#waiting for gpda response..

[grogumaximus]

what do u mean they can't even protest the stewards' decisions now?????????????

[umf1]

george russell is interviewed during the press conference on media day, miami - may 1, 2025 (transcript under the cut)

Interviewer: "Welcome back to Miami, everybody. Part two of our drivers press conference. Closest to me, Nico Hulkenberg, then George Russell and Lewis Hamilton." [time jump] Interviewer: "George, let's bring you in now. Three podiums from the opening five races. Is that a tally that matches with your pre-season expectation?" George: "No, I think it's probably better than our pre-season expectations, to be honest. The pace has fallen out where we thought; that step behind McLaren, and then a close fight with Red Bull and Ferrari. And we've been doing really well to get those podiums and we're nicely P2 in the teams championship, but I don't think it necessarily means we are the second fastest team. I think sort of on average we've been the third fastest team. We saw obviously Charles had a great race last week, and obviously Max also the last couple of races, but we've just been nicely consistent and picking up points." Interviewer: "Consistent, yes, but it looked like Saudi was the most difficult-" George: "Yep." Interviewer: "-of the races so far. Having had a chance to debrief with the team, what conclusions have you reached?" George: "I mean, tires were too hot, really, so that was a big problem, and I think just pushing a bit too hard to try and keep up with the front two. And Charles put in a really strong race and I was probably driving too quick for what the tires and the car was capable of, and then we dropped off a cliff. So not too sure how this weekend's going to pan out, because I think in terms of temperatures and the tires, it'll be relatively similar to Jeddah. So we'll have to wait and see, and see if any of the learnings we've taken from last week we can translate into a bit of performance. But I'm confident the quali pace will sort of be there or thereabouts, but it's the race pace, there's a bit more of a question mark." Interviewer: "Alright, George, thank you for that."

[QUESTIONS FROM THE FLOOR:] Journalist: "Yeah. Craig Slater, Sky Sports. Question for Georgee, actually, with your GPDA hat on: President Mohammed Ben Sulayem has said that after constructive feedback with drivers, he's looking at making improvements to the rules that govern driver conduct issues and so on. Just wanted to know, do you think that's a very positive step, George." George: "Yeah, I mean, conceptually, yes. But obviously we want to see these things put into action, rather than saying 'we're considering things.' We all consider a lot of things. We're clear we want changes, and once they are implemented, then we'll comment on it. But for the time being, it's being considered, so the words don't mean anything until the change has been made." [NOT SHOWN:]

Journalist: "Tom Cary, The Telegraph. One for Lewis and George. Just to put to you the question about fatherhood – I know you’re not dads, but do you feel it could change Max as a person and as a driver? Do you have any hope that it might distract him?" George: "Yeah, I think we’re all professionals, but this is a personal part of your life. I guess for anyone who's had a kid, it’s a pretty special moment. So yeah, all the best to him. As Nico says, I think for many people it probably brings things to your life. I know what it's like when I see my nieces and nephews – they're not my kids, but they bring me so much joy when I spend time with them. And you've seen drivers in the past win championships and races who’ve got kids, so I don't see it changing anything on his professional level."

Journalist: "Molly Hudson, The Times. A question for George: Just following up on Craig's question from earlier. The President’s Instagram post mentioned constructive dialogue. Have you actually had any dialogue with the President? Because I think after the open letter you said there hadn’t been a response. So did it come as new news to you reading it on Instagram?" George: "I mean, in short, yes. I mean, collectively we've not spoken any further since the open letter that was sent out. So whether that is the response – I'm not too sure. As I said, it’ll be great if changes were made and the drivers were at least heard. I think it's just in the best interest for the sport and ensuring that some common sense is applied to these situations. As I said, I think all of us, we can comment on it when we see the action being taken rather than just the consideration."

