been chewing on a tag I saw @gayferrari type... "wags are the new grid girls"
so what was the point of grid girls - to associate glamour and sex to an otherwise all male sport. too much penis, even the cars are shaped like phalluses they needed that yonic energy. it was a marketing tactic, a ploy to associate F1 with their playboy, drive cars get money bitches pussy aspiration. It was being marketed to men -- hence grid girls, not even women, dressed in the driver's insignia but more scantily clad, to be beside him for the unspoken implication that the driver can have her after winning the race.
it took until 2018 to phase out grid girls and was replaced by grid kids (and many of our presently woke feminist drivers then wanted grid girls to stay), with a growing cultural backlash and feminist criticism to the sexualisation of women as props in sports in an era where f1 was rapidly losing viewership and relevancy.
after the drive to survive netflix blow-up, FOM, Liberty Media started explicitly marketing to a lesser tapped market which is the female demographic. anything that wants to be relevant in the social media age needs stans, and nothing encourages that like parasocial relationships. now we have social media admins engaging specifically in fan spaces, using their language, referencing ships, doing fanservice and moving away from the solely male centric marketing.
now wags have always existed as long as drivers have been heterosexual but it wasn't until victoria beckham peak spice girls fame sitting courtside for david beckham made being a wife and girlfriend look glamorous, the outfits she wore and the face she served. the princess story for the new age, where the prince is a handsome famous athlete and you're the prize, the one he's blowing a kiss before shooting the hoop. it's why we still have nicole from pussy cat dolls and lewis hamilton winning world title edits in the year of 2025. it's that camera panning on her, with her gorgeous brown waves and teary eyes as she did the sign of the cross and ran to lewis, kissing him over his helmet -- the fireworks of yas marina in the background.
if grid girls tapped into a purely male heterosexual fantasy, wags tapped into a heterosexual female fantasy.
we can see this with the meteoric rise in social media following of the new age wags. f1 drivers have always dated models and beautiful women, but now those women become famous and build a following off the men they're seen with. what used to be limited to paparazzi and the daily mail, now has hundreds and thousands of independent gossip pages who follow their every move, meticulously detail every outfit and brand they've worn, track their social media activity, even their personal relationships. f1 wags are now bigger than ever, they're parasocially obsessed over and hated on more than ever, every move watched and criticised or smothered in affection just for existing. I'm not here to moralize on celebrity worship culture idgaf, but all this online attention is currency and it is profitable. hence wags build their own careers off the curated, aspirational image of being a wag. of travelling all over the world to beautiful places, wearing beautiful outfits, having a (up to debate) beautiful man by your side -- and brands have certainly taken notice. hence the sponsorships, beauty and fashion brands and self care sponsors all vying to work with them from your rhode lipgloss to your alo matching set
now Liberty Media has seen the shift -- no longer reliant on their official female mascots of grid girls, it's the meticulously dressed, savvy, skinny, gorgeous wives and girlfriends who are the aspirational women on the grid. it's important to note hundreds of women have always worked at f1 races, on the grid as marshals, in hospitality, as team personnel, as engineers and strategists. but YAWN 🥱 bo-ring! everyone knows the most important people on the grid are the drivers and therefore the most important women are the ones at his side. and so Liberty Media pans the cameras on these women and their doe eyed worry/elation as their guy crosses the finish line. it's more frequent, more lingering, and voyeuristic in a way that invites you to inhabit their place in your mind -- what would that be like? after all, you viewer at home are similarly biting your nails watching your guy cross the finish line. in that moment she represents you.
it's ofc misogynistic to imply the aspiration of wags is just for women — the idea of the Hero taking his helmet off and kissing the swooning damsel is literally in bond movies and appeals to the conqueror/winner male fantasy.
but from a purely marketing standpoint, FOM benefits from putting these women in official unofficial spaces as part of the drivers' (and thus F1's new more sanitized, "inclusive" brand image). When the wags are invited to F1 Academy events to promote them, when they're invited to the official F1 movie that's just for the drivers' viewing as the plus one, when they're shown on DTS beside the drivers in their private lives, or a whole segment that's about Ginger Spice riding horses with her sex pest team principal husband, when they're in hospitality and the camera cuts to them every so often signalling to the you, the audience, are supposed to care about this story they're selling you. it's no longer the scantily clad 'girls' by the drivers' side to be ogled, it's the official dowager titled Wives and Girlfriends selling you the aspirational, western, heterosexual, wealthy, conventionally attractive family unit.
not here to cast any moral judgments on wag culture -- I enjoy looking at beautiful women who live such fundamentally different lives too, but rather looking critically at why the larger media complex behind f1 wants to sell you their personal relationships in the era where your attention is currency~
there’s something really interesting about the way Lando and Oscar were introduced to F1, not just as drivers, but as narratives, and how that framing (by McLaren, other figures in the sport and the media) never really left them.
Lando came in as McLaren’s home-grown nineteen-year-old golden boy and because the team was basically betting its reputation on him, every mistake he made was softened. even when he messed up, it didn’t feel like a failure, rather it felt like it was part of the journey, a learning curve. their support for him was emphasized many times and it was used as a cushion.
his "naivety" was framed as "healthy and innocent," and because he was introduced as a "long-term project" that the team was already comfortable with, he was never really an outsider joining the team; he belonged from the start. he was offered team support and was allowed time to develop and hone his skills. even the way his personality was described protected him from future criticism: he was naïve, innocent, funny and human.
McLaren was rebuilding the team at the time Norris joined, which definitely influenced this (he became almost synonymous with the team's recovery), but the point still stands: everything was framed in a way that protected both him and the team’s decision to back him. it served the team’s interest to frame him that way, and because the team did it, the media and fans followed. after a while, defending Lando became almost instinctive, especially for his fans.
this wouldn’t be a problem in itself, but this cushioning followed him throughout his entire career, even in title fights. his mistakes were framed as him still figuring things out because he’s human and it’s part of the journey, instead of receiving the harsh criticism other drivers did. (i'm not saying no one criticized him, but the majority of media framing was very lenient with him, especially after he won the title).
Oscar, on the other hand, entered the sport in almost the exact opposite way. the whole Alpine contract saga immediately put his loyalty and character under scrutiny before he even turned the wheel of the car. instead of being recognized for his outstanding junior career, he was framed as a risk, the outsider and the one who had something to prove.
Oscar wasn’t really allowed to be inexperienced. even in his rookie year, the expectation wasn’t development; he had to justify why he was there. he had to prove why McLaren chose him, prove he belonged, and prove the move wasn't a mistake; "but the boy better be quick". he was a problem to be solved, as opposed to Lando, who was a project to nurture.
this framing meant there was no cushion to land on for Oscar. and because he’s naturally more reserved and controlled, that got interpreted as something else entirely: cold, calculated, almost threatening and machinelike. whereas in contrast Lando was the nice guy, genuine, authentic and vulnerable. this built an odd, contrasting perception around them. vulnerability is often weaponized as a defence mechanism against criticism, because it makes the critic seem like a bully. Oscar's calm personality is often misinterpreted as him being emotionless which "permits" the media to be harsher because they assume the athlete doesn't care or isn't affected.
even after Oscar proved himself, this narrative never really left him. his position in the team was always questioned and speculated on; he was always seen as just Lando’s teammate and a sort of extension rather than a person with his own goals and dreams. McLaren’s "team first" mentality and their questionable racing decisions last year just reinforced this.
because Lando was established first, (and established softly) it meant that when Oscar came in and performed as quickly as he did, it disrupted something people had already accepted as the natural order of things. when Oscar's form dipped later, there was almost a sense of correction, like things were falling back into their "proper" order and opposed to Lando, he wasn't allowed to have excuses for that. him leading the championship for so long was often framed as something temporary, a fluke or a phase.
