Speed junkie.
Have we lost the room?
We've lost the room. I've certainly done that before.
Oh god, yeah, stand up, convenience. It's a tough kid.
It's a tough one. Okay, Tony you ready?
Yeah?
I am Lights out and away we go.
Ooh, I'm not sure you technically are allowed to say that or use that sentence.
Actually, Michael, what do you mean?
It's owned by someone else.
Somebody owns that sentence. You can own a sentence, yes, what do you want?
A story time?
Yes? Story time?
Okay?
Crafty or David Croft, who's the legendary Sky Sports presenter that you often hear on TV, started to introduce that sentence lights out and awhere we go, which has become iconic to basically, and I wonder if you do something similar, but it gives him two or three seconds where he isn't thinking about what he wants to say, but instead he's just like analyzing the situation.
So he owns the sentence.
Well, technically, you can trademark a catchphrase, and in this case, Crofty hasn't actually technically trademarked his opening phrase. But there is a well recognized gentlemen's agreement that others don't use it. There are some lines that even this podcast will not cross.
That's hot.
Ah, I'm afraid sorry, you can't use that one either. Paris Hilton owns it.
Oh my gosh, I love you that form My Heart podcast one on one studios and Sports Illustrated Studios. This is choosing sides.
Yes one Wow.
Wow, Hey guys, can you hear me?
Perfect?
This is Scott Mansell.
I'm an ex professional racing driver with ten years of experience. I've driven over thirty Formula one cars.
But he's also the founder of an immensely popular Formula one YouTube channel called Driver sixty one with.
One point two million subscribers.
My name is Malone Colman. I am a staff writer covering Formula one at the Athletic.
Her thing, I guess you could say, is writing these incredibly in depth and nuanced profiles of the drivers. So she is actually someone who got to spend a lot of time with the F one drivers and really experience up close what it's like being a Formula one racing driver.
Oh interesting.
How would you describe you know, Max forstaff and how would you describe Pierre Ghastly? I pivot the question around to the drivers and have them define themselves. How do you want to be seen in this chapter of your life? It's a big question. They pause, They really do pause, and kind I do a double take a little bit.
Give us a little bit of an introduction.
Who are you?
Where should we know you from?
I don't know.
Bobria watching race cars going around. Yeah, I'm a race car driver. I was very lucky to do Formula one for ten years.
This is Romane Grojean, the Phoenix, ex Formula one racing driver. Current car driver.
Isn't Tony? Isn't he the guy who crashed, almost killed himself, jumped out of the burning car.
Yes, and he has stories to tell about that moment.
I'm gonna tell you a funny story. My wife always complained that I was training too much. I was doing too much geam, I was doing too much bicycle and I didn't need all of that to be a race
car driver. And then at that accident in Bahrain where sixty seven g impact got stuck in a car on fire, didn't lose consciousness, which is amazing, and was strong enough to escape from being locked between you know, a barrier, a halo headrest and into far and just because I was strong enough and fiting off and got the energy to jump out of it, I made it. And since then she's like, well, you can go as much as you want the gym. So you know, it worked out pretty well. You did all of.
That homa to be able to spend more time in the gym. How do you get back in a calf or something like that?
Very very natural, very normal, of course, you know, I'm not I'm not completely stupid. Had a bit of apprehension. I was not sure of what would it be like. And we go to race one and I'm there on the grid thinking, Okay, who is it gonna go. It's gonna be my first race start since the accident. But once the engine started and we got rolling for the formation up, all of those foots went away and it was all about, Okay, how can I do the best I can in that race?
Okay, so we can finally talk about speed? Is that what?
This is?
Absolutely all right?
Because actually let's start with the basics. How fast can an F one car go? What's the fastest that it's ever gone?
Okay, so as of six months ago, and I don't actually think anything has changed surprisingly in the sport over the last six months. The fastest recording speed was still from valtwie Botas, and he did the fastest speed when he was driving for Williams during the qualifying of the twenty sixteen Mexico GP.
Particularly mech because the circuit is at altitude and the air is thinner, so there's less drag on the wings of the car, which is why they go so quick.
He was captured driving at three hundred and seventy two point five kilometers per hour or two hundred and thirty one point five miles per hour. Oh by that.
Honestly, I'm a little bit disappointed right now. And I'll have you know that a four gt American was clocked at three hundred and ten miles per hour at the launch and landing facility located in the Kennedy Space Center, Florida, fastest three corps on the planet.
Half like the Wow, good show, guys.
