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Person
George Russell
A highly skilled British Formula 1 driver who races for the Mercedes team and is known for being extremely fast, especially in qualifying.
Person
Max Verstappen
An incredibly fast Dutch driver who has won multiple Formula 1 world championships with the Red Bull team.
Place
Red Bull Ring
A famous, very fast race track in the mountains of Austria owned by the Red Bull company, known for its beautiful scenery and long straightaways.
Person
Kimi Antonelli
A young Italian racing prodigy who is considered one of the most exciting new talents in motorsport, widely expected to be a future F1 superstar.
Term
double yellow
A safety flag shown to drivers meaning there is a major hazard ahead. Drivers must slow down immediately and are not allowed to try to set a fast lap time.
Term
downforce
The invisible air pressure pushing down on a race car to help its tires stick to the road, letting it go around corners incredibly fast.
Car
Oldsmobile Intrigue
The Oldsmobile Intrigue is a standard four-door family sedan made by General Motors in the late 1990s and early 2000s. It was designed to look and feel more modern than older, boxier cars from the same brand. It was built for everyday commuting and family driving.
Term
virtual safety car
A digital safety system that forces all cars to slow down to a safe speed instantly, without needing a real safety car to lead them around.
Brand
Racing Bulls
A Formula 1 team owned by Red Bull that acts as a sister team, helping to train younger drivers for the main Red Bull team.
Person
Liam Lawson
A talented young racing driver from New Zealand who got his chance in Formula 1 through Red Bull's driver development program.
Person
Arvid Lindblad
A highly-rated young British-Swedish racing driver backed by Red Bull who is climbing the junior ranks toward Formula 1.
Concept
team orders
Rules given by a team's bosses telling their drivers not to fight each other or to let one driver pass the other for the good of the team.
Term
undercut
A strategy where a driver changes their tires earlier than the car in front of them, using the speed of the new tires to get ahead when the other car finally stops.
Concept
lift and coast
A trick where a driver lets off the gas pedal early before a corner to let the car glide, which helps save fuel and cools down the brakes.
Person
Gabriel Bortoleto
A fast young Brazilian racing driver who won a major junior championship and is being trained by McLaren to reach Formula 1.
Place
Silverstone
A famous, very fast race track in England that hosted the very first Formula 1 World Championship race in 1950.
LIVE
The Athletic
The race is on and George Russel and Max Vestappen return to the front in Austria, but will either
of them claim the coveted top step of the podium in my driver rankings or will it go to someone
else entirely?
I'm Ed Struhren joining me to discuss how I rank the driver's performance at the Red
Bull Ring is Matt Behr.
Hello, Matt. Welcome.
Hello, Ed. This is a really weird experience for me because you've ranked the F1 drivers
this weekend and because you borrowed my usual MotoGP partner, Val Herringen, took him to
Austria.
I've ranked the MotoGP riders, so after doing this podcast with you talking about ranking
F1 drivers, I'm going to have to defend my own MotoGP rider rankings to another part
of the audience somewhere else entirely.
So I think I've got a little bit of insight into what you put yourself through every race
in terms of making these harsh 20-second to first judgements and I'm ready for the
challenge of taking you on.
Excellent. So after you've tackled my perfect ratings, you can defend the Indefensible with
yours.
Yours, of course, are terrible. All wrong. I've done them completely differently. I haven't
seen them as yet to be quite honest and I wouldn't have a very strong opinion if I did
because I've seen none of MotoGP from the weekend, but yeah, it's a fun process and
it gives you, as we always have on this relatively new podcast, a different perspective.
And that's why we have the rotating cast of co-hosts.
So looking forward to this one, shall we give the people what they want and tell them all
about the rankings for the Austrian Grand Prix?
So here is the rundown.
22nd Franco Colopinto, 21st Lodz Stroll, 20th Alex Alban, 19th Esteban Ocon,
18th Valtteri Bottas, 17th Sergio Perez, 16th Harvard Limblad, 15th Nica Holkenberg,
14th Fernando Alonso, 13th Isakhajar, 12th Charles Leclerc, 11th Lando Norris, 10th Pierre
Oscar Piastri, 4th Liam Lawson, 3rd Gabrielle Bortoletto, 2nd Max Verstappen, 1st George Russell.
So Matt, what's leapt out of you there? What do you want to tackle first?
