teresa

The Armchair Expert Podcast with Daniel, but only the bits that gave me heart palpitations

-Daniel calls Dax his sugar daddy

- DANIEL SITS DOWN AND IMMEDIATELY OFFERS TO TAKE OFF HIS SHOES BC foot fetish HE DOESNT WANT TO TOUCH THE SOFA WITH HIS SHOES AND THEY SAY, OMINOUSLY: "the sofa has seen way worse"

- Bisexual Chaos ensues at the very beginning as both Monica and Dax take turns hitting on Daniel and calling him gorgeous as he giggles and says "gorgeous is a big word" what a gorgeous idiot (there is actually a v compelling bit here about Daniel performing as Daniel Ricciardo and the difference between Daniel the Performance and Daniel the person)

-Dax and Monica say Daniel is bar none the sweetest, kindest and best mannered celebrity or athlete they have ever encountered or interviewed. They literally spend the first 20 minutes marvelling at how polite and charming he is. Dax said his wife, Kristen Bell, pulled him aside the first time she met Daniel just to gush about how charmed she was.

- Daniel said he doesn't have a deference to authority, he said in a room with 6 people, he'll try to speak to everyone, and give everyone equal time and attention, not just the CEO. He learned that from being forced to attend endless sponsorship events, he said it's important to him to make everyone feel human, not just attend those events to talk to the stakeholders and ignore the fans

- Dax felt bad for texting Daniel after a bad race, didn't know whether he should have even brought it up, apologised, then sent Daniel an apology for his apology then a voice note explaining the apology, and Daniel just replied with a loooooong voice note of him laughing at Dax SCREAM

- Daniel can't swim, or more aptly his swimming is ranked: survival not recreational, says "I love adrenalin but where I'm least equipped is water, I feel like I can swim but I'm not great, I'm just a step above Monica" for reference MONICA DROWNED I'm crying

- Dax, who has interviewed everyone from fucking Obama to Justin Timberlake to Kim K to Natalie Portman to Halsey to Shawn Mendes to prince Harry AND THATS JUST OVER THE COURSE OF 12 MONTHS says Daniel is the most charismatic person he knows

- Daniel says he doesn't like having outbursts on radio because it's unfair to humiliate the team, he said it's not conducive to growth

- Daniel is very bashful about his RIC3 merch, Dax and Monica are fangirling about how his merch is literally the only thing they wear and despite Daniel sending them packages before every drop they both usually order more stuff anyway and I wanted to summarise this bit but he's honestly just radiating earnestness and passion and that's hard to put into words :(

-important Dax and Monica, like the rest of us ARE OBSESSED WITH BLAKE.

“Here, set against men’s football’s macho homogeneity and historic aversion to anything even vaguely coded as female, was a young, elite athlete expressing himself fearlessly and upending gender norms in the process.”

Yes, I do. Perhaps that wouldn’t have been the case in the past, but now I think a gay Formula One driver would be welcomed — and rightly so. I feel that a gay driver would help to speed up the elimination of prejudice and help push our sport in a better direction.

Formula One is a very popular sport around the world. It relates to something that a lot of people do every day on a basic level or, even if they don’t drive themselves, they at least come across regularly: driving — or being driven in — a car. Although driving is, in and of itself, dynamic, I regret to say that some members of the driving community, if I can call it that, are nonetheless very slow — static almost — when it comes to progress.

Yet progress is inevitable. Cars have changed and will keep changing — for the better. Indeed, drivers have changed and will keep changing — again for the better. So I do have hope, and therefore I would absolutely welcome a gay Formula One driver. And, as I say, I think and hope our sport would be ready for one.

Are you aware of any Formula One drivers, past or present, who are or were gay but don’t or didn’t want to come out?

No, but I’m pretty sure there must have been some. I guess I wouldn’t know about them because they never came out, which is a shame.

You were happy to take the knee when Lewis Hamilton sought support for the Black Lives Matter campaign, but a number of other drivers — while forthright in their condemnation of racism — were not. Is that a sign of how difficult it is to carry forward a message in sport, where issues many of us would see as basic human rights are read as politically charged?

All of us have to make our minds up for ourselves. I’m sure that, as I was and I am, the 18 other Formula One drivers were broadly supportive of Lewis’s aims, whether or not they stood or knelt to show that support. What mattered is that we all showed up and were together.

But, yes, I always took the knee, and I usually positioned myself alongside Lewis to do so. He and I see eye-to-eye on a lot of things.

Both you and Lewis Hamilton have spoken out in support of the LGBTQ community — how did you come to be such an ally?

For me, it’s very simple: how can anyone think they have the right to dictate to someone else how they should live or whom they should love? The answer is: they don’t have that right. I’m happy to stand up for that principle.