FIA Blunders and Closing Thoughts

You are listening to Miss Apex podcast . We live at one Welcome to Miss Apex podcast and there's a heat hazard declared officially by the FIA Not just because of some of the hot takes you'll hear over the next hour, but it's set to swelter at the Red Bull ring this weekend . Yes, I know the World Cup is on. Today though, there'll be no hydration breaks. We're going to zero stop this Austrian Grand Prix preview. The title fight is heating up. George Russell's future isn't cooling down. Jonathan Simon here. Matt trumpets as always, Matt, who has bragging rights, I guess , on everything on me right now. Your team's doing well in the World Cup, the USA , you whooped Australia, the New York Knicks. I mean, what else do you need ? I mean, honestly, I am glorying all this sports goodness right now. And if you look at New York, there's just not everybody's like , yeah, we are kind of jealous of you and we hate to admit it because you always act like you're better than us anyway, which well, you know, New York. What can I say? No, the thing that kills me is like you're making a big deal about the US men 's team beating Australia . And people in England love to pretend that they have the most disappointing World Cup team ever . Well I believe that the US men's team is literally the Aston Martin of World Cup team. Oh, so that's how I'm bringing it back to Formula One for you. Oh, that is that is I'm gonna say that is an insult. That is a big insult to who, I don't know, to Aston Martin or to the USA men's soccer team. I'm not sure. One of the two pick whichever one works for you. It's all good. Big news coming out of the paddock already and we're recording it's four PM UK time about one AM Melbourne, eleven AM New York So news is going to filter as it comes. We're trying to get most of it in. We've probably missed some by the time this comes out. George Russell, the rumors are he's confirmed Matt for twenty twenty seven Rumors of a confirmation. So it's not quite confirmed by George or the team yet. Now the rumor is that a contract clause has been triggered and an announcement could happen this weekend . I'm shocked because I heard in November that George said, Well, there is a performance based clause on his contract, right? And I'm thinking, well, what performance based clause would there be? What to beat your teammate which, not he's doing. So clearly that is a different clause he's triggered and it looks like he's going to race on in twenty twenty seven and probably alongside Antonelli, you'd guess . Well, I mean, if you're Antonell e, where would you go ? And if you're George, where would you go? Yeah, exactly. And you're right, it is interesting when you say performance clause, usually you always think, oh, well if the driver having issues, then that means the team can get rid of them. But those things do cut both directions. And famously, I think we've seen Ricardo and especially Vettel for sure , take advantage of poor team performance to bounce off for happier pastures, but it can work both directions. If you're happy where you are, then you get to stay and it puts the driver in charge of making that choice must have been before they had confirmation of how Antonelli was really going to do , that that clause existed . I wouldn't bet on it for the next upcoming contract negotiations though . Well, I'm guessing it's at least either a driver's standings clause. He currently sits third in the standings and it might be at a certain point of the year he's had to hit it , or maybe a self performance type clause like, Hey, George, if you win one race by this point, or the team's P one and Constructors, you can trigger it. But then another report says, Well, hey, it's been a mutual agreement. So it's not just George saying, Hey, I've just activated this clause on my contract. Mercedes have also agreed to it too . And now if you're Max Verstappen, maybe we'll get to this a little later on because I'm getting drained with the Max Verstappen future kind of, you know, what's going to happen there ? He kind of I guess he's got nowhere to go because McLaren looks full, Mercedes now probably full. They're probably going to keep Antonelli. Ferrari's a no go . What do you do if you're Max Verstappen, right ? Well, yeah, I mean you have two choices, but I think you're interested you're it is interesting and you are correct . The most fascinating part of this is the doors that have been closed on a lot of drivers Carlos signs, like there are a lot of drivers who might have been sniffing around Mercedes . In the event they decided they wanted to make a change, but what this also tells us is that fundamentally George's performance at Mercedes has made Mercedes happy enough that they would really very much like him still on board Maybe development related, maybe they see the underlying performance where the results on track haven't matched up, but it's irrelevant. I don't know. If your Max , you have two choices right now, you could look at you could hold on for another year at Red Bull, see what happens at Aston Maybe, which is or Audi, perhaps Jesus . Well, I mean, you say this, but reasons se asons are long and they will be getting massive amounts of help from the from the regulation, certainly the Honda power unit will and the Audi as well . And they both have to p otential to be decent cars , you know, they have the backing . Or you go, you know, all Reichen and you just take your money and go fast carring, rallying, sport s carring for a year or two till something opens up and then you come back and hope you haven't lost any performance . I think it's the right fit too. Like George and Mercedes seem like at least with Toto Wolf as well, I don't want to say it's a match made in heaven, but it's as close to it as you can kind of get there, you know? Like it's a good relationship . I just wonder this is happening too early. I want to know the background to it . If it is the performance clause, like if he satisfied something fair enough , and if he does win the championship this year, we'll all swallow our words and say, okay, well we were premature to criticize whether it was too early to sign George Russell. I think it's a good decision. He is in a title fight Matt and not just with Kimi Antonelli . I'd say Ferrari have inserted themselves in this title fight. There's two camps here. I want to know which one you're in because there are some people that say, Hey, Ferrari have just come off a win in Barcelona, they're looking quick. This is a three horse race for the title. I'm talking Antonelli Russell, Hamilton. But then there's this other camp going, well, wait a second , Ferrari got lucky with a virtual safety card, which camp are you in? Oh, no, no, no, they they were winning Barcelona regardless regardless and you know, you've left somebody out. You've left out a main character here in the championship race and that is the savage unreliability of the Mercedes power unit . And yeah, I don't know . Well, I do want to say before we go on to talk about Ferrari, I'm assuming that's where you're going with that . Don't overlook how unbelievably junior high school and petty team principals can be . Obsid . Just it's just as certain that Mercedes decided to make this announcement or release the rumor to just complicate Red Bull and Max's upcoming discussion because the whole isn't the whole like a board basically of Red Bull at Austria and there's going to be some meetings and talking going on about futures and already like I saw a rumor that Paul Monaham was leaving, this could absolutely be Toto just like it's not enough that he's barred Christian Horner from the sport. He's really just gonna grind them under his heel now. We've seen this. We see Horner and Abeatable. Cyril Abeatable, do you remember him? I don't know where to do he's absolutely am . Yeah, you haven't had a drink