meanwhile, Lando winning felt to many like a full-circle moment, how it should've happened from the beginning. Oscar was perceived as just an obstacle in his way. you could really see this in 2024/2025. when Lando was challenging his more experienced teammates before, it was seen as a good thing, but when Oscar did it, it was seen as something that shouldn’t happen, something that also challenged the unspoken hierarchy at McLaren.
that’s where the team dynamics start to mirror the media ones. with Lando, the messaging has always been: "he is ours," whereas with Oscar, it often felt like: "we gave him a chance." Lando is framed as something McLaren built; Oscar is framed as someone who should be grateful to be there. that difference matters, because one creates a sense of belonging and the other creates a sense of debt.
so even now, despite Oscar’s performances, his consistency, and his results, there’s still this underlying sense that he’s slightly external, that he still needs to prove himself, that he owes something to McLaren. there’s a perception that he has to earn his place in a way Lando never really had to (or at least not to the same extent). that shapes everything: how fans interpret on-track battles, team decisions, who gets defended versus who gets questioned, and who is seen as the "rightful" leader versus the "challenger."
people might say all of this is because they entered the sport under different circumstances, and i get that. but this is about how these framings still follow them after years and help or disadvantage them in different ways, despite their careers changing and evolving. they're still seen as the archetype they were introduced as.
There is Something Seriously Wrong with this Logo..... Chapter Two
So. Lots of you have seen this post by my dear partner ( @lailau7904 ) in which the Williams F1 design team get absolutely torn to bits. In the case you haven't read it yet I highly recommend you do because a) it's really fucking funny and b) it makes what I'm about to tell you even funnier. Though you don't have to, this post touches on entirely different things still regarding this one goddamn logo.
The original post starts like this:
Innocent enough, we made an assumption in good faith that the logo displayed on the Wikipedia page would be the same one as the official version used by Williams. Buckle the fuck up because I'm about to tell you why that was the worst mistake we could have made.
Please. Please I beg of you keep reading this took YEARS off our lifespans. Like the original post was fun and all but it was merely the top of the iceberg. If this were an hbomberguy video this would be the part where he reveals that the background was a greenscreen the whole time. More below the cut!!! :333
The Truth
Already after only a few hours after hitting "post" on the dissection, people started pointing out to us that we'd missed an absolutely crucial detail on the Wikimedia page we got the logo from, pay careful attention:
See THIS?
Yeah this means that that image is not, and never was, the official logo of Williams. All along it had been the work of a Wikipedia user by the name of Juanchocarbonero. Here you can even see the (admittedly painful) history of the file as provided by Wikimedia, this image was uploaded all the way back in 2016, it even underwent an update when the team changed their colour scheme to a lighter blue without getting fucking fixed.
But to me the absolutely most painful part about this page is the "File Usage" section. Which gives you a quick preview of just how deep the goddamn disease that is this piece of graphic design sin really spreads.
And just to clarify: the official version of the logo used by Williams on merch etc is perfectly fine. It's a nice piece of graphic design. I still quite like it. But the story doesn't end there. Not even close.
Consequences
When you look up "williams logo" on Google the image provided by Wikimedia the very first result that pops up, if you're looking for a high-quality .png of this logo that, logically, is what you'll end up using. And I mean, why wouldn't you? What reason do you have not to use it? As long as you don't look to close (oops) it's a perfectly fine, high-definition, clean and transparent image of the logo! No shit people are going to use it!
But this raises a question: Why IS it the most widespread version of the logo? That's fucking weird isn't it? Surely if the actual logo used on ex.: the official Williams F1 website (which, again, is perfectly fucking fine) was available they would've just used that, right?
Now. Small problem. If you want you can go ahead and open whatever search engine you use, if you do that I'm gonna need you to type in "Williams logo" into the search bar, and just try finding a picture that is
of the actual official logo (you can tell the bootleg from the real thing by checking if the middle segment of the W has spiky ends or flat ones. We're looking for flat ones here)
high quality (no pixels or blurring visible to the naked eye)
a transparent png (none of that chequered background bullshit)
NOT a logo with any words (such as: Williams or Racing) visible in it. those don't count.
If you didn't feel like doing any of that, I'll just tell you the answer: you fucking can't. Nothing like that EXISTS. The closest I could get are these two, both of which are mid to ass quality, so they don't count either.
No sensible individual is going to scroll google search results for 5 minutes straight just so they can use a 200x200 image, especially when they think a perfect alternative is right there.
I even found several recoloured versions of the diseased logo, including one as a sticker on Redbubble! Fuck me that's a horrible sight!
The Search
Because I wrote the previous paragrahps after we'd figured out exactly what had happened, you might be under the impression that by this point in trying to answer the question "Why the fuck is that image on Wikipedia instead of, idk, the real fucking thing?" we'd at least established the existence of said "real Williams F1 logo". You'd be wrong, because for somewhere around 24 hours after we'd made the initial, horrifying discovery of just how fucked the Wikipedia version is, we genuinely could not tell if that was the official logo or not.
The ones displayed on their website weren't at all downloadable or even copyable, a non-ass quality of the damn thing just didn't seem to exist anywhere, so we didn't dare draw any conclusions. And we were still foolishly operating on the assumption that Wikipedia wouldn't just lie to us. (this is why your teachers hate it when you use it a source btw. like this is the ONE time it's actually been reasonable)
So, in the hopes of finding the offical Williams Racing logo, the non-scuffed one because clearly it exists, somewhere, we consulted an expert on Intellectual Property: my mother!
What this "consultation" actually roughly looked like was: we went on a walk and I started rambling about the Situation from Last Night before she cut me off and pulled up the website of the World Intellectual Property Organisation, aka the place they store all the Copyright information of like, everything.
BEHOLD:
(pictured; THE ACTUAL FUCKING LOGO I CANNOT BELIEVE IT'S EXISTED THIS WHOLE TIME)
Link to the actual real official legal document because goddamn this rabbithole just kept getting deeper so I like, have that now.
For refence, here is the official copyrighted version and the Wikimedia file overlayed on top of each other. As you can tell, it's disgusting. It's a poor, eyeballed imitation at best.
The copyrighted logo is horrifically low quality because, guess what, that image also isn't downloadable or copyable from the page. I really really cannot blame Juanchocarbonero for uploading his own version to Wikimedia because there legitimately does not exist a version of this logo that is freely available to the public. Like that goddamn abomiation is all we have. It's the effort that counts I guess.
My mother suggested that a possible reason for this could be avoiding the production of knockoff merch, or at least making it recognisable in case it is sold. Think about it, when your logo Doesn't Exist online, no one can use it without a license! It's kind of genius! I'm also about 99% sure they didn't orchestrate it so, it was good luck I guess?
interlude: How the FUCK does Copyright even work
I did immediately think to myself "we should REALLY fix the wikipedia version, like, stat" because I cannot in good conscience have this information available to me and not do anything with it, for the good of the people. However, this poses an issue: was the logo really not scuffed on purpose? Could it be that that version uploaded to Wikipedia isn't a 1:1 of the official logo because of copyrighting issues? To find out I had to look deeper, by comparing the official, website-available logos of various other F1 teams I came to conclusion that: [........................]
Yeah so I wrote that paragraph before actually checking for refences, but even after probably an hour of trying very hard to make sense of the copyright documents and copyright law in general we could not make sense of any of it. According to my mother (again, the closest we have to an expert, like she actually works with copyright in the context of companies but she's not specifically an IP expert. just to clarify) it's actually a lot worse for Wikipedia to have a falsified version of the Williams logo, than it would be to use the copyrighted version. This is because they're spreading misinformation by pretending that's the actual logo. And yet.
