Midweek Motorsport s21 e26

Midweek Motorsport s21 e26 Midweek Motorsport · Jul 15, 2026

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Car

Ford F-150 Lightning

The Ford F-150 Lightning is an electric pickup truck. Instead of using gasoline, it runs on electricity. The podcast brings it up because it’s connected to the Lightning name and has been a topic for fans over time.

Topic

World Superbike

World Superbike is a major motorcycle racing championship. They’re talking about how riders did in a race weekend and how close some results were.

Place

Donnington

Donnington is a famous race track in the UK. The hosts are talking about what happened there during a World Superbike weekend.

Term

swing arm

The swingarm is the pivoting rear suspension arm that carries the rear wheel and allows it to move up and down. In sportbikes, swingarm design affects rear wheel alignment, suspension geometry, and how the bike responds under braking and cornering.

Person

Nicola Booliger

Nicola Booliger is a rider being discussed in the context of a race result. The host is saying the outcome was disappointing because it was close to a win.

Brand

Ruba.IT racing Ducati

“Ruba.IT racing Ducati” is the name of the racing team associated with Ducati. It tells you which team the rider is part of for that season.

Person

Nicola Cooner

Nicola Cooner is mentioned as the rider who made an early pass. It’s part of the story of how the race developed.

Term

track day

A track day is when regular enthusiasts get to use a race track. It’s more about practicing and improving than competing in a race.

Term

hairpin

A hairpin is a super tight corner where you basically turn around and go back the other way. It usually means you have to slow down a lot before turning in.

Term

Foggy Esses

“Foggy Esses” refers to a specific sequence of corners nicknamed after rider Barry “Foggy” Fogarty, who was famous for his skill through that kind of flowing section. “Esses” are a set of alternating left-right bends that test balance and throttle control.

Brand

Aruba

Aruba here is a sponsor name tied to a MotoGP team. It’s not the bike itself—it's part of the team branding that rides on Ducati machinery.

Concept

championship

A championship is the overall season winner. Instead of just one race, riders/teams score points across many events until someone has enough to be the champion.

Topic

points per event

In racing championships, you earn points based on where you finish. The hosts are talking about how many points you can win in one race meeting, and how that makes the championship already decided.

Place

Silverstone

Silverstone is a well-known race track in the UK. It’s used for major racing events, so it’s a big deal when a season’s schedule includes it.

Person

Jorge Martín

Jorge Martín is a professional motorcycle racer. The hosts are saying he and his team might be able to challenge the leading rider.

Person

Valentino

Valentino here refers to Valentino Rossi, one of the most famous motorcycle racers in modern history. The speaker groups him with other elite riders from an earlier era, emphasizing how strong the competition was at the time.

Person

Casey

Casey Stoner is a well-known MotoGP champion. The host mentions him to compare the strength of past competition to the present.

Person

Danny

The host mentions “Danny” as one of several top riders from earlier years, but the transcript doesn’t say which Danny. It’s likely another well-known MotoGP rider from that time.

Place

Moss Corner

Moss Corner is a specific turn on a race track. People often pick corners like this to watch because it’s where cars do something interesting—like braking, turning, or passing.

Term

LMP2

LMP2 is a category of race cars used in long-distance endurance events. It’s meant to be a step below the very top prototype class, so more teams can compete.

Concept

headline race

A headline race is the biggest featured race on a weekend. It’s the one that gets the most focus from fans, media, and usually the broadcast schedule.

Term

GTP

GTP is the top class of prototype race cars in IMSA endurance racing. It’s usually the fastest and most high-tech category compared with other prototype classes.

Term

GTD

GTD is a class for race cars that start from real production sports cars. They’re modified for racing, but they’re not the purpose-built prototype cars.

Term

Michelin pilot challenge

Michelin Pilot Challenge is a racing series in IMSA that Michelin sponsors. It’s a separate endurance championship with its own classes, often running on the same weekends as the bigger headline races.

Place

Mid-Ohio

Mid-Ohio is a race track in Ohio, USA. It’s known for a challenging layout and it hosts endurance races like the four-hour event mentioned here.

Term

splash

A “splash” is a quick refueling stop in an endurance race. Teams add just enough fuel for the next part of the race so they don’t waste time in the pits.

Term

fuel

In endurance racing, fuel is a key part of the strategy. Teams have to plan how much fuel they’ll use so they know when they’ll need to pit and how risky it is to stretch stints.

Term

lap times

Lap times are how long it takes to do one full lap around the track. Faster lap times usually mean the car is running better, but endurance races also care about consistency over many laps.

Term

downforce

Downforce is the aerodynamic “push” that makes the car stick to the road. More downforce usually helps the car go faster through corners, but it can make the car slower on straights because of extra air resistance.

Term

bronze driver

A bronze driver is a driver rating category used in endurance racing to classify competitors by experience and skill level. The idea is to balance teams by requiring certain driver types to take specific roles, like qualifying.

Term

qualify the car

In racing, qualifying determines where the car starts on the grid. In this series, there’s a rule about which driver type has to do the qualifying run.

Term

track record

A track record is the best (fastest) lap time that’s ever been set at that track. Here, they’re talking about record-setting speed for LMP2 cars.

Term

Michelin tires

Michelin is the tire brand used in the series. If everyone uses the same tires, then differences in speed are more about the teams and car setup than tire selection.

Topic

ELMS

ELMS is a European endurance racing series that follows the Le Mans style of prototype racing. The host is saying LMP2 might be even more competitive there than in other series.

Topic

Asian Le Mans

Asian Le Mans is an endurance racing series in Asia inspired by the Le Mans format. It’s part of the host’s argument about where LMP2 racing is most competitive.

Topic

24 Hours of Le Mans

Le Mans is a famous long-distance race where cars drive for 24 hours. People use it as a reference point for how tough and competitive endurance racing is.

Person

Tom Dilman

Tom Dilman is a race driver. In this segment, they’re talking about how he bounced back after a serious problem from the previous year.

Place

CTMP

CTMP is a race track in Ontario, Canada. It’s where teams go for sports car races, and it’s known for being challenging for both cars and drivers.

Term

mechanical issue

A mechanical issue means something went wrong with the car’s parts. In racing, that can be dangerous and can also ruin your chances because you can’t drive at full speed.

Topic

Le Monde

They’re talking about where the interview happened—at an event context called “Le Monde.” It’s not describing a car; it’s the setting for meeting the driver.

Brand

crowd-strike racing by APR

That phrase is the name of a racing team. It’s tied to APR, a company known for performance tuning, and they’re running a car in endurance racing under that team name.

Company

APR Algrave Pro Racing

This is the name of the racing organization behind the entry they’re talking about. In racing, the team name usually tells you who’s running the car and sponsoring the effort.

Term

endurance racing

Endurance racing is long-duration racing where drivers take turns and teams plan strategy. It’s about staying fast and consistent for hours, not just one quick lap.

Term

WEC

WEC is the World Endurance Championship—an international series of long races. Drivers and teams compete across the year, focusing on strategy and staying reliable for hours.

Term

wingless 9x8s

“Wingless” means the car doesn’t use the big rear wing style of downforce. It tries to push the tires onto the road using other aerodynamic surfaces, which can be faster but harder to get right.

Term

splitter height issue

The splitter is a flat aero piece at the front of the race car. If the splitter sits too high or too low, it can break the rules or affect downforce, so the team has to deal with it quickly.

Term

technical infraction

A technical infraction means the car didn’t meet a technical rule during inspection or measurement. The result is usually a penalty that affects where you start or how you’re scored.

Concept

qualifying

Qualifying is the timed session before the race that decides where cars start. Better qualifying usually means you start closer to the front, which can help your race plan.

Term

IMSA

IMSA is a big racing organization that runs sports-car and endurance races in North America. When they say “in IMSA,” they mean that specific racing series and its rules.

Concept

podiums

A “podium” is when a driver finishes in the top three. It matters because it usually means the team is scoring big and doing very well overall.

Concept

50-50

“50-50” means the team planned to have each driver do about half the race. In long races, that planning can matter because each driver may be better at different parts of the track or race conditions.

Concept

front row

The front row is the very front of the starting lineup. Starting there usually helps because you’re less likely to get stuck behind slower cars early on.

Term

ran caution-free

“Caution-free” means there weren’t yellow flags slowing everyone down. When there are no cautions, the race stays more “normal,” and strategy like pitting becomes harder to predict.

Car

Porsche 911

The Porsche 911 is Porsche’s famous sports car with a distinctive layout and handling. Here, the hosts say the 911 hadn’t been doing great lately, but it still managed a strong finish in this race.

Term

BOP

BOP is how race organizers try to make different cars compete more fairly. They may add weight or limit power so one brand doesn’t automatically have an advantage.

Concept

think outside the box

Here it means the team had to be more creative than usual. Instead of just driving the same way everyone else does, they used different ideas to gain positions.

Place

Sebring

Sebring is a well-known endurance race track in Florida. Doing well there is considered impressive because the track is tough and the races are long.

Car

BMW M4 GT3 Evo

The BMW M4 GT3 Evo is a BMW race car made for GT3-style competitions. “Evo” means it’s an improved version of the earlier M4 GT3, designed to be faster and more competitive in races.

Term

track position

Track position just means where you are on the race track compared to other cars. Being ahead (or in the right spot) can make it easier to avoid traffic and choose the best moments to pass.

Topic

opening stint

An opening stint is the first “phase” of the race before the next pit stop or driver change. It matters because it sets you up for the rest of the race strategy.

Term

outside pass

An outside pass is when you try to pass someone by going around the outside of a turn. It can work, but it’s usually harder and riskier than passing on the inside.

Term

Turn 8

Turn 8 is just a named corner on the track. Saying “Turn 8” helps everyone understand exactly where something happened.

Term

dirt

“Dirt” here means the car went off the racing surface onto a lower-grip area. When that happens, the tires lose grip and the car slows relative to everyone else.

Topic

middle stint

A middle stint is the “middle part” of a race segment before the final phase. Teams use it to manage tires and strategy while keeping good position.

Topic

traffic situations

Traffic situations are when you’re stuck dealing with slower cars. Even if you’re fast, passing and maneuvering around them can slow you down.

Term

practice sessions

Practice is when teams test and adjust the car before the important timed parts. It helps them figure out what the car does on track.

Term

off-course excursions

Off-course excursions are moments when a car leaves the intended racing line—such as going wide, hitting curbs too hard, or briefly going off track. Even if the car recovers, excursions can cost time, damage tires, and affect confidence for the rest of the stint.

Car

720S

The McLaren 720S is a high-performance supercar with a twin-turbo V8. Here, they’re talking about it as the specific race car that a team used and how well it performed.

Brand

RLL Team McLaren

RLL Team McLaren is the racing team that runs McLaren cars in this series. They’re being praised for improving the car and getting good results.

Brand

Wynward Racing

Wynward Racing is a racing team in the GTD class. The host is saying they looked better again in this event.

Topic

Rolex

They mean a big endurance race that’s branded “Rolex.” These races are longer and usually require different strategy than shorter races.

Topic

Walkins Glen weekend

They’re talking about the whole race weekend at Watkins Glen, not just the race. That weekend includes practice and qualifying, which can strongly affect where drivers start and how the race goes.

Place

Kerblis section

They’re talking about a particular part of the track called the Kerblis section. If nobody practiced it beforehand, it’s easier for drivers to misjudge braking or cornering there.

Place

Spa

“Spa” is a famous race track in Belgium. It’s challenging and often has changing weather, so doing well there is a big deal.

Term

B or P tables

“B or P tables” are rule documents that help race organizers keep different cars on a more even footing. The host is saying they weren’t released, so nobody can tell exactly what was changed.

Concept

altitude

Altitude can affect how cars run because the air is thinner at higher elevations. That can change engine power and how well the car cools, so race organizers sometimes adjust rules or settings for high-altitude tracks.

Term

free practice

Free Practice is the practice time on the track before the important sessions. Teams use it to try different settings and see how fast they can go, so if a car is fastest in FP1 or FP2, it usually means it looked strong early.

Term

FP1

FP1 is the first practice session of the weekend. It’s when teams get an early read on speed and handling before the next practice and qualifying.

Car

Aston Martin Valkyrie

The Aston Martin Valkyrie is a very high-end, track-oriented super/hypercar from Aston Martin. Here, they mention it because it was the fastest car in the first practice session (FP1), which is a sign it had strong pace right away.

Term

FP2

FP2 is the second practice session. If a different car is fastest in FP2 than in FP1, it often means teams improved their setup or the track conditions changed.

Term

homologation weight

It’s the minimum weight a race car is allowed to run under the racing rules. The idea is to keep teams from making the car too light just to go faster.

Car

Ferrari 51 Ferrari

The Ferrari 512 M is a Ferrari race car from the 1970s. It was made to compete in endurance races, which are long events that test both speed and durability. The podcast mentions it because it was part of a race and is being discussed by where it finished.

Car

Ferrari 50 Ferrari

The Ferrari 550 Maranello is a high-performance Ferrari sports car with a V12 engine. The podcast mentions it in the context of a race, where it’s being ranked by finishing position. That’s why it comes up—its performance in that event.

Term

pit stop issues

A pit stop is when the car comes in to get serviced, usually for tires and sometimes fuel. If there’s a problem during that stop, the car loses time and can fall behind even if it’s fast.

