Tire Testing & Brazil

Hey everybody, Tim here.

So what you're about to hear was supposed to be our Thursday episode, our main episode this week.

And between, uh, then and now, uh, I got some communication, had some, uh, special opportunity come up.

So we're actually doing a special episode that will be released a little later on Thursday.

So we figured we'd give this to you, uh, for our Tuesday episode.

Enjoy, and, uh, see you Thursday.

You, you don't wanna miss that one.

This is, is off track. Oh, lost Alex.

That I love not having the worst internet anymore. .

Hello and welcome to Off Track with Hinch and Tim Rossi was here momentarily and now he's left.

Okay. Wasn't he having internet problems the other day too?

Yeah, I mean this with every bit of respect, James, you look exhausted.

You know what, Tim? I accept that with every bit

of respect, , because it's an accurate description.

Um, I am exhausted.

It's exhausting, uh, doing television, live television for lots of hours, uh, on a, on a day in a weekend in a different country when you're not been sleeping great.

You know, uh, Brazil is, is is a beautiful place.

Uh, it has a lot going for it.

What I can tell you is that the specific hotel in Brazil in which I am staying, uh, on this, on this endeavor here with, with the Grand Prix, not the most comfortable bed I've ever slept in, if I'm being totally honest with you.

Um, and I've been here for a minute now.

And so it's a lot of, not the best sleeps followed by a lot of long days of the track, but, um, you know, you know, you also look like <inaudible>, but for no reason. So, ,

Yeah, I've been painting, uh, I've been painting the walls in my apartment because I've been here like 12 years and I've never done that.

So like, there's just scuffs and stuff all over.

I don't think I'm supposed to be paying in it, but I figure I've been here 12 years.

I'm not getting the safety deposit back anyway.

Um, yeah, I don't think they're going to hold back your safety deposit money for making it look nicer. I don't think that's,

I mean, we'll, we'll see.

Actually, I did give you a lot of credit though.

80 degrees. You did all the painting yourself.

Yeah, but it's like 80 degrees, so it's kind of warm today.

So I just finished putting on another coat of paint on the walls above the stairs and I'm hot.

That's why I look like that.

I just generally don't care about my appearance.

That was more of that. I didn't think you looked.

It's different than normal. Yeah. Um, alright. Assume

We got Alex back. Where are you Alex?

I'm at my house. Tim. It's in Kelly's

Office.

Kelly's office. That makes sense.

So Alex's screen name is not, not tired.

And based on the general demeanor that we're seeing in front of him, we thought maybe I was the more tired one, but I I don't think that's true.

Um, how, how you doing, pal? I'm fine.

I don't have internet. That works.

What's the latest with that? Why is that a thing still?

I don't know, James. Anyways. All right. Here I am.

Uh, I'm gonna be honest.

I didn't watch, uh, I didn't watch F1. How'd it go? Well,

Even if you did, your opinion would probably be very wrong. So just trying

To get the conversation going.

Good to see you too though, pal. . .

I mean, Alex, do we wanna start with, with you?

And, and well, let's start with you. Let's start with you.

I don't care. I, I I just wanna start with you.

I wanna start with, first of all, just, just how you do it.

'cause fine. You, you seem, you seem, well, your,

your name says you're tired.

I'm not gonna say you seem tired.

I'm gonna say your name says you're tired.

Are you, are you tired, pal? No.

Are you okay?

Um, okay, we'll go all the way back there, but we'll go all the way back to Phoenix.

Uh, you were in Phoenix, uh, not that long ago.

Doing some tire testing for Firestone, um, for our triumphant return to Phoenix in a double header extravaganza with NASCAR next day.

Mm-hmm . April, I think

March, March, March, April, or, yeah, March. March May set. Yeah,

Definitely March.

Um, definitely March. Yeah. No, you would know.

Uh, how'd it go? How was it? How was it? How was it?

The tire test itself, uh, went great because it was, I have to um, Tip your hat because he's tipping his hat.

Folks tip my hat on iPhones and Apple watches To Firestone because I think that rightly or wrongly, tire manufacturers come under a lot of criticism.

Um, and there is a lot of expectation that they have placed on them, um, to solve a lot of the problems of racing.

Whether that be, um, the quality of the racing, the general dis distinguishing factors between compounds, um, all while their company bottom line is directly affected by whether or not the tires fail.

Um, because if Firestone Tires are failing, that will have a direct impact on, you know, Firestone sales on Monday.

If Firestone tires don't degrade enough or degrade slightly too much, that's not gonna have an impact on Firestone sales on Monday.

So it's a, it's a difficult job for all manufacturers because the series and the drivers and the teams are looking to them to create a tire that makes great racing.

Um, and that feels good and that it performs well.

Um, and ultimately they want to do that as well.

But their number one priority is the safety of, of the cars and the drivers and, and the end product being durable enough to, to meet the standards.

Um, so with that being said, they brought, I wanna say almost 20 different types of tires.