According to the Copyright Tag (the one on the top) in the Licensing section of the Wikimedia page for the thing pretending to be the Williams F1 logo, it's fine to use it because just a bunch of shapes. The thing is however, that it says that for pretty much every F1 team's logo, most of which are sourced straight from the official website. So this doesn't really mean anything tbh. According to our local expert (still my mother) it's fucking confusing. So I've decided to leave that at that.
update October 20th: as far as the Wikimedia pages on copyrighting tell me, uploading the official logo could, potentially, get me into serious legal trouble with Williams because of copyright laws. Which is still confusing because as said, every other team's logo is sitting uncontested on their respective Wikipedia pages. So basically we still don't know.
Okay. Backtrack. We forgot to ask something very important:
HOW?
HOW does one fuck up a perfectly fine logo THAT BAD.
WHY does one make their own scuffed tracejob and HOW does it end up like THAT. Clearly something must have gone horrifically wrong for it to end up like that.
I have a theory as to what might have happened:
It was either drawn or painted by hand, for a physical paintjob it's actually sort of impressively precise, but still objectively fucked. For a while I outright refused to believe that it could have been done in a digital program with the types of mistakes that were made, but you'll see this theory (partially) disproven later on so I retract it for now.
Operating on the assumption that it wasn't done digitally, a likely theory could be one involving a picture of scan of the paintjob. If the picture was taken at an angle or the logo itself was on a curved surface that COULD potentially explain the weird sort of slide everything has to it.
From then the picture might have been inserted into a digital art program, and the area of the logo might have been automatically selected using the magic wand tool, which could explain the weird growth at the top and that odd rounded off corner.
We also drew the conclusion that the file itself had been "tampered with" (aka cropped manually) by a human, because no computer would generate a resolution of 3356x2543 (you can that this is the original resolution on the Wikimedia page)
WAIT HOLD ON IS THAT IT?
The question of how the Fuck this guy managed to mess up the logo, and even more specifically why some edges were fine and some weren't (ant colony looking thing on the top left) bothered us so much that I at one point started just looking up "WIlliams logo" with the results filtered down to pre-2017 in an attempt to find when exactly the messed up logo was created. As if that would be any help.
Now what I definitely didn't expect to find was THIS
ENHANCE
Yes, you're seeing it right, THAT is the original 'Williams logo with the fucked up arm angles and lenghts'. Which PROVES that, contrary to our previous belief, Juancocarbonero was NOT the origin of the mistakes. Instead it was [checks notes] a DeviantArt user by the name of Nerdkid56?
The original DeviantArt post, which as of 9:47pm CET on the 13th of October 2024 I am about 90% sure is the actual first appearanace of the scuffed logo, is from May of 2015, which lines up well with the original upload date of the fucked up logo onto Wikipedia (November 2016). At the time that DeviantArt post was almost the only source for the logo.
And in the case you needed any convincing that those two logos are the same, here they are overlayed. You may notice that it's one shape (excluding the rounded corner which isn't visible at this resolution.)
This discovery is essential to understanding why the current scuffed version is the way it is. You might remember our confusion about the way some edges are fine while some are attempting to leave the image, the whole thing is a weird Frankensteinian amalgamation of vectors and magic wand mistakes. With this knowledge we can now assume that the mistakes happened in 2 layers:
Nerdkid56: likely just eyeballed the proportions. I'd guess he drew one arm before the other and flipped it around without really checking the angles. Also didn't give a shit about whether the arms lined up with the base or not. Legitimately bad design made in a digital program.
Juancocarbonero: why he used the scuffed W logo instead of the normal ones that were also perfectly accessible by 1 goddamn Google search is a mistery. HOW he even got access to it is another question I do not think we'll have answers to. And I've already explained some of the things we think may be responsible for the uneveness and bumps. Point is he fucked it up even more.
My theory for why Juanchocarbonero used the scuffed version instead of any other available picture goes like this: it was the only png he could find. Practically every other search result for "Williams Logo" that predates 2017 is a jpeg or absolute ass quality (sometimes both for good measure) so, despite it's flaws, Nedkid56's trace of it could have been the best option available at the time (the quality is actually very very good since it's a vector image, and I guess our friend Juanchocarbonero doesn't have an eye for design considering he didn't notice uhm, everything that is wrong with that model.)
Conclusion
The only way to right these wrongs is to go back, to the very beggining of this saga. Wikipedia. Williams I'm so sorry for what you've had to endure. I know what I have to do now. When I eventually make a proper vector image of the official logo and upload it to Wikimedia it'll all be over. And I WILL do it (but not rn this has already robbed me of like 3 whole days of my life. soon)
All of this is, admittedly inconsequental, but also absolutely fucking hilarious. Like imagine. you. one single guy, you make ONE mistake in a silly little "tracing this logo" project because you couldn't be arsed to check the angles of a silly little W. And some other guy, who you likely don't even know, over a whole ass year later, takes your flawed piece of design, makes it even worse somehow and uploads it to a site from which your little tiny innocent mistake becomes the most widespread version of a logo used by an actual real company worth over 700 Million US Dollars. HOW. HOW DID THAT HAPPEN. WHY HAS NO ONE FIXED THIS??? IT'S BEEN 9 YEARS
Just to give you a final look on just how widespread this plague is, here are some examples of media the fucked up version of the logo is featured in:
this Mr V's Garage video (the original reason we started this conversation in the first place)
the thumbnails of these two videos by Tommo, this one by FP1Will, and this one by RicksF1Addiction
such an amount of random places. likely fanmerch and fanart, and like, pretty much any place someone wanted to use the logo. it's everywhere. if you've ever had the Williams logo displayed in anything you've made I can guarantee you 99.9% chance you used the fucked version
and late thank you to everyone ( @bumblewyn @mid-nighttiger @vro0m @lemonsgovroom @mikraas @leclerced fucking hell I kept needing to add people to this list because compiling all of this took absurdly long) who pointed out our misconception in the reblogs of the original post and contributed to us actually looking into this further. and sorry to everyone for accidentally spreading misinformation lmao (it's too funny not to have been worth it tho) (ALSO it's not really our fault is it)
and to keep the tradition of ending on a live discord reaction:
WARNING: LONG POST! THIS IS OVER 5K WORDS OF F1 DRIVER AND F1 META ANALYSIS ABOUT CHAMPIONSHIP MENTALITY
i really wanted to say something on the term 'championship mentality' or 'championship mindset' and how its influence in f1 is kind of a dog whistle to me. the terms 'mental toughness', 'ruthlessness', 'mental maturity', 'psychological resistance', ‘grit’ etc may also fall into this category and can be used almost interchangeably.
i have also read multiple sports trades on this topic in addition to reading f1 fandom mentality about this particular topic and some academic journals.
trust, if i never hear this word again starting today then it will not be soon enough.
In the culture of f1, there is the fabled and almost legendary ‘championship mentality’. As a newcomer to the sport this year, i had only heard the term ‘winning mindset’ prior to this and assumed nothing of it to be honest. Then i kept hearing it over and over and over again throughout the latter half of the season and realized that this was not going away anytime soon. This was something that clearly no one in the media was going to let go of and clearly did not want to let go of. This particular term and the dichotomy that springs up around it were very apparent to me in the three-way title battle between Lando Norris, Max Verstappen, and Oscar Piastri this year.
This term has many different uses and means many different things to many different people thus making it a bit difficult to pin down as a concept. To make my job much easier i decided to analyze the term itself using our three main title contenders from 2025 and other historical examples to illustrate what the word can mean to people, how it can be twisted to fit narratives, and what the word should represent and why it does not represent that.
Do Whatever It Takes
Championship mentality has an unsaid meaning that leaves it open to individual interpretation by drivers, pundits, and fans alike. When we look at the term championship mentality there is most likely a certain definition that comes to the reader’s mind. While I was doing my research, this term was never actually defined by any one person but was more like a feeling that everyone could identify when given the correct prompts.
