2k23! (op81 redux)
Sep. 29th, 2022 01:09 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
goaltenderone month ago (a week before crb ruling):
looking back...... i still think people can have whatever opinion of oscar they want because it's not in my general interest to defend a driver's moral character, but it's really almost unfathomable just how spectacularly alpine cocked everything up and that even while trying to be objective and neutral in my stance (since this was pre-crb ruling and we didn't have the full details of the situation) i was in fact overly generous and kind in my assessment of alpine's share of the blame lmfao.
also at the end of the day...? i honestly think the way mclaren went about dr's contract negotiations was like.......... fine. it doesn't matter whether dr knew exactly when oscar signed his contract because he went into the driver agreement on the basis of a reserve seat (except while knowing that the writing was on the wall for daniel's buyout even if it wasn't a strict guarantee, which i think is fair to say to anyone following this season and frankly isn't like some huge shocking revelation!), and with dr's future at the team being discussed with leadership in the months prior it's clear his public statements were meant to position leverage in the negotiation process and there wasn't really any point at which i think brown/seidl acted in some particularly egregious manner lol. but maybe that's just me.
anyway tl;dr the more i think about it the more excited i am about oscar at mclaren next year!!!!!!! T__T the thing is that like, realistically i don't think mclaren are that great of a team and their car is weird and shit etc. and they've definitely been a strategy disasterclass several times this season, and i don't have high "expectations" relative to i guess oscar's... stock as a rookie/prospect that some people might have? lol in terms of his performance in 2023 that is, but it's at the point where i think alpine is a completely untenable environment to develop in (which is frustrating because i do think doohan has potential and i'm excited to see what victor does in f2 and i think mia did an insane job of scouting and redirecting talent over his time with the team, it's just that rossi's incompetence + lack of accountability + narcissism are at fault for completely dismantling the pipeline structure from the inside out) so i'm just glad he's out of there x__x and at this point it's obvious that i do rate lando despite my best efforts so i really want to see what they're capable of in terms of constructors standing. also i think it's like this:
- there's no point in discussing whether alpine or mclaren would make for a better rookie environment/better car in 2023 because the point is that oscar was never in line for the alpine seat until seb's retirement. so the mclaren move is what it is, contractually and objectively, especially knowing that not even the williams contract had been formally drafted or presented at the time of signing. of course the problem is that public perception and media scrutiny are impossible to influence or quell but it's just My View that there's no point in ascribing additional nuance & contextual pressure to his start in the team ("he'll look stupid if he doesn't have a mega performance now because of the alpine drama" and so on or whatever etc. someone tell nico to shut up please) because it's not actually reflective of how mclaren view their proceedings in bringing him on as dr's replacement. like yes the discourse will happen regardless but i just don't see the value in it!!!!
- i've been reflecting on oscar's f2 run and revisiting past races and i also rewatched his ctd episodes and listened to his recent podcast episode and well first of all it struck me how much i likeeee himmmmm. i was so unironically touched when risa messaged me like "i'm glad you'll have your favorite driver on the grid next year" because i never realized that while i have a clear tier of support in f1 (wanting merc to take p2 in the wcc, following lando's best of the rest exploits, rooting for alex q3/points every weekend, etc.) i definitely lack the level of complete investment that i assume will come when oscar is competing at mclaren T__T maybe this is too much early optimism and hopium but i'm starting to really like the optics of him moving there even though i'm still realistic about the team's shortcomings and failings..... i just don't think it's that spectacularly bad of a place to develop as a rookie. but there's also the thing where i think people are too swayed by their opinions of the alpine saga and the stock of his cv, and frankly and realistically the occasional approach of reactive schadenfreude in manifesting his career failings face with dr sabbatical... everything is inherently make or break and i don't think oscar or anyone at mclaren is fooling themself with how his contract/introduction to the team is meant to be structured.
