Japanese GP 2023 F1 Race Review

Spanners and Trumpets are joined by professional race car driver Bradley Philpot and Presenter/Commentator and 7News Sports Reporter  Jonathan ‘Jono’ Simon as they eavesdrop on all the team radio messages. From Red Bull’s Constructor’s victory to Mercedes’ intramural melee, no carbon fibre shard goes unswept in this, the latest episode of Missed Apex Podcast.

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[01:55.440 -> 02:22.800] You are listening to Missed Apex Podcast. We live F1.
[02:22.800 -> 02:31.000] Welcome to Missed Apex podcast. The title of today's show is Winge to Pass. That title provided by me. I'll take the credit.
[02:31.000 -> 02:38.000] I'm your host Richard Ready, but my friends call me Spanners. So let's be friends. Welcome to the Japanese Grand Prix Race Review.
[02:38.000 -> 02:45.880] Today, we will congratulate the World Constructors' Champions. Red Bull will remark on the rise of McLaren and will
[02:45.880 -> 02:52.640] despair in the end of the North American march. We'll also discuss the general machinations
[02:52.640 -> 02:59.400] of a chaotic Japanese Grand Prix. We'll ask whose fault was everything as only seven cars
[02:59.400 -> 03:07.240] finished the race. And we'll also ask how many resignation letters can you fit into one Grand Prix. We
[03:07.240 -> 03:11.260] are an independent podcast produced in the podcasting shed with the kind permission of
[03:11.260 -> 03:15.860] our better halves. We aim to bring you a race review before your Monday morning commute.
[03:15.860 -> 03:28.720] We might be wrong, but we're first. I'm joined in the shed by Matt to Rumpets.
[03:28.720 -> 03:29.880] How's it going, Matt?
[03:29.880 -> 03:32.120] Did I stay up late or did I get up early?
[03:32.120 -> 03:33.840] Oh, look, a big whiskey.
[03:33.840 -> 03:35.520] Wait, that doesn't help at all.
[03:35.520 -> 03:38.400] So what I did was I woke up at half four.
[03:38.400 -> 03:39.400] I was very tired.
[03:39.400 -> 03:42.280] I had three cups of coffee during the Grand Prix.
[03:42.280 -> 03:49.520] And once it finished, I went and I got a giant breakfast in town, came home and went to bed. So I'm now on my second Sunday.
[03:50.320 -> 03:54.800] I like that, I like that. I had actually got home about a half hour before the race started
[03:54.800 -> 04:00.960] from work, managed to fit in a quick dinner and then settled in to attempt to not fall
[04:00.960 -> 04:04.240] asleep through the whole race. And we're also joined by international
[04:04.240 -> 04:06.880] test driver sensation Bradley Philpot. Hey Brad.
[04:07.440 -> 04:12.960] I love the Japanese Grand Prix because it's a lifelong tradition, that early morning start.
[04:12.960 -> 04:17.920] We only have a few of them in the year but I really like it, sitting on the sofa with my cat,
[04:17.920 -> 04:21.840] drinking a tea, peanut butter on toast. It's like being a kid again.
[04:21.840 -> 04:26.440] It used to be my thing when the babies were little, is I would set my alarm silently on
[04:26.440 -> 04:30.280] my watch and then I would get up with the babies and I would do the feed while watching
[04:30.280 -> 04:34.400] the Australian Grand Prix or, you know, one of the flyaway races.
[04:34.400 -> 04:38.820] And then I'd get all the credit for being like a brilliant dad, but really I was just
[04:38.820 -> 04:40.880] up watching the Grand Prix.
[04:40.880 -> 04:45.000] I don't have children because I've made excellent life choices, but me and my cat had a great
[04:45.000 -> 04:46.000] time.
[04:46.000 -> 04:49.840] You don't have children, but you own like a go-kart and a much better car than me.
[04:49.840 -> 04:51.760] So I can't argue that much.
[04:51.760 -> 04:55.080] Because it was early in the morning, I got to tinker with my go-kart through the rest
[04:55.080 -> 04:56.080] of the day.
[04:56.080 -> 04:58.000] It wasn't like the weekend was over.
[04:58.000 -> 04:59.000] Okay.
[04:59.000 -> 05:03.040] And we're joined by plucky young Australian, Jonathan Simon.
[05:03.040 -> 05:04.240] How's it going, Jono?
[05:04.240 -> 05:10.240] The English Australian, Jonathan Simon. How's it going, Jono? The English-Australian rivalries continue. Piastri and Norris throughout another race.
[05:10.240 -> 05:14.200] That's something to talk about a little later on. I enjoyed the 3pm race for once, where
[05:14.200 -> 05:18.960] I sat on the beach, had my phone out, had my iPad out, and managed to watch a Formula
[05:18.960 -> 05:20.960] One race during the day and not the night time.
[05:20.960 -> 05:26.080] Yeah, there is a rivalry though, between our cultures. We're very close considering
[05:26.080 -> 05:33.120] how far apart we are in the world, but I always feel like your people have ruined sport that we've
[05:33.120 -> 05:37.040] had a direct rivalry in. By winning, is that what you're saying? Yeah, by just being like,
[05:37.040 -> 05:40.880] having good tans and winning. Like, you ruined cricket for me in the 90s.
[05:41.440 -> 05:46.160] Yeah, well that was before my time. I couldn't even tell you who won it back then.
[05:46.160 -> 05:48.800] I'm going to assume it's Australia based on the way things have been going.
[05:48.800 -> 05:51.840] It really didn't. It was it was, yeah, it was Australia, Australia, Australia,
[05:51.840 -> 05:54.600] and then England won one time in the early 2000s.
[05:54.600 -> 05:56.760] And then I stopped watching cricket forever.
[05:56.920 -> 06:01.720] But that that won't happen in F1 just because Piastri seems quite good.
[06:06.840 -> 06:10.840] I tell you what, Matt, we have got a lot to cover here and I definitely, oh my goodness,
[06:10.840 -> 06:14.280] like there was the Paris disaster is a segment in itself.
[06:14.480 -> 06:19.480] The Mercedes drama was just something to behold.
[06:19.480 -> 06:24.600] And yeah, but it's like a seismic shift in that Mercedes relationship.
[06:24.600 -> 06:27.200] McLaren are exceeding
[06:27.200 -> 06:33.520] all expectations and I really did during this race, there was a period where I was looking up
[06:33.520 -> 06:39.920] track limits, rules, race directors notes, interacting on Twitter and I've rubbed off on you.
[06:39.920 -> 06:47.760] Yeah, but there was like this 10 minute segment where I just went, I'm not, I'm not watching the race because there's so much to actually dive into.
[06:47.760 -> 06:52.120] So thank goodness there was the safety car that almost gave us a break to kind of pick
[06:52.120 -> 06:53.120] stuff apart.
[06:53.120 -> 06:58.920] Yeah, it, it, I don't know if it was just because the race was on late at night, but
[06:58.920 -> 07:04.300] it just seemed exceptionally chaotic to me from a, from a, is there a narrative to this
[07:04.300 -> 07:06.300] race or is it just Perez hitting things
[07:06.300 -> 07:11.340] and then random shots of an overtake that happened or someone driving off onto the gravel
[07:11.340 -> 07:13.260] or whatever.
[07:13.260 -> 07:20.180] And thankfully we had loads of radio drama to entertain us because actually not a whole
[07:20.180 -> 07:22.880] lot happened once we got past the start.
[07:22.880 -> 07:25.120] But it feels like a lot happened, Brad, because
[07:25.120 -> 07:31.440] this is just, it's such a good race track. It's a classic old school race track. In the
[07:31.440 -> 07:37.480] dry, it risks being boring. But I think from a wheel-to-wheel racing point of view, like
[07:37.480 -> 07:42.800] things like the Spoon Curve, down to the final chicane, past 130 yards and then into Turn
[07:42.800 -> 07:46.320] 1, like there's genuine racing to be had at this track.
[07:46.880 -> 07:50.560] Yeah, I was actually a bit pessimistic that these cars would be able to do any kind of
[07:50.560 -> 07:56.560] overtaking because they're so wide and this is a traditionally narrow circuit. But actually,
[07:56.560 -> 08:02.880] I was surprised by how much action there was. I know it wasn't the world's most exciting race
[08:02.880 -> 08:06.560] on the whole, but the pockets of action, which
[08:06.560 -> 08:13.040] I'm sure we're going to talk about, the Hamilton-Russell battle, the way you have to set up a move in
[08:13.040 -> 08:19.000] the previous corners. And if you make a mistake, you are suddenly under attack in the following
[08:19.000 -> 08:22.480] corners. It is actually a good track still for modern F1.
[08:22.480 -> 08:25.040] So Brad, back me up on this because obviously,
[08:25.040 -> 08:29.520] I know people don't like, I've done this on iRacing so I know what I'm talking about,
[08:29.520 -> 08:35.680] but I'm also not going to stop doing that. So validate me slightly here. So at the end of the
[08:35.680 -> 08:41.680] lap at Suzuka, we know from doing it on sim racing, is if you overtake into the chicane,
[08:41.680 -> 08:45.360] for example, you're leaving yourself then vulnerable to be overtaken
[08:45.360 -> 08:49.920] down to turn one. And so I'm so happy that I've got the sim racing experience because as soon as
[08:49.920 -> 08:54.800] I saw that Hamilton-Russell battle, I go, oh, that's the wrong place. That's the wrong place
[08:54.800 -> 09:01.600] to win a battle. And you also know from that sim racing that defending the inside down to turn one,
[09:01.600 -> 09:05.680] for example, often doesn't help you. It might be the only
[09:05.680 -> 09:10.480] thing you can do in a certain situation, like Russell Hamilton, but the driver that just
[09:10.480 -> 09:14.440] stays on the racing line and ignores your defense gets to swoop around the outside of
[09:14.440 -> 09:18.960] you. So yeah, you will have a bit of an insight from your sim racing experts.
[09:18.960 -> 09:29.480] And Jono, you wouldn't have known this, but in the olden days, finishing with only 15 cars, or as many as 15 cars, would be kind of a treat. But
[09:29.480 -> 09:31.840] this track provided high attrition.
[09:32.720 -> 09:35.600] Well, I think one of the first races I ever watched in my life
[09:35.600 -> 09:39.280] was 2002 Australia, which I think had like three cars
[09:39.280 -> 09:42.040] finish the entire race, unless I'm getting mixed up with
[09:42.040 -> 09:44.760] another one of the years there, but they had some chaos. The
[09:44.760 -> 09:49.440] track is great. And the overtaking coming out of the last corner, like you guys
[09:49.440 -> 09:53.920] spoke about, I think it's a little bit more difficult than we give it credit because of
[09:53.920 -> 09:59.280] the downhill traction zone coming out of that last corner. It doesn't make it easy for a
[09:59.280 -> 10:03.200] driver to reclaim a position back into turn one, but it makes it possible. And that's
[10:03.200 -> 10:05.960] what we want out of Formula One, is something like that, where we get
[10:06.120 -> 10:09.240] good racing that's hard earned, hard fought as well.
[10:09.960 -> 10:12.720] And Sargent as well, you saw in qualifying, he's on his own.
[10:12.720 -> 10:13.640] He's not even battling.
[10:13.640 -> 10:17.440] He crashed at that final corner, which Timo Glock has done in the past.
[10:17.440 -> 10:21.080] I think a few years ago, I don't know if it was Sirotkin or somebody, I don't know,
[10:21.080 -> 10:23.840] back in the Williams in many, many years ago.
[10:23.840 -> 10:26.920] But yeah, it's a fun race.
[10:26.960 -> 10:29.920] I feel like we've got to set the tone for this show
[10:29.920 -> 10:32.320] by playing a very early game.
[10:32.320 -> 10:34.340] You mentioned Logan Sargent in qualifying.
[10:34.340 -> 10:36.880] We're gonna play a very early game of
[10:36.880 -> 10:38.920] Whose Fault Is It?
[10:38.920 -> 10:41.400] And I'm exclusively going to Brad
[10:41.400 -> 10:43.540] because Brad, you are the only person
[10:43.540 -> 10:45.320] who knows what it's like to
[10:45.320 -> 10:51.440] press the right pedal with your right foot in a high-powered sports car. This was in
[10:51.440 -> 10:56.920] qualifying before the race start. Logan Sargent, he put his foot to the floor and he was wrestling
[10:56.920 -> 11:03.360] that car. It was clearly out of control. And at every opportunity that he had to stop crashing,
[11:03.360 -> 11:05.440] he elected to continue crashing.
[11:05.440 -> 11:10.720] I don't know who it was that said this on X or Twitter, but the comment I saw was,
[11:11.280 -> 11:14.080] Latifi walked so Logan Sargent could run.
[11:15.440 -> 11:22.880] That is really mean, but the exact situation that you just described, I'm sure we all waited for the
[11:22.880 -> 11:25.680] replay to see, okay, what happened here?
[11:25.680 -> 11:31.200] What kind of, what was the circumstance? How, how can we like let him off or give him a pass?
[11:31.840 -> 11:38.560] And as the replay developed, it was like, oh, that's like, that's a really obvious and bad
[11:38.560 -> 11:43.680] driver error. It was, he was chasing, chasing the lap time, you know, he was finishing a lap and he
[11:43.680 -> 11:47.680] was eager to get on the throttle and he picked up a bit of wheel spin, you know, just too much throttle
[11:47.680 -> 11:49.440] for the amount of rear grip available.
[11:49.440 -> 11:52.560] With some steering lock, that's the key though, isn't it?
[11:52.560 -> 11:55.920] With some steering lock because he's in a corner, you know, the exit of the final corner,
[11:55.920 -> 12:00.400] sorry, the exit of the chicane takes you into the final corner. So your acceleration zone
[12:00.400 -> 12:07.460] necessitates some steering angle, so you can't get around that. And he got some wheel spin and the rear started to step out.
[12:07.460 -> 12:08.640] He started getting some oversteer.
[12:08.640 -> 12:12.220] And the only cure for that, when the problem is the throttle,
[12:12.220 -> 12:13.760] the cure is to remove the throttle,
[12:13.760 -> 12:15.800] remove the problem, come off the gas.
[12:15.800 -> 12:17.320] Obviously you will lose time
[12:17.320 -> 12:19.120] because you're backing off the throttle,
[12:19.120 -> 12:20.480] but you've caused a problem.
[12:20.480 -> 12:21.880] So you have to deal with it.
[12:21.880 -> 12:22.720] And he kind of didn't.
[12:22.720 -> 12:25.280] He was like, he wanted to have his cake and eat it.
[12:25.280 -> 12:30.520] He wanted to, you know, get away with the wheel spin and still get a good lap time.
[12:30.520 -> 12:34.400] And you have to make a decision at some point, you know, is it worth putting the car in the
[12:34.400 -> 12:37.680] barrier to chase this lap time?
[12:37.680 -> 12:40.440] And I don't think it was because he did so much damage.
[12:40.440 -> 12:42.640] They had to essentially make a new car.
[12:42.640 -> 12:44.120] They had to completely rebuild it.
[12:44.120 -> 12:50.160] Well, this is really interesting. They had to make a new car. So they replaced so many parts
[12:50.160 -> 12:56.000] that it was deemed to be not the same car, a new car. And it's not the olden days where you can
[12:56.000 -> 13:01.920] have a T-car and you can put your car in the wall and then run back and try to claim that third
[13:01.920 -> 13:05.280] spare car. So I think it was because they changed, was
[13:05.280 -> 13:09.720] it the survival cell, the chassis, or they changed too much of the chassis that that
[13:09.720 -> 13:14.480] became a third car. You can't do that. So it's a 10 second penalty. And he's already
[13:14.480 -> 13:21.520] been doing badly. You know, we had an argument, not an argument, Brad, but Zanvort, I know
[13:21.520 -> 13:26.680] you felt that the Vowles explanation about his hydraulics failing was valid, and
[13:26.680 -> 13:32.640] I'm like, yeah, I'm happy to go, yes, his hydraulics failed over a curb, but he hit
[13:32.640 -> 13:38.180] that curb, and also he's hit a wall in the previous two events, and then now he's hit
[13:38.180 -> 13:40.840] a wall in every event since.
[13:40.840 -> 13:48.000] And so as much as I like James Vowles defending him, he put up a very token defence of him this weekend.
[13:48.000 -> 13:58.000] So, I think the argument against Sargent is the other rookies that have just the same kind of experience as him, or a lot less, that are just doing a much better job.
[13:58.000 -> 14:01.000] Because that Williams isn't the worst car on the grid.
[14:01.000 -> 14:05.280] No, it's not like the Haas with Schumacher, is it? No. And I think
[14:05.280 -> 14:11.760] it's really the Alfa Tauri that is generally the worst. And yet you've got someone like
[14:11.760 -> 14:18.000] Lawson who is outperforming the incumbent. He's outperforming someone who's done several
[14:18.000 -> 14:23.120] seasons and is well regarded, and he's got less experience. So Sargent doesn't really
[14:23.120 -> 14:25.280] have an excuse. That car...
[14:25.280 -> 14:29.600] I have heard people say that he doesn't have the latest parts, but that also doesn't excuse you
[14:29.600 -> 14:33.120] from putting it in the barriers all the time. No, no, no, but Brad, here's the thing. This is...
[14:33.120 -> 14:42.720] it's his fault. So Papa Jimmy, so James Vowles, he did his whole, I'm not angry, I'm disappointed.
[14:42.720 -> 14:45.920] He said, yes, we can't keep him up with the same amount of parts.
[14:45.920 -> 14:51.080] We're struggling with parts due to unforeseen attrition, which is,
[14:51.600 -> 14:57.040] everyone knows that means because Sergeant has been binning it event after event.
[14:57.560 -> 14:59.640] Yeah, it's really not a good look.
[14:59.680 -> 15:02.800] And we've got a lot of races in the season nowadays.
[15:03.240 -> 15:10.600] So by now, in the olden days, when we were young Spanners and we were Formula One fans
[15:10.600 -> 15:12.680] in our youth, the season would have been over by now.
[15:12.680 -> 15:16.300] So we would have had a full season to see what he's like and a team would have made
[15:16.300 -> 15:19.960] a decision on next year's driver based on what they've seen.
[15:19.960 -> 15:24.840] And I don't think we've seen enough, even with the caveats of he's a rookie and he's
[15:24.840 -> 15:25.000] not in one of the best cars out there. I don't think we've seen enough, even with the caveats of he's a rookie and he's not
[15:25.000 -> 15:27.120] in one of the best cars out there.
[15:27.120 -> 15:30.120] I think he's just not ready.
[15:30.120 -> 15:34.320] And whether that's his fault or the team's fault for bringing him in too early or whatever,
[15:34.320 -> 15:36.360] like, or maybe he would never be good enough.
[15:36.360 -> 15:37.360] I don't know.
[15:37.360 -> 15:43.480] But he's not looking, he's not looking really any better than Latifi with the caveat there
[15:43.480 -> 15:45.280] that Latifi had done it for a long,
[15:45.280 -> 15:50.400] long time. So maybe given Stroll levels of experience or Latifi levels of experience,
[15:50.400 -> 15:53.760] he might get there eventually. He would be a lot better. But is that what we're looking for
[15:53.760 -> 15:58.800] in a modern F1 driver when we've got, when we're spoilt for choice of drivers who seemingly can
[15:58.800 -> 16:03.280] come in and just perform instantly like a Piastri or a Lawson? Or a Lawson. Jono?
[16:03.280 -> 16:07.080] Well, first off, the incident, it's obviously his fault, right?
