F1's Love Island 2.0: Wive to Survive

Sources suggest we may never have been more back. Welcome to the second biennial F1 Love Island Games.

For those whose memories need jogging, Valtteri Bottas won when we ran through the grid two years ago, but sadly he's off doing side-quests and popping into Mercedes HQ every now and then to boost the vibes. We're missing some others too – farewell Checo, goodbye KMag, don't bother calling back Logan – so our time in the villa's going to look a little different in 2025.

We still think this should be a series called Wive to Survive though. That hasn't changed one bit.

In some semblance of order...

Max Verstappen

Strengths: Successful, not at all bad looking

Weaknesses: Absolutely bored out of his skull

We've gotten more and more of a view into Max's personality over the years, and can confidently say that after 48 hours without his family and sim racing setup he's going to be out the door so fast he leaves a little cartoon line of himself behind.

Oscar Piastri

Strengths: Inoffensive

Weaknesses: Boring

Oscar seems like a nice kid, but he's still developing some sort of public personality. Come back in another two years.

Lance Stroll

Strengths: More money than God

Weaknesses: Money can't buy game

Watch the last 10 seconds of this clip and then say, with a straight face, that Lance Stroll would pull in the villa (or out of it). You can't. It can't be done.

That reaction from Lance Stroll when Rachel asks whether he can get a podium tomorrow 😅 pic.twitter.com/V60XIoSjDd

— Sky Sports F1 (@SkySportsF1) June 3, 2023

Nico Hulkenberg

Strengths: Definitely a man who exists

Weaknesses: There is almost nothing interesting about him

This certainly is an entry on this list.

Esteban Ocon

Strengths: Tall!

Weaknesses: Virgo [derogatory]

An F1 driver who's a genuine 6' (or what you might call a 'Tinder 6'2') is a fairly rare creature, but Estie still has an intensity to him that's more unsettling than sexy.

Liam Lawson

Strengths: Kiwi cool

Weaknesses: Hair looks like a fancy bird

You ever noticed that about Lawson? How some of his hair choices wouldn't look out of place on some kind of exotic hawk or something? We've noticed that. It might not even be a bad thing, really.

Also, getting bumped from your job after like two weeks: Ick.

The Creche

Alright, something we have to admit at this point: it kind of went over our heads just how young most of the additions to the grid have been since the 2023 edition. As such, we're raising the age requirement for the show to 21 and creating a new little enclosure for the youngsters. It just didn't feel quite right to include them.

As such: welcome to the creche. Think of it as the Muppet Babies version of the show.

Gabriel Bortoleto

Faintly anxious without his Emotional Support Max Verstappen around. Forgets about this fairly soon, because we put lots of video games in the creche.

Ollie Bearman

Ollie was only 18 when he popped up at Ferrari to replace Carlos Sainz last year, and his accent was baffling. It got explained away by pointing out that he moved from Chelmsford to Italy when he was 16, but seriously? You lose your own accent and pick up that hybrid thing in two years? We're not buying it. There's some kind of conspiracy here.

Isack Hadjar

Using this space exclusively to continue the campaign to get 'Sonic the Hadjhog' off the ground as a nickname. We're so, so close.

Kimi Antonelli

The 'gifted child' from your school who's spent a little bit too long hanging out with adults, and looks a little bit baffled to be made to hang out with the rowdy kids.

Back to the show...

Yuki Tsunoda

Strengths: A lovely boy

Weaknesses: Could lose him in a crowd

A lovely young man who'd famously quite like to open a restaurant, Yuki is practically the embodiment of a straight-to-Netflix romcom hunk. But, sorry, there are a lot of people out there who shy away from dating someone they could put in their pocket. We don't dictate society, we just live in it.

Franco Colapinto

Strengths: In demand

Weaknesses: Aura fading

Around the turn of the year, more people were talking about Franco than any time since Spain in the 1950s. This guy was the hottest property in the sport – young, handsome, and looking talented as all hell.

