Downforce is the aerodynamic force that pushes the car’s tires into the track, improving grip. If downforce is reduced, the car can feel skittish and lose traction—especially in high-speed corners like the ones discussed at Spa.
Place
Radeon Grand Stans
This is the grandstand area at Spa. The host is basically saying they walked around the stands so they could watch the cars from a better spot.
The Kemmel Straight is a fast straight at Spa. After it, the cars have to slow down hard for the next corners, so it’s a great place to watch braking and control.
MGU-K is the part of an F1 hybrid system that recovers energy when the car slows down. If it’s not working at full power, the car can’t use as much of that stored energy to accelerate.
La Combe is a corner at Spa where drivers have to slow down a lot. The host is saying it doesn’t feel as dramatic as before because the cars aren’t being pushed as hard.
A “disconnect” means the driver’s experience doesn’t match what you can tell from the outside. The car might look like it’s going fast, but the driver may feel it’s not working the way they want.
“Pujon” is a named corner at Circuit de Spa-Francorchamps. It’s a fast section where drivers aim to carry momentum, and small changes in braking or traction can strongly affect how “quick” it looks and feels.
Liam Lawson is an F1 driver. In this segment, they mention him because he was doing media on Friday and also because drivers were talking about how the track felt.
Lewis Hamilton is one of the most famous drivers in Formula 1. They mention him because he also asked about what happened, showing it mattered to the drivers.
Sprint qualifying is a weekend format where there’s a shorter race that helps decide where cars start for the main race. Teams have to balance speed and strategy because it matters for the grid.
Wheelbase is the length of the car measured from the front wheels to the rear wheels. A shorter wheelbase can make the car feel more nimble and easier to turn, which is why it can affect lap times and handling.
Topic
TV vs on-board perspective distortion
They’re talking about how different camera views can make the racing look better or worse than it really is. TV angles might hide some problems, while in-car cameras can make everything feel more intense.
In F1 coverage, “onboards” are the camera views mounted on the car, typically showing the driver’s perspective of braking points, steering inputs, and how the car behaves through corners. Because they emphasize what the driver sees, they can make certain issues feel more severe than they do from trackside or TV-wide shots.
Term
racing prototypes
A racing prototype is a one-off, experimental race car. It’s built to try new tech and improve over time based on what the team learns.
Mercedes is the F1 team/manufacturer referenced here in relation to its rear-wing hardware. The segment focuses on whether Mercedes can run a specific wing concept at Spa after prior issues were identified and addressed.
A “flip top wing” is a rear wing design that can change position or configuration using a mechanism. The point is to adjust aerodynamics, but it has to be reliable and safe to run in a race.
Pierre Vacher is a senior engineer/technical leader at Red Bull. In this episode, he’s the source for what went wrong with the wing and what they’ve done to fix it.
The FIA is the organization that oversees Formula 1 rules and safety. If they’re worried about a car part being unsafe, teams may have to remove it from the race.
An actuator is a device that physically moves something when the car tells it to. Here, the problem is likely in the actuator or the connection between the actuator and the wing.
Drag reduction just means making the car push through the air with less resistance. Less resistance usually helps the car be quicker, especially in straight lines.
The rear wing assembly is the full set of parts on the back of the car that shapes airflow. It helps the car stick to the road, and it can also change how fast it is on straights.
A flip-top rear wing is a rear wing that can change position or shape. That lets the team adjust how much grip and resistance the car has, but they’re not running it yet in this phase.
A red flag is the signal that the race is stopped for safety. Something dangerous happened on track, so everyone has to slow down and wait for instructions.
Understeer is when the front tires don’t grip enough, so the car won’t turn as sharply as you want. The result is the car slides toward the outside of the corner and can run off the track.
Deployment strategy refers to how an F1 team manages the use of energy/boost systems during a session or lap to maximize performance. It’s about timing and allocation—using the available power when it’s most beneficial rather than all at once.
F1 strategy is the plan for tires and pit stops, plus how the team uses the car’s performance over time. Teams test several possible plans to pick the best one.
The budget cap is the maximum amount of money an F1 team is allowed to spend. If a team isn’t using the full cap, it can limit how many upgrades they can bring.
Company
team boss aiakamatsu
That’s the team’s leader speaking. Team bosses in F1 often explain what their team is focusing on and how they’re planning to improve.
In F1, the rules are written down as a “regulations” set. It tells teams what they can build and how the cars have to work. When the rules change, it can make upgrades work differently and affect how teams improve.
Term
lifetime gains
“Lifetime gains” means improvements that keep helping for a long time, not just for one race. In F1, that matters because teams build upgrades expecting them to work across many weekends.
“Track layout” means how the track is designed—how long it is and what kinds of turns it has. Some tracks make certain car weaknesses show up more than others.
Monza is one of F1’s most famous tracks in Italy. It has lots of fast sections, so it can be tough on the car’s power and efficiency. The hosts say it’s a track where teams can really feel performance limits.
“Energy starved” means the car isn’t getting enough usable power/energy to stay fast. On some tracks, the way the laps are shaped makes that problem worse, so upgrades may not fix everything.
