358 - Belgian GP 2026

🎵

Esho Utan Kupa Niek and welcome to Shift F1, a podcast about speedy racecars.

That by the way is Hungarian for, After the Rain Comes the Raincoat.

An idiom meaning a solution has come too late.

Is it too late for the rest of the grid to catch Kimmy Antinelli?

Not if a solution to their power unit problems doesn't arise.

I'm Drew Scanlon joining me.

Danny O'Dwyer, how are you Danny?

I'm doing good.

We're wedged here between two good old European races.

Looking backwards, of course, on the action.

We just enjoyed its spot.

And also looking forward to another very different track in, as you mentioned,

Hungary, Hungara ring.

Irma Gerd.

It's that time of year again.

Also joining us, Rob Zachney.

How are you, Rob?

Not too bad.

They fixed Spa.

Wow.

All right, great.

Wow, all right.

Strong statement.

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What do we have going on this month, Danny?

I believe we were recording a podcast about the great race.

What are we doing that next week, probably?

Yeah, I don't think it's on the calendar, but that's a good time to do it before we want to

get it in before July.

Well, let's figure it out.

Yeah, absolutely.

And of course, we have bunches and bunches of stuff, a bunch of primers.

What was the last primer we did?

I did Formula Two primer a couple months ago.

We've obviously done a bunch of the movies over the past few months as well.

Yes, there is a just a ridiculous catalog of film reviews.

Drive to Survive.

Maybe you've heard of it.

Oh, my Lord.

Death Race 2008.

Maybe you've heard of it.

Death Race Original.

Maybe you've heard of that.

Hopefully that one.

Hopefully that's the one.

Yes, exactly.

Hand grenade.

But of course, a massive thanks to one of our incredible title sponsors,

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War Rizzle.

Or I.B. Egberto and Igor Forman.

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Jeff Foster.

Troy Stammer.

William Rumpf.

Fancy.

Triceratops.

Lackland The Madden Man.

Samurai Love Story.

And Jason Kelly.

Thank you all so much for your support.

Wow.

There's barely enough space left on this car.

Yeah.

Fancy Triceratops.

Getting in there.

Yeah.

Thank you.

Love that one.

Yes, thanks to all who support us on Patreon

and who listen to the show.

We've got two races to talk about.

One that has happened, one that has not.

Let's start with the one that did.

Okay.

In Belgium, everyone, the grid looked like this.

Kimmy Antonelli.

Pole position.

His reign of pole positions continues

up.

Max Verstappen starting second.

Red Bull had been, you know, kind of putting out there

that they, you know, we might not be looking too hot at spots.

Kind of a long circuit.

We've got some power unit stuff.

But Hajar, Max's teammate, was going into this

with a huge power unit penalty already before qualifying

and even started because they're going to replace

a whole bunch of parts on his engine.

And for that, you get docked places.

So why not use him as a sacrificial lamb?

Shake and bake, baby.

That's exactly what's happening.

CR review of Talladega Nights on Patreon.

The Comma Slash Shift type one.

Hajar slips streams for Stappen to a second place.

Starting third is George Russell in the other Mercedes.

And then Charlotte Claire in fourth, who apparently

on his final run saw a yellow flag being

waved in the pit entry and caused him to back off

just a little bit.

So he'll, he'll start fourth ahead of his teammate,

Lewis Hamilton, who crashed late in free practice three,

but the team was able to rebuild his car enough for him

to qualify fifth.

Did you guys see this, this crash?

All crude one.

I know a funny one.

Yeah.

He basically, he maintains a lot of speed.

He slides off the track and is fighting to hold on to it.

And mostly does, but he clips the barrier pretty hard

with his right rear.

And apparently that, that compromised the car pretty badly

required a substantial rebuild.

Won't be the first time he has a bit of understeer and then snap.

Yeah, indeed.

All right.

In sixth place, Oscar Piestri followed by Arvid Lindblad,

Gabriel Bortoletto, Liam Lawson, and Pierre Gasly in 10th.

Then we've got Franco Colapinto, Nico Holkenberg,

and then Landon Norris in 13th.

He qualified third and then got hit with a power unit penalty,

which we also knew going in to qualifying.

He said later that it was one of his best ever laps.

And yeah, kudos to him for getting it up into third

and giving himself as good a starting position

with that penalty as possible.

14th is Oliver Bearman, 15th Alex Albon,

then we've got Esteban Ocan, Valtteri Bottas,

Sergio Perez, and then a bunch more power unit penalties

in Carlos Sainz, Lance Stroll, Isaac Hagar, and Fernando Alonso.

Although Fernando Alonso might have been there anyway.

It's true.

Yeah, apparently Isaac was penalized.

30 places in Alonso, 20 and even still.

Isaac was penalized 30 places and still Fernando Alonso was behind.

They should make them.

They should just figure out where the grid box would be

if you were in 50th and stick him there.

He's like back up the hill somewhere.

That's really good.

Yeah, I love that.

All right, Danny, do you want to take us through the start

of the Belgian Grand Prix?

Sure, lights out.

Away they go.

All fine down into turn one.

Turn one here is either everyone gets through totally fine,

which has been the case for the past few years,

or somebody takes out like four or five people

and we are once again praising the halo because it's like,

it's such a crazy, it's a short one,

but it's also like slightly downhill

and then it's the start of a race where everyone's going

half a leather.

This time, everyone gets through totally fine.

Can't say that about corners later on.

Verstappen takes a slightly wider line around the outside

of that turn trying to set up an overtake on a snaggy

and then basically just dumps his battery.

He manages to get pretty close

and then he gets the overtake done basically as they are,

like around the outside, I guess,

as they are heading up to Eau Rouge.

But as he does this, he essentially has like,

I saw an interview with him after a race

and he's like, yeah, I had no battery left.

I just did it all right there.

And I guess you're hoping that you get ahead

and then you can, you know,

you just use the physical presence of your car to block.

