17 Burst results for "Alex Albon"
The Autosport Podcast
"alex albon" Discussed on The Autosport Podcast
"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
The Autosport Podcast
"alex albon" Discussed on The Autosport Podcast
"On a Friday. As is becoming a bit of a habit and we like that is the editor of auto sport dot com and that's Hayden car Hayden. Hello, I'm not too bad, thanks. How are you? Yeah, good, actually. Of course, we are both in the UK, so neither of us got a ticket to Miami boots. Yeah, I know. So it's light, so I'm guessing our listeners probably listening to this. Probably not on Friday night. Well, it's already Saturday as we are recording this. So free practice, then FP two and they take the fuel out and do some slightly quicker runs. We saw Max Verstappen leading the way with Carlos Sainz, a four tenths back actually. There was a big, a bit of a big gap and then Charles Leclerc, another tenth back followed by Sergio Pérez and Fernando Alonso in the Aston Martin still looking a bit quick in Miami. Lando Norris putting in a quick lap for McLaren. We'll talk about that because he did it an unusual time. Did it on the softs, but much earlier than everybody else and then Lois Hamilton in 7th Lance stroll 8th espanol and Alex albon. George Russell, not getting a mention until we get down to 15th. He had some trouble with the steering rack. It was a experimental part in free practice one which then had to be taken apart and put back together again and whilst Oscar piastre in the McLaren was looking rapid at some points was down in 6th, but let's get into it. So what did you make of practice today? Well, I guess it's worth saying, it was a normal. Non sprints, Friday. That's right. Very much a return to form. Yeah, going off the excitement and bar minus of the first sprint race a weekend of the season. Traditional FP one FP two for Friday. And yeah, yeah, return to return to the normal sort of Verstappen keen to get that quick early lap on the board and largely dominate dominate the sessions and obviously top the second session by a decent margin over the two Ferraris. And yeah, it is very much a teams could revert to their normal Friday practice run plans, getting those early laps in, few setup tweaks here and there, and then when you get into the meat of the second session, you do your soft tyre, run, and halfway through and then focus on the long runs. And despite a couple of red flags today, so there was one in first practice for hulkenberg crashing, and then yeah, as you mentioned earlier, the second one for leclerc crashing in FP two. All drivers by and large got a decent chunk of lap count up with them. So unlike Baku where they were going in with a lot of blind setups, they will have plenty of data to churn through tonight and into tomorrow's final practice session. And yeah, again, I think the pace, as you mentioned there, sort of the pecking order largely reflects what we've seen over the first four rounds so far this season going into the 5th round of Red Bull at the front, Verstappen, certainly this circuit seems to be suiting a lot more than Baku. He has openly admit as well that Baku is now not his favorite circuit, so it seems to be of a weak one for him and I think yeah, he's feeling a bit more comfortable in Miami having won the inaugural Miami Grand Prix last year. And yeah Ferrari encouraging that, again, once again, sort of second and third running a new floor and diffuser, which everyone's been very keen to keep an eye on and we think leclerc avoids damaging it in his crash in FP two, but we'll wait for the full diagnosis on that one. Yeah, big drama. Was it turned 7 or turn 8? He lost the cut of the rear of the car in turn 7. Slammed on the brakes to not spin and threaten the wall with his diffuser and that just meant he went headlong into the barrier reck in the front wing and the front right of the car. But yeah, at least from our vantage point it looked like the most important parts were all safe and not too badly damaged. And that was certainly the impression that you got from leclerc's radio message as well to his team. He was like, oh, it's all okay. Don't worry. So they should be all right for tomorrow. Yeah, I think Michael Schumacher did this quite famously once when they were short of parts and maybe it was going into Sandoval somewhere, but yeah. I can't remember which year, but that does ring a bell yet. Famous case of not even going to, he knew that they were short on pass at the rear of the car, so I'm not even going to turn, I'm going to go headlong in. We've got we've got front wings. We've got suspension parts. Well that's interesting. So of course we've gone straight from Baku to Miami so very little can in terms of development get done between those two races. But I guess things could have been shipped or there weren't ready for Baku or made their way to Miami. Anything making the news pages of auto sport dot com this week in terms of any technical upgrades that we need to worry about, or is it much the same as a week ago? Well, that's right. You got it. Yeah, spot on. The majority of teams haven't brought a great deal because of the tight turnaround between two races. But Ferrari always sort of said that at Miami there'd be delivering their first bigger upgrades and indeed that's been the case with the new floor and diffuser on the car, particularly looking at they know that they've got the single lap pace in the car as we saw with the clerk getting poles in Baku, but really looking for that sort of race pace and that tyre life management and trying to basically put Red Bull under a bit of pressure, really. And yes, it's early days and obviously the crash wouldn't have helped massively on their data front. But it looks a fairly relatively positive step forward. So we're certainly keeping on that overnight and see what see what they make of it come the end of the Grand Prix on Sunday. Now, in free
The Autosport Podcast
"alex albon" Discussed on The Autosport Podcast
"Going to be able to get there this season. It seems a bit of a stretch, but we'll see what they can do in the next couple of races. But that whole train of cars at that point and it was a bit of a slog in the middle of the Grand Prix. It wasn't one for the ages. It was a little bit dull at times. Like, I like this race because it's a street circuit. There's always overtaking, even if it's a little artificial with that 2.2 kilometer straight and they took a hundred meters off the DRS and maybe split the difference and put 50 back on next year, but I kind of felt underwhelmed by the whole event today. Ben, how did you because that train of cars that really are faster than the ones they're following? Norwich just couldn't get past for so long. I mean, Yuki tsunoda got up to tenth, so there's some feel good stories about today. That point for Yuki is a really feel good story for AlphaTauri, especially with Nick de vries having a terrible weekend. But how are you feeling Ben up about the Grand Prix in general today? Yeah, I think that's probably why my answer to the McLaren question is I don't really know because I think their pace as well as a couple of other teams was masked by how difficult overtaking was in these DRS trains. I wore McLaren and Lando Norris in particular quicker than what they were able to show quite possibly. Same goes for same goes for Lewis Hamilton, I would have been really interested to see Hamilton's pace versus Leclair and Alonso. I don't know if he'd have been up there or not if he was able to clear Carlos signs, but because overtaking was so difficult to come by, I think really the safety car was what destroyed today's race because ultimately we got into a position where it was a tire stalemate. Not everyone was on the same compound that was incredibly durable and the fact that Esteban ocon, for example, was on them from the start, didn't seem to matter whatsoever in terms of others being able to get by. Everyone on that hard tyre. Strategy is a lot of fun. Strategy generally causes races to become far greater than what they were today. And ultimately, when you bring three compounds to attract the first of which being the soft tyre that would have been good for about three laps, the medium tyre that was good for barely the sprint race, which was a third of the Grand Prix, and then you've got this hard tyre that can go the full distance if you're in an LP. So if you've got one tire that's so favorably better than the other two and everyone defaults to that thanks to an early race safety car, it's difficult for it just decreases variables. It just removes one of the variables that can create an interesting Grand Prix. And from that point onwards, if it seems to be difficult to follow, everyone on the same tyres, it's hard to expect there to be much more entertainment than what we actually got. That's actually a really good point. I had a thought about that because of the safety car, everyone, everyone strategy was 11 laps on the medium. Everyone goes to the hards, like there was no contrast. I hadn't yet. Now that you say that, I knew that I hadn't put two and two together. Apart from Russell getting the fastest lap point and put in a set of softs on at the end, that was the way everybody did their race apart from, like you say, the ocon's of let's do 50 laps. With the tires we started on, right, when we come back, we will talk about the weekend formats. And what we might change about it, stick around. Okay, just to finish off the bottom of the order Oscar piastre mentioned in 11th, Alex Albon, at times, having a really good season. And not in the points today in 12th, but I think on a different day, could have scraped in actually. Alex Albon and the Williams 12th, Kevin Magnussen 13th Pierre gasly and Esteban ocon 14th and 15th really, really bad weekend for Alpine. They will want to forget this. Move on to Miami, just issue after issue and not great Logan sergeant. Again, once I forget that set out a whole race in 16th, Nico hulkenberg in the house in 17th and Valtteri Bottas, who got hit twice. Double bubble for him. Well done Valtteri on the first stint. First lap may even maybe and down in 18th non finisher. Joe with some temperature issues towards the end and Nick de Reese who bend it. Let's talk about this weekend's format. I was less than complimentary. When they announced at midweek, I don't like the idea of qualifying on a Friday and I probably just sound like a stuck in the mud. Oh, I like things the way they've always been. But it just seems odd and then right, so that's it qualifying on a Friday and then right forget about that because Saturday stand alone and then sort of Sunday rolls around. You're like, hang on, when did we quantify? It seems a long time ago, but maybe it's my goldfish attention span. Matt, what did you make of the format? And if you would change anything, what would it be? Yeah, it was decent. I'm probably saying this from a slightly bars point of view because I don't want to lose every single weekend of the year to Formula One, but I don't want it to be become 23 sprint races. I think you have a smaller pool. It was good. I think you need to wait for a slightly larger sample size because let's be honest, the reason we're doing sprint races and the reason we've got this qualifying session and the reason we'll have 6 to ten events after three in the first couple of years is TV audiences. So in order to optimize the current setup, you need to work out numbers and that is primarily does a Saturday or Friday qualifying session drawing more numbers. And I think then you swap the, you swap the role of those two sessions accordingly. So whether the Friday night becomes sprint qualifying and Saturday morning becomes Grand Prix qualifying and then like you said, it doesn't really solve your problem Martin because then you have the Friday qualified, which could forget about until Sunday or then you get Saturday morning Grand Prix qualifying, which then immediately irrelevant to the session that follows directly after. So those things need to be ironed out. The immediate changes need to be can not have Lando Norris or any driver, potentially risking a wet qualifying lap just to beat someone else and you can't have it where drivers are unable to run because they don't have a fresh set of the appropriate tires. So those things need to
The Autosport Podcast
"alex albon" Discussed on The Autosport Podcast