- like i think. 2 years is the perfect amount! mclaren aren't supposed to be competitive until 2024, and whether that actually happens by then is really anyone's guess, but i think 2023 is the perfect year to get a rookie who is vastly cheaper than dr but has a high (hypothetical!!!) ceiling up to grips with the car and develop him within the mclaren system while also gauging lando's ability to be the established driver once promoted into very official and visible team leader status. with this context i don't think anyone at mclaren is expecting him to equal or beat lando lol but of course the exact quantitative measure of how he should perform relative to dr is more nuanced and i can't say exactly what i personally expect or hope for...... that i don't know. but if oscar gets vandoorned and is out the door by 2025 then that's just life! and i don't think it will reflect like some massive gamble on mcl's side that will forever be marred by organizational hubris and managerial failings after backstabbing its beloved #2 driver lol like the situation feels really cut-and-dry past alpine's involvement and it's just regular contractual proceedings as far as i see it.
- there's a lot that we can say about oscar when scrutinizing his junior career and i guess there's a degree to which all this analysis is a waste of time and there's nothing to be done other than just wait for bahrain. but i can appreciate lando being fr a mentality monster and even if it's hard to predict how they'll get along because of oscar's extreme normieness lolol (i think it'll be fine though) i'm mildly optimistic about how they'll work together on the technical/race side. it's just like. god how do i put this! when we talk about oscar's junior career..........
> first of all he beat shwartzman decisively as a rookie which reflected terribly on rob's stock, but ferrari clearly still value him with his upcoming fp1 run and are privy to testing data that we know nothing of so junior pace evaluations don't necessarily mean everything. but that's still something to take note of and is impressive in its own regard, even if it means it doesn't really "guarantee" relative success coming into f1
> in the end there are so many dynamics at play when we discuss how his cv shapes up in comparison to george and sharl and even lando or alex. at the end of the day it doesn't really matter. but to me what i like about oscar is how he got through his championships on consistency and composure more than on any pure reflection of pace (mostly with f3), how he is frequently regarded as adaptable and how he honed in on weaknesses from f3 and broke through with strong qualifying in f2. sometimes it's just about margins of errors, but it's also about in the long run, maybe (arguably) the binary value of simply being someone who can vs. can't win—which is to say what matters is that winning doesn't mean everything but it does mean something, and though this something is supplemented with additional context it contains some semiotic value in and or itself. though once again—Arguably. and of course the title itself is a mixture of things, of luck and placement and funding and reliability, so a junior career doesn't quantitatively determine """wdc potential""" (lol whatever that means at this point). but these things are inherent! and i guess to me the way people who solely watch f1 and don't care about junior series will have their entire opinions transformed through highly one-dimensional and invariable takes is what baffles me??? i don't know.
> like prematax is real but not to the degree in which people regard it, there's a level of self-selection involved, etc. and the thing about oscar is that he's "humble" but not necessarily demure either, just very frank and easy and reasonable in his self-assessments (hence why i think he and lando have the potential to mesh well), and it's why he doesn't give prema much credit when pressed on it lol. which is to ask: what will his mentality look like now if he were to be truly pushed in an uncompetitive and underperforming team/car? who knows but i guess as someone who supports him i once again like to believe in his quote-on-quote "adaptability"...... and we can talk about how christian should have had the career oscar has had, how x and y arguably have better raw talent or higher potential or ceilings etc., how oscar had a cinderella trajectory and everything fell in at the right place and right time for him (other than the reserve seat lol), but the minutiae of what makes someone adaptable or worthy and what makes someone fit for a team culture is just so deeply sensitive and variable that there isn't really any point in these hypotheticals. i think that's also how i feel about guanyu at alfa for 2k23 lol. the teamfit <3 so much to say about theo but we don't need to go there
> this is kind of how i've been approaching ollie in f2 next season too........ the language of Binning it or Throwing away a championship is so harsh when you realize how these rookie title expectations are so increasingly arbitrary and overly anticipatory and i guess it's like is it really that much more impressive to win a season as a rookie on merit of consistency than it is to like, not win and initially make mistakes but come into form over the course of the season and adapt fairly quickly and become a serious contender and primary frontrunner by the end/in the winding few races??? i think that's why i rate ollie, and why i don't necessarily guarantee that he'll do fine in f2 but think it's like—well you gotta make or break it at some point. and maybe you get pourchaired and mecachromed. or maybe you don't. and i think gauging his mentality, consistency, error-proneness, adaptability etc. face with dennis/sarge (highly doubt he'll be there but whatever)/whoever ends up at prema will be super revealing and critical, and of course i want to believe that he has the potential to adapt in the way he did during f3 and that he has the full package to weather f2 well but who even knows and who can say. though the more i think about it the more i think merc are reasonable for parking kimi in freca first.... even though i think it would have been completely fair to expect performance from him in f3 right out the gate, it's like if the grid is shaped the way it is and teams are structured the way they are and the road of ascension is stymied by these current certain sets of factors, the net harm reduction is ultimately... fine. i know it's hard to gauge the pure value of kimi's dominance atm and i'll be interested to see how he fares as a rookie in freca....... although also excited for dunne's final performances in italy!
