338 - Preseason Primer 2026

Hello, everybody, and welcome to Shift F1, a podcast about speedy race cars. I am Drew Scanlon. Joining me, we have Danny O'Dwyer. How are you, Danny? I'm good. I'm excited to prime the season. Uh I feel like there has never been a season that required priming quite like this one. Yeah, certainly not in in the history of our podcast. Uh joining us also we have Rob Zagny. How are you, Rob?

Uh still trying to wrap my head around some of the changes to how these things work. Uh so it'll be a learning primary Fantastic. Well, uh, welcome everyone to our preseason primer episode. This episode is designed to explain everything you need to know to enjoy Formula One, even if you've never watched any. The cars, the rules, the teams, the drivers, everything. Uh it's gonna be a beefy one.

This year especially because uh as Danny mentioned, this season is bringing the biggest change to the sport in over a decade. I mean we've been doing this Since twenty fourteen. Yes. And that was the last big regulation. And I would argue... Yeah, and I would argue this feels like fundamentally bigger than the turbo hybrid era. Like this this is this is uh w we we have fundamentally changed this sport, it seems like, from what we've seen from testing so far.

No, I'm I'm with you, Danny. I was I was thinking about that too in terms of the scale of changes. The the big changes have historically been like we've overhauled arrow regs and there's new rules about engineering. Right. And this year it's like, well, Arrow works different than it's ever worked before. We've also changed the engine.

Um and also now there's new there's new driver modes uh that that we've just introduced. So th this is a pretty sweeping overhaul of of a sport that uh usually big changes feel more Yeah. And hey, we'll just stick a new team in there too while we're at it. Why not? Um yeah, so I w one note before we begin. This is gonna be a lot of information, uh especially if you're new to F1. My advice is that trying to remember everything.

might be a little overwhelming. So instead just kind of let it wash over you. Uh and when you actually start watching races, that's when a lot of this stuff is gonna fall into place. You'll you'll hear commentators say something and you go, Oh right, our Um and we're gonna be right here with you all season. We do weekly episodes where we dissect what happened in each race and then talk about the next race coming up.

Um our our kind of policy is that we don't dumb anything down, but we do try to be accessible and keep things in contact. So if you like what we do here, you can support us over at patreon.com slash shiftf1, which also gets you access to our Discord server where there are tons of other friendly folks. Uh, who are there to answer any F1 related questions you have? Um, and you can also email us, shiftf1 podcast at gmail.com. Uh, we usually take During pre race shows.

uh love hearing from newbies and veterans alike. Yeah, absolutely. And and and we'll do some housekeeping at the end and also list out our title sponsors. But uh I want to quickly also mention to people if they're interested in signing up that we are doing 90% off the first

month. Um so if you sign up now up up until the end of the first race weekend which is March eighth, Sunday March eighth, um if you head over to the Patreon, there should be a ninety percent off your first month uh for most of our tiers. Um the code you can use if you want is multi twenty six, but I think that actually is superfluous. you can just uh you can just go to the page. M U L T I Two Six Uh a nice sh a callback to uh Red Bull days have past for those F one uh officials.

Yes, uh many F one in jokes that you that you will become aware of through this podcast.

Uh all right. Well, like I said, there have been uh a lot of changes since last season, but we're gonna start with the basics here. Formula One is the world's fastest, arguably the most prestigious, and certainly the most watched motor race. In the world. It's been around since 1950. And it works like a lot of other sports. There are teams that compete at events over the course of a season. And at the end of a season, a champion is crowned.

So to break that down, this year there are eleven teams with two drivers each, meaning that there are twenty-two drivers in each race. Good math. See yeah, that's right. That's why they pay me the big buck. Uh the season takes place from March into December. This year there are 24 races, each at a different track, across 20 different countries, and we will get to exactly where we're going later. At each race, drivers earn points based on how they finish, and the one with the most points

the season wins the championship. There are technically two championships, one's for the drivers and one is for the teams, which is called the constructors championship. And the teams points are made up of their drivers. That usually means that the driver, uh the winner of the driver's championship is on the team that wins the constructor's championship, but not always. Um really though, what we're all watching for is the driver's championship.

Yeah, exactly. That's that's the sort of crux of it. The constructors is a is a nice sort of um the uh the you know, English football league equivalent would be like, you know, winning the Premier League and winning the FA.

Or something like that. It's like a a side pot. But all of this stuff is super important. Um, especially the constructors for the teams, because there's a decent prize pot that comes with that one. Yes, the the teams care the most about Their their ranking there has a direct effect on the amount of prize money From F one.

Uh money's at the heart of a lot of sports. And it's no different here. Um interestingly, the drivers themselves do not get a prize uh um pot from F one or the FIA um for winning the drivers' championship. But they may have something in their contract, you know, that means if You know, if they were smart enough, they'll have something in their contract that says they get a bonus if they win it. Or if their teammates win teammate wins it. That's a lot of people have that.

Um yeah, so the the the bonuses for the teams can sort of lead to a a feedback loop that keeps the top teams at the top, but uh that makes it all the more exciting when another team does well out of nowhere. And that's also why we pay so much attention to like cut tiny little car tweaks. Uh because y you never know. Each one could give that team I remember having the revelation when I was first getting into F1 that it can be really exciting to see someone come in third.

Because they're an underdog. And I mentioned that to illustrate that the more you know about a team's capabilities and indeed. the entire sport works, the more exciting it can be when you watch them exceed those capabilities. And that's really the whole point of this podcast, because the mo more you know know about F1, the more

Yeah, most most sports are sort of binary. There's like usually two teams uh in many sports and then one winner. Um I think the uh or even in tournaments you'll eventually have a winner in like golf or tennis or something. Motorsports are kind of different. Like you you're sort of looking at the spread across the whole thing. Um honestly there's been time where someone has crept into the top ten and gotten their first points and it's been like something really exciting for everyone to watch.

Especially you know, we we have a a new team. You know, creating a Formula One team from the ground up and then getting points in their first season, that would that would be huge. Yes, absolutely. The first time Cadillac get a get get a point, though they're it'll be very noteworthy. Yeah. Um but yeah, back to money. Uh like you said.

Drivers may get bonuses. Um those are defined by their contracts, which aren't public. Um, but we do know that these guys are pretty well paid. The drivers, Max Verstappen and Lewis Hamilton, were twenty-third and twenty-fourth. on last year's Forbes list of the highest paid athletes at eighty million and seventy eight million dollars respectively, uh near people like Patrick Mahomes Does that that also include sponsorship deals outside of F one? Okay, yeah. Yeah, that's overall.

F1 is trying to they have a mechanism to sort of curb the feedback loop a little bit with a spending cap for each team. It did get bumped up this year to account for the new car design. To two hundred and fifteen million dollars, but that does not include driver salaries uh or travel costs, which are Uh one team did breach the spending cap in 2021 and was penalized with both a fine and a reduction in the amount of wind tunnel time that they can use to develop the aerodynamic.

of her n their next car. No dessert and no wind tunnel time for you tonight. Yes. We are going to be talking a lot about aerodynamics uh later in this episode and and in general.

Okay, so what will you see when you actually sit down and watch a race? Uh for any given race weekend, as we call it, there are actually a few more events that happen. First, there are the practice sessions, two on Friday and one on Saturday that last about an hour. Since the cars change every year and the track conditions are never consistent, it's important for the teams to send their cars around and dial in their setups by making.

Most of that's invisible since teams tend to play their cards pretty close to the chest, but you can usually get a broad sense of how a team might do based on their preference. Um it's also a great like that's a great like background thing to throw on and the the commentators also need to fill time because it's kind of boring. So you they go deep on like minutia. stuff. So if you if you really wanna pick up like tiny little details, watch practice.

Yeah, I don't know I don't know about you guys. Um Rob, to me it reminds you of like baseball, you know what I mean? Like practice sessions are like you're just kinda listening, you're just kind of vibing. There's it's like low stakes for most of it and then something exciting happens.

Yeah, some sports do enter that podcast zone of look, like sometimes there's not a lot that's happening. You're gonna mostly hear commentators uh talking about the sport more broadly and this is frequently where you get the most like insight in some ways that you would not get during a close a close

Uh in F1 that often means gossip uh during during practice sessions. Uh although there are now so many technically savvy people in the commentary booths that you will often have aside about like, hey, look at this cool picture of a wing we got. Especially this year where uh you know, really I think there's gonna be way keener eyes on practice, um, you know, for the first few races for sure, just'cause we're trying to figure this out and the teams and the drivers are too, these new regulations.

Uh the next event of the weekend is qualifying, which is kind of a misnomer. You can't really fail to qualify in the modern era of F1. Qualifying is more about determining the order that the cars will start. Uh takes place on Saturday after the third practice session and is divided into three parts, each about 15 minutes long. In the first session, which we call Q1, all the cars go out on track and try to set the fastest laptop.

At the end of Q1, the slowest six cars are eliminated, and those are the cars that start at the back of the grid, uh in positions 17 Oh that's weird. We had to do different math. Yes. It's not it's not a nice clean five and five. Um in Q two, the remaining cards. go again uh and once more the slowest six are

And then in Q3, we've got 10 cars left. And again, their best times in that session determine their starting order. So the fastest car in the Q3 session starts the race in front, and we call that. Wait, so six out the five out the first It's five it's six, six six are eliminated in the first one, six are eliminated in the second one, and then we've got ten remaining. Okay, okay. Yeah.

Uh it is important to know that it's how you do in each session that determines your starting place. It's not your overall best. So for example, rain could show up in Q three and make everybody slower than the cars that got knocked out in Q two, but those in Q three would still Uh it's also important to know that despite it basically being a time trial, qualifying is pretty fun to watch. Yes. The uh the the ticking of the clock really adds to the drama, and you can get some pretty ambient.

especially if rain shows up because that tends to throw everybody's plans into Yeah, and there's a thing called track evolution, which I'm sure we'll get into, but the more the cars are driving on these tracks generally, the faster the cars can go'cause the tracks getting a bit warmer.

laying down little pup pieces of rubber from the from the tires uh on the driving line. So oftentimes it is the last lap of qual of a qualifying session that determines the fastest lap. Not always, as Drew said, sometimes there's rain. But it means that like the qualifying kind of like the race has like a sort of an interesting, you know, build up and culmination that's fun to watch.

Yeah, I'd say most importantly for me, the qualifying's really the sort of the first chapter in the story of the race. I feel sort of incomplete if I don't watch qualifying. Uh because, you know, you I just turn on the race and you go, Well, hey, how's that guy starting in third?

And and track pos track position's so important as well for races. Like, you know, it's sometimes it's hard to overtake in these races, and especially if you're first you get to sort of dictate um the pace a little bit. So yeah, it's it's very mean. Uh F1 does put highlights of every session on YouTube, so if you don't have an hour to devote to qualifying, uh you can still get the gist in about uh seven minutes. Yeah, and the practices too. Yes, that's that's general.

Um okay, the races, each of which is technically called a Grand Prix, which is French for Big prize. Uh the races are on Sunday and last a maximum of two hours, during which drivers race over a hundred and ninety miles. The number of laps varies because each circuit is a different length, but the total minority. Um all races feature at least one pit stop, which we'll talk about. And at the end, as we mentioned, the drivers are awarded points that contribute to their championship standards.

Crucially, only the top ten finishers get any points. Uh first place gets 25 points, second place gets 18, third place gets fifteen, and it sort of uh uh decrements down to one point. And it's it if you're wondering, it is pretty brutal if you finish just outside the top ten. You get zero points for doing a whole race weekend, but that is just one of the many stories that you are a viewer, you as a viewer are following. Because sometimes, like you said, Danny, it is a huge achievement.

Uh, okay. Now that I've thrown all of that at you, there is one more kind of confusing event that only shows up occasionally. There are six sprint events sprinkled throughout the year. The sprint is basically a short race that happens a day before the actual race. It is one-third the distance of the normal race, and there are no pit stops. The top eight finishers in the sprint earn points with eight points for first place.

Uh on the weekends where there is a sprint, we get one practice session on Friday, followed by sprint specific qualifying, which works like regular qualifying, but the session Uh on Saturday the sprint happens and then we do qualifying for the actual race. And then the race. Yeah, this was also a little bit confusing for us when they brought it in a f a few years ago. And they've they've messed around with the format a few times and and every year they sort of change which

locations, which race weekends, which countries that these sprints happen in. It is purely an effort to get more people to watch races. Um but uh it's been you know largely successful. This I mean this is in keeping with uh with with another thing that's really important to know about F one, which is they do love money a lot. They do. Uh and they love money. They are they are looking for ways to uh

increase revenue without making costs change very much. And so uh all those nice things that Drew just mentioned about like the structure of a race weekend The same way that like there's sometimes practice can be a little bit boring. F1 knows that, but they want to sell three-day passes. And so they want people to have reasons to show up all three days. And so the sprint weekend promoters like it because it brings more people out, uh, and and gives people more racing action to to see.

