Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Foreign.
[00:00:08] Speaker B: Thanks for tuning in to the undercuts review of the 2026 Chinese Grand Prix. Please rate, review and subscribe wherever you listen and enjoy the show.
[00:00:18] Speaker A: By being a racing driver, you are at the 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 exists, you're no longer a racing driver.
[00:00:31] Speaker B: All right, boys. Well, round two in the books. First sprint race weekend, the Chinese Grand Prix and there was a lot of overtaking.
Can't say there wasn't that.
[00:00:48] Speaker A: Off the line, off the start line too, which was very exciting. Once again, Ferrari clearly as advertised, sorting out there, getting their turbo just right.
[00:00:58] Speaker C: They got it for the.
[00:01:00] Speaker A: For the starts, but.
[00:01:02] Speaker C: And the fifth light stayed on just a little bit longer this time. Yeah, just the high. Bye.
[00:01:09] Speaker A: Wasn't quite Australia quick, but I mean, I mean that's. We're talking about the Grand Prix, but I mean, what a great start by Ferrari, but what a terrible start for McLaren, Jason. I mean, what is going on?
They couldn't even get to the grid or Piastri got to the grid and then got wheeled off and electronic.
[00:01:28] Speaker C: Piastri got to the grid this time.
[00:01:29] Speaker A: Yeah, he didn't crash.
[00:01:31] Speaker B: That's true.
[00:01:32] Speaker A: But it's electrical problems through and through, supposedly. Right.
[00:01:36] Speaker B: I don't even know what. What to say.
[00:01:38] Speaker C: Yeah, it was. Yeah, it's the same. It's an electrical problem with the same component of the power unit, but different problems with the same component, seemingly.
[00:01:50] Speaker A: Oh, man.
They're really. They're blaming Mercedes, right, for not sharing enough information with them. They don't quite sure what's going on or so I don't know.
Well, there's a lot of finger pointing
[00:02:00] Speaker C: next week, which is like that. You know, they got to give them the same engine, but they don't have to give them the entire manual.
[00:02:06] Speaker A: Wow.
Is that any way to treat your customers?
[00:02:10] Speaker B: And they like, just gave the engines to them right before testing. Right. So Mercedes has had all this data on the engine for all this time and the other teams are just kind of figuring it out.
[00:02:25] Speaker A: I mean, Piastri's done no racing laps. Well, no, not in a Grand Prix anyway. No. No racing laps at all. Like disaster.
[00:02:38] Speaker C: The last time it's happened since Bruce McLaren apparently in 1960 something.
[00:02:43] Speaker A: Ouch.
Double ouch.
[00:02:45] Speaker B: I'm say that.
[00:02:49] Speaker A: Yeah, but brutal. Yeah, brutal. Brutal for them, but, you know, but. And great for Ferrari off the start, but you can't. The Mercedes won't be denied. Right. They.
They've got the. They've got the engine. They've got the combination of the power unit, the driver, the car, the engine, the battery management, the drivers. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. They're doing what they were advertised to do.
[00:03:16] Speaker B: Kimmy's what, the second youngest ever Grand Prix winner. Max was the first. Correct.
[00:03:22] Speaker A: Yeah, Max is the youngest. Yeah.
[00:03:24] Speaker C: And the youngest ever pulsative beating out Sebastian Vettel, who was like 20 and 200 days or something. So it's know he's really beaten him out by a year or so. So he's the first teenager to take pole, which I was kind of surprised by because, you know, Max had won a race obviously younger than Kimmy is now.
[00:03:46] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:03:47] Speaker C: But hadn't taken a pole, so that was kind of surprising.
[00:03:51] Speaker A: But you can't, you can't fault Kimmy at all. Right. He didn't put a foot. Foot wrong.
[00:03:57] Speaker C: Yeah. I mean, you look at his starts in like Australia and in the sprint, he'd really not got any decent start. So when he qualified on pole, you were watching it going, don't mess it up this time. But he had a decent start. He got off the line. Obviously the Ferraris are quicker off the line, so he, he kind of lost out a little there and.
But you know what, the way that it all kind of came about,
[00:04:22] Speaker B: I
[00:04:22] Speaker C: don't think he put a foot wrong all weekend. Really.
[00:04:24] Speaker A: No, no. I mean, maybe he was helped out with the, the battling that was going on behind him. You know, the Ferraris at one point were fighting each other, which was good racing. But I, as a Ferrari fan, I had my heart in my mouth a little bit. Jason. I kind of felt the same way you probably felt last season when them McLarens were fighting each other. You know, this is good racing, boys, but be careful, be careful.
