Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Foreign.
[00:00:09] Speaker B: Thanks for tuning in to the undercuts review of the 2025 Monaco Grand Prix. Please rate, review and subscribe wherever you listen and enjoy the episode.
By being a racing driver, you are under risk all the time.
By being a racing driver means you are racing with other people and if you no longer go for a gap that exist, you're no longer a racing driver.
All right, guys, so it's a.
I don't even know really where to start with this one. Obviously the 2025 Monaco Grand Prix.
[00:00:42] Speaker C: Good start. Start there. Yeah, that's a good place to start.
[00:00:50] Speaker B: Obviously the first time with the two stop strategy and we were excited to see how that would potentially work out. And like I said to Martin before we started recording, it's definitely changed the race, but I mean it was.
[00:01:09] Speaker C: The reason it was brought in was after last year there was a red flag on the first lap.
Everyone changed their tires under the red flag conditions and then went to the end. So there were no pit stops during the course of the race, which made it just. I mean, what was Charlotte Claire lapping like nine seconds off the pace? I think the Formula 2 cars were about as fast or maybe faster as he was just preserving his tyres to the end. And it was, I mean, I'm a Monaco apologist, as much as you can really get.
But it was tedious. It was like how many more laps? Oh, crap. The 74 more laps of this and it was just.
It was dull and they needed, it's like they felt they needed to do something. They did something.
Were there any overtakes? Maybe one. Well, two if you count Kimi Antonelli putting going up the inside and Bortoletto going into the wall. But other than that, I think it was really just the last lap when Lance stroll past past Nico Hulkenberg. I think that was pretty much it in terms of overtakes. So it didn't really liven up the racing too much, but it, it made it a bit more chaotic and there was stuff to think about.
[00:02:25] Speaker B: Unless you count George. Unless you count George.
[00:02:30] Speaker C: Which was part genius, part like grumpy child. Yeah.
[00:02:35] Speaker A: What do you think would have happened? I mean, this is a dangerous suggestion, but what do you think would have happened if he just did that like lap? I almost put it in the chat. If he just did that lap after lap after lap, like he passed him at the new bel. It's a nouvelle chicane, right?
[00:02:48] Speaker C: Yeah. For the listeners we're talking about George Russell just cutting the chicane to get past Alex Albon.
[00:02:55] Speaker A: He would say, you know, I could break a lot later. So I was trying to go around the outside, but I had to cut the chicane right, to not crash into him. Okay, fair enough. But he could do that, then give the place back and then do it again the next lap and then give the place back and then do it again the next lap and then give the place back just to show over and over again how stupid.
[00:03:13] Speaker C: Yeah, yeah.
[00:03:13] Speaker A: How stupid I was. But, you know, obviously that's, you know, dangerous driving, I guess, potentially.
[00:03:19] Speaker C: But it also, I mean, when you think about when that actually went down and it was a good chunk of the way through the race because the way that it evolved was that you had Liam Lawson holding up the pack so that Isaac Hajar could put his two pit stops in and come out ahead and preserve that great qualifying that he had. He put it in, I think it was sixth in terms of actual qualifying position.
But Lewis Hamilton impeded Max Verstappen for just the most Ferrari of reasons, which gave him the grid spot from fourth to seventh. We're talking about his race engineer coming on the radio saying, Max Verstappen three seconds behind. Oh, actually he's going slowly.
And so Lewis sped up and impeded him into the casino.
And it's like, wait, you told me he was on a slow lap, which was just obviously really annoying. But it meant that Isaac Hajar was starting in fifth place.
I think ninth place was it for, for Liam, which just meant there was a good amount of buffer that Liam could hold up the pack over a period of time in order to let Isaac Hajar Pitt get his both through. And I picked up on this and I feel very proud of myself for my comments on our WhatsApp group about how I saw him coming and worked out really great. It held up both Williams, both Mercedes behind them.
And so of course, once the RBS had done it, then the Williams did it, but it was much later into the race, so the rate at which they were holding up the rest of the pack was annoying everybody. And they. It just meant that also Liam managed to basically make up all the time that he'd lost, holding everyone up because behind him the Williams were doing exactly the same thing. So it was like super weird, super annoying.
James Vowles was, well, basically everyone involved with Williams was just saying, I'm sorry, we don't like to go racing like this. Meanwhile, the guys at V Carb are all high fiving, having a great time because they're geniuses out of all of this because they, you know, they dictated the entire race and scored some phenomenal points. But it's all off the back of great qualifying performers in Q3 with both cars and Hajar ultimately starting fifth on the grid.
[00:05:54] Speaker A: I mean, the fact was that a pit stop cost you about 20 seconds, right?
[00:05:59] Speaker C: Yeah, it's a very short pit stop. You know, when you think of how long imola was at 29 seconds and this is like 19 seconds, very short.
[00:06:07] Speaker A: And these guys were lapping.
