A Look Back at the Start of 2024

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Welcome to Mist Apex Podcast, it's Spanners here. We're looking back at the first races of 2024. The panel tonight have all watched highlights from those races and we've had a look back at what we wrote in the show notes for those episodes as well. There was so... many moments where I looked at it and went oh yeah no way I can't believe it oh remember that guy oh yeah look that brake failure just on one side you say

So we'll be looking back at what surprised us and watching back and what it can teach us about this season. We have got a great... panel tonight so many great people on the show this evening and we've got alex van jean so it shouldn't be a spanners heavy episode for those who are vocal on such things but still click We are an independent podcast produced in the podcasting shed with the kind support of our patrons and partners. We aim to bring you a race review before your Monday morning commute.

We might be wrong, but we sometimes wear branded merch. We do have aforementioned Alex Van Geen. Hello, Alex. Hello Spanners. Spanners has finally picked a show for me and Brad to be on that will cause the least amount of controversy because there hasn't been a race and Max hasn't done anything stupid for us to argue about. So you might actually not lose patrons after this show.

oh do you know what they love it they oh brad's on i hate brad but it's the same people who message every time uh to protest against brad philpot hello brad how's it going hey it's going fine i'm looking forward to looking back at some of these races that I completely forgot about. And looking back on them, did you have a general feeling of, oh yeah, like I did? Yeah, yeah. I remembered them after I re-watched those highlight videos and I'm looking forward to discussing them because...

It's interesting seeing something when you've got the benefit of knowing how it then plays out through the rest of the season. There's some stories that we might not have quite realized how important they were at the time. And now in hindsight, it makes more sense or there's more to dig into.

Yeah. And we're all young men. We've also got here, Matt, two rumpets who every time he falls asleep, forgets what Formula One is. How did you feel looking back at those races, Matt? Why am I here? Oh, wait. Yes. Now I remember. You know what? I went back and looked at our notes from those races and we were actually right about some things. No way. Okay, well, we'll try and...

We'll try and solve that. OK, let's move on then. I think let's look at Bahrain to start with, which was race one. And of course, this year it won't be race one because it will be the Australian Grand Prix. But we looked back at Bahrain and we are using... the seven and a half minute or so highlight reels from F1 TV. So if you go to formula1.com, you can find those. They're also posted on YouTube as well. So I want you guys to know that for this episode, we did over...

24 minutes of research for this race so where should we start where should we start who wants to start on their feelings on the bahrain grand prix 2024 uh brad what struck you first Okay, so I wrote some notes on this. So the first thing that struck me, knowing what we know now, which was how the season played out, was how little McLaren featured. They just weren't really there. They certainly weren't showing signs of...

emerging as a really championship contending car. You wouldn't have looked at that first race and put any money on them going on to win the Constructors' Championship. So McLaren not featuring was my first point.

Yeah, it was rather kind of stark how they just weren't anywhere considering where they ended up in the season. Piastri looked lost at most points, just sort of... letting people blast past him so um yeah considering where we ended up finishing that season it's an incredibly stark turnaround Well, it was a planned thing. This is what I get from watching the whole season and from talking with Summers. They purposely, I think, delayed or planned the introduction of their update so they had...

maximum wind tunnel and testing time right up until the summer break. So yeah, it's not surprising. They were absolutely terrible because they were kind of askew with everybody else's development to start with. Again, this is thinking about back. Ages ago, didn't they completely change their concept mid-testing?

uh last year wasn't that wasn't that where the issue came from so you know nobody wants to no one plans to start the season poorly and then finish strongly because you know that's kind of the opposite of what force india used to do you know it's that kind of thing of you'd really really expect them to come out strong but wasn't that what happened Well, they found something going into November, just like a week or two after they decided they had time to actually bring it to the car.

And that might have even been the season before for all I remember at this point. But it essentially skewed their development. So their developments came later than everybody else. But I think they knew they were on to something with the end of the 23 season. Yes. Oh, sorry, Matt. And so what happened was they might have been able to bring stuff.

the car that we saw five or six races in earlier, but they decided to take their time and introduce it. And what that gave them was extra testing time and extra CFD time to really hone that. Then they wound up, obviously, by the time we got to Silverstone, they wound up with a car that was thoroughly capable of winning most races if, say, Max was driving it. Yeah. And you're right, though, Brad. Like, you wouldn't have looked at that race and gone...

Oh, that's Norris is going to make a charge midseason for the championship. It was looking again. In fact, I would say it was looking like signs. So signs suddenly looked really dangerous. And so when I was on the ringer talking to Meg and saying, you know, who do we think is doing well in testing? People are now talking about McLaren as if we might not have seen.

a headline time but obviously mclaren are going to come in with a good car in a in the space of a year they've gone to that position of people going well it's inevitable but this time last season I don't think many people were going, oh, OK, well, come Silverstone, they're going to be the challenging car. I think they were still, oh, they're a team who in 2023 had had a late development run.

And I was confidently saying, well, they're not going to bring that to the start of 2024, which I'll point out was correct, even if they did come back later. But yeah, at the beginning of that season, Matt, yeah, they just they weren't featuring in everyone's kind of hearts and minds. Yeah, it was actually fascinating going back through the notes, because one of the things that you were immediately concerned about is, oh, gosh, if this is another year of her stop and dominance.

are we going to lose? Is Liberty going to lose their audience? That's how bad it looked when we started last season. Max won the race by 22 seconds over second place. There was a massive gap there and we're all sitting there at the end of our race, I remember with our head in our hands going, oh my god, this is over, there's going to be no battle, at least the Ferrari pair are going to fight.

and causes some interest. Yeah, you had your head in your hands as a fan who doesn't particularly like Red Bull and was probably hoping for an end to Verstappen dominance. I'm looking at someone whose income depends on Formula One and going, oh, it's happened again. And I think I can sympathise with Martin Brundle. I think it was 2016. I've told this a few times, but all through...

You know, the FP1, FP2, FP3s. Oh, Ferrari look really strong. Maybe someone's going to come and challenge here. Red Bull have got this plan. And then as soon as Hamilton knocked in a Q3 lap, it's just so... audibly disappointed oh no oh well scrap the whole season you could hear paper being torn up and that's the feeling i had because honestly people don't realize how much content creators felt the verstappen effect a lot of content creators

just knocked it on the head. So yeah, Verstappen comes out, wins by 22 seconds, Brad. That's not what business people in F1 wanted to see. And what really rammed it home for me was... Perez massively underperformed compared to Verstappen, even from this first race in the season. He was four-tenths off in qualifying, down in fifth, but still managed to get up to second place. And that was...

That was really, for me, I was like, that's the death knell. The season's over. If Perez can qualify down the field and still comfortably take second place by the end, it's all over. And Verstappen obviously winning at a canter. OK, that's easy to say now, but the previous two seasons, Perez had been able to challenge Verstappen in the odd race early season.

So I think at the time it was like, OK, this is just one of the races where Verstappen is beating Perez. But I wasn't feeling like he was going to get thumped or that all hope was over. I did not suspect it was going to be the kind of horror show season. that eventually unfolded because it wasn't too dissimilar to 22 to 23. For Perez? Or did you see it, Brad? Well, now you've got me looking back at 2023 end of season results because in my mind, I didn't think...

Perez was going to remotely challenge Verstappen no no but all I'm saying is at the beginning of the previous two seasons he had like taken the odds you know race when I think 23 before Miami he was sort of looking in there wasn't he Well, okay, so just taking the end of 2023 as like the previous race to Bahrain 24, Perez finished exactly the same number of seconds behind Verstappen as he did at Bahrain. So that seems to, it was like 21 seconds behind.

