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.
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.
Greetings and welcome to Formula XX, a podcast by two Gen X women about Formula One and other motorsports, usually with adult beverages and always with adult words. Today, we're talking 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 to do the sales, unique curbs, ever-evolving track limits, racing in exceptionally hot and humid weather and some inner-team politics, there's a hell of a lot to unpack for Qatar here. To help with. Exactly that is my partner in crime, Jen. Jen, how are you? Where are you and, most importantly, what are you drinking tonight?
Speaker 2:I am in Campbell River. If anybody hears any whining or crying, I do not have somebody tried up in my parents' basement. My parents' tiny five-pound poodle has decided to join us and I cannot keep her out of the room without her making a large, tiny, squeaky noise. Not a large noise what I am drinking. I was going to drink shelter point, but my dad and I finished it. We forgot. Instead, I am drinking another delicious whiskey, sadly not from the island, but I am drinking some smokehead from Iowa. It's just living up to its name. Just one of my go-to whiskeys. Heather, where are you and what are you drinking?
Speaker 1:I am in Seattle as usual this week and I have cracked open and poured a frankly ridiculously large helping of LaFroy Select. That bottle has been up on a shelf for a while and I thought to get through some of tonight's discussion about the Qatar GP, I might want to have this in hand.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I have the entire bottle sitting on the floor next to me to keep popping up. Excellent call. Yeah, you guys don't see Heather's drink, but she is cheers, cheers. She has a rather large one. It'll help your throat from lingering with COVID.
Speaker 1:Three weeks post COVID. I will say, for those of you who have had COVID and have you had, I'm sorry, and if you haven't, run far away and keep your masks on, I'm not enjoying how long it's taking to kick some of the symptoms, including this cold. I'll apologize in advance if I do sound like I have a smoker's hack tonight. I do not, I'm happy to say so. Qatar, yeah, I'm. Honestly. I think I'm personally still trying to figure out what genius put this shit show in motion.
Speaker 2:Sports washing put it in motion. It is a horrible place to have a race. It's a horrible time of year to have a race there.
Speaker 1:Well, and who decided that you want to have a sprint race at Qatar. Yeah, you know, I understand that there's this bullshit background narrative that we have to jive up these ridiculous ways to make things more interesting and or controversial, but doing that on a track that we know there were what five blowouts when we were at this track in 2021. Yeah, the curbs were an issue back then and even though they made changes to the curbs, it's a ton of high speed corners and problematic curbs that did damage to tires two years ago. You've got I don't know a quarter of the grid I'm guessing, at least if I stopped account who have not driven on this track, at least in race conditions. So they got one whole hour of free practice to try and sort this track out.
Speaker 2:And then a shitty 10 minutes before sprints to sort out the changes, right.
Speaker 1:And you know this was just a poor concept from the get go.
Speaker 2:I wonder who is making these calls and why I think somebody's getting paid in deep pockets to make these calls, and I don't just think it's FIA or Liberty Media. I think there's kickbacks going on. There has to be somewhere for that. I don't disagree. I noticed there weren't nearly as many shots of the crowd this time as last time out, and it did say it was a sellout crowd, but I was still trying to decide if they were paid sellout crowd or not.
Speaker 1:I do not think it was as blatant and awful as 2021, where it was very clear that they had purchased t-shirts and flags and distributed them to whichever people they had managed to bring in off of the street to come sit in the stands in 2021. I know just you know, from online shared F1 fandom a number of people who were there and, based on the photos, there were definitely more people in the stands. Soldout is a loose term under the circumstances. There was never a session that there wasn't a ton of space in the stands, but definitely there were more people there than last time. And you know, I don't begrudge anybody going. No, not at all. I'd hate to think that you put this money lining of pockets spectacle on and don't have anybody there to appreciate it. By all accounts, it was absolutely miserable for the people who were just there to spectate. So when we get a few steps down the line and actually start talking about the race, it's certainly not hard to imagine how awful it was for the drivers Jumping forward. I'm going to go ahead and go right with Free Practice 1, which, again because they made it a sprint weekend, this was the only hour of practice the entire 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 fast For, stappin's the bestest, and Max, carlos and Charles ended up finishing as the top three, although I don't think anybody thought that was particularly representative. Well, jen has her parents poodle. I have brought my co-host, rhys, to the table, who you may hear purring in the background as we continue on. So we got on a sprint race weekend, a launch straight into Kuali on Friday night, so the track was closer to race conditions, which I guess was a good thing With such limited practice and without any of the other formulas racing last weekend in Qatar, the track was really green and still evolving a lot and was expected to continue evolving a lot during Kuali, and track limits based on what had happened in Free Practice were absolutely going to be an issue, and they certainly were.
Speaker 1:And Q1, we'll have a conversation about Mercedes, as we often do, but they decided to send their drivers out on mediums when every other driver that was on the grid was on softs for Q1. They sent them out late, sent them out on mediums, then realized they'd made a mistake, so brought them both back into the pit and really never got their drivers out until about the eight minute mark. In the meantime, you had drivers losing laps left, right and center, which meant that there was a ton of jeopardy because A who was leading because of the evolution of the track was changing minute by minute and there were people who you would expect to be near the top of the timing charts had no time at all on the board. Lando still hadn't gotten an actual lap on the board at the five minute mark, although he ultimately ended up second in Q1. Max was down in 13th until about two minutes to go before he finally jumped to the top over everybody and in the end in Q1, we lost Sergeant Stroll, lawson, magnus and Joe.
Speaker 1:It is worth mentioning Stroll, who I think has taken nothing but shit from everybody everywhere online for weeks now is clearly near his tipping point. He was very, very angry Body language, facial expressions, the whole nine yards when he got out of the car after being knocked out in Q1, he then basically shoved his personal trainer, but it was one of those pretty dramatic moments. We've since learned in the last couple of days that the FIA is investigating Stroll for some ambiguously defined potential violations that everyone is assuming is related to him shoving his trainer. It's a weird thing. I'm still struggling to think why the FIA has a role there per se, other than I guess that it was caught on camera and it may be a perceptual issue.
Speaker 2:That's normally a team issue, I would think Right, it should be a team issue. I can't remember now how many years ago when Max came up and shoved Ocon out of line, nothing came with that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I'm not sure anything will come of this either. What we're seeing, particularly for these drivers who are struggling and are being publicly shamed on a continuous basis the Czechos and the Strolls and the Logan Sargents is that it's taking a toll on their mental health. When the commentators get right in their face immediately after something bad has happened and then feigned surprise when they don't get somebody, just like everything's great, I feel like they're baiting these guys a bit at times. Anyway, there was also another round of what is now becoming consistent, which is the drivers who are tagged for going too slow because they're not hitting the minimum time requirement that the race director has set. Nobody got in trouble. It's consistently so far at least ended up that this is a case where each driver is just getting out of the way of somebody on a fast lap. There was some potential jeopardy, since four of them were tagged for after the session, but nothing happened.
Speaker 1:Q2, we had McLaren and Alonzo again fast, right out of the gate, but Verstappen came out and was like here, I'm half a second faster than everybody on my first run. This time he basically didn't need to go out a second time, which helped him save tires, which was consequential. Down the line. There was a really interesting mix of teams in the top 10, which we've seen a bit, but it was one of those instances where we had some big names on the cusp and then ultimately out again. Track limits were just keeping people from getting a time on the chart. That just clipped wings for people Noted was out, signs was out, paris out again in Q2, albon was out and so was Hülkenberg. I have to say, mostly in the context of another conversation that we've been having and that I think we'll continue to have, which is Lewis Hamilton struggling in Qali. But he put in a banger of a lap in Q2, went to the top of the charts, beat Max by a 10th and I think even had more in the car. It was just such a switch because he barely got through in Q1 because he didn't get as many laps on the board and then that lap was just really pretty.
Speaker 1:Unfortunately that form didn't hold in Q3 when it needed to, but it was nice to see him get a really strong, strong lap on the board Q3, wind came up again, which had been a problem in the morning but hadn't really been so bad, but because it was changing directions it suddenly was affecting a bunch of people. Norris was really fast but, man, he was having track limits issues repeatedly. Though Lewis did have a really good first flyer on his second run, he had a big moment in sector two which meant he couldn't improve significantly. Russell did improve on his. In the meantime, oscar and Lando had both gone really fast, but everybody watching, including every commentator on whichever feed you were on, knew that Norris had lost his fast lap to track limits, but they did not change it.
