Episode Transcript
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0:15
Hello, everybody. Welcome to Shift F1, a podcast
0:17
about speedy race cars. I'm
0:19
Drew Scanlon. Joining me, Danny O'Dwyer. How are
0:21
you, Danny? I'm very good,
0:24
Drew. What's going on here? Formula 1 is
0:26
over. Why are we talking? We don't
0:28
usually talk, Drew, unless Formula 1
0:31
is involved. What's happening? What's going
0:33
on? It's the off-season. I'm bathing. I
0:35
just really... Wait, are
0:40
you implying that you have gone an entire F1 season
0:42
without bathing? Yeah, of course.
0:44
Yeah, well, wait, you don't? I
0:48
just couldn't stand not talking
0:50
to my best Formula 1 friends. So
0:53
I've also invited Rob Zachney. How are you, Rob?
0:57
Not too bad. We are recording, right?
0:59
Did I see the numbers flash? I
1:01
see the record thing going. Yeah.
1:03
We've only done this for almost 10
1:06
years. We
1:08
need a... We're not allowed to talk to each other unless
1:10
there's at least one patron in the room. That's
1:14
right. I see the red light
1:17
flashing. Yeah. Is this episode just going
1:19
to be us like completely crashing at
1:21
the end here?
1:23
Just like completely out of energy
1:25
after an entire... The longest F1
1:28
season in history? Yeah. Like the
1:30
Sunday morning after a Saturday night
1:32
bender. You know, just wandering the
1:34
streets in a few days. A
1:37
little bit, I guess. We
1:39
did this one just to kind of throw
1:41
it together to have an opportunity to talk
1:43
about the season that was and do some
1:45
emails. But it does turn out that we
1:48
have some news to cover as well. We
1:51
do. If you're new to this podcast, a
1:53
very warm welcome to you. And if you
1:55
are new to Formula 1 itself, we recommend
1:57
listening to our preseason primer episode that happened
1:59
all the way back in
2:01
what February of this year you've
2:05
got a whole season to catch up on if this is
2:07
your first episode you can go back to listen to that
2:09
episode 216 it
2:11
assumes no prior f1 knowledge and explains how the
2:13
sport works and who everybody is so you can
2:15
go listen to that and then the entire season
2:17
so yeah who knows who will win you can't
2:19
do you know Alonzo starts out well so you
2:21
know maybe he makes good how many
2:23
how many races you gonna win this year the possibilities
2:27
are endless also
2:29
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2:31
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to all that fun stuff head over to patreon.com/shift
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f1 or click the link in the show notes
3:02
what's been going on at this month Danny last
3:04
month just passed we
3:07
did Braun the impossible
3:09
formula one story starring
3:11
everyone's favorite matrix man
3:13
Keanu Reeves this
3:15
month we are doing recording us tomorrow
3:18
I believe our review of
3:20
Gran Turismo have you guys
3:23
watched Gran Turismo yes I
3:26
have a half hour to go okay cool
3:29
that's 4k you how can you put it
3:31
down how hard you're telling me you're telling
3:33
me they got to the 24 hours of
3:35
Lamar and spoilers they but they get to
3:37
the 24 hours of Lamar and you're like
3:40
I think I'll leave it here
3:42
it's like Hemingway you know
3:44
you got to leave this sentence half written
3:46
so that you know where to pick it up yeah
3:49
well there you go there's a little bit
3:51
of insight into what we think about that
3:54
one I'm sure we'll chew
3:56
into it more tomorrow and that will be up
3:58
for patrons I don't know We'll see
4:00
maybe by the weekend, maybe next week, we'll
4:02
get it up in due course. And a
4:04
massive thanks to all of our incredible,
4:06
incredible title sponsors, uh, who
4:08
have done stayed with us for
4:11
the entire year. A bunch of it. We actually have,
4:13
I think we might have one new person this week as
4:15
well, which is amazing. And thank
4:17
you all so much for slapping
4:19
your beautiful names as stickers all
4:21
over our car. Uh,
4:24
those names, of course, one more time for the year
4:26
are F1 Gamer
4:28
Dad. And it's not
4:30
me. I swear Mojo
4:32
Nixon gaming, get rich or
4:34
die. Ryan, a GAVI, 80
4:36
X Cypress training turf. SES
4:39
at team blackjack, Michael Maeve's
4:41
Gordy's army at talking autos,
4:43
Olivia Evans, telemetry doc.com FTC,
4:45
Drew Stewart, Bailey foot, Abdallah
4:48
Althani, Jason Chadwick, Abraham Getchell,
4:50
the space above us podcast,
4:53
llama magic. Sniggs Alex,
4:55
couché Max, Voltaire circuit.
4:58
Troy Stammer, William Romf, Irvine
5:00
clinical research. So
5:02
that makes me laugh. Lachlan, the mad man.
5:05
And our good friend, Jason Kelly. Thank you
5:07
all for covering our beautiful car. We should,
5:10
every year we should get a, like
5:12
a little, little matchbox car done
5:14
with tiny little stickers of all
5:16
the, I actually made, um, me
5:19
and my daughter got into my kid is five
5:21
now and she's, she started like to do Lego
5:23
sets a And then
5:26
I started to do like, and,
5:28
uh, I got a, we did like
5:31
a little daddy daughter, we make Lego
5:33
beside each other thing. And I got
5:35
the Mercedes Lego set, which
5:37
has, uh, I think their
5:40
car from two years ago and also the
5:42
safety car. Um, as,
5:45
as, uh, in like a two in like
5:47
a double set. So I have both of
5:49
those. Randomly said I did
5:51
them all in one night. It was absolute
5:53
blast. Good stuff. Rag much? Yeah,
5:56
yeah. I can make, yeah, I can play with
5:58
children's toys. Yeah. Eat it. That's
6:00
awesome. All right,
6:02
well, as you mentioned, Danny, we have kind
6:04
of an
6:06
unscripted episode we
6:08
just figured, you know, with all the,
6:10
a lot of prep goes
6:13
into those post-race episodes. Yes. And
6:15
we kind of just wanted to chill out and talk about
6:17
the season that was and
6:19
kind of drift into that long
6:22
winter night. And
6:24
before we do that, though, news just
6:26
keeps breaking. Yes. So
6:29
why don't you kick things off here, Danny, with what
6:32
we can look forward to in 2024. Yes.
6:35
First of all, sprint races is
6:38
not what we're going to talk about first.
6:40
Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Cool. Yes.
6:42
It was announced that China and
6:45
Miami will be joining the
6:47
sprint schedule for
6:50
2024. This came during an F1
6:52
commission meeting in November. It was
6:54
agreed that the sporting advisory committee
6:56
will discuss potential changes to that
6:58
sprint format. But that
7:00
proposal will not be presented to the F1 commission
7:03
for consideration until their first meeting
7:05
in 2024. So we're not
7:07
sure what sprint is going to be. Sprint
7:09
could be anything. I mean, it couldn't be anything.
7:11
It's definitely going to be a shorter race.
7:14
It's a foot race now. Could you
7:16
get the literal sprint? They're going to do
7:18
the NFL combine. Who'd
7:20
win? Who'd be the fastest? Do you
7:22
think? They all ran for it. Albon.
7:26
Yeah. Oh, that's a good check. He's tall.
7:28
He's, but he's not, he's not like Ricardo.
7:30
I think Ricardo carries a lot of like
7:33
weight with him. Like he's bigger. Like
7:36
Albon's got like a sprint. Albon's got like a
7:38
marathon body. Yeah. Alonzo
7:41
would struggle. Yes. I think
7:43
those knees have seen some shit. And
7:46
so to, I guess, go in the order that
7:48
we will see them at China will be the
7:51
first one. As long
7:53
as that race is on. It's the first time we've,
7:55
they are actually in the middle of a, is it
7:58
a flu outbreak or something? They're having a pretty. Geez,
8:00
something's going on. It's not COVID apparently, but hey,
8:02
they said that last time. Uh,
8:04
but that'll be April 20th and the 19th to 21st
8:06
is when that one is on. Um,
8:11
Miami is then May 3rd to 5th. Then
8:14
we are at the Ostrich ring, uh, Red Bull
8:16
ring, sorry. Uh, which will become
8:19
the first three-time host of the sprint, uh,
8:21
on June 20th to the 30th, uh,
8:23
circuit of the Americas will run a second
8:25
sprint race in October. And
8:27
then Brazil, uh, at the
8:30
start of November and Qatar at the
8:32
end of November will be the other
8:34
ones. So that's a, that's a
8:37
bunch of six different sprint races
8:39
to enjoy next year. But again, what
8:42
the sprint is, who
8:44
knows? Six opportunities for everyone to
8:46
come away being like, don't
8:48
worry fans. We're going to fix that sprint
8:50
format. I think obviously we know we need
8:52
to rework it. We're on it. We got
8:54
one good one this year. What was it?
8:57
I forget there was one race. Am I
8:59
in Brazil? Was it? No, there was one
9:01
race we had where the sprint was definitely
9:03
better than the main race. I
9:05
forget there was maybe two of them. I forget.
9:07
Yeah, but it feels good. Uh, Qatar one
9:09
was, was all right. But that's a good
9:11
shout. Yeah. I
9:13
just mean interesting race weekend, uh,
9:16
in part like so. Yeah. What we
9:18
will explore later when we're talking about
9:20
reminiscing about the season is that this
9:22
season was very inconsistent. There was
9:25
times where some drivers were doing really well
9:27
and then doing really badly. There were some
9:29
races that were really boring and then really
9:31
good ones. There were sometimes where teams were
9:33
doing great or badly. And then the other
9:35
end of the season, they're doing the complete
9:37
opposite. So it's, it's all higgley-piggly. So if
9:39
you can't remember much about this year, don't
9:41
blame yourself. It was a little bit all
9:43
over the place. Well,
9:46
F1 knows what the people like. So
9:48
does Williams and they like people
9:51
from Florida because they have
9:53
retained Logan Sargent GTA six, dude, Florida
9:56
has never been hotter for
9:59
the 2020. That means the F1
10:02
grid is the same for 2024 as
10:04
it was for 2023. I
10:07
don't know that that's ever happened while I've been watching
10:09
it. Well, not the start of
10:11
2023, because we had our good old friend
10:13
Nick DeVries in there. Oh, you're right. So
10:17
it has. It has slightly changed,
10:19
shall we say. But yeah, it's
10:21
a good point. I'll say
10:23
this, like, I think this proves James Vowels is
10:26
maybe the most on the
10:28
level team for the year. On the level
10:30
team principle I've ever seen, because like any,
10:32
like given the circumstance, any other team principles,
10:34
like, yeah, Logan has their full support. He's
10:36
dead. He's dead.
10:39
Sorry. They're going to take him out
10:41
of the trailer. They're going to shoot him. But
10:43
here, when James Vowels was like, you
10:46
know, we're pleased with the progress, you know, he's saying we're
10:48
at the way to make our decision. All
10:51
of that apparently did mean we are going
10:53
to analyze, like, the data and
10:56
make our decision about him. And then
10:58
they decided to keep him, which
11:00
I think tells us a lot
11:03
about Williams and how, like, Vowels
11:05
operate. But I'm curious, temperature
11:08
check. How do we feel about Logan
11:11
getting a mulligan? It's
11:13
odd, right? Because I mean, we'll
11:15
get into this a little bit later when we can sort
11:17
of run down how the teams and drivers did. It's
11:21
hard to. We it.
11:25
They had a better car this year, but I also
11:27
think Albin got more out of it than just about
11:29
anyone would. Albin had a fantastic
11:31
year. So I
11:33
think it's unfair to compare him right next
11:36
to him. And in a way, when
11:38
Albin is your teammate, I feel like
11:40
perhaps you get a bit more
11:42
time because that's the time
11:44
that Albin didn't get. Maybe
11:48
Albin is a good case for having patience for rookie
11:50
drivers. I
11:53
think I'm glad he's
11:55
getting another go of it. I
11:57
always hate when the sinkers swim out.
