(or: Growth, Depending on Who’s Counting the Circus) Formula 1 analysis Ever notice how, whenever something gets complicated, people just say, “You can see it from so many perspectives”? Sounds deep, right? Or at least, like something a brand would tweet. But honestly, it’s a way to dodge responsibility for what’s actually shown. If everything’s just an opinion, then nothing needs to change. No one needs to tell the truth. No one needs to make things clearer. And here’s where Formula 1 becomes an entire vibe. Not because it isn’t serious. It is. “Every voice matters, even though governing bodies want you to think otherwise.” It’s humans pushing 300 km/h, making split-second moves where one mistake = instant disaster. But most of that never makes it to your screen intact. It gets filtered. Cut. Framed. Translated. So “many perspectives” is the ultimate cop-out: If you didn’t see it, that’s just your perspective. Meanwhile, in the F1 content circus: We’re also told the sport is growing. Bigger. Global. A success story. Liberty Media hypes up “engagement,” “reach,” and “views.” But those words don’t mean one thing anymore. They can include: TV viewers highlight clips social media impressions short-form edits app clicks someone watching 10 seconds of a radio clip and calling it engagement If you count literally everything, of course your numbers look awesome. But when you hype stats over substance, you miss what actually matters. It’s vibes over reality. Even if it no longer resembles the thing you think you’re measuring. At a certain point, you start to wonder if the governing bodies think Gen Z won’t notice, that if the edits are quick enough and the numbers big enough, no one will ask what’s actually being measured. The Perspective Machine And it’s not just the broadcast. The entire media layer around the sport now runs on perspectives. Podcasts. Hot takes. Meme accounts. Post-race livestreams. Take something like The Race F1 Podcast—built on multiple journalists offering different interpretations of the same race. That’s the format. Not one explanation. Many. Driver view. Engineer's view. Journalist's view. Fan reaction. Layer on layer on layer. Sounds like “depth,” right? But often just means: You’re not even watching the race—you’re watching the takes battle it out. The complexity doesn’t disappear. It gets distributed. The Verstappen Effect (Visibility of Skill) Then there’s Max. Max Verstappen is one of the few drivers who occasionally makes the invisible visible. The braking feel. The rotation. The way the car is on the edge but somehow not in the wall. That exists in every driver. You just usually don’t see it. And that’s the problem. The sport isn’t less skilled. It’s just harder to actually see. The Convenience “Many Perspectives” “Many perspectives” sounds fair, on the surface. But it often turns into this: Nobody has to care about what gets lost in the noise. Because if someone, somewhere, understands something, then the system works. Even if: most people only see fragments the broadcast flattens the skill the circus is louder than the race Everything is justified. The Modern Trick Modern F1 has figured out a system: If something is unclear → add content. If something is complex → turn it into story. If something is controversial → turn it into narrative. If something is technical → turn it into spectacle. And suddenly everything feels understandable. Not because it is. It’s just easier to scroll, like, and move on. Post-Race Reality Checkquarters Picture this: the drivers, fresh from risking their lives at 300 km/h, gather in a circle after the Japanese Grand Prix, microphones thrust in their faces. They’re unified, they’re frustrated, and for once, it’s not just Max Verstappen doing the shouting. “We warned them,” they say, voices bouncing off the paddock walls. “We told the FIA the new battery charging regs were a safety risk. But hey, at least the fans are happy, right?” This time, the complaints are loud and specific: extreme speed differentials between cars, dangerous race starts, and high-speed, unpredictable energy deployment. The drivers aren’t whispering; they’re spelling it out, practically holding up neon signs. But still, the response is the same. Meanwhile, At FIA Headquarters Cut to FIA headquarters, where a group of officials is huddled around a table, congratulating each other on a job well done. “Sure, the drivers say they feel like slaves to the spectacle, but have you seen our engagement numbers? Sky-high! The TikTok edits are incredible. Safety concerns? That’s just, you know, one perspective.” Oh, sure. Formula 1 is a “collaboration.” That’s the word. Collaboration. Like when drivers are risking their lives at 300 km/h and somewhere in a glass office a group of officials goes, “Great input, guys—we’ll circle back after we check the engagement metrics.” Because nothing says shared governance like the people doing the actual driving having about as much control as a pop-up ad. The drivers? They’re out there threading a needle at insane speed, feeling grip levels no broadcast can capture, making decisions that could end very badly, very quickly. Meanwhile, the people writing the rules treat that whole reality like it’s…content adjacent. Something to package. Optimize. Maybe A/B test between two highlight clips. It starts to appear less like a sport and more like an old-school record deal. You know, the kind where the artist makes the magic, and the label owns the outcome. The Prince era blueprint: “We love your talent, we just need to control literally everything about how it exists.” And to be clear, F1 drivers aren’t chained to a contract in the same way. But the vibe? Oh, the vibe is familiar. The talent creates the value, the system monetizes the value, and the decision-making power somehow lives…somewhere else. Then when drivers push back, about safety, about rules, about anything that might actually affect how they do their job, you can just hear the response: Hey, hey, hey… respect the process. Respect the governance. Respect my authoritah! Because in modern F1, the governing bodies don’t just govern the sport. They govern the version of the sport you’re allowed to see. And as long as the numbers go up, views, clicks, engagement, everything’s working, right? Who needs collaboration with drivers when you’ve got a killer highlight package? At that point, it’s not really a collaboration. It’s a production. And the drivers? They’re the stars of the show, just not the ones running it. Because in modern F1, nothing says ‘progress’ like ignoring the professionals actually risking their necks, so long as the show goes on and the stats look good. If the people in charge listened to the drivers, who knows, we might accidentally end up with a sport where the people who know the most have the most say. And what fun would that be for the highlight reel? The drivers? Still cracked. The speed? Still unreal. The skill? 100% legit. But what we get isn’t just the sport. It’s hype, takes, memes, brand deals, drama, commentary, and circus layered on top. Another Layer of Noise F1 isn’t just a race anymore, it’s a meme economy and an algorithmic fandom where your TikTok feed might know more about your favorite driver than your passport does. And all of that gets sold as “growth.” Depends how you define watching, right? And how many takes can you stack before the actual racing disappears? “When everyone raises their voice, it’s impossible to ignore. That’s how you wake up the FIA.” But here’s the real flex: the F1 community, yes, including you, can cut through the noise. Every voice matters, even though governing bodies want you to think otherwise. If you want real change, if you want the FIA and the people in charge to actually listen, it takes all of us speaking up. The truth is, the world isn’t particularly well represented by governing bodies these days. F1 is just one example. And if I were a betting lady, I’d say the powers that be will do everything to keep Max Verstappen, but they’ll never publicly give in; it’ll be more strategic, more behind the scenes. Post your takes. Share your perspective. Call out the BS. Don’t just vibe with whatever’s trending. When everyone raises their voice, it’s impossible to ignore. That’s how you wake up the FIA. Maybe we can drag the sport back to what makes it awesome. Or maybe it’s all just content now. Up to you. *Image generated with Kling AI.

Editorial Contributor: Trudy Giordano The Hidden Cost of Success: Why the Industry Wants Your Soul (And What Happens If You Refuse) Ever catch yourself wondering what success actually feels like? I don’t mean the stuff you see in headlines, I’m talking about the messy, unglamorous reality. I think about it a lot. It’s why I keep returning to this topic, even years after I first peeked behind the curtain. We’re told success means charts, numbers, and recognition. That’s the story the music industry likes to parade around. But if you look past all that, there’s a whole messier reality underneath. This pressure to perform and conform isn’t confined to music alone; it’s become a pattern across creative arenas. To bring up the latest example of this phenomenon, Formula 1 is right there, too. Lately, I can’t look away. It’s like watching a reality show in real time, one where the drivers are being recast as the world’s most overfunded boy band. Marketed, managed, and paraded around the globe as a circus act. I’ve even written about it, usually while wondering if the next race will feature mandatory choreography or confetti cannons at pit stops. To me, real success is about autonomy and control: holding onto who you are, even when the system tries to reshape you. I’ve seen this tension everywhere I’ve worked; it’s the ongoing struggle between blending in and staying real, no matter your industry. These two definitions clash, fighting for dominance not just in theory, but in every artist’s lived experience. What the Industry Actually Does (And What Nobody Tells You Upfront) Beneath all the bright lights and slogans about ‘empowering creativity,’ the industry puts predictability and control above all. Whether it’s music, Formula 1, or any billion-dollar circus, the playbook is the same: turn talent into something repeatable, marketable, and safe. But let’s drop the curtain for a second: the circus isn’t always glamorous. I’ve done tour life, not as a musician, but as the one with the camera, documenting the road, wedged between amps and questionable snacks. Sometimes the sound guy is also the van driver, and his best skill is falling asleep while barreling down the German autobahn at speeds that would terrify your insurance agent. That’s when the whole band suddenly discovers the magic of insomnia; nobody dares nap, just in case. It’s exploitation, but not the kind that gets its own Netflix doc. Still, hey, you’re living the dream, right? Once you’re in, you’re no longer just creating, you’re maintaining a recognizable sound, a consistent image, a brand people expect. What starts as a fluid expression becomes a formula and repetition. What starts out as pure expression quickly becomes expectation. Instinct gets replaced by obligation. The wildest part? The system isn’t even broken, it’s working exactly the way it’s supposed to. Whitney Houston and the Pressure of Perfection Whitney Houston reached a level of success that very few artists ever achieve. With that kind of visibility comes unrelenting pressure to repeat yourself: same excellence, same presence, again and again. The rewards increase, but so do the expectations. She