with him at the pub, have you as well? I feel like that was my no, a beautiful's doing whack with Hyundai, I believe . Okay, there you go. So no, no drinks at the pub with that drink with Oldmire Schafna. That was maybe you'd do another one soon. Get us some insights for Mr. Apex. Where I was taking this to actually was kind of Toroto's quote well he said there's a third party involved in this championship fight, constructor and driver . He said singular there, Paul Charlecler, he meets Louis Hamilton here, just Toto Wolf, I'm assuming . He says, We'll discuss internally with George and Kimmy how we want to handle a situation where we risk holding each other up. Now this is after Barcelona, of course, when you could kind of argue and say, well, they might have been within a shot of winning had they not held each other up and maybe Lewis doesn't get the virtual safety car. Should Mercedes start splitting strategies Matt? Isn't that just going to cause more complication between the team ? Okay , so I love this because that driver that was the exact kind of tiny pettiness mess with your opponent's head that I think Todu is particularly brilliant at Sowing Dissension in the Ferrari camp by just forgetting to use the plural instead of the singular, oh I'm sorry, Charles, I forgot, I didn't really mean just Louis . And like we all know exactly what he meant. It's interesting . I would be very curious what George would make of it if Tota said, Okay, well, you know, how we had all those rules we agreed to at the beginning of season. I'm going to throw them out. And since Antonelli's ahead, he's just going to get all the favorable calls from now on. I don't think that goes down so well. I think it's an issue if he does it. I don't think it makes Mercedes look great . Not because you know, running a team that way makes you look bad. Red Bull ran their team that way, but it was but if you went to Red Bull and Drove for them, that was you signed up for those terms. George signed up with Lewis for absolute fairness . And if they stop delivering on it , well before there's a numerical, a serious numerical argument , then that'll be a real interesting change in the culture of the team, I think. George today said the win for the team is priority. It doesn't matter which driver. Come on, George , what am I listening to right now? Seriously , you I'm retracting his twenty twenty seven contract for that BS quote alone. Of course it's about you, George. Come on. You got one chance of the world title at least possibly your best chance in your career so far. I think if they split strategies Matt , it probably will cause more divide, right? Like amongst the garages and amongst the team than it is going to like is George Russell going to I'm sure at the end of the day he'll round of applause shake Kimmy Antonelli's hand well done on the title, but I mean surely right now you just start it's kind of like you're in it's a three dimensional battle. I think you've got the George Garage, you've got the Lewis Garage , you've got Lando Norrises in there as well doing his thing. Antonali's got his own race to run. It's the first time an F one we've se,en this since probably twenty ten where we had those five drivers going for the title at the final race Yeah. And as I said, on the last review show , I believe this has been a Mercedes issue at certain points, they are vulnerable because they are having to consider outcomes, they're having to try and find an optimal strategy where the optimal strategy is unknown and they can't send one driver on plan A and one driver on plan B to borrow some letters from Ferrari there. Well , I sort of used your point to make my own argument about Mercedes , but really if I'm in Russell's camp , I'm liking a split strategy because if you think that Antonelli is as likely as not to be the lead driver . You can imagine the way that works is they don't say lead driver gets strategy A , second driver gets strategy B , probably what it is like pit stops. Lead driver get s choice . So they're going to go chemy, we have plan A and plan B and you know, we have half a lap to decide . Do you box and cover or do you stay out and overcut? Let's just use Barcelon a since we all know what happened there . And we all know what do you think with do you remember McLaren last year too? Like I don't know I know what you're saying with the whole strategy a strategy B, but when Notlander and Norris did it last year , I had to copy it for six months and listen to Australian fans say, hey, they're not supporting Oscar Piatri. They're supporting Norris. It's a biased team. Now, I'm not saying the Italians and the Brits are going say to that Mercedes , but certainly like it's, I just think it's more ugly than it is beneficial doing that kind of stuff. You're disagreeing already. I'm totally disagreeing. I think it's absolutely fair whoever is leading at the first pit stop gets gets the strategy choice that's reasonable. The drivers then their performance on track decides who's in the , we would call it the catbird seat from way back when the thing that I like about this and this is why I think George of All will actually argue for it is because he's quite likely if you just look at past races , there's a much bigger than zero percent chance he will be the one the second strategy, but Mercedes has a tendency to pick the wrong strategy a lot in that in that position and Antonelli bless him is a genius, but he's been in Formula One not nearly long enough necessarily to have a feel for when the team is making a good strategy strategy suggestion and when they aren't. So if I'm Russell, I'm like, Hey, this is kind of great. If I'm lead driver, I can pick the best strategy and I know the best strategy and I've been working with my team a long time so we know what I can do and what I can't do. If it's Anton i, he's probably going to lean on the team more and the team will have a sense that a lot of times won't be right and it'll open the door for me to run the alter nate strategy but gain more points from it because it'll wind up being the better one just because where Mercedes' natural strategy weakness lies. So I don't know, if I'm Georgia being really sneaky, I'd be like, I will I will st ep up for the team and demand that the team win is most important and we should absolutely split strategies and the lead driver should pick. And I think that's fair . Is it hard to argue that? And then think that he's going to inherit like the best of both worlds as a result of going for that . Well, how about Ferrari? Like should Charlotte Clerk now with the rest of the year just support Lewis Hamilton for a title fight? Should he give up his dream that he's worked his whole life for to help Lewis? He's about, I think he's from memory about eighty points behind. Let me check that up. He's about three, four races behind no, that's three races behind Antonelli for the lead . Should he just give up and just help Lewis? Again, it's sort of funny. We've had what a third of the races. It's a bit soon for anyone to be giving up entirely . What? I mean, say what you all about on track performance and who's really fastest and what really makes the driver the best anyway ? The changes that have been associated with the performance increase from Ferrari have been pushed for and eventually gained from Lewis's side of the garage . And therefore I mean if I'm Charles , I just I think my preferred strategy is long term, I benefit from what's happened here . So yes, any sneaky chance I absolutely positively want to take advantage quite in the meantime, I just keep quiet and hope that my chance comes without having to make a fuss about it . Well, this happened two thousand seven. Kimi Rinik wonan the title next year, Felipe Masa, I mean, kind of what ? Almost won the title. We won't speak about that, Felipe. We won't bring that up. I know there's like a