Well, obviously I am interrogating you on behalf of not just my own opinions about your
dastardly rankings, but the race members club's views. If you're not yet in the race members
club and want to be part of this process after every Grand Prix, look at the link on the website
and in the episode description here, go and join the race members club on Patreon and you can be
part of her ranking Ed in a polite way, mostly, about where he's placed everybody in his 22nd
to 1st ranking after every Grand Prix. I'd like to start with a point about the championship
leader, Kimmian Snally, who only managed 9th in your rankings. Even though you admit he looked
faster than the teammate who won the race, George Russell, who's gone first in your rankings,
we'll get to him in a minute. I've got strong opinions about what you've done with George
Russell after this race. But Stuart Coulter in members club, his description of Kimmian Snally's
weekend and your ranking is, his weekend was only undone by a mistake, and that's a mistake in
inverted commas, in qualifying, which wasn't as bad a mistake as throwing the car off the road on
a fast lap, for example. So Stuart feels, Ed, and I'm with him on this, that you've maybe dragged
Kimmian Snally down a bit too much here for the crime of actually thinking it was a double yellow
rather than a single yellow and lifting off in a responsible way and blowing a shot at pole.
Yeah, it was two things, really. I think the verdict mentioned the yellow flag thing,
which I do think was a mistake. We always give credit to drivers for doing things right, for
being in control, for being sharp, and Antonelli wasn't, and he admitted that was his mistake.
But it was also the early laps. By his own admission, he was over excited. I know
the team felt that as well, and that made life for him more difficult. That first stint was not
actually that good overall. It sort of started poorly, and it was catching up from that that
was good after, but he put himself on the back foot and playing catch-ups. So yeah,
his underlying race pace, I think, was a little bit better than George Russell's,
but he'd not used that to good effect. And as I think I mentioned in the entry,
he also, that last qualifying lap he was on, he almost certainly wasn't going to beat Russell.
He was about 0.17-ish behind by the time Russell lifted. So even though Antonelli had,
even if Antonelli had finished that lap, it's unlikely he'd have been able to overhaul Russell.
Yeah, Antonelli had been strong through those last two corners, but I doubt he'd made up that time.
He may have done. Can't say he couldn't have done. So it's a number of different things.
It wasn't pace that was the problem for Antonelli. It was just nailing it when it mattered,
and just good judgment early in the race in particular.
I do notice this is a theme in your rankings generally. You are understandably big on actual
competent execution of something. It's not just enough to actually be blazingly quick,
but you might have thrown it away somewhere in your recovering well. I think I might lean,
and people who look at the rider rankings will probably spot this, lean towards recovery performances,
being impressive, and kind of crediting people for the fight backs. But I think you're a bit
harsh on people who put themselves in the position to need that sort of back like Antonelli this
weekend. Yeah, I think everybody's got their own sort of metrics and the way they look at it and
the way they think of it. And there's no objective right or wrong way to do it. I think the main
thing is to try and be consistent as far as you can within yourself. So yeah, I tend to think
of it in terms of you've got a certain amount of performance potential in the car, and you've
got to deliver that at the key moments and get the best possible results. So a recovery performance
will get you some credit back, but it's quite hard to undo something that really undoes it. I mean,
if you could, if you messed up qualifying and put in this absolutely storming race drive to win,
that probably could get you a number one potentially, if there weren't other candidates who are doing
that sort of thing in lesser cars, but without the catch up. So it's an inexact science, I would say,
but if your recovery element for me is very powerful, you end up tangling yourself up,
certainly in F1. And I think probably MotoGP can be a little bit different as well.
In the let's say you drop the ball in qualifying, you come through from 15th to second, well,
you've had a better race and great recovery, but your teammates on pole and won the race and
controlled it. And this is, I guess, pertinent in a way to Russell Antonelli. Because I can flip
what Stuart Coulter said in that question, Russell wasn't quite as quick as Antonelli,
it's only not in the race, yet it was Russell who was the one who won. So that's where execution
comes in. But again, it's perspective and how you balance those things up and there's no
right or wrong answer fundamentally. Yeah, I must admit, I'm more likely to be swayed by a 15th
to second charge and go, yeah, I forgot what happened Saturday. That was great. That entertained
me. Top marks for a person who's charged a second. Going a little bit further down your rankings,
you put Oscar Piastri fifth on the weekend when he was comfortably the fastest of the McLaren
drivers. And you described his fourth place as the best a McLaren driver could have achieved.
So that stuck with Thomas Knight in the race members club. Thomas would have put Piastri,
I think he said he would have put him third potentially. He was comfortably ahead of teammate
Lando Norris on the track. Lando always goes well out and he beat the Ferraris and he beat
Isaac Hajar in a faster red bull. Both Thomas and Ed W were also a bit surprised that you mentioned
as one of the cons in your pros and cons of Piastri's performance being that he benefited
from Ferrari's poor strategy helping up the order. As Ed says, does this mean you ascribe
some level of responsibility to the drivers for strategic calls by their own team? So
I get the point the members are making here. This was a weekend where Piastri was,
you know, definitely had the upper hand at McLaren. You yourself admit that he did
as much as someone could have done with a McLaren. Is fifth a bit low for that?
