As a governing body, it has done some very fine work over the decades, has used that control to protect the participants from themselves in terms of safety advances. The three bodies have rubbed along ok for the last few years, give or take a few squabbles.
But then one of those freewheeling, anti-authority types, the world champion no less, lets slip with an expressive emphasising adjective of the colourful type in an FIA press conference. The sort of language drivers have been using forever. It’s not being directed at anyone but simply lending some emotion to the description of a situation.
The FIA president, a man by temperament well-suited to having a prestigious title and who likes to be seen to be being in charge, takes exception to the swearing and punishes the world champion. Who responds with indignant mischief by making almost no comments at all in the next FIA conference – thereby making it almost meaningless – but inviting anyone to come and talk to him freely as soon as the conference is over. If it was a cartoon, the man in charge would be visibly fuming at being so easily foiled and made to look so powerless. And the drivers would be sniggering.
Verstappen’s press conference protest made a mockery of Ben Sulayem
Clive Mason/F1 via Getty Images)
The GPDA then issues an open letter to the president, essentially asking him to refrain from treating them like children and to work together in enhancing the sport and oh by the way, where does the money from our fines go to? More mischief, more rejection of authority. The president responds by saying it’s none of their business where the money goes and not long after dismisses the auditors who were advising him and changes the statutes so that any such investigations are conducted internally.
With that done, he issues the revised sporting code. So in response to the drivers asking him to not hold onto the leash so tightly, he has wound it in tighter! Because he’s in control, you see.
George Russell and his GPDA colleagues may be stirred into action by the penalties announced for swearing
Dan Istitene/F1 via Getty Images
Drivers do not fundamentally recognise control as a belief system. They’ll buy into it as far as is required in order to be able to do what they do, as a minor inconvenience but not something which has any intrinsic meaning. By nature they are not subservient. Which is partly what makes them great racing drivers.
But in escalating the squabble, the president may have passed the point at which drivers indulge the man in charge as being in charge. Far from extinguishing the problem, he might just have inflamed it. Which in comedy sketch terms is a fantastic dynamic.
In such a comedy, what might those mischievous drivers do next? Well, they might claim that the stress imposed upon them by all these directives has given them all Tourettes syndrome, which has caused them to swear involuntarily at random. Because the precise cause of Tourettes is not known, they might suggest that the FIA funds some research into the condition…