Seated between Lando Norris and Lewis Hamilton during the post-qualifying Formula 1 press conference in Singapore, Max Verstappen\u2019s responses to questions posed by Tom Clarkson were uncharacteristically curt. Asked what he had changed to improve his performance, Verstappen answered \u201ca lot\u201d, and when Clarkson enquired whether the driver was satisfied with the pace, he paused, apparently contemplating his response, before saying \u201cmaybe\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The remainder of the interview continued in the same vein, Verstappen\u2019s petulance an obvious retaliation for the slap on the wrist he had just received from the Federation Internationale de l’Automobile (FIA), after he used an expletive at a pre-race press conference days before. Questioned about his performance at the Azerbaijan Grand Prix, Verstappen had responded bluntly that \u201cthe car was f%ck&d\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Let me be clear: one of the most successful athletes of all time, never mind racing drivers, was publicly humiliated and then punished, as if he were a pre-teen child, for swearing. In the subsequent FIA press conference, it is no wonder then that he chose to sulk. Despairingly, Verstappen could have avoided this conundrum altogether had he heeded the admonition of FIA president Mohammed Ben Sulayem, who just days before had criticised F1 drivers for using foul language on team radios during races. \u201cWe\u2019re not rappers\u201d, he stated, appealing to family values.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Imagine for a moment Niki Lauda or James Hunt being told by an official to perform community service because they had lost their temper and sworn in the pits. In those days, that particular functionary might have got knocked out.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
That the FIA has adopted such a staunch position against swearing, in particular, is risible. What, between crypto exchanges, online gambling platforms, and alcohol sponsorships, is it that specifically upsets these bureaucrats discharged from totalitarian petrostates, about the word \u201cf%ck\u201d? Is it the children that they are concerned about?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Perhaps, when they go browsing with their families through one of the many mega-malls they have randomly built in the desert, bumping into a Russian oligarch here or a Gupta there, or even into one of the many prostitutes that infamously frequent Dubai \u2013 their adult playground \u2013 they do<\/em>, on the existential question of the word \u201cf%ck\u201d, take offence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Beyond, however, the obvious Monty Python-like comical pathos of it all, there is a more sinister undercurrent that can easily go unnoticed. Ben Sulayem\u2019s comments came immediately after the Azerbaijan Grand Prix, hosted on the streets of Baku, a city that will also, bizarrely, host world leaders for the UN Conference of Parties, COP29, for eleven days this November. Bear in mind that the COP conferences are meant to create a global coordinated response to the impending doom that is inadequately labelled \u201cclimate change\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n How is it possible that, of all the 195 countries that signed the Paris Agreement in 2015, Azerbaijan, an authoritarian regime that is also a petrostate that generates 90% of its export revenues from oil and gas, is the ideal<\/em> location for this coordination to take place? In fact, one could almost interpret Ben Sulayem\u2019s recent obsession with the word \u201cf%ck\u201d as being a clever diversion on top of the overall sportswashing conceit that F1 has become. By doubling down, by elevating the question of moral values in a vacuum of morality, we, the viewers inadvertently end up judging Verstappen, not the authoritarians.<\/p>\n\n\n\n But beneath the puffery, there is a far deeper malice and hidden motive. COP29 president-designate Mukhtar Babayev, a former executive at the Azerbaijan state-owned oil company SOCAR, decided, of his own volition, to exclude any reference to phasing out fossil fuels from the official COP29 agenda. It was with great difficulty, one will recall, that a global agreement was reached at COP28, to transition away from fossil fuels by 2050.<\/p>\n\n\n\n While it is scientifically indisputable that the main culprit for our uncontrollable climate crisis is fossil fuel emissions \u2013 75 Nobel prize winners signed a petition to such effect in the build-up to COP29 \u2013 Babayev has nevertheless ignored these facts, and has instead elevated the issue of renewable grid power storage capacity to the top of the agenda. This seems extraordinarily convenient for China, at this juncture, which produces 80% of the world\u2019s lithium-ion batteries, and which currently faces an oversupply problem given lower-than-expected sales of electric vehicles this year. Capitalism, however, as always, finds its own way to profit from this cacophony of bureaucratic target setting and agenda pushing. F1 is an 8 billion dollar business, at least since 2017, when it was bought by US-based Liberty Media. LVMH, the French luxury behemoth, has just signed a ten-year 100 million euro per-year deal with F1, wishing to harness a new kind of sporting fan market, as they pivot in our new world to new trends. I guess it does make sense though if you really think about it. Holding your child\u2019s hand in one hand and a Louis Vuitton handbag in the other, while the air-con keeps humming in the desert.<\/p>\n\n\n\n