Spanish F1 GP Race Review: Verstappen on TILT!

You are listening to Missed Apex Podcast. We live. F1. Welcome to Mist Apex Podcast. I'm your host, Richard Reddy, but my friends call me Spanners. So, let's be friends. This is our Spanish Grand Prix race review. I had a plan for this show that was coming together very nicely because I write the show notes.

During the race, I had this vision of a nuanced and detailed strategy discussion, and then Max did the bad thing. So for the people who say we don't talk about Verstappen enough, don't worry. We have you covered. So coming up, we'll discuss Max doing the bad thing. Piastri nailing the weekend. Leclerc bringing home a podium. Hulkenberg from the top rope. P5 for Hulkenberg and more on this unexpectedly wild episode of Missed Apex Podcast.

we are an independent podcast produced in the podcasting shed with the kind support of our patrons and partners we aim to bring you a race review before your monday morning commute we might be wrong but we're first i'm joined in the shed by the prodigal son kill a fatted calf for the return of matt two rumpets hello matt buongiorno signore Oh, you've been to Italy, but I'm glad we've got you back. And we've got you back for probably the most intriguing tyre race of the season so far.

I was kind of laughing because I had like five pages of nothing but when people pitted and where they came out. And then Mac did that. I'm like, man, this is just going to save me a whole lot of effort. Yeah, just tear it all up, put it in the bin. We are going to talk about the strategy side, but I think it is, of course, we've got to.

start with what was going on with Max Verstappen. Don't worry, definitely Piastri and McLaren are going to get their props. We're also joined by the clown prince of chaos. It's Miss Apex's own Christian Pedersen. Hello, Christian. Did you say clown or crown? Which one would make you happier and less chaotic? Crown, I think. How are you, my Danish friend? I'm very good. I feel just like Matt. Actually, my comments were a little thin, and then it's the last 15 laps, right?

It blew up. So we do have to, of course, focus on Max Verstappen. And so we'll skip straight to after the safety car restart, the safety car was caused by Kimi Antonelli and worryingly another Mercedes failure.

And then that brought up a very, very long safety car period. And although I think the safety car was probably warranted, they did pull that trigger very quickly, didn't they? It very much felt like competition caution to start with. OK, great. We get a safety car. It's sort of... ruined the playing out of this strategy that had been building up but they lined up with Piastri, Norris, Max Verstappen the problems I think started for Max Verstappen when he only had a hard tyre

I know Matt's going to have a say on this, but I wish they had a go at keeping track position and staying out on the softs. Has a little incident with Leclerc. Has contact with George Russell going into the corner. He's told to give back the place.

by his race engineer. And then, in my opinion, legally, let's make this clear, in my opinion, he then deliberately put on the gas and hit George Russell in a fit of... revenge so breaking that down our experts we've got to go to matt for the tires first of all the call to go on to hards matt yeah so max's tire allotment had um one

new medium, one new soft, three used softs, and a new hard tire. So this was an interesting choice for them because they'd been through three of the four soft tires they'd had, including the new one. So that suggests to me that perhaps the leftover soft tire was just worse off, or they thought he'd be better off with a new hard tire. But I really think, you know, a lot of people will criticize Norris for his lack of championship.

mentality they put him on that hard tire and he was on tilt from the moment he was on that tire he knew he was going to get done on the restart and he just could not He could not say this was something beyond my control. What's the best I can do with it at all? It set the whole thing up beautifully. I know. So what we're describing here is like the stages of madness, basically, that led to that ultimate.

final act i i think the way to go is is sort of in order really so the first thing is is he gets on the loud pedal on the curb loses the back end arguably does quite well to to save that and has this side by side with leclerc now i i really hate this kind of incident in in karting and on i racing because people will naturally want to move out back to the racing line

So there's this natural kind of everyone thinks, yeah, but it's the right hander coming up next. So we're going to go left, right? I actually think here Verstappen is completely entitled to just hold his ground in the middle. Now, notwithstanding that he first moved over to the right to claim. this line but I think there's no doubt in my mind that he held his ground Leclerc tried to gently nudge him over there's contact and then at the point of contact Verstappen moves

So at the point of contact, he moves. So Leclerc is no longer doing anything wrong because he's moving into space that was vacated. But the contact, Christian? Occasionally you hear about football players having someone from defence just...

like glued to them the entire match, right? You hear them just speaking about, I was never able to play my game because someone was always on my back. Yeah, man-to-man. That's a bit like how Max is racing. So as soon as he can see just a tiny gap... and he can close it he closes it so he's like glued to your car and the other racers has learned this now by now so they they are trying slowly to close the gap as well they basically do what he does

And if he doesn't back out, it's going to be a crash. And that is what we saw today. And I think it's a great thing that we see the other drivers reacting to it like this, not in an aggressive way, but in a, I'll take my line, Pedro. And I think just Leclerc, he just said, this is my line from now on and you have to move. And the result was...

It's a little dance, isn't it, as you're negotiating for the line into the corner. So he's moving over a little bit. Max doesn't kneel. Now, I think if Max just holds that line, that will be a dumb thing to do because Leclerc's coming over. But if he does that and there's an incident, I think that's Leclerc's fault. So if there is a crash, I think it's Leclerc's fault. Matt?

Well, that's an interesting one. I'd say from a practical point of view, Leclerc clearly had the overspeed. His front wheels were significantly ahead of maxes. So sort of that's his space. But you're correct. Max's title doesn't have to yield to him. And I think sort of this is exactly you described it as a dance. I describe it as a duet. This is exactly the moment where he's testing how far he can go. And when there's like, oh, dink. All right, that's it. We're done.

Nobody gets damaged. There's no real impact on the race. It was minimal contact at best. And I actually love Leclerc for just saying, well, yeah, Max, move me over to the dirty side. I tried to move him over. And he didn't want to move at all. So it was a little brush. And that was the end of that. I thought that was a bit dangerous of Leclerc to be admitting that. Because he basically, they were like, oh, yeah, Max is accusing you of hitting him. Yeah.

Yeah, I totally did that. Calm down. After me, I have to review the video. But still, it's his defense at the race control, isn't it? He's moving me over to the dirty line so I can't break. I have to take my line to do the racetrack. So it works both ways, I think. I'd like to know the rules on that, I think, Matt. I would love to know. Are you allowed to dog it? Because this is about me and Kyle briefly. fell out on the kart track up at Buckmore because we went around a right-hander.

He was on the outside, and I just held my line, even though there was a left-hander coming up. I held my line to the point that he then had to drive onto the grass, for which he called me, and I quote, filth. That is one of his favorite words. I don't know that there's a specific rule. If you're defending, you're allowed the one move. You're allowed to return to the racing line. Another peculiarity of the Barcelona track there is that it's not really a straight line.

I was going to ask. It narrows from the outside in so you can be going in what you think is a straight line and actually intersect somebody outside of you. And I just assume the FBI looked at the totality of what was going on there and said. Yeah, no, we're not going to bother. Yeah, basically nothing happened, though. There was a concept where nothing happened. I think the rule states something. You can't occupy a track that is not yours. I mean, if there's a car there, you can't go there.

it would be technically on leclerc that he if you can show that by telemetry and stuff if he did most by that it would be his default but it is deemed like a racing incident Honestly, if I was arguing it, I'd say, you know, is this even really a collision? I mean, yes, there was contact, but does it really rise to the quote unquote collision level? No, no, no. So Verstappen is...

Got to let him crash into him and then be like, it's your fault. But it's that whole thing. You're like, if you're crossing a pedestrian crossing and it's your right of way and the car hits you and then you're in the hospital with your leg in plaster going, well, technically it was my right of way.

Props to the British Empire for that quote. I don't know if you guys, if that ever made it to America. But the next incident then was George Russell was able to follow up and get to the apex. Now, I'm a lot less... less clear in my mind about this one basically i flip every single time i looked at it i changed my mind so does anyone have a clear indication so this is the incident that that led to

The Red Bull pit wall saying, hey, you've got to give the position back to Russell. And then obviously he sort of did, I guess. Does anyone have a clear indication in their mind of who? Hang on. Oh, my goodness. Nearly didn't play the bumper. Whose fault is it? Christian Madison. Whose fault is it? I'll say one thing. You can say as many things as you want.

The way the rules are written today is more or less based on what Verstappen has done the last four or five years, right? Now, 100%. And what happens today there with Russell and Verstappen. was the product of the rule writing based on Max Verstappen's driving. And today, he paid the price. The end. Okay, so you're saying that Russell was allowed to do what he did? Yes, definitely. Matt, do you have a case for the defence?

Well, I think there are two lenses through which we can interpret it. Like if you watch back the incident several times, it's very clear that Russell, one, had gained the right coming up the inside. by his placement of the front axle relative to Verstappen at the apex. So he's got to be, his front axle has to be by the mirror. Yeah. So he's fulfilled that criteria.

