Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Foreign.
[00:00:08] Speaker B: Thanks for tuning in to the Undercuts review of the 2026 Singapore Grand Prix. Please rate, review and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts and enjoy the show.
By being a racing driver, you are under risk all the time.
[00:00:23] Speaker A: By being a racing driver means you
[00:00:25] Speaker B: are racing with other people. And if you no longer go for a gap that exists, you're no longer a racing driver. All right, guys, well, we're getting to the. To the home stretch, I guess, the 2026 Singapore Grand Prix. But before we get started on the race, I think we should mention that we heard the news that Rwanda will be on the race calendar in the2030s, I think it said. So what'll be the first race in the continent of Africa since I was. Not to make guys feel old, but Since I was 13 months old was the last time that a race was held in the continent of Africa.
But pretty cool.
[00:01:08] Speaker A: Yeah, I guess there was south. Was there a South African Grand Prix Kai alami in the 90s. In the early 90s, something like that.
[00:01:16] Speaker B: March 19th.
[00:01:18] Speaker C: I thought it was longer ago than that. I mean, I, I don't really remember watching races in Klami or what the circuit was or is.
But yeah, it's. It's still. It's a long, long time ago.
[00:01:35] Speaker B: But yeah, that should be cool.
[00:01:38] Speaker C: Yeah, I mean, always happy to see new races join. I mean, Rwanda,
[00:01:47] Speaker B: they did. They did like some. Was it an award ceremony there or like a season opener ceremony there? The fia, they did something there.
[00:01:55] Speaker C: But yeah, I mean, Rwanda are doing odd things on the world stage, I think. Didn't they enter into like some deportation deal with the UK a couple of years ago, Martin, where like we just. Oh, yeah, just go Australia on them and send them all our criminals or something.
[00:02:12] Speaker A: Yeah, literally. That was basically it. Yeah. It's like if you come to England as an illegal immigrant, we're going to deport you to Rwand. Like. Like that was a Boris Johnson thing, I think, or something. But which was weird because Arsenal like visit Rwanda on their as well. So.
[00:02:29] Speaker C: So what does that say about Arsenal fans? I don't know.
But I did see. I did see Visit Rwanda signage at Sepang last week as well. So it was kind of an open secret that. That there was going to be a. A Rwanda Grand Prix at some stage and renderings of a cir offers absolutely no heavy braking zones whatsoever and so might be fun for the drivers to drive with sweeping turns and all of that, but terrible for spectators who actually want to see a race with Overtaking.
[00:03:05] Speaker B: Yeah. Well, talking about the Singapore Grand Prix, I mean, Max had a crazy start. I mean, he was able to keep the lead by crazy late breaking. Is that him doing great late breaking or Charles breaking too early or a little bit of both?
[00:03:25] Speaker A: I mean, it looked like classic Verstappen, really just squeezing leclerc out until he didn't have any space. But it was a great start by leclerc. He got the better start, right. A better jump off the line for a reaction time.
[00:03:39] Speaker C: And Red Bull haven't had the best starts for a while. I mean, so it was actually. I don't know. Did you guys see when Max came out to go to the grid? He came out of the pit lane, but didn't follow the pit exit. He cut across, like, really early as soon as he cleared the pit wall out into the middle of the track and basically just practiced a crazy, like, line, a really tight line to get through turn one and into turn two without going too deep. So when he started the race, yeah, Shah got a really good start, came up the inside of him, but great car positioning by Max to really basically give Charles no line through the corner whatsoever because he'd be far too tight. So had to really hit the brakes and.
And. And then Max really braked at the last possible moment to be able to make turn two, and he did. And it was like a great piece of driving to get and maintain that. That lead going into the first couple of corners and then ultimately lead throughout the whole race.
[00:04:49] Speaker A: Yeah, it's been. It's been a lot. I mean, I'm just thinking of this to myself. It's been a long time since we've had, like, a big, like, turn one incident at the front. Like, most of the drivers are doing good, good job to avoid each other, especially at the front of the field. Anyway.
[00:05:03] Speaker C: Yeah, I mean, I just. At. At Singapore a few years ago, like, that big shunt with. Was it Ryken and Verstappen into turn one?
[00:05:12] Speaker A: Gotta be a few years ago for Ryker.
