Episode #10: 2023 British GP

Okay, yes, it took us six weeks to get this podcast done...but was it worth the wait? And were Champions Club tickets worth the price? As we finish playing catch up from our travels abroad, we're finally talking about our trip to Merry Ol' England for the 2023 British GP.

From the exhilarating support races and the unforgettable roar of the crowd, gear up for our take on the highs, lows, and thrilling battles of this year's British GP.  We revisit our experiences at the track, interweaved with our usual shallow analysis and new musings on camping, paddock walks and Pimms.  And Jen finally got marbles!

From the exhilarating support races and the unforgettable roar of the crowd to the trials of lacking access to real-time data, our journey at Silverstone was far from dull. But as we discuss the latest shake up of the "best of the rest" pecking order, we wonder if perhaps the charm of live viewing may not always be the ultimate F1 experience.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Greetings and welcome to Formula XX, a podcast by two
Gen X women talking aboutFormula One and other
motorsports, usually with adultbeverages and always with adult
words.
So if you're underage, easilyoffended or bothered by the fact
it's taken us six weeks torecord this podcast for a race
that we actually got to see liveand in person last month, turn
back now because we're going tobe a little rusty around the

(00:23):
edges.
If you're joining us on theregular, you'll know that we are
recording this seriously out oforder.
We've already jumped throughthe two races that happened
after Stillerson and we decidedto save the best for last.
With me, as always, is theamazing and wonderful Gen Gen.
What part of the world are youin and what are you drinking
this?

Speaker 2 (00:41):
evening I am still in Vancouver-ish.
I am not in my room because myroom is basically an empty box
that my housemate is currentlypainting all the holes in the
wall we move out.
Well, I've moved out.
Heather came up and helped memove.
I moved out all of my stuffthis weekend and a little bit
today.
I'm staying in the sparebedroom.
The actual movers come tomorrow.
I'm in a very different roomthat I normally pod in and I'm

(01:04):
not sure how the audio is goingto be.
You guys can all find out justafter I edit it what I am
drinking.
I have my last tiny bit ofsmoke and oak left, which I
don't think is going to get methrough.
That's from Shelter Point,which is a distillery in
Campbell River, which is whereI'll be going shortly.
I also have some of my EdenMills whiskey, which was a super
special, hard to get thing whenHeather and I were in St

(01:27):
Andrew's, scotland, which onlyhas a tiny bit left.
I'm thinking I'm going tofinish both of those two off
throughout the course of thispodcast.
Heather, where in the world areyou and what are you drinking?

Speaker 1 (01:38):
Good memories.
I am back in Seattle after aquick trip up north, as Jen said
, for the weekend.
Yeah, so you're on the finalleg of your big move.
I completed mine more or lessnot too long before Silverstone.
It's been a busy summer, a lotgoing on, as we've covered in

(02:00):
the other recent podcasts whichare in sequence after this.
We both made the trip.
You stayed on for a bit longerand then life has been happening
and that means we've been doinga lot of this out of order.
It also means that I think,realistically, this will be a
bit of a fractured recaprace-wise, which ours always are

(02:23):
anyway, but I think it's very,very different and amazing, but
very different to get to see arace live.
I would be curious to hear whatyour thoughts were A about
getting to see a race inSilverstone and be what it is as
a fan to watch it tracksideversus on TV.

Speaker 2 (02:48):
I really, really loved watching it at Silverstone
.
One of the nice things aboutSilverstone when we were there
were all the support races.
We got to watch F2 and F3 dotheir practice, their quality,
their racing, which I love,watching them in real life.
The only drawback that I well,there's a couple drawbacks

(03:09):
You're going to watch it fromone position.
We were fortunate enough tohave fantastic viewing area.
We were at the Champions Clubfor F1 Experience.
We also had the broadcast goingon, but you can only see a part
of the track.
Whenever the Wi-Fi cut outwhich happened you lost all
commentary of what was going onin other parts of the track.

(03:30):
The other thing that was a bitirksome was that we couldn't.
We've talked about this in theprevious podcast.
That actually happened three,six.
That happened after was thatyou couldn't get anything from
F1 TV.
We couldn't watch any timing,we couldn't listen to any of
that stuff that was going on.
But overall it was fantastic.
The atmosphere at Silverstonewas incredible.

(03:52):
I was a bit worried going inbecause you hear about some of
the races where fans are notkind to each other.
Everybody was lovely to eachother.
Even when we snarked with eachother, no one was being bags of
dicks, which was great.
I'm just chatting to other fans, chatting to people in line,
chatting to people in ourseating area, just talking to

(04:13):
all sorts of other fans, hearingand feeling the crowd roar for
any of the hometown boys whothey did.
The Brits did themselves proudfor their hometown race.
It was a lot of fun.
I'm being able to watch it withtwo of my oldest and dearest
friends was just fantastic.
We had a really good time.

(04:33):
All things being equal, I'd goback again.
I don't know if I'd sit in theseat and squeeze that before
it'd have to be a think upon itbecause they are very, very
expensive, but it was great.
It had so much fun.
Everything was fantastic.
What do you think about seeingit in person versus watching it
on TV?

Speaker 1 (04:49):
Yeah, I would definitely second, the comments
about the vibe at the track.
No doubt some of that is thefact that we tend to be rooting
for at least one of thosehometown boys a lot of the time.
The energy there in that crowdwas just electric.
I would say, having been tothree races, it's probably not

(05:13):
my favorite of the threeexperiences in general because
it's going to be really reallyhard to sort of top the overall
experience that we had inMontreal last year.
But I think in terms of justcrowd dynamic, this Montreal and
Coda this was it Like the justsort of crazy enthusiasm during

(05:35):
the race, like the roar of thecrowd, how into it the crowd
were, was really fun.
I absolutely agree.
As somebody who's just sort of adata nerd, during Kuali, even
to some degree during freepractice and during the race,
not being able to really sitthere and have a good way to

(05:56):
measure the timing and followthe rest of the action on track
is always the hard part.
That I would say is thedownside to seeing something
live is you tend to have apretty narrow field of view of
what's happening.
Even if you have a big screenthere, it's sometimes
challenging to really followwhat's happening because there

(06:17):
can be a lag.
In this case we are talkingabout a building that is right
across from the national pit, sothe old original.
If you go back 15 years andyou're watching a race at
Silverstone, it was that old pitlane and so you have the
straight coming by that old pitlane, but you do have a pretty

(06:37):
long field of view as they'recoming past and then down
towards cops.
So it was a good location.
We were definitely spoiled.
It was fun for us because wealso chose to stay in cabins
that were quite nearby the track.

Speaker 2 (06:53):
There's golf courses all around Silverstone and what
they do for F1 is you can,depending on what you're willing
to do and pay.
You can bring your own tent andcamp.
You can have a regular nylontent provided for you.
You can have a big canvas sortof your glamping tent provided
for you.
You can have cabins, which arebasically garden sheds, but they

(07:17):
are fairly well-appointed andyou can choose to have some of
those with or withoutelectricity, or you can have
motor homes.
So there was three of us.
We had the garden shed, whichwas great.
It had opening and closingwindows.
All the beddings provided theirbunk beds.
We had a mini fridge we couldcharge, we had a light in there,
we could charge all of ourdevices and there was a spot for

(07:38):
the car to park right next toit.
I think that whole set and itwas fun.
Like it was maybe a mile and ahalf walk, I think, from our
cabin to where we were sitting.
It was really cool.
It was a really great, funexperience and I think I said
I'd do it again in a heartbeatif I could afford it again.
It was fantastic, yeah.

Speaker 1 (07:59):
I thought the festival vibe sort of for that
whole part of because it'smultiple different organizations
who are setting up for thosedifferent types of housing that
Jen was just describing andpeople have their flags out and
you definitely can see who'sflying there British boys versus
their Dutch boys versus.

(08:20):
You know, sometimes that's thefun is just sort of figuring out
who people are cheering for andthe odd combinations.
But again, there's justdefinite tilt at Silverston
towards certain drivers.
But for us that was right inour wheelhouse and we had a
great time with all of that.
I thought the food selectiontrackside was great.
It was relatively easy to getto a variety of things.

Speaker 2 (08:45):
They've gone completely cashless.
Everything has to be paid bycard or phone and everybody
coming in was a bit leery ofthat because the year before
they had attempted the samething and the internet wasn't
good enough to support it andmostly I don't remember there
being too many issues with theinternet for being able to pay
for stuff and I'd go back andget one of those Cornish pasties

(09:09):
again in a heartbeat.

Speaker 1 (09:12):
I'd do a PIMS.
Yeah, pour me a PIMS, I'd betotally down for that.
We did not go out onto thetrack for the pit lane melee
after the race, but I think oncewe get through a little more
discussion of the actual raceitself, it'd be worth circling

(09:33):
back around to some of the otherthings that came with being a
champions club.
Again, if you're crazy enoughto pay the money, there are some
other perks that come with thatthat I think are worth
mentioning.
The other thing that was uniqueabout the weekend that we were
there was it was the first timethat the new F1 Brad Pitt movie

(09:55):
was filming in situ during arace weekend and was kitted out
with their cars and multipletrack tours around with filming
kits in between.
They're helicopter goingoverhead.

