#COTA

[livefastdriveyoung]

NO YOU DO NOT UNDERSTAND HOW IMPORTANT IT IS TO ME THAT EMINEM IS PERFORMING AT COTA.

Like.

I know (hopefully he'll be there still) Logan Sargeant is PUMPED. This is so American.

[tyrannosaurus-maxy]

Leclerifying 🤗

[arcadebroke]

[vettelbee]

more cowboy seb

[russellius]

2023 US GP : pre-race

[gonnaupdatethisrandomly]

Toto Wolff and Mick Schumacher watching free practice session for the Grand Prix of USA at Circuit of The Americas on October 20, 2023 in Austin, United States of America. Ph- Hoch Zwei

[thepotentialof2007]

Quick reference for the LH excerpts from Kate Wagner's behind the scenes at COTA article.

All sports are powered by the personalities of their practitioners, and Formula 1 has those in spades—the chipper, effusive Daniel Ricciardo; Mr. Suave, Carlos Sainz; plucky George Russell; the deep-feeling Charles Leclerc; and, perhaps above all, the sport's longtime great champion, a man from some of the humblest beginnings in motorsport, the regal and soft-spoken Lewis Hamilton, who just announced an absolutely shocking move to Ferrari after an illustrious 11 years and six championships behind the wheel of a Mercedes (and six seasons and one championship with Mercedes-powered McLarens).

. . . .

The day's activities commenced with a tour of the garage. In the garage, there are many mysteries one is not allowed to know or see. The use of phones is forbidden lest one incur accusations of espionage. When we got into the garage, Lewis's car was naked, its insides visible for all to see. I think this was the moment where my respect for the sport as it exists really made itself clear. It is hard to describe what I felt looking at that car. The closest phrase I have at my disposal is the technological sublime. I pictured a living, breathing animal of extraterrestrial origin, hooked up to a thousand arcane sensors that delivered messages in little pulses. All the tubes and sculpted carbon-fiber parts and the endless net of wires all working in service to the godhead engine, formed something totally incomprehensible to me, a feat of engineering so vast it breached the realm of magic. Hamilton himself walked through in his helmet, unexpectedly on an errand. After being in the presence of the car, I perceived him differently than before, when he was just a guy driving in circles on TV. The scope of his capabilities became more directly known to me in the face of that which I believed to be unknowable. All of that was built in service of him. He stopped and looked into the open maw of the car. The tour guide led us hurriedly into the back room where the coffee and tire bags were stored so that no one could listen to what Lewis said.

About half an hour later, they brought him up to the paddock to talk to us. It wasn't a press conference, but rather a kind of a TED Talk. The questions were rote and a guy with a microphone asked them as though they were being broadcast on television. Hamilton talked rotely about how much he loved America and the fans here, talked—to the people who needed reassurance—about how the car was "getting there" but made it pointedly certain that they knew it still needed some work, which surprised me, making me realize this was still a private setting. I come from a sport where chivalry never died and no one is allowed to say anything negative because it is "unsportsmanlike" and every cyclist has to play his part in the farcical pageant of being a dull, humble farmer's son. It is a pretty open secret that a lot of cyclists don't like their bike sponsors but they would never, ever, ever say it. It's somewhat contradictory, but the sheer financial calculus of F1 is what makes it possible for Hamilton to be critical. This is a multibillion-dollar industry putting its full heft behind him doing well. It's reminiscent of the patronage system of precapitalist times, when rulers and nobles with endless riches paid musicians and composers to live in the palace with them.

. . . .

Frustrated, I returned to watching the cars as they started up again, knowing that the drivers were pushing them to their limits, engrossed in their personal kaleidoscope of motion and color. Hamilton was in one of them. In the last shootout, he drove differently than before. A great verve frayed the lines he was making, something we can only call effort, push. Watching him, I understood what was so interesting about this sport, even though I was watching it in its most bare-bones form—cars going around in circles. The driver is the apotheosis of quick-moving prowess, total focus and control. The car is both the most studied piece of human engineering, tuned and devised in lab-like environments and at the same time a variable entity, something that must be wrestled with and pushed. The numbers are crunched, the forms wind-tunneled. And yet some spirit escapes their control, and that spirit is known only by the driver. Yes, we watch this perfect blend of man and machine, but we speak of the machine as though it were not of human origin, as though the machine, being born from science could—eventually, through its iterative processes—sublimate human flaws. The driver, being human, knows this is false. His intimacy with the machine is the necessary missing connection, and even if the machine were perfect, it was made for imperfect hands. But it is never perfect. The gaps in its perfection are where disasters transpire, but also miracles. As we waited for the van to take us where we were parked, a part of the track was still visible to us. Hamilton distinguished himself by the lines he cut along the corner and the loudness of his engine, that pushing. We heard over a loudspeaker that he had finished third, a remarkable improvement above the last two sprints, where he lagged behind in the midfield. This made everyone in our camp happy. They always called him by his first name. It reminded me of how I used to talk about cyclists after I started interviewing them, with the swagger of knowing them.

. . . .

When Hamilton came into the room he was wearing a cool pair of pants with shimmery colored mesh sewed in and had an exhausted appearance, having come just from the track. We were allowed to talk to him but were told not to make any recordings or transcriptions. When he spoke, it was notable how often he mentioned his father and how deeply-felt his political convictions were. Some people are totally different off the record, but Lewis was simply a more lively version of himself. I find him a fascinating figure. A lot of fans either love or hate him, see him, paradoxically, as both humble and arrogant. The word quiet is better. Not reserved, not shy, just quiet. He belongs to a special group of people. The ones I've met in life include the violinist Hilary Hahn and Pogačar, the Tour de France winner—human beings who walk the earth differently, with an aura that transcends it. He appeared perpetually relaxed, controlled and refined, both present with us in the room but on a higher plane within. We used to call this magnificence when we believed in kings. I don't know what we call it now. Excellence, maybe. The irony of parading someone incredible like that around in the backrooms of petrochemical executives is not lost on me. I was grateful that I got the opportunity to speak to Lewis Hamilton, someone I am not ashamed to say I admire. I would have preferred it if they let him go home and rest instead.

[sitizelter]

YOU KNOW WHAT THEY SAY: SAVE A HORSE...

[lqvesoph]

his chin resting on her head🫠

[il-predestinato]

Walking off into the sunset. 🌅

Max Verstappen and Charles Leclerc chatting after Qualifying at the 2022 United States Grand Prix.

🎥: Charles Leclerc (Austin GP: Penalty to Podium 🇺🇸)

[raphoupix]

Lando recap of the 2023 season 18th weekend of the season: United States 🇺🇸

[boanerges20]

Brad Binder AmericasGP [COTA] Photo: Polarity Photo

[pixel--moon]

Top 3 COTA Schemes in Pixel Form 🏁

6️⃣ Keselowski

1️⃣6️⃣ van Gisbergen

5️⃣0️⃣ Kobayashi

[insta]

[vettelbee]

cowboy bono

[russellius]

100 races for George and Lando | Sky's feature