"The Curious Case of Monaco" | Is the track fit for purpose, has Lando got his mojo back and what changes are coming in Spain?

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Unfortunately Simon, I agree with Crofton on this one. Thank you very much. Congratulations. Thank you. I know this is not a football podcast, but yes, we went to Wombly and the Dons are going up. But maybe there was a bit more going on. in the Lando Norris corner than we anticipated. Maybe he was suffering just a little bit more.

Greetings, everybody, and welcome to the latest F1 show podcast sponsored by Audi, in which we are going to consider the curious case.

of the monaco grand prix experiment which having talked to a few senior people on the plane on the way back from nice i think it's safe to say perhaps it didn't work so how do we solve this can it be solved does it even matter to those sipping champagne on the yachts well it might not matter to them but it does matter to you at home and we want to consider some of the options we're going to do that and we can do that with the help of yes

Welcome back, Bernie Collins. Bernie Collins fans, what do we call them? Do we call them the Bernadettes? I think we should. I don't know what you call David Croft fans, but David Croft is here. You do have a fan club, though, don't you? You're always selling merch. I know that. Simon Lazenby, the fact that you are wearing merch today from your excesses at Wombly yesterday.

Congratulations. Thank you. I know this is not a football podcast, but yes, we went to Wombly and the Dons are going up. Olé, olé. It was a great afternoon. You know, it was one of the... One of the worst games of football I've seen for quite some time. Very pragmatic. It didn't matter at all to the travelling army of Don's fans. There must have been 35,000 of us there at Wembe yesterday. So, got off the plane.

got the kids up there. We were, we had a magnificent day. And then, so if I've got a bit of a hoarse voice, it's because we were singing, um, assorted chance as we, as we progressed to the, yeah, league one from league two, you know, You're saying the hoarseness is from the football, definitely not from excessive weekend in Monaco. We don't do that anymore. He was a good boy. He went to bed early on Saturday night. I did. He was a very good boy.

I mean, when I say early, I meant early morning, but he did go there. You weren't even with me. You were going from yacht to yacht. Oh, I know. I know what you're like. But yes, yes, that game of football was probably about the same level as the Monaco Grand Prix, which...

I mean, look, as good as Saturday is, Sunday suffered. We'll come on to that in a moment. But first of all, let's start with the positive, shall we? Bernie, you're obviously watching it for back at home. We're going to see you in Barcelona. But Lando Norris. The damage done to the rest on Saturday, but what a weight off his shoulders to pick up a pole position, his first since Australia, and then convert it.

Yeah, you know, a pole position when it really mattered. Monaco, we know, is about qualifying. It is a Saturday competition. And like you say, Landon Norris has been suffering in that in the last few races, not getting that final lap of Q3 together. I guess a lot of us thought when they went out for the push final run of Q3 with McLaren thinking, oh, is that the right thing to do? They've gone quite early there.

But it worked. It worked really well. And Lando got the lap together when it really needed to be put together, you know, despite some very tough competition out there. And that's what made the difference. That's what made the difference to his weekend. And hopefully he has turned that around.

whatever he's changed in the background team that's working, whatever's working for him to get that lap together. And that will give him real confidence going forward because that needs to happen at this stage of the year. It felt to me, Kofi, like it was a pivotal moment in the championship, didn't it, to you? In just everything that he's been suffering from psychologically, beating himself up in a very public manner.

He was totally different on Saturday evening. Once he got that pole position, Zach's going around high-fiving everyone, changing his flight so he wasn't going to go to the Indy 500. He said that he wasn't going to go if they had a front rower.

and they did and they had the pole sitter zach's going around completely bonkers lando was very like just matter of fact pragmatic yeah and i'd lost my groove said lando i've had it all my life and it has gone but yesterday i felt like i'd got it back that was his quote after qualifying and um and on the sunday and that shows the extent i think of how much that pole position mattered

Had he lost his groove? Had we noticed that he'd lost his groove? He'd certainly lost the ability to go and claim a pole position. His teammate Max Verstappen had taken care of that one. But maybe there was a bit more going on in the Lando Norris corner than we anticipated. Maybe he was suffering just a little bit more. I think his emotions after the victory and the way that he kind of dedicated it to his mum and dad as well.

And the way that he came on and was so overjoyed, so emotional, almost tearful that he had won that shows how important it was. And it's not just about Monaco. It's the fact that we're now a third of the way through the season. Had he have lost more ground to his teammate, he could have ended up a win behind Oscar Piastri had that race gone against him. It didn't. Three points in it now.

And here's the thing. Have we not lost that point for the fastest lap? I think Lando Norris would now be leading the world championship. So there's a lot of Lando fans who are saying, bring back the extra point. And I don't think we should have lost it in the first place.

