emily³

Giving this an official title makes it seem like this is going to be some kind of well thought out think piece, but no it's just me rambling and venting. There are two main things my thoughts are circling around. The first can be encapsulated by the incident in Miami with Carlos complaining about Max's dive bomb and the second can be encapsulated by the unsurprising discussion about Isack and the second seat curse. I'll take each separately, but I think in the end they are connected and they are both used to demonize Max.

So I was pretty intentional about putting the fairness in quotes. Because I don't think the obsession is with actual fairness. It is obsessed with the perception of fairness, the image of fairness. Now, for this I'm speaking mostly about certain large sectors of the fandom and also about huge sectors of the media sphere. I have watched the Miami race and the overtake on Carlos a few times. Now there aren't that many angles to it, but I cannot for the life of me see where Carlos was pushed off track and I cannot see any contact. What I saw was an aggressive ultra late on the brakes dive bomb. Carlos was startled and angry about the move. I don't actually care much about that. I take every angry radio message with a grain of salt. They are driving around with heart rates around 150 - 180 (sometimes higher) and the stakes are incredibly high for each and every one of them. So they get somewhat of a pass. (Though I will say what every Max fan said at the time. "Yes, Carlos, he can do whatever he wants. Wherever he is.") But the fans and content creators and journos get no pass, no grace. The hate started almost immediately. "Max can't drive." "Max is dangerous." "It was within the rules, but I can't condone what Max did there." and most importantly "Max drives dirty." What are we fucking talking about? Not only was what he did fully within the rules it was what racing is supposed to be. Brave, bold, beautiful or sometimes ugly, but always brave and bold. It was after this that I came to understand the contingent of fans who like/love the new regs. It was like a lightbulb going off. The battery overtakes are clean, simple, and uncomplicated. No one needs to look or decide or adjudicate. No one needs to defend or be angry. They can just get their own battery and pass back. Easy peasy. And the fastest car wins. Clean and 'fair'. No one is fighting and no one is getting the best of anyone else. It becomes a race to the mediocre. And this is what I see happening in the 'second seat curse' discourse as well. A desire to be fair, by being mediocre. Here's the situation: Red Bull have a car. They have a mediocre car. It has a good power unit and a shitty chassis. They have two drivers who can both drive the car to or close to it's maximum speed. If they want to be faster they have to change the car. There are two ways to gather information with which to change the car - the telemetry/sensor data and the drivers. I assume both drivers have given feedback, but - and I say this without shade to Isack - Max has insane levels of car-fucking wheel knowledge. They bring upgrades in for Miami based mostly on Max's feedback. And he makes good. However at the same time Isack's time falls off. People bring back the second seat curse and whether directly or indirectly blame Max. Either he is the evil sucker of souls, demanding that the team build the car to his specifications so he can win and the teammate is fucked over or he is just so good that the team don't know how to build cars anymore because he 'hides' the faults. I call bullshit on both assumptions. For the first, no teammate other than Sergio Perez has ever even hinted at purposeful sabotage. If that was what was happening you would damn sure hear about it. To the second point, just no. Max Verstappen has never ever ever been shy about sharing how bad the cars are and what specifically is wrong with them. He knew there was something wrong with the steering system from the first lap of winter testing. He told the team and it just took time for them to find and fix the problem. Once they did, Max extracted more time out of the car. Now there were a lot of reasons why Isack had a bad weekend and the team for sure fucked up his floor, getting him disqualified. That's a separate issue. In the end Isack didn't get slower. Max got faster. The team should be chasing faster. But I get the feeling there are parts of the fandom that feel the team should be chasing 'fairness', should be instituting some form of Papaya Rules. They'll end up with two drivers fairly together - in the midfield.