Timing is everything

 There are a lot of things to like about A.J. Foyt's latest IndyCar prodigy Santino Ferrucci, like the fact he apparently has titanium gonads and drives like his hair is on fire, and also that he's still only 26 years old.

Being still only 26 years old is sometimes a liability, however.

Friday, for instance, he got into a spat with Andretti Global drivers Kyle Kirkwood and Colton Herta, both of whom claimed Ferrucci was driving like an idiot and tried to run them both off the road during qualifying up in Detroit. Ferrucci, of course, saw it differently, claiming it was Kirkwood in particular who was driving like an idiot.

Then (just for funsies, perhaps) he took a shot at Herta, calling him Kirkwood's "little boyfriend teammate."

Lesson No. 1 here: Guys who are still only 26 frequently engage their mouths before their brains.

Lesson No. 2: Guys who are still only 26, and alpha males on top of it, will always go to the homophobe well if given half the chance. Someone could do an interesting study on why if it weren't so glaringly obvious: No insult is greater for an alpha hetero male than implying someone is gay.

Anyway, in this case not only was a hetero alpha male doing just that, the timing was, shall we say, exquisite. Because Ferrucci chose to do it on the eve of Pride Month, which began yesterday.

And IndyCar is a proud supporter of Pride Month, on account of it has one of the most robust LGBTIQA+ fan bases in motorsports.

Oops. 

"Man, I just apologize for the comments," Ferrucci told RACER, trying to repair the damage. "I was very out of line, very out of pocket, especially in Pride Month ... I just want to really apologize to the (LGBTIQA+) community for that."

Yeah, well. Maybe he could make amends by thinking of every month as Pride Month. Just a thought.