The Late Braking F1 Podcast - 2024 British GP Qualifying Review

Episode Date: July 6, 2024

Early rain and a drying track provided a thrilling British GP qualifying. Ben is on hand to run through the biggest talking points including a Mercedes 1-2 (what year is this?), an excellent day for the Haas of Hulkenberg, and trickier days for Leclerc and Perez. FOLLOW us on socials! You can find us on YouTube, Instagram, X (Twitter) and TikTok SUPPORT our Patreon for bonus episodes, historic race reviews & more! JOIN our Discord community JOIN our F1 Fantasy League: SIGN UP & create your team, and JOIN our league (join code: C3PHEQHPU04) BUY our Merch SEND us something! We have a brand new PO box - address: Late Braking Podcast, PO Box 821, TRURO TR1 9PE 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. And a very warm welcome to the late breaking F1 podcast presented by me, Ben Hocking. I'm running solo today, but we've still got an episode for you. We have got a lot to talk about for the British Grand Prix qualifying review. What an interesting session that was. a little bit of a jumbled up grid.

Some cars out of position, all of which we will, of course, get to. And the classic British weather, playing interference. But ultimately, a good thing, I think, for the session itself, but also for the race tomorrow. So often we get weather in qualifying sessions.

You always want it to go the right way around. You want to start wet and get drier, because, you know, if you have a dry start that eventually takes, turns to rain, then you've got minutes of sessions being essentially worthless. We've got the opposite today, which is good news. Good news for Mercedes. Most significantly. They will start, they'll start one two tomorrow. I'm sorry, what year is this? Is this 2024? George Russell getting pole position ahead of Lewis Hamilton. And do I have to say, everyone, it's a British top three,

Lando Norris is third. I'm a bit sick of that start already, to be honest, and it's only been 20 minutes it was first said. But, yeah, Lando Norris is in third place, and he'll be joining Max Verstappen on the second row in fourth. Might as well start out front. We'll start with Q3. Like I say, Mercedes a one-two finish. They'd looked pretty good going into this qualifying session, but that's not the first time we've seen that this season. That's not the first time we've said that. They have looked good in certain practice sessions, and then it either completely fades away come qualifying or slightly fades away. But here, here it was still true. Now, it was difficult in the earlier parts of this session to get a true read on what the pace of

each car was. So I'm not going to say it made it more of a surprise, but it's not like we saw it coming because it's not like through FP1 and FP2, we had completely dry representative running where we could kind of tell what Q3 was going to look like. They did look competitive in the other conditions, don't get me wrong, but we knew as the track dries out, as the rain, you know, stayed away in Q3, you know, we knew we were going to get a slightly, we could get a slightly different picture. But Russell and Hamilton, very good from both of them. George Russell, who has got two of his three pole positions in the last few races or so, it's a very impressive margin that he was able to pull out on Lewis Hamilton. It was a couple of attempts in the end. And we saw,

as we quite regularly do between these two very capable drivers, there wasn't a lot to separate them throughout a good chunk of qualifying, and you can extend that to practice as well. But as we are routinely seeing from George Russell this season, he has enough to just put a couple attempts on Lewis Hamilton in that final part of qualifying. It's qualifying record against Hamilton this season, whilst it is somewhat spoken about, I still think it goes a little bit under the radar just how good he is.

is, you know, when he needs to pull in that final lap. I appreciate a lot of people say Hamilton's not in his qualifying prime anymore. He's getting on. The guy's not 70. Like he is, Hamilton is still operating at a very high level. And I think George Russell deserves a lot more respect for his qualifying efforts against Hamilton. That is a, you know, it's a record head to head that is going to hold up when you look back at it in years to come. And this is just another one of those results. I'm not to say that Hamilton's done a poor job. But I'm not to say that Hamilton's done a poor job here. He's on the front row for goodness sake. But George Russell has yet again been able to extract the most from his car in that final part of qualifying. And we saw, at least versus

