Formula 1 Warrior Cats Au.

📊 LANDOSCAR AO3 STATS (may 2025)

notes

sorry this literally took 2 weeks to write... unfortunately the data was retrieved april 28 and it is now may 12.

other work: i previously wrote a stats overview that covered landoscar's fic growth and breakout in 2023 :) i've kept some of the formatting and graphs that i showed there, while other things have been removed or refined because i felt they'd become redundant or unnecessary (aka they were basically just a reflection of fandom growth in general, and not unique or interesting to landoscar as a ship specifically).

methodology: i simply scraped the metadata for every fic in the landoscar tag (until april 28, 2025) and then imported it into google sheets to clean, with most visualizations done in tableau. again, all temporal data is by date updated (not posted) unless noted otherwise. this is because the date that appears on the parent view of the ao3 archives is the updated one, so it's the only feasible datapoint to collect for 3000+ fics.

content: this post does not mention any individual authors or concern itself with kudos, hits, comments, etc. i purely describe archive growth and overall analysis of metadata like word count and tagging metrics.

cleaning: after importing my data, i standardized ship spelling, removed extra "814" or "landoscar" tags, and merged all versions of one-sided, background, implied, past, mentioned etc. into a single "(side)" modifier. i also removed one fic entirely from the dataset because the "loscar" tag was being mistakenly wrangled as landoscar, but otherwise was not actually tagged as landoscar. i also removed extra commentary tags in the ships sets that did not pertain to any ships.

overall stats

before we get into any detailed distributions, let's first look at an overview of the archive as of 2025! in their 2-and-change years as teammates, landoscar have had over 3,409 fics written for them, good enough for 3rd overall in the f1 archives (behind lestappen and maxiel).

most landoscar fics are completed one-shots (although note that a one-shot could easily be 80k words—in fact they have about 30 single-chapter fics that are at least 50k words long), and they also benefit from a lot of first-tagged fic, which is to say 82.3% of landoscar-tagged fics have them as the first ship, implying that they aren't often used as a fleeting side pairing and artificially skewing perception of their popularity. in fact, over half of landoscar fics are PURELY tagged as landoscar (aka otp: true), with no other side pairings tagged at all.

this percentage has actually gone down a bit since 2023 (65.5%), which makes sense since more lando and oscar ships have become established and grown in popularity over the years, but it's also not a very big difference yet...

ship growth

of course, landoscar have grown at a frankly terrifying rate since 2023. remember this annotated graph i posted comparing their growth during the 2023 season to that of carlando and loscar, respectively their other biggest ship at the time? THIS IS HER NOW:

yes... that tiny squished down little rectangle... (wipes away stray tear) they grow up so fast. i also tried to annotate this graph to show other "big" landoscar moments in the timeline since, but i honestly struggled with this because they've just grown SO exponentially and consistently that i don't even feel like i can point to anything as a proper catalyst of production anymore. that is to say, i think landoscar are popular enough now that they have a large amount of dedicated fans/writers who will continuously work on certain drafts and stories regardless of what happens irl, so it's hard to point at certain events as inspiring a meaningful amount of work.

note also that this is all going by date updated, so it's not a true reflection of ~growth~ as a ficdom. thankfully ao3 does have a date_created filter that you can manually enter into the search, but because of this limitation i can't create graphs with the granularity and complexity that scraping an entire archive allows me. nevertheless, i picked a few big ships that landoscar have overtaken over the last 2 years and created this graph using actual date created metrics!!!

this is pretty self-explanatory of course but i think it's fun to look at... :) it's especially satisfying to see how many ships they casually crossed over before the end of 2024.

