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dear-ao3 · 24 days ago

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welcome back to the final slam dunk of f1 2024: the last triple header. vegas. qatar. abu dhabi. we have two world championships still up for grabs, as well as the eternal question of the red bull second seat and the last remaining vcarb seat. we’ve seen a lot this season already, but can it still get crazier?

this is a good question to keep in mind as we enter las vegas. round 22. can max verstappen secure his 4th world title here or will mclaren finally get their shit together? can ferrari snatch the constructors title away from mclaren? will williams have two cars that work? will lewis hamilton finish out his last three races at mercedes? or is everyone going to be sleep deprived and cold and forced to be second hand high at a track that smells aggressively like *checks notes* weed?

fortunately, we’re about to find out. today is december 1, 2024 and strap yourselves in everyone as we enter the las vegas strip. because i can assure you that in this case, what happens in vegas will not stay in vegas.

but before we can ge to vegas, we gotta get through the off week. or weeks. which were really, quite packed with a whole lot of shenanigans.

like the brand spanking new gpda instagram.

for those of you who need a refresher, the gpda is the grand prix drivers association, aka the f1 drivers union. george russell is the current director and all current drivers are members of the union (though you do not have to be a member to be an f1 driver)

why do a bunch of millionaires need a union? to negotiate safety terms and regulations because all of the regulations are decided by people who are Not Them and they raise issues to the fia and the higher ups regarding things theyre concerned about or things that they think need revamping. you know, because there is a pretty decent risk of death and/or serious injury in this sport that makes it slightly different than some other sports.

in any case, they made a brand new instagram account. and followed all of the current drivers plus kimi antonelli, ollie bearman, sebastian vettel, and their two lawyers. apparently george does not follow the instagram. which some people thought meant that there was a coup happening in the gpda. but no, its probably because the account is linked through george’s own account and you cant follow your account. in any case they released this statement

and look, yes it was definitely put through a legal writing team, but there is a high chance that george wrote the starts of it himself.

this also convinced several people online that george was not a tory. id like to take this moment to point out that while we do not for sure know george’s political views, we can infer that he is likely not a tory because 1. his family are quite literally farmers 2. he wore a poppy pin in the paddock in brazil which is something that specifically really pisses off right wing brits (aparently) and 3. quite literally also runs the gpda, which is a union. and i personally don't know a whole lot about british politics so sorry if im butchering this here but i don't think that the tories are particularly pro union.

also, george has been putting in the work with the gpda for years. in saudi arabia 2022 specifically, sebastian (who was the other gpda director at the time) was sick so george was the only director present and attended meetings with the fia and f1 and the drivers to assure their safety cause there was a non zero chance that the track could be a target for a missile. the meetings went incredibly late but he still made sure everyone was heard and then also presented all of that to the fia. hes also advocated for the cars to be raised to combat porpoising, questioned the flag and safety car process, and generally rightfully and respectfully has questioned f1 and the fia’s decision making. so this is really not his first rodeo and it likely wont be his last.

in any case, the gpda dropped their statement. and the racing world waited for a response. though it didn't seem like anything would come of it any time soon.

why? well as some of you may in fact know, the united states had a rather…..tumultuous election in the time between thee brazilian grand prix and the las vegas grand prix. in case you are somehow unaware, our previous president, the one that was between obama and biden, got reelected. if you do not know who was president between obama and biden i urge you to google it for yourself, i will not be getting political of that nature on this post. as you might remember, formula 1 has a Don't Get Political policy (which we know was stemmed from some stupid, definitely racist/homophobic means and plenty of the drivers don't really agree with it) which means that drivers are not allowed to make overly political statements or comments without expressed permission. so. it was rather interesting to see both danica patrick (the commentator who thinks that women should not be in motorsport despite herself being a woman who was in motorsport, and jenson button’s arch nemesis) and mohammed ben suliyam (the fia president) both expressing their excitement in the results of the united states presidential election. surely, these people should be held to the same standards as the drivers are as they are also heavily involved in the sport and also, to an extent, in the public facing side of f1? these two events right next to eachother really exemplified the awful duality of this sport.

but in the meantime, stake announced that zhou and valtteri would not be getting re signed with the team for 2025. which was something that we already kinda knew, but now was known for certain.

and stake, unlike some other teams this year, announced it very respectfully in a way that honored both of the drivers and the time that they had been with the team.

and ruth buscombe, the ex strategist at alpha romeo (which was stake’s previous name) posted this lovely comment about her time working with the two of them while she was with the team:

“I was once told that drivers are like light bulbs you screw them in and out of a car and they aren't really part of the team so don't get attached. Over a decade later I can categorically say they couldn't have been more wrong. All of us, especially Strategists have our day to day lives, our careers and ultimately fate entwined with the two humans driving our cars. They trust us, they protect us, we trust them, we protect them: we are a team and they become more than colleagues, they become our friends. It was an honour and a privilege to call strategy for @valtteribottas and @zhouguanyu24 at Alfa. Thank you for every undercut, every overcut, every stay out, every box, every mistake you forgave, every team order you followed without questioning, every second of race time you cost Aston in that final race, every point you earned (or took away with a fastest lap or that count back position in Imola that ultimately counted for that P6). This is the end of an era but I know it's not the end of either of your tours. We never give up. As VB said in our first ever race briefing (and we were all shocked including VB at how profound it came out) Do not set a limit on what you can achieve."

