they put a mouse in the cockpit

minah she/her 21+

[cherrari]

user cherrari aka minah she/her, toronto very little reblogs, i only come on here to talk

mute to silence me: #9.75 fm

wheel: - #wheel - getting into f1 + +

beautiful graphics by @argentinagp

[cherrari]

hello from long beach practice one! you'll probably be hearing from me more this weekend (sorry) because i am recovering from a small surgery and have missed racing so i might as well watch the practices and qualis and stuff. and because i always like talking to you i thought i would poke my head into your askbox even more than normal.

thoughts: i kind of like long beach, it's pretty. jack and georgia continue to be delightful! i don’t like palou’s ai livery i miss the ketchup and mustard man

i also don’t like kyle’s default livery this season, even though i keep forgetting that it’s bouillon as in gold and thinking of it as bullion as in chicken stock. either way, bring back his brightly colored cars!! one i do like is felix’s because I’m a big green day fan.

poor mick has had some pretty shitty luck this season so for. my hater mode is indifferent to scotty mac’s issues. the broadcast is talking about putting scott dixon out to pasture. unsure if I like the fast six one lap thing i’ll have a few more chances to see it this season and decide.

also, how are you minah??? it's occurred to me that i barge in here talking wheel and never ask about you, even though i do care!! i hope you're feeling better (am i crazy or did you lose your job? if you did i hope you have a new one!) and i am always thinking of you.

omg you had surgery??? are you okay now or is it an ongoing thing?? i have also (obviously) been plagued by injuries and illness recently so i get it kinda... even if it was small i hope your recovery is going okay and you're nice and cosy

i am looking forward to indy this weekend but i have to admit my own depression and general unwellness has been getting in the way of like, Enjoying Things that aren't my Main Things if that makes sense. like unless it's one of the things i'm very into i've had a really difficult time paying attention to it. i haven't really been playing video games, writing, drawing, etc... all i do is watch beisbol and f1 replays... but i will tune in this weekend

it's funny you bring up the liveries because i have an extraordinarily difficult time keeping track of the liveries in indy even when i look at the spotter's guides. my brain is simply too small to keep track of all the changes especially since they're all so overly convoluted. i wish indy had easily accessible data like f1 does so i could consume that instead but i absolutely hate the live timing for indy

in general i feel like the season hasn't been as good as the first few races of last year but i am open to being wrong and enjoying it more as it unfolds. i do miss colton on the indy grid not because i was a massive fan of him but he was always involved in weird and entertaining situations

i am still looking for a job unfort it's been very slow and i really lack energy.. art has sustained me but doing it as a job has made it not really fun for me anymore as a hobby so that sucks :( thank you for thinking of me ily... it has been rough. but every time i go through any hardship i unironically tell myself i'm building good luck for charles 😅

[cherrari]

just after suzuka i was like wow this was an exciting race, i'm gonna have so much trouble sleeping tonight and barber was like that's okay, you can sleep through me.

a delightful yet also frustrating p3 for charles, a just-okay p5 for kyle (still leading the championship by 2 points though!). i'd bet both the ollie race crash and mclaughlin's fp crash are going on promo materials at some point soon; they've been all over the series' social media accounts.

i hope the month off gives ferrari time to figure out what the fuck is going on with deployment, which is about as much as i can hope for given that i don't think the fia are going to tweak the regs again. i'm glad i have an indycar race to look forward to in april bc i'm having surgery and it will be nice to watch something while i'm laid up.

question for you minah, and i'm sorry that it might be a tad morbid: a couple races ago, townsend bell compared alex palou to alain prost and it occurred to me that it might have been the first time i've heard a current driver compared to him. i know he's got the nickname "the professor" but it seems it's all senna these days, and everyone always picks him as their childhood driver hero. is that due to the aggression senna was known for? could part if it be that he "got" to die in a race car and didn't have to get old? pro athletes, after all, are not the best at accepting when they're done.

