Evolution of Formula One Racing

Hello everybody and welcome back to the PON podcast with Matt, Tommy and Gabi Portaletto. Thank you for joining us here in Monaco. What a backdrop . How you doing my friend doing good, wow, hasn't been the cleanest day for me today unfortunately . We were having a very strong weekend, you know, top ten out of sessions and then I crashed into like I touched the wall in T ten and ended up breaking the suspension. So the end of time this goes out, you would have score points tomorrow. Don't worry. It's all good. It's all happiness for you. We're not going to reflect on T ten . Don't worry. Okay, so we got some questions from fans and ourselves. The first one is do you see videos and memes people make about you online? How online are you? I see yes, I see quite a few. I enjoy, you know, the funny ones, obviously, there are some of them that are not funny. But I must say I like I like watching. At the end of the day, I'm a gen Z you know, they say. So I spend a bit of time on TikTok, Instagram . I don't do much to be honest, but you know, before I go to sleep, I open TikTok. I'm laughing all over the place. What's the weirdest one you've seen? No, there was one actually funny these days. I even commented on the video because you know, I was I think it was my that I want to jump like when we finish the race, you need to stop the car, obviously like in the park for me and then you need to jump out of the car. And then when I went like I look up and then I went over the halo because it's not easy to leave a from one car. It's quite complex. You don't want to hit the carbon pieces because each of them cost like hundreds of thousand . So you need to be very careful. So I step in the halo. I look up, there was no one. When I look down, put my feet there and I jump again, I jump into a mechanic and then I fall. And then recently I started just sitting in the halo and then I just move my legs to the other side. So it's much safer and I don't risk any damage to my body. And then someone made like there was a day where and then a funny music behind and me jumping and falling and nowadays me just chilling. So you're thinking about the TikToks when you get out now and I cannot reach that level We ask this to every driver that we've spoken to. And it can be as silly or as serious as you like. What's the one if you could change one rule in Formula One, what would it be? I don't know actually, you know, like Formula One keeps evolving and doing different stuff. It's different . I don't think I would change anything probably just maybe change a bit the format of the race weekends make something different, you know, not that I don't like what I have now, but maybe making it a bit less time in FP and straight away quality or some stuff like this. Like this, we need to push we spent Thursday and then Friday and then we arrive on Saturday only to do a qualifying. Sometimes it takes a bit too long. How do you feel about reverse grids? We've had that previously. People have said I don't like that. No. No, no, because I feel like you should have only one Grandpri, one race. And then if you do a reverse grid, you know, even if you're shit in quality literally , you are going to be good in the reverse grid. And then you know we have we had this in F two and F three. But I couldn't I never won a spring race , but even when you finish the podium it don't feel good unless you start from the back and you finish on the podium. But when you finish on the podium starting like quite ahead, it means that you did a very bad job in Quality. Yeah . Okay, no reverse grids. That's what we've heard. So we're here in Monaco . I'd love to get your sort of feelings and emotions the first time you drove a Formula One car here because like you know, we've driven on the F one game and that's scary enough. How would you describe how you felt the first time you went around here in an F one car? It's extremely quick. The walls are getting closer and closer through the weekends. Unfortunately, I saw one of them very closely today . Hey, we're not talking about today. It's the first time . Yeah, but it feels like always the first time when you jump in this track, man, it's crazy. Like the emotions, the feeling, the speed in the corners, it's amazing. We'll move on to happier things. What's the could you tell us the funniest thing that's happened when you've had a gaming session with Max Verstappen or like a funny moment that you can remember when you were gaming with Max . I mean one of them he rages a lot when he's gaming so I always have so much laughs when he does something stupid and and I just laugh so much or when we are playing sim and we decide just to race each other quite aggressively and then if someone pushes each other out and then in the next breaking point the other guy doesn't break and then he's so funny to see the frustration there. I love it. That's yeah. I love that even F one drivers do that. Yeah, we do the most. I love hitting people in the sim talking about a wholesome thing. It was a question from iwi Maloney . It says Gabby, can you share a sweet memory from your childhood? It can be to do with racing or not. A great memory . Yeah, a sweet memories from your childhood. I don't know, being with my family , everyone having dinner together or lunch , breakfast in the morning . Long time I am not able to do that with them unfortunately because I live here like I'm a lucky guy to live here, but in the sense they live in Brazil and we don't see each other very often anymore as we used to do in the past. And then I really enjoyed that simple moments together, but they were the nicest ones. Awesome. This one's from Corey zero seven . What era of Formula One would you most like to have raced in if it wasn't this one? Good question . I think the two thousand seven, two thousand six cars were amazing. I