314 - Austrian GP Prerace 2025

And welcome to Shift F1, a podcast about speed race cars. That, by the way, is Austrian slang, meaning to play the butt card, which means to have bad luck, apparently. Alonzo said he's had bad luck recently, but is that about to turn around? I am Drew Scanlon. Joining me, Rob Zachney. How are you, Rob? Very warm. We're in the depths of a heat wave, and it is more than my AC can keep up with. So recording in the morning during the few hours my office is habitable.

Nice. Daniel Dwyer, again, on assignment this week. Should be back next week. If you are new to this podcast, a very warm welcome to you. And if you are new to Formula One itself, we've got an episode just for you. The preseason primer episode assumes no prior F1 knowledge.

explains how the sport works and who everybody is so if you'd like to go back and listen to that it's episode 298 also this show would not be possible without our audience over at patreon.com slash shift f1 where every month we release ad free versions of the podcast early

along with bonus podcasts and videos exclusively for our patrons that cover racing documentaries and films, F1 video games, experiments with other racing series, and a lot of weird things. So if you would like to support, bye-bye. If you would like to support the show and get access to all of that fun stuff, head over to patreon.com slash shift F1 or click the link in the show notes. We've not really nailed down a June.

I think we might try to do F1, the movie. We might just go see that movie, yeah. When I come back...

But a lot of other good suggestions in the Discord. Let's see. When is it showing at the Jordan's Furniture IMAX? That's the real question. While you look that up, I'm going to run down our list of title sponsor patrons. over at patreon.com slash shift F1. Chicken Finger Pita. Matt and Harmony. Deenge. It's-a-me Ferrario. Get Rich or Die Ryan. Agave ATX. Agave ATX. I've got to enunciate these title sponsors. Sponsors really care about that, Rob.

Syphus Training, TurfSTS, Michael Mays, MasterCard, Venmo, Zigarettes, Telemetry Deck, Colon, The Movie, FTC, Drew Stewart, Bailey Foote, Jason, Abraham Getchel, TechedUpOnEachCrimes.com. Snigs, Alex Goucher, Max Voltar, Jeff Foster, Troy Stammer, William Rumpf, Lachlan the Madden Man, Oppressive Petrostates, Samurai Love Story, and Jason Kelly.

How are the times looking, Rob? Oh, they're looking great. I have options. I don't have to see it this week, but I could. Good. I've always wondered what film... reviewers and journalists do when to take notes because I definitely need notes taking a movie I can't just watch maybe they're professionals I can just watch a movie and then remember everything but in a darkened theater What is a journalist to do?

On the phone, you get a knee board, like you're a pilot, and write your notes. The old-timey journalist, their handwriting was good enough. They could trust it, that they could take notes and they'd be legible after the movie. I could not trust that. Neither could I. All right, well, we'll figure something out. We're definitely watching the F1 movie at some point. So stay tuned for a bonus episode on that.

But for now, we're going to jump into the news before we get to the Austrian Grand Prix. But yes, there are a few news stories to hit here. Number one, starting it off, Valtteri Bottas. No hard and fast news here yet, but sources say, what is the actual lingo here from Autosports? Yes, senior representatives of the American brand Cadillac.

set to make its F1 debut next season, will attend the British Grand Prix and speak to candidates for its two seats with Botas understood to be top of the list. So... Yeah, Rob. Did you see the Instagram video that he posted? Yes. He walks over to a Cadillac Escalade, I think. And... Notes the inside and says, what a nice seat. There are two seats, both of them free. And then a voice from off camera says, try sitting down. He says, not yet.

I'll put the link in. He's gotten so good at this. Yeah. It's really something. The video has the energy of a Muppet bit. It's a little bit like the nope, nope, nope, nope, nope, the Martians. It's got a little bit of that vibe. The fact that he did reinvent himself. Well, hats off to him. He played this long game. of reinventing himself as the most American Scandinavian the world has ever seen. Yeah. All in preparation, apparently. We're wondering, like, what's going on?

Well, he somehow knew that there would be an American F1 team coming. He's playing 4D chess. Yeah, he was getting ready. At the time, he probably figured he was going to have to out American Danny. And so he became this guy. And now he's just a posting machine. He's just living his best life. I think it's a great fit. And he was a very, very good driver. That is undeniable. His form never really did.

dip at Mercedes. He couldn't keep up with Hamilton across the season, but boy, if you look at how hard it is to have two drivers performing side-by-side without there being weird drama and always generating lots of points... Like, Valtteri is kind of the platonic ideal of the number two driver. Yeah. Yeah, I think Hamilton even said as much, as underhanded a compliment as that may have been. Yeah, I think Cadillac would be wise to...

to hire him. You know, the other big experienced driver out there with a lot of races under his belt is Sergio Perez. I mean, Ricardo is also there as well, but both of those guys stock, I think has fallen a little bit. Versus Valtteri. I would agree, though, I might... You know, we dragged Perez a lot last year. I almost feel, though, like...

