Japanese F1 GP Review 2025

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in a hotel conference room on my family holiday. My wife is delighted. Welcome to the Japanese Grand Prix Race Review. It was a heavyweight slugfest. won by split decision, the winner, and still the biggest threat on the F1 fight card is Matt. Verstappen. Now, it wasn't a thrilling spectacle to watch. I'm not going to fight anyone on that. There's no argument here. However, there was lots of interesting battles and tactics, and those things were below the surface.

I'll admit that. But even if you disagree and say there was nothing interesting about the on-track action, it has advanced. The storyline of F1 2025. This wasn't a bottle episode. This wasn't the episode of Friends where they're getting dressed for an event for the whole show. This was more like Ross gets a pet monkey. The plot developed. We learned things. Now, I was listening on F1 TV, which I don't normally do.

And I'm a big fan of Jolie and Palmer, but I do think on the commentary they called the race completely wrong. Palmer, to be fair to him, was trying to hype up the attack on Verstappen and calling it as McLaren versus Verstappen because... In his defense, that is what would make the best TV. But I don't think that's what this was.

I think this was Norris versus Piastri and nothing else. That was Norris's race. And that is the race that he's won. And I think that the fact that there was no team orders that came through in the end. maybe is a hint that the team management agree that this year it's Oscar versus Lando. they have maybe discounted Max Verstappen.

but too soon. Also, I'm off the Albon fan train. I was only on it for two stops, but I think I'm out. I'm gunning for doing. I just hope he gets that miracle results that he needs. And Hajar, Hajar is my boy right now. Also, Lawson has stemmed the bleeding, but that's about it. And of course, we'll ask if Tsunoda got a passing grade on his promotion evaluation.

We are an independent podcast produced in the podcasting shed with the kind support of our patrons and the somewhat strained support of my partner, given that we're recording this on holiday. 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 by MotoGP host, Miss Apex MotoGP, Kyle Power. Powers, Kyle Powers. Sorry, I took away your S. No, I gave you an extra S.

You gave me an extra S. I don't have an S. You've been on this show for eight years. How did I get that wrong? It's all good. Somebody's surname maybe should start with an S. Maxwell Verstappenacker, because he really won that race for Red Bull in what I thought was late 90s Schumacher era, sort of like.

style of dragging a car i don't think had a right to win to a victory there's two narratives here isn't there there's definitely that verstappen has ascended in this race and and you can argue that that basically that car was essentially a Sauber 10th best car on the grid. And he's pulled off a miracle qualifying lap and then dragged it to the front. I'm going to push back on that a little bit. But I also need to introduce the fact that we're joined from Australia by Jonathan Simon. Hello, Jono.

As Martin Brundle once said, Spanners, I haven't been this disappointed since Shrek 2. You know, I didn't know Suzuka was the Monaco Grand Prix, which you hate. I know that for that much. For all the fans, I reckon we watched the nil-all draw today. That's what it was. Still entertaining, but a lot of takeaways for sure. Maybe for the casual fan, wasn't the most interesting race. But I think, like you said, there's a bit we learned out of Suzuka today.

No, I think it's more like a heavyweight boxing match. You're expecting these fireworks. And actually, when you get in, both drivers are realizing, oh, actually, there's a bit of a kick.

you know the the other guy can chin me and it's all over and i think that's what we saw today where actually pushing hard and getting up behind the gearbox was completely the wrong thing to do so norris is there and he's he's being attacked and there's punches coming in and he's going i i can't sit here and just use up all my endurance

I can't let my little green bar go down. You can tell I've played boxing video games. Because once I do, once I attack, I'm vulnerable and I'm going to get knocked out. So that's what I think it was. drivers kind of going toe to toe but with their guards up the whole time yeah i think that's a that's a that's a fair that's a fair thing to say um i actually think norris was

A slightly weaker McLaren driver today. I think he was pushing almost full bananas to try and get Max and couldn't. I think Piastri may be a tiny bit stronger. Oh, good. I'll always love it when I know we're going to argue and we disagree on about five things I've figured out from our WhatsApp chat. Everything for this race. Yeah. So before we sort of slate Suzuka too much, the key to happiness, I always say, is kids.

low expectations so Suzuka is is up there with Barcelona and Hungaroring and maybe Montreal and then the extreme version of that is Monaco So I think we know. And I think because there's such a love of Suzuka and people look forward to Suzuka, that can be mistaken for Suzuka's going to provide a blinding race. On a dry Suzuka track, as soon as we knew there was no rain, you know, we're all messaging each other going, no.

more modern because suzuka was was a bit of a in the turbo hybrid era was actually it produced some amazing races i think 2017 2018 we had some dodgy weather and produced some great strategy races and people doing blast past overtakes with the drs down to turn one That's really faded out these last couple of years, hasn't it? Massively. There's been hardly any passes into one.

And also, this makes a great argument for the people who say, well, you should just have tyres that last forever. Well, here we go. This was on the limit. This was actually on the limit. So I know we're going to criticise. In fact, let's just do it now. Pirelli came with the wrong tyres. And so this was actually the hardest tyres in the range, Jono. That surprised me, and that feels like a bit of a fluff.

Which the reasons for that is because of the high loads that the tires need to go through. It's like Silverstone. We go there and we go, well, why do they need to bring the hardest compound? Because of the high-speed corners, like 130R, the S section, the tires cop such big loads. So that's why they brought these hard compounds. But in terms of the racing...

I don't know if they predicted. I certainly don't think they thought it was going to be this cold because that didn't help degradation at all today. We knew it was hopefully going to rain. We got anti-climax with that and partly my fault. midweek podcast Wednesday, can I say? I hyped up the rain a little bit too much and that's why I disappointed myself.

So I know you guys are going to go off on Pirelli because we were talking before the podcast about how much you hate their decision. But I don't know. It's a tough one to make. They make the decision months in advance. Look, ultimately, it's a historic racetrack. It wasn't built for cars like this. And so it is going to be an expectation management race. We add that to the list, Kyle. We add this to Monaco, Barcelona.

Yeah, but it doesn't have to be this way. I mean, there's also the circuit was resurfaced. So the new surface was very low degradation as it's sort of a bedding in. But we've seen this from Pirelli loads and I have lost count of the amount of times I've sat on this pod and criticised Pirelli for being too risk averse.

So it's a new surface. They weren't sure how the tyres were going to react. So they always go massively on the side of caution. And they bought the hardest range with them. And also with these tyres.

they stipulate the minimum tyre pressure. So they're like well into the 20s on PSI, which for a racing tyre is lunacy. Usually most of the series about a tyre, you want to get those... tire pressure is low and we're seeing drivers falling out of the window in qualifying because they have to try to get the tire pressure down but get temperature up which is like you can't really

do that and I think the yeah Pirelli being risk averse and the tyre pressure stipulation that they have to put on the team so this is what's strangling it they could have gone I think

at least one or two steps softer. I want them to get rid of this minimum tyre pressure thing because I think that's hurting them more than most people realise. Kyle's going to take off his face mask in a minute and it's going to be Matt underneath it. It's going to be Scooby-Doo style. It was Matt Trumpets all along.

Yeah, he's pulling the strings behind. He's definitely not messaging me now saying, go hard on the tyres, go hard on the tyres. But low degradation. And George Russell even said it at the end, didn't he? Like he was pushing as hard as that was just a flat out push. And yeah, that answers your question. indestructible tyres is not conducive to great racing.

But, and Kyle, like you mentioned, the track was resurfaced. So the first sector in particular was the only one that was resurfaced. That's where most of the wear comes at this track. And what we heard today from the paddock and from the teams was that degradation was actually very low because of the resurfacing. I was very much hoping for like a Turkey 2020 situation where like...

Everyone was 1,500 miles a lap slower in the first sector, which didn't happen. They actually ended up becoming quicker. So also that didn't help. Pirelli don't have that data to then say, okay, we don't know how this resurfacing is going to affect. you know, affect the performance of our tires. So they have to make a decision based on past outcome and past results. And unfortunately today they got it wrong.

Jeez, Jono, you're like the cargo cult with Turkey 2020. It's not going to happen again. Have you heard of that? I wish it does. What a race. They thought the US planes were going to come back, so they built wooden runways and huts. That's like you with Turkey 2020. It's not going to happen again.

It does. No, no, it does. And that's why every race should be resurfaced. No, no, no, of course not. But just last thing on this is think about Pirelli as well, what they need to consider. It's their public perception. Silverstone 2013, when tyres are blowing up randomly and they're being criticised left, right and centre and drivers are in danger, that's what they're trying to avoid, which is the reason why, if anything, we get these conservative tyre decisions.

okay but the the story of the weekend is is even surpassing the the the weekly the weekly how will mclaren handle this oh that way episodes it is max verstappen so he really the F1 world with what was being hailed as a miracle lap and then has gone on to win that race. Kyle, you're comparing this to 90s Schumacher, which tells the audience nothing about how this conversation is going to go. Because if you say to me, classic Schumacher, I'm like, oh, what, overrated, dominant car, FIA assistant.

just cheating oh my god whereas you're seeing it as oh my god it's just like this amazing incredible thing so what do you mean by comparing it to schumacher I mean, so you're harping back to the late... To the late 90s, it was Schumacher in a Ferrari, which was clearly inferior to the McLarens. And every now and then, Schumacher and Braun, via brilliant strategy in just grabbing the car by the scruff of the neck, dragged the car into championship contention and nabbed wins they shouldn't have.

