#what did you do to him ron dennis

[delulujuls]

brazilian air | as12

hi, i am in my classic f1 era rn and i am currently obsessed with mr Senna god he was so fine and since it's his bday today i thought that im gonna upload this one bc why not

also im like 100% sure that this one will flop but i wanted to upload this anyway, so if you'll find it worth a shot, enjoy then!

happy bday king, 64 today but 34 forever, you'll always be missed

summary: during a month break from racing, ayrton thought that inviting y/n into his family sides will get them along even more. to the surprise to both of them, they got along even better than expected

warnings: sexual content, fingering, female orgasm

pairing: fem!mclarendriver x ayrton senna

After the Sao Paulo Grand Prix, there came a monthly break, even though it was only the second race of the season.

The end of march was very warm, but the weather in Brazil had its own rules. Just as in London there was probably a downpour and the temperature barely above ten degrees, the other side of the globe had almost holiday-like weather.

The 1990 season was the second year when Y/N took Alain Prost's seat at McLaren, thus becoming Ayrton Senna's teammate. While many did not look favorably upon Ron Dennis's decision for various reasons—because Y/N was the first woman in history to have the opportunity to race at the top level of motorsport, her debut in Formula 1, her young age, and the fact of what kind of past Senna had with his previous teammates—with each passing month the doubts started to going away.

The girl handled herself on the track incredibly well, and since McLaren did not disappoint with their cars, she practically returned from every race with points, effectively shutting the mouths of all those who spoke unfavorably about her.

Even Ayrton himself, who was initially the most unconvinced about the boss's decision, also didn't need much to change his mind about her. At first, he approached her with distance, fearing that her joining the team might cause even more damage than when they had Prost in reserve. As it turned out, the girl was not his enemy; often, he himself silenced all those who attacked her and questioned her abilities.

Senna saw that she looked up at him as her authority. She never explicitly told him, but it was evident how she listened carefully to his advice, asked when she had doubts, and consulted almost everything only with him, although she had a whole crowd of people around her.

Ron breathed a sigh of relief seeing that they tolerated each other and there were no forecasts for them to repeat the Senna-Prost scenario. However, tolerating each other was an understatement, because Ayrton would never invite someone to his family's sides whom he merely tolerated. The Brazilian didn't admit it out loud, but he liked the girl. Sometimes he even caught himself thinking about her when she wasn't around, and when she was, he smiled a lot more in her company, whereas McLaren's garage used to be a place of nerves and tense atmosphere for him.

Yes, if someone asked him about Y/N, Ayrton would say she was his friend. Someone he never had after leaving Brazil.

"How do I say in Portugese that I can't eat anymore?"

The girl asked, lying on her towel stretched out on the hull of the motorboat belonging to the Senna family.

Y/N shielded the sun with her hand and glanced at Ayrton, who laughed at her question, sitting next to her and smoking a cigarette.

"It's not funny, your mom wants to fatten me up so that I'm heavier and slower than you on the track."

"Não aguento mais, tô chei", but even if you say it in Portugese, my mom won't listen to you anyway."

"I've never eaten such delicious food, but when we get back, I probably won't fit into my clothes anymore."

He released smoke from his lungs and involuntarily glanced at her when she turned onto her stomach and closed her eyes. Her hair, still wet from bathing in the lake, stuck to her shoulders, and her skin, once pale, slowly began to take on a blush from the sun.

"You look good, so don't worry."

"I didn't say I would look bad, just that I won't fit into my pants anymore."

"As long as you can fit into the car, you'll be fine."

The girl snorted, "Well, in that case, I have quite a reserve."

Y/N gathered her hair behind her shoulder and settled more comfortably, exposing herself to the pleasantly warming rays of the sun. Ayrton glanced down her body and only when the heat from his cigarette burned his fingers a little, he snap out of it. Did he really like the girl, or was it just that he spent so much time with her that he got used to her? He didn't know the answer to that question, but he knew that sometimes he found himself staring at her for a bit too long. Despite being a few years younger than him, she had feminine charms. He also objectively thought that the girl was attractive.

She didn't have much of a different opinion about him either because in her eyes, Ayrton was indeed a handsome man. He was tall, athletic, had beautiful brown eyes and hair of the same color, which often fell in curls onto his forehead. She liked his smile and the way he wrinkled his nose, which, like most of his body, was covered in freckles. But Ayrton appealed to her only as an older teammate, someone who was completely out of her reach, and for whom she was probably just an insignificant kid. At least that's what she thought.

They spent time at the lake until late afternoon, as for dinner, besides Ayrton's parents, his sister with Bruno, his nephew, was also supposed to appear. Upon returning to the Senna family's home, the girl took only a quick shower and threw on a thin, white dress because even though the day was slowly coming to an end, the temperature was still high. They spent the evening on the terrace, and time passed in a very pleasant atmosphere. Mrs. Senna made sure that only delicious dishes appeared on the table, while Mr. da Silva entertained the company with stories and jokes. Although Y/N didn't speak anything in Portugese except for the short phrases Ayrton had taught her, there were no communication problems for a moment. At one point, little Bruno grabbed the radio and turned up the volume, pulling the girl by the hand and inviting her to dance. The girl, already somewhat tipsy from wine, agreed without hesitation and followed the six-year-old, dancing with him barefoot on the still warm concrete. Ayrton's mother and sister sang along with the song, his father clapped his hands, and Ayrton himself looked at the scene with tenderness, laughing and sipping his beer. She took the boy in her arms and spun with him, dancing, to which Bruno laughed out loud. Although Ayrton's family had only met Y/N a few days ago, he was convinced, seeing with his own eyes, how much they liked her. It meant a lot to him.

"Tio, agora tio Ayrton!"

Bruno shouted and pointed at the man when a new song started playing. Ayrton laughed and shook his head, to which his sister started pulling his arm and, to the sounds of approval from the family, he stood up and approached the girl, who put the boy down on the ground.

"Querida senhora," he extended his hand towards her, slightly bowing, "may I?"

Y/N chuckled and nodded, extending her hand, which was met with numerous shouts and whistles.

"I can't dance, I can't dance at all."

She said through laughter when he pulled her closer and placed his hand on her waist.

"Everyone can dance to Brazilian rhythms, trust me."

Ayrton replied with an assuring smile and spinned her around, catching her again after a moment. They danced, understanding each other without words, laughing only when one of them accidentally bumped into someone or stepped on someone's foot.

The girl didn't know if her cheeks were burning from the sun, the alcohol, or the fact that she felt embarrassed by being so close to him. But she felt light and happy enough not to dwell on it. She wanted this evening to last as long as possible.

However, at some point, Bruno fell asleep on the chair, and Viviane took him in her arms, announcing that she would put him to bed and she will also take a rest, wishing everyone a good night. Ayrton's mother, seeing that his dad had had enough beer, took him by the arm and, amid numerous protests, escorted him inside. The girl helped carry the dishes to the kitchen, and when she brought in the last batch of plates, Ayrton's mother hugged her tightly.

Y/N returned her embrace with a smile, wishing her a good night before returning to the terrace.

Seeing the expression on her face, Ayrton smiled too.

"They liked you, but I'm sure you noticed that yourself."

"They are very kind," the girl replied, closing the terrace doors, "you have a truly wonderful family."

Y/N approached the table and took a chair to sit on it, but Ayrton straightened up and patted his knees, indicating that she should sit on them. The girl accepted the invitation without protest and sat on them sideways, embracing him around the neck.

"I'm glad you agreed to come here with me," he said, looking into her eyes, to which she smiled.

"I'm glad you invited me."

For a moment, they looked at each other in silence, she on his lap, with her hand on his bare shoulders, he with one hand on her waist and the other caressing her exposed thigh. He raised his hand and brushed a lock of her hair behind her ear, touching her flushed cheek. The girl smiled at his gesture and closed her eyes.

"You're important to me, you know?"

"I am?"

She asked, looking at him again.

Ayrton nodded, stroking her cheek with his thumb. Y/N threaded her fingers into the hair resting at the base of his neck, stroking it lightly. At one point, without thinking or saying a word, he leaned towards her and kissed her. She kissed him back, touching his cheek with her other hand. Ayrton didn't break the kiss, he just hugged her tighter, pressing their bodies together. Y/N was returning each of his kisses and after a while their tongues started their love dance, rubbing against each other. Even though they were both a bit drunk, Ayrton wasn't sure how much he could afford. However, when she slightly opened her legs, giving him a silent invitation, he squeezed her thigh to which she sighed. He smiled against her lips, continuing to kiss her. He stroked her leg, moving higher and higher with each movement. When he felt the fabric of her underwear with his fingertips, he pulled away slightly, wanting to look at her face and see her reaction, but she pulled him closer again, connecting their lips in a kiss.

"Do not stop"

Ayrton smiled against her lips and deepened the kiss in response. He ran his fingers over her pussy and she purred softly. He began to slowly massage her through the fabric of her panties, but when they began to get in the way after some time, he pulled them off her with a quick movement.

His lips soon moved to her neck, marking it with kisses. She tilted her head, giving him better access to her. Ayrton accidentally slipped the strap of her dress, but neither of them cared. The girl noticed it only when he sucked on her nipple, which made her moan involuntarily.

"You have to be quiet, can you do that?"

He asked quietly, glancing at her ecstatic face. She just licked her lips and quickly nodded. He ran his tongue over her nipple again, his hand still massaging her pussy. When he felt how wet she was, he slowly inserted his finger into her, but carefully watched her face, continuing to caress her breasts with his mouth. He looked at her, wanting to make sure they were both on the same page. However, his actions were perceived with enthusiasm, as the girl tilted her head back, letting out a muffled moans from her pursed lips. Ayrton smiled to himself, still peppering her breasts with kisses. He inserted his finger all the way and started moving it, expertly nudging her inner, sensitive spot. Y/N had a hard time staying quiet, especially when he added a second finger and his movements inside her started getting more precise and decisive. The girl covered her mouth with one hand and grabbed his wrist with the other and pushed him harder into herself, feeling that she was only seconds away from orgasm.

"Ayrton, I- oh my god…"

Y/N wrapped her arms around his neck again and dug her nails into his bare shoulder.

"Kiss me, quick"

He said quietly, his breathing also quickening. She complied with his command and kissed him, making him muffle her moans with his mouth. Y/N came on his hand soon after, squeezing her eyes shut and tilting her head back. After a few moments, the girl sat up straight again, trying to calm her breathing. As she slowly began to realize what had actually happened, the blush on her cheeks intensified even more. She looked at him uncertainly, he laughed seeing her reaction and kissed her on the cheek.

"Don't look so innocent, you're quite a good one."

The girl felt ashamed and closed her eyes, cuddling into him, and he hugged her tightly.

"Promise me that no one in your family will sit in this chair for breakfast."

Ayrton chuckled and rubbed his hand on her back.

"I promise, don't worry about it," he rested his cheek on her head, "We can go somewhere else if you want."

The girl raised her head and looked at him.

"I won't be able to keep quiet, Ayrton. Your parents-" "Don't worry," he interrupted her, taking her panties thrown on the chair next to them and handing them to her hand, "I'll make sure you keep your mouth busy."

[cazzyf1]

pls tell me everything you know about the 1982 drivers strike i think about it often

Right I about to go into as much detail as possible about the driver's strike while hopefully keeping it comprehensible.

*cracks knuckles*

Let's go.

So to give some overall context to the situation, Bernie Ecclestone was doing some meddling. He had control over the Formula One Constructors Association (FOCA) which meant he could negotiate contracts between teams, track owners, television rights, etc. Realising the sort of power Bernie Ecclestone was getting, the Federation Internationale de I'Automobile (FIA) put Jean-Marie Balestre in charge. There was a big power struggle between these two however both Ecclestone and Balestre united against the drivers in 1982.

At the start of the 1982 season, a new license called a 'super license' was put forward for the drivers to sign. This license was based on other sports, like football's transfer systems, meaning the drivers had fewer rights - their team owners essentially owned them. For example, the super licence meant a team could keep drivers to one team for up to three years, even if the drivers wanted to leave. This happened after, in 1981, Alain Prost was racing for McLaren, and he became convinced that the car wasn't safe. He refused to drive for the team, though he had a contract. He said if necessary, he would walk away from the sport altogether. Then Renault approached Alain Prost, and he joined them. A new license was created to prevent this situation from happening again.

1982 was also the season that (at the time) 2x World Champion Niki Lauda decided to come out of retirement. In 1979 he had been racing for Bernie Ecclestone's team 'Brabham', but halfway through the season, he walked away, finding no more interest in the sport. Eventually Ron Dennis, who ran the team 'Mclaren' tempted Niki back into the sport.

Niki was sent the super license a few days before the start of the season to sign, and being a stickler for detail he made sure to read through all of it. In reading it, Niki realised the control the team owners would have over the drivers and did not approve of it. Quickly, he rang up Didier Pironi who was head of the drivers association, to talk him through what he had found. Didier agreed that these licenses were bad and then called all the other drivers, telling them not to sign the licence. They had been late though, as 24 had technically already signed as they hadn't properly read the licence. The only ones that hadn't were Lauda, Pironi, Villeneuve who had seen something similar in ice hockey and didn't like it, Arnoux, Giacomelli and de Cesaris.

In South Africa, Kyalami the track was prepared for the drivers to start practising, and the drivers were arriving in their normal cars. But before they could get out on track, a bus pulled up with Niki Lauda and Pironi in it. Without their knowledge, Niki and Didier had managed to borrow a bus from Trevor Rowe and were ready to take the drivers back to their hotel at the Kyalami Ranch. They rounded up all the drivers and told them of their plans, and while they were hesitant, eventually, most of them were convinced to get onto the bus. Only two didn't. Jochen Mass, who was late (He's always late, someone said) and Jacky Ickx.

The team owner of March, John McDonald, caught wind of what was happening and tried to prevent the bus from leaving by parking a van in front of the bus. Jacques Laffite got out of the bus to move the van, accidentally stalled it, but eventually got it out of the way. The bus then set off, taking the scenic route back to the Sunnyside Park Hotel while every news van and car chased after the bus, getting clips of Niki Lauda looking out the back of the bus and waving at them.

Eventually, they arrived, and all of them strutted past the journalists and went into the hotel. Thus ensued a fun time for the drivers relaxing around by the pool for the day. However, things back at the track were not shaping up well.

Bernie Ecclestone and Jean-Marie Balestre were pissed. The race organisers threatened to impound the cars, Bernie Ecclestone threatened to sue the drivers, and Balestre announced if the drivers didn't come back, then they would all be fired. Bernie Ecclestone had already fired the drivers from his team, Nelson Piquet and Riccardo Patrese. The mechanics put signs out joking advertising for new drivers. Didier Pironi was doing the main negotiations for the drivers at the track and reporting back to Niki Lauda at the hotel on how it was progressing. During the evening, when dinner was being served, the driver's wives and girlfriends, who were still at the track, started throwing bread rolls at Balestre.

Didier Pironi arrived at the hotel and explained that if they didn't return and drive immediately, they risked life bans. Niki Lauda realised that this strike would last the night, and he knew that if all the drivers returned to their own rooms, the team principles would easily be able to convince them to abandon the strike. They needed to stay united, which meant literally sticking together. He arranged to take over the conference room in the hotel and have all the spare mattresses brought into the room.

All the drivers moved into this one big room, and soon, the entertainment started. Many of the younger drivers felt quite panicked about the whole situation, worried that they would be fired for going on strike, which would have ended any career in motorsports, so they went to the older drivers like Niki for reassurance. Niki tried to lighten up the atmosphere by telling dirty jokes. Bruno Giacomelli, who was quite passionate about machine guns, got his hands on a chart and gave a presentation on how to take a gun to bits. There was also a piano in the room, and driver Elio de Angelis, trained to play the piano, performed for all the drivers. Everyone there said it was the most beautiful playing they had ever heard. Gilles Villeneuve also had a go playing a few joyful pieces.

