Dutch GP: McLaren exploits Red Bull's weakness

as you've probably heard by now we've teamed up with bed MGM this season we'll be using bed MGM lines to make all of our picks and we'll have special offers for our listeners each week if you haven't signed up for B MGM yet use bonus code the athletic and you'll get a one-year subscription to the athletic plus up to a $1,500 first bet offer on your first wager with B MGM here's how it works download the bmgm app and sign up using bonus code the athletic make your first deposit of at least $10 place your first bet on any game and claim your voucher for a one-year subscription to the athletic see betmgm.com for terms us promotional offers not available in DC Mississippi New York Nevada Ontario or Puerto Rico gambling problem call- 1800 Gambler available in the US call 8778 heny or text heny 467 369 in New York call 1800 next step in Arizona 1800 32755 Massachusetts 1800 bets off in Iowa 180027 7117 for confidential help in Michigan 1800 98123 in Puerto Rico first bet offer for new customers only in partnership with Kansas Crossing Casino and hotel don't forget if you haven't signed up for bed MGM yet use bonus code the athletic and you'll get a one-year subscription to the athletic plus up to a $1,500 first bet offer on your first wager we'll get back to the P the moments but first I have to tell you all about this gamechanging product I use before a night out with drinks it's called Zed biotics pre- alcohol pre- alcohol is the world's first genetically engineered probiotic it was invented by PhD scientists to tackle rough more mornings after drinking here's how it works when you drink alcohol gets converted into a toxic byproduct in the gut it's this byproduct not dehydration that's to blame for your rough next day pre- alcohol produces an enzyme to break this byproduct down just remember to make Zed biotics your first drink of the night drink responsibly and you'll feel your best tomorrow I won't lie I was a bit on the fence about Zed biotics initially but I gave it to shots and I was impressed with the results vacations weddings birthdays and reunions there's so much going on get the most out of your summer plans by stocking up on pre- alcohol now go to zbiotics tocom slra to get 15% off your first order when you use race at checkout pre- alcohol is backed with 100% money back guarantee so if you're unsatisfied for any reason they'll refund your money no questions asked remember to head to zbiotics [Music] docomo zbiotics for sponsoring this episode and our Good Times the [Music] athletic the race is on and Lando norrris took a dominant victory in the Dutch Grand Prix despite losing the lead at the starts passing Max for staffen on it way to a second F1 Victory but why is McLaren now so far ahead and does it mean that the upgraded car is is now unquestionably the fastest I'm edw and join me to unravel events at zandvoort am Mark Hughes and Scott Mitchell Mal well Scott how's it been obviously a sea of orange as ever yeah the uh crowd out in force for McLaren this weekend recognizing the pace of the car and qualifying and and the race um I would say it's the uh probably the most quote unquote subdued zanville atmosphere because it's not the that's not subdued exactly um it's subdued by the standards of a very unsubdued event yes exactly it still it still had the air of being in a uh and Club not quite an orange nightclub of previous years but certainly um a big orange party for for several days the party never stopped even during the rain and the wind that's the voice of Mark Hughes you've already heard Mark were you very much partying all weekend I know that's your style on an F1 race oh yes absolutely you you you you very rarely saw me at the track I was just partying yeah but um I managed to talk to a few people after the race to find out what happened that's always the best thing to do and then you of course go into your late night activities after a Grand Prix which is either partying or writing endless amounts of stuff one or the other but uh are I skating my guy skating oh yeah well why not why not how how is writing endless amounts of copy not a party not a party but it's even more so if you get to read it and there'll be plenty on the website to read from Mark and Scott and everybody else but well now we've set the SE SE a little bit let's get into the race Mark we'll start with a traditional question to you of how the race played out and obviously as part of that just why was Lando Norris so dominant yeah I mean the McLaren was at its very very best this weekend probably the best we've seen even better than in Hungary um it it's very very well suited to this type of track a track with long interconnected Corners a bit like Hungary and uh in addition to that it had its upgrade on of course it had a very significant Arrow upgrade which the most significant performance enhancement it's had since that big picture changing Miami upgrade so it uh yeah we saw the McLaren as very best I think we should be cautious on attributing this as the normal as The New Normal I don't think it is I think what we saw was absolute Peak McLaren and um a very severely compromised Red Bull and uh yeah for reasons that we can get into uh as as we go along the Red Bull had a totally unsuitable couple of components on it which really uh compromised its performance and uh I think I don't think even [Music] with everything perfect on the Red Bull it was going to um be able to beat Norris but it wouldn't have been 20 seconds behind at the end I think um so yes I think uh what what we saw today was uh Lando doing the job that um he's been you know almost but not quite doing uh in the in the last few races and just e even though he got beaten off the start by theapp and again he had so much performance in hand it didn't really matter and he was just very very confident and delivering an absolutely Flawless Victory it was um yeah it was one of the most dominant performances we've seen from anyone for quite some time it was nice to see McLaren pull that off because the McLaren edging ahead of red in qualifying and the couple of times theyve won races this year they've been kind of relatively narrow margins obviously the piastri and in and Norris being so far ahead in Hungary was I guess a little bit different but through the year it's been kind of early season we were used to like big Big Red Bull margins and then as they got caught it's kind of they've the sten's just been pulling out these 11th Hour qualifying laps that means he's either got ahead or he's been within a tenth or something like this but this was I I think this was the first time McLaren dominated weekend yeah it's absolutely resounding it's an interesting Confluence of factors isn't it because Landon Norris said he reckoned even without the upgrade they had they'd have dominated this weekend obviously the windy conditions speically in qualifying made life difficult for Red Bull for stappen had pretty much the start of the Season floor on the car didn't he they had different setups for uh him and Perez were not setups different specifications Perez had a a newer version so there's a lot of experiments and understanding going on there and it's it makes it feel like the upgrade that McLaren put on the car which was you know a little bit on the floor Edge inner corners of the front rear wheel some fairing stuff in the suspension so lots of little things that probably added up to a reasonable amount but it makes it look like Red Bull or rather it makes it look like McLaren have changed the game but as you said Mark it's it it's it's a good step for them and it's positive while while Red Bull are floundering but it's pict is a little bit in all Nuance than that isn't it exactly yeah and I think also in in as you're listing the um Claren upgrades the um the important an important one is the the new rear wing the new high downforce rear wing which is not only much more Aero efficient than the old family of high downforce Wing that they had but it's um it's got a much better DRS performance and we saw that in qualifying it uh it it was losing nothing to the Red Bull there so uh yeah a useful gain but I think uh it's that that doesn't explain the level of dominance we saw this weekend it's it's added to it that's all it's enhanced the the the upgrade package that we saw in Miami which was much more kind of visually striking was more