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I'm just going to vent a "little" since I was bored and sick of all the F1 "fans" acting like George is some washed bum.

China: front wing damage in Q2, gear shift failure in Q3, only enough time for one single Q3 lap without optimal tyre warm up and ERS charge. Then no grip after sc restart, getting stuck in dirty air behind Ferraris. Japan: rear suspension setup change that caused rear end stability to deteriorate, consequences of that in quali and race, deployment issues, software bug that caused the PU to enter superclip or charging state. Bad safety car luck. Miami: wrong strat mode during the race, possible FP1 turbo/PU concern reported through radio might've reduced clean setup data. Wrong strat mode on restart. Balance and tyre window issues persisted until late changes adjustments towards Kimi's direction improved the pace. Yes Miami has always been wacky track for George, but it gets to a point. This was not just "bad track, end of story". Canada: mechanical DNF costing him a potential win in what was a great weekend until that. Monaco: no confidence in the car.

George is not the type of driver to lose couple tenths out of the blue. You want to tell me that he just got out of the car at the end of sprint race in China and in those few hours before quali started… what? Forgot how to drive for 3 race weeks, then remembered how to drive in Canada, and then forgot it again in Monaco? Kimi would obviously start getting closer sooner or later and would start giving George tougher fight than last year, but the scale and timing is the problem. There's a big difference between kimi going from being 2-3 tenths slower to suddenly beating George by 2-4 tenths, versus kimi being able to reduce the qualifying gap and be able to have closer fights, like in Canada. It's impossible not to recognize the incredible driver George is, and there comes a point where it’s impossible not to question what’s happening inside Mercedes.

I can't remember a single mechanical/strategic mess up that affected Kimi's points, wasn’t a driver or shared error and put him in disadvantage against George. Sure, he had bad starts pretty much until Canada and some were caused by things out of his hands, but he's not just some innocent bystander. Plus even if he has had more start issues than George, you generally don’t win race on lap 1. If you don’t lose too many positions and have a strong car, which Mercedes is, then slow start isn’t the end of the world (unless it's Monaco and there's no rain/safety car to save you) but a setup issue, deployment issues, etc… that can affect your whole race.

You could just say that Miami is wacky track for George, but he was on the podium last year. Finishing almost 45 seconds behind your teammate isn't just "bad track, get over it". You could say the quali performance in Monaco is his fault, but he was doing great in FP3, didn't manage to get a clean lap because of traffic but he was driving great times. Qualifying comes and it's "I'm not even doing my FP3 lap, so I don't really get it". Plus they put him in the wrong strat mode, again.

He topped q1, 2, 3 in australia, sq1, sq2, sq3 in china by nearly 3 tenths and won both, then it suddenly went downhill. Where did the sudden one lap and race pace difference come from? If he's struggling with adapting to the car, the team is supposed to help. He said that at the start of the year it was easy, that P2 was worst case, but last races it's been nowhere, how does that even happen? After 6 races, the pattern on George's side is hard to explain by ordinary bad luck or "that's racing". Yes, Kimi did have issues, but George's issues were more severe, more technical. His engineers keep making costly mistakes. As a driver, especially as a driver fighting for a WDC, you should be able to trust your engineers.

Kimi and George have different driving styles, but the team should have ideas on how to get the car closer to where George needs it to be. Qualifying report said they ran pretty similar set-ups, it clearly worked for Kimi but not for George, who couldn't get the tyres in the window and had no grip and could not push without sliding all over the place. If he can't get the tyres in the window, the engineers need to figure out why that is what they and he can change to improve that. It's really odd that a driver who has consistently been a top qualifier pretty much since the start of his F1 career, even in shit cars, suddenly is nowhere near his teammate in multiple qualis.

I also really hate the way Merc PR treats him, that doesn't affect race results but I don't think I'm asking for much when I say that the PR team should act more kindly towards a driver who did so much for the team. The "Chase. Every. Millisecond" post… as someone with 0 experience in PR/marketing/media relations, even I can realize that when one of your driver struggles in qualifying, captioning the post like that is a dumb move. I honestly don't know what is their deal lately with their posts. It feels like a lot of them focus on George as the perfect boyfriend to Carmen rather than their senior driver and championship contender.