The team owners and journalists had by now discovered that all the drivers were hiding out in this one big room, and they were trying to get in. At first, Niki gave an interview by the door, but he ensured no one would leave the room. One of the team principles, Mo Nunn of Ensign, had brought the driver, Guerrero's girlfriend, along as a bargaining trip. Niki made sure to accompany Guerrero to see his girlfriend. He said that the situation could have brought a tear to your eye. Eventually, they got the girlfriend away from the team principal and into the room. Team principal Jean Sage of Renault tried to get to Prost and Arnoux but was beaten off.

At this point, the team principals grew frustrated and decided to break into the room, so the drivers had to use the piano to barricade the door.

Then night came, and it was time for the drivers to get even closer. There were not enough mattresses for one each, meaning all the drivers had to bunk up. Many funny photographs have come from this event. Alain Prost and Giles Villeneuve shared a mattress, which led to Patrick Tambay saying if a child came from this, all the others might as well give up.

There was a problem with the toilet as there was only one and it wasn't in the room. There was a key to the toilet and so the drivers agreed to leave it in the middle of the room so they would know if someone left to the toilet and didn't come back. One driver, Fabi, ended up going to the toilet but did not come back.

During the night, Carlos Reuntemann or Keke Rosberg snored so loudly that Gilles Villeneuve threw a blanket over them to cover the sound.

In the morning, all the drivers got up, trying hard not to sniff the odour of the room and got ready to head to the track as Didier Pironi had been able to successfully negotiate a licence they were happy with. No drivers were fired, Nelson Piquet and Riccardo Paterese were rehired, and the race was successful. There were fears that the drivers could be arrested at the airport, but thankfully, that didn't happen. Instead, they were fined for taking part in the strike, which, while it didn't affect some drivers who already had plenty of money, it wasn't ideal for the drivers who were just getting started.

This is as much as I am able to remember; if you know anything more or if there is something wrong in this let me know in the comments below! Hope you enjoyed the read :)

[teriri-sayes]

Reactions to Chaos Creator's Chapter 266

New title - 33. Do You Think It's Possible With Your Own Power?

TL;DR - Cale reveals that he was an otherworlder sent by a god to stop the god-wannabe dragon. Freedom spies on the emperor. Jungwon says that Dragon Lord came to visit him. Cale is troubled because of gamer Alberu.

The Discussion First half of the chapter was a continuation of Cale's "discussion" with Emperor Alt. Cale revealed about his otherworlder status and his mission, giving Alt false hopes of power when Cale added that he would leave this world after his mission was done.

Of course, Cale knew that Alt's ambition would be hard to achieve, especially when King Dennis was present. Dennis had slyly offered to assign "aides" who would do chores for the mages and swordsmen in Cale's group.

With the great upheaval happening 200 years ago, magic and swordsmanship naturally regressed, so Cale understood why Dennis wanted his kingdom's theoretical mages and reserve swordsmen to "become aides" of the mages and knights in Cale's group. So Cale agreed to Dennis's offer, referring him to Ron and Rosalyn.

The Messages It seemed like the area near the ruined temple of the Chaos God was a no-signal place because Sui's group stopped contacting them after teleporting there. And while Cale was thinking of eventually going there too, he received two messages.

One was from Jungwon who said that the Dragon Lord personally visited him. What? How? Did the Central Plains have a World Tree where the Dragon Lord could use to trace the source of the world and talk to Jungwon, like how he did in Aipotu?

But Cale was more alarmed to read the 2nd message which was from Alberu. Yeah, Cale's bad premonition was correct. Alberu had indeed become an obsessed gamer! 🤣🤣🤣

Alberu's message: I heard that the game is getting a large update patch. It's said that from now on, game users can also build a nation. I plan to try it too. Cale: Ha! Alberu's message: FYI, I was selected as a Rising Newbie, a rising powerhouse among newbies. I think I will participate in the best rookie competition as Roan's representative. Cale: Ha! (Alberu Crossman. That person plans to establish a kingdom in a virtual reality game and be the king. And what? Rising Newbie? How immersed were you in the game to get a title like that!) Cale: *video calls Alberu* Alberu: What? I'm busy now, okay? *moving his pen nonstop* Cale: *shocked* Alberu: What's wrong? What happened? Raon: H-Human! The crown prince has puffy eyes! His cheeks are sunken! We have to give the crown prince 10- no, 100 apple pies! Cale: *covers face with both hands* Aren't you tired? Alberu: *stops writing and smiles* You mean doing both work and games? Cale: Yes. Isn't it better to do it in moderation? Alberu: *shrugs* Isn't it worth a try? Raon: T-The crown prince looks like my human now! Cale: This is driving me crazy.

Oh how the tables have turned. Cale and Alberu have switched their iconic lines of "It's worth a try" and "This is driving me crazy" 🤣🤣🤣 And that Rising Newbie title. Yeah, that's pretty much confirmation of Alberu's game addiction. What have you done to him, Cale?

Ending Remarks The last part about gamer Alberu was hilarious. Next chapter would be Cale's meeting with the pope. I guess we're going to find out soon the chaos the three troublemakers had done there. 😂

[lewisinho]

✨lewis hamilton’s most underrated mclaren drives ✨

(with special dedication to: @l8tof1 & @sirlew44)

did a lil’ rewatch over the break and wanted to do a post about some of lewis’ most underrated wins/drives in f1 over the years; i realise that there are a lot of them and so i decided to split and do a post for his mclaren days and another one for his mercedes years.

a few words of introduction:

the thing about watching mclaren lewis and why it’s just such a privilege, is that this boy is special; babyfaced rookie picked from the crèche by ron dennis and who was told he’d be half a second off nando’s pace and that he shouldn’t worry, wasn’t just hungry he had something to prove, he will nawt be a second driver even if it’s to the reigning 2x world champion who has just come from beating THE michael schumacher, basically babes wasn’t having it and he put the fear of god into these drivers…and ron dennis (say what you want about that that man, but you can’t deny, he really girlbossed that one thing; giving lewis a car that was capable of winning, was a choice™️, but a very good one and we thank him for that); mclaren lewis is special because he’s hungry, he’s raw and fast, very fast, sometimes too fast and too reckless, but he’s learning, and when you watch these races and these seasons you see him learn and grow and change; all these seasons are different, but those mclaren years are just as important for the lore and who he is now and to witness the evolution of both the driver and the man is truly special; so this small collection of drives is a bit of a crème-de-la-crème if you will of those races that i think aren’t as mentioned in the pantheon of great lewis drives as much as i think they should, so let us begin:

fuji 2007 🇯🇵 aka the first rain dance of og bald baby mclazza rookie lewis, stunting on hoes since ‘07

people keep talking about silvo 2008 (and rightly so) but this one is a bit of a forgotten wet-weather masterpiece; talk about artistic sublimity, this is the racing sublimity of one 22-year-old rookie lewis hamilton; baby lewis was holding off his reigning world champion of a teammate absolutely majestically in torrential conditions, and executing the race and the restarts to perfection (race is also chaos personified so brilliant to rewatch). baby lew became a bit of a headache for the establishment™️ and one fernando alonso and it’s fun to watch.

germany 2008 🇩🇪aka mclaren pitwall terrorising baby lewis (the horrors started way before merc)

a race overshadowed by his brilliance in silverstone two weeks earlier (suffering from success and having consecutive masterclasses amirite), but it’s nearly as brilliant; this is lewis vs massa + the mclaren pitwall deciding to gamble with some fuckass strategy and leaving lewis out for a safety car restart, lewis having to pull massive gaps, driving the wheels of that mp4-23 and then overtake from p5 to take the lead; some brilliant overtakes and lewis displaying incredible race pace; this drive is the lewis hamilton special that massa had no answer for 

singapore 2009 🇸🇬 aka lewis decided to serve cunt

to truly appreciate the sheer extent of said cunt serving, you have to watch both quali and the race; mind you, the 2009 mclaren was nawt it, the post-updates mp4-24 was still dogshit compared to lil’ sister mp4-23 and very much an underperforming and unreliable shitbox; the updates also came too late for lewis to put up a proper championship fight; however this did not stop from lewis from putting 2 whole ass seconds on his teammate, take pole ahead of the red bulls and the brawns and then dominate the race, with brilliant tyre management and race pace (40 secs ahead of kova, nearly 10 secs ahead of timo glock in p2 in a truly fuckass mclaren)

brazil 2009 🇧🇷 aka the road to legend is long and twisted and the brazilian racing gods clearly have a plan 

p17 to p3; and no you may think this is one of those checo-esque recovery drives where you qualify terribly but have a rocketship so you overtake cars easily and finish the race in a position you should have started the race in; well, the mp4-24 actually qualified terribly in the wet (even post-upgrades, it was also set up for the dry) and was still very much mid on a sunday; lewis however babes was on yet another mission, overtaking cars *mwah* like please watch it; the brazilian racing gods truly picked a chosen one and his name is lewis hamilton i do not make the rules; his lil’ fist punching the air when he crossed the line says everything you need to know about what that drive meant to lewis (also like that boy was starving for a win around interlagos and to think the first one came only in 2016 jeez) the racing gods really wanted to make that man suffer biblically in true chosen one fashion before offering any type of redemption; you see interlagos and lewis is a special narrative, it’s about a boy achieving immortality in his hero’s homeland, and it goes all the way from 2007 to 2021 and beyond, and there are chapters in between, like 2009, that are worth mentioning, because the man is desperate for a win here and he’s getting so so close, hungry mclaren lewis you mean so much to me, he would eat anything and anyone and well,,,interlagos is lewis’ yearning personified

china 2011 🇨🇳 aka he WILL have his win and he will bite and claw his way towards it 

hungry lewis starving for a win with a car that is half-decent is dangerous; this race is *chefs kiss* oh my god, please watch it, baby mclaren lewis on a mission, babes after the race said he doesn’t remember when he last won a race, like wdym it’s only been like 8 months my guy (we’re on two years now); drama starts before the race even begins, because he’s got a fuel problem and is literally mere seconds away from a pit-lane start but no that team and that man were on a mission: three-stopper, overtaking both seb and jb, terrifying race pace! he also gets a bit emotional in the cool down room and hugs seb 🥹

germany 2011 🇩🇪 aka vintage lewis special 

another one where you have to watch both quali and the race, because baby goat was pulling quali laps out of his ass (imo probably one of his best non pole laps): he split the bulls and was only half a tenth from pole (also 1.2 secs ahead of his teammate); bear in mind we’re in the domination era of kinky kylie (rb-7) which took 12/19 victories and all but one pole position, which interestingly albeit unsurprisingly went to lewis in korea): that man was putting his entire lewpussy into those quali laps; now the race, ladies and gents (gn) this is where it gets tasty and spicy and if you want a three-car fight for the win this delivers on all fronts and provides lewis at his very best this is it;

a small (but important) tangent: i do find it slightly disappointing when people overlook lewis’ 2011 season entirely because of his getting outscored by jb; yes, it wasn’t a clean season from him, he made a lot of errors in the races and it’s quite a frustrating watch in general as a lewis fan, but he also had some absolutely brilliant races (i also can’t help but point out a similar trend that has happened with his 2022 season);

but anyway, this is lewis vs webber vs fernando, mclaren vs red bull vs ferrari for the entire race; overcut and undercut strategies happening simultaneously, lewis’ racecraft and defence on webber!!!!, and featuring a great overtake on nando!

+ honourable mention: australia 2009 🇦🇺 aka icarus flew too close to the sun 

you’re prolly wondering why i’m including australia 2009, which is rather infamously known for ‘liegate’; but lewis’ (and mclaren’s) post-race shenanigans overshadow an actually brilliant drive from p18 to 4th (momentarily 3rd bc trulli got DSQ’d which was then reversed lmao; it’s a bit all over the place) in an actually dogshit mclaren that had no right fighting even for top 5; this is pre-upgrades wheelbarrow mp4-24, this is the stuff that makes the w13 look like a prima ballerina, well guess what lewis was the prima ballerina and was putting that mclaren in positions it really did not deserve to even bear witness to; and then there was a bit of a kerfuffle at the fia office (please read up on liegate it’s acc really funny, mclaren spectacularly shooting themselves in the foot 🙄), someone got fired, lewis disqualified, but oh well, shits and giggles innit (hindsight's a wonderful thing)

hope you enjoyed and i also hope this provided some inspiration for a rewatch :) 💜🏎️

[blorbocedes]

hii it's 'I'm crying over brocedes' hours, blorbie do you think either one regrets ever meeting the other?

I don't think so!

keke making mclaren mercedes benz karting team for nico and lewis was lewis' first official mclaren connection which later helped his relations with ron dennis. and lewis talking how karting in Italy With Nico when they were kids was some of the best times, because you could truly enjoy the racing without the ego/pressure and just be kids. lewis also said coming to monaco to stay at keke's building with nico as kids was what made him dream big like yes, I want to achieve this life and he did! they live in the same building in monaco now! I would also argue driving wise nico made lewis work on his starts more, and it's the constant competition of 2013-2016 that made lewis a more complete, better driver like his peak form we saw.

for nico, lewis was his greatest challenge and his mountain to climb by beating him. he'd been coming second to lewis his entire life and he needed to prove it to himself that if he gave everything, he could be good enough. it made him hone himself into a better driver when the yardstick of measurement and comparison is the greatest driver in modern f1. I think that's also why nico is so complimentary of lewis as a driver because he has tried and knows where he falls short against him. going up against lewis in the title fight of his life also made him realize he Can walk away from f1, and not many people are able to.

lewis saying he reflected on being a better teammate not just driver after 2016/the last few years wouldn't have happened if silver war never happened. he grew as a person bc of it.

i think they both shaped each other during pivotal parts of their life, and they wouldn't be who they are now if they never met.

[formulaocean]

Just some thoughts on almost driver team pairings and the potential butterfly effects from each, all very much AU.

Lewis Hamilton decided Mercedes was just too big a risk from McLaren in 2013. This resulted in their second choice (Hulk) joining Nico Rosberg instead, both giving Hulk podiums and wins and giving Rosberg the 2014 championship a couple years ahead of schedule. Maybe Lewis as Niki Lauda’s number 1 choice in a fading McLaren still joins Mercedes in 2015 but he’s joining a team where Nico is their most recent champion and as such their competition over the next few years is less resentful and Nico has the confidence to fight without mind games . In short brocedes but they were both champions before becoming teammates and it changes everything.

Carrying on from this thought in normal 2016 Nico Rosberg tells Toto he’s retiring at the end of the season regardless of the outcome far earlier than he actually does and they do manage to sign Hulk before he signs with Renault again ending his podium drought.

Toto gets his wish and when Valteri is struggling in 2018 on his one year contracts he actually does manage to sign Max Verstappen from 2019. Does this mean there’s a Max v Lewis championship battle ahead of schedule? I can definitely see it for 2020 in the HAM-BOT-VER podium era as well as 2021 of course. Knock on effects involve Daniel Ricciardo staying on at Red Bull and although I can’t see him beating Lewis or Max in 2021 the dominance of the car in 2022/3 may have made him a world champion if losing his edge was a result of his McLaren days rather than a natural progression. If it was a natural progression it is also more likely that Charles could have had a proper shot at the championship in 2022 as he did beat Checo (barely) even with Ferrari being Ferrari that year and it would be interesting to see how dominant Red Bull would have been in 2023 potentially without a driver that’s 15 seconds ahead- I can see multiple race winners for a start even if they get the championship.

