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dear-ao3 · 6 months ago

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good morning, good evening, and good day. welcome back. outs our second race of the triple header and we are in austria at red bull ring. its a sprint weekend. and everyones haters are in absolute shambles. shit is heating the hell up at the front of the grid. today is july 2, 2024 and lets get right on in

first of all. rude of them to throw a sprint smack in the middle of a triple header weekend. i already have enough things to write about. im going to try not to speed run it and do a proper update though cause oh god this weekend needs it. but regardless.

we start with everyones favorite poor little meow meow, logan sargeant.

now, i didnt include this bit on the last update. but logan aparently did say at the barcelona race that he was going to score points in barcelona next year. which is Intriguing. because as we know, hes not really performing.

admittedly yes hes been dealt a bad hand of cars this season (if you remember all the problems williams had at the beginning with the overheating and the steering wheel and then alex albon raced his car and then he was in alex's chassis that wasnt totally speced to him and then he had old parts and wasnt given the updates and kevin magnussen crashed into him and he finally, finally got the same parts but they didnt work As Well as alex's and yeah. bad time for him overall.) alex albon said in some interview, actually, that logan is actually doing a good job, which is nice to hear especially because the press have been absolutely destroying him. reguardless. we have some logan news.

first and foremost. there are rumors afoot that he is going to go to indycar next year. which is another racing series. specifically that hes going to race with prema in indycar. (i dont know a lot about indycar at all other than that its racing)

now. this all became all the more interesting when logan announced the launch of his own app at the beginning of the week.

now. few things to note here.

the app is called LS2 (two being his f1 number)

its in the williams colors

as someone pointed out on twitter (@ mo_vroom), the app is run by fan capital which is a subsidiary of williams/dorilton. meaning the company (not his brand) is tied to williams

this raises several questions.

first, if logan is moving to indycar he wouldn't be keeping his f1 number, so why did he center the whole branding around specifically LS2 if hes leaving f1? second, the app is in williams colors and is tied to a williams brand. austria is race 11/24. were nearly half done with the season. why go through all the trouble of creating an app for a driver that is centered around his f1 and team branding if hes in fact leaving f1 at the end of the season????

all good questions and unfortunately i have no answers for you. logan did say thought that he is exploring options in and outside of f1 at the moment though

but, we do have contract news.

pierre gasley has re signed with alpine on a multi year deal.

and to the surprise of no one, lance stroll has also re signed with aston martin.

so, there is now one more seat open at alpine for jack doohan and mick schumacher and maybe even carlos sainz to fight out. aparently flavio briatore (who we talked about last week) is interested in carlos. but carlos said during the press conference that the middle of a triple header is a bad time to make a contract decision, especially when it seems like he really doesnt know where hes going. aparently, netflix had a whole extra crew in the paddock on top of the drive to survive crew because they were told that there was going to be na announcement that carlos was going to williams. this obviously did not happen and many people were aparently confused. this is reportedly because flavio is at alpine now and he must have said Something to make carlos reconsider.

theres also rumors about the alpine engine supplier. they might break away from renault. pierre has stayed neutral on it.

the max to mercedes rumors are also back and they are back with an absolute vengeance, mostly because jos verstappen has been talking to the press again.

aparently, jos was going to drive an older red bull, the RB8 at the legends parade event thing in spielberg but he withdrew because according to him (jos) "i heard from several sources that christian horner did everything he could to not let me drive. then i thought: say it to my face. i find it very disappointing." in a separate interview he also said "im completely finished with horner, its like a kindergarten here."

jos then came out and told the press "there is so much going on, so i dont want to say too much about it."

the press then clarified "so a switch to mercedes is not out of the question?"

"correct" said jos.

max is terribly not impressed with all of this. "its not fun," he said. "not for myself, not for my father, not for Christian and not for the team. you dont want these things to happen."

christian also put in his two cents on the Mercedes rumors saying that "the driver who has created all the movement in the market (lewis) had all the information about the engines and 2026 regulations and chose to leave mercedes." meaning max would be insane to go there.

christian also said, "if toto wants to have a verstappen in the car next year, then jos might be available"

toto, unsurprisingly, also had things to say. "horner said that he will stay. lets see, he leave him with this idea...we'll see if the w15 will be a car that can convince max. i think its max who wins the races and not red bull. the rb20 is solid, but perez isn't doing well. its max who makes all the difference."

max though has squashed the rumors of him going to mercedes saying that "we're working on next years car and the thing is that when you are very focused on that, it means that you are driving for that team."

so it seems that max is staying at red bull, but tensions are still high. remember this later :)

kimi still seems likely for mercedes, though lots of people think thats insane because just cause max came into f1 young and succeeded doesnt mean that everyone will. i think ive talked about this tho

and then we also had helmut marko once again being insane and self contradicting in the press.

first, he said that liam lawson is going to sign with vcarb "soon" which we've heard several times now. aparently the shareholders have said that "this is a junior team and we have to act accordingly." marko also said that "The aim was for him [daniel] to be considered for Red Bull Racing with exceptional performances. This seat now belongs to sergio perez, so this plan is no longer valid. we will soon have to put a young driver there [at Racing Bulls]. That would be Liam Lawson.”

the bit about daniel is interesting because it sparked some speculation that daniel might night even be finishing the season at vcarb. will buxton said as much during the race weekend. this weekend was daniels 250th race start. but also, helmut is not to be trusted, as we know. and as evidenced by what he also said below

then he later came out and said that liam would join audi as daniel would be staying at vcarb until 2025. daniel has also said that he has no other options for 2025 other than vcarb

meanwhile, zhou has said that if there is not an open seat for him in 25, he is happy to become a reserve driver because “I think to be a reserve driver would be interesting if they can promise a seat is available for the coming seasons."

i think that that about does it for the contract talk.

so here are the open seats as they stand:

red bull: 0 ferrari: 0 mclaren: 0 mercedes: 1 aston: 0 alpine: 1 sauber: 1 williams: 1 vcarb: 1 haas: 2

moving on. the shenanigans of the week

the first two are actually from last week cause im decently sure i forgot about them. if not i apologize you had to read this twice.

so, last week:

the schumacher family was blackmailed by some criminals saying that they would release sensitive information if they did not pay the criminals 50 million euros . michael schumacher as you may or may not know was involved in a skiing accident in 2013 (14?) and is still alive but the family have chosen to keep any further information about his condition to themselves and out of the spotlight (which is respectable) and for the most part people have respected this, until now. the criminals were aparently caught and arrested.

and second some fans started a petition that leo leclerc (charles dog) is not receiving proper care from charles and his girlfriend alexandra. frankly, idk what the purpose of this was. i think people were concerned that he was only being used for pr reasons? aparently alexandra responded and was annoyed about the whole thing.

but back to this week

first up we have mark webber. who the hell is mark webber? he is an ex formula 1 driver, he was on the grid from 2002 - 2013 and raced for minardi, jaguar, williams (where he was nico rosberg's teammate and was the one to start calling him britney (98% sure) and red bull (where he was terrorized by young sebastian vettel winning his world championships). hes a self proclaimed "proud heterosexual," world endurance championship winner, and oscar pastry's manager.

so george russell posted this video on his instagram

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its of him, his girlfriend carmen and his trainer aleix working out. and low and behold, who commented on this but mark webber:

first, yes, that is his real account handle and yes, he did call carmen a bride. carmen and george have been dating for i think five years, but they are not engaged. so at first everyone was like. hello. mark webber? are you announcing george's engagement????

but no. turns out bride means girl/girlfriend or something along those lines in australian slang (im not australian and i cant find the actual definition anywhere so either correct me or just take my word for it) (actually update on this, i asked my tumblr following what the hell he meant and y'all said that bride just means bride in australian. so idk what the hell mark was talking about, what the hell sir)

this is not the first time mark webber has left cryptic comments on people's instagrams though. just earlier this month he left this one on jenson button's instagram:

whatever that means.

anyway, speaking of george (discussion of food and dieting and that stuff ahead if you dont want to read it skip to the next colored heading) i believe it was last race that george's race engineer told him that he had gotten heavier and george in response aparently made his diet a little more strict. drivers as you may or not know, have to stay at a certain weight in order to compete. george is tall, and taller drivers always suffer due to this because they are taller so naturally they weigh more. george was already on a stricter diet to begin with and hes already incredibly slim. this is also not the first time that stuff like this has happened at mercedes. in 2015/2016 nico rosberg did all kinds of crazy stuff in order to cut weight in order to beat lewis hamilton (cut the paint from his helmet, cut his socks, took bits off of his seat, stopped cycling to loose some muscle in his legs etc etc) though im decently sure he was the one to initiate that (?) and bottas also aparently faced similar things from the team itself when he was at merc and now george is as well. which is not great. at all. (all of the drivers have a trainer and then at least one additional person who does their nutrition and meals and stuff so they are still supervised in what theyre doing and get weighed pre and post race but still its not a great comment to make and it clearly had effects)

oscar piastri's mom nicole was back at it again on twitter

kevin magnussen and nico hulkenberg watched the euros together

mercedes posted more throwback pics of nico rosberg and toto talked about the time mercedes put their logo on the red bull bull at the red bull ring

logan and alex were menaces in the paddock with a ping pong ball

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someone from williams, fred vasseur and another person from williams (?) all raced to the track on either practice day or media day i think it was practice day and went too fast through a police speed trap and had to meet with police about it. james vowels talked about it in his usual unserious manner

and i cant find the source but aparently lewis called sebastian to ask him about his old race engineer, ricciardo, who lewis is aparently considering to make his race engineer when he moves to ferrari next year.

max was late to the press conference by quite a lot (15 minutes) and was aparently sprinting through the paddock to get there

logan was aparently called the "slowest driver" by an interviewer and said in response "thank you very much"

logans bad parking job from last week was also debunked. it was not logan who parked the car badly, it was alex and logan took the blame for it because david coulthard assumed that logan had done it.

and charles was talking about who he would form a band with in f1 (he said himself on the piano, lewis singing and lando on the guitar). when asked what the band should be called, carlos said "just an inchident"

alex albon continues to be insane on the team torque podcast, saying this week that if he had a tattoo it would be random like a duck making eggs or something. logan seemed concerned about him.

and lando is aparently still sick. he was kinda sick last week and it hasn't gotten better. he said that it is not hindering his ability to drive, he just doesnt feel great. i think he might ave actually said that it makes him drive better?

and with that. we're into sprint qualifying.

for the sake of the fact that the rest of this weekend is bonkers insane and i have a lot to cover, were going to keep the whole sprint brief. sorry. also not sorry.

so i didnt watch the practice session. sorry, i was at work. aparently max had a car problem, thought this theme isn't new cause he complains all weekend as of late and then pulls out a pole and a win.

this is also the shortest time length track on the calendar (meaning lap time not lap distance) which makes qualifying difficult due to traffic. despite this. everyone still wanted to step right on each others toes during qualifying.

and no one was more upset about this than ted kravitz, the pit lane commentator.

"the session starts! i'm all excited!" ted exclaimed over the radio. "ive geared myself up! im standing in my styrian wood bird watching hut at the end of the pit lane waiting to count them out. we've got a green light right in front of me. and then nothing! what am i gonna do? my julie andrews impression? give you a round of the hills they are alive with the sound of music? *singing* ah ah ah ah! anyway. well. nothing to do."

the cars did eventually come out.

mclaren had brought an upgrade to their front wing and suspension, which was unsual to do first in a triple header and second in a sprint, but they were confident. vcarb also had a "hodgepodge" of new and old parts on their car as they tried to sort out their upgrade problems from last week in spain.

two interesting things happened in q1. first, logan sargeant got out of q1 which is fantastic news and the second time hes done this during a sprint qualifying. alex albon, his teammate did not get out of q1. for the second time this season, logan out qualified alex.

second, yuki had an insane spin and then save right at the end of the session

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logan ended up out in q2 in p15. and both alpines got through to q3 yet again.

q3 was between both red bulls, mercs, ferraris, mclarens and alpines all battling for the top 10 spots. naturally the best way to go about this was to wait in the pit lane until the absolute last second to get out of the pit lane and hope that you have no problems and set one really flying very fast lap.

well at 3.5 minutes to go and still no cars out george russell said what everyone was saying: 'lets get cracking mate, everyones gonna send it out."

pretty immediately the mercs came out at the 3 minute mark, everyone else followed.

now. you have to do one whole lap (your our lap) before you can start your flying timed lap. as long as you finish your out lap before the end of the session, you can start your flying lap. ideal time for an out lap was one minute 30 seconds. and it was very tight for some people.

too tight for charles leclerc. heading out of the pits he had an engine problem and had to pull to the side, allowing checo and i believe the two alpines to go to the side as he tried to literally restart the car. he got it restarted but did not get to the line in time to start his flying lap. so he did not get to set a time and would start in 10th.

"what the hell happened guys?" charles asked over radio.

"we fixed (took?) the anti stall" the team said.

"uh, thank you but the anti stall kinda stopped the engine. the engine switched off, i dont know if you noticed. there was no engine. the ignition went to off. i had to redo the whole thing."

so charles was not pleased and it was seemingly yet another ferrari goof. it couldnt possibly get worse for them, could it? idk stay tuned.

the main thing we saw in qualifying though was that checo was pretty consistently half a second off of max's pace. which isn't fantastic. especially considering hes re signed a contract with them.

and so they lined up for the sprint the next day:

max on pole followed by lando and oscar. then george, carlos, lewis, checo, esteban, pierre, and charles rounded out the top ten. then we had kevin, lance, fernando, yuki, logan, daniel, nico, valtteri, zhou and alex started from the pit lane due to set up changes.

there was an aborted start at the beginning, meaning they did an extra formation lap and the race was reduced by one lap. this was due to photographers behind the barriers at turn 1 aparently.

right off the line the mclarens were fighting. well. sorta. not like fighting fighting like spain 2016 fighting, but definitely racing eachother. they kept swapping spots 2 and 3 back and forth and even were racing side by side at a few points.

this was fun to watch of course but as the announcers said "mclaren must hake sure they do not loose time fighting eachother" because they had to still get past max before he blew past everyone.

fortunately, max was only half a second ahead and the mclarens had drs.

lando managed to pass max on lap 5, but then max passed him back and while max was passing lando, oscar also managed to pass lando and take second. and oscar managed to stay within DRS range of max until lap 12.

and while that fight was happening, we also had a battle between the two alpines. they were not even fighting for points, they were down in 11 and 12 and going absolutely toe to toe. so much so that our friends the announcers said that "i hope we dont see any confetti made out of carbon fibre between these two." alas. we did not. yet.

back up at the front, oscar was being hard on his tires and lando was gaining on him. he wanted to make a lunge on him. but he already had two strikes for track limits and had to be careful so he didnt get a penalty. oscar stayed in the front and in the words of our friends the announcers "piastri seems to have found his mojo again."

back in the back, alex albon had somehow ended up in 18th and ahead of both sabers despite the fact that he had started in the pit lane. he had not managed to get ahead of logan though, who was in 17th.

and also, fernando alonso, who got shoved off the track by nico hulkenberg and ended in 16th, had not managed to find pace in the car once since he had resigned with the team. aston Martin was absolutely nowhere.

so the race ended. max, oscar, lando, george, carlos, lewis, charles, checo, kevin, lance, esteban, pierre, sui, nico, daniel, fernando, logan, alex, valtteri and zhou.

checo ended up finishing 18 seconds behind max. mclaren were five seconds behind max.

"that was spicy, but good," max said.

"a good race between us...can definitely give them a fight tomorrow" lando said

martin brundle also said to "give that boy a honey lemon drink or whatever" about lando when he got out of the car cause he looked a little more dead than usual

"will definitely take the points, its a good haul between us compared to the other teams." oscar said, ever the shade monster. he was of course talking about red bull, who only took 9 points between max and checo, whereas mclaren managed to take 13.

george also said in his own post interview that "norris and verstappen always get their elbows out. i'll sit back and watch."

i know were zooming but i promise you it will all be worth it. lets talk about real qualifying now. and again, we're speeding.

as we know, its a short track. i dont think if i said this already, but there are also a fuckton of gravel traps. meaning that if you go off the track you go into the gravel. this is to enforce track limits and also make things spicy.

there were also many many zooms on jos verstappen. hm.

q1 showed some disappointments. like when lewis put on a fresh set of soft tires and only managed to go 6th fastest when martin brundle rightfully pointed out that "on fresh tires lewis should be electric on this track....[this is] worrying on fresh tires."

another disappointment was checo down in 12th and just barely scraping through to q2, "on brand spanking new soft tires." again, worrying!!! especially with mclaren slowly closing on red bull in the championship.

and to no one's surprise, williams. they had changed around the set up of the car a little, but ultimately didnt have the pace because alex and logan were both out in q1.

