Vaca Ponderosa

TLDR: the issues in George's car will not be solved, and they will repeatedly be converted into his own shortcomings because Mercedes wants to cover up their incompetence and it plays perfectly into TW's prodigy project. Plus some other ramblings.

The mysterious shape-shifting issues and their obscure solutions

So, after George had seemingly found his mojo again and handily outperformed Atoneli (what a surprise!), a mysterious straight line speed deficit appeared. That's as "nothing the driver can do about it" as it can get, so you're welcome to follow the sabotage route here; we sure have enough evidence to justify it. But that's not what I want to discuss, so we move on.

The difference between the two cars got so blatant even mainstream F1 media started to question Mercedes about it. So Mercedes launched a (always dreadful) reparation tour, with pictures of the drivers together, stories of friendship and some other bullshit. They also claimed they finally found the issue and fixed it. Many GR fans got cautiously optimistic; however, it did not last long.

First off, they didn't fix shit, as we're seeing this very weekend. To be honest, they wouldn't have even if they were actively trying to — which I'm not convinced they are — because this is the team that spent the last few years weekly having issues and saying something along the lines of "we need to analyze and understand what happened". They have yet to finish analyzing and understanding any of those. But they need to maintain the image of a top Formula 1 team; they can't have people highlighting their shortcomings and digging around their failures.

Second, and most damning of all: while Mercedes Official says there have been problems in his car and they are working hard to solve them, yada yada, some people claim they spoke to sources inside the Mercedes garage who confirmed there is no issue at all and George is just making a fuss trying to blame his underperformance on the car. On the mainstream F1 media, the "it's all his driving style, he can't adapt to these cars" is on full swing again. Quotes like Lando's gain all the space on social media. Additionally, because George has been one of the few drivers who didn't trash the new regulations, many fans take his issues — which are directly related to these new PUs — as karma.

Now take a look at Mercedes' statements again with these views in mind. At the beginning of the weekend, they reported that "an element deep in the code" of George's PU was the mysterious problem. Resta also said "we're really thankful to George for having challenged us and highlighted an opportunity where we needed to focus. He has been really good at understanding and highlighting things to us. We have finally been able to identify the solution and put a fix in place for this race". Very, very easy to translate this into "we made up some issue somewhere no one can look and pretended to fix it to appease Georgie boy".

I think we can expect more reporting on these lines to come up during the break: "analysis" that "prove" there is nothing wrong in George's car and it's all him failing to extract the best from these regulations. That among other shading.

We can expect something else from the break as well...

How to fake a prodigy

I believe it's quite clear by now that Torger and some other folks at Mercedes F1 have something big riding on Antoneli's success. Their egos, for sure, probably a lot of money too, and I suspect some positions in the team as well.

They rushed the guy into F1 believing from his early achievements that they have found a "new Verstapen". He underwhelmed in F2, but what really proved he was no prodigy was his performance in his rookie season: no "generational talent" takes a 21-3 beating. He might develop into a great driver in the future (much like George, Oscar and Lando, to name a few), but a prodigy he is not. True prodigies go toe-to-toe with world champions. And don't get me started on the logic of George's a bum, therefore taking such a beating from him means Antoneli is the second coming of Senna.

But Torger got an unique chance for a do-over with the regulation change, aided by a string of bad luck for George. Conservatively speaking, we can assume Japan and Canada were almost certainly Russell wins, which would mean the two Mercedes were alternating on top for the first six races. However, because things went south for George on those two, Antoneli got five wins in a row. Hence, the prodigy project could restart in full gear. They can claim their baby boy has the best understanding of the regs, is the most adaptable, the most consistent, the most anything. Since these regulations have literally all of the best drivers on the grid struggling with something or other, Antoneli has no one to challenge him.

I find it very suspicious how much effort all of F1 media has been putting into faking this particular prodigy, as I have stated in another post. I don't understand the reasons for it, but that's what's happening: they twist and turn and bend and stretch every piece of information to fit this narrative. Moreover, Torger has a history of stupid quotes aimed at anyone and everyone, but recently they're being consistently directed at discrediting George. Whenever asked about anything regarding his senior driver, Wolf releases one or more of the four Ds: Downplay, Dismiss, Deny, be a Dick. It's been very effective, especially because people, for unknown reasons, believe TW is some kind of racing god and knows what he's talking about.