Now, I believe Verstappen did exactly that this weekend. I think the Red Bull has no right, really, to be getting pole position against the McLarens. I think it's the third best car. I think it's probably behind the Mercedes.

as well and the fact that he did that he didn't put he didn't even have a lock up in the race he didn't even go remotely wide it was just that was an absolute maximum like maxed out performance in a really difficult car that's clearly on the knife edge um i think that was just an exceptional performance and it has to be lauded like like Hands down, we're not worthy. And the whole time I'm watching it, I was like, this is what Schumacher used to do in the Ferrari versus those McLaren.

We're not worthy. Is that what you want to do? You want to give us some Wayne's work? Pretty much. pretty much because i thought at least go wide or at least like you know be pressured and be ragged but it wasn't it was just so calm with it as well it was it was a pure championship champions drive a champions weekend you could say so when i praise verstappen i would praise verstappen for the lack of mistake

And I would pour praise on Verstappen for things like Brazil, where these conditions are so extreme that the drivers are pushed and tested. We then see... where drivers fall off on that ladder. So if it's a very easy track, it's quite easy for all of them to look pretty quick. If you do a Brazil last year type scenario in the rain, suddenly you go, oh, who's really got the skills to deal with it? And in those conditions, Verstappen, absolutely clear.

Singapore last year, really, really difficult to qualify. Everyone in the top 10 made mistakes. And Verstappen in probably what was the third or fourth fastest car there got P2. And so I'll look at that and I'll go, yeah, there's consistency there. And that's where we should be lording Verstappen is the amount of time he delivers. I do feel like the Miracle Lap narrative was slightly over-egged.

Because... Oh, of course. Because he... this week there's a window they talk about getting into the window and it's very difficult to get it in the window it looks like this weekend Verstappen was able to get it into the window and suddenly it's got the pace to go up front now Norris said yeah I pretty much nailed my lap So if we say if we guess and say if they were on the same team, if they were both at Ferrari.

Would Verstappen be out qualifying Norris most of the time? Yeah, probably. And there's probably two, maybe three tenths, if you want to put it that way, probably at the extreme. So if they get the same kind of lap time, then that means that that Red Bull is at least within a couple of tenths of the McLaren.

So this weekend, he just had a car capable of putting on pole. Norris says he did pretty much his best lap. And then Verstappen put in a great lap as well. And you go, OK, well, that's just where the cars are at. Today, up front, we didn't... have to see Verstappen really respond to a final push from Norris. I'll put forward the argument that he did a very, very good, competent performance in a car that is very peaky that was performing this weekend. I'm not doing it down.

I'm just saying I'd rather give him credit where it's due than assign some kind of miracle lap to it. And for consistency, I did exactly the same thing after the Singapore 2018 lap. Now, I know I'm going off a bit here, but the Singapore 2018 lap, that was also seen as a godlike lap. from Lewis Hamilton, when in reality there was some kind of, you know, there was a tyre prep hack that they did.

Now, this started off the very slow preparation laps, which they then had to ban because it was causing chaos on the outlaps with really slow cars and then fast qualifying cars. That's why they now have... a a slowest limit you have to reach a minimum time on your outlap but hamilton sort of pretty much figured out that if you trickled around the track and didn't use anything

you will have the grip towards the end of the lap. And that's why he pulled it out of nowhere. And Kyle, you helped me with this at Ella Park for one event. We did a practice session the day before and you just, you went, hmm.

The fastest lap is actually on cold tyres. So when we got to the event, everybody around is like digging in the front, swishing around, trying to get heat into the tyres. And I'm doing a Kimi Raikkonen where I'm just going very, very slowly. I line up on the grid and I make up about six places on the opening lap.

and sometimes you find a little thing like that but that's all good that's teamwork that's tire prep that's car management that's all fine but what it isn't is you know i didn't ascend to center status where i could carve past really good carters that day i just got a little kyle hat I'd argue that is the same thing. That is you maximizing the result. I'd argue that exactly. And thank you for bringing up the Hamilton 2018 Singapore. That's another example of what I believe.

a driver getting more out of the package than even the team expected. Look at the reaction of the team and mechanics. They can barely believe it when Max put it on par one. It was the same for that Lewis 2018 weekend. stunning we see this every now and then from the greats we'll dig deeper and pull out these performances from seemingly nowhere i also believe that Like Max, I understand the claims of this being one of the greatest laps ever if Max was expected to be like P8.

But I'm pretty sure we're expecting him to be P3 most weekends behind the McLarens. The fact that he then scored pole... I don't know. I didn't get the hype of it being as good as a center lap in the 80s, like the 1988 Monaco pole lap, which I don't even know if there's any vision of, if that even exists. Anyway, that's a controversy for another day.

But I do think that the way to put this on the scale from zero to 10, it is not the lap of the gods or anything like that, you know, like the Donington stuff. But it is like an 8-9 solid performance out of 10, like all-time performance from Verstappen. We're going to remember this for some time.

Because the Red Bull have upgrades coming soon. Not in the next couple of races. I think they're coming in Spain from memory. I need to double check that. But around the next two, three races, they're coming in. What if then the car ends up becoming even better? And we go, wait a second, maybe the car is actually good. And it's that balance issue, which will, you know, I'm sure people have talked about it all week, you know, because can the second driver handle the balance issue match?

It's a very sensitive topic to talk about, Spanners, because no matter which direction you take, you're offending someone. That's the unfortunate part. So just to head off offending anyone, I'm not saying it's not a good lap. No one's saying, I think it was a great lap. The way it was being lauded, I think the media got a bit overexcited. I would rate... Last year, Singapore qualifying much higher than this one. This one, I think they've got a better car than we thought.

And because if you are consistently say not in the window or not quite in the window, we get lulled into, okay, well that's their baseline performance. but when they do get it into that tyre window, then suddenly they're able to unlock stuff. And I'll take a wild guess.

that the difficulty in getting it in the window is because you've got the rear end maybe coming around and sliding around. So it makes tyre prep, you know, you get that the wrong side of Larry and then suddenly the tyres are overheating. So I doubt they're having it. I would imagine that when they talk about going out of the window, they're probably going over the line and having tyres that are a little bit warm.

for optimum so at the moment red bull have got a car and this is an engineering choice which is like my drive at golf you know when i get a hold of it when i hit it in the middle i can i can dink it 280 carry but most of the time it's coming off the toe or it's swinging right and going out of bounds That is a great analogy and I was going to do something very similar on that. It's just like

Yeah, it's just like shots in pool or snooker when you're like, you know, maybe maybe like a one in 15. I might get this shot, but to get the lap time out of that Red Bull.

you essentially have to pull one of these 1-in-15 and 1-in-10 blinders every single corner. If you know what I mean, on Naswada Quali, that was special because you have to have the small percentage of getting it absolutely perfect. And then in a race... doing that every corner for every lap of the race which is what i find impressive now

Christian Horner made some good statements afterwards saying that they essentially turned the car and the setup upside down to try to get it into a window where then Max could actually essentially work. So he was still saying the car wasn't perfect. And you know how... sort of vitriolic sort of Christian Horner is saying we're really good and how much of a good job they've done but he basically said we got the car into

a window where then essentially max can then make the difference like like he can use of it we gave him a platform where he can actually then excel in it which i don't think any other driver could have done that which is why i think it

Absolutely amazing. It's that level of nailing it every corner, every lap. Also, it's a bit of a worry for the rest of the pack. If you're McLaren, you want to tell yourself that Verstappen just pulled out this miracle lap out of nowhere when the dark, dirty truth might be... that you've written off Red Bull. You wrote off Red Bull way too soon. And actually Verstappen's in it. And then suddenly you get him on pole position.

and in a decent car. That car looks decent. And he's absolutely in his element. So, you know, we can argue about what the McLarens were up to, but it looked to me... like he was not at any point obviously you say on the radio yeah maximum pace yeah we're really vulnerable the cars behind should probably use all their tires up now this would be a great time to come and attack us we're barely we're barely in this race But I don't think we actually saw Max stretch his leg.

Is it too early? I was going to say, is it too early to bring up the Pitt incident? Because I so badly want to talk about that. If you add that to Verstappen's performance, that was a really good job by him to not only make it look like he didn't steer right, which I don't think he did. But then I watched the replay about the sixth time and I'm like...

Wait a second, the steering wheel's kind of leaning to the right a little bit. Is that because he lost traction or something? I don't know, it's a weird one. But even he did that well. He even played the, I don't want to say dirty games, but the smart mind games of kind of...

I didn't block you. Oh, wait, I have. And you're on the grass. Whoops. Oh, was that an expensive lawnmower? Whatever he said after the race. I think he played this weekend to perfection. This is really sensitive. What you were going to say there, Kyle, just put a pin in it for a second because we are going to have to ask whose fault it is. So this incident was with Lando Norris basically coming out of the pits. And it's like a motorway joining. So he was almost in the slip road.

And then he was hoping, I guess, that Verstappen would respect the edge of the grass and say, well, you need to follow the line of the road. leave me racing so we'll officially Whose fault is it? Whose fault is it? Oh, Kyle, we've had a very similar incident in a karting event. And I was the Verstappen in that case. And I just went, I don't have to turn my steering wheel. Indeed, and I was a gardener. Yeah, and I ran you off the road.

Yeah, absolutely. Whose fault is it? Well, it was a non-issue for me. And if anything, you'd... You're talking of whose fault it was. It was Norris for essentially doing an Alonso-esque football style dive. He knew he was going to end up on the grass. He knew it. And he almost said so himself. He was like, I knew there was no fight.

it it's like merging in turn you know when you come in it says merge in turn on the motorway and no one knows the rules that you have to use it like a zipper and go up that side and everyone always blocks you from coming in at the last minute Verstappen essentially just wasn't letting Norris merge in turn and he never would. It's a Formula One race. So absolute non-issue. I think Norris could have maybe made it look a bit worse if that was Alonso.