Do you need to almost throw out the results with Perez in the second Red Bull seat? His form was very good throughout his time at Force India. He came in strong with Red Bull. And then, yeah, like, his form fell apart. He couldn't drive that car, but nobody has been able to drive that car. And so I almost feel like... You could take a chance on him. It wouldn't be the most inadvisable thing. You probably wouldn't sign him to a multi-year deal. But in terms of who is the new hotness out there...

I guess, you know, maybe you try to tempt away someone like Hajar from Red Bull. There's some, like, people talk about Drugovich. Yeah. As a possibility, I don't know much about him. He's been a name floating around for a couple years. Yeah, Felipe Drugovic. He is currently the Aston Martin reserve driver.

I remain, I know that I'm the only person on this island who beats this drum. I just don't understand why people do not want to see. Or maybe Alex Pillow's people have made it clear that he's not interested in F1, but... He's having like, he's entering this stratosphere of performance that like Serena Williams and like Valentino Rossi are like a handful, like only a few athletes have pulled this shit off.

The dude's won almost every race in IndyCar this year. Wow. Like, he's won how many championships in a row? And it's a series where that kind of reliability, it's not like in F1 you got the winning car that year, you know, you're going to have the...

the season where you win almost every race. That doesn't happen in IndyCar. It's not supposed to. And Alex Pillow appears to just... have it like that and so it's it's it's for me it's like a million dollar question of like i just want to see i just want to see it because it's so hard to compare the two series but

every indicator is like, this guy might be one of the greatest drivers to ever live. Wow. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, as, let's see, the author of this article, Roberto Chinchero, points out, and I'm inclined to agree. If Cadillac goes with experience for both seats, it's looking like Botas and Perez would be the right way to go. But if they...

decide that they want one old hand and one young gun. Um, the first name of the list is, uh, is Felipe Drukovich. So, um, but yeah, we're, weirder things have happened. So, yeah, watch this space. Personnel, Rob. They're moving all around. Yeah, and this is sort of a, you know, another...

piece of the disarray of the FIA story that we've been following under Ben Salim. So, Sarah Mariani, the Sustainability, Diversity, and Inclusion Director. has left. It's unclear. I saw a lot of reports saying that it was a firing, not a voluntary resignation. And the statement she released does not seem, this does not seem like somebody who is happy to be departing their role for leaving on good terms. She wrote...

It is, sadly, time to say goodbye. I loved the ride. I enjoyed every minute of it. I enjoyed the amazing work we did and my incredibly talented team. I did not expect it would end so abruptly. But life goes on. There is a life outside the FIA, a life where talent and dedication are rewarded, where women in leadership positions can thrive, feel valued, and respected. Wow. Okay.

Yeah, it's not hard to read what's going on here. It's a little different than the other... resignations, like, between a lot of the resignations, you know, the firing of, what was it, Niels Wittig, who was the, like... head of officiating for the steward for a number of years. That was sort of just a... Sorry, the race director, I believe he was. That was sort of a surprising firing. You had the other guy who left talking about the lack of integrity from...

Ben Salim's office. And now you have this. The new twist on this, obviously, is it's the unsurprising backlash against something that's associated with DEI. And it is a woman in the firing line. And she's indicating here that a degree of sexism, misogyny, prejudice has been part and parcel of what she's experienced at. the FIA. Not a huge surprise, but it is striking when you see things across a lot of fields all part of the same reactionary backlash, right? It's like we have an...

We live in an odd time where, like, shitty, swagless losers are in positions of authority and they are... They are sort of trying to rebalance the scales and get rid of efforts of inclusion and equity that have been made over a number of years. And this is... sort of of a piece with that. Yeah. Yep. Don't know what else to say about that, but, uh, it's a, it's, it's worrying. Um, when's that?

When's that new election coming around? Yeah, but I don't even know if I can feel optimistic about it. I know. Because the other thing is, it's not... Well, one, I mean, so far... The democratic process has not really delivered us from a lot of these ills. But also, the FIA is not even a Democratic body. Like, this is kind of a, how many of these clubs can you leverage to get your backing? And that appears to be what Salim's good at, is...

you know, cozying up to these other sort of like petty tyrants. Well, from one malevolent dictator to perhaps a benign one. James Vowles has signed a new long-term deal with Williams. He had joined the team in 2023, and so he's re-upped his contract. Not a lot of other news to... break here, but he just says, I'm delighted to sign a new contract. Williams felt like home from the moment I walked through the door. I think they are right, and everyone is right to...

to make this decision. They have, uh, they're sitting fifth in the championship right now. Um, 23, they finished seventh and 24, they finished ninth, but I don't think that tells the whole story. I think, um, The hat I'm wearing aside, I think this is a team on the upswing, and it makes sense for him to want to stay there. The vibes have never been better.

