339 - Australian GP Prerace 2025

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Chill BeApples and welcome to Shift of One, a podcast about speedy race cars. That by the way is Aussie slang for everything will be alright. And of course it will be with these weird regulations. Uh an engine that might shake itself apart on the first lap, and literal bombs falling on Formula One host countries. What could go wrong? I'm Drew Scanlon joining me, Danny O'Dwyer. How are you, Danny? We're back. I've never known as little about Formula One as this moment.

It is beautiful. Even the track walk when I was putting it together, I was like, Okay, overtaking zones this year. I don't know. How does that work? How does anything work anymore? How batteries that don't charge up for qualifying? I what's what's going on? I don't know. Yeah.

It's a wild time. If you if you are just getting into Formula One this year, uh you know as much about F one as any F one fan. Great. Uh also joining joining us Rob Zachney. How are you Rob? You know, as long as the season goes, like c come December I was like, Man, I'm gonna be so bummed what No, not true. Uh the second they started testing, M can I really wanna watch testing and immediately just like just like back in, uh completely Completely zooted for F one.

Uh, if you are new to this podcast, a very warm welcome to you. And if you are new to Formula One itself, why? We recommend listening to our preseason primer episode, which assumes no prior F1 knowledge from you and explains how the sport works and who everybody is. So if you would like to go back and listen to that and get Up to speed.

It's a big one. It's a monster. Yeah. Big chunky. It took us like three weeks to record it because I I I had an internet outage um during one of the first recordings and then uh Rob was snowed in for like a week. So you would You had internet and electricity outages, right?

Yeah, the the uh the electricity isn't so bad. I got a uh propane generator, so it was uh Yeah, so that part wasn't so bad, but the internet goes out when I lose power. It's like the the the whatever the Fios line is to my place. seems to be dependent on power. Um

Like I think it comes in on the same lines, but also literally anytime his power dips or surges, like our internet uh freaks out. So there's there's some sort of dependency there that's different than when I had uh than when I had Xfinity. Yeah.

Um well, this show would not be possible. I would be remiss to uh miss without our look look we haven't done this in a while uh without our audience over at patreon.com slash shiftf one where every month we release ad-free versions of the podcast early for patreon videos that are exclusively for those patrons that cover racing documentaries and films, F1 video games, experiments with other racing series, and a lot of weird things.

support the show and get access to all that fun stuff, head over to patreon dot com slash shift f one or click the link in the show notes. What is going on over in Patreon land this month? Well first of all to let people know that uh through the weekend you can get access to our Patreon for ninety percent off your first month um by heading over to our Patreon and

slash no clip. Uh there is an offer code multi twenty six M U L T I twenty six. Uh but uh I don't think you actually need to put it in anywhere. It's a such it should just already be applied to So thank you very much to everyone who signed up over the past uh week or so. We really, really appreciate it. This whole thing is only made possible through you folks. And uh honestly, the people who the amount the large amount of people listen to this podcast is the reason we still do it.

There were many, many years we were like, Should we wrap this thing up? Should we wrap this thing up? And then suddenly a bunch more people turn up and F1 continues to be Yeah, have any are we coming up on like So has it been over ten years now, Drew?

I think this is our eleventh or twelfth. Yeah. Yeah. I feel like I've been on this longer than I think. And so I think y'all have been doing this way longer. Like Drew, you saying this is year eleven feels wrong to me. Cause I feel I feel like it was Ages ago. that the first uh Alt F one on Giant Bomb. Like I would be if if it's just eleven years, that would be surprisingly. Our first our first season was twenty four.

Wow, okay. Well how do you feel about this? Uh this month we're going to be recording a uh a special patron exclusive podcast for Drive to Survive season eight. Eight. Isn't that crazy? Remember the first one we were like, be great if they did this again. Well and the template for their entire documentary lineup really for for a lot of for a lot of what they make is Yeah. They're doing Drive to Survive but make it golf Drive to Survive Cycling, which was really good. Totally. Uh but yeah.

What should they have next? Louge. Something like curling. Remember all that drama drama in the uh in the Winter Olympics, all the all the controversy? Curl to survive. You could come on. Absolutely do an ice skating one. I think that would clean up. Yeah, that'd be fantastic. Um we will be doing Drive to Survive season eight. We'll be splitting it over two episodes, but we're gonna get them both out this month, folks. So uh our review of Drive to Survive season eight.

Patreon in the coming weeks. And of course you can check out all the ones we did uh last year, including one we did this year already, um Downhill Racer, the beautiful Robert Redford skiing movie. Speaking of the Winter Olympics. In the off season, look, it's tough to check the Shift F one email inbox. I just took a glance through there uh like a week ago. They Netflix or whatever company reached out and offered us

to watch Drive to Survive before it came out. Oh you're kidding. And we missed it. Sorry guys. So Sorry. Ne next year. Next year we'll get ya. You know what though? They never let you have the the full they they're always sending you a a more compressed, watermarked version of it. And by God, half the reason I'm watching it is for the full four K. That's true.

uh sound mix. So uh may maybe Netflix does this differently, but usually like we'll give you early access and like here's a 720p stereo mix of a show you were excited to watch. It's also uh and like the Apple logo is like bouncing like that DVD logo across the screen. With your name and home phone and address on it. Like don't even think about putting this on Torrent. Uh they said just send us your Netflix accounts. Oh.

So I think we blew it. Yet another s yet another opportunity where I could have made MK think I cool I'm cooler than I am. Uh and and I win.

Well, you know who is cool? Our incredible title sponsor patrons. Uh we've got some new names in here as well. So shout out to all of them who contribute at the highest level of our Patreon, an outrageous level, to be frank. Shadow 2, Warrizzle, R.I.P. Egberto, and Ig Igor Furman, TVGP.tv, that video game. Let's Margo Racing, Eaching Wells, Dr. V Deanj, It's a Me Ferrario, AI Generated Content, Mojo Nixon, Get Rich Odai Ryan, Agava ATX, Cyphus Training, Turf SES, Michael Mage.

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Thank you all so much. Our our uh our new uh dynamic f rear wing is covered in your fantastic names. Yeah, it's really it's increasingly unhanded.

I really enjoy. Yes. Speaking of we're gonna talk first about uh what we learned or didn't from Formula One testing, the the two uh weeklong uh events are more s sort of. Uh that's a whole Before we actually got going get going this year, F1 had some cars on track time for them to be able to do that.

figure out uh whether their their cars actually get around the track, come to grips on how these new regulations work. So we're going to figure out or we're gonna we're talk about some things that pop We sort of alluded to this in our primer, but to me, one of the most fun things about uh F1 is

The because there's there are regulations, right? There there are rules that your car must abide by. That's why it's called it's the that's the formula in form. But the fun part of the engineering side to me is how teams adhere to the letter of the law, but maybe not the spirit, and try to try to circumvent, try to find loopholes uh to gain Um they are always doing this and a new regulation set is a is a great opportunity.

uh how different teams uh approach the same problem. You know, th the cars the front wings look different, the the air intakes look different. Like people are solving things uh in different ways. We've got a bunch of power units, uh people I have to deal with it. One of the big things that early on in testing uh was revealed was that Mercedes appears to have gotten around one of the regulations in a really interesting way. The regulations stipulate that uh inside your engine

When the piston is compressing the air before it uh ignites and explodes, producing power, the c the ratio of compression can only be one to sixteen. Crucially They said in the regulations that uh we will measure that um compression ratio at uh ambient temperature. So Mercedes figured out a way to at ambient temperature have the compression ratio be one to six. But they said they said you didn't say anything about uh high what it what it should be at higher temperature.

And therefore, when the engine is actually running on track and warm, it's not an ambient temperature. Therefore, the compression ratio can be higher. Um one one uh eighteenth, right, which is what they ran out of. They haven't said that's the that's the guess that was last year's.