[16:07.080 -> 16:08.960] I mean, he's not really battling with anyone.
[16:08.960 -> 16:12.080] What other fault would be the wind in that situation?
[16:12.080 -> 16:14.560] But it is a downhill traction zone.
[16:14.560 -> 16:15.880] It is very, very difficult.
[16:15.880 -> 16:17.600] That sort of adds to what Brad says.
[16:17.600 -> 16:20.920] It's like you need to back off the throttle because going
[16:20.920 -> 16:23.760] downhill, you don't have sort of gravity sort of helping
[16:23.760 -> 16:25.480] the car stick to the racetrack.
[16:25.480 -> 16:27.160] Point is, he's had his accident.
[16:27.160 -> 16:29.400] Now, he's certainly not going to be driving for Haas
[16:29.400 -> 16:30.840] anytime in the future.
[16:30.840 -> 16:32.780] Like that, I think that's pretty well established.
[16:32.780 -> 16:35.720] There's one seat left on the grid next year and it's his.
[16:35.720 -> 16:38.840] Now, what do you do if you're Williams?
[16:38.840 -> 16:42.420] Is this your P45 resignation letter podcast, like we said,
[16:42.420 -> 16:49.800] and we sort of discuss him and what's happening to Perez. And this race really did decide a lot of futures, I'd have to say, this race
[16:49.800 -> 16:50.800] weekend.
[16:50.800 -> 16:56.580] I think so. Right, Matt, by the way, for everyone who's not in the UK, a P45 is the letter you
[16:56.580 -> 17:01.560] get when you're sacked. And that tells the tax agencies that you are no longer paying
[17:01.560 -> 17:07.120] tax for that company that you're... That's why that is funny from what Jono said.
[17:07.120 -> 17:10.760] Matt, the start line, there was chaos at the start.
[17:10.760 -> 17:11.960] What caused it?
[17:11.960 -> 17:12.960] Whose fault was it?
[17:12.960 -> 17:13.960] Oh, okay.
[17:13.960 -> 17:15.880] I don't get to reply to the sergeant stuff.
[17:15.880 -> 17:16.880] Oh, go on then.
[17:16.880 -> 17:21.960] No, to be fair, no, it would be racist of me to not allow, to silence an American on
[17:21.960 -> 17:22.960] this topic would be racist.
[17:22.960 -> 17:25.360] I'm holding up my hand at the back and being ignored here.
[17:25.360 -> 17:26.360] No, you do it.
[17:26.360 -> 17:27.920] You let me know what you think.
[17:27.920 -> 17:29.400] I will give you a voice.
[17:29.400 -> 17:31.560] Well, I appreciate that.
[17:31.560 -> 17:39.880] Briefly, to put it very briefly, unlike my usual putting it very long way, I feel like
[17:39.880 -> 17:47.180] Sergeant's explanation for this, just to get back to what Brad initially said is that he
[17:47.920 -> 17:51.360] Didn't have a grasp of how much room he had there
[17:51.360 -> 17:56.200] In other words, he expected the track to be farther out now. That's still his mistake
[17:56.240 -> 18:00.620] Yeah, don't get me wrong, but it's a different kind of mistake
[18:01.000 -> 18:08.560] No, it's in the sense that what we've done now had room to do what he was trying to do in
[18:08.560 -> 18:11.960] that car. I think it's a worse mistake. I think not
[18:11.960 -> 18:16.920] knowing the track by the time you get to qualifying is a worse mistake.
[18:16.920 -> 18:21.720] That is fair, except for, guess where F2 doesn't race?
[18:21.720 -> 18:25.280] Yeah, but also guess who came third in the race today?
[18:25.280 -> 18:26.280] Okay.
[18:26.280 -> 18:30.720] Who also had never been in a better car and less difficult.
[18:30.720 -> 18:33.280] And that's the other point I want to make, if I may, real quick.
[18:33.280 -> 18:37.940] As you said that the Alpha Tauri is a worse car, I agree with you.
[18:37.940 -> 18:43.680] But I think the Williams being faster might also be a harder to drive car, kind of like
[18:43.680 -> 18:47.360] the Red Bull that Alex Alban had to deal with
[18:47.360 -> 18:50.600] that year and a half he was racing in the Red Bull team.
[18:50.600 -> 18:55.880] Now this is not to defend overall Sargent, but these are just points that I felt should
[18:55.880 -> 18:56.880] be made.
[18:56.880 -> 18:59.400] Anything else about Sargent can come up in the awards now.
[18:59.400 -> 19:03.640] And in my defense Matt, in the chat I said, hey Matt, we've spent too long talking about
[19:03.640 -> 19:07.320] Sargent, do you mind if we move on to like the big boom boom race stuff?
[19:07.320 -> 19:10.560] And Brad now insists on not letting me continue.
[19:10.560 -> 19:12.960] I want you to continue, I just want to point out that
[19:12.960 -> 19:15.680] there is also another significant Sargent incident
[19:15.680 -> 19:17.600] that we probably need to get to before the awards
[19:17.600 -> 19:19.160] because it's kind of part of the start-ish.
[19:19.160 -> 19:21.680] Oh yeah, that will definitely feature.
[19:21.680 -> 19:23.760] But Matt, bring us to the start
[19:23.760 -> 19:25.280] because there was chaos
[19:25.280 -> 19:32.320] at the start. So I will brush past the McLaren challenge to Verstappen. It was only ever paper
[19:32.320 -> 19:40.000] thin. The wrong McLaren really was second because Piastri didn't have as good a start, Norris had a
[19:40.000 -> 19:46.240] great start, but even if they had managed to swarm Verstappen, anything less than wiping him out
[19:46.240 -> 19:52.400] would have been temporary. So the real interesting stuff was back down the grid. It appeared to me
[19:52.400 -> 20:00.400] like Carlos Sainz jinked left like a lunatic. Sainz went, sorry, Perez went, whoa, I'll just
[20:00.400 -> 20:05.600] wipe out this empty Hamilton-looking space to the left of me, pushed Hamilton off track,
[20:05.600 -> 20:12.240] hit him again, then got to turn two, and then for good measure shoved him off track. What on earth
[20:12.240 -> 20:18.640] was going on at the start? Well, as I like to put it, Perez had a choice to make. He could either
[20:18.640 -> 20:23.680] hit Carlos Sainz or he could hit Lewis Hamilton. Well, hang on. And he chose to hit Hamilton.
[20:23.680 -> 20:25.840] He could have stayed still, couldn't he?
[20:25.840 -> 20:26.840] Brad?
[20:26.840 -> 20:27.840] Well, no.
[20:27.840 -> 20:29.640] I actually want to defend, I can't believe I'm going to do this.
[20:29.640 -> 20:31.400] I want to defend Perez in this situation.
[20:31.400 -> 20:34.400] For the last time this show I'm imagining.
[20:34.400 -> 20:39.920] So as a driver, you actually, he didn't really have a choice to not hit Hamilton because
[20:39.920 -> 20:42.260] you react to the car coming towards you.
[20:42.260 -> 20:45.280] When you're pressed into a small gap like that,
[20:45.280 -> 20:52.280] and a car suddenly jinxed towards you, it's very, very difficult to suppress the natural
[20:52.280 -> 20:56.840] reaction to just swerve away from that thing. And if that means you dink into a car that
[20:56.840 -> 21:02.320] happens to be pressed up against you on your other side, that kind of often tends to happen
[21:02.320 -> 21:05.680] because that car might get out of the way. There's a
[21:05.680 -> 21:09.440] chance that car might get out of the way, but the car that's coming towards you is definitely going
[21:09.440 -> 21:16.960] to hit you. So you have a choice to try and help avoid the definite accident. And the maybe
[21:16.960 -> 21:23.520] accident is kind of a secondary problem. So that is my only defense of Perez this evening, because
[21:23.520 -> 21:25.520] the rest is going to be abuse.
[21:25.520 -> 21:26.520] Jono.
[21:26.520 -> 21:31.720] The problem is, watching from science's perspective and his onboard shot is, it looked like the
[21:31.720 -> 21:36.880] door to the right, or the inside, where Leclerc was defending, was going away.
[21:36.880 -> 21:37.880] It was vanishing.
[21:37.880 -> 21:41.480] And that's why he's jinked left to go, well, I'm going to need to go to the left here.
[21:41.480 -> 21:44.620] And that's what he's probably thought, oh, look, I'm three wide.
[21:44.620 -> 21:49.440] Not knowing he's actually four wide, because Lewis Hamilton's had an exact equivalent start like him and
[21:49.440 -> 21:54.520] just absolutely nailed it off the line. Now it's around one of the most narrow race tracks
[21:54.520 -> 21:58.520] we ever go to on the calendar as well. We've had incidents like this at the past at the
[21:58.520 -> 22:01.960] start line, you know, you know, when you go to a racetrack or you go to a Formula One
[22:01.960 -> 22:05.180] race, you start watching the Grand Prix lights out away we go, whatever you want to a racetrack or you go to a Formula One race, you start watching the Grand Prix, lights out, away we go,
[22:05.180 -> 22:07.300] whatever you want to say and all that shambles.
[22:07.300 -> 22:10.260] You never expect incidents on the straight,
[22:10.260 -> 22:11.980] you know, heading to turn one.
[22:11.980 -> 22:13.260] But at Suzuka it's happened
[22:13.260 -> 22:14.980] and I can count maybe two, three years
[22:14.980 -> 22:18.020] in the last maybe 10, 15 races we've had here.
[22:18.020 -> 22:20.740] I remember 2012 had a very big incident
[22:20.740 -> 22:23.100] at the start line with Raikkonen, Alonso,
[22:23.100 -> 22:24.820] doing pretty much what we saw today
[22:24.820 -> 22:29.360] between the two Ferraris and Lewis and Perez as well.
[22:29.360 -> 22:33.640] I think we've got an early contender, Matt, for comment of the week in our Patreon live
[22:33.640 -> 22:34.640] chat.
[22:34.640 -> 22:39.120] Patreon.com forward slash MrApex to catch us in the Patreon live chat and get our extra
[22:39.120 -> 22:42.240] Patreon content and get ad-free feeds.
[22:42.240 -> 22:45.160] Rob Asher says, I've never been hit by Sergio Perez,
[22:45.160 -> 22:47.960] and I'm starting to feel a little left out.
[22:47.960 -> 22:51.960] Well, I can't blame him, but in Perez's defense,
[22:51.960 -> 22:53.320] and I love this,
[22:53.320 -> 22:56.080] this must be how the physicist feels when they said,
[22:56.080 -> 22:59.080] oh, I have now, this is Isaac Newton,
[22:59.080 -> 23:01.920] oh, gravity, I get it now, and it applies to everything,
[23:01.920 -> 23:04.680] because every incident we're gonna discuss at the start
[23:04.680 -> 23:09.680] happened at the same place and had the same basic constraints. And as Jono points out,
[23:09.680 -> 23:16.640] one, you have a track that is narrowing. It's a funnel into turn one. So people on the inside
[23:16.640 -> 23:21.760] are headed to the outside. People on the outside are headed to the inside. And the second thing
[23:21.760 -> 23:26.560] you have is more than two cars next to each other. So the person
[23:26.560 -> 23:30.480] on the inside doesn't know the person in the middle has a person on the outside, and the
[23:30.480 -> 23:35.520] person on the outside has nowhere to go, even if they know the person in the middle has a person
[23:35.520 -> 23:42.000] on the inside next to them, headed towards them. And that is what caused, approximately,
[23:42.000 -> 23:48.500] the problem for Perez. You had signs coming towards him, you had Hamilton on the outside with nowhere to go,
[23:48.500 -> 23:50.520] and Perez is forced to make that choice.
[23:50.520 -> 23:53.600] But the real cause of this incident-
[23:53.600 -> 23:54.600] This is where we need to be.
[23:54.600 -> 23:55.600] Yeah.
[23:55.600 -> 23:56.600] Go on.
[23:56.600 -> 23:57.600] This is what I wanted to get to.
[23:57.600 -> 23:58.600] This is the juicy stuff.
[23:58.600 -> 24:02.080] Was the fact that Charles Leclerc forgot how to start his car.
[24:02.080 -> 24:03.080] He did!
[24:03.080 -> 24:06.320] And Matt, I don't think anyone has picked up on this.
[24:06.320 -> 24:10.680] You're the only person who I've seen sharing this with people. He's like, Leclerc had a
[24:10.680 -> 24:16.400] horror start, and so as much as I think that Carlos was the agent of chaos here, Charles
[24:16.400 -> 24:22.280] Leclerc just borked the start. Sainz tried to go down the inside, but Sainz, knowing
[24:22.280 -> 24:25.160] that he'd made a bad start, made sure that he only
[24:25.160 -> 24:29.480] left like 0.9 of a car's width to the inside.
[24:29.480 -> 24:31.520] Yeah, well, and this is what it is.
[24:31.520 -> 24:34.160] It's, um, and I'll see, I come from a bike racing background.
[24:34.160 -> 24:35.720] You race on the Velodrome and Sprint still wines and rules.
[24:35.720 -> 24:36.720] Have you ridden bikes, Matt?
[24:36.720 -> 24:37.720] Have you?
[24:37.720 -> 24:38.720] No.
[24:38.720 -> 24:39.720] Yeah.
[24:39.720 -> 24:40.720] Yeah.
[24:40.720 -> 24:41.720] Yeah.
[24:41.720 -> 24:42.720] And yeah, you know, the fixed gear with no race.
[24:42.720 -> 24:43.720] Yeah, I wish you'd said.
[24:43.720 -> 24:44.720] Yeah, yeah.
[24:44.720 -> 24:45.520] I've, I've, I've, I've done that. I'm sure I've talked about it because, you know, the fixed gear with, you know, what she'd said. Yeah, yeah, I've I've I've I've done that.
[24:45.520 -> 24:48.920] I'm sure I've talked about it because, you know, I like to talk about it.
[24:49.560 -> 24:52.600] But there are there are very specific rules.
[24:52.600 -> 24:54.840] In fact, I remember being at a district championship
[24:54.840 -> 24:58.240] and seeing someone disqualified for weaving at the finish
[24:58.480 -> 24:59.920] to block someone passing them.
[24:59.920 -> 25:01.240] And this is what happened.
[25:01.240 -> 25:06.340] Leclerc starts off one direction to the outside after he catches his wheel spin.
[25:06.340 -> 25:10.500] Sines sees that he's made a slow start, goes to the inside.
[25:10.500 -> 25:14.640] Leclerc looks in his mirrors and changes direction.
[25:14.640 -> 25:17.280] And now Sines is closing very rapidly,
[25:17.280 -> 25:18.820] sees the change of direction.
[25:18.820 -> 25:21.840] And the only way to avoid hitting Leclerc,
[25:21.840 -> 25:23.260] this is what I'm getting at,
[25:23.260 -> 25:25.440] is to go the opposite direction, which
[25:25.440 -> 25:27.440] is directly towards Perez.
[25:27.440 -> 25:33.120] Perez sees him coming, and as Brad says, reacts to it, and voila, you have Hamilton on the
[25:33.120 -> 25:36.440] grass saying, wait a minute, what did I do to Perez this time?
[25:36.440 -> 25:37.440] Jonah.
[25:37.440 -> 25:40.440] ALICE I was just gonna add that, y'know, what can
[25:40.440 -> 25:42.080] you do in this situation?
[25:42.080 -> 25:43.640] Do we have to blame somebody in this situation?
[25:43.640 -> 25:44.640] JUSTIN Yes!
[25:44.640 -> 25:45.360] Yes, we do. Yeah, always.
[25:45.400 -> 25:48.560] A lot of people had bad starts, you know, from Leclerc.
[25:48.720 -> 25:50.880] Verstappen had a bad start from P1.
[25:50.880 -> 25:55.080] I don't know how he survived, you know, still first going into the first couple
[25:55.080 -> 25:59.000] corners, and that's because I know Oscar Piastri said after the race
[25:59.440 -> 26:03.800] that he got too excited over his start and he added a bit too much throttle,
[26:03.800 -> 26:11.440] which is why the second stage of his time wasn't as good. And then you go back in the pack and you have what initially I
[26:11.440 -> 26:15.600] thought I had one, I was like, what's that lizard that can like see, you know, that lizard that can
[26:15.600 -> 26:21.280] look at like a few things at once? I think it's all lizards. So you're specifically thinking about
[26:21.280 -> 26:27.640] chameleons and geckos? Yeah, well, geckos, well, let's say geckos being in cans at the moment, they're around
[26:27.640 -> 26:29.280] my house pretty much every day.
[26:29.280 -> 26:35.440] But the, the, I was watching the start with the McLarens and the Red Bull.
[26:35.440 -> 26:39.440] I had an eye on Hamilton because I saw him around the outside and I was like, oh, Perez
[26:39.440 -> 26:41.000] is squeezing him there.
[26:41.000 -> 26:44.840] And I thought the big commotion was one of those two things.
[26:44.840 -> 26:46.520] But it wasn't. It was another incident behind,otion was one of those two things, but it wasn't.
[26:46.520 -> 26:50.960] It was another incident behind, which was Botsas and Albon, who still collided. So there
[26:50.960 -> 26:54.800] were three separate pieces of drama here at the start at Suzuka.
[26:54.800 -> 26:57.200] Well, whose fault was that, Jono?
[26:57.200 -> 27:03.080] Well, that's another situation where you go, you know, five into half doesn't make any
[27:03.080 -> 27:07.240] sense. You know, there's barely any space in Suzuka, and it's a complex one to unravel.
[27:07.240 -> 27:09.800] Alright, are we really, are we gonna accept that?
[27:09.800 -> 27:11.040] It's a racing incident?
[27:11.040 -> 27:12.040] No.
[27:12.040 -> 27:13.040] Go, Matt!
[27:13.040 -> 27:14.040] Everything's a racing incident.
[27:14.040 -> 27:15.040] No it isn't!
[27:15.040 -> 27:16.040] Matt, whose fault is it?
[27:16.040 -> 27:17.040] Assign blame!
[27:17.040 -> 27:21.840] This is a challenging one for me, and you're gonna have to take my opinion with a certain
[27:21.840 -> 27:25.720] large grain of salt, because it involves Ocon as well.
[27:25.720 -> 27:27.680] And you always dismiss anything that involves him.
[27:27.680 -> 27:31.240] Yes, your Ocon-Fossey agenda is disgusting.
[27:31.240 -> 27:36.120] But what I will say is it happened at the exact same piece of track where Perez had
[27:36.120 -> 27:39.840] just run into Hamilton, but they were further back in the field.
[27:39.840 -> 27:47.200] Ocon got a decent start, Botas got an amazing start. Albon got a terrible start. So what happens is
[27:47.200 -> 27:53.360] Ocon is about a car length in front of Albon. Botas has made up time on both of them and he
[27:53.360 -> 28:00.800] pulls alongside of Albon. At the same moment, Ocon had started moving over because the track
[28:00.800 -> 28:12.720] narrows there. He's basically following the pit outline, you know, the outside pit outline. He was following that. And the rear wheel of Alcon hits the front wheel of Botas.
[28:12.720 -> 28:19.760] He loses his wing, smashes into Albon. And that was the that was the incident. That's a tougher
[28:19.760 -> 28:27.120] one to judge. I would tend to put my last person on the scene rule into effect for that one,
[28:27.120 -> 28:34.960] because unlike LeClerc, who was clearly changing direction to block signs and cause signs to have
[28:34.960 -> 28:42.640] to avoid him, Alcon's movement was very obvious and slow across the track, but it did leave Botas
[28:43.440 -> 28:47.600] nowhere to go. But as he was last into the sandwich,
[28:47.600 -> 28:52.960] okay. I would tend to give him a little bit more blame for that, but it is very close to being a
[28:52.960 -> 28:58.000] racing incident that one, because I'm sure Ocon had no idea. Albon was the other side of Botas.
