July 8, 2025 • 39 mins
Oscar Piastri after serving a 10-second time penalty that cost him the race in Silverstone, but does he have reason to feel aggrieved over the punishment? And what does Nico Hulkenberg's podium mean for Audi's 2026 arrival?
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hello, and welcome to Pit Talk, brought to you by Shannon's.
On today's episode, Lando Norris swins his home British Grand
Prix after Oscar Piastre cops a penalty for a safety
car infringement, and Nico Holgenberg gets his first podium trophy
fifteen years after making his Formula One debut. My name's
Michael Lamonado. It's great to have your company and the
(00:21):
company of my co host. If he was giving out
podium trophies for the first time, he'd make sure they
weren't made out of plastic bricks.
Speaker 2 (00:27):
It's Matt Playton, Michael. Good to join you as always,
and I do love the Holkeenberg story because it gives
all of us hope. It gives me hope because in
twenty forty I may yet achieve my greatest career milestone.
So that's definitely something to look forward to, assuming that
we're still around at this point of course. But yeah,
optimism abounds for what can happen fifteen years from now.
And full credit to mister Holgenberg. And I'm sure we
(00:50):
will talk about him at some stage in the next
half an hour or so.
Speaker 1 (00:53):
Twenty forty there'll be several races still not out of
contract by then as well.
Speaker 2 (00:57):
You'll be doing you'll be doing a forty eight racer.
Then let's be honest.
Speaker 3 (01:01):
Oh, can't wait, can't wait.
Speaker 1 (01:03):
That's here we come British Grand Prix, the second leg
of I think an important double header, a meaningful doubleheader
for the championship.
Speaker 3 (01:11):
Not every race will be honest.
Speaker 1 (01:12):
In Formula One, with twenty four races has to be meaningful,
but these last two did feel like that. Lando Nors
of course, one in Austria and one again his home
Grand Prix in Silverston, but did so in had it
not been his home race, perhaps slightly flatter circumstances. I
think his reaction may have been a little bit more
muted because it was a ten second time penalty that
was the headline in the battle for the lead. Roscar
(01:34):
piastre for a safety car infringement. Doesn't that sound very exciting?
Matt Team felt it was a little bit harsh Oscar
and surprising on the most frustrated I think we've ever
seen him. He didn't still didn't seem that frustrated, but
that's just an Oscar thing, I think. But he felt
it was inconsistent, considering it done pretty much the same
thing at the previous restart. Let's just start with the
(01:55):
question where do you sit on where this podium with
this penalty landed?
Speaker 2 (01:59):
I whether I'm just not adopting a controversial tone here.
I thought it was the most obvious penalty of all time.
And I was a little bit surprised that he actually
didn't get one for the restart for laps earlier because
that was a little on the sketchy side as well.
So you know, whether his behavior on lap twenty one
was dictated by what happened on lap seventeen. When I
saw the first safety car restart, thought, oh, he's left
(02:19):
that a bit late, and there's obviously that effect that
I think back to that race at Migello in the
COVID year where the pack were all going in different
speeds and it was complete carnage at the restart there
in perfectly dry, sunny conditions. You had the jeopardy of
the crazy weather that we had on Sunday at Silverston.
I thought the first one was a little bit marginal,
and when the second one happened on lap twenty one,
(02:40):
I mean we were swapping messages at the time saying
that's an absolute slam dunk penalty. I'm not sure why
there's any real conjecture about this. I think he was
a little bit unlucky with the second one in that
the safety car lights went out quite late, particularly relative
to the first safety car and restart, and that might
have caught him out a little bit just at the
point that he was slowing down. So he was a
little bit unlucky with the timing of the safety car
(03:02):
lights going off. He was a little bit unlucky by
Maxvstappen doing what maxvs Stappen does and attempting to gain
the system at every single opportunity and coming alongside and
going what's this guy up to? Because you know, there's
nothing like mentioning something to the to race control to
try and get someone penalized. But in terms of whether
the penalty was justified, and I thought it was one
hundred percent justified, it was a complete slammed up for mine.
(03:24):
But I know we're supposed to possibly have a contrary
view to that given our accents relatives to OSCAR. But
did you think it was as clear cut as I did?
Because I just didn't see how it was anything other
than a penalty when it happened.
Speaker 1 (03:36):
Yeah, I think the penalty was definitely there. There is
an interesting discussion, I guess, or Maxistappen certainly does, about
how often this has actually been happening and why a
line's been drawn now. And I think that's particularly interesting because,
as you said, he'd done pretty much exactly the same
thing ten minutes earlier, maybe five minutes earlier, whenever it
was the previous safety car restart five laps earlier I
(03:56):
think it was, And there was a report on the
race suggest the stewards or race control at least had
actually thought about looking into that because they'd felt it
maybe was a little bit borderline. And so if there's
anywhere that I feel like maybe Oscar has a point.
I don't think it should have avoided a penalty, but
maybe could have attracted a more lenient five second penalty.
Was the fact that he wasn't even warned for that
(04:16):
first incident. And so if you're a driver and again
ten minutes ago you did something and attracted no penalty,
retro or rebuke, and then you do the same thing
again and suddenly it's a penalty, I can understand why
he would have felt a little confused with what seems
like an inconsistency. They went exactly the same. The speed
difference between those two incidents was almost exactly the same,
(04:37):
slightly different part of the track, where for example, the
spray would have been slightly worse because he were coming
out of Chapel where everyone would have been going more
slowly behind him, whereas the second time, relatively far down
the straight, everyone would have been doing pretty close to
their top safety car speed. So context does matter in
terms of comparing those two incidents. But yeah, I think
for certain as a penalty, I just think that it's
(04:57):
a little bit of a pity that it was and
followed up the first time, either with a warning or
just straight up with a penalty, in which case you
obviously wouldn't have done it again the second time.
Speaker 2 (05:06):
Yeah, I completely agree. But by the way you mentioning
corners by names rather than numbers, this is a landmark,
landmark day for this podcast. I was just about to
start scrambling for the Silverstone track map to give you
a chop out there, but I'm not going to. So
thank you for coming to the dark side. But I
do agree with what you were saying before in terms
of if the first incident is no penalty and the
second incident is ten seconds, there's a big gap between
(05:28):
one and two for two incidents that weren't dissimilar in
many respects. To mention, the speed was very similar, at
the point of the track in which it happened was
very different. So you know, I do wonder if you
go from no penalty to five seconds in that incidence,
or you give the chance the driver a chance to hey, listen,
that was a little bit on the marginal side. If
this presents itself again, you might need to keep that
(05:49):
in mind. And I do think that if Piastri was
warned that, you know, hey, you might want to approach
this restart a little bit differently to the last one
because it's being looked at, whether that changes his behavior.
Despite the fact that as I came back to at
the beginning, the safety car lights to go off quite late.
So maybe the conjecture here is between zero seconds and
ten seconds. Is that too big of a gap for
(06:10):
two very similar incidents. But as for the incident itself,
it was a great shame because he had done all
the hard work to get to the position where he was.
The one controlling that safety car and restart because he
had overtaken Maxistap and on track he'd done a terrific
job when the weather was really really poor. He'd done
the hard part and the inverted Commas. Easy part was
(06:31):
going to be bringing home and get a win. And
then obviously we know what the penalty led to in
terms of the results, and you mentioned off the top
here in terms of these past two races in this
doublehead are being pretty significant, more significant Filando Norris, and
he's got two wins after what had happened in Canada
three races ago where it had the incident with his
teammates scored no points, which if you look at the
(06:53):
championship table, it's the only race this season that neither
Norris nor pstri has scored a point, and it's been
quite significant the Champion chipchase. The hard part here for
piastre is that he done all the hard work to
have a twenty two point series lead at the halfway
point of the season. He still has the lead. It's
now only eight points and I think at the start
of the season, if you'd said to Oscar Piastri, hey,
(07:14):
you'll be leading the world championship at the mid season break.
Given what twenty twenty four was and twenty three before that,
he probably would have taken that. But you know, Formula
One drivers are like, you give them an advantage, they'd
like a bigger advantage. And this was one that I
think he'll be kicking himself that it was this that
he's this was the reason that he squandered it. It
would also be less of a bitter pill to swallow
(07:34):
if someone else had have been the beneficiary of a win,
not his teammate who is in the fight with the
world championship.
Speaker 1 (07:40):
For Yeah, the context makes a huge difference, doesn't it.
It's it's interesting to consider. It's a question that a
lot of people who have been asking this week, you know,
the matter of momentum. It's easy to say that week
to week in formula and I guess even though I
think momentum needs more than a week to be decided,
but it certainly feels at a minimum to me, like
Lando Norris, I have more confort and seeing Lando Norris
(08:01):
on track and being able to execute. I know it
has only been really two weeks. I mean, Canada was
a pretty sloppy weekend from qualifying to the race obviously,
but in Austria obviously dominated Silverston. He was slower than
Pastre weekend. Overall, I think that's clear, but very marginally
and didn't ever really make a mistake. His first Q
three lap wasn't perfect, but he corrected it the second
time around, which is usually the opposite of the way
(08:22):
things happened with Lando Norris in the race, he was solid,
got past for Staff and ended up behind him through
no fault of his own, as he got that back immediately.
When vestappens spun, it does feel like something of a
corner has been turned, but by that same token. I
think this is what makes it so interesting and great
for the rest of the season if he continues he's
I don't think that's taken anything away from Oscar. It
hasn't taken Oscar falling back or entering his own confidence
(08:45):
crisis for this points gap to have closed up. It
feels like we're just back to, sort of, as you
said at the start of the season, the season we
expected before Norris went on this little offt pieced journey
of confidence.
Speaker 2 (08:57):
Yeah, I think so. I mean, I don't think Piastre's
level has dropped necessarily. I think Norris has just raised
his a little bit. But he's saying that he's turned
a corner. I'm still of the mind that he's turning
as he's still in the middle of the quarner. Maybe
he's in the apex, maybe he's at the exit. I
don't know, but I don't think he's turned it yet.
Because after Canada we go to Austria, which has always
been a Norris track, even when McLaren weren't particularly good,
(09:19):
So it wasn't surprising at all that he did very
well at the Red Bull Ring. And let's be perfectly
honest here with Silveston, he got lucky. He was in
the right place to be the beneficiary of his teammate's mistake.
So yes, you've still got to execute and bring the
car home. But we discussed this on the last part.
