The Late Braking F1 Podcast - 2024 Brazilian GP Sprint Review

Episode Date: November 2, 2024

Qualifying may have been rained out, but there's still plenty to discuss from the sprint! Join Ben as he dives into McLaren’s approach to team orders, a contentious late-race VSC, and Verstappen’s penalty, which bumped him from 3rd to 4th. *After recording the FIA announced its revised Sunday schedule (times listed here are local time) Qualifying: 07:30 Race: 12:30 FOLLOW us on socials! You can find us on YouTube, Instagram, X (Twitter) and TikTok SUPPORT our Patreon for bonus episodes JOIN our Discord community JOIN our F1 Fantasy League BUY our Merch EMAIL us at [e-mail]   & SUBSCRIBE to our podcast! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

This podcast is part of the Sports Social Podcast Network. Thank you for listening to the Late Breaking F1 podcast. Make sure to check out new episodes every Wednesday and every Sunday. A very warm welcome to the late breaking F1 podcast presented by only me. Ben Hocking. Expecting to give you two sessions to review today, but in the end, just one. I was expecting both a sprint race and a main qualifying session to take a look at instead. Whilst the main sprint went ahead as expected, and there's plenty I'd like to get to on that,

main qualifying that was supposed to take place this evening, as we're talking here, UK time zone, afternoon, I guess late afternoon Brazilian time, wasn't able to go ahead. The heavens opened about one hour before qualifying was due to begin, and they just didn't stop. I kept going for about three hours. I think the FIA tried for about two hours, just under two hours to get this thing underway. Of course, they were in a bit of a race against daylight. But ultimately, no real improvement in the conditions, absolutely chucking it down. And ultimately qualifying postponed.

We'll see if postponed turns to suspended. They're going to give this a go tomorrow morning, as I'm recording this, a Sunday morning before the start of the Grand Prix, which isn't going to leave a lot of time between those two sessions, but conditions don't look much better for tomorrow's running either. So there is at least a chance that if they can't get this thing done tomorrow morning, they're going to have to use something else to determine tomorrow's grid. And when I say something else, I'm not saying that because I don't know.

I'm saying that because no one knows. It could be that they use the classification from the sprint. be that they use the practice session that happened on Friday. Unbelievably, who am I kidding? Unbelievably, believably, the FIA haven't thought to come up with a solution for a sprint weekend if qualifying can't go ahead. Of course, with three practice sessions on a regular weekend, there is a provision in place for if you can't do qualifying.

You take the results from free practice three. Of course, on a sprint weekend, you only have one free practice session. So they might take that, they might take the results of the sprint. Interestingly enough, and this, I wasn't aware of this until today's runnings. From next year, they're going to be looking at using the championship standings instead, which is an interesting one, but it doesn't look as if that would take place this year. So ultimately, no qualifying review, because there is literally nothing to review, but I am going to have a look at the sprint.

Fair warning, I have a dodgy chest at the moment. So it's going to be interesting to see if I can get it. get through uninterrupted. I have never been more hoping of the annoyance of one Harry Ead or one Sam Sage to interrupt me and say something stupid so it could give my voice a rest. I can't rely on that today. I'm going to have to keep talking. So if we get like nine minutes into this thing and I start spluttering, I do apologize. And I have no doubt that the audio quality, those that aren't appreciative of audio quality, will be right on me for that. But I will do my absolute best. I've got like a litre of water alongside me as well. So if there are any pauses, that will be why.

Right, let's get into it. Sprint. We knew that McLaren were coming in with a very strong position. They started one, two in this Grand Prix. Although, in terms of looking at both the drivers and the Constructors' Championship, they were, what you would say, the wrong way round. Oscar Piastri managed to take a brilliant poll position at the end of SQ3 yesterday. Lando Norris still delivering a lap that was good enough for second place, but of course, Lando Norris is the one who's pursuing the driver's championship. Oscar Piastri is not. This is something myself and Sam speculated yesterday as to how would McLaren approach this? You know, it's not too often that we get a situation like this. It's not very often that McLaren, at least in recent times, have had situations like this,