Speaker 1:On the timing charts you had Park Fermé and the top three had really been Max George, who had a great lap, like I say, and Lando, but Lando just didn't come to Park Fermé. Oscar came in his loo because he was fourth on track at that point and he's halfway through his interview in Park Fermé with Naomi and she goes oh yeah, so we just discovered that your lap has been deleted for track limits as well. So that's how Oscar learned was that he had lost his lap also. So that bumped Lewis up into third. But it was just chaos and disorganization and so weird because everybody knew that the stewards were just so slow putting out the information, so that early in the weekend everything was disorganized and chaotic. The only upside was the grid was set for Sunday, but you sort of felt like it was setting the tone for the weekend and it did.
Speaker 2:As you were saying with the track limits, a huge clusterfuck, a problem throughout the entire weekend. I don't know if it was the new track. It's a new track that's been redefined between quality practices and then sprint, quality and sprint in the race and or if it's the heat or if it's a combination of all of them. But you had guys who were throwing up in their helmets as they were driving because of the heat. You had guys that were passing it around corners. You had at one point Russell go in 195 miles an hour down the straight with his hands off the wheel, out in front of the cockpit, diverting wind into the cockpit, into himself, and all of that will lead to just subpar driving conditions.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think subpar kind of defines the weekend. Sprint quality on Saturday, or, sorry, sprint shootout on Saturday morning commenced with an entire new layout. They had decided overnight that there were tire issues, little micro separations between the side wall and the tread that were causing problems in turns 12 and 13. So with relatively short notice, you know a couple of hours, they made a decision that they were going to change the layout of the track ahead of sprint quality and gave us our very first ever familiarization session. So that was, I think, a source of a lot of frustration for the drivers, I know in the aftermath of regular race quality on Friday night and the track limits issues that had taken away laps from Lando and Oscar.
Speaker 1:In the post quality interview the drivers were talking about the fact that you don't even really need track limits in the way that they were using them and enforcing them in Qatar, because the nature of those specific curves unlike at a lot of tracks, you're absolutely slower if you hit those curves. There's no need to add a penalty overlay when you're already losing time on the curves and risking damage to the car. Yeah, it's a self penalization thing, right? Yeah, exactly, it's a self penalization thing. So then deciding to paint a new white line, whatever it was, 20 centimeters, whatever it was, a couple feet, but 80 centimeters, 80 centimeters, trying to get themselves into a new groove, bottom line. It was a big change because they'd already all been struggling there with their whole one hour of practice previously under their belts. Beyond the flying laps that they did in regular quality on Friday night, it was not ideal going into Sprint quality.
Speaker 2:Someone was saying I can't remember if it was a driver or it might have been one of the commentators the nature of the track at Qatar means that there are no natural landmarks for them to focus on. So a lot of times when they drive they're like they focus on this tree, and when they're part of their car comes line to line with that tree, that's when they know to turn in With Qatar. They don't have that, and so driving by the lines on the track, you can't see them. It's just another level of f**kiness for them.
Speaker 1:Yeah, absolutely the fact that when you're sitting in the cockpit of these cars, you can't possibly see the line on the ground. So again, I just feel like this was another shiny example of the FIA being really bad at the actual operational how they get a race put together, how they're making the decisions about things and then how they're implementing things, particularly on the fly. It's just not their strong suit. But tell me what you thought about Sprint Qali?
Speaker 2:So Sprint Qali, as Heather said, started with an awesome 10 minute diversion as the drivers got to desperately try and learn the tracks again and everybody was going super wide at the turns would have been painted over and nobody talked about this. Just from like a geek point of view. Paint takes time to cure Like I don't know how much that would have f**ked things up, but everybody was going wide during that 10 minute session, sergeant took out one of the polystyrene markers and Alonzo went off. Max4sepin went off. Jp told him that he needed to stay out and Max was like I'm just going to box now. And JP was like you need to stay 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 of awesome example of Sir Max, both Salat doing his own thing and not really carrying what the team tells him to do. He is so big and full of himself and when the team tells him sensible things he just f**ks off and does his own thing and I really really hope at some day that's going to bite him in the ass Like. I really want him to have an enormous moment of I don't need to come in lose his closest chance he's ever had standing on the top of the podium. So we had that 10 minute session. They came in and they went right into quality.
Speaker 2:Another I don't know what the f**k's going on with F1 TV and the rest of it. There was no timing chart on the side until nine minutes and 12 seconds into. Q1 was the first time we had any notion of who was on track, what anybody's speeds were, what their tires were. There was no information. The announcers were blathering away. Every now and then the map would pop up with the dots on it and then it would go away. That was just the continuation of a very Qatar weekend. Also, we're going to have to have a podcast that's just about Mercedes and what the f**k's going on there. Because Russell's out on track and he was out before Lewis was and he was like so what are we doing? Are we doing a proper lap or are we doing an out lap? And this engineer came on said we're still discussing that he's on the f**king track.
Speaker 1:I feel this is a discussion and it's Mercedes. It's not like Mercedes is ever the first one out of the garage. No, they're usually one of the last cars out anymore, yeah, and they don't know what they're doing.
Speaker 2:But Russell was one of the first three or four cars out.
Speaker 1: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 any sooner, because they're spending the whole time trying to decide what the f**k they're going to do.
Speaker 2:I don't know. Do they have a magic eight ball to decide? This is s**t.
Speaker 1:I don't know if this is endemic of Toto not being there or what I need to have more alcohol and we need to get further down the line before we wander into Mercedes territory.
Speaker 2:So McLaren's out and McLaren is kicking ass. They're doing really well. Then, of course, max comes out with five minutes just over five minutes left to go, and he comes out and he sets a fastest lap and he is nearly nine tenths of a second faster than everybody else. He was 8.49 seconds faster and you're just like, well f**k, russell is the next fastest and he was nearly a second faster than Jesus. And Norris is on the radio as well, 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 your mind, because this becomes very important for McLaren and Q2.
Speaker 2:And we get to the end of Q1 and we're not sure who has made it through to Q2 yet, because people keep getting knocked out and knocked out, and knocked out and knocked out, going against track limits and also, as Heather mentioned before, for regular quality. A whole bunch of people were noted for going too slow. So we had Russell, hamilton-gasley, lawson, sargent's, notus, stroll, albon, all noted for disregarding race director speeds, which nothing ever came of that. So we go into Q2 and both Mercedes come out right away and Hamilton has his time deleted right away because he goes track, track, limbs, as does so many people, and they were just going and Lewis never ended up getting on the boards with any sort of time that got him through to Q3. And you're watching this and you're watching him. You're like he's not going to get it and every lap he set was deleted and he had like three laps, four laps deleted.
Speaker 2:Then you had Norris and Piastri and they're in and they're not going out, and they were at the top and they come down and they ended up in. Like Norris ended up in tenth and Astrol's lap time hadn't been deleted or Hamilton's lap time hadn't been deleted, norris wouldn't have made it through to Q3. And that wouldn't have been on him. That was an actual time where he'd put a time on the clock and he'd that was McLaren keeping them 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, I think.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think the crazy amount of track evolution. It was exactly the same as regular Qali.
Speaker 2:Yeah, we come into Q3 and right off the top for stop and has a flyer that gets deleted, and I believe this was the only one he had deleted this weekend. I don't remember him because he didn't have any in the race and I don't remember him getting any others deleted.
Speaker 1:You can't see me, but I'm making a face. I'm not sure that's true. I feel like in regular Qali he had one or two deleted. I can't remember him. He definitely did not Like in the race. He was ace as far as that goes. But I think in regular Qali he had a couple.
Speaker 2:Norris and Piastro beat him hand deep after his time got deleted and that moved Max down into P3, which set us up for an interesting start of the grid about who's going where for the sprint race. Because you had a rookie on pole and you had, yes, oscar Right, and you weren't sure how that was going to go, and you had Russell up there and you weren't sure how that was going to go, and you had Max in third and that was a real like what the fuck moment You're like, and that will take us into the sprint race or whatever the fuck we're supposed to call it, because we're not supposed to call it a race.
