Previewing the Upcoming Austrian Grand Prix

You are listening to Miss Apex podcast . We live at one . Welcome to Miss Apex podcast. I'm your host, Matt Trumpets. The title of today's show is Kyle's Excellent Adventure, and we're going to discuss Kyle Vandalizing Circuit to Catalunia Engine sounds are back , baby. Are leclerc's break issues entirely in his head and more but first , we are an independent podcast produced in the podcasting shed with the kind support of our patrons and partners. We aim to bring you a race review before your Monday morning commute. You might be wrong, but we're first. Joining me today is that mad and delightfully fragrant genius Kyle Power. Welcome back from Sunny Spain. Why exactly did you leave again? Hey man, I left because well, I think I overstayed my welcome. We got kicked out and unfortunately had to come back . But what I'm very excited about is that was the first grandpri I've been to for quite a while. You've been to one recently as well. I would love to hear some of your impressions of what you saw and see if they align with mine because I know we're both on the well we tried to pretend to be technically minded at least and it'd be interesting to see what you what you observed not, only in the cast but, how do the crowd react savage? I'd imagine the Spanish crowd to the American crowd may be quite different. I think they are because of course I was at Miami and not bbling food off the hospitality table, so I was generally paying attent ion to what I saw. But I want to start because Barcelona just happened. Let's start with the big things . Where were you seated ? What was the atmosphere like there? Are people hating on the rules still, like what was the general conversation ? The general atmosphere was amazing actually . It was busy, it was amazing. Everyone seemed very happy, very, very excited to be there. There were a few early levers you can probably imagine who they were supporting . There were a few early levers but in general it was really positive. I didn't hear a single bad thing about the regs. Everyone I spoke to at the circuit and I spoke to quite a few people when I was walking around the circuit and it was generally positive. But one of the most positive things I actually found and I kind of get this out early was the demographic change like I really noticed because I mean , Im almost ashamed to say it's been almost ten years. It's been eleven years since I've been to a Grand Prix. The last one I went to was Suzuka in twenty fifteen . And the massive change that I noticed was the demographic change. It was pretty much fifty fifty female to male split in the crowd and it was so good to see. There was just groups of ladies going on girls weekends out to the formula one. Like how cool was that? Like for me like ten, fifteen years ago that was, pretty much inconceivable. So that was one of my big take homes and it was super cool to see. Was it similar at Miami? Yeah, you know, it was But Miami has been like that. I think maybe it's a post drive to survive syndrome combined with the fact Formula One recognized that, oh, well there's fifty percent of the population that isn't currently buying tickets, but could be . really sure Not exactly what kicked it all off, but what makes me feel really good is the comparison to so long ago because I hadn't been to a race a decade or more ago, even though I'm old enough to have been . And I think it's a sign that the sport itself right now at least is moving in a very, very healthy direction . And one that's absolutely necessary because you can't just exclude slightly more than fifty percent of the population and really have a successful thing long term. That's my take . But what was the but it's really great , as I remember the point I actually wanted to make after all that other talking, what's really great is to hear that it's not just here in the States , but that it's in Europe too and specifically Spain , which although I have been and love the country does have a bit of a patriarchal reputation from old times, at least over here . Yeah, that was none of that at all. And it's really good to see like if anything , quite a lot of the groups are kind of bumped into was it seemed like it was the female one of the group if there was like a couple there dragging dragging the guy there instant I met a lovely couple down at Term four and she was pointing out the cars are going bar and the guy was like, They're American and the guy was like, Oh, is that Louis? She was like, No, that's a clerk, you dummy. Louis has got a yellow helmet and it was just he was clueless and she knew everything she was absolutely on it and it was just it was just really nice to it was just really nice to see because yeah, I've been going to Grand Prix since the nineties and it was just it was just such a change and it's just so it was so cool and the atmosphere was absolutely lovely. It was ram. So where I was sitting I was sitting just be I was just sitting between the pit lane exit and turn one. So I could see the pit lane pretty much the start line all into the pit straight turn one , they disappeared as they go through turn three and four but then we could see the exit at turn five and the six seven chicken as they go back off the hill. And my biggest thing is for the first time I've been to Barcelona Loads because my partner lives in the town next to the track and that's why it was super easy for us to get in and out. That was absolutely incredible . Yeah I didn't realise the undulation you don't notice it on TV or the SIM but the hills are quite steep there as I figured out so yeah I did like three laps of the circuit on the Friday alone on foot walking round trying to get different vantage points and yeah it was very hot but all around a really pleasant experience and much cheaper than Silston I have to say for the grandstand it was really cheap and the access and the egress it was all done really well. The only drawback which actually ended up being a positive in the end was there dry events in Spain. So you can't buy alcohol in the venue , which actually I think was a good thing in the end because the heat was incredible. It was like mid thirties and the gradsdans are uncovered well the one we were in anyway. So if I was sitting there nailing ten pints I probably would have been on the floor before the race started. So yeah, drunken brit abroad and there was none of that and it made that be er when we were walking back, that