#i think he'd be good at it though. obv not a prodigy but ... with a mom like that him and jazz can't be out of shape

[astronnova]

thinking about the fact danny has a basketball goal over his bedroom door. thinking about that he has a basketball

i cant find a ss but i swear he also has a skateboard in there occasionally too. its so endearing to me that he likes basketball. i dont remember it ever being touched on properly, but here it is. his room is pretty inconsistent usually (windows appearing in random spots and shelves disappearing when they want to do a certain shot) so i cant remember how many times he actually see the little basketball goal but .... its there

[cherrari]

hello miss minah cherrari

I had a question about like pace, more specifically the markers in their first two years that a driver is going to be really good or is for sure going to improve a lot more

ok so basically I was talking to someone and we both agreed that piastri was a bit overrated, but then we were like why do we feel like that

my thought was mostly that well. I expected a lot more from him this year. with the machinery he had and the way people were talking him up I thought he'd be closer to his teammate than he was. obv we can attribute it to experience or whatnot but I feel like even in your second year that pace that everyone was shoving down my throat last year should have made more of an impact

he had his moments of brilliance like that monza overtake on norris (contentious in the mclaren fandom if my understanding is correct) and he was pretty solid in monaco quali and baku and I think could have snatched pole of those weren't charles circuits but I feel like his quali performance really didn't impress me all that much and considering the machinery he was way too anonymous in the third part of the season

he's definitely good like he's cool under pressure and maybe he'll have a sainz kind of run how he actually improved a lot over his ferrari stint for 22 to 24 but right now I don't feel like he can be put in the top two tiers of this gen of drivers

my ranking would probably go:

ver/lec

nor/rus

pia/sai

also another question, I've seen people say that spending three years in the williams made a huge positive impact and influence on russells driving but I don't feel like that's true? as in i don't think driving a midfield/backmarker for so long is better than being in a fast car and learning while trying to extract the most out of that?? like it's obviously not his fault he was stuck in the williams but I don't think that it was the advantage some people are saying it is?

if you have any thoughts pls share id love to have more information or other perspectives your input would be appreciated

oh also this is in no way shade towards either of these drivers im just generally wanting to know and I like your insights

i think you partially answered your own question in that drivers rarely make massive jumps in pace beyond their first couple of years. as i've said before, carlos probably has had the most improvement out of any top-level driver in the past decade, but this huge improvement still isn't enough to consistently match the best. i find it really difficult to believe oscar will be able to do something unprecedented that carlos couldn't, but i guess it's not impossible. i'm fine if i have to eat my words next season, but i don't think i will

oscar needs to have that level of pace be competitive though, because he has other strengths. granted, pace is the most important skill, but there will inevitably be situations like baku sometimes where being aggressive can put him in a position to win

he's a little unlucky in that his timing of joining f1 is in between what people view as generations; he's too old to be considered a child prodigy like kimi, but too young to be the beloved first driver like most of the people he's competing against. he's just like me actually...... (1998 baby not feeling connected to either millennials or zoomers)

if we're talking about pace i don't think there's much difference between max, charles, lando, and george. they're all rapid and in a world where they had cars all perfectly suited to them i'm not sure who would consistently be above the others, if any. however i obviously believe max and charles have more strengths and well-rounded skillsets compared to the other two, so in general i would agree with your list

except carlos is a much better driver than oscar is (ofc some of this is probably experience but i don't think oscar should be rated higher on the basis of his "potential")

also another question, I've seen people say that spending three years in the williams made a huge positive impact and influence on russells driving but I don't feel like that's true

almost all evidence we have says otherwise. lando himself said multiple times this year that being at the front of the grid is very different from the midfield, and using his words we can infer that this means experience in the midfield cannot compensate for experience at the front. max, charles, lewis, and other various drivers who had access to winning cars in their first <2 years have undoubtedly had smoother development than people like lando or george who spent multiple years bumming around in mediocre-to-trash cars

this is why i think it's a bit unfair to compare oscar's second season to lando's, because the mcl35 was not even 5% as consistent as the mcl38. charles is a much more relevant benchmark as they both had very good cars in their second years (that comparison will end next season though, because there is no way the mcl39 or whatever it's called will be as dogshit as the sf1000 was)

but if carlos could be a wdc in the right car (which i think he could be) then oscar probably can be too. it's just not likely as it stands