"we did a good job with the car, we just dont have the pace," alex said.

"we know our limitation and this just isn't it, its such a shame man" logan said.

q2 also brought out more disappointments, like aston martin who managed to get both cars out in q2. "what is going on at satin martin?" martin wondered. "theyre the 8th fastest team, ahead of sauber and williams." yes. haas and alpine are both faster than aston.

and the french civil war continued because esteban got through to q3. pierre did not

and daniel missed out on q3 by .01 seconds

q3 started off pretty boring. but let's check in with the pit lane.

"ted! what had you got for us down in the pit lane?"

"I've got no cars."

eventually the cars did come out, and they didnt all wait until the last possible second this time.

continuing with our trend of disappointments, charles decided to take a trip into the grass for funzies. "i think i broke everything under the car," he said.

also oscar had his fastest lap time deleted for track limits. mclaren tried to appeal it because oscar didnt gain an advantage from it. but the appeal was rejected. had his lap not been deleted he would have started 3rd.

to no one's surprise, max was back on pole position. lando was four tenths behind him.

"been awhile since we've been on pole" max said jokingly in his interview. I think it's been 2 races since hes been on pole, lol.

"max is in a league of his own...ill take [second]" lando said in his post race interview. "i'll do a better job than i did this morning."

and george rounded out the top three. he was thrilled. "3 races in a row where we are in the top 3 with me and lewis," george said. though he didn't try to oversell the team, who still has a lot of ground to make up "our race will be behind us," he said. meaning that he would have work to do to keep people behind him.

and during all of this, yuki said a slur over the radio. it was r*****. the stewards took note of it and he recieved a 40,000 euro fine for it. however, upon it being explained to yuki what the word meant, he was apologetic and felt bad, saying that english is not his first language (its not, and hes also not fluent in english, he just speaks it, which is different. this is also not the first time that this has happened with yuki i think there was an instance when he called christian a motherfucker awhile ago cause he didnt know what it meant) and he offered to issue a public apology. this reduced his fine to 20,000 euros if he didnt do it again this season. this is not the first time that a driver has said a slur over the radio but i think that this was the first time they were held accountable for it.

so. the moment we've been waiting for. the race.

but first! a brief look into the recent past! it's relevant i swear!

lets look at the 2019 Austrian gp.

it was the final few laps of the race. charles leclerc was in his maiden year at ferrari and was hunting down his first race win, it seemed very possible,

it was lap 68. charles leclerc was leading the race and max verstappen attempted to pass him in turn 3. somehow charles was able to maintain the lead.

on lap 69 charles was not as lucky. he did not defend the inside line and max took advantage of that. he forced charles wide, almost shoving him off the track and they both banged wheels. fortunately there was no damage. unfortunately max was able to take the lead from charles and won the race. charles would not get his first f1 win until 4 races later in belgium.

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ultimately, max did not think that he had been at fault or done anything wrong at all in this incident. (remember, this was still in the years of mercedes dominance, max had no championship titles yet but was getting slowly closer and closer towards the top of the pack)

after the race max said:

-“It’s hard racing otherwise we have to stay home. If those things are not allowed in racing, what is the point of being in F1? "

-"I don’t think we should get a penalty for that. I never opened [the steering wheel] but the problem is that in that corner there is a crest, so when you then go a bit deeper at such a tight angle you just understeer because of that crest."

-"The car on the outside he has to wait a bit because we went quite deep. I never opened the steering wheel. I was in front. He just had to cut back on me but he tried to go around the outside which is not possible."

charles was not in agreement with any of this.

-“I’ll let the stewards decide but for me, it was pretty clear in the car. I don’t know how it looked like from the outside.”

-he was also asked if he thought what max did was fair and he said “I don’t know. I was on the outside, like the lap before, the lap before was completely fine, he left the space for a car width on the exit of the corner but he didn’t on the other lap so we touched and I had to go wide, and then obviously I didn’t have any chance to pass back so it’s a shame.”

the key thing here is leaving space. it comes up a lot. you are supposed to leave a cars width of space so that you dont force people off the track and/or they have room to pass.

max did not get a penalty.

this is also what caused charles and later max to unfollow eachother on instagram. they have not followed eachother back.

so with that in mind. lets also take a brief look at the 2021 abu dhabi gp.

this race was insane for many reasons, not all of which i will get into. but what you need to know is that it was the last race of the season and the title fight between max and lewis came down to this last race. lewis was fighting for a record breaking 8th world champion title. and max was fighting for his first. heading into the weekend they both had exactly 369.5 points.

and boy, was it an insane race.

max was on pole position, lewis started p2.

lewis immediately took the lead from max, but max attempted to regain the lead in turns 6 and 7. he braked late into the chicane and under the braking moved from the inside of the track to the outside of the track to overtake lewis. lewis got forced off slightly and said as much over the radio. he came back on track further in front of max than he had been before. red bull argued that lewis needed to give the position to max, saying that lewis left the track and gained an advantage. this did not happen as the stewards ruled there was no further action necessary. hamilton pushed ahead, still in p1, to extend his lead. max did not get a penalty.

max pitted on lap 13 and lewis pitted on lap 14. checo perez had pitted a few laps before and was out in front when lewis and max rejoined the circuit, with max still a considerable distance behind lewis. checo was told to hold up lewis as much as possible to give max time to catch up. by lap 20 max was only 1.3 seconds behind lewis (instead of the 11 that he had started at), though max was still unable to pass and lewis extended his lead again.

there were a series of crashes and retirements a few laps later, kimi raikkonen crashed into the barriers, george russell retired due to gear box issues and and antonio giovinazzi also retired due to gearbox issues. that caused a virtual safety car. red bull brought max in for fresh tires and did not lose track position. lewis was not brought in for fresh tires. the gap between max and lewis reduced from 17 seconds to 11 seconds.

then the chaos ensued.

a safety car came out on lap 53 due to nicholas latifi's crash. hamilton stayed out. max pitted for soft tires. checo retired under the safety car.

there were notably, five lapped cars (lando norris, fernando alonso, esteban ocon, charles leclerc and sebastian vettel) between lewis in first and max in second. there were other lapped cars further back in the pack. sometimes when this happens during a safety car, the lapped cars are allowed to overtake the safety car and go back to the back of the line to resume their order. they were initially told not to do this. then, the stewards said that only the five lapped cars between hamilton and verstappen could overtake the safety car. the rest of the cars had to stay lapped.

the safety car came in just as vettel unlapped himself for the final lap of the race.

this is where we get the very angry toto throwing his headphones picture from.

on the final lap of the race, max passed lewis at turn 5. lewis tried to overtake him again but ultimately failed.

max won his first championship title. lewis came second.

there are a lot of back and forth radios in this race between toto, lewis, max, christian and race control. both teams were literally trying to do everything to get their driver through to the lead, especially towards the end.

toto was understandably pissed about the lapped car call (if that had not happened lewis would have won) and tried to get race control to reinstate the order that was originally behind the safety car. in response, toto was told by race director michael masi (who called for the safety car unlapping) "toto, its called a motor race, ok? we went car racing."

there were a lot of protests from mercedes about the safety car procedure (all of the lapped cars should have been able to unlap or none of the cars should have unlapped is what they called for, basically because thats what's in the rules) and all of that which is interesting but unfortunately not relevant for what we are talking about. if you want to read about then, they are here. ultimately, mercedes was not successful in getting the result of the race turned over. many if not all of the drivers were in support of hamilton and thought that the safety car decision was ridiculous. michael masi ended up being forced to step down as race director and several changes were made to the rules because of this race. but ultimately, nothing was overturned and max won. this was the end of the mercedes era of dominance as the next year was the introduction of the cost cap and their car was absolutely shit.

now. with all of that said. lets get into the 2024 austrian gp

as im sure you might have already speculated. it was really something.

but it did not start out that way.

(as a very irrelevant aside i want you all to know that i am waiting to board a train right now and it is massively fucking delayed because of course it is so ive whipped out my laptop and my handwritten notes and hunkered down in the train station to bang this thing out. a bitch (me) is committed)

so. Importantly. this race can be won or lost in the pit lane. it's a 20-21 second pit normally, and drops to 10 with a safety car. remember this. its a surprise tool we will need later.

so right out of the gate in lap one charles and oscar had contact, causing charles to loose most of his front wing. charles had to pit and it was a stupidly long time he spent in the pit box (12.8 seconds). logan sargeant also pitted for some reason, i never figured out quite why. but charles came out in 18th and logan came out in 20th. upsetting on all accounts. this absolutely fucked charles's race as he was almost 40 seconds off the lead before lap 10

while that was happening, the mercs were fighting. well. sorta. george was running in 3rd and lewis was running in 4th. on lap 3 lewis passed george but then george passed him back. lewis complained over the radio that george was holding him up. they did not swap drivers.

then we had lando, pretty immediately, get fastest lap. he was 2 seconds behind max and hungry for redemption after the sprint race.

alex albon managed to pass charles leclerc. yes. alex albon in a williams, the second slowest car on the grid, managed to pass charles leclerc in a ferrari. it would appear the monaco curse is getting revenge on the fact that it didnt strike in monaco. martin brundle was beside himself. "this is not representative of the ferrari," he said.

anyway. we had both of the haas drivers pit on lap 11 to get out of a drs train that had been forming (remember its a short track, sometimes you have to pit to get out of traffic). immediately after exiting the pit lane, kevin started fighting with nico, who was right in front of him. they managed to pass eachtohter 2x in a lap. kevin was pretty instantly told to save his tires over the radio. he retaliated asking if nico had also been asked to save his tires or if it was just him. he was told that both of them were told this. "fuck that" kevin said.

by lap 17 max was in lapping distance of charles. charles came in to pit. this was his second pit stop already.

fernando shoved zhou off the track on lap 21, shoving his front wheel into zhou's back wheel. he later got a 10 second penalty for this. "what the fuck is he doing there?" zhou asked over radio. albon and ocon managed to get past zhou for 13th and 14th position.

lewis pitted on lap 22. he was right in front of oscar who snitched on him on radio. "i think hamilton crossed the white line on entry," oscar said. and he was right. lewis got a 5 second penalty for this.

carlos and george pitted on lap 23. lando and max pitted on lap 24. leaving oscar in the lead, but he still needed to pit.

lando argued over the radio that max nearly drove into him in the pit lane. "he launched right into me....i couldnt turn into the box." the stewards ruled that this needed no further investigation.

oscar pitted on lap 26.

so by lap 27 after everyone had done at lest one pit we had this order:

max, lando, george, carlos, lewis, oscar, nico, checo, kevin, daniel, fernando, alex, pierre, zhou, yuki, lance, valtteri, charles and logan

toto decided that this would be a good time to come on the radio.

"lewis theres everything to play here, everything to play."

whatever that meant.

ferrari were very delusional optimistic. and by that i meant that they told charles over the radio that all was not lost and he would get into the fight for points eventually. he was still in 18th. and he made another pit stop (his third!) on lap 34.

"he's not going to get into the points like this!" martin said, making fun of ferrari

"he's on plan z martin said," also making fun of ferrari

while charles was getting his hopes and dreams crushed for the millionth time, we also had the french civil war heating up once again.

there was a proper drs train forming from 10th to 13th spot. we had daniel, fernando, esteban and pierre all running very close to eachother. pierre, at the back of the train, was not pleased with estebans driving.

"he's gotta pass fernando faster, we're loosing time now," pierre said on lap 34.

perhaps this was relayed to esteban, perhaps it was not. either way, both of the alpines managed to pass fernando on lap 36. it was a clumsy pass because pierre, as he was going around fernando was also trying to get past esteban.

in any case. fernando was impressed. or perhaps feeling sarcastic.

"wow!" he said, over the radio.

pierre was less than impressed. "what the fuck what was that? why did he just run me off the track?" pierre said about esteban

fernando then pitted and served his time penalty.

and in the middle of all that, checo got a 5 second penalty for speeding in the pit lane.

by lap 40 max was complaining about the tires. "i dont know what's happening but the tires are suddenly very bad" he said. this would continue for awhile, but remember its a short track. so unless he wanted to come out in the middle of a ton of traffic and lapped cars, he was going to have to deal with his shitty tires.

a few more people had pitted, putting esteban into 8th and pierre into 9th. on lap 41, pierre finally managed to get past esteban in some very very classic, french on french violence.

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"a little bit unnecessary," martin said. "but great fun for us."

"what's bruno going to do?" ted said, still being insane. (bruno is the alpine team principal. "sack ocon again?"

pierre was entirely unbothered

alex albon was under investigation for....something. not sure what cause i forgot to write it down. but he got a 5 second penalty for whatever it was! probably crossing the white line or pit lane speeding,

meanwhile, max verstappen was wondering very loudly why he had not pitted yet on lap 45.

"i cant hold this for much longer, mate, behind" max said on lap 48. he was referring to the two lapped haas cars behind him, which were 8th and 9th.

in the meantime, other people had already started to come into the pits, including pierre, george and carlos. george took the fastest lap on lap 49, really getting some good use out of his new tires.

"tires are shit man," max said on lap 51. and maybe they were tired of hearing him complain because they brought him into the pits.

lando, who was still in second in case you forgot, also pitted.

remember when i said that the race would be won or lost in the pit lane?

max had a lead on lando of i think about 7-8 seconds at this point.

max had a slow stop. one of his rear tires got stuck coming off. he was in the pit box for 6.5 seconds.

lando was in the box for 2.9 seconds.

"ooooooooooh my god," max said as he pulled back onto the track. the gap between him and lando was now under 2 seconds. and there were no lapped cars between them.

around the world, everyone sat up a little straighter. shit was about to get far more interesting.

so it was lap 53. and here was our order.

max, lando, lewis, george, carlos, oscar, nico, kevin, daniel, checo, pierre, esteban, alex, lance, yuki, fernando, valtteri, charles, zhou and logan

lando took the fastest lap on lap 54.

lewis pitted and served his 5 second penalty.

lando had DRS on max. he was .7 behind and lets remember that there are not one not two but three DRS zones on the track. it was time to go racing.

and racing they went. at points they were driving through the traffic of the lapped cars, but they were still going for it.

max was beside himself on the radio. aparently his car was acting up. "its like theres something wrong with the car man," he said.

15 laps to go.

max and lando were still battling.

you might be asking, where the hell is checo in all of this??? why is he not trying to help max??? well that would be because he was stuck further down the order, battling with kevin magnussen in a haas. yes he was battling a HAAS.

max's race engineer tried to give him suggestions for engine modes and gears. max said no.

lando was .4 behind on lap 58.

on lap 59 lando was given a black and white flag for track limits. meaning that if he went off the track one more time he would get a penalty. a 5 second penalty. lando's best option was to get around max now and hope he could build a 5 second gap so that he could still maintain his lead.

on lap 60 lando managed to pass max, but he went off the track so max went back through to the front. this could have been landos final track limits strike. he could get a 5 second penalty now. and he likely would.

lando was .5 behind. he was noted for track limits. he was on track to get that 5 second penalty.

10 laps to go.

lando was running out of time to pass max.

he tried to pass him on lap 63. max went off the track trying to hold the position.

lando thought that that meant he should get the position because max had left the track and gained an advantage. max was not of the same mindset. "he forced me off again!" max said. "thats not how we overtake!"

is anyone else starting to smell abu dhabi 2021? no? well maybe you will in a second because on lap 64 max and lando had contact. max didnt leave a car length of space and moved while braking, sliding to the outside of the track. lando got shoved off and both cars ended up with a puncture.

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are we smelling abu dhabi 2021 now??? what about austria 2019???

people were insanely divided over this. who was at fault? was it max? he moved under the braking which is against the rules! was it lando? why did he go for that line and not take some curb? did max even see him? was it just a racing incident?

in the post race show, jolyon palmer had some interesting insight into the incident.