Concept

hypercars

Hypercars are the top-tier, high-performance prototype/GT-style race cars used in modern endurance series. They’re designed to be extremely fast, and their performance is often managed with rules like BOP to keep racing competitive.

Concept

FIA

FIA stands for the international motorsport governing body. They help set the rules and safety standards that racing series follow.

Concept

technical committee

A technical committee is a group of specialists who help write and update the engineering rules for racing. They make sure the rules are clear and that the cars stay safe.

Place

Barcelona

Barcelona is where some racing events are held in Europe, at a well-known track in Spain. It’s a track that challenges cars with both fast sections and hard braking.

Place

Monza

Monza is a famous race track in Italy known for being very fast. Cars often need a setup that helps them reach high speeds while still braking safely for the corners.

Concept

prologue

A prologue is an early event at the start of the season. Teams use it to get ready—checking car setup and performance—before the real races begin.

Concept

LMEM

LMEM looks like an acronym for another motorsport organization or event. In this context, it’s being grouped with other endurance-racing bodies, but the exact meaning isn’t confirmed in the snippet.

Person

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The world's longest running motorsport magazine show.

Midweek Motorsport, news, features, special guests and analysis from the experts.

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If it has wheels and an engine and they keep score, it's on Midweek Motorsport.

Hello everybody and welcome to Midweek Motorsport.

It is Series 21, episode 26 and this is a football free zone.

Nick and I, like Series 1, episode 7 of the Lightning Lads back in the 1970s for every

1973.

No hiding place.

Go and watch it.

It's a classic piece of British commentary.

We are staying away for all things football but to prove we're live, this is the one and

only time you're gonna sit.

It's still no no.

Now that's all we're saying.

It was suggested by right turn lover, is there any other sport we could use, Mongolian

water polo or something or something Italian?

The Italians traditionally like water polo.

He said, well big upset actually at the weekend.

The Italian water polo team beat the US water polo team 14-10 at Stamford apparently.

But that was then, that doesn't prove that we are live at Norton Gray tonight.

But on a packed program, Nick Damon will be joining me.

He'll be looking forward to the Belgian Grand Prix with F2 and F3.

We'll be checking Indy Carrout, the Borchetta Bourbon Music City Grand Prix.

He's got Borchetta, he's got his fingers in so many things.

It is super formula at the weekend as well at Fuji.

We'll probably not talk about that.

Raleigh Estonia is this weekend which means we'll have Peter Mackay next week to talk

about that.

There's NASCAR at a classic circuit in North Wilkesborough.

Probably won't have time to talk about that either.

And your submissions please.

I suspect many of you will be watching the football and that's fine.

So you'll be listening to this from the archive.

Those that aren't, Ed Moses, no AFA this week.

He needs to escape from the football, which he's done busy weekend from Ed.

He's been in trackside quite a lot lately.

Stu Erkins has been catching up on last week.

Earlier this morning he was still listening to Jonathan Abelgier talking Mx5 with us.

And Wright's Turn Lover has been mentioned.

He'll be tuned in right now.

There may be one or two other of you.

Sarah Rigby I think might be just keeping an eye on what's going on as well as Neil Gardner,

our artist in residence.

What else have we got?

John De Geese will be joining us in this first hour as we have a look at a very busy weekend

of endurance racing.

Two major series that we're working at the weekend, that we're racing at the weekend,

are down in Brazil for the FIA World Endurance Championship.

And there's plenty to come out of that that I need to ask John about.

And of course, we were covering IMSA at...

Where were you at IMSA at the weekend?

I'll say TMP.

See TMP, Canadian Tire Motorsport Park.

We'll talk to John about that in this hour.

And your thoughts on any of those places.

At spec, your attainment on Twitter.

X, whatever it's called.

This week, I don't really have any papers to shuffle.

This is what I do actually, but it's all just my notes from the weekend,

which is still strewn around the Ford Racing Global Broadcast Centre.

And I've still got the track map up on my little easel in front of me from the weekend,

as well from CTMP, up to 1961.

So I don't need to shuffle.

We'll just play the jingle and get into a shocking breaking top story.

That's breaking because it happened at the weekend.

A shocking top story coming up here on Midweek Motorsport.

Well, I said it was shocking.

It was shocking.

Something that has not happened for a very long time happened at the weekend

in World Superbike at Donnington.

Let's bring in our World Superbike at Donnington.

Top reporter, Nickton.

I have written a World Superbike bike round Donnington quite recently.

Obviously the road going version, obviously, because I have the Ducati V4S,

which is the road version of the one level down V4R,

but it's the correct swing arm and everything else.

And I was at Donnington about 56 weeks ago doing a track day.

So I feel that for once, I have the knowledge to give you anything you want to know.

But frankly, the problem we have, I think, on this programme, John,

is we are too keen on picking up people and we don't talk about abject failure enough.

And I feel the level of complete and utter failure that we saw at Donnington over the weekend,

I don't think I've seen anything that's bad for several years in motorsport of any type.

Yeah, well, Nicola Booliger says it's over, isn't it, really?

I cannot believe that Nicola Booliger could not be bothered to win a race

and instead came second by 0.3 of a second.

What an absolute failure.

You know, you go out there, you win 24 races on the speed

and you can't be bothered to make it 25.

Is that what it was, 24?

Yeah, three last year, three on this year, yeah.

So he's not stood anywhere but the top of the box this 2026 season.

He's a Ruba.IT racing Ducati teammate.

Nicola Cooner went by him early on.

I mean, it was cracking.

Over 50,000 at Donnington is a big crowd and it looks like a big crowd.

So fabulous weather, people sitting under parasols on the bank sides.

There's not a huge amount of shade at Donnington and there's not that many grandstands.

So fair play to everybody who went there.

And in that first race, those two teammates basically drove away,

rode away from everybody else.

And that has signaled Nicola Boeliger's absolutely nightmare scenario

where he's not going to win another race also.

No, hang on.

He won the next two.

It was back to normal.

I mean, it is incredible.

Cooner took his opportunity in the first race

and it wasn't as if there was no fighting

because Boeliger went by two or three times

but couldn't get the bike stopped at various of the corners.

Did you use the full track, by the way, with the loop on it?

Yeah.

I can't say it's my favourite bit.

I must admit, it's a bit pointless for a track day to be honest.

You're not really learning anything, going fast, brake, hairpin, up the road again.

I did like the Foggy Esses they call him now.

It's almost been the Foggy Esses.

I did enjoy that.

But the track, I have to be honest, it's a really good track for a bike.

It really is.

I'm rubbish and it's still a really good track for me.

You're not rubbish.

I've seen you're on board.

You're braver than I would be.

Bravery doesn't necessarily line up with talent,

but it's a great track.

It's really, really enjoyable.

You know, but yeah, you sit there.

You go, yeah, I can sit.

These big people are ungodly anyway.

But yeah, I mean, it's...

They are aliens.

The interesting thing is though,

so we are two thirds way through the season, John.

Eight meetings down, four meetings to go.

And Ducati and Aruba have already won the championship.

Oh, really?

Yep.

They've already won.

They already have.

So they could go home and they don't forget,

there's like 52 points per event, which you can win.

No, sorry, 62 points per event you can win.

And they've already won.

Now, obviously because Lacona has had an awful lot of second places,

like all by about four, and now one win.

While he's quite a way behind...

Nicola Boone again.

He hasn't actually lost that he can still theoretically do it.

But it is a ridiculous domination.

I was quite amazed.

It's interesting because I was...

We used to the minute ago, there were 50,000.

I was quite surprised.

He would have thought like, you know,

there's one way of traffic would have put people off.

Obviously, it would have been a British rider.

It would have been fine for one way of traffic.

But I mean, you know, it's...

Everyone still went to see what was going on outside that way.

Let me quickly run down the results.

Berligar leads on 491 points ahead of Ike Lacona,

his team here, on 358.

So, you know, getting on for 150 points, 140 odd points.

Next best, 211 for the Barney Spark racing team,

number five, Jan Montella.

Then Alex Laws...

Yari Montella, sorry, Jan Montella.

Then the Laws Twins, who at various times,

both of them had decent runs along.

And there was something for the home crowd,

because Tommy Bridewell plus the Laws Twins

on two different bikes,

obviously Sam riding for VDS,

and they were riding with heavy lights.

In fact, it would be quite amusing

that the Laws Twins were on the same light, wouldn't it?

No, I mean, different manufacturers and teams.

You knew what I mean.

I thought we'd have less of that with Tim, not here tonight.

Let's pedin' through.

Tommy Bridewell was in there as well.

So, there was something for the Law...

British crowd to cheer about.

Yeah, yeah, absolutely.

But yeah, 50,000 is still pretty impressive.

But I suppose in a way,

if you're going to end up being a lovely day out

with some bikes like a race,

I'm sure people will pick next.

It's probably absolutely fabulous.

Yeah, I think you're right.

Better than sitting in the rain at a wet Thruxton.

Or wherever, yes.

Other damp British circuits are available.

Not at the moment, because nothing's damp at the moment.

No, no.

Undoubtedly, when you go to Scotland at the weekend

for your carting, you'll get wet.

I'm going to predict that.

No, the weather forecast is just cold.

And by cold, I mean 15 degrees.

And it's, you know, it's like 11 degrees less.

But you've fit normally, that had been...

Oh, no.

But this bit, I'm actually looking forward to being cool.

I'm going to get the booklet and sponge out later,

because we've got a horse-bike ban here in Anglin Water.

Well, you're the same, aren't you?

So, I do have to wash the car before I go up north at the weekend.

When you said you get your bucket and sponge,

I thought you were going to go be one of the medics for a football team.

You could do that.

It wouldn't be quite as good trying to polish the car down

with half an orange.

Probably not quite as good.

Thankfully, it's PPF, so it doesn't take a lot of cleaning.

Let's stay on two wheels.

Motor GP at the weekend

were at the Saxon ring.

We might as well call it the Marques ring,

because he's won there now more than any other rider,

and he won both races.

This is Mark Marques.

We're talking about chased by his brother then.

Alex fell off as well, didn't he?

Then he absolutely bossed the Grand Prix.

Can I be honest with you?

It was such a dull concept,

and so obviously he was going to win.

I was fast-forwarding the whole thing.

I've got nothing against Mark.

I think Mark is brave, but it's just like, this is just tedious.

The problem was we knew this was going to happen

before we even turned up,

because he is the master of the left-hand turn.

He won both at the weekend, didn't he?

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

So, what was I going to say?

I completely lost my train of thoughts.

Bezekie, thank you.

Bezekie, who looked nailed on for the championship,

finds himself in fourth now,

with no points from the last three events.

I don't think, obviously, he was banned for one, wasn't he?

It's found from one.

I think you may have got a couple of points in the sprint.

So, in fifth position, and exactly...

Lawson, you've glossed over the point,

but Bezekie, you've also got a completely disconnected

broken shoulder as well.

Well, I was going to say that, yes.

So, that was...

What are they called?

Disconnected and complete fracture of the collar ball.

Snapped.

It sounds horrible.

You've had shoulder problems in your time,

and this sounded horrible.

Not as bad as that, though.

He was taken away and had an operation

pretty much straight away,

as most motorcycle riders tend to do.

Before we came on air,

about half past seven, I think it was,

when we were talking about this

and what we were going to slide in the program.

You said...

What did you say?

Because I said, I don't think you'd be back before the...

You said, I said, it'll be back too soon.

Yeah, because that's a motorcycle ride.

Is he back for the next race, is he?

I don't know.

I can't see it.

I think it's a Silverstone.

It is Silverstone, isn't it?

Yeah.

I think I read somewhere here,

I need you back for Silverstone.

They are different, gravy.

Well, different slash idiots.

Well, that is just short of a month away,

because that's the seventh to the ninth.

Yeah, they're on their summer break now, aren't they?

So, they take their summer break,

Formula One, have two more races

before the summer break,

of which more in the next hour.

So, Bozecki's not going to improve on his 186 points.

He sits fourth at the moment.

Fabi D. Gian Antonio is on 184.

Then there's a bit of gap back to Ralph Fernandez in sixth.

The top three are Marc Marques on 190.

Aya Kira, who had another good weekend

for Superphile Trackhouse Motor GP team on 194.

So, there you go.

You've got 10 points between second and fifth.

Jorge Martín still slightly ahead on 208.

But Martin's form's been up and down a little bit, hasn't it?

I'm really still trying to get...

He's not 100% fit.

You know, he's...

And yeah, I mean, I think I said this last race

because I've raced before,

that if they don't start doing a brilliant team order,

they are going to lose.

Because I've had a number of races recently

where the Trackhouse boys have been ahead of the factory boys.

It used to be factory boys.

Now it's factory boy because there's only one person in it.

If they want to win the World Championship,

then they need to start favouring Jorge Martín.

The interesting thing is that both Martin and Iger

are leaving a brilliant next year.

They're both going to join up as the Yamaha Works riders, aren't they?

Yes, that's right.

They're both leaving a brilliant becoming Yamaha Works riders.

So, you know, it's...

But to me, if a prettier wants to win the riders championship,

then they're going to need to run their team orders.

Because whilst I don't think Mark will be super dominant everywhere,

because some tracks, he suffered a little bit.

He will score enough points to win it.

They don't do that.

Do you think that Mark...

Well, I mean, what is he?

18...

He's only 18 points back.

18 points back, yeah.

