#like marko was never soft on seb

[youjustwaitsunshine]

entranced by whatever that rindt-marko-vettel web is. helmut marko and jochen rindt were best friends and raced together. sebastian vettel reminds helmut marko of jochen rindt. sebastian vettel is a great fan of jochen rindt. did seb become a rindt fan because marko told him stories of him. is marko obsessed with seb because he reminds him of his friend. i have so many questions. there's a story about rindt and marko driving to the german gp at the nürburgring and sleeping next to the track to get woken up by von trips and hill practicing in their ferraris the next morning and rindt looked at them and said to marko that that was what he wanted to do too, become a racing driver. cut to sebastian getting interviewed as a child saying "i would like to- no, i want to become an f1 driver"

[russilton]

Hello, seeing all of the redbull au stuff on my dash again has me wondering! I know that Alex/George’s relationship is going to be different from what you have said but what about George’s other friendships? Is he still friends with Lando or Charles? Is anyone in his corner? I don’t know you opinions on Lando but I always think that the Lando/George friendship in fanfictions is really sweet! <3

Just curious :)

I have like eight asks about Zandvoort and strategy to answer…. So I wrote this up instead! Come get y’all Red Bull AU juice!

Red Bull au masterpost

Long ass post (2.4k whoops) and Red Bull George AU Spoilers under the cut

So I was kinda umming and ahhing on how to phrase this answer so I’m going to try and split it into his relationships per driver. This obviously isn’t all of the grid. Not even I can manage to go into that much detail (trust me, I tried)

But first an overall summary: Redbull George doesn’t have friends. By choice. He’s not like our good real boy George; sweet, well rounded, friendly. His entire life is the race track. He doesn’t date, he doesn’t twitch stream, he doesn’t golf. When he’s off the track he’s training, sleeping, or just keeping to himself. Redbull expects perfection, if he wants that seat (and he’s never wanted anything more) then he has to show up and ace every single race to the best of his ability. Like many abusers, they isolate him on purpose. Without a support network there’s no one to tell George to leave.

He did briefly have some fairly close friendships within the red bull academy, but they fell apart for various reasons.

Pierre

George and Pierre were briefly friendly back in 2017 when he was still at Torro rosso and George was driving in GP3. They mostly only interact through the team, but pierre knows how to be friendly and George is still a little in awe of the whole f1 thing. When Pierre is kicked from RB embarrassingly in 2019, George is sympathetic… but he wants a seat. He’s won his rookie gp3 AND f2 series, and frankly George thinks he’s more than worthy of the seat, he’s more qualified than the other juniors. But when he and Alex drive TR together in 19, and he backs off Alex more than once, as his friend, more about that later. Pierre will have been shamed by marko and co about people who can potentially replace him, and George would have been shown right up there arguing why he should have it over Gasly. Gasly is hurt and avoids George out of anger and some betrayal. George feels bad, but that’s the cost of racing.

Alex

Alex and George have been close for a long time. Both brits, both fighting hard to get where they are. Alex is a little older than George and for a long time he’s basically George’s only friend in the sport. When it comes for Alex to take Pierre’s spot in RB George is… disgruntled but accepts it. He feels selfish for thinking he’s out performed Alex, but there’s something that sits annoyingly in his gut when helmut tells him they chose Alex bc he had a spark George didnt. George expects Alex to come to his defence, say that George was just being a good teammate, he’s not soft. But Alex says nothing, too scared of the embarrassment of following Pierre’s horrific exit with his own. However understandable, he hangs George out to dry. And George realises that when it comes to getting into RB’s seat there are no friends.

Which is exactly what RB wants, it wants ruthless drivers and doesn’t particularly care if they get on, think Seb and Webber. When they see George’s withdrawal from Alex is making him harder and more serious, they know to encourage that. That means keeping Alex for 2020 even when George has been far more consistent. A 3rd seat switch in 2019 makes them look disorganised. And Alex isn’t bad. In order to cultivate George’s ruthless distrust, Alex gets another year and George is told they need to see more from him. At that point their friendship is dead in the water. George’s sole focus is his race craft. Alex is too busy buckling under the RB pressure to care how George feels. They’re walking directly into abuse 101, red bull intentionally separating them from friends and family, only letting them focus on racing.