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he is right. the no moving under braking rule was created For Max because max was consistently doing it. and since hes been consistently 20 seconds ahead of everyone its been awhile since we've had to see him drive this defensively.

in any case. max ended up doing a slow lap on basically 3 tires, came into the pits for fresh tires, got a 10 seconds penalty and came back out in 5th. lando also made it back to the pits but ended up retiring because he would have lost too much time.

we had some insane quotes from the both of them after this.

first, max was told over the radio that he had been given a 10 second penalty for the incident. he was not impressed with this.

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after the race, max said many things. including but not limited to:

-"its stuff you dont want to see happening. its as simple as that."

-"yeah, of course we'll talk about it. at the moment i think its not the right point, its better to just let things cool off ideally."

-("you could have let him by. you are leading the championship") "i could also stay hoe. im here to win. not finish p2."

max also though, did not put the blame on lando at all.

christian horner though, did. "lando was due to get a penalty and it felt like he was over ambitious" he also thought the 10 second penalty was harsh for max.

the post race show also speculated why red bull didnt tell max to cool it with lando on the track because lando was set to get a 5 second penalty anyway and wouldn't have been much of a concern.

later, max got 2 penalty points on his super license for the incident.

there was also talk from will buxton about how "what does it say about f1 if max is resorting to gray areas to keep the lead?" however, as jolyon pointed out, max still qualified 4 tenths ahead, won the sprint and had pole in the sprint and the race.

lando also said things after the race that included but were not limited to:

-"i gave a fair, respectful, on the edge battle, but thats not what i got in return"

-"if he says he did nothing wrong then ill loose a lot of respect for that. if he admits to being a bit stupid and running into me and being a bit reckless...then ill have a small amount of respect for him"

-"he was doing things youre not allowed to do and not getting penalized. i expected a though battle against max. i expect aggression and track limits and that kind of thing, but all three times hes doing stuff which can easily cause an incident. it seemed a bit desperate from his side."

hilariously. most this was all said while they were standing within like 3 feet of eachother doing their own interviews.

and, even more hilariously, toto said later on to sky sports germany that lando was going to be flying in max's jet with him after the race.

so, you might be wondering, if lando and max crashed into eachother, who the hell won the race?

well, someone was running in third. and that someone was george russell.

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toto said that while george was under a heavy braking zone, at over 300kph and later george said he almost crashed hearing toto's voice come through his radio.

so on lap 68, here was our new order:

george, oscar, carlos, lewis, max, nico, checo, kevin, daniel, pierre, charles, esteban, lance, yuki, alex, valtteri, zhou, fernando, logan

gorge was also a very safe 3.1 seconds ahead of oscar.

and he won! george russell won the austrian gp! the last time that mercedes had won a race was in 2022 in brazil, which was George's maiden win! (lewis, btw, has not won since 2021)

"it's fallen into his hands, but he made sure he was ready to scoop it up!" martin brundle said.

his post race radio was a tad insane:

"YES! YABADABADO!" he shouted. "its not over till its over!"

and of course the intro pose returned

the cool down room was as chaotic as you might think it was.

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and george, the insane bastard practically manifested this win himself. "i knew lando was pretty fired up after yesterday," he said. "and you have to be there to pick up the pieces."

oscar was also pleased with his podium, as was carlos. they also accidentally told oscar that silverstone was his home race which he quickly denied. this is hilarious because he has made nearly every race his home race, but somehow draws the line at being british.

haas also, very surprisingly, managed to equal their best ever f1 finish, p6 and p8. and in the post race show they were talking about how insane it was how well the two of them, nico and kevin, are working together and how exactly opposite it is to pierre and esteban.

and there was a general consensus that checo was being absolutely no help to max all weekend. he battled a haas pretty much the whole race and ended in 7th.

max, by comparison, did a slow lap on three tires, had a crash, had a 10 second penalty and a slow pit stop, and still managed to finish 17 seconds ahead of him. checo has scored 8 points in the last 3 races. max has scored 81.

does he deserve the contract he got? could we still see a swap? is daniel going to get his shot or is he going to leave vcarb? whos to say.

in any case. we've now had 5 different race winners from 4 different teams only 11 rounds in. the gap between p1 and p2 every race is closing from upwards of 20 seconds to under 5 seconds. and charles is back having the worst luck known to mankind.

we've got ourselves a proper championship fight that is only going to heat up next week in silverstone.

goodbye and good riddance, stay groovy, and ill see you all next week o7

Sorry i tried to scroll past but, i know nothing about f1 other than max verstappen is fast, my dad doesnt like lewis hamilton, fast car goes in a loop and sometimes expodes. Could you give me a crash course in f1 drama? Im very intrigued. Whats the tea as it were?

a terribly loaded question, but i will do my best. i’ve talked about some of the drama before like the red bull second seat and the chronicles of haas but allow me to briefly try my hand at explaining the nightmare that is the upcoming silly season

under the cut we go

silly season is when the drivers go through contract renewals, extensions and switches. usually it’s confined to the first half of the season (march-july) but it has been known to extend all the way to the last race of the season and they like to switch people around at random sometimes. driver contracts are complex, there’s a lot of money involved and basically You Are The Face Of The Team so if you have a shit season then you make the team look bad. but at the same time you could have a shit season because you have a shit car. it’s sticky stuff.

so. there are only twenty seats in formula 1. 10 teams. each team gets two drivers. (there’s also reserve drivers but we’re not going to get into that). who ends up with a contract is largely up to the teams, they can pull the contract out from under people they can also cut you mid season. they’ve done it before.

of the 20 drivers on the grid, 14 of them have contracts expiring at the end of the year. yes. 14. you see how this could get complicated.

so let’s meet the teams.

red bull racing. they came first this year (and last year) in the championship. like aggressively first. like they won the championship by over 350 points. they are definitely the team to beat. but if you end up with a seat at red bull, you do have to deal with max verstappen being your teammate and he won all but three of the races last year. he’s the golden boy. red bull are also notoriously silly when it comes to contracts and famously swap people mid season who aren’t performing.

mercedes. merc is home to 7 time world champion lewis hamilton and they have won the championship a great many times, though not since 2021. they are kind of in their flop arc and their car the last 2 years has been pretty garbage, but they have still made it work because they were able to come in second last year.

ferrari. god help the poor little meow meows with a ferrari contract. ferrari is a notoriously great team and they’re trying to get back to the top again but their strategy every single time has fallen short. to the point where their drivers are the ones doing the strategy in their cars while driving. they came in third last year and have been decently consistent at getting first in qualifying and then getting beat by max verstappen on race day.

mclaren. they’ve definitely worked their way up over recent years. they ended fourth last year and have had some championship wins before but not nearly as many as say merc and ferrari. their team ceo (owner? director?) is a little interesting and their car started out a pile of flaming hot garbage at the beginning of the year but they did manage to get their shit together.

aston martin. they are owned by canadian billionaire lawrence stroll, father of lance stroll (one of the drivers for the team). they’ve undergone several name changes over the recent years (force india, racing point, etc). they positively slayed at the start of the season and then one day they sucked. they finished fifth in the championship.

alpine. the frenchest french team. they’re (i think?) still partially owned by the french government. both of their drivers are french. (their drivers also hate eachother but we’ll get to that. just know they’re in the middle of a modern french civil war). they had the opportunity to have a good rookie driver (oscar piastri) this past year but in a thrilling twitter battle, he publically flamed the shit out of them and went to mclaren instead (and slayed). they're usually solidly middle of the pack. they ended sixth in the championship.

williams. williams has been one of the back of the grid teams for the last many years but they have finally started to get their shit together and don’t quite suck as much as they used to. all of the points this year were scored by only one driver though (except one but we’ll get there). they came in seventh.

alpha tauri. they are the sister team of red bull. so technically redbull owns both teams (meaning they can swap drivers between teams. they like doing this.) they’ve just kind of been There for awhile but they did slay towards the end of the season when one of their drivers led the race for several laps. basically tho, this team is the gateway to redbull. they came in eighth.

alpha romeo. recently renamed to stake f1 team (but sometimes they are going to be called kick sauber. this is a whole other drama post and i’m not getting into it). they’re also just kind of there. generally unproblematic. seems that really great drivers who get ixed out of a contract for a younger driver end up here or young drivers who are in their early years are here before they go to a better team. they ended ninth this year.

haas. oh haas. goofy team. they suck. point blank they suck. they keep loosing sponsors because they suck, they don’t win ever (one time they came first in qualifying last year). they cursed themselves in australia in 2018 by not tightening their tires and its been downhill ever since. they came 10th. their team principle got let go (fired?) who’s to say today.

so those are the teams. it is important to note that:

-there is a cost cap. each team is allowed to spend no more than 135m per year.

-not all cars are equal. some things are standard. they all undergo the same testing. but the cars are all very different. so you can be a good driver but stuck in a shitty car. which makes it impressive if you are doing well in a shitty car.

let’s meet our drivers!!!

starting with the guys who’s contract is not ending in 2024:

max verstappen. 3 time world champion. 26 years old. general beast on the track. he dominated the whole season. he’s currently racing for red bull and has a contract with them through 2028.

lewis hamilton. 7 time world champion. 39 years old. he drives for mercedes. he will not leave mercedes until he retires. he really really wants to win an 8th world championship and is willing to stick it out a few more years as long as merc still believes in him. his contract expires in 2025.

george russell. the other merc driver. 26 years old. hes aggressively british and says thinks like blimey unironically. walking meme. got his merc seat in 2022 right when they entered their flop arc by getting his tractor of a williams to finish second in qualifying in the middle of a rainstorm. his contract expires in 2025.

lando norris. mclaren driver. 24 years old. he has notably never won a race in his five years of formula one (mostly because right when his car finally was good enough max verstappen was 20 seconds ahead of anyone) but he is regarded as Very Good. he has only ever driven for mclaren. and even though there is another year left on his contract there is mass speculation that he will not renew his contract with mclaren after it expires and he may move up to one of the top teams (red bull, merc, ferrari) (tho i think he doesnt hate himself quite enough to go to ferrari). his contract expires in 2025.

oscar piastri. the other mclaren driver. 22 years old. this was his rookie season and he positively slayed. like people compared his rookie season to lewis hamiltons rookie season. he also had the positively funniest start to his rookie year because alpine announced that he would be driving for them (he had been their reserve driver and in the alpine academy) and he posted a tweet that basically said yeah thats false i never singed anything with you and im going to race with mclaren instead (he dodged a bullet) and then alpine tried and failed to sue him for $4m USD. he signed a contract extension with mclaren this year and his contract expires in 2026.

lance stroll. aston martin driver and son of the aston martin owner. hes doing ok, tho there was conspiracy that he wanted to quit and have a tennis career awhile ago. but basically since his dad owns the team it seems that hes guaranteed a seat for as long as he wants one.

so now. moving onto the good shit. the people who have contracts expiring in 2024. hold onto your hats people.

charles leclerc. (everyones favorite slutty little soup can). 26 years old. he is currently at ferrari and he has been since 2019. notably, he was given the longest contract in the history of ferrari after a stellar rookie season at sauber (renamed to alpha romeo, renamed to stake f1) where he got the tractor of a car consistently into the points. having the longest contract in the history of ferrari was a flex at the time, but now its likely how he will introduce himself at therapy sessions. ferrari have fucked this man left right and center up the ass with a plastic lunchroom spork. hes talented, he can drive, and he can drive well. but the strategy that ferrari has absolutely sucks. either something is wrong with the car (see him blowing out his gear box on the formation lap in monaco, his car completely crapping out and spinning into the barrier in brazil before the race even started) or they fuck up his pit stops or put him on the wrong tires and honestly its just frustrating. but will he leave??? likely not. you'd have to pry ferrari out of his cold dead hands and at this rate that might be where this is headed though there has been some minor speculation of him going to another team like merc or red bull, but merc doesnt have any open seats and red bull is a whole other dumpster fire of drama. ferrari are going to have to pay him a boatload of money to make him stay.

carlos sainz. the smooth operator. 29 years old. ferrari driver. previously carlos was at toro rosso (renamed to alpha tauri), renault (renamed to alpine), and mclaren before signing with ferrari. he has been at ferrari since 2021 and has voiced that he would like to stay with them for however long he can. there is speculation that lando might replace him at ferrari (but landos contract is not up until 2025) and there is also some speculation that alex albon might replace him. while charles is clearly the golden boy at ferrari, carlos is slightly slower but also definitely consistent. he was THE ONLY non red bull driver to win a race this past year, in Singapore after max verstappedn was knocked out of qualifying by alpha tauri reserve driver liam lawson (more on him later) and because he basically came up with his own strategy in the car while he was driving.

sergio perez. aka checo. red bull driver. 33 years old. and oh boy here's where we open the can of worms. checo was previously at racing point (renamed aston martin) and it was very near the end of the 2020 (?) season and he was out of a contract. he had a bonkers race where he was knocked to the back of the grid and then overtook everyone and somehow ended up winning (there is more to that story but just trust me) and christian horner, red bull team principle, mr ginger spice and definite disney villain called him and said congrats sir you have a seat at red bull! well. fast forward. hes been causing problems. problems as in crashing a lot, generally not doing great and pissing the crap out of red bull. it is basically guaranteed at this point that he will not be getting a contract extension. there was actually talk this year of him losing his seat mid season to one of the alpha tauri drivers, because remember, red bull owns both teams and they can switch them whenever they want to (and they have!) but ultimately this did not happen. even though checo has a seat at red bull until the end of 2024, its mass speculated that he is going to get switched with an alpha tauri driver, probably daniel ricciardo (more on him shortly) mid season because there is a speculated clause in daniels contract that says that if checo isn't performing well in the first few races daniel is getting his seat.

daniel ricciardo. 34 years old. alpha tauri driver. man oh man what a guy. outside of being the prankster of the paddock, he has one of the most batshit careers of anyone currently on the grid. he started out at red bull and was showing real talent and skill and was on track to win things (and was!) and was there until the end of 2018 when max verstappen (his teammate) started getting preferential treatment and also red bull started having a lot of problems with their engines (which were being outsourced from Renault (now alpine) and another team on the grid) and well very very long story short he made the surprise move of the century and decided to sign with Renault (which makes no sense they're the one with the engine problems) and was there for 2 years before moving again to mclaren where he was reportedly not treated very well and had a hard time driving the car so they mutually ended his contract with them early and he basically retired at the end of the 2022 season and became a red bull reserve driver. then halfway through the 2023 season alpha tauri ixed one of their drivers, nyck de vries, because he wasnt doing well and promoted daniel back up to a full time driver at alpha tauri (which we know is only a step down from red bull) but then he broke his hand in a crash in zanvort (?) and then he was replaced for a few races by formula 2 driver liam lawson (who we will also talk about) and then he came back to finish out the season in alpha tauri after he was cleared. daniel has admitted openly that he never should have left red bull and he was given bad advice to do so. hes towards the end of his career at this point and its well known that he Really Really wants to finish out his career at red bull again. he and max have already been teammates before and they do work well together and daniel is great driver (see his comeback in texas (or maybe it was brazil?) this year). so. Pretty Sure that daniels going to get either an extension at alpha tauri or go up to red bull. thats what we all want. get this man in a red bull we need him there biblically.

liam lawson. now technically liam is not actually a formula 1 driver. hes a formula 2 driver, but he was daniels replacement for five races and there has been some speculation and some confirmed news about him so hes getting included. when he was racing for f1 he was at alpha tauri. hes 21 and looks like he belongs in the movie grease. no one was expecting him to slay in formula 1 and he positively knocked everyones socks off. the scene: Singapore. which, if you'll recall, is the one race that a not red bull driver won. this was largely because liam lawson slayed the absolute game in qualifying. the qualifying part of racing determines what order the cars start in on the grid for the race and theres three parts, the first two parts the bottom 5 drivers each time get knocked out and then the top 10 complete for the last 10 spots. liam lawson knocked BOTH max verstappen and checo perez out of qualifying in the second round by going very slightly faster than them, effectively fucking up red bulls race and allowing carlos to win. and he also scored points in that race, which no one was expecting. now thats all fine and dandy, but here's the speculation: hemlut marko (im pretty sure) (who is somehow decently involved in the decision making at red bull though i couldn't tell you how) said that he thinks that liam lawson will be in an f1 seat no later than 2025. meaning that he will probably get offered a contract this year. and hes already raced for alpha tauri. red bull have sunk a good amount of money into him. they clearly want him. so if he gets offered an alpha tauri seat in 2025, that means theres a good chance danny rics is going to red bull. do you SEE how the plot here is THICKENED

yuki tsunoda. age 23. currently at alpha tauri. and fun fact, the only alpha tauri driver to race there the whole year. he had three separate team mates. he is slaying and hes often slept on. he has a bit of a temper and likes to shout on the radio and also hates working out (they had to force him to move to italy or something to work out, long story) but hes been kinda killing it. he led several laps in the abu dhabi race this year and hes decently consistent. people think theres possibility that he could get moved up to red bull on account of the fact that he is younger than daniel and clearly has more years in him,, but there is also possibility that he might not because red bull like to make stupid decisions. and if he doesnt get moved up to rebel, will he stay with alpha tauri? we don't know.

