B/F: The Drive Thru #29

• Sebastian Vettel robbed in Barcelona after Spanish GP

• Kimi Raikkonen to make NASCAR Cup debut with PROJECT91
• NASCAR's Trackhouse Racing Will Put Formula 1 and IndyCar Drivers in a Cup Series Stock Car

8 world champions who would've been rejected under F1's flawed superlicence rules

• American Haas F1 team first to reveal new 2022 car
• Steiner: "Not possible" for Schumacher to continue run of F1 crashes
• Schumacher to cut Ferrari ties at end of 2022 F1 season
• Haas signs new F1 title sponsorship deal for 2023
• Dmitry Mazepin Buys Son New F1 Chassis to Compete with Haas' Mick Schumacher

Quotable Quotes...

• Daniel Ricciardo and Hulu Teaming Up for Scripted F1 TV Show
• McLaren in Ricciardo exit talks before Piastri announcement

Say It Ain't So! - DANNY RIC IS OUT

• Hamilton explains latest jewelry investigation

• Former F1 champ Jacques Villeneuve to run 2022 Daytona 500
• F1 plans talks with Netflix and drivers over DTS's fake drama
• Top race executive Tom Garfinkel admits the otherwise popular and celebrity-fuelled inaugural Miami GP actually lost money.
• Keanu Reeves Is Working On an F1 Docuseries for Disney+
• Raikkonen tests Trackhouse NASCAR Next Gen car at VIR ahead of Cup debut
• The Next Call of Duty Will Turn the F1 Singapore Grand Prix Into a Battlefield
• Gamers Rejoice: F1 22 Available on Free Play During Formula 1 U.S. Grand Prix Weekend

Hilarious F1 Mid-season recap!

Mario Andretti returns to F1!

• FIA clears Aston over Red Bull F1 similarities after investigation

• Audi and Porsche hold fire on final F1 decision
• Porsche's Formula 1 plans not dead, says FIA
• VOLKSWAGEN’S BIG BOSS SAYS PORSCHE AND AUDI ARE HEADING TO F1 SOON
• Audi And Porsche Will Join Formula One: Volkswagen CEO

First details of Porsche's buy-in on Red Bull Revealed

[00:00:00] Hello and welcome to the Gran Touring Motor Sports Podcast Break Fix, where we’re always fixing the break into something motorsports related. The Drive-Throughs GTMs monthly news episode, and is sponsored in part by organizations like H P D E junkie.com, hooked on driving American muscle.com, collector car guide.net, project Motoring Garage style magazine, and many others.

If you are interested in becoming a sponsor of the drive-through, look no further than www.gt motorsports.org. Click about and then advertising. Thank you again to everyone that supports Gran Touring Motorsports, our podcast Break Fix and all the other services we provide. Formula One is the ultimate competition, competitiveness, high stakes and politics.

It’s described as a traveling circus with thousands of employees that all share the same desire to win. The drivers are the best in the world, and they all [00:01:00] think they’re the one. They all want to be the best and they’re never less than full send. Welcome to our annual best of retrospective on automotive motorsports and random car adjacent news.

We’re focusing on the entirety of the 2022 season of Formula One in our special through to survive

what’s going on. The racing season ends for us here locally, usually around the late October, early November timeframe. But in other parts of the world where there’s lots of sand and no ocean, you know, they’re still running Formula One races and you know, Decar and all this other kinds of stuff. And so there’s always little tidbits of news here and there.

But as we lead into the opening. Of the next racing season, which Rolex is right around the corner, January 29th and 30th weekend here in Florida, yet again. So maybe some interesting Florida stories. [00:02:00] The news from the NASCAR world is Jacques Villa, former Formula One Champ and IndyCar 500 Champ is gonna make a run at the Daytona 500, which is coming up after Rolex.

So curious to see how that turns out. I mean, it’s basically kind of coming outta retirement to go run in nascar. I mean, yay. Cool. So let’s talk a little bit about Open Wheel News. What’s hot and what’s not in IndyCar? Formula One, what’s not hot is that Williams died. Frank Williams, the uh, I guess the team founder for the Williams F1 team.

He passed away at age 79. His daughter was, I think it was his daughter or granddaughter. His was running the team and owned the team and I think the Williams team sold last year to an investment firm, Dolton Capital. So, and they’re still gonna be the back markers, backmarker team of all Formula One, right?

Well, they’re gonna have some competition with Haas. I was gonna say , they’re doing, they’ve been [00:03:00] doing pretty well. They’re not that far. They’re also, they’re losing George Russell, cuz George Russell is going to be Lewis Hamilton’s teammate for the coming season. So they’ve got the new i I think they’re the ones with the new Chinese driver from Formula two.

That’s that’s moving up. So who knows? They’ll be battling for worst five. But there’s other sad news in Formula One. The king has been dethroned. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Lewis Hamilton lost. He is no longer the reigning champion. That title has gone to Max for Steppen. Due to some late lap final race heroics on his part.

It was a complete farce. And I mean, whoever camp you’re in, you’re not completely happy, I guess, unless you’re a master staffing fan. But whatever d Ricardo wanna wanna let race this year, so I’m happy. Any podium, that’s all that matters. Yeah, and I mean, there’s lots of memes and lots of stuff. I mean, people are even posting about, Hey, don’t forget about science.

You know, he had a great year [00:04:00] despite all the drama that’s going on. So I don’t know, maybe I’ll pay attention next year. , you’ll have to convince me if you’re looking to pay attention this year coming up, you would like to know that come February the teams start unveiling their new cars for the 20 20, 22 season.

So the schedule goes Aston Martin’s first on February 10th, then McLaren on February 11th, Ferrari is the 17th. And then Alpha Romeo is to be announced along with everybody else, alpha, Alpine, Alpine, Haas, Mercedes, red Bull, they’re all, you know, after those dates. So once I see the first one, I’m good. Right.

Basically, yeah. All the cars are, because of the new regulations and everything, all the cars are, should be very close to each other. Yeah. Yeah. And I’m sure there’s silliness and chicanery about all of them that, you know, ridiculous wings and, and all that kind of stuff. If, if, if you watch, ask the. The Aston Martin, then it’s gonna be the exact same car as the Mercedes, cuz that’s what they got in trouble for

Yeah. Right. Flash year. I just wish Formula One would go back to the old days where they could build their [00:05:00] own chassis and their own bodies and do their own engines and, and be all over the map. I mean, I just feel like, you know, it’s like iroc, they’re all in little go-karts and they’re all the same and you know, change the paint color from red to Pepto to green and you call ’em a different team.

I, I don’t know, it’s basically the NASCAR of the open wheel world that IndyCar, oh wait, yeah, nevermind. Cuz some people were saying for a while there, you know, IndyCar was the hottest thing on tv. It was the, it was the racing to watch and still have a hard time believing that. I still think IMSA is, is the way to go.

It’s some of the best racing, I mean, outside of a race like the Mint 400, you know, and some of those big off-road races where you can get really close to the trucks and the drivers IMSA’s the same way. There’s just this 10 foot pole between us, the fans and the racing itself. And it feels too marketing heavy and just, it’s too much of a circus.

And I don’t know, it’s, it’s kind of turned me off. I mean, granted in the WRC world, you can’t get close anymore, you know, because of the deaths and the safety and all that. And it’s still. Bonkers WRC is [00:06:00] absolutely nuts. I gotta tune in cuz Finland and on all those big races and Sweden and what are happening now here in the middle of winter.

So I’m, I’m looking forward to WRC season kicking off, you know, tuning into Red Bulls coverage. They do an excellent job for those that are probably gonna work and I watch a rally race. I’ve said it time and time again. Red Bull TV for free in 4K check. So there was some rumors that Brad Pitt was going to be making some sort of Formula one movie, and that, you know, oh, maybe Louis Hamilton was gonna be in it or, or somehow consult on it or something like that.

You know, it was all very fresh at the time. But as the weeks go by, we’re getting a little bit more information, and now we’re learning that Apple. So I guess this will end up on Apple tv. Apple and Brad Pitt are working together on this formula. Kind of inspired drama. When this was first announced, I actually made the comment, what is this just gonna be driven with Formula One Cars, which was, that’s Ster Stallone hot trash movie [00:07:00] where they were driving indie cars around whatever the hell city it was, which allegedly, I think that movie was originally supposed to be Formula One car.

So we’re finally making the movie we intended to make back then, but with Brad Pitt starring in it. So we know it’s just gonna be better, right? So I’m always down for a car movie, good, bad, or whatever. I mean, we’ve started an entire sub show of Break fix where we review bad car movies. So I’m gonna add this to our list when it comes out.

It’ll be interesting to see as this progresses and we learn more, what exactly it’s going to develop into. It’s not looking perfect. I feel like it should be Tom Cruise. Wait, we already did that movie too. I feel like this is gonna be Troy with helmets. That’s what this is gonna be. . Can Eric Bannon play the bad guy?

At least he’s a car guy.

But speaking of other dramas on television, what about Formula One? What’s going on over there, Brad? What’s the big news? All [00:08:00] the manufacturers are, or all the teams are releasing their new 2022 cars. I think Haas’s the first team to do it. And yeah, I mean, all the cars pretty much look the same. They’re all cool.

I, I believe the wheels are bigger. I mean, the tires are bigger than they have been previously, so that should help. So I’m just gonna have to wait and see how they perform on, in some way, make the racing more exciting. We’re gonna go ahead and see, we always say that every year I, I hear that phrase, we’re gonna make the racing more exciting.

Has that ever proven to be true since Bernie Eccles Ecclestone or Eccleston, whatever his name is, is no longer in charge and that other guy, sports or whatever, took it over? They have made some improvements and actually this year is the first year where they implemented a lot of different changes, especially to the cars and stuff.

So I think it could be good. Last year they were in, they were playing around, hit a lot of the races with the sprint race as a qualifying race. I think that was really cool. inadvertently or with, without their even trying. Some of the races ended up almost in like a reverse grid [00:09:00] because of red flags and stuff like that on the restart, which was super exciting.

But that wasn’t anything that they actually did. It was just kind of a coincidence thing. They are trying to make changes. Some of them make it more exciting, but it depends on what you’re looking for in racing. Some of our F1 fans hate the idea of the sprint race cuz it takes away from the qual, the actual qualifying and, and it adds nothing really.

It discourages someone from actually trying to qualify, you know, and have the fastest lap. I’m gonna watch anyway by like F1 racing, think it’s much more exciting than that. Been IndyCar. I thought the new formula cars were indie cars. They really look similar. They, I mean, I’ve looked at, they look identical, but they’re, I mean the McLarens, the Astons.

I was like, man, that’s a cool delivery on that indie car. You guys got there. I’m like, whatever. But to your point about making the racing more exciting and, and the changes. My hot take on this is if you want the racing to be more exciting, get rid of all this balance of power nonsense. What the people want, what the fans want is not everybody to be the same.

This isn’t go-kart racing. This isn’t [00:10:00] even NASCAR for that respect. And, and NASCAR I think should change too. Let people build their cars. We’re gonna talk about here with Rolex, and actually we should probably maybe transition to Rolex at the same time. You know, when they did the balance of power on the Corvette’s.

If you can’t build a car that competes, build a better car, stop penalizing everybody. If you’re hitting, if you’re following the marks of the rules. Build a better car. The only caveat to that is I would say institute some sort of budget to keep some of that. I mean, there’s a huge disparity in the amount of money that some of these race teams have.

Like obviously the factory teams like Mercedes are going to have a significant budget compared to a team like Haass. Why don’t we split F1 down the middle and do like they in WRC, where it’s WRC one and WRC two, so there’s F1 A and F1 B. It’s essentially what it is. There’s the, the best and then the best of the rest.

But that’s an unofficial thing. It’s not official. Yeah. But yeah, I would, I would agree with that. That’s, but, but, but look at it this way. If it was cheaper for Williams to develop like they did in [00:11:00] the seventies, like a six wheeled formula car and have it be a v12, let ’em. Who cares, like this whole cookie cutter, everybody’s got the same car with different skin on it.

It doesn’t do anything for me. This is why I stopped being interested in Formula One was right after the V 10 era where all the cars were basically the same and, and during the V 10 era it was di it was still different enough. Ferrari still had their motors. B W had their motors, Reno had their motors and they were all different enough and they performed differently.

Some were better than others. To your point, Ferrari has deep pockets, you know, things like that. But once they decided to make all the F1 cars cookie cutter, I’m done. I checked out, I don’t care, Lee. I see that in a lot of other racing and it, and it hurts me because I think it takes away. From the technological progression, it takes away from the ingenuity, it takes away from the originality.

And when you’re looking at the cars, you’re like, well, what’s the difference between the astin and the Honda? There should be a clear delineation between what they are and what they’re capable of. Not the same thing, [00:12:00] but here it is, it’s there is a teen spending cats down to 140 million from 1 75 in 2020.

Oh, damn. Is that all to, to help level the playing field for smaller teams like HOAs, as they go up against outfits with relatively unlimited resources like Ferrari, Mercedes, and Red Bull, which used to spend upwards of 400 million annually. So yes, they’re instituting that as well as all these other changes to kind of more, here’s the underdog story, right?

Ferrari spends 400 million and they get their butts handed to them by Williams, who can only spend 1 75. So who cares? Let them spend a billion dollars if they want to, but build a better mouse trap. Figure out a way to do it and, and you know where it comes from. The bitter engineers are the ones that do more with less.