I think Austria was race one of what the rest
of this season is going to look like, because right now,
(09:40):
on pure performance terms, there is nobody else even in
the picture with McLaren, So these races are going to
boil down to Piastre and Norris in most circumstances, and
it's on little things like ten second penalties for safety
car infringements that this championship will be. I'm not going
to say one or loss, but certainly the narrative is
going to be dictated by him. I mentioned before it
(10:00):
could be a twenty two point championship lead. It's now eight.
Piastre is still in the lead. That's great, But when
there's no one else that, on most occasions, is going
to get in the fight between these two. These are
the days that you end up ruling later in the
season where you could perhaps start to play with the
margin a little bit. It's like if only I hadn't
done the points he lost in Australia for example. Yes,
(10:21):
he was unlucky to encounter a wet part of the
track at the same time as Norris did, but Norris
handled that better than Piastre, and Piastre spotted him a
twenty three point lead after one round. That one is
easier for Piastre to take because that's completely on him.
For something like a safety car infringement to cost you
a pretty significant slab of points relative to your main
title rival. That's why this is hard to swallow.
Speaker 3 (10:42):
Yeah, absolutely right, it is. I think you're right.
Speaker 1 (10:44):
This season is going to be one of those ones
where it's going to be decided, probably in Abu Dhabi's
to say, but when we look back at it, it's
going to be, oh, gee, you change the result of
this race, maybe the championship swings in a different direction.
It's going to be single incidents like this was the
case this weekend totally alter the points picture.
Speaker 3 (11:01):
And that's exciting. That's an exciting prospect.
Speaker 2 (11:03):
Well, and this brings me to something that I wanted
to raise. And I haven't seen your run sheet, so
sorry if I'm jumping ahead here, but I wanted to
get your thoughts on when Piastre came on the radio
and kind of, let's be honest, halfheartedly asked for the
positions to be reversed. It's like, well, I don't agree
with the penalty. You don't agree with it either, so
how about we just swap positions and then we go
racing from there. And I don't think hand on heart
(11:24):
Piastre ever expected McLaren to say, oh, yeah, sure, that's
completely fine. But to my mind, I thought that was
really clever by Piastre. To get that one out there
in the ether. Is something to stash away for the
future because I suspect that sometime over these final twelve
hours of the season, if a similar situation presents itself
and suddenly Norris is on the radio saying, well, I
(11:44):
was ahead, but you know I got forced off by somebody,
or there was a safety car, or so can we
flip the positions back? There's now a precedent set where
McClaren say, well, we're not going to do that, And
I thought that was actually pretty clever. Maybe I'm being
sort of reading too much into it, but I thought
it was cleverly cunning by Piastre to put something out
there that didn't have a real short term benefit because
I think he knew that McClaren were going to say, sure,
(12:05):
swap them around. That might be one that there's now
a precedent said for later in the season. So there
might be a situation where Norris legitimately or illegitimately asks
for the positions to be flipped and they can go back.
We didn't do it at Silveston, so we're not doing
it now because the team is trying so hard to
be fair with these two drivers. Am I reading too
much into that and thinking that Formula One drivers are
(12:27):
cunning in devious at all times or is this actually legit?
Speaker 3 (12:30):
Do you think no? I like it.
Speaker 1 (12:32):
I think there is something in that because this is
the I think this is the first time certainly obviously
it's the first time in a championship context, because it's
never been in that context where we've seen him under
a very particular sort of pressure and frustration, and it
was interesting to see his mind didn't go to you
screaming on the radio, getting a good little bit of
censored audio into the broadcast, but into well actually thinking about, well,
(12:54):
what can I do here to change this outcome? Well
what might I do to win my to win some
favor later on? But I actually think it was clever,
but not necessarily. It doesn't have to have been cunning,
because I thought it was interesting what Andrea Stellas said
after the race, and he said this before this was
a really good example of it that he encourages his
drivers to pretty much just say whatever they're thinking at
(13:15):
any point because he believes that's the way they're going
to avoid some kind of blow up later. Because you're
right now, this particular precedent has been said very particularly
set of circumstances, but nonetheless which means that next time
a sort of weird, sticky situation happens, they're going to
make a decision based on something that's already happened before.
And that's a good way to keep it clean, because
(13:35):
it means there are going to be fewer new incidents
in the future, because eventually every kind of circumstance more
or less is going to be covered by these kinds
of precedents. And it seemed clean here, maybe in a
slightly messier situation, this example will make that appear cleaner.
So I thought it was clever from Piastre, But I
also thought this approach from McLaren. We haven't seen an
ultimate blow up yet. There are so many races still
(13:56):
to go. They've only just closed in my championship margin,
and there haven't been very many incidents on track at
all this year.
Speaker 3 (14:03):
But we don't know.
Speaker 1 (14:04):
Maybe we'll get to the point where suddenly all these
techniques that McLaren's working hard to maintain will be important
and they will read benefits from that.
Speaker 2 (14:12):
Well, how many chapters can the Papya Rules Book? Thick
is the Papye Rules Book because we just keep adding
footnotes and chapters and appendices and all sorts of things,
and this is going to be the world's because book
by the end of the season is multiple volumes.
Speaker 1 (14:24):
I think one person on the they can have a
librarian on the pitwall just to help them find various chapters.
Speaker 2 (14:29):
You might not be wrong.
Speaker 1 (14:31):
Now, just before we move on, I do want to
talk a little bit about Ferrari here and maybe even
Max was happening if you're keen, because total non players
in the Grand Prix at the end of Sunday, obviously,
but we were expecting very different race on Saturday. Obviously
Max Scott pole, but then there was nowhere in the
race with his lack of downforce. The reason I want
to start with Ferrari in particularly because this felt to
me like a more positive weekend, both the Ferrari and
(14:54):
Lewis Hamilton, who were genuine front row contenders in qualifying
and I think in a dry race could have been
there consider ding Hamilton dominated Leclaire in the race, there
was off the road multiple times, he said almost every
lap and finished his equal season best fourth, just sort
of the podium, and we'll talk about that nicolkaboot podium
in a second, but this to me felt like maybe
a genuinely positive weekend for Ferrari, even if the end
(15:15):
of it they were cleaning mostly gravel out of Shark
GLA's airbox.
Speaker 2 (15:18):
Yeah, I think they were the big The fact that
the weather turned on Sunday made their progress inconclusive. I
was really curious to see whether the pace they'd shown
on Friday and Saturday actually translated when it really mattered.
And this sounds like a strange thing to say, but
of those three teams behind McLaren in the Constructor's Championship,
Ferrari's kind of the one that I trust the most,
(15:39):
without enough evidence to actually really back that up, because
at the moment, red Bull fields one car in each race,
and Mercedes works sometimes when the weather's good and doesn't
work other times, and they have a rookie who can
finish on the podium either side of having three straight
DNF so there's a huge inconsistency with what they're doing.
Red Bull are difficult to take seriously as a two
(15:59):
car team right now because they only have one driver
at scores points. So to my mind, Ferrari have the
biggest upside of those three because I think they have
two quality drivers and when the car is quick. It's
genuinely really quick. And I think the disappointing part was
we never quite got to see on the Sunday whether
that was real or not. We need a more benign
weather weekend with a similar Friday Saturday build up to
(16:21):
see what they can do in a race. But it
was still positive for them, I think on the whole,
because I think the performance was there, and you know,
Mercedes is up and down like a yoo and Red
Bull is just the verstap and Pole just summed up
the Red Bull problem to me, and that they they
created a car that was so not a car that
anyone else could probably live with, and he took an
(16:41):
absolutely ridiculous Pole and no one was surprised in the
slightest because that's how good this guy is. And then
of course it rained on Sunday and he was absolutely
nowhere and all over the place. You know, as far
as the staffen goes, that to me shows the issues
that they have because they have to make a very
very particular car even more particular for one particular driver
and they'll finished fifth. So you know, going back to
(17:02):
where you began, it was a shame that we never
got quite got to see the Ferrari progress. But if
you're looking at those three teams in isolation, in which
one you expect to kick on for the rest of
the year, it would be a very Ferrari thing to do.
To actually come on reasonably strong in the back half
of a year for a rule set that's about to
go in the bind. That would be about the most.
That'd be the most Ferrari thing. Ever. It's like, oh,
(17:23):
look how well they finished twenty twenty five, and then
we get to next year and everyone's like, where are
these guys again? So I look forward to that narrative
playing out over the last twelve rounds.
Speaker 1 (17:31):
Yeah, they'll be the highest scoring team over the last
twelve rounds, fifty points off the Constructors champions I's like, wow,
here we go. Then next year, yeah, I think United
it does feel a lot like last year weirdly. I mean,
we haven't seen enough from Ferrari, but they've got more
upgrades coming. They're confident about. This is pretty much what
happened last year. They were nowhere for most of the
first half, and then they were the second best and
then eventually the best team at the end of the year.
(17:52):
So it's going to be a really interesting second half
of the season, not just for the drivers championship, but
I think for that whole front running group. Let's look back, though,
so at the action from the weekend. Matt with Move
of the Week brought to you by Shannons. There's plenty
of moves all over the weekend both Some of them
were mostly errors. Some of them were cars sliding off
the track, accidentally hitting other cars, friendly fire as well.
(18:15):
Got a broad field to pick from, And what are
you going to choose?
Speaker 2 (18:19):
I think it would be I know we're going to
get onto this guy in a minute, but I'm going
to go to the lap thirty four. That's when Nico
Holkenberg went past Lance stro to take third place at Silverstone,
which he held until the end of the race. First
f one party. But he's two hundred and thirty ninth start.
But I do have a stat for you here, and
this is why I've put this in here, just because
I spent five minutes on Forex having a look at
this before we got on. So Holkeenberg spent nineteen laps
(18:39):
on Sunday in third place. That's the most laps in
third place that he's had in any one season, and
they all happened in the same race, and you think
how long ago it was that Niko Holkeenberg was driving
a Williams around in Formula One. That even for all
the ridiculous Hulkenberg stats that came out on Sunday, that's
quite a stat.
Speaker 3 (18:58):
That is a great stat It's a very cifix stout.
I like it.
Speaker 1 (19:01):
I like the specificity of it. I'm going to go
with I don't know, he's a more conventional one. Lewis
Hamilton and his double pass on Estebannocon and George Russell.
I think it was after the first safety car restart.
It was a very little time between safety car, so
it did good job to get that in. But he'd
just been passed by Russell at Abbey. I believe that's
turn one. No, it's turn one. There you go, and
(19:23):
then took around, took both of them around the outside
in the west at Village and just for a little
just for a moment, he thought, oh, look it's Lewis
Hamilton in the west.
Speaker 3 (19:32):
Isn't that good?