Uh but doesn't require staging an entire new race because F1 the calendar is already expanded uh in in recent years. And there's kind of soft agreement that they're not going to add So a bit like where NFL football is. If you're stuck to you just have this many race weekends a year, how can you get a little more uh sporting action that people care about?

And so the the sprint weekend has been the answer to that. Uh the pursuit of ticket revenue will also explain why some courses also have an elusive characteristic now and appear like uh rare Pokemon sometimes, uh as as F1 Uh because the way courses are selected is the you know, people pay F1 fees to host races, uh and they need to make that money back.

And so uh that is that is another factor that counts for a lot of the structure of F one. Yeah, we'll go through the whole calendar later, but just so you know, we might as well uh you know, sort of talk about it here. Uh the six sprint races we have this year are happening in uh China, Miami, Canada, uh, Britain, uh, Holland or the Netherlands apologetic. Okay. Yeah, I mean F1 basically uh yeah, they're they're relatively new, the sprints. Sometimes they're fun, sometimes they're boring.

Some people like'em, some people don't. I I tend to think that it they sort of add a little bit to the like race fatigue that I get after seeing a circuit so much over the weekend. Um, but they are. Um all right. Well, speaking of earning money, we are going to take a quick commercial break, uh, except for the people on Patreon. So if you don't want to hear ads, you can go sign up for Patreon. An ad-free version of the of the show. But we'll be right back and we're going to talk about the cars.

Great band. Yeah.

Okay, well, we've discussed the format, which we've had for many years now, but let's now talk about the cars, which as we've said are pretty different for this year. And for this, I'm going to hand it over to Rock. Uh yeah, huge changes uh with the cars this year. Uh so I guess where where to start things off is We still often talk about F one in This is now kind of a misnomer and you will hear official commentators.

Talk less in terms about engines and more in terms of power units. And that is because an F one engine is no longer a simple internal combustion engine. Uh it is a hybrid engine, and this year uh the big change introduced to Formula One is that they now require uh half the car's power is produced by an internal combustion engine and half of it is produced electrically uh from from uh source from a battery that is recharged over the course of a lap.

Uh so when they discuss the the power unit, it's all the various components that go into comprising uh the things what make car go. And as is uh uh you know as anyone has sort of looked at hybrid prices versus internal combustion engine cars. Uh there's more going on with uh hybrids, and that remains true in F1. And so you have a lot of different parts that can wear out at different rates.

And break down uh di differently. So when we're talking about the power unit, we are talking about the internal combustion engine component. We're talking about a battery system, and crucially, we're also talking about what they call the MGUK, uh motor generator unit uh kinetic. That is uh the thing that harvests uh waste energy from most typically breaking. But with the shift in how much the car has to be powered off um uh powered off the the the battery.

They are now doing some of the things that you see more in electric cars, where it's trying to sneak in ways to harvest energy even when you're not branding. Uh and so there'll be times that will sort of spin the motor a little harder to basically wind up the battery over the course of a lap. Uh so this is this a this is a big shift. Uh they also they also discarded a piece of the hybrid unit that they've had for a number of years, uh the MGU8.

which used thermal uh uh uh like th like wasted thermal output to power the car. That was a really complicated and breakage prone system. Nobody liked it and as you you'll hear this term a lot, it's not road relevant. the manufacturers don't get useful data off an MGUH because Electric cars aren't going to have a lot of uh, you know, exhaust gases being pumped out from them. So they that's not relevant to uh designing for electric cars. Uh so that system is gone.

I'll just mention it here because it's already come up. It turns out that that was uh also a vital system for making the turbos uh work really smoothly in uh the previous generations of F1. And so unintended side effect of eliminating the system that nobody really liked. The car's response to throttle inputs and sort of the the power curve of the engine. Uh really different than in previous years, and apparently also the car has a much higher chance of just.

kind of borderline stalling out at the start. So keep an eye out for that because there's a lot of drivers who've been used to there all there's always this thermal system that's uh like powering the turbos by cycling air back through the engine. That system's gone. And so the turbos can't really run until the engine itself is running. Uh so that is that that is just a thing to keep an eye out for. Um Now they've also introduced

A whole bunch of stuff that is happening with the car dynamically across the lap. Um Since we're talking about power units already, we'll continue talking about that. The drivers now have access to boost.

uh which they can basically deploy the full power of the engine uh at the at the push of a button over the course of a uh over the course of a lap. Um They can't the way F1 makes it so that teams can't effectively like destroy the the power unit in in seeking efficiencies is that the teams are always limited in how much charge and recharge the engine is allowed to do over the course of a life.

Boost doesn't let you break that formula. So if if you've sort of run down the battery, the boost isn't available to you. Now crucially, there's also something else, uh, overtake mode. In previous years, because F1 has always struggled mightily to guarantee that cars can actually pass each other on track, which is kind of a important thing in a race. They introduced something called DRS.

And that would cause the rear wing, uh, which creates a lot of down force, but also creates a lot of drag. That would cause it to flip open. And it was like um, you know, you see sprinters training with a parachute. That was the equivalent of like cutting the parachute off and just go sprinting down a straight.

They got rid of that system. It lives on in a form. I'll talk about that in a second. They got rid of that system though, but the way it worked was when you were within one second of a car you were following, you would pass a detection point to determine whether or not you were you were in that zone. And then you had access to the DR. They have gotten rid of that and they've replaced it with overtake. Um overtake mode.

There's one detection point uh across the lab, but then you get access to an overtake mode, which is distinct from boot. And the way is distinct is that that does allow you to break the the the rules basically around harvesting and deployment. Uh so everyone, you know, with with boost they are limited to you have to stay within the th th this bound.

If you're in overtake range of someone, uh now the car is allowed to harvest and deploy more energy per lap. It basically chill like allows the engine to operate according to a different formula. You could say the engine goes super slow. That's I mean that is the that is the theory they are hoping for. We will see how it works in practice.

I don't I'm not a huge fan of overtake mode. It sounds like something you'd get in like a Tesla, you know what I mean? Like it sounds like a like you press the button and it driving mode. Does it though? I don't know. I mean a Tesla would be like based mode. Uh epic epic Windsor Bacon. Like that kind of yeah that that I think is is it did used to be called manual override mode or

Mom? Oh Mom. And they changed it to overtake. I can't oh well, okay. There you go. I guess yeah, it's better than that. I don't know though. That that would have been pretty funny. He's activated mom. Yeah, people people like sort of anthropomorphizing the system. That's our version of Funky Boy could have been. Mom mode. I like it.

Uh anyway, so this is this is how that system is going to work, but there's other things happening across the lab too. Uh DRS is gone, which allowed the rear wing to be adjusted live over the course of the lap.

But really, is it gone? Or is the whole car now DRS? Everything's DRS to active aerodynamics, uh, which is kind of what it sounds like. You have a lot of aerodynamic elements, wings, winglets, things that create down force, uh, which which increases grip and cornering performance, but also generate drag and slow down the car. and and make it a little bit less efficient uh when it comes to how it uses power. Well now when the car detects its intricate corner, the wings

pop out basically and they take they they they take a more active role because they go into a higher a higher drag, higher grip configuration. And then when the car is in high speed zones the wings kind of like tuck themselves away a little bit and move into a lower grip uh configuration. Uh you know, it's kind of the F one equivalent of like the the old F fourteen Tomcat like swing wings uh ty type thing. It does feel very like flaps and ailerons or something, you know? It kind of

I kinda like it's kinda cool. Like I like we're not to get ahead of ourselves but So a lot of these changes, the drivers are really conflicted about them. But this is the other thing you gotta know about the F1 drivers. Persnickety bunch, really conservative. Uh it's like you're basically dealing with like First chair classical violinists or cellists in terms of their skill, like the greatest at the greatest orchestras in the world.

And then every few years it's like, Oh yeah, we just smashed your instrument. It's in pieces. You can't use it anymore. Here's a string now. Figure it out. Yeah. Right. Yeah. So like drivers have really hyperbolic reactions to a lot of changes like this, and that's happening this year. Some of this stuff is not super popular. We'll see the pre the proof will be in the pudding, all that. We'll see how the racing is. But I I'm kinda with you, Danny.

You're right. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Like the the like they go into corners and the wings come out and then like As it accelerates out of the corner and the wings go away. It's it's kinda neat. There's there's a lot of parts of this that's uh that's that's kinda cool. And and we haven't seen this yet, obviously, uh except for the right.

a little bit of testing that they've done before the season, but um so we don't exactly have the details uh about how all this stuff works intricately, but it sounds to me like corner mode is like the default mode like the car is just in that until the driver and I think it's manual the driver switches to straight

And they can only do that in designated parts of the track.'Cause if you know, if you allowed a driver to change to straight mode in a corner, they might try to do that and to overtake. And fly off the track, right? New new new uh evolutions and creating gnarly gnarly car accidents. Uh something F one generally historically tries to avoid.

And so they would try to uh that would be a real shift in direction if they were now creating modes that generated more awesome and cinematic like cars flying off the track. Yeah, especially as in the F one movie. There's there's a sort of a fundamental thing I feel like when you first g get into F one that you start to understand.

Because all this stuff about wings, like you might you know, what's a wing? It's you know, it's like when you see a spoiler on the back of a car or something like that. Road cars don't generally need these things, but when these cars these cars are so sort of comparatively light when compared to the speed that they go at, that essentially they are like aeroplane wings turned upside down. They are pushing the car down into the ground.

And I guess when you're going fast, you don't need as much of that. But when you're driving these cars Slow with the amount of like torque, you know, like acceleration that they're able to generate and and the lightness of it, um, they need help sticking to the the surface in those sections rather than when they're on a straight the sort of um the speed is pushing the car down a a good Uh the other big change to this card and to me visually I can see.

They've made the car smaller. Yes. Mm-hmm. Um the cars, the wheelbase has been shortened. Uh so I think we reached our peak like two or three years ago, where literally uh the length of an F1 car, nose to tail, was comparable to a stretch limousine, uh by by all accounts. Uh so and that made for cars that Yeah, it sounds weird. That made the cars faster. Uh on on these tracks it's kinda limited where you could run these cars. Uh but

On on F1 tracks that made the cars faster, uh, but also less nimble, less capable of dicing it up again, like trying to trying to create more passing. So this year, uh they they shrank the cars down a little bit. Uh the active arrow uh c came into play but The the flip side of that was they made aerodynamics much simpler. Uh you know, with the under the theory that if you have less sophisticated aerodynamics, um you're generating less

uh wake turbulence and making it easier for cars to chase each other down and and and follow. And they also uh shrank the uh shrank the tires. Um was it just the rear tires or is it all the Um either way, the tires have gotten smaller. Yeah. Uh and And they've hubcaps now. And and tires are And really F one is

It's all about the tires. Uh in in terms of in terms of races and strategy. Uh Mostly we are talking about how drivers are using their tires, how how are those performing. Uh so we should probably get into that next. Yeah. Strategy. Uh so F1 the F1 tire is uh solely produced by Perelli. Uh Perelli was given a brief uh again, because tires are so critical of F one and because the strategy around tires is a lot of the action. They were told to make tires that were good but not too good, basically.

Uh you know, if you if if if you have no constraints, uh you know tire technology is in in a place where you could make really grippy, really hard tires that that you know pretty much last the length of a race and you don't have to you do not have to waste time in the pits changing tires.

But what probably were told was create tires that will sort of provide a lot of grip but also wear out and force drivers to uh force teams and drivers to sort of make make calculations about uh you know how they're how they're going to run their race strategy. And to amplify that, uh The teams have to each each car has to run two compounds of tire over the course of the weekend. So you have to run two different tires with two different degrees of hardness uh in the race.

if you were if you're going to uh stay within the rule. Rule of thumb is harder tire, more durable, less high. Softer it gets, you know, sort of follows intuitively, it's gonna be a little a little a little grippier, but it will also uh you know shred apart a little bit fat uh a little bit faster. Uh this year do you see that we have a new graphic uh for the for on the um timing and scoring pole on the left hand side?

So they now so the tires are identified, they're color-coded. Red is softest, uh, medium is yellow, hardest is white, white stripe. Uh but that changes weekend to weekend because they bring different compounds, probably makes five different tire compounds to each trap. Uh, some tracks have a more abrasive service, some have a smoother one. And so, what is hard, what is medium, uh, what is soft might change depending on the weekend.