so what are the two of them doing next year? well no one is quite sure. theres rumors circulating that zhou is going to sign with ferrari as a reserve driver and theres even heavier rumors circulating that valtteri has signed with mercedes as a reserve driver. though, im not sure how true those rumors are because i could not find that mercedes themselves have said anything about it.

valtteri also has a seemingly never ending series going on his instagram entitled “what’s next?” and its a bunch of videos of him being asked what's next and then doing different things. he ended up releasing merch that says “what’s next” on it and a portion of the proceeds are going to a charity that helps people dealing with sudden job loss. which is definitely his own humor peeking though at his lack of contract for next year

in any case, with the two of them gone, did that mean stake finally announced their other driver?

yes they did. silly season isnt over yet folks.

his name is gabriel bortoleto, hes a brazilian f2 driver and hes currently leading the f2 championship. so why haven’t you heard about him before?

well, there were a lot of people up for the stake seat. like everyone and also their mother and even their mother’s mother.

so who is he?

well. he’s managed by fernando alsono’s management company, is about to win f2 in his rookie year and also won f3 in his rookie year, he looks up to senna and max for their aggression as drivers. he was also a mclaren academy driver, but mclaren released him (meaning that they would not be trying to keep him as a driver or a reserve driver so that he could get a proper seat) . hes definitely not a nobody. and as to why stake signed him over franco, like many people were wondering, i have no idea. driver contracts are sticky and tricky. its possible that this has been being negotiated for awhile, or maybe williams didn't want to release franco from their program.

is that the end of the silly season rumors tho?

oh buddy, you really thought.

so as i mentioned, franco colapinto. as we know, he was just here for the back end of this season because williams already had previously confirmed their line up for next year prior to his arrival and that line up is, as we know, one alexander albon and one carlos sainz.

and as we also know, james vowels has said that franco deserves a seat next year, at any team, doesnt care if franco is technically competing against him, which makes it sound like williams are willing to release franco from their driver development program. problem is, there is exactly one seat left (officially) and it is at vcarb. and red bull are their own completely separate basket case.

and if you've really been paying attention you would know that red bull are currently involved in the eternal debate of Do We Keep Checo For Next Year. technically he does have a contract. but technically we all also know that this means nothing (as especially evidenced by yuki who said earlier this year that he didn't really even bother to read his new contract because he knows it kinda means nothing).

so as a refresher. max has a contract at red bull through 2028. though he has hinted very unsubtly that hes going to see how the regulation changes go in 2026 and if he hates them he might dip. checo technically has a contract at red bull for 2025 (unsure if it extends beyond that), yuki has a contract at racing bulls for 2025 (again, unsure if it extends beyond that, and also i am on a train and google is not really working too well). liam lawson has a contract at racing bulls through the end of 2024 because he replaced daniel ricciardo.

(also, quick interludular tangent on daniel, apparently it came out that he himself was the one who wanted to leave after singapore this year and also asked for the team not to announce anything until after the weekend had ended. this was because he had technically already had a big send off in abu dhabi at the end of 2022 at mclaren when he was sort of retiring and apparently didn't really see the point in doing the whole thing again and wanted to leave on his own terms:

“Red Bull CEO Peter Bayer revealed Daniel Ricciardo requested his F1 exit not be disclosed during the Singapore Grand Prix, even after his Q1 elimination. Ricciardo, initially considered to replace Sergio Perez at Red Bull post-summer, formally exited after the Singapore race, with the news announced the following Friday despite being widely speculated. Bayer told Auto Motor und Sport, ‘We had agreed with Daniel that we would not communicate it. We knew we'd seem outdated as a team, but it was his wish. He believed he'd perform in qualifying and prove himself. I've never seen such mental strength in an athlete.’ Ricciardo's weekend unraveled with a Q1 exit at Marina Bay, which Bayer described as a ‘terrible moment.’ ‘You could hear on the radio his world had collapsed,’ Bayer said. ‘At 2 a.m. Saturday, we asked what to do next. He told us to let him race—he didn't want any nonsense.’ Bayer emphasized the team's support, saying, ‘If Daniel had stayed until Abu Dhabi, we'd have celebrated his farewell with fireworks and a grid photo, like [Kimi] Räikkönen. That's what everyone wanted.’”)

anyway, the running theory is that checo is not going to continue at red bull after this year, and is going to get replaced by Someone. who? well no one really knows. could be liam lawson. it doesnt seem like it would be yuki (even though by all accounts he is killing it this season) but now theres a new theory that it might be franco.

remember that franco himself came out and said that he does not have a contract for next year at the end of the mexican gp. apparently though his team Has been talking to people and horner Has been seen in the williams hospitality (under the guise of trying the coffee from their new sponsor, lost the link for that particular anecdote youll just have to Trust Me).

and Someone, and i really don't remember who it was, even posed recently that red bull should approach williams and say “hey, you happy with franco? if you want to keep him you should, give me sainz”

but, like everything else, this is all speculation. and we will likely not know anything until After the season has already finished. there is a meeting happening about the whole ordeal after abu dhabi (cause driver contracts are complicated, as we know) as confirmed by horner (though talks are definitely still going on)

so heres the situation as i can piece it together.

checo has a Lot of sponsors that bring money to the team (as we know, hes a huge deal in mexico, he has a whole lot of sponsors), and these sponsors have already been told that hes staying for the start of 2025 (supposedly). so they are prepared to keep paying red bull money. but if red bull kick him, then theyre out all that sponsor money, meaning that whoever the next driver who comes in is would need to have at least vaguely comparable sponsorship.

