#because i think max and charles fall into one camp and lando and carlos the other but please let's not frame it as a shipping war

[valyrfia]

hi i came here from thearchercore where they said that you think there seem to be friendship cliques forming around the paddock as of late like carlando vs. lestappen. i've seen these divides between fans but what makes you think there's also that divide between drivers?

I wouldn't call them friendship cliques. More....workplace alliances regarding the way F1 is going and the way F1 should go.

(Full disclaimer. This is a theory of grid dynamics that's been brewing for a little while in my head and I've only really bounced it off people in dms so far, so feel free to critique or refine it.)

Now, why would these two camps clash? Apart from interpersonal reasons (power struggles at any of the teams for example, I think any of the drivers listed racing or PR would resent being labelled as the team's n2 driver), F1 itself as a sport is at a crossroads. We're seeing the obvious effect of DTS in popularising the sport and making these athletes world-famous. In the past, only the world champions really became world-renowned. Now, most drivers are massive social media stars, or even proper A-list celebrities in their own right (Daniel at the Met Gala, for example). This one one hand is brilliant for the sport, because it brings more attention and eyes, and F1 becomes far more popular than it ever has been in the past. Liberty media especially is fond of this, as it brings in more profit for them.

However, in a lot of ways quintessential aspects of racing are lost via appealing to the masses. We see this in the removal of traditional purpose-built tracks in the calendar to make way for street races, in team line ups prioritising the PR-friendliness of a driver much more than before. The question of can the individual personalities of these drivers be sold is now a much bigger factor when considering a line up now than it was even ten years ago.

Since the question of racing vs. PR is raging in F1 in general right now, I think there's natural battle lines being drawn up in the paddock at the moment, that seem to fall along drivers which prioritise racing results over PR, and drivers that rely on PR/sponsors to boost their image without the racing results to necessarily back it up. Let's call them the racing clique vs. the PR clique for simplification.

Furthermore, I think these battlelines are drawn between teammates more often than not. So for example, I'd say Oscar tends to fall into the racing clique, Lando the PR clique (because let's be frank, his level of hype in British media especially WITHOUT a grand prix win is a little ridiculous). Likewise, if we consider our once and future RBR teammate pair, Max is the racing, Daniel the PR.

Ferrari is a little trickier because Charles is a PR mastermind and plays the PR game well in order to manipulate public perception about him. However, I will say that above all Charles has a fair estimation of his own abilities, an incredible racing IQ, and a sharp hunger to win that shines through despite the scrupulous Ferrari PR training (lest we forget the origin of the Il Predestinato name). For this reason, I think I place him in the racing camp. Considering the way that the Sainz camp uses leaks, well-timed sympathy posts, and Carlando to boost the public perception of Carlos's racing ability, I would place Carlos in the PR camp.

There are also other natural flash tensions between these people, but from Lando and Daniel distancing themselves from Max post his Vegas derogatory comments (@tsarinablogs has written some good thinkpieces on this), to the Ferrari civil war (as currently being chronicled by @thearchercore, along with some pretty good evidence as to McLaren trying to copy Ferrari's contract renewal hype, which further puts Lando and Charles into conflict). I don't think the happy go lucky Landoscar dynamic will survive McLaren being a competitive car, especially if Oscar wins a grand prix before Oscar.

There are faultlines and flashpoints forming in the paddock, and I think that especially with the incoming silly season, this question of PR vs. racing when picking drivers will be thrown into haut relief and that'll serve to only heighten the natural and/or pre-existing tensions between these two different groups of people.

[shootingstar-scuderia]

🐑 alrighty i'm coming back at you with one and i'm going to try and make it equally chaotic haha

#there's only one bed #rooster #rivals to lovers #cherry cola and #apocalypse!au

ty ty for sending this in!!! i'm not typically an apocalypse girly, it's usually my hard stop, there's a lot of bits in there that makes me too existential and freaks me out but there also are some things that i find very compelling about it and ngl i like of the way this went...

anyways this got realllllly long so more under the cut!

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okay so rooster makes me think of a top gun maverick sooo maybe a top gun type au where the world is on the verge of apocalypse and they're (max, charles, lando, oscar, george, alex) all training to be fighters pilots. some of the olders (danny, seb, carlos, lewis, etc) are their teachers.

and not to rip straight from top gun but maybe one of their call signs is rooster. idk who it'd be but there's probably some kind of big dick jokes related to it

it's typical boyish shenanigans, they're competitive and fit and young and the world is actively falling apart even though no one tires to think about it too hard so they're really trying to do a lot of fucking and sucking. there's an obligatory shirtless beach scene, they might have a barbecue, there's probably some cherry coke (more on that later)

and there's also a whole lot of haha let's not think about how we are most definitely fighting to our death and the fact that this war is meaningless because as time marches forward it's more and more obvious that we are going to be sent out to fight for nothing and there is no solution to this war.

i think when they first get to their training camp (or however it works in the military) there is some kind of mix up and lando and charles were assigned to the same bed cueing the there's only one bed situation. bc both of them are a little to prissy to be sleeping on the floor they end up sleeping top and tail and have a cow about it.

but this then sparks a rivals to lovers arc between max and charles bc charles hates lando like HE was supposed to be the doe-eyed tiny twinky one but lando is doing a pretty good job taking the title from him. and max and lando are friends from whatever little bootcamp you gotta go through to join the military so by extension charles hates max.

and really like max dgaf about the whole situation, he just finds it so funny that charles hates him. like charles is trying so hard to beat him at dogfights and preform better than him but max is just SO good. which makes charles annoyed to the point where even has he and lando start to get along charles is still on his anti-max agenda. the whole time max just gets more and more starry eyed bc this godddamn fool doesn't know when to quit and he likes that determination and persistence

anyways back to the whole cherry coke thing i think it's maybe max f and lando related bc sorry to all the cherry coke lovers it really feels like the most sticky gremlin coded thing. like i think the two of them fought about it a lot pre-apocalypse. maybe lando bought a case of it from the store one day because it was on sale and max was all liek "of course it's on sale you muppet, it's the worst one." anyways they have a lot of cherry coke during the apocalypse bc it is the worst one and even though the world is ending no one wants it. and maybe max is dead, maybe the two of them fought and have parted ways in a way that was really traumatic. anyways the whole cherry coke really makes lando spiral, there's lots of things to work through there.

bonus bit that's not related to any of the tags loll:

i think there'll be some kind of spy or mole or whatever who is on the side of the "anarchist resistance" (they're probably not really anarchist or anything like that but the boys are just a little too blinded by nationalistic loyalty to see past this. but also like it's literally the apocalypse the only side most people are their own). i'm thinking maybe alex mostly bc i think the galex dynamic would be the most fun to play with

like george feels so incredibly loyal, probably the most blindly loyal out of all of them. but he and alex are like brothers, teetering on the edge of something else, in any situation george would save alex first. but when it's revealed that alex is fighting for the oppositions i think george has a little bit of a breakdown. bc it turns out the one person he thought he knew like the back of his hand he didn't really know well at all. and that begins a whole identity crisis for george because alex is in many ways his twin he knows that alex would never deliberately do something bad, he was just mislead, or was he?

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