Then we have the ongoing rumors of George getting replaced from italian and dutch media. Does mercedes do anything to actually stop all these rumors? No. Compare that to Zak Brown, I don't like the guy one bit but at least he immediately spoke up when people started rumors about Oscar leaving.

After Qatar 2025 Mercedes immediately took action to protect Kimi, but when George was getting hate left and right, especially during the "Lewis is getting sabotaged" and "Qatar 24 beef", what they did was nowhere as big. The context is obviously different but cyberbullying and death threats are never okay. The team sometimes put out a community guidelines reminder, or someone from the team occasionally said something, but nothing close to scale of what happened for Kimi.

Yes, Toto did go to a press conference in 24, but he was responding to Horner calling George hysterical. And let's be honest, if Toto had an opportunity to get into another fight with Horner, he'd jump on it. He was also vocal during the sabotage saga and the team did put out a couple public statements, but they can clearly involve the FIA immediately, show them the hate messages and take immediate action when their driver is target of abuse. Police were involved, but that was to find the original sender, if they caught them I doubt all those people sending hate to George would go "well that's it then, I'll stop sending hate to Russell now". Kimi being accused of race fixing is serious, but again: there is nothing that excuses death threats and cyberbullying, there shouldn't be any clear line from when you start telling people to stop.

Toto called Isack unsportsmanlike in China after he refused Kimi's apology right after he ruined his sprint, when emotions and adrenaline were still high. Yes, race fixing versus getting called unsportsmanlike is big difference, but there's still double standard in the way Toto handled this. He's one of the most well known figures in the sport, his words can incite hate, seems weird to protect one young driver and then do this to another.

Then there is that video of Kimi using his phone while driving in Miami last year, the car crash in San Marino this year and the car commercial he did just few weeks after. Sure, we don't know if he was the one driving in San Marino, but putting a driver who was filmed using his phone on a highway a year ago and who might've caused a reckless crash with a company car just few weeks earlier into a car commercial is questionable. So is doing the ad with his dad, who basically did a hit and run with a traffic officer. You'd expect one of the biggest F1 teams and car manufacturers in the world to be a bit more careful with stuff like that.

Then we have RedBull's "borderline something something" comment. Before anyone says "Well, actually. Mercedes did tweet 'You love to see it.' after RedBull's DNFed in Bahrain 22, so that makes it okay", it was 4 years ago, and the whole "beef" ended after 2 tweets, why re-start it now? Plus redbull literally responsed the next race. The "borderline" comment was a petty reminder of a beef that happened 2 seasons ago, where George literally defended himself after his character and integrity as gpda director was attacked. And a comment that max kind of proved in spain last year and in japan this year when he kicked out a journalist. An official F1 team account acting like any other fan account encouraging the hate to one of the drivers is uncalled for and unprofessional. It was uncalled for and unprofessional back in 22, you’d think they learned in 4 years and you’d think Mercedes would at least respond and defend their driver.

okay definitely a lot but anon you brought up some very good points. will take some time to reply to this so i can do your ask justice

some of these are my opinions and not exactly substantiated!!!! if you send hate in my anons, you will be blocked likely after i post your take. there are many other places to hate on george

let's start with the car:

- yes george has had horrendous luck over the past FIVE races. all the problems you mentioned throughout the races are so so frustrating.

- very odd that one of the best qualifiers on the grid says in interviews that he doesn't know how to drive the car 🤨

- i would say up to japan i could still excuse it because it was clear george was close enough to kinda brush it off. even miami because it's not george's strong suit vs andrea strong track. but extremely odd that his engineers could not find pace for him and george had to do it himself in the car 🤨 to add nuance for you anon in miami last year, the safety car did come out at a good time for george

- then comes canada. upgrade package comes in. maybe the weirdest part to me was george being off the pace until the last moment, if you remember. monaco again suspicious because george was going well in fp3 then quali couldn't find the pace at all even though they said they made minimal changes

- also notice that all other drivers using merc PU have had issues except one. that's all i want to say

- i am always hesitant to call sabotage obviously (we all know emailgate) but you cannot deny there is favouritism. even some george haters can agree on this (just look at torger, will talk about him later)

