NASCAR drivers sometimes have dirty mouths, and who can blame them? Racing at 180 miles per hour in a cockpit as hot as an oven while other drivers beat and kick you can test the patience of a saint.
Mind you, most race car drivers are not saints.
One of our favorite segments on FS1’s NASCAR Race Hub is “Radioactive,” where we rebroadcast driver conversations on team radios. Even though the obscenities are carefully bleeped out, you can hear the rage in the voices of the drivers and crew chiefs:
It’s a double-edged sword: On the one hand, fans have access to drivers’ thoughts that fans of other professional sports can only dream of. On the other hand, it can be annoying for drivers, especially the noisiest ones.
“When you’re in the car and you’re angry, you forget that the kids are listening, or maybe even your own kids,” said six-time NASCAR Sprint Cup Series champion Jimmie Johnson. “My wife told me she would never let our kids listen to me during a race. I said, ‘Really? Am I so bad?’ And she said, ‘When you’re bad, you’re so bad.’
“It definitely opens up our world that was once private and makes it a lot more public than it was,” said Kyle Busch, the 2015 champion. “I’ve definitely changed over the years and I’ve retained a lot more and pushed the radio button less.”
Busch said getting angry on the radio was not related to results on the track.
“I’ve had times where we’ve had blowouts and we’ve had bad results and we’ve had blowouts and we’ve had good results and we’ve won races doing that,” Busch said. “Just using it in the right way will help you.”
Team owner Chip Ganassi said the better the driver, the less trash talk there was on the radio.
“If you look at the guys who win races and championships, nine times out of ten, they are the calmest, most succinct communicators on the radio. They don’t engage in foul language or obscenities,” Ganassi said. “Guys who win consistently or guys who win championships don’t feel the need to do that. I think that should probably tell you something.”
But Johnson said it’s easy to get caught up in the heat of the moment.
“It’s just something we’re losing touch with and I guess we’re kind of familiar with it because there’s always been public channels and all that,” he said. “I understand why it’s entertaining and I cringe from time to time when I hear the term ‘Radioactive’ and wonder what I did the week before and what people were thinking.”
