#what can i say like... brocedes really got me good

[wisteriagoesvroom]

Little brothers of mine

The Guides -- Margaret Widdemer [x] // On Speaking Quietly with My Brother -- Jay Deshpande [x] // It Was The Animals -- Natalie Diaz [x] // The Night Before I Leave Home -- Elisa Gonzalez [x] // I Cast It Away, My Body -- william bearheart [x] // My Brothers Mirror -- Donald Platt [x] // Youth -- Tom Sleigh [x] // There, There, Grieving -- Zeina Hashem Beck [x] // Two Set Out On Their Journey -- Galway Kinnel [x] // stray birds -- Rabindranath Tagore [x] // [When night draws on, remembering keeps me wakeful] -- al-Khansāʾ [x] //

and special thanks @blorbocedes for the final LH soundbite gif (screenshot) because i couldn't find it anywhere else

[fourtyforever]

Get in losers were making a fic rec masterlist

Hi y’all it’s me, your local multishipper, and I’m about to be the change I wish to see in the world by putting all the best f1 fics in one place.

Maxiel

cool things to say to your soulmate by @powerful-owl (E, 14k)

A collection of shorter soulmate stories by the great em powerfulowl. Essentially the maxiel thesis as far as I’m concerned. If you ever catch me talking about the goose fic, this is what I’m talking about. Fun story: this was actually the first F1 rpf I ever read and I blame it for why my standards are so fantastically high.

Thursday girl by @boxboxlewis (M, 3k)

Max is outed by the press. Shocking emotional impact to word ratio and off the charts tenderness. Short and sweet and low key a comfort read to me.

the being unknown by anonymous (E, 12k)

Body swap with really unique and emotional vibes. Ngl this one hurt me (in the best way). A fantastic and heart-wrenching take on the horrors of 2022.

Charlos

win or lose (it’s how you play the game) by @f1-stuff (E, 18k)

Hickey bet between charles and carlos. Cannot get over this fic for as long as I live: the silliness is off the charts, the vibes are literally the most perfectly balanced tenderhorny I’ve ever read and the writing is just really that good. I think about this fic minimum once a day.

last night by venerat (E, 24k)

College au. Ngl this one is just especially spicy, but also very very funny and fully captivating top to bottom (see what I did there? haha). Also a great ensemble cast here, which I always love.

Once more (before we die) by @f1-stuff (M, 6k)

Fantasy AU where charlos are princes of warring kingdoms. I love this AU and I love the tenderness between Charles and Carlos that we get out of it. I’m usually not really an AU type of gal but this one really did change my mind.

Playing games by @vegasgrandprix (T, 4K)

Gay chicken. WIP, but I can already tell so clearly exactly where this is going and that is delightful to me. Honestly this really is how they act like 90% of the time already.

Yukierre

match made in heaven by venerat (T, 4K)

Pierre is yuki’s matchmaker. this one is just so sweet and sooooo silly. Comfort read 100%

Loscar

Are they gay or European? (the answer is both) by periwinkle_bumper_cars (T, 30k)

Logan keeps walking in on other drivers in compromising positions. 100% balls to the wall silliness from beginning to end and just completely delightful the whole time. Background carlando, kmag/hulkenberg, brocedes, maxiel, and honestly the ensemble cast is what takes this one from great to top tier.

Landoscar

By a thread by @mctwinkdom (E, 32k)

The classic Australian thongs misunderstanding (gone sexual). Incredibly silly, amazingly hot and honestly a top-tier character study of both Oscar and Lando. A great study in unreliable narration as well (probably part of what accounts for my previous point).

carried away by orphan account (E, 22k)

Fake dating. Honestly this one got me in my feels so much more than I expected from the premise. Sweet and a little bit angsty and just a delightful read all the way down.

Strollonso

green light, red wine (and I don’t feel fine) by @vicsy (E, 19k)

Mafia AU where lance is the son of Fernando’s arch nemesis. THEE strollonso fic of all time I tell you. Unparalleled characterization on the part of both nando and lance, fantastic ensemble cast, FANTASTIC writing, and off the charts unreal spiciness. If you haven’t read this yet then what are you doing

El dick plan by @waddlingpenguin (E, 800)

Lance says ‘daddy,’ both Fernando and Lawrence answer. Short, sweet and SILLY.

camera roll by @penaltyboxboxbox (E, 5k)

Sexting/sex tapes. Overall nice and spicy and just fantastic characterization. Also absolutely crucial is the companion art also by dave penaltyboxboxbox which is literally like the ice cream on top of the cake for such a wonderful fic

silver platter by @wewentcarracing (E, 10k)

getting together fic featuring long suffering estie bestie. Honestly the fic is amazing and spicy and just so well written but Esteban’s ever growing dismay is lowkey my favorite part. Works as a pretty great lance character study as well.

Brocedes

Roseberg’s vs haminkton by @jean----ralphio (E, 16k)

Tattoo artist versus flower shop, except they’re rivals. This is like…just how they are honestly. Absolutely stunning ensemble cast and absolutely hilarious buildup to lewis and Nico finally getting together. Side order of seb just being a massive shit stirrer which honestly I think is the role he belongs in

The real reason nico rosberg retired by periwinkle_bumper_cars (G, 3k)

Secret Santa (gone horribly wrong). This is…..also just how they are unfortunately. The rancidest of vibes but also screeching-out-loud funny.

will be updating this on the reg so stay tuned for more good fics. also maybe if I am very lucky someday I will have my own fics to add to the list. definitely I need to become slightly more insane before I can start writing for this fandom but believe you me I’m well on my way.

[adolin]

director’s commentary for like a knife in my throat? 🙏🙏

omggg thank you for asking!

like a knife in my throat — (F1 RPF, Nico/fem!Lewis, Rule 63, 2015 F1 Season, Pregnancy, messy vibes all around <3)

“I don’t need you to hand me a championship,” he snaps. Lewis doesn’t say: You’ve been handed everything else.

This was called BABYTRAPPING FIC in my scrivener for weeks which. is exactly what the fic is about. shoutout to @antspaul who had never watched a vroom vroom before I speedran brocedes lore in their DMs so I could be like “These are the vibes now help me brainstorm the het version 🙏”

This was technically a kinkmeme fill but the prompt was quite broad ("brocedes but one of them is a woman") so I pretty much had free reign. My reasoning for the vibes of the ship was just... given the RL lore, if it was het, it would absolutely be a codependent relationship since teenage years kind of scenario. Mildly claustrophobic sort of relationship where they've never really looked at anyone else, never took time to step back and reassess their life without the other, and their lives are so intertwined and when it's good it's great! When it's bad it's suffocating.

the reasoning for making it Nico/fem!Lewis instead of the other way around was that I really wanted to write rancid pregnancy fic and characterisation-wise this felt easier

also, it's a dynamic that lets me make more of their dysfunctionality internal and not external; it kind of compounds their existing privilege disparities instead of offsetting themselves. I'm not sure if I'm explaining myself well but like — in this scenario they can be together. They're not going against established norms (which I think would be the case with Lewis/f!Nico to some extent even if it's het.) ALL the drama is coming from inside the house :3

(There's a lot to be explored in f!Nico/Lewis hetcedes fic and maybe one day I'll write that too but it's a whole different vibe)

Speaking of compounding existing privilege disparities: the whole crux of this fic is that f!Lewis can not deal with the thought of Nico beating her.

The only thing she really has going for her above him is that she's the undisputed better driver. If that changes, even once, she wouldn't be able to live with herself while being in a relationship with him. But she doesn't want to give up that relationship not really because they belong to each other. Hand in unlovable hand!!! also beating him turns her on. Nico's side of this is that he's like. Extremely possessive in return. I can't beat you but I will have you. Nobody else gets to have that but me.

Anyway. BABYTRAPPING. The natural solution to all their dilemmas. Because I choose to believe they're the kind of couple who've lowkey talked about having children at some point in the distant future, it's just that they can't really do it now, and it was always a fond hypothetical (and Nico was always way more into it than Lewis, bc ofc he wasn't the one who'd have to get pregnant you know) and now Lewis decides to jump the gun in the most toxic possible way. She's like, THIS is what we're gonna do. You get to win but it's on my terms. She's giving Nico everything he's ever wanted buuut it comes with a side of mind games and yanking his chain.

However. It's very important for me to note that this is not unilateral. Nico DOES get everything he's ever wanted. They ARE both into this.

and in the sequel that lives in my head, and maybe one day I will write, he's going to be the most inconvenient possible wag, like, he's going to be AROUND. He's going to be Tashi Duncan. He's going to make sure people know he's Supporting Lewis (she was the one who wanted to keep their relationship secret). He's going to put a huge rock on her finger and be like, Oh I'm so lucky I get to have her and it's all very possessive and unhinged. I was actually surprised by how some comments were like "Oh f!Lewis is sooo cold she's got Nico exactly where he wants him" and I'm like, but he's also a bit nasty!!! It's very important to me that the rancid is twofold.

