Apologies I have another ask 😅 ypu can totally ignore this if youd like
Anyway I read your posts about seb and lew and some of their problematic behaviors. I was wondering did nico also have any behavior? Majority of the time all people talk about him is 2016 and his very public friendship breakup. I also saw something about vaccines on reddit but not too sure about that. Overall he seemed like a very pr trained f1 driver in a era where f1 drivers weren't pr trained at all. Its hard to find much on him that isn't post 2016 and I was curious about him.
nico definitely did not behave in any way similarly to seb and lewis wrt women. he and vivian have been in a relationship since they were 17/18 and nico was steadfastly loyal to her. the only time that i know of that he ever indicated any amount of interest in any woman other than vivian was during an interview when he was told that a lot of female tennis players were into him and according to the interviewer he was interested in that, but then immediately dismissed it as a useless ego boost because he was in a relationship. in fact, he was so loyal to vivian that there was never even a hint of a cheating rumour around him (and there were rumours, often very publicly evidenced, around basically every driver) that some people used that as proof of his homosexuality.
as for the vaccine thing, that is categorically false. during covid nico did a vlog/interview thing with someone where he mentioned having been advised by his doctor not to get the covid booster because he'd recently had covid. that got turned into "nico is an anti-vaxxer" by the internet, but it was literally just a temporary delay due to having recently had covid. he was in abu dhabi in 2021 and at that point in time the uae required everyone to be fully vaccinated to travel there, meaning he was definitely vaccinated.
nico's pre-2017 pr was definitely very controlled. f1 was definitely not as big as it is now, and so the drivers were less media trained, but it was also a different era socially. famous athletes being seen publicly drinking heavily and falling out of clubs with models (even if they were in a relationship) was not only tolerated in a way that it wouldn't be now, but actively encouraged. the big names of that era, i.e. jenson button kimi raikkonen lewis hamilton etc tended to fit the mold of "drive fast play hard" in a way nico kind of didn't. he actually is, and always has been, a party girl but he was also quite an introverted personality (and again, loyal to vivian) and didn't really match the image the way the others did.
one thing that was often said about nico was that he was really quite shy, and interestingly one (finnish) journalist said that he was shy in a very finnish way, as in shy to share parts of himself. personally i think that's a good observation of him. to me, nico has always seemed very aware of how he is perceived and not quite satisfied with it. i think he was hesitant to share parts of himself, and when he did he wanted it to be on his terms. post retirement he has been almost shockingly open about how emotional and sensitive he actually was during his career, but when it was actually happening, he made a real effort to keep everything under control and under wraps. now, people perceive nico as the emotional driver, and lewis as the one who was more focused and less bothered by the personal aspects of their relationship, but at the time, lewis was considered the "emotional" one who wore his heart on his sleeve, and nico was the "emotionless" one who viewed the world in exclusively technical terms.
nico is naturally a very cerebral person and a very cerebral driver, and i think it was easier for him to cling to the realm of mechanics and technical aspects because it didn't require him to share anything of himself, and because it was all based in science and fact, rather than being open to interpretation. one thing you see about nico's pr/public presentation during his career was that he tried so hard to be clear about what he was actually saying to journalists and what he was sharing, but it backfired on him in many ways because journalists resented him trying to cling to control and interpreted it as arrogance or insincerity or even blandness and were very negative in response.
i also think that nico entered formula one, and motorsport more generally, with a lot baggage in the sense that as the son of a f1 wdc there were a lot of expectations of him, and a lot of preconceived notions about him. and again, i think nico was very aware of those preconceived notions, and wanted to be free of them, but his attempts to prove them wrong often just reinforced them, and so the only measure of control nico had was to not give the media anything at all.
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