Business of Speed Podcast - What F1 Won't Admit About 2026 | ESPN Insider Nate Saunders

Episode Date: June 2, 2026

ESPN senior F1 writer Nate Saunders joins Vincenzo and Lali for a candid look at the sport from inside the paddock. They dig into the 2026 regulation backlash, Stefano Domenicali's denial in recent interviews, and why the drivers' reaction worries Nate more than the cars. He explains the Verstappen press conference ejection, what really happens at a race weekend, and the NASCAR parallel that should scare Liberty Media. Plus season predictions on Russell, Antonelli, and Ferrari. Nate is the author of Forza Ferrari and Lando Norris: Road to World Champion.

Hola, Vincenzo. Lali, buongiorno. It's a beautiful morning today because we get to talk to this guy. This guy over here, Nate Saunders, senior writer at ESPN.com, author of multiple books and one of our favorite Brits,

and he's joining us today. I've got one of the books back there. I forgot to put it. It's right there. I don't know if you can see it. Oh, there it is. Oh, beautiful. Well, thanks for the amazing intro, guys.

Appreciate it. I used to have my books behind me, but I started to think, does it look does it look really like self-aggrandizing just sitting in front of your own your own stuff but um no i appreciate it and um vincenzo i know you can't be your own cheerleader yeah exactly but vincenzo especially i remember when i told you i was doing a ferrari book a few years ago i could literally see the the excitement so i appreciate it but no i want to be here guys thanks for thanks for having me um i was pumped i was pumped but i was also disappointed that

it didn't come true yes i know well yeah so the the the full title is how if one's greatest team can win again and sadly they haven't kind of fulfilled that bit of it yet but uh but yeah maybe maybe maybe in the next 10 years i don't want to make any bets when it comes to ferrari sadly you know when you started writing the lando norris road to world champion because that was a pretty nice little package for you so when did you start writing that that's his latest book for those who don't know right that's his latest book latest book yeah so um that came out in march and it's it's got 100 pictures in it from getty but so i have a literary agent that i work with you when i did the ferrari book and she actually called me as i landed from abu dhabi i was basically

waiting for my my luggage in december and uh she said i'm gonna i'm just just gonna throw this at you like i'm sure you the last thing you want to do is write about form one in the off season and and you know in the off season we kind of actually the the work doesn't just stop you know there's a lot to do in those first couple of weeks you're kind of doing review stuff and you know you're writing different features about the new year and because your brain you're still so wired coming back from abu dhabi she explained the project i was like you know what i've literally lived through that season it's all fresh in the mind it it was you know it was a much shorter book in terms of the Ferrari one to do but it was just retelling the story of that season and actually

as I got into it you know it's not just Lando's story there it's Piastri's and it's Verstappen's as well you know so kind of tried to weave as much within the confines of that book that I could with you know the way the season uh went around there was one slight day when I was like I shouldn't have taken this on when it was Christmas day was fast approaching and I hadn't quite delivered the you know the book but no it was it was a very late thing and actually that was what was so different the Ferrari book was kind of you know months and months you know almost a year and a half of kind of working on it getting interviews talking to publishers this one happened so quickly um that actually it was kind of bizarre actually having it in my hands before the Australian

Grand Prix you know not there hadn't been a race in time you know in between the two happening which is kind of cool so um but yeah very pleased with that one and uh appreciate the double plug for the the books as well i mean listen gotta show you out and of course that book sits on my bookshelf now after i read it it's one of those books where i'm like okay it's gonna come true one day how they can get back to glory like this is the playbook maybe they should read it if they haven't already like maybe somebody should read it over there no i've i've actually given it to a couple of people at ferrari and i've had good feedback you know but it's kind of like it's kind of it's kind of read it yeah it's kind of a little awkward because you're like you know

and vincenzo as you'll know from reading i think and lally we've spoken about it before i think all of us have similar ways into formula one but you know the the the kind of the foreword of it and the prologue talks about me at monza in 2006 when i was 16 so i told all the people i gave it to i was like this book came from a place of love you know it came from a place of i actually want to see ferrari win a championship it's not trying to do them down so um that's what kind of made that fun to write was you know i got to talk to luca de montezemolo who was kind of the you know the president that brought it all together with Schumacher and that interview came to came to be so late that I basically had to rewrite the book which was fine to do but it you can imagine

you know anyone who's had to kind of redo something near a deadline yeah my stress levels around then were quite bad but yeah I'm I'm the same you know I hope that we can talk about that in some way because it's such a great story and it does feel like there's just that missing chapter at the end if you excuse the book pun but you know of that modern Ferrari story that it needs to have that redemption and really we haven't had it yet so was going to Monza when you were 16 was that sort of your gateway into F1 how young were you when you became sort of full-fledged fan quite addicted to the sport it was way earlier than that so I'm despite the name Saunders half of my family is Italian and that's on my my nonna's side on my my dad's mom and um so when I was young we there

would always be Formula One on but it was at the time when Damon Hill was very popular in the UK but i would go to my nanny's house or to my uncle tony's house and yeah you know stereotypical italian i do have an uncle tony which uh but we would put that we'd put that on and obviously all of my all my little friends at school at the time i was six or seven wanted hill and williams to win i was told don't you're not supporting damon hill in this house we support the red car and then schumacher went there and to be honest with you there's just something about schumacher at that young age and just the ferrari had all these ferrari toys when i was kind of eight nine you know like the famous black and red that burger and a lace used to drive yeah so yeah it just

that hooked me in once yeah yeah you know that and and funnily enough one of their worst eras of car but yet the most iconic looking but it was actually good oh they sounded so good sounded so so good and um you know but it was like going to monza in 2006 it was the second race i'd been to we went to imola in 2004 um but monza there was just something about monza that was just so magical and so special and i read about it in the start of the book me my dad and we want my friend simon his dad was going to come with us as well but couldn't come at the last minute so we you know we kind of took simon with us he's still the biggest ferrari fan to this day but at the end of the race in the last kind of 10 laps we followed a few of these italian fans that