distributions

some quick graphs this time. rating distribution remains extremely similar to the 2023 graph, with explicit fic coming out on top at 28%:

last time i noted a skew in ratings between the overall f1 rpf tag and the landoscar tag (i.e. landoscar had a higher prevalence of e fic), but looking at it a second time i honestly believe this is more of a cultural shift in (f1? sports rpf? who knows) fandom at large and not specific to landoscar as a ship — filtering the f1 rpf tag to works updated from 2023 onward shows that explicit has since become the most popular rating in general, even when excluding landoscar-tagged fics. is it because fandom is getting more horny in general, or because the etiquette surrounding what constitutes t / m / e has changed, or because people are less afraid to post e fic publicly and no longer quarantine it to locked livejournal posts? or something else altogether? Well i don't know and this is a landoscar stats post so it doesn't matter but that could be something for another thought experiment. regardless because of that i feel like further graphs aren't really necessary 🤷‍♀️

onto word distribution:

still similar to last time, although i will note that there's a higher representation of longfic now!!! it might not seem like much, but i noted last year that 85% of landoscar fics were under 10k & 97% under 25k — these numbers are now 78% and 92% respectively, which adds up in the grand scheme of a much larger archive. you'll also notice that the prevalence of <1k fic has gone down as well.

for the fun of it here's the wc distribution but with a further rating breakdown; as previously discussed you're more likely to get G ratings in flashfic because there's less wordspace to Make The Porn Happen. of course there are nuances to this but that's just a broad overview

side ships

what other ships are landoscar shippers shipping these days??? a lot of these ships are familiar from last time, but there are two new entries in ham/ros and pia/sai overtaking nor/ric and gas/lec to enter the top 10. ships that include at least one of lando or oscar are highlighted in orange:

of course, i pulled other 814-adjacent ships, but unfortunately i've realized that a lot of them simply aren't that popular/prevalent (context: within the 814 tag specifically) so they didn't make the top 10... because of that, here's a graph with only ships that include lando or oscar and have a minimum of 10 works within the landoscar tag:

eta: other primarily includes oscar & lily and maxf & lando. lando doesn't really have that many popular pairings within landoscar shippers otherwise...

i had wanted to explore these ships further and look at their growth/do some more in depth breakdowns of their popularity, but atm they're simply not popular enough for me to really do anything here. maybe next year?!

that being said, i did make a table comparing the prevalence of side ships within the 814 tag to the global f1 archives, so as to contextualize the popularity of each ship (see 2023). as usually, maxiel is very underrepresented in the landoscar tag, with galex actually receiving quite a boost compared to before!

additional tags

so last time i only had about 400 fics to work with and i did some analysis on additional tags / essentially au tagging. however, the problem is that there are now 3000 fics in my set, and the limitations of web scraping means that i'm not privy to the tag wrangling that happens in Da Backend of ao3. basically i'm being given all the raw versions of these au tags, whereas on ao3 "a/b/o" and "alpha/beta/omega dynamics" and "au - alpha/beta/omega" and "alternate universe - a/b/o" are all being wrangled together. because it would take way too long for me to do all of this manually and i frankly just don't want to clean that many fics after already going through all the ship tags, i've decided to not do any au analysis because i don't think it would be an accurate reflection of the data...

that being said, i had one new little experiment! as landoscar get more and more competitive, i wanted to chart how ~angsty~ they've gotten as a ship on ao3. i wanted to make a cumulative graph that shows how the overall fluff % - angst % difference has shifted over time, but ummmm... tableau and i had a disagreement. so instead here is a graph of the MoM change in angst % (so basically what percentage of the fics updated in that month specifically were tagged angst?):

the overall number is still not very drastic at all and fluff still prevails over angst in the landoscar archive. to be clear, there are 33.2% fics tagged some variation of fluff and 21.4% fics tagged some variation of angst overall, so there's a fluff surplus of 11.8%. but there has definitely been a slight growth in angst metrics over the past few months!