So it does seem like a good fit. Having said all this, probably he'll be canceled within the next year. Yeah, that's how it goes. Actually, he's a... huge like creep or he's like cold-blooded you wouldn't think he'd be so mean but actually like makes tons of people cry uh yeah like that's you know they have it and you've been like this guy seems like one of the good ones yeah

That'd be devastating. That'd be like if Tom Hanks was canceled. You know what I mean? Yeah. Yep. All right. Last bit of personnel news and last bit of news here, Rob. What's going on with the silly season? Has it kicked off already? Well, I mean, we're still sort of in the midst of it, and the big domino is what is Max going to do? And it's hard to say how much of the story is just generated by, I mean...

All media needs stories to sort of fill out the week. And there's a possibility that this summer, Max will exercise an option he has in his contract to... break contract with red bull and go seek his fortunes elsewhere. Yeah. We believe it's performance based. Like if, if he is at a certain point and I think helmet Marco,

has confirmed this, but not the actual position, just that there is a, if Max is in a certain position in the championship by the summer break, which is after Britain. So we've got Austria and then Britain. he can exercise the clause to escape. And so, because that option exists, we're going to write a lot of stories about what would happen if he did exercise that option, where would he go? And the natural... the natural and almost only logical landing space for him would be Mercedes.

which means that Russell, who is currently in the final year of his contract, would be out of a drive because it's very clear that Antonelli is sort of the future at Mercedes, practically a member of the Wolf clan. So that would be... the end of Russell's time at Mercedes. However, there's been very little indication that Max actually wants to leave. Now, he's very... He's been, at points this season, very unhappy with the state of the car, very frustrated.

But he's also made comments that suggest he's going to continue staying at Red Bull. That is his home. That's where he wants to stay. The interpretation a lot of people have of this... is that Total Wolf has always sort of viewed Max as the one that got away and would love to bring him over to the team and is just holding fire on renewing Russell. Until that possibility is thoroughly dead, right? It's, it's, it's basically like, you know.

Once the wedding between Max and Red Bull actually happens, then Donald Wolf will finally ask George to marry him. But until then, you know, I mean, who can say what the future brings? heart wants what it wants i think but also like the less cynical interpretation is that wolf has always tended to leave these signings late

They just make decisions about these personnel issues later in the season. They sign contracts late. And Russell has had a very good season. There's no reason they wouldn't want to renew him. It's just on the outside possibility that Max leaves. That would leave him in an opposition. That's where Aston Martin comes in the picture. Aston Martin is supposedly interested in Russell, but then the question becomes, well, what's happening to Alonzo in that scenario?

And the word is that Alonso might be considering other options. But the question is, does he really have? that many other options. He has connections with Alpine, but why would the unluckiest driver in the world, why would he leave Aston Martin? on the eve of them, you know, making the Adrian Newey mobile fully operational. Why would he do that and go to Alpine? A team that appears to be just an active tire fire. Just because he's buddies with Flavio. Flavio's his manager. Right.

And he's always said very warm things about Flavio. Flavio fixed a race for him. That's not a bond that you just... You don't take that casually. Like, you get kind of... permanently but not really banned from the sport because you rigged a race and you had a child crash a car so I could get a free pit stop. That's true love. I'm going to remember that. Yeah, exactly. Maybe...

You know, maybe Toto, if he wants to get Max's attention, needs to make a similar gesture like that. You know, it's like stand out in the middle of the track and bring a red flag out at the right moment, holding a boombox. So... But the other thing is, is this a little bit of a smoke screen for, like, does Aston Martin kind of secretly want to move on from Alonso? Where it's like, if Russell's available...

His form has been very, very good, and the weird thing is, and this is, I think, a challenge for Aston Martin. I'm so curious what the dynamic is. It's always like you measure... The apples-to-apples comparison is always like, how are you doing with the teammate? The validity of the comparison at Aston Martin is really hard to pin down. As pay driver vanity projects go, Stroll was like one of the better ones we've seen out there. But...

He's routinely beaten, like, a drum by Fernando Alonso, who is, like, 57 years old. And that, like... how do you interpret those results? Like he is a great driver, but we're already seeing that like, it looks like Lewis's form might've slipped in the last couple of years where he's lost like a, you know, a couple of tenths and he can't quite, he can't quite find them.

It seems reasonable the same thing would have happened to Alonso, but maybe it hasn't, and that gap is real, or maybe it's that Lance kind of sucks, and... You need a much better driver there in the first position, and Russell might be a better candidate. My suspicion here is nothing happens. In the end, I just don't think anything's going to happen. I think Mack's going to stay at Red Bull.

I think once that happens, Russell will stay at Mercedes because I... Adrian Newey aside, the arc hasn't been great at Aston. There's not a lot of options. So I think there's a lot of incentive for these people to all stand pat. Yeah. The one thing that this is bringing up for me, this question is... If there's ambiguity about whether Verstappen is going to stay with your team, if you're Red Bull, and you've got a 2026 car coming down the pike.