The term has a more “i know it when i see it” basis rather than any formal declaration. The definition or its inverse come up normally in heated arguments about a driver doing what he needs to win or what a driver is not willing to do in order to win. This makes the definition hard to specifically pin down as it has become more of an understated cultural marker within the sport itself. The few times you have someone define “championship mentality” only happen when justifying their actions to the audience. When Max Verstappen got a win in the 2024 Brazilian Grand Prix after going ten races without winning he said this,
“On the track, I will put it all on the line. I am not going to back out. I want to win. That needs to be the end result.
“Some people criticise me for that, but most of them don’t have a championship-winning mentality so they don’t understand. And they will never understand that kind of approach.”
The mentality is that every decision and every single thought in the sport must revolve around winning. The only path forward is supremacy and everything in the way should be cut down to size to make way for the driver. Verstappen’s comments also came as a response to the criticisms he received from British pundits after getting multiple penalties while racing against Lando Norris. Rather than saying that in his quest to win he happened to get these penalties and that was not his intention, he doubles down that he can and will do anything within his purview to achieve success. This is the championship mentality – winning at any and all costs, critics be damned.
If we even decide to go back a little further in Formula 1 history we can see this common thread in how pundits talk about the character of someone like Michael Schumacher. An article from Motorsport Magazine writes this about Schumacher,
“Unlike the ostensibly similar incidents of Ayrton Senna before him, these Schumacher fouls didn’t carry obvious premeditated cynical intent. They were more like competitive panic. As if in the millisecond of realisation of his potential failure to achieve the task, he couldn’t allow it to happen and all reason was short-circuited.
But with Michael there was an insecurity that he might not be the fastest and therefore he had to do absolutely everything in his power to ensure anyone who might be faster couldn’t beat him.”
Like the Verstappen example, Schumacher is described as needing to work every single available option at his disposal to clinch a win and not mind the cost. While Schumacher is highly regarded as one of the greatest drivers of all time, his championship mentality is what many deem to be the decisive factor in getting him many of his wins and is a piece of his lasting legacy in the sport. And this mentality, though not necessarily celebrated, is accepted and seen as a necessary part of being a winning driver within the wider culture.
Fans of the sport, not just the drivers and those who work in the sport, as we all know love to contribute to this image. In a substack article i found on “The Championship Mentality” , the author writes that what makes a champion is the ‘relentless hunger that makes you awful to be around and keeps you unpopular with fans’. This author’s analysis also takes into account the narratives that grow around drivers and their personas. Specifically Max Verstappen who seems to be in a league of his own when it comes to driver attitudes towards their craft in modern day Formula 1, and this is what puts him a cut above the rest. This analysis of image and mentality seems to hold up pretty well to me until the ‘unpopular with fans’ part comes up because as we can all see from various social media platforms, pundits, and professionals, Verstappen has plenty of fans.
I am in no way saying that Verstappen does not have his detractors, but i would argue that his image and mentality jell very well with the overall image of F1 and the masculine ideals that the sport wants to portray. Even though his aggression has achieved him his fair share of detractors, because his attitude and mentality on track match so well with the dominant culture (machismo), he gets to maintain his position as the “correct” type of champion across the sport.
Oscar Piastri’s persona also feeds into the dominant culture of machismo though in a slightly different way. Throughout the entire season that I was watching, there was no corner I could turn to where someone was not speaking to how ‘calm’ Oscar was or how ‘unflappable’ he was or how ‘mature’ he was. While Piastri is not generally considered to be as aggressive or as much of a backtalker as Verstappen, both on track and off it, his form of machismo coincides more with a stoicism that still goes along with the dominant culture but feels a little more progressive in image. I write ‘progressive’ only because it is a more understated yet still very present type of a male persona compared to the in-your-face type that we see with Verstappen. Make no mistake, it can still be used as a form of machismo when stripped down to its bare parts.
While fans and those in the industry alike seem to agree on what makes a champion’s mentality, they also seem to agree on what does not. Does anyone remember that Lando Norris Vogue shoot? The photoshoot where we get this quote
Today I notice this brutal honesty – he’s almost subversively rational in his attitude to his sport. “I want to enjoy my life and have fun and share it with others,” he stops the chat to tell me at one moment. “For me, that’s the priority. Priority number two is to try and win the championship.” When was the last time you heard an elite athlete say anything like that?
Because I do.
Lando’s outlook on the championship was even a bit of a shock to the person who was supposed to be giving a positive interview about his mentality surrounding the championship.
“When was the last time you heard an elite athlete say anything like that?”
The writer here is clearly surprised that this is his outlook on his career and output halfway through the season. She, whether it is implicit or explicit, knows that the dominant culture/hegemon demands that being a good driver is putting the championship above all else. Above friends, family, and even a driver’s own health and wellbeing. Norris’ candor on not wanting to sacrifice the greater things in the one life we all share seemed to have, as we all know by now, made fans of the sport think he was not up to the challenge and was weak-willed or weak-minded.
This has been the dominant narrative about Norris before this interview ever even dropped.
Here is a quote from Helmut Marko about Max Verstappen being able to take the 2024 WDC title
“He’s the best, he’s the fastest and, above all, he has the mental strength to theoretically fight for the world championship more than Charles Leclerc and Lando Norris.”
“We know Norris has some mental weaknesses,” he continued. “I’ve read about some of the rituals he needs to do to perform well on race day.”
This came after Norris spoke extensively on the anxiety he has surrounding qualifying and race day. Norris said that he had trouble eating and drinking on Sundays due to the pressure of performing, and here we have a person who is (lol ‘was’ now) in charge of young racers saying that someone who gets nervous before a performance has a mental weakness. The fact that he felt comfortable enough to make those statements and received not too much pushback on those statements should tell you exactly what is expected and accepted within this sport’s culture.
Norris is clearly seen as the odd man out here in terms of mentality by insiders, pundits, and fans alike because he admits to his ‘weaknesses’ or has already been perceived as weak in comparison to his competitors (i.e. Verstappen, Piastri) in the sport. As we can see, once a narrative has been started surrounding a driver, it does not take much for it to snowball out of control. This is a large issue within the sport. Once a driver becomes known for something, it becomes very hard for them to shake that perception.
Give It All to Him
Championship mentality’s unsaid meaning leaving it in an ‘if you know, you know’ limbo which allows it to feed into its more negative definitions and personal narratives in the f1 space because the sport is set up to favor machismo. All three of the championship contenders for the year 2025 represent one of the two sides of the championship mentality that many who are involved in this sport already subscribe to. This then feeds into narratives about competition within the sport that have no real basis in what actually goes into creating success in Formula 1. Following the 2025 season finale, this article from planet f1 really stood out to me and here’s a quote from it,
His mentality is that of the old-school generation of athletes, to whom admitting weakness – any form of weakness – is to giftwrap an advantage and present it to an opponent.
The writer here was talking about Max recounting the mistakes he made along the 2025 season. One of the big mistakes being his Canada 2025 head loss against George Russell. Notice how the author invokes pathos to recall a time from the past where drivers like Verstappen were the norm (which they kind of still are) and how admitting to weakness is tantamount to defeat.
The narrative here is that Max Verstappen does not admit to weakness simply because he is Max Verstappen, and his image will not allow it. No matter how much his own emotions or mistakes cost him, they do not show that he has a poor championship mentality or no championship mentality at all, but that he is a champion who needs to work on himself and come back better next time. This is because Max’s current image leaves no real room for accusations of mental weakness for being angry or aggressive. Aggression is to be expected. He still has the championship mentality, but he needs to work on himself, and the rest will follow.
This type of narrative spin also happened with Oscar Piastri this year. After leading the championship for 15 (? lol i cannot remember and don’t care enough to confirm) weeks he begins to hemorrhage points majorly after Monza and no one can seem to figure out why. In any other instance, in any other sport (and let me say this is my own personal opinion) i think most people would have said he was choking or had simply gotten the yips. Especially after Azerbaijan and COTA. This narrative that he was being sabotaged by McLaren or that he simply no longer had the support of the team can only come about when a captive audience has to make sense of why their stoic, masculine idol no longer seems so unflappable. The narrative has to correct itself to continue to make sense.