A long shot that would likely never have happened but Sebastian Vettel returns to Red Bull in 2021. Ferrari drops him early on in 2020 (let’s say Checo never won that glorious race and he stays on at what becomes Aston Martin for a straightforward swap) and Red Bull was very much looking for a more experienced driver and what’s a better storyline than having Seb return to partner Max? This has ramifications of if Seb got his edge back and it was a three way title fight in 2021 plus he stays longer in the sport with a fast car, or if he was more a Checo/Valteri figure but managed to take valuable points off Lewis (let’s say Silverstone) for a less controversial end to the championship. You also get more of a relationship between Max and Seb instead of just parallels and likely some weirdness from Charles about that too. It’s definitely a bit of a middle finger to Ferrari as well.

The Ferrari Driver Academy does the sensible thing and does not listen to Haas about wanting German sponsorship. Thus Mick goes to partner Kimi at Alfa Romeo instead and gets a more functional team to develop in. Would definitely be curious to see if that would have made a difference!

Ron Dennis does not put a rookie in the fastest car on the grid but still speed runs his progression. As such Fernando gets his third world championship and Lewis still gets his a year later (sorry Kimi).

Oscar Piastri does in fact go to Alpine. This could mean Daniel Ricciardo stays on another year at McLaren with no broken contract when the car actually does get fast (would be interesting to see if he could make that work or not) and also that they might have a spare seat in 2025 where they would court one of their favourite sons for a Carlando reunion in a McLaren that could potentially fight Ferrari long term. Alternatively Alpine is breaking apart at the seems and Mark Webber still does his a plus managing and gets Oscar out of there for 2024 anyway. For 2023 it would mean that Pierre Gasly stays on at Alpha Tauri and that whole mess of Alpha Tauri musical chairs is avoided.

BONUS. Honda pushes for Max to join Aston Martin in 2026 just as he’s potentially looking for an out from Red Bull amidst new engine regulations and an uncomfortable environment. We know they want to work with Max again already. There may not be a championship fight but we do get Alonso and Max as a chaotic and sensational teammate pairing doing more than the car is capable of and a team where all drivers, manufacturers, and financial backers are properly pushing in the right direction. Or maybe he joins after Fernando takes a step away from driving and is in the back room pulling in those points with Lance still around.

BONUS. I just like to think of the pure chaos that would be a George and Max teammate pairing that is not going to happen but would be pure gold. Max gets infinitely annoyed at Mercedes for not knowing how to build a car but has enough experience fighting for wins and podiums in previous not too competitive Red Bull cars that he makes the best of it but George makes it very very hard at times and he is so not used to a teammate that won’t just get out of his way at this point that the “princess dickhead” tiffs become very common. George has a bunch of resentment that he’s not treated as first driver even now and from his side he’s not about to let Max pass just because he’s Max Verstappen and it’s just very funny to watch. Alternatively (in very much crack territory here) Horner has enough of Toto posturing about Max and signs Checo for one more year before stealing George in 2026. Toto shows up for a duel at dawn.

[russilton]

sometimes i get a bit annoyed by people saying "they are all nepo babies" when people try to criticise this issue in f1 (to be fair a lot of it isn't productive or just mean spirited) when lewis and esteban and their families had to work their way up from the very bottom. no they aren't ALL nepo babies and even if they were, it still isn't a good thing.

or even when people say "lawrence stroll's only being a loving father" when there are literally drivers like george on the current grid who had been snubbed in the past and almost lost it all because of him. like okay fine he loves his son but stop pretending its some great and noble act when he has hurt so many people.

You and I are very similar anon, every now and then I hold in complaining about this for too long and end up getting very grumpy about it. Just last night poor @jamesvowles got this text and then I ranted about this exact topic

I also get very rankled by ‘theyre all nepo babies so you can’t critique mine’. One- I sure as hell can, and I will rightfully critique all of the ways they were given privileged access to a sport. Two —There are also different levels of privilege— things like Carlos and Checo and Mick having parental connections that helped them get a seat are the definition of nepotism- but are still less than Lando’s dad buying his seat (while he did still preform fairly well in f2), or Lances dad buying an entire team for him.

And then theres the fact that some drivers got very very lucky to get access to support from outside funding- they had to get it on their talent providing them opportunities for connections and without it, they would’ve had to stop racing entirely. Lewis, George, Esteban, questionably Alex, and I’m sure theres several others I haven’t done the appropriate research on to site all had this. Lewis getting support from Ron Dennis, George getting support from Toto- these are privileged connections that allowed them to get to F1. They deserved that help, their parents gave everything to get them to that point.

What annoys me a bit about ‘theyre all nepo babies’ and ‘lance’s only crime is having a loving father’ is… those other drivers had loving parents too. Lewis’ dad working something like four jobs so they could afford his karting, George’s dad selling his small business and working two jobs and night shifts for George’s, Esteban’s family selling their home for him— I have opinions about how f1 pushes children and families to chase possible bankrupting and questionable parenting for the chance at being millionaires on the backs of young, young kids.. but you cant argue their parents didn’t fucking love them when they were sacrificing everything in their lives for their son to have a chance at their dreams.

The argument isn’t ‘lance’s dad shouldn’t have supported his children’s dreams’ its that these drivers with connected parents didn’t have to jump through extra hoops to get to f1, they had it paved for them, and the money they brought with them keeps them in their seats, while other drivers didn’t have that, and had their performance dropped, they would have been dropped too. They didnt get a chance to rest or make mistakes or risk losing a sponsor. The argument also isn’t ‘nepo babies can never be wdc’s’. Whether I like it or not, Max’s 3 questionable wdc’s amount to at least one total, your parents dont denote your talent. The problem arises when those parents directly hinder or harm the careers of other drivers in order to push their kid forward. Stuff like Esteban being kicked from racing point to give lance a seat forcing him to go a year without one, or George being kicked from PREMA with very little warning at a time he’s talked about desperately struggling with funding.

Those parents should not have had the opportunity to do that, it shouldn’t have ever happened. But where people get actually upset is when the fans of drivers who get that help don’t acknowledge that privilege, or the drivers themselves (like lando in particular) don’t acknowledge the privileges they’ve been afforded. Stomping your feet and going ‘you’re just mad you didn’t get that’ never diffuses a thing. I, and George himself even, have both said that even as a poorer driver, he got more opportunities as a white man than someone else would have. Both George and Lewis talk about how because they were men they had less to fight against than a female driver. Acknowledging your own benefits kinda kills the resentment you could hold against them for getting that help. Nobody should be expecting 24/7 grovelling realistically, but a mention every now and then would be nice, or just understanding those reasons are valid reasons not to like a driver. I can argue all I want that George doesn’t have a posh accent.. but for some people him being British is too much of a reason not to like him, and thats fine. On god, more George and Lewis left for me.

Yes this is the millionaire tax evader sport. Yes they could still be doing more to better the chances for less privileged drivers. Yes they are racing in countries with horrible human rights records with so little complaint… but ‘everything is fucked so what’s the point’ is a nihilist way of thinking, where as I would rather point at drivers like Lewis and George and going ‘if they can do it, so should you.’ Because that incremental change is what will lead us to a better over all

I am- MORE than sure there are nuances to this discussion I’m not covering here in my very subjective personal opinion on the matter at 11 am on a Monday morning, but rambling about it made me feel lighter and more chill about the whole thing, so I don’t really regret doing it, lol. This isnt a call for action, just a longwinded whinge. I’m British, I think everyone should have a whinge every now and then and they’ll be a lot happier.

[keepthedelta]

I'm feeling a little stir in the breeze that smells like a little curiosity for kimi (raikkonen, I hate that I have to specify because he's too iconic to need the last name, he should be like Cher, or Madonna, or Vale).

But I wasnt around to watch the earlier races, what was he like when he was actually racing. I've read about the level of skill and how he managed to fight and win from the back of the grid and how he came in a post schumacher era of racing etc, and then he won and things started sliding backwards. Even read somewhere that he was an alcoholic.

Since you're an actual race enjoyer who's been around for a while I wanted to ask what you think of him, or any interesting anecdotes that highlights his sporting mindset, was he a unique talent in any way.

honestly this is a really tough one because kimi is so difficult to truly define. in my opinion he is one of the greatest racing drivers who has ever lived. his talent and ability far exceeded the number of races and championships he won.

early kimi especially in his mclaren era was unlike anything else i've ever seen. he was so fast and so skilled, his car wasn't necessarily the best one on the grid, this was during the height of schumacher and ferrari's reign, but he pushed it to the absolute limit and performed to a legitimately insane level. his reaction speed was exceptional, if you ever see footage from early lap incidents where multiple drivers collided and kimi was able to navigate through insanity with ease you'll see what i mean. he was incredibly fast, incredibly adaptable, incredibly determined.

in my opinion, a lot of people mistake kimi's lack of fucks for a lack of care or a calm but i don't think that's necessarily true. kimi always said that he hated coming second, and his expectation for all drivers was to hate coming second. he cared so much about racing. so many of his most iconic radio moments are about him caring. he knows what he has to do and what he wants to do and he doesn't want anyone interfering with that. he was an absolute lover of the sport, and for all of his "it's just a hobby to me" towards the very end of his career, when he was in a race winning car he cared a lot. i believe he holds the current record for longest time between race wins, and he holds that record because he continued to care about racing and care about winning.

however, i don't think he cared about what people thought of him. kimi did what kimi wanted to do, and most of the time that coincided with what the team wanted, i.e. winning races, but he also liked to have fun. he was pretty famous for drinking and partying, and in what i'm told is fairly stereotypical finnish fashion he went from being fairly stoic when sober to being incredibly friendly/open. there's video of him completely hammered at the 2018 fia gala, one of the drivers who played the stig on british top gear said that he'd been standing in a bar in monaco when kimi collapsed at his feet, completely drunk, jenson button once said that kimi somehow broke into his house on a night out (and nico implied that kimi was not alone when he did so). i've personally never heard that he was an alcoholic but he was certainly a heavy drinker (as most famous drivers are tbh).

mclaren kimi was an absolute driving god, and i personally think he was a bit unlucky in not winning in 2003 or 2005, but the press began to say that it was his fault, that he wasn't focused enough and was more interested in partying. i personally don't think this is true, and kimi proved that when he finally won in 2007. 2007 is mostly remembered for what was going on in mclaren, the lewis fernando civil war, mclaren copying ferrari and fernando blackmailing ron dennis over it, and i think kimi's skill gets a bit lost in the retelling of that year. he was absolutely the best driver that year and thoroughly deserved his championship. he won more races than the others, had more dnfs, and when it came down to the final few races and he absolutely had to win, he did.

i can't say for sure that kimi wasn't to blame for what happened afterwards. maybe it was a lack of interest, although i personally don't think so, i think he experienced the ferrari cycle of blame. ferrari had a great car in 2007/2008 but the car wasn't amazing after that. but ferrari has never been fully capable of admitting their own faults. the car wasn't as good as it had been during their dominance eras, stefano domenicali was not as good a leader as jean todt, and instead of looking at their internal structure and the people who had left (or been fired in the case of nigel stepney, which was fair) they decided to blame kimi for not performing. mclaren signed jenson button over him and he spent some time doing rally before returning with lotus in 2012.

lotus kimi was also kind of insane. nobody thought that the car would be that good, and kimi supposedly had a clause written into his contract saying that he would receive something like 50,000 dollars bonus for every point he scored. he scored so many points that year that he apparently nearly bankrupted the team, and there's a rumour that he didn't compete in the final two races to save them money (i believe the official story was that he had a back injury).

kimi then eventually went back to ferrari, which is where he got his final wins. he truly was one of the most incredible drivers in f1 history. there are multiple drivers with more wins and championships than him that don't have half of his talent but got luckier with cars and competitors. i think he also proved to an extent that drivers could be themselves and still be popular. he said once in an interview that it was hard the first few years when the team and pr people were trying to force him to be something and someone that he wasn't, but after he refused enough times they eventually gave up. and the person that kimi was, blunt, self interested, uncaring of social niceties and pr speak, was someone that the public really liked and got behind.

however, i can't in good conscience talk about kimi like this without also talking about some very major faults. he has been accused of sexual assault by a woman (he in turn accused her of trying to extort him), and he has reportedly used nazi or neo-nazi symbols in his merchandising, which is something that i personally cannot ignore.

[dizzyduck44]

How none of this is Zak Brown’s fault

There seems to be this narrative that all of McLaren’s woes start and and end with Zak. He has become for a lot of newer fans (and Aussies) the villain of F1.

Thing is I’ve been a fan long enough to remember the rise, the fall, the huge rise and the epic fall and now the climb back of this team. Even I used to refer to my team’s car as a milk float. So let’s put this all into context.

It’s funny because I remember an interview Zak did about 4 years ago. He talked about when he arrived at McLaren, Alonso was the only one who was willing to tell him straight. Under Ron Dennis and Martin Whitmarsh the team had ceased to work. Every department worked independently and acted as if they did not need to answer to another. Some department leaders wouldn’t even turn up for meetings as they felt they were working on the most important aspect of the car and everyone should come to them. Case in point, the chassis team felt that Honda should be doing as they say not them adapting to what Honda needed. Some people had felt stifled by Dennis’ control and others refused to move away from his rigid methods. It resulted in a car that was effectively being built by 8 different teams. The cash flow was in a terrible state and no one was willing to go and find sponsors (some still believed that as a historic team the sponsors should be coming to them), money was being wasted in areas and no one was brave enough to cut it off and whilst most knew the infrastructure at MTC needed updating, again there was this attitude of “we are McLaren, we shouldn’t have to beg”.

You can’t deny in 2023 that a lot of that has been sorted. The team structure was changed under Seidl and now again under Stella, once to let’s make them understand we are one team and now we are one team but we need specialists to help each department. Zak found investors and sponsors that solved the cash flow problems, in fact helped the team avoid bankruptcy. The infrastructure is modernised and nearly up and running. The marketability of the team is great, they have two of the best young talents on the grid and arguably they have taken McLaren back to its roots, racing in multiple series.

This time instead of digging themselves back into the hole they had just climbed out of, mistakes have been identified early and changes made. Which is what is needed. And 2 years in the history of an F1 team really is no time at all. Note how long Williams are taking to recover.

Carlos, Lando and Oscar have all been smart signings that have worked. For some reason just because Daniel couldn’t adapt some still act as if it was everyone else’s problem.

Ricciardo and James Keys were not what was best for the long term future of the team and if you want to win races, they are ultimately the decisions that need to be made.

We also need to stop acting as if those that Zak took over from weren’t the reason McLaren were down the back of the grid with a car that didn’t work and no money.

We can all marvel at the special designed floor tiles at the MTC that mean that they all run in the same lines throughout the facility and that every corridor is exactly the same width of tiles across, just as Ron Dennis insisted, but ultimately that is not going to fix their DRS problem.

Personally I would rather hear Zak say we know that isn’t good enough and upgrades are coming than Whitmarsh’s fateful “we make the best chassis on the grid, it’s the engines that have a problem” brag, because at least it shows the team aren’t living in La La land.

[formulinos]

@topnotchquark mccanned didn’t answer you yet but i can!

