P1 with Matt and Tommy - Should F1 get rid of Friday Practice?

Episode Date: March 27, 2023

Stefano Domenicalli has made the headlines this week after saying he’s in favour of cancelling the practice sessions - because the public don’t like them. We discuss the pros and cons and what are perfect race weekend format looks like!There are fewer than 50 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.

Right, listen up, everybody. We are doing a live podcast show on the 6th of April in London, Leicester Square. Myself and Tommy are going to be waffling in your eyes and ears. Yes, so sign up in the description and we'll maybe see you there on the 6th of April. Yeah. Waffling in your eyes. Keep it. That's brilliant.

It makes sense. A one podcast. with Matt and Tommy. Are we going to talk about whether they should get rid of F, P1, and P2 and P3, apparently, because F1 CEO, Stefano Domenicali, has dropped an absolute bombshell,

has he not, Tom Bellingham? What a topic to talk about before the Australian Grand Prix later this week. Yeah, as a man of my own heart, slandering practice. I know, you were like, we have to do a video on this, and fair play.

I'm looking forward to chat on about it as well. But before we do, let's talk about our five-style review that's been sent in from free, 55-55-55-55-55-55-55-5-55-5-5-5-5-5-5 from Canada. If you want yours read out, leave us a five-style review, and then perhaps we'll read it out if it's creative and exciting. Tommy selects them, so try and appeal to Tommy if you can. This one says, I've really enjoyed what Tommy and Matt have created with P1. They keep the conversation light, while simultaneously doing deep dives on race strategy and the outcomes. That's probably about Ferrari, isn't it?

They both bring a different energy and style to the pod, which makes the whole greater than the sum of their individual parts. Wow. I felt like it was in a maths lesson. Just a couple of buddies just talking wheel. That's true. We are very different, but we're also the same. We come together in harmony as one.

Tommy, let's talk about it, shall we? F1 CEO, Stefano Diminicali. Was that the Moto GP? he this weekend. How dare he cheat on us? A? Two wheels? Unbelievable. And he spoke to the Portuguese channel Sport TV and he's quoted as saying, I am in favour of canceling the practice sessions that are of great benefit to the engineers, but which the public does not like. Big assumption there, Tommy, I would say. And before we dive into your opinion, because I know you're going to go on a serious washed rant, is that we ask the YouTube community, you beautiful people. And 30,

37,000 of you voted and a massive 86% said no to getting rid of Friday practice. That's a big percentage. It doesn't really back his theory, does it? I've just had an invite come up on my. From on Steam of Lando wanting me to play CSGO. So I'm going to have to go now. Thanks so much for the podcast. Cheers.

This is it. This is it. This is the Charlotte Claire on the yacht. But it's Lando asking to play Counterstrike. But it's, sorry Lando. I'll come back to you later. Tommy, washed opinions on practice, please.

Washed opinions on practice. I mean, we've had this many times before. The talk of practice, we'll go into the pros and cons of getting rid of it. But yeah, Stefano Domenicali was at the MotoGP, and I can see why this maybe came up because MotoGP had their first ever sprint race

copying F1, or kind of. Well, kind of. F1 didn't exactly own it, did they? But yeah, introducing sprint races, which is now perhaps becoming, becoming a thing widely in motorsport. MotoGP did it. Worked well because they're always swapping positions and the field's really close

and stuff. Whereas I think the big problem with sprint racing in F1 is that it's essentially a mini race where you don't get the excitement of pit stops and things. So yeah, he was very much going in on practice saying that the engineers love it because they get to do all their tweaks and setups and make the racing a little bit more unpredictable by doing lots of race simulations, but the public don't like it, but then we asked, well, we didn't ask the public, we asked hardcore Formula One fans. We went on the streets and asked.

And they said, the survey said, what is this? What's a practice session? It's probably what the general public would say. But the hardcore regular Formula One watches and P1 community think that Domenicali is washed 86% is a big favour. They love their Friday practice. Yeah, it's a big no, isn't it, from the people that voted. Thank you for getting involved in our YouTube community poll.

But I would also argue, as you just kind of hinted to there, these are the hardcores. These are the ones that usually watch every single race, very integrated with the sports, having a great time. Stefano Domenicali is appealing to the wide population, the casual that watches Formula One. And you'd have to say the casuals are what makes up most of the viewing figures. Of course, you have your hardcores. You have the ones that follow it week and week out. But you're not going to get enormous numbers.