Speaker 2 (10:10):
They're helicopter, yeah, so we got to see all those
four of you who don't know,they had like F2 cars made to
look like F1 cars, and they hadtwo of them just belting around
the track in their own sessions,which was fun and interesting
to see.

Speaker 1 (10:25):
It was.
It was definitely not thenormal occasion.
There was rumor going on priorto Sunday that actually Brad
Pitt, in his car, was going tolead the formation lap around
the track, which I would haveloved because I was pretty sure
it would piss for stappin off,but that isn't actually what
happened.

Speaker 2 (10:46):
No, though I did hear from somebody else that those
cars were on track at the startof the race so that they could
have footage of them being linedup with all the other cars.
So they didn't do the formationbut they went out on track.
I don't know if that's true ornot, but I've heard a couple
other people talking about it.
So but it was, it was a funweekend.

(11:06):
It was also that weekendincredibly, incredibly varied
for the weather.
Like we went from blisteringheat and sun and just like
putting sunscreen on every houror so because we are the whitest
women in the world and we wouldburn to a crisp and a heartbeat

(11:27):
, but also sideways rain andponchos, and like wearing our
full rain jackets and rain suitsin the same day.
And you watched F1 is a bitluckier, but you watch those
poor bastards in F2 and F3 goingaround and having just wildly
wildly, not even like fromsession to session, but within
their own session or their ownraces wildly different weather

(11:50):
conditions and the wind keptchanging direction and intensity
as well, and they getcompletely changed.
I think it was the F2 race.
It completely changed, HiReesie.

Speaker 1 (12:01):
My co-host is going to join us.
Briefly, for those of you whodon't know, and in honor of the
fact that we just learned today,as we are recording this, that
the Imola Kitty formula, lino,passed away after 16 years,
reesie decided she's going tochime in in honor of dear
formula Lino Indeed.
So, going back to the actualrace, saying I will say we were

(12:26):
there for the free practicesessions and quality.
I don't have a ton of thingsthat have stuck in my mind this
many weeks later and I didn't goback and rewatch.
I think the big talking pointfor the weekend was that McLaren
rocked up with a big set ofupgrades.
This, of course, was on theheels of basically 10 races

(12:51):
where the car just nope, was notworking.
They showed up at Silverstonewith their updates and a hideous
livery and a hideous livery,but it didn't matter because the
livery did not slow them downin the least.
And suddenly we had a situationwhere not only were they really
looking sharp in free practice,they had no problem putting

(13:14):
themselves second, third, inqualifying.

Speaker 2 (13:18):
Yeah, that was quite the roar that went up throughout
all of the track when that wasgoing on, mclaren rocking up
with all these upgrades and theupgrades worked Right.
I mean, the last time McLarendid a big update they went
backwards and they've obviouslylike, really sort of had a long
think about what they've doneand sorted themselves out and

(13:39):
are now going in the rightdirection.
And those cars were hooked up.
They were fast, they were agileand they could, they were
competitive and they've stayedcompetitive, which is good for
McLaren.
They've had a couple of ups anddowns in the road and we'll see
if this is something thatcontinues to put them up or if
they've plateaued.
But it was interesting to watch.
I mean, piastri just didphenomenal.

(14:00):
Norse did as well.
They drove the balls off or thetires off that car.

Speaker 1 (14:04):
They both, I think, showed what the potential is.
I know I had pretty high hopesfor Oscar Piastri coming into
the season, not reallyanticipating at the start of the
season that McLaren wasstruggling quite as much as they
were.
Norse may drive me bonkers offthe track.
I certainly think he's anamazing driver and he definitely

(14:27):
knocked it out of the park andSilverstone, in my opinion, both
in Kuali and then in the racewhich we'll talk about in a
minute.
I think the other sort of keytalking point at that point was
the fact that Checo Perez onceagain failed to get into Q3.
The other British drivers GeorgeRussell qualified, Lewis

(14:48):
Hamilton, which hasn't reallybeen the norm this season.
Lewis had a bad Kuali and wewere talking right before we
started racing.
I can't remember if there wasanything in particular that was
going on.
I do know the Mercedes wasstruggling.
They really did not love wherethey were at with the setup,
which has kind of been the norm.
Unfortunately, that Mercedes isstill just way too variable and

(15:13):
I think we did have, as Jensaid, just the craziest changing
weather.
It was definitely.
It was like being in a springclimate somewhere here in the
Pacific Northwest where you jokethat you wait five minutes and
it's a whole new weather system.

Speaker 2 (15:26):
Aston Martin also brought a whole series of
updates where they said theywere going to be on the podium
and could even potentially be infirst place at Silverstone, and
their updates made that car goslower.
That was one of their things.
Them and McLaren were.
We have all the stuff forSilverstone and it did not
happen with Aston Martin at all.

(15:48):
Alonso did great during therace, holding other cars off
from passing him.
I would say that's more to dowith Alonso's driving than it is
to do with the power of thatcar.

Speaker 1 (15:59):
Yeah, there have been a few theories about that in
the week since, up to andincluding something to do with
the flexi wings of the frontring which just keeps coming up,
but I don't there hasn't been alick of actual evidence that
that is something that happened.
But I would say I've probablyseen that in at least four
different places in the last twoweeks that maybe the FIA

(16:22):
cracked down on their front wingand that's part of it.
But at the end of the day herepoint stands they definitely
didn't take a leap forward inSilverstone at all and, other
than being captain of the DRStrain because he definitely does
know how to keep cars behindhim generally, alonso did an

(16:44):
amazing job to get himself up tosixth, because I don't think
that car warranted it To use themuch-toded Wiley Fox phrase
that they call him every timethey've entered his name.

Speaker 2 (16:53):
Alonso did the best he could with the shit box he
was given for that weekend.
One of the other sort of nicethings that ended up being a
very sad thing was Badas wentand put the car and did fairly
well in Q2 and then Fawawe goboom.
Then he ended up at the bottomof Q2 for the start of the race.

Speaker 1 (17:14):
That was yet another chink in the Alfa Romeo armor.
They have struggled, I wouldsay, with the exception of
Hungary the following race.
They've really just not beenable to get themselves out of
that badrum quadrant of the gridon a consistent basis, which I
don't think does justice toeither of those two drivers.

(17:34):
I don't know that they're in aposition to change that in any
significant way for the secondhalf of the season, but I would
sure love to see them both atleast flirting more consistently
with the points, because it hasnot been happening of late.
I don't think either of themwarrants being scoreless.
I don't even know how manyraces in a row it is now.

Speaker 2 (17:56):
Yeah, I think they flatter the car rather than the
other way around.
That car is just not consistent.
I think both those drivers arefairly consistent drivers.
There are pluses and minusesfor both of them, but yeah, I
think if they had a car that wasslightly less breakable, then
they'd be doing well.
Mercedes had a car that didn'tporpoise, they'd be doing a lot

(18:16):
better too.
We can say as much as we wantabout the cars being better, the
teams would be better.
It's the way these things go.
Back to the race Everybody'slined up on the grid, we have
the start of the race, mercedesis splitting their tire strategy
, george is on softs which needsto be kept in mind for later

(18:38):
parts of the race and we go Inour first couple of corners of
Silverstone.
Everything sort of changes.
Norris got an incredible launch.
In fact, he got such a goodlaunch that he pipped for
Stappen and was our new raceleader.
You could have felt the groundshake with the roar that went up

(18:59):
in Silverstone when thathappened, when Norris took the
lead of the race.
It was incredible.

Speaker 1 (19:06):
Yes, people were very enthusiastic and Piaz tri
stayed right with them.
There was actually a point inthat opening lap where Piaz tri
was challenging for Stappen aswell.

Speaker 2 (19:16):
The fact that they could hold that the whole way
through.
So it's not like a house that,yes, you can do well in quality,
you can do well for the firstcouple of laps and then it's
just eaten its tires and they'refucked and they just fall down
the order.
Both Norris and Piaz tri putthose cars in great positions.
They did it in quality and theydid it in the race and they
kept those positions for themost part and they had some

(19:38):
fierce battles to keep thosepositions.
Lewis, however, did not have agood start to the race.
He ended up going quite wideand losing positions and going
down to, I think, 10th, ninth,ninth.

