Episode #17: 2023 Qatar GP

We’re balk to talk about the 2023 Qatar GP, which was dangerous, disorganized and didn’t need to be either of those things.  With a sprint race weekend format, new asphalt, no support races to improve track conditions , degrading tires due to Lusail’s unique curbs, evolving track limits, racing in exceptionally hot and humid weather and some inter-team politics, there’s a lot to unpack. 

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Greetings and welcome to Formula XX, a podcast by two
Gen X women about Formula Oneand other motorsports, usually
with adult beverages and alwayswith adult words.
Today, we're talking about the2023 Qatar GP, which was
dangerous, disorganized anddidn't need to be either of
those things.
With a sprint race, weekendformat, new asphalt, no support
races to improve trackconditions, degrading tires to

(00:21):
do the sales, unique curbs,ever-evolving track limits,
racing in exceptionally hot andhumid weather and some
inner-team politics, there's ahell of a lot to unpack for
Qatar here.
To help with.
Exactly that is my partner incrime, Jen.
Jen, how are you?
Where are you and, mostimportantly, what are you
drinking tonight?

Speaker 2 (00:39):
I am in Campbell River.
If anybody hears any whining orcrying, I do not have somebody
tried up in my parents' basement.
My parents' tiny five-poundpoodle has decided to join us
and I cannot keep her out of theroom without her making a large
, tiny, squeaky noise.
Not a large noise what I amdrinking.
I was going to drink shelterpoint, but my dad and I finished

(01:00):
it.
We forgot.
Instead, I am drinking anotherdelicious whiskey, sadly not
from the island, but I amdrinking some smokehead from
Iowa.
It's just living up to its name.
Just one of my go-to whiskeys.
Heather, where are you and whatare you drinking?

Speaker 1 (01:15):
I am in Seattle as usual this week and I have
cracked open and poured afrankly ridiculously large
helping of LaFroy Select.
That bottle has been up on ashelf for a while and I thought
to get through some of tonight'sdiscussion about the Qatar GP,

(01:35):
I might want to have this inhand.

Speaker 2 (01:37):
Yeah, I have the entire bottle sitting on the
floor next to me to keep poppingup.
Excellent call.
Yeah, you guys don't seeHeather's drink, but she is
cheers, cheers.
She has a rather large one.
It'll help your throat fromlingering with COVID.

Speaker 1 (01:55):
Three weeks post COVID.
I will say, for those of youwho have had COVID and have you
had, I'm sorry, and if youhaven't, run far away and keep
your masks on, I'm not enjoyinghow long it's taking to kick
some of the symptoms, includingthis cold.
I'll apologize in advance if Ido sound like I have a smoker's
hack tonight.
I do not, I'm happy to say so.

(02:15):
Qatar, yeah, I'm.
Honestly.
I think I'm personally stilltrying to figure out what genius
put this shit show in motion.

Speaker 2 (02:23):
Sports washing put it in motion.
It is a horrible place to havea race.
It's a horrible time of year tohave a race there.

Speaker 1 (02:29):
Well, and who decided that you want to have a sprint
race at Qatar.
Yeah, you know, I understandthat there's this bullshit
background narrative that wehave to jive up these ridiculous
ways to make things moreinteresting and or controversial
, but doing that on a track thatwe know there were what five
blowouts when we were at thistrack in 2021.

(02:51):
Yeah, the curbs were an issueback then and even though they
made changes to the curbs, it'sa ton of high speed corners and
problematic curbs that diddamage to tires two years ago.
You've got I don't know aquarter of the grid I'm guessing
, at least if I stopped accountwho have not driven on this
track, at least in raceconditions.
So they got one whole hour offree practice to try and sort

(03:16):
this track out.

Speaker 2 (03:17):
And then a shitty 10 minutes before sprints to sort
out the changes, right.

Speaker 1 (03:22):
And you know this was just a poor concept from the
get go.

Speaker 2 (03:26):
I wonder who is making these calls and why I
think somebody's getting paid indeep pockets to make these
calls, and I don't just thinkit's FIA or Liberty Media.
I think there's kickbacks goingon.
There has to be somewhere forthat.
I don't disagree.
I noticed there weren't nearlyas many shots of the crowd this
time as last time out, and itdid say it was a sellout crowd,

(03:47):
but I was still trying to decideif they were paid sellout crowd
or not.

Speaker 1 (03:51):
I do not think it was as blatant and awful as 2021,
where it was very clear thatthey had purchased t-shirts and
flags and distributed them towhichever people they had
managed to bring in off of thestreet to come sit in the stands
in 2021.
I know just you know, fromonline shared F1 fandom a number

(04:11):
of people who were there and,based on the photos, there were
definitely more people in thestands.
Soldout is a loose term underthe circumstances.
There was never a session thatthere wasn't a ton of space in
the stands, but definitely therewere more people there than
last time.
And you know, I don't begrudgeanybody going.
No, not at all.
I'd hate to think that you putthis money lining of pockets

(04:32):
spectacle on and don't haveanybody there to appreciate it.
By all accounts, it wasabsolutely miserable for the
people who were just there tospectate.
So when we get a few steps downthe line and actually start
talking about the race, it'scertainly not hard to imagine
how awful it was for the driversJumping forward.
I'm going to go ahead and goright with Free Practice 1,

(04:54):
which, again because they madeit a sprint weekend, this was
the only hour of practice theentire weekend.
Basically, it was very sandy.
Your boards are being flattened.
Lots of cars were off the track, especially at turn four.
Mclaren's and Alonso were fastFor, stappin's the bestest, and
Max, carlos and Charles ended upfinishing as the top three,

(05:16):
although I don't think anybodythought that was particularly
representative.
Well, jen has her parentspoodle.
I have brought my co-host, rhys, to the table, who you may hear
purring in the background as wecontinue on.
So we got on a sprint raceweekend, a launch straight into
Kuali on Friday night, so thetrack was closer to race

(05:39):
conditions, which I guess was agood thing With such limited
practice and without any of theother formulas racing last
weekend in Qatar, the track wasreally green and still evolving
a lot and was expected tocontinue evolving a lot during
Kuali, and track limits based onwhat had happened in Free
Practice were absolutely goingto be an issue, and they

(06:00):
certainly were.
And Q1, we'll have aconversation about Mercedes, as
we often do, but they decided tosend their drivers out on
mediums when every other driverthat was on the grid was on
softs for Q1.
They sent them out late, sentthem out on mediums, then
realized they'd made a mistake,so brought them both back into

(06:21):
the pit and really never gottheir drivers out until about
the eight minute mark.
In the meantime, you haddrivers losing laps left, right
and center, which meant thatthere was a ton of jeopardy
because A who was leadingbecause of the evolution of the
track was changing minute byminute and there were people who
you would expect to be near thetop of the timing charts had no

(06:44):
time at all on the board.
Lando still hadn't gotten anactual lap on the board at the
five minute mark, although heultimately ended up second in Q1
.
Max was down in 13th untilabout two minutes to go before
he finally jumped to the topover everybody and in the end in
Q1, we lost Sergeant Stroll,lawson, magnus and Joe.
It is worth mentioning Stroll,who I think has taken nothing

(07:06):
but shit from everybodyeverywhere online for weeks now
is clearly near his tippingpoint.
He was very, very angry Bodylanguage, facial expressions,
the whole nine yards when he gotout of the car after being
knocked out in Q1, he thenbasically shoved his personal
trainer, but it was one of thosepretty dramatic moments.
We've since learned in the lastcouple of days that the FIA is

(07:29):
investigating Stroll for someambiguously defined potential
violations that everyone isassuming is related to him
shoving his trainer.
It's a weird thing.
I'm still struggling to thinkwhy the FIA has a role there per
se, other than I guess that itwas caught on camera and it may
be a perceptual issue.

Speaker 2 (07:48):
That's normally a team issue, I would think Right,
it should be a team issue.
I can't remember now how manyyears ago when Max came up and
shoved Ocon out of line, nothingcame with that.

Speaker 1 (08:00):
Yeah, I'm not sure anything will come of this
either.
What we're seeing, particularlyfor these drivers who are
struggling and are beingpublicly shamed on a continuous
basis the Czechos and theStrolls and the Logan Sargents
is that it's taking a toll ontheir mental health.
When the commentators get rightin their face immediately after
something bad has happened andthen feigned surprise when they

(08:22):
don't get somebody, just likeeverything's great, I feel like
they're baiting these guys a bitat times.
Anyway, there was also anotherround of what is now becoming
consistent, which is the driverswho are tagged for going too
slow because they're not hittingthe minimum time requirement
that the race director has set.
Nobody got in trouble.
It's consistently so far atleast ended up that this is a

(08:45):
case where each driver is justgetting out of the way of
somebody on a fast lap.
There was some potentialjeopardy, since four of them
were tagged for after thesession, but nothing happened.
Q2, we had McLaren and Alonzoagain fast, right out of the
gate, but Verstappen came outand was like here, I'm half a
second faster than everybody onmy first run.
This time he basically didn'tneed to go out a second time,

(09:06):
which helped him save tires,which was consequential.
Down the line.
There was a really interestingmix of teams in the top 10,
which we've seen a bit, but itwas one of those instances where
we had some big names on thecusp and then ultimately out
again.
Track limits were just keepingpeople from getting a time on
the chart.
That just clipped wings forpeople Noted was out, signs was

(09:29):
out, paris out again in Q2,albon was out and so was
Hülkenberg.
I have to say, mostly in thecontext of another conversation
that we've been having and thatI think we'll continue to have,
which is Lewis Hamiltonstruggling in Qali.
But he put in a banger of a lapin Q2, went to the top of the

(09:49):
charts, beat Max by a 10th and Ithink even had more in the car.
It was just such a switchbecause he barely got through in
Q1 because he didn't get asmany laps on the board and then
that lap was just really pretty.
Unfortunately that form didn'thold in Q3 when it needed to,
but it was nice to see him get areally strong, strong lap on
the board Q3, wind came up again, which had been a problem in

(10:11):
the morning but hadn't reallybeen so bad, but because it was
changing directions it suddenlywas affecting a bunch of people.
Norris was really fast but, man, he was having track limits
issues repeatedly.
Though Lewis did have a reallygood first flyer on his second
run, he had a big moment insector two which meant he
couldn't improve significantly.
Russell did improve on his.