checo has said (or rather demanded) that if red bull cut ties with him for 2025, he wants 15.7 million pounds (roughly 20 million us dollars) to buy out his contract.

and williams, supposedly, reportedly, will want Another 15.7 million pounds (20 million us dollars) for franco because red bull would want him full time and not on loan. franco is, as we know, a very new driver to f1. and he would aparently be getting thrown directly into red bull, not vcarb. as three time world champion max verstappen’s teammate. max verstappen who is winning the championship in a shit box presently, just knocked the collective socks off of the whole world at the brazilian gp, won all but three races last year and who has caused the regulations to be changed Because of him on multiple occasions. that max verstappen. franco has less than ten f1 races under his belt.

and there is also the fact to consider that because franco is a relatively new driver, he does not have (probably) nearly as many sponsors as checo does. things like this are impossible to say because its all complicated and hush hush but its not hard to make the assumption that checo, who has been here for 14 years, has more sponsors worth more money than franco colapinto does.

franco’s manager apparently made a comment (which i am assuming was about the rumor ordeals of him having a seat next year) that was “listen carefully because i will only say this once. stop with your opinions, with your insults and stop telling us how to do our job…i need you all to shut up.”

there was another vague rumor circulating around that alpine want to replace jack doohan, who they have only just signed for 2025, with franco before he even makes it to the grid. this would not be the first time that alpine has had issues signing a driver (oscar piastri’s contract for 2023 anyone???) but even worse for the team. jack is set to be the first driver promoted to alpine f1 from their driver academy program in Years. (recently we had zhou get released to sign with sauber and then there was the oscar fiasco).

fortunately for everyone involved though, this turned out to just be a rumor, and jacks seat seems to be safe. how do we know this? alpine announced the number that jack is going to be racing under (7, because he has raced under it before and it was also kimi raikkonen’s number, who he looked up to)

mick though, who as we know is a mercedes reserve driver and also raced this year with alpine in the world endurance championship, posted this on his instagram, which was on a Plain Black Screen:

“Life doesn’t always go as planned, and setbacks can be tough to face. But every challenge is a chance to learn, grow, and come back even stronger. This is just a chapter, not the whole story. The journey continues, and I’m determined to rise above it. Thank you all for your support, it means the world.”

and there was some good speculation over what the hell it was about. some people speculated family, some speculated he broke up with his girlfriend, but even more thought that it might be related to silly season and his continued lack of a seat. he had yet to confirm anything with alpine wec either, so he might be out of a seat entirely. only time though would tell.

but moving on from silly season.

franco colapinto continued to be a pr menace and posted this on his instagram story. this of course being a photo of someone next to a card board cut out of him, holding it in less than pg ways, with the caption (translated from spanish) “stop groping me” (the picture was a screenshot from a video where a guy was pretending to give him head btw)

some days later, he posted this comment which says (again, translated from spanish) "tomorrow I have media training and this time is not a joke... y'all still have a few hours to save me" one can only wonder if the two incidents are related.

in a rather un pr menace way though, he did speak about the importance of therapy during an event, advocating for its importance, especially for athletes.

another wild pr move of the week came from checo. i think that i have mentioned this before but checo’s father is a politician. and he made some comments during the off week that were rather homophobic. the comment was, apparently, about ralf schumacher (who as we know came out as gay earlier this year) and was "I don't know if he's a man or a woman.” now im not entirely sure if this is all that was said (i ripped this off of an instagram comment, don't sue me okay i have seventeen whole pages of links that need to get put into this update alone, i did not want to google one more)

obviously, this is offensive. i should hope that you all don't need me to say that.

here’s what checo said in response though:

"First of all, I don't agree with any of his comments. I think he did a mistake in that regard. I don't share any of his views but at the same time I don't control what my father has to say, I can only control what I say.”

this is not exactly a surprise coming from checo, as we all remember that earlier this year he and max accepted an mtx couple goals award (while they were in mexico, though i think they had won it significantly earlier in the year) and max said, about them receiving the award:

"i think checo always wanted to win this one, since checo joined the team, it’s not about winning races or championships. it’s this one!" as well as that them winning "was not unexpected" and that he and checo "made it"

checo’s thoughts were a bit more succinct, but the sentiment was clear: "dreams do come true"

and speaking of max getting shipped with people. as you may or may not have deduced by now, max often gets shipped with charles leclerc. people get a little crazy about it (i don't mean this is a bad way, i admire all of you and i am very content watching from the side lines). theyre called lestappen.

and well, as you might also remember, max has an e racing team called team red line that he streams with sometimes. and he streamed with them during the off week.

well. one of the members of team red line, brought it up on stream. again i say, this was not a fan comment, this was one of the members bringing this up unprovoked.

"I've just seen a clip of when chadwick was by himself, talking to the chat. He goes: Do you think lestappen is real guys?”

"It's fake- it's fake, what are you talking about?"

and then in the background, max himself started laughing.

the lestappen girlies about lost their minds for a whole week. very funny.

