Monaco Pit Lane Penalties and Controversy

Hello welcome to round eight of the twenty twenty six calendar. and we've arrived here in Austria, the stunning Syrian Hills , in amongst it all is the Red Bull Ring And it's a beautifully hot day, yet again here in Austria, Caron and Berny alongside. me great to be back here. I mean it's a tight technical, fabulous circuit. But first and foremost Lewis Hamilton arriving here finally as a Ferrari winner What kind of energy will he be carrying into the weekend? It was great, wasn't it? It' good for Formula onene, it's good for Ferrari, but most importantly it's good for Louis Hamilton. I think was there was something special Natalally to see him win in reed for the first time in Barcelona at the same place that Michael Schumacer did it thirty years ago. I mean there's something there in the magic of one you know these two great seven time World Champions winning And Ferrari for the first time It really was a fairy tale finish for him there in Barcelona, but Does it do for him as a driver at this stage in his career? And this stage actually in the championship, does it really kind of motivate galvanize these guys to go for a title? Yeah, I think it does, you know and we lived on that dream last year of Lewis and Red, what could happen? what could it bring? And you know it was a bit of a disappointing year really and it's coming to us this year, isn't it They're starting to get the belief. Lewis is getting the belief back that he knows he's still a good driver where these regulations are suiting him. Ferrari are starting to put it together. You know so many times we're so critical of Ferrari's strategy and actually not really playing into their hand in Barcelona. And I think that that's going to bring the whole team together behind Lewis. know he's been critical of some of the things that Ferrari have done last year. He's got the team behind him now they're making the changes that he wants in the car. We've actually heard of Charlotte Claire making changes to match Lewis' setup in the car. So that's really I think going to get that entire team hopefully. ion forward as a team, which we've not always seen from Ferrari. By the way, I can't hide the fact that the bling is really on show right now You've been married. You've got married since we last a week ago. Y. Thank for joining us here in Austria for your honeymoon. This is lovely. Yeah, thank you very much. Yeah It's a bit sad leaving the house to be honest, if I must say. this week, but yeah, a fantastic day and it was great that so many of you were able to join us and I think the family all loved it. Great commitment to the cause coming here to do Austria. sereriously rais the bar. Well, having said that I think it's the secret to a good married life, actually. What not not with that husband. Yeah, just absence and all that.. I'm not sure my wife would believe that. I'm sure my husband's watchishing and nodding. OkayK, but what about the rest of the team? Because we talk about the joyous scenes for Lewis Stark contrast for the other side of the garage. Oh ye Yeah. I mean, Charles had two DNF's in her r own now, you know zero points in Monaco with that crash and then in Barcelona Tquya. but So as a team, They got they've got to try and address the issues that Charl has had because he's incredibly fast in Barcelona as well. He was as quick as Lewis, if not quicker. Q one Q two, he is right there till he made a mistake. had the crash and that you effectively ruined his chance to win because I think they could have had both cars up against Mercedes at the front Charl has got to think about his side of it now. He's got's this is I think a critical couple of weeks between here and Silverston for him to not let the team internal momentum slip too far behind Lewis because As you said, they could be tighty contenders soon. you know we're coming up to we're not far off the summer break now And if we get there and Lewis opens up a big enough gap D start to naturally put their might behind one driver and wouldn't want that to be his teammate. So I think between here serving and Spa, he's got an important three races coming up. Well he knows all too well that the stars have to fully align to win a worldorld Championship, but Bernie t escape the fact he sounds full of hope and optimism. Yeah, you know and Far continuue to develop the car, he mentioned the new engine there, they've got an upgrade to bring this again. Let's see how much that brings to the car. We believe the chassis is really strong there. so there is belief there. There's definitely belief that they can do it and especially because we've seen it so many times in the past Mercedes drivers are got to take points off each other throughout the year. so this is a really really good chance for them to make something happen. This is a power circuit as well. You know, this is a circuit where youve got big inclines up to turn one, back up to three and then idly doubt the fall, but it's a power sensitive circuit. So I think it'll be a good test to see the, you know, Lewis mentioned that the upgraded power unit. Yeah he was Yeah fighting talk after the race in Barcelon and he's, you know, I'm back to doing what I do best. And I think we should make that point because I feel like As much as a strategist come up with the strategies and they did a brilliant job there Ferrari. the drivers have to execute that. And Lewis, you know they started on the soft was the bold choice. then they went to the hard. and that you know, there was a slight difference between what them and Mercedes did When he put that set of mediums on, it was extraordinary. That stint he did there. The gap went from twenty five seconds down to eleven in in hardly six or seven laps. And that was key. you know he and that's where the great champions, it really reminded me Michael Schumach had a race like that back in ninety eight, they changed the strategy at Ferrari and he won it. and the drivers you know, the great drivers rise to the occasion and that was Lewis back to doing that sort of thing. Yes and Lando Norris pointed out that the Ferrari