P1 with Matt and Tommy - F1 Testing Day 2 reaction

Episode Date: February 24, 2023

Another day of F1 testing. Verstappen looked ominous, Mercedes had some issues and what's Haas' mini pit wall all about? All this and more in our testing round-up.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 and welcome back to the P-1 podcast with Man Tommy. I don't know why I went for a Halloween vibe at the start of this podcast, but welcome along to another day of Formula One. We are past the halfway point of Formula One testing. Only three days for the teams and the drivers to figure out what the hell they are up to and what they're going to do with potentially their terrible cars, or maybe they're amazing cars of your Max Verstappen. Welcome Tom Bellingham to the podcast, as always,

resident Max Verstappen fanboy with the Max Cape in the background, probably feeling quite good after today's running. Yeah, he's looking a little bit ominous. I know it's only testing, but yeah, beaming smile on his face after day one, fastest on day one, and second fastest again, but on a slower tire. And, yeah, the Red Bulls looking rather quick

and just kind of just out there doing Maxa Stappan things almost feels like it's where we left off last year, which I can hear the groans of every non-Maxa-Stappan fan right now. But it's only testing. It is only testing. And he was not the fastest driver of the day. The fastest time was set by Joaquin. On the C-5s, but we don't pay attention to that part, P1 by a massive four-hundredths of a second ahead of Maxfoste.

Stappan. Yes, Jeho was on the C-5s, Vestappen on the C-3s. So that is pretty ominous. When you look back, the next C-3 runner was Fernando Alonso in third,

a whole six-tenths back in the Aston Martin. But once again, I would say the Aston's looking pretty saucy. Yeah, I dare say, I'd like to be proven wrong, but dare I say that

Joe Gwainu's lap was maybe a bit of a glory run at the end. We saw a lot of kind of high fuel, not really much lap time action, I guess, today, if you like. But Jeuguyen, you maybe just wanted to go P1, celebrate P1. Hello, nice, like that, like that a lot. Does it make you think of P1? Absolutely.

Not you. Obviously, it makes you think of P1. I was posing a question to our audio listeners. But yes, let's know via your review, because if you leave us a five-star review, we'll read it out in the next podcast. Don't let's forget, Tommy. All right. Next one, tomorrow, the final day of testing, we read out a five-star review. So get involved. Go do it. I read all of them, by the way. I read absolutely all of the reviews. It's a lovely one. Thank you so much. Actually, they are all so lovely. Thank you so much.

Okay, moving on now. Most of the things that happened were things that weren't really to do with the performance or the actual lapse. Like, for example, the practice start that went on was a bit of a strange moment. So there was, what, six, seven cars ready to have the practice start at the end of the morning session. So in that last 15 minute period, they run through all the processes. And then at the end of that, they then have the, I guess, practice. Well, they have the abandoned start.

Then they have the practice start, don't they? And for whatever reason, some of the drivers reacted on the lights going out, Hamilton, Magnuson, and then one other. I don't, I can't remember off the top of my head. But then you had others like Lando Norris just. literally didn't move. So thankfully, they have catlight reactions because they're Formula One drivers, but it was quite a funny thing to watch. And then on top of that, the clip is actually on the F1 YouTube channel. You had Anthony Davidson doing the strangest impression of Crofty

you'll ever hear. It is, it is mind-boggling what that clip is. It is absolutely insane. If you go on that clip, if you just have no context and you go on that clip, you're like, who is this new commentator? Someone in our Twitch chat said that he sounded like Patrick from SpongeBob and I think that is the perfect analogy. And yeah, if you've just joined and kind of not watched any of testing

and you hear that as the commentator, you're probably like, who is this new commentator that is joined? So yeah, it was a funny, funny moment. It's one of those things where you can imagine it being played out of context with like Formula One, the 20 best driver. in the world and then showing that clip where they're all kind of tripping over each other with a start.

Lance and Davidson, oh, he's on there, he's on the grid, and he's on. Yeah, it's very bizarre. Crazy, absolutely crazy. But back to some actual things that happened on track, one of which was George Russell, breaking down with a hydraulic issue. Now, we don't tend to see a huge amount of unreliability from Mercedes. I think they only had one breakdown last year. Correct me if I'm wrong, Tommy, which was Hamilton at the end of the year in Abu Dhabi. The rest was obviously down to crashes and so on. But in terms of actual mechanical reliability, Mercedes always seemed very bulletproof, but a small hitch in that plan for Russell today.

