Sky Sports F1 pundit and analyst Ted Kravitz inadvertently caused a stir when he uttered an expletive during a live broadcast at the Marina Bay Street Circuit in Singapore. The incident was a result of Kravitz tripping over his words during a pit presentation segment.
Kravitz was discussing the design of Ferrari cars when he stumbled over his speech and attempted to redo the take. As he stepped away from the Ferrari car, he expressed his frustration aloud with an unintended “Oh, f***ing hell.” This expletive was broadcast live before the feed abruptly cut to presenter Simon Lazenby. Swift to address the mishap, Lazenby acknowledged the mistake and subsequently returned the broadcast to Kravitz.
The broadcast team quickly moved to manage the fallout from the incident. Simon Lazenby issued a prompt apology during the broadcast, while Ted Kravitz followed up with a heartfelt on-air apology. He explained, as quoted by Daily Mail:
“Big apologies from my side.
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“Just to let you know, we’re live now – when the cars come out for the presentation, which I recorded earlier, I seek perfection but sometimes I don’t get it.
“If I mess up a first take and them I’m frustrated with myself, sometimes a naughty word comes out.
“Obviously, that was never meant to be played – that’s our mistake and we’re owning that. I apologise that that take, which was not meant to be played, got played out.
“This happens in television sometimes, so apologies for that. We’ll seek to do better next time.”
This comes after FIA President Mohammed Ben Sulayem took a stronger stand against F1 drivers for swearing over the team radio during the broadcasts. He said to Autosport ahead of the Singapore Grand Prix weekend:
“We have to differentiate between our sport – motorsport – and rap music.
“We’re not rappers, you know. They say the F-word how many times per minute? We are not on that. That’s them and we are [us].
“I know, I was a driver. In the heat of the moment, when you think you are upset because another driver came to you and pushed you…
“When I used to drive in the dust [and something like that happened], I would get upset. But also, we have to be careful with our conduct. We need to be responsible people.
“And now with the technology, everything is going live and everything is going to be recorded. At the end of the day, we have to study that to see: do we minimise what is being said publicly?
“Because imagine you are sitting with your children and watching the race and then someone is saying all of this dirty language.
“I mean, what would your children or grandchildren say? What would you teach them if that is your sport?”