I'm going to have to go through others. Let's just, for the argument's sake, go to Las Vegas. Yeah, Perez. Slightly closer, there must have been a safety car or something, but he still wasn't right behind him. He's still at a place. I think Perez's only good season with Red Bull was his first season. I think it sharply took a downward turn off his first season and then he was just...

very, very meh. And that's putting it politely. I think we knew the relative levels of a Verstappen and a Perez. And my main point was that Perez could so easily get past the other teams. It was like... There's not even going to be a fight for second place at this rate. It's going to just be Red Bull 1-2. The domination continues. That was really my thoughts from this race. What I remember is Red Bull not having a car that Max particularly liked.

at the beginning of the seasons and that Perez kind of did like. So he would get some good early season results and then sort of gradually tail off. And I think what you caught there by going back and looking at the end of the 23 season.

is exactly that. And you're right. The difference was he did look kind of competitive at the beginning of 23, but at the beginning of 24, he was, like you said, he was already four tenths a second off a lap, but there wasn't any... anyone even closer than that so oh my gosh yeah i mean i have to say i've put the same notes as you like yeah max yeah dominating oh uh now knowing what i know i said oh perez able to be

p2 that shows how good the car is that isn't what i was thinking at the time uh but also yes so different that you and you look at that ferrari and you go that ferrari ended up p3 in the championship you go that that's not on The Ferrari ended up P2, didn't it? Was it not? McLaren and then Ferrari. You go from a dominant Red Bull 1-2, and then obviously knowing what we know now, Red Bull didn't, not only did they not win the Constructors' Championship when it looked to shoe in.

They didn't even come second. So that, as we know, that turned around dramatically. I had another note on race one last year, and that was... Another theme which continued through the season, unfortunately for those of us who have a fandom such as mine, Hamilton under-qualifying. So Hamilton from the off at Bahrain last year.

Didn't look great in qualifying. Eighth position, a second off of pole and a tenth and a half behind Russell, which I think probably is quite a realistic trend. So it wasn't... It wasn't just, okay, he switched off in the second half of the season because he knew he was leaving. That had already begun immediately.

Well, yeah, he'd been excluded from every single meeting. I mean, I have a similar thing in my work life. A couple of months ago, my sales director, my operations director decided that he was going to retire. And I instantly felt... a shut off from him despite the fact of him being such a professional um and it's hard not to do that to shut off when you're like i'm in this car i don't really like this car the team aren't talking to me because why would they because i'm going to their

biggest rival i've just got to get on and do the things i want to do so are they taking the things i want to do and putting that as their first priority no they're not does it affect my performance yes did lewis's head drop i think absolutely which didn't help the situation and actually lewis made a comment in an interview he said it's a lot like being a manager for boiler sales you know you take your eye off

Take your eye off the ball. No, you're right. I don't sell boilers anymore, mate. You sell heating solutions. That's what you sell. Heating and energy solutions. Building the homes of the future tomorrow. Actually, I put in the notes, and this was a great thing that Matt did here, was put what we put in the show notes post-race. And my thing was, oh...

I hope Hamilton's not continuing his trend of favouring race pace over qualifying pace because it's not going to work when you're this far back. And I think it is true. Lewis did tend to sacrifice a bit of qualifying pace to get the race pace correct. But it was a beginning of a trend that continued all season. And you go, no, there's more to it than that. It wasn't just a choice.

Because he wouldn't have chosen to go, yeah, I've got my race pace in the bag. I've qualified P15 again, but that race pace when it comes. But also, now that the field is so close, you can't be three or four tens off.

If you're three or four tenths off, before that would have put him third or fourth on the grid. You can win a race from there. But now it puts him struggling to get into Q3. So... I really, really hope that we have this new, rejuvenated, happy Lewis Hamilton that's going to go and actually be the qualifier that we know he can be, even though I still think in qualifying on pure pace, he's probably going to get beat by Leclerc.

My problem here is that if you'd have asked me when did Hamilton's qualifying start to drop off, now having watched these first three races, I would have said to you, oh, maybe after the summer break. I think I pushed it out of my head. that actually it was from the beginning of the year. So you can conclude from that, well, he had the summer break off, he turned 39 years old, and like Kevin and Perry, when...

You won't know that in America, but it's a TV series where, sorry, my daughter recreated it. You go from 12 and then at midnight you turn 13 and you turn into this horrible teenager who said, you are not my parent. Like maybe Hamilton has turned 39 slash 40 and he's suddenly like,

Ah, I'm sleepy. Why is everything so loud? Why can't we just have an early night and go out earlier and then come home earlier? So, you know, you could have had that winter break thing where Hamilton just switched off or... It does coincide with the team knowing full well that he's going to Ferrari and instantly on a dime becoming the...

the new number two driver. I don't think we'll fully know that until halfway through this season with Ferrari. One thing that struck me when I looked back on it was how much... it seemed clear that Daniel Ricciardo was the chosen one at AlphaTauri. No, Visa Cash App. Sorry, yes, Visa Cash App. Because there was team orders for 13th place.

13th place, Matt. There wasn't team orders for points. For 13th place, Yuki was told to move over. It was the saddest thing. And since we're talking about teenagers in movies... Earlier, I'm going to say that's a very much trying to make fetch happen, trying to make Danny Rick happen with those team orders. But it just was not going to be. And you remember Sunoda's response to that was basically, well, gee, thanks, guys.

And it was just like, oh, man. Matt, as a Snowden fan, I would love to say that was his entire response. But it didn't show up on the highlights, but I did watch something like the 10 best onboards. Honestly, the Formula One package for looking back on those races is really good. And you see from both Ricciardo and Tsunoda the incident after the race.

Where Tsunoda basically locks his brakes up big 11s and just dive bombs Ricciardo at the end of the race in protest. And you go, hmm, that isn't the best way to win hearts and minds in the team. And I've been a big defender of Tsunoda when he's gone off on one. with the swearing and, oh, he's petulant, he's childish. And they go, well, look, a certain amount of that, if you were Kimi Raikkonen and a rugged-looking Finnish guy, you would have got away with 99% of what Yuki Tsunoda does.

But when you use your car as a weapon, for me, that crosses a line. And I've been equally critical when you've seen Tictum do it, when you saw Vettel do it in Baku. And we could go through the list of drivers who've used their car in anger. To me, that crosses a little bit of a line and certainly Snowed across that line there. On your teammate, no less. That's the other thing, Matt. When it's on your teammate, it's different.

Yeah, but was it his forever teammate? That's what I'm going to ask. All right, guys. Alex, what else struck you about the Bahrain Grand Prix? no carlos flip the carlos performance um was something rather impressive that i think lasted for about three well he was in the second race but lasted for about three race weekends and then it popped up every so often. I was like, why didn't we get that fiery dive bomb from a million miles away on your teammate?

Carlos Sainz despite the fact he was leaving we still didn't get too much more of it throughout the case of the season but what it was very clear of was Despite the fact they tried to undercut Carlos in the pits, there were no team orders at Ferrari, which is good, I guess, for going forward at the moment with Ferrari. So, yeah, that was always exciting. Yeah, I think the thing with Sainz, especially with that Ferrari, was early season it really did suit the way he likes to drive the car.