They were lapping like 3, 4, 5 seconds, like off the pace. Like, you know, Sainz was holding up people and Albon was putting four seconds a lap in. So he only had to do like.
[00:06:23] Speaker C: Four laps, four or five laps to.
[00:06:24] Speaker A: Hold up the gap.
[00:06:25] Speaker C: It was mental.
[00:06:26] Speaker A: We're so used to, you know, lap after lap, you know, them gaining or losing, you know, a tenth of a second here. Oh, in 12 laps, he might be in striking distance. No, they could put in a pit stop.
[00:06:37] Speaker C: He's in striking distance by Mirabeau.
[00:06:43] Speaker A: I mean, they're practically parked across the track.
But yeah, it was insane. But yeah, George, George Russell losing it.
[00:06:53] Speaker C: Saying, you know, I'm not playing anymore.
[00:06:55] Speaker A: I'm not, I'm going to go around it. And then they're like, we're going to have to give that place back, George. And he says, I'll just take the penalty.
[00:07:01] Speaker C: And then expecting a 10 second penalty.
[00:07:04] Speaker A: Well, the parents, I mean, that's a classic. I'm a dad, you're a dad, Nick. That's a classic parent move where the kids like, I don't care. Oh, I'll give you something to care about. You would say, oh, what's the, what's the biggest penalty we can reasonably give?
[00:07:19] Speaker C: But, but a drive through at Monaco.
Yeah. Anywhere else it's like meaningful. But it's a, it's a tiny pit lane. Yeah, he was expecting a 10 second penalty. In reality, what is it, like 16 seconds? Because it's an average pit stop delta of 19 and he didn't stop.
So by the time you've slowed down, stopped and gone, maybe it's 15, 16 seconds. So it's not crazy, but it wasn't.
[00:07:45] Speaker A: He did finish 11th. Russell, his idea was that he wasn't going to get points anyway, no matter what he did, if he stayed behind or not.
[00:07:51] Speaker C: So he'd have still finished 11th.
[00:07:53] Speaker A: I think he still finished 11th probably. Yeah.
[00:07:55] Speaker C: He should have done it way earlier and then be able to do it. But I guess that's if they keep this whole.
I don't think they're Going to keep the two stop thing for next year. But if they did, then anyone trying to hold anyone up, the person behind them would just shortcut the chicane.
Like straight away, say, I know what you're doing. I'm just going to shortcut the chicane. And then it would just stretch the whole field again. So it's kind of thrown anarchy into the mix for basically every Monaco Grand Prix from now. Because if you think about it like if it had happened last year, if who was, who was second behind Charles, I can't remember last year, but if as Charles was running around nine seconds off the pace, if they just cut the chicane and gone, shucks, I'm already too far ahead, I'll take the penalty, then that would have changed the entire race. So it said it's set kind of a really dangerous precedent that I think the FIA is going to have to do something about.
[00:08:57] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. I mean the, I mean the other angle of course is, is Verstappen strategy of basically just doing one pit stop.
[00:09:04] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:09:05] Speaker A: And then hoping he gets free one later on. Right. Like, I'm not. This is my best chance to win. And so if there was a, you know, he needed a red flag, really, it wasn't going to work on with anything else. But if there was a red flag, which is not unheard of at Monaco, obviously street circuit, not much space, could have just won the race with the effectively just doing one less pit stop than everybody else.
[00:09:28] Speaker C: And I would like to say that I have read all the statistics, but in reality I've just listened to rival podcasts, but apparently according to statistics that other people have read that I'm just taking credit for Lap 55, the accident rate goes up, like quite precipitously because lap 55 is basically the lap of frustration where people have been sat in traffic for so long that they decide to try something stupid. And there's like a big gap up and most of the safety cars and most of the, you know, red flags, double yellow stores, has come after lap 55. So you kind of see it where, especially looking at last year where people were being held up and the potential for some craziness.
It was a great strategy by Red Bull to just leave him out there because really anything could have happened. And if it had been a red flag and they all stopped, they just change Max's tyres. He doesn't have to stop.
He'd have won the race.
And my coupes F1 picks would have come in.
[00:10:40] Speaker A: What do you think? What do you Think, Jason.
How are we going to fix this problem?
[00:10:45] Speaker B: I mean, do you really want to hear my solution? Sure.
[00:10:47] Speaker A: What's the. What's your most unhinged solution?
[00:10:50] Speaker B: Get rid of it.
[00:10:52] Speaker C: Get rid of Monaco? How dare you? Yeah, how dare.
[00:10:55] Speaker B: Get rid of it.
[00:10:57] Speaker A: I mean, Nick's like, you're coming in softly and you become a Monaco apologist.
[00:11:01] Speaker C: I mean, it's a good job that on my screen, you're between Jason and I. I don't know how we're lined up on your screens, but I'm like, hold me back.
[00:11:13] Speaker A: I'm definitely more on your side. On your side, Jason. I mean, stop it.
