i know you've mentioned your fantasy teammate beef with leclerc more than once before but have you ever explained it in detail. we need you to paint us a beautiful picture of that world
WITH PLEASURE. bear w me here because i have given this a lot of thought but never written any of it out so we’re kind of about to go on this journey together rn 🙂↕️
(edit: not changing anything for posterity purposes but revisiting this and after months of rumination driver 47 isn’t me really despite the fact that i used first person all throughout this. she is her own woman and her beef with cl runs much deeper than mine ever truly will)
i think that the ideal circumstances for prime r mercblues/charles leclerc teammate beef is like. backmarker/midfield team + wildly unpredictable car. it CAN get you into the points on rare occasions when the phase of the moon is right or whatever but you have to be like horsegirl soulbonded with it. in this hypothetical universe ive only been on the grid for like maybe two years and charles gets ‘demoted’ down to whatever team i’m already driving for. maybe its alpine they could fit the criteria (idk how or why he gets booted from ferrari ik it doesn’t make sense but walk w me) obviously he has a chip on his shoulder from the moment he gets there but he doesn’t expect to have any issue beating his significantly less experienced teammate who is also a woman. and then i outqualify and beat him three races in a row because yes the car is a shitbox but it’s MY shitbox hashtag myshitbox <3 and i’ve spent the last two years learning how to work with it instead of against it.
it’s important that this does not mean i am doing well by any standard. i have like 7 total career points if that. BUT i do get a decent amount of media attention despite my floppage because i am the only woman on the grid + there’s also lots of buzz when charles moves teams because whatever happened w ferrari wasn’t publicized so its all just rumors but no one really knows what happened but its charles leclerc leaving ferrari so ofc everyone has questions and theories and opinions. AND everyone else expected him to outperform me as well because again. less experience + rarely scoring points + woman. lol.
these factors mean that we do NOT get along. i think he’s an arrogant snob (and am not good at concealing that from the media. bonus points if i’ve made snarky comments about him in the past + EXTRA bonus points if my team made me publicly walk them back) i like to think i would be at least okay at keeping my commentary to myself most of the time but i absolutely am not good at keeping my facial expressions neutral and that has almost definitely gotten a few (or maybe many) less than charitable articles written about me and MY attitude.
so charles and i on a team is kind of a ticking time bomb because we both have something to prove. i’m mad that i’m stuck with him on my team and that’s all anyone wants to talk to me about instead of my own races. he’s mad that he’s stuck on a team with me + started out losing to me so now that’s all anyone wants to talk to HIM about. he gets a better handle on the car after a few races and so we spend most of the season trying to kill each other for like p13. i accidentally clip him trying to overtake and it fucks both our races. two weeks later i do it again in a sprint and it sounds like he comes very close to calling me a bitch on the radio but that is only speculation. he knocks me out of q1 later that day and i am overheard calling HIM a spiteful bitch. we qualify p11 and p12 (he gets knocked out at the last second by like. pierre gasly idk). we finish p16 and p17 🫶 post race interviews are a mess. he not so subtly insinuates that i’m too emotional. i not so subtly insinuate that he’s old and washed (i actually get a lot of mileage out of calling him old despite the fact that he is less than 4 years older than me. he hates it.) the next day the team is posting damage control “best friend challenge” tiktoks where we’re like. naming each other’s favorite movies color food etc. very obviously painfully scripted. there are people who fall for it anyway 💔