[00:04:53] Speaker B: And I mean, there's more cars next to each other this year than there was last year. So it's like the chances of them crashing into each other must be that much higher. Right. If they have all this time going back and forth past each other like.
[00:05:07] Speaker C: Yeah, yeah. It's funny, they, they kind of, they kept it together a little bit and they, you know, for the first 26 laps of the race, obviously there was that safety car in there.
Where's it get right about lap 10 again this time, same as. Same as last time. But I think it probably got to a point round about lap 26 where they realized that they weren't really going to catch the Mercedes.
So let's battle it out and have some fun with some racing.
And you could see how quickly they fell from being like three and a half, four seconds a lap behind over the course of a lap and a half to two laps. They were then suddenly eight laps behind because they were using their boost to battle rather than keep up, which is kind of a recurring sort of theme. We saw it with George in the Sprint and you know, last week as well.
So it, it, it's fun to watch. I mean I, I was Debbie Downer last week a little bit on the, on the nature of the racing.
I think a lot of that was just my pessimism off the back of qualifying.
I still think that qualifying, they need to do something because again they hearing the cars just decelerating by 50, 60 kilometers per hour as they go down the straight is kind of depressing. I do note, I did notice they didn't really show it as much. They didn't have as many in cars of people on the straight in, in China versus in, in Australia. I think someone got briefed a little bit after Australia that it was kind of embarrassing.
[00:06:50] Speaker A: Right.
[00:06:51] Speaker C: But this circuit, there were a lot more opportunities to regenerate power, which meant that maybe people were more incentivized to use the boost a little bit, knowing that they'd be able to get it back and that led to better racing, better from the perspective of more passes. One thing I would be interested to know, and I don't know, maybe I can email into one of the podcasts or tweet into one of the podcasts I do listen to, is dirty air was a real problem last year. In the last few off the back of the ground effect cars, they seem to be battling a lot closer now. Obviously we saw close battling when the last set of regs came in.
Just haven't optimized the airflows, things like that. But how much is the new regs leading to less dirty air? And that's what factor that is in the closeness of the racing relative to the use of boost to force yourself closer with more. Well, with 460 extra horsepower or whatever it is.
[00:08:00] Speaker A: Right.
[00:08:01] Speaker B: But also the downforce isn't nearly as important this year as it was last year, which probably is making the, whatever dirty air is coming off the cars not as crucial to because it's not
[00:08:13] Speaker C: as turbulent, it's not been disturbed as much because there's less need for it to generate downforce. Yeah, exactly.
[00:08:18] Speaker A: Maybe also me, I'm just making this up as you think about it, but as you mentioned it, but maybe you don't have to follow as Close in the corners because you can boost and catch up. I mean, a lot of the overtaking seems to be big speed differentials on straights or around long, sweeping corners where, you know, you can be a bit further back in less turbulent air, but then boost to catch up and pass, you know, if you sacrifice. If you sacrifice your battery. But I don't know.
[00:08:44] Speaker B: But Lewis was like that one lap where Lewis was. I think he was behind Charles the whole entire time. But the way he was able to just stick on his ass the whole time and try and make all these moves at, like, every single corner. Like, I haven't seen anything like. Like that.
[00:09:00] Speaker C: Yeah. And it was great seeing him pass on the inside into Turn eight as well, which isn't normally a place where you see people pass. But I don't think that that's really a place where there's any sort of energy deployment, because we've seen in qualifying and throughout the race that turns seven and eight have been regeneration parts of the circuit, which isn't ideal because they're real testers in terms of where you can push it to the limit.
So seeing overtaking there, it was kind of. It was good to see. And he did it a couple of times as well, I think. Not just that one time on Charles. I think he did it somewhere else as well on someone else.
[00:09:40] Speaker A: Do you think. Do you think Ferrari's doing the right thing by letting the drivers race each other? I'm talking about Leclerc and Hamilton. Because it's costing them time, though, right?
[00:09:50] Speaker C: Yeah, but I think that that's kind of what I was saying earlier. It's like they. They got to a point where they were like, you know what, we're only ever going to finish second and third here. Obviously, they've got a.
Or, sorry, we're not going to win the race here.
[00:10:02] Speaker B: Right.
[00:10:03] Speaker C: And it's clear that Mercedes has the pace advantage.
And it's like, yeah, we're scrapping for the last step on the podium, so let's scrap amongst ourselves and see who wins. As long as you don't take each other out. And I think with Charles Leclerc and Lewis Hamilton, you've got two of the most precise, most respectful drivers that you can trust them to not wipe each other out.
