Water Parks & The Inevitable Max

This Is off track.

James, you're not in Hinch Coast City anymore.

You're in Oh, did I not change my Hinch daddy?

Well, and Alex, you're not doing Like Abu Hinch.

You don't have a joke one this week either. Sobi, right?

Yeah. Or Abu Abu Dcl.

Buin. Yeah.

Or uh, uh, no, the first one He said made more sense.

Hint, you daddy. I,

I obviously flew here from Qatar today, Cutter and Whatever.

I flew in Abu Dhabi today.

You're making it sound like that's a far flight.

What was it? An hour? No,

No, no.

I'm, I'm not making, not even, It's like Indianapolis. Chicago.

I flew in, I flew in today. Oh my God.

No, sorry. I'm just doing this because

Chicago, I'm tired. And boy,

The flight complaining about I didn't What? Shut

Up.

You could chop it in. Oh God.

I, yeah, for sure would've taken longer, but I could've, I'm just saying, I miss when you were a Chopper guy is a tra This is Me too. .

This is a travel podcast, guys.

So I have a travel, it's not even a story, it's just, it's just, oh God, we have to write this book.

We have to write this book of travel etiquette, all the do's and don'ts, and it's gonna be super snippy and sarcastic.

And, um, one of the big things, it's gonna be, it's gonna be carousel etiquette, car carousel etiquette.

Really reared its ugly head today.

Where like, we flew on basically a charter.

It wasn't a charter, but like the entire flight was just F1 people, right?

And so these people, they all travel a lot.

Everybody gets it. Everybody gets how it works.

And we're down in the carousel and everybody's leaving like a respectable amount of room from where they're standing to the belt so that people can get through to get their stuff.

Okay? This nice little pocket.

And then this, I don't know, this other group from the flight, it's just a bunch of dudes just <inaudible> slammed in there and were standing right up against it.

And they're like, the last ones to the carousel.

And there's this big gap right in front of the, like, right against, and it's like, they're like, oh, look at that front row seats.

Why aren't these people taking it? What a bunch of idiots.

And just slammed in there and it's like, no, dude, you can't just do that.

And then literally, right, , right?

As they do that, all of the people I was staying with bags started showing up.

We had to like <inaudible> get through the jungle of bodies to get to the thing.

And then you're lifting your bag off and just hitting them in the nuts unintentionally, but not apologetically either.

It's, it's just the worst stand back from the carousel.

If you're, if you, if you can, if your leg, if you kick your leg out and your foot can touch the carousel, you are standing too close and you're <inaudible>.

I feel like so much of our like travel advice or stories about what not to do is just, it just comes down to like, just don't be a <inaudible>.

Just like consider other people even a little bit.

I like to sit on the edge and then when the belt turns on, it rubs against my butt.

I could see that. I could see that. Mm.

Because you got that hemorrhoid problem. It

didn't .

Hey, if Connor could turn paint in the car into a depends, uh, sponsorship.

Let's get that preparation h money coming your way, buddy. Preparation

Age, wagon or James.

You could just not check a bag. Ever thought about that?

Dude, it's, I, you know, me, I very, I try very hard to not do that.

I know, I know. But I had to on this trip. It's,

It's, yeah, you gotta cover, you gotta cover your skin.

Um, so I had a travel story coming back from The Bahamas.

I knew this was gonna happen. Um, you know, indie was,

was scheduled to get a bunch of snow and it was all coming in Saturday night.

And, um, the forecast was, was the day I was fine.

Would the forecast as usual for Indianapolis was very aggressive.

It was saying like six to eight inches.

Um, and so the morning of our flight, we, uh, we woke up and got a notification that our flight had been moved to Sunday morning at 5:00 AM which which with bags in the car seat and the baby and everything, landing in Charlotte at eight to then get a rental car, get the baby the car seat out, get the baby in the car seat, drive to a hotel, check in, undo his pack and play Crip thing, get everything all set up

to then just pack it all up for 3:00 AM to go back to the airport.

Didn't sound super appealing.

So I was like looking at my aviation Prague charts and tracking like where the front was moving through.

And I was like, we can fly to Louisville 'cause that's like on the outer boundary and that's not gonna be affected.

So I called up American and was like, Hey, I need to keep the part from Nassau to Charlotte the same, but get us on the, the fricking whatever, eight 30 flight from Charlotte to Louisville.

Rent a car, two hour drive, no problem.

And they were like, yep, that's fine.

Um, you won't be able to sit next to each other, but we'll get you on the flight.

Cool. So we, uh, we show up to the check-in in

The Bahamas, and I don't know, I'm sure you have, but uh, when you use a, a car service, like a transfer service, um, in The Bahamas from the hotel, they like mandate that they're picking you up three hours before your departure.

Like there's no, if you wanna use the service, you don't say the time.

It's like, your plane leaves at four 30, we're picking you up at one 30.

And so we were kind of annoyed by that, but it's like, whatever.

Like, we gotta check outta the hotel anyways.

So let's have lunch and, and and head there.

30 minute drive. We get there like right before two.

And it's a good thing because, um, I don't, James wouldn't know this, Tim does, but when you travel with an infant, um, it doesn't, and they're on your lap.

They don't need a seat. Right, right.

Because they're on your lap.

But if you travel internationally with an infant, they want their piece of the pie.

