355 - Austrian GP & British GP Prerace 2026

Custard and Jelly, and welcome to Shift F1, a podcast about speedy race cars. That, by

the way, is Cockney rhyming slang for telly, or television, because I have to completely

rescind or maybe qualify everything that I said about F1 TV and Apple TV previously,

because the people have commented, pointed out to me that there is a much more

reliable way to find the Sky broadcast on Apple TV. Oh, do tell. Yes, special thanks to my buddy

Ethan, who sent me a very helpful video walking me through. So, okay, if you've got Apple TV,

you go to the Apple TV app, where you usually are watching F1, you go to the F1, there's

like a icon on the side where you find all the F1 stuff, you click that. And then there's a,

there's a, oh boy, I don't have the UI terminology for this, but there's like a part of the list

that you're scrolling through when you're in the F1 zone called catch the entire 2026 season. And

they've got tiles per different grand prix. Okay. You click into that for the one you want to watch.

And then you scroll down until you see the sky section. Okay. And there they have all of the

the replays. Now they only stay up for like a week. Oh, interesting. So if you're like us and

you're keeping up to date with, you know, I want to watch it around the weekend that it's happening,

you're fine. But don't expect it to be there for like, Oh, you know what, I missed Monica, let me

go back because it won't be there. For that, you would have to then link your Apple TV and F1 TV

account. But back to the watching sky on Apple TV. It is what you said, Danny, it is the full sky

broadcast. So for qualifying, you get them, you get to see them going to the sky pad or whatever

to do, you know, analysis of so-and-so's qualifying lap. Instead of when you're on Apple TV, you

just hear them talking about it because you're only getting the world video feed. Nice. Brundle's

little walk as well through the grid. Yes. All the pre-show stuff. A lot of the little like,

I don't know what you'd call them, the like, you know, little packages where Ted Kravitz and

Valturbotas ride a bicycle around the house and, you know, that kind of stuff. So yeah, thank you

to everyone who wrote in and pointed that out. Thank you to our sponsors Sky this week. That's

right. That's right. I honestly just want my sky pre-race show back. Yeah, there you go. You know,

that is good. That is a good broadcast. And that's really where the F1 TV can't match them,

right? The entire like, pre-packaged, going out and doing field, field report. It really is the

field stuff. And then, you know, with Bernie Collins actually on the pit wall. Yeah, it's just a,

you know, you can debate the actual, comparing both commentary teams. But it's the, it's the sort

of ancillary stuff that this guy is, you know, surprising. Well, it's not that F1 TV, I think,

couldn't get access, but they probably just don't have the budget that Sky does, right? So

their coverage is much more comprehensive. But yes, I'm Drew Scanlon joining me, Danny O'Dwyer.

How are you, Danny? I'm doing great. We had a ridiculous day on the World Cup for penalty

shootouts yesterday. Really? Stopped talking about it. Yes, as a member of the Golgi Brazilian,

it was particularly enjoyable. Yeah, enlightening. Yeah, it's wild. But yes, it's been a great

sporting weekend with NASCAR locally as well. And yeah, F1, F1 was, you know, I'm sort of spoiled

on the West Coast here with the times for the football. Like this is very much like the way

they have positioned the World Cup games. It is perfect for people on the West Coast, you know,

they're on the afternoon and they run until the nighttime. So the 6am for Austria was a welcome

wake-up call to what I usually have to do over here when I want to watch the sports that I love.

It's reminding me a little of when I was in Ukraine for cloth map, I wanted to watch F1 live,

which is something, you know, rarely get to do in America without waking up early. And so I walked

into a pub and there was a woman at the front and she said, to the left we have the football and

to the right we have the formula. Hell yeah. Also joining us, Rob Zachney, how are you, Rob?

Doing great, eager to talk about, at least it was a very fun race for about like 12 laps.

Yeah, yeah, not a classic this one, but plenty to talk about. Sure. If you're new to this podcast,

a very warm welcome to you. And if you are new to Formula One itself, we've got an episode just

for you, our preseason primer episode assumes no prior F1 knowledge and explains how this

sport works and who everybody is. So if you'd like to go back and listen to that, it's episode

338. Also this show would not be possible without our audience over at patreon.com

slash shift F1, where every month we release ad-free versions of the podcast early, along with

bonus podcasts and videos exclusively for our patrons that cover racing documentaries and

films, F1 video games, experiments with other racing series and a lot of weird things. So if

you would like to support the show and get access to all that fun stuff, head over to patreon.com

slash shift F1 or click the link in the show notes. What do we have going on this month, Danny?

Yes, we have been racing. We have been death racing over on the Patreon. We have

just in the past two days, we've produced two Patreon exclusive podcasts, one on the original

Roger Corman produced 1975 death race and one on the Jason Statham led spiritual successor,

which came out in 2008, which yeah, two different movies. Let's just say that. Drew,

you weren't able to join us for the second one, but did you watch it? No, how should I watch it?

I couldn't spoil it here, but yeah, maybe you watched the good one. We did say like, there's

important messages about fatherhood in that movie. Okay. I think you learn a few things.

I will say it did produce maybe the funnier of the two podcasts because there is so much weird

stuff in death race, the 2008 one. Also just a nightmarish naming convention because death race

2000 came out in 75. And then the one in 2008 is just called death race, which means you feel like

you need to say death race 2008, but that makes it sound like yeah, it also makes it sound like

actually, I feel like when you start saying like the name of the movie, but then the year,

and it's the remake, you've decisively lost the remake sweepstakes. Yes, correct. It's like,

nobody says oceans 11 and right means like the Sinatra movie. Right. Yeah. But death race,

death race 2008. That's a good one. Death race 2008. Apparently we do need to watch

death race 2050, which Corman did produce. Oh, 2018 it came in or something? Yeah. Yeah. Weirdly,

recently. Late career Corman. And there also is of course two sequels. Without watching most.

Statham one. Yeah. Who don't have him in it. Wow, couldn't even get a statham. No, he's done.