really liked that one. They were small , you know, the engines were very loud . You know, when I joined F one , it's still rocket ships to drive even faster cars than back in the time, but they are bigger, the engines have a little bit like the volume is not so loud as they used to be. I mean, at least to try, you know, I would like to try . Yeah. Well, is they kind of the era you were watching and like aspiring to be a formula one driver, that kind of era ? Well, I watch a lot, I watch videos of Saint I was not alive until I was ten years after he died. I was born. But yeah, Senna for me was always my idol. And yeah, he's the greatest of all time. So I take him as an inspiration. I was going to say in terms of obviously legendary like Brazil has such an amazing history in Formula One , is it like a help or hindrance or like do you feel the pressure like representing Brazil or is it something you're incredibly proud of to there's a lot there was quite a while before we saw like a Brazilian back in Formula One and that to like us it's strange to not have a Brazilian driver in Formula one until you came back of course. Do you feel the kind of pressure and the expectation from being representing such a kind of legendary nation of F one ? I feel the pressure because I put the pressure on myself. That's the reason why I feel it because I believe if you are doing a sport like we are and you don't feel pressure or you're not in love with what you do or you're not supposed to be a formula one driver. I feel like everyone here is constantly under pressure unless they achieved so much already that they can just live with the results from the past . But in my case, you know, I'm a young guy. I still have a lot to prove to myself, to the world, to Brazil . And I feel like yeah , Brazil has built so many great champions and I want to be one of them. So I still have a lot to do better and improve. I think I'm doing a decent job right now, but still making some mistakes and then I still need to clean them up and then I will be able to collect my price . Absolutely. Now this is a very important question as there's about a thousand bottles going into a bin right now . RBY one hundred and fifty says let's settle it once and for all . What is the correct way of pronouncing your name? Because we hear all kinds of different versions of your first and last name. Gabrielle Borto . That's how you say in Portuguese. But I like how they say how soldier like Gabriel Bortoleto or Gabriello Bortoleto. So happy. You don't mind. Man, I don't care . Like whatever, call me it's not gonna change anything unless they call me Joan, you know, completely different name than yes, but they are trying to guess it. It's not an easy name. No, it's not easy. Awesome. Can you tell us about being teammates with Nico, obviously a very experienced driver . You've seen some great things online of like YouTube, obviously you're very different paths of your kind of formula one career. How's it been having like Nico as a teammate? It's great. Nico is a nice guy. You know, we enjoy working together, we work both very hard and I feel like we push each other in the right direction always . So yeah, it's a guy I am very close to also outside of the track. I try to keep the contact and it's nice. Do you remember the first time you met him? Well, yeah, I do actually . He didn't know who I was yet. That was in F two and I knew I was possibly going to be his teammate in the future, but he didn't know proper.ly So I passed to him and I actually wave and he didn't wave back. So I was like, oh, what a superstar. And then after I just saw he was a cool guy. Did you bring that up to him when you met when you were I told him yeah . And but if you you know Nico, know, he wouldn't give us be like, shut up man. What an excellent way to end this interview . Thank you so much for coming on the podcast. You appreciate it. Best off tomorrow. Thank you guys. Enjoy. All right, we have said goodbye to Gabby Bortleta and we're saying hello to Alan McNish Alan. Thank you so much for coming on the podcast. For those that don't know, can you just give a little bit of a line about what you do , where you've come from? Because of course you've, been involved in Form Oulnea and Motorsport for a very long time. Yeah , I'm the racing director of the Audi Revolut F one team and effectively it means that I'm in charge of everything here at the race. Principally it's all of the racing oper ations being in terms of how we run the car , the drivers management of that, but also touch into all of our VIP guests and well, the communications as well. And so therefore there's quite a wide array of touchpoints. And as you say, I've been involved in this sport since one way or another nineteen eighty one when I started carting as a wee boy up in and off then of Scotland . So how is it that obviously you represented Audi Laman legendary partnership that you had together and amazing memories now working with Audi and seeing them come into Formula One, how's that being ? Yeah, you're right . You know, Audi had such a tradition at Lamont actually and it made a lot of our drivers careers in a way. And so Tom Christensen's here this weekend as well, someone that I spent many hours driving around that place in the La Arth, which is next weekend as it turns out, so I'm missing it. I'm in Barcelona but I've already got the live stream sorted out . But I think the principles of the way we go racing is exactly the same. It's with a clear direction end goal being winning, but with the knowledge that actually it takes time to do that. It takes time to build inf therastructure of the team and also against the competition . And so having seen this particular program right from the beginning from day one and how it's grown because I've been involved in it with different roles as well in the background of