would like come with us and we'll take you to the podium and so we were kind of in the infield walked from parabolica alonso's engine at the time was in the fight with schumacher for reno this is 2006 it blew up right in front of us as we're walking so the place went crazy anyway long story short we go under this tunnel kind of go over this fence that's the other side of the tunnel and lo and behold 10 years later when i drive in to monza as a journalist i'm driving in to where the media parking is and i'm looking around i'm like you know what this is exactly where me my dad and simon kind of would like force this fence open with this you know these random italian guys and went onto like next to the barrier basically so it was just very very

cool and surreal um thing and so yeah monza ferrari just really special so i think monza was was the moment and to kind of prove how much it was the case just before we left my sister had brought back this kind of sickly kitten that her friend's cat had had and so my mom said you can name the cat 2006 is when schumacher said i'm retiring in monza and they said kimmy reichen was replacing him so kimmy the cat uh lived in the saunders household to the ripe old age of about 18 but he was he was named you know he was named from you know from that from that event so you know if that doesn't show what an impact it all had on me at that age then i don't think anything else would 18 it's how many years for her he hasn't done anything yeah well yeah so

the cat was like a living embodiment for a long time of of he was he was like yeah he was a kitten when when kimmy the kimmy the real kimmy won but yeah the older he got it was a yeah a living tribute to the you know the kind of the future of ferrari sadly you'd be the cat the reminder that it's all gone to hell yeah but it was very like kimmy actually he was very stoic calm he you know he didn't really you know he didn't he didn't suffer fools very gladly so it was a it was a well-picked name what uh so how did you like what made you want to become a journalist so you love the sport right you're in it and then how did you go from that to wanting to report on it why didn't you want to be a driver did you want to race cars I mean like a lot of people say

oh I had dreams of racing cars did you also have that dream you know what well I had the dream of being a Formula One driver but I knew I never would be one I went karting when I was like eight years old for a friend's birthday and I think I put it in the wall at about turn two and I spent I spent most of the race about a lap down so I think I realized pretty quickly even you know also it felt quite unobtainable you know that story of how you know how expensive it is you just don't even think about it but the funny thing was is when i was a kid writing was one thing i loved to do and i used to take like notepads from school and write reports in them but they would it would either be my school team ramparts and i would be the hero that scored three

goals and you know won the won the big game or it would be about saunders this f1 rookie that comes in and wins the championship in his first season so all very self-aggrandizing reports when i was like 10 11 but that's really where that came from and i loved the auto sport magazine when i was a kid I read that cover to cover you know I've still got you know kind of you know stacks of them back at home so I used to read those I used to try and write reports in a similar way and it's so it's so bizarre now because a lot of the guys I was reading at the time are now colleagues of mine and we sit in the media center so you know it's kind of that's kind of bizarre but there was no one moment but I just I always loved the storytelling that there is with sports and the ability to kind of

write about it talk about it and so I went to university actually just doing a history degree in in england because i didn't really know at 18 what i wanted to do but i became sports editor of their uni paper then and that's when it kind of it went from being this is quite a nice thing to think about to actually i should probably think about doing this longer term so there was no there was no one moment but um i think anyone who knew me as a kid you know adults especially with like yeah he's always writing stuff like he'll do he'll do something like that when he's older that's good was there like a piece that you wrote that was like the piece that kind of set everything off there there wasn't one particular piece but there was a at university

i went and did a um a day so the i live in reading now and i went to reading university i've been i've lived in london in between but i didn't know anything about reading at the time and i went to the uh the local team at the time we're going for the the premier league they were going for promotion to the premier league so i wrote this long piece for the for the newspaper um at the time expecting it to be kind of trimmed down from kind of 2 000 words down to 400 300 whatever it was um and the editor just left it in the paper and she said no this is really good like i really liked it so it was a really small small moment but it was actually one one piece where i was like oh this is actually something that a i like doing but b it seems that you know but you know there

is something to it i'm sure there's i'm sure there's better articles to answer that question vincenzo i just off the top of my head i can't remember one particular one um but i mean the The crazy thing for me was the first time I got to write about just go to a sporting event. So 2013 is when I became a journalist officially. The first time I went to an event, I was at a rugby game and I sat in the media center, like in the media area. And I just, I was like, are people going to pay me to do this? This is insane. So I just, you know, that it was those moments early on that I started 2012 at a company called Sportsbeat.

And the first three weeks of my job, I was sat at my desk and London 2012 was on over the, over the screen, over my head. And we were just taking reports in from journalists that were there, subbing the copy, which is basically editing them and stuff like that. So yeah, that was, that was great. And just so surreal when you're that age to be able to do it. Is there a race that stands out to you early on that I think maybe you always look back to as the race that's a race that you covered like you were at, which I think is different than covering it from afar. Is there a race that stands out to you? Yeah, definitely. So my first race was Spain 2015, but the next year I went again. And that's when Max debuted for Red Bull, won the race.

You had Lewis and Nico collide for Mercedes. and that was the first race i'd really been at where something really major had happened where it was it was kind of okay you really have to be on top of this story now and so it was crazy because as a journalist it was like well what's the story here right because on the one hand hamilton and rosberg have collided together they're the championship contenders but also this this 17 year old kid you know who we all think is the next big thing has just won this race so it was it was just yeah that that was one where so that would have been my second or third race i was actually at on the ground for ESPN and yeah I just I came back from that and I just thought that

is you know the greatest job in the world that you can do you know just seeing the the ebb and flow of it and actually just being able to see the drivers up close and talk to people around the drivers as well and realize that you can get the vibe of what's happening from from the conversations that you can have in the paddock that's when it really came alive for me I think in that in that sense piggybacking off of that what is like what's your like what's your favorite part about a race weekend you know what that's a great question i think there's a few so race weekend i'm sure i'm sure your listeners know the kind of the cadence but the rough the rough way it goes is thursday you have media day obviously they have practice on friday obviously the sprint is

different but then actually actually let me cut you off maybe they're maybe they don't know the cadence of a full race weekend everyone knows friday saturday sunday but you get there much earlier than friday right you're there thursday maybe even before so what why don't you tell us that what does that look like and then yeah and then we can answer the question yeah sure yeah um so i mean it depends as well european race versus an american race but miami is a good example so i'm flying in on monday for miami so i land on monday part of that is for the jet lag part of that is because teams kind of do events in the city or downtown on tuesday wednesday but yeah you you you can go into the circuit on wednesday you know you can find your place in the media