My speculation is that Wolf & Co. get a cut of Antoneli's earnings, regardless of Mercedes. This would explain why they were happy to alude to a future Ferrari move. Drivers for the red team don't even need to win anything to be marketable, as evidenced by Charles (this is no shade to him, just a fact). Imagine being Italian on top of that. But Ferrari seems to have shut the door on their faces: they extended Sharl despite having two more years with him still under contract; and they appear to be following Lewis's leadership now, given his much more positive attitude this year. Suddenly, that path doesn't seem as clear anymore.

Mercedes Extended also doesn't seem too keen on the wonderkid. They barely use him for the brand's promotions. Neither do most of the sponsors, despite him being the championship leader for several months now. What we see is him all over the team's social media and (suspiciously) F1's marketing.

The association they love the most — other than with Senna, of course — is with Verstapen. Antoneli clings to him, talks about him frequently, and now Wolf brings up having both of them on his team. This is the other thing I think we can expect during the break: a lot of Verstapen linked to Mercedes. In fact, I'll be shocked if Antoneli isn't found hanging out on Max's yacht at some point this summer.

At this stage, however, it's quite certain Max to Mercedes is not going to happen, and not only because the board would hardly agree to that with all of it's caveats. It's also because that would be the fastest way to crumble the prodigy facade they are building. Sure, Antoneli beating Verstapen would cement his status. But, firstly, it wouldn't happen unless there are some shenanigans. Need I remind you Antoneli has only beaten 0-time-world-champion George Russell a couple of times without external factors taking his teammate out of the way? And secondly, can you imagine the mayhem if Max's car had 1/10th of the issues George's had while his teammate pulls away scot-free?

This Verstapen+Antoneli fantasy is coming from the unhinged parts of the fandom, the ones who believe one would be lucky to smell Verstapen's farts. In their minds, Antoneli would be ecstatic to play second-fiddle and, before the pseudo-prodigy can beat their goat a single time, Max would retire from F1, leaving the path open for his disciple. There's so much wrong with this idea, I'm not even gonna go there. The fact is the Verstapen camp requires all of the resources and limelight to be on him. And if they are on him, there is no wonderkid, cause faking this prodigy also requires all of the resources and limelight. What Wolf truly wants, I think, is to replace George with a true nº 2, who wouldn't be able to challenge Antoneli even if they wanted to.

Maybe all of this crippling of George we've been seeing since China is designed to make him cave into becoming this ideal nº 2. Or maybe they want him to quit, because his contract is way more secure than we imagine. Or maybe they just don't care at all whatever happens to him because they have their favorite driver to care for.

George's not helping his own case either

I don't think George's own words have been helping him much in this situation. For starters, he's the one who spoke a bunch of times about his driving style. That he supposedly used the same for 20 years, that it doesn't suit the regs as well as his teammate's, so on and so forth. It's perfectly reasonable that he's having some issues getting on top of all of the new elements these regs brought along, which means he can't extract the most from the car every time and hasn't been able to find the consistency he's renown for. But what the heck is he on about when he claims he drove the same way since forever, when we have seen him adapt incredibly quickly to different cars, regulations and circumstances? Is the "driving style" he speaks of the same thing most people are thinking of when they use this expression? I truly appreciate how sincere and detailed he is in his answers, but this type of statement ends up being ammunition for his haters.

George's fervent defense of his team and especially of Torger doesn't play in his favor either. It makes him look like a fool and leaves people confused whether they should or should not give credence to suspicions of favoritism. I get it, he can't say anything negative; but mere silence would already be enough.

And I acknowledge there's a lot that goes on behind the scenes we know nothing about, and that these people know each other much better than we know any of them. So it's plausible that the team and Wolf have been supportive and hardworking and whatnot. However, no matter what they do in private, what they've been showing in public is ugly as hell. The way Torger throws George under the bus repeatedly, the way Mercedes denies issues only to admit to them days later when nobody's paying attention anymore... this stuff is not ok. If nothing else, Mercedes and Wolf should to get their public act together.

A bit of a diversion, but I also believe that, by showing too little of himself, George created a blank canvas others can project anything they want, and his haters use it plenty — as does F1 media. I don't mean he needs to overexpose himself; in fact, I quite like that he's so private and often disappears from the face of the Earth on no-race times. Something in the lines of Albono's PR, though, would be more than enough. However, to me, it seems George's allowed himself to blend too much into the Mercedes corporate brand and doesn't show any of his personality like we used to see when he was at Williams. We, fans, know there's more to him because we dig in and pay attention, but what the mainstream fans see is only the occasional whiny radio or some misquote that passed through a ragebait filter. His characteristics are so faint on the general public's mind, others can claim anything about him and be received with little to no questioning. Plus, the little that is know about him is being gradually taken away by Antoneli's camp, as I discussed in another post.