Now, I know what you're gonna say, Well, what is it in kilometers? I'm not going to answer that. I don't know. This is an American show, Tony. But what I do want an answer to is how is there a faster car than Formula one? I thought Formula one was the pinnacle of racing.
Well over a lap, then a Formula one car would be significantly quicker. They might not be the fastest thing in the world in a straight line. It's partly because they have lots of wings and aerodynamic devices on them, and so there's a lot of drag. Right, It's like pushing a big, a big flat pane or a door through the wind, and it slows it down. But what you give up in straight line speed you more than make up for in the breaking areas and through the corners.
It kind of has a superpower with downforce because the quicker you go, the more downforce you have, Therefore the more grip you have. Therefore you can go a bit quicker, right, So it's kind of extrapolates up with an aerodynamic car.
Well, and that's what's fun about F one is all the turns and stops and stop lights and speed bumps and pedestrians. I think it's weird that they throw some pedestrians in there. Sometimes that would be fun.
It's funny to speed. We always have that question, how first, jogle, I have no idea. I don't know. I just you know, the only thing I know is that whenever it is a beep in my ear, I help shift to the next gear, and whenever I reach maximum geal top top end of the straight line, I breaked as late as I can to make the corner. But it doesn't really matter. If I was doing two hundred miles an hour two
hundred and twenty two, it does really doesn't matter. All matters is or late did I break to make the corner, how much speed did I carry into the corner. But on the street, I don't care. I don't even have the information on my dash.
This makes sense to me.
We got that. Yeah, okay, you said something there that I think new fans might find really interesting. You talked about the beep that you get in your ear. Can you explain what that means?
Yeah, every time we have it's the right timing to get to the next gear. We have a beep in O A and we upshift and some drivers, some of my teammates hate it because, yes, it's a lot of beep. I mean, if you shift thirty five times at a lap, it's thirty five times you're going to get a bip. But at least it allows me to focus on what's outside and not looking at the shift lights, so I use it a lot. We have also won for anti stall.
We have one for perimeter in and pitimeter out, and we use different tones or different resolutions, so don't they don't sound the same, so you know which one is what. But yes, that's it's quite funny that we just used that.
So sure, give that souped up American muscle car and end a straight line and eventually, eventually it will accelerate faster than the Formula one car. But in any kind of realistic chase, the Ford or any other car for that matter, stands absolutely no chance whatsoever.
But oh, there's a butt.
There's a big butts, the big butt. Everyone. Cars are only so fast in the hands of extremely capable and talented drivers, of whom there are obviously only a handful in the entire world.
Right in mind that, I think there's more people going in the space every year, and there's Formula one drivers.
And that is what we're going to talk about today.
You have to think that it's a pyramids. It starts with go kat There's a lot of kids that do go kart. Out of those kids, the top one go to the next level of single seater, and then they do Formula four, Formula three, Formula two, so that the perimeter already gets quite narrow at the top, and then
you've got Formula one. There's twenty guys in the world doing what they do, so already out of every go card single guys, you have taken maybe not twenty of the best because there are different you know, the financial aspect ons on. But I would say you have a good seventy seventy five percent off the top of the world at that level. So then between the drivers is the tiny difference that you have, so, of course than it's the card that does the definant part.
Well, yeah, that's what I wanted to ask you. How much of this is the actual driver? How much of this this machine? I'm starting to get the feeling that it's really more about the car, which is putting me off.
To be honest, you've just highlighted one of the hottest topics in Formula one.
Yes, I think the driver is five percent, machine is ninety five percent. Sadly, really, yes, At at the highest level of motorsport, the drivers are all very very talented, so the only the difference left is the car.
The drivers, of course do make a massive difference, but it's very difficult to compare them across team.
It's always about the car, the driver and the teammate. So in Formula one, your teammate is both your teammate but also your biggest competitor because only the two of you are driving the exact same car. So whereas if you look at the eighteen other drivers on the grid, you could argue, well, they've got a better car, or they've managed to figure out the car and the regulations this year, that's why they're faster. When it comes to your teammate, you can't actually have that.
Debate, right But if me and you are on a team, as our car exactly the same.
Cars are never one hundred percent of the same just because of materials, but most of the team try to make it that, yes, both cars are the same.
If there's an update in like the arrow or something on the car, and the team can't produce a new wing in time, they'll just send one to a race and one of the drivers will get that and they'll generally take it in terms. But the core of the cars are saying. Where they might go in a slightly different direction is with the setup now, of course, on a Formula one car, you can change the springs, you can change the damping of the car, you can change
the wings, you can change the roll bars. Going into a bit too much detail here, there's many things that you can change on a Formula one car, and so the drivers might head off in different directions there, and that's down to personal preference. The setup of the car is kind of a reflection of their driving style. They have to work together in order to extract the most
out of the car. It's why sometimes you hear drivers say I've just gone in the wrong direction with setup because they've headed down the route that they thought was going to be quick and actually their teammate's gone a different way and has ended up being quicker.