(10:31):
In the meantime, oscar andLando had both gone really fast,
but everybody watching,including every commentator on
whichever feed you were on, knewthat Norris had lost his fast
lap to track limits, but theydid not change it.
On the timing charts you hadPark Fermé and the top three had
really been Max George, who hada great lap, like I say, and

(10:55):
Lando, but Lando just didn'tcome to Park Fermé.
Oscar came in his loo becausehe was fourth on track at that
point and he's halfway throughhis interview in Park Fermé with
Naomi and she goes oh yeah, sowe just discovered that your lap
has been deleted for tracklimits as well.
So that's how Oscar learned wasthat he had lost his lap also.

(11:19):
So that bumped Lewis up intothird.
But it was just chaos anddisorganization and so weird
because everybody knew that thestewards were just so slow
putting out the information, sothat early in the weekend
everything was disorganized andchaotic.
The only upside was the gridwas set for Sunday, but you sort
of felt like it was setting thetone for the weekend and it did
.

Speaker 2 (11:39):
As you were saying with the track limits, a huge
clusterfuck, a problemthroughout the entire weekend.
I don't know if it was the newtrack.
It's a new track that's beenredefined between quality
practices and then sprint,quality and sprint in the race
and or if it's the heat or ifit's a combination of all of
them.
But you had guys who werethrowing up in their helmets as
they were driving because of theheat.
You had guys that were passingit around corners.

(12:01):
You had at one point Russell goin 195 miles an hour down the
straight with his hands off thewheel, out in front of the
cockpit, diverting wind into thecockpit, into himself, and all
of that will lead to just subpardriving conditions.

Speaker 1 (12:14):
Yeah, I think subpar kind of defines the weekend.
Sprint quality on Saturday, or,sorry, sprint shootout on
Saturday morning commenced withan entire new layout.
They had decided overnight thatthere were tire issues, little
micro separations between theside wall and the tread that
were causing problems in turns12 and 13.

(12:36):
So with relatively short notice, you know a couple of hours,
they made a decision that theywere going to change the layout
of the track ahead of sprintquality and gave us our very
first ever familiarizationsession.
So that was, I think, a sourceof a lot of frustration for the
drivers, I know in the aftermathof regular race quality on

(12:57):
Friday night and the tracklimits issues that had taken
away laps from Lando and Oscar.
In the post quality interviewthe drivers were talking about
the fact that you don't evenreally need track limits in the
way that they were using themand enforcing them in Qatar,
because the nature of thosespecific curves unlike at a lot
of tracks, you're absolutelyslower if you hit those curves.
There's no need to add apenalty overlay when you're

(13:22):
already losing time on thecurves and risking damage to the
car.
Yeah, it's a self penalizationthing, right?
Yeah, exactly, it's a selfpenalization thing.
So then deciding to paint a newwhite line, whatever it was, 20
centimeters, whatever it was, acouple feet, but 80 centimeters
, 80 centimeters, trying to getthemselves into a new groove,

(13:43):
bottom line.
It was a big change becausethey'd already all been
struggling there with theirwhole one hour of practice
previously under their belts.
Beyond the flying laps thatthey did in regular quality on
Friday night, it was not idealgoing into Sprint quality.

Speaker 2 (13:59):
Someone was saying I can't remember if it was a
driver or it might have been oneof the commentators the nature
of the track at Qatar means thatthere are no natural landmarks
for them to focus on.
So a lot of times when theydrive they're like they focus on
this tree, and when they'repart of their car comes line to
line with that tree, that's whenthey know to turn in With Qatar
.
They don't have that, and sodriving by the lines on the

(14:21):
track, you can't see them.
It's just another level off**kiness for them.

Speaker 1 (14:25):
Yeah, absolutely the fact that when you're sitting in
the cockpit of these cars, youcan't possibly see the line on
the ground.
So again, I just feel like thiswas another shiny example of
the FIA being really bad at theactual operational how they get
a race put together, how they'remaking the decisions about
things and then how they'reimplementing things,
particularly on the fly.

(14:46):
It's just not their strong suit.
But tell me what you thoughtabout Sprint Qali?

Speaker 2 (14:50):
So Sprint Qali, as Heather said, started with an
awesome 10 minute diversion asthe drivers got to desperately
try and learn the tracks againand everybody was going super
wide at the turns would havebeen painted over and nobody
talked about this.
Just from like a geek point ofview.
Paint takes time to cure Like Idon't know how much that would
have f**ked things up, buteverybody was going wide during

(15:14):
that 10 minute session, sergeanttook out one of the polystyrene
markers and Alonzo went off.
Max4sepin went off.
Jp told him that he needed tostay out and Max was like I'm
just going to box now.
And JP was like you need tostay out, you could have learned
from that.
And he's like I don't need to.
And Max just boxed himself,which I think was another sort

(15:35):
of awesome example of Sir Max,both Salat doing his own thing
and not really carrying what theteam tells him to do.
He is so big and full ofhimself and when the team tells
him sensible things he justf**ks off and does his own thing
and I really really hope atsome day that's going to bite
him in the ass Like.
I really want him to have anenormous moment of I don't need

(15:55):
to come in lose his closestchance he's ever had standing on
the top of the podium.
So we had that 10 minutesession.
They came in and they wentright into quality.
Another I don't know what thef**k's going on with F1 TV and
the rest of it.
There was no timing chart onthe side until nine minutes and
12 seconds into.
Q1 was the first time we hadany notion of who was on track,

(16:18):
what anybody's speeds were, whattheir tires were.
There was no information.
The announcers were blatheringaway.
Every now and then the mapwould pop up with the dots on it
and then it would go away.
That was just the continuationof a very Qatar weekend.
Also, we're going to have tohave a podcast that's just about
Mercedes and what the f**k'sgoing on there.
Because Russell's out on trackand he was out before Lewis was

(16:41):
and he was like so what are wedoing?
Are we doing a proper lap orare we doing an out lap?
And this engineer came on saidwe're still discussing that he's
on the f**king track.

Speaker 1 (16:53):
I feel this is a discussion and it's Mercedes.
It's not like Mercedes is everthe first one out of the garage.
No, they're usually one of thelast cars out anymore, yeah, and
they don't know what they'redoing.

Speaker 2 (17:05):
But Russell was one of the first three or four cars
out.

Speaker 1 (17:08):
But yeah, who knows what the f**k they were doing.
Who knows?
Well, now we know why.
They don't let them go out anysooner, because they're spending
the whole time trying to decidewhat the f**k they're going to
do.

Speaker 2 (17:17):
I don't know.
Do they have a magic eight ballto decide?
This is s**t.

Speaker 1 (17:20):
I don't know if this is endemic of Toto not being
there or what I need to havemore alcohol and we need to get
further down the line before wewander into Mercedes territory.

Speaker 2 (17:29):
So McLaren's out and McLaren is kicking ass.
They're doing really well.
Then, of course, max comes outwith five minutes just over five
minutes left to go, and hecomes out and he sets a fastest
lap and he is nearly nine tenthsof a second faster than
everybody else.
He was 8.49 seconds faster andyou're just like, well f**k,

(17:52):
russell is the next fastest andhe was nearly a second faster
than Jesus.
And Norris is on the radio aswell, just towards the end of
the session, asking is he safe?
Should he go out?
Should he be going again?
And his engineer was like yeah,we think you're safe.
Keep this in the back of yourmind, because this becomes very
important for McLaren and Q2.
And we get to the end of Q1 andwe're not sure who has made it
through to Q2 yet, becausepeople keep getting knocked out

(18:15):
and knocked out, and knocked outand knocked out, going against
track limits and also, asHeather mentioned before, for
regular quality.
A whole bunch of people werenoted for going too slow.
So we had Russell,hamilton-gasley, lawson,
sargent's, notus, stroll, albon,all noted for disregarding race
director speeds, which nothingever came of that.

(18:35):
So we go into Q2 and bothMercedes come out right away and
Hamilton has his time deletedright away because he goes track
, track, limbs, as does so manypeople, and they were just going
and Lewis never ended upgetting on the boards with any
sort of time that got himthrough to Q3.
And you're watching this andyou're watching him.
You're like he's not going toget it and every lap he set was

(18:57):
deleted and he had like threelaps, four laps deleted.
Then you had Norris and Piastriand they're in and they're not
going out, and they were at thetop and they come down and they
ended up in.
Like Norris ended up in tenthand Astrol's lap time hadn't
been deleted or Hamilton's laptime hadn't been deleted, norris
wouldn't have made it throughto Q3.
And that wouldn't have been onhim.
That was an actual time wherehe'd put a time on the clock and

(19:18):
he'd that was McLaren keepingthem in after like I don't know
four laps or something.
They had been out there.
They barely did anything.
They only did one flyer each, Ithink.

Speaker 1 (19:25):
Yeah, I think the crazy amount of track evolution.
It was exactly the same asregular Qali.

Speaker 2 (19:30):
Yeah, we come into Q3 and right off the top for stop
and has a flyer that getsdeleted, and I believe this was
the only one he had deleted thisweekend.
I don't remember him because hedidn't have any in the race and
I don't remember him gettingany others deleted.

Speaker 1 (19:44):
You can't see me, but I'm making a face.
I'm not sure that's true.
I feel like in regular Qali hehad one or two deleted.
I can't remember him.
He definitely did not Like inthe race.
He was ace as far as that goes.
But I think in regular Qali hehad a couple.

Speaker 2 (20:00):
Norris and Piastro beat him hand deep after his
time got deleted and that movedMax down into P3, which set us
up for an interesting start ofthe grid about who's going where
for the sprint race.
Because you had a rookie onpole and you had, yes, oscar
Right, and you weren't sure howthat was going to go, and you
had Russell up there and youweren't sure how that was going

(20:22):
to go, and you had Max in thirdand that was a real like what
the fuck moment You're like, andthat will take us into the
sprint race or whatever the fuckwe're supposed to call it,
because we're not supposed tocall it a race.

