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dear-ao3 · 8 days ago

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welcome back. for the last time this year, it is race weekend. were in abu dhabi (part 1), the yas marina circuit. race 24 of 24. the finale of the longest season in f1 history. we’ve had seven different multi race winners, back markers on the podium, mid season retirements, community service penalties, disqualifications, black flags, race bans, crashes, rain, paddocks that smell like weed, the breaking of the monaco curse, stealing each other's taglines, first race wins, rivalries…you name it we’ve seen it. and more.

in the words of crofty: “if you havent been here all season, where have you been? you've missed an absolute thriller.”

the drivers championship, as we know, has already been squared away. but the all important battle for the constructors championship is still on. mclaren v ferrari. a tale as old as, well, time. schumacher v hakkinen. hamilton v massa. will the power of the lando and oscar friendship pull through? or will carlos and charles put aside their differences (that they may or may not have) long enough to snatch the constructors title away from them? and not only are they duking it out for the constructors, but lando and charles are also duking it out for p2 in the drivers championship. will lando hold his ground or will charles come at him with all the fury in the world and then some?

and we’ve also got alpine, haas and racing bulls fighting for p6 in the constructors, the eternal question of the red bull second seat, the v carb second seat and the all important query of Will Valtteri Score Points This Season?

all (or at least most) will be answered tonight.

its december 31, 2024 and i know its late but lets fucking go.

the week started off with none other than jack doohan being announced as making his debut in abu dhabi this very weekend.

jack doohan, as we know, is the alpine reserve driver and has signed with the team for 2025. as we also know there was a rather nasty rumor circulating about him that he was going to lose his alpine seat that he hadnt even really sat in yet to one franco colapinto. alpine squashed this by announcing his driver number (7) but now that he is replacing esteban 1 race earlier than intended, there’s been some theories.

officially the swap had something to do with esteban doing testing for haas and alpine decided that it would be better for them if jack drove the car in abu dhabi. this does of course sadly mean that he cannot wear his very cool send off helmet this weekend because he is not racing and i also think that he was not allowed to say goodbye to the team.

which is fucked up. he got an instagram post from alpine as a send off. and that was about it.

sorry, lets rephrase this. esteban ocon has raced with alpine for the last five years. he is their only race winner under the name “alpine” (they had won races under their previous name, renault, but he is the only alpine winner) and they just said nope. fuck u actually. no race. heres a post instead.

this was esteban's reaction

and jack's reaction

and pierre even had some thoughts

but why did they do that? well. there is a theory that they are testing out jack as a driver in an f1 car before the end of the season so that they can decide whether or not they want to keep jack or take franco instead. im going to emphasize that this is a Theory and is not Confirmed. but it is still a Theory.

alpine also took their end of season photos. and they got crashed by *checks notes* fred vasseur???

yeah, they didn't know either.

anyway. aside from that. we also had the f1 official account horrifically misspell oscars last name. and charles joined in on the fun.

worth pointing out, btw, that charles leclerc has had his name misspelled in every possible which way over the course of time.

charles would also be doing the fp1 session with his brother arthur, who would be driving carlos’s ferrari. arthur is a test driver for ferrari or is part of the academy or something of that nature. and charles spent pretty much all of the media day session talking about how much he loves his brother and how excited he is that the two of them get to be on track at the same time together:

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and charles did whatever this was. some kind of water …. no not water sport. water activity. idk.

also having fun, or, well, maybe not actually, was valtteri bottas. poking fun at himself for still being the only driver currently driving on the grid this year to not score points.

and! speaking of drivers who didn't score points this year! logan sargeant! got signed! to a team!

no, it was not indycar. it was the european le mans series. this could lead to a full time seat for him in the hyper car series in 2026. which is cool for him.

also signing with hyper car was kevin magnussen. he signed with the bmw team. and there is lore here, apparently. because its racing. when isnt there weird lore.

apparently, his new boss at bmw, a man named vincent vosse, saved him from drowning when he was 2. in a pool at vosse’s own house. according to one k mag: "He was in a suit, dressed up for some gala thing, and he jumped in the pool. Ruined his day! But hopefully I can make up for that now. The contact has always been there, l've known him always."

as we know, this race is the end of a lot of things. several people are leaving the grid after abu dhabi: kevin magnussen, valtteri bottas, zhou guanyu, maybe franco colapinto, maybe checo perez. and several people are changing teams. lewis hamilton is going to ferrari, esteban ocon is going to haas, nico hulkenberg is going to stake, carlos sainz is going to williams. i think that's it. i hope that's it. it seems like silly season has been sillier than that.

in any case, there were many goodbyes to be had.

starting with zhou and valtteri and their helmets.

zhou’s helmet had a picture of him and valtteri on it, along with other pictures of special moments in his career as an f1 driver

and his caption of the picture on instagram said: ‘A special helmet with full of loved moments. It’s been a pleasure Valtteri Bottas, loved every highs & lows that we've been through over the last 3 years, one last dance with Stake F1 Team, let’s enjoy it.”

valtteri bottas’s helmet said “what’s next?” on it, still teasing the little branding hes done for teasing what is next in his career. that was an awful sentence, im sorry, but i am not changing it.

and as an aside, the stake social media admin made valtteri and zhou certificates thanking them for participating in the insane social media posts of the year

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charles did a special helmet for carlos that said “muchas gracias carlos” on it.

his instagram caption said “Special helmet for a special teammate ❤️ Thanks for these 4 years together. Let’s push to the max for that last weekend together.” and he was also clearly emotional about carlos leaving the team in his interviews

and carlos also ran a special helmet that showed his team highlights,

and he had a special race suit with the italian flag on it and smooth operator written on the leg.

and ferrari made a special poster of him for his last race.

kevin magnussen also had a helmet showing his highlights at haas.

and he and nico also reminisced about their time as teammates

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and george did a special helmet for lewis with little cartoon pictures of them on the back and a real picture of george when he is a Child trying to get lewis’s autograph on the top with a “crazy how time flies”

george, in case you didn't know, is a massive lewis hamilton fan. so he was clearly feeling Feeling about lewis leaving the team. as evidenced not only by the helmet but also by this instagram post

and he also brought That Very Book that he was trying to get lewis to autograph in the picture to abu dhabi to get his autograph. and they did it on the fanstage.

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lewis also naturally had a send off helmet as well.

and he also changed his profile pictures to this picture from 2013.

as that was when he joined the team. he also reposted the picture on his instagram with the caption “First year. Last year. And all the memories in between.”

lewis leaving mercedes, in case it was already obvious enough, is a Big Fucking Deal. this is the longest time a driver has ever been with a team, (11 years) and it is widely regarded as the greatest partnership between a driver and a team Ever. so mercedes was expected to go all out for this send off, right??

well mercedes did a lot of things for this send off. like a way lot of things. one of them was this video

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they posted this video that was essentially a thank you to lewis, montaging moments from his career highlights with mercedes (btw, lewis won 6 world champion titles with mercedes (and lost two by less than 20 points), helped the team win 8 constructors titles, and also has 84 race wins (someone edited it together here) with mercedes, not podiums. race wins. for context, if we compare this to michael schumacher’s career, he won 5 world championship titles with ferrari, helped the team win five constructors titles, and had 72 race wins with ferrari) inter cut with video footage of small lewis and other children of color and young girls essentially talking about how lewis was a trailblazer for the sport and helped pave a path for many people. and they tag line it with.

“every dream needs a team.”

the dream as in lewis’s dream to essentially be an f1 driver (i think?) or to win

(going to leave here that lewis didn't start at mercedes tho, he started at mclaren. and he also won his first world title with mclaren. don't worry, we’ll get back to the every dream needs a team thing In A Bit. it is a nice video though, it highlights how hes a good sportsman and also quite literally the greatest of all time. it was generally agreed upon though that the tag line was. odd.)

they put this tagline on lewis’s car this weekend as a graphic along with the names of 150 people who won the competition to have their name on the car

also with this video was some other tributing. i wont include all of them cause there were a lot and frankly, i also have a lot to talk about. but we had some good stuff.

pretty much though, every mercedes tribute seemed to include everyone Except for one nico rosberg (yea i know this is about lewis leaving mercedes, not about nico, however, as we have seen this year, you kinda cant really talk about one without talking about the other). but anyway, pretty much all of the photo collages left nico out (as we know lewis doesnt talk about him, maybe he asked for this, maybe not, whos to say. again this is where i say i don't think they owe eachother anything im just reporting the news) until mercedes decided to post this one:

which, in terms of photos of nico and lewis to post. that ones more on the unhinged side of things. and if you're annoyed im talking about nico rosberg, well, stay annoyed i guess cause he pops up again shortly. unfortunately, you cant really talk about one without the other, as i have said.

aside from that, we had bono, lewis’s race engineer, talk about their partnership a little and about how grateful he is for it and how much fun it has been. as he says, most engineers only have one shot at working with a champion, he has had many many years

lewis took everyone on his side of the garage on hot laps around the track

lewis himself was pretty emotional about the whole thing. which is to be expected. hes been with mercedes for twelve very long and (mostly) very successful years. again, i remind you that lewis joined merc in 2013 (which everyone thought was a terrible idea btw) and then won the drivers championship in 2014, 2015, 2017, 2018, 2019 and 2020. the team won the constructors title in 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020 and 2021. that is a long time to be in a very competitive car. that's a lot of success. like, an unprecedented amount of success.