All is not lost for Lando, but then again, all is not lost for Oscar, who has been equally as impressive at times as his teammate. I think we are in for a sensational season, the way that this first third has ended. I do. It feels to me like 2016. It feels to me like that, the intra-team battle, doesn't it, between Rosberg and Hamilton. Three points difference, as you're saying. But in the constructors, actually, McLaren are now, I think, 172 points clear.

of uh of their nearest rivals at this stage of mercedes and then there's only five points between second and four so that in itself in behind is going to be going to be really interesting but they're almost away and gone aren't they bernie

Yeah, I think McLaren, from everything that we can see, the constructors looks pretty safe. But, you know, as Croftby said, it is early in the year we're only third of the way through the year so i think this year on the teams battle and like you say second third fourth all very very tight how quickly can teams shift focus to next year

tea and focus on this year it's really hard one to call that i think more difficult than other years because of the regulation change we have next year teams are going to have to very carefully balance this year's championship and next year's championship mclaren will be glad to be getting the points on the board now that'll mean that they can maybe back off a little bit later on but

If they back off too soon and the others don't, then it's a few weeks before the upgrades appear and then suddenly it's too late to do anything about it. So I think it's going to be very careful working out in the background of these teams. when they shift more of their focus to next year's car. What I would say though, Bernie, that massive gap that McLaren got.

just to me, puts to bed this nonsense debate about we need a number one and a number two driver at McLaren. Forget that. McLaren's statement is we'll pursue the best interests of the team while preserving the interests of the drivers. And put it into Zac Brown words, we haven't got a number one and number two, and we won't have a number one and number two unless, you know, one can't win the championship.

As racing fans, and we're going to get onto this with Monaco, I think, we want to see racing.

We don't want to see team orders. We don't want to see drivers sacrificing their race for somebody else. So why this big debate about how we should have a number one and a number two at McLaren has come up, I really don't understand. They're making... the points that they need as constructors and then let the drivers scrap it out and that's that's where i also think go back to 2016 we're on for a mega season here because it's what mercedes did because they had that big advantage and they could

But it does depend on how close Max is. So at the moment, 22 points behind Lando. If they do sort of disappear, you don't think it matters? I think it does. For the team, they want to win the Constructors' Championship, right? The team are not going to sacrifice a driver. Both can win a driver's championship.

whilst they can easily win a Constructors' Championship. There's no point in doing that, because all you're going to do is hasten the exit out the door of either Lando or Oscar, who now know... I don't know if I agree with that. I think if it comes down to it, the drivers is...

is is is the one that they want now i mean they say that they want the constructors obviously but they've won the constructors so let's give you a hypothetical right let's say one of the two drivers gets 25 30 points ahead right yeah but Max is hot on the heels. Are they not going to put all their eggs in the basket, the one that's there? Are they not actually going to do a Monaco Grand Prix and use the second of the drivers to actually be the buffer?

why do that unless one of them can't win that's that's a ridiculous demotivator uh for for any driver when there's you know a long enough period to go in the season and they're now being told they can't win a championship Unfortunately, Simon, I agree with Crofty on this one. I think that, you know, when it's...

It's very hard to tell a driver very early in the season they can't do it. I think the exception is what I think Zach said himself. If they get to a point where they're crashing into each other. and therefore risking the Constructors' Championship, that's the point that I think they'll get involved and say, enough is enough. But for now, when they're fighting cleanly and both getting good points in the Constructors' Championship...

there will become a point where mathematically they have the constructors championship and that's done and then at that point there's even less need for them to tell them to hold station and and you know zach wants it all he wants one two in the drivers and he wants one in the

So he's going to try and keep his drivers as happy as he can to make that happen. Yeah. To be fair to me, by the way, I'm playing devil's advocate, but I'm also saying that it's what I wasn't talking about now. I was talking about further down the line.

there we go all right let's get into what happened then uh in the race i'm not accepting this cloth i'm not accepting this uh so leo basically we sat next to senior strategy myself and crew senior strategy uh analyst i think he is for um the racing bulls uh Nick Roberts on the plane and we were talking about well done we congratulated them we said strategy team of the week is obviously the racing bulls they did everything that they could do they were the first ones to pull the trigger

in terms of saying, OK, let's back the trucks up, let's create the hole and allow Isaac Hadjar to pit into it through Liam Lawson. He was the sacrificial lamb.

And I think it took Williams by surprise, but it was the genius move, but it was obviously Bernie premeditated and it kind of became the story of the Monaco Grand Prix. Yeah, you know, there was a lot of talk pre-race about... how one teammate could help another teammate and i think there was a bit of talk around the ferraris around mclaren and i sort of thought for though or for those two it's very harsh because the second team mate has still got good

points on the board so you don't want to sacrifice one of those two i think for rb they did a really good job they had premium edited the plan I can't emphasise enough how much work goes into Saturday night strategy and Sunday morning strategy in order to look at what all the permutations might be, why it might not work, what all the other drivers would do. You know, RB with Hajar had this really good opportunity to score really good points and they put all their eggs in that basket.

They committed to the strategy, opened the pit gap very slowly because they'd planned it from the beginning of the race. And then they were really fortunate with Lawson because... Everyone else is on the pit wall. Crofty's talking to James Vole's on the pit wall and their pit wall's starting to think, ah, we can see what's coming together here now. We can do this with our two cars to get the last point scoring positions.

And because Williams then opened the gap between their two drivers, it allowed Lawson not really to have any disadvantage for helping Hodge are out. For RB, you know, they must have been rubbing their hands together when they seen Williams start to employ the same tactic because suddenly it's all come together. But because Williams did it so much later in the race, you know, they only really started lap 25.

they had to make the gap much more quickly so they had to lose more time each lap and and that's where we've seen all the issues coming into it but you know well done rb and The work was still done on Saturday, let's be clear. Hadjard getting a good qualifying position, that's what left them in this position to ensure they had good points, but well done then. I think that's what they love so much is that Williams weren't expecting it.