Speaker 1:Talk to me about sprint. I actually thought that the sprint was for all my bitching about sprints and the sheer number of laps we spent behind the safety car. Again, it's just carnage and chaos, but there was some fun overtake.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it was really interesting. We had for the first time since 2012, two McLarens on the front row and I was wondering about that and like this is going to be some interesting team politics, and I got to tell you I'd like to be a fly in the wall McLaren the next couple of months. See how that's going to shake down.
Speaker 1: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:He gets up into second place and pips Norse ends up going down a couple of spots, as does for Stappen, for Stappen had an uncharacteristically horrific start for him.
Speaker 1:Well, there was a couple things going on too right out of the gate, right With the start of the sprint. Tire choice made a huge difference. I think again, because you've got such limited running, that happened in free practice. You can't really take anything away from that in terms of understanding tires. You certainly couldn't take much more away from either of the quality sessions that they had just had and you had such a mixed bag of who started on softs and who started on hards and the softs fired right the hell off.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you were on a soft. You fuck with flu.
Speaker 1:George on softs like boom, he was right out there. If you were on mediums, that was a different story.
Speaker 2:It was interesting. I think it was such a crap shoot. We've had a bunch of sprint races at this point and usually they're not quite as RG Barges this one, because everybody's really worried about having a car ready for the actual race. But that wasn't the case. The sprint race, people went out.
Speaker 1:Do you think people were choosing to be RG Barge? Or do you think that's just a sandy green track with absolutely not enough running on any conditions with? Now you're on a full fuel load rather 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 sprint race, so they're still not running on a full tank. It's like the perfect scenario.
Speaker 2:I think it's just not having any of them having the experience, like even the most experienced drivers were having moments, a ton of trouble. Yeah, everybody was having a ton of trouble. I think I don't know what would have been the right tires, like it's softer mediums. Well, the medium was ultimately the right tire, yeah, but those softs would have been way worse if we hadn't had all those safety cars, those softs. They would have had to come in.
Speaker 1:That's what I'm saying. The medium had to. The medium, absolutely ultimately, was the right tire, but nobody had a way of knowing that going into the sprint.
Speaker 2:And on the first lap we had a yellow. We had Lawson going off and beached 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 did not have a great launch. Everybody on softs. They cleared Lawson's car pretty quickly. I think it was not even a full lap of the safety car because we went green in lap two and from right away we had a great battle between Alonzo, who was on softs, and Norris, who was on mediums, trying to jockey for a position Same with Russell and Piastri, because Russell ended up in first on his softs and Piastri was behind him on the mediums. And then we get to lap two and Sergeant Beeches himself and now we're setting the clock back to zero race since Sergeant last beached his car or, you know, DNF'd.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's hard to watch, even for me at this point, and I don't really have any particular devotion to Logan Sargent by any stretch of the imagination, but it's tough to be underperforming in such a public forum, I think. So it's been a bit hard to watch.
Speaker 2: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 in his car that the team tells him to change some settings on and not to worry about. And I wonder if it was not to worry about, or if it was, we can't do anything about it, so don't worry about it.
Speaker 1:I think everybody felt like it was a sensor issue. But yeah, who knows what it really was? But he's, he finished the race. Yeah, I mean, the only thing that ended up hampering him was soft tires. Sorry, I misspoke.
Speaker 2:I said the safety car came in lap four, it didn't came in lap six and Russell has a very good restart and it ends up being Piastri and Sykes battling for second and then behind them Paris and Hamilton have a pretty good battle going on and Hamilton's moving up by lap 10. Those on softs are really starting to slide around a bit. People are starting to say the different drivers not all of them are starting to say the softs are going off, which was proven quickly thereafter by Piastri handily getting by Russell, like there wasn't much that Russell could do to keep him going, and the Norris pips Leclerc and is trying to make up points and probably to catch up to Piastri. And then we have Paris and Hulkenberg and Aukon having a battle which ends up in our third safety car at lap 11.
Speaker 1: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 about the time of that second race restart and so, as you alluded to early on, lewis got right up behind Paris and then he fell back a bit for a lap or two and then he was right up behind that pack. Those three had been right nose to tail and the moment Lewis had come up on them so fast, I honestly believe that if there had not been a safety car, lewis would have started picking them off, even though Checo was on mediums as well. So Checo was on the same tire but right behind Hülkenberg who was on softs, ocon, who's on softs. They came out of turn one and Lewis was on Checo's tailpipe at that point. But on Lewis's onboard you just see like in slow motion it coming, the three of them just going, and you could just watch it happen.
Speaker 1:And I am still. All the drivers have amazing reflexes. But I was like I don't understand how Lewis didn't get caught as Ocon's did a 360 in the middle of the track, but you just see on his onboard all three cars going out of frame on his onboard and it was just like hilarious. And then I'm still like I've watched it now a couple of times. Why the F did it take them so long to call out a safety guard? You have two cars beached, a third that has taken a long trek through the gravel and gotten back on but clearly has damage Without its nose Right, without its front wing, and Lewis was somewhere between I think it was like 10, 11, like two kilometers down the road before the yellow was called. Were they all watching a different race at that particular time? Did they not understand that those cars were off? It was really weird.
Speaker 2:They were all too busy celebrating with Paris being off. They didn't care about the rest of it. Max Verstappen's officially the world champion, so who cares about the rest of the season?
Speaker 1: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 and impressive Max Verstappen is.
Speaker 2:Ugh, you're right, and I think, before the safety car comes out, russell's saying he needs to come in for tires. Can we talk?
Speaker 1:about George Russell the genius strategist. Yeah, I'm sorry, but why are they having to explain to George on lap 14 that no 12.
Speaker 2:Whatever it doesn't matter.
Speaker 1:You're not coming in for new tires. That's not mathematically going to help you. Stay out and fight through it, buddy. Yeah, your tires are dead but you're not coming in. No, there's no way, not. On a sprint race, you take a pit stop right now you fall to the bottom, dude, like that's just. I just was like, really, george, I understand you're worried that your tires are cooked. I mean, I get it, you're in panic mode and that he wanted to argue with the team about it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I don't know about Russell. Man, stay out. And everybody else on soft is having the same problems. So during the safety car two, there is I don't know how it started GP is basically telling Verstappen to drive his own race.
Speaker 2:Let it come to him, don't worry about what else is going on, you've already won it. And Verstappen's like I know, mate, I'm trying, but Piastri's pulling away from me. And GP's like don't worry about Piastri, we'll catch him at the end, we'll get him and, no matter what, you've still won. Max is. So I get that they're racing drivers. I get that they're focused on winning and driving, but I also think you have to be focused on the ability to bring your car home. This is second time at this point, it's like an hour, hour and a half that Max has had to been told to use his head At any rate. Safety car comes in lap 14, and everybody's like fired up, Claire Pipst-Norris, verstappen is right on Russell and Piastri has an amazing restart which keeps him well ahead while all the ones behind him are fighting. I think his good restart won him the race and Russell's tires falling off.
Speaker 1:I thought it was fascinating actually, that restart, and it was telling with regard to strategy that fed into the actual race, which was, even though it was universally understood at that point by that restart, the soft tires were problematic, were falling off, were not the right choice to be on blah, blah, blah, the soft still fired up. Oh yeah, so on that restart, people who were on the softs, even though those tires were cooked, still got much better getaways on those softs than those on the medium did, because there was still a penalty if you were on the medium tire on the restart. So that's why those kinds of overtakes and shuffles were happening initially. I mean, it took a lap or less or two for those on the mediums to get the advantage, but yeah, just that the softs could still give you.
Speaker 2:so much better traction. Yeah, I thought that was really interesting as well, and it gave us a lot of interesting battles going on like Gazzly pipped Hamilton.
Speaker 1:Well, he pipped Hamilton because Alonzo Lewis almost had Alonzo and came so close to running into Alonzo that he had to back out of it. And that was what. Let Pierre get by.