spoke, at times, about not always being able to fully express who she was within that system, a tension shared by many artists who find their individuality squeezed by the same systems that celebrate them. I’ve watched artists, friends, and colleagues wrestle with this same dynamic, their private selves often at odds with public expectations.. Sananda Maitreya: Refusal as a Different Form of Success Some artists reject this logic altogether. There’s a very specific moment in late-’80s music where the industry looked at itself and said, “You know what this needs? Another once-in-a-generation, hyper-sexual, falsetto-wielding, genre-bending, reality-distorting male genius.” But a few refuse to play by those rules, choosing a different path entirely. Sananda Maitreya is one of them. Honestly, I wouldn’t have ever thought about his legendary clash with the music industry if I hadn’t stumbled upon one of Questlove’s podcasts. Born Terence Trent D’Arby, he rose to fame in the late 1980s with a vocal style that, to some ears, sounds just a little off-center, sometimes even flirting with the edge of the melody—but always with purpose. His unpredictability and rawness are what make his voice feel authentic. Maybe I just think that because I own hundreds of vinyls and have convinced myself I have a good ear. Either way, it’s genius. Now, did Prince and Michael Jackson feel intimidated? To understand the dynamic, let’s look at each in turn. Prince, for example, felt such a desire to outdo everyone that he was literally leaping off pianos in high heels. Yes, high heels. The man invented his own category of orthopedic risk. The result? Chronic hip pain, and allegedly a painkiller habit that ended with fentanyl and, tragically, an early death. If you’re wondering how far the industry will let you go for applause, just know: if you stick the landing, they’ll ask you to do it again, but with more glitter. Michael Jackson, on the other hand, spent years under the same microscope, feeling the need to reshape not just his sound but his face as well. And he didn’t just get nose jobs; he basically entered into a long-term creative collaboration with his own reflection. It was part childhood trauma (thanks to Joe Jackson’s unsolicited nose critiques), part “I broke it, might as well redesign it,” and part perfectionist quest to finally meet a standard that kept moving every time he got close. Throw in fame-fueled self-surveillance and a possible sprinkle of Body Dysmorphic Disorder, and you get a face that wasn’t so much surgically altered as endlessly revised, like a draft that refused to be final. By the end, his nose wasn’t just a body part; it was a mythological creature, sometimes present, sometimes just rumored to be making an appearance. All of it in the name of maintaining the perfect image. But the cost was written across his face for the world to see. And still, the applause never stopped. In fact, the more he changed, the more the industry leaned in and said, "Great, now do it again, but this time with a little more mystery." This is the real punchline: even as their bodies and identities became sites of public speculation and private struggle, the industry’s logic never blinked. The show must go on. The system doesn’t care if it’s your hip or your nose or your sense of self that gets lost along the way, as long as the crowd keeps clapping. All that changes is the mask, or the curtain, or the face, you’re expected to keep in place. It is in that tension, between early validation and later rebellion, that his story becomes less about fame and more about authorship. And then the story fractures. Our minds scramble for order, longing for just one king to follow. Suddenly, the ecosystem shifts. Not because Prince or Michael Jackson said anything, but because they didn’t have to. Their entire brands were built on control: of sound, image, narrative, gravity itself. And then comes this guy whose whole thing is… controlled chaos. Same sonic neighborhood: falsetto? check sensuality? check artistic genius bordering on mythology? Oh, absolutely There’s a volatility at the heart of his sound, as if every note could crack open something unpredictable. So what do we, the audience, do? We panic. We create a storyline. Because we cannot emotionally process three singular male icons occupying the same aesthetic ZIP code without assuming at least one of them is sharpening knives backstage. We need there to be intimidation. We need tension. Otherwise, what are we even doing here, just appreciating different artists on their own terms? (Honestly, I’d prefer that, but the world rarely cooperates.) What is this, a mature society? The truth is less dramatic and way more interesting: Sananda Maitreya didn’t step into Prince or Michael Jackson’s shadow. He rejected the concept of shadow altogether. He positioned himself not as the next anything, but as an interruption. And interruptions feel like threats, even when no one says a word. So no, there’s no evidence that Prince or Michael Jackson were sitting around, nervously watching their crowns wobble. But the feeling that they might have been? That came from somewhere real: A voice that didn’t ask for permission. A persona that didn’t accept hierarchy. And an industry that immediately turned uniqueness into competition, because God forbid we just let brilliance exist without turning it into a cage match. Nothing rattles you, me, and us faster than the idea of more than one king. We crave a single crown, one throne, an easy story to follow. Blame our brains—we’re wired for clear hierarchies, or else our heads start spinning. Throw in a second contender, and suddenly it’s a royal bake-off, everyone sweating under the spotlight. But what if there are three? And now, one of them just walks in like he invented the concept. Sananda Maitreya didn’t stay in the system that first elevated him. He didn’t negotiate; he left. That choice changes everything. Leave the system, and the old metrics vanish. New terms apply. You’re measured by your own standards now. Nature runs on a brutal rule: you grow like a 3, but you hold yourself together like a 2, so the bigger you get, the closer you are to collapsing under your own ambition. And while we’re talking about creative freedom, don’t miss the newly remastered VIBRATOR (2026)—out now! The Trade That Never Gets Named Remaining inside the system requires consistency, adaptation, and the maintenance of a public self that can be repeated without friction. Leaving it requires a different kind of sacrifice. Less access, less reach, and often less recognition. Neither path is free. The difference isn’t in difficulty, but in who holds control. Where the Real Question Lives The question isn’t: Who succeeded? The real question: What did success extract from you? Not just the milestones, but the compromises made along the way, the parts of yourself traded for validation, approval, or a place at the table. Success never comes free; it always requires something in return. Sometimes it’s creative freedom, sometimes peace of mind, sometimes the very identity that drew you to create in the first place. The higher you climb, the more the system asks of you. Every level comes with new sacrifices, more visibility, more scrutiny, more pressure to fit a mold. What once felt like an opportunity can start to feel like a contract you never signed. The Divide Here’s the real split: Not between success and failure. But between: those who accept the system’s terms and those who refuse to be defined by them. Recognize this distinction, and your perspective on success, and the true gravity of its demands, shifts permanently. I know mine did. If you’ve felt this tension between the world’s definition of success and your own, I’d love to know how you navigate it. What do you keep, and what’s worth letting go?

So, Juan Pablo Montoya has thoughts on Max Verstappen again. And sure, why not? This is a sport where everyone with a steering wheel eventually develops a podcast brain and a strong opinion about “racecraft.” For context, Montoya has been commenting on Max Verstappen, suggesting that Verstappen’s driving style leans a little too far into the aggressive end of the spectrum. He has, in various interviews, questioned whether Verstappen’s approach to wheel-to-wheel racing sometimes crosses into unnecessary risk, even implying a crash-or-win mentality in certain battles. (https://racingnews365.com/verstappen-hit-by-brazen-crash-accusation). Now that’s interesting coming from Montoya. I remember watching him approach overtaking like it was something you were supposed to do before even thinking about it. Strategy for him always felt like something that happened to other people, not him. What cracks me up isn’t that Montoya is wrong. Verstappen is aggressive. That’s not breaking news, that’s basically his brand identity. He races like someone who read the rulebook once, nodded politely, and then decided to interpret it emotionally. "Montoya criticizing aggression has the same energy as a guy who once set his kitchen on fire telling you your toast is too dark." But Montoya criticizing aggression has the same energy as a guy who once set his kitchen on fire telling you your toast is too dark. It’s ironic, and honestly, kind of hilarious. It also does not help that he delivers these takes with the confidence of someone who should be wearing a headset in a control room somewhere labeled “Official Formula 1 Authority on Everything, Apparently.” At times, his comments about discipline and sporting respect even veer into suggesting stricter consequences for drivers who publicly dismiss regulations, including penalty points or harsher sanctions. (https://www.motorsport.com/f1/news/park-him-montoya-calls-for-verstappen-race-ban-or-penalty-points/10818544/). What this really says about Montoya The interesting part isn’t really the critique itself. It’s the personality behind it, and that’s what I find fascinating. Montoya has always carried the vibe of someone who thinks hesitation is a personal insult. He doesn’t so much take racing lines as he negotiates with them aggressively. I’ve always thought his career highlights look like they were generated by asking, “What if we just tried it and saw what happens?” So when he looks at Verstappen and says, essentially, “bit much,” it feels less like analysis and more like a retired chaos specialist reviewing the next generation of chaos and saying, “You kids are enthusiastic, but have you considered slightly fewer lawsuits per lap?” And honestly, I can’t help but laugh at the irony. There’s a subtle comedy in all of this. Montoya is basically the original draft of modern aggressive racing. Verstappen is the refined final product, calibrated, optimized, and somehow even more efficient at making everyone else feel slow. Watching this evolution is wild to me. So Montoya’s criticism of him isn’t really a warning. It’s more like an inventor looking at a newer version of his invention and saying, “That’s not what I meant, but I respect the commitment.” And honestly, I kind of love that. And honestly, I’m not sure I’m writing this as commentary in any serious sense. I’m just a fan, fascinated by how much of this sport is really about personalities colliding at 300 km/h, and even more fascinated by the people who watch it all unfold and somehow turn it into meaning. If the critique is a little over the top or ridiculous, maybe the only fitting response is to meet it with the same energy. * Editorial Contributor: Trudy Giordano. Image generated with Kling AI.