[28:58.720 -> 29:02.400] And for sure that it was not Albon's fault. That's the one thing that you can say for
[29:02.400 -> 29:07.660] certainty in that incident, when you watch his onboard, he's just driving in a dead straight line, completely minding
[29:07.660 -> 29:10.440] his own business, and then suddenly he's got two wheels in the air.
[29:10.440 -> 29:11.760] Except for the terrible start.
[29:11.760 -> 29:16.920] Yeah, but once you make a terrible start, you can't then be at fault for whatever happens
[29:16.920 -> 29:19.280] afterwards if you literally just drive in a straight line.
[29:19.280 -> 29:24.080] Yeah, yeah, yeah. You're an obstacle. It's like blaming the chicane. Oh no, wait, I love
[29:24.080 -> 29:25.600] blaming chicanes. Anyway, Jono,
[29:25.600 -> 29:26.800] you do it. Yeah, I do. Yeah.
[29:27.440 -> 29:32.800] No, I was just going to add that. Yeah, again, like it gave us some great safety car, you know,
[29:32.800 -> 29:38.560] later on to where the Japanese stewards humbly and respectfully cleared the debris. That gave
[29:38.560 -> 29:49.840] us a great race for the next 50 laps after that. So, yeah, I can we yeah, I just realized as well, do we have time to congratulate Max
[29:49.840 -> 29:56.880] on his Red Bull? So basically, how dare you? Because the show notes literally say the next
[29:56.880 -> 30:08.240] thing is to congratulate Red Bull on what I think is probably the most complete and just brutal domination of a World Constructors
[30:08.240 -> 30:13.840] Championship, Jonno. You're absolutely right. This was sealing the deal. Obviously, it was
[30:13.840 -> 30:20.880] always a matter of when, not if, but the fact that it's happened so early in the season
[30:20.880 -> 30:26.260] and with a number two driver who is not delivering, it's just an incredible
[30:26.260 -> 30:35.780] testament to just the sheer enormity of what Red Bull have done this season. It's shock
[30:35.780 -> 30:40.900] and awe. And I think a lot of the criticism that Red Bull have is just because it has
[30:40.900 -> 30:47.280] been a hurricane and a hurricane, F F1 fans and you can't argue against
[30:47.280 -> 30:53.000] a hurricane. You can't fight against a hurricane. You just have to take shelter, hunker down
[30:53.000 -> 30:57.480] and go, whew, that was a bloody big hurricane.
[30:57.480 -> 31:01.280] And I know we're going to go into Perez a little later on, you know, off our show notes,
[31:01.280 -> 31:07.080] but he's only 33 points ahead of Alon lot, not Alonso, sorry, of Lewis
[31:07.080 -> 31:13.680] Hamilton in the driver's championship. It's so close in my opinion, the greatest F1 car
[31:13.680 -> 31:19.200] of all time, arguably, like you look at their success rate and the 1988 McLaren, they won
[31:19.200 -> 31:24.300] 15 of 16 races. I think where Red Bull's pretty much done exactly the same. They've only lost
[31:24.300 -> 31:26.040] one race so far
[31:26.040 -> 31:27.760] and they've got a longer season to do it.
[31:27.760 -> 31:29.680] And it looks like they're probably going to win
[31:29.680 -> 31:31.760] the rest of the races based on how the racetracks are.
[31:31.760 -> 31:32.600] Oh, they will.
[31:32.600 -> 31:33.440] Yeah.
[31:33.440 -> 31:34.260] Depending on what Vegas is like.
[31:34.260 -> 31:38.720] So for Perez to barely be ahead of the championship,
[31:38.720 -> 31:40.260] because if you remember Max, right?
[31:40.260 -> 31:42.560] Perez is barely going to win this championship
[31:42.560 -> 31:45.440] in the greatest Formula One car of all time, potentially.
[31:45.440 -> 31:49.040] Jono, there will be so much time to slate Perez.
[31:49.040 -> 31:54.040] And as a Perez fan, you might think that I'm not going to join in, but I am.
[31:54.040 -> 32:01.640] But Brad, Verstappen has basically single-handedly won the Constructors' title for Red Bull.
[32:01.640 -> 32:05.760] And as an outspoken Verstappen fan you must be delighted.
[32:05.760 -> 32:12.440] I just wanted to point to the fact that as non-Red Bull and Verstappen fans...
[32:12.440 -> 32:16.000] I don't think there are any Red Bull fans on the panel so we're all in the same boat.
[32:16.000 -> 32:26.720] There's really very few crumbs of comfort either because it's not just that they produced a really fast car that's dominated the season,
[32:26.720 -> 32:33.520] but they also always do brilliant pit stops. They always, whoever they've got behind the scenes that
[32:33.520 -> 32:40.720] knows the rule book inside out, they manage to test the limits of the regulations by knowing
[32:40.720 -> 32:45.600] where there are weak spots, like we saw today with the Perez second retirement.
[32:45.600 -> 32:49.000] No one else knew that. And I don't think any other teams would have done that. And as much
[32:49.000 -> 32:53.400] as it's annoying, and you can point to that as a, um, oh, you know, Red Bull getting away
[32:53.400 -> 32:57.640] with a thing, which is then going to be tightened up. If anyone else tries, anyone else tries
[32:57.640 -> 33:02.720] to do it in the future, which does happen. Yeah. Which, which happens a bit too frequently.
[33:02.720 -> 33:07.620] But the point is they did in this circumstance, some of the other things don't fall under
[33:07.620 -> 33:14.520] this category, but in this situation, it was a rule that they managed to find the edge
[33:14.520 -> 33:17.040] of which needed tightening up.
[33:17.040 -> 33:22.560] And Brad, they asked permission and there was not a good enough reason for the FAA to
[33:22.560 -> 33:24.080] go, no, you can't do that.
[33:24.080 -> 33:28.600] But obviously everyone would have gone, no, obviously you can't do that. Wait, hang on a minute. There's no reason
[33:28.600 -> 33:34.320] you can't do that. Ah, crap. We'd better tighten that up in future, which I'm sure they will
[33:34.320 -> 33:42.220] do. Other examples of this are more blatant. So other examples like Verstappen's very aggressive
[33:42.220 -> 33:46.000] defending in 2021, where they go, okay, well, now no one else can do this.
[33:46.000 -> 33:48.000] That's a bit more egregious.
[33:48.000 -> 33:51.000] Whereas this seems to be a genuine loophole
[33:51.000 -> 33:54.000] where Red Bull went, yeah, there's literally no reason
[33:54.000 -> 33:57.000] why you can't just go back out again.
[33:57.000 -> 34:00.000] And then, yeah, the FIA look at that and go,
[34:00.000 -> 34:03.000] ah, bugger, that's our fault.
[34:03.000 -> 34:08.080] And so you've got that side of their performance, you've got really fast pit stops,
[34:08.080 -> 34:13.360] they're generally very solid on strategy. I'd say really the only thing you can look at as
[34:13.360 -> 34:17.200] a crumb of comfort is that sometimes Verstappen doesn't get a very good start.
[34:18.000 -> 34:18.800] That doesn't help.
[34:18.800 -> 34:23.040] And when you go to Singapore, the car is inexplicably a second off the pace,
[34:23.040 -> 34:25.200] but apart from those things,
[34:30.480 -> 34:35.120] there's not a lot you can point to. So basically, that's my way of saying, that's my way of praising them and saying, you know, they've done obviously a brilliant job. It's just a shame that
[34:36.560 -> 34:42.080] as what's that rubbish podcast about Formula One that is a, that is basically comedian. I'm
[34:42.080 -> 34:45.920] joking. I really enjoy them. Which well, for F1's sake, yeah.
[34:45.920 -> 34:48.360] For F1's sake's tweet, where they said,
[34:48.360 -> 34:50.160] in slightly different terms,
[34:50.160 -> 34:55.080] imagine if Red Bull had two drivers as bad,
[34:55.080 -> 34:57.000] they didn't say bad, they said a naughty word,
[34:57.000 -> 34:59.640] as Perez would be in for a brilliant championship.
[34:59.640 -> 35:00.480] Yeah.
[35:02.800 -> 35:06.120] If you want to revel in me and Brad being sad about, about how
[35:06.120 -> 35:11.240] complete the domination of Red Bull is, that's absolutely fine. But we are acknowledging
[35:11.240 -> 35:14.360] it. And I think, Brad, you're right. It's not, it's not just one magic bullet. They
[35:14.360 -> 35:20.840] didn't just build a great car, which is brilliant. They were good in, in all kind of aspects
[35:20.840 -> 35:25.440] of the race. The strategy is spot on, the pit stops are always fantastic. Compare
[35:25.440 -> 35:31.840] those pit stops to Mercedes and, you know, the way... Yeah, if you want to include the way they
[35:32.480 -> 35:39.440] find loopholes and the way they push the strategy and stretch the rules and force the FIA to change
[35:39.440 -> 35:45.300] what they're doing, you could definitely class that as a great sporting achievement. If you wanted
[35:45.300 -> 35:49.340] to. I don't want to, but I feel I have to.
[35:49.340 -> 35:52.020] Even the way they crowd the referee.
[35:52.020 -> 35:55.260] Oh yeah, yes. Crowding the referee. Definitely.
[35:55.260 -> 36:01.960] It works. And other teams don't do it. And in a way, some of the drivers have learned
[36:01.960 -> 36:07.080] the Verstappen style that was then codified to be legal in subsequent years.
[36:07.080 -> 36:08.560] They've started adopting that,
[36:08.560 -> 36:10.000] as we'll probably talk about with Hamilton
[36:10.000 -> 36:11.960] and his defense on Russell today.
[36:13.000 -> 36:14.880] The teams don't seem to have caught up
[36:14.880 -> 36:19.640] to Red Bull's referee crowding tactics quite yet either.
[36:19.640 -> 36:21.160] So I think one thing we can talk about
[36:21.160 -> 36:26.000] is the way you go racing has been defined by Red Bull and in large
[36:26.000 -> 36:31.760] part by Max Verstappen. So Red Bull and Max Verstappen have redefined how you go racing
[36:31.760 -> 36:38.240] in Formula One. Whether you like that or not, you have to accept it. Jono?
[36:38.880 -> 36:47.600] The rule books in the past used to be, here's the rule for Formula One and this is how we interpret it.
[36:47.600 -> 36:51.680] Other teams would say, okay, but we interpret it this way.
[36:51.680 -> 36:55.920] The FIA would clamp down on it and go, no, this is the way it's interpreted.
[36:55.920 -> 36:56.920] That's the rule.
[36:56.920 -> 37:00.700] For some reason in the last five years, we've lost our way with that.
[37:00.700 -> 37:08.560] It's like Brad said, credit to Red Bull, is that it's their interpretation and the FIA goes, Oh, our rules not clear enough.
[37:08.560 -> 37:11.220] Yeah, you're correct. Even though the FIA have the right
[37:11.220 -> 37:14.820] to go, well, no, this is the way that we interpret it. And we
[37:14.820 -> 37:17.280] understand that you're trying to find these loopholes. But it's
[37:17.280 -> 37:20.800] like the FIA sort of gone, everything needs to be worded so
[37:20.800 -> 37:27.480] specific, like this is, there's no common sense anymore. But Formula One wasn't like this in the past. I know, I
[37:27.480 -> 37:30.120] know. I'm not saying all the time, but I do remember, you
[37:30.120 -> 37:33.500] know, 10 years ago, this wasn't the case. So they've certainly
[37:33.500 -> 37:37.560] reshaped things. Now that the problem with this, right, is as
[37:37.560 -> 37:40.120] much as nobody cares about a constructors championship, this
[37:40.120 -> 37:43.400] is very important, because who's going to buck the trend over the
[37:43.400 -> 37:46.580] next few years and take over Red Bull as quick as car?
[37:46.580 -> 37:51.780] Not only have they probably started on next year's car by like race three this year with
[37:51.780 -> 37:56.080] the amount of dominance they had, they've absolutely smashed out the constructors.
[37:56.080 -> 37:59.680] And I feel sorry for Perez because imagine going on the radio or telling him after the
[37:59.680 -> 38:02.080] race, Hey Sergio, we won the constructors.
[38:02.080 -> 38:04.840] And you're like, yeah, I don't care.
[38:04.840 -> 38:05.160] Yeah.
[38:05.160 -> 38:06.160] Okay.
[38:06.160 -> 38:07.840] So I think that's where we need to go to next.
[38:07.840 -> 38:15.480] Matt, you and me, we have a lot, we enjoy supporting a driver and we enjoy, you know,
[38:15.480 -> 38:19.640] our back and forths and picking apart, you know, who's done well, who hasn't.
[38:19.640 -> 38:26.960] And actually I do really feel like my Perez fandom over the past 10 years has been quite similar to
[38:26.960 -> 38:34.880] your Ocon fan journey. We've kind of both supported drivers who weren't destined for stardom. I think
[38:34.880 -> 38:48.080] the difference is Perez has had two real shots to be tested in top teams. And when Perez and Ocon were up against each other at Alpine or Force India at the
[38:48.080 -> 38:53.000] time, my goodness did we have debates. So can you sympathise with me at all when we
[38:53.000 -> 39:00.440] look at Perez's race today and what it means for his career, when I say I'm not enjoying
[39:00.440 -> 39:05.880] being a Perez fan right now, it's hurting. I don't, I don't think the things
[39:05.880 -> 39:11.540] he's doing now or the way he's racing now or the races he's having now represent the
[39:11.540 -> 39:14.480] things that made me a Perez fan.
[39:14.480 -> 39:20.880] Um, I completely understand where you're coming from. I do want to give a quick shout out
[39:20.880 -> 39:31.600] to good old Honda for being a part of the constructors championship. Oh no, no, that is a Red Bull powertrain. That is not a Honda. And that is why Red Bull got
[39:31.600 -> 39:38.000] dispensation for engine reliability upgrades. So you're wrong. That is not a Honda,
[39:38.000 -> 39:49.000] but continue with your liabilist point. No, it's not libelous. The thing to me about Perez today is that I think it's a confluence of two separate
[39:49.000 -> 39:54.000] trends that we have been, that we have one seen in the past and two been seeing very
[39:54.000 -> 39:55.000] recently.
[39:55.000 -> 39:59.760] The first of which is I do believe Perez, and I think we talked about it last week,
[39:59.760 -> 40:11.440] has gotten pretty used to people just getting out of the way because he's in a red bull. And the second of which is, comes from poker really, the saying on tilt.
[40:11.440 -> 40:16.440] I think he was driving very much on tilt today.
[40:16.440 -> 40:21.880] And the combination of the two, well, I mean, I know we took our whacks at Logan Sargent
[40:21.880 -> 40:25.920] earlier, but Sargent is a rookie and perhaps shouldn't
[40:25.920 -> 40:30.080] have even been put into that seat before he got sent off to Super Formula finishing school.
[40:30.640 -> 40:36.880] He just had the budget and the time was right. Perez is going to be living with this for a lot
[40:36.880 -> 40:43.520] longer, I'm afraid, because it was almost tragic to watch at a certain point. You're just like,
[40:43.520 -> 40:50.880] how could someone with that much experience and that good of a car just have it all go so very, very wrong?
[40:50.880 -> 40:58.880] Jono. He's not even doing what he was hired to do at this stage, which was support Verstappen to a
[40:58.880 -> 41:06.000] Driver's World Championship. He was brought in for that role. You're a number two. This is what you got to do. He did it in 2021.
[41:06.000 -> 41:11.360] And I have to say what he did in Abu Dhabi 2021, holding up Lewis borderline.
[41:11.360 -> 41:15.760] I don't even know how that wasn't considered a penalty and dangerous driving anyway, different race.
[41:15.760 -> 41:16.960] But literally...
[41:16.960 -> 41:17.600] No, no.
[41:17.600 -> 41:23.680] The rest of the show is now exploring Perez's defense of Lewis Hamilton in Abu Dhabi 2021.
[41:23.680 -> 41:24.160] Yes.
[41:24.160 -> 41:24.960] No, no, no.
[41:24.960 -> 41:25.000] So basically like that race, you know, for people who don't know, just for a quick five seconds. Perez's defense of Lewis Hamilton in Abu Dhabi 2021. Yes. No, no, no.
[41:25.000 -> 41:28.680] So basically, like that race, you know, for people who don't know,
[41:28.680 -> 41:32.960] just for a quick five seconds, held him up, couldn't make the pit stop.
[41:33.040 -> 41:34.120] That's what happens.
[41:34.120 -> 41:37.760] Anyway, he now hasn't really done much of that since now,
[41:37.760 -> 41:39.600] obviously, because Red Bull have had such a dominant car.
[41:39.600 -> 41:42.560] We haven't noticed it because Wasabian hasn't needed that.
[41:42.560 -> 41:44.960] You know, he can win this championship on his own.
[41:44.960 -> 41:45.000] He doesn't need a teammate to support him. But what happens if Red Bull's car next year flops? noticed it because Vesapen hasn't needed that. You know, he can win this championship on his own.
[41:45.000 -> 41:46.560] He doesn't need a teammate to support him.
[41:46.840 -> 41:51.000] But what happens if Red Bull's car next year flops, you know, which it probably won't.
[41:51.000 -> 41:56.040] But if there's a chance where they'll need Perez to come and support Max to win these titles.
[41:56.200 -> 41:57.080] And he's not doing that.
[41:57.080 -> 41:58.440] And that's the reason he was brought in.
[41:58.520 -> 42:01.760] And if he's not doing that, that's the reason somebody else will be brought into that seat.
[42:02.000 -> 42:08.520] Brad, I suspect and I haven't looked at the figures, but I think there's more drivers
[42:08.520 -> 42:13.100] that have been hit by Perez than haven't been hit by Perez.
[42:13.100 -> 42:17.220] He was never like that before Red Bull.
[42:17.220 -> 42:19.540] Apart from Ocon, yes, Matt, apart from Ocon, shush, shush, shush.
[42:19.540 -> 42:22.540] Yeah, I was just about to say that.
[42:22.540 -> 42:27.360] I think what's frustrating for me, and I say frustrating, I don't really care because I
[42:27.360 -> 42:30.880] don't really have, I'm not really invested in Perez at all.
[42:30.880 -> 42:36.760] But what's frustrating from just a driver point of view, you know, on behalf of anyone
[42:36.760 -> 42:42.920] who's a driver, is that you hope that when someone's given a championship winning car,
[42:42.920 -> 42:46.000] a car which is capable of winning the championship,
[42:46.000 -> 42:50.960] that they're going to be able to do it, do it justice at least, at the very least run
[42:50.960 -> 42:53.380] their teammate respectably close.
[42:53.380 -> 42:58.040] And what we've actually seen in the last three years that Perez has had a title contending
[42:58.040 -> 43:07.200] car, he wasn't even second to his teammate in, or remotely second in 2021. In 2022 again,
[43:07.200 -> 43:11.440] he didn't come second in the championship despite his teammate dominating the championship.
[43:11.440 -> 43:17.600] And in 2023 again, he's in danger of not coming second in a car which is massively dominant.
