jo

I just wanted to leave a little introduction pinned on my blog and talk a bit about my asks.

Hi my name is Jo! I use this blog to mainly talk about motorsports, sometimes more F1, sometimes more MotoGP, usually in a longer format (Anything else, I tend to post on bluesky).

My favorite F1 driver is Charles Leclerc, but I'm also a big Lewis Hamilton fan and he was my favorite driver for many years. For MotoGP, my favorite rider is Pecco Bagnaia, but I started out as a big Enea Bastianini fan (and still am).

I get a lot of asks and a lot of them tend to be negative towards the athletes I support. Some of them I will answer if I feel I have anything relevant to say, but most of the time I'm not gonna bother replying to people who are only looking for validation to their hatred. I'm pretty stubborn and I hold strong beliefs that I know how the athletes I rep perform well.

I'm reading takes like "Oh my god I can't believe Pecco was able to break out of the brainwashing spell that Vale had him under and made him hate Marc" and my only reaction is:

Why do you guys like to ragebait yourselves? 💀

Nothing in that post or anything I wrote since was about how people can't complain about Ferrari incompetence or that Charles fans can't be upset at what's happening.

My entire point is that the situation already sucks enough as it is. Starting to go down the road of conspiracy theories and making Lewis the enemy will only make you more miserable. If that's what you wanna do, be my guest, I don't care.

Even when not everything is going great, I'm always happy for Charles and Lewis when they have good moments. Those are the drivers I rep at the end of the day.

And why should I value former F1 drivers's statements more than what Charles' own TP is saying? 😭. Some of these people have historically said really nasty things about Charles, most of these people produce really bad takes because they think being a former driver provides them with all the knowledge in the world when it doesn't automatically mean they have insight into what's going on with every team.

Fred saying Charles is still fast (and he's just stating facts) and that the problem comes from all the adapting he's been having to do, including the brakes, is not even a great look for Ferrari because it's not normal for a driver to be in a situation where he had to switch brakes 7 races into the season.

Charles is on his 3rd weekend of using brakes different from the ones he's used this entire week. He's 3 tenths off pole, ahead of a Mercedes. Last week he had a pole if the FIA knew their own rules!

Writing a post where half of it is me talking about how I'm against the idea of Ferrari sacrificing Charles' season to win titles and still having to read this ask:

Ferrari isn't applying some sort of shadow team orders to benefit Lewis. Ferrari has been extremely incompetent with Charles and sometimes incompetence, even if one driver is suffering more from it, is just incompetence.

There was an obvious mistake with an update on the car (likely with the software) that affected Charles' brakes but not Lewis'. That sucks, it sucks really badly, but we don't need to make it suck even more by spreading conspiracy theories that Ferrari knew fully well the update was gonna have a negative impact on Charles.

As for things that have happened during races, for example in Monaco with Charles basically serving Lewis' penalty too, even with all the improvements, which absolutely exist, that Ferrari has made over the years, the team still at times struggles with managing two drivers and quick decision making, so I don't think there's anything more than that happening there either.

I think taking any big conclusions, negative or positive, from one race is never ideal. So when I'm asking "Where is Ferrari's championship fighting car?", I'm not saying all of Ferrari's races will be like Austria where we lose points to both Mercedes, but the key element when you are the chasers in a title fight is consistency, and Ferrari immediately failing in that department in the first race after a win may not make me worry about Austria being the standard but it makes me worried about it not being an exception. Looking at the positions Ferrari and Mercedes are in, Ferrari can't really afford more Austrias.

My original point regarding the possibility of Ferrari applying team orders is that this conversation is simply stupid to have until Ferrari actually starts showing consistency in their chase. Team orders don't put a Ferrari in front of a Mercedes today. And full disclosure, I don't agree with the idea of team orders even if Ferrari starts showing consistency. There's no "BUT IF IT WAS CHARLES" here. One of Ferrari's biggest strengths is the driver duo they have on their hands. Charles may not really be in the fight at the moment but Ferrari should be doing everything to bring him to the fight while keeping Lewis there. Ferrari needs their odds as high as they can possibly be, taking one car out of a fight where there are two Mercedes, in my opinion, is deliberately lowering them.