Now, I know this sounds ridiculous. Formula 1 cars are supposed to be the fastest circuit-racing machines on Earth. But sometimes, when I watch modern F1, it almost looks... too smooth. Like someone put racing on 'Do Not Disturb. Why Does F1 Look So Slow? Not slow. Never slow. Just strangely composed. Cars are traveling at 340 km/h, but they look like they're gliding through a luxury condo ad. The drivers? They're pulling G-forces that should qualify them for NASA, but the onboard footage makes it seem like they're complaining about WiFi on a business-class train. Then I switch over to the Nürburgring and watch a GT3 car disappear into fog between two guardrails, the suspension visibly rethinking all its life choices, and somehow that feels faster. Like, 'Should I call my mom?' levels of fast. I do not think this is because Formula 1 lacks intensity. I think it is because humans do not actually perceive speed numerically. We perceive speed through fear. A car only feels fast when it looks like it’s about to get a sternly worded letter from its surroundings. The Nürburgring: Danger You Can See The Nordschleife understands this instinctively. Trees stand too close. The barriers feel personal. The road surface appears to have been designed by geological activity rather than software. Cars bounce, twitch, compress, vanish over blind crests, and return covered in dirt and regret. When I watch Nürburgring footage, my brain constantly receives visual references: nearby objects, instability, steering correction, suspension movement, changing elevation, weather, danger. So my nervous system immediately concludes: “this is an appalling amount of speed.” Engineering Away the Dram Modern Formula 1 circuits often produce the opposite sensation. The runoff areas are enormous. The surfaces are immaculate. The camera stabilization is so smooth that it occasionally resembles footage from a military drone. The cars themselves are so advanced that they make a struggle look like a software bug. That is the paradox: Modern F1 has engineered away many of the visual cues humans instinctively associate with speed. At the Nürburgring, every onboard looks like a negotiation with physics. In Formula 1, the cars frequently appear magnetized to reality itself. Modern F1 has engineered away many of the visual cues humans instinctively associate with speed. At the Nürburgring, every onboard looks like a negotiation with physics. In Formula 1, the cars frequently appear magnetized to reality itself. Why Verstappen Gets It Recently, there’s been a debate about whether Verstappen pushed too hard at the Nürburgring, causing his car to fail. As Dutch Chinese De Boordradio podcast co-host and pro-racing driver Ho-Pin Tung put it: "Dikke vette onzin! (Ducth). “Big fat nonsense, or, i.e., total BS!” Ho-Pin Tung: "Dikke vette onzin! (Dutch). “Big Fat nonsense, i.e., total BS!” When podcaster host Joost Nederpelt (NU.nl F1 Journalist/Reporter) asked, "Do you need a different driving style for a 24-hour race than for a race lasting an hour and a half? Tung answers, “Not with these cars. Today’s endurance racers are engineered so thoroughly that, before a 24-hour event, teams run a ‘30-hour test’—literally driving the car non-stop for 30 hours. The car is built to go flat out that entire time and usually gets through just fine.” While some nostalgically recall the days of gentle gearbox and brake management, that’s no longer necessary. Drivers still need some mechanical sympathy, avoiding excessive overlap between braking and throttle, or steering clear of certain curbs if the team asks, but fundamentally, a modern 24-hour race is basically a sprint race. There's little difference now between sprint and endurance racing. So the suggestion that Verstappen doesn’t know how to drive a 24-hour race, or that this contributed to any failure, is complete nonsense. And I think this is partly why drivers like Max Verstappen resonate with fans right now. Verstappen talks about racing the way many fans still emotionally imagine racing: as something difficult, uncomfortable, and slightly insane. He praises old-school circuits. He openly enjoys sim endurance racing. He likes wet conditions, high-commitment corners, and tracks with personality. From my perspective, Verstappen treats Formula 1 like a day at the office—punching in for the world’s most stressful business trip—while GT3 racing is his after-hours fun, like bowling night with friends, just at 200 mph. And every time he talks enthusiastically about places like Spa or the Nürburgring, I think fans are reminded that racing once looked less like optimization and more like survival. In fact, from my perspective, when Verstappen discusses his racing priorities, it almost sounds as if he sees Formula 1 as his day job, punching in at the office, while GT3 racing is his idea of after-hours fun. For Verstappen, F1 is the Monday morning meeting, and GT3 is bowling night with friends, just at 200 km/h. Now, to be fair, I also think fans romanticize this too much sometimes. Why F1 Can't Be the Nürburgring Formula 1 cannot simply become “the Nürburgring but everywhere.” That would be financially, logistically, and medically catastrophic. F1 is no longer merely about organizing races. It transports a technologically advanced traveling civilization around the world each week. Entire temporary cities appear and disappear: engineering labs, broadcast compounds, hospitality suites, data infrastructure, freight systems, sponsor activations, FIA operation The sport has to function flawlessly across multiple continents while millions of people watch in real time. You can’t run all that on ‘someone brought charcoal and optimism’—unless you’re hosting Thanksgiving at my uncle’s house. And honestly, I do not think Formula 1 should try to become the Nürburgring anyway. The comparison itself is misguided. What I See In F1 When I watch Formula 1, I am watching precision at the absolute edge of physics. I am watching: impossible braking performance, aerodynamic mastery, strategic warfare, and engineering teams spending millions to gain three tenths of a second. It is extraordinary precisely because almost nothing appears accidental. What I See at the Nürburgring But when I watch the 24 Hours Nürburgring, I am watching something entirely different. I am watching a giant mechanical folk festival held in a forest. People arrive with: beer crates, folding chairs, tarps, grills, and camping setups that would get you flagged on a NATO watchlist. By Saturday night, someone is cooking bratwurst beside a flare while a GT3 car screams through darkness hard enough to shake nearby tents. Nobody around me seems particularly concerned about sector times. Everyone is there for the vibes. For texture. For noise. For mud. For the sense that motorsport briefly escaped corporate containment and returned to nature. Why Both Worlds Matter And honestly, as a bit of a fan, I think motorsport is healthier when both worlds exist. I do not want Formula 1 to be(come) chaos. And I do not want the Nürburgring sanitized into premium hospitality content. One is a cathedral of precision. The other is a bonfire. I watch Formula 1 to admire perfection. I watch the Nürburgring to feel alive. * Image generated with Kling AI.

And Why It’s Walking Away Anyway THE DAILY ENGINE AUGUST 20, 2026 Urban planning, ownership drama, and one very Dutch exit Editor's Note: A quick note before we get into it. This piece exists because De Boordradio sat Robert van Overdijk down, on-site, mid-construction, and just let him talk for an hour instead of cutting him off after the third usable soundbite. No press release, no six-outlet-by-lunchtime recycled quote, just someone asking a circuit director about shower epiphanies and stikstof lawsuits and having the patience to let him actually answer. It genuinely got me a little fired up, in the way good radio occasionally still manages to. This is what F1 media needs more of: real people, real stories, told by people who bothered to show up. So, credit where it’s due: goed gedaan, Boordradio. Now if only every paddock reporter would take the hint and put the microphone down for longer than four seconds. This August, Formula 1 pulls into Zandvoort for the sixth time since 2021, and for the last time, period. No rotation deal, no “see you in a couple of years,” no asterisk. The organizers made that decision themselves, on purpose, while the party was still good. If you know anything about how the Dutch generally handle a good party, that alone should tell you something is off. We don’t usually leave early. Here is the thing about Zandvoort that gets lost in the orange smoke: it was never actually about the racing. It was a logistics project wearing a racing suit. — Trudy Giordano A circuit built by people who could not park a car Start with the part that should have been impossible. Zandvoort sits wedged between a village, a beach, and one of the most heavily protected dune ecosystems in the country, home to natterjack toads and sand lizards that, it turns out, have better lawyers than most small businesses. There was no room to widen anything, which, to be fair, describes most of the Netherlands: a nation of 17 million people arranged on a floodplain the size of a large parking lot, where every square meter has already been claimed by a cow, a cyclist, or a committee. So when circuit director Robert van Overdijk and his team went looking for a way to make overtaking possible on a track that was, structurally, too short and too narrow for modern F1 cars, they couldn't do what every other circuit does and pour more asphalt into a field. They had a beach on one side and an environmental court case waiting on the other. The fix, as van Overdijk tells it, came from track manager Niek Oude Luttikhuis, reportedly in the shower, wrestling with a G-force problem that fourteen or fifteen other layout options hadn't solved. His answer: don't lengthen the straight, bank the corner. Which is, when you think about it long enough, basically the moment someone in Dutch civil engineering finally remembered that "up" is also a direction the track could go. A country that spent centuries reclaiming land from the sea rather than simply learning to swim was always going to get there eventually. The Arie Luyendijk corner, named for the Dutch racing driver, solved Zandvoort's space problem by banking instead of lengthening. The real story is in the foreground: bikes and a train, not cars. The result is the Arie Luyendijk corner, tilted at 18 degrees, which functionally adds over 300 meters of flat-out running without moving a single dune. It is, genuinely, one of the cleverer pieces of civil engineering F1 has produced this decade, and it exists because a small Dutch circuit couldn’t afford to think the way bigger, richer circuits get to think. Necessity, meet a very expensive mother. The rebuild that followed the layout decision is its own small miracle of scheduling: contractors reportedly executed the physical construction- tunnels, banked corners, widened straights- in roughly four months, while simultaneously fighting the Dutch nitrogen crisis for permits and then, for good measure, a global pandemic. If you ever want to see Dutch “we’ll figure it out” energy pushed to its structural limit, this was it. The mobility plan is the real headline, and almost nobody outside logistics circles noticed Here’s the sentence that should have made international news and mostly didn’t: Zandvoort, for three days a year, functionally bans cars. Not discourages. Bans. Only residents and accredited staff may drive in. Everyone else, up to 300,000 visitors across a weekend, arrives by bike, train, coach, or foot, routed through a tiered system of “park & bike” and “park & ride” hubs up to 15 kilometers out, with NS running a train into Zandvoort roughly every five minutes during the race weekend. By 2023, the province reported that 98% of visitors arrived by a sustainable method: half by public transport, 30% by bike, 14% by coach, and 4% on foot. This isn't sustainability marketing bolted onto a car race. It's survival logistics: a village that physically cannot absorb the traffic, solving the problem because the alternative was gridlock on a two-lane coastal road. De Volkskrant's own transport experts, reviewing the original 2019 cycling plan, called it "interesting" and "ambitious," which in Dutch understatement is roughly the emotional equivalent of standing ovation. Who actually owns this thing, and who just quietly cashes out This is where it gets properly interesting, and where most fan coverage stops looking. Zandvoort is not publicly owned. It was bought in 2016 by Prince Bernhard van Oranje, an actual minor royal and serious rally driver, together with business partner Menno de Jong, through their holding company Chapman Andretti Partners, for what was reportedly a modest sum at the time. Van Oranje was personally involved in courting F1’s return. By 2024, that bet had paid off handsomely: the holding company’s retained profit for the year alone was over €6 million, pushing total equity past €17 million. And then, approximately two weeks before writing this piece, van Oranje sold out entirely. Not just the circuit, everything: the Hilversum media park stake, the IT company, the property portfolio, all offloaded to his remaining partners so he can, in his own words, redirect his energy toward artificial intelligence investments. He is walking away from Zandvoort roughly the same summer Zandvoort is walking away from Formula 1. Whether that's poetic or just well-timed is your call. Side note, because we'd be lying if we pretended not to notice: this liquidation tour lands a few months after his divorce from Princess Annette, ending a 25-year marriage, was announced, at a point where Dutch outlets were already doing napkin math on what a roughly 280-building portfolio might cost him in a split. It also arrives conveniently downwind of years of "pandjesprins" headlines over housing violations and a certain snack bar eviction that did not read well on the page. "The mission is accomplished" is one way to describe selling everything at once. "Excellent timing on several fronts simultaneously" is another. The sponsors, or: how a workwear brand ended up on the pit wall The naming rights history alone is a small case study in brand opportunism. Heineken has anchored the race title throughout, unsurprising for a Dutch brewer with deep F1 pockets. But the circuit’s own name has been rented out twice: CM.com bought the naming rights in 2020 as part of what van Overdijk called the track’s “digital transformation,” stepped back after 2023, and by mid-2025 the circuit had rebranded again, this time as MASCOT Circuit Zandvoort, courtesy of a Danish workwear company that dresses the circuit’s 1,500-plus event staff. There’s something quietly very