Examples of this disbelief came in the form of his own countrymen crying foul play in their own halls of government. His own manager was setting up trial balloons for him potentially leaving the team due to this perceived mistreatment. Many of his fans want to see him walk away from his team. The audience so tied to the hegemon and its narrative does not want to see their driver as a man who can make mistakes over the course of season but as someone who was wronged in order to make sense of his reversal of fortune and keep him in line with their view of championship mentality.
And then we have Lando Norris whose narrative already leaves him as the number one target for accusations of mental weakness, being too open about his feelings, and not being serious about the championship. When Norris was also screwing the pooch multiple times during the early part of the season, the only thing you could hear from pundits, professionals, and fans was not ‘he has made some mistakes’ or ‘he was being sabotaged’, but ‘he is mentally weak’.
Here’s a smorgasbord of quotes talking about Norris from earlier in the 2025 season.
“I do think Piastri is mentally stronger, even if Norris is faster on one lap,” Red Bull advisor Dr Helmut Marko said recently.
When told a few days later that his comments were controversial, the Austrian added: “But we know that – it’s nothing new.”
Former F1 driver Christijan Albers says Norris stands out as a driver who is far too open about his struggles with the media. “You still have to stand there and give a confident interview,” he told Viaplay.
“You can see from his attitude that he is not as mentally strong as the others. That’s really striking to me.”
Another ex-F1 racer, Giedo van der Garde, agrees: “You can always say ‘Listen, I made a mistake and wasn’t completely on top of things today’. But you can tell that there is no confidence left in himself sometimes.”
I would also say (in my own opinion once again) that in literally any other sport people would have just said that he was choking or had gotten the yips and would have moved on with their lives, but this is Formula 1. We have to make an example out of someone, don’t we? We have to let everyone know what is behavior that will get you punished and what is behavior that will get you rewarded.
When it comes to championship mentality, the narrative and how closely a driver follows the hegemon dictates how the audience will perceive their faults or lapses in character.
With Versteppen, they are mistakes. With Piastri, it is sabotage. With Norris, he has a mental weakness. And somehow, this all makes sense to a majority of people.
Meet Him At the Finish Line
While ‘championship mentality’ does feed into machismo, it can also be used to represent a more progressive outlook on competition within the sport. We are about to slide into more personal opinion analysis once again here. Because Formula 1 is a very machismo driven sport where the competitors use one of the greatest symbols of not just power and dominance but of male power and male dominance, the car, the sport generally will lean towards who has the most power – men. And these men will lean towards what gives them power and keeps them in power – money, ownership of capital, and dictation over who can join the club and how they can join the club (dictation over the status quo). This leaves very few avenues for a more progressive outlook on ‘championship mentality’ but some kind of shine through. Like this one.
“But most results coming from work done, rather than mentality or things. But mentality’s improved, the approach has improved, preparation has improved.
“All of that has improved because of doing more work and working harder, and spending more time trying to understand things, rather than, ‘I’ve got nothing to lose now, I’ll just go for it.’ There’s maybe been two, three, four decisions along the way since then where I’m like, ‘Just risk a bit more.’
“I think much less than you think, and more of it down to just work.”
This quote from Lando himself came right after Mexico 2025 going into Brazil 2025. Instead of saying that he would do literally everything it takes to win and only that, he cites hard work and trying to understand where he was going wrong for the better half of the season to make improvements and get himself the win.
Here we have no appeals to Norris’ aggression or stoicism nabbing him the win but instead getting the win by…studying? It’s almost inconceivable. Now this is not to say that no other drivers on the grid study their flaws and try to improve on them through hard work but this sort of statement is a marked difference compared to his competitors who do this but do not make it a large part of how they secure a win or secure their narrative.
Every single driver I have written about today works hard every single day to deliver the best result for their team and whoever else they have cheering them on throughout the season. The only difference is that the audience seems to place more weight on the image tied up in the work and not the work itself.
Pundits as well have chimed in with this kind of narrative. Here’s a quote from James Hinchcliffe about Lando.
“He was mad that he didn’t beat Max by more than 10 seconds, because if you look actually at the data in the Grand Prix, had Max not started from the pit lane, McLaren might not have won that race,” he noted.
Talking about the British driver’s championship mindset, Hinchcliffe said, “So even though he wins the race by 10 seconds, and I was giving him a little bit of flak for it on the post-race show, I actually really respect that approach because even in the minutes after the Grand Prix, he was already like, we weren’t fast enough. How do we do better next week?”
Now once again, I am not saying that Lando Norris owns a monopoly on the ‘i am just going to work harder to improve next week and i have said nothing derogatory about my competitors’ industrial complex. He does not, and he still remains a highly flawed person, but OMG y’all. Is it not refreshing to hear a driver be written or spoken about like he’s a human being and not a cologne or the cars they drive for a living?
Once again, this is not to say that Verstappen and Piastri cannot be portrayed as people by fans, pundits, and insiders alike, but this sort of ‘oh they’re only human talk’ only really starts to ratchet up when they have made a mistake or at the very end of the season where narratives can finally take a backseat to logic and reasoning, and it never gets too loud. If it was too loud, it would disrupt the next cycle.
With Norris’ win, we have people like his former teammate Carlos Sainz saying,
"But with his particular way of going about life and things, as much as he's got criticized a lot during the last few years for being how he is, he's world champion and everyone can keep dreaming about being F1 world champion while he goes about his own way and does things his own way.
We have pundits now saying
Norris not only proved himself wrong, but also a large number of onlookers. His speed was never in doubt, but there were questions over whether he had the mentality to harness it to full effect. By Sunday evening in Abu Dhabi, those questions had been answered.
We also have fans who now (sometimes begrudgingly) give Norris recognition for his achievement.
Who said that you have to be obsessed with this sport to be successful? Why does racing have to be so enmeshed with a driver that their identity without it is naught? Piastri and Norris have both answered to similar things this year.
As Piastri put it,
“I don’t think there’s one style or one perfect mould of what a Formula 1 World Champion looks like. I think they’ve all looked slightly different."
“You could argue that some of them look similar in a lot of ways, but again, I think the most important thing is to try and do it the way you want to do it, and that will give you the most.”
This quote blew me away because it basically dovetails into this Norris quote from after Abu Dhabi 2025.
"I feel like I have just managed to win it the way I wanted to win it, which was not by being someone I'm not," he said. "Not trying to be as aggressive as Max or as forceful as other champions might have been in the past, whatever it may be. I'm happy. I just won it my way.”
This should be the end of the story. We have finally come full circle and can admit that being a ruthless killer in sport gets an athlete nowhere.
While this sort of internal cultural shift about ‘championship mentality’ sounds great and looks like progress, I sincerely doubt that will happen.
Progress, I mean.
‘Championship mentality’ should not mean masculinity which should not mean machismo, yet here we all are a few weeks later, and awards have been given out, drivers have solidified their roles for the next season, and new regulations have finally taken place.
And there are still people who think that Lando Norris is unworthy of that trophy.
Not because he made them mad (which i find legitimate). Not because he got in the way of a favorite driver (which is also legitimate). And not even because a person may think he is a bad driver (which i still find legitimate).
But because he didn’t do it the right way.
Now what the hell does that even mean?
I want to take it back to this planet f1 article again where the author says that max only has himself to blame for losing this year.
Here we do not get claims of ‘lacking in championship mentality’ when someone with blatant aggro uses his car to harm someone for seemingly no reason other than he was upset about something else. We are told his weakness lies in the mistakes he makes, and that he will learn from them as he always does. But would this article have even been written and Spain 2025 even be remembered had he won 2025?
