#but they're too busy blaming ferrari for their driver's lack of competence

[landomeowrris]

"lando is a bottler" this and "lando has a huge ego" that and we're conveniently forgetting THE biggest bottler (in the low pole/win rate sense) with a big ass mf ego that is charles fucking leclerc??

[p6to]

What the fuck is going on?

I was in the process of typing out several essays worth of thoughts in the tags of @tsarinablogs's lestappen 2024 manifesto, because what else is new. Since I am uncannily similar to Max in all aspects of his public persona (except his driving abilities and his apparent need to come out as bisexual in every third interview), including the 'tism allegations and the certified "parent has a very weird sense of seeing their child as their own person" experience, in this essay I will be yapping about Screwderia Ferrari, shady business and of course: Charles Leclerc.

Charles has given his life and a large part of his career in f1 to Ferrari, leading to six wins, including his own home race Monaco and Ferrari's home race Monza, but also ten gazillion strategy fuck ups and now a (likely) second failed championship battle.

How much is too much for a person to handle?

Ferrari has not won a championship since Kimi Räikkönen in 2007. That much was known when Charles went through the ranks in the Ferrari Driver Academy, so he knew they were not suddenly going to dominate the way Red Bull did the last few years and Mercedes before them. He still had faith in them, made promises about his achievements to his dying father when he must have known that they might be impossible to ever reach.

His devotion and his talent have made him into an (almost) religious figure to the tifosi. Charles Leclerc is Ferrari, and Ferrari is Charles Leclerc.

Or is it?

Time and time again, we have witnessed Charles getting fucked over in favour of his teammate (see "it looks like they're going to sacrifice Leclerc" - George, or the entirety of the SF-23, maybe even today). While a team principal and a good number of other employees were fired in 2022 because things were going horrible and Charles insisted on it, and things were looking better when competent personnel and even Lewis Hamilton were signed by Fred Vasseur, it seems like the actual problem is still there.

Based on what we saw with the Barcelona upgrades and Carlos' interviews, we may have to expect the car to be developed to suit Carlos' understeer-y preference once again, which is wild considering that he is a driver who is leaving at the end of the year, has been outperformed by Charles pretty consistently over the time they were teammates, and has shown very clearly (alone this season!) that he is (in the words of a friend) not driving for Ferrari but for Carlos.

How can it be that Charles has mechanical and technical problems every second race weekend, while his teammate does not, and not only does nobody from the team leadership say anything about it but they also let Carlos downplay Charles' very severe brake issues in Bahrain?

Silverstone has marked the third race this season where Charles did not score points due to either inherent issues of the car (tire warm up in qualifying), mechanical issues (engine), damage (front wing in Austria) AND very questionable strategy calls. Three races of the twelve that have passed is 25%, a figure that is much too high for any top team, let alone Ferrari who were very close to catching up to Red Bull in the WCC just four races ago.

Of course, problems in car development and maybe even a higher lack of reliability in mechanical parts can happen to any team. However, we will now come to the area where I see the biggest problem.

This entire triple header, Fred Vasseur has been giving unacceptable statements about BOTH of his drivers. In Barcelona, he downplayed the issue between Charles and Carlos at the start, positioning himself directly against the driver he should be supporting since he was objectively (data-supported) correct. In Austria, Sky Sports had to make him watch the moment Charles sustained the damage to his front wing, because he could not be bothered to watch it during the actual race.

And now in Silverstone, he blamed both Carlos and Charles for not performing miracles with this shitshow of a tractor during qualifying, let his drivers be fed different information regarding the incoming rain leading to one of them making the wrong tire choice, ruining his race, and then had the audacity to lie about that and Charles position during this incident, making it look like he was still behind Lance when he had actually already overtaken him and was now behind Carlos after starting four places behind him, EVEN THOUGH there were radio transcripts and of course the fucking broadcast that showed the truth.

Us Chirlies have to preface our posts about conspiracy theories with statements about tinfoil hats and "for legal reasons this is a joke", but I will not do this here.

I fully believe that there is shady business going on at Ferrari, including but not limited to potential blackmailing, software sabotage and bribery. I will not pin these onto specific people/groups, because there are too many options. I also think that there is shady business going on at every team, but not to this extent.

The way things are going, with Charles already being on an actually not so subtle PR warpath, I expect some form of news in the next three weeks, including either announcements about people being fired or a Charles-to-Red Bull announcement, although Charles to Mercedes would not surprise me either.

Merc fans joined in on criticising Fred yesterday, and hardcore Max fans are saying Charles should leave Ferrari and join Max at Red Bull. This issue has breached containment, as it should.

Either things are changing at Ferrari or Charles will be exchanging Ferrari for a different team. There is no other solution.

(You have made it to the bottom of this yap-fest. Congratulations! I wish you a very nice day/week/month/year/life without Ferrari-like fuck ups and thank you for reading my stuff :) )