Fic title is from this verse by Sonya Vatomsky

When I finished writing this fic I had to to show Carp a lot of irl-Nico lore bc I felt bad for character assassinating him in the fanfictions. Like btw he's actually a #feministdad who respects the women in his life! And then unfortunately fell into the trap of finding a 40yo millionaire venture capitalist cute. I'm still there. Somebody rescue me

anyway thank u for letting me go on and on and on about this fic I genuinely loved writing it :D

[fanfic writers director’s cut meme!]

[kirasworldofwords]

Also, small announcement from my side: I'm working on a new fic! First chapter is already out, though from here on, I will not continue posting more until the story is fully finished - so this one won't go down the drain like the other one, lmao.

It's called Shadow Ops, like the TV series from 2013 (big thanks to my bestie @ill-procastinato for giving me this name idea, you're the best!) and it's an alternative universe where a few Formula 1 drivers become part of the FBI! This fic will include Hulknussen, Chestappen, Pierresteban, Landoscar, Zhouttas, Webbonso, Charlos, Brocedes and platonic Sargebon and is rated E for spicy things down the line and majorly described injuries as well as descriptions of dead people and swearing.

Included are: Nico Hülkenberg (main), Kevin Magnussen (main), Sergio Pérez, Max Verstappen, Lando Norris, Oscar Piastri, Alexander Albon, Logan Sargeant, Zhou Guan Yu, Valtteri Bottas, Fernando Alonso, Mark Webber, Carlos Sainz Jr., Charles Leclerc, Lewis Hamilton, Nico Rosberg and Jenson Button. George Russel is mentioned here or there, but I won't dive too deep into his role - you'll see why.

There's action, there's love, there will be death and I will make it heartbreaking at certain points. My notes are filled to the brim with stuff I want to include.

I'm really excited about this! And I hope so are you all. 🫶🏻

Have a teaser under the cut!

As soon as he arrived at work and clocked in, he got greeted by one of the many familiar faces of his team and smiled happily. "Good morning, Checo!", the German greeted his colleague, the team's toxicologist, who looked up from the documents he carried to his lab in slight surprise at first but quickly smiled gently. "Buenos días, Nico. Had a good weekend?", the man inquired, waiting for the Special Agent to catch up with him who breathed out a small chuckle. "Relatively, yes. Had a talk with my mom over the phone on Saturday, first one in ages, it feels like. She really misses me. Currently planning my vacation to Emmerich already. What about you?", Nico explained a bit, and Checo nodded along before sighing. "Mmh, could've been better. My sister currently tries to execute a plan to get herself and our parents out of Mexico and into the States. Apparently, the cartel got wind of my occupation and now they're pressuring my parents to get me to come back so they can bleed me dry, basically. It's... a lot to take in.", the Mexican vented a bit, earning himself a sympathetic pat on the shoulder from Nico. "Sounds like a lot of work... I'm positive you can get through this, though. You're Sergio Pérez after all, you can do anything.", he uplifted his colleague who laughed and nodded as he slowed down - he had reached his lab.

"I just need to remember to never give up. That's all.", the smaller man confirmed, having Nico nod at that before they parted ways for the time being, the German now on his way to his own office. He greeted Pierre with a hearty "good morning" as well as the Frenchman rushed past him, the forensic pathologist only shouting a hurried "Morning!" in return. He seemed quite busy, so Nico decided not to interfere.

While on his way to his office, Nico suddenly got dragged into another room - his boss Jenson's office. Nico's partner in crime Kevin was there already as well, the two greeting each other shortly as the German blond closed the door behind himself hastily as he stumbled inside from Jenson dragging him so harshly. "What a way to say good morning at fucking 8 AM, Jenson... What's up? New job?", he asked, and the British man nodded with a serious look on his face. "Brand new job indeed. I already told Kevin all the details, he'll drive you over to the crime scene." - that was all Nico got from his boss, understanding that the Dane next to him would explain everything in detail during their ride to the scene.

As Nico learned later on from Kevin, their victim of the day was a young man, estimated to be somewhere in his mid-twenties and from Great Britain.

[blorbocedes]

hi, hi!!! as the resident brocedes herstorian, i just had a few questions. i'm relatively new to f1, literally only got into it cause i saw one really compelling edit of lestappen on tiktok but then!!! tiktok showed me a brocedes edit and well i've always been a slut for a good tragedy, especially between friends. i think i have the gist of what happened between them but like are there any posts where it's been broken down into detail?? also why does everyone treat nico like he's the villain in this relationship??? and i guess my final question is what happened between schumacher and nico? i saw some people say there were mind games between them??? esp on schumi's end??? also what are these mind games every fic says nico was playing on lewis??? does lewis really not give a shit about nico anymore??? i dont know how many more sad tiktoks of brocedes i can handle 😭😭😭

anyway thank you for the work you do, i love going through your blog!! <33333

hello! for in depth brocedes lore and breakdowns click here (there's... a LOT!)

for why nico's treated as the villain by fandom click here

@manykinsmen also has very insightful essays on nico which is less brocedes focused but a fascinating read, highly recc his blog alongside @distantlaughter and @keepthedelta my nicologist holy grails

schumie era mind games lore here! (schumie was shirtless and hot! nico got hot and bothered as a twink! pissplay?!)

ultimately my, and everyone else's, opinions on it all is subjective. im not inside their heads I can't tell you what they're thinking, just my interpretation of it. and then you can have your own interpreting that's completely different from mine ^—^ happy clicking!

[ladysomething]

Hello there lovely human 💛

I’m kind of going around my favorite writers and ask them for advice and insights about their process (so I can collect it all like a hoarder). I hope you mind sharing some wisdom with us 🥺

So what I just don't understand is how you can post as you write while maintaining this level of awesomeness in your writing. Without writing yourself into a corner and keeping consistency. And it is awesome, the first time I read "You and me, we got a big reputation" I stayed up till 4 in the morning to finish it and it left me full of emotion and hollow at the same time (the same way as when you finish a great TV show or a good book or an awesome video game leaves you feeling, like something beautiful just ended and you can never experience it again. The kind of hollow that leaves you wondering what to do with your life now, that your world has changed, where your chest is empty and full at same time).

Anyway, how do you approach your ideas? Do you have the whole fic plotted out before sitting down for the first chapter? Do you write in order? Does it always go the way you plotted it in the beginning? How long did it take you to plot out "Where you go I go"? Or "You and me, we got a big reputation"?

Anything you want to share about your process would be appreciated 💛

I'm trying to put into words my first actually long fic ever and I know it will be better if I post it after it is all finished, but it is also easier to keep up the momentum if you have readers on your side.

hi!!!

firstly, thank you for the love on big reputations. I'm coming up on a year since I posted the first one shot in the don't blame me series, and I'm feeling some type of way about that.

secondly ... man oh man. I'm gonna go question by question here, but I'm gonna put it below the cut because I know I'm gonna ramble.

well the first thing is that I'm not posting as a write, not really. I'm three chapters ahead, which for me is what I need to make sure I don't write myself into a corner. I'm far enough ahead that I can keep control of the narrative. some people like be further ahead, others don't need to be ahead at all, but that's about the appropriate distance for me, I've found.

it depends on the fic! wygig is pretty much entirely plotted out, yeah. big reputations was not. I had a general idea about where it started, how it was ending, and what I wanted to happen in the middle, but specific scenes weren't planned - not like wygig. GMTF I had specific scenes in my head that I wanted to write, but more I had specific emotions I was trying to capture, and I built the plot around that. in my original manuscript, I had the three acts planned out, the main plot points per act, and then felt it out as I went (which ended up meaning I had a serious pacing problem that is still unresolved, hence why it's still sitting in my drafts lmao). so yeah, it depends on the story.

I write in order these days, but I didn't used to. I've just found that, for me, writing in order means that it forces me to keep writing, because I HAVE to go through all the boring scenes to get to the fun scenes. I use it as motivation, but that doesn't work for everyone! it certainly means that sometimes, by the time I get to the fun scene, I've forgotten what I had planned for it, so I have to build it all up again lmao.

no it doesn't always go the way I plotted! characters often do things I hadn't planned for them to do - sometimes good, sometimes bad. I've been going very rogue recently with wygig, as @saiyanwitcher can attest to. she's had to reel me back in quite a lot recently haha.

oh god, it took @saiyanwitcher and I probably .. I'd say we worked on plotting wygig for a solid month before I started writing - BUT the major caveat here is that I was writing the brocedes fic while we were plotting it out. so I refused to start writing wygig until I finished that, which meant we spent more time on plotting than I usually would. and then we revisit plot points as I get closer to writing them - see what can be kept, what needs to be deleted, what needs to be changed to fit the rogue elements I've inevitably introduced lmao

as I said, I didn't really plot big reputations out like I did with wygig, so that didn't really take any time at all! haha

as advice for putting together your first long fic ... what I'll say is this. I've been writing for almost 15 years at this point. I didn't even realise that I was coming up with a way to write that works best for me until I'd already done it.