Lando Norris in the first runs, there was barely anything in it. But it was that middle sector that really was letting down, even Hamilton even more, but it was letting Russell down compared to Norris. And then on that final flying lap, purple in the middle sector, purple in the final sector. Purple in the final sector really nails it, a great job from him. And his teammate, Lewis Hamilton, like I say, deserves respect of his own for getting on the front row. And what we saw from Hamilton in the first run was, we saw two purple sectors, actually weirdly, but being a couple attempts down on both Russell and Norris. So he had a fastest first and final sector, but a middle sector that was really, really letting him down versus particularly Norris, but also Russell. And of course, he managed to

find time on that. Obviously not enough because Russell was able to find time as well. But, you know, Mercedes, they've continually said, we found something with the car, we've worked it out. And, you know, the win at Austria last time shouldn't really confirm that based on the way in which it was won. But results like this, a representative, everyone going for it, one to finish, that tells me a lot about where Mercedes are right now, but also where they're heading, because if this is the start of some more progress, then suddenly maybe they can, you know,

convert some of these results into actually competing on race day. Speaking of, I think that's going to be a very interesting point going into tomorrow, is do Russell and Hamilton, you know, let's say they get an all right start off the line. Are they going to have the pace to keep up with or hold off, I guess, both Lando Norris and Max Verstappen. So Norris and Vestappen coming into this weekend at least have been the best two drivers in F1 comfortably for quite a while. They've been, you know, they should have been one two in Austria,

but they have been one two in a lot of other races, really since China. You know, they've almost had a lock on those first two positions other than Austria and Monaco as well, which as we know can be a bit of an outlier. But here, I think both of them, both of them had scruffy sessions. From Lando Norris's perspective, I think he should have been in that fight for first and second. And, you know, in the first run, arguably he was. But when the track's improving and you need to get a lap in in the dying stages of Q3, Lando Norris unable to do so.

It was still a cleaner session you would have to say compared to Vestappen, who, you know, we don't know how much he was impacted by, the damage incurred by going wide in Q1, but equally that was self-inflicted. Sure, it didn't end up the same way as his teammate, and I'll get on to that at some point in this episode. But he still made that error. He still ran wide. If it was costing him a couple attempts, you know, that's a shot at pole gone, but he's got no one to blame other than himself. Everyone was in the same conditions at that stage. And he made quite a notable error on his fastest lap in the first sector too. So, you know, he might well have been able to get in that fight

without either of those things happening, but they did. The saving grace for both of those drivers is, I think, race pace, they do have a bit of an advantage on the Mercedes. Now, I don't think it's going to be a lot. And we don't have as much practice time as usual to, you know, get into the data because of the amount of rain that's been around Silverstone this weekend. But if we're looking at FP2, which was largely dry until the last couple of minutes. I think Norris and Vestappen do have a few temps on both Russell and Hamilton, but the question is, will they be able to use it? We know that the start at Silverstone is pretty difficult to make moves.

It's not a long run down into that fast right-hander of turn one. If Russell and Hamilton can stay ahead on that first lap, are Norris and Vestappen going to have the opportunity to showcase that, pace advantage that they may or may not have. I think it's, I'm glad for this result, and you'll know anyone who listens to this regularly, that I don't necessarily root for or against any driver. I'm rooting for the sport, as corny as that sounds. But really, in this situation, I'm glad it's gone the way that it has, because Norris and Vestappen, if they do have a slight pace advantage on the two in front, that could be a really thrilling Grand Prix. That

That could be a thrilling race. You watch now, it will be dull. But I think based on what I've seen in practice so far, those top four, and I could throw Piastri in there as well, to be fair. The top five, that could be a very thrilling fight for the lead. Which leads me onto a frustration. I mean, everyone will know that I get frustrated quite easily on these episodes. And I'm finding a way to be frustrated even when these other two morons aren't here.

Ferrari is usually the next on my list for things I get annoyed at. And that rings true today because it was not a good result. Signs in seventh place is the lead Ferrari. Charles LeCler didn't even get through to Q3. He will start 11th in this race. The reason for my frustration, now I've watched Formula One long enough now to know that if you're expecting too much a Ferrari,

then that's kind of on you. But my main frustration with them here is not necessarily the result. it's the fact that we could have an even more frilling fight out. I know it's thrilling in itself. You know, Mercedes versus Norris versus Vestappen versus Piastri. That's a very tasty top five. There's not a lot to separate them. That's all great. And maybe I should, maybe I should just go, that's absolutely fine. I'm happy to watch and see that unfold tomorrow. But I can't help think that maybe it could have been even more exciting with two Ferraris in the middle.

