yes we want george to have that brat summer but what about ours?
I just got home from a sleepover and a day at the beach and I believe that something about the sun wanting to fucking kill me and my friend attempting to drown me in the mediterranean has made me finally figure out what the summer break is actually for.
Not to give up on George Russell's WDC. Let's be clear about that first.
The comeback is still mathematically possible. Mercedes still needs to get its shit together. There are still races left. Races can go catastrophically wrong for anyone. Kimi can have a bad weekend. George can have an incredible one. Other teams can get between them and take points. The championship can still turn around in ways that none of us can predict.
So no, our george russell world championship agenda is not dead.
What is dead, at least for the next three weeks, is my personal commitment to making it my full-time job.
Because I think somewhere along the way, we forgot that being a George Russell fan was supposed to be funny.
It was supposed to be whimsical.
It was supposed to be us looking at this weird, beautiful in a cillian murphy way, a tad awkward guy and thinking this guy.
Yeah, the one with the bug eyes? that's our guy.
He's very careful with his speech and he makes this pout sometimes before speaking and that's a grown man right there but why does he has the same stare in his eyes of when he used to be a child being asked what his dream was and him responding in a much stronger british accent that the goal was to reach formula 1. and why is he exploring sex toys in hotel rooms.
And then, somehow, we became full-time crisis analysts. We became Mercedes PR specialists and bodyguards and his side engineers with the way we verify each race's telemetry because we don't trust the team.
We became experts in energy deployment, race strategy, power units, team politics, board structures, social media narratives, Instagram captions and the exact emotional implications of every single thing Toto Wolff has ever said, of every little thing implied in between the lines.
I am not saying we were wrong to be upset.
I am not saying that everything that has happened to George this season should be laughed off. I am not saying we should suddenly pretend Mercedes has handled everything perfectly. I am not saying we should stop looking critically at what is happening.
Because we did not all wake up one morning and collectively decide to become insane about Mercedes' Instagram page because we had nothing else to do.
There is context and there are genuine things to be frustrated about. There have been real technical problems and real strategic decisions that have hurt George and real situations where the way the team has communicated about him has been frustrating.
And yes, there have been genuinely stupid arguments made against him that deserve to be dismantled.
And I will continue to dismantle them. I will gladly continue to be george russell's lawyer. that is not going anywhere.
If somebody compares a qualifying session where Kimi had a completely different set of circumstances to George's qualifying session and pretends the two situations are identical because they both technically involved a yellow flag, I will still be there.
We will still care enough to build an argument instead of repeating whatever the loudest person on Twitter said.
Because that part is good. It is good to care enough to learn.
It is good to watch the race at whatever ungodly hour it starts where you are and then spend the next few hours trying to understand what actually happened.
It is good to be interested in the technical side, to look beyond what every team explains and not just leave it at that. It is good to call people out in their bullshit. It is good to look at strategy and breakdown how it went wrong. It is good to understand the politics and be critical thinkers because we know that there is more than what meets the eye.
It is good to care enough that a bad result hurts.
There is something genuinely wonderful about seeing a driver and thinking that we don't know this person, have never spoken to him, have never handled him directly, but we see him race and we spot the talent, the hard-work, the professionalism in the way he drivers and conclude that this guy right here, yeah, this freak who takes his own pillow everywhere? that's our guy and he can win a world championship.
We don't need to personally know George Russell to support him. We don't need to shake his hand or to know what he is like in private.
We are not here because we are his friends. We are here because we are watching a Formula 1 driver and thinking that's our guy.
So we stick with him. Through the epic highs and lows of high school football, we stick with him.
But I think we have to admit that somewhere along the way, supporting George stopped being fun.
And maybe, almost definitely, that's partly on Mercedes. Maybe it's partly on the constant bad luck. Maybe it's partly on the way the narrative has developed.
But, maybe it's also partly on us.
Because it is very easy to start living through a sport.
It is very easy to put your own life on hold and let every race weekend become the thing you are waiting for. Every race becomes this has to make up for the last one and every qualifying session turns to this has to go well and every bad result becomes personal and, before you know it, you're spending hours scrolling through Formula 1 content, arguing with strangers, defending a millionaire you have never met, analysing team statements and becoming emotionally devastated by a car that you do not own.
And then you look at your own life and realise that oh
I have things to do. Problems I need to fix. Victories I need to work for. I have things I want to learn and things I want to create.
You remember that you yourself have a summer, also have a life that is happening outside the paddock.
And frankly? Perhaps, just like me, you have your own personal issues to comeback from.