The “Honda engine” is the power unit Honda supplies for an F1 car. The point here is that even with an upgrade, it won’t instantly become the top engine—though it can help fix problems that are slowing the car down.
“Red Bull powertrain” means the whole set of components that make the car move, centered around its engine/power unit. The hosts are saying other teams’ upgrades are trying to catch up to Red Bull’s strong setup.
“Chronic combustion problems” means the engine’s fuel-burning process has been going wrong for a long time. If combustion isn’t happening correctly, the engine can’t make power efficiently, so the car feels slow.
An F1 car is basically a frame (chassis) plus an engine. This phrase means how that specific frame and engine are matched and set up to work well together, which affects how fast the car can be.
Cadillac is being used as a comparison point for speed. The hosts are saying that even if Aston Martin improves, it still wouldn’t be fast enough compared with Cadillac’s current level.
Aston Martin is one of the Formula 1 teams. Here they’re talking about how hard it’s been for Aston Martin to get its car performing well enough to score points consistently.
In F1, teams choose when to pit and what tires to use. “Strategy weirdness” means those choices (especially if conditions change) can create unexpected race results.
Fernando Alonso is a top-level F1 driver with multiple world championships. The hosts are basically saying it’s shocking that someone like him is in a car that still can’t compete for points.
McLaren Honda is McLaren with Honda’s engine. The hosts are saying the same kind of performance trouble is repeating, and that it’s really affecting the driver.
Term
raising the floor of the quality of races
“Raising the floor” means the rules try to stop races from being too one-sided. The aim is to make more teams capable of close racing, not just the very fastest ones.
“Deployment strategies” means how teams choose when to push the car harder versus when to save it. That can change how fast the car feels and how good the racing looks.
A “one-stop” race strategy means the driver pits only once. Teams do this when the tyres can last long enough, so they don’t waste time making extra stops.
“Yo-yoing” means the racing feels like it keeps swinging back and forth instead of staying exciting for long. It can happen when pit stops and tyre changes make cars jump ahead and then fall back quickly.
In F1, “energy management” is how the team decides when to use extra power and when to save it. Since the car can’t run at full power forever, managing that energy helps determine how fast you can be and when you can attack.
“Overtaking strategies” are the plan for how to pass another car. It’s not just about being faster—it’s about choosing the right moment and using the car’s power and grip effectively.
In F1 context, “pack” means the group of cars running close together, often with multiple cars within a few seconds. When the speaker says forcing others to spend their pack, they’re describing how you can pressure nearby rivals into using their limited resources to defend or attack.
“Wheel-to-wheel combat” means two cars are fighting side-by-side for position. It’s the kind of racing fans like because it’s close and competitive, not just one car pulling away.
The “braking zone” is the part of the track where drivers slow down for a turn. It’s often where overtakes happen because braking is where drivers can make a decisive move.
Single-lap pace is how quickly the car can go on one fast lap. It matters for qualifying, but it doesn’t always predict how the car will behave during the whole race.
Long-run pace is how fast the car stays over a longer stretch of the race. It includes how the tires and car balance hold up, so it’s more representative of race-day performance.
A pace gap just means one car is faster than another by a noticeable amount. It’s usually talked about in terms of lap times and how quickly they can drive.
Your starting setup is the car’s initial settings for the session. If those settings don’t match the track conditions, the car won’t feel right and it can be slower.
Pirelli makes the tires for F1. If they say the track has less grip than expected, teams may realize their car setup was based on the wrong tire behavior.
“Lower ceiling” means there’s a limit to how fast the car can get. It might be steady, but it may not be able to reach the very top speed of the best teams.
The “Max Verstappen factor” is shorthand for how much a driver can extract performance beyond the car’s baseline. In F1, driver skill, confidence, and feedback can noticeably change how quickly a car can be driven at the limit.
“Class B” is an informal F1 comparison for teams that are competitive but not in the very top group. It’s a way of describing relative performance tiers rather than an official category.
LIVE
Hello and welcome to In Car Insights so called because we're in a car and we like to think
we offer Insights. Ed Straw here in the passenger seat. Ben Anderson is on driving duty this
weekend for one of his rare Grand Prix weekend appearances and bringing up the rear in the
back seat is Val Herungi who we will pass the mic to later on. Now it is an in-car podcast so
that's why you can hear things like indicator noises as Ben fights his way through the spa
traffic but we've had Friday here in Belgium. Ben, Mercedes fastest, no particular surprise there.
Were they? I was trackside the whole time so I barely saw what was going on. Antonelli was
quickest wasn't he? He looked quick from where I was watching. Yeah well Mercedes had an interesting
day actually because they struggled a bit in FP1 and they made a big change in FP2 and partly
that was just because the track was the lap times were just not as quick as they were anticipating.