where they need to think about how, if possible, they can get one of their drivers by the other. There are a lot of questions about how they might want to do it. We get into the start of this Grand Prix. Oscar Piastri is on the outside of the corner, Landon Norris on the inside of the corner. And I feel like McLaren might have got what they were deemed to be the perfect, start. And what I mean by that is Oscar Piastri doesn't get off the line brilliantly. Like, it's not a disaster. It's not as if he's dropping positions left, right and centre. He doesn't get a great start. And Landon Norris gets, I mean, for his usual standards, he gets a pretty

good start. Meaning, there could have been an opportunity for Landon Norris to quite simply dive up the inside, Oscar Piastri, not fighting very hard. And that's the position done. You know, there's 24 laps in this spring race. They could have for 23 and however many corners minus 1 is a lap at Brazil. They could not have been, they could have allowed themselves not to be worried about this situation whatsoever. That could have been done. It's turn 1 just based on Norris getting a marginally better start than Oscar Piastri. But Oscar Piastri defends the inside of the corner. It was a surprise. He dived straight to the inside to defend against his teammate. And M. Piastri has obviously, he'd been asked quite a lot so far in the second half of the season,

how much he would help Lando Norris in his championship effort, you know, what he would be required to do. It felt like a bit of an easy one here that if Piastri doesn't get off the line as well as Lando Norris, Norris can quite comfortably go up the inside. Piastri defending it was interesting and I feel like, and I've got no idea what the conversations were behind the scenes at McLaren, it feels like a blunder. as we'll come on to in a little bit.

Even then, they don't get the move done into term one. There should have still been an opportunity going down into what I believe is turn four. That was what Karin Chandok on Sky Commentary speculated before the race started might be the best opportunity for them to get this done. Of course, they had everything they needed going into term four to get this done in that Piastri had the lead and Landon Norris had second. It wasn't like Lecler or Vestappen had brilliant starts that were able to get them alongside or even in front of one of the McLarence. They held all the cards going into that corner. No. No interest in doing it there either.

Surprising again. That leads to a significant amount of what I would deem to be unnecessary pressure. You have Oscar Piastri leading the way. sometimes Lando Norris is in DRS, sometimes he's not. But Charles LeClair, who doesn't have a brilliant start to this Grand Prix, but he's able to keep ahead of Max Verstappen, and Max Verstappen himself, start to apply pressure on the top two. They are very firmly in DRS.

There was one point, I think, two seconds separated those top four drivers. But that only comes, I think, maybe five or six laps into this thing. Again, Leclair and Ferrari as a whole, they didn't warm up their tyres very well at all. They weren't very good to start this Grand Prix and a couple second advantage opened up for the McLarence. Again, giving them more opportunities to make this move before they caught up. They opted not to. And then what happens?

Leclair and Vastappan start to speed up. Vestappen gets the fastest lap. And now they're right on the back of the McLarence and it's far more difficult to make this switch happen. Because you threaten one of the other two or both of the other two having a sniff of getting by as well. and of course McLaren have two championships to consider as part of all this. Later on in the Grand Prix, Max Verstappen gets third place, and all of a sudden, Lando Norris has absolutely no buffer to work with. He's in second place, Vastappen's in third place.

Now, we have seen the last couple of Grand Prix how Max Vestappen is willing to fight Lando Norris, and I've said on numerous occasions how understandable his approach is. Max Vestappen can afford a DNF. Lando Norris cannot. That's just the way they are in terms of the point standings. So if you have voluntarily created a situation where Norris and Vostappen could go wheel-to-wheel because there are no cars between them, it's hard to have a lot of sympathy for if something happened.

Today, of course, it didn't. And we'll talk about how it ended up playing out in a little bit. But this was risky. They identified correctly that Vostappen had a bit more pace than Chau-Laclair. okay, if you have identified that, you should probably make the move at the front as soon as you possibly can so that when Vastappen gets by Leclair, his next car available to him is not Lano Norris. Instead, that's exactly how it works out. And we saw with Max Vastappen, the way that he fought Charles Lecler was far different to how he fought Lando Norris in recent Grand Prix.