12:00
attitude and all that. But obviously
12:02
I think he really has to
12:04
do it next year. He has to really
12:07
prove himself next year if he wants to
12:09
keep it again. It wasn't a great season
12:11
for him, but that's a rookie season for
12:13
sometimes. Yeah, or at
12:15
least show some market improvement.
12:18
I hesitate to... I give a lot
12:20
of benefit of the
12:25
doubt to situations like this because
12:28
you never know if they're on the same
12:30
car development
12:35
schedule, like who's got the
12:38
upgrades, who doesn't. And
12:40
when there is a disparity, especially
12:43
an experience, and
12:45
you're comparing those two people a lot,
12:48
it makes it difficult to compare one person
12:50
with themselves to
12:52
see whether they are improving. And of course, there's
12:54
so much data that we as the audience don't
12:57
get to see. So it's
13:00
tough for us to say
13:02
like, oh, it's a bad move, especially
13:04
when as this Autosport article points out,
13:07
there's not a
13:10
lot of people
13:12
ready to go in the wings. I mean, there's
13:15
Teo Pucher who he
13:17
won the F2 championship this season, right? Lawson
13:19
as well, but he's probably tied up with
13:22
Red Bull, right? Yes. Another
13:25
point that article makes, right? That like, a lot
13:27
of people that could theoretically get, if
13:30
they pan out even a little bit, they're going
13:32
to lose them fast to the teams
13:34
that actually have vested interest in those
13:36
talents. Yeah, and I think we mentioned
13:39
before, Williams has already
13:41
sunk a lot of time and
13:44
money and effort and energy into
13:46
Logan Sargent because he came from
13:48
their F1 Academy. So
13:53
I think it makes a lot of sense.
13:56
It's not maybe as exciting as we
13:58
want, but I I am curious
14:00
to see how he'll
14:03
do next year. Yeah. And I,
14:05
I feel like, I don't know, I'll have to
14:07
think about recent years, I guess, but, you
14:09
know, Russell was obviously a good
14:12
young driver that they had in there for
14:14
a while, but Williams
14:16
was for a long time in my
14:19
head somewhere where veterans went to end
14:21
their careers, and I don't think it
14:23
benefited them. And I think in
14:25
many ways, just having this younger, you know, driver,
14:28
you know, who
14:31
was, who was there before? Stroll, Sorokin,
14:34
but then we're into like the massive, Valtteri
14:36
was there too. Bount Votas was there. Yeah.
14:39
It was, I think it was half that.
14:41
Veterans washed up there to see things out.
14:44
And then people on the rise
14:46
passed through before winding
14:48
the way to Mercedes. Right.
14:51
But yeah, I think
14:53
Williams has been in a tough spot with
14:55
the driver, like their ability
14:58
to hang on to drivers and when they tend to get
15:00
hold of them. But yeah, like I
15:03
find it really interesting. I think, you
15:05
know, there was always sort of a, I
15:09
think Williams was fairly clear about this from the
15:11
start that everyone knew Sargent was going to be
15:13
a bit rough because like there was a sense
15:15
that he'd like, he'd missed a year of development.
15:18
They'd rushed him forward into
15:21
F1. Whereas
15:23
Piastri had a much more sort of, you know,
15:25
he was a reserve
15:27
driver for Alpein, you know, he had a, yeah,
15:30
he sort of had a much more, because he
15:32
had such a great year comparatively, but I think
15:34
you're right. Like he had a, This was much
15:36
more of a, hey kid, it's
15:38
an F1 car, good luck. Yeah. And
15:41
you know, I think he
15:44
had like the
15:46
earlier parts of the year were really rough, but
15:49
I do kind of feel like over
15:51
time, like what was it, Zandvoort,
15:53
he wrecked the car, but before he
15:56
wrecked the car, he's kind
15:58
of on it, right? He has one of those things where. Like
16:00
he was right on the limit and he's
16:02
like setting competitive times and then he loses it a
16:04
bit at a track where to lose It a bit
16:06
means the car is gonna be right off and I
16:08
feel like since then It got
16:10
a lot cleaner the performance gap narrowed a bit
16:13
and that tended to be overshadowed because we had
16:15
so many Bad tracks
16:17
for Williams that like by the end
16:19
Sargent wasn't doing any impressive because Albin
16:21
wasn't doing impressive. They were kind of
16:24
lumbering around back there He did below
16:26
qualifying at the last race but
16:30
Yeah, I kind of I find it an
16:33
interesting approach they're taking which is that The
16:36
first year was an investment and we are
16:38
going to see what seasoning can do with
16:40
this guy because you know If you think
16:42
about the history of F1 a lot of
16:44
motor motorsports You
16:47
know prior to this era of like trying to find
16:49
your wunderkind and just like lock them in at age
16:51
like 17 18 to
16:53
a five-year contract You
16:55
kind of didn't expect people to really
16:57
like pull their act together until like
16:59
their mid-20s in F1 And
17:03
you can wear to other sports right like,
17:05
you know Basketball players get drafted and can
17:07
be in the league for like five six
17:10
years before you're really like saying like, alright
17:12
Now it's time to show out. And so
17:14
I do think there's this is an interesting like experiment
17:17
in Developing a
17:19
driver in an era
17:22
where it's been very much focused on
17:24
like hey your development happened Up
17:26
through F2 now, you just need to be ready to go Who
17:30
knows maybe he will be the first There's
17:34
been one Williams winner in
17:37
the past 20 years. Could you
17:39
remember who it was? Oh, yeah, okay
17:43
pastor pastor Maldonado Spain
17:46
2012 I think Yeah,
17:49
was that when they're running in Valencia a
17:52
little like Barcelona course with the
17:54
street circus. Yeah. No, it's actually
17:56
no and maybe you're right. Was it no was Spain was
17:58
it then God, in my head, it wasn't
18:01
Valencia. Let me look it up. I
18:03
think it was Barcelona. While you're doing that, I, uh, just
18:05
to update everyone here, 2024 could be a bloodbath
18:09
because the only drivers,
18:12
uh, that are secured past 2024
18:14
are the McLaren
18:16
drivers, the Mercedes drivers, and Max
18:18
Verstappen. There you go. Everybody
18:21
else ends their contract ends at least, or
18:23
in, in 2024 or it's nebulous. Wow.
18:28
A real lemon dance. And it was Spain.
18:30
It was Barcelona. That was her
18:33
did it. And he won that race. He won
18:35
that race. Yeah. He did it. Wasn't
18:38
gifted to him. Uh,
18:41
well, speaking of gifting things from
18:44
one to the other. Oh yeah. Yeah.
18:47
This is, this is an odd
18:50
story. I don't know. I'm like, this
18:52
one popped up today. And
18:54
then there's been a lot on it that
18:56
I, that I'm like, there's a lot of
18:58
moving parts to it, so I'm,
19:00
I, I fear I'm going to mangle the story a little bit.
19:03
Uh, so the top headline and
19:06
the organizations that who's doing what is going to
19:08
be important here, FIA
19:12
opened a compliance investigation, uh,
19:16
into, I don't know if they formally
19:18
announced the surfer, if it was leaked,
19:20
but they, they, they launched an investigation
19:22
into conflict of interest
19:24
issues around Toto
19:26
and Susie Wolf, because
19:29
they both, uh, you know,
19:31
they both had a big deal in motorsports for years,
19:33
but right now they wear two very different hats. Husband
19:36
and wife, we should add. Right.
19:39
And, uh, wild if there was two
19:41
people called Wolf who weren't related and
19:43
four of them, that'd be amazing. Like
19:46
Babs and Buster bunny in tiny tune. Uh,
19:51
so, uh, so
19:53
Susie Wolf is head of F1 Academy. Uh,
19:56
and obviously Toto runs
19:58
Mercedes. But
20:01
there were complaints raised
20:04
by other teams that
20:09
something was said that intimated
20:11
that Total Wolf
20:14
might be getting access
20:16
to FOM information, F1
20:18
management, which is
20:20
like the commercial
20:23
rights hold, the operator of F1
20:25
effectively. That
20:29
as – like
20:31
via Suzy Wolf's role working on F1 Academy,
20:33
which is sort of a high-level thing with
20:37
FOM, she would
20:39
be like leaking information
20:41
to her husband about
20:43
FOM matters and deliberations that other team
20:46
principles do not have access to. The
20:49
FIA is investigating this, FIA
20:52
being the
20:54
international advocacy organization,
20:56
but for our purposes, the
20:58
sporting regulatory body of motorsports
21:02
and a body that has a fractious
21:04
history with the F1 teams. And
21:08
we appear to be in a phase
21:10
where that fractiousness is currently waxing. I
21:12
mean, go see our Braun GP podcast.
21:15
Oh, yeah. Exactly. If you want some
21:17
priors on this one. Yeah. So
21:23
this comes out. FIA is investigating this. And right
21:25
away, like my reaction when I saw this was
21:27
like, I don't know if this is going to
21:29
be a good look for anyone because it seems
21:31
really petty to be like, Total
21:34
is getting access to FOM information about
21:36
F1 Academy. Like it's not – I
21:39
don't know what high-level stuff is going
21:41
– I just don't know like how
21:43
valuable or important and relevant
21:46
to like F1 team's operations is
21:48
going to be stuff that like
21:50
Suzy Wolf is dealing with through
21:53
F1 Academy at this juncture. But either way, it
21:55
kind of seemed like a weird – let's mess
21:57
with – Let's
22:00
mess with someone's family. Let's mess with, with our,
22:03
with our, our peers family. It
22:05
definitely makes a bunch of salacious sounding
22:08
headlines. I'll say that like, it's a lot of
22:10
like Toto and Susie Wolf under investigation.
22:12
You know, it's going on here. I
22:14
mean, I do see the flip side too. Like, you know, it is
22:16
kind of, it is unusual
22:18
and kind of weird that you have a husband and wife team. Like,
22:22
look, I worked for husband and
22:24
wife teams, hasn't been great. Weird dynamics. Don't
22:27
recommend it. But at the
22:29
same time, like it, it seems a
22:31
little bit loaded and Susie's been
22:33
around motor sports forever. She's, you
22:35
know, she's, she's been there, you
22:38
know, as long as, and then
22:40
more frankly, like more legit capacities than Toto
22:42
has been for, for
22:45
ages. So anyway, FOM
22:50
came out and said they
22:52
hadn't heard anything about this. Uh,
22:55
that the FIA didn't
22:58
like give them a heads up, uh,
23:00
that this was, that this was in play.
23:03
Um, and so
23:06
they came out and kind of
23:11
blasted, uh, the FIA,
23:13
you know, they said we, we know the public statement
23:15
made by the FAA was not shared with us in
23:17
advance. We have complete confidence.
23:19
The allegations are wrong. We have robust
23:21
processes and procedures that ensure the segregation
23:23
of information responsibilities in the event of
23:25
any potential conflict of interest. We're
23:28
confident November of our team has made
23:30
it on the unauthorized disclosure to a
23:33
team principle and we caution anyone against
23:35
making imprudent and serious allegations without substance.
23:38
So FIA and
23:41
FOM now have yet another
23:43
thing where they've kind of like they're needling
23:45
each other. Uh,
23:47
and then, you know, Susie Wolf,
23:49
obviously, understandably not happy about
23:51
this, uh, you know, no
23:53
that, you know, this feels like a misogynistic
23:56
attack, um, on her. And.
