F1 Star Max Verstappen Hints That He’ll Quit If He Can’t Swear

The motorsport Formula 1 has been plunged into a dispute over profanity and race, with its biggest star flirting with quitting if he is not allowed to swear.

Max Verstappen, the three-time Formula 1 world champion, is in a tense stand-off with its governing body after he dropped an f-bomb when he was asked about the performance of his car after coming in fifth.

Now the profanity has set off a multi-car crash inside the high-octane—and high-value—sport, with one of its top executives facing accusations of racism for comparing Verstappen’s swearing to “rappers.”

The Dutch Verstappen, 26, has become known not just for winning races at top speeds of 230mph, but for blazing ego and blunt talk, which was on display in Netflix’s hit series Drive to Survive. During a press conference ahead of the Singapore Grand Prix last Thursday when he was asked about his Red Bull car’s frustrating performance at the Azerbaijan Grand Prix the previous week, where he finished fifth, he replied, “F—-ed.”

When a moderator scolded him about bad language, Verstappen said, “I couldn’t even say the f-word, I mean it’s not even that bad right? I mean the car was not working, the car is effed and then, [it’s] excuse me for the language. Come on, what are we? Five-year-olds? Six-year-olds? Even if a five-year-old or six-year-old is watching, they will eventually swear anyway even if their parents won’t or they will not allow it.”

Clive Rose – Formula 1/Formula 1 via Getty Images

Within 24 hours, the FIA, F1’s governing body, reprimanded Verstappen and ordered him to “accomplish some work of public interest” as punishment, prompting Verstappen to call the disciplinary measure “ridiculous” and “silly” and immediately started hinting about quitting.

“For sure, these kind of things definitely decide my future as well,” Verstappen said, according to Racer. “You know, when you can’t be yourself, or you have to deal with these kind of silly things. I think now I’m at the stage of my career that you don’t want to be dealing with this all the time. It’s really tiring.”

But then Mohammed Ben Sulayem, the Emirati president of FIA, the sport’s governing body—who has taken a hard line against foul language, especially on team radios used to communicate during races and transmitted on live TV—stepped into the dispute.

MOHD RASFAN/AFP via Getty Images

Ben Sulayem told Motorsport, “We’re not rappers, you know. They say the F-word how many times per minute? That’s them and we are [us].”

His intervention caused Lewis Hamilton, the seven time F1 world champion, who is Black, to lash out about the racially charged comment.

“Saying ‘rappers’ is very stereotypical,” Hamilton said, according to The Guardian. “If you think about it, most rappers are Black, so it says: ‘We are not like them.’ Those are the wrong choice of words and there is a racial element there.”

The dispute comes just as the sport aggressively tries to expand into the U.S., fueled by the success of the Netflix series.

The next Grand Prix on its calendar is in Austin, Texas, at the Circuit of the Americas, between Oct. 18 and 20.