wipe away your tearstains

Looking back, I should have realised we were in for madness when George started the year by commenting on Alex’s winter training camp photos “Is this Baywatch,” calling Alex his best friend in Formula One (after pretending to hem and haw), and telling the world that Alex can’t dance, and Alex started the year by backing George to win the championship, picking George as his heavy hitter in his F1 team (after spending the rest of the video trying to pick cheap drivers), and saying George would be both his best man at his wedding AND his emergency contact. They both then did their best to alienate the rest of the grid by answering only each other for the drivers they’re close to (even though lots of other people said Alex). If there was any doubt, they really cemented their intentions by arriving at testing together, and then. Well then Alex decided to talk about George’s dick on commentary, of course.

arriving at testing together, stating their intentions for the year I need to linger here for a second because it truly makes me crazy. LIKE Alex Jacques and Jolyon Palmer are having your standard testing filler chat, reminiscing about the 2020 Sakhir Grand Prix (and George’s feet being too big for the car), and you can just hear Alex giggling in the background, ready to make his bad joke about big shoes meaning a big dick. A lot of times, one gets the feeling that Alex speaks without thinking, but this was soooo premeditated it’s crazy. In the opinion of this humble scholar, Alex was absolutely laughing because he was trying to imply George has a small dick, and that’s why he was hyena laughing when George came to see him at Williams hospitality later. That’s my truth. 

Testing was the first time we got a hint that it could be a good season for Williams, and if that wasn’t enough to drive a person crazy in the run up to the first race, Drive to Survive blessed Galex Nation with THEEE Singapore episode, which opens with Alex and George flying out together, and Alex filming George for his private collection and calling him tight. Sure! 

thank you for everything netflix

When the first races of the year finally came, we got the return of driver’s parade chats and media pen debriefs, and in Japan, the Williams admin blessed us with footage of George begging for Alex’s old backpack at the hotel. Several things about this drive me crazy. First of all, the way Patrick says off camera that he had already said that George was going to want his old bag, like it’s that much of a recurring theme in their lives. And second of all, the way George’s hand kind of reaches out for Alex’s arm before he seems to realise he’s being Too Much, and he pulls back to put his fingers in his mouth instead. Incredible stuff, that would only get better at the end of the season when it turned out George bought a matching backpack himself after all. Never give up on your dreams, kids. 

one of my favourite photos of the year, hashtag yearning

In Bahrain, we got perhaps the most egregious media pen flirting to date when after free practice (when Alex nearly crashed into Luke Browning who was driving Carlos’s car for a young driver’s test), George swanned up next to him and started to give him shit. The two of them were laughing at each other and talking about who was the alpha like there was no one else in the room, all notion of giving interviews completely forgotten, and looking back at this footage now, I think it’s clear why the FIA decided to give us precisely zero Galex press conferences this year: they simply can’t be trusted. 

two men who like each other too much to be normal

Off track, they remained glued at the hip, surprising no one. After a padel match with Carlos and Lando, George showed off his swish new car to Alex, and every time I look at this video I want to cry laughing. My personal favourite part is when Alex bends down to look at the license plate at the back (which says 63OG), and then turns to George with glee on his face, clearly already thinking of a million ways to make fun of him. Around this time, we also got Alex picking George as an answer on Grill the Grid when George was Not an option, and Alex confirming on his lie detector test that he thinks George has nice abs. Thank you, Alex. 

This brings us to Miami, and I hardly know where to start. While Alex had already had a very strong start to the season, Miami was markedly good for him. In the sprint, Alex crossed the line 4th with George behind him in 5th, and when they got out of their cars in parc ferme, George waited for Alex so that they could yap and so that Alex could touch his back while they walked away. For the sake of the historical record, I must now document that post-race, Alex was given a 5-second time penalty that left him out of the points for driving too slowly under the safety car (which he found out about in the media pen). In a way, this too is Galex because his defence was that George was so close on his tail and it had been raining heavily, that he was just trying to be more cautious.

photo of galex yapping in miami to clense the post of alex's penalty We pick ourselves up and we go again, because the weekend was NOT over. Not only did we have the actual race left to come, where Alex finished 5th (which no one took it away this time) and Alex and George gave each other a thumbs up in the car, but more importantly, we had the LEGO RACE. I honestly still believe that the lego race is one of the most important things to have happened in the history of Formula One, and I’d be saying that even if it didn’t involve George crashing the Williams car into the wall. George was being a true on-track terror the whole time, so he deserved it entirely when his phone fell into the car and smashed, and he was honestly lucky that Alex is a big enough simp that he was willing to help him look for it. People will try to tell you that other things happened in the lego race and that George crashed into other drivers too, but even when George crashed into Lando and made Lando shout his name, to George it was still about Alex, as he made clear to anyone viewing his instagram stories. The two of them were really just joined at the hip the whole weekend, which makes sense because it was also the weekend that George announced his pregnancy. 