24:00
that this is sort of a personal thing
24:02
coming after her specifically because of both her
24:11
gender and her relationship. So
24:16
yeah,
24:18
this has all the makings of like kind of
24:21
in terms of what the actual breach is like
24:23
real tempest in the teapot energy I think in
24:25
terms of like what is actually at stake. But
24:28
in terms of like the ability to generate a
24:30
tremendous amount of ugliness and bad blood, it
24:33
feels like a real hornet's nest got kicked here. Well
24:36
see, I also feel like over the next couple of
24:38
days this thing might just die down entirely or might
24:40
turn into something very ugly. It
24:43
sort of just has only just broken so we're
24:45
kind of in the wake of that initial stuff.
24:48
But yeah, it does seem like just a bad look
24:50
for everyone and also kind of I just wonder what
24:52
evidence there is or because if it's a very like
24:54
he said she, well it's not even that but I don't know
24:57
what it is but it's just very yeah, I
24:59
wonder what brought it up to this level I
25:01
guess. Maybe they're one of those couples that uses
25:03
a shared Gmail account. It's
25:06
like the Hillary Clinton email. They put
25:08
a fucking server in their basement that
25:10
has both FOM and FIA
25:12
emails on us and neither the twain
25:14
should meet. Yeah, we'll
25:16
have to see. Toto looks like a real
25:19
home network administrator. You know
25:21
what, I bet one of them has that Valtteri
25:23
Bottas calendar on their hard drive. That's true, Rob.
25:25
That's probably what it was. Please. Let's
25:28
check in with you. Yeah. So,
25:31
Otas. This isn't news to
25:33
me because I follow all
25:35
these guys on Instagram and Instagram it like
25:37
once it has a little sense of like
25:39
what you like it just gives you more
25:42
of it. Like look at a couple poodle
25:44
photos. You're going to be seeing poodles
25:47
all the time but you
25:49
know you keep tabs on Valtteri Bottas.
25:52
You see him at a gallery, an art gallery, unveiling
25:54
a painting. a
26:00
painting of him, bare
26:02
ass naked, next
26:05
to a bicycle by a lake. He
26:07
puts the ass in Bottas.
26:11
So this is what, what
26:13
all those things were promoting is the
26:15
fact that he put out a nude
26:18
calendar, featuring his
26:21
rear end, across
26:23
the 12 months of the year. Terrific.
26:26
To raise, raise health for,
26:28
uh, uh, November, uh, which
26:30
is the prostate cancer, uh, charity. Which
26:32
in fairness to him, he's been rocking
26:35
that mustache, I think for the entire
26:37
year. I think, am I right
26:39
in that he had that mustache? Oh, I feel like
26:41
he showed up a couple of years ago. I feel
26:43
like he's been. Yeah. He
26:46
used to do it like the way Ricardo does the
26:48
handlebars in Austin. He used to like, he used
26:51
to turn up, maybe it was in
26:53
November, November. I have no idea, but I feel like
26:55
his commitment to it in recent years has been, or
26:57
maybe I'm wrong, but I feel like he's really, he's
26:59
really stuck to it a place. Yes.
27:02
And the other thing he's stuck to is risque
27:05
photos of him working out in the
27:07
wilderness. Like this was, he left Mercedes
27:11
and like he just, his, so
27:13
his, his Insta just started to like fill
27:15
up with photos of
27:17
like here, here I am skinny
27:20
dipping in an Alpine stream.
27:22
Beautiful. And it's like, man,
27:24
that guy seems so happy and so secure. Good
27:28
for him. He's chilling. We'll
27:30
talk about how much he's chilling later on.
27:32
We talked about his performance in
27:34
2024, but yeah, fair play to him. $150,000
27:36
a raise. 75,000
27:39
a cheek. I like it. Yeah.
27:43
Unfortunately, they do appear sold
27:45
out. We're
27:48
going to raise more. I know. I know.
27:50
The article says that they are, that they are printing
27:52
more or they have printed more. I'm not sure.
27:56
But they, they would be wise to, it's great.
28:00
I'll admit I have some some
28:02
f1 buddies I Bought
28:05
all of them calendars. Oh, did
28:07
you really terrific? They arrived a few days
28:09
ago beautiful. They're tremendous Love
28:12
it. What's when's mine arriving? It's
28:17
okay, I forgot to send you one too. I'll
28:19
just send you a picture of my ass. Okay.
28:22
Okay. Well exchange Yeah, mine's good.
28:24
Mine's gonna need a bigger piece of
28:26
paper All Right.
28:29
Well, that is it for news. We're gonna
28:31
take a break and then we will be
28:33
back with some talking points And
28:38
we're back with the talking
28:40
points I feel like this hey like
28:43
a mid-90s political
28:45
show Let's
28:48
talk about some Points
28:51
shall we gentlemen? And
28:53
yeah, so I mean I
28:55
took a step back last week and kind of thought like
28:57
okay What are some of the big what happened last year?
28:59
I went back. I watched a bunch of Race
29:02
replays or a lot of articles I listen to a
29:04
lot of podcasts and I just basically created this big
29:06
document of like here's all the stuff that went on
29:08
and Then I sort of filtered it down to a
29:10
couple of things that I thought would be easy for
29:12
people to Would I happen to do a bunch of
29:15
bunch of research some easy stuff to just sort of
29:17
summarize the year that was in ish and And
29:20
also, you know, just give us an
29:22
excuse to sort of ramble a little bit about the
29:24
year that was 2023
29:26
because it it was kind of a strange
29:28
year like we There
29:31
was a lot of races the most
29:33
races ever and we had a What
29:38
would on the face of it seemed like a
29:40
boring season at least for the championship? Or
29:42
another way of looking at it was the most dominant
29:45
Formula one display that anyone's ever done
29:47
and and
29:51
There were some movement with drivers But not all that
29:53
much at the start of the season and then we
29:55
got a weird one in the middle which came out
29:57
of nowhere and then we're also this
30:00
sort of post-drive to survive F1
30:03
boom hangover when the demands of the
30:05
viewing audience is probably higher than ever
30:07
before and then this year was
30:09
one that felt like it was falling short
30:12
a lot or at least had a lot of pressure on
30:14
it. Before we get into
30:16
some of the sort of stuff that I've collated here,
30:19
I'm just interested in what you guys kind of feel. It's been
30:21
a week since we talked last about
30:24
any specific race. What
30:26
do you guys think Drew? What do you think first of all about like what
30:29
2023 was? Like what are you gonna remember
30:32
about this year? I mean I'm
30:34
gonna remember Max's
30:37
Dominus. I think that
30:39
is just the the specter that hangs over
30:41
it, hang it over at
30:43
the entire time. You
30:46
know coming off of 2022
30:49
and it never really
30:51
like that capped the season's potential for
30:53
me. There was still some fun to
30:55
be had but I
30:57
think that's the overall narrative. Alright
31:00
similar for you Rob or? I
31:03
mean yeah like there's no there's like you know
31:05
this is one of the things where the better
31:08
podcast Potter is like actually I have something but
31:10
no like I think in three or four years
31:12
this can be one of those years that you
31:14
remember it's like what happened that
31:16
year? Max and Red Bull won everything. It's gonna
31:18
be like what was it like Ferrari 2004? Which
31:21
used to be the benchmark I think for
31:24
like oh yeah remember that season where like
31:26
Ferrari basically just like ran the table and
31:28
Chewbacca was untouchable? And that doesn't look anything
31:30
like the level of like dominance we saw
31:33
this year. Like it is ridiculous the degree
31:35
to which like every race was unlocked. I
31:38
will say this like I
31:40
think part of it is you know
31:46
Max was incredibly consistent
31:49
and like you know made no
31:51
real mistakes this year. Also a
31:54
team has never put together a car like
31:57
that is that fast and like this
31:59
reliable like nothing ever went wrong on
32:01
his car. Yeah. Um, which is always a
32:03
partly testament to like how a driver is
32:05
driving it. And it's partly a testament to,
32:07
to how it's being assembled. Uh,
32:10
so like, you know, the, the dominance
32:12
really is impressive as, as kind of
32:14
dull as it got, however, I do
32:16
find myself wondering if one reason you
32:18
don't see this to
32:20
this extent is the
32:23
cost cap means that teams have
32:25
an incentive to decide when they're
32:27
going to cut bait on
32:30
a year and they will do so
32:32
early to start turning to make up like with
32:34
investment down the road. And I do wonder if
32:36
that is one reason, like why this period of
32:38
dominance might feel a little bit like more
32:41
of a foregone conclusion, because, you
32:45
know, it wasn't too long into this where like teams are
32:47
not going to pull out all the stops to, to try
32:49
and like change the fortunes of this championship.
32:51
They're going to start talking about like, well,
32:54
maybe next year Mercedes was talking about next
32:56
year after one race. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely.
32:59
Um, and we've got 2025,
33:02
you know, that's a regulation change. You,
33:05
I gotta believe that, I
33:08
mean, teams are going to try their best in 2024, but
33:12
does the fact that it
33:14
is such an upset after
33:17
that year, move that date where they
33:19
cut and run close to 2026. That's
33:21
the big one, right? Like, isn't that what they move
33:24
it from new engine? I know they knew in this
33:26
20 sex. Okay. Nevermind then. Well,
33:28
I mean, like, I kind of hope not. Yeah. Because hoping
33:31
we don't have two years. Well, I
33:33
hope it, if I feel like if it's one, it's yeah,
33:35
I do worry that I don't want to know, I don't
33:37
want to follow you here. You know what I mean? Um,
33:40
a couple of stats on Verstappen's
33:43
dominance. And I think it's been, it's weird.
33:45
It's like a double edged sword. It's like
33:47
he was so dominant and you're to your
33:49
point, uh, Roberts, you know, he did like,
33:52
it was a fantastic drive. He was consistent. I
33:54
mean, the car is sort of, you know, he
33:56
dominated his teammate, but obviously it sounds like the
33:58
car has sort of been designed to. towards
34:00
Max, uh, Max's driving style
34:02
and whatnot. But, um, you
34:05
know, he, he was consistent throughout it and
34:07
every week, even when the championship was done
34:10
in Dusted, he was still,
34:12
um, fighting for it. Um, and
34:14
the stats prove it, I guess.
34:16
Um, he now has more victories
34:18
than Sebastian Vettel. He won 86.36
34:21
of the races this season, which is the highest
34:24
in any up one season ever. He won 34 races out of the
34:26
last 45. He
34:30
now has the, uh, the, here are some
34:32
other stats, I guess, that he has. He
34:34
has most, he has the win record. He
34:37
has most consecutive wins, most podiums, the biggest
34:39
gap to second in a championship. The most
34:41
points scored in consecutive races, most points in
34:43
a season. He got 92.7 of
34:46
all the available points this year.
34:49
That includes getting wins, fastest laps,
34:51
uh, sprints, all that stuff. Percentage
34:53
of laps led. He won wins
34:55
from poll. Uh, he own,
34:58
he has the global sort of, uh,
35:00
um, uh, record
35:02
for that races left with winning
35:05
the title, I think he might've drawn
35:08
with Mansell on that one, a
35:10
championship leader for 39 races
35:12
now in a row, um, the
35:15
percentage of points between first and second,
35:17
he has the longest one there, longest
35:19
streak of converting polls to wins as
35:21
well with 16. So just
35:24
absolutely insane. And then Red Bull as
35:26
a team have only failed to win
35:28
six races, um, during
35:31
the period of his, uh, his
35:33
Ford, those 45 races, the 34 that he won. So
35:37
just like the type of, I
35:40
mean, in a way it's funny cause in my head I'm like, I
35:43
dunno, I think my brain just switched off
35:45
caring about Red Bull about the
35:47
start of this year after last year.
