P1 with Matt and Tommy - More Ferrari pain in Saudi Arabian practice

Episode Date: March 17, 2023

Friday practice is done in Saudi and it's Max Verstappen leading the way again. Can Fernando Alonso challenge? Will Ferrari fans finally have something to smile about? Probably not.COME SEE US LIVE! There are just a handful of tickets left for our first London live show, at Leicester Square Theatre on 6th April! Get your tickets before the sell out!Follow us on socials! You can find us on Twitter, Instagram, Twitch, 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.

Welcome back to the P-1 podcast, otherwise known as Ferrari, will not be getting anywhere near. P-1 podcast. I am depressed, Tom Bellingham, co-founder. Yeah, wow, cool. You know, in the predictions podcast when I was so unbelievably, well, not unbelievably confident, I was just picking myself up from the gutter. to try again. I'm even wearing, for audio listeners, a Ferrari T-shirt. And it's not gone well, has it, so far?

It's not. It's actually done, they've managed to be worse than that first race. Oh, wow, and it's only Friday. It's gone really badly. Every time you predict Cheryl to do well, something goes wrong. The thing is, I want to give good vibes, otherwise everyone will just think I hate Ferrari. You know, like when people have assumed that whenever you don't predict Vastappen

to finish first, that you, in fact, don't believe in Max Vastapen's abilities when actually you just don't want to jinx him. I just did it because I love him. And it didn't go well. Max Verstappen dominating Friday today. And despite him having a tummy ache, a stomach bug, and you're thinking maybe championship back on. As soon as he wheels himself out in free practice one,

he was a bit late to it, maybe 15, 20 minutes, goes out, just smashes everyone in both FP1 and FP2. It's great. It's fantastic viewing. Yeah, I guess there's not, it wasn't really a surprise, the fact that Vastappen dominating and Red Bull dominating because we're just hoping, even me as a Red Bull fan, that their development is going backwards this year and the other teams are going forwards because there's not really a huge surprise that they ended the season with the best car. There's not been a huge major rule change. And yeah, that car looks absolutely on rails. They were talking about it in FP2 actually showing the clips,

and they are just running that car so low. It's sparking everywhere, and it just looks so planted compared to everyone else. Everyone else bar maybe one man, 41-year-old. The savior of 2023. Jesus himself, Fernando Alonzo. He could be the only threat to Red Bull. I know in the sheet right now, Tommy, it says we're going to talk about Ferrari, but I need a minute.

I need a moment. Let's talk about the positives. Fernando Alonso. Can you believe we're here? This is genuinely we're talking about him as the only threat to record. If you rewind what, six months, not even six months. We're questioning. Was it two months?

I mean, since he moved. Is it actually been only two months as he moved to officially? No, two months since they like kind of launched the car. Yeah, but I'm thinking about when we heard that it had gone to us to mind. Oh, it's a sideways step. We were just not really. convinced. And here we are saying that Fernando Alonso might be our only hope to give us any kind of action at the front against the Red Bulls. Yeah, Fernando Alonzo, when he moved there,

Aston, I'm pretty sure we're about ninth in the Constructors title at that point as well. And Alpine were doing pretty well, albeit his car was always on fire and breaking down. But when he was finishing, they were quick. And it looked like another career move. That's maybe what he needs to do. He needs to move to a team that looks like they're failing. and then he'll reverse jinx it and move there. So maybe Ferrari next. Sorry, I had to get that one there. He did have to.

I mean, he's already been to Ferrari, and he didn't win a championship there, so it's not going to work. But yeah, I'm excited to see what Fernandoonsor can do again this weekend. He was only a couple of tents off for Stappan, I think at the end of free practice two, finishing P2. So it clearly seems like they have both race pace and quality pace.

Their race pace was good in Bahrain, and if Fernando didn't have a mediocre start to the race, who knows where or how far he would have been behind the Red Bulls. So it's good to see from a fan perspective, from a neutral perspective, from Fernando Alonzo fan perspective, that it wasn't just a one-off. In Saudi, they look quick again.

