a month, resolved two whistleblower complaints filed against Ben Sulayem. Susie Wolff, the Mercedes boss’s wife and head of the all-female F1 Academy, has also filed a criminal complaint in France against the FIA ​​over its brief December conflict of interest investigation into alleged sharing of confidential information between husband and wife.

Ben Sulayem has made strides in the fight against online abuse, fought to get Michael Andretti and Cadillac back on the grid and addressed other legitimate issues facing motorsport and Formula 1. But some of the fights he has focused on seem minor, and Hamilton is right to wonder whether they are personal.

In the event that Verstappen said the wrong word, it seems the champion was punished to set an example. Verstappen made sure it didn’t work out, to make it look as stupid as it is.

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