Yeah, one of the things that counted against him very slightly was qualifying. He underachieved
a little bit only by a small amount, but he should have outqualified Norris. He didn't put his
theoretical three best sectors together in qualifying, which a number did. I think he was 36
thousands off tiny margins, but he only ended up qualifying behind Norris by 9,000 or something
like that. So I think had Piastri outqualified Norris and it would have been a very small
swing to do it and he should have done that probably would have put him up a couple of places.
So we're in the world of the hypercritical here, I would say. That thing about the strategy side
is more just reflecting on if you look at a driver who, say, starts behind a couple of cars,
I tend to think, right, how did you get ahead of them? And it's not your job to get ahead of
the cars ahead of you as dramatically as possible. It's just to do it however it happens. But
it kind of means that Piastri beating the Ferraris in itself. That wasn't a particular marker of
quality. It wasn't a bad thing, but there were other markers of quality that I felt were more
powerful than that. So Piastri had a strong weekend, but probably qualifying was the thing that
cost him being in contention to be top three. Maybe even that would have made him a contender
for P1. Yeah, I guess ultimately you can't give Piastri more marks for Ferrari having bad tire
where he didn't do the setup. So that's how Ferrari put itself behind Piastri. Obviously,
your approach to this is spectacularly detailed. I think as listeners may know, you watch so many
on boards, you're listening to Team Radio, you're having all the conversations in the paddock
through the weekend to build up the most detailed picture of what really went on you possibly can.
Ed W did mention about the responsibility for strategic calls that the drivers themselves
make. How much does that weigh in sometimes when you know that a driver has kind of pushed a
strategy call or even overruled one and taken responsibility for their result?
It can be an inexact science to measure. Let's put it that way.
Yeah, sometimes you know explicitly a driver has done this,
and you can see it. And if you speak to people, you get kind of confirmation of that.
And you know that's the case. Other times you don't necessarily know that. So
I would definitely, I mean, generally the strategy, my default is it's not really in the
driver's hands. And the first thing you're always looking at is how well did they execute
the strategy they're on. But if they're giving feedback, etc., if they're being asked what they
think, if they're inputting into the decision, and they cause a slight shift, and it's for
better or worse, that can be factored in, ultimately. So you never have complete total
visibility. Sometimes you do speak to the right people and the radio evidence is absolutely
crystal clear. But other times less so. So I guess a good case here was Hamilton said he
wants to start on softs and felt he could have been forth if that was the case. And
a lot of drivers, Hamilton's not the only one will always think that the road not traveled
would have been the better one, which is very easy to say. And all the drivers now are speaking
before they've had a debrief or spoken to the team, etc. So it's very easy for them to say,
well, if it had been this or that or the other. So to me, it depends on the level of confidence
from the available evidence, both public and private, what influence they had on the strategy.
So sometimes you have a smoking gun. Sometimes you don't, you have to make your best guess,
or sometimes you know that they were just a passenger when it comes to the strategy.
Let's take a look now at what we call the champions top 10 and by champions. That's the
champions tier members of the race members club. So remember to hit that link in the episode
description, I had to patron to find out more about that. Because in order to make sure that our
patrons, our members, the race members club know how difficult this is. We ask them to rank the
drivers one to 22 for every race as well. So they get a taste of their, do they get a taste of
their own medicine? They get a taste of my medicine? Certainly medicine, you forced me to take
every race mat. So would you like to give a rundown of the champions top 10?
I'd love to. Their number one is Max Verstappen. You only put him second. Their number two, George
Russell, down one from your first place. Oscar Piastri does get elevated by the champions. They
put him third. You had him fifth. Fourth for Liam Lawson. You and the champions are in exact
agreement on that. Fifth, Kimi Antonelli up four places. Stuart Coulter hitting the voting button.
Actually, you can do it once. I don't think Stuart cheated there. Ballot stuffing.
Lewis Hamilton sixth in your rankings and in the champions rankings.
Big jump for Arvid Lindblad. We'll talk about him a bit later. He's seventh in their rankings,
only sixteenth in yours. Izakhaja eight, that's up from thirteenth in yours.
Gabrielle Bartoletto plummets from third in your rankings to ninth in theirs.
Pierre Gasly, tenth in yours, tenth in theirs.
Yep. So there's some agreement there and I can already see the reasons for some of those bigger
variations. Now, we won't talk about that here because we also do a relatively new show
for the race members club only, which is me talking about the champions rankings. So
we get plenty of mileage out of all of these rankings. So if you'd like to hear
what I think about the race members club rankings and my just general ramblings about
why I think things are different and all manner of rankings discussion,
if you sign up, head to patreon.com, hit the link in the episode description, all that
join in and you can hear that and also place your votes as well.
Recently, we asked some people about sharing their New York Times accounts.
I'm Neeraj from Madison, Wisconsin. I would like to share my subscription with my family members.
I should be able to share recipes from NYT cooking, wire cutter articles or athletic articles.
We are a family of four. I would like them to have access to the subscription too. Thank you.
