This sounds like a practice session during a race weekend. Teams use it to try different settings and get comfortable with the track before the main event.
A red flag means the race is stopped because something dangerous happened. Everyone has to slow down and wait, and it can change how teams plan the rest of the session.
The Audi Quattro is an Audi model name known for using all-wheel drive. That means power can go to more than one set of wheels to help the car grip the road. The podcast brings it up because it’s a well-known example of traction-focused performance.
This is about the tire brand used in the race—Michelin. Tires strongly affect grip and how the car behaves, so the brand and compound matter.
Concept
secondary start
A “secondary start” is basically a restart after the race start didn’t go normally. The segment says someone hit track signage during that restart and got penalized.
Fernando Alonso is a famous Formula 1 race driver. Here, he’s the driver who managed to score points for his team after penalties reshuffled the results.
In racing, “penalised” means officials punish a driver for breaking a rule. Those penalties can move cars up or down the results, which affects who scores points.
Car
Aston Martin Honda team
This is an F1 team name that includes the engine partner. In Formula 1, the engine supplier matters a lot for how fast and reliable the car is.
Lance Stroll is an F1 driver. In this part, he hits a wall, and the discussion is about what he thinks went wrong.
Term
breaking up service
This sounds like a mis-transcription of “brakes.” The point is that the driver didn’t think the braking system caused the crash.
Term
engine pushing him into it
The segment describes a drivability issue where the engine’s behavior seems to keep pushing the car forward even when the driver isn’t expecting it. That’s consistent with problems like throttle/engine mapping or unintended torque delivery, which can lead to impacts if the car doesn’t slow as intended.
Bearman is a Formula 1 race driver. The hosts are saying he needs to focus on improving with his team rather than relying on a big future opportunity that might not happen.
Ferrari is a top Formula 1 team. The hosts are talking about whether Bearman might get a seat there, and they’re saying that plan isn’t working out.
Person
Louis
“Louis” is another Formula 1 driver whose contract timing affects who might get a seat later. The hosts are basically saying Bearman’s best move is to improve now while waiting for that timeline.
Aerodynamics is how the car’s shape interacts with air. In racing, it affects how much grip the car has and how much it slows down from air resistance.
Alex Albon is a Formula 1 driver. Here, the hosts say he helped his team (Williams) score points and were dealing with strategy decisions during the race.
Nico Hülkenberg is another Formula 1 driver. The hosts are saying he was involved in an incident that sent Carl into the wall, hurting their race.
Term
deployment issue
A “deployment issue” means something that was supposed to activate at the right moment didn’t. In this case, it affected acceleration right when the driver was trying to leave the corner.
Term
manipulating the track
“Manipulating the track” means one car is affecting how other cars can drive the circuit. The hosts are hinting it can be controversial when it disrupts the race flow.
Person
Arvid Lindbergh
Arvid Lindbergh is another driver mentioned in the incident. The hosts say he got past the car that was causing delays.
A “restart” in Formula 1 is when the race is stopped and then resumed under controlled conditions (often after a safety car or red flag). It changes strategy because tire temperatures, fuel usage, and timing of overtakes all reset.
F1 cars have to be at least a certain weight to be allowed to race. Teams aim to be right near that limit because it helps the car go and handle better.
Term
free time
“Free time” is racing slang for extra speed—like finding seconds on a lap. It usually means the team has made changes that should make the car quicker.
Alpine is an F1 team. They’re talking about how the drivers’ performances changed from race to race.
Person
Franka Colopinto
Franka Colopinto is referenced as one of Alpine’s F1 drivers in this segment. The hosts say he had an “anonymous” weekend—meaning he didn’t stand out with notable pace or results.
An overtake is when one race car passes another and gets in front. It’s not just “going by”—the passing move has to be completed safely and clearly so the other driver is behind.
Speeding fines mean the driver went faster than allowed in a restricted area. In racing, that kind of mistake often turns into an official penalty that can cost positions.
A 10-second penalty is an official time punishment added because of a rules issue. It can drop a driver down the order even if they crossed the line in a good position.
Pit stops are when the car comes into the pit lane to get serviced—most commonly tires. When you do it during the race can strongly affect where you come back out and who you’re stuck behind.
A speed trap is a spot on the track where race officials measure how fast cars are going. They do it by timing how long it takes to travel between two points.
If the track curves and you take a shortcut through the middle, you travel fewer meters than the officials assumed. Because speed is calculated from distance, that shortcut can make you look like you were going a bit faster than you really were.
Racing cars and tracks use sensors to measure speed and timing. If the track layout is tricky—like a curve—those sensors can measure the wrong distance, which makes the speed calculation look wrong.
This is just a math way to get speed. If you know how far you went and how long it took, you can calculate speed—but it only works correctly if the distance measurement matches the actual path.
The pit lane is the lane where race cars come in for service during a race. Because F1 limits how fast you can go there, the track layout and how speed is measured can affect whether you’re judged to be speeding.
Place
Gazzley
Gazzley sounds like the race track where the penalties were issued. The host is saying Alpine is trying to challenge those decisions tied to that event.
A “retirement” is when a race ends early for a car because something breaks. The host is saying the driver has had engine problems that forced them to stop more than once.
“Powertrain” just means the car’s main mechanical system for making and sending power to the wheels. The host is saying the problem might not be the engine package itself, but how it’s put into the car.
This means the engine wasn’t fitted or connected correctly in the race car. Even a good engine can fail if the installation—like cooling and connections—doesn’t work properly.
Person
Isaac Hagar
Isaac Hagar is a race driver the hosts are talking about. They’re discussing how he did in a race and how his comments sounded during the event.
Red Bull is the racing team being discussed. The hosts talk about what the team did during a race when red flags came out and what changes were allowed.
A red flag infringement refers to breaking rules during a race stoppage when officials display a red flag. In this segment, the hosts say Red Bull tried to change something during that period, which they claim is not allowed, and then reverted it.
Term
ultimate aerodynamic track
An “aerodynamic track” is a race circuit where airflow and downforce matter a lot for speed. The hosts are saying Red Bull’s car should be more competitive there because aero will be the key.
On many race tracks, the lap is split into sections for timing. Sector one is the first section, and the point here is that being quickest early doesn’t help if you crash before completing the lap.
“Throwing in the wall” means crashing into the track barriers. The host’s point is that being fast for a moment doesn’t matter if you can’t finish the lap safely.
Brake discs are the spinning metal (or carbon-based) parts the brake pads squeeze to slow the car down. Racing “carbon” discs are built to handle very high temperatures.
In racing, “regulations” are the rules that teams must follow when designing the car. The host is saying the old car was built around the old rulebook, and the new one is being built around the new situation.
Carlos Sainz is a famous Formula 1 race driver. The hosts are saying the car’s design and setup were shaped around drivers like him.
Person
Shalah Clare
This sounds like the host is talking about a specific Formula 1 driver—likely Charles Leclerc. They’re saying the car was built with that driver’s feedback in mind.
Qualifying is the timed session before the race that decides where each car starts. Doing well in qualifying usually means you start closer to the front.
“Flash of the pan” means someone’s doing great for a short time, but it might not last. They’re saying Antonelli’s strong run looks real, not just a brief lucky streak.
In F1, “pole” means you start the race from the very front. It’s earned by being fastest in qualifying, and it usually helps you control the race early on.
A “five-second stop” is how fast a pit crew can change tires and get the car back out. In racing, seconds matter a lot because it affects where the car ends up on track.
A safety car is a pace car that comes out when the track is unsafe. It slows everyone down and keeps the race controlled, which can affect when teams pit and how the race plays out.
“Double stacked” means two cars end up getting pit work done back-to-back very quickly. It’s done to save time, but it can go wrong if the timing or coordination isn’t perfect.
A ten-second penalty is basically a punishment measured in time. It means you end up with extra seconds added to your race result, which can drop you down the order.
A drive-through penalty means you have to go through the pit lane slowly, without stopping. It costs you time compared to the cars on track, so you usually drop positions.
Concept
bad luck
“Bad luck” here means things that go wrong that aren’t really the driver’s fault—like timing and race events that cost them positions. It’s being used to explain why results don’t match expected pace.
They’re talking about the next races being on European circuits. Different tracks suit different driving styles, so a driver’s results can change depending on where the race is held.
Hamilton is a very successful Formula 1 driver who has won multiple championships. The hosts are grouping him with other top drivers when talking about who’s dominating now.
Verstappen is a top Formula 1 driver who often fights for wins and championships. The hosts are mentioning him as part of the group of top drivers right now.
WEC is a major endurance racing series where cars race for long periods. The hosts are saying what happens in that series can influence decisions about a road-car project.
This means the car uses an eight-cylinder engine shaped like a “V,” with a total size of 3.2 liters. The hosts are saying the important part is how it’s fitted into the car, not just the engine spec.
Engine installation is how the engine is physically placed and mounted in the car. Where it sits and how it’s connected can change handling and other performance details.
Term
centre of gravity rotation
This is about how the car’s weight shifts as you turn. If the designers get it right, the car can feel more balanced and predictable when you’re driving hard.
GT3 is a category of race cars. It’s designed so different teams can race cars that are based on real-world sports cars, but tuned and built to the same racing rules.
Car
Slane S7R
The Slane S7R is a race car the host mentions from a project they were involved in. They built it for racing rules first, then used what they learned from it to create a road version.
The host is talking about building a race car first, then using it as a blueprint for a road car. The idea is to take what works in racing and adapt it for everyday driving.
The Ford GT is a famous Ford supercar. In this discussion, the host is saying Ford used a similar approach—make a race version first, then bring the ideas over to a road car.
The Rotolabong race is referenced as the timing anchor for when an interview and press conference will occur. It’s a named event in the episode’s narrative, used to explain the schedule around motorsport media coverage.
LMH is a racing class used for the fastest prototype cars in endurance racing. It’s the “hypercar” category that teams build cars to, so the rules for the car are defined by that class.
“New regulations” means the racing rules are changing. Teams usually plan their big upgrades around those changes because it can affect what cars are allowed and how fast they can be.
“Amortize their investment” means paying back a big cost over time instead of all at once. In racing, it’s about how many seasons you get to use and benefit from a costly new program.
LMP2 is a category of race car used in long-distance endurance racing. It’s meant for teams that aren’t the top factory-backed teams, and the rules help keep the cars competitive.
Re-homologate means the race car has to be re-checked and approved under the racing rules. If you change the car a lot, officials may require it to be certified again before it can race.
Aerodynamic redesign means changing the car’s airflow features, like wings or body shape. In racing, that can make the car stick better to the track, but it can also trigger rule checks.
A rear wing is the spoiler on the back of a race car. It helps push the car down onto the track for better grip, but it can also slow the car a bit because it creates drag.
Road to Le Mans is a program/series that helps drivers and teams work their way toward the big Le Mans race. It’s like a stepping-stone where people gain endurance racing experience.
Free practice is a practice session where teams try different settings to learn how the car behaves. It’s not the race, and it usually doesn’t directly decide the starting grid.
Term
P2
P2 means the car finished second. In endurance racing, it’s usually second within its class/category, not automatically second overall.
LNP3 is likely meant to be LMP3, a racing class for smaller, less expensive prototype cars. It’s often used to help newer drivers and teams get experience.
Super Trofeo is Lamborghini’s racing series where many teams drive Lamborghini race cars that are very similar. Since the cars are closely matched, it’s a great place to compare driver skill and team performance.
The Michelin Le Mans Cup is a European endurance racing series. It’s the kind of racing where cars run for longer stints, and drivers learn the skills needed for endurance events.
LMP3 is a type of race car used in endurance racing. Think of it as a “step” in prototype racing—built to be competitive but not as expensive or extreme as the top prototype classes.
A single manufacturer series means everyone is racing cars from the same brand. Because the cars are more similar, the results depend more on how well the drivers and teams execute race strategy and setup.
Downforce is the aerodynamic “squeeze” that presses the tires harder onto the track. More downforce usually means better grip, and “more direct” suggests the car responds to it quickly when you need traction.
Driving style is basically how you drive—how you brake, turn in, and apply throttle. Different race cars need different habits to get the best grip and speed.
Term
open heart surgeries
This means the person had major heart operations when they were very young. It’s part of their personal story about health and training, not something about cars.
Term
congenital heart defect
A congenital heart defect is a heart condition someone is born with. In the story, it explains why they needed medical treatment and had to manage their training early on.
They’re talking about a race that lasts three hours. Longer races focus more on staying consistent and managing the car than just going all-out for a short time.
A "stint" is just a block of time where one driver drives the car before switching to another driver. In long races, teams time these switches so the car can keep going fast without running out of fuel or tires.
A "mandate" in endurance racing is a rules requirement teams must follow, and "three stops" means the car must complete at least three pit stops during the race. This strongly shapes strategy because each stop costs time but also enables driver changes and service like tires and refueling.
Place
North Shlife
The "North Shlife" is a famous part of a race track in Germany called Nürburgring. It’s very long and twisty, so it’s tough on drivers and cars—people brag about doing well there.
The "Le Mans 24 hours" is a famous long-distance race in France where teams try to go as fast as possible for a full day. Because it’s so long, teams have to plan pit stops and driver changes carefully.
CrowdStrike is a company name showing up as a sponsor for a racing team. In racing, sponsors help fund the effort and often get their name attached to the team entry.
In racing driving talk, a “snap” usually means an abrupt loss of traction that quickly changes the car’s direction. It often happens when the rear (or front) tyres suddenly break grip, leading to a fast onset of oversteer or understeer.
Here “tow” means the car behind benefits from the car in front’s airflow. That can change how fast you’re going and how you set up for the next corner.
A chicane is a tight, twisty section of track that forces cars to slow down and turn quickly. The Dunlop chicane is just the name of that specific spot on the circuit.
A “run plan” is the team’s checklist for what they want to accomplish in a practice/stint. It helps them stay organized and measure results consistently.
“Oversteery” means the car’s back end wants to step out when you turn or accelerate. It can make the car feel harder to control, so drivers try to reduce it.
The World Endurance Championship is a major series of long-distance race events. Because races last a long time, teams have to think about things like tires and fuel, not just speed. The speaker is saying Le Mans is especially challenging even compared with other endurance events.
IMSA is a big American sports-car racing series. It also includes long races where teams have to manage tires, fuel, and traffic between different types of cars. The host is using IMSA as a reference point to explain why Le Mans is uniquely tough.
The European Le Mans Series is an endurance racing championship in Europe. It uses a similar style of racing to Le Mans, including multiple classes of cars on track at the same time. The host is saying Le Mans is harder than what you’d expect from those other series.
“Porsche curves” is the name of a specific corner area on the Le Mans track. Drivers use these corner names to talk about where to brake and turn. The host is saying you can’t fully understand it from TV alone.
The Mulsanne straight is Le Mans’ long, high-speed straight. The road surface isn’t perfectly flat—there’s a shape to it (“crown”)—and that can make the car bounce or scrape the ground. The host is pointing out that these details only make sense once you’re driving there.
“Crown in the road” means the track surface has a slight shape, like it’s higher in the middle than at the sides. That can change how the tires sit on the ground and how much the suspension compresses. The host says you only really feel it when you’re driving the car.