alex albon. age 27. currently a williams driver. alex albon is another one with a batshit career. he started out his rookie year in 2019 at alpha tauri then got moved up to red bull halfway through the year when red bull decided that pierre gasley wasnt doing a good enough job (more on him later) and stayed with red bull for a solid year and a half until he lost his seat in 2021 to checo. he has been with williams for the last two years and is basically carrying the team. like. williams as a team scored 28 points this year. and alex albon scored 27 of those 28 points. and as we know, williams is still kind of in their shit arc (though they are doing much better. they didnt score any points for a solid 2 (?) years. so this is an improvement.) and if you can get a shit car to perform you catch the eye of bigger teams. now, alex has already been a red bull driver. and he was on the cusp of podiuming two separate times when lewis hamilton ran into him. this (among a few other things) basically killed his chances at getting resigned at red bull because he wasnt ""performing"" and red bull are bitches who love to win. but some people think that red bull should give him another shot. like daniel, hes already been max's teammate and he can definitely drive. but theres also talk he might go to ferrari because ferrari think that he might compliment charles's driving style (or something). but going to ferrari at this point is kind of suicide. so.

logan sergeant. age 23. the only american on the grid. the other williams driver. he just finished his rookie year. he scored a grand total of one single point this season, in texas, and it was because charles leclerc and lewis hamilton both got disqualified because the floor of their car had more wear (by literally less than millimeters) than it was allowed to, bumping him up from 12th to 10th. he has never done better than alex albon. he was also the very last driver to get a contract for 2024, with williams waiting until i think december of 2023 to announce his contract extension. clearly, hes on thin ice. but people have also said that he needs time to get used to formula 1 (other people have pointed out that oscar piastri slayed his rookie season this year and this statement about needing time is largely false). where logan ends up next year though will largely depend on how well the 2024 season goes for him.

fernando alonso. 42 years old. many people like to point out that oscar piastri is actually younger than fernando's racing career. he won tiktok creator of the year (somehow) and is also a 2 time world champion. he retired a few years ago, just to show back up again and slay. during the first half of the season when aston martin had a zoom zoom car he killed it, and then they had problems on top of problems and he didnt do well. except for that one race in brazil where he came in third, beating checo by literally .05 seconds. he hasn't really made any hints about retiring a second time and he is kind of carrying aston Martin right now (he scored 205 points this season, coming in 4th and tying in points with charles leclerc, lance stroll only scored 74 points this year.) and they did have their best year yet this year. (though they are relatively new).

pierre gasley. 27 years old. french. drives for alpine. the french team. previously he raced with toro rosso (now alpha tauri), then got promoted to a red bull driver in 2019, then halfway through the season they decided he wasnt doing a good enough job and he got demoted back down to alpha tauri. then he won a race with alpha tauri just to stick it to red bull. after the great oscar piastri contract twitter war, he was signed as alpines second driver, with Esteban ocon being the other driver (more on him soon). estie bestie and pierre (both french) were childhood friends and now hate each other for unknown reasons and basically feuded on the track for most of the season. french civil war at alpine. he scored 62 points in 2023 and came in 11th. not really sure where he will end up, it is possible that he will stick it out at alpine.

esteban ocon. 27 years old. also french. currently driving for alpine. another one with a silly bonkers career. he started out at force india and had a baller few seasons there but his teammate at the time was checo, and checo didnt really cooperate with him too much and caused some drama that cost estie bestie some places and some points. max verstappen also beat him up in the garage once. thats not really relevant but it did happen. anyway, after the owner of force india was arrested for .... i don't remember what maybe it was embezzlement or bankruptcy or something money related, the team was backed by lawrence stroll and became racing point. but all of that happened mid season and lawrence was basically like look ill back you guys for now but next year my son gets a seat (lance) so one of you two (checo and estie bestie) have to go. and ultimately they let estie bestie go even though he was more consistent because checo had more sponsors and they needed money. so he was out of formula 1 for a few years (but was a merc reserve driver) and then went to Renault, which then became alpine. he did come in 12th though overall this season, just behind pierre. so. will alpine keep both him and pierre and keep the civil war going? whos to say.

nico hulkenberg. 36 years old. haas driver. in his 200+ f1 races he has never been on the podium and he really really wants to be on the podium. unfortunately this will never happen in a haas because haas fucking sucks. and everyone knows it. he is getting towards the end of his career though. though! stake f1 will become the mario Andretti and audi team in 2026 (don't question it) and they have supposedly voiced interest in nico. so we will see if he hangs on that long to end up at audi. for now tough, hes definitely hating it at haas. though, haas are going to have a different team principle next year so maybe that will change things. i have a sneaky feeling through that haas will probably end up with another 2 rookie drivers because everyone else is smart enough to not race for them.

kevin magnussen. 31 years old. haas driver. hes another deeply interesting character. he has had one podium. in his rookie season. in his first race. and none since. kevin started at haas in 2017 and then left at then end of 2020 when he basically got kicked off because the team needed money and they wanted to bring in drivers with more sponsorships. these drivers were mick schumacher and nikita mazepin. so kevin basically was forced to retire after the 2020 season. this went decently well for haas. until russia invaded ukraine right before the start of the 2022 season and, well, nikita was Russian and it was never distinctly proven that his dads company (who was sponsoring the team) wasnt also funding the invasion. so nikita got fired and they were literally like 2 weeks out from the start of the season, down a driver. who are you gonna call? kevin magnussen! and hes been back ever since. but hes clearly getting annoyed with haas. there was one great clip from this year where his car caught on fire and he kind of just stared into to, clearly hoping it would burn for a long time. so the likelihood of him extending his contract is looking slim.

valtteri bottas. 34 years old. currently a driver for stake f1 (alpha romeo, kick sauber, whatever you wanna call it). previously, he was a mercedes driver and notoriously helped lewis hamilton win a great many championships, until he lost his seat to george russell in 2022. there was a rather awkward part of the 2021 season where valtteri knew that he was out of a merc seat the following year and kind of just chose violence. he slayed. then he went to alpha romeo, grew a mullet and made a calendar of his ass. quite the glow up if you ask me. hes also very interested in cycling. honestly though, i have my own personal speculation that hes going to retire at the end of this year.

zhou guanyu. 24 years old. driver for stake f1 (alpha romeo/kick sauber, etc etc). hes doing alright. he just finished his second season, in his first season he was majorly out qualified by valtteri but this past season he managed to out qualify him a good 6 times. which is decently good for the tractor of a car hes driving. its possible that he could get a contract extension, but like logan, its probably going to depend on how the 2024 season goes for him.

and thats all the drivers. theres also a few others i didnt talk about, like some other f2 drivers who want seats and mick schumacher, who is currently a merc reserve driver, all of which could be contenders for f1 seats. but one things for sure. this is going to be the silliest fucking silly season.

feel free to add on and peer review me

#Instagram #Youtube #not a tag #from saph #saph explains silly season 2024 #i posted this from a train i pray and hope that i got everything and that all the links work #im surprised it even posted #im hot spotted to my phone #my comitment to the bit even surprises me #austrian gp 2024

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dear-ao3 · 6 days ago

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welcome back. for the last time this year, it is race weekend. were in abu dhabi (part 1), the yas marina circuit. race 24 of 24. the finale of the longest season in f1 history. we’ve had seven different multi race winners, back markers on the podium, mid season retirements, community service penalties, disqualifications, black flags, race bans, crashes, rain, paddocks that smell like weed, the breaking of the monaco curse, stealing each other's taglines, first race wins, rivalries…you name it we’ve seen it. and more.

in the words of crofty: “if you havent been here all season, where have you been? you've missed an absolute thriller.”

the drivers championship, as we know, has already been squared away. but the all important battle for the constructors championship is still on. mclaren v ferrari. a tale as old as, well, time. schumacher v hakkinen. hamilton v massa. will the power of the lando and oscar friendship pull through? or will carlos and charles put aside their differences (that they may or may not have) long enough to snatch the constructors title away from them? and not only are they duking it out for the constructors, but lando and charles are also duking it out for p2 in the drivers championship. will lando hold his ground or will charles come at him with all the fury in the world and then some?

and we’ve also got alpine, haas and racing bulls fighting for p6 in the constructors, the eternal question of the red bull second seat, the v carb second seat and the all important query of Will Valtteri Score Points This Season?

all (or at least most) will be answered tonight.

its december 31, 2024 and i know its late but lets fucking go.

the week started off with none other than jack doohan being announced as making his debut in abu dhabi this very weekend.

jack doohan, as we know, is the alpine reserve driver and has signed with the team for 2025. as we also know there was a rather nasty rumor circulating about him that he was going to lose his alpine seat that he hadnt even really sat in yet to one franco colapinto. alpine squashed this by announcing his driver number (7) but now that he is replacing esteban 1 race earlier than intended, there’s been some theories.

officially the swap had something to do with esteban doing testing for haas and alpine decided that it would be better for them if jack drove the car in abu dhabi. this does of course sadly mean that he cannot wear his very cool send off helmet this weekend because he is not racing and i also think that he was not allowed to say goodbye to the team.

which is fucked up. he got an instagram post from alpine as a send off. and that was about it.

sorry, lets rephrase this. esteban ocon has raced with alpine for the last five years. he is their only race winner under the name “alpine” (they had won races under their previous name, renault, but he is the only alpine winner) and they just said nope. fuck u actually. no race. heres a post instead.

this was esteban's reaction

and jack's reaction

and pierre even had some thoughts

but why did they do that? well. there is a theory that they are testing out jack as a driver in an f1 car before the end of the season so that they can decide whether or not they want to keep jack or take franco instead. im going to emphasize that this is a Theory and is not Confirmed. but it is still a Theory.

alpine also took their end of season photos. and they got crashed by *checks notes* fred vasseur???

yeah, they didn't know either.

anyway. aside from that. we also had the f1 official account horrifically misspell oscars last name. and charles joined in on the fun.

worth pointing out, btw, that charles leclerc has had his name misspelled in every possible which way over the course of time.

charles would also be doing the fp1 session with his brother arthur, who would be driving carlos’s ferrari. arthur is a test driver for ferrari or is part of the academy or something of that nature. and charles spent pretty much all of the media day session talking about how much he loves his brother and how excited he is that the two of them get to be on track at the same time together:

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and charles did whatever this was. some kind of water …. no not water sport. water activity. idk.

also having fun, or, well, maybe not actually, was valtteri bottas. poking fun at himself for still being the only driver currently driving on the grid this year to not score points.

and! speaking of drivers who didn't score points this year! logan sargeant! got signed! to a team!

no, it was not indycar. it was the european le mans series. this could lead to a full time seat for him in the hyper car series in 2026. which is cool for him.

also signing with hyper car was kevin magnussen. he signed with the bmw team. and there is lore here, apparently. because its racing. when isnt there weird lore.

apparently, his new boss at bmw, a man named vincent vosse, saved him from drowning when he was 2. in a pool at vosse’s own house. according to one k mag: "He was in a suit, dressed up for some gala thing, and he jumped in the pool. Ruined his day! But hopefully I can make up for that now. The contact has always been there, l've known him always."

as we know, this race is the end of a lot of things. several people are leaving the grid after abu dhabi: kevin magnussen, valtteri bottas, zhou guanyu, maybe franco colapinto, maybe checo perez. and several people are changing teams. lewis hamilton is going to ferrari, esteban ocon is going to haas, nico hulkenberg is going to stake, carlos sainz is going to williams. i think that's it. i hope that's it. it seems like silly season has been sillier than that.

in any case, there were many goodbyes to be had.

starting with zhou and valtteri and their helmets.

zhou’s helmet had a picture of him and valtteri on it, along with other pictures of special moments in his career as an f1 driver

and his caption of the picture on instagram said: ‘A special helmet with full of loved moments. It’s been a pleasure Valtteri Bottas, loved every highs & lows that we've been through over the last 3 years, one last dance with Stake F1 Team, let’s enjoy it.”

valtteri bottas’s helmet said “what’s next?” on it, still teasing the little branding hes done for teasing what is next in his career. that was an awful sentence, im sorry, but i am not changing it.

and as an aside, the stake social media admin made valtteri and zhou certificates thanking them for participating in the insane social media posts of the year

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charles did a special helmet for carlos that said “muchas gracias carlos” on it.

his instagram caption said “Special helmet for a special teammate ❤️ Thanks for these 4 years together. Let’s push to the max for that last weekend together.” and he was also clearly emotional about carlos leaving the team in his interviews

and carlos also ran a special helmet that showed his team highlights,

and he had a special race suit with the italian flag on it and smooth operator written on the leg.

and ferrari made a special poster of him for his last race.

kevin magnussen also had a helmet showing his highlights at haas.

and he and nico also reminisced about their time as teammates

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and george did a special helmet for lewis with little cartoon pictures of them on the back and a real picture of george when he is a Child trying to get lewis’s autograph on the top with a “crazy how time flies”

george, in case you didn't know, is a massive lewis hamilton fan. so he was clearly feeling Feeling about lewis leaving the team. as evidenced not only by the helmet but also by this instagram post

and he also brought That Very Book that he was trying to get lewis to autograph in the picture to abu dhabi to get his autograph. and they did it on the fanstage.

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lewis also naturally had a send off helmet as well.

and he also changed his profile pictures to this picture from 2013.

as that was when he joined the team. he also reposted the picture on his instagram with the caption “First year. Last year. And all the memories in between.”

lewis leaving mercedes, in case it was already obvious enough, is a Big Fucking Deal. this is the longest time a driver has ever been with a team, (11 years) and it is widely regarded as the greatest partnership between a driver and a team Ever. so mercedes was expected to go all out for this send off, right??

well mercedes did a lot of things for this send off. like a way lot of things. one of them was this video

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they posted this video that was essentially a thank you to lewis, montaging moments from his career highlights with mercedes (btw, lewis won 6 world champion titles with mercedes (and lost two by less than 20 points), helped the team win 8 constructors titles, and also has 84 race wins (someone edited it together here) with mercedes, not podiums. race wins. for context, if we compare this to michael schumacher’s career, he won 5 world championship titles with ferrari, helped the team win five constructors titles, and had 72 race wins with ferrari) inter cut with video footage of small lewis and other children of color and young girls essentially talking about how lewis was a trailblazer for the sport and helped pave a path for many people. and they tag line it with.