[00:10:27] Speaker A: Right.
[00:10:28] Speaker B: Until they do.
[00:10:30] Speaker C: Until they do, and then you don't trust them. And then you have to put them back in a box, but let them out the box and let them have some fun while the racing is still like this. Because over time, the engineers are going to Figure it out and they'll know where to deploy, where to harvest, where to do what, where to do what. And I think inevitably the racing's going to calm down a bit.
So enjoy it now.
[00:10:54] Speaker A: Right?
[00:10:55] Speaker B: Yeah.
Well, we've talked about the top two teams in the race quite a bit. Well, I guess we haven't talked about George Mush, but I guess, you know, given what Kimmy did it, there isn't much more to add there. But I mean, Ollie Bearman, what a race. I mean, this. This kid is putting himself in a situation where Carlos is not even going to be thought about for when Lewis decides to walk away. Because it's got to be Bearman. Right?
[00:11:21] Speaker A: I mean, he's a Ferrari guy. Right. He. He stepped in for Carlos a few years ago and, and did a great job. Right. And whenever. Was that Saudi Arabia?
[00:11:29] Speaker C: Saudi. Yeah.
[00:11:30] Speaker A: Yeah.
But. Yeah, but I mean, and just to tie in with what we were talking before about teams sharing information, you know, Haas with the Ferrari engine, they can't say enough good things about how much information Ferrari's been sharing with Haas to get them ready for the season and it's paying off for them.
[00:11:49] Speaker C: What happened with the Haas starts? I didn't really pay attention. Obviously they got the Ferrari engine. Were they making up ground as well in the same way as the Ferraris?
[00:11:59] Speaker A: That's a good question. Yeah. You don't tend to look that.
[00:12:01] Speaker C: Yeah, I don't really. I don't really remember and I don't have written down where people qualified. Obviously know what a great race Oli had. And especially when you. When you look at.
He got. I don't know how many positions he lost on the first lap when Hajar spun out right in front of him and he had to take. Take to the gravel basically to. To avoid coming out of, you know, that last turn before the long straight. And of course, you're off the gas there.
That really penalizes you for the long straight because you're just a sitting duck at that point.
So wherever he came out, he made up multiple spots to the points.
[00:12:42] Speaker A: He qualified 10th and ended up fifth. So the best of the rest, Right? Yeah.
[00:12:50] Speaker C: If you think about it, you've got Ferrari, Mercedes, McLaren. Maybe we don't obviously know they don't race.
We're still giving them the benefit of the doubt, I suppose.
[00:13:04] Speaker B: Right.
[00:13:04] Speaker C: But even then, say they're in the fourth fastest, fifth fastest.
You know, you're basically saying that Red Bull and Haas are the teams that are vying for that spot behind the top three, which is you know, it's a great result for Bayman.
[00:13:26] Speaker A: It's got to be, it's got to be gutting for the teams using the Mercedes power that they've supposedly been treated this way. Because it's not just McLaren that's having these issues. Right. Williams is having issues too.
[00:13:38] Speaker C: Alpine seem to be doing a good job, which I think is sort of says quite a bit probably about the state of the Renault engine that they've had for the last few years.
[00:13:47] Speaker A: That.
[00:13:48] Speaker C: Yeah, yeah, they get a decent lump in it and they're doing all right. Pierre had a really solid race, a solid weekend, really. Yeah. And Franco Colapinto finally getting some points on the board. A point on the board? Yeah.
[00:14:02] Speaker A: Don't, don't. Not plural, I'm afraid, I'm afraid Franco, but you know, it's been a long time coming on.
[00:14:08] Speaker C: It's fine.
[00:14:09] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:14:09] Speaker C: But he finally got a point, his first point for Alpine and you know, he obviously got nerfed by Ocon, who's whose race had really been destroyed as well. Starting on hards and then having to pit late and coming out and just being a little ambitious on cold tires.
Big damage really to Colapinto's car seemingly. So that meant that Carlos Sainz, speaking of someone doing a good job in a horrific car coming in nice, Franco couldn't catch him and get ahead.
There's a lot of damage on that car. And so he was just happy to pick up that one point and call it a pretty successful weekend.
[00:14:54] Speaker A: Yeah. I mean talking of horrific cars though, the Aston Martins, I mean the more you hear about it, the more you look into it, the worse it gets. I shared a video with you guys of Alonso driving and constantly taking his hands off the wheel. Cause it was shaking so badly and hurting his hands.