Michael Schumacher is, as commonly well known, the best f1 driver that there has ever been and that there will ever be. amongst the reasons for it was the fact my guy would do quali laps during races because might as well and everything he did in hid personal/training time was with the goal of being as physically fit for racing as possible (to the point he tried to replicate his body’s responses during races while working out. because might as well.)

this is all to say that you do not win 7 wdc by sheer luck, it takes going to the next level. so as a treat, he would scheme. he would plot. he would lie. and he would bamboozle. some of it was through more direct action like whenever he tried to crash his car into his rivals’ to win a championship (worked w damon hill, it didn’t work with villeneuve bc people were homophobic - michael is part of the lgbt+ community since he is texassexual). but often he’d just focus on the little things, like working out in high intensities in front of drivers to make them feel bad about themselves or whatever nico’s claims were.

his main modus operandi however was usually running his mouth to the press according to his own personal narrative. for instance, when mclaren were doing good in the early 00s, coming off two wdcs with mika häkkinen, he needed to get someone there riled up so they would eventually fuck up. he couldn’t do that straight to häkkinen though, not only because he respected him but because mika was at the time equal to him in championships so ppl knew they were close in talent and above average overall. luckily, mclaren’s second driver was david coulthard, who was mid but thought he was capable of beating both mika and michael. well, when ppl asked ANYTHING about david to schumi he’d straight go like “the guy who thinks can wipe the floor with me and my beloved mika? HAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAA-“ and then ignore the rest of the question. this was totally personal as david took part in the aforementioned homophobic takedown of michael in 1997 but also overall david was just mid and sometimes you have to bully someone to deflate their ego a lil bit. so david would get mad regularly and anger would lead him to be carelesd while driving and he would bottle it. BUT ALSO even ron dennis (mclaren main boss at the time) would get mad and go to the media like “sshjuuuut upppp,.,,., david totally csn win the cuampionshippp i csn’t belive you michel!!!!!!!”. mika would just smile and agree w michael bc he too knew david was mid.

but michael wouldn’t just take people down. sometimes, he would raise them up just for the imposter syndrome of it all. like in 2004, a season where evidently ferrari had as a car the F-TITBLASTER9000 and michael would easily clean the house, he would often say that BAR Honda (who in all fairness were in a great phase) were gonna catch up to them and eventually win a race later in the year. to which jenson button legit had to respond like “mate you know this is my first year taking this sport seriously and the other driver on the team is literally takuma sato. we’re not winning shit this championship and you know it”. and yes he did. BAR ended second but they never won a single race.

he even tried to run his mouth on ayrton senna after a on-track dispute saying that it wasn’t a “behaviour fit for a WC”. but he was just a rookie while senna was an expert on the game, so he went there and gave michael a tell-off in front of every single camera on the paddock, live (you can check on youtube, too lazy for links today sorry!). michael learned from it and perfected the art of media shit talking. he is missed everyday as the closest we get to michael antics is helmut marko’s wild claims and they’re not half as entertaining.

anyway this is what i remembered there are probably more examples. welcome to f1, hope you enjoy the sport! your new missions as a newbie is to become part of the tifosi and try to soak some more of the history of formula 1 overall bc it will help you detect who is talking shit around the fandom! if you like some weird stories, consider my pinned essays :)

[umlewis]

A chat with Lewis Hamilton

22 JUNE 2006

Lewis Hamilton's dominance in the GP2 series continued at Silverstone and took him ever closer to the tantalizing prospect of the young British driver jumping straight into a McLaren F1 seat next year.

The GP2 Championship leader captured the imagination of his home crowd as he romped to his second victory of the weekend, earning a standing ovation. After the race, fans were queuing up to give their congratulations, the praise always the same: "The Formula 1 was boring compared to you," as much a testament to F1's much more racing-friendly support series as to Hamilton's racing ability. However, there is no denying that Hamilton's breathtaking three abreast move on Clivio Piccione and championship rival Nelson Piquet, Jr. as they went into Becketts was a sign of raw talent, and one that made the home fans sit up and freshen up hopes of a new British star in F1.

Being in front of the adoring fans also whetted Hamilton's appetite for success.

"On the in-lap as I was coming in, I really could feel the buzz from the crowd; the amazing support," he says. "I couldn't hear the fans or anything but it just felt amazing, and you know they're all British, you can see all the flags. It's the best feeling to see that support, because usually you go to Europe and it's just not the same. They might cheer you on but it's nowhere near as immense as it is here."

Having dominated another round in GP2 and with Ron Dennis saying "There's no question that he'll be in F1 next season," the press is starting to think about the young Briton driving in F1 next year, especially as Jenson Button (who has been built up for so long) has yet to deliver the wins that they want. Hamilton says that he knew as early as during pre-season testing that racing in F1 in 2007 was a very real prospect:

"It wasn't that I was that confident but it was what I wanted to do. I knew that I had to win GP2 and dominate it as best as I can, like I did in Euro Formula 3 last year. Your results speak for themselves. Nico [Rosberg] and Heikki [Kovalainen] did it last season and if I can do it and do it better than them, then there's got to be a place for me in F1."

It could be said that Hamilton's strong finishes are a result of ART Grand Prix having the dominant car, but the second ART driver Alexandre Premat faired a lot better against Nico Rosberg last year than he has against the rookie Hamilton so far this season. When you consider also that Premat has much more experience in GP2 and that Rosberg has gone on to impress at Williams in F1, then the early signs suggest that Hamilton is ready for Formula 1. But will he hold out for a race drive?

"That's my goal, that's what I want. I am a racing driver. Testing doesn't really interest me, but if I didn't have an opportunity to race, a test seat on the Friday practice session would be perfect. That would be a good position to be in."

There's nothing wrong with starting out at a small team, like Fernando Alonso and Mark Webber did at Minardi. It allowed them to quietly get on with their business, away from any real expectation, and vitally they got to prove their ability, as any driver's pace is only ever judged by how they compare to their teammate. However, Hamilton is adamant that his aim is to drive at McLaren alongside the ever dominant and seemingly unbeatable Alonso. That would expose him at a time when he is learning. His argument, however, is that the stronger the teammate, the better it is for him.

Nothing seems to faze the 21 year old, and it appears his unique long-term relationship with McLaren-Mercedes that started when he was just twelve years old has given him an extraordinary inner belief, while high expectations have long ago taught him how to deal with pressure:

"They've had a major input into my career. Ron (Dennis) has paid very close attention to how I'm doing. He's not so much put pressure on me, but there is that pressure there as he wants me to succeed. He's proud, and I think he's quite emotionally involved in it, which is a good thing. He was out on the podium watching me today, and that's a great feeling. We've been friends and together for nine years now, so it's quite a long partnership considering I'm only 21. I just hope he gives me the opportunity to race for him next year."

Dennis has usually preferred to pay big fees for drivers, but he might be keen to show his rival, Sir Frank Williams, who was done very well out of taking chances on rookies-particularly Brits such as Damon Hill, David Coulthard, and Jenson Button-that he, too, can spot talent.

Williams has always enjoyed making champions out of drivers, where Dennis has gone for proven talent. Having secured the services of hottest property in Alonso, it seems like a very small risk to put a very talented youngster in the car next to him. His "emotional involvement," as Hamilton calls it, might just make him go with his heart on this one.

[alianoralacanta]

Paddock Magazine Analysis (13-12-2007)

Context: Following the McLaren/Ferrari spying controversy of 2007, where McLaren eventually lost its 2nd place in the World Constructor's Championship and got a $100 m fine, Max Mosley in his capacity as FIA President did two interviews. The first was for BBC Hardtalk. His performance there was very poor, making it look suspiciously like the FIA's case was weak. More telling was the second interview, with Paddock Magazine. Given that Paddock Magazine was a FIA publication, it was not exactly going to be the height of intentional journalism. However, it provided an excellent demonstration of the FIA's beliefs about the case. When combined with what had been learned in 2007 (from the Hardtalk interview and earlier proceedings of the case), it was incredibly destructive to the FIA's case against McLaren. In combination, it went to the degree of indicating the FIA had a case to answer itself… My understanding of legal issues has evolved since then but I do not believe the FIA's position has correspondingly improved. (The first parts of quotes are bolded, to help put structure to this essay. I've also had to delete the artificial double-spacing that ended up in there for some reason. For the record, if I wanted to double-space an entry, I'd use the double-space function).

Warning! Long entry alert! An annotated guide to the Paddock Magazine interview with Max Mosley. It is the December 2007 edition, and the FIA has given us a handy link.

It is, as the FIA probably hoped, a good guide to the state of Max Mosley's thinking. Let's probe into this resource to find out exactly what the implications are of the interaction between Max's thought processes and what can be ascertained from other sources.

"I think, in the end, the championship went to the right person"

Max has a good point here. Kimi did in fact do the best performance out of the challengers, so it was perfectly sensible for him to have won the prize. It's refreshing to see some sensible opinions from Max.

"Well, I don't think it [the off-track drama] has done any damage - in fact, it has raised public awareness".

Yes, Max - raised it and turned them right off again. Unfortunately, the good initial note didn't last long.

"The only harm would come if people started to believe it [the spying] was endemic and we couldn't stamp it out."

Most people that weren't deeply knowledgeable about F1 before the Ferrari/McLaren mess were not aware that F1 even had spying. Their impression would not have been that stopping spying was good, it would have been "What do you mean, F1 has spying?!?" The people who've been following F1 for a time know that spying at some level is both endemic and, to a certain extent, inevitable. Admittedly, it is not inevitable to the point alleged against either McLaren or Renault, but information transfer between teams is inherant in any industry whose primary value is in the contents of talented people's heads. Formula 1 is demonstrably such an industry.

"I found myself defending McLaren, rather than trying to explain why we'd done what we had to do!"

If the HardTalk interview constituted a defence of McLaren's behaviour, I'm glad the interviewer did not ask Max to attack McLaren, because it looked to me and a number of other people as if Mosley was launching a McLaren attack at the time.

"The whole thing [the Ferrari/McLaren mess] should have been stopped before it started".

Correct. One would have thought that Nigel Stepney and Mike Coughlan would have known their information-swapping behaviour was slightly dodgy before engaging in it. Apparently not (at least in Coughlan's case).

"Ron [Dennis] could have gone to Jean [Todt] immediately after Australia and said: "Look, we asked the FIA about your floor because there's somebody at Ferrari giving us information".

Two problems. One, this was not the FIA's line at the time. For example, Spyker submitted a protest at that very race concerning Super Aguri and Squadra Toro Rosso using a Toro Rosso drawing, which arrived at Spyker by an unknown route (or at least, unknown to people outside the paddock such as me). Nobody from the FIA openly asked Spyker to tell Franz Tost about the drawing (this may have happened quietly, or Colin Kolles may have done the courtesy call on his own initiative, but we don't know either way). The impression that this sort of thing gives is that if the FIA is contacted in such a way that it receives the offending document(s), the opposing team manager need not be (perhaps because the FIA contacts the opposing team manager as a matter of routine in these cases). So what Max is effectively saying is that the FIA's policy was wrong at the time, for if McLaren had known that the FIA policy wouldn't hold six months down the line, it is highly unlikely he would have taken the path of relying on the known FIA procedures to do the appeal. Instead, he would have either informed Jean Todt (if he had known about the Stepney/Coughlan flow and intended to get it stopped) or he would have simply said nothing, and probably not appealed the Ferrari car in Australia at all (if he thought there was only the one document and/or he wanted to attempt to evade notice).

Secondly, there is no particular reason to believe that Jean would have stopped the information flow on Dennis' say-so, especially as it has yet to be proved whether Dennis knew who in the team had received the drawings, let alone whether this person had received the drawing in a legal fashion. For that matter, it isn't even clear that Dennis knew there was a drawing involved - it is entirely conceivable that Coughlan would only have told people verbally about what he knew about the Ferrari floor, and not given away sources. Certainly if I was in Coughlan's position and intended to use this Ferrari information illegally, this is what I would have done. Simply because the drawing was eventually discovered due to Trudy Coughlan stupidly taking some Ferrari CDs to a photocopy shop does not mean that her husband was stupid in his dealings with the material. With hindsight, the truly smart thing to have done would be to take the moral high ground and denounce Stepney as openly and as immediately as possible, but none of us have foresight as good as our hindsight.

"You get the odd person saying that this has always gone on in F1, but that's nonsense".

Er... ...Shadow/Arrows in 1977, anyone? That was the entire (successful) theft of a team's entire intellectual property (IP), back before the term was even invented. Then there's the whole Ferrari/Toyota mess, involving a copious amount of data theft by more than one ex-Ferrari (and now ex-Toyota and presumably ex-F1) employee.

Admittedly, the general backdrop of espionage is on nowhere near as large a scale (the McLaren/Renault mess is probably a run-of-the-mill example among instances of dishonest information transfer). However, the alleged extent of the Ferrari/McLaren mess has precedents.

"There was a constant stream of information for months"

Interestingly enough, this wasn't proven at the WMSC court, though Max would like to pretend it was proven. Having reviewed the relevant portion of the Ferrari/McLaren September case transcript, I have spotted in the preliminaries that the documents that supposedly prove this statement were considered by the McLaren lawyer to be illegally obtained and illegally revealed to the WMSC court. The response from the WMSC was that it was not concerned about whether the documents were legal. Since it was illegal to use them in court, it was also illegal to base any part of the judgement on these documents. As a result, these documents cannot constitute evidence, let alone proof, of the exchange between Stepney and Coughlan - unless the Italian courts deem that the documents do in fact constitute such evidence.

This hasn't happened yet. Therefore, there is no actual proof that the "live" part occurred, since the WMSC Court appeared to have no other sources for this in its transcript. It thought the illegally-used and unproven documents were "impressive" enough.

"The second major mistake that McLaren made was when they held an inquiry... ...they didn't do it thoroughly enough"

Well, all it would have taken is for two people to have lied in a way that was undetected and McLaren wouldn't have been able to detect that connection. Even if Coughlan and de la Rosa had been somewhat truthful (by admitting that they talked to each other), how much would have been considered normal for two employees, and would it be possible to prove in the relatively short timeframe (the inquiry occurred in the run-up to the July meeting, giving McLaren about three weeks to get the inquiry completed) to go through 1000 people's e-mails to find a handful of dodgy e-mails? Even if only e-mails sent by Coughlan were considered (it is known that McLaren suspected him of something, as he got suspended pretty sharpish when the exchange was initially discovered), that would still have been dozens, and likely hundreds, of e-mails to check. In a company that size, it is fairly easy for a dodgy e-mail connection to go undetected. Usually, discovery occurs when one of the parties accidentally copies their e-mail to someone who has the power to stop or inform on the perpetrators, or else someone in power sees such an e-mail on the screen. For all the advances in e-mail monitoring software, breaches outside a limited range (porn, unnecessary attachments, swearing and personal e-mailing) remain very difficult to detect, especially if the intention is to do so without unduly impeding the free flow of legitimate information. It would take a very time-consuming and thorough, or a very lucky inquiry, to have found out that a rogue employee was transferring illegally-obtained information to another employee unless one of them confessed. That didn't happen until early September (and then it was not to McLaren but to the FIA) - rather late for the initial July trial!

"I think everyone felt that there was more to this than we'd heard [in the July case]".

No, most of us didn't; at least, not in the English-speaking sources I've seen. The Europeans generally write in languages other than English, which makes assessing the rest of Max's answer difficult (the only other language I know is Spanish, and the Spaniards would presumably be pro-Alonso...) The time of which Max speaks was before the time that the FIA started chucking out transcripts to the general public at the slightest opportunity. We, the general public, were not expecting anything else to come out of the case. If the WMSC was, why didn't they take the trouble to advise us in the decision? Oh, wait a minute, that would have made their decision to try the case so early look premature...

In case you're wondering, not every Spanish source was pro-FIA about the second trial. El Pais was concerned that the FIA decision was pro-Ferrari - but maybe its being in Spanish precluded Max from reading it. So the generalisation that the continentals were all pro-FIA in the end is false.