Definitely. Easily. Easily fold it. However, as he's going into the turn and is not unusual on a restart, he has a snap of oversteer. So he very clearly whips the... wheel to the left to catch it and max meantime had had turned in pretty violently meaning to give him absolutely no space whatsoever and as you might imagine leaving no space when someone's going on

cold tires into turn one at stupid kilometers per hour there was there was a little there's a little touch of the front wheels and max goes skittering off the track to the runoff area

complaining that George had fully violated him. Now, I will say, racing drivers being racing drivers, if George had anticipated that, I never saw a full replay, but you could... possibly make the argument that he saw max coming and did that on purpose just to sort of scare him off and i like that better for george like this is for me is a part of george's narrative arc that i really like if he did that on purpose and got away with it

But I'm not going to say that's what actually happened because I don't know. I don't think we've seen that from Russell, have we? Where he's gone like, oh, here's a little taste. Here's a little bit of medicine for you as they come through. Not sure he strikes me exactly like that. He is the type that would go, don't hate the player, hate the game, kind of action-ish, wouldn't you say? I think so. He's the director of the DGBA, and he's vocal when he needs to be.

He's been pretty vocal about Max Verstappen for some time. And I think today he showed him that if this is how you want us to race, this is how we race. And Max paid the price. I also think that Russell didn't have any choice but to go for the overtake. So the way it worked out, the way he ended up, it wasn't like a lunge from miles back. He naturally ended up in that position.

Yeah, this all goes back to how badly Max lost the rear on the straight. He lost so much momentum there. George really was, I mean, it was either slam on the brakes and get hit from behind. Or take that line. And Max knew that. He knew he was fighting a losing battle with Leclerc. He knew he was fighting a losing battle with Russell. And he tried to do everything he could to pin him to that inside.

to the inside of the corner and give himself a chance coming out to maybe hang on to fourth place. Yeah. And again, I think it is self-policing in a way. If you are entitled to squeeze that person to the apex and you go, well, I left him a car's width. And you go, okay, that's great. You can also do that at Spa. So in turn one in Spa-Francorchamps, we often get these incidents where, well, I left...

then one car's width, but then another car pops into the middle because you've got that sort of open curb. So you've got one car nearly cutting the corner, and then this ends up with the outside car being hit. And so you go, yeah, if you...

you technically leave enough but there's no room for error and then you get hit and there's a consequence from that and either you go out of the race that's a little bit self-policing so you can be aggressive and you can squeeze but but you might get a poor outcome my personal opinion on this

is that I don't think Russell did an awful lot wrong. He's down the inside. He's pretty much on the curb. If he'd have been, if he'd ended up where he ended up, he moved out a little. If he'd have been there to start with, that would have been okay. Yeah, I think something that needs...

repeating is that the inside card doesn't have to be on the apex you don't you're not obliged to be all the way over as much as you can and if you own the corner you're kind of dictating the line through the corner Verstappen made a very aggressive tight line trying to hang on i think the second they made contact he sort of got so it's like he drew a foul and he goes oh i've been here i'll act on that hit and i'll go off to the escape road and go well i got hit so that's the end of that

Good attempt, George, on that overtaking manoeuvre. But since you hit me and I've gone off, that's now my place. So that's how I read it in the end. But again, Christian, I'm not going to die on that hill. That's just my best. And I tend to agree with the last thing anyone says on this.

So I tried to think of something, but I couldn't find something funny. Oh, it's all right. That you should have to agree with. But I have to say this. A couple of years ago, I would have said what Russell did today is wrong. When I saw Verstappen do that in Brazil in 21 on Hamilton, for instance, that's when it sort of like kicked off. Oh, I see what you're saying. That was wrong. That was a wrong way of go racing. But then they changed the rules and now they drive.

per the rules. And I don't like it. It's not beautiful. You shouldn't be able to just take the inside and push the outside car off the track. You shouldn't be able to do that. But here we are. I want to argue with that, though. That's not what Russell did. Russell went to the inside. He lost, if we're going to give him the...

beneficial interpretation. He lost the rear a little bit and caught it. Max came over to squeeze him. That's why there was contact. Max could easily have left a little more room and there would have been no contact. Max took to the runoff area. on his own recognizance. And also it happened to work out very handily for him because he could get through that complex more quickly.

than if he tried to hang on around the outside. And that really sets up the fun. No, it does. And so the pit wall is saying to him, we advise you give the place back. So I think if they're saying that.

They're looking at the George Russell wiggle, the little bit of oversteer, as a nothing burger. It's like, yeah, you're going into a corner. Yeah, you're having to do a little bit of a correction. Yes, he came out a little bit. There was a little bit of contact, but so what? The main thing is that Russell was... had his front axle ahead of the wing mirror. Therefore, he owns the corner. It's his. Therefore, give the place back. That's what the Red Bull pit wall is thinking, right?

Yeah, and don't you hate all of having to think that way? Could you tell in my voice that I was like, oh my God, I can't believe I'm having to say all this. But that's how it is. So the Red Bull pit wall, they're not idiots. I mean, they're notoriously one of the most switched on. strategy teams in f1 history and so they're saying give the place back max doesn't like it and then we get to it we get to the bad thing i mean this is crazy i i feel like i'm gonna kick off on this

And you tell me if I've gone too far. Do you feel like that, Spanners? Do you feel like kicking this off? Well, I mean, I've already tweeted. I've already tweeted. I've already put it in place. You already hate it. So just go. Oh, my God. I've already got so much abuse from Verstappen fans. But to me...

I would say that is a very, very clear case of a deliberate ram. So in my opinion, he's gone back on the gas. He's feigned as if he's going to let him past and then gone, ha-ha! In a premeditated, it feels like, on the gas. hit him because that or did that suddenly occur to him he slowed down saw russell and went oh it's that it's russell again i didn't realize it was russell i'm gonna get him

Oh, man, you're bringing up so many. Was it a Hamilton in Spa? Yes. No, no, no. You repassed him too soon. It happened again in Saudi Arabia. You let him by, but immediately got the DRS and passed him back. I think it might have been very much an attempt at one. of those kind of maneuvers oh but everyone knows that you you have to let them by and a corner has to go by you're talking about lewis hamilton in 2008 against yeah kimmy whatever it was against kimmy

Let him go past. Was it 2007? Let him go past and then immediately retook it into the next corner. I think it's well established that you can't do that now. But I think it was like revenge. you hit me now as you go by i'm gonna hit you as well and he is that's a revenge hit using your race car anything could have happened you could have flipped russell you could have had a crash and ended up sideways across the track with other

Cars coming around. Now, do you remember when Lewis Hamilton walked across the track after an incident and then... The FIA said, because you're a world champion, you should be a better example. And they punished him specifically for that. Max Verstappen is now a four-time world champion, in my opinion, deliberately using his car. to hit another car in a bit of a spiteful revenge. I think he was on tilt. He's lost his temper. We've seen him do it in sim racing.

seen him do it on sim racing and i know people say it doesn't matter it's just sim racing when we sit down and me and matt sit down and we do our sim racing that's like our big event of the weekend we take it seriously i we would not expect someone in our championship to ruin someone else's race by skipping

a chicane and wiping someone out, which is something Verstappen has done in sim racing. I don't think this is any different to that. He just did it with real F1 cars. I don't think it's going too far to say for an F1 champion to be doing that, he's bringing the sport into disrepute. I'm going to try to... It's not a different take, but I'm going to go a little bit in defense of what was going on there. Yeah, well, you're here. I'm already excusing myself. Just to be difficult.

Hey, we can put the other side on. I'm getting the feeling that you're not earnestly believing what you're about to say. Actually, so far this year, Max Verstappen has been the best driver in the field, I think. Yeah, sure. I mean, the way he's been driving that Red Bull, he's just been... And I've honestly had to take my hat off for him so many times in a car underperforming, just driving the butt of that car. And today he was...

doing a race with a different strategy to everyone else. His teammate was Pete 42, and he was just going for it, right? And everything was so Max Verstappen peak. And I think he's in that peak when he's at that limit. And when things just start to just unravel and... give the plays back and yada, yada, yada. He's just lost his temper. And this is, I've said this from the beginning, that guy needs management. He does not need Jos Verstappen.

He needs management, right? And he's such a great driver. I just wish that he wouldn't do stuff like this because it's just hurting his brand. It's hurting the image. It's hurting the sport. And someone needs to tell him off, I think. Well, I'm not. Okay. So someone needs to tell him off. I think to me, that's a very clear race ban and people are very upset. But I just think like if...

He got less than Russell got for being a bit cocky on the radio. Exactly. At Monaco. And he's done this numerous times, right? He's done this numerous times. I would say this is the one for me that is the worst one. He's lost his head. He's lost his temper. And I think from his point of view, I understand why he feels like Leclerc hit him and that was wrong and why Russell hit him and why he shouldn't.

give the place back i can understand how all these things build up and it's in a race car it's 200 miles an hour yada yada that's some kind of excuse it's a crime of passion as the french would describe it and i and i would be happy with that if You know, in the next few days, he comes out and goes, whoa, on reflection, my bad. Like, whoa, unbelievable. Because it's a human response. It's not what you want from your athlete, you know, your star athlete at the top of the sport.