Do you take that opportunity to design it in such a way that two people could drive it? Or do you double down? On your weird Verstappen-only car. Because if he then leaves, are you a midfield team? So, my suspicion is, this problem will go away a little bit next year. because the way this has been described, and I think Alvin described it in his interview with High Performance, the car doesn't come out of the factory. The design doesn't come out of the factory being a Maximobile.

It evolves consistently in the direction that he and his preferences point the car. I think they are going to try to get on this problem of we need a more neutral handling car that both drivers can drive. We cannot go through another. where Max is competitive, but we are not in the Constructors' Championship. They will try to solve this problem. I think in 2026, because you're going to have a clean sheet of paper...

I think they will sort of go back to a more neutral handling car that will hopefully address the problems they've been having. I think the problem will reoccur, right? I think it's the thing where it's like... So Max's influence on this, I think, is more like just as a concept for a car evolves, he's like the sun, you know? And the car is the tree, and it's going to stretch toward the angle of the sunlight it gets. Yep.

But I think in 2026, they're going to have a sapling and they're going to be like, all right, this one, this one, we're going to have it go straight up. We're going to put some rings on it, whatever. It's going to be fine. It won't be.

But they're going to try. But it might be a golden opportunity to try to get someone else in there who would be a good enough driver who would also be able to credibly challenge Max in terms of, like, no, the car should go this way. And you might at least have, like...

you know, not necessarily a sun, but a grow light that you can put in there and have things sort of pull back the other direction. Yeah. And maybe it splits the difference. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I think 2026 is going to be really, really interesting.

So I can't wait for it to arrive. A couple of quick hits here. Liberty Media has been given the thumbs up from the European Commission to acquire MotoGP. So that is probably moving forward. And the South African Grand Prix pitch from Kialami. is also moving one step forward. We haven't had confirmation yet, but basically F1 has given a thumbs up from them in their designs. Wow, they're not worried about the white genocide?

Those poor refugees that were landing in the United States. I was like, I don't know. Maybe this isn't the right time. And that's all we got for news. We're going to take a quick break and then we will be back with the track walk.

Alright, Rob. Austria. Austria. The Red Bull Ring. Formerly known as the Ostreich Ring. So, this is... A storied circuit, one of the old classic-style circuits. That has been, I would say, pretty successfully reinvented for the modern era and rendered safe, which was the main focus of this thing. So it's a post-war circuit.

it was built like a lot of tracks of this era where it was built, uh, sort of on the site of a small, uh, a small, a small airport, airfield. And for a number of years, it was a lot like, Nurburgring style or like Spa used to be narrow, twisty, like tarmac running through a very hilly... It's Austria, right? So it's all hillsides. Very narrow. Very cool track if you...

pull up videos of the old track, you can see the issue right away. Overtaking Impossible, this was in the era where they were like... oh, who needs a wall or a guardrail when you have a beautiful hill that sort of marks the edge of where the track is? And so if you went off, you just go into an earthen wall or...

get the car flipped, hyper dangerous. The track was so narrow the cars couldn't overtake, nor could they take evasive action if a car was stranded or disabled in the path of travel. And... Because of these issues, they had a lot of fatalities and a lot of horrible other accidents. And so the thing was reinvented by Herman Tilke in the 90s. And Tilki gets a bad rap, but I would say this is one of his better efforts. He basically cut the track in half. He cut out...

He cut out one of his more iconic sections, the sweeping right-hander that sort of looped back toward the start of the circuit along that hillside. He cut that out and gave us the circuit layout we have today, which is 3.6 miles, 5.9 kilometers. But he also made it so that it was obviously safer and created a lot of overtaking opportunities. And it has lived up to the billing. This has been consistently...

one of the more dynamic tracks and generate a lot of memorable racing moments for a number of years. And the reason for that is it's got the... First sector of the circuit, really, is built to generate a lot of overtaking. So what you have is the start-finish straight... heads steeply up this hill. Gorgeous, gorgeous racetrack. Photography is incredible. Sound of music with cars. It's awesome.

But turn one is a sharp right-hander. You continue heading uphill. Turn two basically doesn't exist. It's barely even a kink. So it's real confusing. You'll hear them talking about, well, they're heading down to turn three. And you'd be like, I didn't see them. When did they go through turn two? Turn two is a phantom. It's an illusion. Turn three is a really sharp right-hander, and then that launches you downhill toward turn four. You can overtake just about any of these corners.

Turn three or turn four are where a lot of the action tends to happen, and there's a really interesting dynamic there. So there's DRS zones along all the straights leading to those corners. So you sort of position yourself to attack coming through turn one. The race to turn three is probably your best opportunity to make the attack, but if you time it right, you can get DRS after the overtake coming out of three.

as you head downhill to turn four, and use that DRS you have to sort of seal the deal. If you don't seal the deal, turn four is interesting because there's kind of only one line through it. Or is there? Maybe you could hang it around the outside. And Sergio Perez was a master of this move, especially at the start of races. And by that, I mean he would frequently hang around the outside and things would go bad and someone would get punted off the track.

