I blog therefore I am

0:27 "it's not that fast". i don't know anything about cars, but the comments said he's in a GT3RS and google says that car costs $225k and the porsche website says it's the "perfect companion for the racetrack", so i'd say he is, in fact, driving a very fast car

BUT it does to my idiot brain register as a car (as opposed to the F1 cars that truly look like toys) and the whole track does vaguely register as a normal-ish kind of highway

so despite it being a fast car on a racetrack, this is a much more familiar-to-the-driving-I-do-as-a-regular-human scenario than anything else i've seen f1 adjacent

alex starts driving, vroom, the car makes pretty nice noises. the landscape is passing quickly, he's clearly going fast, but like. my brain can follow what's happening. it's too quick for the corners but if he were just going straight... that's like reasonably comparable to a normal driving experience

you can see the effort of the car going so fast. say like 0:47, the ties squeal. at 0.52 alex almost TAKES THEM INTO THE BARRIER.

you can kind of see the work of it, that the car is being pushed. the rattling.

liam literally sees his own mortality and never recovers. he spends the rest of the drive squawking about how they and everyone else on the track might die.

but then, you guys. 1:30. ALEX VERSUS THE OTHER CARS

this is where the video goes from like la la to INTERESTING.

before we saw that alex was going quick but now that there are other cars for comparison, we see that in fact alex is going FAST. so fast.

the cars all move aside and he cruises through

i too have been passed on the highway by an maniac going double the speed limit, so again this is familiar to me. i can imagine how it would feel to be in those other cars while alex blasts on by.

liam has fully started screaming

2:20, liam thinks it would be a BIG ONE if someone crashed. alex's face is like. it's so good. he has this extremely attractive neutral expression and just looks focused.

i realized last year that i actually move my tongue from side to side, following the path of my eyes, when i'm looking around a lot while i'm driving. it turns out professional formula one drive alex albon does not.

Alex looks like someone you'd like to have driving you around. from the shrieking of his passenger liam, in fact you realize you would not. they have a laugh about how alex has already almost killed them that one time. 2:52 and alex talks about how he scared himself . we become extremely aware of the STAKES OF IT ALL

3:32, more cars. i, a human, think there's no space and am expecting alex to follow the flow of traffic.

alex albon, a race car driver, in fact goes after it.

4:20, cackling, revving the engine, alex is leaving but a hair between them and the cars they're passing. it goes from like "intense but within the realm of normal" to NEXT LEVEL.

4:35 alex starts laughing so hard he has to cover his face. thank goodness, now that things are so dangerous we've all gone hysterical with it, that alex is driving one handed with his other hand BLOCKING HIS VIEW OF THE ROAD.

if you're wondering if he slows down at this point HE DOES NOT.

instead he goes after the motorcycle. he gets that motorcycle quickly.

at about five minutes onward, we get ALEX VS. THE PORSCHE

and

guys

wow

at first, it's like, okay, that car is fast maybe we'll just....... NO. we won't just anything. alex is going AFTER THEM.

we start to see more of the driving of it all. it's not as much on the straights, but around the corners? alex is fully on the car.

5:46, you can see the tail lights on as the other car starts breaking. alex, meanwhile, appears to speed up.

they think the guy is going to let them pass but he does not

and in a way i'm glad because then we get to see...

6:09, Alex sits on the bummer, just so incredibly close to the car, tailgating like no one has ever tailgated before, and fully bullies the car into submission

just like fully watching the video, looking at alex, the pleasant face of a nice-seeming man, looking at the road and seeing what he's doing to the other drivers. look back at alex, the road, alex. within his beautiful head lives a demon

alex is driving so fast now that the car is doing something different from earlier in the video. it's gotten smoother. the world is just flying by. you can still hear the tires squealing.

6:35 & 7:08. alex comes upon cars again. the cars know about him now. they throw themselves aside, making space for him to pass.

i hope one day the other drivers see this video and know they were so thoroughly bullied by a professional driver. i hope one day they know peace again.

liam narrates "can you imagine how deadly this would be with two cars?"

7:17, alex does a little shoulder check. the dismissive look on his face would have some of you yapping.

7:30 onward. it actually feels like we're in a plane. he's driving so quickly. it's no longer familiar to me. i realize the scale of speed for formula 1 is incomprehensible to my soft brain, how close they come to the other cars, the level of aggression in even a no-stake little hotlap.

8:30 somehow one of the cars doesn't realize that the SECOND they see alex they need to jump aside. alex goes after them. liam yells, "Oh, death, I CHOOSE DEATH." alex passes the car. in actual human time it's been less than five seconds.

8:45 the zoom zoom part is done. liam says "there was one serious moment when i thought, I actually think we might crash." he holds his hands out the window to try to dry off the sweat.