Oh my God. That is ranging from compounds to constructions

that's ranging from sizes stagger.

Yeah. Which is, which is in the stagger realm

and also in wits, which is something Oh, very new.

That is super new. Um, super new.

And I don't want to get into a lot of the details 'cause I don't know how much of it will actually come back, um, for the race in March because they have to do a lot of post-test analysis of, of how these varying tires and, and those combinations held up.

So they'll take all the tires back, they'll cut 'em open, they'll put 'em under a microscope and, and kind of look through all the data and, and see, okay, that tire may have been great on track, but we're not confident in, in its durability across 26 cars for a whole stint, that sort of thing.

So I'm not gonna go into what was good or what was better and what was worse, but the fact that there was so many options and that there was such an effort put into this test, um, really was cool to see.

And, and talking to, to Scott, um, Dixon about it, he was like, man, I haven't met a part of a tire test like this in a better part of it decade.

You know? Um, and, and there's a lot of reasons for that.

You know, there's sometimes a tire test that is happening because there's a very clear directive, um, from either them or from IndyCar.

Like, we have to solve X problem, that's it.

And whatever tire we find that solves X problem is the tire we're gonna go with.

This is a little bit unique in the sense that we're going back to a track that we haven't been to in, in 10 years.

Right. Um, the car is wildly different than, than it is,

than it was last time we were there.

But also I think Firestone is very aware that they, they have a, a huge influence on our racing product, especially on the short ovals.

Um, so they took that to heart, I think, in a, in a lot of ways.

And so it was a two day test.

Um, we did between us, I think over a thousand laps.

Um, wow. So it was, it was, it was really cool to be a part

of and, and I left there being pretty blown away with the, the effort that everyone put into to that test.

So two thumbs up from me, that Is a monumental effort.

'cause I've, I've been part of tire tests that I've never heard those kind of numbers.

I mean two days, 20 different tires to bring. Um,

And I never, I never left pit lane once.

Once. So we, the first, second one,

the first day we had two sets of tires to get the balance right, right?

Like, we haven't been there in forever.

We have no idea what a balance you need, right.

Height, whatever, that sort of thing.

Um, Scott and I had to get our eye, eye in and, and figure that out after that.

Which was, I want to say five runs across two sets of tires.

I never once left pit lane on a non new set of tires.

What's the best part about tire testing?

Oh, is you just to just throw in new boots at it all day long and you just be like, feel like Superman, but that's what they need. Right?

We even, even even did a highline session.

Um, we did a lot of things. It was bad ass.

Okay. I have so many questions.

Um, so I mean with that, with that amount of tire, okay, well let, let's backtrack a little bit for, for Aunt Linda.

So when you're doing a tire test, right, obviously they've brought this wide variety of different things.

What is it that they're asking of you?

What is it that you're trying to feel and like, what's the sort of specific feedback that you're trying to give them?

So the first day was all short runs.

Um, so it was ripping through all of the options that they had.

And those runs were, they wanted seven laps, so nine laps including an out in seven laps Q sim esque meaning, okay, it's obviously not a Q sim 'cause it's more than two laps, but as fast as you can go, um, light fuel basically just as you would in an outing of a practice session, right?

You're feeling it for 10 laps and you're, and you're just pushing the whole time.

Um, and come in and give us feedback on grip balance and any other characteristics.

Like is is how quickly they come in.

Is there any vibration coming? Is there any sort of dig?

How quickly do they come in, that sort of thing.

So day one was really focused on the short run side of things.

Um, at the end of day one, we did one half tank group run, um, group run two cars, but group of two cars we left, we left, we left together and um, we did a 25 lap run just to kind of see, all right, what's the, what are we working with here?

This was also kind of an IndyCar test as well.

'cause they wanted to, to get an initial impression of, um, downforce levels and, and what they needed to be at for what the spec is gonna be.

You know, does this fall in a, in a, um, St.

Louis 2025 spec or does it fall in a St Louis 2023 spec?

Like, like where is Phoenix at from a grip standpoint and, and race ability.

And then day two was, um, uh, another group run, but we wanted to do it after a highline session, um, because we wanted to at least give ourselves a chance, um, to use lane two if, if it became viable.

And then after that it was 55 lap runs.

So you go out on a set 55 laps pit, another set on 55 laps, another set 55 laps.

So you just hammering, um, for, for most of the day, day two.

And, and that was really, um, they cared about your comments a little bit, but it was really for them to see what the right front tire was doing from a temperature standpoint.

Um, 'cause obviously, you know, the right front, ever since the arrow screen has come on board has been under, um, a lot of extra stress, uh, with just with the added weight, um, over the front axle.

So the right front tire has been the tire that has had failures.

If, if that's gonna happen.

Um, so for them and, and, and they're very aware of it, it's at this tire temperature that it fails.

So we wanna see over the 55 laps does it even get into that, that zone or, or trending towards that zone.

Um, so yes, that was, that was the, the purpose of the two days and the run plan.