But it can be done. Like turn four is a corner that really does invite a counterattack or sort of a desperate, desperate move if you couldn't get it done at three. And then the rest of the lap, sort of the infield section as you sort of are pointed. back toward the big Red Bull effigy sculpture in the center of the infield. The rest of the lap is sort of an infield section, lots of twisting fast corners as you sort of loop back toward the start-finish straight.

The entire thing, this track was sort of saved and turned into this palace of F1 Motorsports by now departed Red Bull. Red Bull founder Dietrich Mateschitz. This is their... This is their crown jewel. This is their home turf. And it's been one of the better venues we've had in recent years. Lots of memorable incidents like... Well, okay, a lot of them involve Max Verstappen hitting people or chasing them off the track. Lando Norris last year.

Obviously, he and Max got into it. Charles Leclerc getting bullied off his line a number of years ago by Max. But that's what happens there. It's good times. Yeah, and it's a track dominated by Red Bull.

It's one of their better tracks. It's one of Max's better tracks. He has won five times. The last five winners were in 24 was George Russell. Then it was Verstappen. In 22, it was Leclerc, and then Verstappen won both of the 2021 races. And Russell only won because Norris and Max took each other out. Yeah. In my own statistics here, I have for the drivers, here are the drivers for whom this is not a great track, according to my stats.

Stroll, Alonso, and Piastri, interestingly. Drivers for whom it is a good track, Verstappen, Norris, Sainz. and Ocon. Teams for whom it is not a great track, Aston Martin, but teams for whom it is a good track, Mercedes, Ferrari, and Haas. And if you're curious, I'm taking recent finishes and doing a median on them. And whether, if they are in the top five or bottom five of...

That pairing of Driver or Team and this track, that's when I'll call it out. In my own rating of races, this is the only track which has, over the last three years... earned a three or higher in all of the races. I've rated all three races a three, which is, I call, entertaining. Three out of four. So, be prepared for this one to be boring. Red Bull Ring gives race his wings. There you go. Weather-wise, we are looking...

At a warm one I'm seeing here on Google Weather, moderate high temperature warning for the Myrtle District. 80 degrees Fahrenheit on qualifying day, climbing to 83 on... Race day. That's 27 and 28 Celsius, respectively. And precipitation looking like zero for those two sessions. And very light wind. Looks like five miles an hour. On qualifying day and three miles an hour. On race day, that's eight and five kilometers an hour. So. Just balmy. Just hot. I mean.

One thing we learned is that the Mercedes car has typically not done great in warmer weather. They do very well in colder weather. So perhaps don't expect George to... No, and there's the altitude issues as well with this. It's not the most severe that there are on the track, but it poses challenges with cooling, you know, power output. And, yeah, when it's warm here, things can get a little hairy.

Yeah. Well, let's run down the drivers and teams championships as they stand heading into Austria. Oscar Piastri is on top of the drivers championship with 198 points, 22 points ahead. That's. Less than a win. Well, win plus DNF. Of his teammate, Lando Norris, 21 points ahead of Verstappen in third, who himself is 19 points ahead of George Russell in fourth.

who's 32 points ahead of Leclerc in fifth. Then a 25-point gap to Lewis Hamilton in sixth. A 16-point gap to Kimi Antonelli in seventh. A 21-point gap to Alex Albon in eighth. a 20-point gap to Ocon in ninth, and then it gets much closer. Isaac Hadjar is one point back in 10th. Hulkenberg is one back from Hadjar in 11th. Stroll is six points back in 12th. Sines one point back in...

13th, Pierre Gasly, two points back in 14th, and Tsunoda is in 15th, one point behind Gasly. Then a gap of two to Alonso, two to Behrman, two to Lawson, four to Bortoleto with zero, and then... Also zero, Franco Colapinto and Jack Doohan. McLaren is on top of the constructor standings with 374 points. That is 175 ahead of second place Mercedes.

They are only 16 ahead of Ferrari in third, and Ferrari's 21 points ahead of Red Bull in fourth. Then a sizable gap of 107 points down to Williams in fifth. Haas is in... Sixth place, 27 points back from Williams. They're tied with Racing Bulls on points. Aston Martin is in eighth with 22. That's six points back from seventh place Racing Bulls. And that's two points ahead of Sauber in ninth, who themselves are nine points ahead of Alpine in tenth. Still figuring out how to convert that into...

To read that aloud, that information aloud in a way that is understandable to listeners. So apologies if that's just hard for you to follow. You can join the standings yourself using the link in the show notes to join our fantasy league.