(and before anyone brings up the ages old debate of people shouldn't read stuff about them, i offer you my ages old two cents: don't bring fandom shipping rpf etc stuff up to them unprovoked. but if they go looking for it themselves, well then that's on them.)

and this is unrelated, but rickard silken posted a lestappen edit.

charles seemed to be blissfully unaware of this moment, probably because he went to the gladiator 2 premier with his grilfriend alex. charles did his part as a diligent ferrari driver and wore a ferrari pin like he was a diplomat from a foreign country at a convention and proudly admitted on camera in an interview that he had only seen gladiator one a few days ago. he was described by someone on twitter commenting on the premier as “charles leclerc on way to Gladiator 2 premier in London.”

also present at said premier was carlos and his girlfriend rebecca. carlos was also mentioned by the same user on twitter. but they called him “a sports man, i think heading to Gladiator 2 premier in London.”

lewis was also at the premier. he slayed harder than both of them combined because he is sit lewis hamilton.

charles also wore some ugly pants.

yuki tsunoda moved to milan recently and lives near pierre, who he is besties with from their time in alpha tauri as teammates. they went and did karaoke together in celebration. and they sang their adele song together.

we also had signs of life from both daniel ricciardo and logan sargeant. logan was doing indycar testing (and also slaying, he was at the top of the time sheets) and daniel was at a bills game. they seem to be really enjoying their post f1 glow ups.

dorianne pin, the mercedes f1 academy driver, was on the kimmel show, and she absolutely slayed.

valtteri bottas is dressed as santa in finland on ads selling what appears to be some kind of alcohol

and formula one announced that all of the car liveries would be unveiled at the same time next year, for 2025, with all of the drivers in attendance, at the o2 area in a weird sort of concert like thing. and while this is obviously a terrible cash grab situation, it is inherently hilarious because like? clearly very few drivers will tolerate this (max as we know detestes weird pr) and like. idk. seems like it has the makings to be a hilarious shit show. which just about describes this sport in general.

oscar piastri did some pr with dogs. which was cute. but that also seems to be mclarens default go to when one of their drivers is Not Doing Well (as we have seen with daniel). so hm. interesting choice there mclaren.

also interesting choice was This Statement that andrea stella made in regards to the potential of lando winning the WDC. (remember, he needs to score 21 points every weekend now to beat max and max can win in vegas)

“In terms of the constructors’, it doesn’t change anything and that was always our priority. Even when there was a call to be made to support one driver over the other, it was always secondary to maximising the constructors’ championship. When it comes to the drivers’, for Lando there was never any particular pressure. To be honest, we were enjoying this quest. Sometimes from outside, it may come across like, 'Oh there was an error there', but I don’t think pressure was a significant factor at all. Now we must analyse the points – mathematically we are still in the championship. I think for Lando, for Oscar, we will go to the next races and try and win the races. The last two races should be good, for Vegas it might be more of a Ferrari track, we will see but all to play for and the constructors’ remains and has always been our priority.”

now this is insane and also wild and also begs the question that if this was never the priority then Why On Earth did they pull so many team rules and swaps on oscar? especially in brazil? does mclaren know what theyre doing? Like will buxton said at some point earlier this year, chances to win the world driver championship don’t just pop up every year. so this seems like it could be a half assed cover up by the team over the fact that now it’s Unlikely that lando is going to win (it was unlikely in the first place, but now it’s less likely)

also who remembers their whole “whatever it takes” rebranding from the beginning of the season? not to inflict my own opinion here but, lol.

but enough about mclaren. you might be wondering hey! what happened with the gpda post? did anything come of it???

well. maybe.

in the time between when the gpda posted it and the start of the vegas race week, three people (well! at least i think it was three! theres been a lot happening and its been hard to keep track!) were fired/let go conveniently. these three confirmed people were:

the race director

the liberty media ceo (they presently own f1)

and the compliance officer

which is kind of a lot of important higher ups.

(note: there might have been other people, everyones titles are pretty similar sounding and there were people saying that the f1 ceo was stepping down but as far as i can tell he seems to be staying, more people might have left but i cant really find anything)

and people speculated that the gpda statement might have something to do with it.

and lastly. and perhaps most importantly, max has a new cat.

so now. every time we’ve been to the us so far this year, shenanigans have unfolded. in miami we had lando win his first race. in texas we had a lovely myriad of things including:

oscar saying that “maybe we should adopt nascar rules and sort it out on track or in the pits, but…well actually no. some people have tried that got community service.”

franco saying about alpine and specifically esteban ocon: “the faster lap was taken by the french, why do they change tires bro? we need to save the planet”

max, upon being asked if he sympathizes with mclaren in a press conference: “no, i don’t. i mean they complain about a lot lately anyway. it’s very clear in the rules. outside the white lines you cannot pass.”

and also the liam lawson and fernando alonso beef: “he said he would screw me and i guess he kept his word.”

and this also gets compounded ontop of the shenanigans from the last time we were racing in vegas (last year) for the first time since i believe the 80s:

first they had these very weird hunger games esque entrances that pretty much no one wanted to be a part of, then carlos hit a manhole cover in practice that wasn't secured well and ripped a hole in the bottom of his car nearly paralyzing him. this delayed the second practice session by approximately 6 hours and i think they ended up doing it at some ungodly hour like 4 in the morning, fans got kicked out way before then and max all but condoned them rioting about it. lando binned it into the wall at the beginning of the race in a pretty horrific accident, there were all kinds of problems with the tires not heating up and they initially thought that it might be too cold to race because the cars do not perform well in the cold. charles did a very giggly, very sleep deprived interview with max and then he also had the overtake of the year on the last lap, overtaking checo for second place and he only came two seconds behind max (which was insane considering max was winning races by upwards of 20 seconds that year). red bull had these elvis inspired race suits and max sang viva las vegas over the radio after he won. and instead of a cool down room there was a cool down rolls royce. which was checo aggressively third wheeling max and charles.

