0:15

Hello, everybody. Welcome to Shift F1, a podcast

0:17

about speedy race cars. I'm

0:19

Drew Scanlon. Joining me, Danny O'Dwyer. How are

0:21

you, Danny? I'm very good,

0:24

Drew. What's going on here? Formula 1 is

0:26

over. Why are we talking? We don't

0:28

usually talk, Drew, unless Formula 1

0:31

is involved. What's happening? What's going

0:33

on? It's the off-season. I'm bathing. I

0:35

just really... Wait, are

0:40

you implying that you have gone an entire F1 season

0:42

without bathing? Yeah, of course.

0:44

Yeah, well, wait, you don't? I

0:48

just couldn't stand not talking

0:50

to my best Formula 1 friends. So

0:53

I've also invited Rob Zachney. How are you, Rob?

0:57

Not too bad. We are recording, right?

0:59

Did I see the numbers flash? I

1:01

see the record thing going. Yeah.

1:03

We've only done this for almost 10

1:06

years. We

1:08

need a... We're not allowed to talk to each other unless

1:10

there's at least one patron in the room. That's

1:14

right. I see the red light

1:17

flashing. Yeah. Is this episode just going

1:19

to be us like completely crashing at

1:21

the end here?

1:23

Just like completely out of energy

1:25

after an entire... The longest F1

1:28

season in history? Yeah. Like the

1:30

Sunday morning after a Saturday night

1:32

bender. You know, just wandering the

1:34

streets in a few days. A

1:37

little bit, I guess. We

1:39

did this one just to kind of throw

1:41

it together to have an opportunity to talk

1:43

about the season that was and do some

1:45

emails. But it does turn out that we

1:48

have some news to cover as well. We

1:51

do. If you're new to this podcast, a

1:53

very warm welcome to you. And if you

1:55

are new to Formula 1 itself, we recommend

1:57

listening to our preseason primer episode that happened

1:59

all the way back in

2:01

what February of this year you've

2:05

got a whole season to catch up on if this is

2:07

your first episode you can go back to listen to that

2:09

episode 216 it

2:11

assumes no prior f1 knowledge and explains how the

2:13

sport works and who everybody is so you can

2:15

go listen to that and then the entire season

2:17

so yeah who knows who will win you can't

2:19

do you know Alonzo starts out well so you

2:21

know maybe he makes good how many

2:23

how many races you gonna win this year the possibilities

2:27

are endless also

2:29

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to all that fun stuff head over to patreon.com/shift

3:00

f1 or click the link in the show notes

3:02

what's been going on at this month Danny last

3:04

month just passed we

3:07

did Braun the impossible

3:09

formula one story starring

3:11

everyone's favorite matrix man

3:13

Keanu Reeves this

3:15

month we are doing recording us tomorrow

3:18

I believe our review of

3:20

Gran Turismo have you guys

3:23

watched Gran Turismo yes I

3:26

have a half hour to go okay cool

3:29

that's 4k you how can you put it

3:31

down how hard you're telling me you're telling

3:33

me they got to the 24 hours of

3:35

Lamar and spoilers they but they get to

3:37

the 24 hours of Lamar and you're like

3:40

I think I'll leave it here

3:42

it's like Hemingway you know

3:44

you got to leave this sentence half written

3:46

so that you know where to pick it up yeah

3:49

well there you go there's a little bit

3:51

of insight into what we think about that

3:54

one I'm sure we'll chew

3:56

into it more tomorrow and that will be up

3:58

for patrons I don't know We'll see

4:00

maybe by the weekend, maybe next week, we'll

4:02

get it up in due course. And a

4:04

massive thanks to all of our incredible,

4:06

incredible title sponsors, uh, who

4:08

have done stayed with us for

4:11

the entire year. A bunch of it. We actually have,

4:13

I think we might have one new person this week as

4:15

well, which is amazing. And thank

4:17

you all so much for slapping

4:19

your beautiful names as stickers all

4:21

over our car. Uh,

4:24

those names, of course, one more time for the year

4:26

are F1 Gamer

4:28

Dad. And it's not

4:30

me. I swear Mojo

4:32

Nixon gaming, get rich or

4:34

die. Ryan, a GAVI, 80

4:36

X Cypress training turf. SES

4:39

at team blackjack, Michael Maeve's

4:41

Gordy's army at talking autos,

4:43

Olivia Evans, telemetry doc.com FTC,

4:45

Drew Stewart, Bailey foot, Abdallah

4:48

Althani, Jason Chadwick, Abraham Getchell,

4:50

the space above us podcast,

4:53

llama magic. Sniggs Alex,

4:55

couché Max, Voltaire circuit.

4:58

Troy Stammer, William Romf, Irvine

5:00

clinical research. So

5:02

that makes me laugh. Lachlan, the mad man.

5:05

And our good friend, Jason Kelly. Thank you

5:07

all for covering our beautiful car. We should,

5:10

every year we should get a, like

5:12

a little, little matchbox car done

5:14

with tiny little stickers of all

5:16

the, I actually made, um, me

5:19

and my daughter got into my kid is five

5:21

now and she's, she started like to do Lego

5:23

sets a And then

5:26

I started to do like, and,

5:28

uh, I got a, we did like

5:31

a little daddy daughter, we make Lego

5:33

beside each other thing. And I got

5:35

the Mercedes Lego set, which

5:37

has, uh, I think their

5:40

car from two years ago and also the

5:42

safety car. Um, as,

5:45

as, uh, in like a two in like

5:47

a double set. So I have both of

5:49

those. Randomly said I did

5:51

them all in one night. It was absolute

5:53

blast. Good stuff. Rag much? Yeah,

5:56

yeah. I can make, yeah, I can play with

5:58

children's toys. Yeah. Eat it. That's

6:00

awesome. All right,

6:02

well, as you mentioned, Danny, we have kind

6:04

of an

6:06

unscripted episode we

6:08

just figured, you know, with all the,

6:10

a lot of prep goes

6:13

into those post-race episodes. Yes. And

6:15

we kind of just wanted to chill out and talk about

6:17

the season that was and

6:19

kind of drift into that long

6:22

winter night. And

6:24

before we do that, though, news just

6:26

keeps breaking. Yes. So

6:29

why don't you kick things off here, Danny, with what

6:32

we can look forward to in 2024. Yes.

6:35

First of all, sprint races is

6:38

not what we're going to talk about first.

6:40

Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Cool. Yes.

6:42

It was announced that China and

6:45

Miami will be joining the

6:47

sprint schedule for

6:50

2024. This came during an F1

6:52

commission meeting in November. It was

6:54

agreed that the sporting advisory committee

6:56

will discuss potential changes to that

6:58

sprint format. But that

7:00

proposal will not be presented to the F1 commission

7:03

for consideration until their first meeting

7:05

in 2024. So we're not

7:07

sure what sprint is going to be. Sprint

7:09

could be anything. I mean, it couldn't be anything.

7:11

It's definitely going to be a shorter race.

7:14

It's a foot race now. Could you

7:16

get the literal sprint? They're going to do

7:18

the NFL combine. Who'd

7:20

win? Who'd be the fastest? Do you

7:22

think? They all ran for it. Albon.

7:26

Yeah. Oh, that's a good check. He's tall.

7:28

He's, but he's not, he's not like Ricardo.

7:30

I think Ricardo carries a lot of like

7:33

weight with him. Like he's bigger. Like

7:36

Albon's got like a sprint. Albon's got like a

7:38

marathon body. Yeah. Alonzo

7:41

would struggle. Yes. I think

7:43

those knees have seen some shit. And

7:46

so to, I guess, go in the order that

7:48

we will see them at China will be the

7:51

first one. As long

7:53

as that race is on. It's the first time we've,

7:55

they are actually in the middle of a, is it

7:58

a flu outbreak or something? They're having a pretty. Geez,

8:00

something's going on. It's not COVID apparently, but hey,

8:02

they said that last time. Uh,

8:04

but that'll be April 20th and the 19th to 21st

8:06

is when that one is on. Um,

8:11

Miami is then May 3rd to 5th. Then

8:14

we are at the Ostrich ring, uh, Red Bull

8:16

ring, sorry. Uh, which will become

8:19

the first three-time host of the sprint, uh,

8:21

on June 20th to the 30th, uh,

8:23

circuit of the Americas will run a second

8:25

sprint race in October. And

8:27

then Brazil, uh, at the

8:30

start of November and Qatar at the

8:32

end of November will be the other

8:34

ones. So that's a, that's a

8:37

bunch of six different sprint races

8:39

to enjoy next year. But again, what

8:42

the sprint is, who

8:44

knows? Six opportunities for everyone to

8:46

come away being like, don't

8:48

worry fans. We're going to fix that sprint

8:50

format. I think obviously we know we need

8:52

to rework it. We're on it. We got

8:54

one good one this year. What was it?

8:57

I forget there was one race. Am I

8:59

in Brazil? Was it? No, there was one

9:01

race we had where the sprint was definitely

9:03

better than the main race. I

9:05

forget there was maybe two of them. I forget.

9:07

Yeah, but it feels good. Uh, Qatar one

9:09

was, was all right. But that's a good

9:11

shout. Yeah. I

9:13

just mean interesting race weekend, uh,

9:16

in part like so. Yeah. What we

9:18

will explore later when we're talking about

9:20

reminiscing about the season is that this

9:22

season was very inconsistent. There was

9:25

times where some drivers were doing really well

9:27

and then doing really badly. There were some

9:29

races that were really boring and then really

9:31

good ones. There were sometimes where teams were

9:33

doing great or badly. And then the other

9:35

end of the season, they're doing the complete

9:37

opposite. So it's, it's all higgley-piggly. So if

9:39

you can't remember much about this year, don't

9:41

blame yourself. It was a little bit all

9:43

over the place. Well,

9:46

F1 knows what the people like. So

9:48

does Williams and they like people

9:51

from Florida because they have

9:53

retained Logan Sargent GTA six, dude, Florida

9:56

has never been hotter for

9:59

the 2020. That means the F1

10:02

grid is the same for 2024 as

10:04

it was for 2023. I

10:07

don't know that that's ever happened while I've been watching

10:09

it. Well, not the start of

10:11

2023, because we had our good old friend

10:13

Nick DeVries in there. Oh, you're right. So

10:17

it has. It has slightly changed,

10:19

shall we say. But yeah, it's

10:21

a good point. I'll say

10:23

this, like, I think this proves James Vowels is

10:26

maybe the most on the

10:28

level team for the year. On the level

10:30

team principle I've ever seen, because like any,

10:32

like given the circumstance, any other team principles,

10:34

like, yeah, Logan has their full support. He's

10:36

dead. He's dead.

10:39

Sorry. They're going to take him out

10:41

of the trailer. They're going to shoot him. But

10:43

here, when James Vowels was like, you

10:46

know, we're pleased with the progress, you know, he's saying we're

10:48

at the way to make our decision. All

10:51

of that apparently did mean we are going

10:53

to analyze, like, the data and

10:56

make our decision about him. And then

10:58

they decided to keep him, which

11:00

I think tells us a lot

11:03

about Williams and how, like, Vowels

11:05

operate. But I'm curious, temperature

11:08

check. How do we feel about Logan

11:11

getting a mulligan? It's

11:13

odd, right? Because I mean, we'll

11:15

get into this a little bit later when we can sort

11:17

of run down how the teams and drivers did. It's

11:21

hard to. We it.

11:25

They had a better car this year, but I also

11:27

think Albin got more out of it than just about

11:29

anyone would. Albin had a fantastic

11:31

year. So I

11:33

think it's unfair to compare him right next

11:36

to him. And in a way, when

11:38

Albin is your teammate, I feel like

11:40

perhaps you get a bit more

11:42

time because that's the time

11:44

that Albin didn't get. Maybe

11:48

Albin is a good case for having patience for rookie

11:50

drivers. I

11:53

think I'm glad he's

11:55

getting another go of it. I

11:57

always hate when the sinkers swim out.

