Sunday News March 25th 2025

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Build an overseas field hospital in a disaster zone. What's she saying? Are you just going to turn the radio off? Or are you going to stay here and get stuck in? Still listening? Good. You belong here. Army recruiting no. Search army jobs. We live at one. Welcome to Miss Apex Podcast. I'm your host, Richard Reddy, but my friends call me Spanners. So, let's be friends. There isn't a race this weekend, and as the Friday bin truck pulled up to my house, I panicked.

And I started scrambling around thinking, oh, no, I've missed an FP2 or a sprint race. That's how indoctrinated I am into the early season F1 routine of getting up. Putting the kettle on and then bleary eyed analysis of an F1 race will commence. We are going to be talking about some news. We've also got a full and bulging mailbag to sort through. We have a panellist putting up a strong defence of Liam Lawson.

And he claims he shouldn't have been dropped and was in fact definitely the best ever legendary Red Bull driver ever. No, no, no. We've got some analysis to say. Was it harsher than some people think? But 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 Brad Philpott. Hello, Brad. Good afternoon, Spice. How's it going? Yeah, I'm good. I'm glad I've got you on here today because I think you have a unique experience among the panel. of dropping into real professional top level racing series so that's perhaps why you have a bit more sympathy for lawson than than some of us yeah i've definitely found that

Much like some of the other race drivers who have commented on Instagram, we could talk about Guido Vandegaarder, for example, his Instagram post that Max liked. I've got sympathy for Lawson. I think people who have experienced... the difficulty of dropping into various series and competing against really good teammates, that kind of thing. They've got a bit more, they kind of feel a little bit more for Lawson and understand that it's not as easy as it might look from the outside.

With all the caveats of F1 isn't a finishing school, et cetera, et cetera. But yeah, I'm prepared to talk about that. Yeah, that's fine. And there's other things to talk about. Like I learned that Bottas is the test driver for all the customer teams. We've got some comments from... Bernie Collins, the Red Bull is the 10th fastest team. I do want to address the Jeremy Clarkson comments against Hamilton, not just because...

He seems to just routinely go against one driver whenever he comments about Formula One. But also, I think it's a useful exercise in what to expect, especially over a sprint weekend. between how cars develop but let's start with the lawson thing since that's on your mind and and let's start as well with perhaps some experience you've had of dropping into a season when the other drivers are experienced or it's their car it's their team

And I know that you're fast on a go-kart track. So I've seen you be there and weight dependent, be there or thereabouts of the ultimate pace fairly quickly. Yet you found yourself in series where you go, ah, you know, it's...

It's actually a little bit hard to get up to pace. And when I listen to Tsunoda talking about how he's going to do at the weekend, he's talking about a podium. So he's going, yeah, I'd like a podium, but, you know, I'm realistic. And go, oh, most people are hoping for you to survive.

Most people are hoping for you to make Q2 and you're like, yeah, podium is probably possible. It's that confidence because you know, you've been on a track mixing it with the best people. Like you've literally done that, Brad. And then.

you go well why wouldn't that translate so when you're sat in a touring car and the rain's coming down and every other driver on the grid has done a full season is there still a part of you that goes yeah but i've got this i'm sure i've got this Yeah, so in my example that you're bringing up there, my one-off BTCC weekend, I wouldn't have done it if I didn't back myself in the same way that I'm sure Lawson had no expectation that he was going to struggle as much as he did against Max.

he would have backed himself in the same way that Tsunoda is currently doing, with the talk of, I'd like a podium. All drivers, when they get to that stage in their career, tend to have this self-belief that... Yeah, you know, up until now, every time I've been up against someone, I've managed to get the better of them or I've performed better than maybe expected. I can do this. Just give me the equipment. I'll do it. And obviously Lawson looking shell-shocked.

after each session, a session we saw at the first two rounds. That's then the result of meeting that, what feels like maybe your own limitation or someone who's finally quicker than you are. in this situation that you might not have experienced before or maybe not to that extent so so yeah you you do tend to back yourself and it is a bit of a surprise or a shock when when you struggle all of a sudden but normally

you can justify it or rationalize it and see the way out. And I think Lawson probably was in that position. even with the gap he had to Verstappen, which we'll go into in a short while. You think that it's not quite as bad as everyone is saying, but finish your point, sorry. So I think Lawson will have been thinking, well, okay. Yes, I'm a little way off of Max right now, but here are the reasons why I just need to do this, this and this, and then I can get there eventually.

That's the same kind of thing I've felt when I've been parachuted in in the middle or at the end of a season. And you think, OK, yeah, there's a bit of a pace gap here. Understandably, I know why that is. And let's work on narrowing the gap by working through it. Unfortunately for Lawson, in his situation, he's not had that opportunity. He's had all the bad stuff of the...

the difficult beginning tracks he didn't know, a tricky car, the absolute benchmark of a teammate. So he's had the hardest test you could possibly have, essentially. And then before he's had a chance to... put any of the lessons he's learned in rounds one and round two into practice, the rug's been pulled from him and he's having a situation change again. So that's my first point. Sorry, carry on. No, I was going to say that shouldn't he have made more excuses instead of admitting it?

So when Lotus had that issue with Kimi Raikkonen, I think Kovalainen jumped in and Kovalainen at that point was still hoping that he would have some kind of resurgence. He was Lewis Hamilton's teammate in 2008. I think he was still hoping he was going to have a resurgence up the grid, was the substitute driver for Kimi Raikkonen, because if you lose one fin, you know, just pop another one in. They're like light bulbs. And he admitted to the press afterwards, he went...

Yeah, it was really difficult. That was way harder than I thought it would be. And go, no, don't do that. Make up an excuse. Say you had a talk spike or that your seat was loose. I don't really know what Lawson's public excuses have been. I think he's just... said the facts like this is really hard and yeah he hasn't it's down to me to work harder at it yeah so I think his approach is good it's the correct approach if you get to carry on

And it's just difficult because he's not getting to carry on. Thankfully, he hasn't been completely dropped. At one stage, I thought Colopinto was getting swapped in at the... the junior team Lawson gets to carry on my worry now and I know we haven't gone into the detail yet of what exactly what the gaps and the problems were and maybe what to expect from Japan but my worry now is it's in Red Bull's interests

For him to not do well, now he's a Visa cash app. To justify it, yeah. And it's really in their interest for Tsunoda to have the best possible weekend. And coupled to that... It's a track that Tsunoda knows, obviously. And Lawson also knows it, so that's going to help his performance at RB this weekend. But it's not a fair comparison. What we see from Tsunoda this weekend versus what we've seen from Lawson so far...

isn't fair. Imagine if they've worked on some things to make the car slightly easier based on how difficult it's been for Lawson for round one and round two. Tsunoda will benefit from that. Again, it's a track that Tsunoda is comfortable with and familiar with and he'll have the home support.

That's kind of in his favour. You could argue the pressure, but for some people that's a better thing. The thing is for Lawson is, Tsunoda doesn't have to do that much to make it look like it was really the right decision.

to get to get rid of him so honestly i honestly think he'll be gutted with a q2 knockout but the media will go oh okay well it's a little better than lawson so he's he's just getting to grips with it in a normal amount he's not having the nightmare that lawson was having so i'm a little bit worried about sonoda's claim when he said yeah i'm going for a podium that made me go oh i don't think you understand the magnitude of what's happening here

But let's get into the defence of Liam Lawson. And so this is not to take away from any of the things he said in the press that I discovered that made him go, hmm, whatever, Liam. But you think he might have been judged a little harsh. Yeah, OK, so let's start off with... what would we accept as a, what would have been a reasonable gap to the multiple world champion teammate with his feet firmly under the table?

who's got a strong handle on the car and the team and has obviously visited all the tracks before and won up most of them. What would be a reasonable gap for a driver who has half a season of total experience? and hasn't been to those tracks yet, and to begin with, has a mixed weather condition first race. What would you say would be a kind of okay gap, say, in the first practice session, where you're on the track for the first time, and...