[00:05:14] Speaker C: Yeah, when he. When he was in Ferrari even. I mean, I may have been way off in terms of the who and whatever, but there was a big old shunt in that corner several years ago.
[00:05:25] Speaker A: The drivers definitely seem to be taking maybe. I don't know if cautious is the right approach, but they're definitely taking.
They do a better job of avoiding contact. It looks like. Maybe that's because supposedly overtaking is easier, so maybe missing out at the start. Isn't that as a much of a death knell? As it has been in past years. But yeah, there wasn't much leclerc could do. He ran out of space. And then was. Was Hamilton in third. Right, right then. So it was Verstappen from the two Ferraris. Right. Right at the start with Kimmy behind.
[00:06:02] Speaker B: Yeah, that's right.
But
[00:06:07] Speaker C: the start from the sprint race was way more eventful throughout the grid than of the Grand Prix. Great start from Lewis from what, like fifth or so up into third. And then Carlos Sainz coming up the outside and making up a good few spots in the sprint, which in and of itself was a little bit more eventful probably than the actual race, but that's the world we live in right now. Sprint race in Singapore. Who knew it would be more exciting?
[00:06:35] Speaker A: Yeah, well, they were asking, they were asking Verstappen and Hamilton, I think, after the sprint race about whether they should even have one in Singapore just because overtaking is so tricky.
And they were. They both sort of. By giving non answers, they both sort of said, yeah, not really exciting for the fans when it was so hard for us to overtake and put on a show.
[00:06:54] Speaker C: They probably don't want sprint races anyway. So maybe it's like, what do you expect, you know, a glowing answer for a question that no one wants.
[00:07:03] Speaker A: But ver. Verstappen said something kind of amusing. He's like, basically he said, when I'm at the front, there's nobody to overtake anyway. So what do you want me to do?
[00:07:13] Speaker C: He's been at the front two races.
[00:07:15] Speaker A: Yeah, I just do my job and make sure nobody overtakes me. Which, as we've seen in many, many, many races, he does it very well.
[00:07:22] Speaker B: Yeah. And it was the first time this season and on the last sprint race weekend, that a driver was able to win both the sprint and the feature race in the same.
[00:07:32] Speaker A: Yeah, weekend. It's a little Verstappen. It's like a couple of years ago, Right. When he was just winning every race. He's won two races in a row, plus the sprint race.
All very much too late to make any kind of like championship run. But yeah, Red Bull have definitely, you know, improve their car to make it, you know, the best in the field. Maybe right now, I mean, Mercedes seem to have dropped off, although you gotta think that Kimmy is.
He's a young man, but he's got a smart head on his shoulders. He just knows he's just got to keep it clean and finish every race and they'll hand him the trophy pretty much. Right. He doesn't need to win anything, especially
[00:08:14] Speaker B: when George is starting in P19 in that race.
[00:08:19] Speaker A: Yeah. What was George's grid penalty? 60 places or something like that?
[00:08:23] Speaker B: I think it was 50. Yeah.
[00:08:25] Speaker A: Only 50. Okay.
[00:08:26] Speaker B: Yeah.
But, yeah, pretty crazy. But I mean, at least in the race we did get a little bit of disparity with, you know, tire choices and the Ferrari split and it was very good for Charles. I mean, I'm sure he wanted to have a chance to win the race, but still, finishing in P2 and Lewis just dropping off at the end of the race, really disappointing for him.
[00:08:50] Speaker A: I feel like. I mean, what do you think? I feel like Hamilton could have had a better shot of making his strategy work if they had let him pass leclerc. Right. There was a point where Hamilton, because Hamilton started on medium and everybody else was on soft. Right. So Hamilton was technically. Is that the. Have I got that backwards?
[00:09:09] Speaker C: Yes, you're right.
[00:09:11] Speaker A: Yeah. Hamilton started on the medium, everybody else is on the soft.
He pitted early for the softs, which are the faster tire, um, but ended up behind leclair and they wouldn't.
[00:09:25] Speaker B: He didn't like, seem, but barely, like right behind him.
[00:09:29] Speaker A: Right behind him. And I guess he didn't want to fight him for fear of coming into contact, but they wouldn't let him by and he was losing time on those tires and I think he must. I bet he lost six or seven seconds over the course of like six or seven laps.