12:00

attitude and all that. But obviously

12:02

I think he really has to

12:04

do it next year. He has to really

12:07

prove himself next year if he wants to

12:09

keep it again. It wasn't a great season

12:11

for him, but that's a rookie season for

12:13

sometimes. Yeah, or at

12:15

least show some market improvement.

12:18

I hesitate to... I give a lot

12:20

of benefit of the

12:25

doubt to situations like this because

12:28

you never know if they're on the same

12:30

car development

12:35

schedule, like who's got the

12:38

upgrades, who doesn't. And

12:40

when there is a disparity, especially

12:43

an experience, and

12:45

you're comparing those two people a lot,

12:48

it makes it difficult to compare one person

12:50

with themselves to

12:52

see whether they are improving. And of course, there's

12:54

so much data that we as the audience don't

12:57

get to see. So it's

13:00

tough for us to say

13:02

like, oh, it's a bad move, especially

13:04

when as this Autosport article points out,

13:07

there's not a

13:10

lot of people

13:12

ready to go in the wings. I mean, there's

13:15

Teo Pucher who he

13:17

won the F2 championship this season, right? Lawson

13:19

as well, but he's probably tied up with

13:22

Red Bull, right? Yes. Another

13:25

point that article makes, right? That like, a lot

13:27

of people that could theoretically get, if

13:30

they pan out even a little bit, they're going

13:32

to lose them fast to the teams

13:34

that actually have vested interest in those

13:36

talents. Yeah, and I think we mentioned

13:39

before, Williams has already

13:41

sunk a lot of time and

13:44

money and effort and energy into

13:46

Logan Sargent because he came from

13:48

their F1 Academy. So

13:53

I think it makes a lot of sense.

13:56

It's not maybe as exciting as we

13:58

want, but I I am curious

14:00

to see how he'll

14:03

do next year. Yeah. And I,

14:05

I feel like, I don't know, I'll have to

14:07

think about recent years, I guess, but, you

14:09

know, Russell was obviously a good

14:12

young driver that they had in there for

14:14

a while, but Williams

14:16

was for a long time in my

14:19

head somewhere where veterans went to end

14:21

their careers, and I don't think it

14:23

benefited them. And I think in

14:25

many ways, just having this younger, you know, driver,

14:28

you know, who

14:31

was, who was there before? Stroll, Sorokin,

14:34

but then we're into like the massive, Valtteri

14:36

was there too. Bount Votas was there. Yeah.

14:39

It was, I think it was half that.

14:41

Veterans washed up there to see things out.

14:44

And then people on the rise

14:46

passed through before winding

14:48

the way to Mercedes. Right.

14:51

But yeah, I think

14:53

Williams has been in a tough spot with

14:55

the driver, like their ability

14:58

to hang on to drivers and when they tend to get

15:00

hold of them. But yeah, like I

15:03

find it really interesting. I think, you

15:05

know, there was always sort of a, I

15:09

think Williams was fairly clear about this from the

15:11

start that everyone knew Sargent was going to be

15:13

a bit rough because like there was a sense

15:15

that he'd like, he'd missed a year of development.

15:18

They'd rushed him forward into

15:21

F1. Whereas

15:23

Piastri had a much more sort of, you know,

15:25

he was a reserve

15:27

driver for Alpein, you know, he had a, yeah,

15:30

he sort of had a much more, because he

15:32

had such a great year comparatively, but I think

15:34

you're right. Like he had a, This was much

15:36

more of a, hey kid, it's

15:38

an F1 car, good luck. Yeah. And

15:41

you know, I think he

15:44

had like the

15:46

earlier parts of the year were really rough, but

15:49

I do kind of feel like over

15:51

time, like what was it, Zandvoort,

15:53

he wrecked the car, but before he

15:56

wrecked the car, he's kind

15:58

of on it, right? He has one of those things where. Like

16:00

he was right on the limit and he's

16:02

like setting competitive times and then he loses it a

16:04

bit at a track where to lose It a bit

16:06

means the car is gonna be right off and I

16:08

feel like since then It got

16:10

a lot cleaner the performance gap narrowed a bit

16:13

and that tended to be overshadowed because we had

16:15

so many Bad tracks

16:17

for Williams that like by the end

16:19

Sargent wasn't doing any impressive because Albin

16:21

wasn't doing impressive. They were kind of

16:24

lumbering around back there He did below

16:26

qualifying at the last race but

16:30

Yeah, I kind of I find it an

16:33

interesting approach they're taking which is that The

16:36

first year was an investment and we are

16:38

going to see what seasoning can do with

16:40

this guy because you know If you think

16:42

about the history of F1 a lot of

16:44

motor motorsports You

16:47

know prior to this era of like trying to find

16:49

your wunderkind and just like lock them in at age

16:51

like 17 18 to

16:53

a five-year contract You

16:55

kind of didn't expect people to really

16:57

like pull their act together until like

16:59

their mid-20s in F1 And

17:03

you can wear to other sports right like,

17:05

you know Basketball players get drafted and can

17:07

be in the league for like five six

17:10

years before you're really like saying like, alright

17:12

Now it's time to show out. And so

17:14

I do think there's this is an interesting like experiment

17:17

in Developing a

17:19

driver in an era

17:22

where it's been very much focused on

17:24

like hey your development happened Up

17:26

through F2 now, you just need to be ready to go Who

17:30

knows maybe he will be the first There's

17:34

been one Williams winner in

17:37

the past 20 years. Could you

17:39

remember who it was? Oh, yeah, okay

17:43

pastor pastor Maldonado Spain

17:46

2012 I think Yeah,

17:49

was that when they're running in Valencia a

17:52

little like Barcelona course with the

17:54

street circus. Yeah. No, it's actually

17:56

no and maybe you're right. Was it no was Spain was

17:58

it then God, in my head, it wasn't

18:01

Valencia. Let me look it up. I

18:03

think it was Barcelona. While you're doing that, I, uh, just

18:05

to update everyone here, 2024 could be a bloodbath

18:09

because the only drivers,

18:12

uh, that are secured past 2024

18:14

are the McLaren

18:16

drivers, the Mercedes drivers, and Max

18:18

Verstappen. There you go. Everybody

18:21

else ends their contract ends at least, or

18:23

in, in 2024 or it's nebulous. Wow.

18:28

A real lemon dance. And it was Spain.

18:30

It was Barcelona. That was her

18:33

did it. And he won that race. He won

18:35

that race. Yeah. He did it. Wasn't

18:38

gifted to him. Uh,

18:41

well, speaking of gifting things from

18:44

one to the other. Oh yeah. Yeah.

18:47

This is, this is an odd

18:50

story. I don't know. I'm like, this

18:52

one popped up today. And

18:54

then there's been a lot on it that

18:56

I, that I'm like, there's a lot of

18:58

moving parts to it, so I'm,

19:00

I, I fear I'm going to mangle the story a little bit.

19:03

Uh, so the top headline and

19:06

the organizations that who's doing what is going to

19:08

be important here, FIA

19:12

opened a compliance investigation, uh,

19:16

into, I don't know if they formally

19:18

announced the surfer, if it was leaked,

19:20

but they, they, they launched an investigation

19:22

into conflict of interest

19:24

issues around Toto

19:26

and Susie Wolf, because

19:29

they both, uh, you know,

19:31

they both had a big deal in motorsports for years,

19:33

but right now they wear two very different hats. Husband

19:36

and wife, we should add. Right.

19:39

And, uh, wild if there was two

19:41

people called Wolf who weren't related and

19:43

four of them, that'd be amazing. Like

19:46

Babs and Buster bunny in tiny tune. Uh,

19:51

so, uh, so

19:53

Susie Wolf is head of F1 Academy. Uh,

19:56

and obviously Toto runs

19:58

Mercedes. But

20:01

there were complaints raised

20:04

by other teams that

20:09

something was said that intimated

20:11

that Total Wolf

20:14

might be getting access

20:16

to FOM information, F1

20:18

management, which is

20:20

like the commercial

20:23

rights hold, the operator of F1

20:25

effectively. That

20:29

as – like

20:31

via Suzy Wolf's role working on F1 Academy,

20:33

which is sort of a high-level thing with

20:37

FOM, she would

20:39

be like leaking information

20:41

to her husband about

20:43

FOM matters and deliberations that other team

20:46

principles do not have access to. The

20:49

FIA is investigating this, FIA

20:52

being the

20:54

international advocacy organization,

20:56

but for our purposes, the

20:58

sporting regulatory body of motorsports

21:02

and a body that has a fractious

21:04

history with the F1 teams. And

21:08

we appear to be in a phase

21:10

where that fractiousness is currently waxing. I

21:12

mean, go see our Braun GP podcast.

21:15

Oh, yeah. Exactly. If you want some

21:17

priors on this one. Yeah. So

21:23

this comes out. FIA is investigating this. And right

21:25

away, like my reaction when I saw this was

21:27

like, I don't know if this is going to

21:29

be a good look for anyone because it seems

21:31

really petty to be like, Total

21:34

is getting access to FOM information about

21:36

F1 Academy. Like it's not – I

21:39

don't know what high-level stuff is going

21:41

– I just don't know like how

21:43

valuable or important and relevant

21:46

to like F1 team's operations is

21:48

going to be stuff that like

21:50

Suzy Wolf is dealing with through

21:53

F1 Academy at this juncture. But either way, it

21:55

kind of seemed like a weird – let's mess

21:57

with – Let's

22:00

mess with someone's family. Let's mess with, with our,

22:03

with our, our peers family. It

22:05

definitely makes a bunch of salacious sounding

22:08

headlines. I'll say that like, it's a lot of

22:10

like Toto and Susie Wolf under investigation.

22:12

You know, it's going on here. I

22:14

mean, I do see the flip side too. Like, you know, it is

22:16

kind of, it is unusual

22:18

and kind of weird that you have a husband and wife team. Like,

22:22

look, I worked for husband and

22:24

wife teams, hasn't been great. Weird dynamics. Don't

22:27

recommend it. But at the

22:29

same time, like it, it seems a

22:31

little bit loaded and Susie's been

22:33

around motor sports forever. She's, you

22:35

know, she's, she's been there, you

22:38

know, as long as, and then

22:40

more frankly, like more legit capacities than Toto

22:42

has been for, for

22:45

ages. So anyway, FOM

22:50

came out and said they

22:52

hadn't heard anything about this. Uh,

22:55

that the FIA didn't

22:58

like give them a heads up, uh,

23:00

that this was, that this was in play.

23:03

Um, and so

23:06

they came out and kind of

23:11

blasted, uh, the FIA,

23:13

you know, they said we, we know the public statement

23:15

made by the FAA was not shared with us in

23:17

advance. We have complete confidence.

23:19

The allegations are wrong. We have robust

23:21

processes and procedures that ensure the segregation

23:23

of information responsibilities in the event of

23:25

any potential conflict of interest. We're

23:28

confident November of our team has made

23:30

it on the unauthorized disclosure to a

23:33

team principle and we caution anyone against

23:35

making imprudent and serious allegations without substance.

23:38

So FIA and

23:41

FOM now have yet another

23:43

thing where they've kind of like they're needling

23:45

each other. Uh,

23:47

and then, you know, Susie Wolf,

23:49

obviously, understandably not happy about

23:51

this, uh, you know, no

23:53

that, you know, this feels like a misogynistic

23:56

attack, um, on her. And.

