HIIIIII!!! I Would Like To Ask About The Sewis Beekeeping Fic Please! 💚

HIIIIII!!! I would like to ask about the Sewis Beekeeping fic please! 💚

HIIIIIIII!!!! I suppose I didn't give it a very inconspicuous name haha whoopsie This wip has had two versions now since the original one corrupted. Originally it was supposed to be released around the same time as Juppy space and Intertwined whoopsie again So basically this takes place post retirement (kind of. for seb at least.) Lewis retires from F1 for he first time when he's 41, but isn't done and comes back the next season. The second time he retires he's 45 and still doesn't know what he's doing, doesn't know what hes' searching for by retiring again. It's not because he's been pushed out, no, several teams have made it clear he has a seat if he wants it. Motorsports have been a good chunk of his life for several decades now; He doesn't know how to be still. He should be in Grove, getting fitted for a seat, his body is itching for it, burning all over; So why is he stood on the doorstep of Sebastian's Switzerland home? Sebastian lets him in, Sebastian always let's him in. Lewis has been here before, a few years ago when he'd retired the first time, Seb had called him, invited him to stay and hide from the fallout on his couch. Crashing on the couch had soon enough turned into long heated nights in Seb's sheets. They cooked together, showered together, walked the nature. Then, at the end of the year when he'd answered his phone to the offer of a seat, Seb hadn't begged him to stay, hadn't even asked, really. So, Lewis had gone, not because he didn't want Sebastian, but because he wanted racing more. They still talked over the next few years, but nothing special. Maybe that's why he's here, to see if Seb will still let him in, to make sure. Seb had never showed any signs of being angry at him. Sebastian lets him in again, keeps him busy doing all kinds of chores and tasks. He acts like Lewis hadn't left, like he hadn't abandoned him like that. The only reason that Lewis retired again is because people had been getting "worried" about him. Toto and Bono, who'd both retired years earlier, Susie, who took up the role of fia president, His mum and dad. They worry that he'll end up like Niki, never keeping any family or friends close, being alone. Sebastian hadn't had kept bees the first time Lewis had stayed here, but he walks Lewis through it, the care that they need, how gentle they really are. He makes Lewis build bee houses, and while he does, Lewis tries to reconcile if Retiring and settling down is what he really wants, or if it's what people are expecting him to want. He builds some pretty wonky bee homes, but Seb just laughs and admits that he didn't really need more, he just wanted to give Lewis something to do and he was running out of chores. (spoilers but Lewis doesn't really want to retire, not in the way that Sebastian has, so far away from racing, but he does want Sebastian. The reason Sebastian didn't ask him to stay is because he knows that Lewis is different from him, he knows that Lewis will most probably always be close to racing in some way, and he's okay with that. He knows that if Lewis was forced to stay and settle for too long, he would become miserable, so Seb encourages him to come and go freely. Think like.... Moomin and Snufkin....)

Ask me about my wips

The Chrimer: 2015, F3.

Everyone loves a good rivalry.

Charles and Max's karting history could-- and probably will-- be their own primer, but for Charles' 2015 season only one part really matters: Max jumps from F3 to F1. This casts a long shadow on Charles as his childhood karting rival.

Charles spends most of the year getting asked about seeing Max compete at the highest level of motorsport, like in this segment from a South China Morning Post article about the 2015 Macau Grand Prix:

For his part, however, Leclerc is keeping the focus on what’s right in front of him, rather than on what the horizon might offer as he sets out to tackle the tricky Guia circuit for the first time, knowing, of course, the greats of racing who have gone out there before him and still with comparisons to former VAR – and current Formula One – star Max Verstappen ringing in his ears. “I am taking things step by step,” says Leclerc. “I want to arrive in Formula One when I am more than ready and Formula 3 is a good choice in that I can learn and develop. And I raced Max all through my karting years and we fought each other at the finish, so I have always had the comparisons with him and I am okay with them.”

The jump to F3 is a last minute surprise: Charles had originally been tipped for a full-time Eurocup spot. Eurocup would have been more of the Formula Renault 2.0 level of competition Charles had experienced the previous year; F3 was considered a promotion.