Yeah, or that someone behind me starts fussing with them

or whatever.

But as it happens down the Kemmelstraße,

Antonelli just easily overtakes him.

Unfortunately for Verstappen,

so too does Charlotte Claire around the outside.

So he gets through as well.

And then Verstappen ends up finding himself sort of

just in front of the Hamilton Russell situation.

Russell is still in fourth.

Hamilton is closing the distance a little bit

and as they ran that right hand there

at the end of the Kemmelstraße,

Hamilton has a little bit of understeer and a snap

and he ends up basically smacking the side of George Russell

who ends up on the gravel beach and is out of the race.

You're remembering the end of the incident.

Russell was trying to make up the ground on Hamilton

by late breaking, like diving into that corner

because he then, well, I guess that's the discussion.

What did we see with Russell here at the start?

Because this is, you know, this takes him out of the race.

But you remember last week he had said,

like the car hit straight line speed issues.

He came out of the race very unhappy,

brought it up during the radio message to the team

right after the race.

Toto kind of shot that down.

But you could see it here at the start.

Russell heading up toward Arush was visibly slow

and in a way that all the cars should be accelerating,

they should roughly be matched.

Russell's car was just slower than everyone else's.

He got completely swamped on the straight

and ended up dropping back, getting eaten up by Hamilton.

And then he finally gets some speed back down the Kemmelstraße

and makes what, he would say it was,

he would later say it was a racing incident.

Hamilton did get the penalty for causing the contact,

but I'm kind of of the mind that it is a racing incident.

Russell does a high risk move diving for that corner.

Now he maintains control of the car.

He, it's a neat little bit of driving.

And he's ad.

Does put himself at the mercy of Hamilton.

It is one of those things where cars are, you know,

Ronald's pointing out this stage of the race,

everyone's full load of fuel.

Their tires may not be fully up at the temperature.

Cars are sliding around a lot and Russell dived in.

Hamilton slid a bit and tapped him.

And just there's like a pit maneuver.

Like, you know, the cops are trying to do right.

The, you take out the rear tire, the body section in front

of the rear tire and you just hook the car around.

And that was the end of Russell.

I did see, so immediately he got on the radio

and basically blew up at the team and German TV caught it.

So they aired, I'm out what the fuck happened

with the state of charge down the straight.

I had no fucking battery down the straight.

Guys, unacceptable, un fucking acceptable this whole weekend.

Wow.

The race has a good piece about, hey,

why did that make the air on German TV?

Because usually they bleep it out.

They show, I mean, they show full frontal nudity.

You know what I mean?

Like it's just Germany, man.

That appears to be the answer.

That German TV is like, this is important.

Just broadcast it.

When you have the, like, F1 gives you the onboard,

if you subscribe, or I guess to Sky or whatever,

I'm sure the German broadcasters have the same deal.

When you watch a driver's onboard camera,

you also get their unfiltered radio, right?

So they have access to everything that they're saying.

So I imagine that the broadcast team just ripped the audio

from that and decided to air it.

Yeah, that's good stuff.

Either way, very unfiltered.

And that continued after, when they interviewed him around

lap five, when the race was still going on,

and talked about that he had no battery.

This is an ongoing issue with the car.

You know, he said, I appreciate everyone's working hard

on the issue, but here I am standing here,

lap five talking to you.

The race also had a piece in that same,

in the same piece about like how that message got broadcasted.

They did sort of dig up the telemetry about it.

And you can see that, so there's kind of two things

that Russell says that happened.

First is that Russell said the car didn't charge at all

down to the source, that it's supposed to pick up

some harvesting for the straight at the source, it didn't.

And so he entered the round of the corner down on battery.

And then, as he's coming out of Radeon,

the engine just stopped accelerating.

It hung at 308 kilometers per hour,

and then started working its way up to 315 kilometers.

But that is considerably slower

than where you have Kimi,

who his speeds are capped up by the car.

He got briefly at 313 kilometers,

and then gets up to 318.

The other thing you sort of notice is that,

and they mentioned this during qualifying,

ongoing unhappiness with the car, just generally with Russell,

that he does not seem,

he seems like he's constantly fighting that car.

The car was twitching out of the source

in a way that not every car was.

So everything could go wrong, did go wrong.

And in his attempt to win it back,

and gamble a little bit to try to stay

within touching distance championship flight,

he ends up getting taken out.

And that is his race.

But I don't know, to me, it is visible.

I hadn't fully, to a degree,

I've sort of been thinking like,

yeah, Russell's just unhappy with how the season is going.

I don't know.

There's a boy who cries wolf elements to some of this

that I think doesn't help him.

But you're right, the evidence is there.

When seeing the car, this is the time we're like naked eye.

I was like, oh, something's wrong there.

Yeah.

Wasn't the only car who had a tricky first lap earlier.

I mentioned turn one, of course, earlier in the race,

at the start of the race, Carlos Sainz

had a little bit of trouble slowing down into that.

He ended up tapping the back of Ocon's car.

People were looking at this on replay

because Ocon ended up in the gravel,

and they figured that might have been when he got his puncture.

But as it turns out, it was actually, unfortunately,

later near the end of sector two,

where he and his teammate Franco,

oh, sorry, Ali Berman, tagged each other.

And he got a puncture, which ended up seeing him

depart the track,

but he was able to get it out of the gravel and continue

back around to change some tires.

But there was a safety car,

and then we had some safety car shenanigans.

Yes.

Going the opposite direction that he would like to go

is Oscar Piastri, who sitting in, I think it was second, right?

Gets passed by Leclerc,

and then Verstappen in short order,

laps four and six, I believe.

And Verstappen sees-

Oh, can I interject?

Sorry, I was trying to set you up for something,

but let me just take it myself.

All right.

Ezek Hajar.

Ah.

You know, we're having a weird race here, folks.

Anything can happen at Spa.