I realised I needed people to give feedback as I go. I need to have written a lot in advance, before I start posting anything, so that I know I can finish it under my own steam and that my interest will continue. I need to listen to my mind when I get bored, and take a few days break from writing - but I can't go more than a week without touching a fic, otherwise I won't go back.

they're all things you'll learn along the way!

I also think you should try not to compare yourself to others. if you try to match what other people are doing, you'll never finish, because you'll end up disappointed in one way or another. it's easier said than done, for sure, but if it's your first, give yourself some slack and take everything as a learning experience!

and remember, above all else, to write for yourself. if your always writing for yourself, writing what YOU want to see, the motivation is easier to find.

[slythereen]

Helloooo, i have a genuine question about Charles going to redbull (let me just quickly say that i am not in any way hating on anyone, they're all very talented, so if it seems like i'm shitting on someone, i promise i'm not, it's 2am where i am, i'm very tired and i really just wanna know, and please corrcet me if i'm wrong when stating facts)

Yes, Max and Charles have the same driving style, and have all the lore from their karting days

But what I want to know is, in what world would redbull let Charles (consistently) beat Max? Max has been/ is redbulls golden child, he's been with them since 2016, and he's been very succesful with them, and maybe what i'm saying is wrong but i'll say it anyway: i do kind of believe the team is built around Max? (let's remember how many people were the other driver at rb with Seb and after he left now with Max, like he's the constant and obviously building a team is complicated and idk what goes into it but you can steer it into a certain direction)

And if Charles were to join rb, would he be content with playing second driver to Max Verstappen (who is a 3x wc, like we get angry when Charles has to be 2nd driver to Sainz (who has won like 2 grand prix's) on the occasion (happens too often))

( with this i want to mention the mercedes situation with Rosberg, schuhmacher and Hamilton, where after Michael had left, technically Nico should have been a priority (bcs he'd been there longer), but because Lewis already was a WC, Nico had to be 2nd driver again and brocedes happened) (not that the whole situation is even comparable to brocedes imo, lestappen doesn't even compare)

I truly think redbull are using the whole lestappen thing as a marketing strategy (let's all remember what it's build on) and to create a better image around Max, since they can't really use Daniel anymore because a) he's in the AT seat and b) we saw the uproar from Checo's fans who (rightly, imo) got mad at the whole situation during COTA

This turned out to be way longer than i thought

Hope you have a nice day/evening

🩷

Hello and happy (early) thanksgiving if you’re celebrating !!

I think everything you said is very true actually. I know Red Bull likes to say they aren’t built around Max, but they definitely are. And he’s definitely their golden boy. There’s no getting around that, as much as I think the Red Bull team genuinely likes Charles and would support him.

The reasons why I think that can work regardless:

A) Like you said, Ferrari treats him like a 2nd driver to Carlos half the time — which is just insulting, seeing how Charles should be their prioritized driver and Carlos is most certainly not the caliber of driver Max is. I don’t think he would want to be a true “number two” to Max nor do I think he deserves to be a second. However, if he’s going to get treated that way in Ferrari, I’d rather he get second driver treatment in a competent team where being less prioritized won’t damage him as much precisely because he and Max prefer the same style of car mostly.

B) I think if Red Bull were to sign Charles, they’d be doing it with the intention to try to be the team to do two number one drivers and succeed (unlike Mercedes). Liberty Media was very open and public about wanting Red Bull to have two top drivers for the entertainment value. Plus, it would be just one more thing for Red Bull to completely dominate and do that no one else can, which is very on brand for them. Obviously Max may get a bit more preference initially, but I think they’re smart enough strategically to be able to balance their support if it deserved to be balanced.

C) Mostly, however, I think Red Bull is also thinking ahead to the future. Max has been open about wanting to pursue other categories and other opportunities. Half the time he sounds like he might retire in 2028. So Red Bull needs to be prepared to 1) try to keep Max for longer and 2) have a new number one lined up for when he does leave.

I think Charles is a good candidate in their minds for many reasons, aside from the fact he’s just as talented as Max (arguably). Charles is extremely marketable and likable, without the baggage that Daniel brings (and frankly with more talent than Daniel brings). He gets along well with Max and they’ve been able to be friendly about their (f1) battles, both like to drive aggressively against eachother and therefore are more forgiving with eachother, etc. I think if you’re going to try to make Max accept an equal driver it needs to be Charles.* He’s also shown that he can play the team game and he’s historically been angelic about Ferrari in the media, despite how badly they’ve fucked him over. That’s very useful for Red Bull.

(*Lando is potentially a good candidate and Red Bull obviously has tried to get him before. But I don’t think he matches Max and Charles, which means he’d probably just be a good number two and not a true equal. Plus he and Max were always friends, and I think part of why Max and Charles could manage the more tense aspects of being competing teammates is the fact that they decidedly were not friends through karting.

Also, if the rumors that the Hamilton camp reached out to Red Bull are true? And that Red Bull said no because he and Max couldn’t work as teammates? I think that indicates that they know a second top driver would have to work on a personal level, and they think Charles can work. Helmut Marko indicated that Red Bull approached Charles, after all, which means they must have thought it could work.)

Another major thing with Charles that could make him an ideal choice is that he more openly appreciates the… “show” that Liberty Media is trying to bring to f1. Especially with his Vegas commentary, about how he understands why they are trying to bring in new fans, etc. If Max retired earlier or at the end of this contract I think a huge reason will be because he hates all of the show. So lining up a replacement for Max who won’t end up retiring for the same reason is also beneficial to them.

Which actually loops back to that I think Red Bull knows Charles challenging Max and entertaining him / bringing him fun on track again would help keep Max around. I remain convinced that Charles in a good car could keep Max in f1 longer. Red Bull could very much plan on trying to use Charles to coax Max to stay, and if that doesn’t work out then they have Charles still to continue dominating with. It’s a win-win for them.

Now, that’s not to say Red Bull aren’t just using the lestappen angle to boost Max’s likability. That’s very possible and my second top theory behind it. It may even be more realistic, all things considered. But I don’t think Charles considering Red Bull is as far-fetched as some believe, either.

[presdestigatto]

Yeah I understand your point.

I guess I got more angry because of the way lewis fans are reacting, like saying horrible things aboht charles unprovoked. Saw one of them yesterday saying that charles now would be lewis butler.

And its already like this now, imagine during the season. So that kind of made me wish for lewis to not win the 8 just mostly because of these fans. Also because if one is winning a wdc in ferrari I would rather be charles. Imagine charles fighting to bring Ferrari back to glory for ages only to Lewis arrive and get the glory himself.

About Lewis teammates, you're right he didn't it got it easy like max.

But here is another thing that worries me. I saw some people saying that Lewis got bad blood with pretty much all his teammates except Bottas? So pretty much he was only ok with the one was acting like a second to him

That makes me wonder how it will be with charles. I know they are friendly now, but once they are competing I think it will be different.

Like last year for example, I got the impression Lewis was always asking for team orders. Many times George would fairly be on front because he qualified better and then during the race Lewis would start complaining on the radio.

This makes me anxious about 2025 because even if charles end up having an advantage at quali, what if during races lewis start to ask for the better strategy or to undercut / let him pass?

hey! i think it’s very valid to be pissed at the narratives going around on twitter rn. thinking Charles will fall in line as ferrari’s second driver just because his teammate is a multi-time world champion- where have we seen this before. lol.

ultimately, ferrari is an company and a business and i really doubt that the upper execs care whether lewis or charles brings the title home. christian horner once said that ferrari is too influenced by italian newspapers— currently this protects Charles because they love him. i’d wait and see what narrative they decide to spin regarding the 1644 pairing. i think @verstappenclerc said it well how Charles is still the tifosi’s darling while Lewis was the ‘enemy’ for a good number of years, this probably won’t change unless Charles starts pulling absolute stinkers and they turn on him

anyways onto Lewis again, i think that’s a bit exaggerated due to the silver war? the brocedes fallout is very stark in everyone’s memories, but Charles isn’t Lewis’ childhood friend who Lewis has been constantly beating since they were like 12 lol. he’s chill w George and i could be wrong, but i think he and Jenson were pretty peaceful? in the end i trust in Lewis’ character.

also i don’t pay attention to merc but from what teamlh say, it’s the opposite w George and Lewis 😭 i genuinely dk, but ferrari is still Charles’ team. i think we’ll see them go w2w a couple of times which i’m actually quite looking forward to.

ultimately i am the wrong person to ask about mercedes team dynamics, maybe someone else can weigh in? whether the strategy team will continue to give us teammate related headaches—no point worrying about it now. it’s still a whole year away

[yesterdayiwrote]

Some of the takes I see about George online are actually insane.

I saw someone saying basically the issue with the W14 is that mercedes followed how George felt about the car in development and not Lewis, therefore it suits George and that mercedes should not have taken georges opinion in development as seriously as Lewis's. That they should have focused on making the car suit Lewis and have George adapt.