And even Carlos Sainz admitted that afterwards. He was like, yeah, we got that one right. We were a strategy team of the day. And well done to them. Now, the thing is, McLaren could have done the same, you know, with Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri, should they have needed it as well? They didn't. I think the top four kind of...

drove their normal race on that one. But it's a strategy that McLaren could easily have done. And where would Zac Brown have been asking Oscar Piastri to sacrifice his race for Lando? I think for, you know, I do agree, Crofty, but I think for the top ones, it would have been really harsh for Lando or Oscar to do that. I think, again, even for Hadjar to do it for Verstappen, that would have been...

So, you know, in that midfield or towards the end of the field and the constructors are so tight, every point is going to count. So for Hadjard to sacrifice his race in any way to help Verstappen would have been a bit harsh, I think. And like none of this is new at the moment. We get this at Monaco every year because you can drive two and a half seconds off the pace and hold on to the position. So I was quite surprised, I think, that Williams and Mercedes.

weren't really expecting this to happen you know i sort of i think a lot of people sat on the race and went What are Mercedes going to do? What is the game plan? How long is this race going to go without a pit stop or without, you know, forcing the hand at something? We're seeing, you know, Berman stop.

very, very early. A few people stopped very early under that early VSC. I thought more might have done something there. It was only the bottom four, wasn't it? Yeah, we didn't see the double stop from anyone. So yeah, lots. Lots of team play, but that's always been monocle. When you start outside the top 10, it's very, very difficult. The thing for me about this weekend is that... what it did was it drew into focus once more it probably highlighted even more um that monaco

for the moment, isn't fit for purpose as a Grand Prix track. But does that matter? So what you have now is you have a situation whereby... George Russell's talking about sprinklers. He's talking about making it a double qualifying session Saturday, Sunday. You've got Verstappen talking about banana skins. Can I just read out a few of, I mean, the fans, obviously.

were pretty apoplectic about it, as they always are with regards to Monaco. Bottro Albino, the crown jewel, is now the... clown jewel of f1 kieran dot f321 uh should we just accept monaco will always be a qualifying race um i got this on vinyl says will i ever get those two hours back no you won't how can they be losing tracks like spa or talking about that but keep uh monaco and cr lewis one wtf was that i think that kind of uh of sums it up it's

What are we going to do about it? What are you going to do about it? That's not the right question to ask. To me, the question to ask is, what do you want to do about it? What do you want Monaco to be? to be a race full of overtakes every other lap? Because that's not going to happen unless you get major structural engineering changes on the streets of Monaco. Do you want it to be an outlier because it's a...

30 race seasons, six sprints and 24 Grand Prix, and they're all a little bit different. And if that's the case, then how much of an outlier in terms of overtaking versus strategic opportunities do you want to make it? And then... Where is the sport going with the size of cars and the size of tracks in the future? Because only when you answer all of those questions can you settle on something that might give us a chance of a more absorbing Monaco Grand Prix. Is that fair to say?

Yeah, I think, you know, I agree with what you're saying, Crofty. I think from my side, sat at home watching it, it was bloody confusing because two stops, it's really hard to know what's going on. i run as you may well expect some additional data on a laptop you know it's not just not just a tv but you know i try and try and keep on top of what's going on and even with the extra data and you know i've seen there was some extra graphics

tv about how many stops everyone had done it was so hard to work out what was going on and and to watch as a race it was a bit difficult you know it was a bit of a struggle despite crofty's best efforts on the commentary as always but you know and so that i felt that was a bit difficult at home it was difficult one to watch monaco has always been a saturday race i agree with the size of the car as the crofty says you know and that's something in automotive as a whole you know we want

extra fuel efficiency we want it to be greener but we're making these massive cars so if we want more overtaken we've got to be lighter and nimbler and that's one thing it is a qualifying race so do we just due to qualifying you know we should accept it you know there's other reasons that are difficult to overtake as well you know i enjoyed the one thing i did enjoy was i enjoyed watching the rb strategy play out

And then I enjoyed waiting for others to react to it. Like I quite liked seeing that. And qualifying, I love watching Monica qualifying. I love seeing what goes on there. There's just no margin for error in any of it. We've even seen that with Mercedes. Mercedes had a... terrible day on saturday because which is very abnormal for them because of unreliability with one car and so it's about getting everything together so the saturday's the day to watch

you know and other tracks that's reversed were sunday's you know next week sunday will be the data watch not the saturday so that's okay i think yeah i've got here's a solution i've been working on But you can tell me whether this was ever considered. And I don't know if people have done it in the past. This is not going to work, by the way, for listeners on Spotify. But here is the map of Monaco. But when you get to turn seven...

Mirabeau inferior, rather than going straight down to Portier, which is down there. Why don't you turn left onto the Avenue Princess Grace and go down there? They could...

Narrow the central reservation there. Go down long straight, heavy braking zone at one of these roundabouts down here. Widen it, make it a big hairpin and then come back down and go through the tunnel and then do something to the chicane at the end. Has anyone ever... suggested that yeah first and foremost well done because you've obviously muted me on your phone i've just i've just messaged you i've just messaged you two words rubbish idea and it didn't

why is that a rubbish idea because you'd then have to because they'd be coming too fast down into the car not into the tunnel and then nouvelle chicane you couldn't do that yes yeah you'd need even more rain off area for that but yeah but you can't actually engineer although That's one of Alex Vert's solutions, isn't it? So Alex Vert's, right, and I'm going to mention Alex Vert's here because Alex designs some very fine tracks. His company behind the new Kadir track.