So everyone else, all the teams were like, Wait a minute, you can't do that. And Mercedes, like, Look, we talked with the FIA. They said it was cool. Um So this is and this is also kind of par for the course for uh the sport is one team does something crazy, either it gets called illegal or not. And then either the teams catch up uh or um

They nerf it. There's or they nerf it. Right. So that is that is what's happening here. Um however it's not happening immediately. So Mercedes isn't being penalized. Um Formula One has said, all right, we're gonna we're gonna change the language on this for next year, and we're going to um we're going to now mandate that we do the measurement at a high temperature, 130 degrees Celsius. Um but we're also going to make sure that you have enough time, all teams.

To uh make any adjustments that you need. And we are going to measure it halfway through the season. So in June. Um they're going to measure everyone's compression ratios at high temperatures. And Mercedes has signed on and said, like, yeah, we can. That's that Mercedes. So mid season they will enforce the rule now at high temperatures or they're just going to see where everyone's at?

They're going to enforce it. Okay, okay. But they're giving them that time to But the formal rule language doesn't change till next season. This is just like like midway through this season. Yeah. They're gonna rule will be the same. But it's the t it's the testing that is that

So Formula or uh Mercedes might enjoy an advantage until then, or they will enjoy an advantage. They are downplaying it. They say like, ah, it's just a couple horsepower. Other teams are like, it could be up to 13, which doesn't sound like a But over the course of a lap could be like three. So

I'm fascinated to see whether we can see on track uh this kind of advantage. The other thing is We're gonna be talking about testing in s in testing's like practice. You can kind of get broad strokes, but uh in testing especially teams are what we say, uh sandbag. Trying not to play their hand, right? They don't want to show all of their cards. Uh they want to leave a little bit back. So the really the only time that we the first time we are truly going to know.

what these teams can do is in qualifying where they're actually going all out. Bahrain and Melbourne are very different tracks. Um for one, uh there's no bombs being dropped close to Melbourne uh because of uh delight in in causing starting wars for seemingly little j justification. Um the uh the issue with Melbourne is that it's it's fast and energy management is going to be tricky.

Um the biggest thing that seems to be the the thing that teams were struggling with and sort of evolved over the two week of testing was the ability of this new close to fifty fifty uh between, you know, electric uh power Um the biggest issue was it seemed to be uh the ability for them to to charge the battery and also um what they were running into when it came to super clipping, which is the idea that the the cars were you know, at high speeds essentially.

Sticking the uh what what do you call those things on bikes we used to use for for your lamp, you know, your dynamo. Sticking your dynamo on the wheel, you know what I mean? To try and harvest energy when the when the uh when the the the car is uh at a certain clip. So yeah, I I I It's outside of the whole sandbagging issue and how much teams are able to adapt to it, obviously we have some pretty good broad strokes on who's near the bottom and who is near the top. Um

But there's the devil's in the detail on this one. And track by track, it's not just gonna be Australia. Like the first half of this season is just going to be question mark after question mark as teams adapt And ultimately track conditions, perhaps now more than ever, are going to dictate how fast these cars can go and crucially how qualified. Yeah. We could run into a sort of uh was it Monza twenty twenty three? Um

the the the year where all of uh everyone basically went out at the same time and there was no room um left for the end of quality. We we could start running into weird situations like that.

Yeah. Like you said, Danny, they are having to m manage because we have such a higher proportion now of the power coming from the battery, they have to think more about how to charge it, because it's just a bigger reservoir of energy. And so if you think about qualifying, you're trying to get your car in the optiple optimal performance for one. That means it used to only really mean tires. Like you you're trying to warm up your tires and make them as as sticky as possible. Keep your fuel low.

Right. But now we also have to think about the battery. So because it's bigger, we might see teams spending two preparation laps charging the battery and getting the the tires uh in And exactly because it's hard it's hard to get the tires in the window at the same time as charging the battery. It it you know, it's it's not just breaking hard into corners. So i the the the problem is the sort of the the spinning the plates as it were at the same time. Um and ultimately the other thing is like

Uh energy harvesting and deployment during the race. It's it's there's a lot more plates for the drivers to spin during a lap, regardless of if it's quality or not. And also strategy for all of this. You know, there's just so many different elements

It's going to be one of the years where watching practice is going to be essential, I think'cause it's Never before ha is there going to be so much stuff learned by the teams, both individually and as a group collective, during the course of uh the race weekend leading up to

I am really curious how this energy management stuff is going to play out over this season for the reasons you mentioned. And also just tactically when operating at race pace now, uh that there is So much more in play when it comes to energy deployment uh in F one and energy energy harvesting.

that I am curious to see if you see I'm what I'm really curious to see is do you see just broad convergence over like here's the most efficient way to operate the car during the lap. Or do you see more like stylistic or situational uh approaches to it based on like what you're trying to accomplish and that changes the the energy profile you're you're running. Like are you gonna see these things used more as

resources, which I think is is what F one wants. That that is the goal they are trying to achieve, right? Uh that that you have the that you have, you know, in in lieu of DRS, now when you get within one second someone You get the overtake. uh boost where you're allowed to harvest more energy, harvest and deploy more energy per lap, uh than than you are normally, but the energy still has you still have to do it. You you know, they don't just give this isn't like

Uh there's a special like battery reserve that the FIA gets to d s decide when you get to use. You still have to make the energy math work out. And so I am dying to see whether the rules they've designed create like gamesmanship and a chess match with energy, or if it kind of feels like at key moments in the race.

you got runners with their shoes their shoelaces tied together. You know what I mean?'Cause that'cause that is sometimes the the alarm people are having about it. You know, I don't think anybody's is stoked about the notion of uh you know the the super clipping being used to like uh start harvesting power when the car should be going at its fastest and now it's like slowing itself down to charge that battery because there's no other way to to to harvest.

Yeah, and I do wanna highlight that uh just'cause we might be hearing it a lot. If you if you think about uh like a really long straight, the car is deploying And by the end of a straight, sometimes the battery would be depleted and it was only the internal combustion engine pushing the car forward. The drivers would call or the teams would call this clip.

So we had no more no more. Now we have super clipping. So when your battery runs out before you reach the end of the straight, now instead of just the battery not providing power, now the engine also has to push the car forward and recharge the battery. So that means that

you have less of the internal combustion engine pushing the car forward because some of it has to be uh diverted to charging the battery. Yeah, and you you can hear it if you if you listen to onboards on the cars, you can you know, if you listen to the RPM, if you listen to You can hear the other. Yeah.

Sort of tastes bad in the mouth of an F one fan. You know what I mean? Where you're going as fast as you can, fast as you can, and then it sort sort of just eases off, you know, two thirds down the street. You're like Are we or are we not the pinnacle of Motorsport. And look, the the cars on the last day of testing got within the two perc t the the two the two seconds uh um off last year's uh pace that they had promised. So the cars are fast, like the cars are fast.

They're smaller, they're more nimble. I don't have a problem with you know that. I think I think they figured out a an interesting balance that is better than that. And I've always been I've always thought that sort of the th there's an Icarus like um over over uh

desire for the speed of these cars to be faster and faster every year. Like at a certain point you're you're diminishing the sport in other ways, especially because the tracks, some of which were built in nineteen fifties, were not built for cars to go this fast.

Um but uh you know, the if nothing else that they're certainly within the window of last year, although some of them more so than others. Yeah. Another thing that might happen is that George Russell pointed out, you may be You might have to drive slower in a corner because you're charging your battery. for the overall lap time to be less than if you went through the corner faster, if that makes sense. Which is it's just it's gonna be a a little it is gonna take a bit to to wrap

It's been fun watching the drivers come to grips with some of this stuff, uh, and and talk and share their thoughts. Like yeah, you have like Max Verstappen's been a sourpuss about it, uh as as he often is about like changes and and also like

I think anytime you have a moment like this, the driver who's been f heavily favored under previous regulations is going to enjoy the changes less'cause like it it's gonna be a a move away some from some of the things he's been strongest with, but By and large, I think a lot of the drivers um You know, they they they have a professional obligation to be company men when it when it comes to this and withhold judgment. But it has been interesting watching them talk about

The way this will require style shifts, it will reward different uh stylistic preferences. If you watched Team Torque, uh Alex Albin uh sort of his bold prediction for the season was he thinks Lewis Hamilton is really favored by regulation changes. Uh the the way cornering has been changed with the tires, um

Is something that pr that really does favor Hamilton's uh overall driving style. So you you're you're gonna see a lot of a lot of changes to this. And I think my hope is the thing that Russell's describing that there will be a lot of different stylistic pr approaches to this, that there won't just be some sort of boring optimum. But F1 does tend to converge on boring optimum optimums, right? Like that is that is the problem of optimization is that once a once an once a solution is figured out,

everyone starts to converge on it and it could be that, you know, you got all this rigor moral to achieve everyone doing the same thing every lap. Hopefully it doesn't go that way. All right, we're gonna take a quick break and then we're gonna be back with uh what what this might mean for race start. McDonald's är stolt sponsor av melodifestivalten så tillåt oss att presentera ett av våra bidrag: Festivalmenyn Sour Cream Onion Company, 4 Pepper Chicken Street.