And I think as the season progressed and the updates came on to it, it shifted more towards the kind of car that Leclerc likes to drive. So instead of him... Instead of it being a very equal partnership in terms of lap times and qualifying times, I think Carlos had to work harder to match Leclerc as the season went on. But I think if you compare... as in drivers who knew they were leaving the team from day one, I think Carlos did a better job than Lewis did.

across the season his head never got down he was always on fire he was always going for it um you know he wasn't as quick as his teammate but I think as people leaving the team I think Carlos did a better job than Lewis this year last year I would agree, but I would also, the context I would supply there is I'm at Ferrari and I have a chance to win races and I'm going to a team where I'm probably not. So I best make, I make as much as I possibly can out of this.

before I go to drive up my value on the market, so to speak. And he was fastest in testing. He was. Oh, goodness. We're not doing that, are we? Oh, my God. I know. I saw an interview from... What sponsor of Williams trying to sweet talk? I saw that interview. post-testing with Carlos Sainz. And I'm not expecting him to say, yeah, glory run, mate. Yeah, don't worry about it. No, chill. We're all right. I'm not expecting him to say that. I'm not expecting him to downplay anything.

because they will have had a briefing, I'm sure, where they say, yep, really positive day. Just say, yeah, positive day, but it's only testing. But he said, right, I don't expect to be on the podium. And I don't expect to be in the top five. So your fans of mine have to be a little bit patient. However, I hope that testing today shows that we're not here to languish at the bottom of the grid. We're here to make strides forward. And you go, oh, come on.

Nobody believes that that time is in any way representative or indicates anything about making strides through the field. But again, this is PR speak. But yeah. I really was struck at the beginning of that season. You go, yeah, Carlos Sainz looks like he's on fire. They suddenly realized that he is going to make the decision. Had they announced it at the time that they were releasing Carlos Sainz? Yes, they had, hadn't they?

Yeah, everyone knew that it was signs making way for Lewis Hamilton. Again, this is a thing that I think should make Leclerc fans nervous. I think once a decision has been made at Ferrari... they are happy, as Matt says, to put their thumb on the scales. So you saw it with Vettel when Vettel went out of favour, especially after that Brazil incident, I think in 2019, all the way leading up to that and his frustration that led to that.

You could see suddenly Leclerc's performance from being a clear number two to Sebastian Vettel was then the new young hope. If Carlos Sainz had beat Leclerc last season, they would have looked stupid. Lewis Hamilton gets beaten by Leclerc this season, they're going to look stupid. So I don't think Ferrari are immune to putting their thumb on the scale. Right then, where else are we going? Who else has got a 2024 opening three races observation?

Hands in the air, kids. We've got Brad Philpott. I don't have anything left for Bahrain. General overview. Red Bull are going to walk the championship. This is a continuation of the... of the devastating dominance we've seen the last couple of years and everything's sad and negative. No inclination whatsoever or indication, I should say, that we were going to get the mega second half of the season that we actually saw.

Yeah, so the next two races are going to be Saudi Arabia and the Australian Grand Prix. And to remind you, this season, it's not going to be Bahrain for the opening. They're going to Australia for the opening Grand Prix. Now, as much as I... I love the Australian fan base and think there should definitely be a Grand Prix in Australia. I've always not liked the fact that we go to Australia for the first race. It's never a particularly...

exciting race. It would be like having Imola race one. What's the equivalent? Imola race one, a dry Canada race one. I'm just going to say massively disagree. Australia is race one is where it should be. Australia... Spiritually, I agree with you. Yeah, it's my childhood of how special it is of having to wake up at an ungodly hour and, you know, it makes it... Even more ungodly this year. It's 4am this year. That makes it more special. It's like more of an event. Duvet on the sofa. Snacks.

Cup of tea, trying to keep your eyes open. And finally, Formula One's here. Like, Melbourne is where it should always start. So, I actually agree with you from that point of view. Just like Interlagos should be the final race of the season. But... You're looking at it through rose-tinted glasses a little bit because what you would get is, A, obviously the unrepresentative track.

Teams would go to Australia, there'd be a result, and that would not be representative. You wouldn't really get a clue of how well drivers are doing. But to be fair, that might be good to have a bit of a mixed up thing. But what you would get is a Grand Prix where nothing really happened. And then whatever, eight week break until the Chinese Grand Prix. So just from a rose tinted glasses off point of view.

I never thought that that start to the season made the season pop. If anything, it was a bit anticlimactic. What usually would happen is it would be a... interesting start to the race because it's got a good opening sequence of corners so stuff happens and then invariably the favorite retires It's generally what happens. And then somebody surprising wins, and the person who was expecting to win has to come back from it, which is always fun. Happened to Max last year, happened to Lewis in 2014.

probably more examples of where it's happened or you have the favorite absolutely annihilating the field like the brawn did in 09 so um i love the track i love you know as far as f1 games are concerned you know the years i played them it was a track i raced on the most because it was always the first

first race of the season is you know you only ever started a season like 17 times so you play that race so often and it was always a good fun track to do but it does often turn out into into a procession um if you take the rose tinted glasses off So just to kind of drag us back to Saudi Arabia, because we are going to talk about Melbourne, but that isn't the second race last year. So just to continue the theme of race one and to confirm.

the negativity that I was feeling certainly a year ago, we had again, Red Bull dominate. And again, Perez underperformed, but still comfortably finished second. So Perez half a second off in qualifying, still the second highest finisher, which... really doesn't say much for the other teams and the other cars. He was about eight seconds off Max, and then the Ferrari was a further eight or so seconds back. In the end of the race, Perez was 13 seconds off Max, but still second place.

We're looking at Saudi Arabia, Alex, just in case. You're looking at Australia. Yeah, no, I thought it was eight seconds in Saudi. I'm... I've got it open in front of me on the Formula One website because I'm doing my research as we go. Well done, Bradley. Shut up, Alex. But basically, for me, the main takeaway here is Red Bull domination again. This is confirming what we saw at race one. No reason for any kind of positivity in terms of a championship fight. At this point, this is head in hands.

goodness it's the same again that that and it's all going to be about okay who can finish who can finish second in the constructors or who can finish third in the drivers because that's all we've got to fight for here right so immediately i'm going to disagree with you Because no one cared about the championship and race to everyone cared about Ollie Bearman in the Ferrari. That was like such a great storyline. And then to top it off, we had Lance Stroll doing his best impression of Maldonado.

With that hilarious radio message, can you get the car back to the pits? No, I'm in the wall. Exactly. I've got here stroll unforced error crash in my notes. Yeah. So, okay. I don't know where to start here. We've touched on a few of those things. I think I'll start with the Behrman thing because that's the first thing Brad brought. I am in a minority of one on the Mr. Apex crew about not being excited about that Oli Behrman debut.

To me, I just thought of it as, in fact, I described it as an extended FP1 session and Kyle got so angry at me. And Kyle only ever gets angry at me like once or twice a month. So, but normally that's when I put him on the grass in a go-kart. But yeah, no, Kyle got really angry at me because he said it's an amazing achievement. And I agree that getting thrown in at the deep end with no, I think he had no practice session. He only had the qualifying session.

practice so that's amazing that you keep on the track and obviously they gave him the soft tires they didn't give him the ultimate strategy i'm sure he had the brief keep out the wall one of the most dangerous tracks i i still uh look at that track and i wonder how we haven't had Just an absolute airplane crash moment through those blind S's. So yeah, Behrman did well to bring it home. What I will take objection to is it being classed as an amazing result.

in of itself, without kind of context. So one of the commentators on one of the two main commentator feeds said, and a sensational finish, Oli Behrman, P7, as high as P7. This is incredible. And the other one was going, Oli Behrman, point scorer, you've done it at the first try. And you go, well, to not score points, he'd have had to have been another 34 seconds back. So the nature of F1...

means that because he was in the second fastest car over the course of the weekend, it was very unlikely that he was going to do anything other than finish outside of the top eight. And yes, you had a couple of cars that had... had poor results. You had the Aston Martin, who was still relatively quick at that point in the season. P7's fine, but it's irrelevant. The fact that he finished the race...

and did a good job and did what he was told. That was the achievement. What I object to is it being lauded as some stunning debut. up on par with Hamilton going down the inside of Alonso and taking the two-time world champion run around the outside. That's what I object to. There'll now be a brief pause and the rest of the panel will yell at me for a while.

absolutely gonna yell at you i'm sorry the kid had the kid had barely driven the car before he'd been doing f2 he'd been doing f2 in the previous session and then literally got thrown in at qualifying in a car that he'd never driven before As you said, one of the most dangerous circuits on the calendar. He did well to get around. He'd be a seven-time world champion and the car that won the world championship.