That’s been proven time and time again. The cars that succeed are the ones that were built with less and they got more out of them than the folks that had deep pockets. That’s the Porsche story. That’s the early Italian sports car stories where they didn’t have anything and they built from nothing. So I think we’ve, we’ve gone away [00:13:00] from that and it, and it, it takes away from the racing, in my opinion, because it’s like watching a video game.

Right. And we’ll talk about that in a minute too.

And here we are at the tail end of March and you know, a lot of the racing season has begun, but it’s still pretty much in its infancy. There’s never an unending amount of drama over in the formula one side of motorsports. I’ll start off with more serious news before I pass the baton off to Brad to catch us up on all the things that have happened in the world of Formula One.

Michael Andretti has officially submitted his American Formula One Team Plans. Yay. Oh, that was the somber news. Yeah, that was pretty much it. , he didn’t say, he said serious. More serious news. Oh. Which I’m all for Andre team in Formula One. I guess maybe he’ll take over the Haas team or something. I don’t know.

I think that would make, that would make sense. Yeah. Cause especially with everything that’s going on. I don’t see them adding another team with two more drivers to make the field. 22 cars. I [00:14:00] don’t see that happening, so he’s gotta take over for somebody else. Cool. Good on him. I hope he’s got enough money to do it for more than one year.

Well, since you brought up aas, that’s a great way to talk about what’s been going on. Yeah, so F1 raced last week. Bahrain past, you know, I’m sure everybody knows what’s going on in the Ukraine. Uh, and because of sanctions and this, that and the other and social influence, global social influence around the world, people are basically cutting ties with anything that has to do with Russia, including the Haass race team.

They had a Russian driver, Nikita Mazak, his father was the main team sponsor. His company basically Euro Kalay or something? Yeah, Euro Kalay. They were an agricultural company. Basically. Haass cut ties with them, ripped up their contract and then fired his son. Uh, and then in doing so, they brought on Kevin Magnuson, who used to race for Hoss prior to last year.

It was a good turnout. Kevin Magnuson got fifth place in the race. That’s awesome. He qualified [00:15:00] in seventh, I believe, finished in fifth. It helped that both Red Bulls and one of the, uh, Al Alpha to cars, DN fd, that freed up a couple spots ahead of him. But it was an excellent showing from Haas, who, if we all remember last.

Finished dead last and second to dead last the entire season. Well, because they made a strategic plan, instead of investing a ton of money into building a competitive car for one season when all the regulations were changing for the next year, they elected to say F that they took all their resources, put it into the new car, and just said, we’re gonna run last year’s car and we’re just gonna give these rookie drivers some experience.

That’s what we’re gonna do. I mean, even Schumacher came in at 11 now. He missed the points. It’s clear that the new Haas car is competitive. Well, I can’t wait to see how they spin this on Drive to survive. Oh wait, I can wait because I haven’t watched a single episode yet, and it’s [00:16:00] probably for good reason because now Formula One is chasing Netflix saying there is undue drama in that series.

So I don’t know who to believe anymore. Right. Maybe I just gotta go back to watching the racist. I still think you should watch Drive to Survive. It’s very interesting. But yes, there is a lot of made up controversy and confrontation and soap opera ness to the whole thing. Okay. Although, so is it, is it Bravo level of like reality television, like Real Housewives, orange County?

Or is it, I don’t think it’s Bravo level, but one thing I will say strikes me as genuine is the hatred between Toto Wolf and Christian Horner that I think is 100% dead on. I think those two hate each other’s guts and it, it comes through in the, in the show. But I don’t think Lando and Danny Rick have an issue with each other.

I don’t think Orlando hates Carlos signs. You know, they tried to play up those aspects because I guess otherwise go are the days of [00:17:00] the big rivalries, like, like Santa Cross? Yeah. Or Hunt. Hunt, Lata. I think those days are over with. So they’re trying to make it, they’re trying to make something out of nothing.

But another thing about the F1 race, this, this past weekend, Ferrari came in, won too, for the first time since 2000, 2018. I think it was 2018 at the same track. It wasn’t even further back than that. They only did it once in 2018. . Yeah. So it was good to see Ferrari at the front of the pack, one of the fastest cars out there.

What’s the deal with the Red Bulls and the fuel pump? Wouldn’t we all like to know, including Red Bull? I think , but uh, they haven’t really disclosed too much information. But the cars failed because the engines were starved for fuel. We all hear all the time that lean is mean, but apparently two lean is not that mean and Mercedes is having issues.

Is that what I also heard? There was some speculation and talk during the testing that Mercedes cars weren’t up to their usual standards. They did. Okay. I mean, they came in third and fourth, so they’re not [00:18:00] terrible. Obviously if the Red Bulls were there, though, they would’ve been a little further back.

They’re not running away with it like they have in previous years. The gap has been closed between the front and the back, which is good. It’s, it’s good for racing,

but you know what doesn’t exist and has been teased for many, many years. Is the coming, the shadowing, the grand pedigree of racing. Audi and Porsche are in talks and cuming and debuting. They’re Formula One team. I dunno if it’s so much a team or they wanna provide engines. Well, Volkswagen was supposed to provide the motors, so who is it now?

But it probably gives more prestige to come from Audi PORs. It’s the same BS they did with the 180 Turbo when they, when, when VW created the 180 T. Then Audi suddenly said, well, we invented it. Like, get outta here. It’s all the same motor, it’s all the same stuff. That Block has been around for 40 years.

Get outta here. You know, Porsche wasn’t Formula One back in the day, you know, they were in indie car as well. I wanna see them [00:19:00] come back because I’m tired of Mercedes and Ferrari. I want to see some, some mixes in there. I wanna see them come back and do actually launch a factory team. Correct. I agree. I want them to sell their crap to somebody else.

Correct. And I can see them actually use it, because then this ends up like Formula Atlantic or Formula Mazdas. It’s like, cool, all p you know, or like the indie cars all powered by this motor and everybody’s got a different chassis. I don’t know. I, I don’t like that. But yes, to your point, I’d love to see a factory Porsche team back in Formula One, you know, kicking ass and taking names, but, you know, whatever, who knows?

Stop teasing me. It’s been 30 years of teasing me and I’m, I’m done with it. , what’s hot this month in the world of Motorsport there? Brad F1. S started not too long ago, and Mercedes is middle of the pack. Ferrari is leading. Woo. It’s about time. Yep. Yep. Red Bull had yet another car failure. Yep. Yep. Red Bull is proving to be as reliable.

What radio station? What radio station were they tuned to? 94 9 npr. Sweaty Balls. [00:20:00] I believe there’s a race this weekend, but I think there’s a race every weekend. It’s uh, Emilio. Yeah, they’re in, uh, they’re in Italy. Are they in Moo? No. AutoD. Dromo. Enzo. Dino Ferrario. SpaghettiO . Is that Emil man? They’re, they’re in elo, whatever’s former home of the San Marino Grand pre.

Anyway, there’s do pickles. Uh, there’s a f F1 race this weekend we got Bill Pickle, Dick Trickle, and Col Cricket.

You guys are big into Formula One, and I hear some exciting news coming from our friends at vw, Porsche, Audi. Yeah. Some of our favorite brands. They’ve announced that they are coming to Formula One in looks, what? 2026? It looks like. Not soon enough. 2026. We gotta wait that long. I mean, is that when they’re bringing out the next generation of car that they just brought out?

The new generation. Now we’re [00:21:00] waiting for that. It seems like a three to five year time table in Formula One. Will they be running 20 inch wheels then? Are they waiting for Trump to become president again and, and reduce the cafe, uh, requirements? Vw, the parent company of Audi and Porsche, et cetera, they’re making a push to put Porsche and Audi in Formula One, not just in engines, but actually have their colors being run on a car.

I don’t know. I don’t think that has been said at all. It looks like Audi is, has an agreement with McLaren, I guess for power plants. Both of these agreements are for power plants. Porsche will be powering the, the Red Bulls. I don’t even think there’s an agreement. I think there’s. We on this side wanna do this Audi, Porsche, and then McLaren’s, like middle finger.

We don’t want you. And I’m sure there’ll be negotiation at least that was my understanding. So maybe it’s all for nothing. Maybe they’re gonna power the Andretti car. But the question is with that is are they gonna let another team in and have 22 drivers, or is [00:22:00] Andrei gonna have to buy out somebody? Haas?

You know, I personally, I think Gene Haass is looking to get out of Formula One because it’s a loss leader for him. I mean, this year the team’s been doing a lot better than they have previously. But still, I think he’s been looking for an excuse to get out of Formula One for a little while. What do you do?

Driver shuffle? Or you just kick Schumacher to the curb? Well you keep Schumacher cuz you got rid of the Russian. No you can’t because Andretti wants to have American drivers on an American team in Formula One. He can put Schumacher on the B squad and keep him as a test driver for the team and not break his contract.

Yeah. But once you get a taste of that sweet, sweet Formula one drive, you don’t want to be a test driver anymore. I mean, I’m sure there might be some other team. I’m sure there’s like, you know, some other team that wants to kick somebody out. Maybe they could swoop, swoop up, Schumacher. Magnuson at this point.

I’m sure that Mercedes wants to get rid of Hamilton since he hasn’t done Jack shit this year. How quickly [00:23:00] They’re dis tired. I mean, I can say that because I already know he’s a much better driver than anybody else in the world. . So I don’t, I don’t care. Yes, Louis, you’re better than me. But you’re still gonna get kicked off the team.

It’s either you or Toto. Toto ain’t going nowhere. Nah. Yeah. So Audi and Porsche want again, formula One. They just need to find a team that they can give our plans to. I think they should go ahead and extend the field. Why not? I do too. I don’t think it would hurt. It’s not like there’d be that much more traffic do.

Yeah. They just gotta get around the back markers of Williams. There’s another team, right? For the taking, Williams is already under new own new, uh, ownership. Didn’t they do a documentary, like basically showcasing that they were dead? I mean, what, what’s going, what’s going on? , you know, there’s this show on Netflix called Drive where they talk about all of this stuff.

No, it’s been on for Four Seasons now. No, no. Three seasons. Four Seasons. Tanya, correct me if I’m wrong, three season, four Seasons. Yeah, there’s a lot of information out there, Eric Uhhuh, . There’s a lot of information on ancient aliens too, so I’ll just continue watching that. , you go ahead and watch [00:24:00] W R C with your 10 foil hat and us normal humans are gonna stick with f1.

Just an update. The DeLorean reveal is in four days, two hours, eight minutes, and 27 seconds. 26, 25, 24, 23, 22, 21. And we’re gonna talk about two disciplines simultaneously. And generally these two disciplines don’t go together. And that’s NASCAR and Formula One. They should go together. Aren’t there plenty of Formula One drivers that have made the transition in nascar?

Juan Pablo Montoya comes to mind. Well, I mean there is the guy from um, Ricky Bobby and then, uh, Cole Trickle. Cole Trickle, exactly. . But what are we really on about Kimmy Reichen making his return to the Motor Sports Toyota Iceman? Yes. And he’s gonna be driving what, Brad? A NASCAR 9 91 Chevrolet Camaro at the Watkins Glen International Raceway up in Watkins Glen, New York.

So he is gonna run on a road course in a nascar, so [00:25:00] that’ll be interesting. Well, it’s a limited road course. It’s not the full, he’s not gonna do the tow and then all that jazz. But this seems to be a new concept that Track house racing is pushing to put more overseas drivers Formula One drivers and IndyCar drivers alike in NASCAR Cup series stock cars.

I wanna know if he’s gonna be using a three spoke steering wheel. They have that pad in the middle. You seen those? You know, that would be new for him though. Right. It’s true. Did they even have spokes on their steering wheels? They’re like rectangles with handles on them. Yeah. With about 500 buttons. Yeah.

Right. Nobody knows what they do. Buttons and switches. I mean good for Kimmy is NASCAR that desperate? That’s my question. His retirement. He must have got it really bored really quickly. You see it all the time. I mean, Mika Hawken went to WRC and Olivier Panis went to touring car and I mean there’s, I mean they go wherever they go, right?

Valentino Rossi is left motorcycle racing to go racing cars. He’s [00:26:00] s Rro. Okay. Yeah. So Kimmy Reichen is going to be driving NASCAR and Watkins Glen. Uh, I mean I guess I would watch that NASCAR race just cuz it’s something different. When is that race? It’s in the article. Has NASCAR season started? That’s how much I pay attention to nascar.

Ha. I know the answers yes. I thought NASCAR started in February. Wrong answer. NASCAR season never ends then. How do you know when it begins? Nascar, it’s a never ending story. Well, since we’ve brought up Formula One, you two are the resident experts, and I’m just gonna bring up a couple of things that I noticed this past month.

And we gotta start with the Miami Grand Prix. You mean Monaco Light with the fake marina and all that other stuff going on there? The thing about that that I thought was ironic, the Miami Grand Prix boss, he admits to being shocked by the financial loss that they took on the race. And I’m like, yeah, you went out of your way to build this ridiculous track with all this fake stuff like Disney World, but you oversold the [00:27:00] ticket sales.

And yet you still lost money. I mean, a race in its first year, especially in a new place, isn’t gonna make money. It’s gonna make money in its third year because then you’re still paying down the investment. But I mean, what did he expect? You know, I gotta say the Miami Grand Prix, the spectacle, the fake marina and all that jazz, the helmets.

That’s exactly what you would expect from a South Florida rendition of the French Riviera Grand Prix , which Monica was coming up this weekend, by the way. And I thought that the, uh, the helmets were the coolest part. You know, Lando with his basketball, Danny Rick with his Ace Ventura thing, you know, all that stuff, you know, really lending itself to Florida and whatnot.

