I know I've already annoyed someone today by questioning this, but watching Lando's sky interview, I just cannot wrap my head around why he's acting like this? George crashing end of Singapore and being sad, I get, Checo being miserable, I understand, but ultimately, for McLaren, this is a great result. His frustration yesterday, okay I understand it, he did make mistakes which led to him being P10, but today he quali'ed P2 and finished P3...team mate beating you (to a "win") can be frustrating also, but he's on the "podium"....I literally just can not wrap my head around this reaction. And surely, carrying this frustration and anger at himself forward, isn't going to help his race results?? not tryna police his emotions or say it's an "over-reaction" just....perplexes me. anyone got any insights?
I'm going to give you the benefit of the doubt and assume you're asking this in good faith.
I'm sure you're aware because he has talked openly and honestly about it many times over at this point but he struggles with his mental health, particularly with anxiety and self-doubt, which manifested itself in some quite serious imposter syndrome in his first season/season and a half in F1. This isn't conjecture or projection, it's stuff he's talked about openly and McLaren have talked about and even Trevor Carlin his old F2 boss has talked about (Seidl once went into details about how worried the team were about him when he was living alone during Covid).
He's talked about how he has learned to manage it and has it more or less under control now but I guess the thing is with any mental health struggles they never go away, people just learn ways to silence them so they lay dormant. Obviously none of us know what's going on with him because we're not him and don't even know him, but from the outside it looks like for some reason he has turned up this weekend a little on edge and things seem to be spiralling a bit in a way that watching it is very reminiscent of his rookie year in F1, when a little mistake or two early on would send him on a downward spiral for the entire weekend. The way he couldn't get his mistakes under control yesterday (he has track limits issues sometimes but not normally like that) and he said on the radio to his engineer he was too tense, he clearly knew the car was good enough for front row and he said himself that knows he let himself down and he's always been incredibly hard on himself (a trait Charles also shares, I've never seen two drivers beat themselves up quite so much when they make mistakes) and he's also always been very much about the team so probably feels he's let the team down too, he alluded to that in his interview as well. Then today, he was doing an excellent job in quali, set for pole until he made a mistake on the last corner of his last lap and lost the lap and continues beating himself up, that much was clear in his interview right afterwards. Then in the race, starting on the dirty side of the grid which is awful in Qatar he got a bad start plus getting swallowed up by the soft runners and had to fight his way back to 3rd while his teammate won the race thanks in large part to the clean getaway he was able to get from pole - the one he had messed up and thrown away just a few hours beforehand.
Listening to him talking through his interviews after the race, I don't think it's for effect, or for sympathy or even self-pity. Everything about it from the way he's driving to his interviews afterwards is like he's turned up this weekend stuck back in 2019. Who knows why. I don't think it's Oscar, he's actually had him covered on pace all weekend without the mistakes, Oscar wasn't on his tail pushing him in qual yesterday, he was several tenths off when they both got a clean lap. Could be he knew McLaren would have an amazing car this weekend and he's put too much pressure on himself to try and get that first win. Could be something in his personal life we have no idea of. Could just be his demons have surfaced for no good reason - anyone who struggles with mental health issues knows it can happen sometimes. Whatever it is, demeanour-wise it's like watching him in his rookie season again