- about the previous point, notice how the narrative changes when andrea is winning. andrea is youngest xyz but if it's george, it is urgh mercedes dominance again? just a thought hm

- about the starts: andrea mostly had the more costly starts but it has never cost him the result. most obvious one in my mind is japan where he lost positions but because of (lucky) safety car, he won the race anyway

- there are talks that the upgrades were towards andrea's style sooo 👀 take with a pinch of salt ofc (following merc's trend of developing towards the driver "struggling")

- after monaco gp, it's very clear there is favouritism. his race engineer not giving him clear instructions, strategy team couldn't make up their mind on what to do with george, miscommunication within the pit crew on whether to serve the penalty (props to the pit crew who hesitated though, unfortunately the moment anyone touches the car, it doesn't really matter). whole team forgot about george's penalty. engineering team doesn't even care because why is there a software glitch that prevented the pit limiter from working properly. they wanted andrea win so bad they sacrificed important points (even though he was clear of the entire field let's be real so did he even need that much attention). we as george fans weren't even asking for much, just for him to finish the race where he started which is expected in monaco. and the team can't even do that. it's not sabotage, but if the whole garage is functioning as a one driver team, it might as well be

let's talk merc pr:

- yeah i think every week/day i'm pissed off at these people (literally search my blog for #anti mercedes)

- the chase every millisecond post was so off-putting and at such a bad time. like literally your worst result of the year and you say that?? you couldn't have just done a normal caption. or yk celebrate andrea's pole in another post then post the results

- i still have a grudge with them for not having a pole graphic for george in canada. but given that their lead graphic designer just left, i think they have much bigger problems to deal with 🤭

- saw a reddit comment recently that was something like merc are posting george as anything but the driver. like genuinely what is this team doing. you even have f1 wag snark reddit joking about carmen being merc 3rd driver. personally i have nothing against her but this highlights how much they have been shoving her into posts with george lately. like idk what's the pr strategy here

let's talk replacement rumours:

- unfortunately from my observations last year, torger would never hesitate to feed george to the sharks (media). the fact that he let those rumours go on for as long as they did despite his impressive performances is just disgusting. he's literally only focused on andrea and the concept of getting mv. just the thought of it makes him do crazy things

- you can dislike zak all you want but he is fiercely protective of lando and oscar. he keeps talking about how they are the best drivers and he will keep them forever. and at least he has the results of building a team from rock bottom to double wcc to back it up. and he also recognised that he was not the best person to be a team principal which is when he passed the duties to stella. and zak has always been better at the pr side, being someone that loves to talk to people and people will listen to him. it was a win-win situation for everybody. part of being a good leader is to know when to delegate. torger doesn't have any of these qualities and cannot do any of his jobs

(some people might talk about papaya rules but imo — maybe controversial — at least they could manage the pr side and i can see the merit in some of the decisions they made. their race strategy team still needs work though. i think after monaco, many people are seeing this clearly. mclaren had slow pitstops, problems etc but it was clearly affecting both drivers. this one is just so blatant.)

the other parts (qatar/internet things):

yeah honestly the past events were hinting that torger kinda didn't care. i guess for emailgate they didn't want to say anything because it's internal. but george was getting death threats because of emailgate and they didn't do anything. they released the vague statement on community guidelines but nothing directly addressing it. this serves as a direct comparison to kimi's situation last year. and qatar 2024, i don't remember 100% what he said about the situation. i don't condone death threats to anyone btw but it's kinda hypocritical how you respond in two similar situations.

for me kimi and isack are very different situations because kimi's actions had greater implications because of the wdc and much more attention was focused onto literally everything that period. but i guess he expects everyone to act all pr like and not be human? and george has set high expectations for the pr game so of course torger will compare them to each other.

on the kimi road car thing:

yeah 100% agree. no notes honestly. i don't believe many people actually remember this incident. or maybe they do but it's not brought up often. and everyone uses the excuse of he's so young but please, you have been driving cars in one form or another since you were a kid. and not a good look for mercedes the car company either which is why george is probably still doing all the car company ads.

red bull pr

- it has always been like this with them lmao. they know it will give them engagement and esp since shipping culture has entered the mainstream atp, they are farming it.

- it's also so ironic when max has done much worse

last thing: mercedes pr has always been bad. that's all

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