24:00

that this is sort of a personal thing

24:02

coming after her specifically because of both her

24:11

gender and her relationship. So

24:16

yeah,

24:18

this has all the makings of like kind of

24:21

in terms of what the actual breach is like

24:23

real tempest in the teapot energy I think in

24:25

terms of like what is actually at stake. But

24:28

in terms of like the ability to generate a

24:30

tremendous amount of ugliness and bad blood, it

24:33

feels like a real hornet's nest got kicked here. Well

24:36

see, I also feel like over the next couple of

24:38

days this thing might just die down entirely or might

24:40

turn into something very ugly. It

24:43

sort of just has only just broken so we're

24:45

kind of in the wake of that initial stuff.

24:48

But yeah, it does seem like just a bad look

24:50

for everyone and also kind of I just wonder what

24:52

evidence there is or because if it's a very like

24:54

he said she, well it's not even that but I don't know

24:57

what it is but it's just very yeah, I

24:59

wonder what brought it up to this level I

25:01

guess. Maybe they're one of those couples that uses

25:03

a shared Gmail account. It's

25:06

like the Hillary Clinton email. They put

25:08

a fucking server in their basement that

25:10

has both FOM and FIA

25:12

emails on us and neither the twain

25:14

should meet. Yeah, we'll

25:16

have to see. Toto looks like a real

25:19

home network administrator. You know

25:21

what, I bet one of them has that Valtteri

25:23

Bottas calendar on their hard drive. That's true, Rob.

25:25

That's probably what it was. Please. Let's

25:28

check in with you. Yeah. So,

25:31

Otas. This isn't news to

25:33

me because I follow all

25:35

these guys on Instagram and Instagram it like

25:37

once it has a little sense of like

25:39

what you like it just gives you more

25:42

of it. Like look at a couple poodle

25:44

photos. You're going to be seeing poodles

25:47

all the time but you

25:49

know you keep tabs on Valtteri Bottas.

25:52

You see him at a gallery, an art gallery, unveiling

25:54

a painting. a

26:00

painting of him, bare

26:02

ass naked, next

26:05

to a bicycle by a lake. He

26:07

puts the ass in Bottas.

26:11

So this is what, what

26:13

all those things were promoting is the

26:15

fact that he put out a nude

26:18

calendar, featuring his

26:21

rear end, across

26:23

the 12 months of the year. Terrific.

26:26

To raise, raise health for,

26:28

uh, uh, November, uh, which

26:30

is the prostate cancer, uh, charity. Which

26:32

in fairness to him, he's been rocking

26:35

that mustache, I think for the entire

26:37

year. I think, am I right

26:39

in that he had that mustache? Oh, I feel like

26:41

he showed up a couple of years ago. I feel

26:43

like he's been. Yeah. He

26:46

used to do it like the way Ricardo does the

26:48

handlebars in Austin. He used to like, he used

26:51

to turn up, maybe it was in

26:53

November, November. I have no idea, but I feel like

26:55

his commitment to it in recent years has been, or

26:57

maybe I'm wrong, but I feel like he's really, he's

26:59

really stuck to it a place. Yes.

27:02

And the other thing he's stuck to is risque

27:05

photos of him working out in the

27:07

wilderness. Like this was, he left Mercedes

27:11

and like he just, his, so

27:13

his, his Insta just started to like fill

27:15

up with photos of

27:17

like here, here I am skinny

27:20

dipping in an Alpine stream.

27:22

Beautiful. And it's like, man,

27:24

that guy seems so happy and so secure. Good

27:28

for him. He's chilling. We'll

27:30

talk about how much he's chilling later on.

27:32

We talked about his performance in

27:34

2024, but yeah, fair play to him. $150,000

27:36

a raise. 75,000

27:39

a cheek. I like it. Yeah.

27:43

Unfortunately, they do appear sold

27:45

out. We're

27:48

going to raise more. I know. I know.

27:50

The article says that they are, that they are printing

27:52

more or they have printed more. I'm not sure.

27:56

But they, they would be wise to, it's great.

28:00

I'll admit I have some some

28:02

f1 buddies I Bought

28:05

all of them calendars. Oh, did

28:07

you really terrific? They arrived a few days

28:09

ago beautiful. They're tremendous Love

28:12

it. What's when's mine arriving? It's

28:17

okay, I forgot to send you one too. I'll

28:19

just send you a picture of my ass. Okay.

28:22

Okay. Well exchange Yeah, mine's good.

28:24

Mine's gonna need a bigger piece of

28:26

paper All Right.

28:29

Well, that is it for news. We're gonna

28:31

take a break and then we will be

28:33

back with some talking points And

28:38

we're back with the talking

28:40

points I feel like this hey like

28:43

a mid-90s political

28:45

show Let's

28:48

talk about some Points

28:51

shall we gentlemen? And

28:53

yeah, so I mean I

28:55

took a step back last week and kind of thought like

28:57

okay What are some of the big what happened last year?

28:59

I went back. I watched a bunch of Race

29:02

replays or a lot of articles I listen to a

29:04

lot of podcasts and I just basically created this big

29:06

document of like here's all the stuff that went on

29:08

and Then I sort of filtered it down to a

29:10

couple of things that I thought would be easy for

29:12

people to Would I happen to do a bunch of

29:15

bunch of research some easy stuff to just sort of

29:17

summarize the year that was in ish and And

29:20

also, you know, just give us an

29:22

excuse to sort of ramble a little bit about the

29:24

year that was 2023

29:26

because it it was kind of a strange

29:28

year like we There

29:31

was a lot of races the most

29:33

races ever and we had a What

29:38

would on the face of it seemed like a

29:40

boring season at least for the championship? Or

29:42

another way of looking at it was the most dominant

29:45

Formula one display that anyone's ever done

29:47

and and

29:51

There were some movement with drivers But not all that

29:53

much at the start of the season and then we

29:55

got a weird one in the middle which came out

29:57

of nowhere and then we're also this

30:00

sort of post-drive to survive F1

30:03

boom hangover when the demands of the

30:05

viewing audience is probably higher than ever

30:07

before and then this year was

30:09

one that felt like it was falling short

30:12

a lot or at least had a lot of pressure on

30:14

it. Before we get into

30:16

some of the sort of stuff that I've collated here,

30:19

I'm just interested in what you guys kind of feel. It's been

30:21

a week since we talked last about

30:24

any specific race. What

30:26

do you guys think Drew? What do you think first of all about like what

30:29

2023 was? Like what are you gonna remember

30:32

about this year? I mean I'm

30:34

gonna remember Max's

30:37

Dominus. I think that

30:39

is just the the specter that hangs over

30:41

it, hang it over at

30:43

the entire time. You

30:46

know coming off of 2022

30:49

and it never really

30:51

like that capped the season's potential for

30:53

me. There was still some fun to

30:55

be had but I

30:57

think that's the overall narrative. Alright

31:00

similar for you Rob or? I

31:03

mean yeah like there's no there's like you know

31:05

this is one of the things where the better

31:08

podcast Potter is like actually I have something but

31:10

no like I think in three or four years

31:12

this can be one of those years that you

31:14

remember it's like what happened that

31:16

year? Max and Red Bull won everything. It's gonna

31:18

be like what was it like Ferrari 2004? Which

31:21

used to be the benchmark I think for

31:24

like oh yeah remember that season where like

31:26

Ferrari basically just like ran the table and

31:28

Chewbacca was untouchable? And that doesn't look anything

31:30

like the level of like dominance we saw

31:33

this year. Like it is ridiculous the degree

31:35

to which like every race was unlocked. I

31:38

will say this like I

31:40

think part of it is you know

31:46

Max was incredibly consistent

31:49

and like you know made no

31:51

real mistakes this year. Also a

31:54

team has never put together a car like

31:57

that is that fast and like this

31:59

reliable like nothing ever went wrong on

32:01

his car. Yeah. Um, which is always a

32:03

partly testament to like how a driver is

32:05

driving it. And it's partly a testament to,

32:07

to how it's being assembled. Uh,

32:10

so like, you know, the, the dominance

32:12

really is impressive as, as kind of

32:14

dull as it got, however, I do

32:16

find myself wondering if one reason you

32:18

don't see this to

32:20

this extent is the

32:23

cost cap means that teams have

32:25

an incentive to decide when they're

32:27

going to cut bait on

32:30

a year and they will do so

32:32

early to start turning to make up like with

32:34

investment down the road. And I do wonder if

32:36

that is one reason, like why this period of

32:38

dominance might feel a little bit like more

32:41

of a foregone conclusion, because, you

32:45

know, it wasn't too long into this where like teams are

32:47

not going to pull out all the stops to, to try

32:49

and like change the fortunes of this championship.

32:51

They're going to start talking about like, well,

32:54

maybe next year Mercedes was talking about next

32:56

year after one race. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely.

32:59

Um, and we've got 2025,

33:02

you know, that's a regulation change. You,

33:05

I gotta believe that, I

33:08

mean, teams are going to try their best in 2024, but

33:12

does the fact that it

33:14

is such an upset after

33:17

that year, move that date where they

33:19

cut and run close to 2026. That's

33:21

the big one, right? Like, isn't that what they move

33:24

it from new engine? I know they knew in this

33:26

20 sex. Okay. Nevermind then. Well,

33:28

I mean, like, I kind of hope not. Yeah. Because hoping

33:31

we don't have two years. Well, I

33:33

hope it, if I feel like if it's one, it's yeah,

33:35

I do worry that I don't want to know, I don't

33:37

want to follow you here. You know what I mean? Um,

33:40

a couple of stats on Verstappen's

33:43

dominance. And I think it's been, it's weird.

33:45

It's like a double edged sword. It's like

33:47

he was so dominant and you're to your

33:49

point, uh, Roberts, you know, he did like,

33:52

it was a fantastic drive. He was consistent. I

33:54

mean, the car is sort of, you know, he

33:56

dominated his teammate, but obviously it sounds like the

33:58

car has sort of been designed to. towards

34:00

Max, uh, Max's driving style

34:02

and whatnot. But, um, you

34:05

know, he, he was consistent throughout it and

34:07

every week, even when the championship was done

34:10

in Dusted, he was still,

34:12

um, fighting for it. Um, and

34:14

the stats prove it, I guess.

34:16

Um, he now has more victories

34:18

than Sebastian Vettel. He won 86.36

34:21

of the races this season, which is the highest

34:24

in any up one season ever. He won 34 races out of the

34:26

last 45. He

34:30

now has the, uh, the, here are some

34:32

other stats, I guess, that he has. He

34:34

has most, he has the win record. He

34:37

has most consecutive wins, most podiums, the biggest

34:39

gap to second in a championship. The most

34:41

points scored in consecutive races, most points in

34:43

a season. He got 92.7 of

34:46

all the available points this year.

34:49

That includes getting wins, fastest laps,

34:51

uh, sprints, all that stuff. Percentage

34:53

of laps led. He won wins

34:55

from poll. Uh, he own,

34:58

he has the global sort of, uh,

35:00

um, uh, record

35:02

for that races left with winning

35:05

the title, I think he might've drawn

35:08

with Mansell on that one, a

35:10

championship leader for 39 races

35:12

now in a row, um, the

35:15

percentage of points between first and second,

35:17

he has the longest one there, longest

35:19

streak of converting polls to wins as

35:21

well with 16. So just

35:24

absolutely insane. And then Red Bull as

35:26

a team have only failed to win

35:28

six races, um, during

35:31

the period of his, uh, his

35:33

Ford, those 45 races, the 34 that he won. So

35:37

just like the type of, I

35:40

mean, in a way it's funny cause in my head I'm like, I

35:43

dunno, I think my brain just switched off

35:45

caring about Red Bull about the

35:47

start of this year after last year.