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Okay, so uh another thing that we mentioned in the primer is that we have this um kinetic energy recovery. But what we've lost versus the previous uh regulations is the heat part, the heat energy recovery, the MGU A. Uh it was way complicated, it was really expensive, um and it it has been axed for those. But that part is also apparently what helped spin the turbo.

Now, if you're not a gearhead, a turbocharger uh is basically a tiny jet engine that compresses air before it goes in the engine because the higher uh pressure in a in the engine the more fuel you can put in because the you want the uh fuel rate So the more air you can put in the More power you can get out. So they compress the air with the turbocharger before it.

The MGU H used to spin up your turbo, but we don't have that anymore. So now Teams are having to when they're sitting on the starting line before uh they take off, to spin their turbo up, they have to basically put their foot on the gas for much longer. uh to spin up that turbo. Ferrari knew about this and said, well, if we're gonna if that's the way that this is gonna go, we're just gonna make a smaller turbocharger so that it won't uh take as long to spool up.

The F the the the Formula One or the FIA, the governing bodies have basically said, you know what, this is now we think this is a safety concern. Yeah. Because if some teams are uh

launching immediately off the line and other teams are still spooling their turbochargers and thus have lower performance, you might get crashes at the at the start. Yeah. So this this is a like a sort of a a a Something that happened a lot in previous errors of Formula One when you had packed fields and you know, not the level of sort of investment and quality and reliability that we enjoy now.

that essentially at the start of the race and you you've seen it before in F1 and another formulas, you know, imagine for example you are near the back of the pack and the car in seventh doesn't make it off the line. What's going to happen? Yeah. Stalls, doesn't doesn't move, sits there. What happens is everyone goes, the top six drive away.

The cars that are behind seven, nine, eleven, so on, they're going at a slow enough pace where they're able to get around seven. But you don't see it happening because you're stuck in the back. in a low car trying not to hit the cars around you. By the time you get up to the part of the track where seven is, you're now going a hundred miles an hour.

And getting out of the way is much harder, and you essentially ram a car that's standing, which is d incredibly dangerous for both um uh drivers because basically all of the energy of the impact is gone. It's not like you like tapped each other going around a corner or, you know, hit a wall or something. You know, this is

pr pretty catastrophic. So yeah, it's it's it's it's definitely a massive issue. It like if if this happen there's going to be a lot of people holding their breath on The the one good thing it seems to be that this might be more of an issue for the teams at the back because they have less time when they come around on their formation line. to you know line up. Usually when the last car lines up, little green flag man starts waving at the back.

And says we're all good. Um, which you know, isn't going to leave uh our friends at Aston Martin much time to uh to spin up their turbos. Um so yeah, like you said, they've had to sort

I do feel a little bad for Ferrari from the standpoint of like they they saw a rule change coming and they had an appropriate solution for it. Um and this this fix for safety reasons does diminish an important starting line advantage. uh that they had that they had carved out. And you know, it it it juxtaposes a bit with Mercedes situation where Ah, so you figured out that we can't test for compliance to the uh to the compression ratio we set.

Uh and you use, you know, it it seems like it it's the materials expand a bit uh at operating temperatures to uh you know, to increase that compression ratio. Um and they're gonna they they will get to use that advantage, uh at least for a while. Whereas Ferrari, you know, th they're kind of having that having that nerfed, uh, just because their advantage comes at a point where it's a little more dangerous to have people leaving the starting line uh at rapidly different rate rates of speed.

It would also be uh a little dangerous if you allowed your car in low down force trip. In the primer, we can now have we have active aerodynamics. The car is basically two modes straight mode and corner mode. Um it seems like not X and Y, is that what they were gonna they're gonna go by again?

Um yeah, so it seems like the the default is corner mode. So like car will come out of the pits in corner mode and then in certain designated areas, um regardless of how close they are to other cars, they Straight mode, which moves the aerodynamics into a mode that uh or into uh arrangements that are Low drag that makes them go really fast in the straight mode. There is a straight mode zone on the starting uh the start-finish straight of every track. But when you're at low speeds.

So i the equivalent would be starting the race with the deer. Right. Which we've seen DRS systems fail in past years, where the we would get stuck open and guess what? That car can't turn. Yeah. Like it is it is flies off the track wildly dangerous. Yep. So the the rules now state that Which seems you know, D R S didn't open until the end of the first lap anyway, so you know what I mean? It kinda

Uh sorry, so we talked about Ferrari uh and their turbo charger. They also have come up with uh my favorite uh thing from testing. Did you see Sam Collins gloss on this? Did you see his big moment on during testing?

Okay, so uh if you do not you should subscribe, obviously, to shift F one, but if you have a little more F one subscription money, you should get in on that F one TV premium. Uh'cause it'cause it's awesome. But Uh they do a lot of fun shows there and they have a tech expert, Sam Collins, who is just a a a big he has big like

children's science teacher on public TV uh ener energy, but about about F one. He's worked in but for a bunch of teams, right? Like he's he's been in the pits. He he understands I guess he's taking a step back this year because he's running for his local council. Um You're kidding. So yeah. So he spotted Ferrari tried to keep this under wrap.

Uh but he spotted they they came out early when no one was on track during uh the second week of testing and just ran this just ran this configuration like for once or twice, but the cameras caught it and and Sam saw what it was. So the way he explained it is going back to Formula 3, back when Lewis Hamilton, I think, was in the series. I think Fred Versuwer was running a team around there too. One team had experimented with Flipping the rear wing upside down to reduce drag on a fast track.

Because the way pla the way car wings work, right? The Bernoulli effect is depending on the orientation of the wing, you can generate lift for a plane, or you can generate down force for a car. The downforce, as you might expect, also generates drag, whereas generating lift reduces the pressure on the on the tail of the car uh tail of the vehicle, and it goes faster a little more easily. What Ferrari did, remember all D R S systems have been you just

flip the wing open so that you minimize the angle of incidence relative to the plane of the vehicle. So the wing goes from being a wing to as close as you can get to a blade. uh just sort of straight facing into into the into the air. That is the solution pretty much everyone has adopted. What Sam spotted was that the Ferrari rear wing

had flipped entirely upside down when it went into straight mode. Into like a plane wing. Yes. It had just flipped the wing from its downforce configuration into a lift configuration. uh which Sam theorized would create a sign like meaningfully higher top speed because now not only have you minimized like the incidence of of the strike, you're actually generating now lift. and taking some drag off the car. Uh i it like beyond what you can do just by having it uh be a a sort of neutral instance.

So that is that is Ferrari's theory. Now I think the in the when this was tested in the Formula Three You know, nobody pays that much attention to Formula Three. I don't think the the team did did that well, but Frara wanted to keep his under wrap. We don't know how effective it is going to be ultimately, but Sam Collins seemed pretty enthusiastic'cause just'cause intellectually

This makes a lot of sense and seems like it might be really effective at improving on what DRS has done historically. So

We will see if it if it is effective. I'm sure you're gonna see a lot of teams tweaking their rear wing design so they they too can have a flippy wing. I mean it's also just fun to look at. It looks so cool. It's in the same zone as like, you know, the fan car. A six-wheeled car and Mercedes the d remember the DOS system where they would push their steering wheel away uh forward, like away from the driver to Change the toe of the car. So strange. This is yeah.