“every dream needs a team.”

the dream as in lewis’s dream to essentially be an f1 driver (i think?) or to win

(going to leave here that lewis didn't start at mercedes tho, he started at mclaren. and he also won his first world title with mclaren. don't worry, we’ll get back to the every dream needs a team thing In A Bit. it is a nice video though, it highlights how hes a good sportsman and also quite literally the greatest of all time. it was generally agreed upon though that the tag line was. odd.)

they put this tagline on lewis’s car this weekend as a graphic along with the names of 150 people who won the competition to have their name on the car

also with this video was some other tributing. i wont include all of them cause there were a lot and frankly, i also have a lot to talk about. but we had some good stuff.

pretty much though, every mercedes tribute seemed to include everyone Except for one nico rosberg (yea i know this is about lewis leaving mercedes, not about nico, however, as we have seen this year, you kinda cant really talk about one without talking about the other). but anyway, pretty much all of the photo collages left nico out (as we know lewis doesnt talk about him, maybe he asked for this, maybe not, whos to say. again this is where i say i don't think they owe eachother anything im just reporting the news) until mercedes decided to post this one:

which, in terms of photos of nico and lewis to post. that ones more on the unhinged side of things. and if you're annoyed im talking about nico rosberg, well, stay annoyed i guess cause he pops up again shortly. unfortunately, you cant really talk about one without the other, as i have said.

aside from that, we had bono, lewis’s race engineer, talk about their partnership a little and about how grateful he is for it and how much fun it has been. as he says, most engineers only have one shot at working with a champion, he has had many many years

lewis took everyone on his side of the garage on hot laps around the track

lewis himself was pretty emotional about the whole thing. which is to be expected. hes been with mercedes for twelve very long and (mostly) very successful years. again, i remind you that lewis joined merc in 2013 (which everyone thought was a terrible idea btw) and then won the drivers championship in 2014, 2015, 2017, 2018, 2019 and 2020. the team won the constructors title in 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020 and 2021. that is a long time to be in a very competitive car. that's a lot of success. like, an unprecedented amount of success.

this was a bit too long to transcribe, but he did talk a lot about what he was going to take with im as moments from the team in the press conference. (swipe to hear what he said)

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speaking about this year, he said that “its been an emotional year for me and i think ive not been at my best in the…in handling and dealing with those emotions. and i think this year, as so many of you have been here for my whole career so some of you all think you've all seen the worst of me and you've seen the best of me. and im not going to apologize for either because its..im only human and i don't always get it right. and i definitely would say this year has been one of the worst in terms of handling that from my side. which ill work on trying to be better at. but i hope the good and the highs far outweigh the negatives in how ive handled it or behaved and…and as i said i just remember the good times”

after taking the team photo for the last time he said that “its hard to believe that was our last team photo together. weve had twelve amazing years together. and its hard to believe that that's our last photo that we’re going to take as a whole team, as a group. and its such an honor and a privilege i thik to look back when im sitting on the car, i look back and see everyones face, everyone that's been so hugely influential with the success that we’ve had over the years. had my back and supported me and hopefully vice versa, which is a really proud moment. that's pretty cool. its something that ill definitely cherish. i think the first and the last will be the two that i cherish the most.”

and not really a tribute. but speaking of the team photo, toto wolff was seen wearing not only a short sleeve shirt, but also doing a peace sign

so that was basically lewis’s side of the garage. lots of emotions and feelings and paying tribute and etc etc etc.

so what was going on in george’s side of the garage?

complete and absolute chaos.

if you’ll remember. in qatar max essentially, for lack of better words, called george a two faced bitch because of george supposedly arguing with the fia to get max a 1 place grid penalty for going too slowly in qualifying. max got said penalty and was demoted from pole to second while george started on pole. i need to remind you all that 1. max had already won the world championship and 2. george was not even remotely in contention for the world championship and also mercedes and red bull are hardly rivals this season

if you’ll also remember, george did not say anything about said incident. mostly because max talked about it predominantly in the press conference which im pretty sure happens After all the media interviews? tho i could be wrong about that. regardless george didn't talk about it.

until he decided to come out full guns blazing in abu dhabi.

because this is formula 1. you really thought we were going to have a normal end to our incredibly insane season????

so. first. lets get a little refresher on what max actually said about the penalty situation after qatar *insert rewind noise here*

about the penalty, max said “I think I really spoke about valid reasons of what happened. And it was clear cut that around me there were different scenarios going on as well, with people having colder tyres and stuff so they had to push anyway, and I didn’t want to then cause a scene into a last corner, and then no one had a lap. So very, very surprising. i think we all here, we respect eachother a lot. and of course ive been in that meeting room many times in my life [with the stewards] and my career with people, you know, ive raced. and i’ve never seen someone trying to screw someone over that hard, and then for me i lost all the respect.

he also gestured towards charles when he talked about drivers that he respects, and charles was nearly giggling the whole time like he had tea we all didn't

and he also said, “actually, I just tried to be nice. So maybe I shouldn’t be nice. But the thing is that well, being nice, because at the end of the season, everything is more or less decided, for me especially, I didn’t want to screw anyone over to prepare their lap. And by doing that, being nice, basically you get a penalty. And that’s what I tried to explain as well. But I just felt like I was talking to a brick wall. So there’s not much that was possible, for whatever reason.” (which sounds hilariously like charles’s vegas radio but i digress)

later, max was asked if he was going to try and talk with george about the penalty and the incident with the stewards.

here’s what he had to say about that.

“not right now, but you know what it is? he always acts extremely polite in front of the cameras but if you sit together with him personally, he's a completely different person. i truly can't stand that. then you might as well fuck off, i don’t want anything to do with you.”

max was also backed up by christian horner, who said about george that “yesterday's penalty was more based on hysterics from George, who has been quite hysterical this weekend. There was a little bit of gamesmanship going on in that.”

(yes i did just copy and paste that from the qatar post. sue me i want to be done writing this)

anyway, you’ll also remember (maybe) the article that i quoted talking about the penalty. *cue a second rewind noise*

it appeared that all of the drivers had been informed after sprint qualifying that any going slowly would be taken seriously, after yuki received a warning for just that. and one article reported that:

“at the bottom of their decision Warwick and his fellow stewards made a very important comment: ‘The stewards advise all competitors that particular attention will be paid to adherence to the event notes in the qualifying session and that any potentially dangerous behaviour or impeding may result in the application of grid penalties.’”

in addition, it was also reported by a journalist that the new race director does not take impeding lightly.

“He [the race director] stated that if a car was going slow in a high-speed corner, it should not be on the racing line. The stewards regard this case as a complicated one in that clearly car 1 did not comply with the race director’s event notes and clearly was driving, in our determination, unnecessarily slowly considering the circumstances. It was obvious the driver of car 1 was attempting to cool his tyres. He also could see car 63 approaching as he looked in his mirror multiple times whilst on the small straight between Turns 11 and 12. They also made it clear that they had opted for a lesser penalty than they could have. Unusually, this incident occurred when neither car was on a push lap. Had car 63 been on a push lap, the penalty would have most likely been the usual three grid position penalty, however in mitigation of penalty, it was obvious that the driver of car 63 had clear visibility of Car 1 and that neither car was on a push lap.”

however. someone combed back through all going slowly/failing to follow race directors instructions infringements back to 2022 and found that max is the only one to have ever been given a grid penalty or penalty point for it. when looking at that stat though, keep in mind that theres different race directors making different decisions, the widely claimed “british bias” that the stewards have towards certain british drivers (which george btw doesnt seem to be included in) and also mitigating circumstances, not everything in this sport is clear cut.

and finally, george had some comments about the whole ordeal, but not too many. which i speculated was because he didn't know exactly what max had said until After it had already been said which Likely would have been after george was done with his interviews. so he had relatively normal things to say:

*cue a third and hopefully final rewind noise*

“Yeah, to be honest, I was expecting a crash. But ultimately we [george and lewis] made it easy for him, because both Lewis and I made terrible starts. So it was a pretty simple overtake for him, which was a bit frustrating for us.”

he did say though that his concerns about a crash were not related to max’s comments.

“We know Max is a fighter and is aggressive. I expect no different. I really wanted to go out there and fight with him today, like we could have done in the sprint.”

now. something i mentioned but somehow forgot to properly include in the last update was a brief clip from ted kravitz’s bit that he does at the end of the weekend called teds notebook where he goes over important stuff, gives opinions blah blah etc. anyway. i had referenced that one journalist heard that george and max had had words of some sort outside the stewards room, but not much beyond that.

ted’s notebook from qatar went a little beyond that:

important to take away from this was that before the drivers parade in qatar there was some kind of Incident between max and george where max some something akin to “you and your fia mates, i hope you're happy with what you’ve done.” though apparently, also according to ted, it was “far ruder than that.”

so. we were gearing up for Something. and Everyone was Wondering if Something was Going To Happen in abu dhabi.

the f1 fans (or at least some of them) spent the week between qatar and abu dhabi speculating and there were takes in every which direction about who said what and how and when and whether or not max was telling the truth and ugh this is why no one likes george and blah blah blah (idk i avoided most of it)

and max was asked his opinion on the whole thing again at the press conference on media day. george had still yet to say anything and he was not at the press conference (its random who gets chosen week to week). but we did get max saying this about this comments last week (you know, the two faced comments):

"No regrets at all [about what he said about george], because I meant everything I said. And it is still the same, if I had to do it again maybe I would have said even more, knowing the outcome of the race itself. I still can't believe that someone can be like that in the stewards' room - to me, that is so unacceptable. We're all racing drivers and we all have a lot of respect for each other, we even play sports together, we travel together. Of course you have moments where you come together, crash or whatever and you're not happy. But in my whole career I've never experienced what I experienced in the stewards' room in Qatar and, for me, that was really unacceptable."

so max was not budging. and we were all waiting on george’s side of the story. and boy, did he deliver.

before we get into this. a reminder to everyone that george doesnt usually get involved in stuff like this. he doesnt have many controversies, the most controversial thing in his career is probably that time in imola in 2021 where he smacked bottas on the helmet after the two of them were in a pretty big crash and battling eachother for a seat at mercedes.

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but he was effectively bullied off the internet several years ago for death threats (i think around the mercedes seat controversies, unsure exactly when, im not up to snuff on my george lore sorry) over something or other and now gets all his memes and the like from alex albon. and yeah he does weird pr stuff, but he doesnt really get involved in controversies. and hes also not all that popular as a driver. he mostly gets memed and also made fun of.

he’s also, im going to remind everyone, the gpda president. and the gpda, in case you need reminding, as of vegas, (a mere two/three weeks before the incident) were trying to get max to not get penalized for the swearing in the press conference (among other things).

there were i think several interviews that he gave about the whole thing, all on media say (pretty sure it was media day) and theyll all rather long, (if you want to watch the whole full ones, im pretty sure there were multiple but this is a good one here) but this one has pretty much a good summary of everything he said

which is a lot to unpack.

george came with receipts.

so lets break this down a little.

george says “we’re all fighting on track and its never personal.”

objectively true. other drivers have talked about this before. most of the time battles on track do not translate to battles off track (with some exceptions. you know. nico and lewis. im looking at you two. also prost and senna. the difference here being that they were both insane actual title rivals and max has won four championships and george arrived at mercedes in the middle of their shit arc and has never been in contention for a champion title.) even after….oh god what was that race….austria? where max and lando slammed into each other while battling for first and while they were kinda pissed max was like all that matters is repairing my relationship with lando blah blah blah (max and lando are seemingly more friendly than george and max but that is not the point here)

anyway, george’s argument was that max made their on track battle personal. which is a big no no (according to george) (as i said up top we had people make on track battles personal all the time. see quite literally the most famous example in recent history: nico rosberg and sir lewis hamilton)

george also famously said “someone needs to stand up to a bully like this” because “so far people have let him [max] get away with murder.”

people online really really went off with that. and let me put my english major hat on here for a second to say that Getting Away With Murder Is An Expression an expression meaning, loosely, “get away with anything.” so no, george is not saying that max killed anyone.

george defended himself against what max said in the press conference about how hes “never had someone try that hard to get me a penalty” and george maintained that max was going too slow on the racing line and they all have rules to follow. (true, but again to devils advocate george, remember that max is the only one to ever have gotten penalties in this context for going to slow. but then to that also also remember that the stewards said that they were going to crack down on anyone going to slow after yuki went too slow in practice.)

he also said in a different interview that "It's funny because even before I said a word in the stewards, he was swearing at the stewards. He was so angry, before I'd even spoken. And at the end of the day, there's nothing to lie about.”

then, he of course hits us with some new information, saying that “i find his comments pretty ironic, when he comes out and says ‘im going to purposefully crash into you, im going to put you on your fucking head in the wall.’ for me, that isnt acceptable. and hes gone beyond the line here, and im not going to accept it.”

now, in case you've been keeping track, this is far different than george’s attitude about the whole thing in qatar. george is claiming that max said this to him after the stewards room. which would have been saturday night before the race. and, if you will recall, here is what george said on sunday in qatar about the max incident during qualifying: *yet another rewind noise*

“Yeah, to be honest, I was expecting a crash [during the race]. But ultimately we [george and lewis] made it easy for him [max], because both Lewis and I made terrible starts. So it was a pretty simple overtake for him, which was a bit frustrating for us.”

when asked if this [the likeness of a crash] was because of comments that max had made to him, george apparently “didn't bite” according to one journalist and instead said that “We know Max is a fighter and is aggressive. I expect no different. I really wanted to go out there and fight with him today, like we could have done in the sprint.”

so. little confusing. because if max had said all of this on saturday then why didn't it come up in interviews on sunday?

the same journalist had a theory: “In other words [george] had a chance then [in qatar] to reveal just what Verstappen had said to him [putting him in the wall], and in effect drop him in it, but he chose not to. He's only done so today [in abu dhabi] because of Max's ongoing criticism.”

and george did kind back that theory up. he likely elected to ignore the whole thing and chalk it up to heated emotions in the stewards room and only brought it up once he realized that max was publicly tearing into george’s character. and george said this himself, that he had “no intentions of bringing this up. he said this to me saturday night and i woke up sunday morning feeling fine. but to come out of those press interviews (the post race in qatar ones) saying that i’m two faced, that im a f word and this and that, hes taking this personal. what happens on track is professional, what happens in the stewards is professional.”

so again, george’s main argument here is that max made a race related argument personal, when in george’s mind that is just a fact of racing that stuff like this happens.

also, as many people pointed out, if max did actually say this, (as in threaten to crash into george and put him in the wall) then in nascar that would get you a race ban. and while those same rules don't exist in f1, it is still a very serious threat in some kinds of motorsport.

now, here george also brings up new and interesting lore, saying that “like carlos said to him on sunday morning ‘you would have done the exact same thing.’” and then he cites max getting lando a penalty for not lifting in the yellow flags and blah blah but the real interesting bit here is about carlos.

remember those pictures from before the drivers parade? and remember that ted said something happened before the drivers parade in qatar?? well!

george said (i think in a different interview than the one that i linked) this:

"And I almost joked with him [max] at the drivers' parade about this with Carlos [Sainz] and Checo [Sergio Perez]. I came around, put my arm around him [max] and laughed, 'How are you doing today?' and I said to Carlos jokingly, 'Listen to what this guy said to me yesterday' [the im going to put you on your fucking head line] But I could see it in his eyes that he meant it [the line about you and your fia mates that ted quoted]."

so. this explains then this lovely set of photos:

there were a lot of people online citing these photos as justification that george is a two faced bitch because Why would he have been that nice to max right after max had told him that?? but it seems now that george literally intended to never bring this up and then max went and ranted to hell and back to the press about it so he had pretty much no choice but to bring it up and the timing of everything made him look bad.

george was asked about the thing max said about his “fia mates” and george was confused about that as well, going into detail about the lap times that you have to follow on the out lap. “he [max] was in breach of that, and i was following it to the letter of the law, i wasn't trying to get him a penalty, but that's just how things transpired.”

as some people pointed out, i don't think george was on a flying lap when max was going to slowly, he might have been, im not sure, i don't remember and im not going back to look. but there was debate over this.

george also said that max “cannot deal with adversity. whenever anything is not going his way he lashes out with unnecessary anger and borderline violence. weve seen it in brazil in the past with ocon, we saw it in 21 with lewis, and then mexico with lando, first race of the year in budapest when he didn't have the most dominant car, crashes into lewis, slamming his whole team. that is not a guy who i respect.”

in a second interview george also referenced this batch of receipts he brought up, saying that “I don't know why this topic has got him so angry. And like I said to you before, he cannot deal with adversity. He's had the most dominant car in recent history for two and a half years. I'm not questioning his driving abilities one single bit, but the second he does not have the fastest car - let's take Budapest as an example, he crashes into Lewis. He slams his whole team and he loses the plot. Straight away after that race, 25 percent of his engineering team were sending their CVs to Mercedes, to McLaren, to Aston Martin because they said they can't deal with a guy like that. And since Austria, he's won the same number of races as six other drivers. So when you say, is Max beatable? Of course he's beatable."

and this is quite the array of receipts that george brought up here.

ocon and max in brazil was from like. 2018. when esteban, a lapped car in the race, crashed into max who was leading, and cost him the win. max pushed him in the garage after.

i think the incident hes referring to with lewis was in monza 2021 where he and lewis crashed after one of lewis’s pit stops and max ended up driving over the top of lewis’s car, at one point his tire was on lewis’s helmet. both of them were fine, but it was rather insane

mexico with lando is obviously earlier this year when max got hit with the 20 second penalty after driving, as lando put it, dangerously, while the two of them were battling. george also previously said that max’s racing in mexico was “hard but fair” and now seems to have rolled back that comment since he put it in the same boat as other Controversial and Insane Max Moments.

and budapest was also this year, this was the race where max was really going at it on the radio and once again flew over lewis’s car, then tried to blame it on lewis and was told by his team over the radio that he was being “childish” and that they were “not going to get into a radio fight with the other teams”

id also like to point out, that all of these incidents, while famous racing incidents, happened, they are also all resolved. monza and brazil do get brought up decently enough, but even esteban said this year about brazil 2018 that "Everyone thinks we [him and max] hate each other [because of brazil 2018], but that's not the case. I like that he races really hard. It's very straightforward. It's just who crosses the line first. With Max, there is no bullshit.”

and also. while im devils advocating myself here, there have been plenty of other world champions in recent history who have been pretty vicious on and off track. lewis hamilton is kind of the exception to this, he is a pretty clean racer and doesnt really make things personal (not after 2016 at least and definitely not unless its with nico rosberg but im absolutely not getting into that here)

however, for your perusal i bring up once again incidents like:

-sebastian vettel and mark webber, malaysia 2013, the infamous multi 21 incident where sebastian vettel over took mark webber for the lead when he was explicitly told not to and was kind of a jerk about it.