I don't believe George's a fool at all, but at the same time I don't understand what he's doing. Does he truly believe in this mess of a team? All F1 teams are somewhat messy, so maybe this isn't as bad as we think? Does he seriously trust Torger despite all the red flags? Is there something there that we are not seeing? George's a multimillionaire, so why doesn't he pay someone to take care of his image and help him create a more interesting narrative? Is all of this tied to his contract with Mercedes? Is he unable to make any moves? Is he working on this stuff behind the scenes?

In a split second, George analyzed the situation with the flags and decided on the course of action most likely to get him pole position anyway. With a few more seconds, he formalized his defense in case of an investigation and even had time to lament the loss of his generational lap.

Until the end of the broadcast, commentators and team personnel alike hadn't fully understood what had transpired. Why was his lap not being deleted? How could he possibly be 2 tenths fastes if he lifted for the yellow flag?

Hours later, there were pundits around the world still confused.

It will take years, I tell you, until half of the F1 fanbase can finally grasp what happened at the 2026 Austrian GP qualifying. Years!

The most bizarre thing is how they are outright copying everything George Russell and forcing it onto Antonelli and then it's suddenly the best thing someone has ever done.

George has the T-pose because he pushed against all the mean comments and clowning trying to take him down. Antonelli has a noncommittal "signature pose" because George has one, but he's supposedly so full of personality.

George is known for being smart and analytical, so articles spring saying Antonelli is the most intelligent creature and comprehends the new regulations better than his teammate. As if we can't see that he's being remote controlled by Bono.

People start to sympathize with George's string of bad luck, then it's soon flipped around to poor Kimi is the unlucky one, while George does nothing and gets everything handed to him.

George has a couple of weekend when his car isn't falling apart and handily outperforms Antonelli (what a surprise!), and suddenly there are "analysis" "proving" George is much slower even when he wins.

George talks about having the support of Mercedes, Ola and Toto in these hard times, and immediately the media is all about how Mercedes is Antonelli's family while they cherrypick some picture to prove everybody hates George, from the other driver to his own team.

George has said nothing but praise for Kimi's driving, while Antonelli is busy making up mind games and shading his teammate to Italian media. And George is the two-faced one.

Now they are even dressing Antonelli in a suit and sending him to Wimbledon to latch himself to Sinner, despite Jannik repeatedly saying he's very close to George and that he is rooting for him above anybody else.

There are countless exemples over this year. It's so persistant there's no way it isn't deliberate. What kind of influence does Antonelli's camp have that they got most of F1 media to put so much effort into turning everything he does into the best thing someone has ever done?

Also, someone at the top at Mercedes has to be into this as well, giving the very strange communication going on at their social media, post-race comments and race debriefs, often giving contradictory information and backtracking stuff.

Austria's celebrations showed that a large chunk of Mercedes is plenty happy to see George win. Even Toto seemed completely fine with it. So it may or may not be him who is pushing George down to hype Antonelli up. Or maybe the Antonellis have some shit on him as well, who knows. It's all speculation on my side anyway.

And indignation!

I ask because I find very intriguing the collision of these two radically different styles of fandom, represented nicely — well, not so nicely — by the recent project Chinese fans will be bringing to Silverstone and the subsequent pushback.

From my experience with other types of media, East Asian fans in general have a very visible, creative, and I'd say business-savvy way of expressing their support. They are highly productive and dedicated. It's quite the contrast against the usual buy-merch-and-affront-people modus operandi in sports fandoms.

As has been pointed out multiple times by George fans and a bunch of other smart people, there are heavy misogynistic undertones, overtones, and monotones in the F1 fandom. Heck, there is just a massive amount of contempt for anything that makes women and queer people happy, really. So we can very much expected some clashing.

On one hand, I understand some of the criticism, because I do feel bad seeing people spend their hard-earned cash on millionaires. On the other hand, it's their money to do whatever they want with it. Moreover, I can't help but appreciate just how smart East Asian fans often are with their spending. Take the Silverstone project as an example: other fans will have no idea who organized it or how many people were involved; they will simply see George all over the place and feel that he is very popular, very loved, and very cool — even if they try to hide it under scorn of "kpop fan behaviour".