So how about we pit you, you do a lap, we pit you again.

Ah, yes.

The classic-

And put on those hard-

He started on hard tires, right?

And so they put on mediums to satisfy the two compound rule,

and then back on hards so he never has to pit ever again.

Or just like, don't worry about it.

We got you, bro.

There'll be another safety car.

You'll be able to catch 40 laps or whatever out of these,

out of these bad boys 41 laps.

So yeah, Hajar's at the back of the pack,

but he's the only one that doesn't have to change out

his underpants again this race.

There's got to be something kind of freeing about that.

Yeah, like getting all your taxes done early, you know what I mean?

Yeah, and you're just like, everything is gravy, right?

Like you're playing with house money.

Yeah, because you're like, hey, if there's a safety car here,

then I'm going to just jump everyone.

Well, I guess maybe not a safety car.

But if I can make it happen, if the pack is slower,

if I'm able to get myself through here,

then eventually I could end up leapfrogging a lot of people.

And just because it came up last week,

thing that Ocon probably didn't want to be doing was hitting Bearman.

I'm left one and needing to make an emergency stop

because his tire got punctured in that contact.

But I didn't look too closely at the incident.

Maybe the blame is a little more equally assigned.

But my first impression is like, yeah,

there's Ocon getting into a teammate as he does sometimes.

Yeah. But yes, Leclerc gets by Piastry,

then Verstappen by Piastry,

then Verstappen by Leclerc seems to have figured out his battery strategy there.

But Piastry comes back on Leclerc lap eight

and coming down the Kemmelstrait tries to pull up alongside,

but they touch and some carbon fiber flies off.

Was it Piastry's car?

It was Piastry's car, yeah.

How does nobody get a puncture here?

In fairness, in recent years, this has been a talking point.

I don't know what's going on with the tires,

but there have been so many incidents over the past couple of years

where it looked like in any other era that would have been a puncture

and somehow they're not.

And then obviously the Ocon,

Bearman one was kind of, that's more of a traditional,

they touched and then there was a very fast puncture very quickly.

You're right. I remember watching early on,

like you look at a car wrong and it would have a puncture.

Dunzo and this was like, this was some pretty heavy contact,

lots of Piastry's front wing.

How did you evaluate this one?

Because the commentators were like,

that's going to be a penalty.

Like that is the player crossing the line.

No, I mean, he was ahead.

He stopped to give room though.

And he gave him room.

He gave him a car's width.

He didn't push him out.

You know what I mean?

Like that's, yeah.

As Martin Bruno pointed out,

he gave him a car's width, not a car's width plus a little bit.

Exactly, yeah.

Yeah, but it was, but I will say it did feel a little bit inconsistent

that stuff like this was getting called as racing incidents,

but you know, maybe the Hamilton Slap, Tank Slap, you know.

Yeah, I've not read the Stewards reasoning for the Hamilton one,

but it did seem a little odd.

Yeah, I think it's often a control thing when they see a snap.

That's they seem to be like, if you lost control of your car,

even if it's the most like bog standard,

like first lap tons of people lose control of their car

a tiny bit going through a corner.

But if somebody gets hit while that happens,

they seem to view that as very black and white,

but Claire thing did seem a little bit like excuse for them to give it.

You know what I mean?

Yeah, well, look, five seconds.

That is the wrist lap version of the penalty to is the we don't really like,

it's a long lap here.

It's going to be we're early in the race like five seconds.

Like, you know, you can strategize around this

and they get some good luck with how they serve it.

But the I don't know, for me.

Leclerc was getting overtaken and then he slides over and to me,

it looks like he closes the door.

If that's a cars with we're talking like we yes,

we're talking about exactly one cars with and I'm not entirely sure

that you aren't including a little bit of grass

in your calculation of how much room.

Oh, what was the mint?

You could place right between the two.

Yeah, it was it was a little bit tough.

Piazzari sounds like he's reading the newspapers.

He talks about how dangerous that was.

Yeah, yeah, but yeah, that does mark the that does sort of not only does it

mark the end of his challenge to Claire at that moment,

but as Piazzari is trying to recover from that,

Hamilton shows up in his rear view and now he was all over.

He was all over Piazzari, you know, on the next lap.

Piazzari ends up getting overtaken while his battery was down,

recharging, which is this the whole race is kind of interesting

from the standpoint of in the post race interview,

the drivers talking about the chart, the deployment patterns for the cars

were really wild that the that the the harvesting and deployment cycles

were challenging to predict.

You don't see it as much from our perspective watching the race,

like for me, like especially that first half of the race,

this is pretty action packed.

I don't hate this at all, but there is an awful lot of OK,

now this person's a sitting duck and here comes here comes the next car.

Not necessarily bothered by it, but it does seem like it made the driving

experience a little more stressful.

We got an action packed couple of laps here as well,

because like I think it was Anthony and he came in at lap 19

and it was around the same time that you had Naras getting past Piazzari

and then the VSC kicked in.

So you had like they were in the pit window,

but then a virtual safety car happened.

Was this car, I remember the shot of the steward running across the

or sorry, yeah, Marshall.

I always got those words wrong, sorry.

But the steward should get their ass out there and help.

You're right, yeah.

Put in some, you know, get some sweated out a bit there lads.

And was there a carbon fiber on the track and gussing or something?

Yeah, something like that.

Let's actually take a quick break and then we'll be back with what's

happening after all these safety cars and pit stops.

Actually, before lap 19 when Antonelli pits, we do get Naras coming from

kind of the back here, working his way up.

He gets by both racing bulls, cars, and then shuffles up to by the time Antonelli comes in,

he is in sixth ahead of Verstappen, who I think had pitted.

Noras again, starting on those hard tires from what was it, 13th place.

But yes, Antonelli pits on lap 19 from the lead.

And we do get some more as back on track, Noras is now up to Piastri.

We get what the commentators assume is some team orders here because they're on different strategies.