"Action today. Phillip, sometimes Phil, we do send you to go stand in the paddock, but that never involves standing in the way of Formula One cars. We saw at the end, aachen hadn't taken his mandatory at least one pit stop. So we know he was coming in and yet somehow the FIA opened the gates, pit lane full of photographers who of course looking up at the podium to get there, their shot, their angles or that kind of stuff. They're not going to be looking behind them at a car coming towards them on the pit lane speed limiter. What on earth did you make of what we saw today when the pit lane was full of people and the races going on? Yeah, well, first of all, I'm grateful that you're not literally sending me into the firing line. We wouldn't do that. You'd break more than a toe and people almost did. That was very, very close. It was the onboard made it look pretty dramatic. It is a normal procedure to prepare the top three plugs for a area with barriers and photographers will be that cubing wanting to have that best position to get their snap after that. The team members will be piling in. So you need some time to prepare that area, but there was a bit of a perfect storm with drivers pitting at the very last time, which is not very common. Timing wise I went a bit wrong there. So they all have to look at the margins to who's on track when are we giving the signal for the staff to stop preparing that area? Because it was just a little bit too early to sign. And you can see from many lamps before that you knew O'Connor and hillberg were going to very late because they would hoping for a red flag. So you knew this was going to happen, really. When I saw the news afterwards that the FIA were going to investigate themselves, this is a bit like, this is a bit like asking my 5 year old son if he wants ice cream. Like I know the answer. And the answer is going to be the FIA saying, well, we did nothing wrong. It's like tractors on the track at Suzuka. What you want to what you want to hear, what I want to hear from the FIA when stuff like this happens, and we love motor racing. We don't want to see fans, Marshals, working people ever in danger. What you want to hear is this was wrong. Today was far too close. We will issue a report Tuesday Wednesday, let the heat die down. It's fine. I'm not asking for heads to roll, but instead you get this kind of, well, you know, it's okay, everything's fine. Matt, what's happened afterwards? So we've got any results of this inquiry into themselves. A tiny bit of credit where it's due is that the language the FIA issue with their decision has been strong now acknowledge their fortunate, there was no serious accident and some very serious injuries, I think something along those lines of wording. So they admit the nature could have been pretty pretty horrifying if it had played out in slightly different circumstances. But, you know, they've also tried to draw a clarification between the stewards and the FIA to see that there is some independent governance and it's not just like basically going here, do yourself assessment form, didn't you do it but you know, we're going to find you 5 grand so you can pay for your own Christmas party. None of that sort of thing. But the frustration and they have as well said there will be immediate changes in time for the next race in Miami, so change the protocol. The problem with that is that the FIA already this season have had a few incidents of having to look to precedent whether it is with overturning the Alonzo penalty in Saudi Arabia or not doing that with science penalties. We had a very similar near miss with Alex Albon in Australia 2022 and I've been to check the list of FIA documents. There was no investigation, no decision, no ruling, no change of the rules in response to that. So there's rewarding and you've done nothing about it. My problem is and I can go on a slight rant here and conflate several different things, but if you remember back to the FIA prize giving you get MBS or FIA president Mohammed bin Salman going up on Saturday and going, ah, well you're all wrong. You've misinterpreted the rules about how the points are awarded to Max Verstappen in Japan to decide the title. This is a nonsense. This is on you. Well now we've got it the other way around where that was sort of aimed at sky, the biggest broadcaster they were fluffing up their interpretation of points on that day, which loads of us were. Well, credit where it's due, sky were all over there. They saw that this was going to unfold. They were way, way ahead of the curve. So if the broadcaster has seen it coming sky should as well. It's like the Alonso a penalty as well, where you mean the FIA. So skyscraper, but the FIA should have seen it. Yeah, absolutely. They should have seen what was coming. And it's like the Alonzo penalty as well in Saudi Arabia where the team representative has a thorough understanding of the rule book. So you can overturn the incorrectly applied penalty. Well, it's fair to think that the rule maker should have a fair understanding of the rules as well, which they haven't in this case and I know the FAA will point to what is someone in charge of
The Autosport Podcast
"alex albon" Discussed on The Autosport Podcast
"Well Sergio Pérez won formula ones Azerbaijan Grand Prix sprint race event this afternoon. Overtaking pulsar to Charles Leclerc finishing with almost a 5 second lead Yuki tsunoda caused a safety car period on the opening lap after hitting the wall and the safety car was a day deployed to clear the debris. Now leclerc did lead the restart but Perez passed him arm at 2.2 kilometers straight to take the lead, Max Verstappen, though, couldn't do the same and came home. Third, after a first lap skirmish with George Russell, he finished fourth by the way. The second Ferrari Carlos Sainz was 5th flow home by Fernando Alonso. Lewis Hamilton Lance stroll Alex Albon and Oscar piastre so let's get the verdict on what Saturday's mini pre was like from someone who is the Jack boxhall leg in his new role in 2023 and is on site to the Baku circuit JK doing. Thanks for joining us. Not too bad, thank you. It's been very kind of formula E almost being inner city and being able to walk to the track. It's a little bit of a novelty in that regard for a Formula One race. So I've quite enjoyed that I've quite enjoyed it relatively easy to get to. And you know the racing around here is always breezed spectacular. So I'm looking forward to seeing a big one tomorrow. So Saturday is almost this stand-alone day, which is why I kind of half jokingly called it the mini pre because it's qualifying in the morning, which has no bearing on Sunday because that was all done and dusted on Friday afternoon. And then we have that 17 lap, hundred kilometer or so event on a Saturday afternoon, which yes points are scored, but no doesn't seem as consequential any more compared to the old format, but clearly we saw the action today. The drivers were going for it. So let me just talk about our listeners the results first of all. Let's skip back a little bit to this morning. And qualifying or sprint shoot out as they want us to call it. But then they call it sq so sprint qualifying. So let's use the qualifying word. How different was that to regular qualifying? So different time of the day, so hardcore Formula One fans I've seen online enjoying it because track temps were different, different set of circumstances. But for the average fan, was it that much different to what we're just seeing the day before? What was your verdict on this morning? You know, I think it was actually, and I think it was partly perversely because it was much smaller time frame. I think we actually got more running out of it because people treated it like a wet session. You had all of these drivers try and different things. Obviously, they're locked into a certain tire. But they were trying different things. And then it kind of converged upon just staying out there and to keeping it going and go on a high fuel run and just pound around until eventually you've got the best of the track and so I think it was very different compared to usual qualifying where you do a lap on soft tyres, you pull back in, assess your data and then you go again. This one sort of had a very different face to it. And then the downside of Saturday competitive Saturday action in the morning with Logan Sargent and the Williams and that crash and that kind of scuppers there weekend a little bit. So he didn't take part this afternoon, but then we get into the sprints or the sprint race. I'm still not quite sure what we meant to call it. What is your verdict on that? Because I enjoyed it. And I've come in for some stick. I said on the video earlier this week on our YouTube channel and yesterday's podcast, I'm not a fan of this weekend format, but I think what I got wrong was I was trying to explain, I'm not a fan of changing it so late. People don't hang on every word of auto sport dot com. As much as we wish, we wish they would. But, you know, I just think it was so late in the day it felt rushed, it felt, it just felt like kind of the making it up as they go along. But of course, they weren't. That was my criticism really of the weekend. Actually, when it got to it, yes, we got more competitive track action. Yes, I was still hooked. Yes, I still watched it, and so maybe I have to eat a little bit of humble pie, but what was your take watching it there Azerbaijan? From the perspective of the first lap, it was very, very exciting. I do think that there is a little bit of drivers holding back and they are trying to put themselves in the best shop window for where most of the points are scored tomorrow. But that didn't stop George Russell from giving it a very good go against Max Verstappen. They came to blows and they disagreed quite publicly. It wasn't the most spectacular sprint race. I don't think we've ever seen. I think Brazil has been fantastic for that in previous. But I think it has its merits. And I think that we probably do need to see a little bit more of how sprint qualifying and actual qualifying together work in unison because we've got sample size of one and that's probably not enough. It was sort of pretty one way. I think we expected a Red Bull to get past the cloud at the start and that happened and it was Perez. Verstappen's damage with Russell probably hindered him from doing the same. You could change the format and you can change the lead in and the preamble, but at the end of the day, we've got the same result really. So, you know, I think it's not, it's definitely not a band aid, I think we've definitely seen that today. But I do, again, I do think it has its merits, and I think that there are issues that have been thrown up by this weekend, such as the sacrificing tyres for qualifying. So you can't use them in sprint qualifying three as Lando Norris went through. And bizarrely enough, he was because there's a loophole in the regulations where he could have theoretically done a qualifying lap on wet tires. And McLaren had put him on wet tyres ready to go just in case something happened. And he was able to maybe qualify 9th or something. So there are loopholes and there are regulations that have been thrown up by this. It's got its own place. It just needs to be a little bit clearer where that is. Let's talk a little bit about that clash between Max Verstappen and George Russell when George got past Verstappen clearly frustrated and angry. It looked like a 50 50 to me. George Russell had much less to lose, both today and over the course of the season as well. I must admit that was probably the highlight of the sprint for me in terms of there was some interesting action in the midfield pack. There was some sort of decent battles. A lot of it had very little consequence, but that for me was the highlight was the guy looking, oh, what's going to happen here? And then the safety car kind of scuppered any battle of Verstappen getting passed under racing conditions. I did think Verstappen had his Wendy pants on today, and also I think if I, you know, if I was Red Bull's PR, but if I was Red Bull's PR, I'd say, look, you are going to win every race in 2023. Your car is a beast. Adrian newey is next level. Max Verstappen is going to be world champion again this year. Maybe it's a little classless when the pit wall are talking to him and being like, yeah, nice, nice, nice pass max, and you didn't even hit anybody. Yeah, nice work. And I get it. It's fine, but if Red Bull fans ever wonder, why don't more people like Red Bull? And I think it's an interesting thing as well. Like a lot of British fans don't like Red Bull for whatever reason. They're based in Great Britain, British engineers. Like if you are applying the nationalistic card, lots of reasons for people in this country to like Red Bull. For some reason, they don't, and my Dutch friends find it quite confusing. But there's moments like that. When I'm like, come on, Red Bull. Rise a little bit and just take the high road a little, but Verstappen clearly frustrates one of the reasons we love watching Verstappen because he is just the ultimate talent and he does get in the flap sometimes.