Is what we live for. Did did we mention at the end of the race start section that that they are adding five seconds to that? Yes. We did. Yeah. So I think it's when when the final car pulls up at the back, it'll be um a minimum of five seconds. It's called a stroll rule, I think. Yeah. At least for the start of the season. Well w you said it, Danny. Do you want to get into uh Aston Martin's

Yeah. Whoa. Yeah, yeah. The Adrian Nui dice roll has uh has landed on on a pair of snake eyes. Yeah, I so let's talk about Austin for a second. So Austin Martin are in a weird spot because they clearly have like there is a people talked a lot about the design of this car being

daring and different and doing different things. The the issue that they're running into seems to be purely based with the ability for the engine to adequately harvest energy uh towards the battery and for So the the issue they are running into seems to be just kind of the fundamental new formula. It doesn't seem to be like they like went down a development route. I mean, who knows if the two are connected, but it's it seems like this is an issue that

uh is also so generally widespread and they had so little time in testing. I mean, I think the last day of testing they had four or five untimed laps um that they're just kind of Because it doesn't work. Yeah. So th the they're they're just kinda stuck until they can get enough data and

fix this thing. So they're data if you don't run, you know. So so so I don't know if they're going to be back of the pack for the entire season. It's probably likely that They will figure this thing out at some stage in over the course of the the first quarter of the season.

and then, you know, at least make it past newcomers Cadillac, um, who seem to be doing fine. Like sort of as we suspect that they're at the back of the pack. They're a new team. It makes complete sense. You're not gonna come into F one and start winning. Um uh races right away, especially with a brand new team. This isn't like a like a rebrand or a taking over an old team like Braun or something like that.

These folks are entirely new. And they're using Ferrari power units. Yes. So they don't have that hurdle. that Honda does. I I'm I am interested though to to to know how this like where the fingers are pointing because the the hyphen race dot com has a good uh article about Um as you said, Danny, they they don't they know what is happening. They don't know why, because uh you know in their in the lab it doesn't have this problem, but on track.

Um there is a quote from there and I'm gonna uh open this up so I I get it right. But basically And I another a good piece of color from the primer that I should mention here is that Rob, I think you described Red Bull, their engine also came from a Honda project, but that's different people. So this this Honda engine. Uh you know The Honda B team? Well, it's they've had to stand it up from scratch again, basically. Okay. Um Okay, I'm uh let's see.

It's gonna take me a second to find it. I think I found the the issue. I think I found what you're describing as the issue. Yeah. Okay. Uh so yeah, coming from the race. Uh there was a route there's a press conference, a pre a previously scheduled press conference, uh with Honda Racing Corporation leaders, Koji Watanabe and Iquo Takeshi. Uh and they admitted to suffering a number of issues in Bahrain, uh quoting directly from the article now, the most severe of which relates to the battery.

Honda observed abnormal vibrations that caused damage to the battery, although it is not sure whether the battery system itself is the initial problem. What Honda can see is the battery pack is being shaken because the structure it is attached to is vibrating more severely than expected. Honda's investigating a combination of factors that likely cause these vibrations to emerge and running virtual track testing at Sakura base with a chassis engine and gearbox combined.

but is yet to pinpoint the root cause. If we could identify a single cause, it would be easier to fix. But because multiple linked factors generate the vibration, we don't know whether fixing it, fixing just one will solve. So is that we what you were looking for, Drew? Uh it's a little further down, and I'll quote again from the article. Honda has previously said a desire from Aston Martin to make the overall engine length shorter.

And more compact, prompted revisions to most of the engine's peripheral equipment and how it is integrated into the car, although the design of the engine itself. So I don't know that we can totally lay the blame here at Hunt.

So this is basically this seems one to one with uh a documentary we've talked about many times in this podcast. Grand Prix Driver on Amazon, which covered Honda coming back into the sport, partnering with McLaren, uh at a team where Fernando Alonso was expecting great things from this new partnership. And the documentary was I I I will go to my grave believing the documentary was meant to sort of be a work of corporate corporate triumphalism and a Fernando Alonso propaganda piece, et cetera.

But what the cameras caught was the unraveling of this technical relationship between McLaren uh and Honda and also unraveling of relationships within McLaren as a as well. But it all stemmed from the fact that when the Honda engine was delivered it didn't work for worth a damn with the car. And the documentary being largely from McLaren's perspective kind of indicated that Honda had had failed McLaren here.

But I think the broader consensus about this is one of the tricks about being just an engine manufacturer supplying a team that you don't run is that Just like you were pointing out, like Adrian knew he wanted the engine to be small. That is a huge thing to ask of an engine manufacturer. This is why the person building the car and the person building the engine kind of need to be joined at the hip. They really need to be understanding what the other is doing and what to expect.

That appear that didn't happen with the the case of Honda McLaren uh back then. And it appears not to have happened here as well. The other parallels are the clarion issue had a lot of uh major turnover in the organization at a key point of this relationship. Same thing happened here. Adrian Newey was brought on. uh to to sort of take over this program. A lot of people reshuffled and it just kind of seems like in addition to the fact Honda was now restarting an F one program

It does not seem like Honda and Aston really were able to coordinate what they were doing as well as they needed to. And the result is an engine that kind of can't run. Like they had to stop running and testing because they were down to one battery.

It's not not great. Do we do do we want to talk about the rest of uh the teams as well or yeah, I'd say um we can kinda go down a Put some gloss on what we think ev or or vibes from every team. Yeah, sure. Um it's gonna be interesting. So what we think McCl uh um uh Aston Martin's probably at the bottom, Cadillac is probably after them. Um I just want them to Well I don't I don't think I think Cadillac is this is probably in a better

Aston looks like currently, yeah, yeah. Um William seems like it might be the next one. Um you know they they had a rough start to testing um and definitely figured out some fundamental aspects, you know. The the cars evolved so you know, w couple of weekends and then they take it out and you're like, Oh no, the wheels are the wrong size. We go you know, it's it's kind of that level of of fixing stuff. Um but yeah they I'd say them probably next following

I don't know where I don't I'm not quite sure where Haas are. Renault have done well. Renault seemed like they're in a good spot. W the thing about Williams, the rumor is that they their cars overweight. Um I'm I'm hoping that it's a relatively easy fix. Get some G L P one into that thing, you know what I mean? Just, you know, stop drinking.

I mean Ferrari I think could uh could quietly be good, um I uh or you know, do the Ferrari thing and break Ferrari fans' hearts once again. Um and I I think that might also Um I don't know. I think all eyes are gonna be on Mercedes, uh, maybe because of this compression ratio stuff, but also they were really reliable in testing. They put over. And presumably the Mercedes uh teams, you know, McLaren, are they gonna repeat or be eclipsed by the work?

This year? It ki it kinda looks like from the top down it kinda looks like Mercedes. I'm gonna go Mercedes, Ferrari, McLaren, Red Bull is kind of the Okay. I have no idea where Red Bull. Yeah. Well it's just with between sandbagging and like some of these cars are gonna break down and then obviously you've got, you know, uh the the massive gulf in experience. Um Our good friend uh no is a

Yeah. Yeah, uh racing bulls, I mean, are also in an interesting situation. They seem like they're kind of still middle pack, but like it's it's hard to tell between them, Haas Renault, kind of where everyone ends up shaking out. Where I think the biggest improvement Yep. Yeah, Alpine seemed like yeah, I mean you can only imagine. But but genuinely they looked good. Um not just like marginally competent.

And from where they were last year, then looking good is a pretty huge turnaround. Like, uh we'll we'll talk more about this in you know, we when we discuss Drive to Survive for the for the patrons, but Uh there's a lot of issues I I have with Flavio Bri Briatore, but it does sort of seem like the the key decision he came in, which is I'm gonna come in and shut down this this benighted engine program we've got running.