Chassis is the class of the field. Well it is Kimy Antinelli that still leaves the championship forty one points ahead of Lewis Hamilton, with George Russell his former teammate a further fifty behind. Well interesterestingly, George will obviously be boosted by the fact he made up eighteen points on his teammate from Barcelona and came second He must be troubled by the relative lack of pace We're hearing something about the front wing. Can you explain that I think he'd be relieved to have come away with that weekend having made up eighteen points because He didn't look as quick as Kimmy in the second and third sts, particularly in the hardot t. first in of the medium, it was okay. He opened two and a bit seconds to Lewis but He had no pace on the hard tire. We heard we heard some comments after the race that there wasn't the front wing adjustment that he would have expected for whatever reason, it didn't happen or didn't quite work out. So typically when you switch between one compound to the other, the teams will make an adjustment at the pit stop. So depending on the balance to give them more or less front wing, depending which tyie you're changing because that didn't happen affected his pace. So maybe that is the answer. Only he and the team will be able to quantify how much that was But he was overtaken by his teammate on tri n pace you know Kimy got past him before he broke down. and so I think he'd be relieved to have gained eighteen points because actually he was about to lose another three. Aolutely. he seems somewhat surprised at the relative lack of upgrades. Well pererhaps it's just the fact that the others are bringing so much more. Do you share that sentiment I think it's so difficult when you start to think about upgrades because the others are bringing upgrades more regularly. So more regularly when we get our upgrade sheet through on Friday morning, there's upgrades there for Ferrari and McLaren and he sees the gap clos. Now at the start of any new regulation, the development is really high. so you can find a lot of time in your in your design or in your wind tunnel or in your engine even for these teams. So they're regularly bringing these little bits whereas Mercedes seem like they're holding back more and bringing maybe bigger upgrades but in chunks of time. So it's really hard to sort of see they'll have more information about how they think the performance is in low medium or high speed corners, for example So I think it shouldn't be a surprise to Mercedes. They should know what their development plan is. George should know when they're planning the next upgrade, how much it expect it to bring. maybe a little bit is that they're not getting what they expect from the upgrade. Now that is a worry because that speaks to maybe more correlation or design effort in the background. but they know you know when you rock out Race one as the leader that the pack is going to be chasing you down quickly. and they'll know that's coming and that's a little bit. he's knock up the maximize of the car. notot all his fault, you know reliability issues, for example. He'll know that the opportunity to score points is early in this season before the closing really happens. Well let's just pick up on the reliability issues. How much of a headache will that be for them? indeed Their customer I think they'd be very concerned, you know, and rightly so because The Mercedes were bulletproof in the previous era that we saw from twenty fourteen right uil last year in the type of injy we had. So there'll be concerned because we've seen issues for Noris. we've seen issues with bothob McLaren's in China. You know there there are issues in terms of reliability. D know, if you actually add up the points as a team that they've lost as's a big junk And even for the cononstructor championship, we've talked a lot about the drivers, but for the C constructor championship. Ferrari should not be that close Mercedes Given the performance advantage Mercedes had as outou of the ear, they should be way out of front. So I think there'll be a a lot of people concern and trying to find solutions, of course. Yeah J just to forick up Crn's point, lots of teams would be struggling with reliability. We don't always see the effect of that, but the reliability issues for the Mercedes engine seems to be race stopping reliability issues 's not hampering their performance. It's not like they're having to turn it down a little bit. It' Literally finished with nothing. Yeah, exactly. So once you get those sort of Reus stoppers or show stoppers They're costing you big points and that's what they need to get on top of. But interestingly here in Austria, it has been declared a heat hazard because we've seeen hotter and hotter temperatures. Barcelona was probably our hottest race so far until we've got here How much of an effect if you combine that with altitude, is that going to be how much pressure does that put on the power units? Yeah, it puts a lot of pressure on the power units and the entire chassis driver as a whole because you've got less air to cool everything because you're at altitude. that's standard for Austria. You've got these very high temperatures, which we've seen in Austria in the past, but it's the first time that these engines and this car set upp will have been really exposed to that. So it means that all of your cooling and we don't know what's causing the issues for Mercedes, but if cooling is any part of that, then that is going to be tested to the extreme at this weekend and that's going to put all of the engines the PUs, the drivers under a lot more pressure to make sure. and you know you'll see it during practice sess you'll see it during the race. Anytime we see someone move slightly left or right try and to get a bit more air through the engine, that is the t tale sign that they're struggling. That's what we do here. way and just let the wind bit of this a bit of h go Let go for someone who may be well thinking about that is Lando Norris. but from a driver's perspective, Caron, how does it feel to come back to a track where you know you've gone well He