The fact he was able to do what, 30 laps in it or something before he retired. But.
[00:15:24] Speaker C: And not that it's the same thing entirely, in fact, it's really nothing like it. But it's. What's sticking in my head is a kind of, when I think about that is I've got a leaf blower and it's just like a handheld gas powered one, clearly not pulling 15,000 revs or anything. But if, if I use that for like 15 minutes and it's got that engine going and it vibrates in my hand, the tingling and the. Is just, it's. Yeah, it's crazy. So I can just imagine what the hands were feeling like having like what, 30 laps you said for Fernando?
[00:15:55] Speaker B: 32. 32.
[00:15:56] Speaker C: So that's like 50 minutes of that, which is nuts. I'm not surprised he's taking his hands off because he's. You know, the whole thing just must be tingling and numb and all.
[00:16:06] Speaker A: Like, it's gotta be. So, I mean, I think, Jason, you said, like, how dangerous is that? Like, anything could happen. Your hands are, like, literally off the wheel. If anything's, you know, you get any kind of snap or change in through the wheel, you're not there even holding it to correct your feel for the car must be.
[00:16:24] Speaker C: Well, you don't have any, because you're not in tune.
[00:16:26] Speaker A: Yeah. You're not in tune with the car at all. Yeah. It's an absolute. It's just a massive disaster.
I mean, maybe I've just. Maybe it's my fault. I just jinxed them so much. I was bigging up Adrian Newey for the past two years about how they were to come storming back, and it's just been an unmitigated disaster right now.
[00:16:45] Speaker C: Yeah. I think all of the organizational change that's been going on in Aston Martin is just really. It's really demonstrating that they haven't got a stable organization to have the right people looking at the right things.
[00:17:00] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah.
[00:17:03] Speaker C: Andy was. Andy Cowell. He's the engine guy.
He was in as team principal before they got rid of Mike Krack. They shuffled him in. They put Cowell in because he's the engine guy. He was the engine guy for Mercedes, and they brought him in as team principal. And then his looking over here rather than looking over towards the east, towards the guys in Honda, to the point that they didn't really know that Honda's entire engine department had left a couple of years ago to go and do solar panels. Right. So then when they engaged them to do the engine, they were basically starting from scratch. All the IP had gone to Red Bull, and all the people who knew what to do were all doing something else. So no wonder on the back foot there.
And then you've got Adrian Newey and make him the team principal, but he's the guy that's supposed to be designing the thing. He's got a try and run an organization. Well, of course, his attention is not going to be in the right place. So what do they expect?
This. It comes from the top. This comes from Lawrence Stroll. Too much tweaking, too much tinkering, and the whole team is suffering as a result.
[00:18:07] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:18:09] Speaker B: So do you think that Adrian Newey was hired to be the team principal? Like, do you think that he knew when he got hired that he was going to have that position or did they just decide to put him there because it just seems like an odd choice for him in that position.
[00:18:26] Speaker C: Yeah, I think it was really driven by the fact that they realized that the engine was going to be terrible and they wanted Andy Cowell to go off and figure out the engine.
Maybe, I don't know, I'm just making it up at this point. But it's, you know, if you're busy reorganizing, it means that you're not busy doing the things you're supposed to be doing.
[00:18:45] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, well, I mean, another team that is currently at the bottom of the grid. But I mean, do you call this a win for Cadillac, having both drivers finish the race? Like, that's gotta be pretty, pretty good.
[00:19:04] Speaker A: Yeah. They seem funny. They seem pretty, yeah, they seem very, very solid.
[00:19:08] Speaker B: When do they switch to, like having to start performing? Do they have a whole year of that before or is it multiple years? Like what's the timeframe for that, this kind of thing?
[00:19:19] Speaker A: I mean, they already seem like they're knocking on, on the door. Right. Although I mean, I guess maybe it's a little bit artificial because of the number of bigger guys that aren't finishing the rates. Obviously both McLaren's out and you know, Verstappen didn't finish.
[00:19:32] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:19:33] Speaker A: Where did Botas didn't finish.
Where did Botas finish? Seven cars didn't finish.
[00:19:38] Speaker C: 13 Botas finished 13th ahead Lester Ban after his penalty.
[00:19:43] Speaker A: Right.
[00:19:44] Speaker C: 13th isn't bad. Obviously there was seven retirements finished ahead of Perez.
[00:19:49] Speaker A: He only finished ahead of like, yeah, only one other car. I guess when you add it all up. Yeah, it's not great, is it?