Okay, Matt, where are we going to go next? We're going to go to the bottom because this was a
really interesting one that got loads of questions from the members club. Number 37,
ranch dingus, Amir Merziani in particular, all wondering if this was a particularly tough week
to pick 20 seconds because in Amir's words, nobody was noticeably poor. It's Franco Colopinto,
you have put 20 seconds. That enrages Gabrielle butler who feels it's a case of if in doubt,
we put Franco last and is quite dismissive of you saying that that was as good a 20 second place
as you'll get. Who else was just above that? I think we had Colopinto 22nd, Lance Stroll 21st,
Alex Albin 20th, Esteban Ocon 19th. Separating that group on a weekend when nobody stacked it
on the first lap of the race and took out five other cars, nobody was absolutely miles off the
pace of their teammate. Other members are right in thinking this was a really tough one to separate
at the bottom as well as the top. I tried to encapsulate that with a verdict. That's why I
said as good a 20 second as you get because the thing I always say is Formula One drivers are
really good. As a cohort, they are outstandingly, outstandingly good. The differences between the
best and the worst is pretty small ultimately, particularly on any given weekend. I had to
put somebody there and nobody really felt the deserving 22nd for some of the reasons
you mentioned there. I don't think it's if in doubt that Colopinto last.
The reason he ended up last is if we look at some of the drivers who are down the bottom,
Lance Stroll did go past Alonzo although Alonzo was managing, but it's quite difficult in that
car. Alex Albin definitely had problems in terms of where the tyres were, in terms of the tyre
pressures I think when it came to qualifying that just made it horrible to drive. Esteban Ocon
was lacking downforce. So you had people who had problems and setbacks and disadvantages
didn't allow them to show what they do. There was nothing specific holding Colopinto back.
Now as I said that it was almost a one second gap to Gasly in qualifying in Q2. That wasn't
representative, but Colopinto did make that mistake that ruined the last lap. So it meant he was a
good chunk down the grid and then he was playing catch up from that. So it is harsh because it
wasn't an awful job, but the slogan would be it's the 22 best drivers in the world and I think we
all know it's not the 22 out of 22 the best drivers in the world, but it's 22 of the best drivers
in the world. No question and if none of them find ways to completely mess up or be irredeemably slow
or awful or stupid or just make any of those mistakes then there are going to be people down
the bottom who are still performing at a good level. If we were doing ratings out of 10 that
Colopinto weekend, it's going to be a still a pretty good number. It's not going to be a two,
34 out of 10. It's kind of the nature of the format. So I did feel quite sorry for him,
but he kind of got shuffled down there by ultimately the delivery gap to Gasly, not the
easiest car. I don't consider it a heavy criticism of Colopinto. He's come on nicely this season.
He's just unlucky enough to ended up at the bottom of the pile.
Yeah, you mentioned the format being rankings rather than ratings. One of the reasons we in
the race at the tournament management made you change, which didn't object to you that you
weren't like, please let me keep my ratings. You were fine with this format, but it wasn't
the idea that came from our end, I think. One of the reasons we did the switch was because,
yes, you could in most F1 races give everyone minimum 56 out of 10 because most people
are doing a really good job most of the time, but this is about being really elite. You don't
share positions in F1. Even if you have equal qualifying times, they find a way to split you.
This is about being first rather than 22nd. That's the whole nature of elite sports. So
we think it's fair enough and a bit more fun as well to do this one 22nd format for the rankings.
It does mean that sometimes drivers or riders who have pretty good weekends have to be 22nd,
but that's kind of what they're there for. You've still got to have an exceptional weekend to be
in the top 10, and that's kind of what it's all about really. I understand the downside of that
is you do get passionate fans in the members club and elsewhere who would hate to see their driver
22nd in whatever circumstances. I don't mind that at all because sport works because people care
that much about the drivers, riders, teams they support. I never mind when I see passionate
comments coming in on these rankings or anything else. We want people to be fervently behind their
drivers. Yeah, it's just one of those things. Colopinto's had a few last places, but not a
huge amount of them. Ultimately, I did genuinely when I worked out the rankings, look at it and
think, oh, Colopinto last doesn't look right. Then you sit there and think, well, that's
kind of where he shakes out. He could be ahead of a couple. It's always the usual thing. There's
weekend from Colopinto. It's just it was a sort of okay weekend on a weekend when everyone was
okay or above. Yeah, and also by his standards lately, which had been pretty good, it wasn't a
great weekend. He's done a lot better than that lately. I wasn't too surprised to see him much
lower than he has been in some of your recent rankings. Has he been P2 this year? He's had some
good moments. I think he'll bounce back. It was a tricky weekend for Alpine. Obviously,
10th. So again, condense the difference between 10th and 22nd was not huge. Shall we move on now
and end this part of the podcast with your spotlight where you get to zero and on something you don't
like in my rankings or something you do like that interests you, something that our members haven't
necessarily asked about. So what have you gone for? And are you going on the attack or are you
going down the intrigue route? I'm going on the attack. I'm going to go straight to the top and
say I disagree with George Russell being first partly because I found it a slightly boring choice,