The compounds themselves are the C1 through the C5. The C1 compound is hardest and the C5 is the softest. Now, Drew, the display shows. Uh it's color coded, but they also tell you what compound they're using. So you will see yellow you will you will see like yellow C2 uh there in the race weekend. So you'll be able to tell like

When we say medium, what do we mean? A yellow C2 would still be a pretty hard tire, pretty durable, uh, maybe a little bit less grippy than you might normally expect from a medium. Right. So they've made the every every every weekend we still will only have a hard, medium, and soft. Yeah. But now the real ones will know what compound is that. The C two. I know that one well. So all the tires I just described are what's called slick tires. Uh they're tire they are treadless tires.

uh which in dry conditions is the absolute most uh mechanical grip you can get from a car. But obviously if there's no treads, if it starts to rain suddenly that tire stops working with the dam and you need something a little closer to uh road tires like like you have on your car. And so uh that is where inters, intermediate tires, and wet tires come into play. In practice, uh, in recent years, you're gonna see them continue to race on the intermediate tires, which is no which is designed for

as the name implies, mixed conditions. It's not like a torrential downpour, but it's steady rain. The track is damp to wet, but it isn't like soaked. It's not like there's big puddles forming everywhere. Uh and so that is what you're going to see the most of because when the rain is heavy enough uh to make it advisable to run cars on full west. uh even though F1 does historically like tend to run in the rain, uh the issue that's cropped up in recent years is that uh the wets are so efficient at

throwing water into the air basically. That's that's how that's what the tread is doing, is channeling water uh out of the way of the tire and out of the way of the car. Uh and then the wheel spin throws it into the air as a miss. Full wet tires make it possible for the car to still have like good grip in rainy conditions, but they tend to create a fog bank that nobody can see.

Uh and so when the visibility gets sufficiently bad, uh they tend to bring out a red flag, uh, which you know you're you'll you'll come across There's unsafe conditions, you can't continue to race. That's sometimes brought out by by an accident, uh, but it is also brought out for the rain is heavy enough, visibility is obscured, we need everyone to come into the pits and we're going to wait this out. So

You might see a little bit of racing on the full wets, but chances are that's the the full wet is the harbinger of the end of the race day. Intermediates are what you're going to see the most.

The intermediates also have some interesting characteristics. Um, and this is where F1 can get really interesting. When you have mixed changeable conditions, it's not fully wet, it's not fully dry, um the wet tires with their tread are optimized for uh uh a track service that that has water on it.

If there isn't enough water on the track, the tire will get very hot and begin to wear away very, very fast. When we talk about like what what uh makes a tire work and what makes a tire last longer or shorter, usually we're talking about tire temperature. All compounds have a preferred operating range of temperatures. Part of the driver's job and the engineer's job as well is to like make sure the car can run within those ideal ranges as possible to get the most grip and the least wear.

Intermediate tires uh will the second there's not enough water on the track, they begin to overheat and they begin to wear away. Uh now it can get very funny if they wear away sufficiently to no longer have tread, they start to operate like a slick. And sometimes you'll see people decide. Well now it's a slick tire and I don't need to come in to the pits. I will just run the remaining remainder part of the race on the uh on the interface.

Because the tread does make less grip in in dry conditions. So when you have like a track that is a little bit damp. But is just entering that phase where like maybe you could run a slick on it. That's where you see teams making real decisions about how are we going to run the rest of this race? Do we want to risk risk it all and have someone drive on a slick tire on a wet track. Uh that's where things get very, very exciting. And the the stakes for this are very, very high.

because uh tire strategy is you know really where you can win or lose a race uh a lot of times. The car kinda has to come to a dead stop, obviously, to change tires, but uh for safety reasons, the pit lane also has um a s a speed limit. And so the entire like there's a thing concept we call the delta. There's a normal race pace. And then when you come in for a pit stop. The when they run the stopwatch, uh, you know, for what that lap is, that's gonna be a much, much slower lap.

Because in addition to the time you're stationary, you also have the speed limit that comes into play. And so you're you're very, very slow for for that lap. That can massively change your position in the And so teams are trying to optimize for one of the best times to uh to to make a pit stop and in mixed conditions, uh, you know, if you're deciding if if you can skip a pit stop or or have someone Just avoid that cycle entirely.

That is how some teams that have a lot to r like you know, a a lot of incentive to risk it all, that is how teams can can have a huge strategic uh win by by taking some risks and maybe pitting uh or or or not. Uh depending on what they think their rivals are going to do. The pit stops are very, very fast. This is a place where the F1 teams. invest a lot of money and research in creating the fastest equipment possible to uh to change the tires. The teams have bespoke wheel guns that uh

that that remove the nut on the uh on the tire. Every team's is different. Uh so the teams have these things like they operate so fast and they practice so much that uh a three second stop is like table stakes. That is a competent pit stop. Two seconds is really kind of the gold standard. Some teams have been able to get it to a little bit under two.

They had to put rules in place to make it you couldn't go faster. Uh they they have tried to they have tried to s make it uh slow it down because sometimes teams uh we're we're shaving a little too much off the safety margins for the pit stops, uh for for F one F one's tastes. But that is that's the that's the

Scale at which we're operating. Uh, if you see like a car come in for pit stop and it's like a four-second stop, that's a disaster. Uh, that is a you'll see mechanics walking into the garage. uh, you know, look looking looking like they just uh you know, kicked their dog. Like it is it is just uh it it is it is pure misery. Uh so that that's a lot of the stakes around the pit stop.

All of it hinges on tire wear, uh, and ti like tire strategy. You're going to hear people talking about uh As tires are wearing down, they are effectively throwing little chunks of rubber. off the off the the the the body of the tire onto the onto the side of the track. As the tra as the races run. The racing line, the fastest the fastest like path the cars can chart around the lab.

Will remain clean because the cars are all running in a row, and so uh the rubber that's discarded there is immediately picked up, and mostly the cars are throwing it to the side. off the racing line as the race goes on. will become increasingly covered in what they call marbles, uh these tiny little chunks of discarded rubber rubber.

That act like ball bearings, uh, if a car drives over them. And so as a race goes on, if you go offline, say to pass somebody, you're effectively taking your car out on an ice. And that's not to say you can't do it, but it will be a slower line. It'll be more dangerous. Uh, but you know, no risk it, no biscuit.

And so that is that is a that is a thing that sort of uh looms large in in in the minds of drivers as they're contemplating like how to how to attack and how to defend across a across a lab. Uh you also hear uh about gr uh tire graining, which is effectively tires are supposed to tires are supposed to abrade very smoothly and very naturally. Like they shouldn't

They shouldn't look too different as they as they wear down. They should still have a nice smooth surface, basically. Um, much like they did when they came out of there. uh their their tire blankets where they're kept in the garage uh to keep them nice and warm and toasty in the in that optimal temperature. When you hear them talk about graining, uh effectively the tire is not in an optimal uh temperature window and the way it is uh braiding is well

It kind of looks like it's coming apart in grains. You will you you will see the the you see the tire surface be like kind of pockmarked and it's losing rubber kind of in in in chunks. Not ideal.

But some tires pass through a graining phase before they sort of resume optimal performance. So it's it's it's tough to say whether uh you know graining is is gonna be a a problem with how the tire is working or if it is just a thing the tire has to pass through to continue operating well but it does mean that when a tire is graining uh things are a little more vulnerable.

As tires wear down, uh they do get slower. Um, they, you know, they they produce less grip, and so drivers have to break earlier, uh, take less speed through corners. Uh usually this is a very slow process uh where lap by lap there's there's not much change. The tire the the car is a little bit slower, it's very minuscule. But there is something called the tire cliff where... If you've gone through all the tires optimal operating window.

And you're now running it way too long, suddenly that degradation stops being a gentle incremental curve and it becomes a cliff. Performance just falls. Uh the the way it would look on a lap time chart is it would be like a vertical climb and suddenly each lap is taking much, much longer uh because the the tire is so slow.

You want to avoid the tire cliff. Uh you will a tire that has gone over the cliff can sometimes be two, three seconds slower per lap, maybe more, as a driver is nursing it around. Uh you were a sitting duck w on a on a tire that's that's over the cliff. But Things being what they are, sometimes there's uh incentive to risk hitting it because if you can save a pit stop, uh that will be hugely advantageous to you. Uh and so you know they will they will run it as close to that cliff as possible.

Uh obviously part of the driver's art is proper care and feeding of the tire. Keep it in those nice temperature windows. Don't do Don't drive it like uh you stole it. Don't drive it like it's a video game. Uh you know, have have good habits with breaking and cornering, don't don't abuse the abuse the tires. But Two air is two air is human. Uh one of the most common things you encounter are lockups, uh as You're approaching a corner, you you hit the break.

Uh and rather than arresting the roll of the tires, uh what ends up happening is the axle basically just seizes and the tires stop rotating and they start skidding along the surface. This is actually Much slower for slowing down the car. That doesn't that doesn't work. The car is not breaking effectively if that is happening. But also, as you might imagine, it's like you just take a plane and you're just like squaring off part of a part of a circle.

Uh that is a flat spot uh when that happens and when you flat spot a uh tire You will feel that for the remainder of the tire's life. Uh that the tire is no longer a perfect uh circle. And so there's a part where you're you're going around corners. And that will that will make that that is something you will feel uh through you know, through the steering, through the grip, the tire has been significantly compromised uh by by getting flat spots.

That is a disaster if someone comes straight out of the pits and immediately flat spots the tires that they're supposed to run like 30 laps on. That's not good, uh, because now you still have to do 30 laps, but you've kind of screwed up the time. Uh flat spotting is also though incredibly likely to happen on fresh tires because they are still kind of coming into their their full effect. And so it's easy to misjudge these things uh as as a driver.

Um Just to close the loop, I think, on on pit stops, uh Drew, do you want to tell people about the undercuts and the overcut? Yes. So like you said, pit stops are very costly uh in terms of time. Like a lot of times. When the car is stationary, the team is moving really quickly and can sometimes get the car going again. And you like you said, Rob, two or three seconds.

Um but the whole process of a pit stop can take upwards of 20 seconds, which is a lifetime uh when you're talking about laps that are like 90 seconds total. Um so Timing your pit stop is is crucial. And you've got to take, like you said, the tire cliff into account, the health of your tires, how fast your car is going, when it is worth it. uh to to come in and do that pit stop. But you also have to take into account where your uh you know the the other drivers on the track are. So

Um, one thing that a uh the driver behind a car can do is to try what's called the undercut. So if you are chasing a car. An undercut means you pit first before them, and you have the advantage of knowing that they've ahead of you past the pit entrance. So you can say, okay, they're not pitting on this lap. Now I can. You pit first, and even though you are now 20 seconds behind. Your tires are new and therefore you're going faster than

And you know that eventually they're going to have to pit. So when they do pit, you have made up time on. And they take their 20 seconds, but because your tires were faster at the time that they were still going, they come out behind. Now that doesn't always work and there's a lot of like math involved.

you know, the teams are constantly uh they've got, you know, computers handling all this. In fact, one of my favorite parts is that you've got your your on-site team, but then most teams have back at the factory like You know, many countries away. a whole like mission control where they are watching screens and running, you know, predictions, uh, that then they, you know, call the team at the pit wall and say, like, you need to pit now.

Um it's it all feels very like Apollo mission to me. Um but yes, the undercut is when you come in first. Get new tires and by going faster by the time your opponent pits, you've c they come out. There is a reverse of this called the over. Where you stay out longer on the theory that you have faster laps still in you. Um and so after overtaking them during their stop, you uh will gain enough time on your old tires to have a safe gap. Did I make is that clear?

Did I say that right? Yep. I I think it's it's one of those things where it it makes more sense in practice once you see it. Like once you see it in action. You will see the choices teams are making around this stuff, um, but it can be a little bit it can be a little bit squirrely in the app.

Yeah. Um Danny did have to drop cause because his internet died. We'll get him back in a second, but while we're on these sort of lingo-y things, uh, let's talk about some other things that you're likely to to to see and hear.

To a new viewer, may sound uh unfamiliar. Um I think uh something we might see a lot this year um compared to last year is is flashing lights on the back of a car. Uh these If it's a wet race, they will always these lights will always be flashing because they want to make sure that the car. Um but in a dry race condition, a flashing light generally means that the car ahead of you is recharging the

And the light flashes because that means that due to the nature of the kinetic energy recovery, recharging means that the car might be slowing. So you want to let the driver know behind you. Um you might see the cars. Usually this happens. Um It does happen during qualifying sometimes that a car will be in the pit lane, uh, gestured by the uh the the track officials to a weigh station where they actually weigh the weight of the car.

Um per the rules, the car has to be a minimum weight, which includes the driver. And they weigh the car and the driver separately. So act you will see this after the race. They they said, hey, great. Congratulations. You won the race. Now please step over here on this scale. We need to weigh you. They weigh everybody after the race.

Because they have the weight of the car and driver, they subtract the weight of the driver and they make sure that the car is not underweight. It's just logistically easier rather than making them all stay in the car and queue up. It's also useful for their the driver's trainers to know how much they've uh lost in terms of their own weight in the race, which in a hot race like Singapore can be up to eight pounds.

like in in water weight. Uh these guys are Um thankfully they do have a drink system that they can use. uh during these races to replenish their water space. Yeah. Yeah. I mean this is cause these things are not I mean this is the nature of open wheel racing in particular uh is that These things are not there's no creature comforts, uh, with these things. So yes, they have a they have a drink system. There's little there's like a little camelback built into the uh built into the car.