Yeah, Perez finished a similar distance behind Verstappen as Behrman did behind Leclerc. And Behrman was trying not to put it in the wall. Yeah, but he had the same car as Leclerc. Perez doesn't have the same car as... Okay. And also, in my notes I've got here... Sounds like copium to me. In my notes I've got here, Behrman finishes ahead of Norris and Hamilton on debut. Like, that's...

I don't think the Ferrari is that much quicker than the Mercedes. Well, it was the clear second fastest car that day, wasn't it? Yeah, if you manage to extract that pace from it, which isn't, well, he's still finished in front of those guys, but I think you, this is difficult for me to describe other than to say, I think you...

underestimate just how hard it is to jump into any high-level race car at the last minute and perform remotely close to the potential of the car. I think it's the way you're... Your reaction, I think, would be justified and your position would be justified had he done all of the testing over the winter and the first race. I think you said, yeah, okay, it wasn't... But Brad, to be clear, my position is that there was hyperbole around going, point scorer on his first try, because...

you would have had to have done significantly worse or crash to not score points. Like points was, that was a given that he was going to get a point in that Ferrari. So me watching, I'm watching that race going... This would be so easy to crash. People who have massive experience... Okay, so you're saying not crashing is the achievement. And I agree with that. I agree not crashing. Yeah.

Not crashing and still finishing within like, you know, 10, 12 seconds of one of the very, very fastest guys out there, who's Leclerc. So like Lance Stroll just binned it on his own. Plenty of other people, Daniel Ricciardo just spun on his own. It's so easy to throw a car like that in the wall. And he was having to drive within himself, but not too much because he still has to be quite competitive. He was going for moves on people. Having never made an overtake in a Formula One car.

Doing a switchback dive down the inside of people. On Alpha Tauri's and Haz's, yeah? It doesn't matter. Exactly. People who you have to treat like the rear legs of a donkey. I thought it was super impressive. I wouldn't say it was like Hamilton debut, but even if...

But Hamilton's debut, he had loads of testing in that car. Behrman didn't get to drive the car. Can I have a mini, just a mini pushback in there was a safety car which closed gaps up. Yeah, which also is the reason, that's the other reason that...

that Perez wasn't further behind Verstappen. So hang on, you can't have it both ways, Brad. You can't slate Perez constantly for eight years and then also use him as a marker in my argument that the Behrman performance was just, you know... It's a bare minimum marker.

Yeah, it's a bare minimum. And he did a great job as a guy who'd never driven the car before. I honestly feel like we're agreeing probably more than we think we are. We're just coming at it from different angles. Like if you just go like any kid coming in with no practice, getting around.

that Grand Prix and not crashing and having a bit of a scrap with some of the midfield to lower midfield teams. I agree. I just think people went a little bit nuts and I don't think you should judge the possibility of him being a future superstar on that. Yeah, all I'd say is I don't think he could have done, I don't think anyone could have done much better than he did in that debut. I can't think of a way you could do better than that unless you just luck into it.

Yeah. Oh, yeah. Okay. So they also didn't give him the tools to do any better than that. Like I said at the beginning, they gave him a suboptimal strategy as well. But I just think people read into that as much more than Danik was.

I don't think you yelled at me that much, all that well. And you let Brad do all the work, you cowards. I started the argument. Can I offer something else that happened? Go on then, of course. Okay, so something we haven't mentioned, which was big news at the time, but in the moment it happened.

was Norris jumping the start. Norris clearly jumped the start. Like, we all saw it. We could see it with our eyes. He jumped the start and it just didn't, it wasn't penalised. And it was this thing, I'm pretty sure the justification was, yeah, but he hadn't left the pit box.

when the lights went out. That's never been the rule. I never got that. Yeah, like, in that case, I'll start even further back and start rolling forward and be going 10 miles an hour inside my pit box when the lights go out. You know, that doesn't... fly and I never really got an explanation as to why that wasn't penalised. It's the biggest jumpstart since Maldonado at Spa and he just laughed it off and he just got away with it and what was it, Lewis, I think in Brazil...

Last year, was it? Lewis rolled a little bit and he got a penalty for that. And he stayed within the box or something like that. I don't get it. But I mean, that just goes under something that's been going on for the last couple of years, which is the most inconsistent, ridiculous stewarding that there possibly has been.

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over 18s only three pound monthly fee to maintain the account pay in 500 pounds a month excluding internal transfers and have two active direct debits you may still be charged fees that are outside of santander's control when using your card abroad cashback exclusion and T's and C's apply. A lot of the stewarding especially early on in the season is we don't want to cause a hassle.

So, and I think even go back to Abu Dhabi, like post-race, I know there's a lot of dodgy stuff with that there, but there was a lot of, oh, well, we could penalize that, but then people will get upset. It's a hassle. And there was this whole thing of, oh.

Decide it on the track. Like, oh, we don't want the stewards to intervene. Imagine if football was like that. Yeah, it's a flying tackle. He's put his elbow up. He's broken his nose. But, you know, let them sort it out on the pitch, you know? Man's game, after all. And I feel there's a big difference between...

the stewards now and the FIA now which are getting over-officious on every single thing the drivers do and then historically in F1 where it was almost seen as oh it's um it's not the done thing to get involved just sort of back off a bit That makes it even more bizarre that they didn't do something about it because they're overly officious in almost every area at the moment. Now, yeah. But yeah, clear jumpstart didn't get penalised. Something which was penalised...

was Magnussen's cheeky strategy to try and help his teammate. But he didn't care. Because if you remember, Magnussen had so many penalties, his race was done. But that meant he could just keep using his track position. to inconvenience the cars, which Hülkenberg needed to be inconvenienced. So you had people in different camps on this one, but either it was genius from Haas.

Or it was really unfair and unsportsmanlike. Okay, so what did Magnussen do? He raced people really hard. And he defended people really hard. Like, that seems okay. I'll let someone else speak. He did exactly what Lewis did in Abu Dhabi 2016. He drove as slowly as he possibly could legally.

No, no. And that's why he got a penalty because he didn't do it legally. He literally cut the first corner to get back in front of people. Oh, hang on. Was this, hang on. He's done this twice in this season, didn't he? Yes. Yeah. Right, okay. I'm getting them confused, but okay. I think the penalties came from him taking back track position definitely illegally, like just missing the first corner to then be back in the way of people. Oh, I forgot about that.

So he'd had a penalty already, and he found himself fighting with Tsunoda, and they were going into, I forget which, 17 and 18 or whatever, 2 and 3, whatever it was. And he basically was forced into the runoff, took to the runoff. and stayed ahead of Tsunoda. And then eventually, due to their fighting, Okon got by the both of them. But it didn't matter to him that he got the second penalty because the first penalty had already ruined his race.