So there's tax. Really? And so there's

A kid on your lap tax.

Yeah, but it's like, it's some irrelevant amount.

I mean, I don't mean to say that in a derogatory way, but it's like 20 to $60 depending on where you're going.

Right? Right.

The ticket 15 outta the box, the, so it's a irrelevant Amount, the scheme, scheme of what it cost to have a kid. Yeah.

Right. So when I made the change with American,

I was like, just so you know, like obviously the infant's still coming home with us.

Um, so like, make sure that's all done.

The guy was super cool about it on the app, it showed Alex, Kelly, Benjamin infant and lap, everything looked good.

So we get to check in and the lady's like, we didn't pay the tax.

And I'm like, well, I did because he obviously came down and it was on, it was a round trip ticket.

We weren't gonna leave him here, and we just had to change our destination return airport because it, you guys canceled it essentially.

Um, so it should have just moved over.

She was like, well, it didn't.

I said, okay, well I'm happy to pay it again.

She's like, well, let me, let me figure it out.

So she's tapping away and I can't imagine that there, I would love to see the UI for Like, oh dude, Rental car counter computers.

I have thought this so many Times.

Airline checking computers, like they're, how many keystrokes and pages are there?

Yes. Like this can't, like, come on . Yeah.

So hundred are, you're just playing solitaire and, and just extending this out.

Are you on Facebook market lately? What are you doing?

Um, and so anyways, which is A poorly designed system, clearly, Right?

It, it must be running on Windows Vista or some <inaudible>.

So, um, she has to call, she has to call.

And I'm like, do you want me to just call the EP desk and like pay the fee through them and they'll reprocess it and everything?

It's like, no, no, no. One hour and 20 minutes later,

No. Yes, Alex,

No.

We are standing there and just like Ben is in his stroller, thankfully he's cool, but like, you're just, there's nothing You are, you're just trapped An hour and 20 minutes Standing at the desk.

Our bags are gone. We have, I have my passport.

Kelly has her passport. Everything's done.

But like his ticket isn't, isn't in existence even though he doesn't need a ticket.

It's not in existence.

And so I'm, I'm like getting to the point where there's a united flight that's direct to Chicago that's leaving in like an hour.

And I went down to the United desk and I was like, is that going?

Even though there's weather in Chicago?

And they're like, yeah. And I'm like,

do you have two plus a mini human seats?

And they're like, yeah. I was like, all right, standby.

Because like, I'm not just gonna sit here and watch my flight take off.

Like, this is ridiculous.

So anyways, um, this whole thing ends about 10 minutes later and the lady's heart, I think was in the right place.

Yeah. But she wasted an hour

and a half of our time for a $4 and 30 cent difference.

$4 and 30 cent difference in the tax because we were going to Louisville and not Indianapolis.

That is. And I was like inferior.

I really would've liked the option To just to give her a Fiverr and walk a 10 Because we didn't get to, he and then had a, as babies do his pants.

And so then we were ru we were like, we were behind a bunch of people at this point through security.

They closed TSA breach check.

We were behind a bunch of people in customs.

He had <inaudible> his pants. We had to change him.

It was like a blowout.

So we had to change his outfit and everything.

We barely had time to get a bottle of water and we're like running to the gate.

And it's like, this was so unnecessary for something that was in my mind, super avoidable.

But anyways, that, that's my travel story. We got to, we got

Kentucky.

So then you got to Louisville and you drove Drove home. Yeah,

We drove home.

Oh. And, and what the real pisser of it all is.

Um, we got, it was no Weather.

Two thirds of an inch of snow. Yeah.

The other thing is like, I was like, okay, it's it's pretty bad.

Blah, blah blah. So I need to pay to make sure, I mean,

we have a baby, so I gotta get an all wheel drive.

SUV. It's Thanksgiving,

the holiday. So like, I wasn't cheap.

One way rental. One way rental.

Yeah, for sure. That's the worst. And

Then I just, I just drove and it was just like damp ground and it was like, cool.

I love everything about what happened. .

Oh man, that's like a movie.

You know, it's just like everything that could go wrong, dude.

Well at least the car didn't break down and you end up on the side of the road. And That's

True. That's

True.

Stay in Kentucky in some small town. It's all good.

Holiday Express. You made it, you made it.

Trip was good though. Successful trip

Was great.

You enjoyed, um, we, we had a great time.

Uh, Ben's gonna be an Olympic swimmer.

Just, oh, here you go. Um,

If he's got your length, you, you're a, you're a limby guy that helps in, in swimming.

Does, does. So anyways, great trip.

Very good Thanksgiving. Very happy

that we got the opportunity to go and check it out.

And, um, I'll go back, like, I'll go back when he's like six and can like participate in stuff.

But, um, no, it was cool. It's good to see

You.

You were at a place in Bahamas that has a nice waterpark, kind of famous for its waterpark, you know, for the kids and what have you.

Did I talk about the waterpark at my hotel in Qatar?

Dude, we stayed at this hotel that was like a resort beach side hotel.

Okay. The hotel is fine.

It's not like a, it's not like a fancy place, but it's attached to this waterpark that is so tough to describe to people.

Imagine like a waterpark.

And the set designer for Mad Max Fury Road got together and we're like, let's make a really big post apocalyptic looking waterpark.

Like let's make sure there's tubes coming out of everything.

