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Good thing there's Employment Hero. Our all-in-one system puts HR, payroll, hiring and more all in one place. One system, everything employment. Go to employmenthero.co.uk to see what else we can do for you. Welcome to Missed Apex Podcast, it's our Chinese Grand Prix race review. I'm your host Richard Reddy, but my friends call me Spanner, so let's be friends. If you want to hear my sprint race review, it's still available. I recorded it yesterday and it's on all your podcasts.
today we will be focusing on the thrilling chinese grand prix and look i'm the first to say that sometimes an f1 race is allowed to be boring however i was promised chaos And I was really, really looking forward to it. I told so many people to tune in. The tyres are going to disintegrate. We've got guys up front who might fall back. We've got vast guys coming through. It's going to be just punching chaos from start to finish.
And that just goes to show never hope for anything because life just disappoints and only gets worse. But there's loads of interesting things to talk about, as in it's episode two of Formula One 2025. So lots of stories are unfolding. Hands up in the audience if you came here just to watch me eat humble pie about piastri. Christian's put his hand up. Come on, guys. Come on. You know I'm going to double down.
Why are you getting your hopes up? You know I'm going to double down. This is your fault. You click on the episode. No, it was a great day for Piastri. Exactly the kind of conditions and races where he excels and the kind of races where his fans will point and go, look. That's what we see. That's what we see, Spanners. Also, a little bit of an underperforming weekend for Norris. An amazing low-key start for Russell and Mercedes this weekend. And another scruffy weekend for Ferrari.
who will be disappointed despite a sprint win for Lewis Hamilton. 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're first. I'm joined in the shed gladly and unexpectedly by Matt Toon.
who's made his way to the UK and is in Catman's shed. That's right. After listening to last week's show, at least several listeners missed me. So I got on a plane. And I even took a bus just so I could be here and celebrate the fact that Haas has gotten their season off to the best start in quite some time. Yeah, obviously you make all these predictions pre-season.
And you go, OK, well, there's always going to be a result that makes your preseason predictions look crazy. So I predicted good things for hires and things remaining as normal for Williams. And so obviously in the last race, Williams are like... the second best team somehow, and Haas are having a disaster. So I'm still wrong about both those teams, but I'm less wrong than I was last week.
Yeah, well, I was just going to ignore the fact that Haas was even in the first race and say this is the best start to the season they've had in quite some time. This is the real beginning. Yeah, this is the real beginning. Australia doesn't count. Not a track. Really far away. And we're also joined, because I didn't get the chaos from the Chinese Grand Prix, at least I can get the chaos from Christian Pedersen. Hello, Christian. You call me in when the races are a little bit dull, don't you?
No, I think inviting you on is what causes the races to be dull, but it does seem to work out like that. Yeah, I will do my best to live up to that expectation. So we've actually, we've got a little bit of a, you know, a little bit of a spread. So I'm going out and out and going like that was nearly Singapore levels of dull for that Grand Prix. Matt actually thinks is going for fascinating.
race which feels like a stretch and I think Christian's somewhere in between. I like the race but I like the race primarily because we are used to getting a Bahrain start, right? and bahrain china and those tracks are more or less the same here we get two completely different tracks so i was just looking forward to the track basically just from uh
looking at the sector times, looking at how they do on the tyres, stuff like that. So apart from the wear thing, we'll get to why the race didn't pop in the tyre wear stuff later. Apart from that... We did get to see like a baseline performance of the cars. Nothing particularly strange was happening. And so when we talk about is something representative, this track and this race was representative of everything except. high wear high deg performance i think i i don't want to
This is Matt's role, basically, but it is a really hard track on the left tire, isn't it? It's really, really hard on the left tire. And I think it's the longest straight on the calendar as well. It's a very good combination of what it takes to build a Formula 1 car. So I think we got a pretty good, decent picture in the drive today on where everyone stands, more or less. Let's see what happens with all the penalties.
Oh yeah, right. It's a watching brief for the penalties at the moment. So under investigation is Hamilton, Leclerc and Gasly. So from what I've seen, I'm expecting all three to be announced as disqualified by the time we finish. this show matt yeah so i i'm going to disagree with christian in terms of the track it is a very good track to evaluate a lot of the characteristics of the car but the
big joker in that evaluation was the resurfacing of the track. We saw its behavior change so much over the weekend. And very clearly, based on the post-race investigations, some of the teams were well off.
with how they set their cars up between changing from the sprint race to the qualifying, and they got it wrong for the Sunday. So I think there's room for things to move up and down, but I think relatively... we we've got an idea of where the pace is and all the cars and it pretty much matches what we thought pre-season with mclaren being the tippy top let's start there let's start there then so mclaren has the best car by by a lot
in these conditions. And so if you look at the three events, Australian Grand Prix, Chinese Grand Prix and Sprint Race, overall, the McLaren is looking really strong to the point that there was only two drivers who had a shot of winning today. McLaren are clear. After Australia, McLaren just won basically the championship, right? And then we saw the sprint race. And in some aspects, they were nowhere.
I mean, Norris just couldn't do anything from, was it 6th, 7th? Of course he could, and he didn't have the option to change tires and stuff, but it showed us they are not in it already. They haven't won it yet. And then the race just completely threw everything on his head and the qualifying threw everything on his head. So I'm not sure if I'm that much wiser. I'm still in McLaren's got it kind of camp.
changed a little bit, I'd say. Yeah, so just to jump onto that, I'd say where McLaren is is they probably are a good two or three tenths clear, all things being equal, but... The car itself isn't a no-brainer to drive. They've lost some of the friendliness that they had last season. We saw Nora struggle with it. We saw Piastri struggle with it in qualifying. So where it is is...
They've got the margin, but it's a much more dangerous margin than they previously had. Okay. So the caveat in that is Ferrari's obviously got some pace because they went and won the sprint race. Yeah. They've made some changes? Lewis went, oh yeah, we made some changes and now it's over steering. Really? You made some changes for the car that easily won the sprint race? Well, that's a fantastic decision.
Thanks for that. At least we know the source of those issues at Mercedes when they go, it's looking really strong on Friday. Let's just tinker with stuff a little more. The most interesting thing I thought was how it came alive, the Ferrari, when it was on the tires after like 15 laps or so. It almost...
awoken the Ferrari, just as we saw with Verstappen in today's race, basically. What happened with the Red Bull all of a sudden? So there's something with the tires and probably, as Matt said, the tarmac, the new tarmac in China and stuff like that.
But there is something going on here that suddenly a team can just pop and then it disappears again. So that's my only caveat with the Williams, with the, oh, that's me wishful thinking, with the Williams dominance. That's my only thinking with the McLaren dominance is... If Ferrari get their act together, there might be somewhere to catch up. But at the moment, they're clear.
Yeah, and I just want to address that a little bit because all of the teams had to change because the track was changing and because the weather was different on the Sunday and because they only had the one practice on the Friday. It was a bigger guessing game than usual. Clearly, McLaren and Red Bull did the best job. Seems like Ferrari might not have gotten it correct based on the... Post-race investigations, for example. But that'll be a Ferrari engineering issue.
more than just a Ferrari Ferrari-ing issue. But I really want to get to the McLarens to start with, because it's such a fantastic weekend for the McLarens and for Oscar Piastri. And so both drivers were talking about how difficult it was.
It was to drive. So they're not having it their own way. And Norris was saying, well, I've just left something on the table, especially at the beginning of the weekend. And then towards the end of the weekend, he was making these comments of, he was trying to hint. that he was being magnanimous about not talking about his pace because he kept being asked could you have gone and attacked Piastri and he's like
I don't want to say anything. It doesn't matter. But with like a cheeky side eye and a cheeky smile trying to imply, yeah, of course I could have done. I mean, I could have done. Don't worry about it. Don't ask me to say more. I don't think he could, but that's not the point.
that i'm making here now i think the point is when you've got a difficult car to drive and he was struggling throughout the weekend and you saw him finally get to the pace because i think he did have some pace towards the end of the right you know but come race day piastri didn't piastri was on top of that
nearly straight away and was the one challenging in the sprint race was the one challenging Lewis Hamilton in the end and and then obviously getting at that pole position as well with less mistakes throughout the course of that qualifying session And then being ahead, even if they had the same pace for the race, Piastri's already earned that preferable positioning and the fact that he didn't have to deal with Russell's undercut. He's already earned that by getting up to speed.
quicker and being more consistent quicker in the weekend? Well, I think this is a really good one to talk about because we all remember Norris throwing it off the track, looking like he might take pole position in the sprint race away. But that's because McLaren, trying to save soft tires, had them do two runs. First run, they were overweight with fuel. Second run, they weren't on brand new tires, which everybody else was. So you could...