so. all of this to say. it was going to be a bonkers weekend for suresies.

and that it was.

we started strong with yuki getting held up at customs. despite the fact that he has raced in f1 twice this year already, customs held him up for several hours saying that he had the wrong visa. he was wearing pajamas and they did not believe that he was a formula 1 driver or allow him to call his team or his friends that he had traveled with. eventually he did get into the country, but it was still weird and also bad

this did not stop yuki from showing up to the paddock in an absolute slay of an outfit though.

and lewis, naturally, was also slaying

as was jenson button, the 2009 f1 world champion, current full time WEC driver, part time sky sports commentator, and (perhaps ex perhaps not) 365 party girl, who was in town to comment on the race.

max verstappen got a present for his cat from a fan, and he revealed that the cats name is donatello. but kellys daughter penelope calls him doughnut because its easier for her to say.

there was a statistic going around that pierre has not caused any damage himself to his car this entire season (a statistic that he would like to keep through the last three race weekends)

it was also cold in the paddock (at least by f1 standards, cause most of the places that they go are pretty warm and/or its during the summer) so to be in vegas in 50 F degree weather was positively freezing for them. and so the jackets got broken out. especially at mercedes, where george toto and kimi all showed up in matching puff jackets and there was a really hilarious photo of liam lawson sitting under a blanket and next to a heater in an interview that i seem to have lost the link to. and it was so cold that fernando alonso was wearing four separate layers, which is proudly showed off to everyone on a fan stage

it was revealed that carlos’s trainer, pierluigi, is going with him to williams next year. in case you are wondering, sometimes the trainers are contracted by the teams, sometimes theyre contracted by the drivers (meaning that they either work for the team entity or the driver entity and usually with the team entity theyre hired out via a company etc etc etc) which means that either carlos’s trainer is contracted through his own team 55 team and is by default going with carlos OR he was contracted by ferrari and bought out the contract or left to follow carlos. none of that matters, but its important to me that you know that.

and one of the casinos did a shoey bar again, like they did last year, as a riff off of daniel ricciardo’s signature podium move despite the fact that daniel wasn't there this year. and by half way through the first day they were more than halfway sold out.

charles also got id’d at a casino

and carlos and charles did… well they did things. perhaps the sleep deprivation was getting to them because i don't quite know how else to explain this. they posted a be real of the two of them googling if carlos was the spanish version of the name charles (it is)

and a fan posted a video of the behind the scenes of this video being like what the hell are these two doing

charles almost seductively fixed carlos’s hair

they also responded to some social media comments ? memes ? about the carlos sainz face card not declining and leo and their special edition stuff with the “desert effect” on it

and this now takes us into the race suits. because we had quite a few special liveries and suits for vegas. were they ugly? idk ill let you decide that one.

first we had stake. they went for some green flames.

their car was also a slightly different green than the usual green to match the suit green. and it went the freshly entirely pink alpine (straight out of force india practically because bwt used to be their title sponsor and the car essentially looked exactly like that lol)

and stake made, once again, a funny little meme about it

racing bulls also had a livery. and some race suits. and they looked a lot like sprite cans

and then we had ferrari. they were supposed to look like sand blasted race suits because desert is sandy. it. well. it didn't really look too much like that. it kinda looked like they accidentally put too much bleach in the wash or maybe walked through a cloud of flour. please remember that ferrari has their own fashion brand before you look at them. though, the video of carlos and charles explaining them was a true gem

instagram

and at least charles got to wear some fun shoes that said on them "leo is the best"

esteban ocon had a fun helmet, it was captain america (last year he had deadpool) and he was very excited about it. marvel even commented “on your left” on the post.

lando got asked about how thoughts on the car launch event. as one could have perhaps predicted, he was less than pleased about it:

“if i get told to be there i guess i’ll be there. i might see where max is going on holiday and join him, we might end up having the same illness or something!”

sky sports had rainbow mics this weekend and it pissed of danica patrick visibly

lance stroll agreed with fernando alonso that “the less corners [on a track] the better”

george russell said that he was excited to have kimi as a teammate now that kimi would no longer be able to crash his car, though he thought it would be weird being the oldest on the team. when he asked how lewis does not have any gray hair yet (aparently george does) lewis said, as he has before “black don't crack”

and franco told a fan in a very sweet interaction that they would go far and be a much better driver than he is

he also said that “We [williams] should take what’s left of the 2024 budget and bet it all on black in Vegas. If we win, we can cover the Brazil damages, no problem!”

i almost didn't want to waste space on this, but apparently christian horner gave some weird interview about how “accusations ruin mens lives” (cause remember earlier this year when he was accused of harassment in the workplace?) and he nabbed at toto for kicking him when he was down or something. and not to inflict my own opinion here, but good for toto.

and remember when i told u all about how several higher ups were let go after the gpda released their statement? well. george was asked about this in the press conference and turns out. it was not connected. and not only that, but the fia never responded to the gpda in any regard and did not consult with the gpda before letting any of those people go or before hiring new ones.