Dutch about the idea that the most emotionally resonant motorsport comeback story in a generation is currently sponsored, corner by corner, by the people who make the polo shirts. Government money: real, but a rounding error next to the competition Van Overdijk’s repeated public line that Zandvoort receives essentially no government subsidy, unlike most Grade 1 venues, checks out on the numbers. The state, province, and municipality together invested roughly €7 million in rail upgrades ahead of the 2020 return, and Zandvoort later shared in a broader €20 million regional livability package that wasn’t specifically an F1 subsidy. Compare that to reported annual state injections in the tens of millions at Gulf circuits, and Zandvoort’s position starts to look less like Dutch thriftiness and more like genuine structural disadvantage. Three sold-out days a year isn’t a business model so much as a tightrope, and van Overdijk has said as much directly: a one-off dip in attendance is survivable, a structural one is not. Two directors, two very different jobs It’s worth separating the circuit’s two public faces, because they’re doing different work. Van Overdijk is the balance-sheet brain: permits, contracts, financial risk modeling, 38 wins in 38 court cases against the circuit itself, as of 2022. Jan Lammers, the Zandvoort-born former F1 driver and Le Mans winner, was brought in as sporting director specifically to serve as the fan-facing bridge, and he’s been candid that he privately doubted the whole project was possible. Lammers has consistently pushed back on the idea that local resistance ever really came from Zandvoort itself, arguing the town’s pride at sitting alongside Monaco and Las Vegas on the calendar outweighs the grumbling, most of which, by his account, comes from outside the village boundaries. The reaction the international press actually cared about Here's the funny part: almost none of the above made it into the global coverage. What traveled was the Orange Army, and specifically the sheer, slightly alarming scale of it. The Daily Mirror called it one of the best atmospheres in recent F1 history. Zandvoort itself changed the local speed limit signs from "30" to "33" in honor of Verstappen's car number, an official touch that's either inspired place-branding or marketing with a completely straight face. The flares got so enthusiastic that circuit security reportedly had to tighten entry checks specifically over orange smoke. Christian Horner, never a man short of a soundbite, said the atmosphere had been like being in a nightclub for three days. Take that as a compliment or a liability disclosure; Horner didn't specify which. At home, the reviews are less uniform than the flares suggest Not everyone in the neighborhood was cheering. A 2023 Breda University study found that roughly 80% of Zandvoort residents were proud to host the race, rating the weekend an average of 8.1. But the noise didn’t respect municipal borders. Residents as far as Haarlem and the Ramplaankwartier complained the racket carried on the southwest wind and sounded, in one memorable phrase, like a swarm of genetically modified wasps. And in the strangest twist of the whole saga, the environmental groups who've spent years losing the fight over the circuit's own permit specifically, van Overdijk's claimed 38-for-38 record, aren't celebrating the exit either. It hasn't been a clean sweep everywhere: Rust bij de Kust separately won a 2023 ruling against the municipality over how race-weekend noise gets measured. Rust bij de Kust’s Karel van Broekhoven told NH Nieuws he’s actually worried, because the Grand Prix gave him a media hook to complain about noise. Without it, nobody’s watching what happens next under a new permit that allows music events up to 85 decibels in the dunes. Sometimes your enemy is also your best publicist, and losing him is its own kind of problem. So why leave at the top Van Overdijk’s official answer is that ending it “at its peak” beats waiting for the shine to wear off, and there’s a certain steely Dutch pragmatism to that, the same instinct that put a train every five minutes into a village of 17,000 people rather than pretend the roads would cope. But read the financials, and it looks less like romantic timing and more like a circuit that ran the numbers on subsidy-free racing against state-funded competitors in the Gulf and decided the math stops working eventually. It’s less “we’re leaving on a high note” and more “we did the spreadsheet, and the spreadsheet had opinions.” Either way, this August, watch the trains, not just the cars. The real engineering marvel at Zandvoort was never really the banked corner. It was getting 300,000 people in and out of a beach town with two narrow roads, for six years running, without anyone driving in at all. That’s the part nobody’s going to remember once the orange smoke clears for the last time, and it’s the part actually worth mourning. Monologue* Legacy in the Dunes Dutch Headlines: Covering Zandvoort’s Final Weekend "YOU CAN FEEL THE PAIN" [SOUND: a truck. Just a truck. Doing truck things.] FIELD REPORTER (choking up, live on NOS): And there it is. The freight truck. Carrying, we believe, tires. Driving up the access road. As it has done every year since twenty twenty-one. (long pause) FIELD REPORTER: Beautiful. ANCHOR (in studio, also emotional for no clear reason): Take us through it. What are you seeing out there? FIELD REPORTER: A logistics vehicle. Diesel, I'd guess. Possibly a Scania. It's... it's just doing its job. One last time. (sniffs) FIELD REPORTER: Sorry. It's been a long week. ANCHOR: Take your time. FIELD REPORTER: The dunes have seen a lot of trucks. This might be the last one that means anything. [CUTAWAY: a marshal eating a sandwich. Reporter treats this as a visual metaphor for impermanence.] FIELD REPORTER (V.O.): Even the sandwich felt different this year. ANCHOR: Any word from the truck driver himself? FIELD REPORTER: He waved. Just once. We're calling it a farewell gesture until told otherwise. [SOUND: the truck completes its turn and parks, uneventfully] FIELD REPORTER: And there it is. Parked. Forever changed. As are we all. (END) Synthetic image concept generated with Kling AI. *Image and Monologue Disclaimer: The following image(s) and monologue are entirely fictional and created for creative, illustrative purposes only. Any resemblance to real persons, events, or media is purely coincidental.

Disclosure, rendered in the spirit of the fine print it deserves: the undersigned magazine hereby acknowledges a pre-existing relationship with the artist known as BUSINESS, said relationship encompassing friendship, prior editorial contribution, and photography by a party also employed by this publication. Void where prohibited. Terms subject to change without notice, much like the artist's own choruses. By Nico Cipher, Photos by Trudy Giordano "The real trick BUSINESS pulls off isn't insisting on his seat at the table, it's building the table himself, quietly, then acting surprised you noticed." Origin Story He wasn’t born into New York bravado; he moved into it. Originally from Amsterdam, BUSINESS (also known as BUSINESS NYC or Kevin Gray, per his own official bio page) picked up the gold chain the way some people pick up a work ethic: not handed down, earned one show at a time. That’s the entire premise of Standing On Business, his five-track EP, out now on every platform your algorithm already knows you use. BUSINESS relocated to New York in the wake of the pandemic and has since kept a schedule that looks less like a rap career and more like a small logistics company: 150-plus shows across Brooklyn, Harlem, the Bronx, Queens, and Coney Island, plus runs through New Jersey, Connecticut, and Georgia, a sold-out night opening for The Lox, and a slot at SXSW. Standing On Business doesn’t play like a debut. It plays like someone finally invoicing for work he’s already done. Self-Sufficiency & Influences Every credit on this record says the same thing: written, performed, produced by BUSINESS, drums included. In an era where half of SoundCloud is built on the same twelve purchased loops, that’s not a flex; it’s just accurate. His stated influences, Cash Cobain and Pop Smoke’s drill lineage sitting next to Public Enemy and the Beastie Boys, tell you he did his homework before he started handing out homework of his own. Track-by-Track: Flex, Fantasy, and Reality Opener “Shady AF” comes in already sure of itself, no warm-up, no apology. “Where My Money At” and “7 Figure Deal” hold down the record’s aspirational center, less fantasy than itemized invoice. Both tracks also carry more political weight than their hooks let on; current events surface more than once, though it’s “Temu Troopers” that goes furthest with it. Politics and Satire: "Temu Troopers (Fuck ICE)" Standing On Business doesn’t announce itself as protest music, which is exactly why “Temu Troopers (Fuck ICE)” hits as hard as it does. The setup is pure dread: drones, masks, unmarked SUVs, the specific modern horror of not being able to tell whether the people watching you are cops, ICE, or just guys with a badge from the same catalog as everyone’s Halloween costume this year. That’s the joke buried in “Temu troopers,” discount tactical gear playing dress-up as legitimate authority, and it’s a genuinely funny way to make a genuinely unfunny point: half these operations look like cosplay right up until they don’t. Naming Alligator Alcatraz kills the joke on purpose. That’s a real facility, in the news, right now, and the song wants you to feel the whiplash of going from “ha, knockoff soldiers” to “oh, this is actually happening to people.” The closing argument, that enforcement gets carried out by folks with nothing to gain from it, on behalf of billionaires who’ll never see the ground level, isn’t subtle, and it doesn’t need to be. It’s a hook built for a room to yell back, not a think piece, and it works exactly as well live as it reads on paper. Comedy, Reflection, and the "New Ferrari" The record earns its right to go back to jokes because it just proved it’s not afraid to drop them. “New Ferrari” closes things out, and it’s smarter than its title suggests, less brag than comedy sketch: a dealership scene thick with unwanted flirtation, a car that rides worse than expected, a narrator who spends the whole song quietly admitting the flex isn’t hitting the way it’s supposed to, even while he’s performing it. Jersey Turnpike traffic and torn-up Manhattan asphalt do the real work here, puncturing the fantasy the second the car actually has to be driven somewhere. It’s the track that got its own video, shot on Meserole Street in collaboration with Kevin Webb of Takeover Republic, and on reflection it plays like the whole EP’s thesis: the gap between looking like you made it and actually making it. BUSINESS on Meserole Street, shot for the cover of Standing On Business. One more thing worth clocking: the cover art, also shot on Meserole Street, has him standing on one of the low, weathered barrier boxes scattered along the block, the kind of unglamorous municipal furniture whose entire job is to stop something. He’s using it as a pedestal instead. Given the title of the record, that’s not an accident. Process & Philosophy None of this got built in a lab. In a 2025 sit-down with Hot97’s DJ Drewski, BUSINESS admitted “New Ferrari” wasn’t so much written as workshopped, rebuilt after nearly every show, four different choruses deep by the time it locked in, tuned by the simplest method there is: watching what actually makes a room react. The same patience shows up in how he releases music: no album to have an album, every song treated like it has to earn the listener’s attention on its own. The video came together the same unglamorous way, one introduction leading to the next, a promoter here, an interested party there, exactly the grinding the title of this EP seems to be quietly recommending as a life philosophy. Concise Statement At eleven minutes and thirty-six seconds, Standing On Business doesn’t overstay its welcome, and it doesn’t need to. It’s a mission statement delivered at a normal volume: an artist telling you exactly where he’s standing, then daring you to check his math. Context: Beyond the Record The record makes more sense once you know the rest of what he’s been doing. Consider: Reporting from Within BUSINESS has done the actual reporting on this world himself. In 2024, he filed a long piece for this magazine on New York’s underground hip-hop showcase circuit, the unlicensed venues, the pay-to-play open mics, the pat-downs at the door, the haze you walk through to get to the stage, all the unglamorous machinery underneath the rap-game fantasy. That wasn’t opinion; it was reporting, the kind only available to someone who’s actually stood in a hundred and fifty of those rooms. Read next to that piece, Standing On Business stops looking like a vanity project and starts looking like the next chapter from someone who understands, better than any outside critic could, exactly what getting out of that circuit actually costs. Performance and Persona "You're a movie, bro." / "Yeah, I am weird, so I'm always a character." Near the end of that same Drewski conversation, the host leaned in. "You're a movie, bro," he said, the kind of line that reads as a compliment and a diagnosis at once. "Yeah, I am weird, so I'm always a character," BUSINESS shot back, not missing a beat. Worth sitting with: Business, Businessman, Boss Man, the names stack up like a guy with more than one desk. Standing On Business plays like the soundtrack to whichever one's currently running the meeting. By his own account, the line between the performance and the person was never that clean to begin with. He has the rare ability to make rap look like a quiet profession. Soft-spoken, composed, and always a step ahead, he carries himself less like someone chasing attention and more like someone who already knows where he's headed. His energy says "handle business first, celebrate later," the kind of rapper who'd rather build an empire than win an argument. Even when the conversation slows down, his confidence never does; it's understated, deliberate, and almost suspiciously well-adjusted for the genre. Final Point & Release Info A seat pulled off something bigger, treated like it was reserved for BUSINESS The real trick BUSINESS pulls off isn’t insisting on his seat at the table; it’s building the table himself, quietly, then acting surprised you noticed. Performer and person aren’t really separate here; the hustle is real, and the funniest part might be how effortless he makes all of it look. BUSINESS NYC’s “Standing On Business” EP is out now on all major streaming platforms, the culmination of everything he’s put in so far, and by the sound of it, just a preview of what’s next.