Blame Norris for that, whereas Piastri put in a more measured one. But Piastri did do better. But on the race, I was very excited because clearly everybody was saving tires. It was going to be a 10-lap showdown. And then his pedal went. So I don't think we can say we fully have the data. But what was interesting was that when they were in traffic. both McLarens did seem to struggle a lot, which is the main reason why Piastri was not able to catch Hamilton even in the sprint.
I think there's another aspect to that. I think we are seeing Norris this year being more maybe confident in himself. trying to hype himself up when being interviewed, but not overly hype himself up. So, whereas a couple of years ago he would say, I'm not sure, he will now say, I'm pretty sure I can do that.
But he's not going to say, I'm going to do that like Verstappen does. So he's still like in the middle ground. I think that is the aspect to it as well. I think we're seeing Norris grow up. And just to put a caveat on that, my clear impression, I hear everyone is... hyping Piastri and I think he's an excellent driver. I think half the hype of Piastri is coming from the Mark Webber, David Coulthard and rest in peace Eddie Irvine crowd.
Those people are very good at their job. They know what they're doing in the paddock. And if the paddock is talking about a driver, we're going to talk about the driver. Even though what happens on track. Well, we can talk about whole season predictions and how they've changed. So my view of Piastri isn't affected by this race. And, you know, people will come at me and go, oh, yeah, look, he's won the race. You have to change your mind now.
But I've got many hours of video of me saying Piastri is very fast. He can win a race. There's never been an issue with that. And when he came into Formula One... And I think he won a sprint race quite early on. We were on the Piastri train and I'm not a Norris fan. So I get accused of this British bias. Really was hoping that Piastri would be the one to kind of come in and show.
Maybe that Norris was overhyped, which was my thinking at the time. And then this tyre management issue, specifically on highway races, towards the end of stints would look vulnerable. And I thought that was the limiting factor.
And so that's my sad. That's what I've said. And I knew that when I was quite strong on those opinions, I go, well, at some point, Piastri is going to win a race, right? Piastri is going to win a race. He's capable of winning a race. And then I'm going to have to deal with people going, oh, yeah.
And it happened immediately. It happened immediately. But there's absolutely no denying his performance in these conditions during this race weekend. And I think Norris is wrong to imply, oh, I could have had him because we saw him. try and close the gap down. If you were watching on the lap times, they were doing like 37.6, 37.8. And then you saw Norris, without any radio, just cheekily kind of go, okay, 36.5. Try and close the gap up. And Piastri had an answer at every single point.
So I think Piastri completely had him covered. And as we always say, that you cannot tell the pace of the front car. And I think maybe Norris thinks that actually really if he'd pushed the issue, he had pace. But we don't know.
We don't know how much more pace Piastri had, and there was no danger of those tyres dropping off at all. So I think it's a 10 out of 10 weekend for Piastri, and Norris has got to look at that and go, yeah, in those conditions, I'm not always going to have it my own way. I agree.
Yeah, I'm still going to leave it out that because of the brake pedal issue, everyone was saving their tires for the last 10 laps. And this is why I was so excited about this race, because you could see it. Once they went to a one-stop, you knew that everyone was going to... keep the tires fresh, and then pull the trigger as soon as they thought they could use the last 50% of the tire up, catching whoever they were trying to catch. And we were robbed of that.
Piastri had enough pace to not be worried by Norris, but Norris didn't really get the chance to give it the full effort because of the mechanical. So can we say Piastri can win a race, manage his tires? Yes. Did he have more than Norris left at the end when he's in front? We don't know the answer yet. And I'm looking forward to finding out though. When he had his little mini charge.
at piastri he had a little mini go and i think it was at the point where maybe lewis had already done his stop and they came on the radio so last week the completely made up excuse for them not fighting was the the lapped cars wasn't it Oh, no, we'd love you to overtake, but those cars who you can just breeze by and are going to let you by anyway, they're too much of a hazard, guys. Oh, wouldn't you know it? We've now passed the window and we've made a decision. So today it was...
Oh, you might want to watch that left front, Lando. No, he was on the radio, wasn't he, going, that's all right. No, no, really, you might want to look out for that left front and not push and not try and close that cap down. So I think McLaren both ways. We're trying to protect their drivers and trying, if at all possible, let's just bring it home. They don't want to come on the radio and say, bring it home as it is, because they've made a big deal of free to race.
Oh, I would agree with that. If I'm sitting on the pit wall, I'm like, please give me a reason for Norris to not catch Piastri. And the brake pedal was beautiful. They pressed the long brake pedal button in the car, and Norris was like... No, I think they tried to say, you know, we've got to protect from the graining for sure. I doubt they pressed a button for a hydraulic leak. If those three tens ahead of the pack is something that is going to keep it up.
We're going to see it. It's going to be inevitable. They're going to fight it out. And in my opinion, I see Norris coming out as the winner of that. So, yeah, long term, if the qualifying is going to be really key. Then if you look at last season, Norris outqualified him, I think 20 to four. So 20 to four. And so if there's anything close to that, it would be quite an amazing turnaround to even bring that back to even.
So if Piastri was able to bring that back to even, then he's fully in the fight as well. And then we'll see, of course, when tyre wear and pace dropping off comes into it more. whether that has been ironed out over the winter it absolutely could have done it might happen at any point my predictions are only based on what we've seen in those conditions in the past so i think what proved that the hards weren't going to go off is
This is where you miss out if you're not watching the lap times coming in. There wasn't actually that much of a drop-off at all, Matt, was there? And so the undercut worked to some extent because you've still got a faster tyre on. But for example, the drivers were going faster, the McLarens were going faster in a little bit of a show you what you've got back and forth about 30 laps into the run than they were doing after five laps into that second run.
Yeah, so what I want to say about that was the first undercut, because some people did run a two-stop strategy. The first undercut was actually incredibly powerful. And the reason for that is very simple. The stark tires, the mediums, almost everyone on the mediums, grained up immediately. So when you went onto that hard tire, you had a huge...
overspeed on your rival. The first people to do this, and I apologize, I'm bringing the midfield into it, was Sunoda and then Ocon. They pitted first on about lap 14. and went onto the hard tire and you could see immediately they had lots of pace and very rapidly you had the rest of the front runners coming in.
People who went on to do it a second time were much less successful for that exact reason. No one had run the hard tire. So it was a guess how it would perform. But in combination with a cooling track. and a lighter car and hotter tires when you come out of the pits. The hearts were just magical. That's the C2 at this race if you're playing bingo at home.
I don't have a lot more to say on graining. I think Pri and Christian are just doing... Me neither. Matt's saying things about tyres now. Even when I download the transcript, it just says like asterisks, Matt says things about tyres. Close asterisks. That's the end of it. But yeah, I think there's not a huge amount left with McLaren. But I am finding the psychology between the two drivers interesting. I think Norris thinks...
He's the fastest driver. If they're clear of the pack, then Piastri is going to be a pain, is going to be a pain and sort of be a bit of a ruiner. And hopefully so, because if it is a dominant McLaren, we don't want one driver disappearing off. I'd rather have a Hamilton-Rosberg style fight than, you know, a Verstappen 2020. I do see Pierre Asriel as a good human. I think he's a good guy. Actually, I know he's a sportsman and he will do what he can to win, but he's...
He seems to have a good heart, don't he? He seems to be a good person. And I don't see good persons create really, really bad things, to be honest. So positives then for Piastri was the speed. To me, it's the speed he got up to. Up to speed. Damn. The speed he got up to speed for the sprint weekend with that stark comparison to Norris, who not only struggled with ultimate pace in the sprint qualifying, but also had that weird little off.
where he was racing people but it seemed to be like he got pushed off by a ghost car that's what it felt like it like you're pushed by a ghost car and then hit the brakes on the grass lost about four places and then just got stuck behind lance stroll for for most of the sprint race there as well speaking of ghost car did we see the graphic where they did the qualifying laps with a ghost car so you had it from verstappen's perspective
and then you had the ghost Ferrari of Hamilton, and you could see exactly where the differences were between the braking, where they concertinaed. Very educational, right? But how has it taken so long for that to happen? Yeah. Do you reckon they did it? They went, we could have a ghost car. And everyone just went, oh, all this time we could have just done that. It was amazing.
It was. I think F1 TV has been doing it certainly this season, and they might have even done it at the end of last season. So it's been coming online, but probably from the graphics point of view, it's a bit of a challenge to put it all together. All right. Where do we want to go next, Matt? I think...
Go on, have you got opinions? What's up, Christian? There's a lot of Ds and Qs. I know. I actually put in the Discord, Christian, Matt, don't respond to that yet. Really? Well, let's just do it. We'll just do it now. We'll just do it now. So, yeah. I mean, we could take to Ferrari, and then it would come automatically, wouldn't it? Why don't you tell us who's been disqualified then, Christian? Am I up to date if I'm saying Gasly, Leclerc?