There aren't going to be however many hundred million all living and breathing Formula One. They'll just tune into it. Ah, the race is on. Let's have a little watch. And apparently he thinks that everybody else doesn't like practice. So I won't ask you what the pros are because I don't think you're going to say any, are you? No, there are some pros. I guess it's one of those sessions where people that are at the circuit get to watch the cars

probably for a fraction of the price if you just get a Friday ticket because, and you could argue, maybe even more action because there's lots of cars going out all the time for a long time. And the combined practice sessions are longer than a race. So you do get good value for money there when you're at the circuit. But so that's a pro. The cons are obviously the fact that more casuals won't be that interested. It's not a particularly interesting thing, but then you'll argue that it's not meant to be interesting.

It's meant to be gathering data. It's like testing that we did recently where it wasn't particularly interesting, but we were just happy to see Formula One cars back on our screen. And I think the main con and something that Dominic Carly mentions in this statement about engineers is that they get to spend a long amount of time tweaking every little bit. So the car's absolutely perfect. They've done race simulations so they know exactly what they're going to pit most of the time, exactly who's going to come in, exactly when X tire is going to go off.

And then they just have this race simulation. And then you could argue that the race has become more predictable. Okay. My pros of having practice are of the similar sort of. of level here. When I look at what Stefano Domeni calli saying of getting rid of practice sessions, I'm like, well, what happens on a Friday then? If we don't have practice sessions, what are they going to fill the time with? And unless it is a cart race for three hours, for a bit of bans around the Formula One circuit of that choice, then I'm not interested.

What are they going to fill it with? Because on one side, you've got tracks that are trying desperately to stay in business, some of them. And of course, part of that is, the Friday selling and they've had to, well, they have up their prices quite a bit for the Friday side. They can't just, that can't just disappear and we just have a Saturday, Sunday, Formula One weekend because it just won't be viable for Formula One as a business or for the circuits that want to get involved with it. So it's a very strange way of going about things, isn't it? Obviously, it was just a kind of, probably just a casual chat that Stefano is now going, oh God, I wish I'd not said this because it kind of has, it has opened a can of worms.

And I'm sure he knows that he can't just get rid of it because there are certain pros to it. And that is the fact that you go to a race, you get to see the cars. Obviously, they have whittled down the practice length now. So it is sort of on the same par as a race. But you get to see a lot of cars going around doing their own thing. And that's just part of the Formula One weekend for me. even if I'm not at the race, I think it's still a good thing to have

because the hard cause watch it, and it satisfies them. We can't just appeal to the general public all the time and be like, what would a casual like? Because that's just not the way Formula One should go. And also as well, I guess another pro of it is the fact that Formula One remains this pinnacle of motorsport. If we get rid of all practice

and the teams don't know what they're doing going into qualifying in the race, yes, it could be. more exciting because they don't know what strategy to do and whatnot. But isn't that kind of against what the whole point of Formula One is, is that these cars are tuned to a level where they can get the most out of them? I don't know. Maybe this is just because I've watched it for so many years.

Yeah, we do say that, but then we'll also moan when Red Bull are four seconds faster a lap than everyone else. Maybe Red Bull can not have practice and everyone else can. Yeah, this is the thing. it's and I guess with that argument you could argue that that is the least of Formula One's worries right now is getting rid of Friday practice when you've got a team that's miles clear and we might potentially have yeah should F1 get rid of Red Bull no um but I don't think you know if we ditch the practice sessions for the rest of the year red bull aren't going to be any more dominant so there are other the other ways they can argue of they want to. Sorry, any less dominant.

Yeah. I just think that this is clearly a point that he's making about how much he likes sprint weekends. Because on sprint weekends, Friday practice is a thing, but you only get one of them. Then you go to qualifying on Saturday. And then you get the,

sorry, qualifying on Friday, sprint on Saturday race. So you've got something on every single day. We've got that practice session on the, Saturday as well, mate. Indeed. The most irrelevant practice session for anyone watching ever. Yeah. But this is the thing.

It's not practice. You could argue, it's televised, but it's not there to be entertaining. So you could argue that it just, it's not, it's not there to entertain anyway, neither are any of the practices. So is it a case of spicing up practices? Or do you just have that what we have in the sprint races where, that kind of changes the argument for people that want to go to the track on a Friday and see something, they will get a qualifying session as well.

And I personally, I don't think the sprint race format is perfect. And I do like it, but there can be changes. But the second year we went to Silverstone after the first year of a sprint race weekend, the Friday felt a bit flat to me because, I was so used to that, not so used to it, because it only happened one year, but it's like, oh, this is really cool. You get something on every day. Yeah.