But then a replay shows that Noras passes Piastri and then Piastri passes Noras again.

And that's when we get the virtual safety car.

And it's also when we get Charlotte Claire and Lewis Hamilton coming in for a cheaper

double stack pit stop.

And it's where Lewis Hamilton serves his five second penalty.

And it's also where we get an unsafe release.

Who wants to take this one, Rob?

I mean, it's not anyone's finest hour, but Lewis Hamilton Innocent is the ultimate takeaway.

So it certainly looks to me like Lewis had wanted more wing added to the car.

Yeah, Bernie Collins put some color on this on the Sky broadcast.

When you put on a harder tire, you have less grip, right?

Because of just the mechanical grip of the compound is harder, so your car doesn't grip as well.

Therefore, you need more downforce on your front wing.

And so typically what they do is a guy will reach over during the pit stop

and with a little allen key or something, crank down a screw that'll change the angle of the wing.

So that's what's happening.

Well, that's what someone is attempting to do.

So they wait the five seconds for him to serve out the penalty.

They do the tire change.

And then it certainly looks like one of the front end mechanics at the last minute remembers

that they needed to add wing.

But the tires are already on the car and the light is showing green.

And so it kind of like from the camera perspective, it kind of looks like a mechanic

like committing insurance fraud, like throwing himself in front of like Lewis's car.

That's why you've got to have a dash cam.

But you break down.

It looks like he's trying to reach toward the car to do one last little bit of service.

And then the car lurches.

The wheel spins and like throws him around a little bit.

That's the front wheel.

So it's not under power, but it's still rotating.

And he ends up getting like pulled against the side of the car.

Lewis sees immediately what's happened.

He stops.

The guy gets clear.

And, you know, yes, if everyone's OK, he is.

But kind of the two the two layers of that are.

You kind of needed to remember to do the front wing adjustment like that.

That should have been part of the script for the pit stop.

And then that ship is sailed like the barn doors open.

The horses are leaving like literally the cars leaving the pit box.

Your moment to like fix that boo boo has passed.

You can't you can't get in there with your little Allen key and make that adjustment

as the cars like flying past you.

Yeah.

And it is kind of a shame for Ferrari who nailed the timing on that pit stop.

Because, you know, they they Leclerc because of the virtual safety car comes out ahead of

Antonelli.

And then we've got Norris in the lead because he didn't pit at all.

But yeah, Hamilton now as he comes out down in sixth place.

And I think at that point under investigation for an unsafe release that he did not get a

sporting penalty for that.

The team got fined.

I think 15 grand or something.

I was mentioning a high jar pits again here.

OK, great.

But yeah, do you want to talk about the maybe the coolest moment of the rate?

I mean, so yeah, Leclerc Leclerc does close in on Norris and overtakes them up too much

hassle on lap 23.

But they didn't catch the Lawson Gasly Colopinto.

Oh, they take incident lap 30.

Yeah, they played it in the like picture and picture.

But yeah, please describe it.

Yeah.

So like Lawson goes in on Gasly at the top of Radeon and gets balked a little bit.

And then as they're exiting onto the Kemmel Strait, Colopinto comes rocketing in from the

whole thing was, I think, basically shown from NCARCAM.

Colopinto comes rocketing around Lawson on the right hand side.

And he ends up trapped between the two Alpenes as Colopinto goes launching down the straight.

And then finally, I think Lawson is able to like claw his way ahead of Gasly.

But it was immediately everyone sees that and immediately their thoughts go to Schumacher

Hockenen, which is a slightly different situation here.

Everyone in this picture is fighting for position, but it was a fun moment.

Also, I would say generally, beautifully photographed and directed race after many races

of Austria was good, too.

But after a lot of races where it's like kind of what are we doing here with shot selection

and and capturing the action.

This one unusually cinematic.

I feel like do they always have that camera positioned halfway up a Rouge into Radeon,

where it like the shooting down the hill at the cars coming up the straight.

And then they will sweep like the sweeping pan as the cars race past heading up the hill

through Radeon.

It's an amazing shot.

It's where they showed the Verstappen overtake on Antonelli on lap one from

incredibly cinematic and gives you a sense of the height of that hill and the speed of the cars.

And the whole the whole thing was the whole broadcast kind of had that had that vibe.

They had another moment earlier where I want to say it was one of the Ferraris and Verstappen.

They went to an overhead.

I think it was one of the drone cams by where the road forks for the pit entry at that final that

final chicane.

And they show the two cars like one suddenly breaks from the racing line to dive for the pits.

And it's like a blue angel executing like a heel off maneuver.

But like hopefully a bit higher off the ground than that one they did last week.

But it was still that was pretty cool too.

But it was still one of those moments of oh yeah, I didn't see the shop before it really captures

like the violence of how suddenly these cars can just like completely change direction.

So it was like they lucked out.

It was also gorgeous like high overcast day, which seems to be the absolute like best shooting

conditions for for F1 even life.

But it was there was there were a lot of moments where they like with direction

amped up the drama of the race a little bit.

Yeah, it's also just a really pretty track.

But yeah, thank God we're not getting this every year.

Let's see lap 31 Norris finally pits I think from fourth place.

But unfortunately for him the rear left is slow to come off and slow to go back on.

I think his pit stop is somewhere around yeah 7.8 seconds.

And then when he comes out is in seventh and lap 34 we now get a change of lead Leclerc

having inherited first place with that safety car pit stop is gobbled up by Kimmy Antonelli

who seems to have no problem with his power deployment on the count straight and swoops around

Leclerc by the end of it.

We've also lost Stroll and Perez by this time as well.

Not that anyone particularly cares.

Wow.

All right, Hamilton also in the other Ferrari getting racey getting around Oscar Piastri

on lap 40. The McLarens just really unfortunately looking not going the right direction this race.