He's out of there at that stage. He's whatever he's making. He's like, I'm an artist. This is

beneath me. He's like, I wrapped my story clearly, you know. Okay. Oh my God. So many

Frankensteins. Yeah, so please check those out. That was, I think, one of our best double headers

for a while. Just very, very entertaining movies for very different reasons. And yes, shout out to

our incredible title sponsors over patreon.com slash shift F1, Zeilander Al-Ghoshwari to plot to

produce the military industrial complex war isle or IP Egberto and Igor Foreman. That video game

podcast. Let's Margot racing, each in Wales, Dr. V, Dean's, it's a me, Ferrario, nicotine pouches,

Mojo Nixon, get rich. Oh, Ty Ryan, a Gavi ATX, Cypher's Trading, Turf SES, Michael Maves,

cigarettes, telemetry.com, FTC, Bottas calendar, 2026, Drew Stewart. Oh, this is what this meant

in a foreign language last week. Stirry and fried chicken with potato salad and pumpkin

seed oil. Okay, there you go. That sounds nice. That's great. Bailey Foote, Abraham Getchell,

E3 mysteries, hashtag bunny fiend. Oh, I hope you found work. Good job, buddy. Snakes, Alex Couchet,

Jeff Foster, Troy Stammer, William Rumpf, Lachlan the Maddened Man, Samurai Love Story, and Jason

Kelly. Thank you all so much for supporting our adventures on the track and off and across the

nation. Exactly. Okay, nations. Oh, do we go further afield? I mean, every race, a different

nation. Oh, I see. I was doing a death race thing, but... Oh, okay. Sorry, my brain has been wiped

with all the death race 2000 things now, and I'm just terrified. Yes, exactly. Do you know

they had pickups? They had like little shields and swords on the ground and like Mario Kart,

the new one. Maybe I do need a watch. It's a lot. Release the tombstone. It's good stuff.

What do you want on your tombstone? I want a driver to smash straight into it,

and also latent homophobia. It gets very strange. Great. At the start,

we talked about how it might actually be more cancelable than the exploitation movie original.

Great. Okay. Well, I've got a lot of 3AM baby watching hours to put on something stupid in

the back. Oh, yeah. Yeah, they love it. Okay, let's get to the grid for the Austrian Grand Prix,

and boy howdy, the end of Q3. Exciting, strange. Yeah, controversial. Controversial. Who wants to?

You describe it. I can do it here. I'll do it. I'll take it off. Yeah, so basically,

you know, pretty decent qualifying all around. We are definitely starting to see,

as you'll go through the grid, who the bottom three teams are at this stage. The usual will

Nico Holkenberg make it into the next section drama. Spoilers no. Yeah. And then on the final

laps, they did the sort of Q3, you know, Q3 run to exactly run to 20 seconds left on the timer.

We cut to cockpit of Max Verstappen taking the final turn. He loses the rear car drifts out,

flies out rather into the gravel and he hits the tire barrier. So he's out and we are assuming

probably with a crash like that at the end of qualifying, you know, the track is,

if not initially, but then eventually sort of neutralized. We see Kimmian Zanelli pulling

into the pits and then suddenly, at least on the broadcast, I was watching the F1 TV one,

the commentators start freaking out because they're like, oh, George Russell managed to get

pole. So then it's a bit of a, oh, did he drive through some yellows? Yeah, because he was not

on, he was not on top. It was Charlie Claire, who was holding pole position, then Max crashed.

And then, and on the sky fee, they were like, well, that's it. George Russell have to abandon

his lap. Wait a minute. He has just set the fastest time by two tenths of a second. What is

because George Russell comes on the radio immediately talking about how he had to lift.

He, I lifted, had to, I had to lift for the, for the yellow flag. So there's a single

waved yellow happening at the time that he passes through. Kimmy actually came into the pits thinking

it was a double waved yellow and that he'd have to abort the corner anyway. So he came in and we

should describe here the difference. A single waved yellow is you must lift, you must show, show

that you have seen the yellow and be careful. A double waved yellow is you have to like slow

significantly and be prepared to stop. Correct. Yes. Be prepared to stop. So they are significantly

different. You could also argue that there is some wiggle room in there for what exactly

slowing is for a single waved yellow, but Russell does lift. If you look at the telemetry on the

previous push lap, he did, he did lift. You know, he lifted as much as he needed to for the rules.

Right. So what is that? Is it just like a whoop, a little dip in the, in the graph?

Two tenths or something, or a tenth and a half or something like that. Which is crazy because

he did still get pulled by two tenths. It's remarkable. Obviously the Mercedes is a fast

car, but that's still, his middle sector must have been monstrous too. Because everyone was

setting super fast sectors as well at that end. Like we're stopping at purples as well.

It was really wild because the entire sky crew, they were like, well, that lab's not going to

stand. You thought we're like, because double yellows did come out, they did 20 seconds after

the crash actually happened. So we saw, and we'll talk about that in a second. Yeah. And they're

like, they're just going to delete that laptop. And then, you know, Russell's pulling into the

P one position and Kravitz notes, like it's still on the time sheets. And I do think one thing that

might have thrown them, they went to his in car and they were like, Oh, it's clearly double-waved

yellows on the light panel. On the dash, is it? Oh, no, no. There's an FIA light panel there.

It's sort of like just past the apex of turn nine. They were like, so it looks like there's

double-waved yellow there. But, you know, was it possible that the LED sync refresh was also

confusing matters a little bit? That you're seeing a flicker that is distorting what the

actual indicator is? Either way, you know, Ansonnelli immediately just aborted the entire lab,

then Russell had gone through. Because he thought it was a double. Right. Ansonnelli did.

Well, and I think you might have seen it happen in front of him, too. He was close to,

he was like right. He was not far behind Verstappen. And it certainly was one of those things where

that's going to end the, that's ending the session effectively. But, you know, the FIA's explanation

was they didn't have anyone at the marshaling post who could immediately evaluate, like the

marshaling post was not like right where the REC happened. So the FIA's explanation is

they wanted to give Verstappen time to get the car going and see if you can limp back to the pits.

