Formula 1 Gasps, Drops Monocle Over Max Verstappen’s F-Word

This Formula 1 season has gotten so topsy-turvy that it fell on Max Verstappen of all drivers to make a boring Singapore Grand Prix suddenly exciting. Thanks to Red Bull's shabby performance, mysteriously cratered over the past few months, the excitement came not from the Dutchman's driving, but from his mouth. At a press conference on Thursday, Verstappen was asked about qualifying at the previous week's grand prix circuit in Baku. His reply was characteristically blunt: "As soon as I headed into qualifying, I knew the car was fucked."

For a racing entity that also has Yuki Tsunoda and Yuki Tsunoda's famously inappropriate mouth on its roster, this comment should not have rated beyond mild amusement. However, the Federation Internationale de l'Automobile (or FIA, the F1 governing body) issued a warning for drivers to watch their language following the Azerbaijan Grand Prix. That warning was received poorly going into the Singapore GP weekend, with Lando Norris noting that it's hard to control the language in the heat of the moment. Norris told The Athletic, "They can just not play the radios, so it’s quite simple from their side."

Whether Verstappen forgot about the mandate or ignored it willingly—I lean more toward the former, because even though he wasn't in the middle of a race, the comment was so offhand that it didn't seem premeditated as some form of protest—was irrelevant in the eyes of the FIA. The Red Bull driver got hit with a scolding and a minor punishment: an obligation to accomplish some work of public interest. Essentially, he has to do community service.

The minute nature of the punishment did nothing to appease Verstappen, though, who was pisse—sorry, don't want to curse here—who was angry as heck at having seemingly been targeted for a slip-up. Verstappen spent the rest of the weekend in a foul mood, answering questions at various press conferences and interviews with stilted, sometimes one-word responses. Hilariously, he also invited reporters into the Red Bull hospitality area after Sunday's race, in order to give actual answers, away from the FIA's prying eyes. Verstappen also publicly speculated that he might quit the sport altogether thanks to the incident; normally, from any other driver, this would be a temper tantrum, but for the last few years Verstappen has seemed like the one driver on the grid who might actually walk away from the sport for whatever reason he eventually deems worthy.

Verstappen wasn't the only driver miffed by the FIA's reaction to the solitary fuck. Both Norris and Lewis Hamilton spoke up in support of Verstappen, while Oscar Piastri and Charles Leclerc both made fun of the ruling at various times over the weekend. Verstappen said that he had shared the ruling in the group chat for the Grand Prix Drivers' Association, and that he believes he has the full support of the union: "I wrote in the GPDA [chat] the ruling. And everyone was almost laughing like, 'What the hell is that?' basically. It is very, very silly."

Alex Wurz, chair of the GPDA, publicly backed Verstappen as well, and pointed out that F1 benefited from former Haas team principal Guenther Steiner's liberal use of swears, which made the Italian a fan favorite on the Netflix series Drive to Survive: "How many lifetime community services would Guenther Steiner have to serve for using the F word? He was glorified for using the F word. Netflix broadcast this worldwide, no problem. But then to suddenly change like that?"

Wurz raises a good point. The FIA has tried to balance two conflicting and cynical prerogatives when it comes to how F1 is presented to a worldwide audience. On the one hand, the association understands that F1's recent surge in popularity is connected to the personalities of the drivers, principals, and owners, as portrayed on the Netflix show and on social media. By letting everyone be themselves, or as much of their authentic selves as they can be with cameras constantly in tow, F1 gained fans who loved Daniel Ricciardo's himbo jokester routine, or the Ferrari bromance between Leclerc and Carlos Sainz, or brief looks into the psyche of the oft-guarded Hamilton.

On the other hand, the FIA still sees F1 as a sport of rarefied class and grace, and all the other signifiers of wealth that it so proudly enjoys. It's no secret that F1 caters to the uber-rich. We see this in which drivers get chances on the grid: It's safe to say that every driver at the moment came from lots of money, save for Hamilton and Esteban Ocon, who merely came from some money. It's also apparent what kind of audience F1 wants to attract to its events. This recent focus on some perceived standard of class started with FIA President Mohammed Ben Sulayem telling Autosport that "We have to differentiate between our sport—motorsport—and rap music." I saw this desire for status firsthand in Miami earlier this season. It's no less obvious every time the FIA reacts to anything that seemingly coarsens the sport's pristine presentation.

The best example of this tension, between the sport's mercenary needs and its patrician self-regard, comes from the very existence of the Las Vegas Grand Prix. While that race weekend was chock full of glitz and glamor, it also came with a dangerous and shoddy road, which caused an explosive incident in practice, as well as a handful of cold-weather problems that made the race, good though it was, feel makeshift and poorly put together. The FIA simply skimmed over both of these issues, and the race will go on again this November. There are $10,000 VIP packages to sell, after all.

The FIA can't control the drivers quite as well as it does its races, though. It can only react to their perceived missteps. When a driver as high-profile and successful as Verstappen says "The car was fucked," in a press conference, the federation's corresponding tantrum is essentially autonomic. Formula 1 wants you to believe these drivers are real people with real personalities, but only of a particular kind. They are avatars for the F1 brand, which in turn wants to be fun and chic, classy and focused, always immaculately self-possessed. Verstappen has long disdained that game; he opted out of Drive to Survive for the fourth season over unhappiness with his portrayal—he was the villain, particularly in contrast to Hamilton—and only returned when he was able to control his image.

Verstappen cursing just days after being told not to curse is an extension of his insistence on being seen as whatever version of himself he chooses to portray. That doesn't mean he loses his right to complain when the FIA punishes him for it; just because something is a rule doesn't mean it is correct. There's no way for F1 to balance its desire to promote itself through access into these drivers' inner lives with its desire to control what that access reveals about the sport and its participants. In punishing a rare moment of candor from Verstappen, whose car has indeed been fucked for months now, all the FIA and its race stewards can hope to accomplish is turning the drivers into robotic, media-trained zombies, the kind that will give one-word answers at press conferences and save their true selves for the realms outside of the camera's eye.

Maybe that's what F1 wants in the end: a sport that's fast, glitzy, and sterilized, the perfect show for the kind of wealthy patron who might be offended by Verstappen saying a curse word. F1 seems to have no problem complying with a draconian etiquette in order to keep its moneyed VIPs happy. That compliance becomes its own justification, and its own reward in the form of ever-growing coffers. It just comes at the cost of the actual personalities that made F1 drivers intriguing in the first place.