The Chinese fans are working to make GR's home race special for him, something that Mercedes is not even trying to do. Hopefully, George will see the ads, and they'll lift his spirit. I believe this is great for the morale of the grussell sprouts as well, who have been quite gloomy lately and can use some positive vibes.

Everyone agrees that Toto wants the "prodigy" driver pairing, so he's trying to get rid of George. Everyone takes as a given that if George doesn't win the WDC this year, that means Kimi has surpassed him, and he'll never get another chance — he'll be Ricciardoed, if you will.

I have to wonder, why are you a George fan if you think so little of him? If you underestimate his talent to the point of assuming he's replaceable? If you depreciate his personality to the point of believing his team dislikes him? If you undervalue his standing in the sport to the point of imagining he'll be dropped to the midfield or even out of F1? If you pay no attention to his words? If you doubt his ability to win the WDC when the circumstances are challenging?

Max and Lewis's fans (I guess we can add Alonso's here too) simultaneously amuse me and annoy me with how fervently they believe their driver is the best to ever walk on earth. But even if I find them quite silly, I also envy their unwavering trust, their unabashed support. Meanwhile, we are so timid and hesitant.

I'm not trying to tell other fans what they should think or how they ought to behave. Being a fan is an emotional and ultimately personal experience. We're in a public space, and everybody here has the right to feel what they feel and express whatever they want.

But this is my personal and emotional experience as a GR fan: I wish that when I browse the george russell tags, I could find more recognition of his skills, more praise of his character, more (substantiated) defending against criticism of his performance, and more advocating of his future WDCs. Just a lot more glazing, really.

At the beginning of the year, Alex said that, of all the drivers, he believed the new regs would suit Lewis the best (and was clowned for it, Cassandra 2.0). I'm in no position to be analyzing driving styles, but some conversations on Reddit seem to grasp the bigger picture:

Lewis's driving style is very aggressive, braking late and making more of a V shape on the corners. Kimi's style has largely been compared to Ham's.

George's style is very smooth, braking early and making U shaped corners.

This difference means George tends to lose time in low speed corners, but is really fast on medium and high speed corners. The stability of his approach worked great with the ground effect cars, because it didn't disrupt the airflow under the car as much. However, the 2026 regulations removed the emphasis on the floor and made the cars a lot more stable, so Lewis's style has minimal downsides now. Also, the cornering speeds have dropped overall, meaning more low speed and fewer high speed corners.

From that, we can infer that the optimal setups offered by the computer for the 2026 cars can be applied for Kimi nearly straight up, as the new regs play directly into his strengths. For George, not so much. Hence the setup troubles that he's been having. His feel of the car doesn't quite match the data, and he and his team keep second-guessing themselves when they compare with how things are going on the other garage — leading to confusion and unnecessary tweaks between FP3 and Quali.

So we're doomed then?

Not necessarily. First, he can adapt. Albon — our main source for this piece — has said he believes George is one of the most adaptable drivers on the grid. And we have seen that, many times. How he studied Lando's racing line in Spa 2021 during the red flag and used that to change his approach and put his tractor in P2. Or a couple of months ago when he started getting intermittent power steering assistance mid Q3, in an already challenging rain soaked Vegas, and still managed to secure a P4. Plus, we don't know how much of George's style is his actual preference and how much is just because that's what worked best for the past few years.

Second, George and his team can explore alternative setups and focus more on his feeling of the car, since he is the one who will have to drive it after all. It doesn't matter if a certain setup is theoretically better if it doesn't give George the confidence to push all the way. I wouldn't expect them to get it right every single time, but Barcelona was evidence that it can work, with George dunking 3 tenths on Kimi in qualifying.

Additionally, Mercedes can bring updates to help him, much like McLaren did for Lando last year, which allowed him to have quite a big jump in performance. And, if all fail, in-race strategy can still make a slower car get a better result, as seen with Lewis this very weekend.

So we're not doomed, then?

Well, not necessarily. For one Mercedes is notoriously bad at in-season development. Their strategies suck too. I swear the team writes the strategy for every race at pre-season testing and clock off, because they are completely incapable of reacting to anything (quali results, safety cars, other team's strategies, weather, you name it).