That is...

So the top five are 24 back.

If you go down to Fernandez, he's 49.

Then there's another 20 to Pedro Acosta,

who also, on that Red Bull KTM factory bike,

he seems to blow hot and cold sometimes.

You think the bike grows hot and cold?

Yeah, you're probably right there.

He's only five ahead of Banyan.

We're only half of the season.

We're 11 down 11 to go.

Yeah.

Oh, yeah.

Yeah.

So, I mean, yes, exactly.

There is the restart.

Silverstone next, which is that Mark...

Every track is like this.

Hasn't the last couple of years,

even during Ducati dominance,

hasn't been a particular Ducati circuit.

No.

Then you go to Aragon, which is.

Yeah.

And then we go from there.

But yeah, I mean, Mark will win less somebody.

I mean, Jorge Martín fit with the team behind him,

can take the challenge to Mark,

but otherwise it's not going to happen.

I mean, I think I'll be honest,

and this is, you know, we were very lucky

in that we were brought up on, you know,

the competition between several incredibly good riders,

one of which was Mark, but he's the youngest.

So we've got Martin and Valentino and Casey and Danny.

They've all retired since then.

It is nothing like the same quality

in the cross the field as it was then.

And that's not Mark's fault.

Go out and win, mate.

But, you know, that's the fact.

It has been a drop in quality.

You did say when Mark injured himself

a couple of, or three seasons ago,

it did give a boost to some people

who found out they could win.

And even when Mark came back and he wasn't at his best,

they found out they could race with Mark.

I think Mark Marquez now is,

I still don't think he's as good as he ever was,

but I think he's good enough to win the championship.

That's me to be.

I think he's not.

I think he's good enough to win the championship.

I mean, Bozeki has, he's done himself in, really,

with, he's lost his head completely.

And I'm really disappointed about that,

because I wanted him to see him win the championship

and Aprila win the championship.

You've got Ayagura for Trackhouse,

who is getting a bit of momentum

and Trackhouse are getting a bit of momentum.

How difficult is it for a satellite team to win?

Well, you said Aprila could pull

the Factory Order's card for Jorge Martín.

So do you think it's between Martín Ayagura and Marquez now,

or do you think Marquez is a Neil Donphilovic

if he steers fit?

I think it's between Martín and Marquez.

Right.

But I think...

I think Ayagura will get in there

and challenge for race wins.

I think he'll be there.

Yeah, but overall, yeah.

But Marquez is a favourite now.

And that's ridiculous.

He shouldn't be the favourite,

because he's missed so much,

he's injured and everything else.

And it says more about the inability of anyone else.

I mean, I've got sympathy for your Jorge,

because obviously he himself did not start the season well.

He didn't have preseason either.

Well, he's not fit either.

You said that.

So you sit there, you go,

fair enough, he probably is the next best rider in the field.

But he's not 100% either.

So I can't see how Mark doesn't win this.

Obviously, the key caveat, of course,

the MotoGP is injury, staying away from injury.

Yeah, absolutely right.

And we've seen how much difference that can make.

You listened to the midweek motorsport series,

21 episode 26.

Nick Damon there with me, John Hendoff.

Nick will be back in the second hour of tonight's programme.

We'll start talking about some F1 there as well.

But now it's time.

Oh, yeah, we're going to have another jingle

and then another guest.

The Double Stint with John Hendoff and John DeGees.

John DeGees from Sports Car 365

is with us for another one of our regular,

although not weekly, but regular Double Stint segments.

John, you were at CTMP at the weekend, I presume.

Yes, I was, John.

Always an interesting thing.

I love going to CTMP.

We were doing that one remote as I think most people know.

The Canadian sports car fans are so welcoming,

so knowledgeable.

It was a lovely weekend in terms of the weather.

I've never seen so many people up there on Moss Corner.

And I think all things being considered,

we had a pretty decent weekend, didn't we, of racing?

Yeah, I think it was a really, really good weekend.

And it was my first time up there

since they've moved the race to an LMP2 headline.

All right.

So I had missed the 24 and 25 editions

because I was in Brazil for WEC.

And I was sort of curious to see how it would unfold

over the course of the weekend.

And I actually enjoyed myself quite a bit,

just getting more time to speak with some of the teams

that I usually don't have the time for.

No offense.

But it's just like when GTP is in the show,

there's so much and also other support series that we cover

and other things like that.

I really had a chance to sit down with a lot of drivers

and team bosses from LMP2 from GTD

that you don't get the chance to really catch up with that often.

So it was quite refreshing from that

and from the on track product.

I think it was a really good show yet again.

And as much as I'd like to see GTP return to CTMP,

and I think they probably should,

I really like this concept of an LMP2 headline race.

Maybe it doesn't have to be at CTMP, but put it somewhere else.

And it's great to see the P2 cars in the, you know,

showing as a top billing for at least one race out of the year.

I like the idea of LMP2 as the highlight in the limelight,

taking all the headlines.

Ryan Marine with me in the Ford Racing Global Broadcast Center

at the weekend.

We both said, we love it.

I think it was in Michelin Porsche's tech actually after the race

and we had an awful lot to talk about.

But he said, wouldn't it be nice if that headline

rotated around a few tracks?

So that, you know, GTP went to CTMP

and maybe even if it was only once every couple of years.

And I kind of thought, do you know what Ryan,

you spot on there and whether it was,

because obviously we have GTD headline events as well.

We have Michelin Pilot Challenge headline event now

with the four hour race at Mid-Ohio.

And it's the logistics of it.

There was only nine cars there.

I know there was meant to be more cars in the top class

this past weekend.

I think now with the numbers that we've got in GTP,

it's surely not beyond the bounds of,

and by the way, don't get me wrong,

I absolutely don't give me the job of sorting out the schedules

and the calendars because that's too many pieces of paper

that you're shuffling around.

I do not want to be involved in that.

Could we do it?

I don't know.

Maybe that's a question for John Doonan.

I mean, ultimately, we had a good race.

We had a great race and we crunched the numbers

and at the end of the race, the P2s,

pretty much everybody had to do a quick splash.

At the end, 4567 seconds of fuel,

which actually gave us a little more jeopardy

than we were expecting.

But the lap times were incredible this weekend.

That really made me sit up and take notice.

Yeah, I was blown away by this

because we haven't broken an LMP2 lap record

for, I think, quite a few years

because the cars were in completely different configurations

back in the late 2018, 2019

and they had more power, there was more downforce,

I believe.

And now, the way the class is structured

were you have the bronze driver qualify the car.

Usually, they're a lot slower,

but it wasn't the case this weekend

with the inter-euro pole car starting on pole.

Jeremy Clark put a hell of a lap down

and he broke a seven-year track record,

not just qualifying record,

but actual track record in LMP2

that was topped by Matt McMurray

back in, I think, 2019 by Pier 1 Matheson Motorsports.

So it was amazing to see how quick these LMP2s

were around the track.

And again, there was no big advancement

from last year with these cars.

Same Michelin tires, same performance parameters

as far as I know.

It just shows how much these teams are stepping it up

time and time again, year after year, race after race.

And I actually have to think that this might be

the most competitive LMP2 division worldwide.

And again, no offense to ELMS,

no offense to Asian Le Mans,

or even after 24 hours of Le Mans.

But you do have some of the best teams

and drivers in IMSA LMP2.

We have to talk, I think, about inter-euro pole.

They have been doing fantastic work for such a long time.

For them to do what they've done at Le Mans

and have the success that they've had at Le Mans in Europe.

But they've taken that to the US as well.

And this is not just a named team

who have someone else running the shore for them.

This is a team that's based in Poland

and to go to the US for Tom Dilman, in particular,

who, he had a few ghosts to put to bed

after last year as well.

Man, I thought that was an incredible performance.

Yeah, and he downplayed it a lot when we asked him

in a free event Zoom.

What do you think about returning to CTMP?

And he says, oh, it's just another race, just another race.

But he admitted in the post-race press conference that,

yeah, actually it was kind of special for me to win this one

after what happened last year.

Obviously with the mechanical issue with the card,

it sent him to the hospital with two broken vertebrae.

And he made a pretty quick recovery.

But still, that must have been an extremely frightening moment.

Any accident that you don't have control of at CTMP

could end up being extremely, extremely massive,

even though there's been a lot of safety improvements

around the track in recent years.

But still, to come back and put on a performance like he did,

ultimately passing Alex Quinn, I think, with an hour or 14

to go for what eventually became the winning pass,

yeah, that was some really mega stuff.

There's another name that you've mentioned there, Alex Quinn.

I had a first opportunity to sit down and chat with him

in the crowd-strike racing by APR Algrave Pro Racing area at Le Monde.

And we sort of did a little bit of an extended interview,

which is still actually on the website from our Le Monde coverage.

That is a young man who is taking to endurance racing

as if he was born to it.

Obviously, it's not necessarily being his first choice,

but George Kurtz, Stu and Sam Cox have brought them in to this team.

And I think we saw at the weekend,

he's repaying their confidence.

Yeah, he's really come on, I would say, in the last six months,

well, especially in America, having done odd and end races here

and there in LMP2, but now having the full season drive

with crowd-strike by APR, he's really impressed me.

And from what we hear, he's likely going to have

a factory Pujo seat in the WEC next year.

So he's already a reserve and development driver there.

He's done a couple of tests within the 9x8.

He might be racing an Asian Le Mans series

with the BBM Sport operation.

Oh, that would be smart.

That would be smart.

He's a driver coach of Britton Lenduris

who owns one of the wingless 9x8s.

So there's a lot of connections that all are sort of intermingled there.

But I think Alex is the real deal.

And I would actually be surprised if he's not part of the Pujo lineup

because there's quite a bit of changes in the works there next year.

It wasn't the perfect weekend for AOL racing in either of the classes, actually.

PJ had to start at the back.

They had a splitter height issue, but between him and Dan Cameron,

they came back to third.

That keeps their championship hopes alive.

A typical gritty fight, actually, by AOL racing in the LMP2 category.

Yeah, it was a good one.

I sort of expected them to have a little bit more speed.

But again, they weren't lacking that much.

It was just sort of a case of how things unfolded,

like you said, with PJ having to start from the rear.

But I think he got as high as sixth within 10 minutes of the race.

He had a rapid recovery, obviously, from the technical infraction.

There was no doing of his own in qualifying.

But yeah, I think this was their breakthrough, Imsa, when one year ago.

But you also have to sort of think of it as just collecting podiums,

collecting points.

That's the real important thing at this time of the season.

And to sort of stay in that hunt, which they did

by getting another third place finish.

Just outside the top three, Ricky Taylor.

Now, here's something that I would have lost money on.

Ricky Taylor making his LMP2 debut in Imsa.

How could that possibly be the case?

He was the fastest LMP2 driver all weekend bar, I think, in the race.

Not doing the Goodwood duties for Cadillac.

He and Misha came home in fourth position,

albeit sort of 20 seconds off the podium.

But once again, Ricky Taylor just showing his class.

Yeah, and it was an interesting strategy by the Bobby Oregle Latin team

by sort of splitting the race 50-50 between Misha and Ricky.

And I see where they were trying to get at,

especially if Misha was very quick this weekend.

He qualified on the front row.

He was really in form. It's his favorite track.

He lives in Canada.

But I don't know if that was the ultimate right one to make.

I think Ricky probably could have been in the fight at the end

if they had pitted a little earlier.

But again, again, you don't know where the yellows could have been.

I don't think anybody could have predicted the last, I think,

what hour 45 ran caution-free,

especially after the first two yellows that were pretty quick in succession.

So not saying they made the wrong call,

but things did sort of balance out

when the top three had a pit for their splashes of fuel at the end,

although Ricky was still about, I think, 20 seconds behind.

Yeah, it was a bold move,

and I think it could have worked out under some circumstances.

Different circumstances, yes. Exactly.

It's the old adage, isn't it?

Oh, if you do what everybody else does,

then you'll get the same results.

Sometimes you have to roll the dice a little bit.

The two GTD categories are a return to form for air or racing.

The Porsche 911 has not been the favourite son recently.

Ultimately, they came home in second place on the podium

behind Vasa Sullivan racing by a couple of seconds.

There was Nick and Harry King,

Harry starting the car,

Rexie, as it was in this weekend's trim.

They didn't seem to be there.

The qualifying didn't show for them out.

By the way, I'm not ignoring Jack Hawkes with them.

Ben Barnaker winning, well done to them,

but I think the Porsche story is interesting.

They worked the strategy actually pretty well,

but then when they did get behind the leader,

they kept them pretty honest.

Yeah, it was interesting because

I think the Porsche in general has struggled

the 911 GT3 Arrivo in the last few WeatherTech championship races.

I don't think it's been the team.

I think AO has always been on top of things.

But if you look at the other cars in the GTD class,

namely the right car,

they just haven't really been where they need to be.

Again, I don't know if this is a BOP thing or not,

but it seems like you had to sort of think outside the box

a little bit to try to get into positions,

and that's where AO, that's what AO did to get

the first podium in quite a while

and matching their best finish since Sebring.

Yeah, I'd agree with that.

Good points for Neil Verhagen and Conor de Philippe

in the BMW M4 GT3 Evo for Paul Miller racing.

That keeps them in the championship league.

I've just found the piece of paper actually here in the studio

that has my Porsche keys to the race

and the thing on the top says track position.