center you can catch up with some people you know there's always people from teams in the paddock thursday is media day so we speak to every one of the drivers they're either in the press conference that you'll have seen where there's so many kind of viral clips and because i'm written press we get time with them so you know it's split into two is tv time and written time so you'll get every single driver at any at any given point on thursday but media day is also helpful because you just basically you i mean you guys have seen the paddock it's this kind of not super long stretch of tarmac where you have all these hospitality centers and in every single one of them is basically everyone in form one you could possibly want to speak to so on thursday

you can do that and then friday there's usually two practice sessions unless there's a sprint weekend when you have qualifying for the sprint race on friday but friday is great because you know there's not a huge amount happening on track the practice sessions i don't know if you guys sit and watch them i rarely actually sit at the at the desk and you know watch the whole thing i'll kind of come back but you're kind of catching up with people you know you're you're trying to find stories out there's always something as well in the you know in the sport going on that you you hit you get wind of and so you're like okay i'll go talk to my you know friend of mine down at williams or somebody i know at the fia or you know even other journalists you kind of say are you

hearing this like you know what do you know about it so you kind of always feel like you're i suppose either being inquisitive or being very nosy when you have conversations with people and but then saturday sunday is when you kind of get into the i can't hear nate your your audio cut out what the hell audio cut out is your mic did you switch the mic off maybe or something it was just yeah it cut off like mid mid sentence this is like the connor episode it's like the connor episode sorry guys is that is that any better yeah yeah i'm so sorry no don't worry we've had a few we were recording with connor daily a few months probably back in december or something like that and my power went out my camera wouldn't oh it was and connor was like oh no i ended up connecting

on my phone and and like walking to finish the episode on my phone and connor's like you got to keep this in the episode like yeah yeah it was i mean it was like everything that could go wrong went wrong it was yeah well that's that's a bit of a get out of jail because i was kind of rambling so i can do that again if you want if you want me to you don't have to restart it i like i actually enjoyed what you were saying about how you're kind of bouncing around sometimes you're going to talk to journalists sometimes you're talking to team you know whoever you want to i don't think people realize what's happening in the in the paddock right they just all they see is the the drivers walking through maybe lewis scooting through but people don't really so maybe talk a

little bit about how crazy it is in there because you also have fans in there walking through the paddock that have bought tickets yeah yeah and there's yeah yeah you got fans you have i mean nowadays where you have influencers you have you know you have all of these different tv crews as well i mean you think about you've got f1 tv you have you know the broadcasters of all of the major all the major networks there as well you have team personnel you have the drivers like you say then you have the driver's agents the driver's team some of the drivers turn up with security guards they've all got physios and everyone's kind of sometimes there's some paddocks where there's just all these bodies kind of moving around and you're almost i think the longer

you're in the paddock the better you get it kind of just you almost navigate it you know it's a bit like learning to drive or learn to ride a bike after a while you just kind of forget how you're actually doing it um but yeah there's all these people there and you know the drivers often kind of try and hide out of sight when they can i mean i don't blame them either because they just get mobbed when they go outside and a lot it's a lot of people just try to take selfies as well i think that like the days of i used to take an autograph book with me to sporting events which i felt like used to feel to me used to feel way more personal but they're you know they will stay in either their hospitality trucks or they'll be in the garage but there's there's that kind of small

small kind of space which is the paddock between hospitality and the garages and that's often where they're kind of you know walking or sprinting across um and it's crazy and there's no there's from the outside it doesn't seem like there's a lot of rhyme or reason to it but actually you'll have seen the especially the the you know the comms people that sit with the the drivers and all those interviews they and a few other people have you know the driver's days down to the minute in terms of right you're doing a you're doing a sponsorship thing now now we're going to run over to the you know the fan zone which often is kind of in in the infield so you kind of you know that that's also quite interesting as well because you'll see these these drivers getting on the

scooters or they'll you know jump in the back of a golf buggy or something and be taken over there and there's just always fans you like one of the crazy things about the paddock which i love is you're walking down the paddock you know and you're you're thinking about i've got to go to this team or i'm going to this media session and you'll hear behind you loris or you're kidding and it's just suddenly people have seen and you now for me i just naturally when i hear anyone shout a driver's name i kind of just step to the left and i might get out of the way because also The other people I haven't mentioned here is there's loads of photographers in the paddock as well.

And those guys are taking shots. And I know a lot of the staffers very well, really, really good bunch of people. But if you get in the way of their shot, they will tell you about it. They'll be like, hey, man. So you kind of just dive out of the way of those guys. So there's just so much going on. And everyone there who is working is doing something. And there's people who are taking partners around.

There's people who are taking VIPs around. There's obviously people in TeamKit who are, you know, they're either working in hospitality or they're working on the PR side and they're sorting out the media stuff. So there's this kind of weird ecosystem in the paddock that just exists. And I think it, yeah, I think I'm in it so much that I kind of forget sometimes how crazy it looks to, you know, to people coming in kind of fresh eyed. Because you've been around so long. I'm wondering about how certain like dynamics develop with drivers. do you find that that you've become sort of chummy with certain drivers and they're more likely to come and talk to you and spend a little bit more time with you do you have maybe break some news

you have anyone on speed dial where you could be like i'm gonna just call max right now or text them and ask if or or whoever or maybe the british drivers are drawn to you because you're you're british tell us a little bit about how those dynamics develop over time yeah it's i think it's definitely different now i i envy some of the older guys you know who when they talk about drivers would just kind of be hanging out in the in the paddock because it was a bit quieter they could kind of go and strike up those bonds a bit easier um but no but you absolutely can build those dynamics up i mean i i was always very lucky that the year i started in formula one was 2014 and ricardo at that point had just started at red bull so i always built quite a good rapport with