legal case and stuff. So I got to actually be careful of what I say there. Now I'm not saying that Lewis will win the title this year and then Charlotte win it next year. I'm just saying it can happen. And maybe Lewis goes, Oh well, my eight, I'm good. I'll help Charles next year, you know, win his title. That's a possibility. I doubt that's going to happen. I think everything I've said so far about that Ferrari title fight is let's just wait and see because they're bringing some upgrades to Austria and everybody's hyped up on Ferrari thinking, oh my goodness, this is the quickest team now. They've just won Barcelona. Now wait a second because you know this Agio Matt I've called it Agio ADUO additional development upgrade opportunities Ferrari have their first one ready to go for Austria does that mean they're going to win I'm ex.cited I. get Do my re d prancing horse cap on? Am I ready for topstep at the podium this weekend? Give me some hope . Okay, I'll give you some hope, but I think it's going to have less to do with the initial upgrade , which is rumored to be mainly a fuel upgrade and possibly not worth what they originally thought for various complicated power unit development reasons . Well, the real thing to focus on here and this is part of our larger look at the track is one, you mentioned a heat hazard, correct? Yeah, okay. Which one are the at the track? Which one? Both. My camera. First of all , which of the teams has gone with a non aluminum cylinder head to be able to run higher engine temperatures ? I'll give you a hint not Mercedes and that's not good. Again, the fuel upgrade , so that's worth maybe a little bit of zip . But I think the big thing here is if we're going to talk about the fourth driver being Mercedes unreliability , well the problem they've been having they think now and they think they fixed it has been overheating and the battery packs rel ated and it's both going to be hot and we're at altitude where cooling is so much less effective and Mercedes loves to play right on the edge of oh the entire car overheated won't run anymore . So they may have to turn down enough that they do not have an advantage . Well, yeah, well that's the thing, right? Is the red bull ring is seven hundred meters above sea level. Brazil's about the same . Mexico's the highest one we go to on the calendar. That's like two kilometers above sea level. It's way higher. Now all this altitude stuff, right? It means less cooling, thinner air . And you just mentioned it, Mercedes have already had problems with cooling and temperatures . Ferrari as well. Yes, they're bringing in this upgrade, which you just said, right? But they're playing it down as you would if you're Ferrari. We're bringing an upgrade. It'll be alright. We won't be top of the order. Bang, pole position. That's what I want to see on Saturday. No , but I also think Ferrari could struggle this weekend. I was reading something about how you know they have this little smaller turbo that spools quicker , which means less cooling for them . So all signs are really pointing towards Ferrari and Mercedes struggling Matt . And I think it could open the door for Red Bull to be quick this weekend because it could be this race of attrition , temperatures of like thirty six degrees Celsius. What's that in Fahrenheit? That's like one hundred and ten , almost. Like it's very hot in Austria this weekend . So so it's I mean, what do you do, right? I mean, you're going to have the cool suits on. There's so much to battle this weekend . Well, I think the first thing you think about when you think about that, aside from just the thermal management within the car itself, is you think about your tires . Because we've seen the effect of not being able to manage tires and hot temperatures . And then if you were like me, you remember that Ferrari have cleverly designed an entirely new , well, they haven't. They're wheel suppliers designed a brand new wheel hob that seems to be even better with regards to managing tire temperatures as we saw in Barcelona. So you think to yourself, well, this could also be like a real advantage for Ferrari. It doesn't matter if my engine is more powerful if my tires have overheated and they're just spinning because the tread is essentially liquid at this point. Your engine power does you no good, but if you can get that delicious sweet horsepower down on the asphalt, then you have a massive advantage even if your turbo is small , and we will spool faster, but ultimately you have less power . That's that's the issue for them. And of course, that was based on the start advantage they knew they'd have until the rules got changed and that's boy, that's a whole nother podcast and I've complained about it a lot anyway. So I would bare you that Red Bull, though, you do make the good point . If the FIA's a duo decision is correct and they have the strongest combustion chamber. Oh my goodness , then that actually means the turbo is less important and it's already not going to work as well because we're at altitudes. So yeah, that is potentially a real advantage for Red Bull. I think the problem for them is the whole rest of the car, aerodynamically and just in terms of its balance being predictable for the drivers does it seems to be circuit by circuit. Now we got medium high speed . Yeah, are they better at that this year? It's hard for me track. Can they keep on flipping back and forth, right? Well, I definitely know Ferrari have struggled at all the high speed tracks like Suzuka, Melbourne. That's because I looked it up obviously . And Austria is also a high speed track. So that's not playing in their favor. The lack of breaking in Austria too, like that won't suit Lewis Hamilton's style. But then I think about it and I go, Well, Silverstone has I think it's the least breaking you do on the calendar, and Lewis has won there nine times in his career. So I don't know what to make of that. Anyway. So you got that situation, but yeah, just quickly. Well, no, I was just going to say yeah, he makes up a lot of time, but consider that for all Austria is a very fast track, you do have that just almost dead stop into what I think they call turn three . Yeah , come up turn one, do the big Antonelli took up Verstappen last year, right? That corner turns out breaking is important at least in that corner and you can gain a lot of time there. And I would put a lot of what Ferrari was missing at the high speed circuits down to exactly that. Just like they run out of before they get to the same speed as their rivals and less just an absolute lack of aerodynamic performance , their balance again, the more balance your car has, the easier it is to manage your tires. So I think they're starting from a good position, but they do have notable deficits to Mercedes and Red Bull in certain instances. So yeah, fascinating, absolutely fascinating . And fascinating too that Ferrari have had, I mean, they've had this engine upgrade apparently ready since winter testing because they all the teams knew they were going to have this kind of balance of power, u Ad o come through during the year. So now they can pull the trigger and that's why it's ready to go for Austria . But the funny part is, imagine if you're sitting there as Red Bull. Like when you said that before, when the FIA I think, this is like two , three weeks ago for anyone who missed this, the FIA said that Red Bull have the quickest engine. I was like , huh? I had the Mr. Bean, you know, the Mr Bean meme, the face where you're so confused. I couldn't believe it. I thought I was reading a typo, but they legit , even Red Bull are confused about that. So that stumped me. And I'm sure Red Bull or Ford as they are now have their upgrades ready to go and can't pull the trigger because they're not allowed to. So that's not going to play in their favor. Look, the good news for Red Bull is that they