The FIA can now ban F1 drivers for being ‘rude’

You couldn’t make it up, could you? After last season’s hoo-ha over fruity language in F1, the FIA is set to clamp down on words it doesn’t like with a combination of huge fines, one-month driver bans and the threat of a championship points deduction. Blimey.

Reports say that the governing body’s sporting code for 2025 has introduced a new framework for penalising any language that’s deemed ‘offensive, insulting, coarse, rude or abusive’ or anything deemed to have caused ‘moral injury’ to the FIA. Riiight…

The standard fine is €10,000, but as F1 is a top tier racing category everything is multiplied by four, meaning F1 drivers will be punished by the stewards to the tune of €40,000 (£33,775). And that’s just for their first offence.

A second offence will incur a fine of €80,000 (£67,550) with a suspended one-month driving ban, while a third strike will trigger a whopper of a €120,000 (£101,325) fine, that one-month ban, and a loss of championship points.

Makes you wonder what kind of verbal carnage Max Verstappen would have to unleash to actually endanger his title chances…

You’ll remember of course that this all started with the Dutchman last year, when the then three-time champ swore in an FIA press conference in the build-up to the Singapore Grand Prix.

Prior to that FIA president Mohammed Ben Sulayem had warned the drivers against foul language, saying “we’re not rappers”; Lewis Hamilton later criticised those comments for having a “racial element”.

Anyway, Verstappen was ordered to “accomplish some work of public interest”, and when Charles Leclerc let an f-bomb slip at the Sao Paulo GP a few weeks later, that prompted the GPDA – the group that represents all the drivers – to issue a public letter urging Ben Sulayem to “consider his own tone” and treat the drivers like adults.

Perhaps more worryingly, this latest development could be seen as another attempt by Ben Sulayem to shut down criticism: last month the FIA secured a number of rule changes that critics condemned for making the president less accountable to ethics and audit committees than before. Hmm.

Meanwhile in completely separate but oh-so brilliantly timed news, F1 has today announced a partnership with a celebrity chef for 2025. None other than… Gordon Ramsey! And no, we haven’t made that up. See for yourself...