#fun to look back at their history in f1 and find points of contact

[mgu-h]

lando takes evasive action onto the grass to avoid crashing into max during their outlap in the 2022 japanese gp quali, after max lost the rear trying to warm his tires.

max complains on the radio "f***** mate, unbelievable," as though it were lando's fault.

max gives a little wave to lando anyway as if to acknowledge the incident and the fact that lando avoided hitting him.

max told the media lando was to blame: "if you are just a bit more respectful, then everyone is anyway already lining up. i don’t think anyone is trying to pass into that last chicane, so basically, by trying to pass me, you create that kind of problem." (x)

lando later told sky sports max intentionally blocked him, violating the gentleman's agreement among drivers not to do that: "it was quite clear he tried to do that. there's no rule on what you can do, but doing what he did is something you cannot do."

he also said "people always overtake before the last corner... he probably would have done the same if he was in my situation, but i wouldn't have swerved at him if i was in his situation." (x)

the incident was investigated, and the stewards gave max a reprimand, not a penalty, so he kept pole position and then won the race. lando qualified p10 and finished p10.

[formula-what]

Brocedes time line for a very patient anon

Lewis quotes in orange, Nico quotes in pink, everyone else is blue.

okay first some background knowledge:

Nico is rich as fuck. only child, born in Germany, brought up in Monaco. son of world champion Keke Rosberg

Lewis was born on a council estate in Stevenage and his dad had to work multiple jobs for him to start karting

Honestly I think the difference in their backgrounds is one of the things that pushed them together, they were both isolated from the rest of the kids, but I’m keeping this purely facts rather than speculation.

2000

They’re both 15 years old and are karting teammates for MBB (Mercedes Benz McLaren) in Formula A

Robert Kubica: “there was always competition. But they didn’t fight. It was friendly competition. There was always laughing afterwards.” // “they would even have races to eat pizza”

They often shared hotel rooms at the races which was a “scene of many wrestling matches between them”

Dino Chiesa (their karting boss) – “many times I was called by reception about some problem in the room. It might be noise, or they might have broken something. They would never sleep so they were always tired the next morning”

“they both liked ice cream so much, particularly vanilla. During the night they wanted to eat ice cream always, so I had to go out everywhere to find some and keep them happy”

Lewis would often persuade Nico to buy him sweets

They would have competitions over LITERALLY EVERYTHING

Lewis: “we always had great competition whether on the racetrack or computer games or playing football”

“probably the first bit of competition we had was when Nico used to ride a unicycle everywhere so I thought, ‘I’ve got to learn how to ride this unicycle. Ive got to be better than him.’ I spent all my time outside the go-kart learning to ride this unicycle”

Apparently it only took Lewis 2 hours to teach himself how to do it

In maybe 2013 ish (when they were still friends) Lewis reflected with– “I have never laughed so much than when we were racing together. Nico was kicking everyone’s butt at that time. We had so great races together and built a great relationship”

“we were just arriving and enjoying go-karts and eating pizzas every weekend, fighting all the time and just having fun, whereas now it’s all business.”

many times they would talk about what they would do when they got to f1, made plans hoping to be teammates and become world champions together.

“Nico would say ‘when I’m in formula one’ and for me it was always ‘if I ever get to formula one’. Because obviously Nico’s dad was a formula 1 driver- he knew he was going to make it.”

F1

Nico joined f1 in 2006 with williams, Lewis 2007 with McLaren. And man I WISH I knew what went down with this two when Lewis nearly one his rookie season (missing out by one point to mr fernando alonso) and then WON THE CHAMPIONSHIP in his SECOND SEASON (again by one point thank you mr alonso)

2008 Australia

Nicos gets his first podium, and ofc Lewis is there (he won it) and they are jumping around in the cool down room. Just, two kids who are literally living the one thing they have spent their whole lives dreaming about together. Lewis won the championship that year and oh wow I can only imagine their celebrations together.

2013

They’re teammates in Mercedes!!!

Nico: “every other day there are moments or things that pop up and I can smirk and thing, ‘that’s exactly the same as it was 15 years ago’”

2013 Malaysian Grand Prix gets an honourable mention. This is the race with red bulls good old multi 21 but merc also had their own team orders, stopping nico from fighting for his first merc podium, but Lewis disagreed with it so it didn’t really spark that much tension between them- more the team.

2014

the start of the turbo-hybrid era so y’all know this was good in terms of performance.

2014 Bahrain Grand Prix

They were both fighting for the win and had a collision which prompted a “mock fight” in parc ferme after the race (which I really hope there’s a video of).