There's tactical and strategic elements to this that I think Vastappen and Red Bull understand that McLaren either don't understand or won't understand or are choosing to ignore. Because Vastappan versus Leclair was, at least by Vestappen standards, quite conservative. Like he had a couple of opportunities to make a pass on Lecler and he turned it down. There were a few 50-50 shots in there that he went, no, this isn't, and we heard it from GP over team radio as well. No, this isn't the time. This isn't the place. it's too much of a risk to try this move here.

And we saw Vestappen waited to get by Lecler until it was a slam dunk move in that he had made that move on the club before he even got to the breaking zone. He made sure it was a safe bet. He wouldn't have raced Lando Norris the same way. If he had the opportunity, and of course the VSC kind of made things a bit interesting,

but if he had the opportunity to fight Lando Norris directly in front of him, I am almost certain he fights him slightly differently. Of course, we do then get the VSC, which comes out. And McLaren could have been completely and utterly punished for what I deem to be their stupid actions. Or stupid inaction, I guess, is more accurate. The VSC comes out.

There is no way at that point they know. Oh, sorry, let me rephrase. The yellow flags come out in sector two for Nika Holcombberg's stricken car. At that point, there are numerous different ways this could go. And the way that it went might be the only one that benefits McLaren. They got lucky. I'm not going to buy into any of the conspiracies, by the way, that the FIA timed this perfect,

the stewards timed this perfect. I'm not buying that whatsoever. Look, stewards, FIA being incompetent, that's not too much of a stretch. I think that's all that is there is to this. But it could have easily ended up that actually it was a full-course safety car, and that's the end of the race. There's no opportunity for Piastri to let Landonoros by. It could have easily been, you know, it could have been a VSE, but it could have been

called straight away, again, not giving them the opportunity to make that pass. This could have gone a number of different ways, and they are quite lucky that they had the chance to get that done before the safety car came out. I think the FIA managed it horribly. I do not understand. I do not understand how they didn't call it sooner. There were cars going through that middle sector before they called it. There were cars going through

after they called it and I couldn't really see Nick Holcomberg's car being any more or less dangerous from start to finish. Yet some of it was worthy of the VSC making an appearance. Some of it wasn't.

I don't think they played that very well and McCarran can count themselves quite lucky that they did. And of course the VSC comes in on the final lap of the Grand Prix giving Vestappen Boris Piastri essentially three quarters of a lap to try and fight this thing out. He's an interesting one because Vastappen, as we know, later know at least,

gets a penalty for what he does under VSC as he is attempting to get by Oscar Piastri. Now he backs out of a move just as the, just as it goes green. Again, I ask the question, does he act the same way? if that's Lando Norris. I'm not convinced he does. Who's the same? But I just think McLaren were unnecessarily

I don't know what the word is, but that they should have been far more authoritative in what they did in terms of their decisions. I think there is a lack of someone, whoever that person is or isn't, in McLaren, They need someone to step forward and say, look, we are fighting for a championship here. Stop the games. Stop the nonsense.

This is what we need to do. And this is why we need to do it. This should have been over. Like I said, this should have been over after one corner, I think. I'll allow four corners. But why this went on to lap 24 and it was still a debate. They've come away with a result. But I think you need to remove the result from this because, again, there are so many.

ways this could have gone down and not all of them. In fact, I would say most of them do not end up in a McLaren 1-2 as it has done today. I just think they got a little bit lucky on that one. In terms of Vastappen and Red Bull, obviously Vastappen gets the five-second penalty after the race, which demotes him from third to fourth. I feel like the penalty was maybe just a bit of a rare miscalculation from Red Bull and Vastappan's side, maybe just overzealous, going for that move on Oskopiastri. I think Vostappen managed the sprint race quite well. And I will say this, I wasn't intending to go on a sprint race rant today. And I'll stick to my, I'll stick to my word on that. But I will at least give one small criticism. Of course, we know that the top eight score in

sprints, with the points going 8-7-6-5-4-3-2-1. So there's only one-point gaps between every single position in the sprint. So if you want to relate that to a main race, essentially every pass that's being made in the top eight in a sprint is a main race overtake from 10th to 9th. Like, points wise, that's what you're looking at. It just promotes drivers to be much more conservative. We saw Vestappen might have been the most conservative version of himself that we've seen all season. But why wouldn't he have been? Every single move that he was calculating, you know, do I go for this dialing? You know, do I go for this bomb on Charles LeClair. If I get it, I earn one point.