I, I didn’t watch the race. I know you guys did. I don’t even remember it. The track was that good. Mm-hmm. underwhelming, because I didn’t hear much from our members as well. I mean, normally there’s a big aloo about every race and this track. I think the one thing I heard was this track is trash. Lots of things that I heard were, [00:28:00] it was basically the fire festival of the F1 season.

Yeah. But at least it happened, right? Because Fyre Festival has yet to go off. Oh, it’s okay. He’s outta jail. So the Fyre Festival actually happened. They got a whole bunch of rich people together on an, an island in a foreign country. There was no music, but they had a festival. Fred Minute there. I thought you were gonna talk about Ibiza off the coast of Spain, but you know, Hey, whatever.

It’s, no, no, they were down to South America somewhere. Uh, let me just call up my buddy Ja Rule and see if I can get the details. . I’m trying to think. I, I, I think it was a pretty boring race. Like nothing really. I say boring race and there was like five DNFs, but , that’s terrible. Oh, is that, that’s, no, that’s not the race where Schumacher and like metal crashed each other out.

No, that was this past weekend. No, was Spanish Cro Parade? No. Nove and yeah, I think Vve and Schumacher was this. Okay. And it didn’t, I’m looking at a picture right here of, uh, so Vel took himself, well, Vel got taken out, but Schumacher kept going. I think probably, yeah. That’s also the race where Vel claims that he got robbed [00:29:00] while he was there at the Spanish Crore and laughingly.

I heard from somebody going, did he also claim that they stole his talent? Succinct. . . I was like, that’s a good one. That’s really good. That’s clever. So that race was a good race. The But Miami. Miami not so. I don’t, I can barely remember it. I do remember thinking it was boring. Everyone’s spread out and like that.

But how is it gonna be portrayed in seasons five and six of Tribe to Survive? Because all the drama llamas are gonna be so excited to see the behind the scenes of the Miami Grand Prix. Well, they’ll be basketball helmets and butt slaps and all that stuff. . Well, it is confirmed that there is gonna be a fifth and sixth season of Drive to Survive, which I’m not gonna watch on Netflix cuz I’m not.

Which will be interesting to see if, if they’ve taken any of the uh, feedback from F1 to tone down their dramatizations. I’ll put it this way, and I don’t watch the show, but I was thinking about that because we talked about it last month or the month before. [00:30:00] If you took the drama away from Drive to Survive, all you’d have left is a boring F1 race.

So just watch the F1 race. Well, if you took the drama out of it, you’d have season one and most of season two I would say. And then like I haven’t watched the fourth one yet, but they definitely increase it in the later seasons. So the Bick question is, with all this drama, is Ferrari cheating? What’s all this nonsense about the tires considering?

Unfortunately, the car died in the Spanish gp. No, I don’t think they’re cheating . At least they weren’t in that race. Uh, let me guess. Christian Horner started poking his nose and what Ferrari’s doing, saying the Ferrari was cheating. I guess because Mercedes and Toto Wolf are out of the way right now. I mean, although Mercedes did a lot better in this phrase.

George Russell did get a podium. He did, had an unfortunate incident not happened with Hamilton. At the very beginning, I would question whether or not he would’ve been on the podium. Uh, well you mean [00:31:00] before he ran into Schumacher? No, before K Mag took him out on like oh, oh k K Mag. Yes. Point five of the lap.

I don’t think it was KM Mag that did it though. It was Hamilton drove into him. No, guys, none of that matters because La Cleric wrecked loud ass seventies F1 card, the Monaco Grand Prix too, right? That was not his fault. The brake exploded upon breaking and he had no brakes. You think you would check those things before sending a vintage car out onto the track?

Well blame whoever the heck is the steward of loudest car. Apparently they don’t have enough checklists. Apparently not. There’s a still shot of it and you can see the brake pads or the road or whatever. I mean, it was just like you just saw like this explosion. You could see the parts like out of the car and it was like, and then he hits the wall.

How much is that gonna cost to fix? I mean, it’s been wrecked before. So , well, the last bit of Formula One news that came across our desk, the F I A clears Aston over Red Bulls F1 similarities after an investigation. [00:32:00] What? Aren’t these cars all the same? No. Well, I mean, Aston was in trouble last year as well for allegedly copying the Mercedes design.

Basically, they’re like the Hyundais of the F1 sport because they see what everybody else is doing that’s successful and then they copy it on their own. I think allegedly last year they said that Aston bought the previous year’s design for the Mercedes car and that’s why they were doing so well. This reminds me of Queen versus vanilla Ice.

Yes. Dun, dun, dun, dun dun. Not dun, dun, dun dun. Yeah. Yep. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Okay, got it.

good for the Indy 500. I unfortunately didn’t watch it, just like drive to survive. Not watching that either. So you guys watched the Formula one races. So what is going on? What is this purposing thing? What did they suddenly turn into? Sea mammals. What the hell is going [00:33:00] on the cars? They is a bouncy as they go down as the track.

They bouncy. Bouncy. What do you mean they’re bouncy? They have like more down force than if another car was sitting on top of them. Yeah. No, no, no. Bouncy. Bouncy . Are we talking kangaroos? Like what are we talking about here? We’re talking like basically it’s like a P. So they’re jumping, they’re jumping out of the water.

No, they’re vibrating. They’re bouncing down the straits. Okay. There’s nothing more exciting than watching a driver’s head. They’re oscillating vertically. You know, the vertical oscillation, we all experience it. So it’s, it’s like the stance bros. When they hit a bridge choice and they, they bounce for like five minutes until the bar settles down.

That’s exactly what it is. So I think my opinion on what’s going on is all the cars were redesigned for this year and they’re finding that now the tracks all need to be repaved, , . Well, yeah. I mean, it’s something to do with the underside. They haven’t got it quite right, but apparently, like Red Bull has so far because they’re not suffering, they haven’t [00:34:00] suffer.

As bad as everybody else, but their design is slightly different. They’ve got, I don’t wanna say bent the design rules, but maybe there’s like some caveat loophole that they’ve, they’ve got like these wings at the front underneath that are I think redistributing the air probably in a better way. And I don’t think anyone else is running quite that same design.

So I don’t know what channeling is happening underneath. And basically they’re just sitting there and they’re doing this bouncing and they’re compressing everyone’s spines in the seat and their heads are like floppy rag dolls in the cars at 200 miles an hour bouncing off the halo. It can’t be pleasant.

The last race or whatever. No, it was Azerbaijan when Hamilton got out and he was like basically holding his back, which everyone likes to complain that he’s just a crybaby loser, but I can only imagine that is not pleasant for your back. So I’m sure he was in legitimate pain and there were other think drivers complaining about it too.

So can I ask a stupid question? ? No. What if we put the 15 inch wheels back on and the [00:35:00] tires absorb some of the, yes, we talked about this a little bit, but in thinking about it, maybe it’s not a tire issue. Well, the tires are part of the suspension on Formula Cars, right? That’s side sidewall. Deflection makes a huge difference.

But they all have the same tires, right? So why is Red Bull not having an issue? Or other teams aren’t complaining as badly, but it could also be the air going over the tires. It could be a lot of things. Cause granted, maybe the overall diameter is the same, but it’s not deflecting the air the same way.

The sidewalls are stiffer. There’s a lot in that tire technology, and it’s a little bit, I hate to say unproven, going from a 15 inch wheel to an 18, cut the side in half. There’s a lot of stuff going on there that I would love to see them just throw a set of fifteens on and see if it makes a difference.

Like, let’s start with the simple things first, right? Because all those designs they come up with, with the funky air and all the, the tunneling stuff that they do, they’re pretty, I hate to say, pitch Perfect. At the end of the day, what’s the biggest change to the car is these ridiculous wheels that they put on to make ’em look like, you know, [00:36:00] matchbox cars.

Yeah. And the FIA has said, you know, I mean, they’ve issued a press release saying that they’re going to step in and look at everything and come up with a solution. Oh, they are. They’re just gonna wave a magic wand and not worry about the engineers. They’re just gonna tell ’em what to do. Yeah. Yep. Oh, okay.

Cool. Good job guys. You’ll learn about it and drive to survive. No, I won’t. . So, Tanya mentioned Azure, Baja. I heard a little rumor that Ferrari had four DNFs in that race. Yep. What the heck happened? Signs was a gearbox issue. I think his motor was running failure. Okay. Hi. Le Cleric. Blew the motor cuz all of a sudden it started smoking.

Mm-hmm. , I think one of the other, one of the Haas also had a similar fate. It wasn’t smoking as badly or it was the alpha one or the other. I don’t remember which was the issues. But basically, yeah, four of the power plants poo-pooed and to make matters worse, Schumacher still having issues. Was that the race he crashed in?

I mean, which one hasn’t he crashed in? That’s what I’m saying. [00:37:00] Schumacher’s, the new Masen. Well, I wouldn’t say he’s as bad as that guy, but he was doing really well in Canada except the car died. . Well, have you seen the Canadian track? I mean, I’d love to be there, but it’s like driving around a potato . It’s not like as complicated maybe as some of the other tracks on.

No, but he qualified, he and Magnuson qualified like five and six. I mean they were at the top of the field. I don’t, they were the only team with two drivers in the top six. . Yeah, so I mean they were in a good position and then unfortunately Magnuson suffered a front wing damage that meatball him, and then he lost his shit ton of time in the pits and could never recover.

And then Schumacher’s car, he pulled it off the track basically cuz it died. So that was it for team House. And I was very worried during that race because Alonzo started on the front line, which apparently was the first time in forever. And he was, so, he started number two and I was just thinking it’s the Alonzo train for 70 [00:38:00] laps now , which is annoying as hell and amazing to watch all at the same time.

No, it’s not. It’s so frustrating to watch. It’s, it’s frustrating to be behind him. But al my, he gets his elbows out so far for, he reaches from wall to wall. You cannot get around him even in the grass. He’s just, That guy knows how to defend. I was very grateful when he had to pit and let everybody go by.

That race was a good race. That was a good race. That was a very exciting race. It’s unfortunate. McClair ended up starting all the way in the back, fighting his way through d r s trains to get finally, what did he come in fifth? Mm-hmm. climbed his way back up from basically dead last to fifth probably if he wasn’t stuck in d r s, trains could’ve done so much better.

He did some awesome non D r s passes, which you often don’t see non d r s passes anymore. So it was pretty cool. And then the battle between science and verin at the very end was like someone needed to make a mistake. I [00:39:00] mean, science was breathing down his neck and he was making mistakes, unfortunately, and just couldn’t get around him.

And unfortunately, the Ferrari don’t have the straight line speed. So there was no way he was gonna make the past, but he was glued to him basically for the last couple laps, trying to get back into first place. So there was also a video going around, and I’m sure you saw it, Brad, but they were basically critiquing Danny Rick and talking about how his driving style is part of the reason why he’s not competitive, because he’s too old school now.

I mean, yeah, I can see that being a problem. He’s your heartthrob. I mean, aren’t you a little disappointed by that? Of course, Danny, Rick, I meets your boy, he’s always been in like the middle of the pack. He’s like this guy that I feel like everyone had all these high expectations and then he had one or two podiums and blah, blah, blah.

And then, but for the most part, the majority is middle pack and then it’s just gotten worse. Like he keeps jumping ship. Like he didn’t stay long enough with anybody. He had a lot of promise at Red Bull, but Max Ver Sapin had more promise. And I mean, I think you [00:40:00] and I theorized this or you theorized it, that he was kind of maybe a little scared of having to compete with Vers Sapin and he didn’t want to be the number two driver on his own team.

Yeah, there’s ego there, right? So he, he made the jump. The jump to Reno was just not good because the car just wasn’t really competitive with McLaren. It’s just a completely different car and he just, he can’t seem to get it together. Well and the McLarens themselves aren’t competitive cuz everyone, you know, not this year.

No. They were, makes Lando seem like last year, you know, Lando is supposed to be the next first step in himself and he can’t do anything out there either. So Yeah, this year McLaren, they kind of like the way Mercedes, they just, they can’t get it together. But last year the McLarens were pretty competitive.

Danny won a, a race, you know, last year a race Adam, how many races? 30 because everyone else dnf. No, I’m just kidding. . Oh, well he, he has actually won some races and he’s podium a few times, so he’s doing better than a lot of the drivers in the field right now. A lot of the drivers in the field right now have not as much experience as him.

That is true. They don’t have as [00:41:00] many races under their belt. I mean, he’s like 27 and they’re 19. I mean, I get it. He’s got some years on him, right? ? I think he’s in his thirties, but Wow. He’s, he’s a geezer, he’s a bronze. Yeah, right. He’s bronze class. Yeah, he’s 32. I mean, for F1 standard. No, he’s ancient, but Schumacher was still out there running until he was like almost 40.

Right. Or something like that. I mean, a lot of those was also in the fascist cars. True. But I mean, back in the day, the F1 drivers were a lot older than they are now. Now they’re like, you can drive a cart at like five years old and then by eight you’re in a formula car. You’re like, good to go. You know, it’s, it’s not.

So here’s what I want to know. Do we get a Christian bail movie version of this kind of like the Big short, or is that just still called Drive to Survive? I don’t get the joke. . I, I, I, Tanya, I think you and I have to shut Eric down now. If he hasn’t watched Drive To Survive, he cannot make Drive to survive Jokes.

he tried, he tried really hard this month to get me to watch it. He’s like, [00:42:00] we’re gonna do it. I’m putting it on the tv. I’m like, no, I can’t. I can. Did you put it on? No. Apparently Golden Girls got put on, but not drive to survive. You know? I clicked on Drive to Survive Season one and Golden Girls showed up.

