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meova101 · 1 year

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Okay I have been Thinking lately, and especially now that all I have left is rechewing old crumbs... Sebchal has such character development, you know. It’s actually so different whether you see them now or in 2019 or 2021 and it’s so interesting to see it develop over time. We went from karting together as part of an FDA event to Charles being a nervous wreck to a tribute helmet and ended up at the easy camraderie we see now and there’s so many layers to this shit, man.

In honour of Sebchalday, I figured I’d make a little write-up of the character development I saw in real time. And with little I mean someone stop me this shit is almost 5k. Yes I also had to add in how I watched the public perception of them change because I might as well honestly, the dichotomy in their teammate years truly was something else. Anyway, without further ado, here’s Sebchal throughout the ages, as told by Meo.

2018 and earlier

This really is just a lot of what seems like hero worship from Charles and Seb being polite, a good guy and up for a laugh. In 2017, Charles occasionally starts going on track walks, there’s the iconic moment in Monaco of course, Charles is just a little starstruck. Why else would he make damn sure he’s got Seb in an Instagram post about the karting event. Or look like he’s in a straight-up romcom when Seb talks to him there.

Seb, on the other hand, seems generally aware of Charles (his F2 results, ofc the track walks, signing that picture of Charles from testing 2018, offering Charles a seat during a drivers parade), but he keeps his distance for the most part. Which is completely understandable, honestly. But this all sets up the scene, because who would have ever thought that this would turn into a rather unlikely friendship?

2019

Rivalry time! We kick this off with, uh, a very nervous Charles on the first team outing to the Dolomites, followed by a hug and a cheek cradle in the second race. Yeah idk either where this went off the rails.

Okay no that’s a lie, I know exactly where it went off the rails, and shit really hit the fan in Monza. The media was already pushing a rivalry and it makes sense - the story of the old veteran and the young hotshot, both equally talented (don’t fight me on this Barbara) and vying for the top spot in the iconic team. Charles was settling in well, quickly matching Seb in the first half of the season, something was clearly brewing. It’s brilliant. It’s a showstopper. It’s also not true, but imagine listening to the drivers themselves.

So Monza comes around and all hell breaks loose. No, legit, this streak of races is the main cause of the rivalry talk persisting. In Monza, Charles doesn’t give Seb a tow during qualifying, leaving Seb unable to even set a final time in Q3 (along with basically every other driver, this quali is so funny). Seb has a race to forget after that while Charles wins. He wins in Spa, he wins in Monza, it’s fucking insane. Il Predestinato for real.

Singapore is up next and Charles gets pole, Charles has a good start, but then. Ohhhhh, then. Seb pits, has a very good outlap, starts overtaking the as-of-yet-unpitted like they’re barely there (in fucking Singapore y’all), while Charles falls further behind. Exasperated, Charles gets on the radio and says he wants everything, but what d’you know, Seb wins. Charles does not look pleased on the podium. Seb does.

And then Sochi. Oh my god let me tell you about Sochi. Charles has pole, again. But you don’t want pole in Sochi, and Seb wastes no time in overtaking Charles, nabbing P1 in the process. And what happens next is the perfect example of what I like to call a bitch fight. You’re gonna want to see this to believe it. Here’s a link to the team radio. It’s funny as hell, it’s petty as hell, Seb DNFs and Charles barely hangs on to the podium in the end, ladies and gentlemen: a rivalry.

Brazil only fanned the flames, I’m just saying.

But even with all of this. Like, it seems very explosive, you know. Which makes it all the more interesting how they don’t actually... seem to explode? They’re still nice to each other? Sure, it’s still very careful, and the videos they do together have that awkwardness, but they’re nice. And if you dig, just a little, you find Seb and Charles... actually having fun together. You can see their dynamic here most clearly in the language videos, in my opinion. Charles is gushing over everything Seb is saying in French, while Seb is teaching and teasing a little in the German video.

Ferrari themselves somehow manages to hide all the cute stuff, too. Because they sure tried, but you have to know where to look to find their date road trip through the Italian countryside, the videos for Shell and Ferrari themselves, the utterly endearing UPS video where they are both very confused but having fun with it. This stuff is all there, it was uploaded in real time, but it just… got ignored or brushed off as PR.