cold, crisp beer all the more sweet. I was going to say you do have a reputation to uphold . But it's interesting to me because Miami too was extremely hot, mid thirties , unbelievably humid. And even though I pretended it was no big deal when we recorded our Miami show, it was actually just yeah, people were definitely suffering in the heat. They did a very good job of providing water and aid stations and at least we had covering on our grandstand because I think I said it turned eighteen on the Saturday. So you walked around the track. I'm going to ask you right off the bat, what was your favorite corner for watching these cars? Because I know my favorite spot now in Miami, and I'll share that in a second. All right, well, if I could be cheeky and get into some of the grandstands, the actual final section grandstand was incredible. We were being very cheeky. Luckily I was with my Canada, my brother in law who lives there so we were asking very politely in Spanish and in Catalan to the people running the grandstand entry things like can we just come in? Like they have to buzz you in with your ticket and buzz you out and we're like, Can we just come to have a look? We've got a ticket for that grandstand, but we want to see here and they were like, yeah sure, just come back to me so you won't get me into trouble. So we got into just about every grandstand around the circuit at various points . That was absolutely brilliant, brilliant viewing down there. If you want to see the cars moving around, get into that last section, there's not a lot of action happens there, but you get to see like seven corners pretty much there and you can see the cars moving around. So I only got to see F two through there which is good but where my favourite spot to see Formula One was turn four. Exit of turn three on the outside going into turn four where Leclerc had his whoopsy in qualifying. And this is I got there for the second session and we my Micinado, my friend wanted to go back to the grandstand and on the start of finish train, and I'm like, no, today I want to sit there. I really want to see cars through this corner because they're highload, they're braking, they're turning in and they're trying to get on a throttle again and sitting is a really great space on the outside and the general admission area there . But there was a slight issue. It was blocked by one of these annoy ing Hessian sheets. There was no reason to block the view from people, but they were. And this is where I met this American couple. They were there and they were trying to peer through the Hessian sheet. And then I get to the fence. I'm like, well, it's just tied up with a bit of string, so I just yanked it and ri justpped it it off because run through the fence and ripped it all off and then everyone started getting the same idea. So I just pulled the sheet down. It wasn't pure just mindless vandalism. There was no point having this sheet there. It wasn't blocking a service road. It was off the road. I don't know why they blocked it out. So I managed to rip the sheet down and stood there for a good half hour and watched loads of cars go through Term four . And it was incredible. And it was really good to see some of these observations , but I so startoned as doing it everyone, was like, Oh my god, yeah, why we thought about that? And everyone just sort of ripped the Hessian sheet down. And loads of people started joining us. There was a guy turned up with his son and was like, Oh , come in. When I was done, I gave my space up to some other people. I'm like getting there, that's a really good view. I'm going to carry on back to turn three and gradually make my way back around from turn one. You can get some great views round there, but my main takeaway from turn four was on the Friday at least where the Mercedes and McLarens looked pretty much on rails. They looked really good, particularly the McLarens. Looked very good, and I think I said after Friday that I thought it was going to be a McLaren dominant weekend. They looked great. Um Louis didn't look fantastic. Leclerc had a waggy tail, as well we'd find out on the Saturday, he had a very waggy tail in there. I think that's maybe inherent to his style. Leclerc coming through there was sliding quite a lot and you can see the slides more than you can see on TV , for instance . The other standout was how bad the Aston looked going in . So do we want to start there then? Okay, let's start with that because in Miami , my favorite place to stand was this little spit of land where the Heineken Silver Veranda Pavilion thing was . And it's right in between the approach to turn ten, which is a super long straight and you could see the cars coming into turn one , turn two, turn three, and then look the other way. See them going down towards turn four. So much like you, my immediate react ion to this was , oh my goodness , look at the amount of work the drivers are having to do through all these direction changes at speed. This is not whatever. They can claim that the computer is driving the car, but like, I'm watching their hands and I'm thinking this is not entirely true. They're having to work very hard and this is what I want my race cars to look like. I want them to have to do that to put it on edge and then fun coming back the other way just because billiony miles an hour . And then I saw the Aston . And famously, there used to be a cyclist who described the art of going around a hairpin as connecting thirteen different line segments . And every time I saw the Aston go around a turn, it didn't look like the car was turning. It looked like they were just connecting different straight lines as best they could . It was horrible . I looked at that and I was like, oh man if you gave me the chance right now, I'm not even sure I'd want to take it . Yeah, that one. Yeah, pretty much what I saw. I don't think I saw an Aston hit the same bit of tarmac twice through that corner. They were doing something different. Every time they turned up, they were either massively under steering wide or they were already sideways before they got to the apex. And this kind of aligns with what Alonso said after the thing was like the car's being really inconsistent. It's either pushing on into the corners or the rears are locking. You could actually see it. It was quite visible. If you stood still and kept your head still and just keep like your eyes fixated to the ape x , the difference in cars was quite