transformative in terms of the the performance of the car like thrusting it into contention this this upgrade was almost more kind of symbolic of how the trajectories have gone over the last 12 months because this was a circuit that would have brought out the worst in McLaren a year ago and here it's cemented it as actually now the fastest car on this kind of track and at the same time we have McLaren adding yet another upgrade onto the car that works IM immediately while Red Bull is taking bits off the car and going backwards trying to find this this elusive sweet spot and um yeah you talked a little bit there Ed about the flaw and um yeah the the uh it was felt on a you know cursory look at the evidence after the race by the team that the old floor that vapen was using was um very much inferior to the new spec floor that Perez was running and also they' anticipated a much higher uh Tire dig and so it loaded the car with a a Monaco style rear wing and that was just inappropriate and was the reason Norris was able to put a relatively easy overtake on them once you got within DRS R shows how far that Mclaren has come from a year ago that it is now able to to do these bespoke um Wing level uh packages and not only that but have optimized it to the point where this is a family now that makes the past group of rear Wings obsolete or downforce levels obsolete so it really does feel like McLaren's striking a a proper development sweet spot at the moment so it's it's it's done the big stuff and now it's refining and after the race today when I heard from Andrea Stella he was saying they've got things on the car that they still don't like in terms of where it's weak but there are upgrades coming before the end of this season to address those so whereas Red Bull's troubleshooting McLaren's got itself to the front and he's still going well don't don't not yeah exactly there's still more to come which is um he really ominous that's why I think there was look McLaren's not going to go out every single weekend now and and be on poll by three or four tempts and and win by you know a pit stops marginal or whatever but it's it's it's such a statement of intent this weekend so much about it has has made McLaren the team to beat what's really encouraging for them is that it's just this inexurable march to adding performance things all get better and when they target weaknesses like they targeted the slow Corner weakness the long slow Corner weakness they've improved that a lot they targeted improving the DRS effect which they've done and in fact Lando Norris said that the rear wi upgrade was really important in terms of him being able to pass the stappen as well so they seem so shooted I guess Mark from Red Bull's perspective at least the newer floor is working better because that would a little bit worrying if the start of season one was was more effective so then that raises the question of well are they kind of narrowing the window as they make it better do they need to roll things back to then change the direction it feels like they're quite boxed in for this season doesn't it really and it's going to just be a make the best of it although they do say there's upgrades coming to kind of act on what they've learned and confirmed this weekend they do feel that they've learned an awful lot from this race from two um two completely different specs of car and then the the the different things that they found during this race they they they feel is going to has made the direction um much clearer where they where they need to be heading so if there was a positive to be taken from Red Bull this weekend it was that and there is still the expectation from McLaren that redel will have the edge at Monza next weekend where that straight line speed the Aero efficiency of the car McLaren's made gains and this upgrade is another step towards having that that more efficient package but we go to a completely different challenge in in Italy and yeah it still feels like one of those where I I don't I don't expect McLaren to be second best I think it will be a proper 50501 going in and it'll be about execution that's the thing you just you know McLaren's going to be at least competitive everywhere um it'll either be the fastest or competitive whereas you don't always feel that with the red and and one of the things Stella said post race was because he was inevitably asked about the Championships and obviously the Constructor championship's been on for a while and Stella said that but on the driver's side of Lando Norris taking more points out of a staing again Stella said that they wanted to have the mindset of well why not why can't it be possible and he said they even looked at what Sebastian vettle did with Red Bull in 2013 with those nine wins after the summer break every single race victory that was possible and said why can't we do that and obviously there are lots of reasons why McLaren and Norris can't do that because it's bloody hard for starters but it reminded me of when um Ferrari's uh title hopes were fading a couple of years ago and Matti boso said I think it was in France or Hungary just like well why can't we win every race until the end of the season and when he said that it sounded ridiculous and when Stella says this now you kind of think well difficult but it's not impossible well the bottom line is it reflects a reality that Landon noris is desperately unlikely to win the championship he 70 points behind that's a huge amount with nine races and a few Sprints to go but as Stella says the objective is to go out and win races isn't it and if you win all the races and achieve your objectives then that's great but what I want to see is what I what I exactly what I want to see them do is winning more of these 50/50 races this was an emphatic one in their favor I'd say this is the second weekend of the year when there was no question that McLaren had the advantage in all condition single up long run Pace after Hungary there are other ones where it's been very very nip and tuck with others and a lot closer and they could have won or should have won but that was a slightly different challenge to the winning the 50/50s that's what I want to see them moving on to do but great way to start the second half of the Season although we should note Max fatan did a really good job to come out with second place and that's the value he brings even when they're struggling a bit even with the inferior configuration of the car compared to his teammate he's still uh he led early on P2 just making sure the damage is limited and that's why I think he will still win the championship even if even if it's a struggle to get that many more race wins but let's move on Scott Lando Norris and never to be we had loads of questions about his performance personally from the race members club I'm going to bring one for forward to this section because it's pertinent John a asked how impressive was Lando Norris this weekend and suggested it was Norris's most impressive Grand Prix weekend to date o most impressive weekend to date is kind of tricky because there have been some really excellent ones uh I think he was absolutely superb in Q3 and qualifying to not just pull it together and get pole position but to hook it up the way that he did and and punch that lap time in and that Gap you know that was there was a little bit of the McLaren upgrade there there was a little bit of the McLaren McLaren characteristics suiting this car really well a little bit of Rebel being compromised and then also a decent chunk of Lando Norris being absolutely excellent too um I was initially very disappointed with his start and thought maybe he's in his own head too much here and he's fluffed it again with probably the shortest run of the season to turn one uh and I think I'd said to you mark before the start of the race I'm like oh how's he how does he scw this one up as you know tongue and cheek and and and then he kind of did but then when you watch it back and you see the way that he gets away relative to piastri it's a bad McLaren start both of them get away poorly which leads me to believe and McLaren don't know this either way at the moment because they hadn't looked over the data when we spoke to them but it leads me to think that that was a settings issue maybe they'd um they misjudged it based on the limited practice starts available got the amount of grip that would be there wrong