this was a bit too long to transcribe, but he did talk a lot about what he was going to take with im as moments from the team in the press conference. (swipe to hear what he said)

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speaking about this year, he said that “its been an emotional year for me and i think ive not been at my best in the…in handling and dealing with those emotions. and i think this year, as so many of you have been here for my whole career so some of you all think you've all seen the worst of me and you've seen the best of me. and im not going to apologize for either because its..im only human and i don't always get it right. and i definitely would say this year has been one of the worst in terms of handling that from my side. which ill work on trying to be better at. but i hope the good and the highs far outweigh the negatives in how ive handled it or behaved and…and as i said i just remember the good times”

after taking the team photo for the last time he said that “its hard to believe that was our last team photo together. weve had twelve amazing years together. and its hard to believe that that's our last photo that we’re going to take as a whole team, as a group. and its such an honor and a privilege i thik to look back when im sitting on the car, i look back and see everyones face, everyone that's been so hugely influential with the success that we’ve had over the years. had my back and supported me and hopefully vice versa, which is a really proud moment. that's pretty cool. its something that ill definitely cherish. i think the first and the last will be the two that i cherish the most.”

and not really a tribute. but speaking of the team photo, toto wolff was seen wearing not only a short sleeve shirt, but also doing a peace sign

so that was basically lewis’s side of the garage. lots of emotions and feelings and paying tribute and etc etc etc.

so what was going on in george’s side of the garage?

complete and absolute chaos.

if you’ll remember. in qatar max essentially, for lack of better words, called george a two faced bitch because of george supposedly arguing with the fia to get max a 1 place grid penalty for going too slowly in qualifying. max got said penalty and was demoted from pole to second while george started on pole. i need to remind you all that 1. max had already won the world championship and 2. george was not even remotely in contention for the world championship and also mercedes and red bull are hardly rivals this season

if you’ll also remember, george did not say anything about said incident. mostly because max talked about it predominantly in the press conference which im pretty sure happens After all the media interviews? tho i could be wrong about that. regardless george didn't talk about it.

until he decided to come out full guns blazing in abu dhabi.

because this is formula 1. you really thought we were going to have a normal end to our incredibly insane season????

so. first. lets get a little refresher on what max actually said about the penalty situation after qatar *insert rewind noise here*

about the penalty, max said “I think I really spoke about valid reasons of what happened. And it was clear cut that around me there were different scenarios going on as well, with people having colder tyres and stuff so they had to push anyway, and I didn’t want to then cause a scene into a last corner, and then no one had a lap. So very, very surprising. i think we all here, we respect eachother a lot. and of course ive been in that meeting room many times in my life [with the stewards] and my career with people, you know, ive raced. and i’ve never seen someone trying to screw someone over that hard, and then for me i lost all the respect.

he also gestured towards charles when he talked about drivers that he respects, and charles was nearly giggling the whole time like he had tea we all didn't

and he also said, “actually, I just tried to be nice. So maybe I shouldn’t be nice. But the thing is that well, being nice, because at the end of the season, everything is more or less decided, for me especially, I didn’t want to screw anyone over to prepare their lap. And by doing that, being nice, basically you get a penalty. And that’s what I tried to explain as well. But I just felt like I was talking to a brick wall. So there’s not much that was possible, for whatever reason.” (which sounds hilariously like charles’s vegas radio but i digress)

later, max was asked if he was going to try and talk with george about the penalty and the incident with the stewards.

here’s what he had to say about that.

“not right now, but you know what it is? he always acts extremely polite in front of the cameras but if you sit together with him personally, he's a completely different person. i truly can't stand that. then you might as well fuck off, i don’t want anything to do with you.”

max was also backed up by christian horner, who said about george that “yesterday's penalty was more based on hysterics from George, who has been quite hysterical this weekend. There was a little bit of gamesmanship going on in that.”

(yes i did just copy and paste that from the qatar post. sue me i want to be done writing this)

anyway, you’ll also remember (maybe) the article that i quoted talking about the penalty. *cue a second rewind noise*

it appeared that all of the drivers had been informed after sprint qualifying that any going slowly would be taken seriously, after yuki received a warning for just that. and one article reported that:

“at the bottom of their decision Warwick and his fellow stewards made a very important comment: ‘The stewards advise all competitors that particular attention will be paid to adherence to the event notes in the qualifying session and that any potentially dangerous behaviour or impeding may result in the application of grid penalties.’”

in addition, it was also reported by a journalist that the new race director does not take impeding lightly.

“He [the race director] stated that if a car was going slow in a high-speed corner, it should not be on the racing line. The stewards regard this case as a complicated one in that clearly car 1 did not comply with the race director’s event notes and clearly was driving, in our determination, unnecessarily slowly considering the circumstances. It was obvious the driver of car 1 was attempting to cool his tyres. He also could see car 63 approaching as he looked in his mirror multiple times whilst on the small straight between Turns 11 and 12. They also made it clear that they had opted for a lesser penalty than they could have. Unusually, this incident occurred when neither car was on a push lap. Had car 63 been on a push lap, the penalty would have most likely been the usual three grid position penalty, however in mitigation of penalty, it was obvious that the driver of car 63 had clear visibility of Car 1 and that neither car was on a push lap.”

however. someone combed back through all going slowly/failing to follow race directors instructions infringements back to 2022 and found that max is the only one to have ever been given a grid penalty or penalty point for it. when looking at that stat though, keep in mind that theres different race directors making different decisions, the widely claimed “british bias” that the stewards have towards certain british drivers (which george btw doesnt seem to be included in) and also mitigating circumstances, not everything in this sport is clear cut.

and finally, george had some comments about the whole ordeal, but not too many. which i speculated was because he didn't know exactly what max had said until After it had already been said which Likely would have been after george was done with his interviews. so he had relatively normal things to say:

*cue a third and hopefully final rewind noise*

“Yeah, to be honest, I was expecting a crash. But ultimately we [george and lewis] made it easy for him, because both Lewis and I made terrible starts. So it was a pretty simple overtake for him, which was a bit frustrating for us.”

he did say though that his concerns about a crash were not related to max’s comments.

“We know Max is a fighter and is aggressive. I expect no different. I really wanted to go out there and fight with him today, like we could have done in the sprint.”

now. something i mentioned but somehow forgot to properly include in the last update was a brief clip from ted kravitz’s bit that he does at the end of the weekend called teds notebook where he goes over important stuff, gives opinions blah blah etc. anyway. i had referenced that one journalist heard that george and max had had words of some sort outside the stewards room, but not much beyond that.

ted’s notebook from qatar went a little beyond that:

important to take away from this was that before the drivers parade in qatar there was some kind of Incident between max and george where max some something akin to “you and your fia mates, i hope you're happy with what you’ve done.” though apparently, also according to ted, it was “far ruder than that.”

so. we were gearing up for Something. and Everyone was Wondering if Something was Going To Happen in abu dhabi.

the f1 fans (or at least some of them) spent the week between qatar and abu dhabi speculating and there were takes in every which direction about who said what and how and when and whether or not max was telling the truth and ugh this is why no one likes george and blah blah blah (idk i avoided most of it)

and max was asked his opinion on the whole thing again at the press conference on media day. george had still yet to say anything and he was not at the press conference (its random who gets chosen week to week). but we did get max saying this about this comments last week (you know, the two faced comments):

"No regrets at all [about what he said about george], because I meant everything I said. And it is still the same, if I had to do it again maybe I would have said even more, knowing the outcome of the race itself. I still can't believe that someone can be like that in the stewards' room - to me, that is so unacceptable. We're all racing drivers and we all have a lot of respect for each other, we even play sports together, we travel together. Of course you have moments where you come together, crash or whatever and you're not happy. But in my whole career I've never experienced what I experienced in the stewards' room in Qatar and, for me, that was really unacceptable."

so max was not budging. and we were all waiting on george’s side of the story. and boy, did he deliver.

before we get into this. a reminder to everyone that george doesnt usually get involved in stuff like this. he doesnt have many controversies, the most controversial thing in his career is probably that time in imola in 2021 where he smacked bottas on the helmet after the two of them were in a pretty big crash and battling eachother for a seat at mercedes.