mix as well. And the annoying thing is that they have been in the mix this season. We have seen Carlos Seines take a win. We have seen Shao Lecler take a win. The problem that I have with them is as soon as Red Bull and Vestappen more specifically starts to show more vulnerability, as he has done over the last few races, now Vastappen's still competing for and taking wins, but it can't be denied that the likes of Norris are at least challenging Vestappen and leading. And, and leading, to some exciting battles on track and exciting, you know, finishes to the flag. Ferrari, as Red Bull have become more vulnerable, have got worse. Ever since really, again, Monaco is tough to judge in terms of pure race base, but Imola,

you know, that they were all right enough. And of course, before that, they were fine as well. But since Imola, you think Canada was a disaster. but in other respects rather than just pure pace. It was just a pure disaster from first point in practice one to the race itself. But then you look at the last couple of Grand Prix and they're just, they're not wildly uncompetitive, but they're just missing that last couple of attempts to actually get them in these fights.

And here, what we've had is a complete mess. So as far as I understand it, Carla Sines is running the old spec, as in the either pre-Imila spec or the Imala spec. It goes back a long time. It's an old spec car that Sines has been running this weekend. Charle-Clair has been running the new spec, which in itself is not an alien tactic to have, you know, if you're uncertain about the effectiveness of your upgrades, getting someone to run the new versus the old, you know, that's understandable as a tactic.

But mid-weekend, Ferrari have decided that Charlotte-Clai have decided that Charlotte-Clai, is going to also go back to the old spec. They believe that's the right way, which is good that they can understand that and bad that that's the answer because you'd want the answer to be everything you've worked towards is actually working

and you want to stick with that. Note that they've gone back to something that might have been good five races ago, but is now going to be a bit behind. But they do so on a weekend where, again, there's been rain all around this weekend. We've seen practice interrupted. We've seen an F3 race cancelled. We've seen an F2 race be red flagged. Basically, you're not, you don't have a lot of guarantees for running for track time.

Obviously, FP3 happens, which is not a dry session. Charler LeClair has got a brand new, well, not a brand new. He's got a brand old spec, if that makes any sense at all. He's running it for the first time this weekend. And he's supposed to just perform. He's supposed to just get in the car and straight, away, pick it up. I don't want to make all the excuses in the world for Shao LaClau not being on the same pace as Carlos Sines, but hey, if you don't give anyone track, if you don't give someone track time with changing your car mid-weekend, you're probably not going to get the best results. And that's exactly what we saw. Weirdly, Shao LaClair has always not been brilliant in these middle conditions. He's very good when it's dry, he's very good when it's wet. And when it's in

the middle of it is he can be a little bit suspect in these qualifying sessions. It's not the first time you've seen him miss Q3 in these conditions, but give him some time or just, you know, commit to the fact that you will be one driver on the old spec, one driver on new spec for a whole weekend. If you knew the FP3 and you knew qualifying was going to be dry, okay, I can understand it a little bit more. But Chuck in LeCler in this, in this old car at the last minute, it might well have come from his blessing. It probably did. But even so, the team, I'm not particularly impressed. And again, the big disappointment is if they were in the mix, that's a lot of different drivers, a lot of different teams, battling for pole position. It's very unlikely they'll be able to do a great deal,

particularly Leclair from 11th. If science gets a good start, maybe he can be in the mix for the top four or five again and see what we see what he did in Austria. You know, he didn't have incredible pace and Ferrari didn't have an incredible pace. But, But if you're in that mix and things happen in front of you, then suddenly podium opportunities open up as they did last week. So, um, yeah, starting seventh and eleventh, though, they'll, they'll need strategy, good start, miracle, something or other to, to actually make a lot of progress. Uh, the final driver that I'd like to focus on before I go to a quick break on this episode, it's difficult just talking without throwing it over to someone else, you know.

Nick Alkenberg, he's very good at qualifying, isn't he? He does the qualifying, the Saturdays very well indeed. He was right in the mix. I can't remember exactly what the gap was between Holkenberg and pole position Russell, but it wasn't more than half a second, I don't think. It was pretty close. Maybe it was just over half a 10th, a half a second, I'm not too sure. But he was in the mix throughout all of Q3.

