#but I do feel very bad for a lot of the French fans who've lost their favorite Egg

[royalarchivist]

I love all the lullabies Baghera ever sang to Pomme, but this will always be my favorite one. :')

Tu vas nous manquer Pomme, notre Manzanita. 🍎💙

[slow-button-off]

Hey 🙂 I just wanted to tell you that a lot of Italian fans who've read that interview in Italian were really not upset about the "do you feel a little responsible?" comment. Many found both the question and the answer to be very chill, like they were joking with each other (the "a little", Charles saying he was depressed! with the exclamation mark, make it all seem very playful, especially because Charles isn't the type to admit he was depressed like that, in a throwaway comment, because he doesn't want to make people worry).

Also the fact that the journalist didn't mention it again or try to insist on it. It was a short paragraph, there and gone. And then back to talking about how amazing Seb is, and how the season is going.

Italian fans pointed out that Charles and Italian journalists in live interviews always act very familiar with each other, joking like buddies.

This journalist in particular has always defended Charles in various articles, said that Ferrari made a mistake in not prioritizing him and that Charles is "epic but far too humble" after his win in Austria (don't we all feel that? 🙄😂). So it seems uncharacteristic that he would ever take a dig at him.

Others even said that maybe it was the journalist's way to make sure that Charles was NOT blaming himself, because apparently everyone in Italy worries for him (I reckon in the post race interviews at the French GP, an Italian journalist asked Charles if he has someone to talk to, subtly hinting at a therapist, though Charles either didn't catch that or deflected).

I think I saw it on your blog, an anon telling you that Binotto wagging his finger at Charles wasn't particularly upsetting for Italians, because it can mean many things according to what it's being said? It can just be a way to reinforce and drive the message home, so it's not necessarily bad. I think we are once again missing some of the nuance here because we aren't Italian ourselves.

I feel like we have reached a point where the whole team kind of seems to be on the same wavelength for the first time in a long while, where Binotto and the higher ups defended Charles and called him a champion several times after the mistake, and Binotto even said hope is not lost and Ferrari could win the next 10 races for all he knows. It seems like the team has finally realized how them dismissing the wdc and leaving Charles to "feel like I'm fighting alone" has impacted him psychologically and are now trying to make amends and validating his feelings and hopes. Will they screw up again? ... Most likely 😅 but at least off track their behavior seems to have changed.

So I think it's super important right now to keep the environment around Charles as positive as possible and not spread anger, particularly involving the team or Italian journalists (with whom he's very familiar with, and who treat him almost like a son, or like the child of Italy at the very least) because these are people he's surrounded by all the time. So let's try to keep things positive. Especially since we don't understand the language and might not get all the nuances.

Hiya!

Thanks for letting me know! I kinda figured his answer was pretty relaxed and I think I saw some posts yesterday night that I then forgot about oops...

There's just been a lot of (British) journalists trying to bait people into saying things. Trying to get Charles's to say bad things about Max and like Ted trying to get Horner to call Charles a crasher and so on. I just assumed it was a situation like that because I didn't know who asked him.

The finger wagging was overly criticised. It definitely didn't have the best optics because people are always going to believe what they want but like I've told my friends off when they were being stupid about themselves.

Sometimes I sit and think about the whole I feel like I'm fighting alone thing and I don't quite get how we ended up there. Like it's fine (and kinda obvious) that Ferrari weren't "planning" on winning the wdc this year. Because they knew of the engine and all that. But like have a chat with your driver. I don't want them to tell him to stop believing but like let him know properly.

I think they are know tighter in a way because regardless of what went wrong Charles believed and it's making the others believe and because somehow he is still technically in it.

I just thought it was a situation where someone like Ted is trying to bait him into saying things for a headline.