The Autosport Podcast
"alex albon" Discussed on The Autosport Podcast
"In 6th behind Lewis Hamilton. Teammate Lance stroll struggling with DRS at times over the weekend, but lining up 9th on the grid. He also set an identical time to piastre over qualifying as well, which is just incredible to think that the speeds are so high. I think it was on the commentary. They said that like a thousand people behind each of these teams and they go and do it just down to the thousandth of a second. It's just crazy to think about. But I guess for McLaren, bringing these upgrades competing with the likes of Aston Martin with the likes of Mercedes, they were not far Lando Norris was not far a couple of hundreds, maybe three hundredths behind Fernando Alonso, the Aston Martin, which at times has looked so rapid in the season so far. I guess it sets up a really interesting midfield battle for Sunday. Keep having to check not to say tomorrow. But yeah, that midfield battle looks quite close, doesn't it? Massively, yeah, I think like you say, we've only really had one disrupted practice session and a regular qualifying session to judge the McLaren upgrades, but it looks like they've certainly made that step forward to join that very intriguing midfield fight. It's been fueled largely by the new front wing detail, new nose, but in particular what's caught the eye has been that a new floor and that's where we know that's where all the cars get the bulk of their down force and their performance and it's certainly striking on the eye. So I'm going to show you if you head over to the dot com you'll see the images in the explainer of exactly what they've been up to. But yes, if they can be in the mix against the likes of an LPs and alpha tauris that are showing to the for today, then I think when for a great one and that's what McLaren would have been hoping for from the start this season, obviously. But we've only had three races and they obviously got by their own admission in Australia and bagged some points to get their season started. So maybe all is not lost for McLaren this season. Well, you mentioned AlphaTauri there. Okay, stand out, performance today, obviously. You know, you've got to mention the polls. It's but if you do look further back, then stand out performance. Surely you keep has got a shout in being a standout performer today. Really impressive qualifying in 8th place today teammate though. I sort of heaven and hell for that team. Nick de vries, causing a red flag, really big impact back in Q one and was so frustrated over the radio to all the front end, the front corner, maybe both. I've not looked at the damage report, but at least one corner off that AlphaTauri. So work to do before, again, that's right. I do have some sympathy for Nick de vries. He's not been to, I don't think he's ever raced him back, in fact. Given his time outside of formula two and the Grand Prix scene when he's been informally. But he actually really impressed in first practice. I think he was sort of in the sonoda slot that you mentioned in 8th place in that session. So you sort of had high hopes for him. But as you say, yeah, he got the breaking all wrong for turn three and rather than backing out of it and sort of biding his time. He tried to make the corner in an unfortunate just send him straight into the wall. Quite a high speed and yeah, to the point where the front nose of the car got wedged within the tech probe barrier when they were pulling the car out, it was bringing the barrier with him, which is not ideal. So yeah, that was that was less sit good, so he starts the Grand Prix from last place. But as you say, the sonoda point is, obviously, great final app from him to put him out from the grid. The intriguing aspect that we're just finding out now as of today is because of the way the sprint race format tweaks have come in, it hasn't meant that they've been allowed able to adjust the tire allocations for how many they need not basically they need more softs this weekend because there's two qualifying. But they haven't got that. And so teams were going into this qualifying session because of the way the rules were set out, knowing that they could use their regular amount of soft tyres, but that will leave them short for sprint qualifying where it's mandatory to have soft tyres in Q two and Q three of that session tomorrow. What AlphaTauri have done because they got snowed into Q three. They could obviously just sat out the remainder of Q three banked tenth and gone yet, that's right. We'll keep this set of softs for hopefully if we make Q three in the sprint qualifying tomorrow. But what they did was go out, grab those two spots, use that set of soft tyres, but it means that if sonoda sort of repeats his qualifying performance tomorrow, he gets into Q three, he doesn't have any fresh soft tyres for that session. Which wasn't intended of the rules. They were meant to have all set ready to go for that. But they took the gamble. Will it pay off? You could say it could, and it should. But it will time will tell on that front because you still need to get the points on Saturday and Sunday as is the case this weekend. Couldn't get into that now. I'll just finish off Lance stroll I mentioned in 9th Oscar pie street in tenth. And so George Russell 11th, as I mentioned, espanol, Alex Albon, Valtteri Bottas, and Logan sergeant in 15th. All right, we will take a quick break, and when we come back, we will talk about the sprint shootout and the sprint, the new look to your Saturday stick around back in a second. Okay, let's talk about how the weekend has panned out. So middle of the week, the new weekend format gets ratified, there's a great video online, John noble did a great video. I was just asking him questions, not blind one, trumpet. I was decided the average. However, so Friday morning, free practice one, that's it, disrupted as well. So disrupted session. So they lost time this morning. Straight into qualifying on a Friday when many people are at work, and as somebody pointed out in the YouTube video comments when I was saying, hey, people are going to miss this.
The Autosport Podcast
"alex albon" Discussed on The Autosport Podcast
"On the era of the season, well, there is no midfield, is there, or there's no back markers, you just have the top gaggle of teams and then just the rest and it's going to turn to and fro, like Alfa Romeo, Alfa Romeo, which Bottas qualifying, when was his last sort of meritocratic Q one exit. It's just where the alpha was for that weekend. With Joe fairing no better, but if they come back in Bahrain with their upgrades and our slightly more competitive, it is just the sort of the cut and thrust of the midfield as opposed to them unlocking anything in particular. Joe, sadly, that's what that's what the drivers say. They're pleased, but they're not sort of now going right. We're going to get 6 and 7th every race. Honorable mention Oscar piastre, I mentioned McLaren already, but a home Grand Prix literally a home Grand Prix and getting points. That's a feel good story. Honorable mention for Joan knew getting 9th in the Alfa Romeo Yuki tsunoda in tenth. And who else stood out today that we want to talk about? Of course, Alex Albon. Alexander and the Williams was, was he on for a top ten finish today? Is that Williams half decent? But yeah, that was a heartbreaking thing. Okay, so it was an error. He took himself off with that crash, which put him out, which caused the red flag because there was some gravel on the track and but I still think that's kind of a heartbreaking heartbreaking moment there because it would be interesting to see what Alex Albon could have done today. His teammate didn't really do anything, did a contrary tyre strategy, I think, to most people that didn't we do too much. Anything gentlemen, we've missed. I thought I was, I thought it was a lot to talk about today, given it was a race where Red Bull dominated, and nearly everybody just ran the hard tyre for the whole afternoon. Could have been a snooze fest, but we ended up with plenty going on today. Anything else that I've missed that you'd like to give a mention to? We could have a bit more of a chat about the foot about the Hamilton Verstappen thing, because they did manage to go through a corner together without crashing into each other, which was to be Verstappen needs to, you know, with all due respect, be quiet about that sort of thing. I mean, you talked about the wheels being alongside. And actually, if you look at the rules, you know, there's obviously they've clarified the macaws got to be a sufficiently alongside and there's some guidelines as to what a sufficiently alongside is. But obviously it varies depending on the nature of the corner and the braking zone, et cetera, et cetera. There's no way you can argue how much it wasn't enough alongside. And I'm a little bit surprised actually in a way, the max just didn't open out the corner and letting go and get a better exit. Obviously, I guess it was a bit late because I think Lewis probably wasn't going in there expecting to do the overtake. I think because max is admitted, braked a little bit early. It was a little bit cautious. And Luis went, oh, and just pop down the inside. And then, yeah, it was, I think it was hard, but fair at that point, there was enough room for the Red Bull to survive. And I think had it been the other way around, I would suggest the color on the inside might have run a little bit wider on the corner. So I was glad there was no, yeah, max took a bit of a cheap shot at Lewis in the afterwards, but I'm pleased there wasn't a penalty. And similarly, I'm also pleased that Verstappen did hold on to his win because it would have been ridiculous, as we said, if he'd lost it after the late red flag shenanigans. It's just seems like new max to me or world champion max in that we talked a lot about how he's a different driver now he's got his championships under his belt in that he's not there's no desperation in any of max's driving. And he wouldn't. He, of course, would deny that there was any desperation. There, or maybe he wouldn't, I don't know. Maybe so desperate to finally get championship under his belt. But it just seems like a mature max where he can fluff the start a little bit and be a bit frustrated and still and just still know he's got the machinery that's easily going to win. Pretty much every track. Oh, I think that absolutely is a factor that he's, you know, it's not fighting for his first title. It's not the end of a dogged season. I suppose it was throughout wasn't it Monza and Saudi Arabia and whatever. I also, I also wonder whether there's one sort of underlying awareness that Mercedes aren't going to be taking this title fight down to the wire. Yes, they might come on song, but you know, this is, but for now, Red Bull in a different league. So whether he needs to throw it or lay it all down a line for the third corner of the third race of the season. And by extension of that, just an acceptance or just being aware that the 19 is mega, so once I've heat, it got some heat into my tyres, I'll be able to come back at them. So if it's not now, it will be a bit later on and he did obviously sail by round the outside of turn 8. So just whether those factors just knowing he's got a mega car that this isn't going to decide the title and that this is I've got my I've got my world champions ships now everyone knows how great I am. I'm going to just say three things where the hell ever acknowledge it in public. I really doubt it, but whether he acknowledged it himself in a private room, we don't know, but they must, they must subconsciously just have some sort of effect and I think that's potentially what we saw down with Hamilton and turn through. I'd agree with all that, except the one caveat is we won't truly know how much he's matured until he finds himself in a chat shit for Lewis Hamilton and Mercedes. Yes. We may never have that again. And so we may never get the answer, but I think that that's a question mark. Because I think there's still some subconscious needle or whatever you want to call it in there. But I am pleased that they managed to not crash into each other. As much as it would be nice to see Fernando Alonso winner race at some point. I'd rather it be on Mary not with Hamilton parks on top of each other somewhere. It's one of the questions I had earlier on in the podcast, which I didn't get to because we do have a time limit Kev. But I was going to ask you, will you will you be getting our picture editors to ever be putting a picture of Fernando Alonso on the front page of also sport magazine when he wins? I was going to ask the same for Lewis Hamilton as well because I think both of those cases are going to require either an incident or reliability on Red Bull's case. That's not particularly controversial thing to say. Let's see what Alonzo and ask and Aston can do on a tight downfall dominant track. Fernando can pull something out the bag or if the Red Bull have a weekend that they had to interlock us last year. They didn't quite get it working right. If Alonso gets to sniff, he'll take a win, won't he? I think we very much know that. So yeah, I'd be well, it would be Alonso at last, wouldn't it? It would have to be like ten years after his last one, that'd be amazing. That would be very cool. 20 more chances, haven't we? I'm sure a lot of those 20 will be match Verstappen, but it would be nice if there were a couple of other people in there as well. Well, here we go. We're going to a short break because of no China, but it seems weird to seasons just after now we stop again. JBL, when are you next on a plane and back in the paddock covering Formula One for us at