“GT traffic” means you’re sharing the track with GT-class cars that are slower or faster than your car. In endurance racing, different classes run at the same time, so passing and being passed is part of the job. The host is saying those moments make the track feel even more intense.
Bottoming is when the suspension compresses so far that the car gets too close to the ground. That can cause scraping or a harsh impact because there’s no more suspension travel left. The host is saying the track can force this even when you think you’re in control.
A track walk is when drivers walk the racing track before driving it. They look for subtle things like bumps and how the road changes shape. It helps them understand the track better than just watching it on TV.
Place
Moulzane
Moulzane is a specific spot on the Le Mans track. When they resurface that area, it can change how tires grip there and how drivers time their braking and acceleration.
Place
Arnaige
Arnaige is a specific corner area on the Le Mans track. If the surface is patched there, it can change tire grip, so cars may accelerate differently when you’re exiting the corner.
Simulator work means practicing in a racing video-game-style setup. The point is to learn the rules and procedures so you’re not figuring them out for the first time during the real race.
Place
Morsan
Morsan is a part of the Le Mans track where the signal can get spotty. If the radio cuts out there, drivers may miss important race instructions.
A “slow zone” is a part of the track where race control tells drivers to slow down for safety. The tricky part is what you do when you leave the slow zone—getting back up to speed smoothly without getting in trouble.
The Nürburgring is a very famous race track in Germany. People use it to compare how good cars and drivers are, and the host is saying the same kind of careful driving happens there too.
The green flag means the race is back on and drivers can race again. The host is saying you have to mentally prepare for what comes next right when the green flag appears.
“GT class” refers to a racing category for grand touring cars, where multiple manufacturers and car models compete under class rules. The host contrasts it with a category where everyone has the same equipment, saying GT racing has more variables because different cars/manufacturers can have different performance characteristics.
BOP means “Balance of Performance.” It’s a way race organizers tweak cars so they’re closer in speed, even if they’re different models. That helps the racing depend more on driving and teamwork than on which car is naturally faster.
An “open top car” is a race car where the driver sits in a cockpit without a roof. That changes the airflow around the car compared with a closed cockpit. It can affect how stable the car feels at speed.
In an electric race car, the battery is what stores the electricity that powers the motor. It also adds weight to the car, which can make it handle differently than a gas car. Here, the driver points to that weight as a key difference.
A “Gibson V8” is a type of race engine with eight cylinders arranged in a V shape. It’s not electric—so it makes power differently than Formula E. How it delivers torque can change how you drive the car through corners.
Abu Dhabi is a place in the UAE that hosts big racing events. The driver says they tested the car there, so it gives you context for when and where they started learning the new machinery.
Aerodynamically based grip means the car uses its shape and wings to push itself harder onto the road. That works best at higher speeds where airflow is stronger.
Term
P2 car
P2 is a category of prototype race car used in endurance racing. It usually means a purpose-built car that relies a lot on aerodynamics to stick to the track.
Brake bias is how much of the braking happens at the front versus the rear wheels. Adjusting it changes how stable the car feels when you brake and how it turns afterward.
Fly-by-wire means the car uses electronics to interpret your controls instead of direct mechanical connections. That makes it easier to change settings quickly while driving.
Arrival speed is how fast you are when you reach the start of a corner. Higher arrival speeds mean you have to brake harder and be more precise to make the turn safely.
They mean the braking isn’t split into separate, independent moments. Instead, it’s one continuous braking/setup phase that helps you set up the next turn.
A “make-or-break corner” is a turn where you either nail it and keep going fast, or you mess it up and lose time. It’s especially sensitive to braking and how well you set up the car.
“Electronics” here means the car’s computer-controlled safety and traction systems. They help the car stay stable and keep the wheels from spinning too much.
Place
Forest S's
“Forest S’s” is the name of a particular set of twisty corners on the race track. The point is that you have to commit to the turn-in and speed, not just brake and hope.
“Steering angle” just means how turned the steering wheel is. Turning it more can make the car rotate harder in a corner, which can feel twitchy if the tires aren’t fully happy.
“Heavily banked” means the corner is tilted like a ramp. That tilt helps the car corner faster, but it can also make the car feel different than a flat corner.
“Third or fourth gear” means the driver is picking a lower or higher gear to control how the car pulls. That choice changes how responsive the car feels when you get back on the gas.
Place
Chiquin
“Chiquin” is a named corner/section on the track. The host is saying it looks easier from TV, but it’s actually demanding and mistakes cost you a lot of time.
Place
Deer Tourner
“Deer Tourner” is the name of the next part of the track after Tert Rouge. It’s important because the way you exit Tert Rouge affects how well you can attack the long run afterward.
“Indy” is a famous race track in the US. The speaker is comparing this corner to a tricky part of that track where you have to be confident and drive precisely.
The rear axle is the part that connects the car’s rear wheels to the rest of the drivetrain. When you turn hard, the rear wheels have to grip the road, so the speaker is saying you need confidence that the back of the car will stay planted.
Broward Hill is a specific part of a race track. The track was changed after a crash, and that matters because it changes how the cars have to brake and turn there.
Closing speed means how fast one car is catching another. In endurance racing, that can be tricky because faster cars can appear much sooner than you expect.
When the host calls the P2 “the latest braking car,” they mean it has strong braking performance and can brake later than other classes. That affects racecraft because drivers must adjust their turn-in and spacing when a faster-braking car appears.
The painted curb is the curb edge with paint on it. Drivers use it as a reference point—here, the host says they brake right at that marker to get the car turned in correctly.
Inside front locking is when the front wheel on the inside of the turn stops gripping and starts skidding. It’s a sign you’re braking right at the limit of traction.
A gravel trap is a gravel-filled safety zone beside the track. If a car goes off, the gravel helps slow it down and reduce the chance of a bigger crash.
They’re talking about the Indianapolis race track. The way corners and bumps are laid out there changes how you brake and accelerate compared to other tracks.
It means the back tires lose grip and stop turning while you’re braking. That can make the car slide or feel unstable, so you have to brake more smoothly.
A “traction zone” is a part of the track where the tires don’t have much grip. You have to be careful with how you accelerate and steer because the car can start to slip easily.
The braking point is where you start slowing down for the next turn. Drivers pick a specific spot because braking too early or too late can ruin the corner.
The racing line is the best path through a corner sequence. It’s how drivers steer so they can keep the car balanced and carry speed into the next turn.
A kerb is the raised curb at the edge of the track. Drivers use it like a landmark so they know where they are in the corner and can place the car correctly.
References are landmarks drivers use to know when to brake and when to turn. After a few laps, you stop guessing and start hitting the same points every time.
“Entry” means the start of the corner, when you slow down and set up the turn. The host is saying you can’t just focus on accelerating later—if you brake wrong at the start, you lose time.
Term
pituit
This word looks like it may be mis-transcribed. The speaker seems to be saying the corner is great to drive in a particular type of car.
Here “flat” means you can keep your foot down and go through the corner without backing off. It’s a sign the driver has the speed and line figured out.
“Step out” means the car starts to slide out of the turn instead of following the line you’re aiming for. It usually happens when tires lose grip. They’re saying this car stays planted and doesn’t let that happen.
The front axle is just the front wheels of the car. If they say they’re “fighting” it, it means the front tires are struggling to keep the car pointed where they want. It’s about how the car behaves in the turn.
Off-camber means the track surface is tilted sideways in the corner. That changes how hard the tires are working and can make the car feel trickier. They’re saying it’s hard to notice from TV.
Track limits are the edges of the race track you’re allowed to use. If you go past them, you can get penalized. They’re saying they’re pushing right up to that edge to get the best exit speed.
Term
double 4 chicane
A chicane is a part of the track where you have to weave through a couple of turns to slow down. They’re describing a specific chicane at the end of the lap that’s tricky. The important bit is that it’s not just one corner—it’s two different turning phases.
Curbs are the raised bumps along the edge of the track. Drivers sometimes use them to help the car turn, but they can also unsettle the suspension. They’re saying this car handles curb hits better than you’d expect.
A splitter is a front aerodynamic piece that helps push the car down onto the road. If it’s low and the aero is strong, the car can feel more planted when you hit curbs. They’re using it to explain why the car takes the curb so well.
Droop is how far the suspension can extend when the wheel is unloaded. If the left tires are in droop, the suspension can “give” instead of jolting the car. That helps explain why it stays calm over the curb.
Downshifting means selecting a lower gear so the engine spins faster. That helps the car accelerate, but if you do it at the wrong time you can lose grip and spin the wheels.
“Traction limited” means the tires don’t have enough grip to use all the car’s power. When that happens, the car can slide or spin instead of accelerating cleanly.
Torque is the engine’s “pulling strength.” More torque usually helps you accelerate smoothly at lower engine speeds, especially when leaving slow turns.
Short shifting means shifting up sooner than you normally would. If you do it too early, the engine may not have enough “pull” to get the car moving well out of the turn.
Le Mans is a long-distance race where teams have to keep the car running well for a long time. It’s not just about speed—drivers also have to manage tires, fuel, and driver changes.
Pro-Am means a pro driver and a less-experienced driver share the same race car. The car has to be set up so both drivers can drive it confidently, not just the fastest driver.
A “bronze driver” is a rating that indicates a driver is in a lower experience category than the top pros. In this kind of race, the team has to make the car work for that driver too.
“Pointy” here means the car feels very sharp and reactive, like it wants to turn in quickly. That can be harder to drive smoothly if you’re not used to it.
Formula E is a racing series where the cars are fully electric. Drivers have to manage how the car uses its energy, which is similar to what you do in hybrid endurance race cars.
A Concorde Agreement is basically a big contract that sets the rules for how money is shared in a racing series. Here, they’re comparing MotoGP’s situation to that kind of deal, where the key issue is who gets what money.
This rule means each rider is only allowed one race bike instead of having extra bikes available. The idea is to cut costs, while still making sure the event can run normally.
“Flag-to-flag” just means the race runs from the start signal all the way to the finish. The hosts are saying the bike allocation still has to work for the whole race, not just a short stint.
“Liberty” here means Liberty Media, a company that helps run and market big racing events. The hosts are talking about how their contracts with venues work and what that could change.
“Heritage venues” are long-established circuits or race locations with historical significance in motorcycle racing. The hosts are implying that these tracks may be less willing to meet the financial terms Liberty wants.
Mercedes-AMG is the performance division of Mercedes-Benz, and it’s referenced here as winning another 24-hour race. In endurance events, AMG-branded teams and cars often compete in manufacturer standings and class battles, where consistency and pit execution matter.
A pit stop challenge is a timed contest where racing teams try to change tires and do their pit work as fast as possible. It’s about how quickly the crew can coordinate and execute the stop.
The Ferrari 499P is a race car designed for endurance events, where cars drive for a long time. It’s built specifically for competition rather than everyday street use. The podcast mentions it because it’s one of the cars/entries in the race lineup being discussed.
The Chevrolet Corvette is a sports car built for fast driving. It’s often talked about at car events because it’s a well-known performance model. In the podcast, it’s likely being referenced as part of the cars and teams present.
The Dodge Ram is a large pickup truck. It’s designed to carry loads and handle tough driving. The podcast mentions it in a racing-style context, where the truck name is used for a competition entry.
Term
EVO jokers
“EVO jokers” are like limited “get-out-of-the-rules” development allowances. Teams can use them to make bigger upgrades, but they only get a certain number, and they can run out or expire by the next season.
Homologation is the rulebook “approval” that says what the race car is allowed to be. If they keep the same homologation, they can update parts, but they can’t turn it into a totally different car that would require re-approval.
Brake cooling ducts are parts that guide air to the brakes. That helps keep the brakes from getting overheated, so they keep working strongly for longer races.
Topic
FIA World Insurance Championship
This is the name of the racing series the hosts say is happening right now (round three). It tells you what championship the cars are competing in during this track action.
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Hello everybody and welcome along to Midday Motorsport Live from the Ford Performance,
excuse me, Ford Racing, Global Broadcast Centre, John Hangover and Nick Damon here at the
Segrit de la Sarge.
We are ready to go for a program that will be slightly shorter, will not about five minutes
off the end of this one because Johnny Palmer is going to come in along with Joe Bradley
as our pit reporter informed by Driver Database.
Hello to Kevin Payne, thank you for the wedding anniversary, the wedding anniversary best wishes
for the responsible adult and I.
Ed Morse's no airfare this week, listening from next to post 17.
Quite a quiet part of the day says before a busy evening for Hyperpool, number of our
collective members marshalling this weekend, Kuiper Hoffmann as well, we've seen him already,
right turn lover.
Airfares for Midday Motorsport, that work thing intervening but I'll be reserving a virtual
seat for quality night practice.
Dunn RTL, Mike Perrin has disembarked at Dunn Kirk and on the air 16 tuning in to Midway
Motorsport for the first leg of the journey.
Greetings to the RSL team from Rafi, no airfares, I'm on the train from Firenze to Venetia.
Oh how lovely, Brody is listening in live from home, Brody sorry you couldn't get down
either of you and hope the cat gets better soon and we've swapped a few messages, I think
the cat is well on the way to recovery but not up to being left alone for a week, the
good news is Brody's got the week off so he'll be tuned in all the time on RS1.
The noise in the background is the Rotolamon 3 practice one, we've had a couple of red
flags early on there so that tells the breeze and that is Nick Damon, interesting case you
hadn't noticed.
Brody, we'll hope that we'll see you next year, the Goodyear blimp, no jokes there Nick, very
good, it is on its way and entering French airspace as we speak, hello to Quattro for
that.
Maxime in Ostend in Belgium, hello to Etienne who is here listening on 91.2 FM, met him in
the paddock this morning, indeed everybody who's popped their heads up or walked over
tapping on the shoulder to say hello, that's great.
The Harry Chandler is listening live from Borsajure to a guiding this year with four
first timers, good for you, dear monks, listening from a slightly overcast Arnage, we need to
bump into you at some stage to dear Mr. Monks to hand over an important piece of paper, I
have in my hand a piece of paper, piece of that time maybe not so much but you know what
I'm talking about.
Gigi, thank you Johannes, good to know you're tuned in as well.
At RSL Underscore Studio, I might as well just do that, hashtag 21 RSL24 for 21 RSL24
hours of Le Mon, I'll be watching on Spectre Timment as well to be honest.
Now, the question is, can I infringe Tim Gray or do Nick and I take the show on ourselves?
Up in London is Tim Gray, I know he's there because he's tempted, right, I've got to keep
talking for a little while so I'll tell you that E&S Motorsport and Maxi Dodds is leading
in the leisure on Michelin tyres from the fabulously named Brutal Fish by Campos, Lucas
Fluxagros in second, Oscar Christensen is the best in the LMP3 Pro-Arms for racing spirit
of Le Mans and DKI engineering Quentin Antonelle in third.
Where's the GT3 leader, that's Kessel Racing and David Fulmanelli in fourteenth position.
Tim Gray, up in London, this is Le Mans calling London, can you hear
me London?
I can hear you Le Mans.
Can you hear me?
You might be talking but I can't hear you.
Not until the bed ends.
I know he said try me now.
Oh try me now?
Yeah I tried.