And actually CTMP is absolutely a track position circuit.

We saw a number of people,

and I thought one of the star headline-grabbing runs of the race

was Max Esteson in RLL team McLaren,

particularly that opening stint

where he was right on the tail of Verhagen.

He tried the outside pass at one stage at Turn 8,

got into the dirt, that dropped him back a little bit.

Nikita Johnson did the middle stint.

Ultimately, they end up in sixth position,

but track position this past weekend

was so important in all of the categories.

Yeah, absolutely.

And you saw some teams like Ford Racing hit early

with Ben Barker.

I think it was in the opening 20 minutes of the race,

and they basically were trying to back time the race

in thinking that it was going to go off maybe caution-free.

It backfired on them, unfortunately,

but it was teams thinking of different ways

of just avoiding traffic situations

or being right in the thick of things like Max was.

I didn't think that Esteson would have been able

to hold on for that long.

Obviously, he had a really impressive qualifying run,

but they were dead last in both practice sessions,

and they must have made miracles with that car

between practice and qualifying to qualify second,

and then to sort of stay in the mix there through his stint.

That was one of two GTD Pro cars to change drivers twice.

Nikita Johnson did the middle stint in that car,

and then when Max got back in,

it seemed like something wasn't exactly right.

He had a couple off-course excursions.

That sort of thing sort of faded away,

but I think that was still RLL Team McLaren's best run

with the 720S of the year, for sure.

I got our junior to ask Max when he got out after his first run,

oh, so you changed cars completely then for qualifying.

I think they went 1.6 or 1.7 seconds quicker

in that qualifying session than they'd got off.

Now, okay, they had a problem in the first practice session,

and neither of the drivers had been there,

but even so, that was very impressive,

and maybe that is a corner that is being turned by RLL

with that car and with those two young drivers.

Return to form for Wynward Racing in GTD,

Filales and Russell Ward.

Russell did his usual good stuff in the first race.

I think he was disappointed with that,

but between those two drivers and qualifying,

they come out on top.

They're probably a little bit too far back

after a great start to the season.

I think that's their first podium since they won at the Rolex

earlier in the year,

but good to see those guys back on form.

Yeah, I think the whole Walkins Glen weekend

was a real disappointment.

More than a disappointment just after what happened

in qualifying with Russell

and going over the Kerblis section

that nobody had any practice with before,

and then obviously the race,

it was good to see them return to form

where they really deserved to be.

Yeah, I agree with that.

Obviously, there was a six-hour race down in Brazil

for WEC as well.

You had the team down there.

I mean, the headline there is obvious.

BMW are on a roll,

winning Spa on the podium at Le Monde

and winning again with their hypercar at Sao Paulo.

I just...

Andreas Roos and Vincent Vos,

I don't know if they've stopped partying yet, to be honest.

Yeah, it's quite impressive when you think of things.

Here we are, four races completed halfway through the season.

It looks like, you know, points-wise,

we're not going to have extra points on hand

for the final two races.

Maybe, maybe not.

We'll have to see if we'll talk about that a little later.

But they're right in the thick of things.

Rene, Rast, Robin, Friens are tied

with Kumu Kabayashi, Mike Conway, Nick DeVries

for the championship lead,

and BMW is only, what, five points behind Toyota

in the manufacturer's championship, which is crazy.

Toyota had another...

I was going to say, another challenging race.

Obviously, they won Le Mans,

but it's really hit or miss for them all year

and where they are in terms of the pecking order.

They didn't score any manufacturer points in Brazil,

a real disappointing run for them.

But this really makes the championship come alive,

and I'm really looking forward to getting the Coda

in about six weeks' time

to sort of see what the next thing unfolds

for Hypercar in particular.

We don't know

because there is no B or P tables being published

by FIA, WEC and the ACL.

So we don't know what changes were made at Altitude.

That's the highest Altitude that they raced at.

I kind of want to say that whilst I would like to know,

does it really matter?

The Altitude?

The B or P.

We're not talking about it because we don't know,

and isn't that kind of what the authority is?

That's what they wanted us to do,

and now we're talking about how great the racing is.

There you go.

It has crossed my mind,

but it also has left questions.

Of course.

Just looking at some of the times from Free Practice,

you had the Aston Martin Valkyrie topped the time charts

in FP1, and then the Genesis in FP2,

and I'm like, whoa, what's going on here?

Yes.

We don't know what configurations they're in.

We know the Aston is running under homologation weight in IMSA,

for instance,

but then when the race comes

and you have such an entertaining battle

between some of these manufacturers,

it is putting on a really good show,

and it does...

I almost bite my tongue to say this,

but it almost does make it an enter...

You know what I'm trying to say.

Does the end justify the mates?

Yeah.

I think kind of it does, to be honest.

I'm the person who always likes to have the most data,

to have all the stuff put out in front of me,

but it is kind of fun to see this unfold,

not really knowing how the roast is being cooked.

Yes.

I don't know.

Yes, that's right.

You don't know until you cut into it whether it's done or not.

That's a very good analogy.

I like that.

Ferrari 2nd, Cadillac 3rd, and 4th.

Cadillac locked out the front row with Cadillac 3rd's team.

Georgia, ultimately, they couldn't quite deliver.

The best of the Faris...

The pit stop issues.

Yes, indeed.

They'll not be happy with that.

The 38 car put its best lap in.

We're lit in the race.

Lap 1, 7, 3 or 7, 4.

I think I remember listening to Johnny and Johnny.

Actually, Johnny Moorland was in the booth for that as well for us.

51 Ferrari 2nd, it was the 12 Cadillac in 3rd.

The 50 Ferrari had a not great race.

Aston Martin, 6th.

After, as you mentioned, going well in qualifying.

Genesis just outside the points 13th,

but still ahead of both Peugeots and one of the Toyotas.

It's a lottery, isn't it?

And if us, we have been told as the press,

and we can't know this because we're not seeing this,

but if these changes are 5 and 10 kilos here,

10 and 15 horsepower there,

if they are small IMSA, dare I say IMSA-like changes to the BUP,

I kind of think that this is working out.

Because there's no point in the speculating,

because we don't know.

What we're looking at is the performances of the cars.

And as you've just said there,

well, they had pit stop issues.

And nowadays, you are not going to get the best result

if you're not delivering and executing

with, it doesn't matter how much performance potential

you've got in the car.

Yeah, and I think it's interesting

because it seems to be as close as it's ever been with the BOP,

yet they're not publishing it.

And if they were publishing it, then they can prove to everybody

that this is working out really well,

because I think it's been a success.

You know, more or less this year.

It's a lot better than what it was in recent years

in the hypercars.

So that's where I'm sort of left with like,

do we want to know?

Do we not want to know?

And it's turned into be a little bit of an entertaining thing

because we can't report on what the BOP is.

So it sort of takes one stressor out.

I don't know.

It's an interesting one.

And again, I don't want to say the wrong words,

but again, like I said, I'd like to have all the data,

but tip of the hat to the FIA and ACO

and their technical committee,

because I think they are doing,

things are going in the right direction.

Sure, you're not going to get a perfect every weekend.

I think the Toyota is an example of that maybe,

but it's great to see the variety.

It's great to see the great on-track racing.

You hinted at the rest of the season.

I think you and I found out at Le Mans

what other outlets have been reporting recently,

although as we're talking now,

there's nothing concrete,

but the last two rounds of the season will be in Europe

and that looks to be Barcelona

and then two weekends after that,

three weekends after that actually in Italy at Monza.

Now, you mentioned something that I thought was very interesting.

When I sat down at Imola, start of the season,

at the prologue actually,

and we were talking with senior officials

from FIA, WEC, LMEM,

and in particular the ACO,

it was made very clear to me

that the amount of points on offer for the season

would be respected.

Let me put it that way.

In fact, I think that was the word that was used.

So the races that we are missing

for whenever those two European races happened

and wherever they are,

and let's wait for that to be completely confirmed,

that there would be one and a half points races

to reflect the 18-12 kilometers,

or 10 hours of Cata,

and the eight hours of Bahrain.

That might have slightly changed.

And again, I use that might

because we've not had that officially yet

as you and I are talking right now.

Correct, yeah.

Based on what I have heard,

it sounds like if the races go to Europe,

they will be a pair of six-hour rounds

and not 10 or eight-hour races,

and that would infer that the points

would be normal six-hour points.

But again, I think we need to wait

for the FIA World Tourist Board Council

to approve all of this.

We, us at SportsCard 365

have been sitting on the developments of Plan B,

let's call it, for WEC's calendar,

for over a month now.

I think it's Plan Z by now, John, to be honest.

Well, the Plan B of being the races,

yeah, it's difficult for the promoters.

It's difficult for everybody,

especially when you're trying to work out backup plans

with track availability and things like that.

But that's why we've been cautious

on what we've been reporting,

because it's a very difficult situation

for everybody involved.

The promoters in the Middle East

would love to have the cars back.

We would love to go back.

But it's just on very unfortunate circumstances

right now that it's making it currently,

as we sit here right now, I think a little bit unsafe

to travel to the Middle East

to have put on international sports car racing.

How much do you think,

and we talked about this on Midweek Motorsport last week.

I was talking with Johnny Palmer

about it when I was doing FP3 with him

over the weekend from Sao Paulo,

on the Sao Paulo event.

How much is Formula One leading this?

Because we hear from our contacts

that the 26th of July is when Formula One

will see what they're doing

with their end of the season,

and there's at least two races,

possibly even three races,

that they might have to reschedule.

There is an FIA World Council meeting

just before that 23rd,

I think as you mentioned there.

It's difficult, isn't it?

Even for a series as big

as the FIA World Endurance Championship,

because quite clearly,

F1 is going to have priority.

Yeah, and usually we've seen F1

lead the charge in returning to racing.

Like, look at the COVID era.

I think they were sort of first in...

Well, they were the first to sort of

go to certain regions where there was restrictions and stuff.

Obviously, certain regional championships,

like IMSA, restarted pretty quickly,

but the point I'm trying to make

is that people lead after seeing what F1 does.

And it's a little different now

because WEC is a world championship as well.

But there's also a big thing about

company restrictions and sort of

employees being able to travel

to certain regions or not.

The country of France,

where you see a majority of,

well, staff from FIA and WEC,

Michelin, Pujot, Alpine,

a large chunk of the grid

have French staff or employees

that have to go to certain rules and regulations.

It wasn't until late June

that the restriction was lifted by the French government

to be able to travel to the Middle East.

It went down from like a level four to a level three.

I think I don't have the right wording.

Every country has different things,

but that would have prohibited the likes of Michelin

and Pujot, I was told, from actually traveling there.

So it's not just the FIA making a decision.

It's ultimately up to, can these people actually

work these events?

And you have to think of all the different nations involved.

The U.S. right now has level three warnings

for most of the Middle Eastern countries.

I haven't checked in the last few days

where things have escalated over there.

So again, I don't envy anybody in making these decisions.

It's just, I get the sense from the WEC side

and from the Asian, the teams wanting to participate

in the Asian Le Mans series,

they're getting a little bit stir crazy

on needing to know what it'll be in order to,

especially the Asian championship,

to be able to sell these programs to customers.

And in a very pivotal time of the championship

where they're going to be introducing the hypercar class

for the first time and needing bronze drivers to fund that

and a bronze driver in each car.

That's a very good point.

There needs to be a decision quickly.

And I know July is still quite some time away

from October, November,

but I think we need a decision in the next week or so

for both championships in sports car racing.

And the knot on effects that that has to regional championships.

You mentioned the Asian Le Mans series.

Creventnik recently announced their championship

in the Middle East with two races in Abu Dhabi

and a racing in Dubai with a 12-hour race.

A 24-hour. Yeah. A 24-hour in Dubai.

25 in Dubai, sorry, and a 12-hour and a six-hour at Abu Dhabi.

I think we sort of stumbled over the fact

that the date of the 12-hour race in Abu Dhabi

was the weekend after the F1 Grand Prix in Abu Dhabi

and knowing Creventnik as we do

and their track days,

and knowing F1 and their young driver test,

which would be Monday and Tuesday,

that kind of doesn't quite stick together.

It's happened before in the past

because the golf 12 hours,

that is traditionally always held that date,

the week after the Abu Dhabi F1 Grand Prix.

I remember our Davey Uvama was there last year

and he was actually there during the F1 young driver test.

So I think it could be done.

I don't know the inconsistencies of Creventnik

and their track days, but you still raise a good point, John.

It's interesting.

And of course, none of these things happen in a vacuum.

For example, one of the dates that's been suggested for Barcelona

for the penultimate round of the WAC

would clash with an SRO event,

which would affect quite a lot of drivers,

maybe as many as 19 or 20 drivers

because of the fact that we're talking about GT3 and GT3.

Yeah, and teams too.

That's a good point.

Raj 59, WRT, who else in LMGT3?

There has to be three or four teams.

TF, probably.

TF, exactly. Yeah, sure.

Yeah, so nothing happens in a vacuum.

John, thank you so much

for taking some time out of your busy schedule

to talk with us.

Can we quickly just finish?

There's a couple of articles

that you've posted on Sportacar 365

that I've found absolutely fascinating recently

to do with the new LMP2 regulations,

where you've been talking to Remy Taffer

from Orica, the technical director.

One of the quotes of which was,

if you haven't got yourself sorted by 2027,

you're not going to be on the grid for 2030.