And then it was quite weird going back and then Friday just being a day of nothing. Yeah, I completely agree with that. But I also think that when you're not at the race, you don't feel that at all. So it is very specific to the 100, 200,000 people that go to a Grand Prix, which in the grand scheme of viewing figures is very tiny. But then that is where a lot of tracks make their money. And Formula One, of course, makes their money from ticket sales. So there's so many different routes that you could go down with this.

If I now flip to the cons of having practice, it is having the cast so fine-tuned that they know what they're doing. So on one side you're going, well, what is Formula One, essentially? What route do you want to take Formula One down? Is it just purely entertainment? Because if that's the case, scrap practice or have practice, but it's qualifying every single time and you can score points if you go fast or whatever, because if it is just purely entertainment, then that's the route they should go.

down where there's always something to play for. But if it is a sport first, then they shouldn't worry so much about that. And they should allow for what Formula One has been for so, so many years. So it is a really difficult decision to make. I do personally like the odd sprint race weekend, but I'm so set in my ways of what Formula One is that I don't mind it being three times a year, six obviously this year now. I didn't mind it as three. I think 6 is pushing it

because then that's pushing towards what I think is entertainment first rather than the sport. It's such a difficult topic. It is a very difficult topic because F1 is such a unique sport in that sense because if you look at football, for example, they don't advertise the training matches.

You don't watch that on TV. So you get to the argument of, well, you can't, can't take it away now. They can't say, oh, we're not televising practice because it's boring. Because everyone, this is exactly what happened in testing. And we knew it was going to happen because we, F1 fans love to complain. But we had no, we had that secret test, didn't we, last year. And it was ridiculous. Why is this on TV? Why isn't this on TV? It's a joke. And then this year, we got the test on TV. And it was like, well, this is a bit boring. But it's

to see the cars, but after eight hours, you kind of, okay, right, I've seen cars now. And then you get weird people going, oh, do we need some to spice up testing? No, it's testing. So maybe it's just a case of there's so much content now out there. And every time, the argument is every time a Formula One car is out on track, should it be this entertaining thing where there's something to play for? Or are you allowed? to just have sessions that exist that don't mean anything. I can see them whittling down three practice sessions to perhaps two. And I don't know what they would do with those.

But then if you lose a session, what do you fill it with? And then all of a sudden you go back to it being a sprint race weekend again. So that's clearly the route in which Stefano wants to take it. And perhaps the numbers suggest that, yes, as a worldwide population, F1 sprints are the way to go. or perhaps it's lining people's pockets. There's so many different answers to this that it's mad. So let's dive into now.

What would the perfect race weekend format be? Before we share ours, we asked a few of you what yours would be. So this one is from Kenny underscore Lehmanor. FP1, 90 minutes Friday morning. FP2, 90 minutes Friday afternoon. FP3, 60 minutes Saturday morning. qualifying 60 minutes Saturday afternoon, which gets 12 laps per driver.

And then there's a warm up on the Sunday for 30 minutes. And then on the Sunday, whatever, 2pm, local time, whatever, the race. That's a lot of running. Stefano is actually losing sleep over seeing these ones because that's the complete opposite of what he wanted. That's a more practice, more running before the race as well. Yeah. I'm not a fan of this one.

This is an olden days one, isn't it, Tom? Yeah, this is when I first started watching. There was a... 1957, was it? Not far off. But yeah, this is a lot of running, which is great for the general public. It's not great for Charlotte Claire's engine parts. Sorry, Matt.

Why did you... That was... I was not ready for that. Where did that even come from? But that is... It doesn't really check their kind of, oh, limited parts for a season. though, to be fair, if you're having 90 minutes of this. If that was the case, while they just wouldn't go out.

They wouldn't go out, no. Warm up. This is what happened even when you did those warmups. You had wet, wet sessions. And they were like, well, I'm not going out, binning off my car just before the race. It's just pointless. So, yeah, this is an old school look at it, which this, this answers the question that the perfect race weekend for a lot of people is the one that they grew up with.

I wonder how old Kenny is. I wonder how old Kenny is. Yeah, I'm not a fan of this at all. Far too much running. It's never going to happen in this modern day of Formula One. But thank you, Kenny, for your suggestion all the same. Next one comes in from, I see Josh. I like how it is now.