The teammate has been on the track a lot of times and it's really tricky. How far off would you expect that driver to be? I've got to slightly caveat that by talking about the journey to get to. You're talking about basically fighting the champ. So what is a respectable performance against? the unified heavyweight champion of the world. Yeah, we're not talking about Lawson versus an experienced F1 driver. We're talking about Lawson versus an experienced, absolute elite Formula One driver.

in his first race in the team at a track he's never been to before in mixed conditions. What's a good, what would be a reasonable gap in practice one? Maria in the chat says 0.8 of a second. Okay. No, I would go, I would want to go lower than that because... And this is out of Liam Lawson's control. They've put someone who basically lost on points a couple of times to another mid-ranking journeyman boxer and then put him immediately for his third fight.

put him in and by the way those matches got cut short as well they were only half a match they were only like four rounds immediately then they go okay go in against the heavyweight champion go for it i would expect him at that point to to have his nose put through the back of his head

There's no way he was ready for that fight. But let's say ordinarily, when they put someone through the correct ladder and manage their career properly, I would still think on ultimate pace, haven't we always said that there's about... 0.6 of a second ultimate pace on a fast lap between the whole grid yeah that's assuming though that the conditions are reasonably static and

you know, you've had more than a day in the car in testing. Because remember, they had such tiny amount of testing and then they're straight at a track that the driver doesn't know. So essentially, I'll go into the figures now. The gap in first practice was 0.8. So... For me, that is completely reasonable. Obviously, if you go on positions, you've got Verstappen up in the top five every time and Lawson down in the bottom because the field is super tight.

But that's not a situation that I would expect to stay for the whole season. You know, for me, it's like, OK, we're starting off at point eight. That's a decent effort. So then we go to practice two at Melbourne and you'd say, OK, he needs to get a bit closer now. And he did. In the second practice, he was 0.6 off of Verstappen. So well under a second, just over half a second off of the top-rated guy. And at the same time, Hamilton was struggling. So wasn't he 0.7 and then 0.4?

off of Leclerc. Yeah, Hamilton was not quite as far, but he was, you know, a similar chunk. And obviously he knows the track and he's extremely experienced. So, you know, that puts this into context a little bit. And then we get to practice three and you might have to remind me here on the F1 website, there was no time. And so I'm assuming practice three, it was either a mechanical problem for Lawson or he had an accident. I got, I have a feeling that's when it was a mechanical issue.

and he didn't get the session. In fact, I'm pretty sure that's what it was. So again, that's something out of his hands and he will have lost a session. Even if it was in his hands, say there was a crash, you know, crashes happen and he's lost the track time. So we're going into qualifying at Melbourne, where he's had two sessions where he's been respectably close, in inverted commas, to Max. And if it was against someone really slow, it wouldn't be respectable, but the benchmark is there.

And we go to qualifying and yeah, he's one second. Yeah, that feels... See, this is why I don't want to use the practice because what are their aims in practice? Is Verstappen going for his ultimate 99%? Is he that kind of driver that's 99% in FP1, or is he keeping it out of the wall in FP1 and building up to it? I don't know. That's a genuine question. In FP1, that could have been Lawson's trying his hardest, and he's there doing dunks.

Where the regular players practicing layups. I mean, you could argue that. I don't know. But... All I can say is that's what the gaps were. And normally we rate teammates based on what the gaps were. We don't tend to infer, yeah, but he could have been pushing harder. But I would go that qualifying would be, you know, there's no escaping the qualifying times. And a second is quite far off.

A second is quite far off unless the driver that is the second off is having their own struggles and, you know, is lacking a bit of confidence and, you know, doesn't want to put the car in the wall, etc. I think Lawson is... is far enough off there that I wouldn't say, okay, this is the next wonder kid. He's outperforming expectations. But I also wouldn't be...

I wouldn't think this is a disaster. There's no hope. From that, I think, OK, the guy needs more time. We knew that before we put him in the car. But this is not an unexpected thing. We just need to work with him and see what happens next.

So then in the race, we know what happened. He was kind of getting on with it and he put it in the wall. A lot of people put it in the wall. I'm going to just chalk that one up to it was tricky conditions. He was already struggling. He put it in the wall. It's not good. It doesn't count in his favor, but I also don't think it...

That is the worst thing that's ever happened. He was one of 12, I think, who had a proper off, including the McLarens. And so once you have an off, it's a little bit luck whether or not you end up hitting something, isn't it? A little bit. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. I'm kind of fine with it. I'm not saying, again, that that shows that he did brilliantly. I'm not arguing at all in any of this that Lawson is the next Verstappen. I'm just arguing that I think...

He's being slightly overly criticised for what wasn't actually that terrible a job. And he's admitted that he needed to do a better job. It wasn't like the Perez situation where... It was never his fault. And he would kind of never acknowledge that there was actually a pace problem. Yeah, because there wasn't. And it wasn't his fault. It was just haters like you. Right. So let's go to China. He's had a race now. He needs to do well.

The gap in practice one at China, we're down to three tenths of a second. Lawson's three tenths of a second behind Max. That's decent. That's respectable. Again, never having seen the track before. That's actually a pretty decent gap. It's actually, if I'm being accurate, it's three and a half tenths. But still, he's made quite a big step there. And then we go immediately into sprint qualifying.

So the guy doesn't get three practice sessions. He gets one practice on a big track that he's never driven before, having had a disastrous first race. And he's, you know, respectably close in the practice. One goes into sprint qualifying.

doesn't put it all together, makes a couple of mistakes. He's not fully on top of the tyres, runs a little bit wide somewhere in the middle of the lap, ends up 0.8 off of Verstappen and ends up right down the back. So again, 0.8 is under a second, but it's not... It's not over a second and disastrous, but it is disastrous in terms of position in 2025 F1 when the field is all super, super tight. It is. But if we got into qualifying and Hamilton was 0.8 behind Leclerc...

We would definitely be using that as evidence of like, oh, my goodness, there's a problem here. Yeah. Yeah, we would be doing that. And so Sean is making a point, which I think I made on the show with Alex, saying Lawson's part in this tragedy was asking to be put in the seat.

And so that's something I think his management team have put him in there way too early. And so actually, the more and more I think about this, the more it's far more based on perhaps attitude behind the scenes, which we don't know. But it's more about a bit of a bidding war.

And I think, yeah, Lawson, they pushed for it. They said, here's the money. It must have been a little bit more than Tsunoda or even, I don't know. But they've then made that decision. And that is on Lawson's team to go, yeah, we think we're ready. We think.

We're ready for our shot. And he wasn't. He just wasn't ready for this shot. I know Brad's making a defense here. But then, you know, Tsunoda's team have smelt blood in the water and gone back to Honda and said, is there anything we can do? Can we make it another 10 million? Yeah, 10 million makes sense to us. If we can get him in for Japan, we'll sell a million Honda T-shirts more. We'll sell more shirts in Japan. That all makes financial sense. I still, I think that Brad, I think...

We can't give him too much credit or leeway for saying, well, you didn't have any experience. If it turns out to be true that it was the Lawson team pushing for that seat, then you have to be judged on how you take the opportunity that you've pushed for secured funds for. and gone for and 0.8 seconds to any any other team any other driver to their front running driver would be massive cause for concern in qualifying from my point of view though 0.8 seconds

is very easy to lose or very easy to gain if the situation changes even slightly. If you become slightly more comfortable in the car, if you understand...

exactly, precisely how to extract the pace from that car, how to make the tyres work better, have a setup that just works that bit better for you that unlocks your confidence. 0.8 is like quite... easy to overcome like that can come in quite big chunks it's not like lawson is saying okay he was saying i've got no grip that was kind of his his thing he said quite often but he was never saying

The car feels perfect. I'm driving perfectly. And yet I'm still 0.8 off. That was never the situation. If that was the case, if he was saying, I don't understand it, like it feels like everything is absolutely spot on, but there's still this gap to max. Then you start thinking, okay. there's an issue here. And if that carries on for six months, then yes, understand, let's start thinking seriously about making a switch. Does that ever happen to you as a driver? You're a good sim racer as well.