Right. So we saw quite a big step year on year for Friday practice so with the deployment
challenges that's really costing lap time perhaps even a little bit more than was anticipated but
let's see where we settle tomorrow. But yeah Mercedes looking good. I did ask Andrew Shovell in
the trackside engineering director if the fact that they were a little bit on the back foot in FP1
meant that there's maybe a bit more low hanging fruit overnight to make a big again than usual and
he sort of accepted that principle if they get it right. But there's a lot of teams,
head scratching about deployment but you preempted me because I was going to get you on trackside
fairly surely. Now you went out in both sessions I was going to join you in FP1 but some tech
stuff came up which is always interesting so you were so low. This is your first time seeing the
2026 F1 cars that you hate with a passion in the flesh and I think you discovered a little bit
the duality of them I think. Yeah. There's good things and bad things. Yeah I mean I've always
known that there's this disconnect present. You see it in the fandom right? It's love or hate.
It's become the Marmite Formula One and I experienced that so when I went out for FP1
I went to O Ruge because you can walk there quite easily from the media centre and it's
the iconic spa place isn't it? So I always think it's a really good place to start and I've watched
various iterations of F1 car through O Ruge over the years starting in 2014 and I started covering
Formula One and piecemeal times. I haven't been to spa since 2019 so it's been a while
and they look so impressive through there because they're deploying all the way
down the hill from La Source. They arrive at a real rate of knots. They're arriving at O Ruge
faster than they were before. Yeah and it looks that way and also you instantly see that new
nimbleness the cars have because they've been made lighter and shorter and what have you.
Isn't that nimbleness so much easier to see trackside? We're lucky to do it but the reason
I say that is because you can't see it on the TV so much but trackside you absolutely see it.
It's right there and they looked as they were going up the hill and turning right just that little
bit skittish where they were just lacking a bit of grip. Obviously they've lost downforce too
so that was quite spectacular to watch and I think if you'd just left it there, if I'd just left it
come away thinking this is brilliant. This is the best F1 I've ever seen. F1 is absolutely fine.
I left O Ruge after maybe 25 minutes of the session and did that yomp that you have to do
where you loop around the Radeon Grand Stans down and then go up the hill so that I could get level
with the Kemmelstrait and I joined the Kemmelstrait towards the end and then you see the other side
of F1 2026 which is flashing red lights indicating MG UK not running at full power,
engine note dying, cars sort of not exactly crawling because they're still going really fast but
relatively speaking crawling towards Lecombe. You can feel that sense of yeah it's just the
deceleration zone is so long and therefore they don't attack the corner in the way they used to.
Lecombe used to be a really good place to watch people having to stop an F1 car from a ridiculously
high speed down to a speed at which it could do a reasonable degree of corner and you just
don't get that sensation anymore. They're driving within themselves and like Liam Lawson kind of
backed this up because he said basically from the exit of O Ruge pretty much all the way to
through Pujon all the way up to well pretty much Stavolo they're not they're not running at full
power they're running with the MG UK turned down and harvesting in fact and harvesting so it's not
the same driving challenge but then you get another disconnect so if you go round to no name
which is the left hander before Pujon that's quite a quick corner and obviously Pujon's a very very
quick corner to the naked eye they don't look like they're going slow you're right up against
the barrier they look really fast through the left hander particularly. It's turn nine no name
isn't it? That's right and Pujon if you know if you can still get the sense that they are really
barreling in there but obviously to the drivers who've been used to attacking those corners at
full speed rather than that rather than with that sense of deceleration it's underwhelming
but to the spectator it's not so you get this disconnect again between what the drivers are
feeling and what you're seeing from the outside. Yeah very much so and you could tell that the
drivers were not delighted with the experience of Spa you referred to Liam Lawson I did the
thing on Friday that you have the the Friday pen they do the TV stuff and then they do there's
basically two of us who are nominated for to do the media pen yeah I was just trying to work out
what you're doing. I'm trying to think if I need to do a turnaround because there's a lot of traffic
here that I don't like. I'm not sure we're going to be able to get to where we're going if we don't
go this way though okay because this is the old track we're on we're going past campsites. I need
Ednav because yeah there's just loads of people suddenly they weren't here yesterday. We can set
well with my other hand while um while I'm one's hand holding the mic I'll uh I'll set the Satnav
on just in case it's got some ideas but yeah quite a few drivers were talking about that they were all
kind of aware they needed to be on there nearly a shunt on the whole day. The Sadie's nearly took
out a caravan. Is it Kimmy Ansonelli? No it's not so it wishes. It was one of those oh we haven't
got the history on the Satnav. Where's it gone? Where is it gone? I think it's on the right. No it's
good uh podcasting on so yeah but some of the drivers when you asked them about it they were
doing um they were trying to be a little bit party line but giving the impressionally berm and
was one of those who did that. Lewis Hamilton asked him about it as well and it's sparse still
sparse and they're not saying it's dreadful and easy and everything but it doesn't look that way
like you know Hamilton said the corners are still good and it does look like they are but I guess
it depends on your frame of reference doesn't it and he did say that it's just the dying of the car
on the straights and that tally's like you can see that this it doesn't knit together into a nice
cohesive hole it's there are snapshots depending on where you go and where you look where you're
like this is brilliant and then there are other bits where you go oh in order to make that bit
