P1 with Matt and Tommy - Reaction to US GP sprint qualifying

Episode Date: October 19, 2024

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Hello everybody and welcome back to the B1 podcast with Matt and Tommy. We are coming alive and direct from Austin in a house in an Airbnb, but from Austin to dive about into everything that happened today. Friday, of course, Tommy, not just practice, only one practice because it's a sprint weekend. Yes, I forgot how much, because it's been so long since we've had a sprint weekend, how much they just don't mess about one practice session and then straight into. to the good stuff. And then, you know, on a Friday,

we've already got to kind of see a little bit of the pecking order and how things are looking after what's felt like a very long break. A very long break indeed. But we start, we kickstart the triple header, then a three week break, then another triple header with Austin. An amazing track. We were there, obviously, in practice, weren't we?

Which was cool to see the cars going round. And then we watched the race away from the track because you had a few things and then whatever. But it was still cool to see cars out on there and we were seeing through the S's especially, and that was pretty awesome to see. So let's dive into SQ1, where the bottom five were Piastri, Ocon, Albon, Bottas and Joe. Obviously, Piastri. This is the talking point from SQ1.

Disaster for him, penultimate corner, ran too wide, lost his time. And he wasn't looking ultimately that quick throughout the session. and sadly for him gets his lap time deleted and knocked out in Q1 just as he comes into this weekend saying, you know, I can help Lando with the car, all this sort of stuff. And I know some people have sort of shrugged it off like, oh, but it's only the sprint. And yes, fair enough, it's the less important session.

But at the same time, one, two points, whatever it might be, to take away from Max is still something that every single one of them counts. Yeah, definitely. It's the, I guess, yeah, the positive spin. for McLaren fans is that it's the sprint because there's not much of a gap between the top positions but yeah every point of course is going to count in this championship there's a lot of points available like Formula One keep reminding us because there's so many sprints so many points available still so for Piastri to go out is a disaster for McLaren big time you know got caught

out with track limits which we do see a lot at this track. A trick of corner that has caught out many people in the past and I guess the thing with SQ1 now you don't get many runs at all so if sometimes they just won so because it's a shorter session so if it goes wrong it really goes wrong and it did go wrong for Oscar of course medium tyres being run in the first two sessions of sprint quality but yeah Oscar from there it's pretty much not even maybe a point up for grabs in in such a short race unless he gets a miraculously good start at the beginning and gets himself up to maybe 12th in the first few laps, then perhaps he'll have a chance of catching the Hasses that had an amazing qualifying session today.

Other drivers to talk about Ocon obviously in the McLaren-looking Alpine, which utterly bizarre to see the car look like that today, if I'm being completely honest with you. It just feels as though Alpine are having this sort of overall identity crisis of binning of binging off. their engines, changing their liveries. They've had a red one, they've had an orangey gold one now. It's just a bit odd, I would say, to say the least. And they still haven't looked that quick, at least in the hands of Ocon today. No, not very quick at all.

But I guess, kind of expected where they are with just the midfield being so tight now. And then, of course, Albon. So my crazy prediction has gone out the window already, which is fantastic news. So of course I backed Albon for a good weekend this weekend and to beat Colopinto in every competitive session. And that did not happen. Almost immediately when Alex was on a good lap and then spun in a drastic fashion. And a question from P1 patron member Roanak is the pressure of proving himself against a new teammate getting to Albon? This was a talking point before this weekend.

Colopinto has come into that team, come into Formula 1. and hit the ground running so unbelievably well. And I think this is, it has to be a bit of pressure on Alex's shoulders. You didn't see this when it was Logan Sargent at his teammate or Nicholas Latifio or whoever it might be. But it does feel as though it's starting to seep into Alex's performance ever so slightly. And look, I think Albonne has more than enough opportunity to be able to bounce back. But it does spell for a very positive future, I would say, for what Colopinto is.

shown so far. Yeah, we've had this question actually a lot during our live shows that we're doing out here in the US of people mentioning Alex Albin and how good is he really because that's something that we've gone into this month break talking about because Colopinto is an unbelievable job and of course we've had many discussions on this podcast about well was it just that Albin had Nicholas Latifie and Logan Sargent as a teammate and how good really was he going to be and we were waiting for science to get into that car to see what he could do. But now Colopinto's there. Colopinto's done an amazing job.