here is a summary of what george had to say

"We definitely weren't aware [of the race director leaving]. It was a bit of a surprise, I think, for everybody. It's a hell of a lot of pressure now onto the new race director. Just three races left [this season] … often as drivers, we probably feel like we're the last to find out this sort of information. And when it involves us kind of directly, it would be nice to be kept in the loop and just have an understanding of what decisions are being made.” [George then called for transparency because of the lack of communication between the fia and the gpda and said some drivers were unhappy with calls that had been made by the previous race director but] "sometimes just hiring and firing is not the solution. Let's see what this new era is going to bring, but every time there is a change, you have to take one step back before you make the two steps forwards.” [George was unsure how much confidence the drivers currently had in the fia leadership but said that it was clearly not] "the most stable of places" [due to the departures, and he insinuated that the fia and ben sulayem did not understand the feelings among the drivers especially when it was a challenge to get them to follow through on promises] "I think if we feel that we're being listened to and some of the changes that we are experiencing, requesting, are implemented … then maybe our confidence will increase. But yeah, I think there's a number of drivers who feel probably a bit fed up with the whole situation. And it only seems to be going in, to a degree, the wrong direction." "We all know what we want from the sport and the direction it's been heading and we probably feel that we want to do a small U-turn on a number of topics and just want to work together with the FIA on this. And that's just what we've felt has not been happening at all, at least directly from the President [sulayem]." (you can read more from george’s press conference answers here)

lewis also backed up george, saying in an interview that

"If we don't get a response, I'm sure we'll chase them up. I know they've got a lot going on at the moment, but I think it's just to show that more than ever, the drivers are united, which is perhaps not something you've always seen in the past." he also advocated for closer and better working relationships between the fia and the drivers, saying "There are some things that need addressing, and FIA needs to be better at working and collaborating with us. We want the sport to continue to thrive and be better. We have zero to gain with the comments that we're making, in terms of things that can be better through the race weekends, and all we're asking is to communicate with us more and include us."

charles also said that is is surprised that the fia are making changes now with no explanation and max said that it is weird that they have to learn about fia related news (like the people getting let go/fired) from social media because no one from the fia is talking to them.

and btw losing the race director alone is a big deal. especially with a few races and two titles still to go. the race director makes a lot of decisions that directly affect the drivers and having to get a new one at the end of a tumultuous season cannot be easy.

aside from that mess we also had another mess and that was lando commenting on mclaren’s statement about the drivers championship never being a priority.

first, he talked about the aftermath of brazil:

"I deleted all of my social media so I didn't have any of that. I literally couldn't sleep for the first two days," he recalls. "So I did like, what, 36-40 hours straight. So that probably made everything worse. When you're tired, you're more moody, and that kind of thing. Like, it's a double effect. I was just sat at home alone. It probably would have been better if I had been with my friends. But they don't live in Monaco. They also have lives and are busy doing other things. And I'm a big overthinker, so like the whole flight home, the whole week, it just played over and over in my head. What could I have done differently? Why did I do that? Why did I not do this? You start thinking of all the scenarios that you kind of blame yourself for, why it's now not possible, that kind of thing. And yeah, because I overthink and I struggle with that kind of thing, that took a bigger toll in the days after. It wasn't an easy time."

now, this is not an unusual reaction for a driver to have upon losing the world championship (no matter how far away from winning it lando was), back in 2015 nico rosberg locked himself in his hotel room for hours after losing the championship to lewis hamilton in texas. he then locked the hell in and won the next several races consecutively. (i don't remember how many races it was, you can probably google that yourself if you're interested) and lando also has been open about his own mental health before, so this wasn't an unusual comment coming from him.

he then said this though, also about the championship and what he has learned from this season:

“For the first time, I'm confident to say that I have what I think I need to fight for a championship. Doesn't mean I'm complete, doesn't mean I'm perfect, that's for sure. And when you're competing against drivers who are close to that, like Max, you have to be close to perfect if you want to challenge him.”

and then came the chess analogies:

"It's check and I'm all alone and Max has all of his pawns ready to attack me,” lando said in an interview, which he then followed up by saying that chess is not his strong suit as it that was not obvious from the analogy itself. also we can infer that by pawns he mostly probably means charles and maybe ferrari (who are currently battling against mclaren for first in the constructors championship) and we all remember charles holding up lando for a hot while in brazil, (remember he and max were full teammating) so. could be onto something here.

still, they asked carlos about lando’s comment, and he was woefully confused about it

and then lando said this about about max:

"Everybody thinks we are better mates than we are. I have other people who are my real friends. My true friends. He's a guy I get along with well off the track. That doesn't change. I am good at keeping things separate. If someone treats me like shit on track, it doesn't mean I will treat them like shit off the track. They are two different worlds."

and this:

"Maybe other drivers in the past were ready for such an occasion but no one has gone up against Max so early on in their career, halfway through the season, and put up a pretty reasonable fight.”

(which is interesting because charles and max were fighting eachother back in 2019, when charles was at his first year at ferrari and only his second in formula 1, though i suppose that max was not a champion contender at that point)

now. max commented on the rules and regulations changing and whether or not he feels targeted because as we know a lot of the rules over the years have been changed For Max and also mclaren had been complaining about max breaking rules and racing too hard and here is what he said to bbc

"honestly, even if they would have done or did, first of all i don't care because i drive to what i think is possible and what is allowed in the rules. and if the rules are written like that, i will use the rules. if that would have happened to me the other way around, i don't think i would have been the person to complain so hard because i would just think, 'OK, if that's the rules, that's how we do it' instead of screaming that we need to change the rules.”

and this is funny because back in silverstone 2019, charles said this about racing max:

"If we can race in that way, then I'm more than happy to race that way"

(meaning that, he didn't feel the need to change the rules around in order to race max and also win against him, unlike what is happening now)

this did not though stop mclaren from still being, well, mclaren. see they thought that red bullhead figured out that mclaren’s skid blocks were illegal and were going to report them to the fia. so mclaren instead decided to report themselves first. and low and behold, they were in fact illegal. and “The technical directive issued by the FIA required 7 teams to modify the arrangement of their fastening screws on the floor plate under the car.” and in addition to mclaren, Red Bull, Ferrari, Mercedes, Aston Martin, Haas, Sauber & Alpine all had to change theirs as well.

hilariously, red bull knew nothing about the skid blocks.

that did not stop charles though for calling out mclaren’s under dog qualities.