That's in regards to the top class.

To the top class, yes.

That was an extraordinary thing to say

and the fact that their commitment

to manufacturers in that top class, OEMs,

has been staggered, has allowed them to service

the amount of manufacturers.

He said, if they'd all come at the same time,

we wouldn't have been able to do it.

Yeah, and they're all going to come at the same time in 2030.

Okay, Orica might lose,

but there's probably,

we don't know what Acura Honda is going to do in 2030

and right now they're off the table.

Elping is off the table,

but the successor for that team,

which we believe will be somewhere based in China,

a Chinese manufacturer, might want to still stick with Orica.

We don't know.

Remy basically said they could do two maximum manufacturers

and by looking at it,

you would think that it would be Genesis and Ford

because they're the two most recent

and they look committed for the long term.

But yeah, his comment about 2027 was quite interesting.

That means these OEMs have to get board approval

for the extension or new programs or whatever

by the end of this year

in order to align with the chassis manufacturer

or do their own chassis.

It's really intriguing

because we thought this was going to be more of a carryover

of the regs and grandfathered things in

and Remy sort of spoke about it in a different way

and it really opened some...

It turned my head quite a bit.

Hearing it from the constructor's side.

I don't know Remy that well,

but I've spoken to him a couple of times.

He does not strike me, John,

as somebody who runs around with his hair on fire.

I don't feel as though he's making these comments

in a way to sort of drum up business.

I mean, Orica doesn't have to drum up business.

Let's be quite honest.

I felt that what he was saying

and when I read his words that you quoted

directly on Sportacar 365,

that was like a warning bell to me

and I really sat up and took notice of that.

Yeah, and I think this is what we're going to...

With the new regs,

we may lose one or two manufacturers

just because of the timeline,

not just because of the commitment

or the financial wherewithals.

I think these constructors

are going to be at overcapacity.

If Ferrari continues,

if Toyota continues,

I'm sure they'll want to continue making their own chassis,

but you have to do remember,

the Ferrari chassis is made by Delara,

even though it's not called a Delara.

So Delara is already busy with

what, three other LMDH cars right now,

manufacturers.

So what does their capacity look like?

Multimatic, maybe there could be some room there

if Porsche doesn't come back

or if Porsche does come back to WEC

and there's a lot of different variables,

but the point is that these manufacturers need to be,

A, getting board approval and B,

locking in with their partners by the end of the year

in order to be on the grid in 2030.

That's quite an aggressive timeline.

And just to be clear on this,

and we kind of touched on this across the weekend

and in fact, in the middle of the sport last week,

this new set of regulations

allows anybody to build a chassis.

So if Lula want to come and build a chassis,

if Dorm want to come and build a chassis,

that's fine.

They are not tied to the two LMP2 chassis builders,

which is Oracle and Leisure,

for 2028, for the new 2028 LMP2s,

which is kind of where I was at the beginning of this.

Basically, anybody can build it

so long as it's within some fairly

proscriptive chassis mandatory regulations

that are going to be the new RECs.

Yeah.

So you're right.

Lula or somebody else could come in,

but they would have to go down that second pathway,

I believe, unless we need further clarification here.

But the way it was presented at Lamaze,

that you can be your own OEM and create your own chassis,

or you can go down the route with the four licensed

chassis constructors we have now.

And based on what I've heard,

those four, Leisure, Oracle, Multimatic,

and Delara are not changing.

Right.

But if you were a Ferrari,

unless Ferrari's not a good example,

if you were a Pujo and would want to link up with Lula

for some reason, I guess that is possible

with the other route.

It's just the OEM would have to approve that.

Got you.

That under their own jurisdiction.

But yeah, even with the regulations,

the goal is to confirm them by the end of the year,

but there are still question marks over how all this is going to work.

Yes.

I'm bringing in a new LMP2 chassis as well.

In 28, with the regulations still not fully rubber stamped yet,

either.

Remy told me that, which was a big eye opener as well,

that right now, Oracle has stuff in CFD and on the computer,

based on what they think the regulations will be,

but they haven't been fully confirmed yet.

Yeah.

What we think it might be and what might happen,

well, we saw what happened there with the LMDA regulations.

The manufacturers actually went ahead and just did it

and basically forced the hand of the ACL and IMSA and the FIA,

because ultimately at that point,

there were no proper regulations for the category

that we've come to know as LMDA and GTB.

Yeah.

Jon, thank you very much indeed.

It's always a pleasure.

I love talking to you about the Sportacar365.com,

your ultimate opportunity to find out about everything

Sportacar racing.

And by the way, I do like your increased coverage

of the Japanese series and other bits and pieces as well, Jon.

I know that's a big commitment for you and the team.

Well done for that.

And thanks for joining us tonight on Midweek Motorsport.

Absolutely.

Thanks, Jon.

Midweek Motorsport.

Halftime.

And while we swap ends, here's what's coming up.

Always good to have Jon De Geese on the programme

after a busy weekend of sports cars.

What we've got in the second hour of the programme.

That's a very good question, actually.

Nick German will be rejoining me in just a few moments' time.

We will be looking ahead to the weekend's action two races

before the F1 break, first one of which being Spa.

A hot Spa?

Could be.

Nothing to do with a nice weekend to win

and getting your feet done and all of that.

Yeah.

So when we're talking to Nick about that,

the other Formula One stories and your submissions, please,

to at specutainment on Twitter.

We'll kick the second half of the show off.

Sorry, football reference, which I promised I wouldn't do.

Pack up some next.

Midweek Motorsport on radiolamond.com.

Did you see any of the sports car racing at the weekend, Nick?

Or were you too busy?

Too busy.

Too busy?

No, that's all right.

I was doing my own sports car racing at the weekend.

Yes, I know you were.

And you did very well.

You were powered up.

The team did very well.

No, no.

Hang on.

First of all, we have to congratulate the guys from the Simcast

because they have been entering some pretty prestigious

and highly competitive online races.

High level I found out as well.

High level.

Right.

Highly competitive and high level endurance races,

which culminated last weekend in...

What was that?

The Spa 24?

The Spa 24, yeah.

Right.

GT?

Yes, all GT.

We were in the Aston.

Yeah.

Was that the right car to be in?

I don't know.

I literally just kept the information through and set up.

I just turned up and attempted to do something half decent.

But I ended up doing a brilliant performance, I thought,

for key parts of the race and those key parts

when the race was under safety car or four yellow.

Because I was literally as fast as anybody else under safety car.

I heard you lost no time whatsoever to even the highest ranked I-races.

It's actually better than that because I got two wave rounds.

So I actually gained two laps during that point.

So I don't want to point out that the rest of the team lost time to the leaders

and I gained time to the leaders.

So just leave that one there.

Yeah, the rest of the team were very, very good.

Because at one stage, the team was well up inside the top 10 overall.

Oh, yeah.

We were rotating around in our class.

We were rotating around depending on the pit stops.

We were first, second, third, fourth and fifth.

And then we end up third overall in our class.

Dropped back a bit in the overall overall.

But I think about 55, I think we were about 19th, I think in the end,

or perhaps 20th.

A lot of that was down to good strategy because it wasn't down to...

Yeah, because some of the people in the higher classes were ridiculously quick.

It was a lot of fun.

I ended up doing the...

Basically, I was playing the role of the old rich bloke who owns the team.

And I ended up doing...

I had to do four hours to qualify.

And I ended up doing three hours and 20 minutes in one stint

between like 3.30 in the morning and 7 o'clock.

Because there was a lot of...

I was in there and they kept me having more safety cars, more yellow flags.

So I would get out, I would just get to be four hours

and give everyone a chance to move the car forward.

But I was the man who moved the car forward the most.

Excellent, I like that.

Do you know when the next one is?

They have a series.

I don't think it was in our 24-hour race this year

because they end up doing sort of six hours of Monzer

and six hours of other places as well.

So, yeah, also, I actually managed to take the commentators to task as well

because it was fully broadcast.

Of course you did.

Because someone was listening to it and they said,

you know, they noticed a really good comeback by the team.

They said, after Nick Domen put the car on the wall,

and I had to point out, I was put in the wall.

I didn't put it in the wall.

I was put in the wall by somebody else.

It was a 20-second repair anyway, but I thought,

I'm not being slow.

I might be slow, but I'm safe.

Well, you have to be faster than the bloke

who's going to bump you into the wall lot, don't you, Shirley?

Well, yes, he was just impatient.

Like a lot of people were impatient to get past.

All right.

He wasn't showing what you would call...

Yeah, there were a number of places in Spa

where it's actually really, really easy to overtake,

and we will let you through where he tried.

It was not one either easier where you could let someone through.

Was it multi-class, or was it all GTs?

All GTs, but it was multi-talented.

All right, yeah.

I like that. Well done to you

and to the rest of the SimCast team,

Matt and the rest of the team.

They've really been punching above their wits,

and that's not to say that they aren't talented.

They are talented, but they are in a pretty prestigious

and highly talented paddock,

virtual paddock in those races.

So we wish them well for the rest of the season.

Mentioned earlier on, Nick,

that we are getting towards the mid-season break.

Obviously, a lot of the Formula One drivers,

particularly the UK-based guys

or those that drive for UK-based teams,

were at Festival of Speed at the weekend,

so we saw an awful lot of that

and heard an awful lot about that.

We are at Spa at the weekend

to talk about that in a moment.

Well, go on.

What I was going to say is,

what's the headlines there?

McLaren finally getting the latest engine.

This is a couple of races after the works team.

Yeah, but this is all written down

like some sort of terrible thing that Mercedes have done,

and they've stabbed them in the back,

and it's like, oh, you shouldn't have a customer team.

It's just down to where the engine usage is going.

You've only got four engines a year,

so you can't just change a new one out because it's ready,

if it's not as part of the rotation.

Now, the problem for McLaren and why they ended up

slightly differently rotated to Mercedes

is because they had those failures at the beginning of the season

including that double non-start in China.

So the engine that came in after China obviously

had two more races to run

before the inverted comm was born out.

And so therefore, to put new engines in,

Mercedes had them in one race,

and the timing was right for Williams to have them last time.

I think actually Alpina did as well.

And the timing is now right for McLaren,

and in fairness to McLaren,

they've now got on a power circuit which is built in GP.

They have a brand new engine,

which is a couple more horsepower.

So it's all part of people trying to make out

there's some Mach-Eveille element to it,

and there isn't.

It's just how you still have unlimited engines.

So they should have a bit of an advantage.

I think the problem we have,

sorry, this problem's the wrong way.

So we've got a challenge, shall we?

Challenge to both the teams and those watching

is that the Kemmelstraight is a very, very, very, very long uphill straight

following a flat-out sequence of corners

following a short downhill straight

before the previous braking zone.

So I kind of think people might run out of power.

Well, I was going to ask you that.

Energy hungry tracks like Silverstone

require a different mindset.

Yeah.

We had George Russell basically saying

that he can't challenge for the championship

if they keep, if Mercedes Petronas keep

giving him a car that he had at Silverstone.

He really should have finished fifth there.

He ended up finishing second somewhat fortuitously.

People keep saying that, but he was unlucky

because he had that puncture as well.

Oh, well, that's a fair point, yes.

He was racing for third with Max.

And I think, I think, yes, the second was lucky.

The second was lucky because Antoni broke down

and because of Max's failure, obviously,

Lewis came in for a stop he wouldn't have had

and he wouldn't have behind him.

So, yes.

But, yeah, he never, if some buts and maybes,

he was racing with Max the whole way through.

So people are very quick to jump on George's back.

Yes, he's not doing as good a job as Kimmy at the moment,

but he's not doing a bad job is what I would say.

If I said, if I told you these numbers,

Ferrari, Red Bull, Cadillac, tied on 32,

McLaren on 26, Audi on 22,

Haas, and Racing Bulls on 21, Alpine on 20,

Williams 18, Mercedes 17, Aston Martin 13.

What am I talking about?

I do know the answer to this question,

so I won't do a silly question.

It is declared upgrades on the FIA,

declared upgrades page.

Very good, very good.

Yes, and it's all part of the concept

that some teams are, you know, perhaps upgrading so much.

How can they afford it?

It's all kind of an extra chance to start

spreading potential them, cost cap disparity.

But the fact is that, you know,

what one team considers an upgrade

is not necessarily an upgrade,

and an upgrade could be a relatively simple thing.

So you just change the front wing end plate flap,

which doesn't cost a lot of money in the scheme of things.

It costs a lot of money to you and I,

but not in the scheme of things.

That's one upgrade.

A whole new wing, that's one upgrade.

You have to look at that spending.

Anytime you do anything that has an air and dynamic surface,

that's an upgrade, doesn't it?

That's right, and obviously, you know,

but yeah, it is true.

Ferrari do seem to have bought a lot of the stuff.

I mean, Red Bull had a massive upgrade two races ago.

Mercedes has been much more conservative

about their upgrades.

And of course, Aston Martin, basically,

after trying to bring you a few in the season

to sort out the problems of the car,

it wasn't actually drivable.

There's nothing now for seven or eight races

waiting for a massive upgrade in Hungary.

Yeah, this is interesting, isn't it?

Because clearly, there are several ways

you can cut the cake.

You've got $215 million, the cost cap.

Yeah, you've got a lot more money this year.

A lot more money this year, which is fair enough,

because it's a brand new set of regulations.

And as you know, do you know what I think?