have some upgrades this weekend, but before I forget all that, I mean we kind of touched on I think the big story here , Matt that I don't want to miss is we talked about the weather, right? It's hot, the altitude. And look at history. You've had two critical Mercedes battery failures and there was obviously the one with George Russell at Canada, then you had Antonellia Barcelona . So who's to say that they're going to show any improvement this weekend at Austria? Well , they do have a history of doing well at Austria regardless Red Bull that is. Do they? Red Bull Mercedes . Red Bull. I mean , it seems to do excessively well . Mercedes generally this has been a good circuit for them, but it's also been a weird one. Yeah. They've had like remember they had to stay off the curbs at one time because they kept on messing up their engine, the vibrations that were being caused, harm aonic resonance in the chastis. But they also had they also had twenty nineteen . They had, I mean, they suffered from the same issues that are going to happen this weekend. They had the high air track temps . They were way off the pace. I think Lewis and Boltass were not quick at all. Every year we came here in the turbo hybrid area era you have like a weird result . Like the Williams were third and fourth, I remember twenty fourteen. Like and you just have some weird results here. I'm not saying Mercedes had never been quick here, but I'm saying like you said, Matt, you do have some off , you know, outlier kind of events happen . But just where I want to shift this quickly is the team has said and this is specifically on Antonelli's car, they're bringing a new power unit, new battery pack . They say that they brought some upgrades to help and whether it's software, hardware tweaks, you can get all into all the intricacies a little bit later. But they've had these recent breakdowns, Matt, this is critical for the rest of their season because , you know, you can't lose a title on reliability. We've seen it happen before , but it would be a failure for Mercedes to do anything but win the championship this year that the team that was rumored to have won it even before the season began . Yeah, well you absolutely can in fact lose a championship on reliability, but you really, really would rather not, especially in this day and age . And I just always find it instructive to go back to summer's instructing all of us on the difference between an update and an upgrade . Yes, so if Mercedes says they're bringing new stuff to make things better , well then that's the results they see from their modeling and simul ations and CFD and so on and so forth . But we got to see what happens when it hits the track and especially in these conditions . And if it worked for them, then yeah, now you'd think they'd have ultimately the power unit advantage . And I guess that would be the last thing for anyone still confused about this the duo, the updates you're allowed is based only on secret black box FIA algorithm only focused on the combustion engine. So your electric side has nothing to do with it. However, your overall performance is completely tied into how electrical system interacts with your combustion unit . And I mean, I wouldn't put it past Mercedes and Ferrari and literally every other team to be playing as many games as possible trying to get these advantages even though they're not exactly sure what the FIA is measuring . So this is why you have such a nonsensical result sort of from a standpo ofint view, like obviously everyone knows the best overall power unit belongs to Mercedes . But even the drivers and the teams mat, like you hear them in interviews like Lando Norris going, you know, if Ferrari had the quickest engine. They'd be the best team out there. I know Norris plays a political game really well. Like that's one thing we've got to be careful of there. But even the teams were shocked to find out that Red Bull had the quickest engine. I guess you're right though, it's based on the ice, right? Which is the petrol part of the engine. It's not based on the battery. So Mercedes might have the best battery component. It might be unreliable, but it might be the quickest . So who knows how they measured this stuff in this secret black box? I wonder if you can I was going to come up with a suggestion to just bribe this guy, whoever. Is there one guy sitting in a shed just like analyzing telemetry , like getting, you know what I mean? Just trying to find out it's a couple of guys, but my understanding it's both lab testing and telemetry from the track. It's some combination of the two and they feel like they can isolate a performance number just for the combustion engine or probably they get it in the lab and then they confirm it to make sure no tricks are being played when they test it like on a dyno or whatever But it is it is one of the more nonsensical results because if you take half a step back and say, well, what was the point of this anyway ? Well, the point was that Mercedes shouldn't be getting any help right now and Ferrari and everyone else should be getting home . And that's not how it's played out at all . Also along with that too is I remember once , I think I was doing pit reporting at a at a racing event. It was GT's and I went into the actual truck where they had the person who was deciding all this stuff. So they would actually analyze each team's telemetry and say, hell look, they're putting too much engine power into that car, I can disqualify them or send a notice. And I'm sitting here looking at this computer and it's one guy and I thought I could literally just ult FOR somebody's car from here. Like surely, I could literally just shut down hey, the leaders twenty seconds head bang. Like I'm pretty sure you could do that. I might be wrong. Maybe somebody out there FIA officials listening to the podcast, please let us know if you're allowed to or not allowed to, but if you can do that . The weather before we forget . So I mentioned it's going to be hot, like what thirty six degrees? Impressive part everybody about mat trumpets is he can figure out what thirty six degrees Celsius is in Fahrenheit and convert in his head in like second s . I'll give it go. Can you do it? Which one are we doing? thirty six, thirty six Celsius two Fahrenheit . Well, the only hard part about that is doubling it to seventy two and subtracting seven. So that's that's a tricky one. Two minus seven is always going to get you, but that's a four hundred sixty four add thirty two that is ninety six . Wow, I wrote ninety seven. It might be a typo. I'll give you that. It could be a finger slipping there. Well, the thing is, you know, it's seven point two . So, you know, I didn't account for the decimal because I figured you didn't need that level of accuracy. Also in my head, it starts to get more challenging with multiple number column s. Wow, boy, that's going to be some brilliant podcasting. Everybody watch Trump, it's do math. It's bad enough when I just read numbers off a spreadsheet. Well, I learned something there because, you know, we got viewers or listeners , excuse me from like all parts of the world. We got US listeners, UK listeners. Do you use Fahrenheit in the UK? No, I'm pretty sure they use Celsius over there as well. Anyway, it won't be the hottest F one race in history this weekend. That was Bahrain two thousand five. forty two degrees Celsius about one hundred eight Fahrenheit. Never been a hotter race than that, everybody, but two thousand five is as far as we go back, Matt, when the Hall of Records mysteriously melted away , unfortunately . Yeah . No, the thing is you sort of got different . You have from an environmental point of view , you have your track temperature . That matters a lot. And it's just generally worth knowing that usually that temperature you see for the track, they put that sensor in the coolest place on the track because they don't want is that right? Issues? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah . Because here's the thing that I learned talking to people who really know what they're talking about . The binder, the bitumen that they use on roads and tracks in general just starts to melt once you get to about eighty C . So like some motor GP races in the sixties , I've been reliably informed potentially at the hottest parts of the track might be getting to the Oh well yeah they're starting to melt under their kind of face. Is that what happened in Monaco? Is that why the track melted away? No, that would be a different story. You know what? I think I have someone who knows about that and I may be following up on it. However, I don't have the full story right now other than to say that I'm pretty sure that was a problem across the entire weekend and not just something that showed up on the Sunday . Righto . Well, Perellia are bringing the what is it C three C four C five, softest in their range this weekend. Now I'm excited about that because Barcelona, the two, three , the two to three stop race we had was fun. Gotta admit it wasn't quite as fun or as a circus act as like the twenty eleven paralley where we had those four stop races, but who's to say in Austria this weekend ? We don't have a full stop race. I mean, if you're going to have one of the hottest weekends in F one history, track temp probably in the fifties, sixties, you'd say Matt on race day. Yeah, like you think fifty's you think are a fifty or above? I would say Yeah . I would say that this is good for for our entertainment. I feel sorry for the drivers . I feel sorry for everybody at the track . Me sitting at home in my ten degrees Celsius, freezing cold in winter here in Australia, will be enjoying the entertainment ? Yeah, so we talked about the track. I want to get the drivers in a second. As far as the tires go , again , there's always this sort of focus on, oh, we need a two stop. You need a three stop. No, what you need is a two stop and a three stop or a one stop and a two stop whose outcomes are very close to identical when you run the actual race . That's what makes it exciting. And had Mercedes just been brave enough to try and go over that one last stop and there hadn't been subsequent safety cars. That's what we would have seen in Barcelona is essentially Lewis went out there and said, Hey, a three stop might beat you like a gong and Mercedes had to respond to it. That's why we get the exciting racing. If everybody is on exactly the same pit strategy, then it just devolves into like the undercut and the overcut in the lap before and after the pit stop. What you really want is a diversity of valid options for the teams to exercise . And in Austria too, the power unit is I would say a big key. You know, if your power unit's a monster here at the Red Bull ring, it probably means you're going to win. So according to the FIA, Matt, Red Bull's gonna win because they have the best power unit. Isn't that right? Yeah, again, see my footnote about what it is they exactly measured and it's not really the best power unit. It's just some magic number and I think Mercedes guessed well enough that they got away with it . Well, look, I hope for Red Bull's sake. I hope a Max Verstappen 's sake that Red Bull show some improvement this weekend . Apparently and this is going to be a shock to people how successful Red Bull are going to be for the rest of the year could determine Max Versta ppen's future at the team. I'm being sarcastic there. Of course it is. Of course they need speed, you know, to make Max quick . Yeah, no, I love this because boy, there's been so little ink spilled on Max Verstappen and his future at Red Bull , which was a sarcastic comment because I realized it doesn't always read well across cultures, but I mean, yeah, the obvious problem for Max is the team isn't performant. A lot of it seniors staff have left and you're in what any other sport would be called potentially a rebuilding era at least on the team side, the engineering side . But if you're Max , you know, you can look at Lewis and say, well, I have a window and it's a far sight of that window . I've got Antonelle and who knows who else coming up the ranks. There's another one already in F two that are that are will be legitimate threats in terms of their level of talent especially if they have an extra car advantage. So yeah, you do want to strike while that iron is hot and then there's always that thing of max just being Max and saying, well look, if I'm not winning, it's not really that much fun for me or at least I don't have a chance to win . And I don't know. I brought this up before, but we did interview Button back in the day and he made sort of an off handed comment, not part of our interview that like the brawn that he won the championship in wasn't really a particularly fun car to drive. He's driven cars that he liked a lot better , but it was a car that could win everything . So is it really the car you're driving Max? Or is it the you just don't get engaged enough if you're not close if you can't sniff a win or a podium ? Well, that's right. I remember Jensenstenbuton at the time like struggling at some tracks as well to build tyre temperatures into the car and all that. So yeah, there's a big deal like if Max isn't enjoying himself and the cars he's not at one with the car then of course yeah, he,' hes's going to want to find another team or another car elsewhere that's going to suit him. But as well as the team like fundamentally the people there is that going to is that the same as what Max was enjoying , you know, in the last five , ten years . Apparently Paul Monaghan, you know, the chief engineer at Red Bull, apparently he could leave the team as well. That's really I think I mentioned that a little bit earlier. It's a rumor. I haven't seen it confirmed, but it wouldn't surprise me because all these people have been stuck in that role for a long time . Yeah. And now what they're getting offered is a chance to step up and have more , you know, have more to do it more say, more zeros on the paycheck and everything . He has performance clauses too Matt. Do we get into that? Because I know with Russell we kind of thought that there were certain clauses that could, you know, well let's not get into that again, but apparently last year, what was it like something about the team had to be second or third in constructors, he had an exit clause. I can't remember, but apparently it's the same this year as well . Yeah, well I mean probably everybody has clauses of that kind regardless of what team you're in. But the issue , as we already pointed out, is the doors are rapidly closing if there's no better performing or no promising enough team to go to I mean does he go does he go to where I don't know Well what Aston? That's that's I mean that's the only real place he could and we talked about this earlier, right when we talked about how the domino effect with George Russell is like Aster Martin is pretty much his only option you would say realistically because I would say they have the money to pay him because I think if you did go to Mercedes, I mean the relief for Toto Wall for Mercedes right now Matt, is that Toto doesn't have to go to the Mercedes Board to get approval to sign Max. Like that's how much money Verstappen would I'm not going to say he would demand it, but just naturally you know, a dri,ver of his cali ber, he'd need to be paid big time. So I think that's kind of the relief for Mercedes. They don't have to worry about that because it's probably going to be Russell Antonelli again next year. Aston Martin apparently have the money. Apparently if you go to Lawrence Stroll's house, it's a money pit. It's an endless hole. You can just reach and grab whatever figure you want . I'm lying. Well, it's never an