Seeing practice results, builds up hype and expectations for quality in the race itself. Now, this is a good point, actually, that I haven't really mentioned, or you haven't mentioned either, Tommy. As a pro. It's that hype. It's, it is the, the teasing before the real thing. You know, people go, oh, you watch practice. And I guess rather than everything is something to play for where it's just constant dopamine

and you're like, wow, we're playing for something now. We're playing for something now. I think that'll get very boring in a year's time when you just expect something to happen all the time, whereas practice does lead up to qualifying in the race as being this big Saturday and a big Sunday. whereas sprint race weekends is kind of, oh, it's sort of big on Friday. Then you've got Saturday, which is a shorter race, but is that more exciting than having proper qualifying into a race?

And then it gives people who are out of position the opportunity to make up positions before the real race on Sunday. So I actually completely agree with this. And I think that is one thing that people maybe don't under or realize until it goes away that actually this tease is. really good for the Saturday and Sunday. Yeah. It's always nice on a Friday to see that makes us happen as two seconds quicker than everyone,

so we know what to expect on a Saturday. No, I'm joking. You sound like a salty Ferrari fan, but you've literally got a Max cape in your background. Well, but this is the thing. This is why I don't like practice, because I would argue the opposite to that. Here you go. All the people that like us to disagree. me.

You get, say we have a situation where, oh, this team are good this weekend. You kind of, I know it builds up, but maybe it misses that shock of us going straight into qualifying. And it's like, oh, my God, this team are really good. So it does build up the weekend. And I can see where they're coming from. But then it's just a lot of running and a lot of sessions that kind of

revealing the order and it's just giving them more and more time to tweak the pecking order to be exactly how it should be with all this time rather than maybe throwing a few curveballs into the mix. All right. All right. Tommy, let's explore it, let's explore it,

shall we? We need a jingle for like, the disagreement. The disagreement. What would, okay, we get rid of practice. What,

actually, you probably will include that in your perfect weekend. format, won't you, of how it would look like? Yeah. So I won't ask you right now. We'll do one more. We're from Formula Sophie, who says, I really like the F2 format with a reverse top 10 sprint, but maybe an extra practice session two, like an F1 sprint weekend.

Practice and quality Friday, practice and sprint Saturday and race Sunday. Now, with Formula One being in this experimental phase, I don't know why they haven't tried the Formula 2 format. Maybe it's because they don't want to look like they're going to a feeder series and taking ideas and they're Formula One. They're always being very big with their ideas. They couldn't possibly go and copy Formula 2. Whereas I'm not against them trying the Formula 2 format.

Absolutely not, especially now that they've tweaked it back to a good Formula 2 format. So try it. I would absolutely watch that. The reverse grids are something to be said, because if we're going back to this whole Red Bull dominant thing, you watched literally the last race, Max died 15th. and you knew we were still going to come through the field, and you've kind of had that excitement there, whereas if you start second or first,

you know he's going to win the race unless his car breaks down. So Formula One is a unique sport, and this is something I've always thought about, that while qualifying is traditional, and it's this thing that's lasted forever, it does, you could argue, give, well, it's not an unfair advantage because they literally have the fastest car and then they qualify, but you're kind of giving a head start

to the people that are already quicker. It's like in a football match, if you, if I know that say like Man City play Akrington Stanley or someone rubbish, they start on a level playing field. It's nil, so you have that moment. If it was two nil to Man City before you even started, you wouldn't even watch it because it's like, well, they're going to win and they've already got this advantage. So of course, they're going to not want to do that because the teams are going to. always just argue, well, you can't punish us for building a good car.

And I feel like that's the one thing that I really want to try and do is reverse grids, but it will just be tricky to actually nail the format. But I would really like to see it. And this kind of goes into the next weekend, perfect weekend format. It's tricky, though, because do I want to see it all the time? Because would we have had our reaction of, oh, my God, Max is starting 15th? this is crazy if it was every single race weekend, probably not. Interesting.

I quite like it, as you know. So I'd be willing to test it. That's, I think, the open-mindedness of seeing if it works, oh, if it actually isn't as good as we all think, because Max Verstappen just plows through it from 10th every single time in the sprint, then it is what it is. But then the opposite side is, does that ruin the integrity of the sport? As you say, why are we penalising the teams that are building the fastest car?

but I mean, I guess realistically you would still have the team starting on poll on Sunday. Lots of debate. And I can't wait to see all of your comments on wherever you are watching or listening. Please do send them in or on social media. I'd be really happy to see them. Now let's move to what would our perfect weekend format be from Friday to Sunday? All right. Here we go.