Speaker 2:And we also had, within a couple of laps, the mediums firing up properly and Norris had a really amazing overtake on both Leclerc and Sykes, which was a thing of beauty. He did that really, really well, yeah. And Hamilton then re-pipped Gazzly and they had a bit of a to and fro to who got it. Gazzly had a big lockup, but fuck Liberty Media and F1 commentators because they were showing it with zero commentary. The commentators were yapping about something else that had happened. Meanwhile, lewis is going up the ranks and getting in the points. They're even showing it on the main feed and no commentary is happening on the thing that they are showing us at all. And it wasn't even like oh, it changed feeds. The director changed feeds and gives them a second or two to catch up to it. The entire Hamilton overtaking Gazzly and Gazzly locking up and nearly going off happened and there was no comments on it. We've said this in other podcasts. They must lose money if they say his name in any sort of positive light.
Speaker 1:Well, in that one, I mean at least, pierre kind of took himself off Again. I had the main feed and the on board going at that point and the way Pierre went off you weren't sure if he went off if you were looking at the on board. The fact that they wouldn't be talking about that yeah at all, makes no sense at all.
Speaker 2:You know, if that race had been three or four laps longer, it would have been interesting to see how far up Hamilton would have got himself, because that started a very surgical up and up and up and passing 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: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 behind Charles and you're watching if you haven't seen it, it's worth going back and watching those Ferraris on those socks at that point was like watching cars on marbles. They're doing everything possible to try and just keep the damn car on track, but they're bobbin' and weavin' all over the place. The fact that Lewis got by them without contact I know I appreciate the irony, because we still gotta talk about the main race, but the fact that he managed to thread the needle on those three cars the way he did, and the single most butt clenching moment of the entire season was the moment where he overtook Charles down the main straight and I was 100% convinced he was gonna put his car into the back of Carlos Sainz's Ferrari and didn't, and I still don't know how.
Speaker 2:Well, and I think it's just lucky too, that the wind didn't come into play the same way for Sprint as it did for Qualley. Can you imagine dealing with those socks going off Like you're skating on ice with those cars and suddenly you also have a gust of wind or changing wind direction to deal with Like that would have been?
Speaker 1:Poor Charles had four track limits violations. On the last lap Lewis got by Carlos and was 1.1 second ahead within one corner. How those Ferraris even got to the line. Alex Albonne kudos again. Alex Albonne worked his way up through the field, was an absolute machine, just like Lewis. It would have been fun to see, like maybe two more laps just to see where they would have landed. The difference between Alex Albonne and Charles Leclerc over the line, I think, was 0.003 seconds. That's how close it was.
Speaker 2:Oh, it was so close. If you were Albonne, you would have been so frustrated. If you're Leclerc, you would have just been like sacrificing to whatever deity you believe in, right.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so it was actually more interesting than a lot of them have been. Yeah, so who finished where on the top of the exciting Sprint race?
Speaker 2:Ah, I don't know who cares.
Speaker 1:Piaz Rewan, that's the important thing, that's what I want to hear I don't care about the rest of them Piaz Rewan, oscar Piaz Stree, with his first win in F1. It was awesome. I was so happy for her. I'm so happy for him too.
Speaker 2:I can't remember now if it was the race or if it was Kwally, where you had that super awkward handshake that Lando came up and gave to him as a congratulations. I was like the weirdest sort of meh handshake. I was like the fuck, your teammate just got his.
Speaker 1:I can't remember if it was his first podium or his first win, yeah, but you know that to your point earlier, that is a awkward AF situation that has unfolded in the last couple of weeks. And whether you consider a Sprint race or a win which I don't, personally I'm sorry but I don't think winning a Sprint is on par with winning a race no same. But you know, lando's had sort of the crown on his head and has felt that he was the number one driver and had the team completely wrapped around his little finger in the wake of Danny Rick's debacle at McLaren. Yeah, danny Rick still has a win and he doesn't. It's gotta be hard. I don't envy him, but it'll be really interesting to watch. I think I'm more fascinated by how Liberty and F1 are gonna treat this narrative than anybody. Yeah same.
Speaker 2:So that race ended, or whatever the fuck we're supposed to call it, and a bunch of interesting things. Sort of interesting things happened overnight. Perez, it turned out, had so much damage that he was deemed to have a new chassis, so he started from his box. So he did not start on the grid where he qualified.
Speaker 1:Yeah, there had actually been talk of a 10 second penalty on top of the pit lane start, which I saw reported a couple of different places on Sunday morning, but then never manifested in the race. Well, okay, let me restate that there were 10 seconds worth of penalties, but not for the chassis change. So I don't know where that came from or what came to pass that. That didn't happen. We also had Carlos not even starting. He DNS'd because he had a fuel leak that Ferrari tried to chase down and resolve. But couldn't.
Speaker 2:And Carlos not starting meant that his box was empty on the grid and Hülkenberg made 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 in somebody else. Was it Paris' spot that he lined up in, or was it Sakes' spot that he lined up in?
Speaker 1:I don't know.
Speaker 1:I knew that he had a penalty for lining up in the right spot, but I didn't catch who it was and we kind of jumped over probably what is the most important factor of the weekend for the race, which was the FIA and Ferrari.
Speaker 1:Overnight had once again looked at the tires to analyze them, to see what was going on in terms of damage after the sprint, and they decided that, even with the modifications at turns 12 and 13, there was enough risk of tire issues that they mandated that all new tires could not run for longer than 18 laps and all used tires could not run for longer than 20 laps, which, even though they didn't say it's a mandatory three-stop race math means math you were all going to have to do three stops at least. The thing about this was they waited until, if my understanding is correct, three hours before the race to finalize that decision, which meant that I mean a smart team and there are many smart teams a smart team already knew that this was gonna be a possibility that they were going to mandate stint length or number of pit stops, but drivers had made decisions all weekend long not accounting for that, and that meant the allocation of tires that were left now was going to have a dramatic impact on what drivers chose to go out on which tire, how long they were gonna be able to run, how many pit stops. Because lots of people had run 10, 11, 12. If your max were stopping, you're fucking golden anyway.
Speaker 1:Because he'd only had to run one set of tires in a couple of different quality sessions. Because he stayed in for a bunch of them, right. So he had tires left, right and center to choose from. But if you were further down the grid you were screwed.
Speaker 2:The tires are made specifically for the track. It's not as if Pirelli can like magic up more tires. On a sort of side note, pirelli had said that this was going to be a problem ages ago, and FIA, f1, liberty Media, whomever were like, whatever, it makes for more interesting racing when the tires are a problem, and it's a problem that could have been fixed long before it was a problem 100% and we've seen that come up in conversation before which is Pirelli can make a better compound.
Speaker 1:They have the ability to do it. It's FIA, fom who are pushing on not making a more durable composition of the tires, and that came home to roost this weekend, ironically on the same week or the weekend before the week.
Speaker 2:And let's be clear, they extended their contract because nobody else wants to do the job, because it is a shit show.
Speaker 1:Except that beyond 27,. I think this contract is going to run to 27,. Then apparently, Bridgestone wants 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 be Pirelli's. Either it will be Pirelli's last contract or it will be their last contract as sole provider, which could be interesting.
Speaker 2:Yeah, let's circle around to that after we talk about the race.
Speaker 1:Well, there's not much more to say on that. I mean we'll just know more in the future.
Speaker 2:Yeah, because I've heard Bridgestone has officially been like oh no, once they've learned how handcuffed Pirelli are by the FIA, bridgestone's like oh no, fuck, that it's just going to show us in a bad light. We don't want to show our tires blowing out. We don't want to show our tires wearing out because it's always put on Pirelli right, it's bad PR. Yeah, it is.
Speaker 1:Whether it's fair or not. We're back to the race and obviously, who has what tire is determining who is going to start, on which You've got to get right into it. Mercedes decides to split their strategy, which is not unusual that we've seen them do that on a pretty regular basis, but I think in this case it was an obvious choice. You have Max Verstappen lining up P1. You've got George Russell, who's lining up P2. You've got Lewis Hamilton lining up in P3.
Speaker 1:It's worth noting that Verstappen and Hamilton are both on the clean side of the grid, which actually mattered this weekend because, again, this is a very green track. There is nobody helping to clean the dirty side of the track. Yeah, there's no support races. They Mercedes opted to put Lewis on soft tires, which I think, honestly, was a strategy that benefited George Russell. I'm just going to say it because, unless and until Lewis Hamilton decides to qualify better than his teammate that's the position he's in he's going to be the driver who is supporting the driver who outqualifies him in terms of strategy.