[00:19:56] Speaker C: But you know, you look at that and you think, well, Aston Martin, are they going to score any points? Are they going to get to 13th in any of the races? It could make a difference at the end of the season.
[00:20:07] Speaker A: Yeah, I think this is a, this is their first season, so the expectations would just be we'll take anything that we can get. I mean with, you know, with those two drivers with Bottas and Perez in the car, you can't fault them. They've, they know what they're doing, they can give feedback to the engineers, so they'll make whatever gains they can. And I guess as all the teams learn about the cars, things will get better. But the fact that they're finishing races is great because as we've discussed, reliability problems up and down the grid killing teams.
[00:20:41] Speaker C: Yeah, it's like the lack of Reliability across the grid means that if they can produce something that finishes races, they stand a chance of getting a point. Obviously, the longer through the season time goes on and reliability comes back for other teams, the better they should be getting, but the lesser their chance of finishing higher up the grid. So I think we've got to be careful in how we judge them throughout the season that if they're finishing 13th and 15th now and they're finishing 19th and 20th or 18th and 19th ahead of the Aston Martins and a single retiree, it's not regression.
[00:21:20] Speaker B: Right.
[00:21:21] Speaker C: It's just the way that the field is evolving. I think we've got to give them the whole season to say whether the season has been a success. But I think early indications are they're better than many people thought they were going to be coming into the season.
[00:21:33] Speaker A: Yeah, I mean, they're not the problem. They're not the problem child. You know, that's aston Martin, that's McLaren.
They're the ones that people are looking at to solve problems. Yeah, Yeah. I mean, how are McLaren gonna make their car better when they can't even run it like it's in race trim to even learn where maybe they can gain time.
[00:21:53] Speaker B: Right. You're already so far behind from the top two teams.
[00:21:58] Speaker A: It's not. It's not just the power unit like this. I think their chassis needs to be developed more, too. So, yeah, we'll see.
[00:22:07] Speaker B: I guess really all that we haven't spoken about yet in terms of the race is how Liam Lawson was able to, you know, pretty well dominate his teammate, which he desperately needed.
I mean, it's still so early in Lynn Blad's career, but he had already been looking like the number one driver there just after one race. But Liam kind of tempered it a bit.
[00:22:35] Speaker C: Yeah, it was a great race from Liam Lawson.
Lynn Bl came down to earth a little bit. I think he had such a great debut in Australia that everyone thought he was the finished product already, which clearly he isn't. Like we talk about how Kimmy Antonelli's young.
This guy's young, too.
[00:22:55] Speaker B: Right.
[00:22:55] Speaker C: He. And it was his second race, so he is inexperienced.
These are vastly different cars to what anyone's driven before. Is going to make mistakes, and I think it's okay. You know, it's race two. It's not the end of the world. But to your point, Lawson needs to start stepping up and showing what he can do, and he did that this week.
[00:23:18] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:23:20] Speaker B: And it helped that all those cars dropped out, too.
[00:23:23] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:23:23] Speaker C: And it helped that, you know, like, we didn't.
[00:23:25] Speaker A: We've.
[00:23:26] Speaker C: I mean, we say, what else do we have to talk about? We've not even mentioned Red Bull yet. Right. So obviously other than Hajar spinning out on the first lap, but like Verstappen fell victim to the safety car really, really badly.
[00:23:42] Speaker A: Oh, yeah.
[00:23:43] Speaker C: He pitted the lap before and then you had the hard, tired. You know, the runners that started on hard tyres who then obviously couldn't move on to the medium compound at the point of the safety car, they had to stay out, which was quite funny seeing Colapinto chasing down Geor Russell with Leis Hamilton behind him for the lead for a few laps. But, but, you know, Verstappen, another horrible, horrible start. He's just going backwards at the start. He did in the Grand Prix. He did in the Sprint.
[00:24:18] Speaker A: He seems to have no, no power at the start or no battery or no boost or no turbo or no. No, no, no. Something. Yeah, he can't get off the line at all.
[00:24:28] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah.
[00:24:30] Speaker C: And then he ended up retiring.
[00:24:31] Speaker B: Right.
[00:24:31] Speaker C: And I can't even remember how electrical.
Such an abject race. It's, you know, and, and some of his comments after have been like, pretty blunt.
[00:24:42] Speaker A: Yeah, he's not, he's not happy. I mean, yeah, the Ferrari guys seem to be loving it. Pretending like it's Mario Kart. I mean, Hamilton's first podium for Ferrari as well.
Let's not forget that. Um, but yeah, Verstappen is having a tough time. He can't get to grips with it. So he's kind of crapping all over the new regs. He doesn't like it at all.