brilliant they've made this bit rubbish and you just see that snapshotted around it doesn't join
together nicely and that's the thing the point you make there as well it's really important to
understand with this you don't have to be dogmatic about it these these cars the car engine packages
a disaster or brilliant there's definitely some serious problems with it but there are those
advantages and I remember talking about this as early as China remember watching china through
turn 123 in sprint qualifying I think and saying actually the cars look better here and
they work very slightly quicker not by much but because they've got that responsiveness and it's
only a small amount of weight and a very slight reduction in wheelbase but it makes so much difference
yeah it really does so yeah I mean there is obviously a massive sense of privilege coming to
an f1 race and being able to get that close that is that is always a disconnected privileged position
in itself and we're never trying to say this to say oh we're here and you're not and you can't see it
but just trying to tell you the reality and there must be ways maybe for the tv to capture it a little
bit better as well whether it's lower angles or closer I got or something yeah you just can't
again disconnected the tv you never get the sense of speed and that that plays well for this
formula one and badly at the same time because the bad bits you can't see are as bad on the tv as
easily but equally the bits where they're really impressing you with the sense of speed and that
nimbleness you that doesn't get picked up either so the tv impression kind of distorts it the
onboards is a different thing because the on board show some of the worst aspects of f1
2026 really clearly but those are softened if you're standing tracks on or watching like many fans
were today um slightly stepped back in grandstands or on hillsides and you can you get that sense of
awesomeness these are still like incredible racing prototypes probably the fastest fastest racing
cars on the planet still even though they're not as good as they could be yeah and that will be
whittled away out a little bit next year and a little bit more in 28 so the direction of travel
is the right one i've got more faith now i've seen it that once they do these
tweaks which you know they should probably should have done from the start let's face it they can
make it better it might get to the point where actually just as they want to throw it in the
bin as usually gets quite good when i cease to find a domenicale later in the weekend i'm going to
say you've won over f1 2026 is biggest doubt not necessarily won over but i know i feel better
about it but you know that's maybe i'm just excited because i'm at spa spa's just mega well
what a place to be we're actually driving on the old track now so uh that's one of the great joys
about spa i'm sure not fast enough yeah exactly it's very much traffic blue flags blue flags
everywhere now what else do we have today obviously uh we've talked before about Mercedes not having
the macarena rear wing the flip top wing as i prefer to call it i spoke to pierre vache the
technical director today at red bull just to go and talk a little bit about it and he basically said
yet we've understood the problem the silverstone problem we fully understood that we have fixed
it now they're not running it here this weekend they're not going to run it here this weekend
but basically they just need to work with it and make absolutely sure that it's bullet proof that
was the word he used and that's partly because the fia as has been reported the race reported it
very much taking a very close look at this in terms of the safety aspect of it so they were
doing back and forth with the fia vache didn't say this but i would not be surprised if the fia said
maybe if there's even the slightest doubt you make sure it's off for spa and that will cost
them a bit of pace it's probably giving away a good couple of tenths around here but vache did
say that it'll probably be interesting to have a look at it again in budapest next weekend so that
will be back and it's it's a fix it basically said it's a mechanical problem so it's related to the
actuator or the the interface between the actuator and the wing itself so that's what they've been
able to fix from what he said it didn't sound like they were switching to a ferrari style actuator
where it's on both sides in the end plates they presume it's going to retain the central one
but they're very happy on that ferrari must be crone because theirs just works doesn't it
they've got it right i've spread for so about this as well brilliant because they
ran it it took them a little bit of time to get it working fully as they wanted and always
closing correctly but they never had any kind of red bull style problems and then once they
had it nailed and it was working it worked and they've done huge amounts of mileage on it and
it's it's not been a problem since they they troubleshooted it and made sure everything was
was working so the way fred verserped it was that it's well it's a different concept it's
the same root idea that you're trying to maximize the drag reduction with that that kind of movement
but he called it a different concept so there's two different ways there and obviously he's adamant
it's 100 safe because they've not had any problems with it so it's been looked at though hasn't it
yeah phase obviously they can't single out red bull just because for staff had a couple of crashes
so they've started to look at where anyone who's doing this kind of design right just to see
if there could be any problems because even though ferrari's had a pretty smooth time with it
it's clearly not the easiest thing to get right or make work definitely not because
you've got to get it reliably closing and opening and all that mechanism to work correctly you've
got what is it four tenths of a second is your allowable window and you've got to make sure it's
100 consistent and that the airflow reattaches as you want it to consistently and there's never
any instabilities or vibrations and all of these things that can can start to happen obviously the
on track it's a very dynamic place there's all sorts of factors that can play a part so far i've
done a very good job with that but maybe the red bull one once they've nailed it gives you a bigger
drag reduction there'll be a reason they've done that so let's see how that plays out other upgrades
today mclaren had a new rear wing assembly this was nothing to do with their flip top rear wing
which is still parked for the moment but we will see that after the august break they run it i think
they split it across the cars i think did piastry have the new one and norris the old one i think