outstanding to see actually . And just yeah, the Aston was stand out, stand out bad . And you know, they were obviously the place was full of Alonce fans, loads of people bought all the merch and everything. And I went , you know, I think I've made it quite well known on this podcast. I'm always objective, but I'm not the biggest Alonce fan in the world and I don't like some of the self flatulations that they sort of do and stuff like that and sort of go out and they don't like this. So I was I thought I'd go there this weekend with the you know, you know, I was like try really hard not to take the Mickey, not don't shout Vamosagana as a as he sort of trundles past you in last place . I end up just feeling sorry for all of the fans feeling sorry for Alonso and everything. It was like the school bully well Aston is not like a particularly likeable team in my opinion with just a characters in there. So it was like the school bullies had their trousers pulled down and then over the whole school laughs at them and they say, Oh my home life's not very nice and you end up feeling sorry for them and that's kind of like the situation here with Aston. I'm just like, it's just sad . And I was sad for the crowd and all of the Alonce fans there because there was no hope and you know, and the qualifying didn't go right for him. And for what I thought was going to be, it's going to be funny to see him fail. No, actually . I'm like, I actually want to see them towards the front. I want to see Alonso in a competitive car up there and it was just it just wasn't pleasant to watch, unfortunately , it was just really, really sad. And so hopefully they can sort it out, but they've got some major issues . Yeah, I will never forget the time we were it was, I think, right around when Renault changed the to Alpine and it just looked like all the investment was going away and we were talking about how terrible it was going to be. And we got messaged by someone on the team, they're like, please tell me this is not what's really gonna happen. And I'm like, well, you know , the future isn't certain, so maybe it won't. But for all we can focus on the strolls and the newies and our like and dislike of the characters they play on TV because let's be honest, none of us has sat down and had dinner with any of them. Yeah , of course. This is the thing. It's all wild speculation based off of exactly. Preconceived biases, absolutely, yeah. There are a lot of really good talented people working at that team, and it just really sucks for them that it's gone this far wrong . However , there is glory and redemption awaiting. It is an Adrian Newie car and he does occasionally make a habit of designing a stinker only to turn up with a winner a couple years later. So I don't want to take away all hope . But certainly, Alonzo made a big deal my last catalon race because they're going on rotation with spa and just nothing, nothing to bring to the fans. Couldn't even get to the end of the race and do a half hearted donut because the car wouldn't last and that's such a thing. But while we're on that it's qu,ite interesting to see, and I want to hear what your views are about Miami because I was quite surprised at some of the crowd reactions to the drivers and what's going on with the drivers . So tell me now , which one surprised you most? Which reaction, good or bad surprised you most? And then I'll tell you the one that got me . The reaction to Lewis was the one that surprised me the most How so I thought there was going to be some sort of semi hostile , not semi hostile, but you know, Alantis still likes to take stabs at Lewis in the press and stuff like that. And you know , previously, you know, the Spanish fans have not been too great towards Lewis. But Spain has already had this affiliation with Ferrari. So both the Ferrari boys are getting big cheers, but arguably Lewis was getting the biggest cheers and then on the Sunday when he come across the line I think I'll send you the video I let rip, my voice had almost gone but the whole crowd and when Lewis come out of the VSC and took the lead , all went up in arms, huge cheers and everyone in the crowded launch of fans are sitting next to some Argentinians as well and they all went up and were cheering him. That's what I really took away from it was the amount of Lewis Love and it kind of caught me off guard really . I was expecting to maybe have to stay a little bit quiet with my fandom in there . I mean I'm objective as I can be and I like all of the drivers, I rule clap and generally respect everyone. I might be taking a Mickey in my head or muttering under my breath, but in general, so no it was the Lewis. It was a Lewis love for me. What was your surprise in Miami? My biggest surprise was how few people and by few, I mean practically zero. Like Perez Alonza did a battle in the sprint race and there's so many Perez fans come to Miami huge cheering back and forth at that . Everybody, you know , an overtake, big cheering . And then Antonelli overtakes Russell and it almost was Hamilton level because whenever Hamilt Hamilton could drive around in reverse and he would still get massive cheers. He is like a beloved national hero in the U. S. whether or not he wants to be. I mean practically, he's pretty, much found ed our country if I'm being honest . And he got massive tears every time he did anything . And then Antonelli was in the battle with Russell and when he passed Russell back the entirety of the turn eighteen grand stand just stood up and cheered and it gave me goosebumps . And then I immediately thought, Oh no , poor George, like that is that is just a cratering of whatever in the U. S. whatever support he had, it seems like . I concur, and there's pretty much the same thing here. George wasn't getting really much , much applause or love at all. He certainly wasn't getting any booze. There was no booze or anything. No, nobody it was all incredibly respectful and the crowd were great towards all the drivers . But the yeah, the main thing I took away was when Kimmy was fighting George we were all sort of clapping him, coming up and I'm a brit, but I don't feel particularly aligned to George much and I yeah I'm going to stick my hands up because I was quite happy to see Kimmy pass him. I don't dislike George. I dislike Kimmy Moore. It's just it's just simple. I'm not the most patriotic of people , but yeah, the crowd massive cheer when it happened right in front of us. He would