You know, he's had a very good first lap as well that put him in the mix, and he improved on that even further with his second run, which is, you know, what you're looking to do in qualifying. You're likely to get the best lap in on your second run, but his first banker lap was very good as well. He really maximised this session. To be clear of Carlos Seines, to be the lead Ferrari powered car, oof, that's not a good sentence for Ferrari, is it? I'll tell you what, the worst sentence for them might have. been what Martin Brundall said on commentary, which is that Hasse will be the lead Ferrari car, despite having about a thousand fewer employees, which is a very good point indeed. And he wasn't that far off competing with the likes of Piastri, competing with the likes of Vastappen. So a very good effort from him. P6 is Hass's best start of the season so far. So he'll be in that mix.

And again, it's limited running in practice so far this weekend, at least drive. running, Holkenberg looked pretty good in practice yesterday. I'm not suggesting that he will keep pace with the five cars in front of him, but equally, I don't think he's going to fall off the back of them all that quickly. As usually, it'll depend on how the race unfolds and who he's battling and how hard he has to defend against cars. But if he's left to run his own race, I don't think he's going to be a million miles away from the cars in front of him. And crucially for him, I think he will have a good chance of being comfortably ahead of quite a few cars behind. This is a great opportunity for Hasse to get some more points. That's the positive thing I want to say about Hasse. I did want to get to

a negative. Now, this is probably not going to get any coverage because it didn't end up mattering, but I still think it's worth raising the point because Hasse, I think, got a little bit fortunate. They got a little bit fortunate. So Q1, we know Kevin Magnuson was obviously eliminated. Hulke and Bogue did survive. I didn't agree with the way that Hasse played Q1 though. So we know that it started pretty damn. We started on intermediate tires. Hulkenberg, or at least initially, both of the Hask cars did not come out when all other 18 drivers were on the track. They were being mavericks in that sense. Magnuson eventually did go out, sets a lap on intermediate tires. Holkenberg does not set a time before the red flag comes out for Sergio Perez. Now, as it happened, this gave the track a little bit more

to dry and those drivers that got out there in the first instance, you know, were able to set relatively quick lap times. And we saw it was a bit of a, it was an interesting end to Q1. We had some instances where the first lap was best, then there was a bit of rain, and there was a little bit of a gap in between to set a lap, and then that kind of went quite quickly as well. Has got lucky, because if that rain comes a couple of minutes sooner, Holkenberg is stranded with no time in what is a good car, a good qualifier, and he's knocked down in Q1 alongside his teammate. I think they should, look, if you're in Q1, your only job is to get into the top 15. Your job is not set the fastest, it does not matter if you set the fastest lap or

the 15 fastest lap. All you've got to do is get through. And I think Has had enough pace in their car that they could be fairly confident they will do that if they can just match the strategy of everyone else, which they declined to do. They try to be bold. And, you know, I appreciate it from a viewer's perspective. It is exciting to see someone try something different strategically. Here, though, I just don't think it made sense. Get out there at the same time as everyone else. Secure a lap. And then if something like this does happen where you get a red flag and then you get a downpour, you're not scrambling around for ideas on how on earth you can improve when it's chucking it down. I think they got a little bit lucky. And they arguably got a little bit lucky in Q2 as well, because

Holkenberg went out quite a bit earlier than everyone else. And the track was still rapidly improving towards the closing stages of Q2. And Hulkenberg was pretty much the only driver not out there on a lap setting a time. He'd already done one. Again, that strategy can make sense because if it's dry conditions and you're trying to avoid a late red flag where everyone else's laps get interrupted, but yours doesn't because you've got in there a couple of minutes quicker, that strategy can make sense. I don't think it makes sense in this situation, again,

where you're just looking to be in the top 10 because of the track improvements that were going on. And I think he finished 8th in Q2, and he was a little bit lucky that the likes of, you know, maybe LeCler or, you know, one of the red RB drivers, they didn't end up improving all that much. So a lot of positives for Holkenberg today, but a few things I didn't quite agree on from Hass's perspective.

I'm going to take a quick break at this point. On the other side, we've still got a lot to talk about that happened in Q2 and Q1. I want to talk a bit about Williams, a bit about Aston Martin, and Sergio Perez being knocked out in Q1. Welcome back, everyone. You'll be glad to know, by the way, that I won't be alone for tomorrow's episode. We'll have at least two of us. Sam will be back for the race review tomorrow. But we've still got some more qualifying pointers to discuss.