He would have made it look way worse and would have driven himself near the wall and completely hands up in the air and everything. But no, you have to try it on. You have to play a bit of gamesmanship to try and get your competitors to repent. I remember in the cool-down room, which was one of the best parts about it, when Oscar was kind of... Now, if I was Oscar in that situation, which is kind of what he did...

stir them up a little bit, be like, oh, I had the best view of you two almost colliding. Oh, what happened there? Could you please both explain to me? And I like how they're both smiling at each other, Max and Lando, but also it's like when you have an argument with a friend.

And you know that the other, well, you think the other friend is wrong. So you're also not saying anything because you're like, well, I don't want to like hamper our relationship, but also stuff you. Like that was not nice. So they were kind of not saying anything at the same time, which was one of the best parts. I think Max didn't do anything wrong, technically, right? But Norris could have made it so he did.

So basically, you're right. Norris, he took a dive. But when you look at the replay... there's about half a yard between the defender's foot and the player that dived there was so much room and so Verstappen was probably you know happy to happy to drive him off but in the end he didn't and if you look at it there's like nearly half a car's width

I think if you're Norris, you've got to make Verstappen actually drive into you and touch tyres if you're willing to do that. But if you then just steer with a metre to your left-hand side and just steer onto the grass, you didn't do enough.

I don't think they can do the touching part. And the reason is Oscar Piastri is also in this championship battle. And funnily enough, looking at the point standings, how the hell is George Russell still in this championship battle? Anyway, conversation for another time.

I think in this situation, if it's the final race of the year and Norris has the points advantage, yeah, maybe you do go for a little more risk there. The same way we saw Max fight Lewis at the end of 2021. Kind of same behavior in a sense. Now, I was talking to somebody else during the race, and they were like, well, why did Lando do that? He shouldn't have done that. And I'm like, well, if he doesn't do it, he concedes.

Not concedes, but he's back in the original position he was in, which was second place. There's two benefits from this. Number one is what Kyle and you were both saying. You could bait Max Verstappen into a penalty somehow. We saw this with Sebastian Vettel, Canada 2019. Bit of a different story. Rejoined aggressively. I thought the five seconds was a little bit of a, you know.

The penalty that Vettel got at the time was a little bit extreme and draconian. So maybe that could have been delivered to Max today and it could have been one of the massive controversies of the season. The other reason is... Like, Lando, might as well go for it. Show that you're not going to step down to Max Verstappen. Go for the fight.

I think it was the wrong one, though. Okay, look, here's one of the biggest challenges of overtaking is that when you come off the previous corner, you've lost some downforce. You've lost the downforce of the front wing, and that's what creates this kind of accordion effect, right?

So you might be really close to them. You get into the mid-corner. You don't have as much downforce as them. They get out and away with better grip. And even relatively speaking, they get away earlier, right? So you've got too much of a gap then to hunt down to turn one. If you're coming out of the pits and off the speed limiter... I don't know, Kyle, surely he could just sit in the gearbox and he had an opportunity to be level by the time they got down to turn one.

Yeah, yeah, that's a very good point. And that would rely on him instantly making the decision to back out and slot in behind. Verstappen because if anything that was an unsafe release by McLaren they released him straight into the path of Verstappen and he come out next but you're exactly right he could have sat on his gearbox straight down into turn one but he realistically he knew that if he had half a sniff of getting alongside Max

and staying on the tarmac, then he was going to be on the inside for turn one. So I think he did the right decision on how to take that slight opportunity that he had. But yeah, to slot back in, he would have actually had to back off massively. It is. And if there was contact and he makes Max look bad, the argument back from Red Bull would be, well, McLaren just released Norris straight into our path.

Now, along with that, the best part, I think we kind of mentioned it, was Max kind of just sticks to the center of the road. like he doesn't need to go left like there is room to the left let's be honest and he could have allowed Lando through and they could have been side by side but why would you do that when you have right of way you're in the fast lane and like you said Spanners Norris is coming from the slip lane the part that I found really funny

was the radio messages, the back and forth between the teams and the back and forth sort of indirectly going at each other. Max sending radio messages, calling Lando out and vice versa. Max is like the epitome of the guy who you point a gun at him and Max doesn't dodge the gun. He grabs it and then points it back at people and completely just shows that he's the menace. And that's what I love from Max today. World champions dry. I think we've complimented him enough.

And also he's a race engineer as well, so GP. So it was just a poor attempt at playing the referee from Norris. And then you hear their radio messages going... yeah yeah that wasn't very good where we're okay but there wasn't it wasn't it wasn't a thing going yes we understand max and we're reviewing it now and we're also very angry it was literally like now we're not even we're not even bothered uh yeah

There was a slight chance for Norris to get ahead. And one thing McLaren must be thinking now. Okay, so Dave, everyone said they are the strongest package in the dominant car for the first three races. Red Bull have been struggling. The cars look bad. Max is one point behind Norris in the championship. That's it. They should be putting...

Like, they should be hurting Red Bull right now and they're not. And because, yeah, this Piastri-Norris thing, they're going to be picking points of each other. This is leaving the door open for Max and Red Bull. Like you said, if they do get on top of the car, this is leaving a wide open door for them. Do you think, is it absurd for me to say that I think Max Verstappen is going to win another world title? Is anybody going to disagree with me? No, no. Because I don't understand how...

I think we've, we all agree that Max won the weekend. Like it was his performances that, that managed, you know what I'm saying here? That was a bit of a dumb thing to say, but what I'm trying to say is his performance is basically extracted.

something out of nothing in a sense that car shouldn't have won this weekend in my opinion but When I was watching qualifying and Q3 ended and I saw Verstappen score poll, I literally word for word in my head talking to myself going, what are you doing McLaren? How have two of your drivers allowed him to score pole? Because qualifying won the race today. You saw there was one position change in the top 10.

This is my major point in the race. I think we've covered Verstappen and he's completely in his element there. It's like being in an indoor kart track on pole and you go, probably no overtaking, but you've still got to finish it. You've still got to do it. We won't know this for sure, but I think there was more in that red ball. I think it was like Barcelona last year. I was surprised no one has said, oh, we just needed five more laps.

and the McLarens would have got him. I don't think so. I think Verstappen had enough, especially on a track like that where it's very difficult to overtake.

Another 20 laps and a track like Bahrain where you can overtake, then who knows? Yeah, maybe there's an opportunity. But Max had that race covered. The really key thing is that this wasn't... mclaren attacking verstappen and i think mclaren might have made a mistake so i think mclaren think that this was just oh it's a flash in the pan weekend they're struggling to get it in the tire window this is now a straight fight between our two drivers

And before this weekend, all the media was agreeing, all the pundits were agreeing. They were asking them, is this going to be like Senna Prof? Is this going to be a rivalry? Are you going to be able to survive this as best mate? So everyone was talking about it's these two drivers. Now, if you've bought into that hype...

Or if you agree with that, what you would then do is you would say, right, well, this happens out up front. Now it's up to our drivers to race. There isn't going to be any team orders. There isn't going to be, oh, if you overtake now, go for Max and then we'll swap it back later. There's none of that. So this is clear that the McLaren management think, no.

we're now letting our drivers race to the end. And also, if you look at Norris, at no point did Norris get in the DRS zone, I don't think, of Verstappen. He wasn't attacking Verstappen at all. All he would have gained from attacking Verstappen was losing his tired egg and making himself vulnerable to PS. Yeah, and that's a great point because I think...

McLaren were a little bit too vanilla today like yeah they they didn't they had a chance of about 10 laps left and it generally looked like like Piastri could sit in Norris's DRS and sit there where Norris couldn't challenge Verstappen now you're saying maybe that was intentional to challenge

He was staying out of Verstappen's dirty air to maybe protect his tyres. Yeah, I think so. I think he was trying his hardest to get onto Verstappen. I think McLaren should have, about 10 to 12 laps left, should have swapped the cars, let Oscar have a go, because Oscar... He has the personality of a bowl of garden peas, bless him, and he isn't going to shout and say, look, look, look, I'm here to...

I'm here and I'm going to win the race. He kind of suggested it. I think McLaren should have been a bit forceful and go, let Oscar have a pop because I think Oscar was the stronger race pace driver. Oh man, I see. I think you... You've fallen for what Leclerc does. You've fallen for what George Russell does. You've fallen for what Piastri does, which is...

You've only got to get past your teammates, so then you can just use up your tyres. And of course, you can always, in the tyre-saving phase, get up behind your teammate and go, what is this guy doing? I can't believe it. Hamilton fell for it last week. where leclerc did it you remember leclerc was going ah you know i don't want to be a bother but i am a little bit but i am a little bit faster yeah then he got ahead and did nothing he didn't do anything did he

It's got ahead and stayed there. So, you know, I think that was, you know, Piastri by, it's a show. It's a show of force. If you get within the DRS, you go, God, you know, I'm all over him. I really think I can get past Verstappen. Well, all right, if you think you can get past Verstappen, prove it.

Get past Norris. Yeah, they should have given him a pop. If you want to go and overtake him, son, go for it. Go and overtake. But I don't think that overtake was on. Ultimately... if Norris was going to be struggling he would have then closed the gap up to Verstappen but I also think the second he closed the gap to Verstappen looking at the lap times Verstappen responded every single time this is why I think there was more in the bag

It's too much of a coincidence to say the pace that Max showed today was exactly, just happened to be Max flat out, and it just happened to Max. Norris, tyre saving, and then eventually pushing. They were all playing this game of punch and duty. And this is what I'm talking about when you were talking about having a defensive guard up.

basically the defensive guard is not getting in the dirty air as soon as you attack and try and land a hook you're leaving your big shiny nose open to a bop on the face And Max managed to show that pace in the second stint, despite Red Bull missing that flap adjustment that we heard on the broadcast. You know, he didn't have it, which isn't the most biggest deal in the world, but I think it was down by like one degree. But it makes a difference. And also, I have a feeling as well.

