#us gp 2001

[schumigrace]

big fan of his mannerisms never changing

[batsplat]

Wait what’s the tea on Valentino’s sleep patterns 👀👀 (fellow insomniac / recent motogp fan always looking for more representation)

oh yeah, if you're looking for representation for poor sleeping habits you've very much come to the right place. his sleep patterns are pretty remarkable you have to say. way too nocturnal for a professional athlete, reliant on naps to get through the race weekend, all power to him for somehow making that work and winning all those titles. pretty sure I've read somewhere that he's still known for doing sim races at ungodly hours these days, just how he lives his life

tbh I can't remember off the top of my head where I'd actually read about his sleeping patterns, but I've cobbled together a decent selection of quotes from the usual sources. the most interesting stuff he's said on the topic is in his autobiography - where he goes into rather a lot of detail about his preference for the night. given that it's quite a lengthy passage, I've chucked it under the cut. he frames his nocturnal inclination as not only suiting his natural body clock better, but also as a way of escaping the rest of the world - of being able to move around in peace and silence and anonymity. plus, he liked to spend his nights in the garage to... *pinches bridge of nose* have some special personal time with his bike, when it was just the two of them. take that as you will

before that, let's just start with a few more general descriptions of his sleeping patterns. from early in his career, jerez 1998 (from oxley's vr files):

The camper only holds two people, but that's okay. I don't like my dad to sleep with me, because when it gets to ten o'clock he starts saying: "Vale, Vale, got to bed!", but I can't go to sleep before one or two. We did share a motorhome in '96 and it made life very, very difficult for me.

and about brno 1999 (from oxley's vr files):

On weekends when I'm not racing, I never go to bed before six or seven on Sunday morning. If it's a party, maybe even later, but going to bed at six in the morning is quite normal for me! Even when I was 14 I used to go to bed at 4am. Quite often I'd be riding around the local minimoto tracks until after midnight! If I go to sleep at 11 or 12 I just lie there, my eyes wide open. Maybe I would be good for 24-hour racing!

and then a few years into his premier class career, valentino says the following (x):

'I have a lot of energy after 2am,' Rossi agreed. 'I like to sleep in the morning. I have some problems at the start of the day.'

we've also got a description of crew chief jb's influence in terms of making sure valentino wasn't slacking off by sleeping in (from oxley's vr files):

Burgess' talents aren't restricted to getting the best out of a 500. The Aussie has been in GPs for decades and knows how to extract the best from riders as well. He expects 100 per cent commitment both on the track and in the pits, and when he doesn't get that, he gives 'em hell. Some other crew chiefs won't do that - they're too overawed by their riders' superstardom. JB laid down the law last summer when late-sleeper Rossi turned up late for practice. Rossi suggested that in future one of the crew should be despatched to his motorhome each morning to make sure he was out of bed. No way, said Burgess, I'll be there to give you your wake-up call. Rossi's not overslept since.

and from 2001, in valentino's own words:

Q: Tell us about your sleeping habits, JB has had to wake you a few times for practice... VR: I never go to bed before 1 o'clock, and there's no limit on when I go to bed, but even when I go to sleep very late I always wake up at 8.30, though when I do wake up I always have a big confusion for the first five minutes, then after that I remember: "Oh fuck, I'm at world grand prix!" So I have a shower and then I'm okay. I never get up too close to riding time because the 500 is a dangerous bike so it's necessary to be awake when you climb aboard. Back in the afternoon after practice at four or five o'clock I'll sleep for another hour.

only semi-related but valentino's also talked about... you know, this generational shift - where the sport has become more professionalised, which is reflected in certain lifestyle changes (from barker's rossi biography):

"The next generation is always stronger. They are more professional, they put more effort in, they make a perfect life, they eat in a good way, they don't drink, they go to sleep early, they train every day from the morning to the night... I come from an era where the riders drank beer and smoked cigarettes!"

also plenty of talk of jet lag obviously... doesn't struggle with it too much headed westwards because he says he basically lives on american time anyway. the other direction is tougher, but in his youth he decided that he might as well try to continue living on italian time. so he essentially went racing at 5 in the morning (about phillip island 1998, from oxley's vr files):

I don't have a problem with jet lag, I always sleep. Last year in Indonesia I stayed on Italian time for the whole grand prix - so I was racing at five in the morning! But the difference is too great to do that in Australia.

how on earth are you racing motorcycles like that. mind you, he won that 1997 indonesia race

so yeah. king of disordered sleeping. given the nature of motogp schedules and how they do kind of require you to actually get up in the mornings, congrats to him for being remotely functional during race weekends. crazy how he even won the odd race

and here's the autobiography passage:

My day, usually, begins in the afternoon. It’s as if I exist inside my own personal time zone. I live at night, because I love the night. Now, this might make you think I do goodness-knows-what in the wee hours, or that I don’t live the life of a professional athlete. It’s true, I don’t live the life of an athlete in the traditional sense — early to bed, early to rise and all that — but this does not mean that I’m not careful about what I eat and drink or that I don’t train. In fact, I train a lot, both in the gym and on the bike. It’s just that I go to the gym in the afternoon, rather than the morning. Equally, when I’m training on the bike, down at the quarry, I always go in the afternoon, never at nine o'clock in the morning. My body has a certain type of metabolism. It is used to living according to a different body clock. That’s why, even if I’m travelling all over the world, I don’t experience jet lag and I rarely go to bed before 3 a.m. It’s much more likely that I’m just tucking into bed as people are leaving for work. As I say, I have a special relationship with the night. I like moving in it, living in it, thinking in it, relaxing in it. The night fascinates me, because it’s the period of least confusion. The world calms down, it goes quiet. And, besides, I’m Valentino Rossi. I’m wanted... I'm a fugitive. Yes, I’m always running away from my _ beloved countrymen. The Italians. I’m proud to be Italian, I'm proud of our merits and I regret our shortcomings. Italians are exceptional people. In every way. Even when they start loving you. Because that’s actually when problems can arise — if it’s you that the Italian falls in love with. Italian people are warm, empathetic, spontaneous. But they can also be excessive, oppressive and disrespectful. I don’t know who said that Italians will forgive everything except for success. Whoever it was, they were right. Because it’s absolutely true. After the 1997 season, I could tell I was becoming popular. Year after year, that popularity turned into fully fledged love. They’re in love with me now and, as a result, since the 2004 season, I’ve been a man on the run. And there’s no escape, no end in sight, because wherever I go they find me. There are simple things, the little pleasures in life, which I simply can’t engage in when I’m back in Italy. I can’t go to the bar and have a cappuccino, because I would not be able to drink it. To be fair, I can do it in Tavullia, but that's the only place. If I go more than a few kilometres in any direction from the centre of town, that's it, everything changes and I become, once again, a hunted man. I can’t walk into a store, look at something and decide what I want to buy. In fact, I can’t stop anywhere, not even at a petrol station. If I stop, I’m screwed. Somebody will recognise me (Italians are exceptionally good at recognising people), make a lot of noise, call other people and then, before I know it, I’ve been swallowed up by the crowd. If I schedule a meeting with someone, we have to meet in a secret, out-of-the-way location and, even then, we can't linger. I can't go to a restaurant if there are too many people inside. And if I do go, I can't go at a normal time, say eight o'clock. I have to go later, much later, when people are leaving. And I can't sit where I like, I have to hide away in a corner, in the shadows. As for places like cinemas or the beach, forget about it. They are just always off-limits.

Having said that, I do mix with people. I do it because I like doing it. It’s just that I wish I could do it as a normal person, because, deep down, I am a normal human being. This is part of the reason why I have to live at night. It would be that much tougher during the day, with all those people about. Plus, I don’t like the traffic, the chaos, the noise, all those people running all over the place, stressed out and out of breath. The night is different. Everything is softer, there are fewer people around and you are much more free. It’s like a parallel dimension. The world is different at night. Everything is different. That’s why I’ve assimilated the lyrics of a song by the Italian artist Jovanotti, “Gente. della notte” (“People of the night”). It has become my personal anthem. Jovanotti is one of my favourite singers and I find myself agreeing with him on most things. I love his work. What else can I say? The night is my reality. And I don’t change just because Grands Prix are scheduled during the day. My way of being and living is reflected in what I do during races. I don’t really change. Obviously, I don’t go to bed at dawn, but let’s just say that when I do, finally, go to bed, there aren’t many people around. Everything is better at night in the paddock. There is silence, the people _ have disappeared and, with them, the chaos. I can wander around freely, most of all I can enjoy the empty pit area and my bike. Yes, my bike. Because at night I often slip into the team garage. At some races I do it every single night, because I love being with my bike. My night-time activities can be traced back to the years racing in 125cc, and are directly tied to my passion for aesthetics and the stickers, which would later become my obsession. I don’t leave anything to chance'when it comes to choosing the colour or the stickers for my bike. That’s why I’ve always been central to any and all discussions when we were deciding the aesthetics of my racing bikes. I’ve done it always, with every bike, at every level, with every team. And, naturally, I still do it today. Nobody has ever been allowed to attach a single sticker to my bike, unless it was the logo of a technical sponsor. Until a few years ago I was totally inflexible about this. Now, Roby takes care of the number: he attaches it because then he needs to cover it in transparent paint. But apart - from -this, which is primarily a technical procedure anyway, I take care of everything else to do with the stickers. And this takes time and planning, which is why I started going to the garage at night. During the day it is packed with people. There are mechanics, technicians and others around. I would just get in the way, if I wanted to get near the bike just to check the stickers. As I got older and progressed from 125 to 250 and then to 500 and on to MotoGP, I maintained that passion for aesthetics and stickers, as well as the habit of dropping in on the team garage at night. I enjoy the bike during the day _ obviously, but my relationship with the bike is so special that I can spend hours with it, just looking and admiring it, making sure that everything is in order. Those are very personal moments which I find difficult to describe. The Japanese guys, both the executives but also the engineers never knew this, not the guys at Honda, not the ones at Yamaha. I don’t think they would really understand. They would probably view it as a waste of time, since I don’t actually do anything concrete. I never touch anything to do with the bike itself, beyond, obviously, the stickers. And yet I find it hard to explain to an engineer that I enjoy simply being near the bike, even when I’m not doing anything. It’s a complicated concept to explain: the risk is that people will think that you're crazy.

During the day everything happens so quickly, frenetically, neurotically. However, there is a sacrosanct moment when I need to step away and isolate myself. Once my commitment to the team is over, usually around 5.30 p.m., I retire to my motorhome, relax and take a nap. It usually lasts a couple hours and then I go out. There’s always something to do after dinner. Of course, the range of options depends on how many friends are around. I really start enjoying the paddock around ten o'clock at night. Before going to sleep I check on the bike again and then I go into the team motorhome, which serves as an office. Now that I’m at Yamaha, I have an office all to myself. That’s where I keep all my race gear. I do this for two reasons. My own personal motorhome is an absolute mess, nothing more fits in there and I probably couldn’t find anything amid all the junk. Plus, the office is where I change into my racing suit before going out on to the track. Thus, at night, after going to the pits to see the bike, I go to make sure that all my stuff is where it should be: gloves, suit, socks, boots . . . everything needs to be perfect, because I just don’t have time in the morning to hunt around for stuff. Thus, each morning I have to follow a very precise routine. I’m like a robot, everything is the same each day. Because the truth is that I need to be like clockwork. I just don’t have the time to think. Somebody generally comes to wake me up — usually it’s Jeremy, because he doesn’t trust my ability to wake up on my own! I then get up, wash my face (my eyes are still shut at this point) and try to stay awake as I ride the scooter from the motorhome to the pits. I then go up to the office and get dressed. There too everything is done mechanically. It takes the slightest hiccup to throw everything off, forcing me to be late to the testing.

"I find it hard to explain to an engineer that I enjoy simply being near the bike, even when I’m not doing anything. it’s a complicated concept to explain: the risk is that people will think that you're crazy" well -

[deepdreamnights]

All These Devices Are Now In Your Pocket

Select photos from the Uncanon Valley Museum's installation of the same name, intended to show youngsters just how much utility has been compressed into a single device, and how much the market has narrowed because of it.

By Row:

Martel InstaKlik Camera (1984) / Melinoë Industries GPS-2s (2001)

Fatholla Light Meter (1977) / Issac's Brand Underwater MP3 Player (2003)

Klaxaxabaxan™ Handheld Game (1994) / "Prince Adrian" Platinum Edition Speak & Spell, Tiffany's (1966)

Edison High-Freq K3030 Camera (1973) / L700 Four-Demon Chest, Panasonic (1981)

Splap-it! Game, traditional (1922) / Demiurgical Responder Engine, J.W. Welles & Company (1873)

L'l Farnsy Vacuum-Tube Radiotrox (3022), Poch Ackaoch Perpendicular Receiver (1971)

The images above in this post were made using an autogenerated prompt and/or have not been modified/iterated extensively. As such, they do not meet the minimum expression threshold, and are in the public domain.

Process under the fold:

Lotta prompts here, so I'm going to just go over my process with these.

I took a number of pictures of consumer electronics, along with some wild card objects, and ran them through with Midjourney's /describe feature.

I then shuffled the resulting prompts, separating them with :: marks, resulting in prompts like the following example:

a gold and red medallion located on a white background, in the style of rangercore, konica auto s3, curved mirrors, shuzo oshimi :: the skull in a purple outfit is made from a plastic, orange and green, in the style of m42 mount, terrorwave, packed with hidden details, destroyed gadgets sculptures, katsuhiro otomo, toy camera effects, science academia

The :: marks are used to denote weights normally, but if you don't weight them, MJ tends to blend the concepts. So after that I just appended:

:: electronic device photograph on white background

The example prompt was for the "Edison High-Freq K3030 Camera (1973)" image.