Speaker 1 (19:33):
And then yeah, he still finished fourth, and I think
he probably could have had podium pace, or I think
he had podium pace in a different car or in
different conditions, which is very considerable conditions to place on
that statement. But he clearly he was. I think he
was in good form this week. I think he was
in Hamilton form this weekend, but unfortunately in the progress
(19:55):
of his journey with Ferrara, in Ferrari's own journey this season,
maybe a little bit too early or way too late.
Speaker 2 (20:02):
I'm not sure I did like the past, I've got
to say, because it was that classic opportunistic he read
what was going on in front of him and sized
to what was going to happen with two rivals and
said they're going to end up here. So I'm going there,
and I'm having both of you in the one corner.
It was you and him. He's done this so many
times in the wet over the years that we take
(20:22):
it for granted. But it was a nice reminder of
how decisive and how well he sizes up situations like that.
It was a very good nomination by you.
Speaker 1 (20:30):
I think, well, let's go back to yours, though, Nico Holckenberg,
because that was in many respects it almost overshadowed the
entire weekend. I think his result, his first podium in
two hundred and thirty nine Grand Prix starts, a remarkable
run of non podiums, comfortably the most starts in the
history of Formula One for a driver not to have one.
And now he has the record for most starts before
(20:51):
first podium, eclipsing Carlos Science, who got on He's one
hundred first start a few years ago now in Brazil.
I think it was this was great. It was great.
I don't think anyone can be too disappointed by this,
other than maybe Lancetrol and Lewis Hamilton. Even they must
admit what a great outcome. And madd He's been around
for a very long time. We've been watching him for
a very long time, and I think it's actually easy
(21:13):
to either forget or if you're relative, you don't even
have to be that new to the sport to be honest,
relatively new to the sport to not realize how highly
rated he was when he arrived fifteen years ago.
Speaker 2 (21:24):
Yeah, coming in he was massively rated. I'm so glad
that this box has been checked because it would have
been a travesty for a driver of his quality to
go through a career without a podium. And look, I
mean there's been several times where he's been off the
grid or adjacent to the greed in the last little
while where we thought, well, this is probably going to
be it. I think the thing for me is that
when you saw the graphic come up at the start
(21:45):
of the race and realize that he was actually going
to be the car starting last because Franco Colapino started
from the pit lane for Alpine. He thought, given how
well Sauber has been going lately, I thought to myself,
knowing what he's like in these sorts of races, I
could see him getting up and finishing seventh or eighth
or something, and we go, wow, what a great job
by Holckenberg, How well it's our going. But to see
(22:06):
him fighting for and eventually getting that podium, Yes, there
were tricky situations and conditions, but it was the same
for everybody. He executed an absolutely flawless race when the
strategy came into his favor, and I was glad that.
You know, there's been several situations in the past. I
think of that race at Hockenheigh where he was on
a chance to score the podium many years ago and
slid off in the wet where it was there for him.
(22:28):
He executed it so perfectly given the opportunity, And you
can always gauge how a driver's peers regard a driver
when you see something like this happen. And the response
was immediate and consistent from all of his peers, like
this guy absolutely deserves this. Everyone's very happy for him,
and this should have happened a long time ago, but
(22:50):
circumstances conspired against him. So a real feel good story.
And yeah, I don't think even he must have thought
at this point, it's like, Look, it's great that I'm here,
it's great that I'm going to be part this AUDI
project going forward. But given what Saba are doing lately,
perhaps we could even see him back there, because I've
got wolf faith in Saurba that I have in quite
a few other teams right now.
Speaker 1 (23:10):
Yeah, because I think this is the important second part
of this story, which is that, Okay, this podium was
certainly a considerable stretch for Sober, but the team's clearly
improved quite a bit in the last month or so.
This is its fourth consecutive point scoring race, and it's
got to the stage now where that's not surprising anymore
to see them in the points where is at the
start of the year. I mean, I thought when Nico
(23:31):
scored in Australia in that wet race, that that was
the last time they'd.
Speaker 3 (23:34):
Be scoring points of the very possibly wouldn't.
Speaker 1 (23:36):
Forget that took them what do I think It was
till the fourth last round last year to score points
something like that, and that was pretty much it And
that was a little bit fortunate as well. Whereas it
feels like there is momentum behind this team. Jonathan Wheatley's
bringing I'd say this without judgment, a little bit of
the Red Bull Christian Auna element to this team.
Speaker 3 (23:56):
In a good way.
Speaker 1 (23:57):
In fact, I've heard there's a lot of Red Bull
staff there now in factor among the Sauber team, and
that is no bad thing. It's in Redful's won so
many championships and you know, we started to see it
actually before the results came. Pit stops were a great
example something that's just improved a lot for saubur when
they used to have, I mean last year they had
some dreadful pit stops. Now they're regularly among the fastest. Now,
this big upgrade they brought i think to the Spanish
(24:19):
Grand Prix seems to be working and it feels like
Toauer's gone from a team that I mean, treading water
is almost too good of a thing to say. For
the last few years, it's a team that has some
forward movement to it.
Speaker 2 (24:30):
Yeah, it was like an abandoned building was the last
few years. It was you know it was there, and
you it was there, but no one bothered looking at
it because they'd seen it all before. But Michael, I
know you know this, but I'm going to read these
for the sake of our listeners here. So this is
the past four rounds. Spain, Canada, Austria, Great Britain Sober
thirty five points, Red Bull which has one car, twenty
eight points, Aston Martin twenty two, Racing Bulls fourteen, Alpine
(24:54):
another team that fields only one car. Apparently they have
twelve points. Williams have five points in the last four rounds,
so that twenty twenty five Tap is well and truly
turned off. And Haus have three points in the last
four races, which is two more than the times their
drivers have run into each other over the those last
four races. So you look at this last set of races,
Sauber is punching well above its weight. But this is
(25:15):
not some fluke, one off result. This one's been building
for a while. And you know you mentioned the Jonathan
Wheatlely influence and the fact that AUDI is coming in
next year and the upgrade is working. You look at
this constructor's table now and you can already clearly see
which teams have either put the Q in the ract
for twenty five or are about to, and which ones
are pushing on for glories with a rule set that's
(25:36):
going in the trash. I ferrari, but I would expect
Sauber to actually be able to sustain some level of this,
perhaps not this, but something like this, given that a
lot of their opposition in the midfield has decided we've
had enough and we're looking at twenty twenty six. This
may not be as one off as we think it is.
Speaker 1 (25:52):
Yeah, there's an interesting I really expected a lot of
these midfield teams to just have committed to next year
quite early in the way that Williams has been very
upfront about that idea. There's been almost nothing brought to
that car all year by some real refinements of what's
gone on. Whereas matib and I said late last year
that he didn't want to abandon the car because the
(26:13):
first of all, the car was so bad that didn't
seem right that that should be the car that proceeded
out his involvement, but also because the team had to
believe that it could actually race in Formula One competitively.
And that's that element that when we're talking about new rules,
when we're talking about obviously new constructors coming in or
AUDI taking over the team, I think is easily forgotten
(26:34):
because we assume, well, AUDI will inject all this money
into it, they'll bring some good facilities, their own power,
and it will take care of itself. But if the
team's not really up to it, you can squander quite
easily those advantages or that potential. And I think this
win or this upturn inform is important for that reason
as well as that it now feels like and the
staff will inevitably feel field is you feel like you
(26:55):
can believe that AUDI will debut next year and actually
be good. You know, like the team. It's still a
huge mountain to climb. Obviously to the front of the field,
that's clear, but you now feel like, actually the trajectory
is set, rather than AUDI starting at absolute zero and
then having to figure out how to get there.
Speaker 2 (27:11):
Yeah, there's a human element to this. And you can
spend all the money in the world, or you can
pin all your hopes on a new set of rules.
You know, every hope that you've got, But there is
a human element to this. It's like, huh, look at
what we've achieved in a very short amount of time
with the many impediments that we've got given we're hard
up against an expiring rule set here that's going to
give them momentum that a points table can't necessarily demonstrate.
(27:34):
When you go into the European winter this year with
this blank sheet of paper for twenty twenty six, they
are in so much of a better position than they
were even six months ago. And you would argue that
given what they've got coming in, they're in a better
position than a lot of teams because they seem pretty
stable in the back end. Now, you know someone like
Jonathan Wheatley. You mentioned the pit stops thing, that's the
(27:55):
lowest hanging fruit for a lower team to get right.
That's an app salute based camp bare minimum. When Wheeley
was at Red Bull, coincidence or not, they would always
have the best bit stops on the grid, and that's
something that's it's easily fixed with some extra practice and
training and methodologies and equipment, but it has a massive
effect on the belief and the morale of the employees there.
(28:17):
It's like, look what we've done. We've gone from here
to here really really quickly on this specific thing. Why
can't that translate into other parts of the business. The
one thing I do like about what Saber have done
this year, I really like this driver lineup. I think
it's a really good mix of you know, Borceoletto is
clearly going to be quite decent. I mean, yes, he
makes rookie mistakes and he has some shots or what having,
(28:38):
he's not slow. I think that's a probably a good
sign for the future. And Holkenberg's like the adult in
the room, and I think it's really telling that, you know, yes,
he was clearly really happy with what had happened on
the weekend, but it was in that sort of measured
professional yeah, yeah, look, look what we can do if
we get things right. And I think he's looking at that,
(28:58):
he's thinking, well, it's not going to be two hundred
and thirty nine races until I get my second podium.
It's going to be probably, you know, probably, it wouldn't
surprise me if he ends up on another podium this year.
What you need is a certain set of circumstances and
it could happen because every other team besides McLaren here
is competing with different agendas for the rest of twenty
twenty six. Some teams have already decided twenty five is over.
(29:19):
Other teams will push to the end, and I think
Sour is just in a really, really good spot at
the moment.
Speaker 1 (29:23):
Yeah, just to wrap up on this note, because the
midfield is really close. All those teams in with a
shout and have had these different periods of high scoring potential.
Williams seems like it's past it now. We don't know
whether that'll come back. Even racing bulls seems like they
could be thereabouts at the moment, but they're a little.
Speaker 3 (29:39):
Bit up and down.
Speaker 1 (29:40):
Hearts you wouldn't even want to predict. Sometimes they're good
and sometimes maybe good and sometimes sometimes not.
Speaker 3 (29:45):
Yes, great the great Man.
Speaker 1 (29:46):
And Alpine, though, is where I want to where I
want to land now because this is a team. You know,
we talk about Soerba moving from independent team the dependent
factory analogies on. I really like to being a works
team next year. It feels like Alpine is moving very
much in the opposite direction. Have been a historically great
works team in Formula One will not be next year.