We're not going to see this every round from Red Bull. I think the low deg is... From what we've seen in the opening two rounds, and mistake me if I'm wrong, the Red Bull have struggled with tyre deck. So you talk about a cold track, low degradation, Pirelli over-conservative on the tyre. Who's to say that next week at Bahrain we have a different situation? Although I think at Bahrain, from memory, we're bringing the C1, C2, C3 again.

For some reason at that racetrack, which makes no sense. That's more bizarre than Suzuka. So I wouldn't even be surprised if we have a one stop again next weekend. But if it's low deg in Bahrain, if there's not sand all over the racetrack like there normally is over there. we might see Red Bull struggle again. Those pesky Pirellis bringing the wrong compounds.

But that's a good point that Johnny makes there. And George Russell said this in the race in his interview afterwards. He was like, it's been three cold races. We've been wearing jackets at the races because it's been cold. We expect McLaren to excel in the heat. So let's see what's happening next time.

So it'll be really interesting to see if, yeah, Red Bull do suffer with the Degmore in the heat and they drop off and they can't and whether McLaren are going to stretch their legs over the field because I think they are coming into these races with nowhere near the advantage they should have in points.

Now, speaking of tyre wear and McLaren drivers, you may have noticed that I've come under significant fire for what I think is a fairly vanilla take on Piastri, which is that when you have a higher tyre wear situation... he's not quite able to do what the other drivers are able to do. And overall, I see this partnership as similar to Hamilton-Bottas. Bottas could go and stick it on pole. Bottas could go and win a race. Of course, I happened to say that just before China.

Pretty confident that China would be high wear. And then, of course, that track service had nowhere. And in that situation, Piastri's very fast and could go and go win the race. And my inbox has been absolute torture. See, see, he won the race. What do you say now? I go, no, that's the kind of race that I said he could go and win. And I had no expectations really for Suzuka. But given that it was a clear one stop.

and there was no tyre wear, I just want to point out the only example we can point out of a driver struggling on the mediums in that first stint was Piastri. So when Russell pulled the trigger for the undercut... Actually, by that point, all the pushing up behind Norris's gearbox had finished. It had all gone by then, and he'd dropped back to nearly two seconds. And he even said in the post-race interview,

Look, guys, he said it. He said at the end of the medium, I was struggling with the tyres. No one else was struggling with the tyres. Obviously, once you get onto the hards, tyre wear became no issue at all for anyone. So can we just please take that as a data point of going, this is the only point I'm making.

that towards the end of a stint where there's going to be a bit of higher tyre wear and it's a bit of a disadvantage for him, he's going to suffer. So slightly saved by Verstappen being up front. Because I think if Verstappen's not there, I think at the end, towards the end of that stint...

Norris would have been able to just stretch away. Norris didn't want to get into the dirty air. And if he did push up to Verstappen, Verstappen would have just responded. So you're just using up tyres for no reason.

This is my hypothetical prediction that you can't argue against because it didn't happen. I think if Verstappen's not there, he pulls out like three or four seconds. And also... if there was no excuse to oh we've got to cover off the undercut I think we would have just seen that weakness exposed on a track by the way that is very low wear so I'm still confident that over the course of the season

this this observation which is just an observation we've got millions of data points from the last two millions of data points from the last two seasons all i'm saying is i expect that trend to continue I'm not going to argue with that, despite being Australian and people expecting me to stick up. You traitor. Exactly. I'm not sticking up for Oscar Piastro now, because like you, I do want to see it happen at more races. But the good news this year, and I was thinking about this during the race.

I was like, Oscar's very, just seems a lot more honest. compared to previous years like compared to lando like if you take out that one mistake in australia with the rain like how can you predict that it's just going to random well i mean they did but the timing of having

to deal with a random rain shower at one corner that then basically cost you race. Without that, Oscar's right in this driver's title fight. Arguably could almost be leading the driver's title fight if he scores a good result. So there's, I think...

We've seen an improved Oscar Piastri spanners, and that may prove your point wrong. That's what you're going to be careful of right now. Is that Oscar Piastri? I know I said preseason in our season preview, like how many drivers have you seen just all of a sudden become good out of nowhere? I don't think that's the leap Piastri's made, but I do think he's made an improvement with his tie wear. He's not on Max Verstappen level. He hasn't made that leap. That's what I'm talking about.

And if there's a high tie wear stints like that and he's... smashing it good then then i'll just simply change that but today where tyre wear wasn't an issue it was for one driver and it was piastri But you can see the pace is good and you can see that he's determined and you can see that he's politicking. So, Kyle, this is a classic situation where you've got the second driver behind and they're like, do you know what? If only I was behind that other car.

The commentary I was, Palmer was screaming to McLaren to let Piastri have a go. And I just don't know how that works. Piastri is clever because if he'd have done that, he's not getting past Verstappen either. However, the mental damage to Norris of being told to let your faster, quote unquote, faster teammate go by.

is really damaging. Everyone now... is spinning the narrative in the media is that piastri was the faster driver this race and he wasn't let through by by norris and it's just because of the qualifying and it's unlucky but if you switch them around i'm sure norris could have sat on his for several laps, making himself look fast.

Yeah, potentially. It was just the, and you said it there, several laps sitting on gearbox within DRS range, which we know the tyres don't like it too much. So that's what impressed me. Jono made a good point as well, where, yeah, this is...

Yeah, we're seeing a different Oscar Piastri this year. I was quite critical of him last year being nowhere near Norris and he has been... right there but McLaren they had the perfect chance it was status quo they weren't going to get Verstappen it didn't look like they were going to get Verstappen they may as well They had a chance. They were like, okay, Lando, let him through, give him five laps. If he doesn't make any impression in five laps, we'll invert the cars again. We'll...

We'll just flop them back. They had a wide open goal. They had no pressure from behind. why didn't they just let him have a pop? Like, they had nothing to lose by doing it. This is why I don't understand why they play. Why is Norris not allowed to defend his position? If Piastri is his championship rival, why isn't Norris allowed to fight his championship rival? Well, no, their championship rival is ahead of them.

And that was Max Verstappen. They don't think that. And they're there. This is the thing. I don't think anyone in McLaren was thinking about it like that. So if they're thinking about that, if Papaya rules, why are you stopping Norris fighting for that position? That's... Wow. Football. A game of passion, rivalry and loyalty. But decades ago, beneath the cheers and the chants lay a different kind of warfare called hooliganism. On a match day, everyone was your enemy. We'll uncover the brutal...

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When are they going to realize that, that Max Verstappen may be their biggest threat and not Lando versus Oscar? That might be what we're seeing here. This championship battle is as intriguing as we've had since, obviously, 2021. Max dominated the last three years, unfortunately, for F1 fans, because we'd like to see a very, very toe-to-toe title fight, usually in the sport. I have one disagreement with Kyle. I'm very sorry to say.

But you said something, I think earlier about McLaren, like doing something interesting. I can't remember what you're talking about, but I'll tell you what, it was a very, very, the pit stop bluff. Oh, yeah. Absolutely. Do you remember that? The pit stop bluff was just one of the worst things I've ever seen. It was terrible. Five laps before they should have pitted, thinking that Red Bull were going to buy it on that. It was way too early. They were never going to buy that.

Yeah, I don't get the pit stop bluff, which is, you know, they should have done it maybe three, four laps later. That would have made a lot more sense. But I think they were trying to bait something out of there. A lot of people have been talking about, well, why did Oscar pit first?

I found that interesting too. I think because the tire warmup was bad, I think there's a chance you pit Lando first. He falls behind Piastri. There's a possibility. Little what ifs there, Spanners. I know you like that. What if? So there's that as well. I also think they should have told Lando. I don't know if they did. I need to look back at the radio. But when Verstappen pitted. And they pitted on the same lap. Why didn't Lando do the opposite? I don't get that.

I actually don't get why he didn't do the opposite. Were they scared that Oscar was going to get the undercut on both of them or something? I don't know. I don't think the overcut was ever going to work. The undercut wasn't very powerful. I don't think the overcut was going to do anything. So I think you're basically by staying out, you'll just say, cool, have a free undercut for a number of laps.

So even if you extend, you're going to lose so much time and then you're going to be behind. I think track position was king here. So you couldn't then risk, you know, because I think Russell was even a threat if you stay out for more laps. Well, that's true because remember we saw Antonelli stay out for a long time and didn't gain a position and we saw Hamilton on an alternate strategy and he...

Didn't gain a position either. So there was a very good theory today that I think was proven correct that you just can't overtake. When did Suzuka become Monaco? I really want to know that. I didn't remember it being so hard to overtake around here. I think it gets saved by rain a lot of the time. It's like Montreal and Baku.

where there's been some fantastic races there with well-timed safety cars or weather, something like that. No, when it's a dry race at Suzuka, that is it. You shouldn't be surprised by a dry race at Suzuka being like that. I agree. No arguments. So by the way, just a little thing. I think I owe the strategy team at Mercedes an apology because... Because Hamilton going on that cheeky alternate strategy from the midfield yard.

here we go here we go again i can't wait to see how that uh doesn't work and unfolds poorly he was able to avoid losing a place at the start so so that's fine enough but you go right so these are all hamilton decisions they're messing with stuff on a friday oh that car looks really good what if we changed everything and the oh we're in the midfield let's just do a round let's pick a just sit what tire do you think you should definitely do okay pick one of the other two

I think he alluded to this, didn't he, in qualifying. He was like, oh, well, we chose two different setup directions. Hopefully mine should be better for the race, I think. And he did say he was praying for rain. So I think he... He had the rain more in mind for his setup. And when the rain didn't come, he was like, I might as well.