[43:17.600 -> 43:24.480] Okay, so I agree that that's bad. Can I just put out there that a lot of the dominant
[43:24.480 -> 43:25.240] champions of the
[43:25.240 -> 43:30.320] past, their number two drivers didn't finish second, even though some people thought they
[43:30.320 -> 43:37.280] were good. So Massa nearly won a title, Raikkonen is a world champion, Weber, people thought
[43:37.280 -> 43:42.680] was a good driver. In a team where you pick your number one, sometimes the number two
[43:42.680 -> 43:47.040] gets hung out to dry. Is that no defense at all for Perez?
[43:47.840 -> 43:51.320] I'd also argue the same thing against those people in those situations.
[43:51.360 -> 43:54.480] They clearly did something wrong in those seasons, unless we're talking...
[43:54.480 -> 43:55.640] Unless it was reliability.
[43:55.640 -> 43:58.120] Eddie Irvine? How dare you?
[43:58.600 -> 44:00.840] Yeah, so he's probably quite a good example of this,
[44:01.120 -> 44:05.640] where you've got a driver that isn't good enough to justify their place
[44:05.640 -> 44:11.840] in that car and that there are plenty of drivers on that grid at the same time that in the
[44:11.840 -> 44:16.200] same position would have run the ultimate champion close.
[44:16.200 -> 44:17.760] And I think that's the case we have now.
[44:17.760 -> 44:23.460] I think if you did a straw poll of everyone watching Formula One and every professional
[44:23.460 -> 44:25.040] in the paddock as well.
[44:30.360 -> 44:30.560] I don't think Sergio Perez is coming out in the top 15 drivers, um, at the moment.
[44:33.500 -> 44:33.580] So, and I think even that might be generous.
[44:34.820 -> 44:40.320] I think it might come lower than that. So I think you, this isn't, this also isn't his only time in a top team.
[44:40.320 -> 44:44.060] You know, he's been in McLaren before they decided he wasn't good enough to be there.
[44:44.060 -> 44:51.240] And he forged a really decent career as a kind of strong midfielder. But I think we've seen, we haven't
[44:51.240 -> 44:53.240] even gone into detail about all the stuff that happened with him today.
[44:53.240 -> 44:59.020] No, I was just about to go into that. So look, let's go into detail about that. Even if you
[44:59.020 -> 45:06.480] forget about the clumsy start against Lewis Hamilton, which at least one of the three contacts were pushing off.
[45:06.480 -> 45:11.280] At least one of those might have been investigated if it wasn't for turn one. But you have to
[45:11.280 -> 45:16.480] extend this to Singapore as well. I'm saying all of this, Mexico, I'm looking at you, I'm
[45:16.480 -> 45:22.000] saying all of this is a Perez fan. But like he took out Snowder, his own teammate, you
[45:22.000 -> 45:26.480] know what I mean? He took out Snowda, he took out Albon
[45:26.480 -> 45:32.000] in Singapore and then here he hit Alonso, he hit Hamilton. He was in a thing with Carlos,
[45:32.000 -> 45:37.080] but that probably wasn't his own fault. But then the lunge on Magnus and Jono, that's
[45:37.080 -> 45:41.240] the one where you go, that was, it was desperate.
[45:41.240 -> 45:46.880] It was, and it was completely misjudged. I don't think he expected Kevin to not bow down to
[45:46.880 -> 45:51.440] him. Of all drivers too, it's not like Kevin Magnussen is going to sort of take a step back
[45:51.440 -> 45:58.480] on Sergio Perez. He whacked him pretty good, didn't he too? It wasn't like it was just a
[45:58.480 -> 46:04.080] scrape. He misjudged that corner by, I know I'm exaggerating here, by a mile.
[46:04.320 -> 46:06.160] judge that corner by, I know I'm exaggerating here, by a mile. It was definitely not a good race.
[46:06.160 -> 46:07.160] He came from nowhere.
[46:07.160 -> 46:08.160] He came from nowhere.
[46:08.160 -> 46:10.160] He came from nowhere.
[46:10.160 -> 46:13.760] And it was, you know, Kamui Kobayashi was here in the paddock, I think for the first
[46:13.760 -> 46:16.000] time since he was like a race driver.
[46:16.000 -> 46:21.640] He did it at Kobayashi Corner unofficially named by myself and by many F1 fanatics and
[46:21.640 -> 46:22.640] Kobayashi fans.
[46:22.640 -> 46:26.800] But yeah, they, you know, are you serious? Like at that one corner,
[46:26.800 -> 46:32.080] you know, come on Sergio. Okay, so we've got to move on though because we have two big, big topics
[46:32.080 -> 46:37.120] to talk about. We're going to get to the Mercedes pairing, but first we really have to celebrate
[46:37.120 -> 46:40.320] what were McLaren thinking? How dare they?
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[48:11.920 -> 48:18.560] Honestly, the amount of improvement that McLaren have made is basically rude, Matt.
[48:18.560 -> 48:24.600] How dare they go from that far back on the grid to what they've achieved in the last
[48:24.600 -> 48:26.080] like four or five races.
[48:26.880 -> 48:31.200] Well, you got to love this because all the time we are told by team principals,
[48:31.200 -> 48:35.040] well, we have a five-year plan. We have a 10-year plan. We're planning to do this.
[48:35.040 -> 48:39.440] We're planning to do that. And at the start of the year, we heard exactly this from McLaren.
[48:39.440 -> 48:43.440] Well, you know, when it came down to it, we figured out what the problem was,
[48:43.440 -> 48:47.560] but too late to get it on the car for the start of the year.
[48:47.560 -> 48:50.060] So we're going to bring the update as soon as we can.
[48:50.060 -> 48:53.880] And then it turns out they brought the update to the update, which I didn't even know about
[48:53.880 -> 48:55.360] until they brought it.
[48:55.360 -> 49:02.640] And I would say that in terms of development cost and time coefficient, McLaren have won
[49:02.640 -> 49:05.060] this year completely.
[49:09.600 -> 49:12.840] They have turned themselves into arguably at certain circuits, the second fastest team on the grid.
[49:13.360 -> 49:18.520] And I think unlike Mercedes, they started out with a car that they could adapt
[49:18.520 -> 49:23.420] and the way they've done it is by focusing a lot on the body work, which
[49:23.420 -> 49:27.840] is much cheaper and easier to redesign and tack onto
[49:27.840 -> 49:33.120] than messing about with the suspension and the gearbox and this and that and the other. And to
[49:33.120 -> 49:39.680] that end, I do believe that they roll their own when it comes to the gearbox and rear suspension.
[49:39.680 -> 49:50.920] I don't think they get those parts from Mercedes, although I'd have to check that to be a hundred percent sure. So yeah, McLaren have done the thing. They did the thing that we thought
[49:50.920 -> 49:55.580] Aston had done at the beginning of the season, but it turns out they really hadn't because
[49:55.580 -> 50:00.500] of all the teams who might've been affected by the TD. Well, you know, Aston is the only
[50:00.500 -> 50:12.400] one that has yet to reclaim its place at the front. So McLaren are not quite close enough for that jump in performance to have saved our season
[50:12.400 -> 50:18.320] because can you imagine if they'd done almost exactly the improvement they'd done but they'd
[50:18.320 -> 50:23.440] actually caught Red Bull and suddenly we had, okay the championships are decided but
[50:23.440 -> 50:30.000] we've got some races to end the season with with Nor Norris and Piastri getting, well, I mean, they are amongst the Red Bulls
[50:30.000 -> 50:33.760] because one of the Red Bulls driver, one of the Red Bull drivers didn't turn up, but they-
[50:33.760 -> 50:36.320] They're just talking about Max here, let's be clear.
[50:36.320 -> 50:42.480] Yeah. We just aren't quite close enough. But having said that, I think, and Norris pointed
[50:42.480 -> 50:49.120] this out after the race, without another moment of Perez terrorism during the race, where he held Norris up an additional
[50:49.120 -> 50:54.040] nine or 10 seconds, he actually would have been relatively close to Verstappen by the
[50:54.040 -> 50:59.400] end and by relatively close, I mean, within 10 to 15 seconds, which is decent in modern
[50:59.400 -> 51:00.400] F1.
[51:00.400 -> 51:03.880] Over, well, I mean, we had the safety car and the virtual safety car helping out, but
[51:03.880 -> 51:05.120] it's a 53 lap race
[51:05.120 -> 51:06.600] That's not a terrible margin
[51:06.600 -> 51:10.400] What I do want to point out that we haven't mentioned yet was that I'm pretty sure that
[51:10.640 -> 51:16.440] Red Bull or at least max had a brand new power unit in the back of his car and that can be worth
[51:16.680 -> 51:20.920] Easily several tenths a lap compared to older power units
[51:21.200 -> 51:25.280] Because every time you run them you lose a little bit of horsepower just due to the
[51:25.280 -> 51:33.200] frictional wear in the engine. So, so Red Bull, this was the best possible Red Bull we could have
[51:33.200 -> 51:40.720] seen. And at the end of it all, McLaren were inside 20 seconds on them and look at where they
[51:40.720 -> 51:45.360] started. It gives me actually a little bit of hope for next season.
[51:45.360 -> 51:51.680] And it's also happened multiple times now. This wasn't just an anomaly,
[51:51.680 -> 51:56.320] like they happened to be decent in Singapore whilst Red Bull weren't doing well. McLaren have
[51:56.320 -> 52:00.320] been there ever since the upgrade. And not just these, when they had upgrades earlier in the
[52:00.320 -> 52:05.560] season, was it at Austria where they first put a kit on Norris's
[52:05.560 -> 52:09.840] car and not on Piastri's and Norris was much more competitive.
[52:09.840 -> 52:13.120] So whatever McLaren are doing, even before they've got their new wind tunnel
[52:13.240 -> 52:15.560] on stream, the correlation's good.
[52:16.080 -> 52:20.460] And I thought maybe the kind of departure of James Key at the beginning
[52:20.460 -> 52:23.040] of the year, where it was all a bit messy and they realized it had all
[52:23.040 -> 52:29.040] gone wrong over the winter, that looked to me like a team that was in for a really bad
[52:29.040 -> 52:36.120] year and you've got a couple of years wait before any new hirings or any new design philosophy
[52:36.120 -> 52:41.240] helps you out. Actually, it's just all happened in such a shorter timeframe than I would have
[52:41.240 -> 52:42.720] expected. Jono, you're on mute.
[52:42.720 -> 52:49.520] Sorry, yes, I was on mute. They're basically doing what Mercedes, uh, we've wanted Mercedes to do the last
[52:49.520 -> 52:52.720] year, year and a half is, is based bring an upgrade.
[52:52.720 -> 52:54.520] That's going to turn things around for the team.
[52:54.780 -> 52:58.960] McLaren have done it on a, on a lower budget based on what I've
[52:58.960 -> 53:00.320] seen from the last couple of years.
[53:00.840 -> 53:06.400] And it not to switch this into a Mercedes chat, but just a quick segue on them is, when
[53:06.400 -> 53:13.080] are they going to realize that this is not working and switch things up? And that's where
[53:13.080 -> 53:17.200] every Lewis Hamilton interview I've listened to this weekend, he's been so vocal about
[53:17.200 -> 53:21.520] it, at least on Saturday and Sunday mainly, about the direction they've taken. And I think
[53:21.520 -> 53:27.520] he notices this. He sees what McLaren have done. And it is
[53:27.520 -> 53:34.880] great and a testament to McLaren to somehow spring themselves up 2009-esque into a competitive car
[53:34.880 -> 53:41.520] from nowhere. And credit to Piastri too, who's doing a race later. He gets all these upgrades,
[53:41.520 -> 53:52.000] like Brad said, one race later, and he's still managing to do well. They're in for a good couple of years. I have a feeling that it ain't going
[53:52.000 -> 53:55.320] to end here for McLaren. I feel like the upgrades are going to come in. This car is going to
[53:55.320 -> 54:00.840] transition into next year very well. Then we could see them as a regular midfield best
[54:00.840 -> 54:09.000] of the rest. Alright, let's move on to Mercedes.
[54:13.000 -> 54:16.000] Actually, part of the reason I moved on to Mercedes too quickly, and I shouldn't have done, is because I got too excited
[54:16.000 -> 54:18.000] about Piastri's qualifying performance.
[54:18.000 -> 54:21.000] And I think, to anyone who follows my Twitter,
[54:21.000 -> 54:29.000] I have to go, yes, OK, yes, I did get carried away on Saturday that I was like, this, he could be the Norris killer. And I'm not quite sure
[54:29.000 -> 54:36.640] why in my F1 fandom space, I've decided that Norris needs to be crushed. So I can't really
[54:36.640 -> 54:42.720] explain why, Brad, but like, I do, I do feel like, ah, someone needs to put Norris in his
[54:42.720 -> 54:47.200] place. I honestly can't explain why I don't like Norris,
[54:47.200 -> 54:48.800] but I am a Piastri fan,
[54:48.800 -> 54:53.140] and then I'm rooting for Piastri to show Norris up,
[54:53.140 -> 54:53.980] but he didn't.
[54:53.980 -> 54:56.520] Norris did very, very well in the race.
[54:56.520 -> 55:00.160] Yeah, I'm actually probably on exactly the same level
[55:00.160 -> 55:01.800] as you on this.
[55:01.800 -> 55:07.200] I liked Norris, and then for some reason reason I didn't quite like him as much and then
[55:07.200 -> 55:11.920] when Piastri came along it was like yeah he'll show up. But I still think Norris is amazing.
[55:11.920 -> 55:18.400] I actually think Norris is in a similar level but nowhere near quite as strongly that I think
[55:18.400 -> 55:23.600] Verstappen is really good but I don't like him. I think Norris is also really really good and
[55:23.600 -> 55:25.040] potentially on Verstappen's level,
[55:25.040 -> 55:30.240] which will be a controversial comment. But it's not that I don't like Norris, it's just that I
[55:30.240 -> 55:37.280] don't love him. And I really do like Piastri. I love, in the same way that Alex van Geen
[55:37.280 -> 55:47.780] thinks he's boring, I love that he's just so dry and calm and unfazed by what is, he is a really young person as
[55:47.780 -> 55:52.200] a rookie driving for McLaren in his rookie season.
[55:52.200 -> 55:55.720] And suddenly he's got a really decent car and he's taking the fight to his extremely
[55:55.720 -> 55:56.960] well-regarded teammate.
[55:56.960 -> 56:02.740] I would be bouncing off the walls excited about all of the successes.
[56:02.740 -> 56:04.080] And he just doesn't seem to care.
[56:04.080 -> 56:06.400] He's like, he's not even celebrating.
[56:06.400 -> 56:08.600] It's like he doesn't care until it's a win
[56:08.600 -> 56:11.400] and then maybe we'll see something.
[56:11.400 -> 56:12.720] Yeah, I'm a fan.
[56:12.720 -> 56:13.560] There you go, Jono.
[56:13.560 -> 56:16.720] You must be by default, obviously a fan.
[56:16.720 -> 56:17.920] Well, yeah, it depends.
[56:17.920 -> 56:20.400] I'm not big on the whole patriotism thing,
[56:20.400 -> 56:23.360] but he is great and it's great for the country of Australia
[56:23.360 -> 56:25.880] to have two drivers on the grid next year and one of them
[56:26.060 -> 56:27.880] Could finish on the podium
[56:27.880 -> 56:35.680] Finally and not get disqualified like Daniel Ricciardo was back in 2014 at the Australian Grand Prix, but in terms of Piastri
[56:36.760 -> 56:42.640] What's so impressive and and something that Brad just alerted me to is he's doing this in his rookie year
[56:43.400 -> 56:47.000] 15-16 races in a year out from racing,
[56:47.000 -> 56:52.840] which is a big deal, to lose, not necessarily lose skill, but just lose your touch for a
[56:52.840 -> 56:53.840] year.
[56:53.840 -> 56:59.120] It's not old school F1 where you have a dedicated test reserve driver who's doing almost as
[56:59.120 -> 57:04.020] more or as many miles as the race drivers.
[57:04.020 -> 57:05.840] There's limited testing these days.
[57:05.840 -> 57:07.240] We've seen in the last two,
[57:07.240 -> 57:10.680] three years in this era of F1 with how limited testing is,
[57:10.680 -> 57:15.840] is the fact that drivers who move teams or rookie drivers really,
[57:15.840 -> 57:18.320] really struggle in their first year in a new car,
[57:18.320 -> 57:20.600] in a different car, in a new team.
[57:20.600 -> 57:24.920] Yet, Piastri, despite having been given upgrades,
[57:24.920 -> 57:27.280] races later, races plural,
[57:27.280 -> 57:31.040] actually I'll take that back, one race later is generally how they've done at McLaren,
[57:31.040 -> 57:36.640] and still match Lando Norris, yet qualify ahead of him? Please. This guy is in for a great future,
[57:36.640 -> 57:42.160] and no question about it, Lando Norris is in for a tough asking at McLaren, especially next year,
[57:42.160 -> 57:50.240] because that's where the transition gets done. But I jumped the gun. I jumped the gun because I've liked how Piastri has kind of entered the
[57:50.240 -> 57:54.880] scene. And I've always kind of had this thing of like, maybe Norris is overrated. And I think
[57:54.880 -> 58:03.520] that's pure sporting fandom and sporting bias. And I was too eager to see, yeah, the Norris killer.
[58:03.640 -> 58:04.160] eager to see the Norris killer.
[58:09.240 -> 58:14.640] And I think qualifying and race pace is such a different beast now in Formula One. And yeah, so the fact that the Piastri is able to keep up with, or anyone
[58:15.040 -> 58:20.320] is able to keep up with a teammate in qualifying, isn't the signifier for
[58:20.320 -> 58:25.600] whether or not they are able to then match their teammate on race pace.
[58:26.400 -> 58:32.560] So I should say at this point that perhaps, although their parting was bitter,
[58:33.120 -> 58:39.680] Piastri should say a thank you to Otmar, at least, if not the team, for hooking him up with a whole
[58:39.680 -> 58:46.680] bunch of historic Formula One cars at important circuits throughout the season in the year
[58:46.680 -> 58:53.400] that he was out of the sport, because I'm sure that didn't hurt him in the slightest,
[58:53.400 -> 58:55.400] being able to get that sort of experience.
[58:55.400 -> 59:00.840] It's the kind of thing that we heard about with Stroll too, before he came to Williams.
[59:00.840 -> 59:06.960] Now the difference here is that Piastri is obviously a world-class talent, but what is
[59:06.960 -> 59:11.920] keeping him, what is keeping him from fulfilling that dream that we all have?
[59:11.920 -> 59:16.080] Norse is the established driver, and there's no more exciting story in Formula One than
[59:16.080 -> 59:19.820] Rookie shows up and beats established class driver.
[59:19.820 -> 59:22.440] We loved it when Hamilton took it to Alonso.
[59:22.440 -> 59:24.440] We loved it when Alonso took it to Schumacher.
[59:24.440 -> 59:30.240] It's just, it is the best storyline, but the boy has to learn how to
[59:30.240 -> 59:32.520] manage his tires in the race.
[59:32.880 -> 59:37.440] It just seems like to me that on race pace and especially when the car is full of
[59:37.440 -> 59:41.480] fuel, he is unable to yet.
[59:41.840 -> 59:42.920] I think he'll get there.
[59:43.320 -> 59:48.160] Uh, but he's, he hasn't quite figured out the secret to getting
[59:48.160 -> 59:53.680] through the race fast without overheating the tires. And that's why we see the pace differential.