Saudi he designed a track for Rwanda as well if that ever comes to fruition he's a very good designer he's also you know on the chairman of the GPDA so has has a lot of input from drivers His idea is to lengthen the exit out of the tunnel towards that nouvelle chicane, but to make the corner much tighter, that left-hand corner much tighter, and then to go out further where at the moment there is water.

Now, it involves a little bit of reclaiming land, but not a lot. And then you turn right and allow drivers to get on the gas a little bit earlier than they normally would coming out of the now left hander. So they can make the rundown to back and still have to back off a little bit to back and not take it flat out because they're doing the same speeds as they now would be.

that would create an overtaking opportunity that's not necessarily all on the lumps and bumps coming out of the tunnel and down that hill.

now i think that's a fabulous idea because it doesn't involve a huge amount of structural change he also advocates that we um at rascas the we move the apex out two or three meters and the area left on the track gets moved out a little bit as well and he also advocates that we can do we can straighten up the entry into the lowe's hairpin to stop drivers having to come into that hairpin and move to the right before they then go left

straighten it up so you can dive bomb down the inside but you do need the permission of monaco to make changes to their roads and whilst the place is packed

and everyone is coming to see the race and spending lots of money and it shows no signs of getting less and less popular in terms of people wanting to go, why on earth would they change? Because that involves a lot of money being spent. Yeah, I think... You know, there's so many things. Lots of people are saying we shouldn't change anything this morning ago. It's the way it's always been.

You know, we have made changes to other tracks. Singapore is one that immediately springs to mind. It was very, very difficult to overtake. We've made changes to that in order to improve overtaking, improve the race, and they've definitely worked.

that was by accident because they were renovating the stand so they just took out four corners and carried on on the straight we're not talking about taking things out we're talking about adding things here that's that's the big trouble for me is that it's going to involve

money. Tracks change all the time anyway. I mean, I think people get a bit overprotective of the streets of Monaco when they're not fit for purpose at the moment for racing. Just try stuff if they're prepared to pay it. I think we have to keep trying things. You know, I'm glad...

i wasn't convinced of the two stop before we went into it i'm glad we've tried it because if we did another race like last year that would have been even worse we've got no stops so it's good that we're doing something let's keep working on it and there's there's definitely things to be learned and but you know it it will not take away from how special qualifying is at monaco and we spoke a little bit before but spectators love it

Do we think next year, with the changes in regulations, as JB was pointing out, they're going to be slightly smaller, the cars. They're not going to be massively smaller, are they? But with the changes in regulations, is that going to create... bigger deltas and more overtaking opportunities? I think we'll see more overtaken everywhere because of how the cars are going to recover and charge and these things.

I'm, let's see, we need to get into the regulations. I think there's a long way to go to make those work. could again be like this race and really confusing when people are harvesting when people are deploying what's going on don't make knee-jerk reactions on this one and see how next year

pans out there are there are people I spoke to people at the airport um from within the sport who have suggestions for a few tweaks that can be made but if you found it confusing Bernie watching it we need to be careful You know, I see people saying, oh, you can't drive more than three seconds a lap slower than your first lap or whatever. You start introducing rules like that, it gets really confusing, not just to people watching, but people trying to police it and regulate.

as well. I'm not sure the FIA have all the enough people to regulate every single lap of every single car going around the Grand Prix 78 times. But there's just one thing I would say. and ladies as you were at the airport on sunday night but you're in a different terminal to to ted and i not a single person that came up who had been there said i've had a really bad weekend it was awful

Instead, they all said, we loved it. It was brilliant. You've got to go to Monaco. It's just a fantastic spectacle. So people that are going are loving it. And I get why people watching back at home don't feel that love. But it is a really special place and it has always been. And ever since I started watching Monaco, it has not been full of overtakes. So why are we trying to engineer a race now that's full of overtakes? So, Bernie, is it a flat no to my avenue of Princess Grace?

Yes. I'm not saying no to it. I'm going to have to give you this point, Simon, because I had Crofty the point earlier. So in fairness, I will agree with you. Might have to take up circuit design.

if you've been down the avenue princess grace it's not wide enough to get cars down there you'd have to completely change the road because it and remove curbs remove trees remove pavements because it isn't wide enough on either side of the road to get the straight that you want to see some overtaking i want to see that straight and i want it also isn't nico rosberg's apartment

near there we would end up blocking him in for the weekend which would be quite amusing for us anyway should we finish this part then with um what is our new feature we haven't got a sponsor for it yet but we are hanging out for one which is our winner of the week, our shocker of the week, and our moment of the weekend. Bernie, I'd like to start with you on this one, please. Winner of the week has to go to Lando Doris.

for qualifying and the race um shocker of the week is a joint prize won by the entire mercedes for qualifying shockers and then race shockers um and the moment of the week simon goes from obviously i watched a lot of the coverage because you know i don't like to miss out the moment of the week is um crafty getting driven around the circuit by Kimi Antonelli because heaven forbid someone would forget their past and miss out on such a global grand opportunity and at home that really

come across on the coverage. That was my shocker of the week. That was my shocker. I had that done as my shocker of the week. Ten's massive head that couldn't fit into a helmet. You know, me having a nightmare with my past. I left it. The first time in about four years I've done that. And then gifting it to Crofty. Snooze you lose. I presume your winner is that, or maybe that's your moment of the weekend as well. And winner...

