the comparisons between kimi leading the championship this year and oscar leading the championship at the start of last year bother me for a lot of reasons, but the one that’s really been getting to me lately is the fact that no one is acknowledging how different expectations were for the two of them at the start of the season.
for his whole career, kimi has been treated like some kind of prodigy, and it was almost seen as an inevitability that he would one day be fighting for an f1 championship. he’s been lauded as the future of mercedes, and he has toto’s complete and enthusiastic support. going into this season, mercedes was expected to lead with no clear competition, so all the chatter was around kimi and george.
at the start of last year, on the other hand, mclaren certainly had the strongest car, but red bull was still in contention, and the title conversation was entirely focused on the norris-verstappen rematch. nobody in the media, and i mean NOBODY, was talking about oscar as a serious contender for the title despite some of his strong performances in 2024 and his vast improvement over the course of his first two years. oscar’s title bid seemingly came out of nowhere because he’s never had anywhere near kimi’s level of hype (even with a significantly more successful junior career), and the only people who knew how strong of a driver oscar had become were his fans who had been paying close attention to his progress. and despite his incredibly strong start to the year (and all of his wins being earned and not gifted by lucky safety cars), the media still didn’t seriously start considering him a championship contender until around saudi/miami.
another very important distinction is the fact that kimi is mercedes’ golden boy, toto’s pet project, and you know he’s going to have the complete backing of his team throughout the whole season. oscar, on the other hand, is very clearly NOT the golden child. that’s not to say that mclaren doesn’t value him at all, but their support of him is limited, conditional. they were happy to celebrate his success at the beginning of the year because it helped their “two number one drivers/happy papaya family/there is no war in ba sing se” narrative, but once he became too serious of a threat, they started to suffocate him (bad strategies, not defending him from bullshit penalties (silverstone), media mind games, invoking hungary 24 to guilt him into following team orders, blatant favoritism like robbing him of a very deserved grand slam in qatar because they didn’t want to even slightly disadvantage lando with strategy, etc). and that’s not to mention the fact that the team didn’t make any upgrades later in the year when oscar was struggling with the car but they worked tirelessly at the beginning of the year when lando was struggling with the car (i know they had turned their focus to 2026 at that point, but people still don’t acknowledge the fact that lando and max got upgrades to help them when they were struggling and oscar didn’t and that definitely played a part in his decline in performance later in the year). and even with all of that, he managed to stay in contention for the title all the way to abu dhabi. merc just isn’t going to throw that kind of bullshit at kimi this year and everyone knows it
to put it simply, kimi is leading the championship in accordance with his team’s wishes and the media’s expectations. oscar made a bid for the championship in SPITE of his team’s wishes and AGAINST the public’s expectations. they are not the same, and i need everyone to stop treating them like they are
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