past George down into turn one and yeah, there was a lot of Kimmy love. And when Kimmy retired, huge sighs and from the crowd, everyone was really, really gutted. So yeah, George, I don't know what's going on with George at the moment. I don't know what he said or what he's done, but he doesn't seem to be captivating the public. Although I did see somebody wearing an alonce shirt with a George Russell cap and I thought that was quite an odd an odd combination. I'm like, okay, that's a that was quite odd, but maybe they just needed a cap from the sun, other than maybe I'm just trying to imagine the members of that club in their meetings, but I should probably stop and joking . I tried for support is who you support. I honestly feel like the first F one fan I ever met in real life in the U. S. had started watching right around when Reykin won and he was a huge Kimmy Reykin fan. I started watching around when Hamilton won. I was a huge Hamilton fan. People who started with Max are Max fans. I think it just you don't know always a ton about the sport when you start watching unless you grew up with it in your family. So when you pick it up , they always focus on the leaders and in every case Reichen Hamilton Versappa , this is the insurgent who wins the big thing . And then that's it. Like you sort of that imprints on you for life. Whoever else you come to like as your as your fandom grows more mature, shall we say ? Okay , we've talked about driver reactions . There was actual racing there, but you know what we've not talked about? And this was the things that I saw at the race. This is the thing that really made me so incredibly happy. He's not talked about how the cars sound on track. Oh, and I want to get into that, mostly because I could say ha. I was right, exhaust blow diffingusers, ha , but that's mostly in joking fashion. But they really sound entirely that each power unit has like its own voice, its own character. Yeah, they're a bit more unique. They're still, I mean, I'm a bit of an old school purist I said I've been going to F one since the nineties . It's no longer and it hasn't been since twenty fourteen. It's no longer a visceral experience. And in my opinion, Formula One should be a visceral experience. You should feel it as they go past you, you should feel the gear changes in your chest. That's gone. And my partner actually came. The last time she saw an F one car in the flesh was, I think when we went to Silverson testing in twenty thirteen, it was a test that Mercedes weren't allowed to attend because they did their secret tyre test. The summer test. And I think one of her first comments was, where's the what's happened? She goes, how are they disquiet? I know they're quiet when we're watching TV, but wow , the F three and Porsche Super Cup are way , way louder because they don't have hybrid engines. The F three is arguably the loudest class. The slowest class is the loudest class. Now it's the F three and the Porch Super Cup. So the noise are gone, but there is lovely really cool unique differences in the engines. And what I expected to hear was what I've seen on all of the coverage was like the Audi is going to be louder and a different note and significantly louder. I actually thought it was different. I thought it was the it was the racing, it was the Red Bull engine powertrain cars , which were for me noticeably louder than the other ones. It was the four Red Bull powertrain cars that were noticeably louder, had a nice tone to them, particularly when leaving the pits, they were much louder than the other cars. The only time I found the Audi was loudest was when it was doing practice starts and they were doing that pre v. That made all sorts of weird, wonderful noises sitting there doing this pre red thing. That was really cool to hear. The Mercedes sounded the quietest to me, the quietest and the softest. The Ferrari was kind of middle of the road. Yeah, I was it was nice to hear the different sounds and wow, I love when they're what was really good for me is when they're just cruising around on half throttle and just the mental noises it's making and the popping and the banging and stuff like I expected the Honda to sound terrible like I remember in twenty fif teen standing in the S in Zuka when the Honda was having a really troublesome year and that was making some gnarly noises, some crazy weird noises and that had kind of gone this time. The Honda sounded normal if anything . Yeah I don't know if I call it entirely normal. I felt like it's downshift sounded like someone threw a bag of nuts into a cement mixer, but nevertheless , I just like that the cars have their own distinct personalities again. The ground effect era just seemed eventually devoid of because the cars all behaved almost exactly the same due to the aerodynamics. And the engines were just so efficient you didn't really hear a difference. But these are brand new power units. They're turbos but not no H, so you get more sound and because of the energy mapping w,ildly different approaches into and out of corners . All good stuff. You watched Did you watch any of the F two rays? Yes, yes, yes, did I watch the whole ? Well, which one? The one on the Sunday? Matter. I don't really care. I watched all the racing. From there, there's racing, I'm gonna watch it. Yeah . When I came in, the F two race was happening and I was blown away. And this is just for anyone who might be thinking about going to a race , get there in time for the F two race. The cars are amazing and the driving is stupendous and fantastic and full of mistakes even more entertainingly. Yeah, them and the F three too that is a massive giggle as well. I'm not sure they go to Miami the F three, maybe not. But if they go to European rounds, that's a giggle and the Porsche supercup is also a bit of a giggle. I've always been a bit anti Porsche super cup. I don't know why it's on the premier single seater calendar at all, really. It's like the dentist class, but like but they sound amazing. I forgot how good they sound. They sound absolutely amazing. But yeah, DF two was good and we had a really good strategic race actually. We had like old alternate strategies, somebody started on soft, someone started on hards and we were calling the strategy from the stands and it was really really good to see . We really, really enjoyed that partic,ularly I think it was the sprint on the Saturday where we'd one of the front runners completely lost all of their