cookies n cream

Now, those who know me are probably aware that I mostly support Ferrari here. That has a bunch of reasons that I won't get into because they're not relevant and also I don't fucking need a reason to like a goddamn sports team. IT'S SPORTS

Anyway so yeah I like Ferrari and I like Charles Leclerc and as such I am of course pretty devastated currently, more so than usual because let's be real there's a constant baseline of depression anyway. This is however not about him specifically.

(Although I do want to mention that some of y'all need to calm down and maybe listen to him?? If he says it was his fault then you gotta believe him like that's our guy who else are you gonna believe if not him? I know it's sad, but don't be weird about it please. It makes all of us look bad.)

What this is about is the fact that I have seen only ONE person in this whole fandom apart from myself say ANYTHING about the fact that it was a pretty bad crash??

Now I will admit that 1. I did not watch actual TV coverage because I have zero means to access it currently and 2. I've not been online a lot after seeing quali results because of course I knew the internet would turn into a cesspool over this (and I was right). So maybe a lot of people are actually talking about this and I just missed it, but even if so, my point still stands.

We need to talk more about the fact that every crash in Formula 1 is a FUCKING CAR CRASH. Do you know how many people die of that shit every year??? A LOT. MANY MANY PEOPLE DIE OF THIS.

And the fact that we somehow forget this with F1 crashes is of course a stellar testament to all engineers who have ever worked on driver safety in this sport and all motorsports but still. For a lot of the history of this sport drivers being devastatingly injured or LITERALLY DYING was horrifyingly normal. Have you ever looked at the Wikipedia list of F1 drivers who died while doing F1? IT'S TOO LONG. IT'S TERRIFYINGLY LONG. Especially for a sport with a relatively very small number of athletes. I'm sure someone has done math on what the surviving-driver to dead-driver ratio is but I cannot provide that service because math's not really my thing. Regardless, for the longest time a crash in F1 meant death or heavy injury. Even crashes that we perceive as pretty minor nowadays.

Which brings me to my point. Charles' crash today wasn't really minor. Yes, it was also not extremely huge but if I understood correctly it was big enough that they sent out the medical car and they don't fucking do that just for shits and giggles. Now he evidently seems to be completely unharmed, which again THANK YOU TO EVERYONE WHO HAS EVER DONE DRIVER SAFETY. That's great news!! But this doesn't mean we can just ignore it!

Like genuinely how. How have I only seen one singular person go "hey btw thank goodness he's alright". Because that always, ALWAYS, needs to be the first thing we think about with these things! This is not funny. This is not a FUCKING joke. These people are putting their literal LIVES on the line for your fucking entertainment how fucking DARE you laugh at this. How dare you be cruel and mean and so goddamn ANNOYING about it. Yes they get paid a shit ton of too much money for this job. It's still a human life. It's still a HUMAN.

When you see a driver go off into a wall like that and the first thing you think of is how funny of a meme you can make on the internet about it, or how great you can ragebait his fans about it, or god forbid your first thought is "good I hope he can't race next weekend" (which I have seen and let me tell you I nearly physically threw up because it made me so mad). Then let me remind you:

PEOPLE. HAVE. DIED. DOING. THIS.

FREQUENTLY

The last fatal crash we had was in 2014, if we only count "actual" F1 races (because we will better not fucking forget the supporting series either. Anthoine Hubert I never saw you race but I will not forget you). It's been 12 years. I get it. I get that that's a long time and that most of us probably weren't in the sport yet back then. I wasn't!! I was literally a child. But also, 12 years is not actually that long. It really isn't. A child born on the day of that crash is still a child today. No matter how safe these cars are nowadays the risk is NEVER zero. The last fatal crash before the one in 2014 that eventually took Jules Bianchi's life was literally Ayrton Senna. There were over 20 years between those two accidents. And listen. I hope. I hope I hope so much that Jules Bianchi was the last one. Forever. But we don't know. We never know. Maybe this time we wait thirty years or fifty until someone dies again. WE CAN'T KNOW.

These drivers do this because they want to. They love it enough to accept the risk that they might die in their car. But that does not mean we can ignore the risk. It does not mean that laughter is EVER the correct first response. Laugh if you must (and you can probably tell that I also don't like that much already), but laugh with the knowledge that the person you make fun of could have died just then. Remind yourself of that. This is true for ALL drivers, ESPECIALLY the ones you don't like. It doesn't matter if it's Charles Leclerc. Or Lance Stroll. Or Logan Sergeant. Or Latifi or even fucking Mazepin and I hate that guy. Arguably, it matters even more with the drivers that crash more often.

Because every time they do, they too know "I could have died just then". And yet they still put on the helmet again. Look at Grosjean!! He might not be in F1 anymore but he's still racing. Even after what happened to him. If nothing else at least appreciate that level of conviction and/or insanity (what really is the difference anyway).

Remember them. Remember their names. Remember Bianchi and Senna and Ratzenberger and Villeneuve and de Angelis and Cevert and Rindt and von Trips and Collins and all the others. And remember that the person you so flippantly make fun of could have been the next name on that list.

“There will always be a chance, that you’ll get burnt. For reaching too far into it.”

“I knew there was brightness in you, that you’d shine brightly.”

“Even if that meant I’d have to darken my light.”