unlimited money pet , but there are very clearly teams that have more resource available to them . And if you can't offer by far the best performing car , then you either need to offer some kind of team culture that you really vibe with. And it's like, okay fine, I don't mind because like everybody here is amazing. The chemistry is fantastic. I'm just having the time of my life. I don't really care because after all it is formula One, man , there's rarely more than one or two teams that can really win a championship and maybe another two or three that might win a race . You know, it's been that way as long as I can remember watching it. Started was it twenty thirteen ? There was one season where we had five winners and five races. That was pretty unusual, although the very end of a regulation set . It was even better. It was seven from seven in twenty twelve. Okay . Possibility. It could have been nine from nine. I won't get into that, but it could have been for anybody who watched F one back then . Does he hold too much power at Red Bull? Do you reckon Max ? Like do you think? Because Carlos signs during the week, I don't know if you saw this, but apparently he revealed that Max hasn't written into his contract to not do marketing and interviews . So So if you're going to pay him big bucks at Mercedes, like do you want that? You'd want to make some money off his brand somehow . Yeah, so I think the problem is the whole Red Bull team was built around catering to Max . And again, that's a valid and normal strategy . But the collapse of power above him , yeah, means he perhaps has an outsized voice relative to any other driver's position in a team . But that wouldn't have happened . Well, I'm not going to continue to the what ifs, but had the normal team principal than had Matash still been alive, this would have never happened . I mean, it might have happened, but it wouldn't have been an issue for Max and he would have been able to get as much leverage out of it as he is now. Because at the end of the day, say what you all about anyone directly above him. This was Dietrich Madish 's team and everything we're seeing now is a direct result of his passing and the power devolving into a more corporate entity. Yeah, everything's getting off the rails at Red Bull . Even Carlos Sides getting Carlos Sins off the rails just revealed that just revealed that Verstappen, I guess, revelation in his contract. Another Carlos signs off the rails as well, and Matt, he said an idea. I think he said something like you should have each driver race every car twice over the course of a season to determine the champion Jesus Christ. Somebody checked the water at the Carlos Science Residence anyway. Well sure you don't have a car. It was a bad idea . I will fight you about this. This is absolutely tely brilliant. What is the biggest differentiator in Formula One? It is the car. Right. We all know this . Who's the best driver ? Is it necessarily the one in the best car , no, are they all so close in performance? I mean even you know, even people that get mocked for performance like Stroll, look, they would probably trash you at any race you care to mention their level of performance just is across a pretty narrow band . So what he's saying is if we rotated the drivers by team across the season . So start your first race is in Williams, your second race is in Red Bull, your third race is in Mercedes, your fourth race is in Audi, your fifth like that. Yeah , across a twenty two or twenty two week season , every driver would get two races in the same make and that means that their point score would be much more signal and much less noise across a whole season because I'd be yeah, I wouldn't get any points when I started in the ass in this year, but I'd probably get a haul of them in a Mercedes wouldn't I? But also a challenge for the team because they'd have new drivers to deal with and for the drivers because they would have to adapt to cars that drove quite a bit differently week after week after week. It would be a really fascinating challenge now obviously completely unworkable in the real world . But like as sort of a thinking exercise, I'm like, oh yeah, no, I'm totally actually on board with that. That really works quite well. I'm not saying it's a terrible idea . I'm just saying that it will never happen . And it's not even a half baked idea, Carlos Science. It's burnt . It's not happening. It's not in real life. I don't think he meant it to happen in real life. I think he was probably making a point about how limiting it is because if you get a team that messes up , you, the driver had can't make up for it no matter how good you are and arguments we've had. Yeah, no , Yukopaxit and Men Aston and he might do better than Alonso or Stroll, but he's not doing Q three better by any stretch of the imagination. No, of course not. No, look, I get where Coloscience is coming from I hope for Max's sake in Austria because apparently Red Bull are bringing an upgrade update there you go I should say you mentioned you and you and Summers have taught me well now and they're going to be at the minimum weight of what is it like seven hundred and seventy kilograms? What's that? Like three shiquilo meals? Like yeah, it's pretty light so they're going to be lighter, they're going to be better. I hope for Max's sake, Matt , that he's top step at the podium and it rejuvenates himself this weekend. I think all signs of pointing towards a red bull leap this weekend. I think they're going to win. I'm calling it . Well, I will tell you this unless the car itself brakes while racing because they made it lighter . The closest thing you get to a guaranteed upgrade is the car is five or six kilograms lighter. That is just lap time all the way around . So if they if they have made the car and I think it's seven hundred and sixty eight , what honestly, there have been a lot of different weights in Formula One regulations over the years and they're kind of all in my brain. And so occasionally I just snatch the wrong one by accident . But if they're down to minimum weight, then that should be a significant laptime upgrade for them. Look, well, I don't know where how long have we gone so far? I think we're trying to do I know Spanner's always promises every podcast we're going to do under an hour. I will actually stick to that this podcast for for the Austrian we're probably around forty three , forty five minutes of recorded material . Do you think this year, Matt, you know, I know, you know, I love my F one history. I think back to two thousand nine, there's this kind of two thousand nine esque development development race happening. Maybe not to the extreme. Now for people who didn't watch F one back then, this is how dramatic it was . What you have with Aster Martin today , you had a team like that in two thousand nine show up one weekend and put it on poll . Like it was that was the Force India back then, right ? Is it a bit hard to do these days because of the cost cap? Matt? Is it more modern day so engineers are making less mistakes . Are we going to see that this year? Aster Martin potentially make that leap pole position one round ? Well, no, because the power unit is too far off the mark. I think what you had in two thousand nine is you had very, very mature power units. So there was not a great deal of difference . Mercedes, I think was the most powerful, Renault the least, but the band was so narrow and Renault had some other technological advantages that allowed them to be very, very competitive and worked very well with the Red Bull . But the big difference is across that two thousand nine to twenty twenty one when we really had a cost cap , one you had the incredible rate of development of simulation tools , artificial intelligence , different model ing algorithms that are far more efficient than your standard Bonnie Carlo method