Journalist: "Jon Noble, The Race. George, another one. You’re one of the few drivers who've raced with the cooling vest this year. But some drivers want to race with it but can't because it adds too much weight onto their car. If it’s not declared from the GPDA’s perspective, does something need to be done to ensure everyone’s operating on the same playing field on this? Because obviously not all cars weigh the same without ballast." George: "Yeah. I mean, I feel fortunate that I’ve had the chance to run with the cooling vest. It’s not perfect yet, but it’s definitely an improvement, I feel. Every car is also different – I think every cockpit runs at different temperatures. I know we've seen our cockpit getting up to 60 degrees before, and I think the heat hazard is at 31 degrees, I believe, or 30. But when you compound that with the sunlight and the temperature of the cockpit, it is like a sauna in the race car. So yeah, I don’t know. We've not collectively spoken about it, and not everybody's in favour to run it – which is also fine. Somebody made the point recently – like football players on a cold day, some people are wearing gloves, some people have got short sleeve shirts on – and that should be the driver’s choice. Maybe the heat hazard should be reduced slightly because we've not yet gone over it. Saudi was hot, Bahrain was hot, here – maybe it could be adjusted by a few degrees."

Journalist: "Jenna Fryer, Associated Press. Some of the drivers have talked about some of the turns." George: "Yeah. I mean, I enjoy coming to Miami. It’s a crazy race. The circuit is quirky. That tight section – we don’t love it, but it's different. You know, the same like in Baku – we don’t love the castle section, it’s so tight and very challenging, but you don’t want every circuit to be the same either. It’s an amazing race. It's improving every year. Things are looking better as well – driving to the paddock, it looks pretty cool. And where all of the team garages are set up inside the stadium – they’re the experts, we just drive the cars. It should stay like that."

Journalist: "Graham Harris, Motorsport Monday. Question for all three of you – but George mainly. The GPDA is a formal body of the drivers, but you don’t seem to have a formal relationship with the FIA, with structured meetings where you can actually sit down and come out and say, "we talked about this face to face." You're resorting to open letters and that type of thing. Do you think that position should change?" George: "I mean, it’s… I feel it's like unprecedented times we’ve been in over the last 18 months with what’s been changed and what’s happening. I think when the GPDA was founded years ago, it wasn’t really to talk about politics – it was to talk about safety, improvements of the sport, improvements of the racing. Especially myself – I find myself talking about topics that I didn’t really have any intention of talking about. But we find ourselves in a time where we're not focused on the things why we’re all here. We're here to go racing, we’re here to create the best show for the fans, to have the fastest cars, the safest cars, the best technology, the best engineering – and yet we talk about fines and punishments and swearing. So yeah, maybe something should change. We're open to it, but we just ultimately want the best for the sport."

[ofeliaxoxo]

in a world where Oscar and George are both girls it makes so much sense for George who had to Become Hot Deliberately (tall no boobs horsey face idk what the girl equivalent of the 1D flatironed bowl cut is but she had it) deciding it was her Moral Obligation as GPDA president and trailblazer to guide awkward little Oscar on this journey for the sake of Women in Sport and Oscar says well I won't be doing any of that but I guess it's cool you want to hang out :)

Literally. Like my girl George is very much someone for whom Being Hot never came naturally and it was a source of torture in her teen years. She literally wasn’t hot. And then she realised she’d had enough and her determination kicked in. She said fuck it im just going to be hot. And it did work she is hot. That is crucial to this au george is fully a feminine hot girl but it’s not easy or instinctive the way it can be for some people. Or at least it is now, through habit, but it was a conscious and active choice. She’s also still very George. And YES George being like we are Women In Sport actually makes me so:( like it’s emotional to me. Girl George….my heart. She’d always be putting so much effort in. But to me that’s so touching. They play padel or whatever thing du jour all the drivers are into and hang out politely a couple times before realising like wait I actually Like You. I don’t have a lot of George and Oscar knowledge to hand but they have hung out a couple times. Also the Miami convo, George saying I wanna see you party and Oscar saying ok when are We going out. To rpf this George wants Oscar to Do It Right and Oscar’s response is ok:) yay:) let’s hang out:)

And that results in them accidentally forming a real and true friendship where they really do care for each other. Everyone’s either like ok the girls will just be put together OR expecting them to hate each other. But they just simply are friends and prefer each other to a lot of the other drivers and no one else is sure whether that is Annoying or Correct. They still have their other friendships like George and Alex, or Oscar and Logan and then later Oscar and Charles. George has a lot more actual friends on the grid than Oscar. She grew up racing them and they’ve known her since she was a creature. She’s very outgoing and self possessed while Oscar starts off as quieter/more self censored. And Oscar doesn’t have that long term relationship she’s just coming in now as a Woman albeit a gross one. She thinks her grossness overpowers her Womanness but actually that is simply not how it works. So she’s a little disconnected apart from to George. Her conspicuous friends on the grid are largely through Lando as with real life.