I am normally not a betting woman, but I would bet the farm that it most certainly would not. I am confident it would just be another casualty on the way to victory. This would have been a footnote in the comeback fervor that would have surrounded Verstappen.
And how, you may ask, do i know this?
When I was trying to find examples of ‘championship mentality’ from the past, I stumbled upon that Michael Schumacher article i referenced earlier, and this one quote struck me in particular. This is Nico Rosberg talking about being teammates with Michael Schumacher.
"it comes naturally to him, to try and psychologically get into the head of his competition. And it would be from the morning to the evening. He’d love to walk around in the engineering room topless just to show his six-pack. Just another statement of strength. It just went on and on. Infinite examples like that.
“When Michael came along he was like God in the team. We had some strategy meetings and even my strategy was being discussed with Michael and not with me! Even though I was sitting there! I’m sure every day after getting up, he would think, ‘How do I make my team-mate small?’
Schumacher is a universally revered driver and universally revered winner. His driver narrative cannot be separated from his championship mentality because it was him. Constant shows of strength, small psychological digs, and maybe even points of sabotage litter this man’s career, yet, for some reason, these stories are seen as ‘just Michael being Michael’ and excused. In the same article, two people from his time at Benneton mention very questionable behaviors that Schumacher would present that the team did not like but they would “never criticise him” and “stood by and supported [Schumacher] regardless”.
Media in the modern day could make the difference for why nobody wants to really criticise him. After all, we have already made our collective verdict on Schumacher as a legend of the sport, so no more needs to be said. Respect for his current situation could also be the culprit since no one wants to speak ill of someone in his current condition.
Or maybe…nobody actually cares.
That article ends with this quote about Schumacher.
"So let’s appreciate Michael Schumacher for the giant of a racing driver he was and recall him as the very warm human being behind the mask. The controversies shouldn’t define him. He was a true great."
Schumacher is an ‘exceptional individual’ who does not need to be defined by his faults when we look back on his career. When Schumacher initially carried out his underhanded tactics, he did receive his earned backlash but moments like Monaco 2006 and Jerez 1997 are basically relegated to footnotes in this article and by a lot of fans and pundits. We only need to remember the greatness and glory he brought to the sport to round out our assessments, and nothing else should cause us to withhold praise because he was a winner. And everybody loves a winner. Especially when that winner already feeds into the dominant narrative of what a champion should be.
And honestly, even though i love to watch that clip of schumacher storming down the paddock to knock the lights out of david coulthard at the 1998 belgian grand prix, i often think to myself, why are we like this?
Why do i sometimes love watching someone i hate lose more than watching somebody i like win? What is the argument that states that you cannot have victory without brutality? Without ruthlessness? Without pain and suffering and taking your pound of flesh?
And what the hell does it even mean to be a champion? Does it mean crushing the dreams of someone you’ve known since you were little kids over and over again? Does it mean your teammate constantly has to sacrifice himself to give you a leg up? Does it mean suddenly having lady luck on your side? Or someone choking when you needed it most?
The point is to win the game. That is the only stated objective. You have to get the most points to win the game. That is what makes a champion. A champion must be the person with the most points at the end of the season.
At the end of the day, “championship mentality”, as we have come to know by its hegemonic definition, does not always pass muster in this very game.
Verstappen lost this year with his narrative intact and his ‘championship mentality’. Schumacher left in 2006 not on top, and left again in 2012 not on top with his narrative and championship mentality. Piastri lost this year with his narrative and championship mentality. Norris won because he got the most points.
And i just want to go back to that article one last time for this mark webber quote, so i can finally put you all out of your misery (if you made it this far – five thousand words mind you – you are a saint).
“[Schumacher] told me straight and just showed me what he was prepared to do in order to win. I was happy he had the respect for me to tell the truth. Michael was an absolute phenomenon, but the levels he would go to just to keep being successful… That’s the way he was wired, he was such a ferocious competitor, always on the edge. Would you be comfortable looking in the mirror and saying, ‘This is what I did to achieve success?’”
For every single champion this sport has ever had, the answer is yes. Don’t make me laugh. The answer is yes.
It’s yes because they can still claim that they won. They are winners, and people only remember winners.
On Lewis Hamilton, Ferrari, the immediate past, the long-term future, and why Charles Leclerc will remain Ferrari's priority (contrary to popular belief)
Now that everyone's slowly recovering from the CHAOS of Lewis's Ferrari announcement (and one of the best days on the internet for a while), it's no surprise that we're all starting to ask ourselves...well, how exactly will a Charles Leclerc and Lewis Hamilton line up work? Yes, Charles is Ferrari's golden boy, and has been so even as far back as his record-breaking F2 campaign, and yes, every single WDC of the past half a century rates Charles as a once-in-a-generation driver who would likely have at least one successful WDC campaign under his belt if he were given a half-decent car and strategy. But Lewis Hamilton is...well, Lewis Hamilton. His name and his achievements stand in a class of their own. 7x WDC wins in teams with 8x WCC wins across his career. His name is synonymous with, and often even bigger than, the F1 brand. Surely it's a no-brainer in this driver line-up that Charles is bound to be sidelined, especially as Lewis has made no secrets in the past about his hunt for an elusive eighth WDC.
However, I believe otherwise. I think that Lewis coming to Ferrari was not only accepted by Charles, but actively encouraged and furthermore, Lewis will not be given the n1 driver status by the team. Charles and Lewis at Ferrari will be, at best, equals, but more likely the development informed by Lewis and his experience but skewed towards Charles. To truly dive into why, we need to consider several factors including la mafia monegasque inside Ferrari, the curious case of Charles's old teammates, the emerging details of Lewis's contract, and the true value of what Lewis brings to Maranello. Buckle up, grab yourself a drink and a snack, (spare a prayer for @tsarinablogs who proofread this), and I'll see you below the cut. It's going to be a wild ride.
First things first, even though it's signing Lewis Hamilton, we have had confirmation that this move basically passed through Charles for approval and Charles signed his contract extension KNOWING that his teammate would be none other than Lewis, and he signed anyway. I'm sure this isn't a choice that Charles made lightly, so we have to put ourselves in his shoes, examine his reasons.
Charles has been outspoken about relishing a chance to learn from Lewis. And what racing driver worth their laurels wouldn't? In races that most of us can't bear to watch (Charles and Carlos in Monza 2023, and Max and Charles fights in 2022 come to mind), Charles always emerges beaming and giggling. This man lives and breathes for racing right on the limit, and how better to learn that from THE Lewis Hamilton. But just because Charles wants to learn from Lewis doesn't mean (as some seem to believe) that Charles will suddenly become the Ferrari n2. I trust Charles's judgement in this, and trust that Il Predestinato has unshakeable faith that he will be the one fighting for a title, even if his teammate is Lewis Hamilton. For any worried that Charles couldn't possibly hold his own, well, let's take a little look at how Charles has fared in a teammate battles in the past.
Max Verstappen is more often than not, ridiculed and made fun of for having a teammate curse. And while, yes, he pushed Daniel Ricciardo out of the RBR n1 seat, he sat through the rotating door of Pierre/Alex, and Checo hasn't been having the greatest time. But Max's teammates, more often than not, do have very decent carers after. Daniel basically has a guaranteed ride out of sabbatical right back into the fastest car on the grid next year, Pierre is still around with Alpine, Alex is making some serious waves at Williams and is being touted as a possible replacement for Lewis.