I remember watching all of their videos at the tail end of 2019, and just gloating like… if only they’d known what would happen afterwards. They wouldn’t be so cordial to each other now if they’d known what lies ahead. Until I realized, and yes this took a hot minute, that if they were always nice to each other, even in the second half of the season, even after everything that had already happened… maybe they actually liked each other.

This was a revelation. Unheard of. These two hated each other, were vying for top spot and there could only be one winner, the other one was just collateral damage, of course they didn’t like each other!

The first half of 2020

Dear reader, turns out they like each other.

There were two camps developing at this time. One of them was still convinced these two hated each other, disliked each other at the very least. The other camp was watching Charles slowly lose his mind on Twitch.

I really can’t understate just how much the lockdown did for the perception of Sebchal, although the major turnaround would happen much later. There really are two factors at play here and I will get to the second one in a bit, but you cannot underestimate how much the Twitch era helped.

Because Charles – and you have to understand, Charles was still seen as a very arrogant, incredibly pretty, extremely talented guy (two of those three are true) which did not help – brought up Seb, a lot. He told us about how he’d been in touch with Seb, trying to get him to play games with him on stream. He wanted to be teammates with Seb so bad while playing F1 2019 that he accidentally picked Seb to play as. He watched F1 compilations that definitely had other drivers in it while exclaiming they were videos about him and Seb. Whether you ship them or not, it’s clear as day that from Charles’s side, there was no rivalry.

Seb, of course, was pretty quiet during this time, but there’s this one interview for Marlboro Mission Winnow that feels more like friends catching up than an actual interview, so there’s that.

The second factor in this is Netflix getting involved. We all know and love to hate Drive To Survive and for season 2, they finally got access to Ferrari and Mercedes. Of course they’d dive headfirst into the rivalry storyline, because believe it or not, once upon a time Drive To Survive actually pretended to base their plot on reality.

And this one backfired. What they thought they were showing were two guys who didn’t much like each other, trying to figure out a way to keep the media at bay. What they actually showed were two very much exasperated guys, teasing and joking with each other while trying to focus on their job. Netflix failed to account for the fact that people might actually look beyond the framing, and thanks to Ferrari trying their best at social media but being endearingly rough around the edges with it, we had plenty of material for that.

And while all of this was playing out, we heard that Seb’s contract at Ferrari wouldn’t be renewed.

Now that’s a whole mess I won’t get into further, because this is also the part where the rats get divided into two camps and I’m not here for that. What I am here for, though, is Charles’s reaction, because he posted a very heartfelt message about the news a bit after it dropped. Why did it take him a bit? Not because he had to run it past PR, I’m pretty sure, because I don’t believe for one second his messages would have gotten the green light. No, it was because not only did Charles take special care to pick out a few pictures of him and Seb together to add to the message, but also because he was driving back from France that day and also, he didn’t know.

I only know he was in the middle of a long drive that day because he’d mentioned it on his Twitch stream before. Also, while looking up this Tweet, I noticed the location tag so that helps. I’m sure I didn’t hallucinate it but since Charles didn’t feel like archiving his streams, I’m also pretty sure this is lost to the void by now. If you happen to have this clip, please let me know so I can stop doubting my memory.

But the second part, where he plain didn’t know? It never got confirmed, but I’m positive. Once again, so many people were convinced here that Charles had been pulling strings behind the scenes, that them working together was impossible after 2019 and especially Brazil, Ferrari had to make a choice and they picked Charles. Except Charles has gone on record multiple times, stating he’d like to keep Seb as his teammate. That he still had so much to learn from him. If it was up to him, Seb would be his teammate for years to come. If he’d known, why would he not have had the messages ready? Why would he have been hyping Seb up as his teammate? Why would anything else in 2020 have happened?

Because trust me, we’re only through the first half of the year now, and it’s only getting better.

The second half of 2020

As we know now, the 2020 Ferrari sucked. Which, in hindsight, was clear during testing, but we all thought Ferrari had just learned how to sandbag. It took until the season finally got underway in Austria that we realized just how deep in the shit our guys were. Charles got a podium in the first race while Seb barely got one point, undoubtedly helped out by the fact that almost half the drivers DNF’d.