Speaker 1 (20:36):
Talk to me about sprint.
I actually thought that thesprint was for all my bitching
about sprints and the sheernumber of laps we spent behind
the safety car.
Again, it's just carnage andchaos, but there was some fun
overtake.

Speaker 2 (20:51):
Yeah, it was really interesting.
We had for the first time since2012, two McLarens on the front
row and I was wondering aboutthat and like this is going to
be some interesting teampolitics, and I got to tell you
I'd like to be a fly in the wallMcLaren the next couple of
months.
See how that's going to shakedown.

Speaker 1 (21:06):
Oh, they're handling it a fuck ton better than
Mercedes are, I'm sorry so yeah,russell had a very good launch
for the start of sprint.

Speaker 2 (21:14):
He gets up into second place and pips Norse ends
up going down a couple of spots, as does for Stappen, for
Stappen had anuncharacteristically horrific
start for him.

Speaker 1 (21:23):
Well, there was a couple things going on too right
out of the gate, right With thestart of the sprint.
Tire choice made a hugedifference.
I think again, because you'vegot such limited running, that
happened in free practice.
You can't really take anythingaway from that in terms of
understanding tires.
You certainly couldn't takemuch more away from either of

(21:44):
the quality sessions that theyhad just had and you had such a
mixed bag of who started onsofts and who started on hards
and the softs fired right thehell off.

Speaker 2 (21:54):
Yeah, you were on a soft.
You fuck with flu.

Speaker 1 (21:56):
George on softs like boom, he was right out there.
If you were on mediums, thatwas a different story.

Speaker 2 (22:02):
It was interesting.
I think it was such a crapshoot.
We've had a bunch of sprintraces at this point and usually
they're not quite as RG Bargesthis one, because everybody's
really worried about having acar ready for the actual race.
But that wasn't the case.
The sprint race, people wentout.

Speaker 1 (22:19):
Do you think people were choosing to be RG Barge?
Or do you think that's just asandy green track with
absolutely not enough running onany conditions with?
Now you're on a full fuel loadrather than running it like a
fifth of a tank, or you know?
I mean it wasn't a full tank.
Let me step back from that.
It's a third tank in the sprintrace, so they're still not

(22:41):
running on a full tank.
It's like the perfect scenario.

Speaker 2 (22:45):
I think it's just not having any of them having the
experience, like even the mostexperienced drivers were having
moments, a ton of trouble.
Yeah, everybody was having aton of trouble.
I think I don't know what wouldhave been the right tires, like
it's softer mediums.
Well, the medium was ultimatelythe right tire, yeah, but those
softs would have been way worseif we hadn't had all those
safety cars, those softs.

(23:06):
They would have had to come in.

Speaker 1 (23:07):
That's what I'm saying.
The medium had to.
The medium, absolutelyultimately, was the right tire,
but nobody had a way of knowingthat going into the sprint.

Speaker 2 (23:15):
And on the first lap we had a yellow.
We had Lawson going off andbeached it and we had a yellow
right off the bat and Piastri,who had a really good launch,
has to prove his medal again.
So any of them on mediums didnot have a great launch.
Everybody on softs.

(23:35):
They cleared Lawson's carpretty quickly.
I think it was not even a fulllap of the safety car because we
went green in lap two and fromright away we had a great battle
between Alonzo, who was onsofts, and Norris, who was on
mediums, trying to jockey for aposition Same with Russell and
Piastri, because Russell endedup in first on his softs and

(23:58):
Piastri was behind him on themediums.
And then we get to lap two andSergeant Beeches himself and now
we're setting the clock back tozero race since Sergeant last
beached his car or, you know,DNF'd.

Speaker 1 (24:10):
Yeah, it's hard to watch, even for me at this point
, and I don't really have anyparticular devotion to Logan
Sargent by any stretch of theimagination, but it's tough to
be underperforming in such apublic forum, I think.
So it's been a bit hard towatch.

Speaker 2 (24:25):
Yeah, and again they got him off quickly because the
safety car came in back in lap.
Four Shades of things to come.
Sykes is reporting misfires inhis car that the team tells him
to change some settings on andnot to worry about.
And I wonder if it was not toworry about, or if it was, we
can't do anything about it, sodon't worry about it.

Speaker 1 (24:45):
I think everybody felt like it was a sensor issue.
But yeah, who knows what itreally was?
But he's, he finished the race.
Yeah, I mean, the only thingthat ended up hampering him was
soft tires.
Sorry, I misspoke.

Speaker 2 (24:55):
I said the safety car came in lap four, it didn't
came in lap six and Russell hasa very good restart and it ends
up being Piastri and Sykesbattling for second and then
behind them Paris and Hamiltonhave a pretty good battle going
on and Hamilton's moving up bylap 10.
Those on softs are reallystarting to slide around a bit.
People are starting to say thedifferent drivers not all of

(25:17):
them are starting to say thesofts are going off, which was
proven quickly thereafter byPiastri handily getting by
Russell, like there wasn't muchthat Russell could do to keep
him going, and the Norris pipsLeclerc and is trying to make up
points and probably to catch upto Piastri.
And then we have Paris andHulkenberg and Aukon having a

(25:37):
battle which ends up in ourthird safety car at lap 11.

Speaker 1 (25:41):
And I have to tell you it was one of the more I
shouldn't really say comical,but I had started watching
Louis's on board between aboutthe time of that second race
restart and so, as you alludedto early on, lewis got right up
behind Paris and then he fellback a bit for a lap or two and

(26:03):
then he was right up behind thatpack.
Those three had been right noseto tail and the moment Lewis
had come up on them so fast, Ihonestly believe that if there
had not been a safety car, lewiswould have started picking them
off, even though Checo was onmediums as well.
So Checo was on the same tirebut right behind Hülkenberg who

(26:26):
was on softs, ocon, who's onsofts.
They came out of turn one andLewis was on Checo's tailpipe at
that point.
But on Lewis's onboard you justsee like in slow motion it
coming, the three of them justgoing, and you could just watch
it happen.
And I am still.

(26:46):
All the drivers have amazingreflexes.
But I was like I don'tunderstand how Lewis didn't get
caught as Ocon's did a 360 inthe middle of the track, but you
just see on his onboard allthree cars going out of frame on
his onboard and it was justlike hilarious.
And then I'm still like I'vewatched it now a couple of times

(27:08):
.
Why the F did it take them solong to call out a safety guard?
You have two cars beached, athird that has taken a long trek
through the gravel and gottenback on but clearly has damage
Without its nose Right, withoutits front wing, and Lewis was
somewhere between I think it waslike 10, 11, like two

(27:31):
kilometers down the road beforethe yellow was called.
Were they all watching adifferent race at that
particular time?
Did they not understand thatthose cars were off?
It was really weird.

Speaker 2 (27:43):
They were all too busy celebrating with Paris
being off.
They didn't care about the restof it.
Max Verstappen's officially theworld champion, so who cares
about the rest of the season?

Speaker 1 (27:51):
There was a whole lot of okay, we get to pull up that
graphic in a minute and, oh God, let's please self-masterbate
over how fast and awesome andimpressive Max Verstappen is.

Speaker 2 (28:04):
Ugh, you're right, and I think, before the safety
car comes out, russell's sayinghe needs to come in for tires.
Can we talk?

Speaker 1 (28:11):
about George Russell the genius strategist.
Yeah, I'm sorry, but why arethey having to explain to George
on lap 14 that no 12.

Speaker 2 (28:21):
Whatever it doesn't matter.

Speaker 1 (28:22):
You're not coming in for new tires.
That's not mathematically goingto help you.
Stay out and fight through it,buddy.
Yeah, your tires are dead butyou're not coming in.
No, there's no way, not.
On a sprint race, you take apit stop right now you fall to
the bottom, dude, like that'sjust.
I just was like, really, george, I understand you're worried
that your tires are cooked.
I mean, I get it, you're inpanic mode and that he wanted to

(28:43):
argue with the team about it.

Speaker 2 (28:44):
Yeah, I don't know about Russell.
Man, stay out.
And everybody else on soft ishaving the same problems.
So during the safety car two,there is I don't know how it
started GP is basically tellingVerstappen to drive his own race
.
Let it come to him, don't worryabout what else is going on,
you've already won it.
And Verstappen's like I know,mate, I'm trying, but Piastri's

(29:05):
pulling away from me.
And GP's like don't worry aboutPiastri, we'll catch him at the
end, we'll get him and, nomatter what, you've still won.
Max is.
So I get that they're racingdrivers.
I get that they're focused onwinning and driving, but I also
think you have to be focused onthe ability to bring your car
home.
This is second time at thispoint, it's like an hour, hour
and a half that Max has had tobeen told to use his head At any

(29:27):
rate.
Safety car comes in lap 14, andeverybody's like fired up,
Claire Pipst-Norris, verstappenis right on Russell and Piastri
has an amazing restart whichkeeps him well ahead while all
the ones behind him are fighting.
I think his good restart wonhim the race and Russell's tires
falling off.

Speaker 1 (29:46):
I thought it was fascinating actually, that
restart, and it was telling withregard to strategy that fed
into the actual race, which was,even though it was universally
understood at that point by thatrestart, the soft tires were
problematic, were falling off,were not the right choice to be
on blah, blah, blah, the softstill fired up.

(30:07):
Oh yeah, so on that restart,people who were on the softs,
even though those tires werecooked, still got much better
getaways on those softs thanthose on the medium did, because
there was still a penalty ifyou were on the medium tire on
the restart.
So that's why those kinds ofovertakes and shuffles were
happening initially.
I mean, it took a lap or lessor two for those on the mediums

(30:32):
to get the advantage, but yeah,just that the softs could still
give you.

Speaker 2 (30:36):
so much better traction.
Yeah, I thought that was reallyinteresting as well, and it
gave us a lot of interestingbattles going on like Gazzly
pipped Hamilton.

Speaker 1 (30:44):
Well, he pipped Hamilton because Alonzo Lewis
almost had Alonzo and came soclose to running into Alonzo
that he had to back out of it.
And that was what.
Let Pierre get by.