Turns out, Nico won because he had used engine modes banned by Mercedes to get a power advantage in the closing laps. which kinda pissed Lewis off

2014 Spanish Grand Prix

Lewis’ fourth win in a row and took lead in the championship. They were fighting till literally the last second and Lewis crossed the line 0.6 seconds ahead of Nico, who says he could have passed him with one more lap.

Lewis defended using the same banned engine modes that Nico had used in Bahrain. Yeah.

2014 Monaco Grand Prix

This is IT. This is peak petty bitch. This is the one people still cry about.

It’s the end of Q3, both of them are out on a lap, Nico ahead of lewis. Nico’s already on provisional pole but Lewis is pretty close.

And then,, Nico just,, parks his car?? He says he made a mistake but the guy doesn’t even crash he straight up just,, rolls to a stop into a slip road. So the yellow flags come out forcing Lewis to abort a lap that was in the makings of pole.

The stewards say it was a-okay but Lewis was convinced it was intentional (and let’s be honest, yeah it probably was) and he even claimed that merc’s data proved it. (low key surprised he didn’t just tweet out the telemetry but I guess he got a stern telling off from mclaren last time)

But *this* is when Lewis tells the world that they aren’t friends anymore. An iconic interview.

Nico then wins the race too, ending Lewis’s four win streak and putting Nico in the lead of the championship.

2014 Hungarian Grand Prix

Lewis has an engine failure in quali meaning he starts from the pit lane, but he does good to make his way up the pack but THEN there’s a safety car which puts him ahead of Nico but on a different strategy.

Nico asks if Lewis can let him past as he needs to pit again before the end of the race, which will give him the place back anyways. Lewis straight up refuses, he’s on a role here. He started from last, and Nico started from pole, why should he slow down to let his title rival through.

Mercedes strongly suggest that his blocking fucked up Nicos race but Niki Lauda is on Lewis’ side so he doesn’t get punished (We stan a supportive father figure) even though he did blatantly refuse to be a team player.

And guys, this is the last race before the summer break so you know Nico was left seething for four weeks.

2014 Belgian Grand Prix

Second lap, Nico attempts a clumsy move and there’s contact, giving Hamilton a puncture and knocking him out of the race.

There’s a lot of controversy but basically it turns out he crashed with him intentionally, not backing out of the corner to “prove a point”. Nico ended up finishing second but was punished by the team, forced to apologise, and even booed on the podium.

2014 Abu Dhabi

For some reason it ran for double points?? The first time in History??? But idk???

Lewis had a perfect start and went on to win it and take the title, Nico had a problem and was told to retire the car but he kept going anyway and finished 14th. Nico went into the cool down room to congratulate Lewis on the championship win, which. cute.

Lewis claimed his second championship. Which not only was huge because of the inter team rivalry, but also because of the large gap between his first win. This guy had lost out on winning the championship in his ROOKIE season by ONE POINT, and then WON it in his SECOND season, and then there was like a FIVE YEAR gap before he won it again.

2015

Damnnn this car was fiiiinneeeeeee.

They do more laps in testing than any other car AND do it on a single power unit. And then. Australia. They take a one-two THIRTY FOUR seconds ahead of the third place Ferrari.

2015 Chinese Grand Prix

Nico is second in a one-two but claims that Lewis kept backing him up into Seb, trying to compromise his race (and help out his boyfriend).

Lewis gave zero shits: "It's not my job to look after Nico's race, it's my job to manage the car and bring the car home as healthy and as fast as possible. That's what I did."

2015 U.S. Grand Prix

If Lewis wins here he could also claim the title with three races to spare (you have to remember back then the title fight often went up to the last race so this was pretty cool)

Lewis very aggressively forced Rosberg wide at Turn 1 to claim the lead, and then there was some sexy fighting between the Mercs and Redbull all race. Nico led in the closing stages but made a mistake, running deep into a corner and letting Lewis past with only a handful of laps to go.

Nico finished P2 and had not only lost the race but the championship title. Nico was fuming, saying Lewis’ move at the start was “one step too far”.

This is the infamous cap throw in the cool down room. Lewis throws Nico his P2 hat, Nico straight up yeets it back at him. I tear up just thinking about it. They grow up so fast.

2016

Nico had came so close to winning and I guess this was just, the last straw. All or nothing. This year he literally gave it everything he had. Lewis and him stopped speaking, Nico gave up literally the rest of his life and even stopped sleeping in the same bed as his wife and taking care of his kids, instead spending every moment trying to get into Lewis’ head. Honestly, I think he might be the only one that could beat Lewis. Just because he knew him *so well*. He literally threw away like 16 years of friendship. But also it’s like, he had to be world champion. He *had to*. His dad was champion and his whole life he’s been preparing to win it too. Tough luck that he raced in the same era as Mr. Best Driver The Sport Has Ever Seen.