both them were on the same side of the grid as well so you know it's about as eliminating all the variables in as start as you can and they both got away poorly so I don't really think you can put that on Norris and he did great job to recover when when the measure these things and in the league table they're they're very close up to the top in terms of their Starline performance but they are consistently slower than the Red Bull so which is the the uh the relevant measure so yeah I think it's a it's a mixture of the they they're not quite there and the Red Bull being state-ofthe-art it reminds me a little bit actually of um Red Bull versus Mercedes in 21 because Mercedes and leis Hamilton were just top notch on starts that season and Honda made some progress and Red Bull made some progress and there were what there were a couple of real eye-catching ones I remember imer in the wet was was really good but it was just always they were always just a little bit behind because they were up against this combination that were just nailing it every time and now Ribble and verafin have got to that level and McLaren and Norris are going oh bloody hell this is how hard it is to Ace the starts in these cars week in week out and I think if you look at the starts pestan Norris were very very similar just to the naked eye obviously it's difficult to judge to the thousandth doing that but they they were similar getaway so yeah it's a team thing because you also have to remember that there's a hell of a lot of play in the the start in terms of the temperature of the clutch what percentage you're aiming for the revs all of these things are meticulously planned and that's why it's kind of a a team element but Norris had talked about the elements of improving the start so he would have been a little bit disappointed to fall behind but I like the fact just from a mentality point of view that he fell behind and didn't seem to worry too much about it he knew it was the race was going to come back to him it came back to him a little bit quicker than he expected I don't think he expected to uh catch and overtake theen quite so early in the race I was slightly surprised by how fast it happened but he there was no sort of sign of panic which is really important Mark what did you think of Oscar pastry's relative performance because obviously there was the talk about uh him having a strong couple of races before the break and and getting on S but this was just one where although I think the Gap was exaggerated he was very much second best McLaren driver wasn't he yeah it all got away from him probably in the final Q3 runs I think generally this weekend he was around a 10th slow than Norris over a qualifying lap and on- race Pace about the same but the circumstances start to get put in place when he had to back off on his prep lap in the final Q3 uh to allow uh Pier gazley pass to complete his flying lap which meant his tie attempts were a bit down as he went into to turn one he had a bit of a snap over steer moment through turn one had a bit of an underst steer moment where he had to get out the throttle in turn three and there's your half a second and that's the half a second that he was down on Norris and qualifying and there's your third place on the grid rather than the front row so you know I think that's where really started to go wrong and then you know one thing leads to another and he got out accelerated um Off the Grid by George Russell in a Mercedes which this this weekend was much slower than even a a Red Bull so he spent all the first stint behind the Mercedes which unlike the Red Bull didn't have a bond or rear wing so it wasn't as as possible as as the Red Bull was and that then as he tried to stay out to try and counter the to counter that and get a tire offset so he was then undercut and lost an additional place to char Clair's Ferrari and so he's then in recovery mode and by the time you've done all that you've used up all your tires it's you're not comparing like with like when you're looking at a guy running out the front absolutely you know uninterrupted and uncompromised so these things just snowball but he was definitely the second best McLaren driver this weekend but not by anything like the Marin looked and I think with um without without the the timing of that out laap without gazley happening to to to be coming by at exactly the right wrong moment for him would have seen an Oscar piastri front row and a McLaren one two probably clear for stop and that's how it would have played out in the normal un uninterrupted running of it so you just see how these uh perceptions can be completely out out of skew with uh the the the reality of performance and and I think that's all that's all we saw here with pastri this weekend yeah and although they'll be a little bit disappointed not to have got that one two a fourth place still beats Perez's sixth place so that helps him in the Constructor Championship 30 points the gap there now and you know piastri he's in his second season isn't he so have to be a little bit up and down but yeah as you say that kind of on10th pace difference is about where I had it as well because you could see that advancing through the sessions and qualifying as well before they diverged on that uh last run but uh yeah we'll see pestry uh giving Norris some trouble at Future races I'm very sure of that we'll get back to the pod in a moment but first of all let me tell you about gramal email Google doc slack you write across multiple platforms and places during your workday so delivering consistent highquality communication everywhere is key grammarly is an AI writing partner that helps you get work done faster with highquality writing for better projects proposals presentations and more best of all grammar Works where you work so you can get more done no matter what tools you use as a journalist and podcast host I'm constantly writing and rewriting copy and drawing up scripts it's part of the job and grammal helps make it faster it's got some really cool features like tone suggestions to help you strike the right balance between direct and friendly in work emails plus gram has a ton of other great features like Advanced spelling grammar punctuation and conciseness suggestions to ensure your writing is professional mistake free and clear get AI writing support that works where you work sign up and download for free at grammar.com podcast that's g r m m a l y.com / podcast easy as said done you know we love talking stats here at the athletic here's one that's super simple to remember discover automatically doubles the cash back you've earned on your credit card at the end of your first year with cash back match that means with discover you could turn $150 cashback to $300 that's right you could put it towards some memorabilia you've had your eye on or treat to a premium Sports Network you earn and discover doubles see terms at discover.com crcard let's move on to the battle a little bit further back Mark because the Ferrari versus Mercedes scrap sort of seem to swing back and forth during the whole weekend Charlotte cler prevailed in the final results he got third place Mercedes ended up doing a two- stopper with George Russell 7th and Lewis Hamilton eth and obviously Carlos SS came through the the field fairly effectively after his difficult qualifying having had that gearbox problem on Friday but how do you judge the relative performance between Mercedes and Ferrari and where it fits in with Red Bull and McLaren the Mercedes was U much more variable because it's uh it was very badly afflicted by uh track temperatures it seemed like generally the track temperature was a little bit too cool for it and sometimes you would get to that threshold where the tires worked but sometimes it wouldn't and it's a very difficult thing to to judge from lap to laap especially when you got a gusting wind to to sort of confuse things further the Ferrari was just not a good car it isn't a good car to drive at the limit through long Corners it doesn't it doesn't do steady state cornering well it it turns it turns in well uh it does short Corners very well it it accelerates out of short Corners very well but it is not a car that works well through long Corners so this was the worst kind of track to see it in during a qualifying but those things when you're driving it two or three seconds off the pace and what you have to do