You know, it is a human response that exists. But yeah, I think it's definitely worthy of a race ban. He's got three penalty points, so he's one penalty point away from a race ban anyway. But honestly... I don't see why that's not an immediate black flag. If you did that on a kart track, black flag. Did that in Formula 3? Black flag. I would say that there's some F1 drivers in F1. If they did that, black flag. I find it difficult.

that Verstappen didn't get at least a DQ from this race. Or a stop-and-go penalty at least. 10-second penalty for something like that? People are comparing this to the Vettel one in Baku. I do think this is worse than the... The Vettel one was petty. It was slow and he drifted in. Yeah, it was such a shame. Yeah, this was, I slow down, I let you go.

into turn four at Barcelona. Then I put my foot on the gas and ram into you. I think this is a difference. I think Vettel was angry at what happened. Max Verstappen is driving like he owns the track and no one else is welcome. And that is just two completely different things. He's challenging the system always, always. And it has to stop. The system has to say here and no further.

I think the only defense the stewards have, and I believe this would be the reason it was a 10 second penalty and not an immediate race ban, is one, unlike Russell, he didn't go on the radio and say, there, that's what you get.

Yeah, we did that in Monza. If he'd done that, it would have been game over. No, he literally said that. Matt, he literally said that in Monza in 2021. He said, that's what you get when you don't leave the space or whatever, when he parked it on top of Hamilton's head. Yeah.

But we're not talking about then. We're talking about now. Stop living in the past. And this is like a very legalistic way of thinking that we are only, if you look at the pattern, and I put this in our notes, the pattern is incredibly troubling. And I think the FIA needs to figure out how to address it. But they only look at the incident itself, generally speaking, and they only consider the pattern once you run out of penalty points.

And the thing is, they're going to say, he's going to say is, I was just trying to take the position back. I was trying to get my front axle ahead. And they're going to say, well, you entered the corner out of control and caused a collision. That's a 10 second penalty. You're going to say it's intentional. Everyone believes it was intentional who saw it. The penalty does not. All the analysts say that, but at a legalistic point of view, it's more arguable.

So they're giving him something that can't be argued with immediately. No. Rather than engaging in the... ongoing court battle you know that would create on the broadcast i saw you know they were a lot of the presenters were being asked so you're saying it's deliberate and they're like well we didn't say that we didn't say that and they're staring like panicking no we didn't say it was deliberate like i i i think i can say in my opinion i think that was deliberate right

the the f1 tv uh it was palmer on f1 tv was like that was intentional oh yeah analyzing the incident were much more i'll use the big word circumspect and how they presented it They use Chris Midland right now at F1 Live, an old journalist, Formula One journalist. A friend of Miss Apex. Yeah, numerous times he went like, that... That corner five, it's not sitting well with me. And that was just the vibe, right? And then you turn on Sky and it's like watching Fox News talk about Trump.

Stop. I mean, come on. Christian, stop, stop, stop. Right. Chris Medland is a national treasure in F1. So protect him. It's fine. We can protect him from any trouble. But yeah, that is my opinion. right in the stewards report it doesn't say he did it by purpose it says was clearly the cause of the incident my worry is okay not worry but if you're p11

then you can just do this for free, right? You can just go and hit someone if you're a bit angry with them because 10 second penalty, who cares? If you've got a 10 second gap behind you, you can just hit someone, right? Because who cares? You can... Oh, you meant to let them through, yeah, but I've got a gap, so I'm just going to hit them. I'll lose one place, but that's fine. It is a bizarrely lenient penalty. Bizarrely.

You say that, and yet they also included the fact that they wouldn't have made Max give the position back. So there's also that. Yeah, so I guess he's right about that. But yeah, two wrongs don't make rights. So what's going to happen, you think? Nothing. That's fine. It'll just be like everything. It'll just be like, oh, well. And then someone else will do it and they'll get a race ban. I don't know. Like, yoo-hoo, Canada. What? Max? What? Who? Yeah. Right. It's been a long triple header.

But we have to move on. I think that was worth spending time on because that was like a big sequence of events that just blew up the internet today. But we should get on to McLaren, Matt. All right, then. Let's do that. All right. So, Piastri, world champion, yeah? It's on. Yep, no tire troubles in the clean air, hot temperatures. He did run into some graining at some points. You did see the pace come and go.

Norris did get a really nice undercut protecting against Verstappen. Yeah, three-second undercut. And I was so looking forward to the end, finally getting to the end of a race with Norris chasing Piastri on hot temperatures and highly difficult terrain. And wouldn't you know, a safety car broke out. Yeah, I think my honest opinion is that I think Piastri had it covered. I think so too. However, they didn't really run out of tires at any point today. So...

They were so in control of their pace that after the safety car restart, from doing maybe 120s, 119s when they wanted to gap to Verstappen, that's what they were doing on the softs in the first stint. after the safety car reset restart on low fuel they were doing like 114 115 to break away from the pack and you go oh my goodness they were like hiding the only reason max was even briefly in the hunt was because they were hiding like three seconds of pace

So apart from the graining, they weren't at any risk of running out of tyres. And by the time they had this second set of softs to go on, I think they only had 18 or 17 laps to go anyway. So McLaren were super, super comfortable. I don't think there was anything Norris could have done to push anyone, well, Piastri, over the cliff and then overtake them. Not today. We'll never know, but it did look like Piastri was within the margins of his ability to...

To manage and really management here is the correct word. Like I remember like lap four or so McLaren coming on the radio to Norris or they played the message. They're like, okay, great. Your tires are fully up to temperature. You can go ahead and start using them now.

They had it dialed in from the beginning. Their pace advantage was ridiculous. Their degradation advantage was ridiculous. And their management of the race and of the drivers, because I'll point out they did have the option to screw up the undercut like they did in Hungary last year. And they managed to not do it. So props to your strategy department for learning that lesson. So I'm going to talk a little bit about the track before I talk about PS3. Go for it.

So, it's located in Spain. Do you have some guitar? Deep in the Catalan Hills. Dos Terezas. The track is basically... What I don't like about the Barcelona track is you have to raise the line, right? You have to drive the line at maximum speed. You don't attack the track. You sort of drive that line.

And it's all about your tires and all about picking that line every time. If you go to Ungara Ring, for instance, then you attack the track. That is the driver's track. I see Piastri being stronger than Norris on tracks where you have to be... Like this on the wheel.

audio podcast i know it's audio but people have to be patrons and they have this is the bonus he's saying he's saying a light touch on the wheel is what yeah exactly and i see norris being a little bit stronger tracks where he has to attack the track and that is sort of how i view those two it's a very strong car right and they are basically just ahead of the field and they i think they manage it they're not just ahead of the field man they're miles ahead of the field

They really are. I'm coming to a different conclusion. I think the car is pretty amazing, but I'm finding Piastri and Norris to have different tracks that tend to favor them. And I think, you know, you go back and you look at Monaco and Norris was, was all the way there. Lots of low speed turns, nothing high speed.

here at barcelona we always talk about it being the most balanced track but honestly that's not the case since they ditched the chicane and that's only two years now it's now a bit more of a medium high speed track than it used to be but with a lot of management required because the radius of the turns are so unbelievably long at those higher speeds. And that has consistently favored Piastri across the season. Sure, but what made this track...

Less of a high day issue for them was they had so much in hand that they were telling them not to push through turns three and turn nine. So turn three is a big right hand uphill and nine is the kink. And so. In this kind of scenario, for sure, I think Piastri's taken a massive step up. Bia said, say something in our live chat, say something complimentary about Piastri. I think I've said loads of things about Piastri that are complimentary. I've pointed out a couple of things about last season.

If they change, they change. Qualifying for sure has changed. You saw Norris looking like a little bit of a mess, maybe like he was pushing too hard. Even from turn one, he was just going a little bit sideways. In Monaco... It could all be down to whatever setups they've chosen. In Monaco, Piastri was a little bit scruffy with his rear end going up. I think Piastri made an interesting comment that in FP1, he was flat through turn three.

And then he changed the setup and he had to lift. So through qualifying, he then had to lift through. So you don't know what little setup choices they've made that vary from track to track. But yeah, on a track like this where we said that overtaking...

you know, is notoriously difficult in Barcelona. If you get behind in qualifying, then that is going to mess you up for the whole week. And like I said, once qualifying was done and once Norris again had a poor start, these poor starts, they didn't go away.