But the only place to put it is by where the power unit lives. The battery and the motor both generate tremendous amounts of heat. And so what they put into the car is usually like a frozen brick of gate. Uh it is the temperature of like lukewarm soup after just a few laps, basically. So like, yes, there's a drink system, uh, and drivers will be happy to have it, but uh it's it it's pr it's pretty gnarly. And yeah, it's it's also like you are

In especially in hotter races, you're like approaching limits of like human endurance. Uh like famously, I think it was last year or the year before, uh George Russell uh basically had a heat stroke after after a race. Um so like these things can creep up on drivers fast. Yeah, and um I think it was last year that a a rookie, a young rookie driver retired, like could not finish a race um because he was uh cooking.

Um one thing we we didn't mention yet is the the the top speed of the cars. These things will do there is no uh regulated top speed, but you will see them go above 220 miles. Um, some other lingo here that you'll hear. Uh box is synonymous with pit or pit stop. So you'll hear over the radio instead of pit, they'll say box or box box. Um

Speed trap is another phrase you'll hear. That's just the section of the track where they go the fastest that they like to highlight for viewers. It's not like there's no regular It's never detect. For like boost mode, yeah. Back marker um means someone who is

uh typically being lapped. So in like the the back, the rear of the field. Um and this is something that that Danny will get into when uh he t he talks about flags, but you know Even though these cars are very close in performance, over the course of a two-hour race, um the front runners will encounter the rear of the field, the back markers, and pass them. Uh Rob, you want to describe over and under steer?

Uh yeah, so uh this is actually you're gonna see a lot more of this. So in previous years, the cars were so heavy and the tires were so tricky to get in optimal ranges that they tended to have major problems with understeer, which is most what most of us are familiar with because road cars are generally tuned to have understeer.

where you're turning the wheel, the car can't respond enough with enough grip to sort of follow the line you're giving it. The you you you want to take a sharper turn, but the path the car is actually traveling is a much shallower turn. Uh that is under steer. The the the car is under under steering.

That was one of the big problems in F1 for the last several years. Uh it is a thing associated with like a a less uh high performing car. Again, there's a reason road cars are tuned to have this uh if they're going an air in one direction. Oversteer is the opposite, where the back end uh will sort of make a very exaggerated snappy motion, and so you are trying to uh corner a certain rate and the car actually wants to bring its nose sharply

uh in like into that turn and now wants him to cut a a far sharper turn than you intended. Uh and if you don't catch it, that is how spins happen. The cars this year appear to be much more prone to oversteering. uh routinely during testing, you saw drivers have to, you know, midway through a corner, uh, like basically wrestle the car uh you know out of an oversteer moment in a way that a lot of them have not really had to contend with.

In number of years. F1 cars always understeer and oversteer, uh, you know, and at certain corners, certain points. Part of drivers is like knowing how to handle those moments. But in general, F1 cars had problems turning in recent years. Um and oversteer was not an encounter not a problem uh that you encounter as much in a properly set up F1 car.

Suddenly this year, that's happening a lot. Uh you're so you will you will see cars uh the way oversteer looks a lot is like it will look like the back end is wobbling uh as as a as a car is coming into or exiting a corner. Um and that's especially likely because uh the rear tires are where all the power comes from.

And so, you know, if you think about it, the rear tires are also trying to provide grip and cornering speed, but then they're also trying to put power through. Uh it's a big that's a big assignment. And uh sometimes those those those power the that that power coming off the back end

uh can can easily cause a car to spin out. That's what you're gonna hear the most often is like when you see a driver spin the car, put it into a wall following like not making a corner, usually they will go back and they'll analyze, oh he just Started accelerating too fast. He was on the power too soon. Uh, and caused a spike of oversteer and put himself out of the race. So that is a thing to keep.

Another thing you'll probably hear a lot is uh especially in qualifying, purple sector or going purple. This refers to uh the the on-screen graphics. Um in qualifying you will see Times that the car is put up, if they are if the f if the font is in yellow, that means they haven't. If it is green, that means that they're they've improved on their personal best. And if it's purple, that means they are overall best. Um

And that color can refer to either the overall best lap time or the best just the best time in that segment of the track. And typically they're divided into three different segments. Um the other thing, so purple is something to especially watch out for during the race. Because purple sectors often indicate like how is the track performing. So, like again, those mixed conditions where like should we be on wets or should we be on slick?

Teams will be watching to see is someone now like if someone like someone is trying tire strategy to come out. Are they setting purple times? If someone is on the right tire strategy, the the course is now appropriate for being on an inter tire and everyone else is still on slicks, but they weren't sure about it. The second someone who's on inters like starts setting purple times, that is an indicator that like, oh.

It's time to it's time to change tires. So in the race, like purple tire time should be happening regularly because the cars are burning off fuel and getting lighter and getting faster. But sometimes the purple sector is also an indicator of course conditions. And that's a that's a neat thing to to look out for during during trip. Yeah. Uh another um

F1 or racing specific word you hear a lot is shakane. This describes a uh a part of a circuit that is a quick left-right or a quick right-left turn. Two uh sharp turns very close in succession. Uh another phrase is pit window. This again is is not a regular y you'll see on the graphics like pit window lap 20 to 25. That's not a requirement for the cars to pit. That's just when we expect a car. Or the cars to start pitching. And the last one here I have. Parc Ferme. This is closed park in French.

Um it's basically uh an uh a physical area and a designated time of the weekend where technical checks are done by officials to make sure that the cars are within regular. For example, after qualifying, their cars will go into park firme. And during that time, no performance adjustments can be made to the car. Because they want to make sure that the car that qualified is the car that raced.

Yeah, they used to uh they used to allow a lot more changes to happen across the weekend, but now it is very much a Put your pencils down, it is time uh the the exam is the the engineering side of the the exam is over. Now it is time to go racing with what you brought.

And as you might imagine, uh there are many more rules and indeed penalties. So Danny, what can you tell us about what you can Yes, there was no referee uh standing in the middle of the track throwing up yellow and red cards. There are uh Fernando Alonso likes to imagine he's won. That's yes. That's what he's gonna do when he retires. Uh there's no there's no NFL, you know, throwing flags.

Although is there? Now that I think about it. They're not on the field but they are somewhere in the room. The sport has many flags, but yes. Let's talk about flags, shall we? So Um yeah, so there's a you know there's a bunch of uh marshals all around the track who are basically, you know, um usually local employees and they are sent uh um you know s they're there for the race.

Um and they are sent messages and information from um a smaller group of people who uh are essentially there to adjudicate over um the race itself, uh watching it up in a little box. watching replays and things like that. We're all downstream from this. So we're sort of in the same position of the drivers lots of times where something happens and then you're like, Oh, I I wonder how the stewards are going to react to this one. Um

Some things happen on track, you know, if there's a a crash or an incident and there's usually in a lot of these cases there's a sort of textbook way of approaching them, but the devil's in the detail a lot when it comes to the actual penalties themselves. So let's let's talk about the flags first of all. Um whenever you see a green flag waving, that just means the track is you know, normal racing conditions are happening, you're good to go. Uh everything is normal and fine.

Um yellow flags, much like yellow cards, or those little flags in NFL. That they throw on. Um this usually th this means that oh, there's something happening that you need to be aware of like a yellow light. At the traffic. Yeah. You're right. Actually that's a that's a better one. Yeah, a yellow light at a at a at a traffic light. Um

Essentially it always means like sort of be a bit aware and no overtaking at this part of the track. You can get a yellow flag in a section of the track or a corner or two. Um you can get one across the entire track as well. Um and the drivers are sort of made aware of that via not just the waving of the flags uh at the circuit but also nowadays their uh you know digital displays on their wheels often uh highlight this as well. Let them know. Yes, exactly.

Um so uh if if there's a single stationary yellow flag, this means um no overtaking because there's a danger somewhere near the track. um somewhere on the track sometimes, but it's like not, you know, maybe this piece of debris or something like that. Um double yellows is a is a more serious version of this, is which basically means again, you're not let overtake, but

there could be something in the middle of the track. Like you you need to really slow down and really be aware. So that happens if, you know cars crash, somebody breaks down, um and they're stuck in the track. And it's obviously a way of stopping a uh a car going at pace hitting something that is stationary, which can be incredibly dangerous. Um The most serious of the flags is the red flag, which means that the session has stopped. It's basically the

the the the whistle that says, We're stop, we're done, we're not we're not doing anything. Um and in a red flag the cars essentially should crawl around the track and come back into the pit. Um that can happen for a number of reasons. It could happen'cause of particularly bad crash. It could happen because um

uh some damage happened to the circuit itself, uh either from a crash or f for some other reason. Uh it could also happen if, you know, weather conditions get to a point where increasingly dangerous too. um to to drive. That can be you know d torrential downpours of weather. It can also be um lightning, for instance, if storms come in with lightning.

Um there there's one element of the the race that they have to be aware of, which is that uh for the safety of the drivers, they have a helicopter on site at all times there to medevac essentially people out. weather conditions get to a stage where that helicopter is not in a safe position to be able to take off, they will also red flag the race because that obviously takes the

the you know, the safety element away there. So uh in general you're gonna get some wave flags during the race. It just happens because cars break down or you know, a piece of carbon fiber comes off of someone's car'cause they touch Uh red flags are rarer, but you know, there will be a half dozen to a dozen red flags during a season for one reason or another, usually because of a bad crash or because the weather just got too crazy.

But yes, generally we got some we got some green frags. Green frags? Green flags. Sorry, the game. Came out. No, we're not playing that one F one quake. That we all love. Um now let's talk about the weird flags. Some of these you'll see, some of these You won't see some of these maybe I've never seen or seen once or twice. Um, so there is a yellow and red striped flag. Which means specifically there is uh like some d debris, usually like oil or some type of

uh you know, elements on the ground that maybe they might not be able to see uh, you know, in that area. But it's like, trust us, there's something here you need to be aware of. And if if it is a piece of roadkill, which Has happened in F one. uh over the years uh they rock the flag from side to side. So if you ever see a yellow and red striped flag getting rocked to side.

side to side in Australia, for instance, first race of the season. Could be a wombat, you know? You don't want to hit that thing going a hundred and fifty miles an hour. They might do it also if the animal's still, you know, walking around on the track. We get this with Canada. Uh We get it in like Singapore. Giant lizards. There's always lizards. Giant lizards. Yeah. Are the thing at Singapore, which is always bizarre. Um yeah, rabbit rabbits.

Have happened in F1 over the years, foxes, things like that. So um, yes, you know. The drivers will risk life and limb to avoid hitting. If if they see an animal, you will see uh so like in general the drivers live in horror of striking a critter. For probably for, you know, empathetic reasons and also because they they sort of drive around massive ice cream scoops.

Which direct the animals into their faces. I mean the halo exists now. But you know, it's like hitting a deer, you know what I mean? Also the aerodynamics are not guts are not good for the aerodynamics. Which is um like really That that might actually have more to do with it. Like that so much of of the car used to be breakable or gumpable by like

Uh little bits of matter and with simplified arrow, maybe we'll see who who the real uh monsters are. Exac yeah, that's true. Yeah. It's hard to it's hard to do uh that stuff when you got, you know, chunks of rabbit ear. You know, rabbit foot though, maybe look. Keep your eyes peeled. Um uh other ones that are sort of uh you know outside of

the norm. The uh the meatball flag, as we call it, which is a black flag with an orange circle in the middle. This is to let the driver know that they have a mechanical issue and that they need you to come in and have it rectified.

Uh generally this will be communicated via the radio. Uh but if your radio has a mechanical issue, for instance, um that might be trick uh tricky to communicate. If you don't heed to that flag, you're gonna get in trouble. It's it oftentimes it's the marsh the stewards telling you that uh look there's a piece of your car that's gonna fall off and your team is like happy for you to stay out, but we need you to kinda

Um because you know, it might it might fly off. Um there is a half black, half white flag which they use for on sportsmanlike conduct. Honestly, I this one is you know, kinda rare. I can't I can't remember the last time I saw this. more than the allotted amount of time. So if you if you go outside of the the track limits, I think it's

Twice or three times, you don't get a penalty, and they'll show you the black and white flag saying, like you're on the bubble. If you do it one more time, then you And and generally at well, uh the stewards will tell the teams and the teams generally tell the driver. There was one incident last year where they said to Lewis, like, Oh, we've had three strikes and he or two strikes and he was like

When did we get one? Yeah. You know, th they didn't update him, but that's more to do with Lewis and his uh his ex uh uh compatriot on the pit,'cause they've actually swapped out that engineer now. He's not he's not His guy anymore. Um Then there's the black flag, uh which uh often has a number associated with it. This is a disqualification, so this can be because you did not heed the black and white flag, it can be because

um, you know, some serious uh unsportsman like conduct, lots of different reasons. So you can get black flagged in a race and that means you need to come in, you're out Um the checkered flag which uh the black and white sort of checkered uh pattern, you know, like a like a nice tablecloth. That is obviously the end of a race or practice or qualifying, the end of the session itself and they cross the cross the um

the the line for the final time. Um and then uh the flag that you will see a bit more, even though it's sort of um you know, it's it's it's not necessarily to do with the rules or a threat on the track or anything with like that. Is more of a heads up for the driver, is the blue flag. So obviously You know, F one races are long.

