Brown intervenes in discussion about swearing in F1: 'I think that's inappropriate'
F1 News
- Savannah Lenz
Like many team principals, McLaren CEO Zak Brown has his own opinions about how to handle swearing in Formula 1. Ahead of the 2025 season, the FIA released new rules regarding the punishments for swearing and thus, the conversation surrounding the controversial topic flared up again.
Brown partly agrees with FIA on swearing
On the James Allen on F1 podcast, Brown said, "The swearing I agree with in certain circumstances, meaning in a press conference where everything is quite chilled out, there's no emotion involved, there's no reason to swear,” he continued, “I think that's inappropriate and we should set a good example.”
With intense sports such as Formula 1, the emotions build up and it can get quite heated. Brown points out that in other sports, they still swear but the difference is they are not wearing a mic. "I think when the helmet is on, you’re in the heat of the battle, I would imagine on a football pitch or a baseball field, there's a lot of stuff that we just don't hear because they're not mic’d up.”
Brown: 'You can't expect that from F1 drivers'
But who does he think the blame should fall on? He says, “We do have the power to hit the delay button or delete on the broadcast. You actually can control whether it makes it onto TV or not by just hitting the delete button.”
“I think showing the emotion and the passion and the intensity is good. A little bit of it is okay, but we've got the power in the production studio to hit the pause button,” Brown thinks that would be a good way to handle it. For the production team to be the end point, not the drivers. “So I think that's how you solve that. It would be unrealistic to say you can't swear when the helmet is on.”
This article was written in collaboration with Nicole Mulder.
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