[00:09:43] Speaker C: Yeah. I mean, he said he had two hours. He said he had two hours, two seconds to spare, two seconds per lap to spare in his tires. I mean, he started on the medium tire thinking to go long, but the soft tire was by far the superior tire.
[00:09:59] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:09:59] Speaker C: So. And the degradation on the soft tire was not nearly what people thought it was going to be.
You know, you look through qualifying and the tire degraded from its peak grip. You know, it was really good for a lap, maybe a lap and a half at its peak grip, but then it just plateaued and would stay in that window for 30 plus laps as it turned out in the race. So.
So you got Lewis on medium thinking he'd probably be able to go longer, but he just wanted to get off that tire. Now, when you start the two cars on different tyres, you know that there's going to probably be a point during the race where they come across each other with a tire offset. But it seems that Ferrari don't even think about talking about that before the race. It's like they're reacting to it during the race.
A Scenario, which is blindingly obvious to every other strategist up and down the grid and blindingly obvious to the layperson, such as ourselves. So why are they not talking about it in the context of, hey, guys, there's going to be a point at which you're very likely to be closer to each other. Close to each other on the track.
And we're going to ask the person who's on the older, maybe slightly slower or certainly slower tire at that particular point in the race to concede the position to their teammate so that they can go on and get the best outcome for the team. Now, if you then find yourself at the same spot on the track later on, then we'll switch it back.
[00:11:54] Speaker A: Yeah, I mean, it's absolute accountable.
[00:11:57] Speaker C: How is that not.
[00:11:58] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:11:58] Speaker C: How is the conversation taking place?
[00:12:00] Speaker A: Yeah, I, I don't know the answer to that. I was very frustrated for Hamilton that it was, you know, leclerc was going to do whatever leclerc did. But, you know, Hamilton, they would net. Ferrari were net. Losing out by not switching them, I mean, unless.
[00:12:17] Speaker B: And they told him no. Right. Straight up. They were just like, no, you got to conserve your tire pretty much.
[00:12:23] Speaker A: And. And then Hamilton just had to. He just took it on himself, I guess, to roll the dice at the end and not come in for a second stop when everybody else did, to try. And.
[00:12:33] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:12:34] Speaker C: Thinking the tie would last forever, which it obviously wouldn't because it was. I mean, one of the things that, you know, during qualifying, Lewis was ahead. He was fastest in Q1, fastest in Q2.
He had the fastest split times for each of the sectors in Q3, but couldn't. Strict. Strictly, couldn't string a lap together. Excuse me. It was like he was over driving on his. In Q3. He was relaxing Q1 and Q2, but was over driving in Q3. And he should really have had pole, but couldn't string it. Couldn't string the whole lap together. And he lost out to Max.
The reason that he was probably so good in qualifying was the same reason that he fell backwards during the race, which is that the Ferrari was switching his tires on. But it was getting a bit more DEG certainly than Max in the Red Bull.
[00:13:27] Speaker B: Yeah.
But obviously great. Great for Charles, not so good for Lewis. And then we get the same situation. I mean, all things considered, a decent race from George, I guess, from where he started. But it's. We. We said it was over last race and it's even more over now. It's just salt in the wounds. Right. I mean, yeah. It's the Kimmy shows.
[00:13:54] Speaker C: I mean, to use a soccer football for our global audience analogy, certainly that English people would understand. Jeff Hurst has definitely picked up the ball at the halfway line.
[00:14:07] Speaker A: Some of the crowd are on the pitch.
[00:14:09] Speaker C: They think it's all over.
[00:14:11] Speaker B: Right.
[00:14:13] Speaker C: It's, you know, it's not fully, but. But it can. It is. And he can win. Kimi, that is. Can win the title in Austin next weekend.
[00:14:26] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:14:26] Speaker C: And I hope he does, because if he doesn't, then the next race after that is what Mexico City and I. I mean, hopefully they.
Well, basically they've got to delay as long as possible the decision of whether they're going to have those last at least one or two races at the end of the season so that they a give Abu Dhabi and Qatar the. The best chance or the longest available time to actually put a race on. But they. We want Kimmy to win it on track and not on a Tuesday like we've talked about before.
[00:15:03] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
[00:15:07] Speaker B: And if you take George.
[00:15:08] Speaker C: Go back to George.
[00:15:10] Speaker B: Yeah, go ahead. I mean, I was just gonna say if we take those two races out, he's already won it. Right. I imagine.
