The Formula One World Championships are heating up, with Red Bull and Max Verstappen’s recent troubles coinciding with Lando Norris and McLaren charge up the Drivers’ and Constructors’ Championship tables. In the midst of all this though, the sport’s governing body suddenly enforcing a diktat against swearing has ushered in a controversy that was completely and utterly unexpected.

At a time when rivalries could blossom and shots could be fired between championship contenders, the FIA punishing defending champion Max Verstappen for swearing in a press conference has in fact united the drivers.

The crux of the matter

Verstappen swore on September 19 ahead of the Singapore Grand Prix when describing his car at the previous race in Azerbaijan, where he finished fifth. Less than 24 hours later, the Dutchman was summoned to the stewards where, after a 13-minute hearing, he was issued with a punishment for using language deemed under the rules to be “coarse, rude or may cause offence”. He will be expected to “accomplish some work of public interest” yet to be defined.

Verstappen subsequently finished second at the Singapore Grand Prix and he protested against the FIA’s decision by largely remaining quite and giving monsyllabic answers to questions in the press conference sanctioned by the body after the qualification. He even said “No, I might get fined”, when asked to elaborate on what had been done to improve the performance of the car between the Azerbaijan Grand Prix and Singapore.

Verstappen chose to speak properly in interviews that he gave outside of the press conference which is organised by the FIA. When asked if these kind of altercations with the FIA would make him reconsider his future in the sport, the 26-year-old was unequivocal said, “For sure, yeah.”

“I mean, these kinds of things definitely decide my future as well. When you can’t be yourself, you have to deal with these kinds of silly things. Now I’m at a stage of my career that I don’t want to be dealing with this all the time. It’s really tiring.”

What the FIA had said

FIA president Mohammed Ben Sulayem had said a week before the race in Singapore that the body will be more stringent in ensuring that drivers cut down on the number of times they swear in the media during a race weekend. Ironically. Ben Sulayem was criticised for the choice of words he used to say this. “We have to differentiate between our sport – motorsport – and rap music. We’re not rappers, you know. They say the f-word how many times per minute? We are not on that. That’s them and we are [us]”, Ben Sulayem had said.

In response to this, seven-time world champion Lewis Hamilton accused Ben Sulayem of using stereotypical bias informed by a “racial element” in citing rap artists.