which everyone's having to do to to um manage the ties to to maximize your stint length that that ceases to become an issue and it's then just about is the car balanced and and can it be driven in such a way that you have um decent Tire deck and and in that uh way on race day it was a much more consistent car and and Char you know a wonderful job absolutely Flawless job and uh they got the strategy right the the they made the calls at the at the right times and yeah it was just a a very good operational weekend from Ferrari but around a track where it's just not not very good car SS had a interesting theory for the qualifying deficit he he felt that there was something about the car on a on a the track this weekend that it just was not getting the tires in the window for the one lap and he felt that what he could not put more energy into the tires on on the outlet lap and when you mix together all those elements that they just felt that they weren't quite nailing the the tire prep um which is really significant here for for various reasons you can you can start like at any circuit you can start the lap with the tires slightly under temperature and then maybe you'll buy it back towards the end of the lap and theoretically that that could work quite well here because this is a circuit where you put a lot of energy through the tire as the lap develops but you also need an awful lot of confidence going into turn one here and as s said they they gave away so much time in the first sector and you don't get that back in the second part of the lap so you add that to the fact that it's just not a circuit that suits the car and the fact that we know that they've been hitting this pping problem for for so long there's reasonable chance that they're running the car in a state that's just costing them a little bit of optimization and I I looked at the lap the the lur lap inw versus Norris and you look at it initially when you think 9/10 of a second and you think I'm going to see like one really big snap or something like that it is yeah it's it's between anywhere from a few hundreds of a second to I think the biggest loss in a single Corner was maybe just under 2/10 but it's just almost every single corner there there's just a littleit it's just bleeding lap time across across it and you know monzo and Singapore and Baku could be very different stories but it shows where the limitations are and that that figures where the car that you're having to run a little bit higher than ideal to you know to keep it away from purpy I had say also a very strong performance of ner who's been performing really well this season actually he's been consistently very strong there's been the odd if a weekend but not very many of them I think people tend to exaggerate how many uh disappointing weekends L cler's had because he's actually been really consistently good and science obviously very good first in just to cut through those Midfield Runners and make sure he could get a a decent result and and beat Perez of course we did have a few members Club questions mark I'll throw at you Chris parrot said Mercedes made a mistake pitting Russell for soft but if Russell and Hamilton had been reversed would Hamilton have closed the Gap and regained any lost positions and Robert gri said what happened to Mercedes pacon with the bizarre two stop strategies to sign they were struggling a lot with the tires uh the the Hamilton strategy from where he started on the grid he penalized 14th Place wasn't it 14th or 15th 14 uh 14th is where he started in the end I think yes yeah um because of the Alban disqualification and Magnuson starting from the p so uh that was always going to be two stop going in and you'll have noticed he started on the softs whereas NE everyone else was on the mediums so that was always a two stop and that was that was a logical strategy on a weekend where the the difference between a one stop and a two was small starting that far back in a faster car two stop was The Logical choice and that was always the way it was going to be plus he got that second stop for free because he had more than a pit stop worth of Gap over hulkenberg so it it you weren't losing position you were just getting onto a better tire and you were more than going to make up that that time by getting on the fresher Tire the time of the extra stop 20 20 odd seconds with George they that was going to be a one stop but he just didn't have the pace and as science was clearly going to comp pass in the next couple of laps uh they decided to switch him accepting that he was going to get passed by the Ferrari anyway and and try to use the tire offset with a a fresh set of softs to to to more than claim that back but it just it lost them the place to Perez and to sign so yeah it didn't it didn't work and as he was trying to push on those softs early on he probably overworked them and that's when Lewis was able to catch them so yeah they ended up just you know in in their own in their own little little place it was the the the root cause was just a basic lack of race Pace it was just wasn't a very well balanced car it was overused in the rear end and it didn't didn't work very well there's something there's something that they're not quite nailing on the on the car around this type of track um it was probably even further out of its Sweet Spot than the than the Red Bull and Scott obviously Mark mentioned there Russell maybe being a little bit harder on his tires early on as you mentioned to me during the race it's quite a common pattern isn't it in terms of Hamilton being a fantastic tie manager Russell's not bad at it but he does have a a consistent trouble of maybe going a little bit harder earlier on and then struggling over a stint relative to Hamilton doesn't mean they're terrible in terms of management but just not quite the same level as what Hamilton can do yeah I feel like when when Russell's in control of it he can do a really good job but I I do wonder if he feel feels like he does still have that tendency to just kind of get carried away early on and so my I I wondered if today the problem was he had that slow stop and it cost him some time and I wonder if he was just trying to recover a bit too much time too quickly um I thought it was very telling that even though he had a pretty reasonable advantage on Hamilton Tire wise um you know Hamilton looked the faster right to the end of of the race and it was only once he caught Russell was in dirty air and there was no way he was going to get past that that kind of went the other way again so yeah I thought Russell was the well no I thought Hamilton was the stronger Mercedes driver in that regard today should we talk a bit more about Sergio perz now Scott you were keeping quite a close eye on him he finished uh six from fifth on the grid solid point so as he doing the job Red Bull need not no because um the cars I think there was well he was helped by the Mercedes second pit stop for for Russell because there was a point where Perez was going to finish behind two cars he should have beaten he he should have beaten Russell on Merit and he should have beaten the second Ferrari and he was going to lose to to both of them it was better in terms of obviously execution there was nothing dramatically bad about either qualifying or the or the race this weekend it was a very swingy kind of qualifying session anyway we talked about the gaps between Norris and pastri for example Hamilton was out in Q2 so even though it was a pretty big gap between Perez and vasta and you it's harsh to be too critical of that without then saying that the others did a the others that were on similar or bigger margins did a crap job you know but so it was it was it was sort of better definitely and it's kind of in the ballpark but it's at the low end of the ballparks don't really have low ends do that you you understand what I'm saying with my mix metaphors here those on a slope do have a low end that's true but those on the slope are poorly chosen location wise indeed so I think it was kind of all right but he needs to kick on from here and the fact that he did seem ultimately to have the fastest spec of the two and still this deficit would be a little bit of a worry yeah that could very easily have been lasting class couldn't it in eighth place and he just as he was in Spar he needs to do a little bit better than that obviously at Spar he was seventh