him but i think a lot of us did because he was just a very personable guy and he was one of those few people that kind of remembered the names of the people asking him questions you know and would kind of ask you stuff back which always throws you you know as a journalist when someone says so what do you think about it and you're like oh i hadn't really hadn't really you know formulated my ideas here yet in this press conference for you but i think the main way is and this is something that might sound funny to people who read the media but it took me a few years to really comprehend the fact that people in the paddock are reading what you're writing i know that sounds insane you know but you kind of when you when you first start out as a journalist when

was first writing stuff for ESPN you just you just forget the reach that anything has so drivers sometimes will come to you and say I didn't agree with what you wrote or you know there was a clickbait headline that you had there the other day and you kind of sometimes have to justify yourself and say well look you know here's what you said here's how we did it and because you have that face-to-face first of all I think it's one of the one of the reasons why you try and write everything as fairly as you can because you know I'm unlike being a you know somebody commenting on x or whatever you have to look these people in the eye the next week and kind of say well look you know here's my question here's what i think about it um in terms of actual drivers i

mean it's a good point about the brits i think we're quite lucky in that we can kind of all the teams are based in the uk as well so we often have opportunities to go for like you know media lunches with them they don't do it as much now sadly covid kind of changed the culture around it quite a bit but yeah it's it's a difficult one because some drivers now i'm i'm 30 36 years old So for guys like Kimi and Behrman and some of the young guys, I'm so far removed from their age now that I actually don't feel like I have as much in common. Whereas with Ricardo and I were weeks apart in age, there was a small cluster of drivers where you're like, OK, I feel like I'm exactly the same age as these people. I kind of relate to them a little bit. I know I know how they talk and I know how they how they think, maybe not how they think about racing. But, you know, you kind of feel like you relate to them a little bit. And really, the thing is, is you're in these sessions all the time.

I think one thing people don't realize about our job is we go to these sessions every day. you know we face these drivers often multiple times through a week so they just i think they just get used to the questions you ask they get used to the way you ask questions i think sometimes there's drivers who you can tell you know don't like a particular journalist or have a particular issue with a type of question we've seen that recently with max for example but you've just you've just got to i think you've just got to ask your questions be as honest about it as you can and be as you know as um i suppose the intention has to be right you know the intention has to be this is a fair question to ask and i remember ricardo you know at the end when he left in

singapore i was there that week and he was just it it was really telling because every single journalist kind of wanted to go down and say good you know say goodbye to the guy so he was one of those guys that people kind of connected with quite well um but yeah in terms of relationship building it's actually one of the hardest parts of the job is kind of keeping people happy and to your point about um about numbers i have a team boss uh on speed dial who i'll text quite often and the reason i have his number is because he he and i fell out over an article i wrote um in 2022 and we had this long phone call and at the end of the phone call he said all right well now you've got my number you can call me next time you want to write any bs about me

and now we actually have a very good relationship okay well i mean he you know he's he's uh from your side of the pond originally uh vincenzo in in terms of of the atlantic if that narrows it down um you know narrows down quite quite easily yeah but i mean and but you know so zach brown you know one of the guys but i think a lot of us have his numbers that's very good at that he he's he's good at kind of i'm not saying he has people's numbers and says i want you to write this about me but he always says look if you want to comment about a story and get my get my take first yeah exactly you know so he's he's he's good at that yeah and and christian was really good good with that as well you know you can kind of go in and you know as soon as he recognized you and knew you if you

went up to him you say hey you've got two minutes i can just want to ask you something you know about this they'll appreciate it as well because they then know okay if this guy's writing about this story i've told him this and that's when you know a lot of people ask when you guys write you know sources have said this or whatever usually it's not always from the team bosses but it's from people that have said all right well this is what's happening here and you're basically you've got two bits of information from two conflicting sources and you're like all right well the truth's probably somewhere in the middle there not always in the middle but often that's a good a good starting point so um yeah hopefully that explains it a bit but happy to happy to give

a you know more insight into the relationship building so you can keep this in as well i've turned a fan on next to me because of how hot it is in the uk and i'm now shivering so i don't know if you can hear that in my voice i'm just gonna tell you it is in the uk it's probably like 15 it's probably 15 degrees in your problem minus six in toronto yeah lucky you no i mean vincenzo's right it's not it's not conventionally warm but um because we don't have air conditioning because we don't have air conditioning but well i'll just start here talking then and i was like i'm literally my teeth are starting to chatter together hey so you brought up something and i want i was just going to ask

you about the max situation and you had written an article about max um ejecting the journalist and i think you had said something like um you know obviously that your view is a little biased because you are a member of the media and how bad it looks on Red Bull. Can we just, how, I don't know how often that happens, right? Like I'm thinking back to, I don't know if I've ever seen it.

I don't know if I have. Maybe Montoya. Juan Pablo was a little bit rude sometimes with journalists, I'll be honest. But other than that, I don't remember such controversy around a journalist and driver interaction. Yeah, there's that famous clip, isn't there,

of Montoya being asked like a joke question in Australia and he just walks out. He just leaves, yeah. I think he did quite a lot. In terms of for me personally, i've never seen that where a a driver or a team boss has said you get out and i'm not talking until you get out there's definitely been times when when you know when you hear oh a driver this driver doesn't like this journalist's question or this story yeah often what happens is the team

kind of interject to that point and say look we have an issue here with you and the driver let's either sit you down privately or let's just you know talk about it but it's very rare that a driver has kind of the the freedom to say get out of it but also isn't kind of checked by the team which i think was the concerning thing about that with max and the thing with that incident is and i know giles very well you know one of my good friends in the paddock so i kind of tweeted it i was like yeah and yeah his his book's great he's it's it's yeah i think his his his good reads got bombarded a little bit by staff and fans after this poor guy gosh but like i think all of us in the media center will tell you the same thing none of us at all have an issue with max answering

a question the way he did to giles in abu dhabi and giles will be the first person to tell you that but to kick someone out of the press conference i think for me was where it was you know it was odd and yeah i think it spoke to the fact that clearly it does it affects max for a reason right because i think he's human it's stung clearly it's right i do i do i see where you where you're at and the point that we can't be kicking journalists out but it is like 10 of me wants to show max a little bit of grace because he is a freaking human being yeah he was clearly hurt it hurt it for whatever reason it stung it clearly hurt his feelings and we see i think sometimes we see these guys too robotic and we don't see they're actually human beings sometimes