Do you know how much money I think they should have?

As much as they want.

As much they can spend.

Yeah, as much as they can raise and spend.

Absolutely.

There are clearly several ways that you can cut the cake.

It seems as though Ferrari have front-loaded their upgrades

in a brand new set of regulations,

which is not a bad idea.

I think Vassar, Fred Vassar had said

that they are deliberately upgrading it

during the early part of the season,

so they can have a better performance

for the greater number of races.

I kind of understand that,

because Toto was being a bit snitty once in a while

and said, Ferrari seem to have limited.

So, at Aston Martin and Williams,

they did a little bit at the start,

but quite frankly, their cars weren't the best

at the start of the season.

I'm loving weren't the best.

They were blooming awful.

Right.

You know, I have to be diplomatic.

Yeah, fine.

I mean, do they come at some stage?

Do they come effectively with a B-spec car?

Is that what you're talking about?

It's pretty much...

They save up a whole lot of upgrades

and play all the cards together.

Yeah, it's pretty much what Aston Martin are going to do.

And I think it's pretty much what Williams are going to do,

though a lot of Williams' stuff is going to be

components that look the same, but are lighter,

that they have gone down a couple of calls.

Yeah, I mean, I think the thing to remember is

that we have stable regulations.

So, anything you learn this year

can be applied to next year.

And that's quite important.

And the absolute...

If you can see e-gains by upgrading early,

then, you know, go for it.

But also, the other thing to think about is

you're doing that based on initially

two or three tracks of experience.

When you've got 10 tracks of experience,

what you would do is probably different.

You'd probably upgrade it in a different way having run.

So, yes, it's absolutely right.

Fred says, if you upgrade early,

you get the benefit for longer.

Then again, if you wait longer,

you might end up with a more considered upgrade path.

But I think, you know, it would carry on the whole way through.

There's no point stopping developing these cars

because, effectively, they're held over next year.

And as you know that, it's a fact, don't we, John?

Because the teams, when they announced the power split,

which would result in requiring more fuel,

some teams weren't very happy about that

because they wanted to carry the chassis over from this year to next year.

Yes.

And also, the key part of the chassis is the fuel tank.

So, a lot of people, you know, so it is...

Yeah, we are looking at a minimum of a two-year formula

of little change, and perhaps even a three-year of little change.

I mean, we do know already that there's going to be some changes

due to things being banned.

Those exhaust outlet wings have been banned for next year.

And it looks like it hasn't been confirmed.

There's a very good chance that the rotating rear wings

will also be disallowed for next year.

This is because of the accident that Max had at Silverstone.

Yeah, and I think...

I feel that's a bit unfair on Ferrari,

whose system seemed to be working fine.

Yeah, and I agree, but I think, again,

I don't have an issue with something being banned at the end of the year.

Right.

That's fine.

I have an issue, as I have from the 20 years we've been doing this show.

Must-dumpers.

Stuff being banned with stuff...

Yeah, you don't ban stuff in season.

No.

That's not fair.

Because it was legal, and you said,

yeah, it's fine.

You don't ban it in season if it's not unsafe.

And, yeah, this is the thing.

Is the ring unsafe?

It's obviously not unsafe for the main reason

that Ferrari have been running it completely fine

for six races, seven races.

Yeah, Red Bull, their version,

apparently has issues.

As I've said before,

I don't know if the issues are entirely the wing on the person,

probably in the press and the throttle sometimes,

or the combination of the two,

because I noticed that as I had it, I wasn't falling off yet.

Oh, yeah, that's a good point.

And if you had a structural issue,

normally those sort of things hit both cars.

But, you know, you're not allowed to criticize the deity

as Max Verstappen, so it is entirely the car.

Just going back to those big upgrades for Aston Martin,

so they're going to bring their big, big upgrade

just before the Hungarian in the world.

Well, we have no speed and our car is vibrating.

And is a bit of a monter.

Hungarian Grand Prix for those that that's the last race,

so not this race coming at Spa,

but the one after is the last one before the summer break.

Williams apparently are saying that they won't have theirs

until Azerbaijan in September.

Well, also, don't forget the...

I don't think that the car upgrade for Aston Martin

is going to be in sequence with the engine upgrade,

which Honda are bringing their engine upgrade

after summer break, so it's going to be a two-stage process,

because obviously the engine is also awful.

And I don't know how much Honda are going to get

from their first upgrade, but, you know, it might be a bit...

Obviously, they do have the biggest scope to improve.

But yeah, we've seen a lot of development.

And of course, the thing about it is,

at the beginning of any real cycle,

your developments are going to bring you much more,

because there's so much more to find.

So you start this year,

and you may well find two seconds of course of a season.

Next season, you'll find one.

The third season of the regulations,

you'll find 0.5, which is why obviously...

Law of diminishing returns, yeah.

All the teams get closer and

as a set of regulations get more mature.

I was going to say about that, though.

Because we've got Coscap, it's not like

if you conceptually have gone a bit wrong,

you can spend your way out of that

potentially engineering or aerodynamic cul-de-sac

that you've got yourself into.

But somebody like Williams,

I think is an interesting example,

because Coscap was meant to help teams like Williams.

They were warfully under-invested in for...

Yes, decades maybe.

So they get to survive,

but does it make getting the ground that they've lost

to the top teams,

does it make getting that ground back more difficult?

Because it's not just the car they've got to think about,

it's the whole infrastructure.

And that might be a new staff canteen

or a...

outside of Coscap.

Yeah, but you know what I mean.

And also...

I like sandwiches, but come out of it.

Unlike...

But do you spend a whole host of money

on some super-expensive bit?

What's a big bit that they do a lot of?

The floor, let's see it right.

Let's get a lighter, super-duper new floor

and that gives you...

Let's see, that gives you a tenth.

That would be quite a lot, although I did see Andrea Stella seeing

whereas it used to be two or three hundredths.

It's now a tenth or two tenths in this new regulations,

exactly mirroring what you've said.

So let's say you can have a super-expensive floor

that gives you a tenth of performance,

but instead you could do, I don't know,

three surface changes,

which were a damn sight cheaper,

like your wing end plate.

There you go, your wing end plate.

So you do a wing end plate or something else

and something else, which is much less expensive,

but you get four hundredths of a second each.

So all of a sudden, those three little things

add up to 0.12 of a second

and you've actually got better value for money.

I mean, is that what's going on?

Are people having to say,

we've got to get a return on all of this investment

and that return's got to be faster lab time?

Yeah, a hundred percent.

I mean, that is the unintended consequence

of the cost cap.

But this was the first time we've had the cost cap

coming into a completely set of new rules.

I mean, the last time it was kind of,

it went over a rule change

and I think Ripple fell out of it.

But that is what it is.

You have to work out what we can afford,

what we think it will bring virtually,

where we can make savings, be able to bring it

or where we have to spend money and other stuff.

I mean, it's a point you raised earlier

about teams like Williams and teams like Haas

and to a lesser extent Alpine.

They were behind the eight ball as far as infrastructure

prior to the, Haas were behind it

because of the unique way they're funded,

because the unique way they're put together.

Obviously, Williams had a legacy of underinvestment

stretching back 15 years.

And Alpine also had some stuff that was kind of getting a bit old.

So they all wanted to make infrastructure upgrades.

But those infrastructure upgrades, as they're not the can team,

but they are things that affect the car,

did fall under the cost cap.

And it's a case, you know, there was, I thought,

it's interesting, I thought there was a sort of a groundswell

to eliminate those things from the cost cap

for certain teams and make up for the fact that they didn't have it.

It seems like perhaps that's been backburned or it's all been spent.

But yeah, I mean, that is why, you know, we've had a complete,

we've had the cost cap, what, for four years now?

Yeah, four years had the cost cap.

This is year five of it.

We had a complete set of rule changes

and the exact same four teams are at the top.

So they've not, so why is that?

Because theoretically you would think, well, hang on a second.

You know, two, and they're not, one is a customer team.

So it's not exactly like, oh, it's just, and you're kind of going,

well, why is that?

Surely, you know, we've leveled the playing field.

They can't outspend it.

How can that be?

Because there's two reasons.

One, because they already had the infrastructure there

and haven't had to buy it.

And then you had to work it.

Yeah, they got the experience people.

Yeah, and they had the rank and file people

who had the experience, you know, from before.

So I suppose the inertia of the change is, you know, too much

because, you know, this is the point.

You see, if you step a team now, you've just,

you've got so much to go do, and you've got to learn so much.

It's like Cadillac, you've set up a very, very good team

with a good engine and good people and, you know, excellent facilities

and no worries about money up to the limit they can spend.

And obviously with new infrastructure

and the whole of corporate GM behind them and everything else

are a second to two seconds off.

It's not because they're rubbish, it's because they're new

and there's so much stuff you have to learn.

And I think your point about the established teams,

it's a bit like the conundrum that people had

in the early 2000s in sports car racing.

It didn't matter whether the regulations were going to change

or were changing because they were

and they were being tinkered with not exactly season on season

but, you know, Audi were being pegged back all the way.

But what you couldn't do is buy your way

in the 10 years of Audi's knowledge of sports car racing.

And all those bigger teams, before the cost cap came in,

had heavy infrastructure investment.

And now everybody has got to trade off the development of the car

against maybe a factory development or a new wind tunnel

or whatever.

And do we still have wind tunnel caps as well, don't we,

in Formula One in terms of time?

So does that mean more CFD?

Those CFD and wind tunnel are all equally capped

on a sliding scale of your success.

I mean, it's interesting, isn't it?

Because, yeah, we look at...

But the point about it is experience and basic knowledge

is still playing out in sports cars,

even after balance, performance and cost cap.

Because why the hell did Toyota win Le Mans?

Because they raced cleverer than the rest of the teams.

They qualified 14th.

But they had that experience and they won the race based on experience

and obviously talented drivers and everything else.

But that was about using the tactics,

knowing how to race Le Mans.

And that's a cost-capped, bopped series.

So being a really, really established race team

is always going to be an advantage.

All right, so two races before the summer break.

Spa, as we've mentioned, this weekend looks like

the weather will be cracked and the flags,

which could be interesting.

I was at a Spa Grand Prix where it very nearly got called off

because it was too hot.

We saw two or three weekends of call for the crowd strike.

Spa 24, they were wetting the track down in the early morning

trying to get the heat out of it.

Didn't the track break up at Spa 24?

I think that's what they were worried about

and they were housing it down.

The year that I did some F1 stuff for Bernie Vision

was the year that there was the side-by-side pass,

one either side.

Ah, that's 2000.

Yeah, and that weekend it was steaming

to the point where the Porsche Supercoupe couldn't go ahead.

The weird thing is, you know,

they were worried about the tides.

We missed meeting each other for the first time

because it was one of the races I had off in that year.

I don't know why I had not met you then.

I had to wait another four years to meet you at the touring house.

Isn't that amazing?

I wondered why I hadn't met you then.

Well, they cancelled the Porsche Supercoupe races that weekend

which had never happened before

and that was basically 50-plus Celsius surface temperatures

on the track and Michelin going,

uh, no, we're not good at this track.

We're not going to risk that.

You all right? Do you want a drink?

Yeah, I probably did.

I have a virtual drink. Hold on.

Nick Damon, taking a break.

We'll cut this out.

We'll cut this out later.

Don't worry.

I'm back now. I've choked to death.

I'm back now.

Excellent.

We've now got a virtual, Nick Damon, AI versus.

Right, Spa this weekend.

Yes.

I can't help but thinking, think that where the start line is,

um, the Ferrari starting advantage does not seem to be quite as big

as it has been.

Um, I think Lewis and you know, I am not a Lewis fan boy at all,

but I think Lewis is one of the drivers,

possibly the driver who's got his head around his energy management.

Let's put it that way.

The car's energy management as well,

if not better than everybody else.

Uh, he certainly seems to be able to race with it for the longest

and he's doing things in a very different way.

Um, Ferrari, will there be that?

Who's going to be there this weekend?

Well, realistically, um, the fact is that the.

Problem really has always been,

you start at the front, the grid,

the problem was you got slipstreamed up the, uh,

came off straight, didn't you?

Yes, exactly.

Now the problem is that, um, you're going to get,

I'm not going to cough again or anything.

Um, you're going to get power.

Uh, sorry, Lewis.

I'll just mute Nick for a second whilst he's,

he's choking away.

We're talking about, uh, the Belgian Grand Prix

at Spa-Francorchamps at this weekend.

Have you really?

Sorry about that.

I've no idea why I'm dying.

Uh, it's probably a little bit of some sort of psychic feeling

about how England are doing.

I don't know.

Stop it.

Don't mention it.

But, uh, yeah.

I mean, I think this is probably,

you get, you get slipstreamed up the chemo straight.

Now it's all about power management.

So how they go, look at the, the, the power deployment

going up the chemo and they go work out,

well, what can you defend going down the,

down the hill, um, to pull on that sort of thing.

So it's, it's, it's hard to predict where the start of the race.

My feeling is I've yet to see a race where the Mercedes

wasn't the best car.

So it's often not by much.

And obviously they got reliability issues.

Despite what George is saying about a lack of straight lines,

speed and all that kind of malarkey.

You still think that's the best car?

Yes.

Let's go through all the races.

They've only not won two of them.

It didn't win Barcelona.

And that was, um, basically because of strategy and great

driving, but the car was still the best.

