I can’t believe we’ve reached a point in the f1blr ecosystem where new members have no idea what the Demotion™ is 😂
Dany was the one that set the precedent for what happened to Alex and Pierre.
Thing is that unlike Alex and Pierre, Daniil had achieved podium finishes with RBR and actually beat his teammate (Ricciardo) in the points standings in 2015. He wasn’t wildly underperforming compared to Dan.
In 2016 he got a podium in China, had the infamous crash with Seb in Russia (his home race 💀) and was demoted the day (? Or closely after then) after the Russian race. (Fun tidbit of the demotion - Dany received the call from Marko while he was watching Game of Thrones). Add insult to injury, when he was demoted to Toro Rosso they gave him all new (and relatively inexperienced) engineers as there was a clean up on what was Max’s side of the garage (see my previous ask re: the civil war brewing at Toro Rosso). The combo of new team + demotion + things not working out at STR culminated in that godawful qualifying session in Germany.
Anyways, things looked a bit better (him vs Verstappen in Singapore was so 🥵) but then 2017 came around and. Well. We saw how that ended 💀 (spoiler alert: they didn’t even let him finish the season).
Friendly reminder that Daniil Kvyat is so bad at flirting that he saw his life flash before his eyes when Daniel Ricciardo wanted to know how to hypothetically ask a girl out in Russian.
What I love about this picture is that Dany, Checo and Robert are probably laughing at some shitty joke and meanwhile, in the background, you know Valtteri is trying to maintain his stoic “I’m a badass bitch” persona while biting down on his bottom lip trying to not laugh with them.