In their second race… they crashed. Charles attempted a divebomb down the inside and instead humped Seb’s rear wing. I was crowing at the television at that point, ready for the will-they-won’t-they rivalry of the previous year to continue, yes they’re friendly off track but on track it’s spicy, this was bound to explode…

And nothing.

Because what had happened, especially with them both knowing this partnership would end after this season, was that they started backing each other up. This season was going to be a wash either way and Seb wasn’t going to be there to deal with the fall-out of it. There was no reason for them to remain cordial, to not throw each other under the bus when necessary, and especially in this case it seemed clear-cut, yet they didn’t.

The difference between what happened on track and what happened off track became even more stark. On track, Charles was outdriving Seb so incredibly hard. He qualified so well, while Seb started getting booted out of Q2 more and more often. Charles nabbed another podium in Silverstone, Seb fought for singular points most races. And yet they made sure that whenever the media brought up their results, or tried to poke into their partnership, they always backed each other up. They never once talked bad about each other, tried to make sure the media didn’t forget both of them are extremely talented, and presented themselves as a united front.

Not that anyone bought that, but whatever. 2020 was a weird time and we didn’t have Fernando back on the grid yet. They were aching for some drama.

Off-track, though, and once again you had to actually look for this, which is a common theme with Sebchal… man, this era makes me the most feral still. We not only get Charles saying Ich liebe dich at the end of Seb’s birthday video, and Seb making awkward jokes in Charles’s birthday video, but we get the hourglass challenges. Quite frankly, this is the best social media to ever come out of F1, hands down, nothing will ever beat this. Because you can see, in real time, how Seb and Charles grow closer and more comfortable with each other.

They constantly get paired up with other Ferrari team members, but that doesn’t matter, because when Seb and Charles start talking? They’re talking and no one can disturb them. Like when Seb tries to explain what a pocket watch is briefly, in the background of a video. Seb trying to teach Charles some more Ferrari history during Memory. The entire music challenge, which might as well not have anyone else there.

We get a true glimpse of their fun competitive vibe here, even though Charles gives Seb more chances to win when it looks like Seb might actually lose (you might claim that Seb let you win, Charles, but we have the proof in the darts video and the categories video). I’m pretty sure that if you’d let the two of them alone with a game, you could come back hours later and they’d still be racing tiny little racecars.

You can tell how much closer they got during this season, but as usual, you have to look and listen for it to click. There’s the moment during qualifying for Spa, when they both get knocked out in Q2 and we get a shot of them looking at each other and smiling in understanding. There’s Turkey, where Seb finally gets his podium because he can capitalize on a mistake from Charles, and Charles actually stops beating himself up over the radio for a moment to congratulate Seb on his podium.

The final few races are just a fever dream, really. You have to see the challenge videos to believe them, but they truly have found their dynamic there and they’re so comfortable around each other. And the Danke Seb helmet is still, to this day, probably my favourite moment. Charles made a fucking scrapbook on his helmet. And just to show how even at that point, people still wanted the rivalry to be real so bad: I vividly remember someone on commentary saying “what’s he thanking Seb for, leaving the team?”. It’s crazy. That’s how pervasive the rivalry narrative was, even when Seb and Charles did everything to prove it wasn’t true.

2021

So 2020 was a whirlwind of character development, of notable moments, and definitely lit a fire underneath the ship. Now, however, we enter uncharted territories. The rivalry talk is finally over, now that their time as teammates has ended. But this also means we don’t get to see them interact quite as often, since they’re no longer shoved together at every possible opportunity (lol, not like they were anyway, seeing as the shipbaiting only really starts kicking off around this time in F1 socmed), and we’re rats looking for crumbs now.

Luckily for us, we get a lot of crumbs, and once again it shows very well how their relationship evolves and how they actually work together.

Now, during the winter break and after testing, there were quite a lot of doubters. Which is fine! Everyone gets to have their own opinions! But because the whole rivalry thing was so incredibly pervasive and even without that, Seb and Charles just seem like very different people who only got shoved together because they drove for the same team… it’s entirely understandable to doubt whether they’d continue to interact. And let’s be real, testing did not necessarily give us any indication to think otherwise.