Speaker 1 (19:52):
And certainly it was interesting.
The Mercedes did not fire upthose mediums very well.
Neither did it for Stappen'sRed Bull, for that matter.
The vagaries of something trackspecific.
I don't think Lewis got aparticularly poor launch.
That back in just as oftenseems to be the case.
He did not go where he wantedit to go, so he did tumble down

(20:12):
the grid a couple of spots,stabilize that pretty quickly.
I mean, it didn't take all thatlong for him to start making it
places again, but not the startthat he had hoped for.
George, on the other hand, Ithink, got himself up a spot or
two in the initial corner meleeand started off on those softs

(20:34):
and was immediately on CharleLeclerc's tail where he stayed
for a very, very, very long time.
That was a good pace forFerrari in the opening stint.
George continually was withinwell less than a second and just
never could find a way past.

Speaker 2 (20:53):
Yeah, and that says something about.
It was like oh, the power ofDRS, the power of DRS.
Some cars have it, some carsdon't, and Mercedes obviously
doesn't.
So yeah, so George did.
He was behind Leclerc for many,many laps.
The only reason he went up pastLeclerc was not because of an
overtake, it was because Leclercpitted.
Hamilton was behind Alonzo, whodid a good job, offending him

(21:14):
off for a lap or two before hefinally pipped him, and the
crowd just lost his ever-lovingfucking mind.
Heather and I watched the raceagain recently, but in this
crowd in the stands you couldjust hear vibrations.
I think it would be even louderwhen Lewis pipped Alonzo than
when Norris got the lead of therace.

(21:36):
You can tell who the hometownfavorite is deep down for
everyone.
No problem there, absolutely.

Speaker 1 (21:41):
And kudos to George because as usual there's I feel
like there's sort of been aconsistent discrepancy between
Pirelli's predicted tirestrategy and what the bulk of
the grid are doing.
Maybe, well, certainly the lastthree races, but I would say
probably.
If I paid attention and wentback, it goes further than that

(22:04):
the anticipated tire window onthe softs.
So Charles went in on, I think,like lap 19 and put on a new
pair of hards and he was comingoff the mediums.
So at that point George's tireswere actually about 22 laps old
, because they were three lapold tires at the start of the

(22:26):
race.
So he just keeps going andthose softs which were supposed
to have gone off aroundsomewhere in the 15 to 17 lap
range.
He was just a little energizerbunny and despite the fact that
he'd spent those first 19 lapsright on Leclerc's tail, did not
have a pace delta at all.
In fact he really, reallymaintained a really good pace

(22:49):
all the way until the pointwhere they finally brought him
in for a new set of tires.
And that really that tirestrategy, I will say, although
it was affected by what happenedout of his control later in the
race was one of the best thingsI've seen Mercedes do for
strategy recently because ifthings hadn't changed beyond

(23:11):
their control a little bit laterin the race he really would
have been in a good spot.
I think he had a reasonableshot at fourth and he was not
able to get that for safety car,but that was not in any way,
shape or form a result ofanything he did, because he was
right on point.

Speaker 2 (23:29):
He did really well.
In lap seven, hulk came in tochange his nose from a bargy
bargy that he had with thedevries which was, incidentally,
probably the nail that wentinto poor Nick's driving coffin.
And then lap 10, poor Estebanwas retired, which was the start
of one of the many recenttragic weekends, if you're an

(23:52):
Alpine fan so one of the thingswhen you're in sort of our level
of where we were with the F1experience, they have F1
personalities to come and talkto you and if you're at any race
where Heather and I are not,it's people like Bodas, and
races where Heather and I are,it's like a statistician Jack
Villeneuve and Ottmar.
So Ottmar came to talk to usand was really hopeful and

(24:13):
really happy and really sort ofpersonable and then the race
happened and I was like oh what?
And then like all the otherfallout happened and like I
wonder if the pictures that weall got when you're chatting
with us is some of the lasthappy pictures we have of you.

Speaker 1 (24:29):
Yeah, George, you know, did a really nice job.
I'm trying to think who elsewas on softs.
There were only a couple ofother drivers on soft.
Pretty much everybody was ableto take them longer than
anticipated.
So where Pirelli really landson these and how accurate they
are on their tire predictions,as I was alluding to earlier, I
think it's sort of interestingto watch right now because I'm

(24:50):
not convinced they really.
I don't think they understandhow those tires work.
Yeah, I don't think theyunderstand them is what my
takeaway has been after theselast few races, because they've
just been wrong so many times,so we get to lap 19.

Speaker 2 (25:04):
One of the things we sort of glossed over, which
isn't really super important,but that Max has taken the lead
by this point.
He's complaining about the windmaking it hard to drive, which
is fair enough.

Speaker 1 (25:15):
Oh, I'm sorry.
Was I supposed to give a shitabout Verstappen taking the lead
?

Speaker 2 (25:18):
I do need to know that he's in the lead for
further on discussion aboutwhat's happening.
The other thing is Ferraribeing fucking Ferrari at this
point, where Sykes' engineercomes on the radio and asking
you know how's it going, what'sup, how about Plan B?
And Sykes is like, okay, what'sPlan B?
The engineer's like, oh, I'llget back to you about that.

(25:40):
And you're like well doneFerrari.
Well fucking done.
Like one assumes that they usethe alphabet the same way
everybody else does and Plan Bwould be their second plan.

Speaker 1 (25:52):
I think it's just fine that somebody forgot.
I think it's tragic that boththe driver and the engineer
forgot.
I have no problem having somegrace for Carlos not knowing.
Oh, absolutely, becausealthough I think Carlos is
overrated generally speaking asa driver, I do think he's very
smart in the car and is usuallyextremely aware and very good at

(26:16):
requiring his team to give himinformation.
He doesn't take anything ifthey were driving there, but for
him to have forgotten, no, butCharles does.
You know, it's taken basicallya full season and a half of
absolute chaos and mayhem foryou to get any sort of overt
pushback from Charles on theradio, whereas Carlos is just

(26:39):
like yeah, no, not doing thatthing you just told me to do
Like on the regular it's notunusual.

Speaker 2 (26:45):
Like that thing sounds stupid and I'm just going
to keep driving.
So fuck right off.

Speaker 1 (26:49):
I'm just going to keep driving.
When he forgot and theengineers forgot.
Yeah, that was a pretty classicRight, you're right.
So, yeah, first up and took thelead on lap five.
Nobody gives a shit, becauseeverybody knew it was going to
happen.
On the flip side, what I wasstarting to say a minute ago was
lap 19,.
We get to this point in therace.
Pits are starting to happen.

(27:10):
Poor Pierre Gasly has alreadybeen behind Alonso at this point
, for, I swear to God, it musthave been at least 10 laps by
the time we get just to lap 19.
A few more laps go by.
Checo is still down in ninth.
I don't even remember where hestarted and I don't care about.
What I can tell you is ifyou're driving a Red Bull, you

(27:30):
should be farther up the gridthan ninth after the halfway
point of a race like Silverstone, where there are plenty of
opportunities to overtake.
And yet he was stilllanguishing at that point in the
race and I really was surprisedthat he struggled as much as he
did for that first half of therace.

Speaker 2 (27:51):
I'm always surprised when he struggled as much as he
does.
That car is a fucking rocketship and for someone who is such
a journeyman as Paris is, who'sdriven so many different types
of cars on the grid, it's notlike Danny Rick.
Danny Rick, I guess he's beenfor several different teams, but
when he got to McLaren that wasthe first time he'd ever driven
an F1 car without a Renaultengine.

(28:12):
So that was a big sort oflearning curve for him, which he
failed to learn.
But Paris has driven for amultitude of teams for a
multitude of different types ofcars, and the fact that he can't
understand that car, I think,sort of speaks to one how much
that car is geared especiallytowards Max Verstappen.

(28:34):
But two, also, I think he's inhis head so much right now.
I think whatever fucking mindgames go on over at Red Bull, I
think he's in the weeds withthem right now and he's
overthinking or underthinking ortriple guessing or I don't know
what's going on with him.
But I am not impressed withwhat's happening and he should
definitely be better Justpassing, never mind all the

(28:54):
fuckups he does in Quali.
He should be better at beingable to pass with the car that
he has.
It's ridiculous that it takeshim half a race to get through a
third of the grid with that car.

Speaker 1 (29:05):
Agreed, I think when we do our midseason recap in a
couple of weeks as if we knowwe're doing a midseason recap,
but I suspect we will I thinkthat's obviously you know, for
better or for worse, if you'regoing to have any sort of a
talking point about Red Bull, itunfortunately dwells entirely
within that realm of well, howcome Max Verstappen's so much

(29:28):
better than Jaco Paris?
I don't want to waste any timeon it tonight, but it really was
sort of weird to see, as wewere getting to the halfway
point.
So back in the race, lap 25,.

Speaker 2 (29:39):
At this point Lewis has been behind signs quite a
while I have him catching himfor like one second at about lap
22.

Speaker 1 (29:48):
Yeah, he turned it up and I remember us sort of
thinking, well, had he been tiresaving at that point?
Maybe he was, because there wascertainly a point in that lower
20s that he just put the hammerdown.
He really was closing and thenit kind of faded back and so he

(30:10):
was sort of sitting in about theone and a half second range and
didn't seem very likely that hewas going to overtake at that
point.
He got it down finally then tounder a second and Ferrari went
ahead and pitted signs, whichmade sense Strategically.
They weren't going to let himget overtaken on track.
That wasn't in Ferrari'sstrategy plan.