Speaker 2 (30:55):
And we also had, within a couple of laps, the
mediums firing up properly andNorris had a really amazing
overtake on both Leclerc andSykes, which was a thing of
beauty.
He did that really, really well, yeah.
And Hamilton then re-pippedGazzly and they had a bit of a
to and fro to who got it.
Gazzly had a big lockup, butfuck Liberty Media and F1

(31:15):
commentators because they wereshowing it with zero commentary.
The commentators were yappingabout something else that had
happened.
Meanwhile, lewis is going upthe ranks and getting in the
points.
They're even showing it on themain feed and no commentary is
happening on the thing that theyare showing us at all.
And it wasn't even like oh, itchanged feeds.
The director changed feeds andgives them a second or two to

(31:37):
catch up to it.
The entire Hamilton overtakingGazzly and Gazzly locking up and
nearly going off happened andthere was no comments on it.
We've said this in otherpodcasts.
They must lose money if theysay his name in any sort of
positive light.

Speaker 1 (31:50):
Well, in that one, I mean at least, pierre kind of
took himself off Again.
I had the main feed and the onboard going at that point and
the way Pierre went off youweren't sure if he went off if
you were looking at the on board.
The fact that they wouldn't betalking about that yeah at all,
makes no sense at all.

Speaker 2 (32:09):
You know, if that race had been three or four laps
longer, it would have beeninteresting to see how far up
Hamilton would have got himself,because that started a very
surgical up and up and up andpassing people, because he
passed Alonzo, he passed Leclerc, he passed Sykes all within two
laps the last three laps well,actually the last four laps.

Speaker 1 (32:28):
I was holding my breath again, being focused on
the on boards.
He got past Alonzo in turn one,essentially.
But the last two laps,particularly the second to the
last lap, when he was behindCharles and you're watching if
you haven't seen it, it's worthgoing back and watching those
Ferraris on those socks at thatpoint was like watching cars on

(32:50):
marbles.
They're doing everythingpossible to try and just keep
the damn car on track, butthey're bobbin' and weavin' all
over the place.
The fact that Lewis got by themwithout contact I know I
appreciate the irony, because westill gotta talk about the main
race, but the fact that hemanaged to thread the needle on
those three cars the way he did,and the single most butt

(33:10):
clenching moment of the entireseason was the moment where he
overtook Charles down the mainstraight and I was 100%
convinced he was gonna put hiscar into the back of Carlos
Sainz's Ferrari and didn't, andI still don't know how.

Speaker 2 (33:27):
Well, and I think it's just lucky too, that the
wind didn't come into play thesame way for Sprint as it did
for Qualley.
Can you imagine dealing withthose socks going off Like
you're skating on ice with thosecars and suddenly you also have
a gust of wind or changing winddirection to deal with Like
that would have been?

Speaker 1 (33:45):
Poor Charles had four track limits violations.
On the last lap Lewis got byCarlos and was 1.1 second ahead
within one corner.
How those Ferraris even got tothe line.
Alex Albonne kudos again.
Alex Albonne worked his way upthrough the field, was an

(34:07):
absolute machine, just likeLewis.
It would have been fun to see,like maybe two more laps just to
see where they would havelanded.
The difference between AlexAlbonne and Charles Leclerc over
the line, I think, was 0.003seconds.
That's how close it was.

Speaker 2 (34:25):
Oh, it was so close.
If you were Albonne, you wouldhave been so frustrated.
If you're Leclerc, you wouldhave just been like sacrificing
to whatever deity you believe in, right.

Speaker 1 (34:33):
Yeah, so it was actually more interesting than a
lot of them have been.
Yeah, so who finished where onthe top of the exciting Sprint
race?

Speaker 2 (34:42):
Ah, I don't know who cares.

Speaker 1 (34:44):
Piaz Rewan, that's the important thing, that's what
I want to hear I don't careabout the rest of them Piaz
Rewan, oscar Piaz Stree, withhis first win in F1.
It was awesome.
I was so happy for her.
I'm so happy for him too.

Speaker 2 (34:57):
I can't remember now if it was the race or if it was
Kwally, where you had that superawkward handshake that Lando
came up and gave to him as acongratulations.
I was like the weirdest sort ofmeh handshake.
I was like the fuck, yourteammate just got his.

Speaker 1 (35:14):
I can't remember if it was his first podium or his
first win, yeah, but you knowthat to your point earlier, that
is a awkward AF situation thathas unfolded in the last couple
of weeks.
And whether you consider aSprint race or a win which I
don't, personally I'm sorry butI don't think winning a Sprint

(35:34):
is on par with winning a race nosame.
But you know, lando's had sortof the crown on his head and has
felt that he was the number onedriver and had the team
completely wrapped around hislittle finger in the wake of
Danny Rick's debacle at McLaren.
Yeah, danny Rick still has awin and he doesn't.
It's gotta be hard.

(35:56):
I don't envy him, but it'll bereally interesting to watch.
I think I'm more fascinated byhow Liberty and F1 are gonna
treat this narrative thananybody.
Yeah same.

Speaker 2 (36:08):
So that race ended, or whatever the fuck we're
supposed to call it, and a bunchof interesting things.
Sort of interesting thingshappened overnight.
Perez, it turned out, had somuch damage that he was deemed
to have a new chassis, so hestarted from his box.
So he did not start on the gridwhere he qualified.

Speaker 1 (36:25):
Yeah, there had actually been talk of a 10
second penalty on top of the pitlane start, which I saw
reported a couple of differentplaces on Sunday morning, but
then never manifested in therace.
Well, okay, let me restate thatthere were 10 seconds worth of
penalties, but not for thechassis change.
So I don't know where that camefrom or what came to pass that.
That didn't happen.
We also had Carlos not evenstarting.

(36:48):
He DNS'd because he had a fuelleak that Ferrari tried to chase
down and resolve.
But couldn't.

Speaker 2 (36:54):
And Carlos not starting meant that his box was
empty on the grid and Hülkenbergmade a hell of a fucking boo
boo when he came to line up,because he did not line up in
his spot, he lined up insomebody else.
Was it Paris' spot that helined up in, or was it Sakes'
spot that he lined up in?

Speaker 1 (37:12):
I don't know.
I knew that he had a penalty forlining up in the right spot,
but I didn't catch who it wasand we kind of jumped over
probably what is the mostimportant factor of the weekend
for the race, which was the FIAand Ferrari.
Overnight had once again lookedat the tires to analyze them, to
see what was going on in termsof damage after the sprint, and

(37:33):
they decided that, even with themodifications at turns 12 and
13, there was enough risk oftire issues that they mandated
that all new tires could not runfor longer than 18 laps and all
used tires could not run forlonger than 20 laps, which, even
though they didn't say it's amandatory three-stop race math
means math you were all going tohave to do three stops at least

(37:58):
.
The thing about this was theywaited until, if my
understanding is correct, threehours before the race to
finalize that decision, whichmeant that I mean a smart team
and there are many smart teams asmart team already knew that
this was gonna be a possibilitythat they were going to mandate
stint length or number of pitstops, but drivers had made

(38:20):
decisions all weekend long notaccounting for that, and that
meant the allocation of tiresthat were left now was going to
have a dramatic impact on whatdrivers chose to go out on which
tire, how long they were gonnabe able to run, how many pit
stops.
Because lots of people had run10, 11, 12.

(38:42):
If your max were stopping,you're fucking golden anyway.
Because he'd only had to run oneset of tires in a couple of
different quality sessions.
Because he stayed in for abunch of them, right.
So he had tires left, right andcenter to choose from.
But if you were further downthe grid you were screwed.

Speaker 2 (39:01):
The tires are made specifically for the track.
It's not as if Pirelli can likemagic up more tires.
On a sort of side note, pirellihad said that this was going to
be a problem ages ago, and FIA,f1, liberty Media, whomever
were like, whatever, it makesfor more interesting racing when
the tires are a problem, andit's a problem that could have

(39:21):
been fixed long before it was aproblem 100% and we've seen that
come up in conversation beforewhich is Pirelli can make a
better compound.

Speaker 1 (39:30):
They have the ability to do it.
It's FIA, fom who are pushingon not making a more durable
composition of the tires, andthat came home to roost this
weekend, ironically on the sameweek or the weekend before the
week.

Speaker 2 (39:52):
And let's be clear, they extended their contract
because nobody else wants to dothe job, because it is a shit
show.

Speaker 1 (39:58):
Except that beyond 27,.
I think this contract is goingto run to 27,.
Then apparently, Bridgestonewants back into the mix.
I don't know.
We'll circle back to that,because I have read in a couple
of places that this will bePirelli's.
Either it will be Pirelli'slast contract or it will be
their last contract as soleprovider, which could be
interesting.

Speaker 2 (40:18):
Yeah, let's circle around to that after we talk
about the race.

Speaker 1 (40:20):
Well, there's not much more to say on that.
I mean we'll just know more inthe future.

Speaker 2 (40:23):
Yeah, because I've heard Bridgestone has officially
been like oh no, once they'velearned how handcuffed Pirelli
are by the FIA, bridgestone'slike oh no, fuck, that it's just
going to show us in a bad light.
We don't want to show our tiresblowing out.
We don't want to show our tireswearing out because it's always
put on Pirelli right, it's badPR.
Yeah, it is.

Speaker 1 (40:40):
Whether it's fair or not.
We're back to the race andobviously, who has what tire is
determining who is going tostart, on which You've got to
get right into it.
Mercedes decides to split theirstrategy, which is not unusual
that we've seen them do that ona pretty regular basis, but I
think in this case it was anobvious choice.