And so he was like, OK, fine with me. Second penalty, third penalty. It's not really going to matter that much. And I think that's why some people got upset with the way he drove. But we've seen lots of drivers. make overtakes off track and simply out drive the penalty yes so there we go yeah that was actually one of three examples i was going to give of how Formula One doesn't clamp down on the professional foul. So I don't know if there's an NFL equivalent, but in soccer, okay, so for years...

you used to be able to just hack a player down if they were going to score. And that would be like, oh, well, yeah, you've got the free kick, but the goal scoring opportunity is gone. So, yeah, the guy skins you, he's going past you.

just take his legs out. And so football, soccer, introduced the professional foul. So if they went past you and they were one-on-one with the keeper and you thought, I'm never going to catch him, I'll just take his legs out. Professional foul, red card. So yes, you have prevented the goal scoring opportunity.

but you're off, your team is down to 10 men. That is a massive penalty. Also, if the keeper was out of it and another player, an outfield player, used their hands and just went, right, I'm going to dive and knock it out of the way, that's a professional foul because you go... Well, whatever free kick you give, it's not going to be worse than a goal. But now they say, right, well, you're going to be sent off.

Formula One needs an equivalent professional foul. So Matt's example there is, well, I'll just accept the 10-second penalty for going off track, and then I'll just drive off into the distance. It's better than losing time behind a driver. Or like Verstappen did, I think, at...

Was it Cota or Mexico? Where, yeah, he went off track, got ahead and was able to hold Norris up. And, well, he still benefited. He admitted that. Well, he sort of admitted. He said, well, it worked out better. That's a professional foul. Monza. I think Damon Hill and Johnny Herbert were right.

He knew that if Hamilton got ahead, he was going to disappear and get a lead in the championship or get an advantage in the championship with points wise. So he kept his foot in, dunked them both out. They both went off. He lost points. He got a three place grid penalty.

which he didn't really serve because he had an engine penalty. Now, in my mind, that was entirely deliberate. He knew exactly what he was doing. That's exactly the same as that professional foul cutting down the goal scorer when they're clear on goal.

And the other example I had, I've lost it now. But yeah, so I think that's F1 needs a penalty, which means if you are making a calculated attempt to gain an advantage by doing a foul, we will have... a punitive penalty so really I think disqualification that would be would that be a disincentive Brad for what Magnussen did

Yeah, if you can demonstrate that that is a clear and deliberate professional foul. And obviously there's some subjectivity here, so it's difficult. I appreciate it's not necessarily clear cut, but I think the stewards... should actually have some kind of leeway to decide if something is deliberate, if it's as blatant as that. then it needs to be a red card situation. Exactly that, which is in Formula One terms is a black flag. So it needs to be a, sorry, this is over and above just...

you've made an error and gained an advantage or, you know, something has gone wrong in a racing situation. This is a clear and deliberate violation of the rules and therefore... you are then affecting other people in a way. It's the same as kind of if a teammate slowed down, waited for their teammates rival to catch them and then race them really, really hard. It's a similar thing. It's a, it's.

It ruins the racing because it's a thing that anyone could easily do if it was allowed to go unchecked and makes the actual fair racing totally... Yeah, like when Ocon unlapped himself against Verstappen and then wiped him out at Interlagos. We should have just DQ'd Ocon there and then three races. That was Verstappen's fault. But yeah, we haven't got time. Matt, we haven't got time. We haven't got time. We've got to move on. Come on.

No, I want to come back a little bit about this. And I feel like it deserves some separation. I think it's okay to look at Magnuson taking the off track to stay ahead of Tsunoda. and say, that's a penalty. 10 seconds isn't enough. It should be a drive-through. But that's different to him driving slowly, but staying ahead of Sunoda legally.

to benefit his teammate. And I think we do need to make a distinction there. So I don't think Brad would have a problem with, say, delaying your acceleration. You always said to me, Brad, that's okay. Like if you're going around Luffield and everyone's waiting to get back on the power and you just don't.

and they hit you from behind, that's the car behind's fault. So you're happy with that, but things like cutting off track, and that's where you draw the line. Yeah, you can't miss a corner and take track position and then hold people up deliberately. That's just like, that's an obvious...

Black flag offence. Think what would happen, and this is quite an interesting way to do it, think what would happen if you did that in iRacing. If you cut a corner like that, you would then get a slowdown. You have to slow down. to give back more time than you've gained by doing it. Therefore, it massively disincentivizes it. Obviously, you could then still block people, but then that would come down to stewards, you know, applying penalties fairly, watching it.

But yeah, it's not the same as delaying throttle slightly, trying to inconvenience people that are in a legitimate race with you. That's very different from getting that track position in the first place illegally and then whatever happens after that. You shouldn't be in the position to do any of that other race craft because you were behind them. So it would be like going flat out through the pit lane.

and emerging ahead of someone because you've shortcut it. Silverstone's a great example. It's shorter to go through the pits. Just go through the pits without your limiter on and get in front of people. and then accept the fact you've got a pit lane speed penalty. Yeah, or just, you know, go up the sort of escape lane up Eau Rouge so you don't have to, you know, flip flop left and right. I mean, this is something we've never really explored before, but...

There is no incrementally higher pit lane speeding penalty apart from financial. So you could get a bigger fine for more kilometers per hour over the limit. But in a race, if you speed in the pit lane, you speed in the pit lane. So surely you could if you were going to take this to its extreme.

You could just accept, yep, I'm going to get a speeding in the pit lane penalty, but I'm doing 140 miles an hour all the way through. There's got to be some, there's got to be some coverall clause for that. There's like reckless something. I'm sure they would. Erratic driving. Yeah. Erratic driving. Thank you for that.

it would be and that's what i'm saying so you can't get away with that so there's no reason you should be able to get away with cutting a corner to get in front of someone it's the same thing i think we've got one more row left from saudi which is that me and alex disagree i don't like the track

I don't think it's a good track, apart from, I think it's a bit Monaco-y, where they're like, oh yeah, but the walls. I'm like, okay, great. I think it would be better without the walls. Apart from the fact that they're dangerous, and I've got my dad head on. go in you know be careful guys be careful be careful you can't see around that corner i think it's a bit go-kart track it's a bit indoor go-kart track there's one overtaking spot really uh i don't get why you like it alex

As far as a track to do laps round, I don't like it. But we've seen good races there because you've got really long straights.

with chicanes at the end of them, where you can fight all the way through them and then fight all the way up to the next corner. And that's what we want, isn't it? I don't give a... damn that it's not a great track to drive on and it's you know I care about the dangerous thing because for how many years did they tell us we couldn't go straight to the hairpin at Abu Dhabi yeah because it was too dangerous

and now you have zero runoff at 220 miles an hour but every race there's been good oh yeah we've got good racing we've had good racing all the way through it and you get good racing from good racetracks there's a type of fish that gets hunted by dolphins right and it's survived alex bear with me here it's survival tactic is when the dolphins come along they bury themselves in the sand right and they go this is safe the dolphin will never see me the dolphin's got echolocation

So it just eats a bunch of the fish because it finds them, eats them. All the other fish that pop up go, yep, we lived. That worked. Brilliant. Every time a dolphin comes along, we'll bury ourselves in the sand. That always works. That's where we're at. with that series of left-rights in the Saudi Arabian Grand Prix. Every time the race finishes, we go, well, no, there wasn't a massive pile-up where people blindly went into a pile of Formula One cars at 200 miles an hour.

Therefore, it's fine. It's just because it hasn't happened yet. Like, I'm holding my breath every Grand Prix. I actually think it's worse in qualifying. It's a horrible, horrible, terrible racetrack for qualifying because you have cars going slowly in places where cars shouldn't be going slowly through blind corners and things. It's a track like this where we have a minimum time limit, which at this track... isn't

isn't low enough isn't uh low enough so i i understand what you're saying with that really really bizarre analogy which is which is which is weird everyone i basically get it because i understand you more than anything else But as far as race days are concerned...