Might as well just throw a bit of a strategy gamble. Why not? And it actually kind of worked out OK for him. I think with the set up changes, he was struggling for pace anyway. It certainly wasn't bad. But yeah, I was surprised to see that. And I thought exactly the same as you. I was like, hang on a minute. So it was Lewis all along. It's not Mercedes at all. So yeah, if there had been a red flag at the point where Antonelli and Hamilton were out...

then you kind of go, oh, actually, Antonelli and Hamilton could have been fighting for a podium. Considering how key track position was, you would have needed a really, really big delta to overtake. So I think just to finish off on McLaren. Yes, they might be underestimating the Red Bulls, but they're definitely, they're focusing on each other. At the moment, I think it's still useful to talk about a straight fight for the title between Lando Norris and Piastri.

And it's going to flip-flop. So it's going to be about which one of them wins more often, which one of them can get ahead in qualifying more often. And it was really close. There was nothing between them in qualifying. But based on last season, where I think it was 20-4... on the qualifying excluding sprint races

On the evidence of that, you would say Norris is still the favourite to get ahead and be in pole position more often. And has he got rid of his first lap curse? I think, you know, I don't know. Has he got rid of his first lap curse?

um can piastri be closer in qualifying more often those are open questions norris is still my favorite in that in that battle but and by by some way as well i don't i wouldn't expect it to be all the way down to uh what's the final race this year is it abu dhabi still abu dhabi i wouldn't expect it to be going down to to abu dhabi for example as the season unfolds so we'll see if time makes

a fool of me obviously one of the biggest topics going into the weekend was how would Yuki Tsunoda do and I'm a big Tsunoda fan and I'm terrified and I'm scared and it's not the result we wanted But it's like, it's fine. I think it's fine. It feels like it's going to be, it feels like it's going to be okay. So the main thing for me was Lawson looked like he could not operate that car.

Whereas we didn't get that feeling with Tsunoda. In free practice, he was fairly much on the pace. Q1, he was there or thereabouts, had a bad Q2. And then... a bunch of people woke up who only saw q2 and went oh it's no better than lawson what's the point

I thought that was a huge win, actually, for Yuki. I thought he did a great job. Like, P1, practice 1, he was in P6, only 0.1. behind max and then practice two with all of the red flags and whatnot he really didn't get enough running he had hardly any running and he said himself after the race you know 57 laps whatever it was that was the most laps i've had in this car and i'm learning every single one we know the car is super difficult That car has been essentially last the last two weekends.

So anything but last would have been a win. Getting it into Q2, I thought he did a really, really solid job. And yet, once you're qualified down there, as we saw, difficult to overtake. It was never realistic for him to go forward. He didn't go backwards. He didn't crash. He didn't get shouting on the radio. He took it all in stride. He learned. That sounded like a different Yuki Tsunoda into the race as well. He got it.

I'm actually, I think that was a big win. I think that's reflected on him really well this weekend, personally. Yeah, no, it's not the win I wanted. It's not a big win. Right, and I tell you what, before the race, I think we would have accepted what happened because I think my expectations was if he's...

high up in q2 so if he's like you know just missing out on q3 we'd be happy and then i think we said points didn't we i think we said he needed to be eighth really and so it's it's short of that but you can't shy away from that it is short of that uh well i think before the weekend if you'd have said okay look

It's going to be not a great qualifying Q2, but he'll finish up 12th. I think he finished up, you know, will you take that? I'll go, do you know what? Just for safety, I'm going to bank that. I'm going to take that. The reason I'm disappointed was because the practice pace and the Q1 pace was like, oh no, he's got a handle of this car. He's fine. He's absolutely fine. And then it went wrong and then you're stuck back there.

So I think he can operate this car. I don't think it's a Lawson type situation. And I think, yeah, I think it's okay, Jono. I think it's okay. It's okay, but you said before something about... We thought that, I don't think Sonoda, I think we're less concerned now with the second car. I think we were very much concerned, but I don't think Sonoda's, I don't think the issues are over. I think they're still there. I've also tried to avoid this topic like the whole weekend because that's everybody.

wants to talk about really and I kind of don't want to talk about it but my takeaways from this were Sergio Perez, his stocks have risen again. Essentially, the result from Tsunoda today is...

really what Sergio Perez, I feel like, would have produced? Am I wrong in saying that? Are you saying that we've reverted back to Perez? Because last week or two weeks ago, we talked about Yuki Tsunoda and how he was overlooked and how such a great midfield driver he was and he was scoring more points than Hajar. Now Isaac Hadro is ahead of Yuki Snowder in the Drivers' Championship, funnily enough.

There were some caveats. Do we then put Isaac Hadjo in the car? The other thing is, and I started, this is where my mind just went to weird places with this. I kind of thought, well, why do we keep trying to figure out which driver can drive the second Red Bull? Do we get to the point where we're like, let's put Hamilton in at Bahrain next week. Let's put Leclerc. Let's put Norris in the week after. Obviously, we can't do that. It'll never happen for whatever reason. But what if...

You could chuck Max in like the Williams. And then Max starts winning races. And then we go, wait a second. Maybe Max is just the greatest driver in the history of the sport. And so it's not the second car's issue. I don't know. I'm pretty sure I'm wrong on both of those. That's the beauty of Formula One, though, is you don't get these questions answered quickly. You have to watch Formula One for a couple of decades.

And then you start to get the answers to it. And even in the Sebastian Vettel situations, people still tell you you're wrong. I never liked it, you know. Sebastian Vettel, four years at Red Bull. Oh, there's something not right here. There's something wrong. And then even when he basically lost to his teammate every single year. Shut up. I don't care about facts. Even when he lost to his teammate every single year after that, people were still not.

seeing what I was seeing and then he turned into lovable Uncle Seb and then you were never allowed to say anything bad about him because he likes bees and I do like Sebastian Vettel as a person as a personality now yeah you don't get those answers quickly but with Sonoda I think it's a passing grade. I'm a bit relieved. However, there is one warning sign that I've just thought of now for Tsunoda fans who are taking heart in that.

In the two events where Lawson was struggling, that Red Bull was nowhere. This is an event where the Red Bull was able to find its window of performance. that basically lawson got the crap races where they couldn't get it into the window and sunoda's coming on a weekend where yeah it's kind of working all right and he was running a higher downforce wing as well i'm not sure what the reasons behind that were and he could go well if it goes back to a weekend where

The Red Bull's not working so well. We could have another data point. So I am prepared for that. However, for now, I think it was kind of okay. Anything else on Tsunoda? Yeah, I think they made their setup choice. One semi preempting a bit of rain, but it gave him loads more rear downforce. And that's one of the complaints I think Lawson had was the car either understeers, but then it's really snappy and on a knife edge.

on the rear end so I think they're like okay let's make it as easy as we can for Yuki it might ultimately hurt the ultimate performance he can extract but he's not going to be put it in the wall and we need to start building confidence whereas

Horner said it as well because I think they asked too much of Lawson where the car's difficult. To get any of that time out of it, it has to be difficult, but he can't get any level baseline of confidence. So I think it goes, right, let's step back a couple of steps. Let's put Yuki on a slower, but at least let him build confidence from day zero, where I think they did Chuck Lawson in the deep end a bit too much.

And he just completely lost his head and couldn't do it. Like, like you're right. It looked incompatible with Lawson. Like he could not make the car function. Whereas Yuki hasn't had that at all. So in that sense, it was. nice and steady and positive and hard to take for Yuki.

Let's see him move up in Bahrain. OK, if he's still 12th after the next two races, then I'll eat my words and say it was a bad performance. But I think that was really positive from Yugi. OK, let's see. But then if you look at the drivers, the RB drivers, Hajar. had a great performance. So he looked really strong all weekend. But let's put it into some perspective. He was doing really well in the previous two events and looked good and looks on pace.

So one of two things has happened. He either took a major step up between two and three, or he's just been doing the good job he's been doing normally, and Tsunoda would have been a little bit further than that had there not been the driver swap. You go, the most likely scenario is... Yes, Harjot's doing great. Tsunoda would have been a little bit above that, barring any extreme visa cash-out tactics that have been happening.

Because let's be honest, in the midfield, at least this race, the racing bulls were the quickest midfield car. Is anybody going to argue with me on that? Okay, thank you, because I was going to actually wreak havoc if somebody did. And I think the Williams is, they've scored more points than they did last year already, three races into this year, so they're still up there.

Imagine today we're talking about a Yuki Tsunoda. Let's say he doesn't go to Red Bull. He stays at Racing Bills. Imagine if we're talking about, oh, Yuki Tsunoda, top five result. He's beat Kimi Antonelli and Lewis Hamilton. That's a possibility. The gap wasn't that far off.

Can I, or should I, I don't know if I should bring it up yet, but I really wanted to talk about how disappointed I was with Isaac Hadjar, just letting Lewis Hamilton through at the start of the race. Like a great race from Hadjar, but at the start of the race, it's like. That's your first chance to go defensive and you just kind of let him through. And at the end of the race, the gap was only a few seconds.

Kyle, it wasn't like 20 to 30 seconds. He could have held him off for most of the race. It was hard to overtake today. I'm not saying that Hadjah would have held him off. Let Kyle yell at you now. Okay, go Kyle. Tell me why you're wrong and I'm correct. Go. Hajar actually played that very, very intelligently. Lewis got the run on him. There was no way Hajar going defensive was going to keep him behind. Lewis was fully ahead, already by the breaking zone. Hajar didn't even really...

bother he played that clever as i know we're both just going to lose time go through i'm doing my own race here so i thought he actually played that very very maturely and i would have done exactly the same if he'd wasted multiple seconds trying to scrappily keep him behind he could have fallen into the clutches of those behind him. So I think Hajar played that very, very clever. I'm not saying that he would have kept him behind. I'm saying at least try.