Also I enjoy the concept of George making Oscar hot and people (Lando) being like now hold the phone. Because he does have that teasing friend relationship w girl George still and then when he sees them sexily slaying he’s like oh no wait god fuck.

[georgegraphys]

Now that the QAT discourse is an "outdated thing" I guess I can now speak up about the whole thing, can I?

Take this lightly as my observations and what I say might be biased because I'm human and no one is fully objective. And lastly, please don't reblog with main tags of the drivers, I don't want to start things again but I just want to say my thoughts that I've been wanting to share but only after things went silent. And I do not wish to entertain another opinion except my own thoughts because this is simply me sharing not asking for someone else's thoughts/opinion.

Can I say that what happened in Qatar is somehow a heavily calculated thing?

I obviously don't know the whole situation as I'm not the oxygen in the air or flies in the walls but I can see how MV manipulates the media to his own advantage.

First, timing. He starts throwing the fire when GR finishes his media rounds, which means GR would have no time to clarify/fight the things MV throw on the spot and would have to wait for 3-4 days to respond. This also happens because GR doesn't have a "press" ready at his side to broadcast his thoughts immediately. As you can see, MV/RBR (especially Marko) had that press. Like it can be a summer break and you'd still see a journalist talking to Marko. I hope one day GR will have a press on his side that works that way. Believe me, it'll help. A lot.

Second of all, the accusations. The accusations were merely not about the unfairness of the penalty. If that's the case, GR would've ignored them like what the others did. But MV's party attacks things on GR side that he CANNOT afford to ignore: a) his personality b) the FIA mates thing. GR is a GPDA director and a public figure first and foremost, that FIA accusation is a serious one and that needs to be cleared up 100%. So at the end of the day? GR can't afford to pass it up and had to speak to the press one way or another

Third, audience. I think it is common knowledge that F1 audiences have short term memory and their recency bias sometimes occurs only for an hour. And so I do think someone did take advantage by being the first person to speak up about the penalty drama, knowing how the audience would react (+ the advantage of timing and his personal audience which is a bigger one than that of GR's). Because MV spoke up first and had the advantage of the press, timing, and audience, everyone easily picked his words as the "right" ones, not noticing the inconsistencies and downplaying. Let us be honest, it is only 1% of the F1 audience that have full access and the willingness to oversee the contents like interviews, ted's notebook, etc and those people are mainly the big accounts. Those big accounts, having those access to those things and the dedication to process those things (regardless of it being biased or not), slowly becomes a key opinion leader. Fans who don't have access to those things trusts these big accounts so much and misinterpret these things. Sometimes? other big accounts also steal stuff like this and paraphrase it in their own way (sometimes twist it to make their points and appease their audience). That is where everything goes disastrous. Especially in the 3-4 days void of GR not speaking to the press.

Fourth? Time to wash your hands. After throwing the fires, creating narratives that GR couldn't dodge or avoid to not give a response, taking advantage of the timing, substance, and audience, that certain party starts to wash their hands. MV went from not wanting to play padel with GR to speaking about the dinner incident (another hand washing moment as he implies that he already wants to make amends + being the bigger guy, pushing the common narrative of the bigger guy = no faults) and saying that they'll sort this out and it'll be okay after a few padel games. Also? CHorner went from calling GR hysterical to saying MV-GR should deal with these things privately. Heavy on CHorner, what's with the backtrack? At least you should side fully with your driver no? Have some backbone, Christian. Don't bullshit and shit talk George when you liked his pics and follow him. Kinda shameless and pathetic yk?

So yeah these are the thoughts I have and basically what, in my opinion, happened. I know I previously said that this is an emotion-driven thing. But after seeing what transpired in Abu Dhabi? It's heavily calculated there and emotionally driven in Qatar. Abu Dhabi changed my thoughts that this is far from an innocent, honest, spontaneous play. Again, it's my opinion. You have yours. This time, I don't feel like entertaining any other opinions since for me, this is just me sharing what I think back then, not an open discussion any more.