[n4talia-chaparro]

Anyways ugly ass Adult Jasper ("gp!jasper") jumpscare 🤯🤯🤯🤯🗣🗣‼️‼️‼️‼️‼️‼️🔥🔥🔥💥💥 TESTING OUT THE VHS EFFECTS WITHOUT USING THE FILTERS. 🗣🗣🔥🔥

(I hate the way his design sm)

.𖥔 ݁ ˖˚₊‧꒰ა 🦴 ໒꒱ ‧₊˚.𖥔 ݁ ˖

RAMBLE TIME:

Since I rambled about the timeline thing uh yesterday I had a dumb idea of what he look like if he was in the 2000s BEFORE the present. Jasper changed a lot after Benny was forced to move out (well possibly kicked out cuz Bernice is only defending her "husband") and he seems a bit silly yet sorta manly throughout the years.

Jasper was the next person to move out after turning 18. He was reading to have his place, somewhere in Cleveland, and have his own family so he moved out with his girlfriend before marriage while Bethany, the sister, still lives with Bernice. (Keep that in mind Bethany is still a child [age 8 to 10] during that time.)

.𖥔 ݁ ˖˚₊‧꒰ა 🦴 ໒꒱ ‧₊˚.𖥔 ݁ ˖

January 1st, 2001: 3 years later Jasper returns to Piqua along with his wife and their kid, Kaley/"Kipper" Krupp. The family moved somewhere close to Bernice's location as a surprise and boom. They met again, unfortunately, Jasper didn't meet Benny again. Bernice warns him about it. He didn't understand why but Bernice convinced (well lied, or sum) him that there's nothing to worry about him.

She told Jasper that anything related to Benny should not be spoken about, including in front of Kaley/Kipper. Bernice didn't wanna allow her grandkid to interact with Benny without any context whatsoever. But Jasper agreed and maybe thought his mom was worried and overprotective towards the child.

.𖥔 ݁ ˖˚₊‧꒰ა 🦴 ໒꒱ ‧₊˚.𖥔 ݁ ˖

December 25th, 2001: Just Christmas. Nothing else but Jasper on the other hand wasn't sure why Bernice didn't wanna allow him to interact or FaceTime Benny. Maybe it's her worrisome? Is she hiding something? Not sure. Jasper soon tried his best to not bring up the topic and enjoy the holiday. Hoping he can see the full reason of it.

-----

Isnsksmks uhhb that's I guess. It sucks lol

[kevinskorchinski]

sameee I'm so happy to see all my goofy little guys back on the ice 🥹

I've been interested about getting into f1 but at the same time I don't really have time to watch it or learn rn loll

F1 for en is difficult to watch because I am Australian so most of the races are at midnight and with f1 I found it easier to get into because there are more people talking about it/a bigger fan base

if you want to get into it i linked some info

A primer by @lina-corsasa breaking down the teams, tracks, calander etc. she also has one for team history

But there has been so much to happen this year that i will give you a very basic run down.

Red Bull: Something to note with Red Bull is that they have a junior team called "Visa CashApp RB" terrible name i know but it used to be known as AlphaTauri and Toro Rosso. And these two combine for lots of driver change drama. like this year Liam Lawson (the rb reserve driver) replaced Daniel Ricciardo (fan favourite driver) after the singapore drama. This sparked a lot of drama because no one knew for certain if it was daniels last race and it was only announced a week after the race finished that it was.

RED BULL AND VCARB DRIVERS:

Red Bull; MAX VERSTAPPEN (Dutch): he has 3 drivers championships (2021,22,23) he is the youngest ever f1 driver (joined the sports in 2016 when he was 17, that is why the fia added that you have to be 18 and over to get a super license), hes currently on top of the championship and his closest rival is Lando Norris. Also his dad is a piece of shit that made max sacrifice his whole childhood to be the driver he is today.

Red Bull; SERGIO PEREZ (Mexicain): he is in the second red bull seat which is seen as the cursed seat because so many people have been in that seat than replaced. And compared to max, checo is not performing well and this is what give him a lot of unnecessary hate. (well in MY opinion sergio is so hated and not for good reason most of the time its because he's in a good team but is driving like shit, but that isn't a good enough reason for him to be on of the most hated people).

VCARB; YUKI TSUNODA 角田 裕毅 (Japanese): he was very crash prone in his earlier years but he has cleaned up his act. and he is one of my personal favourites. He is a very intense driver and oftentimes not taken that seriously because if his earlier years which suck :(

VCARB; LIAM LAWSON (kiwi): his first f1 race actaully wasn't last weekend (Austin GP) but was the Dutch GP 2023 when daniel ricciardo (second race back) crashed and broke his hand so liam being the reserve driver he got a shot. And so far in is very short f1 career he is doing well. Also one of his biggest inspirations growing up was lightning mcqueen.

MCLAREN DRIVERS:

LANDO NORRIS (British): jack hughes but f1 driver version (but less injured and more egotistical (sorry ln4 fans))

OSCAR PIASTRI (Australian): Oscar is my goat and the reason i got into motorsports. He is consisdered a generational driver. And because of that fact he caused a whole legal meltdown between mclaren and alpine. He was in the Alpine junior driver program and was their reserve driver, then when fernando alonso announced that he was leaving alpine announced oscar but he had already signed a contract with mclaren. so of course alpine wasn't happy took oscar and mcalren to court but oscar and mclaren ended up winning. also oscar is very funny and i love him.

ALPINE:

Esteban Ocon (french): he is leaving the team at the end of te year to go to haas. people don't like ocon because he is a teammate... annoyeer? idk none of his teammates like him. But that doesn't mean his story of barley having any money but making it to f1 is any less inspiring.

PIERRE GASLY (french): pierre... idk how to describe pierre. he's like a very competitive tiktok fuckboy that just so happens to be an f1 driver.

ASTON MARTIN:

FERNANDO ALONSO (Spanish): has two world championships (2005,06). he has been in the sports since 2001 and is one of the GOATS because he can extract everything out of the car. also his tiktok is hilarious check that out

LANCE STROLL (Canadian): not many people like him because he is a pay driver to the highest degree as well. His dad literally bought racing point (now aston martin) so lance is never leaving the sports until he gets tired of it.

FERRARI: i'm not a ferrari fan but you cannot deny there would not be f1 without ferrari

CHARLES LECLERC (monegasque): a fan favourite driver and he can genuinely fight for a championship but he has the worst luck

CARLOS SAINZ JR (Spanish): his dad carlos sainz sr is a world champion rally cross driver. Carlos isn't driving for ferrari next year after it was announced lewis hamilton is driving for the team next year (that caused an absolute meltdown btw). Next year he is driving for williams.

WILLIAMS:

ALEX ALBON (Thai): he is a dual citizanship driver he was bron and raced in britain to a thai mother but he doesn't like being called a british driver and called people out on this. They mention his dual citizenship when he does well. also he has a lot of pets and his gf lily is very cool as well.

FRANCO COLAPINTO (Argentine): his first race was Monza (italian gp) this year after he replaced logan sargeant. Franco immediatly became a fan fav because he is funny a charismatic and people really want him to get a seat next year but the only place avalible is the sauber but no one likes sauber.

STAKE F1 KICK SAUBER TEAM (i actually don't know their name most people just call them stake or sauber):

VALTTERI BOTTAS (finnish): one of the most famous second drivers because at his time at mercedes he was always behind lewis hamilton. he's just idk there ig he likes to show his ass.

ZHOU GUAYNU 周冠宇 (Chinese): the first ever chinese driver. and i have a soft spot for him even though he cannot qualify well but it's not helped when the sauber is an actual tractor.

HAAS:

NICO HULKENBERG (german): he is amazing at qualifying but since that haas is a trashbox (to note: less so this year) he can barely fight in the race. also something that is mentioned when hulk is mentioned is he has the most race starts without a podium. also he is racing for sauber next year because sauber is being taken over by audi in 2026.

KEVIN MAGNUSSEN (danish): he doesn't have a seat for next year, sadly. because this year he has been an ontrack terrorist to make sure nico gets points. Kevin Magnussen you will be missed next year.

MERCEDES:

LEWIS HAMILTON (British): 🐐 (he also has a dog called roscoe)

GEORGE RUSSELL (British): idk who to describe george i genuinely don't. hes a good-solid driver and his humour is underrated (imo).

DRIVER TRANSFERS FOR THIS YEAR AND NEXT YEARS:

VCARB: 2024

Danial Riccardo -> Liam Lawson

WILLIAMS: 2024-25

Logan Sargeant -> Franco Colapinto -> Carlos Sainz

FERRARI: 2025

Carlos Sainz -> Lewis Hamilton

ALPINE: 2025

Esteban Ocon -> Jack Doohan

HAAS: 2025

Nico Hulkenberg -> Esteban Ocon

Kevin Magnussen -> Ollie Bearman

MERCEDES: 2025

Lewis Hamilton -> Kimi Antonelli

NEXT YEAR DRIVERS:

JACK DOOHAN (Australian): he was the alpine reserve driver and is replacing esteban ocon next year. he also was a twitch streamer and did some pre and post race commentary for sky sports.

OLLIE BEARMAN (British): Ferrari junior driver. Already a fan favourite and is racing for has next year.

KIMI ANTONELLI (italian): he is also generational and that is why team owner and principal of mercedes wants kimi in a seat so bad. and so when lewis dropped the ferrari bombshell people were already speculating that kimi would be announced. But there was a slight issue he was 17 so he wouldn't be eligible for a super license. but he turned 18 so he's now eligible (idk if he got it i think he does)

[eugenedebs1920]

Does the, Leave it to Beaver, Happy Days, I Love Lucy, heck, Cheers, have any roots in the real world behind them? These television shows, where the characters find themselves in certain, hilarious situations. It’s not the comedy I ponder. It’s the way in which the society, community, group that they were a part of, that they interacted in. Did things use to be that way? Because my experience has been so detached from anything that resembles those ecospheres those people existed in.

The Columbine School shooting happened just down the road a few miles from where I went to high school. I was a high school sophomore when it happened. Ditching school, smoking pot because it was 4/20. For the longest time I don’t think I truly wrapped my head around what had actually taken place. Yet. Life went on.

I had graduated high school in the spring of 2001. That summer I took my graduation money and traveled around the east coast and Midwest, seeing terrible jam bands with my high school sweetheart. Driving around in a 1992 VW Golf, that got almost forty miles to the gallon highway. Not that that mattered much, the average price of gas was $0.99 a gallon. When we were heading towards the Atlantic, going through Kansas it was $0.76 a gallon!

I, to this day, have never felt so free. Traveling the country, with this pretty little hippie girl I was in love with, selling contraband at shows, seeing live music constantly, and experiencing these little towns, these midwestern folks, so in awe of these two shitkids passing through their town. Honestly, we were in awe of them as well.

I remember we stopped at some greasy spoon, roadside breakfast joint. The waitress, an older lady, but when you’re 18 everyone is an older person. She asked where we were heading, we told her, she ended up suggesting we take an old state highway, that it would get us to the same place at roughly the same time. This was back before GPS was really a thing other than backcountry hikers and emergency crews, how we made it anywhere I do not know. We took her advice and went the route she suggested.

Traveling this state highway, seeing these near ghost towns that the interstate had diverted traffic away from, limping along on their last leg, we saw a billboard that boasted, “worlds largest collection of vinyl records”, I collected vinyl at the time and starting to feel the trance from starring through a windshield for too long.

We find the little record store, when we walked in it was an homage to Roy Rogers. Everything, and I mean EVERYTHING, was Roy Rogers paraphernalia and records. It had to be the owner, who came to greet us. Me, this dirty hippie fuck, in patchwork corduroy pants, say to him, “So, this is the world’s largest collection of records huh?” He looks at us with a disapproving smirk and gestures to follow him towards the back of the store. Mind you, this is backass nowhere Indiana or Illinois, one of the two. In the back of this, what one would think was a Roy Rodgers museum, is rack after rack after rack of vinyl records, had to be ten feet high, both sides of what could be considered a small warehouse, full of records! It was overwhelming. We rummaged through records for about an hour before getting back on the road with our little treasure.

The summer came and went and the air became crisp as the leaves changed their hue from green to red to gold. As fate would have it, my high school sweetheart’s birthday was, haha, probably still is, in early fall.

Because I had thrown inhibitions to the wind, traveled half the country using my graduation money, relinquished my duties at the fine, part time job I had at the thrift store, when tour was over, I stayed at my moms, in the basement (mind you I was 18).

It was girls birthday, so first thing, in the mountain time zone, on the morning of, September the eleventh, two thousand and one, I gave my girl a call to wish her a happy birthday. She answered the phone, I said, “Haply birthday darling!! GOOOOD MORNING!!” there was a pause on the line, finally, with an, almost rasp to her voice, she said, “Yea. It’s real happy..”, I said back to her, “what’s wrong?” She asked if I had watched any tv yet (mind the younger readers. There was a time when we didn’t have all the information we could ever need in the palm of our hands and we got news and sports and whatnot from the television set) I had to chuckle because I rarely watched tv. She advised me to turn on the tv and give her a call back.

I don’t recall if I ever did call her back. There are images from that day that are forever tattooed in my brain. These scenes, just seared into my mind. I’m nat an empath but I have a lot of empathy, sympathy, compassion, that burdens me at times, I can put myself in moments of duress and imagine the feeling, the thoughts, the anxiety of that situation. When I saw those people, those humans, my countrymen, my fellow American, I just thought of that moment they were in. The contemplation of, do I burn to death in this building or do I leap to my death? I thought about what that must have felt like, the despair, the stress, the utter feeling of hopelessness to make that choice and jump out those windows. The fear that had and would grip you in those final moments. Too see, I don’t know how many but, five, eight, a dozen human fucking beings, dive to their end. I. America. The world. Would never be the same.