after the exclusion but he finished last in class on the road so yeah a bit more work to be done for Perez but a gentle Improvement and it was interesting wasn't it Mark because um Andrew Benson of the BBC found out that Perez have been doing a little bit of driver coaching with Rob Wilson the uh renowned driver coach at Silver Stone It's Not Unusual F1 drivers do do this but it shows the ENT of the work that's going on there in terms of trying to get everything out of Perez even going back to basics and doing the the work on tracking a road car just to kind of get to the fundamentals and just think about what you're doing with your driving yeah um lots of drivers have done it over the years Kimmy reiken used to go up there a lot um valry BS too yeah it's just it's just coaching it's just uh allowing another professional driver to sit alongside and observe and and pick you know pick out any any bad habits you you you may have picked up and just just give some input and uh yeah as you say it is really back to basic stuff but it it it allows you to build and allows you to your confidence to build and that's you know that's very much what he needs at the moment yeah it's good to be doing that sort of thing and yeah coaching shouldn't be uh regarded with suspicion in in in Motorsport like all sports top athletes have coaches it's an important thing to do so hopefully that would have helped him a little bit now Mark you mentioned in our last podcast episode you were looking forward to the next twist and turns in the Alpine story were you expecting a Midfield class Victory as anval for Pierre gazley in ninth place to be among those story lines I wasn't but um it's such a wildly fluctuating story isn't it that you you you wouldn't have put it you know you wouldn't have said it was ridiculous that that might happen but yeah great great performance um he was really impressive this weekend gazley who's uh you really got stuck in even he I think he got um quite a bad run through the first practice didn't he and he was I think he was delayed a little bit but then he really nailed it and getting that thing into Q3 and put some ballsy passes on people uh usually R the outside of Taren fought it out with Alonzo hulkenberg yeah really really welld deserved um best of the rest after the uh the the the four big teams yeah I thought gazley had a a very very strong weekend and obviously Scott Alpine were in the news oie Oaks his first weekend as team principal obviously favy bori was uh talking a little bit on the record about their plans as well so are you now a convert are you completely convinced by the Alpine Revolution um there's there's not a lot to be convinced by at the moment they just purely because the this new leadership's only just getting started and there's been an awful lot of uh kind of shaking shaking the tree uh was since flavio's arrived uh Oak said it was the it's the Flavio tornado just uh going through basically tearing some stuff up and briori was sort of explaining that he felt that this team did need a an electric shock go through it that there was just and I kind of understand it in a way because there's been a lot of different people coming in and fiddling around the edges with this and it hasn't felt like actually anyone's either had the time the inclination or the authority over the last like four or five 5 years to get properly stuck in and change stuff maybe that will change now maybe Bor being there and sort of really deao being in charge and Oaks running endstone closely on a daily basis whereas they kind of missed that kind of leader before CU Bruno fam 's predecessor had a broader Alpine Motorsport remit so he could never be 100% focused on it because that wasn't his job to be 100% focused on it so let's see the direction that it takes um obviously willing to to give them time time is the the least you can afford a new team principal especially for Oaks he's he's new to F1 as a as a team boss even though he's got a lot of leadership experience from his time running high-tech GP which he founded in 2015 um and there's some bits of it that sound encouraging my I would say the most realistic part of it was Bri tor's timeline I was a bit worried when he put a year on something and made me think oh God here we go again but he was really just saying podiums in 2027 because they recognized the scale of the task ahead and actually I was kind of thinking I don't mind that as a Target because it's far enough ahead to genuinely reflect how much work needs to be done but within between now and 27 you've got a lot that's going to change within the team so they're not just expecting exactly the same stuff to suddenly yield a massively better result and you also got regulation changes on the horizon but this will be the second year of the r changes so they're not just going going oh 2026 we'll have it all I didn't mind that I thought that kind of put it put it back on a course that feels realistic whereas stuff like that blooming 100 race plan always felt utterly nebulous well they spent ages arguing about when the 100 race plan started counting down didn't they that was they changed it didn't they they seem be disagreements about when it started Etc which just sums up that team yeah I'd agree with you actually that 27 timeline is quite encouraging simp because it's not 26 which I suspected it might be but let's see how it really plays out o Oaks is clearly very accomplished as a a team boss I think he has the potential to to be very effective and while I have my uh fairly well talked about reservations about Flavia briori he can and has in the past been very good in terms of directing a team so who knows maybe let's see how they uh play out I'm still slightly dubious about the long-term future of that elsewhere in the Midfield Scott Aston Martin got the last point with Alonzo in 10 that was a weekend where L stroll showed some decent pace but didn't deliver it in Q3 then got that 5sec penalty for speeding in the pit entry that drops in behind Ricardo in the final results but any Midfield story lines leaping out at you uh Mark obviously cover covered how good um gazley was uh for for Alpine I was a bit disappointed by the Aston Martin result in the end they looked really good um three qualifying and thought something better was on the cards but then they had their usual Sunday slump but unfortunately for I I would say the standout one is probably a negative one so I think we'll probably need our old mate valter to pipe in about now let's go welcome to valb sympathy corner right Scott why are we back in val botas sympathy Corner yeah I can't remember the last time we visited it U I think we've had ample opportunity to but maybe we've just been a little bit generous let him off the hook uh but um this was just a full FL eded Unapologetic punch you in the face sympathy Corner weekend the car was awful it was so the worst of car has been this season I would so so slow um and when you consider it had a massive upgrade only a couple of races ago at a circuit like this in hungry where they were kind of optimistic about where it would leave them they've come here and been absolutely battered and then obviously did everything they could with a weird strategy choice to just ensure they definitely finished last with both cars they were at risk of beating one in the race today so I'm glad that they made sure they put that notion to bed and I spoke to about botas afterwards and I just asked him like you know because he was saying they was they they had an inkling this wouldn't suit them but it was even worse they than they expected they didn't think it would be this bad and the reason is thinks that the car is just terrible in the crosswind and he thinks that also this layout with a couple of banked corners and also some undulations he thinks really brings out the worst in the car as well because the ride Height's like constantly in in flux with the the fact that obviously the suspension's constantly basically traveling through a corner and in in in a more kind of extreme way than a conventional circuit and so it just sounds like it sounds like a car that as soon as it's not doing something in a completely straight line or with relatively simple things being asked of it physically it's all over the place so it does not sound like a car it doesn't seem to have a good mechanical platform or aeroc control if it's that sensitive