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but he was effectively bullied off the internet several years ago for death threats (i think around the mercedes seat controversies, unsure exactly when, im not up to snuff on my george lore sorry) over something or other and now gets all his memes and the like from alex albon. and yeah he does weird pr stuff, but he doesnt really get involved in controversies. and hes also not all that popular as a driver. he mostly gets memed and also made fun of.

he’s also, im going to remind everyone, the gpda president. and the gpda, in case you need reminding, as of vegas, (a mere two/three weeks before the incident) were trying to get max to not get penalized for the swearing in the press conference (among other things).

there were i think several interviews that he gave about the whole thing, all on media say (pretty sure it was media day) and theyll all rather long, (if you want to watch the whole full ones, im pretty sure there were multiple but this is a good one here) but this one has pretty much a good summary of everything he said

which is a lot to unpack.

george came with receipts.

so lets break this down a little.

george says “we’re all fighting on track and its never personal.”

objectively true. other drivers have talked about this before. most of the time battles on track do not translate to battles off track (with some exceptions. you know. nico and lewis. im looking at you two. also prost and senna. the difference here being that they were both insane actual title rivals and max has won four championships and george arrived at mercedes in the middle of their shit arc and has never been in contention for a champion title.) even after….oh god what was that race….austria? where max and lando slammed into each other while battling for first and while they were kinda pissed max was like all that matters is repairing my relationship with lando blah blah blah (max and lando are seemingly more friendly than george and max but that is not the point here)

anyway, george’s argument was that max made their on track battle personal. which is a big no no (according to george) (as i said up top we had people make on track battles personal all the time. see quite literally the most famous example in recent history: nico rosberg and sir lewis hamilton)

george also famously said “someone needs to stand up to a bully like this” because “so far people have let him [max] get away with murder.”

people online really really went off with that. and let me put my english major hat on here for a second to say that Getting Away With Murder Is An Expression an expression meaning, loosely, “get away with anything.” so no, george is not saying that max killed anyone.

george defended himself against what max said in the press conference about how hes “never had someone try that hard to get me a penalty” and george maintained that max was going too slow on the racing line and they all have rules to follow. (true, but again to devils advocate george, remember that max is the only one to ever have gotten penalties in this context for going to slow. but then to that also also remember that the stewards said that they were going to crack down on anyone going to slow after yuki went too slow in practice.)

he also said in a different interview that "It's funny because even before I said a word in the stewards, he was swearing at the stewards. He was so angry, before I'd even spoken. And at the end of the day, there's nothing to lie about.”

then, he of course hits us with some new information, saying that “i find his comments pretty ironic, when he comes out and says ‘im going to purposefully crash into you, im going to put you on your fucking head in the wall.’ for me, that isnt acceptable. and hes gone beyond the line here, and im not going to accept it.”

now, in case you've been keeping track, this is far different than george’s attitude about the whole thing in qatar. george is claiming that max said this to him after the stewards room. which would have been saturday night before the race. and, if you will recall, here is what george said on sunday in qatar about the max incident during qualifying: *yet another rewind noise*

“Yeah, to be honest, I was expecting a crash [during the race]. But ultimately we [george and lewis] made it easy for him [max], because both Lewis and I made terrible starts. So it was a pretty simple overtake for him, which was a bit frustrating for us.”

when asked if this [the likeness of a crash] was because of comments that max had made to him, george apparently “didn't bite” according to one journalist and instead said that “We know Max is a fighter and is aggressive. I expect no different. I really wanted to go out there and fight with him today, like we could have done in the sprint.”

so. little confusing. because if max had said all of this on saturday then why didn't it come up in interviews on sunday?

the same journalist had a theory: “In other words [george] had a chance then [in qatar] to reveal just what Verstappen had said to him [putting him in the wall], and in effect drop him in it, but he chose not to. He's only done so today [in abu dhabi] because of Max's ongoing criticism.”

and george did kind back that theory up. he likely elected to ignore the whole thing and chalk it up to heated emotions in the stewards room and only brought it up once he realized that max was publicly tearing into george’s character. and george said this himself, that he had “no intentions of bringing this up. he said this to me saturday night and i woke up sunday morning feeling fine. but to come out of those press interviews (the post race in qatar ones) saying that i’m two faced, that im a f word and this and that, hes taking this personal. what happens on track is professional, what happens in the stewards is professional.”

so again, george’s main argument here is that max made a race related argument personal, when in george’s mind that is just a fact of racing that stuff like this happens.

also, as many people pointed out, if max did actually say this, (as in threaten to crash into george and put him in the wall) then in nascar that would get you a race ban. and while those same rules don't exist in f1, it is still a very serious threat in some kinds of motorsport.

now, here george also brings up new and interesting lore, saying that “like carlos said to him on sunday morning ‘you would have done the exact same thing.’” and then he cites max getting lando a penalty for not lifting in the yellow flags and blah blah but the real interesting bit here is about carlos.

remember those pictures from before the drivers parade? and remember that ted said something happened before the drivers parade in qatar?? well!

george said (i think in a different interview than the one that i linked) this:

"And I almost joked with him [max] at the drivers' parade about this with Carlos [Sainz] and Checo [Sergio Perez]. I came around, put my arm around him [max] and laughed, 'How are you doing today?' and I said to Carlos jokingly, 'Listen to what this guy said to me yesterday' [the im going to put you on your fucking head line] But I could see it in his eyes that he meant it [the line about you and your fia mates that ted quoted]."

so. this explains then this lovely set of photos:

there were a lot of people online citing these photos as justification that george is a two faced bitch because Why would he have been that nice to max right after max had told him that?? but it seems now that george literally intended to never bring this up and then max went and ranted to hell and back to the press about it so he had pretty much no choice but to bring it up and the timing of everything made him look bad.

george was asked about the thing max said about his “fia mates” and george was confused about that as well, going into detail about the lap times that you have to follow on the out lap. “he [max] was in breach of that, and i was following it to the letter of the law, i wasn't trying to get him a penalty, but that's just how things transpired.”

as some people pointed out, i don't think george was on a flying lap when max was going to slowly, he might have been, im not sure, i don't remember and im not going back to look. but there was debate over this.

george also said that max “cannot deal with adversity. whenever anything is not going his way he lashes out with unnecessary anger and borderline violence. weve seen it in brazil in the past with ocon, we saw it in 21 with lewis, and then mexico with lando, first race of the year in budapest when he didn't have the most dominant car, crashes into lewis, slamming his whole team. that is not a guy who i respect.”

in a second interview george also referenced this batch of receipts he brought up, saying that “I don't know why this topic has got him so angry. And like I said to you before, he cannot deal with adversity. He's had the most dominant car in recent history for two and a half years. I'm not questioning his driving abilities one single bit, but the second he does not have the fastest car - let's take Budapest as an example, he crashes into Lewis. He slams his whole team and he loses the plot. Straight away after that race, 25 percent of his engineering team were sending their CVs to Mercedes, to McLaren, to Aston Martin because they said they can't deal with a guy like that. And since Austria, he's won the same number of races as six other drivers. So when you say, is Max beatable? Of course he's beatable."

and this is quite the array of receipts that george brought up here.

ocon and max in brazil was from like. 2018. when esteban, a lapped car in the race, crashed into max who was leading, and cost him the win. max pushed him in the garage after.

i think the incident hes referring to with lewis was in monza 2021 where he and lewis crashed after one of lewis’s pit stops and max ended up driving over the top of lewis’s car, at one point his tire was on lewis’s helmet. both of them were fine, but it was rather insane

mexico with lando is obviously earlier this year when max got hit with the 20 second penalty after driving, as lando put it, dangerously, while the two of them were battling. george also previously said that max’s racing in mexico was “hard but fair” and now seems to have rolled back that comment since he put it in the same boat as other Controversial and Insane Max Moments.

and budapest was also this year, this was the race where max was really going at it on the radio and once again flew over lewis’s car, then tried to blame it on lewis and was told by his team over the radio that he was being “childish” and that they were “not going to get into a radio fight with the other teams”

id also like to point out, that all of these incidents, while famous racing incidents, happened, they are also all resolved. monza and brazil do get brought up decently enough, but even esteban said this year about brazil 2018 that "Everyone thinks we [him and max] hate each other [because of brazil 2018], but that's not the case. I like that he races really hard. It's very straightforward. It's just who crosses the line first. With Max, there is no bullshit.”

and also. while im devils advocating myself here, there have been plenty of other world champions in recent history who have been pretty vicious on and off track. lewis hamilton is kind of the exception to this, he is a pretty clean racer and doesnt really make things personal (not after 2016 at least and definitely not unless its with nico rosberg but im absolutely not getting into that here)

however, for your perusal i bring up once again incidents like:

-sebastian vettel and mark webber, malaysia 2013, the infamous multi 21 incident where sebastian vettel over took mark webber for the lead when he was explicitly told not to and was kind of a jerk about it.

-spa 1998 where michael schumacher almost decked david coulthard in the pitlane because he thought that he had tried to kill him and also thought that it was a plot by mclaren to fix the race to benefit his rival mika hakkinen.

-japan 2005 when fernando alonso was trying to help renault win the constructors title (he had already won the drivers championship at the previous race) (he had also qualified 16th) and was effectively bullying michael schumacher (driving for ferrari at the time and already a 7x world title winner) trying to pass him earlier on in the race. eventually, michael kinda let him by (michael himself was also a very hard racer, and fernando was pretty young at the time) and after the race fernando famously said: “I knew he would hit the brakes because he has a wife and two kids at home”

these are all drivers, by the way, that max has been compared to.

george, in a different interview, compared max to lewis, saying that "He's [max] a four-time world champion. When I compare his actions to the ones of Lewis [Hamilton], Lewis is the sort of world champion who I aspire to be like. The way he fought Max in '21 was hard, very hard. It's fair, but never beyond the line.”

now again, as i said, this is mostly true. lewis is generally regarded as a pretty good sportsman and a clean racer. but that is if you omit the years 2014-2016 where he was tied up in a raging title fight with one nico rosberg that culminated in the end of their friendship (after knowing each other since they were children), nico’s retirement after his one and only championship win in 2016, and lewis’s absolute refusal to ever talk about him.

though, i will say, even though nico and lewis are their own absolute disaster that really cant be compared to max because of their whole history and everything, there was the famous post monaco interview in 2014 (after a very intense race that nico eventually won where nico had been accused of crashing purposefully in qualifying and preventing lewis from trying to take pole from him) where lewis told the press about nico that “well we’re not friends. we’re colleagues.” (admittedly, the press was really harping on him about this and he later tweeted that they were friends, but i couldn't talk about Not Making Things Personal and not bring this up so) just goes to show you that even the most composed drivers and champions have their moments. its a hard sport, obviously things get tense sometimes.