But this is so hard to know if it's the car or the driver. So like Max could just be a badass driver driving a good car and he's dominating. So they're like, it's the car, it's the car, it's the car.
I think that's true. I think the engineers building that car to be as fast as it can with kind of a driver, and the best drivers are the ones who are able to adapt to the car that's been built. For them.
That is what is happening currently right now with Maxistapanie. Undoubtedly that he both has the pinnacle of cars. He has the fastest car, the greatest car. He also is one of the greatest drivers out there on track, if not the greatest driver out there on track, right. And what's been interesting and really hard for his teammates is they have to match him, right, and they've struggled.
Probably let check go through, please, let's check go back through.
And we had Daniel Cardo, Pierre Ghastly. We now have Checko Perez, let's check go through. And they're all struggling.
Has Jugo won anything this year?
One they do?
They even let them win, Well, they don't let him Max.
Max.
That's the point, Max will let no one. Max is sat in that car going I want to win everything, and they're like, you've already got the championship, Max.
Let's check go through please, right, But I mean, if Chugo is in first place, what won't they tell him to back off so Max can go past them.
I mean they've tried.
I told you already last time.
You guys, don't ask that again to me.
Are we clear about that?
You've seen it over the years. The drivers just want to dominate their their teammates, how they show their value. These are racing drivers, These are professional sports people. There are one hundred percent selfish. The only way that they will ever help each other out is perhaps in a race when they're on completely different pitch strategies. You know, one driver is going for a one stop and needs
to look after their tires. Another drivers doing two stops and is kind of racing back through the field and needs to overtake. These drivers, they're made to win, right, That's all the focus. And if it looks like a kind gesture, there's another reason for it. Yeah they're not. They're not just they're not just being kind.
So if we put the entire grid this year in one of those you know, Andrew Nui red bulls, what would happen?
What would happen? As in who would win?
Yeah?
You want me to pick it up?
Three?
Oh? Yes?
Do it?
Okay?
Puckus up on the edge.
Here.
This is purely off driving, right, We driver sixty one are completely unbiased. I look at the drivers, you know, as if I was coaching them or working with them. It's got nothing to do with their personalities. But I think off the back of this year, probably the Stappen, Leclair and Norris.
We got to take a short break. Can you tell me what the different skills are required to be a good driver, to be a good fane driver.
Well, you need the talent, you need the strengths, you need the mental strengths as well. You need to be a good communicator, good manager with your guys. You know, they spend a lot of times around you. You need to be good with the media and the market. So it's it's quite a full job.
Actually, to me, the most important thing is having like a higher mental capacity. There is a lot of stuff happening when we're out on track. You put a normal person in a road car which is slow compared to a formal one car, and they don't have enough capacity to drive that thing quickly understand what you're saying from the passenger seat, you know, when you're sat next to them.
These drivers are driving at two hundred miles an hour, centimeters from the wall, changing the diff settings on the steering wheel, thinking about how they're going to overtake the car in front of them, trying to manage the tires, and trying to think about the general strategy, all while also thinking about if any setup changes, any wing changes
need to happen in the next pit stop. So the capacity that these drivers have is just absolutely incredible that they can absorb all of this information and most of them sound reason then be calm when they're on the radio.
Everything.
I think when you look at F one, the physicality of it, you're able to prepare for. That is something that you can train from a very young age, and you're able to do. When it comes to mental strength, that looks very different in each person, and everyone's going to adjust very differently. Some people can very easily switch the noise off, other people not so much. But it goes beyond just you know, the traditional social media noise.
When I was talking to Para, ghastly asked him to walk me through what a race weekend looked like, and it was the amount of scrutiny that they are under at all times. At the minute that they leave their rooms, all lives are on them. And it's not just fans and social media, it's also you know, engineers, it's talking about the cars. It's data sensors that are on the
cars when they're going around the track. It's all the cameras and the videographers that are within the paddock, the social media team, sponsors, and it's a lot of pressure to be able to do it. Yes, it's their job. Yes it's what they get paid to do. Yes, they love it. But two things can be read at once. It can be a lot to take on and something that they absolutely adore with their entire heart and want
to be doing so. I think when you look at F one, the mental component, the mental strength that you need to be an F one driver is so important and a critical part of a success journey within F one because you need to be fully turned on in every way possible.