Um, and, uh, they didn't win, uh, last week when Anthony

should have won.

So it's the best car.

Um, you know, not by the country mile.

It used to be in 2014.

And, and as you can see, it only needs a little something.

Yeah.

Um, for it not to win.

Um, Anthony's in great form.

None of the problems he's had have been his fault.

So he doesn't have to start getting down himself.

He probably a little bit concerned.

He's a 25 points ahead of George.

You know, I think, I think the, the unknown to me is,

is which Red Bull is going to turn up.

Um, because they were very, very good in Austria and not very

good in comparison to the other top 14.

Sorry.

Not very good in Silverstone.

So yeah, I mean that, that's, that's the kind of the,

the, the think about it.

And it's going to be a big challenge for team.

You know, the, the weird nature of the circuit where you've

effectively got a flat out sector and then some very

tight and twisty sector.

So you've got one, but parts of track, which is absolutely

no issue whatsoever for Regen.

The bit where you really need it, you run out.

So I think, I think my feeling is it, I think,

I can't really see that Mercedes won't win unless something

happens to the Mercedes.

And in fact, that's been happening quite a lot.

Yeah.

Um, and then we go on to, uh, is it, is it the following week

or is it two weeks after Hungary?

Please follow me.

I think it's back to back.

Yes it is.

I should, I should really have looked that up before I started

that, that sentence.

Um, then it's the Hungar rule ring, which, uh, again,

if that's hot, that could be interesting.

We've, we've had limitation.

When is it not hot?

Well, exactly.

We've had limitation on tire life there.

And I actually thought, you know, the 16 lap runes where

they had to run flat out all the time.

Can they do that with the new cars on that track?

I don't know.

But I thought they were really interesting Grand Prix because

you saw people actually working hard.

Well, yeah.

I mean, I think, I don't think it'd be that much of a problem.

They've got, they seem to have got a bit of a handle on the tires,

these narrow tires with ridiculous pressures.

It seemed to be okay.

Um, Hungar ring, obviously one of Lewis's best tracks, uh,

historically.

And you kind of think, uh, and it's sort of a, a non-energy

starve circuit.

Imagine a slow circuit with lots of braking.

They've no issue of power.

So you've got to say it's got more of a chance of Ferrari or Red Bull,

um, getting up there with McLaren, of course,

uh, with Mercedes.

So that was, I think that one should be a really interesting race,

especially traditionally, of course, it's been a nightmare to try and

overtake at the Hungar ring.

So perhaps with the way the energy management uses,

you might lose that issue of it being difficult to overtake.

We might see a really good race.

So as it stands going into the weekend,

it's the two Mercedes drivers, Antonelli on 179,

154 for George, uh, Lewis Hamilton next up on 147, Charles Leclerc.

In fact, it's Noah's Ark, isn't it?

Because you've got the two Ferraris 147 and 108.

The two McLaren's 97 and 82.

And then the two Red Bulls, Max from ESAC, uh, which is 76-52.

I think that's interesting.

Actually, all season, the McLaren's been anonymous.

They've been anonymous all season.

And we spent our entire time talking about Red Bull and Max Verstappen,

but because of the various problems, he's actually behind both of them.

Um, you know, in just case you show the unreliability, stroke,

aerodynamic issues that cars been having,

because you keep talking about Max,

he keeps saying, oh, Max is there, thereabouts,

but he hasn't, you know, it's not happened for the team.

Whereas McLaren, who have admitted themselves,

they're a step behind, um, Mercedes at, you know, at best,

have just by outside of China, which was a disaster,

have just kind of gone round the track,

picking up the fifths, the sixths, the fourths, the thirds.

They managed to get themselves ahead of both the Red Bulls.

At the mid-season break, Will Antonelli still believe the championship.

He will be, won't he?

I mean, he hasn't got to do anything silly now.

Um, he's got his teammate 55, so 25 points behind him.

Uh, Lewis is another seven points behind that.

And then, Charles and everybody else

is another 40 points back on top of that, nearly 100 points back.

I mean, 70 odd points back.

Um, I mean, Antonelli's just got to keep going around

and picking up the points and not getting a DNF, doesn't he?

Well, that's been an issue, isn't it?

Well, that is true.

He DNF'd in Barcelona, not his fault.

He didn't get any points in Silverstone,

which was mostly not his fault.

Perhaps you could say he should have got two,

which isn't really a massive amount, obviously.

Uh, because he had an unexpected failure

for the aerodynamic piece.

So it's been a case really when the saviour said let him down.

He's just done nothing wrong.

So the car gets to the end,

then he's going to be on the podium at worst,

and probably our current form,

and things can change ahead of George,

and therefore, you know, there's nothing to say that in two races,

Tommy won't have much to be a lead.

So that's this weekend,

Belgian Grand Prix,

Nick's team-by-team on the show.

Next week, you'll listen to Midway Motorsport,

Series 21, Episode 26,

uh, moving into the last quarter,

uh, no hydration break here.

Well, just cracks.

Nick probably needs it to be...

Probably need one, would you mind, yeah.

Yeah, do you need an anti-crump pickle gel or something like that?

No, I'm not cramping up.

It's just some sort of tickly...

I don't know what's going on,

but obviously it's still warm over the windows.

Some sort of foreign body fluid to be a throat or something.

Okay, same as all right.

I mean, if you won the £8,

the spiders are supposed to be here during your life, apparently.

Ah, there you go.

Other ridiculous facts that are actually true.

Um, take a couple of sports car stories

that didn't have the time with John

before the end of the first hour.

Um, we've been enjoying in the IMSA category

and at Le Mans, in IMSA series

and at Le Mans, the Mustangs,

and they've just released their schedule

for 2027 in Australia

for the second year of the Mustang Cup

that started this year.

It's the Motorcraft Mustang Cup Australia

a 2027 calendar

that uses the GT World Challenge Australia

for all-bar the season finale this year.

That's at Sandown, I think.

Got it at its own event there next year.

It's pretty much the same thing.

Phillip Island, it rolled 17th to 18th.

The Bend, Sydney Motorsport Park, Queensland Raceway.

But then the one I'm very, very interested,

Bathurst at the end of October.

So that's on the 1000, the Bathurst 1000 undercard

which will be fantastic to see those cars around there.

And I think we talked about it as well.

Um, there'll be a sixth and final round TBA for next year.

There is an Invitational Race at the CrowdStrike

24 hours of Spa,

but that, as far as I'm aware,

won't be a point score in round,

much as the Le Mans Race wasn't.

So we're still waiting sometime,

maybe early November,

or will it slip into one of the gaps

between when they've come back after Spa,

which that's going to be Sydney Motorsport Park,

that's July.

So then there's the Hall of August

and most of September,

or half of September,

they could slot something in there

for adding that to their calendar.

I like that racing.

It's interesting, isn't it?

In a marketplace where there are plenty

of single manufacturer series

and particular sports car series,

I mean, Ford's with the Mustang shape,

you could effectively jump into Ford

in a Mustang and Mustang Cup

and go all the way to World Championship in Le Mans,

albeit not exactly the same car,

but the same shape of car

and the same manufacturer and model of car.

But the dark horse are Cup and Challenge,

it's the same car,

different tire manufacturers in the States

from the Cup and Challenge,

but it's the same car.

Really interesting that they decided to go stick shift

and a little bit more analogue

than perhaps some of the sort of sub GT3,

sub GT4, Cup cars, etc.

that are out there at the moment.

Yeah, I think I suppose it's,

as you say, when there's so many to choose from,

it's how do you differentiate your championship

from something else?

And yeah, you've got the obvious model

that everyone make environment is trying to emulate

is the Porsche model.

The Porsche model is built on this ability to go

from club racing to GT3 in a seamless step,

but also the Porsche model is built on everything

around the race meter, isn't it?

It's built on the hospitality and everything else.

You're going down the Porsche model.

If you want to go down a front engine model

or not a rear engine model,

and you want to look at something like this,

and you want to have a more analogue experience,

then it gives you a choice.

And I think that's what you've got to do.

You have to differentiate yourself.

Why should I do this rather than Super Cup or Carrera Cup?

And the answer is because it's a basic American muscle car

built for the 2012, 2020s.

And this is what we can give you and give you

this is what it will give you.

Obviously, all these competitions,

they get enough entries.

They're all very competitive.

So that's not really the point.

It's the point about the quality of the racing,

the point about the quality of the sport,

the support about the quality of the backing

for the manufacturer.

And that's how you differentiate yourself.

And that's why if you have something different,

like a car that is front engine,

that's a car that is manual,

and it's a car which you need to drive in a different way,

it's going to appeal to different people, isn't it?

Well, you mentioned Porsche there,

and that actually leads me on to the next thing

I want to talk about because traditionally,

Porsche have differentiated some of their GT products.

Everything in Porsche is a GT.

However, the Carrera Cup and the Super Cup car

is now just called Cup,

no longer GT3 Cup,

because they were all called GT3s as well.

That was confused in the GT3 bit, I thought.

Yes.

So you had the GT3R,

you had the GT3 Cup, the GT3R,

which was the GT3 Formula Car,

then the GT3 RS,

and then the GT3 RSR, and even me,

as you know, sits up nights snoring gently

to the sound of a flat six ticking over.

The Porsche have now called the Cup car

just Porsche Cup, 911 Cup,

which is good.

The thing that I...

It was kept quite quiet,

came out a couple of weeks ago,

we might have just mentioned it in passing.

I think it was early in July.

Porsche's new GT4 car,

which in the past had always been a Cayman,

and now they've standardised that platform

much as Ford have done,

Ferrari have done,

that you come up through a Cup

or some kind of challenge series

through into GT4 into GT3,

and now the new GT4 Formula Car

is based on the Carrera Cup and Super Cup car,

although it is going to be

a properly homologated GT4.

The GT4R, it's called,

98% of the single-mate car

carried over to the new car.

I think that probably says more

about how sophisticated the Cup car is.

Is anything about the GT4 category?

Well, yeah, we are aware of how good the Cup cars are,

because we follow Craventic,

and we see them

significantly quicker than GT4 cars.

As we always say,

in the longer races,

there's a very good chance that an hour and 20 minutes in,

one of the 992s will be leading.

I think it's interesting,

I assume they've dropped the Cayman,

because the Cayman is no longer a road car,

because they went down the electric car.

I think that might be being turned around

with the news that Volkswagen is going to lose

100,000 jobs in the group.

There's a lot of stuff going on there, yeah.

Anyway, so it makes a lot of sense.

They can then make a load more money

from something else I'm sure they're building on the line.

Maybe it's 98% the same as the Cup car,

because the Cup car is also a line, isn't it?

Yeah.

Then, I'm assuming

the 2% of the stuff,

they've been detuning to be a GT4.

Well, yeah,

it is the venerable

four-litre 500-horsepower

engine.

Volker Holtzmeier, who's a smashing bloke,

has been talking to sports car 365.

And basically,

the history lesson

that he's talking about, about GT4.

If you go back 10 years ago

to the first Cayman,

it was the first

motorsport-based Cayman.

I think it was just meant to be kind of like

an entry-level, like a track-tier car.

It was as little as possible

to the road car.

And then,

just after that came out,

I think not even a year later,

GT4 became a thing.

SRO launched GT4

and

saw

the Cayman really hadn't been designed

for that.

The first Cayman I remember

that you could buy was about 110,000 euros.

It only had the 3.4-litre engine

with 285 horsepower.

It wasn't particularly

pokey

considering that

Aves 2.7

has 2.7T.

Then they had the, what would the next one be?

So that would have been the 981.

Then they went to the 718.

That was 425 horsepower.

But that quite simply wasn't enough.

So they went

up to the

A4-litre engine.

Not the same one

as the Cup car.

Basically, that's the 2.9 engine.

The one that they put in GT4

is a 2.9 twin-turbo engine

bored out to 4.0-litres and without the turbos.

I think that is about 500

in the race car.

They left the PD-Key

in.

They left the road-car electronics in.

The thing is, I think GT4

has moved away from that type of car.

You basically

everything is

more sophisticated now

as GT4 has got more competitive.

One thing I do notice

looking at the Porsche GT4R,

the 911 GT4R,

the Cup car is 1260 kilos.

That is

in my mind.

The GT4 car is going to be

1,515 kilos.

That's heavier than my road-going

GTS 992.

I don't think I have 300 kilos.

I've got no idea.

They'll have five-stud

wheels.

Narrow wheels

and therefore, narrow tires.

think it's

interesting.

375...

I think it's a great idea.

375,000

USD

for a GT4 car ready to go.

I can't help thinking that the other

GT4 manufacturers are going to be

frightened about that.

It's a good car.

Although, as we were talking

with John about earlier,

Porsche

haven't had a brilliant

until Nick Tandy and Harry

King on the podium at the weekend there.

Porsche haven't had a fantastic sports car

series of their.

It's not really going

very well. The start of the season with the

IMSA cars was okay.

One of the first two.

They got slapped with tonnes of penalties.

The other car won, wasn't it?

JDC knew that.

What I do

know.

Just going back to,

there's a situation where

every manufacturer doesn't have good years

or bad years. The issue at the moment,

you alluded to it.

It's a really good point.

The whole vague situation

is completely up in the air.

That includes Ducati, who we didn't speak

about earlier. Ducati is heavily rumoured

to be up for sale.

Ducati is worth it.