But loads of times in karting and iRacing, I'm like, I nailed that. I absolutely nailed that. And then I'm a second or two seconds, even more than that, off sometimes. Sim racing is probably the main arena in which I've experienced that thing where it's like, but I am doing so, so well here. How on earth is someone X number of tenths or seconds ahead? But yeah, anyway, that would be a situation where I'd be considering let's seriously think about swapping him.

But that, in my mind, that isn't the situation. Let me just finish these stats because we're nearly at the end of them so you get the full picture because there's not many more sessions. He then, in the sprint race, went from 19th to 14th. You know, whatever. Didn't make that much of an impact, but it's not like the car is...

streets ahead of all the other cards it's not like red bulls of a couple of years ago so hard to make progress but 14th yeah whatever then we had main qualifying and this time he was seven tenths off of max so slight progress and you know not

Not the biggest gap I've ever seen between teammates. And then in the race, he went P20 to P12 after penalties. In the end, you know, starting from the pit lane. Fastest lap. I know it's really, really hard to judge fastest laps, but I don't think he had like an extra pit stop that gave him much better tyres. Pretty sure Lawson was on the...

the same kind of strategy as everyone else. And he finished the race with a fastest lap half a second off max. So quite a long way behind, obviously, as you do tend to be if you start down the field. But still nothing in any of that information tells me... this needs to be a change right now. I agree with you. I think the reasons are more, the reason they haven't bothered sticking with him and making it work is they've gone, you know, there's an easier way out of this.

Let's just stick Sonoda in. And when Sonoda likely does better than Lawson's done, even if it's only slightly better, we'll look like we made the right decision. And it's as simple as that. And we've got a load of millions of Honda money. Yeah, I think the maths probably just worked out and it's brutal though. You look around the grid and as you said rightly about Perez, he would make up a reason every single time.

Yell at his engineers. That's normal racing driver stuff. And the Perez gap. I mean, maybe I'm making up a false reality in my mind, but I'm pretty certain that for months and months and maybe years... most of us were saying they've got to get rid of you can't he can't still be this far off and then another race would go by surely they're going to get rid of him now he can't still be this far off yet he had opportunity after opportunity and would still

very rarely be the rear gunner Max needed occasionally, but very rarely. It was extremely sporadic. And I just have to think if Lawson was afforded remotely that same opportunity, there's nothing to say he couldn't have been at least as good as the Perez. version of a Mac teammate. Yeah, he just hasn't been given that chance. That's why I think it's a bit unfair. I want to get your input on Driver Styles. So there's a few things to comment on about an interview that I've only read about.

So if the news outlets are massively misquoting Bernie Collins here, Sky X-Race strategist, I think she was X-Strategist 4.

I've forgotten which team. Yeah, Aston Martin slash Racing Point. There you go. So if it's been taken out of context, I apologize, but all the outlets are sort of putting it across in the same way. And the comment there was, instead of putting... sunoda in or instead of putting lawson in you should look down your driver program and you should find the driver that has the the more front bias driving style so someone who really wants a pointy front end in the same way that the max verstappen

is that a thing brad is that a thing where you just go okay for example i've driven danny's setups in our i-racing championship and he really likes a rear loose end and so whenever i was driving that every time i hit the brakes i was just terrified of the rear coming out

And that just killed all my flow. Well, most of the time it resulted in me spinning, but it would also stop me attacking. So is that a thing? Because I'm probably a driver who doesn't want the rear end going around. I want a stable rear because I'm not very good. You know, like they say to kids at go-kart tracks, breaking a straight line to stop the rear going out. I wonder if that's the feeling the second Red Bull drivers have been getting. And is there this mythical youth out there?

who's been setting up his Formula 4 car to have a snappy back end that could just jump in and do better. So this is one of those really tricky things to answer. I think it's like a yes and no answer because... maybe there is someone maybe there is someone who would like a car that drives exactly like max has it and you know really nervous on the rear whatever whatever the situation is but until and unless you

have the opportunity to get them to drive that Formula One car, you're not going to actually know whether in that situation that's what they want. You know, you could have asked Lawson a few months ago.

I was hearing that Lawson had a really similar driving style to Max. That's what I heard over and over. And that's one of the reasons this was going to work. Yet, I bet if you spoke to Lawson now and you said, you put that to him and said, I thought you said you liked a pointy front end. He'd go...

Yeah, yeah, but not like that. Not the way that car felt. I think it's too nuanced to say some drivers like cars that are a little bit tail happy. Therefore, find one of those on your junior program, stick them in the Red Bull. you'd need they'd need to go through the whole process because it's so specific and it could be even setup specific track specific tire compound specific there's so many things that could affect

whether or not that driver likes it. I think Max has been in that car and in that team for long enough that, first of all, he'll be really used to whatever they give him. And secondly, the whole thing about them developing a car towards the thing he likes.

That's just going to be like a compound situation over a long period of time. And anyone who jumps in that is going to have to get their head around it. It would be the same with any car, but if it's nervous and that's how that car works best, then... I guess it's going to be even harder. Another reason why I think it's not fair to chuck a driver out after having a couple of guys. What would be really interesting would be to get a 2016 Max and put him in the car that Max likes now.

And, you know, has he always liked it exactly like that or has it been an evolution getting to that point? Yeah, I mean, the cars, just the formula has changed so much since then anyway. So the cars will feel fundamentally different regardless. So, yeah, I think...

We often simplify the answers to these things too much. And when I say we, I don't mean you and I. No, I do. The general perception of saying, even just saying, oh yeah, Max likes it pointy, that's probably way too broad and general anyway. It'll be really detailed nuance. in various parts of various corners with different conditions. So I think it's a much harder question to answer. Why, then, do some drivers like it pointy?

and some like what effect does that have i'm just trying to get to the root of it because we say these things in a throwaway way so to me when we're doing a fixed setup in our racing championship i like a stable Rear end, which tends to make it a bit pushy, a bit understeery. And I do better compared to the field in those situations. Because if I'm not worried about the back end going away, I feel like I can attack the corner early, get the weight transfer going early.

And then I get on the power earlier, whereas other people hate that and can't stand the fact that it's not biting and turning in. Is there a reason? And could I ever compete with my preferences of wanting like that? Or am I essentially... I'm like having training wheels by wanting an understeery car. Yeah, there's a couple of levels to this. So you, I think you probably freely admit you're not an elite.

driver level what you're really good amateur especially considering you only really started doing anything you know in competition when you were very very late so without wanting to sound insulting. No, you can be, you can be. Your example of wanting a rear end stable is probably, well, almost certainly because you haven't got a really deep grounding from a young age.

of using car control and having this kind of real deep feel of subconsciously correcting things when they go wrong. And so for you, having a stable rear end is a prerequisite to... being confident to push the car. And now that's probably not the case for the vast majority of professional race drivers who are just this everyone that we then look at their preferences is a step above that.

you'd say all of the people who get to a particular level are happy dealing with those things that you need to not happen. So it's probably not the best example of using yourself for this. And it's also why I think that... We've spoken about this for years, but if you painted all the cars the same colour and you had an onboard where all the drivers were in white helmets with white liveries and you couldn't see which car was which, I would defy the vast majority of people.

from telling who was who, because really all the drivers want the car quite similar to each other. It's just within that really narrow scope of similarity, Max will be at one end and other drivers will be slightly at the other end. Now you ask why. It's because they will have grown up driving. I've definitely, I've used this example before on the show. They will have grown up driving particular carts, particular...

tracks, particular conditions, and then into particular single seater series in the junior formula. And everyone's history is different. Everyone has come from a different background and had a different experience. And the way they felt in their formative years and the things they felt they needed from a car and the things that helped them perform the best, that will have carried on as a kind of baseline style throughout their career. And although you have to be...

like I say, in this relatively narrow window for it to be on the pace, you have to be driving it in a certain way, whatever you're in. You can't be doing something wildly different to everyone else. That slight nuance is what will have carried on. And that's where you get to this, this driver likes X.

kind of car handling trait and another driver prefers whatever. I just think your example of it needing to be completely stable, that's more of a Spanners isn't an elite driver, so needs this level of stability in order to then... perform at your maximum but yeah you would would you ever even start thinking a little bit if a driver's talking about wanting that planted rear end you kind of go oh that could be like a limiting factor a little bit also i think there's a massive amount of driver

um, bullshiness. There's a, there's a better phrase to use here. It's, there is a certain amount of personal kudos to saying, Oh no, I like it really loose. I like. Someone liking understeer is not a cool race driver thing to say. It's cool to like oversteer. Yeah, I can deal with it sideways. I like it pointy. That's just... that's a thing that race drivers say. And obviously oversteer is much more fun than understeer. Oversteer is a thing you can control and you can show off and that's...