I think they've been haunting him. It was an issue last season. I think it's an issue now. And that puts you at a massive disadvantage. So then you're behind Verstappen and then you're having to not be in clean air. And clean air is king this year. And so even then, by the time... You clear Verstappen. Let's say you had an advantage on tyre wear. You've squandered it. And so as a new, brand new Norris fan, it's been a very frustrating weekend just watching him fall down.

in about three or four small areas and you go well piastri's not fallen down in in any of them i will take minor exception to the start because he was on the dirty side of the grid and we've seen how much of an advantage starting p3 can be on the long run down to

their first turn in Barcelona over the years. So I think that did advantage Max to a certain degree. And at the end of the day, his race isn't with Max. At the end of the day, his race is with Norris. And if he pulled off as many people were... begging why didn't he just lift off the brakes and just run max out of room well because if he gets if he has damage and gets sacked out of the race

then he's lost his championship shot against Norris because that's how tight it is. So he was smart in that, I think. But Norris always errs to that side. So he always errs to the survival side. Yeah. It's going to pay off for him long term compared to what we saw happen to Max lose an additional 11 points in his attempt to finish third in the championship.

If you zoom out just a little bit, not so much in the details, just look at the overview picture of the season. I know this can be hard for the Norris fan club, but Oscars, definitely. picked up the pace. He's definitely a better racer this year. He's sort of like got it more in command. He's doing his own thing, the cheeky comment and stuff like that.

I mean, he's doing a better thing this year in the McLaren than he did last year, definitely. I wouldn't argue. I think the car has come to him some in the way it handles, and it's been harder for Norris. And it's really just down to the tiniest of margins between them on any given weekend. And like you say, it could just be how the team decides to develop the car for qualifying in the race. Yeah. It's down to things that are out of their control.

It's definitely sort of gotten past the point where I thought that Norris is just like messing up all those qualifying. So he seems to have that a little bit. I know he messed up a little, but he's not just ruining Q3 and ending up having to do a recovery drive.

from p7 that he seems to put that a little bit behind him and then you go well then monaco you know he managed to get the advantage and and here piastri had the advantage on him so kind of one one in this era of actually getting to see them head to head so you know that's very very positive for piastri and and in qualifying i think they're much closer i think if you unless piastri is doing something specific where

He's going, right, it's all about the last run in Q3, which would be smart. You kind of get the feeling through qualifying. You kind of go, oh, Norris seems to be on fire here. And then it doesn't quite happen, which is frustrating. It is, but I still think it's going to change from race to race. No. Agree. All right, then. Yeah, what I was going to say there was that there was a sort of fake battle because I was watching the lap times. When they realized Verstappen was...

doing a three stop and actually it looked a little better than than it first seemed they were okay we've got to get a bit of a hurry on and suddenly that gap which was about four and a half seconds closed to about two seconds you know this is it this is it it's it's game on you know this is spanners was right no and so you kind of go this gap is closing is this norris charging and it really wasn't all it was was we've been driving very conservatively

We need to drive less conservatively because Verstappen is making himself an issue. Therefore, increase the pace a little bit. Got within two seconds and then Piastri did the same. And then later on, Piastri was like it suited his race perhaps to protect against the undercut.

So he then pulled out a gap to five seconds as well. I think both drivers ultimately had a lot more pace, as it showed under the safety car. But that doesn't mean then that you could do a critical attack. So A, go fast enough to close the gap and overtake.

I think Piastri would always be able to cover that off. Go so fast that Piastri has to use his tyres more. I think they were in so little danger of getting to a cliff of any tyre that there was a lot more fat in that. So they could have handled...

you know, pushing one, one and a half, two seconds faster, both of them for a little bit. I think the teams, the team might have then gone, this isn't going anywhere. You're just hurting both of you. Like it was so well managed. I think Jason in the live chat was giving us all the radio messages.

And it was incredibly, you know, they tell them exactly what speed to go through turn three. And they're saying, yeah, OK, well, you can attack this now. And they seemed very, very comfortable. There was no tire or lap time drop off on either of those McLarens. on any stint and i think um i mean we saw verstappen lose a little bit of tire life and i think because but he was taking more out deliberately to make the three stop work so yeah yeah

An interesting race, but I think the safety car restart showed us that it's not as interesting as we thought it was when we were watching it live. I agree with you, Spennis. Yay! You are, after all, the head of the Norris Fan Club.

We do as you say. I disagree because I think the battle between Leclerc and Verstappen, the three-stop versus the two-stop, was really the interesting... thing i don't think verstappen was ever catching him but the three-stop was a much better strategy than a lot of people gave credit to and i'm i'm kind of sad

No other team chose to try it. Well, tell me why it was good. Because when the safety car restart happened, had he already done his three, right? Yes. So the coming in for hards was just for the sake of having... a new set of tires. What if, like I said at the beginning of the show, what if he just stayed out and gone, right, I've got eight lap old softs. I'm just going to take track position.

It would have been really interesting. I'd assume that the McLarens would have passed them because they had newer tires on. But if you take Lawson as a good... Lawson and Bortoletto both stayed out on Old Sauce. I want to say maybe like 15 laps for Lawson and maybe seven or eight for Bortoletto. And they both lost a single place.

to people who'd stopped for new tires, for fresh tires. Nobody really put on new tires except for Hulkenberg and one or two other people who had them left in their allotment. But the fresher tires were a big advantage on the restart. compared to the three people who stayed out for track position. But the two of them on the softwares only lost a position, so he might have lost a place to Russell, say, but he would not have been losing the rear of the car on the restart.

the way he did on those hard tires, which were notoriously low grip and had the only advantage if they would just go for a very long time. So I'm not saying this to turn on, Matt. I'm just saying this because I think it's important.

There's something going on with the tyres and Pirelli. It's like they have a little bit more freedom now to think. I don't know if there's more balance between what their goal is and what is happening on track or whatever. But what they're doing, for instance, when we go to Spa. They're going to jump like... degree of softness. Explain. So that you no more can do the hard tire and win the race. You have to make an alternative so you can now do two mediums and do as fast as one hard.

And we see a little bit of the same thing. Sorry, just to clarify that. So they're going basically C2, C3, C5, or they're skipping it like that, Matt? Yeah, yeah. One of them is a skip and I believe Silverstone is just a plain old step software all the way around. So instead of one, two, three, it's two, three, four. I wonder, I wonder though, Christian, if just F1 is starting to panic.

about that classic boring one-stop where they've got the softest tires and it's the street circuit and they just do medium hard to the end of the race? I think the opposite. I think they've started to maybe... provoke Pirelli to be a little bit more aggressive to spice it up because there's nothing more boring than a race where you can basically all do the same strategy and they're all just driving a train, right? If Pirelli can...

Like we saw today, if Verstappen can do a race, almost win, doing a different strategy than the two McLarens, even though they are a bit faster than him, then we have something interesting. And it was only Verstappen who did that. It's just an extra player in the game, right? It's like a 21st car on the grid, basically, when Pirelli is doing a little bit with the tires. And in the future, if they...

get good conditions on a mule car. They can test the tires on and stuff like that. We could see much more of that. And I think that would be a great addition to the show. They could just get. I saw Matt smile. Did you see Matt smile? They could just get one team to do secret tests for them. I'm sure.

i'm sure no one i'm sure no one from germany or i don't know okay here you go though i approve of the things pirelli are doing and and it being a step softer and it's a step is it matt this is why it's a step softer across the range so this year's C5 is softer than last year's C5 anyway. No, they added the C6, but they changed the construction, which sort of changed the delta, the degradation difference between the tires. But I think the construction has made them...

more resilient, especially to thermal degradation, which has been good for the teams in terms of their strategy and a little more consistency. It's just their choosing. They have enough data now with these cars that they feel more comfortable going softer and knowing that the tires aren't going to fail. And that's always their concern. It's a safety issue. If this much energy is going through the tire...

We're worried it might fail. And we remember Spa. We remember Silverstone. And so we don't want that again. That's sad. Silverstone 2013. But then for this year, they're going a step softer for Silverstone. If it happens again, drama. But no, no, I approve. It's something I've been calling for. If the tyres are going a step softer, that's great. I'm so happy that the C6 seem to work out because that means we'll get to use it again. But yeah.

disastrous in the end for Verstappen, going on to those hards, but overtaken by Leclerc. Now, this is one of the most interesting aspects, I think, of the weekend. He's ended up with...

a slightly different tyre strategy, and he's ended up getting a podium. Matt, can you explain, because I really did miss this, what he did in Q3 and why he ended up with different tyres or something? So he did two things. In the final practice, he... used up a soft instead of a medium and then in Q3 he only made a single run thereby saving a soft tire for himself which meant he had a soft

and two new mediums to use in the race. Now, this was a decision, obviously, he made in practice. Must have been something the engineers said to him, or, you know, maybe he had dinner with Carlos, I'm not sure. But he shows up. Full of swagger. Tells everyone, yeah, no, we're doing it for tire strategy during the race. It's entirely my choice. The responsibility falls fully on me.

I've never heard him talk like this before. So I'm not sure where this comes from. But he was very confident about it. And as things worked out for him, it was a genius move. for him to have that second medium available for his third stint of the race after his second pit stop. Explain how it helped. Every other team was either going soft, medium, soft. or soft, medium, hard, which meant that the hard tire was obviously terrible. So nobody chose that, unlike last year. Except Max.