"McLaren has often said this (drivers saying Ferrari are favourite), it's not the first time they say maybe that Red Bull will be the favourite and then in the end they are the fastest."

and speaking of charles. he and max were back at it again, not even remotely dodging the lestappen rumors. first ferrari and red bull were sharing the fan stage together, which doesnt ever really happen, usually it is a top team with a mid field team, but for some insane reason they decided to put ferrari and red bull together and absolutely no one was mad about it. except for maybe max whos mic died and he got bonked in the nose by carlos’s mic while carlos was letting max speak into it.

and max and charles, as they do, continued to stare at eachother throughout the fan stage as they yapped.

and Charles signed an inchident shirt and announced himself that max should also sign it

and the red bull racing admin on instagram threads also continued to ship lestappen openly. and even called out the ferrari admin for calling charles yapping charle-splaining instead of leclerc-ifying

and, sky sports made lewis hamilton watch a bunch of old videos of him and nico rosberg fighting for the title from 2014, racing clips and just clips of them in general. and on not one but two screens. and as we know, lewis rarely ever speaks about nico, so this was interesting.

what was also interesting is that he lied about their relationship. seemingly.

now, usual disclaimers here, i don't know these guys, and objectively they only know what happened. (again, i don't think either of them owe the other anything, whatever happened happened and we will never know what happened) and i can only report the findings of the internet. and the internet had a lot to say.

lewis says that he and nico lost touch and werent in contact from after they were karting teammates (i think around 13/14 years old) to when they were teammates at mercedes (when they were 28)

and. well. the internet had some qualms with that. including but not limited to:

they went on vacation together several times in that gap, and one of those times nico taught lewis how to snowboard

and theres footage of them partying together when they were teens

they also definitely talked in the paddock when they were both in f1. and we all remember nicos first podium with lewis. lewis and jenson also once sang nico happy birthday during the drivers parade.

and like, it might be true that they might not have been Best Friends during that time. but they definitely knew eachother.

oh, and nico was also in vegas that weekend. for the race.

ah, love a good couple of guys being unreliable narrators about their weird and slightly homoerotic friendship that exploded in a drivers title fight in front of the whole world. pure poetry, am i right???

so there was a lot that happened. clearly.

am i missing something? i feel like i am missing something here.

oh right.

all that and the entire paddock smelled like weed.

yes. weed.

“what is very noticeable around the circuit is the smell of marijuana,” checo said.

“there was a smell of marijuana,” franco added. “if they dope test the drivers now, i think we’ll all be positive.”

and so with all that. the practice sessions.

i didn't watch all of them, only the third one, but there was plenty of chaos there.

first, valtteri bottas already has a five place grid penalty for a power unit change.

and lewis showed up wearing a complete glitter fit and also slaying

oscar couldn't get his mclaren to turn off

and alex’s williams caused a red flag almost instantly, in true williams fashion

and the return of the vegas gp, with its weird night schedule that is conducive for effectively no one least of all the drivers (seriously the race Starts at 10pm Local Time. that means drivers are going to bed around 5am to prepare for late nights, not to mention that that is 1am eastern time and 6am uk time) meant that we had the return of Weird Sleep Deprived Commentary from our lovely commentators

such as crofty saying multiple times that the only place that the race time is conducive for is guam time,fiercely debating whether or not the plural of elvis is elvises or elvi, also something about the phases of the moon

and, unbelievably, karun tried to explain how tire graining works using the metaphor of grating cheese. no i am not kidding. this happened. and you might think this is a normal metaphor to make and it is but then it got weird:

“if the tire is too cold, it starts to shred and it peels,” karun said.

“like soft cheese?” jenson button, the 2009 f1 world champion asked.

“almost like you get a grater on the top of a cheddar,” karun agreed

“like a medium soft cheese,” jenson amended

“room temperature cheddar,” karun probably nodded.

they also talked about andretti. you remember andretti, who wanted to start an 11th formula 1 team but was denied? well hes back now, partnering with cadillac and also general motors as they pitch a new, cadillac racing team. apparently it is supposed to be announced very soon if they are in, but they would be an american team.

and jenson, who was in the box for practice, had some insight on them. starting with the color.

crofty said that they should paint the cadillac car pink cause of the springsteen song.

and jenson said, “they did paint one of their hyper cars pink [in wec], and im actually a cadillac driver next year.” which is true. it was recently announced that he was moving from team jota to team cadillac for 2025 (cause jenson does in fact still race cars)

still, crofty and karun saw a great opportunity to make fun of him.

“are you [back] in formula 1?” crofty asked, excited that jenson might finally get to serve his three place grid penalty

jenson just laughed

“now this is a scoop!” karun continued. “jenson button returns!”

“no,” jenson corrected, still laughing. “in world endurance championship.”

“this is a night of exclusives,” crofty said, ignoring him.

jenson also told everyone that he had seen boys II men down in the williams garage the day before and went to go say hi. he sounded very excited about the whole thing.

crofty though was in disbelief. “you went up to boys II men for a selfie?”