So You, you got to do the highline practice, which is was probably like some kind of a first in in that type of test.

But selfishly just from my own knowledge and hope, like were you guys able to kind run close and like could you kind of make the second lane work?

'cause that was never really something we were able to do at Old Phoenix.

So because the tracks changed too, right?

It's a slightly different configuration.

I mean not really. The numbers have changed

but the tracks, the track's the same.

Um, I would say no, but not because the Highline didn't work.

When we went and did the Highline session, it was six tenths slower, seven 10th slow.

Well it depends on the set of tires.

So let's call it six tenths slower than the normal racing line.

A lot of grip, it was comfortable to run up there.

It wasn't a problem. When you have two cars,

lane two's never gonna work because lane one's faster.

And so if you run lane two, you're gonna get left because you're still six tenths slower.

Both Scott and I agreed that if the leader had come up on traffic six tenths slower is viable to to be an option.

Yeah. Um, it just, and,

and this is the thing with short over racing, it's a matter of will someone be up there early enough to protect it from getting marbles by the time the leaders catch the back.

But because it, it's not bumpy up there, um, it's not like grooves like it's just, it's it's the same as lane two.

Um, and the good thing is, or sorry, it's the same as lane one.

The good thing is the only other series that really races there is cup and Cup either runs below the yellow line like on the apron or they run up against the wall.

So it's not like our racing line is the rubber up gripped up line, like over events and events and years and years.

So the difference between lane one and lane two is really not that much because a lot of other series don't actually run where Indy cars run.

Um, so I think that's a, the other reason why it was actually about the same.

Um, you're just covering more distance sort of thing.

So I I, I'm, I'm cautiously optimistic like we have to, we have to get the right tire 'cause there were some tires that were way worse than others.

Right. Um, and we have to get the right downforce package

because there were some downforce levels that were way worse than others.

But I believe that they have the solution to what they need to make it a fantastic race when we go back there.

So there, there's, there's two things for me on that.

I mean we, we kind of made the comment last week when you said you were going there that it's like, oh yeah, we're gonna go pound around after cup's just been there and done 3000 laps.

Well we're racing there on a cup weekend.

So like there actually is gonna be a bunch of that rubber in those places.

So maybe there was some, some, you know, uh, some premeditated, believe it Or not, man, doing there was no rubber down.

I mean there's something I there's, it's not Very little, it's because their tires like turned to dust apparently. So like,

Oh yeah, I have heard That.

It it, you I have heard that would be stunned.

Like the track looked clean. Yeah, it was like, did it rain?

That's fine. Yeah.

So the, the other thing for me was, I was gonna ask that question about Arrow.

So this was also not, this was not just an IndyCar or sorry, not just a Firestone thing.

IndyCar was also there testing arrow packages 'cause or has anyone else run there yet?

No, just on the IndyCar side.

Okay, so you guys were doing that as well.

That's also good to know.

'cause I wasn't sure if it was, it was only with a tire test.

You set the car up, you do your five runs or whatever and then you don't get to touch it for the rest of the two days in terms of setup.

But IndyCar was there and they were assessing different, different configurations for era They were.

Um, but a lot of it, so IndyCar reading between the lines and, and I don't think I'm oversharing here.

IndyCar wants more downforce because they know that that makes the racing better.

Firestone does not to a, to a point because that puts more load on the tire, which brings it closer to a failure point.

So both are aware of each other's wishes, both are aware of each other's concerns.

Um, and you gotta find, you gotta find a happy medium, right?

So again, there was some that were clear, there was like, that would be awesome, but obviously that's not gonna work.

And there was some that was like, that is horrible, please don't ever think about bringing that.

And then there were some that were, eh, and there were some that were quite good.

So again, super successful, very cool to be part of it.

They Firestone will be back, um, with two more cars in January, um, with like probably three options to kind of do a final run and make their final decision before the open test in February.

Um, but I mean, they've put, like I said, super impressed with the effort that they put into it.

And because of all of this homework, I do think that it's going to be a very different race and product than what we had in March.

Um, which, or sorry, than what we had in 2018 in March.

And that's, It's low key, super important because it's, it's a doubleheader weekend gonna be a lot of eyeballs on IndyCar and we need to make a very good impression.

So one thing, one thing I learned that's disappointing, but it is what it's, are you or are you not under the impression that it is a Saturday night race?

Well, I was until you just said that. Yeah.

The way you said that makes me think it's not now, but you, you were under the impression it was a Saturday night race.

Are we a Saturday day race? Well,

What do you classify noon as like, is that night? Um,

It's the daytime of the night. Like

Exactly the daytime of the night, The day time, the night is an Illusion.

It's some would call it lunchtime doubly. So,

Uh, it's like, yeah, it's like mid day, the Opposite of Midnight and night, right?

Yeah. Right. Yeah.

So, so No, not a night.

Good news is you can get home Saturday night.

You mean we have more time for Applebee's Saturday night?