they're just our heroes that we see on tv and we forget and for whatever reason that hit struck a chord and you never know we all have that right where something strikes a chord and we don't know quite why and so i i do think we can't be censoring journalists but there is a part of me i have to admit that feels a teensy weensy bad for max is that bad no no no well i mean what was interesting from my perspective was i i obviously had the view of the media on it you know in terms of this is what i think as a journalist but there are so many conflicting views on it which actually surprised me actually you know reading reading people that had you know had that opinion lally as well but also just people that were almost saying well none of those guys should be there anyway type thing

but yeah i think i think one of the things about max that i do really respect is that he does wear he wears his emotions on his sleeve in a very different way to say lewis lewis you know lewis is a very emotional driver and you know it's always been what defines him and when he's in a bad mood he's in a really bad mood he's a good mood it's euphoric with max you always know how he feels if you ask i've asked max bad questions before where he's looked at me and just gone no don't know and you thought the thing is as a journalist as well i think people think we're kind of these you know hate filled or you know i don't know what people think about us but it's the same as doing a job like if you if you say something stupid to your boss you're like

damn why did I say that why did I ask that question that way we're the same way you know and often you've you know you've got a malt given to you or something and then you know you say your name and suddenly the word you're thinking of just doesn't quite work and English is my first language so I've got no excuse there's some guys there who are doing their whole job in a second language of English and you know they do it better than me sometimes I think for me the thing the thing that was surprising about that with with Verstappen and Giles and Red Bull was that was that it was allowed to get to that situation in the first place you know because from what I understand max was pretty pissed with that question well he was clearly pissed with the

question that day but he told people that red baller i'm not i'm not talking to that guy again and to me that's what that's where as a team i think you potentially suggest that max maybe you know it's it's difficult for people to kind of draw a line under that i think someone just needs to step in and i don't know if it's if if if horn would have done the same thing but i don't think knowing christian horn of the way i know him i don't think it would have allowed that to played out because i just think it looked bad for everybody involved sure you know um but uh but yeah i mean i i don't know did i don't know if you guys thought the initial question from abu dhabi was was fair you know the one not the one in uh or the conversation that came into the one from

abu dhabi the initial the initial question because i mean to me to me the thing with that was i think it's quite a fair question you know maybe maybe the timing of it was pretty brutal but that press conference that's also sports right yeah and i think yeah no i'm saying we have there at the time absolutely and we have coaches if you think about there's coaches and athletes that are getting questions in the middle of games now different in other sports right you have nfl coaches that are coming off the field on at the between the first and second quarter and they're getting asked questions their team's getting their shit pushed in and it's like so what did you do wrong in the first quarter yeah you know there's that famous the the Janice

Atena I can't even say his last name where where the journalist is very famous where they where they ask him if he feels like a failure he's like wait a second Kobe Bryant played all these seasons so were all the seasons he didn't win a championship of failure right so sometimes they get triggered and and it was a fair question but it triggered Max and yeah well that and that Janice example is a really good one because I remember at the time Lewis Hamilton shared that And my colleague at ESPN, Lawrence Edmondson, asked him about, asked Lewis about that in an interview in Austin, whichever year that would have been. And Lewis gave a great answer on why it, because he said, you know, sometimes, you know, we

get a microphone put in front of our face from people that have never raced and they say, you did a terrible job today, didn't you? And he's like, well, no, I just, you know, had a bad start, got some wheel spin. Then I kind of couldn't pass a guy for a couple of that, you know, so in their heads, they're like, well, yeah, it's harder than it looks. And so I do, I do empathize as well. But the thing, the thing with, with journalism that I think is harder and harder to do now is you're, it used to be you were the kind of the conduit between the sport and the fan, but now social media has kind of, it's taken a lot of that space, right? So now that job hasn't really changed, but at the same time it's changed completely because you're now trying to, you're trying to exist in this ecosystem that kind of is evolving around you all the time. So I think, yeah, it's, it's, it's tricky now because every, everyone has an opinion.

Everyone has a, a way to voice that opinion and everyone has, I mean, you know, that clip of that question that Giles asked, I mean, it was, it was viral before the press conference even finished, I think in, in Abu Dhabi last year. Yeah. And I remember getting back to my desk and it had been sent to me like, were you in this press conference? I was like, yeah, it's literally just finished. Like how, you know, how is it out?

Like, you know, which is, it's crazy. and there's and so you know you're constantly you're constantly kind of fighting the battle in journalism now of of working out what is actually out on social media because often if you've not been there or you've not been in the moment you've kind of missed it but uh but yeah uh it's it's it's an interesting one i you know hopefully they resolve that situation between the two of them but um i thought it was interesting to see the very big mix of reactions you know with fans and and stuff like that on what went down so speaking of mixed reactions i want to talk a little bit about nice nice nice segue into that i like that very nice segue where could you

possibly be going with that where could i possibly be going speaking of contra okay so obviously there's a lot of controversy right now that is going on i i'm sure you have watched the race interview with stefano domenicali i just watched it again this morning yeah watched it twice again because the first time i thought i was in some kind of suspended reality and i was screaming I was yelling quite literally. I've never had something trigger me this much. I was yelling at the phone. And I really think Stefano might have a future as a Premier League goalie because he was dodging things like it was it was pretty intense. So I want to talk to you a little bit about the controversy. How do you see that play out even at a Grand Prix weekend? And maybe perhaps your personal thoughts on what's going on? Let's let's get into it. you know the race interview is a good place to start i thought i thought it was a great interview um and he did one with autosport as well a week before and but both of them were very similar i thought in tone which was i don't know about you guys but it strikes me the word gaslighting a

little bit is where you kind of get to where i've got no issue with formula one i've got no issue with formula one turning around and saying look guys give this time because that is correct as well we've had three races it's like give this time let's let it play out but the concerning thing about those interviews that stefano domenicali's done is he's basically said no there's no issue everything's great everything's fine and overtakes and overtake and there's a quiet insinuation there he hasn't said it explicitly but there's that quiet insinuation that if you don't if you don't like this formula one then that's you're the problem it's not the car you're the issue and to me that that that just greats i mean i've got very mixed feelings