[59:53.680 -> 59:59.680] Like I mean, he had such a huge advantage because because he pitted during that virtual safety car,
[59:59.680 -> 01:00:03.040] which was accidental. They didn't know it was coming, but it happened. He got
[01:00:05.600 -> 01:00:07.560] was accidental. They didn't know it was coming, but it happened. He got about a 14 second undercut on Verstappen.
[01:00:07.560 -> 01:00:08.560] Yes.
[01:00:08.560 -> 01:00:15.840] But Norris was able to catch him with a regular pit stop, close that gap, and still have enough
[01:00:15.840 -> 01:00:22.840] pace to put a decent gap on him. So that's the knowledge I want for Piastri by time he
[01:00:22.840 -> 01:00:25.440] gets to next season, so that we can really
[01:00:25.440 -> 01:00:31.120] see the two McLarens just right on the same pace and on the edge of what they're capable
[01:00:31.120 -> 01:00:32.120] of.
[01:00:32.120 -> 01:00:34.640] So I think that's all we've got time for today.
[01:00:34.640 -> 01:00:39.280] Oh, unless you wanted to talk about the Mercedes thing.
[01:00:39.280 -> 01:00:40.840] Did you?
[01:00:40.840 -> 01:00:43.480] Was there something to discuss with Mercedes?
[01:00:43.480 -> 01:00:44.880] Okay, wow.
[01:00:44.880 -> 01:00:47.280] The gloves are off at Mercedes.
[01:00:47.280 -> 01:00:51.920] So, Lewis Hamilton sets about his business, he makes a couple of mistakes.
[01:00:51.920 -> 01:00:55.360] George Russell tries to overtake him, is unsuccessful,
[01:00:55.360 -> 01:01:02.720] chooses a very alternate strategy that no one else has decided to go for in that race.
[01:01:02.720 -> 01:01:06.800] A cheeky one-stop that leaves him vulnerable at the end,
[01:01:06.800 -> 01:01:14.000] makes him be overtaken by everyone from Verstappen to Sainz. But there is controversy,
[01:01:14.000 -> 01:01:25.600] there is dynamics in that team that is bubbling to the surface after an all- season long, or in fact, we could say a two season long map,
[01:01:25.960 -> 01:01:38.960] pretends that all is well at Mercedes, but this is exactly the same as every other volatile teammate battle in every racing series on the planet.
[01:01:39.200 -> 01:01:41.360] At Mercedes, there's a clear battle.
[01:01:41.640 -> 01:01:43.720] Hamilton versus Russell.
[01:01:44.200 -> 01:01:51.160] Yeah. And I will attempt a hot take here. So if I get it wrong, feel free to tell me
[01:01:51.160 -> 01:01:57.520] I've gotten it wrong. I think the issue here is that Lewis, whatever else he's concerned
[01:01:57.520 -> 01:02:10.000] about, is looking at Ferrari and the Constructors' Championship and the gap from Mercedes to Ferrari. And I think Russell is looking in the mirror at himself and his own results.
[01:02:10.000 -> 01:02:14.240] And I think that Lewis has had enough of that.
[01:02:14.240 -> 01:02:15.760] And I think that we saw it today.
[01:02:15.760 -> 01:02:16.160] Jono.
[01:02:17.040 -> 01:02:17.440] He's gone.
[01:02:18.080 -> 01:02:19.440] Jono has disappeared.
[01:02:19.440 -> 01:02:20.320] I think I'm back.
[01:02:20.320 -> 01:02:20.480] Yeah.
[01:02:20.480 -> 01:02:21.440] Have you got me now?
[01:02:21.440 -> 01:02:24.160] Yeah, but you're on the wrong microphone and you sound terrible.
[01:02:24.800 -> 01:02:27.440] Oh, okay. Oh, there you go. There there you go. You're fine. You're fine.
[01:02:27.440 -> 01:02:29.280] Tech issues. Go, go, go.
[01:02:29.280 -> 01:02:32.800] The cables. To be fair, you're on the other side of the world.
[01:02:33.760 -> 01:02:35.760] So there's a lot of cabling to deal with. Yes.
[01:02:35.760 -> 01:02:40.560] Okay, go on. Carry on. What I was going to allude to was, that's
[01:02:40.560 -> 01:02:44.880] interesting what Matt talks about, because I actually thought it was not the opposite today,
[01:02:44.880 -> 01:02:50.120] but I actually thought Lewis was thinking about his own race more and losing a position to science but
[01:02:50.600 -> 01:02:53.780] Matt sort of proved me wrong because science is Ferrari, you know
[01:02:53.780 -> 01:02:56.940] So yeah, Lewis is thinking big picture as well in that sense
[01:02:57.240 -> 01:03:02.080] What I wasn't happy about with the end battle was the TV pundits
[01:03:02.400 -> 01:03:07.040] Now I was watching Sky's coverage today and the TV pundits constantly
[01:03:07.040 -> 01:03:13.020] going well George should let Lewis through and then if, if, oh no sorry, George should
[01:03:13.020 -> 01:03:16.500] hold up Lewis and then let Lewis through on the final lap. I'm like why? Why does he need
[01:03:16.500 -> 01:03:20.760] to let Lewis through on the final lap? You know, Lewis needs to gain his position legitimately
[01:03:20.760 -> 01:03:27.360] first. So it was a tricky situation at the end of the race in that situation. I guess they're on different strategy and everything.
[01:03:27.360 -> 01:03:29.360] Brad has some hands up.
[01:03:29.360 -> 01:03:33.720] If I'm George Russell, Brad, I sort of sit there going, well, why do I need to do this
[01:03:33.720 -> 01:03:39.520] Carlos Sainz trick and help Lewis defend Sainz and then let him through on the final lap?
[01:03:39.520 -> 01:03:43.760] I don't need to do that. At the end of the day, Lewis needs to earn that position. And
[01:03:43.760 -> 01:03:48.400] they swapped the cars and it actually turned out to be the correct decision because they at least managed to defend one of
[01:03:48.400 -> 01:03:53.360] the Ferraris. The signs didn't jump both machines. So I thought it was the correct decision at the
[01:03:53.360 -> 01:03:59.120] end of the day. There you go. I just want to explain why, to answer Gianno's question basically,
[01:03:59.120 -> 01:04:04.240] why does George need to let Lewis through? At the time, when I was watching this live,
[01:04:04.240 -> 01:04:10.880] I was in exactly the same camp as you. I wasn't really thinking of the race picture in its entirety. And I was
[01:04:10.880 -> 01:04:15.680] thinking, oh, you know, Lewis, why doesn't he just do an overtake? You know, he's, if he's quicker
[01:04:15.680 -> 01:04:21.600] and he's to overtake. I'd forgotten that Russell was only on this alternate strategy because he
[01:04:21.600 -> 01:04:29.600] was behind and couldn't get past Lewis earlier in the race and had asked for this strategy or certainly discussed it with the team and was basically
[01:04:29.600 -> 01:04:32.560] rolling the dice on what was probably a slower strategy.
[01:04:32.560 -> 01:04:36.560] And in every other teammate situation, if you saw this happen at Alpine, which we'll
[01:04:36.560 -> 01:04:41.900] probably get onto later, or pretty much any other team, if one driver is doing a wildly
[01:04:41.900 -> 01:04:46.160] different strategy, you know when they meet in the middle, when
[01:04:46.160 -> 01:04:51.160] their strategies converge and cross over, the team has a responsibility to make sure
[01:04:51.160 -> 01:04:53.840] that you don't ruin both their strategies.
[01:04:53.840 -> 01:04:54.840] That's just how it works.
[01:04:54.840 -> 01:04:57.420] That's as a team, that's the way you run the race.
[01:04:57.420 -> 01:05:02.440] You make sure that the driver that's on the faster strategy and was ahead at the time
[01:05:02.440 -> 01:05:06.600] the other driver decided to gamble gets through without too much of a hassle,
[01:05:06.600 -> 01:05:09.600] especially when he's being chased down by a rival team.
[01:05:09.600 -> 01:05:12.600] Yeah, yeah, this is, that's the thing, Brad.
[01:05:12.600 -> 01:05:14.600] It's like, yeah, so fair play.
[01:05:14.600 -> 01:05:20.000] If Russell wants to roll the dice, and he has made a habit of rolling the dice,
[01:05:20.000 -> 01:05:21.700] he very, very often says,
[01:05:21.700 -> 01:05:25.480] okay, I'll go on the harder tire for longer.
[01:05:25.760 -> 01:05:28.160] And as Kyle says, I'll go hang.
[01:05:28.520 -> 01:05:30.360] So he'll go hang for a safety car.
[01:05:30.560 -> 01:05:31.400] So he'll go, right.
[01:05:31.400 -> 01:05:35.040] If there's, if there's a safety car, if something happens, then I get a free
[01:05:35.240 -> 01:05:39.560] pit stop and then I gain track position.
[01:05:39.720 -> 01:05:43.800] But basically like he's only ahead because of that gamble.
[01:05:44.160 -> 01:05:47.880] The whole stream of cars from Verstappen
[01:05:47.880 -> 01:05:53.520] to Sainz basically are all destined to go past him. He has no defence, he's seconds
[01:05:53.520 -> 01:06:00.360] a lap slower, and in fact he doesn't really defend that hard against the rest of the cars
[01:06:00.360 -> 01:06:06.480] coming through. But when it comes to Hamilton, he Hamilton he goes no I must maintain this position
[01:06:06.480 -> 01:06:13.680] this position not the McLarens not the Ferraris not the not the Red Bull up ahead but now that
[01:06:13.680 -> 01:06:20.960] it's Hamilton I will not yield. And this would be different if this was a pre-arranged strategy
[01:06:20.960 -> 01:06:26.240] before the race and maybe we were in the final couple of laps and George and Lewis were
[01:06:26.240 -> 01:06:30.160] both fighting for a similar position in the championship. But that's a very, very different
[01:06:30.160 -> 01:06:35.120] circumstance from what's actually the case. You've got one of the drivers who is in the hunt for
[01:06:35.120 -> 01:06:39.040] second place in the Drivers' Championship, whether or not he cares, he certainly says he doesn't care
[01:06:39.040 -> 01:06:44.320] particularly about that. The team are in the hunt for second in the Constructors and it wasn't
[01:06:44.320 -> 01:06:47.200] pre-arranged, it's something that's changed during the race
[01:06:47.200 -> 01:06:51.520] So why should the driver on the normal strategy who isn't doing anything wrong?
[01:06:51.520 -> 01:06:57.480] Although he did do some things wrong earlier, which we can talk about shortly, but he's just going about the plan strategy
[01:06:57.480 -> 01:07:06.800] Why should he suddenly be forced to have to ruin his tires lose a bunch of time and make an overtake on a teammate. It's just very different
[01:07:06.800 -> 01:07:11.680] from two drivers who are battling for a championship. If this was Rosberg, Hamilton,
[01:07:11.680 -> 01:07:15.680] they were super close on points and the championships on the line, I would be all in
[01:07:15.680 -> 01:07:20.560] favor of drivers, the teammates can choose their strategies during the race and try and get one up
[01:07:20.560 -> 01:07:28.240] on each other. But that's just not this situation. Matt. Well, it's interesting because at Alpine, you had a similar, but different situation
[01:07:28.240 -> 01:07:29.760] and I'm glad you bring up those things.
[01:07:29.760 -> 01:07:34.400] But what I want to talk about is that it was Russell affirmatively
[01:07:34.520 -> 01:07:36.760] asking for the alternate strategy.
[01:07:36.760 -> 01:07:42.640] When he realized he wasn't going to be able to pass Lewis, which is fine.
[01:07:43.080 -> 01:07:49.840] But the flip side of that is, as Brad rightly points out if I'm on a one-stop strategy and
[01:07:49.840 -> 01:07:54.480] I'm well, I'm into my 28th or 29th lap on my hard tire.
[01:07:54.480 -> 01:07:56.640] I don't have the pace of Lewis.
[01:07:56.640 -> 01:08:10.480] There's no point in fighting Lewis and it's bad for both of our races if we do that. And especially when when we have Carlos signs in DRS on Lewis and Russell is like, let's
[01:08:10.480 -> 01:08:14.880] use the signs trick like the signs Lando trick.
[01:08:14.880 -> 01:08:16.240] They did.
[01:08:16.240 -> 01:08:17.240] Yeah.
[01:08:17.240 -> 01:08:21.600] And and Hamilton is like, well, that's fine, but I should be in front because I have the
[01:08:21.600 -> 01:08:26.320] pace to stay in front of Carlos and Russell absolutely does not.
[01:08:26.320 -> 01:08:30.240] And the first person to get past if I'm in the middle of the sandwich is going to be
[01:08:30.240 -> 01:08:33.320] me and then we lose both places to Ferrari.
[01:08:33.320 -> 01:08:35.840] And he was completely right about that.
[01:08:35.840 -> 01:08:41.600] Can I be brutally honest and not at all bias as a Lewis Hamilton fan?
[01:08:41.600 -> 01:08:42.600] Of course you can.
[01:08:42.600 -> 01:08:43.600] We trust your neutrality.
[01:08:43.600 -> 01:08:45.360] Oh yeah, please, please trust-
[01:08:45.360 -> 01:08:49.200] You are the Switzerland of this comment, my friend. Oh my god, I've got no stake in this
[01:08:49.200 -> 01:08:55.840] fight at all. But look at the points table, look at the points table. Lewis Hamilton's
[01:08:55.840 -> 01:09:00.880] quite a bit ahead of George Russell and George Russell was right to call his season a disaster
[01:09:00.880 -> 01:09:08.000] because on race pace, George Russell doesn't have it. For whatever reason, you
[01:09:08.000 -> 01:09:12.680] could say that it's Lewis Hamilton's team, you could say he's new to Mercedes, he hasn't
[01:09:12.680 -> 01:09:19.120] caught up yet, but for whatever reason, on race pace, race after race after race in this
[01:09:19.120 -> 01:09:26.480] season, Lewis Hamilton is the fastest driver in Mercedes. And George Russell is fast enough, because
[01:09:26.480 -> 01:09:32.480] he's brilliant at driving race cars, he's fast enough to overtake if Lewis Hamilton
[01:09:32.480 -> 01:09:39.640] makes a mistake. He's fast enough to qualify ahead if he has more of a qualifying setup.
[01:09:39.640 -> 01:10:08.000] Brad, George Russell is fast enough to get in Lewis Hamilton's way and no more. I don't think he's ever been the best qualifying driver at every single event versus good teammates.
[01:10:08.000 -> 01:10:13.440] I agree. People always yell at me when I say Lewis Hamilton isn't actually the best qualifier.
[01:10:13.440 -> 01:10:20.040] People always yell at me and go, he's got 9,000 poles. And he has because of the amount
[01:10:20.040 -> 01:10:31.920] of time he spent at a top team. But if you look at him compared to his teammates, he hasn't actually like dominated even Bottas or Rosberg in the way you'd expect. And I think at least partly
[01:10:31.920 -> 01:10:38.880] that is deliberate because he has looked towards what will suit the race better rather than what
[01:10:38.880 -> 01:10:44.560] will get him one lap pace. But my point being here is that this race he did qualify ahead,
[01:10:44.560 -> 01:10:45.440] pretty comfortably ahead,
[01:10:45.440 -> 01:10:49.040] it was three and a half tenths ahead. As he made the point in the interview afterwards,
[01:10:49.040 -> 01:10:55.920] he made sure everyone knew it was three and a half tenths ahead. And then in the race, he was
[01:10:55.920 -> 01:11:00.560] destined to be faster on race pace because he generally is, but he made a couple of mistakes
[01:11:00.560 -> 01:11:05.360] and the first one of those allowed Russell to have an attack into the final chicane
[01:11:05.360 -> 01:11:11.040] and it was a really good move. So Russell did the move that, hang on I'm gonna have to get this the
[01:11:11.040 -> 01:11:15.760] right way around now because I wasn't young enough to see this live, Senna and Prost into that final
[01:11:15.760 -> 01:11:22.960] chicane. Senna went for the move up the inside like Russell did and Hamilton was in the Prost position
[01:11:22.960 -> 01:11:28.500] and Hamilton isn't a dirty silly driver like sometimes Prost and Senna were,
[01:11:28.500 -> 01:11:30.500] and so he didn't just turn straight on at him.
[01:11:30.500 -> 01:11:36.000] And they both gave each other brilliant amounts of room. It was perfect racing.
[01:11:36.000 -> 01:11:43.000] That's the kind of thing we've been starved of in recent years because of the way people have adopted the Verstappen style of no compromise.
[01:11:43.000 -> 01:11:47.640] But there was compromise, and they both got got through no contact, no damage, brilliant.
[01:11:47.800 -> 01:11:49.820] Hamilton was unable to repass him.
[01:11:50.120 -> 01:11:53.560] Great little bit of action, but the highlight of the race for me, but
[01:11:53.560 -> 01:11:56.780] then Hamilton set about pulling away, you know, built a gap and was
[01:11:56.780 -> 01:12:00.440] clearly faster on race pace again until he made another mistake going
[01:12:00.440 -> 01:12:04.540] slightly wide just before going under the bridge and it, and so obviously
[01:12:04.540 -> 01:12:05.840] Russell at the, at this point,
[01:12:05.840 -> 01:12:10.800] when he's on the radio saying, you know, we're going to fight or we're going to fight each other
[01:12:10.800 -> 01:12:17.200] or the other or the other teams or whatever it was he said. I can understand in the moment why he
[01:12:17.200 -> 01:12:25.920] would feel like that, but also he was only in that position because the driver who was driving faster made a couple of errors. That's it. And
[01:12:26.640 -> 01:12:32.160] I'd like to discuss whether the third incident was actually an error or not.
[01:12:32.160 -> 01:12:32.800] Okay. So...
[01:12:32.800 -> 01:12:35.520] The unpenalized Hamilton defense.
[01:12:35.520 -> 01:12:40.560] Okay. So we're talking about... So as you come out of the hairpin, I think Hamilton's mistake
[01:12:40.560 -> 01:12:45.920] is just before the hairpin. So you've got Degner 1 downhill, Degner 2, he goes out,
[01:12:46.480 -> 01:12:51.680] you know, over the kerb and that gives Russell the opportunity to kind of close up and at the
[01:12:51.680 -> 01:12:59.040] hairpin he gets a run onto him up to the double left-hander of Spoon before the back straight,
[01:12:59.040 -> 01:13:06.080] before 130R and Russell gets a kind of, he gets on the inside out of the hairpin and the
[01:13:06.720 -> 01:13:14.360] turn, the straight if you like, because you're flat out, drifts to the right. Russell gets track position on the
[01:13:14.760 -> 01:13:20.120] outside and then you've got a double left-hander. So he's on the right-hand side of a double
[01:13:20.800 -> 01:13:27.680] left-hander and tries to hang it out around the outside of the first part of Spoon curve.
[01:13:27.680 -> 01:13:31.640] So, first off, that's a very low percentage move.
[01:13:31.640 -> 01:13:31.960] It is.
[01:13:31.960 -> 01:13:38.120] Unless you're already past the driver, you know, unless you're clearly ahead of the driver that's
[01:13:38.120 -> 01:13:48.160] defending by the time you turn into Spoon, you're probably not going round. But that doesn't really excuse the next part, if I'm
[01:13:48.160 -> 01:13:51.160] right about what I think the rules are.
[01:13:51.160 -> 01:13:52.680] Go for it.