[00:15:18] Speaker C: I don't know. I haven't done the math. What is it? He's 102 or 144 points ahead and there's either six or eight or five. I think it's five or seven races left.
You'd have thought we'd maybe done our homework before getting on a podcast and talking about this.
He's probably.
[00:15:38] Speaker A: He's 102 points ahead.
So that's four race wins and he's still got a two point lead.
So you need five races to. For him not to win it over. Russell with him not finishing everyone. So us, Mexico, Brazil, Vegas, and then you got. Yeah. If you lose those last two places like Jason said, then it's all over already.
[00:16:02] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:16:03] Speaker C: But George did have a better Grand Prix than sprint race.
[00:16:07] Speaker B: Yeah, he did.
[00:16:08] Speaker A: Well, you mean as in he didn't crash out?
[00:16:10] Speaker C: I think he didn't spin out at the end of the first lap.
[00:16:13] Speaker A: Yeah, I guess. I'm sorry, my maths is a little off. Right. Because there's more sprint races in there somewhere. Is there another sprint race?
[00:16:21] Speaker C: No, no, this is the last. This is the last sprint race.
[00:16:24] Speaker A: I still. I stand by it then. Okay.
[00:16:28] Speaker B: Yeah. Well, the McLarens had a better regular race than sprint race, too.
[00:16:34] Speaker A: Yeah.
As in not crashing into each other.
[00:16:38] Speaker B: Yeah, pretty much the same scenario. Yeah.
[00:16:40] Speaker A: Norris not hitting Piastri.
[00:16:43] Speaker C: Yeah. I mean, it's It's. It was the Piastri left the door open and. But everybody except his teammate should go for it. At that point in the race, it doesn't really make a difference.
And you're going to get the same number of points as a team and won two more points for Lando than it is now. It's not going to win in the World Championship.
So it was a bit rash. And his message on the radio towards the end of the Grand Prix of, hey, is there anything I could do to help Oscar? Kind of thing was a bit.
Yeah, like the kids I did hear on one of the podcasts I listened to over the last couple of days. I think it was the race. Nelson Falkenberg said it's a bit like when you've told the kids off and they're suddenly very useful around the house.
[00:17:38] Speaker A: Yeah, they want to be helpful. Yeah, he said it multiple times, didn't he? What can I do to help Oscar? Yeah,
[00:17:48] Speaker B: little too late, buddy.
[00:17:49] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:17:52] Speaker B: Yeah. That was a disappointing race weekend for really McLaren all around. And then we had that weird moment with Lewis and Lando towards the end of the race where Lewis, Lewis like went. Went long and didn't. Or went off track and didn't let the guys through. And then someone was able to. I think maybe it was. Kimmy was able to jump by Lando before Lewis gave the spot back or something along those lines.
[00:18:19] Speaker C: Well, I don't think he gave the spot back.
[00:18:20] Speaker A: He never gave it back. Yeah, because there was.
[00:18:22] Speaker C: But he didn't need to.
[00:18:23] Speaker A: Yeah, Kimmy came through and then he was. Yeah, he ended up being overtaken anyway. But yeah, he definitely left the track and gained an advantage. But in the end it was kind of.
[00:18:32] Speaker C: Yeah, but he didn't need. But he didn't need to give the place back because he followed race director's instruction going to the right hand side of the bollard on the exit of turn two.
So there is a runoff area, but you. And so you, you know, there's that you have to go down a defined path to get back on the track.
And as long as you're doing that, you're complying with essentially what the track limits are because that's the relief.
So that's why he didn't have to give the space back. But yes, Kimmy got by.
[00:19:03] Speaker A: And
[00:19:05] Speaker C: yeah, so that was another sort of backwards moment for the McLarens.
[00:19:10] Speaker A: Usually you imagine that the runoff like that, if you had to go around the bollard, it would be much, much slower route to take that. You Wouldn't be able to stay ahead, but I guess it's just the way that the.
The course is configured at that point. But.
[00:19:21] Speaker B: And I think Lando took the corner poorly as well, so he just was slow coming out of that corner. So Kimmy was able to take advantage and Lewis was kind of irrelevant, I guess, at.
Well, I guess, I mean, the rest of the winners. Liam scoring again while back in the. You know, the sister team to Red Bull and Nico Hulkenberg getting some points as well.