I don’t know what happened. Those saucy old ladies are amazing. That was the, that was the original drive to survive. Yes. Saint Ola edition. They were surviving. Not much drive there though. Well, they had a drive to survive. Yeah. Not that they had to. Not that they had to drive to survive, but they had the drive to survive.

The drive to survive. And Blanche was a slut. Rose said, so we know this, it’s Rose said. So

what is the one show that Eric refuses to watch? Game of Thrones. No, I think he watched Game of Thrones. RuPaul’s Drag Race. . I think that’s on his top 10 list. It is a car related show. [00:43:00] Jay Leno’s Garage. , RuPaul’s Drag Racing has drag racing. What are you talking about? . Oh, do you not like Motory? He hates John Davis with a fan.

This comes up literally every month. I refuse every episode. Is it American top here? His American top here is always working. It has garnered more US viewership because of this show on Netflix, which is the opposite of World Rally championship . I know you watched Russ Valley before, so I know it’s not that.

It’s good. Show that guy’s nuts. Every Bad American version of Top year. Yeah, top. Yeah. Thank you. . . Oh my god, they’re so bad. But no, not that is the Junkyard War. Are you anti junkyard wars? I am anti drive to survive. I refuse to watch it. Oh, and Brad almost pinned me down at b i r and he’s like, we’re put, I’m putting it on and I’m like, Nope, I’m leaving the house.

We’re not. So instead, bonus, what did we watch at V I r? ? I [00:44:00] know Forza. They can afraid. But she was an answer to a previous question, although she was the wrong answer of whose stepmother she was. It’s true. And I mistakenly listened to this on the drive home from v i r cuz it started playing over my Bluetooth.

See they are both pals and confidants. Thank you for being a friend. The problem with Drive to Survive is season spoiled before it starts. Mike, you ruined them. Nobody. Nobody got that. Yeah, it’s Golden Girls. Golden Girls, thank you. I made Brad watch The Golden Girls instead of watching Drive to Survive.

Golden Girls were amazing. Here’s, here’s a little secret he didn’t have to make me. Hey, I watched that going on. It’s great show , he liked it. He really did. Those four saucy broads. There is a new series coming to Hulu about F1 racing and stuff. You know something else Eric will never watch a hundred percent.

[00:45:00] Daniel Ricardo has been pegged as one of the executive producers. Hopefully he makes it not cheesy or overly dramatic or fake. I have an issue with how they talk about his racing prowess. He’s not Aton Senna or Louis Hamilton or Michael Schumacher. He’s only won eight races in F1 people. He’s not like a champion or anything like that, so whatever.

It’s the same thing as like if Kevin Magnuson was, was doing this, whatever. But yeah, there’s an F1 show coming out. Eric won’t watch it. We’ll have to tell you how it is. But you know what? I honed in on Brad? No. Where it says, Danny, Rick and Hulu teaming up for scripted F1 TV show and immediately I said, well, Netflix already has drive five.

What the hell is this? Right? It doesn’t make any sense at all. You know it’s gonna be a, A comedy like that show that was on Netflix about the NASCAR season that they canceled after one season. The one with Kevin James in it. I can’t remember what it was called, but it was actually pretty good. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah.

That wast a bad, that wast a bad show. No, it was [00:46:00] pretty good show. They just dropped it. But there’s also another docu-series Eric might watch. This one is being led, I guess, development by Keanu Reeves, greatest person of all time, wants to develop a docu-series around Ross’s Brawn and Bran gp, who apparently they were two time champions.

GP, formula One again. I mean, you lost me at Ke Reeves because he’s gonna be like, oh no, Kung fu I, I mean, I get it. He’s like into bikes and all this other kind of stuff. I, I’m happy there’s another Hollywood celebrity that is into cars. If you tell me, yeah, okay, we’re doing another Peter Brock film or we’re gonna do something about Hurley Haywood or whatever.

Fine, but this, whatever, okay, I’ll watch it. It’s kind of sorta of up there with my attention span of like the lady in the Dale and some of the other stuff. I’ll get around to it when I get around to it. It’s actually pretty interesting. So Honda pulled out F1 back in 2008, but there was a team that they had that they just decided we’re not gonna fund.

So the [00:47:00] principal of the team bought it from Honda for one pound. We renamed it Bronze GP was Ross Braun, and then they had Jensen Button and Rubens Bar driving and they won the 2009 season in 2010. Oh, so this is the rich energy car now I’m interested. I got it. Got it, got it. But I wanna know any drama in the F1 world.

Did mix Schumacher blow up another car again, or you know, the Ferrari actually finishing a race? What’s going on? So yeah, Carlos signed, his car broke, so he did not finish the race. The last race that they had, which was. That was the Red Bull ring, I think. Austria. Austria, yeah. Charles Le Cleric won, but he was having pedal issues, so he was literally pulling the, the accelerator pedal back up with his foot to get it to set and then putting it down and pulling it up.

I It was still staying engaged. Like 30% or something? Oh yeah. Yeah. It wouldn’t come back. So he would push it down and it wouldn’t come back. So he had to manually force it to come. Uh, so he did that. The last few relapses of the race still managed to beat for [00:48:00] stop him. And then Lewis Hamilton got a podium.

He came in third again. Yep. He’s making his comeback people. Uh, yeah. Huh? Uhhuh. . Uhhuh . Right there with Danny Rick.

Well, switching gears, let’s talk about GM and Motorsports a little bit. There has been a push recently through, what is it, project 91 and Track House Motorsports to get famous drivers from different disciplines to come run in America’s premier racing series. Known to us as nascar. Yeah, they already have.

He already did. It was this past weekend. That’s right. Our latest victim was Kimmy Reichen. And how did he do? Yeah, how did he do not well, he got crashed out in the bus stop. I heard . I’ve read his report. He’s the iceman as he always will be. He didn’t say a whole lot. It sounded like he crashed with his own teammate and excuses about how everybody went left and he didn’t.

And I, I don’t know. It was just like, okay. There was all this seesawing about where he. In [00:49:00] terms of the pack. One minute he was eighth and then he was 28th and then he was 18th and I didn’t really understand what was going on. So what I think happened is he was taking the airline into the bus stop, staying far right.

Everybody else was taking the NASCAR line, staying far left. And then when he started turning or not turning, basically because you, your far right, you just kind of jerked the wheel a little bit. Everybody else kind of turned in on him and pushed him into the bus stop. More than likely, I hope to see Kimmy out there running some more events.

Maybe he’s only gonna do the road courses. Yeah, he was doing testing at b I r. Why? I don’t know, because the v i R and Watkins win are not close to being the same track. Curious to see if he continues. I’d like to see him do some more. I’d like to see some other people, I mean we saw this with Juan Pablo Montoya and a lot of other folks that transitioned over from other motor sports.

I, I don’t want it to come off like, well, I’m retired from the big stage, so let me go run nascar. It’s a difficult thing that they do. Those cars are very, [00:50:00] I, I don’t want to use the word primitive and have it come off sounding negative or derogatory cuz it’s not. Those cars are a handful and we’re gonna learn about that more in an episode later on in the season where we talk to some folks about late models and what they’re like to drive and how they’re set up.

They take some bravery, they take some strength to drive. It’s a lot different than the super computerized jet fighters of like a Formula One car. So there is an adjustment there. But I like to see people move around. Some folks retire and choose other disciplines and it doesn’t work out. Kimmy’s still got a lot of life ahead of him as a driver, so who knows?

Maybe he’ll end up in the uh, S R O or Imso pad one day, you know, we’ll get to see him out in a touring car or GT car. And just outta curiosity, what is the connection to General Motors? He drives a Camaro. Okay. That isn’t a Camaro, but it’s got a Chevy engine. Does it have a Chevy engine or a Gibson engine?

Well that’s still a Chevy at the end of the day, right? Maybe sort of in spirit. Yes. Kind of. Sort of . Meanwhile, Porsche [00:51:00] has revealed its first details about its buy-in of the Red Bull Formula One team, since you two are there, our resident Formula One experts, how do you feel about. Sorry. Go ahead Brad.

Great. Yeah, good job. Go teen. The yawn explains everything. My biggest question is, like we’ve been saying for a while, is it gonna be a Porsche? There was all that back and forth about Volkswagen supplying the mgus, the new power plants and, and this and that. Now we’re not hearing that, but it’s gonna be an Audi.

Okay, well we’ve seen how that plays out. It’s a Volkswagen product that they put a different badge on and we will go that way and make everybody believe that that’s the truth. The question is, is the first Porsche F1 car in 2026 really gonna be a Porsche? Isn’t it all badge engineering at this point?

It’s all just advertising. Porsche’s paying to put their name on somebody else’s Formula one car, sort of like the LMD H cars too, right? Where the chassis are being built by Delara and they’re being built by Orca and Weber and then people are slapping their badges on ’em and maybe supplying the [00:52:00] power plant.

So maybe that’s the way of the future. Although for Porsche, it just seems out of character for them not to build a car from the ground up and I don’t know like that. I’d rather see them be car, motor, chassis, everything them than I’m like, okay, I bought into 50% Red Bulls slapped some poor sticker on side Ronna Honda to motor.

Exactly. They’re doing the same thing that Aston Martin did. I think with the now Aston Martin team, formerly Force India, it’s all cost cutting. The, the bean counters and accountants have gotten in the ear of the executives and saying, yes, this is great. This will be wonderful for us, except we don’t wanna spend any money to do it, so make it.

But without further ado, I need to turn to my subject matter experts in the worlds of open car racing, especially Formula One. Let’s talk about what happened in August. Nothing cuz it had basically been a holiday. . Well, there’s one thing we could talk about. What’s that? Daniel Ricardo is losing his racing seat for next year.

Oh, are you sad? I, I’m a little [00:53:00] sad. He hasn’t really done much. He’s fell pretty hard from Grace after leaving Red Bull and he’s had a string of really bad and unlucky years. I don’t know what is next for him, but apparently McLaren is buying out the rest of his contract and it’s a sad day for you. Is it Danny Rick fan?

Yep. So we will see if he ends up racing, maybe we’ll see him over in SRO somewhere. Well, he may go wherever ves going. Ves retiring, he’s going biking and all the stuff that VE does. Buying old formula cars like Nigel Mantles, right? Yeah. So that’s two drivers out. Ves out. Danny Rick’s out. Well there’s drama around.

Fernando just out of the blue announced that he was leaving his race seat and jumping. Who did he jump over to? Aston Martin joked there being that, you know, Stroll’s daddy bought him his seat and then metal retires. He thinks he’s gonna be the number one driver and all of a sudden Fernando in his seat, a lot of shuffling going around.

There was a lot of drama around this Piri guy. And Alpine made an [00:54:00] announcement that he was gonna take the seat and then two seconds later he’s like, I never said that and blah, blah blah. So who. Yeah, but do Pietri is actually going to McLaren that I stop following after the initial drama. Nevermind.

McLaren hopes to replace Ricardo with reigning Formula two champion Pietri. Pire has been in the middle of a tug of war between AL p and McLaren, and his future will be decided by the FIA’s Contract Recognition board next week, because I guess he maybe had a verbal commitment to Aine. Nothing was really set in stone, and then he really wants to go to McLaren instead of Alpine.

I don’t know. Yeah, it’s all fodder for drive to survive. So what isn’t fodder is what we alluded to earlier about all the Porsche stuff. We’re not sure if it’s gonna be a Honda powered Porsche, whatnot. But the F I A has approved the wording for the new regs when the new cars come out in 2026. Basically the bluff, the bottom line up front is that the M G U H, the power plant that Volkswagen was gonna supply has been dropped and the F I A is [00:55:00] pushing for, what they’re saying is quote, fully sustainable fuels.

The M G U H was supposed to be Volkswagen, Porsche, Audi’s way into Formula One. Obviously they’re still coming. As we noted earlier, what I think is happening is, you know, these quote unquote, fully sustainable fuels might be a nod to Porsche’s synthetic fuel that they’ve been been developing. And so maybe there’s something going on there that’s complete speculation.

That’s just my opinion, why we would do such a drastic shift from replacing the. To going back to let’s find a different fuel source and keep the ice motors in Formula One. I thought that was interesting, but we’re not gonna see what that turns into for a couple more years. Apparently the next Call of Duty update is gonna have one of the zones be the Singapore Grand pre track as a battlefield.

And so you’ll be fighting across the streets while Formula One cars are driving around. Uh, why? I don’t know why actually, and didn’t look into it cause I didn’t care. But I, my question is, can you shoot the Formula One cars? So [00:56:00] does that secure a win for Haass if you blow up everybody else? Ah, . Speaking of Haass Holes, there was a video that is going around that has led me to the conclusion that I don’t need to watch Drive to survive.

I just need to watch more of these mid-season recaps by this YouTuber. This is the funniest stuff I have ever seen. It’s like a one man video, but he plays the role of all the different drivers and their afex and their accents and some of the team owners like Christian Horner and, and all those guys. I mean, it was unbelievably funny.

I busted out laughing when he is making fun of the Ferrari and he is like, my car is on fire. My car is on fire. Like all this stuff and the whole Gene Haas thing. No, he’s hilarious. I think he usually puts out a video after every race. Yeah. Unbelievable. This is the first time I’ve seen this and it was. I was in tears.

It was so good. We’re gonna post that in the show notes for anybody who doesn’t know what the heck I’m talking about, I don’t wanna spoil it. You definitely gotta check it out [00:57:00] and you can search for him on YouTube, Connor Moore, and I believe he does more impressions than just F1 racers too. So he’s got some other different kind of videos out there.