so it just sounds like a mess and it looked like a mess as well yeah they're nowhere near in terms of getting the high and low speed performance they've done some experiments with flexible body work that haven't worked entirely well and everyone's been doing that there's a certain amount of flexibility you can get away with you've got to work in those areas they're just not that uh that good at it and it just yeah and strategy wasn't great I mean they seem to make a Bel line even over and above the fact they've got the slowest car they're very very good at establishing themselves in the last two positions in races to the point where I'm wondering whether somebody at Audi has got their timing screen upside down that's the only thing that I can think of to uh to explain it but it's just stuff's all over the place and you know they they changed um lots of things on the car for Joe before Saturday and then the car was all over the place and just both drivers are saying similar things and it's uh yeah it's not going well there the drivers definitely are the problem and I have a bit of a fear that in Audi there's been a suspicion that has been the problem but they need to take quite long hard look at themselves you I I guessing you mean that the drivers aren't the problem oh sorry no the drivers aren't AR really problem look Joe's not had a great season by any stretch of the imagination but straw eviscerates botas and Joe but he's also had endless problems some of which haven't been very well publicized let's put it that way so yeah I think it's if you look at the deficit I mean they keep saying it's quite close and a few tents makes a difference but we talked a lot about trajectories over the the break in terms of how teams are doing and the the Sala trajectory is just nothing they're not able to make any consistent progress so that's what really really worries me there so yeah a lot of sympathy for valter botas doubly so given he all things being equal and correct decisions being made he should resign there to take going to have to keep driving for this team for even longer yeah exactly and just hope things get a little bit better but yeah definitely definitely Val B sympathy corner is going strong we almost need a Joe sympathy corner to go with it salba sympathy Corner Maybe although um I feel that the amount of squandering of this Audi runup to 2026 that's been going on is is concerning me and they don't necessarily deserve sympathy from that perspective so uh yeah we need to see the Matia bonotto effect starting to come in fairly soon I would say well as ever we're devoting the final part of the podcast to questions from the race members Club thanks to all those who send questions in we'll try and get through as many as we can across the day in our midweek episode and if you're interested in signing up you can click the link in the description of this podcast head to our website go to patreon and search for the race on their loads of extra content not just asking questions on our podcast but exclusive podcasts as well exclusive bring back v10s we had a recent listener questions with Gard Berger so loads there for you to enjoy if you are so minded Scott the first question to you from ancy R Who Says how was Lando Norris able to do the fastest lap with those old tires I was surprised that Mercedes wasn't able to do it with the used softs well the main um thing I think that's went in Norris's favor there was that he didn't uh he didn't ask McLaren if he could do it Stella said after the race that if he'd have said oh do you think we can go for fastest lap they'd have said no don't take any risks um it's too far gone and Hamilton did it on a set of softs um but Norris just did it anyway at the end it was uh theapp and vesque um in the execution it just showed how much Pace was in that McLaren and how much he'd been able to look after those tires even though he was pulling away it was um it was just an indication of the class of the car and also what what how reserved nor was almost in that final stint yeah the the Dig was pretty low especially on the McLaren and also when Lewis set that lap on the softs he still had oh something like 15 laps worth of fuel in would it be something about 15 laps from the end so you know Norris did it on on near nearly empty tank so there's that to take into account as well yeah and he was sensibly in making sure he had full deployment available for that particular lap but well worth it for for the extra point you'd have to say Mark a question from Jake Britain is there anything McLaren could have done with pastri to get him in front of L cler uh Ferrari put it lir quite early and I think um it was just about as early as he could do it without dropping into a load of traffic so uh probably not no they the he didn't have enough extra uh straight line to be able to do it on track I think they more or less had to do what they they tried to do which was try to get a tire offset in the second stint by running longer in the first but you as recounted it didn't work so I don't think they did anything particularly wrong um no I I think uh Ferrari Ferrari made all the right calls and converted their track position in into a finishing position and uh question on that topic that I'll take from Cody van djk who says does Ferrari understand their car it's two races in a row getting podiums they were impossible are they surprising themselves or being sheepish to not set their own bar too high and nein nlls also asked where the Ferrari Pace came from we kind of addressed the pace coming from because once you're in kind of steady state running in races with management it's a slightly different challenge to qualifying and the Ferrari is better in race trim than in terms of qualifying Pace that's a characteristic they tried to uh change after a couple of years of being overpowered and qualifying and struggling in the races I think they do have a reasonable feel for it I think predicting L cler to get a Podium depended on a number of things happening and it was making sure he got the track position he had to get Perez at the start Perez got a little bit boxed in he sort of tried to go for a gap ahead of him between uh Russell and uh piastri and that closed and then L cler sweeped around the outside then he was able to undercut uh piastri so there was a little bit of circumstances there so yeah it could very easily have been a fourth or fifth place for L clerk I think so that was probably something you wouldn't foresee kind of the race all the cards falling your way you ending up on the podium Mercedes obviously with Russell uh uh losing the position as well so yeah I think they've got a reasonable understanding of where they understand what the problem is whether they understand the root of it and how to fix it will only know when the upgrades come yeah and I think also you got to look at it and say well was it really that competitive if you take Norris as the this the measure it's about as far off Norris as it would usually be all that happened was we had a a Red Bull that was way out of its window and a a Mercedes that was way out of its window so it flattered the Ferrari relative to the to the front it wasn't any further forward than you'd expect yeah exactly Scott a question for you from John Ohara to what extent was Lando's Gap over his teammate as much of a statement as the dominance of his Poland Victory it seemed important in terms of the narrative I think it was important for Norris for very many reasons to kind of get things back on track I think for his own self-confidence as much as anything else from a championship perspective if he is genuinely holding out hope that there could be a stunningly unlikely title charge he needed to to win McLaren's got a job to do in the construct his championship and yes the fact that piastri had beaten him in those races before the summer break and was starting to turn up the pressure a little bit which combined with Norris's mistakes was making people ask whether or not Norris was the long-term McLaren leader if pastri was perhaps on a trajectory that would see him Eclipse Norris and this result doesn't change that in in saying no piastri is clearly not going to be the better driver than Norris at McLaren it's still way too early to determine that but what what this does is just helps kind of reestablish in everybody's mind because I think f1's become ever more