[00:19:48] Speaker C: Yeah, I mean, a great weekend for Liam Lawson.
He's really.
He still hasn't got a contract for next year and he really needs one because I don't. I don't think anyone would be doing any better than him at this stage. You know, obviously he's up against a rookie teammate in Arvid Lindblad who's doing as well as anyone could have expected as a rookie. But Liam's really doing a top job and deserves to be given the seat for next year and just really need to put pen to paper on it.
[00:20:21] Speaker B: I mean, unless he's got another contract that we don't know about, I feel like that's got to happen. Right?
[00:20:28] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:20:29] Speaker C: I mean, there's no other seats left. I mean, there's the Haas seat opposite Ollie Bearman, but it doesn't make any sense for him to go there.
It doesn't make any sense for Red Bull to let Liam go over there for a start. And there's no point in Haas doing it because they want their engine deal from Ferrari and they're going to take the Ferrari development driver whose name escapes me. Rafa Kamera.
[00:20:56] Speaker B: Right.
[00:20:56] Speaker C: He's sort of odds on for that seat. They just need to sign Liam Lawson and get on with going racing for the rest of the season.
Did you guys see on Sky Sports the utterly cringeworthy thing that they did with the V carb guys this weekend?
[00:21:18] Speaker B: No.
[00:21:19] Speaker A: What was that like, this?
[00:21:20] Speaker C: Impractical jokers. Was it Impractical Jokers, that show on.
[00:21:25] Speaker A: Yeah, I know that show. Yeah.
[00:21:27] Speaker C: Where you've got people with hidden cameras and they've got an earpiece and getting one guy to be something totally stupid. But they, they did that with a really cringeworthy interview between Arvid Lindblad and what's her name, The.
The. The sky presenter, Bernie Collins.
[00:21:53] Speaker B: Naomi.
[00:21:54] Speaker C: Naomi Schiff. Naomi Schiff. Yeah.
It was horrible. I couldn't even watch it. It was so bad.
Arvid Lindblad. Like, what is going on? And they kind of come out like it's the funniest thing ever and it's just not.
But don't, don't even look it up, don't watch it. It's not worth it. But it was terrible.
[00:22:13] Speaker A: Whatever the opposite of a viral video is, that's what you want for that to happen. Yes.
[00:22:17] Speaker C: Bacterial. It was bacterial.
[00:22:19] Speaker B: Nice.
I mean, I feel like most of those are usually pretty bad. They had a good one when it was like Oscars first or second year in the team and they did the cricket against each other within the team, you know, like that was pretty good. But yeah, most of the time those are pretty bad.
[00:22:36] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:22:36] Speaker B: And another thing that's really bad. Lance Stroll dnfing for the 12th time in a season, tying the record with John Lacey in two in 2000.
Brutal.
[00:22:50] Speaker C: It's almost like there needs to be a website of did lance finish a race dot com. And you go to it, it just says no.
[00:22:59] Speaker A: So 12.
He hasn't finished 12 races. And you said it ties with Jean alaisi from the 90s, I guess 2000 French team at that time, was it some solid seasons. John Lacey was around for a long time.
For a long time, yeah.
I don't remember him not finishing a lot of races, but.
[00:23:25] Speaker C: Well, I mean, reliability used to be much worse, certainly from an engine perspective.
[00:23:30] Speaker A: Flowing up all over the place. Yeah.
[00:23:34] Speaker B: Was that prostrate in like a blue
[00:23:39] Speaker A: car with his hand down the side. Right.
[00:23:42] Speaker C: If he was in the 2002 Prost, that finished, I think probably about 10% of races that year, maybe, maybe slightly more. But that was in a 17 race season. I think they had fails to finish in about 15 of them.
[00:23:58] Speaker A: Oh, it was Gaulois. It wasn't Jettin. I knew it was some cigarette.
[00:24:02] Speaker C: It was some yellow cigarette that the French smoked.
[00:24:09] Speaker B: That's.
So, let's see. Yes, that. Yes. He was on the pros team with Nikki Heidfeld in 2000.
[00:24:18] Speaker A: Oh, my God. Yeah. I'm just looking at the Wikipedia page right now. It just says retired, retired, retired, retired, retired, retired.
[00:24:24] Speaker B: Yeah.