I'm not saying lose 5-10 seconds defending it, but at least try for a lap. Like he just said straight away, like, oh, I'm not even going to bother. Like, had he have known now watching, if he watches the race back and goes, oh, it's very difficult to overtake. I wonder if I could have held off Lewis for a few laps and then he would have backed off. and then not tried to attempt an overtake. It would only cost Hager one position, but I was kind of saying like...

This is nitpicking at the young man because I thought he drove an amazing race today, right? Like really good race. He even said he lacked fitness. Like he did that with a neck that was basically about to break. You know, well done to Isaac. But I think like... At least show some fight. He's driving out like he's Paul DiResta 2011 out there. Come on. That's boring. That's totally unfair. He kept Lewis behind for six laps.

And then when Lewis actually got past him, he could see in his mirrors, he was like, he's so close this time that I have not got any hope in defending it. It's just pointless. So he didn't, so he didn't bother defending it and cost himself time moving offline, get his tires dirty. I think he played that really, really, really well. And yeah, with the fitness thing and his general performance.

I think it was a superstar weekend. He overcome sort of plum crush issues in qualifying, which is really distracting, put in an amazing... Is that what it was, Kyle? Is that what it was? I think that was the technical reason why that's what it was. So he was feeling really guilty and saying, if this is the issue that stops us getting out of Q1, I'm really sorry. It was that his...

he was getting his nuts caught in the seatbelt. I think it sounded like that. Very uncomfortable with the straps come up. Did you know you've been strapped into like a race car? Yeah.

it does go near that region. And if you are not... comfortable that's horrible and the g's under breaking are horrific so for him to put that out of his head and then saying i can't focus because let's face it you've got certain things in advice you can't focus very well and i'm just saying as well carl that wouldn't be a problem for everyone so you know good for you isaac yeah

He's kept his head and he's put in a great thing. And Jono with the neck thing, like I have been there in an endurance race, albeit in go-karts, but after an hour and a half and a very fast two-stroke car, my neck is gone and I'm having to almost use my head to hold my neck. It's horrendous when you're tired and suffering like that. It is so hard to keep concentrating and keep pushing. So even more respect, but.

also no deg on the tyres so essentially he was pushing flat out most of the race at zazuka which is a neck killer so Yeah, fair play Hadjar. I think he was my mini superstar of the weekend, really. Really good. And obviously that's my Yuki bias going, yeah, well, Yuki would have definitely beaten him anyway. Of course he would. It would have needed another, I think... We're looking at this eight seconds to get up to Hamilton.

Yeah, it's not inconceivable, not inconceivable, but I think Agile's doing a good job. But what a nightmare for Lawson. Now, I know there's going to be some, there's a Lawson sympathiser here, but I think this is the worst possible case scenario. 17th. in the end and tactics aside you know might not have had the optimum he went long he went really long didn't he went too long but he was he was more than amply behind

Hajar in qualifying. So he qualified P14, promoted to 13 after Sainz's pit lane drop and was behind him all the time in the race. If you want the bounce back and you want the recovery, you had to come back and beat Hajar because Hajar was being...

You know, it was not up to the level of Tsunoda. So if you want to prove that it's just a big thing, it's a big mistake, you've got to come in and be agile. That was the minimum this weekend. He's got to recover from this quickly because I could see them replacing him at Visa Cash App as well. yeah potentially like who's who's in the wings to jump into that see who have they got wait like wait waiting in the wings to actually jump into it i don't know if they've got like

more young drivers, they want to ruin their careers by throwing them in. But yeah, good point with Lawson. He's got a nightmare on his hands. It just goes to show how much easier that RB is to drive than the Red Bull because Lawson wasn't last.

Yeah, I think Hajar, he's shown such good pace in all of the, it just hasn't clicked for him in the races and bad strategies and stuff like that. So I think Hajar's actually a mini superstar in the making. This is worst case scenario for Lawson. You've got a rookie teammate who is...

Very quick. And let's face it, Lawson technically classes the rookies, but in this whole rookie conversation, he's the least rookie of all of the rookies, if you know what I mean. And he looks to be the one struggling the most. So I'm inclined to agree with his founders. I think... I think this is not looking particularly great for Lawson. But this weekend was better than the previous two. If you're trying to take any sort of win out of it, he wasn't last.

producer Steve here always has a go at me when I call Lawson a rookie and I think there might be a bit of Australian New Zealand beef there and I'm not going to get involved in it but to stick with Steve's argument and be on his side he's a rookie but he's been now in four different cars in three seasons so he's been in you know three three visa cash apps or whatever they were the first season and then also the red bull as well but uh there would there would have been a bit of redemption

had he been able to have beaten Tsunoda over the weekend so obviously in qualifying it would have I think he mentioned something about out qualifying Tsunoda kind of a hmm see but you know that really the sting was taken off that by Hajar being about eight places up above him and then you know in the race Tsunoda with a much better car I believe it's a better car then was managed to pull off an overtake on a track very hard to overtake on. and then finishes a lot higher up the grid.

But you, Kyle, you think that that... You said to me the Visa Cash app is the best car on the grid. That's what you said to me. Not quite. I think comparatively overall, I think as a package right at the very moment, I think you could almost argue that it's a better car than the actual Red Bull.

In terms of the context, in ultimately peaky performance, ultimate lap time, if you're Max Verstappen and you ace it every single mini sector of every lap, then yes, the Red Bull ultimately will be faster. I think the... the rb or the visa crap app v card whatever it is

I think you could argue is a better package. It's easy to drive. Lawson's jumped straight into it and wasn't last and struggling. Hajar, rookie, putting it into the top 10. Yeah, I think Tsunoda probably could have been top five or six maybe if he was driving that RB. this weekend i think that in itself kind of infers and kind of indicates that that rb in terms of overall package you could argue is better than the

Yeah, but in terms of which car is faster and therefore better, it was Red Bull. In one person's hand.

just in one that's how it works that's how most of the world championships have worked well not the mercedes era because that car was pretty good than the ferraris but some world championships that's how it works anyway okay well let's put our necks on the line then a little bit i think as we go over the next three races i'm going to expect i'm going to hope that we're going to see sunoda pull himself a little bit clearer

And Lawson has got a fight on his hands. He's got to show that he can at least hang it. That will be the minimum. We'd be not getting beaten by Hajar. Guys, we've covered nearly everything, I think, except Mercedes. So I think Jono... There's loads of points that we can pick up in the awards in our Any Other Business section. However, let's see what you've got to say about Mercedes. I think then we'll move on.

Well, I really wanted to mention the Lewis Hamilton quote from Ferrari, which I think is so important to mention is post-race. We'll get to Mercedes and the sex banners. I literally just broke everything you just said the last 30 seconds. Thanks, Matt. But just before Mercedes, Lewis after the race says, you know, we found something on the car that's underperforming the last three races. And he said, it's costing me about one-tenth per lap. So he said, hopefully that's fixed next race.

And then I heard Jack Villeneuve theorize that it's, you know, a stiff suspension or something like that. He reckons it's a spring issue. And that's why the car, you know, they had the plank wear issue at China that kind of relates to it and how the car wasn't reacting well to bumps and stuff. And then they got disqualified. That was an interesting quote. Lewis didn't go into details from it. I don't know what to believe, again, with sources and F1. I've heard everything in my whole life.

Just before the Mercedes talk, I think that that was a massive quote to hear from because also two things. One-tenth a difference is not going to win Lewis World Championship this year. One-tenth wasn't the difference today between him and... charlotte claire a bit bigger than that but it would make a difference now i don't know if it's on both cars it's another question i think it was just on lewis's car which i found interesting Is it the soft, fleshy thing in the cockpit?

Well, you know, obviously we're going to offer some bedding in time, but look, I mean, there's... That does track a little bit because he was the one who failed the plank test. And so if you're having to constantly mess with the ride height to make sure that you don't fail the plank wear, okay, that could be something in it. But this is the whole thing like when you have a cracked chassis and you just...

You know, you just don't know. And then they say, okay, finally, we'll change the chassis. We'll see if it makes a difference. And you could even lie and just say to the driver, yeah, we changed the chassis. Go for it, mate. Magic tires. You've got magic tires. Go. I think it is specifically a ride height thing because he keeps saying he wants to go lower and lower and lower and they keep saying that. So yeah, and they're terrified of the planks. I think they're...

They're airing on the side of caution. Now, this is really weird that it's just on Lewis's car, which is maybe indicating you've got a very different style from Leclerc and needs it in a slightly different setup window to drive it that way, which is kind of... odd so i think maybe lewis is super sensitive and yeah it was super sensitive to ride height maybe in this era of cars we know he's struggled with this era of cars as well might need them to react in a certain way that he's comfortable

Okay, I'm going to try this again. Hey, Jono. Mercedes. What did you make of Mercedes, Jono? Mercedes. Oh, yeah. Did you see doing? Oh, yeah. He went for it in the DRS. No, no, no. I won't change topic this time. Mercedes, first off, there's not really much to talk about George Russell. Like, wow, great job, George. I think let's just leave it at that. Like it was another great performance. He's kind of lingering there and he's...

Up there, he's only like 15 points behind a championship lead too. So well done, George. Where I want to talk more about or who I want to talk more about is Kimi Antonelli.