Uh seems like it was the right thing competitively. Uh it it seems to have allowed the team to to focus on other things and not be held back by uh you know what was going on with the power unit. So yeah, I was surprised how much they turned things around. I was yeah, it was surprising how much Williams does not look fully ready for prime time. Um

And then yeah, among the big four, I just have no idea. There's a lot of early buzz that like this is George Russell's year, Mercedes looks great, but everyone's accusing everyone of sandbagging. Uh, you know, I If I had to guess, uh I like I do think Mercedes is probably in the strongest place, especially because we are we've newly arrived with the new engine spec and that is where they

that is was the c cornerstone of their dominance uh with the with the previous generation of rules. Uh so I I would probably tip them. And then Oh, I wanna believe that Ferrari's gonna be in there competing. I do, but I fundamentally I think have more confidence in McLaren at this juncture. Um, so that's that's probably where I'd go. And then I'd probably say Ferrari and then Red Bull. Okay, I wanna ask two quick questions about some of this stuff. First of all, Audi, do you have any feeling on

how they've ended up shaking out of this. They seem like they're mid packy, lower side of mid pack maybe. I I think if if they are, that would be impressive considering this is also the first year that they've had their package And then my second question is, is Max Restappen gonna take a sabbatical? I don't think so, no, but I like Max is an odd guy. Um, you know, we've talked about this before. I don't think he is kidding when he talks about like he doesn't like a lot of the stuff that goes.

Yeah. I also do wonder a bit There are a lot of things with him where as persnickety as he can be, uh, he also seems like someone who likes having like close collaborative relationships, and that's really not a And so I do think he is not bluffing when he talks about how much like sports car racing and stuff like WEC does appeal to him.

Because I do think one, like they are cool series. They are cool cars. That is that is undeniable. Uh and you race different tracks. There's a lot to recommend it. He loves old school classic tracks. Uh and that is really not where F one is head headed right now. No, you wouldn't have to travel uh as as crazy far either. It's so you know what I mean, he's got a new kid, he's got more money than than he'll ever

I mean. So I I think fundamentally, you know, I I think sometimes he frames it as I don't know if I'm gonna stay in the sport'cause I don't like the direction of F one, but I don't think I don't know if he's gonna stay in the sport long term regardless because I think there's parts of it that he really finds unappealing. Like the more we learn about it, this is not a like The em you're you're basically a politician, right? It's like the the the F one calendar for for a driver is like

uh the closing months of a campaign. It's been uh where you are constantly at events, you are meeting with important sponsors, VIPs. There's a lot of stuff that goes to being an F one driver that Max fundamentally I don't think really signs up for. Uh it does it out of obligation. Especially if we've been doing it for basically your entire Like at a certain stage you must be. And I I don't think he has that sort of like Lewis Hamilton has that sort of desire to, you know, beat the Schumacher.

Like you know, get g haul in all these championships. I don't know if Max has that. I don't think that's Part of his motivation. You know, I'm he's very motivated and I think he likes winning a lot, obviously, and he's incredibly talented, but I I don't get the impression that he's like

he's in this sport to to to be to get all the accolades, you know, beer break all the records and and wander off. He's not quite Nico Rosberg, but I do think at a certain stage You know, if you can go out on top and if you can go out by your own you know, on your own on on your own sword, then I think that's something that increasingly a lot of these drivers are ha are happy to do. All right, well

From testing to the news. Rob, you've got a couple of doozies here before we get to Australia. Take it away. Yeah, so as Danny alluded to uh earlier, um over the past many, many years, F one has become increasingly enmeshed with, as always, petro dollars, but also petro states and Middle East. uh eastern uh monarchies and so has put a lot of the F one calendar now in Gulf states Abu Dhabi, Bahrain, uh Qatar.

And now we have a major war in the Gulf, uh, started by the US and Israel. Um, and uh I Iran has a large missile capability and has already been returning fire. into US allies, which is basically a rundown of the states I just I just mentioned. Right. Uh like countries that that are hosting F one races this season and hosting F one races quite soon. Uh now this has come up before uh when uh God what was it w was it what was the track where Hoothi Rebels were firing rockets? Oh it's Jeddah.

Was it Java? Yeah, there was there was uh something you could see an explosion from the track during practice. Right. And and so like F one has had brushes with just the consequences of like, you know, forever war in the Middle East before. This is a different scale, uh than than that. Uh this is th this is a major this is a major uh exchange that's happening between uh Iran and uh you know the these countries and the US forces based within them.

And so that has thrown things into doubt. Now, we don't know what that means. F one is soft soft pedaling this right now. What what they're saying is uh You know, they are monitoring the situation. Uh you know, this is a classic, you know. Aren't we all? Yeah. Uh, you know, they're hoping for everyone ev everyone's safety, but they they are going to you know, they're they're they're gonna be making decisions as the situation evolves. I think there's a couple things. One Um

You know, this is a if if you are thinking this is gonna wrap up within just a couple of weeks, I think you're kidding yourself. Like if this is Rob when has a war in the Middle East? Ever. Swift. And decisive. Yeah. So I You know, the the F one calendars doesn't start there, but they're supposed to be in the region soon. They were gonna have a tire test, uh, at at one of the tracks, uh when I think it was in uh

I think in Abu Dhabi. And then the US base started getting hit uh there. And so Perelli canceled the tire test. And it's worth mentioning maybe for people who don't just understand geographically kind of where this is at. Like obviously Iran is a massive. Of country. It like takes up a significant chunk of this sort of I don't know what you call it, like Eurasian uh uh subcontinent between Yeah.

You know, the western coast of the Persian Gulf. You know what I mean? Like it's like and that's where Bahrain, Qatar and the UAE, where Abu Dhabi is based, are are all. Like it's it's across a narrow ocean, a narrow sea base. from Iran. So it this isn't like oh, it's like somewhere in the you know, we we're talked about Baku. Baku's race, for instance, this year is being postponed. We talked about in the the season primary. Sorry he's being shifted to the Saturday because of um

Uh a remembrance day, I guess, for the uh the For a war they launched. For a war they launched, yeah, the N the Gorno Karabakh uh uh war. So Um we joked about that and then the next day Trump awarded Medals of Honor for the uh operation to kidnap Maduro. Uh and I was like, Oh yeah, we're just uh like playing the hits, like huh, we did something morally morally sketchy. Uh better

Be better say that it was a heroic and brave thing we did. The Medal of Honor, you know, the first recipients of it were I think after the Civil War, people who engaged in massacring natives. Oh really in the U S Army. Oh, so it's business as usual.

Yeah, like they're they they like they they awarded like medals of honor to the entire unit that uh engaged in wounded knee. Oh wow. If you're familiar with the US history, wounded knee is uh massacre uh toward the end of the the the wars uh on the on the plains. the US military portrayed it as battle, it was a massacre of a civilian uh village. But to sort of mask that fact they they gave up medals of honor. So yeah, uh proud tradition of using medals of valor to obscure the fact that like

Maybe overall what was happening was not the most valorous thing. So y yeah, and it's impossible to get away from this stuff. in F one. You know what I mean? People will be like, Keep your politics out of sports and all that and it's like, look.

I that'd be nice. I think we're all pretty politically active, maybe. You know what I mean? And and sometimes you can wedge it in. F1 is so deeply uh in in inserted into the wheels of power, money and influence that sort of corrupt And and control so much of our day to day lives that it Yeah, that it's uh and and a big part of this is just the geographical reality of the fact that we have a lot of race.

on the Arabian Peninsula. Jeddah's we haven't talked about as well in Saudi Arabia like And and current and this conflict is like, you know, if you're talking about Israel launching a lot of these rockets, that's that's the whole other side of the peninsula where this stuff is coming from. And and also like this isn't new in F one, like when when was it uh I forgot what year it was, but the year that the tanks from Saudi Arabia rolled into Bahrain, like that w the the race got cancelled'cause

drivers protested. Like that this this stuff has, you know, material consequences to our entertainment needs as well as our our sort of moral center. And yeah, I uh the fact that these races are super soon, like Bahrain is supposed to be the twelfth of September. That's a month away. Well Saudi Arabia's the nineteenth of April, like September's not a month away. Sorry sorry, the night April. Twelfth of April. Bahrain is twelfth of April. And I didn't know. So last weekend.