as for the part about red bull engineers wanting to leave red bull. not sure how true that is entirely, but we do know that adrian newey went to aston and jonathan wheatley is going to stake and they were a large part of red bull great ness. (unclear if this was in any way related to max though, newey’s departure seemed to be more related to the horner allegations (yeah that was also this year. its been a long season)).

in Yet Another interview, george said that "They're [red bull] doing their utmost to get Horner out of Red Bull,” along with then continuing to repeat that the red bull mechanics were applying to other teams. i seem to remember someone, maybe zak brown, maybe toto wolff, saying something like this earlier in the year. but it is kind of unclear how george himself would have known that fact Specifically given that he is a mercedes driver and not a mclaren or aston driver.

and horner said. something. about this specifically. that i cant find. but it was something about how george shouldn't comment on other teams inter workings because its not his business. which is kinda fair, george knows what's happening at mercedes, not what's happening at any other team because hes only on one team. he might know the rumors and the gossip and all that, but he definitely doesnt know the ins and the outs, just like anyone else doesnt.

max later had this to say about george’s comment about people leaving red bull though:

"it is also very difficult for them, when you see that we have taken a lot of people away from mercedes for our engine program. then frustration comes out. we have the last laugh, because we won the race last week. they start on pole position because of that nitpicking with the stewards, but 300 meters he was already behind. everything he brings up has nothing to do with it. i was very relaxed with the stewards, i had already won the championship. but he had to be so dramatic to start first."

toto wolff also talked about horner. because of course he did.

and remember these guys have a history too. we all remember the great “i have it printed out” incident in 2022 during the meeting about the porpoising.

anyway, toto said this about horner (who remember also had some choice words for george last week, calling him essentially overly emotional) "Why does he feel entitled to comment about my driver?...Yapping little terrier - always something to say."

horner was definitely not impressed by that comment At All. (surprise surprise) he said this: “I love terriers! I think they’re great dogs. I’ve had four of them, I’ve had a couple of Airedales, they’re the king of the terriers. I had a couple of West Highland terriers called Bernie and Flavio. The thing about terriers, they’re tremendously loyal. To be called a terrier, is that such a bad thing? They’re not afraid of having a go at the bigger dogs – I’d rather be a terrier than a wolf maybe.”

he also posted this on his instagram story after toto made that remark, which is a picture of his own terrier.

but anyway. back to george. because yes, he still somehow wasn't done dunking on max.

one of his other arguments here was about how max should be a better role model. "I think we've also got a duty as drivers I've got an eight-year-old nephew who's just started go-karting, who watches all of my races, watches TikTok, watches YouTube, and for a world champion to be coming out saying he's going to go out of his way to crash into someone and put them on their effing head, that is not the sort of role models we should be."

this is another interesting argument. because i believe that one of the main arguments for drivers to not curse so much (which again, is something that george is actively arguing against as the gpda director) is that they should be being a good role model for younger kids watching. so, while it makes sense that george would bring this up as a like “hey maybe we shouldn't threaten eachother” argument, but again, max is hardly the first world champion to ever have a controversial moment. and also with the role model argument being used about the cursing right now, idk maybe not the best idea.

he also said that he thought that max didn't attack him specifically. as in, it was not personal to george. he thought that it would have been the same with anyone in the stewards room in that specific incident. and circled it back more to how that makes max a bully:

"I think [Verstappen] has been enabled because nobody stood up to him. Lewis stood up to him in 2021 and Lewis lost that championship unfairly. Could you imagine the roles being reversed and Max losing that championship in the manner that Lewis lost that championship? I mean, [former FIA race director] Masi would be fearing for his life. So, as I said, some of the recent incidents, he has been punished and he punished himself. I honestly think it could have been anybody in that stewards' room and Max would have reacted the same way. He's made it personal when there was no need to make it personal. He's a year older than me, so we only crossed paths once in go-karts in 2011. But as I said, he was wound up and frustrated before I even spoke in that stewards' room."

so this is now Another racing incident that george has brought up, abu dhabi 2021. weve talked about this before, max won the championship instead of lewis on the last lap of the race after a bs safety car call that allowed cars between lewis and max only to unlap and cost lewis the championship. michael masi was the race director at the time and he resigned i think not long after that and i believe got sent death threats about how he called the end of that race (as did nicholas latifi, the driver who caused the safety car). so given that masi did get death threats when lewis didn't win, i cant imagine that it would have been any different if max had lost. max did chill out a decent amount in the last year when he was really dominating, so we havent seen this side of him in awhile, as was pointed out several times by many different people over the course of the year.

if max really was this wound up though when george got in the stewards room, that might have resulted in a more heated debate than normal. horner said about the stewards meeting that “Max does nothing but tell the truth so I believe 100 per cent what he said to be accurate. There [were] other people in those stewards’ rooms as well, and they also came back and reported that they were quite surprised at the approach that was taken.” and maybe that approach was that george was a little more forceful than he would have normally been.

in the original interview i inserted, at the end, the interviewer asks george at the end:

“just to finally put to max’s point, which was that he felt that you crossed a line in terms of respect that was broken and he would say ‘well im not lashing out, im telling the truth and that's the way i am…’ he would say ‘that's just the way i am, that's i tell the truth, i say it the way it is.’”

this is objectively true, max has said this many times and so have other people, hes pretty blunt and to the point and just says it like it is. george though was not overly pleased with this.

“well im telling the truth that he said to me that hes going to put me on my fucking head. and for me that is crossing a line.”

in another interview though, george said that "So as of tonight, for me, this is put to bed, and it's in race mode, and I'm focused on the weekend. I don't need to talk to him at all., there's nothing for me to say. I know what Max is like. This is not the first time I've seen him like this. I've seen him like this as a 14-year-old in the go-kart paddock. So this is just me sharing what happened on Saturday night. I walked into the stewards' with no problem with Max. I walked out of the stewards' with no problem with Max. Then, s**t has hit the fan and the words he said to me. I went back and I told my team and we laughed about it. And then I woke up the next day and I was expecting to have a laugh about it. But as I said, I saw the fire in his eyes.”

now, if you will recall, max’s original argument about the stewards room was:

“i’ve never seen someone trying to screw someone over that hard, and then for me i lost all the respect.”

“I just felt like I was talking to a brick wall.”

and

“he [george] always acts extremely polite in front of the cameras but if you sit together with him personally, he's a completely different person. i truly can't stand that. then you might as well fuck off, i don’t want anything to do with you.”

so george did not really address any of that at all. instead he brought up a lot off different points about how max had been behaving, how hes a bully and how hes been allowed to get away with things and how george himself was just following the rules.

max, obviously, saw george’s scathing remarks about him and had this to say:

"that's not true [that i said i'd drive him into a wall] i didn't say it like that. he's trying to exaggerate it again. do you know what else i can't stand? that he attacks me in an unacceptable way with the stewards and then comes back a day later as if nothing is wrong and slaps me on the shoulder. then i think: stay away for a while. he makes up all kinds of things that aren't true. with me you always get the same: here, at home, with the stewards; i don't change. you can't say that about everyone. but i'm not surprised by that with him."

now, we’ve already heard george’s justification for why he was so casual with max in the morning before the drivers parade, it was because he didn’t think that max was still going to be pissed about it, but he was (or at least that's how i understand it. sorry guys im on hour 9 of writing just the george max part alone and its all starting to sound the same to me)

in any case, as ted said, drive to survive apparently has the sound byte of whatever the two of them said before the drivers parade and knowing netflix, they will milk this for all its worth in the new season of drive to survive. so i suppose we wont have any real information that isnt speculation about any of this until march.

max also addressed george calling him a bully, saying that, "yes, but george is a bully. that he brings up all these kinds of things. he is just a loser. he lies and sticks all kinds of things together that are not correct. i only gave my opinion about his behaviour to the stewards. he clearly does not appreciate that. what he said about 2021, that is also what happened to the stewards. he insinuates a lot of things that do not make sense."

and yes, like i said, a lot of the stuff that george dragged up had absolutely nothing to do with the incident at hand and it was probably a pr move to just get the press to focus on a whole lot of controversial max moments (because yeah however way you spin it, he does have those. george really only has the one and its that time he slammed valtteri on the helmet in imola in 2021. which people did drag up, but that's only one incident and george alone brought up five separate racing incidents of max’s. people also brought up relentlessly that max’s father is literally abusive (remember i said a really long time that he was accused of murdering someone once), which doesnt really have anything to do with this other than to say that sometimes max might resort to anger?)

also. important to note. and i cannot find the original quote of this, but at some point george switched from just saying that max was going to put his head in the wall to “i was going to let you by, but now im going to put your fucking head in the wall” or something along those lines. which everyone was like, yeah no way max ever said that. which is fair. max has never been known to let anyone by even a little bit. many people saw this as a crack in george’s argument. but there is also the possibility that max was saying that he was going to let george off for his behavior or not punish him in the race or something and then he changed his mind.

and finally, at some point, george reportedly said that he had tears in his eyes (out of frustration likely) and upon being told that, max said this:

"it wasn't that dramatic last week with the stewards, maybe next time then i'll bring tissues."

so. clearly this was not a mild incident. and im going to express that this is literally just a sampling of it. there was a lot more of just the two of them in their interviews tearing into eachother, but it did get very repetitive. so this is pretty much the main bits of it.

and ive tired to present as much of the information as i can as unbiasedly as possible so you can decide for yourself. there were a lot of opinions about the whole thing. like a whole lot. so i really did my best here.