The events that would precede that, although expected, it didn’t make it right. It didn’t fix it. It didn’t undo what I had seen, what they had seen! What we saw. There was no amount of murder that was going to remedy the murder that happened on the morning of September 11, 2001. The world would never be the same.

That was hard to write. It Fuckin hurts. What makes it even more painful is that it got worse before it got better. More of my brothers and sisters died because of that morning. To add insult to injury, my fellow citizens that were dying on the battlefields, in some desert, halfway around the world, they were dying for me. It doesn’t matter the war, those service members are fighting for us. For me. In my name. For the cause of freedom.

Thousands and thousands of Americans died for me to live in this country. A country where the foundation of our whole system of governance is based on the notion that all peoples are created equal, that we are endowed with certain unalienable rights, that among these right are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. once said (maybe more than once) “Darkness cannot drive out darkness. Only light can do that. Hatred cannot drive out hatred. Only love can do that”. The killing of poverty stricken Afghans and Iraqis, and too many others in the Middle East, around the globe, it didn’t make it better, it made it worse.

God! Was it 20 years or more that war went on. It got a little better, then it got. A whole lot worse.

When I see the division in this country right now. When I see the anger in this country right now. When I see the conflict we are embattled in right now. It breaks my heart.

For you are my brother, my sister, my countrymen, my fellow American, a fellow human. You are not my enemy and never will be. We are on the same team!

That brings me back to my original question. Was there a time? When things were simpler? When we showed respect and kindness towards each other? When we cared for each other? When we could disagree but not hate each other? And how do we get back there?

[conradscrime]

The Murder of Martha Moxley

October 01, 2023

On October 30, 1975, 15 year old Martha Moxley went out with her friends to "mischief night" which was a night where all the neighbourhood kids would pull pranks on the neighbours, such as ding dong ditch and TP'ing houses.

According to the other kids there that night, Martha had been flirting with a boy named Thomas Skakel and even kissed him. Thomas had an older brother named Michael. Their mother had died in 1973 from brain cancer and that was when Michael turned to drinking. It was said that the Skakel's would be given large sums of money and would be left unsupervised a lot.

The last time anyone saw Martha she was apparently with Thomas behind a fence, near the boy's pool in his backyard. This was at 9:30pm.

The following day, October 31, 1975, Halloween, Martha's body was found underneath a tree in her own backyard. Her pants and underwear were pulled down, though it was later determined she had not been sexually assaulted.

Pieces of a broken six-iron golf club were found near her. The autopsy indicated that she had been bludgeoned and stabbed with the club. The club was owned by the Skakel's.

Since Thomas Skakel was the last person to have been with Martha the night before he became the prime suspect. His father however, denied authorities to get any access to Thomas' school and mental health records.

Thomas' live in tutor, Kenneth Littleton also became a prime suspect. He had only started working a few hours before the murder. Neither Thomas or Kenneth were charged and the case was cold for decades.

Over the years both Thomas and his brother Michael changed their alibi's for the night Martha was murdered. Michael claimed he was window-peeping and masturbating in a tree beside Martha's home from 11:30 pm to 12:30 am.

Two former students who had gone to a centre for troubled youths reported they had heard Michael confess to killing Martha with a golf club. One of these students quoted Michael as having said, "I'm gong to get away with murder. I'm a Kennedy." Michael's aunt was the widow of US Senator, Robert F. Kennedy. Michael supposedly had gotten special treatment at this centre.

A man named William Kennedy Smith was tried and acquitted for rape in 1991, and a rumour had begun that he had been at the Skakel house on the night Martha was killed. Though it was never confirmed if he had involvement, the case had a new investigation to go off of.

In June 1998, a one-man grand jury was set to review the evidence of the case. After 18 months, it was determined there was enough evidence to charge Michael Skakel with murder.

On January 9, 2000, Michael surrendered to authorities. He was released shortly after on a $500,000 bail. On March 14, 2000, Michael was arraigned for murder n juvenile court, because he was only 15 years old at the time of Martha's murder.

On January 31, 2001, a judged ruled he would be tried as an adult.

The trial began on May 7, 2002, in Connecticut. Michael's alibi at the time of the murder was that he was at his cousin's house. On June 7, 2002, Michael was found guilty of the murder of Martha Moxley. He was sentenced to 20 years to life in prison.

Skakel and his team fought for a new trial many times, often being denied. However, on October 23, 2013, Skakel was granted a new trial by Judge Thomas A. Bishop who ruled his attorney had failed to adequately represent Michael when he was convicted in 2002.

On November 21, 2013, Skakel was released on a $1.2 million bond and conditions. He had to be monitored with a GPS device and have no contact with the Moxley family. He would not be allowed to leave the state of Connecticut and would be periodically checked in on over the phone.

In December 2016, the Connecticut Supreme Court reinstated Skakel's murder conviction with a 4-3 majority decision. In 2018, they wanted the court to revoke Skakel's bail, and make him continue to serve his sentence in jail. Also in 2018 it was announced there would be a new trial ordered, but by October 2020, it was informed that Skakel would not be retried, with the state's chief saying the state would not be able to prove anything beyond a reasonable doubt.

Michael Skakel remains released.

[camillasgirl]

Queen Camilla’s Patronages

The Royal Osteoporosis Society (President from 01.10.2001)

We’re the Royal Osteoporosis Society – the UK’s largest national charity dedicated to improving bone health and beating osteoporosis. And we’re here for everyone. We equip people with practical information and support to take action on their bone health.Working with healthcare professionals and policy-makers, we’re influencing and shaping policy and practice at every level. We’re driving the research and development of new treatments, to beat osteoporosis together. The charity was established in 1986 and has since grown into a well respected national charity.

In recognition of her tireless work for osteoporosis and her support of the charity, Her Majesty The Queen Consort became President of the Royal Osteoporosis Society in October 2001. Her Majesty first became a supporter of the charity in 1994, when her mother died as a result of osteoporosis, and she later become a patron in 1997.

Her first public speech was made in 2002 at the World Congress on Osteoporosis, hosted by the International Osteoporosis Foundation (IOF) in Lisbon. In this speech, The Duchess explained why fighting osteoporosis is so important to her:

“My family knew nothing about osteoporosis. The local GP was kind and sympathetic but he, like us, was able to do little to alleviate the terrible pain that my mother suffered so stoically. We watched in horror as she quite literally shrank before our eyes. She lost about eight inches in height and became so bent that she was unable to digest her food properly, leaving her with no appetite at all. In her latter years, she could not breathe without oxygen or even totter round her beloved garden on her Zimmer frame. I believe the quality of her life became so dismal and her suffering so unbearable that she just gave up the fight and lost the will to live. As a result of my mother’s death, I became determined to find some way of helping people with osteoporosis from experiencing the same fate and general disregard that she encountered. I was lucky enough to discover, on my doorstep, the National Osteoporosis Society, a relatively new and small charity, piloted by the indomitable Linda Edwards.”

Her poignant words did much to generate a significant amount of press interest in osteoporosis that year and those in attendance at this event used the occasion to urge policy makers across the globe to make the disease a priority for national health care agendas.

During her time as President, Her Majesty has taken an active and very personal interest in raising awareness of our work. Over the years, she has held receptions, attended events, met people living with the condition, and made many impassioned speeches.

In 2007, Her Majesty received the Kohn Foundation Award from Dr Ralph Kohn (later Sir Ralph Kohn) in recognition of her contribution to raising awareness of osteoporosis.

[race-week]

I want to know how long it took you to gather the information about driver DNFs on their birthdays

It didn’t take too long actually, maybe 30 mins?

Stats F1 is a really helpful website and it breaks down everything they have a list of each drivers DNFs, then I had to find out which DNFs were on their birthdays.

When you have an idea on the rough layout of the calendar year on year it can be used to pick things out so for instance with Albon, I was only really looking for DNFs in Bahrain, Australia and Saudi Arabia. For Alonso his birthday always falls around the Hungarian GP.

After that, it was looking at each of the calendars to see the dates that each GP fell on. That was the longest part, especially having to go back to 2001 for Alonso. 

[backupherewego]

WORKING AT BRAWN GP (James part)

2/14, 2011

Name: James Vowles Job Title: Race Strategy Engineer Age: 30 Lives: Oxford Hobbies: Motorbikes, Motorsport, Mountain Biking

Q. What studies did you complete before you worked in Formula One?

A. I wasn't entirely sure where I wanted to go in life when I was younger. I can say I was studious as most of my school reports stated James is clearly very intelligent, when he applies himself! I completed most of my education in Geneva at an International School and at about 16 years old, I started to dedicate myself a bit more, particularly enjoying Maths, Physics and Computing. This led me to return to the UK to study Computer Science at the University Of East Anglia as a stepping stone until I figured out where I was destined. I had done my fair share of karting to this point and loved motorsport. When I was growing up Sundays were mostly spent watching Formula One races with a friend who truly was like a brother to me. Until that point I considered motorsport a far fetched dream and after sending out CVs to all the F1 teams, with zero positive results (including one CV actually sent back to me!), I decided to dedicate my life to both getting into and then being successful in F1. I started working weekends at Snetterton Race Circuit, which was near my University, with Formula Ford and GT teams, building up both experience and contacts, until I finished my degree in 2000. From there, I was one of 20 students lucky enough to be selected for the first Cranfield University MSc in Motorsport Engineering course. The course was a baptism of fire, with the other 19 students being of extremely high calibre, all with Engineering backgrounds, most of who now work in either F1 or GP2. In September 2001 I graduated with a distinction, picking up a Prodrive award for the design of a school racing car.

Q. Where did you work before Brawn GP?

A. In terms of motorsport, I started where all budding engineers should – scrapping rubber from GT racing slicks in a cold garage on a Sunday morning! When I was still doing my MSc in 201, Ray Rowan, who ran successful FIA Sportcars and F3 teams, gave me my first engineering role. I started as the Data Engineer for the F3 team and after a few months Ray felt comfortable enough to let me run the programme and engineer the car

from then onwards. That same year I became the Senior Race Engineer on their Le Mans programme, taking the Pilbeam LM675 car to Le Mans. In 2001, I applied for an Assistant Race Engineer position with British American Racing, and whilst I wasn抰 accepted for that role, I made enough of an impression for a new role to be created, and my first goal of entering Formula One was achieved. In 2002, I started work on a Race Strategy system and shortly afterwards joined the Race Engineering department and started travelling to the races. My role has expanded over the years combining Race Engineering duties, Friday car running with Anthony Davidson as our third driver in 2004 and 2006 and of course Race Strategy. In 2008 I was privileged enough to start working with Ross Brawn and we haven looked back since.

Q. Describe your job on a day-to-day basis?

A. Prior to each race, I gather all the historical data, patterns (traffic, overtaking, track changes) and team performance data. Brawn GP has a number of custom simulation packages which we run to ensure that we gain a good understanding of the running plan for the weekend and the estimated tyre performance, highlighting any potential problems and considerations. During Friday we will build a picture on our competitors performance, tyre usage, weaknesses and strengths. I work closely with the senior race engineers to ensure we get the most out of our car and modify the run plans if required during sessions. The Friday data then allows us to determine a qualifying plan including which tyre compounds and in what order and just as importantly, the final qualifying fuel figure. We always create several plans, depending on where our competitors are relative to us in each qualifying session. On Sunday morning Ross and I sit down and discuss all of the potential race scenarios and plan actions for various events such as safety car deployment and accidents. This planning is the key to solid race strategy as we may only have a matter of seconds to react to incidents on track. During the race, the decisions we make are what order to run the tyre compounds, what the next stop lap will be, what to do in case on safety cars on every lap, who we are fighting, and what we can do to defend or beat them. We are continuously updating the driver with his targets, both lap time and position to allow them to manage their tyres and the gaps to other cars around and ultimately their pace. Following the race I will analyse all of the decisions and data gathered from the event, understand what we did right, and what we could have done differently and improved on. This analysis is then used to build a further understanding with regards to our competitors for the following event.

Q. What do you like about working in Formula One?

A. Formula One is unique – it's my passion, my hobby, my life. Outside of the race weekend, the entire team is trying to work harder, faster and better than the nine other teams to ensure that by the next race, we do a better job than them. The business solely

focuses on a single event, which lasts around two hours roughly every other week, where the result of hard work and dedication can be seen the world over. The other aspect is the reactivity of Brawn GP and how quickly we can react to other competitors, rule changes, and problems. We are able to draw, manufacture and run components that were first discussed only a few weeks ago.

Q. What's the best thing about working for Brawn GP?

A. For me, it's all about the people you work with, the team work, the development. The race engineering group has been together for a long time and is very close which makes for a great working environment. I think it抯 fair to say the engineers spend nearly as much time together as we do with our respective partners! The other reason is Ross Brawn who has changed the way we work together as a team. It's a privilege to work alongside him during a race weekend.

Q. What’s the most challenging aspect of your job?

A. The first challenge is making a strategic decision during qualifying or the race, sometimes in just a few seconds, based on as little or as much data you have available at that time. The difference between making a good or bad decision can be as much as several positions by the end of the race and therefore having the most accurate data possible at all times is key to this. The second is managing driver expectation and performance over a race weekend. During the race the goal is to work with the engineers to give the driver targets to hit, manage his pace, and keep an eye on your competitors to understand both their performance and usage of tyres.

