In Defense of S*** Talk
The FIA’s crackdown on explicit language shakes the very foundation of sports
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Read my latest article for Motorsport.com about Formula 1’s social media admins and how they’re adapting to an era of online fandom.
“As soon as I went into qualifying, I knew the car was fucked,” Max Verstappen said bluntly in Thursday’s press conference ahead of the Singapore Grand Prix.
Less than 24 hours later, the Federation Internationale de l'Automobile (FIA) stewards summoned the Red Bull driver to their offices. The subsequent punishment wasn’t a slap on the wrist, but rather an order to “accomplish some work of public interest,” according to FIA documents. The ruling body concluded that Verstappen’s comment violated Article 12.2.1.k of the International Sporting Code and used the “seven words you can’t say on television.”
The clause broadly limits “any misconduct towards, but not limited to license holders, officials, officers or member of the staff of the FIA, members of the staff of the organizer or promoter, members of the staff of the competitors, suppliers of products or services to (or contractors or subcontractors to) any of the parties listed above, doping control officials or any other person involved in a doping control.”
Verstappen defended his speech by claiming English was not his first language.
His community service punishment marked the climax of an ongoing discussion over the past few months. At the Hungarian Grand Prix in July, the Dutch driver hurled a slew of colorful words at his race engineer, Gianpiero Lambiase, over the radio after Lando Norris undercut his Red Bull. Ahead of the Belgian Grand Prix, Verstappen told a group of reporters crammed into the Red Bull hospitality suite, “If people don’t like my language, then don’t listen in. Turn the volume down.”
“In other sports, people say things but they don’t have a mic attached to their mouths,” he added.
While fans online debated whether Verstappen’s language was professional or not, the FIA began to publicly warn about clamping down on language it deemed inappropriate. It isn’t the first time. At the inaugural Las Vegas Grand Prix last November, the FIA issued warnings to both Toto Wolff and Fred Vasseur, Mercedes and Ferrari’s team principals, for using swear words during a press conference.
Now, the ruling body is taking action rather than throwing around empty threats. As of Sunday, Verstappen hadn’t received information on what “public interest” work would entail.
Slotting into the second qualifying spot on Saturday, Verstappen evaded press conference questions and told reporters “I would prefer if you ask these questions outside the room,” after joking “I might get fined an extra day [of community service]” if he elaborated on car improvements. A group of media gathered in the paddock and media pen where the Red Bull driver answered questions in a move news outlets like Autosport, The Race and The Athletic called a “protest.”
Other drivers labeled the ruling as “absurd.” Norris said he didn’t want Formula 1 to lose its rawness and that the ruling was “pretty unfair.” Oscar Piastri teased about the decision in the post-race cooldown room on Sunday, asking his teammate to describe a close encounter with the wall “without using swear words.” Charles Leclerc insisted “There are other priorities for the FIA to look at. We are adults.”
“I think it’s a bit of a joke, to be honest,” Lewis Hamilton added. “I certainly wouldn’t be doing it [community service], and I hope Max doesn’t do it.”
This is the second time Verstappen has been hit with community service as a punishment. Following a physical altercation between Verstappen and Esteban Ocon at the 2018 Brazilian Grand Prix, the former faced two days of public service.
While Verstappen’s press conference profanity didn’t call out an opposing driver—“if you aim it at someone that's bad,” he said—the subsequent ruling threatens to disrupt sports’ core: the insult-slinging, scurrilous gossip spreading and brazen trash talk that forces competitors to rise to the occasion.
A core that some reckon is rotten.
The hazy definition, and regulation, of misconduct
The FIA claimed the crackdown is an attempt to curtail online abuse and sanitize the sport for young audiences.
“We need to be responsible people and now with technology, everything is going live and everything is going to be recorded. At the end of the day, we have to study that to see: do we minimize what is being said publicly?” FIA President Mohammed Ben Sulayem said. He cited that online abuse towards officials inflates when drivers and team members use negative language.
As the sport’s audience skews younger, Ben Sulayem also expressed concern over children watching from home. “Because imagine you are sitting with your children and watching the race and then someone is saying all of this dirty language. I mean, what would your children or grandchildren say? What would you teach them if that is your sport?”