but also I like how much you've praised some people who outperformed their machinery, got the
absolute maximum out of what they were doing. I'm not convinced looking at how close to his tail
Max Verstappen was at the end of much of the race and how much Kimmy Ensonnelly caught up,
that Russell was overperforming his machinery like some of the others were, that he wasn't
benefiting from the Red Bull still being a bit inferior from Ensonnelly having the slightly
wobbly or qualifying and it still felt like it wouldn't have taken a lot for this result to be
different. I understand you meet one of the pros in your praise of Russell was that he nailed the
situation in qualifying where he knew it was not a double yellow, it was a single yellow and he did
enough. Part of me is a little bit dubious about that. I don't, I'm a bit old school in terms of I
think yellow flag should be really, really heeded and I think he heeded it to the letter of the
rules and yes it was clever, but the idea of someone taking a poll lap under yellow still
feels a bit uncomfortable for me at least. Now I'm going to throw in, well I'm disagreeing with
you, I'm going to throw in someone from the members club disagreeing with me because Alex
Hindley does kind of call this an example of George Russell doing the Nicky Louder thing and
winning by just as much as you need to rather than storming off into distance. Alex suggesting
that maybe Russell had a bit in hands there, but yeah I thought this was, I was pleased to see Russell
win again, it was good for the narrative from Paulson points back, but I wouldn't have put him
first, I think other people got more out of their cars and I felt there were too many question marks
about how easily he might have actually been beaten. Yeah it was difficult, it didn't really feel, I
wasn't particularly happy with him being first really, it didn't entirely feel right but then
you sort of sit down and try and work through it, I particularly didn't like it being first and second
in the race being first and second, but I understand you're disquiet about the the
pole yellow flag thing, but I can pretty much harpoon that argument, but it's rules is rules,
isn't it? You play to the rules, blame the game not the player ultimately, that's what you've got to
do and I thought he did a really good job to respond in a way that the stewards could look
at it and say yeah you've done what you need to do according to what we've told you and that was
fine, so I thought that was very very clever and the fact that he put together a really mighty lap
as I say about 0.17 up on Antonelli on the equivalent aborted Antonelli lap
at the point he did it gave him a little bit of leeway so it was a mighty qualifying lap as well,
so that did count for me and I did feel it was a good managing race, I do think that Antonelli
had a bit more pace but equally Russell didn't have to have that pace if you see what I mean,
so he was able to keep those closing pursuers out of reach and Verstappen never quite got into
close enough to attack, I think he just got overtake mode in that second stint, didn't he?
But it was very well done from Russell and I don't think this was a case where outright pace was
the crushing dominant factor for number one but it was execution because again you can flip it
so well he didn't quite have the he wasn't quite the fastest but he won and that was the reward
for being clever in qualifying, yeah there was some fortune but even if Antonelli had completed
that lap and so he was going to be second on the grid it would have been a different race,
Antonelli might have beaten him and if if Antonelli had stayed out when that virtual safety car came
out for science and been able to get a cheaper pit stop that would have changed things a little bit
and instantly there was no time to to get him in with where science stopped that wasn't on the
cards but that could have slightly changed things as well but it didn't so just as
Colla Pinto's P22 was one of the best P22's you'll see, I think this P1 from Russell was
perhaps one of the less emphatic P1's you'd see but I'm interested to know who you'd suggest as
the alternatives, I thought about Verstappen and I did think about others like Lawson, I mean anybody
who's up reasonably high, you kind of consider but I couldn't come up with anyone who had a
compelling case and I am quite minded to do it because I love putting people who are not
the obvious ones because it normally means you found something but I'll try not, I won't do it
without what I think is a measured reason so I get why there's concern but the yellow flag thing
is just you follow the rules they tell you no matter how incorrect they are, I don't like it
really but you do what you're allowed to do. I would have argued for Verstappen first, I'd be
going a little bit on kind of vibes and hope over pure data because we don't know where he would
have ended up if the crash and qualifying hadn't happened that crash wasn't his fault which is
quite a powerful thing for me, I also I think as comes up every time we end up on bring back
three tens together I love a kind of spicy narrative and a vibe and Verstappen and Red Bull
being back near the front and the amount of racing had to pull off his battle with Lewis
Hamilton to get there there's a lot of spirit in Verstappen's weekend and so I think if George
Russell was doing the efficient winning by the right margin and doing what you had to
to me that's that's a bit dull and my head gets very easily turned by someone swashbuckling
their way forward after a qualifying crash that wasn't their fault in a car that was nowhere
near winning a few weeks ago so for me it's Max. Yeah I would say if people want to put Max
first and George Russell second or whatever it's in no way wrong there obviously the crash that
team took responsibility for the problems up that did play a really tiny part because Verstappen
did say he had a slight moment a little bit earlier in the lap so there's just this tiny thing in the
back of my mind that wasn't his fault and I did pretty much exonerate him for it when I was just