Q. What has been the best moment of the 2009 season so far?

A. There have been several. The first would be when we took the BGP 001 car to Silverstone watching Jenson drive a few laps to ensure all was well before we shipped the car to its first test. The relief from where the team was just a few months ago was indescribable. However my best moment in 2009 was, without question, Monaco. A one- two result from Jenson and Rubens is an incredible achievement. More specifically from a strategic perspective, we had the right strategy, putting the cars first and third on the grid. We managed a difficult tyre situation and reacted quickly to the dynamic race to bring the cars home first and second. At the end of the race I was standing just next to the podium, Ross Brawn just behind me with his elbows on my shoulders watching Jenson running down the straight after leaving his car in Parc Ferme. It's a memory that will stay with me forever.

[killed-by-choice]

Sarah Dunn, 31 (UK 2020)

Sarah Louise Dunn was 31 years old and already raising 5 children in a pandemic. She decided to get an abortion when she discovered she was pregnant with her 6th child, but she had no idea that she would die along with her baby.

The abortion industry advertises abortion as “safe healthcare”, but the opposite is true. After being given the chemical abortion pill, Sarah began to experience alarming symptoms such as excessive bleeding, abdominal pain, severe leg pain and severe leg pain. She tried to seek medical attention, but her symptoms were dismissed and the warning signs of rapidly advancing sepsis were overlooked.

Days later, Sarah called an ambulance for herself and was rushed to Blackpool Victoria Hospital. She had severe blood poisoning from her sepsis and her organs were already failing. Shortly after, she had a seizure and was transferred to the ICU, where her condition was found to be unsurvivable. Her five surviving children were brought to her bedside to say goodbye as she died of Toxic Shock Syndrome.

Louise Rae, Assistant Coroner for Blackpool & Fylde, reviewed Sarah’s case and wrote to the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) warning of the need for greater training on sepsis risk. Her report has been sent to Maria Caulfield MP, DHSC Parliamentary Under Secretary, and notes that symptoms were missed by a GP, who apparently hadn’t noticed the recent abortion in Sarah’s patient records.

Sarah’s case is not an isolated incident. Even when used legally, the abortion pill has killed many others in a strikingly similar way, including but not limited to 18-year-old Holly Patterson, 18-year-old Manon Jones, Chanelle Bryant, Anita Koli, Ashwini Thavai, Oriane Shevin, Hoa Thuy “Vivian” Tran, Maria Del Valle González López and many known only under pseudonyms, including: “Summer” (Canada 2022), “Corrie” (USA 2021–2022), “Carmen” (USA 2008), “Jane of Canada” (2001), “Marcie” (Australia 2010), “Belle” (USA 2009), “Ella” (USA 2009-2010), “Wanda” (USA 2006), “Olivia” (UK 2010), “Janet” (UK 2020), “Crystal” (Canada 2003), “Jess” (UK 2004-2005) and “Janice” (UK 2004-2005).

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/mother-died-of-post-abortion-sepsis-after-neglect-by-nhs-rmr0tdzzk

https://www.blackpoolgazette.co.uk/news/people/expert-to-be-called-in-for-investigation-into-sepsis-death-of-young-blackpool-mum-after-abortion-3347462

https://www.lancs.live/news/lancashire-news/mum-dies-days-after-medical-23992249

https://www.blackpoolgazette.co.uk/health/unqualified-pharmacist-mistook-mums-sepsis-symptoms-for-painkiller-withdrawals-two-days-before-she-died-at-blackpool-vic-3442175

[starry-hughes]

4, 6, 19, 46???

4. what are you looking forward to?

i have a date on saturday :)

6. is it hard for you to get over someone?

obviously, i went back to my ex

19. have you ever been to New York?

yes! my whole family went in like 2009! i fell asleep in grand central station and i rode the toys-r-us ferris wheel. i want to go back and see an islanders game and a mets game! i also technically went in 2001 when i was in the womb

46. what my last text message says

it was to my brother:

dad is watching the GP with me and keeps saying sir lewis

(and then my brother said: dude i can’t keep watching max win)

get to know me asks!

[batsplat]

hi! I don’t know if this is the type of question you’d like to answer, but I was thinking about how being born in the same year would have affected valentino and marc’s careers (as in both born 1979). would they or could they have started in the same year? would they be teammates at honda, and if so, would valentino still make the switch to yamaha? how does this affect rivalries with other riders? I just think it’s interesting to think about!

it sure is interesting to think about!! tossing it under the cut because this gets long and kinda dumb

well, look, let's set some basic conditions here. first of all, obviously we don't know if 1979-born marc reaches the same level of success because of how the sport changes over time, everything is super circumstantial, what even is 'talent' bla bla bla (kinda the stuff I talk about here). he can't use his signature riding style on those bikes, demands of the bikes are different, competitive ladders are different, local motorcycling scene is different, etc etc etc... hey, by the same token, maybe he'd be even more successful and would never lose a race. we're going to throw out all that nitpick-y shit and assume that he makes it to the top of the sport. we're also going to assume that marc and valentino are both able to compete with each other on relatively equal terms and go from there. we'll obviously never know either way, but this is the most fun way to approach it, like obviously either 'marc wins zero titles' and 'marc wins ten consecutive titles' are deeply unsatisfying outcomes... I do think you can get fun and nerdy into figuring out how exactly their respective strengths and weaknesses as riders compare, what their title fights might look like, the nitty gritty of which tracks they'd beat each other at... but I reckon this post is probably long enough as it is, so I've mostly skipped over those bits. they both win some titles, that's what we're going with

the precociousness question is interesting because, again, obviously marc's development timeline would inevitably look at least somewhat different in this universe. would he start grand prix racing a little later? would he need a little longer to adapt to those 500cc bikes than he does to motogp bikes? who knows. let's just play this the most simple, straightforward way possible and again assume he hits his early career milestones at the exact same rate - most importantly, of course winning the premier class title as a 20 year old rookie. it's an editorial choice that lets us skip to the fun stuff

so, the fun stuff. let's compare and contrast their journeys to the premier class:

top row is ages, bottom row is years in this timeline, the cells indicate championship positions, the colours indicate class (green = 125cc; blue = 250cc; lavender (?) = 500cc)

this actually works out quite nicely! they're not even really encroaching on each other's titles at this stage. if you really want to get into 1998 lore, obviously that title becomes way more complicated... aprilia is the strongest team, they had that 'super team' set up already filled up, do they supply four guys? is marc somewhere else? does valentino have worse machinery in that year? one of the two other guys? who knows, and also this feels like maybe a tangent for another day. let's assume they're both competitive here, and then it doesn't really matter so much if valentino ends up p3 in that championship - crucially, he still needed a big chunk of that season to adapt to the bike

so then! let's start with this time period, and rattle through some random thoughts about what the competitive landscape looks like pre-2001:

if marc is that good that early, he kinda hogs up a lot of the limelight. some folks took a bit of a punt on valentino in 1996 to get him into gp racing - yes, there were already signs of something special, but it was still all a bit more uncertain

so valentino is basically always in the position where he's hunting marc... he's constantly a step behind

now, it's actually possible to wager a good guess at how he reacts to that! the answer is 'not great': when he was constantly asked about biaggi, whether he was the biaggi of 125cc and all that, he came out with the line that biaggi would dream of being the valentino rossi of 250cc. in this timeline, I don't think the biaggi thing completely goes away because that's still italy's darling... but the first point of comparison would always be marc. and valentino unsurprisingly doesn't enjoy always being second best

of course, they do have enough overlap in the lower categories that they do actually get to fight each other on-track. 1996!valentino was, as he describes it, "an absolute pest". even though he only finished in ninth in the standings, he did get a win and was often in the front-running group, so let's say they do have a few on-track run in's during 125cc. chuck those two together as seventeen year olds, and this sounds like *checks notes* a bit of a health hazard. there is a genuine argument to be made that valentino is worse at this stage - from oxley's reference book about france 1996: "valentino was once again in the mix at paul ricard, ducking and diving in the midst of a leading group that numbered up to 16 riders, but he was riding harder than ever, using all the kerbs and then some and occasionally kicking out at rivals with his knees and elbows"

marc likes to respond to aggression by one-upping his rivals, so this feels like it just goes wrong. several times. while they're still in 125cc. also, marc is mostly winning that year, which really lights up valentino. if anything, he'd probably be even more motivated during those years, because now he's got someone to chase and someone he would just love to piss off

let's say marc still narrowly misses out on a rookie 250cc title in large part due to injury. they spend a year together in that class too, where valentino is doing a lot of learning - but is a frontrunner basically from the word go - and marc is going for the title properly now. they have a lot of intense annoyingly tactical battles this year, plenty of dramatic last lap battles, and it takes valentino around half the season until he starts winning some of these (irl, he won one of the first ten races of the season and then the last four - and also crashes a lot. marc was the class of the field)

this is the year in which marc is just... a lot. plenty of controversy!! practise crashes! back of the grid penalties! and if marc does stuff like 'trying to run his rival off-track', there is a bit of a risk valentino attempts to one-up him here. they are both starting to get real reputations, and valentino's probably gets worse by association lol

then marc heads off to the premier class. valentino dominates his 250cc title, but he's being overshadowed by marc doing the thing. which means he will be extremely fired up once he gets to the premier class himself... which might not actually help him. too much exuberance on those 500cc bikes sounds like a recipe for painful crashes

let's assume marc dominates the first half of that season and it takes valentino a while to get going. the second half is more competitive when valentino finally clicks with the 500cc's and marc starts making more errors... setting up what's to come

let's also say marc immediately gets to the repsol honda team because they really want the next big thing and the contract situation is different from when valentino joins a year later - whereas valentino still gets a shell satellite team set up for himself in 2000. he's still obviously highly rated by honda and they still give him doohan's old crew and presumably quite heavy factory backing... but there's also not quite the same urgency in the succession planning. you kinda want to sign the kid so nobody else gets him, right, and he did beat marc a few times at the end of 1998... who knows who ends up turning out better, yeah? but at the end of the day, marc is still Plan A and he seems to be working out pretty well for them

this is all well and good, but obviously a rivalry is a bit more than just a general vibe and on-track incidents and a list of results. so, my general thesis for how this relationship goes is that it kinda oscillates between 'pretty good vibes!!' and 'breaks your geiger counter'. this goes in cycles of about 2-3 years, becomes a lovely soap opera for the paddock to follow. so let’s say for instance that they go through a rough patch in 1998, and then again in 2001, and then again 2003-04, and so on…. then you get marc’s injury years and from then on it gets proper messy

so, here's a stab on what the interpersonal vibes look like during the early years:

valentino embraces the underdog position. you get this with the biaggi stuff but also you get it throughout his career... he actually likes it! he's so much about surprising people, subverting expectations, proving them wrong... he thrives in the role where everyone thinks marc is going to be the next big thing and dominate the sport for fifty years

he does also have the potential to be a major thorn in marc's side, especially if the title fight is as close as marc's canonical 125cc title was. but they do run into the same problem here that they unfortunately will always run into: they get on as people! their chemistry has never actually been an issue. back then, you'd also get more like... socialisation in the paddock... it's a bit more casual, less professionalised, they hang out more and are teenagers and are both young and annoyingly good and eventually get to that irritating 'you're the only bitch in this house I respect' thing

valentino is still very good at making marc laugh, and seems to find marc funny too so. that's a thing. marc canonically glomps onto a very small number of people, and he's already shown in real life one of those people can absolutely be valentino. we all know what we're here for and it's the most BORING outcome if they're just indifferent towards each other. but why would marc be! of course, he's completely taken in by the super talented charming rival who is actually willing to match his viciousness step for step. he wants to fight valentino forever and ever

marc does really want to be friends... once he knows valentino he decides he really likes him... sometimes he's a bit oblivious to how tough he's making valentino's life, sometimes he's wilfully disinterested... valentino is sucked in a little bit in spite of himself, though I still reckon valentino's cynicism about friendships with rivals was learned over time (hey ho sete). at the start, valentino is happy enough to be friends with his close rivals, and really it's only later that all those subconscious issues of keeping rivals at arms' length develop. he's there to have fun! it might be vicious on-track, but it's a party off-track!

and he thinks it'll totally be fine!! he's not adverse to chatting up rivals and trying to get a sense of how they tick for future reference... some of the stuff marc does bothers him, but it's not like he can immediately even articulate why. and it is tough, with how marc has long been the chosen boy... just how brutal marc gets when valentino gets close to beating him... and usually valentino reacts Just Fine to that, but he does file it all away for future reference, because he sure doesn't think marc is reacting that way to just anyone on-track...? and then sometimes marc is perceived as a real rival, sometimes he just makes valentino uncomfortable, and valentino suddenly remembers that Actually, this is a Work Relationship. in general valentino runs very hot and cold with marc, in a way that does make sense according to his internal logic but can get very confusing to anyone else, not least marc

the slight mismatch between their rates of progression also gives you these gap years where they're not directly competing... and valentino is really coming into his own in 1997. so, yes, valentino is constantly chasing marc from a competitive standpoint... but marc is watching valentino's celebrations and thinks they're just like. the best thing ever. accidental valentino rossi fan, poor soul. a big fan of the hairstyles and will enthusiastically defend them to any critics, including that one time when one of his parents made a derogatory remark about the green hair

what if they're proper friends in 1997 (age eighteen) and hung out and gone to parties together and gotten drunk and have just become Real Actual Teenage Friends while they're not racing each other... when marc gets his diplopia, what if valentino is kinda freaked by this, he'd been planning to get to 250cc to beat marc's ass next year... what if he goes to visit marc, what then...

