tongamgam

[fcaruana]

as someone from argentina, can you please share how things are in your country with franco now in f1? and like how fast things have changed and the hype he got, the difference between f2 and f1 etc? i'm so curious to know, i assume he'll head back home after the brazil gp since there's a bit of a break and argentina is right there. i'm picturing pure chaos

oh it's INSANE the amount of support he gained in two months. he already was pretty well-known in argentina after fans pushed a campaign to get him sponsors for f2 last year. he wasn't going to be able to jump from f3 to f2 until argentinian fans came through and started making noise. when franco came there was a hundred people outside his hotel. bizarrap's dad saw the campaign and the rest is history

but while thousands of argentinians followed his f2 races, the vast majority of them already were motorsport fans. now, in f1, EVERYONE is supporting him, even people who hadn't watched a single f1 race before. right before the f1 announcement franco had 552k followers on instagram. now he has 3.2 million !!!!!

i've overheard people talking about him at the supermarket and the doctor's waiting room ??!&# which is crazy. i haven't seen something like this for an argentinian athlete in a long while. he said he hates the messi comparisons but i can see this worship getting near that level in the future if all goes well

they're planning a banderazo for interlagos so watch out for hundreds of argentinians flags. it's gonna be insane