Its like people aren't aware that these cars are a different era of cars to what lewis won his championship with. Plus it isn't like the engineers are gonna go sure we will go with George in this even though what Lewis says will be faster. They go with what they feel the fastest concept will be, they don't just decide to go with George because they like him more than Lewis.

Plus it ignores the fact that George was working in the Mercedes simulator all the way back from the brocedes era. It was his work in the simulator which gave him opportunities to test drive cars and do free practice sessions and tire tests. Surely he must have some abilty in the sim and the engineers have alot of trust in him. They are always praising his technical knowlege. Just look at last weekend. Lewis even admitted that George chose the better set up and strategy, even though on paper it shouldn't have been.

Honestly I feel for the lad. People insulted him last year because apparently he didn't do enough for development for the car and lewis was doing all the experiments and it cost him points and now because the cars a bit crap its all his fault because they put more weight into what George has said about development. Both cannot be true. You can't say George didn't do any development last year but also blame him for the car being bad this year because of what he said in development last year.

Okay, I’ve been trying to think of a way to answer this since I got it, and I’m really struggling to find a way that covers ALL the nuance of the situation whilst simultaneously airing my frustration and trying not to be a biased dick about it. I do genuinely like both of them.

This creeping narrative that everything that goes wrong is because of George and everything that goes right is because of Lewis really does fuck me off big time because it’s just such childish bullshit and I can’t be dealing with it. That said it’s so ridiculously childish that it’s barely worth giving much credence to. The people know what they’re doing and sometimes you just have to let people have their copium and just… laugh?

I think people need to allow Lewis to be vulnerable and this aching need by some people to paint this picture that he is a perfect, fully rounded driver with absolutely no flaws or weaknesses does no one any favours. Sure we haven’t seen them as much, because success has a tendency to conceal these things, but even the GOATs have areas that need improvement. Merc have no responsibility to treat him as a first priority in all eventualities, and doing so would do Lewis more harm than good? If they had insisted on switching the cars in Jeddah like some people wanted, it surely would have been ten times more humiliating for him when he got passed by his teammate five laps later going quicker on the harder tyre?

George has a really solid eye for strategy. He can call strategy in the car while he’s driving a race and that’s no mean feat. Personally, I feel Lewis is weaker in that area. He prefers the team to lead his strategy and he puts his full faith in them to get it right and that’s fine, plenty of drivers do that. It’s not a glaring void in his arsenal, but in times when things go wrong it gives George an advantage he can draw on. People get angry at him doing it, because he’s ‘putting himself first’ but equally sometimes you’ve got to control your own destiny.

The whole situation with the car design is getting a bit ‘He said, She said’. Lewis said no one listened to him and he had all the right answers. George said they all agreed the direction together. We’ll never know who is telling the truth. Chances are it’s somewhere in the middle. Some teams do design their cars to suit one specific driver over another. I don’t know that I buy into any theory that suggests in Merc it would be George, even if he did come out on top last year. I said before I was a bit disappointed with Lewis’ comments and I think they were ill advised and borne out of frustration, as did he in the press conference, and then effectively doubled down and said something just as contentious in the post race interviews 🤷🏼‍♀️

We know George has done car development. You can’t joke about him being locked in the Sim and then simultaneously accuse him of not assisting with development, and then simultaneously accuse him of driving the entire development direction to suit himself. Like any sane person knows all of those things can’t be true cos the maths ain’t mathing?

Lewis isn’t ultimately responsible for his fans and the things they say, that being said I do feel like he sees more than he lets on and he knows when to give a crafty stir of the pot. They all do? This is purely his fans doing it though, not him, even if Spinz hasn’t helped matters in the past 😒

I think it’s a shame it’s got to this state though. I feel sorry for George and I do feel sorry for Lewis as well. It is a tougher situation for him in light of 2021. None of this is George’s fault though and it’s sad to see the online discourse getting so… tribal at times.

[sticher30]

🎀 list 5 things that make you happy, then put this in the ask box for the last 10 people who liked or reblogged something from you! get to know your moots or followers <3

-@letsgoricciardo

Ooh ok five things that make me happy.

My friends I got from this year. I've always had a slight FOMO and a little bit of an imposter syndrome in relation to friends. This is defininetly been actually nice for me, I actually haven't felt anything related to an imposter syndrome this year since I left for university. So I'm really happy to have made the friends I did.

Editing. Editing has always been a form of art that I love to do. I'm still on the newer side of things (like I'm about to hit 5 years now). I've actually made insta moots with editors that I like looked up to. One of them I even got slightly close to and did a lil animal crossing prom thing in a discord with them which was insane. I mean it's crazy when these people you've watched make edits and aspire to make edit slike them, suddenly become mutuals with you on instagram. I started on insta and now I'm on tt. I started with RvB and I went back to RvB after the era we do not talk about but I'm also doing f1 and fe edits.

Motorsports. I've always been a sports jumper. I started with MLB then went to NBA and then NFL. I like to say that the more I get into a sport is based on the funny videos of them. MLB is obvious, I've seen all the old funny videos that I could tell you what happens in the clips. I've seen so many that I've seen so many repeat clips. NBA was more Luka for some reason, I think I liked his trick shot stuff. There isn't a lot of funny moments without involving someone in the negative light, which is different from MLB. Which I loved MLB funny moments that occured between the two teams. And then NFL just happened somehow with some funny things but not a lot. And then I found motorsports through a Brocedes edit. And I just fell in love through the funny moments. My parents sometimes ask me, how do I know so much f1 stuff, and I say it's because I consumed a lot of videos. Which I did, but majority were a funny complimation. And then suddenly formulawah made a guide to formula e, and there were quips in there that made me interested in watching fe. And suddenly now I'm watching all the lil funny montages they have up on the fe channels. And so yeah, f1 and fe make me happy.

Gaming. I play a lot of different genres of games (OXENFREE is my favorite totally recommend try playing it AAAAAAAA I could go on a whole ramble about this). Right now I have a fixation on Stardew Valley (especially with the new update) so I'm gonna binge play that. But I just love gaming, especially games with character designs and stories). And gaming just makes me happy.

Red vs Blue. It's like slightly also making me sad because it's ending (also everything Project Freelancer makes me sad (THERE IS LITERALLY A SONG THATS KINDA HAPPY AND VIBES ARE GOOD CALLED "We'll be coming back" BUT I GET SAD EVERYTIME BC SOMEONE ONCE COMPARED IT TO WASH AND THE FREELANCERS AND I JUST SCREAM) ahem anyways, yeah it can also make me sad). But it also makes me laugh a lot, and I love the characters dearly. Even if I scream in frustration when a fic on ao3 may not update in a month (bc the fandom is like half dead there ngl and that usually means discontinued sometimes). But I love Red vs Blue so much. I bought the fanbook, I bought some like slap bracelets. I just love it and it makes me happy. I could literally anaylyze every single character.

[dear-ao3]

and welcome back to the off week. i really thought that i could get away with no update this week, but alas. contracts have been signed and ice cream has been made. dogs have appeared and red bull marketing continues to be, well, red bull marketing. so today is april 14, 2024 and lets just dive right in head first to the most bemusing smattering of information that is on this post

were covering a few things this update, each more perplexing than the last:

-landos continued dedication to the bit -charles leclerc (as an entity) -fernando alonsos cryptic way of speaking -carlos sainz tempting the devil (among others) -the bonkers social media highlights of the week -brocedes

so lets just get lando out of the way. back on the government mandated mclaren update. first, he was on the forbes 30 under 30 europe list for sports and games. now that im writing this, im not sure lando actually acknowledged this at all? it might have just been the mclaren ig acc. also his ln4 official account called him pookie. not once but twice. who is running this account. we need need answers.

he also stared directly into a camera not once but twice:

yeah man. idk either.

and lastly, if you remember last week lando ran into alex's grandma at the airport. alex albon posted photos of her at the end of the race weekend with a signed lando norris cap and the caption "left suzuka with some souvenirs...well grandma did"

moving on from that. mr leclerc. the miserable soup can. tho this week he was not miserable at all. i know! i was surprised too!

first! we have the tiny mystery dog:

his name is leo leclerc. in pretty much every photo of him charles is holding him like a tiny purse or perhaps the way sharpay evans would hold boi in high school musical. and many, many people were keen to point out that not only! can he be friends with lewis hamilton's dog roscoe next year, but also, he seems to have taken a page out of lewis hamiltons book in getting a dog and naming it after his biggest rival (roscoes name is quite close to nico rosberg and leo pretty much means lion which is max's nickname) (in case you dont know who nico rosberg is, worry not we will get to him at the end of this post)

and then, more interestingly, we have the launch of lec. charles's ice cream. and let me tell you, if anyone could have managed to look miserable while eating ice cream, it would have been charles, but alas he did not. there is life in his eyes this week!

tho he did say a few things that made me and others fear for his mental state, including comparing ice cream flavors to ferrari potential:

and oh yeah did i mention the flavor names are insane??

vanillove. salty carammmmel. peanut caramel tango. swirly pistachi-oh! and chocolate crunch.

