It feels almost disingenuous to say my car was stolen. It was not broken into. No one hotwired it. I was not carjacked at gunpoint. Nor was it stolen through the recent TikTok trend to boost Kias by sticking a USB drive down the throat of the ignition. Nothing so clever or destructive occurred.
I left Las Vegas, where I live, for a work trip to Phoenix. That morning, my father flew into Las Vegas for a weekend trip with his wife and her grandson. They borrowed my car. While out to dinner that evening, my father left it unlocked with the key inside in the parking lot of the Orleans Hotel and Casino, a budget resort west of the Strip.
I was out drinking with colleagues that night and missed a few calls. When I checked my phone, I saw my father had texted with weird punctuation and fragment sentences: “Call me It’s very important. It’s about important.”
It sounded important. I had also missed a call from the police. I got on the phone with my father first and, with a tone of pure shame, he said, “I’m sorry to tell you this, son. Your car is gone.”
When Dan Hernandez recovered his stolen car, he found a mysterious VHS labeled “Bad Tape” left inside of it. His friends and family told him not to watch it, but Dan couldn’t resist. Read our latest.
so mercedes didn't officially block anything but stewards might have asked unofficially and merc might not have approved so we can say with 100% confidince that ferrari couldn't avoid penalty bc of merc lol what? no one is fan of merc but this rumor isn't even a rumor just fanfiction atp
Carlos has a penalty for 2 very specific reasons
The Race Organisers (F1) and the FIA failed to ensure the track was prepared to an acceptable standard before cars took to it
The FIA rulebook makes no exceptions or special dispensation for Force Majeur in situations like this
That is where the buck stops. The idea that the blame lies with Mercedes is entirely a distraction from who has actually fucked up here, and caused the situation to arise.
Are Mercedes potentially being dicks? Possibly, but they haven't caused Ferrari to get a penalty, they've essentially said 'Sorry to hear about your bad luck, but we're not going to sign off on you getting a lifeline'. Probably a bit unsportsmanlike, but given they're the only team directly in competition with them, probably unsurprising too.
And it shouldn't be up to the teams to sign off on band aid decisions to cover the FIA/F1's ass, especially not on the fly, because where do you draw the line? This is only a problem now because he's on his last engine, if it happened at the start of the season it wouldn't be an issue.
I suspect the FIA will now try and create a clause to make allowances for what happens should this arise again, but to create something watertight that isn't open to abuse is going to be easier said than done I would imagine.
I have seen multiple posts about the new Zorro show this morning, so I suppose it just started? So, while it is a subject people are talking about:
The very first Zorro book, The Curse of Capistrano, later renamed as The Mark of Zorro, is available for free on Project Gutenberg, and it was genuinely one of my top 2 books of 2022 (it's a tie with the German pirate novel Ein Meer aus Feuer). Genuinely one of the best-paced things I've ever read. 100/10, would absolutely recommend.
Chapter 13 of Pretty Little Thing is up!! This week J'onn and Clark's investigation bring them to Pop's Place where they run into a few characters you might remember.
I really enjoyed getting to write J'onn's POV (and I look forward to his next chapter)