(30:06):
There'll be Mercedes customers. That's now the slowest car on
the grid pretty much again qualifying Saba was slow this
this weekend but clearly had good pace. Yeah, Gazzi had
a great weekend though, did qualify in the top ten
really quite unexpectedly, and then held on to that place
really well. In that way we know ghasly can when
he's got the sniff of a good result. But of
course the big story for Alpine is what's going on
with that second car. Not the only team I guess
(30:28):
in Formula One to effectively be a one carte, but
Franco Colopinto for his sixth race, and with rumors about
Alpine being interested in Valtrie Botas had really quite a
poor weekend qualifying way the back didn't never see really
any glimpse of pace from him, and then his race
never even really got going, I think officially as recorded
as it did not start due to a drive line
issue that there's been some speculation may have driver era involved,
(30:52):
being similar to the Spanish Grand Prix qualifying incident, but
I'm not sure how true that is. Now speculation is
really mounting that he may not even be the car
at the next time, Right, What do you think's going
on here?
Speaker 3 (31:03):
Man? Because it doesn't seem great?
Speaker 2 (31:05):
What do I think is going on with olped? I
could either just shrug my shoulders, which is terrible podcast content,
or I could talk for the next forty five minutes
and we'd been none the wiser, quite frankly. But you
know what would be really interesting to me is if
they are going to make a driver change, which they might.
It depends if the bag transfers or Argentina keep coming through.
But I think you could take one variable out of
(31:25):
all of this, and let's just say Valerie Botas gets
the last ten races, they make a change shit in
the mid season break after Belgium and Hungary. That at
least takes a variable out of the equation in that
if you have a couple of experienced heads in the car.
Because you mentioned Ghastly before, Thank God for Pierre Ghastly,
because you're right, he's the guy that when there's a
sniff of an opportunity to get a decent result. He's
(31:45):
made a career on not letting those go. If you
had someone else that at least had the experience and
potentially the speed to do that, perhaps valtreie Bot has
it takes one variable out of the equation that we
just don't know the answer to yet. Because that second
car this year has been driven by a driver who
came into twenty twenty five with one Grand Prix start
and Jack doing and with about eight in Franco Colopinto.
(32:07):
I don't think it helps their situation, and now having
to experienced heads isn't going to solve all of their problems.
But I think it just removes one variable. But at
the moment they seem it's the worst possible combination. We're slow.
We don't know why we're slow operationally. Weekend to weekend.
It varies enormously, And as you said, this is where
they should be better because they are a works team.
(32:28):
Like next year, they're just not. You've got this huge
changing set of rules going on, and we've said this before.
It has always felt to me like a team that
is being primed to be sold. As much as they deny,
and as much as that story is kicked around right now,
I just do not understand what it is that they're doing.
So what I've just spent the last one hundred and
eighty seconds doing is the verbal equivalent of a shoulder
(32:49):
shrug and pointing back to you, because frankly, I don't
think they know, so I don't know how we're supposed to.
Speaker 1 (32:55):
Yeah, that's what I've been saying anytime I've been asked,
is that I'm not even sure Alpine knows what it's doing.
It seemed to me the start of the year, when
Jack Dowan was still in the seat, that there was
a little bit of a divide between the race team
and upper management, by which I really just mean plav
a bit or I think, and he's kind of I
don't want to say pulling the strings because that makes
it sound nefarious. But he's making decisions because he knows
(33:16):
he has the power to make decisions, and he's doing
what he's gout instinct tells him. And I guess once
upon a time that kind of worked. Whether or not
that's going to work again, Oh look, I'll leave that
up to you to decide for yourselves. But so far,
it hasn't and I just can't help but wonder what
would be happening here had Jack Don been allowed to
complete his rookie season, because we saw he was improving,
qualified P one race Oka, qualified pier Gays in Miami,
(33:40):
he was more able to put the pace that was
clearly there together more consistently, was slowly getting there. We
were another six races down the road now. Rather than
talking about, Wow, this guy has been mcalfa six races,
keeps crashing it and not doing very well, maybe we'd
be saying, hey, the guy has been there for twelve races,
similar to Gabrielle Bortiletto, only recently has really been clicking
with the sobur and scored those first points a week ago.
(34:02):
We'd be saying something sim about Jack going, oh, actually,
you know, maybe he's going to be a decent driver
for the future of Alpine or whatever it'll be called
when it solves well.
Speaker 2 (34:09):
And the same for Colopinto. I mean, the Ding situation
was mismanaged from day one, and the Colopinto situation as
much as we can talk about the money coming in
and you know, he was signed and he was always
going to get the seat that also has been mismanaged
because you know, the guiltine has been hanging over his head.
And I just don't think that you can have drivers
with that little Formula One experience, no matter their surname,
(34:30):
or their pedigree or their bank balance. There's no way
to operate, and that's no way to build into a
season that is, as you will know, twenty four rounds long.
The whole thing's just been so unnecessarily turbulent, but probably
consistent with the way that team operates, so perhaps we
shouldn't be surprised.
Speaker 1 (34:46):
Yeah, I think that's a good call. Well, let's move
on finally to the crystal ball, brought to you by
Complete home Filtration. It's up to you whether you want
to predict anything happening at Alpine. I certainly wouldn't be
that brave. Crystal ball is not of that level. But
mat where would you like to take up?
Speaker 2 (35:01):
Yes, my crystal ball, to quote Lando Norris, is broken
after last weekend because I picked Oscar Piastre to be
the British Gorod Pery and that did not work out
very well. But look, I could you could make a
crystal ball prediction about Alpine? And why would you do that,
so I'm going to go I'm going to go longer
view than just the short term here with these next
two races before the mid season break, I'm saying, sticking
(35:23):
on the Souber theme, they are going to finish a
comfortable fifth place in the Constructor's Championship at the end
of the season. Now they're already six, they're going to
leap frog Williams based on the trajectory of these two teams,
and as an adjunct to my crystal ball, given the
way Williams are going, could Williams actually finish second last
in the Constructor's Championship? Now this sounds a little bit
(35:44):
extreme here. Williams has fifty nine points. Hears is currently
ninth out of ten with twenty nine points, And I
don't necessarily trust Hals to score thirty more points of
Williams before the end of the season. But who is
going to score more points than Williams for the rest
of the season. Probably most teams, because we know they've
got twenty twenty six in their side and it's so
tightly packed in there behind Sauber that I would probably
(36:05):
trust some of those other teams to score more points,
and perhaps Williams over the course of the season. We've
got half the season to go, and they could absolutely
easily slide towards the foot of the table if they
are not careful. So there's two crystal balls for you,
not just one.
Speaker 3 (36:17):
That's a good call.
Speaker 1 (36:18):
I really like this really has me thinking now because
I'm looking at the championship championship chart and thinking, actually,
quite could be quite possible. Aston Martin's the team I
keep forgetting is in Formula one.
Speaker 2 (36:27):
That's what?
Speaker 1 (36:29):
Yeah, so I sometimes I think he wishes they went
in Formula One, but yeah, that I'd be willing to
say they could fillims for finish eighth. I think Hearts
is just too inconsistent. But Aston Martin, they've also upgraded
similar times to Sober and Alonso's pretty finished seventh in
a row. I think seven seven times in a row
is a lance stroll this week actually, so the team's
(36:50):
got the best result of seventh in a row.
Speaker 3 (36:51):
I guess Racing.
Speaker 1 (36:52):
Bulls I think is actually pretty good just when their
drivers are having a good weekend, given they're so inexperience,
I think that's perfectly reasonable.
Speaker 3 (37:00):
I could see it.
Speaker 1 (37:01):
Happening, which would be a remarkable turnaround from the enthusiasm
of the start of the season for Williams, wouldn't it.
But they knew that was the risk. In fact, I
don't think they were even prepared or they didn't realize
they'd be starting so strongly. So I suppose if you
said they were fifth with the chance of retaining it,
that absolutely have taken it to in the off season.
Speaker 2 (37:17):
Yeah. Absolutely, And I think for Williams all that's going
to be forgotten if they start twenty six with a
reasonably competitive car and hit the ground running anyway, I
don't think they're going to be looking back at the
twenty twenty five Constructors Championship with too many regrets if
that's the case. But I've had two cracks at the
Crystal ball and I haven't given you one yet, So
before I hog all of the crystal ball gazing for
this weekend, what have you got?
Speaker 1 (37:37):
Yeah, yours are good. I'm satisfied with that. Now I'm
going to move over to Supercars Land because they've got
a really important weekend coming up this weekend. Towns will
five hundred and it's important because it's the first real
street track on the calendar this year and that's important
because two of the three finals this year are street tracks.
The Gold Coast is the first one and the finale
is Adelaide, And so this weekend is it's obviously not
(38:00):
going to be crucial to who makes the finals unless
this is a weekend where someone round about that position
ten scores a big points or whatever.
Speaker 3 (38:06):
Obviously, but this.
Speaker 1 (38:07):
Is going to be really important to that form guy.
This is almost going to be this almost like preseason
testing for the finals, particularly for those teams that are,
let's be honest, pretty much locked in their irregular front
runners and those top drivers. So who performs well here
is suddenly their odds for the championship are going to
shorten considerably. And I think for the first time all
year pretty much, I know he's got one win already.
(38:28):
We're going to see a good weekend, I hope from
chasmost it because it'd be good to see him in
contention for the finals. I think the sport needs and
wants him up the front, and he's only sort of
thereabouts this year, but I'd like to see him do well.
I think he did well last year. If he does
well again this year, suddenly the story around WAU season
particularly most it season is going to change quite considerably,
(38:50):
but whatever happens, it's going to be. It's an important result.
It's gonna be one really to watch.
Speaker 2 (38:54):
I like the pre season analogy because of the way
the back end of this season is going to be.
And yeah, it does add it's something a little bit
extra for a normal in inverted Commas round in July.
That's going to have far reaching consequences, So I do
like this. You shouldn't underrate your crystal ballgasing. I think
that was I think we've had a good week on
the crystal Ball this week.
Speaker 1 (39:13):
Yeah, I watch all the predictions end up to be wrong,
but that's all the time we have for Pittalk today.
You can subscribe to Pittalk wherever you get your favorite podcasts,
and you can leave us a rating and a review
as well. This weekend it is the Supercars Townsville five
hundred with Friday's race. Friday's race yes at three point
forty and then races on Saturday at Sunday at three pm,
after which you can catch the German Motorcycle Grand Prix
(39:33):
with lights out at ten pm on Sunday. You give
up to date with all the latest f one, supercars
and MotoGP news at foxsports dot com dot Au from
Matt Clayton and me Michael Lomonado. Thanks very much for
your company. We'll catch you next week.
