Listen nobody wants my opinion on this but I’m 99% sure the dark secret Carlos knows about Alex is just that Alex isn’t polite/professional at a surface social level lol and this is quite apparent to his fans but surprising for everyone else (extended analysis below the cut)
Disclaimer. I don’t fucking know these people. At all. I’m speculating based on what I’ve noticed. Their personalities are all heavily wrapped up in PR. It’s hard to see what’s real and what’s not. The posts i see (even though I’ve seen a ton of content for both drivers) are probably a biased selection. This opinion is a biased opinion because I am a fan of both drivers. Don’t take this too seriously. It’s not a hate post for either driver. I’m tagging the antis because I don’t actually want to start a fight. It’s just something I’ve come to notice over the last few years worth of content and think other people might find it interesting to ponder.
To explain, my take is that Alex is generally a good person/moral [to be clear nobody on the current grid is actually moral, but comparatively speaking he’s pretty moral], but at a surface interaction level he’s not particularly polite or professional. He’s constantly making messy/bitchy comments about other drivers/media whatever.
This has thrown Carlos off for a long time now. In the Williams surprise two kids video, Carlos mentions that Alex likes to complain a lot and is rude. He’s before that mentioned in multiple press things that Alex is often rude to/firm with the team in ways he finds off-putting. This is especially notable, because the way Alex is doing these things usually benefits Carlos, but it’s bothersome to him regardless. None of this is a surprise to me. Carlos, in my opinion, is one of the most PR trained if not the most PR trained on the grid. His whole persona is polite, classy, professional, yet silly man. If you listen to enough of his interviews, he contradicts himself a lot and the most recent one is always a take that is more “PR trained.” For example, as he was leaving Ferrari he mentioned not knowing much about Alex but being surprised to hear people were drilling into him how good Alex is. But in more recent interviews, he’s implied that he’s always seen Alex to be a staunch competitor. It’s the small things like that where you see how Carlos tailors himself to always be as polite as he can be particularly within formula one. In Ferrari, he was always pushing back against teammate beef by saying it’s not appropriate to shit talk a teammate over the radio and in the media. However, at the same time, you can see when his classy facade breaks. I’ve seen a lot of really iffy interactions on his end that don’t sit right with me, and those almost all occur when the other person isn’t important to formula one.
Alex is the complete opposite. I’ll make this its own post one day, but Alex (and his media strategy) involves him being chaotic and also a bit bitchy. He’s pretty blatant about this. He refers to himself as a diva often, talks shit with anyone who will talk shit with him, and likes to stir the pot with other drivers. I’ll make a longer post eventually on why I think this is his PR strategy, but when people talk about his nice guy reputation, he tends to rebuff it and has more than once done so by indicating that he is “more of a diva than people realize” and has “dark humor.” He’s explicitly bringing attention to the way thay he’s interpersonally difficult. However, it’s worth noting that people who work with him pretty overwhelmingly come to his defense. I’ve seen Williams social media people in comments of a random influencer post defending Alex. Once there was a small snafu with a photag calling out Alex for being rude and Kym and others immediately came to his defense. Alex Jacques refers to Alex as one of the nicest guys on the grid and at the same time tells a story of Albono terrorizing him on broadcast by showing the camera a photo of Jacques with a terrible haircut for absolutely no reason. Alex also helped Carlos following Carlos’ appendectomy with how to deal with the car buckles, and has given multiple of his teammates driving advice over the radio. I won’t get into more, but there are a lot of things i see him do on a deeper level that have a pretty moral connotation to them, but on that surface level? He’s calling media lazy, his fellow drivers dramatic, cussing out his race engineer, and causing as much trouble as he can.
Essentially, to be super clear, Carlos is very nice and polite on a surface level, to somewhat of an extreme level in my opinion, and it’s wrapped up heavily in his PR. Alex, on the other hand, is intentionally rebuffing any impression that he is a nice person on a social surface, despite the fact (and in my opinion because of the fact) that he has a pretty moral core. When people say Alex is moral or a good person, they don’t mean that he’s polite, because honestly, he’s often not (and I’d argue intentionally so). However, thats how Carlos sees morality because the core of Carlos’ morality has to do with fairness, politeness, graciousness, and professionalism, particularly in the workplace. So for Carlos, hearing that Alex is such a good person and then witnessing him having a diva fest every six minutes and continuously doing things Caco would behest Carlos over, is probably pretty offputting
Also again just to underscore, I don’t think Alex is actually moral. I just mean in comparison to f1 drives in general and I don’t mean to say there’s a huge gap or anything. There’s not.