Yeah, I, I don't want a red eye home, so I'll just, I'll hang out with Tim at the Applebee's of Goodyear, Arizona .

Um, well look, here's the, here's the good news, man.

If you look back through our, our year, uh, in IndyCar, short ovals, we kind of did pretty well at as a series more night Firestone Did a pretty good job and the, in the series did a pretty good job of the arrow package.

We've had to tweak a couple things over the years, but like this year was pretty solid.

All those races were pretty good.

So if we could just draw off all of that experience and as you said, put on a good show.

Um, yeah, that is a bummer. It's not a night race though.

It'd be cool if they, we had one, but hey, if the downforce package is right, honestly It doesn't Matter.

Daytime races. Yeah, daytime races mean usually a kind

of more DG and that can honestly make better racing than sometimes anyway.

So man, there were some, there were some tires that the dag holy like seconds, Like let's say a fast lap was a 21 Oh and you were falling off to 24 fives.

Yeah. That's like gold Iowa, right?

That's skin would get that bad. Yeah.

Like start. Did you Guys like those

ones or was that too much?

No, you start, you start the stint flat in one and two and you end the stint the third gear one and two.

Wow. Yikes. All right. Yeah.

Did you like, were you and Scott both pretty consistent on which ones you liked and which you didn't and feedback was pretty close?

I think it would've been because wildly enough every single set, we were within half a 10th of each other, like lap time-wise.

So like, I would imagine they didn't tell us, but like we would do like midday meetings and end of day meetings and everything.

And like we were saying the same thing. So

That's the hard part though about tire testing, right?

Is you're sitting there and like the debrief at the end of the day.

So like you go and do a run and you give your feedback and then you go do another run different tire and you give your feedback, you go do another run different tire, give your feedback and it's like, yeah, this one's slightly more front grip mid corner or hey, this one warms up a little bit faster, but the peak grip's not as high.

And then you go through it all and then you do like the midday or the end of day and you've probably done 14 sets of tires in that time.

And, and they're like, okay, so, so set 11 B you said you said this so that was better that you're like, uh, fool.

Uh, I don't know man, by like the eight set, they all kind of went to get whatever I I said it's, It's like wine tasting. It's like wine tasting.

Yes. Yes. Dire testing is just like wine tasting. Yeah.

It doesn't matter after the fifth class. Mm. Yeah.

You know, you're just not really performing at you. You just dunno

What's happening.

So what you're saying is I would be really good at tire testing.

No, because you're not good at wine tasting. .

I'm phenomenal at wine tasting .

It's, it's, it's the feedback of the wine that you struggle with, Tim.

You are just like, this tastes good Generally pro. Yeah. .

Yeah. I like that Guys

For it.

I'm a big, I'm a big tire guy.

Uh, I'm happy with all of these.

Well this is all very good. I, um,

I'm, that's, that's good.

I also am now cautiously optimistic by that, that feedback.

I, I gotta say man, I completely understand the thinking, the philosophy, the mindset of any tire company in racing.

'cause this is like a universal truth across them all that tire failures look bad.

It's bad, bad pr, right?

But I mean, are people really gonna buy less of a given tire because under extreme conditions in a very competitive motorsports environment, there's a failure or two.

Like, are you gonna really Um, I think so James, because I guess We need, We know, we know for better or worse race fans are opinionated.

Mm. And so if they deem something to be bad,

then I could see it influencing their decision.

But I almost feel like, I almost feel like if if, and I'm, I'm just gonna say tire company X, right?

Like, 'cause this is a universal thing.

If, if a tire, if a, if a tire vendor for a given series was, was protecting so much against failures that it just, the racing wasn't good and all the teams and drivers were complaining that the racing wasn't good because of a tire.

I almost feel like fans would be more inclined to revolt about that.

Then we've pushed the limits on making the racing good.

Occasionally a tire fails, you know, but like maybe if their favorite driver's tire fails while he is going for a win or she's going for a win and maybe, maybe, I don't know.

I don't know. I don't know. So

I guess it's just bad for us.

I mean I was, I'm obviously fairly involved in the sport and uh, when Pelli took over from Michelin while Bridgestone, but whatever, Bridgestone, Michelin, when they became Your sole Supplier, when Pelli took over in in Europe in Formula One, their initial couple years was pretty bad.

Rough, Rough, rough.

And I at the time owned an Audi sedan and I had to go get new tires.

It was a performance car. Right.

And I specifically chose against getting P zeros and getting Michelin SuperSports or whatever they're called, like the, the performance equivalent from Michelin.

Now that was because I had some personal firsthand experience of being wildly annoyed with Pelli and the tire that was being given for GB two cars and such.

And I was like, f this I'm pissed.

But like I also could understand that that's gonna have no impact on 30,000 miles that I put on Right.

My road tire, but I still Right. Didn't buy it.

Yeah. I guess it's all marketing, right?

Like it's, everything's just marketing. And so if if the,

It's it's the, the image and, and the the idea the messaging company comes company that you have in your head. Yeah, yeah,

Yeah.