Nick Roberts, head of strategy at Racing Bulls. Exactly what he needed to do to produce a brilliant result for the team. Well done, Nick Roberts and your strategy team. Now, I was told it was loser of the week. Yeah, well, I'd change that because it sounds too harsh. My loser of the week, Nick Roberts and his strategy team at Racing Bulls for spoiling everybody's fun and ruining the Monaco Grand Prix. Don't ever think about doing that again.

Ridiculous. And by moment of the week, well, guess what? Other than Lance Stroll overtaking Nico Hülkenberg on the last lap, it was really good. And seriously, it was a brilliant move. Simon Laysen will be losing his pass on my hot lap. Whatever happens, I've now been on a hot lap around the Monaco Grand Prix, and only when you're in a car at immense speeds do you appreciate the skill.

of all the drivers in every series that managed to get at least one lap in without crashing. It's frightening and it's utterly breathtaking in equal measure. What were yours, Simon? Nothing else matters apart from my shocker of the week, frankly. I'll go winner Isaac Hadjar. Somebody said something to him just to clear it up as he was on his way to join us in presentation.

and i like this about him he's feisty he wasn't gonna let it go he was just like no no no you're not going on to the energy station after that i don't know what was said or anything like that but it clearly really got to him and He's my winner just because I think he's, I really like him. I think he's right up there.

in with a shout of rookie of the season with the way he's performing week in week out i love the fact that he takes no prisoners either as we saw he's clearly one of these characters who is not going to mind getting his elbows out so i love that so he's my winner shocker

um we've discussed that and yeah again yeah my moment of the week was was hadjar so i'm going to give it all to hadjar because it's easy to give it to lando not that i'm denigrating that but uh so yes he's going to take care of the plaudits and Yeah, my shocker is Croft. But my shocker is so often the Croft. There we are. Shall we take a short break? And then we'll come back. We'll discuss everything else that happened.

on the weekend. And we'll look ahead to Barcelona as well because of those TDs that are coming in, which are going to be, or that TD, which could shake up the order, or will it? We'll be back in a couple of moments. Welcome back to the F1 show, sponsored by Audi. Still joined by Bernie Collins and by David Croft in front of his immortal line on the wall behind him. I can't believe you have that. It's great. Did he light up, by the way?

It doesn't need to because the lights are going out. So why would it light up? Let's have a conversation, if we could, about Ferrari and Charles Leclerc and Lewis Hamilton. Shall we start with Charles? He led every single practice session. um took pole position back off lando norris and then lost it again to him he was obviously really deflated and he knew that from saturday because uh all of the elation of last year he is though a maestro bernie around the streets of his home

Yeah, you know, and it would have been lovely to see him celebrate there again. You know, last year was such a special moment. mclaren and norris did well to do that a different plan to everyone else in q3 which seemed to at least work for them on that soft tire um and it's very very small margins here and that's why you know charlotte claire was so upset

post saturday is you know it's going to be very very difficult to gain that back on sunday and bar and norris having some sort of shocker off the line and and you know it was they remained in the positions that they started in so it was all down to that Saturday qualified position but but a much, much stronger weekend than we'd all been led to believe it was going to be for Ferrari. We'd been hearing the stories of how they're poor at so speed and that didn't exactly come to fruition.

They didn't have to run it, though, as high as they have when you get the range of different speed corners, do they? So actually, it's going to be different in Barcelona when we get there and we get a different range there. They're going to have to run it higher inevitably, aren't they? Yeah, I think Barcelona would be definitely a different game there. There's a multitude of different corner speeds.

It is a track that really tests overall performance of the car. So I think there is a likelihood they're going to have to raise the ride height or do whatever they need to do to get that car to perform over the full race distance. expect the performance to drop a little bit but let's see maybe they've resolved their issues that they've been having through the year they're waiting on these upgrades to come and Bartholomew is normally a good place to bring upgrades

I'm never going to believe a word Charles Leclerc says to me ever again. I saw him on Wednesday night and we said goodbye to each other. So looking forward to the race. Calling you home again for a win, that's not going to happen, he said. Not a chance. We're rubbish in slow speed corners. No, don't go practicing me winning.

And then he went and kind of dominated all the practice sessions. But I thought McLaren played a blinder with their qualifying strategy. It really got the drivers dialed in for where they needed to be. And Lando took advantage. And I'm with you, Bernie. I'm not expecting Ferrari to be that strong in Barcelona until they can solve the problems around the rear end of their car and running it as low as they need to run it.

And I don't think we've seen the evidence so far that that is coming or has come. Now, maybe with new upgrades, they'll be absolutely fine. But it's a big engineering job to fix what we think they need to fix. not helped by the person that was leading that project, leaving when only 90% of it had been completed. And there will come a time, as you alluded to at the start of the show, that they'll just have to switch off this year and think about next year.

And in many other years that have carried on with it, but I don't see Ferrari getting to the bottom of it necessarily in a quick enough time to make it count for this year.