tbh i do think a lot of the idolization of senna has to do with him dying and i think most hardcore motorsport fans would agree. there's otherwise no reason for senna to be deified so much and not prost. i think a similar thing applies to (gilles) villeneuve, who was an outstanding driver certainly but had he actually completed his wdc run(s) probably wouldn't be as hyped as he is today. it doesn't particularly bother me, it happens in every sport

i definitely would not compare palou to prost though lol. that feels like a "oscar is just like kimi raikkonen!!!!!" type of comparison where it's mostly their reputation that has similarities and not themselves. also i just think indy is too different from f1 to compare drivers like that

omg did you see that scotty's crash got posted to tmz for some reason i was crying over that like why are they up in our business

[cherrari]

wait omg minah i just remembered you were watching baseball!! are you still? i think you should, there's some similarities between baseball and motorsports that you might find appealing, especially with the introduction of new rules in mlb these past few years!! it also functions great as background noise if you need to get work done. i know those two points may sound contradictory but i promise they're not!!

i do!! i watch every jays game but i also just put whatever is airing on sportsnet on as bg noise. i'm going to the game tmrw irl actually!

[cherrari]

hello hello hello!!

we are now two full (and one sprint) races into the f1 season, three races into the indycar season. i don't super love the new f1 regs, and equally as importantly i am learning that i don't understand them, i thought i had no clue how the cars worked before, but now i am totally lost.

i know indycar is not as exciting but we have prema out and roman grosjean in (i thought of you when i heard he was coming back. professional athlete careers are temporary, being nice to one of my favorite bloggers is forever!) honda and chevy both recommitted to being engine suppliers for indycar. we have a new tire rule for street courses. there's a stupid course in dc coming up but also the 110th indy 500 this year!!

minah cherrari points a microphone what are your thoughts on the two seasons so far?

very amused at you associating grosjean with me because my friends do too. literally every time he appears someone makes a joke about my credit card. i am not going to indy this year but if i was he would unironically be the autograph i want the most bcs i didn't think he'd step foot in canada ever again lmao also good riddance to prema. don't come back #imo

pleasantly surprised at indy so far not being the total palou show though i have to admit i'm still really annoyed at rasmussen throwing away a very obvious chance at a win the other week. between that and f1 pissing me off i have spent the last 2 weeks totally fixated on latino baseball teams

i wouldn't say i'm looking forward to suzuka per se, but no matter how uninspiring formula energy management is, i can never sleep through a session of watching charles drive in circles. unlike @xarialore who ditched me during china quali......

out of all the racing series, the one i'm most looking forward to is f2 which won't be back until JUNE good god 😭😭😭😭 i can't remember if you follow f2... i'm guessing you are since colton is there this year at least?

[cherrari]

hi minah!! im so sorry if this comes really out of left side, but i was reading your kinkmeme fill series and realized some were hidden… again im sorry for being out of loop and asking this but i was wondering if youd ever reveal those fics again? i honestly cant even remember what exactly they were about anymore but i do remember enjoying all of the works in that series and would really hope to see them again one day TT

honestly i think the writing is just kinda bad in them... i hid a few fics from other fandoms too :( maybe i'll add them back sometime later but i've been extremely depressed recently about all my creative work (not only writing but also art) so it's tough to find the motivation to fix them

[cherrari]

hi minah how are you, are you watching races? i know we're only two races in but how do you feel about the way these new regs are playing out so far

i hate these regs and the focus on energy management has taken a lot of joy out of what i love the most about the sport (the chassis engineering and examining data)

i'm still watching every session with my bffs and my beloved @xarialore but honestly i don't have much to say about f1 as a whole right now. the teams clearly didn't maximize their own understanding of how to use these regs, and so a lot of the expected "benefits" of them aren't panning out, leaving us with mostly the negatives

[cherrari]

i'm so happy seeing everyone love arvid...