"I'd already been told that some e-mails existed, by Bernie [Ecclestone] [when Ron Dennis informed Max of the e-mails]"

Clive at F1 Insight has already tackled this matter; suffice to say that Max's pretence that he was hearing about the e-mails from Ron for the first time is unimpressive at best. More transparency is expected from people enforcing rules.

"I wasn't sure enough to write to the drivers, until the Italian police came up with the list of all the contacts"

Excuse me, but isn't this the same inadmissible list that has already supposedly proven a "live" link between Nigel Stepney and Mike Coughlan despite its inadmissibility? If this is so, then Max was not entitled to use it as a tool to compel anyone to comply with its wishes, particularly with the threat implied with it being an FIA instruction. Such behaviour demeans the validity of FIA instructions.

That said, the FIA could and perhaps should have asked every employee in McLaren to turn over all relevant evidence as soon as it opened the investigation of the case on a reasonably-scaled amnesty scheme. It had the power to analyse the e-mails (including Spanish translation!) that McLaren could not reasonably be capable of doing in such a short time-frame, and it would also have led to a considerably swifter route to the conclusion of this matter.

"they [the e-mails] either came from Alonso or de la Rosa. But presumably the Alonso camp"

That's a mighty big leap, given that Max does not give evidence that differentiates the two. This sort of thinking can be seen elsewhere in this interview, to sometimes dangerous effect to his own case.

By the way, reading personal e-mails is normally illegal under the Computer Misuse Act. However, the sense of Max's elaboration of this question indicates that Fernando chose to reveal these e-mails to Bernie (why remains a mystery, when it would have been simpler to forward the lot to Max), on this occasion the initial Alonso e-mail can be said to have been acquired legally. There is no question over whether the subsequent driver e-mails were obtained legally, only whether Max's justification for requesting them was based on legally-obtained documentation.

"I still think, from a legal point of view, we should have excluded everybody [relating to McLaren over the Ferrari/McLaren mess]."

I'll give him that - he has never deviated once from this point of view. He is consistent in at least some of his opinions. If you assume the conclusion that the WMSC wanted us to believe, then this also follows. The conclusion is therefore valid.

The trouble is that the conclusion is not sound, for the evidence has turned out to be some illegally-obtained Italian documents and a bunch of e-mails that only prove that three employees knew rather than one (and also suggesting that only those three knew - otherwise the e-mails would have been in English and had a wider circulation). This means that there were three rogue employees. The two discovered by the September trial had been granted full amnesty, so technically the FIA was not empowered to issue any punishment to the rest of the team following the evidence, due to its inadequete nature.

"In the end, arguably justice was done [in the McLaren/Ferrari mess]."

Try making that quote compatible with the previous quote. Note that they are spoken by the same person, in the same paragraph in relation, to the same question. Can you get "justice was done" to fit with "we should have excluded everyone"? Me neither.

"For a lot of it [the evidence], you had to draw the inference."

This is the most self-destructive sentence I have ever seen in a court case. Only a fool admits to having little hard evidence for a guilty judgement, let alone one involving such a large penalty and with a larger one threatened. If this were a real court under discussion, the police would be immediately pressing for a re-trial without the interested parties even having to ask first. It pretty much invalidates Max Mosley as a judge of fact in these sorts of cases.

The temptation for me to skip the assumptions that follow this sentence are therefore too strong to resist.

"If we'd done nothing, there would be the temptation to set out to acquire information from another team in any number of ways."

This probably seemed like a logical thing to say at the time (this interview appears to have taken place in late October or early November). However, since the McLaren/Renault mess has shown that only the impression of co-operation is necessary in order to evade a spying charge, then this statement suddenly looks a bit strange. If anything, events will encourage employees to spy, not discourage them. Just not necessarily as individuals.

"I think, and hope, they're paranoid about not doing anything"

How's that for a "Go back to being blobs. Blobs are easy" (Thief of Time by Terry Pratchett) mentality?

"If there are things of that kind... ...they've been quietly got rid of"

Proof that this interview was done before mid-November, when the McLaren/Renault case re-appeared (after a brief mention in the September court case).

"Just suppose the 2008 McLaren incorporates everything from the 2007 Ferrari... ...we've got to make sure... ...the 2008 McLaren doesn't incorporate and Ferrari intellectual property"

If (and after everything above, it's a big if) you still believe that McLaren's guilty judgement was legitimate, then this is a perfectly sensible inference. Max is completely right about the need to check that cars are not contaminated with other teams' IP. In fact, why don't they do this with every team at the appropriate moment in the season, to proactively check that this sort of stuff doesn't happen?

Would be a neat idea...

[gokartkid]

9, brocedes💛

9. things you said when i was crying

Lewis hasn’t cried yet. He’s in his hotel room, alone now after everything, still shaking from the adrenaline; from the memories of people screaming in his ear and the heavy weight of the trophy in his hand, like a phantom limb. It felt almost like he should still be holding it now, like he shouldn’t let go of it for 24 hours or - deliriously - like if he didn’t hang onto it he’d never win again.

He wasn’t a superstitious person, but he thought maybe, some people became superstitious in moments like this; that it was forgivable, in moments like this.

There’s still champagne, sticky behind his ear, down the crevices of his neck.

He’s done it. Lewis Hamilton, a Formula 1 grand prix winner. That’s who he’ll see now, looking in the mirror.

He covers his face with his hands, giggles, feels intoxicated even though most of the champagne hadn’t even made it into his mouth; he wonders if it could be absorbed through his skin. There was no other way to let out the fizzing in his chest.

There’s a knock at the door, and he scrubs his hands down his face quickly, takes a few deep breaths. He doesn’t know exactly who it will be, but it seems like a good policy to not be laughing at yourself in your hotel room if the door opened to, say, Ron Dennis.

On the other side of it is Nico. Lewis stares at the back of his head, looking down the hotel corridor, before he turns back around. They both pause for a second, blank and looking at each other before Nico tackles him backwards into the room, arms tight around him, one hand cupping the back of his head.

Lewis just closes the door before Nico is yelling in his ear, barely coherent.

“You did it!”

Lewis is yelling too now, riding the wave of infectious energy. They jump up and down, horribly uncoordinated, every movement sticking together like it would hurt them to come apart, like if he and Nico could just hug tight enough they would become one person.

“Man, this is so crazy.”

Nico is looking at him earnestly, cupping Lewis’ face in his hands. His race had been- alright, the best he could pull out of that Williams that he was chained to. He doesn’t know if it’s a horrible thing to be glad he’d won first, out of the two of them. He tightens his grip on Nico to stop thinking about it.

Lewis feels suddenly overwhelmed, the tears that had been pricking at his eyes finally threatening to fall, the dam on the verge of bursting. He tries to blink them away, schools his face into being a facsimile of nonchalant and cool.

“You’re next, for sure man.”

He pulls himself away, self conscious suddenly about how close they are as tears creep down his face. It reminds him of the past; he doesn’t usually think about that stuff but it’s there, grinning into each others faces like they used to do after their karting races, talking quietly until they couldn’t hold it in anymore and chattering away only to get told off the next morning.

“Of course I am.”

Nico says it with the self assured air that Lewis thinks he might have been born with, a look that suits him right down to the upturned point of his nose. He doesn’t let Lewis get away, grasps at his forearm.

“Hey,” Nico’s trying to make eye contact with him, ducks his head down when Lewis glances away, feels like he’s upturned with too much of his soft belly showing, “I’m proud of you man. It’s all happening.”

“Yeah,” Lewis let’s out a breath shakily, feels it rattle out of his chest, “yeah. Thanks.”

When Nico moves in closer, he isn’t sure what he’s expecting, if he’s expecting anything at all. He presses their lips together, almost sweetly, mouth closed and nose brushing against his cheek.

Lewis can see a curl escaping from behind Nico’s left ear. He tucks it away, with a remarkably steady hand.

He closes his eyes.

The space between their lips tastes salty and sweet, the mix of his tears and champagne. The taste of a winner, he thinks, and smiles into the kiss.

“Something funny?”

Nico mumbles it between their lips. Lewis is pressing forward, his hands grasping at Nico’s waist, fabric bunching between his fingers.

“Nothing,” his body feels electric, “I just can’t wait until it’s both of us.”

[mcgnussen]

some points from the ‘beyond the grid’ podcast episode with jan magnussen:

who is jan magnussen?

jan is a three-time karting world champion, british formula 3 champion, formula ford festival winner, four-time le mans winner, 24 hours of daytona winner and former f1 driver for mclaren and stewart. as of 2017, he was the most winning racing driver in europe (mai note: this might not be the case anymore, but it’s still pretty damn cool he could ever boast about that.)  

he is currently 49 years old, father of three children, including kevin magnussen. he had kevin when he was only 19 years old. his other son, luca, has begun to show some promise in karting and recently won fourth place in the danish championship and is reported only getting better and better. considering luca is only around 13 years old, this is pretty promising if he should wish to be a racing driver like his dad and big brother.  

martin whitmarsh believes jan was the greatest raw racing talent since ayrton senna. 

his road to formula 1 and his f1 career

his racing career really took off when he finally got some funding and was able to join the stewart team in the british formula 3. he did a few races for them in 1993, getting a podium, but then raced the entire 1994 season where jan absolutely dominated, winning 14 out of 18 races, beating senna’s record of 12 races won in a season.   

fun fact: jan has raced against christian horner, toto wolff and zak brown throughout his career.   

jan obviously has a lot of respect for ron dennis, but also kind of thinks he is a piece of shit (mai note: okay, maybe that’s me paraphrasing a bit, but honestly not very much...) and he faced a lot of pressure from ron during his brief time at mclaren.    

he believes that his incredibly successful season in f3 actually went against him. that car fit him so well and everything came so naturally to him, so he did not really learn anything from it. jan believes you learn more when you have to fight for it or when you fail.    

jan got into f1 as a reserve driver for mclaren but was later offered a 4-year deal with stewart in formula 1 and broke his contract with mclaren as he did not see ron dennis replacing either coulthard or häkkinen with him in the foreseeable future. at stewart, he was teammates with rubens barrichello and they were good friends, but jan admitted to underestimating rubens on track, which he says that he has learned from.    

stewart kept saying to jan they had a plan for him, the first two years of the plan was just about jan learning the ropes and beginning to score points. jan relied way too much on this plan, he was pretty naive during his f1 career and did not really understand the politics at the time. it was only afterwards he realised what had happened.  

slowly, his relationship with jackie stewart began to break down. and ironically, when he finally turned a point and got his first f1 points (despite it being within timeframe of the plan), he was sacked from the team just after.

after f1 

after he had been sacked, he wanted nothing to do with f1 and all the politics of the f1 world. even if he had been offered to drive for another f1 team, jan believes he would have said no. he even considered quitting racing altogether because he was just so broken down from the way he had been treated.  

he went to america because his manager told him to to get out of bed and get going again, he immediately loved it as he was welcomed with open arms and the car was fun to drive. and then he moved to america within the week. and we all know he went on to have a great career with many wins.  

jan says the formula 1 cars were the best cars he has driven, but he also really liked the cars in nascar. he compared nascar to a three-hour long barfight with furniture being thrown ― and he loved it! but of course, he also love sportscars. 

the magnussen family

jan has advised kevin but has mostly left him alone to carve out his own path in f1, only telling kevin what he did himself that didn’t work and so on, he has mostly been there just to support k-mag.   

he was worried about kevin joining mclaren under the leadership of ron dennis, but was impressed by how well k-mag dealt with him. as jan said “the f1 world is not a nice one, you will go places, but it’s not nice” and it’s clear ron dennis was one of the worst people in f1 at the time (mai note: if not of all time).   

jan has seen a change in kevin this season, he believes it’s because he has reconnected with being a racing driver last year, and not just a formula 1 driver, and found out that life is also good outside f1.  

when m*zepin got fired, jan asked kevin about returning to f1 if he got the chance and he said that kev immediately laughed as he said “hell no”, kevin was done with that chapter of his life. but then a week later, he calls jan and says “you’re not gonna believe this...” and they had a long conversation about the offer from haas. kevin was thinking things through, wondering about his family with all the travelling and his contracts with other teams, and jan told him he was proud of kev for thinking of all these things, but that he also knew kevin was going to do it anyway to which k-mag responded “yeah, i’m gonna do it” 😂  

jan talks about how le mans with kevin was one of the best moments of his life despite all the problems they faced with the car during it, he said that it was the first time that he held nothing back and was 100% honest with his teammate. they had a lot of fun comparing data and they could see that they were very alike in their driving style. despite being a bit unhappy about it, he admitted that kevin was faster than him. but he talked about how he learned a lot from kevin and that they work very differently because they have had very different racing educations ― and that kevin’s education from f1 is the better education.     

jan’s dad also did a bit of amateur racing, jan is professional racing driver, so is kevin and his young son, luca, is climbing the ranks in karting. despite never pushing kevin into racing, jan said that kev was pretty hard on him and told him not to push luca, being very protective of his little brother. so they just had fun with it, but luca has seemed to really stepped it up this year. jan said that he will let luca call the shots, but he will be there every step of the way, and he will even sell the house again to fund him if that is what it takes. as jan says “i have had a great life in this racing world, if luca can have a great life as well then i’ll support that.”

[cazzyf1]

My Favourite Quotes from: Niki Lauda Der Weg Zum Triumph by Peter Lanz

I finished reading the second book I got the other day, so here are the typed-up quotes that I liked. This is translated from German to English via google translate, so it's not grammatically correct and might have some mistranslations.

"If he appears to strangers as a cold, calculating man, he is in fact sensitive to moods and registers feelings that others have towards him very quickly and sensitively"

"Accordingly, Niki Lauda was disappointed in the evening when his wife Marlene came from Ibiza in Nelson Piquet's private jet. He said: "I want to drive the best race of the season tomorrow, but the most important thing in Formula 1 is to survive, that's also part of it."<< Marlene Lauda hadn't traveled to races for five years. She dismissed the fuss of the last few months with a catchy sentence: "It's nice when Niki becomes world champion, but what do I have to do with that?" But now she couldn't stand being alone in her house in Santa Eulalia on the race weekend , although she said she was going mad with excitement in the box, she came to Estoril. At the same time, I know that Niki can also become world champion without me. Reinhold Messner also climbs mountains alone. He doesn't need a woman for that. And Niki Lauda said: "I'm happy when she's there, but that doesn't mean I drive faster or slower."

"Second place meant the world title at that moment. Lauda was asked what he felt in those seconds: "Above all, fear that the petrol would not last until the end. It was trembling and praying. Shortly after five o'clock in the afternoon, when everything was finally over, Niki Lauda showed, perhaps for the first time in public, how much he was carried away by the joy and pride of victory. He, who often doesn't change his face after winning a race, got all excited, hugged his wife again and again, shook everyone's hand and even furtively stroked his eyes once or twice... As the champagne was passed onto the podium, Niki Lauda started shaking the magnum like a little boy and splattered the champagne all over the place, so that in the end Alain Prost, Ayrton Senna, McLaren boss Ron Dennis and the car's designer John Barnard, standing with Lauda on the podium were completely soaked."

"Marlene Lauda even hugged Alain Prost, and Niki Lauda kept saying: "I'm really sorry for Prost. he was for the biggest challenge for me in the 13 years that I've been driving Formula 1. Now that the war of nerves is over, I can tell you - he's a really good guy. The next day, Niki Lauda brought his wife and children back to Ibiza and flew on to his office in Vienna himself."