pace and it was just a massive train. And of course they still have DRS. So it was basically a DRS train behind them and every I meant every lap we got an overtake when the next one in the queue got to them right in front of us inter n one and just overtook. So that was really good to that was really good to see but they're they're all they're all really fun to see. I mean if you're there at an event I couldn't believe it because there's a lot of I told it was like a dry event. Just outside our grandstand on one of the entrance there's a big party tent selling beer and the amount of people who just didn't watch the races were only watching the F one sessions and just went and drank beer in between and I'm just like you're crazy like you paid a t icket. What's the racing? Yeah, get your money's worth. Okay. We need to pick up a couple of brief news stories that I think we also want to talk about for other reasons . So the biggest one for me because we were already talking a bit about George Russell is how much worse his race was made by Mercedes than even we knew at the time . Oh God, yeah, is this them bodging bodging the front wing adjust? Yes. In the pit stop that's a clang of that . Yeah , so apparently the story is they were supposed to adjust for the harder tire to help tame the understeer that tends to come with a less flexible, slightly more slated tire . And the adjuster gun was set incorrectly and they dialed way too much front wing in and, then helpfully on a low grip, high dag circuit, he had unbelievable amounts of oversteer on a tire that was already going to be pretty difficult to get into the window as far as the fronts were concerned ? Yep, that's a double whammy because of course if you're sliding, you then spike the surface temperature, which is then going to make it worse, which will make it slide more and eventually you heat up the carcass or you cause some blistering and graining on your tyres and it's and also the driver just loses confidence. This happens everywhere wherever you drive even in the sim you have a couple of snaps and you're like oh I can't lean on this as much as I'd like to and yes that's a bit of a howler for Mercedes. And I presume every car might be different in depending on which front which end of the car makes more grip. But as you said, in general, for harder tyres, you'd generally dial on, I think, I think the general consensus is more front wing because it would be a bit more understood. So yeah, they must have put considerably more front wing in because he instantly started struggling . Yeah, so that was a bad one for Mercedes and bad for George because I don't think they told him? I don't know if they realized until after he'd say he's trying to probably second guessing himself of what he's doing. It probably would have been better if they had said, by the way, we've accidentally given you way too much front wing . Beware, that would have put his mind rest a, but if they didn't tell him then his just maybe because he seemed he was a bit downbeat after the race and he would be. You've just been outperformed by your teammate again and you're there but he must be really really like thinking in you know, retrospective into his head just like, wow, I had the race under control and how did it all go away for me and I was struggling with the cars? So his last memory of getting out of that car was I was slow and I was struggling. And that's going to have a mental impact going into the next races. Yeah , well I imagine in my mind it goes something like this . Antony , technically you beat Kimmy, you out qualified him. You did the things, but in the race every,one's going to look at that and say like, oh yeah, no, but your toes, George, you're done. Look at him. This kid is catching you, blah, blah, blah . Never mind the penalty or the mechanical failure. And then you're like, I don't know, I was doing everything. My tires were going off, you know , maybe I've lost it. And then a day later, your engineer shows up and says, So yeah, we looked into why you were having all that trouble with the oversteer. And well , I don't know exactly how to tell you this, but the gun was set on two revolutions instead of one revolution, so you had way too much front wing. And that pretty much explains why you couldn't do what you normally do with the tires at that stage of the race. And I'd be like, oh, okay, well then that's great then I feel so much better because now I feel like I have a real chance again. Like there's a explanation that can be fixed and we know exactly what it is very easy problem to solve, although interesting to note, these continuing operational glitches with Mercedes . I think the talent drain is perhaps a bit real at this point for them. Yeah, maybe and it's finger trouble. I don't know whether it was a fault with the gun or it sounds like to me somebody's not set the gun correctly because if you're you would have thought it was a fault with the gun the stop it wouldn't put enough in enough in r,ather than too much . But we're speculating. I presume, we presume all logic would to take that it is too much. If anybody from Mercedes is listening to this and would like to write in anomalously and tell us that would be that would be very, very nice. But as it's a self it's a vicious circle then he's going to spike the surface temps. His means his fronts aren't going to work properly. It's a vicious cycle like the car's base is unbalanced and it's running in the wrong config. And yeah it,'s it's just bad and it's bad for your driver. And also Mercedes didn't really mention anything about George's that was his hundredth race for the team, wasn't it? And they didn't really seem to appear. Yeah, I'm kind of figuring sorry for George because it's like seems to be losing for not really doing anything wrong. He seems to be losing the team in the locker room. Yeah, honestly, a couple more races like this and he'll start picking up sympathy vote from the fans like, oh, you know what? I mean, like he's not maybe the best driver. I don't have a like a big you know, some drivers you watch me like they're just electric and you're like, oh yeah, yeah yeah. George doesn't have that impact, but I think even the hard , most hard hearted of fans will start looking at them and be like, oh, dude, man, that's that's just not right. I mean, he's a good driver . He's done a good job at Mercedes. He's out pointed Lewis. He's been stuck in one of the best drivers to walk