P1 with Matt and Tommy - Reaction to the Mercedes and McLaren F1 car launches

Episode Date: February 14, 2024

We take a break from some top secret filming to bring you our reaction to today's two (weird) car launches. But one of the liveries on show was absolutely lovely!WE'RE GOING BACK ON TOUR! Tickets for our April live shows are available right here: https://www.tegeurope.com/events/p1-with-matt-tommy/You can sign up to our Patreon here! You'll get access to exclusive episodes you won't hear anywhere else, every P1 episode ad-free, full driver interview videos, early access to tickets and more!Follow us on socials! You can find us on Twitter, Instagram, Twitch, YouTube and TikTok. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Hello everybody and welcome back to the P1 podcast. And you might notice things are a little bit different. We're on tour, but not really. Not like a live show top. P1 live show tickets are available. But we've been doing some top secret filming, which you can't talk about for a few weeks. So look forward to that one.

But we're here, Tommy, to talk about the Mercedes and McLaren car launches that happened today. The one time we went outside of the house, two teams decided to launch on Valentine's Day. how really inconvenient of them? How dare they? I know, like you say, we weren't on Twitch for all the people wondering, where were you? Where were you?

Yeah, sorry. We were stepping outside, touching some grass and doing some very exciting filming, which you'll see at some point. And yeah, we had two cars to look forward to. Did you actually touch grass today though? I don't feel like we actually touched grass.

Oh, no, I didn't actually. Yeah, but we can't go anymore. We might be breaking several rules if we say that we did or did not touch grass. So there you go. Right, let's get into our first thoughts of the Mercedes livery then. And we've got a picture right here to have a look at. And my first reaction is, oof.

Oh, baby. Yeah, I love it. I think that is absolute sex on wheels. That is glorious. It's gorgeous. It's beautiful. It's, is that carbon or is that just black? I don't know.

It'd be carbon, I imagine. Yeah, probably. In the renders, they'll have made it look more black, like painted black, but it probably will be carbon. They always do that with a bit of trickery, didn't they? It didn't stick out, though, in the actual launch itself. You didn't go like, oh, that just sticks out as a bit of carbon. So, I don't know, maybe they've found a way of doing it like that that I don't understand.

But what I do understand is that that car is really nice. I really like it. I think it's one of my favourite liveries. Nice. Yeah, I really like it as well. I think it's an improvement. I was worried when they, I did think that they'd maybe try and do something with the silver and bring it back. they've done that thing that they did in 2021 where they kind of

they've got the silver going on but also they've almost made the black their own thing as well so they've kind of got two of these hero colours going together and in 2021 I will say that I thought it looked absolutely awful like it at all and this way and this way they've done it the other way around where the nose cone is the thing that kind of has the silver on it and it looks really, really nice. I think it's one of the best liveries that Mercedes have done actually in F1. I think it's very good. And I like the fact that, yeah, from that front view, it just looks all silver, really.

And then the side view, they've still got the black, but it's not just, I think if they've done an all black car now, because of how everyone else has been doing it, would have been a bit annoyed and it kind of doesn't hit the same as it did last year, where it was novelty. So I'm glad that they bought the silver back. both in agreement that it's an absolute banger. A question from Dustin Vincent underscore K. The silver nose needs to grow on me, to be honest.

What about you guys? Do you like it when you first saw it? Well, as you can probably tell by our first thoughts, yes, I actually really like it. And I love how the silver stripe kind of comes round the car as well and sort of merges into the black at the back. Genuinely, stone-cold banger. Even the red Ineos doesn't even affect me anymore.

That used to be the thing that killed it. The drawback, yeah. But now, for some reason, I don't know if it's because we just got used to it or what, but I actually think it even complements it somehow. Or we're so desperate for any colour on a car that we're just like, just throw some colour on there. We're fine with it now.

Maybe it's the Ferrari fan of me. I'm like, red. Yeah, that works for me. Lewis is getting used to it, of course. Let's speak about the actual car launch itself because... It's weird. Weird. Very weird car launch. Mercedes have...

I feel like they've rolled it out before with some smoke before. You know what I mean? There's been a bit of theatrics. Yeah. This time it was just, hello and welcome, here's the car. And so, Toto, it's been a busy winter. There was no cover, yeah. It was really weird.

There was no cover. Like, I don't know. I don't get it. I don't understand fully why we're not getting any sort of, especially when they're there and the cars are like, how much is a piece of fabric to stick over the car for them to go like that? Or what is the reason for this more basic approach? I think it's Lewis Hamilton going to Ferrari.

You reckon without him leaving, they would have had a little value in a little barrel. Yeah, yeah. I think they literally. just when, let's just get the elephant in the room out, straight away, because that is exactly what they did. It was extremely weird the fact that, yeah, it wasn't even like, go, cover off, speak to the drivers. They were there. It was literally like, the lights came on, the countdown went to zero, and the car was down, you're like, oh. It felt like we joined the car launch halfway through. Yeah. We're like, well, here's the car. Here's the car. And it's just chatting.