35:49

But, um, it's

35:52

impressive, but it

35:54

sucks. That's the problem. Like

35:57

it's, it's really amazing. And drag, uh,

35:59

and Max's. clearly an incredible driver, but

36:02

we don't get to see him be

36:04

an incredible driver because statistics like this,

36:06

while obviously mirroring his

36:08

skill and you

36:11

know impossible for

36:14

most mortals to achieve stuff like

36:16

this. They're boring. Like

36:18

nobody fucking cares. People care

36:20

when they see all

36:23

the overtakes he did against Hamilton

36:26

in the season he won the

36:28

championship or like how much he hits a

36:30

fight in those. It's a different type

36:33

of thing obviously and I don't want to downplay

36:35

it at all. I think it's remarkable

36:37

what he's done and he's clearly putting himself in

36:39

you know contention for being

36:41

one of the legends of the sport especially

36:43

this young early in his career. But

36:46

it's boring. It sucks and who cares? You

36:48

know what I mean? Well,

36:51

and also like I think it highlights like

36:54

it's been a growing feeling for a while just

36:56

like we've always talked about the records

36:58

don't they're not comparable, right? Like

37:01

right. Prost and Senna's records and

37:03

achievements aren't comparable to

37:05

what we're talking about like Schumacher or Hamilton.

37:07

Like it's just it's a different sport. The

37:09

risks are different. They're not like setting

37:12

up just a number of races like reliability. Everything

37:14

is so different and if you look at like

37:17

Schumacher starting like the what for us

37:19

now is the modern modern era of F1

37:23

it's like F1 goes through now a

37:25

series of eras where a team and

37:28

a driver just wreck

37:30

house year on year on year

37:32

on year, you know, it's like there's the

37:34

you know, the there's the re-interregnum and then

37:37

we get you know, we get

37:39

you know after Schumacher we get you know

37:42

years of Red Bull dominance, right? Years of

37:44

Mercedes dominance and now we are back to

37:46

years of Red Bull dominance. No one's making

37:48

documentaries about those seasons They're making the documentary

37:50

about the brawn season, you know, I mean

37:52

like right and and so I think it's

37:54

one of those things Where you know, we

37:56

can talk about You know,

37:58

it's like the mess seeing these impressive stats

38:02

after points just kind of becomes meaningless because it's

38:04

like, yeah, you're great. You're beating all the records

38:06

that the last guy said after beating all the

38:08

records, the last guy before him. And

38:12

I think the other, but the other part of

38:14

it is, you know, we've talked about like, why

38:16

did the Mercedes years feel a little bit less

38:18

grading in general?

38:20

There was some sort of sense of

38:23

a rival being that internal where you

38:25

had Rossberg and Hamilton having a few

38:27

really knockdown drag out championship duels, not

38:30

just the one that Rossberg like, you know, nipped out from

38:32

under him. Like the year before that type

38:34

of going hammer in tongues as well. Hey, even, even Bottas,

38:36

even though he never got close to him once all the

38:39

points were counted at the end of a season, got

38:41

way more of a sniff of it than Jekyll. Absolutely.

38:44

But like, yeah, you just

38:46

don't have a sense of,

38:48

I mean, this is where the Schumacher comparison

38:50

actually was really apt because like, there's

38:53

just been no internal threat

38:55

whatsoever. No desire for it. It

38:57

could be either. No. And

39:00

I think it's a little bit on for

39:02

like, you know, who knows what max, who knows

39:04

what max cares about, but in terms of like, I

39:06

think it is unfortunate for the,

39:08

how he's going to be regarded and how this is

39:10

going to be remembered because he's a

39:15

protagonist about an antagonist. Like

39:17

it is just, he went out there, he drove away from everyone

39:19

like 20 times. That

39:22

is not compelling. Yeah. Exactly.

39:26

Yeah. Which I think sucks

39:28

for him as well. You know what I mean? That,

39:30

that, that, that like to have done all of this

39:32

and have such an amazing year. And I'm sure for

39:34

sapping fans probably have really enjoyed it. And I think

39:37

that's really, I'm glad for them. And I think that's

39:39

really great. But it, it

39:42

doesn't, it doesn't like give

39:44

you goosebumps. You know what I mean? Like those in

39:46

a way, the, the

39:48

statistics are sort of like this

39:52

cold reality check. But you know what

39:54

I mean? Like, yeah. So many times

39:56

when, when David Croft was like,

39:58

and these one, the. most races ever like

40:01

yeah are we some like I'm like I'm

40:03

not about that yeah or is it just

40:05

an indicator of kind of what we're watching

40:07

here like it just reminds you my

40:09

little I am really it's it's amazing

40:11

to be watching this right this is

40:14

he's one of the greats of all time

40:16

the same thing we're watching Hamilton right it's

40:18

like I

40:20

didn't watch the Schumacher era people

40:23

talk about him like he is a god

40:25

right but they also talk

40:27

about like I in the same way

40:29

people were bored

40:31

to tears of us yeah like I think

40:34

more people dropped off for me the one

40:36

in those years probably than just about any

40:38

other year I can imagine because it

40:40

just became a procession so it's it's not it's the

40:42

same I guess it you know it's like it's

40:46

there's a cost I guess to this type of

40:48

dominance and it's the people get bored may move

40:50

on and that's not good for anyone you know

40:52

so and

40:55

it's yeah it sucks to talk about

40:57

his success in his achievements with this

40:59

big qualifier but I think given where

41:02

we are in f1 sort of like recent

41:04

boom it must make

41:06

everyone feel a little bit uneasy that like

41:09

you know we had a season like this you know I

41:11

mean that's the nature of it

41:13

being a sport or not a

41:16

TV show yeah since his

41:18

mom was like charged you'd be different look

41:20

man I'm here in New England I've been

41:22

I was I live in New England for

41:24

up the entire New England Patriots dynasty let

41:26

me tell you like it

41:29

was not the most enjoyable thing in

41:31

the world to watch and to a

41:33

degree like even that fandom like it

41:35

could only be disappointed but like it

41:37

wasn't it wasn't necessarily the most fun

41:40

experience ever the

41:42

the nature of these things like dynasties

41:44

like this are kind of weird to

41:46

see when whenever something is this dominant

41:49

you know people can enjoy the wins but

41:51

also there gets this sense of like what

41:54

kind of winning is the only thing now because

41:56

there's not much there's not much of a contest

41:58

to it yeah Let's

42:00

refine ourselves and I I feel like

42:02

in one v1 team sports or one

42:05

of you won anything right? You

42:07

always have that thing where like on any

42:09

day anyone might snatch it and you know

42:12

You get it in tennis you get in

42:14

golf you get it in football you get

42:16

upset right everyone loves the underdog in the

42:18

in a cup Competition and soccer you're always

42:20

watching that like League two team Let's

42:23

see if they're able to beat the Premier League team and there's

42:25

all that pressure there and you just don't get that in Racing

42:27

like that. You know what I mean? It's just I mean you

42:29

do but it is it is a different The

42:32

calculations different because you've got you've got a

42:34

you like Max could always

42:36

crash out, but that's Yeah,

42:39

we're like, you know you go to a track where?

42:42

You know the the car just isn't strong

42:44

right? But that's like it is what I was there you

42:46

know or like you have a wet race or something like it can

42:48

happen but I feel like the Yeah,

42:53

if for some reason it just feels like a Longer

42:56

shot. Yeah, or it's or the or

42:58

the the feeling of of triumph for

43:00

the other team or person It's not

43:02

like if the Bears bet like Tom

43:04

Brady's Patriots right it's not

43:07

the same as when like signs one Singapore

43:09

this year You know what I mean? Like

43:11

it's not it doesn't have this

43:14

Isolated you can have these isolated

43:16

sporting moments that feel like triumphs

43:18

from underdogs, but you don't The

43:21

only way you get that enough one is if

43:23

you have a situation where like I like a

43:25

rookie or a younger driver Who's never won anything

43:27

or like Alonzo if Alonzo would want to race

43:29

this year that would have been? One

43:32

of those feelings, but we didn't even get that, you know

43:34

so I think it's a

43:36

problem that's motorsport sort of suffers a bit is

43:38

that even when somebody like for stopping has a

43:41

You know a bit of bad luck or the wrong

43:43

pit strategy or a safety car at the wrong time

43:46

It doesn't even feel like grace It feels a little

43:48

bit cool to see someone else win, but it's not

43:50

the same as you know

43:52

in some other sports You don't get that

43:54

little micro excitements, you know Yeah,

43:58

I don't know well, let's talk about some excitement,

44:00

Danny, or some other things that, you know,

44:02

when we've got the one big

44:05

thing that we just try

44:07

to ignore, what else are we looking at? Well, the other

44:09

thing that's happened this year that was the big sort of,

44:11

you know, a lot of headlines, a lot of chat about

44:14

was what happened with Nick De Vries. Obviously

44:16

him sort of, it was

44:19

a bit of a shock that he lost his seat, but

44:21

also not a shock. It seemed like it was on the

44:23

cards, but then when it happened, it seemed to happen quite

44:25

quickly. And then Danny

44:29

Ricardo coming into the sport was obviously a

44:31

huge headline given what he

44:33

had sort of, you know, him losing his

44:35

seat at the start of this year. And

44:38

then him getting injured, having Liam Lawson going.

44:41

There was like, it was, you know, in a year in

44:43

which we didn't have all that much drama

44:46

with new drivers, or, you

44:49

know, this driver really needs to buck it up or they're going

44:51

to lose their seats, I guess, except for De Vries. This

44:54

was kind of the only bit of that action we got

44:56

this year. And it was very dramatic. Yeah,

45:00

I mean, the thing about

45:03

driver seat swaps is like,

45:05

at least for me, you

45:07

know, I really feel for the guys when

45:10

that stuff happens, but it is like really

45:12

exciting and a fun shakeup. And

45:16

yeah, it's a season that needed it. And so

45:18

I'm glad that rotating seated off

45:20

a towery was there to keep us

45:22

entertained. And you know, it's fun to

45:24

see how they do, right? And you just plop a driver

45:26

in there. It's,

45:28

you know, I guess I feel bad for De

45:30

Vries though, because like that car was such a

45:32

dog. Like that, like

45:35

that car was bad. And yes, he

45:37

was bad in it. But I still

45:39

contend like the things that were happening

45:42

him all pointed to like

45:44

things that appear to be deeper issues with the car.

45:47

I'm very curious, like we ever get

45:51

the full story on this. Like, why was

45:53

there so little vote of confidence

45:55

coming into this? Like they were clearly not bought

45:57

in on De Vries. Like this was a, we're

45:59

putting in this car, we're going to

46:01

give this shop, but like the leash was

46:03

short for, for, for, for

46:05

where he, where he started. And

46:08

the other part of this is I really,

46:10

you know, it's something about earlier being kind

46:12

of amazed that James Zawl appears to have

46:14

been on the level, having that level of

46:16

patience for Logan Sargent. I

46:20

really didn't think that Red

46:22

Bull were genuinely invested in Daniel Ricardo.

46:24

Like I thought the whole like reserve

46:26

driver thing, like re-signing him. I

46:29

thought it was a weird like, Hey,

46:31

we liked the guy. It's good. Yeah,

46:33

it's good. We get good press. He's,

46:35

he's, he's got that Red Bull athlete

46:37

thing going like Daniel Ricardo long

46:40

after his results have really stopped being top

46:42

of the table. Uh, it's still

46:44

like a compelling figure in, in a field

46:47

that sometimes is a bit

46:49

star for personality and

46:51

extraversion. And

46:53

so I really didn't think that

46:56

when they sort of brought him back into

46:58

the fold, that there was an actual roadmap

47:00

and intention to get him back

47:02

in a Red Bull race seat. Yeah,

47:05

it's a, that it

47:08

seemed to be the only answer though, once DeVries

47:10

was sort of out. Um, I do wonder if

47:12

some of DeVries is, he

47:14

came in with such confidence. I remember that passing

47:17

remark at the end of that drive to survive

47:19

season when he was like, I'm going to come

47:21

and I'm going to like dominate, you know, Cenote

47:23

basically. Um, and, uh, I

47:25

wonder if the fact that he's 28, you know, he sort

47:27

of had a bit more of a career and hadn't

47:34

really maybe, you know,

47:36

sort of gone better himself at a race

47:39

at which they sort of expected some of these younger fellows

47:41

now. Well, yeah. I mean, he, he

47:43

won the formula two championship. He won a

47:45

formula E championship and yeah,

47:47

he's 28 comes in and doesn't,

47:51

you know, burn it up. That

47:53

I think is maybe the most,

47:56

uh, the clearest example

47:58

of maybe why. Yeah, maybe they

48:00

see, if they see something in him, maybe his mentality

48:02

or the way he's attacking the, you know, the training

48:04

or whatever it is, maybe if they see it and

48:06

somebody who's that older, they're like, Oh, we can't teach

48:09

an old dog new tricks out of, I have no

48:11

idea. Ancient 20 year old,

48:13

hell, my, Marco finished in school. Won't,

48:15

uh, won't work. Yeah, exactly. Um,

48:17

uh, let's have a little, uh, quick.

