My opinion on George is simply that he is being manipulated by Mercedes and Carmen to be this poster boy. I have watched George a long time ( since his F3 days) and he used to be fun. The days with the twitch quartet and Covid were some of my favourites as his personality shone then he met her. He went from having a laugh with Alex and Lando in his first year of Williams to being really serious, pushing himself to get the top contract, the money the marketing man and it just makes me really sad that he feels like he cant be himself anymore. Or maybe we are all just growing up. ( I am the same age as him)
Ngl I'm really not a fan of the 'woman manipulates poor helpless man' narrative. I find Carmen completely insufferable, but imo I've not seen any evidence she's manipulating him into anything. For all that they are annoying, they do seem from what we see to genuinely love each other. They both seem pretty desperate to be seen as some kind of F1 It Couple but I don't think she's pushing that narrative any more than he is. I also think she ultimately gave up her career because it must be very hard to put the work in that is needed in a relationship with someone who has the lifestyle and schedule of an F1 driver and also hold down a regular 9-5 job at the same time, especially in a high-pressure world like finance. I guess she chose George over the job, as he can afford to support her and her best option to be able to spend time with him is to try and make it as some kind of influencer. It's sad that she was in that position of having to make the choice tbh. Not that we should feel too sorry for her, given the massive advantages being with a millionnaire brings, like having the freedom to make a choice like that in the first place. I also get the impression that her own family are fairly well-off so she's probably not relying purely on him anyway.
George used to come across as a lot more fun as a junior but he was also always a bit of a twonk on track. I don't think he's being manipulated by Toto either, I think he's 100% going along with the whole Mercedes PR persona, that's a choice he's made himself. Lando did have a point though when he said he feels lucky to be in McLaren as they let him be himself much more than a team like Mercedes would (what he was saying got lost under the whole 'Lando calls George boring' rhetoric that followed, but he was 100% right, as was Alex when he noted something similar). But everyone who drives for Merc has faced the same thing - even Michael Schumacher did despite who he was and even Lewis did before he won them several championships and was able to call the shots more and be a bit more himself again. Merc are no worse than Ferrari for that though, and infinitely better than Ron Dennis-era McLaren were. George takes the whole Mercedes thing Very Seriously and his personality started to change even in his last year at Williams. Whether he was thumping Bottas over the head after he caused a crash with Valtteri or making little digs in the press about the Merc seat being his before it was announced, his ego started to get a bit out of control and he started taking himself far too seriously, and it's not really stopped. The fact that his peers who have known him for years have called him out on it more than once says a lot.
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I could be completely wrong but I think this has been in the works before Lewis. Or at least for a while, I remember her posting about it ages ago now.
the one thing I do think is a bit weird is a few Brazilian journalists have said whilst Lewis is in Rio he’s going to go about doing some of his Mission 44 work, which is great - I know he announced recently that they were expanding to Brazil (other places too) - but to tie that in with whatever this relationship is is a bit … idk. It doesn’t sit right with me and I can’t really work out why? Maybe I’m just annoyed with him generally so am I seeing everything negatively because someone actually doing work to support communities whilst being on holiday is never a bad thing really, idk why I feel weird about it
I wonder if for him he sees it as doing something to give something back to Brazil after all the love they have given him.