If I don't get it right, and I'd DNF, I lose maybe five or six. The cost benefit on all of these often leads to, it's not worth me trying a particularly risky move, which I don't think is great in its own right. But back to Vastappen and Red Bull, because I don't want to spend too much time on slamming sprints today. I think Vastappen will still be relatively happy. Even with losing three points to Lando Norris, of course Norris getting eight for the switch

that him and Piastri made, Vestappen getting five after that penalty, I still think he'll be relatively content because the pace of the Red Bull looked better. He was in the fight, which isn't something that we've been able to say a lot this second half of the season. He was able to, for the most part,

keep pace with the two McLarence. And maybe even more encouragingly because it's not only about what the performance of your car is looking like. It's what it's like relative to the rest of the field. Ferrari didn't look good. You know, again, they started really poorly. And of course, Vestappen gets by Lecler on pace alone. Carlos Seins never even gets into that fight. I think if you offered up the situation, based on how it's been the last few races, if you offered up the situation to Vestappen, you're going to be the second fastest team. You're going to be clear of Ferrari. You'll be a bit behind McLaren, but you know what? you will still be able to compete with them. You'll be able to stick by them during a whole stint.

Vastappen, based on what he's, you know, what could have been behind door number two, he'd probably say, yeah, all right, I can deal with that. Because at that point, he will believe he can make the difference, him as a driver. And I think, yeah, again, I think he'll be relatively encouraged. Like, qualifying, obviously, he was in the mix with the Ferraris. race pace, there was a little bit of a worry that maybe Ferrari would take the advantage,

as they have done in the last few Grand Prix. No, despite in Mexico, Vastappen's pace being nowhere, you take the 20 seconds out of the equation, the race pace was maybe more discouraging. They looked all right today, or at least Vastappen looked all right. Perez was obviously, and I'll speak a bit more on Perez than a bit, but he had overtakes to make, whereas Vestappen was already in the fight based on qualifying. I think he'll be encouraged that if he gets another good qualifying session tomorrow morning, that in the race, he'll be able to hang with the McLaren's.

If he can pick up third place and Lano Norris wins, it's not the worst result in the world. I'm going to take a quick break at this point. It actually happens to be in line with when we usually take our breaks, but also my voice is in shreds. So I'll see you in a few minutes. welcome back everyone I think my voice is slightly better but we'll see how we go

because there's still plenty to talk about from the sprint we spent a lot of time on the McLaren's fighting out front a lot of time on Vastappan I guess I referenced Ferrari I don't have too much more to say about them other than that's disappointing they just weren't that quick

and Charlotte Clare I think that at least do a good job of staying in that fight but what will discourage him and the team is that they kind of fell away at the end of that stint. And remember a sprint race on the medium tire, that's a third of a Grand Prix. Yeah, you're probably going to have to do, if you want to want, I've got no idea

if we're going to be racing on dry tires, of course, but if you want to do a one stop around here, you are going to have to probably do at least 24 laps on those medium tires. They didn't look good after about 15, 16. Yeah, he dropped a bit of time to the two McLaren's. Of course, that then allowed. for Stapp and the opportunity to get by. So less data to work with, obviously,

because we haven't had a qualifying, a main qualifying session yet. We haven't had the practice sessions that we would get on a normal weekend. But Ferrari, who just seemed to be hitting their stride after two consecutive wins, don't look as strong here. I'll tell you who they look stronger than, though.

Mercedes. Oh, dear. It's, the problem is they kind of know what they're getting. going to get every single time that they get into the car. I think George Russell was asked about this before the session. And his answer was basically, yeah, I don't think we got the pace of the top guys. We're going to be in the middle of nowhere. And he was dead on. Russell, at least, Hamilton had worked to do, but Russell was in the middle of nowhere. He made an error at turn one, which at least temporarily gave the likes of Gazley a bit of a sniff of an opportunity, but as soon as that

immediate threat had gone. It looked to be fairly comfortable from his side. And he was, as he says, in the middle of nowhere. It's, again, I don't have too much more to add for Russell and Mercedes, because it's not dissimilar from where they've been really since the summer break. Of course, before the summer break, they looked fairly good. They won a Grand Prix in Belgium. They won a Grand Prix at Silverstone. Technically, they won one at Austria as well. That one was less pace orientated. but certainly since the summer break, they have seemed to occupy this position of just, we're nowhere.