[00:25:03] Speaker B: But I wonder what all these Verstappen fans that were saying Lewis can't drive are thinking now.
[00:25:12] Speaker C: Well, yeah, they defend their man, you know.
[00:25:15] Speaker A: Exactly. You know, fans are always going to be fans. But it's great, great for Lewis. You know, you always want to beat your teammate and they, they fought hard and he came out on top ahead of Charles.
[00:25:27] Speaker C: So, yeah, you know, this has always been a track that he's won here six times. He's this track. Obviously, you got to think back to his first season when he kind of went into the gravel runoff going into the pits and that was the end of his race because you could see the canvas through the tire right back in. What was that?
[00:25:43] Speaker A: Oh, something.
[00:25:46] Speaker C: Yeah. 07.
That gravel trap's not there anymore. But that it was a bit of bad luck and it seems like he has a lot of good luck here. Obviously won the Sprint last year. And got on the podium today and well this weekend it's, you know, it's not Sunday anymore but let's just have a chat about that podium for a second. That was like the feel good podium for, for Toto. Right. And Bono for sure, you know, Kimmy's first win which is great and Lewis being there for that, being on the same podium with his mate Bono as well.
And of course, yeah, Kimmy is in the F1 race seat now but obviously he's been part of the Mercedes stable for years so it's not like his paths didn't come crossing with Lewis. He's obviously known Lewis for a while and Lewis has seen him grow and achieve his ambitions and it was a great podium for everyone there.
[00:26:45] Speaker A: Yeah, I mean so what does this mean for the championship then?
Is it legitimately just between Kimmy and Russell? Is it even between those two? Is it just Russell's to lose?
[00:26:58] Speaker C: It's Russell's to lose. You can't read in too much to Kimmy getting his first win.
It is his first. He is still young, you know, the sustained pressure of a season long campaign. I think he's probably, despite the fact that it was a good win, it's probably more than he can do. I'd happily be proved wrong but you know you look at where George was in qualifying, he had the problem. They had to basically cobble his car back together again and you know, he got second on the grid and you know Kimmy was just drove off into the sunset while George was having to contend with the Ferraris a bit. So it was, yeah, I think that it's still George's to lose.
[00:27:46] Speaker A: I agree with you but at least there could be some sort of competition there ala maybe not quite as evenly as Piastri and Lando last season but
[00:27:58] Speaker C: I mean I think it's from a constructor's perspective, you know that he's got it in him to pick up the pieces from. If George has an off weekend which when you look at how strong the Ferrari is, Ferrari are going to win some races this year.
Think there's any doubt about that? Right. It can't go. Given the reliability that we're seeing across the field I think it's a stretch to think that Mercedes will win every single race but when you've got Charles and Lewis in those Ferraris you know that they're going to take any opportunity as long as Ferrari don't mess up strategies or anything.
[00:28:31] Speaker A: But you know, yeah, for once Ferrari did a good, did a good job with Strategies this time around, they had to do one pit stop when it was a safety car. They did the pit stop. They put them on.
[00:28:42] Speaker C: They were supposed.
[00:28:43] Speaker A: Exactly.
[00:28:43] Speaker C: They didn't go n. Stay out. It's fine.
[00:28:47] Speaker A: We'll just do it later for a longer pit stop. So. Yeah.
[00:28:50] Speaker B: Are you guys saying that you don't think Ferrari has a chance to win this championship already?
[00:28:56] Speaker C: No, I think that. I think that they, they possibly can, but I think that it's. Mercedes has got such a dominant car that.
Yeah, I don't, I don't. I don't think that there'll be enough opportunity for one of the Ferrari drivers to, to win the drivers. But the fact that they've got Charles and Lewis there means that the constructors, they've got a legit shot.
Kimmy winning this race shows that he's got what it takes to pick up the pieces. If George has an off race, which keeps them in the fight for the constructors, even though we think the drivers is going to go to them anyway.
[00:29:36] Speaker A: Not unless the Ferrari somehow upgrade the car. You know, as, as the cars tend to get better over the season, but they need to take a significant step forward that the other teams don't make.
[00:29:48] Speaker B: I mean, last year, I know it's totally different regs, but I mean, there was a time in the season when we thought that McLaren had it shoot in and I mean, obviously we did end up winning it, but I mean, how close was it in the end between him and Max? Like two points, three points. Yeah.
[00:30:06] Speaker A: So the cut. There's plenty of time. You're right. There's plenty of time to go. But you wouldn't bet against. You wouldn't bet it. They're not. They have a chance. Ferrari. But you wouldn't bet against McLaren, right?