But a strong showing from Norris here as we finish the race Kimmy Antonelli coming across

the line in first, Leclerc in second, and Verstappen in third being hounded by Hamilton

who comes up in fourth, Piastri fifth, and then Hajar I'm sorry it's Hajar Norris which is the

close one. So yeah Hajar sixth Norris seventh, Bordoletto holds on for eighth place 24 seconds

a field from the rest of the pack. That's a couple of those.

Yeah, Linda Bladden in ninth, and then another big gap as you say Danny,

to Franca Colopinto in tenth. Behind him Pierre Gasly, Liam Lawson, Nico Holkenberg, Oliver

Bergman, Alex Albon in 15th, then Carlos Sainz, Esteban Ocon who finished the race,

Valter Bottas, and Fernando Alonso followed by the DNFs of Lance Stroll, Sergio Perez, and George

Russell. Bottas did the last 10 laps on softs. Really? Yeah, that's what I quite liked. They pitted

them like lap 34 and he came out on softs and I was like oh all right let's do it let's try all the

compounds. All right well that was the Belgian Grand Prix. Let's take it now to the news such

as it is. Yeah not too much here is there? There really is not. We neglected to assign

news stories here but I found this one thanks to racefans.net. They do great roundups of F1 news

that they don't cover that other people do. The Times has an article here saying that an

Abu Dhabi backed bid to buy racing bulls led by Bernie Ecclestone was denied 3000000000 dollars

that Red Bull turned down for what? For racing bulls. I don't know that seems that's it I'd sell

racing bulls for that much. You could think of the goats you could buy Danny. Bernie Ecclestone's

95 why does he care? This is what he just I don't know just go hang out with your 24-year-old

wife I don't know but she's probably like just what is happening? What were you gonna say Rob?

Can't help he just wants to make deals he just wants to be back in it he misses it

but it is I was like okay that offer seems a little stingy based on it's not that stingy but

you have to remember like the difference between 7000000000 dollars is a billion

dollars it's a lot of money and F1 valuations have gone up a bit but the highest end like there are

no this isn't we're quite an NFL numbers right there there are no 10 billion dollar F1 like teams

so this seems like it would have been a fair offer for for a program like racing bulls

I don't know why they they rejected it as possible that they think

someone is willing to to set the market higher because I don't know if we talked about this

the news story but there's a rumor that BYD the Chinese auto manufacturer is looking to get into

F1 now it's very clear from the early reporting on that that they do not want to buy a team they

want to start entire their entire program based out of China with with support facilities elsewhere

but that's the one orders attached to you right yeah yeah I don't know we talked about it about

a month ago I think yeah it's yeah they they he meshed the I forget the the chairman's name

the lady who runs that um I remember because I kept wanting to make a PYT reference and couldn't

fit it in what's PYT uh Michael Jackson song PYT oh pretty young thing no yeah I'm not gonna I'm not

my problem problem yeah so my my suspicion is is possible that like racing bulls is figuring

that we saw how difficult it was for andretti uh to get on the grid and so maybe their assumption

is that you know somebody is going to come along who is going to pay a premium over the

typical valuation of the of the team just because their strategic plans require it

so maybe that maybe that's why you reject this offer or maybe behind the scenes there's just a

collective do we want to let Bernie back in this thing we let him back in he might live to be 100

that's true yeah I don't I don't maybe there's something going on Bernie's like Bernie is like

Paul's grandfather and hard day's night it is Paul's right uh not not John's I don't know what

it is but no hard day's night the Beatles movie the entire the the the action that sort of sets

the film is there's an evil old man that they have been made the Beatles have been made responsible

for over the course of this film and over the course of the day he basically breaks the Beatles up

um like that is just just like he eventually convinces Ringo uh that they don't appreciate him

and really strike on his own and I feel like that is what you get with Bernie Eccleston

into the paddock is just like uh worm tonguing his way through the yeah I was about to say I think

it's like maybe you know maybe one of the cars is like a horcrux or he has to like you know he's

trying to suck arvid limb blood so loud to get an extra three months of life I think that's been

maybe a lot a lot of vampires on the grid yes uh all right and finally Rob you flagged this one uh

master snapping speaking of deal closing uh yeah like this is mostly getting pick up on news

sites I think because it's a McLaren for staffing connection but it kind of isn't so McLaren has uh

a very well regarded uh F1 prospect uh incredibly Dutch name it Dutch name here Dries van Langen

Donk uh 15 years old van Langen put a donk on it van Langen donk that's I mean even in our world

this is pushing it very very much is uh he um had a great card in career uh again 15 his career

he had a great childhood where he was very good at driving cards uh and now is made a very promising

transition to open-wheel racing um so he's part of the McLaren program and is one of their top

prospects and he just signed with uh Verstappen Racing which is uh Max's Max's company uh that I

think now holds uh the eSports program under its umbrella also apparently holds Yoss as one of its

drivers uh for his rally career wow and wait his dad yeah I didn't even know he drove rally but

that's uh huh okay I don't think I'm not sure he's like routinely on the circuit I don't

don't fully know but um I do know he he's driving regularly I just don't know fully uh what what what

he is up to besides whenever he's my father of the year uh mother's breast yeah yeah you think Max

would ever fire him I don't think my suspicion is Max has already decided how he wants to handle all

this um my my read on it is always that at some point Max made an adjustment to maintain

a close relationship but also one that like leaves Max firmly in command where he wants to be and

leaves Yoss as a interlocutor and someone to run interference but I'm not sure Yoss is steering

the ship as as much as he used to either way uh the main reason I think people intrigued by this is

because McLaren is still regarded as the prospect uh that Max might go to after um if if things continue

to sort of stall out at at Red Bull um and so there's some interest in is him signing McLaren driver

a signal that he's also willing to draw closer to that organization but it actually also seems more

like promising young Dutch driver you belong with me young man uh let me let me show you these ropes

we didn't talk about uh Piastries pass into Aruge um I forget who it was on but the commentators

called it out uh saying there was a similar Mark Webber pass who of course manages Oscar