We're better than the midfield, but we haven't got a clue when it comes to beating the likes of McLaren. A few other drivers in that midfield, though, that do deserve some respect, I think, for their performances. Pierre Gasly and Liam Lawson. So Pierre Gasly was able to hold on and score points. Liam Lawson ultimately wasn't,

although gave it a pretty good shot. Pierre Gazley, seventh place. The only disappointing thing, and disappointing might be a stretch, but given Alpina are in this battle with Williams for, yeah, eighth and ninth of the championship, I think it would have been, they would have loved a seventh place in the main race, because that's obviously worth three times as many points

as what you get for seventh in a sprint race. But that's a very negative way of looking at it. It's still a strong performance from Gasly, who qualified very well. And I think the way that he was able to hold pace similar to Mexico, I guess, was really good. And we've kind of saw something of a progression, I think, from Gassley, in that since the United States, he has, as far as I'm aware, had three Q3 appearances or either Q3 or SQ3 appearances. US kind of strategy-orientated, but he wasn't able to keep his qualifying position. Mexico, he does a better job and he finishes in 10th, he's in that fight for points.

Here, even better. Like, there's progression about this. That Alpine does seem to be, and I am talking very relative here, it's better than what it was. And he can fight. And ultimately, whilst Perez got by everyone he needed to get by, that he was one short. And that one short was ghastly. So I give him a lot of credit for what he was able to do. Liam Lawson again, fought really well. He, I like his attitude. I like his attitude. And I know not everyone does. He seems to ruffle some feathers. But as he, he put this very well in his press conference on Thursday when he said that he's not here to make enemies, but at the same time, he's not here to make friends. And I think that's a really good way of viewing it. He's not going out there with the sole intention of annoying,

of 20 drivers. But equally, if he has to, you know, ruffle some feathers in order to, in order to get where he needs to go, he's not going to apologise for that, nor should he. He fought well again today. Perez and Lawson again were fighting on track, which was interesting. I don't blame Lawson for the way that he defended. I don't blame Perez for the way that he attacked. and I think this was a slightly different situation to Mexico in that Mexico, I think Perez was in the position he was because of his own shortcomings. Here, Perez, I think, has more of a case to be slightly annoyed

at what the team delivered for him in qualifying yesterday. He didn't get a second run in SQ2, so he would have felt that if he'd been given an opportunity to make SQ3, he might well have done. I think moving on to Perez, I think he makes a good job. He does a good job today of getting through the cars that he needs to. He made some nice clinical overtakes, I felt, until he got to Lawson. He had to have two attempts at that.

The first attempt didn't go very well with him going deep into turn one. But he gets done the second time around. I think the worst thing about the whole Perez versus Lawson fighting. From Perez's perspective is this. In terms of overall points, we know Red Bull had the Constructors' Championship lead not that long ago. and in theory they're not out of it from a point's perspective. Like they're still in touching distance. We've also seen that R.B. Toro or also,

every single name that it's been called, all of those incarnations have not been against team orders in order to help the other team, the senior team Red Bull. And now we've seen numerous occasions where Sergio Perez, in theory, has an opportunity at more points and Liam Lawson is not told to get out the way.

I'm not advocating for it because I hate it, but equally if it's in the rules, it's confusing or damning as to why they're not using it more. They must feel like Sergio Perez is not able to offer enough that they don't even think they're in a constructors battle anymore. If you thought you were in a constructors battle

with Ferrari and with McLaren, you would immediately say, as has happened in the past, Liam Lawson, get out of the way. Get out of the way. Sergio Perez can come through. That's an easy point, and then he can go after Gasly

and see if he can get two. As has been referenced quite a few times today across the coverage, every point is going to matter in both championships. I just don't think McClara, I don't think Red Bull think they can win. Because you wouldn't,

you would force these. things to happen otherwise. And again, the evidence is it's happened before. So the fact that Perez is trying to make his way through the field and not getting help from the sister team, I think it's just an indication that they know that it's futile, which is, which should be a real worrying sign for them that that's how they view themselves. But yeah, I did at least want to make that point. A couple of other teams in the midfield I did just want to focus on quickly as well so Hass

bit disappointed I appreciate Holkenberg had the DNF but given what they showed in qualifying and indeed in practice one I thought they might be able to get themselves in the points here and early on

I think there was the potential for them to do so so you know we had you know Bermen seemed to go really well in the first half of this Grand Prix. But, and this is a learning curve and it makes sense. Again, it's easy to forget this.