(30:34):
So that was the plan B.
That was the plan B.
Once they remembered what itwas.
I will give Ferrari props onthose first two stops.
Both Charles and signs's pitstops were really good, which
was nice to see because therewere plenty of examples of not
great pit stops again in.

Speaker 2 (30:54):
Silverstone See Mercedes, the whole race.

Speaker 1 (30:57):
Yeah, Poor fucking George.
Right, I mean lap 29,.
George has been on those tiresfor a century and a half.
They're soft.
At least 10 laps passed whatthey were expected to be at that
point and he comes in and getsa shit 3.9 second pit stop.
Mercedes, fix your shit.

(31:19):
You will never be a top tierteam if you cannot figure out
how to do a competitive pit stop.

Speaker 2 (31:25):
I am willing to come in and do a day worth of
training.
I will pay or, to be fair, Iwill use all of my points to
come and try out to be like ajack person or like tire off
person, tire on person.
I don't think I can do thedrill gun person thing because
my knees are shit and kneelingdown on a concrete, even with
the pad, seems like anexcruciating part.
But you know what?

(31:46):
I have a decently physicalperson.
I feel like I could help thatteam out of it.

Speaker 1 (31:51):
I have faith in you.
You can do it.
I think we could start to gofund me for that thing or a
Kickstarter, and get you thecash you need.
It really sucked, though.
In this case there was a chancethat George was going to be
able to jump Cheryl.
That long pit stop put paid tothe reality of that happening.
It seemed like maybe he wouldhave come out just behind Cheryl

(32:13):
regardless if it had been aregular, and by regular I mean
2.5 or less pit stop.
That just then meant that hewas behind Cheryl yet again on
lap 31.
We got, in my opinion, theovertake of the race.

Speaker 2 (32:28):
The past George did on Charles around the outside
was a thing of beauty by far thebest past we saw, absolutely,
and both of them battling it outand trying to keep track
position or gain track position.
They just were fucking perfectand they didn't touch each other
and there was no.
Well, this is my piece of thetrack, so I'm going to push you
wide, regardless of whether youknow you're there or not, or I'm

(32:51):
there or not.
I just thought it was reallyreally great race craft from
both of them.

Speaker 1 (32:55):
Yeah, going back, all harkening back to the first
stint when, again, those twowere playing footsie with each
other.
There were a couple of pointsthat I thought Charles was
uncharacteristically aggressivein terms of waiting until the
last second.
But in that second stint and inthis situation, both of them
were brilliant in terms of beingable to be wheel to wheel and,

(33:16):
like you said, we don't we don'talways get to see that with
certain drivers on the grid.
So those two, I think, reallybonus points to both of them,
but I do think George deservedovertake of the race.

Speaker 2 (33:28):
I agree.
One of the things too, whenLewis was in that clean air
which is how there was, becauseshe watches the timing at the
same time she was pointing outto me Lewis is matching for
stopping for fastest track times, for lap time speed, like that
car in clean air, with whatevermagic Lewis was doing to it, was
fucking flying along the track.

Speaker 1 (33:49):
Yeah, he definitely.
Strategically he needed newtires for reasons shortly after
that.
But the mediums were dialed inand either because he had really
conserved them very well orbecause the Mercedes is just
happier or was at least on thatday happier on the mediums.

(34:10):
Very nice to see.
It's too little, too late.
Again, he qualified out ofposition.
He did not have a good qualityand he did not have a good start
, but he definitely had the paceat this point in the race.

Speaker 2 (34:23):
Then also just around then a whole bunch of people,
George included, came in fortires.
Leclerc came in on lap 33 fortires and I don't know how he
didn't get an unsafe releasewith what happened with him and
Albonne.

Speaker 1 (34:36):
What prompted that flurry?
Because we talked about Georgecoming in.
George just came in because heneeded new tires on lap 29.
What happened that promptedthat?

Speaker 2 (34:46):
For a while we go, boom, for a while we go boom,
not like Ferrari, ferrari, butyou know, customer team Ferrari
engine go boom.
Magdalen caught fire real good.
It was quite impressive that,like we could see the smoke at
one point from where he was, youknow, burning away, and that
prompted a whole slew of pitstops of people coming in.

(35:07):
Another shitty pit stops forHamilton.

Speaker 1 (35:10):
Yeah, the virtual safety car came out and, well
for sure, charles came in rightaway.
It took a little bit for theleaders to come in.
Mostly a full safety car came.
It wasn't it was within a lap,but part of it is, I think,
because Silverstone is such along lap.
They started with the VSC andit wasn't necessarily clear
whether it was going to go tovirtual safety car initially.

(35:31):
But where the car was and thefact that it was on fire and it
wasn't going to not be on fireimmediately meant most teams
went.
Oh haha opportunity.

Speaker 2 (35:40):
Well, and we were at the race, like I'm sure people
were at home at the TV whyaren't the leaders pitting?
Why the fuck aren't the leaderspitting like pit right now?
Why are they going?

Speaker 1 (35:48):
Oh well, they both shit the bad.

Speaker 2 (35:49):
Like how have the top four not pitted?
This is fucking ridiculous.
There might have been some fourletter words.
Yes, by that point there'dprobably been quite a lot of
champagne, so they're probablyquite allowed possible.
Four letter words at that pointI wouldn't rule it out.
So Leclerc comes in to pit on33, and how he didn't get a
penalty for unsafe release intoAlbaan is a fucking mystery man

(36:11):
Like that was real close.

Speaker 1 (36:14):
If you think that's close, go watch Spa and Pierre
Gasly's wildly unsafe release inthe sprint race.
That didn't get penalized, butthat's all other conversation.
Norris had a great pit stop a2.2 second from McLaren to get
him out on the hards, the hardsfor him to get out on the hards,
which everybody was like WTF.

Speaker 2 (36:36):
But and you know what , and he was as well.
He's like why are we on thehards?
We've lost the race, we've lostthe position and his engineer,
which just was steadfast.
It's not the best option, butit's the best option we have.
And you know what.
Props to the strategist likethey called that correctly
putting him on hards and havingHamilton come out in medium
softs.
The assumption was that Lewisis going to pip him right away,

(36:59):
like once the restart happened,that the difference in the tires
just meant Lewis was going towalk by Norris.

Speaker 1 (37:05):
I mean it's worth pointing out because of the
timing of all of this.
George had pitted, oscarPiazzari had just pitted.
This meant Lewis was sitting inthird position at the time of
the safety car, which meant ourlineup at this point on the
restart is Verstappen, norrisHamilton.
Verstappen pitted for softs,norris was given the hards,

(37:28):
lewis is on the softs, piazzariis on the hards, george at this
point is on the media.
We finally get the restartafter about 127 laps behind the
safety car.
And then what happened?

Speaker 2 (37:41):
One.
When we got the restart of therace, verstappen caught Norris
napping.
Verstappen launched right awayand it was a good second and a
half, two seconds before Norriswent and he went and it took a
bit for those tires to turn onand Lewis was right on his
gearbox Like, and the crowdgoing back and forth you could
tell people weren't sure who tocheer for or maybe everyone was

(38:02):
just cheering in general about,like when Norris did something,
well, everybody roared.
When Lewis was like lookinglike he'd make a pass or make
the pass stick, everybody, likeeverybody, was just we're
standing on the edge of ourseats, right Like where we were,
we had tables and chairs andstuff and we had a wall and we
were basically standing on aroof of the building and we were

(38:23):
all on the wall and the wallhas had metal on it and
everybody, everyone was bangingon that metal and screaming at
the top of our lungs when theycame by us, battling yeah it's
hard to explain.

Speaker 1 (38:35):
I think that moment towards the end of the race
where there was a genuinepossibility that Lewis was going
to get Lando and to your point,either way, it didn't really
matter what the outcome was.
Everybody was so freaking,excited and into the race.
I'm trying to think if there'sbeen any moment again

(38:55):
recognizing fully that thechemistry of being there is
different than on TV.
But can you think of a momentthat we've seen at another race
this year that was as excitingas yeah.
I can't.
No, absolutely not, because 98%of the season is absolute

(39:17):
drudgery.
I would say that moment ofwatching Lando and Lewis and of
course the dialogue all weekendhad been we are seeing the
passing of the baton from LewisHamilton to Lando Norris.
Lewis just isn't the it anymoreand Lando is the new it boy

(39:39):
because McLaren has had a singlefucking race back at the front
end of the grid.
So of course, let's just, youknow, blow smoke up everybody's
collective ass when clearly thedesire for people to see Lewis
do well and Lando do well ismagnetic.
Certainly in that environment.
Would it have played the samein Xandort?