Hamilton? Both Ferraris disqualified. Ouch! So this is the plank wear issue for Hamilton that they were worried about in Australia and ended up having to raise the ride height to protect against it. And they've fallen foul of it again. And if you're the stewards, it's a no-brainer to check.
Hamilton and Leclerc's ride height, isn't it, after the issues they've had? Should we maybe just briefly tell if someone's listening and they don't know what the plank is underneath every car? There's like a wooden plank. It's in the middle of the car. Every car has it. It's basically just put on the bottom of the car. And that is what you see touching the floor or the atomic when they go really low. You are allowed to use some of that wood.
from the scraping, but not a lot. What is it? 0.2 millimeters or something like that, Matt? I don't remember the exact number. It's 10. mil to start and i think they're allowed one millimeter of wear that's true um but we have a question actually from the chat that's really good and goes along to that uh haric leah wants to know what's the difference between plank assembly and plank where so the plank actually is attached to the car in like
two or three different sections. And it's made out of a glass wood laminate. And they're very specific. They have titanium skid blocks that makes the sparks. And then at very specific points, there's wear holes. And the FIA will measure them after the race. And if they're below a certain thickness, then you're basically automatically disqualified. Because what it means is you ran an illegal ride height. The car ran too low.
The reason they don't want you to do that is because if you bottom it out too much, you lose all your downforce. It's a safety issue. So it's a technical infringement and an automatic DSQ. And this is what's happened to Hamilton. Ferrari's defense, it is also hard to get that right when you have very little actual practice running, which is what happens on sprint weekends. So this is not the first time we've seen a problem. Wow.
Nine other teams managed to get it right, didn't they, Ferrari? That just adds to the list of Ferrari-ness that has happened at the beginning of this season. And Lewis Hamilton is now, he's getting the full Ferrari experience. He's definitely getting his money's worth. And it all started off...
so brilliantly as well like i said i think we've mostly covered the the sprint race stuff and you can still go back and listen to that sprint race review but after the sprint race finished it's like ferrari just dropped off a cliff Yeah, it is. Although I think if I was Hamilton, I take a win in the sprint race and a disqualification in the main race because a win is a win is a win. I think, yeah, after today, if you'd have just leaned over into Hamilton's car and gone.
By the way, you've just been disqualified from that. He'd just go, yeah, fine. Yeah, sure. You're not going to argue that one. You're not going to march to the steward's office to defend that. So why am I so miffed with Ferrari? I think a few key things went wrong. so really positive after the sprint race going well hamilton isn't aging ever he's never gonna age he's never gonna lose pace he's just looked really good against leclerc not only in the three sprint qualifying sessions
but also has out-qualified him in just a normal qualifying session as well. I mean, there's some caveats to that because Leclerc has openly said he doesn't like the track here and he's not the fastest around there. And he's just put that all on him. He said, I'm just struggling here.
So on a not great Leclerc weekend, Hamilton was clear. He had a little bit of fat on that as well. And he's ahead of him. A couple of grid spots was ahead of him in the sprint race, won the sprint race. So he's still got it. That's fine. I think they're fairly even. I think I'm looking at the race pace today.
They looked fairly even as well. But I think we can start with just the changing of the setup. So, Matt, you're defending that and saying that they had to change something because it was going to be colder. Well, colder, longer race. You have to change for qualifying. Everybody makes these sort of evolutionary setup changes along the way. And obviously one of the biggest.
is is ride height so if i'm predicting if i'm setting up my car for a particular ride height with my tanks full and then everybody goes just that little bit faster Well, that means there's more downforce on the car, which means that the car bottoms more. It could just be a curb that they didn't use in the sprint race, got used a lot more.
And war, there's so many tiny things that can go wrong. But what it does tell you is Ferrari was trying to put it on the bleeding edge of the ride height margin. And they got it slightly wrong. It was about half a mil extra wear on Hamilton's plank is what I'm saying. What did Leclerc get disqualified for? That was for being underweight. Underweight. I don't know. That's not the wing because they're allowed to replace the wing.
And in fact, they replaced the wing. They used the correct weight for the intact front wing, removed the fuel, and he was about a kilogram. Under, I think. But that could also be Plankware. The other thing that I just want to mention randomly about Plankware is you're like, well, why did they pick Hamilton? Surely this is the FIA out to get him.
They actually use suspension measurements and they can target pretty effectively who is whose ride height is too low based on suspension telemetry. And that's why they know who to look at after the race. I can tell you from the official document on Leclerc, they changed the broken front wing, basically. They put on a new front wing to have the right measurement from the front.
And they empty the fuel and they got 799 kilograms. And that is a kilogram too little, isn't it? So basically just like Russell last year underweight. Yeah, so they were obviously worried about the plank wear. So the engineer, I don't know Leclerc's race engineer's name, but they said, okay, can you use less curb in turn six or whatever? And he just went, no. So there was loads of those radio messages.
where an engineer was, I've got all the information, I'm quite clever, I've been doing this for a long time, I need you to do this thing. And they just said no. So Tsunoda gets an honourable mention in dispatches at this point. He goes, I want to push my fronts more. No, we can't do that. Well, I'm gonna. Okay. And that didn't seem to work out great.
It does appear that the drivers are more in the strategy nowadays, doesn't it? The drivers are no longer just like robots in cars doing what the team says. Now it's more cooperation, and I like that. And I think we have some very intelligent drivers these days, probably the most intelligent racing drivers we've ever had. And racing drivers are intelligent, but from the chat comes the excellent observation. The question is, does that have...
to do with maybe switching to a one-stop strategy when everyone predicted a two-stop at the start of the race? And the answer is yes. In fact, that might very well be the case because there's tire wear. and tread wear that you had not planned for in a two-stop. Oh, right. And you're going to wear the tread down and run the car closer to the ground. So yes, absolutely. That could have been the thing. They might not have...
Good point. It left a margin for a one stop when they set the car up for today's race. All right. Yes. So that's exactly what happened to Russell in Spa. Everyone was predicting a two stop. And then Russell had the genius idea to run a strategy that they weren't set up to do.
And so perhaps Leclerc has done that same thing. So Hamilton didn't do it. So he didn't fall foul of the weight thing that Leclerc and Russell have. He fell foul of something different. If that is to be the case, something has to be changed because you... You have to be able to change your tyre strategy without ever getting underweight. You have to remove the tyres. Right, okay. We're going to get misunderstood here. So Sugis and Charles both saying yes.
Pointing out Hamilton was on a two stop. That's right. So we're specifically talking about the thing where you end up underweight from running a one stop when you're expecting to run a two stop. OK, that didn't happen to Lewis Hamilton. We're talking about what happened to. leclerc thank you greg yeah hamilton's disqualification was ride height not weight so we're specifically talking about the leclerc russell thing same phenomenon so really leclerc's team has to be kicking themselves even more
Because they had that. They had the spar case. That's now in their notebook. Look, I've got a list of things I'm mad at Ferrari about. Is this how it works to FOSI? Is this what we do? Do we make a list? Why would you ever weigh the car with the tyres on? I don't understand that from a perspective of how much the car weighs, because the tires shouldn't be a part of the car weight if you lose a lot of tires during the race.
Just strange, isn't it? So if they thought they were going to run a two stop, then they thought they would be weighed with much newer tires on. So why would you add extra weight or have extra weight, extra ballast, if you know you're going to be overweight?
on at the end of the race from your two-stop if you're pretty sure you're going to do a two-stop you never have to worry about what the car would weigh with very worn tires so that's the thing that's the thing that Leclerc and Russell fell foul of here so if i go down my list that wasn't even on my list of things to be mad at ferrari for wasn't even on my list so turn one was that on your list yeah that's my next one so yeah so that's not the reason why that's so bad is
You could kind of with Russell go, oh, it's a bit unlucky. I haven't really seen anyone caught out like that before. But Ferrari had a good example from Spa of why you don't switch from your minimum two-stop thinking. to suddenly then go and do a one-stop. Interesting that other teams didn't fall foul of it, so they must run a little bit more margin. Well, I think at least one other team did, but I think the real answer is always plan for a one-stop.
Okay. Yeah, and we've got, say, Adrian, who normally knows about these things, said that FIA can replace tyres with new ones if they think they're significantly lighter. Well, I don't think that happened in the Russell case, and we'll wait and see if that happened in the Leclerc case.
We'll keep watching brief on that. If anyone has any insights in that in the chat, let us know. I think we won't dwell on it. Yeah, lap one. I mean, I'm personally... Oh, we've got Whose Fault Is It For That? Whose Fault Is It? A little from column A, a little from column B. My feeling is that Leclerc was a little bit optimistic trying to get up the inside there. And had he kept complete control of it, he would have been all right. But he got spat out of the curve a little bit.
