#if anyone has any further info please feel free to add 🥰

[hyacinthsdiamonds]

The reason why they don't follow each other lmao, I still cackle thinking of Charles - literally on Max's freaking plane going home to Monaco after Austria 2019 - looking over at Max to see if he noticed that he'd unfollowed him.

(this point from a post of yours btw)

is there any proof to that point? i'm genuinely asking

Hi Anon,

So I don't have any screenshotted proof from this pre & post Austria 2019 era myself, but maybe another blog does (I've only been active myself in f1 tumblr since 2021, despite following the sport my entire life and looking over the tags every so often before setting up my blog here) so I'll throw this in the tags so if someone does have that type of evidence, they can add it here.

Here's what we do know and have evidence for;

We do know that Max and Charles did follow each other on their various social media platforms until circa 2019, as - (if you scroll back far enough) - you can see different interactions between them pre 2019, pre Austria specifically. [Unrelated note: the unhingedness of them and the rest of the then teenaged members of the grid at this point of time is beyond hilarious. Genuinely, if you have the time it's worth the scrolling because they're such teenage boys tm it's ridiculous, and we kinda forget how long their lives have been interconnected, and it's before they got proper pr training and before certain drivers - most recognisably Max - gave their socials to a media team to run. There was a good period of time around 2017/18 when Victoria, his sister, ran his accounts as well as he wanted to include her in his team, before a proper media team took over. Objectively, the idea of Victoria noticing Charles unfollowed Max and then being the one to unfollow Charles in response, while Max remains oblivious to the entire situation is killing me lmao].

Now we do definitely know that they shared the flight home from Austria as during press after the race, Max was asked if things were going to be awkward with Charles now and he was essentially like "??? We're literally sharing a flight home???" This was Max's "It was just an inchident" ngl. Meanwhile, this was Charles on the podium:

... so he certainly did not share the same sentiment. It was his "it's just unfair" era. You can see a clear difference in Charles' driving post Austria, he started taking more risks and was more aggressive afterwards, because he felt if max was allowed to take risks and be aggressive, so was he. In the story of Charles' racing career, Austria 2019 is a significant race in his journey, even though it wasn't the win he wanted it to be. He would win his first two races in the aftermath of it.

It would not be the first or last time Charles would pettily unfollow someone on the grid after feeling he had been dirty by them and/or the FIA. In 2021, he followed every driver on the grid bar Max and would unfollow Valterri after what Charles dubbed the bowling incident in Hungary. While Bottas caused the main chaos of that opening lap, Stroll was the one who actually took Charles out of the race, but Lance has Charles following him as of 2024. Bottas also may have been unfollowed because of his preference of being as little clothed as possible in his insta posts lmao, but Charles did follow him before Hungary 2021 and quickly unfollowed afterwards.

I hope this provides some help, anon. And I'm sorry that I don't have the relevant screenshots to validate and accurately fact check this section of lestappen lore.