Yeah. And then W C is supposed to be running in in Qatar uh I think this weekend. Iran is supposed to be in the World Cup. Which takes place in among other countries, the country currently bombing them, America. So like How's that gonna work? President Trump was just received the FIFA Medal of Peace. He did. Infantino said this guy would do this. Well it once you get the medal, then you can start, you know

uh kidnapping presents and and killing Ayatollahs. You know what I mean? Like once you've they used to have it right. They awarded the Peace Prize.

after he murdered a bunch of people and they were like, Hey, wait to stop killing a bunch of people. Well they the No Baxi's rule is you're allowed to give your peace prize to s your Nobel prize to somebody else as well, if they're a despot and you're and you're a a a sh a Well and and something else so just uh something to emphasize uh here I think is Yep, we're a bunch of F one fans, but Danny is from a white European nation that unusually for them is a victim of colonialism.

Uh and the exceptionally improved Imperial h hegemon. Uh and and so uh like I think it's it's worth remembering that Danny has lived among the English and the Americans for most of his life. But has a very different perspective, I think, and a bracing one. Uh that that I think a lot of uh like US and UK listeners might not see the world the same way because they have always sort of approached it from within the imperial bubble.

uh and not as sort of a subject to it. I mean I have I have family who have been for instance, I you know, I have family who are involved in the armed force. in Lebanon, in Palestine, like the like we're you know, we we don't sort of we we grew up with eyes open to a lot of this stuff back home and you know it's'cause it kind of mirrors it's a bit of it's a bit of a colonial survivors. But um but uh look you know, obviously Rob you're incredibly you know well spoken.

It's just, you know, you can't avoid it. And and and you certainly can't when there is supposed to be two races happening in in these areas like very close to a conversation. There's one last thing that I that scares the shit out of me. Um Flights in and out of the

Yeah, well they've kind of literally the other day Kuwait shot down multiple US fighters. We're on the same side as war, but Kuwait uh fired rockets and brought down three American F fifteens. First of all, there were reasons for that. Yeah, I think those are the first F fifteen Are they first ever ones lost in combat?

I think. Um I know that it has a a flawless air to air track record, but uh certain they they've had to have been shot down before now, but Uh the point is like you got missiles flying everywhere, you have missile interdiction systems uh like reacting and trying to shoot down aerial objects right and left.

So in addition to gee, I hope rockets don't start landing near the tracks or near where people are staying, uh I don't know that I would I don't know that you get me on a flight that moves through that airspace. That's a that's a this is and this is perhaps one of the most difficult parts of the world to get to without air flight. You know what I mean? Like I've flown into Dubai a few times over the years and

Like you wanna you wanna drive from Istanbul to you know, to to Bahrain? I don't think so. Um Speaking of which I'm also uh Andrew as a pilot, I'm uh interested did you see all that stuff about that weird laser system in Dallas that keeps closing the airport down there? The'cause they i keep seeing like Quincenera balloons flying over from from from the the border and and shooting them out of the sky. It shot a US drone out of the sky. Uh

uh this uh laser deterrent system is something Dallas? It was Dallas, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah. So you know Austin Grand Prix as well. Fly into Austin. Don't fly into Dallas. Yeah. Yeah, I mean uh civilian Uh you know, over Ukraine. So we don't race in Russia anymore. You know what I mean? Like this stuff is this is part of the tapestry of F1 is the Sochi race is gone, much to Lando.

All right. Let's let's yeah, let's move on to McLaren. Uh Rob, do we finally have some closure here on the Pelot situation? Oh my god. The saga. Yeah, Pilot fucked up, but also he won multiple championships, so it doesn't really matter. So it kinda came to the resume. Yeah. All right. Tough to be called. Alex Pelot is kind of the Max Verstappen of a of IndyCar right now. He's he's a dominant Spanish driver. He's won uh like, I think, four of the last five championships.

Uh he s we won the season opener. Um he's he's the top of his top of his game. He drives for uh uh Chipkinassie, a a sort of high achieving IndyCar team. And McLaren wanted to poach him from Ganassi uh early in sort of his rise to predominance. Um and Pilot took that deal and said he was going to go to McLaren.

Now, McLaren has an IndyCar program, but Pelot's interest in McLaren was getting into its F1 program and making his way into F1. And then McLaren As people might remember, also had a very public and turns out these two things were deeply related. They basically nip it. Oscar Piastri out of out from under Alpine and brought him into McLaren to become McLaren driver, and the rest is is history there, where Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri were sort of clearly the uh intended future of

of McLaren and F one. And Pillow realized that that didn't really square with any possibility of him making his way into uh form Formula One with the team. And so he walked away from the deal, uh, and went running back to Ganassi, who he kind of had a public split with, you know, t to begin the whole saga. But now he went running back to Ganassi because you know, he had a championship winning car, he knew the team and he would rather be driving for Genassi and IndyCar.

than working as a McLaren driver in IndyCar or like hoping for a reserve driver role in F1 uh and waste his his prime racing uh years in in in that way. But he had signed a contract with McLaren and so he just Breached it and said, I'm not gonna drive for McLaren. He went back to to Genassey and McLaren sued for damages. Uh Pileau fought it, uh, trying to argue that he had been deceived by Zach Brown, that uh the F1 stuff had never really been a good faith offer, and he was he was tricked.

But the court case didn't really go super well for him, uh because you know it's It's kinda preposterous. Like everyone knows what the score is. The nego the contract said what it said. Uh he was never promised an F one seat. Uh he just didn't like the the path he was uh you know, the real the the fact the path he thought he was gonna walk was was closing.

Uh and so they kind of got their clocks cleaned in in court. Now crucially, Genassi said whatever happens, he's gonna pay for uh w whatever s whatever settlement or or verdict is reached in the case. And it was settled, um, but it was basically a surrender. Um Pelot had to release a statement. apologizing to McLaren.

to Zach Brown for uh saying that Zach Brown deceived him or behaved less than honorably, uh in his statement. Pillow had to admit that was not true and and Zach Brown had been stand up about the entire thing. You also had to apologize to the Ganassi racing team uh for having pulled them into this and having them put in this position. It's amazing. Um So on top of that I think the total price tag of this was twenty million dollars. Oh my god.

Uh I think that might be inclusive of no, sorry. No. Uh legal fees. The legal fees I think were eighteen million and the settlement was twenty. And so uh Oh. Okay, no no no no. Actually okay, no, it's better. So these are pounds, not dollars. That's worse. That's worse. So it's eight million legal fees that Pelow's on the hook for, a twelve million pound settlement. Okay. Uh and so the court case cost

Two thirds as much as the ultimate settlement. Uh and Pillow basically had to eat a lot of public crow over the entire thing. Uh so apparently being paid a reduced rate. I think for this reason. That is. Yeah. There you go. It's it's it's like it's like when like like a like a husband is caught cheating by the like the two other partners involved. You know they they have to apologize to both of them.

It's like a like a although I I feel for him'cause he wa you know, he was caught in like Piastri didn't get in any trouble for basically leaving Alpine in there. You know what it'll which seemed to be the case as well. So yeah, I don't know. He he uh he obviously He's definitely gonna need to get into F1 now, it sounds like, if he wants to pay some of his debt. Well, so this is the funny thing though, like

It's the cost of doing business, right? Like it ultimately he won two more indie card championships, maybe three since the saga started. Right. Uh like in terms of I think the foolish part was fighting at this. Because like, dude, you broke a contract that like you just no longer wanted to honor'cause it was in your interest not to honor it. And that's fine. But It was always a long shot that you were gonna be able to say, uh, no, like, yeah, I signed the contract, but

when we looked into each other's eyes, it was clear that Zach meant for me to go into F one. That's just that was never gonna hold up. So I think it was silly. But in terms of how it worked out for for him, Um, pretty smart. Like this is still this is still worth it to get a championship-winning race car. Uh, and they seem to be.

Poised for yet another year of dominating IndyCar, uh having won the season opener. So very funny way for this all to have panned out. Uh speaking of uh American racing series, did you watch Daytona?

No, I did not. Okay. Rob, did you give a give it a word? No, I heard it was really exciting, especially the end. Yeah, the end was uh Heartbreaking if you're a Northern Californian uh S Sonoma Raceway fan for uh for for uh Kyle Kyle Larson. Um he uh he almost got his first win, but it came down to the last corner in the course. Several spin outs. There was a c there was one big one. Um no one got injured, I don't believe, over the course of the the week. Interesting. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah, Daytona always they always say the only Malap that matters at Daytona is the last one. Increasingly the only corner that matters is the last one. If you're in fourth or fifth, That's a good spot to be going into the last corner of the tona. You can just keep out of the way. Who knows? You might end up uh you might end up you know I was about to say drinking some milk, but that's uh Drinking some

Who doesn't want a big frosty glass of milk, Hanned do you um in in the Florida sun? Milk was a bad choice. What about fosters, Danny?