Now, from the in-car perspective, where everyone had seen the crash happen,

because they had literally, you know, it's the final run. So they were doing the thing where

I don't know who had just like snatched Q, I don't know who had just snatched P1. But, you know,

they do the thing where you show the lap finish and that's like, oh, but wait, let's go see what

Max has got and they cut to Max. So everyone saw the in-car view of Max just bearing it in the

wall. And so everyone watching was like, that car is stranded. That car is going nowhere. But,

apparently the FIA, this is all happening very, very quickly. It's like 22 seconds before they

get the double wave yellow out there. But the FIA saw a fairly intact looking red ball in the gravel

next to the wall and didn't immediately call the double wave yellows. And so, yeah, Russell,

you know, sort of sneaked through and got that got that P1. Russell is,

I wouldn't mind him teaching the board game on board game night. I do not know that I want to

play a board game seriously with it. Because again, it's one of those things where like,

you know, if he has, if he can be said to have like a special, a secret power,

it is this ability to sort of like, hold the regs in his head and like, understand the letter

very well. And this was an example where he might have still had a faster lap than Antonoli.

You know, they're both on laps that were headed towards P1. But his quick notice of,

you know, hey, wait a second. That's a single wave yellow. That preserved his Paul and, you

know, ultimately probably improved his chances enormously for the for the race win and became

part of, you know, sort of a midseason resurgence we're seeing from Russell here.

Yeah, it's, it's, there's a couple of things to sort of like talk about this. First of all,

I guess it is a, it was a weird crash, like you don't tend to lose. So it seemed like they're,

from what I read, there was an issue with his active arrow or something that caused him to

basically go out. Because it is a peculiar place for it to happen. That said, yeah, like Rob said,

apparently the single yellow came out from whatever was the closest

marshal to that spot, but nobody was obviously able to, it took them 22 seconds to get the

double wave yellows out. People, I think in hindsight, and perhaps with some justification

would say, look, usually when they bring out a single yellow, it's because the car has gone

off somewhere a little bit weird. And this is a little bit weird, but also then you start to

worry about the, you know, at that stage, nobody knew why he went off there. There could have been,

you know, debris on the track or oil or whatever it was, right? And it's quite dangerous to have

a car out there stricken on a fast corner like that and then have other cars coming around

that same corner. Obviously, there was no marshals on the track. If there was, there would have been

a double yellow immediately. And as Rob said, they thought that maybe he could get it going

against it or giving a bit of a grace period. Obviously, I haven't seen the crash where he's

completely bended in the wall and probably ruined a bit of the suspension on the front

left, if nowhere else. So yeah, I was a bit like, oh, that's crazy that they didn't like

neutralize the race because somebody essentially drove off in a part of the track that at least

when you see the crash initially, you're like, oh yeah, you can crash your car there. But it was

a little bit of a weird spot. I will also say, so I think maybe there's a little bit of a

conversation for the FAA there to figure out if they can, I don't know. I'm not sure if in a,

I guess in a race it would be different, but there's definitely that element in the fanbase.

I think of people thinking, oh, for the love of this, for the love of the game, they kept the

flags out of the mix for the end of Kuali, but I'm not really sure about that.

Are you talking about the commenters on the race? I haven't seen much of this online,

but the best explanation of this is on the race. And as with all motorsports websites,

if you scroll down past the end of the article, you will see like

the biggest morons on the internet discussing the week's news. And so if you want to know what a

sub-normal intelligence probably English guy in his 50s thinks about things,

then you just sort of go down to those comments and just see what's up.

And one of the things that you occasionally see is like, all but the FAA did this for the show.

They're reading it. They're trying to turn F1 into pro wrestling.

But look, Michael Massey did a lot of damage to that counter-argument because that was the

one time that they did do something stupid for the show and it ended up deciding a championship.

That is true. But by and large, the FIA has never been like this FIA doing this for a show.

The FIA did a race under safety car for like three laps in Belgium and then sent everyone home

because the track was too wet. You think these people are afraid of ruining the show?

I will say, I think this was some welcomed gasoline on the fire for George Russell haters,

though. This was like a real, if you dislike George, this was a real easy, a soft lob,

you know what I mean? To be like, look, he doesn't even care about driver safety. Our perfect baby

boy, Kimmy Antonelli, immediately went into the pits and George Russell,

he just doesn't care. He's a sicko. He crashed into a battery, bought us that one time and

blamed him. You know what I mean? I think there's a little bit of that going on as well.

Well, let's run down the rest of the grid here. George Russell, that pole position remains,

so he will start the race in first position. Charlotte Claire, second place, then Lewis

Hamilton in third, and Kimmy Antonelli in fourth, having bailed on that final run.

Max Verstappen will line up fifth, followed by the two McLarens of Lanonaurus and Oscar Piestri,

then Isaac Hadjar in eighth, Liam Lawson in ninth, and Arvid Lindblad in the second racing bulls

in tenth. Does it bother you guys when they refer to on the broadcast as a single car as

a racing bulls? Yeah, I hate that. I don't like that. You know if I hadn't noticed it,

but now I'd be angry. Yeah, no. I would accept a racing bull or a racing bull's car. I agree.

Eleventh place, Pierre Gasly, Gabrielle Bordoletto, Oliver Bearman, Niko Holkenberg,

Esteban O'Conn in 15th, followed by Franco Colapinto, Carlos, and then two by two here,

the Noah's Ark of the Back of the Grid, Carlos Sainz and Alex Alvon, Sergio Perez and Valdir

Botas, and Fernando Alonso and Lance Stroll. Okay, we are going to take a quick break,

everyone, but then we will be back with the 2026 Austrian Grand Prix.

Danny, do you want to take us through the start? Sure. Lights out, off they go. Everyone's in the

same order that they were qualified in. Kimmy Antonelli has a little bit of trouble

into the first corner, getting the car stopped. Yeah, exactly. And the same thing happens in

the run they had to turn three after that big uphill climb. He runs a little bit wide again.