In an interview, Charles was asked why he decided on F3 instead of Eurocup:

"After the season of last year, my manager and I thought that it would be better to jump to F3! Firstly, there are 3 races per weekend and 11 weekends so we drive a lot and so we gain a lot of experience! Then loads of drivers were planning to do it! And I felt really good in the car and the tests went well."

Surprisingly, Charles picks to race for Dutch team Van Amersfoort in the FIA Formula 3 European Championship like Max did the previous year. He essentially steps into his former rival's spot, replacing Max as team leader and taking his former engineer. This was allegedly on Jos Verstappen's suggestion, but there isn't much reference to that connection out there that I could find.

This doesn't help the comparisons.

Formula Scout-- in their 2015 Driver Profile of Charles-- would write:

Leclerc marked himself out as a real prospect in karting – so much so he topped our 2012 ‘karters to watch‘ feature, ahead of Verstappen. But it’s never a foregone conclusion that a successful karter will make a successful car racer. [...] Those performances suggested he would be capable of stepping up to F3, particularly as his old rival Verstappen had made it look easy and didn’t have the benefit of a year of car racing experience. And so he has proven to be. It’s still early days, but Leclerc has so far been the class of a large crop of rookies and taken the fight to proven F3 winners with multiple years of experience already under their belt. His early performances are on a par with what last year’s star rookies Esteban Ocon and Verstappen were doing – in fact, his record of two wins and five podiums from the first six races replicates the 2014 champion’s start. If he keeps it up, he will deserve to be held in the same high esteem as them a few months down the line.

They would ultimately summarize Charles' future as so:

While he’s got plenty in common with his old karting rival and Van Amersfoort F3 predecessor Verstappen, a lesser reputation and sensible management mean he’s unlikely to be making the jump straight up to F1 next year. He will therefore need to sustain this impressive form into an intermediate category like GP2 in order to make the grade.

Even with the comparisons to Esteban and Max, Charles still appears to be able to joke with both at the beginning of the season.

This lightheartedness would be needed, especially when Max was the special F1 driver guest for one of Charles' podiums:

Charles would start the season strong. As a rookie, Charles would top the morning running at the pre-event test of the opening round weekend by nearly half a second.

In true Charles fashion, he's unable to take the W:

"A good day," said Leclerc at the end of the test, after reviewing the results and drawing conclusions. “We have learned a lot, both about the set-up for qualifying and for the race. However, this does not mean that I am automatically one of the leading drivers this weekend as well, testing and racing are two different things. But needless to say, it's my goal to do it."

He would bring this momentum into winning in Silverstone, Hockenheim, Spa-Francorchamps and Nuremberg. I find the races themselves a little dull to break down race-by-race, but if you're interested.. an anon has provided video of every race here.

Charles would explain that:

“We arrived at the first race quite confident but obviously there were still had doubts from some people who didn’t know me when I arrived for testing. We were really fast from the first race which was a bit of a surprise because I was a rookie among all these experienced drivers so they didn’t really expect me. But from another point of view we were prepared, we worked hard and after testing it wasn’t that much of a surprise for us, how we went. We were quite confident.”

However... Charles' season would become inconsistent after a crash in Zandvoort with Lance Stroll would damage his chassis in a way that could never be correctly repaired.

Jules would pass the next week.

Charles would only podium once more during the remaining season, five months later in Macau.

He is quoted as saying:

“It is a good result, but I am never happy when I'm not first. Since I was a child I was never happy when I wasn't first. So, it is the still the same.”

Charles would end up finishing the season in fourth place behind Felix Rosenquist, Antonio Giovinazzi, and Jake Dennis. He'd still have 4 wins, 13 podiums, 3 pole positions and 6 fastest laps, making him the rookie champion over future F1 competitors George Russell, Lance Stroll and Alexander Albon.

Formula Scout would summarize his season:

VAR, like most, couldn’t keep up with Prema in the later part of the season but Leclerc seemed to lose some individual sparkle too. That’s forgivable for a teenage rookie though, particularly with the early-season highs becoming impossible to match. And no young racer should have to say goodbye to a life-long friend and mentor mid-season. Leclerc might not have been champion but he was F3’s standout talent in 2015.