Piastry but it was I mean the Webber one was more intense the Webber one is is a is an all-time

but yeah it's still pretty good um all right well that's Belgium that's the news Danny should we take

it to Hungary? Irma Gerd we once again go to the Hungora ring um yes this was uh you know famously

Bernie Eccleston's you know delighted to get finally get a race behind the iron curtain

um yeah first appeared on the the uh the F1 calendar the same year that I first appeared

in reality 1986 um yeah 70 laps 4.38 kilometers 2.7 miles uh the track is about 20 kilometers

outside Budapest uh I was just in Budapest I should have gone out and had a look at the Hungora ring

I was too busy watching Arsenal getting beaten in the Champions League final

um yeah this is a pretty good one I think for fans it's it's an affordable you know close to a major

city um uh track with uh good sight lines and generally some some good racing so it's pretty

well attended in terms of it's the makeup of the track itself it's kind of you know people talk about

it as if it's a sort of a big go track it's a bit like poor to mount in that way um but we have had

problems at overtaking here sort of historically um so it can turn into a bit of a procession the

amount of places that you can sort of actively get an overtake stuck in over the years has has been

a little bit tricky well have to see with these new regs with the cars being slightly smaller

with the battery allowing for more dynamic areas where you can get the jump on somebody

um we'll have to see if that changes at all but in general the two major overtaking spots are at

the end of the star finish straight into turn one and the sort of cutback as it were good getting

into the next turn at turn two which is like a downhill wider left hander so those are traditionally

where we got them it gets hot here it's narrow it's twisty it's often quite dusty here um

monaco levels of downforce required because of all of these uh turns so it's a real at least

that generally is an aero versus horsepower track uh the the star finish straight is probably the only

section of the track that you know is is is a dominant straight line section like the rest of it

there's a lot of high speed corners but it's not like um it's very different to span not respect

you're not just like you know going horsepower all day so we'll see so there's a couple of things

happening here that might make it an interesting race with the new regulations um but yeah we'll

have to wait and see yes uh personally i have rated this let's see here i kind of all over the

place last year i rated it a two out of four uh but then a four out of four my notes here

norris and piastri started 12 for stappen's car not working well he and hamilton have a great

battle for stappen uh dive bombing hamilton and bouncing off his wheel norris spent many laps

protesting giving the place back to oh back to piastri but did finally with three laps to go

piastries first win and the first mclaren 12 since 2012 yeah that was that was memorable

but then a then a two out of four and then a three out of four in 2022 so you never really

know and with these new regulations as you say danie we might get some different passing areas

we we might not um you also saw in your notes it took 20 years before we had a wet race we might

not have a wet race uh this weekend we're looking at five percent chance of rain for race or for

qualifying that's about that's about 21 and 20 years exactly five percent um looks to be

fairly warm uh 80 degrees on qualifying day or what is that Celsius 27 um and slightly cooler

77 warm um on race day or 25 Celsius uh with 30 30 percent humidity 40 percent on qualifying day

and 60 on race day that's that's gonna be that's high for well europe yeah um all right well as we

head into the uh hungarian round here are your driver's standings kimmy antinelli still on top

with that uh big points shift after george russell went out and he won the race antinelli

he now has 204 points in first place louis hamilton is now in second with 159 oh wow

and george russell with 154 is in third the other ferrari charlie claire in fourth with 126

then the two mclarence of lennon oris with 103 and oscar piastre with 92 that's not such a big gap

for snapin has 91 in seventh place isaac had char has 60 in eighth place pierre gasly in ninth

has 42 liam loson in 10th with 39 then we've got arvid lindblad in 11th followed by franca colapinto

oliver bairman gabriell bordelletto carlos signs in 15th then alex alban estobano con

and fernando alonso in 18th and finally the zero points havers with nico holkenberg voucher

botas surgio pares and lance stroll a little little quick side uh chat about the uh current

standing situation um i did you know a couple months ago i was saying like look all you need

to do all you need is like a couple of bad races and that that lead you know a couple of engine

problems new regulations that sort of stuff and that lead uh antinelli's lead at the time

gets swallowed up he did have a little bit of wobble but he's come out of this um current summer

situation and probably into the break uh once again with a fairly healthy lead mostly because

of russell's problems um in this in these cases you know that 25 place delta is pretty strong so

i mean the narrative going into the latter half of this season second half is going to be that this

is kimmy's to lose and you know i can i can appreciate that to a certain point but i also

think that like getting a lead this big as we saw last year um this early is is tricky for even the

most steelheaded drivers and kimmy is 19 years old if he wins this year he'll be the youngest

step one champion ever um so uh i don't think by any stretch that this uh season is wrapped up i think

there's the the issues with uh reliability over mercedes are very interesting i think you're

going to have one side of the garage it doesn't want to mess with the formula too much and you're

gonna have another side of the garage that's really trying to fix what's going on and if you

spread that out over a couple of months you might run into a situation where suddenly one of those

cars is a bit more developed than the others so that's the thing that i'm interested in is whether

kimmy's side of the garage is going to be too conservative with how they uh deal with their

car for the rest of the the season and then as a result we have a little bit of a changing of the

regard regard to you know performance um near the end of the season yeah total wolf uh mercedes

team principal did say that the power unit stuff is affecting both cars um but uh we'll we'll see

maybe how how true that is um but in any case mercedes has a commanding lead in the team's

standings with 358 points to ferrari's 285 um claren is in third with 195 and then red bull

in fourth with 151 then a jump down to alpine in fifth with 61 tied on points with racing bulls

gene hasen team are in seventh with 21 points it's another big gap and then williams in eighth

with 11 outie with 10 aston martin with one and cadillac in the back with zero the shift of one

fantasy league is available for you to join should you like to use link in the show notes here is the

podium from belgium we got a three-way tie for third between scuderia portakito ward's team and