48:19

First of all, actually we're talking about the popularity. I

48:22

want to look at some, um, figures that I found

48:24

here, uh, viewership from, uh, 2020

48:26

was about 87.65 million. Uh,

48:33

per race, I believe. No, that can't be

48:35

right. That must be in total, uh,

48:38

with 17 million this year. So it is

48:40

down a bit. I think that's probably

48:42

average viewership. I think that's average viewership per

48:45

race per race. Yeah. Um,

48:47

and then average, but average attendance per race was

48:49

actually higher. And this might have something to do

48:51

with just them sort of going

48:53

to places that. Sprint Danny, they can fill

48:55

up maybe spits. Maybe the fact that China

48:57

wasn't on the calendar for two years in

48:59

a row helped this out, but it's up

49:01

to 300,000 people. And

49:04

2017, it was about 203,000. Uh,

49:07

and 2000 and which those numbers are weird,

49:09

right? Because that is like, uh,

49:14

that is for the weekend and

49:16

you can count multiple, the people this

49:18

multiple times. Yes. Yeah. You could go

49:20

to, you know, Friday, Saturday

49:22

and Sunday. And that's three. Yeah.

49:25

Fair. But in any case, if they do

49:28

it, if they do it, they're still

49:30

talking about around the year, you're still talking

49:32

about like a, like a 50% increase basically.

49:34

Uh, while why on the, or since, yeah,

49:36

since 2019 and the COVID years, obviously are

49:38

in there in the middle as well. So

49:40

maybe they create like an artificial bump when

49:42

people can finally leave their goddamn houses again.

49:44

Uh, let's do a quick little rundown of

49:47

the teams before we move on out of

49:49

this. Um, the, uh, let's,

49:52

how about we divvy these up a little bit? How

49:55

about we just sort of like, if anyone wants to

49:57

jump in and take one of these themselves, um, I'll

49:59

do for a Mayo just for

50:01

fun because they're such a weird little

50:03

situation. I think Joe had

50:05

a bad year. I don't think it

50:07

was particularly, um, uh, impressive.

50:11

And I think Bottas is,

50:13

him and

50:15

Magnus and I feel like are a little bit

50:17

in their Kimmy Riken in last year's, or they're

50:19

just kind of chilling a bit, which I guess,

50:21

um, so I don't, I

50:24

don't know how they should feel about

50:26

this year at all. Uh,

50:29

and also they're doing the cyber thing next year. Right.

50:31

So I don't know if there's much of a shakeup

50:33

going on there with the car, but

50:35

I think, I don't know.

50:37

I think of all the

50:40

teams, they seem like one of the ones that's

50:42

most lost because I think Joe

50:44

needs to maybe kick it up a gear like he

50:46

should be trying to beat Bottas if Bottas is at

50:48

this stage of his career. This

50:51

is sour energy, man. Like this is, this is the

50:53

thing. Like if you took the alpha Romeo

50:55

of it out, you're like, Oh

50:57

yeah, that's sour and

51:00

I feel like that's kind

51:02

of what they play here in life,

51:04

man, that car kind of sucks and

51:06

they're just kind of running around and

51:08

not really accomplishing a lot, uh,

51:11

and I mean, it's made weirder by the fact that,

51:14

you know, I think we had greater expectations

51:16

of this team back when they were alpha

51:18

Romeo and we have

51:20

greater expectations of it for whenever

51:23

Audi comes in and whenever Audi is

51:25

willing to start admitting that like you

51:27

actually start publicizing the fact that

51:29

they're like committed to this, uh, relationship,

51:32

but, but yeah, it's like, I think it's

51:34

this weird place because this team is just

51:36

kind of in this weird, like, uh, you

51:39

know, Gulch between

51:42

the offer male era, and

51:44

then what promises there'd be a

51:46

much more well-heeled era under Audi,

51:48

but for now they

51:50

look like a back marker team in

51:53

some ways because historically they have been a back marker

51:55

team, uh, alpha towery on

51:57

the other side. How do we, how do we feel about

51:59

them? Any any hard thoughts about

52:01

those guys? Yeah, we kind of talked about

52:03

yeah You know their

52:05

their second seat, but I think their first

52:08

seat Sunoda This was I think

52:10

he has only gotten stronger as

52:12

the years have gone by he to

52:14

think of him as like the old hand If this

52:16

team is kind of funny Yeah

52:19

But maybe it shouldn't be because he

52:22

and I don't know I'm not looking

52:24

at data here But he seems to me just

52:26

emotionally consistent And

52:28

Alapine I feel like are one of the

52:30

hardest ones to pin down they never know

52:32

what to think of this team Whether

52:35

it's Renault or Lotus or alpine.

52:38

It's always a mystery to me And they're

52:40

just kind of swimming around the it's you

52:42

know between 10th and 12th kind of out

52:44

there a little bit They feel like like

52:46

they were gas is up there and but fourth

52:48

for yeah, race, right? Yeah, it's just it's confounding

52:51

and I'll count how they had a decent season

52:53

I would say as well like neither of them

52:55

I don't think set it on fire. I would

52:57

put them on the positive end of the of

52:59

the Of the middle,

53:01

but like they didn't have a badge here, but

53:03

they I don't know It's I

53:06

guess it's just funny cuz Aston Martin. I think

53:08

I would I Would

53:10

write a emotionally I would put them at

53:13

the back of the middle But

53:15

they I think finished with more points, but they

53:17

such a weird. That's such a jet on high

53:19

gear Right, cuz like obviously Alonzo

53:21

had a fantastic stars, right? He had like what's

53:24

like six podiums this year I think he was

53:26

second multiple times and

53:28

then His

53:31

teammate unfortunately had a

53:34

sort of a rotten middle period but then he

53:36

actually ended up finishing the season pretty well his

53:38

last like You know three or

53:40

four races and then sort of if we

53:42

stick McLaren in here They had almost the

53:44

exact opposite where McLaren started off and we're

53:46

in no-mounts land we're arguing

53:49

arguably fighting with the Alpenes

53:52

and then you had a situation where I think Nara's got like

53:55

four or five second place positions

53:57

as well like he ended up

54:00

doing really well, especially the latter half of the

54:02

season. McLaren is

54:06

like the wildest comeback story

54:09

this year, where it was like that car that

54:11

looked like, Oh man, they're just completely lost. This

54:13

is going to be a lost season. Norris is

54:15

going to be losing his mind, et cetera. And

54:17

then they were like,

54:19

we opened up that wind tunnel. And then

54:22

that car started getting real good, real fast.

54:25

They, they start turning in great

54:27

results and like moving

54:29

to fourth. Moving the fourth in the

54:31

championship. And like, you know, really, if there were

54:33

another, you know, 10 races less in

54:35

the season, do we think they stay in fourth or

54:37

do we think they might like, you know, nab third,

54:40

I think they might like they, they might be able

54:42

to, you know, close in on that, on that Ferrari.

54:45

Um, like, and I think

54:47

that's where you sort of see, uh, I've heard McLaren.

54:49

I feel really confident coming out of the season because

54:51

like the ability to

54:53

rally and like develop and get

54:56

the car pull, like pulled in

54:58

the right direction over season is

55:00

really exciting. Whereas Aston

55:02

Martin, they can say that like, man,

55:05

you know, that middle period where like

55:07

our car sucked and Lance looked like

55:09

he was, uh, you know, criminally incompetent

55:12

because we were, we were doing like

55:14

wild experiments, like trying to make next

55:16

year's car better. And maybe that's

55:18

true. Maybe that's part of the strategy of like, we're going

55:21

to go all in now of, you know,

55:23

we're going to build up that 2024 car, but

55:26

it looked gnarly. Yeah. That was a, that

55:28

was a weird vibe for the season. And

55:30

I can't, you can't, you can't sell me

55:33

on media that

55:35

it was their strategy to make

55:37

the boss's son look like crap for months.

55:41

Well, Hey, right there. What do

55:43

you think then of the McLaren

55:46

duo? Because you could argue that that, that

55:48

might be like the strongest pairing on the

55:50

grid you could, like, I think Ferrari and

55:52

we'll get to Mercedes. I think Russell had

55:54

a pretty rotten year, but you

55:57

know, Piazza really came good.

56:00

And his rookie season and Lando this year

56:02

looked like, you know, you, you,

56:04

you, now you're looking at Lando going, cause this guy

56:07

win a championship, like in the right car. Like he,

56:09

he, they both got a lot. I think they both

56:11

had a good season. What, what do you make of

56:13

her up? I

56:17

think that's going to be a

56:19

problem. Okay. Because I think like,

56:21

I look, it's a good problem

56:23

to have, but. Yes.

56:25

We did have a hell of a rookie season, a hell

56:28

of a rookie season. And

56:30

there really haven't been many teams that

56:33

have like two drivers who are actually

56:35

a number one, like talent

56:38

that can coexist peacefully for very

56:40

long. Right. And

56:43

I suspect once it

56:45

is no longer McLaren versus the world McLaren

56:47

versus like, you know, starting on the back

56:49

foot, I

56:51

think the odds of that becoming

56:53

a little bit weird, just in terms of

56:55

the vibe are very, very high. And I

56:58

suspect that sooner than you might

57:00

think McLaren's going to have to decide about like, which

57:03

of these guys makes the most sense to commit to

57:05

because whoever doesn't feel like

57:08

they're getting the love, you know, drew yourself with

57:10

that blood bath coming up as like contracts are

57:12

running out. We're due for

57:14

some retirements. You know,

57:16

if any, if either one

57:19

of these guys has the vibe that like,

57:21

man, I should be winning more races and

57:23

like team politics, they're privileging the other guy

57:25

over me, I believe these guys get

57:28

that feeling. You

57:30

know, they're going to be very susceptible to

57:32

the argument coming from, you

57:35

know, other teams, maybe a team

57:37

like Alpine, for instance, being like, we're

57:39

designed around you. Don't you want to come

57:41

here and like have it all about you?

57:44

Did work for Daniel. I think Lando sees

57:46

that as a cautionary tale. Maybe. Um,

57:48

let's move on to the, uh, the two Ferrari

57:50

cars, I guess, uh, Ferrari and, and Haas, two

57:53

teams of Ferrari engines, both teams that you could

57:55

argue. Definitely in Haas's case, we're

57:57

better on Saturday than Sunday. What

58:00

did you make of them drew I guess Ferrari and

58:02

and you know if you want to chat about Haas

58:04

a little bit, too Yeah, I mean,

58:07

I'm kind of forced to just go off vibes

58:09

here It's just

58:11

like what I kind of felt about these

58:13

teams over over the season But I

58:15

felt better about Ferrari than I have in a long

58:17

time and I think I chalk it up to Fred

58:22

Fred seems like a steady hand. I

58:26

Wanted to see what a staple Ferrari can do And

58:29

I feel like I'm seeing what that

58:32

might look like Haas. Oh,

58:34

man They just yeah,

58:37

they can't get it together. I

58:39

just I want to see I

58:41

want to see Better

58:45

performance that I feel worse Right.

