Ok so, i could not focus on the romance in this book at all because I was way too caught up in how little the actual F1 elements of this story made sense (and how we spent waaaaaay too much of this book focusing on racing vs romance- the pacing of this book was awful but that’s another thing). I guess normally sports romances don’t bother me too much because other sports leagues are so much larger than F1, so it’s a lot easier to suspend your disbelief about a fake team existing or about the actual sports elements. But F1 is literally only 20 guys, so it’s impossible not to feel like the author is trying to portray real people.

The whole thing made me so uncomfortable- I’m definitely not at all into fanfiction about real people, I think it’s invasive and weird, and nothing about this even pretended not to be blatantly ripping off almost every driver’s likeness, including real rivalries between real drivers and actual team dynamics. The author did not even attempt to make this book a completely different F1 reality- we got the exact same drama and teams as the most recent seasons. The driver portrayals were so absurd it would border on being funny if it weren’t creepy as hell.

when I wasn’t uncomfortable with the way-too-real driver portrayals, I was laughing at how unrealistic any actual racing was in this book. For other fellow f1 fans to laugh at with me, in no order:
* driver is ordered to DNF because of a “technical issue,” but really the team principal just didn’t like him and ordered him to DNF to make him look bad (pretty sure the FIA would have an issue with this)
* driver is ordered to stay behind his teammate in p11 for the entire race despite having better pace than him (0.5 seconds