Verstappen quickly responded: “Excuse me for the language, but come on, what are we? Five-year-olds? Six-year-olds? Even if a five-year-old or six-year-old is watching, I mean, they will eventually swear anyway.”
Seven of the 24 races have a separate F1 Kids broadcast.
In the U.S., the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) regulates broadcast media and imposes fines for indecent, obscene and profane content aired on TV or radio shows. In 1964, Supreme Court Associate Justice Potter Stewart ruled in an obscenity case, “I know it when I see it.” While the case didn’t deal with broadcast media or swear words and instead pornographic material in a film (which Stewart deemed protected under the First Amendment), it still left a fuzzy and subjective definition of what is considered indecent, obscene and profane. Eight years later, comedian George Carlin delivered his “Seven Words You Can Never Say on Television” monologue, critiquing the censorship of certain words, and was arrested for disturbing the peace at a Milwaukee summer concert. Although the charges were dropped, a New York radio station’s airing of Carlin’s monologue brought the case to the Supreme Court. In 1978, the court sided with the FCC. The 2005 Broadcast Decency Enforcement Act tightened the reins on language allowed in broadcast media. But obscenity and indecency laws remain vague.
Formula 1 attempted to create contours around the vague definition of “misconduct” at the last World Motor Sport Council.
"They [the FIA] want to set a precedent," Verstappen said over the Singapore race weekend. "People got warnings or a little fine [in the past] and now with me they want to set an even bigger example I guess, which for me is a bit weird of course because I didn't swear at anyone particularly, I just said one thing about my car.
"It's in the code, you know? They have to follow the book and it's not the stewards, I don't want to blame this on the stewards because I actually had a really good chat with them and they need to follow the code, the book. I think they are quite understanding, but it's difficult for them as well."
But the sport’s international format makes aligning those definitions with broadcasting laws difficult. In the U.K., swearing is allowed in broadcast media and a 2020 study found that the British public wasn’t offended by on-air explicit language. Racist, homophobic and sexist comments were of more concern. Just like cryptocurrency, alcohol and tobacco sponsorship, each host country has inconsistent regulations.
While Formula 1 continues to partner with British media broadcaster SkySports, U.S. media deals have swelled in interest and profit. The broadcast media rights deal with ESPN, beginning in 2023, reportedly surged from $5 million per year to the sports media giant paying Formula 1 $90 million a year for exclusive broadcast rights in the states. From media rights to sponsorship deals, the sport is increasingly shifting its focus to a country with strict broadcast oversight.
Wait, trash talk is actually good for you?
The sun was beating down on the streets of Azerbaijan's capital city. Skidding across a hot, slippery surface, George Russell careened his Mercedes into the soon-to-be three-time world champion’s Red Bull. As the sprint race ended, the camera zeroed in on the gash adorning Verstappen’s car before panning to the Red Bull driver confronting Russell.
“Well, next time expect the same, dickhead,” Verstappen called after Russell’s retreating frame.
Formula 1’s fanbase ate up the pair’s heated exchange amid a slow season. Surging stateside, the sport hit record viewership and revenues in 2022, until Verstappen’s unprecedented dominant season made fans click the remote’s off switch.
Some light trash-talking can buoy sporting slumps, according to sports journalist Rafi Kohan, author of Trash Talk: The Only Book About Destroying Your Rivals That Isn’t Total Garbage. Kohan argues that sports like baseball—currently drying up in a “boring era”—can be saved with a few choice words.
But more than conserving Formula 1’s number of viewers or zeros attached to its valuation, trash talk is something so intimately woven into the fabric of sports that it’s nearly impossible to shake—or ban. The FIA’s crackdown on explicit language, whether hurled at an athlete’s own team or a competitor, threatens the very foundation of sports: Trash talk.
The smack talk that followed both Russell and Verstappen into press conference sessions and post-race interviews resembled a part of the sport that had long been missing in an era of sustained dominance. It signaled back to a time of great rivalries: Vettel vs. Webber, Prost vs. Senna, Lauda vs. Hunt and Hamilton’s string of challengers. More importantly, it showed just how desperate the sport is for trash talk. Talking smack is, after all, “as old as the bible—it’s perhaps the original sport,” according to Kohan.