-spa 1998 where michael schumacher almost decked david coulthard in the pitlane because he thought that he had tried to kill him and also thought that it was a plot by mclaren to fix the race to benefit his rival mika hakkinen.

-japan 2005 when fernando alonso was trying to help renault win the constructors title (he had already won the drivers championship at the previous race) (he had also qualified 16th) and was effectively bullying michael schumacher (driving for ferrari at the time and already a 7x world title winner) trying to pass him earlier on in the race. eventually, michael kinda let him by (michael himself was also a very hard racer, and fernando was pretty young at the time) and after the race fernando famously said: “I knew he would hit the brakes because he has a wife and two kids at home”

these are all drivers, by the way, that max has been compared to.

george, in a different interview, compared max to lewis, saying that "He's [max] a four-time world champion. When I compare his actions to the ones of Lewis [Hamilton], Lewis is the sort of world champion who I aspire to be like. The way he fought Max in '21 was hard, very hard. It's fair, but never beyond the line.”

now again, as i said, this is mostly true. lewis is generally regarded as a pretty good sportsman and a clean racer. but that is if you omit the years 2014-2016 where he was tied up in a raging title fight with one nico rosberg that culminated in the end of their friendship (after knowing each other since they were children), nico’s retirement after his one and only championship win in 2016, and lewis’s absolute refusal to ever talk about him.

though, i will say, even though nico and lewis are their own absolute disaster that really cant be compared to max because of their whole history and everything, there was the famous post monaco interview in 2014 (after a very intense race that nico eventually won where nico had been accused of crashing purposefully in qualifying and preventing lewis from trying to take pole from him) where lewis told the press about nico that “well we’re not friends. we’re colleagues.” (admittedly, the press was really harping on him about this and he later tweeted that they were friends, but i couldn't talk about Not Making Things Personal and not bring this up so) just goes to show you that even the most composed drivers and champions have their moments. its a hard sport, obviously things get tense sometimes.

as for the part about red bull engineers wanting to leave red bull. not sure how true that is entirely, but we do know that adrian newey went to aston and jonathan wheatley is going to stake and they were a large part of red bull great ness. (unclear if this was in any way related to max though, newey’s departure seemed to be more related to the horner allegations (yeah that was also this year. its been a long season)).

in Yet Another interview, george said that "They're [red bull] doing their utmost to get Horner out of Red Bull,” along with then continuing to repeat that the red bull mechanics were applying to other teams. i seem to remember someone, maybe zak brown, maybe toto wolff, saying something like this earlier in the year. but it is kind of unclear how george himself would have known that fact Specifically given that he is a mercedes driver and not a mclaren or aston driver.

and horner said. something. about this specifically. that i cant find. but it was something about how george shouldn't comment on other teams inter workings because its not his business. which is kinda fair, george knows what's happening at mercedes, not what's happening at any other team because hes only on one team. he might know the rumors and the gossip and all that, but he definitely doesnt know the ins and the outs, just like anyone else doesnt.

max later had this to say about george’s comment about people leaving red bull though:

"it is also very difficult for them, when you see that we have taken a lot of people away from mercedes for our engine program. then frustration comes out. we have the last laugh, because we won the race last week. they start on pole position because of that nitpicking with the stewards, but 300 meters he was already behind. everything he brings up has nothing to do with it. i was very relaxed with the stewards, i had already won the championship. but he had to be so dramatic to start first."

toto wolff also talked about horner. because of course he did.

and remember these guys have a history too. we all remember the great “i have it printed out” incident in 2022 during the meeting about the porpoising.

anyway, toto said this about horner (who remember also had some choice words for george last week, calling him essentially overly emotional) "Why does he feel entitled to comment about my driver?...Yapping little terrier - always something to say."

horner was definitely not impressed by that comment At All. (surprise surprise) he said this: “I love terriers! I think they’re great dogs. I’ve had four of them, I’ve had a couple of Airedales, they’re the king of the terriers. I had a couple of West Highland terriers called Bernie and Flavio. The thing about terriers, they’re tremendously loyal. To be called a terrier, is that such a bad thing? They’re not afraid of having a go at the bigger dogs – I’d rather be a terrier than a wolf maybe.”

he also posted this on his instagram story after toto made that remark, which is a picture of his own terrier.

but anyway. back to george. because yes, he still somehow wasn't done dunking on max.

one of his other arguments here was about how max should be a better role model. "I think we've also got a duty as drivers I've got an eight-year-old nephew who's just started go-karting, who watches all of my races, watches TikTok, watches YouTube, and for a world champion to be coming out saying he's going to go out of his way to crash into someone and put them on their effing head, that is not the sort of role models we should be."

this is another interesting argument. because i believe that one of the main arguments for drivers to not curse so much (which again, is something that george is actively arguing against as the gpda director) is that they should be being a good role model for younger kids watching. so, while it makes sense that george would bring this up as a like “hey maybe we shouldn't threaten eachother” argument, but again, max is hardly the first world champion to ever have a controversial moment. and also with the role model argument being used about the cursing right now, idk maybe not the best idea.

he also said that he thought that max didn't attack him specifically. as in, it was not personal to george. he thought that it would have been the same with anyone in the stewards room in that specific incident. and circled it back more to how that makes max a bully:

"I think [Verstappen] has been enabled because nobody stood up to him. Lewis stood up to him in 2021 and Lewis lost that championship unfairly. Could you imagine the roles being reversed and Max losing that championship in the manner that Lewis lost that championship? I mean, [former FIA race director] Masi would be fearing for his life. So, as I said, some of the recent incidents, he has been punished and he punished himself. I honestly think it could have been anybody in that stewards' room and Max would have reacted the same way. He's made it personal when there was no need to make it personal. He's a year older than me, so we only crossed paths once in go-karts in 2011. But as I said, he was wound up and frustrated before I even spoke in that stewards' room."

so this is now Another racing incident that george has brought up, abu dhabi 2021. weve talked about this before, max won the championship instead of lewis on the last lap of the race after a bs safety car call that allowed cars between lewis and max only to unlap and cost lewis the championship. michael masi was the race director at the time and he resigned i think not long after that and i believe got sent death threats about how he called the end of that race (as did nicholas latifi, the driver who caused the safety car). so given that masi did get death threats when lewis didn't win, i cant imagine that it would have been any different if max had lost. max did chill out a decent amount in the last year when he was really dominating, so we havent seen this side of him in awhile, as was pointed out several times by many different people over the course of the year.

if max really was this wound up though when george got in the stewards room, that might have resulted in a more heated debate than normal. horner said about the stewards meeting that “Max does nothing but tell the truth so I believe 100 per cent what he said to be accurate. There [were] other people in those stewards’ rooms as well, and they also came back and reported that they were quite surprised at the approach that was taken.” and maybe that approach was that george was a little more forceful than he would have normally been.

in the original interview i inserted, at the end, the interviewer asks george at the end:

“just to finally put to max’s point, which was that he felt that you crossed a line in terms of respect that was broken and he would say ‘well im not lashing out, im telling the truth and that's the way i am…’ he would say ‘that's just the way i am, that's i tell the truth, i say it the way it is.’”

this is objectively true, max has said this many times and so have other people, hes pretty blunt and to the point and just says it like it is. george though was not overly pleased with this.

“well im telling the truth that he said to me that hes going to put me on my fucking head. and for me that is crossing a line.”

in another interview though, george said that "So as of tonight, for me, this is put to bed, and it's in race mode, and I'm focused on the weekend. I don't need to talk to him at all., there's nothing for me to say. I know what Max is like. This is not the first time I've seen him like this. I've seen him like this as a 14-year-old in the go-kart paddock. So this is just me sharing what happened on Saturday night. I walked into the stewards' with no problem with Max. I walked out of the stewards' with no problem with Max. Then, s**t has hit the fan and the words he said to me. I went back and I told my team and we laughed about it. And then I woke up the next day and I was expecting to have a laugh about it. But as I said, I saw the fire in his eyes.”

now, if you will recall, max’s original argument about the stewards room was:

“i’ve never seen someone trying to screw someone over that hard, and then for me i lost all the respect.”

“I just felt like I was talking to a brick wall.”

and

“he [george] always acts extremely polite in front of the cameras but if you sit together with him personally, he's a completely different person. i truly can't stand that. then you might as well fuck off, i don’t want anything to do with you.”

so george did not really address any of that at all. instead he brought up a lot off different points about how max had been behaving, how hes a bully and how hes been allowed to get away with things and how george himself was just following the rules.

max, obviously, saw george’s scathing remarks about him and had this to say:

"that's not true [that i said i'd drive him into a wall] i didn't say it like that. he's trying to exaggerate it again. do you know what else i can't stand? that he attacks me in an unacceptable way with the stewards and then comes back a day later as if nothing is wrong and slaps me on the shoulder. then i think: stay away for a while. he makes up all kinds of things that aren't true. with me you always get the same: here, at home, with the stewards; i don't change. you can't say that about everyone. but i'm not surprised by that with him."

now, we’ve already heard george’s justification for why he was so casual with max in the morning before the drivers parade, it was because he didn’t think that max was still going to be pissed about it, but he was (or at least that's how i understand it. sorry guys im on hour 9 of writing just the george max part alone and its all starting to sound the same to me)

in any case, as ted said, drive to survive apparently has the sound byte of whatever the two of them said before the drivers parade and knowing netflix, they will milk this for all its worth in the new season of drive to survive. so i suppose we wont have any real information that isnt speculation about any of this until march.

max also addressed george calling him a bully, saying that, "yes, but george is a bully. that he brings up all these kinds of things. he is just a loser. he lies and sticks all kinds of things together that are not correct. i only gave my opinion about his behaviour to the stewards. he clearly does not appreciate that. what he said about 2021, that is also what happened to the stewards. he insinuates a lot of things that do not make sense."

and yes, like i said, a lot of the stuff that george dragged up had absolutely nothing to do with the incident at hand and it was probably a pr move to just get the press to focus on a whole lot of controversial max moments (because yeah however way you spin it, he does have those. george really only has the one and its that time he slammed valtteri on the helmet in imola in 2021. which people did drag up, but that's only one incident and george alone brought up five separate racing incidents of max’s. people also brought up relentlessly that max’s father is literally abusive (remember i said a really long time that he was accused of murdering someone once), which doesnt really have anything to do with this other than to say that sometimes max might resort to anger?)

also. important to note. and i cannot find the original quote of this, but at some point george switched from just saying that max was going to put his head in the wall to “i was going to let you by, but now im going to put your fucking head in the wall” or something along those lines. which everyone was like, yeah no way max ever said that. which is fair. max has never been known to let anyone by even a little bit. many people saw this as a crack in george’s argument. but there is also the possibility that max was saying that he was going to let george off for his behavior or not punish him in the race or something and then he changed his mind.

and finally, at some point, george reportedly said that he had tears in his eyes (out of frustration likely) and upon being told that, max said this:

"it wasn't that dramatic last week with the stewards, maybe next time then i'll bring tissues."

so. clearly this was not a mild incident. and im going to express that this is literally just a sampling of it. there was a lot more of just the two of them in their interviews tearing into eachother, but it did get very repetitive. so this is pretty much the main bits of it.

and ive tired to present as much of the information as i can as unbiasedly as possible so you can decide for yourself. there were a lot of opinions about the whole thing. like a whole lot. so i really did my best here.

(and if you want my opinion, i think theyre both telling the truth here. i think probably something did get heated in the stewards room and maybe max was really pissed and george pushed a little harder for a penalty. max probably also did tell george that he was going to put him on his head. none of this seems that insane to me. i also do think that george is telling the truth that he wasn't that concerned about the whole thing on saturday night and then max was still going at it on sunday morning. all in all, in my opinion, they both fucked up here. and don't worry, it wasn't over)

but, tldr:

-max drives slowly on his outlap in qualifying, potentially impeding george

-george cites this as dangerous driving, potentially lying about how severe it was, potentially also telling max that he didn't think it was a big deal before they got to the stewards room

-there was already a precedent for the weekend about how drivers driving slowly would get punished (as established with yuki in fp1)

-something in the stewards room gets said that causes max to lose his temper and make him think that george is being unreasonable with the stewards

-max gets a 1 place grid penalty

-max tells george that hes going to put george’s head in the wall

-george takes this as a heated and of the moment comment

-george approaches max the following morning before the drivers parade and jokes about max’s comments from last night to carlos and checo

-carlos and checo are seemingly confused and carlos says that max would have done the same thing in the stewards room

-they race

-max ends up winning from p2, george finished p4 from pole

-after the race max tells the press that george is two faced and was unfair with the stewards and pushed really hard for a penalty that he felt he didn't deserve given the circumstances

-george says virtually nothing about it

-rumors circulate about what might have been said

-max continues to bash george in abu dhabi, saying hes not sorry for what he said

-george drags up years worth of racing incidents about max, calls him a bully, says that he threatened to put his head in the wall

-max says that this is not true and it never happened and this is more reasoning why george is two faced

-toto wolff calls christian horner a terrier, christian says hed rather be a terrier than a wolff

-george continues to lay into max, saying that he has lost respect for him and also saying that he didn't intend on dragging this up but now that max insulted his character he has no choice but to

-max says it wasn't a big deal and next time he’ll bring tissues

-remember. max already won the world title, george was not in contention. mercedes was solidly 4th in the drivers championship.

-max doesnt usually go at people hes not title fighting for no reason cause he kinda hates the press

-george also doesnt usually go at anyone because he also doesnt like the press and also knows that people don't like him

so. certainly other people must have opinions about this, right?

well. lando definitely did.

lando, remember, was max’s sort of title rival this year. he was in a lot of battles with max for sure, including mexico, which george cited as one of max’s controversial racing incidents. (george also implied that he wasn't sure why “people” (probably lando charles and checo) havent stood up to max before) lando is also pretty good friends with max (they fly together regularly, they hang out together, lando also seemingly has a pretty good relationship with max’s girlfriend kelly’s daughter penelope and i think theres evidence that hes known her for most of if not all of her life (i think shes like somewhere in the 5 year old range), so theres definitely some element of trust there). and hes also pretty good friends with george. george, lando and alex all were in the younger junior series together (f2 mainly, but i think also f3) so they have been racing against eachother for awhile, and its pretty obvious from videos and interviews and all that that theyre friends.

and lando, as we all saw last week in qatar, loves to stir shit up. especially when its not his shit.

and mclaren, in case you forgot in all of this, are in a constructors title battle against ferrari. ferrari are a little ways behind, but they still could beat mclaren in the final race of the season.

so lando was of course asked about the george and max drama.

and here is what he said:

“I hope it doesn’t get smoothed out… I hope they stay fighting and arguing, because it’s amusing to watch”

first of all, absolute man of the people

second, objectively hilarious response

third, this was definitely taking a decent amount of the press pressure off of mclaren, who as i said, were in a title fight with ferrari, so this was probably benefiting them in a weird backwards way.

zak brown though was asked this by martin brundle:

“Is Lando too compliant with Max Verstappen? Is he too submissive with him because he hasn't come out really and supported George at all in this latest spat?”

which is an….interesting choice of words to say the least.

and zaks response was not all that much better: “Yeah, I think we've seen him race Max really hard. Lando's a different type of character.”

in any case, lando did not defend either one of them. in fact, he just added to the shit storm.

and how, you might be wondering, how could this get any more insane?

well. it is abu dhabi. final race of the season. and that means. its time for the annual drivers dinner.

in case you don't know what this is, every year at the end of the season all of (or at least most of) the drivers get together to have dinner. its usually on the thursday night, before the real racing of the weekend has started.

there was for awhile that i think the previous years champion would pay for dinner, but i think that stopped one year when nico and lewis got into a heated debate over who was paying for dinner that year and everyone ended up paying separately

in any case. the first of the posts to be posted about the drivers dinner was, to my knowledge, lando’s. and it was this:

which is. objectively hilarious. he’s once again stirring the pot. and also max’s beef emoji. does this ever fucking stop? (the answer is no)

and of course everyone posted virtually the same photo so oscar of course shit on it with his caption which read “Exclusive pic from the drivers’ dinner. Won’t find it elsewhere”

esteban ocon later posted the seating arrangement:

yes, george and max were seated as far away from eachother as possible, lando did not lie about that

though apparently, that was not intended.

liam lawson did an interview after the race weekend where they asked him about how the drivers dinner went, specifically the seating chart. and well. just watch it.

so good to know that everyone else finds the beef funny except for george.

lewis also took the time to make fun of lando’s inability to sit still:

and unfortunately i lost the stupid link. but he posted a series of pictures of landos face zoomed in with hhis eyes closed or not looking at the camera in all of them and cat opined it "lando multiple takes norris"

and if you're wondering where lance and fernando are. apparently they went on a date with lawrence stroll? to get dinner. no i am not joking. i have no idea what this sport is anymore

not sure where kevin and nico were.

the drivers were also asked the following day about the team dinner. the drivers in question being oscar lando alex and franco. it was a bit of a trainwreck.