The real problem is the track's not big enough. Right.
[00:11:21] Speaker C: It's not that the track's not big enough. The cars are too big.
[00:11:24] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:11:25] Speaker C: Make the cars smaller.
[00:11:26] Speaker A: There's not enough space.
[00:11:28] Speaker C: Yes.
[00:11:29] Speaker A: So is there a realistic solution to making the track of a size that will accept these cars? You know, is it even possible? And Monaco can do many, many things with their billions of euros.
[00:11:46] Speaker C: Have you seen on Twitter or whatever it's called now, Alex Vert put out a video of the change that he's proposing to the Monaco track because he, he has a company, they design circuits and apparently they're very good.
[00:12:03] Speaker B: But anyhow, about these with like the loop.
[00:12:06] Speaker C: Well, there was. So there's really three changing three corners.
One is Rascas and reprofiling it so that cars aren't moving around. It kind of spreads it out a little bit.
[00:12:19] Speaker A: Raskas is the.
[00:12:21] Speaker C: It's basically the last corner around Cafe de Paris and it's at the end after the swimming pool. You do the chicane and then it's that right hander because it's super awkward. It's super awkward to get in there because you're constantly turning left until you have to turn right. And if you could open that. That up a little bit, then it gives people an opportunity to dive bomb up the inside to that last corner.
The second one was reprofiling the hairpin, which I think is a little bit weird, but I mean, there's not a whole lot of space to do that.
[00:12:54] Speaker A: I was gonna say. But then the tight as it can be.
[00:12:56] Speaker C: But then the third one, which I guess is most interesting but probably equally as expensive as the others, is to reclaim some additional land in the marina. And instead of having the nouvelle chicane where it is, move it 80 met closer to tobacco and make it into more of a conventional chicane.
So they need to reclaim some. Some land just like they did outside Portier, you know, that used to be Portier and then a bunch of, you know, the Mediterranean. They've built some stuff there, but reclaim some land there and then just change that. And it was, it was kind of interesting. Go look on Twitter, try and find it. I think it's under Alex Vertz's thing.
It's like four minute video, him explaining it. But there are probably a few options that they have. But really it's just make the car smaller, take away the hybrid, make it a straightforward V8, sustainable fuel on a narrower track.
[00:13:54] Speaker A: We can't change all the cars just for one circuit.
[00:13:57] Speaker B: No, but you only give them all the same car.
[00:14:00] Speaker C: But you don't need to change all of the cars. You just need to change the regs to make the cars smaller, more nimble, more agile, lighter like they used to be in my day.
[00:14:11] Speaker A: And.
[00:14:14] Speaker C: And then you have better racing. Simple.
[00:14:17] Speaker A: One of the. One of the top posts on. On Reddit's F1 today is on Tuesday. As we look at this, somebody's taken a map of Monaco and just superimposed interlagos.
And it's not. It doesn't look like half bad. Like you're like, oh, hang on, is that. Is that the Monaco circuit? Because it's got like the duck bill and all that kind of stuff where the hairpin is and things. And then it goes out and crosses the opening of the harbor and then back down the sort of the jetty where the huge boats park up. So you start to think, you know, I don't. How many could they. Could they do some temporary.
[00:14:52] Speaker B: They could just get the Rainbow Bridge from floating.
[00:14:55] Speaker A: Floating gantry or something across the harbour entrance. Because that could give you a super long straight there and you could actually do something with it. But yeah. Yeah, it's. Yeah.
Because you think about one thing that I. It doesn't. It's not that much of a crazy thought, but with all this like mandatory pit stop stuff, I was like, oh, how did they come up with that? But I kind of forgot that, like every race has a mandatory one pit stop, doesn't it? I guess there's certain races where maybe they could get away with none. I don't know.
[00:15:25] Speaker B: Well, they have to use two tire compounds.
[00:15:27] Speaker A: You got to use two tire compounders. Yeah.
[00:15:30] Speaker C: I do fundamentally think that if it's a red flag, you shouldn't be able. You can change your tires, but you shouldn't be able to put on a different compound.
Right.
[00:15:40] Speaker A: Or it doesn't count as your pit stop. Or it has to be a racing pit stop or something. Under racing conditions.
[00:15:45] Speaker C: That too, maybe. But, you know, it's like if the ball. I'm going to lose everybody now, because we're an American podcast, but I'm going to use a cricket reference, Right.
[00:16:01] Speaker A: Oh, God.
[00:16:02] Speaker C: Because in cricket.
So you know how in baseball actually.
[00:16:06] Speaker B: No, cricket.
[00:16:07] Speaker C: There you go. Right.
So you know how in baseball the umpire's just got a whole bag of balls and then they pitch and then he kind of throws it and he gets a new ball out. In cricket, you use the same ball for a defined period of play and if the ball gets damaged in any way, they bring out a box of balls and they look for one that's in very similar condition to make sure that the condition of the game as a whole isn't altered because of something that's happened.