Everything looks rusty and, and sandblasted.

But like, it's a brand new state-of-the-art water park.

Like, it's not like you almost feel bad. Yeah.

You look like, well, there's no wes in abandoned water park.

And I'm never sending my kid down any of those slides.

'cause they'll get some, some sort of, you know, scrapes, cuts and, and subsequent diseases.

This place had 53 water slides.

It was the biggest waterpark I've seen by a factor of 10.

And it looked like a movie set.

It was unbelievable.

And I, I I got a, I'm actually gonna, I took a video of it 'cause it makes no sense.

There's this one part that goes out over the ocean and it looks like a floating, it looks like the movie Water world.

It looks like Water World. And Mad Max had a child.

So did you get to enjoy it at all or were you just too busy working the whole time?

Yeah, no, of course not. Tim.

I'm, I'm, I did not get to do that.

I, I, I don't, that's wrong. That's the wrong way to word.

Word. It. I could have, I had time to do it.

I chose not to the, the main reason being some of the crew did.

And they said it was great. Um,

but like, if something had gone wrong and like we li you know, we kind of had this, this discussion among all the, all the presenters and, and commentators.

It was like, if one of us like breaks a wrist or cuts something severely, like that's just, it's not a good time of year to do that.

You know, we're two races to go.

It's championship deciders coming up.

We don't need to lose anybody at this point.

Uh, so we opted not to, but it was, it was, it was, it was a thing.

I sent you guys a video. Have a look.

It was wild, wild experience.

Holy Yeah. Isn't that insane?

Like, I'm like, okay, cool, whatever, whatever.

And then you pan and zoom to the thing off to the right.

Yes. . Like what is, that's there's an elevator

to get to the top like Space Station.

It, it looks like a space station crashed into the ocean.

Yeah. And they made a water park out of it.

That is incredible.

I know. Like I, it was a big, big part of me

that really wanted to go check it out.

And like, the, the first day nobody did. Is it open? Yeah.

Yeah. It opens because because it's a night race.

It opened after we would have to leave for the track, right.

It opened at like 11:00 AM and we normally left at like one, but there was the, the first day nobody went.

The second day we're sitting in the office and we were talking about it.

And there there was one guy that works in the office and he kinda looked around and he was like, yeah, I went this morning.

We're like, yeah, wait, what? He goes, yeah, yeah.

I just lined up at like 10 50 and waited till it opened up and as soon as it opened up I just spent an hour running around the place and doing as many slides as I could.

I'm like, oh my God, that's amazing. How was it?

He goes, it was awesome. You gotta do it.

I went, there's one, uh, on Yas Marina that's pretty legit.

Um, oh really? It's not, it's not to the level

of like Mad Max is this, but it's like, it's a very good, like with some fricking fast water slides That is worth going to if you get the Time.

I have a couple days off. 'cause I'm on,

I staying on Yas Marina and I don't have anything to do for the next few.

Yeah. So, so it's to the left

of Ferrari World if you're leaving the island. So have

You ever been to Ferrari world?

I have. Is it worth going? 'cause I've never been,

I mean, the roller coaster's cool. The rest is <inaudible>.

Okay. So probably not. I mean

It's, it's, it's literally it the rollercoaster, like the launch is badass and then it's just a normal roller coaster and then you're walking around a fricking gift shop.

Right. Like it's not Yeah.

And it's not like we're Ferrari guys.

We're not sitting here with Right. Ferraris in the garage and

No James, what we are is Max guys.

And so we should, we should probably talk about some Max, speaking of Mad Max and all these sort of things, max, max, max.

I just love how you call that on the show. .

I also love that. Like Yeah.

People were disagreeing with you pretty hard in the comments. They were

Like people Well, yeah, Like, It's so funny.

I've never se I've never seen our comments.

People dunno, ball people dunno, ball James.

And I know ball people also have, some people also have some really, really bad takes in this sport.

And we'll get to that, but Oh yeah, Yeah.

Let's, let's, let's just get stuck in man, whatever practice was practice qualifying was qualifying.

Oscar did a great job, got poll track record. Track record.

Lando was quick, but then missed his second run in Q3.

So it was starting third max.

Dan was second in a car that, I don't know, should it be second?

Maybe, maybe not. No, probably not. And Max

Was in second.

Sorry, max was third. Yeah, yeah. Sorry, sorry, sorry.

That's right. That was, it was the sprint.

George was second. Orlando was third in the sprint. Yeah,

That Was.

But yes, so, so I mean, Lando goes into the race with a chance to lock up the championship before First.

Before, before, before we get Yeah. To the, the Yeah.

The scenarios. Um, I just wanna talk about the track.

Track. Like probably cool to race lap in an F1 car. Yes.

Yeah. But like what a horrible track to race on.

Yes. It's

Pretty bad.

Pretty that, that's pretty much Monaco. Like it's just, it's

Yeah, it's horrendous.

Yeah. Monaco was fast and fun. Right.

And had no penalties for making a, you Know, I just mean in terms of like the race product itself felt like Monaco, like it's every, you can't even get within a second really.

Um, unenjoyable, Go ahead.

And, and also like Monaco, they had this mandatory two stop rule.

Mm-hmm. Although in Monaco was just,

you had a stop twice in Qatar it was, you can't do more than 25 laps on a set of tires.

So you have to have two stops to make 57 laps.