still, this is probably around the time when valentino first says mildly annoying stuff about marc to the press (going by the biaggi precedent), which is how you set up them really going at it in 1998. it gets vicious... but also, they're young, they do kinda get over it, and then marc progresses to the premier class and they can just socialise normally again... all the while, valentino is watching what marc is doing and thinking about just how badly he wants to beat marc

valentino's rookie campaign in the premier class is also fine - because valentino is too busy adapting to the bike, marc is dominating, and traditionally those are not the circumstances in which valentino picks his fights. they have a lot of fun here together, and they're both very generous about each other's successes. marc is so impressive, I can't compare myself to him yet, valentino's adapting so well to the premier class, he'll definitely be fighting for titles soon, etc etc. fair fights (by their definition of 'fair', anyway) and them both being really complimentary towards each other afterwards. everyone who wanted beef is disappointed and disgusted, but at least you've still got the vale/biaggi thing going on in the background (btw marc also for SURE would've picked a fight with biaggi in 1999, so they can bond over that and pointedly chat to each other in pressers while ignoring biaggi)

valentino's ability to make marc laugh is particularly lethal in this year, because valentino’s struggling just enough that maybeeeee marc is being suckered just a little into thinking he’ll always have valentino covered. so he can just let himself have fun with valentino without feeling too threatened... this sets up the title fight in the following year being a complete and utter nightmare… late 2000 is already ringing a few alarm bells when marc’s results start getting messier and valentino is clearly finally properly getting to grips with the 500cc bikes (first dry race win late that year). oh well! I'm sure their relationship will survive just fine!

and then... well, again, super conveniently, valentino's first premier class title at age 22 matches up with... you know. marc's 2015

let’s just say marc does suffer a bit of head loss when he encounters his first real challenge in the sport, when there’s finally a bit of real adversity after so much success. valentino wins the first few races while marc has some patchier results, and then marc kinda tries too hard to close the gap - and then, whoops, he’s gone too far and he’s left himself with too much work to do. I did run the maths for their average points at xyz age just to have a rough measure of how the seasons compare… as in how valentino’s compare to valentino’s and marc’s compare to marc’s, because any comparison between the two is completely meaningless, very different competitive pictures. that being said, fun fact: biaggi actually scores slightly more average points per race in 2001 than marc does in 2015. still, I don’t really believe you can get marc to sepang 2015 that title fight, just isn't close enough… the marc/valentino relationship does still sour, but it’s because you get an assen equivalent... valentino wins in a slightly dubious manner, and marc doesn't react well... after which valentino goes ‘aha so it’s all right until I’m winning, yeah?’

valentino in this timeline has just like. such a massive victim complex. helps fire him up that everyone’s constantly underrating him NOBODY believed he could ever take on marc (this is mostly not true). the way the assen 2015 equivalent plays out is not just ‘what a sore loser’ but also ‘MARC NEVER BELIEVED I WAS GOING TO BE A SERIOUS THREAT AND THIS PROVES IT’. it’s like… deeply insulting to valentino and also triggers the bit of valentino’s brain where he has to prove everyone, most of all marc, wrong. that's how you get the interpersonal hurt! valentino fully believes marc has switched up towards him and can't handle any version of their rivalry where marc doesn't have the upper hand. and marc does need some time to get over it and maybe he did write off valentino just a teensy bit but also... this is just how he competes... he thinks of a lot of things as 'fair game' that others don't... and he does also view valentino differently when he's a real competitor, so valentino isn't even completely wrong... marc does react badly to losing for the first time... but it's also more complicated than that, because marc is genuinely fond of valentino and really does want to put all that aside when the title fight is over again, except valentino thinks marc has shown his true colours. whips this controversy out later on in the season as he has a habit of doing, presumably when there's not even really any title fight impetus because that's been mostly wrapped up. (which would be a bit unusual for him but, hey, he's young and silly, he doesn't start feuds in Sensible Ways back then.) so they just kinda both end up escalating it and making it ugly, and by the end of the year it's all a mess. without any competitive justification... it's a bit argentina 2018 vibes, like there's not really any point to it apart from how they both drive each other insane occasionally. big public controversy. nobody wins here!

my guess is that the general pattern of this relationship is that it’s fine any time marc has a clear edge, and devolves every time valentino challenges him. this isn’t necessarily because I think marc throws a fit every time he’s challenged - it’s primarily because valentino prefers to attack from a position of strength. basically, if you want to get something proper nasty from him, you either need to get him with his back against the wall where he reckons blowing shit up is his best choice… or you wait until he has the upper hand, at which point he attempts to press home his advantage. bite harder when the opponent is already bleeding, if you will. a big believer in being a mean winner over being a sore loser, valentino is, and you do see this trait at various stages of his career. also, mostly there has to be a competitive justification to start drama? if he can't fight properly on-track, then why bother? so at times, it’s all civil on the surface when he’s on the back foot… but when he’s on top or close to the top, then the knives really come out. incidentally, this is one of the reasons why irl he was relatively restrained with marc post-2015 (look, I’m aware it might not seem like that but he definitely was way less indiscriminate with the snide jibes lobbed at some of his other rivals than he was with marc). there was never a situation where it really felt worth it with marc, and it’s just… a better look to have a go at your opponent when you’re winning, right? in this alternate timeline, there absolutely are times when valentino feels like it’s worth it... first premier class title is still baby valentino who isn't really deliberately picking fights and is more genuinely hurt by what he believes is marc playing dirty, so it's all less deliberate and calculating. but from then on you do see this pattern a lot I reckon

in terms of fallout, obviously you’d have to assume their popularity would be at least a little more balanced - and at the very least there’d be more national loyalty from the spanish here (boo!! vale!! at!! jerez!!) BUT valentino is just very good at the charm offensive… all the quirky celebrations, plus everyone loves an underdog who takes on the big bad dominant athlete of the time… idk, I reckon he might still get the love of the masses. if their relationship completely deteriorates in 2001, that feels like disproportionately it gets uglier for marc. but it's too much for both of them!! valentino gets a bit spooked in a way he didn't irl after the biaggi rivalry… he really did like marc and against biaggi he did just end up being everyone's sweetheart ridwe in a way he can't quite pull off against another young star… and it's just all so polarising! the factionalism takes valentino aback a bit - I still think it's worse for marc, but valentino goes. hey. this isn't fun any more :(

and oh, by the way, valentino switches to repsol honda for the 2002 season

everybody is extremely hype to see what the two do to each other as teammates, Will They Murder Each Other, but they are initially disappointed… contrary to popular perception, valentino is in fact capable of biding his time, and he goes into that season deciding it’s in his interest to Not have any more drama - which marc broadly agrees with him on. this detente doesn’t last long, obviously, but I feel like this is the time period where they're both a bit more settled, a bit more consistent, less susceptible to complete head loss, can really go at it in the championship... you get a couple close title fights here I reckon, ones where they're trying not to reawaken the feud between each other but... hey, let's say they actually have a crash where they take each other out (the one thing they canonically did not get to do!!) while fighting for position. massively try to downplay it afterwards, they're both hard racers after all :))) but everyone kinda knows it's only so long until this goes badly again. except at the same time they're kinda forcibly exposed to each other a lot in their capacity as teammates and they remember how they were actually Friends and the line between pretending to enjoy each other's company and not pretending is blurred... and the initial drama wasn't as bad as sepang 2015 (also helps valentino that he won the equivalent title in this timeline lol) and valentino knows he's going to see so much of this guy... he's someone who doesn't want to spend much of his life in awkward silences... they're kinda destined to be rivals forever and ever and they're also teammates and there was way too much drama... so actually they do get back to a friendly jokey place... is it sincere? is it not? who knows (not them)

dealer's choice who wins these two titles. we can chuck in one of those where valentino wins the major on-track battles but then marc wins the title fairly comfortably or something... valentino would really relish those fights lbr, even when they don't alter the momentum of the season as much as he'd like. maybe they do get a super close title fight for flavour, one where they're both actually consistent and the big on-track battles do make a difference in terms of momentum and all that stuff. crucially! they still have FUN fighting each other! that's the key thing... plus, they have that annoying vibe where they think they're the only guys who can match each other... there's that mutual understanding that's built in the heat of battle, like they're the only one who really gets what the other is all about, nobody else can... if anything, marc is forced to respect valentino even more now that vale has actually managed to beat him over the course of a full season at least once. biaggi is still a personal antagonist for valentino, but even irl he does very much fade as a threat after the first title fight - and it's all kinda defanged by marc's presence. how borderline obsessed valentino ends up with marc. maybe biaggi still ends up being the real title threat in 2001 after marc nukes his hopes early that year, maybe you still have some of that canonical vale/biaggi drama, but by the end of that year it really is more about marc and THEIR whole thing

brief interlude for a list of jibes valentino likes throwing at marc on a semi-regular basis as he gets better at using the media:

inconsistent stewarding: easy one. valentino was canonically an absolute menace in his early days, but by the time they compete in 250cc I’m sure there’s some mildly phrased insinuations that marc really seems to be getting off lightly with his penalties. valentino isn’t as skilled a media operator back in those days - but with marc’s hit rate of controversial incidents, it’s just incredibly low hanging fruit. valentino picks it with ease

Stop Asking Me About Marc: see the biaggi of 125cc thing. valentino gets sick of being constantly compared to marc! he's his own girl! it's what prompts the first insults he lobs in marc's direction, and it becomes a bit of a running theme. it's not even that anti-marc, but the more sick he gets of The Narrative the more implicitly anti-marc it becomes (marc, who's a lot more into the idea that they're Eternal Rivals, doesn't start drama over what valentino says but it just makes him a bit sad :( like HE doesn't have any problem being compared with valentino Actually)

‘woe be on me for taking on Big Honda’: listen, irl obviously valentino was increasingly annoyed in 2003 when both sete and biaggi argued he had the better bike than them because he was in the factory team. irl that ‘satellite team’ of his in 2000-01 barely was an independent outfit. still, would he have hesitated in 2001 to remind people that his number one rival was decked in repsol honda colours and he wasn't? well, probably not. just rhetorical positioning, right - he’s not even attacking marc, he’s just politely questioning whether honda really would prefer the satellite team to win the title and whether that might not have an influence on what bike parts they’re sending to which riders… just mentioning it! just reminding everyone of what an underdog he is! in case anyone had forgotten!

unequal treatment: this type of thing probably wouldn’t stop when valentino switches to the repsol honda squad. also probably would be justified lol - we’ll get to this in a second, but if he's facing a marc who has had time to make this team his own and is going to fight to keep it that way? yeah, hm. the way this works is that marc is waging most of this war behind the scenes and valentino, who'd be constantly on the back foot in this scenario given it never would have really been his team, is repeatedly taking it public. doesn't work particularly well beyond making marc's life more unpleasant - the public takes valentino's side, honda doesn't

'someone doesn’t like a challenge :((': again, the assen 2015 equivalent, where valentino points out their relationship was just fine until he started seriously challenging marc. young!vale doesn’t really have a reputation for being a particularly nasty competitor, especially if the biaggi feud is defanged just a little… so I reckon he could actually pull this off quite nicely. marc does rub a lot of people the wrong way, even without the valentino factor! he's so obviously rough and ruthless and so committed to winning that valentino can easily play victim here

'marc races me differently': basically the silverstone 2016 thing... it's not really something valentino complains about once they're through the 2001 title fight, and there is the understanding that this behaviour is kinda mutual - but valentino does occasionally throw in a snide remark. just to remind everyone that marc treats him differently!! he's extra aggressive with vale!! of course valentino is totally fine and chill with it, just wanted to remind everyone. in case they'd forgotten. just. a. reminder.

of course, there's also another major issue: the unique stresses of the teammate dynamic. here's the big question - does the switch of valentino to yamaha still happen? yeah, sure! I think he could well get flighty. marc would be the established guy within honda and someone that valentino would never be able to completely displace. plus a lot of valentino’s canonical complaints do still hold, about how honda doesn’t care who’s winning as long as it’s a honda, the stifling culture of winning, the joylessness… marc wouldn’t leave honda unless he absolutely has to because he loves that team, that's his home in a way it never is for valentino. but he is also obviously an absolutely awful teammate to have and, bit of a hot take here, when it comes to the development war stuff he kinda is worse than valentino. so you've got marc ensuring vale's input into the development process is constantly ignored, marc's entire team attempting to isolate valentino within honda, and he never does manage to ruin valentino's title hopes entirely, but inevitably the internal war is one valentino never comes particularly close to winning. in real life valentino sticks it out in repsol honda for a grand total of two years, aka the length of one contract cycle, which sounds about right for the length of time that team would survive until they do just start attempting to strangle each other. so vale goes to yamaha! this would not be a pretty divorce, and it would be even more obscenely risky than in real life, flat out insane from valentino. irl people think he's kinda crazy for doing it, in this universe people would think he's just an idiot. how on earth is he planning to beat the marc marquez on a yamaha?