Sure, let's let's do it. Let's go down under. Time my kangaroo down sport, etc. etc. Uh very excited to do a track walk for uh Melbourne, for Albert Park, because I was there only three or so months ago. Maybe five months ago now. Back in uh late October, I think it was. I was in uh I flew to Sydney.

For South by South West, I did a a talk there with some other awesome people. Um and then I flew down to Melbourne'cause I wanted to see some Australia while I was there. I was only in the country for about a week or so. Um Did some uh research down there. I work in the world of video game documentaries, so I was chatting to people who run studios and museums down there. There's an amazing video game museum in Melbourne that has a uh a fantastic um

Game World's exhibition. I met the curators there for that. Had a great time. Apparently right after I have a friend who um is a uh um Marshall at the Melbourne Grand Prix every year. And he um said he sent me a couple of pictures there two days ago of a really great Formula One Um what would you call it? Exhibition.

that is currently on in Mel Melbourne. So if you can go if you can get there, go to it. The first picture he sent me or no, the picture he posted on Instagram that was like, you know, F one fans will get it was Uh this picture which is of a burnt pair of gloves. Um are they Grosjans? They are Grosjans. Oh and they also have the wheel there as well.

Amazing. Yeah. So he had a he said it was um fantastic. But while I was there, I of course drove over to the track. And the thing about Albert Park is that it is It's a park. It's it's like a beautiful park in Melbourne that people run around and play cricket and soccer around and cycle around and drive around. And you can drive on almost all the roads. I think it's uh Lakeside Drive and Augy Drive or the two

Main thoroughfares there. And um it's it's a bit confusing because it's kind of a one way system, so I had to like attempted a few times, but I drove around it. I took some photographs and sent them to you guys on the Discord. Um it's wild how it it is the Uh aside from maybe Monaco, which I've never been to in person, it is the most inside of a city F1 track I have ever seen. And it's in like a largely residential area, I would say.

Not like suburban, but like it's it's in a residential within a city sort of place. Like there are restaurants and shops, but there's a lot of houses, there's like you know, two story houses down the street. There's like a couple of apartment blocks that are newer and and stuff like that. Um and so because of this, uh because it is a you know a not a purpose built race track um that has n general traffic driving on it, three hundred and sixty days a year a year or whatever.

Um it's a track that n is not only bumpy, but also evolves a lot over the weekend. Um quite slippery at the start, but as the cars, the F one cars, the other Junior series cars are rolling around there, they're laying down rubber and they're um you know, the track is evolving over the the course of the weekend.

Um it's a very front end centric track, which with these new um cars is going to be interesting. It's also very fast. I talked earlier about the energy management issues that they may run into here without like massive breaking zones and quite a lot of straight. And this is a multiple DRS zone track in years past. Now we have these straight mode zones on the map.

Which I don't know. Track maps look wild now. Yeah, I don't know what to I don't know what to say about this. There are one, two, three, four, five straight mode zones, which is basically anywhere there's a straight and or or even a high speed. n uh corner or non straight, let's call it, which the back half of the track has. Maybe the most fun part to drive on in a in a real F one in a in a real car. Timeout.

Breaking. Breaking news. Uh Wex season Urper and Qatar uh postponed a depth. Wow, when was it? It was gonna be this weekend, I think. Okay. Uh but yeah, it is now they're saying there there is no makeup date. They're saying they're gonna run this race later in the Okay, so it's gonna happen uh end of March.

But it's been postponed until later in the year. No date given. I think later in the year might be optimistic. Right. But yeah, so the first domino has fallen. Um remember when we uh were about to start the Australian Grand Prix? Before CO the yes. Yeah. This isn't fucking happening. This isn't happening. So and this is the FAA too. This race was further out

Then well no hang on. There when's when's the first race they're gonna be back in uh Bahrain in the Middle East? Twelfth. The twelfth of I think it's not gonna happen. And then Saudi Arabia. Yeah. Which i is further, like you know, it's on it's but it's but it's not Yeah, we might be going from Japan in March twenty ninth to Miami. We were organizing stuff earlier before that we recorded the podcast and Drew, you're making the point that there are only three free Tuesdays this year.

uh to record additional podcasts. Um which which shows you how dense the season is. But like we may run into a situation where we go from the twenty ninth of March in Japan and there's no race in April. Like third of May Miami is the next one. I forget what their str because like do they pull the trigger on like a makeup day? S or like a a replacement rate. Like when?

Like August? Like during the Yeah. Yeah, I don't I'cause uh all the teams are going to have their calendars organized, all their business stuff organized. The ship doesn't turn out. Oh I wish. Go back to Port bring Port Mao back. It's the only good thing that happened during COVID was Port Omao. Uh the Qatar Grand Prix for F one doesn't take place until the twenty ninth of November.

So yeah, you know. Qatar's the least likely one to to get uh I think cancelled due to this, but I think it's still a decent a decent chance. Um and this is this is before any drivers start weighing in on like various feelings about doing races at a bunch of uh yeah partners in uh bombing Iran. Yeah, Char Leclerc's posting wedding photographs last weekend. You know what I mean? Like these these guys are

You know, they have lives outside of the sport. Wait, did he get married? He did. Yeah. Oh. In Monaco like Dude, just watch the wedding videos. They have like fake VHS filters on them and stuff and then he's like driving the sexiest open wheel classic Ferrari you've ever seen. His wife looks like a million dollar I forget her name, sorry.

I'm sure she'll be in Drive to Survive a bunch of things. Alexandra, I think. The dog is involved, of course. He's wearing a little tuxedo, I think. Leo's got a little tuxedo. It's yeah, it's like it's ridiculous.

Um but anyway, yeah, just to to round off on Melbourne, uh fifty-eight laps long, I I'm not gonna sit here and tell you what's gonna happen. It's it's just so hard to figure out where there's gonna be overlapping, how much sandbagging was going on. how much the regulation change is gonna uh change the way in which the cars attack the track, to say nothing of reliability. Um Yeah, it's it's it's gonna be a wild uh a wild first race. Uh what I will say is

Obviously the Aussies are a good time, right? We sort of inherently understand that it's sort of a country With a g with a g you know, people like to have the crack as we say back home in Ireland. I don't know what they say in Australia. I've forgotten already. Oh my god. Um Do you do you ever watch Thursday night football? Yeah, like NFL Prime. Did you see the crack bit? No. So there was a moment where Fitz uh Fitzpatrick had just been on a trip to Ireland. Oh, bro. And he was talking about

Uh yeah, I loved my time in Ireland. I loved all the crack, uh as they say over there. And Richard Sherman's expression when he heard that just like he was like, what did he say? And then and then uh Whitlock absolutely lost it at that moment. It was it was fantastic. I have to watch that. I have to watch it.

Currently Irish Twitter or Irish social media is going crazy because one of our politicians apparently the quirk accent sounds Jamaican. So all of Irish and Caribbean internet has been talking about this one viral video all week, but it has not gotten out of that bubble.

But it's all that's happening there. Is is this because Irish were involved in being the main English speakers, a lot of colonized yes folks heard? In in initially indentured servants, but then uh Ultimately uh plantation owners'cause the Irish were whites so they we were the only ones that were allowed to buy the farms, crucially.

So that's we are going places on the street. I know it's it's really this is what happens when we don't do a podcast for three months. But anyway, the last thing I'll say is If I there are loads of F1 races I would love to go to lo love to go to. After spending three or four days in Melbourne driving out to the track, I cannot think of a uh you know, a more fun place to enjoy a race. I the people were so nice.

the weather's fantastic. It's essentially located. I'm sure it's expensive to to get a a hotel, but like it's a big city. Um and I I bet it's I bet it's brilliant. And, you know, yeah, I think it's a great place to start the season, honestly. It's got great vibes and hopefully it'll have great racing. It's got great vibes for a lot of drivers and teams. Uh according to my own internal statistics database here. Uh it is the top five in the top five.