You had some freedom in when you could do it until, but we'll get to that.

So it was, it was a compromise race.

Whenever the strategy's kind of predicated on a rule, it's, it's almost guaranteed to be a, a bad race.

'cause everyone's gonna do the same thing.

And then you got a track that's really hard to pass on.

The, the lap though is impressive, man.

Like, you watch the onboards and like you talk to the guys after a, a qua run and they're, it's like mind blowing how fast they can go around these places.

Um, really enjoyable to drive, but like you say, not the best race.

So, yeah. So I mean, we're not gonna sit here

and go through all the permutations of how it could have played out championship wise, but Lando had a shot at it off the start.

Essentially if land, if Lando wins, If Lando wins, it's over.

Yeah. If he, if he beats the other two guys,

Scores him by what two points going into something Was score max by two to eliminate him.

Uh, yeah, I think that's right. Something like that.

Everyone kind of, everyone kind of thought, look, Lando had the most to lose.

Right? So the thought was

that he might be a little bit cautious.

In turn one max has absolutely nothing.

Like if Max got beat by Lando in any position on the race track, he was out.

So he had to get by Lando and he did. And that's fine.

And Lando was cruising around in third.

Oscar was cruising around in first everything was hunky dory.

And then a safety car comes out.

The timing of the safety car is very important.

'cause like we said, 25 lap maximum stints, 57 lap race, which means the first pit window opens on lap seven Because seven plus 25 plus 25 Is 57.

Right? So you could pit on seven,

do 25 laps pit again on 32 25 laps.

So safety car comes out under safety car, your pit stop lost time is half almost of what?

It's 26 seconds under a green, like 14 seconds car.

Just like Indy car from where it was. Yep.

Just like Indy car. So they come

around the pits under the safety car and Oscar stays out Max, who is now second dives into the pits.

So Norris goes up to third or second from third.

Norris stays out and every other car except Espan, Ocon went into the pits.

Uh oh. Because now Max's

fourth, but then Ocon got a penalty.

So he actually had to go into the pits anyway.

So now Max's third again and he's a full pit stop ahead.

And the collective arena that is, that racetrack was just like, what the fuck did they just do?

What just happened here?

And it was the most outrageous thing you've ever seen.

Now I'm saying that in the sense of, in the moment as you watch it unfold, you're like, what if, if 18 cars do one thing and two cars do the other, you gotta, you gotta believe that the two are probably in the wrong here.

Right? But the thought Alex has

to be, it's a very difficult track to pass on.

If you pit now your race is now absolutely dictated for you from a, from a strategy standpoint.

'cause you have to now pit on lap 32 or you're adding another stop and, and there's just no way that everybody behind us will pit.

That's gotta be the thought, right?

That a few guys running in the teens would roll the dice to get the track position at a difficult to, to pass track.

And that would create a buffer.

Max would come out in eighth or seventh.

So, and he would have to cut through some guys.

Like, is that, is that what they're thinking at this point?

Who I, I I don't wanna hypothesize what they're thinking.

Um, because it could be a number of things.

What baffles me is, is why it wasn't an easy decision for them.

Because mm-hmm .

If, if the max maximum stint windows make this such an easy decision because you know that you have to, you have to do two stops.

It's a rule. Okay?

You can only do 25 laps per stint, why wouldn't you?

Regardless really of anything that's gonna come in the future, why wouldn't you take a quote unquote free pit stop?

Like, that's the question that I don't understand is now you only have one green flag stop to the end.

In, in my mind, there's no, there's no counter argument that gives you a reason to not have only one green flag stop to the end.

I don't know a strategist that wouldn't take that.

So the, the, I guess is my point Or my confusion.

So I, the, the message that land's engineer Will Joseph gave to him Is they have no flex flexibility anymore.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Maybe, maybe actually it was Tom saw,

maybe it was Oscar's engineer, but yeah, It was based No, it was, it was Will Orlando.

'cause it was, Lando was like, why didn't we come in? Why didn't we follow next? Why

Didn't we follow?

Which is a fair question. Like right,

if you're McLaren, why are you not splitting?

First of all, um, if you're really, if you really think that staying out is the way to go, you should at least, you know, coming in is a viable option too.

Should you should at least split, um, so that you're Covering the guy that you're racing, right? Like in a sense,

You're covering the guy that you're racing.

Um, but does this default back to what McLaren potentially is gonna die by?

And they're trying to keep this so fair, they didn't want to put one guy on a strategy that could be potentially better than the other car.

So I I then this is, this has obviously been a hot topic, right?

This has been a, a, a big theory that's been floating around.

Um, I don't buy that. And, and here's why.

What makes it fair still is in any race, the driver that qualifies ahead and is running ahead on track gets priority of strategy.

So if there are two strategies they get to pick.

So in that situation, if land o's car wants to do the opposite of Oscar or wants to roll the dice, um, well, sorry, Oscar gets the priority.

So if they thought in their heart of hearts that staying out was the right call, then Land's side of the garage has to make the decision.

Do we wanna stick to the same strategy or do we want to try to do something else?

Because he gets priority.

So if that's what they thought was the best and they thought pitting was not as good, you, you, sorry.

You lost that. Right. By not out qualifying him.

Right. That's how it

Worked.

So here's, here's, here's something, here's something that I'm pretty sure this is how it works in F1, it's how it worked when I was there.