They've been fun and enjoyable for us. Okay, they're dangerous and yeah, dad head on, blah, blah, blah. But I've raced at dangerous racetracks before and they're fun when you're in the seat. How would you best defend yourself against a dolphin? I would put itching powder between me and the dolphin.

dolphin because they haven't got any hands so they can't scratch an itch and that's why they make that noise you've lost this you've lost it they can't scratch i would never be reincarnated as an animal that can't scratch an itch that's why dolphins make that sound They're just really itchy all the time.

There are various reasons we shouldn't be going to Saudi Arabia for a race. One of those is that the track is way too dangerous. Thank you, Brad. Brad, it's nice to have a professional race driver say that. At least, like, it's not just me being, you know.

It's way less dangerous than the Nürburgring. I watch it through, and there's a reason we don't run Formula One cars on the North Cipher. I watch that. Nürburgring's too dangerous for most cars. You nearly killed me in a Peugeot. It's okay. But carry on your point, Brad.

No, that's it, really. I watch it through my fingers and I'm just relieved every time the race finishes that we haven't had a horrible injury. Just me, not just me then. And hopefully, with any luck, I'm entirely... entirely wrong and those poor fish are safe from those mean mean dolphins so is that australia now are we going on to australia alex sharp this is where it gets interesting okay brad lead us off into australia

Okay, so the main thing, the main note from Australia is that the Max Verstappen domination was halted. at least. That's probably the best way to put it because it's not like he stopped them winning races through the rest of the season or it was an immediate turnaround in form in terms of pace because it was still Verstappen right at the front. But...

he didn't win the race. And this stopped him from getting that 10 race winning streak that I think was one of the records that he was going for. Good! I mean, sorry, that was an unprovoked reaction. And... And I don't remember what happened to Perez, but this time Perez was a minute behind. So not only was it not a Red Bull win, it wasn't a Verstappen win, so it wasn't even a Red Bull podium. So quite a big difference.

However, in qualifying, so before we get to the race itself, qualifying still look like pretty clearly Red Bull are the ones to beat. Perez only three-tenths off pole this time, put him in third. Verstappen ahead by a couple of tenths. from Sainz. So continuing on from, you know, where he left off at the first race after his appendix operation at Saudi. Sainz, the form Ferrari driver, but Verstappen clearly out front again.

There was, again, no indication that Verstappen wasn't going to comfortably win the championship until the race began. Oh, this is a big one for you and me, Brad. Okay, who's on the... no asymmetric breaking that was all a big conspiracy side that's matt who is they definitely had asymmetric breaking and got taken away from them me and brad and who's in between is alex is a little bit in between so I was surprised by my reaction because I knew about the Australia thing.

But it's in the past. You don't put two and two together. And then we had the asymmetric accusations and the technical directive. Scarbs proposes his asymmetric breaking system. So that is nothing official. Scarbs just went.

How would this work if you wanted asymmetric braking? Well, you would have a little device that was sensitive to the g-force of the car, and that device, as it moved, would change the amount of hydraulic pressure that could go to each brake. And then you would have a spring that would return.

the that little little valve once you got to zero g you'd have to have a spring that then returned it to the center at center so when you hit the brakes on the straight it would be even breaking again as you go into the corner the g-force pushes your little thing over and i think the inside wheel would bite more

Therefore, you would be able to rotate the car more. It was similar to the McLaren thing we had years ago, wasn't it? McLaren had a similar device in Hackening's car years ago. Wasn't it similar? It was the fiddle brake.

It was an extra brake pedal and they could set it for either side. And it was the second pedal that the driver had to be able to operate correctly to make it worse. How do you think you're going to get away with that? Like an extra pedal? Like, yeah, they won't check. We'll be all right.

They got through a lot of races before the photographer took a picture of the inside and spotted it. And the thing with this is, I know there was a Red Bull mechanic that said, I build the car, therefore I've seen it. But, you know, you would have... a i'm sure and someone please someone from f1 team just tell me if i'm wrong you would basically you would have a brake assembly which would have cables with hydraulic attachments on it and you'd get your brake assembly plumb it all in and you'd go

plug that into the braking system, plug this one into the brake end, you wouldn't necessarily see where this asymmetric braking was. But then you look at this fault, and I was watching it back with Jolion Palmer's commentary, and they were talking really...

As if it was an engine blowout. Because it looked like a classic engine blowout. You've got smoke coming. And it's Palmer straight away. And by the way, Julian Palmer, he is so spot on. He is so quick assessing these things. He goes, what's even failed on that? hang on a minute hang on a minute it's one side of a break and then looking back on it now watching it with you know fresh eyes you kind of go oh yeah

It's a brake failure on one side where it clearly looks like it's been locked on, almost as if the spring that brings it back to the centre didn't quite do its job properly. And you go, oh, my God, it's so obvious now. Let's have Brad and then Matt. So the thing that... that most annoyed me about this, this whole discussion was regardless of whether or not there was an asymmetric breaking tool, the reaction of the...

no, there definitely isn't one people was that no F1 team would ever cheat. I can't believe you would suggest a Formula One team would have a secret device. All the mechanics would know about it. And one of the mechanics said it's not there. We have... Hundreds, probably, of documented cases of where an F1 team has definitely had a system. I'm just going to pull one completely out of thin air. The BAR extra...

fuel tank. I guarantee all the mechanics didn't know that that was, that they had this thing that was technically illegal because it held a bit of extra fuel. Ferrari fuel flow. Yeah. Allowed them to run with less fuel or less weight for the first flexible fuel lines. Yeah. Yeah, there are so many examples of where a team's upper design team or maybe management know about a thing that they're doing which is on the line or if they get caught, it's probably not allowed. But they just do it.

And there's no way they just put out a memo to everyone in the team. I know you're working on the front wing in the garage or you're the tire pressure engineer. But just so you know, we've got this thing that's proper dodgy.

It's just preposterous to suggest that a team, especially Red Bull, wouldn't have a thing which was like maybe a bit tricky. I mean, it's really clever. If they had this thing, that's a really, really clever way of doing it. And if they managed to do it in a way that can't... get found out until it goes wrong like fair play for the ingenuity because you would hide it in a brake assembly and your average FIA steward is not going to see that and I do love the idea you know of

of Derek in admin in Red Bull going, OK, remember, guys, 1330. It's Steve's birthday, so we're going to gather with cake. Also, everyone, remember, we're changing the company pens. So go and line up for you. And also, we've got an asymmetric braking device. It's massively illegal. Don't tell anyone. Matt.

Nico, please don't talk about the illegal tire test when you get up in front of the present Monaco. We've got to let Matt get in as the sole person. And in fact, Matt, you were so... We were speaking to some quite important people in Formula. And you said...

that me thinking it was an asymmetric braking device was an embarrassment to Miss Apex. That's what you said. Possibly. We were about eight beers in. But I don't remember. We were about eight beers in. I deny all knowledge of such a thing. I could have misremembered. No, no, the thing that I recall, this got flagged up because it came up in the 2026 regs as a thing that had been outlawed.

which made Scarbs go, well, here's how such a thing could potentially work. Because when they were talking about the engine regulations, they were talking about a way that they could introduce this sort of asymmetric braking that would replicate the action of the fiddle brake that McLaren ran.

scarves came up with this idea and the next thing you know like red bull is clearly guilty of it yep i'm glad you agree now i'm not saying they weren't up to something because probably they were i just don't think it was that That's all. Alex?

