What happened the last time Verstappen did community service

"You won't believe who's coming."

It's the oddly petrol-fume stinking pitlane of the Moulay El Hassan circuit ahead of the 2019 Marrakech E-Prix. The Atlas Mountains are twinkling to my right. These are the early days of Formula E's Gen-2 era.

Amid the manufacturer influx party the electric championship was guzzling upon, that meant pretty much anyone could be coming. Wayne Rooney? Boris Johnson? Liz Hurley? Idris Elba had driven the Gen1 car at the previous Paris E-Prix, something Johnson had also done during a flying visit to the controversial Battersea round in 2015. Heady days.

"... Max Verstappen – serving his community service for shoving Esteban Ocon".

Obviously. But for the FIA, it actually was clear.

The governing body had slapped Verstappen – then just a lowly five-time F1 race winner – with this punishment as a result of the ugly confrontation scenes in the Interlagos paddock a few months earlier. This all followed the infamous unlapping incident with the then Force India racer as Verstappen led the 2018 Brazilian Grand Prix later won by Lewis Hamilton.

Some in the FE paddock felt this part of Verstappen's punishment – he was also required to attend a later winter stewards’ training seminar in Geneva – made the championship look bad. This included the Marrakech weekend’s superpole winner, Sam Bird, who said, “to call coming to an FE race community service I think does FE a bit of a disjustice [sic]”.

There was negativity after Verstappen was previously made to complete community service at a Formula E event

Photo by: Sam Bloxham / Motorsport Images

“This is an amazing category,” added the then Virgin Racing driver. “And people pay to come and watch us – it shouldn't be a punishment to come here.”

But timing was far more important than any imagined slight – FE firmly being the baby of then FIA president Jean Todt. Verstappen’s community service had been designed so he could witness exactly how FIA-appointed stewards spend race weekends at a high-level international events and adjudicate accordingly.

FE’s then semi-winter series status meant this was just the first event of sufficient standard for him to attend. Marrakech was also handily near his Monaco residence in-between FE jaunts to Riyadh and Santiago, and came during the few weeks of F1’s ever-expanding schedule that Verstappen himself wouldn’t be travelling to race events.

"It’s good to experience different things in racing rather than just sitting in the car"
Max Verstappen

So, flown in from Monaco/Nice, Verstappen spent that day shadowing the event stewards – appointed, as ever, to act independently on the FIA’s behalf. After a tour of the Marrakech track’s race control facilities and with lunch in FE’s giant team-and-crew catering tent, he sat at the stewards’ tables during live sessions and for any required hearings. He was not made available for FE PR purposes, but did speak to FIA media staff at the day’s end.

Having witnessed an E-Prix where DS Teechtah driver Jean-Eric Vergne hit Bird in audacious move for the lead at Turn 1 and spun, and the two BMW Andretti drivers Antonio Felix da Costa and Alexander Sims spectacularly took each other out of the lead fight much later, Verstappen was left to reflect how “it’s interesting to see it from the other side”.

“Everybody does their own job during the weekend,” he added. “And it’s good to really see what it takes to make these important decisions – sometimes a decision might not be nice for a certain person but it has to be taken and you have to follow the rules.

“I think it’s good to experience different things in racing rather than just sitting in the car – to be here and do this kind of work has been a constructive thing for me.”

Verstappen was interested in how decisions are made by the FIA stewards

Photo by: Joe Portlock / Motorsport Images

Autosport understands he privately expressed his opinions on certain incidents from the day to the panel that included ex-F1 racer and regular grand prix steward, Tonio Liuzzi, but didn’t do so during any formal decision-making process.

While the FE paddock then prepared to conduct a rookie test on the same course the next day – including drivers such as Nyck de Vries and Jamie Chadwick – Verstappen headed home.

In 2024, he faces a second FIA-mandated community service sentence – this time for swearing during the pre-event press conference for the 2024 Singapore GP. If Verstappen’s appearance in Marrakech was a surprise, it will be even more so if he acquiesces this time around.

Then, this was a clever, but light-touch penalty and penance opportunity given the seriousness of what Verstappen did to Ocon in Brazil. Now, having completely failed to act when Verstappen used ableist and other appalling offensive language after a crash with Lance Stroll in practice at the 2020 Portuguese GP, the FIA has gotten itself into a mess over something that just did not require intervention. That’s beyond the reminder to watch his mouth that came from FIA press conference host Tom Clarkson in Singapore.

As Verstappen himself pointed out, F1 press conferences aren’t for kids. It’s supposed to be a professional setting that will allow F1 fans a great understanding of what is a very complex motorsport discipline. It has been diluted greatly due to the instance of TV broadcasters to encroach on the space because they pay for access in the paddock, but drivers should still be allowed to express themselves as they wish.

The FIA clampdown on this isn’t just confined to F1, either, with the legendary Sebastien Ogier also protesting since Singapore over being censored in the World Rally Championship.

Use of language is included in the International Sporting Code, but this push is a bizarre act of self-harm currently stemming from the governing body’s very top – by FIA president Mohammed Ben Sulayem.

Verstappen's language in an FIA press conference landed him in hot water

Photo by: Lionel Ng / Motorsport Images

The most absurd element – beyond the ill-chosen "rap music" comparison – is that in saying “we can and we are” asking Formula One Management world feed broadcasts to filter out driver swearing, Ben Sulayem is calling for something that is already happening.

So, Verstappen is in open revolt, with Hamilton saying “I hope Max doesn't do it [the community service]” during the post-Singapore qualifying press his 2021 title rival was already boycotting.

Incidents such as Portimao show how Verstappen has far from an unblemished record on his statements in F1 – in and out of the cockpit. But here he is acting with deft judgement.

Now, the FIA seems to be trying to stop grown adults being who they are

He’s not refusing to speak to the media, simply doing his own press conferences away from the FIA setting. He will have known exactly how the images of that impromptu scrum in Singapore will have been received. It will be interesting to see if he keeps this approach up after F1’s second mid-season break in as many months when the championship reconvenes in Austin.

America never misses a chance to make its point as a free-speech bastion, which makes the next race’s setting particularly interesting for Verstappen’s stand. And, given what happened in 2018-2019, we can expect any community service organising to be some way off, but where F1 is heading next is an important part of the current debate.

A point recently made to Autosport is that many new F1 fans in the USA have been drawn in in significant part because Drive to Survive takes a very unvarnished approach to driver expression in terms of language.

Sure, a lot of the Netflix hit is staged and much isn’t a true representation of the sporting reality, but the drivers can swear in a real way you never see in the ultra-sanitised sports presentation in America.

Now, the FIA seems to be trying to stop grown adults being who they are. That not only doesn’t make sense, but it also appears to risk undoing much of the good work F1 has done in expanding its fanbase into a lucrative growing market in recent years.

That spells a different kind of trouble ahead…

Has the FIA caused more problems by clamping down on Verstappen's language?

Photo by: Ben Hunt