Speaker 1:That said, the soft tire option soft tire, clean side of the grid existed for one purpose, and one purpose only, which was get ahead into corner one, the only way that that strategy means anything is if you're able to get ahead of Max Verstappen and control the pace for a few laps, 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 pit stop. Now I do think maybe that would have worked for Lewis if we hadn't had what happened. That happened because he'd have been offset in terms of the pits. There was some theory that we were going to see really, really busy pit lane activity on those target 18 and 36 and on and on. Maybe being on an offset for pit stops would have worked for Lewis, but it seemed pretty apparent what the idea was.
Speaker 1:We talked about it with the drivers. Yeah, it is what it is. The race starts. Lewis gets an amazing getaway. George gets a really good getaway too. By the time we get to corner, one George is. He's coming up to Verstappen. He's on the middle of the track and Lewis miscalculates and cuts over and hits tire to tire with George, spins himself into the gravel and is out of the race. George is momentarily off. I didn't know at that point. I was, in that moment, not sure whether 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 a couple of turns. But this was the moment, this was the culmination. You literally knew. I don't know about you and you watched it, but I literally knew. The minute the race started, the second, five, four, three, two, one lights out. The nanosecond they started going down the track and I saw George jink over to the left.
Speaker 2:I knew what was going to happen.
Speaker 1:Yeah, there was no way that it wasn't going to happen. I saw it coming. It was absolutely going to happen. It was Lewis' fault. If you're listening, I am a huge Lewis Hamilton fan girl, which nobody who's ever listened to one of these before will ever question. That said, I acknowledge it was Lewis' misjudgment, but I was so fucking angry in the moment that the team had not created a strategy and made it clear what was supposed to happen into turn one.
Speaker 2:It was obvious they didn't, because originally, when George was on the radio, it was like I'm so sorry I wasn't looking behind me, I didn't see him. I didn't see him, but he's lying.
Speaker 1:This is the problem right there. That's the part that you have to talk about. I know this isn't a Mercedes podcast, but it's a Mercedes podcast right now. That's a lie. You can watch George. George knew 100% where Lewis was. The PR spin makes it impossible to understand because, again, I went through the rest of the race just like how could you have allowed this to happen? There was no reason for this to have happened. If you had a plan and it was clear what the idea was, you wouldn't have created a situation that put both of them side by side into that corner, if you could avoid it. I am realistic enough to know George is a driver. He got a good launch. They both, frankly, got a better launch than Verstappen. In some ways. He had the inside corner. He was, I think, trying to cover them both off simultaneously realized he couldn't do it. He had a side line on the track into the corner, into turn one. He was exactly where he needed to be.
Speaker 2:Well, the Mercedes boys took care of themselves for him.
Speaker 1:Well, they did. The problem is, we've spent time talking about this over multiple pods. This was inevitable. It was inevitable, it was absolutely going to happen. More to the point, it's going to continue to happen. This is the tip of the iceberg. Mercedes claims that they absolutely did have a strategy, that they talked about it, but they don't do team orders. Here we are. Well, I've got a news flash. If you don't create team orders and make it specific what the plan is, this will happen any time those two are together, ever again, because George Russell will never look at it through the lens. First of what the team needs, ever, ever.
Speaker 2:At least when Bodass was being a dick, he wasn't taking Lewis out, but he was nicking points off of him by doing a fastest lap or something. This could have been a huge for the driver's standings Absolutely epic.
Speaker 1:I don't care about the driver's standings. No offense, lewis still managed to pick up points on Checo, even with a fucking DNF. Lewis doesn't care about P2. I truly don't think he gives a shit about P2. You and I care more about him getting P2 than he ever will, and he's not going to get P2, so it doesn't matter. The team claims that they want P2 in the constructors. They're not going to get it. I mean, george, putting it in the wall.
Speaker 2:Not the way McLaren's going in Ferrari yeah.
Speaker 1:Well, george put it in the wall and gave away a band loaded points in Singapore and Lewis ends up doing something stupid that cost them a crap ton of points Again. My problem with all of this is this is a team that has no ability to develop their car in a productive way continues to have the seventh best pit stops on the grid. They've had two years. While they're fathom around and screwing everything else up, they're still terrible at pit stops. Their strategy is sus at best, including this moment. Again. You cannot put the faster driver behind the slower driver. I don't mean in terms of pace, although I think you can make a pretty good argument that Lewis has a better race pace than George. I'm talking about the tire, delta, yeah 100%.
Speaker 1:You set that fucking situation up, you created that problem, unless you literally said to George your job is to stay out of Lewis's way for the first corner. If he can't get by Max, it's fair play, but for the first corner your job is to let Lewis get by him.
Speaker 2:Instead, george put himself right in the fucking way On all those radio broadcasts back and forth that they had. At one point I couldn't tell who was talking. It sort of sounded like Toto Wolfe was talking. Get your head back, just drive.
Speaker 1:It was Toto. Okay, it was Toto. Toto called in again Okay, that's my thought and told George to get his head down and drive.
Speaker 2:I just want to put aside for everybody. I've just watched the race today. It was Canadian Thanksgiving. I didn't watch any of it live. I've been catching up over the last couple of days. I've stayed off social media for 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 that sounds like Toto. It's not his engineer. I don't know who the fuck that is. So, toto, is he still in the hospital calling.
Speaker 1:He's not in the hospital, but he was not in Qatar. They clearly have him fed into the garage and he's still weighing in on things, the shifting dialogue through that first stage and, of course, you know, in fairness, it's chaos. Everyone's reacting to it. Again, I don't really have antipathy for George, it's just I'm still more mad at the team because they continue to create these situations. Yeah, that don't have to happen.
Speaker 1:This one was so avoidable. And for George to be like I wasn't looking in my mirrors you didn't need to look in your mirrors, but for the record, if you watch the onboard, he was looking in his mirrors. He knew exactly where Max and Lewis were. He simply elected to keep his foot in and that's this. Right, he's a racing driver, but it meant this was gonna happen. Yeah, and what it tells us is it will continue to happen.
Speaker 1:Unlike Red Bull, who have a car designed completely around a single driver who is performing at such a high level he can basically beat the entire rest of the field that have two drivers that's how far ahead they are and McLaren, who are not only driving with two incredibly strong drivers who are in no danger of taking each other out in the races are setting new records for fastest pit stops. Who are developing everybody else on the grid, maybe kind of closing the gap to Red Bull a little bit. I mean, again, red Bull's focus is on next year, but in terms of this year, mclaren keeps upping their game, race by race. You know this is an embarrassment. Yeah, I don't think we've hit rock bottom with Mercedes. I truly believe this is not the last time we're gonna see these two trip over each other this year, and we've only got five races left.
Speaker 2:I feel we're strongly heading towards a Rosberg Hamilton situation with that team.
Speaker 1:A thousand percent. There's no other scenario possible at this point. Toto made this fucking mess.
Speaker 2:And he's not dealing with it. He always said with Hamilton and Rosberg he came into the situation and he would deal with it completely differently if he had the ability to. But he never had the ability to. Buddy, you got the fucking situation right now and you are not dealing with it any differently.
Speaker 1:No, he's not. In fact, I think Toto's part of the problem. I think the lack of leadership. God damn, I miss Nikki. Yeah, I think this team flails without somebody who is an ass kicker truth teller, and there are none of those people left. Yeah, there's nobody who's willing to just go. Look. It's this or that I mean. Your choices at this point are you tell Lewis, you know Lewis? Here's the thing. Buddy, you got seven championships. You helped create a dynasty of eight constructors. Championships. You gave us a presence that we would never have otherwise had. But here's the thing.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you're not going to get another one. You got screwed out of your previous one and we're really sorry about that.
Speaker 1:Well, we're really sorry about it and you know, admittedly we didn't do fuck all about it and you and I have different opinions on this, but nevertheless we did nothing to help overturn that injustice. But here's the thing we will support your diversity initiatives. We will do whatever it is in the background that we need to do to make you feel good about your time here, but we're putting all of our focus onto George 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 the background.