Because I felt like, I feel like he's giving off those 2015 Verstappen vibes. Like, you know, when Max came into the sport and he was pretty good, he was up against Carlos Sainz and he kind of... towards the end of the year swung things around I think towards the start of the year if anything Carlos Sainz looked like he was matching Verstappen if not at some points better than him and then towards the end of the year and midpoint we're like wow Max Verstappen really could be the next big thing

And today I was watching Kimi Antonelli and the battle with Lewis and the alternate strategy. And I was like, this kid's still going through his exams and he's doing this. Like, I think we could really see a swing in the second half of the year. Now he needs to do it quickly. Because I know I've rumored it for a while about Max Verstappen going to Mercedes.

And they're going to have to make a decision between whether they keep George or Kimmy. And surely they have to keep Kimmy if he keeps producing like this. Maybe I'm wrong, but I don't know. That was a terrific race from Kimi Antonelli today to hold off. Not only Lewis Hamilton, but then sort of get towards George Russell towards the end of the...

the session, and he didn't do it on luck. Australia, I felt, was a bit more luck with the rain. It was pure pace this weekend. Good job. I can't believe you're going to make me argue on the side of Russell, for God's sake.

Russell, you just said he's like 17 points off the lead. He's had two podiums and he finished ahead of Antonelli and you're sitting there going, well, they better kick him out and keep Antonelli. You've got to think about the future. That's what I'm saying. I think George Russell is... It will bring too much competition to Max Verstappen and distraction. With Antonelli, you can have two, three bad years of Antonelli while you get George's title.

2026 onwards, then you figure it out after. When you have George and Max straight up next year, that could cause some troubles. I don't think George is backing down from people. I would personally keep George, but I don't think it would work with the dynamic of Max and George. God, this hurts, but Jono. come on yeah p3 p3 p5 right no we're not talking about the downfall of russell he's absolutely smashing this this this season so far uh kyle yeah i think they're good points like um like russell

Ultimately, yeah. Antonelli is the future. I think Kimi has actually been slightly placid this year. Like, I expected, like, fireworks. He comes out, like, amazing. Like, you're expecting Kapow, like, in your face. And actually...

He's been very sensible and slow building. But yeah, we saw glimpses of it and he was trying to out-Russell Russell doing the alternate strategy. So Russell's going to realise what it's like having a young whippersnapper as a teammate trying the Contra strategy every weekend on you now. He's going to have a taste of his own medicine. as what Lewis was dealing with him the last couple of years in Mercedes.

I believe by the end of the year, I'm expecting maybe Antonelli to be on top of Russell. But I agree at the moment, Russell is smashing it and is doing everything he needs to do. He can't perform any better. I think that brings us nicely onto the podium. Don't worry, there's a bunch of topics we've missed out, but I'm sure they'll come up in our awards. So let's go on to the podium champagne.

All right, it wasn't the rain-filled classic Japanese Grand Prix that we hoped for. But as you can tell from, I think... From our discussions, I'm still excited about the team dynamics. There's so much to be settled in the Red Bull drama. And I do appreciate the fact that Red Bull have now decided to give both them and Visa cash out.

The same liveries to stop pretending that it's anything other than a four person team that they can just swap around at will. And of course, the McLaren dynamic is amazing. And Max Verstappen. is just like an unsinkable rubber duck. They keep trying to pull him under the end of last season and this season, and he just keeps popping up back to the surface.

Well, ultimately, I still feel like it is going to be the McLaren drivers fighting for the title. It is way, way, way too early to discount Max Verstappen. He's definitely got a percentage chance. of taking this title home. So what we do here on Missed Apex is we give out some awards. We start off with the negative one so that we can finish on a positive note. So we'll ask who missed the Apex? Oh no, you missed the iPad.

All right, let's go to you, Jonathan Simone. You are a TV reporter. You are a podcaster, a content creator. You are a sim racer. You're an improv superstar. I heard that you sometimes around the campfire will pull out a guitar and go. Hey guys, I'm just going to strum a few out. I'm just going to, oh, this is one I wrote myself. It's about this time where I felt like pain and emotion.

That should be my Twitter handle. Because my Twitter handle, JohnnyS8, J-O-N-N-Y-E-S-S-8. I'm also on Instagram. Follow me there. I need a new one. We've been discussing it for four years. Maybe it should be Swiss Army Knife. Anyway, I don't know. Bad thing for the weekend. This is easy. I had about seven things and I have to pick one.

And I don't know where to start. Well, actually, let's start from pretty much missing the pit box in practice. Let's go in chronological order. Because as much as that was funny, it was also a pretty bad error to make. And luckily, he didn't make it during the race. It's always good to do that. He, at 1.30R during the race, I don't know for what reason, just used the curb.

Like at the end of 130R going like 300 kilometers an hour, like nobody touches that point of the curb. Imagine if it was wet. I don't understand what that was. Like a couple of lockups, if not two or three at the final chicane. And to add salt to the wound. Post-race, we've just found out that he is fined 20,000 euro for missing the national anthem, 10,000 of which is suspended.

You could not have pieced together a worse weekend for Carlos Sainz, whose teammates scored points in P9, and he was all the way down in P14. Wow, what a shambles. Sainz in shambles is the headline for that. I know people love clickbait these days, so there you go.

He was supposed to come in. He was supposed to be the destroyer of Albon. And at the moment, Albon's looking pretty comfortable against him, which I don't think anyone was expecting. Except Matt. Matt's feeling pretty smug right now. I don't mind. I thought it was going to be even. I didn't expect it to be this one-sided, at least not today. Let's give science a weekend in Bahrain, because I think this weekend was a one-off. The dude missed the national anthem. Now, even that, like, who cares?

Matter of fact, why do the drivers need to show up? That's just admin. If you're not five minutes early, you're late. So let's go to Kyle Power. Kyle. Bad thing of the weekend. No, no, wait. People have got to follow you because you do some stellar work over at the Missed Apex MotoGP. podcast and that you are kicking the formula e podcast's butts at the moment it's very very very upsetting but you guys are building up a great community you could also you can always if you email me feedback at

I'll always pass those on to Kyle, but you can follow the links in the show notes below to his social media as well. At what point in the season are we a MotoGP? We have had three rounds now, and after the previous round, with the championship leader making an unforced error, the championship is now wide open. It was looking like domination, and now it's all really wide open. So just like with F1... the races haven't been like rip snorting races like amazing but the but

Intriguing. The story, yeah, and the narrative behind his building. So lots and lots of intrigue. So, yeah. do go and check out our, we did an intro to MotoGP show. So if you are bike curious, but you're of the four wheeled kind, then come in and have a listen to the show. We, we, we've made that show. specifically aimed at you to try to entice you over to the dark side. I did not approve that.

just for the just for legal reasons that was all kyle okay i thought it was quite clever so in your podcast player go and search for missed apex moto and search for the same on youtube because there's a video version as well so who missed the apex for you kyle I want to make sure I'm not going to take your one. Oh, you're not. I know exactly who you're going for.

Well, there are two people. I would either, one of them's a Williams driver. Oh, that's mine. So you take the one. I'm not going to say, so I'm going to go for the Aston Martin as a whole and particularly one of their drivers. In particular, because Aston, Aston's anonymous. Where were they? It was terrible. Stroll had an absolute shocker. But one person this year who was behind their teammate.

And looking at Stroll is Alonso. He crashed in Australia. Again, he threw the car off the road in what looked like a bit of a rookie error in practice for Suzuka. And most other drivers doing this, particularly who talk the talk like Alonso does and talks themselves up. You have to be open to some criticism, but the press seem immune to...

criticizing Alonso. He is immune to all criticism and I think he was even suggesting his off during practice was caused by some weird bumps or bouncing. He put the wheel, he turned into Degna with the wheel on the ground.

like that was only ever going to result in one way so yeah I think Aston Martin in particular Alonso kind of missed the apex this year this weekend really but Alonso did have some redemption and Stroll had some sort of epic shocker I don't know how Stroll too stopped I think in the end but he was last like how on earth

Because Stroll has actually been, dare I say it, really quite solid this year. And this weekend, Stroll just forgot how to drive. Well, I think we are going to get close to asking the what's going on with Fernando Alonso question. It's just, I've got this sort of... unshakable thing from the last 40 years of him being in f1 that he's he'll pull it together but maybe he might not he might not he's my age He's my age. He might not make it to the end of the season.

Is this the end of Alonso? Because if you believe the spiel, the sort of rhetoric he creates about himself is he's the greatest that's ever lived kind of thing in the race. But like we are seeing, and to be fair, he usually does pull some miracle drives out the bag and a lot, for the most part, lives up to the hype. This year, he really hasn't. His smiling is putting a brave face on it, but that Aston relationship isn't really sort of coming to fruition as we thought it may do yet.

They've maybe got some exciting times in the future, but no, I think they missed the apex this weekend. Yep. Okay. I don't think the time's yet there yet, but yeah, we might start having the Alonzo conversation.

We might be having that conversation at some point. My Miss the Apex Award goes to Alex Albon. I've been trying to get on the Alex Albon train after Drive to Survive and been kind of going, oh, you know, I get him now. I get what he's doing. I get... his personality but you know on the radio if you took away the radios and they became a bit more of a mystery to them, I'd be like, fine. I'd be like, yeah, fine, fine, fine.

I don't like judging them on it because it feels a little bit intrusive and they're in a very raw state when they're on the radio. But because they choose to broadcast it... And the drivers know in advance, they know they're on TV when they do it or there's a risk of it. We do end up having that information. So I wouldn't mind if we didn't have that information, but we have it. And it sounded really terrible, really.

It wasn't just, like, frustrated. It was, like, really... What's the word? Like... Moody, angsty teenager. It was horrible. It was in the mood. yeah yeah exactly it was it you that said i was expecting him to go that's so unfair yeah exactly my parents Yeah, so all I want to say is that those were pretty bad radio messages and whatever. I would be way worse. If I was an F1 driver, my goodness, my reputation would be in the bin for, hey, Kyle, you're a hothead when the visor's down as well.