trying to think oh is it Russell or is it Verstappen that that was just a small thing that was almost
a tiebreaker but yeah it was really really difficult to separate them and you can probably
make a compelling case that well you can make a compelling case that Verstappen got was relative
to the car just as quick if not fractionally quicker than Russell but again there's just
execution and that thing in my mind thinking well was there a way for him to win this race and it's
actually maybe there just about was because there's always little tiny things that can be done so
it's tricky but if you again it comes down to where you set the performance potential of the car who
knows there might be another if you put Verstappen in a Mercedes you might be three tenths of a second
up the road but it's impossible to know that for sure so you kind of get trapped in that that loop
of reasoning but Verstappen had a great weekend no question he he's a perfectly viable and worthy
contender for our nomination to be number one right final part of the podcast now Matt we're
going a bit further down the order to see what I've done wrong we're going to end with one team
with two drivers was like to highlight about them we're racing balls territory for the rest of
this episode because we've got Arvid Lindblad who you put only sixteenths compared to Liam Lawson's
fourth they finished together in the results ninth and tenth but it's the ignored team orders and
the role that played in your harsh ish ranking of Lindblad that people are really interested in
obviously there's a point in the race where Liam Lawson is told I think it was
brakes he was saving his base so they're going to manage the car and said Lindblad will stay behind
you and then kind of moments after that radio message Lindblad blasts his way past Lawson
with that braking roof which left Liam Lawson very unimpressed Lawson undercuts back past him
later so they end up in the kind of right order as far as the team and Lawson are concerned
but Michael Holden asks where would Lindblad have been in your rankings if he'd have bathed that
team order because you did highlight this team order and his response to it as a problem in
your judgment on him. Sue Morecraft wonders did you mean the team order denied him a chance
to do better and earn a better ranking or did you mark him down for snubbing it?
No I very much marked him down for snubbing it because it was all emphatic and it's one thing
to ignore a team order to hold station and go past your teammate it's quite another to do it
when you have both been told it's critical to manage the brake temperatures and you go past
your teammate and attack him while he's lifting and coasting into a corner and then have a fairly
robust move. Now look Arvid Lindblad's 18 it was a bit of an error judgment I think you knew that
after the race so I'm not going to hang drawn quarter in for everything that he'll have learned from
this but it was just unnecessary I don't see what there was to gain and we can see that it didn't
really affect his race because he sat in front of Lawson in that middle stint before they switched
it around so I don't think it really held Lindblad Black Lawson was I think the quicker
racing Bulls driver not by a vast margin this weekend but he was that that fraction quicker
and in Barcelona Lindblad despite being behind him qualifying in the race I think was the underlying
quicker racing Bulls driver but yeah that means if he hadn't ignored the team order he'd have been
floating somewhere in the neighborhood of somewhere in the bottom half of the top 10 probably good
weekend not just not quite Lawson's level but the team order thing just just irritating because
there was no ambiguity if you're in a position to be able to watch it through there is zero
ambiguity he's told to hold position he is told that the brake management is critical he knows
Lawson's managing as well and he's told to hold position he goes why and he's told and then he
goes past and Lawson's been told and asked a couple of times is he definitely not going to attack me
and basically they say no twice and then he steams past him and it's like well
yeah so a big chunk of it is ignoring the team order and just the just being a bit stupid to
ignore the team order but look it's a lesson he's 18 he's had a really impressive rookie season
and this was still a good weekend but I just didn't it just seemed to me to be entirely futile
and it's bad for the team because if you ignore the team order and you start racing each other
and you cut your brakes and you cattle out your way out of the race well what what have you achieved
there what have you proved so no question Limblad will learn from that and it's it's quite harsh
ranking accordingly but I just don't see the upside of of doing that yeah there's a few things in your
rankings have disagreed with you on but I'm a hundred percent with you on that it's just he's
impressing so much this season anyway his career isn't going to be changed by passing Lawson in
those circumstances in a positive way it's only going to reflect bad Dylan because like he said
it's completely pointless and at the end he was asked about it in his stance was kind of well we
still finish 9th and 10th so it's fine it's like no Arvid you missed the point there that was that
was not a good marker to lay down to future employers let's talk Lawson um fourth in your
rankings one of the top performers this week in terms of how he maximized the car but Anders
Duncan says why is Lawson not first he maximized everything relative to the performance of the
car Melmet Harco brackets retired and says quite happy with your ranking of Lawson in fourth but
he thinks you're a bit harsh in your comments about his qualifying lap because he said he didn't
really exceed the car's potential but as Melmet says what's the point in going Banzai if you're
only going to be 9th anyway he feels that was quite a smart qualifying lap from Lawson so
you did mention Lawson someone you there was a case to maybe put him first with how he'd maximized
