Verstappen, Leclerc, Ferrari discussed on The Autosport Podcast

Automatic TRANSCRIPT

I won't be as sick as charla Claire is feeling this evening. We're going to get into all of the events of today and ask some pretty important questions. And play a few what ifs as well. Join on the podcast today by Alex kalanos, Jess mcfadyen and Hayden Cobb, right? Let's kick off then Alex I'll come straight to you Verstappen made it look easy and I know that because after he took the lead, I counted four times we saw him on TV one time he had a pit stop and they filmed him crossing the line and you know that's a race when someone has just got it in the bag and the TV coverage is not interested. That's my official way of measuring how good someone's race was clearly Verstappen as soon as leclerc had retired as soon as he took Perez. It was done and dusted, right? He made that look so easy. In fact, he was even talking on the radio about how slow he didn't want to drive. That was a pretty big masterclass today. Yeah, I think you're absolutely right there, Martin. That does sum up how dominant Verstappen was in the end. But I think the discussion about the lap time is more of a reflection of Red Bull and Verstappen. Well, more of the Red Bull was reminding Verstappen just exactly how wrong this race can go in the slightest moment, as we saw in 2021, the tyres exploding, you know, that's obviously always a concern when you've got walls are closed, they can be carbon fiber around and also a late race safety car really could have swung things. If, for example, the Red Bulls have just passed the pits and George Russell is able to stop when there's a big instrument at the end. He could have somehow voted into the lead. So I think those were the concerns, but in terms of as we saw out and outpace to the finish, no one was stopping Verstappen and it's interesting because it's quite a response to yesterday, obviously with Perez ending up ahead of him in qualifying leclerc beaten both of them. I think it's a reflection more of leclerc is just able to just he's just so sensationally fast. He makes what is a faster package in the Red Bull. Look, basically he makes the Ferrari package look better than it is. So I think the Red Bull is a much better package this season. It just sort of look Larry's ultimately making the difference. But Verstappen was second best, so to come back the way it did in the race tremendous Perez master of the tyres was made to look pretty ordinary. And again, that's just a reflection of how good Verstappen is. And it's an element of his game, because he's so good at so many other things, is a bit underrated. So Jess Red Bull now one two in the driver's championship. They're starting to run away with it. Well, as we saw, the Ferraris implode did put a tweet out that said yikes is this for the end of Ferrari's championship. Contention. But as lots of people on Twitter like to remind me were only a third of the way through the season and we were having those exact same conversations, but the other way around when Red Bull were having their reliability issues earlier in the season. So it's not looking great. They've not had a great run of races for and I think the key difference here is it's not all about reliability. It has been about making bad strategy calls and throwing away points where you would hope that on days like today where you are a victim of attrition, then you can kind of back it up because you've been perfect the rest of the time. But Ferrari haven't, whereas Red Bull, where the points of mattered have been able to be consistent. So I think that's going to be the worry for Ferrari is that if they've clearly do have a reliability problem because four of the cars that DNF today were Ferrari powered. It's definitely of a concern. And they're going to be left going straight into Canada, so no time to even really think about it. Straight into Canada, which is an awful journey, really, to go from back to Canada, is pretty hardcore. But yeah, there's going to be a lot of question marks. And as we know, as we saw last season, a strong Verstappen is extremely hard to reel back in and it took Mercedes and Lewis Hamilton last season to find absolutely everything that they possibly could to reign him back in and have it finish as close as we did last season not to bring last season back up and give everybody triggered members. Can I just make a very quick point about last season? Because it kept annoying me. I kept seeing this on the TV coverage and all over the Internet as well. People going, oh, Hamilton's mistake at back, he cost him the world title. It cost him the win, guaranteed, did not cost him the world title because he had the world title one before the saga at the end. If that had been done as it always had been before, he still probably wins the world title. But anyway, a minor, a minor gripe for your journey. It's a good show. Do you feel better for that now, Alex? I'm just really annoying because it's just like, it's not right. It's like, yeah, of course it would have helped, but even in spite of that error, he still put himself in a position to win without the rules just being made up in a completely new way. There we go. If this is going to be the continuation of Ferrari form, then I really hope we're not just going to have a Red Bull run away with it because we all want more than that, right? We want to see Ferrari back up there competing for titles. And if we get to halfway point and it's not looking likely. I mean, I hate the fact that we're even having this conversation a third of the way through. So let's hope not. Let's hope let's be optimists. Let's hope that it's going to be a resurgence. I think Alex thinks it's not okay, great. I'll pass over to you. Yeah, sorry to be, again, as usual, the voice of doom and gloom. But the problem is these Red Bulls are so good. Like, look at what happened to them after Bahrain and Melbourne when their thoughts were that old white Ferrari is going to run away, but now how can leclerc lose a 40 odd point leader whatever he had, right? The problem is, is Red Bull have made that car better at every stage. And Ferrari, while it definitely did improve things in Spain, things just aren't going right, like the engine problems that's happening science had a separate hydraulic issue, go wrong today. And it's just a little bit. You just get the sense. You know, I'm not saying this is definitely going to play out, but you just get a sense with teams that Ferrari is still not quite the finished project. Look at the Jack problem, the Hitler today when he came in on the virtual safety car. And whereas Red Bull, they just, it's just when the momentum is with them, the fact that they have improved that car, which was already probably still at least not very close with Ferrari, the standout car coming out of testing. They've made it, they've made it better. Whereas Ferrari things just keep seeming to be going wrong. They can turn that around. It's just they haven't been able to prove that they can do it yet. Well, it's a good time to bring Hayden in to talk about you and your team auto sport dot com..

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