(and if you want my opinion, i think theyre both telling the truth here. i think probably something did get heated in the stewards room and maybe max was really pissed and george pushed a little harder for a penalty. max probably also did tell george that he was going to put him on his head. none of this seems that insane to me. i also do think that george is telling the truth that he wasn't that concerned about the whole thing on saturday night and then max was still going at it on sunday morning. all in all, in my opinion, they both fucked up here. and don't worry, it wasn't over)

but, tldr:

-max drives slowly on his outlap in qualifying, potentially impeding george

-george cites this as dangerous driving, potentially lying about how severe it was, potentially also telling max that he didn't think it was a big deal before they got to the stewards room

-there was already a precedent for the weekend about how drivers driving slowly would get punished (as established with yuki in fp1)

-something in the stewards room gets said that causes max to lose his temper and make him think that george is being unreasonable with the stewards

-max gets a 1 place grid penalty

-max tells george that hes going to put george’s head in the wall

-george takes this as a heated and of the moment comment

-george approaches max the following morning before the drivers parade and jokes about max’s comments from last night to carlos and checo

-carlos and checo are seemingly confused and carlos says that max would have done the same thing in the stewards room

-they race

-max ends up winning from p2, george finished p4 from pole

-after the race max tells the press that george is two faced and was unfair with the stewards and pushed really hard for a penalty that he felt he didn't deserve given the circumstances

-george says virtually nothing about it

-rumors circulate about what might have been said

-max continues to bash george in abu dhabi, saying hes not sorry for what he said

-george drags up years worth of racing incidents about max, calls him a bully, says that he threatened to put his head in the wall

-max says that this is not true and it never happened and this is more reasoning why george is two faced

-toto wolff calls christian horner a terrier, christian says hed rather be a terrier than a wolff

-george continues to lay into max, saying that he has lost respect for him and also saying that he didn't intend on dragging this up but now that max insulted his character he has no choice but to

-max says it wasn't a big deal and next time he’ll bring tissues

-remember. max already won the world title, george was not in contention. mercedes was solidly 4th in the drivers championship.

-max doesnt usually go at people hes not title fighting for no reason cause he kinda hates the press

-george also doesnt usually go at anyone because he also doesnt like the press and also knows that people don't like him

so. certainly other people must have opinions about this, right?

well. lando definitely did.

lando, remember, was max’s sort of title rival this year. he was in a lot of battles with max for sure, including mexico, which george cited as one of max’s controversial racing incidents. (george also implied that he wasn't sure why “people” (probably lando charles and checo) havent stood up to max before) lando is also pretty good friends with max (they fly together regularly, they hang out together, lando also seemingly has a pretty good relationship with max’s girlfriend kelly’s daughter penelope and i think theres evidence that hes known her for most of if not all of her life (i think shes like somewhere in the 5 year old range), so theres definitely some element of trust there). and hes also pretty good friends with george. george, lando and alex all were in the younger junior series together (f2 mainly, but i think also f3) so they have been racing against eachother for awhile, and its pretty obvious from videos and interviews and all that that theyre friends.

and lando, as we all saw last week in qatar, loves to stir shit up. especially when its not his shit.

and mclaren, in case you forgot in all of this, are in a constructors title battle against ferrari. ferrari are a little ways behind, but they still could beat mclaren in the final race of the season.

so lando was of course asked about the george and max drama.

and here is what he said:

“I hope it doesn’t get smoothed out… I hope they stay fighting and arguing, because it’s amusing to watch”

first of all, absolute man of the people

second, objectively hilarious response

third, this was definitely taking a decent amount of the press pressure off of mclaren, who as i said, were in a title fight with ferrari, so this was probably benefiting them in a weird backwards way.

zak brown though was asked this by martin brundle:

“Is Lando too compliant with Max Verstappen? Is he too submissive with him because he hasn't come out really and supported George at all in this latest spat?”

which is an….interesting choice of words to say the least.

and zaks response was not all that much better: “Yeah, I think we've seen him race Max really hard. Lando's a different type of character.”

in any case, lando did not defend either one of them. in fact, he just added to the shit storm.

and how, you might be wondering, how could this get any more insane?

well. it is abu dhabi. final race of the season. and that means. its time for the annual drivers dinner.

in case you don't know what this is, every year at the end of the season all of (or at least most of) the drivers get together to have dinner. its usually on the thursday night, before the real racing of the weekend has started.

there was for awhile that i think the previous years champion would pay for dinner, but i think that stopped one year when nico and lewis got into a heated debate over who was paying for dinner that year and everyone ended up paying separately

in any case. the first of the posts to be posted about the drivers dinner was, to my knowledge, lando’s. and it was this:

which is. objectively hilarious. he’s once again stirring the pot. and also max’s beef emoji. does this ever fucking stop? (the answer is no)

and of course everyone posted virtually the same photo so oscar of course shit on it with his caption which read “Exclusive pic from the drivers’ dinner. Won’t find it elsewhere”

esteban ocon later posted the seating arrangement:

yes, george and max were seated as far away from eachother as possible, lando did not lie about that

though apparently, that was not intended.

liam lawson did an interview after the race weekend where they asked him about how the drivers dinner went, specifically the seating chart. and well. just watch it.

so good to know that everyone else finds the beef funny except for george.

lewis also took the time to make fun of lando’s inability to sit still:

and unfortunately i lost the stupid link. but he posted a series of pictures of landos face zoomed in with hhis eyes closed or not looking at the camera in all of them and cat opined it "lando multiple takes norris"

and if you're wondering where lance and fernando are. apparently they went on a date with lawrence stroll? to get dinner. no i am not joking. i have no idea what this sport is anymore

not sure where kevin and nico were.

the drivers were also asked the following day about the team dinner. the drivers in question being oscar lando alex and franco. it was a bit of a trainwreck.

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and valtteri ended up paying for the dinner, in case you were wondering. and it ended up being apparently 5k euros.

and in all of this, charles leclerc managed to get food poisoning. potentially from the dinner. though he was the only one. this was especially tragic for him as he almost missed out on doing fp1, which he was doing with his younger brother, arthur leclerc. a fact that pretty much got entirely overshadowed by the whole george and max drama of the day before.

now you might be wondering. is that the end of the max and george drama? or did something else insane happen??

now. if you don't know the bomb i am about to drop. i want you to take a second. and think to yourself. what could make the george and max drama more insane.

go ahead

think to yourself

make a guess

….

do you have it?

great!

now take that guess and throw it out the window because theres no way you guessed what actually happened here:

yeah. max verstappen and his long time girlfriend, kelly piquet, announced that they are having a child.

and now, i know that i tried to remain unbiased here. i know i tried. but im sorry. how much of a pr save do you need to be like oh hey. you know what will distract the press from this weird feud im having with a driver over a one place grid penalty that actually didn't really affect my race at all in a season where i’ve already won the world title? announcing that i am having a child.

this did pretty effectively shut the press up (for the most part) about the max and george drama. but like. absolutely insane that they chose to do this. because there was absolutely no way that this was Not a pr move. first, look at the context of the weekend so far. george had just dragged up every bit of dirt he could on max verstappen and they clearly needed something positive for the press to talk about instead. and this. was what they landed on.

because it really seems like this was supposed to get announced After the season was over. mostly because max is a pretty private person. second. who would, in normal circumstances, post this literally less than an hour before the first day of practice sessions for the last race of an insane season???

(also kelly posted some stuff on her instagram that made it seem like the two of them had been trying to have a child for awhile, so, weird that theyre still using this as a deflection for pr purposes. or at least, that is what i think)

also, this kid is going to be a verstappen piquet. the childs father will have won four (minimum) titles and grandfather (nelson piquet) won three. kinda wild.

in any case, regardless of how it got announced, congrats to them.

and because this post is too long, i will see you all on part 2.

the 2024 formula 1 silly season and drama master post, part 2 (part 1 here)

Hello and welcome to ah fucking fuck auto caps fuck fuck fuck how do i turn off auto caps AHA there we go okay. take 2

hello and welcome to the great and very insane formula 1 2024 season drama post, part 2. if you are new here or are just looking for part one (which contains the previous 16 (?) races, the off season, pre season testing and everything else, that can be found HERE. (a word to the wise: open it in a browser, not the app, and preferably on a computer to avoid crashing. its fucking long).

what the hell is formula 1? car go fast. fastest cars in the world zoom around tracks at top speeds of over 300kph, piloted by the top 20 drivers in the world. it might not sound dramatic, but oh man. you will Not be disappointed. this post focuses on the drama, the insanity, the sheer what the hell how is this a serious sport. no legitimately. we've just about seen it all this year. grindr, dogs, watersports, ice cream brands, its all here.

the point of this post? to educate, to catalog the insane drama, and to just have a good time. people like to gatekeep this sport, there is also a lot happening. i try to make it easy to understand. again, probably best to start at the beginning of the post because it does a pretty good job of explaining things, which i began way back in january, and can be found HERE (again, shes long, be careful)

and, as usual, if you do not want to see this post EVER AGAIN, block the tag #saph explains silly season 2024

and a second caution, i assume this post will be getting long as well. including this one we have minimum 9 updates left!