[01:13:52.680 -> 01:13:57.120] Which is that, with our new driving rules we've had to get used to over the last couple
[01:13:57.120 -> 01:14:03.840] of years, an attacking car on the outside isn't entitled to any room whatsoever unless
[01:14:03.840 -> 01:14:06.000] they have their car ahead by the apex.
[01:14:06.000 -> 01:14:06.920] I don't like that.
[01:14:06.920 -> 01:14:12.120] I don't like it either. But for consistency's sake, that's what we're left with and that's
[01:14:12.120 -> 01:14:17.480] what the guidelines say. And so the car in Russell's position clearly wasn't ahead by
[01:14:17.480 -> 01:14:22.040] the apex. I don't think they got remotely near the apex at the point they ran wide,
[01:14:22.040 -> 01:14:25.120] just because of the line into that corner.
[01:14:25.120 -> 01:14:31.660] But the part which is controversial is that in defending, Hamilton ran Russell all the
[01:14:31.660 -> 01:14:34.800] way off the track and also didn't stay on himself.
[01:14:34.800 -> 01:14:41.120] The rules as they stand are that you don't have to leave the other driver any room, but
[01:14:41.120 -> 01:14:46.080] you also have to be able to maintain your own car on the circuit. Now,
[01:14:46.080 -> 01:14:52.560] the questionable part here is, do the kerbs, the outside kerbs count as part of the racing surface
[01:14:52.560 -> 01:14:56.320] in that particular corner? Because normally they don't. Normally it's the white line,
[01:14:56.960 -> 01:15:00.800] but Hamilton was on the kerb, but not within the white lines.
[01:15:00.800 -> 01:15:05.680] So this was actually disappointing because initially, like you and I disagreed
[01:15:05.680 -> 01:15:10.720] strongly and people were saying, oh, Brad has tweeted a thing and Spanners has tweeted
[01:15:10.720 -> 01:15:15.000] a thing. And who's right? And I went, no, Brad's definitely wrong about this. And then
[01:15:15.000 -> 01:15:22.400] we've ended up unfortunately agreeing that we're both probably right. So Hamilton, I
[01:15:22.400 -> 01:15:28.240] was only paying attention when I tweeted about the incident where Hamilton doesn't
[01:15:28.240 -> 01:15:34.880] have to leave Russell room because he's ahead and the rules are at the moment if you're ahead at
[01:15:34.880 -> 01:15:40.560] the apex as the inside car you don't have to leave room on the outside. And I actually had thought
[01:15:40.560 -> 01:15:45.600] watching it that he'd stayed on track. But he had left the white lines.
[01:15:45.600 -> 01:15:48.600] So he'd gone outside the white lines, but was on the kerb.
[01:15:48.600 -> 01:15:53.200] And I thought I remembered the race director saying,
[01:15:53.200 -> 01:15:58.600] we are now going to say that the white lines are the track limit all the time.
[01:15:58.600 -> 01:16:01.600] And they don't seem to have stuck by that.
[01:16:01.600 -> 01:16:05.800] And in this race, for example, Leclerc overtook Russell,
[01:16:05.800 -> 01:16:10.640] I think, on the outside of turn one, turn two, also left the white lines, but was on
[01:16:10.640 -> 01:16:17.680] the kerb, and that was deemed to also have been a good pass. So I think in this race,
[01:16:17.680 -> 01:16:27.400] they are saying that the kerbs were in play. And it's horribly inconsistent, Matt. And according to what the rules are at the
[01:16:27.400 -> 01:16:35.480] moment, Hamilton did nothing wrong by shoving his teammate off track and also broadly staying
[01:16:35.480 -> 01:16:41.260] on the curve. Whereas my wish would be that it would have been judged to be that he didn't
[01:16:41.260 -> 01:16:46.300] leave Russell room on the outside, therefore penalty, and that he left
[01:16:46.300 -> 01:16:50.000] the track while overtaking, therefore penalty.
[01:16:50.000 -> 01:16:54.520] But the rules of F1 are not what I would wish them to be, therefore no penalty.
[01:16:54.520 -> 01:17:01.340] Well, what we would all wish, especially after last weekend, is a fairly consistent application
[01:17:01.340 -> 01:17:02.620] of the rules.
[01:17:02.620 -> 01:17:06.540] As to the use of curbs versus white lines. Well, if it's
[01:17:06.540 -> 01:17:10.500] made clear in the driver's meeting what's what and we don't know and judged
[01:17:10.500 -> 01:17:16.560] accordingly, then I think that is fair to say locally, okay, if you're on
[01:17:16.560 -> 01:17:21.080] the curb and you're in Spoon, you're considered to be in the track and I
[01:17:21.080 -> 01:17:32.160] think you could go look at deleted lap times and probably figure out pretty quickly like where that line lay. But as a matter of fact, as a matter of judgment of fact,
[01:17:33.120 -> 01:17:38.320] this was not an overtake that was ever going to happen for Russell, even if Lewis left him.
[01:17:38.320 -> 01:17:39.280] That's key.
[01:17:39.280 -> 01:17:46.520] And Lewis, I mean, you know, I always start the show going, what is it that I forgot to do?
[01:17:46.520 -> 01:17:49.520] I forgot to go back and look at that a little more closely.
[01:17:49.520 -> 01:17:56.200] But from the replay that I saw, the move was over before Louis left the track.
[01:17:56.200 -> 01:17:57.720] And you can disagree with me.
[01:17:57.720 -> 01:17:58.720] Oh, go on.
[01:17:58.720 -> 01:18:02.520] My defense is I didn't look at it closely enough, so you could entirely be right.
[01:18:02.520 -> 01:18:05.440] But to me, it was never an overtake that was going to happen.
[01:18:12.480 -> 01:18:18.320] It was opportunistic and it again to fall back on my own racing experience, like if I had the chance to overtake Brad in karting, I wouldn't because it would just waste both of our times.
[01:18:18.320 -> 01:18:22.560] I've literally had. I mean, I mean, I mean, I know Brad reacts badly that he's like,
[01:18:22.560 -> 01:18:26.720] you should always overtake me, but no, I'm interested in the fastest I can go.
[01:18:26.720 -> 01:18:29.740] I've had that situation in a mistake X karting event
[01:18:29.740 -> 01:18:32.200] where I think I was P4, Brad,
[01:18:32.200 -> 01:18:35.120] you were stuck in a dog kart in P3,
[01:18:35.120 -> 01:18:36.500] and I had a couple of opportunities
[01:18:36.500 -> 01:18:37.920] where I could dive down the inside,
[01:18:37.920 -> 01:18:40.480] but I went, but what would I gain
[01:18:40.480 -> 01:18:42.080] really out of that position?
[01:18:42.080 -> 01:18:46.500] Like anyone can not break and go down the inside
[01:18:46.500 -> 01:18:48.300] and temporarily gain a position.
[01:18:48.300 -> 01:18:51.880] But my thinking was, well, if I do that,
[01:18:51.880 -> 01:18:55.740] we're going to lose track with the guys, you know, up front.
[01:18:55.740 -> 01:18:57.680] So there's more to racing than
[01:18:57.680 -> 01:19:00.520] if I can simply make a move, I will.
[01:19:00.520 -> 01:19:02.980] So I'd just like to point out from my point of view,
[01:19:02.980 -> 01:19:16.000] it's kind of irrelevant whether or not he would have made the move stick had it been allowed to play out differently because, and I'm trying to be consistent with the drivers I'm fans on and the drivers I'm not fans of,
[01:19:16.000 -> 01:19:25.360] the fact was that Hamilton did run him wide. And so what might have happened was never allowed to play out. So in my fairness mind, I'd still fall
[01:19:25.360 -> 01:19:31.280] back on what's legal and what's not legal. And watching that live and seeing that situation just
[01:19:31.280 -> 01:19:37.360] play out in front of my eyes, because most racing in the world isn't Formula One, and most racing
[01:19:37.360 -> 01:19:42.480] in the world has a sensible application of driving standards. Formula One, I'd just like to point
[01:19:42.480 -> 01:19:49.840] this out for everyone who's listening, who is basically just a Formula One fan, doesn't watch other motorsports. Formula One is a bit of
[01:19:51.440 -> 01:19:57.680] an anomaly in the world of motorsport in that the driver etiquette rules are terribly enforced,
[01:19:57.680 -> 01:20:03.120] awfully inconsistent and don't allow for good racing because of this being allowed to force
[01:20:03.120 -> 01:20:08.040] people off thing. Just look at what happened with the Hamilton-Russell fight into that final chicane where they gave
[01:20:08.040 -> 01:20:09.040] each other room.
[01:20:09.040 -> 01:20:10.040] The fight continued.
[01:20:10.040 -> 01:20:14.120] We had a good battle that continued for more than one corner because that's how it's supposed
[01:20:14.120 -> 01:20:15.120] to be.
[01:20:15.120 -> 01:20:20.240] And anyway, so back to my point, watching that live, my driving brain is tuned to see
[01:20:20.240 -> 01:20:26.240] that particular move that Hamilton did, that particular defense as illegal. Yes, I agree.
[01:20:26.240 -> 01:20:31.200] If I did that in basically any race series I've ever raced in, karting, real cars, or
[01:20:31.200 -> 01:20:34.640] sim racing, if I did that move, I would expect to be penalized for it.
[01:20:34.640 -> 01:20:38.000] But in Formula One, that's not necessarily the rule.
[01:20:38.000 -> 01:20:39.840] Sometimes it is, sometimes it isn't.
[01:20:39.840 -> 01:20:46.800] And so my initial reaction wasn't necessarily in line with what this weekend's specific rules were.
[01:20:46.800 -> 01:20:48.620] Yeah, so I'm torn.
[01:20:48.620 -> 01:20:52.620] So obviously, like, I don't want Hamilton to be penalized
[01:20:52.620 -> 01:20:54.800] because I'm a Hamilton fan.
[01:20:54.800 -> 01:20:59.800] And I think that the way things are being judged,
[01:21:00.380 -> 01:21:04.000] that's not a penalty, but with my, like, you know,
[01:21:04.000 -> 01:21:05.240] what I would wish, I would look at that and go, that's not, doesn't But with my, like, you know, what I would wish, I would
[01:21:05.240 -> 01:21:09.960] look at that and go, that's not, doesn't feel like the way we should go racing. But Jono,
[01:21:09.960 -> 01:21:16.680] I'm going to put you in the Toto Wolf position right now, because Toto Wolf wasn't at the
[01:21:16.680 -> 01:21:21.560] track, which might explain a little bit of a delay in the team orders. But you've got
[01:21:21.560 -> 01:21:26.240] Lewis Hamilton and George Russell legitimately fighting. You have a long
[01:21:26.240 -> 01:21:33.120] history of fairness between teammates and letting them fight, but you have a young teammate that
[01:21:33.120 -> 01:21:39.920] isn't on par with Ray Spacey. You have two teammates that are not doing the same strategy.
[01:21:39.920 -> 01:21:46.880] What do you do when they suddenly meet on track, seven or six laps from the end on different
[01:21:46.880 -> 01:21:52.480] strategies? I can answer that in a sec, just once. I didn't get my two cents, sorry, on the Russell
[01:21:52.480 -> 01:21:57.920] Hamilton incident. And Russell was never making the corner, is when you watch from his perspective
[01:21:57.920 -> 01:22:04.160] and his on-board. Even if you make, sorry, even if you make the move on Lewis and Lewis gives
[01:22:04.160 -> 01:22:06.160] enough space, obviously Lewis didn't get enough space.
[01:22:06.160 -> 01:22:08.720] And he goes beyond the white lines. George wasn't making the
[01:22:08.720 -> 01:22:11.160] corner. So if he made the move legitimately, he would have had
[01:22:11.160 -> 01:22:14.040] to give the position back or suffer a five second penalty,
[01:22:14.040 -> 01:22:17.160] one of the two. And that's why it was ignored and the racing
[01:22:17.160 -> 01:22:20.020] incident and whatever it was, you know, I don't even think it
[01:22:20.020 -> 01:22:23.560] was investigated at one point. Now what you do if you're Toto
[01:22:23.560 -> 01:22:26.520] Wolf. Yeah, it's an interesting one because you, Spanish, have been
[01:22:26.520 -> 01:22:29.440] talking about this for months, if not since last year. I'm not
[01:22:29.440 -> 01:22:33.200] sure when you first brought it up, but you've genuinely been on
[01:22:33.200 -> 01:22:36.040] the camp of you need a number one, Mercedes are going to be
[01:22:36.040 -> 01:22:37.080] fighting for a title.
[01:22:37.200 -> 01:22:38.920] Every team needs a number one.
[01:22:39.400 -> 01:22:42.840] Yeah. And what do you do in that situation? Now, I think if you're
[01:22:42.840 -> 01:22:47.880] Mercedes, there's no point playing that battle now when you're not
[01:22:47.880 -> 01:22:50.080] fighting for a championship. There's no point picking a
[01:22:50.080 -> 01:22:55.040] number one now. Let the number one come out on its own. I know
[01:22:55.040 -> 01:22:57.120] that's a bad thing to say because they tried to do that in
[01:22:57.120 -> 01:23:00.560] 2007. It quite didn't really work out because it's like, who
[01:23:00.560 -> 01:23:08.880] was the number one that year? Anyway, tricky situation at McLaren over there. But in this year, if I get to like
[01:23:08.880 -> 01:23:11.720] round seven, and you say Lewis Hamilton's ahead by a race, then
[01:23:11.720 -> 01:23:13.680] you start to go, Okay, well, maybe we should favor this
[01:23:13.680 -> 01:23:16.840] driver. He's our best chance. And look at it so far, he's been
[01:23:16.840 -> 01:23:20.280] your best chance. So that's a tricky situation there. And it's
[01:23:20.280 -> 01:23:23.920] not just them who are going to have to decide this. If McLaren
[01:23:23.920 -> 01:23:26.560] bring a car next year, where they have to fight for a title,
[01:23:26.840 -> 01:23:29.800] who do they choose as their number one to score as many points?
[01:23:30.080 -> 01:23:34.960] So it's to me, I think you leave it up to the driver that sort of is
[01:23:34.960 -> 01:23:38.040] is sort of walks in and becomes the king of the mountain.
[01:23:38.040 -> 01:23:39.040] And that's how you decide it.
[01:23:39.040 -> 01:23:45.240] OK, Matt, should Russell have let Hamilton through when first ordered to?
[01:23:45.720 -> 01:23:46.220] Yes.
[01:23:46.640 -> 01:23:47.140] Okay.
[01:23:47.360 -> 01:23:49.720] It's a no brainer, different strategies.
[01:23:49.720 -> 01:23:54.400] He was trying to make a one stop work and, and, and Hamilton was on a regular two stop
[01:23:54.800 -> 01:23:55.840] and, and much faster.
[01:23:55.840 -> 01:24:00.520] And in fact, if I was Toto, just to tie this all together and mention tires,
[01:24:00.520 -> 01:24:02.960] cause we, we have to need to talk about that.
[01:24:02.960 -> 01:24:08.100] Some is I would just show, I would just show George the lap times.
[01:24:08.440 -> 01:24:08.540] Yeah.
[01:24:08.580 -> 01:24:11.880] Louis was almost two seconds a lap faster on those fresh tires.
[01:24:11.900 -> 01:24:17.460] It just, it, it, it is not a thing that needed to have this big of a fuss made about it.
[01:24:17.460 -> 01:24:20.240] I get that there were hard feelings about the behavior at spoon.
[01:24:20.240 -> 01:24:29.920] Maybe we could have a separate chat about that. But at the end of the day, the stewards basically said, well, this was an entire non-event,
[01:24:29.920 -> 01:24:36.920] probably for the reason that Chyna mentioned, that Russell was not in a position where his
[01:24:36.920 -> 01:24:41.560] only choice was to go off track when they entered the corner.
[01:24:41.560 -> 01:24:51.120] And so the answer is, well, just look at the lap times, George. I understand you're in your cockpit and you want to beat Lewis, and we want you for that
[01:24:51.120 -> 01:24:56.380] reason, but the practicalities of the race, the externalities, if you want to be all fancy
[01:24:56.380 -> 01:25:00.360] about it, dictated otherwise in this circumstance.
[01:25:00.360 -> 01:25:05.720] To his credit, because we have sort of been bashing him a bit, to his credit, post-race,
[01:25:05.720 -> 01:25:09.720] he seemed to be very accepting of that.
[01:25:09.720 -> 01:25:12.240] Okay, so we have been bashing him.
[01:25:12.240 -> 01:25:16.760] So Brad, I'm going to continue bashing George Russell.
[01:25:16.760 -> 01:25:17.760] I tried.
[01:25:17.760 -> 01:25:19.560] I tried to give you an escape there.
[01:25:19.560 -> 01:25:25.760] George Russell only wants to beat Lewis Hamilton, and that's a big, big problem.
[01:25:26.560 -> 01:25:31.600] Yeah, yes. If we're looking at a situation where, I mean this year it doesn't really matter,
[01:25:31.600 -> 01:25:36.480] it doesn't, but if we're looking at a situation where you've got a tight title fight which is,
[01:25:36.480 -> 01:25:40.480] you know, we can dream that that's a potential thing that could happen in the next couple of
[01:25:40.480 -> 01:25:46.640] years and you've got a team like Red Bull, where you've got a clear,
[01:25:46.640 -> 01:25:48.080] it's not just that Verstappen's number one,
[01:25:48.080 -> 01:25:49.760] he's just clearly better than his teammate as well,
[01:25:49.760 -> 01:25:52.160] but you know, a de facto number one,
[01:25:52.160 -> 01:25:54.920] who anytime that car is capable of scoring a win,
[01:25:54.920 -> 01:25:56.520] on all the tracks that that car's good at,
[01:25:56.520 -> 01:25:58.040] he's going to win the race.
[01:25:58.040 -> 01:26:00.360] And you've got a Mercedes where all the tracks
[01:26:00.360 -> 01:26:02.820] that that car can win, sometimes it'll be George,
[01:26:02.820 -> 01:26:03.800] and sometimes it'll be Lewis,
[01:26:03.800 -> 01:26:08.300] and sometimes it'll be neither of them them because Russell will get in the way
[01:26:08.800 -> 01:26:12.680] and, you know, and cause both of the strategies to not work.
[01:26:13.080 -> 01:26:17.280] I think it's, there's a really good argument for having two good drivers.
[01:26:17.720 -> 01:26:21.500] There's also a really good argument for having one that's a clear step behind.
[01:26:21.860 -> 01:26:25.520] And I was arguing for Russell to be in the second Mercedes all
[01:26:25.520 -> 01:26:29.040] the way through the final couple of Bottas years. And I actually think Russell being
[01:26:29.040 -> 01:26:33.480] there in 2021 might have helped Hamilton win the championship because all the times where
[01:26:33.480 -> 01:26:40.240] the Mercedes was clearly good enough, there was never a Bottas taking points off of Verstappen.
[01:26:40.240 -> 01:26:46.360] But I think with the current situation, he's a little bit too close, or at least close
[01:26:46.360 -> 01:26:47.360] at the wrong time.
[01:26:47.360 -> 01:26:50.920] Here's the thing, he's good enough to be in the way.
[01:26:50.920 -> 01:26:51.920] Yes, exactly.
[01:26:51.920 -> 01:27:00.880] I just wanted to mention something that I saw on Twitter that Toto Wolff had apparently
[01:27:00.880 -> 01:27:03.480] made the actual call himself.
[01:27:03.480 -> 01:27:06.720] But it's such an obvious swap. Wolf had apparently made the actual call himself. I don't know how he did it that fast.