(40:00):
No, but it didn't.
In their home race it went onfor several laps of could they,
would they, could he, would hesort of slow down but stayed
competitive all the way throughthat last stint of the race.
For Stappen, at this point, ofcourse, had checked out.

Speaker 2 (40:15):
He was, you know, in his own postal code within a
couple of laps, but what wasgoing on behind him was just so
much more interesting it wasinfinitely more, and not just
with that, like like Lewis andNorris, because I don't remember
some of the other battles thatwere going on during the race
because everybody was just sofocused.
I know it was going on betweenLewis and Norris, but there were
great battles going all the waydown the grid, Like Leclerc

(40:37):
pipped Sykes at one point whichended up just like destroying
the rest of Sykes' race right.
Like when he pipped him.

Speaker 1 (40:46):
Yeah, to the point that you felt like he'd taken
off the side of the car.
Yeah, they didn't touch oranything.
So it's falling down the orderso quickly that it was kind of
flabbergasting because you justthought wait, what?
What's happening?
Does he have a slow leak?
Is he a puncture, or did hepick up some front end plate
damage that we missed somewherealong the way, which did not

(41:07):
seem to be the case?
He just was sort of beingpassed by everybody.

Speaker 2 (41:13):
Leclerc pipped Sykes.
Gasly pipped Stroll and thenimmediately Gasly and Sykes are
in this round robin of trying topass each other and making an
overtake and not making anovertake, and it was friggin
awesome.
And then poor fucking Gasly,Like he did so well.

Speaker 1 (41:31):
Yeah, I think if you're going to talk about who's
had the worst luck this seasonso far, I'm not sure there's a
candidate even remotely incontention for that honor except
Pierre Gasly.
He's just again and again and Iwon't say there haven't been
times or some of it's his ownmaking, but by and large he did
nothing wrong.

Speaker 2 (41:50):
No, Stroll, sort of mugged him and strolled this mug
.
Yeah, I can tell you, if I wasGasly I'd look long and hard
about.
You know, if I crossed a graveI shouldn't have, or if there's
a curse on me that shouldn't be.
And then if I was, then if Iwas Alpine, I'd look long and
hard if Gasly was cursed and ifhe was bringing a curse to the

(42:11):
team as well, because that shitain't right man.
What's going on over there isjust fucked up.

Speaker 1 (42:18):
It is.
I hope that somebody has hiredan exorcist for the F1 summer
break, because that team needsone, and we talked about this
before.
Gasly was hot after that race,like Stroll did get a five
second penalty.
Gasly was like tough shit, Idon't care, I'll see you out in
the parking lot, buddy.

(42:38):
Like that was mm-mm, he was allover and it was the second or
the third time, I have to say,because Gasly went after signs I
don't even remember which raceseveral races ago on social
media and doubled down on it atime or two and still was like
mm-mm and he was not a happycamper.
I sometimes wonder how, if theyactually let this shit go, if

(43:01):
they actually come meet eachother outside their little RVs
and play games at 21.

Speaker 2 (43:06):
They do some sort of sim racing or sim boxing.

Speaker 1 (43:10):
Right.
What do they do to get this outof their system?
I hope they don't walk aroundwith a chip right on their
shoulders about this shit forthree weeks.
Let's see Lap 48, we're veryclose to the end 52 lap race.
By the time we got to lap 48,Lewis was not getting past Lando
.
He was staying therethereabouts, but I think we all

(43:31):
kind of knew at this point thatthat opportunity was in the rear
view mirror.

Speaker 2 (43:36):
What we were all hoping for was, on lap 49, lando
got the black and white flag,and if he'd exceeded track
limits one more time, that wouldhave been a five second penalty
.

Speaker 1 (43:46):
It was.
Yeah, I mean I was just goingto say on lap 48, george got one
which was like huh.
Well, because they weren'ttelling us during the race, you
didn't see anything about thesetrack limits violations until
they brought up hey, it's ablack and white flag.
So they kind of came a littlebit out of left field and were
coming out of left field verylate in the race.

(44:07):
So, like Jen said, you couldn'thelp but hope, if you were
tipping towards the LewisHamilton side of the equation,
that Lando would justconveniently accidentally move
himself off of track limits andgive himself a five second
penalty.
But he didn't.
Piaz tri, who, again, you can't,I don't think, particularly if
you put the context that startswith Silverstone and ends with

(44:27):
spa, these last three races Idon't think you can overstate
how good Piaz tri is doing as arookie.
I think he's been amazing andthis race was the one that sort
of confirmed for everybody whatmost people already knew, based
on his history in the sport, washe's a very, very solid driver

(44:48):
and if you think about where hecan be in a year or less,
frankly, if that McLaren is asgood as it's appeared to be over
the last few races.
He ought to be on the podiumsometime soon.

Speaker 2 (44:58):
I think McLaren's going to have a very interesting
problem on its hands in thenext.
Oh, I'm here for it Six or 10races, I am here for it For
ringing.

Speaker 1 (45:10):
I want to see it.
I want to see every minute ofit.
I am absolutely there for everyounce of that drama.

Speaker 2 (45:15):
I don't think Zach Brown has sort of the ability to
manage his drivers that way.
Christian Horner, who is, Ithink, a horrible person and a
horrible manager, can definitelymanage his drivers.

Speaker 1 (45:27):
He doesn't manage his drivers.
I beg to differ he doesn'tmanage his drivers Giving orders
and making somebody say we'veheard this.
This has been it's ironic tiny,because this has been the
narrative in F1 in the media allweek long, this entire
narrative that's been burning inthe background because
everybody's bored out of theirdamn minds.
Helmet Marko has made it clearthat you know, in Mercedes or

(45:51):
Ferrari there are no first drive, but if you're a Red Bull you
need that for harmony.
Harmony.
So Horner doesn't have to, hejust makes a choice and then
everything, everything that thatteam does is framed around
satisfying that choice.

Speaker 2 (46:08):
I agree with that, and I also think that Horner
will just absolutely lit in tothe driver he needs to scream at
for whatever, and I think TotalWolf mostly is pretty good at
managing his drivers, but Idon't know.
I think I mentioned this inprevious podcasts.
Somebody on Tumblr mentionedZach Brown and his stable of

(46:29):
twinks.
That's something that I'm nevernot going to think about, but I
also think that means hedoesn't manage them, like he has
a bunch of these young boxcoming in, which they all are
right.
You have to have a certainmindset to be an elite athlete,
to be an F1 driver, to risk yourlife to do this, but he is two
really, really talented youngdrivers who have a lot to show,

(46:50):
and I don't know how Lando'sgoing to be with a younger
driver who is starting to equalhim or, at some point, beat him.
I think it's going to be verydifferent than when Sykes did it
Like.
I think this is going to be areally fascinating team dynamic
to see in the next year, yearand a half Agreed, and again.

Speaker 1 (47:11):
I'm here for it.
So we get into the last lap andthere's a little hardgy bargy
because of the whole stroll orghastly.
Who's going to end up in tenth,who's going to end up in
eleventh?
So there were some things thatwere actually happening down the
field.
But, frankly, our attention inperson in Silverstone a trip we

(47:32):
made in large part because ofour fandom for a certain driver
who, if you've listened to eventhis episode, you know who that
is.
We get to the end of the raceand Boring McBoringdom happens
crosses the line P1.
Lando comes in second.
Hamilton comes in, I will say,close behind.

(47:53):
He was never going to closethat gap, but it was still tight
.
Piastri was 100% closing down.
I don't know, and I should havegone back and watched the on
boards Either Lewis's tires wentoff a cliff or he was asleep in
the middle sector on the lastlap, because Piastri took
basically a second out of theDelta between the two of them on

(48:16):
the last lap.
So Piastri finishes just like asecond and change behind Lewis.

Speaker 2 (48:23):
Plymouth is what it is, and shit happens, man.

Speaker 1 (48:26):
Yeah, there was a lot of talk in social media for a
few days afterwards about howbutthurt George was about the
timing on the safety car, and Iwill say it's one of the few
times that I could laugh because, right, that was what people
were like.
Dude, how many times have youbenefited from the fucking
safety car in the last 18 months?
Shut up, right.

(48:47):
Just, you're going tosemi-loser.
And, in fairness, george camearound to that too, so it was
just one of those.
You're never, ever, ever, evergoing to be able to give Lewis
Hamilton shit from benefitingfrom a safety car for the rest
of his career.
Yeah, and he drove a good race.
He put himself in that positionby driving really well and

(49:08):
having amazing pace and notmaking a mistake.

Speaker 2 (49:11):
Well, apart from the start, but he didn't put a foot
out once he went wide.
He never put a foot out again.