that was it in fp1 but spoke to neal holdy said yeah everything works as expected so it's on both
cars for fp2 and they were quite quick weren't they mclaren brisk yeah they're a couple of tenths
off Mercedes but i think Mercedes because they had that set they had a bit of a setup problem and
because they were adjusting there is i think going to be a bit more of a game so maybe the
mclaren wasn't quite as close as both its short run and the the hints of long run pace and they
were hints of long run because we had that red flag for pierre gazley's off which i got a picture
of his rear wing because i was i was picked up by the shuttle bus at puan and i saw it was a red flag
i saw gazley there was actually a tv screen so i was able to see the replay of gazley going off
looks like it just understeers off and then clatters the rear wheel into some bit of barrier
that was sticking out well it's a great example of because you watch the onboard and you think
right okay i see why he's gone off do a little moment later in the corner and goes but it didn't
look like it was going to end up in the wall and then there is that little bit that sort of juts
out so yeah he was quite surprised by it and for a real glancing blow it did a hell of a lot of
damage yeah i mean they were really scraping bits off the track so we stopped because a couple of
photographers wanted to get pictures of the the aftermath but you couldn't see the car the car
itself had been moved but they were scraping bits of wing and carbon fiber and then the the top part
of the rear well the main part of the rear wing was just lying at the side of
track or a picture of it but i couldn't i couldn't take it as a souvenir because by the time i looked
back it had been swept away onto onto the back of a truck yeah and that's going to be annoying for
them because there's a lot of parts so i don't i don't think they'll be furious at ghastly because
it's very easy to watch it and say well you should have just been a bit more careful and backed off
and made sure you didn't get into the wall but it seemed fine it's just one of those just wandered
off the track didn't he exactly yeah and then and then just got sort of sucked into that jutty out
a little bit of wall franka colopinto was quick today he was pretty happy with fp2
quite confident in the car after some sort of up and down weekend so he's looking quicker ghastly
set a quicker lap time than the one he was credited with but it was deleted for turn four
track limits but his fastest time was still i think from memory two tenths off what colopinto
did so colopinto looking very on the money ben would you like to say something to cover me
passing the mic back to val so he can chip in shortly yeah what would you like me to talk about
i could talk about this very slow traffic this is very unsparred i expect spar to be about being
quick and flat out especially on the straightest and we're crawling towards our destination at the
moment i'm very disappointed well benjamin at least we know we're going in the in the right
direction because this morning we were doing a lot of curious lapping around we're doing loops
we were doing loops of doom where we could not yeah find a way to the circuit because
and actually this happened to me track side some i was coming back and i was i walked after fp1
pretty much the length of the amount of the circuit you can do from the inside tried to
find my way back into the paddock and got diverted by some annoying attendant out into the
general spectator area on the outside of the track totally wrong and then i had to loop myself
back and find a bus it's been infuriating today trying to deal with officialdom hilarious i'm
glad it happened to you and not me with my still broken-ish foot that i'm sure i'm the only one
with two working legs in this car that i'm sure the members of the race members club are tired
of hearing at this point because it feels like i've brought it up in every possible piece of
content since i since i've done my foot tick um there's some there's kind of a problem with today
generally in terms of uh assessing where everybody stands and not just you know team by team but
within teams and it's a problem that happens at spa all the time but it's maybe of a slightly
different nature this year but it's what makes spa practice slightly frustrating is that because it's
a uh drag downforce drag circuit across the across the three sectors you get teams just wildly
experimenting across the two different cars and trying to hone in on the on the exact right of
approach of you know what rear wing you're running but in this case it'll be what deployment strategy
you use and there was some expectation pre-weekend that there wouldn't really be a lot of divergence
because and you burn everything uh in sector one you don't use any power in sector two you burn
everything in sector three but it does sound like they're they found some areas of divergence whether
they be you know obviously at the start in the the end of the lap or whether they be like at the
very start of the lap on the run to the first corner or uh into or out of the puan part and
that will presumably teams will narrow down the the optimal list of strategies tomorrow and and we'll
see probably a lot of the stranger gaps between teammates eradicated but i do think the 1.2 seconds
was it between george russell and kimmy antinelli can't help but find notable that's massive there's
monumental there's a monumental amount of time and it it does seem to have a lot to do with
you know with deployment but it's you can't really shrug it away i think we've had it earlier this
season where russell looks sketchy on friday and then he's like no no it's fine i'll figure it out
and i'm not sure not sure he did when he said it and there was like a half tone of admission from
from shoveling when you spoke to him ed that russell is a little discombobulated that there's
there's a bit of work to be done and obviously you know shoveling protecting his
driver and talking up his driver wanted to project the confidence that that russell will be okay and
i'm sure he'll be okay okay i'm not sure he'll be antinelli level okay and at this point in the
in the championship picture he needs to be antinelli level okay at basically every weekend
doesn't he can't really have any weekends where you're second fiddle to antinelli at least i would
have said that if the gap wasn't significantly diminished by by reliability weirdness um
haas new front wing if i'm not mistaken seemed tentatively positive seemed quite positive don't
think uh all the bearman's suggestion was that it doesn't necessarily add load but it just transforms