and, as we know, charles and lewis will be teammates next year. lewis is vegan (and has an interesting affinity with vanilla ice cream but well get to that later) and charles had this to say when asked about making a vegan flavor for lewis:

"we were talking about it the last time on the track! he has this new alma project of his, which is very nice because he has developed a new soft drink, while i have ice cream. so surely, one day, when he arrives at ferrari, we will celebrate with my ice cream and his drink."

he was also asked by the italian press "to verstappen, what can we offer to him? chamomile ice cream to calm him down a little bit?" and charles said this in response:

"no, we have a good relationship. what im interested in is beating him on the track to start with, and that's what we're working on. i'll also give him the flavor he likes and then we'll try to beat him on the track."

which is all kinds of unhinged. especially coming from the same week that he got a dog and basically named it after max. (they still dont follow eachother on ig lets remember)

it was also pointed out by a few people, mainly on this tumblr post, that this had the same but also opposite energy as lewis saying this back in 2014 about if he remembered the first time he met nico rosberg: "I remember the first time I looked at girls. I remember when I met my girlfriend, the first time I had sex... But I never actually think about the first time I met Nico. I don't remember things like that." which is just. what a thing to say. anyway, we will get to brocedes later on this post and this will all make sense. or perhaps it wont. brocedes is an enigma.

now you might be wondering Why an f1 driver would make ice cream, given the fact that they adhere to pretty strict diets due to the weight restrictions on the cars and all that. well, aparently, that was the very reason why charles decided to make the ice cream in the first place:

"as a professional athlete it is crucial for me to maintain a healthy lifestyle where my performance is strongly linked to commitment, training and fitness. this, however does not prevent me from indulging in some small little forbidden pleasure, particularly that of a food i love."

which is to say, he definitely made his own ice cream brand (which has like protein and less calories in it or something) so that he can eat a whole pint of ice cream after he gets fucked over by the ferrari strategy once again.

and how does it taste? couldn't tell you, its only in italy and i live in the us. so if someone wants to teleport me ice cream i would be unbelievably pleased.

another driver was also hungry this week, but not hungry for ice cream, sweet treats or even food (well perhaps food. you do kind of need that to live), nay he was hungry for a contract renewal.

can you guess who it is?

if you guessed logan sargeant...well you would be incredibly incorrect.

but if you guessed fernando alonso, you would be right!

he extended his contract at aston martin. we dont know exactly how long it is, but it is multi year, meaning that he will be at aston until at least 2026. the aston martin team announced it in the funniest way they possibly could.

fernando also said This about the contract extension, which is intriguing and amusing:

"This is the longest contract I ever signed in my career. Something that will keep me linked with Aston Martin for many years to come.”

which leads many people to think that after hes done racing for them hes going to stay on as an engineer or a coach or an advisor or something else. which would be silly and goofy and evil of him as usual.

also on the contract hunt is one carlos sainz jr.

as we know, he was supposedly offered a contract at audi (currently stake) for 2025, but! he was also reportedly offered a mercedes contract!

this may come as a shock to many people because 1. mercedes pretty distinctly said that they hadn't been talking to carlos, 2. kimi antonelli is set to test driver a merc f1 car this week and 3. toto said last week (more or less) *cue austrian accent* "well you know the driver market is very fluid and we do not want to rush into any decisions blah blah blah"

reportedly though, carlos has not signed it because of the terms of it.

the contract that he was offered is a 1+1 contact, meaning that he is signed for one year with the opportunity to resign for a second year if hes doing well. he wants to be on the same contract at george russell, who has a 2+1 contract.

merc is probably doing this because they want to keep their options open for 2026. the options being signing kimi antonelli. who they really, really dont want to lose to another team (red bull).

also in terms of contract news, aparently red bull are reportedly considering re signing checo for 2025. this is rumored to be a 2 year contract. but he has to keep performing to the level that he is now. and historically, checo starts the season well and then it goes downhill.

and lastly, apparently yuki is reportedly on audis short list if carlos goes elsewhere

which takes us to an update on the open seats:

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

and now for the highlight of this post, the social media nonsense:

starting with the red bull marketing team making liam lawson read this script for a video:

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Oracle Red Bull Racing (@redbullracing)

the general comments were "now he understands why checo and max dont like the marketing team"

also going off the rails this week was williams who posted this:

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Williams Racing (@williamsracing)

alpine posted these two photos for pet day:

mercedes posted these photos of george, lewis and a child from the japan weekend:

max verstappen said this last weekend about f1 academy:

“There are girls, but much fewer than boys. For example, our team now only has boys riding. But if there is a fast girl among us, then of course we want her too. That's just how it is in the real world, isn't it? Team bosses don't look at whether someone is a boy or a girl. It's about how fast they are. It is good that Formula 1 now pays extra attention to women in motorsport with the F1 Academy, although I have doubts about how they approach it. The cars they drive are way too slow. If you ever want to get them into Formula 1, it really has to go to a higher level. It's nice and nice that girls are now sponsored by Formula 1 teams, but what do we actually help them with? There is no next step for them now. For example, the gap to a Formula 4 car is already too big.”

george russell is back on his shirtless (and toes out?) instagram pictures kick:

sir lewis hamilton won a gq global creativity award, where he was named and honors as a "f1 transcending powerhouse" and he also absolutely slayed the outfit game as per usual

zhou posted more content of his cat sweet corn

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by 玉米粒 SweetCorn (@ymlzhou.jpg)

and there was other stuff (carlos continues to seemingly bike across all of europe as does valtteri, logan and alex went golfing, several drivers went to the monaco tennis finals something or other etc etc) but thats the most important highlights

and so. without any further ado. a (very very abridged version) of the blood feud between sir lewis hamilton and nico rosberg

but before we get there, in case youre thinking to yourself, wow saph, your writing is so interesting and compelling! how do you do it! the answer is that i might not have a college degree in shitposting, but i do have a college degree in both history and writing, which together is a deathly combo that i wield like a very very dull double edged sword. in any case, should any of you want to read a more full length and in depth version of this feud, i am writing it out a la insane academic paper with the help of a few friends. why isn't the full version on this post? well this post is already too long and were barely at race 5 of 24 plus this is about the 2024 season and this drama is more than 10 years old. also, i did very very fully intend to have the insane brocedes lore post done before i updated this, but that is not physically possible so for now you will have to deal with this short version. and when i finish it, i will post it and link it here on this post for your viewing pleasure.

regardless. the blood feud.

was any real blood spilled? i have no idea. but nico rosberg did end up under a sink at one point in a hotel room in japan. thats neither here nor there tho and we dont know any more than that other than that it happened.

the feud is called a few things. the brocedes civil war. the silver war. the hamilton rosberg rivalry. any way you spin it, its about lewis and nico. and who might these two be? well im glad you asked:

we are already familiar with sir lewis hamilton:

8 7 time world champion, knighted by the queen of england, mercedes driver, owner of one dog named roscoe, enjoys surfing, fights for equal rights, all around good guy

and our other player, nico rosberg, who i have mentioned a few times:

1 time world champion, ex formula 1 driver for williams and mercedes. from germany but lives in Monaco, essentially a YouTuber, married with two daughters, now a sky sports presenter, was called brittney by the other drivers back in the day because of his hair.

tho this is Current Cool and (mostly) Chilled Out lewis and nico. which is. not the lewis and nico were talking about. nuh uh. at the time of these tales, these two were general pr nightmares and teammates at mercedes. lewis was not yet knighted. they were not nearly as reserved or chilled out At All. and over the course over the four years they were teammates at merc they managed to go from this:

to this:

(yes that is nico throwing his p2 hat at lewis i think this was in 2015 after lewis had just won the championship again. and it wasnt a friendly little toss toss. he wailed it across the room)

and these two. as you might have guessed. good freaking lord. theyre something.

so. we've talked about rivalries. we've briefly touched on charles and max, and lewis and seb, and we've talked about friendships like carlos and lando. lewis and nico put all of them to shame.

again, i will go deeper than this on the other post that is not done yet, but heres what you need to know to understand this season:

-as i said, these two used to be teammates, first in karting when they were kids and then again years later when they both finally made it to f1 at mercedes.

-because they were childhood friends, the lore here runs very very deep. both have said some of the best times in their lives were when they were teenagers trashing hotel rooms, wrestling and eating pizza and vanilla ice cream and kelloggs frosties late at night between karting races

-they were pretty unlikely friends. lewis grew up pretty poor and his dad worked 4 jobs to support his karting, he was bullied and dealt with a lot of racism. nico grew up wealthy as the son of an f1 world champion. both of them were different than the other karting kids (in opposite ways) and this is probably what drew them together

-they were teammates at merc from 2013-2016. this coincided with Peak Merc Dominance (beginning in 2014) and it was man against man from 2014-2016 as they both tried to beat the other in the championship. ultimately, this is what caused their friendship to deteriorate because they both became transfixed on beating eachother. after rosberg wrecked lewis's monaco race in 2014 lewis said that they were no longer friends, and there was also the scene where rosberg THREW his p2 hat at hamilton in the cool down room in texas in 2015 (pictured above), among many many other things (not counting all the times they crashed into eachother) (perhaps on purpose, perhaps not)

-lewis won the championship in 2014 and 2015 and basically, nico refused to be a second driver to lewis and wanted to beat him, he came very close in 2015 and then sacrificed literally everything (as in. stopped sleeping in the same bed as his own wife levels of sacrificing everything) in 2016 to beat him and win the world championship. including his friendship with lewis. he says that this was because winning the championship was his childhood dream. (his dad was also an f1 driver and had won the world championship).

