World champion Max Verstappen must carry out public interest work as punishment for swearing in an official F1 press conference
This absolute nonsense. Max should push this issue by not complying (maybe even add a little “fuck yous” in the message). What are they going to do? Whatever the next step would be, just ignore and do not comply.
Force the hand of the FIA to show them for what they are : idiots gatekeeping nonsense. This does nothing for the sport and it is a non-issue.
Some part of me feels this is a consequence of an American company owning F1 now and implementing these BS actions that seem to be normal in US sports. I was afraid that this mentality would come to F1 and here we are…
He needs to do a public apology
“I’m very fucking sorry for my poor choice of words.”
The British are way more afraid of swearing on national TV than the Americans are
Nope, the broadcaster just issues a (sometimes tongue in cheek) apology and everything carries on.
The US broadcasters risk breach of advertising contracts and losing money over it.
The UK broadcasters will get a small fine if they don’t apologise and do it regularly.
And the public in the UK generally don’t care.
Eh. US networks don’t allow it, just the same as UK ones before 21:00.
Real people don’t actually care.
Meh, two peas in a pod as far as I am concerned 🤣
It’s this liberty or MBS?
It’s the same. Liberty is driven by money and it is scared advertisers will take offense and consequentially less money be generated because of it. MBS is cognizant of this concern and started to act as he also is driven by financial motives.
You could consider Liberty and MBS to be in the same camp on this one. And it is all about financials, not morals.
Some part of me feels this is a consequence of an American company owning F1 now and implementing these BS actions that seem to be normal in US sports. I was afraid that this mentality would come to F1 and here we are…
Nah, it’s the Brits who say " we apologise for any strong language you may have heard" even if it was only one word because of Ofcom. I can’t find any good data because search engines are glorified news machines now not finding anything older, but this has been a thing for public broadcasts for a while.
Language like that is quite common in the Netherlands, I suppose it’s all rappers there. I fail to see how this did any harm to F1, or motorsport. It is childish. This will further reduce the quality of press conferences where drivers really do not say anything but the usual: “Car was [not] running well, we are [not] confident we can run for the top places [run in the points]. We have [no] upgrades. See you after the race.”.
Future press conferences “I am here so I don’t get fined.”
Fuckin hell
Kimi got out of the sport just in time I guess…
I expected this to happen, but not to the WDC.
Fuck that lol
I do agree that in press conference and televised stuff that language should be kept clean. Did he apologise after saying it? I remember Lando swore when he won the Miami GP but immediately apologised. I have no issue when it’s used over team radios as that is delayed and can be censored as and when needed, and it’s in the heat of the moment and words like that do come out.
I completely disagree. I think we should all stop getting offended by so-called foul language and realise that we ourselves have the power of assigning value to words, and choosing as a society to continue to be offended by hearing “shit” and “fuck” is simply unnecessarily perpetuating the cycle and in essence creating opportunities to feel negative emotions for no reason for the next generation.
There is also the fact that this language ban isn’t even motivated by some sort of morality in the first place but by sponsors who think association with such language will hurt their sales.
Yep, totally agree.
As a non native english speaker it’s always funny to me, how the commentators on Sky F1 immediately apologize for the “dirty” words the drivers use.
Come on guys, we all know these words and everyone should be allowed to say “shit” or “fuck”, when things are exactly that: shit!
As a non native english speaker it’s always funny to me, how the commentators on Sky F1 immediately apologize for the “dirty” words the drivers use.
This is actually required by law. It’s party of their broadcasting licence that they don’t use profanity before “the watershed” (2100 at night). If they receive a complaint that they were seen to allow the profanity they get fined. And repeat offending will lose their broadcast licence.
It’s dumb and you may not agree with it, but that’s the rules.
Then they should stop using communications that contain profanity in their broadcasts. Drivers should dump the blame on the production teams.
Then they should stop using communications that contain profanity in their broadcasts.
They do that when they have enough time to redact the profanity. It’s always bleeped out. But in a live situation when you don’t have time to edit a beep in you’re going to have some fall through the cracks.
I don’t know if you watch any other sport on British TV but it’s the same there. For example in Rugby the referee is actually mic’d up and you always hear some fruity language from the players. And when that leaks into the ref’s mic and gets accidentally broadcast the commentators apologise because they don’t want to be seen as breaching the rules.
In general you probably don’t want to broadcast foul language when children might be watching. But you also can’t avoid foul language at sporting events that happen to be broadcast at the hours children might be watching. So you have to do something to tread that line.
And, look, if you still disagree then maybe switch to a Dutch stream of the coverage where apparently it’s totally normal to swear like a pirate at any time of day 🤷.