That's the thing that sets you apart from an amateur rental cart driver. When you're a little kid and you've done owner driver carting and you've done a lot of, you've really experienced and the other kids spin when the cart gets sideways and you can hold it. From that moment all the way until you're an F1 driver, that's much cooler to say you like oversteer than understeer, obviously.

yeah so public publicly no one's ever going to say oh yeah i like it i like it to be safe and stable it's like oh what because you're not as good as the other guys that's that's the attitude from a professional yeah all right i've spent that whole time trying to not be insulted i'm still recovering from You started very, very, very. Can we get the tape back on the transcript? How many verys were there? I was mid-30s. Or maybe late 30s. I'm not sure.

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being able to not tell the difference between the drivers. The young drivers, some of them maybe would look a bit different from the onboard. Do you not think you could tell Antonelli's? steering inputs from from russell's because in my head i've convinced myself that the inputs look very different on antonelli's onboard i'd need to really look and see Because even if you compare two on-board laps, if we take a Russell lap and an Antonelli lap from the same track, from the same session,

Even in that situation, if one's on heavier fuel, one's on lighter fuel, one's on worn tires, one's on brand new tires, if one's being told to fuel save, one's going for outright pace, they're just going to look wildly different anyway. you'd need a really controlled set of conditions before I could say, yes, we can tell the difference. Ultimately, the correct amount of steering angle and the correct turning point...

It's all the same thing and the correct rate of steering application, you know, how fast you go from straight to the maximum amount of steering angle you need for a particular corner.

that's all the same like it's the same regardless of who's driving the car that all has to be within a very narrow window otherwise you're going to be slow so it's i i believe personally we over egg this and make out the differences to be bigger than they are um but you know i'd love to do this experiment if we could do this somehow i'm sure there's some kind of ai that can blank the cars for us and let us try this experiment yes

That has to exist. That has to exist. All right. The other part of that interview that left me wondering was, well, the other option is Verstappen could just be a god and could be just wrestling the worst car on the grid. which Bernie Collins has said the Red Bull is. If Max leaves or doesn't show up at a race, they're currently the 10th fastest team. Okay, let that sink in, because we love Bernie Collins, especially at Miss Apex, we're always...

Really delighted to get her inputs, which is a big favourite. If Max leaves or doesn't show up at a race, they are currently... The 10th fastest team. I was criticised last year for saying when Checo was there that if Max didn't turn up for a race, they were the 4th fastest team. But at the minute, they're 10th fastest. For that to be true though, surely Lawson would need to have beaten no other...

number one drivers so lawson if you'd basically taken verstappen out of that race or he'd crashed lawson would have made the red bull look like the 10th fastest team that that can't be right i think i think i get what they're driving at Which is they're in trouble because if they don't have a driver like Max who can drive that car, they're not going to be getting P2 in Australia and they're not going to be getting P4 in China. But 10th...

I hope that was hyperbole. I want to go back and hear the tone. But that can't be anywhere near true, can it? I don't think it's that far off true. We're going to see another data point when Tsunoda drives. So if Tsunoda drives and is... absolute midfield or in the top 10, then that's probably not a fair assessment from Bernie. But it's not wildly...

wrong if you do base it on Lawson's performance. Maybe we need to go somewhere between Max and Lawson to see what's a realistic position for that car. It's just the field is so tight that a couple of tents here and there and you can go from being... fourth best to last. So that'll be interesting to see. I don't know. I think you do need to make a car that two drivers can drive in order to say you've made a good one. You can't just rely on having Max.

It's a throwaway comment, so obviously it's easier for us here to pick it apart. But you'd have to caveat by saying that it would be the 10th fastest car without Max and in a situation where you also don't find a driver to replace Max. that is able to do what max can do so because max can literally drive the car to p2 p4 so that is what the car is capable of like that it is possible to do that

But what we're not seeing is what Max could do in those other cars. It's the whole Williams when they had Stroll and Sorokin or whoever the drivers were. How good was that car? We actually don't know. It looked like it was the worst car. It might have been the fifth best car. Yeah, no, I know. I think that was a Q3 car at times when Sorokin and Stroll were having their Q1 knockouts. But you could also say McLaren are in real trouble because...

If you took Piastri and Norris out and replaced them with, I don't know, you know, some drivers who never made it to F1, they'd be in real trouble. That car would look terrible. So, I don't know. The thing is, the whole thing of Max would be able to win races in a Haas in the wet. I think it's overstating Max's ability. Max can drive the car as well as possible within the way it's been designed.

All I'd say is we do have some kind of data to place this because Lawson wasn't hopelessly off the pace at the back of the field when he was in the racing bull last year. So that shows that Lawson isn't a... shouldn't have made it to F1, no hope a driver. He was like immediately competitive against Tsunoda. So I think Tsunoda had the better of him in terms of stats over the course of their time together. I think you've got the qualifying stats, but Lawson certainly didn't look like...

we need to kick him out of this team. No, no, no, no. He was surviving in that team. He was really very, very strong in his first couple of races and then kind of settled into similar to Tsunoda pace. So that shows that he isn't...

isn't this terrible driver that just can't drive Formula One cars. So that's got to put some of the blame on the car for this year. But this is why I say after two races, it's not enough to know. He needs like a couple more, but he didn't need a couple more last year when he was thrown in.

in the racing bull he didn't need it didn't matter if it's a track he hadn't been to yeah he was kind of fine so that it's just i'm constantly swaying between how much is it that he just can't get to grips with this car and in in which case That's kind of him and kind of the car's fault. And how much is it more one or the other? It's a really difficult situation to answer, especially now he's not going to get to carry on in that car. And the thing is, I've given up on my...

I don't think they're the same car, right? So with Perez in there, me watching it and seeing Perez go in there and suddenly not be able to drive, I go, something's not right. It can't be the same car. And then when Lawson was struggling, you put in our WhatsApp chat, something's not right. And I was like, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. Because that's what I was saying with Perez. So, you know, if we just go on that assumption, no, it is absolutely is the same car.

and there isn't some kind of contract with Verstappen where you're our actual paid driver, and when we have someone come in with funding, yes, they'll be here, but they're not going to quite have the same access to all the same toys as you have. If we're abandoning that theory... If my initial theory was right, then everyone who goes into that seat would be doomed. If you didn't have all the tools to completely deal with the style of car they've made...

You would be like Alex Albon going, oh, it's a really sensitive mouse, and then there's nothing I can do about it, and then go to Williams and do fine. Or you'd be Gasly not being able to keep up, or Perez, or Lawson, and probably Yuki Tsunoda coming up now. In my mind, there's still an element of...