They do. I think we both predicted, actually, we didn't put them in our predictions. If you go back and listen to that, we didn't really talk about them too much. And it's not to say that I thought it was a complete one-off. I just thought maybe this track wouldn't suit them as much. And they'd obviously, you know, had a great test and looked like they were doing well,

but close with Ferrari. But the reality is it looks like that Fernando is the threat unless Ferrari, which we hope, are just turning their engines down so they don't explode by Saturday. Yeah, let's talk about Ferrari then, shall we? They finish ninth and tenth in free practice too, if you've been tuning into our Matt P1 Tommy Twitch watchalongs, which we did just out of love for all of you guys this weekend, you would have seen me popping off.

I was not happy at all because realistically they don't look very quick. And I was convinced, you were convinced Tommy, that they would take a step forward in Saudi. But it doesn't seem that way. LeClair, obviously running an engine penalty, 10 place penalty, at least. it depends if they decide to take more after practice, because realistically, that Ferrari doesn't look bulletproof even after the changes. LeClau's been having some problems, more issues with his engine during FP2,

getting away, it seemed like out of the pits as well, that he was having some kind of clutch issues, and you just, it's like, give me a break, just at least give me a couple of races, just a few podiums, a bit of silverware to go, yeah, Ferrari are there or thereabouts, But no, it's not happening. It's pain. Yeah, they were ninth and tenth in FP2.

Hopefully that's just a sign that they were saving the engine, worried about reliability. I can't believe we're saying, we hope they're just worrying about reliability. That's how bad it is at Ferrari that we're kind of hoping it's just not as painful as. Because as well, they took precautionary changes to both LeClaire and Starr,

Anne signs his car in terms of the engines. They swapped it out. And no, it's the second race. Like how? They didn't even like win in Bahrain. They weren't challenging for it. It's not like they turned it up too much and they were challenging. They weren't.

They would have been beaten by Alonzo anyway. Oh, goodness me. Junior Alpha Wolf says when Ferrari Payne is going to end? Never. 2000. Never, probably. It's just, yeah, it's just a continuation of, of the pain that we saw last year

and what we've seen potentially for the last 16 years, to be honest with you. So look, it's fine. Let's move on before I start crying. One of the big changes, actually, worth mentioning is that they have stopped DRS chicken as far as we're aware.

They have moved the DRS detection zone until after the final corner. So none of this slamming on the brakes, oh, you go first, you go first kind of racing, which I don't think, pleased a lot of people. I believe that may have been one of the only things that we could look forward to

for the race on Sunday. Actually, that would need a race for the win, which doesn't look like that or happen either. But it's on one side, I think, yes, fair enough. I can understand why they're doing it. You know, drivers slamming on the brakes to try and get the other driver to go ahead has caused an incident in the past.

And it was very close with Leclair and Vastappen as well. On the flip side, realistically, it wasn't like it caused, anything too crazy and also gave us some serious entertainment. So I can see both sides, but they have changed it, and we're not going to see any more of that anymore. That's a shame. It was always fun, and particularly seeing someone like Fernando Lons at the front with

the prospect of DRS Chicken, the guy is the king of beat houseery and mind games and all that kind of stuff. So it would have been fun to see Fernando doing something like that. But alas, it's not going to happen. But, I mean, I can see why, like you say, because it's a sketchy circuit. They've made some changes, as we mentioned in our Monday podcast. But it's still a damn sketchy circuit. So many incidents.

So many traffic problems. So many moments that just make you wince when you see an onboard of a car flying around a corner and suddenly there's someone going about 20 miles an hour on the apex of a blind a very quick corner. And yes, I think my concerns are still there from that side. If anything, it felt like there were more sketchy moments than the normal. And that's just, unfortunately, the nature of this circuit, unless you create some sort of miraculous barrier that you can see through,

like a transparent barrier. You know what I mean? So like the walls are still there, but you can see through. Rainbow Ray. Yeah, something like that. It's always going. to be that case unless they expand it to the level of which it just becomes any other track. And it doesn't have that that thrill element. So it's just, it's, it's down to the communication

from the engineers to the drivers. If that isn't on point, if that isn't constantly being fed to the driver, then there's going to be these problems. It doesn't really matter if they move a wall here or do whatever. They're going to have these issues. The problem is it's at such high speed that it can cause, and we are just waiting realistically, for that big moment to happen, we saw Sergio Perez just doodling, just chilling. Carlos Sines, by the way,

felt like he was involved in almost every single one of them. Most of the time he was the slow car, but the one with Perez, it just didn't seem like Czechos was particularly concentrating and moved slightly to the racing line, and Carlos came flying through, and Perez had to make a big correction to not come together.