—

i will leave this here for now... if there's anything specific that you're interested in lmk and i can whip it up!!! hehe ty for reading 🧡

Do I hear Osc for world champion 2025?🧡

I forgot to post this Max drawing

I'm about to party on you Watch me, watch me party on you, yeah

Had the pleasure of oscar piastri burger era returning to my tl today along with the bahrain cooldown room which birthed this

© Hector Vivas (1), Bryn Lennon (2-4), Mark Thompson (5-6)

i can't stop thinking about how oversized that hoodie was that oscar was wearing at mtc.

like lando could fully fit in that thing with him. imagine oscar just chilling there minding his business on his phone or sum and all of a sudden a curly head of hair shoves its way under the hoodie 😭😭

Fluff is literally .. the thing I really can’t do but I also couldn’t stop thinking about it so take my 700 words dabble (unedited) of Lando taking over the place in Osc‘s hoodie.🥺

Home 🧡

“S‘fucking cold in Zandvoort man.” Lando barges into his hotel room like he owns that place. Hair a fluffy mess, nose and the tips of his ears pink and alone from the look on his face Oscar already knows Lando is grumpy. Grumpy in the worst sense.

And Oscar? He had the morning session. Already showered, ordered some food and lounged the rest of the day in his bed. Comfy sweats, a pair of fuzzy socks he stole from Lando and the oversized Reiss sweater on. Just enjoying a bit of free time before the madness starts again. He earned that. Just like the extra big portion of pasta he had after his shower.

Lando kicked his shoes off, one trainer flying half-way through the room before he stopped right in front of the bed, one eyebrow raised in a silent question, gooseflesh still visible on his tanned arms.

“Next time try wearing a hoodie?”

Oscar mocks him, tone light while he leans his head to the side - already knowing what Lando wants without saying. Patting the side next to him, already lifting up the blanket. Lando wrangles down his sweats, shirt following, before he lays down next to Oscar, pressing his cold body against the Aussie who lets out a sharp gasp.

“Fuck Lands you’re like .. ice cold?”

The only thing missing is the teeth chattering, would be really dramatic in Oscar’s opinion but on the other hand Lando is the one for dramatic shit. Instead the brit pushes a sneaky hand under Oscar’s hoodie, the cold of his fingers seeping through the shirt.

“That‘s nice..“

A mumble; before Oscar suddenly has a mop of brown curls in his face, Lando wrapping himself over Oscar‘s body, seeking out the warmth he needs so desperately. The other hand slightly pulls at the hem of the hoodie.

“Really big on you. You reckon .. we could both fit in?” Head lifted, he looks at Oscar. Eyes big, head tilted. Doing his best puppy-gremlin-expression, also including a little pout.

For a moment Oscar just stares, thinking about sending Lando away to take a shower so he can enjoy a few more minutes of peace. But at the same time it’s Lando. And he can never say no to Lando, no matter how hard he tries. So after taking a deep breath, he slowly slides more down, lifting the blankets in the process again.

“Try it, just try to keep the hoodie in one piece, yeah?”

But Lando is already busy, sliding down Oscar‘s body. In every other situation it would be hot. But right now, it’s just so awfully endearing. The way Lando lifts up the hoodie, biting down on his bottom lip. Oscar can see the gears in his head working, figuring out how they both can fit in. Oscar is just glad Lando doesn’t see the pathetic fond look on his face and he can bring himself back to looking normal when Lando slides between his legs. Curly head already gone under the hoodie.

There are a few huffs, Lando almost kicks Oscar in the balls when he lifts up one of his legs but then, a long moment later (Oscar was already concerned Lando would suffocate) the head full of brown curls pops out of the neckline; a wide grin on his lips, all teeth on display.

“Hi..”

Lando giggles, face nuzzling against Oscar‘s neck, arms wrapped around his upper body, straddling his lap. When Oscar tilts his head, he can take a deep breath of just Lando. Colognes, shampoo and hairproducts. And if his heart slows down a few beats, it’s between him and god.

His arms wrapped around Lando‘s form under the hoodie, their shared warmth already making him tired again. Lando squirms a bit, just shuffling around until he finds his final position, letting out a content sigh. Body going lax and heavy against Oscar’s chest.

“Could s‘here forever Osc.“

Landos words already slurred, voice low and hoarse like in the mornings. Even without looking at his face Oscar knows that Lando tries to fight sleep, so one of his hands finds the way in Lando‘s curls, softly scraping his scalp until the Brit starts to snore softly. Forever sounds really good.

🐧

papayas