You can also send us an email, shiftf1podcast at gmail.com or f1.cool slash emails. Rob, do you want to take this one to start here from Anonymous? Sure. I work with IWC, who are the main watch sponsor of the Mercedes team in the F1 film. Other than now knowing what watches are printed on the driver's race suits, my work hasn't bled into F1 too much.

However, there are a few things that might be interesting to you. IWC, standing for International Watch Company, has a bit of a boring reputation in the watch world. Allegedly, I know nothing about watches. And yet you work there. So having Lewis Hamilton for all your marketing materials was a massive bonus for them. In December, we had a multi-week effort to wipe all Lewis content from the databases. Even just his wrist and ham images had to be removed due to his recognizable tattoos. Oh, wow.

Now all IWC have are George Russell, not beating the boring reputation, and Kimi Antonelli, a literal child. So they have instead gone ahead and made a special watch to honor Total Wolf that is specifically designed to withstand... 30,000 Gs and his tendency to smash things. 30,000 Gs? At a certain point, I think you're probably just...

You know what I mean? It's a watch, so it can survive a crazy impact, I guess. The number probably just gets ridiculous. I do not know if Toto Wolf knows they are selling a watch based on his temper. Also, only... 100 have been made, and they cost €95,000. Oh, boy. For the F1 film, these are the final days of an effort that has lasted years. Last time IWC agreed to make watches for a film, it was the second Aquaman.

And I guess they agreed to it when they thought it would matter. Instead, no one at IWCC even knew what the two watches were for in the database, or that they had spent who knows how much on something no one noticed. For F1, this seems to already be a much better campaign. They have made at least 10 unique watches that every character in the film will wear. Wow. I also just want to complain that the title has been a nightmare localizing across the world languages.

with some directly translating F1 The Movie to F1 Ill Film, or just F1 or F1 Royalty Mark, or a Chinese title which might be called F1 Fast and Furious or F1 Full Throttle, depending on what translation.

Wow. This is, I love this shit. An email I return to a lot is, uh, somebody wrote to us about, uh, perfumes and colognes and like the grades of scent that are out there like in terms of the chemical compound and composition where it's like some are just like scented water but then there's actual like there's sort of a tear

And, like, the really good ones are sort of built differently. And I was like, I had no idea about any of this. So I love hearing, look, if we got people out there who work for Rolex or Todd Hoyer, let us know what's up. Yeah. If you've got employee discounts, like call me. I just love the notion of an IWC employee looking through the database and going like, what is this?

Oh, the Aquaman? We made an Aquaman watch? And it's how much? I'm looking up Aquaman IWC watch, honestly. Great. Great. If you find something, I'll put a link in the show notes.

Next one here is from Steve. Hey guys, Steve from the Discord here, responding to the livery question from the other week, just to give a little more insight on how livery designs are put together and the difficulty in serving so many different masters. I can only come at this from a point of view with direct experience doing it in NASCAR, but as with all things related to design, a lot of this will apply across the board.

The first thing to note is that every single sponsor, team, manufacturer, etc. will have a different set of rules and pathways as to how this process even gets started in the first place. Some sponsors will use their own marketing firms or design in-house. Some will let it fall to the team or manufacturers who have their own marketing firms. This is where I sit. Or in-house or freelancers.

To take my most recent work as an example, the process started with us being sent the sponsor's upcoming brand slash marketing guidelines to use as a base for what the company is looking for in general. From there, I put together a deck of designs trying to hit the broad strokes of different aspects of the brand that seemed the most important. Once the feedback from that round comes in, we whittle it down until we land on what works best from both a creative and a brand needs point of view.

This process can be either very easy or completely soul-crushing, depending on how willing the sponsor is to bend. Brand guidelines can be extremely stringent, and race cars are notoriously weird shapes. Tilting the logo, not leaving enough room around the logo, or cutting off the logo in any way are usually no-gos, which makes it a magnitude more difficult to actually fit the logo more comfortably on the car in a way that doesn't look. for the lack of a better word, weak. So...

Once all that's approved, you now have to deal with the race team itself. Does this livery conform to the team's standards? Does anything here conflict with the logos of the team's associate sponsors who already have their smaller spot on the car locked in?

My most recent car had to be adjusted in a pretty silly way to work around another sponsor's logo, which thankfully ended up working out okay, but could have been a disaster. An extreme example of this is Monster Energy, who demands that their logo is always on a black background.

even when not the primary sponsor, leading to strange black patches on cars where it wouldn't normally make sense. In general, designing these things is difficult because you have to serve the needs of the many, many entities that are paying for it.

Many of the best-looking race cars are usually the ones that had sponsors that were flexible enough to allow for creativity. Obviously, nothing I say here can be taken as gospel, but I've been doing this for over a decade now, so I've seen enough to know roughly how the sausage is made. Yeah, that seems like a real task. Yep. That doesn't seem fun at all. It would be, yeah. I mean, only because of all the people complaining. Right.