The only overtake that really happens of consequence in this whole section is between the

two Ferraris. Leclerc has a bit of a, I don't know if he's trying on Russell or if he's just

not out of his good corner, but Hamilton manages to get a better exit. And as they run down into

the start of sector two in that classic spot where Hamilton knocked out O'Conn going up the inside.

This time he goes around the ad side and manages to overtake

Chuck Leclerc. Yeah, I don't think you'd ever say a turn for someone knocked out O'Conn by going

up the inside. Oh, sorry, Albon. It's always, no, was it, it was Albin? It was Albin, yeah,

I remember it was, it was good. Okay, well then, then I was in that. Hamilton absolutely did tackle

Albin on like two occasions changing the trajectory of his entire career in life.

Exactly. This is the, I think the second one. Yeah. O'Conn, on the other hand,

is always trying to go around the outside of turn four, whether or not that is an advisable decision.

So yeah, that is, we needed to figure out who was, who was innocent and who was guilty of,

of these charges. Yeah. Antonelli has a really scruffy first lap here. He never really gets

it back together. And it sort of heralds what's going to be ongoing problems for him,

controlling the car. And it does set us up though. We, you know, we get a pretty amazing

second lap with after weeks of just bagging on the camera work and production decisions of

the F1 broadcast. They brought the heat this time. You have, as Antonelli

runs off a turn one, trying to overtake on the Claire, that brings, it sort of bulks everyone.

Verstappen ends up right with the Claire and Antonelli racing toward the second sector,

plunging down the hill towards turn four and manages to overtake both of them,

past turn four, heading into that, that infield sector. And they cut to an actually good drone

shot. Now there's historically, there's only one good kind of drone shot really, and that's the

corner overhead stationary cam. But every time they try to do a drone chase cam, it's the saddest

shit you've ever seen. And it's, it's, it's like, did you lose the, did the helicopter crash? Like

is, what's, what's going wrong here? But this, this drone, I do wonder, is this that like special

Red Bull drone that they engineered to like move a little faster? So it is a drone that can

roughly pace, not perfectly, but at the speeds they achieve at sort of the start of sector two,

it can kind of pace the cars as they exit turn four and race toward five and six and follows

them through five and six. It follows them through, through some of the loop before it loses them on

the exit. Awesome shot. We saw it a few times, but, but here it was one of the most, most

dramatic is you sort of see the overtake and you're running alongside the cars as they're,

as they're dueling down that, down that, not quite straight. Yeah. It sort of benefits the drone

operator in a, in a way that the battle ends up being a little bit further back where the McLaren

start to sort of enter the fight and gobble up Antonelli as well. Yeah. It's so, I'm, I feel

like this drone shot is like 80% of the way. Yeah. It's my feeling. Yeah. It's like, it's,

quite good, but there's, there's this dramatic tension with drone shots of, of you wondering if

it's going to be able to keep up with it and the nature of a wide angle lens like that and the

fact that you're basically like a, like a steady cam, jib situation is that like people's, people's

comfort with framing on something like that is very, very, the window is very small. So like,

it's a really hard shot to pull off because essentially you are trying to, like there's a

reason why, you know, a crane shot in a movie or a, you know, a lot of them are

operated over and again to make sure the framing works because when it doesn't work,

it makes you feel uncomfortable as a viewer. And this was slightly further behind than it

needed to be sometimes. But I understand why it's a wide angle lens and you don't want to be ahead

of the action and all that stuff. But yeah, it's a, it's a really tricky shot to pull off. And I

think they did a pretty great job on it. But yeah, it's, it's not a, it's not all the way there.

And I think that's just a byproduct of drone shots like that are really wide angle lens under

owns because they have to hedge about placement that they're not actually confident they can track

that smoothly. I think there's a bunch of reasons you can obviously push in and a lot of them do

have like multiple cameras and stuff like that. I think stabilization was the initial reason for

this because you can basically use software to, you know, if you're, if you're shooting wide,

you can use software to basically like crop in slightly and then stabilize the shot within the

frame. So I think historically that's, that's kind of why. You're also hamstrung here by the

size of the drone. Yeah, it's wider lenses are small. Yeah, exactly. And the drone needs to be

small to be able to go that fast. I'll see if I can find the, someone in the discord posted

sort of a behind the scenes of this particular drone. Yeah, I saw it on, on Instagram or something,

somebody posted them, them doing it. It was like a surprisingly small little crew there out there

on the track doing it. Yeah, it looks like kind of a bullet with four rotors on it. I would love

to see, you know, a gimbal, you know, to keep it level. And I'd like to see, I think higher

resolution to be able to, as the cars inevitably streak away from the drone, they're, they just

get so small and you kind of can't see what's happening. But I know, and if you didn't go that

wide with that perspective, it would leave the frame or yeah, it wouldn't work. It would be what

it would exacerbate the problems you get with drone shots. And they are hamstrung a little bit

by having to not fly over the track for safety reasons, right? Although man, they got a couple

of the later shots, they were like, pretty close. I was like, Oh, that's, that's, you know, it's,

it looks further than it is on the lens sometimes, you know what I mean? Like, I don't know what

that lens was. It was like, I don't know, it was pretty wide. It was like 15 or 12 or something

there. It was, it was, um, yeah, I was, was impressed by it. But yeah, we don't stick

big telescopic lenses on them. It would look a little bit weird. I didn't want to shout out flying

horse. I didn't want to shout out Lawson on the first lap trying to get by, I think it was Norris,

dipping onto the grass a little bit, didn't end up working, but bold. Oh, I want to say one more

thing about the drone, which isn't, I don't, it's not about the drone as a piece of kid, but on the

initial, on the first lap, when they were looking downturn for, I thought something had come off

someone's car. It looked like a tire or something. Cause it was the drone. Yeah. Because MK saw this

tune and was like, what is that? Did somebody just lose like that piece of the McLaren? It was the

drone. Yeah. I had to, I had to go back and replay it after the race. Cause I was like,

cause Hajar was down on the grass. And so I thought something, but the way it was moving,

it was like, well, if it's moving at that speed, it has to be a tire or something. But like,

clearly it wasn't. Or I was like, did a hubcap come off someone's car? You know what I mean?