"We had met in a café on Vienna's Schwarzenberg place agreed. When Lauda came in, he did not correspond at all to the image that is commonly made of a racing driver. He seemed rather shy and uptight. He wore a light-colored duffle coat, corduroy pants, and Clarks. In contrast to later times, he immediately made an extraordinary effort to appear in the best light. Somehow he seemed very proud that journalists from Germany flew to Vienna especially to talk to him. We then drove to his parents' house on Potzleinsdorferstrasse, where he had a room, and the first thing Niki Lauda did was to call the Levis jeans advertising man to tell him that he was giving an interview. Then he called the Bosch recruiter and rattled off the same litany again. I don't know if he was so proud of being interviewed at the time or if it was a service for his sponsors, in any case he was very accommodating and when the photographer asked him to he gathered all his trophies and draped them around himself on the needle felt floor. We then took a picture of him packing his racing suit and one of him lying on the couch reading a book. nod The room in which he lived was about thirty square meters and furnished in a rather carelessly manner. The wall was covered with veneered cupboards, there was a washbasin and a shower behind a partition and there were a few Reansport books on the shelves between the trophies. Once his mother looked briefly at the door but went right back. Niki Lauda wore his hair quite long back then, it was neatly parted and smooth, not as curly as it is today. He had a signet ring with a black stone on his left ring finger. His demeanor made him look like hundreds of other boys from upper Viennese society. Only his language didn't fit the picture: he spoke a strong dialect, and to this day he has maintained a certain fondness for flowery expletives. Of course, he knows how to speak High German on TV or in radio interviews, but in small circles, rude words come out quite easily. At that time, Niki Lauda collected the newspaper clippings and photos that dealt with his racing career. He probably wouldn't like to admit that today, but at first he was exceedingly proud when there was something about him in the newspaper. He often called sportswriters on the go and told them how the races he had competed in had turned out. Out of gratitude, the Viennese newspapers always wrote a few words about the young Austrian Lauda, ​​even if he was only placed somewhere in the middle. Nothing that Niki Lauda learned today about his early days counts, is 100% correct. But it's not a lie either. Rather, it's a mixture of half-true memories and a role cliché that he's grown into over the last ten years. In any case, it is certain that it all began in 1967. With a car accident." -p27-29

"So Niki Lauda told her (his grandma) the story of the borrowed car and the accident. He must have told the story to Berst dramatically, because when he left his grandmother he was 38,000 shillings richer - a little over five thousand marks. He was able to buy the battered Mini 1300 from Jose Draxler. For Niki Lauda, ​​getting into racing was a means to an end. All sorts of people in the years that followed made terrible accusations against his grandmother for helping him become a racing driver. If N Lauda had a really warm relationship with a family member, it was with the old lady. And when, many years later, he decided to finish racing, it was Marlene Lauda, ​​his wife, who first called grandmother and told her about the decision.

Question: What is your first childhood memory?' Answer: "I always had to go horseback riding when I was eight or nine years old. I was terrified of the stupid horses. I always disappeared to the toilet and hoped that I wouldn't have to ride then. I never knew why my parents sent me to horseback riding. They just wanted it. Out of. Then I remember my nanny. That must have been before. I was always raised by nannies. I remember her kind of uniform, she had a cap like that on her head. She was about thirty years old. Normal looking, not particularly pretty. She existed, but she couldn't replace my parents. I also remember something that happened when I was about seven years old. My father parked a car on a mountain with the handbrake on. And somehow the handbrake disengaged. Anyway discovered I did and ran with my brother. And I held. We screamed like crazy, then my father came." - p33-34

Niki Lauda didn't get along very well with his classmates at school. Although his parents him repeatedly dragged him to dentists and oral surgeons to have his teeth adjusted, he had to put up with the ridicule of the others. They called him rabbit or squirrel because of his protruding teeth, and his mother's pampering concern did the rest to make Niki Lauda appear as half a portion to his peers. He had to go to school in a hat and coat at the slightest breeze, and once he said: When I think back today and myself. and see my brother when we were kids, well, we were pretty sweethearts.” Which means something like sissy. According to his brother Florian, who is four years his junior, he was "terrified". Nothing fascinated the sissy like a car. - p34

"Niki Lauda once said to me: >> Many young men only start racing out of a need to show off or because of complexes. If you are successful and recognize your complexes, you can discard them. I had a tremendous number of complexes. inferiority complex. I was always bray, I'd never pulled a rascal prank. The only thing that didn't fit the picture of the model boy was my bad performance at school. I was particularly bad at religion.” - p35

"I asked him, 'Have you been dealt with harshly? Have you ever been beaten?< Laura: No. Barely. A slap in the face at most. I have one brother who is studying medicine. He's younger than me. He's very different from me, he's a very quiet, dreamy, spiritual idealist. His interests go more into the music.<< Question: 'Then you are a loud, unromantic, realistic person?' Lauda: »I am harder and more stubborn.<<" - p36

Back then, nothing fascinated Niki Lauda more than trucks. When he spoke in a Playboy interview in 1974 about how crazy he was about trucks, that he was almost addicted to driving such a thing, the Steyr works made a truck train available to him for a day. Lauda drove the truck to Zeltweg, onto the race track and did lap after lap. He'd never gotten a truck license, but he was a natural. He was having fun like a little kid, chasing the train around the track at breakneck speed and making the back of the truck swerve. He even considered opening a trucking company in the past because he was so fascinated by trucks. - p37

"Niki Lauda packed. He had a stack of suitcases in front of him and a light canvas bag with leather details. In it he put his racing overalls, crash helmet, head protection, fireproof shoes, high gauntlet gloves and coarse underwear, which in an emergency could keep the fire away from the body for a few seconds. » Where are my swimming trunks?' asked Lauda. It was bitterly cold in Vienna back in January 1972 and the cold was gradually eating through the brick walls, like that that people had to heat up their ovens vigorously in order to to get the apartments tolerably warm. Mariella von Reininghaus, Niki Lauda's girlfriend, was rummaging around in a drawer. They were at Lauda's parents' house in Vienna. "Here," Mariella held out the swimming trunks, "there she is." - p43

"act that is second to none. At the time, he would break down the doors of anyone who could help him in any way. His confidence bordered on the insane" - p46

"Once upon a time, in November 1972, a skinny, brunette boy started getting drunk in a Viennese wine bar. This young man, who usually only drank apple juice and milk, drank one glass of wine after the other. He had good reason to. He was broke. He was in debt and had no job. The boy was Niki Lauda. He gambled big and lost. There he was with a horrendous loan and no racing car. Because Max Mosley put him on the street at the end of the 1972 season. A stupid situation for the young man from the best family. He was with a sportswriter at the wine bar to get drunk. "Now I don't know what to advise you either," the journalist was saying. The two were silent for a while. Then they ordered wine again. "I could take a job in an office," said Lauda pensively, "and then slowly pay off my debts. ask them for a contract for touring car races. "You would earn more that way than in the office." "But not enough," said Lauda. He had reached the fourth quarter of white wine. It never occurred to him to ask his father for money, although that would have been the easiest way in the situation. He could have helped him. But Niki Lauda decided that only one person could pull him out of the shit he was in now - Niki Lauda. "Louis Stanley asked for my address at Watkins Glen last month for the American Grand Prix," he said thoughtfully. >>So what?< >>What and?<<< »Did you give it to him?<< Laura shook her head. "Not yet. I don't think Stanley had any honest intention of enlisting me. It was just a joke.' The journalist grabbed his arm and looked at him as if he were looking at a madman refusing a cold beer in the desert after seven thirsty days. "Come on," he said, "come on, you have to use every chance you have now."<< Two days later, an airmail letter from Vienna landed in the attic suite of London's venerable Dorchester Hotel on Hyde Park Corner. express, of course. Sender: Nikolaus Lauda. - p49-51

But before Niki Lauda entered the fashionable Dorchester, he passed the Playboy Club, where the Bunnies were busily running around behind glass facades on the first floor. He stopped for a moment and looked up. The girls looked good enough to eat in their tight suits with bunny tails on their buttocks and long legs. Then Niki Lauda quickly walked the few steps to the hotel. The most expensive English luxury limousines were parked bumper to bumper in front of the driveway. This time, Niki Lauda's heart beat even harder than when he saw the Playboy bunnies in the club. Whenever he sees a nice car, he's completely smitten. An almost sensual desire overcomes him, he wants to touch it, sit in it, look under the hood, drive around with it. That was the case then and it's not much different today. Niki Lauda used to wash his car every free hour. There was something immensely calming about washing the car. - p51

Lauda has a cleanliness tick when it comes to cars. His car must always be sparkling clean, Helmut Marko once gave him a car vacuum cleaner, one of the nicest presents, as he claimed for a long time. P52

"A few days earlier he had borrowed a tuxedo for a party. Lauda, ​​who hated formal attire, was quite glad he had his tuxedo with him. He was blessed. After the aperitif, Louis Stanley said: 'Wonderful what you did today. Very splendid. honest.< Fittipaldi and Stewart, the two world champions, came to congratulate them. The Austrian racing driver Lauda was even a little tipsy. After dinner, Stanley offered Lauda a cigar. Lauda refused. Back then, he only smoked a cigarette once, but only when his sponsor, Marlboro, could see him." - p60

He, who doesn't like discotheques, was persuaded by the nightclub manager Bruno Reichmann to advertise a discotheque called Half Moon in Salzburg. He received five thousand schillings a month and the rumor spread that the bar belonged to Niki Lauda." - p61

Lauda later said: "It never occurred to me that there could be another person in the car. The car had overturned, one ran around with a fire extinguisher and tried to extinguish his car. That's what I thought.<< Only when Lauda's BRM fails on the 52nd lap due to fuel pressure problems does the Viennese slowly realize what a drama he had unknowingly witnessed. He didn't help because he didn't know anything about it and because the mushroom cloud made it impossible for him to see what was happening. Lauda felt dying. He crouched in a corner of the box and didn't want to see anyone. A reporter came by. >Why didn't you stop, man? Wh did you let the poor fellow burn without any help?' Lauda was depressed. “I got a puff of smoke. I didn't know there was another one inside. »God in heaven, why don't you see that?<< >If I come along with 250 things, the route i wet from the foam of the fire extinguishers and the air is fuller Rauch, then I must see that I put my BRM on the stop.<< >But I still don't understand why you don't could see.' Lauda became angry. Hell, he had the poor one Roger Williamson actually not seen. He had chosen a goddamn profession, he felt that at the moment and he was full of self-doubt and blame. But the journalist did not want to hear all this. He wanted to hear something else. So Niki Lauda told him: "I'm not paid to save, but to drive." - p63-4

"I asked Lauda: »An American psychologist found that 600 racing drivers who were examined had an above-average desire for intimate intercourse and a great need to attract attention in women. How do you feel? Lauda replied: "Maybe that's how it is in America. It's different here.<< I quoted Stirling Moss, a former racing driver >>There's always a bunch of girls hanging around the racetrack... the sights and sounds that accompany the drama of a race are a strong attraction for almost all women. During a race a woman is more receptive to an offer than usual.<< Lauda said: >> How does Moss want to be able to judge that if he is not a woman? The women who hang around there go to the races because they want to meet one of those special people. So the receptive women go there.<<" - p70

"In the evening, Niki Lauda went to a discotheque in Madrid with Mariella von Reininghaus. Suddenly the Blue Danube Waltz sounded. Lauda said to his girlfriend: 'Today I felt like someone who always stands at the station and has to watch his train go by. He finally stopped today." - (after his first win) p80

"It snowed. Thick, sticky flakes steadily sank to the ground. Lauda liked skiing. He skied for as long as he could remember and he skied very well. Actually, apart from car racing, skiing was the only thing that actually fascinated him at the time. He watched ski racers on TV and really suffered with them. (Much later he was to develop a close friendship with ski racers. When Franz Klammer finally managed to win the World Cup again in 1981, after many, many defeats, Niki Lauda sat at home in front of the television and cried with joy.) In the winter of 1969 he went on holiday in Ba Gastein. It was very cold then. It seemed as if one's breath froze in front of one's lips. Niki Lauda stood on the slope, jumped, pushed himself, took his sticks under his arms and sped off... suddenly he gave a jolt, he lost his footing, snow flew up, he fell, rolled in an avalanche straight down the slope. When he finally lay still, everything was spinning around him. He rubbed his eyes. A young girl stood next to him and watched him silently. The girl was five foot five at most, fairly thin, and had a delicate bone structure. It had huge amber eyes. Niki Lauda later remembered the girl's first words to the letter: "Can I help you in any way?" That's how he met Mariella von Reininghaus." - p82-3

"Niki Lauda hates being photographed. He doesn't like to pose and when a photographer persuades him to do so, he usually looks at the camera in an angry or artificial manner. He didn't like it either when someone wanted to photograph him in his first apartment of his own. However, since his popularity also increased the demand for personality stories, he had to endure a few private photos for better or for worse." - p84

"Before Mariella von Reininghaus, Niki Lauda only had one close friend" - p86

"Once, in March 1982, he was the guest of honor at the Astro Show. He told me at the time that he didn't believe in astrology, that he only went to the show because he liked the presenter, Elizabeth Teissier, so much. He then actually sat across from Madame Teissier throughout the broadcast, gazing at her as enraptured as a rabbit would gaze at a snake, and yet denying all the things that Teissier claimed to have gleaned from the stars about him. But... somehow everything fascinated him." - p87

"Niki Lauda thought he was going crazy for a moment. The spectators behaved like wild animals. Thousands upon thousands pressed on him from all sides. Someone suddenly gave the order for the new champion to be pulled out of the confusion with mounted police officers. Suddenly,« Niki Lauda later recalled, I was surrounded by ten police officers. The policemen sat on mighty horses. I just saw the buttocks and the dangerous hooves of the horses. And so we walked around. It was almost horrible, and I would have wet my pants for fear." - p97

"It was around this time that Niki Lauda started chasing after the girls like crazy. He got engaged when he was almost 20 years old and before that had hardly had time to gain experience with women. A reporter once asked him, "Can you remember the names of your girlfriends? And Lauda answered to everyone's amazement: "Yes, because there was Mariella and before Mariella there was Ursula Aus - that was it." His dogged determination to raise money and get the cars he was given roadworthy took all his strength. In addition, of was shy and more comfortable in the company of other racers." - p98

When he gained enormous popularity after his first Grand Prix victories, he clearly noticed for the first time how unimportant external appearances are for a man. The women fought for the successful one. And to his surprise, he found that he could win at the girls even against handsome men like Clay Regazzoni, the womanizer with whom he often hung out at the time. And he slowly began to get a taste for social life. He really enjoyed being the star of Munich society. And the glittering, glamorous society found it fabulous when the young star Niki Lauda suddenly turned up in one of the Ine discotheques such as Why not or Josephines in the evening, in crumpled tweed jackets, with an open shirt collar and a rat's tail of young, glamorous skinny, long-haired girl in tow. Suddenly Niki Lauda was in all the gossip columns. - p99

"Niki Lauda was certainly never a compulsive womanizer who tried to compensate for defeats with conquests, but through his successes he suddenly found a taste for life. that had been foreign to him until then. He no longer had to face the embarrassment of being rejected by a woman he spoke to. He was famous and anyway the girls made a move on him. He once said to me: "'If I think about it, I didn't meet the prettiest girls at the race tracks, but often in discos like Why not.'" - p100

