BACK TO DECEMBER ━ oscar piastri.

[ 001 ] The Room Where It Happens

( ACT I. ── Fading Imprints )
chapter one / The Room Where It Happens

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ARTICLE ─ The Track Limits
( thetracklimits.com/Masera... )

Maserati Says Crush The Gender Disparity In Motorsports and I Begin Removing My Clothes.

Entry posted by Billy Ireland
Monday, December 14, 2023

After failing to acquire a contract with retired four-time world champion Sebastian Vettel, the incoming Maserati Racing Team have revealed a new target for their 2024 driver line-up.

Let's discuss Maserati's current positioning as a whole for a moment before digging into the nitty-gritty of the noticable lack of employees (a situation that frankly should have been resolved months ago, considering the years-long buildup of this team launch).

This is the perfect waiting-in-the-weeds suspense. Maserati will go into this season with little to no expectation whatsoever, and frankly, I love it. If they turn out to be good (à la even a general midfield team; Alpine, etc.), they will turn a lot of heads and impress a lot of people. But if they end up sucking, as everyone outside of their ever-loyal home country of Italy expects, they're likely not going to get clowned internationally, due to the shadows of a lot more pressing concerns (outstanding Red Bull dominance, outstanding Haas dogshitness, etc.). So Maserati are in the perfect spot, IMO.

One other point of interest: it has become increasingly more obvious every day that no one really gives a shit about Maserati anyway. The international media has no idea why Formula One needs another boastfully Italian team, nor do they care to find out. There are 10 established teams that (to them) move the needle more.

Appointed Team Principal (for a solid ten months) Paul Ruggiero had early success in team management, which F1 remembers. They remember him hoisting up Williams as a powerhouse Damon-Hill-World Championship team back in the day, so they think extremely favorably of him. Therefore, many in the media saw Maserati, a team that had already begun negotiations with Sebastian Vettel, fire their Team Principal who was responsible for the aforementioned negotiations, and then ghost Vettel this past November ─ and to that they say WTF. They didn't see the progressive steps taken by a team that was heading south quickly: they saw dysfunction. And I get it. If I wasn't inundated with Maserati on a daily basis (I'm nosy), I wouldn't get the moves either. Because most people don't know that Paul Ruggiero crashed and burned during his final year at Williams. Most people don't remember that a Ruggiero-managed team produced one of the most historic collapses in Formula One history by poo-pooing the bed on a 40-point championship lead by failing to grab a single podium in the remaining seven races. All the media remembers is Ruggiero outsmarting Ferrari with a nationally televised wild card over thirty years ago.

The irony is that his replacement as Maserati Team Principal is Gabriele Ruggiero. Name ring a bell? Surprise. It's his half-brother.