I can't hear myself, what will you turn up?
Probably that one.
That's the one, I've gone.
Okay, we shall carry on until the bed ends, hopefully we don't have a top story that I've
got to crash into because that'll be interesting.
So coming later on this afternoon of course we have all of the track action for you but
we'll try and put a sort of a programme together.
We do have a big interview, I spent some time with JQ's yesterday and he's our big interview.
Big interview, yeah.
We've also got a live studio guest which is always...
Better than a dead studio guest.
Yeah, we'll hear all of you apparently.
Right, let's see if Tim Greer is behind that bed.
What's behind this bed?
It's Tim Greer.
Hello.
Ah.
The string is not stretching.
Clearly not.
Shall we just crack on?
Probably yes.
Okay.
I'm just waiting for the bed to end.
I don't remember it being this long.
It's a looping bed of the cure.
Is it?
The cure.
It's the cure.
They're playing Eila White Festival next weekend on Solider.
This isn't the cure.
It's not the cure.
It's the cure.
It's the cure.
She shall censure it.
Yeah, but that's not the cure.
The cure of Robert Smith, aren't they?
Oh, yes, you're right.
This is two old brains tired after several times at this moment.
Am I going to say?
It's the cult.
The cult.
It is the cult.
Thank you very much, Tim.
We'll carry on without Tim for a moment.
I believe the listener online is hearing,
but he's not making the trip to Le Mans.
It's this EES, you see.
Right, yep, yep.
My imagination probably is...
Hello to Bucky Bick, who's with us on Studio Vision.
Studio Vision's design.
An hour and a half ago, it was going to be,
because we changed our plans of how we're going to do this.
We weren't going to be here, but now we are here.
We're waiting for the cameras.
Hello.
Hello.
We've got more cameras this year, and cleverer cameras.
The capital ceases.
He's in an hour away.
We'll be there soon.
There we are.
Right, OK.
The bed has ended.
Does that mean we can speak to Tim?
I don't know, because I...
It hasn't ended.
The listeners have faded it down.
Oh, there you are.
There you are.
Tim Greer comes through on 91.2 FM.
Finally.
Up in London, Tim.
How are you today, and how's the London weather?
The London weather is glorious.
I'm just here rolling on the floor,
laughing at you thinking that that was the cure.
I know, I don't even know why I got that.
It's doubling down on the fact that you thought it was the cure.
I backed out of the cure.
You did.
By Graeme's bestie.
You knew it wasn't, but you couldn't say cult.
I didn't actually...
You had to be very careful how he says cult.
It was fine, but I...
So, I've done on a pack programme tonight, Tim,
so you have plenty of time to shuffle your papers.
Well, you haven't told us everything that's on the pack show tonight,
because you haven't told us who the live studio guest is, have you?
The live studio guest.
Well...
Still better than Dead One.
He is still better than Dead One.
That is...
And...
It's Colin Quinn.
And he'll be joining us in now about 30 minutes time.
Yeah, absolutely.
You did mention Jake Hughes.
So, I'll put that in the big interview slot.
That sounds reasonable.
That wasn't the original plan, but it is the plan now.
When we are live on site, things tend to be fluid.
Yes.
Hey, Maywee.
You were going to do this show on a balcony,
and then realised that you'd been very lonely on the balcony, didn't you?
I wasn't going to be there.
Jamie Dwyer is tuning in.
You have to do a quick walk home from work.
Midday, Morta Sport means I can join for a change.
And that's the day of England.
And so, team by team?
Team by team, I think.
We did that for the very interesting weekend in Monaco.
And, well, we knew there was an extra 30 metres in the pit lane.
Well, it just goes to show that something that prides itself on being the most technically advanced motor sport is actually...
Not.
Not.
Yes.
I think not.
And also, in...
It's fine if you don't cut corners.
But the corners weren't cut.
That was the point.
You might have forgotten about the extra bled.
It was still doing the speed.
It was fine.
You weren't speeding.
We'll explain in more detail why it happened.
But you sit there going, and you didn't think perhaps once you were to rescind these things?
No.
No.
Because that would have been a really good idea.
Yeah.
Anyway, we'll talk more in detail about...
Yes.
It affected everyone equally.
No.
Because some people were going to pull for 60.1 when they weren't speeding.
Yeah.
Or 60.4 when they weren't speeding.
So you get...
That's about you actually being punished by something you haven't actually done.
It's just an error.
It's like if the speed camera pings you at 85 when you're doing 60.
Yeah.
The speed camera's at full, but they won't take it away.
Well, if you can prove it, you can.
Well, they could prove it.
They couldn't take it away.
Yeah.
That's like saying, I'm sorry, I'm locking you up for stealing your Sainsbury shop this
week.
Oh, again, I'm sorry about that.
Hang on.
Here's my receipt.
Here's my receipt.
Don't care.
Oh, that happened to me.
That happened to me and Marks and Spencer's.
Really?
You got pulled.
The woman thought that I hadn't paid for my shopping even after I showed her my receipt.
And the security guard would say, I'm not getting involved in this.
Anyway, they gave me a large cash sum to compensate me for my trouble.
Really?
Yes.
Did you have to independently ask for that?
Did it happen in the shop as they were embarrassed?
It happened after I phoned them and then the manager phoned me back.
Excellent.
They're quite good at customer service eventually.
I've just had a parking firm back out of a court case because I was prepared to take
it all the way.
Yeah.
And they actually gave up yesterday.
Moving on.
Top story, please.
Top story?
Can you play a jingle?
You can play the jingle.
I can play a jingle, yes.
Do you want to play a jingle?
Yeah, play the jingle.
That's exciting.
I was going to actually start by doing team by team and get it out of the way so we can
focus on Le Mans later.
Well, OK, let's do that.
OK, then it is time for Nick Damon's team by team review of the Monaco Grand Prix.
Are we starting?
OK, right.
Let's start.
What do you mean to go on?
I'd quite like a hooray.
Oh, sorry.
I was really...
Give me it again.
It's time for Nick Damon's team by team review of the Monaco Grand Prix.
Hooray!
Oh, I've not missed it.
Hooray!
Yeah, too fast.
Hooray!
On the corner.
Hooray!
And we're going to start with Cadillac.
Hang on a second.
That was the most underwhelmed whom I've ever heard, John.
Honestly, I'm just checking his Cadillac.
So Cadillac very, very nearly scored a point.
However, because Sergio Perez has no idea where his grid slot is, not just once, but twice,
in the ultimate game of who's got the most penalties.
Put it this way, they're worse at penalties than Arsenal.
Or better at penalties than Arsenal, they've got more of them.
They ended up ending up in the 11th or 12th.
Perez was actually quite quick.
The first problem was he actually pulled into the spot vacated by Gabriel Bortoletto.
And the second one was he apparently just put himself too far to the right.
So there's a couple of silly mistakes and they missed their chance to get a point, which
I think would have been quite good.
Any problem was a cause that they worked particularly quick.
And Valterio Bottas had the same problem with, as always with reliability issues, his cart,
both cart looks very too hot, break-wise as they learn as they go.
And again, Perez was much better than Bottas, but I think Bottas had such bad luck
that they kind of removed this, we're going to sack you next Tuesday, he had a hat over him.
Let's move on to Aldi.
Aldi were in 10th place before they were penalised,
but Perez into 10th place while he was penalised.
Not going to spoil you, who actually got that final point.
Oh, he don't know yet, it might change.
Very disappointing weekend for Aldi.
They were running during practice as the best of the rest pace-wise.
They then bought a letto last up in qualifying one or qualifying two.
I think qualifying one.
The interesting thing was he actually managed to break the suspension without hitting anything,
which was slightly worry all the steering on.
And then Hulgenberg didn't make a complete good start, was coming through the field,
absolutely swiped signs off the track during the secondary start and got a penalty.
So he wasn't 10th either.
So Aldi are having a difficult time getting cars to run and getting processes to it.
And realistically, they're making a worse job of it as far as the rules and reliability are concerned.
But taking over a team that had been established for 35 years,
than Cadillac have who started from scratch.
Every other team scored a point, Nick.
This is amazing.
So our third team we're going to talk about is Aston Martin.
Aston Martin, who weren't scored, who were in 12th place with Fernando Alonso,
and then of course they penalised Hulgenberg and they penalised Perez,
and that meant that Fernando Alonso scored the first point for the Aston Martin Honda team.
What a fantastic achievement.
It was a slight, probably clouded by the fact that before he knew he'd scored a point,
he described it as a complete waste of time.
He had absolutely no positives.
Lance Stroll had driven into a wall.
He didn't actually blame the breaking up service.
He blamed the engine pushing him into it.
So they are now what, four months into the racing season?
That's what engines do in real-life cars.
Well, the engine is supposed to not go forward when you're not pressing something.
It drives by itself. That can be a bit of an issue.
So basically, it's not getting any better.
They apparently have some upgrades that are going to solve everything, which sounds a bit unlikely.
Anyway, so the good news is that in a car like this next year,
I'm sure Alonso will be taking the Monaco off to go and do Indy.
Because he normally does, but he's got a rubbish Honda back of his car.
We move on to Haas.
Yes, so Haas, I guess because Espanol got some points there, didn't he,
in kind of a chaotic race at the end.
Yeah, Haas have got a problem, and it's now been evident the last 23 races,
they started really, really well this year, but the upgrades everyone else brought,
either for race three or during that massive break, were significantly better than theirs.
They've now fallen down that pecking order of the middle teams.
They haven't got much more coming.
It doesn't help that it appears that there was a magnetic attraction,
despite the fact that cars are carbon-fibre between Espanolcon and Oliver Bearman at the moment.
They hit each other, they blamed each other.
I think I'll be really honest with you.
I don't think Espanolcon is a particularly good driver to having a team
when you're trying to have a harmonious working together to work together as a team and move forward.
I think that's a little bit, I'll say self, I know all drivers are selfish,
but they normally get the message when they have to work together to move forward.
I don't think that's really got that in his makeup.
I think it's all about him.
I know he's had a difficult fight and scrap,
but I think it's one of the reasons he's had problems keeping jobs,
even going back to the racing point days.
I think it's come over again, he's not really,
it doesn't seem to be working with Bearman,
who I think possibly also needs a little bit of a let's work as a team concept.
Bearman obviously was probably really pushing,
because he was under the impression that there was a Ferrari job going at the end of the year.
Well, that's not happening given the uptick in form of a certain seven-time world champion.
Now, what Bearman has to do is concentrate on a gradual improvement,
working with the team and then hoping that Louis only goes on through 2027.
Yeah, it's been a disappointing couple of races with no real sunny horizon.
Of course, this week at Barcelona, which is the ultimate test of aerodynamics,
so we'll find out who really is where,
but it does look like it has a little bit further down than they thought there were.
Williams.
Yeah, I mean, Williams managed to score points with Alex Albon.
They're a terrible season so far, bad luck and everything else.
Carl signs for the score points as well,
being chunked into the wall by Nico Hülkenberg.
He got a bit confusing when they were trying to engineer this double-point score,
when Albon was then told to sign through, that was fun,
then told to hold everyone up.
The only problem was he was holding up felled miserably because they had a deployment issue,
so when he was holding up, when he was supposed to accelerate out of the corner,
the car went in there, one not going to bother.
I think Arvid Lindbergh went past him, luckily he had to pit,
so that's manipulating the track, which is so popular, let's be honest,
that Monaco didn't really work, then of course they had to restart,
and things were looking a lot better, and then they got,
signs were kicked off, but in the end they did score some points,
so Albon got a few more points for Williams, who are slowly improving,
I think basically by just hacksawing bits off the car and getting close to the minimum weight,
so they have free time, which they're still working on,
but I think it's a disappointing performance so far this year,
but it's slowly improving.
Let's move on to Alpine.
Yeah, so Alpine, after a couple of races where Franka Colopinto has been absolutely the better of the two Alpine drivers,
it was Gazzley's turn to completely turn that around.
Colopinto had a pretty anonymous weekend, anonymous?
Anonymous?
Anonymous.
Anonymous.
Yeah, had a weekend where he made no impression.
I think he made an impression on the wall actually in first practice,
but it wasn't a great weekend, it wasn't a bad weekend for Colopinto,
it just wasn't anything special, and he had been looking pretty good,
it's a unique circuit in Monaco, I don't think he's ever been in F1 car before.
I think all his part season started after Monaco,
so I think this was his first Monaco.
Did Monaco last year come in?
When did they sack?
Was it his first race?
Come in when they got rid of doing last year,
because I'm five, anyway, it doesn't matter.
He hasn't done much.
Gazzley was great.
He managed to get the overtake done on Norris,
and then he got in Fenn, that was mostly down to Piastri,
into San Devoit, and then he sat in front of him
and just parked for Norris, for 30 laps until Norris' car broke down.
Then he carried on going forward,
getting past people who weren't there, his cars broke down,
and had problems.
The only problem was he managed to get two speeding fines,
as by the Northamptonshire Constabulary.
Do you know that his team didn't tell him?
His team had not told him he had the fines, the penalties.
Oh really?
So he had a 10 second penalty in the race,
which is why he was so distraught when he found out he wasn't on the podium.
He didn't know until after the race.
They felt that was the best way to motivate him.
But yeah, so he wasn't sitting there knowing he wasn't in third.
He thought he was in third until he crossed the line.
So basically, he was very upset.
What that has done is brought into focus
this very strange situation with the pit lane.
One of the main reasons for this problem with the timing of the pit stops
is they've slightly changed the pit entry this year into Monaco
because they've added the two cars or the Cadillac cars.
So it's made the entry different from how it has been before.
This is why we haven't had this problem historically.
And it comes in on a curve.
Now, they don't do the speed trap effectively
by the way you often see it tracks with a man with a gun,
you know, a little radar gun, ping, how fast you're going.
It's all done by time over distance.
So they say, right, if you go from point A to point B,
in X seconds you've done a certain speed.
That's fine.
That's fine unless point A and point B are on a curve.
So if you go point A and point B on a curve
and you measure it round the curve,
if you don't go round the curve because you can cut across the middle of it,
you've done less meters.
Still at 60 kilometers an hour, but the two bits of timing
think, oh no, it's 60.1 or 60.4.
So the drivers, actually what drivers are supposed to do,
which is minimize the length of the track,
got themselves pinged and that's why everyone was getting,
well, some people were getting pinged for tiny amounts
because they, and again, the big thing really is why,
when they realized it, why the penalties weren't rescinded,
because they knew the cars weren't in this bit, but anyway.
Colin Pinto did do Monaco, SDS, thanks Jesse.
Did he, I wasn't quite sure.
He was brought in after Miami.
Miami, okay, so he did.
Thanks Jesse.
Well, there we are.
He didn't rubbish Carl Archer.
I don't understand, well there's a lot of things I don't understand,
but so you're saying they don't have micro sectors in the pit lane.
No, they have a couple of, no, there's three of them.
There's three or four measuring points, absolutely.
But those, if a measuring point is on a corner
and you take the arc of the corner to the distance
and someone cuts across that, still legally,
they're going, they have made a shorter point.
Basically it depends where you've taken the measurement,
how far away from the wall on the right hand side.