So under a red flag, why should you be able to benefit from improving your condition?
Right.
If it's a red flag, if you're on medium tyres, you should only be allowed to change into a used set of medium tires.
It wouldn't solve all of this, but I was on the toilet and I thought of this and I thought it was inspired and I should bring it to you guys and the world.
[00:17:15] Speaker A: I don't know what to think about that. I mean, the argument to that, the. The counter argument to that, of course, is that it's all the same for everybody, right? Everybody gets to change tires. Everybody can, like, put a new nose on or. Or do whatever. So it's the same for everybody. But when you do have mandatory pit stops and that counts as a pit stop, or you're getting these cheap pit stops under safety car and stuff like that, that. That seems to be part of the. The game we're playing.
But that would be crazy hard to. To police, wouldn't it? They would, you know, counting the number of laps on your tires. And they've got. Haven't got that many tyres as it is. I think they were struggling in Monaco, right, with this mandatory extra set. Everybody was pootling around on used.
[00:17:57] Speaker C: Yeah. Because you automatically get more soft tyres than anything else, I think, as part of the allocation. And the soft tyre was basically useless. It was good for about three quarters of a lap, so no one ever really wanted to use it. So everyone's kind of forced into using more of the medium tyre during qualifying, which automatically means they've got fewer tyres for the race.
[00:18:18] Speaker A: 1. One other idea I had got, just changing. I don't. I don't.
[00:18:22] Speaker C: Oh, we're Just full of ideas today, aren't we?
When did this come to you, Martin?
[00:18:28] Speaker A: Thinking about it a lot, obviously, the last two days. But what if. What if we could have. Obviously we see the radio messages right between the drivers and the pit wall and vice versa, and they're communicating and, you know, shouting at their race engineer, but really they're talking about how terribly everybody else is driving. You know, he just put me into the wall, he gave me no space, he pushed me off, all that kind of stuff. I mean, how great would it. Would it have been at Monaco if there was some sort of, like, video game F1 group chat that the drivers were in so that George could talk directly to Albon in front of him, you know, as if he was in an F1 lobby, you know, get out the way, Alex. Like, you're holding me up. What are you doing, man?
[00:19:11] Speaker C: Like, car to car communications.
[00:19:13] Speaker A: Car to car communications directly between the drivers.
[00:19:17] Speaker C: That would be hilarious. It's like James put me through to Alex.
[00:19:23] Speaker A: I don't know, just a lobby. Just lobby chat. I don't know.
[00:19:27] Speaker B: Could you imagine Max on that thing? Oh, my God, you'd be ruthless.
[00:19:32] Speaker C: I mean, with all of the swearing and all of that. And it's like restricting what can be broadcast. That goes completely the opposite way, which I think is amazing.
Maybe you have to subscribe to that. That feed so that you need to sign a waiver that you're not offended by the use of, like, the F bomb or any of that. And so it insulates and it's like, I'm over 18 and I'm not impressionable. And these are not my role models in life. We just like their entertainment and the sporting capabilities that they have.
And then just listen to it. It'd be amazing.
[00:20:09] Speaker A: The frustrations that. I mean, we were frustrated watching it because it was boring, but the frustrations of the drivers actually trying to do their best and miss the walls and miss the cars that are driving in front, like, guessing where they're going to break?
[00:20:21] Speaker C: Well, that was it, right?
[00:20:22] Speaker A: I mean, must have boiled over, because.
[00:20:25] Speaker C: When you're a racing driver, you're in the zone and you're.
You're just trying to get around as fast as possible. Famously, Ayrton Senna was like. Like 30 seconds in the lead back in 1980 and crashed at Portier because he was. He. He. His concentration lapsed because he wasn't trying to go round as quickly as possible.
So I did see that. I think both Liam Lawson and Alex Albon, separately from one another, had had Said in the post race interviews that it was actually really difficult to drive so slowly around the circuit because, you know, Liam was saying, my mind just started wandering because he wasn't driving. He wasn't trying that hard.
[00:21:13] Speaker B: Right.
[00:21:13] Speaker C: Which isn't what you want.
[00:21:16] Speaker A: Yeah, but it did. I thought you were going to mention when you mentioned Senna. There's a famous race where he drove. He was driving as fast as he could, Senna, but it was very slow and clapped out tires and Mansell had just gone in for a pit stop. I think it's like in the 80s you can find it. And Mansell was just all over the back of him for, you know, 10 laps or something. But again, it's. It was Monaco then, it's Monaco now. You couldn't. He couldn't pass.
[00:21:41] Speaker C: I mean, that's the thing. It's always been a race where there was very little overtaking. So why are we trying to make it a place with lots of overtaking now?
[00:21:49] Speaker A: It does, it seems. Well, we're getting. We're getting a lot. We're getting used to a lot more overtaking. They've addressed that issue like it was back in the 90s. You very rarely got an overtake for the lead that wasn't in the pit stops.