"Once she gave a party in honor of Niki Lauda. It was a warm summer night, the guests had to appear in costumes from the 1920s, but Lauda herself didn't think of dressing up and came in the usual tweed jacket. And in the free space in front of Why not there was a vintage car. Of course there were also photographers and they persuaded Niki Lauda to pose for photos. »Come on Niki, get in the car, we need some pretty pictures. Lauda took a seat, disgruntled. He hated posed photos. When he wanted to get out, the photographers asked him to put his arm around a girl. The girl was a certain Iris Grass, a model who had already been associated with all sorts of high-profile men and who once said of her first encounter with Niki Lauda: »We were both in a bad mood and hissed at each other.<< But over time, the mood changed. Niki Lauda: I liked her green eyes. She always looked so sincere. As if she had no idea of ​​anything. So... I don't know... poor actually, pitiful. But pretty. I got myself the same evening arranged to meet her and often went out with her.<«< Whereupon the Bild newspaper reported: »The small, almost frail Austrian racing driver has a fiancée in his hometown of Salzburg, who is also from Adel. is very wealthy and beautiful. But that doesn't stop Niki from calling the beautiful Munich girl Iris from all corners of the world to arrange a meeting. Then the two go to La Cave or Victor's Bistro on Hohenzollernstraße to feast - and then they end up dutifully at Why not. I like him very much, Iris openly admits and is happy when the Formula 1 racing driver flies quickly from Frankfurt, Monza or Copenhagen to Munich for her sake. However, she doesn't quite believe that Niki Lauda only goes out with her, as he does with a deep look into her pretty. green eyes has claimed.<" - p101-2

"He fell head over heels in love with the actress Christine Schuberth, who had made her career naked in the cinema as the 'Mutzenbacherin', and then with another actress, Iris Berben." - p103

"Once, when the relationship between the two was about to break up, Mariella von Reininghau complained »Niki can only develop feelings about his car and about nothing else. Maybe he needs someone who only sees him as the world champion when he wakes up in the morning. Niki Lauda wrote about the nasty arguments: "We were arguing more and more often, and I cheated more and more often in the summer of '75 - I just needed a lot of variety as a counterpoint." On the other hand: "I had been with Mariella for seven years and was actually pretty sure that we would get married someday." - p104

"Whenever a reporter asked him the inevitable question, Mr. Lauda, ​​how do you feel about sex before the race?' What really drains your condition is what's around it. You get to know a woman at a race track, you go out to eat with her, then to a bar, and you don't go to bed until four in the morning. It's different with your wife or girlfriend. You can still sleep twelve hours despite all the sex. I once asked Niki Lauda: »Jackie Stewart was a monk two days before the star when he was a racing driver. He has a very attractive wife, but he wants to go hungry and hot, what do St think? Lauda replied: "I don't know what Jackie Stewart used for his races. I need my arms and legs, nothing else. I don't think sex and racing cars have anything to do with each other. A woman is a woman, a car is a car. I can try to master a machine, but you have to understand a person.<< - p104-5

"James Hunt, the Brit who snatched the world title from Niki Lauda in 1976, is a man that women love. And who loves women. One of his friends once said: »He starts caressing your body, kisses you all over. Really everywhere. And he doesn't care if a race is coming up or not. For a while he had a sticker over his heart: 'Sex is also a Sport.' James Hunt once fell into the hands of Wendy Leigh, an attractive Englishwoman who was writing for the book What Does a Girl Do? wife researched well in bed. Hunt's wife Suzy had just gotten engaged to Richard Burton and the racer was willing to provide information to the reporter. He said, "Sometimes I analyze myself a little and watch myself trying to maneuver a girl into bed. Then I'm always surprised at how devious I do it. I fool people. It's actually fun for me, just like selling something to people. Sometimes you get a woman who refuses to do certain things in bed; perhaps because she has inhibitions or is afraid that she will like it too much afterwards. It's your job to relax her, work on her gently, explain things to her skillfully, and get her to think it's a good idea. Then there are women who pretend to reject something, they play you their number, refuse to go to bed with you just because they want to appear different from who they are. These women are a waste of time. Others resist certain things in bed and want to make an impression. But they make no impression on me. I like a woman who asks for what she wants in bed, and I tell her that too. The real pleasure in bed, what really gets me excited, is when I can please a woman. I like it when the girls come to my bed and have a great time there. if they really enjoy it, that's great for a man and that can be fun. Personally, I like the women who reach orgasm quickly. Because that means she enjoys it, orgasm is the same as feeling pleasure.<< James Hunt - p105-6

Lauda didn't like the superficial party talks. He'd never gotten used to the chatter, and for a brief moment wondered if there wasn't a way to slip away undetected, when suddenly he felt someone watching him. He looked up. A beautiful young woman was quiet to him kicked, sat down and naturally put her hand on his knee. The hand was long, slender, and soft as a feather. >Are you thirsty? Do you want something to drink? whisky, gin, Cognac?< She addressed him as "du" straight away, and she had a voice, heaven, what a fascinating voice. A little hoarse, with a barely noticeable foreign accent. It was only much later that Niki Lauda found out that she was born in South America and that she had been brought up there for a few years. In all honesty, he replied, 'I'd have an appetite for a mineral water.< Oh. She gave him an amused look, got up without a word and brought him a glass of mineral water. - p111

"Marlene Knaus was extraordinarily pretty. She liked to wear her hair up, had a dazzling figure and worked as a model in Munich for a while. From time to time she was also photographed naked. (The photos of Marlene, with her hair pinned up, naked, crouching in a wicker chair, still haunt the editorial offices of daily newspapers to the displeasure of her future husband." - p113

Lemmy Hofer came a short time later. Lauda stood up and took a deep breath, the beautiful Lemmy Hofer from yesterday's party. Marlene Knaus. Curd Jürgens' girlfriend! With a few quick steps he stood in front of her and took her hand. "What are you doing there?" he asked awkwardly. Marlene grinned and Lemmy intervened. 'I spoke to her on the phone this morning. She was bored and we made a date. So I thought, just take her with you.' They sat down next to Niki Lauda. Marlene was silent for a while, then she said cheekily: "I wanted to take a look at Niki Lauda in daylight. That's what she did until Lemmy Hofer said: "Imagine, Niki, that Marlene has her no idea about car racing. She thought you were a Marlene nodded. »Yeah? They all ordered coffee. Lauda looked at Marlene furtively. She had a wonderfully even face. the Hair was back in a bun, her skin suntanned. Her hoarse voice, her closeness... I had seen many beautiful women. They didn't worry me. But this woman was something very special.< How would other men behave in Niki Lauda's situation? They would have used all their charm to impress Marlene Knaus. Lauda not. He turned to his friend Lemmy. »Tell me, what's new in Vienna?<< Lemmy looked at him in amazement for a moment. Then he began to tell. The two of them chatted about old times all afternoon. Marlene listened. She said nothing, no doubt irritated that none of the men took any further notice of her. When she said goodbye, she asked Lauda: "One thing I would like to know... are you always so... so reserved?" Niki Lauda smiled. »Depends.<< He had the feeling that he had won this first round." - p117-8

"Miss Knaus, please." »Miss Knaus isn't here.<< Niki Lauda hesitated for a moment. "When will she come back?" We're not expecting her any time soon.'< 'Where is she?' Miss Knaus is in the hospital. She has severe pneumonia.<< Niki Lauda asked the name of the clinic where Marlene was. Later he told friends with a grin: 'It wasn't nice that Marlene was in the hospital, but it was my big chance. Curd Jürgens was shooting a film in Vienna, but I was there. And I sat at his girlfriend's bedside as often as possible.« He visited Marlene every day. And when the doctor threw him out after a while, he would stand by the window and talk to her. She says, "I thought it was cute. I was in a bad way, but Niki helped me with his visits.<<" - p119

"Where do you want to go, Marlene?<< I would love to take you to an inn and have a schnapps.' Lauda had to laugh. "I'll bring the car here carefully so that the doctors don't notice anything," he said. "You're getting dressed and then we'll take off.' No sooner said than done. Fifteen minutes later they were already behind them in Salzburg. Niki Lauda stopped in a pine forest. "Shall we go for a walk?" "Gladly." Marlene got out. He took her hand. Tall conifers left and right. A narrow path, covered with pine needles. Cicadas chirped. The inn, which they soon reached, looked rather run down Window frames hung askew in the wall. Lauda put his arm around Marlene. They entered. Farmers from the area sat at massive oak tables with smoothly scrubbed tops. The only thing not in the tavern fitted, the jukebox was in the corner. Nobody here knew a racing driver, Niki Lauda, ​​and nobody cared about Curd Jürgens' girlfriend. They sat down at an empty table. Marlene laid her head on his shoulder. The innkeeper joined them. Niki Lauda ordered slivovitz twice. You could see a piece of sky from the window. Clouds came up. A locomotive whistled in the distance. A hit came from the jukebox. The innkeeper brought the schnapps. They drunk. Niki Lauda took Marlene's head in his hands and kissed her she. Shall we have another one, Niki?< »But then we're really drunk.<<< So what? The whole afternoon is ours. They held hands, and Niki Lauda suddenly realized: this is the woman for life! Suddenly he felt as if someone had turned on the light in a dark room. He himself had always resisted marriage, he had said: 'If two people like each other and live together, there is no need for a marriage certificate.' But in a tiny second everything had changed. Niki Lauda felt he had to seal his relationship with Marlene Knaus. She asked him, "What are you thinking about now?" And he answered: 'I remember that I'm always with you want to stay with you Always.” His racing car, the world championship, Mariella, Curd Jürgens… everything was suddenly far, far away. The small village economy became the center of the world for him. He was happy. - p121-2

"There is no doubt that Lauda suffered greatly from public attention in his first year of the World Cup. He had enjoyed being a celebrity in the beginning, but it was already too much for him." - p123

"Another racer, who has since died in an accident, took a particularly good-looking stewardess to his bungalow and began exchanging affections with her in broad daylight. Of course, Lauda and Stuck and a few other racing drivers noticed. They crept up to the bungalow, quietly opened the window and then splashed cold water in the room and on the two naked people." - p128

"Once some one poured milk in Jacky Ickx bed. The sun burns relentlessly hot on the bungalows during the day and when Ickx wanted to go to sleep in the evening, there was a pitiful smell of sour milk. Ickx returned the favor and smeared the windows of Lauda's rental car with honey. Mario Andretti, the American Indianapolis winner, piled up all the sun loungers in the swimming pool one night, a little nervous, and James Hunt was delighted to go naked through the pool scurrying around the garden and scaring the female guests (until all of a sudden he got fed up with the fuss and moved to Sleepy Hollow a few miles away and ended up trying to stay with friends when he didn't like it there either)" - p128-9

"Three years after her first visit to Kyalami, when Marlene Lauda was pregnant and couldn't go with her, she sent her husband a sex doll by post and wrote »so that you don't get any stupid ideas down there«. It was also a birthday present for Lauda. Oddly enough, the puritanical customs of South Africa, who otherwise rigorously confiscate every sex magazine, had nothing against the inflatable doll and Niki Lauda's friends seized it, dressed it in overalls and laid it in the garden." - p129

"Niki Lauda, ​​who was with Mariella a few months earlier von Reininghaus had said, "Hand on heart, I feel married and a ring and a marriage certificate wouldn't change that much either," suddenly moved heaven and earth to get the marriage papers for Marlene and himself. "I wanted to marry her because I wanted to get married," he told me at the time. »It's a feeling - she belongs to you. There's no logical explanation for that.<< If someone spoke to him about Marlene's pregnancy, he got very angry: "When a racing driver is married and has children, he doesn't drive any differently than usual. It's just me driving, not mine wife, not my children. When I race, I turn off everything around me. I don't think about whether my wife is pregnant. It doesn't matter if I have 36 children and five wives, or none at all. Anything else is idiotic. A few days after the race in South Africa, Niki Lauda married Marlene Knaus. So that no one would get wind of the event, they decided to get married in England. But then things didn't work out with the papers, Marlene Knaus doesn't have a birth certificate because it was burned at some point in Venezuela and Niki Lauda couldn't find her parents' marriage certificate. Salzburg was just as out of the question as a place for the wedding, just like Vienna. "People would have been standing in line," said Niki Lauda to his friend Dr. Oertel, who got him the first sponsorship money from the Raiffeisenbank years ago. So Niki Lauda and Marlene Knaus decided to get married in Wiener Neustadt, a good hundred kilometers from Vienna in Lower Austria. No one took care of Lauda there, Dr. Karl-Heinz Oertel was the best man and had to lend Niki Lauda a tie because the groom didn't have one." - p131-2

"A child seemed to complement Niki Lauda's life. It gave him the chance to correct his own messed up childhood. Marlene would make the child feel. to be needed and useful. She surrounded herself with a lot of care, and Niki Lauda didn't tell her that during a first training session on the Jarama race track in Spain had crashed through three fangrines at more than 200 kilometers per hour and had been hit in the skull by a wooden stake. Although he had a headache, he continued testing despite the slight concussion." - p132-3

"She remembered for a moment the first race she had witnessed in South Africa. She had been at the finish tower and when he won she ran down to congratulate him. Hundreds of people pounced on Niki Lauda, ​​everyone wanted something from him, Marlene involuntarily withdrew and just waved at Niki Lauda. On the plane she congratulated him and ordered champagne. He adjusted his seat so that he could sleep comfortably. Before he fell asleep, he asked her, "How did you like the first race you witnessed?" And Marlene answered: >>You're all a bit crazy, I think." - p148

"Around this time Marlene Lauda drove to Salzburg, from the airport she wanted to fly to Cologne with the pilot in Lauda's plane and meet her husband. She was a little confused. In Vienna she had had a very strange dream that would not let her go. It had been Friday night into Saturday night. »I saw, she told Niki Lauda's mother, a car on fire. It was Niki's Ferrari. I saw that very clearly. But only the car was on fire, I didn't see Niki.« Lauda's mother tried to calm Marlene, when that didn't help, she snapped at her. >stop. Don't talk nonsense. Here, take a pill.< Marlene thought about this dream while driving to Salzburg Airport. Of this dream and the race from the Nürburgring... it was 1 p.m." - p154

"Arturo Merzario, the small, skinny Italian, was the first to help Lauda. He was lying behind Lauda in his Wolf Formula 1, stopped immediately, jumped out and ran into the flames. Afterwards, he kept remembering what he witnessed at around two-thirty in the afternoon on August 1st: 'Lauda's screams were terrible. I didn't understand what he was shouting, but I can imagine it.<<" - p156

"When the announcement came through the loudspeakers that Niki Lauda had had a serious accident and that the race would be started again, a few thousand spectators in the finish area started to laugh and shouted and hooted with joy. Huschke von Hanstein gave a first radio interview: "Niki is fine," he said, ser is already flirting with the nurses.<< Then the race started again, but four cars were missing: those of Brett Lunger, Harald Ertl, Chris Amon and Niki Lauda." - p159

"When the ambulance brought Lauda to the hospital on the edge of the rolling hills of the Eifel in Adenau, there was tremendous excitement. A doctor held out a telephone receiver to Lauda: "A call for you, Mr. Laudas," he said. Brazilian radio. They want to do an interview with you.<< It was completely absurd. Lauda lay on the stretcher, got a telephone receiver in his hand and spoke live with a reporter. The conversation was broadcast on the radio across Brazil. But Lauda still doesn't know what he said back then. He was completely gone and has no memory" - p161

"The two nurses who took turns tending to him had soft, friendly voices. Later, when he could see again, he noticed that they were very pretty." - p168

"Once his wife asked him if he would like his parents to visit him. They were in Mannheim, but they didn't want to let them into the intensive care unit without his knowledge. Not yet, Lauda indicated with his wife's hand movements. They communicated by finger pressure or by raising and lowering their hands. Lauda couldn't talk. Marlene Lauda remembered: »I stayed in the hospital, I couldn't go to the hotel. I didn't want to take Valium either. Everyone always gave me Valium. I didn't take any. I collected the pills because, I thought to myself, if anything happens, you'll take them all at once. I already had a whole bunch.<<" - p172