-the championship in 2016 came down to the last race in abu dhabi, and reportedly nico was so nervous beforehand that he couldn't eat anything beforehand except for kellogg frosties, the very same cereal that he and lewis would eat straight out of the box as teens, but now they were hardly on speaking terms and he was battling him for the championship. they were playing all kinds of mind games with eachother at this point. this was the era of f1 where yeah you knew merc would probably win the race but you tuned in to see if nico and lewis would kill eachother on track. nico ended up winning the race and the championship and announced his retirement from the sport a few days later at the fia prize giving ceremony

-since then, lewis basically refuses to say nicos name and is generally awkward about the whole thing, but he and nico reportedly live in the same apartment building in monaco and lewis gets nicos daughters presents at christmas. nico pretty much looks murderous any time anyone suggests that lewis has lost his touch with racing or with the car and has said that in his heart lewis is still his best friend.

-lewis chilled the fuck out after this, complete 180 style. started being a pr dream, stopped calling out other drivers for not following him on twitter, doing activism, all of the good stuff we know him for now. theres one really heartbreaking interview in 2021 where they ask him if hes a better driver than he was in 2016 and he says "yes. and a better teammate."

-why is this important? well. nico as i said is a sky sports presenter and he is going to be at the chinese gp next week. also, you lot have been asking me to talk about them and simply there was no other place to put this.

-also, this has been lewis's worst start to an f1 season in his whole career (18 years). this is the first time that he hasn't had a top 5 finish in the first 4 races. yes, he has already signed with ferrari, but people are still wondering if hes lost his touch with the car, or if the car just kinda sucks. and i think nico is going to shoot some absolutely firey looks over this.

-also theres probably going to be a decent amount of talk about mercedes at the china gp because of all the contract talk going on around mercedes right now, so good to at least be somewhat familiar with the merc lore

and speaking of china! again! i remind you all! i am not watching the chinese gp live because i am being smited by my work schedule! the update will be late! but it will come! trust me! its also going to be an absolutely bonkers weekend! i know i say that every weekend but!! im feeling it in my baby seal boots this time!! does anyone even read this far on the post!! idk anymore!!!!

reguardless, thank you all for watching me loose my mind once again, ill see you all at some point next week :)

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

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

under the cut we go

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

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

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

so let’s meet the teams.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

let’s meet our drivers!!!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

feel free to add on and peer review me

[vro0m]

2013 season summary

Alright sorry it took me so long but here it is. So what happened in 2013?

Well it was Lewis' first year with Mercedes. They're actually not doing much better than Mclaren was in 2012, HOWEVER. I feel like overall the team’s energy is more hopeful because Mercedes is doing better than in 2012, when McLaren was spiraling downwards or stagnating at best.

Lewis is not really joyful though. He has his moments, especially at the beginning of the season and when he won, but you can tell he's still frustrated with his results. The last race leaves us with a last interview in which he struggles to find positives to his season, apart from the fact, as we said, that Mercedes did better in 2013 than in 2012 which was the goal. So what’s up with the results? What’s the issue?

Apart from the fact that Seb in his RedBull is still fucking flying, well, it’s the tyres. It's a whole scandal throughout the season : the tyres are absolute shit (see also : British GP). Also the whole Pirelli testing issue, with Mercedes taking part in a tyre test after Barcelona (as asked by Pirelli) that turns out to be illegal and leads them to being shut out of the young driver testing with the new tyres that Pirelli had to put together hastily in the middle of the season because it was so very bad. And the Mercedes seem to be especially hard on them too, which doesn't help. So the boys do pretty well on quali day (5 poles for Lewis) but they go backwards during the races, which is frustrating for them and about just as frustrating to watch.

But despite Lewis struggling to see them, there are positives. He won a race, which wasn't necessarily expected given that the 2012 Mercedes was very much a midfielder (and is not quite out of it yet) and that he’s new to the team. His points average is barely lower than in 2012 (9.5 VS. 9.95). I mean sure, he’s not winning a lot, but in 2012 he DNFd more than he won so... Yeah.

Also enters Bono and you can hear them figure out how to communicate throughout the season which is interesting (they aren't quite there yet either, Lewis gets a bit frustrated at times trying to explain what he needs to hear and what he doesn't need to hear and when). And we got our first “get in there”!

It’s something people from the inside (Brawn) notice just as much as people from the outside (journalists) : he gets more and more familiar with his team, more and more at ease, at home. And god knows it seems to be a very important element to Lewis' balance. And Niki only has good things to say about him.

Also the tyre issue is pretty straightforward as far as engineering goes. When it comes to the car, it seems to be one, specific, well delimited issue. And when it comes to the tyres themselves, Pirelli pretty much fixed them during that season and they’ll have new ones in 2014, that were tested with RedBull at some point (yeah, apparently they were allowed to do that because they used the 2011 car or some shit like that...).

So yep. Lewis might not see it (and in his defense it’s very easy to say from 2022), but everything seems to be falling into place quite nicely...

Let’s talk numbers : so far, I’ve completed 42.2% of my rewatch. In total, I’ve made 870 GIFs to illustrate it.

Here’s a list of the 2013 GPs with a roughly two-sentence summary and the link to the actual recap if you wanna read it or take a look at the GIFs I made :

1. Australian GP : tense racing with Alonso, it starts raining mid-way through. Lewis P5. No gifs.

2. Malaysian GP : wet track. Lewis pulls a Jenson in the pits. RedBull racing. Mercedes racing. Multi 21. Not too happy Lewis, but P3.

3. Chinese GP : Lewis pole! A lost wheel! Very close racing to the end. Lewis P3 again.

4. Bahrain GP : grid-penalty for Lewis. Tyre talks. Lewis interview. Low expectations. The Mercedes go backwards. McLaren racing. Satisfied P5 Lewis.

5. Spanish GP : Mercedes 1-2. The Mercedes go backwards. P12.

6. Monaco GP : Mercedes 1-2 again. Baby Roscoe. Brocedes chapter 1. Extremely boring race, even for Monaco. Red flag. P4.

7. Canadian GP : Close racing with Alonso at the end. P3. A marshal died.

8. British GP : Lewis pole! British quiz and lollipop eating. Delamination puncture. Delamination puncture. Delamination puncture. Delamination puncture. Lewis remontada. P4. Not too happy.

9. German GP : Lewis pole! Another lost wheel and an unlucky cameraman. Mercedes team orders. The Mercedes go backwards. Bad faith Lewis is back. Fire, empty car on track?! P5. Titty holding.

10. Hungarian GP : Lewis 30th pole! Long race but action packed. First Mercedes win for Lewis!

11. Belgian GP : Lewis pole again! Greenpeace protest. Absolutely mind-numbingly boring race. P3. Flirting with Seb.

12. Italian GP : RedBull Pirelli BS. Lewis starts P12... Radio issues and slow puncture. Bad race but loads of overtakes. P9. A bit defeated.

13. Singapore GP : long race. P5. Hitchhiking. Niki interview.

14. Korean GP : a bit of chaos, fire, delamination. Amazing Alonso battle. P5.

15. Japanese GP : delamination puncture. DNF.

16. Indian GP : frustrating race. P6. Seb is WDC for the fourth time.

17. Abu Dhabi GP : no gifs. Lewis goes backwards. Boring. P7.

18. American GP : no gifs. Boring. P4.

19. Brazilian GP : controversial contact, missing wheels, drive-through penalty. P9. Overall not too happy Lewis.

[formula-what]

Brocedes time line for a very patient anon

Lewis quotes in orange, Nico quotes in pink, everyone else is blue.

okay first some background knowledge:

Nico is rich as fuck. only child, born in Germany, brought up in Monaco. son of world champion Keke Rosberg

Lewis was born on a council estate in Stevenage and his dad had to work multiple jobs for him to start karting

Honestly I think the difference in their backgrounds is one of the things that pushed them together, they were both isolated from the rest of the kids, but I’m keeping this purely facts rather than speculation.