And you go, oh, straight away. That could so easily have been a puncher. But if you want to look from the Hamilton side, Hamilton knew, obviously, maybe, you know, Leclerc is there or whatever, but he took every inch that he could take to try and open up the left-hander. And I'm immediately going to disagree with you. He was moving over to block Max. I don't think he was even aware of Leclerc being there. Like I saw there was a backward looking shot and he just comes right over.
in front of max to keep him from coming up the inside into turn three so leclerc was saying no to his engineer when he said maybe a little less curb in turn two yeah and he said no And that is exactly what happened. He had a little bit of understeer from touching the curb. So the car basically just moved maybe like 20, 30 centimeters to the left, which he didn't account for.
And what was it? And in goes Hamilton! Whatever, he just came from nowhere, didn't he? But it's a perfectly normal line in turn two. Yep. So, yeah, I'll post that on a mistake from Leclerc there, really. So it was a bit of a nothing burger, but it so easily could have just been a flat tyre. And then we've got even more drama. And then, of course, Leclerc has to run the rest of the Grand Prix.
without that wing and so you're doing the maths and you go surely the 12 seconds to replace the wing on a track which at that point people still thought was going to throw up some some wear obviously at that point they didn't know If there was going to be higher wear, then clearly the most important area you want downforce is the front left. So it did seem a bit mad to keep him out there without that front wing end plate. It can't...
Matt, is 20 to 30 points of downforce a lot of downforce or an insignificant amount of downforce? 20 to 30 points is not insignificant. It will definitely make a difference in the handling. But again, I have kind of an interesting theory about why that actually worked out better for him. Okay. And I think what it is, is it's a... is a left front limited track for everybody. And it may be that in making the car more pointy, they had a little too much on the nose.
So what was happening was he was actually getting a better balance in the turn. No way. Because that inflate was gone and there was a little less push on it in the high-speed right-handers. However, I also think that some of that was just made up by the weight of the fuel in the car. So what you saw is as we got to the end of the race, he began to really struggle. And that's because the weight was no longer pushing the suspension down.
in addition to the downforce. And at that point, at the end of the race, that missing downforce actually made him a lot slower. So you have these 1,500, 2,000 people working around the clock, building tiny little bits of carbon-ish, deluxe-y NASA stuff. And then how much is that? There's $3 billion a year. budget and then everything is smashed and he just goes faster.
I mean, I'm looking at these pictures every week, just zooming in on little details, discussing with people, debates everywhere. Reddit is exploding with a little thingy thingy on a, on a, on wherever on the car. When it doesn't work, he actually goes faster. I mean, you ask yourself, what is going on here? I mean, someone needs to explain to me in TLDR. What is going on? I love thinking about Paolo in the shop there and sitting there just going...
It's falling off and it's dropping no... And he's been arguing in the office for ages why it needed to be a very specific curve line. And in the end, it didn't look that critical. You know, it's better than the Haas engineer who...
would just put that end plate on Magnussen's car every single race, knowing full well he was wasting his time. But yeah, it's an interesting one, for sure. But they shouldn't have been making that contact. They want to look out. I don't think either of them is trying to be... really aggressive or wipe out their teammate of course but do you think they should have swapped the costs i haven't finished being mad about this thing yet so my one thing from that going forward is
Leclerc is being a little more aggressive when they've had the wheel-to-wheels lap one than Hamilton. Hamilton has yielded a couple of times. Or a couple of times. It's only been one race. Oh, no, yeah. It was two restarts, wasn't it? There was a restart.
So there was the start and the restart where Hamilton yielded to Leclerc and was a bit polite. Here he was a bit more aggressive and Leclerc was as aggressive as he normally is. That might be something to look out for. They'll probably come together at some point. Similar pace, both wanting that play. It's a mark against them as teammates. That's all, Matt. But we've seen this with signs too. You know, like they, Leclerc and Hamilton are both very, very, very, very good race car drivers.
And I would imagine even if they're doing full-on battle, well, I mean, you saw what Sainz and Leclerc got up to and managed to not hit each other. I would imagine they'll be similar. This episode is brought to you by Thriver, the personalized blood testing service that helps you feel your best today and spend more years in good health.
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and being led by my biases and optimistic wishes. Because it's a brand new season, and that initial pecking order is likely to sway backwards and forwards. I think Ferrari could still be really dangerous. So I've still got Hamilton and Leclerc right up there in my top tens. I also can't help my heart leading my head, so I'm going to put Tsunoda way too high up the grid every single time. I'm putting Yuki fifth every race.
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Head to pro.kraken.com and trade without trade-offs. Don't invest unless you're prepared to lose all the money you invest. This is a high risk investment and you should not expect to be protected if something goes wrong. So the next thing I'm mad about is the team orders. And I'm mad at Hamilton. I'm actually mad at Hamilton. So Leclerc was trying to just push on and was trying to put pressure on. And that's a little bit of politicking.
So you know that they're both saving tyres. They both know they're saving tyres. But if you use a little bit of extra of your tyre to sit in kind of a passive, aggressive, frustrated position, like you do in traffic, you might not necessarily be up someone's bumper.
but you're close enough that you have to kind of cover the brake. Looking at Matt here. Matt basically gets in the car in front when he's on the freeway. But Leclerc's posturing was, come on, guys, you know, I've got so much pace, I can't believe Lewis is holding me up.
And Hamilton kind of falls for it a little bit. And he's the first one to suggest, I'm going to let him through then. Do you know what? I'm just going to pull over. It's like if you're in a caravan and people are passively, aggressively behind you. Do you know what? I'm just going to pull into the lay-by.
Just go on by. So he initiated that. Then Leclerc gets ahead and doesn't do anything. Just sits there. See, I love this is so much driver psychology because Hamilton had such a happy car on Saturday. That the Sunday car, granted in traffic, didn't feel as good. So Hamilton's like, geez, I'm really struggling.
Yeah, let's let good old Charlie go there because I'm struggling with the car. But the reality is he was more or less the same pace. Leclerc never passed Russell, but he felt bad to Hamilton because he had such the good car on Saturday. But for Leclerc... The car was wretched on this Saturday and suddenly removing it in plate. And he's like, we just having a good old time. He's like, I'm super fast. Reality is they were both about the same pace.
I love it when there's a balance in a team where the drive, you see it a little bit at McLaren, I think, where they basically accept when one is faster than the other, maybe not deep down, but on the surface, right? And I like when a team does that because that makes the team bigger as a team. But what I don't like is if one gives, let's say Leclerc, he gets the position from Lewis and then at the end of the race...
they are in the same positions, they should definitely swap back. That is what you do to keep that team balance alive and happy. And they didn't do that. It doesn't matter now because they're both out, right? But that is what can turn into like this little hairy ball that just runs down the hill and gets bigger and bigger and bigger. The hairy ball. Yeah, sorry. Good. No, you said hairy ball on the stream. No, no, good. It wouldn't be Christine. I don't know why I said it, actually.
No one knows why you say anything or why you get... I don't think we want to know. Or why you get invited back regularly. Five million people in Denmark. None of them would say that except Christian. So Paddy says, I think... He was suggesting to be overtaken because he thought it would look better than being overtaken. Now, if that's true, that marks a staggering lack of confidence. And I think Leclerc, maybe he could have pulled off a DRS overtake.
And maybe Hamilton would have been able to do the same. But the fact is, however he got past, once they got past, they were pretty much, the gap wasn't really changing all that much. And... There was one from Suja saying Ham fought it for a bit. And when they did swap, Leclerc jumped four seconds ahead on track. But then he dropped back a bit as well. So I don't think he did. I think because we don't hear the radio messages in real time. I think it was like the McLaren thing as well.
So basically Hamilton was suggesting it. They thought about it for a little while. By the time they had said, OK, let's do the swap, Hamilton was actually 1.3 seconds ahead and was catching Russell a little bit. So I don't know what damage that swap has done. what they had to do then to close the gap up, get it swapped, just for Leclerc to be the one sitting behind George Russell instead. I think that's a mess. I think they're going to have to sit down and really talk about that one.
Yeah, I think the good news for them is because everybody got disqualified. It doesn't really matter where they finished on track. So you can sort of erase it. But in terms of a team and. And especially in terms of operation, it struck me as odd to put Leclerc ahead unless Hamilton was really telling his engineer, no, I feel like I'm losing the tires. I can barely drive the car.
Then you let Leclerc go. But you would otherwise never let a car with damage go unless he had like a serious, serious delta, which he didn't. And then at the end, the damage. meant that he fell back and lost a place to Verstappen. So it was really not a great choice. Last two things I'm upset with Ferrari for is A, everybody else figured out way quicker than they did that it was going to be a one-stop.