[00:30:15] Speaker C: Yeah. And of course you've got the. I don't know if it's. If they're keeping it the same, given we're losing two races in the Middle east, which we'll kind of come to in a second, but every six races they're benchmarking the engines and there'll be the opportunity. The FIA will be granting teams the ability to tweak their engines based on how far they are off the pace. So I think that anyone that's getting an engine disadvantage through the first quarter of the season should see a relative performance gain based on ability to tweak their engine as well as the other sort of the wind tunnel stuff. That is still a rule. Wherever you are at a particular point in the season, you're allocated a greater, you know, greater development wind tunnel time and so which I think is a lot of what helped the in season development over the last few years. So with the amount of learning that each of the teams are doing, I think there's every opportunity for other teams to catch up. And with the gap now between the next race in Japan which is at the end of March to the Miami race which is at the beginning of May, obviously that's a five week gap that teams have to really, you know, not have to worry about getting cars ready to go off to a race and all that kind of stuff. All their energies can go into the development. Yeah, the teams are in.
The other teams have an opportunity to get themselves closer to Mercedes. I think the team that's going to hate this the most missing out on these two races is Mercedes because they've off to a great start and missing two races is an opportunity lost for them to gain ton of points on everyone else.
[00:32:04] Speaker A: Yeah, no, it's, it's a massive gap. Right. There's no racing in April at all. Basically losing.
[00:32:10] Speaker C: Terrible.
[00:32:11] Speaker A: It's crazy.
[00:32:12] Speaker B: I mean yeah, the Vegas lines are pretty, they, they stand behind what you guys are saying essentially that it's George and Kimmy are way ahead of Max. Lewis and Charles.
[00:32:27] Speaker A: It's theirs to lose right now.
[00:32:29] Speaker C: Yeah, but Max is still in that conversation.
Something about Max being Max. Right.
[00:32:35] Speaker B: He's tied with Lewis and Charles for the third best odds.
[00:32:40] Speaker C: Seemingly the fourth or fifth best car. I don't know.
[00:32:42] Speaker A: Yeah, well we do have a race in just over a week though in, in Japan to look forward to.
And I mean that track is, it's got some interesting corners. Right. They have a lot more, they have some faster corners than Shanghai is a bit slower but more of a medium speed layout I think. So yeah.
[00:33:03] Speaker C: I'm really like say I'm the pessimist in all of this in terms of the new regs but if you look, if you think about the lap you've got from the spoon curve around 130R you've got Casio which is like the only breaking point before then going down the main straight by the pits into the S's 130R I'm hoping they actually try through 130R because it's one heck of a corner. I hope they don't use it like they have 7 and 8 at China and 9 and 10 in Australia as an opportunity to harvest and not go through that corner.
[00:33:45] Speaker A: Right.
[00:33:45] Speaker C: Full, full clap. I can see them having to harvest their.
Because there's still the straight down to the last chicane and then there's still the main straight down to the first corner and they start backing off down to that first corner to try and blast it up the, the esses again. That's going to be not a good look in particular during qualifying.
I'll get off my soapbox, but I'm worried.
I love Suzuka. You know, it had become kind of boring in terms of racing. Not a whole lot of overtaking the last couple of years based on what we've seen in China.
I'm optimistic that the racing itself will be a good spectacle.
But I'm, you know, I, I can see qualifying being underwhelming.
It's such a great track.
[00:34:38] Speaker A: We just want to see something more than the Mercedes beating the Ferrari. Like can the McLarens get in the mix? Can the Red Bulls get in the mix? You know, can somebody else get in there?
[00:34:49] Speaker C: They got to get in the blender to get in the mix.
[00:34:52] Speaker A: What does the team do? What information has it got to make changes to their car to make it better? They don't have much. They're still in the information gathering phase. You know, certainly McLaren and others haven't been able to put the laps in. So yeah, we'll see.
[00:35:09] Speaker C: Get out there, make sure you stay on the, on the track and get the data so that you've got more data to look at over the next five weeks. Because if you don't get it now, you're not going to get anything. And then you could be moving in totally the wrong direction in a five week period which you could progress so far down a path and if it's wrong, you're on the back foot massively, 100%.
[00:35:28] Speaker A: I mean, it's like, you know, you see it every so often, don't you, in races where a car is having trouble and it, it retires and then they fiddle about with it in the, in the pits and then they put them back out on the track again to do some more laps even though they're 11 laps down or something just to get more data, who knows?