Friday. And then you can say Friday, Tommy. We'll do it like that. My Friday. No, that would be confusing. No, okay, cool. Ignore that. Friday

60 minute FP1 and for FP2 60 minute cart race around the track I like that They can still get to know all the bumps and whatnot but not in their own car

It's just to finally shut up Twitter and who the best driver is and we'll just know because they're in carts Exactly Can you imagine seeing a cart going up like O'Rouge or something

That would be quite something They'd need a quite powerful car otherwise it might just roll back down But realistically I think 60 minute FP1 60 minute FP2. Sorry. Saturday, Q1 and Q2 the same.

Q3, one shot qualifying. 10th goes out first. First goes out last. And yes, weather might play a factor, but get over it. That's all I'm going to say to that one. I made that up about 10 minutes ago before the podcast started. And I was actually like, oh, I quite like that. And then Sunday, a 24-hour race.

And when you run out of you have to run. Yeah. I mean, that justifies the ticket price. races these days, doesn't it? But no, a normal race. I don't think the format is too far away from being perfect anyway, but I think spicing up quality, maybe just that tiny tweak might be quite nice. Tommy. Yeah, this is, so you've kind of gone for almost the same, but a little tweak.

I mean, looking at all the people that have messaged in, no one can agree. And I'm going to have a really, I will do my perfect answer, but my, I thought about this for a lot. And I just keep changing my mind. And I think that just shows that there is no perfect solution because, of course, I want to be entertained as much as possible watching a weekend. And part of me goes, well, yes, I want to watch qualifying on a Friday because I want to consume all the weekend. I want to be as entertaining as possible and multiple sessions.

I think my answer is I like it changing. And I like the fact that we've got six sprints a year. maybe even more, but if I would, I would like to throw maybe three to six times a year. How many? No, I, okay, perfect, perfect format. So everybody. Tommy's thought about this a lot and he's still changing his mind. That's the thing.

I actually have thought about it a lot and I'm still changing it. It just shows how crazy it is. But, okay, nine sprints, sprint weekends, which is just under half the races. so you have a bit of variety. And then five of them are where you reverse the top 10 for the sprint. Yeah, because my problem with the sprint, and it always will be, is you don't get the jeopardy of a sprint because it's the first half of a race, which in Formula One is never, it's rarely that exciting after the first lap. It's until they get to the pit stops and there's jeopardy and there's undercutting and overcutting and different strategies and all this kind of stuff, whereas the sprint is essentially

the first part of the race where they just drive around and there's no jeopardy. Just the first step. Yeah, exactly. So if you had a reverse element to that, it would make it more exciting. We've seen the Stappan in Saudi, Hamilton in Brazil a couple of years ago. the quick cars do get to the front. So I don't think they have to worry that if they started last every race,

they're still going to win the championship. So why only five then? Just to mix it up, see how it goes, and then if it's the best thing ever and we do like it. I'm going to press the button, the argument button. Disagree. Disagreement time. Go on.

All right, Tommy. I'm going to play this one straight at you right here. Does that not make Formula One incredibly confusing when you have three different formats to keep up with. And if you're a casual fan and you're like, wait, why is Vestappan starting 10th in this race this time? Oh, it's one of the sprint reverse ones

rather than the sprint normal one. And it's definitely not a real full race weekend one. What's your argument to that? Then you should know wheel. No. Yeah, they'll always have that problem, but I'd argue that F-1's a complicated sport anyway. and you're like, hey, I want to make it more complicated.

I don't want to make it even more complicated by having different formats and random lottery and random grids and stuff. Oh, no, yeah, that's what you could do. No qualifying. You just roll the lottery and you pick the number. They did that in British touring cars. Yeah. And it was quite, yeah, they actually do like a lottery.

And then the person that gets pole in one of the races that decides where they start, and then everyone gets shifted down that order. Wow. So, I mean, it's crazy, but I'd like to see it just as, an experiment. What would you call them then? So you've got the normal, the sprint, and then what, the super sprint? Yeah, super sprint.

The sprint to the front. No, super sprint. Oh, it's a good job, Tom. He's not in branding. Yeah, super sprint. Super sprint. Super sprint. Okay.

That is. F1, take notes. One thing I would say about yours is I do think the one shot qualifying lends itself perfectly to a sprint weekend. I would perfectly, I think I'd almost prefer that more than normal qualifying on sprint weekend. So sprint weekend, we have one-shot quality for the entirety of it. Do we have a Q1, Q2, Q3 and it's one-shot in each of them?