that came out of World War two nuclear weapons development . And all of the teams that had no cost caps spent everything they could on these . Yeah . And all of the teams that had no money throughout that era, Williams off calf didn't . And now they're you can't catch up . You can't spend, there's no way to spend the amount of money you'd need to catch up with the cycles and generations of information and data they've already been able to generate to the point where I was listening to another show, the only other podcast I listen to and it's not a Formula One podcast. Oh, this is blasphemous. Y'all got a Formula One podcast. I will tell you listen to no Formula One podcast . Apart from us. Well, yeah, apart from you. You don't listen to us. I'm on most of these. So like it's sort of like a you get my point there. Yes, yes. And it's getting to the point where they've generated so much data in w ind tunnels and stuff like that that they have to they no longer have to run full CFD simulations. They can instead train an artificial intelligence, which is not your chat GPT people. There are some resemblances and some things in common, but not at all. We're talking about a very different set of tools here , but they can train it up on these results and instead of running lengthy , huge , demanding CFD simulation . The artificial intelligence trained enough on past results can just tell you much more quickly and almost in real time if what you are thinking of is going to work. Now, obviously there's going to be some caveats there and very, very far outside my wheelhouse, but I did hear someone who actually I believe was responsible for the development of the Mass Damper with his own AI company , talking about this in a show that was recorded last month. So I'm not also just making it up . And I think the bigger teams are getting to the point where they have and that's I mean, imagine the efficiency advantage there . One AI set of tokens and responses or whatever versus a whole CFD cycle . So now I can really make progress at just exponentially better levels. And if I'm a team that didn't have money and doesn't have these tools, I'm still doing things the old fashioned way. I remember back in the day, a friend of ours got hired to work at a team and discovered that their server infrastructure was so poor , they were still having to hand enter suspension settings to run simulations for Friday practice and everybody else had automated it and could run all possible suspension settings and choose from the pool of the best ones to start the Friday with. So this is like this we're still there . Everybody has moved up some because now Brimulan makes lots of money so all the teams have money . Wait , first off, that was all very good. But how did we get on to this? Because we're talking about you were talking about whether a force in India result could happen . And I'm saying it's less likely because the data tools because the data tools that big teams have are just suffocatingly that much better. Well, that's it. Okay, so to bring it back to that , if you remember two thousand nine to all the F one fans watching back then, so you had, you know, four cyndia, like we said, they were slow one round. They'd come into spa, pole, podium , they were as slow as what you'd see from Aston Martin. Then you had the opposite effect. I remember Toyota the same year, front row starts Bahrain and then two races later slowest car at Monaco. So it's not as dramatic as what you're saying is going to happen. The problem is now by you saying all this is, if you're Fernandabolonso, cover your ears because this is a man who's trying to extend his career beyond seventy, five years old or whatever he is now. And I'm impressed with how like I actually can't believe it's twenty twenty six. It's been twenty years since he won his last world title and he's still tearing up a formula one race track and doing a great job out there . Anyway , we think he's leaning towards another contract, Matt , is the rumors coming out of the paddock on a Thursday ? He says he'll make his mind up on the performance improvements from Aster Martin. Now why I giggle and why that's funny is like Red Bull, they're bringing some upgrades this weekend updates excuse me to Austria . Now I don't think anything they bring to the car is going to fix things, right? Like it's going to have to be down to the engine you mentioned earlier. It's all about this Honda power unit. That's where they're struggling. We're not saying that the car's a gem. We're not saying the car's as good as a you know, the chassis is not as good as a Ferrari . But I'm pretty sure like unless Honda is funding their project big time, I don't think we're going to see a massive leap from Aster Martin. I hope Alonso doesn't retire then. Can you give me some good news? I'm getting negative here. I need some good news, please. Well, I mean, I think good news number one is Honda has been given an extraordinary amount of leeway to fix things because it's not in anybody's best interest for them to be that far off the pace. Secondly, I do believe based on the timing of Newie's Garden Leaf , that what he presented to the team and what he demanded from Honda were just, well , you could go with very poorly thought out and no one to really oversee him . And I think that is sort of less the case now. If nothing else, he's there and can see it for himself and will have a much better idea . And certainly historically, he has designed some terrible, terrible performing cars and then a year or two later had championship winning cars. So if I'm alonzo , here's what I would like . I would like to see that the performance of the car aside from the power unit is significantly improving as far as a balance and comfort goes. Because remember, they gave him that special seating position and he had to quit because it was literally just breaking him like that was a couple of races ago. Yeah . So rethinking the seat seating position , very important. But just fundamentally , will the car be balanced enough to know if I'm going to have understeer or oversteer? I don't even care if it 's understeers like, you know, my granddad's station wagon at this point that would be an estate to you Europe ans Doesn't matter . As long as it just does the same thing in every corner, I can cope with it a lot better than just never knowing what's going to happen. Problematically, some a lot of that too is down to the programming of getting the power from braking and from the engine into the battery. So if you need power, it takes full power and braking and you have all this extra slowing down at the crankshaft of the of the car. So your brakes work super duper well, get to the next time around and your battery's full, it gives you none of that. And I think that the manual systems they're hydraulic are just struggling I bet to keep up . And along with that too, I think you mentioned earlier about we mentioned something about the budget. I've lost it, but it was about, you know, these Aduo upgrades coming in. So I looked it up and you know, you know, Red Bulls your yardstick basically. Then you have your everybody else's a few percentage off and all that kind of stuff . Now apparently Astermartin are allowed about eleven million dollars extra on top of the cost cap to improve whatever the problems are with the power units and all that kind of stuff. You see Alonso's quote that just came out. I know they're still in the past I'm not surprised. Tell me what he goes. He says, apparently there's no money to bring upgrades and he says unlimited upgrades like the other teams do. I should pronounce every R with a roll every time I come to how he pronounces him like that. Anyway, he said it's surprising to see the FIA page on Friday every race because maybe the other teams have the money machine in the minus one floor in the factory. Now this is Al