“yes!” jenson said, incredulously. “they were my youth!”

there was a fantastic photo of jenson serving cunt in a green velvet suit standing next to boys II men, but i cannot find it for the life of me

george called the sauber a “green thing” and then the following day said, about the sauber “same bloke again, two days in a row” about a minor incident. and lance’s car lost all power at the end of the session.

but perhaps most interestingly. we had problems down at red bull.

problems like, they had the wrong rear wing.

or at least, that was according to one helmut marko, and we know how reliable he is. in any case, he claimed they had the wrong one and couldn't overnight a new one from england.

basically though, the wing was too steep, meaning that they were losing about 6 tenths per second on the straights (which was bad. because vegas is mostly straights. and remember. max can win the damn world championship this weekend pretty much as long as he finishes ahead of lando and in the points). so what did red bull do? well they busted out the angle grinder and diy’d their own rear wing.

max was appropriately pissed about the whole thing

but in a later interview he explained a little better than helmut what was going on:

“if you're missing between three and seven tenths everywhere in the sectors then of course something is wrong. its not just a bit of balance here or there, its not just the right tire grip. then of course you can't push and nothing works out. and then of course our rear wing is of course, we just have a bit too much drag. we havent got a smaller wing. we don't have it. so over one lap that makes it even trickier because we had to saw off a lot of the drs flap and of course you have less drs effect. the problem is of course we’ve only got one more season with these regulations. and when you have to develop a whole new wing that costs money of course. its a bit of a difficult issue.”

he was then asked if the stories that they had brought the wrong were incorrect. and he said “yeah, well if you believe that then you're a pancake.”

during practice three, when they were still trying to sort out the wing problems, he had a few concerning radios, including:

“its only getting worse, the car is undriveable” and “this is…i cant drive it. im going to crash. my left front is completely fucked.” but they did seem to fic it by the end of the session, or at least make the car driveable because max ended 5th fastest and said that the car was miles better to drive grip wise.

red bull might have been suffering to high hell. but a team that was Not suffering to high hell (for once) was mercedes. in fact, lewis and george were both so quick that they themselves had absolutely no idea Why (though they speculated that it was because of the cold)

"Incredible day. Love to tell you why. To be honest, we're scratching our heads a little bit, why it was so positive,” george said after fp2

“that's the first time that I've actually had a day like that I think this year,” lewis said. “The car was feeling really good in fP1. fP2, less so, so got some work to do overnight, but… Difficult to know exactly where we are or why we are where we are, but really enjoying driving the track. And I think, yeah, we'll see whether the car is still the same tomorrow."

so weve got two mercedes rocketships, a diy red bull, a championship on the line, a track that smells like weed and a race only suitable for guam.

qualifying, anyone?

well everyone was ready except for lance stroll, whos car was in several million pieces as they tried to sort out his power issue from practice. they managed to get it fixed and he did get to do one flying lap, but still went out in q1.

also out in q1 was checo perez. and as he got out, there was a graphic of him shown on the sphere giving a thumbs down, which was really just. it was really something.

this is the pinnacle of motorsport.

even worse for checo now tho was his qualifying stats for the season. he now had 8 q3 exits this year. max has had 5 in the last 8 years. hes also been responsible for 50% of their q1 eliminations as a team, despite only being with the team since 2021.

in q2 franco became the first driver to find the wall and crash into it. which was devastating news for williams because they had only just managed to scrape enough parts together to go to vegas and had had to fix francos car twice already in brazil. the mechanics were not pleased.

and the crash was big, 50G. he was cleared medically and sent to the hotel to rest, but would need to be cleared to race in the morning, if he had a car to race.

once everything was repaired, we got to q3 which was surprising for two reasons. first, lewis made his first mistakes of the weekend and came tenth. second, pierre qualified third. in his alpine. coming off the back of the double podium weekend. it was his first time ever qualifying top 3.

the alpine admin was beside themself.

george was on pole. he was very excited. but he was also sleep deprived as he accidentally said during his interview that he was betting on ferrari. and he received his pole position award from a man who cooks shirtless on tik tok.

carlos was in second, he was also happy because he got to keep his p2 this year, unlike last year “because of the famous drain cover” (he got a 10 place grid penalty for changing the power unit after the crash)

and starting 4 5 and 6 were charles, max and lando. which would be interesting to say the least.

max though did defend franco after his crash, saying "the experts... should keep their mouths shut. Even if I were to drive a road car on the limit on this circuit, it's not easy either. let them do it. Being in front of the camera is often a sign that they can't do it themselves, or that they can't do it anymore.”

speaking of max, remember, the only way that max doesnt win the championship this weekend is if lando scores 3 or more points than him.

the track, btw, still smelled like weed. max said he felt high in his car and charles looked high in his interview.

mick though, over in the merc garage, didn't manage to look high, just miserable.

and so. what we’ve all been waiting for. the race. self described as james hinchcliffe as having “cold temperatures, [a] dirty race track, low downforce configurations and walls everywhere.”

and unfortunately for all of you, you will have to find out what happened in the race in part 2 of las vegas because tumblr hates this post and would not let me put it all on the same update, no matter how hard i tried :/

so. i will be back soon :) stay intrigued everyone!

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.

instagram

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

instagram

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 #idk if this will post #sorry it sucks i was actively celebrating thanksgiving #las vegas gp 2024 #part 2 to come #Instagram

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