And I know that it works this way for a number of teams.

I don't wanna speak from McLaren, but I think there's one strategist who's making the call for both cars.

I don't the race engineers have input, but it is ultimately one individual that is making Yeah.

The decisions. So, well, I I I wonder how much each side of,

of the garage gets an input or person X is like, we're doing this, We don't know this, this is, I'm now just completely speculating, right?

My belief would be that the strategist presents the options and the race engineers get to make the final call, right?

Like on paper, here are your options.

And then you've gotta decide on your, you can't have one person making that call for two drivers when they're racing against each other for the championship, right?

At some point you might want to take a risk on one of those cars, and that's not the decision of the strategist, right?

That's way above their pay pay grade. Yeah.

So I, I think it's like, here's the data, here's what strategy tells you.

Here's what simulation tells you.

Here's what I think you should do, do with that as you wish. I don't,

I, I don't know that that's how that exists, how that works. Actually,

Don't, I'm gonna ask that question this weekend. I'm gonna look

Into that.

I don't think that architecture is there, because for the most part, formula One strategy is, is pretty simple.

And it's with all of the technology and everything that they have and how predictable usually the races are, right?

It's the strategy's decided going into the race, all the homework's been done, the research has been done.

So there may be a decision on the fly of a lap or two undercut or overcut based on, you know, how tired egg is happening or in position or out of position to start that sort of thing.

But usually the strategy is decided before the green flag even drops.

And so I think that if there was a decision that if there, yes, our pit window opens on seven, but if we're running one, two, one three, call it whatever, we're not gonna take it because we have such a clear advantage on pace.

I don't even know that it was that big of a discussion Because it's interesting Because there was an interview with Hannah, uh, who's the Schmidt, I think it is SCH or whatever, SCH who's the, the strategist for Red Bull mm-hmm .

Um, and the question was, well, were you ever in doubt, especially when you were being told that McLaren's not coming and she, her response was no.

Like our window was open, it was under yellow.

I I was stunned that they weren't taking it. It was kind of the

Yeah, and, and she wasn't the only team person from various teams that said like, no, no.

Like we work through all these, like in our pre-race strategy programs, we work through all these scenarios.

We worked through the exact scenario of a safety car coming out on lap seven and the default is to pit.

So it's, it's more how did McLaren miss it, right? Mm-hmm .

And like, like Red Bull obviously get a lot of credit.

They called it, right? They won the race. Yeah. They

Said Everyone else 18 , 17 other cars also made the right call.

And so it's, the question is more what did McLaren miss?

What did they think was gonna happen?

Um, but like, I I, yeah, I gotta think that a race, a race engineer rather could like override that decision if they really wanted to.

But I'm, I, I'll, I'm gonna look into that.

'cause that's a great point. It's a great question.

Um, obviously it didn't work out for them.

Max won it by an insane amount.

Um, which means that Lando leads a championship going into Abu Dhabi by 12 points over Max, who has now overtaken Oscar, who after Xandr was 104 points ahead of 'em.

That is four full race wins and four points that is four and a bit race wins that Max has clawed back since August.

Unbelievable out of control. Some interesting.

And then Oscar's two, four points, I think behind Max some hilarious stats that came up.

Uh, as we now have three drivers eligible going into the last race.

I, I, I have not looked this one up.

I just saw it on like a, a meme.

So this might be inaccurate.

I know at least the first one is, but the last I think three or maybe even four times that there were three drivers or more eligible for the championship going into the last race.

The driver leading going in won the championship.

Zero times not a great stat.

If Orlando, now trends are meant to be broken, streaks are meant to be broken.

So that doesn't actually say anything.

But it's just an interesting point that when you're the one that's had the lead and it's getting whittled down and the pressure comes up and the other guys just got this hunger and momentum, I mean, oh man, it's so I, oh God.

I'm struggling. I'm struggling.

So I have a question Yeah.

To ask.

Ariel Max is leading, Hmm.

George Kimmy, whatever the second Oscar's third land's fourth, right? So there's four laps to

Go.

So preface this question, to preface this question.

If, if Max wins, Lando has to finish third or better.

Correct. So yeah, max George, Oscar,

four laps to go.

Does McLaren ask Oscar to move over?

And if they do, does Oscar do it?

So I think it has to be, I think so the answer is yes and yes because their, their philosophy has always been, Let me one up.

You let me one up. You

Okay?

Okay. That's fine. I agree. I agree.

What if it's Max Oscar George Lando Still? Yes.

Give up a podium. Yeah, it's a podium. Really?

Who gives a <inaudible>? He's had 18 this

year. It doesn't matter. Okay,

So, so, because Here's the thing, the the team is Just pull over and let two cars by.

Yeah. Absolutely. Absolutely. It sucks.

You think he doesn't? Because I think, I think, uh,

I think if he doesn't, let me put it this way.

I think he does. I think that Oscar is a, uh,

I think he's a fierce competitor.

I think he's a hell of a racing driver.

I think he's world champion material.

I think doing that, you, you, I dunno how long his contract is, right?

If you do that, you are number two for the rest of your time at that team.

And like you, you know that you're done there.

Like that is the end of your career at that team.

You'll see at your contract if you're lucky, and you will be relegated to the number two position if you go against the team like that.

