was looking for some quotes from lewis to brat-ify and stumbled upon this article/interview with serena williams from 2017, which happened to have some interesting tidbits. so, here's my thoughts on me just talking about the whole thing! disclaimer: i am a relatively new f1 fan and also supposed to be asleep right now, so perhaps take some of the things i say with a grain of salt, and feel free to correct me!
website font is atrocious, at least for this kind of format. gdocs is claiming that it's courier new, which is usually okay when it's just by itself, but just urgh. bad
serena calls lewis things like "the very best" multiple times, which imo is a bit of a stretch, at least for the time being (article was published in july 2017, and he definitely wasn't viewed as such at the time); i figure she probably just doesn't know a super big amount about the sport outside of lewis
honestly really surprised that some of lewis's...less than favorable exploits were mentioned (e.g. crashing his car and partying with models) and were then followed immediately by "for someone who wants to be the best at everything, you just have to start somewhere".
lewis and serena's banter and the article are screaming 2017 and not necessarily in a good way 💀😠getting many a painful flashback rn
talking about how a lot of the effort they (drivers) put into being fit for the car isn't seen at all by fans is pretty interesting
didn't realize he mentioned the whole locking himself in his hotel room thing before now?? damn :( he does seem to know that it was pretty unhealthy btp, which is good! in general rn he's sorta talking about how he's like, matured and calmed down and stuff.
inspiration section: his brother (perseverance) and serena (don't dim your light or smth)
apparently he used to be insecure about his catholicism, which i thought was a bit odd at first until i remembered that the us has only had two catholic presidents (jfk and biden) and that boris johnson "came out" as catholic a couple years ago. anyways he only rlly started embracing it AFTER getting to f1, which is sorta interesting. (how many people on the 2007 grid were catholic? lemme google) (post google search: i got lazy, but the answer is that there weren't many. massa seeeems to be roman catholic, but idk how similar that is to catholic catholicism)
serena compliments lewis on his singing and asks when he's gonna release his album (real). his response is that a) he's a hyperperfectionist who takes forever to finish songs and b) he's worried that if he thinks too much about releasing it it'll take the fun out of it (fair).
[lewis] doesn't really wanna do his own clothing or vehicle lines or whatever b/c he likes collabing w/ people a lot
he was designing a motorcycle at the time apparently??? and he's done it before???? WHERE'RE THE MOTORCYCLES LEWIS???? WHERE ARE THEYYYYYYYYYY
rapid-fire question time!
HE HASN'T EATEN MEAT IN TWO YEARS ATP??? oh my god guys new lewis lore just dropped!!! (the question was chicken or fish and he said fish, so i'm guessing he doesn't count fish as meat, soooo i'm taking this to mean that he was pescatarian (diet where you eat no meat other than fish) for two years)
overall, the lewis in this interview feels like he's in a bit of a transition phase atm in terms of character development and stuff, which makes sense considering, well. *gestures*
quotes i liked/found interesting:
"And more than anything, I fear not being as great as I know I can be."
"My dad wanted me to have a better life than he had ever had. He wanted us to succeed so badly. And I never wanted to let him down."
"I manage myself. I chose this team myself. So there’s a huge satisfaction for me."
"I feel like people are expecting me to fail, therefore, I expect myself to win. Just like you—everyone knows how good you are, and they’re just waiting for you to fall."
"I’ve realized that winning isn’t everything. It’s very much about the journey ... So while winning is definitely the ultimate goal, the lessons learned when I don’t win only strengthen me."
"I hate losing. It doesn’t matter if it’s racing or playing Ping-Pong, I hate it. 'You’re either first or you’re last.'"