So I think they probably did it too late for Hamilton. I'd imagine he would say, because he's always pessimistic on the tyres. I'd imagine they said to him, can you get to the end? You go, oh, no, because we've been pushing it and we've been going hard. So I'll go for that two-stop strategy. And then on to hards, on to hards again. You go, surely that would have been a medium's call.
I just want to add a little thing before we end the Ferrari bit. There's been a lot about the pit radio from Hamilton and Ricciardo, his engineer. And we only get the pieces on air that... Builds the narrative, basically. So if you listen to all the pit radio, to the communication to his car, he gets a lot of help. He gets a lot of do this and that. They go like a B-Balance 58 on one lap.
and then the D5 speech, all of that, he gets all the info he wants, and they only broadcast the one bit where it goes wrong. I think someone's trying to build a narrative there that is not really existing. And I've forgotten the last thing that I'm mad with Ferrari about. But anyway, I'm enjoying it. It's fun. I'm enjoying being Tifosi. Well, I mean, they did have a Ferrari team that did very, very well. It just was an actual Ferrari.
Yes, we'll move on from Ferrari now. So if you're listening to the podcast version, I'm going to do a couple of plugs for stuff. So feel free to skip. I'll time it. There you go. Exactly. I'll do exactly 60 seconds of plugs. Go. So.
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missed apex we've got a midweek show lined up i don't know what it is yet but we have got japan in two weeks time and we'll have a normal sunday show next sunday if you would leave us an itunes review that would really really help or a spotify review and like and subscribe on the YouTube. One more thing, a personal recommendation. If you are looking for an audio producer...
Let me recommend my Cambridge radio producer, Liam Taylor. So if you're looking for someone to edit your podcast or do any bits and bobs on social media, if you're looking for that person now, personal recommendation, personal friend, worked with him for years. Get in touch with me and I'll hook you up for that. Where do you want to go next, Matt? I've got a feeling I know what team you want to go to next. But we're going to have to cover Mercedes first. So really quietly impressive.
Nobody has been ranting and raving and shouting about George Russell pre-season or between the races or even after the races. Nobody's lingering impression of this race was, oh yeah, another Russell podium because he's almost sneaked on there.
But they're delighted. They're not making mistakes. They're not tripping over each other. And Russell's looking really, really strong, Matt. Yeah. And this wound up falling fully into the Mercedes wheelhouse in terms of... when their car likes to do well, or at least that was the Jonathan Noble saying that... that they always do well on. When the front's grain, Mercedes tends to do better than a lot of other teams, so comparatively. But Russell genuinely had a good race and a decent weekend.
But that said, I think if you look at the overall picture for Mercedes, I think they're still clearly team number three or occasionally four. And I don't see that changing until we get new aerodynamic regulations. Yeah. So that's, again, we've got the gap where you should have Ferrari. So I still think that Ferrari should be up there with McLaren. So maybe just a touch behind McLaren with a little bit of gap to Mercedes.
Mercedes are playing the field. They're playing the opponents in front of them. So at the moment, yeah, at the moment, they're the clear second best team, aren't they? I'd imagine. No? It's going to depend on the track and the track conditions.
yeah i think do you know i've just got so there's so little to say about that team at the moment because they've just been flying under the radar but antonelli actually it's a little bit scruffy a little bit disappointing driver of the day though i don't know i don't know why they could be
a strong contender during the year because if you look at how mercedes started the last couple of years it's been pretty much on the back foot right they didn't do well at the beginning they had a couple of tracks where their car was dominant but didn't really do well now they're
Here and thereabouts. So they're going to come to the tracks where the Mercedes is going to do really, really well. And hats off to Russell. I mean, he's delivering. He's delivering on a high note for the first two races. Yeah, well, yes. Yeah, it might continue. But Antonelli apparently had some damage as well. And he had damage that he'd picked up in Australia. And that's why he went out in Q1.
Okay, but no one's driving his car towards the damage except Kimi Antonelli. So he's damaging his own car. That is part of the makeup of his own performance. Sorry, Matt. I was going to say, I didn't see him have contact with anyone. So this is curb damage or something similar, I would imagine. He's going to get there as well. I think he's probably the facet of the new rookies.
Cool. We'll do a rookie rundown at midweek, I think, because Red Bull is an interesting one. So the pace is gone. It seems to be nowhere. And I'm actually going to use this as a way to defend Liam Lawson slightly. So Liam Lawson is nowhere, nowhere. I saw a meme where, you know, where they do the message and someone says, what time are you getting here? And the person responds with a picture of Liam Lawson. What does that mean? It means I'm not turning up.
Absolutely savage. The whole of the internet is really, really raining on Lawson. Lawson looks baffled. They started him from the pit lane, made significant setup changes in the pit lane. If I was to guess, I would say that they've... stiffened up the rear suspension for him to see if they could get him more confidence in the rear. So that was Horner's specific comment was that the rear was going to go away.
And the only real experience we've got of that, Matt, I don't know if you remember our racing championship where we had the Renault 2.0 and every time we touched the brakes, the back end was going. And so instead of concentrating on the corner and trying to carry speed, all you're thinking about is...
How do I stop the rear of this vehicle just snapping out away from me? So you're braking cautiously in a straight line. You're not really attacking. And I think that's what we saw in the onboards with Lawson. Then you go, oh, he's not able to attack the corner. And in fact, he was just missing apexes.
all over the place and that in my head now oh I can relate to that with my relevant iRacing experience you're just trying to get it stopped in a straight line without the back end going out and then by the time you try and go to the apex you've missed it a bit Yeah, and this is really the thing, and you could see it very clearly on the onboard. He became so tentative with corner entry, especially the higher speed corner entry. He would just turn, turn, turn, because...
Every time he started to turn in, he had that feeling of the back snapping on him. And unfortunately, that's probably exacerbating what's causing the issue in the first place. So what they're trying to do with these suspension changes is get the car into a window where he can feel some confidence on entering the corner. Because once he has that, he will be, I'm convinced he will be.
fast-ish. And this could also maybe be a clue as to what was plaguing Perez. But I do like that Red Bull have learned from their past experience with other young drivers. And instead of giving them half a season or a season and a half...
They're like two races with mechanical issues, different setups and a sprint race. And if you're not there, then you're done. We'll just chuck you out and put somebody else in. Huge rumors that they're going to put Tsunoda in for Japan. So Jason says, does Yuki like an oversteering car? Well... We're about to find out. I think they're going to put him in. And that's so cynical as well that it happens to be Suzuka.
I totally agree with you, Spanis. I'm not a Lawson fan, but Lawson has the spirit to do what he needs to do in Red Bull. But let's say you have a friend. Every time you visit... your friend he basically just throws a big cake in your face when you enter still eventually you will start to bring stuff to like block in front of your head or maybe duck or something if you look at red bull it's
Paris, a very good driver. Albon, a very good driver. It's all of them. They are all experiencing the same. It is not the drivers. It is the car. Okay? It's, I mean... Do you know what I'm so maddest about this week? You'll have seen it in the WhatsApp chat where we were slating Lawson, right? Before we put our professional faces on and come out here and try and be a bit more reasonable. But Brad went...
oh, something's not right. Something's clearly not right. He's not that. And I went, oh yeah, where was this with Perez? Because that's exactly what I was saying with Perez. I was going, something's not right. Something's not right. Because I watch Perez in the midfield and yeah, might have peaky performances.
But I've seen him drag pigs up to the podium and then he gets to Red Bull and you go, that's not, he's not even driving the same. That's, you know, he had a reputation for driving a certain way. And, you know, it couldn't come, he couldn't hold on to the tyres either. There was a lot of story spanners about the different setups he had to try Paris during the different weekends, different wings and stuff like that. They basically just tested the car to make Max the winner. So, I mean, if you...
go about it that way, you are going to be losing with your second driver. And if you lose with your second driver, you're not going to win the championship and you're not the champions anymore.
But people were looking at Lawson now with more confidence and saying, well, we think he was this star and we thought he was going to really go and take it to Verstappen. So now it is really ringing alarm bells and it only took four... drivers for people to i think agree that there's something fundamentally weird about that that second that second see maria with two comments saying perez vindication intensifies oh yeah and also she says
spanners is so happy apologies i've just realized my cheeks are slightly hurting i have been smiling this entire segment because i'm not because i'm not a red bull fan and they've been dominant for so long But they've clearly gone the wrong way. Something's gone wrong with Red Bull right now, because even Verstappen can't drag that to near the front. He's clearly slow, clearly struggling. Yeah, this is the thing that you were worried about with Newey being gone.