35:49
But, um, it's
35:52
impressive, but it
35:54
sucks. That's the problem. Like
35:57
it's, it's really amazing. And drag, uh,
35:59
and Max's. clearly an incredible driver, but
36:02
we don't get to see him be
36:04
an incredible driver because statistics like this,
36:06
while obviously mirroring his
36:08
skill and you
36:11
know impossible for
36:14
most mortals to achieve stuff like
36:16
this. They're boring. Like
36:18
nobody fucking cares. People care
36:20
when they see all
36:23
the overtakes he did against Hamilton
36:26
in the season he won the
36:28
championship or like how much he hits a
36:30
fight in those. It's a different type
36:33
of thing obviously and I don't want to downplay
36:35
it at all. I think it's remarkable
36:37
what he's done and he's clearly putting himself in
36:39
you know contention for being
36:41
one of the legends of the sport especially
36:43
this young early in his career. But
36:46
it's boring. It sucks and who cares? You
36:48
know what I mean? Well,
36:51
and also like I think it highlights like
36:54
it's been a growing feeling for a while just
36:56
like we've always talked about the records
36:58
don't they're not comparable, right? Like
37:01
right. Prost and Senna's records and
37:03
achievements aren't comparable to
37:05
what we're talking about like Schumacher or Hamilton.
37:07
Like it's just it's a different sport. The
37:09
risks are different. They're not like setting
37:12
up just a number of races like reliability. Everything
37:14
is so different and if you look at like
37:17
Schumacher starting like the what for us
37:19
now is the modern modern era of F1
37:23
it's like F1 goes through now a
37:25
series of eras where a team and
37:28
a driver just wreck
37:30
house year on year on year
37:32
on year, you know, it's like there's the
37:34
you know, the there's the re-interregnum and then
37:37
we get you know, we get
37:39
you know after Schumacher we get you know
37:42
years of Red Bull dominance, right? Years of
37:44
Mercedes dominance and now we are back to
37:46
years of Red Bull dominance. No one's making
37:48
documentaries about those seasons They're making the documentary
37:50
about the brawn season, you know, I mean
37:52
like right and and so I think it's
37:54
one of those things Where you know, we
37:56
can talk about You know,
37:58
it's like the mess seeing these impressive stats
38:02
after points just kind of becomes meaningless because it's
38:04
like, yeah, you're great. You're beating all the records
38:06
that the last guy said after beating all the
38:08
records, the last guy before him. And
38:12
I think the other, but the other part of
38:14
it is, you know, we've talked about like, why
38:16
did the Mercedes years feel a little bit less
38:18
grading in general?
38:20
There was some sort of sense of
38:23
a rival being that internal where you
38:25
had Rossberg and Hamilton having a few
38:27
really knockdown drag out championship duels, not
38:30
just the one that Rossberg like, you know, nipped out from
38:32
under him. Like the year before that type
38:34
of going hammer in tongues as well. Hey, even, even Bottas,
38:36
even though he never got close to him once all the
38:39
points were counted at the end of a season, got
38:41
way more of a sniff of it than Jekyll. Absolutely.
38:44
But like, yeah, you just
38:46
don't have a sense of,
38:48
I mean, this is where the Schumacher comparison
38:50
actually was really apt because like, there's
38:53
just been no internal threat
38:55
whatsoever. No desire for it. It
38:57
could be either. No. And
39:00
I think it's a little bit on for
39:02
like, you know, who knows what max, who knows
39:04
what max cares about, but in terms of like, I
39:06
think it is unfortunate for the,
39:08
how he's going to be regarded and how this is
39:10
going to be remembered because he's a
39:15
protagonist about an antagonist. Like
39:17
it is just, he went out there, he drove away from everyone
39:19
like 20 times. That
39:22
is not compelling. Yeah. Exactly.
39:26
Yeah. Which I think sucks
39:28
for him as well. You know what I mean? That,
39:30
that, that, that like to have done all of this
39:32
and have such an amazing year. And I'm sure for
39:34
sapping fans probably have really enjoyed it. And I think
39:37
that's really, I'm glad for them. And I think that's
39:39
really great. But it, it
39:42
doesn't, it doesn't like give
39:44
you goosebumps. You know what I mean? Like those in
39:46
a way, the, the
39:48
statistics are sort of like this
39:52
cold reality check. But you know what
39:54
I mean? Like, yeah. So many times
39:56
when, when David Croft was like,
39:58
and these one, the. most races ever like
40:01
yeah are we some like I'm like I'm
40:03
not about that yeah or is it just
40:05
an indicator of kind of what we're watching
40:07
here like it just reminds you my
40:09
little I am really it's it's amazing
40:11
to be watching this right this is
40:14
he's one of the greats of all time
40:16
the same thing we're watching Hamilton right it's
40:18
like I
40:20
didn't watch the Schumacher era people
40:23
talk about him like he is a god
40:25
right but they also talk
40:27
about like I in the same way
40:29
people were bored
40:31
to tears of us yeah like I think
40:34
more people dropped off for me the one
40:36
in those years probably than just about any
40:38
other year I can imagine because it
40:40
just became a procession so it's it's not it's the
40:42
same I guess it you know it's like it's
40:46
there's a cost I guess to this type of
40:48
dominance and it's the people get bored may move
40:50
on and that's not good for anyone you know
40:52
so and
40:55
it's yeah it sucks to talk about
40:57
his success in his achievements with this
40:59
big qualifier but I think given where
41:02
we are in f1 sort of like recent
41:04
boom it must make
41:06
everyone feel a little bit uneasy that like
41:09
you know we had a season like this you know I
41:11
mean that's the nature of it
41:13
being a sport or not a
41:16
TV show yeah since his
41:18
mom was like charged you'd be different look
41:20
man I'm here in New England I've been
41:22
I was I live in New England for
41:24
up the entire New England Patriots dynasty let
41:26
me tell you like it
41:29
was not the most enjoyable thing in
41:31
the world to watch and to a
41:33
degree like even that fandom like it
41:35
could only be disappointed but like it
41:37
wasn't it wasn't necessarily the most fun
41:40
experience ever the
41:42
the nature of these things like dynasties
41:44
like this are kind of weird to
41:46
see when whenever something is this dominant
41:49
you know people can enjoy the wins but
41:51
also there gets this sense of like what
41:54
kind of winning is the only thing now because
41:56
there's not much there's not much of a contest
41:58
to it yeah Let's
42:00
refine ourselves and I I feel like
42:02
in one v1 team sports or one
42:05
of you won anything right? You
42:07
always have that thing where like on any
42:09
day anyone might snatch it and you know
42:12
You get it in tennis you get in
42:14
golf you get it in football you get
42:16
upset right everyone loves the underdog in the
42:18
in a cup Competition and soccer you're always
42:20
watching that like League two team Let's
42:23
see if they're able to beat the Premier League team and there's
42:25
all that pressure there and you just don't get that in Racing
42:27
like that. You know what I mean? It's just I mean you
42:29
do but it is it is a different The
42:32
calculations different because you've got you've got a
42:34
you like Max could always
42:36
crash out, but that's Yeah,
42:39
we're like, you know you go to a track where?
42:42
You know the the car just isn't strong
42:44
right? But that's like it is what I was there you
42:46
know or like you have a wet race or something like it can
42:48
happen but I feel like the Yeah,
42:53
if for some reason it just feels like a Longer
42:56
shot. Yeah, or it's or the or
42:58
the the feeling of of triumph for
43:00
the other team or person It's not
43:02
like if the Bears bet like Tom
43:04
Brady's Patriots right it's not
43:07
the same as when like signs one Singapore
43:09
this year You know what I mean? Like
43:11
it's not it doesn't have this
43:14
Isolated you can have these isolated
43:16
sporting moments that feel like triumphs
43:18
from underdogs, but you don't The
43:21
only way you get that enough one is if
43:23
you have a situation where like I like a
43:25
rookie or a younger driver Who's never won anything
43:27
or like Alonzo if Alonzo would want to race
43:29
this year that would have been? One
43:32
of those feelings, but we didn't even get that, you know
43:34
so I think it's a
43:36
problem that's motorsport sort of suffers a bit is
43:38
that even when somebody like for stopping has a
43:41
You know a bit of bad luck or the wrong
43:43
pit strategy or a safety car at the wrong time
43:46
It doesn't even feel like grace It feels a little
43:48
bit cool to see someone else win, but it's not
43:50
the same as you know
43:52
in some other sports You don't get that
43:54
little micro excitements, you know Yeah,
43:58
I don't know well, let's talk about some excitement,
44:00
Danny, or some other things that, you know,
44:02
when we've got the one big
44:05
thing that we just try
44:07
to ignore, what else are we looking at? Well, the other
44:09
thing that's happened this year that was the big sort of,
44:11
you know, a lot of headlines, a lot of chat about
44:14
was what happened with Nick De Vries. Obviously
44:16
him sort of, it was
44:19
a bit of a shock that he lost his seat, but
44:21
also not a shock. It seemed like it was on the
44:23
cards, but then when it happened, it seemed to happen quite
44:25
quickly. And then Danny
44:29
Ricardo coming into the sport was obviously a
44:31
huge headline given what he
44:33
had sort of, you know, him losing his
44:35
seat at the start of this year. And
44:38
then him getting injured, having Liam Lawson going.
44:41
There was like, it was, you know, in a year in
44:43
which we didn't have all that much drama
44:46
with new drivers, or, you
44:49
know, this driver really needs to buck it up or they're going
44:51
to lose their seats, I guess, except for De Vries. This
44:54
was kind of the only bit of that action we got
44:56
this year. And it was very dramatic. Yeah,
45:00
I mean, the thing about
45:03
driver seat swaps is like,
45:05
at least for me, you
45:07
know, I really feel for the guys when
45:10
that stuff happens, but it is like really
45:12
exciting and a fun shakeup. And
45:16
yeah, it's a season that needed it. And so
45:18
I'm glad that rotating seated off
45:20
a towery was there to keep us
45:22
entertained. And you know, it's fun to
45:24
see how they do, right? And you just plop a driver
45:26
in there. It's,
45:28
you know, I guess I feel bad for De
45:30
Vries though, because like that car was such a
45:32
dog. Like that, like
45:35
that car was bad. And yes, he
45:37
was bad in it. But I still
45:39
contend like the things that were happening
45:42
him all pointed to like
45:44
things that appear to be deeper issues with the car.
45:47
I'm very curious, like we ever get
45:51
the full story on this. Like, why was
45:53
there so little vote of confidence
45:55
coming into this? Like they were clearly not bought
45:57
in on De Vries. Like this was a, we're
45:59
putting in this car, we're going to
46:01
give this shop, but like the leash was
46:03
short for, for, for, for
46:05
where he, where he started. And
46:08
the other part of this is I really,
46:10
you know, it's something about earlier being kind
46:12
of amazed that James Zawl appears to have
46:14
been on the level, having that level of
46:16
patience for Logan Sargent. I
46:20
really didn't think that Red
46:22
Bull were genuinely invested in Daniel Ricardo.
46:24
Like I thought the whole like reserve
46:26
driver thing, like re-signing him. I
46:29
thought it was a weird like, Hey,
46:31
we liked the guy. It's good. Yeah,
46:33
it's good. We get good press. He's,
46:35
he's, he's got that Red Bull athlete
46:37
thing going like Daniel Ricardo long
46:40
after his results have really stopped being top
46:42
of the table. Uh, it's still
46:44
like a compelling figure in, in a field
46:47
that sometimes is a bit
46:49
star for personality and
46:51
extraversion. And
46:53
so I really didn't think that
46:56
when they sort of brought him back into
46:58
the fold, that there was an actual roadmap
47:00
and intention to get him back
47:02
in a Red Bull race seat. Yeah,
47:05
it's a, that it
47:08
seemed to be the only answer though, once DeVries
47:10
was sort of out. Um, I do wonder if
47:12
some of DeVries is, he
47:14
came in with such confidence. I remember that passing
47:17
remark at the end of that drive to survive
47:19
season when he was like, I'm going to come
47:21
and I'm going to like dominate, you know, Cenote
47:23
basically. Um, and, uh, I
47:25
wonder if the fact that he's 28, you know, he sort
47:27
of had a bit more of a career and hadn't
47:34
really maybe, you know,
47:36
sort of gone better himself at a race
47:39
at which they sort of expected some of these younger fellows
47:41
now. Well, yeah. I mean, he, he
47:43
won the formula two championship. He won a
47:45
formula E championship and yeah,
47:47
he's 28 comes in and doesn't,
47:51
you know, burn it up. That
47:53
I think is maybe the most,
47:56
uh, the clearest example
47:58
of maybe why. Yeah, maybe they
48:00
see, if they see something in him, maybe his mentality
48:02
or the way he's attacking the, you know, the training
48:04
or whatever it is, maybe if they see it and
48:06
somebody who's that older, they're like, Oh, we can't teach
48:09
an old dog new tricks out of, I have no
48:11
idea. Ancient 20 year old,
48:13
hell, my, Marco finished in school. Won't,
48:15
uh, won't work. Yeah, exactly. Um,
48:17
uh, let's have a little, uh, quick.