Uh oftentimes People are on different pit strategies and you get into situations where over the course of these very long races where they're driving for, you know, accumulating dozens upon dozens of road miles essentially. um where the the drivers at the front of the race, you know, the top five, top ten will often catch up with drivers at the back of the track. And then if that happens, you don't want the driver who's in first.

battling with position with the driver who is in twenty second, twenty first, twenty. Uh so in those situations the driver who is the back marker, as they're known, um, is shown a blue flag to let them know that a car that is ahead of them is not racing them for position, is coming up and they are basically required to make space for that car to be able to get around them as quickly as possible. Not just on the track but also often slowing down to even allow them to do so safely.

um you're essentially required to just not make it as much work for that other driver to get past you and it's just sort of taken, you know, culturally within the uh, you know, elements of fair play within the sport as a uh known quantity that if you're at the back, you're gonna have to just get out of the way and seed position and slow down a little bit. um to do that. So uh the blue flag is shown to them to let them know that

somebody is coming up on Yeah and it is it's a little counterintuitive because you know you think well are isn't everyone racing everyone all the time? But at this point if you're being blue flagged you are um about to be allowed. Uh now you may also be battling with other people who are back markers. So the tricky part is uh moving over to allow the front runner through, but at the same time not allowing the guy you are.

Totally. And hoping as well that maybe if there's something in front of you that like you can slow down a little bit less, like in a good position, like on a straight maybe and let them pass there. and that maybe the next driver up will have to do it at a more complicated place and then has to slow down a bit more than you had to and you can catch up. Um so yeah, it's a there's a whole sort of arch uh unto itself when it comes to blue flag.

And then the last thing with the flags is a little bit more than a little bit. Uh the safety car or the virtual safety car. So safety car let's say that one first because it's the easiest. If for instance something happens on the track that requires the race to be neutralized but as in stopped, but they don't want to red flag the race.

Um so let's say a car is uh stricken, you know, somewhere near the the racing line and they have to get on, you know, either Marshalls have to run on and pick up debris or they have to bring a truck on to lift that car off. They don't necessarily want to red flag the race'cause then everyone has to come to the pits, everyone has to like restart the race again. It just takes a long time. But they're thinking

Yeah, it's gonna take like two or three la especially with these new restarts, which we'll talk about. Um, but you know, uh it maybe it's gonna take two to three to four laps to clear all this sort of stuff. They basically send out a A safety car, which looks like a road car. It's not an open wheel car. It's actually like a very, you know, souped up sports car. you know, and so we can actually set a a a pace that's similar to these cars. Um

These F1 cars. And essentially this will lead the pack. It'll become like a follow-the-leader thing, uh, where this car drives around at at a decent clip, but like nowhere near racing. It looks like it's going as fast as it can, but right behind the F1 cars look like they're Extreme.

It's really funny. Yeah, it looks like they're crawling, but they're probably doing like seventy, eighty miles an hour or something, you know what I mean? Um so the safety car will come out, it has big flashing lights on it, and when the safety car comes out, when safety car pops up, the race is basically like Slow down. Yeah, don't pass anybody. Yeah. And it bunches up the pack. So, you know, if you were ten seconds ahead of the person behind you, then once the safety car comes out

You're gonna be, you know, a second, m less, half a second ahead of them. You all get bunched up and at a certain point the safety car drives in and people essentially start racing again from that backed up position.

Um there is another thing that they added now that we have this sort of, you know, better networking and communications that modern technology affords. Um they have something called the virtual safety car, which is introduced to essentially do the thing the safety car does, which is slow everyone down, but instead of again having to create this scenario where we have to wait for the safety car to go out first and we have to wait for the safety car to get

in front of the pack leader and then it has to come in. Um there might be a situation where there's an area of the track that has something on it, but we're gonna get it cleared. They do something called the virtual safety car. And essentially what it does is it sets a sort of um speed and uh speed requirement for the drivers to slow down to and they have to retain the uh

Delta time between them and the car in front of them has to be within a certain window. So essentially it's like, okay, we are We're letting you all slow yourselves down. Don't try and overtake. Don't try and cut some time in front of the person in front of you. Um you have to slow down so we can safely fix this thing. And then hopefully after a lap and a half or two laps of this we will turn off the virtual safety car and you can go race.

Yeah. So it all depends on the sort of scenario that the race stewards are attempting to fill out. Yeah, the thing about the virtual safety car is it it's designed to maintain the gaps that you have as the driver have eked out from your rivals. uh versus the real safety car which eliminates those because you have to bunch back up. So it's effectively like everyone slows down together and then when it's done, we lift it back up and it's like the race uh just continues. Exactly.

Yes, if you don't follow the rules then this is where you get a little slap on the wrist. And penalties are again, sort of open to interpretation, you know, like so many penalties in sports. You know, maybe you know a red card tackle if you see it or Is that pass interference? Yeah. Exactly. There's a lot of that. And F one is no stranger to this, of course.

So uh let's go through them sort of in order of severity. Um and I'll try and give examples of what would constitute one or the other. So, you know. The simplest one you get is like a five-second penalty. So this could be added to essentially your position at the end of a race. um or uh yeah which i which is usually uh the case. Uh we'll talk about um stop goes and stuff in a second. Uh so this can be for again like cutting corners too much, things like that, common small infringements.

Stuff that's a good thing. You know, you need to get a you need to get a slap on the wrist for it, but it's not the craziest thing. Uh a ten second penalty is for essentially the same thing except a higher degree of severity when it comes to uh what you did. So, you know. What what do we think about a ten second penalty? That could be um S hitting another car maybe, like diving up the inside and But again, devil's in the detail here, interpretation, right?

They've also these things are sometimes being under review a lot among the drivers because the five second penalty used to be the standard uh the standard fare for most minor infractions. And then people realized, well, you just don't serve that and the five seconds is trivial. Uh yeah, if you cut a corner, you could Stiffening the penalties to make it uh so that you can't get an advantage. Because it turns out five seconds is very cheap uh if you end up with favorable track position.

Uh which is why we have ones that are even um more s more serious than that, such as the drive through penalty. So obviously there are um you know pit

In the uh in an F1 race, pit stops where drivers come in and change their tires. Whenever you do that, it obviously takes a chunk of time, not just the time that they're sitting there, you know, getting lifted up, tires coming off, tires going on, but also the Uh time lost while in that pit lane because you obviously have to slow down to a certain speed limit for everyone's safety and also to stop the car and start the car.

So oftentimes, you know, there's like a twenty five to thirty second uh loss in time while going in and out of the bits. Um maybe even more for some. So one uh penalty they have is a drive-thru penalty, which essentially is you have to come through the pits, but you can't stop your car. You just gotta drive through. That's it. You gotta go through the Denny's. Takeout window. Mm did Denny's was the wrong choice. They don't have they don't do that. McDonald's. Burger King.

You have to drive through but you cannot stop and get your food. You gotta just keep going. Um and this is for again like sort of constantly cutting corners, cutting chicanes, skipping track limits, which is like driving outside of what we have deemed is the actual racetrack itself. Uh things like that where you are perhaps gaining an advantage on time, slap on the wrist, we're gonna take some of the time away.

The worst version of this is the stop-go penalty. And this is like the drive-thru, except you have to go into your pit box and you have to stop for 10 seconds. You gotta sit there. No one can touch your car. If you wanna change your tires after that, that's fine. And that's generally what happens is people. Is that true? Oh well

I know after the stop go for the for a s for a stop go penalty, I don't think you can touch your car. I think if you get a ten second penalty, you're gonna serve it in your pit box. Then you can sorry, yeah, you're right. But I think with a stop go, I think you have to park and then leave. And if you want to pit, you have to come in again.

Yeah, that's true. Sorry. Yes. The five and ten second penalties sometimes people um yeah will like add them into a pit stop generally because if you if you're handed a f like a regular five second Uh And you don't have and and you don't pit again in the race, they just tack it on to the end of your end.

If you do pit after you've received a penalty, you have to serve that five seconds in the pit box. And that's where no one can touch your car until five seconds are up. And this is really fun. Like you'll see someone on the pit wall is has a stopwatch. And then they all hear in the radios, Okay, go and then everyone pounces on the car. Yes, and there has been instances where people have accidentally touched a tire or something and then uh invalidated that.

Stop and then they have to come back and do it again. Um but yes, sorry, but thanks for clearing that up. The stop go itself is one where yes, you can come in, stop, and then you gotta go out. And it's because of the severity, like you end up losing like a minute almost of of time doing this.

This is this is yeah, this is something like you know, you've you've done something that is a massive uh benefit to you like jumping a start at the start of the race or doing something egregiously um you know, unfair or dangerous like speeding in the pit lane, ignoring um overtaking blue f uh flags, things like that, um or or doing like insanely egregious versions of blocking cars. you know, in breaking zones or multiple movements um uh on the straight if someone's trying to overtake you stuff

So it's pretty much the worst one they can give you. Um There's also uh grid position penalties that you can get for like five spots, ten spots. This generally tends to happen when people uh break park firme rules, which is essentially they have done some sort of modification to their car um at a period during the race weekend which is deemed uh a a a time window where you're not allowed change stuff. Um and teams will sort of tactically do this. You know, they'll be like, well

Look, we're gonna lose some good positions on this. We're gonna have to start from the back, but you know, this engine or this part of the engine is is not working properly and it's gonna basically, you know, tank our race. So we're just gonna take the hit on this, we're gonna you know um do this and then serve the the the grid position as a result. Um the other onious situation is if something uh sort of again on the more serious side happens at the end of a race.

They may decide to punish you for the next race rather than just sort of, you know, giving someone in fourteen to ten second penalty at the end of a race is really not going to move the needle in any way. They're not gonna get any points at the end. Or yeah, if you if you T bone another car and you both go out. Uh then a time penalty's not gonna do anything.

Drop. Yeah, if exactly. If you were the one responsible, they want to be able to make sure obviously that you take some sort of penalty for it. Um Then you there is the uh the yes, the the ten place penalty, which happens after you get uh five How do we what do we call these? Are they they're not points? Yeah, they're on your license. But they feel similar.

Um which is like a you know, hey, we we saw that. We're not gonna give you a penalty now, but if you keep it up and they accrue, then we're gonna give it a little bit of a a grid penalty. Same way like race bands work the same way. If you accrue

These come in the form of points on your license. So if you know if I if I crash into somebody, they're gonna say, Mm, that that one was bad. Um you know, not all not all incidents are But if they deem that this was an egregious uh error on your part, they're gonna hand you a couple points on your license, and if you accrue twelve points. In a calendar year, it's a rolling window, uh, then they'll hand you a race ban. Which we've seen relative. Penalty points exist in

The UK for sure. I think Ireland we might have them. But they don't do that here, right? In the normal drivers? No. On your license. No. So if if you get like if you get involved in like a crash or you get a speeding ticket or something like that, you will get a penalty point added to your license and then you do lose your license if you get a certain amount of them within a certain time. Yeah. So it's basically the same l law applied to this sport.

Um and then yeah, so you know, or you could you could yeah, race bands can you can also just be handed out if something crazy happens as well. Um we don't tend to see that stuff. Um Which uh which says more about the the quality of the driving at this level than, you know, probably anything else. But Um uh that is thankfully the case. But the issue here again is that you know A lot of the time you can tell why someone's getting a certain penalty or why a certain flag is getting waved, but

There are elements of this sport that are a little bit open to interpretation. We are going to run afoul of this the early stages of this new regulation change season, I suspect, quite a lot. Especially with the way in which the you know, power is deployed on straights, you know, uh and also how harvesting is done on corners for energy. I suspect that this is going to be um a little bit tricky. So l let's give a sort of a

as broad an overview position as to what is ca constituted fair defending of your position into a corner, right? So we've talked a lot about You know, blue flags, uh you know, somebody is a back marker, you're overtaking them. Most of the overtake well, not most, but like the m exciting overtakes you will see on television will be ones for position, where somebody who in second is trying to get into first, where somebody in Twelfth is trying to get into tenth. No matter what it is. Um and

Obviously if you're the card defending that position, you want to make it as difficult as possible for that person to try and overtake you. And generally that means picking a certain part of the track that you are going to occupy. uh and then picking a certain direction of travel around a corner that you're also going to occupy. And so the only other available option is the part of the track that you're not on.

Uh what I'm getting towards is that you can't just swerve around in front of the car in front of you to stop them from getting past. randomly change direction in a in a corner or break too early or like there's or you know, break check somebody. There's there's things that you're not allowed to do within the sort of sporting code. Um and a lot of this has got to do with safety'cause these cars are

super expensive, super fast cars and they're made out of cheap plastic, it'll look like. They're made out of very expensive carbon fiber. Um but when they hit each other

They fall apart, they crash, and then you've got somebody sitting in uh, you know, an open container with a helmet flying through the air into a barrier. So they have to establish some sort of rules um about defending Uh and of course because this is a competitive sport, people are gonna try and skirt around those rules or stretch those rules as much as they can.