Yeah, had to finish his day early. But yeah, very rare to see that from Mercedes. And yeah, not good for them because we mentioned last time, there was, have we got the lap times? Yeah, so a lot of people did a lot of laps, but I think Russell only did, how many did Russell do? 26, yeah. So that's the lowest lap count by quite a long way.

And everyone else got plenty of laps in. It's just so rare to see any kind of mechanical failures now. And we mentioned actually on stream that we haven't seen anywhere near the amount of red flags like you normally do because Barcelona, where they used to test and they did the private test last year, one, the cars are more reliable because of the carryover and rules. And two, if you go off track in Bahrain, it's just flat runoff and you're fine. Whereas in Barcelona you're beached in the gravel, they red flag it. There's a delay. I think start of last year. There's so many red flags from what I remember of people going in the gravel and it was

another red flag, another red flag. But here, just a very normal session apart from a bizarre practice start and Russell breaking down. Yeah, considering there's what, eight and a half hours of, I guess, the clock ticking down. Not a lot went on in that eight and a half hours, but one thing that came out, which is very interesting, McLaren saying they're not hitting their targets. Zach Brown just basically straight up giving everybody the indication that McLaren ain't doing so good. No, we were worried about that yesterday before Norris popped in P5, but again, the actual quote is, we know we set some goals for development, which we didn't hit. We felt it was better to be honest about that.

They seem very pessimistic. The drivers seem pessimistic. The team feel pessimistic. and they're kind of already talking about upgrades and getting them in as soon as possible. It's a big yikes. And the thing is for them being pessimistic as well, when the reality is that right now,

they've kind of set into a trend of fighting for P4 in the championship. Like that just seems to be where McLaren have settled themselves into. They never talk about, ah, it's time to start winning races. This year is going to be the year. The fact that they are hesitant and anyone's really expecting them them is to secure P4 is very concerning, especially when you look back to this time last year, round one in Bahrain. They were pretty much the worst car on the grid. They were. They're right

near the back, weren't they? And yeah, you're right. The fact that McLaren are, they're saying they're not hitting their targets and you've got to think their target is probably around fourth. it's not, they're not going to, there's no way that they're going to, this year, think they're going to be right at the front with not much of a rule change. So not looking good for McLaren could see another struggle. You may have had, you may have pulled an absolute blinder with your season predictions with Aston Martin finishing best of the rest, Alonzo finishing best of the rest. Because right now, everyone's hyping up what that Aston Martin looks like on track.

I think Jack Duhin was having a great interview on Sky with Rachel Brooks. and he's really articulate. I actually really enjoyed listening to Jack Dewan and the way he was speaking about the car and every kind of technical thing you can think of. But he spoke about it in a way that you could quite understand. But he was saying how the Aston Martin just looks so planted and so balanced.

And well, you know, when drivers say that, it could be quite an exciting time if you're an Aston Martin fan. Or a Fernando Alonzo fan more to the point like you are, Tommy. Yeah. So well done. What prediction, hopefully, maybe. I hope you're happy with the money. Well, go.

Okay, moving on now, Tommy. You've got a bit of news that I don't actually know much about, and it's to do with Hasse and their pit wall. Now, I miss this. Do you want to enlighten people? I will. So a kind of unusual thing that we've not seen before, but Hasse have introduced a mini pit wall.

It looks quite comical, because obviously the teams normally have eight people on the pit wall, and, you know, like a fancy looking pit wall with loads of computers and stuff, and Hasse only have three chairs on theirs and very small pit wall. And the reason they've done that is because their thinking is what would you rather have because of the budget cap, of course, and they're saying that not putting an extra six, seven people on the pit wall or whatever, they actually will save quarter of a, quarter of a million, I think they said, which they'd rather spend on car upgrades. So I think that's

going to be quite a fascinating thing to find out later down the line what these teams start doing to basically spend money in other areas. That is very interesting. I suppose for Hasse, they aren't a big team and they're not getting anywhere near the budget cap anyway. So this is literally just money that they are moving around their team. And I mean, I'm now very interested to see how their strategy goes with only three on the pit wall. And they've sent five other people home. So we will see if... They do think they can potentially start hitting the budget cap now they with their new sponsor.

Oh, really? Potentially. Yeah. Now they've got their new title sponsor Money, Money, Graham. They're expecting big things. Oh, cash money. Okay. Well, good luck to have.