Yeah, and it depends how much the curve you've taken
as part of the measurement, the distance,
when in fact the straight line is shorter.
And that's what it was.
So it wasn't anything to do with them extending the pit lane for cut-aluck?
Yes, well, that's changed the entry, the entry now has more of a curve.
There you go.
And so that's now got more of a curve which you can cut
if you're a proper racing driver, because that's what you do.
But unfortunately the sensors still go,
well that should be 51.3 metres,
but you're only travelling 50.5 or 50.6,
and that's enough to make your speed 20 miles.
So everywhere else in the world, a calculation of speed is time or the distance.
Whereas in Formula 1...
No, no, it is time over distance, but the distance wasn't finite.
If you're doing a time over...
If you've got an absolutely straight pit lane,
time over distance is fine.
If you've got a curve on it, it's not.
Not if you take the middle to the middle.
To be absolutely fair, you'd have to take the inside to the inside.
That's what the problem is.
But they take the middle to middle.
You have to take the shortest distance that can possibly be taken illegally.
They take the middle to the middle.
I think that's where their sensors are anyway for other things.
Anyway, I assume that what will happen is,
Alpine who've got this penalty,
trying to overturn these two penalties at Gazzley,
thinks being heard tomorrow,
everyone thinks that what will happen is that they will be told,
we're really sorry and we'll make sure it doesn't happen again,
and there'll be remedial things put into make sure it doesn't happen again.
But they won't get that place back.
It's very unlikely.
There's been a red flag in this event.
It's going to be resumed.
In fact, it's just resumed again with 13 minutes and 20 to go.
Daniel Frost for Race GP or R Race GP,
ahead of 23 events racing.
Giovanni Mascur, 23 events is one of the teams actually I guess,
drives for when Alex turns up, Alex Quinn turns up there on.
Then DKI is the best of the pro-arms,
and the best of the GTE3s, United Autosport.
And Mikael Berch or Michael Birch is the best of that,
from High Class Racing and EF Corsa,
and High Class Racing again,
those are the, no, High Class Racing and EF Corsa,
and he's fourth, Kessel Racing,
which is the fabulously named Lorenzo Ferdinando in Nocenti.
You got a mini?
Well, I like those in Nocenti minis, always did.
You're listening to Midday Motorsport,
Nick and John in the Ford Racing Global Broadcast Centre,
91.2 FM around the circuits, RS1 around the world,
and on Studio Vision as well.
And where do we find Studio Vision, if people want to tune in?
It's on YouTube.
On YouTube?
It's actually in the aptly named,
Raising Him On Studio Vision by Cartoon Live TV site.
I change it for the week, so if you search Raising Him On Studio Vision,
you will find it.
Okay, very good.
It comes straight to it, and you get to see me and John
from various different angles, which sounds very exciting.
Okay.
Is there a beer angle?
No.
Surprisingly no.
The reason for that is that...
Is there one of those helms in?
I could do one.
It's interesting, there's things you can do,
but you're just not allowed to, because of the various copyrights.
Yeah, we can't do rear angles,
because then you'd see the screens.
So we have to do it.
Over the shoulder shot.
What about a pedal view?
It's quite dark down there, and you basically see the base of a television.
Yes.
Very nice, Bers.
Shall we move on to the rest of the team by team?
Because there was one team, and only one team,
that had both cars in the points, and that was RB.
Racing balls, yes.
They managed to get both of their rebel powertrain engines to work properly.
No problem at all with either of them.
It wasn't a car that didn't start, or a very upset Frenchman,
for goodness' sake, how many laps there.
It's not in a minute as well.
Liam Lawson actually did a very good job the whole weekend,
looked slightly above Arvid Limblad for his performance.
But at the end of the day, he would have scored points without all the mucking about
that happened and the penalties, but probably in eighth or ninth,
which is a good result for racing balls at Monaco.
Limblad definitely benefited from the chaos,
because he was running down outside the points,
but of course he managed to get past the Williams,
which gave him a bit of a trap position over some of the other cars behind him,
not over the Williams, oddly.
And then of course the restart, he managed to move forward.
So it was just a really good weekend for racing balls.
They got a hat full of points, 18 points,
which in the midfield is Christmas comes early.
And they could be very, very happy with what they did,
because they had two cars reliably handling well into the points.
And I don't think they actually had any damage either that weekend, which is even better.
McLaren are next.
Well, McLaren, I think, will come out of this weekend feeling thoroughly disappointed,
because they were so far off the pace of the other teams.
They were much slower than the other three top teams.
If you look to what was happening in the race,
when Piascia, I think, was in fourth or fifth,
he was, no, he was fifth, because he was behind Hajar and Russell.
When Hajar was having all his problems and losing three seconds a lap to the leaders,
Piascia wasn't catching him up, about half a second.
And the impassionate, he was, Piascia's pace was that of a slightly hobbled red-ball racing car
rather than completely hobbled red-ball racing car.
Norris Scott stuck behind Gowse, he couldn't get past him,
then slowly his engine disappeared up his backside,
and he stopped again with more problems.
He's had, I think, three retirement engine problems now.
And as we know, given the fact that Kimmianthine has finished every race,
and Russell's finished all by one, it's not,
and in fact, most of the Williams finished most of the time,
it's not the red-ball, sorry, it's not the Mercedes powertrain, it's the problem,
it's often the installation issues.
So there's a lot of work that Mattara needs to do about working how to get that engine
integrated properly into the car.
I mean, it's pretty obvious realistically that they're not going to be retaining either their championships this year,
so they need users that are learning year and a building year for next year.
The car's not awful, by any means, but it just certainly wasn't suited to these streets of Monaco.
I think a fourth place was a good result,
considering they managed to get that because everyone else was dropping out around them.
Will the win this weekend?
No.
Well, the might, because Sac won't be there, because Sac will be here.
The tent will win when Sac's not there.
Sac wasn't there in Canada, they didn't win.
It was in India.
That's right, he was, yeah.
And also, Bartholomew's not that far away, he could beat both.
Yes, true.
No, that is true.
I know you say run Friday night.
To fly out for the afternoons, yeah, fly out for the race, you'll see the start here.
You get a little private jet, hop over to Bartholomew.
Bartholomew.
What's the rate?
And then maybe whiz back for the end here.
Could do.
Depends on where the cars are.
That's how they're doing as well.
Red Bull the next.
Yeah, I mean Red Bull, did the sort of thing that Red Bull were doing a lot last year, where they were all at sea,
and then somebody sat in the simulator over none.
I'm not quite sure who is this, especially in Boine, I don't think it was him this weekend, because he would have been at Test Day.
Good boy.
Basically, bashed about for hours to try and work out a decent setup overnight.
They tried that on Saturday, it didn't really work, and then somebody else decided we'll try this one instead,
and it transformed the car, and suddenly, you know, Versapen was there or there about, so Pol Hadjar was not where you'd expect a first year Red Bull driver to be.
Well, as you wouldn't expect me back at the back, this one's actually quite a good one, so it was actually quite close to Versapen.
A couple of tents off, and it was great, everything was looking fantastic, and we all quite were,
well, this is quite an interesting race, you know, the young gun against the old Stagia, it worked most well.
Actually, it's not fair to say, because the old Stagia was in third, that was Hamilton's, what was the middle one,
the young Stagia, perhaps, from Versapen?
The middle child.
The middle child, yes, the Petuland middle child.
Oh, Pott.
You know, and yes, it was Alfie Go's, and...
Petuland.
Alfie goes, and he doesn't go, and we were completely, I mean, I was watching it on record with Joe,
and we both went, oh, because it would have been fun to have Max in the race, but he was out.
I was surprised, he was surprisingly unmonly.
I kind of thought, thought it would be an absolute, you know, pram-toy-road interface, but there wasn't, it was like,
oh, what can you do?
Well, that was said for another driver, which I haven't talked about yet.
He was slightly positive, and everything else, and I was like, oh, okay.
So perhaps he's raining back on, that I'm going to retire because I don't like it anymore,
situation, or perhaps he's just waiting for a bigger chance to be mony later.
Anyway, it's just really bad luck after a good performance this Saturday.
Isaac Hagar has now become the most moniest driver ever on Team Red Bull.
Oh, do you think that Red Bull have a specific amount of mourning that they're allowed,
and Hagar basically used it all up?
I think he got the wrong... I mean, basically, he was, I think Hagar was a bit unlucky,
that the way he expressed himself in his second language sounds more angst than it needs to.
I don't think it's quite that angst.
I think he's trying to make a point in his second language in a noisy environment.
It sounds very aggy, when he probably is just trying to get his point over.
However, listening to it, he does sound like a petulant child, and he does sound like...
Frankly, he doesn't need his engine remapped, he's a slap, but they...
Despite, again, all this moaning, and it's not the first time he's in a Red Bull run out of power,
but still a good result, and give you Danny Ricciardo seven or eight years ago.
Obviously, benefiting from some other misfortune, he got the thing on the podium,
and kept the podium after a potential problem with a red flag infringement,
which was when Red Bull tried to change something, you're not allowed to change it with the red flags,
and then unchanged it.
So they put it back, yes.
And unchanged it, well, it's fair enough.
That was interesting.
Well, you know, it's, you know, not like that, you're kind of going whatever.
They managed to get the third place, and, yeah, it will be very interesting how Red Bull goes this weekend
at the ultimate aerodynamic track.
I feel they're going me a lot closer, but they do have a little bit of an increase here,
as we know with the engine, it's still not running.
Even though, of course, I don't think we're going to discuss this later,
there is, of course, the best engine in F1, according to the FIA.
Is it?
Yeah.
Okay.
Moving on.
Yuki Sennodra, apparently, is the...
What's he doing with the test driver?
I can't imagine it was him.
There was another young Japanese driver whose name I've forgotten,
and he is Iyuma Iwasa.
So it could be him.
I've just seen that the Red Bull Academy has signed someone called Rocco Coronel.
Yep.
Is that Tom's brother?
Or...
Or Tim's son, yeah, Tim or Tom's son.
You know what, they've signed him, they're going to under-sign him again.
They're going to sign him again, then.
Absolutely.
That's not one for the Twitter fans of old.
It's Friarie next.
Well, Friarie were definitely going to win this race.
This is the one they were definitely going to win, no issue whatsoever.
They're going to definitely win it, and on Friday, they were definitely going to win it.
I think in fairness, they did what they could do.
They couldn't...
Mercedes-Benz aced it, and they've got the best car.
It's a story we were telling from the years of 2014 to 2020.
They have the best car, and for once, they actually had a car which worked at Monaco,
which often has been the Achilles heel, actually, Mercedes during the season.
Now, I'm just going to feel really chuffed.
I mean, let's be honest, he's now had two seconds in a row.
He absolutely, comprehensively beat Charles Leclerc in his own backyard,
the track that Charles is supposed to be bringing out.
People are saying things like, oh, but Charles is on a really fast lap.
He'll be through at the wall.
Doesn't matter.
I could be really, really fast down the straight, and then just hit the wall.
It's not difficult.
The point about it is you have to get round the lap for it to count.
It's not what it is.
Yeah, it's amazing.
It's quite interesting because a lot of people don't seem to understand that.
Apparently, being fast in sector one and throwing in the wall is a really big achievement, apparently.
I think that's a true sports correlation as well.
I think we'll see some of that at Le Mans.
Leclerc had another one of his weekends where things just didn't go right,
and he got round the dial and spiral.
He blamed the brakes and everything else for his tripping the wall,
which I think there's more cold tyres in the fact the track was breaking out,
but he's had a right old hump with the brakes.
But you know where this comes from, where him blaming the brakes comes from.
Because Lewis has changed.
Lewis has given it massive mind games.
No, it's because Lewis isn't using Brembo anymore.
He's using carbon industries discs, which he has been for a while.
I don't know what parts of carbon this is used.
Everyone's using Brembo calipers.
They're always using Brembo calipers.
I think they're almost a standard fitment in F1 now, the Brembo calipers.
He's changed the discs to carbon industry.
The interview that Shalah Clare did was interesting,
because he said he didn't want to see anything about them,
and then said everything about them.
Well, that says.
Which is good.
So Lewis does appear, we are getting the real Lewis after a couple of really quite poor years.
The last year with Mercedes in the first year with Ferrari,
we're always saying we've lost it.
You know, he seems to like these new cars.
He seems to be revitalised.
Do you think also the team, he's standing within the team,
and his relationship with the team.
Whether it's true or not, he feels he has more input in what's going on.
The car he had last year was the last year, the previous regulations,
the machine was completely developed around,
probably around Carlos Sainz and more importantly, Shalah Clare.
Not the Lewis.
He didn't like those sort of cars anyway.
At least the Mercedes would have been designed around him not liking it,
and he didn't like it.
So this car, I think, has been started from a clean sheet of paper,
and I think they've taken input from a seven-time world champion,
because even you think he's a little bit past it.
You know, he wasn't past it, his brain isn't past it, his ideas aren't past it.
He's worked with the best team in, what was the best team in Formula One
for many years and won seven more championships,
so he knows what he's talking about,
even if he can't always access the nth degree anymore.
But in a race situation, he's still very, very good,
and he managed to do the qualifying very well.
So if you're a Lewis fan, it's nice to see him back,
and I think it's nice that his swan song is not going to be like Michael Schumacher's,
which was a concert level disappointment.
This one, at least, has got some high points in it.
And finally, Mercedes.
Yes, a tale of two cars, a tale of woe and a tale of joy.
Kimi Antonelli won his fifth race, he's now won five races in his career,
George Russell's won six, so he could equal George Russell's win ratio after many years.
Antonelli has, well, he's just exploded, it's amazing what he's managed to do.
Everyone's still trying to talk him down, but...
You can't say it's a flash of the pan, you can't say he's had a lot of luck.
Five on the bounce.
He stuck it on pole, which was brilliant.
You could argue that, you know, he can't argue that he stuck it on pole, it was brilliant.
He went off, he made two perfect starts, which has been a problem.
He completely had the pace over the Ferrari, that's nothing about,
I'm not saying anything about Lewis, basically he drove that Mercedes to the level that Mercedes can drive,
which is way quicker than the Ferrari could go.
How far ahead was he before that red flag?
He was about 18 seconds or something.
Yeah, but plus he had the penalty as well at that point.
He was cruising, he was setting a faster lap, he was doing a pace that Alton couldn't do,
especially because the Ferrari is a little bit more tricky on its tyres.
But Antonelli drove that Mercedes perfectly, and you can say really, you sit there going,
well, I don't know, someone who had a very patchy first season,
had a terrible period this time last year, right up through to past the British Grand Prix.
It's the kids, they've got the talent, suddenly they get it, you know, and...
And he's got it.
He's got it.
So the biggest problem is he's got it, and George Russell, who was, of course, the champion-elect,
going into the season, obviously he had very much, he has had bad luck,
however he would still be behind.
He had bad luck last weekend at, in Canada, two weekends ago in Canada,
and he had bad luck here because basically, yes, he picked up a speeding penalty,
but we've already said those speeding penalties are ridiculous.
And then he ended up with a massive penalty because the team of Sadies loused up doing his five-second stop,
because the reason being was, of course, it came in through the safety car,
they double stacked, and they all just went into double stacked mode.
