Verstappen made to complete a day of community service for swearing

Verstappen's F-bomb leads to FIA community service order, sparking debate on F1's over-policing and racial undertones.

Max Verstappen said a bad word — it started with an F — in a formal news conference to describe how his race car was performing. The man who called for Verstappen to be punished also drew sharp criticism for his own choice of words.

Verstappen's sanction for his egregious behavior? The three-time Formula 1 champion was ordered by the sport's governing body to complete a day of community service because the FIA has apparently banned cursing.

The crackdown had been foreshadowed — Ferrari team principal Fred Vasseur and Mercedes boss Toto Wolff were both summoned to speak to the stewards last November about their language at a news conference in Las Vegas — and FIA President Mohammed Ben Sulayem publicly rebuked cursing earlier this month.

Motorsport.com reported that the FIA had asked Formula One Management to better limit the naughty language broadcast during races. While the curse words — said on team radio that is accessible to the public — are bleeped out on television, Ben Sulayem found the frequency of the poor language unsettling.

“We have to differentiate between our sport — motorsport — and rap music,” Ben Sulayem said. “We’re not rappers, you know.”

Lewis Hamilton, who already felt he'd been personally targeted by Ben Sulayem when the president banned the wearing of jewelry during competition upon election, felt the comments had a racial element to them.

“I don’t like how he has expressed it. Saying ‘rappers’ is very stereotypical," said Hamilton, the only Black driver in F1. "If you think about it, most rappers are Black. So it says, ‘We are not like them.’ So I think those are the wrong choice of words and there is a racial element there.”