Massa Shares His Opinion On Verstappen's Penalty For Swearing

Saturday, 05 October 2024 at 18:00

Former F1 driver Felipe Massa shared his opinion on the penalty that Max Verstappen received for swearing at the official FIA press conference.

Red Bull Racing F1 driver Max Verstappen was ordered by the FIA (F1's regulatory body) to accomplish work of public interest after he used the F-word to describe problems with his car during an official FIA press conference.

Brazilian racing driver Felipe Massa, who completed 15 seasons in Formula One, recently shared his opinion on the penalty that the Dutchman received. He told RacingNews365:

"What happened to Max, he didn't pass the limit. When you have some fights there are some words and whatever you know, even some bad words."

"Sometimes that is part of the sport. It's part of the condition, the pressure, whenever things happen in a race."

The 43-year-old made the same point that Charles Leclerc , for example, also touched on: Formula 1 is the only sport where fans can hear what players/drivers say.

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"In football, you make a bad tackle on another player, if he has a microphone by his mouth, things will come out, and maybe not in a perfect way."

"But what's happening is too much, you know. The sport needs to have a way of [allowing] funny things, even crazy things which belong to the fights [on track]."

"You cannot really do that. It was not nice what happened to Max with this punishment that Max had, and whatever, you know, all the drivers can have so he's not part of too much."

Former F1 driver Johny Herbert, who was one of the stewards at the 2024 Singapore Grand Prix, recently shared how the stewards talked to the triple World Champion and why they decided to give him such a controversial penalty.

Of course, the Dutchman went on to start his protest afterward, which was - not properly answering any of the questions at official FIA press conferences. It remains to be seen whether he keeps it going even after the Autumn break at the United States Grand Prix.