The Autosport Podcast
"alex albon" Discussed on The Autosport Podcast
"I think it was just under 6 tenths Russell was off the pace in Saudi and a full 6 tenths off in Bahrain. So only be sort of half a second off has happened. It really was quite a result for Mercedes. I think it's more to do with the fact that all teams are struggling to get heat into their tires here with first of all, the low temperatures for this time of year and also the very smooth track surface. We saw a hell of a lot of running and you qualify and they're all worried The Rain was going to return, but also it just takes that amount of time to get exactly happy with the tires, even Red Bull matched. First few laps in Q three looked all at sea was going slower than he was during Q two, but right at the end didn't even need the sort of normal couple of prep laps that the rested and Sadie's cars, two prep laps where they delivered their quickest laps. Verstappen able to come out there doing out map. Nearly as fast as lap and it absolutely blew everybody away. For what it's worth, I thought George Russell did really, really well to get into getting second to dip under the one minute 17 bracket alongside Verstappen. Lewis Hamilton, could he have beaten his teammate for the first time this season? It's very possible, obviously he was sort of held up a little bit by Nico hulkenberg's Hass going through the final corners ahead of the final laps and he did say, yeah, that did actually cost me a bit of tire temperature when it came to that critical turn one, turn to really, really challenging segment there. And if you are lucky enough to be in Melbourne to see one of these races, go and watch those turns because these cars are absolutely alive and right on the edge through it. So yeah, fantastic place to watch. But yeah, that's the top three after that came Fernando Alonso, Carlos Sainz, Lance stroll and Charles De Clair Ferrari getting their sort of timings wrong, getting things wrong when it came to sort of the running order on the track, like class or suggesting science. Up front ahead of him at least was sort of a bit of a distraction there, but there we go. Alex Albon, 8th for Williams, fantastic result for him. Let's give them a shout out and that really was a tremendous effort. And sort of Williams just speaking about how he was able to go with the flow to get the tyres working and to keep them the correct operating range absolutely critical for that and just the confidence of that gave him. They often talk it's interesting talking to Dave Robinson their head of vehicle dynamics after qualifying it is very much a dark heart getting these Pirelli tires to work Alban said that exactly that after qualifying and it's just a moving target constant, and some drivers can do it better than others, some teams can get on top of it better than others, but Alban and Williams absolutely in the grooves the well done to them. Pierre gasly in 9th place for Alpine. And like I said, hulkenberg, again in Q three for House, he's doing fantastic job in qualifying this year so fair play to him. Let's have a quick look ahead to the race tomorrow. I mean, obviously on paper, it looks like another Verstappen Red Bull walk over, but you've got to think. We're discussing this at dinner at the wonderful Babu G Indian restaurant on the corner of grey street and fitzroy street just that they're very edge of Albert park just by gate ten on the way in the leads you into the supercars paddock and then eventually to the bottom of the F one pit lane. Fantastic restaurant I urge you if you're ever in Melbourne at any time of year, I've been there twice now in the last two years and honestly the best curry I've ever had and it's absolutely fantastic. So go there. But anyway, AVL Phil and I were discussing what might happen in the race tomorrow. I promise we talked about other things because when you live when you're constantly working informally, one you do have to find some ways to escape. But no, we did find enough time to go over what we thought might happen in the race tomorrow. What happens? We hope will happen in the race tomorrow considering how easy it's been for Red Bull so far. And basically, if you're a Mercedes, you've got to be talking to your drivers and saying, whoever gets to that first corner in front has to have a go at Max Verstappen. And if they crash, they crash, if they get ahead, the other one can put pressure, you know, it's got they've got to go all out attack. They've got one opportunity, and if they don't take it there, the race is blown. And we know this is almost a lost season already from Mercedes have they got to change car concept and make such big changes. It's going to be very, very hard to catch up. With Perez out of the picture, they can really go to town on zapping here. There's going to be strategic options for everybody saying all three tires could potentially be an option, but the most likely way to do things the quickest way to do things is a one stopper start on the mediums, go to the hards if there's a safety car, the soft will come into play, but it's not a fantastic race tire and Dave Robertson was saying that the long running that was logged in FP three after FP two was washed out. The cars that did do long runs on the software experience in quite high tyre degradation and that would be a little bit less when it comes to the race because of how the drives are managing things like that rather than pushing on in practice, but yeah, don't expect the soft to be used too much to my. So strategic options for Mercedes, but surely their best option is to attack. Well, I hope you've enjoyed this travel diary of hope you appreciated me with on getting things wrong when it comes to how the timeline works and various bits and pieces. But yeah, another fantastic week in Melbourne, I do hope race day goes well. I do hope my flight home via Doha goes well my two flights I am via Doha go well on Monday night and I arrived back into London on Tuesday lunchtime. Anyway, enjoy the Australian Grand Prix on Sunday. Wherever you are in the world, whatever time it is, I'm off to bed now, and actually it's going to be a pretty unique experience for me in 20 23 in the tonight. The clocks go back here in Australia because of course it's the awesome there. So we get a lovely extra hour of sleep when I'm back in London in October, get to enjoy that as well in the UK. So yes, enjoy the Australian Grand Prix, 2023. Sports social podcast network.
Homo Sapiens
"alex albon" Discussed on Homo Sapiens
"It's really nice that what he was saying about bonding with your family, bonding with his dad, you know, like you want to it's a really nice thing. Sport is a lovely thing for families to bond over with, you know, if you like it and I don't think the LGBT people should feel excluded from that. We've also got two other lovely messages you and says. I can't remember when I started getting into F one, but I've definitely been a fan of it since I was a teenager. Well, you've got to listen to Christian's podcast than you and weirdly I don't really care about cars and no one else in my family is particularly a fan, but I was a bit of a teen, a bit of a geek with it. I used to keep my own records of race results, including grass showing points for each race finishing positions. You and your amazing. And Christian was nodding heavily here. Oh my God. Yeah. Christian is holding up charts of points. I mean, what is this? Is this to do with recent F one scores? I've got the gold scores. I could be called scores. I make little notes of each race and each result. I find that it helps as a broadcaster if I write stuff down, it sort of goes in a little bit, and it helps my brain sort of draw back to it in the past, so I'm a big advocate turning out. I'm exactly the same right stuff down about the sport. Yeah, absolutely. That's lovely. Eric also says that he grew up watching with his dad and kirsty says, I like F one, but not in the way I used to. I hate the fact that it's all a Middle East takeover, which means F one is in the Middle East a lot, am I right? Is that right? Yeah, I would describe it as a Middle East takeover, but there were Middle Eastern races, yes. Because this is something people might not know is like F one moves around the world. There's races all over the world, right? Yes, correct, yes. And then kirsty says the cars don't have so much power and there aren't and there aren't the characters of years gone by. No senators or James Hunt, James Hunt was the poster boy getting drunk at all the ladies and was a right character. Any characters out there in F one? So many characters. I would disagree with kirsty slightly, only because yes, of course, queer people like us would rather the sport. Didn't go to such an openly homophobic country, but as I've already mentioned on this podcast, it goes to Hungary in Europe where I've been on holiday, which has had its own problems. We've got our own problems with LGBTQ+ right in this country. It goes to America, which has gotten big problems. The sad reality of the situation is, if you think it's countries with human rights issues, you probably wouldn't go to very many countries and where would the bar be as to where you do and don't go. So it's tricky. And as I say it goes back to earlier and me having my vote arises broadened a little bit by saying, listen, is it more powerful to go to these countries with drivers showing rainbow flags with three races one messages? That's so and also, you know, there's not that many Middle Eastern races of the 24 races. There's not that many. So I would disagree slightly on that point. I would also disagree that the characters. And this is where the podcast that we do, the fast and the curious of course, we do talk about the races, of course, we do, but we thought that when we entered the F one podcast space this year, every Formula One podcast fundamentally in our view did the same thing. It was presented by three versions of me. Three F one geeks talking in great detail about F one was as my co presenter Betty is new to F one and learning as we go and our big thing is we bring the personality of the drivers out. We've just had an interview with a guy called Alex Albon, who's a British tie driver who talked to us about the fact his mom has replaced the kids who've left the family as they've grown older with cats and is effectively in his words become a bit of a stereotypical crazy cat lady and that has gives him a bad reputation. It was hilarious. We spoke to he also at the same point said that one of the other drivers who's got a sort of habit for topless photos, George Russell should get an only fans. We had Logan Sargent on who is an American guy who expressed his love of burgers, now listeners got in touch in their hundreds to find him a proper burger in the UK. There are so many characters in Formula One. I love it. And I don't think necessarily the media always brings those characters out. And I think it's easy to look back with rose tinted glasses and go, oh, there's no one like James Hunt who was a massive character, but we've also got someone like Daniel Ricciardo in and around the sport who's an Aussie guy who's so full of character, as I say, Alex Albon Pierre gasly. A lot of these guys do have real character. And I think if hopefully, if she listens to the podcast, our focus hear a little bit more of the personalities, the drivers, because I do think the drivers have more personality than people give them credit for. The other thing I would say is what was the previous gentleman's name because names I'm rubbish are. Let me at least get his name. Ewan? Ewan. And I think other people said it earlier. It's a brilliant thing for bonding with my dad. Yeah, David, yeah, because oh and Eric said that. I'm Derek. I'm exactly the same. Anthony, it was Anthony. We're not doing brilliant with our names, are we? But fine. Anthony, yeah, I mean, I'm not that bothered about that. I can barely hear you over the film my husband's watch. So we're lucky we're at this level. I have no interest in road cars and any of that doesn't bother me in the slightest. I'm not believe it or not, not a car person. I'd just like F one. And also in terms of watching with my dad, it was entirely my dad who got me into it. My dad had been a two wheel motor sport far more bikes really, but was watching F one, and that's what got me into it. So, you know, my younger brother bonds with my dad massively for their mutual love of rugby our mutual love of motor sport. It's a brilliant thing for me and my dad. So yeah, it's one of my, one of my, if not my favorite part of the sport is enjoying it with my dad, so yeah, absolutely. That's lovely. I always need to go to the NEC Birmingham to the car show with my dad. It was like not the sporty stuff. It was like, it was just cars. Yeah. We both loved cars when I was little. It was like, you'd go and look at the new Ford fiesta. See, I was the opposite. And people presume, again, Greg James, we did a podcast with Greg's a massive car person and started sending me a few messages on this car and that card. I'm like, I can appreciate it, but I'm not, my boyfriend knows far more about car cars than I do and has zero interest in Formula One, whereas I've got sort of zero interest in the new whatever supercar is, but just but love Formula One. It's weird, isn't it? There's no, this is one of Greg's big mantras. There's no right or wrong way of loving sports. You can be a casual fan. You can be an absolute geek with F one like me and making bloody charts. You know, whatever whatever works for you. Quite right. Well, do you know what Christian this has been absolute eye opener? It's been really lovely having you on the show. So I can not thank you enough for taking the time. And I'm so thrilled that podcast is going well and I'm so thrilled that you're providing a new kind of Anglo fleshy. A previously undisrupted space, I believe they would take. So if anyone has been turned round to F one, that's a motor car racing thing. Then you must download the fast and forgotten. And I should say we are very, very new F one fan friendly. And one of the things that's meant the most about doing the podcast to me so far is the amount of people with messages that I'd never watched F one before but stumbled upon this or I haven't watched it for ten years and stumbled across this and now we're back into it. So we are there to help with people who are totally new to it. Also, F one is great to watch while you're doing the ironing. That's all I'm missing. It is, yeah, yeah, it is. It's just really soothing peaceful. It's always on a Sunday. I mean, what more of an athlete could you hope for? So get it wherever you get your podcasts, Christian, you've been wonderful. Thank you so much. Thank you for having me. Many more viral moments for you. Bless you. Me too. I really appreciate inviting me on. Thanks so much, Chris. It's been a pleasure. Not at all. Don't forget to get in touch. Tell us all your thoughts about LGBTQ+ sports hello Emma saps podcast dot com at homo sapiens and Instagram and Facebook. Things like that. All right, everybody, thanks for listening. I've had fun Christians had to find my husband's been watching a very loud film. It's been great for everybody. Alrighty, bye now. At
