As much as sports are about live action, it is also about the raw emotions that athletes face in those moments. Taking that away would be taking a crucial aspect of the sport that fans love to see and what often keeps them engaged.
Yet F1 president Mohammed Ben Sulayem thinks that fans mustn’t be able to hear drivers’ team radios because of the excessive swearing that takes place. While the 63-year-old is of the opinion that doing so will probably help prevent children from learning foul language, drivers like Max Verstappen believe that young kids will learn it anyway.
After receiving the infamous community service punishment last year for swearing during a press conference, an irked Verstappen said, “I couldn’t even say the F-word and it’s not even that bad, right? Even if a five-year-old or six-year-old is watching, they will eventually swear anyway. This is not changing anything.
Instead, he had another advice for the FIA to reduce swearing and that was simply to stop broadcasting the team radio messages. While the FIA seems to be doing exactly that, two Pitstop Boys podcast hosts Jake Boys and Fabio Bocca have explained how doing so will reduce the interest among fans.
“If you remove them (team radios) completely, we’ll have no idea what the drivers’ thinking, what’s going on throughout the race. It’s just a terrible, terrible idea,” said Boys.
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Meanwhile, his co-host Bocca added that the FIA could simply also bleep all team radio communications to prevent fans from hearing any kind of swearing. While this is already being done, it is not enough for Sulayem.
Sulayem stirs up controversy again
Sulayem’s crackdown on swearing last year followed up by the Grand Prix Drivers’ Association (GPDA) sending him a letter, urging him to treat drivers like adults, definitely did not seem enough for him to address this issue. The 63-year-old has brought up this topic again, stating that he treats all drivers like his “sons and daughters“.
Speaking further of what are the future plans to reduce swearing, Ben Sulayem added, “Do we go on and then shut down the radios of live communication? Maybe. “Do we delay it? Maybe. There are a lot of things that would work now with our promoter“. However, that was not the only controversy he stirred up again.
He also reminded everyone that the “FOM [Formula One Management] are the promoter; the FIA, we are still the owners of the championship“. The ownership debate in F1 is critical as just two years ago, Ben Sulayem stirred up massive controversy when he claimed that the sport’s valuation of $20 billion was massively overvalued.
“As the custodians of motorsport, the FIA, as a non-profit organization, is cautious about alleged inflated price tags of $20bn being put on F1,” he wrote in a post on X.
As the custodians of motorsport, the FIA, as a non-profit organisation, is cautious about alleged inflated price tags of $20bn being put on F1. (1/3)
— Mohammed Ben Sulayem (@Ben_Sulayem) January 23, 2023
These comments were unsurprisingly not taken too kindly by F1’s commercial rights holders Liberty Media. They issued a letter, accusing Ben Sulayem of “interfering with our [commercial] rights in an unacceptable manner“.
With Ben Sulayem not only stirring controversy with the F1 drivers but also with the sport’s commercial rights holders, it is fair to say he is not concerned about making friends.