48:19
First of all, actually we're talking about the popularity. I
48:22
want to look at some, um, figures that I found
48:24
here, uh, viewership from, uh, 2020
48:26
was about 87.65 million. Uh,
48:33
per race, I believe. No, that can't be
48:35
right. That must be in total, uh,
48:38
with 17 million this year. So it is
48:40
down a bit. I think that's probably
48:42
average viewership. I think that's average viewership per
48:45
race per race. Yeah. Um,
48:47
and then average, but average attendance per race was
48:49
actually higher. And this might have something to do
48:51
with just them sort of going
48:53
to places that. Sprint Danny, they can fill
48:55
up maybe spits. Maybe the fact that China
48:57
wasn't on the calendar for two years in
48:59
a row helped this out, but it's up
49:01
to 300,000 people. And
49:04
2017, it was about 203,000. Uh,
49:07
and 2000 and which those numbers are weird,
49:09
right? Because that is like, uh,
49:14
that is for the weekend and
49:16
you can count multiple, the people this
49:18
multiple times. Yes. Yeah. You could go
49:20
to, you know, Friday, Saturday
49:22
and Sunday. And that's three. Yeah.
49:25
Fair. But in any case, if they do
49:28
it, if they do it, they're still
49:30
talking about around the year, you're still talking
49:32
about like a, like a 50% increase basically.
49:34
Uh, while why on the, or since, yeah,
49:36
since 2019 and the COVID years, obviously are
49:38
in there in the middle as well. So
49:40
maybe they create like an artificial bump when
49:42
people can finally leave their goddamn houses again.
49:44
Uh, let's do a quick little rundown of
49:47
the teams before we move on out of
49:49
this. Um, the, uh, let's,
49:52
how about we divvy these up a little bit? How
49:55
about we just sort of like, if anyone wants to
49:57
jump in and take one of these themselves, um, I'll
49:59
do for a Mayo just for
50:01
fun because they're such a weird little
50:03
situation. I think Joe had
50:05
a bad year. I don't think it
50:07
was particularly, um, uh, impressive.
50:11
And I think Bottas is,
50:13
him and
50:15
Magnus and I feel like are a little bit
50:17
in their Kimmy Riken in last year's, or they're
50:19
just kind of chilling a bit, which I guess,
50:21
um, so I don't, I
50:24
don't know how they should feel about
50:26
this year at all. Uh,
50:29
and also they're doing the cyber thing next year. Right.
50:31
So I don't know if there's much of a shakeup
50:33
going on there with the car, but
50:35
I think, I don't know.
50:37
I think of all the
50:40
teams, they seem like one of the ones that's
50:42
most lost because I think Joe
50:44
needs to maybe kick it up a gear like he
50:46
should be trying to beat Bottas if Bottas is at
50:48
this stage of his career. This
50:51
is sour energy, man. Like this is, this is the
50:53
thing. Like if you took the alpha Romeo
50:55
of it out, you're like, Oh
50:57
yeah, that's sour and
51:00
I feel like that's kind
51:02
of what they play here in life,
51:04
man, that car kind of sucks and
51:06
they're just kind of running around and
51:08
not really accomplishing a lot, uh,
51:11
and I mean, it's made weirder by the fact that,
51:14
you know, I think we had greater expectations
51:16
of this team back when they were alpha
51:18
Romeo and we have
51:20
greater expectations of it for whenever
51:23
Audi comes in and whenever Audi is
51:25
willing to start admitting that like you
51:27
actually start publicizing the fact that
51:29
they're like committed to this, uh, relationship,
51:32
but, but yeah, it's like, I think it's
51:34
this weird place because this team is just
51:36
kind of in this weird, like, uh, you
51:39
know, Gulch between
51:42
the offer male era, and
51:44
then what promises there'd be a
51:46
much more well-heeled era under Audi,
51:48
but for now they
51:50
look like a back marker team in
51:53
some ways because historically they have been a back marker
51:55
team, uh, alpha towery on
51:57
the other side. How do we, how do we feel about
51:59
them? Any any hard thoughts about
52:01
those guys? Yeah, we kind of talked about
52:03
yeah You know their
52:05
their second seat, but I think their first
52:08
seat Sunoda This was I think
52:10
he has only gotten stronger as
52:12
the years have gone by he to
52:14
think of him as like the old hand If this
52:16
team is kind of funny Yeah
52:19
But maybe it shouldn't be because he
52:22
and I don't know I'm not looking
52:24
at data here But he seems to me just
52:26
emotionally consistent And
52:28
Alapine I feel like are one of the
52:30
hardest ones to pin down they never know
52:32
what to think of this team Whether
52:35
it's Renault or Lotus or alpine.
52:38
It's always a mystery to me And they're
52:40
just kind of swimming around the it's you
52:42
know between 10th and 12th kind of out
52:44
there a little bit They feel like like
52:46
they were gas is up there and but fourth
52:48
for yeah, race, right? Yeah, it's just it's confounding
52:51
and I'll count how they had a decent season
52:53
I would say as well like neither of them
52:55
I don't think set it on fire. I would
52:57
put them on the positive end of the of
52:59
the Of the middle,
53:01
but like they didn't have a badge here, but
53:03
they I don't know It's I
53:06
guess it's just funny cuz Aston Martin. I think
53:08
I would I Would
53:10
write a emotionally I would put them at
53:13
the back of the middle But
53:15
they I think finished with more points, but they
53:17
such a weird. That's such a jet on high
53:19
gear Right, cuz like obviously Alonzo
53:21
had a fantastic stars, right? He had like what's
53:24
like six podiums this year I think he was
53:26
second multiple times and
53:28
then His
53:31
teammate unfortunately had a
53:34
sort of a rotten middle period but then he
53:36
actually ended up finishing the season pretty well his
53:38
last like You know three or
53:40
four races and then sort of if we
53:42
stick McLaren in here They had almost the
53:44
exact opposite where McLaren started off and we're
53:46
in no-mounts land we're arguing
53:49
arguably fighting with the Alpenes
53:52
and then you had a situation where I think Nara's got like
53:55
four or five second place positions
53:57
as well like he ended up
54:00
doing really well, especially the latter half of the
54:02
season. McLaren is
54:06
like the wildest comeback story
54:09
this year, where it was like that car that
54:11
looked like, Oh man, they're just completely lost. This
54:13
is going to be a lost season. Norris is
54:15
going to be losing his mind, et cetera. And
54:17
then they were like,
54:19
we opened up that wind tunnel. And then
54:22
that car started getting real good, real fast.
54:25
They, they start turning in great
54:27
results and like moving
54:29
to fourth. Moving the fourth in the
54:31
championship. And like, you know, really, if there were
54:33
another, you know, 10 races less in
54:35
the season, do we think they stay in fourth or
54:37
do we think they might like, you know, nab third,
54:40
I think they might like they, they might be able
54:42
to, you know, close in on that, on that Ferrari.
54:45
Um, like, and I think
54:47
that's where you sort of see, uh, I've heard McLaren.
54:49
I feel really confident coming out of the season because
54:51
like the ability to
54:53
rally and like develop and get
54:56
the car pull, like pulled in
54:58
the right direction over season is
55:00
really exciting. Whereas Aston
55:02
Martin, they can say that like, man,
55:05
you know, that middle period where like
55:07
our car sucked and Lance looked like
55:09
he was, uh, you know, criminally incompetent
55:12
because we were, we were doing like
55:14
wild experiments, like trying to make next
55:16
year's car better. And maybe that's
55:18
true. Maybe that's part of the strategy of like, we're going
55:21
to go all in now of, you know,
55:23
we're going to build up that 2024 car, but
55:26
it looked gnarly. Yeah. That was a, that
55:28
was a weird vibe for the season. And
55:30
I can't, you can't, you can't sell me
55:33
on media that
55:35
it was their strategy to make
55:37
the boss's son look like crap for months.
55:41
Well, Hey, right there. What do
55:43
you think then of the McLaren
55:46
duo? Because you could argue that that, that
55:48
might be like the strongest pairing on the
55:50
grid you could, like, I think Ferrari and
55:52
we'll get to Mercedes. I think Russell had
55:54
a pretty rotten year, but you
55:57
know, Piazza really came good.
56:00
And his rookie season and Lando this year
56:02
looked like, you know, you, you,
56:04
you, now you're looking at Lando going, cause this guy
56:07
win a championship, like in the right car. Like he,
56:09
he, they both got a lot. I think they both
56:11
had a good season. What, what do you make of
56:13
her up? I
56:17
think that's going to be a
56:19
problem. Okay. Because I think like,
56:21
I look, it's a good problem
56:23
to have, but. Yes.
56:25
We did have a hell of a rookie season, a hell
56:28
of a rookie season. And
56:30
there really haven't been many teams that
56:33
have like two drivers who are actually
56:35
a number one, like talent
56:38
that can coexist peacefully for very
56:40
long. Right. And
56:43
I suspect once it
56:45
is no longer McLaren versus the world McLaren
56:47
versus like, you know, starting on the back
56:49
foot, I
56:51
think the odds of that becoming
56:53
a little bit weird, just in terms of
56:55
the vibe are very, very high. And I
56:58
suspect that sooner than you might
57:00
think McLaren's going to have to decide about like, which
57:03
of these guys makes the most sense to commit to
57:05
because whoever doesn't feel like
57:08
they're getting the love, you know, drew yourself with
57:10
that blood bath coming up as like contracts are
57:12
running out. We're due for
57:14
some retirements. You know,
57:16
if any, if either one
57:19
of these guys has the vibe that like,
57:21
man, I should be winning more races and
57:23
like team politics, they're privileging the other guy
57:25
over me, I believe these guys get
57:28
that feeling. You
57:30
know, they're going to be very susceptible to
57:32
the argument coming from, you
57:35
know, other teams, maybe a team
57:37
like Alpine, for instance, being like, we're
57:39
designed around you. Don't you want to come
57:41
here and like have it all about you?
57:44
Did work for Daniel. I think Lando sees
57:46
that as a cautionary tale. Maybe. Um,
57:48
let's move on to the, uh, the two Ferrari
57:50
cars, I guess, uh, Ferrari and, and Haas, two
57:53
teams of Ferrari engines, both teams that you could
57:55
argue. Definitely in Haas's case, we're
57:57
better on Saturday than Sunday. What
58:00
did you make of them drew I guess Ferrari and
58:02
and you know if you want to chat about Haas
58:04
a little bit, too Yeah, I mean,
58:07
I'm kind of forced to just go off vibes
58:09
here It's just
58:11
like what I kind of felt about these
58:13
teams over over the season But I
58:15
felt better about Ferrari than I have in a long
58:17
time and I think I chalk it up to Fred
58:22
Fred seems like a steady hand. I
58:26
Wanted to see what a staple Ferrari can do And
58:29
I feel like I'm seeing what that
58:32
might look like Haas. Oh,
58:34
man They just yeah,
58:37
they can't get it together. I
58:39
just I want to see I
58:41
want to see Better
58:45
performance that I feel worse Right.
