I'm just trying to explain that it's a normal situation.

From what I’ve observed, drivers usually arrive on Tuesday or Wednesday (I'd guess it's more likely to be Wednesday for a European race, Tuesday if there's jet lag to account for).

These first couple of days are presumably spent acclimating, working with the team, maybe sightseeing if time permits (and best of all if it can be content-farmed). Drivers are often spotted out and about in the host city. Believable activities would include meetings edit: probably NOT at the paddock to sync up on strategy or technical matters (because the paddock is usually still under construction), filming social media content, signing autographs for fans, maybe personal media (magazine interviews and the like)? Nebulous "sponsor obligations"? Restaurant meals with their teams or entourages have definitely been known to occur. Personal care stuff for jet lag, mindset, physio, whatever. Networking with other teams & hustling for a contract if yours is up at the end of the season? Probably lots of leeway and creative license here.

Thursday: media day, the official start of the race weekend work and the day the paddock opens to everyone. Probably also social media filming could happen on this day, and I'd assume there could be the same work meetings I theorized for Wednesday (forward-looking convos about the car, set-up, strategy, whatever) and on the personal side of things I'd find it easy to buy a scene set on Thursday with some kind of training/workout, massages, sports psychologist or coaching, etc.

The paddock has a curfew on Thursdays at which time the gates will be locked and everyone is expected to have cleared out and stopped working, including drivers. The paddock is locked down overnight.

Friday:

Pretty well-understood but I'll recap it anyway...

On non-sprint weekends, Friday has two free practice sessions. I don’t believe they have fixed time slots week over week, but FP2 is supposed to start no less than 2.5 hours after FP1, and from what I’ve seen they’re usually in the afternoon local time.

On sprint weekends, you have only one free practice, and then sprint qualifying probably a couple of hours later.

Free practice sessions last for an hour.

Friday is also the day of the driver’s briefing (I’m guessing in the morning?) which George explains so nicely for us here.

Driver fan stages (with the Q&A/silly games/banter) tend to happen on Friday and/or Saturday.

The paddock has a curfew on Fridays at which time the gates will be locked and everyone is expected to have cleared out and stopped working, including drivers. The paddock is locked down overnight.

Saturday:

On non-sprint weekends, Saturday consists of FP3 in the morning and qualifying in the afternoon.

On sprint weekends, we get a sprint race and main race qualifying.

Here & Friday, insert additional data review and debriefing meetings from FP/quali/sprints, discussing tomorrow's strategy and set-up, etc.

Sunday: Race day! See this article for a pretty in-depth overview of the day up to race start. Races occur at varying times locally.

Post-race schedule is roughly: pop the car in parc fermé -> get weighed (as in their persons, car weighing is done separately without the driver's involvement) -> quick change/shower -> if in the top 3, cooldown room & podium celebration -> media pen interviews -> if in the top 3, additional press conference & celebration with team -> team debrief (shoutout to @forcederror for listing this out for me tysm). Meeting with the stewards to argue your innocence against various allegations of track crimes optional, and presumably would come directly before or possibly after the team debrief.

Drivers will generally depart as soon as possible after the debrief, except I'm assuming for night races? A lot of drivers fly private and will have arranged to fly in groups, sometimes on a jet personally owned by a driver or team principal, but it’s not unheard of for backmarkers and iconoclasts to fly commercial.