What that means is, and Hamilton here is a great comparison, what that means is because you're going onto a soft tire, you have to run that medium tire fairly long in your middle stead. Because Leclerc was going onto another medium tire, it essentially meant... He had a lot more choice about when he chose to pit, how much of an undercut he was going to get from that, and no worries about getting to the end of the race. It was a huge strategic advantage only enjoyed by the Haas team.

who were unable to take advantage of it because of the safety car. Yeah. I usually go ultra soft, medium, ultra soft. What is it? What chaos? What chaos is this? I don't know. I don't want to know. Please do not explain that to us. Yeah, that's great. If you could just refrain from clarifying what you mean there, that'd be fantastic. So, yeah. So demonstrating some real leadership. And I think Leclerc at the moment.

He's in a fantastic position where he's definitely faster than his teammate. He's making the Ferrari look good. It's definitely a car that he can drive and he's got a skip in his step. The best you could hope for now in this McLaren, current McLaren environment in this economy. Oh, you'd take a P3 in this economy, wouldn't you, Matt? You would. But this also brings up to me, and I'm going to have the same criticism for Mercedes. If you look at Max.

in a much slower car, the Red Bull, doing a three-stop and not being that far off the two McLarens and fast enough to beat a faster car. The Ferrari was faster than Red Bull. If you if everything else was equal tire life and stuff like that, I think the Ferrari is a faster race car today. And yet he's ahead and he's on for a podium with a three stop. If you got someone like Hamilton, who's clearly not having a great time with the car.

Why sentence him to managing those tires where you know he's going to struggle after a certain number of laps? And I would say the same with Antonelli. If you look at where Antonelli was starting, why Mercedes just didn't put him on a three-stop to see what would happen, I don't know. I wish the teams would be willing to bet a little bit more in this season with drivers who are out of place in interesting strategies like that. So many teams now are away from one more stop, push more.

with, you know, with some softer tyres. We used to see it all the time. We used to always get to like, you know, 20 laps to go and someone would go, ah, YOLO, let's just bolt the softs on and go. Well, I find it a little strange for Hamilton. It's around like, I think it was around like...

five or six or something. Both Verstappen and Hamilton dropped off the McLarens at that time. But Verstappen sort of regained his pace and should I... translate that to get heat in his tires or whatever but hamilton never regained the speed and he was constantly like four five six seven eight sometimes a second slower than the clerk

And there's just something weird going on there. My best estimate from watching the lap times is that he's over half a second behind on race pace. And I know they didn't run exactly the same strategy, but you go, that's too big. Like, that's...

I could understand it if he was, you know, just being beaten. But it's such a big gap. And I think I'm starting to get, not despondent, I'm not expecting anything. I'm not going into any weekend now hoping for a big Hamilton result. I mean, I was in a bar. And I had to ask spousal permission because we were watching her friend play. I'm like, is it all right if I put my headphones in for Q3? And I'm watching it. Hamilton pops up quite near the end in Q3. And I just roared.

in a bar with my own headphone in and everyone's giving me a funny look and i just went um formula one and so they let me off and even when russell and verstappen went ahead of him i was still at p5 ahead of leclerc like that's great that's such a bonus But I haven't been expecting anything, Matt. I haven't gone into a race weekend going, oh, this could be a good one for Hamilton because he's just so far, he's so far off it and so lost and so down. And we're into what, race nine now?

Shouldn't we have... Nine or ten. Nine or ten. I think it's nine rather than ten. But I'm not saying I would have expected him to be fully up to speed. We talked at length about having half a season, but... You know, we should see like with Signs. Signs is getting to grips with it now and he's looking like himself in his car. Hamilton's not looking like anything. I invite you to consider. No! Just for the purposes of a thought experiment.

That if instead of Leclerc in the other seat, you put Lance Stroll. Okay. Well, okay. Who I chose because he's currently Alonzo's teammate. And Alonzo was the only older person than Hamilton on the grid. How would Hamilton look then? I'm just saying this is Leclerc's team. LeClerc is at the peak of his driving prowess. He may gain some more speed or better results through maturity as he continues to gain experience. But he's as fast as he's ever going to be. Lewis is at a brand new car.

He's not happy with it. They didn't get it right. And, you know, I just like if I'm if I'm I understand where Lewis is mentally, but looking at it from the outside, I'm like, this isn't nearly as bad as it looks. Hang in there. Yeah, but watch Alonso's qualifying lap, right? He was so on it. He was in Spain. He was the king of Spain. He wanted that. That was two, three tenths of just Alonso being in Spain. You don't see Hamilton do those laps anymore.

It's like he's not connected to the car somehow. He's not, he's not riding the car. The car is riding him. But then again, right. Okay. Yeah. Chinese sprint race. That was forever ago. But in Imola. I felt something. You know, I said on the show, it felt like he was sitting forward in his seat, like chasing down Antonelli. So there's little moments. He was...

bouncing and hopping around in Monaco. So maybe there are greens. That happens when he leaves the pits and the tyres are good for him. Then the entire stint with that tyre is good. But it's like one stint of the three always. It's never two or three stints, right? If we're looking for, does anyone want false hope or excuses? Because I've got a few.

Yeah, I'll take two. I'll take two of those with some sugar on top. So Paddy makes a point, I noticed earlier as well, Lewis was complaining quite strongly about the car in practice. And that was specifically about the rear. He was saying there was a loose rear. And then they interviewed Vasseur, who went, no, it's fine. And Vasseur seems to have done that with loads, like Hamilton clearly unhappy with his team on the radio and upset. Fred, any problems with the team radio? No. Problems?

No, the Bezies, everything's good. Any problems with that rear? No, he likes doing that. And then, so basically he's complaining about the rear and then in the race, he's clearly got problems getting on the power because the... The difference in pace between Hamilton and Leclerc when Leclerc was about to overtake Hamilton and they did the order to swap, which was horrible, but inevitable, like completely correct to give that order to swap and not hold up Leclerc.

But at that point, it looked like you had Hamilton basically at the end of a stint. You know, when they're at the end of a stint and someone's got fresh tyres and they're defenceless. That's what it looked like. And you go, there's no way that Hamilton is...

is that different on pace? Do you know what I mean? Where Leclerc can basically pressure him that much and be that much far. If it is, if that's true, if this is representative of the pace difference between him and Leclerc, either Leclerc is a generational talent of unknown... force, the likes of which we've never seen, or it's over for Hamilton. Now, there's a big queue of people saying it's over for Hamilton, but if he was fading and he was losing a little bit of speed, it wouldn't be that.

It wouldn't be like that amount of speed. Like, I could accept that Leclerc beats him. I could. But he just, he looks like he's got nothing to fight with. Because he doesn't have a car he can work with right now. For a variety of reasons that change from race to race. But I have an overriding theory. If you'd like me to spend 10 minutes explaining it. Not 10 minutes, but I will say firstly that Matthew says, at what point do we stop trying to make excuses for Hamilton?

by criticising strategy and accept that he's past his prime and sliding down the grid because of his age. Not yet, Matthew. Not yet. It'll happen, but I'm not ready. How's that? But no, Matt, no, go on. Give me your overriding theory, but maybe less than 10 minutes.

All right, so less than 10 minutes, but do you remember when we went to bigger tires, bigger diameter tires, the reason, or not the reason, one of the things that happened was when the diameter was bigger, the sidewalls became thinner. And that changed how the tires responded to driver inputs. And Hamilton grew up in the 13-inch tire era where they were balloons.

where they would load and unload in predictable fashion in the way the drivers could use that to make corrections without losing the car entirely. The thinner sidewalls have faster response rates. And I think it succeeded. Do you remember Stuart Mitchell coming on the show talking about driver resolution? Oh, yeah. I think at his age.

Those cars are so heavy and now they've loaded on all these years of downforce. If you look at how much faster they are to when we first started with these tires, I think it's just a little bit beyond his ability. to sense the car goes before he realizes it, and it takes away his confidence. And the only fix for that is...

Ferrari essentially needs to resort their rear suspension so they can run at the correct ride height. Then with the extra downforce, less sliding, I think he'd be able to manage it. Leclerc and all the younger kids who've got more reflexes, because I'm being honest at my age. definitely that goes, are able to deal with it slightly better. And a car like Ferrari that's that fast at the absolute margin, like we see in qualifying.

That's where all this comes from. You get in a spiral where you're a little bit slower. The tires get a little bit colder. They grain. That gives you less confidence. That means your lap time goes down. That means the tire gets colder. That means your graining doesn't go away.

while the clerks clears and suddenly you're like a second apart in lap time and you're like, what just happened to me? With you talking about your age, I will tell tales on your family that you said on your trip that they kept pointing out, watch out for those stares.

