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What makes it ten times worse is their blatant lack of accountability. Publicly dismissing your driver when he says something is wrong with the car? Tell me this isn't clown behaviour? All it does is fuel the fire for the media and toxic fans to question his abilities instead of addressing the literal issues.

If the issues happened three times in ten races? Fine. New regulations, shit happens. But we're talking every. single. weekend. The moment one fire is put out, and another one starts. It’s not just a "he'll bounce" back. I've seen pure dominance when his car was fine. It's not this car doesn't suit his driving style. It’s pure negligence. This is arguably the most crucial season of his career. He is finally fighting for a championship, and the team is dragging their feet to fix or at least discover the issue? I know the team works hard, but does working hard pay off?

Instead of trusting the driver who is actually feeling the car on track, they blame him. The media and fans eat it up because looking at actual data is too much work for them, only for the team to quietly admit weeks later that shocker the driver was right all along it WAS ON US MY BAD.

Look at the other side of the garage. When their driver complain, the team doesn't question his driving style they rush to find what's wrong and fix it. There is actual trust and urgency there they're aware this isn't just any other season where all they care about is scoring podiums and a couple of wins and it's a season were they have a huge chance in battling and winning the championship, which is why they’re running away with it. The other garage has the exact same resources, so what is the excuse? This goes beyond incompetence.

I don’t remember Z*k Br*wn last year ever jumping on the radio to publicly dismiss his drivers' complaints, but he still gets his fare share of criticism.

I mean, McLaren literally admitted to punishing Lando a chunk of the year for daring to actually race his teammate instead of trailing along and following their "rules" - except the telemetry showed that the fault in Lando's resulting wreck was Oscar's, not Lando's. The McLaren team strategist was also Oscar's personal strategist during this time. I could go on. But unless you pay attention to McLaren specifically, it was immediately forgotten when it came out because it looked so bad and conflicted with the narrative that was painted all over the media.

McLaren actively worked against Lando, Lando prevailed anyway, and only when it became too obvious, the truth "slipped out," and they were basically forced to let the garages operate individually did McLaren stop. You can see the immediate drop off that started when Oscar stopped receiving information/setups/strat discussion from Lando and no longer got default priority for qualifying runs and pit stops.

​I by no means intended to claim that the mcl teammate battle last year was perfectly equal, nor do I believe the claim that Zak was favouring one driver and Andrea favouring another 'balanced things out.' I don't subscribe to that logic at all.

​My intention was absolutely not to dismiss or minimize what Lando went through. I was one just as shocked and upset by how mcl weaponized his open honesty about his mental health to cover up their screw-ups. It was incredibly frustrating to watch the team paint his teammate as this perfectly composed 'stone-cold killer' while feeding a narrative to the media that Lando's issue was his mental health. It directly fueled toxic fan behaviour, leaving him wide open to horrific online bullying, being labelled 'too sensitive,' and worse. It was all to protect their image.

​When I noted that the situation felt 'different,' I was looking at how the team bosses wield their power publicly. Mcl hid behind the constant PR spin of 'Papaya Rules', which I agree aren't nearly as fair as they claim.

​The contrast I was trying to highlight with merc is that Toto Wolff doesn't face the same widespread scrutiny from the broader fanbase that Zak Brown does. Because Toto isn't as hated by the majority of the fans, he seems entirely comfortable being loud, aggressive, and highly public with his criticism and actively dismissing the complaints about the car on the radio and questioning the performance to the media.