about these cars but i think that it's the blonde kind of denial of the criticism the formula one has kind of so far shown it's been the most concerning thing has some of it been overblown maybe but then at the same time you know i think if drive i've never known a change in formula one that's been this hated by drivers and the fact that so many of them have come out and spoken about it and even lewis hamilton and even charles leclerc who have been kind of two of the biggest cheerleaders for them when they had a pretty bad race in japan you could see the kind of well you know qualifying wasn't great i know they've tweaked things now again but you could see that these cars just fundamentally that it seems like they've taken a lot of the kind of the life and soul out

of racing a formula one car which is concerning um yeah i had the same reaction to you lally i was kind of shaking my head like i couldn't i think either career as a politician i mean i think dominicali you know whether that career waits for him or not but but that's what the role is anyway like the role he's in is is a basically a politician um i think where i get most like you said the denial is what stings it is the gaslighting right it's the fact that you're going to tell me that what i'm watching is good and that an overtake is an overtake i believe he said in there there was that's the point i was about to bring up yeah that one to me was was crazy because it's not is it about vast majority of fans yeah i asked him a thousand

times where are you getting this data vast majority of fans vast majority bless bless ed and jonathan they tried to get something out of him and he yeah yeah shout out to ed straw and john noble for that interview and then stewart codlinked the autosport one but they both all three of them you know in those respective interviews ask that question and we've been asking the same thing so again this gives some insight into the job we have really good relationships with the comms people at all the teams but formula one have comms people and so the fia and we've been asking the same thing well okay well you're saying that fan feedback's good but how are you collating that information together like who are you asking and how and

also how are you asking it because if you're saying to fans is the racing this year more fun for you than last year then you could easily arrive at a yes because last year the racing wasn't that great you know racing was pretty poor if it's is this racing the best racing a formula one you've ever seen so much of it comes down to the wording it also comes down to you know it also comes down to how long people have been watching and that's not a negative or a positive but unless you're asking people who've been watching for 50 years and people who have been watching for one race and you're trying to ask as many of those people as you can you're not really getting an you know an accurate sample of what's going on and the other one that's crazy to

me and i don't know if you both noticed it but and ed straw immediately kind of went back to stefano about it when he said well ticket sales so far have been great and he said well a lot of those were from last year yeah so look we'll see and this is the thing formal one i actually think for ticket sales this year will be great you know because you very rarely see these things tail off immediately but what will be concerning is if as we get into this regulation change if that does and again that's change i think it's all anecdotal and you know if you are online at all you can get a vibe check you could take a quick vibe check by reading social across the board you know what are people saying on instagram what are people saying on twitter what are people saying

on threads what are people you know just again it's a temperature check it's not hard and cold fact there are by far more people saying i'm going to cancel my subscription this is not racing there's just more people saying that and to deny that would be foolish again i don't know what the percentage increases if there is a percentage increase maybe people were always saying this they were just drowned out by better racing but going back to the overtake i want to you know indy um indycar they always say look how many overtakes we have to indy 500 and the biggest rebuttal from formula one fans is always like well those aren't overtakes they're just position changes yeah yeah well now here we are formula one they're just position changes yeah well that

was really telling in australia you know and and they put that out there but as soon as that race finished we in the media sense of again you can imagine how many what's i mean it's european-based sports so we all use whatsapp i know in america that took a while to come on we use whatsapp yeah number one forward communication at business speed so what's that good well i think to to exist in formula one you'd be lost without it but the amount of whatsapp groups we have in that and within minutes of the australia race finishing we had the overtaking stat you know straight there of like here's how many overtakes there were versus last year um and look the thing with overtakes is fascinating to me i think the obsession with overtakes to me and i i'd love

to know what you guys think about this is the obsession with lap time as well the formal ones always had where it's always like these are the quickest cars ever this and i'm like okay great if it's the fastest lap ever cool but is the racing fun or is it still really really bad like exactly i couldn't tell you off the top of my head what the lap record of every track is i've got like a ballpark idea and the thing with that yeah exactly right like doesn't matter because we've got to a point now where really you're shaving tenths of a second off or half a second off you're not you're not looking at formula one car being like that is going so much faster than it was two years ago you know you know obviously they're going a bit quicker they're going a bit

slower yeah the thing i always point out to to use that example is the thing when people think of usain bolt and the most iconic image of him it's it's usually beijing 2008 yeah it's that and it's him running across the line yeah right you know 20 meters left of the race and he's he's taunting everyone and he's still if you go back and look at usain bolt's record that was he ran it three times quicker than that after that you know but i couldn't tell you i couldn't tell you that i couldn't tell you that the four times he ran it i know it was nine seconds something but the time is kind of irrelevant unless you're actually watching the event you don't it's it's it's it's the moment he he runs it that is the important thing as a fan it's not it's not what

he sets obviously it is in the record books but that's not what people talk about they talk about the moment so overtakes and lap time i don't know if you guys think the same but i think this obsession with it i do think i do does concern me a little bit that it sometimes it feels like it blinds decision makers in formula one of like this is what we absolutely have to have yeah If you can change those things, then that's great, but it shouldn't be the build and end of it, I don't think. It's become this battle over who can be, it's become a marketing battle across all these series now.

Well, we're the fastest sport. We're the fastest, or series, we're the fastest series. I wrote this in a LinkedIn post this week where I said, where I kind of recap some of the changes, and I said this, cars will be slower, theoretically, I guess, I think, but the crowd has always read speed through aesthetics first, which is what we're talking about.