Does the second Red Bull driver get all the toys? Because that is a paid seat. It's not Pro-Am, as you called a racing point at one point, Brad, which I thought was hilarious. But it is Pro versus... pro who has to secure funding like why would the driver who who pays and brings funding for that seat necessarily get treated in the same way as the superstar driver who gets 100 million a year yeah i just i just

Can't see it being that much effort to give two drivers in the same team equal machinery. It's the effort thing I think is more relevant here. It's who gets the best engineers and the most time.

you know, getting to talk about the direction of the car and stuff. But all that stuff's the same at every team. Like, why would it be so wildly different at Red Bull? And then that leads me to think what you mentioned earlier. Is it just that Max is that good? But if it really is just that Max is that good...

then that means the Red Bull have been making a really rubbish car a lot of the time. Because it shouldn't, the second driver who's, like we said, been decent at RB or wherever, if it's Albon going to Williams or whatever, this second driver that in other teams is fine. Then when they come up against Max, they're miles off. But the Red Bull, it's not like the Red Bull is... That basically says to me that...

Okay, so without Max, as we said earlier, Red Bull would be really, really slow. And that also doesn't really feel like it makes sense. So there's this question. What is it? Is it Max? Is it that the second car isn't very good? What is the case? And we don't have an answer. It's really frustrating because I've swung between all these different points quite a lot of the time. I thought with Perez, I had a bit of a handle on it because we had so many data points with Perez.

We saw him in lots of different situations over a really long time. And I thought we had decent reasons that Gasly wasn't really there or Album wasn't really there. It's like, okay, but these are much less experienced drivers. And they're not that far off Max, but we're kind of justified in changing. So yeah, I'm still none the wiser.

I'm really looking forward to finding out more and more data points over the season. I know. I'm just so scared. I'm just so scared. It's all on Tsunoda now. Come on, Yuki. So we've been joined by a wild trumpet. Now, this is a bad idea for several reasons.

I've only done it because I can't answer Pat's question, saying I reckon that Haas will have a rough weekend due to their problems with transitional downforce. So we called in the cavalry. However, the cavalry has been on a whiskey tour in Scotland. for for most of the day so welcome from scotland matt trumpets hello matt hey there spanners i guess i find out now if my new earbuds work or not can you hear me

I can hear you. You just sound like a radio caller. So why don't you do a guest spot here and tell us all about transitional downforce. It's Pat Wright with his reckon that Haas will have a rough weekend due to their problems with transitional downforce. Well, the issue he's referencing is actually with the balance, the aero balance changing rapidly in swift transition, directional transition. And this is a problem that they saw in Australia.

So it was at 9, 10, 8, 9. I don't remember the turns, but they were losing 3, 4 tenths because when they went to change directions, the balance would change suddenly and the car was very difficult to handle. But what's part of that issue, and I think what all of the teams have run into at a certain point, is that they have worked themselves.

So that's not actually that's not actually zoom distortion. That is just what Matt sounds like after several whiskeys. So I can see on the screen that he's pixelating and dropping out. And I think. Did you understand any of that, Brad? No, you didn't. And now he's completely frozen as well. So, Matt, I think it was a good experiment, but we're going to have to leave you to getting gently sloshed in the Highlands. No.

And that goes to prove what I've always said about Scotland, which is that, you know, it's a bit rubbish up there. You know, nice food, nice whiskey, but, you know, the internet hasn't made it, so we can't do it. Brad, Bottas. Yes, Bottas. So I was quite surprised yesterday to see a post of Bottas in a McLaren suit and to see that he's been out in a McLaren. I don't know whether it's this year's. I don't actually know which one is in a recent McLaren.

getting familiar, probably seat fit, getting familiar with buttons and that kind of thing. I didn't get it. So he did this Instagram post of the McLaren going by and him going, oh, it's nice to be in Papaya or something. I went... Well, hang on a minute. Is he taking the video and saying that? It's like, no, he was in the car. Valtteri Bottas was in the championship leading McLaren.

Okay, so you think it was this year's McLaren he was driving? I don't know. Neither do I. They all look the same. It was orange and black. But it doesn't really matter. I think it's mainly that he was out there... Just having some kind of familiarization with McLaren as a team because he is the Mercedes-nominated reserve driver. And we've got this situation similar to last year and I think the year before where Stoffel van Doorn was Aston Martin, Mercedes.

And McLaren, reserve driver. And so he needs to know if he needs to be dropped in at a moment's notice. He needs to have some kind of familiarity with their processes, their steering wheel, all that kind of thing. So, and obviously a seat that fits in that car. So that's nice for him, isn't it? Nice for Bottas to have a little go. Well, okay. What do we think of Bottas then? He was doing okay at Sauber. I mean, he did pretty good at Mercedes. Like, it was fine.

When you look at now the standard for a number two driver that can't keep up, we're talking late Red Bull Perez, and now we're talking about this Lawson disaster. Bottas wasn't that. Bottas was regularly, every now and then, he was... faster than Hamilton on one lap pace. Hamilton had to do it the hard way quite a lot in getting past Bottas at the end of the first stint. So we know he's okay. If you had to have a reserve driver, that's a pretty good reserve driver to have, right?

Yeah, he's really recent. He's not old and he wasn't terrible or anything. We've kind of forgotten about him a bit because he was in a rubbish car the last couple of years. But yeah, he's recent enough that he's a very credible... reserve driver. And we saw not very long ago, Nico Hülkenberg being drafted back in after quite a while away, you know, not, and we didn't ever really think of Hülkenberg as this absolute superstar.

And, you know, and he's not super young. He didn't really have all those things in his favour, yet he still jumped in at a moment's notice and did a really good job as a reserve driver. Looked absolutely... on pace after one or two practice sessions. So I imagine Bottas would be the same thing if he's called upon. He's got...

a decent chance of being called upon as a reserve driver for three teams. You know, you've, you're quite not likely, but you've got decent odds of being called upon. People have appendixes. What do you call it? go down, appendix failure, appendicitis, yeah, and other similar things, you know, ailments, fall off a mountain bike, that kind of thing. So, although Bottas is probably the one more likely to fall off a mountain bike with the amount of gravel cycling he does.

Yeah, that's a great position to be in. It gets to just be there, chill out with Mercedes each weekend and be ready to jump in a car. Okay, but for McLaren, isn't that a bit sketchy? Because he is definitely a Mercedes guy. He has definitely been employed by Mercedes by...

Is this like 3D chess? And you go, oh, hang on a minute. Our engine contract specifies that we also provide the reserve driver. What if we get Bottas in? He'll definitely tell us what McLaren are doing. Yeah, that's an interesting one, isn't it? Actually, a couple of these teams, not so much Aston Martin, but McLaren and Mercedes are direct rivals this year.

you've got a reserve who is effectively from the other team. So yeah, that's an interesting dynamic, but I'm sure they're all professional enough that it won't really matter. No way! What, you think they're going to set up an industry wall or they'll tell Bottas something and they'll go... Yeah, but you're not going to tell Toto, are you? No, no, don't worry, I'm chill. I just don't know how many secrets a driver could glean from...

It would only be if there were specific things the driver needed to know about the special stuff that team had going on that was essential for them to know ahead of time. If they're just doing the stuff in the background and it makes the car fast, the driver doesn't really need to know it.