2000

They’re both 15 years old and are karting teammates for MBB (Mercedes Benz McLaren) in Formula A

Robert Kubica: “there was always competition. But they didn’t fight. It was friendly competition. There was always laughing afterwards.” // “they would even have races to eat pizza”

They often shared hotel rooms at the races which was a “scene of many wrestling matches between them”

Dino Chiesa (their karting boss) – “many times I was called by reception about some problem in the room. It might be noise, or they might have broken something. They would never sleep so they were always tired the next morning”

“they both liked ice cream so much, particularly vanilla. During the night they wanted to eat ice cream always, so I had to go out everywhere to find some and keep them happy”

Lewis would often persuade Nico to buy him sweets

They would have competitions over LITERALLY EVERYTHING

Lewis: “we always had great competition whether on the racetrack or computer games or playing football”

“probably the first bit of competition we had was when Nico used to ride a unicycle everywhere so I thought, ‘I’ve got to learn how to ride this unicycle. Ive got to be better than him.’ I spent all my time outside the go-kart learning to ride this unicycle”

Apparently it only took Lewis 2 hours to teach himself how to do it

In maybe 2013 ish (when they were still friends) Lewis reflected with– “I have never laughed so much than when we were racing together. Nico was kicking everyone’s butt at that time. We had so great races together and built a great relationship”

“we were just arriving and enjoying go-karts and eating pizzas every weekend, fighting all the time and just having fun, whereas now it’s all business.”

many times they would talk about what they would do when they got to f1, made plans hoping to be teammates and become world champions together.

“Nico would say ‘when I’m in formula one’ and for me it was always ‘if I ever get to formula one’. Because obviously Nico’s dad was a formula 1 driver- he knew he was going to make it.”

F1

Nico joined f1 in 2006 with williams, Lewis 2007 with McLaren. And man I WISH I knew what went down with this two when Lewis nearly one his rookie season (missing out by one point to mr fernando alonso) and then WON THE CHAMPIONSHIP in his SECOND SEASON (again by one point thank you mr alonso)

2008 Australia

Nicos gets his first podium, and ofc Lewis is there (he won it) and they are jumping around in the cool down room. Just, two kids who are literally living the one thing they have spent their whole lives dreaming about together. Lewis won the championship that year and oh wow I can only imagine their celebrations together.

2013

They’re teammates in Mercedes!!!

Nico: “every other day there are moments or things that pop up and I can smirk and thing, ‘that’s exactly the same as it was 15 years ago’”

2013 Malaysian Grand Prix gets an honourable mention. This is the race with red bulls good old multi 21 but merc also had their own team orders, stopping nico from fighting for his first merc podium, but Lewis disagreed with it so it didn’t really spark that much tension between them- more the team.

2014

the start of the turbo-hybrid era so y’all know this was good in terms of performance.

2014 Bahrain Grand Prix

They were both fighting for the win and had a collision which prompted a “mock fight” in parc ferme after the race (which I really hope there’s a video of).

Turns out, Nico won because he had used engine modes banned by Mercedes to get a power advantage in the closing laps. which kinda pissed Lewis off

2014 Spanish Grand Prix

Lewis’ fourth win in a row and took lead in the championship. They were fighting till literally the last second and Lewis crossed the line 0.6 seconds ahead of Nico, who says he could have passed him with one more lap.

Lewis defended using the same banned engine modes that Nico had used in Bahrain. Yeah.

2014 Monaco Grand Prix

This is IT. This is peak petty bitch. This is the one people still cry about.

It’s the end of Q3, both of them are out on a lap, Nico ahead of lewis. Nico’s already on provisional pole but Lewis is pretty close.

And then,, Nico just,, parks his car?? He says he made a mistake but the guy doesn’t even crash he straight up just,, rolls to a stop into a slip road. So the yellow flags come out forcing Lewis to abort a lap that was in the makings of pole.

The stewards say it was a-okay but Lewis was convinced it was intentional (and let’s be honest, yeah it probably was) and he even claimed that merc’s data proved it. (low key surprised he didn’t just tweet out the telemetry but I guess he got a stern telling off from mclaren last time)

But *this* is when Lewis tells the world that they aren’t friends anymore. An iconic interview.

Nico then wins the race too, ending Lewis’s four win streak and putting Nico in the lead of the championship.

2014 Hungarian Grand Prix

Lewis has an engine failure in quali meaning he starts from the pit lane, but he does good to make his way up the pack but THEN there’s a safety car which puts him ahead of Nico but on a different strategy.

Nico asks if Lewis can let him past as he needs to pit again before the end of the race, which will give him the place back anyways. Lewis straight up refuses, he’s on a role here. He started from last, and Nico started from pole, why should he slow down to let his title rival through.

Mercedes strongly suggest that his blocking fucked up Nicos race but Niki Lauda is on Lewis’ side so he doesn’t get punished (We stan a supportive father figure) even though he did blatantly refuse to be a team player.

And guys, this is the last race before the summer break so you know Nico was left seething for four weeks.

2014 Belgian Grand Prix

Second lap, Nico attempts a clumsy move and there’s contact, giving Hamilton a puncture and knocking him out of the race.

There’s a lot of controversy but basically it turns out he crashed with him intentionally, not backing out of the corner to “prove a point”. Nico ended up finishing second but was punished by the team, forced to apologise, and even booed on the podium.

2014 Abu Dhabi

For some reason it ran for double points?? The first time in History??? But idk???

Lewis had a perfect start and went on to win it and take the title, Nico had a problem and was told to retire the car but he kept going anyway and finished 14th. Nico went into the cool down room to congratulate Lewis on the championship win, which. cute.

Lewis claimed his second championship. Which not only was huge because of the inter team rivalry, but also because of the large gap between his first win. This guy had lost out on winning the championship in his ROOKIE season by ONE POINT, and then WON it in his SECOND season, and then there was like a FIVE YEAR gap before he won it again.

2015

Damnnn this car was fiiiinneeeeeee.

They do more laps in testing than any other car AND do it on a single power unit. And then. Australia. They take a one-two THIRTY FOUR seconds ahead of the third place Ferrari.

2015 Chinese Grand Prix

Nico is second in a one-two but claims that Lewis kept backing him up into Seb, trying to compromise his race (and help out his boyfriend).

Lewis gave zero shits: "It's not my job to look after Nico's race, it's my job to manage the car and bring the car home as healthy and as fast as possible. That's what I did."

2015 U.S. Grand Prix

If Lewis wins here he could also claim the title with three races to spare (you have to remember back then the title fight often went up to the last race so this was pretty cool)

Lewis very aggressively forced Rosberg wide at Turn 1 to claim the lead, and then there was some sexy fighting between the Mercs and Redbull all race. Nico led in the closing stages but made a mistake, running deep into a corner and letting Lewis past with only a handful of laps to go.

Nico finished P2 and had not only lost the race but the championship title. Nico was fuming, saying Lewis’ move at the start was “one step too far”.

This is the infamous cap throw in the cool down room. Lewis throws Nico his P2 hat, Nico straight up yeets it back at him. I tear up just thinking about it. They grow up so fast.

2016

Nico had came so close to winning and I guess this was just, the last straw. All or nothing. This year he literally gave it everything he had. Lewis and him stopped speaking, Nico gave up literally the rest of his life and even stopped sleeping in the same bed as his wife and taking care of his kids, instead spending every moment trying to get into Lewis’ head. Honestly, I think he might be the only one that could beat Lewis. Just because he knew him *so well*. He literally threw away like 16 years of friendship. But also it’s like, he had to be world champion. He *had to*. His dad was champion and his whole life he’s been preparing to win it too. Tough luck that he raced in the same era as Mr. Best Driver The Sport Has Ever Seen.

Nico won the last few races of 2015, and the first four races of 2016. Lewis had a couple car problems and Nico had a good lead on him in the championship.

2016 Spanish Grand Prix

Gentlemen. A short view back to the past. Nico had made a switch error on the formation lap causing the car to go into the wrong engine mode. So he was running a lot slower than Lewis, who was fighting to claim back the lead.

Nico closed the door to keep him back, and Lewis lost control on the grass, and spins into Nico and taking them both out of the race in the first lap. This is probably one of the most iconic crashes. I’m pretty sure there’s a clip of this somewhere in black and white with the titanic music over the top.

Niki Lauda blamed this one on Lewis (I guess even a supportive dad has to be critical sometimes) "Lewis is too aggressive. It is stupid, we could've won this race".

2016 Austrian Grand Prix

Nico had been struggling with a brake issue all race but was still on the way to win it. But in the last lap Lewis had caught him up and gone in for the overtake.

Typical Nico not taking any shit, refusing to be the guy that backs out and they collide. Lewis took the win and a damaged Nico dropped to fourth. From first. In the last lap.

Both of them blamed each other and tired dad team boss Toto Wolff threatened team orders in future races.

The stewards blamed Nico for the incident, issuing him two penalty points for failing to allow "racing room" and causing a collision.

2016 Abu Dhabi

In the final laps of the race, Lewis ignored team-orders from his race engineer and the technical director.

He deliberately slowed and backed Nico into the pack hoping they overtake him, and there would be enough of a points difference to win the title.

Nico finished second and won the title by five points.

And then,,, Nico announced a surprise retirement during the FIA prize giving ceremony.

Lewis’ response:

"This is the first time he's won in 18 years, hence why it was not a surprise that he decided to stop.” (We stan a petty king)

“But he's also got a family to focus on and probably wants to have more children. Formula One takes up so much of your time."