tl;dr x1000 guys i am really and truly oscar fan T__T i guess while everything was going on i didn't really let myself reflect on how much i genuinely am looking forward to his first year on the grid but the more i conceptualize it the more i'm like wow i truly do support this bitch!!! what!!! and i'm like objectively fascinated by ollie's edgelord gen z psyche lol and very interested in how his career develops (let's go abu dhabi var stand-in 😤) and i also like lewis and other f1 drivers for their own reasons or at the least semi-reluctantly rate/support people in other capacities, but oscar is just my fav at the end of the day......... though maybe that is already obvious from the unhinged amount of thought i've put into where he fits in at mclaren while writing this post LMFAO. >
not to say that i ever think mwebber knows what he's doing but people are so stupid about oscar's situation it kills me........ acting like he personally wrote that tweet or didn't have obvious legal advising in the process or acting like being put on reserve for an ENTIRE YEAR before getting thrown a consolatory williams and the distant promise of a midfield spot because your idiotic french ceo shot himself in the foot with a stupidly reactive contract is evenly remotely comparable to grussell getting the seat right out of f2 and being guaranteed eventual promotion to the then-best team on the grid LIKE....? please be serious.
[...] imo calling oscar greedy is misguided given existing context but like so be it, you can think whatever you want of him etc. obviously idc. it's just that on an objective level i still think alpine are easily 95% at fault for how they've mismanaged his negotiations, and (forgetting indycar fiasco for a minute here) i don't even think mclaren have made any glaring faux pas in "handling" the media (and i mean strictly the media the contract side can be debated) of oscar's situation???
looking back...... i still think people can have whatever opinion of oscar they want because it's not in my general interest to defend a driver's moral character, but it's really almost unfathomable just how spectacularly alpine cocked everything up and that even while trying to be objective and neutral in my stance (since this was pre-crb ruling and we didn't have the full details of the situation) i was in fact overly generous and kind in my assessment of alpine's share of the blame lmfao.
also at the end of the day...? i honestly think the way mclaren went about dr's contract negotiations was like.......... fine. it doesn't matter whether dr knew exactly when oscar signed his contract because he went into the driver agreement on the basis of a reserve seat (except while knowing that the writing was on the wall for daniel's buyout even if it wasn't a strict guarantee, which i think is fair to say to anyone following this season and frankly isn't like some huge shocking revelation!), and with dr's future at the team being discussed with leadership in the months prior it's clear his public statements were meant to position leverage in the negotiation process and there wasn't really any point at which i think brown/seidl acted in some particularly egregious manner lol. but maybe that's just me.
