Explained: Formula 1’s swearing row that has led to Max Verstappen threatening to quit the sport

After being severely disciplined for using foul language during a news conference, Max Verstappen has threatened to resign from Formula 1.

The Formula One World Championships are getting hotter as McLaren climbs the Drivers’ and Constructors’ Championship tables and Red Bull and Max Verstappen’s recent problems coincide with Lando Norris’s. But in the middle of all of this, an entirely unexpected scandal has emerged due to the sport’s governing body abruptly enforcing a ban on swearing.

The crux of the matter

Before the Singapore Grand Prix on September 19, Verstappen made a swearing statement about his car during the previous race in Azerbaijan, where he ended in fifth place. The Dutchman was brought to the stewards less than twenty-four hours later. Following a thirteen-minute hearing, he was punished for using language that the rules considered to be “coarse, rude, or may cause offence.” It is anticipated that he will “accomplish some work of public interest,” which is yet to be specified.

Verstappen made the decision to communicate appropriately in interviews he did outside of the FIA-hosted news conference. The 26-year-old made it clear when asked if he would think twice about continuing in the sport if he had more altercations like these with the FIA: “For sure, yeah.”

These kinds of things do, after all, determine my destiny as well. These kinds of ridiculous things are what you have to deal with when you can’t be yourself. I don’t want to be dealing with this all the time at this point in my career. It’s pretty tiring.”

What the FIA had said

A week prior to the Singapore race, FIA President Mohammed Ben Sulayem had declared that the organization will be stricter about making sure drivers reduce the amount of times they swear in public during race weekends. In an ironic manner. Ben Sulayem received backlash for the terms he chose to communicate this. “We need to distinguish between rap music and our sport, motorsport. We’re not rappers, you know. How many times a minute do they say the f-word? That is not where we are at. We are [us], and that’s them,” Ben Sulayem had declared.

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.