Meanwhile in the Czech Republic. But wait, what? At first I was like, this is so dumb. And then I watched the video and I was like, this is sort of badass . I think it’s super awesome. We don’t talk about the Czech Republic. Can you find it on a map? What’s the best selling car in the Czech Republic? An F two car.

Oh, what, what? Apparently a G two Former Delara Formula one . So, okay, what happened? Apparently he has one and apparently he takes it onto the highway and cruises at a, at the speed limit, not doing anything crazy. And somebody was doing him, he did do a pull, well he did a pole when, when the C H R got out of his way, but the person videoing him was keeping up.

So what were they driving? Another GP two Formula car. Apparently the car. [00:58:00] Sounds amazing. It does. He looks amazing. Oh my God, this guy’s living his best life. And I, I went to be him. Sort of like the cart Vader videos that came out a while back. If anybody remembers, I think they’re on Ebos World where that French guy goes out in the middle of the night with his shifter cart and starts driving through Paris and, you know, blasting people down the highway at a hundred miles an hour.

We always say that cars are meant to be driven. Thumbs up to this guy, right? Granted, Take it to the racetrack. Nah dude. Take it to the, the Walmart . It sounded like this is not necessarily the first time he is done this either or at least there’s somebody else who has done this as well. Yeah. I wanna know why there are so many of these decommissioned formula CARSs.

How do we get them in the wild? Yes. How do, how do we get them? I like the last line of the article though. It may be the only time you ever see an open wheel race car and a second generation new Beatle in the same place. . And then I had to go back and look at the photo. I was like, damn, you right son.

There is a Beatle there . That’s [00:59:00] awesome.

Yeah, so, uh, you were just talking about Porsche before Lamborghini. So speaking of them, you know, there was a whole big hoorah thing about Porsche and F1 and Audi and F1 and, and Porsche suddenly was in talks with Red Bull. Yeah. Took their label on the side of the car, I guess. Put your left foot in and hit your right foot.

Right foot out. You know, we’re doing the hokey pokey. Yeah, that’s where we left it. . That’s exactly where we are. The music stopped. Porsche fell out of the seat. Duck, duck goose didn’t work. Got the duck reference again. Good. There it is. There’s no hope for a Porsche. F1 teams, is that what you’re saying?

They wanted to do, I think like 50 50 and now was 49. Too much I think for Red Bull,

whatever it was. It was like it was too much. Horner was not willing to give up that, so they kicked them to the curb essentially. So no deal. T B [01:00:00] D What happens? Do they go after somebody else now? I don’t know. I haven’t heard, I haven’t looked. I know we’ll talk about it later, but I hear Al Alpha tars up for sale, so who knows?

Maybe those slap Porsche stickers on that card will be confused just as where we’re gonna be before Honda powered Formula One car by Porsche, whatever, , but more on that later. So what’s going on in the open wheel Formula One community? Tanya. I know without Brad here, this is all you. Oh man. Whole bunch of stuff like you know, Ferrari being Ferrari

So they blew up and caught on fire. ? No, but you know, looking great and qualifying, getting pulled positions and then just going home on race day . It’s disappointing but it’s becoming quite comical. The memes are getting good, so yeah, not much goodness to report on Ferrari, but a lot of just turnover and driver changes.

And the most interesting thing of the last race, which is also quite comical, was album very last minute ended up out of the race with a [01:01:00] appendicitis so he wasn’t feeling great and then ended up having to go get surgery last minute. And then it was like a whole thing. Like he, he like reacted badly coming outta the anesthesia too and like, but he’s okay.

He’s o, he’s good. But they put the reserve driver in Mr. Nick DeVry, I think his name is, and like he got like a top 10. Finish his teammate. Yeah. He’s so much better than like, I don’t see Latifee having a seat because this guy just got the first points . Like how bad is it that you’re like 21 outta 20 drivers and points.

Cause your reserve driver came in . He had a resume. He did a job interview and he passed that job interview. Like if he doesn’t get probably a seat, Having shown that based on his performance. I, I mean that’s, I don’t know who’s in charge. So is that why Herda lost his seat? Because now they gotta put this guy out there.

I don’t know the hor Well the whole Herda thing is all the drama around the, the super license and he doesn’t have enough points cuz he hasn’t done enough races and indie and this, that and the other. And you know, the [01:02:00] whole scary thing. If they make an exception for him, then it opens the floodgates to all these other people.

But then I think I saw an article that was like, well then like Kimmy and even Verin should never have gotten their license or something. And I didn’t follow into that. So I don’t know the whole story behind it for what is right now. Her does not moving in yet cuz they’re sticking to their license rules.

But there are other movements with Ricardo getting kicked out. Yikes. And then they finally, that whole will he. He do, they don’t they with Pietri and that he was with Alpine and then he’s not, apparently he’s being signed now to McLaren officially. So there’s a bunch of vehicle driver changes.

Unfortunately, Schumacher is no longer, I guess, on the Ferrari team anymore. So I guess they’re not pleased with his house performance, unfortunately, so he won’t no longer, longer be part of the Ferrari driving team. Well, they can’t afford to replace cars after every race. Well, you know what, the last several races, he hasn’t really had any incidents.

He hasn’t put ’em in the wall or anything [01:03:00] like that. So he is, he’s been finishing, so, you know, that’s good. He’s got big shoes to fill and that’s unfortunate carrying that last name and the heritage and thinking that he’s gonna jump into the Ferrari and suddenly he’s gonna be his dad. I mean, I hate to say it that way, but there’s only one Michael Schumacher.

Uh, it’s tough. Who knows? He needs more seat time like we all do. Right? And that’s, that’s the recipe for success is more seat time. The question is, where does he get his seat time? Does he walk away from Formula One for a while and go to m s A or go to w e c go run prototypes or, or indie cars, come to the states, get some more experience.

I know that F1 is the top of the totem pole, but a lot of these guys. Have experienced from other places, and then they had ventured out afterwards. Look at Juan Papa Montoya, look at Alonzo, you know, trying to go for the Triple crown and, and all that kind of stuff. There’s other opportunities. There’s been plenty of people that left f1, take Olivier Penns, he ran for pros.

He was a basically a back marker way back in the day. [01:04:00] He went to touring car and he kicked butt. Like he found his discipline. Right. And maybe, uh, Schumacher needs to do the same thing. I don’t know. I was wondering, BES retired, they’re friends. Maybe he could become more of a coach or a mentor for time World champion himself, Sebastian Bes.

So maybe there’s something he, I, I think he’s already probably to some extent been working with Schumacher, but maybe there’s something more there he could do if, if there is a path or, or anything for him to be as a sliver, as great as his. Right. So that’s very true and I think the last bit of hokey pokey that’s been going on in the open wheel world has to do with Alex plu, right?

There was a whole thing about he was leaving Indy car to go to McLaren. Same kind of thing as like Colin Hurda, and now we’re talking about it. He’s sticking with chicken assi after all of that stuff. So, okay, fine, whatever. It’s always like this, this time of the year, right? What does the next season look like?

You know, if it isn’t the new cars that are coming out, we all get excited about that. It’s the drama of the drivers changing teams. The bigger question is, and [01:05:00] maybe for Sarah’s, how’s it all gonna play out and drive to survive? I don’t know. I’m dying to watch this next season to see the other perspective of what I’m watching right now.

It’s crazy. I don’t know. I, when we were talking about Schumacher, I didn’t realize that he’d been let go, so I’m kind of processing that information as we speak. There’s gonna be a lot to catch up on. It’s gonna be all off track. Drama. Yeah. It’s not gonna be on track drama for this coming season. So much movement.

So much movement. All the on track drama will be making fun of Ferrari, unfortunately. , right? I think so. I think so. Sorry guys. Sorry. And since we’re bringing that up and, and to talk a little bit about what we talked about on your episode, you became a Formula One fan as a result of Drive to Survive. No, you’re absolutely right and I will admit it freely all day long.

I love it. It’s been kind of a gateway for me to start watching and learning about other races [01:06:00] too. So one of the women I work with, our associate editor, Shannon McBride, or Shannon Scott, sorry, she just got married. Shannon Scott, she’s a big indie car person. And so we published an article about watching an indie car race for your first time, and she provided her perspective along with one of our newbie writers.

And so, you know, we’re all kind of getting excited about that even though it’s the tail end of the season. But in any case, it’s like figuring out, okay, what am I gonna do? Am I gonna be maybe go see some races this coming year? Because it would be really fun to put all those pieces together in person.

I’m really excited about that. And speaking of that, there was an article that gives you no information that the Las Vegas Grand Prix is planning affordable zone of tickets. Whatever that means. Whatever that, what does that mean? affordable for who? So if you’re interested in Formula One at Las Vegas, keep your eyes out for these affordable price seats.

I [01:07:00] wonder that myself, and I also wonder which high-rise casino is really the one to get a room at and just watch it from there with the TV on to get full coverage and then looking out over your balcony to see the race and hearing the race live. I think that’s really the strategy. Forego buying the F1 tickets and sitting in the grandstand.

Get yourself a room at the Bellagio or at the vi The luck, you know the, it’s the Las Vegas version of the yacht and the Monaco Harbor. Correct. Exactly. Yeah, I like that. Which you needed to reserve your ho your hotel room then three years ago. It’s okay. Lamont’s is way cooler.

But what else is wrapping up is the open wheel and formula one season. So why don’t we jump into that as our showcase for the first time in 27 episodes? Let’s kick it off with Formula One. There’s only four races [01:08:00] left. One coming up this weekend that will have happened before the drive through airs. We do not know the recap on that as of yet.

Who will take first place? It’s Lewis Max for staff and wins . Favorite track, but he did not win there last year for the first time in forever. I heard that Mercedes was doing some changes to their front wing. Sounded like to help with turn in, so maybe he’ll stand a chance. Likely not. So can we just make predictions for this race that has already happened?

When this airs, I’m going to say that Verin wins followed by La Cleric, followed by Vern’s teammate Sergio. Sergio, yeah. Checo followed by signs, followed by Hamilton Signs is gonna crash out and end up in like last. But isn’t Coda just like Monaco? You end where you qualify unless you screw up? No, there’s plenty of passing opportunities at Coda for the back markers.

Mercedes has been so far ahead of the pack, but this [01:09:00] is a different year. Maybe Hamilton didn’t do so well at Coda last year because just like this year he has to explain his latest jewelry investigation. Jewelry investigation. Tell us more. I think it has something to do with his nose stud and he had to leave it in place cause he was having an infection of some sort.

Hadn’t they already got on his case about wearing jewelry during the races, like earrings. He already, you know, the nose ring and everything like that. Like they’re very much against it. I’m like, because it’s safety, we’ll use that excuse fine, whatever. I mean as long as it fits in your helmet, it doesn’t obscure your vision or whatever, it isn’t ripping into the flame retardant material, the helmet.

Why do you care? But I mean, if he’s having. Take the damn thing out. I don’t know what to say. Is this like the women that go to an office environment and they’ve got a nose ring? So they got a, a piece of, uh, band-aid over it because they can’t take it out? Well, apparently he had it like soldered in, so it was like permanent stud, so he couldn’t take it out.

And so they gave him an exception and then he took it out because of the rules and then he got an infection, so he had to put it back in. And I guess that’s where [01:10:00] like the newest debacle is. Well, he soldered it in, so he had to use a dremel to get it out. So of course he had an infection, , he had to have somebody on the team dremel it out because he couldn’t do it himself.

Can you imagine ? I don’t know like how you do that. Anyway, I, I gotta say these jewelry rules are stupid and they’re all over the place in sports. The Yankees. That has nothing to do with Formula One, obviously. But they have all kinds of weird dress code rules as well. I don’t know if they changed them recently cause I haven’t been keeping up, but they used to have one where nobody on the team could have a beard or any facial hair whatsoever.

I think they allowed mustaches at some point. But yeah, and, and no jewelry, I mean, very few people were allowed to wear jewelry and stuff. It’s, I think those rules are stupid. That mustache rule is hilarious. Cause all the baseball players look like seventies porn stars and it’s, they’re terrible. Yeah. O okay.

My Piazza , I could, I can understand those rules in a sport that could have potential contact between people. [01:11:00] Yeah. Yeah. Because that could be a source of injury. Like Yes, baseball is not a contact sport. However, players sliding into bases, there’s potential to contact somebody else. You could have an injury that way, a tear off of jewelry or scratch.

So I could get that rule the nose stud in your nose inside your helmet. If the crash is so bad that your helmet is compromised to such an extent that the nose ring becomes a problem, it doesn’t matter anymore. You’re dead. It’s a very high profit, I think. Am I missing something? Can your family recover the nose stud and sell it for millions?

You know, I could understand like a rule that’s like, don’t wear rings because why would you honestly, because your hands can swell or do whatever when you’re doing physical boards like that, or a situation of, you know, I don’t know, something happening and, and your finger getting smashed in the ring, cutting off your finger or something like that.

Or same thing with a, a necklace chain, even though that should be tucked into your suit. Not a big deal, but [01:12:00] heaven forbid it got snagged somehow on something and I don’t know, chokes you but your nose stud, I don’t know, earrings. If you had an earring, like again, if your helmet’s that far compromised, you’re not giving a an F1 about your nose ring in this picture.

He’s got his AirPods in. Does he wear them when he is racing too? Is he out there listening to like Jay-Z and Oz or wear whatever the hell lu listen to? Well, they all have an earpiece, right? Well, he’s definitely not listening to the team. The, the joke is that he’s listening to music or something and not paying attention to them.