Interesting. Well hey look, they're doing,

they're doing a good job at the moment.

And uh, they would know, they would know these things more than me.

I, I tell you what would influence my next purchase of tires if a tire manufacturer were to sponsor off track, I would uh, I would then become that guy. What about, and you know what

About, What about a brake sponsor, Tim?

Oh yeah. So this is funny. Um, oh boy.

Alex and I were driving down to the breeder's cup and Alex was driving because of the two of us.

He's the professional driver and just barely.

But I don't, I don't really drive all that much in my day-to-day life.

Pretty much only drive three miles to take Hazel to school and the three miles to pick Hazel up.

None of that's highway. Alex noticed that

Pause.

This is how much Tim knows about vehicles.

I was like, when he tells this story, I was like, well it'll be covered under warranty 'cause you're like, this is under five years old and by The way, it wasn't, it's under 50, it was not covered under Warranty, It's Whatever.

Um, and under 50,000 miles.

And he was like, it's got over 50,000 miles on it.

And I'm literally looking at the OD that says 28,897. I

Had just made the service appointment on the app and I thought it said 60 something.

So I was just going off that.

But anyway, on, so Alex noticed that, uh, when he was applying the brakes on the highway, like you have to do in LA traffic a lot, it had a bit of a shimmy.

Most highways at some point point, Tim, you have to hit a break. A shitty, it's not just an LA

Thing, not a shitty James.

Like it felt as though, you know, when sometimes an airplane lands and there are hard on the brakes.

Yeah. And the overhead compartments are like Absolutely

Yes. Yeah.

It was that warped Rotor feeling. Yeah.

Oh, So funny.

You should mention that , because Alex goes, you got a warped rotor, it could maybe be the brake pads, but it's not making any like squeaky noises.

So it's probably a warped rotor. So that was Saturday.

I made an appointment at the dealership on Friday and he was like, but but you need to tell me what it is after you take it in because like if I'm wrong on this, it's pretty embarrassing.

So I get in, I explain the noise, the guy's like, sounds like a rotor issue.

Could be the brake pads. We'll check an hour later they call

back, they're like, yeah, so you got a warp rotor, you need to get that, we're gonna replace that.

It was not under warranty.

But uh, yeah, I was, I was very impressed to, uh, Alex's ability to, uh, diagnose the issue in the car.

I'm now less impressed because James was able to diagnose it, secondhand hearing about it from Just the description.

No, no. Just be more impressed with me.

You don't have to be less impressed with Him.

No, but he did was very present. No, here's the thing.

I think everyone knows that Tim .

Yeah, I didn't know this Actually. Exactly. That's

Actually the point, Tim.

It's not that either of us did anything oppressive.

It's sounded shockingly un impressive.

And, and the fact, Don't even know the fact that, The fact that you didn't realize it.

I, I made a comment as we were pulling out of your neighborhood, which is under a quarter mile from your garage.

Yeah. He said the, the brakes were very sensitive.

And then You just said sensitive.

It wasn't until highway that you were like, oh, you got a problem here, .

Anyways, my bad car, trouble aside, there was an F1 race, I assume There was No, I came or you just on vacation.

Brazil for Yeah. Giggles.

Um, there was, there was Alex, did you, did you catch any Of it?

I catch, I caught catched.

I, I did not catch sprint qualifying.

I caught sprint race.

I caught Q1 of normal qualifying and I caught the race.

Mm-hmm . So yeah, I'm pretty caught. That's the

Majority.

That's a good amount. Yeah. Yeah.

So, um, sprint race then let's start there because that kind of had a big impact on things of a lot of people Impact Literally.

Yeah, dude, that Boto crash, my god looked so violent and so outta control, destroyed that car, destroyed that car.

Some of the pictures out of it were ridiculous, but luckily he was fine.

Car Lesso, RIP car, but no, uh, up at the front.

So yeah, mixed conditions kind of to start.

Well I say that it was dry, but wet patches and damp whatever, front String was Pretty wet.

Uh, there was some, yes, there was some, some heavily damp patches on the front straight and like turn one was even still a little bit damp.

But long story short, you've got Lando running first.

You got Antonelli running second kind of hounding him and then Ptri third and you know, this run that land's been on taking points away from Oscar and Oscar was a little bit closer, you know, and paced to Orlando this weekend.

Still not that close. Just fewer people in between them.

And then, yeah, turned three, got up on the curb, turfed it off into the wall.

It's tough man. And it was just kind of the beginning of,

it wasn't in the beginning, it was the, the next stage in a, in a rough weekend for him.

Um, two other guys did the exact same thing right after him, which was, I don't know, do you feel better at that point if you've made a mistake as a driver and then like your car comes to a stop and you look up and two other cars have also bend it off in the same point.

You're like, okay, so clearly it's not easy right now.

So I, I had that exact situation Silverstone, I, uh, it was a, it was a drying race and you're on slicks and I was running like fifth or something and I fired it off in a, in a brake zone.