Some drivers are incredibly good at squeezing everything out of the car, giving that perfect lap. This quality, this precision quality, makes them qualifying champions. But being able to qualify this I think this is one of the problems that charl Leclair has is you can put everything on the line, do an incredible qualifying lap, be really good during the qualifying sessions to keep up that consistency and perform in the heat of the moment during the race as well.
Because qualifying lap don't they just take your best lap, they take a single lap yes.
Oh, all out one shot, put.
Everything on the line, all the forgive my ignorance? Are all the cars on the track for qualifying?
Yes and no, different times, different moments. And again remember that conversation that we had about the degradation of the track and is it hot is it cold? It's always better to not be the first person. If you're the second person, you can also get a toe. This is when your teammate comes in. So there's all of those little components and you'll often hear the drivers get angry of like why did you put me out on the track?
Now everyone's out here, And that goes to the strategy component of this was the absolute wrong time to put me out to do my hot lap?
Right? I see? Okay?
And the consistency is key. Like some people we talked about this when we talked about trusting your gut or looking at the numbers and knowing where to hit every single time. A driver like Esteban Ukhon is incredibly consistent rarely makes those mistakes. Annex albums another example of you know he's going to show up and rely driver, but you might not always be very surprised by them because
they're just like, yeah, that's that's what I expected. Right then we've got tire management and we discussed it at lamp during our entire episode and.
Got to be a huge skill the drivers need to be good at.
Yeah. The way I like to think of it is, okay, you know, I'll start the race and push the first few laps, and then I get into my rthom and then I try to save as much as I can on that entire life. So whenever I need it to make a pass to push at the end of a stint so on, I have got it left. And you know,
sometimes you completely mess it out. I think last year one stint in a race that we were doing really well, I pushed a little bit too hard from the beginning and at the last six seven laps of the stint was I was just hanging in there and losing position, and I thought, you know what, that was stupid. I should have done it differently at the beginning of a stint, and I work work differently. But anyway, that's you know, you always learn. I'm normally decent at it. I like
it because I understand sliding effect. But yeah, I think the best word for the one someone that doesn't know is to remember that the tires of a life, and they have a memory, so everything you take away at the beginning, you know, it's like it's like on a bicycle. You have a certain amount of matches in your in your back pocket, and every time you attack, or you try to attack climbing or playing with his friend, you burn a match and eventually you don't have any left.
Funnily enough, Paris, because we've been talking about check out a bit. Parents is often referred to as the tire whisperer exactly, though it does seem this season at least whatever he's whispering to those tires, they aren't actually paying attention and listening.
Maybe maybe needs to yell at him.
Just shouting at one of my favorites, which is still tied to tires somewhat, which is driving in the wet conditions?
Does this come up a lot? Though?
Let me put a pin in that for because you know what I'm going to say. We've got an episode.
Oh yeah, well I forgot about that.
We're going to have a whole episode dedicated to none other than the weather. Yeah, one more reaction time.
Yes, I was gonna say this, This needs to be.
There reaction time you can improve. Some people are more natural than others, but you can improve while working at it.
You see them as they're training for the races. They're playing with these tennis balls and they're hitting these lights all over.
Yeah, exactly obvious one is the start, you know, that's so how fast react to the lights, But also in any circumstances, I think the one we don't see is the one inside the cow and there's anything happening in front, and how quick you can react, how quickly can react to debris flying, or quick can react to a car spinning in front of you, how quick you can react to reaction of the drive in front of you trying to pass him.
Per official timing is a formula one. The fastest driver to get off the mark is again Valcherie bot Us. At the twenty nineteen Japanese Grand Prix at Suzuka, he recorded a reaction time of just noter point not four seconds off the line.
Which is zero point zero second. I was going to say, and just translating your British.
Is getting off the line really the big indicator of that.
You will hear some drivers go just I wasn't fast enough, especially if you're on the front light, especially if you're in the front two rows. The first person that gets out of there and gets that driving line is fat. You have you definitely have, Yeah, definitely have a d up. I'll tell you fun fact for you. We haven't done one of those in a while. You know those five lights that go out at the start of the rays to indicate the race is starting. I never knew this,
but it's it's a manual button that's pressed. Oh I thought it was automatic till not that long ago. But there's an actual human that presses go the lights are on, and then go the lights get.
Off, And when the lights are off, it's race time. Where we go?
It's m M and awhere we go.
Okay, with all these skills, I noticed you didn't mention sir Lewis Hamilton or Max for stepping at all.