My wife is convinced I was going to have a fatal accident like walking on a sidewalk. Do you know what I get now? Like if there's a task and let's say I get the stepladder out, they'll point to my son and go, oh, send the boy up. Send the boy up. You go, what? I'll be okay. I'm just going to mention the radio from Hamilton on the slowdown lap. He said, I don't know what's wrong with this car, mate.

When Hamilton says that, I believe him that that is the car. There's something fundamentally wrong. I'm not saying the car is wrong, but he's 13 years winning. you're doing it right you're doing it right the way i'm doing it is right in the car that is winning for 13 years straight then you're gonna think what you're doing is right and now he has to do something else right yeah but you know it i think it's a generational thing you know when he

joined it was a different sport so the sport he dominated is not the sport of now and you've got these young superstars coming in and they're they're the new generation you know you've got you know obviously Verstappen very established but people like Norris, Piastri

Leclerc. They grew up Antonelli. They grew up in a completely different environment. You know, a lot of these guys spent tons and tons of time on a sim, and they consider a sim to be legit training, iRacing to be legit training for driving, and Hamilton... was famously not a massive fan of using even the simulator. So it just gets to a point with every sports person. If you hang around long enough, it's a different game. Look at tennis. Look at tennis. You've got...

Guys in there, when the new generations came through, they had no answer to Nadal, to Federer, to Djokovic. It could just be one of those things that's just a reality. The things that made him... an athlete, a superpower in F1, and now just things that everybody has is one of those things as well. I'm just going to give a disclaimer in regards to the radio.

I was reporting before because that's AI that translated for Formula One. And the radio 20 seconds later from Leclerc was, I'm too old, guys. I need morphine. That is basically what it said. I'm not sure if you said that. That's what the radio transcript said. Christian, somebody earlier suggested that the final edit of the show is just going to be Christian saying hello and then we don't hear from you again. Okay. I'm okay with that.

The Hamilton thing is a watching brief. My expectations are low. I'm looking forward to him winning a race. Basically, he's going to win Silverstone and it will be a really, really happy day. And then Drive to Survive will make it about George Russell somehow again. I guess. Right. So we have Hulkenberg in P5. Matt, what the hell happened to Hulkenberg? I saw him. He has no business.

In fact, I'm going to get angry. Hulkenberg, who I'm a fan of, has no business being in P5. And now I've got to sit here and wonder how the hell... It wasn't a high attrition race. Nothing particularly weird happened. Suddenly, Nico Hockenberg, out of nowhere, in one of the, you know, a team that seemed hopeless, out of nowhere, P5 at the Spanish Grand Prix.

With a ton of overtakes on a track where you're not supposed to overtake, what happened? And why doesn't he just do that all the time? If you're listening, Nico Hulkelberg, why don't you just do that every time? If you could have been doing this the whole time, why didn't you?

Yeah, I agree. It was a total disappointment because Wheatley said clearly they were aiming at one and two. He only finished fifth. So, I mean, honestly, you'd expect him to do better, really. Well, what are they doing? What are Sal were doing most week in, week out? Like the square root of Jack Turnip and then P5. I'm actually, I didn't realise how mad I was going to be at Sauber actually.

The worst thing about that was when I had to delete the comments and then the Sabo was right behind Hamilton Imagine. I just deleted. Can't use that. Yeah, the show notes getting ripped apart. Matt. Yeah, honestly, it's a disappointment because that's my go-to miss the apex when everyone else takes mine. No, it's very clear what happened. First of all, he made up five positions in the first lap.

admittedly, he did go off track, but they decided that it wasn't illegal, so he got to keep them. And then he just ran a great race. He was 10th, and he did a very early stop, Undercut, Gasly, and Alonso. sat behind Hajar and just, he was by himself in a perfect rhythm on that medium tire. They brought him in around lap 45, I think, for a new soft tire.

And then the safety car happened and they had another new soft tire because what really made his weekend was doing so horribly in qualifying that he had all these brand new tires left over to bring to the race. A bold strategy. But yeah, well done. Yeah, they're going to be...

They should be celebrating that tonight. And hopefully, hopefully for them, like Bortoleto seems cool. I think Hulkenberg seems to have the measure of him at the moment. So, you know, Bortoleto is not winning rookie of the year. But yeah, P5 is like a win, isn't it, for those guys?

It's massive. I mean, that's like Ocon's done that for Haas. We've seen a couple of the midfield teams. Hajar has done it for Visa. Like, that's the markup. I'm a midfield team, at least at certain tracks. They brought a huge update. And apparently they finally started spending money again because you've got Wheatley now running things. And it's just all of it is starting to pay off for them a bit. Bortoletto actually was ahead.

But Hulkenberg just had that start and therefore gained the best strategy from the team. And Bortoletto worked very well with them. So they actually have a really good driver pairing too. And it's exciting. It's exciting going forward. The only bad news really is if you're Aston Martin, you've now been sunk to the... Yeah. So I've got two teams that I wanted to talk about before we go to the podium. And I think Visa Kashap Arby is...

I don't even know what their name is anymore. I've lost track. Is it just RB now? Yeah. Is it just racing? If you just mentioned all the credit cards. Visa, Cash App, MasterCard, Amex, RB, and also Aston Martin. So they're the two I want to cover, Matt, before we go to the podium. Okay, minor correction, Alpine all the way to the bottom. Aston next to the bottom. Okay.

Sorry, I just said something wrong and wanted to fix it for you. Where do we go first? Aston Martin, weird one with Lance Stroll. So this was one of my most interacted with tweets of the weekend.

where I just said something about the Lance Stroll thing is not sitting right with me. So they said he was struggling with his wrist in FP2 and he did have quite a big wrist injury. But the timing of it, if he was on Friday having a... a bad risk you'd go oh you know do we do we risk it let's make a real assessment let's not go into saturday and into qualifying unless we think you can do the race otherwise bring in or something and go and that's that's sort of it's a bonus for a team to go oh

Let's throw this lad into an F1 weekend so for the future we know if we need a replacement for Alonso. He could be a real superstar. Let's see what he's like to work with under pressure in a Grand Prix. Instead, you go into... qualifying and then the rule is you have to do a practice session to compete in the race and i believe it's still the case that qualifying technically counts as a practice it's called like final practice so qualifying is final practice if you do qualifying

Even for one session, one lap, you're allowed to then go into the Grand Prix. But he pulled out after being knocked out in Q2. And the thing with me, I just went, that timing just seems a little... A little odd, like beyond unlucky. And then they said he's had this injury for the last six weeks. He's been struggling with it. So it's a known thing, yet they let it get all the way to the end of Saturday.

I mean, I'm not surprised if we're just going to discuss, you know, he had pretty significant surgery after his bike crash. He had, was it both of his hands, his forearm was messed up. Two and a half years ago, two and a half years ago, wasn't it? It seems like he had a crash recently that re aggravated one of the injuries.

And so it's not entirely surprising that you'd reach a point where you decide that it's getting worse rather than better. It would be unsafe for me to raise. You generally would push someone to make that choice.

before qualifying as you point out because it's better for the team to have two cars in the race instead of one so so it is it is a little bit odd but again you could just sort of see like whatever some snap of oversteer just sent it over the edge you know now i can't i really can't use my hand it's done but that's not what you want to talk about no i want to go i want to go full tinfoil hat you want to talk about the fact that he had out

Massive. As a Southerner, I'd use the word hissy fit. I don't know if that would get me in trouble or not these days. I'll use it. He had a massive temper tantrum after losing out to Alonzo. threw things, broke things. And, you know, I just, maybe he hit a wall or two in frustration and aggravated that injury.

If you're speculating, you would certainly speculate that direction to make it juicy, wouldn't you? Have you ever punched the wall in anger? Yeah, I have. The wall won. Chris did. I can tell why you have as well. I think all men have at one point... Hit a wall and gone, that's a bad idea. It's much better in the movies.

I remember once at Denmark's radio where I saw a host from another channel just take the entire computer and keyboard and everything just throw out the window from fourth floor. Oh, my goodness. Yeah. But I want to just a note. on Stroll, right? I think it's not easy being Lance Stroll. First of all, you're up against Alonso, who's probably one of the hardest to be up against, even though he's the team player nowadays. Yeah, sure.

And he's the son of the richest man on the grid. And he's gotten the seat because he's the son of the richest man on the grid who owns the team. Everyone can feel that. No matter where you are, everyone's got that vibe. You can feel when everyone's thinking. That's just a son. He's not talented. It's just a son, rich boy. And that's just going to hurt you. So this is, we got a third-hand report that Lawrence Stroll...

who truly believes that Lance Stroll is a talent and that he's going to come together and he's going to end up being a challenge. So that's some insight that we got that might be false. Like the rumours we get are not from like Lawrence Stroll.

butler we just but yeah fourth or fifth hand we think we've had the question answered of does he believe it or is it kind of just well we're just paying for him to go racing no they genuinely believe in project stroll and so if it's not going well and he's under pressure You can see that frustration. It's a very human reaction to feel bad after a sporting event. And so there was that footage of him pushing past his trainer, wasn't there, after a bad result. So you kind of go, okay, well...