dub airman's dub airman's in second charles in charge that's very good

someone's calling to it's my doorbell we've uh who's calling you this time in the morning you

kidding me yes probably someone dropping off a package uh and then oh this is it's a good visual

gag uh in first place from belgium slash kick sour slash join outie slash kick and slash join

like yeah like you're doing in a oh game server game so yeah video games that's good stuff uh but

overall the podium looks like this uh cigarettes has dropped wow uh it's now in third young ones

anymore you know then we've got oh your your cigarettes just arrived at your door that's right

i might have to go get that fan amp fantasy hq in second and the macarena in first all right you

guys can dig over okay he's gonna do it we're taking bets on a lot of who

i mean eight a.m 815 it must be something important rob somebody came to my door at eight

fifteen i just turned up with a shotgun we had a lady come to uh to my daughter's birthday

party um with a bunch of animals like rescue animals but she turned up the week early by accident

she got the dates wrong so i don't know yeah at about like 10 in the morning nine

on a saturday and i answered the door and there's some animal ladies and they're like do you know

why we're here and that's a really weird way to start an interaction with somebody that's alarming

yeah yeah i was like you know you did and like thankfully they weren't holding any of the animals

right then i mean that that would have been a clue at least um but they they pulled up and

realized that there was no one else there and we're like oh there's no party out at the moment

obviously but they did turn up last uh this past weekend and i severely underestimated

their gain i thought they were gonna turn up with like some turtles you know you know a raccoon i

don't know some like animals some a cool dog they turned up with uh they did turn up with

turtles they turned up with a hedgehog they had an armadillo well then they pulled out a fucking

serval what which yeah like the second fastest land cat in the world like a very large it's like a

house cat that's like two and a half feet tall like they're just and it like starts stretching on one

of our trees and and then a sloth appeared it was a fennec fox it was like every time they went back

to the car and pulled out something else there was snakes it was a good time man it was a good time

wow okay weird animals love it get animal people new new animal just dropped yeah for me get some

servals man you need to get on those russian instagram accounts there's loads of people

in like mosco like like sort of like fail sons of oligarchs who have servals living in their

apartments and they are they are in charge wow let me tell you they are who's the pet i would say

yeah uh all right well you can send us all your serval pictures

shift it from podcaster gmail.com or f1.cool slash email so you got also hit us up on the socials

that's us around the internet should we take it around the world

we've got those craftsmen trucks at lucas excuse me lucas oil internet uh indian

avalanche raceway park look i did not have a lot of sleep last night uh in indian avalanche it was at

the door can you tell us who was at the door it was it was amazon um why the fuck are they calling

you like 15 times yeah you have to sign for it do you have to sign for something no no i don't know

christ uh okay yes the craftsmen truck series race t sport 200 presented by worn industries

worn industries. W-a-r-n as in i warned you not as in this is worn down at 8 a.m. yes yeah

worn industries yep that sounds like a bad guy in an anime yeah worn heavy industries

i was playing some metal gear acid at 2 a.m. on wash that's a psp game it is on my ayn thore

oh wow you were playing it as as intended that's right that's amazing look it looks great you can

you can bump up the rendering resolution and it looks fantastic uh formula e is in tokyo

what yes for the tokyo e pre is that a first i don't remember them being in tokyo before i don't

know but that's that's probably dude they better race on my way they bet like you might what's

name it on highway again they're always all the street racers go on oh it's like an every video

game every video game has that highway yeah they usually just call it tokyo highway yes you're right

i want them to race that the mountain from initial d oh you're right yeah it's just that one turn

oh beautiful uh formula two and formula three will be supporting f1 at the hungar ring we also

have uh dt mz at motorsport arena over oh osher's laban osher's laban in osher's laban deutschland

i love to wear my osher's laban um the nascar a reilly series is uh the indian apples motor

speedway for the pens oil 250 presented by take five oil change wow oil all the way down

yes like and those sponsors are formally e we also have the n h r a they are at pacific

raceways in kent washington for the muckel chute casino resort northwest nationals excuse me that's

right muckel chute that's right i'll be honest that native american tribe i was about to say

that is the least i'm no expert but when i hear some words i'm like oh that sounds like a native

american tribe muckel chute mm-hmm hmm uh the motocross grand prix is in locat chechia

oh nice are we saying chechia chechia i think it's chechia okay chechia uh for the motocross chechia

yourself true uh huh before for you slovakia is that is that indy car race happening this weekend

can i i think the national mall 200 is going on this weekend the freedom 250 or whatever

can i tell a joke i made when i was like seven years old please this was the

first i the chechia it kind of opens the door a little bit although this is technically a

yugoslavian joke but i don't know why i made this up when i was a kid this is a really bad joke

and i've never told this publicly but it was the first joke i ever made up and i'm kind of proud

of it okay and you can easily see how it's just right down the timestamp for when we're having

one of the jokes being told yeah you can skip it um so the i was and i was seven

or eight when i made this up so like you know give me give me some hands so the un they're all at the

un all of the different countries are there and they're having their morning porridge i don't

know why they're having morning porridge but they have porridge in the morning and they're all eating

their porridge and the uh the prime minister or the guy from spain um uh doesn't like it and he's

like um i can't finish this i'm sorry so he turns to the guy from finland and says what do i

do with the rest of this porridge and he says don't worry about it just slap it on the last of it

wow yeah that's you know what

i'll allow it that's pretty good thank you that's pretty good

oh i was in the internet races for a month but i saw there were events happening this weekend so

i don't know fully why that is huh there's no way to count for a month no it's the the dc races on

august 23rd it's not this weekend oh i think 250 people freedom yeah people in the discord

we're just talking about the the track layout and it's about what you'd expect it looks like a formula

e layout lots of straights lots of right handers yes yes indeed uh guys we also have no scar

yeah also at the union apples motor speedway for the brickyard 400 nothing more american than bricks

well seems more english to me but all right uh we also have why did i close the planning document

we also have formula one yeah yeah that's right uh things kick off this weekend

right a july 24th at 7 30 a.m eastern time is free practice one followed by free practice

