Doyen of the rant and occasional lord and master of hair-trigger, high-comedy vitriol, Dan Ticktum issued a full-on medley of fury as Formula E made its Jeddah race debut last Friday.
The whole publicly available conversation was displayed in all its technicolour sweary glory and, by the power of AI, in black and white transcription too. And it was up on social media just minutes after it had taken place.
Ticktum was running sixth in the first of the weekend's two races but a fault with his car meant it needed a reset before he served his Pit Boost stop. His Cupra Kiro team also changed his front wing after that, costing him a heap of time and sending him to the back of the field.
His rant was, of course, an open goal for the keyboard pontificators of the self-proclaimed motorsport morality police to chide, criticise and poke fun at perhaps the motorsport whipping-boy of the last decade when it comes to over-wrought rambles.
The Race gauged the opinion of a small selection of Ticktum's Formula E rivals in the paddock and also some from elsewhere in the industry over the last few days - which ranged from 'legend' and 'we'd feel lost without it', to 'If I were his team principal I'd sack him without hesitation' or most memorably 'Epic Dan Profanosaurus, you hero!'.
Ticktum brings forth so many opinions; good and bad and little in between. There is a lot of bile and division in return for his rants. Is it justified? He certainly doesn't think so. But you could say he doesn't help himself but at least he is himself, and that's important here too.
If he didn't explode so spectacularly he wouldn't get the negative attention in the first place. But he does.
Ticktum's radio exchange
Michael Lee: Dan, for info we will have to stop before the Pit Boost as well for a reset. So, you're coming in.
Dan Ticktum: What? What do you mean? What's wrong?
ML: So, there's an error that we need to reset before we can charge.
DT: So, what do I have to do?
ML: Come in the box in normal mode and then we'll go mode zero when you're in the box. I'll follow you through the rest.
DT: Can we just try and not do that and risk it? Because we're going to lose the whole f***ing race because of that?
ML: Yep. Negative, we have to do the reset Dan.
DT: Oh, for f***'s sake man.
ML: So, box box.
DT: F***ing hell. Right mode zero when I stop?
DT: Hello? Mode zero when I stop.
ML: Affirm.
DT: F*** this s***. Boxing now.
ML: And then we'll start the boost.
DT: Yep.
ML: Then afterwards we will do the wing change.
DT: What why?! Why!? No! Just get on with it! What the f*** are we doing?!
ML: It's got a countdown timer.
DT: Bloody hell.
DT: I don’t have it. I haven't got anything! F***ing hell, what a s*** show. I don't know, I don’t know how long I've got. What mode do I go to?
ML: We'll do wing change. There's a wing change first so stay in mode zero.
DT: No!! Oh, guys I'm getting out. F***ing hell. Oh my god. Why? Why are we changing the wing?!
ML: So, we're losing time here anyway, so waiting for a safety car.
DT: What the f***ing hell has just happened. Please bring me in. Please.
But let's break it down in a granular way: a professional and highly stressed athlete, full of adrenaline, boils over. He vents into an in-built helmet microphone after seeing weeks of hard work and a big result ripped from his grasp through little fault of his own.
Then ask yourself this: how many players from Manchester City, English football's preeminent side of recent years, will have had similar rants to themselves or team-mates in their close vicinity after getting battered by Arsenal 5-1 two weeks ago?
It was probably the vast majority of them, and it probably continued down the pitch-side tunnel and into the dressing room afterwards too. It just so happened that there wasn't a microphone within recording distance when they were venting.
What people are misunderstanding about driver rants on radios, and Ticktum's are only the most spectacular among a vast pool, is that it is not personal to the recipient nor the team in the firing line.
This this THIS 👇🏼 pic.twitter.com/OmthPirEYI
— Formula E Source (@formulaesource) February 15, 2025
Granted, it can sometimes intonate as such. But you'll find that 10 minutes after the race in the debrief, Ticktum and his engineer Michael Lee will have had a reasonably civilised conversation and probably in time will eventually be ribbing each other about the whole exchange.
Cupra Kiro has known over the last three seasons that it can't change Ticktum's character and his occasional propensity to flare up. It probably actually doesn't really want to, at least not completely.
We all know that Ticktum is combustible. Well capable of turning it all the way up to 11 on occasion, so perhaps a bit of a detune might be desirable, but it's not something Cupra Kiro will feel is affecting his performance drastically or indeed be top of its 'to do list'.
Perhaps better management of his words' pure potency wouldn't go amiss. His team is gently addressing that and Ticktum has to be receptive to at least shortening those rants and perhaps using the energy he spends on them to transform it all into something much more positive, if at all possible.
"It's a very different frustration compared to what we had in previous seasons," team principal Alex Hui told The Race at Jeddah last Saturday morning after Ticktum's rant the previous day.
"In previous seasons, we didn't have a competitive car, especially in the race. So, we knew that even if we run in the front, we're going to slip back, or we need some luck or a miracle.
"But now the frustration is you can fight, and then something works against you. You don't want the bad races to happen when you perform, but it will happen."
After Ticktum's Jeddah explosion, Hui "had a few conversations with him" and said that "from our perspective, we understand the frustrations. The whole team shares the same frustrations, so we knew where it was coming from".
"We know Dan's emotions. We knew that by the time we told him, it was really difficult for him to accept at that point."
The hurricane blew out as quickly as it had started. But there was no devastation left behind. It was a painful blow not to get big points, which Ticktum would have likely picked up last Friday.
"I already told him he should learn to deal with that frustration but obviously it's very difficult," added Hui.
"You have to learn how to deal with it better and we will all learn to deal with it better, as a team and Dan as a driver. We also really openly discussed how we could manage better from his side. because sometimes, you do get a compromised race."
Part of that will include the experience, no-nonsense and positive mindset approach of well-known sporting performance coach Gerry Convy. He has worked extensively with Juan Pablo Montoya, Dario Franchitti and David Coulthard in the past and knows how to get the best from drivers in hostile environments.
Convy knows too about the demands of Formula E, having worked for several seasons with Stoffel Vandoorne and Nyck de Vries at Mercedes.
"Gerry is here, it's his first weekend with us yes," confirmed Hui. "We were talking to Gerry already before the season started, trying to make it work and we were always planning to bring him in.
"He is spending quite a lot of time with Dan. We will try to understand with the team, with Dan, with Gerry, what we can do to keep building."
That will be a step in the right direction, just as Cupra Kiro will be hoping that its grasp on the Porsche package and its exciting new era develops quickly. It has a raft of new staff it is recruiting right now that should plug in before the end of the present season.
Patience is really a virtue here for Ticktum. And before the moral crusaders start on that appraisal, perhaps a better understanding of the entire situation is needed to fully understand just why it happened and why actually it shouldn't be taken and processed as piously as it has been in many quarters.