And could they resolve the fundamental issue that they ran into with last year's update around the Spanish Grand Prix, where suddenly they went from winning to barely finishing sixth to sort of coming back at the end of the year? And I meant to do this and I didn't. So apologies. But if you look at Verstappen points now compared to Verstappen points last year and Norris points now compared to Norris points last year.
are we saying Max may not be the favorite for the championship this season? Also, if you look at it from Zunoda's perspective, end of last season... Everyone was like, he's just hung out to dry. They don't care about this guy anymore. He doesn't have the Honda backing. They're just going to get rid of him after 25. Then all of a sudden now he's going to be sitting in... Verstappen's teammate in the next race. If I was Tsunoda, I would go like...
Listen, you already ruined my career. Are you going to ruin it more now? Are you going to just put me on the wall, just shoot me down? Because that is what is going to happen. No one you put in that car is going to drive it fast. for at least half a year until you learn it. And you have to accept you're being like the development driver. That's not going to work for anyone. It's going to ruin careers. And it's a shame. I hate watching it.
So first of all, I'm shocked, shocked that Spanners would think a marketing company would bring a Japanese driver into a Japanese race. But I'm also wondering... What if they bring an update that makes that car easier to drive that was developed on Lawson, but Tsunoda inherits it and looks like a genius? Because I could really see that happening also. Yeah, just keep bringing fresh sacrifices.
I will say I think Tsunoda is a really, really good driver. Don't get me wrong with that comment. But it would be funny if Lawson put on all the work and then Tsunoda inherited the result. It's only funny if you're mean. That would be a mean thing to find funny. but okay there's been a there was chat in the past and they go is this developed towards max and i'm sure people have sworn blind like no they just have built the fastest car and it's the snap and so good
that he can handle the things you have to do to make it the fastest car. Horner has flat out, like, he's put that one to bed. He said, no, we have gone in the direction that Max wants because he's always asking for a pointier, ever more oversteery car. and other drivers can't handle it. But at the moment, he can't handle it either, or he's struggling as well. So they're going to have to accept maybe that's not the best way to go. Maybe they've made a mistake.
Oh, yeah, I would agree. Although, again, maybe what they really need to do is just have like the equivalent of an open casting call for the Red Bull second seat to open it up to anyone with the super license and whoever gets closest to Max gets the seat.
Because they might do better than what they're doing right now. You have some sim experience, don't you, Spanness? Yeah, I mean, I'm not. You fit in the car. Oh, me? I could do it. I mean, I could start from the pit. You would look good in Red Bull colors. You and Horner would be like.
this question for another time is what what level of race car to us as muggles realistically think we could operate and drive there is no way i could drive an f1 car fast enough to get the brakes up to temperature or get the tires up to temperature i just the risk reward would go out the window you know i'd see a corner coming and what even if i was doing all the right things my brain would go now park that but i think yeah go on
Imagine how we would all feel here in this crowd. You know, the Patreon, everyone just... waiting for this weekend they do have spanners doing practice one they do have strap uh sort of stripped down they say f1 experience where they have that old renault and i there's no way that that's race tuned
That's just so you can feel like you're driving an F1 car fast in a straight line. So, yeah, I think F4. I bet I could jump in an F4 car and operate it. There you go. That would be my bet. Not be on pace, of course, but I think I could operate it. you might be able to operate it. But in fact, but in fact, I think it would break you very rapidly if I'm remembering Brad's comments correctly. Yeah.
He could maybe finish two or three laps before his neck exploded on him. I wouldn't be going fast enough for my neck to get sore. And if you have to go and speak to Catman and he wants to wave at us, obviously Matt is borrowing Catman's outdoor shed. And I think the family has just come home.
All right. I think they have. Speaking of coming home, it's time to talk about my favorite team. Go on then. Let's hand over to Matt. Let's go. So Matt, you've got two things to be happy about, which is Haas, who have now been... I think, oh no, it's Haas. Oh, it's all combined. So Ocon and Haas are in the same team now. So we only have to listen to you being incorrect due to your biases once per show.
That's right. But I also get to talk about why I thought this race was particularly genius. And that involves the other team that we've been talking about with Yuki. And RB and why they finished so far off and why Haas finished so high up. Wait, Matt, to put this into context, you have to tell us where has Ocon been classified as finishing in this race? He is now.
classified in fifth place with Behrman in eighth. So it's a double points race. And it was genuine double points because they were both in the points before all the disqualifications happened. Wow, that is an amazing result for Haas. P5 and P8. And a little bit of redemption for Ocon and a bit of redemption for people who were predicting good things for Haas preseason and then had to endure Australia. But yeah, wow, what a turnaround.
Yeah, and this is where it gets interesting, because Haas put Ocon, who qualified 11th, on the front rider strategy of beginning on the medium tire, but they also made the call to put Behrman. on the hard tire and run an opposite strategy. And that, because the hard tire wasn't so susceptible to the grading from the start, wound up being genius. So in the early days, they pitted Ocon with Tsunoda on lap 14, and they were the first ones to pit. And they showed how powerful the undercut was.
But Bearman ran all the way up to the back of Lance Stroll and even had a go at passing him, had a lockup. And then they brought him in around lap 28. So that was his pit stop. And he managed to get his medium tires all the way to the end of the race and make a couple of really good overtakes along the way. just to nick the last point-paying position. And Alcon, which I thought everybody was going to do a two-stop on those hard tires, I'm like, 43 laps? That's impossible.
was chasing Tsunoda, because Tsunoda pitted ahead of him, was a place ahead of him, and Ocon gradually caught him up. And I think this went to that... that call, that radio call where Sunoda's like, I'm going to push my fronts. And they're like, don't. And he's like, I'm doing it anyway. And they're like... well, okay, you're going to learn the lesson then about why you shouldn't do it. They actually pitted him and put him on a two-stop. And what happened was, because the hard tire was so good,
The undercut, which they thought they were undercutting Alcon for the second stop, the undercut really didn't work at all. He came out in traffic, and even though people were on older tires, he didn't really have a great fresh tire advantage on them. Absolutely killed it. So it demonstrated not only that the two-strop was clearly not the correct strategy. I mean, you had Hamilton as well, but that...
You had to manage your tires in order to make that one stop work if you wanted to finish in the points. Komatsu, the team principal from Haas, just said that he was delighted with the result, but the inherent problems the Haas car has is still there. And as we started this podcast about an hour ago, we talked about the difference from race one to race two.
And if we can have a season where Haas can be so off in one race that we basically write them off for the entire season based on one result. And then the next race, they go P5, P7 or wherever they ended. And they still have problems with the car. I think the entire field is still settling in. I think we're going to see some surprises in the next two, maybe one, two races.
And then we can start seeing where Haas is. But having Ocon in the middle of the points, that is a delight to my heart as well. Absolutely amazing. Yeah, just to follow up on the Komatsu point a little bit, their real specific issue is high speed. directional changes, which is why at Albert Park, they were nowhere. And there's not any of those at this circuit. So on circuits, you might think maybe Jetta or something like that, where you have those.
you might expect them to not do well. But on circuits that don't have those... Well, clearly they haven't designed an absolutely awful car or else they wouldn't have been doing as well as they did today. Just want to add that Suzuka is basically one big thing of those. The entire first section is that. Yeah, one slightly worrying thing. Has anyone seen a news article about Komatsu being hands-on, like literally hands-on with, I don't know if there's been a story about it, someone...
like quote-unquote leaked it or whatever, told me that, yeah, Komatsu's been really hands-on still, which is slightly concerning if the team principal is having to pull up his sleeves and you go, well, organisationally, that doesn't bode well. Like if you saw Toto Wolff or Christian Horner... spannering in a car. I know it's different because Komatsu's an engineer and he's come up that way, but still, it doesn't quite seem right to me. I mean, it's not Niki Lauda in a Formula One car.
Oh, by redesigning the bolts. Oh, yeah, cool. Remember when he said, you guys are terrible. Put me in the car. I'll show you how to drive it. And then he immediately just drove it off the road and got out and laughed and said, well, I guess not. I want to say the problem with that quote is 26. You can't be a team principal and work on the card at the same time. Those two things can't be combined. Yeah. So, yeah, if that's happening, Matt, that would be a concern.
Yeah, well, it sounded like to me, based on it, it would be like one of those things where, you know, is it this you're telling someone to do something, but you're getting the sense they haven't done exactly what you meant for them to do. And at a certain point, it's quicker just to show them.
rather than explain it with a lot of words cool but that's my take uh let's let's go with my shirt with williams let's move on to williams quickly so uh greg says i remember a couple of weeks ago saying i reckon Albon beat signs with ease and spanners laughed me out of the channel. First things first, as with all of these season long predictions, however, has been a surprise.
I would have expected signs to be clear by the end of the season and to get up to speed quickly. It is still race two. It is still transferring team power unit, etc. But if you look at Hamilton, Hamilton's pretty much up to speed with Leclerc. I would definitely have expected signs to not be struggling.
How he's struggling now. And what did we have? We had the ghost spike. No, the torque spike in Australia that made him send. He didn't just, you know, hit the accelerator too early or too much like all the other drivers who did exactly the same thing did. Torque spike.