[01:27:06.720 -> 01:27:11.040] It was such an obvious swap. It could just be on WhatsApp, isn't it? But it was such an obvious
[01:27:11.040 -> 01:27:22.240] swap. I can't see any logic. No other team fouls the driver on the faster tyre when the strategies
[01:27:22.240 -> 01:27:25.400] kind of intersect. No other team goes, ah, yeah, well,
[01:27:25.400 -> 01:27:27.600] you're on the harder tire,
[01:27:27.600 -> 01:27:30.360] so therefore you're entitled to track position.
[01:27:30.360 -> 01:27:32.280] That might help you against the rivals,
[01:27:32.280 -> 01:27:34.000] but there's no other team that just goes,
[01:27:34.000 -> 01:27:37.600] yes, you have to hold up your teammate
[01:27:37.600 -> 01:27:39.320] who's on the normal strategy
[01:27:39.320 -> 01:27:43.600] because you took a different other strategy
[01:27:43.600 -> 01:27:46.120] that kept you out and gave you track position.
[01:27:46.120 -> 01:27:47.120] Jono?
[01:27:47.120 -> 01:27:49.440] Jono Massieri Why don't we, if we had paddock access, I
[01:27:49.440 -> 01:27:52.720] would ask George, are you trying to beat Lewis?
[01:27:52.720 -> 01:27:53.720] Like what is your goal?
[01:27:53.720 -> 01:27:54.720] Why is he asking that?
[01:27:54.720 -> 01:27:59.320] Yeah, like, no, no, but like, why can't we just get down to the bottom of things and
[01:27:59.320 -> 01:28:00.320] just ask questions?
[01:28:00.320 -> 01:28:04.160] You know, that's the frustrating thing about that.
[01:28:04.160 -> 01:28:06.320] That's interesting about Toto making that decision,
[01:28:06.320 -> 01:28:08.880] what just texted and went like swap them.
[01:28:08.880 -> 01:28:13.840] Yeah, because did you hear Jono when the radio call came across,
[01:28:13.840 -> 01:28:16.480] it changed from, you know, invert positions to...
[01:28:16.480 -> 01:28:17.360] Yeah, this is...
[01:28:17.360 -> 01:28:18.480] It was something along the line.
[01:28:19.120 -> 01:28:20.720] This is not a request, this is an instruction.
[01:28:20.720 -> 01:28:22.240] This is an instruction, yeah.
[01:28:22.240 -> 01:28:25.400] That must be code for team order, basically.
[01:28:25.400 -> 01:28:26.400] Yeah.
[01:28:26.400 -> 01:28:27.400] Yeah.
[01:28:27.400 -> 01:28:28.400] Oh, definitely.
[01:28:28.400 -> 01:28:35.920] All right, guys, let's go on to our podium.
[01:28:35.920 -> 01:28:48.880] A surprisingly entertaining Japanese Grand Prix in the dry still provided lots of racing action and not a single technical directive in sight
[01:28:48.880 -> 01:28:54.360] to hold back Max Verstappen. The new floor... that's all right to say isn't it Brad? The
[01:28:54.360 -> 01:29:01.760] new floor seemed to just fix stuff. Therefore, the technical directive never existed.
[01:29:01.760 -> 01:29:06.120] Yeah, so this has been the topic of the last week and it's always nice to have
[01:29:06.640 -> 01:29:09.400] something to chat about and some hope to cling onto.
[01:29:09.400 -> 01:29:17.680] I think my hunch now is probably that whatever technical directive changes
[01:29:18.080 -> 01:29:22.000] any of the teams had to make didn't have a super dramatic effect.
[01:29:22.320 -> 01:29:28.100] But the thing that I do take issue with is people saying that it was ridiculous
[01:29:28.100 -> 01:29:35.640] and a conspiracy theory to suggest that on the one race where the dominant car
[01:29:36.100 -> 01:29:41.480] is miles off the pace, that it might not be, that it definitely wasn't
[01:29:41.580 -> 01:29:42.640] to do with the technical directive.
[01:29:42.640 -> 01:29:47.600] I think until we have the additional data points of this weekend and subsequent weekends,
[01:29:47.600 -> 01:29:52.040] I think it would be more of a conspiracy to just dismiss that out of hand.
[01:29:52.040 -> 01:29:56.640] And I find it quite strange that, and obviously there've been strange Singapore results in
[01:29:56.640 -> 01:30:02.040] the past, but still you've got a car that has broken all the records for dominance.
[01:30:02.040 -> 01:30:06.480] What would be so different about this particular track that all
[01:30:06.480 -> 01:30:11.760] the other cars were fine but this one wasn't? So even if the technical directive had no effect,
[01:30:11.760 -> 01:30:18.240] I don't think it was crazy to think maybe it did, and also to have the hope. My tweets and exes,
[01:30:18.240 -> 01:30:22.160] where I was basically saying, yeah, they definitely have been cheating for sure,
[01:30:22.160 -> 01:30:25.040] and now they've been caught out. That's pretty
[01:30:25.040 -> 01:30:28.080] much mainly tongue in cheek that I hope that's the case.
[01:30:28.080 -> 01:30:34.600] So if you argued that Red Bull were doomed because of this technical directive, then
[01:30:34.600 -> 01:30:40.220] obviously you would be wrong. I think the only real argument was, were Red Bull's actions
[01:30:40.220 -> 01:30:48.800] at Singapore influenced by the technical directive? And so, you know, there's a floor directive where, you know, the FIA say,
[01:30:48.800 -> 01:30:53.280] right, we're now monitoring what you do with your floor, if it's flexing,
[01:30:53.280 -> 01:30:56.960] to hide the wear on the skid blocks.
[01:30:56.960 -> 01:30:58.800] And they go, okay, good.
[01:30:58.800 -> 01:31:01.280] Right, in that case, then we're going to bring a new floor.
[01:31:01.280 -> 01:31:04.320] And here's where I got a lot of abuse on Twitter,
[01:31:04.320 -> 01:31:05.120] because they tried to bring a new floor. And here's where I got a lot of abuse on Twitter, because they
[01:31:05.120 -> 01:31:09.880] tried to bring a new floor for the Singapore Grand Prix, and it didn't work. So they went
[01:31:09.880 -> 01:31:15.360] back to the old floor. The old floor wasn't illegal. It's just that the FIA were now monitoring
[01:31:15.360 -> 01:31:21.240] the, not just the skid blocks, but all of the wear around the plank. So they weren't
[01:31:21.240 -> 01:31:26.480] able to make that new floor work. and the solution seemed to be to raise
[01:31:26.480 -> 01:31:27.480] the ride height.
[01:31:27.480 -> 01:31:34.120] And Mark Hughes did document how they raised the ride height, and therefore the Red Bull
[01:31:34.120 -> 01:31:38.960] wasn't able to connect to the floor, wasn't able to use that ground effect.
[01:31:38.960 -> 01:31:43.480] So we get to the Japanese Grand Prix, and they bring a new floor, and it works.
[01:31:43.480 -> 01:31:46.320] And we see the difference between Perez's floor,
[01:31:46.320 -> 01:31:52.560] which was the old floor, and Verstappen's floor in FP1. And wasn't it something like a 1.4
[01:31:53.280 -> 01:32:00.560] second difference between Perez and Verstappen? So at least two tenths of a new floor.
[01:32:00.560 -> 01:32:06.800] Yeah. Oh, that's harsh. Have I not suffered enough as a Perez fan? Have I not conceded
[01:32:06.800 -> 01:32:13.320] enough without that dig? But yes, so there was a huge, huge difference in FP1 and then
[01:32:13.320 -> 01:32:19.720] both drivers moved to the new floor. And from what I can tell, the difference in that floor
[01:32:19.720 -> 01:32:25.680] map was, it wasn't like everything was changed on the floor, but it was the edges. So essentially,
[01:32:25.680 -> 01:32:31.280] yeah, so the floor edges. So it essentially meant that you can now run at a higher ride height,
[01:32:31.280 -> 01:32:36.720] but you've got extra floor edge to mean that you're connected to the floor. I don't think
[01:32:36.720 -> 01:32:43.040] it's crazy to go, hey, there was a technical directive, which I heard about, and I know you
[01:32:43.040 -> 01:32:45.840] heard about it as well, Matt, I know you heard about it as well,
[01:32:45.840 -> 01:32:51.760] in the summer break, and they tried to bring a new floor in Singapore. Obviously, they didn't
[01:32:51.760 -> 01:32:56.520] quite have the time to make it work, it didn't work, so now they do it in Japan and it does work.
[01:32:56.520 -> 01:33:05.120] So there's no controversy around the fact that the technical directive is now no longer an issue for Red Bull,
[01:33:05.760 -> 01:33:10.320] the somewhat redundant argument is, did it affect them in Singapore?
[01:33:10.320 -> 01:33:15.680] Well, I mean, the thing I keep on harping on is that I really think if you want to
[01:33:15.680 -> 01:33:20.320] understand the impact of that technical directive, you should probably look at Monza,
[01:33:20.320 -> 01:33:26.080] because that's where I see the evidence, just lap time evidence, that suddenly Red Bull,
[01:33:26.080 -> 01:33:33.620] which had been so efficient in an aerodynamic way, I mean, suddenly had signs able to say
[01:33:33.620 -> 01:33:35.960] out of max for 15 laps.
[01:33:35.960 -> 01:33:37.520] So does it have an effect?
[01:33:37.520 -> 01:33:44.080] Well, yeah, they probably were already bringing something they knew would work to Monza in
[01:33:44.080 -> 01:33:45.440] preparation for Singapore
[01:33:45.440 -> 01:33:50.720] where the actual technical directive was going to be enforced through whatever scrutineering
[01:33:50.720 -> 01:33:53.460] magic the FIA had come up with.
[01:33:53.460 -> 01:33:59.560] And if you look at the performance differential, I think that gives you the best picture.
[01:33:59.560 -> 01:34:01.400] They did bring a new floor to Singapore.
[01:34:01.400 -> 01:34:05.600] It did not work in the way they imagined. Now Red Bull says it's because
[01:34:06.800 -> 01:34:11.600] the simulator didn't have the data for the resurfaced part of the track and that caused
[01:34:11.600 -> 01:34:15.760] them to get a whole bunch of stuff wrong. And in the end, they reverted to the old floor.
[01:34:16.320 -> 01:34:22.080] The other thing about Singapore is that the turns are very short radius and they're mostly 90 degree
[01:34:22.080 -> 01:34:29.240] and the braking is almost all in a straight line, none of which the Red Bull is better at than other teams necessarily. So it was always
[01:34:29.240 -> 01:34:35.360] a weak track for them. That's also true. But you can't argue there was no impact from the
[01:34:35.360 -> 01:34:39.420] technical directive, I don't believe, but I believe they were not the only team to be
[01:34:39.420 -> 01:34:45.520] impacted. And as I mentioned earlier, I'm still pretty sure Aston is the team that has lost out the most
[01:34:45.520 -> 01:34:53.440] from this. And that is sort of how I look at it. And I don't know if that proves your point or
[01:34:54.240 -> 01:34:58.960] disproves your point, but that's sort of kind of where I am with it.
[01:34:58.960 -> 01:35:02.960] I'm going to assume that that proved my point. So let's go on to the awards.
[01:35:02.960 -> 01:35:05.440] And the first award we do is the Thing
[01:35:05.440 -> 01:35:18.720] of the Weekend. Jonathan Simon, my Australian friend, my sporting foe, what do you think
[01:35:18.720 -> 01:35:27.680] stood out for you as the thing or the person or the or the who, or the time, or the ethereal concept of the weekend.
[01:35:27.680 -> 01:35:34.920] I thoroughly enjoyed when Carlos Sainz was sitting there behind two Mercedes, claiming
[01:35:34.920 -> 01:35:40.320] the DRS trick as his, and something we should name after him, the Sainz DRS trick.
[01:35:40.320 -> 01:35:43.520] No one else has ever done that before.
[01:35:43.520 -> 01:35:44.640] Exactly.
[01:35:44.640 -> 01:35:49.320] And there are probably people who have done that in video games, let alone the real world
[01:35:49.320 -> 01:35:53.680] in F1, but science, in my opinion, made it famous.
[01:35:53.680 -> 01:35:54.680] He's claimed it.
[01:35:54.680 -> 01:35:55.680] Yeah.
[01:35:55.680 -> 01:35:59.200] And he's marketed himself very well in that situation.
[01:35:59.200 -> 01:36:01.280] And he gets my thing of the weekend.
[01:36:01.280 -> 01:36:02.960] Very close first place.
[01:36:02.960 -> 01:36:07.960] I was about to give it to Fernando Alonso, who the only reason why, I mean, we
[01:36:07.960 -> 01:36:10.800] didn't really talk about Aston Martin that much this podcast
[01:36:10.800 -> 01:36:13.360] and neither do we about Ferrari too, because they could have
[01:36:13.600 -> 01:36:16.880] easily did it at Science First at the end. And yeah, exactly.
[01:36:16.880 -> 01:36:18.920] And had they put it Science First, and if you didn't
[01:36:18.920 -> 01:36:21.640] undercut Leclerc, they would have kept fourth and fifth
[01:36:21.640 -> 01:36:24.800] instead of losing a position to Mercedes. But that's, that's
[01:36:24.800 -> 01:36:26.840] something that will take like 10 minutes to unravel.
[01:36:26.840 -> 01:36:35.400] But Alonso keeping himself relevant by saying that the team threw himself to the Lions, or did I get that quote wrong?
[01:36:35.400 -> 01:36:36.920] You know, that's absolutely right.
[01:36:36.920 -> 01:36:46.880] So it is a miss to not kind of unpick the Ferrari race, but it was relatively, if you want to talk about it from a strategy point of view,
[01:36:46.880 -> 01:36:47.920] yes, we could go,
[01:36:47.920 -> 01:36:50.840] well, that's quite a good weekend for Ferrari,
[01:36:50.840 -> 01:36:54.480] but they had one big strategy call to make,
[01:36:54.480 -> 01:36:59.480] and it was whether or not to cover off Lewis Hamilton.
[01:36:59.880 -> 01:37:04.880] And they anticipated Hamilton's pit stop with Leclerc,
[01:37:09.200 -> 01:37:12.680] and they kind of sacrificed signs in an alternate strategy, which they did in the reverse in the last race.
[01:37:12.680 -> 01:37:16.400] So that's kind of why I didn't dwell on it, Jono.
[01:37:16.400 -> 01:37:18.880] It didn't seem kind of super interesting.
[01:37:18.880 -> 01:37:22.320] The reason I thought it was very interesting was they had...
[01:37:22.320 -> 01:37:29.240] So Verstappen had first and the McLare's had the final podium positions wrapped up, right? Ferrari is your third quickest car, you have to finish fourth
[01:37:29.240 -> 01:37:35.120] and fifth, right? Because Perez was non-existent, so he's not really a car. Now, all they had
[01:37:35.120 -> 01:37:39.960] to do was finish ahead of the Mercedes and that's a successful weekend because stealing
[01:37:39.960 -> 01:37:44.520] a position from the McLaren's a bit too ambitious, I think, for the pace that they had. Now,
[01:37:44.520 -> 01:37:50.480] the gaps at the second stop, right when Leclerc was coming in, LeClerc was 1.8 seconds ahead of his teammate
[01:37:50.480 -> 01:37:57.920] Sainz, who was, Sainz was 3.3 ahead of Hamilton. But they've decided to pit LeClerc first because
[01:37:57.920 -> 01:38:03.600] they don't want to risk Sainz undercutting his own teammate, which I understand, but there's 3.3
[01:38:03.600 -> 01:38:05.340] seconds to Lewis Hamilton.
[01:38:05.340 -> 01:38:07.940] Now the undercut wasn't, you know, it was worth a lot.
[01:38:07.940 -> 01:38:11.360] It was worth a couple seconds at least, but not 3.3.
[01:38:11.360 -> 01:38:14.240] And I'm not sure why they didn't bring signs straight after,
[01:38:14.240 -> 01:38:15.640] or at least tell Carlos,
[01:38:15.640 -> 01:38:17.280] hey, maybe drop back by half a second
[01:38:17.280 -> 01:38:19.460] and we'll bring you first or do something like that.
[01:38:19.460 -> 01:38:20.720] So it was tough for Ferrari.
[01:38:20.720 -> 01:38:23.140] It was a tough situation for them to manage,
[01:38:23.140 -> 01:38:24.580] but I think they should have gone for it.
[01:38:24.580 -> 01:38:30.400] And I think they should have gone for pitting Leclerc and then Sainz following up straight up.
[01:38:30.400 -> 01:38:36.400] Mercedes did a great job with the undercut. I think that Ferrari is in love with the concept
[01:38:36.400 -> 01:38:41.760] of the noble sacrifice. They sacrificed Leclerc last week, very clearly for Sainz.
[01:38:41.760 -> 01:38:47.840] They love it. Sainz, although he was much closer than I thought to being ahead of Leclerc at the start, was
[01:38:47.840 -> 01:38:51.960] second driver, and Ferrari had zero problem dispatching him.
[01:38:51.960 -> 01:38:56.920] If you'd like a different take on that, Ferrari is really only capable of doing strategy
[01:38:56.920 -> 01:39:00.920] for one car, and the other car just gets used to help out.
[01:39:00.920 -> 01:39:01.920] ALICE That's harsh.
[01:39:01.920 -> 01:39:03.920] That is, that is harsh.
[01:39:03.920 -> 01:39:10.120] LIAM Can I add as well, I love how Leclerc nails and destroys Carlos Sainz over a race weekend
[01:39:10.120 -> 01:39:14.960] when the cars can't win a race, but Carlos Sainz looks like the greatest Ferrari driver
[01:39:14.960 -> 01:39:16.920] ever because he actually wins a race, y'know?
[01:39:16.920 -> 01:39:18.720] This is like George Russell last year, y'know?
[01:39:18.720 -> 01:39:22.920] It was like, Lewis Hamilton was better than him, but George is like, winning all the races
[01:39:22.920 -> 01:39:23.920] when the car was good.
[01:39:23.920 -> 01:39:30.320] Hang on, this is our thing of the weekend award award and it's gone negative, so I'm going to go second.
[01:39:30.320 -> 01:39:34.640] I'm going to go second. And, oh, where can you follow me? Well, you can follow me on Twitter
[01:39:34.640 -> 01:39:41.200] at SpannersReady, or on Instagram SpannersReady as well, or on Facebook as RichardReady. All the
[01:39:41.200 -> 01:39:52.460] links for everyone's social media will be in the show notes below. But the thing of the weekend does have to be Max Verstappen sealing the Constructors'
[01:39:52.460 -> 01:39:59.360] title on his own. But Max Verstappen has basically won the entire Constructors' Championship
[01:39:59.360 -> 01:40:06.680] on his own. I don't know what the exact points are, but let's take away all of Perez's points and
[01:40:06.680 -> 01:40:10.520] go, is Max Verstappen going to win the Constructors' title on his own?
[01:40:10.520 -> 01:40:12.560] Yeah, and everyone's nodding.
[01:40:12.560 -> 01:40:17.400] So, Matt, if we play this out towards the end of the season, Verstappen is going to
[01:40:17.400 -> 01:40:20.240] beat Ferrari and Mercedes.
[01:40:20.240 -> 01:40:25.880] Yeah, I think right now he'd be 95 points ahead of the constructors if they just didn't
[01:40:25.880 -> 01:40:30.720] bother to hire a second driver, which, you know, admittedly would save on some costs,
[01:40:30.720 -> 01:40:34.520] although they're exempted costs, so oh gosh, I'm not going to go down that road.