Hello, and welcome to Pit Talk, brought to you by Shannon's.
On today's episode, Lando Norris swins his home British Grand
Prix after Oscar Piastre cops a penalty for a safety
car infringement, and Nico Holgenberg gets his first podium trophy
fifteen years after making his Formula One debut. My name's
Michael Lamonado. It's great to have your company and the
(00:21):
company of my co host. If he was giving out
podium trophies for the first time, he'd make sure they
weren't made out of plastic bricks.
Speaker 2 (00:27):
It's Matt Playton, Michael. Good to join you as always,
and I do love the Holkeenberg story because it gives
all of us hope. It gives me hope because in
twenty forty I may yet achieve my greatest career milestone.
So that's definitely something to look forward to, assuming that
we're still around at this point of course. But yeah,
optimism abounds for what can happen fifteen years from now.
And full credit to mister Holgenberg. And I'm sure we
(00:50):
will talk about him at some stage in the next
half an hour or so.
Speaker 1 (00:53):
Twenty forty there'll be several races still not out of
contract by then as well.
Speaker 2 (00:57):
You'll be doing you'll be doing a forty eight racer.
Then let's be honest.
Speaker 3 (01:01):
Oh, can't wait, can't wait.
Speaker 1 (01:03):
That's here we come British Grand Prix, the second leg
of I think an important double header, a meaningful doubleheader
for the championship.
Speaker 3 (01:11):
Not every race will be honest.
Speaker 1 (01:12):
In Formula One, with twenty four races has to be meaningful,
but these last two did feel like that. Lando Nors
of course, one in Austria and one again his home
Grand Prix in Silverston, but did so in had it
not been his home race, perhaps slightly flatter circumstances. I
think his reaction may have been a little bit more
muted because it was a ten second time penalty that
was the headline in the battle for the lead. Roscar
(01:34):
piastre for a safety car infringement. Doesn't that sound very exciting?
Matt Team felt it was a little bit harsh Oscar
and surprising on the most frustrated I think we've ever
seen him. He didn't still didn't seem that frustrated, but
that's just an Oscar thing, I think. But he felt
it was inconsistent, considering it done pretty much the same
thing at the previous restart. Let's just start with the
(01:55):
question where do you sit on where this podium with
this penalty landed?
Speaker 2 (01:59):
I whether I'm just not adopting a controversial tone here.
I thought it was the most obvious penalty of all time.
And I was a little bit surprised that he actually
didn't get one for the restart for laps earlier because
that was a little on the sketchy side as well.
So you know, whether his behavior on lap twenty one
was dictated by what happened on lap seventeen. When I
saw the first safety car restart, thought, oh, he's left
(02:19):
that a bit late, and there's obviously that effect that
I think back to that race at Migello in the
COVID year where the pack were all going in different
speeds and it was complete carnage at the restart there
in perfectly dry, sunny conditions. You had the jeopardy of
the crazy weather that we had on Sunday at Silverston.
I thought the first one was a little bit marginal,
and when the second one happened on lap twenty one,
(02:40):
I mean we were swapping messages at the time saying
that's an absolute slam dunk penalty. I'm not sure why
there's any real conjecture about this. I think he was
a little bit unlucky with the second one in that
the safety car lights went out quite late, particularly relative
to the first safety car and restart, and that might
have caught him out a little bit just at the
point that he was slowing down. So he was a
little bit unlucky with the timing of the safety car
(03:02):
lights going off. He was a little bit unlucky by
Maxvstappen doing what maxvs Stappen does and attempting to gain
the system at every single opportunity and coming alongside and
going what's this guy up to? Because you know, there's
nothing like mentioning something to the to race control to
try and get someone penalized. But in terms of whether
the penalty was justified, and I thought it was one
hundred percent justified, it was a complete slammed up for mine.
(03:24):
But I know we're supposed to possibly have a contrary
view to that given our accents relatives to OSCAR. But
did you think it was as clear cut as I did?
Because I just didn't see how it was anything other
than a penalty when it happened.
Speaker 1 (03:36):
Yeah, I think the penalty was definitely there. There is
an interesting discussion, I guess, or Maxistappen certainly does, about
how often this has actually been happening and why a
line's been drawn now. And I think that's particularly interesting because,
as you said, he'd done pretty much exactly the same
thing ten minutes earlier, maybe five minutes earlier, whenever it
was the previous safety car restart five laps earlier I
(03:56):
think it was, And there was a report on the
race suggest the stewards or race control at least had
actually thought about looking into that because they'd felt it
maybe was a little bit borderline. And so if there's
anywhere that I feel like maybe Oscar has a point.
I don't think it should have avoided a penalty, but
maybe could have attracted a more lenient five second penalty.
Was the fact that he wasn't even warned for that
(04:16):
first incident. And so if you're a driver and again
ten minutes ago you did something and attracted no penalty,
retro or rebuke, and then you do the same thing
again and suddenly it's a penalty, I can understand why
he would have felt a little confused with what seems
like an inconsistency. They went exactly the same. The speed
difference between those two incidents was almost exactly the same,
(04:37):
slightly different part of the track, where for example, the
spray would have been slightly worse because he were coming
out of Chapel where everyone would have been going more
slowly behind him, whereas the second time, relatively far down
the straight, everyone would have been doing pretty close to
their top safety car speed. So context does matter in
terms of comparing those two incidents. But yeah, I think
for certain as a penalty, I just think that it's
(04:57):
a little bit of a pity that it was and
followed up the first time, either with a warning or
just straight up with a penalty, in which case you
obviously wouldn't have done it again the second time.
Speaker 2 (05:06):
Yeah, I completely agree. But by the way you mentioning
corners by names rather than numbers, this is a landmark,
landmark day for this podcast. I was just about to
start scrambling for the Silverstone track map to give you
a chop out there, but I'm not going to. So
thank you for coming to the dark side. But I
do agree with what you were saying before in terms
of if the first incident is no penalty and the
second incident is ten seconds, there's a big gap between
(05:28):
one and two for two incidents that weren't dissimilar in
many respects. To mention, the speed was very similar, at
the point of the track in which it happened was
very different. So you know, I do wonder if you
go from no penalty to five seconds in that incidence,
or you give the chance the driver a chance to hey, listen,
that was a little bit on the marginal side. If
this presents itself again, you might need to keep that
(05:49):
in mind. And I do think that if Piastri was
warned that, you know, hey, you might want to approach
this restart a little bit differently to the last one
because it's being looked at, whether that changes his behavior.
Despite the fact that as I came back to at
the beginning, the safety car lights to go off quite late.
So maybe the conjecture here is between zero seconds and
ten seconds. Is that too big of a gap for
(06:10):
two very similar incidents. But as for the incident itself,
it was a great shame because he had done all
the hard work to get to the position where he was.
The one controlling that safety car and restart because he
had overtaken Maxistap and on track he'd done a terrific
job when the weather was really really poor. He'd done
the hard part and the inverted Commas. Easy part was
(06:31):
going to be bringing home and get a win. And
then obviously we know what the penalty led to in
terms of the results, and you mentioned off the top
here in terms of these past two races in this
doublehead are being pretty significant, more significant Filando Norris, and
he's got two wins after what had happened in Canada
three races ago where it had the incident with his
teammates scored no points, which if you look at the
(06:53):
championship table, it's the only race this season that neither
Norris nor pstri has scored a point, and it's been
quite significant the Champion chipchase. The hard part here for
piastre is that he done all the hard work to
have a twenty two point series lead at the halfway
point of the season. He still has the lead. It's
now only eight points and I think at the start
of the season, if you'd said to Oscar Piastri, hey,
(07:14):
you'll be leading the world championship at the mid season break.
Given what twenty twenty four was and twenty three before that,
he probably would have taken that. But you know, Formula
One drivers are like, you give them an advantage, they'd
like a bigger advantage. And this was one that I
think he'll be kicking himself that it was this that
he's this was the reason that he squandered it. It
would also be less of a bitter pill to swallow
(07:34):
if someone else had have been the beneficiary of a win,
not his teammate who is in the fight with the
world championship.
Speaker 1 (07:40):
For Yeah, the context makes a huge difference, doesn't it.
It's it's interesting to consider. It's a question that a
lot of people who have been asking this week, you know,
the matter of momentum. It's easy to say that week
to week in formula and I guess even though I
think momentum needs more than a week to be decided,
but it certainly feels at a minimum to me, like
Lando Norris, I have more confort and seeing Lando Norris
(08:01):
on track and being able to execute. I know it
has only been really two weeks. I mean, Canada was
a pretty sloppy weekend from qualifying to the race obviously,
but in Austria obviously dominated Silverston. He was slower than
Pastre weekend. Overall, I think that's clear, but very marginally
and didn't ever really make a mistake. His first Q
three lap wasn't perfect, but he corrected it the second
time around, which is usually the opposite of the way
(08:22):
things happened with Lando Norris in the race, he was solid,
got past for Staff and ended up behind him through
no fault of his own, as he got that back immediately.
When vestappens spun, it does feel like something of a
corner has been turned, but by that same token. I
think this is what makes it so interesting and great
for the rest of the season if he continues he's
I don't think that's taken anything away from Oscar. It
hasn't taken Oscar falling back or entering his own confidence
(08:45):
crisis for this points gap to have closed up. It
feels like we're just back to, sort of, as you
said at the start of the season, the season we
expected before Norris went on this little offt pieced journey
of confidence.
Speaker 2 (08:57):
Yeah, I think so. I mean, I don't think Piastre's
level has dropped necessarily. I think Norris has just raised
his a little bit. But he's saying that he's turned
a corner. I'm still of the mind that he's turning
as he's still in the middle of the quarner. Maybe
he's in the apex, maybe he's at the exit. I
don't know, but I don't think he's turned it yet.
Because after Canada we go to Austria, which has always
been a Norris track, even when McLaren weren't particularly good,
(09:19):
So it wasn't surprising at all that he did very
well at the Red Bull Ring. And let's be perfectly
honest here with Silveston, he got lucky. He was in
the right place to be the beneficiary of his teammate's mistake.
So yes, you've still got to execute and bring the
car home. But we discussed this on the last part.
I think Austria was race one of what the rest
of this season is going to look like, because right now,
(09:40):
on pure performance terms, there is nobody else even in
the picture with McLaren, So these races are going to
boil down to Piastre and Norris in most circumstances, and
it's on little things like ten second penalties for safety
car infringements that this championship will be. I'm not going
to say one or loss, but certainly the narrative is
going to be dictated by him. I mentioned before it
(10:00):
could be a twenty two point championship lead. It's now eight.