The Autosport Podcast
"alex albon" Discussed on The Autosport Podcast
"It's probably a two part thing of the long term situation is probably a brand new car four 2024. And then do what they can with their current concept and they've talked about a new side pod design and a few other things that will be changed for imola, which is in mid May when they're sort of the first big upgrades everyone's expected to live will be coming. So yes, they are where they are. They've been very honest and open about they haven't met expectations within themselves. They thought if they could get on top of the poor person and I'm trying to unlock the performance they believe was there in last year's car and this is car that they could be, yeah, fighting for world championships, but they've got to where they are currently with this W 14 and did just whether it's the data, whether it's correlation, it's just not adding up and it has never added up to what they expected. So yeah, some pretty harsh and brutal on home truths and honesty has come from the team and I think they're preparing for a changing of concepts and changing ways because it's just not worked. Wow. Yeah, I wouldn't be surprised to see a B spec car. Sometime around Silverstone this year as they clearly have said, hey, you know, we tried it. We tried our best. But this is not the way, not the way to go. A team who did, I think, show well. If you look at the actual times, the progress made through the race, ignoring penalties and stuff like that. If you sift through the data, a team who had reason to be happy in Bahrain, you wouldn't think so, is Alpine two cars in the top 6 in free practice today. Any news coming through from them, they're going to bring some upgrades quite regularly. Any news on that, or is this a sign of the inherent place in the car? What do you think? Yeah, so nothing in terms of a significant upgrade for this weekend, which is by and large the case for most of the teams because it's so close to the opening race. There's bits and pieces, but nothing too too drastic. But you're right. I think the real pain maybe is showing up this time around. They had in no one certain times a bit of a shocker in Bahrain. Whereby gasly just didn't get qualifying, hooked up was out in Q one, back road to grid. Whereas ocon qualified well, but he had very much a race to forget picking up penalties like their sweeties. And therefore, he dropped out the points and eventually they retired the car, whereas gasoline fought his way up to the point, but gasly saying that speaking on Thursday, like you said, they had to look at the data, they looked to where the cars and the traces were going. They thought if they had a clean weekend in Bahrain, they could challenge Mercedes or give them give them a headache, which instantly puts them sort of, as we know, 6th, 7th place. Or maybe just behind them, which on reflection of where they are at the moment in Saudi, early days of course, is probably where we'd expect them to be going on going on the practice pace. So yeah, if they can have a clean weekend and extract the full potential of their car, which is pretty much what the team said at the end of the Bahrain Grand Prix of knowing like, right, this isn't really us. Then yeah, they probably will be the fourth or 5th quickest car on the grid. So yeah, let's wait and see, they've still got to get through qualifying in the race, but yeah, if they show their full potential, I think they'll be, they'll be fighting for the point, definitely. And finally, a quick word on Williams actually, I thought I'd pick them out to just talk to talk about rather. Alex Albon finishing just over a second off the pace of Max Verstappen today and Logan Sargent ahead of drivers like Oscar piastre, ahead of Valtteri Bottas. So William's not bringing up the rear today in free practice. Actually, with Saudi, it's a fast flowing track. They said their car could be good on some circuits this year. This should be one of them. Any news coming out of Williams and how this could be a good circuit for them. That's right, yeah. The circuit should suit their car characteristics. Albania was 14th nephew two, but he, his fastest lap was set on the mediums, whereas everyone else managed to get their fast lap down on the softs, which is a bit of an anomaly, so you could definitely give him a few tents in hand to move him up the order and that puts him just on the edge of the point where he was for Bahrain. And yeah, I think you have to think you're right. Again, if they have a clean weekend and qualify well, there's a chance that Alban in particular can be fighting for that sort of just outside and just the top ten is sort of where they would be aiming. It is a definite tough ask for rookie Logan sergeant. He has experienced around this track in F two, but obviously this is a different sort of challenge. He didn't he didn't do too badly. And granted his Bahrain debut in F one was, I think, the most people's expectations. I think he quitted himself very, very well. So yeah, give him a chance to see how he does. I'm always sort of keen to see how he does compared to the other two rookies for this year, which is piastre and de vries. They've all got varying experience, let's say, in terms of their junior careers and such. But given where their teams are, they're all they seem to be fairly well matched in terms of how the seasonal go. So keeping that sort of little battle between those three going. And he's acquitted himself, I think, very well. So yeah, give him a charge. It might be a bit more difficult for say sergeant to fight for the points and match albums performances. Over these first few rounds, but yeah, they've got the package to hopefully do something quite exciting this weekend. Absolutely. All right, well, thank you very much for your rundown of the Friday action once again. The big stories on auto sport dot com, which is where you should be heading to, if you are a subscriber to also support plus a reminder we have all our wonderful long reads and in depth articles on the plus section of the website as well. And it should be your first port of call for the
Analog(ue)
"alex albon" Discussed on Analog(ue)
"They are, in my opinion, in a better place than they were this time last year, but what they realized is this is the best place they can be and it ain't good enough so they come back to the drawing board. I don't know what that's going to mean. Mercedes are being really cagey about this. They're basically saying, and I love that they've been sort of open about it. This concept doesn't work. And so now we need to go back to the drawing board. And it's like, does that mean they're going to do anything this year? It's complicated to understand. Obviously, what they're missing is the error. They're aerodynamics are wrong, because look how good that Aston Martin is. Now that Aston Martin has a lot of Mercedes parts in it, and so my expectation is there probably if they can, if they had the ability and they have the money available, they will produce a body, which is closer to the Red Bull body. Because that's why that's what Aston did. That's why it's called the green ball, if you heard this before? No, I have not. Last year it was called people joking and calling the green ball. And there was a race where all of the Aston Martin mechanics were drinking the lime flavored Red Bull? Which was like a wink towards the idea that they knew people pulling it back. So they're all drinking the green Red Bull, which is just like hilarious, but like if you look at the Aston Martin and the Red Bull, they clearly took a lot of inspiration from the shape of the car. And I think that if you look at the Mercedes, the Mercedes is very different in its body shape. And it's the side pods, the parts that come out the side, which is the air intakes on them. And that's what people are suggesting is one of the big reasons as to why the rebel is slower. They went on a different concept and it's just not performed for them on track. For me, I would love them to be winning, but I don't care that they're not because it's tested my fandom. And anyone that thinks that I was just in it because they were women. Any performance. I loved it. Lewis had a fantastic race. I was so happy with his performance. It is such a great job. Considering what he had at hand. And I was like, I was happy with that. As a fan, I didn't expect any more than that. And I expect by the end of the year like last year, they'll win their win something, one of them will win something. Then I'm going to win the season. Maybe next year, you know what I mean? But here's what I like about this season. It's even more mixed up than last time, right? Totally. Williams look great. Yeah, what is happening? McLaren is a disaster. And Williams are confident too. I watched Alex Albon after the race and he was like, this wasn't supposed to be a good track for us, and we made it work. We have other tracks that we think will be better for our car. And we understand now a lot more about what we can get out of this car. And so that looks great. Niko. Look great. I was happy to see Nico back. He looked fantastic. Logan sergeant, man. I don't remember surprised him covered at all during the broadcast. He wasn't really because he wasn't much of a race, but like he came in 12 or something. And I was just like, buddy, you surprised me. And you say I have zero. I thought he was going to be like the next mazepin or whatever, right? Gosh, the reason for this. I don't know it was a driver, but here was my concern with Logan sergeant, right? Usually when these guys come up into F one, they're like, one F three, one F two, one formula E they have this lineage. He doesn't have that. He was a good driver in F two, and he just got his super license with just the right amount of money. Oh, that's right. I forgot about that. My concern was that he might not be able to hold his own against some of the other drivers. That's fair. It looks like he can. So I'm like genuinely, I want him to do really well now to prove people like me wrong. I think like in a lot of the media that I've been consuming beforehand, like YouTube videos and reading stuff, everyone was thinking that he was going to suck. Like that he was going to be the worst this season. And I don't think that he's showing that. I think it's hard to tell one race in, but he at least had a good first showing. I was actually pretty bummed that he didn't score points. I wanted him to pick up a point in the end. But yeah, it was interesting that the midfields all mixed up again, right? Pierre gasly had a fantastic race. It's hard to watch. He gained like 11 places. And it's all mixed up in a good way. And now it's just all I was asked. If they can pull this off, if Aston Martin can pull this off, there is something that's going to happen this season that hasn't happened in maybe ten or 15 years. It's been three teams. Right? And for a while, one of them was not doing nothing. Ferrari, right? If we now have four teams, like that are fighting for victories, that's different. I was like, look, I know that Mercedes are best for the rest of the best right now. But if things follow like they did last year, like they have the ability to win. Right. Which I expect, what they will achieve at some point, like you were saying. And so do I. But now we have Aston Martin, hopefully in the mix as well. And I will tell you right now, there are a lot of people with a lot of mixed views on this. I could not respect large stroll enough for what he did this weekend. Yeah, I was just about to say that I actually am leaving aside when he either clipped or got clipped by Fernando. I actually thought he put together a really good race, especially for Lance stroll. He actually did a pretty good job. Yeah, but you know what he was coming into this race move, right? Oh, yo, that's right. 'cause he had like bust up his hands or something. That's right. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Fractures in both wrists. One of them had pins in it. A week before.