Yeah, let's get it done, go on.
People who knew what was going on was the right front tyre change tube.
Yeah, it was like that, and then they went for it, and that was it.
So, and I'm not quite sure what normally, if you get it wrong, you then get a ten-second penalty,
for some reason you've got a driver, I think I might have missed something about why that became a drive-through,
but after the second restart, the drive-through put him to the back of the grid and he got no points at all.
Now, realistically, that is bad luck, but he wasn't going to finish higher than, or merit,
he wasn't going to finish higher than fourth, and that is, and a long way behind, and never doing the lap times,
and that's the worry.
You know, bad luck is bad luck, and he did have some bad luck, and he's, yeah,
he's 60-something points behind, and absolutely, he's had 35 points of bad luck.
But, yeah, that's then, then's the brakes, and, you know, and George is coming now to the traditional run of European tracks,
this is where Kimming had problems last year, this is where George needs to assert himself,
and I realize that, you know, he's doing, you know, first against the second,
it's going to take him a long time to catch up those points, but, time has to be turned.
You know, he hasn't become a bad driver overnight, the problem is, he does appear to have,
we have, what we now appear to have our next-generation talent, and we have three,
which means we'll have three generations, well, perhaps four because Alonso being a bit different one from,
you have Alonso, then you have Hamilton, Verstappen, and now you have Antenna,
it has four-generation talents at once, because people are able to stay around so long.
And that, and that was the Grand Prix.
And that was, you know, Damon's team by team review of the Grand Prix, and this weekend at Barcelona,
we're going to see some new names in some, or some different names in some Formula One cars,
because Luke Browning is going to be testing the Williams, Paul Aver,
he's going to be testing the Audi, and McLaren is going to have Leonardo Funnaroli in it for food practice one.
Our Formula Two champion, Rainy.
Rainy, yes.
Why are so many teams picking Barcelona to do this?
Well, because they did a test there, and people have got their eye in for the track,
and the track they all really know, I assume.
Also, the other, the advantage is you can get, if you want to do some aerodynamic testing in FB1,
you can stick on some massive brakes, and anybody can drive the car at 106km's at the steady state,
and your mails will get your test drives into that.
Yep.
Let's do some sports kind of news.
Yeah, would you like to start?
I would like to start with 2027.
Yeah.
And Imza in 2027.
Yeah.
Specifically, which we now know won't have a genesis in it.
I don't.
Go on, so on.
Do you want to comment on that?
I don't want to let me finish the sentence.
No, no, no, finish the sentence.
That's why I stopped.
I thought you had finished.
And won't have a hypercar from AO Racing.
Right.
So, I don't think it was ever going to have a genesis, if truth be told.
So, I'm not sure that that is the breaking news that everybody says it is.
They had mooted 2028 in the past, but they had originally said 2027.
Yeah, it was always going to be dependent on what happened this year in the WEC.
And I think they know they've got work to do.
I was with Luke Donkvalka actually just before the show started.
And he actually gave me a walk around the car explaining the concepts and some other things.
Which, by the way, we wouldn't have been able to do with the camera because we're not allowed to look at the engine and the engine installation.
Well, still.
And he described some of the bits that actually don't want people to see.
So, we've kind of had a bit of an exclusive there.
Is that performative?
Because no one else is going to use their 3.2-litre V8.
No, no, no.
It's more about how they've installed it and where the ancillaries are and things like that.
It's really, very clever.
Positioning the centre of gravity rotation.
All of that, Tim.
Exactly.
So, and also, they've got a big announcement coming on Friday, which is to do with another racing car.
The gossip would be that it was a GT3 car.
And having had, well, they're going to build one.
Okay, they're going to build a sports coupé, aren't they?
Well, or sports saloon.
I, as you know, have some experience of building a racing car, not just me,
of being in a project where we built a racing car to exploit the regulations and then backwards engineers into a road car.
That was the Slane S7R, Wellingbrook Supercar.
Wellingbrook Supercar.
And basically Ford did the same thing when they revived the Ford GT again for the racing here.
So, if I tell you that we're not going to play that interview until after the Rotolabong race on Friday,
by which time the press conference will have happened.
But you've done the interview.
I've done the interview.
Oh, hello.
Yeah.
I'm thinking how's my Ford this big as well, doesn't it?
It happens at one o'clock on Friday.
So, when Rotolabong finishes.
I come finish with someone who finishes at 12.20.
That's why I was told to leave a gap after the Rotolabong race before the qualifying review at one.
Ah, now.
That's right.
Right.
There you go.
It's all coming clear.
Okay.
So, that's coming up.
There's a second interview with Luke Donkowolka that I did on him more broadly, which was that day.
That's 10 plus eight at Le Mans time today.
Oh, brilliant.
That's if you were at all interested in the science of design, of car design and the disruptive nature that car designers can be if given enough autonomy and climbing high enough in a company like Luke has done.
He's had a tremendous career.
We talk about his career a lot and he's such an enthusiast for motor racing.
I bounded back down from talking to him again.
I've never met him before today.
I talked to him down the line for this interview tonight and I bounded back down.
It is impossible to not be enthused when you talk to him.
And between him and Cyril Abidaboo, Abidaboo I described as a world wind of positivity.
He's just incredible.
You get swept up.
So anyway, back to the story.
I'm not sure it's a massive shock that they won't be there next year.
I think they've got work to do.
They know they've got work to do this year.
This is very much a learning year.
This is not going to be a 12 or possibly even three year project for Genesis Magma racing.
I feel that Luke Donkvolder, the Chief Creative Officer, has been tasked with building history,
building a dynastic approach to motorsport.
You don't do that by coming in for three years and going away.
I don't think it's bad news for the American series and John Dunan because Genesis is the second-biggest market outside of Korea.
He's the United States, so they will want to be there.
But I think they want to get WAC and LeMond on the right track and you can understand why that is.
And by the way, the same for Ford.
Ford won't be doing a dual program next year and neither will McLaren.
They'll be concentrating on WAC and LeMond.
And when and if McLaren go and when and if Ford go, I think there's two slightly different stories there.
McLaren get their coverage in the States by how many grand prix the States got now?
Three.
Three.
So that's McLaren's coverage in the States.
And IndyCar as well.
Yes, very good point.
Okay, so that's AO, not getting an LMH car.
Did they want one?
This is something that Jeanette was talking about last year and said maybe in 2027.
But at the weekend, I think, possibly this week, he said he'd rather do it in 2030.
And that makes a lot of sense as well.
Because that's when new regulations come out.
Yes.
Oh, they'll extend these ones.
Perhaps.
You can't tell 14 manufacturers will check your stuff all obsolete, can you?
Well, and particularly when it's already 2026.
And next year, you've got two manufacturers coming in for their first year who now apparently may only have 27, 28 and 29 to amortize their investment.
I suspect you might be right.
We've also got to bring in a new LMP2.
What's the rules about historic teams who've been there getting a completely new car?
Because they aren't allowed to.
Because Persia want to build a completely new car, they're not allowed to, are they?
They'd have to re-homologate the car.
But I thought they couldn't build a completely new car.
That was against the rules.
That is, they got some waivers when they did the aerodynamic redesign with taking the rear wing off the car.
And those cars will continue.
And so that's, I mean, that's that really.
If they ended with a different entity though, they could come in with a new car, even if it was the same piece.
They could be Citroen, couldn't they? They could be Citroen or Maserati.
If you listened to our chat with Andy Cotton, you will have heard that that's what might happen with BYD.
Can we just break away from that for a second?
Because we've got Colin Quain in the studio.
Hot foot, presumably, from the free practice from Road to Le Mans. Hello Colin.
Hello. It's good to be here on Road to Le Mans.
Did you take part in that session? I saw one of the teams that I know, your driver was out there.
Yeah, yeah, no, I just had to spread my way over here.
Got quite delayed off of an accident in the last session.
And yeah, I did the first in and my teammate Giovanni Mascio finished out the session in it. Quite good. P2, I believe.
Yes, you are. P2 RS or Race GP done, but frost with the top time in LNP3, then DKI engineer and just behind you.
Brutal Fish by Campos. Great name for a team by the way.
I've seen that Brutal Fish is probably some sort of subset of weird fish.
But it's a designer clothing brand of some sort.
I'm getting a shrewd.
If we're looking around everyone here, I have no idea.
Tell me a little bit about your season so far, Colin.
If you don't mind, you wear very proudly the stars and stripes on your race suit.
So what's an American doing over here in Europe racing when you could be racing in England?
Yeah, well I'm racing in both the American series in Super Traffio, North America, Lamborghini and also here in Europe in the Michelin Le Mans Cup.
So yeah, it's been quite a couple hectic few years for me coming from single-seaters over in England and making the transition over to America in sports car racing in the Lamborghini Super Traffio Championship.
And then, yeah, so this year had a great opportunity to go out and test with 23 events racing and went quite well.
I wasn't really expecting to be racing here this year. It was quite last minute.
And no, the opportunity came about and had to adapt quite quickly.
And here I am today. We have had a great season so far. Two rounds.
23 events. Am I right in saying that that is a collaboration with Amato Ferrari, who is AF Corsa, looking for new talent?
Because I notice you've got the tricolore colors on the car, which kind of when I saw the car, that because it's a French team, 23 events.
And I got very, very confused about my country's flags. And then I looked you up and I thought, he's not Italian, is he?
No, he's Italian. And I didn't think that you had any Italian heritage from what I would find on Drive a Day at the base.
So this is kind of a junior squad, a talent finding and proving squad for AF Corsa. Is that how it works?
I would say that's absolutely how it works. And no, I'm so grateful for AF Corsa, Amato, knowing him now and putting me in this position this year with this incredible team.
It's been such a pleasure and an honor.
What's the ultimate goal? What do you want?
Hopefully, be racing in the 24 and sometime soon.
Have you put a timeframe on yourself for that? Or is that a bit dangerous?
I think I wouldn't say a bit dangerous. Anything can happen in motorsport, opportunities arise anywhere.
And I think just doing the best I can this year and just keeping up what I'm doing with the future holds.
How does driving an LMP3 car compare with a Super Trofeo car, which is probably with respect to all the other major manufacturers who have single manufacturer series,
that's probably the most powerful. And I'm pretty certain it is the fastest in a straight line because it's not got a huge amount of air roll.
Faster than GT3 cars actually, in a straight line.
How does that compare the jumping out of the Super Trofeo car into a downforce much more direct at the time?
Yeah, I mean, it's not in day, honestly. Completely different driving style. The Super Trofeo, it just requires total commitment in a strange but very rewarding way compared to, I would say, any other car I've driven.
Coming from Formula cars, do you think that will make it into the brochure for Super Trofeo? Strange but very rewarding.
No, I would say coming from single-seaters that was kind of the way for me in terms of evaluating that car, the Super Trofeo.
And then coming into the LMP3, obviously it's a lot heavier. It definitely has a bit more power than what I drove in England, GB3.
But the same, I would say, very similar in terms of, well, pretty much the precision you have to have with the car compared to a GT car.
And I think having that experience in single-seaters definitely made me a little bit more adaptable in this car transitioning from the Super Trofeo to this.
I've left this to the end because this doesn't define you at all, which is laudable. But you had some quite serious health problems when you were younger.
You were born with a congenital heart problem. We've had footballers in the UK with Hall in the heart, Acer Hartford, a man's city player many years ago when I was coming through.
And you've had to have a number of medical procedures. How did that affect your early career? Did it affect your early career?
Well, sure. I would say it did. I was born with a congenital heart defect, undergone three open heart surgeries by the time I was three and numerous others after.
But I would say I had to work a little bit harder, had to change up my workout routine, and that could handle my heart condition.
And here I am today, living life to the fullest.
And it sounds a tough thing to say. You've got to go through your medicals, you've got to do all that. Is it fixed?
Oh, they replumbed me.
So you've had the tune of, you've had the bigger turbo for all of it, with a big plunger, tweaked up a bit.
And you live a normal life and you look at it, it's a fiddle, and you've got a motorway.
Absolutely. And I wouldn't say 100% fixed, obviously. Still have the condition. But I'm able to compete in MERSport at a very high level.
Good for you.
Yeah, I'm very grateful for it.
As I said, I didn't want to late with that, but it's part of your story. And it's yours, the grit, I think, that you've had. Colin, thanks for coming in.
Thank you very much.
And it's good to look for the rest of the weekend. We'll be covering the race. Three hour race on Friday. First time we've had a three hour race.
So what's the tactics there? Do you just do half the race each? Is it a stint, a stint and a stint?
We'll figure it out, but yeah, it's a 75 minute minimum driver. So yeah, we'll figure it out as we go along.
75 minutes is more than a fuel stint.
It's mandated three stops.
You can have a mandate of three stops. And yeah, we'll see how it goes.
I mean, I don't mind a three hour race. I did a four hour NLS race last year to get my pee permit around the North Shlife.
So yeah, no, not bad. And Lamar, what an incredible circuit to be racing at. It's a true honor to be here.
I know that there's not many opportunities for a driver to be racing around here.
So, and especially in the main, the second main race to the 24th full circuit.
That's the key. Colin Queen is a name that you need to put in the back of your mind. Colin, thank you very much indeed for joining us here on Midweek Motorsports.
Still to come, we have all of the afternoon action. Next up, more driver interviews as we head into the second hour.
Half time and while we swap ends, here's what's coming up.
So, moving into hour number two. I was just going to say just after nine o'clock, but of course it's not.
It's just after one o'clock here in Central Europe in the summertime.
It is nine o'clock somewhere. Get the tequila out. That'll make the afternoon interesting.
Still to come, more sports car news. Will have more of your comments please.
Colin Queen, a nice young man. On aspect your team and get them fired in.
Hello to Dave Alcock who's listening in live.
We'll start hour number two with an interview that I did yesterday with another driver who's coming in to endurance racing.
And then we'll have an APR racing. Jake Hughes will be our big interview here on Midweek Motorsports.
Getting set for this year's Le Mans 24 hours.
2026 is the 94th edition.
And welcome to CrowdStrike APR's effort for Jake Hughes. How are you doing fella? And how did test dig up?
Well actually I know how test did went. Shall we just talk about the afternoon and leave the morning out?
No, I have sorry, I have got to ask you about what went on towards the end of that morning session.
You were just coming out of the pits.
Yeah, I mean for sure the afternoon I would say was better than the morning.
It was just one of those very unfortunate things. I came out of the pits on new cold tyres.
I had quite a big snap on cold tyres. Unfortunately the tow to collected me as I was gathering it back up.
You'd literally popped out of the pit lane two corners before that. This was at the Dunlop chicane underneath the Goodyear bridge.
I know that's confusing but that is the correct nomenclature. So you hadn't even got into your lap at this point?
No, exactly. I was cruising, just went through the right of Dunlop chicane, got a big snap.
Full correction as I was gathering it back up. The tow to nothing he could have done. He was completely innocent in it.
I think he was a little bit blinded by the he was right behind the gearbox. The Cadillac, one of the Cadillacs.
I don't think he saw me in a 45 degree angle and hit the front right of the car.
As I said, nothing he could have done. It was one of those things if it happens two seconds before or after,
I just collect a slide, carry on, no spin, no yellow flag, no one talks about it.