But once again, this is exactly what’s so nice about them, if you look a bit closer… they actually became friends somewhere along these years.

Charles stands next to Seb for the We Race As One ceremony. This might be planned out beforehand, I don’t know, but what certainly isn’t planned out, is them talking and sharing their customary fist bumps before and after these little bits. After races, they also catch up if they find each other either near the car in parc ferme or in the press pen. It’s never that obvious unless you look, and we sure looked.

But it became blindingly obvious during Monaco and Baku this year.

When the drivers were waiting around for the parade, we find Seb and Charles talking to each other, once again so invested in their conversation that Charles almost misses his cue for the bus. And then, once it becomes clear that Charles can’t participate in the race, plenty of drivers offer some words of comfort. But Seb’s the only one to hug him, really talk to him about it, and Charles even leans back into him when Seb’s let go. We don’t know what was said of course, but it’s clear as day now that if anyone’s still hanging onto the old narrative… they’re dead wrong.

And then Baku. Not only do they find each other on the grid again (a recurring theme, there’s so often just a small moment of them getting the other’s attention to say hi), but after the race, Charles obviously first congratulates Pierre on his podium, and then beelines to Seb, where Fernando stares at the display of affection in front of him like he’s watching two aliens land.

It’s the easy way they both grab onto each other there, no hesitation from either side. And yes, I know it seems like Charles is a very tactile guy, but it’s always other people grabbing him. There’s two people where Charles will take the initiative, and both of them have made it onto the podium for this race. Later on, Seb lets us know that he told Charles the previous night, through text, that he’d see him in his mirrors, which once again shows that quietly, they’re still in touch. They’re texting, still teasing each other, and we had no idea until that moment that they still kept in touch in that way, and once again, even if you take the shoggles off it’s still frankly unbelievable that they managed to build a friendship when literally everyone was pushing them towards a rivalry.

This is the moment the rivalry talk really fizzles out, insofar it still even existed. Yes, there’s still people hanging onto it, and it does make a good story, but it’s just that. A story. What we see now is two people who are seemingly very different, pushed together in circumstances that would make other people crack, and they’ve somehow built a connection.

And isn’t that the best story of all?

There’s no topping these crumbs, not even the moment in the Spa press-pen tops this, where we all figured out Charles was talking to Seb before even hearing or seeing him just based on his facial expression, but it does show where Sebchal is at in this year. They’re figuring out how to be friends now that there’s no obligation, because both of them want to be. Seb isn’t one for big gestures and Charles (surprisingly, I know) isn’t either, so we only get the one in Baku. Hell, even Monaco was more of a background thing, and I sure nearly broke my tablet when I spotted the two of them during the We Race As One ceremony as the camera was panning away.

But in the background, there they are, always somehow finding each other, and that’s what truly solidified my love for this ship, really. They don’t need flashy moments, they’re comfortable with each other and it shows.

2022

And then we get to 2022, where everyone finally seems to have figured out that the whole rivalry narrative was never actually a thing. I’m sure part of this is the fact that they haven’t been teammates in a year at this point, that they’re both still persisting in only ever talking nicely about the other when asked, and well, the Aston Martin isn’t actually good so there’s no chance of even having battles on track.

And what we do get, is more crumbs. Honestly, we get much more than in 2021, even without really big moments like Monaco and Baku.

The thing is, we see yet another development in their dynamic for this season. And that’s really one of the big things about Sebchal all this time, we get to see them develop as people, as friends, and this really feels like a culmination of sorts. It doesn’t get picked up much by the social media accounts (thank fuck) and both of them definitely have their people on the grid (Seb gravitates towards Mick, Charles gravitates towards Pierre), but they seem so comfortable in their interactions now.

Take, for instance, the times they get put into the same press conference. We’ve gone back to the bigger pressers now, five people in each session, so we already get more moments where they’re together in the room. And pretty much every time, there’s these quiet friendly moments that don’t necessarily get picked up by the media, but they’re endearing as hell.