Speaker 1:The sort of grotesquery around Lewis, you know, initially he was like I got taken out by my teammate, but very shortly after being back in the paddock he was like this was my fault. Yeah, I don't think it was a 100% fault issue, I think you know I mean the stewards called it a racing incident. I think the stewards call everything that's turn one lap one a racing incident. They never have the balls to do anything else but predominantly, or if they had to judge it, it would have been Lewis's fault.
Speaker 1:And I think we all acknowledged that it was ultimately Lewis turning in too sharply that caused the problem, but the bottom line is this if you have a hope and thought of competing in the constructors championship, you got to sort this shit, yeah right now Fast, quick and in a goddamn hurry Right now I think you can't keep laughing around.
Speaker 2:Get it fucking done.
Speaker 1:Get it sorted. Tell everybody what it's going to be, you know. And if you don't have the balls to do that, then congratulations. You're about to be fourth in the constructors championship in 2024, if you're fucking lucky. I don't have any hope that they're going to end up in second. I think they're going to be fucking lucky if they end up third. With five races to go. That's how bad they are right now.
Speaker 2:Well, it might be for the best that they end up so far down and have all the more development time.
Speaker 1:I don't think it'll matter. I think this team is just cooked. We're watching a team unravel in real time. They have two of the best drivers on the grid, but they aren't capable of managing that and they sure as hell aren't taking advantage of the time that they've had to improve any of their operations. Who knows, even if they had a great car and I have a lot of faith in James Allison but even if they had a great car next year, which we have no guarantee of would it make any difference when every other team on the grid 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:Well, and now we get to lap four. We go green.
Speaker 1:I think we might need a momentary pause for me to get even more whiskey.
Speaker 2:Brief pause for Marbu's and the poodle. So we go green again at lap four and Max Verstappen has a really good restart. It's safe to say he controls the race for the first stint. Yeah, absolutely, he's controlling it like that. This launch he did really, really well. One of the things we didn't know and it never said what happened bought us, lost part of his wing or his nose in the first lap because he came, he comes in to change his nose, and all of the commentator said was he changed his nose, but they never showed anything and they never said anything. He definitely came in for a pit stop, though.
Speaker 1:Well, there's a couple of things. I think the direction in the race was really bad. I think it was chaos. It was a challenging race to figure out how you would manage, but with the option of graphics the idea, knowing what we know, going into the race about every driver having used tires with different amounts of laps on them and a limited number of new tires, and trying to manage 18 laps versus 20 laps like come up with a graphic. Yeah, you know, there was never anything. They'd pop up a little header that would say so and so must pit by lap, whatever. And it was like well, that's great, it's on screen for two seconds and there are 20 drivers and you're trying to keep track of it in your head. And there was no way to make heads or tails of that and God knows, like one of the previous races.
Speaker 2: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 Julian Palmer, like with an umbrella and a rain suit, in a car, in a swimsuit, like all these things that they were making on the fly. So somebody obviously knows how to make them and how to put them up. Why don't they have that person in for the race day, even if they're an intern? Maybe you should fucking hire them and give them money and they can, you know, make some graphics so great.
Speaker 1:Also, I think you got to note that Oscar, in the melee between Lewis and George helping each other screw themselves, george has come in, he's dead. Last Piestri is up to second.
Speaker 2:Piestri managed to avoid all of the carnage, amazingly. He did a really, really good job 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 back and forth for passing and eventually Hulk Pip's Sonodo. Well, that was all going on. It came up that Hulk has a 10 second penalty that we talked about earlier for starting in the wrong spot and we go on and by lap eight, russell is up to 12th and Perez is still only like 14th or something. It is worth noting that Russell is on the medium and Perez is on the hards, but Perez, throughout the entire course of the race, did not cover himself in glory and I don't know if the heat was affecting him by that point. I haven't heard anything about Perez like puking in his helmet or having to be helped out from his car, but I don't know.
Speaker 1:I don't remember the lap so I didn't acknowledge. I didn't take great notes during the race so I don't remember at what point in the race we finally started to hear it started. The focus was on Logan Sargent. You finally get a team radio and you're having a sort of weird awkward interaction between Logan and the pit wall. It almost I think it almost sounded like you was talking to James.
Speaker 2:Yeah it was James. It was lap 35 where James Valles comes on, and I was like there's no shame in it.
Speaker 1:So that was the first time in the race that we really had any hint that somebody was suffering. Now there had been comments because George, coming in and out, was raising his visor and then at one point Lando was raising and lowering his visor as he would be coming in to the pit lane for a stop.
Speaker 2:Alonzo, talked about. His butt was very, his ass was on fire, his side and he wants to know if they could dump water on him.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so there was some obvious signs eventually that the heat was an issue within the race with Logan, sort of. Again in the context of narratives. That happened was he was sick and that was the narrative was that he was sick and whether or not he could continue the race. Because there was no understanding of the fact that this was really physically impacting all of the drivers, it became a whole narrative around. You know, logan's just bailing. Basically, logan just needs to kind of suck it up. Nobody has said anything about Logan being sick. So why is Logan suddenly having issues? You have this sort of weird dialogue happening between DC and Jolin Palmer and it was sort of a piling on moment. Yeah, and even in the context of the race I was not comfortable with how the conversation was going and of course in hindsight they seem even doucheier for talking about Logan the way they did. And again, I'm not a Logan Sergeant Apologist by any stretch of the imagination.
Speaker 2:Well, if anything, we leave a little anti-Logan Sergeant because of his family and his political leadings.
Speaker 1:Correct, but I just wasn't comfortable with the way that that was being discussed in the context of the race. Even then, I don't have a ton of interest in the lap by lap analysis of what happened. I think again, as a spectator it was challenging to follow and understand who was really where. Usually you have a pretty good sense of who's you know actual, even though if they're in 12th, where they really are. That was super challenging in this race.
Speaker 1:It was clear that George was having a very strong race. He'd make his way up past several people, but you just didn't know how many pit stops were really left in any given time. Yeah, all the things you talked about, you've got a lot of drivers doing really weird things. You said way earlier you know George would take his hands off the wheel. It was hard to put it in the context in the moment of the race. You mentioned Alonso. You know Alonso takes a flyer off into the gravel at one point I don't know if his tires were going off Came back on again. I know F1 drivers have really good reflexes, but I'm still not sure how he didn't manage to collect Charles Leclerc at that point.
Speaker 2:And how he didn't get a penalty for an unsafe reentry.
Speaker 1:AF and men. I think I read actually the stewards thing and it was because Charles didn't have to take evasive action. And I'm like, just because Charles didn't crash his car didn't make that not a dangerous reentry.
Speaker 2:But, nevertheless. I watched that happen. I was like how the fuck Like and 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: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 other nuances and things that happen in the race that are worth discussing, but for me to think about the fact that eventually Logan did retire and that was a talking point in the race, because, again, I think everybody's sort of expecting at any time Williams to go yeah, we tried, but I'm sorry, logan, like this, isn't it? And you had the commentators dogpiling on that Logan retires and has to be helped out of the car. Yeah, and they were making such a big deal about.
Speaker 1:Well, nobody said anything about him being sick before this. So, like blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, turns out Logan had had quote unquote flu, like symptoms earlier in the week, which you interpret that however you want it translates to he was already dehydrated before they got to Qatar. He clearly had heat stroke. We then find out, let's stroll Climbed out of his car barely and stumbled immediately to an ambulance to ask for help. After this race, we find out he was literally tunnel visioning, starting to black out in the high-speed corners.
Speaker 2:Awk on from, I think it said, turn 15, lap 15 or 16, vomiting in his helmet, which I can'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 of us are huge Logan Sargent fans by any stretch of the imagination. However, you had the announcer's dog piling on him like well, he's not a real racer when I was a real racer. If a true racer just pushes through it and look, I am, by no stretch of the imagination, an elite athlete at all. I happily do half marathons. I finish in the middle of a pack. I definitely know about pushing through and being able to do a race or DNF a race and figure out when I do that. These guys are top 0.00001% of athletes in the world.