Michael Carsta is paying attention.
I was paying attention, You were paying attention.
I think this is because both of them have all of the above.
The kind of best skill and the best driving style to have is the one way you can adapt to any of the cars. Now, don't forget that the cars are changing race by race. They're actually changing within the session, right, the circuit is changing. The balance between the front and the rear of the car is changing as well, even over a single qualifying lap. So when people talk about the balance changing, they may turn into one corner and the car might have understeerd, so the front isn't turning
as much as you actually want it to. And then towards the end of the lap, the rear might be sliding and giving way before the front. And so the driver themselves can change their style, how they use the brakes, how they turn the car, how they come off the brakes, how they accelerate to manipulate this balance. So they're doing it within a lap, they're doing it corner by corner, they're doing it when the tires change, they're doing it
when the wind direction changes. But to a broader extent, a driving style will change as a car develops over the season and even year by year, and generation of
rule changes to generation of rule changes. Right, and so when you look at the really good drivers, the Schumachers, the Hamilton's of the Stappens, they're able to keep this going over you know, different eras of Formula one, and so they're the guys who can adapt they're the ones who can change their style to extract the very most from the car.
Where does experience play into all this? You talked about reaction time being best with young drivers, but a lot of this other stuff I would think experience would be a huge benefit.
So where experience comes into this, it's kind of not toning things down, but it's knowing when to not push at one hundred percent, having the capacity to think about a wider strategy, kind of picking your battles. When you're a young driver, you just want to push a hundred percent all of the time, and you know that's good in most cases, but sometimes you just have to sit back. Sometimes you don't need to go for that dive bomb move.
Obviously, your body needs a little bit more time to recover the more advanced you go in your age compared to when you were a youngster, So that's the difference. You just need to, you know, plan your travel a little bit better, plan you sleep a little bit better, make sure that you are more careful with your nutrition. But racing is very particular in a way that we
train very little in our environment. Imagine football player, soccer player, tennis player, whatever, and you're tell him that the only place you can practice is at the matches, at the game, and in between you can do you can go to the gym, you can work and your reflexes, you can do your cardiovascular or your bicycle or running, but you cannot do your game. And I think that's what that's what's very different in racing, you know. I think this year in Indica, we're very lucky. We have five days
of testing, which is a lot. I think that's why we can see in racing that drivers that are a bit older or more experience. Did I say because I've bothered them, we can still compete at the highest level because we may have lost a little bit of that craziness that you have at the beginning, but we have the experience that the youngster don't have, just because we've been spending more time driving cars.
When you look at the great drivers, right, Schumecker came in, he did the same thing. He was really quick, but he made a few mistakes. Hamilton came in, he was very aggressive, he made quite a few mistakes and then he toned things down. This happens them the same Leclair was doing that but has continued. Unfortunately, he makes quite makes quite a few mistakes. So whether or not that will stop, whether that's because of the Ferrari or not,
we don't know. But you generally see the experience coming with the great drivers at least, and it makes them more consistent, and it makes them have better decision making skills.
I noticed maybe all of this as a former athlete, not at this level obvious, but there's no list of confidence. But probably if you have consistency, tire management, you know how to drive in wet conditions and reaction time, you have good confidence. But I would think a confident driver is goes without saying otherwise, Boom goes the dynamite.
Boom goes the dynamite. And this is where I love.
Another trademark term boom goes the mast show it's not, but.
It's your right for the beginning. This is why I like that we did the episode previously on social and gossip and drama, because all the drivers will say this, this is a mental game, and I don't think all the drama and the gossip is actually helping the drivers. I actually think it's hindering. And I think this is
what's happening with someone like Perez right now. Jecko, there is so much noise around him, not being the right teammate, not being good for his car, Daniel Ricardo coming for his seat like that has to mess with you.
Yes, it's great to be standing in a podium. It's awesome to be leaving those moments where the high super high, but there also a lot of moment where the lowers are not that much seen and who alone you are in those moments? You know, when you win, everyone is with you. When you don't win, you end up being very much on your own.
What's something that surprised you with some of these drivers. What's something that's maybe like a misconception that we have of these drivers or you know, we have this idea that you have to be a fierce competitor and leave, you know, leave nothing unturned and you know, do your talking on the track, and it's it's a very sort of stereotypical male like vision that we have of what
it takes to be a Formula One driver. I'm just is that true or is there anything that's maybe surprised you as talking with these drivers over the last couple of years.
