#sbinnala

I wanna talk about my man Sebastian Vettel. The one and only. The Seb. The Sinbad Vennel. The s🅱️innala. The legend. This man does not get enough freaking credit and I feel it is high time to give him a shoutout. I know I talk a lot about Charles on this blog, but today I wanna mix it up and talk about one of my first racing loves from back in 2010, when I first started watching F1. 

Sebastian Vettel is fantastic. Truly, and wholeheartedly fantastic. 

Seb is a four time world champion. Four times. Under Red Bull, no less, not often seen as one of the powerhouse teams (Even with Max, they’ve been unable to beat Mercedes for the championship.) Currently, he is tied for fourth place with Alain Prost as one of the top F1 racers of all time. 

Seb has also been kicked around and mistreated by Ferrari for a couple years now. Whether it’s giving him a shitty car, forgetting to give him any strategy at all, or blatantly prioritizing Charles in every race, he never catches a break with this team. And through it all, what does Seb do? 

He smiles, he makes plans for a better future, he treats Charles with so much kindness and respect it melts my heart, he cleans up his trash when he crashes because of the car they left him with, he puts up with all of Ferrari’s nonsense, and never says a bad word about anyone involved. 

And in addition to all of that, Sebastian Vettel is just an absolute delight of a human being. He’s funny in an extremely clever way. He speaks his mind, while remaining polite and reasonable at all times. He treats every driver like a friend, especially those the media tries to depict as his enemies, like Lewis or Charles. He follows orders. He kneels with Lewis. He stands like a dad. He smiles like a golden retriever. Need I say more?

The beginning of the FP3 session was quite quiet, with Pietro Fittipaldi dominating the charts for the first 15 minutes of the session, his prowess in the Haas scaring off any potential competitors! Unfortunately, the rookie’s reign didn’t last long as soon the session got under way, with the Ferraris looking pretty good for a while. That didn’t last either, as both of the Ferraris ended up outside of the top ten when the session finished. Max Verstappen snatched P1 in this final session, 0.206 seconds off from Valtteri in second and Pierre Gasly coming in third about 0.15 seconds off of Valtteri. Our boy Russell unfortunately didn’t have the best practice session, ending in P7, but managed to get quite a few laps and practice starts in to prepare for qualifying. Also, he was surrounded by his best buds on the track, with Lando and Alex in P5 and P6 respectively. Charles also had to complete the Ferrari Mandatory Number of Spins Per Weekend, getting his spin out of his system at the tail end of the session.