anyway, those of you who have been following along the whole time, welcome back! i know we got a little delayed. and i know we’re on a new post, so lets just briefly take a second for me to explain what the fuck happened. first i had an anatomy test, second i work 2 jobs with fuck ass hours, third tumblr decided to stop letting me look at any of my drafts, fourth tumblr support ghosted me about the drafts issue and the post was half saving half not so i just decided fuck it, were going with post 2, electric boogaloo, and fifth, i decided to start typing this instead in a google docs so. many changes. if you're new here i am usually more on top of this.

but here we are. were back on street circuits. we’re in baku, azerbaijan, for the start of the last third of the season. 8 races remain, world championship titles are still within grasp of multiple people. the drama is dramaing. and today is september 22, 2024 and lets fucking go.

first and foremost, on account of the fact that this post is late (again, see above), were going to have to do a bit of a speed run. if you're new here, i promise that this is not representative of my normal dedication to the update post. and for those asking, yeah, ill probably compile it somewhere better than a tumblr post after its all said and done, but we don't have time for that now.

what we do have time for is the Off Week (and like some of the media stuff). and it was filled with silliness:

george russell decided to wear what can only be described as slightly ugly yellow short shorts with his taylor swift shirt that he got at the eras tour. this was baffling for several reasons, the main reason being that i don't think the internet knew that he was capable of wearing a graphic t shirt

fernando alonso got his aston martin valkyrie finally. in case you are unfamiliar, a valkyrie i think is the worlds fastest street legal car. he posted tweets about this that made it seem like he wanted to fuck the car. hilariously, the car broke down an hour later.

we also had the very thrilling conclusion to grill the grid. oscar won and he somehow managed to look more pleased about his grill the grid win than his first race victory.

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nico rosberg went to the green awards and he wore a fantastically insane teal blue suit. yes i know hes not a current driver. but you all like hearing about him so ask and you shall receive. unfornunately i cant find a picture of it though

and also not a current driver is mick schumacher, but my roommate asked me to include that he was seen on his girlfriends instagram being bad at golf. like. exceptionally bad at golf. like he hit a tree 20 feet in front of him.

also playing golf was lando norris. except he managed to look like try bolton from high school musical 2.

he also talked about the world driver championship with his friend max fewtrell while they were playing golf. unfortunately i lost this link in the sea of technical difficulties, but the gist of it was that he was saying that there is still hope for him to beat max in the championship (hes about 60 points behind right now). lando doesnt usually talk about the championship because he doesnt want news outlets to paint him as “desperate” so this was interesting

charles leclerc had an insane off week. first he rear ended someone in monaco. then he spoke at a yacht conference. he was not scheduled to speak at said yacht conference, he was there doing something else and they were like hey you're cool people know you, heres a microphone. he alsp ended up on a weather channel while promoting a karting event he was doing for the jules bianchi foundation (his god father, the one who died during the f1 race in japan 2014). he also changed his instagram pop and re centered it because some random tiktoker told him it matched his aesthetic better.

oscar piastri posted a photo of himself sitting in the cockpit of a plane and then promptly deleted it. because he posted it on 9/11. for anyone who doesnt know what that is, that was when some terrorists hijacked commercial planes and few them into the world trade centers in nyc and the pentagon in washington dc

max verstappen also posted a plane pic with himself and lando norris, but he did not delete it.

we also had the return of daniel ricciardo’s jpg instagram account, which is kinda like a finsta for photos that hes taken. i think lando started this a few years ago.

heading into the race week we certainly got a weird ass batch of pr. including but not limited to:

lewis hamilton was back on top and slaying in the fit game. as was yuki.

lewis hamilton also exposed george russell as listening to katy perry pre race. katy perry and taylor swift (this was after he claimed that he liked listening to old school rap music.) though, lewis then started singing wrecking ball???? confusing vibes all around

george was not off the hook yet tho because some intern definitely make him say skidibidi toilet or whatever the thing is idk, i might be gen z but im not insufferable, okay? actually george in baku was just all kinds of unhinged

george and alex also got up to something, what it is no one knows but it is clearly something

max pulled up to the paddock de aged about 10 years. picture one is of him in baku in 2015 (i believe he was 17) and picture 2 is this year. no i am not kidding.

and franco walked into the paddock telling everyone about argentinian mate (which is a drink, not a friend)

and max shoved a microphone out of the way so everyone could gossip

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then of course, we had some slightly more relevant drama

haas announced that ollie would be replacing kevin at baku. in case you forgot, kevin magnussen received a total of 12 penalty points over the season so far, which means he gets one race ban. how did he get the points? well he was mostly wreaking havoc on everyone else so that his teammate, nico hulkenberg, could drag his car into the points. lets all remember the time in saudi arabia where he managed to get 20 seconds of penalties by basically driving like a mad man just to make sure that nico could keep his position after he pit stopped. anyway, nico was kind of pissed about the race ban situation and said “maybe the guidelines for F1 penalties need to be reviewed as the stewards ‘want to get involved’ no matter the contact.”

in any case though, k mags was out. and ollie was in. we’ve seen ollie before. notably he subbed in for carlos sainz at the saudi arabia gp when carlos had appendicitis. he managed to get points as well. since then, he has been announced as a haas driver for 2025 and is now subbing in for k mags (haas, later in the week called him a super sub. clearly no gen z person read that over.) he can do this because ferrari has a haas engine so they share reserve drivers.

adrian newey finally got employed. i know! i can hardly believe it either! but he did! and youll never guess where!

ferrari? no that would be too obvious.

mercedes? nah

williams? no too much of a shit show

aston martin? ding ding ding! just the right amount of shit show!

that is right. newey is going to aston for 2025.

apparently he was offered a “good package” according to himself, which i assume means pay and also the fact that lawrence stroll made him a shareholder? stakeholder? whatever its called. in the team itself. basically he has a lot of power.

he said that he always wanted to work with fernando and lewis. and he couldn't do both. and aston had a better package than ferrari.

fernando looked positively evil during all the announcement pictures. and called the team "definitely the team of the future" and for those of you who don't know, fernando is positively evil. hes just been stuck in a shit box and we havent seen very much of him, but man does he know how to evilly slut it up. so that will be fun to see.

by contrast, people said that lance was not excited enough. and well. lance 1. has resting bitch face and 2. never really looks excited about anything. also he lives in a world where take your child to work day somehow became his job. (his dad owns the team).

lewis hamilton was asked what he thought about adrian not going to ferrari, and here's what he had to say:

"i feel like, while I have mentioned before that it would be an honor to work with adrian, i have been privileged to work with two championship winning teams that didnt have adrian."

mclaren announced pato o ward would do FP1 in mexico. who is pato o ward? hes one of mclaren’s indycar drivers and one of the f1 reserve drivers. he is incredibly charming and definitely runs his own social media as seen here:

mclaren Also claim they figured out who their number 2 driver is and they claim its oscar. i say they claim because the statements were a lot more complex than that. essentially, according to andrea stella, the priority is to the team first, then lando and then oscar. so they didn't outright say that oscar is the number 2 driver and i am willing to bet real money that this is because mr mark webber, oscars manager, has something in oscars contract that prevents him from being a number 2 driver. this is of course because mark webber was one of the most infamous number 2 drivers in f1 history to none other than menace war criminal sebastian vettel, who in their time as teammates, managed to win 4 back to back world champions. or, top to bottom if you're mrs darbus from high school musical.

lando was asked about this and he said that yes, the team does support him. though he would not expect oscar to give up a win for him and that it is more complex behind the scenes. i suppose we will see if there are any papaya rules coming out this weekend….

and oscar said "i think the main point is its not purely just going to be me pulling over for lando every single race, because thats how none of us, including lando, wont want to go racing, if we feel that someone has done a much better job on a weekend, whichever way it is, we want that person to be rewarded."

max verstappen commented on the mclaren situation as well. which was funny mostly because red bull has one of the most defined number 1 and number 2 drivers of any team. he said "you look at it form oscar's perspective, he is closer to lando than lando to me. they have to deal with that."

and allow me to put on a tin foil hat as we are about to talk about the future of the red bull seat. because all i have to offer here is a baseball hat and a red bull can.

a long time ago we talked about the red bull cans. the ones that red bull makes to promote f1. at the end of last season red bull put max and checo on the red bull can. this season at the start it was just max on the red bull can. well. now checo has reappeared on the cans too. and i will tell you what i think this means. it means that checo is not getting swapped this season, which was a possibility for awhile.

but! there is more!

daniel ricciardo made an instagram post this week. and it was very interesting. but most interestingly he was wearing a red bull hat.

which he does occasionally, no big deal really. he did race for the for several years, he technically does currently. BUT then he showed up TO THE PADDOCK wearing the red bull hat.

which is Big Interesting. usually you show up in a statement outfit or wearing the team kit. and daniel is not a red bull racing driver. he is a visa cashapp racing bulls driver. they might be owned by red bull but they are Not the same team. so why the red bull hat. in the paddock. well, the rumor is that hes taking checos seat for 2025. and the rumor is that this will be announced before mexico. so checo can have a proper send off.

and with that. the baku lore.

theres a lot that has happened at baku. as i said its a street circuit. and i think its the fastest street circuit. but over the years theres been some notable events.

such as the great kimi raikkonen radio for gloves and steering wheel:

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they gave mini kimi this week gloves and steering wheel in honor of that

the max and daniel crash in 2018 when they were running p1 and p2 respectfully

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and of course. how could we forget. charles’s infamous “i am stupid” radio.