the planet in recent generations survived that and was doing a good job against Antonelle till it all started going badly for from a relabiility point of view. So I think I think there's a sympathy comeback for George somewhere. I'll be interested to see when we get to Silverston what happens there because I do know some people who are definitely Russell fans who live there. So it would be it'd be interesting to see how different the reaction is . But I also want to talk about this because Russell is not the only popular driver or bleed driver to suddenly be struggling to their upstart teammate. And here, of course, I'm talking about Charles Leclerc very easily owned the Ferrari Garage at least from the outside last year . And in the last three races, suddenly I say I mean the word suddenly too much, but gosh, the last three races, there's Le Corc acting like he's the junior partner and has no idea like I thought I was driving this bus, but apparently my steering wheel was actually just a little plastic toy in the back seat. With me, there's Big Lewis up front , making sure I have a snag Yeah, I'm kind of feel sorry for I'm a massive shoulder clerk fan, like huge. I think he's such a nice chap and I really, really like him . But yeah, he's having this problem with his brakes. his And comments after Monica are so strange and even Brembo come out and like, well we're kind of unaware of this. And I've got a little theory that I don't think it's purely about the actual brakes themselves. It's how they're having a brake strategy or how they're trying to slow this down in conjunction with the brake material. So if I if I'm correct, I think Lewis Lewis has always used carbon industries. So there's two major manufactures of brake material. There's Brembo 's traditional as carbon industries . They'll both perform the yeah, they've both got the same sort of performance limit, but how they make their performance will be slightly different. And it's driver preference. This is such a common thing within teams to have drivers on different brake supplies . Just because it's driver preference, Lewis has always used carbon industries. So I think last year, I think Lewis tried to stick with Brembo because Ferrari I think we were a bit reluctant to change, maybe why he was so unhappy. I think that's the case. So he's gone to carbon industries. Leclerc has tried it as well and seen them and decided to stick with Brembo but of course you've got the grass is always greener syndrome when all of a sudden your teammate starts to do well and you start to struggle you like oh my god it must be . But I think it's to do with how they're regenering and their strategies and is getting a little bit of inconsistency really. So when he say, Oh man, these brakes, I think he's talking about slowing down in general rather than the actual brake material. Yeah, and this is part of a discussion that I had to shut off or else we would have had a whole show about it before our actual show . Well, what you're talking about and this is fun because it also crosses over a lot into MotoGP. We'll talk about that later, but it's really using the prankshaft to recover energy is effectively making it a break. So what we're really talking about is engine braking strategies into corners and the need to recover that much energy significantly changes the feel that the driver receives. So if I'm on full region and I smash the stop pedal, I get maximum immediate stopping if I do the same thing and my car is like no after a meal like , no, I do not need another waffer thin mint of energy. Thank you very much. They smash that brake pedal and it just it's almost like it's there are no rear brakes . And I think this is kind of what all of the teams are struggl ing with, trying to get that into a window that is predictable enough, the drivers can be repeatable with it. And it really seems to have messed up Leclerc a lot. So he's like, oh, well maybe Lewis with his magic break material offers me something. And it might because to my knowledge, the reason Lewis likes those is because you call it feel, but I would rather use the word feedback. It's an important feedback channel for him without it. Well, you saw what last year looked like, didn't you? Without it, he can still be a very good driver . However, he will not be the lowest that you and I know because you've taken away an important feedback channel from him . And so I think Leclark's like, well yeah, maybe maybe breaks like that will improve things for me in some ways, but he's still got to get on top of the very different behavior of the engine braking, which now that I think about it, didn't Lewis complain about engine braking on the Ferrari last year a whole bunch. So again, maybe there's something where he's been able to have a bit of an influ this season that he just couldn't change last season . Yeah, quite possibly. And in my own very limited amateur racing experience, I've actually experienced a brake manufacturer ch when Ianged changed teams when I was racing in senior rotax . I changed from a full Celgate floating brake system which is quite expensive and nice it had lovely feel I could put it onto that perfect not locking the rear tyres under rotating the rear ty res, just between locking and rotating the right speed and you can set the car up and sit it. And it was quite crucial way to make lap time to get the car into this magical little window and with the kel gates I could just hit that every time progressively come up to that mark. I could progressively come up to hit it and keep it there. Whereas I moved teams and we something called a GMS style brake. And it had the same braking performance. It was just very, very aggressive and you'd go immediately to this lock point and then had to come back off of it, which I struggled initially to really get my head around. I could do the same lap time , but I had to twice as hard to do it. And I had to really think about what I was doing in every breaking zone. And if you're thinking about what you're having to do in a breaking zone, you're already behind. You're already losing behind and everything because things are happening so fast. I eventually got on top of it, but I had to work twice as hard to do it. So neither of the brake systems had better performance limit. It was the same they just made their performance in different ways and it's feel and it's absolutely confidence. I And remember getting out of my first test of the I've got a