Brother I know absolutely nothing about F1 racing or whatever too-heterosexual-to-be-heterosexual car themed sport you’ve been talking about so in my head I keep thinking it’s some kind of racing anime
So like yeah what’s the tea??? Who should I like??? WTF is racing about? Any chance there’s some gay subtext is actual sports or can I just not read your posts correctly?
omg anonymous !!! but anon whoever you are THANK YOU for asking abt my current fixation :3 kissing u on the forehead about it and also jumping up and down (which as you'd imagine might be difficult to maneuver) ‼️‼️‼️‼️‼️
okok so. yesyes formula one!!! f1 racing! if you want a starting place or to know what it's actually about I'd imagine you could google it or go to a source far more reliable than myself so I will go straight to answering your questions haha
racing anime is honestly not that far off, from what I have seen of sports anime anyway (very very little from when my high school best friend was in her haikyuu phase). the thing with f1 is that. ok. ten teams, each with two drivers, so twenty drivers on the grid. so like, you take two constantly sweaty and adrenaline-hyped young men and say "you're partners now. do all this promotional content so everyone thinks you're really friendly and close. because you're partners now." and it is really easy to see the Implications yk??? i think that actually f1 is like. the most RPFed thing in ao3 or smth if I am remembering correctly. and in fairness the promo content sometimes definitely leans into it, whether in a weird gay for pay way or just in a funny way? and some of the drivers and teams also definitely lean into it on their own
the other thing about f1 is that yeah, you get into it when you're like 20ish (although some of the rookies this year are my age or YOUNGER... fuck you mean my boy kimi is EIGHTEEN YEARS OLD), but you have to start driving (or karting at that point) when you're like. five. so everyone on the grid for the most part GREW UP TOGETHER, and some of them are really tight (or at least still seem that way when cameras are around?).
I personally am a mercedes and a mclaren fan and my favorite drivers are george, alex, and oscar so those are the guys I wind up posting about (my #4 is kimi, george's teammate at mercedes - the eighteen year old - and my #5 is lando, oscar's teammate at mclaren so you see me talk about them too probably)(alex drives for williams which is my third favorite team, fwiw) and with these five the relationships are I think (bias bc they're the ones I like and pay attention to) fairly interesting? george, alex, and lando all started f1 in 2019 (they're the 2019 rookies) and george and alex especially were good friends growing up and seem to be good friends still (although they've been bickering in the media lately which seems to be in good fun but still has been an interesting watch.) lando and oscar have arguably the weirdest and gayest teammate dynamic on the grid and idk what's going on with them but it's almost too easy. low hanging fruit yk??? like,,, they had special race suits for this past race and they look SO wedding and so ofc everyone is going "ok so they're engaged ok so they're married." the way they act in front of the cameras is wild sometimes. (do I really think anything's going on there in real life? no, but if you're looking for it there's plenty to see if that makes sense) and then kimi is just kinda there, relationship-wise, but he did replace lewis hamilton at mercedes when lewis went to ferrari (which was wild bc lewis had been there FOREVER, literally mr mercedes, and also this pushed carlos sainz to williams with alex, which separated c² which was carlos and charles leclerc at ferrari, and also meant logan sergeant, who's an american and medium close to oscar iirc, didn't have a seat, but he wasn't going to have one anyway...it's all very complicated.) and that was a big deal especially since last two races notwithstanding he's been outperforming lewis this year (and outperforming how well lewis was doing his last little while at merc too!?)
so tldr yeah there's a lot of gay subtext built in actually weirdly enough??? inherent homoeroticism of men doing sports aside (shout-out to my lit theory prof last sem who made us watch a ten minute compilation of nba players smacking each other in the ass. ten minutes of that was so long. we definitely got the gist by minute two. that has very little to do with this but I think about that class period all the time) all these people literally grew up together and some of them are really close and some of them were really close (if I think too hard about lewis and nico I can't sleep at night) and then to make matters worse they have to do all this promo content all the time showing how close they are and showing how they're partners, while simultaneously, "in f1 your teammate is your biggest rival." f1 is the gay sport bc the teams do the shipping for us, and if the teams don't do it, the drivers will. idk it's weird