♡81|16|33|4♡

Ilya:

- earned his first EVER pole position (and 6 poles total)

- more than doubled his total career points

- more than quadrupled his win total and equaled the win total of his mentor mark webber

- earned two hat tricks and one grand slam

- DRASTICALLY improved his qualifying, bringing his h2h to a nearly 1:1 ratio compared to the 5:1 ratio in his teammate’s favor last year

- has the second highest pole to win ratio in the history of the sport

- held a race-finishing streak that lasted three seasons (44, the second longest in the sport’s history)

- got 8 consecutive podiums (one of only three mclaren drivers to do so alongside aryton senna and lewis hamilton)

- lead the championship for 15 rounds and stayed in contention until the very last race

- forced his way into the championship conversation despite not being a considered a real threat at the start of the season

- has shown tremendous improvements equal to those between his first and second seasons that he will continue to build on going forward

lawrence: "to beat max verstappen, that must make this championship even more impressive for you"

And sometimes as a kid you visit your friends' homes and some of then whisper to you - grimacing with embarrassment - about how they're not supposed to tell anyone this, but there's a whole room in their house that's currently on fire. And you're like yeah it's ok I'm not supposed to tell people about the way our house is a little bit on fire all the time, too. And then you visit some other friend's house and there's no trace of fire anywhere, and you think "wow, these people are really good at hiding their house fire."

And one day you show up to work like "hey sorry I'm late, I forgot to wet the walls before going to bed last night and my whole house burned down", and you're startled by the way people react, acting like that must be the worst thing that has ever happened to you. And you're just like "chill, it's been years since the last time this happened, and it wasn't even that bad this time", and that just makes people more shocked, acting like that's the weirdest and most concerning thing they've ever heard anyone say, which only confuses you more.

"the best part of it all is nothing happened to oscar" - lando 🥹🫶🏻