Or do we have a... Very long, wouldn't it? I do like the idea of Q3, a one-shot quality. And then, yeah, like you say, if it rains, you get a bit of... Yeah, you've got a bit of drama. Which I quite like, so yeah, F-1. we'll take 10% if you go with our formats. Okay.

I'll just add one more thing. Yes. And we'll have this conversation so many times about sprint weekends, but I remember having the conversation of, oh, the sprint weekend's really good because say at Monza, it allowed Daniel Ricardo to make his way up the order and then in the race he was ahead and won. But then I think it was Imler last year, I think it was.

you had Perez and someone else out of position and then everyone just argued that it ruined the jeopardy of qualifying and the answer to that is every Formula One race is different and will always be different so maybe it's not to be tampered with it's just some races will be good and some races will be bad just like every other sport Wow, popping off Tommy

I would argue that the Danny Rick situation is a much rarer occasion than than having a Perez come through the field because the Danny Rick one was just very odd. I don't know how that even happened. It was incredible. But yes, there you go. Before we do head off,

there was an interesting bit of news that Dominic Carly basically just dropping the T left, right and center, that Madrid are in talks about hosting a Formula One race. This was what he told the Spanish sports newspaper, Marca, sorry, I think it's probably Marcia. Who knows? He said, we are happy with Barcelona.

and it is true that Madrid wants a race. So we will see all this is good for F1. There is great interest, but it is also true that we are focused at the moment on Barcelona, which has a contract and the relationship is strong. It's incredible how Alonzo starts doing well and all of a sudden Madrid are like, hey, could we have a race? Yeah.

What state is the Valencia streets are in? Oh, okay, Madrid is. Yeah, literally. It's, yeah, very bad state, Valencia. And it was also a terrible track. So Barcelona, don't want to talk about it too much because it's a terrible track. But at the end of 2021, Formula One did extend its contract with them for five years. So it ends at the end of 2026.

But let's not forget the La Chicanne has gone. Would we miss it still if it? Well, to be fair, let's wait. Let's wait and see if that last chicane was the crux of racing action for Formula One. And actually, with that back, it's going to be incredible. But still, I think my gut feeling is not. no, I would not miss it. Even though we don't know at all what Madrid would look like,

it could be a car park. We're still like, we still wouldn't miss Barcelona that much. No, try something new. I don't really like, I think Barcelona is just so, Formula One has just outgrown it with the racing that they have there. Don't you dare bring a monarchy. But it's not unique enough to be interesting, and it's not. it's just too many kind of high speed corners that it's like every other circuit yet.

It's just really hard to overtake. And we'll see with the chicane. I'm not holding out much hope. But for one of my favorite cities in the world, Barcelona, which is such a great city, the circuit is extremely boring. So I wouldn't miss it from being there. Madrid screams straight race. and the way a foreign is going

and I'm sure they're probably like we could keep it at Barcelona or we could have it in the centre of Madrid and charge 6,000 euros a ticket so yeah Another straight track. Woo! I know.

We've won by what cost with Barcelona going right. And also with the Barcelona track like it's just the circuit of Barcelona and Catalonia just really is quite far behind other circuits and what they look like. their facilities obviously hasn't been great. And it's a bit out of nowhere,

like in the middle of nowhere as well, isn't it? It's not exactly hustle and bustle, is it? Anyway, we don't need to slander that circuit anymore because it was all about Stefano Domenicali dropping news about practice sessions. Let us know your thoughts, please do. And before we go, Tommy, what are your final thoughts? My final thoughts are, I wish it was a sprint weekend now because I've realised that I actually think they're quite good.

And I feel like after the start of the season we had, it's a bit of jeopardy. You do realise, Tommy, once you speak an opinion, that is it for the rest of time. You have to lock in with that opinion. Otherwise, someone will just quote, tweet you and go, this you? This you?

I remember when you said you enjoyed one practice session in 1997. Yep. How dare you enjoy that. Right. Thank you so much, everybody. Thank you, Tommy. And we'll see you very soon. For more content, Australian Grand Prix coming.

So look forward to that. We'll be live on Twitch on Saturday and on Sunday at the god-awful time of half-five in the morning where we are. But look, we're not going to complain because you're amazing. If you're an Australian fan in particular, you are incredible. And we'll see you very soon. Bye! Bye!

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