A new story from The Autosport Podcast

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Your life. You can find a piece as classic as she is. Right now, get up to 50% off Mother's Day gifts at blue Nile dot com, blue Nile dot com. I welcome back to the podcast. So yeah, the big standout drive JBL for Kevin Magnussen in-house. Great first bank a lot. Did it on used soft, I think, as well. And the hassle be really happy. Let's be let's be honest, the outright pace of that has is not going to keep them in that position. But a starting fourth, look, that is just a brilliant feel good story for them to sleep on overnight on Saturday into Sunday. But what can Hass realistically do? Can they target a top ten? What do you think? I think they're very confident about actually, and they've come into the weekend with a brand new floor. The performance over the practice sessions has been really, really good. There was a point in Q two where both Magnussen and hulkenberg were ready to progress in Q three. Unfortunately, it didn't quite work out like that. Hulkenberg just kind of missed the boats by the end of that session, but Magnussen got himself in. He's looked super impressive all weekend and again as we talk about getting something on the board just in case something bad happens, Magnussen executed that perfectly. And it has sort of shades of Brazil last year of being in the right place at the right time and completely making the most of it. Back to some did admit that maybe he did get a little bit lucky with regards to getting P four and I think most people would probably agree. But yeah, Hass has been really, really strong this weekend. It's home race. And it's great to see. I think that there are definitely a prospect for the top ten because Mercedes looks like it's struggled in qualifying, which I'm sure get into. McLaren, I think we are probably expecting to do better with regards to their new updates, but again, struggles in qualifying and to break out Q one. So you're going to have that sort of lower points battle between maybe the alpines and the houses and maybe a few cars that are a little bit resurgent battery Bottas as well in the Alfa Romeo was impressive. So we've got a good battle, I think, between some of these cars and there could be some big points on offer because there's the propensity to make mistakes. And we've seen that throughout the weekend so far. And so if Magnuson and hulkenberg two very dependable drivers can do their jobs and just keep the car in one piece and do what they need to do, then big rewards could really be on offer. Nico hulkenberg's looked properly quick at times this weekend. As well. So McLaren, you mentioned them, Lando Norris 16th, Oscar piastre, 19th, where are the alpines? Oh look, Pierre gasly in 5th and Esteban ocon in 8th I wonder. I'll scoop your street is feeling. I'm sure fine. It's a long-term project, et cetera, et cetera, all those usual things that we hear from Formula One teams. They have bought back Gilles de Ferrand, the very famous name in racing work with McLaren before, but we get that news coming out of McLaren over this weekend that he will join them for at least one year to support Andreas Stella in the team, but they need, well, McLaren need something to analyze where it's going wrong. So yeah, the alpines did pretty well, as you say, Bottas in tenth also great for Alfa Romeo. So now that he's got that in Q three, that's every team has now appeared in Q three so far. This season, which I think is a nice stacked account of those that say F one 2023 is a little bit boring as the rules converge. AlphaTauri's a quick mention Nick de vries. Again, at times you've been doing all right. He just needs a clean weekend really negative in 15th and Yuki tsunoda in 17th, the two Williams chamber homeboy, Logan sergeant, less than 20 miles away from the track. He's where he was born, so probably fantastic to have friends and family there, but not a great result today, Alex Albon again. It's a great season. And 11th and hopefully can do something and hold his position as well as he can from there. Let's finish off with talking about the Mercedes then that's the I think that's the big story that is more longer term probably. Toto Wolff said this, it is the lack of comprehension of what is wrong that makes this car such a nasty piece of work. The car is not a good car. There are problems everywhere with the base performance of the car and the lack of understanding of the car. It is not acceptable. I mean, he's clearly venting there and in a calmer moment he might be a bit more pragmatic or management speak, but JBL Mercedes, where is it where is it going wrong in terms of is this just a Miami specific thing or are they really struggling to understand this car? Well, according to my colleagues who went to that Mercedes press conference, toto wolf wanted to originally say something a little bit stronger about the car, but he settled on a nasty piece of work. And it's getting to a point now where the team is no longer talking quite so much about, oh, we can make this car a little bit better and we just need to do this. So if we do this and we get this right, there just seems to be this sort of complicit agreement now that it's getting to a point where they're going to just say is irredeemable and there's everything that we throw at it. We just can't seem to get it to work. And when they came into the season, they were like, okay, right, we've managed to sort of sort out the bouncing in the car that was so prevalent last year. George Russell has now come out and said, well, we're having bouncing again this weekend. Balance has been really, really poor. And this comes after Russell and Hamilton were one two in FP one. And it seemed that when there was very limited grip, they seemed to be able to switch it on, but as the grip improved, they were going backwards. And they're not entirely sure why. And we heard Russell's radio over the course of the weekend. I think he mentioned it in FP two, and he mentioned it in FP three as well. When he was coming through turn two, the car was kind of jockeying and he felt like he was almost on three wheels because when you have a fast change of direction from one into two, when the car loads in a different direction, it doesn't seem to quite respond on the other side to the point that they need it to. So they're kind of really, really struggling to work with it. Russell did manage to make it into Q two Q three. And he did quite a decent job there. He was what P 6, which is a good return given the struggles they had, but Lewis Hamilton obviously missing out in Q two. You know, he loves coming to American races. He's the most successful Formula One driver at U.S. based events. And he's just

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