"He really wanted to see himself in the mirror. The doctors forbade it, but when nobody was looking he would sit up and face the glass windows in such a way that he could at least catch a glimpse of his appearance. On Friday the swelling around his eyes receded, he recognized his wife and mother. Whoever wanted to visit him had to strip down to his underwear and put on a sterile gown. He blinked at his mother and croaked, "My God, how do you look?" The green smocks confused him. "You look like Martians," he said." - p173

"One night he got up quietly and crept into the bathroom. He looked in the mirror for a while and said to Marlene, who went to the hospital at five o'clock the next morning. »Now I look like I did at the carnival in Rio. Or one of the leading actors in a horror film.' Marlene Lauda didn't know whether to laugh or comfort him." - p174-4

"They came up with all sorts of tricks to let the transport go smoothly. They issued a bulletin saying that three days later the patient Nikolaus Lauda could be transported from Mannheim to Ludwigshafen by ambulance. In truth, however, they drove to the other clinic the following day in the private car of Prof. Peter, the head of the hospital at the time. It was like a thriller and Niki Lauda had fun doing it. He was given a wide-brimmed hat and a blanket covered his bloated body. And while the reporters were standing in front of the front door, they carried Lauda through the delivery entrance to the doctor's Mercedes." - p174

"Lauda had to record radio commercials for a while, which were broadcast before the races and sounded like this: Narrator: Niki Lauda, ​​who do you fear most when racing in South Africa, Hunt, Scheckter or Fimpaldi? Lauda: None of the three. Only the customs, because they always want to take my Römerquelle away from me, because they think it's a magic potion He was paid 180,000 marks for saying such nonsense." - p191

"He always knew that he could hit some people, yes, that he could hurt some if he stole a disproportionate amount of money from them. He punished people by charging astronomical sums. I remember once having lunch with Niki Lauda in a particularly expensive Munich restaurant. He had brought his wife and two other friends. And then there was an older man who wanted to win Lauda for some business. I noticed that Lauda felt uncomfortable in the man's company. He didn't like him. When it came to paying the very high food bill, Lauda shirked. He also motioned to the rest of us to leave the bill behind. In the end, the businessman had no choice left to pay. And Niki Lauda triumphed" - p200

"Lauda herself characterizes himself differently. He once told me: »I really enjoy a candlelight meal with tender music by Leonard Cohen or Gorden Lightfoot, I love sitting in the middle of a green meadow and looking at the flowers.<<" - 211

"On the other hand, he is brutally open in some respects. When his four-year-old son Lukas once asked him where the severe facial burns came from, he put the child in front of the television and showed the video cassette with the film of the accident. 'You see,' he said, 'I sat inside and burned myself.' Lukas was terribly frightened.

He doesn't mind if children stop and look at him and ask what happened to his face. But he hates being stared at by adults. He once said: “I don't like intrigues and lies, even if I'm not involved myself.” What he fears most is “people's stupidity. Not if they're uneducated, but if they're just stubbornly stupid." - p211

"While the phone rang in the living room, Marlene Lauda sat her son Lucas in his little chair. Niki Lauda had said goodbye to her two days earlier and she had no idea that he was planning to give up racing. She kissed him the usual farewell, then he sat down in his car in the garage, about twenty yards away to the kennel, she walked alongside. She picked up the phone. "Yes, please?" "It's me, Niki." It was silent for a moment. Marlene asked: "Why aren't you at training?" She was a little irritated because her husband called at a very unusual time. Lauda replied: "Look out, you can tell Frau Meier, our housekeeper, that she no longer needs to wash my overalls." At first, Marlene Lauda didn't understand what her husband meant. Then she asked softly and doubtfully: Have you... I mean... have you stopped? 'Yes,' he replied. 'But' she didn't know for a split second what was happening to her... she wanted to scream with joy... but she just said: 'You can't stop suddenly, in the middle of the season... why. "Nothing. I have stopped. I can stop.< Bernie Ecclestone picked up the receiver and said: >Marlene, Niki has gone mad.<< Finally, Niki Lauda calmly said goodbye to his wife. Marlene Lauda later confided to friends: »I thought motionless for a whole hour. Why now? But then I stopped wondering. Because, let's assume it's the kid or something. I think he should keep that to himself.<< Marlene went completely nuts. She phoned her sister in Geneva and immediately yelled: »Niki stopped.<< She said later: »I called my doctor. I had him paged by radio at the clinic. This is the doctor who gave birth to Lucas - he's so nice. I called down at the village inn in the middle of the night and said everyone who is there now can drink whatever they want and as much as they want on my account. I also recently called Curd Jürgens. I was already a little tipsy. He was really happy. Anyone who doesn't know something like that doesn't know what it's like to suddenly no longer have to be afraid for the man. No longer afraid that one day they will carry him away on a stretcher and you stand by and know: So that's it - your life, your marriage.<< p219-20

"In early 1977 he even flew from Austria to California in the Cessna Citation, a jet-powered aircraft. The flight lasted 23 hours. Marlene Lauda played stewardess, served ham sandwiches, pepper sausage, mineral water and hot coffee. When they arrived at the Hotel Holliday Inn in Long Beach, everyone thought that Lauda had gone crazy." - p229

"He called a press conference, invited the journalists onto his plane and flew around Austria with them. He was particularly lovable and, for the first time, did something he had always detested. He also took Marlene and his son Lukas, who was born in April 1979, with him and offered the photographers and journalists the opportunity to take family pictures. When Lukas was born in 1979, Niki Lauda was in Long Beach because the American West Coast Grand Prix was coming up. He heard about the birth of his first son over the phone before flying to Las Vegas with his then-team boss Bernie Ecclestone to see the new racetrack. And it was clear to him that his son should not be marketed. “I've strictly forbidden photography. A reporter who offered to radio him a picture of the newborn to America was dismissed: "I said no photo, and I'll see my son often enough." Of course he was proud to be the father of a boy, but he didn't want children as vehemently as Marlene did. Once he said when his wife still was pregnant: "If it's a boy, he's to be called Lukas Ben. If it's a girl, we've already chosen a name... wait a minute, that was... oh. damn, i forgot. Well, it doesn't matter.<< In December 1980, when Lukas was one and a half years old, he kept having his picture taken with Marlene and Lukas and also said: »My boy is a super child. He's friendly and incredibly open-minded. He drives like a wild tractor. Only in the passenger seat, of course. But if he's not allowed to come along, he'll start crying.<< - p249-50

"I am too sensitive. And maybe too open. At least for my self. There are situations when people hurt me. And that hurts me. That's why I build a wall around me." - p251

"Now he was vulnerable, a man with little cultural sense whose favorite film is Jeremiah Johnson starring Robert Redford, who went to the opera only once in his life, as a child, and almost fell asleep doing it, who doesn't read novels and only thought of business." - p251

"Once, it was a Saturday morning, he came home to Hof near Salzburg. He'd gone out to buy newspapers that morning and forgot to close the garage door. Marlene wasn't at home either, so the house was empty for a good hour. As he stepped into the hallway, he saw a man walking around in it. He had his arms spread wide and was striding toward the spiral staircase that leads from the garage hallway to the living room. room on the first floor. The man moved very stiffly and earnestly. It looked funny looking As if he were a bird ready to fly away at any moment. He didn't pay any attention to Niki Lauda. Lauda said: "Hello, can I help you?" The other man looked at him and replied: "Ah, Mr. Lauda, ​​nice day. Thanks, it's all right... Niki Lauda thought hard, but he had it man actually never seen before. The stranger now began to climb the stairs with outstretched arms. He touched the railing with his fingertips. 'Damn,' he said crossly. Now it was too colorful for Lauda. "Listen," he snapped, "this is my house. What are you doing?< The other stopped, put his arms down and left towards Lauda. He seemed really upset. "But you're being rude, Herr Lauda," he said. 'I'm building a house like yours and I'd like a nice spiral staircase like that too. I saw yours in a newspaper. Now I have to measure whether my closet goes up the stairs. My closet is<< - he spread his arms apart again - »>about that deep.<< Lauda threw him out." - p252-3

"Lauda let in on the edge of his large property Put up a sign that read: »Private property<<. That didn't help. People came anyway. Even after he stopped racing, they kept harassing him. When someone was at the door again at the weekend, Lauda asked: "Why are you following me?" He said: »I would like to look at your house.<< Lauda answered: »What would you say if I came to you one day and sat in front of your apartment door?«< "This is something else. You are Lauda. «< Marlene was getting scared. And Niki Lauda tried to get a gun. Initially, however, he was denied a firearms license, saying that taxi drivers had caused enough mischief with pistols and that no new firearms licenses were being issued in Austria. Lauda said: "But I'm not a taxi driver. It took a while and several interventions before Niki Lauda was able to obtain a pistol, a Walther, and received the gun license number 074894. This bureaucracy also annoyed him. And slowly the desire to leave Austria, at least for a while, germinated in him." - p254

"Niki Lauda generally says that he is a particularly cautious driver (»Everyone claims that they are good drivers. Anyone who cannot do it at least says they drive >quickly<<<), but in truth he accelerates vigorously, wherever it is possible. I had an appointment with him on April 27, 1981 to find out more about the rumors that Niki Lauda wanted to return to Formula 1. He told me that he had just overlooked a speed limit on a German autobahn and had run into a speed camera at over 200 kilometers per hour. The police officers who then stopped him were quite perplexed. They said it was one of the few devices that could measure over 200 kilometers per hour and that he was the very first to drive in there. Then they said they would consider that a test measurement and he should continue driving now. Niki Lauda was in good spirits, he had been lucky and he could just as easily have gotten rid of his driver's license" - p261

"At first, Marlene Lauda did not want to accept the fact that her husband was getting back into the Grand Prix circus. "She cried quite a bit," Lauda put it gently. "For what Niki is up to there," Marlene Lauda said to me on the phone in November 1981, "there's really only one word - crazy! I have the impression that he must have gone completely mad. When I first read about these rumors in the newspaper, I still thought they were inventions by journalists.<< But slowly she began to suspect that there was more to it than that. >>Whenever Niki talked to me about car racing, she teased his voice a little. Good heavens, I thought if there is nothing in the bush!<< Then one day she received certainty. “Niki came home from Egypt. He had had difficult negotiations about his airline and the Fokker charter and I thought he would be tired and taciturn. But he was all high-spirited and funny. He was suspiciously in a good mood. There's more to come, I thought. And indeed. That evening he taught me that he wanted to try again.<< Marlene Lauda now knew that nobody could be strong enough to dissuade Niki Lauda from making such a decision. »Not if he's really determined to do it.<<" - p266

Niki Lauda attracted the most beautiful girls. A number of top-class love affairs were immediately attributed to him. There he hung out in New York's Xenon and in Rome's Bella Blue he hung out with Ileonora Vallone, the beautiful, long-haired daughter of actor Ralf Vallone. The Munich evening newspaper then asked Marlene Lauda if she was jealous and she replied: "I don't take something like that seriously. After all, I've known Niki long enough.« The picture said: »An infidelity can happen spontaneously with him«, says his wife, »but he would never let himself be caught.« And: »Niki Lauda prefers to come five minutes too early than a minute too late. But every two months he gets drunk with friends in the village inn in the Salzkammergut, but in between he calls his wife. I'll be there soon and won't be home until after midnight. He even missed Christmas Eve. He drank with his pilots, didn't get home until ten and fell asleep next to the Christmas tree. >The next morning I looked in the mirror and said to myself: you asshole." - p272-3

"At the end of 1982, the Laudas decided to move to Ibiza for a while. "Marlene and the children are there most of the time anyway," he said. He liquidated his household in Salzburg and had his two mastiffs put to sleep. Marlene had longed for the dogs after the wedding, they were two particularly beautiful, dark dogs, Bagheera and Balu. The dogs slept in a four-poster bed with checkered curtains and were kind-hearted. "But then suddenly," Niki Lauda told the Bild newspaper, "they became jealous of our children." Because the dogs were running around freely, there was always trouble with hikers and hunters. Once Lauda even left Austrian television is looking for his dogs because they like had disappeared from the face of the earth and he was afraid they could be killed by hunters." - p273

Tagging @f1yogurt to read in their own time; lots of information here

[crookshanks23]

Season 1, Episode 34: Dedicated Involved Loving Fathers

(Note: This is a long one y'all. I ended up typing out all of my thoughts on this one)

Favorite Moment: The entire phone call with Beth May.

General Thoughts:

All right: because I'm really curious, I want to sit and log my feelings as I listen to this. As I mentioned in my previous post, this is the one episode that I've not been able to relisten to because it set me off the first time I heard it. I was listening to the podcast in the car, because I was doing a lot of commuting, and I was so confused by this episode that I exited out of the episode a couple of different times, sure that I had accidentally skipped an episode. And that confusion has just really put me off from this episode. Looking back on the episode, it's very clever, from what I can remember of it, but it bothered me so much. Maybe it's because I was driving, and so instead of just being a fun time, it became this huge distraction.

So, what I remember of this episode, is that there is a fight with bounty hunters and somehow they end up riding on a bunch of animals. And there are some shenanigans with Dennis. But that's it. Most of the details of this episode are not in my brain anymore.

So here we go, let's see how I feel about this one on my second go-around. (By the way, I finished episode 33 over a week ago, have hit play on this episode three times, and have been unable to listen to it. But now it's time. I'm going to do this.)

This intro is very dumb, but very funny. And I love a good "flip to side two" joke. It makes my old millennial heart happy.

The whole table talk and Dad fact portion does a great job of integrating Ashley naturally. So flawless it threw me.

Grant's nickname is shooter? Oh no. The context of that now is unfortunately not a funny baby poop joke. Oof.

Again, so nonchalant in with the Dennis stuff. And I didn't realize that he was also a rogue. No wonder Ron doesn't like him.

His anchor is at the librarium decepticus? That's so smart.

Thanks Ron, for saying all the things I felt listening to this the first time.

Okay, enjoying the episode so far. Doing a quick check-in on how I'm feeling. Maybe it's just me and this horrible bias I have against this episode, but it feels different. It's still enjoyable and I'm still smiling while I'm listening, but it's more that I'm enjoying the heat between Ron and Dennis. I don't know, this is a weird experience.

Ron fell on to his dagger? There's definitely some shenanigans happening here. Accident? I think not!

Poor Grant. Why give him an axe? I had forgotten about all of the additional trauma that happens to this boy in this episode.

Dennis has always been Paeden's favorite? Ugh. Feels awful. Poor Darryl.

Ron doing what Dennis does is great.

RIP jug. It was a cool, useful item.

I'm just happy to be here. Ok, that was flawless. Hats off to Ashley for that one.

So much shade being thrown towards Ron AND Beth. I don't like it. But I like it.

The energy. Is so weird.

It's not bad, for a combat episode. But doesn't feel like how they do combat. More like how actual combat goes in a DnD game.

Okay, another feelings check in. I really do love the Ron anti-Dennis heat. It is very funny.

So we're now 30 minutes from the end of the episode, and the combat is over. And I have no idea what is left because I don't remember anything else from this episode.

Ok, the entire Beth May phone call is hysterical.

Love that Erin hates Dennis too. Oh wait. Nope. She's playing hard to get. That is pretty funny.

Mr. Mustache meets Terry! And Terry finally believes Ron!

Dennis brings up Scam... And reveals himself as Mark. Glenn's line of "Mark- what did you do with Dennis?" Very funny. He's revealed and then disappears.

And there's some planning and apologizing and that's it. I did it!

And next time, we get to what I consider the official start of Arc 2. Let's go get some anchors!