So it's probably not anything that he could take across to Mercedes. But you'd get feedback and go, oh, yeah, the tyres get up to temperature really quickly, but they don't wear. Or I'm feeling grip from lap one. You know, at least they'd know. That car's a bit better than your car. No, but they'd know where it was. You could kind of, I suppose they can see it all from the data anyway. But, you know, if they said, right, that McLaren just does what I want it to do.

on turning or whatever or i can get it rotated at the apex more or or something or the brakes just feel like they're more effective then there's low hanging fruit for mercedes to then go after isn't there yeah oh we'll just make the brakes better then we'll just make it better we'll just make it turn in better you know the problem is it's all it's all again too nuanced for a driver just giving the standard setup adjustment feedback

All of that stuff is within the realms of tweaking in a day with the normal setup tools. So you need to have something like, ah, the McLaren engineer told me that we had to go mode blah, blah, blah on the warmup lap. And that kept the tires in this really... low temperature window that we don't normally do at mercedes it would be kind of process things like that that would be maybe most useful but i doubt there's that much stuff that that they're doing in that area that makes that

That big a difference is probably mainly car design. Niles G says, I reckon Bottas will be thrown into a seat before this season is over. These rookies will cause mayhem and at least one team who thought they could just weather the storm. Until 2026, we'll realize that they can't afford it. But he's not a reserve driver for any rookies, I don't think. Antonelli is the only one that he would be a reserve driver for. So this might be a good time.

to check in with our rookies. So we've got Lawson, bad. It's bad, isn't it? However Brad is justifying it, Lawson's doing bad. Hajar actually seems to be doing fine.

When you talk about the gap, if you say, well, what would you expect someone to come in and be relative to their teammate? I think Hadjar's ticked all those boxes, hasn't he, pretty much? Yeah, Hadjar's been good. I was really... sad for him what happened on the out lap on the formation lap at Melbourne because I've been watching his weekend and I was thinking this guy is doing a great job like he's I like I like what I'm seeing with him and

Yeah, I think luckily he's put that to bed and he's absolutely, I think he's looking safe. Who knows if Tsunoda doesn't perform. As they want him to. And the Honda money dries up. Maybe Hajar will be in before the end of the season in the Red Bull. But yeah, he's looking good. So yeah, Lawson, underperformance. Hajar, strong performance, fine.

And Antonelli is the weird one. So why am I still excited about Antonelli when he's not really getting any results? He's having quite sketchy sessions. He's having quite a few offs. But I know there's something about him.

like he's he's doing he's taking different lines he's doing something a little bit different and i think i said this a couple of weeks ago yeah if you open a shop and you go oh no one else has got a shop like this it's either because yeah people have tried that and it's failed in the past

or you are actually a genius and something special. But two races in, I haven't had that thing yet where you go, whoa, it's real. There's no Colopinto effect. You know, Colopinto came in and immediately just looked like, whoa. We found something here. Antonelli's not quite doing that yet. I think it's hard to do that against Russell. I think we know Russell's at a really strong level. And Antonelli's certainly not... He's not looked bad at all. He's looked like...

He looks like he drives with a bit of freedom and he's quite unfussed by pressure and expectation. Seems really like he's got a lot of self-belief and he's just letting the process. take itself where it goes I'd really I really wish I had the figures of Antonelli's gaps to Russell at Melbourne and Shanghai because I think if we were to look at those and then compare them to Lawson's gaps to

to Verstappen. I think it will put it into a bit more context. I think we'd be talking one or two tenths difference between someone who we think is doing really well versus Russell, not even versus Verstappen. you know, we could probably agree Verstappen might be a step ahead of Russell. And so, anyway, Antonelli, I think he's doing, I think he's doing really well, but he's obviously also...

being afforded the time to actually develop and flourish and do well, without the pressure of his seat being immediately under threat. Lawson knew, if I'm not doing amazingly from the outset, straight away I'm going to have a threat, and obviously... He not only didn't do amazingly, he did worse than people expected. Antonelli good. It definitely feels like no one's saying to Antonelli, you've got three races to prove yourself. He's not under a Jack doing type contract. They believe in him.

And I suppose the football analogy is they're saying, well, just go out there and play your own game. Go out there and shoot. Shoot from 20 yards if you want to. If you miss, it doesn't matter. Go on, get stuck in and whatever. Red card, doesn't matter. We're backing you. And we were talking earlier about how a driver's early years then kind of forms their style and their preferences as they go on. And obviously...

As you know well, Spanners, during COVID, me and Kimi Antonelli were on iRacing basically every day, 10 races a day in the Formula Renault. And I helped develop his stuff. I'm sure I could find loads of replays I've got saved on my computer. where you hear me on the voice going, Kimmy, dude, it was the first lap, mate. Come on. And he'd be like, I'm sorry, sorry. Next time we have another race soon. He was a lovely, lovely lad, but he used to always crash into me and be very apologetic.

I really thought at that stage, oh, there's no way this guy's getting to Formula One. I knew he was a Mercedes development driver at the time in karting. I was like, there's no way. He's way too crashy. He seems to have largely sorted that out with my help. For the audio listeners, Brad did the hand gestures with his Italian. I don't know if that's better or worse than what Christian did at the weekend, but we'll see if we get away with it. I miss the pre-COVID iRacing days because...

It was a low-key thing that the media hadn't really latched onto, but so many young drivers were all on iRacing, and you would just pop on. I had quite a few lunchtime sessions with Jake Dennis. Formula E driver now. And I think Grosjean as well. Great session where I was avoiding being lapped by Grosjean. And I could see the time going down and down and going, if I don't put a wheel wrong, maybe he won't lap me.

But I don't think it happens as much now. They tend to stick to their groups and official tournaments and stuff. Yeah, and obviously in season, most people don't have time for it. But yeah, we were all enforced back then to just have free time. If we were lucky enough to have a sim, we did a lot of it. Good. So Bortoleto, that's an interesting one because it's up in the air what kind of benchmark he has. But again, he stayed out of the headlines apart from that.

that moment in Australia where again, half the field had moments, but okay. Okay. We'll give him a pass at the moment. I think. Yeah. Not really much to say for me on board. He's been, he's been fine. you probably forgive me for not focusing too much of my watching effort on the, the Salvas. So yeah, he's like, if he's not doing anything to make headlines. then he's doing a good job. And I think actually he's been on the pace or quicker than Hulkenberg.

Yeah, and this demonstrates, by the way, why on Miss Apex we don't ever tend to go down lists and the rookie list is quite long. And as you can see, you don't always have that killer thing to talk about. So when people say, oh, no mention of... Sauber this weekend yeah they didn't do anything that's fine we're not going down a list and I even knew one podcast who would do it in reverse so they would start with the the most anonymous teams who did badly

scramble around for things to say about whatever Marussia were up to. And then they wouldn't talk about Mercedes and Red Bull until the end of the show. You go, yeah, everyone's bored. Honestly, no one cares about... caterham's performance and how their sub driver did with duct tape holding their wishbones together something that we we have argued about pre-season is behrman so you guys really really enthusiastic about ollie behrman

Me not having followed his junior career at all and just seeing him sub in a couple of times on what I thought were very safe kind of runs. And he just was like, yeah, bring it home. And he did. Who's going to end up being right now that we've had a look at him for a couple of races? I think he got the dodgy race out of his system. Dodgy weekend. Is that a mulligan? Is that a mulligan, is it? Yeah, he's now... We have such few data points on all these drivers.

The same with Lawson. Doesn't matter. We've got two races of data. We were arguing about Behrman with like no data points. Now we have two. That's nearly infinitely more. So I would say he looks like he's settling in. Okay, fine. But he's not.

He's not at Ocon's level. He's not, you know, blown the grid away and put Ocon to the sword straight away. I do, although I said I don't pay attention, you know, down the grid as much, I do try and just keep a bit of an eye on how is that driver doing versus their teammate. I feel like I've got... This is entirely unscientific. This is my vibes. I feel like I've got the impression that Shanghai, Behrman was reasonably decent. He was overtaking...

Who was it? Was it Lawson he overtook and went, ciao, or whatever? He was doing fine, as expected. He was obviously confident enough to be a bit cocky on the radio, which shows that he's feeling a bit better and a little bit more confident. I think Behrman is going to, I think me and whoever was allied with me and my views of Behrman being really decent is going to be vindicated over the course of the season. I think we have a very strong handle on Ocon's level.

which is like decent, but he's reached the ceiling. And I feel like Bearman probably will, with a bit of youthful flair, will probably kick on from here. So, you know, I think Bearman is... He's a good long-term prospect and might do some things that surprise us. Okay, I'm sticking to my guns, though. I think Ocon will be comfortably still... the number one driver. That worked out with the Perez fandom, didn't it? Just stick to it and he'll just wither away and get gradually...