58:48

It's just like you get these exciting

58:50

Saturdays and then like well, it's really

58:52

mean anything Especially Holkenberg

58:54

who like Magnuson didn't have a

58:57

great year Next

58:59

story. Yeah. Yeah, Magnuson had like the

59:01

year of a new dad or maybe

59:03

he had his like his His

59:05

eye was in a different direction his priorities

59:07

had shifted perhaps and he

59:09

was doing alright But Holkenberg amazing

59:12

comeback story and I spent like

59:14

he was some of his qualification was

59:16

just outrageous He was getting that car

59:18

positions it didn't but then come

59:21

Sunday Like a

59:23

slow death of him getting you know

59:26

Eventually overtaken by everyone until he was

59:28

like sitting in, you know 16th There's

59:31

how many years of this with Haas where it's

59:33

like yeah Oh, man they'd like maybe

59:35

they've got it together this year and then they just

59:37

like coast backwards over the course of the race and

59:40

it's like It is it is

59:42

really this main because I'm like, I'm

59:44

a Charlie Brown with the football every year I have

59:46

those moments. I'm like damn they qualify the shit out

59:48

of that car All right, we

59:50

got we got a new player at this table

59:53

and then it's like, okay Well, we're

59:55

five laps into the stint. They're running

59:57

two seconds off the lead.

1:00:00

We've seen this movie before the

1:00:02

way Hulkenberg and Magnuson

1:00:05

was converged in the race by

1:00:07

Hulkenberg starting from like eight places

1:00:09

out. And

1:00:12

this car sucks. It's like, hey, hey,

1:00:14

buddy. When they both end up like together at the

1:00:16

back of the grid, which is making it makes it

1:00:18

all the more surprising that like, you're

1:00:20

telling me Gene Haas wasn't like,

1:00:23

oh, yeah, Andre, I'll

1:00:25

take your billion dollars. Yeah.

1:00:29

Oh, yeah, it's amazing. What made you think

1:00:31

that maybe Gene Haas hates the

1:00:34

Andreites? He may be very well. There could

1:00:36

be some American lower sports beef there. We

1:00:38

don't know. Another

1:00:41

team with asymmetric drivers,

1:00:44

you could argue, is Williams, Alex,

1:00:46

Albon had a terrific career. I

1:00:51

don't even have to be a debate champion. No, we

1:00:54

guess we did a little bit of a chat about it earlier. Yeah,

1:00:56

Logan Sargent obviously had a tricky

1:00:59

rookie year. Albon really made good, seemed to

1:01:01

get that Williams in places that again, it

1:01:05

wouldn't be in the hands of another

1:01:07

driver. I want to talk to you

1:01:09

guys about Mercedes though, our last team here. Last

1:01:12

year, Russell really had the

1:01:14

best of Hamilton. And

1:01:17

this year it seemed to swap the other way again. Lewis

1:01:19

was almost prost

1:01:22

like in his drive. He was

1:01:24

not often really racing at

1:01:27

the front, but just was

1:01:29

able to always accrue like top five points.

1:01:31

Like he was very good at being

1:01:34

up there, getting the points and obviously

1:01:36

it benefited him in the, in the,

1:01:38

the drivers championships. Russell seemed to struggle

1:01:40

this year, I felt. What

1:01:43

do you guys make of what's going on over at Mercedes?

1:01:46

I mean, I think they struggled

1:01:49

a lot with their car and I

1:01:51

don't know, I think at different times

1:01:53

they were, one

1:01:56

was on top of it or the other was, you know,

1:01:58

and it just kind of shook out. that I

1:02:02

guess the experienced one grappled

1:02:05

it better. That's kind of my feeling. I

1:02:07

think there's a little bit of

1:02:10

deceptiveness about last year because like

1:02:12

Mercedes later kind of confirmed this

1:02:14

was the case, which

1:02:16

was Hamilton went into skunk works mode

1:02:18

and they began, like throughout last year,

1:02:21

they began throwing a lot of weird set of stuff and a lot

1:02:23

of weird dev work at him to

1:02:25

try and like get

1:02:28

the team out of the

1:02:30

cul-de-sac that they were stuck in

1:02:33

and Russell was just optimizing

1:02:35

for race pace. And so

1:02:38

he was optimizing to

1:02:40

compete in races and Hamilton fundamentally wasn't. And

1:02:42

so Russell had this really impressive season where

1:02:44

it looked like, OK, this

1:02:48

might be the next generation

1:02:51

in place at Mercedes. I

1:02:53

think if I'm. I

1:02:56

think my Russell fan from Russell, I think there's some

1:02:58

things I find alarming about this. One

1:03:01

is that with the pressure on a little bit, some of

1:03:03

that unflappable cool and poise

1:03:06

that we saw in the

1:03:08

lowered expectations world of Williams cracked

1:03:12

this year. You know, he was on the

1:03:14

radio trying to, you know, manage

1:03:18

from the race seat, but like really

1:03:20

trying to do too much. And it's

1:03:22

not like he's speaking

1:03:25

in the position of moral authority where he's totally nailing it.

1:03:27

And the team is the one letting him down. Like there

1:03:31

were a lot of times where kind of response could have

1:03:33

been the George like, do just

1:03:35

drive, just drive the car, man. Like, you know, if

1:03:37

you're concerned about where we're going to play, it's just

1:03:39

like, here's thought, be faster. The

1:03:42

other like I keep coming back to Singapore as

1:03:44

just like that was not a good mistake. Like

1:03:47

there's misfortune and like, you know,

1:03:49

stuff happens out on the racetrack

1:03:52

that was not a good mistake to make.

1:03:55

But it was, I fear, a revealing

1:03:57

one. Right. Which was like he. Had

1:04:00

this golden opportunity to compete for this race, but

1:04:03

even before that he had been like losing

1:04:05

time to Hamilton and really the team maybe

1:04:07

should have swapped Hamilton around in front because

1:04:10

he he was able to like hold more pace

1:04:12

in that car. And then

1:04:15

Russell just tunnel visioned onto

1:04:17

the back of Lando's car lost

1:04:19

awareness and took himself out.

1:04:23

That is not the stuff of which champions

1:04:25

are made. It could be a major learning

1:04:27

moment for him, but like

1:04:30

suddenly there's this cracks in

1:04:32

the facade that I

1:04:34

hadn't seen before, but now I find them

1:04:36

kind of concerning. To

1:04:39

wrap up our little talking

1:04:42

points section here, a couple of races of

1:04:44

the year, you mentioned Singapore, for bringing that

1:04:46

one up. Signs holding off

1:04:48

the Mercedes using Lando Norris as

1:04:51

a sort of a DRS buffer between

1:04:53

them, expertly. Signs

1:04:56

versus the Red Bulls and Monza, the

1:04:58

daily use of rain that came from

1:05:01

the Landvoort. No, so good. Absolutely

1:05:05

great. And then the surprise of Las

1:05:07

Vegas being such an interesting

1:05:10

battle on the street there. You

1:05:12

know, the temperatures may be favoring the

1:05:15

tires and the strategy and, you know, an

1:05:17

interesting looking track if nothing else. I

1:05:19

want to give a shout out to Qatar

1:05:21

for the FIA

1:05:23

mandate that the tires could do no more than 18

1:05:26

laps. So

1:05:28

weird. So strange. Yeah. Yeah.

1:05:30

Let's spin the wheels. Let's, let's have a weird rule

1:05:32

every race. You know what I mean? Like put

1:05:35

the sprinklers on there too. Um, yeah. And

1:05:38

I guess just to wrap it up, you know, what

1:05:40

do you guys, if you had any hope for

1:05:42

next year, what would it be? Is there anything

1:05:44

obviously obvious one to go for? I guess is,

1:05:46

is that we have a bit more competition at

1:05:49

the top of the pack. Is

1:05:51

there anything else you guys are interested in or

1:05:53

anything you'd like to see? Any driver you'd like

1:05:55

to see make good next year? And

1:05:58

I am most excited. to

1:06:00

see how Williams does. Like

1:06:03

they've been so bad for so long and

1:06:05

they're on the upswing and they've got this

1:06:07

new, the James Vowels energy.

1:06:10

It's just, yeah, so curious to see

1:06:13

where that goes. Once

1:06:16

again, Drew

1:06:18

had to talk to mine. Like I'm right there. No,

1:06:21

but it's true. It's like very

1:06:23

interesting story because like Vowels the

1:06:26

entire year has had the vibe

1:06:29

of like Vowels took over this ramshackle,

1:06:31

weird old family business. Like after it

1:06:34

had been run by these incompetent bankers

1:06:36

for like two or three years. And

1:06:39

now they're starting to look like a

1:06:41

race team. You got Albin with his

1:06:43

like new lease on life and really

1:06:46

Logan Sargent with an even newer

1:06:49

lease on life. They

1:06:51

are in a really, really

1:06:53

interesting place. So I

1:06:55

think that's like my positive like vibe that I

1:06:57

want to pick up. I am

1:06:59

just so curious what Alpin looks like in

1:07:01

the coming years. Cause just as a program,

1:07:04

it seems absolutely fubar over there

1:07:07

and maybe like cleaning Lauren Rossi

1:07:09

out of there and Oatmar and

1:07:11

all that like is all necessary,

1:07:13

but just doesn't

1:07:16

feel great over there. And the two drivers don't

1:07:18

like each other. And

1:07:21

I think next year, especially if we're going

1:07:23

to get all this contracts malarkey at the

1:07:25

end of the year, I think

1:07:28

that bodes well for some interesting,

1:07:30

you know, inter or

1:07:32

yeah, inter team battles as well as

1:07:35

folks really try and make themselves stand out either

1:07:37

for the team that they're on or the team

1:07:39

that they want to go to. So I'm

1:07:41

excited for that if nothing else. Cause I think we

1:07:43

lacked a lot of that this year. I won't seem

1:07:45

to be pretty comfortable. And there was

1:07:47

just so much weirdness with like which team was

1:07:50

in the ascendancy at any one

1:07:52

time that it was hard to kind of

1:07:54

keep your eye on that. So yeah. And

1:07:56

obviously I'm excited for China to come back.

1:07:59

Circuits cool. And you know, I'm

1:08:03

glad to have the longest straight in Formula One history

1:08:05

back. Yeah. And there

1:08:08

you go. Well, let's

1:08:10

take it to some emails.

1:08:12

Shiftf1podcast.gmail.com or f1.cool slash emails.

1:08:15

Rob Zachne, what do we have? This

1:08:20

one, it feels familiar. Maybe I'd marked it

1:08:22

off earlier, but if it sounds really familiar

1:08:24

as I read it, just let me know.

