The furious race to take the F-word out of F1

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Subscribe to enjoy similar stories. SINGAPORE—It happens to every Formula One driver. You’re crammed inside a tiny cockpit, sweating through your fireproof suit, with your foot to the floor at 200 miles per hour, when suddenly something goes wrong with your $10 million machine.

Or you get passed. Or you crash. So you drop an F-bomb.

The problem is that moment of frustration isn’t confined to the inside of your helmet—anything drivers say is relayed back to their team over a radio. And in an age of wall-to-wall F1 race coverage, those radio communications are frequently broadcast straight to a television audience of tens of millions. Which is why motorsport’s world governing body this week asked drivers to pump the brakes on running their mouths.

And on Thursday in Singapore, the world’s best drivers briefly complied—but only to reply politely that they intend to keep on cursing, thank you very much. “What are we, 5-year-olds?" defending world champion Max Verstappen said. “People say a lot of bad things when they’re full of adrenaline in other sports.

It just doesn’t get picked up." Verstappen, whose Dutch directness is famous in F1 circles, has never been one to censor himself. In fact, mere minutes before he was asked about the new recommendation, he had been complaining about the state of his car at this month’s Azerbaijan Grand Prix. “As soon as I went to qualifying," Verstappen said, “I knew the car was f—ed." The debate kicked off when Mohammed Ben Sulayem, the president of the Federation Internationale de l’Automobile, said in an interview that he had enough of drivers letting loose over the radio, even though it’s usually bleeped out on the television broadcasts.