Yeah, it reminds me a little bit of the John Mulaney bit where it's like when you write like happy birthday as a child's like big H and then you just squeeze in. It feels like a similar thing happens where it's like, okay, I know what the branding should look like, all that, yeah. Great. All right, now put it all together on a car alongside other brands. Nope. No, thank you. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Godspeed, Steve. Thank you for your email. You want to take this next one, Rob, from Blake?

Yeah. Blake writes, hey guys, not sure if you have all seen the images going around of the drivers of the red carpet for the F1, the movie premiere, but they are certainly something. My friends and I are having a ball roasting these boys for their subpar suits. I need to hear your thoughts. I don't know how guys with a lot of money and a lot of reasons to wear nice suits don't have proper tailors slash stylists. And yes, Rob, dye workwear did a thread on the subject.

Thanks for the great pod, Blake. Yeah, I noticed this as well. I did not... My initial take was just... There's a lot of young guys who do not wear suits, and so they probably threw this together pretty fast. Now... Because the RF1 drivers, maybe they didn't, right? Maybe this is every single brand, like these are all bespoke suits, that these are various labels sort of putting, should be trying to deck these guys out in the nicest stuff. And maybe it just looks awkward because...

They're kids who don't wear suits. But the Dye Workwear thread does have a pretty good breakdown of what's going wrong here. He does note, the menswear guy does note, that Gasly pulls it off the best of anyone, which was sort of my... read on it as well he also did give props to yuki for trying something different which was a massively oversized uh suit that just drapes off his frame down to the ground

I just want to point out here that I sent the picture of all of them together to my wife, Sarah, and her response, she doesn't know these drivers very well, but she does know Yuki, and she said, In a text to me, I would take a bullet, parentheses, non-fatal for Yuki. Yeah. So thumbs up. No, he looks... He's cute. Also, I do think Little Guy, huge suit, is actually pretty brilliant. It's very funny. It's the inverse of Chris Farley, so I'm for it. Amazing.

Thank you, Blake. We've got some other people sending us that as well. Really fun. I'll put a link to that in the show notes as well. So yeah, you can send us an email.

You can send us some socials using the links in the show notes. And that's us around the Internet. And now let's take it around the world of racing, starting in the birthplace of democracy. The World Rally Championship is in the Acropolis Rally in Greece this weekend. A little further afield in Hampton, Georgia. At the Echo Park Speedway, we've got the NASCAR Xfinity Series for the Focused Health 250. MotoGP is in the Netherlands at TT Circuit Awesome for the awesome round.

Formula 2 and Formula 3 will be supporting Formula 1 this weekend in Austria? Austria. That's right. That's where we are. Super GT is... In Malaysia, at the Sepang International Circuit. My hesitation there was like, oh no, where is Super Jeep T? Do I need to look up the prefecture? They get to go to Sepang. I know. I know. Um... The Craftsman Trucks are in Lakeville, Connecticut at Lime Rock Park for the Leuna 150. Don't know what that is. Sounds like a drug. Yep. The NHRA.

is in... Hmm. Hmm. These sorts of towns are always difficult because it's spelled Norwalk, but is it taken from a British place and therefore is it Norrick? Or something weird. Anyway, that's in Ohio. For the Summit Racing Equipment Nationals. And we got NASCAR. Also at Echo Park Speedway in Hampton, Georgia. For the... Quaker State 400 available at Walmart. It's the challenge round one, whatever that means. Oh, Leon is a union. I think we do this every year.

I'm going to be like, what the fuck is Leona? Laborers International Union of North America. Got it. Got it. Is this the playoffs? No, it's not the playoffs. It's a challenge round. I'm looking at the schedule. Challenge round. One, two, three, four. For NASCAR? Championship round, yeah. Oh, who knows? NASCAR fans are being yelling at me right now, I'm sorry. I don't, it's like, I feel like the playoffs just start, and it's like, NASCAR playoffs, how do those work? I will never find out.

There's no way to know. I'm so sorry, Steve. And a couple, let's see. Nope, that's it. All right, Formula One. Maybe you heard of it. Friday, June 27th, things kick off. Free Practice 1 at 7.30 a.m. Eastern Time on ESPN2, followed by Free Practice 2 at 11 a.m., also on ESPN2. Saturday, June 28th, Free Practice 3 is at 6.30 a.m. on ESPN2, followed by Qualifying at 10 a.m.

on ESPN2. But the race, everyone, Sunday, June 29th at 9 a.m. Eastern on ESPN. Catch it. You know, I looked up... viewership numbers in the u.s between indycar and formula one and just just based on

ESPN. So I don't know that Formula One publishes their over-the-top, their streaming service numbers in the US. But ESPN is getting like 1.3 million on average. per race indycar is getting two million per race on fox yeah that's according to indycar themselves and espn themselves but According to those numbers, on television, more people are watching IndyCar. It's very surprising to me.

