rae

Listen, I get that the idea of ‘Carlando’ is a great way to get instant engagement and views on your team’s social media bc why wouldn’t it? Here we have one of the best teammate pairings in recent history that get along well and are genuinely happy for each other on and off track. And most importantly, everyone loves their bond too!

But what was the purpose of posting this tiktok almost a month after this moment had happened? Especially when it has no relevance to your current driver pairing that you should be actively marketing and promoting?

Sure the sounds of fans screaming driver’s names have been currently going viral and perhaps they wanted to use it, but you know a driver who also has a sound bite going viral? That’s right, it’s Oscar! Your current driver!!

It’s fair to say that the majority of us have been so disappointed with the McLaren marketing plan for this season, but it sucks even more when we barely get any good quality content of Oscar (and not just thrown together last minute videos where they’ve clearly plucked Oscar out of his lunch seat).

Sure, Oscar is naturally reserved and hesitant towards media, but when he’s given the opportunity (see prema videos or even the challenge/marketing videos from last year), he knows how to provide good quality and humorous content! He has a sarcastic, dry sense of humour that everyone loves! In fact, his personality is largely the reason why people went from hating/being indifferent about him for the first half of last year to being widely accepted and loved by all f1 fans!!!

So when content like this is sent out, that focuses on a pairing that ended 4 years ago, captioned with ‘more moments like this’ (yeah no we totally want more Mclaren Ferrari rival podiums and not double mclaren podiums) while we have breadcrumbs of content from your current drivers, it gives the impression that they just don’t care about promoting Oscar as part of this team (which is not true and he is clearly valued there, but it does not reflect online).

And what sucks the most is that the Mclaren social media platforms are what allowed us to get to know Oscar as well. Yes, he has a brand manager now and we are seeing more personal content from him, but compared to other drivers he is still largely private and offline (which he is more than entitled to be).

First they axe McLaren unboxed which didn’t highlight any of Oscar’s major achievements last year (Spa sprint, Japan first podium, and Qatar win(???!?!?)) and was the source through which we get to discover the team dynamic. And I don’t buy the excuse that it’s due to DTS rules bc all other teams are still putting out BTS vlogs and content.

Then they decide to archive all Instagram posts that highlighted those achievements and had extra content/videos of Oscar and Lando.

And THEN they barely put out any content of Oscar and Lando together and instead post 10000 videos and photos of Lando and Carlos (again nothing wrong with that, but there is still an imbalance).

What’s most unfortunate is that then people start to cast aside or disregard Oscar’s contribution to the team as a driver. We already have people saying that Oscar should go to Mercedes so that Carlos can come back to Mclaren. While obviously it’s not serious, it still highlights the impression that people have of Landoscar. And personally to me this is incredibly disrespectful to Oscar and to his efforts that he has made to drive the team forward with Lando (and the fact that both Lando and Oscar have said they work extremely well together and have similar driving styles with identical feedback - oh look, what a perfect recipe to create a championship winning car and healthy teammate dynamic!!).