So it was one of those racing things, unfortunately.
Guys did great work during the lunch break, got back out in the afternoon.
Tit that out of the equation. How had the morning session gone and then did you lose any time in the afternoon?
And did you pretty much get through the tick list of things to do in terms of the two three-hour sessions?
Yeah, I mean to be fair, the damage we got away with it with the damage, it wasn't that big at all.
I think it took the guys maybe 30 minutes to fix. It was pretty much nothing. I think the tow to came off a little bit worse.
So we were ready to go pretty much two hours before the start of the afternoon session.
We obviously lost, I think it was around 30, 40 minutes of the morning, so roughly 10 laps or something like that that I was planning to do.
And the afternoon went smoothly. We got through the run plan as intended.
We found it a little bit tricky, I would say, because obviously I didn't drive in the morning,
but my two teammates, Michael and Enzo, were finding it a bit tricky with the car.
We had quite an oversteery car, let's say, and we spent most of the afternoon sort of dialing that back
and bringing it more towards a bit of a neutral car, which by the end of the afternoon session we definitely managed to do.
And yeah, I would say the last run I was feeling very comfortable with it.
This is a strange place in many ways. It's a great place. Don't get me wrong.
When I say strange, I mean difficult. I mean challenging.
But it is unlike anything else that we got a race on in the World Endurance Championship in the European Le Mans series, in IMSA.
And you can't just come here and test. And I know you can do sims, and I know how good sims are,
but there really isn't here, I think, of all places. There's nothing like being out on the track.
I mean, absolutely not. I watch as any racing driver that hasn't done Le Mans,
who's probably done it, I've watched Le Mans every single year, probably more than half the race at least.
And honestly, on TV it looks, I don't want to say simple, the track, but it looks, you know, it's a straight corner,
a straight corner kind of vibe. You get to Porsche curves and obviously there's a sequence of corners.
But it looks quite a simple track to learn on TV. And then you get here, and what the TV doesn't show you,
what on-bores doesn't show you is the bumps, is the curves, is the crown in the road down Mulsanne straight.
You know, there's little things like that that you cannot picture on TV.
And especially when you're in like an Olympia 2 car, you know, I had numerous occasions yesterday where I was overtaking a GT traffic
whilst being overtaken by a hypercar and you find yourself in the middle of the road where the crown of the road is
and the front of the car is bottoming and touching. And these are all the little things that you can't experience until you get here.
And so yesterday was definitely an eye-opener in that sense. I still felt like I got onto it quite quickly.
You know, it's what I've done for the most years now, getting used to new cars, so a new track.
So I found that fairly comfortable, but yeah, it still felt like I needed a few laps.
A friend of mine who shall remain nameless, or that I protect the guilty in this case, said to me when he was about to come to Le Mans
many years ago now, actually, and he said, I don't know what you guys going up about Le Mans and all of this.
I understand the history, but I've looked at the track and on paper it looks pretty simple.
And I said to him, you don't miss it on paper, mate. You don't drive it on paper.
Those little nuances that you're talking about, even in a road car, you get a bit more idea if you drive around it
or you do the track walk, I know a lot of people cycle around there.
But even year on year, some of the kerbs changed. There's been a bit of resurfacing this year from the first chicane down to Moulzane.
There's a couple of patches, I noticed at Arnaige on the acceleration zone through the centre of the corner.
All those things just make a difference. And the vast majority, of course, is still public road through the rest of the year.
So there's going to be an evolution of the track that is quite impressive actually over the week or so.
Particularly if it's days dry. So that means you would have had to do all your rookie bits and pieces, your tests,
go and do the simulator work. And how was that then? Because we hear about that.
It's something the ACO talk about, but the opportunity for you who've just been through it, Jack, to tell us about it,
what was it like from your point of view, was it highly experienced and skilled driver?
Was it a bit like going back to school?
A little bit of a flavour of that. But I think it's vital, though, to be honest.
So you didn't resent it at all?
No, I think obviously for maybe bronze drivers and such, they'd probably take a little bit more from it than I would,
let's say, even just from cycling around the track model. But for me as a pro, it's more for the procedural stuff.
Like safety cars and the slow zones and things like that.
That's all stuff that you know on paper, right? But it's good to get an example of it in a simulated environment
when there's literally no pressure on, there's no consequence for getting it wrong,
and you can really play around a bit and try pushing into slow zones and things like that.
The safety car procedure is actually quite an interesting one because it's unlike anything else, right?
And on paper it's quite simple, but you can get it wrong.
And even for a pro driver, whilst we'd like to think we're always perfect,
as I saw yesterday morning of a little snap on cold tyres, we never are fully perfect.
And so it's nice just to get that in the back of the brain on the simulator before you come here for real.
And the other thing is that this is a big circuit. Can you get radio communications all the way around, by the way?
That's a question I haven't asked people for quite a while.
Yeah, pretty much. There's a small dead spot, I wouldn't say dead spot patchy spot around Morsan.
Yeah, which is the first one that's put out the way, yeah.
Yeah, exactly. And you would expect that to a degree, I suppose, but even there you can still understand what the engineer's saying.
Right, so you can get a bit of help if slow zones are coming out, if safety cars are coming out,
if they're about to be withdrawn, but ultimately getting into the slow zones is one thing,
and most people get that right. Where I always think this time to be made up is coming out of the slow zones.
You've got to be really honoured.
Yeah, exactly. I think it's a little bit of what you see on the Nurburgring, right, sometimes in terms of...
Yes, that's right.
I think you can get a little bit trigger happy when you would launch out the slow zone.
You can see it, at least when I tried it on the simulator, I haven't experienced it yet on the real track,
but you can see the green flag and you have like 78 seconds probably on the 80kmh to prepare for that imaginary line.
And you know, you can imagine a certain environment where you're racing for a position,
and maybe you're the car ahead and there's a car behind that's pulling out a little bit and showing the nose,
and it's a mental sort of race that you can't give anything, but you also cannot get a penalty.
So yeah, there's a definite skill to that.
Safety cars, you mentioned, three safety cars, then we get everybody together and then we go back green.
I think that's a much better way than we used to do it before.
It's actually what many years ago one of our listeners suggested it took the ACO a little while to get on to it,
to combine those three, so you didn't...
Back in the... I was going to say the olden days, that's not that far back, I mean I do go along where back, but it's not that far back.
I remember watching it.
Alright, alright, I'm sure, yes, oh yes, I was, I was in short trousers at school, yes, you can leave that out as well.
Well, it would effectively, you would get three races in the different classes, and it is so hard to make up time here.
You're in a category where everybody has the same equipment, where everybody has the same performance potential.
I accept the cars still have to be set up, but there are far fewer variables than see it in a GT class with two cars or three cars of each manufacturer
of a hypercar category, where we've got 18 cars from nine different, eight from manufacturers out there.
Is that a joy for you as a competitive driver, that closeness of competition, or is it a complete pain, because it means you cannot afford a mistake?
I mean, to be honest, I haven't experienced BOP racing myself yet.
I mean, I've very much been in single seat as most of my career, been in Formula E for three or four years, so I'm very much used to the whole, you know,
you get given a car, make the most of it kind of thing, and that's what it is.
You know, I fully understand why we have BOP in other categories, but it is nice to race in a category like LMP2,
where you are just with your own abilities, your teammates abilities, the engineers ability, the communication between the two of you,
the group of you to get the most out of it.
So I'm very much warmed up to that, I'm very much what I know, the racing I know.
So that's not an issue for me.
I think maybe when the day comes that I race here, maybe in the GT or even a hypercar in the future, and there's a bit of BOP going on,
that's something I'll have to learn.
How does the Oracle Gibson, the ABR car compare to what you were driving in Formula E?
Yeah, that's a Formula car, yeah, it's an open top car.
It's quite heavy because of the battery.
Is there anything that you've been able to bring over? Different mode of power, alright?
That's an obvious one.
But in terms of your driving style, is there anything that you've been able to bring over from that into the P2?
In many ways, no, to be honest.
The cars are very, very different.
The obvious stuff, you know, one's electric, one's powered by a Gibson V8, that's obvious, right?
You're not only getting used to having noise in the AES, it's a kid.
Yeah, do you know when I tested the car for the first time? It was only back in February when I drove an Alameda P2 car for the first time.
And it was in Abu Dhabi after Asia and Le Mans.
I was going down the straight and I was expecting to be doing like 320kmh by the noise of the engine.
I looked down and I was doing 250kmh.
And even when you get out of the car, your fingers tips are vibrating after doing a couple of stints in the car from the vibration.
So it's very different. The weight of the cars are not too dissimilar, let's say.
The Formula E car is very heavy.
But I would say...
But I presume the Formula E car carries its weight in a different way. There's quite a lot of the weight to lower down.
Yeah, exactly. But they drive very differently. One's on an all-weather tire, a groove tire, one's on a slick tire.
But I would say an easier way to compare them is the Formula E car relies a lot on mechanical grip
and system controls and software updates and things like that.
Very digital, in a way.
The P2 car is very much aerodynamically based. That's where it generates most of its grip.
It comes into its own in a medium to high speed corner, in a slow speed corner, it becomes quite a heavy car.
And it's obviously... Whilst it's always been updated to the RRK, it's quite an old car now.
So it's very much like... Even when I got in the car for the first time and realised I had to change brake bias with the old notch next to the wheel,
I very much used to being able to press a button on the...
I was able to change the digital brake bias, let's say, on the fly-by-wire.
So that was a funny one. But I love this car, honestly.
I keep saying to people I fall in love with endurance racing very quickly.
But even this car as well, it's so raw to drive.
Like I said, it's visceral, it vibrates, it's loud. You can push it as hard as you want.
The tire's very consistent, it has a lot of aerodynamic grip.
Are you getting the feedback that you want that you need?
From the car, absolutely. You feel everything. You feel absolutely everything.
One thing I've really been surprised at coming here at Le Mans is it's probably the track with the highest sort of arrival speeds into corners.
You go to places into corners like entry to Indy through the kink and Porsche 1.
That right-hander into Indianapolis, that is a real pin in the what-not corner.
I bet it's great in a P2 car.
It's amazing.
But you're still on the throttle there.
You enter, you turn in, you pretty much turn as you brake.
So you pretty much don't lift the throttle until it's time to brake.
And again, coming back to what I said earlier, when you watch it on TV, on TV they often have the raised camera position.
And you don't get the road height view.
Jesus, it's a fast corner.
Commitment?
Yeah, fully.
Once you start braking pretty much for the kink, you don't come off the brakes until you go through the left.
So it becomes one braking zone, especially once you're up to speed.
So the speed you're carrying to the kink in Indy has a knock-on effect for how you arrive into the left.
So you can imagine if you get that wrong or you're overpushed, the left becomes a make-or-break corner.
As you probably see in the mornings when people get tired and stuff like that.
It's something I'm definitely going to have to be sharp on.
Let's talk about the rest of the lap then, as you've talked about that.
We'll leave the Dunlop Shack here now, because you've learned that one now, and at least you know what not to do.
I've got to tell you, that's probably the only thing that we've got in common.
I got a street Aston Martin, very sideways there on a demo lap once.
And it caught my attention.
I'll tell you that. And exactly the same. Went about 45 degrees.
My passenger just giggled, thought it was all part of the fun.
But I had a bit of a sweat run.
No, no, hell no. I had it all under control.
Thank goodness for all the electronics.
So, under the new bridge, down at the old Forest S's, that's quite committed through there as well.
And that area always seems to me to be a kind of a rhythm corner.
It's a bit like ski slalom.
If you get out of Kinkilta with the first one, you're fighting it all the way through to Tert Rouge.
Yeah, absolutely. Again, like what I said earlier about not knowing the track when you're only watching on TV,
because before you brake for the S's, as you're going through the right where the green bollards are, there's a bump.
There's a big bump through there just before you brake. Didn't have a clue that was there until I got here.
So, I finally started doing my first lap.
So I go through there with a bit of steering angle and the car gets a little bit of a wiggle on this.
So that's one thing I noticed, but it's heavily banked.
You have a choice of what to do through there as well, especially through the left.
You have a choice whether to stop the car and get very early aggressive to throttle,
stay flat through the right before Tert Rouge.
Or you can carry a lot of minimum and have to change, have to make the right or tighter line and you don't get maybe get the exit.
You can play around with third or fourth gear in the P2 car there.
So there's a lot of variability in the driving through there, but very fun to drive.
Then you come down to Tert Rouge, the Red Hill as it is. Tert Rouge, not Red Head.
Oh, is it?
Yeah, no, no, you said it right. A lot of people don't.
Very important corner because it leads you onto the first part, the first long run down to what's now called the Deer Tourner, Chiquin.
Again, a corner that on telly, that on paper looks, oh yeah, that's all right. It's not at all, is it?
It's a big corner. corner, especially when you know the consequence for not pushing it is so big for lap time.
But the consequence of getting the wrongly is also so big.
So you can't afford to, you have to know what the car is doing through there.
You have to. You need to be able to feel confident to push through there. You need to feel confident because again, it's a bit like the kinking to Indy.
You kind of brake as you turn into the corner and to be honest, it's not a lot of brake pressure anyway.
So you require a lot of commitment on the steering wheel, a lot of trust in the rear axle of the car.
But if you don't have the front, you can't pick up the throttle.
So it's such a difficult corner to get right in, not just set up, but how you drive the car.
But like you say, it's again such a fun corner to drive. It's so fast.
And then you exit the corner and there's loads of traffic to deal with because through the Estes and Teteroos, it's been difficult to get past GT cars or whatnot.
There's hypercars queuing up waiting to get past. So yeah, you've got to be awake through there.
The two chicades. The guys who designed the track and the chicades, they swear to me that they are identical but mirror images of each other.
I am absolutely convinced that the second chicane is slightly tighter than the first, particularly from 8x out.
But they say it's not the case. The first one, de Atona, is right, left, right.
I always think that's a more open chicane and that you can get on the power way earlier and hammer across that exit curb.
Whereas the second one, which is left, right, left, coming onto the last part of the Molesanne Strait,
it always seems to me that that left hand curb, the exit curb, comes up a little bit quicker.
I would agree on the exit, absolutely. I don't know, there's a slightly different profile.
I don't know if it's the way they've done the resurfacing this year for the exit curb on the second chicane,
but it's a bit more of a ridge than the exit curb on the first chicane.
So if you sort of go over it with a bit of the middle of the car over the exit curb in the second chicane,
the car jumps, whereas in the exit of the first chicane, the car takes it easy.
It could be, it's my first time, right, so I don't have a comparison last year,
but it could be to do with the resurfacing there.
I think the entry are quite similar, to be honest, but again, to do with the resurfacing,
the second chicane feels faster now.
Like the confidence you have to go through the first apex and the second chicane feels different.
The change of direction, performance of the car feels a bit better as well,
but I think that's mostly asphalt related.
So up over the old Broward Hill, which was shaved down after Mark Webber's accident in the Mercedes all those years ago,
a good amount, sort of 10 feet plus, if you look to the right, if you're ever driving down that part of the track
when you can drive that down the track, look to the right, and you can see where the track used to be
and where it has come down. It's a goodly amount.