And I want to go next to Aston Martin. So I think a slightly better performance from Aston Martin today. They've been struggling pace-wise for quite a while now when we look at this season. The days of Fernando Alonzo getting into the top five or so in qualifying, they haven't existed for quite a while. Arguably today, though, they should have done. So Stroll and Alonzo both managed to make it through its Q3. That in itself is progress.

practice-wise that they look reasonable enough to indicate that actually they might be able to hold these positions in the race as well to actually claim some points. But Fernando Alonzo, I think, has got to be disappointed with his starting position. Stroll, I think, is about where he should be. He managed to just about make it into Q3. I think he was 10th. So he was right on the bubble. And then he's starting eighth place. So he's managed to out-qualify Alburn, who's he behind, Ferrari signs, Holkenberg, McLaren's, Verstappen, Mercedes. I think Stroll has done about as good a job as he could have done. But Alonzo had more pace in that car.

He'll start P10 and I don't think he got a good lap in in Q3, whereas we saw nearly every driver from Q2 to Q3 improved by somewhere between four temps all the way up to about a second. everyone was improving rapidly. Alonzo didn't. Alonzo had a better Q2 time than he had a Q3 time. If he improves by the same... But let's go with a lower estimate of that. If he improves by half a second,

he's in the mix, on his Q2 time, I should say. He's in the mix with the likes of Vestappen and Piastri. I think he absolutely had a shot to be somewhere in that top five if he unlocked as much pace in the car as I think he had. We saw it through Q1 and Q2 that he had a fairly good pace. He had good pace advantage on his teammate. And this isn't the first time this has happened this season, where we get to Q3 and Alonzo just cannot seem to hook that lap together.

It seems to be very all or nothing for him in Q3 so far this year. There have been a few outstanding performances where he's put that car where it doesn't deserve to be. But a few other instances like today, Australia is another good example actually, where they had reasonable pace and end of Q3 weren't able to get anything else. Anytime that someone's Q2 lap

is better than their Q3 lap indicates that they haven't done a good job when we've got to the final part of qualifying. But that is particularly true when you're dealing with a drying track as we had today. I appreciate most of the drying had happened by this point, but there was still a lot of improvements

going on out there. Enough so that Alonzo, I think, is like so, I think he's about five positions shy of where he could have been. Even so, though, I think it is a better day for Aston Martin. I think their pace here is a little bit better than it has been for a couple of Grand Prix. Still a long way from where I'd like it to be. But 8th and 10th is where they'll start tomorrow. The other card, the other kind between them is Williams of Alex Albaugh, making an appearance

again in Q3. Now, Williams have had a bit of a torrid time so far. I was going to say recently, should we just say this season? Obviously, they had a good result at Monaco, but that's about it. They haven't delivered a lot in Grand Prix, and there have been a few recent races where they have probably been the slowest car, if not the ninth, if not 10th. But this was better. You know, Alex Albin navigated the conditions very well today. And, you know, when he got to Q3, I didn't expect a lot of him. And that's nothing on him is just based on the pace of that car. The fact that got there was his achievement of the day.

Deserves a lot of respect for splitting the Aston Martins. And who knows? Who knows? He will give himself the best opportunity possible to make some progress in the race. I was actually quite happy with Albin's race pace as well in FP2. So I think he could, depending on whether Charle-Claire and the Ferrari can work things out. But even, you know, apart from him, I don't know if anyone else behind him is definitely going to have the pace to overtake him. So Alonzo in there as well. So Alonzo and LeClaire are directly behind him.

Everyone from 12th down, though, I think he's got a reasonable chance of staying ahead of. So respect to Alex Album for today's performance. Do also need to give props to Logan Sargent as well. So he'll qualify 12. So he'll start on the sixth row of the grid alongside Charles LeCler. Don't think anyone was predicting that on today's grid, but here we are. Yeah, he deserves a lot of respect, because firstly, he's going through one of the most difficult experiences a driver can have, which is essentially being out of a seat, but it not being confirmed yet. Now, I'm not saying that a driver being confirmed out of a seat is good, but when it happens, at least that's a weight lifted from your shoulders,

and it's kind of, you know, it's done. It's done and you can just not relax, but you can just crack on and, okay, that's done. I'm moving on, I'm just going to do everything I can in each session. I'm going to have a bit of fun with it. Logan Sargent's in this weird limbo stage where he knows he's not around next year, but equally it's not confirmed yet. And James Vals is saying things that we haven't made a decision for next year yet, but we're looking at things for this year as well.