new car. And I was like, I don't like these brakes. And I remember my mechanic, my name nameless, Ben come and he goes, he goes, wow, I like a brake that wants to kill you. And I was like, well, well, I don't actually, particularly. I quite like a softer approach to my braking. Thank you very much. And it was like, That's just the nature of these brakes. Get used to it, basically. And I was like, okay, okay, nice. So yeah, I've got some very minor experience in this exact thing. And of course, imagine you're in Formula One, on top of extra dynamics of these braking strategies thrown on top. And it's so easy to understand how drivers can get into a position where they're not comfortable. And as soon as you start losing confidence and you're trying to second guess yourself, it's again, it's almost one of these vicious circles where like it just gets worse and worse. So I feel sorry for Declair. I'm not sure what has he actually said, is he gonna try to change over to the carbon industries now and follow Lewis's direction completely, or is he 'cause I think he tried them on the Friday, I think maybe. I think he used them throughout the weekend. I went looking for any quotes . But of course, all you could find were, hey, what about that accident you just had? Wasn't that terrible? Was that your fault or the teams ? You know, the vapidity of some of the questioning occasionally makes me a little irritable. But I'm again , you happen to work for Ferrari, send us an email, miss Apex. net feedback. That's fine, or to me, Matt at and just let me know what he really thought of those breaks and how that will won or't work with his side of the garage's approach to moving forward . The other thing I want to say weirdly is that issue with the engine braking sounded a lot like what might be happening to Alonso and Aston , but on a much bigger scale. Like the Ferrari window is now a foot and a half . The Asternind wows is like ten feet . So completely unpredictable every corner, no idea, is it going to push you into the corner? Is it going to stop you way more than you expect? Are there going to be no breaks at all? You just don't know . And once your brakes don't work, then you can't load the tires properly. Then the tires don't work, then the car doesn't go fast and you don't have the aerodynamics you need to make the tires work to make the brakes hotter, to make it just is like so rapid ly becomes this vicious downward spiral of things not quite working to the point of just you can't even drive the car hardly . Yeah, and you can see this with the Astent the Astent and I think Alonso even mentioned this is saying it was like the car is it is unpredictable one lap it's pushing into the corner and the next lap he's locking the rears and I think this is all to do with remember Newie, basically, Adrian Newie sat down in Australia and basically pinned almost one hundred percent of the blame on Honda. I think that was quite disingenuous. I think ninety percent of the blame of this is probably on Aston because they've got all sorts of problems with their gearbox. It's not sinking and it's crazy this far in the this season and their gearbox and their gear and their gear changes aren't sinking properly. So when you get a heavy gear ch orang iter's not sinking this has to work beautifully in conjunction with the engine with the regen of the MGUK on the rear axle. And if it's not all in harmony, it's going to do something slightly different every time. And you can visually see that on the side of the track, interturn four, said earlier like I didn't see Anaston hit the same bit of tarmac twice. Like one lap is going in there and he's understeering the next lap. He looks like he's almost sideways when he's arriving. And it pretty much makes to the point that it's almost impossible to drive. And I would say most of that is down to Aston problems , not necessarily Honda problems. I mean, I don't think Honda's the Honda engine is a picnic at the moment. It's probably the worst out there, but I think a lot of their problems are coming from chassis related and how it's all being integrated. And yes, it's heinously heinously complex to try to get everything to work in conjunction like this , but a team like Aston , like, come on with the resources that they've got and I know they're trying to build like for like a stronger future and everything that sounds like a tory politician. But I know they're trying to build for a strong for like a stronger future , but wow, I can't believe they're they're getting it wrong this much. But on the same day you mentioned it earlier. You feel so sorry for everyone in the team, including the driver because it's going to wear you down, but it was so visible watching it there if you knew what to look for. So when I saw the ASA I was looking for these issues. I was like, I was actually looking for this and it was really cool to hear Lance comments at the end of the day saying pretty much aligning with exactly what I thought and what I saw in my head like of it's pushing on and again it all comes down to the braking and the strategies. It looks terrible and how can you expect somebody to drive a car when you don't know what it's going to do every time when you hit something it's unpredictable. It's like an unpredictable er o window, and I think Has actually, on a side note, Has have said their car works in a such a horribly narrow window where it produces lovely downforce when it's at a lovely ride height and Willison sits there but as soon as you go out of it it,'s a complete log. And again, it's this drivability and predictability which Aston just don't have. And I think they're going to get an upgrade soon , but it seems like it's kind of futile really. I don't think any amounts of upgrades are going to fix what an inherently bad bad car. The car, to quote Colin Edwards from MotorGP several years ago, it looks like the car was born bad. Yeah , what I will say is they will probably learn a lot of very useful and important lessons trying to reduce the damage . So if you should happen to be an Aston fan don't give up all the hope just yet because it's just the first year of a brand new regulation set that is changing a lot in the next two seasons anyway with regards to the power unit. I want to bring up one more thing that I don't even think anyone's written an actual story about it, but I have seen the occasional person bring it up in online chats, which is the Ferrari were sandbagging to