By contrast, Charles tends to destroy the careers of those who have been his teammates in Formula 1. I mean, we only need to take one look at the position that Carlos is now in to see it. At the start of 2023, everything was looking right for Carlos. He had a car that suited him and didn't suit Charles (extreme understeer), he even managed to be the only non-RB driver to win a race in 2023. However Charles, with three more non-classified (DNS/DNF/DSQ) races, still beat Carlos in the WDC at the end of the year, not placing ONCE outside the top 5 in races he finished since the end of the Summer Break. Even in a year that was supposed to be geared for Carlos, Charles humiliated him. Now, no team seems to be jumping at the chance to sign Carlos. Indeed his best option at the moment might be to sign with Sauber, try and build the team around him when it becomes Audi and hope that by some miracle in the first few seasons of this new F1 team it can be at least high midfield. But Carlos is in a sticky situation, he's quite old for a prime F1 driver in the current era, especially considering the extremely talented generation just below him. This news has more or less sealed his fate of not being anywhere near a championship car for at least the next 3-4 years.
Even looking back past Carlos to Seb. Make no mistake of it, Ferrari destroyed Seb's career–but Charles, the upstart young Il Predestinato and the pride of Maranello, is also wholly responsible. He refused to roll over and accept the role of easy-going second driver, despite the car and the team being built around Seb, and won not only his maiden grand prix, but won Monza as a Ferrari driver and finished ABOVE Seb in points in the WDC that year.
It's a fact that flies below the radar, but Charles is ruthless when it comes to his teammates. One thing Charles proved while being teammates with Seb is that he's happy to learn from more experienced teammates, then use their own tricks against them. Charles thrives DESPITE and almost BECAUSE of the adversity and ends up outperforming them and often as a result, if not ending their careers then at least setting them back. While it's almost certain that Lewis's career move AFTER this will be retirement, it's not only foolish but it's plain wrong to assume that Charles will try anything other than to beat Lewis in a teammate head to head, all the while watching and observing what it is that makes Lewis Hamilton a 7x WDC.
While we're on the topic of Charles and his ruthlessness, make no mistake, this Fred Vasseur takeover of Ferrari has been entirely orchestrated by Charles. It's pretty much a widely known fact that Mattia was fired to placate Charles, and Fred was brought in on Charles's request. Not only is Fred Charles's old Sauber boss, but Charles also has a cultural advantage with Fred over his present and future teammates that's worth mentioning, him and Fred share a common mother tongue in French and if they're videoed together, chances are they're speaking it. It's a tiny detail, really, but you tend to have unconcious affinity to those who share your native language. Fred is Charles's man at Ferrari, and this is reflected in not only Fred's words surrounding Charles's contract renewal, but also in the secondary driver signings. Not only does the new reserve driver, F2 FDA prodigy Ollie Bearman, seem very friendly with Charles, but the Scuderia's new development driver, who will spending crucial hours on the sim and in testing, is none other than Arthur Leclerc. This is a team that is deliberately being filled with Charles ride or dies, and it's of little surprise that Carlos found himself pushed out of the nest.
So we've established that Charles wants to go up against Lewis Hamilton, that he's bringing Lewis into a team that orbits Charles like the sun. But what's to stop Lewis from doing to Charles what he did to Fernando in 2008, and Nico in 2013? Even with the strength of Charles's conviction and the team Charles has around him, Lewis Hamilton is Lewis Hamilton. Even if Charles and Fred talk in French, Lewis knew Fred first, and has known him for longer. It's already confirmed that Lewis is bringing engineers and expertise from Mercedes and Lewis could mount a challenge to Il Predestinato at Maranello if he wanted to. So why won't he?
It's simple, Lewis's goal is not to win the eighth, it's something longer lasting.
Now don't get me wrong, if Charles does not match Lewis in the car, and the car is dominant. Lewis will win every single WDC for as long as he and Charles are teammates and he will do so without remorse or regret. If Lewis knows he can outperform Charles, he will refuse to bow to the slightest of team orders. Charles has to keep his end of the bargain and do what Nico Rosberg did in 2016–show that he can beat Lewis Hamilton in equal machinery.
To clarify, I'm sure that winning an eighth, especially with Ferrari, would mean the world to Lewis. Not only would he break a world record, but he'd bring the championship home to Schumacher's old team. It would create a legacy to last, his time in F1 forever immortalised in legend. But what about his life AFTER F1, what sort of legacy does Lewis want to leave there?
I think Lewis is ready to retire. His drive for Ferrari is a swan song, the fulfilment of a childhood dream, but we also have to consider what could have made him decide to not end his career with Mercedes. After all, he's been with them since he was thirteen, been driving for them in F1 for 10 seasons (soon to be 11) and he's been outspoken about that team basically being his family. While there are excellent points about Ferrari possibly being dominant under the new regs in 2026 and car development in Mercedes not listening to Lewis, I believe the biggest factor is what Ferrari could promise Lewis for when his career as an F1 driver comes to a close. Not only did Mercedes refuse to make him ambassador, but Ferrari promised him one of the most expensive contracts in the history of the sport and a joint investment fund to help grow Lewis's own projects in the future. Lewis is passionate about having a platform, in having initiatives to further his causes and it makes absolute sense that he wants to focus on these after his retirement. Ferrari was able to promise him security and freedom after the racing is done, while apparently, Mercedes could offer neither.
So if Ferrari isn't bringing Lewis in on this insane with the goal of winning a world championship, what do they stand to gain from it all?
It's simple, Ferrari is Ferrari yes, but Lewis Hamilton is Lewis Hamilton. The best and the brightest in the F1 world will be flocking to Maranello, lining up outside the gates for a chance to work with him, just as they did to Mercedes in the years past. Just as Ferrari can guarantee Lewis long-term success, Lewis can guarantee Ferrari long-term success. Even if Lewis only stays a couple of years, it is certain that the expertise he brings in will stay longer, long enough to secure Ferrari dominance and many WCCs throughout the new regs and maybe even longer than that. On the chance that Charles can't quite match Lewis and Lewis does get his eighth, he'll still almost certainly get a WDC out of it when Lewis leaves, along with a treasure trove of firsthand information as to the driving and the mindset of the most decorated F1 driver ever, information that Charles will carry on into his career and whoever he may face next.
And Charles will carry on, this is the most important piece of the puzzle. This is why Charles obviously relishes having Lewis as his future teammate, no matter what it will bring. At best, Charles can write himself into history by fulfilling the Il Predestinato prophecy in spectacular fashion, not only bringing glory back to Maranello, but doing so with The Sir Lewis Hamilton as his teammate, and cementing his status as generational talent in indisputable fashion. At worst for Charles, Lewis takes the initial glory of the first championship after the drought, but the subsequent championships will be basically promised to Charles. Lewis will likely not stick around for longer than three years, after which Charles will have a team of incredible engineering and strategic proportions with him at the centre for the rest of his career, which could easily last another decade after that.
Lewis Hamilton is Lewis Hamilton, and him and Ferrari have a lot to benefit from each other, but make no mistake, Charles is the present, and the future of la Scuderia Ferrari.
Lastly, although I'm sure most of you have heard this story, I'll leave you with some words by Sky Sports' Carlo Vanzini as to the origin of Charles's nickname, Il Predestinato.
“It all goes back to an early encounter. He was about 15 and they had brought him to Sky for some media training. We had this meeting and then had a press conference simulation where I asked him something like: ‘You’re starting on pole today but your team-mate is racing for title, what are you going to do?’
“To which he answered, ‘I race to win.’ So we sat there and came up with a more diplomatic answer, something along the lines of ‘I’ll focus on my race, but I will help the team wherever necessary.’
“But then this boy came up to me later and told me the question I had asked was fundamentally wrong because ‘there is no way my teammate will be the one fighting for the championship and not me.'”
Mercedes arrive at Suzuka unbeaten, unstoppable, and carrying the weight of a reborn dynasty. After four years of grasping for wins, the Silver Arrows aren't just back… they're hunting.
Let me paint you a picture.