Speaker 2:If they're saying there's an issue and there's a health problem and it's been interesting, some of the stuff that I've been reading post-race is that all the other drivers that have raced at Qatar are saying we're so happy that this was so horrific for F1, not because they're happy how bad it was for the drivers, but that it's finally drawing attention to how bad the track is in terms of how his actual setup is, how challenging the track is in terms of the weather conditions and what other drivers are being forced to race in. You can say as much as you want. Oh, they're. Athletes are paid. They can't leave when they want to. If they leave, they void their contracts. There are huge financial and legal ramifications if they do not race, which is why, despite the fact that they unanimously did not want to race in Saudi Arabia a couple of years ago, they had to race. There is no walking away from that without really big repercussions, I think, having so many drivers be so ill I don't know if we mentioned that Albon had to be lifted out of his car.
Speaker 2:He could not leave his car on his own. This is not okay. I love driving, I love a good spectacle, I love racing, but I don't want it at the cost of anybody's long-term health or their lives or anything like that. I'm Canadian. The saying is you go to a fight and a hockey game might break out, but that's not actually what I want to see. I want to see good athletes at the height of their training and understanding, performing at the height of their abilities, making these guys drive around the track while they're throwing up and passing out.
Speaker 1:That's not fucking cool, man, what she said Was there anything else within the context 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 the course of the race. Both Checo and Lance had multiple five-second penalties. Gasly did as well. There you go. You had Checo and Stroll and Gasly with multiple five-second penalties.
Speaker 1:I think we can say George really did have an amazing recovery drive to get himself from basically dead last on lap two all the way back up to P4. Tells you really, mclaren's worked their way up and got themselves both on the podium, which kudos to them. It would have been fascinating if the Mercedes could have kept their shit together and not created a situation that caused the chaos that it did in turn one. Where would they have been? The car had pace Generally speaking not always, but generally speaking, lewis has had better race pace. If George could get back up to P4 from P18. Would they both been on the podium? Hard to say. If they had, I think they would have secured P2 in the constructors. They did not and they will not is my take on that.
Speaker 2:No, the fact that Toto had to call from wherever, he had to call from Again for a race in a row.
Speaker 1: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 made to be broken that McLaren set that new record 1.8-second pit stop for Lando. I know they had at least one other that was at 2.0. They were really money. I will say Red Bull had a 4.1-second pit stop for Verstappen, no less. Yeah, that was crazy to see in real time. I'm not used to seeing that, not hanging off a Mercedes driver and even Paris's pit stops.
Speaker 2:I mean, he had multiple five-second penalty pit stops, but apart from that he just had bad pit stops.
Speaker 1:Let's be real. They are done with Checo. Oh yeah, checo's gone. Checo will make it till the end of the season, but Checo is not going to be in that seat next season, not for a million years. Who did you have for?
Speaker 2:Driver of the Day. I had Piastri. He had a solid fucking drive. He had an amazing weekend. Like props to him, man, he did really well this weekend.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I agree, I had Oscar, and that's three weeks in a row that I have agreed with the general public's choice for Driver of the Day, which is unprecedented boys and girls Absolutely unprecedented. I actually also give Logan Sargent kudos for being smart enough to park up. I find the idea that a bunch of them are out there driving with tunnel vision and graying out and 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 dog pile on Lance Stroll the way many people do. He's clearly he's not availing himself of the points options that his teammate is. But that said, I don't have anything against Lance per se, but I find it not okay that you chose to keep driving when you were blacking out in the high speed corners you pass out, you can cause havoc.
Speaker 1:I am coming back to this right now because, fuck Martin Brundle is the nice way I'm going to put it the last Toyota of respect I had for Brundle died and was buried under a rock this week, when I have to read him talking about this in the context of blah, blah, blah. You know Nikki Latt had drove when he didn't. Don't put Nikki Latt as name in your mouth. Nikki didn't want to drive in the race that caused him to be burned alive. Two assholes who are not in the driver's seat, making these constant, ongoing, lit rain and awful, treacherous conditions. That's what's your best driver. Stop, yeah, just stop. Will Buxton?
Speaker 2:shut your mouth, stop talking about this, these announcers who have never driven these types of cars. Julian Palmer's the one who's driven a closer to iteration of these cars. Just fuck right off when my day I could try. Fuck you, jackie Stewart. Fuck you. I defy you to get in these cars at the peak of your driving career and do okay.
Speaker 1:Agreed and I don't care For me. That's the thing. I want to watch these amazing athletes driving these engineering marvels, ideally with actual competition, unlike what we're watching unfold currently. I don't need to see them driving in extremely dangerous conditions to appreciate their talent or to enjoy watching a race. I don't find that interesting, engaging or in any other way. I don't want to watch somebody die. Yeah, it's not the fucking hunger games, Right? That does not need to be a part of what I'm enjoying F1 to do.
Speaker 1:And when these gross old white men, or even middle-aged and younger white men, are making these claims, it's disgusting. It's part of the same bullshit narrative we've seen and talked about in the past. But here's the thing we know that next year Qatar is later. It's really late in the season so hopefully that alleviates this god-awful heat-humidity combo that created part of this. The stint length was also part of this because they were all having to drive basically at quality lap level. Because these stints were so short, they had to drive as fast as possible. They are going to have to figure out what they need to do to avoid this problem next year. Please don't even breathe sprint race as a concept at Qatar ever again. But I am so disappointed that the 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 at all. No, never. I'm appreciative of Logan Sargent. I know he had to have been absolutely desperate. You heard it in his voice talking to James Valls he wanted to finish that race.
Speaker 2:Yeah, he would say, I can do it. Man, Believe me, I can do it.
Speaker 1:So for him to have then retired I can't even imagine how hard that was for him. So I give him that Lucky son of a bitch. I had Lewis Hamilton, who managed 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 in the Drivers Championship. I don't know how Lewis managed that, considering he was not shining glory upon himself this weekend.
Speaker 2:I also agree with Lewis for a slightly different one, where he did not get collected in that. Ocon Hulkenberg who is it? Ocon Hulkenberg? Checo, checo, they didn't get collected in that.
Speaker 1:That poor bastard. I this time gave it to all 18 drivers who actually finished that race Carlos Sainz and Lewis Hamilton. Maybe I should give the two of them Lucky Son of a Bitch for not having to drive in those conditions, which were clearly horrific, horrific.
Speaker 2:Yeah, they had at the start of the race, when they're all lined up on the grid and they still have their tire blankets on and they're holding umbrellas over them, that the majority of the pit lane crews had sweated through their hair. They looked like they'd been swimming. Their hair was so wet.
Speaker 1:I hope that the FIA has learned something from this. At the end of the day, douche Canoe of the Race, I had Lewis for clipping George and costing the team huge points, but also George for fucking the team strategy. For Toto for not nipping all of this fucking drama in the bud, because I truly believe that Toto Wolf created this problem and he's not dealing with it. Mercedes is a hole for fucking up their team management and, honestly, they're creepy fucking social media behavior this week. I understand why people are calling it out. This team is on a spiral downwards. Boys and girls. I don't know where it's going to end, but I think we're watching it in real time at the moment. I agree with that.
Speaker 2:I love the announcers for just being absolute bags of postulant ball sweat, for calling out and making fun of people before, during and after the race, for tapping out, for saying it's too hot, these conditions are awful, we can't race in them. We had people long after the race saying if there were true racers in my day, fuck right off. It was 39 degrees plus humidity at night. That's unreal. And you're driving in those snow suits, basically on top of furnaces. Let's keep that in mind. The cars are hot in and of themselves. The engines are going, they are sitting and leaning against heat sources.
Speaker 1:I agree completely with that. I basically slotted all of that into the Asinine commentator comment category because I just thought the snide comments about Logan, everything that came afterwards, as I said before, the last shred of respect I had for Martin Brundle just shriveled up and died. I have not had space for Martin Brundle in my brain for about 18 months, but that was it. And Will Buxton and Matt Cue at Autosport and all of these pathetic excuse for commentators or journalists. This was a moment where you go.