I've actually talked with a friend about how I would deal with this thing as a person who worked in PR. We shared the same opinion that GR should keep his silence and do a little bit of an image cleaning with contents and stuff (this was before AD and the FIA mates claim got big). Because sometimes these discourses are not worth entertaining and a silence would be better since everyone would forget about it once they realized there is no drama to feed on. But again, MV threw something GR cannot dodge so we "changed" the things we would do. We honestly think that GR should give a one time full out interview explaining what he has to explain and never entertain the discourse again regardless of what RBR is saying and what the public reaction is. And voila! We see eye to eye with the Merc PR team. George gave one FULL interview and did not entertain any of the dinner incident, padel game thing, RBR response, CH's response, etc. And it is a PERFECT move. Why? Because GR did what he already did. Face the public and give his statement. Their reactions and opinions from further there are no longer important. He said what he had to say and that's that. One day, i'm sure, the public would go back to what GR said and realize that he was right all along. It's a long process to reach that part but that's the safest one. We did this for fun and as a mental training too on what we would do in a crisis like this (how we manage a crisis + try to learn/predict the PR strategy Merc is gonna throw out as a company)

GR did the right thing with his response. 100% perfect. Throw everything all at once and give ZERO response afterwards. In the end, RBR would look like a fool for talking alone to the press. After a while, the press would also get bored of it if there were no reactions from GR and they'd move on. Why? Because when you write the news, you have to have two things to compare. You have to have pros and cons to make it entertaining. Things won't be fun if it's one sided. They thrive on a two sided drama. When it's one-sided, events expire quickly and will no longer be deemed relevant to report on as news. I hope from this point forward, GR will no longer entertain such questions and just preserve his silence.

Lastly? If GR ignores MV longer than this? Don't get mad at him. The things that happened this time are too far for a mere one grid penalty that is worthless anyways. He has every right to take his time. Being angry at the penalty is one thing. But throwing shade of the unpaid work GR did as the GPDA director and lowkey dismissing his efforts by slandering and accusing him is another.

[arrangedaccident]

my assumption (and hope) is that there’s been no response to the insane new fia guidelines bc the gpda is waiting until the beginning of the season when a strike would be more effective

[vro0m]

While we wait for further info (that were not going to get) about the race director change, is this just MBS making someone other than himself take responsibility and the FIA trying to appear like they are improving after the GPDA called them out so recently, yes or yes?

I do not know which is why I said "waiting for more information".

I'd be surprised if the GPDA thing had that much of an impact honestly? But in any case it's weird.

Did he get fired or did he leave? (all the articles and statements so far say he left, he stepped down, etc but words are words)

In either case what's the emergency? There's only three races / three weeks left in the season. What's the point of it happening now?

Anyway it seems clearly unplanned because why else would you announce such a thing 8 days from the next GP weekend + in the middle of the second week of a 2 week break?

Is he a scapegoat? Or were they discussing some things over the bream and couldn't reach an agreement? Did he then decided he'd rather leave or did they then decided they'd rather fire him? Does it have nothing to do with it at all and he has some personal emergency?

[f1wasmyworld]

I don't know if it's just me but i feel like asking/wanting Seb to continue his work as a gpda director is just an easy way out for (some of) the other drivers to not speak up themselves but keep shifting the responsibility over to Seb.

I really wish he has the strength to say no and to just enjoy 'the nothing' that's already waiting for him.

However, if he says no, i just KNOW that he would be there to help them if they call him one day. It's just how he is 💙

[umflowers]

hey, know what i just remembered while going through my old likes? when that bomb dropped near the jeddah circuit and there was a four hour meeting that stretched into the wee morning hours, when seb wasn’t there and george was the only gpda representative, when he was going up against all the team principals and the heads of fia/fom/liberty media and the saudi government, when he did all that at 24 years old, took on the responsibility of representing the entire paddock, probably went nearly sleepless while team members were sleeping on the runoff areas of the circuit waiting for word? none of you were bitching about george. actually pretty much all of you were praising him.