But you know, who never had to worry about any of this in his 60 plus years of racing? Mario Formula One Champion 1978, Mario Andretti and he made some news in Formula One this month. He got back in. To the seat of a Formula one car, a modern formula one car, modernish. It was a pre four cylinder turbo McLaren thing.

It was, it sounded amazing. It sounded good. Yeah. What was it? A 2013? Yeah. Yeah, the 2013 McLaren. And he got to drive it around Laguna [01:13:00] Osaka. I don’t know how many laps he got from the video I watched. It’s only about five minutes. He did at least three and his first lap. Yeah, that’s what I, I was like, oh man, he’s driving like he’s going to K-Mart or something.

And then he was, he was actually doing the right thing. He was hitting all his apexes. Mm-hmm. . He let it warm up. And by that third lap, I was like, for an 82 year old, he is booking. I mean, you heard him going into the turns down shifting, get right back on it. I was like, dude, he’s still got it. Yeah. And you watched his lines and they were super clean and I was like, man, you go, that’s awesome.

We need another 80 year old driver out there competing against him. That’s called V R G. You need like the League of Legends or something. International Race of Champions. Yeah, I, Iraq . Yeah. Whoever’s still around their own series. , the G series. Geriatric, I mean, NASCAR’s got most of the senior citizen sponsors on their cars.

Anyway. Seattle, Viagra, A A R P. I mean, what’s the difference, right? The Silver [01:14:00] Fox series. Uh, you know, we talked about this last month. You guys brought up the whole thing about Colton Herda and his super license and all that. And you know what, somebody followed up on exactly what you guys were talking about, that there were other drivers that would have been rejected under these F1 super license rules and they brought up eight of them.

The new super license rule, which this rule came into effect with Max for staffs move into super license in 2015. So he was the reason why they even instituted this rule, basically himself or a lot of people before him, not have qualified for their super licenses into F1 and the eight drivers in reverse order.

Oh, it’s a Letterman list. Let’s go number eight, Alonzo real, number seven, Damon Hill. Whoa, number six, Alan Jones. Who the hell is he? Jensen button at number five. Number four, Nigel Mansel. Wow, that’s impressive. Can you [01:15:00] imagine us missing the great Nigel Mansel number three. The Iceman Jimmy Reichen, really, because apparently he had like three days of racing or something ridiculous.

It wasn’t three, but he didn’t have very many races under his belt. Number two, this one surprises the hell outta me, Nikki. Louder really? Because essentially he bought his way through , F two, and into f1 the good old days. And then number one, Mr. Max for step and himself who brought this rule. That’s an interesting list of folks.

The history books would be a lot different if this rule was in place. So that’s what I’m getting at. Why does this have to be so complicated? If you wanna buy your way in, you can afford to run on a Formula One team. No. Cause Maan is the reason. They don’t want that , he might spin. Isn’t that what his, isn’t that how you pronounce it?

Mez Meza spin. I feel like this is just another barrier of entry [01:16:00] Exactly. For people that don’t look like the rest of the people that are already on the F1 grid. Yeah. It’s just another barrier of entry in, in a long list of other barriers of entry to, to prevent people like women, people of color and things like that from getting access and be having an opportunity.

Americans in general. Yeah. Having an opportunity to race on, you know, open wheels. Biggest stage. It’s kind of sad. They talk about, you know, Mario, the American F1 winner and all that, and I’m not discrediting any of his wins because they’re all legitimate, his championship and everything, but he was a naturalized American dual citizenship or whatever.

He, since what Scott Speed was the last one that really tried and that didn’t go anywhere Michael tried that didn’t go anywhere. There was always like something in the way to get an American F one driver out there and it’s like this Colton Herda thing is just, again, they’re playing these games. To your point, we don’t want the Americans here and I don’t understand why do we not have the talent?

It’s like [01:17:00] they’re redlining. Just to circle back to give credit to Mr. Allen Jones in case anyone is wondering who he is. He was a one-time world champion from 1980. Australian drivers is why I don’t know him. . Okay. He’s like that guy who played one bond film, laser bean. He was awesome. And he was also from Australia.

It’s an Australia. He was a Williams driver in case anyone else wanted more fun facts. I don’t believe that a Williams car won . There used to be something back in the day. Yeah, they definitely were. Ways, oh, there still still something. . I hear that in imitation is the most sincere form of flattery. So Ferari is.

Trying to be Ferrari now, whatever. Their car had a little flame incident in pit lane during, I think it was Singapore Grand pre next. At least they were in pit lane. I had, everyone was right there and as were about to roll him, back outta pit lane and then whoops, anti-climatic. And [01:18:00] the Singapore race was actually quite interesting.

Not really. Yes, no, it’s a city cor, it’s a city track, right? Mm-hmm. . So it’s a street course, very tight. Essentially it’s follow the leader. So the position you started in was basically the position you ended in. So Sergio took the early lead right off the line and that’s where the race ended with Sergio Teco Perez coming in first, followed by two three, Ferrari finish.

There was some interesting, whoops and almost misses throughout that race. Uncharacteristic lockup by Louis, which totally shunted his chance at pressuring into third place. Verin had terrible grid position. I forget, I don’t know what penalties he got that he ended up like eighth when he started, and then obviously didn’t break back into the top three.

Cuz it’s a really hard track to pass people on and you know, that was that race. . And then we had Suzuka, which was a cluster. I watched the first couple laps and then it stopped for two hours. . [01:19:00] Yeah, exactly. It was, oh, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. What? I had to go. I had, I had other things to do. I had grocery shopping and kid detail.

Yes. It was like a nine hour race and eight and a half of those hours was not doing anything. That’s an exaggeration. So it started, it was raining and under the glorious judgment of, I don’t know who, everyone started on inters, on intermediate tires. I was very confused by this. When I saw the lineup of the names and everyone had the inter tires next to their name, it is actively raining.

Why are you not going out on wets? And it’s not even like the radar was like, oh, well in the next five minutes it’s gonna stop raining. So you know, I don’t wanna be on wets. No, no, no. It was like actively raining and going to be actively raining for like the next several hours and everybody went out on inters.

What happened partway through lock one Carlos rear end broke loose and he crashed. Then somebody else had like a, a failure and ended up red flagging the race basically on lap two. And then they sat there for like two hours, not doing anything, waiting for the rain to subside. And then [01:20:00] when they finally decided to go back out, everybody put wets on.

It wasn’t raining. So then what happens two, three laps later, they’re all freaking coming in and switching back to enters because the whats are terrible cuz it’s not actively raining. , how many pit incidents were there? There were, there were a few, or people were like leaving the pit lane side by side and all this crazy stuff and somebody touched somebody else in the pit too.

I mean, it was, it was complete pandemonium. That’s butt slaps, right? I mean there’s, yeah, I mean there was a whole thing and, and like galey, it was whole kind of funny. See he was so pissed because when Carlos re, they red flagged, but they moved the recovery crane out onto the track. There was so much road spray, you could not see a single thing.

So people got very upset because the same thing happened on Suzuka a number of years ago. Jules Bianchi ended up dying because it was wet rain conditions. There was a crane out attending to another car. He ended up losing control right near the crane and he went at like however many million miles an hour into the [01:21:00] crane and he ended up coma, blah, blah.

Months later he’s. Come to those injuries and died. They did the exact same thing. Zero visibility. There was a crane out on the track. These drivers didn’t even know. Gly was like super pissed when he came in cuz he drove right by it. However, later got like a huge penalty cuz he was speeding under red flag.

But there’s like a whole thing that like it hadn’t come through yet on like our little steering wheel that there was a red flag. So like he didn’t slow down. The whole race was a cluster for staff in one. LeClair came in second, Sergio came in third. La Clare ends up in third because he bombed through the last corners, cutting them biking line and ended up getting a five second penalty.

Brilliant. Vern was declared two, two-time world champion at this. . Yeah. So the, the rest of the season is kind of moved. It’s the rest of the season is now who’s gonna get second place? . So who is gonna get second place? Do we have any psychic? They’re still trying to figure out the constructor Championship as well.

Right. Comes down to Ferrari powered or not Ferrari powered. [01:22:00] Right. I mean that’s how Formula One is right now. No, cuz Red Bull’s pretty much gonna win. Who are their engines by Honda? It wasn’t, is it still Honda? Yeah. They don’t have their engines yet, right? They claim to have their, or they their own powertrain.

I can’t keep track of those people. It’s not a Ferrari or Mercedes powertrain. No, but they were No. Right. That’s where I’m all lost. No, they, they were Reno and then they switched to Honda and then I think Honda pulled out. Yeah, it’s still, it’s still Honda. Oh it is still Honda. There’s still Honda until the Motor Power Unit swap in 2026.

Oh. Which is when Audi is coming into the playing field. Because unlike the whole Porsche thing, they’ve committed to build power units starting 2026 committed in so far as they’re like we’re gonna start RA winning races within three years. They’re already throwing down the gauntlet. Something about how they’re working with the current Alpha male team.

So this goes back to the same question. Is it Audi’s chassis Alpha slash Ferrari power plant with [01:23:00] some stickers, like what are we doing here? But you’re saying they’re gonna build their own motor so then it’s not the alpha male team, they’re just taking over. The Alpha Romeo, engineering and management and all that stuff.

They’re replacing the Alpha team. They have a 75% buyout deal with Saber, who owns Alpha. They’re supposed to be building power units now. The car that they unveiled in August already, which is ver and nice looking, very nice, is Audi. Audi rings all over it. Audi colors. It reminds me of the Decar tron thing that they made.

Yes. It’s like the same style. It’s got those same Grays branding. Yeah, exactly. Branding smart. I mean, the Porsche one didn’t look like a Porsche, that’s for sure. It looked like something else with stickers on it. This, to your point, looks like what we expect from an Audi race car. Now I still harken back to the A L M S days of the R eight with the silver and the little color on their nose and all that kind of thing.

But this is their new thing for, you know, the 2020s is this, this [01:24:00] multicolor grays and blacks and red and it definitely sticks out. It’s definitely pretty cool, but we gotta wait a couple more years. Right before they even hit the stage. They’re not gonna have cars until 24, is that right? They can’t do anything until 2026 because for now what they’ve been saying is they’re gonna supply the power unit and in.

Thought there was something to the effect that they’ve got a unit that will be ready even later this year or next year for testing. So they’re definitely doing something with power units. I don’t think they can do anything earlier than 26 cuz they’re gonna have to be adhering to whatever the new rules are.

And then it’s T B D in the future if they’re forced to share power units. So maybe there could be Williams running Audi power plants. Dunno. So the bigger question is, what does this mean for Porsche? Because you know what happens wherever VW and Audi go, Porsche soon follows. So they’re gonna come and swoop in and say, that’s great, thanks for designing that car.

And then they’re gonna slap their stickers on it and claim that they made the engine and all this stuff. Uh, the way I see it is it’s a four cylinder power plan or whatever it is now. So they’re gonna go grab [01:25:00] a two liter turbo out of an A four, modify the hell out of it, and uh, we’re gonna go to f1. Well, the whole thing was they were gonna do their separate things, right?

They wanted to have both teams out there and then the whole Porsche Red Bull thing fizzled out. So now Porsche’s basically screwed sort of, but they’re still like, I wanna play at the party, let me in. So they’re still dancing around in the background. . And the question now is, do they still buy into another team partner with the Williams Andrei?

Something happened there and they go with Andrei. I just don’t understand how Volkswagen can afford to run two full teams. It doesn’t make sense. Like why wouldn’t they just do Porsche and V and Audi together, maybe run two cars on the same team instead of two Audis, just a Porsche and an Audi under the same management.

I mean, the cars aren’t gonna be that different at the end of the day. Cuz let’s face it, who’s building the chassis? Is it Audi’s chassis? Is it Delara, somebody else? Right? You get into that game, which we talked about before, even when Porsche came [01:26:00] to the table, it was whoever’s chassis with a Honda motor, with a Porsche badge on it.

And, and so it’s not, they’re not building these cars from scratch. So it’s sort of like, why field two teams of two cars? . They’re doubling down. More advertising for them I guess, but they’re competing against themselves. It’s, it’s silly. That’s what they always do. But it, I mean it’s, it’s supposed to be a team team though.

It’s shake and bake. It’s not just shake and shake . That’s not how it works. . It’s not twice bake. Shake it and then you bake it. No, it’s not. It’s not. Not bacon baked twice baked. No it’s not. Bacon baked, triple baked. You know who’s sitting around going Team team. There’s no I in team, Danny, Rick, cuz he’s not on anybody’s team.

W Wall. W what A fall from, not even Grace. I don’t know what his, he had a huge misstep when he left Red Bull Rub Bull basically. Yeah. I mean he’s your boy. Come on, it’s Danny Rick. Yeah, something’s going on. He’s just not the [01:27:00] same driver he used to be. That kind of answers the question. Was it the car or was it him?

It’s obviously the car that cowboy hat that he’s been sporting over the last week. What is going on? Is he a rodeo dude now? Like what is he doing? That’s his shtick to be funny and lighthearted and humorous wherever he goes. And I think he just loves Texas so he now got a well that cowboy handle on.

He’s very much like Richard Hammond. He is a closet American guy’s. A Mustang goes to cars and coffee, runs over a bunch of people and yeah, that’s why he doesn’t drive enough one anymore. I thought you would be more heartbroken about this, Brad. I know there are people out there that. Devastated that Danny Rick isn’t gonna be on the last I I, I am.

I am disappointed because I think there are other drivers that deserve to go versus him. But for instance, I think Lance Stroll doesn’t deserve a place on the grid. I think Danny Rick does, but Danny Rick doesn’t have the deep pockets that Stroll does. Yeah. And his daddy doesn’t own the team. He is actually in a great spot right now that he won’t be tethered [01:28:00] to Formula One if he turns his eyes the right way next year with G T P and LeMans and w e c do like Alonzo did, get yourself into an L M P car, get your crown somewhere else.