the car characteristics in a more palatable way haas obviously in an interesting situation where
it's a relatively underdeveloped cars they as they've acknowledged all throughout the weekend and
it feels like all throughout the year and as uh team boss aiakamatsu said on thursday they believe
they are absolutely the sole team and i found not running at the budget cap right now so their
upgrade plan is not limited but where you're allowed to spend but what they physically have to spend
and kamatsu said that it's you know it's not fair to haas designers it's not fair to you know the
staff to everybody trying to eke out every potential bit of performance while there's this i think he
described it as basically having one hand tied behind their back or some other just hands tied
uh because other teams just have more resource to operate on and when you have all the teams
more or less hit up against that budget limit obviously some of those teams spend money well
some of them don't spend it so well some of those teams are five seconds off the base this weekend
for example but yeah it is a fascinating situation there because i feel like i'm picking up
ever so slight frustration from ollie bearman in season two in particular about the
situation that haas has found itself in i think he can accept being in the midfield but i think he
may be struggling a little bit to accept being in the midfield with a car that cannot be developed
at the same rate as midfield rivals and with a car that increasingly is showing up to the weekends
without uh the possibility to score points now again upgraded this weekend with a new front wing
so that should help a little bit but i believe bearman's words were that they need four or five
10 uh four or five times the the step forward which which is fun bendy you want to talk about
five seconds off the base team a little i wonder who that could be anybody
hey hold up this is your minute your day to play to make to move to move through to explore
it's your body to rest to nourish to grow it's your mind you know it's your place your life
to love to dream to change it's your world to understand the new york times find out more
at nytimes.com slash your world who could be that far off the pace oh it's got to be astin
martin honda or mclaren honda as i would call it from my time regularly going to spa it's just so
extraordinarily similar same lead driver cars are useless but they think it should be brilliant
uh and the engine doesn't work and what's what's funny is that they you know there's so much talk
about this uh upgrade package that they've got planned that's phase one on the car in hungry
and then probably a phase two chassis wise plus the engine step for zanvo after the summer break
and if that all adds up to what they think it should add up to a couple of seconds ish
third two and a half maybe somewhere in that region you take that off and they are at cadillac pace
around this track so like it's even if it's transformative is it going to be transformative
enough to transform their season no it's not it's just like the first step on a really horrendous
road to not even respectability just not a shambles it's it's it's a little wild isn't it because
yeah this is a very different situation in terms of you know this is the first year of a very different
set of regulations so obviously lifetime gains are going to be more meaningful but if they bring
an update that's worth two seconds that is in absolute value the greatest update we've seen
in a very very long time in formula one that is i mean in some ways an incredible achievement
by by recent f1 standards but it will nudge them towards williams at best and williams
is the second most disappointing team in f1 this season it's it is it is just a deeply fascinating
situation from from every level and of course before any of that happens they have to get
through this weekend uh yeah the the track layout exposes them a little bit the length of the track
obviously exposes them it's not you know it wouldn't be a five second deficit um anywhere else it
wouldn't be a five second deficit at shorter laps this is a long punishing lap but this is
what alonzo was saying on thursday where he's like well even if the upgrade works as expected and
obviously we have to be careful because we've promised a lot in the past and haven't delivered
any of it uh he's prepared that you know tracks like monza coming up which is probably the most
energy starved of the season worse than even spar they're going to be hopeless there because the
honda engine is one upgrade but it's not like that one upgrade is going to make the honda engine the
best engine in formula one you know arrival for the red bull powertrain's thing it's just going to
be fixing some like chronic combustion problems that are making that car so dog slow and will
those updates work they might do but it's not it's not going to turn the honda engine into a world
beat to it's going to make it just a little bit less unrespectable than it is now so they are
targeting those kinds of fiddly tracks where they hope to make more difference with the chassis
upgrades basically yeah it's a gear so i mean like five seconds even at a track like spot is
a wild number in what we've come to expect from yes massive yeah it's the new the 2010s new teams
number and the position that we've ended up in the championship is astin has been able to scrape
a point in very unlikely circumstances that uh i mean it's chassis engine combination does not
deserve as a lucky point was yeah so it kind of reminds you of those early 2010s seasons
remember where like entire like tens of millions would hinge on one weird race between caterham
and virgin or lotus and marussia or whatever was going on and also hrt was allegedly there
occasionally and there's something it's right for Cadillac to be in that situation because they are
totally new to this and arguably have outkicked expectations somewhat but it's it's something
wild for astin martin to be there and even you know we talk about it all the time and we we perceive
it all the time but i still feel like the novelty of it somehow hasn't worn off just just how far
off they've been with this package and just what drastic measures they've had to to adopt and basically
sacrifice big chunks of the season and when one of their drivers is openly talking about just getting
the race over and done with uh and going to see the the world cup final on sunday yeah because
it's very hard to imagine a scenario in which that car has any shot at scoring points like
something the track has to break up in a spot basically like just mild rain or strategy weirdness