Speaker 1 (49:17):
He did not, and it's one of those things where this
was a classic race.
Having looked back at the lastthree and pretty tight
succession over the last fewweeks as we're catching up on
these podcasts, lewis's pace inthat car, considering the car,
is never one of the good carsWe've been talking about Aston

(49:37):
Martin being at the top end of.
You've got Red Bull and thensomebody Mercedes has never been
to somebody.
Yeah, it's been Aston Martin,it's been Ferrari, now it's been
McLaren.
Mercedes has never been thesecond-ran car this season and
there are times where his paceis at par with Verstappens,

(49:59):
which is fucking crazy in a carthat sucks.
So I'm sorry, I think he isflying way under the radar.
The pace delta between him andGeorge in this race was another
example.
When they were both in freeishair, second stint, lewis was
still six tenths of a secondfaster.

(50:20):
Yeah, come on, somebody, wakeup and get him a good car,
because this would be so muchmore interesting as a season if
he had a car that didn't suck.

Speaker 2 (50:32):
The time of recording .
It'd be interesting to see,like if he was in one of those
Ferraris, because the rumors arethat they had a Ferrari and
that Fred Fred sorry, fredVisser I had friends and like
friends, fernand, and stuck myhead in like that's not at all.
Nothing to do with that one.
Fred Visser and Jean what's HisNuts?

(50:52):
Have both come and askedHamilton to drive for Ferrari
and Citisikes and I thinkHamilton and Leclerc would be an
amazing, interesting pairing towatch.

Speaker 1 (51:02):
I don't know how my two favorite drivers on the same
team would probably suck.
You know, like I love Charlesand I love Lewis, I don't know
if I'd love them as teammates.
Yeah, but it'd be fun.
It'd be fun, it'd beinteresting to see.

Speaker 2 (51:15):
It'd be interesting to see what Hamilton could do
with that Ferrari.
Right, but absolutely I don'tthink he's going to leave
Mercedes.
He has too much invested withthem, not in terms I shouldn't
say not only in terms ofdevelopment of driving of seven
oh I'm sorry, six drivers,championships with that Seven,
but also with all the stuff he'sdoing with Mission 44 and

(51:37):
everything that Mercedes isdoing in terms of social,
economic and racial diversitywithin their team.
I think that is the biggestthing and I don't think he'd get
that in Ferrari.
He wouldn't.

Speaker 1 (51:49):
And he's already every report in decades that he
was like you know what.
That's really sweet, but no.
And whether he's actuallysigned a contract with Mercedes
which is also being rumored thisweek or not, he's got loyalty
tattooed on himself for a reasonLike he considers Mercedes home

(52:09):
and family.
I think one of the sort of andI'll admit it butt hurtiest
things for me in the last coupleof weeks has been the fact that
McLaren's resurgence you heardit in the post race interviews
one of the first things thatLewis always does, in addition
to acknowledging the crowd andthe energy that the crowd brings
, which he does consistently,and thanking his team, which he

(52:32):
does consistently, andfrequently congratulating his
teammate if there's something totalk about, which he generally
does pretty consistently, wasgive kudos to McLaren and talk
up Lando.
Now you will notice, for thoseof you who are astute listeners
to the pod, that is notreciprocated by young Mr Norris

(52:53):
at any point.
Quite to the contrary.
I think Lewis carries that kindof racing loyalty is his DNA.
He considers McLaren withoutquestion his how he started.
How he started.
He did not leave because hehated their guts.
He left even though he was nothaving a great time.
You know the leap to Mercedeswas a big deal, but he's never

(53:17):
going to leave.

Speaker 2 (53:18):
Well, nikki Ladder had to come and talk to him
personally about coming overLike it wasn't just like a
random offer on the table.
And here you go, like it was adriver coming to speak with
another driver saying I thinkthat this is the way to go, I
think this is the developmentyou want and I think that he
made obviously he made the rightchoice, right, but it was a
really hard choice for him tomake.

Speaker 1 (53:38):
Yeah, I think there's lots of history that it was and
it was a leap of faith and itcould have gone a very different
direction, but it didn't in thepoint being.
You know, he's not going toFerrari, he's going to race for
Mercedes.
The only question is how manymore years?
He's made it very clear allyear long that it's not the

(53:59):
details of the racing contract,it's not a dollar figure thing.
I don't think it's anambassadorial thing in the sense
of he wants to be out thereshilling Mercedes for years to
come.
I do think he's trying toposition himself, as you said
exactly correctly.
He wants to make sure that hedoesn't leave and all the work

(54:22):
that he's done gets pushed underthe rug in the same way that
the FIA did with we Races 1,right Lip service and t-shirts
and the second that we can getaway with it.
We're going to forbid anybodyfrom talking about those things.
We're never, ever going toacknowledge that they happened
and we're certainly not going tokeep them going moving forward.
He's not stupid.

(54:42):
He recognizes that the biggestvalue he can make in his life is
this kind of societal change.
He has a tiny wedge and a tinywindow of time to do it.
God fucking bless him forwanting to do that and using
that leverage for somethingconstructive.

(55:03):
While you watch nearly everyother driver on the grid, I
absolutely pretend that thosekinds of concepts and issues are
non-existent.
I'm looking at you, danny Rickand Max Verstappen, and Nico
Halkenberg and Carlos Sainz.

Speaker 2 (55:24):
Arguably, max Verstappen has a much heavier
hammer than Louis does with F1and Liberty.
Yeah, because he's a white guy.
Yeah, with Liberty Media, andhe's a designated white guy.
He's a designated white hopeand he's the winningest winner
that ever did winnest.
At the moment, he's better thanany driver that's ever driven.
Haven't you heard?
I have, in fact, despite thefact that Louis is the one still

(55:46):
breaking records, but he is nottalking about anything.
I mean, considering who hisquasi-father-in-law is and what
his quasi-father-in-law has saidand never come back on.
Yeah, you're an awful human,here's the thing, even if you
are a hardcore racist and youkeep that to yourself.
Guess what?
There's other things that youcan talk about.
A bunch of them have been shutup about it.

(56:07):
Norris doesn't talk aboutmental health stuff at all
anymore, neither does GeorgeRussell, and I don't know if
that's something that LibertyMedia has come down on them and
said they're not allowed to talkwith and they don't think they
have the clout to talk about itanymore, or they're just way
more interested in winning thananything else.

Speaker 1 (56:22):
Well, if you think about it, though, that did come
out before the season, and Ithink Louis is the only one
who's persevered through it.
There was a lot of talk in thepreseason, and you know, as we
got into those weeks leading upto the first race, that they had
effectively censored thedrivers and said that they would
not be allowed to talk aboutthose sorts of things unless

(56:42):
they got special dispensation.
You know, we still heard aboutthe fucking nose studs for the
first few races of the season,and the thing that is hilarious
and just brings it home,particularly in the context of
Silverstone, which I recognizeas something of an outlier and
maybe I would have said, wasuntil I saw him get that pole

(57:04):
position in Hungary People arefucking hungry to see Louis do
well.
Yeah, you know he.
When he was on the top, it waseasy for everybody to hate his
guts and the gross toxicity ofthe Verstappen fandom and the
blatant desire for Liberty Mediato appoint someone else as the

(57:26):
delegated best ever aside.
That's not representative ofwhat most people are hungry for
at this point.
He shows up and people losetheir damn minds.
We saw it in Miami, we see it.
We see it all the time and Ijust think it's hilarious
because he's the only one withthe sort of intestinal fortitude
and the no, I can do all thesethings.

(57:48):
I can not only rock up and be agood driver and be consistently
a good driver and a fashionicon and a game changer for
these social issues and beshadowed upon by most of the
people in the world, but I havemy priorities and you're going
to have to conquer the fact thatyou still need me way more than

(58:10):
I need you, and that's where F1is right now.
I know they don't like it.

Speaker 2 (58:14):
Legitimately.
For me, the only person on thegrid who I think probably has to
do is to keep their mouth shutabout all of their sort of
personal feelings is Joe.
He has family in China.
China is no fucking joke aboutsaying stuff.
He's the only one I can seeabout not taking any sort of
like pride stance, racial stance, any of that stuff Like that's

(58:35):
what could happen to his familyis super fucked up.
The rest of them, there's nofucking risk.
And tail, especially for forStappen, alonzo, sykes, leclerc,
there's no risk involved withthat.
They can start and, as I said,fuck it Like no one talks.
Like Norris has said earlier,mental health, but also
environmental stuff, and hedoesn't talk about any of that
anymore, I think that a degree.

Speaker 1 (58:56):
not, I mean I don't want to oversell it, but I think
a part of why we subbed saidwalk away was just sort of
institutional fatigue.
Sure, not having a competitivecar was a grind, I am absolutely
sure, for somebody that had hadhis success and was as
competitive and as good a driveras Seb was and had two really

(59:19):
good cars, yeah.
But you know again, I'm surenot having a great car made it
much easier for him to decide tostep away and focus on his
family.
But I also think there was justa sense of like Jesus Christ
you know, it's, it's exhausting.
I don't.
I don't know how Lewis does it.