And then in qualifying or in sprint qualifying, he had a loose seat, I think was the reason. I haven't heard a reason why he was off pace, but at the moment it looks like, well, Albon's beaten him handsomely in qualifying and beaten him handsomely in the race. Albon looks like the better driver. I'm surprised, Matt. If I ended up being wrong at the end of the season about that, so be it. But yeah, genuinely surprised.
It doesn't surprise me. And like you, I think it's way too early to conclude one driver is better than the other. And in fact, you'd expect a driver with Alvin's pedigree. To be pretty much optimizing a car, he's been at the team several years now. So it is more of a challenge for signs. But they're very specific issues he's trying to understand and figure out with regards to tire wear and at the margins in qualifying.
But broadly enough, he's already on pace. He looks better this week than he looked last week. So yeah, you know, let's see where things stand when we get to summer break. And that might be a more honest assessment point. There was a team radio on the finishing lap, the signs were...
He went, I don't know what happened. I'm pretty sure I can go faster than this. I just have a feeling in the car, and I can't go faster. And then the response from Walt was, you can go faster, and we will go faster, yada, yada. He's still adapting. We should mention, though, it's Alex Albon's birthday today. And as a Thai native, I just returned from Thailand yesterday, as you know. I'm going to say happy birthday in Thai.
Right, this has so much potential to go wrong. It's going to go so wrong. It probably will. Can I just suggest don't do it in the accent? I'm going to do it in the accent. All right. Okay. Can we focus in real quick just on Christian? Okay. anyone uh do we have listeners in thailand right now okay can anyone confirm i'm pretty sure it's it's fairly close can you tell us what he actually said and if we need to delete it from the show before we get sued yes and also thankfully that is
the most danish i've ever if you were trying to do the accent you sounded more danish than ever so i think we're probably clear makes me so sad you say that i really tried hard you're really going for it okay i think matt okay any big teams you want to mention before we go into the awards or any low-hanging fruit uh sauber was nowhere we talked about the two-stop versus the one-stop uh we've covered all the point paying teams i know what we didn't really
I'm glad we didn't do this, right? Okay, we can definitely talk about Hadjar for sure, but we didn't talk about why the race was so boring. I think on previous shows, we'd have led with that, and that was a mistake. I wanted to get straight to Piastri. It definitely was Piastri's stamped himself over the weekend. Why didn't that race pop? For the very simple reason that it was an incredibly strategic race.
And it was predicated on properly managing your tires. So what you were doing, if you made your undercut or overcut work, you were going to the end of the race on that set. You had to preserve them so you didn't push. until you had the finish line in sight. And then it was a mad push for the end. And I have to mention, side note, the thing that you asked about, the Ocon overtake on Antonelli, that I meant to mention. Don't have to say anything else about it.
Also, I think the sprint races does do a magic thing, but they also ruin the main race a little bit because we get so much information. So everyone is just basically know where the cars are. Yeah, kind of. I mean, there was a turnaround. There was a change a little bit.
bit in the pecking order between the two and and i didn't want to be negative about it but i woke up i got to yesterday evening i went oh my god there's still a race there's still the actual race tomorrow i'd had so much f1 but also
Obviously a little bit different for me because I'm creating content around it. I'd done my sprint review, but I very much had a feeling of, oh yeah, China was done. That was good. Hamilton won. And then you go, oh, okay. Well, another race. It definitely takes the excitement out of the Grand Prix. It's not the same. It's just not the same. And this argument that it's better than FP3 is really tiring because nobody is arguing that. It's obviously better than FP3.
But it does take away the specialness of the glory. May I add just a little thing to the sprint race? I think it's a little bit about perception. So if you looked at the sprint race as instead... being six different testing sessions during the year with points awarded. If you looked at it like that, it wouldn't be boring, would it? So let me get this straight. Maria in the chat says everyone gets their information from the Sprint except for Ferrari. Yeah, that's really kind of hilarious. Savage.
Secondly, are you arguing that you want to take Hamilton's win away from him by having no sprint races? Do you really want to make that argument? No, and I did. I felt like a massive hypocrite. Because, yeah, you know, people will rightly message me going, oh, do you still think sprint races are rubbish? No, sprint races are great. Time makes hypocrites of us all. But for me, it's much less time and much more immediate.
So it's the overtaking as well. It was difficult to overtake. And so that gives you a Singapore type environment too. So if you do go ultra conservative, let's say like Russell tyre managing didn't really have to worry about Leclerc. because he was coming off of turn 12 really well, and Leclerc wasn't able to make a move. Therefore, there's no real penalty for preserving around the rest of the lap. So yeah, a little bit of a perfect storm, and people will go...
Well, why not have tyres that you can just push on and just don't wear out? You would get a slightly faster version of what we saw today. They would still be in a line. They would be creating more aero weight. They would be going harder. And you'd get what we had in Qatar. which is a field of drivers really not accustomed to pushing hard for the entire race and sort of wobbling out you'd have to make significant changes to do that but it really does show you that the wear on the tires is what
is making Formula One exciting at the moment. The fact that you have offsets and deltas, and yeah, there's still going to be some tyre preserving, but you definitely get a period in the race where someone goes, right, I preserved my tyres for a little bit longer. Therefore, I was able to make my stop later or I held on to my tires and they're fading and they don't want to pit because they're going to be in trouble and have to do a two stop instead. That's when you get.
the racing happening. That's when you get them going, right, now's the time to go and attack, to go and hunt them down. And that strategy battle, I find that fascinating. I find that fascinating as the wheel-to-wheel racing, you know, because you're racing in the relative box. It's iRacing.
terms that we say you're racing the timing tree a little bit you're and that that is good racing when you have this situation where you you don't have that element or you have a situation where there's just no tire wear at all f1 would be f1 would be 90s f1 when my friend rightly criticized me and he said why do you watch f1 i can get the same thrill by having beads on a string and then raising one end of that string and watching the beads fall to the lower end now that's fair
Anyway, so yes, some races are going to be boring in a Formula 1 series. I just think there was so much hype around this one. I let myself believe. The secret to a happy life is low expectations. So let's never look forward to a race again would be the only solution. All right, racing balls, Matt. What happened? I saw the thing with Tsunoda where I've got the feeling that maybe Tsunoda just overpushed his tyres and got a bit carried away where his team wanted to manage.
But the strategy didn't look great, and I just saw them tumbling down the field. Yeah, this is essentially what happened. Tsunoda was the front-running bull, and he pushed too hard. was getting caught by Ocon. So they went to the undercut, to the two-stop, and then nobody else did a two-stop. So the undercut not only wouldn't have worked...
Because Ocon was as fast on the old tire as he was on the new tire. But nobody else did it. So it was just they gave away 24 seconds of lap time for no really good reason. And Hadjar actually... looked like he was having issues especially in the first step uh keeping his tires because i think i think they may have run a two-stop with him as well
I'd have to look back through my paper notes, and that would make a lot of noise, so I'm not going to do it now. Relatively to the other rookies, and this could maybe be our rookie rundown segment, I felt like he drove pretty well. He was pretty close, wasn't he? And had some fighty battles. But the tire management is something he's going to have to work on. Yeah, but it didn't look like Tsunoda did. He was quite close to Tsunoda. I don't think there was massive gulf between the two today.
Yeah, if that was the case, then that's because he did manage to pull off a one-stop, whereas Tsunoda was on the two-stop. So he got chucked into traffic ahead of Hajar, and then... wasn't able to make a lot of forward progress because everybody's 24 lap old hearts were as good as brand new hearts yeah and that's what you that was the the giveaway that you knew the race was over as soon as hamilton came out of the pits
And he was only really like half a second quicker than the McLarens. And yeah, those McLarens probably could have been doing 35s if they wanted to anyway. I think everyone would have looked at those times and gone, oh no, no, no, there's no...
There's no benefit to trying to go and do that second stop. Yeah. All right. So that's it. So we learned something interesting, but it was very much to the detriment of Tsunoda and Hajar that we learned it. There we go. So no, no need for Hajar to get upset. And no need for Helmut Marco to then be incredibly mean about him. Oh, we covered that in the midweek, didn't we? Marco being mean. I think we did. All right, cool. I think this is a good time to move on to the awards.
It's time to celebrate the end of the Chinese Grand Prix with our awards, where we start off by being super negative and judgy, because why not? You can't judge them from your sofa. I mean, I can. I can. And it's your fault if you're listening. You're the ones who enable this. So we'll do the bad thing award. Then we can end by being super positive about the good stuff. So we'll ask.