Kind of worse. Firstly, what are you talking about? I've won the Perez argument. Lawson has won the whole Perez argument for me. It was a hospital pass. He never stood a chance. And then, here's the thing, though. If Tsunoda comes in...

And the same thing happens. You know, I'm going to double down and go like, see, Brad, see. But if Tsunoda does well, I'll just pretend I didn't say any of that. And it was that he's just really good all along. There's just so many reasons. We've covered most of these already. There's so many reasons.

if Tsunoda comes in and does well, we're going to need way more data than that because there's so many reasons that he could do well on a given weekend. They could just nail the setup. He could be super comfortable with the track. There's like loads of stuff. Maybe, you know, this is super conspiratorial thinking, and I don't subscribe to this, but...

If there's this thing they do to the second car to artificially hold it back, then they might just stop doing that to make themselves look like they made the right decision. There's so many things that you could point to to say, oh, that's why he was better. If Tsunoda flops...

in japan in his home race they are going to look like tools they are going to look like morons because it is i think it's worse if they made a driver error with lawson that's one thing they corrected that with the sonoda great that's done If they have made an undriveable second car and all the other alternative is both the junior drivers they've been investing in for years have both come to Red Bull and are flops, which probably shows that Hadjar then.

isn't coming in at an amazing level, and that that RB could have been much further up the grid if they'd done better with their junior programme. All of that comes into play if Tsunoda has a Lawson-type experience. even in his first race. And then they've got a couple of weeks. No, they've got one week until Saudi of full-on press calling them absolute Muppets. I really hope...

If Tsunoda struggles, he's very vocal and clear about it. Like, I want to know. I want someone who isn't trying to protect their seat there, you know, who feels like he's got the confidence of the backing of Honda. He needs to justify his position to them, not to Red Bull so much. I want him to say, you know, no, this car is rubbish because this, this, this. It doesn't do this properly. Whereas, obviously, as we saw with Lawson, he was much more...

you know, willing to take it on the chin that no, I'm the problem. I need to drive better. I'm finding it hard, et cetera. So I want Sonoda to just be vocal. Yeah. You can't just say, I'm just not very good at this. You've got to say. You know, I've been tired lately. I've been under a lot of stress at work. This kind of thing never, never usually happens. You can't not fight your corner. You've got to go full driver excuse.

I think Lawson might look back on that and go, do you know what? I should have just, should have thrown my toys out the pram a little bit more. Should have stood up for myself a little bit more. But yeah, putting it all in himself. Do you think Tsunoda's Red Bull engineer?

will accept him dictating the way they run the race strategy in the same way that his RB engineer did. That was one of the most surprising radio calls I've heard in ages. Yeah, I want to use up all my tires. No, no, don't do that. No, but I want to. Okay, then. Go for it. Well, what do I know? I want to cut to the engineer ripping up the notes and throwing them away. Taking off his headset. I may as well take a break then, Yuki. Jeez. Yeah, exactly.

And not in a sarcastic way. You can imagine GP to Max saying, oh, go on then, Max, yeah, do it. And then see what happens. It wasn't like that. It was no passive aggressiveness. It was just like, yeah, OK. Yeah, GP, who was also the Paul Diresta race engineer. I used that as an example for so long of him saying to Paul DeResta, OK, Paul, you tell us what you think the right time to pit is and what tyre you want. And he didn't last much longer. I don't know.

I'm nervous. I'm really, really nervous that Tsunoda does not know what is ahead of him. He just goes, yeah, I was better than Lawson. Lawson struggled. And he was like, yeah, of course. Yeah, of course. Oh, that war of words where they both were saying this same thing. Lawson, his position was...

I've raced Yuki for years and I've always beaten him. And Tsunoda basically said exactly the same thing. Yeah. So that's it. Tsunoda would have just been looking ahead and going, yeah, of course he failed. I told you. Now it's my turn. Finally. Phew. Here we go. Oh, God. Oh, no. I'm frightened. So frightened. I think we'll end on a couple of quickfire reckons here. In fact, oh, we've got some really good ones. I might do these midweek. Let's see. I wanted to do...

No, I'm going to save up the records. I'm going to do the Clarkson comment because it's quite... A, like, shut up. He just comes out. Jeremy Clarkson, who was on Top Gear, and what did they call the American one when they did it? Grand Tour. Sure. Grand Tour. He's known for being outspoken and grabbing headlines. But when it comes to F1, all he ever seems to talk about is Lewis Hamilton's terrible. And he just constantly goes on attacking Lewis Hamilton. At some point, you just go.

all right mate i think i think we get it like i think i think we get where you're coming from but he said that basically it's worrying that he went from hero in the sprint race to zero and how could his form drop off so badly And had previously said that Ferrari made a mistake by signing Lewis Hamilton. And then he went so slowly that his teammate overtook him. Like a real teardown of Lewis Hamilton. Now you can listen to our race review at the time.

And I think we made a reasonable fist of sort of breaking that down. Of course, a driver can lose a bit of pace or have conditions not suit him the same between different sessions. But there was the cars being released from Park Fermi. It's obviously a big factor. They said they made several setup changes, which combined in the car going away from them. And you know what I think about Leclerc being more pushy.

on the radio so psychologically maybe got in hamilton's head a little bit and hamilton's thinking oh no i'm i'm actually i don't want to i want to be a team player i don't want to hold up the faster ferrari but you know leclerc was was was just doing what a lot of the drivers do going i can't believe it I know we're all saving tires here, guys, but come on. I mean, I could be going much faster and then didn't. But the interesting talking point from that, Brad, is this how can you go from...

being very, very quick in one part of the weekend to not so quick in the second part of the weekend. I am starting to suspect that there is a Hamilton trait where he wants to over tinker or pushes for over tinkering because this was happening at Mercedes as well. But this can happen.

over sessions. They have this full competitive sprint race where they go, oh, those things didn't work. Let's try and fix them. And then they get one roll of the dice into qualifying before it then goes back into Park Vermeer. Yeah, I mean, I... I think this is entirely uncontroversial that you can have a very different performance between the sprint race and the main race. We've seen it loads of times before. The conditions are never identical. The race is a completely different length.

what you need from the car changes a little bit when you know you've got pit stops coming in and different tyre compounds and higher fuel load and all that kind of thing. It's perfectly conceivable that the car... and drive a combo that was quickest on one day isn't necessarily quickest on the next day. Then you've got Hamilton not starting on pole in the main race, so he doesn't have clear air for the entire time. It's just a completely different set of conditions. Plus, with Park Fermi...

being opened you know everyone being able to make changes i agree with you hamilton i'm pretty sure does tinker more than he probably should but then you've got all the other teams all the variables of the other top teams also making changes to their cars So it's not the same set of circumstances. So I think it would be weird if we had exactly the same scenario between sprint race and main race, especially when there's a separate qualifying session setting a separate order for that one.

Yeah, I mean, Clarkson, I get frustrated with Clarkson because there are times when I agree with some things he says and I quite like him and I get endeared to him on something like Clarkson's farm and then he'll come out with something which is just super unhelpful like... I mean, his Meghan Markle comments a couple of years ago, just like gratuitously cruel and...

And you think, how is this the same person? He seems like quite a nice guy in certain situations. And then he got his pants pulled down totally over the farmer tax stuff. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Looked like an absolute idiot in front of that BBC reporter. Yeah, but he's not an F1 pundit, but he grabs the headlines and then they get repeated everywhere. And there's a few characters like this. There is a cottage industry, if you like, in Formula One media of, can we get an anti-Hamilton quote?