So, some general points to understand about this. You're not allowed to make abnormal changes in direction if you are the defending car. So that means that you can't just like, I'm drifting over to the right of the track and then whoop, I'm gonna come back over to the left, right? that type of thing, you know, that type of uh subdiffusure or whatever can create bad incidents, right? So

Again, you're already imagining this in your head and thinking, well, you know, shouldn't you try and outsmart the car behind you? Yes. What's an abnormal change in direction? Exactly. This is the problem with any sport. And F1, this is uh this is the the issue they run. Um making like double movements. So if you are if you are you know on a straight and somebody's going to try and dive up the inside, you know, let's say the right side of the track, you are allowed to block them.

You are not allowed block them a second time. You can't just keep swerving back and forth. Um Similarly, if you're in like a breaking zone and it looks like y you are the one that instigates the movement, you know, into the inside of a turn, but then you you cut back over to the other side. because of the nature of how cars break in F one. Like generally cars in F one, you know you watch like you play like

drifting video games, you've watch action movies, you hit the brakes and you turn. If you hit the brakes, so if you are you know, weaving in the braking area, and then the car behind you hits their brakes, and then you go back in front of them, crash is gonna happen. So you gotta be careful about that.

So you're not allowed like do that, you're not allowed to block super late if you were entering a corner and you've decided which part of the corner you're going to be breaking into, you can't just suddenly decide to change at the last second when everyone's uh in their breaking zone. Um And uh and then the other thing is when cars are side by side into turns, you know, they're trying to overtake each other, they're on a straight, you can't just run the other car off the track.

You can't uh instigate uh contact between people. You have to leave a gap between the cards. It is crazy how good these drivers are about leaving the smallest gap. Sometimes the wheels are sort of like inside of each other as it were, you know, like somebody's front wheel is between the other two. Yeah, interlocked exactly. Um that's all fine. You just a gap is the smallest amount of

space you can imagine uh in F1. Um and incidents often happen because somebody's braking a little bit too late or turning in a little bit too much. And oftentimes cars will hit each other and take each other out.

And they'll just put it down to a racing incident. This is not something we need to punish one of you for. It was fair racing, but you both you know you both fell a cropper of of of just Yeah, I mean it it'll it'll it'll take some watching, but I think you know uh it'll it'll become apparent um y you'll this is something that you'll get better at afterwards. That is that is the thing. Uh if you're if you're familiar, for instance, with

American gridiron football and the perennial debates but what really is a catch? Uh that is kind of what happens in F one when it comes to these driving standards. Was that a footballing move? Yeah, because there's a lot of this is in the eye of the beholder, for instance. you're allowed to regain the racing line heading into a corner. So you can make your blocking move down the straight.

And then as someone is trying to maybe move around you, but there's a corner coming up, you can regain the correct line for taking the corner, and that just happens to block someone else. And that introduces ambiguity that is frequently adjudicated by a rotating cast of uh racing officials who who try to figure out what's fair racing and what's outside the rules. And then the drivers themselves are frequently on the radio.

lobbying and you clear they're talking to their race engineer, complaining about what has just happened or what they what they their read on the incident. But it is clearly meant for the consumption of racing officials so that it is It it is sort of like loudly proclaiming one's innocence, uh, that you cannot imagine that that you would be penalized for something or that someone else would would not see the other guy was at fault. So this is a thing where you will you will get

You will see these things in practice and and you will internalize more of the logic of these rules. You will never fully feel confident about how those rules are being interpreted and applied because the drivers aren't you.

All right, well, how do you actually watch these races? And this is something that's also changed this year. In the US, you have one option. You must have a subscription to Apple TV. Which is thirteen dollars a month or ninety nine dollars a month. Uh my advice is once you've gotten that subscription to watch using F1's official app, which is called F1 TV. Uh and it's available on basically every kind of streaming box or smart TV. Um though you will need to link it to your app.

Uh the F one TV app will give you access to live sessions. Um on demand replays. Uh they've got 30 minute highlight edits of uh the races, which are convenient if you're In a hurry, as well as a historical archive of hundreds of old races and uh sessions for the F1 feeder series like Formula 2 and the F1 Academy.

Uh there's also the official F1 YouTube channel, which provides highlights of each session uh with the races being edited down to about seven minutes. Uh same with qualifying. Um that's usually how I uh consume practice.

Um though I know many of all our listeners just watch the YouTube Rice Highlights uh and then listen to our podcast to get the full picture. So uh you've got And speaking of commercial rights, let's take it to one more commercial break, and then we'll be back with an overview of the teams and drivers.

All right, so we've found that a lot of newcomers to F1 were introduced to it. By watching Drive to Survive on Netflix, and I'm sure now the the F one movie will have done something similar. So if you're coming in after watching one of those, uh Brad Pitt is not an F one. Just I want to get that edited away. That was that was that was Hollywood magic. Um yes. Uh you oh there are no people in their fifties. We have some some forties uh in the in the field. Fernando's

He's he's trying it. He's gonna get there. Um I guess if you're wondering we we I think we generally gave a thumbs up to the F1 movie. We have a whole episode on Patreon um where we talk about it. It's popcorn flick. It's kinda silly, but it's yeah, it's good. Yeah, and it's not surprising that those are effective on ramps'cause they do a great job of showing the the human drama of the sport. Just like it pays to understand the technicalities of the sport, knowing the people really adds.

So with that we're gonna go through every team and driver. the grid. Like I said, there are two drivers per team. The concept of teammates in F1 is a little weird. They do sometimes work together. For instance, if two teammates are on track one behind the other, the car behind maybe order to defend against another attacking But that is only if the driver

listens to their team's orders. Usually they do. Not always. Uh every driver out there thinks that they are the best, and they all especially want to beat their teammates because they are the only ones with the same machine. So uh it's a pretty poor reflection of your ability if your teammate beats you every time in effect. Um before we get to the teams and drivers, a quick note about how to tell them apart on track.

Uh each team has a different paint job, which we call a livery, but the cars within the same team look almost identical. The major difference between them Uh is the color of their camera pod, which is sometimes called the T-bar,'cause it looks like a a squat letter T sitting on top of the car just behind the driver's head.

Um one driver will have a black T-bar while the other will have a fluorescent yellow one. Typically it's the more senior driver with the black one, but that's not always the case. Um so be on the lookout for um our official spotter's guide as we get closer to the first race uh that we'll put out Um and then as you will get we go through this, you'll also hear um what engine each team has in their car. This can get a little confusing. A lot of the teams

Will have names that you've heard of, like Mercedes and Ferrari. In addition to being F1 teams, some of those teams also make their own engines, which are called Works teams. and then sell those engines to other teams, which are called customers. So with each team breakdown we'll we'll mention the engine manufacturer and we do it not just because it's a piece of trivia, but um especially this year, engine performance can really affect how good your car is. So it's it's valuable.

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Um all right, so we're gonna go in championship order from how they finished last year, uh starting in the constructors in the constructors championship. Starting with Danny.

McLaren. McLaren won the constructors championship last year. They did so the year before that. Um which was kind of cool because the previous years it was Red Bull, Red Bull, Red Bull, Red Bull for a long time. Uh so yes, they came first last year. They are the orange car or papaya as they like to call it. Um but yeah, you can miss them. Big old orange car. Um Of course McLaren founded by Bruce McLaren, a famous um not just for Million driver, but uh

many different he was a great engineer as well, uh New Zealand born driver. Um It's the team's been around since around the eighties. They're generally a sort of luxury car uh brand in the UK. They make high performance, very expensive cars, you know, not your street cars that your your your grandmother's gonna buy those are like incredibly high performance, you know. Unless you've got a remote grandmother What'd you say? Yes. It is a ridiculously high.

Yeah. So you've got the coolest granny in the world and Rich. Yeah. Yeah. You will never step foot on one of these cars. I've never I've I I think I saw a P one one time in London or something. Um they are based in the UK. Uh they run a Mercedes engine. Um they are the nationality of the team is also UK. Uh the team principal is Andreas Stella, who moved over from

I'm blanking. Well he was at um Renault, right? Don't remember. Prior to here. I'm trying to remember. That's you don't see him very often because you normally just see the big American CEO.

Yes, Zach Brown, the CEO, is uh a man made famous by well, I guess his first claim to fame was that he was on was it the prices right? Is that what I think was Wheel of Fortune he Wheel of Fortune, he won some money and then turned it into a go-karting career and then did some racing and has been the CEO of McLaren and has turned it around, you know, a couple of fits and starts over the past ten years, different driver combinations, but uh between

The current two drivers they have, which I'll talk about in a second, and the advancements they made with the um the car itself, uh he has managed to drive them towards two constructor championships and now a driver's championship as well. The driver who won that championship is uh UK he wasn't UK born, but British citizen Lando Naris. Uh he won last year. He is twenty-six years old.

Um Lando has been in the sport for many, many years. He was part of a a a generation of younger drivers that came in. And um you know, were were competent drivers. Mentality with Lando was a thing for a while. There was a couple of races where he almost got on the podium, almost one in Russia, about four or five years ago now. Um but uh was never able to stick the landing. Uh so last year when he did win the championship it was uh a real testament to sort of who he he has become as a driver. Um

And not just his skill but his mentality because the issue he ran into was that he wasn't just fighting Max Verstappen, a multiple world championship winner. He was also racing a very tricky teammate, an Oscar Piastri, two years his senior. Uh his junior, sorry, at age twenty four. Um Oscar is an Australian um and last year he ultimately uh placed third. Um but he was leading the championship for a number of months last year. He, you know, forced Lando to sort of up his game, as did Verstappen.

slow encroachment back into that top three of the races. Uh but Oscary Oscar, like I said, was was leading the championship for a chunk of last year, had a couple of uh

you know, dodgy races, a little bit of um uh bad luck as well, um, and ultimately ceded it to to Lando. It the the season did eventually come i it it came down to the last race in that mathematically it was possible for three drivers to win it, but um it would have required Lando to have, you know, engine trouble or a particularly bad

final performance. Uh as it happened, Oscar drove a great final race as well, but ultimately came in third because Max pipped him as well. Um so yeah, they have a great, you know set of drivers, they have a champion. They are champions. But ultimately this year with the new regulations, it's all gonna come down to how the aero and the power and the batteries all work. And for that

You know, I think we're gonna talk about testing a little bit after this uh this team rundown and um yeah, it's it's hard to tell right now between the top three or four teams who's really got the card. Uh Lando apparently Was born in the UK. His mother though is Belgium, so um Belgian citizenship as well. Apparently, and I'm just I'm just learning this now, uh his mother has stated that or Lando his mother gave him the name Lando, which he says was not inspired by Lando Calright.

Not everything is a Star Wars reference. Can color me surprised. Uh yeah.

Next up, Mercedes. They play second in the drive or the constructors championship last year. They are the silver and teal car. Um, they run their own engine, a Mercedes engine. The team uh is technically you have i the official entry uh is German and that's It's it's weird. via an o an auto club of a specific country, and then that is their official entry into Formula One. All their factories are in England, as a lot of the factories. are. Their team principal is an Austrian man named Toto Wolf.

Who sounds exactly like Arnold Schwarzenegger. Um until 2021, Mercedes had won the previous seven drivers and constructors championships. But after that, they really struggled to get on top of their car. There was kind of a regulation change that they they went down a an incorrect path. Last year they really started looking better and and we expect that trend to continue.

Uh their drivers are George Russell. He's 28 from the UK. Last year finished fourth in the Drivers Championship. Very much the British gentleman. I think Rob once described him as a Spitfire pilot. Uh he had developed a reputation for buckling under pressure, had a lot of like late race crashes, but that has changed recently. Uh he's had a string of really solid finishes and I he's hung He also apparently made the case to Toto Wolf to sign him to the Mercedes driver program with a PowerPoint.

Yeah. Teachers back. Um his teammate, Andrea Kimi Antonelli. They call him Kimi Antonelli. Uh he is nineteen years old, uh Italian, last year placed seventh in the drivers championship. This is his second year in the sport after he started last year with Mercedes as a rookie. There was sort of

A lot of young phenom hype around him when he came in, but instead of setting the world on fire, I'd say he came off as capable but still a little green. Uh I expect this year a lot of those rough edges are gonna be sanded off. Yeah. Next stop, Danny.

Yeah, Red Bull. Red Bull are a a a it's a drink. It's got taurine, it's got sugar, it's got you know, it's it's what you need to start your day of trucking. Um it's uh you know what Red Bull is. Uh Red Bull have obviously been in a bunch of sports over the years. They invest in lots of crazy stuff. Uh but their investment into Formula One started back in uh two thousand five. Um and the between the period of twenty ten and twenty thirteen, um

twenty fourteen even as well. They were they were v dominant. You know what I mean? Like they won four championships there in a row between twenty ten, twenty thirteen. They were second either side of that. Um and then Mercedes were we're dominant for the next sort of six, seven years. Um uh shout out to all of your your your children who are now doing the hand movement because of what I just said. Um And then uh they managed to sort of get back into contention again.

in the past couple of years. They won the constructor in twenty twenty two and twenty twenty three, which were the two central years of Max Verstappen, one of their drivers for uh championships that he won in a row between twenty twenty one and twenty tw twenty twenty four. Um so they have had fits and starts of being the most dominant team. They've had on and off sort of years uh with that. Um The constructors ultimately uh eluded them the past two years because of the rise of McLaren.