I remember standing around about there in my first Le Mans back in 1989, taking photographs of Jaguars
and things like that coming towards me, and there were no chicanes in those days.
That was incredible. Only two-lear Arm Corps there as well, back in those days.
This is all our yesterdays. So into Mulz and Corny, you don't have to do the roundabout.
Thank goodness, it's cut off. But again, that's a break and turn kind of area.
The poor guys in the GT cars, I've seen this so many times, you could be looking and look 20 times as you're coming in there.
You normally sit on the left-hand side of the car, you're coming up, look nothing there, look nothing there.
I'm going to turn in. Oh my God, there's something there, because the closing speed there between the P2s and the GTs
and particularly the hypercars and the GTs is incredible, because you guys are presumed still fully committed through that first turning phase for that corner.
Yeah, I mean the P2 is probably the latest... Maybe it's not in distance, but it feels like it's the latest braking car out there.
Even compared to the... When a hypercar has come past me and pulled back in front for the braking, I have to actually back up a little bit to my normal braking point.
So you have to be awake to that. But speaking about how that drives into more sand, we turn in flat and we brake pretty much at the painted curb on the inside.
It's very late. And now it's resurfaced. I don't think the... I don't know if back in the day there was tricky feeling on the brake attack, but now it's super smooth.
But you can really get a bit of inside front locking at the end.
Right. So it's just the arrows bleeding off.
Yeah, exactly. And again, watching on TV, you often see cars into that gravel trap through the night and as the front tire cools down, maybe it gets cooler.
Yeah, and you're thinking, oh, what a plonk are you on?
It looks so simple. You look so... Just don't do that, right? And then you get here and you feel the grip. You feel the inside front slipping into the corner.
And it's all stuff you put through practice. You put to the back of your mind that it's like, well, okay.
So actually, yeah, in the night when the tires get an older cooler, whatever, you're going to have to be careful of something like that.
But it's... It is quite a smooth braking zone now.
So out of there, accelerate and back up through the... Do you go all the way down to first there? Did you take that in second?
Second.
Second. Okay. So second, all the way up. Fastest part of the track now, I reckon.
You can tell me if I'm wrong. Through the two right-handed kinks, coming down into that kink that we're talking about in Indianapolis.
Nice big bang in there.
Arnaj, probably the slowest point of the circuit now.
First gear, yeah. Very easy to rear lock through there. There's a bump on the exit of Arnaj, which is like right as...
At least in the P2, it's right as you're on wheel spin. It's right as you're upshifting.
Of course it is.
The TC is trying to help you as well at the same time. And it's just like you've got these three or four things acting pretty much at the exact moment.
So the traction zone is tricky through there.
So then you get a little bit of a breather up. It's slight climb. You probably don't see this on television either.
It's a slight climb, little left hand kink, and then you set yourself up for the entry to the Porsche Curves.
My God, if we're talking about commitment, the entry to the Porsche Curves and you change surface there as well as you come off that first right-hander.
And then effectively, you're in a straight track. There's no runoff at all at that point. What's that like in the P2?
How do you approach it? How do you get through it?
I'm trying to figure the right word.
You breathe in and hold your breath, do you?
Exactly, another B word maybe or something. A lot of those.
And again, look, you're right. It's a lot more uphill than it looks.
Funny enough, even as you get to the braking point, you think you should be able to see the corner. It's actually quite blind.
And you brake, and especially in the first laps before I knew I didn't have my references.
You watch the on-bores and you get a reference on the side of the track to brake, but your eyes then have to pick up the apex.
And when you don't know where you're going yet, your eyes don't move to where they should at the exact moment.
Very good point.
Yeah, and with a corner like that, when you arrive so quick and you don't see the apex, and you don't yet know where you're going because you don't know the track,
there's moments where you think you're on the wrong line, and it's easy to do something wrong that you never intended to do.
And after a few laps, you get your references, you know the kerb's going to be where it is, and it's very...
You need to push so hard that you don't go on the throttle before the entry curve, let's say.
It's really easy to feel like you can get on the throttle early and you think, I am winning loads of time,
but actually the time's on the braking on the entry.
I've heard people say that entry, you know, it's not that important because you've got to make sure you're still at the right for the next left-hander.
Yeah, that's true to a point. You can't give up that next left-hander, but you're going to lose so much time in that long, arcing turning to that first right-hander,
but you have got to stay quite tight to the safer barrier that is there, and then you're into the Porsche Curve's proper.
What a challenging set of corners, and I bet it's great in a pituit.
It's amazing. I feel like I'm saying the same thing a lot with this, talking about the track, but it's miles better than I even thought it could be.
You know, the Porsche Curve. It's such a famous set of corners, right? Everyone knows what the Porsche Curve is.
It's not easy, is it?
It's not. It's really not. Like you say, you drive this track, the first two sectors, let's say, or at least until an arcing, it's quite wide, in a way.
You know, you get the lane system on the more sand straight, and you can go free wide, and all of a sudden you come through one of the fastest corners on the track,
and you're presented with walls and safer barriers and curbs, which you cannot take. You cannot use them. They're a lot taller than they look on TV.
And they're flat, but only just flat. So it's not...
So if I was a rally-court driver, it would be flat, maybe?
Yeah, exactly. And they're definitely not flat for you when you're first getting up to speed.
So again, Porsche 1 completely determines how you arrive at Porsche 4, really.
Especially in the P2. I'm not sure what the GT and the hypercars like, but by the time you're doing your quali lap, Porsche 2 and 3 are flat.
So you need to carry enough speed through Porsche 1 to not have it easy flat in Porsche 2 and 3, if you see what I mean.
But then you arrive in Porsche 4 with whatever speed you've been carrying, and it's such an aggressive entry.
You feel like you've been so...naughty with a steering angle you apply for Porsche 4. There's no way the car should accept that.
There's so much grip. Yeah, there's so much grip. And it's so long and fast that you think it's going to step out,
but it never really has a chance to step out. You're always fighting the front axle through there.
The entry bills are real limited and you think it's going to carry on.
And pretty much as soon as you get into the corner, it becomes front limited straight away in the P2.
And then you make sure you're in the right position for karting. And even that's off-camber. You don't see that on TV.
You always go through karting and you arrive to the track limits on the exit and you think,
oh, there was another 2km an hour through there. Could have gone...
And every single lap you do it and you're like, there's still more. There's still more. It's just one of those tracks.
And then right at the end you get the naggy, double 4 chicane as it effectively is.
People look at that and think, why? And I can understand that.
But actually, those are two very different sets of corners at the end of the lap
because you can be very committed through the first one.
The first curve of a 4 chicane has really surprised me a hand which you can take of it.
Because you have the normal raised section of the curb and then you have the sleeping policemen,
the yellow like you have in Dunlop or Exit of Karting for example as well.
And at least for the P2, I'm so surprised with the P2 how well it takes curbs.
I'm so surprised. You look at it and you see how low the splitter is and how much aero it has.
And it's a single-seater platform, let's say. There's no way it can take that curb.
It can take so much more than you think.
So that 4 chicane is pretty much your, at least in quality in the race,
you might need to protect the car a little bit more.
But you're right up against the gravel on the apex of the first one.
And if you take it fast enough and well enough, the left-side tyres are in droop,
so it doesn't even flinch the car in some ways.
But it's one of those ones where if you're half-hearted with it, you'll feel it.
If you fly over it, the car just jumps over, it skips over it.
And then we're all the way down the box for the second part of it before the...
Yes, you're fifth to third. It might be sixth to third, depending on the wind for first part of Ford.
And then you carry the first two apexes in third, and then you double downshift into first for the last part.
The first apex of the last chicane, the second-last corner, is very aggressive.
Very aggressive. Like, I think in quality, it's one of those where you'll just jump over it and make sure we're in track limits.
But in the race, that's one I think you have to stay away from.
Traction limited coming out of that second part of the chicane?
Very it. If I could say where the PC may have a weakness is traction in general.
The drivability is always a bit tricky, and it doesn't have a lot of torque, it has a lot of power, but it doesn't have a lot of torque.
Quite picky.
Yes, so you need first gear, but really, ideally, you'd be in second.
But there's no torque in low-down and second gear, so you need to be in first, and then you get wheel spin.
So it's one of those things where you do the whole lap first.
And you haven't got enough torque to short shift to kill that well through it?
Yeah, exactly. You need to rev it out.
So you do the whole lap 13 kilometres, you see on the Delta, I'm on a good lap, you survive through forward one and two,
and then all of a sudden you get a bit of wheel spin in the last corner.
It's gone.
Yeah, you're like, wow.
Let's start again.
Yeah, exactly.
Let's start again.
That's magnificent, MIR, thank you.
It belies the fact that this is your first visit here, but it's clear to me that you are thoroughly enjoying your Le Mans experience already,
and I applaud you for that, because you only do your first Le Mans at one time, obviously.
What else are you looking forward to as we wrap up the time with you, and thank you very much for taking time to talk to us.
There's still a lot to go. We haven't even turned a wheel in competitive terms yet.
As far as you're aware, what will you be doing as we go through the week?
And we've got this new hyper-port qualifying as well.
Yeah, exactly.
So I'm in Pro-Am, so it's about what we're doing through practice now is it's one thing like me and Enzo,
as let's say the pro drivers want from the car.
It's another thing what Michael, our bronze driver, wants from the car, right?
Yeah.
And it's the first time I've raced in Pro-Am, the first time I raced with a bronze driver,
and that's new for me, and that's something I'm having to think about as well,
of how I manage the weekend with the team, with him, and make sure he's feeling comfortable with the car,
because what I feel comfortable with the car, he might not.
Absolutely.
And as we all know, Michael being comfortable will win us a lot more race time than me being comfortable.
Absolutely, right.
So it's about finding, you know, to drive.
So you might have to drive around something.
We know what you can do in a car.
So you might have to drive around something, because Michael says,
well actually I'd quite prefer it if it was a little less pointy, for example.
Yeah, absolutely, and that's what we've noticed a little bit through the test days.
The car was in quite a pointy state.
I could deal with it.
I bet you could, yes.
And it's something I like in the car, actually.
And yeah, and we need to go, sort of dial that back a little bit, you know,
as the grip comes up as well and Michael gets more comfortable with the track,
the goalpost will move, right?
So we don't just sort of,
we don't just sort of say, well, we're happy with it now,
and that's the car we're taking to the race.
We've got practice for a reason.
We'll keep moving it as we go through the week,
and hopefully we arrive with a car for the start of the race,
that, you know, definitely Michael's come to with,
but also me and Enzo are happy with as well.
There's a bit of tactics to be talked about here as well.
The first part of qualifying, which is when Michael's out,
will be the most amount of cars on the track of any of the qualifying sessions,
because the G-days are out as well, all the G-days.
Then it gets whittled down a little bit, so we'll lose a few cars.
But then you've got to decide which of you and Enzo go in that second session
to get you into the fight for fall position.
You don't have to tell me, and I'm not expecting you to.
I'm not going to put your arm up your back.
No, I'm really not.
But is that a discussion that you've already have, that you know you have to have?
Of course we've already had the conversation, yeah.
I mean, actually we haven't, we've got a soft plan for what we think we're going to do,
and we probably will do that, to be honest, but it can change.
Absolutely, and it can change the see-how we're going through practice,
who's more comfortable with the car, who's more comfortable driving that setup
we currently have on the car, you know.
It's more important to get yourselves into the top ten effectively,
top ten showdown, hyper pool too, than where you are in the top ten.
I would say so.
I would say so, yeah.
I mean, it's a 24 hour race, but you still want to start a higher up as you can, right?
It's in theory less drama there, there's less things to go wrong,
not saying things can't still go wrong, but it's nice for morale to start a higher up,
if you can get into hyper pool too, so I would say so.
I'm like very good friends with Nick Yellery, and I remember last year,
I think he set the fastest time of the whole weekend in hyper pool one,
and he doesn't do hyper pool two, so he doesn't get pole.
So you know, like the glory goes to somebody else,
you have to drop it as a pro, you know, you have to drop it,
you have to do what's best for the car, team mates,
best for the team to get the best possible results.
So yeah, at the moment I would say prioritising hyper pool one is probably more important for us.
Thank you for your time.
Thank you very much.
You're a great addition to this grid.
Some fantastic characters, just hear it, crowd strike, APR, let's not forget.
But in terms of drivers, up and down the paddock, we have some great characters,
and you're absolutely fitting in.
Delighted to see you here, and hopefully we'll see you doing some more endurance racing in the near future.
Is that the plan?
You're very slyly there, just said, hate the car early on in the interview.
You've got experience of managing systems with Formula E,
which is exactly what you need for the current breed of LMH and LMDH cars.
Is this a shop window for you?
Yeah, absolutely.
I've always wanted to do endurance racing anyway.
Everyone's story is different, how their career evolves is always different.
Mine took me in the single-seater route and took me straight into Formula E into professional racing,
and I had a great time there, and now I'm here, but whilst I was there I couldn't do endurance racing,
so I'm a little bit late to the party, maybe in endurance racing,
but no, I'm used to racing for the top manufacturers.
I want to be at the top level, I want to win the race overall, eventually in the future as well,
and at the moment you have to be in a hypercar to do that.
So I'm loving the opportunity I have here with API, you know, Stu and Samrun are great outfit,
and it's a great place.
You're never short of smiles in here, are we?
Exactly, it's a great place to come and race and enjoy your racing more importantly,
and they provide us with a great car to go and win,
but absolutely my goal in the back of my mind is to win Le Mans and to win Imsa Wec, whatever it may be,
and hypercar is a good place to do that.
I think you'll agree, dear listener, on 91.2 FM and around the world on RS2,
any manufacturer could not have a better representative than GQ,
who we've been spending some time with.
Thank you very much, go well and enjoy.
Thank you very much, I enjoyed it.
GQ's talking to me yesterday here at the Circuit de la Sarte,
and the chat round the track was interesting.
Have you raced round here virtually?
Oh, thousands of virtual laps, it's actually one of the tracks I'm good at.
In comparison to the other P2, don't you?
I do like a P2, it's very helpful.
So was that helpful for you?
It was, I feel that I now could pop in, this is the problem you see,
but I'm walking in the pit lane, I'm looking at the open doors of the P2,
whilst these are the ones that the drivers of Le Jays always sit in the same cosmo as Stoogmore.
And I sit there and think, yeah, I could drive that, no problem, I could hop in, I could drive that,
and of course I realised you couldn't.
I could go round, possibly.
Possibly.
Probably wouldn't have heated the tyres to work or anything, but I'd give it a go.
I think it's a lovely idea.
We brought off some sports car news, so we've got lots of coverage coming up all the way through.
It's quite a lot of sports cars news, isn't it?
It's quite a lot coming in.
It's like the whole week is just news.
It is indeed.
What would you like us to talk about in particular, Mr Grey?
Everyone loves a plucky little amateur, don't they?
I do, yes.
I'm assuming this isn't one, but keep going.
We're going to talk about the return of Izato Fraschini.
Yes, high-class racing.
Remember, we have to take you back in time.
Michalotto.
It doesn't seem like it hasn't raced since 2024.
It actually seems a lot longer back than that.
It was only 18 months ago.
I know, but the car itself had quite a long gestation period.