Not that I think that that's going to cause any friction with Lewis Hamilton. I see reports that Lewis might quit at the end of the year. I don't see that happening either. It's just going to be frustrations all round for what...

could have been a mega year for him joining a new team and Charles Leclerc carrying on with a title challenge. It's just not going to come. Lewis had been really positive after his comeback drive at Imola and then... getting into the weekend and then he qualifies and then gets the three-place grid penalty for impeding Max Verstappen.

at Massonet, which hampered his chances. He then lost a chunk of time in the early stage of the race. The top four were away and gone. He was behind Hadjar and Fernando Alonso. Fernando obviously crashed out with a duff engine. And then... He finished in a creditable fifth position. I say creditable, it was still 51 seconds behind. And I think he was sort of at odds to know what had happened. He got a bit of traffic. There was certainly that. But there was also that miscommunication.

um in qualifying has prompted quite a lot of reaction as you can imagine from team lh bernie i'll just read you a couple of these ones uc tilly lucy tilly will lh get a new race engineer gcaf how quickly Can we sack the whole Ferrari pit wall? He's gone that harsh. And Calpecio went a Ferrari signing Bono. Inevitable. You're going to get that going on. But it was another miscommunication. And what did you think of his lack of pace in the race?

Yeah, so let's start with the qualifying one. I can't emphasize enough.

how difficult traffic is for the pit wall to work out in monaco a few reasons for that obviously gps is quite poor radio um is quite poor as well in terms of getting the information across but and obviously things are happening very very hectic in terms of especially with this new soft because some people were doing double kudos so not an easy run plan to keep on top of either and but the other difficulty in monaco that people don't often think about is because it's such a short lap

Actually, when you're looking at a GPS dot, to tell the difference by someone on a push and a slow lap is actually very, very small. It's the difference. You're looking for small differences in their sector one time or whatever. He'd not even gone through sector one at the point that this is happening. So you're looking at GPS mini sectors. All of that's quite inaccurate. So I can see where the error came from. Now, obviously, a lot of teams.

in that situation will err on the side of caution. So if you're unsure if a car is fast or slow, you call it as fast because that's the safest way. And then if he's not fast, you deal with it later. The difficulty with that is if he's not fast and he goes past you and gains the track position, then people will be complaining that Lewis is putting a bad track position because he let another car pass. So there's difficulties in both directions. So I can see how it happened. It's a mistake.

They're all really experienced guys. It's not the only traffic mistake we see the other weekend. We've seen some shockers in terms of impeding and cars not getting in the way. I think the Lance Stroll one, arguably the worst one. There's a lot going on there. The race. Okay, so I was a bit surprised that come the second stop, Lewis has lost enough time that Piastri is able to box and come out in front of him.

So the pace was off. And what we've seen with this new regulation is that the top five were really pushing and previous Monocos are all driving off the pace. This time they were really pushing to open a gap. Lewis just wasn't able, for whatever reason, to stay with them. And that's surprising given how much Lewis loves Monaco and how confident he seemed going into the weekend. He seemed much more confident than Charles Leclerc was. So that's more worrying for me than the qualifying.

radio stuff. Do you think Lewis was having to hold back a little bit, though, and try and create a gap for Charles to pit into? Was he actually doing a bit of what Liam was doing for Isaac?

think so because he wasn't there was no one directly behind Lewis you know Lewis was very much on his own sort of no man's land in that middle bit you know definitely the second half of the bit of the race so I'm not really sure what went what went on through then i've not listened to all the radio crawlers so you might be right but um i've not listened to it all it was just when we had the radio message you know right push lewis this is our race now

That made me think that he was running another race, maybe for Charles, in the early stages. And Ferrari had kind of hinted that they might have to do a bit of that. When they spoke to Martin and themselves, because we obviously asked the question, who's going to tell Lewis and leave that one to Fred for a bit. There were a few laps where he was just trying to create a gap if a gap was needed. Red Bull.

Verstappen, worst qualifying of the season. 1% off the pace. That was double the deficit of Bahrain in qualifying. I mean, we've talked about this before with regards to the Red Bull, but that RB21, much like... previous iterations does not like car uh does not like curbs i should say bernie does it just it just is not at home and it lacks the mechanical grip that some of the others do

Yeah, you know, and I think we praise Verstappen for very often getting the most out of the car. But if the car is... nervous or not consistent lap on lap, not repeatable corner on corner. You don't trust the break-in and we hear so often the complaints about the break-in. Monaco is the worst circuit for that. if you don't know reliably where your car is going to place each lap.

It's very hard to get the most out of it in Monaco. Every street circuit would be very difficult. The circuits with a bit more runoff, you can maybe catch it, but you can't in Monaco. When you make a mistake, that's it. It's game over. Yes, you know, I'm sure he will have wished that they could have done better, but they gave it a good shot in the race. It didn't ultimately change his finished position, but they gave it a good shot.

Yeah, holding out for the late safety car, the red flag. Obviously, they did the opposite of the leaders. It was kind of a damage limitation.

performance for them, wasn't it, for Max? I mean, he's twice a winner around the streets of Monaco. But I want to talk to you, Crofty, about the other car, Yuki Tsunoda, out of the points again. it's the familiar tale we've had it so often now christian himself has already written off the constructors but where do we go with this because it doesn't matter could it could any other driver on the grid drive that

second red bull and be within i don't know two or three tenths of max regularly i just can't see i mean this is not poor quality drivers we're seeing in the second car these are very very decent grand prix drivers and it just is a perennial issue that i don't know how they get on top of it I think the answer to your question is yes, but they're not going to sign Lando Norris or George Russell or Carlos Sainz, drivers of that calibre.

And with all due respect to Yuki, who I know is now the most experienced Japanese driver in Formula One history, he's not a Lando Norris. He's a good driver, but he's not a race-winning driver yet. One day, I hope he is.