And I was like in the wall like head in hands and then I got pounded by three more cars and I was like, oh wow.

I mean clearly I'm not the only one.

Yeah, Clearly it was impossible to get through that corner .

So yes, it, it does make, I mean obviously it still feels <inaudible>, but there's at least that's slight bit of relief that it was a hard situation.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Um, felt bad for him.

K Pinta went off there, Kinberg went off there.

Max also went through said damn patch and had a massive moment and didn't crash.

So it was possible Orlando also had, uh, sprayed come off his tire in that same spot seconds before.

Well do you not think so Lando used a lot of curb.

There could be Lando used a lot of curb there. Yeah.

And the subsequent cars that went through there all kind of fired it off. So the, the

The, the point that it kind of made me think like, yeah, that might have had something to do with it.

It was when you're on Antonelli's onboard, who's running second and he's right behind Orlando and there's this, like the onboard camera gets like this big, big amount of spray on it and then the next car goes off.

So that was, that was tough for uh, for Oscar.

Orlando wins the sprint race, um, over Antonelli and Russell.

And then in the Grand Prix you missed, you said you missed Q3 Lando, uh, he obviously got pole, but it was, you know, he was 10th going to the last run 'cause he botched his first attempt and big pressure.

Ptri was P one at the time. He was P 10.

Big pressure, you know, situation.

And that's something that I feel like a lot of people have given Lando about, you know, this year is he doesn't handle those high pressure situations, especially in qualifying as well.

But he pulled it off, man had like a massive gap to P two and looked like it was gonna be kind of Mexico City all over again.

Max is out in Q1, the first time that he's been out in Q1 based on pure performance in his entire career.

He's gone out because of accidents or like mechanical failures or PU things or whatever.

He's never just been one of the slowest five cars in his entire career until this weekend.

That is insane. That's

Why I turned it off.

like he's done no one to, no one to threaten. So,

Well I was thinking about this, I was thinking about why do I want Max who has dominated this sport for the past four years, why do I want him to win again?

Right. And it's because it's cool.

It's cool to watch. It's, and

and there's countless episodes where we've gone on about this, right?

You're seeing something that you might not ever see again.

And so when he, when the car let him down, because I knew that through the sprint, through practice, sprint, qualifying sprint race, whatever, like the Red Bull wasn't that good, right?

So I, I watched qualifying for the sole purpose of, I wanted to see how far up the grid he could wrestle that thing to at least put the McLaren's under pressure.

Like I knew he didn't probably have a shot at the front row, but I was like, can you put it third, fifth?

Like he's done so many times, right?

And when he goes out in Q1, it was just like all of my joy from this qualifying session has disappeared and I don't wanna watch it.

And that's a, that's a weird thing considering another part of me really wants, you know, Orlando or Oscar to win.

It's so cool to watch someone just punch so far above the, the weight of their car.

Which brings us to Sunday afternoon.

You must have loved today then you must have absolutely loved today because dude we're all saying the same thing, right?

We're like, all right to to have kept this championship alive.

He had to beat them in every race for months onwards.

And he was doing that until Mexico still be one of them.

But Lando wins and now Lando iss on pole.

He ends up starting from the pit lane 'cause he is like it.

I'm down in 16th, I'll take a new engine, I'll do some setup changes 'cause obviously the setup's garbage, which I want to get to in a second.

And he dry, he has a punch, starts the race, makes up a couple spots.

He's already running like 13th, a handful of laps in, gets a puncture, has to pit out a sequence and, And and has to bail on the tire.

That was gonna take him deep into the race.

'cause I think they were gonna stop It.

Yeah, it was the worst, it was the worst tire to have this happen to early in the race.

And then he is back at the back and now it's just like, ah, I'm just gonna go for it.

Just gonna wa me. He was always going for it.

Dude, the drive up to third, like a second away from second place from pit lane was one of the coolest things.

And like remember last year when he went from 17th to first in the wet, that was impressive.

But even that he had kind of help from a safety car or a red flag or something.

Safety car, red flag, red flag. He was a red flag.

He had to do a free pit stop basically under red.

And so that helped his super impressive charge to the field.

It was impressive nonetheless.

But he did have that, he didn't have that today.

He got bone by a puncture, had to make three stops to everyone else's two and was still only 10 seconds behind the leader.

22 seconds lost on pit late do the math.

That was an unbelievable drive.

Yeah, It just made it look easy.

He made passing cars look so easy there and it was like, there was a, there was a, I don't really thought he was gonna win it 'cause Lando was just too good.

But like I thought for sure he had second at one point I thought he was gonna track Danny Antonelli.

So what's, what's so Stayed out.

What's so weird is I, um, thanks to F1 tv, well thanks to the massive dispute between ESPN and YouTube tv.

My only option to watch Formula One is on F1 tv.

And I must say you're welcome. Y'all do a very good job.

So thank You.

I I was forced to switch over but I actually quite enjoyed it.