Because the anti-Hamilton quotes get clicks and they get shared and they get driven by a community of people who aren't interested in the facts in any given thing. They are fully just, let's find any way to attack Lewis Hamilton. And so you have outlets. and pundits who go this is this is money this is money we know what we're doing so you know you get you get uh ralph schumacher comments all the time because he is

often very vocal against Lewis Hamilton. And then you get the same with Jeremy Clarkson. And I haven't done the study on what percentage of Planet F1 headlines are massively anti-Lewis Hamilton or... Here's what someone else said, slagging off Lewis Hamilton. Check this out. But it's high. I think it's high. And I don't know. I just feel like I just wanted to mention it because, I don't know, I don't hear people like me just going, hey.

There's a thing where people are deliberately stoking hate against Lewis Hamilton and monetizing it. But I think it happens. Oh, now I've ended on a rant, Brad. I wanted to end on something super happy. What's super happy? What can we talk about? Okay, Stephen F says, I reckon Ferrari will be the fourth fastest at best. And I'm being overcautious. Oh, because they're being overcautious because they don't want to get disqualified again.

Yeah, there's pace there somewhere. Did you hear this thing where they said that they were protecting the gearbox? And that's why they were. Yeah, that's why they've been making these ride height changes and suspension changes. And then that is what led to the plank wear. But it's also like the plank wear. That will happen at some point. But they are fundamentally having to compromise their fast pace to protect something. It's making them slow. So at the moment, they are the fourth fastest car.

But do they have the potential to get up there? We're not finding out at the moment because they're having to put sticking plasters over everything. So at the moment, I'm not optimistic at all. Yeah, my only hope there is we saw things change so much over last season, between the beginning and the end of the season. There's just scope. The teams are close enough that small changes can make quite a big difference to the pecking order. So hopefully they figure something out.

Yeah, I don't know. I do get this impression, though, that, you know, the plank thing at Melbourne, which then turned into an actual disqualification, there was clearly something there. There was clearly some fire behind that smoke. And that's annoying, because if they designed a car that...

you can't run in its working window without being disqualified. And even when they did that, even when they got disqualified, it wasn't that fast. No, if you're going to get disqualified from P1, if you're going to be outside of the rules, P1. Yeah, it's worrying. I can see like a Silverstone or Hungary win for Hamilton. But then the rest of the season is going to be like frustrating. And interviews are going, yeah, we had the pace on Friday.

Yeah, well, you don't have to run a legal car. It's fine. But then when we had to actually make sure that we could finish the race, we couldn't put it together and we couldn't get a result. I think it's going to be a long... a long year of that i think later in the week we're going to have matt come in because we'll talk about the the news around the 2026 regulations and mercedes have said if you abandon the 2026 regs we can't or delay them

we won't give anybody else engines. They're saying there's a long lead time. We can sort ourselves out, but we can't give our customers any engines. So there seems to be a backlash to the initial plan to somehow skip the 2026 regulations.

and go straight to V10s. But Matt will be all over that midweek, and we're going to do a preview. I think Jono is going to join us, and then we're going to have Jono and Kyle for the Japanese Grand Prix race review. Thank you very much to Brad. Brad, we haven't given you a chance to plug things.

Okay, let me plug things. Go subscribe to my YouTube channel. Just search for Brad Philpott on YouTube because that is the social media platform that I'm massively concentrating on. I have for the last year or so, and I'm trying to do regular, well-edited... interesting racing videos this season it is my kart championship i'm racing in 100 uk series and the first video about that

It's going to be in about two weeks time because our first race is in a couple of weeks. But there's a whole winter's worth of edited videos, including one that just went out this week. So go check them out. And if you... available when I'm doing an iRacing livestream, check them out too. I think I do some of the best livestreams on iRacing. Now, rather than plug any of my stuff, because you all already follow me everywhere, I want to do a personal plug.

to my friend Andy, who's doing an ultra marathon. So running from London to Brighton and back, I don't know, but it's like five marathons in a row or something. It's crazy. But he's doing it. to raise money for armed forces, charities that help soldiers who fell off the wagon a little bit and who got themselves in a bad place during service and just making sure that they're not parachuted out of the armed forces into the civilian world.

and just just left it it's um i'm an ex-soldier myself it's a very very strange environment it's a strange world to inhabit it's hard to describe how but behaviors and and and lifestyles that can go unchecked and can go masked in the armed forces. And then you're completely unshielded and abandoned in some way when you get out to the other side. But there are charities out there that do help ex-servicemen.

And Andy's trying to raise money to do those. So it will be the first link in the show notes, even above Patreon. And if you're minded to support charities, if you're someone who supports charities and you fancy chucking a fiver or a tenner in there to...

to help Andy along. His journey is being tracked there as well, so you can see his progress, and I'll keep you updated too. I'd appreciate that. But until next week, no, until midweek, work hard, be kind, and have fun. This was Missed Apex Podcast. Bye. So I'm just going to address the little post-show thing that's come up in the chat, Brad, and I'll decide whether we edit it out or not later. But I have had people saying, why haven't I commented on Eddie Jordan? And to be completely honest...

It's because I never know what to say in those circumstances. I didn't know him personally. And I wanted to avoid what I saw another pod doing, which is saying Eddie Jordan has passed. oh that means we're going to do two special episodes on his career and it felt to me like saying oh this tragedy has happened so you know what that means content and so i get caught in the middle we didn't have a show like the day after

So we were kind of caught in this no man's land. Christian, I thought, had covered it. But he said Eddie Irvine had passed. And you go, oh, Christian. So anyway, that's the mess that we found ourselves in. Do you want me to just, can I just give you a heartfelt thing myself? Yeah, of course. Because I actually do have a bit of skin in the Eddie Jordan game. So when I was a young Formula One fan, I...

I gravitated towards Jordan as my team. So I was a huge Jordan fan in the 90s. And to the point where my bedroom was painted yellow, I basically wore Jordan merch. That was what I used to just... hang out in had like team shirts you know the real ones like race worn sorry you know weekend worn authentic shirts and that's what i'd wear jordan baseball caps had flags on my wall and i'd used to go to the british grand prix

as the Jordan fan. Huge flags, Jordan on top of other Jordan flags. We were in, me and my friends were in Autosport and on the Autosport website back when that was a big thing because we were such super fans. You know the whole story of me sneaking into the press conference in a full Jordan race suit. As a young driver. Getting completely drunk on the Jordan V10.

vodka drink and again buying all the merch at that same day and in that same situation i drunkenly went and hugged eddie jordan um when he was just like there in the little kind of hospitality area um i think he told me to get away from him can't remember but basically i was a huge huge fan and always supported the Jordan cars when Jordan got the 1-2 at Spa in 1998 me and my best friend at the time went out on our yellow bicycles because we bought yellow bikes to be Jordan

And we were like chanting Damon and Ralphie as we'd cycled around the streets in joy. So Eddie Jordan and that team were a real big part of my Formula One fandom in the 90s and early 2000s. I can't say I loved him as a pundit when he was an early BBC pundit. In fact, I thought his takes were wild and often terribly inaccurate. But interesting. But interesting. But interesting and undeniable that actually he was extremely well connected and really...

Had his finger in lots of pies, lots of management. situations and things that we didn't know he was doing behind the scenes. I only recently found out, for example, after his death, that he always wore a wig. His hair was never his real hair. I would have never known that, even though I was a massive super fan. But anyway, Jordan as a team and Eddie Jordan brought me lots of joy over the years.

It was sad to hear that he passed away. So there we go. That's my heartfelt tribute. And I will say apologies to anyone who would look to us as content creators and go, somehow they really would want us to market. and would want us to say things and then are disappointed that we didn't. See what Brad just did there. Like, I'm not good at that kind of thing, so I'm glad Brad said it. Maybe I could have worked harder to speak to the guys and said, hey, does anybody have a...

anything they want to say about Eddie Jordan and put that out. I didn't. So that's just, I'm just not very good at that. And I didn't, I again, didn't do well at doing that. I think we'll leave that in, Brad. That was really nice. I appreciate you saying that. And everyone else, we'll see you next week as I gently fade to black.

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