That's, you know, if you've got a kind of life where you can just have everything you want and nothing else, nothing goes wrong and you're protected and told you're great and then it's not happening, it must be very, very frustrating. I'm not excusing the behaviour, but given that BBC report...

And given that we've seen him throw that kind of temper tantrum before, I think it's completely a believable, not even conspiracy narrative that the reported temper tantrum resulted in him punching a wall and injuring his hand. All I'm saying Spanish is... It's so believable that maybe we should just wait 24 hours before we believe it.

That is all I'm saying. Perception is not reality as we are tend to. I tend to sleep in on a Monday because I'm editing late. So I'm just going to save time. I'm just going to go ahead and believe it now. Exactly. That is the easy way. I get it. I get it. And everyone, you know, you're going to sit there and I will just counter narrative this with.

props to Lance because you know this is a thing that he can't buy he can't just buy a world championship he's actually going to have to be good enough for long enough to earn it And he's not given up on it, which a lot of people at this point would have said, oh, you know, I've put my time in. I've had a few good results. I could easily walk off and do a commentary gig or something else. Newey 2026. That's why.

By the same token, we started out talking about a different driver having an absolute temper tantrum on the track. It's not an unusual thing for people in those positions to occasionally have these sorts of outbursts. And being famous.

changes you do you remember matt when like three people recognized me walking past the stadium at miami i was and then you wouldn't talk to us for the rest i was unbearable i was like talk to my people and i was like i was even thinking about like should i get like a pa so that when people

want a selfie. That's a good idea. I hand my hat and glasses to them without even looking and then someone just takes my hat and glasses. And you should run around on like an electric scooter with someone running behind you all the time. Of course I should. Your wife. Could you maybe talk to her? Would she do that, you think? She would not tolerate me.

being in in any way in that mode whatsoever on something electric but the general point the serious point i'm making is that when people are really high profile and they're successful when there's money washing around it it does change you know what you do and then and then An incident like this exposes the humanness of it all, because I would imagine they do go around going, like, I'm a pretty big deal.

Wherever I go, people are asking for my autograph. People are asking for, you know, stuff from me. I'm getting contract offers. I'm being interviewed. I'm being asked my opinion all the time. And then... I think that can probably get you in a pretty unhealthy place. And then, you know, you end up with these two incidents that we've seen today. And, you know, do they reflect, though, in the light of the day and go, oh, I was in this bubble.

of this sort of not real world and then this human side came out or do they find a way to double down and go no I was right I was right to hit George Russell oh no I was right to punch the wall and then uh pretend I didn't I don't know This is, that's a question for like a psychology podcast. The next panel. Yeah. All right. The other team I wanted to talk about was the MasterCard Visa Amex racing balls.

I am, in a fan way, not in a weird way, falling in love with Isaac Hadjar. Everything about him, personality, performance, and... I don't know. I feel like I just want to be the first to do it, and then now you're copying me, Matt. You're going to copy me, but I was doing it first. Two weeks ago, I said. No, I don't remember. Two weeks ago. I don't remember two weeks ago. No, you don't. Neither do I, really.

Yeah, but it's so impressive. And obviously, we'll get to Lawson in a second. But yeah, he's completely got Lawson in his pocket. He's performing well. He's pulling out results. I would say, obviously, I don't know the relative performance between that car this year and last year.

But what he's doing is impressing more than what Tsunoda was doing. I think Tsunoda was impressive last year. I think Hadjar is showing to be even more impressive. So, yeah, I think the only way is up. He's definitely rookie of the year. I think he's up there for, you know, in the conversation for driver of the year so far. And I just hope it keeps going because he does seem like genuinely cool as well. So basically you don't want him going to Red Bull. No.

I did say to Meg Shuster earlier. Oh, my God, man. What did you just say? No, no, no, no, no. I did say, I was talking to Meg on the ringer earlier, and when the phone rings and it's Helmut Marko. And you go, oh, no. I'm driving into the tunnel. I'm driving into the tunnel. Run! What was that? Run, Isaac, run! And you go, the call is coming from inside the house. Get out of there. Yeah, I definitely...

Don't want to see Hajar there. We haven't talked about Tsunoda, to be fair, because it's so lame. And like Pierre Vachet was saying, well, we decided to try a bigger rear wing. in qualifying to see if it helped and that was a mistake so Tsunoda was doing his lap and he was he said oh um yeah I did a good lap and then he's p20 p20

To Verstappen up there in whatever he was in P3? No, that's obviously not representative of Snowda's talents. He was putting that RB in P5, P6 last year and getting great results. The argument is finished now, isn't it? The argument about the second Red Bull car is over. There's something very weird about it, whether it's this unique driving style or whether they do different things with the car because the focus really is all on Verstappen.

The blame is completely away from the drivers. Yeah, Lawson had a shocker even compared to the other number two drivers. But I think... I think now the case is closed, really. Tsunoda, Gasly, Albon, Checo. No!

Right, okay. I'm so sorry. Do you know what, Paddy, you're right. We are editing just Christian fully out of this. It's true what you're saying. So yeah, so let's enjoy Hajar for now before he gets promoted to Red Bull and everyone says that he should be demoted straight away. Lawson, however.

Oh, dear Lord. What a race. I like Lawson. I like Lawson. What a race he had. I like Lawson more after this race. I'll tell you that. Yeah. What a... Okay, let's be clear. He's an absolute weapon. Like, what a thug. He's like a magnet to Alonso as well. Yeah, but what are you going to do, Christian? If you're Lawson, you're going to turn up and just not drive. If you're going to be Liam Lawson, you may as well be as Liam Lawson as possible, mind you.

He's probably the one on the grid who the least wants to be friends with anyone. I like that. He's a bit like K-Mag, actually, in that sense. He's a lonely rider on the track. he's very aggressive and he uh he doesn't take no bs he's just i like that but i mean hedger is faster so yeah no no there is that he's scrapping and daniel m says that he's a

Chaos agent. Are you saying that he's the Christian Patterson of Formula One? Yeah, but look, he gets stuck in and I actually think, I think he was at fault. Oh, hang on. Whose fault is it? I'd be genuinely interested in your takes here, actually. So I think it's pretty clear he stuck his nose in in turn one and caused that stuff. I don't think anyone's going to argue with that. But is anyone going to blame him for the Albon stuff? No, go on, Matt.

I feel like Albon had a bit of a nightmare. He really did. Williams sort of, this is like, you know, when people show up and tell you they're going to do terrible, it's going to be terrible, I'm going to fail this test. And you're like, well, yeah, with that attitude, you probably are. Well, that would be Williams this week.

They were like, we're going to be nowhere. And they proved it with Albin's driving and that first pit stop for Sainz, which was like 10 seconds long. They just like, they had given up so much hope by time the race started that I'm surprised either of them finished, quite frankly.

But they've been one of the teams of the season, right? And so it's been going so well. And, yeah, they say, oh, we don't go well here. I think what broke my heart was rather than give Albon a third front wing, they just went, nah, just... nah just in it is that why they retired him rather than like just giving him signs his spare wing or do they only have one i don't know if they were out of wings i don't know if there was other damage to the car or again they were just like you know what

Maybe it's better just to save the miles on the power unit for spa or someplace where we're going to be really competitive. I just hope that that's not a sign of things to come because they've already said they've turned the wind tunnel off. So you kind of go, oh. I can respect not developing into 2025, but I wouldn't want them to give up. I still want them to go racing.

They said it already last week, didn't they? They knew this was going to be a hard track for them, a difficult track, because of how they apply the power out of corners, mostly as far as I understood on Alpen. It's how the power goes down to the tires when you try to get traction out of corners. And in Barcelona, it's just like everything is a corner, right? Everywhere you want your traction is a corner mollusk. It just doesn't suit the Williams car, apparently, which...

It's a bit of a surprise to me, I must say, in regards to the other tracks we've been at where they've been quite fast. And I don't really get that why they're not fast at Barcelona, to be honest. No. And it's not front-wing related, I'm pretty sure. All right, maybe one for a tech time map. Maybe we overdue a chat with Summers. You'd look at the characteristics of the track, high speed, long radius turns, and just say that's their kryptonite, that's their Achilles heel.

There's very few tracks that have those sorts of turn three, turn nine characteristics. Or maybe just the left front is hard for them. Oh, I'm with you. So if they went to like Malaysia. as well. That might be similar. Maybe China. How did they do in China? Remember that? Oh, good point. Someone look up the Chinese Grand Prix race results. Too little time for too much information. And we are known for not being right.

Well, we go to the podium. Are you doing this on purpose, Christian? I'm sorry, Spencer. I just want to go to the podium. And initially... subtly exciting Spanish Grand Prix turned to a chaos-filled drama fest. So, we go onto the podium, and I have to ask my panel an important question, which is... Who missed the apex for you? Oh, no, you missed the apex. This is the part of the show where I ask people if they have things to promote. Christian Pedersen, you are a...