(59:41):
I don't.
I can't imagine the emotionaland mental stamina that it takes
to be constantlymicroaggressions aren't even the
right word.
There is overt racism that hasbeen thrown at him every year
he's been on the track.
It got worse and worse in 21.
It was marginally better in 22,mostly because it was easy to

(01:00:04):
change the narrative to oh, he'swashed, george is beating him,
he's washed.
So you could do it in anindirect way.

Speaker 2 (01:00:11):
You could still be a racist motherfucker and say shit
about him, but you could frameit like that and pretend that it
was OK to do and not sayanything about the fact that the
reason you were slower wasbecause he had all the
experimental shit in his car andall the monitors on his car.

Speaker 1 (01:00:28):
Yeah, until fucking even helmet Marco, who I'm sure
has a dartboard with LewisHamilton's face on it somewhere,
was like, yeah, the only reasonwhy he's been slower is he's
got all the extra shit on hiscar.
You know when even fuckinghelmet Marco is calling it out.

(01:00:49):
So then you just look at whathappened the minute they stopped
doing that and how much hedominated his teammate, which he
did.
Anyway, it doesn't matter, Iwill focus.
However, you alluded to thisearlier and I will give the
kudos where the kudos are due.
That was Lewis Hamilton gettingon the podium in Silverstone
for the 14th fucking time, a newrecord in F1 for the most

(01:01:11):
number of podiums at a singlerace track, which is kind of
mind blown.
Yeah, it's incredible 14 timeshe's been on that podium at
Silverstone.

Speaker 2 (01:01:24):
Nuts.
So when we were there, we madea decision because we have a
friend who has some mobilityissues.
We made a decision that weweren't going to go to the
podium, and I don't actuallyhave regrets about not going to
the podium because we were sofar away from it we wouldn't
have been there.
But it also like if I couldhave like hit a button to
transport us from point A to theexact opposite side of the
fucking track, to watch that.

Speaker 1 (01:01:45):
That would have been incredible it would.

Speaker 2 (01:01:47):
Heather and I are pretty fast walkers and decent
runners and we're really goodabout like clearing the fucking
way in front of us, but therewas no way we'd have gotten over
there.
But guys, guys, you know we didget.
I got more than three races.
I got to collect marbles fromthe track.
I am so excited about my marvel.

Speaker 1 (01:02:08):
We did get down onto the track.
So yes, I don't know that I'vecarried quite the degree of
passion for the marbles that Jenhas, but I absolutely was
getting some at Silverstone.
You better bet your ass.
We also got some of the stickeroff of the Aramco barrier.
Just getting to be on the damntrack was so fun, it was so cool

(01:02:29):
.

Speaker 2 (01:02:30):
So one of the things we haven't talked about, the
reason that Heather and I havemet each other and had like a
base starting point because whenwe met which we met online
before all the cool kids weredoing it I lived in Pennsylvania
, she lived in Portland and wewere X file fans and you had to
know coding, you had to knowHTML in chat rooms to talk to

(01:02:52):
each other and baby Jen wasn'teven legal yet.

Speaker 1 (01:02:57):
Wasn't an adult.

Speaker 2 (01:02:58):
He key and one of the things that we went and one of
our friends, Sheila, we met thesame way.
One of the things that we haveis a picture that she took of us
as we're ripping the X off ofthe Rolex giant X to put up when
I eventually get into my condo,which I will treasure forever.

(01:03:19):
But it was awesome, Likewalking the track afterwards
taking it.
Everybody was so happy.
There was none of this.
I never felt unsafe atSilverstone, I have to say the
three races we went to I haven'thad any negative experience.
There was no fucking orangesmoke which would have sent me
to the hospital.
There's no way I'd surviveinhaling that orange smoke,

(01:03:40):
which was great.
At no point did I hear anyracial slurs or sexist slurs,
which I know is not the case formany of the races, and
everybody was happy.
We didn't see anybody hearabout brawls and stuff happening
.
That didn't happen and wewalked the track, we got our
marbles, we got some stuff fromthe barriers and then we sat

(01:04:05):
down and we had some Cornishpasties and some Pims and just
sat in the sunset and enjoyedthe day and enjoyed the rest of
the day and it was fantastic.

Speaker 1 (01:04:14):
The overall vibe really was amazing and I think
the single biggest motivation,the thing that makes me go back,
don't go back.
Certainly it's a price pointthat probably isn't achievable
for us a second year in a row.
But the podium, I will saypeople didn't boo first happen,

(01:04:38):
it was just silence, it was justsort of us mattering.
Lando, second place the crowdwent wild, no doubt about it.
People were super excited forhim and understandably he drove
an amazing race.
Hands down deserved every bitof adulation he was getting.

Speaker 2 (01:05:00):
But at the end of the day.

Speaker 1 (01:05:02):
Oh, the sound, for Lewis was the sound for Lewis is
still going to be the thing.
You know that's what you strivefor.
For Stappens going to get it inZanvoort.
You know, at this point again,if you talk about this in the
context of the other two racesthat came after Silverston, it's
interesting that it wasn't asloud in Spa for him, which is
arguably one of his home racesas well.

(01:05:24):
Yeah, I wonder if that's justdispersal of the crowd.
I feel like Spa, it's harderfor more that many people to get
to the podium just because youknow the track is 128 miles long
.
So I wonder how much of that?
Because I think just wildlydisproportionately, the crowd at
Spa is rooting for him.

Speaker 2 (01:05:41):
Yeah because it's home race.
But you're right.

Speaker 1 (01:05:44):
Yeah, one of them and that's Zanvoort.
We always know is is justliterally the max for Stappen
weekend and he has theopportunity to set and beat
Vettel's record, which isdepressing AF.
But there you go.
So, unless we get our thirdquarter, fourth quarter like we
bolt over time miracle andsomebody manages to sneak one

(01:06:08):
around the outside, maybe becomethe most popular driver in F1
for a couple of weeks.
It was a really amazingopportunity.
We did get to do a paddock walk.
That's another perk that comeswith the Champions Club.
So we got a chance to seevarious incendiary.
We saw James Vowles, we sawBrad Pitt Well, I was saving

(01:06:31):
that one, but they're all thechicken packs.
So we did.
No, it's fine we did.
We got to see James Vowles.
We got to see Mario Isola asoftware basura, but I'll be
honest with you, I didn'trealize he was there in real
time.

Speaker 2 (01:06:47):
It was only when I was looking at my pictures we
saw we thought Ted Kravitz thesecond, to late to realize it
was Ted Kravitz.

Speaker 1 (01:06:55):
We did.
We saw Ted too late, we saw.
We saw Stoffel van Dorn, yeah,we saw Max Mann, yeah, oh,
here's the thing, here's howgood a friend I am.

Speaker 2 (01:07:06):
So we talk about our Montreal friends that we made at
the race, who we have stayedgood enough friends with, that
we're all going to Austin withtogether in October, and we have
a couple of neutrals.
The rest are all Lewis friends,though the neutrals really lean
towards Lewis.
And we have this one outliereven his fiance says he's the
outlier.
Is this Max van?

(01:07:28):
And because, because I love ourMax van so much, because he is
just an awesome human being, Idid take a picture of Max for
Stappen and I sent it to him inour WhatsApp group and then I
promptly deleted the picture offmy phone.

Speaker 1 (01:07:44):
I get pissed every time, you guys.
Usually he will post somestupid ass Max picture one in
particular on WhatsApp and thenI always find it in my camera.
I'm like what the fuck?
I'm going to get this thing offmy phone.
Yeah, so we did see Max, we saw.
We saw the background, sort ofI don't you know hard to say

(01:08:05):
with role.
It looked like they're playingthe mechanics in Brad Pitt's
movie.
We got to see their mock garage.

Speaker 2 (01:08:11):
We got to actually one of the things I saw really
interesting thought was reallyinteresting Like we saw all of
how the pits set up.
So when Heather and I did anequivalent sort of thing in
Montreal, they don't have thetrucks and the proper pit setup
the way they do almosteverywhere else in the world,
because it's on an island, notjust Montreal itself but the
race, it's pre existingbuildings.

(01:08:31):
They don't bring their trucksright Like they, and watching
how those trucks set up andwatching it's like fucking
transformers and some sort ofmagical rift in the time space
continuum, how big those trucksturn into, like these three
story buildings and they havedifferent facades to them.
And we also got to sort of do awalk along between where they

(01:08:55):
make all the chemicals that golike the oils and the lubes and
everything that which are allvery track and temperature
specific that go into the car,which I thought was just
absolutely fascinating to see.
I do want to give like anawesome fist bump props to
Alpine, because pride was overby that point and we're walking
and this is nothing they had ontheir car, this is nothing they

(01:09:16):
talked about, this is nothingyou would have known unless
you'd walk down there.
Alpine sort of lab for all oftheir stuff, still had all the
pride stuff, all the pride flagsup and all of the little
buttons and posters up in itwhich, you know, props to
fucking Alpine for having that,enjoying it, celebrating.

