today is a good day for car fuckers.

daniels also #confirmed securing millions into the team and also has been credited by the whole team for improving the car massively and giving the engineers a direction to take the car. Alpha tauri getting faster once daniel joined wasn’t a coincidence. It’s so funny bc every comment I see about daniel rn is about how he’s gonna get fired— sorry guys those are just your hopes and dreams, not rooted in reality❤️❤️ daniels honestly the best driver a team like vcarb could hope for I’m not joking. They need experience and $$$

hmmmhm. yessss, all very interesting parts of the puzzle, i feel. even from a more general point of view like, what makes a driver worthy of keeping around in what team. it's an interesting question with any driver on any team! and what's the stuff they're looking at behind the scenes, you know? obviously the general public bases most of their opinions on what happens on track but when you think about all the data available to the team (and not just like, racing wise, but also money wise, pr wise, etc) that we just don't know about... also, and this is maybe controversial yet brave but fuck it, last time daniel left red bull, they still hadn't properly filled that hole by the time he came back. like they figured it out for red bull, but that second seat at toro rosso/alpha tauri/vcarb was still a mess, when ndv showed up. they just couldn't make anyone stick. plus, you can tell drivers are hesitant to sign with the red bull org for a bunch of different reasons too. albon and gasly both sound lowkey traumatized and espesh gasly i feel burned a lot of bridges and albon doesn't seem keen to come back at all. plus, a bunch of people just do not want to be in the seat next to max. i hope for yuki that he gets picked up by a better team since he's never going to be allowed in that red bull seat and he deserves better. so while right now it seems there's too few seats for too many drivers within the rb club, things may look completely different when more drivers start signing contracts and they may, again, be left with unfilled seats. i can't imagine that not playing a big part as well.

DTS S1 Word Vomit

Temporarily veering away from primer territory, because I'm rewatching DTS S1 (I'm about halfway through at this point) and having some FEELINGS and need to get them out somewhere:

Daniel's personality hasn't changed much but his attitude is SO different. He was so focused on winning and especially on winning a championship. I'm thankful he's in a much better place now! I know everyone wants to win a WDC but I think it's a much healthier attitude to go out and have fun driving and do the best you can do, because sometimes your car is a tractor and if you spend all of your time thinking about how you won't ever be WDC, that's miserable.

They don't show even half of the times it happened but gosh it really drives home how unreliable the Renault engines were. So many engine problems leading to retirements for Max and Daniel both. (I think it's telling that now in 2024 Renault isn't supplying engines to anyone but their own team (Alpine) anymore.)

There's so much more we know about Daniel going to Renault that isn't shown and I wish I knew better what was known at the time but not included by Netflix vs. what we have learned in the years since.

For example, Christian talking about how they'd offered Daniel plenty of money is hilarious, now that we know how much more he made at Renault.

Speaking of Christian, is the entire DTS team frantically scrambling this week to re-cut as much of S6 as they can? Sending them energy and focus and lots of good food and caffeine.

Daniel going to Renault meant Carlos was all of a sudden out of a seat. Sounds familiar...🤔

I am petty and will probably never forgive ZB for how he treated Daniel and I'm feeling very vindicated in that opinion because he's so unlikable even in S1.

Every time someone crashes, the first thing that happens is their race engineer/TP asks if they are okay. This is normal, this is what we are used to. It keeps reminding me of that time that, while at McL, Daniel crashed and the first thing he was asked was "Is the car okay?" (See previous bullet point.)

Also feeling vindicated about having the opinion that Checo is a kind of reckless driver, and has been for awhile.

Related, Max is such an aggressive driver and I just...hope he is in the lead most of the time again next year so I don't have to worry about him playing bumper cars at 200+ mph.

It's fun to hear GP talking to Max on the radio and know it's him, even though he isn't named.

The lack of Merc and Ferrari in this season is both funny and sad, but bless the producers for finding some good press conference footage of Kimi. I think Kimi might have annoyed me if I were watching his seasons in real time, but looking back, he cracks me up. I'm glad I never had to manage him, though!

Pierre so excited about going to Red Bull, oof.

But all of the Pierre and Charles being friends since they were tiny lore is adorable!

I'm going to miss Günther so much! (I used to think that someday I would go visit the Haas HQ in North Carolina and...that's no longer something I'm particularly interested in.)

I'm sure I'm not the first to point this out, but I didn't remember the 2018 Toro Rosso car well enough to make the connection, but look at the similarity in the liveries between the 2018 TR and the 2024 VCARB. Obviously not identical, but I like the return of the blue, the red accents, and the silver bull!

Anyways, that's it for now, I hope someone enjoyed this word vomit. It is really interesting going back and watching S1 knowing so much more about the sport, the season, and what's to come. Also interesting how much a lot of the drivers have matured since 2018. I'm sure that happens all the time with drivers who stick around for many years, but this is my first time seeing it.

just checked out the reddit video - it has the same high pitched whine noise. i was wondering (and kinda worrying) about that too in the vcarb vid so kinda feel better that it's in red bull's too lol. one of the comments on reddit wondered if it was the drone videoing the cars so that could explain that noise. and then the chunky engine gurgles are just normal honda noises.

I have to admit the vcarb did sound weird even to my untrained ears in that tiny video clip we got and the only video I’ve seen of the Red Bull is the one in the wet. I honestly don’t know how reliable any comparison is given the quality of videos that are out there, but if the good people of the internet have reached the conclusion that they sound similar and very fast, I will kindly incorporate that into my belief system because delusions ✨