Drive to Survive will pay for convincing people through one heavily edited race that Yuki was "thoroughly outperformed" by Liam and Liam had his heart broken in Suzuka when the literal facts are
-Liam was told he would not be getting the seat before Singapore. This was literally said by him and also Yuki's manager. The rumor that Honda intervened in Suzuka to renew Yuki is blatantly false and nothing like what DTS showed.
-Yuki won the qualifying head-to-head 4-1. The one quali that Liam beat him at (Singapore) Yuki was impeded by Max in Q2 and looking at his Q1 time, he would have easily made it to Q3. Fair play to Liam though, he performed well in Singapore across the whole weekend.
-Monza and Singapore we weren't able to compare because Yuki didn't get to complete a single lap due to a DNS and DNF from Perez ramming into him. In races they both completed, Yuki placed ahead in Zandvoort (before a post-race penalty) and in Qatar after Liam crashed out. In Suzuka he finished one place behind because despite lapping faster, he was told to hold position and Alphatauri were coaching Liam to defend against him. So it's a mixed bag but Yuki comes out ahead.
Yes, Liam was the only one to score points in their 5 shared races. Fantastic work by him and something the team desperately needed. But in the 3 races where the AT had the best chances of scoring points (Zandvoort,Singapore and Monza), Yuki was not even able to start at the latter two and had some bizarre strategy in the first where he was kept on softs for 28 laps till he inevitably fell out of the points
-Yuki was the faster driver in terms of pace across all 3 races they shared.
Now let's be clear here: Liam did a fantastic job for someone who had to jump in at very short notice. He absolutely deserves a spot in F1. However, it's not Yuki who "stole his spot" by any metric. Look at the results of the four AT drivers last year. Yuki's points haul would have singlehandedly kept the team ahead of Alfa Romeo in the constructors. Not to mention he scored points and dragged the car to P11 multiple times at the beginning of the season when it was at its worst. He earned his renewal solely on merit.
Some of you are either a) so eager to discredit Yuki or b) so bored with current F1 that you need to artificially create narratives. Let Liam develop like a normal rookie instead of expecting him to beat an experienced teammate and then inevitably shitting on him when he doesn't. Has no one learned anything from the whole saga of "Nyck is gonna be team leader at Alphatauri and destroy Yuki". He is not the easy target y'all think he is.
I know this is a sport and there'll always be drivers or teams you hate/dislike but sending death threats or discrediting a driver's performance for stuff not in their control (and no, I don't believe Lando and the FIA are collaborating per se, the FIA are just terrible on their own accord) is wild behaviour...
If you hate Lando because he's said some questionable things about politics/Max/etc, then sure that's fair game. But your favs would pull team orders and stuff to win too if they had a shot at the championship and you know it. You can be upset about it (I definitely am) but as a huge Max and Oscar fan who could not gaf about Lando, going out of your way to dm him death threats/leave hate comments on HIS OWN CELEBRATION POSTS is so insane to me.
It's clear that some people just don't see the drivers as actual people or assume it's okay to pull this shit because they're public figures. This kind of hate wasn't okay when it was Max-targeted and it's not okay now, for any of the drivers.
Max winning his 4th title in Las Vegas... Daniel driving around Las Vegas in the Red Bull for the USA Road trip vid... Daniel's one point steal...Las Vegas will always be theirs
I think that "Yes!" is the most emotion we'll ever hear from him in the car
I spent too long on this so I figured I’d post it here! Just smth I made for fun. I’ll probably make one for the GP itself but no promises lol
What unlucky timing for a yellow flag... 😭😭
If anyone was wondering, here's the full list of Alex Albon's suffering today:
He pits super early for some reason (around Lap 9), then reports "We have a problem. Tire not on properly." The commentstors review the footage and say it doesn't seem like the tyre was loose.
He pits a second time, ends up a lap down.
Williams gets investigated for Albon's unsafe release, end up with a 10 sec penalty.
It's then revealed he also damaged his only set of hards when that first pit stop got messed up
He pits around Lap 55 just to retire the car. DNFs the race.
is the lewis hamilton and fernando alonso dynamic not just mr turner and dinkleberg on a less cartoony scale
It's race week again!! I offer: a Max Verstappen poster.
Someone needs to bring the williams mechanics a care package because I think they all deserve one after the last few races specifically