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and valtteri ended up paying for the dinner, in case you were wondering. and it ended up being apparently 5k euros.

and in all of this, charles leclerc managed to get food poisoning. potentially from the dinner. though he was the only one. this was especially tragic for him as he almost missed out on doing fp1, which he was doing with his younger brother, arthur leclerc. a fact that pretty much got entirely overshadowed by the whole george and max drama of the day before.

now you might be wondering. is that the end of the max and george drama? or did something else insane happen??

now. if you don't know the bomb i am about to drop. i want you to take a second. and think to yourself. what could make the george and max drama more insane.

go ahead

think to yourself

make a guess

….

do you have it?

great!

now take that guess and throw it out the window because theres no way you guessed what actually happened here:

yeah. max verstappen and his long time girlfriend, kelly piquet, announced that they are having a child.

and now, i know that i tried to remain unbiased here. i know i tried. but im sorry. how much of a pr save do you need to be like oh hey. you know what will distract the press from this weird feud im having with a driver over a one place grid penalty that actually didn't really affect my race at all in a season where i’ve already won the world title? announcing that i am having a child.

this did pretty effectively shut the press up (for the most part) about the max and george drama. but like. absolutely insane that they chose to do this. because there was absolutely no way that this was Not a pr move. first, look at the context of the weekend so far. george had just dragged up every bit of dirt he could on max verstappen and they clearly needed something positive for the press to talk about instead. and this. was what they landed on.

because it really seems like this was supposed to get announced After the season was over. mostly because max is a pretty private person. second. who would, in normal circumstances, post this literally less than an hour before the first day of practice sessions for the last race of an insane season???

(also kelly posted some stuff on her instagram that made it seem like the two of them had been trying to have a child for awhile, so, weird that theyre still using this as a deflection for pr purposes. or at least, that is what i think)

also, this kid is going to be a verstappen piquet. the childs father will have won four (minimum) titles and grandfather (nelson piquet) won three. kinda wild.

in any case, regardless of how it got announced, congrats to them.

and because this post is too long, i will see you all on part 2.

the 2024 formula 1 silly season and drama master post, part 2 (part 1 here)

Hello and welcome to ah fucking fuck auto caps fuck fuck fuck how do i turn off auto caps AHA there we go okay. take 2

hello and welcome to the great and very insane formula 1 2024 season drama post, part 2. if you are new here or are just looking for part one (which contains the previous 16 (?) races, the off season, pre season testing and everything else, that can be found HERE. (a word to the wise: open it in a browser, not the app, and preferably on a computer to avoid crashing. its fucking long).

what the hell is formula 1? car go fast. fastest cars in the world zoom around tracks at top speeds of over 300kph, piloted by the top 20 drivers in the world. it might not sound dramatic, but oh man. you will Not be disappointed. this post focuses on the drama, the insanity, the sheer what the hell how is this a serious sport. no legitimately. we've just about seen it all this year. grindr, dogs, watersports, ice cream brands, its all here.

the point of this post? to educate, to catalog the insane drama, and to just have a good time. people like to gatekeep this sport, there is also a lot happening. i try to make it easy to understand. again, probably best to start at the beginning of the post because it does a pretty good job of explaining things, which i began way back in january, and can be found HERE (again, shes long, be careful)

and, as usual, if you do not want to see this post EVER AGAIN, block the tag #saph explains silly season 2024

and a second caution, i assume this post will be getting long as well. including this one we have minimum 9 updates left!

anyway, those of you who have been following along the whole time, welcome back! i know we got a little delayed. and i know we’re on a new post, so lets just briefly take a second for me to explain what the fuck happened. first i had an anatomy test, second i work 2 jobs with fuck ass hours, third tumblr decided to stop letting me look at any of my drafts, fourth tumblr support ghosted me about the drafts issue and the post was half saving half not so i just decided fuck it, were going with post 2, electric boogaloo, and fifth, i decided to start typing this instead in a google docs so. many changes. if you're new here i am usually more on top of this.

but here we are. were back on street circuits. we’re in baku, azerbaijan, for the start of the last third of the season. 8 races remain, world championship titles are still within grasp of multiple people. the drama is dramaing. and today is september 22, 2024 and lets fucking go.

first and foremost, on account of the fact that this post is late (again, see above), were going to have to do a bit of a speed run. if you're new here, i promise that this is not representative of my normal dedication to the update post. and for those asking, yeah, ill probably compile it somewhere better than a tumblr post after its all said and done, but we don't have time for that now.

what we do have time for is the Off Week (and like some of the media stuff). and it was filled with silliness:

george russell decided to wear what can only be described as slightly ugly yellow short shorts with his taylor swift shirt that he got at the eras tour. this was baffling for several reasons, the main reason being that i don't think the internet knew that he was capable of wearing a graphic t shirt

fernando alonso got his aston martin valkyrie finally. in case you are unfamiliar, a valkyrie i think is the worlds fastest street legal car. he posted tweets about this that made it seem like he wanted to fuck the car. hilariously, the car broke down an hour later.

we also had the very thrilling conclusion to grill the grid. oscar won and he somehow managed to look more pleased about his grill the grid win than his first race victory.

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nico rosberg went to the green awards and he wore a fantastically insane teal blue suit. yes i know hes not a current driver. but you all like hearing about him so ask and you shall receive. unfornunately i cant find a picture of it though

and also not a current driver is mick schumacher, but my roommate asked me to include that he was seen on his girlfriends instagram being bad at golf. like. exceptionally bad at golf. like he hit a tree 20 feet in front of him.

also playing golf was lando norris. except he managed to look like try bolton from high school musical 2.

he also talked about the world driver championship with his friend max fewtrell while they were playing golf. unfortunately i lost this link in the sea of technical difficulties, but the gist of it was that he was saying that there is still hope for him to beat max in the championship (hes about 60 points behind right now). lando doesnt usually talk about the championship because he doesnt want news outlets to paint him as “desperate” so this was interesting

charles leclerc had an insane off week. first he rear ended someone in monaco. then he spoke at a yacht conference. he was not scheduled to speak at said yacht conference, he was there doing something else and they were like hey you're cool people know you, heres a microphone. he alsp ended up on a weather channel while promoting a karting event he was doing for the jules bianchi foundation (his god father, the one who died during the f1 race in japan 2014). he also changed his instagram pop and re centered it because some random tiktoker told him it matched his aesthetic better.

oscar piastri posted a photo of himself sitting in the cockpit of a plane and then promptly deleted it. because he posted it on 9/11. for anyone who doesnt know what that is, that was when some terrorists hijacked commercial planes and few them into the world trade centers in nyc and the pentagon in washington dc

max verstappen also posted a plane pic with himself and lando norris, but he did not delete it.

we also had the return of daniel ricciardo’s jpg instagram account, which is kinda like a finsta for photos that hes taken. i think lando started this a few years ago.

heading into the race week we certainly got a weird ass batch of pr. including but not limited to:

lewis hamilton was back on top and slaying in the fit game. as was yuki.

lewis hamilton also exposed george russell as listening to katy perry pre race. katy perry and taylor swift (this was after he claimed that he liked listening to old school rap music.) though, lewis then started singing wrecking ball???? confusing vibes all around

george was not off the hook yet tho because some intern definitely make him say skidibidi toilet or whatever the thing is idk, i might be gen z but im not insufferable, okay? actually george in baku was just all kinds of unhinged

george and alex also got up to something, what it is no one knows but it is clearly something

max pulled up to the paddock de aged about 10 years. picture one is of him in baku in 2015 (i believe he was 17) and picture 2 is this year. no i am not kidding.

and franco walked into the paddock telling everyone about argentinian mate (which is a drink, not a friend)

and max shoved a microphone out of the way so everyone could gossip

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then of course, we had some slightly more relevant drama

haas announced that ollie would be replacing kevin at baku. in case you forgot, kevin magnussen received a total of 12 penalty points over the season so far, which means he gets one race ban. how did he get the points? well he was mostly wreaking havoc on everyone else so that his teammate, nico hulkenberg, could drag his car into the points. lets all remember the time in saudi arabia where he managed to get 20 seconds of penalties by basically driving like a mad man just to make sure that nico could keep his position after he pit stopped. anyway, nico was kind of pissed about the race ban situation and said “maybe the guidelines for F1 penalties need to be reviewed as the stewards ‘want to get involved’ no matter the contact.”

in any case though, k mags was out. and ollie was in. we’ve seen ollie before. notably he subbed in for carlos sainz at the saudi arabia gp when carlos had appendicitis. he managed to get points as well. since then, he has been announced as a haas driver for 2025 and is now subbing in for k mags (haas, later in the week called him a super sub. clearly no gen z person read that over.) he can do this because ferrari has a haas engine so they share reserve drivers.

adrian newey finally got employed. i know! i can hardly believe it either! but he did! and youll never guess where!

ferrari? no that would be too obvious.

mercedes? nah

williams? no too much of a shit show

aston martin? ding ding ding! just the right amount of shit show!

that is right. newey is going to aston for 2025.

apparently he was offered a “good package” according to himself, which i assume means pay and also the fact that lawrence stroll made him a shareholder? stakeholder? whatever its called. in the team itself. basically he has a lot of power.

he said that he always wanted to work with fernando and lewis. and he couldn't do both. and aston had a better package than ferrari.

fernando looked positively evil during all the announcement pictures. and called the team "definitely the team of the future" and for those of you who don't know, fernando is positively evil. hes just been stuck in a shit box and we havent seen very much of him, but man does he know how to evilly slut it up. so that will be fun to see.

by contrast, people said that lance was not excited enough. and well. lance 1. has resting bitch face and 2. never really looks excited about anything. also he lives in a world where take your child to work day somehow became his job. (his dad owns the team).

lewis hamilton was asked what he thought about adrian not going to ferrari, and here's what he had to say:

"i feel like, while I have mentioned before that it would be an honor to work with adrian, i have been privileged to work with two championship winning teams that didnt have adrian."

mclaren announced pato o ward would do FP1 in mexico. who is pato o ward? hes one of mclaren’s indycar drivers and one of the f1 reserve drivers. he is incredibly charming and definitely runs his own social media as seen here:

mclaren Also claim they figured out who their number 2 driver is and they claim its oscar. i say they claim because the statements were a lot more complex than that. essentially, according to andrea stella, the priority is to the team first, then lando and then oscar. so they didn't outright say that oscar is the number 2 driver and i am willing to bet real money that this is because mr mark webber, oscars manager, has something in oscars contract that prevents him from being a number 2 driver. this is of course because mark webber was one of the most infamous number 2 drivers in f1 history to none other than menace war criminal sebastian vettel, who in their time as teammates, managed to win 4 back to back world champions. or, top to bottom if you're mrs darbus from high school musical.

lando was asked about this and he said that yes, the team does support him. though he would not expect oscar to give up a win for him and that it is more complex behind the scenes. i suppose we will see if there are any papaya rules coming out this weekend….

and oscar said "i think the main point is its not purely just going to be me pulling over for lando every single race, because thats how none of us, including lando, wont want to go racing, if we feel that someone has done a much better job on a weekend, whichever way it is, we want that person to be rewarded."

max verstappen commented on the mclaren situation as well. which was funny mostly because red bull has one of the most defined number 1 and number 2 drivers of any team. he said "you look at it form oscar's perspective, he is closer to lando than lando to me. they have to deal with that."

and allow me to put on a tin foil hat as we are about to talk about the future of the red bull seat. because all i have to offer here is a baseball hat and a red bull can.

a long time ago we talked about the red bull cans. the ones that red bull makes to promote f1. at the end of last season red bull put max and checo on the red bull can. this season at the start it was just max on the red bull can. well. now checo has reappeared on the cans too. and i will tell you what i think this means. it means that checo is not getting swapped this season, which was a possibility for awhile.

but! there is more!

daniel ricciardo made an instagram post this week. and it was very interesting. but most interestingly he was wearing a red bull hat.

which he does occasionally, no big deal really. he did race for the for several years, he technically does currently. BUT then he showed up TO THE PADDOCK wearing the red bull hat.

which is Big Interesting. usually you show up in a statement outfit or wearing the team kit. and daniel is not a red bull racing driver. he is a visa cashapp racing bulls driver. they might be owned by red bull but they are Not the same team. so why the red bull hat. in the paddock. well, the rumor is that hes taking checos seat for 2025. and the rumor is that this will be announced before mexico. so checo can have a proper send off.

and with that. the baku lore.

theres a lot that has happened at baku. as i said its a street circuit. and i think its the fastest street circuit. but over the years theres been some notable events.

such as the great kimi raikkonen radio for gloves and steering wheel:

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they gave mini kimi this week gloves and steering wheel in honor of that

the max and daniel crash in 2018 when they were running p1 and p2 respectfully

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and of course. how could we forget. charles’s infamous “i am stupid” radio.

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speaking of charles, he crashed again in fp1. not quite in the same spot, but nearly. he took a picture with the marshalls.

then in fp2 he rage quit, basically saying that the car sucks.