And yeah, they went straight into Toto with the question about Hamilton going to Ferrari. Mercedes clearly were like, let's just cover that off at the top, rather than everyone thinking, oh, you know, there's elephant in the room sort of vibe. Yeah, 100%. Which is probably the right way to have done it. You know, Toto said, you know, very PR-friendly answers. And Lewis said some very PR-friendly answers as well. It was a lovely PR-friendly event, wasn't it?

Yeah. But yes, better to actually have that, you know, real-life thing. You want to see the drivers and stuff, don't you. We can't, and as much as it was a weird start, I don't think we can, you know, say too much about it in terms of, you know, a negative. because the drivers were there. We heard from the drivers. We heard from Toto. And it felt like a very similar Mercedes car launch to others. It was just very much like, okay, we're here. Yeah, I feel like this car launch season has been, we've kind of ticked

every box of having like a normal corporate launch. Then we've had the quick videos and we've had the big song and dance launch. Then we've had pre-recorded launches. And the only thing that we didn't have was a countdown to a real launch where they didn't even take the cover off and Mercedes tick that one off. We kind of seem to have had a bit of everything this this car launch season and yeah that was an unusual one to essentially just be like wow it's here oh my god and then of course they they throw out all the pictures immediately and everyone tries to screenshot the car because they went actually showing the car that much because they were and maybe that's a reason for it and showing a lot of the drivers and stuff whereas they were just

chatting to them so the camera's on them and I think a lot of people probably like, shows that car there, that's the car that we're trying to see. Exactly. Question from Agulgend 1, 2, 3, 4. Why was the digital version of the car different to the one on the live stream which is driving today? Because they're hiding things. Hiding things, the beauty of renders, the beauty of... Can do whatever they like with the renders.

Yeah, they can Photoshop, you know, you can turn exposures up here, then everywhere, there's certain people have done over the years and found that, you know, McLaren were scribbling things out and stuff like that. Of course, you know, Mercedes aren't going to be like, here is everything we've come up with. Because of course, Formula One teams don't want to give away the game. Of course, when they shake down the car,

that's giving away the game. And of course, there are going to be pictures surfacing and whatnot. And I'm sure lots of theories and speculation of, oh, they've gone for a middle rod push-pull suspension, which we all understand a lot about. But what is for sure is that

F-1 teams will try and hide as much as they can until the very last minute in testing. Exactly. Mercedes have done this before. The one that springs to mind was 20-22. The renders that they launched look absolutely nothing like the car. Like completely different. It was like a show car and it was really weird because they dropped all these images and then like you say, had that car in the studio, a bit like they did this time and you go, that's not that car.

Like it's not even remotely similar. So they want to get people get people guessing formula one teams i guess you know they don't want to release a 6 000 pixel images that every formula one team can go oh excellent what's this what's this what's that um so it looks very different and they can do what they like with the render but the the actual car itself yeah they're they're obviously trying to try to hide things uh i know the thing that most people are talking about online we're not going to go into technical stuff because we don't know huge amount about it and how it's going to be but um the front wing wing certainly is quite alarmingly different to anything else we've seen how like

curvy it is and stuff it almost reminds me of the cars that you had in the mid 2000s where like the middle part of the car was allowed to be they raised the um the height of the front wing in the regulations but realized that it didn't cover a certain point so if you remember they almost like a bit of like a mustache where they went went went and it looks like kind of looks a little bit similar to that. So it would be interesting to see what they're doing. And then, of course, every team's doing it now with the whole, like, the side pods

are just getting so thin at the top. Like, you can see that they're just trying to, like, channel all the air underneath it. And the Mercedes is quite, like, huge. Like, you can see that that's where they want all the air to go into. Tommy's Technical Corner. I feel it would be the TTC from here on in

on the podcast, But thank you very much for that, Tommy. Let's see how that unfolds for Mercedes' performance this year. I mean, it was a nine-minute video, so there's not really much more to talk about when it comes to Mercedes. Of course, they shake down the car. They spoke about... We didn't see it at 8 a.m.

No. I know. They actually thought about doing the launch and then doing the car for the shakedown, which makes more sense. They spoke about the expectations a little bit as well. And Toto Wolf, of course, you know, saying that they're Ferrari and McLaren and that sort of thing, and hopefully fighting at the front.