two of the greatest images i've ever seen

Now I’m down on record as thinking Imola should be cancelled every year, but in 2025 I had to kind of eat my words because in the run-up, we got a media event so spectacular that Galex nation might never see the like again: the George & Alex-centric episode of The Fast and the Curious Podcast. While sadly we didn’t get them winding each other up jointly, they appeared back to back, and wasted no opportunity to rib the other as much as they could. We received crucial lore, such as Alex saying George ditched him to hang out on a yacht, and George hitting back by saying that Alex doesn’t respond to him when Lily’s around. I don’t exaggerate in the slightest when I say that George’s tone of voice when he said “Oh now you want me” has haunted me since May, and I know that Galex Nation has collectively not moved on from Alex goading the hosts into calling George “Princess George,” or George calling Alex an alpha male in return (Alpha count for the season: 2).

George may have felt he had something to apologise for – after even Alex’s cats were winding him up about spending too much time on yachts – because he was soon after spotted in the Williams garage. For those keeping track at home, this was the first time he was seen in the Williams garage in the year – it wouldn’t be the last. In the race itself, Alex finished 5th again (!), and on the back of Kimi inviting his school class to the paddock, we got Alex telling the world that George isn’t school-smart, and in revenge for George roasting his dancing at the start of the year, Alex slandered George’s dancing skills right back. 

It’s slightly daunting to realise that I’ve written so much and we haven’t even reached Monaco yet because Monaco was almost certainly THE Galex event of the calendar year. The weekend started off well with our boys joined at the hip at the F1 movie premiere and George confirming that he doesn’t wear underwear when he races, but no one could’ve predicted where the on-track action would take us. After George’s engine blew up in Q2 (and ruined his end-of-year stats), in the race George ended up stuck behind Alex, who was driving intentionally slowly to help Carlos.

f1 movie premire aka sanctioned flirting time Already frustrated by his car failing him, he had a full crash-out on the radio about Alex’s grandma driving, and eventually resorted to cutting the Nouvelle Chicane to get past him. Alex snitched on him for intentionally going off track, but George wasn’t about to let a five-second time penalty stop him – not even when the five-second penalty turned into a drive-through penalty for knowingly breaking the rules. Bloggers up and down the internet were posting about the Galex divorce, but not two minutes after the race, they had already made up, with George insisting that Alex buy him dinner (despite the fact that it was George who had intentionally cheated). Alex’s suggestion that they go for a drive-through was sadly thwarted by the fact that there aren’t any in Monaco. 

alex_albon: you’re welcome @.georgerussell63

Because god loves rpf, we then got a full debrief of the date, where George made it clear that the debt was not settled, and Alex spilled that it cost him 500 euros. Even weeks later, George still wasn’t done talking about it. Lobster pasta, you will always be famous to me.

As if to prove to the world that their marriage was strong as ever post-Monaco, in Spain, we got more media pen flirting where George told the press that Alex smelled, and Alex retaliated in social media videos by randomly bringing up how much George sweats for no reason at all, and stating unequivocally that he and George have the biggest bromance on the grid and that George is a whore for attention. 

Austria blessed us with an umbrella incident that was beautifully photographed by Lewis, and at Silverstone, Alex gave us the spiritual follow-up to the time George went to the mat defending him in 2020, and told the world that George was underrated and Mercedes should give him everything he was asking for in his contract negotiations. Never one to let a moment go unacknowledged, George thanked Alex by thwacking him on the arm in the media pen, and (in my reading of events) Alex responded by panicking before the driver’s parade that he had given too much of his feelings away. Best to cover it up by roasting his guy.

few things hit like an umbrella moment In Spa, yet another Galex Media event hit the towers when George crashed Alex’s post-quali Sky Pad interview for absolutely no reason at all, and spent the whole time he was on camera looking at Alex adoringly. Alex qualified P5 ahead of George’s P6, and George was clearly in such a good mood about it that he decided Alex still owed him for George helping him get his Williams seat, which Alex was absolutely not having, considering that George used to go to his family’s house for dinner when Alex wasn’t even there (sidenote: I would like to award this interviewer a medal on behalf of Galex nation for his good work in always asking the right questions). They were both then obviously joined at the hip giggling (and jumping) up a storm before the race itself, and the parc ferme shots gave us photos destined to be fic headers.