You pulled me over on the side of a car track once and called me filth and you meant it. he did mean it in a moment we weren't friends for that that small moment but um yeah so i'm not judging on that but yeah that sounded bad all i want to really point out um and can we can we zoom in on me please camera one on me please steve um is

This would be weeks and weeks and weeks of newspaper headlines about his tirade and it would be awful. And I tweeted and I put on Blue Sky, if Hamilton spoke to his engineer like Albon is right now, dot, dot, dot. And someone said, are you really trying to pull the racism card? So I just want to be really clear and tell me if I stutter during any of this.

But I have never been shy that I think the intense and overblown attacks on Hamilton by the media are cynical attempts to cash in on the racially motivated hate towards Lewis Hamilton. Now, I did say that clearly, didn't I? So there's no, there's no, it is that. So yeah.

That is my answer. And I think if we... don't keep highlighting the other behavior that is much higher and should attract more attention than what Hamilton did politely asking his engineer, then we're never going to have any kind of pushback against those outlets that just feed off of it.

If you want to follow me on Blue Sky on Twitter and see me ranting like that, just search for Spanners Ready there. Spanners Ready on Instagram as well and Missed Apex F1 on TikTok. Now we get to be positive and we get to ask who hit the apex. So firstly, apologies to our live stream because we weren't able to put a live stream on today. So we've uploaded the video. We're still going to get it up.

Pretty quickly, definitely in time for your Monday morning commute, but we will have normal service resumed. And sorry if the sound might, you know, I don't have my normal studio sound. I am in a conference room in a hotel. So we are going to be back to normal service next week. And if you want to support us on that journey, patreon.com forward slash Missed Apex would be a wonderful place to come and support us as well. Patreon.com forward slash Missed Apex. Jono, who hit the apex for you?

Here we go. So it's not Max because we complimented Max enough. So I was going to use him, but I think we've done enough on him. It's not Kimi Antonelli, again, because I complimented him for a lot. But well done, Kimi Antonelli. It's this man. It's Will Joseph, the engineer of Lando Norris. Now here's why. You finally did it, Will Joseph. You almost broke the F1 radio graphic. I've been on this podcast for a few years now, criticizing how much he speaks on the radio.

He spoke for so long today, the graphic almost cut off at the bottom of the screen. And as soon as I saw that, I said, thank you. I've been very negative the whole weekend. I needed a good thing of the weekend. And that was a good thing of the weekend. Will Joseph almost broke the F1 graphic. by speaking for way too long again. Is that his name? Will Joseph. I've never committed his name to memory. But yeah, he seems to handle Lando Norris very well.

They get along, so, you know, it would not be a good combo, Jono and Will Joseph. I'd probably need somebody who's a bit more economical with their words. But Lando and him get along, so it's about the driver, you know. engineer relationship that combo oh man i'd go through so many race engineers if i was a f1 star i would just be and it wouldn't even be me firing them or demanding they quit people just going nah no i'm not having it

Not working with that guy. My thing of the weekend then is going to go to Behrman. So I was unimpressed. I was unimpressed with the Saudi. We could have the argument again. Me and Jono weren't impressed with his Saudi. filling debut and you guys are crazy no no no we never said that he didn't do a bad thing to get through that weekend and that was good we just i just didn't understand why that

That specific performance was rated as a... Everyone acted like he won a world championship. I didn't get it. The commentary was incredible. It was in a car he'd never driven before on the hardest track. It was amazing. He did an incredible job not to end up in the wall, let alone the points. It was epic.

Spanners, let's praise Yuki Snowder then today. Well done, Yuki Snowder. P12, a lot better than Liam Lawson. Come on, let's not be praising that stuff. I'm going to praise Bearman, though, because we know where Ocon is, we think, and he seems to be. doing a bit better than the knock-on? Is that...

Seems a bit better at the moment. Straight away. He's just dragged a Haas into the points at Zazuka on merit. A Haas, which is not known for its downforce and fast corner performance. Amazing. Yeah, nothing weird happened. He just put a weekend together. Yeah. Yeah, he did a good job. Now, the Haas was, we did expect it to be...

You know, Matt, in the preview as well, we were talking about this. We did expect it to be a little bit quicker this weekend because of the resurface first sector and how they didn't understand why, but the car just was dialed in in China and they managed to do it this weekend. But Behrman also beat the likes of Fernando Alonso, Yuki Tsunoda, Carlos Sainz. Beat a lot of good names. Well done, Oli Behrman. I'll finally give him some raps. Yeah.

Yeah, that's good. Yeah. If the evidence changes, change your mind. There's no shame in that. And delete all the episodes where I said all the preseason stuff. Just get rid of it quick. Kyle, who hit the apex for you? Mine, I'm probably going to get a lot of stick for this because mine theory should be a very bad thing, but I actually think it's a very good thing.

Jack Doohan. Now I'm going to explain my reasons, right? He hit the apex for me rapidly before hitting the wall. But the fact that Jack Doohan, right, in the sim, he's been going on the sim, he's been using, trying to get some tricks to get, to get like a, you know, a head.

Even in the sim, he's been doing turn one flat out with DRS open to have the sheer... like bravery to go in there in real life and just blindly do that and result in a huge crash he he has his father's bravery his father is multiple motor gp world champion with horrific injuries absolute lunatic the fact that you can jump in i mean even on the sim when you do this in the sim

You use it on iRacing. DRS open through turn one flight is lunacy. I wouldn't even do it in the sim. I was like, that's just ridiculous and crazy. The fact that he's done it in the sim and then tried it straight off in real life. I actually think, yeah, it's a silly mistake.

The fact that he's had the blind bravery and faith to do that, I think is incredible. And I doff my cap to you, sir. I think I still would have put it down as a bad thing because... a bad thing but the bravery just my god like wouldn't you just look around and just like before you did that you just go just just check in real quick are people are people opening drs there or are they keeping that closed as they come through

I mean, if you've ever driven like a downforce race car or anything, you realise like... the violence that you're in and the g-force anyway so then to take away loads of your rear grip just return one i just i just found that mind-boggling that is even tried that yes stupid but Wasn't there a Silverstone race, I might be misremembering this, where Vettel was able to take Abbey with the DRS open?

Yeah, it would have been 2011 in qualifying when they could open it whenever they could. And then Grosjean was like, oh, I can also do this. And then he didn't and he cracked. No, the race of 2018, because it was Grosjean, he just forgot to close it. That was my debut on Missed Apex Podcast.

I believe it was in 2018. It was my first ever race. Oh, nice. So here's the issue, is that the DRS will close if you lift or break enough. So in corners like... abbey where you you don't have to come off the pedal or this this little kink into turn one before turn one um is it even called a turn that that kink is it that's turn one so turn two is the big right hander

Oh, I didn't know that. Right, but the kinkiness turn one and straights turn two. Yeah, I didn't know that. I thought Grosjean did it on purpose just because he thought he could do it, but I do like it when drivers push the limits. The other one that sticks out in my head, I know this is really random, is Fisichella in Interlagos. It must have been like 2001 or something. And, you know, the penultimate left-hand kink.

before the left hand yeah and he was in the interview he's going i just want to see you know is it possible to take it flat out and like the car has gone in the wall and in the interview just goes It's not possible. And you go, no way. Yeah, no, we all saw it. Everyone saw it. It was on TV, mate. Everyone saw it. I actually had another quick one about Behrman.

And he said, I was really surprised no one took the iRacing line. Yeah, this is brilliant. Because I know, because it feels obvious in the sim, and that's to stay to the right-hand side and basically hug the pit wall. The reason I do that is because it's the indoor karting line and you just go shortest possible line. Why would Grand Prix drivers go over to the left when you don't need to? Are you talking about the... You go, Kyle.

Essentially, it will affect your speed onto the straight. You are taking a shorter distance to the line, so you gain lap time, but it will compromise your... your your ultimate top speed because you're scrubbing speed a bit more you're not massively accelerating so in the race you wouldn't usually do that because you're affecting the end of the next lap but at the end of an all-out push on the quality lap it makes perfect sense you take

the least run to the line and you'll probably save a hundred or two but it's maximized you're trying to maximize everything in qualifying and It's awesome to see straight from the sim and him actually referencing iRacing doing it as well because we're all doing that during the Miss Apex Championships. We're all doing the same trick.

Because we've annoyed people in the past where we just go, oh, yeah, this is just like we're in the sim. And you go, shut up about your computer game at home. And you go, OK, kind of fair. But also, it's the experience that I've got. But these guys coming through now, Antonelli, Behrman, they also see themselves as sim racers and they adapt the things they do in sim racing and the lines that you take in sim racing to F1 as well.

So we're vindicated and everyone else is wrong. Go and follow Jonathan Simon. Go and follow Kyle Power. Follow me, Spanners. I'm the best one. So click my links first. Please consider supporting us on Patreon. even if only for a little while. We will see you midweek for our round four. Saudi Arabian Grand Prix race review. Is it Saudi next time? Bahrain, isn't it? Oh, is it Bahrain next week? Okay, excellent. So we've got the Bahrain Grand Prix race review midweek.

And then I'll be back in the shed for Sunday for that race review at a more normal time. Until we see you next, work hard, be kind, and have fun. This was Mistake Makes Podcast. Find me somebody. Dreams beds aren't shy. Come on, guys, join in. to love dreams can our experts won't rest until they've found the perfect Let us find you a bed that loves you back. Smashed it. Want to have your voice heard? Listeners, what are you most proud of this week? Hello, caller one. I moved into my first flat.

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