So that's what this summer break is going to be. We are not surrendering or suddenly declaring that the championship is over. Nah, this is not me out of the blue becoming indifferent to whether Kimi wins the wdc or outscores George.
I am not going to pretend I don't care. Of course I care.
I am still going to be upset if George gets screwed over. I am still going to be annoyed if Mercedes makes a call that ruins his race. I am still going to notice if the team treats him unfairly. I am still going to defend him if people make stupid claims.
As long as I am invested in this sport, I will watch george russell race and think you should be winning
But I refuse to let that consume me.
I refuse to spend the next three weeks obsessively trying to force a championship outcome that I cannot control. I refuse to let my entire emotional state depend on whether Mercedes can get a car to start properly. I refuse to make George Russell's first world title my personal responsibility.
George is the one driving the car and Mercedes is the one building it and Toto is the one managing the team and the board is the one holding the meetings and -
Me? I am the one who needs to go to the beach, drink what I haven't all school year and practice my italian.
So, for the summer break:
I am going to do my own thing. I am going to paint. I am going to catch up with the world outside of Formula 1 because what the hell is happening in the rest of latin america. I am going to get back into politics and relearn why we need sanchez out of office now. I am going to work on my scholarship.
I am going to deal with my own life.
And, somewhere in the background, on another shore that the mediterranean reaches, my wdc in the making will be having his own hot girl summer, perhaps consuming considerably less wine than me, but chilling nonetheless. George Russell is presumably going to have three weeks to sit down, decompress, go on holiday, think about what the fuck has happened, and come back to the paddock with the energy of rumors about my death have been... greatly exaggerated
Because, genuinely, George has nothing to lose now.
He's a grown man. He knows what he has to do.
He has been in this sport long enough to know that a championship can be lost, won, stolen, recovered, abandoned and somehow resurrected from the dead.
He has nothing to lose by continuing to fight.
So, if he comes back after the summer break and wins three races in a row? Fuck it, we ball. If he closes the gap? Fuck it, we ball.
If Kimi wins? Fuck it. Congratulations, I guess. I will still think that his career is being screwed over by Mercedes.
If Lewis Hamilton wins his eighth? Holy plot twist. If Fernando Alonso somehow comes back from the dead and wins the World Championship? Honestly, respect.
The point is: we are not going to spend the rest of the season being miserable because the exact outcome we wanted is no longer guaranteed.
The championship is still there. The comeback is still possible. Mercedes still needs to get its shit together. The other teams can still take points. Races can still go horribly wrong.
And if he doesn't? He will still be George Russell and will continue to support my client, will continue to represent my client.
I am still going to care. But I am going to try to remember that being a fan is supposed to contain some joy.
Some silliness, some whimsy, some look at this ridiculous man, I love him.
We can take the sport seriously without making ourselves miserable. We can be critical without being consumed. We can be angry about Mercedes without making Mercedes bashing our entire personality.
And I think that's where I'm at now.
Not in a George MUST win the World Championship or everything is over but more as a George Russell is my guy. I want him to have a functioning car. I want to see him race. I want to see him win. I want to see what he can do when the machinery actually gives him a fair chance.
And if that leads to a championship comeback? Fantastic, literally heaven on Earth.
If it doesn't? We will still be here, because the championship is not the only reason we support him.
We support him because we see something in him.
Because we think he's good, because we like watching him drive, because he can pull off overtaking so many damn cars in only 22 laps, because we trust that he has it in him to lock the fuck in. Because he is funny and he is weird and he has gay allegations with his best friend and he is whimsical and he is dating a spanish woman and that is just *chef's kiss
Because, for whatever reason, this is our guy.
And we stick with our guy.
Through the epic highs and lows of high school football.
So yes. To Mercedes: fuck you, fix the car and stop making me defend things that should not need defending because can't you just give George a functioning vehicle and let him race.
We're gonna savour our own damn summer break.
As a random stranger you follow on the Internet, I'd like to invite you to do the same as me. To relish the pause we are putting on this sport, not by ignoring anything F1 related, no, but by stopping it from having such a hold on you.
We're going to let the championship exist without personally carrying it on our backs. And when we come back? Maybe George is still 59 points behind, maybe he's closer, maybe he's leading.
Whatever! What ever happened to stai calmo? We will deal with it then.
For now, we support George Russell and we cling to mathematic odds and we stay critically engaged and we inform ourselves about updates on the status quo.
But we also have fun again.
Because being a George Russell fan used to be funny. It used to be whimsical.
And I think maybe we are allowed to make it that way again.
In the nicest, most loving way possible, I'm asking for all of us to touch grass.
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