Moreover, time is not on George's side. We still have 2/3 of the races to go and a lot can and will happen. But he is down a lot of points, even if to little fault of his own. His side of the garage is not helping either, making foolish mistakes and failing to give him crucial information that could have lead to much better results. He can't be flawless whilst adapting/testing, so he really needs his team's support right now, but their competence is questionable. And let's not forget that gaining points on your teammate is always harder. Even if the team is not prioritizing one over the other, it's not gonna go all out to take points from them either.

I'm afraid this season is going to be an uphill battle for George.

That's his challenge to face, though. All we, fans, can do, is to continue to support him, show appreciation for his achievements and never fall for the washed allegations.

It's all fun and games when George is the butt of the joke, as all theses fandoms have something against him specifically.

But the Kimi Hype Train is coming to get their men!

Who needs the old predestinato when the new one is even Italian? Who needs the old Max Verstappen when the new one can do everything even younger and doesn't have the anger issues? Who needs Lewis Hamilton when the new "global superstar" is white and so bland he doesn't bother anyone?

First, the premise: I really doubt Toto loves Kimi and hates George. He loves money, spectacle and a narrative that portrays him as the best TP ever. He'll get behind either driver if it suits his ego.

Therefore, for one, Mercedes needs to get the WCC. It's embarrassing that they were outclassed by their customer team two years in a row. They need George's car at least functioning for that. It may seem like they don't realize or care about their faults, but their attitude is a cover up, a diversion. They've done this plenty: "hey, don't look at this ugly blunder, look at this shiny thing instead, aren't we just awesome?". They know they messed up, but they'll always pretend they didn't.

For two, sure youngest whatever is cool, compensate for the miss with Max, yada yada. They can still get that for the next three years, though. You know what else is cool? Largest point deficit ever overcome to win a driver's championship*. And George would take it by a lot.

Just last year, Toto was saying that he didn't think Max was the only driver who could close a huge point gap, that Red Bull had improved a lot to help him and so on. He also seemed almost giddy at the idea of managing another intense intra-team title fight in Canada this year. He takes great pride in handling the Lewis-Rosberg years — although, what he has to proud of in that I do not know. Furthermore, Toto may sound borderline senile often, but he's not stupid. He knows George's quality as a driver.

Bottom line is, if George can shift the momentum — and he can can, he's the better driver by a margin and already came close to taking the wins in Japan and Canada despite several issues — there's a real possibility that Toto and Mercedes will back him up, at least enough to let him drive. Because that would be one sexy narrative, with Mercedes front and center in every way. And if George fails, the wonderkid takes it, so it's a win-win situation. Whether having the support of an incompetent team can successfully lead to this outcome is another story.

The most glaring example I can give of what I mean is probably how Lewis was washed in 2022. And the he wasn't in 2023. And then he was again. And now he isn't once more.

Right now, we are witnessing people lauding a certain driver as a prodigy based solely on the fact that he got five consecutive wins, but has he actually done anything truly impressive?

Despite having a top 4 car for his rookie season and the fastest car by far in the second one, we can count in one hand the number of times he showed something a bit more interesting. We might not even need the full hand. To be honest, what we have really seen him do is keep the car on the track (mostly) and get good results when everything goes right and he isn't challenged in any way. But when things don't go as smoothly he has nothing to show.

Meanwhile, we have seen George and a few other drivers pull really incredible results from subpar machinery and against very difficult circumstances, but because they weren't wins, I guess they count for nothing, right?

This post is just a little rant against the idea that George is washed, in fact, against the idea that he's even challenged by his teammate on a talent basis, at least for now. Because if we look just a little beyond the standings, we can see that, when Kimi gives his all and has a very good performance, occasionally he can beat George, especially if external circumstances get in George's way. When George's on it, thought, he stands no chance. Essentially what I mean is, Kimi's best can, sometimes, juuust edge out George's average, but George's best is untouchable.

I believe George when he says he is not quite connecting with the car. He looks like he is fighting with it all the time. Yet, he still managed to pull a P1 out of his ass in Canada against his teammate who had everything going perfectly on his end.

That's how I personally evaluate drivers: not by what they can get when all is good, but by what they can do when everything is going to shit.

That is why I ended up a GR63 fan.

No championship points are given for Driver of the Day, most glazed by Sky Sports pundits, favorite of their team's social media manager, less insulted by peevish redditors, or whatever.

As a matter of fact, most former WDCs were widely hated by the time they earned their titles. That didn't hinder them, though. Articles criticizing them didn't actually make them suck, and booing didn't stop them from stepping on the podium and collecting their trophies.