Piastre is still in the lead. That's great, But when
there's no one else that, on most occasions, is going
to get in the fight between these two. These are
the days that you end up ruling later in the
season where you could perhaps start to play with the
margin a little bit. It's like if only I hadn't
done the points he lost in Australia for example. Yes,
(10:21):
he was unlucky to encounter a wet part of the
track at the same time as Norris did, but Norris
handled that better than Piastre, and Piastre spotted him a
twenty three point lead after one round. That one is
easier for Piastre to take because that's completely on him.
For something like a safety car infringement to cost you
a pretty significant slab of points relative to your main
title rival. That's why this is hard to swallow.
Speaker 3 (10:42):
Yeah, absolutely right, it is. I think you're right.
Speaker 1 (10:44):
This season is going to be one of those ones
where it's going to be decided, probably in Abu Dhabi's
to say, but when we look back at it, it's
going to be, oh, gee, you change the result of
this race, maybe the championship swings in a different direction.
It's going to be single incidents like this was the
case this weekend totally alter the points picture.
Speaker 3 (11:01):
And that's exciting. That's an exciting prospect.
Speaker 2 (11:03):
Well, and this brings me to something that I wanted
to raise. And I haven't seen your run sheet, so
sorry if I'm jumping ahead here, but I wanted to
get your thoughts on when Piastre came on the radio
and kind of, let's be honest, halfheartedly asked for the
positions to be reversed. It's like, well, I don't agree
with the penalty. You don't agree with it either, so
how about we just swap positions and then we go
racing from there. And I don't think hand on heart
(11:24):
Piastre ever expected McLaren to say, oh, yeah, sure, that's
completely fine. But to my mind, I thought that was
really clever by Piastre. To get that one out there
in the ether. Is something to stash away for the
future because I suspect that sometime over these final twelve
hours of the season, if a similar situation presents itself
and suddenly Norris is on the radio saying, well, I
(11:44):
was ahead, but you know I got forced off by somebody,
or there was a safety car, or so can we
flip the positions back? There's now a precedent set where
McClaren say, well, we're not going to do that, And
I thought that was actually pretty clever. Maybe I'm being
sort of reading too much into it, but I thought
it was cleverly cunning by Piastre to put something out
there that didn't have a real short term benefit because
I think he knew that McClaren were going to say, sure,
(12:05):
swap them around. That might be one that there's now
a precedent said for later in the season. So there
might be a situation where Norris legitimately or illegitimately asks
for the positions to be flipped and they can go back.
We didn't do it at Silveston, so we're not doing
it now because the team is trying so hard to
be fair with these two drivers. Am I reading too
much into that and thinking that Formula One drivers are
(12:27):
cunning in devious at all times or is this actually legit?
Speaker 3 (12:30):
Do you think no? I like it.
Speaker 1 (12:32):
I think there is something in that because this is
the I think this is the first time certainly obviously
it's the first time in a championship context, because it's
never been in that context where we've seen him under
a very particular sort of pressure and frustration, and it
was interesting to see his mind didn't go to you
screaming on the radio, getting a good little bit of
censored audio into the broadcast, but into well actually thinking about, well,
(12:54):
what can I do here to change this outcome? Well
what might I do to win my to win some
favor later on? But I actually think it was clever,
but not necessarily. It doesn't have to have been cunning,
because I thought it was interesting what Andrea Stellas said
after the race, and he said this before this was
a really good example of it that he encourages his
drivers to pretty much just say whatever they're thinking at
(13:15):
any point because he believes that's the way they're going
to avoid some kind of blow up later. Because you're
right now, this particular precedent has been said very particularly
set of circumstances, but nonetheless which means that next time
a sort of weird, sticky situation happens, they're going to
make a decision based on something that's already happened before.
And that's a good way to keep it clean, because
(13:35):
it means there are going to be fewer new incidents
in the future, because eventually every kind of circumstance more
or less is going to be covered by these kinds
of precedents. And it seemed clean here, maybe in a
slightly messier situation, this example will make that appear cleaner.
So I thought it was clever from Piastre, But I
also thought this approach from McLaren. We haven't seen an
ultimate blow up yet. There are so many races still
(13:56):
to go. They've only just closed in my championship margin,
and there haven't been very many incidents on track at
all this year.
Speaker 3 (14:03):
But we don't know.
Speaker 1 (14:04):
Maybe we'll get to the point where suddenly all these
techniques that McLaren's working hard to maintain will be important
and they will read benefits from that.
Speaker 2 (14:12):
Well, how many chapters can the Papya Rules Book? Thick
is the Papye Rules Book because we just keep adding
footnotes and chapters and appendices and all sorts of things,
and this is going to be the world's because book
by the end of the season is multiple volumes.
Speaker 1 (14:24):
I think one person on the they can have a
librarian on the pitwall just to help them find various chapters.
Speaker 2 (14:29):
You might not be wrong.
Speaker 1 (14:31):
Now, just before we move on, I do want to
talk a little bit about Ferrari here and maybe even
Max was happening if you're keen, because total non players
in the Grand Prix at the end of Sunday, obviously,
but we were expecting very different race on Saturday. Obviously
Max Scott pole, but then there was nowhere in the
race with his lack of downforce. The reason I want
to start with Ferrari in particularly because this felt to
me like a more positive weekend, both the Ferrari and
(14:54):
Lewis Hamilton, who were genuine front row contenders in qualifying
and I think in a dry race could have been
there consider ding Hamilton dominated Leclaire in the race, there
was off the road multiple times, he said almost every
lap and finished his equal season best fourth, just sort
of the podium, and we'll talk about that nicolkaboot podium
in a second, but this to me felt like maybe
a genuinely positive weekend for Ferrari, even if the end
(15:15):
of it they were cleaning mostly gravel out of Shark
GLA's airbox.
Speaker 2 (15:18):
Yeah, I think they were the big The fact that
the weather turned on Sunday made their progress inconclusive. I
was really curious to see whether the pace they'd shown
on Friday and Saturday actually translated when it really mattered.
And this sounds like a strange thing to say, but
of those three teams behind McLaren in the Constructor's Championship,
Ferrari's kind of the one that I trust the most,
(15:39):
without enough evidence to actually really back that up, because
at the moment, red Bull fields one car in each race,
and Mercedes works sometimes when the weather's good and doesn't
work other times, and they have a rookie who can
finish on the podium either side of having three straight
DNF so there's a huge inconsistency with what they're doing.
Red Bull are difficult to take seriously as a two
(15:59):
car team right now because they only have one driver
at scores points. So to my mind, Ferrari have the
biggest upside of those three because I think they have
two quality drivers and when the car is quick. It's
genuinely really quick. And I think the disappointing part was
we never quite got to see on the Sunday whether
that was real or not. We need a more benign
weather weekend with a similar Friday Saturday build up to
(16:21):
see what they can do in a race. But it
was still positive for them, I think on the whole,
because I think the performance was there, and you know,
Mercedes is up and down like a yoo and Red
Bull is just the verstap and Pole just summed up
the Red Bull problem to me, and that they they
created a car that was so not a car that
anyone else could probably live with, and he took an
(16:41):
absolutely ridiculous Pole and no one was surprised in the
slightest because that's how good this guy is. And then
of course it rained on Sunday and he was absolutely
nowhere and all over the place. You know, as far
as the staffen goes, that to me shows the issues
that they have because they have to make a very
very particular car even more particular for one particular driver
and they'll finished fifth. So you know, going back to
(17:02):
where you began, it was a shame that we never
got quite got to see the Ferrari progress. But if
you're looking at those three teams in isolation, in which
one you expect to kick on for the rest of
the year, it would be a very Ferrari thing to do.
To actually come on reasonably strong in the back half
of a year for a rule set that's about to
go in the bind. That would be about the most.
That'd be the most Ferrari thing. Ever. It's like, oh,
(17:23):
look how well they finished twenty twenty five, and then
we get to next year and everyone's like, where are
these guys again? So I look forward to that narrative
playing out over the last twelve rounds.
Speaker 1 (17:31):
Yeah, they'll be the highest scoring team over the last
twelve rounds, fifty points off the Constructors champions I's like, wow,
here we go. Then next year, yeah, I think United
it does feel a lot like last year weirdly. I mean,
we haven't seen enough from Ferrari, but they've got more
upgrades coming. They're confident about. This is pretty much what
happened last year. They were nowhere for most of the
first half, and then they were the second best and
then eventually the best team at the end of the year.
(17:52):
So it's going to be a really interesting second half
of the season, not just for the drivers championship, but
I think for that whole front running group. Let's look back, though,
so at the action from the weekend. Matt with Move
of the Week brought to you by Shannons. There's plenty
of moves all over the weekend both Some of them
were mostly errors. Some of them were cars sliding off
the track, accidentally hitting other cars, friendly fire as well.
(18:15):
Got a broad field to pick from, And what are
you going to choose?
Speaker 2 (18:19):
I think it would be I know we're going to
get onto this guy in a minute, but I'm going
to go to the lap thirty four. That's when Nico
Holkenberg went past Lance stro to take third place at Silverstone,
which he held until the end of the race. First
f one party. But he's two hundred and thirty ninth start.
But I do have a stat for you here, and
this is why I've put this in here, just because
I spent five minutes on Forex having a look at
this before we got on. So Holkeenberg spent nineteen laps
(18:39):
on Sunday in third place. That's the most laps in
third place that he's had in any one season, and
they all happened in the same race, and you think
how long ago it was that Niko Holkeenberg was driving
a Williams around in Formula One. That even for all
the ridiculous Hulkenberg stats that came out on Sunday, that's
quite a stat.
Speaker 3 (18:58):
That is a great stat It's a very cifix stout.
I like it.
Speaker 1 (19:01):
I like the specificity of it. I'm going to go
with I don't know, he's a more conventional one. Lewis
Hamilton and his double pass on Estebannocon and George Russell.
I think it was after the first safety car restart.
It was a very little time between safety car, so
it did good job to get that in. But he'd
just been passed by Russell at Abbey. I believe that's
turn one. No, it's turn one. There you go, and
(19:23):
then took around, took both of them around the outside
in the west at Village and just for a little
just for a moment, he thought, oh, look it's Lewis
Hamilton in the west.
Speaker 3 (19:32):
Isn't that good?
Speaker 1 (19:33):
And then yeah, he still finished fourth, and I think
he probably could have had podium pace, or I think
he had podium pace in a different car or in
different conditions, which is very considerable conditions to place on
that statement. But he clearly he was. I think he
was in good form this week. I think he was
in Hamilton form this weekend, but unfortunately in the progress
(19:55):
of his journey with Ferrara, in Ferrari's own journey this season,
maybe a little bit too early or way too late.