We now move on to, well, no report, which is around Stroll and his condition. The chatter is that he's broken both of his wrists, and we don't know the level of which the break is. I mean, for me, it seems as though he will not drive in Bahrain. I think they're leaving it to the last minute just to try and get him in the car, especially if the Aston Martin's looking good. Lawrence Stroll is the big bad boss of the team, and his son's not going to drive in the first race the season when Asson Martin could be the fourth best team. You know they'll leave it to the last minute, but it could be Drogovich's first race in Bahrain. Yeah, it could well be.

It's not usual testing where maybe in some tests we've had it before where in past years gone by where there's like maybe a couple of weeks or stuff. We're going to be racing next week. Like a week today, it's going to be we're going to be getting down to. to like practice. So yeah, it's going to be going to be crazy to see if he actually makes it in time. It is a race against time. And yeah, we could see Drogavich making his debut. I mean, if that Aston is good, so unfortunate for Stroll to have had no testing.

Because was it last year, Vettel had COVID and missed some of the rounds as well, didn't he? So he's going to, we're going to have a situation again where we might have a, Aston Martin Reserve driver for the start of the season. Oh, history repeating itself. Yeah. Okay, well, look forward to that. I guess a few other things to highlight. DeVries did a really good lap and finished P4 today on the C4 tires,

did 74 laps, so he can be quite happy with himself in the Alpha Tari. I think Logan Sargent, got to give him a shout out in P7. Yes, was on the C5 tires, and when you compare that to Alfa Romeo's show, you've got nine tenths between them. So we don't know yet how good that Williams is, but then again, that was done maybe a little bit earlier in the day when the sun was shining. But still, P7 ahead of Leclair, not sure what we can make of that, if anything, definitely nothing because it's testing.

Both Mercedes were 13th and 15th as well, so a very underwhelming day for them, especially after Russell's problems as well. That, yeah, I think that pretty much wraps up day two. Would you say, Tommy? I was also actually going to say about Russell, I do enjoy not him breaking down, but the panic of the marshals trying to balance the car as it goes on to the, the recovery vehicle. Like, if I was in charge of that, the car would be upside down.

Everyone would see everything and it would be a disaster. Chaos. Yeah, I bet Mercedes are there trying to. You see this a lot in testing where because I guess there's still time for early in the season for teams to see other cars. And they've probably got spy photographers everywhere all dotted around the track. So when a car breaks down, it's probably when panic sets in for the car. teams, one, because their car's broken down, and two, because the other teams can start

snapping photos of it and the floor and everything. And we know with these new cars that the floor is the most important bit of it, really. That's where all the downforce is and the clever stuff. And also, before we go, we should probably mention that weird kind of Williams thing that was going on with Sargent that seemed as though it was a rehearsal for the whole procedure of if you have an ERS failure, apparently, according to Crofty, seemed very eloquent in the way that he was describing it. So I'm going to take what he said as gospel. And so that was a bit of a strange moment. And then Joe as well, right at the end of the day as well, having a problem potentially with his clutch. Just when he shifted into first gear,

it sounded like a squeaking, a baby squeaking, maybe. I don't know how you would describe it. I'm not technical, but squeaking baby. Yeah, that needs changing. Anyway, there you go. You don't tune into P1 for any sort of technical analysis. And that is where we're going to leave it. Tom, P1, Bellingham. What is your final thoughts? Final thoughts are let's get some high speed running tomorrow and we can get some some hype when Alonzo goes P1 and everyone's jumping around going crazy thinking that Astor

Martin have built the greatest car ever and then get to testing and his car, sorry, get to the first race and his car sets on fire in three laps. It's probably what's going to happen. Let's be honest. Anti-jinks is fully happening right now, Tommy. Well done. So we're going to be live on Twitch. P1 Tommy for the final two hours.

You put in here one hour, and I'm not Ron Burgundy. I'm pretty sure it's the final two hours. We decided. So yeah, I was ahead of the game there and read it. Well, read it and then changed it. So yes, come and join us. Matt P1, Tommy, live on Twitch for a watchalong of the final two hours of testing tomorrow. If you can't make that, we'll be back here, of course, tomorrow on YouTube. Also on audio platforms for the roundup of the final day of testing.

So we'll see you then. Bye. Bye. is a Stack production and part of the ACAST creator network.