And certainly when you had the refueling era. Right. Overtaking and strategy was all based on the weight of the car and how long you're going to be in the pits and how much fuel you're going to put in. It was a different kind of race back then. We are spoiled with overtaking these days with drs and these tracks. But Monaco, Monaco isn't it.
If we even mention that Lando won.
[00:22:29] Speaker B: I was just about to say that we haven't even spoken about.
Oddly enough, I'm wearing my Lando hat. We haven't even spoken about McLaren at all yet.
But I mean, they did what they. What can you say? He locked up into turn one, almost lost it, but was able to stay in the lead and stayed the. In the lead the whole entire race.
[00:22:48] Speaker C: The cool down room when Lando walked in and Oscar's like, dude, I thought you were in the wall.
That was actually a great cool down room. And they cut away and they kind of took the volume down. But I could have listened to that for ages. That was a really good dynamic that they had in there.
[00:23:06] Speaker B: I always felt that way.
[00:23:07] Speaker A: I told you, driver chat. Everybody wants to hear the driver chat.
[00:23:10] Speaker B: Yeah. I think they should just get rid of all the interviews at the end of the race. Just have Them sit in a room and watch like the 30 minute highlights and just hear what they have to say about what's going on.
[00:23:21] Speaker A: They're watching it for the first time.
[00:23:23] Speaker B: Right.
[00:23:24] Speaker C: And it's like when it showed the video on the screen behind them or in front of them of when Oscar going through San Devote, the first corner sideways, and he just was kissing the wall with his tire and he goes like, oh, man, who's that? And it's like, that was me.
[00:23:44] Speaker A: The back end was sliding out, wasn't it?
[00:23:46] Speaker C: Yeah, but I mean, back to McLaren in terms of Lando versus Oscar. I mean, first of all, you gotta say that this is the shot in the arm that Lando really, really needed.
You know, he was out of his groove.
There was. And this has got it. This has got. This is.
It's not new. I mean, this was the first time that he'd wheeled her out in public, though, I think. Right.
[00:24:08] Speaker B: They had dated before and then broke up and now they're back together again. But holy.
[00:24:13] Speaker C: She's.
[00:24:14] Speaker B: I must have been the.
[00:24:15] Speaker C: I'm a fan.
[00:24:17] Speaker B: He's a lucky man. He's a lucky man.
[00:24:19] Speaker C: He is indeed a very lucky man. And whatever. Whatever she's. She did to him on the eve of this race, he. She needs to just keep doing. I'm there for you, buddy.
[00:24:27] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:24:29] Speaker C: But Lando, this was a shot in the arm that he needed. It got him back in the, you know, pole, locked it out. And it's the. You win it on Saturday in Monaco. You really do. And it was a great pole lap. Oscar never really got the car under him. It always looked that the back was just a little bit loose and he just never really got into his rhythm.
[00:24:49] Speaker A: Yeah, that was the most excited I got all weekend. And I had my text all ready to go on the chat channel as leclair put in that poll app in, you know, yes, in all capital letters, ready to be broadcast to the group. And then I had to delete it to no Lando.
[00:25:10] Speaker C: He was about to hit send and then it was like, Lando is going again.
[00:25:14] Speaker A: It's like he's gone again. What? They're not allowed to do that.
[00:25:21] Speaker B: Everyone's like, he's. I mean, they're going out too early.
They're going out too early.
[00:25:27] Speaker A: Clarence to do two. They got. They put three laps in in the fast in the last stint.
[00:25:32] Speaker C: Yeah. I mean, the thing there is that session, if, you know, the track was improving so much during the course of a session that they actually thought about in quite a smart way that the other guys had been sitting out for like 3, 4 minutes.
Whereas putting them out and giving them a lap and then a cool down lap to recharge the batteries and then go again gave them a much more recent reference point for how the track was gripping up. And it just meant that they were a little bit more confident on that last lap just to push it that little bit harder than the other guys who've been sitting in the garage for a couple of minutes longer. And the track had really changed a lot.
[00:26:19] Speaker A: Yeah, I mean it absolutely worked. And like you said, qualifying is everything. So the top positions, they all finished where they started pretty much right.
[00:26:31] Speaker C: Despite all the two pit stops. I mean, it was just like Max had got by because where did Max qualify? He was like, he was fourth. He was fourth and he finished fourth. Oh. And it was really just Hajar and Lewis which switched because Lewis had got that three spot drop and Lewis was faster. Although Lewis still finished like what, 50 seconds back that middle stint. And he just did. He just couldn't do anything. I mean, one thing I will say, I don't look at the overall race time this year compared to last year, but the guys at the front were really pushing throughout the whole race and that's evident by the fact that fourth place, fifth place back, they were 40, 50 seconds clear of those guys.