It had that sort of future, but it was, yeah, it was the drone. Later then when I saw the drone,

I was like, oh, okay. And then I went back and saw it. So also worth noting, this is yet another

climate change, 200 Grand Prix. It was brutally hot up in Austria and yeah, literally murderously

hot across Europe. A lot of this past week, like 1300 people have died across Europe in the,

in the, in the extreme heat, which the European climate has meant that no buildings are prepared

to deal with something like this. So, you know, it's a pretty serious stuff going on there. But

for F1's purposes, it also means you're really at the outer limits of operating range for

temperature. And I assume the thinner air in Austria does not help with the air cooling issues.

You know, it's why engines tend to be down on power in part of the, at the altitude races. But

we see him pulling into the pits on lap three, at the start of lap three, and then just disappearing

in a fog bank of a fire extinguisher gas. And as that is happening, Lawson reports his cars on fire

and then gets an awesome race with Hadjar, as they do like this, the switchback races. So the

thing you see a lot at this race is the go to move for getting past someone appears to be,

you check apart on corner entry and go under them at the apex, you go inside and then try to beat

them on the, on the exit. The thing that's fun about that is neither of those lines, neither the

outside line nor that under, that sort of undercutting line is really the optimal. So everyone is

losing time going through the corners that way, which means the move doesn't always stick,

frequently doesn't, and you will get like multiple corners of drivers switching back and forth

during, during a race. But there is no evidence of Hadjar's brakes being on fire.

It just looks like, it looks like he's on fire as he, as he battles Isaac Hadjar.

And then, I'm sorry, go ahead Rob, I think you're right.

Then he says, I still am on fire. And then Perez, and this is like, you know,

this is starting to feel like test pilots or something like that. Perez reports smoke in the

cockpit and boxes, boxes to retire. So now in Italy, it's all part of Adrian Newey's new plan,

don't worry. Mostly the back marker teams here, afflicted by this. Now, speaking of Adrian Newey,

it does not appear that the, you know, that doesn't, they didn't catch fire,

but they probably weren't going fast enough to overstress their brakes. This, this was a weekend

where the Aston Martin impossibly seemed even further afield of the rest of the grid.

The heat probably, I mean, the heat was causing problems for lots of people. I think Ferrari as

well, perhaps. Yeah, kind of the first big narrative here is that the Ferraris are not,

may have qualified well, but not up to, to race pace. As you said, Rob, for Stappen got by Antonelli

and Leclerc. And then Antonelli is lap seven now, getting by Leclerc up the inside. And then,

you know, the, the other narrative here is, once for Stappen, closes up to him

for second place for Stappen versus Hamilton. Lap 11, who wants to take us through this battle?

Yeah, this was a fun one. Again, it was kind of like what Rob was saying earlier. There's that,

you know, up into turn three, there's the sort of, you know, you know, check yourself and then sort

of come, come get a, get a better exit. Check yourself and wreck the other guy. Yeah, but

Verstappen doesn't do that. Verstappen, in this case, does the classic Verstappen, which is I'm

going to break later and then that you aren't going to be forced off the track. But I don't,

I'm only joking. Like he, he does the break later thing, but he does leave enough space

just about for Charles, but Charles has to like completely slow down essentially. So super

aggressive. Oh, sorry, Lewis Lewis, super aggressive, very well executed overtake. Hamilton, though,

gets a better drive, I guess, out of that turn manages to overtake her and the entry to turn

four big lock up from Verstappen. We get another one of these beautiful little drone shots with

Verstappen attempting to do the job around the next turn. And then remembering cops corner in

Silverstone, he does get on the dirt a little bit on the next turn and the next turn, but Verstappen

or, but Hamilton is able to keep the position at least for then. It was a, I don't know, a few

laps later. Yes. Lap 22 is when the battle heats up yet again. And again, some awesome

back and forth, some up and unders, some drone shots. But finally, Max Verstappen does end up

ahead taking that third place from Hamilton. Carla signs entered the trash. Well, and that

first dual Hamilton, the second Verstappen gets past him, right? Hamilton just goes off the track

on the second one. He pit, he boxes. Oh, yeah, right. This is where they're like,

this is the Ferrari three stop thing. They're sort of looming over this. Is that what they're

going to try? They have degradation problems, I think, as well that they're running into.

I also wanted to call out in qualifying, sorry, I forgot about this, an amazing, first of all,

an amazing strategy call by Red Bull, and then an amazing explanation of that by Bernie Collins

on Sky, who said that Red Bull wanted to retain as many brand new sets of tires as they could.

And so they opted to send Verstappen out on some used tires in, I think this was Q2.

Right. And he therefore set a time to get him through to Q3 by 40,000th of a second.

Oh, that's why he was so far down. Yes, he was almost pipped by, I forget who it was now,

but he was almost pipped and would have been out, would have started 11th, I think.

So great call, bold call by their strategy team, Hannah Schmidt, I think her name is,

head of strategy at Red Bull. She must have been shmitting herself when he was so low down the

table. You're a dad now, come on. That's right, yeah, I can appreciate.

24, Carlos Sainz aforementioned, pulls over to the side of the start-finish straight with an

issue, Williams the other team really not having a great race here, just in time for Antonelli

to just pass the optimal point for Antonelli. Antonelli pits and then we get a virtual safety

car. So yeah, he does not benefit at all. And in fact, people behind him do get the benefit

of pitting under a virtual safety car. Hamilton, again. Yes, for his like, I don't know,

eighth stop of the race or whatever this was. Actually, I can see here, thanks to shout out,

again, to racefans.net. I think that might have been stopped too.

So lap 25, that would have been, yes, that was the second stop. So he started on mediums,

his first stop went to hards, and now here he is going to soft tires. That won't be final

pit stop of the race. Yeah, it was because initially I was like, it was sort of weird

because it's rare the timing works out this way. And I wasn't sure, is this going to help Antonelli?