Drivers such as Lance Stroll, Nico Holkenberg, Fernando Alonzo, um, and teams such as Ferrari, Aston Martin. Um And Williams. It is not so hot for Sergio Perez and Oscar Piastri or Alpine. Statistically though, Master Stappen has done the best here. Then Lewis Hamilton and Charles Leclerc. Team wise, we've got uh Red Bull and Mercedes. Last five winners, Lando Norris in 2025, then Carlos Sainz, Max Verstappen, Charles Leclerc, and Valkyrie Botas. So a good mix.

here. Also a good mix in terms of my own uh ratings of Australian grounds pre. Uh I've had a I have a four-point scale from one being a procession, two being a strategy race, three being entertaining, and four being bonker. Uh in the last four years. Wow, incredible. To the nineties. Um, we've gotten two, four, three, and four. So I'd say yeah, there's opportunity here for this to be a a a really great race.

But that is all a giant ast a big twenty twenty-six sized asterisk on that, because we really have zero asterisk. what to expect. Same goes for uh the weather. Don't really know what to expect there. Um we're looking at maybe 20% chance of rain um on qualifying day. Uh 0% chance uh Monday with temperatures around sixty-six Fahrenheit or uh nineteen Celsius um on qualifying day, climbing to seventy-four um or twenty-three.

And uh wind looks to be uh, you know, something, thirteen miles an hour or twenty-one kilometers an hour out of the south. Uh uh slowing down. Uh that's on quality. So um probably probably just fine for a day of racing with uh a small chance.

Thanks. Um, this is your last chance to get in on our fantasy league before the season kicks off. There's a link in the show notes to join. You can also send us an email if you like, shiftfond podcast at gmail.com or fn.cool slash emails. You can also hit us up on the socials. I have yet to post the uh the driver spotter with the T-bar colors for everyone. Um also race time. Shift F1 Podcast is the general username we use. Have we tweeted out the uh fantasy code yet? Yeah.

We've posted that okay. Oh boy. And Um I'll have to figure that out. That's right. It's so great. That's us around the internet, Danny. Should we take it around the world?

Oh, that's also been bottled up over the winter. Oh boy. I've been I've been blue balling that one. Speaking of speaking of uh Australia and racing at Albert Park, not only do we have Formula Two and Formula Three supporting Formula One this weekend, we've also got the Repco Supercars. Uh the Australia the Australian NASCAR, what races on actual circuits instead of ovals only. Supercars are a great time.

Tune into that. They're called super cars. I mean come on. They are pretty super duper. We've also got IndyCar at the Phoenix Raceway in Avondale, Arizona for the Good Ranchers two fifty. Uh we have we've got the NASCAR no longer the Xfinity series, uh the the lower tier of NASCAR. It is now the NASCAR O'Reilly Auto. There you go. Uh they're also in uh Phoenix, the Phoenix raceway for the GovX two hundred G O V X in all caps. Don't know what that is.

The NHRA is it the Gainesville Raceway for the Um Um Um Amelie? Is that uh Okay Mili Motor Oil Gator National Taking place in Paris. That's right, yes. She will change your life. And your oil. Uh GovX is a military and government. Oh, this is the surplus store. This is the online surplus store. They've had the most roided up commercials I've ever seen.

It also has you can also buy tickets to Disneyland on it. It's very confusing. That's no more American thing I've ever heard in my life. Yeah. You can bring your uh your tactical uh water water And we got an escar you also at the Phoenix Race boy Phoenix. Indy, NASCAR if you're gonna race in Phoenix, this is the time of year to do it. Oh yeah. For the straight talk wireless five hundred.

Great talk. That's'cause that's'cause for this wireless system you have to put it you have the two cups, you have to pull them tight. They gotta be straight unless it doesn't work. Straight mode Uh all right. Formula One, maybe you've heard of it, kicks off this weekend. Uh these are Eastern times. Um and I don't have to do the channels or I don't get to do the channels because it's all on Apple TV. Everyone. Oh yeah. Get your in the in the US at least.

Tim Apple, your money. Steve jobs it up. Friday, March 5th. Free practice one is at 8.30 p.m. Because we're in Australia. Free practice two is at midnight. Between March fifth and sixth. Saturday, March sixth, free practice three is at eight thirty P. M. followed by qualifying at midnight. And Sunday, everyone, the race, March seventh at eleven PM Eastern time. Ah I will no longer get to say ESPN two the deuce. Eastern time. Eight AM. I will be on a f airplane or maybe just land.

Eight AM In LA. I'm going down for to shoot for one day. I'm flying down in the morning, flying back. Ooh, wow. Sonoma to the All right, well, it starts our time at eight PM. Eight AM. Oh PM Oh, that's fine. I'll watch it. That's great. I'll watch it in the airport. I'll be fine.

Uh all right, well that's what's happening this weekend. Danny what happened um this Yes, I have uh got the necrom necromicon with me here. Um uh so in years past I have always worried about doing it on the day we're recording or the day it went live. Um'cause we record this on March uh third on Tuesday. It goes live early uh Wednesday morning. But we do actually put this up for patrons on March third. So I

For two reasons I'm gonna do it. One to mix it up and two because I've already looked at March fourth and it has somebody. So I'm going to do March third. I don't wanna start the year. I don't wanna start the year does this your first if this is your first time with us. Yes. Danny's book of uh F one history frequently includes fatalities. Yes. Yes. This was a marshal in the Australian Grand Prix in two thousand one. But we're not gonna we're not gonna

Mark, I I think we might have done this one before though. So let maybe I've messed this up. Marsha maybe, we'll see. Mike the Bike Halewood was already one of the world's top motorbike riders when he switched to four wheels to try his hand at Grand Prix Racing on this day. He was on the grid for the South African Grand Prix at the end. Kyle Kayalami today in nineteen seventy three when his car was hit by Clay Regazzoni's BRM, which then burst into flames with Regazzoni unconscious at the wheel.

I didn't read this one ahead of time. No, Rigazzani didn't die. I would have heard about it. Uh Hellwood immediately dived into the flames, undid Regazzoni's seatbelts, and dragged him clear of the burning wreckage. Clay was taken to hospital with minor burns, while Hillwood was awarded the George Medal for his bravery. The two thousand and two season kicked off on this day with the first race in Melbourne, Australia.

Michael Schumacher won his Ferr won in his Ferrari, but the real hero was Mark Weber, the Australian driver making his Formula One debut for the Minati team, which was then owned by Australians Paul Sto Stoddard. Weber finished fifth for the Minnows, earning them two points and a fantastic reaction from his boss and home crowd. And that's and um apologies to all of our friends down on the first.

Exactly. Paul Hogan. Okay. Throw that book on the Barbie. Hey, can I just say one last thing about Australia? Sure. It contains my favorite animal ever now. Oh. The wombat. Yeah. Ah yes. The two poops, right? Yes, qu square pu square poops. They poop squares. They also kill um like predators with their ass. So they have this thing where they'cause they're so dense, they're like super muscly and dense, they can actually run really fast. They're like they're like cute little f fucking muscle pigs.

Uh and there was one I met called Patty and I loved him. Um but what they do is if they're being like chased by like I don't know a fox or a coyote or something like that, they walk they run into their little tunnel, their little, you know, ho k hey you know, little dirt A cave they've made for themselves. Den. There I found the word. And then when the and then when they leave a space above their butt and the den ceiling.

for the fox or whatever to stick its head in. Yeah. And then they like they twerk it. They like they cr and they crush its head between the the the ground on their butt. Isn't that crazy? That's that's like the that's the natural world version of call an ambulance for you. You know what I mean? Yeah. Like that's amazing. Unbelievable. Wombats. Love'em. Wow. All right. Well, we've heard Danny's final thoughts ahead of Australia. Rob. I'm good. I know you gotta get out of here.

Well, if you'd like to support the show and get access to all of our bonus episodes, the early ad free version of the Discord, you can do so over at patreon.com slash shift F. Have a good race weekend, everyone.