58:48
It's just like you get these exciting
58:50
Saturdays and then like well, it's really
58:52
mean anything Especially Holkenberg
58:54
who like Magnuson didn't have a
58:57
great year Next
58:59
story. Yeah. Yeah, Magnuson had like the
59:01
year of a new dad or maybe
59:03
he had his like his His
59:05
eye was in a different direction his priorities
59:07
had shifted perhaps and he
59:09
was doing alright But Holkenberg amazing
59:12
comeback story and I spent like
59:14
he was some of his qualification was
59:16
just outrageous He was getting that car
59:18
positions it didn't but then come
59:21
Sunday Like a
59:23
slow death of him getting you know
59:26
Eventually overtaken by everyone until he was
59:28
like sitting in, you know 16th There's
59:31
how many years of this with Haas where it's
59:33
like yeah Oh, man they'd like maybe
59:35
they've got it together this year and then they just
59:37
like coast backwards over the course of the race and
59:40
it's like It is it is
59:42
really this main because I'm like, I'm
59:44
a Charlie Brown with the football every year I have
59:46
those moments. I'm like damn they qualify the shit out
59:48
of that car All right, we
59:50
got we got a new player at this table
59:53
and then it's like, okay Well, we're
59:55
five laps into the stint. They're running
59:57
two seconds off the lead.
1:00:00
We've seen this movie before the
1:00:02
way Hulkenberg and Magnuson
1:00:05
was converged in the race by
1:00:07
Hulkenberg starting from like eight places
1:00:09
out. And
1:00:12
this car sucks. It's like, hey, hey,
1:00:14
buddy. When they both end up like together at the
1:00:16
back of the grid, which is making it makes it
1:00:18
all the more surprising that like, you're
1:00:20
telling me Gene Haas wasn't like,
1:00:23
oh, yeah, Andre, I'll
1:00:25
take your billion dollars. Yeah.
1:00:29
Oh, yeah, it's amazing. What made you think
1:00:31
that maybe Gene Haas hates the
1:00:34
Andreites? He may be very well. There could
1:00:36
be some American lower sports beef there. We
1:00:38
don't know. Another
1:00:41
team with asymmetric drivers,
1:00:44
you could argue, is Williams, Alex,
1:00:46
Albon had a terrific career. I
1:00:51
don't even have to be a debate champion. No, we
1:00:54
guess we did a little bit of a chat about it earlier. Yeah,
1:00:56
Logan Sargent obviously had a tricky
1:00:59
rookie year. Albon really made good, seemed to
1:01:01
get that Williams in places that again, it
1:01:05
wouldn't be in the hands of another
1:01:07
driver. I want to talk to you
1:01:09
guys about Mercedes though, our last team here. Last
1:01:12
year, Russell really had the
1:01:14
best of Hamilton. And
1:01:17
this year it seemed to swap the other way again. Lewis
1:01:19
was almost prost
1:01:22
like in his drive. He was
1:01:24
not often really racing at
1:01:27
the front, but just was
1:01:29
able to always accrue like top five points.
1:01:31
Like he was very good at being
1:01:34
up there, getting the points and obviously
1:01:36
it benefited him in the, in the,
1:01:38
the drivers championships. Russell seemed to struggle
1:01:40
this year, I felt. What
1:01:43
do you guys make of what's going on over at Mercedes?
1:01:46
I mean, I think they struggled
1:01:49
a lot with their car and I
1:01:51
don't know, I think at different times
1:01:53
they were, one
1:01:56
was on top of it or the other was, you know,
1:01:58
and it just kind of shook out. that I
1:02:02
guess the experienced one grappled
1:02:05
it better. That's kind of my feeling. I
1:02:07
think there's a little bit of
1:02:10
deceptiveness about last year because like
1:02:12
Mercedes later kind of confirmed this
1:02:14
was the case, which
1:02:16
was Hamilton went into skunk works mode
1:02:18
and they began, like throughout last year,
1:02:21
they began throwing a lot of weird set of stuff and a lot
1:02:23
of weird dev work at him to
1:02:25
try and like get
1:02:28
the team out of the
1:02:30
cul-de-sac that they were stuck in
1:02:33
and Russell was just optimizing
1:02:35
for race pace. And so
1:02:38
he was optimizing to
1:02:40
compete in races and Hamilton fundamentally wasn't. And
1:02:42
so Russell had this really impressive season where
1:02:44
it looked like, OK, this
1:02:48
might be the next generation
1:02:51
in place at Mercedes. I
1:02:53
think if I'm. I
1:02:56
think my Russell fan from Russell, I think there's some
1:02:58
things I find alarming about this. One
1:03:01
is that with the pressure on a little bit, some of
1:03:03
that unflappable cool and poise
1:03:06
that we saw in the
1:03:08
lowered expectations world of Williams cracked
1:03:12
this year. You know, he was on the
1:03:14
radio trying to, you know, manage
1:03:18
from the race seat, but like really
1:03:20
trying to do too much. And it's
1:03:22
not like he's speaking
1:03:25
in the position of moral authority where he's totally nailing it.
1:03:27
And the team is the one letting him down. Like there
1:03:31
were a lot of times where kind of response could have
1:03:33
been the George like, do just
1:03:35
drive, just drive the car, man. Like, you know, if
1:03:37
you're concerned about where we're going to play, it's just
1:03:39
like, here's thought, be faster. The
1:03:42
other like I keep coming back to Singapore as
1:03:44
just like that was not a good mistake. Like
1:03:47
there's misfortune and like, you know,
1:03:49
stuff happens out on the racetrack
1:03:52
that was not a good mistake to make.
1:03:55
But it was, I fear, a revealing
1:03:57
one. Right. Which was like he. Had
1:04:00
this golden opportunity to compete for this race, but
1:04:03
even before that he had been like losing
1:04:05
time to Hamilton and really the team maybe
1:04:07
should have swapped Hamilton around in front because
1:04:10
he he was able to like hold more pace
1:04:12
in that car. And then
1:04:15
Russell just tunnel visioned onto
1:04:17
the back of Lando's car lost
1:04:19
awareness and took himself out.
1:04:23
That is not the stuff of which champions
1:04:25
are made. It could be a major learning
1:04:27
moment for him, but like
1:04:30
suddenly there's this cracks in
1:04:32
the facade that I
1:04:34
hadn't seen before, but now I find them
1:04:36
kind of concerning. To
1:04:39
wrap up our little talking
1:04:42
points section here, a couple of races of
1:04:44
the year, you mentioned Singapore, for bringing that
1:04:46
one up. Signs holding off
1:04:48
the Mercedes using Lando Norris as
1:04:51
a sort of a DRS buffer between
1:04:53
them, expertly. Signs
1:04:56
versus the Red Bulls and Monza, the
1:04:58
daily use of rain that came from
1:05:01
the Landvoort. No, so good. Absolutely
1:05:05
great. And then the surprise of Las
1:05:07
Vegas being such an interesting
1:05:10
battle on the street there. You
1:05:12
know, the temperatures may be favoring the
1:05:15
tires and the strategy and, you know, an
1:05:17
interesting looking track if nothing else. I
1:05:19
want to give a shout out to Qatar
1:05:21
for the FIA
1:05:23
mandate that the tires could do no more than 18
1:05:26
laps. So
1:05:28
weird. So strange. Yeah. Yeah.
1:05:30
Let's spin the wheels. Let's, let's have a weird rule
1:05:32
every race. You know what I mean? Like put
1:05:35
the sprinklers on there too. Um, yeah. And
1:05:38
I guess just to wrap it up, you know, what
1:05:40
do you guys, if you had any hope for
1:05:42
next year, what would it be? Is there anything
1:05:44
obviously obvious one to go for? I guess is,
1:05:46
is that we have a bit more competition at
1:05:49
the top of the pack. Is
1:05:51
there anything else you guys are interested in or
1:05:53
anything you'd like to see? Any driver you'd like
1:05:55
to see make good next year? And
1:05:58
I am most excited. to
1:06:00
see how Williams does. Like
1:06:03
they've been so bad for so long and
1:06:05
they're on the upswing and they've got this
1:06:07
new, the James Vowels energy.
1:06:10
It's just, yeah, so curious to see
1:06:13
where that goes. Once
1:06:16
again, Drew
1:06:18
had to talk to mine. Like I'm right there. No,
1:06:21
but it's true. It's like very
1:06:23
interesting story because like Vowels the
1:06:26
entire year has had the vibe
1:06:29
of like Vowels took over this ramshackle,
1:06:31
weird old family business. Like after it
1:06:34
had been run by these incompetent bankers
1:06:36
for like two or three years. And
1:06:39
now they're starting to look like a
1:06:41
race team. You got Albin with his
1:06:43
like new lease on life and really
1:06:46
Logan Sargent with an even newer
1:06:49
lease on life. They
1:06:51
are in a really, really
1:06:53
interesting place. So I
1:06:55
think that's like my positive like vibe that I
1:06:57
want to pick up. I am
1:06:59
just so curious what Alpin looks like in
1:07:01
the coming years. Cause just as a program,
1:07:04
it seems absolutely fubar over there
1:07:07
and maybe like cleaning Lauren Rossi
1:07:09
out of there and Oatmar and
1:07:11
all that like is all necessary,
1:07:13
but just doesn't
1:07:16
feel great over there. And the two drivers don't
1:07:18
like each other. And
1:07:21
I think next year, especially if we're going
1:07:23
to get all this contracts malarkey at the
1:07:25
end of the year, I think
1:07:28
that bodes well for some interesting,
1:07:30
you know, inter or
1:07:32
yeah, inter team battles as well as
1:07:35
folks really try and make themselves stand out either
1:07:37
for the team that they're on or the team
1:07:39
that they want to go to. So I'm
1:07:41
excited for that if nothing else. Cause I think we
1:07:43
lacked a lot of that this year. I won't seem
1:07:45
to be pretty comfortable. And there was
1:07:47
just so much weirdness with like which team was
1:07:50
in the ascendancy at any one
1:07:52
time that it was hard to kind of
1:07:54
keep your eye on that. So yeah. And
1:07:56
obviously I'm excited for China to come back.
1:07:59
Circuits cool. And you know, I'm
1:08:03
glad to have the longest straight in Formula One history
1:08:05
back. Yeah. And there
1:08:08
you go. Well, let's
1:08:10
take it to some emails.
1:08:12
Shiftf1podcast.gmail.com or f1.cool slash emails.
1:08:15
Rob Zachne, what do we have? This
1:08:20
one, it feels familiar. Maybe I'd marked it
1:08:22
off earlier, but if it sounds really familiar
1:08:24
as I read it, just let me know.