Speaker 1 (01:09:32):
Absolutely, and it is completely fascinating.
One of the things that both Jenand I have, I think, a mutual
shared love of is sort oflogistics and planning and
organizing things andunderstanding how those
operations work.
And if you could give me anoption to buy a behind the
scenes tour?
Like, don't get me wrong, apaddock walk is a behind the

(01:09:54):
scenes tour, but only in thesense that you're in a shared
space where you clearly have avery limited, a very controlled
opportunity to potentiallyinteract with someone somewhere
from some team, just dependingon the luck of the draw.
You're randomly assigned time.
You show up.
When they tell you to show up,you could see anybody.
There were people who got tosee Susie Wolf while she was in

(01:10:15):
the paddock.
You got to see Toto, people'sSouthwest, people's South George
.
None of that happened when wewere walking in.
That's okay, you get what youget and it's great If you could.
Let me actually talk to thepeople who decide how they
organize.
Which order do those vehiclescome in?
Which days do they do that?
What order do they approach,how they're going to set those
buildings up?

(01:10:35):
There were some real practicalissues that came up in the
conversation with the guy thatwas giving us our track walk,
our sort of tour guide, which iswhen you think about the
practicalities of triple headerweekends and the fact that under
normal circumstances it'sincredibly challenging and
exhausting.
They have two sets ofeverything because they have to

(01:10:57):
have one going to the next raceand getting set up as an
advanced team for the existingrace and then having to do that
for three races in a row.
I will never not look at thecalendar that's on this calendar
.
Frankly, this season, let alonenext season.
I think that's not dangerousand crazy.
There are times where theyliterally have to have the

(01:11:19):
driver staged so that thedrivers drive for X number of
hours and then stop andimmediately have a driver staged
to get in and keep driving it.

Speaker 2 (01:11:30):
That's there is no pause.
They're saying they're flyingin drivers to weigh stations to
keep the trucks going.
Yeah, all of that sort of myjob has a lot to do with
logistics in real life.
And when we went in and out thetrack or someone had hired the
sort of stereotypical Londondouble decker buses that you see
that took us from, like, thegathering points to the paddock

(01:11:52):
and back.
And when we're on the, I thinkit was when we were on the one
of the buses as overhearinganother guy who was not part of
our tour because it's justgeneral press teams, everybody's
taking these buses back andforth was chatting about.
So they have a newish person atSilverstone doing all of the
physical logistics and they weresaying the old person that used
to be there and I can't believethe guy was like see how sloppy

(01:12:14):
all these trucks are parks.
The old guy never would havedone that, Apparently like he
had laser eyesight and they allparked like all the big rigs
once they're all loaded, allparked within an inch of each
other.
And I can't remember if it wasour tour guide or was another
overheard conversation.
But they're talking aboutMonaco and Monaco you have three
hours to get in, get out andload everything and that's it,
because that's how preciseeverything has to be

(01:12:37):
logistically to get the teams,all the background stuff, in and
out.

Speaker 1 (01:12:40):
I would love it.
I'm serious, I would there.
I would drop some hard cash toget a chance to just see
somebody walk through the behindthe scenes overview of that,
that and or the broadcastlogistics.
I would love to get a chance tobe inside the control room
where they are literallyoverviewing all of the cameras,

(01:13:02):
making the decisions.
We bitch when they get it wrong.
There are times you'reseriously.
Why are you showing this?
I know there was a momentyesterday when we were
rewatching the race where weboth went, huh, there's
literally a key overtakehappening off screen.
Why aren't we seeing that?
That's a production issue,right?
Someone's just not making thecall in the moment.
But I would love to understandhow you get 100 cameras around

(01:13:26):
the tracks saying how are youmaking those calls?
That part of things is superfascinating.

Speaker 2 (01:13:31):
Yeah, the tour guide we have was talking about.
I can't remember what it is,but it's like a terabyte of data
that gets uploaded anddownloaded like every couple of
seconds to be able to everybodyto choose, like this day and age
, right, like you can choose tobe on the international feed,
the F1, the sky feed, you canchoose to be following a driver,

(01:13:54):
like all of that, the logisticsof all of that, especially
being somewhere not thatSilverson's backwater, but it's
not a huge metropolis either.
Right, like what is the actualphysical infrastructure that
happens that needs to be inplace to be encrypted?

Speaker 1 (01:14:09):
It can't just be like Joe Bob sitting off the side of
the track hacking into things.
So we literally have, somewherein that realm of data
management, a whole otheroverlay that has to happen.
Plus, the thing we learned inthe UK is God damn it and we
talked about this in one of theother podcasts but you can't

(01:14:32):
watch anything unless you have asky license.
So we of course, per ourearlier conversation, not having
gotten to see all of the partsof the race, because we were
there live, we're, we want towatch it.
We couldn't watch it the entiretime.
Yeah, we were in the UK.
We were in the UK becausethere's no way to watch F1 TV

(01:14:56):
because it's region blocked.
So that was another sort of, sowe get to watch it now at our
convenience, which is okay toanything else you want to throw
into the mix before we wrap that.
Oh, I know the other statisticharkening back to that podium
the first time that there weretwo Brits on the podium in 24
years.

Speaker 2 (01:15:16):
So that was pretty cool.
I had a fantastic time.
It was a great race.
We had some hits and bumpsalong the way getting there and
the rest of the time we were inthe UK, but that raise, we had a
good time.
It was fantastic.
The weather was an interestingchallenge here and there.
Overall it was just so much funand I loved going there with you
guys.
Like it was just amazing and Igot some marbles, the other sort

(01:15:39):
of random things.
So we're walking around and Ihad these boots that I was
wearing and the soul sort ofwore out of one of the heels and
I was like, okay, well, I'llget new boots.
And that didn't end uphappening for the next three
weeks.
And as I'm going to leave, Irealized that this white rock
that I picked up walking aroundthe golf course going into
Silverstone was still in theheel of my boots.

(01:16:00):
So my last day in London Iended up with a the teaspoon
from the hotel room and peelingout that white rock which I've
added to my marbles mycollection of random shit from
Silverstone.

Speaker 1 (01:16:12):
Yay If you get the chance in the future.
If you couldn't tell, we'd bothstrongly recommend Silverstone
as being, I think, one of thekey races to go and watch during
the year.
I think, regardless of who youcheer for, who you root for, you
will have a really, really goodtime.
I think that, unfortunately, isone of the knock on yuck

(01:16:33):
effects is that races havebecome sort of, let's say,
radicalized, but I do think thatthere are certain races,
particularly in the European leg, where you're going to have a
not great time if you'recheering for anybody other than
one team, one driverspecifically Correct, one driver
specifically.
And Silverstone is not likethat.

(01:16:55):
I think you can go and be a fanof any driver on the grid and
still have a perfectly enjoyabletime, and I would not hesitate
to go back.

Speaker 2 (01:17:04):
There was someone flying a Kimmy Reckinen flag at
the campground.
So like you do, you, buddy.

Speaker 1 (01:17:10):
It was insane earlier , like sometimes the one of the
fun parts of just sort ofwatching, like what people chose
to decorate with and who'sfreeclad they were flying and
God bless them there was.
There was at least some variety.
It wasn't all just the Englishboys, there was plenty of
Ferrari fans and a few diehardDutch fans.
So you know you, you learned tosort of broker mental peace

(01:17:32):
with whoever your neighbors are,because you're about two and a
half feet away from one another,and other than the smokers.
You know, I think we did prettydarn well.
We had some pretty goodneighbors.

Speaker 2 (01:17:43):
It was a good time, financial issues not being
concerned, I go back.
The good news is.

Speaker 1 (01:17:47):
Silverstone's not going anywhere.
If we're very lucky, the driverthat we're currently rooting
for is not going anywhere in thenear term either, so, whoever
you're out there cheering for, Ihope you get a chance to go see
a race live.
It's definitely an experienceworth having if you haven't
already had it.
On that note, I think we'rewrapping up for this.
We might have talked a littlelonger than we should have, but

(01:18:07):
yeah, I think this is as theeditor of her podcast.

Speaker 2 (01:18:10):
This is our second longest one.
I'm currently editing Hungary,which is our longest one by far.

Speaker 1 (01:18:15):
We're taking so many lessons under, we're not
learning lessons is actually theproblem.
I think we're getting worse atthis as we go along, but
nevertheless, it's this summerbreak of 2023.
We'll regroup and hope to seeeverybody on the flip side.
We will be back for Zanport.

Speaker 2 (01:18:30):
And maybe we'll do a Zanport podcast live together
because we'll be in the samecity that weekend.
But we said that multiple timesbefore.
That's never come to fruition,not really happened, has it?

Speaker 1 (01:18:40):
That's okay too.
All right, back with beveragesand bad words in a couple of
weeks.
Have a great night, everybody.
Bye.