interpersonally, the yamaha switch is. not good vibes. valentino has spent an entire year implying he feels imprisoned in a team with marc (LOVE brno 2003 in this universe), and marc finds this move a) baffling, and b) kinda loser behaviour because valentino can’t handle taking him on in the same team, so he’s essentially conceding the fight to marc. this dynamic is basically two years of marc attempting to bully valentino behind the scenes, trying to make his life hell, just endlessly gnawing away at him, and then valentino's like 'right lads I'm out' and marc goes :( why would you do this :(( I'm losing my main rival :(( I thought you were better than this :( I thought we had something special :(. for valentino, yes partly he's throwing a fit because he knows honda would never choose him over marc, partly it's justifiable frustration at being stuck in very much The Marc Team, but partly it's also kinda... not really fun for him... he does actually want his team to care about him... but honda doesn't care... so that's that

now, realistically, in this timeline marc has zero right to be losing to valentino in 2004 - not with that bike disparity. maybe if he loses his head completely! that’s… hm, 2018!marc, who we know did have some capacity for head loss. if marc builds up an early advantage while the yamaha is still at its dodgiest, it should theoretically be game over. if he does something silly… hey, who knows. that one’s a fun one psychologically because obviously marc would be the overwhelming favourite that year and valentino can completely embrace the underdog role. I do also reckon whoever wins this one, you can have a real big proper falling out either towards the start or maybe even towards the end of the season. it's all more serious now, somehow... being at honda together meant it just kinda felt like they'd be exchanging titles, honda didn't mind who won - but now both manufacturers are super into it, the press is even more into it, they're more into it... it's personal! they both have a point to prove! maybe marc dropped a few kinda mind games-y comments towards the end of their time together that he doesn't get why valentino felt like he had to leave, that it's not really what a rider does when they think they can win in a fair fight, kinda implying maybe valentino thinks he's already won enough titles and knows he isn't beating marc again anyway. valentino responds in a sane and proportionate manner (bottling it all up and then using any controversy that happens the following year to just unleash on marc). let's say marc wins that title (and valentino gets second place just ahead of sete), but valentino wins a big dramatic fight late that season, and there's some kind of justification for him to really lay into marc, to set off the feud all over again... all sets up their title fight the next year, of course

irl this is when they're both at their very best (2005/2019 respectively), so they get to be at their very best here too. in the name of balance, maybe you should let valentino have this one... or maybe not, swap these titles around at will. but if he DID, then he obviously builds that title charge around a big dramatic victory against marc early in the season on spanish soil. it feels lazy to just copy paste jerez 2005 and valentino being booed to this scenario, but let's assume marc does have his canonical early season crash at a friendly track (á la cota 2019) and that valentino does get that big victory at... hm, catalunya (ik, switching jerez for that is very creative) (but at least he can't get skittled by jorge lorenzo in this timeline). and the win is in somewhat controversial fashion and national partisanship is at a high here... canonically, valentino gets more aggressive in his racing during his switch to yamaha out of necessity, though in this world I imagine he would've already gone more extreme earlier while trying to match marc. they both kinda have to be careful to not go... too far, constantly flirting with the limit, exploring how much they can get away with, but they do have a duel here where they really push it. cause some controversy. give the season the right vibe (x)

no misano on the calendar unfortunately for an equivalent marc being booed moment, and I actually quite like the idea they both keep their respective mugello and sachsenring streaks (so no booing a victorious marc at mugello). each of which isn't the favourite track of the other, though vale in particular has had some great sachsenring scraps... and valentino's margin over the field at mugello is way smaller than marc's equivalent margin at sachsenring. but again, mugello's not really a fantastic marc track, and even without facing prime!valentino he didn't win after 2014, so it feels reasonable valentino could still get a bunch of consecutive wins there. I reckon we give marc a donington park victory, which was basically like valentino's second home race and a track valentino did really like. plus the british fans are canonically absolutely out of their minds so it works. the way the timeline works out that would unfortunately steal one of valentino's most iconic wins, but let's not overthink this eh

let's say their interpersonal relationship is actually slightly on the mend again after the nadir of the previous year, but the public has never been more divided... this is basically what everyone had wanted, right? the competition and the racing has never been better bla bla, they're nicely contrasting characters who are both happy to play dirty, and they give the press a lot to work with. (there are also a vocal minority who despise them both for being 'dangerous assholes' but what can you do.) hey, maybe they actually manage a season where they're the only two guys to win races, that would be kinda cool - and if you look at 2005/2019, surely it is possible... (I suppose sete is a bit more competitive here at least than he was irl because valentino has had the decency not to crush his soul.) narratively, of course it's a bit too neat to let them have this showdown just before it goes to shit for both of them, but they're the type of guys to make things narratively pleasing so I'll allow it. two nations divided, plenty of sniping at each other in the press, but #realfans will note they actually start meeting each other's gaze again in pressers and even manage to shake hands... let's say valentino does most of the points damage early that season, bites at marc from a position of strength (or something) to create a bit of a buffer, before running a bit of a defensive campaign, while marc is gradually ramping up the sheer levels of on-track terrorism. valentino does not remember the last time he had an fp2 session where he didn't have a honda-related jump scare. bless

anyway, listen, I don't really care about the order of these titles, beyond it being more fun for our purposes here if they're more or less balanced (though I do think it's neat if valentino is always kinda stuck chasing marc). they never get quite to the same relationship lows of sepang 2015 because, well, you needed a lot of very specific circumstances to get there irl - and I do think them being peers and being more familiar with each other does help... there's also no real power imbalance, or certainly not as extreme. plus, they're kinda aware from early on that they're stuck with each other. they're primed to spend their entire careers as rivals, like it or not! (I imagine valentino would very much Not like that at times.) they are both deeply pragmatic a lot of the time as racers, and valentino in particular would be less inclined to completely burn his bridges in this scenario I reckon. life's easier when you remain civil... and unwittingly they do keep remembering how fond they are of each other

brief interlude to ruminate on how this all actually affects them as people, vs their canon selves!

valentino never gets to be The One Guy in the sport, which does take something away from him in a way... a little less confidence, always a little more to prove. again, I do think he's quite comfortable in that underdog role and manages to make it his own. he's not as popular, he's not singlehandedly breathing new life into the sport... but on the other hand, what do people love more than a great rivalry? people would have gone crazy over them both, and valentino would've taken full advantage, turned them both into even bigger stars... still, there's a little more insecurity in there over his own abilities than there is irl where he was the single lord and master of the sport for years

the thing about marc is that so much of who he is as a racer feels to some extent influence or inspired by valentino that it's kinda tough to imagine who he is without that. then again, having valentino as a peer does allow valentino to still exert some of that influence (if obviously in a different way). they'd learn a lot from each other, at the end of the day - and even if marc doesn't hero worship valentino... he can still think vale's really cool... it's not star struck, but it's maybe a little bit star struck - given valentino is just so different to anyone else marc has ever come across

the power dynamic does change how they both approach the interpersonal relationship too... irl!valentino does really like adjusting his interpersonal warmth settings to what exactly he's attempting to accomplish in any given rivalry at any given point (even though, again, he's not that deliberate with it from the start of his career). but he's also less likely to completely freeze marc out... not for long, not forever. they basically do the 2016-18 cycle several times because they're competitive enough for long enough to be able to do that shit. warm with each other before there's another big fight, again and again

you do flip the dynamic a little bit in that valentino is the one to shape himself in response to marc a bit now... always chasing, perhaps a note of envy, perhaps some resentment of marc's role in the sport... perhaps also wishing he could get some independence, some freedom from marc and this joint legacy (also helps motivate the switch to yamaha). marc is way more into that shared legacy lbr, but they are both the types to get themselves nicely fired up over an enemy... so consciously or subconsciously they do play up that feud at times when it suits them competitively

no sepang 2015 trauma for marc! this valentino stuff might be bad, but it would never be that bad. he's a bit more happy to pick fights! a bit more happy to do his psychological warfare in the open! a little more openly annoying! less worried about how he's being perceived! more willing to meet valentino head on! let the man have some fun

okay. misery town... 2006

so, look, obviously we're applying some artistic license again here if we're keeping both the arm injury and valentino's dramatic last round loss. like, if you really want to get into it, valentino needs to lose the championship to someone and in this universe there's no seat available in repsol honda in 2003 so do you put hayden somewhere else within honda... but after that rookie season does honda still have enough faith to actually promote him... also does it make a difference if he doesn't have valentino there to directly give him advice... also, dani would PROBABLY just be promoted directly to the factory team in 2006... like idk I do feel this universe might kill nicky hayden's career and valentino should reallyyyyyy win this title. but like. fuck it. who cares. there's also a more abstract argument to be made about how irl!valentino does feel that he left something on the table in 2006 (personally I think it's one of his most impressive seasons but sure, I do get what he's saying) - but surely you wouldn't be 'complacent' in the same way if you hadn't won the last five titles? but again. nobody cares. let's assume they both still have broadly the same year they had irl, partly because there is something.... pleasing? sad? about how the ages DO actually match up here in terms of when their domination of the sport kinda collapses (if to completely different degrees). which would be a massive shock for the sport, right! both of those things irl are already a big shock, but if you have two super dominant forces you would kinda assume one of them would be able to pick up the pieces in any given year, even if the other falters? especially if 2005 was like, this ultra dominant season from the pair of them! but no, suddenly they're both diminished, maybe it is possible for someone else to actually win a title

(another 'fun' coincidence is that jerez is actually the season opener for the very last time in 2006... until 2020. so you can directly layer these races onto each other rather nicely, with valentino's first corner crash and marc's gravel excursion happening at jerez, two early disasters they're attempting to recover from before marc's crash)

on this year:

not really MUCH to say about it on-track if we're assuming it broadly plays out the same...

idk, guess it's about how you want to interpret their relationship. does valentino give marc a call? does he have an aneurysm watching marc attempting to race the following week in *checks notes* qatar? does he get quite stressed out about how cavalier marc is with his own safety, because unfortunately he does care about the guy? does he feel like he's missed his big chance to exploit marc's absence? does the press give him a lot of flak for this? any more insecurities to work through here?

hey, at least there isn't a pandemic in this universe

the thing is, right, if you've spent your entire racing career hunting down this one guy, who's always a step ahead of you, using him as a way to motivate yourself - so much spite, as ever, with valentino to get himself going - and then he just disappears... like they've been sharing the paddock for ten years, for valentino's entire grand prix career. his first memorable battles were against him, he was watching marc win titles in a higher category than vale, then this gradually escalating rivalry with more and more history and hatred and genuine friendship... you kinda inevitably end up defining yourself by the other, right? you can't avoid being shaped by that relationship, by that competitive push and pull. without quite the same interpersonal breakdown... well, valentino is someone who loves to hate his enemies. like, he does enjoy the animosity! he enjoys sniping at his rivals! he enjoys fighting them flat out on the track and off it! and if marc is suddenly gone, he's left feeling bereft. he doesn't get WHY, but he misses him...

marc starts getting long phone calls from valentino where he goes on increasingly incoherent rants about whatever aspect of the sport has annoyed him today. marc doesn't understand what's going on but he's not going to complain. it's a nice distraction

on to 2007! so, obviously the honda in 2007 is better than the honda in 2021, and irl dani does actually end up outscoring valentino by one point (after valentino attempted to ride in valencia with a broken hand and immediately had a mechanical dnf lol). (also idk what to do with the honda situation, let's pretend like honda panicked and created a three man team.) I'm gonna go ahead and say that this version of marc would get considerably better results than 2021!marc, but is not getting particularly close to winning that title. maybe he finishes fourth in the championship idk. he's missing races, honda's definitely not on ducati's level that year, honda/yamaha are still on the michelins at a time when the bridgestones are very much the tyre to be on

one rider who is guaranteed to insert himself into that rivalry in any timeline is, of course, casey stoner. now, casey does get a bit of a grace period from having to deal with marc... marc is absent for his rookie season and is still preoccupied with his injury afterwards. mostly, this is valentino’s problem… but also!! marc can multi-task. so you know how casey complained about valentino hazing him in practise sessions in 2006? and you know how marc would make himself a nuisance in 2019 when following around rookie fabio during quali? and how he followed around his new yamaha hire and rival vinales in pre-season testing in 2017 on a fact finding mission? and how irritated casey was when elias kept following him in successive races in 2007 (see here)? and how much marc was using this tactic post-2020, including by repeatedly picking on new big name pecco? how he generally does this in quite a targeted manner against his main rivals? and how he also tends to do it more when he knows it'll piss people off? so, let’s put all of those things together. how do we think that plays out?

this is why I reckon that despite how casey is nominally fighting valentino for the title, somehow you’d manage to have more open hostilities between casey and marc. again, remember how the casey/vale dynamic went irl: yes, casey was increasingly pissed off by the end of 2007 because he thought valentino wasn’t as nice to him any more and was also annoying in the press about him. but like, relatively speaking… this is still all quite small scale stuff. valentino mostly just does some wink wink nudge nudge stuff to the press that gets back to casey and annoys him because he thinks it’s contributing to an overall unfair narrative about his title… but it’s all still fairly subtle. valentino waits until laguna the following year to go all in, where he completely changes up his on-track tactics and - once he’s got his big win - he really makes sure to rub it in. there's a clear competitive justification for the laguna escalation, but his baseline level of on-track aggression with casey is relatively restrained until that point

by contrast, in this universe you get at least three or four incidents that year where casey extensively complains marc and marc just does the equivalent of a thumbs up (or a literal thumbs up, as he has been known to do). valentino determinedly stays out of it but probably silently enjoys it. by virtue of the negative effect marc and valentino have on each other, racing standards are really not at casey stoner acceptable levels at this time. casey doesn't enjoy valentino's media whisper campaign, but the marc stuff broadly bothers him more... in the races, outside of the races... irl valentino sort of retreated and regrouped late 2007, early 2008 and was less focused on fighting casey, more focused on exerting pressure on yamaha and figuring out the tyre switch he'd forced through. marc does NOT have a title fight to worry about and can instead dedicate himself to making a nuisance of himself. the thing is, casey is generally more inclined to expressing his annoyance through the media than on-track (unless he literally punches you, which he has of course done), so that's probably one of those weirdly one-sided situations where marc does drive casey absolutely insane but also doesn't really talk about it publicly while casey. does

all that being said, I don't really see any reason why casey wouldn't still win that 2007 title pretty handily, which brings us on to 2008. marc goes off halfway through to get his arm fixed, so no tricky title fight questions there. MY main question is whether he mimics valentino in switching to bridgestones. (irl!dani was still on michelins for like. most of the season until they pissed him off so bad he made the switch, which basically made a bunch of riders copy him and kinda brought about the single tyre era lol.) I think he does! bit awkward with michelin (as it was for valentino), but I reckon he'd also subscribe to the principle of wanting to take on his rivals on equal footing - and even if the tyres don't make as much of a difference as valentino says, at least everyone's in the same boat. so maybe that already kinda kills off the michelins at the start of 2008... and it's almost an act of silent solidarity, like marc has had an on and off enough 2007 that he's not fully on top of where he can make the michelins work and where he can't, and honda's telling him to stick with what he's got, but he's looked at what valentino's doing and gone. eh. if he can't do it then maybe it is a better idea to switch, so it's like an unspoken way of showing that he does kinda trust valentino's judgement... (I'm aware the two people still reading this likely don't give a shit about this, but I swear the tyre thing was a big enough deal that it does have major characterisation repercussions.) so valentino takes that title. you kinda assume marc would have considerably better results on that honda, certainly doesn't just have a single podium, hopefully gets a win somewhere. who knows