[00:27:20] Speaker A: Yeah. Oh, wasn't there a funny radio exchange between Hamilton and his engineer where he asked him like, am I like a minute behind or whatever? And the engineer just basically told him the weather or something. Completely.
[00:27:33] Speaker C: Something else completely.
[00:27:35] Speaker A: He's like, oh. And then how was like, oh, so you're just not going to answer that.
[00:27:38] Speaker C: Question how far behind how those tires feeling? Louis?
[00:27:43] Speaker A: He's like, yeah, you're 40, you're 45 seconds off the pace.
Oh, even the commentators, I think got it all mixed up once because Crofty, I think, was it who was commentating? Yeah, he thought that like Hajar had to do some overtaking to get his positions back. And that's right. The co commentator is like, no, those are lapsed cars. Yeah, they're already a lap down. Don't worry about it.
[00:28:04] Speaker C: But it just shows. I think the commentators were just struggling to keep up with all the different things that are moving because there was so much more going on in terms of.
They brought up a graphic that I've never seen before where it was basically showing cars next to each other and it was actually a grid view of 0 stops, 1 stops and 2 stops just to kind of show you who done what stops?
[00:28:29] Speaker A: By the end of the race, everybody's got to move from column A to.
[00:28:32] Speaker B: Column C.
[00:28:34] Speaker A: You've got Russell and Antonelli like 60 laps in and they were still in column A.
[00:28:42] Speaker C: But, I mean, you point out that if we've got, like, biggest winners in the thing, obviously McLaren have done great.
The racing bulls did really good job. Williams did a great job from being so disadvantaged behind Lawson and they managed to get the last two points. But, oh, man, Mercedes there was.
To be frank, though, there's nothing they could have done other than cut the chicane on lap four.
Right, right. Because they were just painted into a corner because they'd got exactly. You know, you got a battery failure in the tunnel. For George, Kimi Antonelli had stuffed it into the wall by just taking a little too much on the entrance to the new Val chicane.
So it just meant that they were behind the two teams that really exploited this two pit stop strategy for everything that it was worth. And they were just left there going, why did we even come here in the first place?
[00:29:49] Speaker B: Pretty much, yeah.
[00:29:50] Speaker C: But Alex did buy George dinner on Sunday night.
[00:29:54] Speaker A: Oh, did you see the other. That was the other funny thing, which was in response to that, I think George said, you owed me dinner. And Albon. Oh, take me out to dinner. And Albon went, how about a drive through?
[00:30:12] Speaker C: That's amazing.
[00:30:14] Speaker A: I mean, it took you a second as well.
[00:30:16] Speaker C: Oh, gold.
That's gold.
[00:30:20] Speaker A: Gold, Jerry, gold.
That's why we need the driver chat. But we're never. We're never going to get that. That's ridiculous. Otherwise, Yuki would be screaming in.
In the driver's ears all day.
[00:30:34] Speaker B: He's quiet these days. I mean, when he finishes like P17, it's hard.
[00:30:39] Speaker C: I mean, he pitted on lap one. He was the guy that tried to do that and it just didn't work out. I guess that going into this race, people were like, well, everyone could just cycle through their pit stops on lap one and lap two. And then I guess we now know what would have happened with that because Yuki ended up nowhere.
[00:30:56] Speaker A: Yeah, we.
We still had the. The unluckiest man in. In Formula one, Right. Alonso Fernando is zero points this year continues. I mean, another DNF to the list that he's actually.
[00:31:11] Speaker C: And he was having a great weekend, to be fair.
[00:31:13] Speaker B: Yeah, he was on points.
Yeah.
[00:31:16] Speaker C: Yeah. He was at seventh, I think, at that point, doing a great job.
[00:31:19] Speaker A: His car just died. Right.
[00:31:21] Speaker C: Yeah. I didn't see what actually happened there, but they were having a. They were having a Solid weekend from car performance.
His teammate, on the other hand, just seemed to like impede everybody, crash into the rest of the people that he didn't impede, and then overtake Nico Hulkenberg on the last lap for the best move of the race. It's like.
But Adrian Newey, his first appearance on the pit wall in Aston Martin green.
[00:31:47] Speaker B: Oh, that's right.
[00:31:48] Speaker C: Obviously the races up until now, they've been like a 12 hour flight away.
So round trip a day and being away for three days basically meant that there would be a week where he wasn't focusing on next year's car. So it was too sort of expensive for him to go.
So quick, hop down to Monaco for race day. See him on the pit wall, I'm sure really well for the team and it was good to see him there.
Yeah.
[00:32:19] Speaker A: And who was it? That was Gasly's car. He ran into the back of Tsunoda. Right. And it completely almost took off the front wheel of, of Gastly's car. But Tsunoda's car just carried on.
Like, I mean, he still stopped on, on that. No, he didn't stop on that lap. Did he notice?
[00:32:37] Speaker C: No, he just kept going.
