Oh shit you're right 🙈 My first thought was Barbi too, but when I went looking for gifsets from that race a different gifset of theirs came up, I didn't see this one, so I was like, okay maybe I'm misremembering something. Well, there we go, mystery solved!
since you are the sebchal blog to me maybe you can help me do you know who made this gif? i am 100% sure the person who posted it did not make it
Hmm, it doesn't look familiar to me? Just scrolling through OP's blog it looks like they do use the Tumblr built-in "find a gif" feature (which then adds credit and a direct link by default) at least sometimes on their posts. So maybe they do a mix of using other people's gifs through that feature (god knows I constantly get notifications about my gifs being used in Y/N imagines through that lol) and making their own? I'm willing to give them the benefit of the doubt on this one.
Hmm, it doesn't look familiar to me? Just scrolling through OP's blog it looks like they do use the Tumblr built-in "find a gif" feature (which then adds credit and a direct link by default) at least sometimes on their posts. So maybe they do a mix of using other people's gifs through that feature (god knows I constantly get notifications about my gifs being used in Y/N imagines through that lol) and making their own? I'm willing to give them the benefit of the doubt on this one.
The entire picture around sainz amazes me. Like how you're going to rate him so high, how you're going to compare him against charles when he has one good race every 8 f1 weekends, how you going to call him better than Hamilton, how you going to say he's the best driver on the grid after max and then turn around and ask "is carlos sainz underrated"
Exactly. It's so funny imo for the media to be like "is CS underrated?" and make his ex/current teammate answer that question (which, like, wtf else are they going to say, they're hardly going to start beef in a press conference with him sitting right there lmao.) If anything he's overrated. As you said, he can be completely anonymous for multiple races in a row but one good weekend and he's suddenly better than Charles and basically on par with Max and should get the Red Bull seat. Not to mention Ferrari must be regretting "getting rid of the wrong driver." Okay? 🤨
Even at his lowest I think he gets a lot of grace. Outside the pool of British drivers he's basically the British pundit/journos golden child; the likes of Lawrence Barretto and Damon Hill consistently prop him up and add to this narrative of him being the "worthier" Ferrari driver, the faster one, the one with more prowess and exemplary leadership skills. Also the "consummate professional and dedicated team player." Yeah, until he starts binning planned strategies or impeding his teammate. 😑
The disappointing thing is, this is and will likely continue to be the mainstream narrative as long as these weekends happen. It's something I've noticed among "casuals" as well — unless you are deeply invested in the Ferrari ecosystem and constantly and closely following the developments, the interviews, the drivers' team radios, etc, the perception is basically: Even when Charles qualifies on pole he loses out to Max, sometimes even in the early laps of the race, and then can't manage to regain the lead, ergo he is ineffective; Carlos, meanwhile, "gets the job done" and, well, wins, ergo he is effective, Ferrari's sole hero, etc.
Obviously there's lots of factors that influence a race weekend or result. Hell, things might have looked different if Ferrari hadn't implemented team orders pretty much as soon as Max was out of the picture. We know this. But a lot of people don't, either through plain ignorance, or because they willingly dismiss the context in favour of the face value results, and the face value results say Carlos is the only non-RB race winner in the past year. And unfortunately the only way for this narrative to change is for Charles to, well, win. (I know we're only three races in and by all accounts Ferrari seem better equipped to challenge Red Bull this year than last year, so he may get a few opportunities to do so, but yeah. Carlos has been undoubtedly very lucky to always be in the right place at the right time to take advantage of the rare Red Bull mishap, and Charles needs to make sure he's putting himself in that position too, especially if the car is struggling in dirty air. Figures that the one time he broke his front row streak Max would have reliability issues 😭)
Also imo the hype is magnified by the fact that he's the someone other than Max that people desperately want to see winning. So much so that the "how" doesn't even matter anymore. The race was objectively boring but a lot of people are hyping it up and artificially bumping up the enjoyment meter just because the end result was a non-Max win. So he's got that on his side as well. But for me, I think how the race is won matters as well. Both times he took advantage of Max/Red Bull having a rare off day. Which, fine, this sport is about luck and capitalizing on these opportunities when they present themselves, I get that. But the real breakthrough will come when Ferrari is able to keep up with and beat Red Bull in the race on merit, not because they just got lucky. The closest we got to that so far is Vegas. If they can do that this year then we can start saying that Red Bull's got serious competition. Making thinkpieces out of hypotheticals because Max had a debilitating, race-ending issue with his car is not it.
max can get less than 10 for a grand chelem because he didn’t top timesheets in free practises!! carlos sainz gets no pole nth in fps and wins cuz max’s brakes got missile struck and its a 10. ur joking.
Maybe CL will have a bit of rage inside losing the opportunity for a win the week end max dnf and we’ll see the beast next race to make it interesting
I thought that too, but 2022 changed my mind, and I don't think it was necessarily an outlier. Granted I slept through most of this weekend because all the sessions were on at impossible times for me, but from what I saw from the interviews he gave, Charles actually seemed pretty excited and positive about his/their chances pre-qualy. I think he called this their best shot at pole so far this season? And considering how drivers are, I'm inclined to believe he was talking about his chances, not his teammate's. Obviously that didn't pan out for whatever reason, which was disappointing after he seemed like the stronger of the two throughout the FPs.
As for him not obeying orders... idk. I can imagine the justification being something along the lines of "oh, we had to play it safe because a Max DNF happens approximately once every two years and we couldn't throw out the opportunity for a safe 1-2 through in-fighting" with maybe a dash of "this was Carlos's to lose based on qualy results." But then the next week it's going to be "oh we have to play it safe because both Red Bulls are back and 100% operational." So I'm not sure when and if Charles will get a chance to truly throw down the gauntlet. It's frustrating to see Ferrari not really caring about which car finishes in front as long as it's red, but I think Red Bull's dominance has them playing things really safe for fear of losing out points to others. It's funny, because everyone's excited about, oh, look how close the top 4/5 all is, but it seems in reality that just translates to a lot of team orders between teammates and not much actual excitement, at least so far.
And again with the mixed signals, because on one hand you've got Fred and Charles being optimistic about Ferrari's chances of closing the gap, saying the aim is always pole, always first, but then... yeah. He doesn't even get to fight for it if he's the one on the back foot through qualy or some in-race mishap. I want to hope that over the course of the season they'll get close enough that we get a glimpse of that 2022 fight between Max and Charles or at least Vegas 2023 vibe, but with the way things look right now I'm not holding my breath.
carlos absolutely made a huge song and dance about 'oh i'll have to be careful during each practice session but i'm gonna muster all the strength i can to do this race'
alex literally had respiratory failure requiring intubation after his appendectomy and he didn't make that big of a deal of coming back to drive...to singapore nonetheless
Oh absolutely 🫱🏻🫲🏻 And I feel like the comms/pundits only furthered that narrative? I get it, it was a shock, he had to miss the race in Saudi and I'm sure it wasn't a pleasant experience to go through appendicitis and surgery and recovery but yeah, I feel like Alex wasn't given half this fanfare of a triumphant comeback. It's like people want him to be the unlikely hero, the underdog story against Max or even Charles, it's A Lot.
He has an infuriating ability to be in the right place exactly at the right time and have the team rally around him as a result. Some people were worried about how his departure from the team would impact team dynamics this year, guess nothing has changed though🤷🏻♀️