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but he was back and better than ever in practice three because he managed to top the time charts. welcome back fuck ass ferrari.

some other teams definitely experienced the lows but not really the highs of baku during practice. like lance stroll who came on the radio to say “this is not a car” (good thing they have adrian newey now, right?

franco colapinto also cut his ear before practice on the neck strengthener stretcher thing that they all use and the team wanted to give him stitches but he was like no no no i need to be in the car in about 5 minutes im not doing that. so he jammed on his helmet and jumped in the car. he also crashed and when he went to the medical center he took off his helmet and there was blood everywhere and they were like no no no you cannot race! and he was like no! this is not from the crash! and then explained it and they let him do qualifying.

also im pretty sure? ollie bearman crashed? in practice? but frankly i don't have time to google it so whos to say.

but alas. qualifying.

i know i know this is kind of a shitty update. i promise ill go all out in singapore. i PROMISE.

so as i said. its a street circuit. high speed. 90 degree corners. and also windy as hell. we also had the dynamic duo of karun and harry in the commentary box.

max led the first practice, george led the second and i think charles led the third. or some order like that.

slipstream here is almost essential (slipstream: going behind another car to reduce the wind drag so you can go faster)

charles has the last three pole positions (first in qualifying) here in baku, but he has never won. by comparison, red bull have never had pole here but they have won.

and franco has never been to baku before.

i think that's all the exposition that we need here.

q1 started with max complaining about his car. “the car is jumping around like crazy on the rear axle” he said. despite this he was sitting in p3.

the mid field battle though….the mid field battle was heating the hell up. mostly because none other than franco colapinto, who if you will remember, has never been to baku before, had split the two ferraris. he was in third for the moment, .109 seconds behind carlos sainz and .159 seconds ahead of charles leclerc. we still had a lot of qualifying left to go, so this was probably not going to stay, but it was still insane. he was pushing insanely hard, nearly kissing the walls. clearly he had learned from his crash in practice.

the two mclarens waited until the very end of q1 to do their final flying push lap, and oscar made it through, but tragedy struck for lando.

lando was in the middle of his last flying lap, time was ticking down, and there was a Very Brief yellow flag on the track. now, according to rules, you cannot complete your flying lap if there is a yellow flag. so lando pitted and was stuck down in 17th and out of qualifying. this would be the first time that he was out in q1 since vegas last year (which if i remember correctly was also not his fault)

now though, of course nothing is ever that cut and dry. people thought that there had been a mis showing of a flag. yellow flag means that a car is stopped on track, white flag means that a car is going slowly on the track. and people thought that there had been a yellow flag shown when it was actually supposed to be a white flag (if there had been a white flag then lando would have been able to keep doing his flying lap) lando himself said that he had no idea what people were talking about because there is a light on the steering wheel that lights up when flags are called and he had a big yellow light. so it was clearly a yellow flag.

if you're concerned about lando being able to pull it out of the bag, id like to point you in the direction of the mexican gp last year where lando qualified 17th and finished 5th. on a track that was hard to overtake on. he can be absolutely insane when he wants to be. worry not gentle reader.

in any case. also out in q1 was daniel ricciardo, valtteri bottas, zhou guanyu and esteban ocon.

and notably, williams, who was on fucking fire this weekend as we already saw, finished q1 with alex albon in second (ahead of oscar) and franco colapinto in 8th. pierre gasly had somehow managed to also get into 4th. and nico hulkenberg was in 7th with ollie bearman in 13th. i told you the mid field battle was heating the hell up.

q2. everyone zoomed straight out of the gate. they didn't want to get lando norris’d. but, speaking of that, if lando managed to get no points in the race and charles managed to win, charles would overtake lando in the drivers championship. mark webber himself told this to charles, who was absolutely baffled.

in any case, charles was kinda suffering right now and that was because he was not getting slipstream from carlos to make his lap faster. meanwhile, carlos seemed to be actively trying to give charles the slipstream because he came on radio to say “he keeps missing the tow”

and amazingly, franco colapinto was 4 tenths AHEAD of alex albon. alex albon who had not been unqualified by his teammate once since the start of 2023. ex red bull driver alex albon. that alex albon.

max topped the times in q2, followed immediately by charles. insanely, fernando alonso managed to drag the aston martin to fifth. and franco was right behind him in 6th. by comparison alex albon was in 10th.

and from q2 we lost ollie bearman, yuki tsunoda (who has never qualified lower than 8th in baku), pierre gasly, nico hulkenberg and lance stroll. so yes, ollie bearman managed to outqualify nico hulkenberg. this is ollies second ever f1 race.

steaming on forward to q3.

we had, for review, in q3 the following:

both ferraris, both red bulls, both mercedes, both WILLIAMS (has not happened since vegas 2023), plus fernando alonso and oscar piastri.

right out the gate it was wild.

“red bull! theyve re found their mojo! or have they!” karun said. red bull were in 5th and 6th and not entirely sucking for the moment.

everyone did one flyer and then came out at the end for a second flyer.

here were the standings:

charles, carlos, oscar, george, checo, max, lewis, alex, franco, fernando

and everyone was making it to the line and all was going smooth until-

wait a second what is that

could it be! alex albon! with the air box fan still on his car! surely not!!!

oh but it was! and harry and karun were like oh wow so unfortunate for williams tisk tisk

meanwhile ted jumped on the radio to Loudly announce to everyone that this was insane and if i have time here i will put the rant he ranted cause it was Fantastic.

and what do you know i have time

so we had 3 minutes left qualifying and everyone was pulling out of the pits for their last flyer when oscar hopped on the radio to say

"the williams still has the air box fan in"

"oh what an error! disaster for williams!" karun and harry said. they speculated if the marshalls could get it or if the session needed to be red flagged. but alex threw the fan off the car.

and then they asked "ted have you ever seen that before?" and ted did not hold back:

"ITS A MASSIVE YELLOW FAN HOW COULD YOU MISS IT???!!! HOW COULD THE MECHANICS MISS IT???? I CANT BELIVE THEY WOULD MAKE SUCH A MISTAKE DOWN AT WILLIAMS! SUCH AN EXPERIENCED BUNCH OF GUYS AND GIRLS! WHAT IS GOING ON AT WILLIAMS OPERATIONALLY? HOW COULD YOU SEND A CAR OUT LIKE THAT?"

alex, obviously, got fined for an unsafe release 5k euros. he also had to throw the fan off to the side and got slightly covered in dry ice. he did not get to the a second flying lap.

franco did tho!

and here were out qualifying results:

p1: charles p2: oscar p3: carlos p4: checo p5: george p6: max p7: lewis p8: fernando p9: franco p10: alex p11: ollie p12: yuki p13: pierre p14: nico p15: lance p16: daniel p17: lando p18: valtteri p19: zhou p20: esteban

oh ho ho but we werent done yet. because pierre gasly got disqualified from qualifying. for failing fuel flow regulations. and lewis was going to have to start from the pit lane for changing his power unit.

everyone, and by everyone i mean oscar max and checo, pretty much said that charles was going to get pole no matter what, they knew this coming in and the best they were trying for was second

onto the race.

notably, this is considered a checo track. this was one of the three races that max did not win last year. because checo won it. its a track that he does well on, evidenced by the fact that he qualified above max in qualifying. so people were expecting big things from him.

and so, we head into lap 1.

charles managed to hang onto the lead. checo passed carlos straight out of the gate for third and max managed to pass george to take fifth. lando had managed to get ahead of nico and up into 13th. notably, franco held onto 8th and ollie was able to hold onto tenth.

someone who was not doing well was lance stroll, who came on the radio saying that he had a puncture. this was from contact with yuki. lance had to pit for fresh tires and was pretty immediately thrown to the back of the grid.

by lap 2 lando had managed to get past daniel and was in 12th, he was trying to get past yuki next, which he managed by lap 3. yuki also lost a spot to nico.

also slaying in the mclaren was oscar, who took fastest lap. then charles took fastest lap.

and lewis hamilton, who had started from the pit lane, was up to 16th. already. somehow. though he was displeased with the tires, sayig that “this tire is pretty bad” over the radio.

yuki meanwhile was clearly having a problem because he had started going very very slowly. thought the pit wall said that he had no problems. this would later turn out to be false but we will indulge them for the time being.

franco was STILL ahead of alex albon on lap 6. STILL.

lando on lap 8 managed to push his way into points positions, overtaking ollie bearman for 10th. though this was where things were about to slow down for him because in front of him were alex, franco and fernando, who were all very close together and would be hard to get past.

george was back in bad luck hell as a plastic bag entered his airbox. will he ever catch a break.

on lap 11 nico hulkenberg finally caught up with ollie bearman and passed him for 11th.

and max’s car was not working. to potentially no one’s surprise. “i have zero bite in the car” he said. and this was probably true because checo was a whole 6.5 seconds ahead of him. insane gap.

several pit stops later that i will not detail out because we simply do not have the time, alex albon ended up in 4th and lando ended up in fifth. and oscar was about to get undercut by checo.

“mojo seems to be back for checo perez” harry said, correctly.

mojo was back for him indeed. and now he was right behind lando.

and if you will recall, according to mclaren themselves, priority at mclaren is the team first, then oscar, then lando. but oscar was ahead of lando. so what did mclaren do?

they asked lando do hold up perez, but not compromise his own race.

remever a long time ago when i said mclaren wouldn't have any internal drama this season? man how i was wrong.

lando managed to hold up perez for around a lap or two before he got past. this was crucial because this was during when oscar was in the pits.

thanks to lando and the power of the papaya rules teamwork, oscar ended up coming out in 4th, only .706s ahead of checo.

mclaren are working together everyone! mclaren are working together!

meanwhile, turns out that yuki did indeed have problems because he retired on lap 17 with a hole in his sidepod from the contact with lance on lap 1. this was now two races in a row where he had had to retire for reasons out of his control.

several more people pitted. and eventually charles was back out in front, oscar was in p2. until he wasn't. no, he didn't dnf. he overtook charles! he was in p1! he popped out of nowhere! nowhere being 2 car lengths back and just flooring it to spring around charles like a little silly slinky! karun called it a “good, fair and robust defense,” which sounds like its descibing notes in wine. but this was not wine. this was the baku gp. and we were only half done.

ollie bearman was defending against lewis hamilton, holding on tightly to 14th place.

charles was still behind oscar and he could not get past, despite the fact that he was still very much in spitting distance. “they are pushing like crazy or they have more grip than us” he said.

carlos got past both lando and alex albon and was up into 4th

this brought max up behind lando. max was on 11 lap old tires and lando was on 24 lap old tires. but lando still defended like hell and managed to hold onto sixth. max was 0.632 seconds behind lando on lap 25 when he said that “my brakes are not working.” this was hardly a surprise. max has hated the car since china.

also experiencing technical difficulties was sir lewis hamilton. he was stuck down in 14th and was first told to do “everything you can do to get the surface temp down” of the tires. he said “im trying” then several laps later on lap 29 he came on the radio to say “are you seeing how i have to drive this thing?” “yes,” bono, his engineer said. “quite effective though.”

max was still half a second behind lando. mclaren faked a pit stop call over the radio to get max to pit. he did not.

but, george russell did manage to pass him. which was “not good for max’s world champion aspirations.”

this was also when ted very bafflingly said that “if i had a sofa in the pit lane i would be jumping up and down on it” im not sure what that was in response to.

meanwhile, ollie was still holding off sir lewis hamilton. and charles was trying to get oscar to pit again by lying over the radio. it was not working.

lando did a pit stop finally and came out a whole 15 second behind max. he was hoping to catch max by the end of the race. but it might be tight. lets go last lap lando.

“lando, imagine andrea on your shoulder saying ‘zero wheel spin’ in every exit,” lando’s race engineer said. if you're confused, everyone else was too.

10 laps to go and here were the order of affairs:

oscar

+.449s charles +1.865s checo +2.989s carlos +16.530s george +1.909s max +11.535s lando +9.715s fernando +2.589s alex +2.451s nico +4.667s franco +1.590s lewis +1.261s ollie +1.791s pierre +9.205s daniel +23.919s esteban +.789s lance +3.862s valtteri +3.631s guanyu

lando was determined. he took fastest lap on lap 43 and was 8.8s behind max

at this point, the leaders were starting to lap the cars in the back. “the back markers are starting to come up,” checo’s engineer said to him. “its going to get messy.”

“hold onto your hats and if you don't have one go get one and hold onto it” harry said. harry would turn out to be correct.

we had the top 3 all running very close to eachother, that was oscar, charles and checo and “welcome to the party carlos sainz!” who was now 1.2 seconds behind checo in the four way battle for the lead.

definitely not leading was lance stroll, who retired on lap 47 with a brake problem.

oscar managed to pull ahead of charles by 1.5 seconds, finally knocking him out of DRS range. so now it was a three way battle for second. and charles had “no rear tires. no rear tires at all.”

and, just like i said he would, lando managed to pass max on lap 49. he was closing the gap slowly in the championship.

“verstappen’s day goes from bad to worse,” harry said. because lando still had fastest lap, so he would score 3 more points than max. which is important if lando wants to beat max in the championship (though i think hes still like 60 points behind)

meanwhile! franco managed to pass nico hulkenberg for 10th! he was in the points!!!! at his second race!!!

but this was short lived because there was a crash! a big smackeroo! between carlos and checo!! checo was mad, carlos didn't know what happened.

what happened was that carlos was trying to pass checo but checo did not move over. it was deemed an equal fault accident. both of them were utterly confused at what happened and apparently spent 20 minutes in the medical center being utterly lost and aparently saying that sometimes this sport sucks. and! contrary to what several people said! checo did not bang on carlos’s helmet after the crash.

the crash actually caused chef's dad to have a heart attack. he is stable now.

and well. this clip of george from the post qualifying interviews definitely didnt age well:

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but! since we were a matter of a few laps from the end, this meant that the rest of the race was finished under a virtual safety car.

which meant

OSCAR PIASTRI WINS THE AZERBAIJAN GP

and george inherited p3!

and on his own merit too! no safety cars, no team orders, no weird shit!

“yes!” he whispered over the radio.

he almost fell getting out of the car, then gave us all the “one moment” hand gesture before properly celebrating.

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he also got driver of the day!

(this was marginally better than george russell, who said over the radio “i cant get any rubber (to pick up on his tires) all im getting is leaves”)

gunther steiner also hosted the post race interviews. which was interesting.

george said that the most difficult part of the race was “driving full gas into a wall of carbon fiber on the penultimate lap…the vsc should have come out sooner”

charles bashed ferrari because they didn't do any high fuel runs in practice.

oscar was entirely pleased. “i managed to overtake and hold onto it for the next 35 laps..one of the better races of my career.” and honestly, oscar winning a race straight after mclaren basically announcing that he was their number 2 driver is nothing short of hilarious.

and! mclaren was now leading the constructors championship by 20 points! for the first time in ten years!!!!

the top three had a moment outside of the car that was filled with baffled:

and oscar's engineer tom got to stand on the podium with him. he usually takes a selfie with oscar after each race he podiums at, but he was too excited to so george took this picture for them

(george also aparently demomished oscar in a game of uno on the plane, immediately humbling him)

george also shielded himself from the champagne on the podium

the cooldown room reacted to the crash in a very straight forward manner:

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and very quickly cause its midnight and the singapore gp starts in 8 hours, the post race, speed ran:

-mark webber told off laura winter for thinking that oscar didn't have good tire management

-alex albon was “super happy, that's a lot of points for us” (williams finished in 7th and 8th). he cut his own interview short when ollie bearman arrived, saying “I can go, im happy to go” and then waving comically.

-williams was so pleased with this result they blasted everyone with champagne. and they overtook alpine in the constructors championship! this was also their best race finish all season

-(and a quick note, if youre going to really blame logan for being that shit of a driver here, please remember that the car he was driving was several rounds of upgrades behind alex's pretty much the entire time he was driving it)

-ollie became the first driver to ever score points in his first two races for two different constructors because the double dnf pushed him up to 10th place. he said that there was not much difference between the haas and the ferrari, the ferrari was just red

-franco continued to charm everyone and flirt with the reporters.

-they interviewed george and lewis and the camera had to be adjusted for george's height. it was comical and resulted in my favorite edit so far of the season (sound on)

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-lando looked pleased and happy for once. he said about holding off checo that “i didn't hold him up i just had to cool my tires a little.” he was delighted to be leading the constructors for the first time in ten years and he defended alex albon saying “i struggled to get past alex for a while, which is common, alex doesnt make mistakes.” he also ratted on max for going to fast during the VSC and said “i didn't complain, facts were stated.” and to sum it all up he said that “im executing things well, i’m very quick…i’m not going to be the happiest guy, but i am never the happiest guy….car is performing well everywhere…some red cars behind us seem to be our biggest competitors right now”

-by comparison george insulted all of pirelli. the tire people. “pretty infuriating that it (the pace) changes this so much….its black magic, people who make the tires don't understand the tires…..for 20 laps we had a car not worthy of points and for 20 laps we had a car fighting for victory and the only difference is the tires.”

-lewis was notably upset after the race and walked through the paddock with his helmet on, not wanting to talk to anyone. but he did talk to franco and ollie and congratulate them on a job well done defending against him and racing against him. franco even fangirled over this on his instagram.

-charles was clearly upset with ferrari. he was so upset he posted a thirst trap.

-and oscar. oscar was very happy this afternoon. and his mom was there! she doesnt usually come cause it scares her, but nicole was there today!

-mclaren celebrated with a hell of a lot of champagne. both oscar’s wina and lando’s insane recovery, and the fact that they were leading the championship. red bull have been dethroned, at least for now.

-there was so much champagne that lando took off his socks to spray it. all seems well at mclaren.

-at least one thing is for sure, oscar had a better time here this weekend than last year when he got food poisoning and only ate four pieces of toast

and with that. we head into singapore. quite literally as it is starting in a few hours. again, i apologixe about this post. its a little sad, but the next one will be better. pinkly promise.

see you all soon!!!

#not a tag #from saph #saph explains silly season 2024 #this will be at least 2 maybe three more parts aa #Instagram

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