THE DAILY ENGINE AUGUST 13, 2026 "The radio that's heard every version of this decision before Max has." This is a recurring tribute to Michael Sorkin’s iconic “250 Things An Architect Should Know.” But this list is a very different set of blueprints: not about architecture, but about Max Verstappen, four-time F1 world champion, Red Bull Racing (yes, the energy drink), a steering wheel, and the existential vertigo of being the best driver in a car that might no longer be the best. Every F1 driver hits a crossroads: loyalty, ambition, and a whole lot of uncertainty. For Max, the stakes are turbocharged. Here’s what he might consider before making the biggest pit stop of his career. Of course, all of this happens under the blinding floodlights of F1’s silly season, when a hundred journalists refresh the same three group chats, an unnamed source turns out to be someone's cousin who once shook Christian Horner's hand at a gala, and a fresh "deal as good as done" headline drops every forty-eight hours, right up until it isn't. Somewhere in Milton Keynes, one imagines Helmut Marko giving four contradictory quotes to four outlets in a single afternoon, each one just cryptic enough to be technically deniable. Everything below? Pure, speculative Verstappen—no transcripts, no leaks, just invented inner dialogue. Real events are sourced at the end. The rest? Imagination (and a little Red Bull). The feel of a title-winning car under your hands versus the feel of a car that is merely very good. That there was a time when “very good” wasn’t good enough for you. The sound Christian Horner’s voice makes when he is confident, and the sound it makes when he is performing with confidence. That these sounds are not the same sound. How to read a wind tunnel report for what it says and for what it doesn’t. The exact millisecond a strategy call stops being a suggestion and becomes a symptom. Dad’s opinion. You already know it. Everyone already knows it. That knowing your father’s opinion and needing it are two different vulnerabilities. The weight of a five-year contract is measured in kilograms of downforce lost—and in how many times you have to pretend you read all the clauses. That Adrian Newey left, and that departures like his are not weather; they are forecasts. How a factory sounds different once its best engineer’s office is empty. The particular loneliness of winning a championship nobody thinks you deserved because the car was too good. The particular loneliness of not winning one because the car wasn’t good enough. Which loneliness would you rather carry? That Toto Wolff answers his phone on the first ring for exactly one kind of caller. Whether you are, or could be, that caller. The taste of energy drinks you no longer have to pretend to enjoy after eleven years. That loyalty and inertia wear the same racing suit. How to tell them apart in a mirror at 4 a.m. That Helmut Marko has a precise tone he uses when praising a young driver he’s grooming to replace someone. That someone is sometimes you, hypothetically, one day, theoretically, don’t worry about it. Worry about it. The feeling of a car that rotates on command versus a car you have to negotiate with. That negotiation is not the same as driving, except when you’re negotiating for a car that actually drives. The Aston Martin factory smells like new carpet and old ambition. Mercedes smells like a boardroom that has already forgiven itself. Ferrari smells like history performing itself for tourists. What Red Bull smells like to you now, after all these years, is different from what it smells like to a rookie walking in for the first time. (For non-F1 readers: Red Bull Racing is the team owned by the energy drink company Red Bull.) That “one more year” is a sentence with no known upper bound. The specific ache of being loyal to a team that, for a while, was loyal to a different aerodynamicist than the one currently in the room. That regulation changes reset everyone’s clock except the myth of you. The myth does not carry downforce. That George Russell talks about Mercedes’ future like a man reading from a script he helped write. That scripts like that are usually true, eventually, on a delay. The particular vertigo of being twenty-seven and already being called a legacy. That legacy is just a nice way of saying “we’ve started writing the obituary early.” How GP’s voice tightens over the radio when the balance shifts mid-stint. That you hear it in his voice before the data ever confirms what’s wrong. (The data never sounds nervous.) The value of a championship won in a car everyone agrees was dominant, versus one won in a car everyone agrees was a fight. Which one do people remember longer? It’s the fight. It’s always the fight. That Red Bull without you is still Red Bull, but it’s an energy drink company with a very expensive hobby. That you without Red Bull are still the fastest man in the field, but nobody’s sure whose field. The smell of a fresh set of softs before they’ve been anywhere. (Yes, Pirelli, this is a sponsorship opportunity.) How quickly that smell becomes irrelevant once you’re two corners in. That every team principal in this paddock has, at some point, described you privately as “a generational problem to solve for.” That “problem” in that sentence is a compliment wearing a disguise. The exact shape of Lando Norris’s smile when he beats you, which is not smug, which is somehow worse than smug. That youth doesn’t need to be smug. It has time. Whether you still have time, and how you’ve started counting it differently than you did at twenty. The feeling of a home grandstand in the Netherlands, which is not neutral, which never asks you to be neutral. That Zandvoort forgives you things Silverstone won’t. The particular comfort of a language you don’t have to translate your anger into. What it costs to give that up for a locker room where everyone’s second language is English and everyone’s first language is money. That money was never actually the variable in question here. It never is, with you. The sound of your own radio silence, which says more than your radio messages do. That your team has learned to fear the silence more than the shouting. The exact grip level at which a car stops being predictable and becomes honest. That honesty and speed are not the same thing, no matter how many careers get built pretending they are. How a paddock rumor travels from a mechanic’s group chat to a back page in under six hours. That you are, structurally, the back page. Every year. Whether you talk or not. The relief of a car that doesn’t need saving. That you have never, not once, driven a car that didn’t need saving in some corner of some session. Whether that’s the car’s fault or a habit you’ve built your identity around. The precise moment a factory decides internally that a driver is now “a retention question” rather than “a certainty.” That this moment has already happened. You weren’t in the room. You felt it anyway. The difference between a team believing in you and a team needing you to keep believing in them. That Red Bull needs the second thing more than it will ever admit. How a fanbase built around “us against the paddock” reacts to any hint that you might join the paddock. That some of them will call it betrayal, and some will call it survival, and none of them will be driving the car. The feeling of downforce returning to a car mid-season after months of chasing it. That this feeling is temporary, and everyone in the factory knows it, and nobody says it out loud in front of you. Whether silence, in a factory, is respect or fear. It’s usually both. The particular exhaustion of being asked “will you stay” in every single post-session interview for eighteen months. That the question is never really about you. It’s about what everyone else is allowed to plan around. The way Zak Brown talks about “opportunities” is like a man leaving his front door unlocked on purpose. That an unlocked door is still, technically, a door you’d have to choose to open. What it meant was that Mercedes kept a seat “flexible” for the better part of two seasons. That the seat isn’t flexible anymore, and everyone noticed exactly which week it stopped being. The specific unease of a contract clause written by a lawyer who has never once sat in the car it’s negotiating for. How your body remembers a car’s rear end even when your mind is somewhere else entirely. That muscle memory does not care about contract negotiations. The particular arithmetic of championships versus stability, and how nobody agrees which variable to weight higher. That your father weighs them differently than you do, and always has. The way a simulator session at 11 p.m. tells you more about a hypothetical car than any press conference ever will. Whether you’ve run the numbers on a hypothetical Mercedes yet. Be honest. The cost, in trust, of a paddock that has watched you loyal to one team for over a decade suddenly window shop. That window shopping and moving are different verbs, and the paddock conflates them on purpose. How it feels to walk into a factory where the trophies on the wall aren’t yours yet. Whether that feeling is exciting or just unfamiliar dressed up as exciting. The specific grief of watching a teammate’s car improve while yours stays still. That this grief has a name in every language, and none of them are polite. The particular chill of a co-owner’s patience running out somewhere you can’t see it happening. That patience, at that level, doesn’t get announced. It just quietly stops being extended. Whether a driver can outgrow a team the way a person outgrows a hometown. That hometowns don’t usually pay you $70 million a year to stay. The way engineers talk about “the Max era” already, in the past tense, while you’re still sitting in the room. That being spoken about in the past tense while alive is a very specific kind of professional death. The temperature difference between a garage that’s winning and a garage that’s rebuilding. That Red Bull’s garage has been both, in the same season, more than once. The particular comfort of knowing exactly where every switch on your steering wheel is without looking. What it costs, in lap time and in identity, to relearn a wheel from scratch somewhere else. Whether identity built on a steering wheel layout is identity you actually want. The way your management team has started fielding calls they didn’t use to field. That you know about these calls. Everyone in this paragraph knows you know. How Fernando Alonso, at 45, still talks about leaving Aston Martin like a man testing a door handle just to feel it move. That door handles are cheap. Doors are expensive. The specific betrayal of a car that was fast in pre-season and slow by round six. That pre-season pace is a promise and mid-season pace is a confession. Whether Red Bull has been confessing to you for longer than you’ve admitted. The way a title fight against your own teammate feels different from a title fight against a stranger. That there is currently no teammate at Red Bull capable of giving you that fight, and whether you’ve noticed how quiet that makes the season. Quiet seasons are not always restful. The precise flavor of a win that everyone expected, which tastes like nothing, which tastes like Tuesday. How badly you miss the taste of a win nobody expected. That the last team to give you that taste consistently was this one, once, a while ago now. The physics of a car losing half a second a lap over eighteen months without anyone in charge admitting it out loud. That physics doesn’t care about contracts either. The way Sergio Perez’s exit was handled, and what it taught you about how this team handles endings. That endings, here, are managed like PR problems first and human beings second. Whether you’d get the same treatment, or whether four titles buy you a softer landing. The particular vanity of assuming your exit would be handled with more grace than the last one. The particular height of a car that answers instantly to input, no delay, no argument. That you’ve had this car before. You know what it’s like to lose it slowly. How a factory’s internal mood shifts the week after a big regulation announcement. That everyone recalculates their own value the moment the rules change, you included. The sound of Helmut Marko not answering a direct question about your future is its own kind of answer. That the silence from Milton Keynes has gotten longer, not shorter, this year. Whether Mercedes’ engine department and post-2026 rules are a genuine advantage or a rumor everyone’s decided to believe. That rumors, in this sport, are just facts that haven’t been confirmed by someone with something to lose yet. The way it feels to be the reason a stock price moves. That very few athletes carry that particular weight, and fewer still get to put it down. Whether staying is loyalty or just the absence of a better offer arriving on time. That timing has decided more careers in this sport than talent has. The specific dread of a summer break spent fielding “sources say” articles instead of resting. That your management leaks some of those sources on purpose. You know this. Decide how you feel about it. That there’s comfort in a fanbase that has never had to share me. What would it cost that fanbase, and you, if you asked them to share you? The way a driver’s number becomes a brand, and a brand becomes a liability the moment it’s attached to the wrong garage. Whether 1 means more on a car that’s winning or on a car that’s yours. The precise moment in every negotiation where the team