Back to sport were involved.
Then there weren't.
Then it came out.
Then it didn't.
De Cain ran it under the Izata name.
The car was designed and developed by Michalotto.
It's not as if it was a complete pub.
I think it was Brazil the last time.
High-class racing, fair to say they've been pretty competitive in LNP2 ranks.
Down through the years, we see them in IMSA,
European Le Mans series, WEC.
They did the Michelin Le Mans Cup.
They're here this weekend, actually.
A technical development of the car might mean, could mean,
the machine returns to competition.
I think that probably means showers you manage.
I've got this budget idea.
They're trying to get the hypercar idea off and away, aren't they?
The Le Mans series is a number of the less-faceted hypercars.
Not likely to be WEC.
Good point.
Anders Fjord back the man behind high-class, of course.
I think there's people looking to resurrect a lot of the earlier hypercars.
I'm not sure whether they're going to run a Porsche over to buy an Abu Dhabi and Sipang.
They might do.
They can get one.
There is a Porsche that is owned by a member of the Porsche family.
I am being reliably informed that it's going to be brought out.
As of October, there's two spare Acura's knocking about.
More likely to go to the Ayrshire Le Mans series.
The only thing yet that we don't have is a calendar for the Ayrshire Le Mans series.
They've got some uncertainty.
It's not possible yet, is it?
I think one's our next story.
Oh, how are we good?
Because it was a story about things that we expect to happen next year.
But there haven't been any confirmation of it.
This one is one for Nick Damon because MotoGP is going to happen.
Yay!
Is that official today?
Official last night.
OK, whenever the next race is, which I think is weekend after next, there will be 10,000
driver and rider announcers we already know.
Yeah, absolutely right.
I think they might spread the marathon for the rest of the year.
This is the MotoGP version of the Concorde agreement.
Basically, this is what it's about.
It's about money.
It's about money again.
It's all about that money.
Felt free, Luca.
It was the amount of it.
It was the cut the teams were getting of the general revenues.
Obviously, with the switch from Dauna to Liberty Media, they obviously wanted to have a model
which is much closer to that of F1, which is lots of money, rather than the one that is currently got.
But then there's some rules came across and it looks like they're really trying to push this one bike per rider rule as well.
Yes.
In practice, that'll save you one and a half million euros a year, apparently.
One and a half million.
They're going to have two in the race.
They're still going to have two bikes there.
Because that's obviously for the flag to flag races.
You need to have two bikes.
Correct.
The new agreement will be until the end of 2031 with an option to extend until 2036.
The other agreements that are going to be interesting is Liberty.
I don't think Liberty have had to do any major renegotiations with venues since they took over.
Certainly not with...
They might want to do one after last week.
Heritage venues.
I might come on and let in a moment, Nick.
And that is interesting.
I think from what I've heard on the grapevine type thing, there are going to be some heritage venues that might not be wanting to put as much money on the table as Liberty wants.
There is an issue there.
There's two issues.
Liberty have got a couple of issues.
The main one being that they are significantly more concerned...
As they're looking for global expansion, they are significantly more concerned about the Southern European-ness of the rider than the team, to any way else.
To the point now where some of the riders, especially Spanish and also slightly Italian extraction, it's being actively suggested they're not promoted from Moto2.
And other people are.
Now, the reason that the Italians and Spanish dominate MotoGP is not just because...
Well, it is obviously because the individual turned to the rider.
Because that's where the feeder series are.
The Spanish AV or T-AV, one of the used to be Reps, I was not called that anymore.
But they've got a completely...
They've got subchamperages from 15 up.
They've got Moto3.
They've got satellite Moto3 championships, both in Italy and Spain.
So that's what the rider is riding.
If you're a great rider in the UK, you'll be on a 600.
You'll be going down the four-stroke.
You'll be going down the adapted road bike rather than the road bike concept.
And the same problem they've got in the States.
The States, you know, it pinnacles out with super bikes.
So it's a question because what Liberty don't want.
I mean, they do don't mind, you know, great couple of Spaniards, couple of Italians.
They don't want like nine Spaniards and six Italians.
That's interesting.
Just lost our picture link.
Oh, no, picture link just came up.
It's pretty.
Yes.
It's gone again.
I know why that's happening.
That's because they're getting ready to start their show.
We're going to be a bit late for the next session because Ferrari Challenge
is still got 10 minutes to go.
So we don't have a calendar for MotoGP yet.
But apparently that's going to be this subject of discussions at Brno in fortnight's time.
And they should announce it shortly after that.
Okay.
I think everything.
I think a lot of things have been sorted out waiting for the contract hit sign.
Balaton Park.
But oh, Balaton Park the weekend.
Let's get through it quickly.
No is the answer.
No, no one turned up either.
I know it's a terrible track.
No one turns up.
People can't overtake and it's dangerous.
I mean, it doesn't help if people make mistakes, but it's still dangerous anyway.
Yeah.
The Mark Marquez one both races.
Which was incredible.
That point everyone.
Point everyone now as a world champion.
Not sure, but good weekend for him.
Yeah.
Bezekie got taken out in the main race.
Who's the championship leader?
They are now talking about changing the rules whereby they go to two by two rather than
three by three.
And a bigger gap.
They have agreed to a bigger gap.
A bigger gap.
They've agreed to a bigger gap.
I think an extra three meters between every single row.
There's no difference on the stagger.
They've also agreed to, for some, I think all the tracks after the summer break, no
ride height devices at the start.
No haul shot to some.
No haul shot devices.
Yeah.
Sorry.
Yeah, the start.
The ball of time being rates happen.
Because this is a consequence of what happened at Barcelona.
Correct.
It was initially agreed for just three tracks to, but now it's been agreed for all of them.
So it was Silverstone somewhere else and somewhere else where the tracks agreed for have no haul
shot devices.
Now they've said no haul shot devices.
All this stuff, of course, is banned for next year anyway.
Yeah.
So it's been wound down rather than wound up.
Yeah.
The ride height device ban starts at Silverstone, but the extra three meters starts at the Saxon
ring, which was a month earlier.
Right.
Yeah.
So they get a lot of pay to the new lines out.
Yeah.
Can I quickly do a little bit of, a couple of other bits of sport car news unless you've
got more bike news, Tim?
I didn't have any more bike news now.
Right.
Thanks to Jesse, SuperTaku Fuji 24 hours was last weekend.
Tatsuya Katyoka on his record breaking fourth win.
And it was TKRI that notched up consecutive wins.
Another Mercedes-AMG win in a 24 hour race.
And now they're equal Nissan for five outright manufacturer wins.
We were rather busy here with a variety of action and in the States, of course, but
that went on over the weekend.
The pit stop challenge.
Do you know who won the pit stop challenge?
I don't know.
Tell me on pit stop challenge.
It's very interesting, actually.
Excuse me.
I did hear Bruno shouting about it for about a while.
He was shouting a lot.
Hang on a second.
Also, it also has some of the world's, I don't know whether it was lost in translation.
Some of the countdowns didn't quite run as you'd expect them to.
It was 8.8 seconds, which was the top time in GTWRT BMW with the number 69 team.
In fairness, they had an identical team to the EF Corsa crew in hypercar who won the pit stop challenge.
But it was, I don't see how they won it if they had the same time.
But the joint winners, if you went L and P2 honours, went to the CLX Motorsport, Oracle crew.
And the 83 499P as well.
Why is Ben Keating going to be smooth this weekend?
I don't know.
He doesn't upset his elbow.
Well, interestingly, the car has been completely relivered.
And the new wrap has all of the decals printed on it in the right places.
So there's absolutely nothing stuck on top of the car.
Well, that links back a course to McLaren being fined what, 30,000 euros?
Because they put a sticker over the clutch release button.
And I'm sitting there going, what is wrong with you?
It's obviously something you don't do.
And it's obviously something they decided to do until they got caught.
And I'm going to say, what else?
Who's bigger than ever at Le Mans this year?
Bigger than anyone?
I've got an answer, which isn't very fair.
Say again. Tim, sorry?
Bebendum.
No.
The crowd?
It's a massive erection.
Well, they built a wheel.
No.
The bridge.
Cadillac Corvette.
Oh, yes, the hospitality suite, yes.
It has a big black edifice.
Like a holdy inn somewhere near an airport.
But it looks like it's got its own gravitational pull.
It does look like something out of, you know, the next Star Wars movie.
The Mandalorian, this is the way.
This is the way, but you aren't allowed in.
It's got like 21 bedrooms, isn't it?
It's got 21 bedrooms.
It's got massage suite.
It is big.
I've been in smaller.
There's no points.
You get no points.
I bet they don't have a pancake machine.
I bet they do.
It's called a man or a woman.
You'll make your pancake if you ask nicely.
OK.
And by the way, there are not even housing the 13-AutoSport and EO by TF Corvette teams in there.
Physio, engineers meeting room, media office, soundproof, fawn booth,
sponsor lounge, team restaurant, coffee corner.
Oh, hello.
Under terrace.
Coffee corner.
16,000 square feet, double decker.
Six spaces.
Red flag, by the way, with three minutes and 30 seconds.
So I think Sergio...
Sergio Paolet in the Enrico Reparto Corsa Ram is the best of the Pirelli runners.
Pirelli AM, Formula Racing, Enzo Ede.
In Coppa Shell, it's Tibo Valent in the Uroso Corsa number 132.
And Coppa Shell AM is Kessel Racing and John Ryu session will not resume.
There you go.
Absolutely perfect.
I still don't think we're going to get this one off on time.
It depends what the red flag clear up will be.
Because this is red flag, someone's either off the track or they're going to need to be clear on this.
The...Diablo Bradley will be our first...Pitlin report that informed by driver database.
DriverDB.com.
DriverDB.
Yeah, DriverDB.
You know when you were talking about the tyres yesterday, by the way, and the tyres?
I realise what it reminds me of.
Sure, then.
Do you know when you're making a meatball?
Yes.
I've deliberately not used an F word that quite a lot of people outside the UK wouldn't understand.
And you can wrap it with cow fat.
That's what it looks like.
It's like the fat that you wrap around.
I think it looks like a crocodile skin.
Do you?
Quite a big crocodile, obviously.
It actually does...it's proude.
Like a skin.
No, crocodiles have much...snakeskins have very regular scale size where crocodiles often have larger ones.
Oh, regular.
Okay.
Don't argue with Nick about his...
About his snake.
Don't argue with Nick about his snakes.
No.
Absolutely.
Right, what else have we got time for?
Joey Carmer is lurking, getting ready to go live for this first session.
He's not fainting at the session flag and he won't be starting for a while yet.
Sebastian Buemini is in the number eight Toyota Hypercar.
I'm sure he's very comfortable.
We need to talk about Joseph Newgarden's left foot.
Left foot.
Will that be played by Daniel Day Lewis later?
Very good.
It doesn't seem to be affecting his ability to turn left because he won at World Wide Technology.
I haven't seen that yet.
He's still here to watch his wheel in 11 starts.
Yeah.
And 15th...
Not bother watching that, no.
I just look at the highlights.
Oh, right.
It's 15th short total.
Hang on a second.
Hang on.
Yes, we will do.
There's a potential delay of 10 minutes.
We'll bring you a drink.
Oh, that's nice.
That's nice.
Yeah.
That's the number seven Toyota crew talking.
Lovely drink.
To their driver.
Do you have someone to bring you a drink, Nick?
No.
I brought my hot drink.
He's not getting ready.
He literally can't wait to evict me from this seat.
He's pushing, he's pushing, he's ready for it.
Highlights, right?
Go on.
I watched the Grand Prix highlights on Sunday night after I'd finished doing the Imza.
The seven minute ones?
No, no, no.
The longer one.
The longer Sky Sports one.
Oh, the Alps.
No, that first.
I had no clue what had gone on in that race whatsoever and how it linked together or didn't
link together to the point where on Monday I watched the whole race.
At the end of the whole race, I was still not on the wiser, if I'm quite honest.
There was so much that wasn't explained.
So no wonder the highlights didn't make any sense.
I know they've changed that.
Now that is the FOM TV guys, but they were a bit all over the place again at the weekend.
It's a bit rarer than a race, right?
Yeah.
I don't know why.
But you could follow it, but to follow it you had to be staring at the timing screen to
work it out for yourself because you weren't being helped by the commentators or the pictures.
But also, I was looking at the timing on the screen and when clearly Lewis Hamilton had
served his five seconds, it was still there.
It's because Manu turned it off and someone was being rubbish.
Okay.
I was very, very, very confused.
You're being rubbish.
Eduardo Freitas is about to sit down and will hear his voice in a moment or two as well.
We've got three minutes, nearly two minutes to go.
What would you like us to finish up with, Tim?
Well, I'd just like to say we had a message from one of our listeners, Jack Shilaski, who
said he's lost the audio and studio vision.
Then he realised that as he leaned backwards, he was accidentally leaning on the volume down
button on his headphones.
Excellent.
And by leaning forwards again, that's it.
Jack.
Brilliant.
That's brilliant.
We've all been there, though.
The final story, hey, look, the early Aston Martins used to catch your knee on the seat
wheels on the early Vantage's that were next to your knee on the transmission tunnel.
You could find yourself cord-ridden just gently drifting away from the wheel.
It's honestly very off-putting, particularly on the Creef Road between Creef and Abba Felde
up in the Scottish Lowlands.
Ferrari, finish off with Ferrari.
They are the defending champions.
Ferdinando Canizzo has been talking to the press and says they will use three EVO jokers
at the end of this season.
If you were listening to the programmes that we did from Scrutiny, you'll have heard James
Collardo saying the new tyre doesn't really work for them.
They want to focus on the integration of the car, said Ferdinando Canizzo.
Everything has to be working in syncs, or instead of playing the EVO jokers one at a time,
we're going to use them effectively to create a completely new car, which, as we said, you can't do,
but you can't do the jokers.
Every component of the car will be integrated.
If we changed just the rear suspension, it would have an impact on the areas.
We're tackling different areas in an integrated way.
It will not be a completely new car, having said, it will be a completely new car.
But we will use the same homologation.
Only one of the five EVO jokers that they can use have been used so far.
They did some brake cooling ducts from memory for Sao Paulo in 2024.
So their allocation of four jokers expires next year.
And then you've got two further upgrades, one for the 28 and 29 seasons.
So three out of the four, they might lose one, is basically what they are saying.
And that's about all we've got from this midday motorsport.
Thanks to our guests, to Tim up in London, and to Nick Damon with me.
Stand by, get trackside, lock it in a 91.2 FM and RS1.
There's action on the track as the FIA World Insurance Championship comes to round three.
The Le Mans 24 hours.
About this episode
Midweek Motorsport s21 e22 runs as a live-style roundup across Formula One, endurance racing, and Monaco/Le Mans build-up. Early on, the hosts flag practice disruptions with “red flags,” then dig into Monaco pit-lane timing and speed-camera-style measurement logic that can trigger penalties. The F1 focus swings through grid-slot confusion, reliability/engine installation debates, and Barcelona aerodynamics. Later, the show pivots to endurance: LMP3/LMP2 rules, BOP, and Le Mans track realities like bumps, resurfacing, slow zones, and simulator prep.