Box of Neutrals
"alex albon" Discussed on Box of Neutrals
"Where it belongs. Yeah, you know what? I'm a 100% on board with that. I'm a 100% on board and I think that is a great reason actually for them to reconsider how many Melbourne gets. Because the crowds are going to be big for the foreseeable future here. The atmosphere is going to be great, where there's normally good. Okay, the track is not, could be better for racing. But a court also be better with these cars. Who knows? I mean, Fernando Alonso's overtaking in all sorts of places. So maybe we won't be thinking that so much anymore either. That's that fourth DRS and everyone's talking about. Yeah, you are, right? You've done it. You've done well. Give yourself a tick. A pat on the back, or whatever the ward is on box of neutrals. So no idea. Where are you using overseas, are we? Yes. Yes, what's yours? Do you have one? Well, no, I wasn't prepared. I'll see if I can think of one before the end of the show. But let's talk about some of the well, we can talk about some several understeer over the greed over the course of the race. Particularly proprietary. Yeah, well, look, let's just start there. Embarrassing. Yeah. It was, I mean, for the second year in a row, this team's rocked up under prepared for a season. Last year it was the brakes getting too hot, the slowest car out there. At least it was a little bit more reliable, although except for the brakes, obviously. This year they've had body work fallen off over the course of testing, stuff isn't strong enough, stuff gets too hot. Electronics failed us could be astrid's car, pneumatic pressure filed and landed North Dakota, that's an unusual problem, I feel it's very rare that happens. And he finished two laps down at the very back of the greed. This is a massive indictment on this team. I don't think I'm going to talk about all the wind tunnels not ready yet and that's true, it's not ready to lighter and I don't have the new senior at all that kind of stuff yes. But I mean, in any sport in which asked partner now we're talking about a lot. But which they can come out of a bunch of portable buildings and develop the second quickest car, even if Fernando Alonso is driving it, a performance like this from McLaren, which has an established facility, even if they got an old wind tunnel whatever, is embarrassing by definition. That's real. That's absolutely real. It warrants that sting because I'm a 100% and this is not a case of because Oscar piastre is aboard the team. This is a trend and it's concerning because it's very frustrating because McLaren were coming out of a funk and it was a real funk. It was, in fact, it was. Oh, that's real. That's absolutely real. It was a real fun. And the Carlos Sainz, Lando Norris, era, quietly chipped away. Didn't make too much fanfare regain their dignity. And then they started getting a bit of cocky. They got a Daniel Ricciardo. They go, Google Chrome, on board. And so there was plenty of swagger aboard this time, and a lot of expectation. But they just haven't delivered and they've made so many missteps along the way. And I feel like it's got to a point where for me, I'm almost, I'm obsessed. For now I know it's only one race. But I'm almost upset that Oscar piastres first exposure to Formula One. Granted Daniel Ricciardo's was aboard an HR tape, but that was very different context. I think it finished too, didn't it? I feel like, yeah, I think he did. Anyway, but I feel like it was almost, I'm not speaking for him or whatever, but I just get the picture that it was like McLaren sold him the world and they delivered him. A zed card. Of a map with a lot of incorrect version. Yeah. It still says Czechoslovakia. That's what kind of map Oscar got because I feel like just a little bit of me when the Alpine is a great spot. They got points. Yale Payne will come good. Enough. Not good enough. Even worse. If Oscar had stayed with Alpine, took the course of action that they had recommended it when we're going to keep Alonso at Alpine. And we're going to put you online to Williams. I guarantee Oscar piastre would have a Grand Prix point to his name. At the time of this recording, in either team of Alpine or Williams. Yes. And that is saying something about where McLaren's app. Absolutely. I mean, Williams were one of the good stories actually the weekend, weirdly, an unexpectedly competitive, even Logan sergeant less than ten seconds behind Alex Albon to miss out on a point by not very much exactly the same lap time as Lando Norris. Yes, and that is another indictment on McLaren. Not land on our specifically, but McLaren, Lando's doing as good a job, I think, as you can. And Oscar too for a rookie in the position he's in his career. This is dire stuff, and even if you look back over the last few years since their recovery from the Honda days, it's been exaggerated. Like I've had a look at this recently for an article, and they've gone from 9th under Honda, went to 6th 5th and fourth and then the third in 2020, right? And I've sort of been slowly coming down. A lot of those years, you know, Ferrari had that engine agreement, which meant they finished 6th. Those years also went through when forced India collapsed and they lost all of their points. So would have finished ahead of them. And then the subsequent year the knock on effects of the financial problems that racing point is it then was was suffering. There are a lot of reasons actually the thing McLaren hasn't got much better than a 5th at best team in the last few years and we're actually holding them to an expectation they don't really deserve yet and obviously we all hope McLaren recovers a because we want the sport to be competitive as possible and B because there's a historic team. It ought to be doing better. But I think they sort of just not, I mean, obviously, you look at the results, they're not there, and I don't think it's enough to say, all right, a result this bad might be a blip, much like Bahrain was last year and I ended up scoring points at the next couple of races. But them being very ordinary as a team is not a blip. This is the long, long-term trend now for McLaren. This is where they've made their bed and they're lying in it. And they seem quite comfortable because they won't get up. No. I'll give you a couple of obvious things and understand. I'll give you the first one. Understeer or oversteer, McLaren should have stuck with Renault. Why did they need to move the Mercedes? There was no need. I'm going to say that's understeer. Or neutral, because I don't think it's really made any difference. And Mercedes did have the best engine. I mean, it's not so much all equal now pretty much the engines, but in the years that they made the decision. I would say they probably saw the best in. Inside say that's neutral I don't know about financially. But I'd say that's a you would say that's oversteer. Maybe overstayed. I would say it's oversteer. I don't think it's made any difference. There you go. It's important. My second oversteer. And we'll put this out to the box neutral Discord. So my two questions for the switch to back to Mercedes for McLaren to use the prickly one. It's mildly uncomfortable. Oh. Lando Norris is wasting his time. At McLaren. That is spot on. I wish that was oversteer undersea because it sounds better, but I think that's what that's neutral. That's right in the middle. I think that's a great call. Why did he sign a 100 year contract with McLaren? There was no need to. They liked him like they were fans of human. He says he likes McLaren, whatever. Sign a two or three, do you like everyone else? Yeah. And give yourself the, I mean, I'm sure he's probably got options in the contract, although McLaren negotiates weird contracts. There was just no need. And okay, immediately to this unlikely to be openings well, actually almost every team's higher up. So maybe they will be opening somewhere, but there's unlikely to be over things that fry in Mercedes Red Bull, but Red Bull did inquire into his services. And then he just signed an extension of McLaren. It just seems like a weird and I think we're definitely going to already reflecting on it as a weird a weird instance of Korea self harm. Like why? Why? Almost too comfortable. Yes. That McLaren could be just, yeah. And he's going to get frustrated and I'm worried you'll get frustrated and that will boost his performance because he is a great driver. He is a top probably top 5 on the grid at the moment. I think there's maybe
The Autosport Podcast
"alex albon" Discussed on The Autosport Podcast
"Obviously not in the turmoil that McLaren are in or whatever and that you have to think there's more to unlock and they are convinced they're going to out develop everyone. So that force first place is still very much achievable, but once we got to testing, it was clear that Aston Martin were going to be in a surprise package, but I thought Alpine would be the performer. I thought Alpine would be the one taking it to Merck and Aston Martin would be sort of hanging on to their coattails. So by that measure, by their standards I've set for themselves, they disappointed, I suppose. Yeah, a bit of a frustrating frustrating one for that for them. Just how badly the race was executed whether it was gasly on his side, you know, tearing up the whole weekend by starting from the back of the grid or ocon just ticking all the boxes, maybe doing that thing. And if I get all my bad luck and misdemeanors out the way now, I'll be playing sailing and then I can concentrate on falling out with a third or fourth teammate instead. Scoring points today, Williams are off the mark already after the first event Alexander albon intent for Williams and an outing for Logan sergeant in 12th. So yeah, finishing a lap down, but he's got to be happy. And actually, Kev, what do you think that Williams looks like? Not the fastest car out there, but drivable? More than the last couple of years. What do you think? Yeah, it's got to be the sort of pleasant surprise of the weekend, hasn't it? Both the general where they slotted in for Adams get a points grade. Also Logan sausage and I mean he didn't set the world on fire in F two. He looked like he'd be a decent driver. Deserved an F one chance, but probably wouldn't be that amazing, but actually, yeah, solid job, not a million miles behind album. Or was it tenth and 12th? Carl look balanced. Okay, so they're lacking a bit of overall down force which is going to be said of pretty much any Williams since about 1997. But since I knew he left and he subsequently produced some quite useful cars. But yeah, I think they would be probably pretty pleased with that. I think it's a lot better than we were thinking after testing. I mean, obviously Matt was at testing. I mean, my impression was that Williams, there was a feeling that they'd be kind of propping up the back again. I said, hang on a minute, we need some praise here. We're the second best developers, one winter to another. After Aston Martin and you sort of said, we could have done even more because he felt he really left a bit of time on the table in qualifying. I think Kevin, if you go back and read my copy from the map from testing, we weren't saying they're going to be well, actually I did say that I think in the preview that we cut a drifters black markets, but trackside observations were. They had basically, they had built a Formula One car. It really unremarkable, but all the better for that wasn't masses of understeer. And okay, they were having to back off a bit through the high speed because as you say the Williams lack of down force, but it wasn't like the balancing of the Ferrari, the terminal understeer of the McLaren and things like that. So I think a neat job and vows James vows coming to his team principal. He said, he's obviously taken a job with assurances that will be up to the cost cap. So if he can get a pretty handy operator and he's a technical director to find a point on it, it will be to save the season because you need their chief design has stepped into that role. You need someone to oversee that both in terms of logistics and planning. So what resources do you dedicate to 2023? What do you pile into this massive reset that they're going to have for the next year? So if they get that right, then it's a competitive season. I expect them to sort of get shuffled further towards a rip. But as a debut debut for their FW 45 coaches, it's mega. You would expect that perhaps a bit more from Jeddah where it is low down force and they can just be sort of slippery in a straight line in Alban's racecraft and overcome the bizarre nature of the track where you peering through walls half the time pick your pick your spots. But it's just so like, it's a horrible way. It's just so nice. It was such a nicely executed race from him. And yeah, sergeant of the debutantes probably gave the best account of himself, but he wasn't hampered by a bad car or bad strategy like the other two were. JBL, you've come from a little while covering formula E and that's a series used to people coming in and buying teams and renaming them and shuffling around ownership and stuff like that. Let's talk about AlphaTauri, the story, of course, before the race and after around testing as well was maybe AlphaTauri if it doesn't perform as Red Bull owners and shareholders would like, then it perhaps could be sold. There's plenty that would come in would, you know, Andretti could cut would like to enter Formula One. But that's different to buying a team versus getting a place on the entry list. How do you think AlphaTauri looked today? JBL, what do you think about their prospects and does that start to play into the wider team future as well of what could happen to that team? Well, I think it was a bit of a, it was a bit of a difficult day. Sonoda was challenging album by the end of it, you know, arguably with a better car because the Williams is good in the straight line and they trimmed off some of the downfall. Well, even more of the down force just to try and maximize that advantage because as we know Bahrain's got very, very long straights and you can make a decent amount of chunk of that time there. But Alex Albon, elbows out as is his want and as he's become very accustomed to doing of late. Just prove too strong. And I think as I said earlier, the race was the other driver that was hamstrung by the chance of not having the opportunity to pit under the virtual safety car and so he kind of dropped like a rock and it was after such a strong debut last year covering for albano Williams. It was a much more difficult proper debut. But I'm pretty sure that having him on board again, as you mentioned, I've been done formula E for the last year in a bit, so I sort of gotten to know him quite well. He's quite hard to ask master in kind of the same kind of George Russell kind of mold. And as everybody kind of pointed to during testing, he had this big long sort of checklist of things that the team can work on. And I think they'll be all the better for having him in the team. As I said, it was a difficult race and he was kind of outshone by sonoda. But again, it's his first proper formula Formula One race. He's used to cars with about probably less than half the power. So it will probably take him a little bit of time to get properly up to speed. You know, doing a one race in a Williams on a track that Williams is supposed to be quite good at. It was probably a bit of an outlier, for sure. I think the team with regards to takeover rumors, there was a sort of hands off warning issued. There was sort of discussions that the new chairperson of Red Bull, other women laugh was perhaps looking at cutting it off because Red Bull, the Formula One team itself is self sufficient now. It's got big sponsors. It's got Oracle. It's got massive sponsors putting you in a lot of money. They're winning championships, which brings plenty of income as well.
