P1 with Matt and Tommy - F1 Testing Day 1 reaction

Episode Date: February 23, 2023

F1 IS BACK! We finally had cars back on our screens for day one of testing in Bahrain. We go through what surprised us, who looks quick and who appears to be struggling ahead of the new season.Join us tomorrow on Twitch for day two of testing! You can also find us on Twitter, Instagram, YouTube and TikTok.***Please take the time to rate and review us on Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your pods. It means a great deal to the show and will make it easier for other potential listeners to find us. Thanks!*** Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Hello everybody. A one podcast. Formula One, I can officially say, has returned. We have cars on track. None of this. Oh, the livery looks a bit rubbish. No, it's time to talk about the four wheels going forward most of the time and how quickly those drivers have managed that.

Yes, day one of barine testing is here. Tommy, Tom Bellingham. sweet dulcet tones of the co-founder. There he is, in my ears, in your eyes, potentially if you're over on YouTube. What a day. We've actually had a lot of running today. So have we.

We've been on Twitch as of recording this for nine and a half hours. Matt P1, Tommy, if you don't follow already, boom. Get the plug in right now. But thankfully, still buzzing, seeing cars on the track. Max Verstappen and Fernando Alonso 1-2, what more could I ask for? I know, that's actually crazy. That's actually ridiculous.

Of course, the Aston Martin didn't start particularly well. They had Dugovic breaking down only a few minutes into the session, and we were sort of joking, weren't we? Oh, here we go. Alonzo's gone to Aston Martin. Everything's starting to fall apart. And actually, as well, I think Fernando Alonzo had a problem with his floor when he went in as well, which meant he had to go back in and have some work done.

But in the end, Mr. Fernando, the two-time champ with the Purple Last Sector, just narrowly missing out on the fastest time of the day. Not that we're analysing times, but also Fernando Lonzo's P2. So let's analyse the times, you know what I mean? Yeah, it was a surprise because for most of the session, you had the usual suspects at the front, not just Vastappan doing Vastappen things,

but, you know, Ferrari were up there, Mercedes were up there, and it looked like we're just going to get the usual top three. And then out of nowhere, Fernando just sticks it in P2, very close to Vestappen's time at the top. Obviously, it's only testing. But the Aston looked good.

I mean, what a turnaround from the start of the session where we were, like you say, making memes about Alonzo's moved to another team and suddenly they're unreliable and terrible again. And that Aston looked hooked up in the hands of Alonzo. It did. And I think obviously you can't take too much from testing. We're not going to say that Fernando Alonzo is going to be on the front row of the grid. come next Sunday.

But shut it. Contain your fanboy, but I think it does in a way solidify that Aston Martin at least have a good car to work with after day one of testing. They got good mileage. Alonzo got 60 laps,

Djagovich 40, so it's 100 in total, which isn't too bad. It's not the highest by any stretch. For Stappen, on the other hand, managed 157. But the fact that they've clearly got,

at least with Alonzo, a good baseline, with the car. He was pushing at the end as well to try and get the fastest lap and didn't manage it. But it's a good sign for Aston Martin, I would say.

Yeah, definitely. You said it during our Twitch stream. He wanted that fastest lap. He wanted to end to the day fastest and just probably silence a lot of doubters that he's moved. Because to jump ahead, maybe I'll move the talking point around.

But Alpine were nowhere, his old team. 16 and 17. We're so excited about Formula One being back. We can dot around however we like, Tommy. I like the fact that you're just so excited. And this is you being excited. I know that people might not realize that. But yeah, Alpine, 16th, 17th.

They clocked 113 laps altogether. But yes, we shouldn't take times. But they didn't, yeah, they were very anonymous. We didn't see much of them in terms of really anywhere near the top 10, let alone the top of the leaderboard. The only thing I think I saw from Alpine at all was them kind of putting duct tape on the wobbly wing mirrors. Their poor Castrol sponsor would then just ca.

Yeah. Fuming. They're having words. Absolutely fuming. Oh, chinks. Hello. Let's talk about Ferrari, shall we? There was a big talking point,

which turned out to be maybe a bit more easily explained than perhaps some of us were wondering, was in the morning session. Carlos Sines was out there, and there was a bit of a sucky point, I suppose. for want of a better way. But it was kind of an indentation. It was clearly being like pushed in on the front part of the nose.