Some critics warn of sportsmanship waning when trash talk is encouraged. Yelling unpleasantries doesn’t exactly spell a good work environment. In fact, in most beige office cubicles, such behavior would result in a trip to HR. Just like the definition of obscenity, the line between trash talk and inappropriate language is often fuzzy. Former driver Nelson Piquet’s notorious trash-talking ventured into racist and homophobic hate speech. There was no question that Yuki Tsunoda using ableist language in June wasn’t trash talk, but a slur. The FIA fined the Visa Cash App RB driver €40,000.
But when trash talk is “appropriate,” a little goes a long way: it can push fellow athletes to compete better, create a locker room bond and up the ante. A 2018 Cornell study theorized that trash talk may have survived this long because it is beneficial for competition.
“It can be used to self-motivate, distract, build hype or even construct bonds of personal intimacy. It can likewise be funny and playful, strategic and needling or insulting, edgy and aggressive,” Kohan writes. “It raises the stakes of the confrontation and asks whether one’s competitors can metabolize that added pressure without losing focus or if they’ll instead become emotional or distracted or question their abilities to succeed.”
Ask any athlete and they will likely tell you half the game happens in their head. It’s why people choke or sharply fall off in performance. It’s also why sports psychologists are on most teams’ payrolls. In racing, mental fortitude is just as necessary as the ability to turn the steering wheel and verbal hits can be just as effective as taking a chunk out of a rival’s car.
At the same time, trash talk can boost self-confidence and team bonding as intimacy poses as insolence, like Verstappen demanding more from his team.
However, those benefits are often lost on the public.
“Mostly, and especially in the U.S., trash talk is treated as little more than verbal static, or worse, it’s stigmatized and racialized and used as an excuse to punish and control other people’s behavior,” Kohan writes. When trash talk first became popularized in sports through baseball and boxing, it was criticized and racialized as the language of African American athletes.
On Friday, Hamilton criticized the ruling body’s president after Ben Sulayem told Motorsport that drivers were athletes, not rappers in response to swearing.
“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? That’s them and we are [us],” Ben Sulayem said.
“I don’t like how he’s expressed it. Saying ‘rappers’ is very stereotypical and if you think about it, most rappers are Black. So he really pointed it towards ‘We’re not like them,’” Hamilton, the first and only Black Formula 1 driver, said. “I think that was the wrong choice of words. There’s a racial element there.”
Trash talk was popularized by Black athletes like Muhammed Ali and linguistic games common in Black communities—most notably ‘The Dozens,’ a game where two people insult each other until the other gives up. But, Kohan claims it can be traced back to the Roman Empire and Shakespeare’s sonnets. Now, you can find trash talk lobbed between the world’s biggest boy bands, Silicon Valley’s tech CEOs and chess players in New York’s Washington Square Park.
Cutting trash talk from modern Formula 1 would be like altering the sport’s DNA.
If Formula 1’s “Drive to Survive” era taught us anything, it’s that the masses are desperate for a “Real Housewives” spin on the sport. X (or Twitter) beef and broadcasted radio messages are feeding the frenzy. And the “Seven Dirty Words” are almost always at the scene of the crime. One X account even coined a new team name for Russell and Verstappen in the off-chance that the latter would sign onto Mercedes in 2026: Beef-cedes.
But Verstappen questioned his future at any team this weekend. The 26-year-old has teased leaving Formula 1 as more sprint races join the calendar and the entertainment factor becomes a top priority. The FIA’s ruling resurfaced retirement talk.
“These kinds of things definitely decide my future,” Verstappen said on Sunday. “When you can’t be yourself, you have to deal with these kinds of silly things…I think 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.”
Fans joked that ‘Mad Max’ was back, but he may not be here to stay. Verstappen—known for his thorny persona, no-nonsense attitude and aggressive driving style in his early Formula 1 years—is adamant about drivers’ being uncensored.
Throwing around the occasional F-bomb comes with the territory.
*While working at Hachette Book Group’s PublicAffairs and Bold Type Books, I briefly assisted in working on Kohan’s book.
I really enjoyed your point about sports and trash talk! Also I think maybe if the organization really cared about cleaning up their image, they wouldn't hold races in countries known for human rights abuses...this is purely performative and honestly pretty insulting to me as a viewer.
also, karun chandock made a point over this recent GP about how english is most of the driver's second language, are they going to mediate every swear word in every language?