So yeah, it's just one of those. I think Q1 tomorrow is going to be pretty sketchy to say the least. So we'll see. But realistically, we can't change it. It's practice. The cars are out there. Yeah, we can't change the circuit and it is what it is. I mean, it's the nature as well of the fact that it's now in Formula One.

You do get these really, really, really slow. outlapse, which is, if you've been watching Formula One for a very long time, it didn't used to be the case because you kind of wanted to warm your tyres up and actually kind of, you know, get everything going. But now you see a car, even to the point where you're getting around the final corner, so slow. And it's just, it's just not good.

It's not good for, it's just going to one day cause a really, really bad accident. I think this track is going to be the one that it could, happen because of the blind corners as well. Exactly. And it does feel like we're waiting for it to happen. But realistically, there's not a huge amount they can change if they're going to keep the circuit as it is and keep that thrill element.

So fingers crossed, we don't get any ridiculously crazy impact this weekend or any weekend in the future years as well. Let's move on now to a question from Youngders. on a scale of 1 to 10, how badly does Piastri regret choosing McLaren over Alpine? When you actually look at the decision Oscar Piastri made,

you kind of wondered, at least, you know, from first glance, why all the hassle to go to a team that is kind of on par with each other? Alpine and McLaren, they were fighting for fourth for the whole of last year. Alpine won out in that fight.

Why go to the level of which you did to go to McLaren over Alping? I mentioned before in a podcast. Also, why go to that level to potentially go up against one of the best drivers in the grid of being Norris? Compared to Ocon, no disrespect to Esty Besty, but not as highly regarded. Well, it's not worked out at least from the performance level of that McLaren. Again, they look off the pace. It was so close in FP2, to be fair, because it wasn't, there wasn't, much pace differential between Piaci and Norris at the end of FP2.

You go, oh, it was a couple of tents, I think, in the end, wasn't it? And then you looked at the positions and it was 12th to 19th or something. That's the nature of FP2, I think, as well, because we look back to Bahrain. You were on Twitter, oh, are we in for a banger of a season? To be fair. It's separately by a second, but that's down to engine modes and all that sort of stuff. And then when they crank it up, then we see the real gaps. So FP2 can be a bit of a bait.

in terms of how close it actually is between all the cars. But back to Piastri, I think there might be a slight element. But at this stage, you can't be regretting it. It's only round two. McLaren picked it up by Imola last year. I see that they will take steps forward again this year. But it's not looking great at the moment. It's not, yeah, down in 19th.

But like you say, it's not a huge gap off to the actual runners. I mean, Alpine, I think this is just the nature. of the circuit for Alpine, they are very quick in a straight line and they're looking very, very handy. Could be a good, good race for those guys. But you've got to think that when the season progresses, I can't see Alpine being miles ahead of McLaren. However, like you say, it is just one of those things where he's made such a huge, dramatic move for a sideways step. sideways a little bit back, if anything, and a big leap back at the moment,

but we'll see if McLaren can turn it around. Not hopeful. Yeah, I'm not convinced at the moment, because, as you say, Alpine, looking really good, fourth and sixth in free practice too, and kind of going along the lines of what you believed would be happening with your biggest good surprise being Ockon, and he's up there in P4 at the moment.

So a point is well and truly on its way, unless I decide to jinx him again. so I won't say anything for the sake of Ocon's. Six penalty. For the sake of Ockons weekend. Let's talk about another drive that's been off the pace. Lewis Hamilton in the Mercedes, down in 11th in Free Practice 2.

I know again, it's free practice. Can't take too much from it. But not exactly the form or the pace that we were expecting to see in comparison to his teammate, half a second down the road at the end of Free Practice 2, up in 5th. There's been a lot of talk about his future. Now, I'm not going to say that anything that's really been suggested is anything other than a pipe dream, far-fetched even.

But the big news that is real that has actually come out is Angela Cullen has essentially broken off her relationship with Hamilton and is going off to do bigger and better things. Now, I wasn't particularly like, oh my God, that's huge news. but you, Tommy, on the other hand, you smell something. You can smell something in the air. I just think it's quite a big move, really, because it seems like she's just always been there with Hamilton, and I've read a few things that she is pretty much, seems almost like the only person that Hamilton can trust in Formula One,

and he kind of, he's quite a private person in the paddock, doesn't have many like he's not really friendly with the other drives is he and stuff so like she's very much it's like right-hand woman I guess that just like that he can work with and puts him in a good mindset and things like that so I was surprised that um you can understand because I think um she has young kids as well I think was one of one of the things as well that to spend more time and it's difficult traveling over the world but you just assumed that they would uh she would be there until Hamilton decided to call it a day because of the relationship they've had. But yeah, it's even before this, people have kind of talked about Hamilton's future.