stops talking about “commitment” and starts talking about “flexibility.” That flexibility, from a team, usually means they’ve already modeled a season without you. How it feels to watch a car you used to dominate in now dominate you. That McLaren’s papaya used to be a punchline. Now it’s just a color you see in your mirrors. The particular arrogance required to think a bad season is temporary. The particular arrogance required to think it isn’t. That you’ve never once managed to hold only one of those arrogances at a time. The way it feels to sign an autograph for a kid wearing a shirt with a number that isn’t yours. That kids don’t lie about who they actually like. Adults in suits do that for a living. The sound of a garage celebrating a podium like it’s a win, because it’s been that kind of year. That you’ve started to notice when your team lowers its own bar, and how that noticing changes you. The exact resale value of loyalty in a sport with no long-term memory. That the sport remembers wins. It does not remember who stayed. Whether Lewis Hamilton’s move to Ferrari taught the paddock that even the most loyal drivers eventually cash out on legacy. That “even Lewis” is now a phrase people use in these conversations. About you. In rooms you’re not in. The way a new regulation cycle is a rare, brief window where every team is theoretically equal. That windows like that don’t stay open. Everyone in engineering knows exactly when they close. The specific comfort of Dutch directness in a sport built on English understatement. What you’d lose, culturally, in a garage that doesn’t speak your language, literally or otherwise. The particular data point that a driver’s peak years and a team’s rebuilding years rarely overlap on purpose. That you may be watching that data point unfold in real time. The feel of a wet Spa in a car with real grip, which you have felt, which you remember, which you are chasing. That chasing a memory and chasing a contract can look identical from the outside. The way it feels to be benchmarked against your younger self in every single team debrief. That your younger self had a Newey car, and you don’t get to forget that, ever, even when you win anyway. The specific fear of becoming a cautionary tale about staying too long. The specific fear of becoming a cautionary tale about leaving too soon. That both tales exist in this sport, in living memory, with names attached. The taste of a team radio message that starts with “just to manage expectations.” That expectation management is corporate for “we already know.” How Zandvoort’s dunes sound different at 3 a.m. before a home race than any other track on the calendar. Whether “home” is a place or a paddock or a feeling, you’re not sure, this team still gives you. The particular exhaustion of being the only driver in the field, nobody offers advice to anymore, because you’re supposed to already know. That not being allowed to not know is its own quiet cruelty. The way a title defense becomes a title chase becomes, quietly, a title memory. That you can feel which stage you’re in, even when the results say otherwise. The specific comfort of a mechanic who’s worked your car for a decade and reads your mood off your jaw before you speak. What you’d be trading that comfort for, and whether trust like that transfers or has to be rebuilt from nothing. The way Aston Martin’s ambition currently outpaces its results, and what that gap says about promises in this sport generally. That every seat you’d consider is a promise. Every promise in this sport has a shelf life. The particular arithmetic of a driver’s market value, which peaks the moment everyone suspects you might leave and never again. That your management understands this arithmetic better than you’d like to admit. The way “I’m happy where I am” sounds different in year eleven than it did in year three. That the paddock has learned to hear the difference even when the words are identical. The specific comfort of knowing every marshal post on every circuit by feel, not memory. What it costs to relearn a track’s blind spots in someone else’s car. The way a driver’s era gets named after the fact, never during it, and how strange it is to wonder what yours will be called. That “the Verstappen years” already exists as a phrase, in the past tense, in articles you haven’t read yet. The particular vertigo of being both the present and the retrospective at the same time. The way loyalty gets rebranded as stubbornness the moment results dip, by the same people who called it admirable a year earlier. The rebranding says more about them than about you. The specific comfort of a paddock where you’ve beaten everyone currently in it, at some point, in some car. What it would mean to start that ledger over somewhere new. The way a driver’s greatest fear is rarely losing. It’s becoming ordinary. That Ordinarily, in this sport, a car that finishes fourth is one that nobody talks about on Monday. The particular relief of a team that still, despite everything, builds the car around you first. Whether that’s still true, or whether it stopped being true quietly, sometime last year, without a press release. The way engineers talk about “protecting the championship-winning package” makes it seem as though the package and the driver are separable. That you are the package. You’ve always been the package. Somebody should say that out loud in a meeting. The specific comfort of knowing your own worth without needing the paddock to confirm it. Whether staying somewhere that’s stopped confirming it is confidence or denial. The way this sport treats loyalty as a virtue right up until it becomes a headline about being “stuck.” That the difference between those two words is entirely a matter of results, not character. The particular privilege of a driver who can walk into any factory on the grid and be handed the best seat without negotiation. That very few drivers in history have had that privilege. Fewer still have used it. The way a season with no real rival feels, at first, like dominance, and later, quietly, like isolation. That isolation and dominance have shared a garage before, in this exact team, and you were there for it. The specific comfort of a title that silences doubters versus a title that just adds to a pile. That you can feel, mid-season, which kind you’re currently building. The strange doubling of seeing your own face on a billboard for a deal that might not survive the season it’s advertising. That the marketing department signs longer contracts with your image than your management does with the team. The particular discipline of giving nothing away in a press conference while giving everything away in a radio message twenty minutes later. That the paddock has learned to watch the radio, not the podium, for the truth. The way a driver’s management team starts a rumor is not to lie, but to test the market’s temperature. That you’ve allowed this. Every time. Whether you call it strategy or cowardice is up to you. Whether your setup notes, run plans, and years of telemetry preferences belong to you or to the garage you leave them in. That nobody has ever actually tested this in court, because no one this valuable has ever wanted to find out. The particular arithmetic of a driver who has already won that history enough doesn’t need one more, but wants one more anyway. That wanting and needing stopped being the same thing for you a while ago, and that’s fine, that’s allowed, that’s most champions eventually. The way a paddock remembers a driver who left at the peak of a dynasty more fondly than one who stayed through its decline. That fondness isn’t the same as respect, and you’ve earned the respect regardless of the ending. The specific comfort of a team principal who still fights for you in rooms you’re not in. Whether that fighting has gotten quieter, or whether you’ve just stopped asking who’s in the room. The way it feels to watch a junior driver in your old junior team’s colors and recognize your own hunger in someone else’s face. That hunger like that is rare, and teams chase it the way they used to chase you. The particular comfort of knowing exactly what a Red Bull steering wheel means to people who’ve never driven one. What it would cost, symbolically, to hand that meaning to someone else. The way legacy gets written by whoever’s left standing at the press conference, not by whoever drove the fastest lap. That 'leaving first and being pushed out' reads identically in a headline, but never feel that way from inside the car. The specific comfort of a garage that still sings your name after a win, off-key, exhausted, real. Whether that sound exists anywhere else, or whether it’s specific to this particular group of people in this particular building. The particular weight of grooming your own junior driver while still deciding whether you’ll have a senior seat worth handing him. That succession planning cuts both ways when you’re the one succeeding as well as being succeeded. The particular grief of realizing a partnership has an expiration date neither of you set out loud. That expiration dates in this sport are usually set by a spreadsheet, not a conversation. The way it feels to be the last driver from a golden era still sitting in the same seat. Whether that’s a compliment to your loyalty or evidence that everyone else already knew something you didn’t. The specific comfort of a fanbase that has never once had to explain who you drive for. What it would mean to spend a year explaining a new badge to people who only ever learned one. The way champions are remembered is less for their titles and more for the shape of their exit. That you get to choose that shape. Almost nobody in this sport gets to choose that shape. The particular comfort of knowing your own greatness doesn’t require anyone else’s permission to exist. That staying or leaving will not, in the end, change how fast you actually were. The specific vertigo of realizing the car in the museum will outlast every argument about which garage it was built in. That someone’s kid will stand in front of it in twenty years and just see a race car, not a decision. The specific comfort of knowing this decision feels enormous now and will read as a single line in a Wikipedia infobox in thirty years. That the infobox will list years, not feelings, and it will not care which nights you couldn’t sleep. The way every driver who ever faced this exact choice, in some other car, some other year, thought their case was unprecedented. That it wasn’t. It never is. The paddock has seen this exact vertigo before and will see it again after you. The feel of a helmet coming off after a race you’ve already decided, quietly, privately, weeks before you tell anyone: you know the answer. You’ve known for a while. The only open question left is who you tell first. (Reflect: What does legacy mean in F1? What does it mean to leave a team, or to stay? This project asks these questions, not just of Max Verstappen, but of anyone facing a crossroads between comfort and challenge.) Disclaimer This list compiles paraphrased sentiment, documented events, paddock commentary, and cultural narratives that have circulated publicly around Max Verstappen, Red Bull Racing, and the broader Formula 1 driver market. Entries have been condensed and synthesized for brevity while maintaining thematic accuracy. Where entries reference real events (personnel departures, driver moves, regulation changes, race venues), those are grounded in public records. The interior voice, invented dialogue, and psychological framing throughout are original satirical writing, not verbatim record or attributed quotation. This is a work of motorsport satire and cultural commentary, not journalism. Documented Record Selected facts referenced or alluded to in this piece, for verification: Verstappen signed his current Red Bull contract in 2022, running through the end of 2028. (ESPN) Reports through 2025 and 2026 described performance-linked exit clauses tied to Verstappen’s championship position at set points in the season; one such clause, tied to the 2026 summer break standings, was widely reported as active. (ESPN, Crash.net, f1oversteer.com) Adrian Newey announced his departure from Red Bull in May 2024 and officially left the team on March 1, 2025, joining Aston Martin as Managing Technical Partner and shareholder. (Sky Sports, Front Office Sports) Sergio Perez departed Red Bull at the end of the 2024 season and was replaced by Liam Lawson; Lawson was replaced by Yuki Tsunoda after two race weekends in 2025. (Formula1.com, Sky Sports) Toto Wolff stated in 2026 that Mercedes would retain George Russell and Andrea Kimi Antonelli through 2027, closing off persistent speculation about a Verstappen move there. (f1oversteer.com) Jos Verstappen publicly disputed Dutch media reports in 2026 claiming Max was close to a new long-term Red Bull deal. (f1-fansite.com) German outlet BILD reported Red Bull offered a contract extension through 2029 with an increased base salary, removing exit-clause language from the deal. (Yahoo Sports, f1oversteer.com) As of the 2026 summer break, Verstappen sat sixth in the drivers’ standings, more than 100 points behind championship leader Andrea Kimi Antonelli, amid Red Bull reliability issues, including rear wing failures at the Austrian and British Grands Prix. (Formula1.com) Verstappen’s manager, Raymond Vermeulen, stated publicly that Verstappen intends to fulfill his current Red Bull contract. (Crash.net, ESPN) Synthetic image concept generated with Kling AI.