But what I'm getting to is, is I was toggling between the onboards of, 'cause you can watch an onboard from your favorite driver for the whole race if you want to.

I was toggling between the onboards between Max and Yuki, right.

You know, Yuki was last on pace and Max was a threat to second and on the podium.

And I'm pretty good at like understanding what's going on behind the wheel of a race car.

Max's car looked, eh, like it, it didn't look good.

Like it, it wasn't the, the front end wasn't really sharp, you know, the power down was okay.

Like it didn't look hooked up on rails.

Like you expect a formula in one car to look.

And I looked at Yuki's and like it looked the same like it did.

Neither car looked good yet somehow Max is like almost a second quicker and I couldn't depict how he was achieving it.

So that's a stick he has.

He has this like ability to find lap time in ways that I can't even really deduce.

Yeah. Well it's important to remember

that he won't have had the same setup as Yuki 'cause he got to make changes.

Fair. But still it didn't look any different right?

It wasn't like an obvious thing.

But the, the, the setup thing is, is, is interesting.

So Red Bull have this, this dilemma in a sense, right?

They've got four cars, they have four and a half drivers, half being the linblad, you know, the driver linblad in F two.

Um, and they're, they're not entirely sure what to do with with anybody but Max right?

It seems to be pretty universally understood that Hotjar is gonna go up to um, red Bull to partner Max Yuki's clearly not done enough.

Right before today Red Bull had scored 351 points in the constructors championship.

Yuki had scored 28 of those 28.

So Max had single handedly, by the way, ripple passed Ferrari in the constructors championship today on the basis of, of Ferrari double DNF and Max on the podium out of control that they're in third in the constructors. So you mean

Max is in third in the constructors? Yep.

Max is so almost single handedly in third in the construction championship.

Mm-hmm. So there's been a lot of debate around Yuki, right?

'cause obviously that second Ripple bull is not easy to drive and all the things that we, all the things we know, but there was still an argument that you'd keep 'em in the system next year it's 2026 is a brand new reg set.

Having some guys with experience of probably a good thing, even if you bumped 'em back down to racing bulls, whatever, rather than bringing in a limb lad who's a complete rookie and having not the most stellar season in F two.

What happened this weekend was in the sprint race, Yuki started from Pittling 'cause he was P 19 I think in qualifying and they tried a new setup on him.

'cause the car was not good on Friday. They both qualified

poor 16 and 19 in the sprint.

So the sprint race he started for pit lane and got to change all the cars.

So he did some setup changes, directionally came back in.

His feedback was this is better, let's do this for qualifying.

So Max put on Yuki setup, okay, probably for the first time in the however long they've been teammates or the first time Max has done that with any teammate since Ricardo and Max gets eliminated in Q1 on pure performance for the first time in his career.

I didn't not know those details.

The biggest Yuki supporter within that team and was trying to justify keeping him in the system in any way we could.

That to me is such a nail in the coffin. Oh, that's worse

Than really anything else that could have happened.

Spinning, crash on a white curb.

Like yeah, One time they were relied purely on his feedback and it was the worst qualified performance of Max's career.

I don't know. I don't know. We'll see what they're gonna do.

They're, you know, they're dragging their feet on if they say they're gonna make a decision before Abu Dhabi and that's coming up.

Um, but again, I it's not a slam dunk that Lin Blad should get that seat because I dunno, we're getting, we're getting way off track, uh, of, of that.

We can go to that later.

What I do wanna touch on though is the Ptri penalty, right?

So Ptri ends up the, the Grum pri in, in fifth of the points gap.

Now 24 points Lando nice, but doesn't matter, I mean you can make, you can lose that in one race, right?

That's not even a race buffer.

So like this is by no means cruise control.

This is by no means protecting your lead or whatever.

Everyone's still gotta push. But, but Oscar qualified fourth

and did a pretty <inaudible> stout move on a restart to, to get up into second and be right on on Orlando's gearbox.

And he got a penalty for it.

It was three wide antonelli in the middle of Claire on the outside.

He fired on the inside, slight contact with Antonelli, pushed him into Le Claire, ended Le Claire's race.

The other two kept going. What was your view on that?

He got a ten second penalty for it.

What was your view on that?

Well, what my view was, he shouldn't get a penalty. Why

Not?

But because Antonelli squeezed him pretty hard.

Um, yes, Oscar had a lockup going on, but like it's three cars into one.

Oscar was gonna make the corner.

It's not like he was so locked up.

He was, you know, roja at Portland who thought it was meters instead of feet, like too soon, you know?

Well it wasn't like a, like a brain fade, right?

It was a a, an aggressive move on a corner that's downhill.

It drops away from you. The left

front's always gonna lock up there.

And, and he was in control of the car, right?

And he bumped Antonelli, which happened to put him into a slide that he caught.

But in catching it, it hit Charles's left front and ended Charles's day.

Charles' unlucky bystander, antonelli, no damage to his car, kept going, PTRI, no damage to his car, kept going.