If you put the driver before the team, if, if that's my team and a driver does that, not only I <inaudible> bench him, I make him a reserve driver and put someone else in the car and make him come to the track for 24 rounds and sip espressos, giving tours of the garage to sponsors for, for disobeying the team.

I get the mentality of a driver, obviously.

But these programs are so big, they're so much bigger.

This is a team sport.

You can't sit there and make this argument that racing's a team sport and let one individual go and grenade a team season like that.

Mm. And let 'em get away

With it.

No, see, I I, I get in context what you're saying, but the money comes from the constructors' championship first of all.

Mm-hmm . So they've already won that.

So there's no grenade the team season.

If Lando finishes second in the world championship or first there isn't.

There is by that same exact logic, if he does it, he's relegated to the number two driver.

Hmm. No.

So if he does or doesn't, he's relegated to the number two driver because No, see, I don't, I don't, I don't think that you, you think just, 'cause if Lando wins it that next year he comes in with automatic number one status, James, I don't think so. I don't think

So.

James, there is, the way racing works over there, you are, you are defined by your performance against your teammate. You know this,

Right?

And they're right now they're almost dead nuts going into the last race.

Right? So like they're very,

even there's almost nothing between it. There's

A big, there's a big, there's a big difference between your teammate winning the world driver's championship and finishing second and you finish third.

There's a big difference between him finishing first and you finishing third versus second.

Third. I agree. Like for sure.

What does he, what does he owe?

No, because it's not helping the team.

It's helping Lando does, does he have it in his heart?

I'm not disagreeing with you, I'm just playing devil's advocate.

Yeah. Does he have it in his heart to let,

to help Lando like that?

That's the harder part, right?

Is yeah, watching your teammates succeed.

And it's not even like he's running fifth in the championship and he's gonna help his teammate win.

That would be hard enough. But if you, that was the guy that

until this race, like you had, you had a chance to win it too, right?

Both of you going for your first one. I completely get it.

And, and yes, the Constructors championship is where the money comes from, but the only one anybody cares about is a driver's championship.

There are definitely gonna be financial incentives from sponsors if they win a driver's championship.

So it would physically cost the team money.

But it's, it's, if it's what the team asked Them to do, probably save the team money because they wouldn't have to bonus Outlander's World Championship, but , okay.

I'm sure those bonuses are built into the sponsor contracts too.

Mm-hmm. Right? Like, but,

but here's the thing where I disagree with you is in, in terms of fine if Lando wins it, because Oscar does that, that he's now the defacto number one going into 26.

Because by that logic, again, just playing devil's advocate by that logic Lando came into this year as the number one, if the team believed that nobody at the start of the year thought Oscar was gonna like beat Lando straight up, right?

Like Lando went on, went on such a tear the second half of last year, Oscar was getting better.

But everybody thought if the McLaren was a championship winning car, it was like it was, it was Land O's deal, right?

But they gave Oscar equal treatment, equal equipment, equal opportunity, any delivered, delivered in a way nobody expected.

At least not yet in year three.

So at some point they could have biased that towards Lando if that was the, what they thought was gonna happen and they didn't.

They've actually done for all the things that people sit here today, the day after Qatar Grand Prix and won <inaudible> on McLaren for X, Y, z.

There is no denying the season they've had has been incredible their approach to managing the driver situation.

You may agree with it or not, but with what they tried to do, what they tried to achieve, they've handled it pretty, pretty well.

That's a very difficult situation to Manage.

I, I agree. So you,

you think they blow all that up at the end?

Because people, I Don't think it's blowing it up, Up their whole thing.

Their whole ethos has been we are this fair equal opportunity employer, right?

We want both our guys to have the same until now Until one of them can't win it.

So my point was gonna be, it would be on the last lap because if on the last lap, if you cross the line like that, your boy can't win it, but your other guy can.

So if they're in that third and fourth scenario, I'll give 'em to the last lap in case Max George and Kimmy all crash into each other.

And then he <inaudible> wins the whole thing.

But if there's no mathematical way for him to win with those three cars crossing the line in front of him, then you're sticking to your, your, your whole philosophy still.

All right, well it's, Here's we'll see man.

Interesting. We'll see it's interesting.

It's, it's, but so the, the other, 'cause I can guarantee you, I can guarantee you something Max is winning in Abu Dhabi.

So , the scenario that plays out behind him is going to be awesome to, That is the thing man.

Does that play into your guys' head?

Like when, when you're in a position like that where not only do you have to win, but somebody else has to finish and it's totally outta your control.

Like how does that affect you? You going in? No, no.

You just, it doesn't matter. Just

Win.

We, you, you can't focus, you can't change the other guy's day, right?

Like you can't control what you can't control.

So you just focus on what's in your control, which is trying to win that race.

And then whatever happens, happens, um, max just has to hope that those guys choke.

'cause they, they should be 1, 2, 3, you know, they qualified 1, 2, 3 in Qatar, it's top three in the championship as They should.

No, but so, so here's, here's where, and you called this a while ago.

It's, George is gonna, Mercedes is gonna dictate this championship and really the only reason that George wasn't in a better position in Qatar is 'cause when everyone came into pit lane, he got super boned.

'cause he couldn't, was trapped in his box.

I fully expect George and or Kimmy to be in the top four in qualifying.

So as Toto has made it very clear and we'll, we'll touch on this right before we close.