Ducati is very fortunate

because it's doing so well.

It's making so much money per unit.

People are going,

that's a huge cash cow

if Volkswagen need it.

The annoying thing about all this

is it's two reasons.

They've still got the hangover from dieselgate

from 15 years ago. Most of this because they

just bet completely on electric cars.

That's what's caused all this problem.

I'm like, I told them it's a bad idea.

I said, don't do that.

Yeah.

I was just looking there

to see how quickly

that GT4R

is going to be called.

Let me have a look.

The Cayman is not going to be

eligible for

Mission and Pilot Challenge at IMSA next year.

If you want to race a Porsche

in Pilot Challenge next year,

that four-hour race

at Daytona will be

its competition debut, I'm guessing.

There you go.

Although I'm reading here on

Sportscar365, the Cayman will still

be eligible for some of the

SRO classes as well.

I worry about

Volkswagen

EG for EG

and how they go forward.

I don't think they're the only

manufacturer around.

Let's be honest about this.

As far as road cars are coming there,

anyone based in Europe is

under tremendous threat from the Chinese manufacturers.

Well, there's that as well.

I don't know if it's good or bad.

It seems okay, which is all that matters

on the showroom floor and it's fully loaded

and it's cheap.

It's exactly the same way that

every country's made

the headway in the past.

I did notice, however,

I realised that this isn't

motorsport that we're talking about.

But it is.

It affects it, doesn't it?

The point about it is, if you're not talking about

Lola or Dolara,

everything else comes through

manufacturers and every single piece

of racing is paid for

by manufacturers deciding

it'll be good PR for them. I suppose

in Porsche's case, it actually makes money as well.

But most of the time, it's good PR

and it's always the

first thing to get cut when things go wrong.

I'll give you 2009.

Pertual.

Everything. Do you think about F1?

It's over the 2009-2010 season

where we lost

BMW and we lost Honda during that period.

You mentioned the Chinese

thing and obviously either BYD

or Geely-Geeley

or whichever way you want to say it.

I've heard it pronounced both ways.

I think Geely-Geeley own companies

like JQ and Jetstar and everything else.

Yes, exactly.

JQ and...

I think Geely-Geeley own Volvo, don't they?

Yes, Paul Star's being shut down in the US

at the...

The Americans use it

due to the...

I don't know...

They're safe from the Chinese

invasion at the moment.

But European manufacturing in Europe, not so much.

Well, it's interesting you should mention that

because it has been said

that they're just dumping cars

onto the European market

and not making any money out of them.

Have you ever heard of Skywell?

Skywell produce a

BE-11

which is a sort of

CX-5

Q5 sort of

sized SUV

which starts at

£24,000.

Yes, but the thing is though

it's really interesting actually John

because obviously you and I both spend some time

in the UAE over the winter

and the amount of cars where you go

what on earth's that?

And it's another Chinese brand

with a kind of made-up name

that is shifting buckets of...

On the whole, I'll be honest with you

the thing they most like to do is copy variations

of the Defender, a new one in some way

look that way or perhaps in fairness

also the G-Wagon as well

which obviously sells well in the UAE

but there are so many different brands

we don't have

we are in the UK sorry, I don't want to get too broke

Yeah, but Skywell

which has been in the UK for two years

and doesn't sell a huge amount of cars

it's on a kind of level with

Leap Mortar

they were supposed to be releasing

a hatchback

a commercial vehicle

and a saloon called the Skyhorn

which I think that should have

been a camper

The Skyhome just sounds like

some sort of way-work satellite telly

Yes indeed

Remotely

It's important

in the UK, ceased trading

last week, innovation automotive

were

a bit like the old dealer groups

back in the day where

you all enough to remember this as well

so 16

Skywell dealers across England and Wales

spread right across the country actually

and

registered 64 cars

in June

and have gone poof

and literally disappeared

overnight

General Manager

of Innovate Automotive

was talking to one of the car magazines

that I saw the other day and he said

if you're going to compete in the UK market

you require continuous significant investment

and

he mature family

took the decision

to close the UK

as it was unable to meet the UK

market's

investment level

they've been operated in the UK for the last five years

plans for the company to return to the Middle East

where it finds success

I just wonder

and you and I, we've seen this happen

with motorcycles haven't we

with the Japanese

who came into

Palomai

sold them cheap

and basically got

and built them better

there was that as well, they didn't have a lot of competition

on that

but I just wonder how

sustainable this is

BYD were

noticeable at Le Mans

classic at

Festival of Speed

I heard stories

huge

let me finish

huge amounts of money

changing hands

for various Chinese companies

to drive cars up the hill

and when I say huge amount of company

if I've got this wrong I apologise

but it was something like

five demo runs

up the hill

at Goodwood

a million pounds

I mean

well there we go

the flash and a lot of cash

but it's interesting

let's be honest

we've seen

a country

coming from nowhere

sell cars that were a joke

slowly improve quality

slowly improve ability

and in the end become leaders of innovation

and now launching a sports car brand

and I'm talking about Kia Hyundai

Kia Hyundai Kia

because when they came out

when you and I were young

the earliest Hyundai's came out

and they were cheap jokes

bought by people who didn't know about cars

and it certainly was

it was pony

but it's really interesting

because

I've actually shared that pretty much

I think they make fantastic cars

but it's the same thing

it's like kids today

we talk about Skoda

they're cheap alternative Vag cars

to us we have all the jokes

and we are now going oh Chinese cars

20 years time

if things continue going

they'll be going oh yeah I bought this with BYD

oh yeah great

but you have to spend money

to do that

no one is going to buy a Chinese car

that costs the same money as an Audi

or a Volkswagen

the only way you can get people through the door

is by providing more

for less

let's just remind ourselves

Luke Donkowolka

and when he invented Genesis

when he was asked to invent Genesis

create Genesis that was 10 years ago

so they've actually done it on a pretty

but they had the huge manufacturing

might of Hyundai

industrial

they had Hyundai and Kia

and some of the platforms

to lean upon

and they were already present

in a

very competitive European market

I just wonder how

sustainable it is

and whether

and what this means for motorsport

if Chinese brands start jumping

I don't think the

sheer number of Chinese brands

is sustainable

the reason I say that

is because once you get past

early adopters and always deny it's cheap

then the

negative stuff comes coming out

and that is all about spare support

and dealer support

and the only way you can have a good dealer network

is if you have less brands

BYD

and Geely

they can have a full country dealer network

you talked about the company that just went bust

they had 16 branches across the whole country

that's not enough, that's not a dealer network

I know the UK is not a big country

but that's not a dealer network

that's about to say it's Maserati

with 16 dealers

and that's what will happen

is you'll end up with 3 or 4

Chinese manufacturers absolutely getting it right

and several of them falling by the wayside

very quickly

we'll get back to motorsport as we finish up

midweek motorsport series 21 episode 26

sorry for the slight tangent

but it does

Nick knows because he gets them after me

I still get a weekly

automotive

magazine

and I learn as much about what's happening

or going to happen

4, 5, 6, 7 months or a year down the line

in motorsport

from watching where the trends are

in the automotive sector

as I do from talking to people in paddocks to be honest

speaking of paddocks

Indycar

Bochetta Bourbon

Music City Grand Prix

on the oval at the weekend

going into the weekend after

mid Ohio

Alex Palau leads by 56 points

over Kyle Kirkwood

who is

11 points ahead of Christian Lungard

David Malukas next up

is another point

further back then there's a 32

point gap to Pat or Ward

where's Joseph Newgarden

Joseph Newgarden is in 6th

and I'm pleased you mentioned that

he's 134 points back

but he is the king

of the ovals

although not necessarily

we haven't always raised on the oval

at Nashville, it is hometown

but he is

very very good

on ovals

the numbers are

stunning

Palau

at a road or a street

of course

has won 13 in the last 38

series races

but

Newgarden

13 of the last 30 oval races

that's 43

44 percent

if you go back to the 2021 season

and

his last 10 NTT Indycar

race victories

have all come on ovals

any idea

where his last road course victory was

Joseph Newgarden do you remember

where or when

well I'll tell you it was

2022 that's how long the course

since he won

I'm going to go for it as a

complete guess the Indy road course

no it was Road America

oh that's a good track

yes

he is from a place called Hendersonville

Tennessee so he's

Laurel

he has won

2 this year already

yes I think he has

Phoenix

Worldwide Technology Raceway

he won

on this it's a one and a third

mile concrete oval at Nashville

and

that it's always a great race

between

what time of day is it going out

it's going out now I'm glad you asked that

as well

because it goes out

after the World Cup

final trophy

presentation

because it's on Fox

530

Eastern is

which is what it

but if it goes to extra time

and penalties they will wait

they are not going to flag it off

because they're going to

yeah it is going to follow

so the World Cup

final

on Sunday

and there will be people who

will they quite know

who the two teams are

we know who one of them is

hey don't do not

tweet it to us

stop

I'm not looking at my phone

it's nowhere near me

I haven't even got the desire to think about

looking at it

my phone is not even on the same level

of the house as the studio

for the same reason

and I've been very careful

at looking at only certain things

but when you do watch it

don't make the mistake you made yesterday

which is what

Joe told me

I had been working

doing some editing

I dashed downstairs at 8 o'clock

at 9 o'clock thinking

that was what time the

France spin kicked off

spun through

the

schedule on the skybox

on the satellite box

saw it was on

clicked it on and

it was four minutes into

into the game

fantastic because I forgot to put it on

to record so I sat down

grabbed myself a little drink mixed myself in a groany

sat and watched it watch through the first half

Eve fell asleep

and I think she went up to bed

at half time

half time I went up

made myself another drink

and I said Bradley you know

who do you fancy in the final Ben

spin off France and he went well we know

and I went what do you mean we know I'm sitting watching it live

he went no you're not it's finished

I went don't be daft

I was thinking have I actually taped it

and I couldn't fast forward it

I realised I was watching it on ITV

one plus one

because that was the first thing I'd seen it on

I am that much of an idiot

and did you wonder why the picture quality was so bad as well?

I thought my eyes had gone really bad

I'd been staring at a screen though

because I'd been doing editing and stuff like that

so anyway that was there

that is my

confession but you know what

it was great because I didn't know what was going to happen

so that's all fine anyway back to the weekends

so Newgarden

probably the

favourite at the weekends

all of the

Tarantara

about the Domino's falling for next year

I wonder

how destructive

or off-putting that can be

who's got

right so I can't

do a quiz with us both

who's got

of the active drivers

who's got the most career

oval victories

Matthew Jason

Newgarden surely

it's somebody who it almost

never is when we do these

it's got Dixon

25 career oval victories

wow that is

that to surprise how many Joseph got then

he must have

second

with 20 so he's 5 back

not this years of course

true

yeah

the

who's third

only 1 since 2019

what's your standard answer

well done

2024

was his last one

that was at Iowa Speedway

short oval

races

who else

2 wins and 15 top 5 finishes

for Scott McLaughlin

everybody else

Alexander Rossi

Alex Palo

2 only 2 career

oval victories

and the

only other drivers

to win an

oval race since 2021

there are 2 of them

one was an indie race

and one was at Nashville

so 2 drivers

the only other 2

from the ones I've mentioned

to win an oval race since 2021

are who

that was after that

before that

sorry and he's not

so who won 2021

in NAPLAS 500

oh I can't remember that one

yes well done

and 2024

Nashville

see I thought Ericsson won one in Nashville

I must have them at the road course

I don't know if he answered that question

let me

you gave me the first 3 letters

Colton Hurd was it

Colton Hurd

it's David Malukas

that enters Nashville with the

most points scored this season on Orville's

believe it or not

116

points

that's mostly

he hasn't won a race

at all yet but he's

very good

New Gardens

just 9 points

further back

as far

as Orville points this season

it starts after

the trophy has been presented

if you're on Fox in

the US so it's going to be Hapmas 10

or beyond here

in the UK

and that is just about

as much as we've got time for

Nick is

karting at the weekend

we're doing the Scottish National Championships

from the Grampian Kart Club

which is a long way north I know that's got a drive there

sat the afternoon and Sunday

on Karting Live TV me and Joe will be

rabbiting on about it so

if you have nothing else to do

please tune in

yes but there's plenty of other stuff

Bethlehem Belgian Grand Prix, Rally Estonia

that IndyCar race

and possibly

IndyCar race will be long after we finish that's fine

well that's true but you're still

you're still up there on Sunday

you're not going to try and drive back down

no no no it's two day drive

to get all the way up there

back to a more normal

show next week

whatever a normal show looks

and sounds like

thank you to John De Geese for joining us

for an excellent double stint

and to Nick Damon for being around

as well

my name's John Heindorf

and the responsible adult was

Eve Hewitt, whatever you're doing

whatever you're watching this weekend

enjoy it, Nick and I are now

fingers in

the question is Nick

did you leave

the telly and the skybox

BBC One because that's the problem

this is not my first radio

I have

fallen foul of that

I've fallen foul of that on Grand Prix

in the past

also because the blue skybox fell foul for me

because sometimes when it turns on

and records something then stays on that channel

so I have a kind of a

when I turn it on I immediately press

3-1 to get Dave

that's my go to

we're off to watch the football

thanks for joining us and we'll see you

next week 8 o'clock on RS1

0:00

124:41

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Le Monde

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50-50

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Walkins Glen weekend

Kerblis section

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LMEM

About this episode

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