reactive and the way that everything's judged is kind of more knee-jerk than than it used to be it's just for those people that are judging everybody on their last race it's a reminder that Lando Norris is a very fast driver and a very capable racing driver and I think the fact that he showed that robustness to get back past for spp and even though he had the car Advantage you know track position still a tricky thing to to overcome took advantage he did the job and I think this was a very very good way to get his second F1 victory yeah absolutely in terms of that battle it's going to play out over a long period those Trends and those battles go back and forth and pastri after alls on in this second season Mark a question from Matthew kle has Red Bull's TI management worsened with this year car or are we just seeing the car pushed more leading to higher dag than we were seeing last year and Luke Spiker asked a similar question yeah I think um a little bit of an element of both but I think the big the biggest thing by far is the the reduced margin of speed um so you know when you've got a car which is intrinsically able to you know at its peak B half a second faster than the next fastest car it's relatively easy to uh make it look like your your tire management is fantastic because you just drive it a little bit further off the pace and it's still fast enough but as soon as your next fastest car is about as fast as you you that that disappears and you you're exposed so I think it's it's mainly that but it's a little bit about this car is not as easy to balance as the previous one next question I'll take from Daniel Ingleton who says do circuits need to reconsider all the pirate Technics at The Checkered Flag by the side of the track the track was completely covered in Smoke when drivers were finishing the race today and looked extremely dangerous yeah I did wonder about that cuz from the outside it looked pretty impenetrable I had to look at the onboards from uh particularly with stappen and clerk who obviously following a little bit after Norris it wasn't quite so bad from the onboards but still maybe a little bit worse than perhaps it should be so they might need to just think about that a little bit although it was very much well after the Checker Flag by which point they should have slowed down anyway so maybe they should be a little bit careful with that but I don't think it was quite as bad there was a shot wasn't there that went on the Main feed that showed the sort of headon where it looked completely impenetrable it was a little bit worse than it was from the uh from the onboards but yeah I think they maybe need to have a little bit of a look at that Scott a question from Janis vanal is Logan Sergeant going to be replaced soon now he's crashed another Williams update package in fp3 we also had a similar question from Robert odic um I think the Downs are probably bigger than ever we've been talking on off I think for probably four or five months now that Sergeant's vulnerable and that's been largely because his performances and the occasional crash and underwhelming but it's also been because James vals has never ruled it out he's constantly said that Sergeant needs to justify his place in the car and that includes to the end of this season not just uh Beyond and we know that he's being dropped for 2025 anyway um I would say that crashing the in the manner that he did in the most unacceptable kind of accident in a heavily up graded car that they've put a lot of money and time and effort into that the hopes for the rest of their season rest on as well in terms of finally trying to score some more points and improve their competitive situation I suspect that is the closest James Bowser's come as Williams boss to making an emotional decision and I think that is probably why he then had a very very low profile for the rest of the weekend I don't think it was necessarily because of albin's flaw flaw related disqualification from qualifying and the disappointment around that we've seen many of time this year already and last year too that vs is happy to front up to such problems look at the crisis that they got themselves in at the start of the year in terms of pace lack of spares no spare chassis Etc this felt very much like a person who didn't want to be confronted with questions about a driver that he probably wants to replace now if I was going to put my gut feeling out there I think vals has been flirting with the idea for a while and I think now he would he would like to because I I can't see how it's good for morale to keep going through this you know the Williams that side of the garage must have been devastated to have yet another massive workload put on the to-do list overnight misqu ifying as as a result had a compromised gromi um the only problem is there's not really a cast iron option to replace him with Liam Lawson is a great one but red ball would only let him go on the right terms and that would probably mean being able to recall him if they do their own driver Shuffle in a few races time that's no good for Williams Mick schumac has been mentioned but I don't really like the idea of replacing an underperforming driver who crashes every now and then with a driver whose 2-year career was sort of summarized by underperforming and crashing every now and then and then you're into the Realms of punting on a rookie Felipe dugovic at Aston Martin or um someone like Williams's own Formula 2 driver at the moment Franco kapino that kind of driver again I just think that's I just think that's a bit too much of a risk for what they want to achieve dugovic is maybe the only or the sort of most kind of appealing plugin and play option but he's he's still got a little bit of an unknown attached to him the only thing we know for certain is it won't be Kimmy Antonelli he's going to drive in fp1 for Mercedes at Monza and Toto wer said that it's been agreed he will not drive for Williams for the rest of this season also in the world of Williams Mark we inevitably had several questions about Alex Alban's exclusion from eighth in qualifying EDR gaming yakobus Lan Granton Andrew Ferg all chipped in with questions I'm going to merge that into asking for an explanation of the Alban floor disqualification how much was it illegal by and is it easily rectified um three of a millimeter and it was rectified by a little bit of um shaving with some sandpaper that's how close it was but yeah the these measurements are they're not straightforward there's lots of dimensional boxes that they have to come comp with what simultaneously and they are measured by laser scanning and so they the the teams endeavored to have the exact same um measuring system as the FIA and they thought they had done but they were out by as just say3 of a millimeter and no matter how many ways the FIA tried to to measure it to try and you know find if there was a way of of a con forming it was it was always just that little bit out U and so they they effectively didn't have any uh alternative it was at the it was the front of the floor um and yeah it it was it was it was shaved into legality literally yeah quite an easy uh fix at least in that regard and it should be fairly easy in terms of uh going forward those floors because the ones everybody got they can adapt that way and would have done that for the race and if there's any others lying around they can do the same thing there's a connected question that comes from Oscar who clarifies no not that one so not Oscar piastri not my 10 month not my 10 Monon old son either the question ah his first words the question is with the caveat this was sent in before the race has it actually been a good weekend for Williams to jump straight into Q3 comfortably on a Fickle track and environment is pretty good and even the sergeant prank has a positive it removes any pangs of feeling about dropping him for science uh yeah I think they're already not feeling particularly problematic about dropping him for science they've given Logan Sergeant plenty in terms of basically saving his uh his career in terms of being able to race an F2 and giving him at least a year and a half in in F1 maybe two full season so I don't think that that'll help much on that part but the more serious part of the question yeah obviously the legality thing they'll be kicking themselves for but it doesn't change the fact that the upgrade package works