The hope is that the cars will look more alive, which is what they're hoping to deliver with these changes. I don't know if that's definitely going to happen, but it goes to your point. All we care about is what the cars look like. Why are we in love with the MP4? Why are we in love with the FW16, the 641, the whatever, you name it, F2004? Why do we love those cars? Because they look twitchy. They look like at any second they are absolutely going to go flip over, right?

don't look so stable they don't look like we don't want stability right speed means there's a little bit of danger there quite frankly if you look back at what was it the 2019 mercedes whichever one was 2021 mercedes i mean yeah not the fw it was the w whatever 17 or w19 whatever it was that was like you know they're the fastest car ever uh nate's gone again nate's lost again nate's He's got to fix his audio again. So I'll keep talking. Me and Lali will keep talking. You can keep on watching.

So then I want to ask you something, Vincenzo and Nate, because one of the quotes from the Dominicali interview that really kind of bugged me was when he said, we are bigger than racing around the track. And I think of like the American big four, right? Like the NFL, the NBA, the MLB, NHL. I can't imagine football, American football, and the three of us really like American football

and college football is something we share. I can't imagine them saying it's bigger than throwing the ball. No, the game is. Nothing's bigger than the actual game. That's what matters. Well, it shouldn't be. It shouldn't be, at least. It shouldn't be.

So when Stefano says we're bigger than racing on the track, well, no, dude, you're running a motorsport series. The most important thing to fans, to the people that he's sort of disenfranchising, which is us lifelong purists. I wouldn't say anybody. Yeah, that's what should matter the most. So I want to hear your guys' take on that.

And I also want to touch a little bit on the fact that purist has become like a four-letter word like we're like the bad guy the purist so i want to hear your thoughts on that that that should it be bigger than racing on the track shouldn't the racing on the track be what's the most important thing about the sport i want your take veen chit and i want to hear i'll go did the audio come back if i ever could hey is that there we go is that better hey good sorry that was that was really i was just like troubleshooting it in the background lately as you were chatting that was great sorry the chance that you go i'll say this and i've always said this you can go back and look at tweets at posts at articles i've written

the best form of entertainment will always be when you have great racing on track always great racing will always cause the best drama it'll always cause the most excitement you don't need to manufacture it right we went through that with drive to survive a lot of manufactured moments in the series itself which again it's entertainment i'm fine with that but on track i want to see the absolute best possible product you can produce as the level of series you are so when i go to an imsa race i know what to expect knowing that there's a ladder of kind of series right there's a hierarchy of series who has the most money to spend so i know when i go to an f1 race this is the standard indy car this is the standard mass car this is their

standard imsa this is the standard weck you know what you're going into give me the absolute best racing you can with the money or whatever the formula that you've created for yourself if you can't do that like lolly said and like stefano's alluding to you have now put us in a position where we have to go and accept the fact that i'm going to a concert or a club and there might be racing there like that's not what i signed up for i didn't sign up five years ago whatever you know like that's not what i signed up for nate no no that honestly the two of you are spot on and i think that's where liberty media kind of liberty media and as by extension of that domenicali have obviously i think you know they can turn around and point to a lot of great wins on and

off track with formula one and i think all of that that you've both said is kind of a byproduct of that i think they've been blinded a little bit by that success you know you look at formula one at the moment has the Midas touch like you would not believe until it came to these regs anyway but you you look at blockbuster movie tick netflix series tick you look at you know lego kardashian yeah disney yeah yeah i mean you don't but you know kim kardashian you know it's become so culturally relevant now and so culturally popular that i think for years and we we kind of sensed it a little bit and it's not a dig but i think they they you know formula one people in it i think got used to the fact that everything they did was successful everything

they did was was big i mean that you know that lego thing last year for example you know the cars in miami amazing and so many people i know who don't even watch formula one saw that But I think what's happened with that now is that I think the idea of the show has kind of, for a lot of people, has started to seep into the race itself. And I'll take you both back to Miami 2023. I had a conversation with Ryan McGee, who does College Game Day, does SEC Network with Marty Smith, but he and Marty were in Miami for the first race with ESPN. and I'll never forget that um that Ryan McGee told me and my colleague Lawrence at the time we were we were having some some drinks one evening and he said you know what Formula One's doing exactly what NASCAR did at the start of the 2000s when NASCAR had never been more popular it was exactly it the drivers were household names in a way they had never been before you know Dale Earnhardt was legitimately one of the most yeah was just one of the most one of the

popular people in America you know it came to sports and they forgot about the fan base they they started making decisions that drove the fan base away and he and i remember mcgee telling me this at the time and that was 20 maybe it was either the first miami or the second miami and back then i was like well but formula one's not doing that because they're because they're getting all these things right but even mcgee could see it then he's like they're doing the same he was like dude they're doing the same thing that nascar did they and he said they'll win until they stop winning and when they stop winning they won't realize they've stopped winning for a few years They won't realize that everything they're doing is great.

And by then, it's too late. So, you know, that's what alarmed me when I saw the thing about the ticket sales. Because I was like, well, the ticket sales aren't going to be relevant. Always going to lag. I just want to say that the ticket sales also, but Nate is on to something about like, there is a bubble and it's going to pop, right? And if you've sort of alienated all these like people that have been watching for 10, 20, 30, 40 years, what's going to happen?

I understand that the casual fan is now who they're catering to the most, and it's very obvious, but they're also, in a way, neglecting the, quote, purist that I referred to earlier that has become a bit of a curse word. And what's going to happen when this bubble bursts? The people who get up and watch FP1 at 2 a.m., those people should matter to your sport as well. Those people are always going to watch. I think the concern and what you've alluded to, Nate was saying it too, I don't know if

nate can hear me but the concern is going to be when dollars start pulling out and brands stop you know sponsors start pulling out or the sponsorship deals start dropping in value because you know what 10 years a billion dollars that lvmh dropped might not you know what how about 10 years 500 million now well that's a big you know that's a that's a huge drop you know what happens when mclaren when zach brown has saturated every possible american brand and you can't squeeze what is it you can't squeeze water from a stone right like at some point it's gonna dry up so so nate we i i'm i'm of the mindset that lando norris has won championship in him and he's gotten it a little bit of the jensen button thing i do think and and remember