obviously was poed here a lot. he's one here, he first podium here There iss something about this circuit that does seem to click with Landon Norris. Oh, yeah, I think this is one of his strongest circuits. The poll lap he did last year was for me the best qualifying lap of the season. was on poed by the biggest poll margin of the year on what is the shortest lap time of the amazing over half a second. And you know, we're used to seeing we've seen Q ones for seven tenth cover the whole twenty car field, right? So I think you're right. He's a bit of a specialist around here and that will come in handy because In terms of the absolute car performance It's not quite there yet. you know, the Ferraris seem to have leapfrogged ahead of them. You look at Lewis' result, you know, I know they are a different strategy, Ultimately He won the race by over twenty twenty seconds. So ye I think McLaren have got work to do. Just on that work to do, Bernie, how much is it about the emphasis and focus that they naturally had to put on last year? and they didn't necessarily look forward to twenty twenty six in perhaps the same way that o this team Yeah, you know I think it's not gone unnoticed. you know, we've been discussing it in the office between us. McLaren and Red Ball are P three and P four this year whereas they were P one and P two teams last year. So I think there will have been this focus. They wanted to get that Constructors and dririvers Championship that was really important to McLaren last year and that has meant that they probably haven't put as much emphasis as early into this year and believe it will be the full three months behind, but as you're developing that car, it takes very little, let's say for the chassis to be slightly off and therefore you have to red decide some fundamental piece of the Chassis design that means that you start drawing a design later than the others and that's potentially where they're at. Yeah, I mean, I think I don't fully buy the three month thing. I think he it's a bit of driver, you know he fuck the number out of somewhere. and like calculate it all. How he just buying the space the time Let's just recap a little bit, right? We go back to Miami Landon Norres was as fast as Kimmy Antinelli, who was the faster of the Mercedes. He was faster than George Rossso by a big chunk. and Lando could and argably should have won that race. you know the strategy played out a bit differently. So it wasn't that long ago. What's happened since is Ferrari of introduced upgrade, McLaren brought off a new F wing to Canada, they took it off the car I think it's more about that. Maybe it's more that the upgrades they have brought haven't delivered the performance. Now that's something we have not said about McLaren in two and half years, Bernie, isn't it? That midseason update came here Yeah in twenty three. And since then, every time they brought something to the car, the correlation is something we the whole padrick has commended them about. and so maybe that's that's what they need to be looking at now. And just to back up Mcaren's point Maybe we're going to get into it later, but you know, they have they're bringing a new ra wing this weekend. They're bringing the new macarino wing or whatever you want to describe itin I'll let you do that rather than me. But you know, we've already heard them I think say They're not confident enough that that's going to stay in the coril again. And that is a different McLaren upgrade system to what we're used to as Cre and highighlighters. They're going to run it in FP one, but they're not going to race with it. O. No engine upgrades for Red Bull at their home race. Well just to remind you for a bit of context, Red Bull would deemed to have the best power unit, the benchmark in terms of power unit at least in terms of the internal combustion engine and therefore weren't able to benefit from the token system that the others are already implementing. Yeah. I think in Barcelona, it was pretty clear. they were really annoyed and frustrated by it. And to be honest, I kind of understand where they're coming from. I find it a bit odd. Obviously I'm not an engine designer or an engineer on that side of it I look at it and go, we have a power unit today where we are saying that forty six, forty seven percent of the power comes from the battery system Yeahet, we're just going to completely disregard that bit and only award tokens to what's going on with the other fifty three percent. And I'm like, I don't get that because the one hundred percent propels the car. It's not just the fifty three percent propelling the car. So you have to have a metric across all of it. And so to me, I actually understand their frustration to be honest Yeah, I totally agree that agree with Kern's point. It would be very interesting to sat in some of those discussions to figure out how the regulation across the teams, across the FAA, they've got to the point where the upgrade system that they're putting the engines is based as Kern's outlined on one section of the engine. So someone very intelligent has sat on those meetings and proposed that it's going to be based just on the internal combustion engine and not on the battery because it felt it benefited them. Because from the outside you caners there's a lot of very powerful people in this product that have debate these regulations and someone has proposed I got through Well no I think what Bernie is saying is this is classic F one politics, isn't it? Mercedes or Ferrari or Audi, you know the teams that have got the tokens have been able to lobby the case because these decisions are made, you know, the collective discussions happen with all of the power manufacturers, FI F one get involved, and they sort of vote and lock the rules down. What Bernie is diplomatically alluding to there, This is a classic case of F one politics where it feels like Ripel perhaps to been outmaneuvered in the way that the other teams. A I speaking for you? No, no, I know one hundred percent agree with what Bern been saying Potentially Mercedes we don't know we're on the me. Someone has said, this is