Um uh and they ended up coming in third overall. So they are a a dark uh blue and yellow car. Generally you can spot them because they have a big red bull on the side of the the car. Um

This year they are running their own engines. They have built their own uh powertrain company uh in collaboration with Ford Motorsport uh to to essentially bring what was uh you know, uh an external partner and they're they're bringing it in which which is risky, but you know Uh we'll we'll see how it works out for them.

Um much like the Red Bull company, they are based in uh sorry, they're they are a an Austrian team. Uh they actually own their own circuit, uh the old A1 ring, which is now known as the Red Bull Ring or the Austriched Ring.

which just means Austrian ring. Um but yes, as Drew said, like everyone else, they are essentially based in the UK. Like almost everyone else they're based in the UK. Uh their team principal is Laurent Mekis, uh who replaced the drive to survive famous um and spice girl uh husband uh Christian Horner uh during last season after uh you know um Multiple Sort of uh issues ended uh caught up with him. Yeah, it's a whole other We could do a preseason primer on Christian Horner.

Um but we're not gonna do that, thankfully. Um Uh so yes, uh Larmek is his the team principal and he'll be running the show. The drivers are Max Verstappen, who is twenty-eight years old. He's Dutch, his father was an F one driver, Jos Verstappen. Uh Max's a four time world champion. He is largely considered the best driver of his generation. He is probably in contention for one of the best drivers of all time. He is incredibly talented across multiple um different aspects of motorsport.

Um smart guy, uh very great mentality as well. Um he came second last year after b being out of contention halfway through the season. Somehow managed to wrestle that car back. And this has been a problem with Red Bull for a long time, which is that Max is so good.

and he is able to drive the car on the limit that his teammates struggle to drive that same car anywhere near his pace. In fact they would probably be happier in a different car because it would be easier to drive. Um His teammate for this year is a young Frenchman, uh, called Isaac Hajar, or Isaac Hajar as we tend to call him. Um last year he placed in twelfth with Red Bull's sister team, which we'll talk about in a second, who are currently called Racing Bulls. That's not confusing. Um

Listen to our entire preseason podcast on the naming convention of this team because it's just gotten ridiculous over the years. Um, Hajar w had a dodgy start to the last season. He made some early mistakes. He seemed mentally frail, let's say. Um but over the course of last season he showed incredible racecraft, uh incredible mental acuity, uh and ultimately found himself in uh getting the second seat at Red Bull um which you know, has been a rotating

for the past while. I mean Sergio Perez was in there for a while, but last year they went through Liam Lawson, Yuki Sinoda, nobody could seem to handle the car. So we're all hoping that Isaac does a great job and doesn't fall afoul of the second Red Bull. uh seat like so many talented drivers before him. All right. Ferrari Rob.

Uh Ferrari's probably the most famous team in F1, damn near synonymous with the sport. Uh, they finished fourth last year. And it was a grim season as they often have been. Uh the team has had legendary drivers for it. Nikki Lauda, Michael Schumacher. Michael Schumacher led into a dominant period in the late nineties, early two thousands, but it has been a long fallow period since then with a lot of uh unease, unrest at at the company as they try to find a a winning combination.

They're based out of uh Italy and they do make their own engine. That is sort of the the heart of the team is is a a history of racing development. Uh currently they are led by Fred Vasour, a well-regarded team principal with a long history in motorsport. was sort of looked to as someone who could turn things around at Ferrari, but things have not quite worked out that way ever since. And the team also is pursuing kind of a two track strategy with its drivers. Um For a long time there.

their primary driver, the person they were clearly building their future around was Charles Leclerc, a uh driver from Monaco, uh, who was part of that young driver cohort that that Danny alluded alluded to. Uh they were very quick to sign him to a long term contract. Uh but then last year they brought in uh

Seven, six time world champion? Seven. Seven. Yeah. Seven-time world champion, Lewis Hamilton, uh, who Was dominant at Mer Mercedes, uh, also won a championship with McLaren, one of the best drivers in the history of the sport. Uh, but has had some tough years lately as m as uh Mercedes form declined.

And his first year at Ferrari was disastrous. Uh and the vibes I would say were bad, not just for him, but also Charles Leclerc. Uh Ferrari is a team that probably gets more shit than they deserve because they're so famous and they're sort of known for making hilariously like ill-timed errors. Uh, but it does seem to have gotten into the water supply there and the vibes I would say are bad. The drivers both seem to

uh struggle with depression uh just from being Ferrari drivers. Um and that's not really an exaggeration from comic effect. They do seem pretty bummed a a good portion of the season with what is happening.

Uh Williams are next to the U.S. Uh Lastopy's fifth, which is higher than they have placed in uh many, many years. Um they were sort of bottom of the barrel for a little while there. Um founded, you know, long time ago by Frank Williams and Patrick Head. It's sort of a classic British team. They run in Mercedes uh engine and they are blue and white. You'll this is they're one of the teams that are sometimes hard to pick out because there's a lot of blue and white.

Um British team, like I said, their team principal, uh not to be confused with James Consonants. His name is James Vowels. He's a very interesting gentleman. He speaks in a in a in a very beautiful posh-British accent. And if you watch Drive to Survive, you're probably very familiar with him. Uh their two drivers couldn't have different more different starts and entrances into uh Formula One. Alexander Albon is a twenty nine year old Thai driver.

Um uh grew up in the UK but r uh races under the uh flag of his um his uh his mother's uh nation, one that he's very connected to obviously himself. Um uh placed last year in eighth position. Okay. Yes, yeah, yeah. Yeah. Well I said he was Thai, but yeah, yeah. Um uh yes, and uh and you know, has a very interesting entrance uh

story into Formula One. His teammate Carlos Sainz Junior is the son of a very famous, uh, largely rally focused driver, Carlos Sainz. Uh junior is age thirty one now. He is Spanish. Last year he placed ninth. So they were eighth and ninth, right behind each other.

Uh both very talented drivers who have never really found the car to put them uh sort of in contention for a championship. Uh will Williams have one this year? We'll have to wait and see. Yeah. Um Racing Bulls, as we mentioned, this is the sister team to Red Bull. You

There are limits about how much technical information you can share with another team. Um, but in the past, Red Bull has, uh, as we've said, sort of used this team as kind of a far-text. It's younger drivers. This team is based in uh Italy. Um, they also have a uh factory. you know, an office in the UK. Um, but they are an Italian team. They used to be called Tororosso, uh, which was Italian for Red Bull.

a much cooler name. They also use the uh the Red Bull Ford engine, uh, which is new for this year. They are a white and yellow car. Their drivers are Liam Lawson. Who is 24 from New Zealand? Last year he placed 14th. He, like many drivers, including Alex Albon and a few more that we'll get to. Was one of those promoted to Red Bull to partner Max Verstappen only to last a handful of races before getting demoted?

Uh but like many of those drivers um before him, he has seemed to flourish at the end. So um hoping to see more from him this year. He is partnered by, I think, the field's only rookie this year, Arvid Lindblad. Uh love Formula One names. Um he's eighteen from the UK. He um has a uh a good history with uh former uh or the lower tiers.

He won the prestigious Macau Grand Prix in Formula Four in 2023, placed fourth in the F3 Championship a year later, and came sixth in F2, becoming the youngest F2 championship. in uh sorry F2 winner in history. I personally have not seen him race, but um Red Bull tends to produce good drivers, so I am assuming Eager to see uh how he does. It's uh, you know, all gonna be down to how good the car is. Racing balls, I feel like, is either an afterthought or they really impress you. Rob Aston Martin.

Oh fascinating team. Uh We haven't gone into the fact that a lot of teams have changed names over the years and have been one organization owned by multiple people. That is relevant here with Aston Martin. Uh they were a team that was sort of a plucky, scrappy underdog when they were Force India. Uh that team sort of collapsed because the Indian uh drinks billionaire who owned the team, Vijay Moleev, uh got in some legal issues, kind of maybe sort of went on the run for a little bit.

uh trying to evade said legal issues, but he lost uh his control of the team and they became a semi independent organization as racing point before being rescued by billionaire uh Lawrence Stroll. who was brought into F1 to support his son Lance's uh racing ambitions. And so ultimately was so involved in the sport and so all in on his son's career that he bought an entire racing team.

But like uh Saturn devouring his children, Lawrence Stroll seems to have taken his son's dream and turned it into his own. Uh, Lawrence uh took over the team and began directly running it, moving uh its longtime team principal out of his role. uh and bringing in his own people to sort of oversee the the building of a top shelf uh F1 organization. And he spared no expense in doing it and the results have been shit. Uh since he sort of put his stamp on the team, its uh results have collapsed.

Um he has obviously he has a son, Lance, uh driving for the team, who It I think is probably described as a marginal F1 driver, clearly good enough to be on the grid.

does not r often demonstrate that he is someone particularly worth keeping around if he were not the boss's son. He is paired with uh Fernando Alonso, a two time champion who May have brought a jinx to Aston Martin because uh Fernando Alonso's career has been spent trying to find more championships and better cars, and everywhere he goes, the team gets worse.

And then he leaves just as the team is about to start turning things around. There's often debate about whether or not these two factors are related and whether Fernando is quietly part of the problem, uh, but he is extremely well regarded, he's very smart, he's a a very sharp driver. Um and so I I think you'll you'll hear the commentators extend him a lot of a lot of benefit of the doubt and give him a pass on a lot of things. Uh but in particular this year is cursed for resonant reasons.

Because part of uh Aston Martin turning things around was sparing no expense and recruiting uh Adrian Nui. an F1 aerodynamics engineer who's worked for just about everyone uh and gave Red Bull uh some of its most dominant cars uh over the over the past uh fifty fifteen or so years. He was placed in charge of the team, given a King's ransom to develop a unbeatable car.

And then Aston partnered with Honda for their engine. Honda having just produced World Championship winning cars again with Red Bull with a catch. Honda was quitting F1 just as Red Bull started winning. They stuck with that plan. Red Bull basically hired all the people who built Honda's engine. And so Honda started from scratch for Aston Martin. And the result. judging by what happened at testing, have been nightmarish. Both the drivers are depressed.

saying the car is potentially three or four seconds slower per lap than the other teams, which in F1 terms, you're basically not even the same series. Uh that is a you will be lapped twice before that race is over. Uh so things are going really well over there and is a Aston Martin is fun and instructive for an example of what happens when sort of a a finance class

uh actually tries to operate things as opposed to just taking credit for it. Uh and so that's it it's sort of morbidly fascinating from that standpoint.

Uh also somewhat fascinating, the Haas team. Uh they are until Cadillac, they were the newest F1 team on the grid, having started from scratch in 2016. They're owned by American businessman Gene Haas, whose company makes uh C and C machines, which are basically factory robots, which is a little ironic because this team is famous for keeping costs down by buying as many parts as legally possible From Ferrari. Uh this has lessened a bit over the years. Um they make more of the

The car themselves these days. If you watch any of the early seasons of Drive to Survive, you may remember their former team principal Gunter Steiner, who oversaw a real roller coaster of an F1 team. Now it's headed by Ao Kamatsu, who seems to be quite capable. Basically the exact opposite of Sniper. affect. Uh they are red and white. They have a Ferrari engine naturally. They have uh bases in the US, UK, and Italy. And their drivers are Oliver Behrman, he's 20 from Britain.

um from the UK. Last year he placed 13th. He made his debut in an F1 car in a Ferrari when Carlos Sainz uh had to have emergency surgery for appendicitis. Um he went on to uh impress last year, frequently beating his much more experienced teammate. Um I I Haas isn't likely gonna be fighting for wins, but Behrman is fast and I I'd qualify dependable. Esteban Okan is the other driver. He's 29 from France.

He plays 15th last year, has been racing full-time in F1 since 2017, although he had to sit out 2019 when Lance Stroll's dad bought the team out from under him and installed his son as a driver. Uh which must have been particularly tough because Ocon is one of the few F1 drivers like Hamilton from a more humble background. These are a lot there's a lot of rich kids here. His parents famously sold their house and lived in a motor home so they could bring him to all of his racing events.

Uh he does have a reputation for clashing with his teammates, but we haven't seen that so much recently. Um he's sort of become one of F1's journeyman drivers with occasional flashes of brilliance, but generally just a steady. Next up, Rob.