Because like the VSC is going to come out, he is boxed, but other cars will have to slow down.

But yes, it did mean that he still paid like the full fare for the penalty of the stop and

then everyone else is getting the cheaper stop, which hurts him. His problems do not end there.

When he gets out of the pit, he's back on track. He's asking about like, why is the car, why is

the braking so bad? And Bono explains that he has a brake split. One set of brakes is

significantly hotter than the other. Shortly after that, Hamilton is also having his own issues.

And he has told to, he's told the cars needs to go into mode TS, I assume that means temperature

safe, to deal with temperature issues. And Hamilton, dryly notes, I already have no power.

And, well, Lewis, you're getting less. Now, I am curious, are they, I'm curious what is,

what this mode is protecting? Maybe it's everything, but is the ice the issue here?

Or is it the batteries, which we already know, like the heat cycles on these batteries are

already pretty brutal. And so I was, I was kind of wondering like, what is the,

I wonder what is the most like, what is the thing the teams are most worried about when

they're looking at internal temperatures aboard the cars? Yeah, I'm not sure. I imagine, you know,

we've seen Mercedes having battery problems. Those have been the culprits to a lot of their

early season retirements. And we've seen three retirements in this race that are likely heat

related as well. Yeah. So yeah, not sure. But what is for a certain is that Ferrari still

being overtaken by their rivals, Antonelli gets by Leclerc and here on lap 37, we've got

a, the McLaren of Piastri, also getting by Leclerc. And then, and then Lewis Hamilton,

going wheel to wheel with his teammate. They are on different strategies. Leclerc, I think at this

stage is on older tires. Hamilton now on his soft tires, does get by, or I'm sorry, yeah, battles

along, along sort of around a whole lap battle side by side with Charle Claire.

But you can kind of see the, the riding on the wall there and eventually Hamilton

gets out ahead and into the pits comes Charle Claire for some new hard tires.

Yeah. This dance happens a few times because when he comes back out, then there's another fight

between him and Piastri lap 48, I think it was. Yeah. Because like Hamilton then pits again.

Yeah. Along with Piastri. And then he gets to overtake Leclerc again as well. So it's just

like Leclerc is constantly getting overtaken by everyone either side of the strategy.

Right. Yeah. All right. Next thing I got here, lap 56, Charle Claire and Isaac Hadjar.

Isaac getting down into what is that turn? Four. Yeah. And then a little drag race

to Leclerc on the inside. Puff of smoke as well. Yep. Hadjar cooks it and then we get more drone

shots as Hadjar does the up and under and speeds by lap 59. Lynn and Norris now up the inside

of Leclerc. Poor, poor Charle Claire. Yeah. Just going one direction, isn't he? Yeah. Exactly.

Yeah. The end of this race was a bit sleepy. There wasn't, there wasn't too much going on. I mean,

Antonelli was catching Verstappen at a pretty good clip, but I think he ran out of, out of race.

I mean, all the, the three of them, the top three finished within like two seconds of

future or something. It's pretty crazy at the end of a race this long. Yeah. Anyway,

kind of does the thing. Finishing the race, trying to, well, he does kind of a wiggle,

but like, you know, pulling next to Verstappen, seeing if he can get by. But yeah, it's, it's

at the end of the race. Russell on top, Verstappen second, Antonelli in a close third. And then

we have, uh, Piastri making his way up to fourth. Well done, McLaren. Yeah. He's about 20 seconds

behind them, but still, uh, you know, uh, Lewis Hamilton in fifth, uh, Isaac Hadjar, sixth,

Landon Orris, seventh, and Charlotte Clair down and eighth. I think he, even at one point was like,

is there any downside to pitting? Cause I'm so far behind. That's what you want to hear.

That's what you want to hear from your right, from your joy. Yeah. Oh, sorry to pit. Okay.

And his team was not to retire. No, no, no. And his team was like, nope, there really isn't. So

they think they, they do pit and still come out ahead of Liam Lawson in new finishes and ninth,

Arvid Lindblad in a 10. I believe is where they started. Uh, Gabrielle Bordeletto finishes 11th,

followed by Nico Hockenberg, then Pierre Gasly, Oliver Bearman, Franco Colapinto in 15th. Then

we've got Ocon, uh, Albon, uh, Fernando Alonso, and then the DNFs of Stroll, Sines, Perez, and

Bautas. Stroll got a penalty as well, didn't he, for yellows or something? Uh, I believe that.

Classic. Uh, driver's standings are these accurate. I now no longer trust. Okay. Yep. Indeed,

I had to refresh. I don't know what is going on there. Kimmy Ansonelli has 171 points. George

Russell now in second with 131. That is 40 points behind, for you math heads out there. Uh, six

points ahead of Lewis Hamilton in third, followed by Oscar Piastri in fourth and Landon Norris in

fifth. They are separated by one point. And indeed, Charlotte Clare is tied on points with

Landon Norris in sixth. Then Verstappen in seventh with, uh, he's, he's six points behind with 73.

Then a little gap down to Isaac Hadjar in eighth with 42. Pierre Gasly is a point behind in ninth

with 41. Then Liam Lawson in 10th with 30. Behind him, we have Oliver Bearman in 11th,

Franca Colapinto, 12th. Arvid Lindblad, 13th. Carlos Sainz, 14th. Alex Albon, 15th. Esteban O'Conn,

16th. Gabbro Bortoletto is 17th. Fernando Alonzo, Fernando Alonzo is 18th. And then the

zero point scorers of Nico Holkenberg, Valtteri Bottas, Sergio Perez, and Lance Stroll.