Yeah, we need to spin up a second podcast. I don't know. I mean, is that just the magic of putting it on the main network? That's a big part of it, is Fox is actually promoting... IndyCar. NBC didn't. They kind of kicked on NBC Sports or Peacock. They didn't promote it in that way. Fox has pushed hard to put it in front of people.

Treat it like a marquee sport. And, you know, going out over the air versus cable, yeah, makes a big difference. But still, I would never have given the... mind share they take up in the public discourse and media coverage IndyCar doesn't seem to rank yeah I'm with you alright well that's what's going on this weekend

We don't have Danny's grimoire for this day in the past, but we do have... I cannot believe this. An email from Joe. Rob, please take it away. Joe T. from the Philly Burbs writes... Danny, Drew and Rob, I recently came across this fun tidbit of motorsports history that I think you folks might enjoy.

Otto Menz was born in the German state of Württemberg in 1899 and worked his way up from his initial introductions to the world of automotives as a mechanic and chauffeur to have a brief period of success in racing, with his most notable achievement being his victory at the 1926. German Grand Prix, the first German Grand Prix to run at the famous Nürburgring circuit before becoming a test driver for Mercedes-Benz until his death in 1933. Getting out at the right time. However...

This isn't where our story ends, as I need to bring up other notable historical tidbits involving Otto Mendes and go back in his earlier career as a chauffeur for the wealthy automotive enthusiasts in the mid-1900s to another key date in history. June 28th. 1914, Sarajevo, where Menz found himself employed as one of the drivers in the Archduke Franz Ferdinand's motorcade. Oh, my God. According to the website Motorsport Memorial.

The leading car of the motorcade conducted the Archduke, his wife Sophie Ciotek, Bosnia Governor General Oskar Potiorek, and Franz Ferdinand's bodyguard, Lieutenant Colonel Count Franz von Harak Maers. I can't say it was mares or men's. Joe has spelled it both ways. I'll look it up. Yeah. Anyway. Madden, thanks to the proximity between Daimler and Grafenstift, was the driver of the second car a large Mercedes? As such...

Maybe it is Mares. As such, Mares was an eyewitness to the assassination of the Archduke shot by Greville Princep, a member of a group that wished to secede the Slavic territories from Austria-Hungary. Mares understood the events quicker than most people. He immediately stopped. the Mercedes and jumped from the car. He's among the first to reach Franz Ferdinand.

And possessing enormous physical strength, he lifted the Archduke from his seat and carried him to a nearby house. Oh, my God. Paris laid Franz Ferdinand on the steps of the house while others dashed for help. Shortly later, the Archduke was placed back on his seat in the Grafenstitz.

or stilts. I can't quite make out the Kearney on this font. Stitz. Groffen Stitz. The car was then driven to the governor's residence for emergency medical treatment. Both Franz Fernand and his wife died before reaching the destination. Finally, the most interesting fact about the story. This is the car Marys won the 1927 German Grand Prix in a 1927 Mercedes-Benz S-Type sportswagen. Still survives to this day and is currently on display among the rest of the cars in the collection at the Simeon.

Foundation Automotive Museum in Philadelphia, PA. I've attached an image of this car along with a link to the museum's website. Amazing. Incredible. Wow. I didn't think we could top... like the various, the mass death at Le Mans or ML194, but like motorsports being adjacent to the start of World War I, incredible. Yeah. Somebody stop them. This is made even more amazing by the fact that I picked up at the bookstore in San Francisco's Japantown, which if you're ever there...

Definitely go in. I picked up a copy of, or an issue of Asimov's, which is a science fiction magazine. And in the... May, June issue, there is a story that I read last night about time travelers going back in time to mess with Archduke Friendsford's assassination.

Like making sure the race car driver was the guy in the lead car. Exactly. Although, so maybe I'm getting this wrong, but my understanding is the initial assassination attempt completely failed. And... the motorcade drove out safely, and it was when they stopped to figure out where they were going, they just got unlucky, and Gravrilo Princip was part of the plot.

was just there by coincidence having like kind of given up on like, well, we missed him. Right. And then the car just rolls up and it's there. Yeah.

Yeah, the way that this story, and I don't know the veracity of it, but the way that the story in my science fiction magazine describes it is there was a, yeah, like someone hurled a bomb at him. They escaped that, and then... took a wrong turn and that's where princip was walking out and he had a gun on him yeah man why would you stop i would have just been like keep driving if yeah i think he couldn't make a turn like

Yeah, exactly. It was a different time. Awesome. Thank you, Joe, for injecting a little history into this pod.

All right, well, final thoughts, Rob, ahead of Austria. Looking forward to it. You know, it's been an interesting season. And, yeah, like, you're not wrong. It's... That race consistently has been entertaining for a number of years. It's kind of engineered to be that way. So, hoping for another good one.

If you'd like to support the show and get access to all of our bonus episodes, the early ad-free version of the podcast and the official Shift F1 Discord, you can do so over at patreon.com slash Shift F1. Have a good race weekend, everyone. We will see you all next week.