Right. And maybe he’s better suited to sports car and prototype racing. We should really feel bad for Danny Rec if he’s doing the right things. He’s looking for another seat in another discipline. He’s got a shit ton of money. I don’t feel bad for him. Yeah. I would totally go to Daytona and watch him race in the 24 hour at the Rolex.

A hundred percent. Yeah. Yes, I would do that. Or he could go to WRC and nobody else would ever see him race again. the League of Legends. The other big news, the other person who’s leaving wishes gonna break many hearts and crush many souls. Is the one the only. Gofi Who? Gofi the goat. Hamilton’s out. No.

Latifi? No. Oh, . Gofi. Latifi. They kicked his ass out. He made a [01:29:00] funny, oh, oh. This is what I get for not watching Drive to Survive. Yeah. He doesn’t pay attention to f1, so he doesn’t know that Latifi is called gif. He as a joke that he’s the goat at sucking

So finally Williams made a smart move and they’re kicking him to the curb. And I believe Nick DeVry, who had the most awesome job interview a couple races ago when he sat in for Alex Almond, was appendicitis emergency procedure and actually scored points for like first time in a while for Williams. Um, I think he got the seat.

Yeah. Good job. . Good job. And he was the test driver, right? Is what you told me. Something like that. And then he was reserved, so they put him in the seat and uh, he did very well for first time actually out there competing. So he will be on a full-time seat. Awesome. Good friend. Congratulations. Meanwhile, I think there’s news from.

They have a new sponsor. What is it? Rich Energy again? Bang Energy is [01:30:00] going

No, they’ve signed on with MoneyGram. They’re still around? Yeah. Oh, wow. I thought they went out of business like a decade ago. Like who? MoneyGram. Really’s a lot bigger in other countries. Like Rich Energy was, oh, because we gotta wire the money to the Nigerian prints. So you still need MoneyGram. I understand, because the banks won’t let you wire funds to people on the OAC list.

But MoneyGram May or Formula One teams, that’s how we’re there paying for. No, no. You’re thinking of Force India. good for Haas. Good for Haas because since he might spin’s, dad pulled all his money out. They gotta get sponsorship from somewhere. Ma pin’s dad is involved in MoneyGram, and maybe it’s his backdoor.

We’re, we’re funneling money around somehow. You know, again, MoneyGram is still a thing. Seriously. MoneyGram is headquartered in Dallas, Texas. What? That’s [01:31:00] unbelievable. But in a world of Venmo and PayPal and Insta Funds and Cash app and people still use MoneyGram, I mean, I’m, I’m hung up on this. I’m gonna be thinking about this the whole episode.

Wait, this So MoneyGram, okay, so this makes sense Now, MoneyGram does the, uh, money orders, no. The post office does the money orders? No, no, no. You can go into 7-Eleven and buy like a MoneyGram money order. I believe my mind is melted. There are a lot of people out there that don’t have checking accounts or can’t have checking accounts, so they do everything through money order.

And who do you get your money orders from? Money. Congratulations, TOAs. They have us, but I I’ve got one more question though. When does the MoneyGram book come out? . So everybody’s picking up the the Rich Energy book. So when are we gonna get a MoneyGram book? I gotta email Elizabeth and find out. They got like a a three book deal, right?

The next three Hot sponsors. . Yeah. It’s gonna be Rich Energy, MoneyGram and aol. . There’s a trilogy. I still have an AOL [01:32:00] CD on my desk. I’d use it as a coaster. My girls asked me the other day, what is that thing with the little yellow man on it? I’m like, it was a weird conversation. Let me tell you. These used to come in the mail, all the CD

So do the money grams come in the mail. There’s other news coming outta. And I love this quote. I guess they decided to cut Mick Schumacher finally because he cost them a fortune and he has wrecked a lot of cars that have cost us a lot of money. It was very profound. I mean, that’s a Yogi bearer quality quote right there.

Mick costs a fortune. He wrecked a lot of cars that have cost us a lot of money. When you come to a fork in the road, take it . That’s exactly what makes Schumachers been doing. He comes to a fork in the road and he takes it and he wrecks the car, and now he costs Gene Haass a ton of money. I think the problem is he doesn’t take the fork in the road.

He’s taken straight down the middle of the fork where there’s no road straight, straight down the fork. That’s why Haass is using MoneyGram, because Gene Haass is [01:33:00] paying his people with money orders. , , the check is in the mail. Literally it feels like the pot calling the kettle black. They have to blame somebody.

Now the Mabin has gone, felt like he was wrecking a car, not only in free practice, free practice, two qualifying, and in the race it was like every time he set foot in the car, it was either blowing up or wrecking or whatever. So it’s like really? I mean, fine. Again, you wanna find a way to cut him loose, but the question is now, Make Schumacher’s future.

And like I said last month, just like Danny, Rick, I think he should go somewhere else and come back to Formula One. So at what point do we not blame the driver and start looking at the car? Mazak, he bought his way in whatever, but Schumacher, he actually did really well in F two. Didn’t he win the championship and F two before moving up to f1?

But the F two cars are totally different. They’re like Skippy cars, right? They’re all the same. They’re underpowered. I, I don’t think it’s, cuz he lacks skill though. I mean he probably drives better than most of [01:34:00] us, but, well that’s not hard. . I mean they’re all super talented, right? And they wouldn’t be there to some extent except for the guy that got beat by the test driver.

I mean, come on. Seriously. Yeah, there’s always an exception to every rule, but for the most part like should be exceptional drivers because F1 is the pinnacle of racing, right? So it’s like you hired everybody who was number one in their school, in their class, and then you put them all against each other.

Well someone’s not gonna be number one anymore. . So it’s weird cuz it’s like these are all top drivers, but then clearly there’s somebody who’s coming in for a second, third and someone who’s coming in 18, 19, 20, right? Or not at all. again, I argue that there should be just like there is in wrc, F1 A and F1 B, and there’s a champion and the lower half and whatever.

Because if you divide the top 10 from the bottom 10, it’s two totally different races. Okay, put Max for staffing in the host car. Can he still be number one? because clearly he’s driving wise. Amazing. Right? Or the Red [01:35:00] Bull is just so far out of the league. But if you put him in the hos car, if he can’t finish better than whatever position, then it’s like, okay, then it’s a car problem.

Right? And they don’t have the money to put into their car cuz they really didn’t this year. Like everyone else has exceeded their budget caps or just at their budget cap and like they haven’t hit it yet. So it’s like they’re intentionally not spending money. So they’re not making any improvements. And so if you ever got a shitty car, didn’t we already prove that with Hamilton?

Once they changed the Mercedes? He is, it’s like 10th place all the time. He doesn’t, can’t get outta his own way. So was it him or was it the car? So he went from goat to Gofi in one season, right? Because Russell, up until the last few races was always top five finishing in a Mercedes. So how did they tune the cars different from each other?

The same team, same Mercedes cars, but one is doing worse than the other. That was a criticism that. Masin had, and his father had of the Haas team last year was that Mick was getting the better car. That’s like saying you’re getting the better go-kart at the go-kart track. I get that , [01:36:00] I don’t know, but I feel like Formula One has always been this way since the days of Lotus where it’s like.

Cheat as much as you can until you get caught and then just kind of pull back. And so that’s why you see these huge discrepancies, right? And they changes, but the cars are all the same by regulation. Yeah, I think that’s bs. They can’t be, you can see that they’re not, because the Red Bulls pull away and they pull away sometimes at staggering gaps to everyone else.

And it’s like, how, how is that possible? And I mean, one could say that that was the case for the Mercedes for years and years and years. Cuz it was like, you know, Hamilton’s in the lead and nobody can touch the Mercedes and now suddenly nobody can touch the Red Bulls. I mean it’s unfortunate for Mick, you hate to see it cuz of his father.

Not only is he out of the seat for ho but he is, he no longer has that Ferrari seat either. Haass has a new sponsor, but do they have any drivers for next year? So another thing that they’ve said is Gunther. It is either Gunther or Jean. I don’t know which one it was. But someone from Haass has basically, they said they’re done with [01:37:00] rookies.

They do not want to seat drivers anymore that are rookies. They want somebody with experience in their seats. They’re, they don’t wanna train them. I believe Gunther said, we’re fucking done with these fucking rookies, . That sounds about right. That’s, that’s sounds, that sounds about right. Gunther quote.

That’ll be on drive to survive next season. It’s true. So it’ll be interesting to see who they. There, Danny, Rick. Hey, Danny. Rick. . . Can I just say I’m tired of F1 and F1 fan, boys and girls saying F1 is the pinnacle of Motorsport. It’s the self-proclaimed pinnacle of motorsport. I don’t think it’s actually the pinnacle of motors sport.

It’s, it’s not the greatest motors sport in the history of the world. I’m tired of people saying that. I keep saying it. Multi-class endurance racing is the pinnacle of motorsport. And to your point about they should have F1 A and F1 B, so the F1 grid is essentially multi-class racing. . That’s my point.

They’re gold, silver, bronze level, right? Just like it is in sports, car racing. Silver fox level. Just bring [01:38:00] Mario Andretti back. They’ll be much better off for it. He can run for Haas. No problems sir. Go run for the Andretti team. For those of you that actually pay attention to formula. It is reportedly ditching their fan boost option for the next season.

There’s Formula e . Are they replacing fan boost with checkpoints from like fours of Horizon? No. Do it like Man, Nintendo. What was it? Rad racer. So like, yes, if you were missing the checkpoint, your car started slowing down, but you could like still coast through that checkpoint and then like boom, the power’s back on

Do it like that. Yes. Have Elon Musk get the button Turning people’s power off in one. You know the other thing that’s going away, like I mentioned this month, is Formula W, the women’s version of Formula One is no longer gonna happen. Going back to what we were talking about, multi-class formula racing, I was always against the idea of having something separate.

Why, to your point, Brad, from earlier about all these gates and the super licensing and everything we talked about, when are we gonna see the first [01:39:00] female Formula One driver? I didn’t think the series was ending. I thought the series was just ending early this year. Cause they ran outta money, but that’s it.

They ran outta money. It’s over for the season, but it’s not necessarily that they’re not gonna get money yet for next season, right? W Series is ending their 2022 season early to focus on fundraising for the 2023 season. So they’re trying to raise funds for next year. You know how they do that? MoneyGram?

When are we gonna start seeing Rich Energy at W Series cars? When are we gonna get our first Formula? One female driver. Apparently we’ve had one. Wait, we did. She’s from Italy years ago. Really? Lela Lombardi, no woman, has raced in a world championship F1 race since Lela Lombardi’s 12th place. Finish in the 1976 Austrian Grand Prix, which ended her brief.

17 Grand Pix spell across 1974 and 76. Still, by far the longest racing career in F1 for any female driver. You learn something new every day. Look at that. She did Better than any host driver . Maybe they should look into her. Maybe ha should [01:40:00] go the W Series route.

All right, Brad and Tanya here. We are faced with the end of the formula in season. So how did it finish up? And who came in second? Who came in second? It was La Cleric. It was came down to the last race, but La Cleric finally pulled it out against Perez. That is true. Since the last time we talked. How many races there been?

About three. Starting with Austin, four Austin, Mexico, Brazil, and Yas Marina. Good night. It’s like at the end of the firework show where they just throw everything together and give you the big finale. So I thought it was pretty funny. If we go back and look at Austin, apparently the c e o of Apple technically waved a checkered flag at the U S G P, and nobody seemed to care.

Nobody seemed to know who he was either. I [01:41:00] watched the race and I swear the cameraman that kept showing Tim Cook had no idea that he was Tim Cook. There was one point where they showed Ed. And they were like, ed Sheeran, musical artist or something like that. You recording artists. If they even said Tim Cook on the screen, they didn’t say who he was underneath, so he didn’t, yeah.

So, so yeah, so the, I think that second time they showed him, they actually found out who he was. Cuz someone was like, Hey, you know that that’s in Cook. And the guy, and then, then the, the Gen Z guy was like, yeah, yeah, whatever. Okay, I’ll put it up there. But when he was standing next to Ed Sheeran, ed Sheeran’s like a god to gen ears.

So Ed Sheeran recording artist, just sitting in a room doing nothing. Tim Cookman while waving a flag really poorly, no offense. What? Yeah, I was gonna say, was it waving? Was the flag waving him or was he waving the flag? Well, I think the flag was waving itself. , I’m not gonna lie, I, I sort of forgot Tim Cook was in charge of Apple.

So I sort of feel for these people, like, who is this random dude? Yeah. I think Apple [01:42:00] fans forget that Tim cook’s in, in charge of Apple too. Or they wish that he wasn’t just like, we all wish Elon Musk was in charge of nothing. Mm-hmm. . Well, speaking of being in charge of things, I heard Haass was also protesting Red Bulls and the Alpines.

What was that all about? Oh, you know what it was, it was the incident where someone had their front wing was dangling. and they didn’t have to come in. Whereas Magnuson like had to do that twice the whole season. It sounds like a wine and cheese party to me. I mean, if Haas successfully protested, does it make their finishing position any better?

Yes. Instead of 10th, they become 10th. , they finished eighth. Yeah, because Williams is like permanent 10th spot. So one could argue that maybe had he not had those penalties and then ended up last place, maybe he could have gotten more points than they could have beaten Aston Martin and, and then there’s a lot of money on the line between the different constructor places too.