And we've actually put it as strange, big, sucky nose. That's what's in our podcast sheet. Technical analysis. You come here for the technical expertise of Tom Bellingham and Matt Gallagher. But apart from that, that was clearly a malfunction. Ferrari, I think, came out and basically confirmed that it wasn't meant to do that. And it didn't make any sense for it to do that. Because realistically, that would actually have disturbed the airfurt.

flow more if that was something they were trying to achieve, which then again is Ferrari, so you never know. But they looked quite good. Third and fourth, every single time they went fastest, you best believe I was on the Twitch stream hyping the life out of them. I'm ready for my heart to be broken once again. But they were all on the C3 tyres worth mentioning the top six, Norris and Hamilton being fifth and sixth, all of them on the C3 tyres. So make of that what you will. It's so funny in testing that every time something weird happens, you assume it's some crazy innovation. And yeah, all of us were in chat, like,

is this the new Das? Like, what on earth is that? And then it's just the fact that the nose wasn't working properly. So if you've not seen it, I guess you'd call it like a little bit of a dimple, if you like, just kind of dimpled in down the straight and then popped out. And it only happened once,

but it's just one of those things where it got caught by the cameras. And because it's testing, you assume that it's this incredible, exciting innovation, but no, just just the nose doing weird things. Also, whilst we're talking about Ferrari, it's probably worth mentioning signs making the same mistake, I think, three times in his morning session run just after the first sector into that S's section, just losing the car and going straight on, which was a bit of action, I suppose. Pretty much the only real action in the sense of that and maybe a lot of lockups into the double left hand. downhill turn 11, I want to say.

Apart from that, we didn't see any crashes. There was one red flag. For the Drogovic thing. Yeah, not many stoppages at all. There wasn't much chaos in the slightest, which means probably tomorrow the entirety of the eight and a bit hours are going to be red flagged. Yeah, if you actually look at the lap times,

sorry, the number of laps, normally on day one of testing, you get at least one driver or one team that's had an absolute mare and maybe done five, six, seven laps. But what's the fewest laps was Drogovic, I believe, on 40? Yeah, Drogovic on 40 laps. Norris did 40 laps and they both had quite big problems and were in the pits for quite a while.

So for them to still do 40 laps is very impressive. So we now move on to McLaren. You mentioned Norris, 40 laps. they struggled again. They had some break problems with Norris. Maybe that was something to do with it being in the daytime because they seemed to run a bit better, didn't they, in the night? Obviously, cooler conditions.

And Norris did end up P5, which was a nice lap time. Not that we care about lap times, as we keep saying. Don't make any judgments there. But I suppose when you looked at the start of their day, you're going, oh my God, they're like 17th. And obviously Norris hadn't been out. they were really low down on the leaderboard. You're wondering,

is this going to be another travesty of a start of a season for McLaren? But at least it was slightly more promising towards the end. 92 laps in total for McLaren, which is probably on the lower end, if not maybe the least. What's Aston Martin? Yeah, even Aston Martin. So I think McLaren probably did the least amount of laps of anyone.

But it's not like it's McLaren Honda days and where they were doing 10 laps or five laps or even zero. lapse in a test session. 90 odd is still a decent amount of data collection. It was very, very, very concerning at one point when you had Piastri down right at the bottom, second from last because Perez didn't do any running. So Piastri 18th, but second from last. And yeah, the fact that you had him all the way down the order and I'm not looking very quick. and then Norris went out and it sounded like there was problems again, not had confirmation, I don't believe yet,

but there was talk of, it could be the brakes, and they were also taping up the kind of wheel brows. So it was very concerning, and you saw Lando getting out the car and looking annoyed, and we were talking about it, weren't we on stream going, when is Lando going to get the car he deserves for his talent and be able to show what he can do? and if it was going to be another disaster like it was last year at Bahrain. But at the end of the day, P5 looks pretty good, but it's only testing.

Exactly. But you're not going to complain finishing P5 unless you have one miller of fuel left as you finish your hot lap and you've just given absolutely everything, which I doubt McLaren would have done. Speaking of teams that maybe looked all right, Williams, out of nowhere, especially in Alex Albin, seventh fastest today. Bear in mind as well, would have been in the morning session, hotter conditions, track wouldn't have been as quick. It looks very nice, 74 laps on the board for him as well. And alongside him,

of course, Logan Sargent, or should I call him Logie Sarge as, as F1 tweeted his name or nickname as, which I'm still trying to digest and is digesting very badly. He finished 10th. And overall, Williams did 149 laps. So right up there with the top of the mileage, which they can be very happy with, I'd say. And Tommy, look, you were saying that they might well be P20 merchants, but it's not looking that way after they won a testing.