absolutely well in much in the way we've seen in the past in the Tour de France, the eventual winner pretend to be weak in the mountains until someone commits to an attack and then when they do and are absolutely on their limit , they yawn and stretch a little bit and then just double the pace and ride away from them , waving goodbye . So I've seen the theory Ferrari knew this performance was in the bag and they were very careful to not tip their hand to Mercedes ahead of time. But you were at the track. Did you get that impression when you were there ? No . Head a sandbagging to be bluntly honest, no , Lewis looked like one of the ones who was struggling in turn for more than others. And of course, he missed the first session in a Friday because his Berganovich, I think, had his drive. Yeah, so his, I mean, that's the session to miss. Lewis Hamilton is a Barcelona specialist. He's done a million and one laps around there. So if you're going to give away a Friday, that's it. But of course to test all the new all of the new era upgrades. And yeah, turn for me, Lewis looked like he was struggling a lot. I mean, Lecler c was losing the rear a lot, but I think that's just generally his style . He seemed pretty quick but was a bit loose and a bit lairy where Lewis looks looked loose and lairy but not in a fun way if that makes any sense look.ed It like he was wrestling and struggling with the car. So for my semi knowledgeable but largely untrained eye, I'd say that's absolute hobcobblers because Lewis Lewis was not looking pretty to me on the Friday . All right, so here's the thing . I want to briefly point out where I think this is going to get your opinion which is it looks like to me everyone is saying Ferrari br'ingsing their first engine update to Austria , but Mercedes had not brought their big update aerodynamically to Barcelona. So I see this being the battle of the updates going forward to Austria . What do you think what do you think of that? This isn't a proper preview. This is just a tease, but mostly like I'm genuinely curious. What do you think is going to happen in Austria? Wow, so this is just some nice batting pub style wild speculation, just how there we go, finally. Absolutely . Absolutely . I love this question and I love it because traditionally across the last couple of years , Merc have always really struggled in the heat, but they were looking pretty good in Barcelona and Austria is also known for its heat, but it's a totally, totally different style of circ uit. It's straight line, stamp on the brakes, there you know, you've basically got slow corner, long straight, slow corner, long straight, slow corner, and then you get into fast sweepers . So if you're believing what Lando Norris is saying and what all the other drivers are saying that the Ferrari has got the best amount of downforce and aero package, which I still find it's very odd saying that and they're a little bit weak on the engine side arguably you would have thought Mercedes are going to be really strong here, especially if you've got an update because look at Monaco. Remember when Barcelona had that awful chicken in the final sector and it was always the precursor to Monaco that oh whoever's fastest in sector three at Buslad is going to win Monaco. Well basically the first half of the lap in Austria with the slow speed sort of corners there that turn one and then the turn three hair pin and then down there they're kind of Monaco speed corners a little bit so and Kimi Antoni showed us that Merc was still pretty mighty Monaco in a slow speed but, so were Ferrari as well. So I think Merc will be ahead because they think they have a slight power unit advantage. They still have the speed, but final sector is surely going to be Ferrari and McLaren Land. So I'm going to stick my neck out and I'm going to wishfully say that I think it's going to be incredibly close between them and I think there's a great chance that Ferrari can probably nip it on Tyreware because the Mercedes were front wing changes aside weren't looking that pretty on the tireware front in Barcelona, so if it's super hot, I think Ferrari could actually come out on top . I think that is one of the biggest advantages of having the best chassis is you're almost automatically going to be great with your tires . You can use them exactly like you want to and not be for ced to rely on one corner way too much to make up for your other deficiencies, I'd be happy to tell you what I think. But sadly, even though it's not three AM in a hotel lobby , I believe we were running close to the end of our time . So Kyle, where can people find you? Where can people follow you on social media? Well , I'm a bit of a dinosaur and I don't like social media that much, so we'll have you be that way then. Well, don't follow me. How about going follow our Motor GP show , which I host . And I host you as one of my wonderful guests Oh you can say annoying we all know it's a panelist no you're brilliant. I'm forever trying to corral you and you and Jules on I'm like come on come on let's get the end of this point go and follow the motor GP show that's on YouTube that',s Miss Ape x MotoGP . That's the same name on your podcast if you listen to audio only. We do video. Our wonderful producer Steve produces us an amazing video. The audio is amazing and the Mot orGP season at the moment is teeing up formula one's looking tasty, but boy MotorGP is arguably even tastier. You have Mark Marquez , who's the reigning champion, but his body is sm ashed to pieces, he's just coming back from double surgery, dominated the last round, has a whopping points deficit. But if he gets his body in the right shape, should start taking points off. We've got two of Prilliers at the top and they're kind of not really getting on at the moment because they wiped each other out last time. You've got Pedro Acosta, a crazy youngster in there on the KTM trying to make it work. There are so many storylines going on and the championship is being geed up to what's shoulder going to be a salivating and an epic sort of finale. Last year was it was epic for all other reasons this season. I think we're going to have heroic performances and I think it's going to go right down to the wire . Couldn't agree more down to the wire and it's just one cake and too many people taking bites out of it right now. As for me, I'm at ET fifty five on all your so cials . And remember , until next time , this has been Missed Apex podcast