[01:40:34.520 -> 01:40:51.400] No, the thing that is getting to me here, Max Verstappen did not win the Constructors' Championship. Red Bull won it by designing and building and being propelled by an amazing power unit.
[01:40:51.400 -> 01:40:52.400] Oh, counter.
[01:40:52.400 -> 01:40:53.400] Counter.
[01:40:53.400 -> 01:40:54.400] And designing an amazing car.
[01:40:54.400 -> 01:40:59.680] Yes, Max helped the team, like obviously quite a lot, looking at the points.
[01:40:59.680 -> 01:41:00.680] Don't get me wrong.
[01:41:00.680 -> 01:41:05.760] Not diminishing his impact, but the to constructors is a team championship.
[01:41:05.960 -> 01:41:09.560] And the team is mostly invisible behind the driver.
[01:41:09.560 -> 01:41:13.040] So I just do want to bring them up a little bit here.
[01:41:13.160 -> 01:41:18.360] They have done, as Brad was alluding to earlier, an amazing job from the legal
[01:41:18.360 -> 01:41:22.200] point of view, from the practical point of view, from the design point of view.
[01:41:22.240 -> 01:41:24.640] It's all been amazing to watch.
[01:41:24.640 -> 01:41:29.600] So all I want to say as someone who's not a Red Bull or Verstappen fan, not every driver
[01:41:29.600 -> 01:41:38.400] on the grid seals the Constructors' Championship for Red Bull here at Suzuka with 85 races left.
[01:41:38.400 -> 01:41:45.600] So you can't not put that at least a little bit at the door of Max Verstappen. In fact,
[01:41:45.600 -> 01:41:48.560] it's a lot, Jonno, at the door of Max Verstappen.
[01:41:48.560 -> 01:41:52.240] Jonno Marrielli I'm pretty sure every Red Bull employee gets,
[01:41:52.240 -> 01:41:56.320] I might be getting the figure wrong, but let's say around 10 grand as a bonus for winning the
[01:41:56.320 -> 01:42:01.120] Constructors' Championship. So if I'm Sergio Perez, and let's say he was the only driver
[01:42:01.120 -> 01:42:07.880] at Red Bull and he's barely winning this championship. I'd be looking at him with, I'd be greasing him down, you know, the garage.
[01:42:07.880 -> 01:42:11.080] Every time he walks into that cockpit, I'd be like, are you serious?
[01:42:11.080 -> 01:42:13.040] You're going to cost me 10 grand.
[01:42:13.040 -> 01:42:17.680] You're for really, you know, and I look at him and go, you made me rich.
[01:42:17.680 -> 01:42:18.680] Thank you very much.
[01:42:18.680 -> 01:42:19.680] You know, I appreciate it.
[01:42:19.680 -> 01:42:23.600] So, you know, there's, there's the added bonus of having the very quick Dutchman in your
[01:42:23.600 -> 01:42:24.600] car.
[01:42:24.600 -> 01:42:30.960] Brad, what's your thing of the weekend? Wait, not yet. You made a video on YouTube about...
[01:42:30.960 -> 01:42:38.000] You're a good driver, Brad. You drive well. And you scare normal people,
[01:42:38.000 -> 01:42:43.520] taking them around racetracks. And you have made a video that deserves a lot of views.
[01:42:44.160 -> 01:42:49.580] So I made a video. It's the best edited video I've ever made for my YouTube channel, which
[01:42:49.580 -> 01:42:51.840] you can find by searching Brad Philpot on YouTube.
[01:42:51.840 -> 01:42:56.200] No, you can also click on the show notes below, so long as, Brad, you share that link with
[01:42:56.200 -> 01:42:57.200] Matt.
[01:42:57.200 -> 01:43:02.560] Yep, I did. Yeah, well, you could do that. It's about a little week-long adventure that
[01:43:02.560 -> 01:43:08.160] I took with a couple of Texan friends where I taught them the Nürburgring and they drove some very, very fast cars.
[01:43:08.240 -> 01:43:12.000] And I didn't intend to make a video about it, but I did capture a bunch of footage
[01:43:12.020 -> 01:43:15.640] and I came home and decided to weave that together into an exciting
[01:43:15.640 -> 01:43:17.120] little eight minute long video.
[01:43:17.120 -> 01:43:21.080] So if you'd like to take a look at that, go and do that for me and
[01:43:21.080 -> 01:43:22.000] subscribe to the channel.
[01:43:22.020 -> 01:43:22.920] That'd help me out a lot.
[01:43:23.200 -> 01:43:27.080] Um, you can also follow me on X at Bradley Philpop.
[01:43:27.080 -> 01:43:29.280] So I'd like to try and stay ahead of Spanners
[01:43:29.280 -> 01:43:30.280] in the follow up.
[01:43:30.280 -> 01:43:31.760] How many, what are we doing?
[01:43:31.760 -> 01:43:32.960] How many have you got?
[01:43:32.960 -> 01:43:35.960] I'm teetering on the edge of 21,000.
[01:43:35.960 -> 01:43:37.400] I'm at 18,000.
[01:43:37.400 -> 01:43:39.200] So you're still winning for now.
[01:43:39.200 -> 01:43:40.200] You're closing in fast.
[01:43:40.200 -> 01:43:43.400] So follow me at Spanners Ready and don't follow Brad.
[01:43:43.400 -> 01:43:45.340] And if you're already following Brad,
[01:43:45.340 -> 01:43:48.760] unfollow temporarily so I can win.
[01:43:48.760 -> 01:43:52.760] My thing of the weekend was in the cool down room
[01:43:52.760 -> 01:43:54.440] where the drivers see, they get to sit
[01:43:54.440 -> 01:43:56.920] and watch some of the highlights of the race together.
[01:43:56.920 -> 01:44:00.220] They played the replay of Perez crashing into,
[01:44:00.220 -> 01:44:02.040] was it Magnussen at the hairpin?
[01:44:02.040 -> 01:44:02.880] One of the guys.
[01:44:02.880 -> 01:44:03.700] It could be anyone.
[01:44:03.700 -> 01:44:04.540] Yeah, it could be anyone.
[01:44:04.540 -> 01:44:08.000] Magnussen spun him around. And my thing of the weekend is Norris's reaction where he went,
[01:44:08.000 -> 01:44:09.920] Ooh, interesting!
[01:44:09.920 -> 01:44:12.880] And that made me chuckle.
[01:44:12.880 -> 01:44:14.160] So that's my thing of the weekend.
[01:44:14.160 -> 01:44:14.640] Excellent.
[01:44:14.640 -> 01:44:17.280] And Matt, two rumpets, what's your thing of the weekend?
[01:44:17.920 -> 01:44:24.160] Okay, you're gonna hate me for this, because my thing of the weekend is gonna back to our,
[01:44:24.160 -> 01:44:26.960] not only the Alpine embroilio
[01:44:26.960 -> 01:44:32.400] that we failed to mention but also the Alonzo thing that we didn't get to but my thing of the
[01:44:32.400 -> 01:44:40.080] weekend radio transcripts I learned so much from reading team radio this weekend and it was so
[01:44:40.640 -> 01:44:45.680] decidedly enjoyable from a dramatic narrative point of view.
[01:44:45.680 -> 01:44:52.360] So drivers, please don't realize that we can now access all of your comments all of the
[01:44:52.360 -> 01:44:57.160] time immediately after the race, because as soon as you do, it's going to get as boring
[01:44:57.160 -> 01:44:58.720] as the press conferences are.
[01:44:58.720 -> 01:45:02.920] Matt, tell me why Gasly was speaking.
[01:45:02.920 -> 01:45:03.920] Should we say mean?
[01:45:03.920 -> 01:45:06.720] No, let's say why was Gasly speaking Italian
[01:45:07.360 -> 01:45:13.280] as he went down the grid? Making hand gestures recognizable to New York City driver? Well,
[01:45:13.280 -> 01:45:20.880] yeah. Okay. It's a very simple story and it comes down to communication. Ocon had been on a one-stop
[01:45:20.880 -> 01:45:25.600] strategy. Gasly was catching him near the end of this race.
[01:45:25.600 -> 01:45:30.360] The team realized that Ghazalie might catch Alonzo ahead, and they wanted that to happen.
[01:45:30.360 -> 01:45:32.880] So they asked Ocon to let Ghazalie by.
[01:45:32.880 -> 01:45:35.280] Ocon was two seconds ahead when that happened.
[01:45:35.280 -> 01:45:39.200] Ocon said, yeah, but I get the place back if he doesn't catch him.
[01:45:39.200 -> 01:45:41.480] His engineer said, we'll see.
[01:45:41.480 -> 01:45:44.960] A minute later, the engineer said, yes, you do.
[01:45:44.960 -> 01:45:49.840] But the team didn't inform Pierre that that was the arrangement.
[01:45:49.840 -> 01:45:55.000] So gasoline goes by, gets to the end of the race and they're like, Oh yeah, give that
[01:45:55.000 -> 01:45:56.640] place back to Esteban.
[01:45:56.640 -> 01:45:58.320] And he's like, what?
[01:45:58.320 -> 01:46:00.560] This is not what a racing driver should do.
[01:46:00.560 -> 01:46:06.160] I am using completely safe for work words to express my displeasure over the radio about
[01:46:06.160 -> 01:46:12.960] this." And then when he crossed the finish line, there were some recognizable Brooklyn gestures,
[01:46:12.960 -> 01:46:18.800] and I do believe he attempted to beat his halo into submission on the way into park for May.
[01:46:19.440 -> 01:46:27.840] Yeah, it was rough, Brad. I just wanted to express my sympathy or is it empathy for being in that
[01:46:27.840 -> 01:46:33.760] position. And I think he did a very sensible thing where he didn't press the radio button
[01:46:33.760 -> 01:46:40.720] whilst he did those. He was just letting out his frustration, having a bit of a tantrum and
[01:46:41.520 -> 01:46:46.320] doing that in into his helmet. And I'm sure lots of us have done that.
[01:46:46.320 -> 01:46:48.760] I did a similar thing when Alex Van Geen crashed into me
[01:46:48.760 -> 01:46:51.060] on the warmup lap at our latest go-kart race.
[01:46:51.060 -> 01:46:53.200] And to be absolutely-
[01:46:53.200 -> 01:46:55.480] Over ninth and 10th as well.
[01:46:55.480 -> 01:46:56.320] Yeah.
[01:46:56.320 -> 01:46:57.160] No, that's all I was saying, Matt.
[01:46:57.160 -> 01:46:58.640] It's over ninth and 10th as well.
[01:46:58.640 -> 01:47:02.320] It's like barely meaningless positions, you know,
[01:47:02.320 -> 01:47:04.560] for a team who were contending for podiums
[01:47:04.560 -> 01:47:05.960] a couple of years ago.
[01:47:05.960 -> 01:47:06.960] Five year plan.
[01:47:06.960 -> 01:47:11.680] And I just want to say, I don't think Pierre said anything that any racing driver hasn't
[01:47:11.680 -> 01:47:14.720] thought when they've had to give up a position.
[01:47:14.720 -> 01:47:21.080] But unlike the Mercedes, Gasly hadn't caught up to Ocon when Ocon gave up the position.
[01:47:21.080 -> 01:47:50.160] So from a larger sense of team fairness, I understand why you might, because like, there was no threat from behind. If you let Gasly catch Ocon, they can raise for that extra point, two points instead of one. Yay. Okay, right. If I'm Alfa Romeo, maybe I enjoy that. But it was a small deal. Gasly's hugely ahead on points. And it just shows you how racing drivers think
[01:47:50.160 -> 01:47:58.600] about every single position, how important it is to them. And I don't think that Ghazali
[01:47:58.600 -> 01:48:01.960] is wrong to feel that way, because the team messed up here.
[01:48:01.960 -> 01:48:02.960] Sure.
[01:48:02.960 -> 01:48:07.200] Oh no, we're doing... No, you can't Jonno! Because the positive
[01:48:07.200 -> 01:48:13.480] side of the show is over and we now have to, from our armchairs, from our sheds, we have
[01:48:13.480 -> 01:48:20.480] to pour scorn on drivers. And I've tried to be positive. The negative things in F1 and
[01:48:20.480 -> 01:48:25.000] watching an F1 race, it's so easy to pick fault.
[01:48:25.000 -> 01:48:26.600] So let's do that.
[01:48:26.600 -> 01:48:30.280] Who missed the apex for you, Brad Philpott?
[01:48:30.280 -> 01:48:32.080] Oh, this is just too easy.
[01:48:32.080 -> 01:48:33.440] This is too easy.
[01:48:33.440 -> 01:48:34.600] I was sitting here thinking,
[01:48:34.600 -> 01:48:37.440] okay, so if Matt chooses this one,
[01:48:37.440 -> 01:48:38.280] then I have to go for this.
[01:48:38.280 -> 01:48:40.200] No, no, you're first, you're first.
[01:48:40.200 -> 01:48:41.040] Oh, this is easy.
[01:48:41.040 -> 01:48:44.920] I'm completely spoilt for choice.
[01:48:44.920 -> 01:48:47.360] Let's go Perez. Perez missed the apex
[01:48:47.360 -> 01:48:56.560] because he was off the pace in qualifying. He was not good in the race. He is armed with one of the
[01:48:56.560 -> 01:49:02.160] most, in fact, I think you can say the most dominant race car in Formula 1 of all time.
[01:49:02.160 -> 01:49:07.600] He's armed with that car. And even if that car, and I
[01:49:07.600 -> 01:49:11.400] don't think he has a different car to Verstappen, but even if he has a different car to Verstappen
[01:49:11.400 -> 01:49:16.280] slightly, or if it just doesn't suit him, that is no excuse because it's so much quicker
[01:49:16.280 -> 01:49:20.160] than everything else. He should be able to scythe through the pack effortlessly. And
[01:49:20.160 -> 01:49:25.320] he clumsily bashed into everything he could and was just generally poor.
[01:49:25.320 -> 01:49:26.800] And this wasn't a one-off,
[01:49:26.800 -> 01:49:30.160] he's been pretty rubbish for the last couple of years
[01:49:30.160 -> 01:49:31.400] and has been well off of his teammate
[01:49:31.400 -> 01:49:32.680] for the last three years.
[01:49:32.680 -> 01:49:36.320] Pere had missed the Apex for me for the last few years.
[01:49:36.320 -> 01:49:40.120] If you've hit a third of the grid in the last two events,
[01:49:41.040 -> 01:49:44.200] the missed Apex award is justified.
[01:49:44.200 -> 01:49:45.560] I think that's fair. Jono, who missed the Apex award is justified. I think that's fair.
[01:49:45.560 -> 01:49:46.560] Jono!
[01:49:46.560 -> 01:49:48.440] Who missed the Apex for you?
[01:49:48.440 -> 01:49:54.080] I'm going to steer away from drivers and teams and all that and go to the broadcast because,
[01:49:54.080 -> 01:49:59.120] well, maybe blaming the broadcast here is a bit bad, but at least maybe the race itself
[01:49:59.120 -> 01:50:06.120] missed the Apex in the sense that I think at one, I was staring at my screen and they had the
[01:50:06.120 -> 01:50:09.360] camera pointed at Sergio Perez's car ready to go out.
[01:50:09.360 -> 01:50:10.360] Oh, I hated that.
[01:50:10.360 -> 01:50:12.440] Jono, Jono, I was not interested.
[01:50:12.440 -> 01:50:17.640] As a Perez fan, I wasn't interested in seeing him while he was on track, because it was
[01:50:17.640 -> 01:50:18.840] so awful.
[01:50:18.840 -> 01:50:27.560] The last thing I then wanted to do was watch him on track, in the garage, was pathetically uninteresting.
[01:50:27.560 -> 01:50:31.200] So I went and got a stopwatch out, because I literally was watching it and I went, okay,
[01:50:31.200 -> 01:50:34.240] all right, we're going to, it's the race, all right, we're going to change.
[01:50:34.240 -> 01:50:35.920] Okay, all right, we're not changing.
[01:50:35.920 -> 01:50:36.920] So I said, you know what?
[01:50:36.920 -> 01:50:40.480] I rewinded and I got the stopwatch out on my phone and I actually timed it and it was
[01:50:40.480 -> 01:50:45.400] 44 and a half seconds of watching Sergio Perez do nothing, which I calculated
[01:50:45.400 -> 01:50:46.400] is half a lap.
[01:50:46.400 -> 01:50:47.400] Half a lap.
[01:50:47.400 -> 01:50:51.840] We just watched somebody sit in a garage and do nothing when there's a Grand Prix going
[01:50:51.840 -> 01:50:52.840] on.
[01:50:52.840 -> 01:50:53.840] It's not even a safety car.
[01:50:53.840 -> 01:50:54.880] It's not a practice session.
[01:50:54.880 -> 01:50:55.880] It's not the beginning of qualifying.
[01:50:55.880 -> 01:50:58.000] It ain't a test session.
[01:50:58.000 -> 01:51:00.320] Why did we sit there watching him for 45 seconds?
[01:51:00.320 -> 01:51:03.320] Did they anticipate he was going to go out because the engine was revving?
[01:51:03.320 -> 01:51:05.200] Who cares if he goes out anyway?
[01:51:05.200 -> 01:51:07.920] He was 26 laps behind at that stage.
[01:51:07.920 -> 01:51:12.760] Is there any chance, Matt, that that was the longest ever pit stop?
[01:51:12.760 -> 01:51:19.920] Why on earth was Perez allowed to continue when he'd basically retired?
[01:51:19.920 -> 01:51:24.960] Because much like my favorite New York Ranger player who realized there was no rule against
[01:51:24.960 -> 01:51:28.960] just basically standing right in front of the goalie and punching him in the face repeatedly,
[01:51:28.960 -> 01:51:32.960] did so for a game until it was outlawed, because there was no rule against it.
[01:51:32.960 -> 01:51:37.340] But I'm surprised Brad didn't bring up the amazing record of, I do believe Perez is the
[01:51:37.340 -> 01:51:41.680] only person to ever get two DNFs in a single race.
[01:51:41.680 -> 01:51:44.680] Or two retirements in a race.
[01:51:44.680 -> 01:51:45.100] Yeah.
[01:51:45.320 -> 01:51:47.520] I swear it's been done before.
[01:51:47.520 -> 01:51:53.160] I swear somebody did it in the last 10, 15 years, but this has been the first high profile one that I can remember.
[01:51:53.160 -> 01:51:53.960] Was it Mark Webber?
[01:51:53.960 -> 01:51:55.200] I can't remember, many years ago.
[01:51:55.320 -> 01:52:05.520] Yeah, but you can be sure that no other team will be allowed to basically retire and then send a car out to then serve a penalty.
[01:52:05.520 -> 01:52:07.320] I'm very sure that won't happen.
[01:52:07.320 -> 01:52:10.800] But please do check the show notes below and follow our panellists,
[01:52:10.800 -> 01:52:15.720] Jonathan Simon from Australia land, all the way from Australia land.
[01:52:15.720 -> 01:52:21.000] Follow Brad Philpott and go and check out his video of him terrifying civilians
[01:52:21.120 -> 01:52:24.960] around the Nordschleife and follow MattPT55.
[01:52:24.960 -> 01:52:27.200] And of course, follow me at SpannersReady
[01:52:27.200 -> 01:52:32.360] on Twitter. I'm the best one. Until we see you next, work hard, be kind and have fun.
[01:52:32.360 -> 01:52:50.000] This was Mr Apex Podcast. ♪♪
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