[cherrari]

if charles is a mouse does that mean minah is........a bird? specifically this tiny #fierce looking bird this is so minah cherrari

are you implying i am trying to hunt and kill charles

[cherrari]

do u think based on this these regs will suit charles?

all regulations would suit charles. he's extraordinarily adaptable especially given that he said a lot of his driving comes from instinct (which would, hypothetically, make it more difficult for him to adapt, but nowhere in his career does this appear to be the case)

[cherrari]

i was wondering why ferrari doesn’t seem to go for a sandbagging tactic as much? unless it’s just, harder to tell? but i feel like last year the tests weren’t this positive but i still remember people talking about them pushing a lot more than the other top teams

ferrari just don't sandbag... even in fps they show close to their full hand and that's why they almost won the free practice championship but then were nowhere in qualifying. who knows why, but it seems they don't care if other teams perceive them as a threat

[cherrari]

I'm confused why Red Bull seems so happy when they don't look near Merc

i wouldn't put any stock on what red bull "looks" like because they weren't exactly pushing anything the past few weeks

they and mclaren spent less time on these cars than mercedes and ferrari did, so it wouldn't be surprising if they were a step behind for a bit (though i don't think they will be lol) and i'm sure they're aware of this

[cherrari]

Should we be worried about the car sliding a lot?

the only car in the top four that stuck out to me as sliding a lot was mclaren. the instability you see in the ferrari is going to be normal for the first season or two because of how little downforce they have

even the merc which overall looked planted as hell was sliding a lot, but that's just something we need to get used to even for competitive cars

[cherrari]

arvid thoughts?

i don't think anyone should expect anything other than him putting in laps, which he did a lot of, so i'm pleased

[cherrari]

thoughts on day 3? what's your current ranking of the long runs? (disclaimer it's only testing bla bla)

ferrari and mercedes looked ahead of the other two in every area including long runs but then relatively equal to each other. granted, red bull was definitely sandbagging but i think mclaren was having legitimate difficulties with handling as exhibited by both drivers constantly going off even when not on hot laps. mclaren also really struggle with deg in the high temps, as did mercedes a little but they've always had that issue and george's runs seemed extremely consistent otherwise. race pace has been ferrari's biggest strength since vasseur's takeover so it doesn't surprise me they look good, especially with charles in today's morning session

so mercedes => ferrari > red bull > mclaren which is the same as the general car ranking for me. red bull was just lacking power (again, this is the definition of sandbagging lol but we also don't know what their peak may be, it could still be lower than the top two) and mclaren looked like too much of a handful to be consistent

mercedes were also very obviously sandbagging but again, we can only work with what we have seen since we don't know what the potential peak is. they looked very confident though (as did ferrari, but i think mercedes was hiding more and they weren't even hiding that they were hiding it lmao)

[cherrari]

do you think other teams will try copying ferraris designs

like vowles said, there's a few reasons why creating so much lift might be counterproductive. the wing works well in theory for ferrari because they're generating extra downforce and upwash from the diffuser area. teams with better power delivery might find themselves flying off the track when trying to exit a straight if they abruptly added 5 km/h more lol

the wing mechanism probably wouldn't be that expensive or difficult to reproduce, but in order to do it effectively they'd need to change the rest of the car too and THAT would be expensive and difficult. unless a team feels so confident in their current car they don't have anything else to work on, i can't see any of them chasing ferrari's rear philosophy. if it turns out to be amazing, the earliest we'd see it is next year (and that's already very generous)

we are talking about not "just" changing where external parts are but the internal packaging like the gearbox, pu, driveshaft... these are the types of changes that happen over multiple seasons. when you see how radical the design is, it makes you realise why so much of last season was sacrificed

[cherrari]

How good is the wing? Why is everyone so excited?

oh maybe i should've clarified i was just excited because i think it looks cool and spinning things tickle my brain 😭😭😭 it doesn't seem to be far enough in the pipeline to be like Wow this is a huge advantage, they didn't actually run it afaik. the exhaust winglet is far more interesting in its potential impact at this current point