Even with the issues in the later half of the season, he was still tapped to go into GP3 with Todt's team, ART Grand Prix. And he had some lighthearted moments:

(Behind the scenes footage here.)

One of the most lasting legacies of this season, though, is how it would set up the rest of Charles' career.

Charles did go into 2015 with very few sponsors outside of Todt. In a pre-season assessment, Formula Scout summarizes his off-track relationships:

No doubt assisted by the Bianchis’ tutelage, Leclerc signed with Todt Jr’s All Road Management firm in 2011. At present, Leclerc has no ties to F1 teams, but through his work with Felipe Massa, Pastor Maldonado and Bianchi, Todt has dealt with most of them and will be very well-placed to get his protege a role when the time comes. A potential stumbling point is that most F1 teams are already overflowing with some serious sub-F1 prospects, but if he continues to impress as he’s doing at the moment, they could begin falling over each other to find a space for him. Funding-wise, Leclerc benefits from partners usually tied to Todt’s projects, and watch maker Richard Mille (currently a sponsor of the Lotus F1 team) is his loyal main backer. And you’d imagine that being billed as a future F1 star from Monaco could well tempt some further future investment.

Lance Stroll would spend most of his single-seaters career against Charles as the Ferrari-backed driver until 2015, when he left to take a development driver role with Williams.

By this point, the Ferrari Driver Academy was heavily scrutinized to the point where it was speculated that they would do away with the initiative entirely. While Red Bull's junior program had brought Sebastian Vettel, Daniel Ricciardo and Daniil Kyvat to its senior team, no driver from the FDA had successfully made the jump. At the end of 2015, Ferrari team principal Maurizio Arrivabene decided to appoint a new head and restructure the program entirely.

Charles was rumored to be the next addition to the Ferrari Driver Academy in November 2015 as part of these changes; by December, articles were already talking as if the signing was inevitable.

In 2020, Charles would talk about visiting Maranello for the first time-- not as a friend of Jules'-- that year with his father:

I went with my father to Maranello (the home of Ferrari). I was 17 years young and extremely shy. I was scared because I didn't know if I was good enough to be included in the programme.

He was. He would end up impressing Ferrari in his two days of testing.

They would announce Charles as a member of the Ferrari Driver Academy in 2016, setting up both his next year and the rest of his career.

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mindtheanimals

5 months ago

what's your favorite seb/lewis moment? 👀

cannot be expected to pick just one so here are just a few:

2018 abu dhabi podium: one of the first things i came across when i joined this fandom and it is still one of the things i think of most often. everything about it is so horny from lewis randomly stripping out of his shirt on the podium? seb aiming his champagne and shooting off across his back? lewis like. pointing at it? so horny

seb defending lewis during a press conference: lewis gets that annoying question about calling max a dickhead and seb immediately jumps in to defend his wife. it is important to me because lewis always has to defend himself and literally his every move and he CAN defend himself but i love that seb was like hold on babe i've got this stupid one. no worries. and the way lewis looks at seb when seb comes to his defense...please

seb congratulates lewis on his 7th championship + the podium afterward: i actually can't talk a lot about this because it feels very overwhelming for me...i think about seb jumping out of his car going straight to lewis who's been BAWLING and telling him hes just made history every day of my life. also think about the face pat from lewis. he pats seb's face at the same time seb grasps his arm :( as for the podium. also super overwhelming and i said all i need to say in the tags of that post. it's everything to me

seb and lewis sitting on the podium soaking it all in: i actually don't know when this is from but it seems like it would be seb's first podium with ferrari? or something equally as important because.....the way seb looks so overcome with emotion is a lot for me. especially the bottom right gif where seb like. takes a breath looks at the sky trying to take it all in like he can't believe this is happening? and lewis. sitting an inch away from him. looks at him and just smiles. kill me

seb lifting lewis' visor: i honestly don't know why this is one of my favorite moments but it is very very near and dear to me. there is just something about them finishing a race embracing and seb lifting lewis' visor so they can see each other better :( feels very intimate and loving

121 notes View Post

mindtheanimals

5 months ago