What I also found interesting about the match retirement was, watching the highlights, the Australian fans went mental. They were so happy and cheering. So does that still class as British bias? Or does that also mean that other countries also don't like Red Bull? I've got a sort of mini answer to that point, which is the British fan base is a huge side of that fan base. And also Max Verstappen is the dominant.

driver there so I think it's much more about dominant driving I don't think if Max Verstappen had done everything exactly the same but been third in the previous championships he's not going to get booed or jeered or cheered for having a brake failure. It's purely tall, poppy syndrome. Absolutely. What we saw unfold in front of us, though, was a smoking right rear brake and then...

Max obviously slowing down. At first, he didn't slow down. He kept pushing. Fair play to him. Clearly had a problem. He was just still really fast through those sweepers halfway through the lap. And he came into the pits. And clearly on TV, the right rear brake assembly just exploded and fired itself into the pit wall off to the right. Like a real obvious, like, boom. It's like, that is definitely broken. So we knew from that moment, okay, this...

Total domination we'd seen for nearly double-digit number of races. Max is just going to win. It was like the Schumacher years all over again. He just wins every single race we watch. That had ended, and it was then kind of open to anyone else. And who was it that emerged at the front? It was Carlos Sainz. Again, Carlos Sainz. And that was one of our arguments. Like when Red Bull said it was a break issue.

They said it had been on from the start, basically, that the first time he applied the brakes, the right brake had stock, right rear brake had stock. But that was an argument we had, whether or not Sainz legitimately had the pace. Or if Verstappen's pace was hobbled by this mechanical incident, whatever it was. It's a great comment in our live chat. And hello to our patrons in the live chat. You can join them there at patreon.com forward slash Mr. Apex. Hayden says...

The best evidence that Mercedes have never broken any rules during their era is we know James Vowles can't keep a secret. Can you imagine if it was him in charge of the asymmetric braking? They'd have gone in there like, is there anything? Dodgy there. You go, no, everything's above board. We fit the asymmetric braking device as normal. And we refute all these allegations of cheating. And he'd walk away thinking that he'd absolutely nailed that interview. So something else un-Red Bull related.

that I've got in my notes for this race was we just had two races where Hamilton's been outqualified by Russell. In this race, he didn't even make it into Q3. So comfortably outqualified by Russell. It definitely wasn't a... oh, Hamilton's qualifying pace fell off in the second half of the season thing. This was now a trend, the first three races. And just to top it off, his engine failed. So we spoke about bulletproof reliability of this generation of cars.

Hamilton actually had a genuine engine failure, from what it looks like, at least, on the replay of the race I saw. I don't know whether that ever was expanded upon in news reports afterwards. Yeah, it was a power unit failure. I don't remember why. And they'd had cooling issues the race before, too. So they and Williams were struggling a bit. But interestingly, McLaren, not so much. Mercedes cooling issues.

Matt, I was speaking to Meg earlier in the week and just going, it's not a new thing. Mercedes are talking at the moment as if, yeah, I'll... Oh, I think we talked about it on the Patreon pod as well. They're talking about it like, oh, yeah, if we can just sort these recent cooling issues out, they've always had it. They've always run their cooling on the limit. And they've always burned up their rear tires. And the character of the car is the character of the car.

And it's hard. It's hard to get beyond that from a design point of view, I think. It will be interesting to see. Is George Russell now the team leader? Has he been driving the direction of development? since the beginning of last year and what effect might that have on their prospects with Antonelli. I think we're definitely into the realms of speculation. But at that point, I have to admit, I had forgotten.

how sort of early these kind of Hamilton issues had started. Obviously, he can't control an engine failure. My big one from this was McLaren. So I looked at... The situation where Piastri was asked to move over for Lando Norris and just immediately did. No issue. Just immediately did. So what was going on?

As we got to Italy and as we got to Hungary and as we got the Brazil sprint race, where did that all come from when at the beginning of the season, with no discernible points difference, he was just... Yeah, move aside. Yeah, that makes sense. It wasn't for a race win.

And that's what it came down to. And also, I think he was on five lap younger tyres and was way, way, way quicker than Oscar. And Oscar was like, there's no point in me fighting this one. As far as what they did later in the season, I have no...

freaking idea um i think they lost their absolute mind and potentially lost a driver's championship out of it i do believe there was a small chance that lando could have at least taken that fight a little bit more serious um but yeah i think that's purely the case was Lando was way faster. Yeah, really, for me, it comes down to the five lap offset in tires. Norris was on five lap faster tires. But what I find interesting in our notes...

is we were already talking about the fact that McLaren suddenly looked to be incredibly fast on low fuel in the last stint in Australia. And much like you're talking about the Hamilton qualifying issues. I had no idea we'd already started looking at that early in the season at McLaren's last stint performance. You've got a good one in your notes here, Brad, about the Russell crash. That was a genuinely scary one.

Really bad race for Mercedes in general. So yeah, Hamilton engine failure. And then right near the end of the race, we had this strange situation where George Russell thought... Fernando Alonso had effectively break-tested him at whatever that corner's called. I've got no idea what the corner names or numbers are at Australia, but the kind of medium to fast right-hander about a third of the way into the lap.

Alonso slowed earlier than normal, but it looked to me watching like Russell was quite far behind him still and kind of overreacted, lost control, had an accident where he spun. back onto the track, and having lost one of the rear wheels, I think the left rear wheel, the car bounced up onto its side, and Russell was effectively on his left side.

with the bottom of the car exposed to any car coming around the corner. And it's probably obvious to say this, but Formula One cars are designed to withstand impact. When they hit things on the front, the rear and the sides, but not the bottom. Was it the bottom? In my memory, it was the head side that was facing oncoming traffic. No, it wasn't. It was the bottom. Russell's head was facing down the track. It was the unsighted.

It was his backside that was facing traffic. That explains more why he was so scared then, because he couldn't see anything. Yeah, I mean, I think I'd still rather it was that way around than having my head exposed. But you don't want to be T-boned. from underneath in a Formula One car. They just not, they don't have impact tests in that direction. So he was justifiably agitated on the radio and it was quite terrifying to hear his fear.

Anyone who's been in a race situation where they've been in an accident like that or any kind of accident where you are in a perilous position. Driver coaching last year, my very first session of the year at Brands Hatch, sat in the passenger seat. My driver lost control and rolled us into the gravel trap. And we were on our side, similar to Russell. And what's most frightening is you don't know who else is going to do a similar thing and hit you. And so, yeah, you can't get out.

You can't run away because if you unbelt, that's the moment someone's going to hit you. So anyway, yeah, scary moment. Mike, I had this in my notes as well, but my comment on it was no matter how much extra... extra we've taken in regards to safety with regarding the cars and formula one in general high speed f1 crashes are still really really scary and we all see these crashes and we and

Well, the ones that know, we're like, wow, they are big and dangerous and you've got away with something. We've had a couple at Australia, you know, years ago, Martin Brundle, and we had the massive Fernando Alonso one as well. Yeah, so I think despite the fact that we've increased safety and increased safety and increased safety, despite people moaning at Formula One for increasing safety as much as they have, it is still a really, really dangerous, scary sport.

It is. Some numbers for you. That particular corner, because I looked up the aftermath reports, 216 kilometers an hour, 135 miles for those of you who live in my country. And Alonso got a big fat penalty for that. And it was found that he slowed 100 meters earlier. than he normally did. And as it turns out, just the other side of that turn. Yeah. A DRS detection point. And he was trying to play games to keep Russell from being in DRS. And instead.

created a situation of immense danger. Alonzo would never. Surely not. Sorry, Spanners. No, you're okay. 100 metres early in F1 world is... massive there is unless you have a problem uh there is no reason to break a hundred meters earlier for a corner especially when you're in a race with somebody there that that's why it was deemed the break test

It's not a traditional brake check, but it definitely was enough to put a driver off. And not the first time we've seen Alonso do that either. He did it in Vegas as well to Hamilton, no? Hmm.