kind of being king of the midfield this weekend um fourth Anders Duncan certainly feels it's a bit
unfair you know I think what I said about in the in the con for his qualifying lap and actually
I added this in because I didn't think I made it clear enough with Bortoletto third and Lawson
fourth why Bortoletto was ahead so that's why I put in the con which said the qualifying was
strong but the lap didn't look quite as strong relative to car potentials rival midfield of
Bortoletto's that's more about how good Bortoletto's lap was actually he described it's one of the
best laps he's done and you watch it it's really on the money there's he's just really precise
early on in terms of the turn and the speed he's carrying through the corner and then there's a
couple of moments when he's just tidying it out perfectly as the rears are overheating a little
bit so I thought Bortoletto's qualifying lap was really mightily impressive so again you're
trying to make the difference team two have done really really well and it's basically Bortoletto's
done a brilliant qualifying lap and Liam Lawson's done a very good qualifying lap
so for me it was just a differentiator and ultimately the racing bulls was that was the
class of the midfield Lawson did a really good job and again if you're the fourth best Grand
Pre-Driver on across from Formula One weekend particularly one where everyone's done pretty
well you've done pretty well haven't you you've had a really good weekend so I wouldn't again
argue if Lawson was third I it was difficult and sometimes I'll talk about the mission etc
and because there wasn't quite that same threat to the racing bulls in the race
and ultimately they had a little bit easier in qualifying he didn't have those kind of
extra added layers of difficulty that Russell I mean Russell had the opportunity to do the yellow
flag thing in the last couple of corners only a couple of drivers had that that's kind of a
a bonus mission you can do and it helps you but it's not accessible to others that's not Lawson's
fault but it just wasn't there on the table and obviously Verstappen just mightily quick and
almost managed to haul the the Red Bull to a victory so that's kind of why he was behind those
three but again the top four is still pretty close together so again if someone says oh I
think Lawson's P1 I wouldn't be queuing up to say you're utterly utterly utterly wrong it's just
really small weightings of opinion and what you value etc and isn't Lawson having a good season
which is which is good to see yeah mentioning Portoletto there as well obviously third place
was someone who he wasn't in the points is the high score the kind of what I love about the
rankings is when you find someone who really deserves that praise whose result on paper
doesn't show it and I have to say in the members club just a lot of agreement really
people going oh yeah Portoletto fair point um Stevie Noyes is even saying what can more of
you could he could he have done to be first but I think you've outlined that the people you have
put first and second had the chance to kind of go on those bonus missions and do that a little bit
more so yeah that the only thing Portoletto maybe could have done and again this is hyper critical
had he been able to stay with the racing bulls that I think I meant mentioned it
because Ocon got him approaching turn three on lap two it wasn't a particular mistake or
anything from Portoletto but had he been able to stay ahead of Ocon and not just lost a couple of
laps he could have hung with the racing bulls and maybe made it interesting there that doesn't mean
I think he should have been beating the racing bulls but again you're looking for these tiny
differentiators and maybe if you've been able to hang with them you'd say oh you managed to keep
hanging on to them and you know was there to threaten them to menace one of them and there
was still a little bit of threat because that's why they pitted limb blood first at the first stop
but maybe just lost that little tiny bit of race time but Portoletto was really good and
I think it's worth noting I mean he was about three tenths quicker than Hülkenberg and qualifying
and that was kind of around the whole lap it was really impressive Portoletto is really I mean
he's generally very very good and very impressive he's really good around the red bullring as well
if you remember I think he was P1 in the rankings last year and I just think he was very he was
just the driver in the in the midfield who I felt was closest to the maximum and again
he's P3 normally a P3 in the rankings you can make a case for them to be number one
right shall we move on now to our standings championship which is rapidly evolving this
awards points for the top 10 each race in the driver rankings and it creates an alternative
championship so so Matt do you want to run through it yeah absolutely and it mirrors the real life
championship at the moment because Kimmy Ansonali is on top of it but after Austria George Russell
moves ahead of Lewis Hamilton into second in the rankings in your championship they are equal and
Russell is ahead on count back they're both seven points behind Ansonali nice close championship
battle Max Verstappen has jumped Lando Norris to go into fourth he's now eight points ahead of
Lando in your championship and what does that put him 27 points off leader Ansonali
Charlotte Clair going in the other direction he's fallen from ninth in your rankings
championship to twelfth now yeah it's it's a very very interesting order to look at
I'm really annoyed with Hajar being gone two points still funnily enough when I was working
out his ranking I did think of that I said I wanted to get some points I said no don't do that
that's not what this is about but it's starting to take shape a little bit interesting to see
again the midfield group Lawson and Limblad doing well in there Sainton Gasly obviously
leading the the way but it's kind of shaping up more and the Hamilton Leclerc
gap is quite stark isn't it that's that's that's not something I'd have seen coming and I think
