Yesterday I wasn't allowed to weigh in on the whole Carlos Sainz discourse we apparently had yesterday (because i was in a prison of my own making) and I'm kind of glad I didn't, because from what I can see it just devolved into what it always does when a driver says/does something politically regressive. We all collectively go "misogyny/racism is bad", and then one either pivots into "and that's why you should remember they're all bad" or "no this time it's a special case and we need to be mad at this guy specifically". And normally I just tolerate this fighting because usually at least one or both responses are understandable. But this time it specifically annoyed me because, and I will be blunt here, it was ridiculous to me that everyone is surprised Carlos Sainz thinks men need to be the pursuers in relationships. If you are surprised that specifically Carlos Sainz Jr, the man who's father follows the Spanish far-right party on Instagram and who refused to kneel in 2020 for Lewis' BLM movement, believes in something so mundanely normalized in sexual politic to the point where if you went on the street and asked a random man about it he'd probably agree, then I say this with all kindness. I think you may be slightly oblivious to the world around you.
Now don't get me wrong. I do think what Carlos said was disgusting and I was appalled by it. It is of course an appalling belief system to me, but it simply doesn't shock my understandings of Carlos Sainz to hear him say that. Fork found in the kitchen drawer. Its not anymore disgusting to me then George Russell or Lando Norris being offhandedly excited or admirable about Donald Trump. What was shocking to me was the fact that the Williams social media team posted it. Because that is concerning. That tells me that the Williams social media team, at best, thinks the rage-bait attention they'll get from posting what Carlos said is worth it, or worse, thinks that they no longer need to maintain a politically progressive facade. And with the way pop culture has been moving, I would bet on the latter. Which doesn't even consider the possibility that maybe the Williams team just doesn't think what he said was that bad! And that's concerning to me! That's what should be capturing our collective attention right now, the fact that Formula 1 teams may no longer feel pressured to appeal to younger progressive audience, that the soft social power progressive movements used to have is going away.
And that's why yesterday annoyed me so much. Because nobody was fucking talking about that. But of course we didn't, because for any Formula 1 fan whose progressive politics are inherently compromised when they're being a fan of Formula 1, it's so much easier to limit our discussion of "problematic" politics to individual actors. Because then we can follow through with the above coping mechanisms! We can all go "well all these men are evil lets not put them on a pedestal" or play "my driver is more moral than your driver" and stop there. We can go through a fanwar or say "im gonna make them fulfill my sexual fantasy as revenge" and we never have to grapple with the fact that our politics are much more compromised by following Formula 1 besides just "Rich Man I Like Is Bad". If we tried to say "Hey, isn't it bad that Williams thinks it's fine to post Carlos being a misogynist on their official social media releases? Should we keep watching the socmed posts?" then suddenly it's not just Carlos Sainz that we have to grapple with, but an entire team and ecosystem. But if we stick to "x driver did something bad lets discuss", we never have to contend with our own complicity in the system that is Formula 1. We never have to grapple with the political implications of giving it our attention, our emails when someone signs up for Formula1.com, our free advertising when we make fanworks on tiktok or twitter, our money when we buy merch, our views when we watch a race on tv, or grill the grid, or a team advertisement because our driver is in it. We never have to consider the implications of buying a ticket to see a race in person, or volunteering our time to marshal one, or becoming a Formula 1 influencer. We can all just stay in our little bubbles where the only thing that matters is if our drivers say the right things at the right time and when they don't do that we all read off our scripts and then retreat into lala land where we either feel righteous for hating the right people or absolved because we're writing slightly disrespectful fan fiction about them. And no I'm not saying we need to stop engaging with Formula 1 all together, but I wish we had a little more self awareness about just how compromising our positions as fans are, and could have discussions about possible fandom etiquette that go beyond "should I reblog gif sets of x driver".
In short. I love so many of you. But we are not serious people not even a little.