And it's not what you want to hear as a driver. So for Logan Sargent to come out and get his best qualifying session of the season so far in 12, I think does deserve respect, even though Albin is. made Q3 and he hasn't. I still think that is a respectable qualifying performance from him in very tricky conditions. There wasn't a great deal between them either. It's not like there was a second separating the two Williams cars. It was a few temps, which is, which is reasonable. I mean, a few temps separated Russell and Hamilton out front. It's perfectly okay and acceptable to be a couple of attempts behind your teammate. That's not going to lose your job. A lot of other things is going to lose

Logan Sargent his job, and I'm not saying that he doesn't deserve to lose his job. You know, I don't think he should have been racing this season, quite frankly. He's not good enough. But results like today, he should take a lot of heart from, regardless of what it leads to. If, you know, if it's an advert for something else in the racing world, great. If it's just for his own personal satisfaction of what he's doing, that's great as well. But I do think he deserves a shout out for what he was able to do. qualifies both for the Salbers and qualifies both for the Alpines,

who, to be fair, kind of just ruin themselves. And there's three teams with two drivers behind Sargent on tomorrow's grid. I think he deserves respect. I did, you know, the R.B drivers, I should probably touch on as well, because similar to Ferrari, they can't seem to get their car right in that they've made upgrades that they don't quite think are upgrades and are probably not. upgrades. Yuki Sonoda is the lead of the two in 13th, but Ricardo in 15th, that's not exactly where they want to be. Two cars knocked out in Q2. And quite honestly, I don't want to say

they're lucky to get into Q2 because they did what they had to do. But if this was true representative running, I'm not sure in dry conditions they actually would have had the pace to get into Q2, or at least not both of them, because they look slow, which is a shame. because they seem to be making some progress in Austria. It was a slow start to the weekend, but they really got there in the end, especially, well, particularly with Daniel Ricardo in the race itself, getting points.

But it seems like they've gone backwards again. I know Yuki Sunoda has said that they're running some sort of Frankenstein car, where it's some of the upgrades that they've made, but equally they've kind of gone back on some of them. Again, the way F1 works, you have to do a lot of this figuring out on the circuit, appreciate that, but it just goes to show how costly is when upgrades don't work as you think they will. Not only because, you know, they don't work and you're not quicker, that's the obvious part. But also, it's the time investment of trying to work out whether it's salvageable or not,

or whether you do just need to, you know, bite the bullet and go back to the drawing board completely or whether you can as R.B. A trying to do and make something of it. That is in itself a a really time-consuming exercise where other teams, where they have nailed upgrades, are on to the next ones. And they're already back in the factory and working on something else. Whatever they're doing, doesn't seem to be working. 13 for 15, like I say, I, again, on the evidence of practice, I don't see them making a lot of progress or indeed any progress in the race tomorrow.

Again, I seem to be getting everything wrong so far this season. So well done to you both when you score points. but yeah, this was, I'm not surprised by it. I'm not surprised by their performance. They were, they were slow in practice, and they were slow when it got to Q2 as well. Even so, they qualified better than Alpin did. Goodness me, 18th and 20.

Now, Pierre Gasly, I think we can put to one side because he'll be taking a 50 place grid penalty. He's actually starting next to me in Cornwall, I think. Yeah, it reminded me of the days of McLaren Honda when grid penalties used to be utterly ridiculous. There was maybe the Italian Grand Prix when one of them, I think I'd like a 65 place penalty. Of course, it makes sense for the likes of Alpine and any other team to, if you're going to take a penalty and you're going to be somewhere towards the back, if not the back, might as well, you get all of the new parts in. well, you can take all the penalties at the same time because, you know, an F1, you can't start worse than 20th. They're not just going to put you a lap down. So yeah, Gassley will put to one side.

Ockon, at least, though, did have an opportunity to do what he's done recently, which is compete and actually make it to Q3. But to compete in Q3, you have to make it through Q2. And to make it through Q2, you have to make it through Q1. And that's where Ockon was eliminated. He seemed to be one of the drivers that timing-wise did not get it right or the team didn't get it right. We saw quite a public disagreement between himself and an unidentified. I'm not sure who it was. Another Alpine team member about how Ocon feels his only push lap was at the worst possible time because that's when the rain was coming down.