onso throwing his toys out the prayer clearly upset with how things are going . Lauren Stroll is not a money pit. He's already lost. I mean, the amount of money they've spent to get to this stage and be back at the grid is terrifying for them, right? And now the FIA's gone, hey, here's eleven million dollars more to make yourselves quicker. I doubt money is going to solve this problem. Matt, there's obviously other fundamental problems Yeah , so like and it is a bit, if you'll pardon the phrase rich for him at Asen to be complaining about money because if there's any team that looks like a monty pet and had endless streams of spending available, it would be Aston . However, I will point you to a favorite saying of mine from my wife's industry, which is a quick, cheap, fast quick, cheap good pick two . And what let's take Ferrari's account , their power unit update has been in the works since twenty twenty five , when they began to get his sense of where everybody else's power unit at play, knew he was on garden leave until like the last couple of months before this season. So correct? I'm sure the staff did the best they could , but without a long term strategic vision, which really should have started , you know, before twenty twenty five, twenty twenty four , twenty twenty three . You were lost right now and it is costing you just two, three, four, five, ten times as much to try and keep up. So I don't think he's wrong about it, but I believe the reasons aren't that the other teams have unlimited funds that they are playing accounting games with because remind me who's been who's been dinged for that before? Red Bull. I think Aston's been on the naughty list once or twice. I'm not sure if they were ever penalized, but yeah, all the teams will be playing some level of accounting games, let's face it , but they're all being watched by the other teams, so there's only so much they're going to get away with anyway . It's really the long term planning. That's why these other teams seem to have more resources because it cost a lot less . If I know by November I need to produce these parts in July , well then I can do that very inexpensively. I can do the production late at night when the electricity is cheaper, I can do things off hour. There's so many ways they're probably getting more advantage out of it, but just mostly by being organized , you know ? Now I wasn't going to bring it up, but now that you brought up these cost cap breaches, I think I'm going to have to bring up like a list of FIA blunders just before we go, which of these tickles you fancy the most Matt? This is like the this is off the top of my head the last ten years . The handling of the Monaco result with Pierre Gasly. We won't get into that again , but that's an absolute shambles. Oh, for some reason, let's reinstate Pier Gasli there. Oh, George Russell, let's reinstate you. Oh, we can't. Anyway , Red Bull fastest engine decision. I think that that's still quite a howler tracking on the five thousand fifty power output let's not get into that again . The swearing penalties , jewelry penalties , the whole driving standards and thing that happened with Verstappen, do you remember back in twenty twenty one? Yeah , twenty twenty one, that's I mean, I'm going to call that the Lord Voldemort race. The race that shall not be named . Then you've got the Red Bull Cost Capreach which you brought up and remember h,iding the Ferrari's illegal engine also swept under the rug. Few FIA blunders matt from the from the last ten years like do we which of those tickles you fancy the most? I'm going to run down. I don't think the Monaco result was a particular blunder . I think there are issues in that haven't been properly aired and might need more looking at because if you're going to accept the race director being able to define redefine the speed limit in the pit lane during the race weekend and that has and that has the force of a regulation , well then maybe him saying you may you must stay all four wheels , you know, between the two white lines. You may not cut . Then that should be the force of a regulation too. And yet, somehow, I've heard from some sources they were specifically told that and then well, whatever. We can get into that. I think there's room for it to be, yeah, may not have been perfect, but there's some unexplored issues there. Fastest Engine already explained it, you know, it was as with many things , good intentions don't always yield good results . Don't you dare mention the Lord Voldemort race again, by the way, that is off the cards. Anyway, I will I will fifty, fifty power output. I've had my say on that. It's not a blunder. It was a weakness in catering to the manufacturers more than they should have been. The one for me of all of these it really, really stands out and it's sort of related you could say maybe to the twenty one thing . To me it's it's the swearing penalties. It's the jewelry penalties because you were making a stand on something that was force decades ago. They didn't want you wearing rings because of a lot of very horrible things that can happen to your hands in accidents . And what you were talking about now is entirely different. If you're going to make a point about something, it should be a point about something that matters . And there were much, much better things to insist on still being regulations in this day and age , you know , and it was obvious to everyone who watched. So you're undercutting your own power with the drivers. Yeah . But more importantly, the optics of oh, well no, a study ring. No, that's unsafe . Really? Well, really , tell me more guys 'cause you like, I wonder for being like, oh, maybe they have a point to like, oh or on the radio during a race, you may not use sweary words. Really? Like have you, come to New York ? My three year old could swear properly because you can't get down the sidewalk without hearing it. It's just like, I get it. I know for some people it's inconvenient if you've got kids of a certain age. However , that's also kind of life guys guys,. Get over it it. Well, that's. It's MBS versus the eighteenth Amendment, really. I mean, might as well arrest the Beer Baron at this point and it's be as close as close to that episode as possible. Anyway, final thing, Matt, let's not get into the rest of it. Let's wrap it . Anything to plug, I guess, before the race review ? Well, not really a plug, but I just got to be proud of, you know, however so often you got to be proud of your partner. My wife has a new book coming out and it's a historical fiction and it's about Helen Gibson who was Hollywood's first stunt woman. And she's now writing under the name for historical fictions. Amanda Waller is probably not going to be out for like a year and a half, but the official announcement hit the trade publication so I could finally tell people about it. Very excited. And it's not a romance . It's like women' as fiction, historical fiction kind of deal. And other than that, I just want to say thanks again to David 'cause he got in touch at PT fifty five, you're in New York, went out, had drinks. It was a fantastic time.. So thanks I really enjoyed it. Well, there you go. Yeah, and check. So that's not gonna be so I can't get my hands on the copy for another year, at least. I think Yeah. Well, I mean maybe talk to me off there. We'll see what we can. Yeah, yeah, sneak me a PDF or the Word Doc version, the draft is , V zero point one anyway at Matt Pete fifty five on Socials, I'm at Johnny S eight JONNY N ES eight, we'll be back for the race review Sunday. The crew will be back. It'll be spanners myself, Matt, unless unless one of us gets shot, really, I think we'll all be will all be back for Sunday . Enjoy for now though . Enjoy the race weekend. Austria, it's going to be a good one. It's going to be sweltering. Stay cool. Enjoy it. Take care. We'll see you Sunday.