'Tis the season to be silly
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| It's the most wonderful time of the year... |
Before we delve into this week's developments let's just quickly cover a subject for any new fans...
What the heck is F1 silly season?
Well, many sports have a summer break. My other favorite sport is football (or soccer so as not to confuse Brian) which ends it's season around May and starts again in August.
It is a clean break between seasons and as well as players resting up, it's also the time when all the rumors start as to which players may get transferred where.
Clubs start looking at their needs for next season and think about who they may want to drop from their playing squad.
It will go from headline grabbing megabuck deals by the worlds biggest club all the way down the ladder to pub conversations between friends who might discuss who Littletown FC might be buying this year to play in front of their crowd of three men and a dog.
It happens in many sports and while the rumors are fun, and maybe become frantic at times, it's all contained to the "off season".
In other words if you upset someone by leaving the team, you don't have to go back and face the music instantly.
Unless you are in Formula 1 that is.
Over in the world of F1 this action still takes place in the summer but the difference here is that it is not the off season for the sport.
Rumors of who will be driving for who next season start to swirl now and teams will announce driver line ups for next year which may well mean the guy in the seat for the 2nd half of this year has nowhere to go next year.
It's all a bit surreal and I don't quite know how you deal with that as a driver if you are in a car for part two of a season but know you are being ditched or are doing the ditching in the following season.
I guess it's all part of the deal that you know you're getting yourself into when you hop onboard the crazy F1 train.
Anyway, so that's F1's silly season.
The point of the season during which driver line ups for next year will be negotiated and the point at which the rumor mill goes into overdrive.
In the past we heard about this on the radio or in the newspapers.
Over the last decade or so the world of social media has ramped up the silliness to a whole new level.
Not only are we seeing fan made memes doing the rounds (will share some later in this post as they are comedy gold) but we now see the drivers and teams getting involved.
So, how have we seen that play out this year?
We just need to hop back to last Thurs to trace the main catalyst to this years drama.
July 28th was the day Vettel announced he was retiring from F1 at the end of the year.
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| Vettel's debut album cover |
This instantly gave us an open seat over at Aston for 2023 which naturally sparked debate amongst the F1 community as to who would take that seat.
Indeed on this very blog we had speculated about what would happen if Vettel left and had thrown Hulkenburg, Alonso, Giovinazzi, and Piastri into the mix.
Little did we know that two of those names were about to become splattered all over twitter and the interweb in general.
Fast forward to Monday 1st August and things kicked into gear just as everyone was putting the Hungarian GP behind them and heading for the F1 summer break.
Fernando Alonso leaves Alpine and moves to Aston.
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| The names Alonso, Fernando Alonso |
Apparently Alpine are not aware this is happening and they hear about it the same time as us via the internet.
Alonso has essentially agreed to switch teams and not even told Alpine and then headed off on vacation and has had no contact with Otmar since.
Allegedly.
If true then remember that, not only will this probably have pissed Alpine off massively, this does not take effect until 2023 so Alonso still has to show up to Alpine in Spa and race for the team he has just walked out on.
It's OK though as Alpine now have an easy option to take. That up and coming talent that is Piastri now gets the seat. Simples.
Rolling into Tuesday we get an Alpine statement that Piastri is taking the seat.
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| The king is dead, long live the king |
Cue joyous celebrations from all those who have followed his career and have been waiting for him to get his moment.
A couple of folk such as Matty over at WTF1 point out that this announcement has been made while Australians are all still tucked up in bed.
But it will all be OK right?
Wrong.
Piastri gets out of bed and I imagine sees a phone lit up like a Christmas tree with all the notifications of congratulations.
In a state of confusion he must work out that folk seem to think he's joining Alpine in 2023, a viewpoint he quickly amends in the spotlight of social media.
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| #awkward |
Ouch.
In the space of a few days Alpine have lost their experienced talisman, announced the arrival of a new talent, and then had that talent deny the story.
All this has happened in the three days since the summer break started!
Getting in on the action, Williams & Alex Albon played what is known as an absolute blinder by mocking the whole situation by making an announcement of their own.
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| Genius, pure genius |
They even teased it by saying that an announcement was coming from them at 3pm GMT. This is what makes social media so good!
What else will we see happen?
Is Piastri going to McLaren?
If so where does that leave Danny Ric? Can he go back to Alpine or is that him done in F1?
Who DOES end up taking that Alpine seat?
What else is going to happen in silly season.
We're not even going to try and guess. We're just gonna grab the popcorn, sit back, and enjoy the show.
We'll leave you with a few of our favorite meme reactions from twitter & reddit.
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