25/09/2024
NEWS STORY
The so-called drivers' union - the Grand Prix Drivers' Association - is to hold talks with the FIA as row over swearing builds.
In all honesty, if Max and Red Bull were cruising to the title as in 2023 the current row over bad language would be just the sort of thing to take our minds off things, and would certainly appeal to those converted to the sport by the likes of Drive to Survive.
But with a genuine fight to the wire building the ongoing row is proving something of a distraction, indeed an embarrassment for the sport.
24 hours after FIA president, Mohammed ben Sulayem revealed that he was to talk to Formula One Management over the broadcasting of bad language, Max Verstappen was hit with a one-day community service order for dropping an F-bomb during the official driver press conference.
The Dutchman reacted to the punishment with a form of silent protest, whilst the likes of Lewis Hamilton and Lando Norris described the ban and the world champion's resultant punishment as silly.
As more drivers vent their feelings - albeit without the use of profanity - it has been revealed that the GPDA is to hold talks with the sport's governing body.
"How many lifetime community services would Guenther Steiner have to serve for using the F-word?" asked GPDA chairman, Alex Wurz in a YouTube interview with Formel1.de. "He was glorified for using the F-word," added the Austrian.
"Netflix broadcast that worldwide, no problem," he added. "But then to suddenly change like that...
"I have to say, it's not my personal taste as a driver," he said of Verstappen's F-bomb. "But as GPDA chairman, I have to officially say that we will, of course, discuss it internally, reach a full consensus, and then we will consider whether and in what form we will talk to the FIA and the president."
However, as the ban, Verstappen's punishment and the Dutchman's subsequent claim that such rules could drive him out of the sport, divide public opinion, Wurz believes the issue should not be played out in public.
"Personally, I always believe, and we also do this at the GPDA, we solve it internally," he said. "We don't go through the media. Very rarely does something go from the GPDA to the media because we simply try to solve things internally for the sake of the sport and want to bring the people and the individual key stakeholders on our journey together."
Like Verstappen, and others however, Wurz agrees that a clampdown on bad language means that drivers can no longer be themselves.
"I think drivers have to be allowed to express themselves authentically to some extent," he said. "Of course, it shouldn't be personally offensive, and it shouldn't be discriminatory either. They've all come a long way in that regard. So, for me personally, the penalty is too severe."
While all of us shudder at the person in the street seemingly unable to utter a sentence without including at least one F-bomb and perhaps even a C-word for good measure, neither do we want a grid full of anodyne George Russell-types seemingly fully-signed up to the cult of the corporation.