Ansonali versus Russell Ansonali's had a really impressive season he has been probably the most
impressive driver overall but I think I think a lot of people have kind of underestimated the
things that Russell is doing as well he's been eclipsed by Ansonali but he's sort of hanging in
there he's got as many polls as him he's got that little sharpness we still think often he's not
as quick in the race and I and that is going to catch up with him and he's already caught up with
him some of the time this season but he's got to do something about that but I think Russell has
at least weathered the worst of the the Ansonali battering he was having and Ansonali still
favorite for the championship but I think some people will be looking at that and think oh Russell
has been terrible this season why is he so high but if you look at what he's been doing it's it's
been pretty good even if it's disappointing against the expectations while Ansonali has probably
slightly exceeded them so yeah interesting to see how that battle rages and if they stay close
whether the driver rankings picture the points picture matches the final order of the championship
I guess we'll find out come December or maybe November depending on how the calendar pans out
yeah I take your very professional sensible point about how well how well Russell has been doing
despite appearances but I do a big part of me is going well his teammates about 10 years younger
than him and has been in F1 for two minutes compared to Russell so this is why it's good
that you do these rankings and I don't often get to touch them imagine how good Ansonali is going to
be 34 years down the line with all that experience built up as well you know it's app
it's frightening to be honest I mean it's right yeah we are in the sort of potential
for Stappen level driver territory here with with Ansonali and we're going to see him
on that upward curve and we could be seeing this season a little window where maybe the Ansonali
will go down as a better all-time great Grand Prix driver and Russell kind of in the tier below
but this is this could be Russell's window we could be seeing that or it could be a great battle
between the pair that pushes the two of them on I'm fascinated to see how it how it pans out and
yeah I think Ansonali's been been absolutely mighty and he's the star of the season but
there's still rough edges and of course there are how can there not be rough edges but still and I
said this on the post race podcast you know he's made those those mistakes he didn't he got caught
out he wasn't vigilant enough and sharp enough with the with the yellows okay that's an experience
that happens he got a bit over excited at the start and lost out but he's still third and he
still almost got Max for Stappen and he still spent a big chunk of the race catching up George
Russell so it's still a really strong weekend even though I had him whatever down in ninth so
even when Ansonali is dropping the ball a little bit he's not dropping it as much as Russell
has been at times and that's really impressive so yeah let's see how it pans out we've got Silverstone
coming up next obviously as well so thanks Matt for your challenges unless you've got any final
thoughts to throw at me or Barb's no I think I'm fairly satisfied with where you've ended up on a
weekend when I think they've made it hard to separate them particularly at the bottom but
also at the top there weren't many there was no really compelling first and they're really
compelling 20 seconds I think you've dealt with a tough one a race that was entertaining to watch
but didn't have loads of real kind of spikes and peaks and troughs about it you've dealt with a
tricky splitting the nuances sort of ranking well here so I bow to your judgment on this one Ed
you've done you've done reasonably well yeah usually the distribution of the drivers is something
of a bell curve sometimes it's a lopsided bell curve and a bell curve is sort of when you have the
the sort of the two sort of low levels on the outside and then the majority kind of in the
middle so you get sort of a bell shape but this one I don't know what a flat
bell curve is it's just it's all it's more just a little sort of gentle rolling hill or something
this time but that normally means that we're going to have a race where it goes completely
the other way so who knows what we'll get at Silverstone this weekend because we will be back
next week to discuss the British Grand Prix driver rankings if you want to
join the driver ranking fund sign up for the race members club head to patreon.com
search for the race there hit the link in the episode description loads more benefits there
thriving community bonus content in car insights podcasts all that kind of thing so thanks again
to Matt thanks to everyone for listening and stay with us for everything you need to know from the
world of formula one the athletic
About this episode
Ed Straw and Matt Beer debate the controversial driver rankings from the Austrian Grand Prix. They dive deep into why George Russell claimed the top spot over Max Verstappen, and whether Kimi Antonelli was judged too harshly for his qualifying mistake. The hosts also address feedback from The Race Members Club, questioning Oscar Piastri's fifth-place ranking despite outperforming his McLaren teammate, and explore how driver execution versus team strategy influences these highly detailed ratings.
Original notes
George Russell and Max Verstappen returned to the front in Austria - but will either of them claim the coveted top step of the podium in our driver rankings, or will it go to someone else entirely? Matt Beer, armed with questions from The Race Members' Club, joins Edd Straw to run the rule over his Red Bull Ring driver rankings, including whether he got the top two in his rankings the right way around and whether one driver is being unreasonably picked on when it comes to deciding who comes last...
If you'd like to take part in the driver rankings fun, get bonus F1 podcasts, and enjoy ad-free listening, sign-up to The Race Members' Club on Patreon today.
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