So, I’m gonna rant and I don’t even care if anyone reads this but I need to get it off my chest.
That final scene of Lando in the Brazil Unboxed broke my heart. Poor guy faked a smile to entertain fans and as soon as he was alone, he looked like he was about to have a panic attack.
Lando’s been treated like shit by so many F1 fans for months now. Back when he got into F1 people already started calling him a pay driver (which isn't even true) and didn't even give him a chance to prove himself. He was torn apart for every single mistake he made, constantly got compared to Carlos despite being a rookie and Carlos being much more experienced.
This year, it's escalated so much. That incident with Checo in Austria, his Spa shunt, his love life on summer vacation, not winning in Monza and "only" being second, Sochi, all the bad luck in these past couple of weeks. The poor guy gets blamed and blatantly hated for everything and most things are absolutely out of his control.
People forget that he's barely 22 years old. He came into F1 as a 19 year old. Has he made mistakes? Absolutely. Don't we all? As I said before, we have the luxury of learning from mistakes and growing and maturing. Lando doesn't get that. He gets judged instantly for anything that goes wrong. And in that very second, people forget that he's the youngest ever British driver, one of the youngest podium and pole sitters, is still best of the rest in the 2021 season.
He's been so open about mental health and how he's struggled with it and people seem to use it as an invitation to kick him even more. And I absolutely cannot understand how people have sympathy for Haas driver #9 "crying" in an interview after everything that he's done but don't feel for Lando.
Lando has said that all he cares about is making other people happy and smile. He is such a people pleaser that he goes and takes pictures with fans after a disaster such as Brazil only to get into the car and - for lack of a better term - fall apart.
He's only human, a really young one at that. People need to stop giving him such a hard time about literally anything. He breathes and someone will find some way to hate him for that. Some people really need to learn how to be fucking kind and I cannot stand this anymore, as if F1 in itself wasn't hard enough.