And surprising thing was Toto Wolf actually was asked about this. And I thought his answer was a little bit defeatist where he didn't say, well, why would Hamilton leave Mercedes, we're the best team on the grid and we'll get back to where he were? He said, well, he kind of said that at the start, but then he kind of went a bit more into, well, actually, in two years time, we might not have a championship winning car for him, and then we didn't understand why he wanted to leave.

And I was kind of like, oh, that's not exactly fighting talk that we're used to from Mercedes. Maybe he's learned from his Netflix comment. Yeah, it's not the confidence that you'd want to hear if you're a Mercedes fan. If they were confident that they're going to be figuring this out pretty soon and they're going to be back at the front of the grid, then he would have said something,

a little bit more along those lines, I think, but it just didn't happen. A question from Beehive 8172, what do you think about Angela Cullen's departure? Is it odd timing after the first race? Does changing physios affect the driver's routine or headspace? And that's a really good point, actually. I didn't think about the fact that it's literally just after the first race. Surely, if she had decided this previously, you would think that would have just been at the end of last season and she would have packed it in then and had a lovely goodbye and whatnot.

But instead, after the first race, now, I know, circumstances can change. And, you know, we're not going to look into that. It might be personal reasons. But when you look at it on the face of it, it is a strange time to pack it all in. And to have that change within Hamilton's routine will certainly be something that I think will affect his headspace a little bit, just purely from the fact of he did, she did seem like the one person Hamilton always turned to and was, you know, part of his entire formal. one journey, at least in, you know, in the recent years. So I'm not going to say Hamilton's now going to be washed because of it, but it's going to be a change that he's going to have to get used to.

Yeah, it is, it's crazy to have it in one race. And I can't believe we're here talking about the kind of narrative has kind of shifted from, dare I say, is Hamilton going to get his eighth to, is Hamilton actually going to win a race again before he retires, which is that. absolutely maddening. I think he will. I think the Mercedes aren't that far off. It is, it is kind of a sign of how well Mercedes have had it. There's kind of this crisis talk and oh, Hamilton's going to leave and this is the worst race we've ever had an absolute crisis. And then you look and they're third in the constructive title. It's not that bad. I'm sure other

teams would happily be in their position. But yeah, it's going to be. be interesting to see how this affects Hamilton mentally. There's a lot of things in Formula One. He says he wants to stay till his gets his eighth. But realistically, can he do that? And is he going to get that Ferrari? Probably not with them being on fire all the time. Yeah, definitely something to keep an eye on.

Let's see. You're going to have to hit for more Max tummy aches. That's the only thing that can defeat. Max Verstappen at the moment. But even that, to be fair, he's, he's sort himself out. And to be honest, it would just be a bit of weight loss, really, and a bit of less weight in the car. So absolutely flying.

Another tenth of second. Yeah, there you go. Oh, he's got a tummy eight. Damn it. Anyway, there you go. That is it. Thank you so much for watching on YouTube or listening in your ears over on our podcast platforms.

Tommy, what are your final thoughts? My final thoughts are... I haven't had one of these for a while. come on fernando what insight incredible okay one final thought is I saw crofty say that

Fernando lonte is in garage 33 this weekend and he's looking for his 30 third victory so it's written in the stars that Fernando lonte is going to get that way yeah that's a good final thought well done enjoyed that my final thought is our live show tickets are live now 6th of April if you want to come and see myself and Tommy

live on the 6th of April in London, Lester Square Theatre there'll be a link everywhere. Everywhere you can find it. Isn't that right, Tommy? You're going to put a link absolutely everywhere. It's actually nearly sold out, which is insane. I looked at the rose and I was like,

why are there so many unavailable? Why are people paying to see us? But this is it, right? I cannot wait. If you do come along, if not, do not worry, because I know a lot of you aren't even in the UK. How dare you not book a flight? There you go.

Thank you very much, everybody, and we'll see you very soon. Bye. Bye. P1 is a stack production and part of the ACASTC creator network.