1:08:27

Okay. I don't know if we read this

1:08:29

before and I just didn't mark it correctly,

1:08:31

but Chris writes, it's my first full season

1:08:34

watching F1. I wanted to ask, are we

1:08:36

experiencing an uncharacteristically civil and incident-less season? Incidents

1:08:39

seem far, few and far between, and all

1:08:41

the drivers seem to be extremely friendly with a little butting

1:08:43

of heads. Is this typical? Are they standard

1:08:46

F1 season? And is driving to survive warped me into thinking

1:08:48

it would be something like the Real Housewives of Monaco

1:08:50

meets Twisted Metal? Or

1:08:52

has an uncompetitive season at the top led

1:08:54

to less aggressive driving, less hot-headedness on the

1:08:56

grid? Bing! It's that one. I

1:08:59

think the minute, like

1:09:02

you also see this anytime

1:09:04

like a championship is done and dusted, like

1:09:07

people get way more simpatico with each other,

1:09:09

people chill out. But

1:09:11

in general, when there's

1:09:13

a season where, you know, there's always going to be,

1:09:15

you know, fights with your teammate, you're always

1:09:18

going to be a little insecure about your teammate. But when you've

1:09:20

got a season where it's like, man,

1:09:22

we are not, we're

1:09:24

not in the championship, huh? We

1:09:26

are not racing for wins here. The

1:09:29

temperature goes down so much, and it just becomes

1:09:31

like a fraternity

1:09:34

of drivers that are out there. Unless something

1:09:36

really grievous happens on the track, the

1:09:38

stakes aren't that high. But the minute you have people

1:09:40

fighting for wins, and

1:09:42

wins matter a tremendous amount. Forget championship, but

1:09:45

like once wins are on the line consistently,

1:09:47

at first, you

1:09:49

know, people will keep it clean, and

1:09:51

there'll be good vibes. But

1:09:53

if you keep running into each other on the track

1:09:55

and fighting for those wins, eventually things will happen that

1:09:58

like set people against each other. each other, like if, I

1:10:01

think if Charles Leclerc and

1:10:04

Max Verstappen don't have like completely

1:10:06

diverging fortunes, uh, you know, subsequent

1:10:08

to like 2019 or whatever. Yeah. I

1:10:11

think those guys probably hate each other, but

1:10:15

it was diffused because Max pulled away,

1:10:17

uh, and Ferrari kind

1:10:19

of entered the wilderness a little bit. I

1:10:22

would, yeah, I'd be interested to know if it

1:10:24

does feel like we didn't have that many crazy

1:10:26

crashes this year, although I will say that it

1:10:28

was Australia this year that they did the standing

1:10:30

start and that everyone crashed, right? So, and then

1:10:32

they basically said, okay, we're never doing those again.

1:10:35

Right. There was the whole, like, is

1:10:37

this sport is this spectacle argument that we were

1:10:39

having after the first race. And,

1:10:42

you know, that's where you get a

1:10:44

lot of these is, you know, starts of races.

1:10:46

And who knows maybe

1:10:48

that also maybe stripped away some of that. We

1:10:50

did, we didn't, I don't remember any bad crashes.

1:10:52

You know what I mean? Like

1:10:54

Alonzo in Australia comes to mind, obviously

1:10:57

Grosjean and Bahrain or Qatar,

1:10:59

no, Laseo, wasn't it that one? Yeah. Um,

1:11:02

we had, you know, even Russell and Bottas

1:11:05

in, uh, it was Imola, wasn't it? Um,

1:11:07

there's a, there's a, you know, there has

1:11:09

been someone I was like, can't quite remember,

1:11:11

Lando's one at Vegas was a bit nasty, but thankfully

1:11:15

it was okay. Um, and

1:11:17

the Russell, the Russell of Altruay one is

1:11:19

illuminating because like there. The stakes

1:11:21

were who was going to drive that Mercedes the

1:11:23

next year. Totally. Like it is the minute like

1:11:25

the, these guys start to fear each

1:11:28

other as like, you're the guy keeping me from my

1:11:30

dream, be it a race win or whatever. That

1:11:33

is where like all this, you

1:11:35

know, bromance stuff goes out the window. And

1:11:37

we just haven't had that. Yeah.

1:11:41

I take this next one. Yeah. Mike

1:11:43

writes in, I've pondered what the recent periods

1:11:45

of dominance by Red Bull and Mercedes tell

1:11:47

us about actual driver skill when talking about

1:11:50

the greatest drivers of all time. We often

1:11:52

reference championships, one points, podiums, et cetera. Are

1:11:54

we making the assumption that good drivers always

1:11:56

get their chance in a competitive car? What

1:11:59

if they don't? I'm not going

1:12:01

to claim that Max Lewis, Michael and the

1:12:03

other multiple time champions are not great drivers

1:12:05

Instead I'll ask what driver never had the

1:12:07

stars aligned in terms of getting a seat

1:12:10

with the right team at the right time

1:12:12

Holtenberg seems to drive the Haas beyond its

1:12:14

limits and qualifying But the car

1:12:16

just doesn't have the pace a race

1:12:19

pace for him to bag too many

1:12:21

points Did force India or Renault ever

1:12:23

really give him a racing car?

1:12:26

Yes, will we ever see stuff of Andorin and F1 seat again?

1:12:28

No, well say no to that one He unfortunately

1:12:30

was not unstoppable. He was quite

1:12:32

stoppable I mean, yeah This

1:12:36

is I feel like something that comes up

1:12:38

a lot when you talk about F1 is is the

1:12:40

you know It's an any sports like,

1:12:42

you know, who's Patrick

1:12:44

Mahomes right now one of the best quarterbacks in Lee's got

1:12:47

an amazing offensive lineman and you

1:12:49

know his Defense first of all is incredible on

1:12:51

the Chiefs are winning so much because of that

1:12:53

and then he's got a good o-line in front

1:12:55

of him, so it's like You

1:12:58

know, I'm sure it happens in basketball as well.

1:13:00

It definitely happens in soccer, you know, there's all

1:13:02

it's never just one person right, and

1:13:04

I think there's a fairly and People

1:13:07

sort of assume that you don't

1:13:10

if someone's a diamond they tend to end

1:13:12

up with a good team Eventually like

1:13:15

you don't often have somebody who

1:13:17

spent their entire career in

1:13:19

the wrong cars like nobody's really

1:13:21

coming to mind the only ones that come to mind

1:13:23

a little bit are the Really great

1:13:25

drivers who ended up being number two drivers

1:13:27

like Barrichello a Ferrari or something like that.

1:13:29

And Where you're

1:13:31

like in another era or maybe even

1:13:34

in another car against Michael who maybe

1:13:36

or like Massa when Alonzo was was

1:13:38

number one and So

1:13:41

you get into those situations and Rossberg

1:13:44

I think was the interesting one

1:13:46

of those that came good Which is really interesting

1:13:48

and then it was so hard on him that

1:13:50

he just piece that was like well That was

1:13:52

the worst year of my life. I'm done with

1:13:54

f1. I'll become a youtuber Liam Lawson

1:13:56

Also now a youtuber go check out his channel. He's

1:13:59

doing vlogs and stuff and what

1:14:02

about Antonio Gia and I see

1:14:04

no I don't know huh Gia and I

1:14:06

feel like guanyu Joe is a bit of

1:14:08

a Gia of an Aussie right now he's

1:14:10

kind of like my actual answer okay

1:14:13

and I'm surprised Rob didn't say it

1:14:16

Bobby K Robert

1:14:19

kibbitz kibbitz but yeah

1:14:21

you know I

1:14:23

mean the car

1:14:26

accident is why he's not championship like he

1:14:28

was good like you know apparently the Ferrari

1:14:30

deal was basically inked he was awful it

1:14:32

was gonna happen and

1:14:35

that that damned rally race

1:14:38

that accident but yeah like

1:14:40

that's a good pull yeah

1:14:42

I think hands down the modern era the great

1:14:45

what if is if

1:14:47

Robert kibbitz doesn't have that accident does

1:14:49

he end up being like the

1:14:52

defining talent of the late 2000s

1:14:55

into like the mid-teens I

1:14:58

think the decent chance he would have like him

1:15:01

and like man we saw a bit

1:15:03

that bronze documentary him and said battle getting their

1:15:05

wires crossed out yeah imagine

1:15:08

then there for that entire era right yeah

1:15:12

I think to Mike's question though

1:15:14

we don't I honest

1:15:16

I think the way we all talk about F1

1:15:19

is like I think obviously

1:15:21

when you look at it over years

1:15:23

like Max or Lewis or Schumacher like

1:15:26

there's an obvious like greatness that's there in their

1:15:28

consistency and mentality and able to like dial it

1:15:30

in and all that sort of stuff but

1:15:32

like I don't think I you

1:15:35

know like anything in life

1:15:37

there's a certain amount of luck or privilege

1:15:39

or right timer where whatever was that contributed

1:15:41

to it so I don't look at like

1:15:44

I don't necessarily look at other drivers who

1:15:46

won championships or almost won championships

1:15:48

and think that they're like infinitely

1:15:50

worse it just it feels like the baseball

1:15:52

thing where it's like the worst player in

1:15:55

MLB right is like a worst set of

1:15:57

thousands of players but they're still in

1:15:59

the top zero zero a 1% of best baseball

1:16:01

players in the world. So it's hard

1:16:03

to, to like compress it

1:16:05

that way. You know, are they different

1:16:08

from, you know, would I put Rosberg

1:16:10

or Massa or Barrichello or,

1:16:12

you know, whoever else, Button

1:16:15

even who won a championship, but was

1:16:17

very lucky. Would I put them in

1:16:19

the same realm as, as,

1:16:21

you know, Senna and Schumacher

1:16:23

and Hamilton and what's looking increasingly

1:16:25

like Max or Stappen? Probably not.

1:16:28

But you know, there's more

1:16:30

data there. You've had years and years and years. And I

1:16:32

don't think you have people fall through the cracks. Although Bobby

1:16:34

K is a really good call. I

1:16:37

don't know. I, I, I do think, uh,

1:16:40

I think people fall through the cracks all the time.

1:16:42

Like I think it is just things do not like,

1:16:44

I think Hulkenberg is kind of a quintessential example of

1:16:46

he was never in the right place at the right

1:16:49

time. And to an extent, you

1:16:51

know, I'd say like, well, is there something about

1:16:53

the guy that causes it to

1:16:56

go that way? Maybe, but

1:16:58

like you look at the teams that Hulkenberg drove for, they've

1:17:00

been a mystery about like, damn, why didn't the, the

1:17:02

winds come? Like he was, he was always in those teams

1:17:04

that were trying to break through into the next level. But

1:17:08

when he showed up on the scene, he was

1:17:10

a phenomenal talent and was like, you know, driving

1:17:13

beyond limits of the cars he was driving, which

1:17:16

made him a great pick and invaluable person

1:17:18

to pull for teams that needed someone to

1:17:20

drive beyond a car with like a lower

1:17:22

ceiling than they would otherwise want. Uh,

1:17:25

and so that's how career ends up getting wasted. You

1:17:27

end up like trying to justify yourself to a room

1:17:29

full of school children, uh, at a Microsoft store. You

1:17:32

know, this is, I think it is

1:17:35

once the guy starts having success and,

1:17:37

you know, becomes that guy

1:17:39

within team. They

1:17:41

don't permit challengers, uh,

1:17:44

you know, in the territory, the team doesn't want to

1:17:46

rock the boat. Nobody, you know, nobody's like, let's

1:17:49

let's let steel sharpen steel. Uh,

1:17:51

once you got a good thing going, it

1:17:53

moves into every protective mode, Daniel

1:17:56

Kibbe. Look,

1:17:59

man, he's, he's. Looking forward to Christmas gonna open up

1:18:01

another bottle of vodka Fucking

1:18:06

Christmas that virtual Christmas card to the fans.