It wasn't this big kerfuffle, right?

So based on that, yes, Charles' day was over, but you can't penalize Oscar for that because on that, there's an equal amount of possibility that Antonelli could have had an over steer moment at the apex of one and his right rear hit Charles's left front and caused the same situation.

So in my mind, the contact was between Oscar and Kimmy.

Both cars continued.

You can't penalize Oscar for Charles going out in that situation.

In my mind. That's why I thought it was too much.

Yeah, I mean I, I thought that, I thought basically the same thing.

I thought that the penalty probably stemmed from, so it's two things, right?

The outcome for the all the drivers involved, quote unquote.

And so Char obviously is involved in that and he's outta the race.

I get that Oscar was in, okay, Oscar was trying to pass Char in the sense that they were ahead, but like he wasn't really trying to pass Char, he was trying to pass Kimmy, right?

Char happened to be the three, the like the third guy to three white situation.

Mm-hmm tough to tough to make that work either way.

I mean, at Brazil, the way that geometry of those first couple corners is, you can make that work.

But as much as Char was trying to pass Kimmy, he probably had a sense by looking in his mirror that Oscar had a run and was probably gonna chuck it up the inside Kimie crowded, uh, pry immensely.

He had a lot of room to his right to open up more and give him more room.

I do fully believe he knew he was there because he gave him almost enough room, but not quite.

But I do feel like the damning piece of evidence for the stewards in, in, or uh, working against Oscar was the fact that his inside front was locked up.

But to your point, I completely agree it was locked up, but he was not out of control.

There's a big difference between having a locked tire and having lost control of the car momentarily.

If Kimmy wasn't there, he would've made the corner perfectly fine.

He was right at the apex, right on the apex.

He didn't under steer out into Kimmy.

Kimmy came down onto him and it created that contact.

So I'm a hundred percent with you, man.

And I think it's, I think it's a, it's a real bummer.

Um, it doesn't take away from Orlando's win.

'cause obviously he was still in front and probably was gonna stay there, but it would've been, you know, obviously for the championship much better if Oscar had finished second instead of fifth.

Um, it's kind of the second bogus penalty that Oscar's received this year.

And, you know, for that guy he must just be in this position of feeling like, man, like what else could go wrong for me at this point?

You know, it's, it's been, uh, it's been a tough stretch for him.

It has and, and now is when the conspiracy theories all start to, to, to begin and, and that sort of thing, which there's never a, there's never a dull moment in racing.

Someone who, who said the quote that like, motor sports is drama mystery and intrigue interrupted every seven days by a motor race or something.

Like, there's , it's a famous quote by, by someone who was in, in the sport a while ago.

Um, and it's true, Tim Woke that up in the fact check, But, uh, it's setting us up for a good final three.

I still think Max is gonna make a run at it because as we said last week, he doesn't lose in America.

So he is gonna win in Vegas. Um, he's

Got a really good shot in Vegas And I don't know, I still think there's some, some, some DNFs to unfold here in our future. But, uh, time

He's, he's got, yeah, McLaren's not traditionally great in Vegas.

I know it's a small sample size and McLaren and Ferri can be, so they could get in the mix.

If Red Bull's up there and McLaren have a bad day and the other two slash four are up in the mix there, that could swing things.

I do think Qatar is still gonna be more of an Oscar track.

He's just, he's very quick there.

Not that Lao's not, but it's more suited to his kind of style and, um, the strengths that we've seen outta him this year.

And I think that's gonna be a, a big test of, has Lando just freely improved?

Has Oscar really sort of lost his way a bit?

Um, just 'cause it's one where you kind of expect that, but I don't know.

We'll see. It is exciting.

It's, it's good to see, you know, at one point in the season, you know, midseason, we thought Oscar was gonna have this thing locked up by Austin.

And so I'm, I'm super stoked when you're working these races, it's a lot better when there's a championship battle going on. Oh, hell

Yeah.

Um, Huge congrats to Kim Antonelli best finish of his career up on the podium.

Had some crazy pressure from Vertin at the end there and he did not put a, a wheel wrong.

It's great to see that. And, uh, yeah man, it's,

it was, it was an exciting race.

I mean, that track is known for having a lot of overtaking it's way above the season average.

And I, I mean, max alone I think passed more cars than the season average so far this year.

So, um, yeah, entertaining race, even though it was a sprint weekend, which normally can lead to a boring Grand Prix, it was, uh, it was a banger.

What, uh, what do you have coming up in the next week?

Well, James, it's snowing outside, which is crazy.

I heard, like, I dunno if you can see that I'm kind of excited.

Um, I leave tomorrow morning to go to Charlotte, Monday in Charlotte, back Monday night, back to Charlotte on Wednesday, so yeah, a lot of, of Charlotte.

Um, but that's okay. That's, but yes. Anyways, I

Don't know what we're gonna talk about next week, but we'll see you then.

Thanks. Thanks for coming along. Bye.

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