[00:32:38] Speaker A: Stop. So, yeah, just carried on.
[00:32:40] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:32:40] Speaker A: So that's amazing, like damage difference. Gasly's car was just totally destroyed.
[00:32:45] Speaker C: Yeah. And I don't know, did the stewards do anything after that around driving a car in an unsafe condition?
[00:32:53] Speaker A: Maybe they're thinking about it for the next race potentially.
[00:32:56] Speaker C: But what was the alternative? I mean, I guess when it initially happened, he could have, what, on having no wheel on the left, tried to get into the escape route on the right or just leave it on track and have a safety car.
So, you know, just get round.
[00:33:14] Speaker B: Yeah. I didn't have as big a problem with it as the commentators.
[00:33:18] Speaker C: I didn't either.
I thought it was legit to try and get back to the pits, clear.
[00:33:23] Speaker A: The track, you know, as it turns out, I guess it was okay. But yeah, we didn't have five guys coming through and all getting punctures. So then it would have been a different story. Right.
[00:33:33] Speaker C: If you had, then it would have been interesting, Martin.
[00:33:36] Speaker A: Yeah, of course.
I mean, maybe that's what he was thinking. In the back of his mind he's like, I don't want to be the guy that causes the red flag, flag and everybody's going to pit stop and it's going to destroy this whole plan. I thought it was going to be a red car. I thought red flag, but.
[00:33:53] Speaker C: But I mean, just to kind of talk about Alpine this weekend.
What a terrible weekend for Alpine. They tried this crazy. They tried medium tires in the qualifying and they tried this, but they were just nowhere. They did. They had a terrible week. And I think that it was Flavio Briatore who was dictating the tire strategy in qualifying, which is what does that show you? That shows a team in complete disarray and they need a team principal to be appointed ASAP before next season gets derailed as well. While they're at it, I think bringing.
[00:34:29] Speaker B: Flavio in was the biggest mistake they could have ever made. And I understand he's from, like, an old guard, but, like, he is too old school. He is too old school.
[00:34:40] Speaker C: He's too old.
[00:34:40] Speaker B: And it's just gonna.
It's. Well, that too. And it's just.
[00:34:44] Speaker C: It's just. It's just a cancerous.
[00:34:45] Speaker B: It seems like it's just a cancerous place to be.
[00:34:48] Speaker C: Yeah, it's.
Nothing good is going on there.
Meanwhile, we've not really heard anything really about Oliver Oaks and all the stuff that was going on with his brother and Dmitry Mazepin and the reason that he stepped away from the team.
It's just. It's gone very quiet there. And I've not read anything at all.
[00:35:13] Speaker B: Yeah, I haven't seen anything at all.
Hopefully we're not getting Mazda spin back in here.
Oh, well, I mean, I can't imagine there's much else to really talk about. I mean, I guess we, we didn't really talk about Oscar. Well, I guess we talked about the championship being crazy close now. But, I mean, I guess you put Oscar as a loser here, right? Even though he gets.
[00:35:38] Speaker A: I guess so.
[00:35:38] Speaker C: He, he, he. I mean, a podium. He's what, like seven consecutive podiums or something? And he's like.
I don't even know how many consecutive points finishes. He's, like, super consistent. Even on the bad day, like, like we talked about, he never really got to grips with the car.
He got a podium out of it, so.
But it means that it's three points between Lando and Oscar.
If the, if the point for the fastest lap was still in place, would Lando be leading the championship? I don't know, but it's super tight and McLaren is still clearly the fastest car, and we'll just see what happens.
[00:36:18] Speaker A: In Spain, Lando threw in the fastest lap of the race on the last lap after Verstappen pulled out from in front of him just to show that he still had even more pace, you know, in the car with no fuel and still, you know, plenty of life in the tires. I suppose so.
Because I think Russell had the fastest lap up until that point.
Probably. Probably on. Yeah, on the laps that he did. Probably after he sort of illegally over.
[00:36:43] Speaker C: Yeah, well, I mean, he said it's like. Well, I'd had a miserable race and I just wanted to enjoy Monaco.
[00:36:56] Speaker B: Well, I don't know how much he enjoyed it after that because he sounded like he was crying on the radio. When they told him that he had the drive through, what did he say? He was like, I just don't want to talk right now.
[00:37:06] Speaker A: Yeah, well, I think he was cognizant.
He realized he'd already said too much when he's like, just give me the penalty. Anyway, now it's only going to get worse. So discretion. The better part there, I think.
[00:37:20] Speaker B: Well, I guess Martin brings us to coops.
[00:37:23] Speaker A: Oh, coops. Yes, coops. F1 this week. Coops f1.com But I made the front page for the first time in many, many rounds. Many years maybe with a top score. But the top score was RS Andre, 275 points this week, followed by Steven McGuigan, 1.
[00:37:41] Speaker B: Wow.