that, then I'm fully invested and fully invested into it, but at the same time as well pretty excited about the next steps because now we're life, now we're going racing and that all the buildup over the last four and a bit years was all about to get to this point. And this year in particular in Formula One, I've found it immensely impressive the speed that this car has been able to produce at such an early point in the partnership. Yes, there's been some reliability issues, but you must take a lot of sort of positives out of this considering that you know look round here it looked like you maybe were the fifth fastest team. It's it's going to be a pretty big step in quite an early journey. Yeah, you're right. And it's a bit like a racing driver. It's better to start with a fast racing driver and try and tame it down and also a fast racing car and trying to, you know, iron out the bugs and we've got a quick car. There's no question about it. You know Nico or Gabby have qualified up until this weekend the eleven's just knocking on the door of Q three and frankly this weekend I think we had the pace to get both cars in Q three , but ultimately it didn't happen for other reasons but the raw speed I think is there when we look at the chassis medium and high speed corners it's really really strong and so yes we are happy with that but we're competitive people so we're happy with that but we're looking at how do we improve the areas that we need to strengthen up on and that's where the focus and energy is now. Yeah ab,solutely. Question how does it differ working with the drivers having one of the most experienced drivers on the grid with Nico and then Gabby who of course is trying to make his mark in the sport? Well, Gabby, I don't know any of the music that list heens for goodness at le sastake Nico can sort of half get into touch with him. Now it's both of them are very good and they complement each other, which is really good for us at the moment. You know, Gabby's youthful enthusiasm, he's just starting his career Ni.ko and the other side's got that width of experience. You know, whatever you throw it on, I've been there. I've done it. I know how to handle it and he just gets on with it. And we need that at the moment as we're building the team up as well. He gets right to the nub of things very, very quick ly. And the other thing is that they're not egotistical , you know, they're very balanced people. And I mean, I don't mean drivers, I mean people and that's something that I really do like about both of them . And they're quite fun to be around. I'm looking forward to the Scotland Brazil match at the World Cup. That's the one I'm really looking forward to. So I'm going to throw you under the bus a little bit because we've been told that you have some very funny stories from your kind of time in motorsport. Could you share one with our audience now? I have some buddies. I sure if I could do that. You know, Cricky I',ve got Will Sand in here. He's going to be looking at me with this sort of nervous look on his face saying no, do not say that one . It's very good when you've been around this sport for so long and you've seen so many things. Some of them are cringe worthy when you look back on them to be honest with you. The one that I shared with Gabby was actually crashing on the way to the grid in Petit Le Mont and it wasn't a funny story. It was a really frustrating story because I shunted on the way to the grid and I walked into the motorhome while they were appearing in the car and Dindle Cabello, my long time teammate walked in all happy, saying, Everything okay. Okay said, okay have you looked at it the thing's in two pieces, the gearbox was off the mac and they repaired it but the model of the story was we went on and we won the race so you know it's not what happens it's about how you recover and now I can look back on it and think of it as quite funny at times at the time I was kicking anything that was sort of hitting that front of that motorame. But yeah, wow, what a turnaround, what a turnaround. So you raced in Formula One back in two thousand . Now how isn't funny? How crazy is it to see how much Formula One has evolved since then ? Well in so many different ways now we're talking about doing a season of twenty four races and sixty six percent of those are outside of Europe . Back then you were doing a season of seventeen races of which sixty six percent were within Europe. So just the sheer work load, we had open testing then. I think I did forty five days of testing on my own, not the teammate, not the test drivers or anyone else. It was just insane on these areas. You know, we were changing engines twice per day . And now you're looking at the, you know, the power units for the whole season. So there's been so many changes but the biggest single change I would say is if you look at the grid from back to front , it's so narrow . It's hundreds of a second that's differentiating, you know, whether you jump into the next bat or qualifying or you're on the second or the third or the fourth row. And that was over tenths and you know, three, four tenths of a second back then. And the other thing is you had one or two races that were like Monaco. One or two races that were packed out. Now every single race is packed out. Every single person knows about Formula One and when they're coming here, they're coming here for entertain ment on and off the circuit and that's another big change. I would say it's all for the benefit actually . Yeah. We're pretty happy with how Formula One has gone as well. It's definitely going to the right direction. Big thanks to Al foran Fur coming on. Really appreciate your insight and for the funny story as well. So thank you. It wasn't that funny. It was painful. I can tell you. It was a PG story P one is a stack production and part of the ACAS Creator Network.