I suppose the temptation for Red Bull is just to carry on doing what they're doing, and then maybe they will find, you know, in Arvid Lindblad or whoever's coming through the ranks after him, or even Isaac Hadja, a driver that can live with Max. But Max... is exceptional max is a a phenomenal talent and max will extract way more performance out of any car i think at the moment than the most drivers on the grid he's the form driver on the grid and

To say that he's got to get within two or three tenths of max is a tall order, a tough order. But Red Bull are a championship winning team. And therefore, it's not an unrealistic ask for that second driver. in the Rebel car. I personally think they've got the wrong driver still, and they should have gone. If they want to win a Constructors' Championship, go and get a driver that is good enough.

Might well be in time, but I don't think he's proved it. Well, they should have got Carlos Sainz, but for whatever reason, that didn't happen. Carlos Sainz was the driver available on the market for next year. Once you've not got Carlos Sainz, who are you looking for in the future? Lando's locked into a long-term contract. George Russell's out of contract at the end of this year. What combo that would be.

It would be an interesting combo and give us plenty to talk about. I don't think there's any animosity between George and Max. They're just fiercely competitive human beings that have not always seen eye to eye. on the track at any given moment. But that's the caliber of driver they're going to have to get. And I've not got a downer on Yuki, trust me. But is he a consistent podium finisher or race winner?

Look at the stats. No, he's not. Do you want to be a constructors champion? Yes. Therefore, go out and get a consistent race winner or podium finisher. Otherwise, he's going to... He's going to finish in the lower reaches of the top 10 when your other driver's going to be, you know, second or third on the grid. Bernie, we touched on this on the pod the other day. You know, you can see what Alpine are doing and actually they've now been linked with even potentially Mick Schumacher.

coming back in, or at the very least, Paul Aaron. I don't know if they're going to mix and match all year just because, get it right before the new regulations come in. But might we see that, do you think, in the Red Bull senior team as well? Might we see Isaac Hadjar get...

an opportunity if this continues um along the same lines of what was going on with liam lawson do you think anything could happen anything could happen in terms of who they put in that second seat but they need to be really careful because Look at someone like Hager. He's coming this year, being very strong, very consistent, you know, getting the job done. And it could ruin him to put him in that red ball seat, quite frankly. It ruins everybody.

yeah exactly if there's not enough work done in the background so you know it is a bit the poison chalice really if you want to think of it like that So the bigger question for me for Red Ball is we know Verstappen is this talent. You know, none of us can really put a number on how talented because you never get.

direct comparison all this like how far off has that red bull car been over the last few years but can they improve the car can they make even if they leave max's car well enough alone can they make the other car work for a second driver and they've got all this data you know they've got you know we talked about them having a second team they've got the rb data they've got their own data out of those three drivers

pick the driver that's best suited to the characteristics of that car and get that car that has not worked for the last three or four years in a race with when in position that's what needs to happen and they need like as much as you say they need to get their driver lineup sorted out for next year they need to get the car sorted out for next year like they are you know if max wins the championship this year the driver championship it would be his best by far

win of a drivers championship because he doesn't the package is not working so they need to get on top of that for next year what we're seeing is world-class isn't it crafty it's world-class every single time we we talk about max actually what we're seeing is something extraordinarily special i i totally agree because it's not like max is really happy with the car it's not like max says this

car's an absolute dream. He's driving around the problems because he has got that talent. I don't know if you can engineer a car in two different ways. um at a race track and i don't know in time whether yuki sunoda will get used to it and his muscle memory will become more adept at this race ball red bull rather than the racing balls and he might go and score better points but i

I know what you're saying about the engineering lineup, Bernie, but can a good jockey make a bad horse great? No. A better jockey can make a bad horse better. It is the only analogy I can give there. And I've backed many a bad horse in my time. You can make the second Red Bull a racing bull. Just do that. Yeah, exactly. That'll actually be closer.

That is scoring more points at the minute, isn't it? It would, yeah. Simple. Obviously, you can't, Simon, because the regulation... No, I know that. It's got allowed, but it... It's a better idea than the Avenue Princess Grace.

So Mercedes, who said, just quickly, stuck behind Williams. Nothing they could do. They were on the hards. They ran long. They were hoping for a safety car, a little bit like Max Verstappen. Russell pitted lap 64 and 70. Antonelli, as we discussed, 71 and 73. But before we move on to Barcelona, just let's talk about the dive at the Nouvelle Chicane to get ahead of a dawdling Alex Albon. And then he comes over the radio and says, I don't care.

if i don't care if i get a penalty or something like that does it and so of course the stewards hear this and they chuck the book at him i mean they probably should have expected it anyway because you're almost buying time aren't you but the drive-through it didn't make any odds

Really? Actually, perhaps he finished better than he would have done with the drive-through, Bernie, on that one. But in all seriousness, it just kind of summed up the race, didn't it? That moment said it all. Well, it did sum up the race. Well, looking forward to next year to see what happens, because as you pointed out, Simon, if he'd done it.