The Autosport Podcast
"alex albon" Discussed on The Autosport Podcast
"Let me ask you a little bit about what you think of the Alfa Romeo because in Bottas hands finishing 8th day look pretty good and not quite as quick in Zhou guang so although a fastest lap at the end that was a bit weird because he almost caught Alonso as Alonso was weaving across the line to celebrate and it made a bit of a gap to go for the fastest lap, but okay, fine. What do you make of what alpha am I have brought to this year? The team is still very much in a kind of same size, same continuation as kind of last season. Obviously with their P 6 and the constructors championship they had a little bit more money and a little bit more resource to kind of go out and recruit and stuff like that. But they're still at the end of the day, the kind of quintessential, let's say, slap bang in the middle team. Qualifying probably wasn't quite to their taste. But a lot of Bottas performance in the race was him just taking a strategy and executing it really well. And it really works out for him. I think the sort of key moment of that was when he came in for his first pit stop on lap 11. He'd come in for the hard tyre. And what he'd managed to do is actually over cuts of Fernando Alonso and I think it was George Ross, yeah, George Russell as well. So he managed to undercut them, was ahead of them, and obviously he didn't have the pace to kind of keep up with them. But I thought that was very, very good. You know, kind of taking the strategy and taking the prerogative and doing the right thing there. And that eventually led to him being in that kind of position in the lower midfield. It was kind of almost almost a lonely race. He had Pierre gasly catching back up to him towards the end of the race, but I think Bottas kind of had it all in hand and he was very sort of sensible and solid P 8, so it was a really good afternoon from him and just on Joe. He was kind of one of the drivers it was him and Nick de vries. They were kind of a hamstring a little bit towards the end. Because neither of those two pitted under the virtual safety car and the cars around them kind of did. So you had guys like Alex Albon and gasly and tsunoda and sergeant all kind of catching back up and making ground over here. And so what Alfred decided to do at the end was a brand I don't know if it was a brand new set first that of soft tyre. And so he could go and do the fastest lap and take the point away from Pierre gasly. So in a mirror to last season where Alfa Romeo was trying to ruin Aston Martin's race so they could beat them in the constructors championship. They're there again just trying to not quite play the fool as such but try and be a nuisance and it paid off again Gaussian didn't get that fast as that point. And by the end of the season, it could be the case where they're split by a single point and that would have been the clincher. So even though it's the first race of the season, they're already thinking about that. Which is quite an interesting note. Joe had a sort of relatively decent race, wasn't really, let's say in the hunt for points, but I think because qualifying was so compromised, I was probably the best thing they could do. Absolutely. And it wasn't very much two by two for the rest of the rest of the field as we work our way through because after the top two Red Bulls and then the two Merckx, anyone Ferrari finishing and the two Aston Martins, it then was Alfa Romeo because Bottas was in 7th and then Alpine then Williams and then AlphaTauri. And so kind of mixing it up that midfield battle Matt that we're all looking forward to this year Pierre gasly was in 9th in the Alpine and so that's worthy of a mention in terms of gastly getting two points in the other Alpine Esteban archon, not classified a DNF. But everything he did turned to crap today in terms of can we introduce a new award? I think we should have the comedy performance of the weekend awards. I mean, it just got worse and worse. Three different penalties and each one related to the penalty before. It's actually brilliant. It was like it was like stacking as I stacking my toddler does and it's like it just more and more. So the first one was he wasn't in his grid slot. And I thought I meant he went long, but he didn't. Oh, enormous microphone shop. The listeners have got to see, it's brilliant. Yeah. The host of the podcast dropping his microphone. So the first one, first of all, was he was far too off to the side. You look at that shot of the lights going out and there's one car blatantly out of line. So there was that. And then it just kept stacking and then it was the engineers touching the car, .4 seconds too early, didn't serve his 5 seconds. And then you can tell the stewards sitting around going, well, what do we do now? So that was a 5 second. Now it's a ten second, speeding in the pit lane. Have some more sir. It was comedy. He should have completed the set and done a track limits violation like hulkenberg. And that would have been absolutely brilliant. You basically have had a month added on to your race time. But can I just make it? But can I just make a request to F one and sky? It's not a tie, it's not a ten second time penalty is it? It's just a ten second penalty. You don't need to say the word time. It's not a ten second length penalty, is it? Pointless extra work. The theory is me every time. Sorry, I know that's just me being weird. Until the writer ill, the writers in the room. Offended by that. If I can go incredibly niche, I was a worse jump start since Jean alesi in Bahrain in a speed car. There you go. That's something to YouTube. It's quite amusing. Oh, that's brilliant. Yeah. But Matt, I think where I started this very rambling question was how did you, what do you make of Alpine on their first outing? And how they might look for the next few races. It's tough, I think, to call it anything other than a disappointment since there was so much hype, both in terms of the steps forward taken by the car. Everyone's favorite evolution, Alpine arguably, apart from Aston Martin, I've got closest to revolution where they're completely reconfigured the rear suspension and cooling package. And the fact that they said we are going to be in for a really lonely season because we're going to close the top three and move away from the rest of the mid pack so you know those what's that 7th and 8th place every week there are as we're not going to be overtaking. So they fell somewhere short of that. Obviously in terms of pace, it's a slightly more of a gray area. Esteban ocon's race was so poorly executed. You have to set it to one side, but the way gasly came back through was obviously deeply impressive. So suggest there's hints and obviously not in the turmoil that McLaren are in or whatever and that you have to think there's more to unlock and they are convinced they're going to out develop everyone.
The Autosport Podcast
"alex albon" Discussed on The Autosport Podcast
"Absolutely. And it was great because you got that big swapper on and turned four or something, or turned ten, and he caught it, and it was just such a good action. It was funny afterwards Rosberg interviewed Alonso on that sort of LED podium, which they now have. And you could tell when Rosberg said, did you like passing Lewis Hamilton and getting past him? Rosberg loved asking that question. I thought that was really nice. If Alonso can qualify up there at week in week out and we can see the race base that Aston Martin and they can develop it through the year, which, as you've mentioned, Matt, Dan fellows for anyone new or doesn't know, he was the former head of aerodynamics at Red Bull, now his technical director that Aston Martin then he learned from the best and that's going to be brilliant to watch this year. Let's talk a little bit. So we've talked about Mercedes anybody you want to chip in a bit more with Mercedes Toto Wolff said they're going to change concept Lewis was down Russell was down afterwards, anything else you've heard. I thought it was interesting to note that in the early part of stints, Russell looked quicker, even to the point where he got on the radio and went. Is the Lewis de struggling or is he looking after side? Yeah. Are you struggling? But actually, Hamilton was quicker by the end of the stint. He was still just that little bit better on time management. And ended up quiet a bit further down the road than Russell. Which I think is good, actually. It showed that Hamilton's still at that very high level. It gives something George to aim for and get even better at. So I think I still think it's a fantastic driver line. I thought that was quite interesting that early on Hamilton looked like he was kind of in the way, but actually he just managed the race brilliantly. I thought that he did say didn't he before the final stop that he could have done more laps. On those tyres. And they brought him in to try and stop the Alonzo undercut. With hindsight, you could say, actually, maybe they should have just given up the fight on Alonso. Let Lewis go longer and then he'd have had more tires to go at science with at the end. So might he have he definitely lost to Alonso, but might he have been able to beat? Because he cruised up to the back of it and then ran out of rubber. Were they both did, didn't they? Science went outside first and then Hamilton did in the dirtier while Alonso just disappeared down the road. I mean, I just beat Alex kellan orcas off the flag for when he did say that one of Mercedes who is out there and one of the Mercedes problems is that they went kind of light on the aero to get some straight line speed and try and get a laptop I'm out of the car but then that hurts you because you slide around more and you screw the tires. So I think they were probably in a compromised setup and I think Hamilton was probably doing a very good job managing the tyres that only really became obvious make more towards the end. But I did find that particularly amusing when Russell sort of just started to go and Hamilton about a struggling and he just asking a question of whether he can have the position and fires off at turn turn, which I'm guessing they're slightly staggered, but those two those two moments that was quite amusing. And I also actually on the subject of radio messages. I know you said you were listening to fernande, but you know he's giving himself a reputation now. How much of that is gameplay, where he says it's a lovely car because through every GP two engine, there is and for every year, the worst defending I've ever seen from my teammates said about ocon. He knows there's an audience he knows people are listening. So whether that's just sort of playing a game really, I wonder about that stroke about that about that too with the lap one collision with stroll, the cynic and he says he knows damn well it was a green car in his mirrors but just chose to keep him quiet and not reacting to that all the way through just in the same way as when it was announced series and Aston Martin signing and then Lance stroll sort of fired him off the road in America. That was a one incident of last season. He didn't seem to have a major grudge at trying to and then getting out of the car today and throwing a load of praise on stroll who actually is entirely deserving of that. I know there is that sort of slight debate over is it irresponsible for him to come back slightly injured and deny a chance to drugovich slash but better back then we're in a praise that kind of behavior would louder coming back from injuries, you know, to race in 76, that dilemma. I thought stroll gave a really good account of himself, but again, second guessing Alonso's actions, which is always amusing, whether Alonso getting out the car and saying stroll was mega, that's just a placate. The team for as long as possible until the inevitable flare up next time when Lawrence drove Danes to suggest that his son should get the twins front wing. Yeah, that was another part of the team radio picked up afterwards as well when he said Lance is my hero what a result. And again, maybe that was for the world feed. I'm not sure that was played. That's when the engineer was sort of telling him, oh, by the way, you're on the podium, so I need to go to this place near the way bridge and don't go to the usual place. First time, podium since, what would that be 20, 21? I guess for Alonso. Right, we'll take a quick break when we come back, we will do. Go through the rest of the field and work out who had a good day, bad day, and what it means for the rest of the season. Stay there. All right, welcome back to the auto sport. Podcast. Let's talk a little bit about the rest of the field then. In fact, I've aware that I didn't do a rundown on the top ten because I like to get into it straight away at the beginning of the show. Max Verstappen, Sergio Pérez, and Alonso with a podium, Carlos Sainz in the only remaining Ferrari followed by Lewis Hamilton and then Lance stroll with broken bones in 6th place. George Russell in 7th, Valtteri Bottas, scoring points in Bahrain because, of course, because he always does. In 9th Pierre gasly and Alex Albon in the Williams in tenth Yuki tsunoda in 11th because it's Bahrain. So of course you're finishing 11th. Logan sargeant is outing in 12th brilliant. Came mag in 13th, Nick the vries 14th and Nico hulkenberg in 15th Joe guy new fastest lap in 16th and Lando Norris was classified two laps down in 17th.