Again, really, really good job. It's not just that Alburn's had done a bad job. He's done a brilliant job. And, yeah, I think the first few races, it was very, and I know it's only Friday, but if it happens again tomorrow, we're going to have to end the whole, well, let's not jump to conclusions

because he's doing an amazing job and you know Logan and Latifi never beat Albon and now Colapinto is just doing an unbelievable job and sometimes drivers deserve praise without the other one getting the opposite criticism but I do feel as though in this case

it does highlight some questions around Albon in terms of how much he has actually been extracting out of that car but let's see let's see how he gets on for the rest of the weekend and then Bottas and Joe right at the back Joe like I think he was over a second off us. So I'm hoping for those two to deliver a really floppy performance because I know there was a few questions raised about how they can even flop. But they were in the mix of the bottom teams in

Singapore if they're right off the back and claiming points. Yeah, they're doing their best F2 impression or North America Carrera Cup as it is here. So maybe that's what they're going for. SQ2 then and the bottom five of this session were Perez, Gazley, Stroll, Alonzo and Lawson. Yes, Sotri Perez. Ding, ding, ding, tick the bingo card. It's being spoken about again. Perez, not a good qualifying session at all. Max looked a bit steady at the start of qualifying,

and Perez got within a tenth, and he had his lap time deleted, I think, in SQ1. And SQ2, just nowhere, absolutely nowhere. It's all well and good having that gap between the two, which you expect. But when it's as gargantuan as it is, this is where you have to discuss it to some degree, as much as we hate bringing the same conversation up every single time. Yeah, because now, of course, Perez was kind of saved a little bit

where Max was, his form was obviously not as good, and Max was finishing fifth and sixth, but, you know, spoiler alert, Max is on sprint pole, and Perez is all the way down in 11th. So that is a huge gap between teammates that you don't normally see in Formula One anymore. So, yeah, disaster for Perez. And yes, a certain Yuki Sonoda did make it into the session.

And I completely agreed with the tweet that you put out that I'm sure Christine Horner is pretending not to watch. No, absolutely not. People on Patreon member, Abadabby 2020, Survivor, comes in with Max is getting pole and Checo is still fighting the midfield. How much longer can this last? Well, it's lasted long enough as it is.

I don't think that's going to change. That's pretty much, I think, our thoughts on that one. He'll go to the end of the season. Of course, he has a contract for next season, and we've not actually spoken about this, but he did the whole tweet, didn't he? Of, like, I'm not leaving and all this kind of stuff. But then also, Helmut Marco came out in the press and said,

I reckon in 2025 there'll be a junior driver alongside Max. I saw the joke as well of, like, because he did that, I'm not effing leaving from the Wolf of Wall Street. And then I saw me reply and being like, yes, and then the company afterwards just basically disintegrated. Yeah, yeah, the con. context of the, when you actually, the context of the film, it's not what you want to be saying. It's not the best thing when he should have left. But anyway, Perez 11th, let's see what he can do from there.

Gazley, I think it's worth mentioning, had a decent SQ, considering Ocon was knocked out in the first part of qualifying. Stroll out qualifying, you'll go to Alonzo because Alonzo couldn't keep it on the track around the penultimate corner, which I think we should mention. They've obviously narrowed that exit curb to allow for the drivers to run slightly wider before getting the track. limit warnings, but they're still struggling huge amounts with understeer around there. It's such a difficult corner as well, even playing on the F1 game, it's so blind that you just have to trust your instincts, throw it in there, and sometimes drivers will just pick up understeer and then that's your lap gone. It's a really odd corner.

It always has been, it's always been a struggle for track limits. If you watch actually an indie car race or a NASCAR race, they actually don't even use the track there because they don't limit. track limits like they do in Formula One in something like IndyCar, so they let them run wide and it looks almost comical watching them go all the way. And that is, for the way the circuit is designed, they seem to just want to run that line. They're always trying to eke out a bit more performance and, you know, the argument will always be, we'll just go a bit slower then, but these are Formula One drivers. Exactly. Let's go to SQ3, shall we, where the order was. Vestapp and Russell, Leclair, Norris,

signs Holkenberg Hamilton Magnussen, Sunoda, Colopinto. First question is from P1Patri member Alan Enderpey. Jammerge it back off. Look, let's not get too ahead of ourselves. It's just the sprint. You've got Russell on the front row with Vastappen. I'm sure George Russell will want to take a nice little sprint victory tomorrow. I mean, Mercedes in general.