Yes, we get the moments where Seb’s flirty on main (which is so fun to watch too, and I dare say it’s even more pronounced now than it even was in 2020). There’s the bus tour jokes in Monaco, where Charles offers to take Seb on one. There’s the presser in Monza, where Seb says he never had as many issues leaving the hotel as Charles does, probably because Charles is more handsome. This kind of open teasing is something new and definitely shows how far they’ve come already.

But there’s also the moments that are more brief, more subtle. Like when Charles motions at Seb about his moustache, or when Seb heads straight towards Charles when he’s late to give him a fistbump. Or when they’re sitting next to each other and end up deep in conversation again, while the presser’s still going on. I know I say the word comfortable a lot, but that’s what it is. They seem to enjoy each other’s company, they like talking to each other and seem to search it out, too, and it’s so organic when you’ve followed them for all these years but it’s a stark contrast to where they started and where the narrative started, too. It’s also a slap in the face to everyone who doubted they’d even acknowledge each other after Seb left the team, which I’m totally here for because I’m not bitter at all lol.

Besides these moments, where they’re already in front of a camera and don’t care that whatever they do is being recorded, there’s still more moments when they’re not. Like, this is just what they do, they don’t ham it up for the cameras at all. There’s plenty of times in the press pen, after a race usually, where they will find each other and catch up a little. To the point where Britta and Mia, both their PR people, just start talking among themselves as well. And it’s always so interesting to see how, even when Charles is looking down (like after Silverstone, or before Hungary for obvious reasons), Seb will always manage to coax a smile out of him.

Because we have more interactions to go off here and we have so much history by now, it’s easier to point out where it seems like they’ve figured out how the other one wants to be treated. As I pointed out in the 2021 section, Seb is one of the few people Charles will actually initiate physical contact with. And throughout the years, throughout this season, it’s not hard to figure out why that is. Most people will grab Charles when they want to touch him, not give him much of a choice. On the other hand, Seb does give him that choice, either touches him briefly and then lets go (like with the upper arm touches that are often used between them to get the other’s attention), or he hugs him from the side, leaving Charles an opening to get out of it if he wants.

On the other hand, Charles seems very aware that Seb is a private person and gives Seb the chance to maintain that privacy, too. During the Twitch streams in 2020 already, he would talk about Seb but never reveal much of what they were talking about together. Most of the times they interact are in the background and Charles is happy enough to let Seb initiate their contact when they are in front of a camera.

And while it seemed like Charles wasn’t very involved in Seb’s last race, I would argue he was and actually took a step back himself to let Seb do what he had to. Even when he felt ill, Charles was still there for the final track run, in the crowd. He did the donuts he promised, mimicked Seb’s finger when he was on the podium after the race. He was also one of the few, if not the only one, to temper expectations and tell people that when Seb’s made a decision, he’s sticking with it, and to not pin hopes on him returning (he’s very stubborn, after all, and his favourite colour’s blue). It might not seem like a lot, but there’s a very real respect and acknowledgement of who Seb is as a person there.

The narrative surrounding Sebchal has changed so much through the years – to the point where even Ferrari called it a very special bond in their social media posts about Seb’s last race – and their dynamic has evolved alongside it. The “rivalry” was very fun while it lasted, don’t get me wrong, but the guys have been telling us all along that it was fabricated and luckily, we now have the full picture. It’s been a fun journey to see it all develop right in front of my salad (I might have only joined after the 2019 summer break but all in all, missing out on half a season is excusable I think) and while I do miss seeing the two of them together on the grid, I will absolutely go down with this ship. No one does it like them and even without new crumbs, there’s still plenty to chew on and pick apart to keep me busy for a long time to come.

#sebchal #sebchalday23 #god this truly is just one big ramble and infodump huh #idk if anyone is even interested in this but it's sebchalday and I miss them and I just want to bask in their history #because it's so fascinating! nothing about this makes any sense but here we are!#watching them throughout the years is something I'll always be thankful for... it was a ride and a half but it was amazing #it's the slow burn it's the growth it's them figuring out each other #I truly don't think we'll ever get another unhinged storyline like this #charles started at hero worship and seb started at talented guy but not Kimi hmpf #and they became genuine friends by the end of it #obsessed with them I tell you #meo shouting into the void

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