I do however have one specific suggestion for 2022-inspired drama

marc takes out defending champion and eventual 2008 runner-up casey lap one of his comeback race. valentino sends him flowers

brief interlude to talk about rivals!

again, think the main thing with biaggi is that it just takes a bit of attention away from the whole thing... the feud still happens because it's a rivalry between two italians that gets a lot of press hype, and valentino still doesn't shy away from pissing biaggi off - but there's still less of a spotlight on it. and yeah, wouldn't just be valentino who gets into some feisty exchanges with biaggi, looking at biaggi's track record

I feel bad for doing sete dirty up until now, so as the number one sete gibernau scholar currently active on this website (and quite possibly any website), I do need to address the sete question. the thing is, right, the appeal of the sete rivalry in canon is that it's kinda like. valentino fighting his internal demons. trying to figure out the honda thing. fighting sete who is a way of externalising the internal demons. inevitably, having a straightforward number one enemy and friend and rival and object of his obsessions does kinda distract from sete? who has to play the third man role in that dynamic, and finds it tougher to asset himself in any title fights (especially if we give 2004 to marc in a fairly straightforward manner)

I think sete would still have dramatic on-track battles with both of them! but it's also different if those fights don't have quite the same Implications, because the media narrative around them ends up being completely different. sete isn't being used to judge whether valentino is washed or not, basically

valentino/sete friendship saved!!!!

maybe sete wins the 2006 title for gresini in this timeline idk. sorry sete unfortunately I don't think u get cursed in this timeline :(

and now to the most important question: does casey prefer marc or valentino before he joins the premier class? so u can kinda go both ways on this... on the one hand, I think casey is more directly inspired by marc's style. also, he's a big fan of dominance, and the way this works out in my head is that marc does have more 'dominant' wins than valentino where he just comfortably gaps the field

then again... valentino does tend to go that extra step on the interpersonal stuff, is a bit friendlier with a bunch of riders including the up-and-comers, just generally more outgoing than marc is. (yes, I realise marc being more closed-off is partly the aftereffects of sepang 2015, but it's also a vibe idk. valentino is aggressively a people person, marc is charismatic but is really only interested in about four people at any given time.) plus, you've got the australian connection via valentino's crew chief, and vale probably does have a somewhat better reputation than marc in terms of being a dickhead on-track?

I reckon casey is fairly neutral on this rivalry and cites them both as inspirations in the generic sense, but does get on with valentino a touch better before they become rivals

he does end up kinda hating them both

valentino subconsciously probably does benefit from the emergence of casey as someone he can actually focus some negative energy on in marc's semi absence. gives him some fire again... gets him out of his funk... at heart he's a hater

maybe casey's relationship with valentino is a little better than irl because valentino is no longer the sole representative of everything that's wrong with the sport. like, you still get mad about laguna, right, but then you're also being crashed out by marc on the first lap of his post-injury comeback a couple of races later... like I said. he hates them both

casey already wants to unionise along age lines irl, in this universe he's lobbying for a new rule to force riders to retire at age 27

dani's a fun one, because inevitably he does kinda have a rough time of this scenario. first of all, he's not really honda's golden boy in the same way any more. you've already got marc. second of all, it's not completely implausible marc would've quietly tried and failed to block dani from joining the team at all

I actually think if you put those two respective versions of marc and dani against each other... more beef? puig surely becomes a bit of a nightmare in that team, even more than irl, constant ugly press briefings and insinuations that marc has developed this bike to shit (obviously would be ironic given what a marc... propagandist? puig became in irl post-2020 but y'know)

kinda like a worse version of the dani/hayden dynamic that's also a fusion with marc's dynamic with his post-2020 teammates, where it's just interpersonally quite cold and frigid and there's a lot of scrapping about who gets to lead the team in bike development. not ACTIVELY hostile 'let's kill each other on-track' but not really good vibes

is jorge lorenzo a marc fan in this universe? .... or. actually. is he more likely to be a proper valentino fan? canonically, the being a biaggi fan thing was a bit of contrarianism from jorge - but if you're going to be contrarian against the guy who is winning everything in this universe, it'd primarily be against marc. also, presumably a lot of his immediate circle would root for marc on the basis of national loyalty, so maybe that... could push him in valentino's direction?

on the flip side, if valentino is more popular, maybe he goes marc. god knows, maybe he'd still be a biaggi fan, but I kinda feel like this version of motogp in the noughties you have to choose a side. I think you can make a case for either direction

not that it really matters... if we're still slotting jorge into valentino's team, he was more committed to keeping that relationship respectful than with his other rivals, which.... uh. hate to say it, but I reckon you could give marc and jorge early beef too?

kinda depends, because there's only an overlap of two races where marc is back and before jorge is crashing himself to pieces in his rookie season, so he'd have to strike FAST. then again, he managed to piss off both dani and casey during that time period! he's efficient!!

still, long term jorge's number one priority remains valentino, and that's also where the more serious drama would likely originate

anyways!! one more year and then we're 'up to date'. honestly, there's no elegant way to integrate 2009 and 2023, so just do whatever really. the issue here is obviously the honda... which did have some proper gremlins in 2009, but like, normal gremlins not 2023 honda gremlins. obviously, if marc injures himself a bunch, he's not in the title fight, but presumably he's not injuring himself as much and not as reckless in frustration if he's not on that bloody murder honda. you could have him play the sepang 2015-lite role in the jorge/valentino title fight? I seem to remember the commentators at some point in 2009 saying that valentino had talked about how dani might end up playing a significant role in the title fight by way of like, taking points from the others in crucial places (something like that, I'm sure he phrased in a way that sounds less condescending). irl 2009 is a bit meh as a season apart from like. seven interesting races. (jerez le mans mugello catalunya sachsenring phillip island sepang iirc, and three of those are wet races.) so adding in extra marc marquez would probably spice up the product at least a little bit? a fit marc would presumably be in that title fight but y'know, given the yamaha was the best bike that year (apart from maybe the ducati, casey seems to think that was the best bike they ever made but who knows), maybe it still ends up being very much an intra-yamaha war. not super committed to any particular title fight scenario that season idk

and on the interpersonal relationship post-2006:

man the aliens getting involved does make it more complicated. over the course of his career, valentino generally doesn't really deliberately escalate feuds when he's not fighting someone directly for a title? of course there's a very obvious exception to this rule who is relevant here

I think to both of them it's still the Special Rivalry, even though valentino does not embrace it to the same extent as marc does. but subconsciously he still does embrace it...

they do have this fun thing where they very clearly race each other differently than they do anyone else (excepting days when valentino has something special cooked up for casey)

realistically obviously these on-track battles happen less because we are now in a dire dire era for racing that can't entirely be blamed on the riding styles of the other three aliens. but like I'm sure they still manage twice a year at least to cook up something fun

I've turned this around in my head a few times now and I... just don't really see valentino starting shit with marc during this era? and because he is a bit more the active instigator in that dynamic, but he'd be more inclined to brush off whatever shit marc is sending his way... I kinda think they'd be fine here? if anything, you might get to this slightly absurd place where it essentially mimics the 2013-14 vale/marc dynamic where they do low-key back each other up whenever a dispute rocks up. deeply confusing to anyone who has been around to see the years and years of relentless toxicity to see them repeatedly publicly agreeing like this

but like? if the other aliens (especially casey and dani) complained about marc and valentino's riding style...? hey maybe we get some good old-fashioned generational warfare, marc and valentino both going fuck them kids

also again as a baseline dynamic, they are fond of each other... they may have a lot of problems, but the interpersonal chemistry isn't one of them. if this is a period in which valentino is racking up a couple more titles and marc isn't, obviously this would be like. deeply distressing to marc. but also again I do feel you'd need two parties to escalate this feud again and I just don't think valentino would?

world peace era

kinda the question, right... irl you have 2018 as a new nadir and then the relationship edges back towards civility in 2019, minus isolated spats... and then you have enforced separation by way of covid/injury and that's kinda it for their interpersonal interactions. but in this universe, they do just... keep interacting... also they have so much more history with each other! less hero worship less active betrayal but more just them being teenagers who got drunk together a lot. they'd figure it out again imo!! it's still weird and loaded because they're both ultra competitive, but at the end of the day throwing in a bunch of other rivals into the mix makes them think about how maybe they do actually like each other a whole lot

and the injury does spook valentino... marc was suddenly gone... marc keeps hurting himself... canonically, valentino does show some real concern about marc's antics in 2012 - and okay, here valentino isn't the older one and isn't as traumatised and still believes in his own immortality a little more, but he's still not marc. and marc makes a stupid, reckless decision, and he leaves valentino... given how long they have been friends in this universe, it's just about enough of a scare that it maybe prompts valentino to reevaluate that relationship just a teensy bit? not enough to hold too firm in the face of competitive pressures, but enough to make valentino worry a little more about marc hurting himself than he's worried about marc being the biggest star in their world or their legacies being tied too closely together or whatever... and marc does infuriate him in this, but he does also care...

after this, you would have to get more creative with this universe. valentino breaks his leg, I guess. obviously, marc is not riding a satellite ducati. does valentino still go to ducati in this universe? who wins any of the titles going forward? do you really want to steal any of jorge's titles? what about casey? what happens when we hit the 2013 onwards stretch? idk I'll revisit this in three years time to compare and contrast with what happens irl in marc's timeline (psst since he's currently as old as vale was in 2010.... casey/marc teammate feud starts next year....?) and decide how to forcibly graft that onto this timeline. I'm not really attached to specific title numbers.... going forwards, you can have them compete 4eva - fuck the other aliens - or have only marc win titles or neither of them wins any more titles and that's that. who's to say!

CONCLUDING THOUGHTS

so... like... what does this alternate universe change? obviously there's a bunch of cool on-track battles that would've been neat to see. they're both just fun racers to watch - with very different styles that match up very nicely - and of course the thought of both of them in their prime slugging it out week after week is tantalising in itself. I do think in general, valentino doesn't match marc's aggression as much as he assen 2015's his way through his problems... but also, you'd get some fun 'wow you've both taken each other out' races where both feel like they can't get away with yielding to the other. also, one of my favourite things about sports rivalries is how the way they engage with each other changes over time, how each new encounter inevitably in conversation with all the past fights they've had. in this universe you end up with a bigger sample size inevitably than irl (though honestly the irl one compares pretty positively with a lot of rivalries this century in terms of quality of on-track competition), plus it's over a larger time span. what do they learn from each other? what tricks do they pick up? how does that dynamic change over time? the most obvious shift informed by real life is that [2000 -> 2001] [2014 -> 2015] you go from marc winning the proper battles to valentino winning the proper battles, which helps bring about the marc head loss that season as valentino gets more comfortable with the bikes and the premier class and marc struggles for the first time. where you go from there... again, tbh it's dealer's choice, but the key thing is you have that dynamic of constantly revisiting old haunts and old battles and building on their history more and more and more... it's also super formative and constant for both of them in a way that none of their actual irl rivalries can quite be, like something that caries through from 125cc to 250cc to the premier class?? kids crashing into each other in 1996 and revisiting that same track in 2009 to fight it out again? they end up just sharing a lot with each other that completely eclipses any other on-track rivalry

but there's something... hm, I do really like the generational aspect of marc/valentino and to me it's one of the most interesting aspects of that rivalry, so I'm almost loathe to strip them of that, which is obviously why I've written a reasonable length tumblr post about this. when you make them peers, marc cannot steal valentino's moves, he can't supplant him, he won't have this hero worship that makes him construct himself in valentino's image. you kinda want to find a way to maintain aspects of that dynamic, right, where marc still sees valentino as like. the coolest thing ever. and doesn't model himself after him as much as admire him, sometimes from closer and sometimes from afar... valentino's always making racing fun - which it obviously is to marc too, marc's also a cheery kid, but they are a bit different in how... y'know, marc's constantly inventing new ways to overcome the pain barrier whereas valentino looks at all the more unpleasant aspects of racing and goes 'no thank you <3' (one of my favourite anecdotes about young valentino is what a wimp he was about the rain, which never quite went away). also they come from different enough backgrounds, valentino with his deeply laissez faire parents where he had to grow up quickly himself and occasionally parent them, marc with his deeply not laissez faire parents where the growing up is a bit more about the money of it all but he's still fairly sheltered and living the Professional Child Athlete Lifestyle... and whenever they're not actually racing each other, marc can still construct a bit of an idealised version of valentino in his own head, where he doesn't as much want to be him as he wants to be around him. the reflected glow of all that joy

you tease out the most interesting elements of valentino's side of the equation by going all in on the resentment imo. marc might not be replacing him in this universe, the stuff he 'has' in this universe is fundamentally stuff valentino can take from him if he's good enough... but marc's just everywhere, isn't he? always a little ahead, always seen as the next big thing, burns bright very very early. valentino wants his own legacy! he wants to be his own guy! but he's also a storyteller, and there is a story to be told here... one about how he's just a girl, in a big big world, taking on the big bad marc marquez. so in his head he'd just love to get rid of marc, but also he gets to this weird place where he kinda needs him.... he ends up defining himself against marc, both in the public's eye and in his own mind. they're both each other's biggest points of reference, to where they're eventually each other's only reference. and just like in real life, valentino never quite escapes how all this resentment stems from self-recognition... it's resentment based on how similar they are and how unfair it is that there's someone who's this good who's this much a match for valentino... all because they're similar enough in their approach to competition, grinning while twisting in the knives, vicious in the heat of battle... and because they do both fundamentally want to have fun! so sometimes valentino might love to hate marc but mostly he just loves to fight him...