That's all still true...sort of. Unfortunately, since then he's added the vibe that if a gardener left an upturned rake somewhere around the villa, he'd step on it and hit himself in the face.

George Russell

Strengths: Tall, nice eyes

Weaknesses: Beige beige beige

Sees a pop of colour on a pair of swimming shorts provided to him by the production crew and has a mild anxiety attack thinking about wearing something that isn't a neutral colour. Leaves the villa quietly that evening.

Charles Leclerc

Strengths: Handsome

Weaknesses: Wishes he was back in Monaco

Yeah yeah, loads of drivers live in Monaco. But Charles is the only one from Monaco. They merely adopted the principality, he was born in it, molded by it. He didn't see a poor person until he was already a man, by then it was nothing to him but confusing. (We're doing a Bane thing here, that came across right? We didn't just go completely mad).

He wants off the island and back to his apartment. We won't stop him.

Fernando Alonso

Strengths: Handsome into his 40s

Weaknesses: That whole Taylor Swift thing

Remember that? When there were those rumours that Nando was going out with Taylor Swift and he spent about six months rinsing it for TikTok content? And it turned out instead, she'd started going out with a man who gives off the impression that he only stopped writing 'R' and 'L' on his hands because someone pointed out he couldn't read the letters anyway? Aura loss, we're afraid.

Lando Norris

Strengths: Hair

Weaknesses: Horrible wispy little beard

On the off-chance that somebody around the paddock reads this, or that Lando is ego-surfing, I need to know what he uses in his hair to keep it that bouncy and curly all the time. It's not right that you can get out of a 200mph marvel of engineering, take your helmet off and not have helmet hair. I am on my knees begging, for everyone else out there with glorious, curly hair, what Lando Norris' hair regime is. Please.

Wrote that two years ago. Will keep writing it until someone comes through. Apparently there's some chat that Danny Ric taught him everything he knows?

Lewis Hamilton

Strengths: High standards

Weaknesses: Absolutely fed up

There's absolutely no doubt that Lewis has all the ingredients to succeed at the villa. Great rig, intimidating dating history, probably the single most interesting person on the grid.

Buuuuuut...the last two years have seriously dinged him here. He's spent half his time just going on about how he isn't good enough and how nothing matters – and being an emo in your 40s isn't dignified.

Pierre Gasly

Strengths: Looks, languages

Weaknesses: He is still, ultimately, French

A stealth contender to walk away with the prize money, here. Seems to get on with other drivers so you know he's got some charisma about him, he's got good hair, and he speaks a handful of languages. Very annoying dog though, sorry Simba.

Alex Albon

Strengths: Tall, has about 50 cats

Weaknesses: Very posh, has about 50 cats

The man responsible for the line 'Alex Albon is hot and god is dead' in v1.0 back in 2023, we want to talk about the cats a little bit here instead.

Can we be frank? A dozen cats is too many. It's too many! Imagine you leave the show dating Alex, you get a rare non-race weekend back at his house, you sit down on the sofa with a blanket and some popcorn to watch a film and ha ha! Good luck having a nice romantic evening in! Two of those cats will start chasing each other, one will knead your legs with needle claws through the blanket, one's chasing things on the screen, one's Just Yelling, and one will absolutely drop an absolutely nuclear turd just as you've got settled. And there are still half a dozen more of them.

Carlos Sainz Jr.

Strengths: Handsome! Seems nice!

Weaknesses: Annoying fans!

When we did the first edition of this, the most controversial entry* [*edit: forgot how much people hated us talking Logan Sargeant down, that was a weird couple of days on Twitter] appeared to be calling Carlos a 'personality void' and challenging people to name one interesting thing about him.

We got told 'he's goofy' and 'he loves breakfast'. Not to encourage incredibly annoying behaviour, but that and his last couple of years of showcasing some quiet charm on F1 video packages has been enough to vault him up into the top spot. Congratulations, Carlos.

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