Editor’s note: BOOS is a Dutch media outlet. The subject matter has broader relevance. "This year, BOOS found an institution it trusts completely to investigate itself. That institution is BOOS." A disclosure, since BOOS is so fond of them: we are not journalists. We are a subculture magazine that runs fictional ads for a fitness brand called HOLD THIS™ and reviews Formula 1 (F1) race official decisions with the seriousness other outlets reserve for major global news. We do not have a press card, an ombudsman, or a legal team on retainer. What we have is the same access to YouTube as everyone else, and the same ability to notice when four episodes go by without anyone in the room disagreeing with the host. That's arguably the more honest vantage point here. BOOS spent four years building a reputation on the premise that powerful institutions can't police themselves. Talent show producers, landlords, telecom companies, a rapper, a crooner, an entire broadcaster’s flagship format: all of them, according to BOOS, needed someone from outside the building to walk in and ask the uncomfortable question nobody inside was going to ask. Consider this us, from outside a much smaller and much sillier building, extending the same courtesy. This year, BOOS found an institution it trusts completely to investigate itself. That institution is BOOS. The Retrospective Nobody Asked to Grade The occasion is “RADIO BOOS: This was The Voice,” a four-part podcast that arrived four years after BOOS’s original exposé on The Voice of Holland, styled as an act of transparency. Same host. Same production company. Same broadcaster. Same YouTube channel. The only thing missing from the original formula is the part where somebody with no stake in the outcome gets to ask the hard question. Call it accountability journalism, minus the accountability, minus the journalism, plus a very tasteful cold open. It's worth pausing on the name here, because it does half our job for us. BOOS is the Dutch word for 'angry.' The brand identity of the Netherlands’ leading investigative show is, quite literally, MAD. Not “Concerned.” Not “Skeptical.” Not even “Cross.” Just mad, all caps—a mission statement in a hoodie. For nine years, that branding was directed outward, at landlords, at telecom companies, at a popular Dutch talent show, The Voice, that let a bandleader run wild. It was a good look on them. Righteous anger aimed at those in power is, generally speaking, the right kind of anger. So it’s a little disorienting to watch that same brand turn around, point the microphone at itself, and produce four hours of measured, reflective, admirably even-keeled conversation about its own choices. Somewhere between “MAD” and “This Was The Voice,” BOOS discovered inside voices. The anger, it turns out, only really works in one direction. When the subject under the lamp is BOOS, the register quietly downgrades from BOOS to something closer to “Gently Curious, With Guardrails.” Which is fine, as far as it goes. It’s just not the brand they sold anyone. Worth being precise about the standard here, because it isn't one we're inventing. BOOS describes itself, in its own words, as an investigative platform that calls power to account "always with the facts first." Not usually, not when convenient, always, per BOOS's own standing mission statement. Yet BOOS's own materials describe this specific retrospective as making room for "the perspectives of victims," a fine and worthy job, and a different one entirely from calling power to account with the facts first. Only one of those comes with a promise to survive being checked. Pick a lane, folks. We've read the mission statement four times now and we're genuinely confused about which BOOS showed up to make this podcast. And an empty tank produces a very specific symptom: sameness. Not villainy, sameness. A landlord and a Grammy-adjacent bandleader and a Kickstarter game developer and, eventually, BOOS’s own editorial team all get handled in roughly the same register, the same certainty, the same refusal to let the story bend toward whatever inconvenient thing the facts are actually doing that week. A format built to recognize one kind of story keeps recognizing that one kind of story, whether or not it’s the one in front of it. That’s the real cost of nine years in a single emotional gear: not that the anger was wrong, but that everything starts to look like the thing the anger already knows how to be angry at. Ali B and Marco Borsato got the same tone in January 2022 and two different verdicts three years later, and the retrospective, when it finally had the room to sit with that difference, mostly didn’t. Sameness, doing what it does, flattened a genuinely complicated outcome back into the shape the format already had. Defend First, Examine Never "Transparent, in the sense that you can see everything. Independent, in the sense that you cannot." To be fair to Hofman, the show says the quiet part almost out loud. The stated ambition is to examine “how journalism and the judiciary relate to one another,” a genuinely interesting question that BOOS answers, four episodes running, by never once handing the microphone to anyone who might disagree with BOOS about it. This is a bit like a defendant publishing his own appeal, presided over by his own defense attorney, with closing remarks from his mother. Transparent, in the sense that you can see everything. Independent, in the sense that you cannot. Credit where due: when Ali B’s lawyer claimed in court that Hofman ignored requests for more time and that Ali B posted his statement before BOOS’s deadline, the podcast walks through its own records and shows both claims are false. That’s real accountability, just aimed at someone else’s account of BOOS, never at BOOS’s own. Here is the part BOOS itself proved back in 2022, before the retrospective was ever needed. The single most famous interview BOOS ever conducted, the one where Talpa boss John de Mol sat down with Hofman on camera and got asked exactly the kind of question BOOS built its whole identity on refusing to let power dodge, happened because De Mol arranged it. He set the terms: he’d watch the episode first, then respond, with the episode filmed the night before broadcast, on his schedule. Six months later, when Hofman came back and asked for a second sit-down, De Mol said no, specifically because the evidence BOOS gave him to review had been anonymized and redacted to the point he couldn’t meaningfully respond to it- the exact complaint every accused party in this saga has made. He has given barely any interviews since. Which means the outlet whose entire premise is that subjects don’t get to control the story, that anonymity protects sources rather than shields the people accusing them from being checked, had its defining confrontation happen entirely on the terms of the man being confronted, and then watched him walk away for good the moment the terms stopped suiting him. Funny that a man who has built and run television networks for a living would happen to land on the one format that let him look transparent while giving nothing up. If a landlord had pulled that off, it would have been a whole episode about landlords who only talk when they've picked the format. It's a tic, actually, once you start looking for it, the reflex to close a gap before anyone else can open it. Hofman does it with De Mol, unprompted. In episode four, he does it about his own reporting, walking through "all the patterns we found and lots of the evidence too" before anyone at the table has challenged him on it. He's said the same about the whole investigation's process: that BOOS spoke to no one off the record, not even Linda de Mol when she asked. It's a real, specific, checkable-sounding claim about integrity that happens to be about the one category of thing that leaves no trace for anyone outside the room to check; an off-the-record conversation, by definition, is invisible to everyone except the two people who had it. When Ali B's lawyer made specific false claims in court about BOOS's conduct, the podcast methodically disproves them, which is fair and also, notice, still a rebuttal of someone else's account, never an invitation to test their own. When a media analyst raised a real conflict-of-interest question this July, the first word out of Hofman's mouth was "nitwit." And when episode four went up, BOOS disabled the comments before a single viewer could type one. Defend first, examine never. An outlet built entirely on making other people answer for themselves seems constitutionally unable to leave a gap open long enough for anyone, including itself, actually to step into it. The comments decision has a real, defensible reason behind it, protecting the safety of sources describing what happened to them after the original broadcast, including a source at LINDA magazine whom people intimidated and blamed after she helped connect BOOS to its story in the first place. That reason is genuine. We'll admit it feels a little strange being the outlet that side-eyes a safety call, not going to lie. But it's also, whether anyone intended it this way or not, the last brick in a wall that already had no door: no outside journalist in the room, no adversarial interview, no seat at the table for the version of events that got complicated by a courtroom, and now, no comment section either. BOOS spent four years teaching the Dutch public that silence is what powerful people reach for when they don't want to be questioned. It is a little rich to watch them reach for it too, however good the reason. Two Men, One Tone, Two Verdicts Ali B was convicted. Marco Borsato was acquitted eight months before this podcast aired; a Dutch court found that the diary entries, secret recordings, and retrospective emotion didn't amount to proof. Episode four devotes real time to that split verdict, bringing in an outside legal scholar to explain why an acquittal isn't the same as nothing happening and pushing back hard on the public rush to re-embrace Borsato. But the show doesn't apply the same scrutiny to BOOS itself: the scholar explains the law in general, but nobody gets to test BOOS's own decisions against it. This isn't even a Voice-specific problem. In July, a media analyst accused Hofman of running a takedown of a competing tutor-company owner without disclosing his own old stake in a rival tutoring business, and Hofman's on-the-record response was to call the guy a nitwit—in writing. Escalating a professional dispute to a schoolyard insult is a choice, and you have to respect the commitment to the bit. And then there's the timing. The podcast launched the same week The Voice of Holland returned to Dutch television, and the show BOOS itself canceled. Hofman has said he can show messages from his own archive proving the overlap was accidental, though what's actually been published is his account of that, not the messages themselves, which is transparent, and also circular: the man accused of stage-managing attention offered, as proof he wasn't, evidence nobody outside the room has actually seen, on his own schedule. If a landlord had pulled that off, it would have been the cold open. What This Doesn't Prove "You can build something true and still build it in a way that makes it structurally immune to being checked." None of this requires believing BOOS got the underlying story wrong. The conviction suggests they mostly didn’t. That is precisely what makes the format worth noticing rather than dismissing: you can build something true and still build it in a way that makes it structurally immune to being checked. The original broadcast asked the country to trust an institution’s account of a powerful man’s conduct. The retrospective asks the country to trust the same institution’s account of its own conduct, using the same tools, minus the part where somebody else gets to look at the receipts. Somewhere in Hilversum there is a landlord who once broke Tim Hofman’s jaw rather than answer his questions. He at least had the decency to be a coward about it in public. We’re aware of how this looks: an American satire outlet with a fake activewear brand, watching a Dutch broadcaster’s internal reckoning from several thousand miles and one ocean away, weighing in on journalistic ethics we did not grow up with, working off childhood memories of Dutch television rather than anything current. Then again, BOOS isn’t television anymore. It’s a podcast, sitting on the same platforms as everything else, one tap away for anyone, anywhere, no cable package or Dutch grandmother required. Whatever distance we’re supposed to be disqualified by, BOOS itself dissolved the moment it went looking for a global feed instead of a broadcast slot. That distance cuts both ways, and it’s arguably the whole job description around here: we’d rather sit with something we don’t understand than settle into a house style and defend it for nine years. Sameness is the thing we’re actively trying not to become. So it falls to the foreigners with the fake posture brand, listening on the same app as everyone else, to point out that the emperor’s transparency has no outside tailor, wherever you’re standing when you notice it. Visual: AI-generated, for the mag. No mannequins were harmed, mostly because they can't be.