anyway. what would this timeline adjustment actually add beyond a bunch of on-track battles? I think the main thing you get here is the kinda.... intimacy... from having been teenagers at the same time, having been given the time and space to actually build up a relationship as peers that constantly gets chipped at and reconstructed again and again and again. they kinda function as each other's foils, which they do anyway but here it's from a position of equality. irl, you actually have to jump through some major narrative hoops to even put them both in a position where they'd consider becoming friends (thanks real life for jumping through those hoops). you don't have to do that in this universe! valentino did get more cynical about being both friends and rivals over time (or at least that's my theory, see here) - but when he's a teenager, he's not going to be cautious in the same way! if he likes marc, which the evidence we have suggests he very much would, he'd just be friends with him! the normal way! valentino isn't prepared for the entire thing turning ugly because he's never done this before, there's no past experiences he'd be drawing on here and would be inspired by in starting feuds with his friends-turned-enemies. they'd both be young and innocent and kinda get into the process of feuding in an organic manner, as it should be

and, yeah, the other element is that valentino... well. look. he's really not the fully formed package at the start of his career, including when it comes to media manipulation. but it's always in there somewhere... there's something fun about this being baby's first feud! irl he kinda stumbles into the biaggi one, right, where he says some shady stuff about biaggi and then he's like 'wait a moment the journalists actually report on what I tell them??' and then it escalates from there. very trial and error! in this universe, valentino can trial and error this feud, where he just says some kinda feisty stuff to the press about how he doesn't always want to be compared to marc marquez and maybe they should be asking marc about him, y'know, the cocky little shit - and the public animosity comes and goes in waves where they have one serious spat in the lower categories, then patch it up again, then a proper feud, then it gets better again, then more feuding, etc etc etc.... and in all of this, they're both very into using the media as the way to litigate this feud - especially when they really aren't speaking to each other. and valentino's occasionally quite deliberately drawing the public to his side to make marc's life less pleasant, which he gets better and better at as the years pass. valentino does help turn marc into a bit of a heel, someone the public loves to hate and to root against. (though, again, it is very very important to me you get some crowds booing valentino.) marc's just too good! too vicious! and unlucky to have valentino, the people's princess and poor wee underdog, as his primary rival! but even then, because valentino is younger and less jaded, there's also a level of hostility that he would shy away from. and the fact that they're so inescapable to each other also helps the feud die down each time. because you don't want every single podium until the end of time to be unbearably awkward...

in a way. the direct competition does make things more vicious but more straightforwardly so? and in a more equal way. broadly speaking they do have a better shot of figuring things out in this world imo! maybe valentino finds a qatar 2004 equivalent to burn everything to the ground, but I reckon he flirts with that line without quite crossing it... they have more argentina 2018 equivalents, stuff where one of them (probably marc) does something insane on the track and one of them (probably valentino) says something insane off it... but that's a bit more straightforward! what really makes sepang 2015 so fucked is that it's not a direct title fight between the two of them, like that's why it's the wound they can't heal from! irl it's almost like a commentary on the age gap, right, that they're barely overlapping in competitive windows and how the feud itself can't stem from something so direct... it had to happen in a more roundabout way that allows it to curdle into something far crueller and far more bitter... but the moment you make them peers, then it's all fair, really - a lot of the stuff they do to each other is more 'acceptable' and just part of being rivals and easier to eventually look past. (cf how they're both mostly still focused on sepang 2015 to this day, not argentina 2018.) for better or for worse, they're trapped with each other... irl, part of the unequal power dynamics stem from the simple fact that valentino was integral to marc's childhood but marc wasn't to valentino's. marc can't escape valentino not only because of their shared history, but also because valentino was such a big part of growing up, of figuring out who he'd become... hero worship as a formative process - where however marc feels about valentino now, there's still elements of his identity as a racer and as a person that are inexorably linked to valentino. but here, when they're peers, neither of them can escape that - and when nostalgia comes calling, it does so for both of them. valentino can't just dismiss marc as part of his story, because marc has managed to so thoroughly make himself a part of it. which can make everything worse between them too... and they know each other so thoroughly they'll figure out some nicely brutal ways to hurt each other, again and again and again. they're so similar, so combustive, stuck with each other for so long that they can trial so many flavours of cruelty. but hey, let's be optimistic, just this once. they can't escape each other so they might as well learn to forgive each other

[dystini]

Indycar Driver Lore

Indycar Driver Lore Masterlist

Sting Ray Robb

Birthdate: Sept. 3, 2001 Hometown: Payette, Idaho Residence: Payette, Idaho Height/Weight: Unknown

Rookie Year: 2023

Team: A. J. Foyt Enterprises

Follow him on: Instagram Twitter YouTube

Career Stats

2023 Dale Coyne Racing w/ Rick Ware Racing - 23rd Overall

Indy Lights (now IndyNXT) 2021 Juncos Racing - 8th Overall 2022 Andretti Autosport - 2nd Overall

Named after the Corvette, won the 2020 USF Pro 2000 championship and has raced Formula Car Challenge and NASCAR K&N Pro Series West. -- Faith is a key part of his life, and he is involved in The Porch young adult ministry. enjoys spending his time outdoors in the mountains of his home state, Idaho, where he skis and hunts in the fall and winter and participates in rock climbing and watersports in the spring and summer.

Iconic/memorable moments

Idaho native Sting Ray Robb reflects on journey ahead of Indy 500 debut "It's a dream come true." Sting Ray Robb will race in the Indy Car Series Interviewing David Malukas and Sting Ray Robb Indycar Driver Sting Ray Robb Tells Us about the New Detroit GP street course! IndyCar Driver Sting Ray Robb Joins Us at Indy 500 Media Day Live at McGilvery's 04/25/2023: Sting Ray Robb - Racer to Racer Podcast Sting Ray Robb - Racer to Racer Podcast Ministry In Motorsports : Episode 01 : Sting Ray Robb

Since he was three, Sting Ray Robb, from Payette, Idaho, has aspired to be a racecar driver. This all- American, Champion driver has already enjoyed a “fantastic dream” driving career. While competing against the world’s best at every level, he has garnered numerous honors, trophies, podiums and championships along the way.

Yes, Sting Ray, is his real legal name and he believes he was born to race! As soon as he was able to walk and talk, he asked for a race car. And so with a little pedal red Corvette, the journey began.

Fanfic Lore

none

[f1reader]

He might have been karting since the age of ten, but remarkably Kimi had only raced cars on 23 occasions (three in Formula Ford and 20 in Formula Renault) before he joined the grid for the 2001 Australian Grand Prix. Bearing in mind that in 2000 a Formula Renault car was powered by a 185 bhp engine from a Renault Clio, the step up to a 800bhp+ Sauber F1 car was a big one. However, Kimi took to F1 incredibly quickly, being on the pace of Sauber’s regular drivers on just his second day in testing. There were many who voiced concerns about granting an F1 Super Licence to a driver with so little experience, but Sauber signed him for the 2001 season regardless.

He really is the ‘Iceman’

It was Ron Dennis that gave Kimi the nickname of ‘Iceman’ when he was driving for McLaren but his laid-back approach and ability to remain unfazed by anything F1 could throw at him were never more evident than on the day of his F1 debut in Australia 2001. You might have expected a 21-year-old with so little experience to be anxiously pacing up and down the garage 30 minutes before the start of his first race. Not Kimi though – he was fast asleep in the Sauber motorhome. Having qualified just three tenths of a second slower than his much more experienced team-mate ‘Quick Nick’ Heidfeld, he scored a point with a sixth-place finish in his very first F1 race.

Except when he’s not the Iceman

Speaking recently on the ‘F1: Beyond the Grid’ podcast, Fernando Alonso had this to say about Kimi: “He’s a very good character in Formula 1 and we will miss him… he’s very honest, he’s not playing any games, he’s what you see. A part of this may be a mask that we see from him, of being very cold and not talking too much. There is a different person I think inside… not the Iceman. I think he’s quite warm inside, even if you need to meet him outside of racing, it’s when you see the real Kimi”.

He tells it like it is and always makes us smile

Kimi might not be known as F1’s chattiest driver, but when he does speak, he comes out with some real corkers. In an era when most drivers are terrified of upsetting their bosses and sponsors, Kimi doesn’t seem to care. Here are a few of his most famous quotes:

- On the grid prior to the 2006 Brazilian GP, Kimi was approached by Martin Brundle on live TV. "You missed the presentation by Pele, will you get over it?" asked Brundle. "Yeah. I was having a sh*t," replied Kimi.

- Whilst leading the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix in 2012 Kimi was clearly becoming irritated by the instructions coming over the radio from his Race Engineer. "Just leave me alone, I know what I’m doing," he said. Then later in the race when told to look after his tyres, he replied, "yes, yes, yes, I’m doing that all the time – you don’t have to remind me every 10 seconds…" Apparently, he did know what he was doing because he went on to win the race.

- When asked how he found the new McLaren in testing in January 2004, Kimi didn’t mince his words. "It’s complete sh*t," he replied in Finnish.

- Interviewer: What is the most exciting part of the race?

- Kimi: I think it’s the start, always

- Interviewer: And the most boring?

- Kimi: Now

He’s monumentally smart when it comes to money

His manager will probably want to take some credit here, but despite winning just the one championship, Kimi has become phenomenally wealthy. His net worth has been estimated at between $200-250m. Only Alonso, Hamilton and Schumacher have earned more from the sport and in 2009 he was said to be the second highest paid sportsperson in the world after Tiger Woods.

One of his most impressive deals was the one with Ferrari for the 2010 season. The team had both Massa and Raikkonen under contract but desperately wanted Fernando Alonso in the car. The solution was to offer Kimi a reputed £20m not to drive that year.

Then there was the time that he nearly bankrupted the Lotus team. When Kimi signed his two-year deal with Lotus he was to receive both a salary and a points bonus. The team clearly weren’t confident that they would do particularly well because they apparently agreed to pay €50,000 per point scored. Kimi went on to finish on the podium 13 times and win twice, scoring 390 points over the two years. That would have meant a bonus of €19.5m!

Series 18, episode 7 in March 2012 saw Kimi join Jeremy Clarkson as the ‘star in a reasonably priced car’. He wasn’t particularly quick in the Suzuki Liana but to be fair, it was ‘extremely wet’ that day. Regardless, for a man who has talked about hating giving interviews, he entered into the spirit of things and gave us a lot of laughs.

He’s a proper F1 driver

But the main reason why we love Kimi, is that he’s a proper F1 driver. As the 2007 World Champion, his name will forever feature on a list that includes the likes of Fangio, Clark, Stewart, Senna, Schumacher and Hamilton. Kimi deserves his place amongst the greats - he’s fast, committed and supremely talented, but most of all, he clearly loves F1. With the exception of Schumacher and Alonso, no other driver has still been competing at this level fourteen years after winning their first championship.

[sanstropfremir]

Re: your xg has you in a chokehold tag (because me too - I think both shooting star and left right have been repeated so many times on Spotify that they’re destined to be my top two songs for the year already and it’s only the first week of February) -

What do you think about how their overall concept/design/styling has ended up with the shooting star comeback now that we’ve had two weeks of stages? Obviously you liked a lot of the concept photos with the reblogs (they were so good!) so I’m curious if you think the execution of the mv/remaining content stayed at the same level or not.

big fucking mood i think left right is gonna be my top played this year simon made that song for ME! anyways got two asks about shooting star so i'm gonna put a screenshot of the other one here bc they bring up a point i wanna touch on also:

firstly: obvs they have an extremely talented creative director working for them and i suspect that their stylist/designer is probably either japanese or korean japanese, bc there's a SUPER strong early 00s harajuku/lisa frank thread in the visuals that not really any other kpop group has managed to catch in quite the same way and that is VERY authentic to the time. and i think it does really help that their executive producer (of the company and of their music) was a kid in the 00s AND was an active idol in the early 10s, so he probably has a good eye for what they're looking for visually and/or the understanding to be able to hire and communicate with a person who does. and they allocated their reasources really smartly with the mv, they put most of their emphasis on the styling and on the editing, bc a lot of what makes mvs and just video content from the 00s is the experimentation with vfx/cgi/'futuristic' visuals bc it was all new tech at the time. the nice thing about the 20yr nostalgia cycle is now all the effects that editors and directors thought they were doing in 2001 can actually be achieved much easier and in better fidelity than anyone could have dreamed. they utilize a lot of different camera angles and effects to give each of the sets more punch, including a lot of practical effects, like the mirrored buildings and all the lighting.

i do think the mv is the best part of the cb, bc it really is SO well done; i wish they had used more of the more 'out there' outfits for the music show stages, but i think it was probably a fair assessment to tone it back a little for kr promotions bc the gp tends not to react as well to stuff that's on the ''weirder'' end of fashion, esp for women. that being said i don't actually think any of the outfits from the stages were a disappointment either, they have all been extremely good, just not as ostentatious as we saw in the mv. i am VERY glad that we got a stage with the blue wigs though, bc that was one of my fave looks.