[00:35:42] Speaker B: But two laps, the Assens did that, so.
[00:35:48] Speaker A: Yeah, Stroll did that, didn't he?
[00:35:50] Speaker B: I think they both did.
Well, I guess that brings us to Coops, F1.
[00:35:57] Speaker A: Coops F1, yeah. So decent scores this week. Slightly down on the scores from Australia, but shout out to Ma Cooper, my own mother with the top score this round.
I don't know, maybe she's one of our original listeners. Hi, Mum.
Her birthday coming up too but yeah, so she got 210. Fight to win with 200, Rigs a Roni 196.
Myself as the early leader.
I dropped all the way down to 26.
Not particularly good week for me, but fight to win. Who came second up to first overall?
Ayrton Sanio in. In second place. Who was one of the top scorers last week as well.
How are you guys doing? Gotta scroll, scroll, scroll. Or Nick. Nick down in 48th.
[00:36:53] Speaker C: Yeah. It helps if I'd actually put some picks in.
That's the thing when you have these. These Saturday overnight races, Friday overnight qualifying is. It kind of upsets the timing and I, you know, blank.
[00:37:08] Speaker A: Oh, well, you've got to forget. You got to get. You got to lock in. Yeah. It's not all these early Saturday morning qualifying sessions for us on the east coast at the moment.
[00:37:16] Speaker C: Yeah. And. And it's, you know, maybe I'm still. I was still a little too gung ho on McLaren before the first race of the season when I actually set these picks that I kind of put them up there. And honestly, Max being Max, I, you know, I kind of included him quite high up, given that we hadn't seen any racing when I put these picks in. Now we know a little bit more and we'd had the sprint to make some decisions, you know, so it's entirely my fault.
[00:37:43] Speaker A: It's hard. It's hard not to include some of these guys. Right. How can you not put the McLarens and. And Max in the.
[00:37:49] Speaker C: How can you not put the world champ, the current world champion, and the guy that won the prior four at somewhere in top five? Exactly where the points are scored. So.
[00:37:58] Speaker A: And well. But Jason's staying quiet because he's doing even worse down in 67th. But I dropped a long way to go.
[00:38:05] Speaker B: I dropped down less than you guys did.
[00:38:08] Speaker A: There you go. That's. That's one way of looking. Looking at it.
[00:38:13] Speaker C: So that's the guy half on or half off? I don't know.
[00:38:17] Speaker A: Yeah, the glass is half full.
[00:38:19] Speaker C: Are you clipping or super clipping?
[00:38:22] Speaker A: Yeah, he's just harvesting his energy to make a run up the table next week.
[00:38:27] Speaker B: Getting ready to push the boost, you know.
[00:38:29] Speaker A: Exactly. Exactly. But yeah, no race this weekend. But yeah, get. Get it all in with Japan after that. Because it's going to be a long wait for. For Miami.
[00:38:41] Speaker B: Is there no chance that they add any. Have they said that there's like 0% chance that they're gonna add anything in there?
[00:38:46] Speaker C: They're not adding anything logistically. They it's very, very difficult to do it at this stage.
[00:38:52] Speaker B: Can't add Imola in there.
[00:38:55] Speaker C: No one wants to go to Imola.
Imola came back on the calendar during COVID primitively because they wanted to a be the first. They wanted to put on a. A show for people because there was nothing else on. And it was a very good opportunity, as we all know, to get viewers.
But also they had television obligations, contractual obligations to put on a certain number of races. Even without these two races, those contractual terms with the TV networks and things were all well being met. And so, especially in a cost cap era, the money that would be used to ship people around the world do all of that, they can reinvest in the development of the vehicles. So. Yeah, nothing.
[00:39:40] Speaker B: Oh, well, I guess we'll just have a pre summer break.
[00:39:46] Speaker A: Yeah, it's going to be tough, but
[00:39:48] Speaker C: spring break like everyone else.
[00:39:49] Speaker A: Spring break.
[00:39:50] Speaker C: Yeah, duh.
[00:39:53] Speaker A: That's what comes before summer.
That's the season before summer.
Taking one too many batteries to the head, Jason, I think down in Philadelphia. Yeah, that's right.
[00:40:07] Speaker B: Too many snowballers.
[00:40:09] Speaker C: And on that bombshell,
[00:40:18] Speaker B: Thanks for listening to the undercut's review of the 2026 Chinese Grand Prix. Please rate, review and subscribe wherever you listen and join us next time for our review of the 2026 Japanese Grand Prix. We'll see you there.