1:18:08

I feel bad for the next one literally

1:18:10

every single time I see a Kelly

1:18:13

PK had a race like Jesus

1:18:15

six of Game of Thrones nonsense. Yeah, Drew you

1:18:18

want to take that this is this This is

1:18:20

the last email we could

1:18:22

be okay. Yeah. All right, Billy

1:18:24

writes. Hey gents. Love the pod I live

1:18:27

in Kansas City and have been an f1 fan since 2007 but

1:18:30

the recent popularity boom thanks to the perfect

1:18:32

intersection of the drive to survive

1:18:34

show and the 2021

1:18:37

season world drivers Championship

1:18:40

title has been great in bringing fresh

1:18:42

energy and that is no different for

1:18:44

Kansas City Well path light brewery in

1:18:46

the KC suburb of Shawnee has been

1:18:48

open since 2020 and shows every single

1:18:50

race live Whether it's 6 a.m. For

1:18:53

a European race or a middle of

1:18:55

the night for faraway races like Australia

1:18:57

Japan and Las Vegas at

1:19:00

the height of 2021 and then the most of the 2022

1:19:03

season the entire brewery was Absolutely packed

1:19:05

for every single race so much so

1:19:07

that a long line would form outside

1:19:09

the brewery an hour and a half

1:19:12

before each Race as people waited to

1:19:14

grab a choice table Not

1:19:16

the thing I wanted to draw attention to since

1:19:18

my friends and I usually play at the brewery

1:19:20

during races is the formula day Board game by

1:19:23

the way, that's spelled formula and then the initial

1:19:26

D okay, if you haven't heard

1:19:28

of it I don't blame you since it is

1:19:30

currently in his third edition and not exactly flying

1:19:32

off the shelves I won't bore you

1:19:34

with the minute details of the rules But I would say

1:19:37

that for a tabletop rendition It generally

1:19:39

picks up on a lot of the mental

1:19:41

aspects of taking on each track the

1:19:44

coolest part is that out of that

1:19:46

the out of print second edition had expansion

1:19:48

packs that contained f1 tracks used roughly between

1:19:50

1988 and 2004 So

1:19:54

you can race at all your favorite tracks. I will

1:19:56

include some pictures of my personal favorites It

1:19:59

is quite hard to compile all of these classic

1:20:01

printings, but as you would expect with as

1:20:04

strong an intersection of committed fans as F1

1:20:06

and board gamers, the online community has not

1:20:08

only kept up with current tracks, but also

1:20:10

made it so anyone can print off most

1:20:13

of the out of print tracks as well.

1:20:16

If you ever find yourselves in Kansas City, make

1:20:18

your way to the path light and find the

1:20:20

table with the board game version of whatever F1

1:20:22

track is racing that weekend. Damn, maybe

1:20:24

I want to go to Shaw. I've been to

1:20:26

Shawnee before. A

1:20:30

mutual friend of ours, Dan Rikers, had

1:20:33

me to his hometown of Lawrence,

1:20:35

Kansas. He's been on the show. He

1:20:37

has been on the show. He was

1:20:40

on the show. Yeah, we did a talent swap

1:20:42

where he watched the Nefun Race and I watched

1:20:44

Resting Mania. Oh no. God,

1:20:46

I forgot about that. Yeah, he had me

1:20:48

over for Thanksgiving one year and we hung

1:20:51

out and we hit up all the places,

1:20:53

man. O'Lakes, Lawrence, all

1:20:55

the good spots, Shawnee. Have y'all

1:20:57

played Formula Day? No, never. I

1:21:00

own a copy of it, but I have never played it. Is

1:21:03

it good? Surprisingly so.

1:21:05

It's really nifty. I think the one thing

1:21:07

I'll call you is that, yeah,

1:21:10

you choose a gear and the gear

1:21:13

determines how many, you roll a different number

1:21:15

side of dice, like a D20 for like

1:21:17

sixth gear. So

1:21:19

you could just go flying down the fucking track with that

1:21:21

and the first gear is where you get D4. But

1:21:26

the cool thing that they do is like your

1:21:29

car has mechanical reliability points that you

1:21:31

move a little thing to track, like

1:21:33

how much damage effectively you've done to

1:21:35

components. And so you

1:21:37

can do things like I'm going to over-cook

1:21:39

it into this corner and I'm

1:21:41

going to need to dump too much speed and

1:21:43

I won't be able to just do that by

1:21:45

down-shifting one gear to get a

1:21:47

die roll that's going to be safe for

1:21:49

me. So I am just going to down-shift

1:21:51

like two gears and that's going

1:21:53

to inflict a point of damage on my gearbox

1:21:56

because it's like you're skipping a gear and like

1:21:58

just beating the hell out of transmission. Now

1:22:00

you force yourself to slow down. Maybe still get

1:22:02

unlucky roll too much now. You're going too deep

1:22:04

into the corner Well now you can

1:22:06

take damage points on your brakes so I sort of

1:22:08

stop yourself before you like go into another car and

1:22:12

So like you do that too often your car falls

1:22:14

apart and so it's

1:22:16

like it ends up being a really

1:22:18

good race a really good board game about like Putting

1:22:21

a lap together and trying to be

1:22:23

smooth but using board

1:22:25

game mechanics and it's like

1:22:28

Kind of feels like racing. There's a picture over

1:22:31

here. It's there's one with like it's clearly Monaco

1:22:33

It's got a grass cast and that's the only

1:22:35

one I've raced There

1:22:40

you go, there you go, that's an appropriate one to end on a

1:22:42

board game Maybe a Christmas present you

1:22:45

could grab some the formula one fan

1:22:47

in your life Well,

1:22:49

thank you for all of the emails shift

1:22:52

f1 [email protected] or f1.cool slash

1:22:54

emails You can also

1:22:57

hit us up on the socials using the links in

1:22:59

the show notes That's

1:23:02

us Around the internet. Do

1:23:04

you want to take us around the world Danny?

1:23:06

Do you have around the world on kind of?

1:23:08

Okay, let's race around the way Yeah,

1:23:13

I will link to an auto sport article in

1:23:16

the show notes called

1:23:18

motorsport avenge event branch

1:23:20

branch to watch During

1:23:23

the winter break and how to

1:23:25

watch them. Oh cool So I'll

1:23:27

just shout some out here starting on December 8th the

1:23:29

24-hour series Their

1:23:32

next race is in Kuwait There's

1:23:35

a lot of a lot of golf stuff going on

1:23:37

here. It's golf 12 hours. I'm here. Yeah The

1:23:41

FIM super enduro world

1:23:43

championship a hybrid motorcycle

1:23:47

competition Meaning

1:23:49

combining supercross and enduro on

1:23:52

an indoor circuit Whoa.

1:23:55

Yeah, that's their next races

1:23:57

in Poland. So yeah better be

1:24:00

doors. We got

1:24:02

the stock car pro series in Brazil.

1:24:05

Whoa. The Dakar

1:24:08

World Rally Championship. That's

1:24:10

in Saudi Arabia this year kicking off January

1:24:13

5th. And

1:24:15

the World Rally Championship their next race is

1:24:17

in Monte Carlo in January

1:24:21

25th. I believe that's the start

1:24:23

of the season. Okay. Oh we've

1:24:25

also got the Asian Le Mans series in

1:24:27

Formula E of course. Round one Mexico City

1:24:29

E-Prix January 13th 2024. On

1:24:33

the streets. Gosh there's even more.

1:24:35

Super Sprint Motorsport New Zealand Championship.

1:24:38

Le Tokyo in Duropale.

1:24:41

NASCAR maybe you've heard of it.

1:24:43

Oh my god. February 4th. I

1:24:46

think I might camp out in Sonoma this year. Yeah

1:24:49

I think I might camp on the infield. Do

1:24:53

you have an RV? I got a little or we got an RV

1:24:55

a couple months back. We got a little bit. We're left in two

1:24:57

months with a trailer. 24. Oh boy. Oh boy.

1:25:00

If you want to go camping. I

1:25:02

wanted to yeah I want to live that Logan lucky

1:25:05

life. Was

1:25:07

that in Indianapolis was it? No

1:25:11

that was Charlottesville. Yeah we

1:25:13

were right. Yeah I was.

1:25:15

Yeah. All right well final thoughts.

1:25:18

Oh yeah speaking of things to

1:25:20

watch the Michael Fassbender Road to

1:25:22

Le Mans. Oh most recent thing

1:25:25

is out but in lieu of doing

1:25:27

a series this year they just went

1:25:29

ahead and did a 90-minute movie.

1:25:32

It is available on Porsche's YouTube

1:25:35

channel right now. It's called Michael

1:25:37

Fassbender colon Road to Le Mans

1:25:39

hyphen the film. So it's a

1:25:41

bit confusing because this is the. Feels like the

1:25:43

end. It 100% feels like the end. I've watched

1:25:48

this. I enjoyed it. I would say

1:25:50

the opening 30 minutes is them just

1:25:53

recapping the previous whatever four seasons of

1:25:55

the series. Maybe. No I

1:25:57

need 90 minutes of new content. No. And

1:26:00

then they show what happened this year

1:26:02

and everything else. And, you

1:26:04

know, I think they do a good job of

1:26:07

wrapping it up. Uh, I really, I

1:26:09

enjoyed watching this one as well. Do we need to do

1:26:11

this? Oh yeah. I don't think we

1:26:13

need to do this, do we? Maybe we've done whatever we

1:26:15

did all the other ones. Maybe, yeah, maybe that's the first

1:26:17

thing. I didn't check this box off. I need to check

1:26:19

it off. I'll watch it again.

1:26:21

I enjoyed watching it. It's a, yeah, maybe that's what

1:26:23

we do for January. January. Yeah. Okay. So everyone else

1:26:25

then that's your homework for the holiday

1:26:27

period is go check out the

1:26:29

free movie. What a

1:26:32

contrast with Gran Turismo. What

1:26:38

a pairing. What a pairing. Damn

1:26:40

you, Here's

1:26:43

Michael Fassbender. All

1:26:47

right. Final thoughts on the 2023 season, Danny O'Dwyer.

1:26:52

Um, yeah, everything

1:26:54

I've said, I guess rambled on already.

1:26:56

I enjoyed it. It

1:26:58

wasn't the most exciting year. Um,

1:27:02

it was interesting in lots of ways and

1:27:04

we did have some exciting races, which was

1:27:06

fun. Um, I

1:27:08

think for everyone's sake, I would love if

1:27:10

the gap is closed to red bowl, um,

1:27:13

and next year, just to, to, I

1:27:15

think, I think everyone looks better if

1:27:17

there's more competition there. Um,

1:27:20

uh, and yeah,

1:27:22

for the sake of the sport, I feel a little

1:27:24

bit too, kind of get away with one of them,

1:27:26

maybe, or maybe two of them. But next

1:27:29

year, if it ends up being that way

1:27:31

again, I think we're might be in trouble.

1:27:33

So, you know, I think, uh, yeah, fingers

1:27:35

crossed a bit more competitive at

1:27:37

the top or just, you

1:27:39

know, Red Bull just take one

1:27:41

for us, like just get Ricardo in that seat,

1:27:43

just spice it up. Just let you

1:27:46

know what I mean? Like if checkers not going to

1:27:48

fight for fight max, then get someone else in there

1:27:50

and, and, you know, help us out.

1:27:52

Um, but yeah, um, you know, I'll enjoy

1:27:54

the break. But I'll, I'll be craving some

1:27:57

circuit action, uh, come January. All

1:28:00

right, final thoughts, Rob? The

1:28:04

time has come for any team

1:28:06

that's serious to take the fight to Red

1:28:09

Ball. You're not gonna beat Adrian Newey at

1:28:12

building a better arrow package under this role

1:28:14

system. You

1:28:16

need a nitrous system. So

1:28:20

who's gonna have the will to try

1:28:22

to slip that past the scrutiny? Maybe

1:28:25

Andretti would. Yeah,

1:28:27

hey, don't look under that plank.

1:28:32

You don't need to know what's going on under there. Yeah,

1:28:36

engineering director at Andretti Vin

1:28:38

Diesel. Exactly, it's a

1:28:40

family, you know. Well,

1:28:43

thank you everyone for joining our family

1:28:46

over this season, all our

1:28:48

listeners, all of our patrons. We

1:28:51

could not do this show without you. If

1:28:53

you would like to support the show and

1:28:55

get access to all of our bonus episodes,

1:28:57

the ad free version of the podcast and

1:28:59

the official Shift F1 Discord, tons of stuff

1:29:01

probably going on over the winter break, certainly

1:29:03

in Simland. Check that out.

1:29:06

Please do so over at patreon.com/Shift F1.

1:29:10

Have a good race weekend, everyone.

1:29:12

We will see you all next

1:29:14

time. Oh, next time. Pfft.

1:29:18

Meow. Meow.

1:29:57

Meow. you