They're fighting for second in the construction championship against Red Bull.

So they're not really willing to give up any points at this point.

Nor why would they, 'cause let's be honest, they probably don't wanna see a customer team win a world championship. Like

For sure. Not

For sure not.

It's, it's actually an interesting point though because like it's either a team with their own engine, beating them with their own game or it's the team that they hate more than ever.

And you know, like Mercedes isn't a lose lose situation here.

Yeah. Like no matter who wins,

they're gonna be pretty upset.

True. Um,

but yeah, I think, I think this is gonna come down to if Lando is to win this and wants to win this, he needs to hope that George and Kimmy aren't that strong.

'cause we know Ferrari is lost. Um, yeah.

And quite frankly, there's no one else close enough in pace.

So Yeah. Um, be very interesting to see. They're

Gonna play a part.

They're gonna play a part. It's

A, it's a shame.

It's a shame that it, I'm not, I'm not on Yuki.

It's really a shame Max doesn't have help because Yeah, man, what a and and what a predicament re bulls in because imagine how much easier all this could be if they had another car up there.

Um, just like Sergio. It'd be done.

Who, who helped be done. Who. Yeah,

Exactly.

We, we were just, we were having this conversation at dinner tonight, was like, man, you forget how big of a part Checko played in 21.

Yes. It, it's, it's easy to forget how big a part

that he played and like when you, when that, when that person's not there, when that wingman's not there mm-hmm .

It's easy to forget that like the teammate, even if it's like the number two guy can really, really helped us.

It's funny, it's funny how bad they thought he was.

And now in hindsight they're probably like, huh, dude, I've said it before.

The only guy I've ever seen that gets fired takes a year off and his stock goes up without ever getting back in the car.

Like his, his program went up also insane.

That Red Bull is ahead of Ferrari in the championship with basically one guy scoring points like Max for stepin.

Max for Stepin is gonna beat Ferrari in the Constructors championship Lately.

Lately Ferrari's, I won guy's scoring points. Two .

Dude, even that barely, I mean that thing has just been rough.

Yeah, yeah. But no, so you mentioned it

and we gotta, we've gotta touch on it.

The, you know, the points gap could have been 10 points, um, coming in to this race.

But with two laps to go, Antonelli getting chased down by Lando makes a mistake. One

Lap to go, One lap to go makes a mistake and uh, or yeah, on the second last lap, um, in turn 10 goes wide, Lando gets by, gets fourth instead of fifth.

Now that is very important in the championship because if Max wins Lando can finish third and still win it.

Had he not made that pass or Kimmy not made that mistake, that would not be the case.

If Max won Lando would have to be second.

So he, he bought himself the buffer of Oscar being in between, which, I mean that could literally have dictated everything, but it was not intentional.

Unfortunately. It took the broadcast a couple seconds

to show the replay.

'cause when you first see it, you just see Kimmy offline and Lando going by and you kind of think, man, what just happened there?

But to your point about Toto, they're still trying to win a championship.

They're not giving points away, especially not to a customer team.

The, the, the subsequent online hate that Kimie Antonelli got for something he did not do is absolutely insane.

The poor kid blacked out his own photo on his Instagram.

So that way when you search his name, you can't just automatically tell which one's him.

'cause I'm sure there's a lot of fake Kimmy Antonelli counts out there.

Death threats and <inaudible>. Guys, I love passionate fans.

You're the reason that we have sports not just racing all sports, there's just no world in which a pass for fourth and fifth in a race, regardless of the subsequent outcomes that could come as a result of that is worth you going online and threatening a 19-year-old kid's life.

Like, what are we doing here? That's insane.

Retweet, retweet.

I just, I feel so bad for him.

He's gonna have a terrible week after a great weekend.

You know, he's a, he's a kid man, he's 19 and he's having to deal with the pressure of being a Formula one driver.

And now he's gotta deal with the pressure of some small sect of social media calling for his head for something he did not do.

So, but the other thing that's interesting about it, sorry, go. Oh,

I was gonna say, I mean like helmet Marco kind of played into this discourse by by saying, and like that's somebody who should know better.

Well, ye yes, but also, no, he's not a great example.

He's kind of checked out from how the world works in this sense.

But the, the, the, the point that I was thinking about, which I would love your opinion on this, the helmet Marco stuff came after the race.

Mine, not yours, Tim, the helmet Marco stuff came after the race in a in an article.

And if that's, if you follow the sport enough to be looking up articles of, of uh, of Hel Marcos quotes, fine.

But on the broadcast, which is when the most number of people are gonna see what's happening, there was a radio message played from Max's engineer GP to Max that said, oh yeah, it looks like Kim mullet, Lando buy before we had seen the replay of him making very clearly a mistake.

That is where a lot of people jumped, excuse me, jumped on this conspiracy theory.

Right? So G's now getting a bunch of flack too.

I don't love that a race engineer talking to his driver in the heat of competition has to think about filtering what he says because of that.

Because, because Kimmy Antonelli could get death threats as a result.

I'm not sure. I love the fact that the broadcast,

I'm not saying that like obviously we obviously like the broadcast played it, it's they get all the radio, they choose what to play, it's fine.

It, it makes me wonder if we should be broadcasting radio messages at all because the number of times drivers get <inaudible> for saying stuff in the heat of the moment, you know, and I know it is entertaining.