I think that's it's the building to switch off if you just waited, like a few more minutes after a session before talking to them. There can be a difference as you come down from that adrenaline high and the best way possible. They are some of the fiercest competitors I've met, but also several of the drivers are probably the kindness people ever, very much kind of teddy bears. They care a lot, not just about their job, but
also the people around them. When they feel comfortable, you can kind of tell, like Lando constantly, I rarely see him with like two feet on the ground. He's constantly got like a knee up sitting in some kind of like very much young twenty something positioned in a chair. It's like a little detailed Most people would not notice, but it kind of shows the comfort level that he
has with whoever's around him. But I think, if I had to pick the biggest misconception, I think people don't take into account that these drivers come from very different cultures. Max Verstappen, for example, I think he's like the most misunderstood driver in the entire paddock. It comes from a Belgian Dutch family. Bluntness is part of the culture that he grew up in, and so I appreciate that he's like blunt and authentic and one hundred percent himself. He
is such an old soul. I feel like between hearing how he talks about different things in general, like I've talked to him before about social media and stuff, and hearing how he's his approach to it, which is that he doesn't post, tweet nothing, I think it's interesting. But how he approaches the sport I think is also kind of similar in like an older mind. He's just very much in sync with the card that he's in and his level of knowledge is just more than I've seen
from some other drivers. But each driver's very very different. I think the Maxim Steven this year is probably the most authentic version of Max, and we've been able to see he's always one hundred percent himself with how blunt he is and things like that, but he seemed more at ease, more.
Open, less with a ship on his shoulder exactly.
You know.
It's funny. I feel like every season I'm going through a bit of a journey myself. I have to admit I'm coming from a very negative place towards Max Versteppan, and I feel like this this season, I'm slowly being warmed up to max for stepping, and I still don't know how you feel about that. It's going to be okay, No, I need to be open to change, you know, exactly, open my heart to change. Change.
Damn it that you feel it too. If we're going to devote a whole episode to speed, I hate to be this guy. But pit stops stopping the words stop. You don't hear this ever in racing. It's the word stop, but they have to take at least one pit that's required requiet. Okay, yeah, it's also cool in racing race fastest, first place. You so rarely hear the word stop. Who stops the fastest?
Right now? It's red Bull, Red Bull, and you have it on top of their garage fastest pit stop. You know how. There's the there's the driver Championship, and then there's the Constructor Chammpionship. There's also the pit stop Championship, and it's not an official championship, but you will hear the Red Bull pit stop team actually be livid when they lose it, and that has happened.
It's like who can rest the fastest? I don't think they're resting during these I know, but the word stop is like stopping the car has stopped.
You do have a thing for four letter words, don't you.
It's kind of funny that there's a fastest competition for stopping.
Yeah, stand by for Michael kosh to congratulating himself.
I'm crushing it.
You are crushing it, Tony. I'm not sure that Costa's ego needs any more inflating.
To be honest, what's the fastest pit stop error? Do you know that?
I'm glad you asked. In twenty nineteen at the Brazilian GP, the Red Bull needed just one point eight two seconds to change four tires of the Maxims step in RB fifteen. Red Bull is fascinating. They keep beating their own records and they take it very serious.
There's only so much time left. Eventually it's gonna be zero.
But that again, we keep talking about that. It's the incredible thing with these athletes. They keep pushing those numbers to you know, we never I don't think anyone in Formula one fifteen years ago for we're going to beat sub two seconds, and here we are. But there's a bat.
Oh, there's always a butt.
There's always a bat. Another team has actually beaten this record just this year.
Threat.
Do you want to have a guest.
Who not Ferrari? Ferrari? Yeah, Ferrari's like they're putting the toast in the toaster and we're waiting for it. I don't know Mercedes.
You said Mercedes. I would have actually said Mercedes as well. It's actually McLaren. McLaren pit Crew on Lando Norris's car and it occurred during the Katar GP of twenty twenty three and recorded it at one point eight seconds. So you can best bet that Red Bull right now have something else that they're gunning for. Hell yeah, which is give us back our recorded pit stop. We want to beat them this.
It's just occurred to me. It brought up a question in your guys conversation. Do you think, I mean, obviously the records keep being broken in sports? Yeah, do you think at some point we will plateau?
So my daughter loves high jump, okay, for whatever reason. When I take her to play tennis, she just hangs in the corner and kicks leaves. But her grandpa put high jump on when he was visiting, and she's like transfixed by it. No, it's when the Olympics when you jump over the bar they.
Never can no attempt a new world record of two or nine.