We'll have to look back on that. So next week, we'll look back on the last three races of 2023, 2024. That almost takes us to the end. But what I want to get is the panel's kind of general feeling as we... entered that kind of end of that first phase but matt have you got one last thing on australia it's a tiny thing and i only bring it up because it was effectively the end of logan sergeant's career the album crash and having to give up his ride

I think that's where it was obvious to everybody that he was done in the sport. Okay, we're going to have a fight again about Logan Sargent, are we? All right, I wasn't expecting that. All right, let's dust off that old one. Here we go. No. The thing that really struck me was between 23 and 24, it was already massively obvious that he wasn't up to scratch. He was having loads of crashes. It was silly. And then you had James Vowles come out and...

was defending him, was covering for him. And I would guess, I would suspect there was a bit of top cover where he gave stories to protect his driver, for which I respect. And then I also believe that financially, it made... no sense for them to get rid of logan sargent the reported figures for the first season was 50 million i have no even rumored figures for the second season but i i doubt

massively that his performance in the first season meant Williams said oh you can have the second time for free like some old western right so no they didn't just suddenly go we're gonna not receive money for you for the second season and take you as a talent hire

after the performance of the first season. So all that talk about, well, we want to build together, we want to build forward, just meant another check was signed. Another check was signed. So to me, there wasn't any more doubt. It was just about...

whether Williams could sort out that financial situation and by the time they got into the middle of 2024 it turns out they could because in all likelihood Colopinto as much as we love him and think he's a superstar in all likelihood Colopinto came in with enough money

to make sacking Logan Sargent economically viable. So I slightly disagree with that, Matt. I think the writing was on the wall for whether he was there as a merit hire, and it was more about how much money could Williams get instead. I'm just drawing that as a definitive line where you knew, looking backwards, this is William saying, it's just a matter of time for Sargent because we're making him give up his car for Albon.

Okay, so at the end of those first three races, Max Verstappen was in the lead of the championship, but only by four points. So 51 points from Charles Leclerc. Sergio Perez doing a sterling job, despite whatever Brad says. 26, right up there, Brad, right up there. And Carlos Sainz, incredibly unlucky to not be leading the championship. So Carlos Sainz was on 40 points, 11 points behind. It's hard to argue that in...

Saudi Arabia with Leclerc finishing I think P3 in Saudi so that's 15 points he was running better than Leclerc at the beginning of the season he was probably going to score at least 12 points because he had the same car as Leclerc and would have finished fourth, probably at a minimum, that if we'd have gone into this period with Sainz leading the championship, the narrative might have been different. It might have been. I'm not sure I see him outscoring.

over the whole season, Leclerc still, because I think they were moving the car to benefit Charles. But I know you love useless statistics. I don't. Here's one. George Russell at that point had crashed out of all three. of Carlos Sainz wins. And that's about the most useless stat I think I've ever found, but it is funny. That is some Texas sharpshooter fallacy goodness right there. My favorite statistic from this is looking at the...

The points from the first three races, Lando Norris is in sixth place with 27 points. And no one, I think, is suspecting him.

of creeping up the table but by the time we get to the end of the season he is the number two driver so when we say to people don't panic at the beginning of a season if your driver is doing well don't get confident if your driver is disappearing into the distance especially in a season where they've already said they're basically changing the rules after race 11 there is going to be so much to play for from beginning to end so this has been a quite good look back

And I think this has inspired me to go, guys, we do have to pick a race and do a watch through and a little bit of a mini review of a historic Grand Prix if anyone has the appetite for it. Silverstone 08. That just happened. You're at 99. That was five minutes ago. We can do that. So Silverstone 08 was the massa doing his best impression of a fine Russian ballerina throughout the course of the Grand Prix. Is that all you wanted to watch that for? Just to...

It was a truly wonderful performance just from Lewis and a couple of other drivers in that race as well. I think Barrichello was particularly good in that race as well.

well so um yeah it was and it's just it is a historic moment you know it was it was it was one of the coming of age drives of Lewis Hamilton who we are quite fond of on this podcast i'm neutral but alex i'm not neutral about waiting for when your next cart build video comes out part two came out and just too long between seasons i was

I mean, three's been out as well, to be fair. Yeah, I knew that, of course. What I mean is... where's cart build four where is it so where can we find the edit right now and if i wasn't doing this show it would probably have been out tonight but Now it'll probably be out tomorrow. So search for Alex Vanjeen, V-A-N-G-E-E-N on YouTube, where he's putting bits of go-kart together.

Basically. And then on Thursday, Brad's coming to my house to fit my stickers and that'll go in a video too. Putting stickers on things. So you're basically doing sticker dolly dress book, but for go-karts. Honestly. When it comes to stickers and stuff, I'm terrible. I'm so bad at doing stickers that when it comes to even making Lego, I get my wife to do the stickers.

It's not even a joke. It's absolutely entirely true. No doubt it's a joke at all. And then after that one comes out, there will then be the one from our race that we had a few weeks ago, where I finally have... undone all the bad work from the last few years and beaten you in a go-kart race yes alex not just beat me outperform me throughout the whole event and brad has got a video on that where me and alex didn't feature at all that's not quite true

I said hello. I featured at the beginning of the video eating chips. I was like, ah, thanks for throwing me under the bus there. And eating tarmac too. And for when I decided to lean down, kiss the tarmac and beg it for some more grip. But Brad, your YouTube channel has been going great. You've got a coaching channel, so thedrivercoach.com. So, yeah, I do have a driver coaching YouTube channel and website. The website is theracecoach.com.

The driver coaching YouTube channel is mainly for the people who I've done the sessions with, so they can watch their sessions back. But it is public. So if you search for the race coach, you can have a look there. My YouTube channel I really care about is my one, just Brad Philpott. And essentially, it's all the same events Alex does, just... much better produced videos and it's racing at the front rather than

wherever he is yeah and there's the reason that you guys didn't feature in my most recent video is because i was focusing on what was happening at the front we tried our bet we made the a final and we still didn't make it it's only because the people in the front of the a final weigh four kilos like don't weigh the

weight of normal grown humans. We made it to the big show and we didn't get lapped. We deserved our moment. I know, I know. But I mean, it's also the same when we do weighted events. Shut up. You're so lucky I can't. This is a safer work podcast. So just go check out, just search Brad Philpott on YouTube and there's going to be heavily produced videos through the rest of this year. So the race season starts for us in April.

There's going to be videos all the time up until then, but the good ones start at the season. I was today looking at just how many cameras I can fit on my go-kart, and I'm racing in a much faster category this year, so it's going to be cool. And of course, follow me and Matt on our social media links. We'll put them in the show notes below as well as those other two guys. But the number one thing you can do for us, especially at the beginning of the season.

is to just tell a couple of friends that Missed Apex is a good place to hang out. and have a bit of a parasocial experience talking about Formula One. We've got a great community with a ton of interaction, and you can come and support us in our Patreon community as well. But word of mouth has always been... our biggest marketing tool. So even if you've got eight friends on Facebook or you're saying it to Jeff at the water cooler at work and just mention, oh yeah, are you into Formula One?

I listen to Missed Apex podcast, M-I-S-S-E-D, Missed Apex podcast, because like it's a generally fine hangout and they're not experts or anything, but I like listening to them and or shouting at their opinions. That is the absolute number one thing anyone can do to support Mist Apex Podcast. We've got a new season ahead, and I'm so, so excited to share that with you. Until we see you next, work hard, be kind, and have fun. This was Mist Apex Podcast.

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