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speaking of charles, he crashed again in fp1. not quite in the same spot, but nearly. he took a picture with the marshalls.

then in fp2 he rage quit, basically saying that the car sucks.

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but he was back and better than ever in practice three because he managed to top the time charts. welcome back fuck ass ferrari.

some other teams definitely experienced the lows but not really the highs of baku during practice. like lance stroll who came on the radio to say “this is not a car” (good thing they have adrian newey now, right?

franco colapinto also cut his ear before practice on the neck strengthener stretcher thing that they all use and the team wanted to give him stitches but he was like no no no i need to be in the car in about 5 minutes im not doing that. so he jammed on his helmet and jumped in the car. he also crashed and when he went to the medical center he took off his helmet and there was blood everywhere and they were like no no no you cannot race! and he was like no! this is not from the crash! and then explained it and they let him do qualifying.

also im pretty sure? ollie bearman crashed? in practice? but frankly i don't have time to google it so whos to say.

but alas. qualifying.

i know i know this is kind of a shitty update. i promise ill go all out in singapore. i PROMISE.

so as i said. its a street circuit. high speed. 90 degree corners. and also windy as hell. we also had the dynamic duo of karun and harry in the commentary box.

max led the first practice, george led the second and i think charles led the third. or some order like that.

slipstream here is almost essential (slipstream: going behind another car to reduce the wind drag so you can go faster)

charles has the last three pole positions (first in qualifying) here in baku, but he has never won. by comparison, red bull have never had pole here but they have won.

and franco has never been to baku before.

i think that's all the exposition that we need here.

q1 started with max complaining about his car. “the car is jumping around like crazy on the rear axle” he said. despite this he was sitting in p3.

the mid field battle though….the mid field battle was heating the hell up. mostly because none other than franco colapinto, who if you will remember, has never been to baku before, had split the two ferraris. he was in third for the moment, .109 seconds behind carlos sainz and .159 seconds ahead of charles leclerc. we still had a lot of qualifying left to go, so this was probably not going to stay, but it was still insane. he was pushing insanely hard, nearly kissing the walls. clearly he had learned from his crash in practice.

the two mclarens waited until the very end of q1 to do their final flying push lap, and oscar made it through, but tragedy struck for lando.

lando was in the middle of his last flying lap, time was ticking down, and there was a Very Brief yellow flag on the track. now, according to rules, you cannot complete your flying lap if there is a yellow flag. so lando pitted and was stuck down in 17th and out of qualifying. this would be the first time that he was out in q1 since vegas last year (which if i remember correctly was also not his fault)

now though, of course nothing is ever that cut and dry. people thought that there had been a mis showing of a flag. yellow flag means that a car is stopped on track, white flag means that a car is going slowly on the track. and people thought that there had been a yellow flag shown when it was actually supposed to be a white flag (if there had been a white flag then lando would have been able to keep doing his flying lap) lando himself said that he had no idea what people were talking about because there is a light on the steering wheel that lights up when flags are called and he had a big yellow light. so it was clearly a yellow flag.

if you're concerned about lando being able to pull it out of the bag, id like to point you in the direction of the mexican gp last year where lando qualified 17th and finished 5th. on a track that was hard to overtake on. he can be absolutely insane when he wants to be. worry not gentle reader.

in any case. also out in q1 was daniel ricciardo, valtteri bottas, zhou guanyu and esteban ocon.

and notably, williams, who was on fucking fire this weekend as we already saw, finished q1 with alex albon in second (ahead of oscar) and franco colapinto in 8th. pierre gasly had somehow managed to also get into 4th. and nico hulkenberg was in 7th with ollie bearman in 13th. i told you the mid field battle was heating the hell up.

q2. everyone zoomed straight out of the gate. they didn't want to get lando norris’d. but, speaking of that, if lando managed to get no points in the race and charles managed to win, charles would overtake lando in the drivers championship. mark webber himself told this to charles, who was absolutely baffled.

in any case, charles was kinda suffering right now and that was because he was not getting slipstream from carlos to make his lap faster. meanwhile, carlos seemed to be actively trying to give charles the slipstream because he came on radio to say “he keeps missing the tow”

and amazingly, franco colapinto was 4 tenths AHEAD of alex albon. alex albon who had not been unqualified by his teammate once since the start of 2023. ex red bull driver alex albon. that alex albon.

max topped the times in q2, followed immediately by charles. insanely, fernando alonso managed to drag the aston martin to fifth. and franco was right behind him in 6th. by comparison alex albon was in 10th.

and from q2 we lost ollie bearman, yuki tsunoda (who has never qualified lower than 8th in baku), pierre gasly, nico hulkenberg and lance stroll. so yes, ollie bearman managed to outqualify nico hulkenberg. this is ollies second ever f1 race.

steaming on forward to q3.

we had, for review, in q3 the following:

both ferraris, both red bulls, both mercedes, both WILLIAMS (has not happened since vegas 2023), plus fernando alonso and oscar piastri.

right out the gate it was wild.

“red bull! theyve re found their mojo! or have they!” karun said. red bull were in 5th and 6th and not entirely sucking for the moment.

everyone did one flyer and then came out at the end for a second flyer.

here were the standings:

charles, carlos, oscar, george, checo, max, lewis, alex, franco, fernando

and everyone was making it to the line and all was going smooth until-

wait a second what is that

could it be! alex albon! with the air box fan still on his car! surely not!!!

oh but it was! and harry and karun were like oh wow so unfortunate for williams tisk tisk

meanwhile ted jumped on the radio to Loudly announce to everyone that this was insane and if i have time here i will put the rant he ranted cause it was Fantastic.

and what do you know i have time

so we had 3 minutes left qualifying and everyone was pulling out of the pits for their last flyer when oscar hopped on the radio to say

"the williams still has the air box fan in"

"oh what an error! disaster for williams!" karun and harry said. they speculated if the marshalls could get it or if the session needed to be red flagged. but alex threw the fan off the car.

and then they asked "ted have you ever seen that before?" and ted did not hold back:

"ITS A MASSIVE YELLOW FAN HOW COULD YOU MISS IT???!!! HOW COULD THE MECHANICS MISS IT???? I CANT BELIVE THEY WOULD MAKE SUCH A MISTAKE DOWN AT WILLIAMS! SUCH AN EXPERIENCED BUNCH OF GUYS AND GIRLS! WHAT IS GOING ON AT WILLIAMS OPERATIONALLY? HOW COULD YOU SEND A CAR OUT LIKE THAT?"

alex, obviously, got fined for an unsafe release 5k euros. he also had to throw the fan off to the side and got slightly covered in dry ice. he did not get to the a second flying lap.

franco did tho!

and here were out qualifying results:

p1: charles p2: oscar p3: carlos p4: checo p5: george p6: max p7: lewis p8: fernando p9: franco p10: alex p11: ollie p12: yuki p13: pierre p14: nico p15: lance p16: daniel p17: lando p18: valtteri p19: zhou p20: esteban

oh ho ho but we werent done yet. because pierre gasly got disqualified from qualifying. for failing fuel flow regulations. and lewis was going to have to start from the pit lane for changing his power unit.

everyone, and by everyone i mean oscar max and checo, pretty much said that charles was going to get pole no matter what, they knew this coming in and the best they were trying for was second

onto the race.

notably, this is considered a checo track. this was one of the three races that max did not win last year. because checo won it. its a track that he does well on, evidenced by the fact that he qualified above max in qualifying. so people were expecting big things from him.

and so, we head into lap 1.

charles managed to hang onto the lead. checo passed carlos straight out of the gate for third and max managed to pass george to take fifth. lando had managed to get ahead of nico and up into 13th. notably, franco held onto 8th and ollie was able to hold onto tenth.

someone who was not doing well was lance stroll, who came on the radio saying that he had a puncture. this was from contact with yuki. lance had to pit for fresh tires and was pretty immediately thrown to the back of the grid.

by lap 2 lando had managed to get past daniel and was in 12th, he was trying to get past yuki next, which he managed by lap 3. yuki also lost a spot to nico.

also slaying in the mclaren was oscar, who took fastest lap. then charles took fastest lap.

and lewis hamilton, who had started from the pit lane, was up to 16th. already. somehow. though he was displeased with the tires, sayig that “this tire is pretty bad” over the radio.

yuki meanwhile was clearly having a problem because he had started going very very slowly. thought the pit wall said that he had no problems. this would later turn out to be false but we will indulge them for the time being.

franco was STILL ahead of alex albon on lap 6. STILL.

lando on lap 8 managed to push his way into points positions, overtaking ollie bearman for 10th. though this was where things were about to slow down for him because in front of him were alex, franco and fernando, who were all very close together and would be hard to get past.

george was back in bad luck hell as a plastic bag entered his airbox. will he ever catch a break.

on lap 11 nico hulkenberg finally caught up with ollie bearman and passed him for 11th.

and max’s car was not working. to potentially no one’s surprise. “i have zero bite in the car” he said. and this was probably true because checo was a whole 6.5 seconds ahead of him. insane gap.

several pit stops later that i will not detail out because we simply do not have the time, alex albon ended up in 4th and lando ended up in fifth. and oscar was about to get undercut by checo.