a good way to measure it. This is veryutr know like this is going to be the best way to measure it from how we look at the engine. We're going to have the most reliable data. they've put forward their point of view. that's been agreed. everyveryone sat down and agreeed and now people are sitting back going, o, but we have a much better battery and they're not even looking at how the battery implements it. So it'll be interesting to see if that change is going forward into next year Well Lewis is saying that they will benefit from this small engine upgrade. Let's just see how much significance that does have throughout the weekend. O, well more politics was of course the pit lane penalties from Monaco, which meant that Pier Gasli lost his podium only then to regain it Crofty actually caught up with Pierre Gazlin and you can see that lovely interview with him on our show on Saturday What do you make of it all? I mean the things that have changed since we last spoke about this are the fact that Mercedes have dropped their appeal to it. Red Bull and McLlaren are still going with theirs How will that sort of play out or is that about setting a precedent for future possible situations Messy, isn't it? There there's no As soon as those drivers served a penalty during the Grand Prix, And you know, Lewis didn't really get impacted, but George Russell did. The whole thing was going to turn into a mess. and that's what we got. I could see all sides of this, right? I can see why they reversed it and gave Gazley the podium. He didn't deserve to get penal liized because fundamentally, did he go over sixty kilometers an hour? No, he didn't. so he didn't deserve to be penal liized. Fine, sllam Dunk. But then I understand Red Bullller and McLaren's sation because they're going how you know how do you how do you unravel this mess? And the truth of matter, I don't know how you unravel this mess. It is a mess. you know I think Corin's right, it is a mess because even if we don't think about the people who have penalties. think of Kamimillionanali who won the race, didn't get a penalty. he drove slower than needed through the Petleian at all times went through the Petliian. So he is penalized in the race through a slower pedalty in time. Every driver who didn't get a penalty both because they bad has been gone too slowly through rebellion. so when you start to think of Okay if Hamilton didn't know have the pany, if Russell didn't have the pany, if Russell didn't have the drive through to try and unpeck where everyone would finish in the reus without the penalties let alone where everyone to finish if they were allowed to drive with the crack speed through the T prove the pet l. It should have been sorted on Friday night. They should have decided on Friday night. a number of people got penalties on Friday because they were speed in. There was, we believe a discussion with the FIA about what they were going to do going forward. Nothing was changed and then were in the situation on the race. So it should have been resolved on Friday night one way or the other. They should have said we're sticking with this and people are going to get penalized so you're going to have adjust your pet limit to fifty five k per each or whatever so it's really, really difficult to unpick the whole what if after the event because the ch in reaction of every single bay. You know, you think of the two Ferrars had to stack, the first one had to serve a penalty. It affects know so much to unbank. It's really, really difficult to do post race. Well, Oscar said it' a good start by measuring the pit lanes properly.. Actually no, just on that we won't see this again, hopefully not because the Monaco Pit lane is a complex one.' you know It's not designed in the same way that most of these tracks are Forma onene is a complex sport. So yes, I agree. We may not see this problem and things keep cropping up all the time. I think and Bernie's absolutely hit the nail on the head there. it's about the process. If on a Friday, and here it could be something else, you know it could be the curb, it could be the track, It's like we go to Catar remember a few years ago where they recognized the problem of one of the curbs. They on Friday night move the white line, change the edge of the track that's the response you want to get. And I think You know, to Bernie's point When there is a known problem and it might not be the same thing again, it won't be the same thing again. but the process of get ahead of the curve rather than have to sort the mess out later, that's the key point. OkayK, well every track has its nuances. A quick word from both of you what kind of racing weekend we can look forward to. Austria is always it's one of those ones that really tasks everyone. There's so much going on. The lap time is very, very short is full action here and it's one that on the pitwall it tests everybody and it'll test the drivers with the heat and just how fast things happen around. I am fascinated to see what Ferrari can do because there's a lot of momentum This is a track, which is a power circuit. they've got an upgrade, but it's also aero, middle sector, final sector, unique good car balance, and they've got it. And there's hllly Bayan. Look at. I mean, look at that Fine figure of a man. That's you next. You're getting back out there and I tell you what, this is a lovely way to start the weekend, isn't it? It Nice chat and a little Cycle aroundound the track. Yeah. Let's have a look at the timings then. so make sure you join us when you're meant to. Tomorrow at midday for practice one, prractice two at three hundred thirty five F one showow up five fifteen. And then on Saturday eleven fifteen for the third and final practice session with qualifying at two fifteen And then we're on airr at twelve thirty on Sunday with a race start of two o'clock. It's been an absolute pleasure to chat to you both, just the warm up we all needed. and I think possibly we're in for all four teams being in the running for a really strong weekend. Let's see how it pans out. Thanks for your company. Bye for now. See you tomorrow the day