#you also see this when they make f1 drivers do hot laps with coworkers and they’re in the passenger seat wigging out

[moonshynecybin]

I was wondering if you could talk about Marc and his control freak tendencies cause I find them fascinating but I don’t know much about them. Has he always had them and they just amplified after Sepang or has he always had strong control freak tendencies and is it in a lot of different ways or just some particular situations.

the control freak stuff comes to me as like. MOST professional athletes at marc’s level i think tend to have SOMEEE sort of control freakism tendencies. not all, obviously, but to excel at that level you have to be obsessive, and most sports have some sort of random chance associated with them that is out of an athlete’s control— especially when you add other riders to the mix and ESPECIALLY in a sport as dangerous as motogp. there’s so much you CANT control that you white knuckle onto the things you can. this is also where you get superstition imo (marc’s little crossed fingers mistake banishment ritual), it allows you to create the illusion of more control in order to feel better about the lack of it that is the reality of the situation ya feel me

there’s also what marc is actually AFRAID of. as a #anxietygirl myself i can tell you that a bunch of my anxiety/phobias leap out in situations where there’s a bunch of x-factors that i can’t control or manage. marc is the same methinks. on a bike screaming around a track at 220mph? fine because HES the one driving. in the ocean? where you are just one speck amongst the vast unending soup? and there probably aren’t sharks that are going to bother you but there’s always that little niggling chance that if something happens there’s nothing you can do about it?? in a lot of ways he loses that control! and i bet that freaks him out a bit.

there’s also him self producing a documentary about himself. and literally giving feedbacks on the edit straight to camera in it like. i want people to know that i am a goofball that has fun :) which yeah he does and he is. but that is a craaaaazy thing to say/do lmao

[its-all-papaya]

💅 do my nails & potential landoscar rivalry following hungary and now monza

it's silly goofy how well these asks work for me... my brain is so interesting... anyway, nails are tan now in case anybody cares !

↠ please make me do my chores

idk if this is a hot take, but my opinion on landoscar rn is that i feel like a rivalry and more, worse tension is inevitable at this point. hungary was one thing, but it clearly wasn’t a one-time ocurrance and the car is obviously fast, so they’re probably going to continue to be 1-2 or thereabouts in qualifying for the rest of the season. and that’s going to just keep pumping out situations like monza lap one. they both want to win and they're both going to be frustrated when they don't, especially if it's at the expense of the other.

that being said, there are levels. is landoscar going to be brocedes? no. nobody ever will be. will they continue to be as friendly and goofy as they were first half of this season though? i kind of doubt it at this point. they could! people have! but it feels like we’re kind of at a turning point (for this year at least).

because i’ve worked in sports myself for years now, i have a few thoughts on rivalries/teammate relationships to ramble about. i’ll try not to go on too much:

By and large, fans see rivalries from an extremely different lens than athletes do. F1 is pretty different from teams I’ve personally worked with because the teammate+competitor thing is kind of unique to motorsport, but on basically every team I’ve worked for, the athletes don’t feel it as intensely as people watching do. Rivalries are usually much more emotionally involved (for lack of a better word) from the outside. Again, it's probably really different when it’s one-to-one and you’re facing the same people over and over every weekend, but I think as a general rule, fans focus on the narratives much more than teams do internally.

Feelings are also situational a lot of the time. I’ve watched athletes speak in a pregame meeting about how they need to "destroy" their opponent “for the good of the sport,” then turn around and post pictures with people from that same opponent while training with a national team together literally weeks later. The emotions in and around the actual competition spaces are usually really different from outside. ESPECIALLY in smaller/niche sports where most athletes have shared history and friendships that existed before they reached the pinnacle of competition. The thing is, we see a TON of the HIGHEST emotion moments (during races and right after) and much less of the mundane, casual moments between drivers. We're witnessing like 1% of these people's relationships with each other and it's a weird 1% to boot. How we perceive their relationships is definitely not how they view them themselves most of the time. They're reacting to one another out of adrenaline and in the heat of competition, they're going to say and think things about one another that they do not, generally, think about each other in day-to-day life.

It is LATE in the season. F1 is a LOT of forced proximity. Sports in general is that way, and there is not one single person I’ve ever worked with that I have completely loved all the time or completely despised all the time. My coworkers are like my siblings, and I imagine it might be similar in F1? But multiplied by 1000? You can't really take meaningful time away from people you work really closely with. My current job is SO much jockeying for the same limited resources against people also doing my job in a similar way and there are times I want to rip people’s throats out because they’re getting things I want for my own projects and think my own people deserve more. However, those coworkers are also literally my best friends. I hang out with them routinely and go out with them and talk about my problems with them. It's a lot of compartmentalizing because we’re all around each other 6-7 days a week, we’re all tired 24/7 from working long-ass days one after the other, and the average age is like 24.5, so we’re simultaneously trying to manage insane stressful competitive situations and ALSO form our brains and learn how to manage ourselves as people. See? Lando and Oscar are within like a year or two of me and Lando’s been in his job almost exactly the same amount of time I’ve been in sports. I can confirm that even after like 400 events or whatever I’ve worked in that span, I personally still do things in the heat of stress that I regret later and say things I don’t mean, etc, and I'm not even the one pumped full of brain chemicals after competing. Sports is just intense sometimes.

I see and talk to a LOT of people shortly after they lose games, and it’s crazy to judge anyone based on how they act in those minutes. Basing our perceptions of relationships on what we see in the cooldown room and podiums when we largely don’t see anything else is... incomplete. “Lewis is amicable after” yeah, he’s 40. He has 20 years of practice handling these things. The majority of the people we’re judging reactions from are like six months into having fully formed prefrontal cortexes. Also, people manage emotions in different ways in general, and if Lando doesn’t want to talk in the cooldown room, that’s probably because he thinks it’s better than what would come out of his mouth if he did speak. It doesn’t mean he hates Oscar. You can be mad at someone and petty about them outperforming you THIRTY MINUTES AFTER IT HAPPENED without judging them for it as a person. It's nearly impossible to have perspective on a situation THAT close after a loss.

In summary: yes, I think landoscar has the potential to implode and dissolve and ruin whatever friendship exists. ESPECIALLY if McLaren continues to mismanage situations between them (again: been there. when nobody above you is making the calls, you’re making them among yourselves in the moment and it feels INSANELY more personal and inflammatory when you get fucked over). That being said, rivalry on track does not automatically mean horrible relationship off. I think they respect each other a lot and a part of this is just that I don’t think either driver or the team really expected to run into this problem this season specifically, so they weren't prepared for it until they're all in the middle and exhausted and feeling the pressure. Which... is another convo.

I hope landoscar are fine! I don't think they hate each other! I also think race weekends for the rest of the season are going to be a lot closer vibes-wise to Monza than anything pre-Hungary, though. I don't think Lando is going to be celebrating any of Oscar's wins with him this season in the moment. And I don't blame him and I don't think it means he despises Oscar and their friendship is ruined, he's just focussed on his own championship because that has always been the logical conclusion of his job.

thank you for the ask, i hope this was at all coherent!! everyone feel free to follow up!!