The Autosport Podcast
"alex albon" Discussed on The Autosport Podcast
"Well, welcome back to the final part of this podcast. No travel diary today, you're just going to get my reaction to the first qualifying session of Formula One 2023. Well, the headline, the headline result, not all that exciting. Max Verstappen leads a one, two, for Red Bull, out of Sergio Pérez, who he looked to have absolutely covered as he did in 2022. But Ferrari's Charles Leclerc ending up as the closest challenger. Again, very familiar from 2022, but given the hype surrounding Aston Martin, given the pace that Fernando Alonso was shown in that car on Friday. It is still something of a shock to see Ferrari there. I think they definitely weren't showing their hand at all in testing. In fact, by thread baudrillard is amusingly accusing Ferrari of sandbagging in testing. And in fact, Max Verstappen suggesting that the bit of a bit of the front of the wheel fairing, the wheel covering on the Glasgow that fed off at the start of qualifying, suggesting that was actually the sand back, and that's all the pace came from. But anyway, there we go. And basically, I hadn't shown their hands, but still they were sort of suggesting that we don't think we're in the hunt for pole. Essentially played an excellent expectation management game, but still leclerc definitely seemed to be in the hunt. He was only just over a tenth behind Verstappen after the first runs. And then actually the real shock of the session was to see him climbing out of the car. Not having a second go at the end of Q three. And he said, yeah, there was time there. He I think he genuinely thinks he could have given Verstappen around for his money and definitely probably thinks he's going to beaten Perez. But nevertheless, it's a good sign for Ferrari because the suggestion was that after testing Red Bull was just going to walk both qualifying and the race so this is a sign of progress for Ferrari based on sort of the suggestions coming out of the paddock last weekend. Race pace does seem to be a little bit more of a struggle for them and the whole reason why leclerc and Ferrari said they abandoned that second run in Q three was to simply try and give it an extra little edge when it came to the opening race thing. He'll start on a new set of soft tyres that will give him a little bit of extra grip off the line and then ideally just last that little bit longer maybe able to keep pace more consistently do more of an Abu Dhabi 2022 performance than say what happened at imola last year where the tyres and Miami as well were the tyres went off and that's how the ripples were able to take victory there. So yeah, hopefully it'll be an exciting way tomorrow but based on what we saw in FPT. Max just happened looking commandingly in control on the long runs. But nevertheless, as we saw in this race last year, unexpected things can happen for Red Bull. We know the fuel pump problem at the end of the race last year. So the team is definitely wary of mistakes being made or certainly things just not going as perfectly as they could. And spent a long time in the press conference explaining that actually it was a real shock when he jumped in the car on Friday morning in FP one and just found that the balance suddenly he thought was perfect in testing was really, really off this weekend. Now, yes, there are different tyre compounds. It's the harder compounds that are being used for the race as both the whole range, the teams has access to last weekend, but the sort of suggestion in the paddock is there's some rumors that Red Bull have had to make, make some changes to the underneath of their car, maybe raise it up a little bit just to make sure it's compliant with the skid blocks and the plank wear and things like that. Team very, very coy on that, said your pair of spaces then we don't understand why, but I think that's probably slightly disingenuous. A team as good as Red Bull doesn't suddenly just not understand things. But we have to take them at their word and that's what it was coming out of qualifying. But anyway, Ferrari potentially rebels closest rival tomorrow or it could be Aston Martin. Yes, the hype train perhaps not as going as well as many had hoped and potentially predicted in qualifying the Fernando Alonso in 5th behind Carlos Sainz, but he produced an excellent long run. In fact, it was only shady just by Verstappen in FB two, although we think that the Red Bull was running quite considerably heavy of them Aston Martin. But yet Aston, both leclerc, both Verstappen and Perez as well saying that that team really is going to be a threat in the race tomorrow. So really want to keep an eye on. Even if astin doesn't have the pace to challenge for victory, the fact that it's in podium contention and seems to be their genuinely at this stage. Well, that just shows what real progress the team has made. This time a year ago, the car was porpoising badly. It was Shawn of down force, it just wasn't it really wasn't looking like a good package and it was looking like this big this big ambitions that Lawrence Stroll had or still has, of course. There was no chance of them coming off. Well, in a year, what a step they've made in full credit to that team. It's providing inspiration to the likes of Williams, to the likes of AlphaTauri. The teams that are down the back of the grid currently, particularly speaking to Dave Robson at Williams tonight. It shows them that it is possible, but you have to have the pieces in place. You have to have the investment and you also have to have the skills of the designers and the engineers. Anyway, full credit to us for that. But nevertheless, this is a qualifying podcast running out of time a little bit. So I thought I'd just give a couple of shout outs. Obviously, there's a downbeat shout out at Mercedes, Toto Wolff after edition saying basically the concept is wrong. The concept is totally got to change at Mercedes if it's going to have any hope of catching Red Bull in this new ground effects formula. George Russell and Lewis Hamilton, 6th and 7th, briefly look like they might threaten the top positions in Q one and Q two, but Red Bull's engine modes aren't going to be have turned up to the max, things like the tyres are big factor as well and just general track evolution at that point it was getting quicker with every passing lap. But yeah, big shout outs to Nico hulkenberg qualifies tenth on his ribs full-time return to Formula One with Hass, excellent, really, really showing his worth to the team there, delivering under pressure and full credit to him. Finally, Alex Albon and excellent, an excellent performance he ends up 15th after his front wing broke. That's why he was suddenly understeering off at turn four and he's final run in Q two. But yeah, great performance a to escape Q three because there was a lot of sort of expectation that Williams were really in trouble or expected for this qualifying session based on what we saw in testing, but there we go. He thought he could have made Q three and I think that the team, the team believes that as well. You know, it's a bit of a shock to them, but they're happy that their driver that the skills that he showed the talent that he showed in 2022, being able to deliver under pressure and qualifying he's still got it. So those are my shout outs. This has been my travel diary from Bahrain. I hope you've enjoyed it. I hope I didn't waffle on too much about the appalling traffic, but there we go. Let us know your thoughts about these travel diaries. We are going to continue doing them throughout 2023, but you know, it'd be interesting to hear what people want to hear more about, want to hear less about whatever. But there we go. Anyway, enjoy the Bahrain Grand Prix tomorrow. Let's hope it's a good race. Sports social podcast network.
The Autosport Podcast
"alex albon" Discussed on The Autosport Podcast
"And then James vows, they've got an absolutely phenomenal signing. I think he's been an integral part of Mercedes leadership throughout their domination of Formula One. So I think that he's going to be a really, really good asset. He starts on Monday. As team principal. And I think that for Williams this year, yeah, they've got to look at just trying to properly get back into that midfield fight, because last year it was kind of like he had, okay, you're a big three at the front. There are no McLaren Alpine. They were sort of leading the midfield most of the time. Then there's gaggle of teams behind. And every now and then Williams would absolutely excel you'd see Alex Albon in Australia or Miami imola as well he put in a really good performance. And they will be able to basically get in front and just keep the cars behind. This year they need to try and do that more regularly. It needs to be that on merit they are there like that, yeah, not to say they weren't on merit last year, but they just needed to be more that we've actually got ourselves into position on pure pace alone. It's not through a funky strategy or rolling the dice or anything like that. So that's the goal for them. I think that, yeah, Logan sergeant, new driver coming in. I think that as with any rookie, we're going to see that sort of quite steep trajectory in terms of needing to get up to speed. But Alex Albon is into what is fourth 50s and F one now. He's a very safe power hands. I think is in a better headspace, better groove than ever, which is really, really cool to see. And I think he can really help lead Williams through this year. And then the following day, Alfa Romeo showed off their car, which they said, the C 43 will be more of an all rounder, which is interesting. We had a piece from our colleague Adam Cooper on why Audi's distant future in Formula One is helping Alfa Romeo, which was interesting. You can go check it out online. Then the car hits the track for a shakedown in Barcelona with a totally different floor. Giorgio piola had some thoughts on that, whether it was a launch red herring or a design dead end. What did you think of what you saw from Alfa Romeo? Yeah, it was interesting because when they did that initial launch, a lot of people said, oh, that floor looks. Yeah, very, very aggressive and then it came to the actual shakedown itself, and it wasn't there anymore. So again, it shows the difference between what you see at launch and what you actually see on the track. There is always that a little bit of disparity. But I think for alpha yeah, last year, the big thing that hurt them was just the speed of upgrades basically. They weren't quick enough and keeping up with the rest of the midfield in terms of bringing upgrades to their carts. And a lot of that is down to resources and facilities and stuff like that. And this is very much a team that's basically on the up again and recovering, I guess. So yeah, there's a lot for them to do. They're working hard though. I think that last year their big benefit in the early part of the season was being pretty much the only team that had got down to the weight limit. And as last season more on that, obviously became less of an advantage. This year, yeah, they've really got to focus on getting those sort of getting rid of the big peaks and troughs that they had. You see the team go, so many race to that point, and all of a sudden boss ass in Mexico was only 8 tenths of pole or something. And I asked Fred Vasser about that sort of low period they had in the middle of the season. And he said, but if you look at the time when we were closest to poll, that was actually Mexico at the very end of the year. So it doesn't quite make sense in terms of where they were. It's a funny one. But yeah, I think they just need a bit more consistency this year. I think last year I'm writing saying they scored the fewest points of any team between Monza and saw the end of the season. So there is a lot for them to try and I think catch up on and try to recover. So the Audi works partnership coming into force, that's going to be a massive boost for the team or whether there's kind of a nice sort of electric field bubbling around the alpha team, which is quite cool. It's the last season as alpha as well before they probably go back to Salva name for a couple of years. So yeah, Andrea sideliners team boss as well. The CEO of the group sorry. I think that's a fantastic signing. And I think that for the long term, they're in a really, really good spot. And I think I'm going to be one to watch. Maybe not this year, but in the long term future, definitely. Yeah, I'm really interested to watch how that relationship evolves because Audi are coming in as a full manufacturer. But for now, they are an investor. They hold equity now, they are their money is now going into the team, but of course they're running Ferrari bits, and of course Audi at some point would be a full competitor to Audi, so there'll be a day when the owner of the team says, oh, can we have a look at that drawing of the engine we're buying off you? And for no, you can't. But of course, the answer is yes because we're a customer, so they'll be learning an amount and