I I love hearing it sometimes too. I, I, I'm guilty of that.

But when we've now got this sport to a point where a guy whose job has nothing to do with that, like he should not have to worry about that stuff in his role.

You could argue that the driver, you know, knows what they sign up for or whatever.

But like again, heat of the battle comp competitive environment, even asking drivers to filter to themselves is but for the engineer to have the power to say something out of context or, or misrepresented 'cause he didn't have all the information and it leading to this poor kid getting death threats on social media.

Like that's a we've think about No, I think think Doing here, I think this is a, I don't, no, this is a societal problem that has been instigated by social media is we don't need to filter radio messages.

We need to take away social media accounts from jackasses.

There you go. That's

Probably, there should be an IQ test before you're allowed to have Twitter .

Is this your way of telling me I need to delete my account?

No, you're not a jackass. No .

We just don't like what you say on it.

Yeah. Your tweets are pretty lame.

I had feel like I had a banger about jumping off a bridge the other day.

No, your tweets like, I I wanna know what inspires you to actually do the build a tweet because it's honestly which tweet?

If all my friends were jumping off a bridge, I probably would too.

All of them question mark. They have to know something.

Right? That's not tweet. It's a banger approach.

, that's that's a great tweet. I may be old fashioned.

Oh not that one. I don't know if this is a sign of aging

or not, but I just got a new toaster and I'm psyched about it. Yeah. Not even a

I did see that one.

I did see that one and I thought that was pretty, you're too young to tweet stuff like that.

Designed and 3D printed modular shelves for my daughter's cool daughter's duck collection.

There's just a lot of questions about all of that.

Yeah, I thought it was pretty cool.

And I was, the bridge one was, 'cause I was, I was out, uh, at Culver City with Kenna and we were walking around and I forget what she said, but like, I, I had done something 'cause everybody in front of us had done it.

She goes, would you jump off a bridge if all your friends jumped off a bridge?

Just like, probably like they would, right?

Like if they were all doing it.

Like they have to know it's not that tall.

Like I have a lot of independent minded friends.

I feel like they know something that I don't if they're all gonna jump off of it Or were you just like gonna be sad that all your friends were gone?

Yeah. You have too much fomo.

I have a lot of fomo. I figure like a lot of fomo.

If all my friends jumped off, then like worst case scenario, I've got a soft landing, right.

Because I'm hitting .

So See that's how you, that's how you should have finished the tweet that's funnier than they must have known something .

Yeah. Worst case scenario. I got a softer landing.

That's, I just feel like you two Wouldn't jump off a bridge without doing some research on the safety of, of the bridge jump. Right? Like

It is a flawed anecdote, isn't it?

Like I know that was a popular one when we were kids or even when our parents were kids.

I feel like that one's a few generations old, but uh, yeah, that wasn't a very practical, realistic one.

And a banger tweet. I'm gonna

retweet it from the offtrack account. It

Should, it should be more like, if your friends are gonna drink eight beers, are you gonna join 'em? Yeah.

Obviously that's Monday. Yeah, of course I am. I'm I'm

Prob probably gonna have nine just to show them I can drink more.

All right, well it's Monday morning so you can go back and verify that I'm doing this.

I'm gonna go ahead and retweet that bridge one from the off track account.

'cause that's a banger. Okay.

I hate that you have the power to do that, Guys.

Um, talk to you next week when we have a five time world champion.

Cannot wait. . Alright. Calling it I saw you meant he

Was gonna be on here.

I was like, no. Wait, are we getting mad? Definitely not.

Look, I know we're a news, we're a news breaking outlet now, but I don't think we can get the, uh, the world champion on.

I got all excited. I got all excited that I was like, no,

you would've known before now.

Like that would've been .

We would've been like, Hey, we're talking to Max.

Like he's not gonna reveal That.

Imagine I just told you we had a guest lined up.

Imagine I told you we had a guest lined up and just didn't tell you who it was and it just happened to be like Mac. Yeah.

You kind of did that once you guys gave me like a day notice that we were doing the big, uh, Andretti announcement one .

Oh, that's, that's plenty of time.

I mean, like, literally we log on, I'm like, hey, just send this, uh, send the link to this email and I'm just like, m for [email protected]. ,

Uh, Tappin [email protected] gmail. I

Would like it if he was like Gmail, like four, like there, like he was the fourth tappin to get to it.

Yeah, I'm sure he wasn't the first because like he's a he's a kid, right?

Yeah. Like email addresses started a while ago.

Anyway, we're getting off track. Yeah. What, what Alex said,

This has been off track with Hinch and Rossi off track is part of the Sirius XM Sports Podcast network.

If you enjoyed this episode and want to hear more, please give a five star rating and leave a review.

Subscribe today wherever you stream your podcasts.

We are at Ask Off Track on Twitter and Instagram.

And if you wanna follow us on Twitter, we're at Hinch Town and at Alexander Rossi.

If you wanna follow them though, we have no idea why you would.

He's at the Tim Durham on Twitter.

Find us on YouTube and subscribe to our channel for exclusive video content.

Off Track is produced by Tim Durham, and by that we mean f.

Water Parks & The Inevitable Max

About this episode

Mitsubishi Outlander

Request an Explanation

Want to learn more?

Help improve this episode

More from Off Track with Hinch and Rossi