Oh my God. I know that we speak about this and they're sort of practice. two competitive session trajectory that they sometimes have. But they had one of the most, just the busiest, most chaotic FP-1s you could possibly think. I think both of them were facing the wrong way at one point. They were both struggling for grip. And then you got Russell up in second. I know Hamilton, you know, wasn't so happy down in seventh in the end.

But Mercedes found pace once again. That car is so confusing. You know, I wouldn't put it. I wouldn't put it past, George. Russell being like eighth in qualifying tomorrow because we've seen that as a trend it just seems to happen where sometimes the car just gets into that window and is really good for the championship back off it's very easy for fans to jump on the hole like oh max has happened so boring he was on he was on pulled by 0.0 12 of a second you know Formula 1 has never been closer he himself hasn't won for ages

So if anything, it's just another driver that's kind of at the front. And, you know, in the last six races, we've seen P1s from Max, Lewis, George, Oscar, Lando, Schar. Like, it's changing all the time and that makes it really good. You can't, you know, it's not like Max has just kind of, they've put some upgrades on and Max is half a second clear of the field. He's not. His teammates 11th and he's just done it. you know, I backed him for sprint pole in our predictions and for that reason was because I think

there's no better driver than Max's the Step and when it's not, you don't need to dial in the car. It's just, you know, not much practice, straight out. How many times do we see a wet session where Max is a second quicker than the field when they do their very first laps? He doesn't need that warming up like a lot of other drivers do. And that's, you know, kind of almost doesn't surprise me, but I don't think just because he's on pole here, I mean, this is backed up by the gap, but it could all change again tomorrow in another qualifying session, and even though it's completely the same circuit, just because Formula One is so close at the moment. Exactly. And of course, Landos in fourth, which is not the worst position ever. It's not as if it is completely

championship off if Max wins and Landau's down in 12th or something. There's still a possibility. Lando said after the qualifying session that it was shocking what he managed to put on the board and he was a quarter of a second off of Max. I know that there was a lot of struggles out there. It was quite low grip and drivers were making mistakes, but Lando, of course, very hard on himself anyway, but it did feel as though he obviously felt like he'd left a lot on the table in this qualifying session. And this is what happens. The next question kind of links that. From P1, Patreon member, AMG Piper, do we think the lack of practice has affected McLaren? Now, there was a few people jumping on the fact that McLaren, I think, have brought seven upgrades to this weekend.

And then Lando was asked about this, you know, was it not enough time to dial in the upgrades? And he said, no, the car's basically the same. There's not much difference. So he was very quite cutthroat with his response. And that's kind of how Lando is after a bad session. He's quite short with his answers. But he seemed to suggest that the car didn't really need too much dialing in. So where the problems are, perhaps it's just with general setup.

But this is what a sprint weekend throws at certain teams. And McLaren are on the back foot slightly. Exactly. I wouldn't put it past McLaren to have a much better qualifying tomorrow when they've had a whole sprint race and then another longer qualifying session to get up to speed. The fact that it's so close, it's going to change again, like I said, from the previous question,

that it's changing all the time based on just conditions and things. You know, it's not just Mercedes that, you know, McLaren have obviously had a very, very good car and seemed like the best car, but it's not completely unbelievable dominance best car. It's just been very quick. So when other people get it right, there is a chance that, you know, Lando and even Oscar, obviously he's way down, but that they can be in, you know, fourth or fifth

because it's incredibly close. Absolutely. And you look a little bit further down. Of course, Signs was looking quite good in sort of, I think, SQ2 in particular, but then wasn't able to translate that into a final lap in SQ3 and other drivers to shout out,

I mean, the team has a sixth and eighth. I thought KMAG, again, KMAG looked so great and I thought he was going to out-qualify Holcomberg. But Niko put in a fantastic lap in SQ3 to be three and a half tenths off pole in P6 and Hasse once again putting themselves in a position to score a point or two tomorrow in the sprint and Nico just doing Nico things. Yeah, never underestimate my biggest flop turning them into the absolute goat because of course just like your biggest flop normally means they have an absolute shocker.