I mean, how many races were there that year? 16 or 17.
[00:24:29] Speaker A: 17. 17 races. They didn't. They didn't score any points.
The best result was Nick Heitfeld got eighth in Canada.
[00:24:39] Speaker B: Well, that would be points, but that
[00:24:40] Speaker C: was when points only went down to six, wasn't it?
[00:24:42] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:24:43] Speaker C: Ten points for the winner.
[00:24:44] Speaker A: Oh, yeah.
[00:24:44] Speaker C: Quite possibly points down to six.
[00:24:46] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:24:48] Speaker B: So that just makes Stroll look that much worse. Right.
[00:24:52] Speaker A: I guess he's got more races in which not to finish. So, like that makes it quote unquote easier to not finish. In 12 races. But yeah, I mean, I don't know what Stroll is doing, but he's bulletproof when it comes to contracts, apparently.
And your dad owns the team.
Yeah, he can do no wrong.
Yeah.
[00:25:15] Speaker B: And I guess the only other people to note that expected to have a better weekend is probably Alpine, unfortunately, another weekend with. I think they did not. Did they not score any points in the whole three race races in a row, so.
[00:25:34] Speaker A: Oh, really?
[00:25:35] Speaker C: In Baku, they. They scored in Baku, right? No, no, because they took each other out. Kapinto took them both out and I don't think gas recovered into the points. No, because he was gone, wasn't he?
Yeah. So they've had a bit of a woeful time of it and they've lost out a lot of points to the racing bulls over the course of this three, three race run. And so I think it's like 30 something points now that the V carb have over them, which at that part of the grid is a lot of points to make up.
[00:26:11] Speaker B: Yeah.
Yep. It's looking like, yeah, it's going to be Red bull racing in four and racing bulls in five, so. Well, I guess it's still pretty tight between McLaren and Red Bull for three and four.
[00:26:27] Speaker A: No, for sure.
Verstappen could overhaul that on his own.
[00:26:31] Speaker B: It's only a seven point difference.
[00:26:33] Speaker C: Yeah. What is it up to Ferrari?
[00:26:35] Speaker A: They're 100 points ahead of that, so, yeah, pretty much done everybody else.
[00:26:40] Speaker B: I don't know.
[00:26:40] Speaker C: Is it. I mean it's the way that, that Max is winning races and that Ferrari are tripping themselves up. It's not.
[00:26:47] Speaker B: It comes down to Hajar really, y this.
[00:26:50] Speaker A: Yeah. It's kind of Verstappen on his own though, isn't it?
The Ferraris aren't that bad. They're getting on the podium. They're just, they're just finishing like third, fourth every race.
[00:26:59] Speaker B: You know, they keep beating Hajar. It's. Max is ahead of both of them but the Ferraris keep beating Hajar.
[00:27:05] Speaker A: So it's
[00:27:07] Speaker C: those, those upgrades that, that Red Bull have brought have really, really helped Max and I think it's the, the, the car itself was probably a bit more user friendly across the board because they couldn't fine tune it to how Max wanted it.
Very sort of loose on the back end and they've kind of fixed that, which might then start to take the car away from ha in the same way as it's taken the car away from basically every other teammate. But we'll see how we do. I mean, this, there's other races left of the season.
But I think one of the key, one of the best things about this season, despite the engines, is that, yeah, it looked at the start of the season like Mercedes were going to walk it, like they did in 2014 at the start of the turbo hybrid era for the next four or five seasons, or like Red Bull did at the start of the last rule set.
But yes, she had a very strong start from Mercedes, but then it was Ferrari that up there and challenging and then it was McLaren that were there and challenging through Zandvoort and Budapest with Lando winning a couple of races and now it's Max in the Red Bull. So these developments and the upgrades that people have brought have made meaningful differences.
So I mean, but the rate at which Red Bull have got their act together over the course of the last couple of months is pretty foreboding for next year if they can continue this development rate up and if the, the, the upgrades that they do bring continue to offer those gains over the field in the way that they have to date. Whereas the Mercedes upgrades that they're bringing big packages and they don't seem to be working.
So it's, you know, it's a little too little too late because Antonelli's got one hand on the trophy.
But next year, I don't know, could get interesting.
[00:29:11] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah.