So she loves high jumps. She's like, you know, just can't stop watching high jump. So as a parent, being a parent, you get you dive into these topics you never thought you even or gave a shit about the world record for high jump has been stuck it since like nineteen eighty seven. Yeah, so there, it is a wonderful new world record. We will reach a plateau, you know, at some point someone will break, but you keep thinking humans will go high or faster.
In a way, it's disconcerting if high jumping is any kind of harbinger or you know, a sign of where we're heading is humanity.
I before you even said anything, I knew what you were going to say, and I tend to agree with you on this, like have we maxed out humanity? And if so, it's going to end soon, but hopefully not before we've reason two of choosing sides.
Season three, you mean, oh shit, yeah you know what, or just you're you're not even sure if we're going to finish this very season.
I'm just hoping we could finish this Yeah.
Yeah, yeah, maybe that's better, more and more realistic achievable goal.
Let it faite the black. I'm going to watch the fastest pit stop right now while you guys talk.
There's something there that I think, when it comes to technology, you can push the boundaries a little bit faster and a little bit further than what you can do if it's just human.
Right, that's true, that's true.
You should have been done now with your pit stop.
Well, I watched the fifteen second ad first Lando Norris. Here it is this slap box, this slap about boom but bengales them a high five. Well, lump of coke and off he goes.
Gods, it's insane, right, you better have time to blink.
That is so cool. That's really fun to watch. I advise anybody to watch that and say, is this how efficient I am at work? Because that's not how I work.
Get into the job, get out cool cool. Let's talk about the people who do the stopping.
Before we dive into that. We got to take a short break as promised. We are back.
Let's talk about the people who do the stopping the fastest, the fastest stopping, and I think you might enjoy this. The mechanics on the driver's team. So there's you know, there's there's there's two drivers, two different teams. Each team has different mechanics for each driver. They actually duplicate as the pit stop crew. So the rison you can't if you wanted to Michael tomorrow, you cauldn't actually apply to
just be part of the pit stop crew. You would actually have to do a full time job as a mechanic battle.
Here's me tearing up my your applications.
So no one is actually just a pit stop crew me. But that's not an actual job in of itself. Rather, they are doing this as an additional job and they apply for it. It's a lot of the mechanics, but not just the mechanics. It can be people in the gearbox tech support team or the garage support team that can apply to be part of the fastest team that does the pit.
Stops, the team that slows down the fastest.
That's the third time you made that joke.
You know what the incredible thing is the pit lane speed limit is a fairly recent rule change, Like they never used to have speed limits. You'd see the drivers come in as fast as they could and then leave as fast as they could.
You know, in.
Senna's period and around that time, flutter all the way through an accident in the pit lane now as a Ferrari mechanic that's on the ground.
I'm guessing because I didn't say it happened, but it's clear that a wheel came off the Minardi.
There's a danger of.
Cars coming in at high speed.
A good pit stop also requires the driver to be sharp and hit that mark to absolute decision.
Right, I'm gonna click this link.
Let's check out this performance by Launce Stroll.
The front jackman gets knocked over and immediately his reservist is like, my turn, I'm going in. Yeah. It's like finally, dad, did you see I've been waiting this whole time.
Yeah.
In some ways, that reservist is waiting for the driver to knock the other guy over. Let's be honest.
Let's be honest.
Yeah, sorry about thats a really cold well.
This is not an example of a great pit but it's an example of the driver needs to hit their mark.
He needs to hit the mark.
And it makes me laugh that we picked lancetroll fucking up to show me because it fit fits perfectly.
Stand by for a heartwarming display of empathy.
I don't really care that this guy got knocked over shouldn't have been standing there.
Literally, it's his job to stand there.
The other thing that I thought was really interesting, and even though I've been watching the sport since ninety ninety one, I only discovered this I think it was last year that even though there are two teams mechanics engineers that work on the two cars, it's one team that does the pit stop for both teams. Okay, so there isn't a dedicated pit stop crew for Let's sake, Red Bull for Checko, and a dedicated pit stop crew for Max.
I was wondering, like, they don't ever pit at the same time, you can't write.
Double stack, so box box box box boxbox box box.
They will do back to back, which are so impressive to this absolutely spots off proper perfection just when one.
Works out the other one back again.
It's like a production and the choreography of that is sensational.
It does look like a very well choreographed dance when they pull off those double stack it is just so impressive. I personally think it's one of the coolest things.
A double stack double stack.
Those selected to be on the pit crew practice per season and mid season thousands and thousands of times, and they do it daily. The teams also film and analyze the pit stops to find where they can improve, and you will often see the race engineers walking around the pit stops and when they do it what look slightly do it for the fans for the show, they're actually doing it for them and you will constantly see them analyzing this. Some pick crew practice meditation and mindful nurse.