11 a.m saturday july 25th free practice three is at 6 30 a.m followed by qualifying at 10 a.m

and then the race everyone sunday july 26th at 9 a.m eastern time and then we got a big old dirty

break folks we're not back until uh the last zandvor for a while i guess on august 23rd that's

right yeah uh but that's what's going on this weekend danie what happened this day in history

in the days of your july 21st for decades no one thought anyone would ever match fangio's

achievement of winning five world championship titles but today in 2002 it happened when michael

schumacher maybe you've heard of him won the french grand prix at manikur michael had equaled

fangios 45 year old record he had done it in records time taking just 11 races of the seasons

to win the title emotional and close to tears after schumacher said i have never been good at

finding the right words at these moments it has overcome me frary chairman lucca di montezella

describe schumacher as the greatest driver to ever driver for a while frary and schumacher

were celebrating the mood at the arrows team was downcast don't worry it wasn't because anyone died

in serious financial difficulty team boss tom walkensaw was in negotiations to sell the team

and the only running the cars did all weekend was one unsuccessful lap in qualifying which was

enough to fulfill their contractual obligations the team folded shortly afterwards arrow pointing

down arrow pointing down exactly all right well heading into the hungarian weekend final thoughts

any uh thanks for putting up with my terrible joke

um i think i mean it's becoming a two horse there's there is something

they're hitting mute by accident on my fucking microphone there is something about this season

which is unsatisfying i don't know if it's coming off of last season which was kind of a

a roller coaster but also every race was kind of a bit mad like it was a real good

mclaren fight but then the teams were closer like today we had those like 25 second gaps between

somebody i mean it's spy i get it but like it does seem like the races are less interesting

overall and also the uh season is also um and also i'm not sure if having the extra team is

helping this either so i i this i think is kind of par for the course a little bit with new

regulations is that you end up getting one team that's kind of got it right and then the rest of

them are flaring a little bit so i was somewhat waiting for that and it's not that bad like you

you do have Verstappen in the mix you do have the ferrari's doing surprisingly well and

Hamilton obviously has managed to gather a bunch of points but yeah there is there is something

about the season that's a little bit of a a drag and i'm interested to see what this post summer

i'm interested to see what the narratives are to look forward to obviously kimmy's championship run

and which kind of feels i think maybe that's part of it is that like after last year where you had

piastre had been in the sport for a couple of years lando who obviously has this sort of long

always a bridesmaid situation and even russell this year we have as well but it's almost like kimmy's

getting his chance too quickly you know what i mean like it's not even that satisfying to see kimmy

win the championship even though i really like him but it's almost like we didn't get a year or two

of struggle before he's had his chance so it's hard to really get excited about that one as well

so yeah i'm interested in what people think leave in the comments what your thoughts are with regard

to how excited you are about the rest of the season i guess do we have comments we've comments on youtube

oh i guess on spotify now to have those new comment things on spotify you can send us an email to

send us an electronic mail what do you think rob uh that's interesting i guess i'm thinking about

this because my point of comparison is like when the v6 turbos were introduced i feel like it was

two years of like mercedes just walking over everyone and it wasn't this it wasn't even this

close i agree this fits the pattern of like someone kind of gets these regulations right and then

everyone else kind of playing catch up we've seen way more extreme versions of very like the the

turbo hybrid switch and then the the introduction of ground effect which was like all right red bull

go and go and take a couple of these and so by those standards i think like this has been

still much more interesting right like that ferrari is still in there fighting uh with a

actual reasonable shot of a championship like it requires things continue to go wrong for

mercedes like that they are not in control of their destiny here but like ferrari ferrari is in

there um max can get the car up there uh on a on a good day so by those standards i think it's i

think it's been okay but i do think there is um it is undeniable that there is a little bit of

of our current championship runners like toto wanted to get a max for stappin he rummaged around

he was like get get me one of those put him in the car rushed it rushed him into it now they got

the regulations right and it's like all right go be the youngest f1 champion in the world and it

does it is a little anti-climactic uh you know it's that is that is the direction the sport

has moved where um you know the the direction toward pulling drivers in younger sort of locking

them up uh i think has a side effect of um kids can be cute but not interesting and i think that's

kind of the dilemma and i think when we look back on this era right is that there's a reason like the

drivers from the the iconic years of f1 like tend to loom large as personalities and characters

and it's just a little trickier to make a narrative around people who are all like

under 24 yeah and there's a lot of that happening right now where it's like look at this little

cute little guy look at him these kids go fast this is so sweet and that's kind of the narrative

of this channel like everyone's choosing to find a cute the other drivers find a cute there's not

even like tension around like fuck this kid he shows up and wins a championship he's a really

likable kid and he looks like a kid like he looks like a child like but it

does more than people feel bad for george you know i think if there's any narrative in that man

that's the dream is that george enters his his his a villain era and i feel like getting taken

out by lewis at the service race is like a really good notch on the way to get in the albin special

from lewis yes exactly yeah the no there there's there's definitely there's definitely a bit of

that um and the fact that george's problems with the car are like the most gas lightable problems

in the world of like i don't know george the electronic deployment i don't know electronic

things are happening at car we can't control them kimmy seems to be doing just fine it's

actually him too so i don't know what the problem is so that is very funny but i i do think there

is a little something too um the way it's all in packaging broadcast the narrative is like

just the youngest driver ever what is what a special boy with a special baby

and is like he is a special baby and that's great and i'll be very interested to see

when he's a fully developed person what kind of one driver in champion he is but in the meantime

go airbot

all right well if you would like to support the show and 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 weekend everyone we will see you all next week

you

Suzuki Samurai

Mclaren 12

Original notes