Speaker 2 (20:02):
I'm not sure I did like the past, I've got
to say, because it was that classic opportunistic he read
what was going on in front of him and sized
to what was going to happen with two rivals and
said they're going to end up here. So I'm going there,
and I'm having both of you in the one corner.
It was you and him. He's done this so many
times in the wet over the years that we take
(20:22):
it for granted. But it was a nice reminder of
how decisive and how well he sizes up situations like that.
It was a very good nomination by you.
Speaker 1 (20:30):
I think, well, let's go back to yours, though, Nico Holckenberg,
because that was in many respects it almost overshadowed the
entire weekend. I think his result, his first podium in
two hundred and thirty nine Grand Prix starts, a remarkable
run of non podiums, comfortably the most starts in the
history of Formula One for a driver not to have one.
And now he has the record for most starts before
(20:51):
first podium, eclipsing Carlos Science, who got on He's one
hundred first start a few years ago now in Brazil.
I think it was this was great. It was great.
I don't think anyone can be too disappointed by this,
other than maybe Lancetrol and Lewis Hamilton. Even they must
admit what a great outcome. And madd He's been around
for a very long time. We've been watching him for
a very long time, and I think it's actually easy
(21:13):
to either forget or if you're relative, you don't even
have to be that new to the sport to be honest,
relatively new to the sport to not realize how highly
rated he was when he arrived fifteen years ago.
Speaker 2 (21:24):
Yeah, coming in he was massively rated. I'm so glad
that this box has been checked because it would have
been a travesty for a driver of his quality to
go through a career without a podium. And look, I
mean there's been several times where he's been off the
grid or adjacent to the greed in the last little
while where we thought, well, this is probably going to
be it. I think the thing for me is that
when you saw the graphic come up at the start
(21:45):
of the race and realize that he was actually going
to be the car starting last because Franco Colapino started
from the pit lane for Alpine. He thought, given how
well Sauber has been going lately, I thought to myself,
knowing what he's like in these sorts of races, I
could see him getting up and finishing seventh or eighth
or something, and we go, wow, what a great job
by Holckenberg, How well it's our going. But to see
(22:06):
him fighting for and eventually getting that podium, Yes, there
were tricky situations and conditions, but it was the same
for everybody. He executed an absolutely flawless race when the
strategy came into his favor, and I was glad that.
You know, there's been several situations in the past. I
think of that race at Hockenheigh where he was on
a chance to score the podium many years ago and
slid off in the wet where it was there for him.
(22:28):
He executed it so perfectly given the opportunity, And you
can always gauge how a driver's peers regard a driver
when you see something like this happen. And the response
was immediate and consistent from all of his peers, like
this guy absolutely deserves this. Everyone's very happy for him,
and this should have happened a long time ago, but
(22:50):
circumstances conspired against him. So a real feel good story.
And yeah, I don't think even he must have thought
at this point, it's like, Look, it's great that I'm here,
it's great that I'm going to be part this AUDI
project going forward. But given what Saba are doing lately,
perhaps we could even see him back there, because I've
got wolf faith in Saurba that I have in quite
a few other teams right now.
Speaker 1 (23:10):
Yeah, because I think this is the important second part
of this story, which is that, Okay, this podium was
certainly a considerable stretch for Sober, but the team's clearly
improved quite a bit in the last month or so.
This is its fourth consecutive point scoring race, and it's
got to the stage now where that's not surprising anymore
to see them in the points where is at the
start of the year. I mean, I thought when Nico
(23:31):
scored in Australia in that wet race, that that was
the last time they'd.
Speaker 3 (23:34):
Be scoring points of the very possibly wouldn't.
Speaker 1 (23:36):
Forget that took them what do I think It was
till the fourth last round last year to score points
something like that, and that was pretty much it And
that was a little bit fortunate as well. Whereas it
feels like there is momentum behind this team. Jonathan Wheatley's
bringing I'd say this without judgment, a little bit of
the Red Bull Christian Auna element to this team.
Speaker 3 (23:56):
In a good way.
Speaker 1 (23:57):
In fact, I've heard there's a lot of Red Bull
staff there now in factor among the Sauber team, and
that is no bad thing. It's in Redful's won so
many championships and you know, we started to see it
actually before the results came. Pit stops were a great
example something that's just improved a lot for saubur when
they used to have, I mean last year they had
some dreadful pit stops. Now they're regularly among the fastest. Now,
this big upgrade they brought i think to the Spanish
(24:19):
Grand Prix seems to be working and it feels like
Toauer's gone from a team that I mean, treading water
is almost too good of a thing to say. For
the last few years, it's a team that has some
forward movement to it.
Speaker 2 (24:30):
Yeah, it was like an abandoned building was the last
few years. It was you know it was there, and
you it was there, but no one bothered looking at
it because they'd seen it all before. But Michael, I
know you know this, but I'm going to read these
for the sake of our listeners here. So this is
the past four rounds. Spain, Canada, Austria, Great Britain Sober
thirty five points, Red Bull which has one car, twenty
eight points, Aston Martin twenty two, Racing Bulls fourteen, Alpine
(24:54):
another team that fields only one car. Apparently they have
twelve points. Williams have five points in the last four rounds,
so that twenty twenty five Tap is well and truly
turned off. And Haus have three points in the last
four races, which is two more than the times their
drivers have run into each other over the those last
four races. So you look at this last set of races,
Sauber is punching well above its weight. But this is
(25:15):
not some fluke, one off result. This one's been building
for a while. And you know you mentioned the Jonathan
Wheatlely influence and the fact that AUDI is coming in
next year and the upgrade is working. You look at
this constructor's table now and you can already clearly see
which teams have either put the Q in the ract
for twenty five or are about to, and which ones
are pushing on for glories with a rule set that's
(25:36):
going in the trash. I ferrari, but I would expect
Sauber to actually be able to sustain some level of this,
perhaps not this, but something like this, given that a
lot of their opposition in the midfield has decided we've
had enough and we're looking at twenty twenty six. This
may not be as one off as we think it is.
Speaker 1 (25:52):
Yeah, there's an interesting I really expected a lot of
these midfield teams to just have committed to next year
quite early in the way that Williams has been very
upfront about that idea. There's been almost nothing brought to
that car all year by some real refinements of what's
gone on. Whereas matib and I said late last year
that he didn't want to abandon the car because the
(26:13):
first of all, the car was so bad that didn't
seem right that that should be the car that proceeded
out his involvement, but also because the team had to
believe that it could actually race in Formula One competitively.
And that's that element that when we're talking about new rules,
when we're talking about obviously new constructors coming in or
AUDI taking over the team, I think is easily forgotten
(26:34):
because we assume, well, AUDI will inject all this money
into it, they'll bring some good facilities, their own power,
and it will take care of itself. But if the
team's not really up to it, you can squander quite
easily those advantages or that potential. And I think this
win or this upturn inform is important for that reason
as well as that it now feels like and the
staff will inevitably feel field is you feel like you
(26:55):
can believe that AUDI will debut next year and actually
be good. You know, like the team. It's still a
huge mountain to climb. Obviously to the front of the field,
that's clear, but you now feel like, actually the trajectory
is set, rather than AUDI starting at absolute zero and
then having to figure out how to get there.
Speaker 2 (27:11):
Yeah, there's a human element to this. And you can
spend all the money in the world, or you can
pin all your hopes on a new set of rules.
You know, every hope that you've got, But there is
a human element to this. It's like, huh, look at
what we've achieved in a very short amount of time
with the many impediments that we've got given we're hard
up against an expiring rule set here that's going to
give them momentum that a points table can't necessarily demonstrate.
(27:34):
When you go into the European winter this year with
this blank sheet of paper for twenty twenty six, they
are in so much of a better position than they
were even six months ago. And you would argue that
given what they've got coming in, they're in a better
position than a lot of teams because they seem pretty
stable in the back end. Now, you know someone like
Jonathan Wheatley. You mentioned the pit stops thing, that's the
(27:55):
lowest hanging fruit for a lower team to get right.
That's an app salute based camp bare minimum. When Wheeley
was at Red Bull, coincidence or not, they would always
have the best bit stops on the grid, and that's
something that's it's easily fixed with some extra practice and
training and methodologies and equipment, but it has a massive
effect on the belief and the morale of the employees there.
(28:17):
It's like, look what we've done. We've gone from here
to here really really quickly on this specific thing. Why
can't that translate into other parts of the business. The
one thing I do like about what Saber have done
this year, I really like this driver lineup. I think
it's a really good mix of you know, Borceoletto is
clearly going to be quite decent. I mean, yes, he
makes rookie mistakes and he has some shots or what having,
(28:38):
he's not slow. I think that's a probably a good
sign for the future. And Holkenberg's like the adult in
the room, and I think it's really telling that, you know, yes,
he was clearly really happy with what had happened on
the weekend, but it was in that sort of measured
professional yeah, yeah, look, look what we can do if
we get things right. And I think he's looking at that,
(28:58):
he's thinking, well, it's not going to be two hundred
and thirty nine races until I get my second podium.
It's going to be probably, you know, probably, it wouldn't
surprise me if he ends up on another podium this year.
What you need is a certain set of circumstances and
it could happen because every other team besides McLaren here
is competing with different agendas for the rest of twenty
twenty six. Some teams have already decided twenty five is over.
(29:19):
Other teams will push to the end, and I think
Sour is just in a really, really good spot at
the moment.
Speaker 1 (29:23):
Yeah, just to wrap up on this note, because the
midfield is really close. All those teams in with a
shout and have had these different periods of high scoring potential.
Williams seems like it's past it now. We don't know
whether that'll come back. Even racing bulls seems like they
could be thereabouts at the moment, but they're a little.
Speaker 3 (29:39):
Bit up and down.
Speaker 1 (29:40):
Hearts you wouldn't even want to predict. Sometimes they're good
and sometimes maybe good and sometimes sometimes not.
Speaker 3 (29:45):
Yes, great the great Man.
Speaker 1 (29:46):
And Alpine, though, is where I want to where I
want to land now because this is a team. You know,
we talk about Soerba moving from independent team the dependent
factory analogies on. I really like to being a works
team next year. It feels like Alpine is moving very
much in the opposite direction. Have been a historically great
works team in Formula One will not be next year.