Jack raise dire off dire On Jack, Raise dire off dire On Jack, raise dire lof dire On.
This is a very cool part of racing.
It's weird that it's like it's this moment in time where the racing kind of stops, Yeah, to be able to go and raise bigger and better the moment that exercise is done.
And you know what my least favorite part of life is, but I've gotten older, I've had to adjust my thinking on it.
What stand by for another fascinating life observation.
Maintenance, Yeah, the daily maintenance of stuff. You gotta change tires, sometimes you got to clean the windshield off, and if everything is going well, maybe that's the time to think about when you're going to do that.
And you do before it's too late.
For it's too late, because those pit stops where it's too late you're changing a wing or whatever those are, those are gonn take forever. Do any of these little tidbits ever make it in? I wonder the good ones?
And you actually bring out you actually bring up a really good point, which is not not only does everyone have a job to do, but the drive also has
to hit that exact mark. And you will hear them say if I stop a little bit too forward, a little bit too left, the people actually have to move out of their position to hit the wheelgun and then in the exactly and that you lose half a second, a mini second here and there, and so that I've always found really impressive of how the drivers get to hit that mark to perfection.
Is there a break? Is it a foot break?
It is a foot break, And actually most human beings cannot push that foot break.
Because you just got to hit it so hard.
You've got to hit it so hard. It's a phenomenal if you're ever bought. There's a phenomenal video on YouTube that is I think the title is can a normal person drive a Formula One car? And this guide trains for months and months with Formula one to figure out and keep saying we can't let you out until you hit the brake to one hundred percent and he can't then, and he's like, I'm doing it, like you're about twenty percent of the brake. We're gonna need you to get to that.
What a soft man? Come on, bro, hit it.
When you put a normal person in a Formal one car, they don't work the engine hard enough. You have to get your ears and your senses adjusted to how high a Formula one car revs. And so most people just, you know, just trundle through the gears only using half of the rpm. The problem is when you do that, all of the hydraulic systems in the car run off the engine, and so if the engine isn't turning over quickly enough, the hydraulic systems fail and the car actually
turns itself off. And so that's another thing. You're constantly telling the drivers to change down, change down the gears, use the engine a little bit more.
I think there's one thing that's the hardest and most annoying and frustrating the parties that people will never know what it is to drive a Formula one car at full speed just because it's you know, you can go and play basketball and you can try to shoot a three points basket and see you often you miss it, especially myself. But and then you see Michael Jordan or Lebron James and they do it, and it's just like
boom boom all the time. In you can go and play golf and you can hit your driver and so you do two hundred and twenty yards and then the pros they do three hundred and they shoot, you know, minus ten and you are plus thirty five eighteen hollers and Formula one car you cannot jump in. You can you cannot compare yourself as much as I would love to, It's it's not possible. And I think that's that's one of the hardest part in our spots for people to understand.
Final four. It's Michael, We're at the end. Are you a speed junkie? Are you feeling it?
Yeah? I am. I Speed is Speed is everything to the sport. Without speed, there is no f one. Speed makes the steaks high, speed makes money come in. Speed makes us watch it, Speed makes the pit stop more interesting. Speed is everything. Speed Give me speed. I have a need for speed. There's a freight trademark I should do because there's so much speed. The driver's skill is so important because if they don't get it right, bad stuff can happen.
And it's not just speed for one lap. They have to do fifty plus seventy laps and they have to keep that speed up.
Yeah, the speed is everything. I mean really, honestly, I hate to whisper this into the microphone, but we could eliminate all the other episodes and just talk about speed. But can we No, we can't because we got ads to sell. Sult in.
This has been Choosing Sides f one, a production of Sports Illustrated Studios, iHeart Podcast and one oh one Studio Podcast. The show is hosted by Michael Costa and Tony Cowan Brown. This episode was edited, scored, and sound designed by senior producer Jojai May Paddle. Scott Stone is the executive producer and head of audio, and Daniel Wexman is Director of podcast Development and production Manager at one on one Studios.
At iHeart Podcasts, Sean Titne is our executive producer and a special thank you to Michelle Newman, David Glasser, and David Hootkin from one O one Studios. For more shows from iHeart Podcasts, go visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts, and whatever you do, don't forget to rate us and tell your friends. It really does mean a lot.
Next week, on Choosing Sides F one, we are going to talk about the tech nerd. If F one is the merger of Man and Machine, and we just spent most of this episode talking about Man. Well, next week we're going to shift our full attention to the machine.
Nerds. Yeah, suck at nerds.