I mean, there’s millions of dollars on the line there. Right. And for a team like Haass, I [01:43:00] mean, they need all the money they can get. I mean, I don’t know if it would’ve made a difference in the end. Like I’m not gonna go back and calculate theoretical points, but that sounds like something Eric would. If he watched f1, not gonna happen.

Not gonna do it. Speaking, which you mentioned magnuson. He apparently got the pole. That’s cause nobody else was doing laps. Oh, okay. And not the stripper pole folks actually pole at the race. It’s the festive, his pole pole for the sprint race. Yes. And then afterwards they had the, the feats of strength and he lost during the sprint race.

But the qualifying for the sprint race was like rain conditions. He went out first. So he had the driest lapse, I think before the rain started coming down further than everybody else came out. So the conditions weren’t great. So, I mean, yeah. Does that actually count as pole too? I mean, I, I haven’t paid attention to what the statistics from the sprint race and the qualifying leading up to the sprint race actually mean.

But does that mean he got poll? [01:44:00] I mean, he had the fastest lap, so he was on pole . Yeah, I, I guess that’ll go down in the record books. Haas had a pole as soon as this race actually started though, it was like tick, tick, tick, tick, tick. He goes down the order. Cause of course he’s gonna get passed by everybody.

I mean, he did his best, but the car is slower than everybody else. But then during the actual race, because he still started in a good position because of the sprint race. But then Danny, Rick wiped him out, wiped them both out. I mean, what’s he got to lose at this point? Well, he took a stupid late attempt in a turn.

Ended up I think wheel to wheel Magnuson spun in the middle of track would have been okay. Had the traction, not pulled the car off the track backwards. And so as he’s getting sucked without any control backwards, Danny Rick was in the grass trying to go around him and then he just backed straight into him and sent him into the [01:45:00] wall magazine, had his car destroyed.

Mick is there swerving to avoid, not T bonning him. People are going everywhere. And it was like lap, like 1, 2, 3. I don’t know. It was really early. They, so that was unfortunate when the press got a hold of this. They were all like the first American team to get F1 Pson shadow in 76. And I literally said W t F in both ways.

Worst of first and what, uh, I had no, I, I had forgotten about Shadow. That’s that like dark period, the middle ages of Formula One, like 76. Like who’s paying attention? Nobody from our generation. Right? We all knew he wasn’t gonna stay in like big deal Ma. It was. Questionable circumstances to get the pole.

And there’s no way they were gonna stay in the top 10 at all. And the real news out of that race was a Mercedes one, two finish, boom. The real news out of that race was debuting their new special U S G driving suits. Come on now. No, no, no, no, no. That race with Magson on pole was Brazil two [01:46:00] races later. Ah,

Now we stopped talking about Austin already. I’ve lost track. Just we moved on. I always do. Haas on poll was not Austin, it was Brazil. Oh my bad. What about these rumors about Audi and Mick Schumacher? They could talk to whoever they want. It’s also three, four years away. That’s true. But that means that there’s hope for Mick Schumacher, but he’s still on the unemployment line.

He’ll end up somewhere for somebody’s development squad or test driver or something like that. A and I think that’s exactly what we’ve been talking about, is he needs more time maybe in the testing group and instead of on the main stage, right? He’s just gotta get more seat time. He’s just gotta get more comfortable.

And like some people have said before, Come back to this with more experience and if you get used to driving a not so great car and you get into a good team, then suddenly you’re like a superhero. There’s hope for Mick yet, not Danny Rick though. Oh, there’s hope for Danny Rick. He might be going to Red Bull.

Yeah, he’s on the Red Bull [01:47:00] Reserve team. When did that happen? I don’t know. Like a day ago? Like Yeah, like one or two days ago. Ah, third Were you been, bro? Oh, that’s right. You don’t watch. No, I don’t. No, I don’t. But more importantly, apparently there’s a midnights album for Formula One. What is the, what is this?

I don’t get any of this stuff now. I feel totally like a dinosaur. It’s not anything to do with Formula One. It was Formula One being cheeky, I guess, and hip, because Taylor Swift’s 10th album Midnights debuted on October 21st, two days before the Austin u s g. And so Mercedes had fun playing with the album Cover Art by replacing her bass with Hamilton and Russell, and then Ferrari, seeing them do it followed suit as well.

All right, so the first place, max first stop, and that was pretty much locked in like eight races ago. Second place went to La Cleric. Since the last time we talked, did they really affect anybody else [01:48:00] in the Points race or was it sort of just the race to the end? Literally everybody other than Max, was it that close between.

Well because for constructors titles and things like that, it was a big deal. How did it finish out? Red Bull, Ferrari, Mercedes, Alpine, McLaren, Alfa Romeo, Aston Haas, Ferari Williams. Wait, wait. Haass beat somebody. Hoss beat two people. That’s insane. Williams doesn’t count . Now that we’re at the end of a very long season, you know, there seems to be more races every year and and next year, you know they’re adding Vegas and all this other stuff to the schedule.

In your guys’ opinion, looking back over the season, what are your thoughts? What are the highs? What are the lows? What are you thinking going into next year? I’m thinking Mercedes is going to be more competitive next year, certainly than they were this year. And I think Ferrari has a very long winter ahead of them because they had a lot of really dumb mistakes.

I [01:49:00] can’t think of a better term to use than they made a lot of dumb mistakes with their pit strategy, with their, just the team strategy period. The cars had issues. It was handed to them. Yes, they had to compete with Red Bull and Red Wolves, you know, the creme la creme right now. But they had a chance and they kind of squandered it a little bit.

They did end up in second for constructors, but still, I feel like they had a rough year rougher than it should have actually been. They had a lot of promise. and then they lost their, uh, their team principal. Their team principal bonito is gone. Is that a bad thing? . . So are you guys hearing any other rumors?

You thinking any other driver changes? Do you think the rest of the field will be locked up for the next season outside of Danny? Rick not having a seat. Make shoe markers out, obviously. Cause they’re gonna fill those, either they’ve already filled those seats. Yeah. Niel Holberg is taking the Haas seat, which is funny because he’s gonna be driving next to Magnuson, who they’ve had some words in the past.

Yes. They have . Well they buried that. They buried that hatchet. They’ve said. Yeah. Allegedly. Of, of course they [01:50:00] did. They, because they had to . Yes. When they saw the numbers on their contract, they buried the hatchet. Same as when Senna and Prost were on the same team. We saw how that worked out. . We have, I believe it’s Logan Sergeant u s a driver.

He’s going to replace Gofi from Williams, right? Yes. And Nick Dev Rise is going to Ferari al Alpha tar, or because, uh, Al Alonzo’s moving out of Alpine to Aston Martin to retirement. So he’s, he’s taking battles, seats. Why is Alonzo still driving? Like wasn’t he done? He actually did pretty good this year.

Alpine came in fourth. Yeah, he’s still competitive in the constructor series. Thanks to him. . I mean, he came in ninth in points, but he’s like the elder statesman right now, isn’t he? He is now. Well now the battle’s gone. He had some unfortunate retirements or else he probably would’ve had more points. Well, the sandwich bag, I remember that.

That took him out, didn’t it? Wasn’t that like 10 [01:51:00] years ago? That was this year. It was like the beginning of the year. No, it was like last year. Dude. Multiple people have had things in their break ducks this year, which have been unfortunate. Uh, we’re lucky that he wasn’t murdered in Austin by his teammate, or not his, his soon to be teammate, excuse me.

Lance Stroll in as Martin who drove him off the track and he went airborne. Ooh. Landed almost directly head on into the barrier, but, uh, came down. Sideways onto it. Was that Austin or Brazil? No, that was Austin. And he kept going. He kept going. The car like literally airborne, slammed into the burial. The skirt was knocked out and then, and yeah, he c Yeah, I remember now.

Yeah, he was wrecked like yeah, his car was trashed. He was done somehow Heroically. Alonzo kept going, but then Stroll did it again in Mexico. I think that’s the one I remember. He drove Vel his teammate off the track and Vel had to [01:52:00] drive through the grass. And because he is good, he like maintained control or that could have been ugly too.

I love the way that when he, when Stroll does that, the other people they put their radio on and their likes like okay, this is how it’s going to be. Okay. fours, the rules . So unfortunately he’s still around for another year. Stroll’s gonna be around until his daddy runs outta money. Yeah, exactly. People stop buying his, his father’s jeans.

So who are you guys rooting for next year? What’s your crystal ball say? I mean, as an American citizen, I feel like I have to root for Logan Sergeant. Just for fun. I mean, I’ll wish him well, but he’s not gonna do anything good. So I will continue to root for Ferrari. . , I mean I feel like as Italians you guys have to root for Ferrari.

It’s like a national pride. If Red Bull keeps the trajectory of their car and Mercedes can’t improve their car, then it’s Red Bull again because we all know Friar’s gonna disappoint us even though they’re gonna come screaming outta the gates looking [01:53:00] amazing, qualify amazingly, and then just crumble on the race day.

I’m not a fan of Christian Horner. I think he’s a little weasel, but you can’t deny his ability to run a race team. I don’t like Max, so I’m not a Red Bull fan, but I really do like Sergio Perez. Yeah, and it’s unfortunate cuz there’s the controversy now about how Max handled the last couple races and not following team direction.

I think it was Brazil. Perez was, they were asking if to get Perez some points right to help him in the standings cuz they finished six seven Red Bull. So they had some issues that race and so it was like, well we could let Perez go ahead and it would help him clinch a second place finish. Overall in the season, max was ahead of him.

The way they showed it when you were viewing, they gave him the order. They said If you can’t pass Alonzo by turn 12, let Perez buy turn. If I’m not mistaken is [01:54:00] the last corner of the track before the start finished like two feet later. So, well like he was gonna come to a stop to let Perez, who was like two turns behind because the gap was pretty large at that point between the two of them.

Why you even give that order and why it even mattered for him to try to beat Alonzo. You’re already coming in sixth or fifth, who cares? But on the other side of the coin, I could see the, the point of, well if you were up my butt in showing that you were faster, then I’d give it to you, but you’re not anywhere near.

Which was the same kind of thing that happened in the last race where they almost talked about, well cuz Max ran away again and he was in first out there by himself and it was like, well, you know, do you slow down and start blocking the cleric? So Perez has time to catch up and then like, cause a train so Perez and get around and the, and the announcers were hilarious cuz they’re like, uh, yeah, let’s not do that.

That sounds a lot like race fixing cuz you have like a [01:55:00] dude with like 22nd lead and you’re gonna tell him to slow down. So did you block the second place person so your teammate can like make it through? Cuz he was really trying to come back through the field to get up into eventually what third place that he finished, but there wasn’t enough time for him to pull back forward.

So stupid things like that. Like I don’t blame Max for being like, I’m not gonna slow down. Like you don’t have the pace to be around to keep up with me. What am I slowing down? Yeah, I was like, if you, if you want the points, earn ’em. Right. So do you think Max would ever leave Red Bull and go somewhere else?

And if he didn’t, where do you think he’d end up? No. Why he Bruno and then McLaren and then back at Red Bull as a test driver, why would he uh, leave a winning team that’s made him a two-time world champion with, for all intents and purposes a car that looks like it would probably do the same thing again next year.

He’s not leaving. He’s gonna do the, he’s gonna do the vet. Keep going till there’s a problem at Red Bull. That’s only if everybody figures out how they’re cheating and then cheats. Just like Red Bull’s cheating and then [01:56:00] he’s getting his butt handed to him. So, you know, there’s that aspect. Well good then I’d like to see a little more competition then.

Like the Red Bull being 30 seconds ahead of the next person. . Exactly my point. Weren’t we having these same conversations about Mercedes Not two years ago? Yes, probably because they were cheating. Everybody’s cheating. They’re all cheaters. It’s like buzz light year everywhere you look cheaters. Yeah. You say Mercedes was cheating and yet wasn’t it Ashton Martin or what were they forced India at the time they got in trouble.

Who was really cheating? for who? Who basically bought Mercedes design from some like black market site and then built the car to Mercedes specs and then all of a sudden forced. India is really good. They were racing point at the time cuz the guy from forced India got in trouble with all that financial scandal and all that crap.

Yeah, rich energy. So they basically built the year before his Mercedes and they were kicking butt and they were keeping up and it was like, where the hell did they come from? Oh. , it’s a Mercedes, basically. . If you can’t beat ’em, join ’em. Right. A hundred percent. It just goes to show. Right, exactly. [01:57:00] Well, I am not too excited yet about the 2023 season.

I will say I am excited about the Vegas race, except they’re already saying it’s going to be the most expensive race it’s sold out to go to. Yeah, and it, the track’s not even ready yet, so it’s pretty much insane. Curious to see it if nothing else on tv just for a new race. Although for those of you listening to this, we actually have a special episode coming out later this year where we talk about the history of the Caesars Palace Grand Prix.

And this is not the first time Formula One or IndyCar have run in Vegas, so a lot of history there, especially back in the seventies and the eighties, even during the time where the current Caesars Palace was being built and the Bellagio, uh, and stuff like that. So really cool kind of historical episode coming there as we look down the straightaway to next year.

Well, Brad and Tanya, I thank you both for covering all this Formula One news for our fans and hopefully they enjoyed our season long retrospective here, and we look forward to seeing what happens next [01:58:00] year. I never watched practice, but I used to watch both qualifying the sprint race when they occurred and the race.

I’d only watch the race. I don’t watch qualifying or practice, no, they got time for that. But next year I’m back, back on the saddle. I can’t wait to see drive to survive. No . You’re not Horner’s little helper. Ah hum.[01:59:00]

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