Max

As much as it pains me to say, Max and George are friends for a while. They aren’t close by any means, it’s closer to work affiliates. But Max is at least somewhat cunning, and he knows that RB are sizing George up for the seat with him, and it will benefit him to make sure George is on his side early. He and George don’t exactly hang out outside of work, but on race weekend if he finds time to speak to George during driver parades and press conferences, that’s his business. When he sees what George is doing with the AT car, and looks to see how Alex is following the same route as Pierre, he makes sure to hint to George that if he keeps those performances up, the 21’ seat could be his. Max thinks George should be a lot more impressed with him than George is. A lot of red bull juniors see max as the blueprint, hired young and lorded by his team, but George just sees him as competition. They’re politely friendly till George is well settled in the RB seat, it’s good PR after all, but as George becomes a threat to him Max is less and less okay with George’s lack of awe. When George is ignoring Max’s praise in order to go and bother Lewis, then starts to threaten Max’s points total, that’s a problem. He doesn’t directly suggest red bull breaking George, but he sure as shit doesn’t stop it, that little British queer should get in line, Max has a championship to win.

Yuki

I kinda forgot about Yuki for a while. I can't lie, because he’s not so easy to fit into the red bull villain team narrative around George, and because I can’t hate Yuki. He’s just a lil badass dude! But I think I’ve settled on George not really thinking about him much? This isn’t to be mean to him, George is just utterly focused on his seat. He’s seen the churning of the RB junior program himself, yuki will either sink or swim in the AT sea. If he sinks, it’ll be a shame, the guy seems nice, but it’s not George’s problem. If he swims, then he’s a threat to George’s position, and George will have to eye him carefully. I’m not kidding when I said the RB atmosphere is toxic.

By the time George is taking his own rose tinted glasses off, seeing how the team is crumbling, he worries for Yuki. Pierre is looking around at getting himself out, as is Alex, but Yuki still wants George's seat. George doesn’t feel like he knows him well enough to warn the guy, but when he leaves he catches Pierre’s eye. There's still a lot of unspoken apologising to happen between them still, but George hopes Pierre will warn Yuki.

Norris

Lando… look I won’t lie, I am not a massive fan of Lando irl and that affects how I write him, similar to how I am with Max or Perez etc. I used to like him under pure British bias, but with the way he acts around George, his laddish banter personality and the fact he writes for a Terfy Tory paper… I’d just rather not have anything to do with the guy. He may be able to ignore how the paper treats trans folk but I don’t get to. So fuck that.

George and Lando are friends for a while. Shared nationality and the fact they’re often competing in the same series mean George and Lando are around each other often. It’s sort of like how you are friends with guys in highschool you stop talking to as soon as you go to uni because most of your friendship was based on proximity. When George gets into the RB junior program, he has to get serious, and Lando mocks him for it. George shakes it off as Lando being Lando, but then they’re competing in F2 and Landos barbs get more and more jealous and pointed. George doesn’t have time for it, if Lando wants to be bitter George is kicking his ass, that’s his problem. He doesn’t have time to humor Lando saying he has a stick up his ass for RB, nor his jabs at George’s choices to eat salad to stay in RB’s weight limit when he gets to eat burgers. Poor Alex is stuck between them, and eventually gives up on trying to make them get along. George beats Lando to the F2 championship and they stop talking.

Other rookies (Charles, Nicky, Lance, Esteban, Mick etc)

George doesn’t really know any of them well, and doesn’t have a reason to change that. He doesn’t stream, he doesn’t party much, he doesn’t relax with other drivers. He’s politely cordial with all of them but doesn’t really seek them out as friends. George is… aloof at the best of times too, most of them have seen him change with his junior signing and leave him to it. George is a fuckin dick to get past on track but never outright dangerous, he’s confident but not mean to the press.In a sense George is very isolated in a way nobody really notices because why would they?

2022 - Mercedes George

Sebastian and Valtteri

When George goes to Merc, everything changes. The only thing he has to come with him is Lewis. But Lewis introduces him to new people, and those new people sort of reintroduce old ones.