anyway tl;dr the more i think about it the more excited i am about oscar at mclaren next year!!!!!!! T__T the thing is that like, realistically i don't think mclaren are that great of a team and their car is weird and shit etc. and they've definitely been a strategy disasterclass several times this season, and i don't have high "expectations" relative to i guess oscar's... stock as a rookie/prospect that some people might have? lol in terms of his performance in 2023 that is, but it's at the point where i think alpine is a completely untenable environment to develop in (which is frustrating because i do think doohan has potential and i'm excited to see what victor does in f2 and i think mia did an insane job of scouting and redirecting talent over his time with the team, it's just that rossi's incompetence + lack of accountability + narcissism are at fault for completely dismantling the pipeline structure from the inside out) so i'm just glad he's out of there x__x and at this point it's obvious that i do rate lando despite my best efforts so i really want to see what they're capable of in terms of constructors standing. also i think it's like this:
- there's no point in discussing whether alpine or mclaren would make for a better rookie environment/better car in 2023 because the point is that oscar was never in line for the alpine seat until seb's retirement. so the mclaren move is what it is, contractually and objectively, especially knowing that not even the williams contract had been formally drafted or presented at the time of signing. of course the problem is that public perception and media scrutiny are impossible to influence or quell but it's just My View that there's no point in ascribing additional nuance & contextual pressure to his start in the team ("he'll look stupid if he doesn't have a mega performance now because of the alpine drama" and so on or whatever etc. someone tell nico to shut up please) because it's not actually reflective of how mclaren view their proceedings in bringing him on as dr's replacement. like yes the discourse will happen regardless but i just don't see the value in it!!!!
- i've been reflecting on oscar's f2 run and revisiting past races and i also rewatched his ctd episodes and listened to his recent podcast episode and well first of all it struck me how much i likeeee himmmmm. i was so unironically touched when risa messaged me like "i'm glad you'll have your favorite driver on the grid next year" because i never realized that while i have a clear tier of support in f1 (wanting merc to take p2 in the wcc, following lando's best of the rest exploits, rooting for alex q3/points every weekend, etc.) i definitely lack the level of complete investment that i assume will come when oscar is competing at mclaren T__T maybe this is too much early optimism and hopium but i'm starting to really like the optics of him moving there even though i'm still realistic about the team's shortcomings and failings..... i just don't think it's that spectacularly bad of a place to develop as a rookie. but there's also the thing where i think people are too swayed by their opinions of the alpine saga and the stock of his cv, and frankly and realistically the occasional approach of reactive schadenfreude in manifesting his career failings face with dr sabbatical... everything is inherently make or break and i don't think oscar or anyone at mclaren is fooling themself with how his contract/introduction to the team is meant to be structured.
- like i think. 2 years is the perfect amount! mclaren aren't supposed to be competitive until 2024, and whether that actually happens by then is really anyone's guess, but i think 2023 is the perfect year to get a rookie who is vastly cheaper than dr but has a high (hypothetical!!!) ceiling up to grips with the car and develop him within the mclaren system while also gauging lando's ability to be the established driver once promoted into very official and visible team leader status. with this context i don't think anyone at mclaren is expecting him to equal or beat lando lol but of course the exact quantitative measure of how he should perform relative to dr is more nuanced and i can't say exactly what i personally expect or hope for...... that i don't know. but if oscar gets vandoorned and is out the door by 2025 then that's just life! and i don't think it will reflect like some massive gamble on mcl's side that will forever be marred by organizational hubris and managerial failings after backstabbing its beloved #2 driver lol like the situation feels really cut-and-dry past alpine's involvement and it's just regular contractual proceedings as far as i see it.
- there's a lot that we can say about oscar when scrutinizing his junior career and i guess there's a degree to which all this analysis is a waste of time and there's nothing to be done other than just wait for bahrain. but i can appreciate lando being fr a mentality monster and even if it's hard to predict how they'll get along because of oscar's extreme normieness lolol (i think it'll be fine though) i'm mildly optimistic about how they'll work together on the technical/race side. it's just like. god how do i put this! when we talk about oscar's junior career..........