Speaker 1:Our sport can do better. We can do better and we can protect our drivers. And we should be looking at how we take the fact that we have the 20 best drivers in the world. Whatever like blah, blah, blah, whether it really is the 20 best drivers in the world or not. The idea that people like Martin Brundle will give this Bullshit about them not owning, the idea that Martin Brendel will sit there and Act as though Enduring these kinds of conditions is not beyond the pale is vile. So for manufactured bullshit. Liberty Media talking point of the weekend. I think the obvious is the unending circle jerk for Max Verstappen's third driver's championship Arguably his first legitimate driver's championship that didn't involve fucking cheating by Michael Massey, and or Cheating by the team as a whole but well, here's the thing.
Speaker 2:I think it builds on previous cheating from developing that car.
Speaker 1:I don't disagree. That said, I will give Max Verstappen credit. He is a machine. It's nothing that I ever want to experience again.
Speaker 1:I don't know what my long-term future as a viewer of F1 really is. I have to sort of cling to this season by my fingernails to keep watching and not be like, oh my god. You can't deny that he's extremely effective as a driver in that car, which is wildly dominant compared to everything else on the grid, but he doesn't make stupid mistakes. The most excitement that you ever get is him and GP verbally tangling with each other. So you know, whatever kudos this season, la, la, la, la la. I have no interest in watching this for two more years, and I'm pretty sure that's what we're on for. So I do hope that, if nothing else, mclaren really are Continuing to improve their car. You've got two strong drivers there. I think we all know Danny Ricardo is gonna end up in the second seat for Red Bull for next year Because they have nobody else that meets their marketing needs. I think they think that he can handle the same type of car as for Stappen, meaning what they want in a car is similar enough.
Speaker 2:There's no way but they tell him going in like your driver number two, your whole purpose is to make sure max wins.
Speaker 1:I don't need to tell him. He knows that. You don't even need to say that out.
Speaker 2:I don't know.
Speaker 1: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 having his ass kicked at McLaren is Danny Rick knows every day he gets to be in a car on the F1 grid is a gift. He's never gonna complain ever, ever, ever, ever, ever about being the number two driver. He knows exactly the same way Checo did. Like you can give lip service to it, but Checo always understood what his place was. I don't buy the Checo, I mean again, they're drivers in their own minds. Yeah, yeah, I can do whatever. There was never a point where Checo wasn't the number two driver, to your point earlier. I think it will be fascinating to see how McLaren handle it and whether Zach Brown is less of a douche bag than we all kind of Believe he is or he could just be a complete douche bag, but still control the team right, yeah, well right, they're not mutually exclusive.
Speaker 1:Both can be true at the same time. I think Oscar Piaz-Tri has such a level head, yeah look at his mom.
Speaker 2:How do you don't have a level head with a mom like that?
Speaker 1:Yeah Right, he will just do what he needs to do. I Don't believe we will ever see Piaz-Tri and Norris come together the way we're seeing Hamilton and Russell.
Speaker 2: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:You know, at that point Danny was the lead driver. Perceptually, you can make a decision and you need to make a decision about what your goal is and McLaren. I think at this point there's gonna be some sort of crossover moment that happens, where it's clear that Piaz-Tri is better than Norris, mm-hmm, and that's gonna be an awkward moment and at that point it won't really matter, because that'll only last for a few months and what'll happen is Norris will leave McLaren yeah, and that's how that's gonna be resolved and Piaz-Tri will end up being the one that stays with McLaren and build the team around him. I think Albonne will go somewhere else in a year. I I think it would be fun to see Albonne redevelop Williams.
Speaker 2:I don't think Albonne will stay at Williams, not unless they pass me improve.
Speaker 1:Right, he's. He's done very, very well this season and he he deserves to have an Opportunity to choose another seed if he wants it, and I suspect he will. I think the only team that's really, really at risk Right now is Mercedes, and they've just created so many problems, mm-hmm. They're not gonna get themselves out of this hole Anytime soon, and a good car won't make it better. No, they're the only team on the grid where, if they improve their car, they're probably 100% do right like how, how'd you manage that toto?
Speaker 2:I don't understand how he managed bodass and Lewis Fairly well for the most part and has shit the bed so badly.
Speaker 1:Well, I think there's a couple things that play. I think it's not hard at this point to acknowledge that George is better than Valtteri in some ways Not all of them. You know Valtteri had the ability to beat Lewis in quality from time to time to I think George Is just way more aggressive. Again, like I think Valtteri is a fundamental tenant of who he is Understood the importance of the team aspect of things. I think George doesn't give a fuck. He'll. He'll give it lots of lip service, but I think when it comes to being in the car in the moment I'm sorry, we've seen it all year long George is very about George. George is never worried about what do we need to be doing. It's never the word we would never come out of his mouth. No, and he never congratulates his teammate. Ever, ever, like you will not hear the word Lewis did a good job today come out of his mouth. In the meantime, lewis has to give George props all the time.
Speaker 1:The difference in how the media narrative works if Lewis makes a mistake Versus if George makes a mistake has been in stark relief in the last ten days, and I Know that it will keep talking about this at length. But even watching how Mercedes own social media team manages how Perception works around. These events this week has been enlightening and not really in a good way. I think they're gonna continue to try and sell the kumbaya narrative. There is no kumbaya in that team right now. I'm sorry to be a fan of a team that is as bad as this right now and, like I said earlier, I don't. I don't think we're at rock bottom now I think.
Speaker 2:I think we're gonna find a rock bottom which will be fucking awesome, and by awesome I mean awful.
Speaker 1:I think it's certainly providing a ton of entertainment. If you're not a Mercedes, if you're somebody who really hated Mercedes throughout their dominant period, this is a very good time for you.
Speaker 2:So, heather, where's the?
Speaker 1:next race. The next race is it circuit of the Americas in Austin, texas, and where will we be watching it? We will be watching it trackside at turn 15, together with a bunch of awesome friends that we made a year ago plus in Montreal, and I, for one, am over the moon to get to see Not only that group of friends that we made in Montreal, but some new friends we've made online. I Am super, super, super excited to get to see Formula Academy.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I'm so so to be able to see that live.
Speaker 1:It's a sprint weekend, which I Really wish it wasn't. Yeah, there's support races. Yeah, I'm a much bigger fan of getting to see free practice. I'm a freak. I like free practice. I like the idea that the teams really get a chance to get their car dialed in and then, by the time we get to the race, everybody's really operating it peak, as opposed to the bullshit that gets generated. But nevertheless, it is what it is we get to see. I'm not gonna lie. Having the opportunity to see the Killers, queen and DJ test yo is like are you kidding me?
Speaker 2:I am not an awesome over the moon on that and it's just been announced yesterday. There's a whole section where you can go make friendship bracelets.
Speaker 1:We can go make friendship bracelets coming soon to you, tableau 20 friendship bracelets, and there's a bunch of people that I think are gonna be 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 good weekend. I don't think it's gonna be a good weekend for my team or my driver, but it will not stop us from enjoying F1. We are entering a strange and complicated and high pressure situation for F1. So we have Koda and Mexico and Brazil. Bam Bam Bam. Two of those three races are additional sprints on top of guitar. So this is sort of the crush period of the calendar for 2023. After that we go. They announced the race time for Vegas. This week.
Speaker 2:What time's the racing in Vegas?
Speaker 1:10, 30 at night, I think, or 11 pm, it's like, literally, they found the one time slot on the entire 24 hours of A clock that works right nobody anyway Go F1, unless you happen to be drunk and stumbling around in Vegas.
Speaker 1:Well, they wouldn't let you stumble along the strip anyway, that's true. They've torn out all the trees and put in grandstand, so who the hell knows what's really happening? Oh God forbid. Fom and Liberty Media would make a good choice. But here we are. It'll be over soon, boys and girls. Handful of races to go, but yeah, how about you? What are you looking forward to in?
Speaker 2:Austin, as Heather said, to seeing all of our friends in Person again that we made when went to the Montreal race. I'm looking forward to a bunch of the really awesome people I have met online to see them person. Some of them we got to see in Silverstone.
Speaker 1:All right, we will be back in hopefully two weeks, giving what you know about us and how frequently we managed to get these podcasts uploaded. It might be in december, who knows? We'll try our best, people. Thanks for sticking with us. All right, we will Talk soon, jen, have a wonderful night.
Speaker 2:Heather, have a great night and hey, I'll see you in Austin. Woot, talk to you later. Bye.