normally that means that they're going to have one of the best qualifiers or races and that is that is a performance that we've kind of seen from nico hukkaho kubberg a few times particularly last year and my goodness me has from where we were all predicting them to be at the start of this year and being this joke of a team and not scoring any points and we we thought they're going to be what stake are now and they're up in sixth and eighth and they could bag a load of more points I think the most impressive thing

about this for Hasse is that we're late in the season now as well and normally we've seen Hasse have a great start to the season and then they're just awful for them to do it with six races to go is really impressive because that isn't normally the case absolutely so well on to Hasse also to Yuki Sonoda

who I think was the reason that Sergio Perez fell out in SQ2, so Yuki doing Yuki things and having another great qualifying and out-qualifying Liam Lawson as well, which I think is important for Yuki to just keep that confidence going from his side. And then of course, Franco Colopinto. We've touched upon it a little bit with Albonne and the discussion there, but he made SQ3, not just SQ2, but all the way through to the final session.

Did have a little cheeky spin on his flying attempt, which put him on the, well, very much on the back foot for his final. run but once again the guy is just just can do no wrong at the moment yeah he's performing so so well um there's absolutely no surprise at all that he's getting heavily backed for people really wanting him on the grid we've seen it's going to be very very fascinating to the rest of the year because what's it going to be like if we get to um you know a few races time and he's still outperforming um I don't think, unless it's some absolute miraculous amazing drive, I don't think James Alzer is going to switch them.

It would have to be album, maybe like, poor form going into next year or something that would make that happen. I can't see it happening, which I guess for Colapinto fans is unfortunate because he deserves to be on the grid. And it's just a shame. It's such a shame that there's not enough seats because it's just a fantastic talent and and 100% is proving he deserves to be on the grid. He's a breath of fresh air and it's kind of, you know,

it seems like a really likable guy. And he's kind of so unexpected when he was announced at Williams that he would become this like star. And it's also really awesome to see, you know, he was talking about how, obviously, in South America, absolutely love him and now going to races that are quite close to South America. So he's going to have, he's going to have unbelievable support into Lagos in particular which is going to be exciting and

yeah I hope he continues to do well but unfortunately for him there's no real seat for him no room at the inn but I think he will be ruffling a few feathers in the Albon camp in particular and well look there are still six races to go and if Colopinto does a lot better than Albon then I think James Vow's as much as I still don't think he would do that there are some questions I'm sure that we're going around in his head. And that pretty much sums up, I think, Friday running. Thank you so much to everybody who firstly tuned into the Twitch stream that I did earlier when Tommy was out, which was good fun. We haven't really decided if we're going to be streaming tomorrow nor Sunday, but just keeping out on the socials.

If we're live, we're live, you'll see it. And also our Austin show is just around the corner. It's on Sunday in downtown Austin at Emo's and it should be an absolute banger. There's a few tickets still left if you'd like to come along. The other shows have been so much fun and it promises to be probably the best show with it being the last one and it might be

a little bit wavy as well when we go out there with a few pre-drinks but Tommy, final thoughts? Yep, super hype for that show. Just being at the track today and being back around a Formula One race, the crowd are amazing. You know, I've heard a lot of good things about

Austin. It was one of my bucket list races that I've never been to, so really, you know, I'm I'm absolutely buzzing to be here and it's exciting that I've always heard that this is the track in America that is like the really hardcore American Formula One fans and you can see that. When you're walking around the track, it is a proper amazing atmosphere and there's so many teams represented and different drivers and things. So yeah, really excited for the live show as well. It's going to be so good. Hell yeah. And if you're wondering or were a little bit concerned about the start time for that Austin show,

It is been pushed back to 9pm to make sure that you'll be able to leave the track and come along if you are indeed at the race. That is it. See you very soon. Lots of love. Keep pushing in the gym. Sweet dreams. Adios and everything else in between. Penguins. For those I've no idea what we're talking about, there are some penguin listeners out there. Thank you for continuing to send some random job occupations that you listen to the podcast to. And we'll see you tomorrow. Bye. and part of the ACAST created network.