Mainly, Bottas and Vettel, both Lewis’ close friends, drivers that the year before George had considered it important to beat. Seb is Red Bull's prior golden child, George measured himself up against Seb often. And Valtteri is the person George was hired to beat, he’s a little ashamed to think about how often he looked down on Bottas, who did end up beating him in the championship standings anyway. Both of them are also, as mentioned, Lewis’ close friends, and they welcome George with open arms. It’s not exactly a hug-a-thon, but Valtteri is grounding and protective. He gave Lewis the blessing to bring George to Merc and George is aware of that, he almost expects Val to lord it over him, or be bitter, but Val is neither. Instead he’s quietly supportive, he takes George to the side when he visits Lewis and helps George learn the names of his new engineering team, people Lewis doesn’t even necessarily know well. In the paddock he’ll quietly put himself between George and Red bull team members. It’s ridiculous, he’s so much smaller than George, but it makes part of him feel a little safer even if he doesn’t want to admit it. George often feels so alone without Lewis around other drivers, he spent so long coldly avoiding them, now he feels slightly outcast in this new threatening black race suit. He can’t help but read into how they look at him, or through him. But Val gives him a friend, even if he teases George about his bambi legs and willingness to sleep with Lewis Hamilton (Val has seen Lewis in the sauna, he’s not sure if George is brave or insane for willingly taking that)

With Seb, George isn’t as close as he is IRL, at least at first. George isn’t part of the GPDA, though he may end up taking up that roll later in the au, and he avoids Seb on track because it’s all he can stand to hear some days about how much Christian misses Seb, Sebastian is the boots they want him to fill, and something in that makes his back itch. When he leaves Red Bull, he wants to ask Seb about it. If he knew how bad it was. In the end seb finds him, sits down next to George and asks him how bad it was. Lewis had let hints through but George’s trauma is his to tell. When George tells him, Seb nods, and tells George the team has changed. There was something good in them, a long long time ago. But Seb had been offered George’s eventual seat in 2020, before he signed with Aston, and even with an improving car he could tell something wasn’t right with them. He ended up turning Christian down of course. He muses to George that his gut was right, and he wished he could have warned George back then. George points out he probably wouldn't have listened. They laugh it off, but in the end George finds someone to talk about Redbull with, in a way that Lewis and Val don’t get. Seb also tells him teasing stories about Lewis that Val pitches in for, and it makes George’s gut roll happily to hear them.

Slowly George tries to mend some of his old friendships. It’s not smooth sailing by any means, he, Pierre and Alex have a lot to work out. But at the same time, shared trauma bonds guys, and Lewis encourages George to spend time with them when he’s comfortable. Lewis comes a lot too, he gets on with Pierre and Alex is nice enough, if it helps George relax a little, it can’t hurt.

With those two come a lot more possible new friends. Pierre introduces George to his Boyfriend Charles, Charles brings Mick. Alex brings Nicky, who is friendly and laughs with George. Val and Seb bring their friends and teammates, Daniel, Zhou, Stroll and nyck, who in turn introduce him to Esteban and co. It’s not easy, George doesn’t fall into buddy-buddy with them, he’s still George. But he can joke with them during race weekends, press conferences are a less hellish endeavour. They invite him to things and sometimes he even goes. He’s still learning to manage that part of him that distrusts all of this, tries to learn to separate drivers from the track.

If I were to guess who George ends up closest to, it may end up being Pierre. It’s not my normal choice necessarily (nothing against Pierre, I just think Williams George is closer to Nicky and Charles) but in this au they’re both a little weathered and haunted by RB. Pierre is calmer than a lot of the other young drivers, it makes George feel less jumpy and nervous, and his dry wit matches Georges own. Besides, when there’s an awkward silence, one of them can make a joke about some weird shit Max used to do and share a laugh.

(Additional note: I’ve decided it’ll probably work best if Georges physio at RB is hired by the Team. He returns to and rehires Aleix when he moves to Mercedes’ and they make it clear he’s free to hire who he wants, much like Lewis hires Angela not the team)