This is third Grand Prix. We need to remember like how inexperienced he is. But today should have been a bit of a learning curve to say, okay, tire management. That's a good thing. Because he really struggled towards the end of that Grand Prix. Holkenberg was, he got a good start. But ultimately couldn't really capitalize on it.

either. So I was a little bit disappointed in Hass. Another team to focus on is Williams. We had Albin starting inside the top 10, colapinto just outside. Excuse me a moment. 28 minutes. I'm not too disappointed at that being the limit for my voice. Williams, I felt were, again, a little bit disappointed. They struggled early on more than I was expecting. Albin lost a couple of positions is off the start, and he just lost touch with the guys ahead, particularly the Hasse guys. Colopento was directly behind him. He had Hamilton behind him to worry about for a large chunk of this Grand Prix. They weren't as quick as I thought they were going to be. Again, I thought they would be able to keep touch with the Gasly, Lawson, hash drivers fight. And I think they got better as

the Grand Prix went on. But the start kind of just put them out of consideration, which will be an annoyance for them. Speaking of Lewis Hamilton, when you're starting, what was it, 13th in this race, with only eight places being given points. He needed a good start. He got the opposite of good start. Sorry, I'm talking rubbish. He started 11th. But he dropped three positions off the start, which is what Sam Sage would call not ideal. Again, at that point, his race was probably over. But again, though, it's worrying that he really took his time to make some progress through this field. Like he was able to, of course, keep in touch with the drivers ahead.

But it really wasn't until the last sort of third of this Grand Prix that he was actually able to make a couple of overtakes. I think he made two, maybe. But where Perez was able to, and Perez obviously got a slightly better start, but Perez was able to work his way through this field, make some overtakes and then ultimately compete for the bottom end of those points. points. Hamilton was just not able to do the same thing. So whether that's an indictment on Hamilton, whether that's an indictment on the team, make your own mind up on that one. But yeah, he'll be,

he's had a few of these qualifying sessions this year. Of course, we don't exactly know what's happening. We're qualifying tomorrow. But he'll need, he needs to be there alongside George Russell in Q3 to really, because I think when it comes to race pace, when he's in clean air, as we saw in Mexico, there's no problem whatsoever. But if he's having to, if he's giving himself work to do by overtaking some of these cars that he's quicker than, but not massively quicker than, it makes progress very, very difficult in a Grand Prix. So, yeah, disappointing qualifying session that ultimately led to a qualifying sprint race. I think that's going to, I think that's going to do it for the sprint race. Of course, there were other efforts from the likes of, of Asthma

Martin Salba, Yuki Sonoda, but none of them had particularly good days that are worth talking about, I would say. As reference, at least at the time of recording, we don't know exactly what's happening with qualifying. We know that there will be an attempt to run it tomorrow morning Brazilian time, so likely early afternoon UK time. Work out wherever you are in the world as to what that will mean for you, but we haven't had any confirmation of an attempted start time. Again, there is still a lot of weather around, which could mean that that is either postponed or completely suspended, in which case they will use something to determine the grid. Again, though, we don't know what that will be. It's going to be a potentially very, very interesting day tomorrow after what has

been a very interesting day today. I am glad to say that I will not be by myself tomorrow. I will be rejoined by Mr. Sam Sage and Mr. Harry Ead. I'm very much looking forward to them being here. so again, my voice can get a little bit of arrest. I hope you've enjoyed the last 30-ish minutes of rambling or so. You know where to find us across social media. Get in the Discord if you're not there already. And keep breaking late. This podcast is part of the Sports Social Podcast Network.