(41:00):
You have Max Verstappen liningup P1.
You've got George Russell,who's lining up P2.
You've got Lewis Hamiltonlining up in P3.
It's worth noting thatVerstappen and Hamilton are both
on the clean side of the grid,which actually mattered this
weekend because, again, this isa very green track.
There is nobody helping toclean the dirty side of the

(41:22):
track.
Yeah, there's no support races.
They Mercedes opted to putLewis on soft tires, which I
think, honestly, was a strategythat benefited George Russell.
I'm just going to say itbecause, unless and until Lewis
Hamilton decides to qualifybetter than his teammate that's
the position he's in he's goingto be the driver who is

(41:45):
supporting the driver whooutqualifies him in terms of
strategy.
That said, the soft tire optionsoft tire, clean side of the
grid existed for one purpose,and one purpose only, which was
get ahead into corner one, theonly way that that strategy
means anything is if you're ableto get ahead of Max Verstappen

(42:05):
and control the pace for a fewlaps, because on a full tank of
gas that tire probably had seven, maybe eight laps in it before
you had to come in for a pitstop.
Now I do think maybe that wouldhave worked for Lewis if we
hadn't had what happened.
That happened because he'd havebeen offset in terms of the
pits.
There was some theory that wewere going to see really, really

(42:27):
busy pit lane activity on thosetarget 18 and 36 and on and on.
Maybe being on an offset forpit stops would have worked for
Lewis, but it seemed prettyapparent what the idea was.
We talked about it with thedrivers.
Yeah, it is what it is.
The race starts.
Lewis gets an amazing getaway.

(42:48):
George gets a really goodgetaway too.
By the time we get to corner,one George is.
He's coming up to Verstappen.
He's on the middle of the trackand Lewis miscalculates and
cuts over and hits tire to tirewith George, spins himself into

(43:09):
the gravel and is out of therace.
George is momentarily off.
I didn't know at that point.
I was, in that moment, not surewhether George was going to be
able to keep going or not.
Keastree had a great start,launched himself and ended up
basically in second within acouple of turns.
But this was the moment, thiswas the culmination.

(43:31):
You literally knew.
I don't know about you and youwatched it, but I literally knew
.
The minute the race started,the second, five, four, three,
two, one lights out.
The nanosecond they startedgoing down the track and I saw
George jink over to the left.

Speaker 2 (43:47):
I knew what was going to happen.

Speaker 1 (43:48):
Yeah, there was no way that it wasn't going to
happen.
I saw it coming.
It was absolutely going tohappen.
It was Lewis' fault.
If you're listening, I am ahuge Lewis Hamilton fan girl,
which nobody who's ever listenedto one of these before will
ever question.
That said, I acknowledge it wasLewis' misjudgment, but I was

(44:09):
so fucking angry in the momentthat the team had not created a
strategy and made it clear whatwas supposed to happen into turn
one.

Speaker 2 (44:16):
It was obvious they didn't, because originally, when
George was on the radio, it waslike I'm so sorry I wasn't
looking behind me, I didn't seehim.
I didn't see him, but he'slying.

Speaker 1 (44:25):
This is the problem right there.
That's the part that you haveto talk about.
I know this isn't a Mercedespodcast, but it's a Mercedes
podcast right now.
That's a lie.
You can watch George.
George knew 100% where Lewiswas.
The PR spin makes it impossibleto understand because, again, I
went through the rest of therace just like how could you

(44:47):
have allowed this to happen?
There was no reason for this tohave happened.
If you had a plan and it wasclear what the idea was, you
wouldn't have created asituation that put both of them
side by side into that corner,if you could avoid it.
I am realistic enough to knowGeorge is a driver.
He got a good launch.
They both, frankly, got abetter launch than Verstappen.

(45:09):
In some ways.
He had the inside corner.
He was, I think, trying tocover them both off
simultaneously realized hecouldn't do it.
He had a side line on the trackinto the corner, into turn one.
He was exactly where he neededto be.

Speaker 2 (45:21):
Well, the Mercedes boys took care of themselves for
him.

Speaker 1 (45:25):
Well, they did.
The problem is, we've spenttime talking about this over
multiple pods.
This was inevitable.
It was inevitable, it wasabsolutely going to happen.
More to the point, it's goingto continue to happen.
This is the tip of the iceberg.
Mercedes claims that theyabsolutely did have a strategy,
that they talked about it, butthey don't do team orders.

(45:48):
Here we are.
Well, I've got a news flash.
If you don't create team ordersand make it specific what the
plan is, this will happen anytime those two are together,
ever again, because GeorgeRussell will never look at it
through the lens.
First of what the team needs,ever, ever.

Speaker 2 (46:07):
At least when Bodass was being a dick, he wasn't
taking Lewis out, but he wasnicking points off of him by
doing a fastest lap or something.
This could have been a huge forthe driver's standings
Absolutely epic.

Speaker 1 (46:18):
I don't care about the driver's standings.
No offense, lewis still managedto pick up points on Checo,
even with a fucking DNF.
Lewis doesn't care about P2.
I truly don't think he gives ashit about P2.
You and I care more about himgetting P2 than he ever will,
and he's not going to get P2, soit doesn't matter.
The team claims that they wantP2 in the constructors.

(46:40):
They're not going to get it.
I mean, george, putting it inthe wall.

Speaker 2 (46:44):
Not the way McLaren's going in Ferrari yeah.

Speaker 1 (46:47):
Well, george put it in the wall and gave away a band
loaded points in Singapore andLewis ends up doing something
stupid that cost them a crap tonof points Again.
My problem with all of this isthis is a team that has no
ability to develop their car ina productive way continues to
have the seventh best pit stopson the grid.

(47:09):
They've had two years.
While they're fathom around andscrewing everything else up,
they're still terrible at pitstops.
Their strategy is sus at best,including this moment.
Again.
You cannot put the fasterdriver behind the slower driver.

(47:29):
I don't mean in terms of pace,although I think you can make a
pretty good argument that Lewishas a better race pace than
George.
I'm talking about the tire,delta, yeah 100%.
You set that fucking situationup, you created that problem,
unless you literally said toGeorge your job is to stay out
of Lewis's way for the firstcorner.

(47:52):
If he can't get by Max, it'sfair play, but for the first
corner your job is to let Lewisget by him.

Speaker 2 (48:02):
Instead, george put himself right in the fucking way
On all those radio broadcastsback and forth that they had.
At one point I couldn't tellwho was talking.
It sort of sounded like TotoWolfe was talking.
Get your head back, just drive.

Speaker 1 (48:15):
It was Toto.
Okay, it was Toto.
Toto called in again Okay,that's my thought and told
George to get his head down anddrive.

Speaker 2 (48:21):
I just want to put aside for everybody.
I've just watched the racetoday.
It was Canadian Thanksgiving.
I didn't watch any of it live.
I've been catching up over thelast couple of days.
I've stayed off social mediafor a lot of it, so I don't know
a lot of these answers.
So it was it was good to.
I was like shit, man thatsounds like Toto.
It's not his engineer.
I don't know who the fuck thatis.
So, toto, is he still in thehospital calling.

Speaker 1 (48:42):
He's not in the hospital, but he was not in
Qatar.
They clearly have him fed intothe garage and he's still
weighing in on things, theshifting dialogue through that
first stage and, of course, youknow, in fairness, it's chaos.
Everyone's reacting to it.
Again, I don't really haveantipathy for George, it's just

(49:03):
I'm still more mad at the teambecause they continue to create
these situations.
Yeah, that don't have to happen.
This one was so avoidable.
And for George to be like Iwasn't looking in my mirrors you
didn't need to look in yourmirrors, but for the record, if
you watch the onboard, he waslooking in his mirrors.
He knew exactly where Max andLewis were.

(49:25):
He simply elected to keep hisfoot in and that's this.
Right, he's a racing driver,but it meant this was gonna
happen.
Yeah, and what it tells us isit will continue to happen.
Unlike Red Bull, who have a cardesigned completely around a
single driver who is performingat such a high level he can

(49:46):
basically beat the entire restof the field that have two
drivers that's how far aheadthey are and McLaren, who are
not only driving with twoincredibly strong drivers who
are in no danger of taking eachother out in the races are
setting new records for fastestpit stops.
Who are developing everybodyelse on the grid, maybe kind of

(50:10):
closing the gap to Red Bull alittle bit.
I mean, again, red Bull's focusis on next year, but in terms
of this year, mclaren keepsupping their game, race by race.
You know this is anembarrassment.
Yeah, I don't think we've hitrock bottom with Mercedes.
I truly believe this is not thelast time we're gonna see these
two trip over each other thisyear, and we've only got five

(50:31):
races left.

Speaker 2 (50:32):
I feel we're strongly heading towards a Rosberg
Hamilton situation with thatteam.

Speaker 1 (50:37):
A thousand percent.
There's no other scenariopossible at this point.
Toto made this fucking mess.

Speaker 2 (50:44):
And he's not dealing with it.
He always said with Hamiltonand Rosberg he came into the
situation and he would deal withit completely differently if he
had the ability to.
But he never had the ability to.
Buddy, you got the fuckingsituation right now and you are
not dealing with it anydifferently.

Speaker 1 (50:59):
No, he's not.
In fact, I think Toto's part ofthe problem.
I think the lack of leadership.
God damn, I miss Nikki.
Yeah, I think this team flailswithout somebody who is an ass
kicker truth teller, and thereare none of those people left.
Yeah, there's nobody who'swilling to just go.
Look.
It's this or that I mean.
Your choices at this point areyou tell Lewis, you know Lewis?

(51:21):
Here's the thing.
Buddy, you got sevenchampionships.
You helped create a dynasty ofeight constructors.
Championships.
You gave us a presence that wewould never have otherwise had.
But here's the thing.

Speaker 2 (51:35):
Yeah, you're not going to get another one.
You got screwed out of yourprevious one and we're really
sorry about that.

Speaker 1 (51:40):
Well, we're really sorry about it and you know,
admittedly we didn't do fuck allabout it and you and I have
different opinions on this, butnevertheless we did nothing to
help overturn that injustice.
But here's the thing we willsupport your diversity
initiatives.
We will do whatever it is inthe background that we need to
do to make you feel good aboutyour time here, but we're

(52:02):
putting all of our focus ontoGeorge Russell and that's the
way it is.
Yeah, and sometimes, you know,I watch what their social media
team is doing and I think, well,maybe that conversation has
already happened in thebackground.
The sort of grotesquery aroundLewis, you know, initially he
was like I got taken out by myteammate, but very shortly after
being back in the paddock hewas like this was my fault.