EDITOR'S NOTE Every magazine has an aisle it can't ignore. Ours glitters with pink and gold-black, priced by a logic no one wrote down but everyone pays. In this issue, a father and his fifteen-year-old daughter walk that aisle together, but this time, she's the one reading the labels. The thesis fits on a hairbrush: color changes meaning once a price tag is attached. What Lynn notices in a dollar store, four dollars versus nine for the same thing, echoes the argument this magazine has made since issue one. The visual language sold as personal preference is often just a business model in lip gloss. Pink didn't pick women; someone picked pink, then charged women for choosing it back. What makes this piece work isn't outrage. It's a teenager doing the math out loud, and a father wise enough to listen, honest enough to admit where his own eye still snags (that "special" section, the discomfort he can't fully name). No one claims to have it all figured out. That's the point. Sexism rarely makes headlines. Sometimes, it arrives priced in pink, and a girl is the first to notice. by Sixten "Dad" Rebel, with Lynn "Princess" Rebel Lynn, my fifteen-year-old daughter, has her own attitude, her own dress code, her own ideas—a young woman in the making. She needed a weekend off (yes, divorced, thank you for noticing), and at her age, I got that. So she stayed with me. That being said, we went shopping. I asked her what she needed and which stores she wanted to hit. First stop: the kind of place you'd call a dollar store, looking for a hairbrush. They were all out, at least the ones that didn't look like they'd come out of a bubble gum machine. The colors hurt my eyes, and the shapes were... well, interesting. Anyway, we went to another store, and there she found one. That thing was expensive, at least for a hairbrush. But who knows, right? I'm her dad, and a guy who doesn't exactly go looking for hairbrushes. She found one she liked, and we moved on to the next store. Picture this: The dad, Mister Rebel if you like, is wearing short army pants, worn-out shoes, and a metal shirt from some obscure Norwegian band. She’s in a white tank top, baggy jeans, and similarly worn-out shoes. Together, we strolled through the women’s lipstick, perfume, eyeliner, nail clippers, and hair products section. To my surprise, those "special" nail clippers cost almost fifty god-damn bucks. But that wasn't the biggest thing. What I actually wondered about, positively, were the answers she gave me to my questions. The question was: why are the women's products displayed in glittery pink and red? This is what she said: "Dad, that's because it's sexism. It's just plain and simple sexism. It's sexists to think all women like red and pink and lilac colors." Nearby, there was a section for darker colors, anchored by a photograph of a beautiful Black woman. The display gleamed in black and gold, showing off deeper shades of lipstick and eyeliner. I’ll admit, it struck me as odd, maybe not overtly racist, but something about the separation felt off. Unless someone convinces me otherwise, I’ll keep wondering about it. Lynn continued: "Those colors are 'special' for women. Like, the same brush in the men's section is exactly the same, but two or three times cheaper. Men don't care as much about how it looks, just whether it works. Women care more about how it looks, not just whether the brush works for their hair. And women buy more products, so they charge more to make more money. Your brush costs like four bucks, mine costs like nine. Same thing, different price. So I say it's sexist to charge women more than men, and it's ridiculous they use these stereotypical colors like all women like them, which isn't true." She kept going: "Also the perfume. I like this one, and when I like something, I buy it. I'm not wearing men's perfume." Naturally, I couldn't resist checking out the guys' smelly cologne section myself (I don't actually use the stuff, I'm a body spray and deodorant guy, that's it). And she was right about that, too: the men's section was cheaper, though not by as much as I expected. It was, without question, an interesting hour of shopping. And I was surprised that this was on her mind. Surprised in a good way, of course. I forgot to ask whether this applies to other women's products, like clothes, jewelry, and shoes. I'm not sure. Probably it does. I didn't fact-check it. Lynn will always be my princess, but this shopping trip showed me she's already becoming her own person, someone who notices the price of pink, asks the right questions, and refuses to accept the easy answer. Maybe I didn't have all the answers for her, but that's the point: we're both still learning. The aisle we walked together wasn’t just about hair brushes or nail clippers, it was about seeing the world a little clearer, and realizing how much more there is to question. With love, Sixten AI-generated image. Inspired by, not a depiction of, contributors Sixten "Dad" and Lynn "Princess" Rebel.

Social conventions often dictate our choices, even if subconsciously. When discussing women’s physical activity, social pressures influence motivations to reach an impossible body goal. Working out or moving their body isn’t encouraged by society. And getting stronger or preventing age-related diseases aren’t mainstream objectives, even though they bring the most benefits. The real question, then, is: Why does working out as a woman always spark debate both online and offline? In our modern society—in which gym goers are increasing—women are still criticised. From their choice to work out in the first place to what they wear and how they behave, women don’t always feel comfortable lifting weights or moving their bodies (unless it’s pilates or yoga). Because of this, the World Health Organization (WHO) has created an action plan. According to WHO, 20 to 40% of women don’t meet the minimum level of healthy physical activity each week. One of the program’s objectives is to “Create Active People.” In this scheme, women are considered one of “the least active groups,” therefore inviting them to participate in more physical activity by creating a welcoming fitness environment. Nonetheless, in the US today, statistics show that 52% of gym members are women, while in 2022 only 48% of memberships were female-held. This shows that, even if society doesn’t encourage women to work out because of the many stereotypes surrounding the gym, they are still confronting these comments and breaking social conventions. From Serena Williams to Ilona Mayer, many female athletes are living proof that strength and athleticism come in different shapes and forms. Social Media on Women's Bodies Thanks to inspiring women who fight stereotypes on a daily basis, the fitness world is slowly changing. That said, a TikTok debate recently trended about what gym clothes women should wear. Rather than focus on complimenting women who choose to get up from their couch, work out, and improve their overall health, what they wear became the most valuable focal point for social commentary. This strictly relates to the long-established double standards women are subjected to every single day. When men wear shorts to exercise, no one says anything because “it’s normal.” When a woman wears shorts, everyone has something to say about it. “Provocative,” “dangerous,” and so many other colorful words depict a picture where women are practically “asking for it.” Sports bras, too, are often the subject of irrelevant opinions when men can run shirtless outside and no one dares comment on that choice. How often have I heard the phrase “the gym is scary” from a female friend? Spoiler: Way too many times. The real reason is that gyms are often full of testosterone, which can feel intimidating to someone who isn’t comfortable with being stared at, even if not intentionally. Historically, women were not allowed to participate in professional sports until the second half of the 20th century, according to AISTS (International Academy of Sport Science and Technology). Thanks to women like Kathrine Switzer, who broke the rules to run in the 1967 Boston marathon, women have begun looking up to these figures. Switzer ran a male-only race, which allowed slow changes to happen. In 1972, the same marathon accepted women who met specific requirements—a great step forward in letting women participate in professional sports. Because of her and many other athletes, women are convinced they can do more. Even if they’re still not encouraged to work out too much, as they would then look “like a man,” more women are defying the odds and breaking records. Tigst Assefa set a new women’s record at the 2026 London Marathon, just to cite one of the many determined, disciplined, and strongest female athletes in the world. "The physical and mental strength required to work out or even run goes way beyond aesthetics." Investing in Health The physical and mental strength required to work out or even run goes way beyond aesthetics. Women have a 1 in 3 chance of getting osteoporosis as they age. Lifting weights can help prevent it, but because of misinformation, most women are unaware of the great benefits working out can have for their long-term health. From stronger bones to a lower risk of chronic illnesses, strength training in particular is one of the best investments a woman can make. Instead of fitting within the box society has built over the years, women should be encouraged to cut some time for themselves to work out. It is also an empowering move to build a strong body when we have to protect and defend it at all costs. Why should women limit themselves when they can just lift weights and have fun? As research at WHO confirmed, the goal is for everyone to discover the exercise routine that works best for them. Not everyone is made to work out at the gym, for example, yet the workout per se is essential to a more active and equal society. Many influencers are beginning to produce content showing that women can be stronger, too. Social media, then, can become a very powerful tool to support women in their fitness journey. From Gymshark ambassadors to OnerActive ones, the range of female athletes who break social conventions is increasing daily. So let’s just try to judge less and work out more. Sources: Chandrasekaran, P., "Gym Goers Statistics", Gitnux Cometta, S., "The Evolution of Women in Sports and the Path Forward", AISTS Sport Management and Technology Cowley, E.S. and Schneider, J., "'I sometimes feel like I can't win!': An exploratory mixed-methods study of women's body image and experiences of exercising in gym settings", PLOS One "The Real Story: 1967 Boston Marathon", Kathrine Switzer "About Osteoporosis", Osteoporosis Foundation "The Unique Benefits of Strength Training for Women", University Hospitals "Global Action Plan on Physical Activity 2018–2030", World Health Organization Synthetic image concept generated with Kling AI. Reality edited for editorial purposes.