1:08:27
Okay. I don't know if we read this
1:08:29
before and I just didn't mark it correctly,
1:08:31
but Chris writes, it's my first full season
1:08:34
watching F1. I wanted to ask, are we
1:08:36
experiencing an uncharacteristically civil and incident-less season? Incidents
1:08:39
seem far, few and far between, and all
1:08:41
the drivers seem to be extremely friendly with a little butting
1:08:43
of heads. Is this typical? Are they standard
1:08:46
F1 season? And is driving to survive warped me into thinking
1:08:48
it would be something like the Real Housewives of Monaco
1:08:50
meets Twisted Metal? Or
1:08:52
has an uncompetitive season at the top led
1:08:54
to less aggressive driving, less hot-headedness on the
1:08:56
grid? Bing! It's that one. I
1:08:59
think the minute, like
1:09:02
you also see this anytime
1:09:04
like a championship is done and dusted, like
1:09:07
people get way more simpatico with each other,
1:09:09
people chill out. But
1:09:11
in general, when there's
1:09:13
a season where, you know, there's always going to be,
1:09:15
you know, fights with your teammate, you're always
1:09:18
going to be a little insecure about your teammate. But when you've
1:09:20
got a season where it's like, man,
1:09:22
we are not, we're
1:09:24
not in the championship, huh? We
1:09:26
are not racing for wins here. The
1:09:29
temperature goes down so much, and it just becomes
1:09:31
like a fraternity
1:09:34
of drivers that are out there. Unless something
1:09:36
really grievous happens on the track, the
1:09:38
stakes aren't that high. But the minute you have people
1:09:40
fighting for wins, and
1:09:42
wins matter a tremendous amount. Forget championship, but
1:09:45
like once wins are on the line consistently,
1:09:47
at first, you
1:09:49
know, people will keep it clean, and
1:09:51
there'll be good vibes. But
1:09:53
if you keep running into each other on the track
1:09:55
and fighting for those wins, eventually things will happen that
1:09:58
like set people against each other. each other, like if, I
1:10:01
think if Charles Leclerc and
1:10:04
Max Verstappen don't have like completely
1:10:06
diverging fortunes, uh, you know, subsequent
1:10:08
to like 2019 or whatever. Yeah. I
1:10:11
think those guys probably hate each other, but
1:10:15
it was diffused because Max pulled away,
1:10:17
uh, and Ferrari kind
1:10:19
of entered the wilderness a little bit. I
1:10:22
would, yeah, I'd be interested to know if it
1:10:24
does feel like we didn't have that many crazy
1:10:26
crashes this year, although I will say that it
1:10:28
was Australia this year that they did the standing
1:10:30
start and that everyone crashed, right? So, and then
1:10:32
they basically said, okay, we're never doing those again.
1:10:35
Right. There was the whole, like, is
1:10:37
this sport is this spectacle argument that we were
1:10:39
having after the first race. And,
1:10:42
you know, that's where you get a
1:10:44
lot of these is, you know, starts of races.
1:10:46
And who knows maybe
1:10:48
that also maybe stripped away some of that. We
1:10:50
did, we didn't, I don't remember any bad crashes.
1:10:52
You know what I mean? Like
1:10:54
Alonzo in Australia comes to mind, obviously
1:10:57
Grosjean and Bahrain or Qatar,
1:10:59
no, Laseo, wasn't it that one? Yeah. Um,
1:11:02
we had, you know, even Russell and Bottas
1:11:05
in, uh, it was Imola, wasn't it? Um,
1:11:07
there's a, there's a, you know, there has
1:11:09
been someone I was like, can't quite remember,
1:11:11
Lando's one at Vegas was a bit nasty, but thankfully
1:11:15
it was okay. Um, and
1:11:17
the Russell, the Russell of Altruay one is
1:11:19
illuminating because like there. The stakes
1:11:21
were who was going to drive that Mercedes the
1:11:23
next year. Totally. Like it is the minute like
1:11:25
the, these guys start to fear each
1:11:28
other as like, you're the guy keeping me from my
1:11:30
dream, be it a race win or whatever. That
1:11:33
is where like all this, you
1:11:35
know, bromance stuff goes out the window. And
1:11:37
we just haven't had that. Yeah.
1:11:41
I take this next one. Yeah. Mike
1:11:43
writes in, I've pondered what the recent periods
1:11:45
of dominance by Red Bull and Mercedes tell
1:11:47
us about actual driver skill when talking about
1:11:50
the greatest drivers of all time. We often
1:11:52
reference championships, one points, podiums, et cetera. Are
1:11:54
we making the assumption that good drivers always
1:11:56
get their chance in a competitive car? What
1:11:59
if they don't? I'm not going
1:12:01
to claim that Max Lewis, Michael and the
1:12:03
other multiple time champions are not great drivers
1:12:05
Instead I'll ask what driver never had the
1:12:07
stars aligned in terms of getting a seat
1:12:10
with the right team at the right time
1:12:12
Holtenberg seems to drive the Haas beyond its
1:12:14
limits and qualifying But the car
1:12:16
just doesn't have the pace a race
1:12:19
pace for him to bag too many
1:12:21
points Did force India or Renault ever
1:12:23
really give him a racing car?
1:12:26
Yes, will we ever see stuff of Andorin and F1 seat again?
1:12:28
No, well say no to that one He unfortunately
1:12:30
was not unstoppable. He was quite
1:12:32
stoppable I mean, yeah This
1:12:36
is I feel like something that comes up
1:12:38
a lot when you talk about F1 is is the
1:12:40
you know It's an any sports like,
1:12:42
you know, who's Patrick
1:12:44
Mahomes right now one of the best quarterbacks in Lee's got
1:12:47
an amazing offensive lineman and you
1:12:49
know his Defense first of all is incredible on
1:12:51
the Chiefs are winning so much because of that
1:12:53
and then he's got a good o-line in front
1:12:55
of him, so it's like You
1:12:58
know, I'm sure it happens in basketball as well.
1:13:00
It definitely happens in soccer, you know, there's all
1:13:02
it's never just one person right, and
1:13:04
I think there's a fairly and People
1:13:07
sort of assume that you don't
1:13:10
if someone's a diamond they tend to end
1:13:12
up with a good team Eventually like
1:13:15
you don't often have somebody who
1:13:17
spent their entire career in
1:13:19
the wrong cars like nobody's really
1:13:21
coming to mind the only ones that come to mind
1:13:23
a little bit are the Really great
1:13:25
drivers who ended up being number two drivers
1:13:27
like Barrichello a Ferrari or something like that.
1:13:29
And Where you're
1:13:31
like in another era or maybe even
1:13:34
in another car against Michael who maybe
1:13:36
or like Massa when Alonzo was was
1:13:38
number one and So
1:13:41
you get into those situations and Rossberg
1:13:44
I think was the interesting one
1:13:46
of those that came good Which is really interesting
1:13:48
and then it was so hard on him that
1:13:50
he just piece that was like well That was
1:13:52
the worst year of my life. I'm done with
1:13:54
f1. I'll become a youtuber Liam Lawson
1:13:56
Also now a youtuber go check out his channel. He's
1:13:59
doing vlogs and stuff and what
1:14:02
about Antonio Gia and I see
1:14:04
no I don't know huh Gia and I
1:14:06
feel like guanyu Joe is a bit of
1:14:08
a Gia of an Aussie right now he's
1:14:10
kind of like my actual answer okay
1:14:13
and I'm surprised Rob didn't say it
1:14:16
Bobby K Robert
1:14:19
kibbitz kibbitz but yeah
1:14:21
you know I
1:14:23
mean the car
1:14:26
accident is why he's not championship like he
1:14:28
was good like you know apparently the Ferrari
1:14:30
deal was basically inked he was awful it
1:14:32
was gonna happen and
1:14:35
that that damned rally race
1:14:38
that accident but yeah like
1:14:40
that's a good pull yeah
1:14:42
I think hands down the modern era the great
1:14:45
what if is if
1:14:47
Robert kibbitz doesn't have that accident does
1:14:49
he end up being like the
1:14:52
defining talent of the late 2000s
1:14:55
into like the mid-teens I
1:14:58
think the decent chance he would have like him
1:15:01
and like man we saw a bit
1:15:03
that bronze documentary him and said battle getting their
1:15:05
wires crossed out yeah imagine
1:15:08
then there for that entire era right yeah
1:15:12
I think to Mike's question though
1:15:14
we don't I honest
1:15:16
I think the way we all talk about F1
1:15:19
is like I think obviously
1:15:21
when you look at it over years
1:15:23
like Max or Lewis or Schumacher like
1:15:26
there's an obvious like greatness that's there in their
1:15:28
consistency and mentality and able to like dial it
1:15:30
in and all that sort of stuff but
1:15:32
like I don't think I you
1:15:35
know like anything in life
1:15:37
there's a certain amount of luck or privilege
1:15:39
or right timer where whatever was that contributed
1:15:41
to it so I don't look at like
1:15:44
I don't necessarily look at other drivers who
1:15:46
won championships or almost won championships
1:15:48
and think that they're like infinitely
1:15:50
worse it just it feels like the baseball
1:15:52
thing where it's like the worst player in
1:15:55
MLB right is like a worst set of
1:15:57
thousands of players but they're still in
1:15:59
the top zero zero a 1% of best baseball
1:16:01
players in the world. So it's hard
1:16:03
to, to like compress it
1:16:05
that way. You know, are they different
1:16:08
from, you know, would I put Rosberg
1:16:10
or Massa or Barrichello or,
1:16:12
you know, whoever else, Button
1:16:15
even who won a championship, but was
1:16:17
very lucky. Would I put them in
1:16:19
the same realm as, as,
1:16:21
you know, Senna and Schumacher
1:16:23
and Hamilton and what's looking increasingly
1:16:25
like Max or Stappen? Probably not.
1:16:28
But you know, there's more
1:16:30
data there. You've had years and years and years. And I
1:16:32
don't think you have people fall through the cracks. Although Bobby
1:16:34
K is a really good call. I
1:16:37
don't know. I, I, I do think, uh,
1:16:40
I think people fall through the cracks all the time.
1:16:42
Like I think it is just things do not like,
1:16:44
I think Hulkenberg is kind of a quintessential example of
1:16:46
he was never in the right place at the right
1:16:49
time. And to an extent, you
1:16:51
know, I'd say like, well, is there something about
1:16:53
the guy that causes it to
1:16:56
go that way? Maybe, but
1:16:58
like you look at the teams that Hulkenberg drove for, they've
1:17:00
been a mystery about like, damn, why didn't the, the
1:17:02
winds come? Like he was, he was always in those teams
1:17:04
that were trying to break through into the next level. But
1:17:08
when he showed up on the scene, he was
1:17:10
a phenomenal talent and was like, you know, driving
1:17:13
beyond limits of the cars he was driving, which
1:17:16
made him a great pick and invaluable person
1:17:18
to pull for teams that needed someone to
1:17:20
drive beyond a car with like a lower
1:17:22
ceiling than they would otherwise want. Uh,
1:17:25
and so that's how career ends up getting wasted. You
1:17:27
end up like trying to justify yourself to a room
1:17:29
full of school children, uh, at a Microsoft store. You
1:17:32
know, this is, I think it is
1:17:35
once the guy starts having success and,
1:17:37
you know, becomes that guy
1:17:39
within team. They
1:17:41
don't permit challengers, uh,
1:17:44
you know, in the territory, the team doesn't want to
1:17:46
rock the boat. Nobody, you know, nobody's like, let's
1:17:49
let's let steel sharpen steel. Uh,
1:17:51
once you got a good thing going, it
1:17:53
moves into every protective mode, Daniel
1:17:56
Kibbe. Look,
1:17:59
man, he's, he's. Looking forward to Christmas gonna open up
1:18:01
another bottle of vodka Fucking
1:18:06
Christmas that virtual Christmas card to the fans.