(52:26):
Yeah, I don't think it was a100% fault issue, I think you
know I mean the stewards calledit a racing incident.
I think the stewards calleverything that's turn one lap
one a racing incident.
They never have the balls to doanything else but predominantly
, or if they had to judge it, itwould have been Lewis's fault.
And I think we all acknowledgedthat it was ultimately Lewis

(52:47):
turning in too sharply thatcaused the problem, but the
bottom line is this if you havea hope and thought of competing
in the constructors championship, you got to sort this shit,
yeah right now Fast, quick andin a goddamn hurry Right now I
think you can't keep laughingaround.

Speaker 2 (53:03):
Get it fucking done.

Speaker 1 (53:04):
Get it sorted.
Tell everybody what it's goingto be, you know.
And if you don't have the ballsto do that, then
congratulations.
You're about to be fourth inthe constructors championship in
2024, if you're fucking lucky.
I don't have any hope thatthey're going to end up in
second.
I think they're going to befucking lucky if they end up
third.
With five races to go.
That's how bad they are rightnow.

Speaker 2 (53:24):
Well, it might be for the best that they end up so
far down and have all the moredevelopment time.

Speaker 1 (53:28):
I don't think it'll matter.
I think this team is justcooked.
We're watching a team unravelin real time.
They have two of the bestdrivers on the grid, but they
aren't capable of managing thatand they sure as hell aren't
taking advantage of the timethat they've had to improve any
of their operations.
Who knows, even if they had agreat car and I have a lot of

(53:48):
faith in James Allison but evenif they had a great car next
year, which we have no guaranteeof would it make any difference
when every other team on thegrid is 18 to 24 months ahead of
them in development?
Right, yeah, we're so fucked,we're super fucked.
You're not in like a fun way.
And on that uplifting note,what else happened in the race,
Jay?

Speaker 2 (54:07):
Well, and now we get to lap four.
We go green.

Speaker 1 (54:16):
I think we might need a momentary pause for me to get
even more whiskey.

Speaker 2 (54:21):
Brief pause for Marbu's and the poodle.
So we go green again at lapfour and Max Verstappen has a
really good restart.
It's safe to say he controlsthe race for the first stint.
Yeah, absolutely, he'scontrolling it like that.
This launch he did really,really well.
One of the things we didn'tknow and it never said what

(54:43):
happened bought us, lost part ofhis wing or his nose in the
first lap because he came, hecomes in to change his nose, and
all of the commentator said washe changed his nose, but they
never showed anything and theynever said anything.
He definitely came in for a pitstop, though.

Speaker 1 (54:56):
Well, there's a couple of things.
I think the direction in therace was really bad.
I think it was chaos.
It was a challenging race tofigure out how you would manage,
but with the option of graphicsthe idea, knowing what we know,
going into the race about everydriver having used tires with

(55:16):
different amounts of laps onthem and a limited number of new
tires, and trying to manage 18laps versus 20 laps like come up
with a graphic.
Yeah, you know, there was neveranything.
They'd pop up a little headerthat would say so and so must
pit by lap, whatever.
And it was like well, that'sgreat, it's on screen for two
seconds and there are 20 driversand you're trying to keep track

(55:37):
of it in your head.
And there was no way to makeheads or tails of that and God
knows, like one of the previousraces.

Speaker 2 (55:44):
I can't remember what it was if I was watching Free
Practice or Quality or something, but there was ongoing jokes
with new graphics with JulianPalmer, like with an umbrella
and a rain suit, in a car, in aswimsuit, like all these things
that they were making on the fly.
So somebody obviously knows howto make them and how to put
them up.
Why don't they have that personin for the race day, even if
they're an intern?

(56:04):
Maybe you should fucking hirethem and give them money and
they can, you know, make somegraphics so great.

Speaker 1 (56:10):
Also, I think you got to note that Oscar, in the
melee between Lewis and Georgehelping each other screw
themselves, george has come in,he's dead.
Last Piestri is up to second.

Speaker 2 (56:22):
Piestri managed to avoid all of the carnage,
amazingly.
He did a really, really goodjob and the race restart's
almost right away.
Russell Pip's Perez coming in,hulk and Sonodo have a really
good battle going on, going backand forth for passing and
eventually Hulk Pip's Sonodo.
Well, that was all going on.

(56:42):
It came up that Hulk has a 10second penalty that we talked
about earlier for starting inthe wrong spot and we go on and
by lap eight, russell is up to12th and Perez is still only
like 14th or something.
It is worth noting that Russellis on the medium and Perez is
on the hards, but Perez,throughout the entire course of

(57:05):
the race, did not cover himselfin glory and I don't know if the
heat was affecting him by thatpoint.
I haven't heard anything aboutPerez like puking in his helmet
or having to be helped out fromhis car, but I don't know.

Speaker 1 (57:16):
I don't remember the lap so I didn't acknowledge.
I didn't take great notesduring the race so I don't
remember at what point in therace we finally started to hear
it started.
The focus was on Logan Sargent.
You finally get a team radioand you're having a sort of
weird awkward interactionbetween Logan and the pit wall.

(57:38):
It almost I think it almostsounded like you was talking to
James.

Speaker 2 (57:41):
Yeah it was James.
It was lap 35 where JamesValles comes on, and I was like
there's no shame in it.

Speaker 1 (57:48):
So that was the first time in the race that we really
had any hint that somebody wassuffering.
Now there had been commentsbecause George, coming in and
out, was raising his visor andthen at one point Lando was
raising and lowering his visoras he would be coming in to the
pit lane for a stop.

Speaker 2 (58:03):
Alonzo, talked about.
His butt was very, his ass wason fire, his side and he wants
to know if they could dump wateron him.

Speaker 1 (58:10):
Yeah, so there was some obvious signs eventually
that the heat was an issuewithin the race with Logan, sort
of.
Again in the context ofnarratives.
That happened was he was sickand that was the narrative was
that he was sick and whether ornot he could continue the race.
Because there was nounderstanding of the fact that

(58:30):
this was really physicallyimpacting all of the drivers, it
became a whole narrative around.
You know, logan's just bailing.
Basically, logan just needs tokind of suck it up.
Nobody has said anything aboutLogan being sick.
So why is Logan suddenly havingissues?
You have this sort of weirddialogue happening between DC

(58:52):
and Jolin Palmer and it was sortof a piling on moment.
Yeah, and even in the contextof the race I was not
comfortable with how theconversation was going and of
course in hindsight they seemeven doucheier for talking about
Logan the way they did.
And again, I'm not a LoganSergeant Apologist by any
stretch of the imagination.

Speaker 2 (59:11):
Well, if anything, we leave a little anti-Logan
Sergeant because of his familyand his political leadings.

Speaker 1 (59:16):
Correct, but I just wasn't comfortable with the way
that that was being discussed inthe context of the race.
Even then, I don't have a tonof interest in the lap by lap
analysis of what happened.
I think again, as a spectatorit was challenging to follow and
understand who was really where.
Usually you have a pretty goodsense of who's you know actual,

(59:38):
even though if they're in 12th,where they really are.
That was super challenging inthis race.
It was clear that George washaving a very strong race.
He'd make his way up pastseveral people, but you just
didn't know how many pit stopswere really left in any given
time.
Yeah, all the things you talkedabout, you've got a lot of

(59:58):
drivers doing really weirdthings.
You said way earlier you knowGeorge would take his hands off
the wheel.
It was hard to put it in thecontext in the moment of the
race.
You mentioned Alonso.
You know Alonso takes a flyeroff into the gravel at one point
I don't know if his tires weregoing off Came back on again.
I know F1 drivers have reallygood reflexes, but I'm still not

(01:00:20):
sure how he didn't manage tocollect Charles Leclerc at that
point.

Speaker 2 (01:00:24):
And how he didn't get a penalty for an unsafe reentry
.

Speaker 1 (01:00:27):
AF and men.
I think I read actually thestewards thing and it was
because Charles didn't have totake evasive action.
And I'm like, just becauseCharles didn't crash his car
didn't make that not a dangerousreentry.

Speaker 2 (01:00:40):
But, nevertheless.
I watched that happen.
I was like how the fuck Likeand again, just because Charles
didn't have to like, as you said, take evasive action, I don't
think the way Alonso came in,Charles had the ability and time
to take evasive action.

Speaker 1 (01:00:55):
And again, in hindsight, we might as well just
jump to it.
I mean, we're talking about it,let's just talk about it, we
can.
I'm sure there are othernuances and things that happen
in the race that are worthdiscussing, but for me to think
about the fact that eventuallyLogan did retire and that was a
talking point in the race,because, again, I think

(01:01:16):
everybody's sort of expecting atany time Williams to go yeah,
we tried, but I'm sorry, logan,like this, isn't it?
And you had the commentatorsdogpiling on that Logan retires
and has to be helped out of thecar.
Yeah, and they were making sucha big deal about.
Well, nobody said anything abouthim being sick before this.
So, like blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, turns out Logan

(01:01:38):
had had quote unquote flu, likesymptoms earlier in the week,
which you interpret that howeveryou want it translates to he
was already dehydrated beforethey got to Qatar.
He clearly had heat stroke.
We then find out, let's strollClimbed out of his car barely

(01:01:59):
and stumbled immediately to anambulance to ask for help.
After this race, we find out hewas literally tunnel visioning,
starting to black out in thehigh-speed corners.

Speaker 2 (01:02:11):
Awk on from, I think it said, turn 15, lap 15 or 16,
vomiting in his helmet, which Ican't even begin to be okay
about.
There's still another 40-ish,40 laps to go behind with that
smell.
Those helmets are tight Again,as Heather and I said, neither

(01:02:32):
of us are huge Logan Sargentfans by any stretch of the
imagination.
However, you had theannouncer's dog piling on him
like well, he's not a real racerwhen I was a real racer.
If a true racer just pushesthrough it and look, I am, by no
stretch of the imagination, anelite athlete at all.
I happily do half marathons.
I finish in the middle of apack.