Nico won the last few races of 2015, and the first four races of 2016. Lewis had a couple car problems and Nico had a good lead on him in the championship.

2016 Spanish Grand Prix

Gentlemen. A short view back to the past. Nico had made a switch error on the formation lap causing the car to go into the wrong engine mode. So he was running a lot slower than Lewis, who was fighting to claim back the lead.

Nico closed the door to keep him back, and Lewis lost control on the grass, and spins into Nico and taking them both out of the race in the first lap. This is probably one of the most iconic crashes. I’m pretty sure there’s a clip of this somewhere in black and white with the titanic music over the top.

Niki Lauda blamed this one on Lewis (I guess even a supportive dad has to be critical sometimes) "Lewis is too aggressive. It is stupid, we could've won this race".

2016 Austrian Grand Prix

Nico had been struggling with a brake issue all race but was still on the way to win it. But in the last lap Lewis had caught him up and gone in for the overtake.

Typical Nico not taking any shit, refusing to be the guy that backs out and they collide. Lewis took the win and a damaged Nico dropped to fourth. From first. In the last lap.

Both of them blamed each other and tired dad team boss Toto Wolff threatened team orders in future races.

The stewards blamed Nico for the incident, issuing him two penalty points for failing to allow "racing room" and causing a collision.

2016 Abu Dhabi

In the final laps of the race, Lewis ignored team-orders from his race engineer and the technical director.

He deliberately slowed and backed Nico into the pack hoping they overtake him, and there would be enough of a points difference to win the title.

Nico finished second and won the title by five points.

And then,,, Nico announced a surprise retirement during the FIA prize giving ceremony.

Lewis’ response:

"This is the first time he's won in 18 years, hence why it was not a surprise that he decided to stop.” (We stan a petty king)

“But he's also got a family to focus on and probably wants to have more children. Formula One takes up so much of your time."

“In terms of missing the rivalry, of course because we started karting when we were 13 and we would always talk about being champions. When I joined this team, Nico was there, which was something we spoke about when we were kids. So it's going to be very, very strange, and, for sure, it will be sad to not have him in the team next year."

And now they are kind of on speaking terms but not really, they are both pretty private but I think they are at the ‘awkward small talk when we run into each other at the supermarket’ stage of the break up.

[castroneves]

so i’m new to indycar but my brother just got us both tickets for pocono so what’s the tldr on the sport? who’s your favorites? also who’s the shitty drivers personality/beliefs wise to stay away from?

i know you said tl;dr but i literally can’t be brief in this context so i’m just gonna give you a short little profile of each driver (just the ones you’ll see racing at pocono) in order of the current championship standings (also i’ve realized i have a hard time explaining indycar to people who don’t already know formula one because i make a lot of comparisons so if you don’t watch formula one just ignore those parts i’m sorry):

1. josef newgarden: basically the personification of a golden retriever puppy. super high energy, gets along with everyone, and a super talented and FAIR driver (see: the newgarden move). he won the championship in 2017 and is currently leading this year’s championship by 16 points

2. alexander rossi: confirmed trump supporter, comes off as an arrogant asshole in interviews, but everyone loves him because of his talent. it’s so hard to hate him because he’s literally that good (here’s an example, and another example), i honestly think he could make max verstappen weep if they were on the same terms

3. simon pagenaud: quickly becoming my all time favorite driver (i love almost everyone on the grid but as i’ve now met simon twice i think he’s my top fave). he won the indy 500 this year and the championship in 2016. he’s very quirky and goofy, kind of like an older version of josef. team penske truly needs will power’s chilled out & relaxed persona to dilute the feral energy from josef & simon lmfao (here is a video that really captures his essence) 

4. scott dixon: the most successful driver on the current grid and one of the most successful in history. i don’t know much about him personally but he seems like a father figure to whoever his teammate is (felix this year) and he has a really cute family too

5. will power: the old, relaxed energy to mellow out team penske. he had a streak of success in the early 2010′s and kind of had a reputation as an arrogant asshole around that time but i think he’s gotten a lot better since then. he won the indy 500 for the first time last year, and the championship in 2014

6. ryan hunter-reay: nicknamed “captain america”, another dad figure on the grid, has a pretty decorated career. don’t know much else about him but he’s very highly respected on the grid, josef newgarden once said he is “just too polite” 

7. takuma sato: very sweet and level-headed, 42 years old and still going strong, has a really comforting presence on the grid. in races he’s generally in the midfield but is capable of surprises, like winning in alabama this year and very shockingly winning the 500 in 2017

8. graham rahal: son of indycar legend bobby rahal. he’s very honest, straightforward, WILL tell you the truth even if it hurts and i respect him for that. has a bit of a temper but always races fair and expects the best out of everyone. he also does a lot of fundraising and charity work for veterans which is coolio (i jokingly refer to him as my brother because his dad and my dad look VERY similar, it’s uncanny)

