#and is buds with the cashapp guy. Which

[nottonyharrison]

It's just so riotously funny that this rumour about Daniel Ricciardo having two races to prove himself was started by the NZ Herald of all publications.

For starters, the Aotearoa NZ media in general has zero in-depth understanding of how F1 works at all. We don't send journalists to races from any of our outlets. We only care about F1 because there's a chance a kiwi might have a permanent seat in the near future and is like... probably gonna be pretty good if he does. It's highly unlikely that any journalist here has contacts within the paddock beyond Lawson and his family.

Like to understand exactly how much this country does not care about F1 from a media perspective, they didn't even talk about it when Brendon Hartley was driving. Probably would have been different if he was doing well, but he wasn't. Motorsport news in general doesn't even have its own section on the sports page of our most well known news site, despite Supercars being pretty big in this part of the world.

Every time I read an article about F1, or see a short segment on TV (which will always mention Liam Lawson in some way, I am not kidding, they will find a way to work him in there), it's almost always laughable the lack of in depth understanding the reporter has on the matters, particularly the intra and inter-team politics, the impact of money and sponsorship, and even just basic stuff like strategy being a major part of the outcome of a race. Or how a driver can have value beyond their race result.

Then, you have the Herald specifically, which absolutely loves a clickbait article to drive traffic. In fairness, this is very much a product of the state of our media at the moment, which is currently undergoing an absolute gutting. Personally, I find the Herald to be riddled with minor factual errors, constant and egregious spelling and grammatical mistakes, and spin. Keep in mind that this is in the context of the NZ media, which is generally considered very factual and accurate on a global scale. They're not like... the Daily Mail, they're a reputable outlet that isn't tabloid journalism, but they're not exactly afraid of wild speculation when it suits.

So yeah. I saw someone post a screenshot of the article, and had to hold in my laughter.