I will happily be proved wrong. I think it's great that Williams came straight out of the blocks. Performing well, Albin was up in kind of P3, P4, at the start in the morning session putting in quick lap times and to be able to do it straight away was very impressive

Logan was in in the afternoon or Logie Saj like you said which became a bit of a meme in the Twitch chat we were determined not to make that a thing but we're definitely going to make it a thing and yeah he's up there in P10 when he first went out the pits

and was wrestling the car like it was a drift car or I guess like an F2 car really he was turning into the corners fighting the wheel looking all over the place but by the end of it looked a lot more hooked up and yeah Williams in seventh and tenth it's only testing but you never know and if if they've been if they prove me wrong then I will be more than happy I won't be mad about it because it'd be nice nice to see Williams back towards the front or the very least, just not the back so they can join that midfield fight and we want as many competitive cars as possible. Well, Williams had said on the

lead up to testing that they felt like they're going to be more in the mix than where they were perhaps last year. So from the evidence that they've displayed today, it definitely seems like they're moving in the right direction. But yeah, I find it interesting that you say about Logan Sargent and it almost as though he was adapting his driving style as he was adapting his driving style as he was doing more laps and by the end, doing a decent job. So you can't, you can't really criticize him for what he managed. Didn't make a mistake, didn't crash, like some rookies might do. Of course, Bahrain is quite a forgiving track, I would say, unless you properly lose it and just spear into the wall. There's quite a bit of runoff to work with. So maybe that's working in his

favour slightly compared to, you know, the Barcelona's of this way. You're in the gravel and then you're stuck. But no, a very decent job from Williams for sure. And I think that's, that pretty much wraps up day one of testing. There's not a lot of chaos to talk about, Tommy. Is there anything else you want to reflect on? Maybe a bit of porpoising or... Yes, actually, I completely ignored that point on the sheet. So I probably should have mentioned that porpoising.

Ferrari seemed to be bouncing around at certain points. It wasn't a consistent bouncing around. But clearly when they were changing the setup of the car, there were moments when especially Charles LeClau was bouncing around quite heavily in the afternoon session. There were other cars as well, but I wouldn't say it's anywhere near the level of what we saw previously. Mercedes, I think we're bouncing around a bit as well. Yeah, a little bit.

Certainly not anywhere near the problems they had before. It kind of looked like I think it was Alpine was bouncing a little bit, but Merck wasn't bad at all, which is good for them because that was really the downfall of the whole season last year. because we can see they've still gone for their, some say would be a risk, the keeping with that kind of no side pod or at least slim side pod approach. And the fact that they've gone with that

and then could just focus on not bouncing. Yeah, Toto, according to Twitch chat said, Toto said no bouncing in an interview. So great for them that they don't, if it carries on, that they don't have to spend half, a season. One person called Mike in the Twitch chat has said, no bouncing. Tommy's like, my sources tell me. Yeah. But if they don't have to spend half a season doing it, then yeah,

they should be better for their concept that they don't have to start doing ridiculous, experimental things like they were doing last year. Indeed. They have got, as something was described earlier in the Twitch chat, it was like a travel pillow. the Mercedes sort of back part of the car. If you actually look at the angle, sort of slightly above where the driver would be sitting, you will not be able to not see the travel pillow once you spot it. So go and check that out after this podcast.

But yeah, that pretty much wraps it up, I would say, Tommy. What are your final thoughts of day one of testing? Final thoughts are, it's just been so good to have F1 cars back on track and enjoying it with the lovely people in the Twitch chat. It's just been... Matt P1, Tommy.

Absolutely. Come on. I haven't... Get involved. Have I not taught you yet to do a little plug here and there? Does it have to always be me? Am I the walking advert?

Yeah, yeah, yeah. But no, in all seriousness, we've been very excited for Formula One to come back and especially with this new venture going into an exciting season that we're super excited for. And the first day that we've had on Twitch,

like I say, been streaming for nearly 10 hours now, about 10 hours. So I do apologise. I'm also very red because I've done a few shooies. And also my PC is very, very warm. But it's been an awesome day. It certainly has my final thoughts. Absolutely insane scenes on the Twitch channel today.

If you haven't seen us on Twitch yet, Matt P1, Tommy, if you want to come and join us for the next two days of F1 testing. We hit 10,000 subscribers on Twitch. I want to shout out. each and every one of those on Twitch chat that have been enjoying us, even if it's just watching or if it's subscribing or whatever it is. So feel free to come join us over the next two days, and that is pretty much it.

Thank you for joining our roundup of day one of testing. We'll see you very soon for another video tomorrow. I don't know why I said soon. It's definitely tomorrow. Bye! Bye!