> first of all he beat shwartzman decisively as a rookie which reflected terribly on rob's stock, but ferrari clearly still value him with his upcoming fp1 run and are privy to testing data that we know nothing of so junior pace evaluations don't necessarily mean everything. but that's still something to take note of and is impressive in its own regard, even if it means it doesn't really "guarantee" relative success coming into f1
> in the end there are so many dynamics at play when we discuss how his cv shapes up in comparison to george and sharl and even lando or alex. at the end of the day it doesn't really matter. but to me what i like about oscar is how he got through his championships on consistency and composure more than on any pure reflection of pace (mostly with f3), how he is frequently regarded as adaptable and how he honed in on weaknesses from f3 and broke through with strong qualifying in f2. sometimes it's just about margins of errors, but it's also about in the long run, maybe (arguably) the binary value of simply being someone who can vs. can't win—which is to say what matters is that winning doesn't mean everything but it does mean something, and though this something is supplemented with additional context it contains some semiotic value in and or itself. though once again—Arguably. and of course the title itself is a mixture of things, of luck and placement and funding and reliability, so a junior career doesn't quantitatively determine """wdc potential""" (lol whatever that means at this point). but these things are inherent! and i guess to me the way people who solely watch f1 and don't care about junior series will have their entire opinions transformed through highly one-dimensional and invariable takes is what baffles me??? i don't know.
> like prematax is real but not to the degree in which people regard it, there's a level of self-selection involved, etc. and the thing about oscar is that he's "humble" but not necessarily demure either, just very frank and easy and reasonable in his self-assessments (hence why i think he and lando have the potential to mesh well), and it's why he doesn't give prema much credit when pressed on it lol. which is to ask: what will his mentality look like now if he were to be truly pushed in an uncompetitive and underperforming team/car? who knows but i guess as someone who supports him i once again like to believe in his quote-on-quote "adaptability"...... and we can talk about how christian should have had the career oscar has had, how x and y arguably have better raw talent or higher potential or ceilings etc., how oscar had a cinderella trajectory and everything fell in at the right place and right time for him (other than the reserve seat lol), but the minutiae of what makes someone adaptable or worthy and what makes someone fit for a team culture is just so deeply sensitive and variable that there isn't really any point in these hypotheticals. i think that's also how i feel about guanyu at alfa for 2k23 lol. the teamfit <3 so much to say about theo but we don't need to go there
> this is kind of how i've been approaching ollie in f2 next season too........ the language of Binning it or Throwing away a championship is so harsh when you realize how these rookie title expectations are so increasingly arbitrary and overly anticipatory and i guess it's like is it really that much more impressive to win a season as a rookie on merit of consistency than it is to like, not win and initially make mistakes but come into form over the course of the season and adapt fairly quickly and become a serious contender and primary frontrunner by the end/in the winding few races??? i think that's why i rate ollie, and why i don't necessarily guarantee that he'll do fine in f2 but think it's like—well you gotta make or break it at some point. and maybe you get pourchaired and mecachromed. or maybe you don't. and i think gauging his mentality, consistency, error-proneness, adaptability etc. face with dennis/sarge (highly doubt he'll be there but whatever)/whoever ends up at prema will be super revealing and critical, and of course i want to believe that he has the potential to adapt in the way he did during f3 and that he has the full package to weather f2 well but who even knows and who can say. though the more i think about it the more i think merc are reasonable for parking kimi in freca first.... even though i think it would have been completely fair to expect performance from him in f3 right out the gate, it's like if the grid is shaped the way it is and teams are structured the way they are and the road of ascension is stymied by these current certain sets of factors, the net harm reduction is ultimately... fine. i know it's hard to gauge the pure value of kimi's dominance atm and i'll be interested to see how he fares as a rookie in freca....... although also excited for dunne's final performances in italy!
tl;dr x1000 guys i am really and truly oscar fan T__T i guess while everything was going on i didn't really let myself reflect on how much i genuinely am looking forward to his first year on the grid but the more i conceptualize it the more i'm like wow i truly do support this bitch!!! what!!! and i'm like objectively fascinated by ollie's edgelord gen z psyche lol and very interested in how his career develops (let's go abu dhabi var stand-in 😤) and i also like lewis and other f1 drivers for their own reasons or at the least semi-reluctantly rate/support people in other capacities, but oscar is just my fav at the end of the day......... though maybe that is already obvious from the unhinged amount of thought i've put into where he fits in at mclaren while writing this post LMFAO. >