“In terms of missing the rivalry, of course because we started karting when we were 13 and we would always talk about being champions. When I joined this team, Nico was there, which was something we spoke about when we were kids. So it's going to be very, very strange, and, for sure, it will be sad to not have him in the team next year."

And now they are kind of on speaking terms but not really, they are both pretty private but I think they are at the ‘awkward small talk when we run into each other at the supermarket’ stage of the break up.

[raellucia]

So today I was reading this legendary post by esme(Thank u so much this summary is a treasure I will keep it close to my chest and re-read it every night before I go to sleep with tears) and reading what Kubica said, Lewis and Nico competed all the time in their karting years but

"...There was always laughing afterwards."

And I recalled that time Nico got really jealous bcz Lewis posted about Valtteri being the best teammate of all time, and he literally said "WHAT ABOUT ME" and told their whole story again at that event. And this comment:

And these two combined really made me write an ESSAY about brocedes sooo yeeeah (it's just my long boring headcon sry

(I know it's not the only reason Nico retires but) Huh imagine Nico got tired of all that "the only way to win is playing mind games with my best friend bcz he is f*cking good at driving" shit, thinking "this is exhausted, It's not like I can do this one more time so I might as well retire haha bye :) ".

So after his retirement he had very hopeful thoughts of their relationship, like OK maybe I really went TOO FAR this time but, hummmmm it's just another BIG fight between us (yes, for 2 freaking year, maybe a little bit TOO big, but anyway), we can fix this right? It may take some time but he'll surely forgive me as always, just like our childhood days. He ALWAYS forgive me when I play nice afterwards and we ALWAYS make up, like ALWAYS (*nico thinking of this smugly), we're meant to be friends (soulmates! he thought to himself).

SO he went straight to make amends, like followed lewis on ig, made many posts complimenting him, and said “I’m open to finding our way, y'know, and even having a good relationship again in the future. why not?” in the interview (oh he's so very confident back then lol). THEN after like half a year of frantic outreach, gestures of goodwill, whatever you wanna call it, (I'd say it's COURTING), He slowly realized oops, this is not working, I THOUGHT Lew would get over it but he's now completely ignoring me!!!

(And at this moment Lewis was like: Hi bitch It's called DIGNITY and NEVER FORGIVE, oh u don't know that? Let me teach u the lesson besitie!!!🥰🥰🥰) OK seriously, Lewis' thought: It's the same old story and he has had ENOUGH. This one hurts TOO MUCH and it has already crossed the line, Nico can't just wipe the slate clean and expect him to forget all this, like wtf. Yes he acknowledged it's not all Nico's fault, he's also done shitty things but whatever, it's just TRAUMATIC. He just decided he doesn't want to go through this EVER again. And u know Lewis, he's that kind of person so determined, once he has made up his mind, nothing can sway him from his decision. He'll never accept Nico as a friend, cut it off completely, and didn't even make friends anymore with anyone in the paddock.)

And Nico, (being a nasty little bitch), after his futile attempts, the thought of "shit I really f*cked up this time I SHOULD BE BLAMING MYSELF and go cry in a corner" might have crossed his mind 2 or 3 times, but OF COURSE he started feeling pissed off and mainly blaming it on Lewis like "After all I've done for you! After I've compromised so much!!! What else do u want from me?!?? How dare you still ignore me and not forgive me???? "

AND HE LOST HIS SHIT, being sarcastic and bitter every now and then, COULDN'T STOP mentioning and talking about Lewis & savouring their relationship on ALL occasion, appropriate or not. He's messing around like a child, just to get some attention from Lew, and he doesn't even realize it himself.

His LOVE for Lewis deep down could not be concealed by his crazy words, and as days goes by, he calms down at times and even says things nice and full of love. But he'll always be frustrated by the fact that Lewis is not moved. at all. Lewis could talk with him politely for a minute in the paddock, could even hang out on one yacht with him (and toto, yeah he doubted that Lew would come if it's him only... nah Nico couldn't even think about it), from outside it will seem all fine, peaceful, a good story of enemies eventually cleared the air, a happy ending of a long fic, if only Nico could be content with this illusion. If only he could play along. But he CAN'T because he knows things are not going back at all, IT IS totally different from the past. They're not even like, 10% friends or something, they are just NOT FRIENDS. And Nico can never settle with JUST THAT. He can't even pretend it. So he can't help but going back to the "bitter-sour-bitch-losing-his-shit" mode over and over again (and makes everyone super awkward but he couldn't care less LOL). Because he's NICO ROSBERG and he f*cking gets EVERYTHING he wants in his life, he could even win over LEWIS HAMILTON and snatch the F1 WORLD CHAMPION from him, shit, but he can not get Lewis to come around. He might never be able to make Lewis love him again. And he had never failed so miserably.

Sometimes he wonders maybe people are right about that nemesis thing. They've been fighting each other ever since they first met, through out the time they were still friend, and got fiercer when they're not friends anymore. But at the end of the day, none of them wins. They're just two wretches kept losing to each other, and uncontrollably love each other, and then hate even more.

[blorbocedes]

norstappen is so so compelling to me, please let me ramble for a (few) moments:

I hateeeeeee when people compare norstappen to brocedes (which I am def sure you’ve talked about and have thoughts of) or even any Lando-rivalry BECAUSE literally the situations are not even close

“there are parallels” um so actually yeah maybe parallel universes that had inverse and refracted canon events- brocedes had such an intricate and intertwined path where it led to such a devastating fallout (and here i will admit im not factually caught up in all lore brocedes, so I can’t speak on everything but) anyways methinks that the whole heartbreak and reaction of brocedes breakup was lended to primarily the fact that they were teammates and the fact that they had so much history together

not gonna go into that too in depth but all that just to say norstappen are NOT even close to being brocedes, and now please let me get into why that makes them so compelling

for most of our fav duos on the grid, they have had history as teammates (e.g. maxiel, carlando, sebmark, etc) because dynamics are easier to acknowledge and easier to consume. obviously there are some exceptions like galex and lestappen but we know why they’re so close because of their racing histories

BUT NORSTAPPEN like yes ik they raced in juniors and whatever but it was so fleeting that seeing them come together in f1 is just like woah

Max is historically a fierce competitor and used to be so hot headed he was brash and (c)rude

so maybe a lot of their companionship now could be attributed to the fact they weren’t direct competitors in 20/21 but to me that really doesn’t matter bc the way they talked to and about each other then is still with the same fondness they talk about each other now

even though they’re currently competing for the wdc they’re still friends first and foremost, and they pretty much refuse to speak down on each other (Austria is a whole nother rant I don’t have space for) and they still support each other so so much it’s actually unfathomable to me

like guys come on this is the part where you’re supposed to start shit talking and throwing hands, not going at it raw on the pj with an audience

but their respect for each other is of the highest standard and tbh that’s the ONLY reason they’re still Good with each other in my opinion, although the appearance and the nature of that respect I am mildly unsure of

thank you for sacrificing a piece of your askbox for my rambling, and if you have any counterpoints I’d loveeee to hear them

max and lando never raced against each other, until they got into f1. not in the junior karting categories

personally speaking, wholesome friends to lovers does nothing for me and I don't care for ships that's like let's see who can respect each other harder. that's not what I find compelling ab norstappen but the fun thing about rpf is its all made up and different ppl interpret it in different ways, so if that's what works for you then go off!!! and im glad you're having fun too:3

[nobrakesdown]

For the ask game - F and K 👀

Ahhh, thank you my dear

F - I have realized I use my dialogue as more - meat and potatoes, I guess, and mostly flex in my descriptions, but let's see what I've got!

Okay here's a Weird One, but here's a snip from something you can't replace:

"I've had my eye on the Facebook Marketplace listing for a while.  Wanted to wait for the day itself, y'know, treat yo self or whatever."

Michael lets out a deep breath.  "You bought your own murder weapon on Facebook Marketplace." 

"Technically," Daniel says, a hard, tight edge to his voice, "the bomb was the murder weapon."

I love the dynamic here, and I think this does a really good job of showing how Daniel is being very irreverent about his trauma while also being wound incredibly tight.

I am also gonna show off my favorite line from the first chapter of emergence:

The ride there is - fine.  When Lando asks if he can play music Daniel says sure, because it's an easy win and he could use some of those.  They don't talk much, Lando staring out of the window in a way that makes Daniel feel like a middle-aged mom trying to connect with her teenager on the way home from school.  

I love it cause first of all it's just cute, but it also shows Daniel subconsciously defaulting to thinking of herself as feminine before she starts considering gender stuff.

K - I am sure you chose this one cause you knew I would have a hard time picking one >:(. The Monza stillbirth fic is maybe the most angsty to me personally, but idk if it's the worst over all. Another bad one is a fic I will probably never publish but use to process current events. The breeding program au is also deeply angsty, and I'll shout out the brocedes carbon monoxide poisoning fic as another doozy.