Uh we're talking about the Audi team, semi-new to F1. Audi bought out a longstanding team that was usually toward the back of the grid, uh, the sauber team. They've they've changed name names and partners for uh a number of years, but the Sauber organization has been around and that is uh that is the core of the Audi F

Uh they are going be going around and it looks like an Audi, right? Audi's love of sort of matte silver and gray looks uh with red accents. That is that is what their car looks like. Uh critically the the thing that is Yeah, very exciting from the standpoint that the the pitch that was made at the Volkswagen group, uh, for for why it was good to get into F one is that they were going to come in and make their own engine. Their argument is that the Mercedes team is not a true German

uh team, the powertrains, the engine uh m manufacturer for Mercedes is also a UK team. Audi's going to come in and unleash German engineering uh on F one. Uh meanwhile though the car is still largely made in uh out of a out of a base in Switzerland and then a lot of R D is developed in the UK because F one is such a UK centric sport, uh, that there's just a you you miss out on a lot of uh you know talent and ability in the in if you're not if you don't have a presence in the UK job market.

The Audi effort has been troubled though, uh ever ever since its inception. Uh there was sort of high level struggles about what the vision was for the team. Uh uh the Audi uh corporate level seemed uncommitted about things. Uh they finally had to fire a bunch of people and they brought in former Ferrari team principal and uh director of their uh engine manufacturing effort.

Mattia Bonato. So he you will see him sort of running the show at Audi, uh, but he's not their racing operations uh sort of sort of leader. That is Jonathan Wheatler, Wheatley serving as team principal. Uh for their lineup this year, uh they've got Nico Hulkenberg, uh sort of a Really well respected driver who just never broke through to a top tier team. Um, he got his first podium in his career uh last year.

Um so he's sort of their their their veteran and old hands and has connections with with Audi going back some years. He is paired with uh one of the new young cohort of of drivers. Uh, Gabriel Bordoleto, uh a Brazilian who finished nineteenth in the standings last year and has shown flashes of of some some real ability.

But probably it seems like one of the weaker drivers in was Ben a pretty excellent cohort. Uh so that might not be a knock against him. It's just a tough comparison. Yeah, he's in a slow.

Tough to tough to see. Or it has been. Next up, Alpine. Spelled like Alpine, but it's Pronounce that way because it's French. Um, this is the racing brand of the French car company Renault, which is partly owned by France. Um, they've really struggled over the past five years, which I chalk up to chaotic leadership and the fact that until this year they used their own Renault engine.

which was significantly down on power compared to the others in the field, but they scrapped that program and this year uh will be their first as a Mercedes customer team. Their current team principal is Flavio Briatore. who ran the Renault team in the early 2000s until he was banned from the sport entirely for instructing his driver to crash to help the other driver win the race. But I guess we're fine with that now, especially if you've seen the F one movie.

Uh they are a blue and pink car. Um they also have bases in the UK. Their drivers are Pierre Gasly, Pierre Gasly, uh he's French. He's 30. He last year placed eighteenth. Um he's another a r ex Red Bull driver. Um he lasted twelve races. Uh however, again, I'd say he steadily has earned himself a reputation for getting on top of subpar cars, which is a skill he has needed at Alpine. Um I'm hoping that this new engine uh will allow him to be able to do it.

To shine a little more. His teammate is Franco Calapinto, 22 from Argentina. He had a stressful rookie season last year when he and another driver named Jack Doohin basically traded off. until their team principal decided uh on Calapinto. Um he failed to get any points last year, but I don't think that's wholly indicative of his skill. I think the microscope is gonna be him on him again this year though. And if the car is better, he'll have to stick close to his teammate or risk getting booted.

And finally Rob

Or sorry, did you have things to America's team Cadillac. The new team. Uh so Cadillac is actually an American organization, unlike like the Haas team, which is owned by an American, has some facilities in the US but is largely again uh run out of a broom closet in Ferrari's factory. Uh Cadillac It had a long and harrowing saga to get into the sport. It started with the Andretti family and particularly Michael Andretti's quest to get an F1 team started up.

Uh but the F one for a variety of uh like administrative reasons, rules reasons about getting into the sport, but also became apparent as the saga went on, a lot of personal antipathy directed toward Michael Andretti. Uh the Andretti organizations could not crack their way into F one. That culminated with Michael Andretti selling his stake in the team effectively to Dan Tauris, uh his long longtime business partner, and the Andretti organization uh had a bid accepted to become the new F1 team.

And they were partnered with uh General Motors and particularly uh Cadillac, which is sort of their uh the brand they have leading most of their racing efforts uh these days in addition to Corvette. Um, however, the Cadillac effort is a ways off from developing its own engine. Uh they are using Ferrari engines uh for for this year.

Um they are primarily based uh theoretically in Indiana, a facility that uh the Android organization has has put a lot of investment into uh but obviously they have uh facilities in hubs around the US and they have the uh pretty much required uh facility in the UK. Uh they're led by Team Principal Graham Loden and they have two returning I don't know if you call them fan favorites, but two well-regarded old guys uh coming in as their drivers. First is Sergio Perez, a thirty-six-year-old.

Mexican driver who had a good start to his Red Bull career in his last uh tour of duty there. But became one of that sad collection of drivers who was publicly humiliated week after week by Max Verstappen dominating races while Sergio Perez struggled to score points at any of them. And Red Bull sort of unceremoniously dumped him and he spent

uh a year or two, I can't remember at this point, uh cooling his heels, waiting for an opportunity. And that came here. I do think the fact that he is uh sort of based in North America probably helped him with with getting the spot. at Cadillac. Uh he is paired with Valtteri Botas. Uh, a 36 year old 36-year-old Finnish driver who was partnered with Lewis Hamilton at Mercedes for a number of years.

uh and has become sort of a unlikely social media star as he gave up on his ambitions of being a particularly like accomplished championship winning driver. And started living uh living moss, uh let us say. Yeah. Uh, and just started leaning into a particularly Finnish brand of weirdness. If you play uh If you play video games and you're familiar with the Studio Remedy makers of Max Payne and Alan Wake. Um there is an inherent finishness that's out there and Valtry Baltas is

an example of that. He he likes saunas, uh, cycling and being bare ass naked on social media. Uh so that he's he's a good he's a good follow. It's a it's a good time. Great things are not expected from this team, but they also look unlikely to be the worst given how badly some things are going uh elsewhere on the And those are the teams we will I think for our next episode get deeper into what we've seen in testing uh

But uh we can move on right now, I think, to uh the calendar, places we're going this year. One of my favorite things about F one is this sort of traveling circus feel of the sport, with everyone rolling up to a new country and Spinning up these crazy events. Danny, where are we going this? Yeah, a couple of changes for folks who are um uh w watching for the past few seasons. Um so Spain this year is a bit funny'cause we have two Grand Prix happening in there. So the

Regular circuit the Barcelona Catalonia one um is now going to be called the Barcelona Catalonia Grand Prix. It is going to be rotating with Spa um apparently going forward. Um and then the other one, the Madring, which is the um You know, the street circuit that's happening in Madrid, that is going to be known as the Spanish Grand Prix.

Um Imala has been discontinued, so we're never we're not going back to the Emilia Romagna Grand Prix. And then the Azerbaijan Grand Prix is going to be held on a Saturday because the Azerbaijani government has Remembrance Day on that Sunday, which is h connected to the twenty twenty, the second and Nagorno Karabakh War, which, you know

I don't know get get into too much into geopolitics, but like Azerbaijan are largely the aggressor in that situation. So it's it's a little bit weird to have Remembrance Day for the war you started trying to take over this uh this disputed territory. This is another this is F this is like F one is Weird money?

And weird politics. Like that is it's Yes. Just a little sprinkling that I like about this sport. I s I suspect the Armenian uh F one fans won't be super jazzed about that Saturday race, but Anyway, I digress. Um and then the other thing to say is that the sprint weekends, which we've talked about earlier, um the races where the sprint will happen, um I will I will point out during this uh this rundown.

Essentially it's China, Miami, Canada, the British Grand Prix, the Dutch Grand Prix, uh and Singapore will be Uh so we start very soon on March eighth at the Australian Grand Prix, which has uh become uh the the starting Uh yeah, race of the season over the past few years at Albert Park and Melbourne. Then we're to China uh the following week for a sprint weekend at the Shanghai International Circuit.

Um two weeks after that we got the uh Japanese Grand Prix at Suzuka, then the twelfth of April, so another little break there, the Bahrain Grand Prix at the Bahrain International Circuit in Sakir. A week after that, april nineteenth, the Saudi Arabian Grabbery happens at the Jeddah Street Circuit. Um then we have a short kind of break again. Um the third of May, the Miami uh Grand Prix start. uh with a sprint weekend at the uh Miami International Autodrome, also known as the

uh parking lot of the Hard Rock uh stadium. Uh a couple of weeks later we have another Sprint Reek uh weekend. So back to back at the Canadian Grand Prix at the fantastic Gilles Villeneuve circus. On the twenty fourth of May. Seventh of June, we are at Monaco for uh the Monaco Grand Prix, which is one of the worst but most photogenic races in uh world motorsport. The Barcelona uh Barcelona Catalonia Grand Prix a week after that uh on june fourteenth.

June twenty eighth, we head to the Red Bull Ring, previously mentioned, uh owned by Red Bull, um at the uh Austrian Grand Prix in Spielberg. And then we are 5th of July going to Silverstone for the British Grand Prix, which is a sprint weekend this year. Spa Francochamp. Returns uh july nineteenth for the Belgian Grand Prix. Um the twenty sixth of July, a week later, we'll be at the Hungara Ring, which is the Hungarian Grand Prix.

And then we have the proper summer break. We return twenty third of August for the Dutch Grand Prix at Zamvoort, which is a sprint weekend and I believe the final Zamvoort we're having, if I remember correctly. Um sixth of September is the Italian Grand Prix of Monza. Thirteenth of September, the Spanish Grand Prix at that new Madring, if they finish it. Uh the twenty sixth of September we head to Azerbaijan aforementionedly on a Saturday racing at the Baku City Circuit in Baku.

The eleventh of October, we head back to uh Asia for the Singapore Grand Prix uh at Marina Bay, which is a nighttime uh race in the heat. It's also a sprint weekend. That is gonna be a rough one for them. They returned then on the 25th of October to North America for a little while. United States Grand Prix in Austin, Texas on that 25th of October. A week later, first of November, we head to Mexico City for the Autodromo Hermanos Rodriguez track.

uh and uh the wonderful Grand Prix that happens there. A week later after that we continue travelling south to Sarlo and and hit up Interlagos on November eighth. Um a little bit of a gap as they travel back up north to the Las Vegas Strip. to race the night race at Las Vegas on the twenty first of November, which is the third last race of the calendar uh this year. Then we are at the penultimate race at the Qatar Grand Prix in LaSalle on the twenty ninth of November.

So splitting Thanksgiving there and then the final race of the season happens December sixth. at the uh long time now home of the final race of the season in Abu Dhabi as the sun sets on Yas Marina Circuit. Yes, it is a behemoth of a season twenty four races, but again, we will be with you the entire time.

Uh finally, I just want to welcome F1 newcomers. It can be intimidating to jump into something like this, and uh the more annoying F1 fans can be pretty protective uh of their precious sport, but racing is for everyone. That's what we believe. be excited about it. Our goal is to keep our show accessible so that more people can learn it too. Uh like I mentioned before, you can write in at shiftf1 podcast at gmail.com or go to f1.cool Slash emails.

Uh we'll also have an F1 fantasy league. Yes, F1 does fantasy sports. Um once uh once that gets started we'll we'll post uh a link to join on the the so the socials. um and put it in our our podcast show notes. Um and if you want, you can ask other listeners of Shift F1 by joining our Discord channel, which is um also newbie friendly. People are are really nice in there. It's it's it's a great time. Um and you can do that via Patreon, Dan.

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We've talked enough. Uh all right. Thank you everyone for joining us here. Uh let's get some some final thoughts ahead of the 2026 season. Danny. Yeah, I mean we we we'll talk a lot on the first episode about what we think about these new regulations, what we think about where the teams are, how testing has gone. It's always hard to tell exactly what's gonna happen in the first few races because teams withhold, you know, performance, they sandbag, um, they fix stuff. Um it's it's

I don't know about Rob. This is th I I know some teams are really bad this year. I I'm not I I can't tell who's who's at the top, top, top. It's it's just at this stage it's it's seemingly Hard impossible to see and and that is very exciting. Yeah. Rob, final thoughts.

Yeah, no, I'm I'm with Danny. There's a lot of we'll talk about this more next week. I'm I'm eager to have this convers conversation with y'all. Uh some drivers have already been bagging on the new cars, the new regulations. There's been some issues. But from what I saw Those look like fun little race cars. Something that F one hasn't had in a minute. And so nothing I saw in testing made me less interested in F one. Uh so I'm I'm cautiously optimistic. Yeah, I'm I'm optimistic for

for it being weird. And that is that is what I'm excited about. Like it could go, these new regulations we we haven't really seen uh you know uh uh the sport actual racing with them yet. So it could be a complete disaster. But you know F Or race starts, which could be very interesting. addressed quickly but like that kind of stuff is just making me more excited to see how things shake out so um I'm excited for it and excited to have all of our listeners here with us for the season uh and

Until next week. Have a good race weekend, everyone, and we will see you all.