I have little to say about the Singapore Grand Prix. The race at Singapore is only usually interesting if a safety car grants some strategic variety, as happened last year. However, as is becoming typical in 2024, there were no safety cars in Singapore, making the race quite boring. My personal frustration was only compounded by both Ferrari drivers screwing up qualifying and only recovering to fifth and seventh in the race, so I couldn’t even enjoy the result. However, there were a couple of topics throughout the weekend that I feel are worth  giving my (belated) opinions on.

The first of these is the way in which Daniel Ricciardo has been treated. It’s not a secret that I haven’t been particularly impressed with Daniel’s performances this year. Whilst an improvement on his dreadful stint at McLaren, Daniel has been humbled by Yuki Tsunoda and it’s apparent that he is not the driver he used to be. However, he is a seven-time GP winner for the Red Bull team, so deserved a gracious farewell. Dropping him from the RB team with six races left to go in the season is not very respectful to his legacy. Not even telling anyone and leaving him in a position where he had no farewell, instead being resorted to being close to tears in interviews during the weekend, was completely abominable. In a year in which Red Bull has had its reputation thoroughly damaged, this was the worst possible look and made me, far from Ricciardo’s biggest fan, just want to give the man a big hug.

The second topic I’d like to discuss is the ridiculous swearing saga. Mohammed Ben Sulayem, the President of the FIA, recently requested that drivers swear less over the radio to make the sport more family friendly. This is already quite silly, as there is no requirement for the producers to play radio messages with swear words in, but they do because it sells. Rather than regulating F1’s producers, Ben Sulayem thinks that it should be incumbent on the people driving some of the fastest cars in the world not to swear if something goes wrong. Max Verstappen then proceeded to swear in the press conference, which resulted in the stewards ruling that he needed to complete community service. Almost all the drivers found this ridiculous, with Lewis encouraging Max to boycott this service. Max also implied that decisions like these will lead to him leaving the sport sooner. Why F1 feels it’s a good idea to alienate one of their biggest stars is beyond me. And it being all for something as trivial as swearing defines the Ben Sulayem leadership, one characterized by making unnecessary and unpopular decisions whilst proceeding to not make those fans are clamoring for.