would not do it or come anywhere close to doing it they've got no chance here they just got absolutely
no chance they're miles off even cadillac and like i say if you even just transpose their
theoretical update gain onto this weekend they're just at cadillac pace and that's that's nowhere
near good enough when you're astin martin honda with fernando alonso in the in the lead seat if
you like like it's just it's just nuts to me that that mclaren honda situation is happening to him
again yeah like he that must be messing with his head massively because he can say well it's not
the same team and obviously honda are different to the honda of then but the problems just seem
so like familiar and repeated and it's also a shame because it's like finally the unification of
like one of the greatest drivers in forerun history and the greatest forerun designer in history and
it's just like nothing yeah it's like it's worse than nothing well so far and it's you know it's
not like it's their fault necessarily but it's just like it's sad because alonso is not going to be
around much longer as a formal one driver so it's kind of a shame as much as it's an interesting
story and you're right it's fascinating it's also a real waste of the potential that's left in the
alonso and that we know obviously newie is capable of i do think it's better than the the alternative
like if they were just a quiet sixth or seventh that's just not as interesting as this is sure
is at least at least like we'll remember this this will be part of the the story of the season
in a major way just just one more thing to raise um spa despite its you know status and despite
its obvious attractions as a as a racing circuit hasn't really been conducive to amazing f1 racing
as of late one thing about the set of regulations is that you know for all of your deep hatred of it
ben it is supposed to surf are you gonna yo yo me now i i'm not gonna say those exact words
but i am going to say that it's been quite okay at raising the floor of the quality of races
like even if the action is fake at least like it's not my numbing have the races been good
though james vauld said this didn't he on tv i didn't catch the interview i saw some quotes
where he was like i think we can all agree the racing has been quite good even if the product
is not perfect and i'm like really like tell me tell me which races have been amazing there's been
a lot of races and i i i'm only moonlighting in f1 my main my main area of expertise currently
is motor gp so that's that's a lot of races i have to jog in my head i can only tell you my
overall impression has been that i don't know about we can all agree but yeah i i found they've
been they've been generally all right and there's there's a bit of fear that this weekend you know
we won't necessarily even see that artificial level of action because of convergence of those
deployment strategies and the fact that spark can still be despite it's what is supposed to be an
overtaking conducive nature can still be not quite that but you know i i don't i prefer to
be optimistic heading into what is expected to be a one-stop on on sunday with maybe not as much
yo-yoing as as we've been used to uh much to ben's chagrin right then what do you think ed what can
we expect from a spa is it and have we had any good races really well it'll depends on your
definition of good races there've been some good battles with uh the team of sades drivers canada
was sort of a tense race and yeah things going on i mean measurements of good racing is very very
difficult what i would say about the spa race that could be very interesting is because it's
such an extreme energy management challenge and globally that's not great but that does mean
there are but there are a lot of places where you are going to not be able to deploy so
that does create some interesting challenges in terms of your overtaking strategies
where you want to get to forcing others to spend their pack where they might not want to
can you get past and just nudge away a little bit enough to stay ahead so regardless of what
your definition of good racing is or not there is potential for interesting shuffling to go on
and what's your definition my definition is ultimately you want wheel to wheel combat and
you're not going to see so much of that you're not going to see sort of two cars so much contesting
the braking zone to the last minute side by side through corners but that that's hard to do but
you know we've got to deal with the racing we've got there are bigger problems that are being
tackled but that that's not something that can be challenged overnight but
it does create the chance for there to be a different pattern of of race pace compared to
single lap pace and that potential is maybe a tiny bit bigger here than in others so
i'm sort of looking for the for the potential positives there but there is scope for there to be
some disorder in in that regard but it's going to be quite difficult and spa hasn't been a brilliant
track contrary to kind of what you'd leap to assume it was for racing in recent years so
yeah we'll see what we get but the whole weekend and single lap performance long run pace performance
is all about that deployment that's absolutely critical and we'll see a more consistent picture
tomorrow certainly on the the single lap pace there's a few interesting things in terms of
some of the front runners obviously Lewis Hamilton was talking about the fact that
slow in the middle sector and he suggested that maybe about the the downforce drag level
that they are carrying i think he wants a little bit more wing presumably to find some pace there
so interesting to see where they go one must say you take that step forward etc red bull sort of
look right but there's still quite a big pace gap there as well they looked they looked a lot
further off in fp2 than fp1 i mean it looked quite exciting to start with didn't it because
had you ever stopped them are right there always at the near or at the top of the times and you
thought oh hello yeah because because Mercedes missed the window they were their starting setup
was based on some assumptions that worked quite right Pirelli said that when they measured the
track the grip level was lower than than they expected so it's a false impression that's
created some problems yeah so ultimately that there's still questions to be answered i still
think that Mercedes is looking very good shape they had a a sort of a comfortable but slender
advantage today and they only mess around a bit on the friday don't they like one of those that
normally they they get a bit closer to their potential on a friday Mercedes seemed to me to