In the team standings, Mercedes is on top with 262. Uh, that is 72 points ahead of Ferrari in

second. McLaren is in third with 141. And Red Bull in fourth with 89. Then we've got Alpine in fifth

with 57. Racing Bulls in sixth with 41. Jean Hassan team in seventh have 21. Williams is in eighth

with 11. Audi has two. Aston Martin has one. And Cadillac still with zero. And that, everyone,

is the Austrian Grand Prix. We're going to do some quick hits here in the news section,

before we get to the British Grand Prix track walk. Rob, what's going on with

our good friend, Ben Sillium? Oh boy. Well, he's going to be our, you know, we were all worried,

would our friendship ever end? Would we ever stop having races end with a reenactment of the scene

where the Turkish general molests Lawrence of Arabia? No, we're going to keep getting it for

forever because the FIA, a body that we now know, basically has a unbreakable voting lock in favor

of Ben Sillium because of how the body is constructed. They voted to get rid of term limits.

And the term limit was like a dozen years, wasn't this? It's not like the term limit was like,

four years. It was like the term limit was already too long a term.

Yeah. Well, I think this is, there was a limit to how many terms you could do

now, no longer. You can just keep doing terms. You've got to keep getting voted in

at the end of your term, but you can keep doing terms. Oh, this is good. They also stiffened the

eligibility requirements. Oh, great. Great. Great. So have some last time. So no term limits and

harder for him to be challenged. He's in this job as long as he wants it.

He can buddy up to everyone. He can be besties with all the drivers and stand on every podium.

And yeah, great. What is up? I swear to God, somebody needs to make a video game where you

take all of the, like him and Infantino at FIFA, like just take all of the heads of sports

and then you just get to beat the living shite head of them because these people are just absolute

ghouls. I don't know. Oh, it's just, it's worse in sports, but I think to have these people out

there and rubbing shoulders and trying to, I don't know, shake babies and kiss hands,

it's so gross. Can't stand it. All right. Other personnel news here. The rumors are flying thick

and fast about Verstappen as they have been. You know, is he going to stay with Red Bull?

His management had some interesting quotes this week. They said, and this is in a Dutch press

saying that Verstappen wants to remain at Red Bull for life, but quote, wasn't born to race in the

midfield. Sick burn. But also. Probably accurate. I think Joss Verstappen probably in his project

was, yeah. Yeah. The hyphenrace.com has a good kind of breakdown here of all the

different things. Some day you also have an answer for what other kids were born to do.

Organs, extra organs, in case Max eats them. So Verstappen does have a contract with Red Bull

running into 2028, which is fast approaching. But his contract, and I'll just quote you from

the article, also contains a clause that allows him to exit the team if he's not inside the top

two in the driver's championship at some unspecified point in August, 2026. This happens again. Yeah.

We also believed to be a mechanism that means Verstappen does not have to notify the team that

the clause is being activated until October. The race then points out, though, where does he go?

Everybody else, Mercedes, Ferrari, and McLaren, everybody's locked down until at least 2027.

So the thinking is that, and also here, Max Verstappen met apparently with Zach Brown.

That doesn't necessarily mean anything. He meets everyone. He meets everyone and everyone meets

everyone. So we're just playing paddle. That's right. So yeah, as the race points out, this may

just be putting a little pressure on Red Bull to sweeten the deal for his next contract.

But yeah, I just wanted to keep everybody up to date on the rumors. Verstappen.

Max Verstappen's seen on the golf course. I don't know that the F1 got, well,

let's see. Sines and Norris, I think, are there. But this is the only way. Love the links.

I think Zach Brown is going to realize you have no capacity to build rapport with that kid.

Because he doesn't golf? No, the only Verstappen on a golf course thing I've seen is him almost

killing Kelly Pique on a golf cart. Do you remember that? Oh, is this the drive to survive?

No, he's racing a golf course. So he does golf. That's right. He does. He's on a golf cart,

of course. And he started racing his buddies' entourage, basically, with his wife in the cart.

That's good stuff. All right, that's it for news. Let's take it to the track walk, Danny.

Off to Silverstone we go, the classic Formula One track where it all began 1950. 52 laps around

this old RAF base, you can tell from the sort of triangular pattern of the runways, how they put

this one together. 5.891 kilometers or 3.66 miles. Obviously, so much history here at Silverstone.

My mind is still boggled by the fact that they change where the star finish straight is.

Every time we go around this track, I still get a little bit confused. But it's full of, you know,

just iconic corners left, right and center. We've had years and years of different

moments over here, you know, Mansel's overtake of PK, Schumacher and Hill battling here,

Hamilton's great races over the years, Landon Ars winning it. Just loads of loads of great

moments. Obviously, the incident I already mentioned earlier today of Hamilton and Verstappen

on cops as well. This is a real like sort of front limited high speed, low drag, very fast

corners. So, you know, Ferraris woes are probably not going to be great for the next couple of

races maybe given the tracks that we have coming up. The heat wave seems to be passing east,

so I'm not sure if it's going to be as hot. You'll get into that in a second, I'm sure it

will, but yeah, this is what's it doing here with me?

Yeah, this is, you know, horsepower wins at Silverstone just because of the nature of the

high speed corners and stuff. But yeah, I think reliability is going to continue to rear its

head here and perhaps maybe the brake situation with the heat, but it all comes down to I guess

how hot it's going to be. Yeah, well, just personally, this is I think my highest rated track.

Nice. Yeah, the last four years I have rated this a four out of four, a four, a three and a four.

So, don't want to jinx anything, but yeah, Austria was weirdly was weirdly sleepy. I thought

for a track, we usually get some good stuff out. I don't know. Yeah, I mean, I still thought the

race was entertaining. It did not dip into strategy race for me, but yeah. Got a three,

did it? It got a three. Got a three. Weather wise, Danny, you mentioned this is a sprint weekend,

by the way, so we will be, yeah, every Friday, Saturday and Sunday, I'll have some bearing on points.

So, we're looking at Friday, temps as high as 77 or 25 Celsius,

zero percent chance of precipitation and looks like light to moderate wind, 10 miles an hour

out of the west or 16 kilometers an hour. Saturday, little higher wind, still zero precipitation

and similar temps, maybe a degree or two higher. Sunday, temperatures climb to 83 Fahrenheit or

28 Celsius, five percent chance of precipitation and back to kind of medium wind at 10 miles an

hour or 16 kilometers an hour. So, warm, no rain. Yeah, keep your sun cream on lads.