[00:29:12] Speaker B: And McLaren should have more wind tunnel time for next year. Right. And they're usually pretty good with their upgrades too. I wouldn't be surprised if we see another battle with red Bull and McLaren up at the top. And Mercedes will probably be there at least the beginning of the year next year, right?
[00:29:30] Speaker C: Hope so.
But this was as a closing comment, this was Max's first win in Singapore. It's been a bogey track for him, I think. When did he first race there? In 2016? 17. I don't know what is, but it was the only race on the calendar up until this year that he hadn't won. He hadn't won Singapore, he'd won everywhere else. Now this year we've gone obviously got Madrid which no one had won at.
I don't know if he one in Sepang. It's obviously been a long time, 2017 since we had a race in Sepang,
[00:30:05] Speaker A: but I think he was the finally
[00:30:06] Speaker C: got the monkey off the top.
[00:30:07] Speaker A: I think he was the previous winner actually in Sapang. I think he was the defending champion, effectively.
[00:30:12] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:30:16] Speaker B: Well, and where are we have our second U.S. grand Prix coming up? Well, I guess the first U.S. grand Prix but the second Grand Prix in the U.S.
in two weeks.
[00:30:30] Speaker A: Yep.
Austin, right?
[00:30:33] Speaker B: Yeah. Yeah, that's sometimes.
[00:30:36] Speaker C: I mean, that's good.
[00:30:37] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:30:37] Speaker C: I mean it's going to be. We've had a quirky race. Well, we've had a few quirky races over the last few weeks because obviously Baku is a bit, you know, it's got a tight and twisty bit and a very long straight bit.
Singapore, obviously street circuit. Sepang was kind of weird just by virtue of how the surface was so rough and it was, you know, rainy and all the things that made it a little bit odd. Hopefully Austin's going to be a great barometer for how we're going to see the rest of the season pan out and really what the competitive order is at this point in the season may change, but it's going to be interesting to see who has the upper hand next time out.
[00:31:25] Speaker A: Yeah.
Yeah.
[00:31:28] Speaker B: I guess that brings us to Coops F1 to close it out.
[00:31:33] Speaker A: Yeah. Good week this week. Some, some pretty high scores.
Shout out to McNags. My own father taking the top spot. He was very happy this week along with.
Yeah, along with Phil JS both of them scored 270 points and then FUDC with 260 and Levi 09 with 255 in the overall standings.
No change with the top two. Beaverro still leading the way from Matt D.
Table Tablet ID up two spots to third.
Jason making a slight move in the right direction. Up one spot to 11th.
Trying to become relevant again.
[00:32:17] Speaker B: Trying.
[00:32:18] Speaker A: Nick up nine spots to 33rd and my dad right behind him. He jumped. My dad was up 31 spots to 34. Oh, nice big move. I think I moved up slightly as well. Yeah, I moved up eight spots to 96 but I still don't. I've been doing it for 20 years and I still don't have a trophy after my name either. Jason and I could cheat so trying
[00:32:39] Speaker B: to make me feel better.
I'm just so close. So many times.
[00:32:46] Speaker C: A man of impeccable integrity.
There you go. How did the pick consensus bot do?
Where is he or she in the overall standings?
[00:32:57] Speaker A: Pick consensus has dropped down to 38th down six spots in the past when it was much more like, you know, predictable. With Verstappen winning every race pick consensus was like a top 10 but now it's tricky. People are finishing but not always in the same spot. So we're having a lot of trouble. The scores are definitely lower this season, race on race than they have been in the past just because you don't have this sort of guaranteed 40 points from Max winning or from Lando winning,
[00:33:28] Speaker C: whoever it might be, and probably a larger point spread as well.
[00:33:33] Speaker B: And the front has changed a lot more this year than in years past. So that's been good.
[00:33:40] Speaker C: Lots of yo yo.
[00:33:42] Speaker A: I think this consensus is still people picking Kimmy to win. They people still believe in him.
But yeah, Max is up there now already. The early pick consensus for USA is Kimmy, but that will probably change.
[00:33:57] Speaker B: Yeah, give up the corner.
[00:34:01] Speaker A: What is wrong with these people?
[00:34:03] Speaker B: Thanks for listening to the Undercuts review of the 2026 Singapore Grand Prix. Please rate, review and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts, and join us next time for our review of the 2026 US Grand Prix. We'll see.