be a team that's normally a little bit more experimental or off yeah on a friday so if they're
if they end it quickest that's not normally a good sign that they're beatable yeah and George
Russell's struggling a little bit as well so yeah true just trying to run that piastry struggling a
bit more than norris and we see a few of these just doing things out racing bulls have got an
upgrade and that there's two bits to their upgrade there's the cooling package which only Liam not
Liam Lawson only arvid linblad is running they decided who would run that because they haven't
got two sets they'll have two sets for bidapest next weekend but that was basically what qualifying
Silverstone was a shootout for and Limblad actually got ahead of Lawson in qualifying there so that's
why he's got it but so you'll see the the role who've been taken things Lawson was was running
the more conventional one Limblad than you are but there are some performance upgrades as well
that they both got yeah so there is a little bit of a performance difference between those two cars
so it's not massive but for example if Liam Lawson's a tenth slower than Limblad in qualifying
he is probably at the same pace or maybe fractionally quicker they wouldn't say exactly what the
difference was but there's I'm sure there's a tenth or two maybe difference how is that team
just so relentlessly fast in the midfield now are they just better than red bull at making a chassis
and that that red bull engine is just amazing well the red bull the red bull's still a quicker car
a peak so they've got it but the racing bulls is quite is very consistent and they've got a nice
fruitful development path that they'll have a development path and a car concept that probably
has a lower ceiling but it's easier to attain and we've seen this at times in previous years as well
but still if you want to have the best possible chance on a race weekend at the best result
you want the red bull it's just going to be harder to get that pace out of it and you kind of need
Max Verstappen and then you get what's the Max Verstappen factor but I'm sure yeah the same old
story but I'm absolutely certain that Max Verstappen happy in a red bull as is now is going to be
quicker than Max Verstappen in a racing bulls because there's some dynamic differences but racing
bulls have done a great job they've really on top of their their error upgrade pathway
and I'll remain the team principal about this they're putting things on the car it's working
it's delivering they're quick in qualifying they're now quick in the races as well so every track
pretty much they're they're doing a pretty good job and they're at the front of that class B or
near the front of it so yeah that's the thing for me because they they always used to be quite
good at doing certain types of corners or certain types of tracks but they were never really good
all-rounders and they've really become that yeah they're also executing well now we're going to
say farewell to Val now he's about to get out Val would you like to make a final comment I thought
you're just going to finish the recording whether you're just going to continue it without me I'm
that inessential yeah yeah we're going to talk to each other well we wanted to give the give the
listeners the full in car experience so we'll hear we'll hear Val jumping out Val staying just
around the corner from us so 22 different locations but bye Val good night Val thanks for
coming Val's gone he's giving us a nice wave a nice a nice cheery wave to to see us off and we
will probably finish there because we've been rambling on enough we're just making sure that
Ben is able to maneuver around Val Val seems to be coming back Val's forgotten Val's forgotten
something oh he's forgotten his phone all that would have been costly very very costly so Val
is phoned up and he's made a second departure and while Ben is maneuvering I think we should
sign off so thanks very much for riding along with us as I say regular listeners on the race
members club will know we do this each day Thursday Friday Saturday of course we have the post race
podcast the big podcast on Sunday night so we don't do a member's only one but we like to do
these slightly more informal podcasts and we tell you what we see it wasn't the most eventful journey
this one so there wasn't so much to pick up on but sometimes we see all sorts of weird and wonderful
things but it's a great chance to debrief on the day say what we've seen what we've been doing and
it's it's handy for us too because we're all doing different things so I haven't seen you much today
exactly yeah we see different things we uh like some one of us was in the press conference or two I
was down in the paddock throughout the press conference so I didn't see anything that was
going on in there so it's great to uh compare notes and share it all with you so if you're
interested search for the race members club on Patreon or hit the link in the episode description
you can find out more about that there's a thriving community of great people there loads of extra
bonus content not just the in-car insights podcasts but as I say we'll be back tomorrow for members
and if you're not signed up we'd love to have you along for the ride in the future we'll see you tomorrow
About this episode
Friday’s Belgium running gets an in-car style debrief, with Mercedes’ pace standing out but their FP1 struggles and a big FP2 change explaining the swing. Spa’s fast sections highlight why the cars can look skittish—downforce loss, plus hybrid deployment warnings and long braking zones shaping what drivers feel versus what TV shows. The hosts also unpack rear-wing safety checks, McLaren and Haas upgrade details, and why energy management could make Sunday’s one-stop race more interesting.
As a special bonus, we're making the Friday edition of our In-Car Insights podcast - usually only available to The Race Members' Club - free for everyone to listen to.
This one was recorded as Edd, Ben and Val were winding their way through the Ardennes countryside en route to their lodgings, taking in parts of the classic Spa track. On the drive they discuss all of the day's big talking points, but Ben kicks things off by sharing his thoughts on seeing 2026 F1 machinery in the flesh for the first time. Has watching trackside made him to change his mind about this generation of cars, or does he still dislike them as much as before? Listen in to find out!
If you like what you hear - and we're confident you will - head to Patreon.com/therace to sign up to The Race Members' Club and enjoy these bonus episodes (and much more besides) on every grand prix weekend.