A Danish celebrity. You are an ex-TV presenter. You are now heavily embedded in the future of Danish radio. You are, of course, a radio star in your own right, but you don't have social media. following because you don't want you don't want people following you to your house leaving gifts through your your letterbox adorning you with praise you you had all that and now you just want to live a normal life damn it

In peace, that's true. I do actually have a blue sky, and I only made it for this, so I never check it. I'm opening right now. I'm going to say, let me see what my name is there. I think it's actually just K-Pad. So, yeah. that's it okay fair enough but also if you want to chat you can tag him in our discord and so yeah in our discord that's where our patrons are and you can sign up to be a patron at patreon.com forward slash missed apex loads of new patrons in the last month or so

I'm not sure what I've said that's appealed to people and said, yep, this is the time to support Miss Apex. But it's come at a really good time. And that support is so appreciated. Thank you to everyone. who has stayed a patron. I never think like, oh, sign up and sign up forever. You know, support us for a little while. Jump in and out of our Discord. Get an ad-free feed and get some... Oh, Matt, we haven't done a patron pod for a while. We must do one.

about our US adventures and your holiday in Italy as well. But Christian. Yeah. Who missed? Yeah, who missed? What missed the Apex? When missed the Apex for you? I'm going to dodge the obvious one. I think we talked enough about that one. So I'm just going to say the safety card restart procedure. We need to talk about that just a tiny bit. Yes, please. Yeah. First of all, the fact that it's called like when he touches the first stone, Antonetti's car touches the first stone, safety car.

Immediately. And then they just leave the safety car out. I understand the thing about the cars having to pass, but when you have seven laps remaining of the race, then they don't have to catch up. They are never going to catch them anyway. Come on, use your brain. It is possible to do something that is not completely in the rule book and make it a better day for everyone. And I lack that. I don't care about the lapped cars race.

So, you know, they're saying, oh, yeah, but Alonso needs to catch up to the pack so that he can fight for the pack. I don't care. You got lapped. You got lapped. Like, okay. I actually think Lawson held up everyone during that period because I was looking at the tracker and he was going slower than the safety car, but on the backside of the track with everyone just bunching up behind him. And it was Hatcha in front of him, wasn't it, right?

No, it was Gasly in front of me. I can't remember what happened, but I'm pretty sure he held them up. But they've got to get out of the way. That's the thing. We don't want them in the order. We don't want them... actually in the pack of people racing unless you're trying to uh specifically manufacture a title result i'm kidding i'm kidding calm down so uh getting them out of the way is fine my personal preference would be lap cars go through the pit lane join the back of the queue

And then we'll just pretend that you did a lap. Yeah, but you can't do that because of fuel and weight. After the race, they then have to go around again. They have to drink a liter of fuel. Yeah, exactly. That's a good one. You can maths some maths out of that. Yeah, you have to just go.

If you get lapped and you have to go through the pit lane to go to the back of the pack, then after the race is finished, you did two parade laps with a flag. I don't know. That's fine. But it's not important. The big thing is it's not important to the race that we're watching.

Or we could just go, right, you can get halfway around the lap. You know, this thing of just waiting to get all the way back. And I think we've had two races now where we've had the safety car for like nine, ten laps, and it's not necessary. The lapped cars thing is dumb.

Need to find a solution. Agree. I mean, you could just calculate how far ahead they'd have to be before they wouldn't be caught by the end of the race and use that, which is what I would have sort of expected. But are you saying, Christian? out loud and legally actionable way that Lawson was holding everyone up for the benefit of another driver who might have been on a related team?

And on the wrong tires? The way he did it when they were released on the main straight, right? Everyone drives past the safety car. And then when they hit around corner four, five-ish. he just parked it and drove very slowly slower than the safety car for the i think the rest part of that lap so they never really catch them up i'm not sure why he did that but it just looked like that on the driver tracker but again it's driver tracker

Matt, Trumpets, you're back. Thank God. You left me. I had to have Stuffy and Jono and stuff. Sorry, you know. Stuffy was all like, oh, no, I've had a crash on iRacing. And Jono was like, oh, mate, look at my kangaroo. So it's good to have you back. Thank you very much for returning. It's delightful to be back. People should follow you. You're criminally under-followed. So it's at MattPT55 on everything. So you're going to go follow him on your poison of choice. Who missed the apex for you?

Well, you know, again, overlooking the very obvious temper tantrums and stuff like that, really, as bad as I expected them to do, Williams managed to do even worse. And I'm surprised by that. you know they lowered the bar very convincingly and then failed to meet it so yeah

Not a great weekend for them. Well, you've all left me with the easy one then. I'm not going to overlook the temper tantrums. I'm going to give my Miss Apex Award to the driver of the day as voted for by fans. Max Verstappen won driver of the day, which I guess is funny.

But anyway, I'm going to give it to the driver who deliberately revenge rammed another driver with his race car. So Max Verstappen, you get my missed apex. You should definitely, you should follow me. Yeah, follow me at SpannersReady. I am posting on Instagram. I'm doing interesting things there. I'm insulting Matt on there, but not tagging him so that if he doesn't check it independently, he never knows. On TikTok, at Miss Apex F1.

I am trying to post more regularly on there, and I've got a feeling that that channel could be a good source of daily content. So go and encourage me. Go and follow MistApexF1 on TikTok. I'm on Blue Sky. Twitter. So my Miss Apex Award was for Max, but now we get to finish on the Good Thing Award. Christian. Who hit the Apex for you? Well, well, well. I actually think just the mere fact that we always hear the driver saying, I'm pushing, I'm pushing, I'm pushing. It's...

Racing is at its peak at the moment. I love that. And then I also have to mention the live timing tower in Barcelona. I just love that. It's a thing of beauty from a racing point of view. And I'd love to see that in more places. So I picked two things that probably no one else thought about. Well, let's see. Matt, did Christian ruin your Hit the Apex Award? Who hit the Apex for you?

Oh, well, you know, I'm going to leave you the easy one. And I'm going to say the race radio this weekend was particularly hilarious, both during the race and before. You had LeClerc saying... mode push what do you think i'm doing already here and you had hamilton saying things like oh this is entirely a waste of money with the flexi wing enforcement and so on and so forth so there was a lot of choice

absolutely choice driver comments this week. And so thank you, drivers. Your snarky sarcasm is fully appreciated here at Nest Apex Podcast. You've missed the best one. If we're doing driver comments, then it's got to be Lando Norris when they were in the cool-down room.

And they were looking at the thing with Verstappen doing the revenge punt. And Norris going, oh, I've done that. And everyone's going, wait, what? Is there going to be some story of how he did a... a revenge hit in his junior career or something or in karting and he went in mario kart okay you got me you do know it's a reference to the the comment from mac forstabon right no

He did that on a radio a couple of races ago. Is it Mario Kart? So it's a reference to something, as Dublin said. And that made it double cheeky, basically. This game has layers. But no, my real thing of the weekend is, I think one of the big winners... is George Russell. So remember, this is an ongoing beef with Max Verstappen. And when you get under your opponent's skin that much, they lose their head.

So let's be clear, Verstappen absolutely lost his head. When you lose your head that much, then your opponent doesn't have to do anything. You've completely made your opponent's case. So Russell didn't have to go on the radio and rant and rave about it. He didn't have to be in the pen and go, what on earth is that? Because Verstappen's shown himself up. If that was my kid, I'd go, Max, what have you done? You've shown yourself up here.

So Russell could be completely magnanimous. Well, I can't comment too much on these things. I'm the head of the Grand Prix Drivers Association, which is fantastic and makes me look very handsome and wise. But actually, I'm too close to this incident, so I'll leave it to my peers.

to make a comment i couldn't possibly say what i think and he just gets to just soak it in and like he's won that battle when you he's gonna own a farm at some point when you lose it that hard you hand your opponents um victory as well so george russell uh thing of the weekend for me guys thank you so much for joining us thank you to our patrons in the live chat thank you for people who've joined us on the live stream here and i would say if you

Because we get asked often, like, how can we help you outside of Patreon? The number one way I think you could help us outside of Patreon is to make sure you subscribe so that you're auto-downloading the show, so that it's in your podcatcher. Whenever you want it, it's there and ready. And also it being downloaded as soon as it comes out really helps us in the charts as well. So if you tend to listen on Wednesday, if you auto download it for the for the Sunday.

That really helps us with visibility in iTunes and Spotify charts. And then the second best way is tell a friend. So just tell someone, hey, after the race, I listen to Miss Apex podcast. And, you know, as a bonus, I go and hang out in the... in the Mist Apex Patreon Discord as well. Until we see you next, work hard, be kind and have fun. This was Mist Apex Podcast. I can see Christian finding a way to ruin the outro.

I see you. Put that down, Christian. Christian, put it down. I'm doing emojis. I'm doing emojis. He's disappeared off screen. That's worse. When he disappears, that's worse.