1:18:08
I feel bad for the next one literally
1:18:10
every single time I see a Kelly
1:18:13
PK had a race like Jesus
1:18:15
six of Game of Thrones nonsense. Yeah, Drew you
1:18:18
want to take that this is this This is
1:18:20
the last email we could
1:18:22
be okay. Yeah. All right, Billy
1:18:24
writes. Hey gents. Love the pod I live
1:18:27
in Kansas City and have been an f1 fan since 2007 but
1:18:30
the recent popularity boom thanks to the perfect
1:18:32
intersection of the drive to survive
1:18:34
show and the 2021
1:18:37
season world drivers Championship
1:18:40
title has been great in bringing fresh
1:18:42
energy and that is no different for
1:18:44
Kansas City Well path light brewery in
1:18:46
the KC suburb of Shawnee has been
1:18:48
open since 2020 and shows every single
1:18:50
race live Whether it's 6 a.m. For
1:18:53
a European race or a middle of
1:18:55
the night for faraway races like Australia
1:18:57
Japan and Las Vegas at
1:19:00
the height of 2021 and then the most of the 2022
1:19:03
season the entire brewery was Absolutely packed
1:19:05
for every single race so much so
1:19:07
that a long line would form outside
1:19:09
the brewery an hour and a half
1:19:12
before each Race as people waited to
1:19:14
grab a choice table Not
1:19:16
the thing I wanted to draw attention to since
1:19:18
my friends and I usually play at the brewery
1:19:20
during races is the formula day Board game by
1:19:23
the way, that's spelled formula and then the initial
1:19:26
D okay, if you haven't heard
1:19:28
of it I don't blame you since it is
1:19:30
currently in his third edition and not exactly flying
1:19:32
off the shelves I won't bore you
1:19:34
with the minute details of the rules But I would say
1:19:37
that for a tabletop rendition It generally
1:19:39
picks up on a lot of the mental
1:19:41
aspects of taking on each track the
1:19:44
coolest part is that out of that
1:19:46
the out of print second edition had expansion
1:19:48
packs that contained f1 tracks used roughly between
1:19:50
1988 and 2004 So
1:19:54
you can race at all your favorite tracks. I will
1:19:56
include some pictures of my personal favorites It
1:19:59
is quite hard to compile all of these classic
1:20:01
printings, but as you would expect with as
1:20:04
strong an intersection of committed fans as F1
1:20:06
and board gamers, the online community has not
1:20:08
only kept up with current tracks, but also
1:20:10
made it so anyone can print off most
1:20:13
of the out of print tracks as well.
1:20:16
If you ever find yourselves in Kansas City, make
1:20:18
your way to the path light and find the
1:20:20
table with the board game version of whatever F1
1:20:22
track is racing that weekend. Damn, maybe
1:20:24
I want to go to Shaw. I've been to
1:20:26
Shawnee before. A
1:20:30
mutual friend of ours, Dan Rikers, had
1:20:33
me to his hometown of Lawrence,
1:20:35
Kansas. He's been on the show. He
1:20:37
has been on the show. He was
1:20:40
on the show. Yeah, we did a talent swap
1:20:42
where he watched the Nefun Race and I watched
1:20:44
Resting Mania. Oh no. God,
1:20:46
I forgot about that. Yeah, he had me
1:20:48
over for Thanksgiving one year and we hung
1:20:51
out and we hit up all the places,
1:20:53
man. O'Lakes, Lawrence, all
1:20:55
the good spots, Shawnee. Have y'all
1:20:57
played Formula Day? No, never. I
1:21:00
own a copy of it, but I have never played it. Is
1:21:03
it good? Surprisingly so.
1:21:05
It's really nifty. I think the one thing
1:21:07
I'll call you is that, yeah,
1:21:10
you choose a gear and the gear
1:21:13
determines how many, you roll a different number
1:21:15
side of dice, like a D20 for like
1:21:17
sixth gear. So
1:21:19
you could just go flying down the fucking track with that
1:21:21
and the first gear is where you get D4. But
1:21:26
the cool thing that they do is like your
1:21:29
car has mechanical reliability points that you
1:21:31
move a little thing to track, like
1:21:33
how much damage effectively you've done to
1:21:35
components. And so you
1:21:37
can do things like I'm going to over-cook
1:21:39
it into this corner and I'm
1:21:41
going to need to dump too much speed and
1:21:43
I won't be able to just do that by
1:21:45
down-shifting one gear to get a
1:21:47
die roll that's going to be safe for
1:21:49
me. So I am just going to down-shift
1:21:51
like two gears and that's going
1:21:53
to inflict a point of damage on my gearbox
1:21:56
because it's like you're skipping a gear and like
1:21:58
just beating the hell out of transmission. Now
1:22:00
you force yourself to slow down. Maybe still get
1:22:02
unlucky roll too much now. You're going too deep
1:22:04
into the corner Well now you can
1:22:06
take damage points on your brakes so I sort of
1:22:08
stop yourself before you like go into another car and
1:22:12
So like you do that too often your car falls
1:22:14
apart and so it's
1:22:16
like it ends up being a really
1:22:18
good race a really good board game about like Putting
1:22:21
a lap together and trying to be
1:22:23
smooth but using board
1:22:25
game mechanics and it's like
1:22:28
Kind of feels like racing. There's a picture over
1:22:31
here. It's there's one with like it's clearly Monaco
1:22:33
It's got a grass cast and that's the only
1:22:35
one I've raced There
1:22:40
you go, there you go, that's an appropriate one to end on a
1:22:42
board game Maybe a Christmas present you
1:22:45
could grab some the formula one fan
1:22:47
in your life Well,
1:22:49
thank you for all of the emails shift
1:22:52
f1 podcast@gmail.com or f1.cool slash
1:22:54
emails You can also
1:22:57
hit us up on the socials using the links in
1:22:59
the show notes That's
1:23:02
us Around the internet. Do
1:23:04
you want to take us around the world Danny?
1:23:06
Do you have around the world on kind of?
1:23:08
Okay, let's race around the way Yeah,
1:23:13
I will link to an auto sport article in
1:23:16
the show notes called
1:23:18
motorsport avenge event branch
1:23:20
branch to watch During
1:23:23
the winter break and how to
1:23:25
watch them. Oh cool So I'll
1:23:27
just shout some out here starting on December 8th the
1:23:29
24-hour series Their
1:23:32
next race is in Kuwait There's
1:23:35
a lot of a lot of golf stuff going on
1:23:37
here. It's golf 12 hours. I'm here. Yeah The
1:23:41
FIM super enduro world
1:23:43
championship a hybrid motorcycle
1:23:47
competition Meaning
1:23:49
combining supercross and enduro on
1:23:52
an indoor circuit Whoa.
1:23:55
Yeah, that's their next races
1:23:57
in Poland. So yeah better be
1:24:00
doors. We got
1:24:02
the stock car pro series in Brazil.
1:24:05
Whoa. The Dakar
1:24:08
World Rally Championship. That's
1:24:10
in Saudi Arabia this year kicking off January
1:24:13
5th. And
1:24:15
the World Rally Championship their next race is
1:24:17
in Monte Carlo in January
1:24:21
25th. I believe that's the start
1:24:23
of the season. Okay. Oh we've
1:24:25
also got the Asian Le Mans series in
1:24:27
Formula E of course. Round one Mexico City
1:24:29
E-Prix January 13th 2024. On
1:24:33
the streets. Gosh there's even more.
1:24:35
Super Sprint Motorsport New Zealand Championship.
1:24:38
Le Tokyo in Duropale.
1:24:41
NASCAR maybe you've heard of it.
1:24:43
Oh my god. February 4th. I
1:24:46
think I might camp out in Sonoma this year. Yeah
1:24:49
I think I might camp on the infield. Do
1:24:53
you have an RV? I got a little or we got an RV
1:24:55
a couple months back. We got a little bit. We're left in two
1:24:57
months with a trailer. 24. Oh boy. Oh boy.
1:25:00
If you want to go camping. I
1:25:02
wanted to yeah I want to live that Logan lucky
1:25:05
life. Was
1:25:07
that in Indianapolis was it? No
1:25:11
that was Charlottesville. Yeah we
1:25:13
were right. Yeah I was.
1:25:15
Yeah. All right well final thoughts.
1:25:18
Oh yeah speaking of things to
1:25:20
watch the Michael Fassbender Road to
1:25:22
Le Mans. Oh most recent thing
1:25:25
is out but in lieu of doing
1:25:27
a series this year they just went
1:25:29
ahead and did a 90-minute movie.
1:25:32
It is available on Porsche's YouTube
1:25:35
channel right now. It's called Michael
1:25:37
Fassbender colon Road to Le Mans
1:25:39
hyphen the film. So it's a
1:25:41
bit confusing because this is the. Feels like the
1:25:43
end. It 100% feels like the end. I've watched
1:25:48
this. I enjoyed it. I would say
1:25:50
the opening 30 minutes is them just
1:25:53
recapping the previous whatever four seasons of
1:25:55
the series. Maybe. No I
1:25:57
need 90 minutes of new content. No. And
1:26:00
then they show what happened this year
1:26:02
and everything else. And, you
1:26:04
know, I think they do a good job of
1:26:07
wrapping it up. Uh, I really, I
1:26:09
enjoyed watching this one as well. Do we need to do
1:26:11
this? Oh yeah. I don't think we
1:26:13
need to do this, do we? Maybe we've done whatever we
1:26:15
did all the other ones. Maybe, yeah, maybe that's the first
1:26:17
thing. I didn't check this box off. I need to check
1:26:19
it off. I'll watch it again.
1:26:21
I enjoyed watching it. It's a, yeah, maybe that's what
1:26:23
we do for January. January. Yeah. Okay. So everyone else
1:26:25
then that's your homework for the holiday
1:26:27
period is go check out the
1:26:29
free movie. What a
1:26:32
contrast with Gran Turismo. What
1:26:38
a pairing. What a pairing. Damn
1:26:40
you, Here's
1:26:43
Michael Fassbender. All
1:26:47
right. Final thoughts on the 2023 season, Danny O'Dwyer.
1:26:52
Um, yeah, everything
1:26:54
I've said, I guess rambled on already.
1:26:56
I enjoyed it. It
1:26:58
wasn't the most exciting year. Um,
1:27:02
it was interesting in lots of ways and
1:27:04
we did have some exciting races, which was
1:27:06
fun. Um, I
1:27:08
think for everyone's sake, I would love if
1:27:10
the gap is closed to red bowl, um,
1:27:13
and next year, just to, to, I
1:27:15
think, I think everyone looks better if
1:27:17
there's more competition there. Um,
1:27:20
uh, and yeah,
1:27:22
for the sake of the sport, I feel a little
1:27:24
bit too, kind of get away with one of them,
1:27:26
maybe, or maybe two of them. But next
1:27:29
year, if it ends up being that way
1:27:31
again, I think we're might be in trouble.
1:27:33
So, you know, I think, uh, yeah, fingers
1:27:35
crossed a bit more competitive at
1:27:37
the top or just, you
1:27:39
know, Red Bull just take one
1:27:41
for us, like just get Ricardo in that seat,
1:27:43
just spice it up. Just let you
1:27:46
know what I mean? Like if checkers not going to
1:27:48
fight for fight max, then get someone else in there
1:27:50
and, and, you know, help us out.
1:27:52
Um, but yeah, um, you know, I'll enjoy
1:27:54
the break. But I'll, I'll be craving some
1:27:57
circuit action, uh, come January. All
1:28:00
right, final thoughts, Rob? The
1:28:04
time has come for any team
1:28:06
that's serious to take the fight to Red
1:28:09
Ball. You're not gonna beat Adrian Newey at
1:28:12
building a better arrow package under this role
1:28:14
system. You
1:28:16
need a nitrous system. So
1:28:20
who's gonna have the will to try
1:28:22
to slip that past the scrutiny? Maybe
1:28:25
Andretti would. Yeah,
1:28:27
hey, don't look under that plank.
1:28:32
You don't need to know what's going on under there. Yeah,
1:28:36
engineering director at Andretti Vin
1:28:38
Diesel. Exactly, it's a
1:28:40
family, you know. Well,
1:28:43
thank you everyone for joining our family
1:28:46
over this season, all our
1:28:48
listeners, all of our patrons. We
1:28:51
could not do this show without you. If
1:28:53
you would like to support the show and
1:28:55
get access to all of our bonus episodes,
1:28:57
the ad free version of the podcast and
1:28:59
the official Shift F1 Discord, tons of stuff
1:29:01
probably going on over the winter break, certainly
1:29:03
in Simland. Check that out.
1:29:06
Please do so over at patreon.com/Shift F1.
1:29:10
Have a good race weekend, everyone.
1:29:12
We will see you all next
1:29:14
time. Oh, next time. Pfft.
1:29:18
Meow. Meow.
1:29:57
Meow. you
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