very very well so it's a major aerodynamic upgrade package the first of the year and there was a little bit of weight saving as well the roll hoop uh had changed a bit to knock some weight out there also weight quite high up in the car which is good for the center of gravity and it looks like it might have given Williams that that extra step to be a regular Contender at the front of that Midfield it's kind of been a bit 12 13th hasn't it with Alban as it sort of standard but maybe now it could be a bit 9th 10th the one thing we have to say on that is Alban and Williams went very well as anval last year so we need a bit of a bigger sample set there but yeah they can certainly on a disappointing weekend in terms of the results be pretty happy with the performance they've added to the car that's very very encouraging so maybe not a good weekend but uh from from a certain angle very very encouraging Scott a question from Neo s what happened to Yuki coda's race why did the team formerly known as minardi put him on a two- stopper it was difficult to discern from the TV coverage I don't think it's the team's former manard name that's relevant it was a very Toro Roso strategy it just me is just Peak to oroso just that kind of inexplicable why on Earth have you done that and the answer seemed to be that they wanted to split the strategy across the two cars and take a bit of a risk um but then they seemed surprised to discover that the strategy that put sonoda behind a bunch of cars many he was behind a bunch of cars and then just had a lot of dirty air um and had to overtake cars that he wasn't massively quicker then um which is a pretty stunning thing to find out in the middle of a gromie so I I just sometimes that team does stuff that I think only that team and maybe some people at Saba would understand because they just do these strategic choices that just you see them from the outside and you just think well that that's just condemning you to to failure and it happens a handful of times a year and I think this was one of them they they they they probably did have to roll the dice a little bit to try and get into the points but I don't think sonoda was the car to do it with given that he was starting quite close to the points in the beginning um if you were going to do that with anything I think you do it with your second car but so be it that's just how that team is and it's um yeah it probably was never going to score points today but it ended up a lot further off with sonoda than it probably should have Mark a question from Alexander lore returning to the world of Alpine what are what are your views on Jack Doan getting the Alpine Drive I've been following his performance in F3 and F2 and I think he might be a good addition to the grid yeah I agree he is not one of those Stand Out drivers in the junior category that wins instantly in everything they do you know like Charlotte Clair or George Russell or oscar piastri but he's you know drivers develop at different rates people people develop at different rates and we've seen enough examples in the past where guys that look okay they're they're they're okay they're decent but they don't look well shattering just build and build and build and there's no reason why um he might not be one of them he's done enough his his best stuff is genuinely impressive and I was particularly impressed last year in Abu Dhabi when he was um he did fp1 and was I think 0.14 off gazley on the on much the same program and then got out of that and got into his F2 car and and set a very impressive poll yeah and certainly he's impressed the team with his approach in terms of the simulator running the TPC testing your previous cars uh as it's called has been been pretty impressive so yeah I think danan I think danan probably will do a pretty good job in Formula One I think he's got the right attitude and the underlying pace is pretty good I mean Scott had a bit of a chat about Doan in one of the podcasts when we were going through that phase early in the August break of recording a fresh podcast every every six hours and doing bits at different times I'm sure we talked about doing at some point because we knew that they basically made that decision it's just it wasn't announced until uh the Zan vort weekend the final question I'll take from Yap roer who says after four years at xanor with all the problems that the organization faces every year wouldn't it be better if the Dutch Grand Prix went to Asen wouldn't that circuit be better for the current generation F1 cars yeah I mean Asen it would be okay for F1 cars I have seen Big Time single seaters at assen I went to the 2007 champ car race there that Justin uh Wilson uh won and uh I would recommend if anybody wants to search for champ car ass in 2007 an American Anthem or some such on YouTube you will find the most glorious rendition of the American national anthem before a sporting event you have ever heard it was extremely funny to be there at the time but um returning to the actual point I wouldn't like it to leave xanor yeah it it's a cramped circuit it does have problems but they do a pretty good job in terms of getting everyone in and out could deal with a bit more space but it's a circuit with a lot of character in terms of the actual track more so than Asen you know Asen is a a legendary track for bikes isn't it the Dutch TT um I feel xanor is a more car racing track so I'd like it to stay there how was the General organization this year Scott I wasn't on site but you were I found it to be perfectly fine I've been getting the I've been getting the train in and out every day I've had a seat on the train every time I've got granted I've been leave I've been coming in quite early and leaving quite late but when I do leave you know there's trains going from zanol station every 5 minutes yeah big numbers you you you look and when you're about to join in the you know the crowd you think oh it's going to be a crush and it's going to stop and you're going to get delayed but you know it always moves I think um I think it's it's it's pretty good actually they they do quite they do quite a good job with it actually you know on the organizational side the only thing that stood out to me this weekend is I think uh FAA and F1 might need to clamp down on drivers with um their increasingly Larry scooter usage because a track like this there's um the the most the unique thing about zanville actually organizationally is the split Paddock isn't it between where the hospitality units are on the truck so the drivers are constantly whizzing up and down but it's also the only walkway you and also the the the golf cart boogies which used to transport people and equipment so it's a bit Yeah can get a bit and the drivers are wh going around on on scooters which n 99 tons out of 100 really isn't a problem but here like there was I won't say which driver it was because I don't want it to sound like it's a it's a Pyon or anything like but what one driver nearly absolutely flew into a crowd of people um earlier just because they weren't slowing down on the scooter and just kind of expected everybody to miraculously get out of their way and it's one of those things where you're like okay if this is the environment we're all going to be in maybe we should all be behaving like we recognize this environment and we're not above it so if anything I would say that we need a little bit of uh F1 driver clamp down on being slightly lar idiots that seems like a very very good idea so yeah Dutch gr pre ideally to stay at zanville and we should add that there is some question mark about its future because it's got the deal till 2025 so there's one more on this this deal I think they had a couple of years options on the original contract that 24 and 25 and there's some talk about whether it'll continue whether it'll go to every other year but the Dutch Grom Prix in the in the max with stener has been a brilliant Edition hasn't it i' I'd be disappointed if F1 moved on from xanor although they should always look at ways to improve things particularly when it comes to the point you made I think Scott well thanks very much for everyone's questions thanks to Scott and Mark for your excellent answers it's a double header so we're going to be heading straight off to Italy imminently so stay with us for everything you need to know from the world of Formula [Music] [Applause] 1 the athletic