(30:06):
There'll be Mercedes customers. That's now the slowest car on
the grid pretty much again qualifying Saba was slow this
this weekend but clearly had good pace. Yeah, Gazzi had
a great weekend though, did qualify in the top ten
really quite unexpectedly, and then held on to that place
really well. In that way we know ghasly can when
he's got the sniff of a good result. But of
course the big story for Alpine is what's going on
with that second car. Not the only team I guess
(30:28):
in Formula One to effectively be a one carte, but
Franco Colopinto for his sixth race, and with rumors about
Alpine being interested in Valtrie Botas had really quite a
poor weekend qualifying way the back didn't never see really
any glimpse of pace from him, and then his race
never even really got going, I think officially as recorded
as it did not start due to a drive line
issue that there's been some speculation may have driver era involved,
(30:52):
being similar to the Spanish Grand Prix qualifying incident, but
I'm not sure how true that is. Now speculation is
really mounting that he may not even be the car
at the next time, Right, What do you think's going
on here?
Speaker 3 (31:03):
Man? Because it doesn't seem great?
Speaker 2 (31:05):
What do I think is going on with olped? I
could either just shrug my shoulders, which is terrible podcast content,
or I could talk for the next forty five minutes
and we'd been none the wiser, quite frankly. But you
know what would be really interesting to me is if
they are going to make a driver change, which they might.
It depends if the bag transfers or Argentina keep coming through.
But I think you could take one variable out of
(31:25):
all of this, and let's just say Valerie Botas gets
the last ten races, they make a change shit in
the mid season break after Belgium and Hungary. That at
least takes a variable out of the equation in that
if you have a couple of experienced heads in the car.
Because you mentioned Ghastly before, Thank God for Pierre Ghastly,
because you're right, he's the guy that when there's a
sniff of an opportunity to get a decent result. He's
(31:45):
made a career on not letting those go. If you
had someone else that at least had the experience and
potentially the speed to do that, perhaps valtreie Bot has
it takes one variable out of the equation that we
just don't know the answer to yet. Because that second
car this year has been driven by a driver who
came into twenty twenty five with one Grand Prix start
and Jack doing and with about eight in Franco Colopinto.
(32:07):
I don't think it helps their situation, and now having
to experienced heads isn't going to solve all of their problems.
But I think it just removes one variable. But at
the moment they seem it's the worst possible combination. We're slow.
We don't know why we're slow operationally. Weekend to weekend.
It varies enormously, And as you said, this is where
they should be better because they are a works team.
(32:28):
Like next year, they're just not. You've got this huge
changing set of rules going on, and we've said this before.
It has always felt to me like a team that
is being primed to be sold. As much as they deny,
and as much as that story is kicked around right now,
I just do not understand what it is that they're doing.
So what I've just spent the last one hundred and
eighty seconds doing is the verbal equivalent of a shoulder
(32:49):
shrug and pointing back to you, because frankly, I don't
think they know, so I don't know how we're supposed to.
Speaker 1 (32:55):
Yeah, that's what I've been saying anytime I've been asked,
is that I'm not even sure Alpine knows what it's doing.
It seemed to me the start of the year, when
Jack Dowan was still in the seat, that there was
a little bit of a divide between the race team
and upper management, by which I really just mean plav
a bit or I think, and he's kind of I
don't want to say pulling the strings because that makes
it sound nefarious. But he's making decisions because he knows
(33:16):
he has the power to make decisions, and he's doing
what he's gout instinct tells him. And I guess once
upon a time that kind of worked. Whether or not
that's going to work again, Oh look, I'll leave that
up to you to decide for yourselves. But so far,
it hasn't and I just can't help but wonder what
would be happening here had Jack Don been allowed to
complete his rookie season, because we saw he was improving,
qualified P one race Oka, qualified pier Gays in Miami,
(33:40):
he was more able to put the pace that was
clearly there together more consistently, was slowly getting there. We
were another six races down the road now. Rather than
talking about, Wow, this guy has been mcalfa six races,
keeps crashing it and not doing very well, maybe we'd
be saying, hey, the guy has been there for twelve races,
similar to Gabrielle Bortiletto, only recently has really been clicking
with the sobur and scored those first points a week ago.
(34:02):
We'd be saying something sim about Jack going, oh, actually,
you know, maybe he's going to be a decent driver
for the future of Alpine or whatever it'll be called
when it solves well.
Speaker 2 (34:09):
And the same for Colopinto. I mean, the Ding situation
was mismanaged from day one, and the Colopinto situation as
much as we can talk about the money coming in
and you know, he was signed and he was always
going to get the seat that also has been mismanaged
because you know, the guiltine has been hanging over his head.
And I just don't think that you can have drivers
with that little Formula One experience, no matter their surname,
(34:30):
or their pedigree or their bank balance. There's no way
to operate, and that's no way to build into a
season that is, as you will know, twenty four rounds long.
The whole thing's just been so unnecessarily turbulent, but probably
consistent with the way that team operates, so perhaps we
shouldn't be surprised.
Speaker 1 (34:46):
Yeah, I think that's a good call. Well, let's move
on finally to the crystal ball, brought to you by
Complete home Filtration. It's up to you whether you want
to predict anything happening at Alpine. I certainly wouldn't be
that brave. Crystal ball is not of that level. But
mat where would you like to take up?
Speaker 2 (35:01):
Yes, my crystal ball, to quote Lando Norris, is broken
after last weekend because I picked Oscar Piastre to be
the British Gorod Pery and that did not work out
very well. But look, I could you could make a
crystal ball prediction about Alpine? And why would you do that,
so I'm going to go I'm going to go longer
view than just the short term here with these next
two races before the mid season break, I'm saying, sticking
(35:23):
on the Souber theme, they are going to finish a
comfortable fifth place in the Constructor's Championship at the end
of the season. Now they're already six, they're going to
leap frog Williams based on the trajectory of these two teams,
and as an adjunct to my crystal ball, given the
way Williams are going, could Williams actually finish second last
in the Constructor's Championship? Now this sounds a little bit
(35:44):
extreme here. Williams has fifty nine points. Hears is currently
ninth out of ten with twenty nine points, And I
don't necessarily trust Hals to score thirty more points of
Williams before the end of the season. But who is
going to score more points than Williams for the rest
of the season. Probably most teams, because we know they've
got twenty twenty six in their side and it's so
tightly packed in there behind Sauber that I would probably
(36:05):
trust some of those other teams to score more points,
and perhaps Williams over the course of the season. We've
got half the season to go, and they could absolutely
easily slide towards the foot of the table if they
are not careful. So there's two crystal balls for you,
not just one.
Speaker 3 (36:17):
That's a good call.
Speaker 1 (36:18):
I really like this really has me thinking now because
I'm looking at the championship championship chart and thinking, actually,
quite could be quite possible. Aston Martin's the team I
keep forgetting is in Formula one.
Speaker 2 (36:27):
That's what?
Speaker 1 (36:29):
Yeah, so I sometimes I think he wishes they went
in Formula One, but yeah, that I'd be willing to
say they could fillims for finish eighth. I think Hearts
is just too inconsistent. But Aston Martin, they've also upgraded
similar times to Sober and Alonso's pretty finished seventh in
a row. I think seven seven times in a row
is a lance stroll this week actually, so the team's
(36:50):
got the best result of seventh in a row.
Speaker 3 (36:51):
I guess Racing.
Speaker 1 (36:52):
Bulls I think is actually pretty good just when their
drivers are having a good weekend, given they're so inexperience,
I think that's perfectly reasonable.
Speaker 3 (37:00):
I could see it.
Speaker 1 (37:01):
Happening, which would be a remarkable turnaround from the enthusiasm
of the start of the season for Williams, wouldn't it.
But they knew that was the risk. In fact, I
don't think they were even prepared or they didn't realize
they'd be starting so strongly. So I suppose if you
said they were fifth with the chance of retaining it,
that absolutely have taken it to in the off season.
Speaker 2 (37:17):
Yeah. Absolutely, And I think for Williams all that's going
to be forgotten if they start twenty six with a
reasonably competitive car and hit the ground running anyway, I
don't think they're going to be looking back at the
twenty twenty five Constructors Championship with too many regrets if
that's the case. But I've had two cracks at the
Crystal ball and I haven't given you one yet, So
before I hog all of the crystal ball gazing for
this weekend, what have you got?
Speaker 1 (37:37):
Yeah, yours are good. I'm satisfied with that. Now I'm
going to move over to Supercars Land because they've got
a really important weekend coming up this weekend. Towns will
five hundred and it's important because it's the first real
street track on the calendar this year and that's important
because two of the three finals this year are street tracks.
The Gold Coast is the first one and the finale
is Adelaide, And so this weekend is it's obviously not
(38:00):
going to be crucial to who makes the finals unless
this is a weekend where someone round about that position
ten scores a big points or whatever.
Speaker 3 (38:06):
Obviously, but this.
Speaker 1 (38:07):
Is going to be really important to that form guy.
This is almost going to be this almost like preseason
testing for the finals, particularly for those teams that are,
let's be honest, pretty much locked in their irregular front
runners and those top drivers. So who performs well here
is suddenly their odds for the championship are going to
shorten considerably. And I think for the first time all
year pretty much, I know he's got one win already.
(38:28):
We're going to see a good weekend, I hope from
chasmost it because it'd be good to see him in
contention for the finals. I think the sport needs and
wants him up the front, and he's only sort of
thereabouts this year, but I'd like to see him do well.
I think he did well last year. If he does
well again this year, suddenly the story around WAU season
particularly most it season is going to change quite considerably,
(38:50):
but whatever happens, it's going to be. It's an important result.
It's gonna be one really to watch.
Speaker 2 (38:54):
I like the pre season analogy because of the way
the back end of this season is going to be.
And yeah, it does add it's something a little bit
extra for a normal in inverted Commas round in July.
That's going to have far reaching consequences, So I do
like this. You shouldn't underrate your crystal ballgasing. I think
that was I think we've had a good week on
the crystal Ball this week.
Speaker 1 (39:13):
Yeah, I watch all the predictions end up to be wrong,
but that's all the time we have for Pittalk today.
You can subscribe to Pittalk wherever you get your favorite podcasts,
and you can leave us a rating and a review
as well. This weekend it is the Supercars Townsville five
hundred with Friday's race. Friday's race yes at three point
forty and then races on Saturday at Sunday at three pm,
after which you can catch the German Motorcycle Grand Prix
(39:33):
with lights out at ten pm on Sunday. You give
up to date with all the latest f one, supercars
and MotoGP news at foxsports dot com dot Au from
Matt Clayton and me Michael Lomonado. Thanks very much for
your company. We'll catch you next week.
Popular Podcasts
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
24/7 News: The Latest
The latest news in 4 minutes updated every hour, every day.
The Joe Rogan Experience
The official podcast of comedian Joe Rogan.