(01:02:52):
I definitely know about pushingthrough and being able to do a
race or DNF a race and figureout when I do that.
These guys are top 0.00001% ofathletes in the world.
If they're saying there's anissue and there's a health
problem and it's beeninteresting, some of the stuff
that I've been reading post-raceis that all the other drivers

(01:03:15):
that have raced at Qatar aresaying we're so happy that this
was so horrific for F1, notbecause they're happy how bad it
was for the drivers, but thatit's finally drawing attention
to how bad the track is in termsof how his actual setup is, how
challenging the track is interms of the weather conditions

(01:03:36):
and what other drivers are beingforced to race in.
You can say as much as you want.
Oh, they're.
Athletes are paid.
They can't leave when they wantto.
If they leave, they void theircontracts.
There are huge financial andlegal ramifications if they do
not race, which is why, despitethe fact that they unanimously
did not want to race in SaudiArabia a couple of years ago,

(01:03:58):
they had to race.
There is no walking away fromthat without really big
repercussions, I think, havingso many drivers be so ill I
don't know if we mentioned thatAlbon had to be lifted out of
his car.
He could not leave his car onhis own.
This is not okay.
I love driving, I love a goodspectacle, I love racing, but I

(01:04:20):
don't want it at the cost ofanybody's long-term health or
their lives or anything likethat.
I'm Canadian.
The saying is you go to a fightand a hockey game might break
out, but that's not actuallywhat I want to see.
I want to see good athletes atthe height of their training and
understanding, performing atthe height of their abilities,

(01:04:41):
making these guys drive aroundthe track while they're throwing
up and passing out.

Speaker 1 (01:04:44):
That's not fucking cool, man, what she said Was
there anything else within thecontext of the race that you
really wanted to hit?
I think it's worth noting again, just because track limits, we
had 51 laps deleted over thecourse of the race.
Both Checo and Lance hadmultiple five-second penalties.
Gasly did as well.
There you go.

(01:05:05):
You had Checo and Stroll andGasly with multiple five-second
penalties.
I think we can say George reallydid have an amazing recovery
drive to get himself frombasically dead last on lap two
all the way back up to P4.
Tells you really, mclaren'sworked their way up and got
themselves both on the podium,which kudos to them.

(01:05:26):
It would have been fascinatingif the Mercedes could have kept
their shit together and notcreated a situation that caused
the chaos that it did in turnone.
Where would they have been?
The car had pace Generallyspeaking not always, but
generally speaking, lewis hashad better race pace.
If George could get back up toP4 from P18.
Would they both been on thepodium?
Hard to say.

(01:05:47):
If they had, I think they wouldhave secured P2 in the
constructors.
They did not and they will notis my take on that.

Speaker 2 (01:05:54):
No, the fact that Toto had to call from wherever,
he had to call from Again for arace in a row.

Speaker 1 (01:06:00):
So anything else you wanted to really hit within the
context of the race itself?
I don't think so.
So I had for records are madeto be broken that McLaren set
that new record 1.8-second pitstop for Lando.
I know they had at least oneother that was at 2.0.
They were really money.
I will say Red Bull had a4.1-second pit stop for

(01:06:21):
Verstappen, no less.
Yeah, that was crazy to see inreal time.
I'm not used to seeing that,not hanging off a Mercedes
driver and even Paris's pitstops.

Speaker 2 (01:06:30):
I mean, he had multiple five-second penalty pit
stops, but apart from that hejust had bad pit stops.

Speaker 1 (01:06:36):
Let's be real.
They are done with Checo.
Oh yeah, checo's gone.
Checo will make it till the endof the season, but Checo is not
going to be in that seat nextseason, not for a million years.
Who did you have for?

Speaker 2 (01:06:47):
Driver of the Day.
I had Piastri.
He had a solid fucking drive.
He had an amazing weekend.
Like props to him, man, he didreally well this weekend.

Speaker 1 (01:06:56):
Yeah, I agree, I had Oscar, and that's three weeks in
a row that I have agreed withthe general public's choice for
Driver of the Day, which isunprecedented boys and girls
Absolutely unprecedented.
I actually also give LoganSargent kudos for being smart
enough to park up.
I find the idea that a bunch ofthem are out there driving with

(01:07:18):
tunnel vision and graying outand puking, I just find that
fucking asinine.
That's not safe.
You can find.
If you're puking your helmet,you're having to deal with that
yourself.
That's one thing.
I do not feel the need to dogpile on Lance Stroll the way
many people do.
He's clearly he's not availinghimself of the points options

(01:07:41):
that his teammate is.
But that said, I don't haveanything against Lance per se,
but I find it not okay that youchose to keep driving when you
were blacking out in the highspeed corners you pass out, you
can cause havoc.
I am coming back to this rightnow because, fuck Martin Brundle
is the nice way I'm going toput it the last Toyota of

(01:08:04):
respect I had for Brundle diedand was buried under a rock this
week, when I have to read himtalking about this in the
context of blah, blah, blah.
You know Nikki Latt had drovewhen he didn't.
Don't put Nikki Latt as name inyour mouth.
Nikki didn't want to drive inthe race that caused him to be

(01:08:25):
burned alive.
Two assholes who are not in thedriver's seat, making these
constant, ongoing, lit rain andawful, treacherous conditions.
That's what's your best driver.
Stop, yeah, just stop.
Will Buxton?

Speaker 2 (01:08:43):
shut your mouth, stop talking about this, these
announcers who have never driventhese types of cars.
Julian Palmer's the one who'sdriven a closer to iteration of
these cars.
Just fuck right off when my dayI could try.
Fuck you, jackie Stewart.
Fuck you.
I defy you to get in these carsat the peak of your driving
career and do okay.

Speaker 1 (01:09:01):
Agreed and I don't care For me.
That's the thing.
I want to watch these amazingathletes driving these
engineering marvels, ideallywith actual competition, unlike
what we're watching unfoldcurrently.
I don't need to see themdriving in extremely dangerous

(01:09:22):
conditions to appreciate theirtalent or to enjoy watching a
race.
I don't find that interesting,engaging or in any other way.
I don't want to watch somebodydie.
Yeah, it's not the fuckinghunger games, Right?
That does not need to be a partof what I'm enjoying F1 to do.

(01:09:42):
And when these gross old whitemen, or even middle-aged and
younger white men, are makingthese claims, it's disgusting.
It's part of the same bullshitnarrative we've seen and talked
about in the past.
But here's the thing we knowthat next year Qatar is later.
It's really late in the seasonso hopefully that alleviates

(01:10:03):
this god-awful heat-humiditycombo that created part of this.
The stint length was also partof this because they were all
having to drive basically atquality lap level.
Because these stints were soshort, they had to drive as fast
as possible.
They are going to have tofigure out what they need to do

(01:10:24):
to avoid this problem next year.
Please don't even breathesprint race as a concept at
Qatar ever again.
But I am so disappointed thatthe FIA still like, yeah,
they'll give lip service to,will make sure that this sort of
thing doesn't happen again.
It shouldn't have happened atall.
No, never.

(01:10:44):
I'm appreciative of LoganSargent.
I know he had to have beenabsolutely desperate.
You heard it in his voicetalking to James Valls he wanted
to finish that race.

Speaker 2 (01:10:54):
Yeah, he would say, I can do it.
Man, Believe me, I can do it.

Speaker 1 (01:10:57):
So for him to have then retired I can't even
imagine how hard that was forhim.
So I give him that Lucky son ofa bitch.
I had Lewis Hamilton, whomanaged to come away with more
points to Checo despite the DNF.
That should not have happened.
And again, I'm sorry, checo,and I still fully believe that
Checo is going to end up P2 inthe Drivers Championship.

(01:11:19):
I don't know how Lewis managedthat, considering he was not
shining glory upon himself thisweekend.

Speaker 2 (01:11:25):
I also agree with Lewis for a slightly different
one, where he did not getcollected in that.
Ocon Hulkenberg who is it?
Ocon Hulkenberg?
Checo, checo, they didn't getcollected in that.

Speaker 1 (01:11:37):
That poor bastard.
I this time gave it to all 18drivers who actually finished
that race Carlos Sainz and LewisHamilton.
Maybe I should give the two ofthem Lucky Son of a Bitch for
not having to drive in thoseconditions, which were clearly
horrific, horrific.

Speaker 2 (01:11:53):
Yeah, they had at the start of the race, when they're
all lined up on the grid andthey still have their tire
blankets on and they're holdingumbrellas over them, that the
majority of the pit lane crewshad sweated through their hair.
They looked like they'd beenswimming.
Their hair was so wet.

Speaker 1 (01:12:11):
I hope that the FIA has learned something from this.
At the end of the day, doucheCanoe of the Race, I had Lewis
for clipping George and costingthe team huge points, but also
George for fucking the teamstrategy.
For Toto for not nipping all ofthis fucking drama in the bud,
because I truly believe thatToto Wolf created this problem

(01:12:32):
and he's not dealing with it.
Mercedes is a hole for fuckingup their team management and,
honestly, they're creepy fuckingsocial media behavior this week
.
I understand why people arecalling it out.
This team is on a spiraldownwards.
Boys and girls.
I don't know where it's goingto end, but I think we're
watching it in real time at themoment.
I agree with that.

Speaker 2 (01:12:52):
I love the announcers for just being absolute bags of
postulant ball sweat, forcalling out and making fun of
people before, during and afterthe race, for tapping out, for
saying it's too hot, theseconditions are awful, we can't
race in them.
We had people long after therace saying if there were true

(01:13:13):
racers in my day, fuck right off.
It was 39 degrees plus humidityat night.
That's unreal.
And you're driving in thosesnow suits, basically on top of
furnaces.
Let's keep that in mind.
The cars are hot in and ofthemselves.
The engines are going, they aresitting and leaning against

(01:13:35):
heat sources.

Speaker 1 (01:13:36):
I agree completely with that.
I basically slotted all of thatinto the Asinine commentator
comment category because I justthought the snide comments about
Logan, everything that cameafterwards, as I said before,
the last shred of respect I hadfor Martin Brundle just
shriveled up and died.
I have not had space for MartinBrundle in my brain for about

(01:14:03):
18 months, but that was it.
And Will Buxton and Matt Cue atAutosport and all of these
pathetic excuse for commentatorsor journalists.
This was a moment where you go.
Our sport can do better.
We can do better and we canprotect our drivers.
And we should be looking at howwe take the fact that we have
the 20 best drivers in the world.