So clearly they're already not thinking they're going to challenge Red Ball, which... The fight for second? Yes. Yeah. This is why we've said so many times about Hamilton's move, that at the end of the day, it is a sideways step. It's rolling the dice one more time. Why stay at Mercedes if he's always had this dream of Ferrari when it's not like, you know, he'd have been absolutely insane to leave Mercedes in 2021 or, you know, 2019 when they were so dominant

and they had such a great car. 2021. Interesting. No, sorry, in 201, when they were winning races, it would have been silly for him to leave. Now, yeah, they've not, they didn't win last year, the only won one race, Hamilton's not won for a couple years. It's rolling the dice and seeing what he can do at Ferrari.

But I thought it's fascinating that in the launch, they were just, let's just get straight into it. Everyone's gonna wanna talk about it. It almost felt like, let's get it over with and kind of, let's not do any more talking, please. Speaking of not really talking, McLaren just plonked some images out, didn't they? Yeah, of their actual car this time. I remember McLaren as well.

Like, you know, they did the whole thing at the MTC. They got the fans involved on the screen during COVID. Do you remember all that sort of stuff? Yeah, yeah. This year I just didn't fancy it. Why is no one fancying it? Well, they've done something completely different. I mentioned about how like every Formula One team seems to have done something different this year.

And that is a completely new, really. I don't, can't remember what I don't think I've seen this before, but obviously there's the people like us, and I think the majority of, we obviously like banter about the technical aspects of it and there's not really understanding too much. I think that's just part of like Formula One if you understand that side of it, like that's fascinating for you. But like, if you're enjoying the racing and stuff and don't know too much about that side, you are looking at that car and just going, like, here's what I think to the livery and blah, blah, blah. So the fact that they released that halfway through January, obviously we saw it on the 2023 car and it's like, right, this is our new

colour scheme, we got to see it. So that makes this second launch very weird because we're essentially seeing exactly the same livery, but then it is of course going on the new car, but it definitely takes away from it. And maybe that is a good thing. You wonder, maybe that was because they were launching at the same time as Mercedes and they'd clash days and gone, you know what, let's just release the livery first. have our own big day first and be the first to do it. But yeah, I think the main reaction to McLaren was, well, I've seen this livery and we'll see how the car does. Because, yeah, it's a very odd concept, isn't it?

To essentially have like two launches. Two launches that are kind of not the whole thing. So almost both of them maybe are a bit underwhelming rather than having a big launch. Yeah, because I can understand if, you know, we go between regulations and you do like a livery review. deal on the old car and then you have the new car, which is completely different and you're like, wow, look at this, this, this, this, this, this. But there isn't a regulation change.

It's very minimal changes. To the normal viewer, you're just like, that's another Formula One car with the McLaren livery that I've already seen, which, again, I will say, when I see it, I'm like, yeah, I quite like it. It's a shame how much carbon and that sort of stuff, but as an overall design, I think it looks quite nice. But yes, it was just like, oh, Maclound have launched again, but they didn't really. It was just Mercedes plus a McLaren picture. Yeah, true. Although I have changed my mind a little bit about McLaren. Yeah. But I am going to, I'm going to, I'm going to tease everyone and say I'll save it for our livery ranking video.

Unbelievable. This guy, marketing genius. Tune in next time, apparently. Right, well that pretty much sums up the Mercedes and McLaren car launches. Tommy, what are your final thoughts, please? Final thoughts are one more to go, which we're going to be there for, which is going to be exciting. We get to go to one and there's a big launch. Hopefully. We will actually, we'll be live on Twitch as well, which sounds weird, but because it's happening in the morning.

Yeah. And then we're going to be able to get back to come on Twitch. No, it's in Bargoat and then we can. Yeah, so we can't actually talk about it. So we will be on Twitch like, what? We'll be there. I never knew that.

Yeah, we'll be that meme. But yeah, that's going to be quite cool. Hopefully we don't go all the way to go all the way there. And it's a three-second video because you'll be very nice. Can you imagine? Hey everyone, welcome. We're here to watch YouTube. We were just on our phone like this.

Oh, okay. And then we'll go home. But no, that would be cool. And yeah, one more to go. And then we are on the important step of cars on track and excitement. Yeah. Rebel were doing a lot to try and get me over to from Ferrari's, but I see it.

I see it. You know, they're pulling out all the stops this last year. Podium, going under the podium. I know, honestly. Ferrari, you step up your game. Come on. Where's that little one-to-one dinner date with Charlotte Club? Come on.

Let's just let's get that happening. All right, God's sake. But yeah, we look forward to giving you more content tomorrow, both live on Twitch and, of course, our usual reaction stuff. And then, yeah, we're not far away from Formula One starting. Can not wait. See you very soon. Bye. Bye. Make sure you follow us on all of our socials. We're Matt P1, Tommy, on Twitter, TikTok, Twitch and Instagram. You can also sign up to our Patreon at the link in the episode notes for ad-free episodes,

full video interviews and extra bonus episodes. For us, as little as $5 a month. Finally, make sure you're following us on Spotify. See you soon. P1 is a Stack production and part of the Acast creator network.