“mojo seems to be back for checo perez” harry said, correctly.

mojo was back for him indeed. and now he was right behind lando.

and if you will recall, according to mclaren themselves, priority at mclaren is the team first, then oscar, then lando. but oscar was ahead of lando. so what did mclaren do?

they asked lando do hold up perez, but not compromise his own race.

remever a long time ago when i said mclaren wouldn't have any internal drama this season? man how i was wrong.

lando managed to hold up perez for around a lap or two before he got past. this was crucial because this was during when oscar was in the pits.

thanks to lando and the power of the papaya rules teamwork, oscar ended up coming out in 4th, only .706s ahead of checo.

mclaren are working together everyone! mclaren are working together!

meanwhile, turns out that yuki did indeed have problems because he retired on lap 17 with a hole in his sidepod from the contact with lance on lap 1. this was now two races in a row where he had had to retire for reasons out of his control.

several more people pitted. and eventually charles was back out in front, oscar was in p2. until he wasn't. no, he didn't dnf. he overtook charles! he was in p1! he popped out of nowhere! nowhere being 2 car lengths back and just flooring it to spring around charles like a little silly slinky! karun called it a “good, fair and robust defense,” which sounds like its descibing notes in wine. but this was not wine. this was the baku gp. and we were only half done.

ollie bearman was defending against lewis hamilton, holding on tightly to 14th place.

charles was still behind oscar and he could not get past, despite the fact that he was still very much in spitting distance. “they are pushing like crazy or they have more grip than us” he said.

carlos got past both lando and alex albon and was up into 4th

this brought max up behind lando. max was on 11 lap old tires and lando was on 24 lap old tires. but lando still defended like hell and managed to hold onto sixth. max was 0.632 seconds behind lando on lap 25 when he said that “my brakes are not working.” this was hardly a surprise. max has hated the car since china.

also experiencing technical difficulties was sir lewis hamilton. he was stuck down in 14th and was first told to do “everything you can do to get the surface temp down” of the tires. he said “im trying” then several laps later on lap 29 he came on the radio to say “are you seeing how i have to drive this thing?” “yes,” bono, his engineer said. “quite effective though.”

max was still half a second behind lando. mclaren faked a pit stop call over the radio to get max to pit. he did not.

but, george russell did manage to pass him. which was “not good for max’s world champion aspirations.”

this was also when ted very bafflingly said that “if i had a sofa in the pit lane i would be jumping up and down on it” im not sure what that was in response to.

meanwhile, ollie was still holding off sir lewis hamilton. and charles was trying to get oscar to pit again by lying over the radio. it was not working.

lando did a pit stop finally and came out a whole 15 second behind max. he was hoping to catch max by the end of the race. but it might be tight. lets go last lap lando.

“lando, imagine andrea on your shoulder saying ‘zero wheel spin’ in every exit,” lando’s race engineer said. if you're confused, everyone else was too.

10 laps to go and here were the order of affairs:

oscar

+.449s charles +1.865s checo +2.989s carlos +16.530s george +1.909s max +11.535s lando +9.715s fernando +2.589s alex +2.451s nico +4.667s franco +1.590s lewis +1.261s ollie +1.791s pierre +9.205s daniel +23.919s esteban +.789s lance +3.862s valtteri +3.631s guanyu

lando was determined. he took fastest lap on lap 43 and was 8.8s behind max

at this point, the leaders were starting to lap the cars in the back. “the back markers are starting to come up,” checo’s engineer said to him. “its going to get messy.”

“hold onto your hats and if you don't have one go get one and hold onto it” harry said. harry would turn out to be correct.

we had the top 3 all running very close to eachother, that was oscar, charles and checo and “welcome to the party carlos sainz!” who was now 1.2 seconds behind checo in the four way battle for the lead.

definitely not leading was lance stroll, who retired on lap 47 with a brake problem.

oscar managed to pull ahead of charles by 1.5 seconds, finally knocking him out of DRS range. so now it was a three way battle for second. and charles had “no rear tires. no rear tires at all.”

and, just like i said he would, lando managed to pass max on lap 49. he was closing the gap slowly in the championship.

“verstappen’s day goes from bad to worse,” harry said. because lando still had fastest lap, so he would score 3 more points than max. which is important if lando wants to beat max in the championship (though i think hes still like 60 points behind)

meanwhile! franco managed to pass nico hulkenberg for 10th! he was in the points!!!! at his second race!!!

but this was short lived because there was a crash! a big smackeroo! between carlos and checo!! checo was mad, carlos didn't know what happened.

what happened was that carlos was trying to pass checo but checo did not move over. it was deemed an equal fault accident. both of them were utterly confused at what happened and apparently spent 20 minutes in the medical center being utterly lost and aparently saying that sometimes this sport sucks. and! contrary to what several people said! checo did not bang on carlos’s helmet after the crash.

the crash actually caused chef's dad to have a heart attack. he is stable now.

and well. this clip of george from the post qualifying interviews definitely didnt age well:

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but! since we were a matter of a few laps from the end, this meant that the rest of the race was finished under a virtual safety car.

which meant

OSCAR PIASTRI WINS THE AZERBAIJAN GP

and george inherited p3!

and on his own merit too! no safety cars, no team orders, no weird shit!

“yes!” he whispered over the radio.

he almost fell getting out of the car, then gave us all the “one moment” hand gesture before properly celebrating.

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he also got driver of the day!

(this was marginally better than george russell, who said over the radio “i cant get any rubber (to pick up on his tires) all im getting is leaves”)

gunther steiner also hosted the post race interviews. which was interesting.

george said that the most difficult part of the race was “driving full gas into a wall of carbon fiber on the penultimate lap…the vsc should have come out sooner”

charles bashed ferrari because they didn't do any high fuel runs in practice.

oscar was entirely pleased. “i managed to overtake and hold onto it for the next 35 laps..one of the better races of my career.” and honestly, oscar winning a race straight after mclaren basically announcing that he was their number 2 driver is nothing short of hilarious.

and! mclaren was now leading the constructors championship by 20 points! for the first time in ten years!!!!

the top three had a moment outside of the car that was filled with baffled:

and oscar's engineer tom got to stand on the podium with him. he usually takes a selfie with oscar after each race he podiums at, but he was too excited to so george took this picture for them

(george also aparently demomished oscar in a game of uno on the plane, immediately humbling him)

george also shielded himself from the champagne on the podium

the cooldown room reacted to the crash in a very straight forward manner:

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and very quickly cause its midnight and the singapore gp starts in 8 hours, the post race, speed ran:

-mark webber told off laura winter for thinking that oscar didn't have good tire management

-alex albon was “super happy, that's a lot of points for us” (williams finished in 7th and 8th). he cut his own interview short when ollie bearman arrived, saying “I can go, im happy to go” and then waving comically.

-williams was so pleased with this result they blasted everyone with champagne. and they overtook alpine in the constructors championship! this was also their best race finish all season

-(and a quick note, if youre going to really blame logan for being that shit of a driver here, please remember that the car he was driving was several rounds of upgrades behind alex's pretty much the entire time he was driving it)

-ollie became the first driver to ever score points in his first two races for two different constructors because the double dnf pushed him up to 10th place. he said that there was not much difference between the haas and the ferrari, the ferrari was just red

-franco continued to charm everyone and flirt with the reporters.

-they interviewed george and lewis and the camera had to be adjusted for george's height. it was comical and resulted in my favorite edit so far of the season (sound on)

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-lando looked pleased and happy for once. he said about holding off checo that “i didn't hold him up i just had to cool my tires a little.” he was delighted to be leading the constructors for the first time in ten years and he defended alex albon saying “i struggled to get past alex for a while, which is common, alex doesnt make mistakes.” he also ratted on max for going to fast during the VSC and said “i didn't complain, facts were stated.” and to sum it all up he said that “im executing things well, i’m very quick…i’m not going to be the happiest guy, but i am never the happiest guy….car is performing well everywhere…some red cars behind us seem to be our biggest competitors right now”

-by comparison george insulted all of pirelli. the tire people. “pretty infuriating that it (the pace) changes this so much….its black magic, people who make the tires don't understand the tires…..for 20 laps we had a car not worthy of points and for 20 laps we had a car fighting for victory and the only difference is the tires.”

-lewis was notably upset after the race and walked through the paddock with his helmet on, not wanting to talk to anyone. but he did talk to franco and ollie and congratulate them on a job well done defending against him and racing against him. franco even fangirled over this on his instagram.

-charles was clearly upset with ferrari. he was so upset he posted a thirst trap.

-and oscar. oscar was very happy this afternoon. and his mom was there! she doesnt usually come cause it scares her, but nicole was there today!

-mclaren celebrated with a hell of a lot of champagne. both oscar’s wina and lando’s insane recovery, and the fact that they were leading the championship. red bull have been dethroned, at least for now.

-there was so much champagne that lando took off his socks to spray it. all seems well at mclaren.

-at least one thing is for sure, oscar had a better time here this weekend than last year when he got food poisoning and only ate four pieces of toast

and with that. we head into singapore. quite literally as it is starting in a few hours. again, i apologixe about this post. its a little sad, but the next one will be better. pinkly promise.

see you all soon!!!

#not a tag #from saph #saph explains silly season 2024 #this will be at least 2 maybe three more parts aa #Instagram

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