(01:14:24):
Whatever like blah, blah, blah,whether it really is the 20
best drivers in the world or not.
The idea that people likeMartin Brundle will give this
Bullshit about them not owning,the idea that Martin Brendel
will sit there and Act as thoughEnduring these kinds of

(01:14:47):
conditions is not beyond thepale is vile.
So for manufactured bullshit.
Liberty Media talking point ofthe weekend.
I think the obvious is theunending circle jerk for Max
Verstappen's third driver'schampionship Arguably his first
legitimate driver's championshipthat didn't involve fucking

(01:15:08):
cheating by Michael Massey, andor Cheating by the team as a
whole but well, here's the thing.

Speaker 2 (01:15:14):
I think it builds on previous cheating from
developing that car.

Speaker 1 (01:15:18):
I don't disagree.
That said, I will give MaxVerstappen credit.
He is a machine.
It's nothing that I ever wantto experience again.
I don't know what my long-termfuture as a viewer of F1 really
is.
I have to sort of cling to thisseason by my fingernails to
keep watching and not be like,oh my god.

(01:15:39):
You can't deny that he'sextremely effective as a driver
in that car, which is wildlydominant compared to everything
else on the grid, but he doesn'tmake stupid mistakes.
The most excitement that youever get is him and GP verbally
tangling with each other.
So you know, whatever kudosthis season, la, la, la, la la.

(01:16:02):
I have no interest in watchingthis for two more years, and I'm
pretty sure that's what we'reon for.
So I do hope that, if nothingelse, mclaren really are
Continuing to improve their car.
You've got two strong driversthere.
I think we all know DannyRicardo is gonna end up in the
second seat for Red Bull fornext year Because they have

(01:16:23):
nobody else that meets theirmarketing needs.
I think they think that he canhandle the same type of car as
for Stappen, meaning what theywant in a car is similar enough.

Speaker 2 (01:16:35):
There's no way but they tell him going in like your
driver number two, your wholepurpose is to make sure max wins
.

Speaker 1 (01:16:41):
I don't need to tell him.
He knows that.
You don't even need to say thatout.

Speaker 2 (01:16:45):
I don't know.

Speaker 1 (01:16:46):
He's not glad Danny has to be happy to be on the
grid.
That's the.
That's the.
The knock-on effect of havinghis ass kicked at McLaren is
Danny Rick knows every day hegets to be in a car on the F1
grid is a gift.
He's never gonna complain ever,ever, ever, ever, ever about

(01:17:07):
being the number two driver.
He knows exactly the same wayCheco did.
Like you can give lip serviceto it, but Checo always
understood what his place was.
I don't buy the Checo, I meanagain, they're drivers in their
own minds.
Yeah, yeah, I can do whatever.
There was never a point whereCheco wasn't the number two
driver, to your point earlier.

(01:17:28):
I think it will be fascinatingto see how McLaren handle it and
whether Zach Brown is less of adouche bag than we all kind of
Believe he is or he could justbe a complete douche bag, but
still control the team right,yeah, well right, they're not
mutually exclusive.
Both can be true at the sametime.
I think Oscar Piaz-Tri has sucha level head, yeah look at his

(01:17:50):
mom.

Speaker 2 (01:17:51):
How do you don't have a level head with a mom like
that?

Speaker 1 (01:17:52):
Yeah Right, he will just do what he needs to do.
I Don't believe we will eversee Piaz-Tri and Norris come
together the way we're seeingHamilton and Russell.

Speaker 2 (01:18:06):
I was gonna say, or back in the day, the way Ricardo
and First stop and did yeah,because back then they both
thought that they were Queen B.

Speaker 1 (01:18:14):
You know, at that point Danny was the lead driver.
Perceptually, you can make adecision and you need to make a
decision about what your goal isand McLaren.
I think at this point there'sgonna be some sort of crossover
moment that happens, where it'sclear that Piaz-Tri is better
than Norris, mm-hmm, and that'sgonna be an awkward moment and

(01:18:37):
at that point it won't reallymatter, because that'll only
last for a few months andwhat'll happen is Norris will
leave McLaren yeah, and that'show that's gonna be resolved and
Piaz-Tri will end up being theone that stays with McLaren and
build the team around him.
I think Albonne will gosomewhere else in a year.
I I think it would be fun tosee Albonne redevelop Williams.

Speaker 2 (01:18:57):
I don't think Albonne will stay at Williams, not
unless they pass me improve.

Speaker 1 (01:19:03):
Right, he's.
He's done very, very well thisseason and he he deserves to
have an Opportunity to chooseanother seed if he wants it, and
I suspect he will.
I think the only team that'sreally, really at risk Right now
is Mercedes, and they've justcreated so many problems, mm-hmm

(01:19:23):
.
They're not gonna getthemselves out of this hole
Anytime soon, and a good carwon't make it better.
No, they're the only team onthe grid where, if they improve
their car, they're probably 100%do right like how, how'd you
manage that toto?

Speaker 2 (01:19:41):
I don't understand how he managed bodass and Lewis
Fairly well for the most partand has shit the bed so badly.

Speaker 1 (01:19:51):
Well, I think there's a couple things that play.
I think it's not hard at thispoint to acknowledge that George
is better than Valtteri in someways Not all of them.
You know Valtteri had theability to beat Lewis in quality
from time to time to I thinkGeorge Is just way more
aggressive.
Again, like I think Valtteri isa fundamental tenant of who he

(01:20:13):
is Understood the importance ofthe team aspect of things.
I think George doesn't give afuck.
He'll.
He'll give it lots of lipservice, but I think when it
comes to being in the car in themoment I'm sorry, we've seen it
all year long George is veryabout George.
George is never worried aboutwhat do we need to be doing.

(01:20:34):
It's never the word we wouldnever come out of his mouth.
No, and he never congratulateshis teammate.
Ever, ever, like you will nothear the word Lewis did a good
job today come out of his mouth.
In the meantime, lewis has togive George props all the time.
The difference in how the medianarrative works if Lewis makes a

(01:20:58):
mistake Versus if George makesa mistake has been in stark
relief in the last ten days, andI Know that it will keep
talking about this at length.
But even watching how Mercedesown social media team manages

(01:21:19):
how Perception works around.
These events this week has beenenlightening and not really in
a good way.
I think they're gonna continueto try and sell the kumbaya
narrative.
There is no kumbaya in thatteam right now.
I'm sorry to be a fan of a teamthat is as bad as this right
now and, like I said earlier, Idon't.
I don't think we're at rockbottom now I think.

Speaker 2 (01:21:40):
I think we're gonna find a rock bottom which will be
fucking awesome, and by awesomeI mean awful.

Speaker 1 (01:21:45):
I think it's certainly providing a ton of
entertainment.
If you're not a Mercedes, ifyou're somebody who really hated
Mercedes throughout theirdominant period, this is a very
good time for you.

Speaker 2 (01:21:58):
So, heather, where's the?

Speaker 1 (01:22:00):
next race.
The next race is it circuit ofthe Americas in Austin, texas,
and where will we be watching it?
We will be watching ittrackside at turn 15, together
with a bunch of awesome friendsthat we made a year ago plus in
Montreal, and I, for one, amover the moon to get to see Not

(01:22:23):
only that group of friends thatwe made in Montreal, but some
new friends we've made online.
I Am super, super, superexcited to get to see Formula
Academy.

Speaker 2 (01:22:36):
Yeah, I'm so so to be able to see that live.

Speaker 1 (01:22:38):
It's a sprint weekend , which I Really wish it wasn't.
Yeah, there's support races.
Yeah, I'm a much bigger fan ofgetting to see free practice.
I'm a freak.
I like free practice.
I like the idea that the teamsreally get a chance to get their
car dialed in and then, by thetime we get to the race,
everybody's really operating itpeak, as opposed to the bullshit

(01:23:01):
that gets generated.
But nevertheless, it is what itis we get to see.
I'm not gonna lie.
Having the opportunity to seethe Killers, queen and DJ test
yo is like are you kidding me?

Speaker 2 (01:23:13):
I am not an awesome over the moon on that and it's
just been announced yesterday.
There's a whole section whereyou can go make friendship
bracelets.

Speaker 1 (01:23:19):
We can go make friendship bracelets coming soon
to you, tableau 20 friendshipbracelets, and there's a bunch
of people that I think are gonnabe there that I'm looking
forward to hopefully, hopefully,getting to see in person and
say hi to.
So I think it's gonna be a goodweekend.
I don't think it's gonna be agood weekend for my team or my
driver, but it will not stop usfrom enjoying F1.
We are entering a strange andcomplicated and high pressure

(01:23:43):
situation for F1.
So we have Koda and Mexico andBrazil.
Bam Bam Bam.
Two of those three races areadditional sprints on top of
guitar.
So this is sort of the crushperiod of the calendar for 2023.
After that we go.
They announced the race timefor Vegas.

(01:24:06):
This week.

Speaker 2 (01:24:06):
What time's the racing in Vegas?

Speaker 1 (01:24:08):
10, 30 at night, I think, or 11 pm, it's like,
literally, they found the onetime slot on the entire 24 hours
of A clock that works rightnobody anyway Go F1, unless you
happen to be drunk and stumblingaround in Vegas.
Well, they wouldn't let youstumble along the strip anyway,
that's true.
They've torn out all the treesand put in grandstand, so who

(01:24:29):
the hell knows what's reallyhappening?
Oh God forbid.
Fom and Liberty Media wouldmake a good choice.
But here we are.
It'll be over soon, boys andgirls.
Handful of races to go, butyeah, how about you?
What are you looking forward toin?

Speaker 2 (01:24:45):
Austin, as Heather said, to seeing all of our
friends in Person again that wemade when went to the Montreal
race.
I'm looking forward to a bunchof the really awesome people I
have met online to see themperson.
Some of them we got to see inSilverstone.

Speaker 1 (01:25:02):
All right, we will be back in hopefully two weeks,
giving what you know about usand how frequently we managed to
get these podcasts uploaded.
It might be in december, whoknows?
We'll try our best, people.
Thanks for sticking with us.
All right, we will Talk soon,jen, have a wonderful night.

Speaker 2 (01:25:19):
Heather, have a great night and hey, I'll see you in
Austin.
Woot, talk to you later.
Bye.