20 laps earlier, if he'd done it to everyone he came across, he would have finished in a better position. So the drive-through, he was so fast compared to Albon that the drive-through penalty was null and void. He was still in a better position by having had the drive-through penalty. And I've seen it many, many times in the past. You know, one of my drivers did it at Spa. They overtook someone. Then we got given a five-second penalty. But actually...

the five second penalty was not as much of a disadvantage as being stuck behind the car we were stuck behind. Here's a brilliant example in Monaco where it takes so much time to overtake someone and he was losing so much time each lap.

that the penalty didn't fit the crime. And arguably, I was wondering what Mercedes would want to do with Kimi Antonelli. Do you tell Kimi Antonelli... which i don't think they ever would on the radio but how do you say to him actually this has worked out all right for george just drive just because yeah it did you know ultimately george he didn't finish in the points

But if he'd done it 20 lap earlier, he could have done. And that means the penalty wasn't harsh enough. So was Kimi Antonelli in a desperate way to get past Alex Albon where... Alex slammed the brakes on into the Nouvelle chicane after that. Was Kimi aware that had he got past Alex and then started to really back up Alex, then the penalty for George would have been completely mitigated?

you would have got to make a point there um by the way the penalties it starts at a 10 second that's your baseline for leaving the track and gaining advantage it goes up to that drive-through for being a little bit petulant with it and i don't blame george for that actually the guidelines

just talk over that a minute you know as as bernie's pointing out there there's the punishment has got to fit the crime and actually going forward they can have anything these are only guidelines aren't they they can actually apply whatever they want to apply well Well, they can up to a drive through. That's the maximum I think they can do unless there's a really justifiable reason.

Now, had Kimi blocked Alex... What's that justifiable reason? That's what I'm saying. Well, yeah. If Kimi really got past Alex and blocked him and held him so much that George would have got a point, then maybe we'd have seen a disqualification or whatever.

it's ridiculous sportsman like behavior yeah alex bought him dinner though didn't he so uh that was good sorry mate uh completely trashed your race well i thought i was trashing your race so here we are i'll buy a chicken schnitzel in the evening and whatever else they they had um before we go um because yesterday's don's voice is beginning to uh take it

the front wing being stiffer by a factor of a third. That is what it is with the static load tests on top of it, 60 newtons force. apply to it can only move 10 millimeters as opposed to 15 millimeters. I think I'm right in saying that, aren't I, Bernie? And how's it going to affect things? What's your take on this? Well, there's been a lot of chatter about it.

Teams have now had, how many races have we had, eight races to get ready for it. So they know on each deflection test that they do in the FAA garage, they'll know what their deflection is for each of the wings and each setup that they're running. so they'll have known how far out they are if any are out we don't we're not obviously privy to that information so we don't know if anyone's been regularly feeling on the new metric of the front wing test so you know as much as teams

speculate whether it'll affect them or not. And there was a lot of discussion that it'd affect McLaren and McLaren have said it won't affect them. They're not worried about it. The proof will be in the pudding. So qualifying in Spain and racing Spain. Is someone going to suffer by having to bring a new front wing? And we'll find that out on Thursday when we get the parts that have changed on the car.

And is anyone going to suffer with higher degradation, for example, or lower straight line speed? So that's how we'll see it. If someone doesn't have the same speed at the end of the street as we would expect, that's where we'll see it. So we don't know. And that's going to make Barcelona a little bit more exciting as well, I think. What we do know is that McLaren say it's not going to affect us. And Red Bull say it might affect them. McLaren say it's nothing to do with our wings flexing.

in the same way that we're not cooling our tires using you know different materials expenses water by the way on that one this is brilliant because they're quite clever engineers at mclaren they worked out that to keep their tires cool they'd need seven kilos of water in the tires which would be quite heavy and after 10 laps of monaco the water would be boiling and they would be it would have enough temperature to cook andrea stella his pasta

for his team for his team dinner afterwards so forget the the water trick but yeah is it the wing have mercedes already gone stiffer with their front wing and got ahead of the game and they you know will have a a more setup knowledge going into that weekend. Our Alpine, our Aston Martin, other teams that are going to get affected as well. Bernie's right. We'll see out on the track.

my overriding thought on this though is if it's such a big issue if it needed doing why wasn't it done at the start of the season why have we waited eight races because if it is going to be a dramatic effect

then, well, someone was flexing too much at the start of the season. And therefore, it should have been nipped in the bud straight away. We've had to wait until Spain. That just seems a bit of a fudged compromise for me. I mean, the rear wing... tests or that you know they were being policing the rear wings more since shanghai that hasn't actually affected mclaren too much but if this does and then we see red bull or one of the others coming back at mclaren a complete inverse of what we saw

from 2024 and then you never know crofty mclaren might get back into the state where they have to apply team orders depending or or favor one of uh I wish I had a straw. I'd bring it to Barcelona with me and you could clutch at it for the next day.

Well, we are going to Barcelona. We're back for one day only. Bernie, thanks for joining us. You're going to be on the same plane as us tomorrow. I think we're leaving at half seven. We'll be there late. Oh, no, I'm earlier tomorrow than you. Oh, OK. Well, we won't be able to join you. I'm going to get in in time for my dinner. Have some dinner. Nice, relaxed evening in Barcelona. Ready for Thursday at the track. It's going to be a hot one. Is it? Yeah. Have you not read my free event email?

I didn't even know it had come out yet. I wish I'd read it before this. I might have talked some sense, but that never happens. Thank you, Crofty, for your debut on the F1 show podcast. I think it's gone very well. We might allow you back.

Thank you. I'd love to come back and I will leave you with this satisfying thought that after the lack of overtaking in Monaco, at least we're going to a track now where there is plenty of overtaking historically and it's not like... 91% of the races have been won from the front row. Oh, yeah. No, it is. Okay. Thanks, Bernie. Thank you, Crofty. I will see you tomorrow at some stage, on some flight, or in some hotel, or on the bus on Thursday. But for us all here, at the pod.

The F1 Show pod. We'll see you later. Bye-bye.