Oh, no, you missed the apex. We'll ask who missed the apex. For you, Christian Pedersen from Denmark, a Viking. And by the way, this is our, apart from Uncle Steve, video producer, this is our oldest available panel. on today so and steve is here in spirit isn't so if it's been grumpy that's why that's i'm the young pup of the panel today so christian
You ride around for free on the Danish transit system most of the time because you've got your train pass. But you also release some music. So you have an EP out. Can we plug it? Can we not plug it? I have an upcoming EP. I used to be part of a band called Clone, which was club music, chill out and stuff in the early zeros. Clone, which means clown.
English is written the same way, just with a K instead of a C. Anyway, we're just re-releasing all our stuff this month and bringing some new stuff next month. Yeah. And you're not going to like the music. I don't care. I am. You probably will not understand it. I am. I am. Because my love and respect for you, Christian, will put context to it and it will make it enjoyable and it will fill my heart.
And the heart of the listeners. Which is a true statement. And I feel much better now after hearing that statement. When you have the links, drop the links. Everyone wants to hear your music. I will do it. You're a fascinating individual. He was like Anton Deck in Denmark. I love that reference. It's always the same reference. Who missed the apex for you?
I like just the mere fact that Formula One is back. I'm not going to be negative on anyone. You have to be. That's the whole award. Yeah, I know. I'm going to be negative on the way the commentators dress. This Anthony Davison uniform. Oh my God, sorry. High brown trousers and a shirt that is buttoned, but the two top buttons are open. Always the same colors, light brown trousers, completely new white sneakers.
Come on, guys. Come on. That is okay. I was sorry, Anthony Davidson. You look fabulous. Just to show you the other side. You think Anthony Davison would look fabulous. I do. My two rumpets. I tell you, you don't look as fabulous as your talented wife who writes books and has an F1 romance book that is out now. Let's not talk about that upcoming one. The one that's out now called The Fast and the Reckless. It's a love story.
around formula one so if you're into the romance genre you should buy that we'll have a link for that in the show notes today let's get those sales pushed up can you not retire now now from the the vast wealth of those book sales No, more people need to buy lots more books for that to happen. But there is now, it's available in Spanish, so you can get it in that language as well. Muchos gracias. Was that Spanish or was that Italian?
Rachel says Anthony Davidson wasn't even on Sky this weekend and he's still getting shade from Christian. Okay, Matt, who missed the apex for you? This is actually a challenge because I have a couple. that I'd like to go. I might take advantage of Christian's inability to come up with anything negative. So I will give you two, and neither one will be the one that you're going to pick, so that's fine. The first would be Alonzo.
Because is he being comprehensively outperformed by Stroll? And if so, what do we think about that? I'm like, I've never seen this behavior from an Alonzo before. And it worries me slightly. And the other thing that I'm going to go talk about missing the apex is I will go with continued media criticism here, despite I know rumors are rumors and sometimes you do have to talk about them.
Just the whole treatment of Lawson losing his job after two races as an 11 race rookie is just insane. It's wrong to, it's just wrong. He's a young driver. He's a young person. I know it's Formula One. I know it's a hothouse. But I simply, I think it's wrong. It was wrong when they did it to Gasly. It was wrong when they did it to Albin. And it's wrong that they're doing it to Lawson.
Okay, you did too there. I'm not going to write Alonso off yet completely. However, I think it is 3-0 for qualifying. Yeah, it is 3-0 for qualifying. He's pretty old. He's pretty old. And if this was happening at the top and they were level... Then you could go, oh, maybe Stroll's catching up and Stroll's really pulling out of the bag here. But since it's happening on the bottom, it's more likely that Alonso's form has fallen to match Stroll's rather than Stroll is suddenly better than...
Or as good as Alonso? It has been 12 years since his last victory. That's pretty amazing, isn't it? Us always hyping this guy up. And I do believe he's really, really good. I mean, he's probably one of the best in the field if they had the similar car, but 12 years since his last race win, and we're still talking. about Alonso as the goat? No, it's completely possible. It is possible that Aston Martin is now leaving a lot of performance on the table.
Because they have an aged-out driver and a Neppo driver. I mean, that is an insult, but it's not not true. So they could well be living some lap time on the table there. What was your other one, Matt? It was the Alonzo one and then the Lawson thing. Oh, right. OK, that's good. I'll talk about Lawson in the next awards. So who missed the apex? Well, it's got to be absolutely Ferrari because there's too many things wrong.
So there's mechanical things wrong. There's set up decisions that are wrong. There's tactical decisions that are wrong. Everything's wrong right now. They've built a good car. And they're not bringing it home. And they got disqualified. So even before getting disqualified, they'd left performance on the table. And then they got disqualified. And that's no one's fault but your own. So definitely Ferrari. So now we get to be positive.
Matthew, do try to pay attention and think of something before I come to you this time. Please. Thank you very much. So actually, I've got a few things of the weekend as well. Lawson was actually going to get it from me. And it's obviously not the driving. It's going. terribly however he could be throwing his toys out the pram he's not he's being calm he could be trying to find excuses he could be talking about a loose seat and talk spikes but he's not
He said, it's on me. He said, I've got to do a better job. I'm really trying and this is difficult. And he's composed himself really well in what must be a devastating situation to find yourself in. You've got the dream job. You did it. You came into F1 in the junior Red Bull team.
Proved yourself enough to get in there, and it's a nightmare. This is a nightmare of kind of de-freeze proportions, and it looks like he's not going to get any more chances. I'm seeing so many things now about Yuki coming in for... for japan so the way he's handled himself does deserve some credit you can follow me what am i into at the moment if you want to follow me on new on somewhere uh tiktok so search for missed apex f1 on tiktok i'm doing just the pieces to camera
So imagine my Twitter feed, but instead I'm just yelling it at my phone. And look through my Instagram as well. Come follow me on those things too. So search for Spanners Ready on Instagram. Matt, what's your thing of the weekend?
My thing of the weekend is it might have been 12 years since Alonzo has won a race, but it's been exactly one day since a 40-year-old won a race, and that would be Lewis Hamilton. The last time was Nigel Mansell, and as someone who... at least 40 yeah let me say hot diggity dog i couldn't be happier very different kind of 40 year olds though there's someone did a side by side of mansell and hamilton and hamilton is you know still looks fresh as a daisy compared to
compared to Nigel Mansell. Both great as well. But yeah, Hamilton, I think he's got a good few years left in him. And honestly, I'm so mad about today. I'd nearly forgotten about the sprint race and how happy that was. It is just a sprint race. That's fine. Well, you know, he was in front of a pack of cars and he led that home and got the chequered flag. Christian, who hit the apex for you?
I'm going to give it to Verstappen for the overtake on Leclerc. Damn, that was my reserve one. Yeah, really good. Really good race craft there. That was beautiful. I mean, Max Verstappen is just such a... He's just such a racer, isn't he? I mean, he's going to go for it every time and he almost always wins. And I like him as the underdog more than I like him as the one in the superior car. He's going to make... Yeah, we'll see him fight.
Sorry? Yeah, we'll see him fight more. You're not going to see the best out of him in the 23 car. You see the best out of him last season. Back against the wall, not in the best car. Rain's pouring down and shows you why he's the current world champion. That's the kind of...
thing you want out of Verstappen he's gonna make 25 more interesting I think and he is just like he's a brilliant racer and he showed there and also I want to give it to Haas because yeah Ocon overtaking on Antonelli on lap 16-15 with half the car in the grass. Doing 300 kilometers an hour. And kilometers is the way we measure speed in the real world. And this is for Matt. And it's for you as well, Spanners. No, we do miles an hour as well. Yeah, that was such a good overtake, though.
You don't know for sure if you're still going to be on the grass by the time you have to hit the brakes. And so that was absolutely superb. Very Arcon-ish, I think. I like Arcon. Oh, look at Matt's little face. Look how happy he is. Oh, good, good, good, good. The joys of supporting drivers in the midfield. Tim Rudd says maybe Verstappen is immortal and they need to sacrifice the second driver to the gods.
for him to be able to race forever. I had Dewan down here as well. I know the result isn't great, but he's going for it. And in his situation, he could be sitting there and being timid. I don't think it went, I think the ones I saw it went wrong. But, you know, at least he's going for it and then I've already covered.
Lawson thank you so much for joining us for our Chinese Grand Prix race review go and click all the links below so that you can go and stalk Christian Pedersen so that you can read the books and help the retirement fund of Matt two rumpets and then you can see the vertical scrolls of a 44 year old trying to be a tiktoker and either join in argue with me or just generally judge me that's fine we'll see you midweek but until then work hard be kind And have fun. This was Mist Apex Podcast.
I think we got away with that really for a Christian episode. No poetry. No poetry. And only one hairy ball. It grew, though. Christian, you got so close to the finish to the checkered flag, only to stick it in the gravel at the end. You do podcasts. We'll do your ISA. With the Vanguard managed ISA, our experts will take care of things for you. What will you do instead?
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