[00:37:42] Speaker A: And I managed to slip in there with 240 points. Nothing too exciting. I did have LeClaire. I had them close, but not, not no cigar in all the, all the spots. So a lot of 25 points and 40 points.
I did have the Mercedes in there, which probably a lot of people did too, but that didn't go anywhere.
So that, that got me on the front page and as a, as a biggest mover, too, up 84. 84 places into the top 100.
But enough about me at the top of the top of the overall leaderboard. Yeah. Jason, you're still leading from Nick.
[00:38:19] Speaker B: Barely.
[00:38:19] Speaker A: It still makes me feel uncomfortable that it's the two of you at the top of this. It seems like the fix is in, but. Yeah. And R.S. andre, with a top score this week, broke into the top 10, moving up 78, eight spots into the top 10. So still you can get a good, good prediction in. Lots of movement to be had.
[00:38:40] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:38:40] Speaker A: And you're. You're going to get an opportunity in just a few days in, in Spain, right? Is it Circuit de Catalunya?
[00:38:48] Speaker B: Is this the last, the last one at this track in Spain, Right. Because they're going to Madrid, is that right?
[00:38:55] Speaker A: I didn't know that.
[00:38:56] Speaker C: I don't actually know. That's a good point. I know that they've this Madrid circuit.
[00:39:02] Speaker B: Or is that just a separate race?
[00:39:04] Speaker C: I don't that's our homework before the next.
[00:39:08] Speaker B: I guess.
[00:39:08] Speaker A: So we'll definitely find out. But I mean it's a classic. It's a classic circuit. It's been around for a long, long time.
Who won that here last year? Do you remember? Was it early season match?
[00:39:22] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:39:22] Speaker A: Still going on, wasn't it at that.
[00:39:24] Speaker B: Especially in Madrid. That's like their kind of track, right?
[00:39:27] Speaker A: Are you meeting in Catalonia?
[00:39:29] Speaker C: Yeah, yeah. I mean and this is definitely. Yeah. To your point, Jason, this is a, this is a Red Bull circuit.
We'll see if this is going to be interesting this next week because this is the rule. This is the, the race where the flexi wings rule is being introduced.
So there are a lot more strict parameters around how much your front wing can flex in this race.
And so the expectation is that if, if there's going to be a shake up at any point in the season, it's going to be at the next one. Obviously this next one just given the circuit configuration is leans more Red Bull, so we can't read anything into it too much. But this is going to be the big one in terms of what people anticipate being a shake up.
[00:40:24] Speaker A: Right.
[00:40:25] Speaker C: And just for. For those listeners who are still here listening to his drone on the rule changes are around the front wing because the front wing Red Bull in particular were protesting the amount of flex that people were getting because the nature of these cars mean that in low speed you get understeer and in high speed you get oversteer as the center of downforce moves through the car based on the speed because the rate at which the air goes through these venturi tunnels underneath. So by having a front wing that is at slow speeds, steeper, it gives them more front end in the slower corners.
And as they go faster, it flexes so that you don't get the oversteer, you get a much more even sort of slide through the corners.
It's super geeky idea what you just said. It's super geeky.
[00:41:29] Speaker A: I stopped listening halfway through that explanation.
[00:41:32] Speaker B: I tried so hard.
[00:41:33] Speaker C: I'm trying to explain it in a way that people can understand. But the whole thing is right, the whole, the reason that like Red Bull was so good was because they could keep their car level.
And with this flexible wings, it's meant that the other teams have been able to get closer. So Red Bull have pinned all of their hopes on these rule changes that are coming in Spain, which is automatically just by its characteristics. I can see your yawning, Jason. I'll stop soon. I promise that I'm going Max Verstappen for the next race. And if it's not, then Max's season is toast.
[00:42:10] Speaker A: There you go.
[00:42:12] Speaker B: Yeah. And I don't know if he's going to win, but I. Do you think? I do agree that it is necessary for him to win if he wants to keep this championship fight going.
[00:42:23] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:42:24] Speaker A: All right.
[00:42:25] Speaker C: I'm biggest D. And yes, goes to.
[00:42:28] Speaker B: The Spanish Grand Prix from 2026 until 2035 is at. In Madrid.
[00:42:36] Speaker A: Okay. Oh, there you go. You did your. You did your homework.
[00:42:39] Speaker C: But I actually think it's.
But I welcome it because Spain was always a track that they always used it in winter testing.
[00:42:49] Speaker B: Right.
[00:42:49] Speaker C: Everyone knows the track.
It invariably led to boring races. So, yeah, give us a new street circuit, mix it up a bit, see how we go.
He has to give up the corner. I had to nose ahead.
What is wrong with these people?
[00:43:09] Speaker B: Thanks for listening to the undercuts review of the 2025 Monaco Grand Prix. Please rate, review and subscribe wherever you listen. And join us next time for our review of the 2025 Spanish Grand Prix. We'll see you there.