we were sad having a beer and i and i told you i was killer i think he's the killer yeah i remember i remember you saying that i remember and you told me and you told me if that word appeared in espn uh copy that you would come and you'd come and get me i'd come after you signed a document perhaps that day yeah so so i want to i want to hear your thoughts about this season obviously everybody was gung-ho about george george george russell world champion but now we're three races in i want to hear your thoughts on how you see the the season developing a bit well you know what i see a lot of parallels this year to last year in that the guy that we all thought was favorite coming in Lando last year George this year wins the first race you think okay there they go and

then the young exciting well you know the you know the young kind of prodigy teammate who I obviously slightly different for Piastri because he'd you know he claimed a win before that season but in terms of the dynamic and the feeling around them it feels very similar with Kimi maybe more so actually because Kimi's kind of won his first race this year but I think that that will be a saving grace of formula one this season regardless of how good the rules are if we get a good fight between the mercedes drivers and if there's some needle in it by the end as well where you end up kind of i don't know it's like 2016 again or you know we get papaya rules style thing where the team can't work how to let them race or whatever that will save a lot of the negativity around

formula one's regs if ultimately if the if the a bit like last year i mentioned earlier that you know last year the racing wasn't great in terms of the actual the you know the start to finish of a grand prix but it was still you still wanted to watch every weekend because max was chasing the two guys down you didn't know if the two drivers would collide again you didn't know if mclaren were going to make a mess when it came to pyroles there was some reason to watch every weekend so yeah i can see that happening again and to be honest with you i all off season i was thinking well george russell if the car's there he's going to win it i don't know kimmy i remember somebody once told me about kimmy at mercedes he said the thing with the thing with kimmy antonelli that we

think is so exciting is that he doesn't know how quick he is he doesn't understand he doesn't understand it's almost like he has to drive a car slower to make sure it stays on the racetrack than he can drive if that makes sense and yeah i think that there's so few racing drivers that have ever legitimately been like that and obviously the first moment he ever drove the mercedes he crashed out at monza there's been that feeling about him and it's so exciting to see him and i think george russell the great thing will be as well is that if russell if russell you know bounces back and gets himself into the fight then then good on him you know well done um but i think he's probably a bit surprised at how quickly this is turned around um internally so at the moment i can't i can't

call it with those two guys i'd love to see ferrari get involved but i think it's kimmy v russell and now my money wouldn't be on russell i know i don't if you guys are the same i'm i'm a big Kimi guy same yeah well big Kimi guy big Kimi guy and I told you about Kimi the cat earlier I might have to get another one I'm a big Kimi guy obviously he first Italian driver really full-time driver I mean Giovinazzi was a little bit but really a full-time driver here so I'm big time if Ferrari can't put things together with the duo they have you know who I like both of the drivers then i want kimmy even if it's in a mercedes i'm okay with it uh that's that's my tip but i like your take so who do you who would you if you had to put money down today and bet on one driver who

are you betting on i think right now i'd still say george just because we've seen we've seen years of russell i mean russell last year probably if you took max out of the season last year russell's probably driver of the year with gasly maybe that it was the two of them with with just in terms of consistency the lack of a stake russell still has that whole package i think but the next few races i think will determine you know he's not had to react to a having a title winning car but b his teammate is also up for the challenge in the same way you know he got there and the car immediately dropped off a cliff you know and he beat lewis but it was like but the car wasn't there so there was always a question of like how would it happen when it all

comes together but i would still put money on george but i'm the same as you vincenzo i mean kimmy's so fun so exciting like yeah just just um if he keeps driving like that then it could be a it could be a really special season i'm happy with it i'd be happy with it last question to wrap up here what is your absolute favorite track in the world that you've covered maybe actually let's do this who has the best paddock uh media the media center sorry not paddock best media center in the world that you've attended best best media center is austria best food best food too right the food is incredible i have heard this from many yeah the food so food is hit and miss so honestly like sometimes people think we get we get kind of fed like kings some places you get you feel like your

royalty that is what the food is so good but also the reason the media center is great is you literally overlook that whole you think about austria it's so beautiful it's like so beautiful and your the media center is overlooking the the kind of the grandstand and the and the and so you and watch the whole thing so when when uh the staff and the clerk collided in 2019 i was sat at my desk and usually you're watching on the tv screen i was sat at my desk watching out of the window as they went up and because there's a two second delay on the the coverage versus the the tv just because of the broadcast i saw them as they and they just went out of view and then i looked and saw them collide so we've got like the two hits of it crazy that's so fun so that one that

one's great and even there's even a bit of a walk to the like from the media center to the had it but it's so good that you don't mind this one coming up miami you're in the hard rock stadium i love that one as well i think that's such a cool touch so yeah those those two stand out and then vegas vegas is pretty wild as well vegas pretty cool yeah it's freezing cold though that's the problem they do it so it's just the wrong time of year so you're just constantly shivering in vegas but uh yeah i learned that the hard way the in 24 actually danica patrick i hung out i was hanging out with her under she had a heater so i was i actually stood with her under the heater because it was i had just a short sleeve shirt on like this it's vegas yeah you need to freezing that's

the way the wind was handing out beanies and and gloves because that's how cold it was to everyone yeah we took we took a bunch of beanies and gloves from the wind because we were freezing what do you mean a bunch espn did an interview with lawson then i remember we had a heater next to the and he just basically he sat next to the stage and said let me know the moment i need to be on and he hugged this this heater came on i was freezing and then ran back to the to the thing so yeah that was so good so yeah vegas is interesting but yeah austria austria to answer the first question is is is it that's the one all right austria then that's that's the next uh that's where we have to go to then austria next annual saunders it has been a pleasure to see you thank

you and we'll see you in miami coming up yes we'll do this we'll do this properly again apologies we'll do this properly again and especially like because things are going to evolve as the season evolves so we would love to chat with you again

thank you so much for joining us it was wonderful to see you and if you have not read his books yet go pick up Forza Federati

and Lando Norris Road to World Champion both of those books are available now so yeah there's a few things I wrote one about

Daniel Ricciardo Daniel Ricciardo yeah go buy the two newer books Forza Federati and the Lando Norris book yeah those are the ones that we want to sell out if you find a rugby book written by nate saunders

please do let me know um buy it and give it to the real nate saunders yes please nate we will see you next week thank you so much for joining us thank you guys