Yeah, we've got Belgium, just a bit of a catch-up. Spaz on after this, a couple of weeks after this.

The week after that, it's hungry and then we're into the summer break, which is a bit of a month

long. Yes, indeed. Well, you should get your fantasy teams all squared away ahead of the British

Grand Prix. If you partake, you can also join our league using the link in the show notes.

Here is the podium from the Austrian Grand Prix. In third, okay, Lando Calrotisserie chicken.

That's doing a lot, but I like it. In second, show me the Shadowfax. Oh, okay.

Shadowfax. And in first. Oh, that was good. Your Gandalf was good. Thank you. Do it again.

Shadowfax. Oh, my God. It's great. And in first, Ocelot Hippo Racing.

It sounds like a Melliger solid character. It's pretty good. In third overall though,

Fanamp Fantasy HQ. Whoa. Sounds like a F1 sponsor. Sounds like a strip club.

Second, the Macarena. And in first, as always, cigarettes. Cigarettes. Nicotine pages, I'm sure,

are on the on the hunt, though. Indeed. ShiftF1podcast.com or f1.cool. Slash

emails. If you'd like to send us a message, you could also hit us up on the socials.

That's us around the internet. Should we take it around the world, Danny? Let's race around the world.

Okay, I have a good one. I like that. Thank you. I was inspired by, I should have done it as Gandalf.

Formula E is in Shanghai. The Shanghai Audi International Circuit, apparently.

For the Shanghai E-Prix. Audi. Very Chinese company. Sure. Formula 2 and Formula 3 are

supporting Formula 1 in Silverstone this weekend. We have DTM as a notice thing.

Orlando, will you be there? Please. In number, Deutschland? Then ask our O'Reilly series is in

Chicago Land. The Chicago Land Speedway for the Quervo 300. What do you call me?

The Quervo Gold. What's Quervo? That's a tequila. Okay. The Fine Colombian.

Um, Motocross Grand Prix is in South Africa and it, uh, oh, at Teratopia Motocross,

Motocross Track New. New. Yes. The Teratopia Motocross Track New.

NEW? Is this NEW? Yeah. Have I, is this someone looking at my premiere file names?

Before final, final, final there. Right.

IndyCar is in Mid-Ohio for the Honda Indy 200 in Lexington, Ohio.

And we got NASCAR. Also in the land of Chicago for the ERO 400.

ERO. Is that a router? Do they make routers? ERO. Oh, ERO. E-R-O. Yeah, they do like a

Wi-Fi, um, like what do you call them? Meshes, I think? Sure. Mesh networks. Yeah.

And for everyone, maybe you've heard of it. Things kick off Friday, July 3rd.

Free practice one is at 730 AM followed by Sprint qualifying at 1130 AM Eastern Time.

Then Saturday, July 4th, the 4th of July. Welcome to Earth. Welcome to the Sprint at 7 AM

followed by qualifying at 11 AM. And then the race everyone, Sunday, July 5th at 10 AM Eastern Time.

Danny, that's what happened this weekend. What happened this day in history?

June 30th. The French Grand Prix has been held twice on this day in history and both

were flag to flag victories for British drivers who both went on to win the title that same season.

The first was in 1963 when Jim Clark was in his pump, apparently. After qualifying on pole, Clark

drove away from the rest of the field in his lotus and won by over a minute from Tony Maggs,

who was a second for Cooper. In 1986, Damon Hill was beaten to pole by Michael Schumacher,

but the Germans for our engine blew up on the parade lap. Hill then finished off in his Williams

Renault and won from his teammate, Jacques Villeneuve, in seconds. The two Benetons of

Jean-Alice and Gerhard Berger finished behind them, making it a 1, 2, 3, 4 finish for Renault

engines on French soil. Oh, those Halcyon days. Yeah. I'm still angry at what the French are doing

to our telephone system. Oh my gosh. And our economy. People who have not listened to our

Patreon podcasts are going to be very confused by that. Yeah. All right. Well, a pretty good

Austria and looking forward to a pretty good question mark, British Grand Prix. Final thoughts,

Danny. I'll have to see. Yeah. This has been a weird season. It's been a roller coaster of,

is this a good season? And at the moment, it feels like the pack has shuffled into its places

a wee bit. I'm seeing a lot of two by twos and qualifying. The Ferrari World Championship

threat, I think, is largely stymied. Well, I mean, they had that upgrade, right, which we mentioned

last week for Austria. And then they had a hot race at high altitude. So is it representative?

I don't know. Density altitude caught them again. That's right. I guess we'll see. So dangerous

for Ferrari's ender points. Yes. I think Silverstone will be demonstrative. I do think though,

just because of the nature of this and Spa and, well, Lewis is good and hungry. But yeah,

it's going to be, yeah, we'll have to see. Maybe it becomes an interesting fight between them and

the McLaren's that we kind of got a little bit in Austria. But yeah, the Driver's Championship

this year, you know, seems to be between those two Silver Arrows. And there's plenty more races to

go. I mean, that can be interesting. Final thoughts, Rob. E-Row is Amazon's house brand for networking

products. Oh, is it? Super well regarded. Bye. Yeah, I had one. They're expensive. I got one. I had to

return it in the end. It was not happy with my router, but that happens. Oh, is that another?

Is that another one? Router? Router? Yeah. Do you say router? Router? Router? Oh my God, my router won't

work. Here's my Gandalf. So spelled bog. Took the 405 to get the best body and router.

What are you talking about? All right, if you'd like us to support the show,

get access to all of our bonus episodes, the early ad-free version of the podcast and the

official Shift F1 Discord. You can do so over at patreon.com slash Shift F1. Have a good race week

and everyone. We will see you all next week.

Suzuki Samurai

Max Verstappen

Kimi Antonelli

George Russell

Charles Leclerc

double waved yellow

single waved yellow

active aero

virtual safety car

brake split

Mohammed Ben Sulayem

Silverstone

density altitude

About this episode

Original notes