It is 2019. Mercedes has just won their sixth consecutive constructors’ championship. Lewis Hamilton is untouchable. The silver cars start from the front, manage the race, and collect their points with the kind of calm efficiency that makes you want to throw your remote at the television — not because it’s boring, exactly, but because you already know how it ends before it begins. Every. Single. Time. Mercedes dominates while others simply chase.
Fast forward to 2022. The rule changes come. The cars are different. Suddenly, Mercedes is struggling. Hamilton is visibly frustrated on the team radio. George Russell, the new signing, is outperforming a seven-time world champion, and it doesn’t even matter because neither of them can get near the front. Red Bull is dominant. Then Ferrari surged. Then McLaren takes over and wins the whole thing in 2025. And somewhere in Brackley, the engineers at Mercedes are staring at data, pulling apart every millimetre of their car, quietly rebuilding.
Now, two races into 2026, the true results of that painstaking Mercedes rebuild are taking centre stage.
And honestly? It is frightening.
Australia, round one: George Russell wins. Kimi Antonelli, eighteen and Hamilton’s replacement—still karting while others raced in Formula 2—finishes second. An impressive one-two to start the season, but one race alone doesn’t set a trend.
That was just the beginning. Then came Shanghai.
In Shanghai, Antonelli takes pole—the youngest in F1 history. He starts up front and races with maturity and control, finishing five seconds ahead of Russell. Another Mercedes one-two. Ninety-eight constructors’ points before March ends.
There is a word Mercedes keep using to describe their 2026 car. Predictable. On the surface that sounds underwhelming — you wouldn't exactly put it on a poster. But in Formula 1, predictable means a driver knows exactly what the car will do at every corner, in every condition, on every lap. Predictable means confidence. Predictable means fast. And if you watched Mercedes between 2014 and 2021, you know exactly what a confident, fast, predictable Mercedes looks like from the outside.
It looks like this. It has always looked like this.
The standings after two rounds tell their own brutal story. Russell leads on 51 points, Antonelli four behind on 47. Ferrari's Charles Leclerc sits third on 34, Lewis Hamilton fourth on 33. And then, somewhere further down the order, the reigning champions McLaren are nursing 18 points between two drivers — 70 points behind Mercedes — having failed to get either car to the start line in China. Lando Norris, the man who won the drivers' title in 2025, is sixth in the standings. Oscar Piastri has missed two races in a row.
Think about that for a moment. The team that dominated 2025 so completely that it barely felt like a competition is now scrambling for points while their rivals lap the field in one-two formation. The reversal is staggering. Formula 1 has a way of humbling people. It has done it again.
Now everyone goes to Suzuka. And if you have never watched a Japanese Grand Prix, let me tell you — there is nowhere on the calendar quite like it. The fans arrive in full team kit, waving flags, and some sleep outside the circuit the night before just to be close to the action. The atmosphere is unlike anything else in sport. But the circuit itself is what really matters this weekend, because Suzuka is the kind of track that strips everything back and tells you the truth.
The S Curves demand total trust in the car. No room for hesitation. The Degners require commitment—trust the grip or lose time. Then 130R: a fast left-hander, where stability means the difference between a record lap and the barriers. Suzuka rewards the brave and, more importantly, the predictable.
All of this, of course, brings us back to that word again.
A car that its own drivers describe as predictable and planted is, at Suzuka, a weapon. And right now, Mercedes has two of them.
One more storyline deserves attention: it would be wrong to discuss Mercedes’ resurgence without mentioning the man in the Ferrari garage watching it happen.
Hamilton left Mercedes after 2025 for Ferrari, shocking the paddock. He chased a new challenge—the chance to win in red, a feat no British driver has achieved.
No one expected Mercedes to become dominant again right after Hamilton’s exit. In Shanghai, he stood on his first Ferrari podium, watching two Mercedes drivers—his former team—celebrate above him.
He will line up at Suzuka knowing that a win for Ferrari this weekend is not just about points. It is about proving that the move was the right one. That the story isn’t over. That there is still a world in which Lewis Hamilton wins a title in red rather than silver. He has done more improbable things in his career. But improbable is a lot harder when the team ahead of you has ninety-eight points and a car that drives itself.
Finally, one last thing worth remembering as the paddock packs up and heads to Japan. With the Bahrain and Saudi Arabian Grands Prix cancelled due to the conflict in the Middle East, Suzuka is the last race until Miami on May 3. Six weeks of silence after Sunday. Six weeks for whatever happens at Suzuka to sit in the standings, unchallenged and unchanging, while every team stares at the gap and thinks about what comes next.
If Mercedes win again — if Russell and Antonelli cross the line first and second for the third time in three races — that gap is going to look very large indeed by the time the Miami paddock opens its doorIf Mercedes win again—if Russell and Antonelli take another one-two—the gap will look enormous by Miami.s finds a car they believe in, they do not let go.
Sources
Formula1.com — 2026 Australian & Chinese GP official results
RacingNews365 — “Antonelli becomes youngest pole sitter in F1 history”
Crash.net — 2026 F1 standings after Chinese GP
Total-Motorsport.com — F1 2026 championship standings after China
Forbes / Yahoo Sports — F1 cancels Bahrain and Saudi Arabian GPs amid Middle East war
Formula1.com — Historical constructors’ championship standings 2014–2025
Pitwall Press · Race coverage, analysis, and opinion
This weekend's social media explosion has been A Lot.
First, we got the incredibly brave and personal post from Kelly Piquet and Max Verstappen celebrating their 5-year anniversary and celebration of the day they learned their baby would be a girl. In it, Kelly revealed that their daughter Lily is a rainbow baby. For those who don't know, that term means a baby born after a previous miscarriage, stillbirth, or infant loss. It's a profoundly personal and often painful thing to share, and the fact that they did in the context of their anniversary casts a light on a private grief they endured together. Pregnancy loss doesn't just affect the mother; the father can also experience intense grief. Considering we all know that Max values his family intensely and has been outspoken in his desire for a family of his own, we can assume this loss was very rough for the couple.
Then, almost immediately in the same news cycle (depending on your timezone), we get The Engagement Post™ from Charles Leclerc and Alexandra Saint Mleux. And it was elaborate. A multi-slide, professionally shot, cinematic masterpiece of an announcement. The kind of post that is designed to dominate headlines and flood the 'for you' pages. And good for them, it was a fantasy engagement!
Now, let's be clear: Charles's engagement was 100% pre-planned. You don't get that photoshoot and rollout by accident. This is not a "Charles did this to Max" situation.
But.
Let's talk about Max Verstappen. This is a man who is notoriously, almost pathologically, private. He hates the F1 PR circus. He visibly bristles at personal questions. His idea of a good time is streaming on his sim rig with his friends, away from the spotlight. The only personal life content we get is what Kelly shares, and even that feels carefully curated.
By sharing the news about Lily being a rainbow baby, they opened a door. A door that the less-sensitive members of the F1 press corps would absolutely try to barge through with deeply personal and potentially traumatic questions this weekend in Brazil. "Max, how difficult was the miscarriage for you?" "Can you talk about that period of loss?" The mere thought is gut-wrenching.
And then... Charles got engaged.
Suddenly, the media has two massive, positive-but-complex human interest stories to chase. One involves grief and loss (a tricky subject requiring nuance many lack), and the other is a classic, easy, celebratory "congratulations on your engagement!" story.
The spotlight has been forcibly split.
Instead of a press conference where Max is the sole target for personal inquiries, he will now share that burden. A significant portion of the questions, especially the lighter, fluffier ones, will be directed at Charles. The two hot topics will compete, and the engagement is simply an easier, less delicate story for journalists to lead with.
So, while it was undoubtedly a complete coincidence of timing, I can't help but think that Max Verstappen, the man who despises this part of the job more than anything, is sitting in São Paulo feeling an immense, quiet sense of gratitude. Charles's meticulously planned, headline-dominating engagement may have just inadvertently given him a shield, allowing him to focus on racing in Brazil with a little more peace.