9. felix rosenqvist: rookie fresh off the boat from formula E. also don’t know much about him but he’s been very exciting to watch so far this year and just got his first podium this weekend at mid-ohio which was very well deserved (he did once say the n-word on instagram, many years ago, and he’s swedish so i don’t expect him to know the history, but... it happened)

10. james hinchcliffe: literally everyone’s fave, not one single person hates him. he’s the beaming ray of sunshine on the grid and gets along with everyone, very similar to josef. if josef is a golden retriever, james is a cuddly little labrador (here is a video of them together from a LONG time ago but nothing has changed)

11. sebastien bourdais: another old boy but a true legend. he won 4 consecutive championships in champ car (indycar’s predecessor... kind of... it’s a long story) and continues kicking ass today. he was in a really scary crash during qualifying at the indy 500 a few years ago and made an impressive comeback. 

12. spencer pigot: i honestly truly do not know anything about him, i didn’t even know he was a full time driver until right now, he just kinda fades into the background...

13. santino ferrucci: another confirmed trump supporter, was kicked out of formula 2 for deliberately making contact with his teammate, using his phone while driving his car, allegedly making racist remarks towards his teammate, etc. (you can read about it here). some people will say he’s had a really successful rookie season but honestly he just got lucky a few times and isn’t that good overall. he comes from money which explains a lot lmfao

14. colton herta: the BABY of the grid. he won his second ever indycar race at COTA this year, becoming the youngest race winner in indy history at 18 years old, one week before his 19th birthday. aside from his mega talent on track, he’s a respectable guy off track and is very mature for his age. if you watch F1 i’d compare him to a slightly more laid-back version of lando norris

15. marcus ericsson: if you’re coming from F1 then you already know him pretty well. he didn’t have much success in F1 but has found his niche in indycar, already scoring a podium in his rookie season. he’s chill and quiet but overall a nice young man

16. marco andretti: a third generation andretti, honestly has no real purpose on the grid aside from being the descendant of two racing icons (his grandfather is mario andretti, his dad is michael andretti), but uhhhh he’s been racing for about 15 years and only has two wins, so... take that as you will. you’ll almost always find him at the back of the grid these days

17. zach veach: by far the tiniest driver on the grid. i stood very close to him this weekend and he was shorter than me (i’m 5′1″) and i wouldn’t be surprised if he hasn’t broken 100 pounds. i don’t know much about him other than his very inspiring backstory (read here), and he has a strong religious background as well.

18. tony kanaan: a fucking FIXTURE on the indy grid. another old man but a legend. he has been racing in indycar for 17 years and did champ car for 5 years, so essentially he’s been at the top class of american single seaters for almost as long as i’ve been alive. he has one championship win (2004) and one indy 500 win (2013)

(skipped ed jones, not racing at pocono)

20. matheus leist: the first driver i ever met in person. he’s really nice and chill, but honestly not much to write home about on track. he’s solid and fairly consistent, but i wouldn’t bet money on him

(skipped jack harvey, max chilton, patricio o’ward: not racing at pocono) 

24. ed carpenter: nicknamed “the oval master” because... he’s really good on oval circuits. he races the ovals for his own team. that’s all i know tbh 

(skipped conor daly, sage karam, james davison, helio castroneves: not racing at pocono) 

29. charlie kimball: don’t know much about him other than that he’s diabetic, and there was a pretty interesting article about how he manages his blood sugar during races (read here). he also has a bit of reputation for being rude/dismissive to fans but i can’t confirm that, i’ve never met him

so that’s it for your grid. you can take that information however you want, they’re just my opinions, someone else might have the complete opposite. also i should add, i really don’t wanna scare you if this is your first race, but pocono is one of two races on the indy calendar that makes me so viscerally nervous i almost can’t watch it (the other is texas motor speedway). again, i don’t want to freak you out, but just so you’re prepared, you will probably see quite a bit of crashing during the race. the AMR/holmatro safety team is one of, if not THE best in all of motorsports, here’s a little (slightly dated) video you can watch about how they do what they do in the event of crashes (warning tho: there is graphic crash footage in that video). despite what some people may say (i’m looking at you, felipe massa), indycar is the hallmark of motorsport safety and most other series have followed them in terms of safety technology innovations over the last 20 years (e.g., indycar has been using safety cars since the 70s, mandated a pit speed limit in 1991, CART mandated HANS for all tracks in 2001, indycar has used safer barrier since 2002, etc.) so if you do see crashing, take a deep breath and remind yourself that they have the world’s best crew taking care of them instantly. if you have any other questions don’t hesitate to ask, & i know you’ll have tons of fun at the race hehe :^)