I don't really have the evidence to say who's in the right, who's in the wrong, but what I can say is that being such a public moment very much shows where Ocon is at with the team and where the team are at with Ocon. In almost any circumstance, that discussion happens. That discussion happens with any driver in any team. But in 99% of instances, it's a private discussion and not one that happens in the pit lane when there are cameras and microphones all about. Now, Ocon, and this is one of the downsides of making the decisions so early for Alpine,

is that Ocon probably doesn't care right now. He's not going to be there next year. He's not fighting for a contract, at least at that team. You know, rumors are he might be heading to Hasse for next year. But that really, it's kind of a bit dismal how, you know, Ocon's been at the team for about, I think this is his fifth year at, quote, unquote, the team. I appreciate it was Renaud in 2020.

2020. And to see it end in spats like this in the pit lane is rather, rather sad. But anyway, they're going to struggle from 18th and 20th, aren't they? They've had some reasonable pace at previous Grand Prix. I'm unconvinced they're that quick this weekend. And we have seen as well, they're not particularly great at making overtakes. So, but that's something you'll have to do. If you want to get points and you start 18th and 20th, so good luck to them both. Now I say Ocon starting 18th and I say Gasly starting 20th, that does leave one car in between them. And this will be my last topic on today's episode.

And that is the performance of Sergio Perez. Now, Perez was eliminated from Q1 in the British Grand Prix last year as well. So this isn't exactly new territory. We saw at this point last year, Sergio Perez was very much struggling with qualifying. I think it got a little bit better towards the end of last season. and it was much, much better at the beginning of this season. But it has absolutely gone back to where it was.

And there are rumours swirling around whether Christian Horner is considering making a change. We know he's got that contract, whether he's got that contract with, you know, Red Bull or whether he's got that contract with Red Bull, the company, which would include R.B., of course, whether there's going to be a change happening there, you know, performance clauses and the like.

There's a lot, like I say, swirling around at the moment, but putting all that to one side and just looking at the incident itself, it must be even more frustrating for him that essentially he catches the error. Like, he does what he needs to do. He wasn't the only driver that ran off at cops. You know, Magnuson ran off there, his teammate ran off there, but crucially in both of those other situations, they are able to manage the gravel well enough

that they can keep momentum on their car and keep the car going. With Sergio Perez, it's an odd one because he catches his error, but then in catching his error and trying to get going again, he then spins the car into the gravel facing the wrong way, and there's not much he can do at that point. You know, these cars, they very easily get beached in the gravel if you're not, you know, keeping, like I say, keeping momentum going through them as the likes of Vastappan did.

and the result, he was obviously out on soft tires at the time where it was about the crossover opportunity. It's, again, it's tough because actually qualifying pace-wise, I don't think there was as big a gap between Vastappen and Perez this time around. I guess we won't know because he didn't have the opportunity to compete in Q3 when they were out on the soft tires in dry conditions. but at least through practice, his race pace is still concerning, but his qualifying pace did seem to be better,

you know, a few tenths off of Vastappan, rather than one second, as has been the case recently. And that's all for nothing now, because he's got to start from the back row of the grid. What is achievable? I don't know. I think, look, there's still quite a gap between the top sort of four teams and the rest of the grid.

So there is a reasonable chance that he gets back to score a point, two points, but I wouldn't put any money on it being more than that. I've spoken a lot about Perez's struggles in qualifying in the race recently, and I can't say much more without going over the same points. It would become repetitive. Vastappen is, even on days like today where Vastappen arguably doesn't have a good session, he's still 15 places of where Sergio Perez is. Qualifying is so important.

That goes without saying, but not even an opportunity to compete in Q2. Very worrying for his future prospects. Last thing I will do is just crown a driver of the session. Who do I think the contenders are? I certainly think Alex Albin getting into Q3 deserves a mention. I do think Nika Holkenberg deserves a mention in sixth place. I will give it to George Russell

just because of the gap that he was able to put on Lewis Hamilton in that final running Q3. If it was closer, I might have stuck with Nika Holkenberg on this one, but George Russell separating himself from his teammate late on, separating himself from Lando Norris. There are still reasonable questions about George Russell, but he answered quite a lot of them, I thought, in that lap.

That was impressive stuff. And another all-timer of a response. No yabba-daboo, but you could tell he was He was wanting to, but he held it back. Maybe we'll hear it tomorrow. Who knows? There you go. There's our qualifying review, or my qualifying review, at least, for today.

We do have another episode coming tomorrow. So Sam will be joining me again on the British Grand Prix review. As I say, it's an exciting grid. So we might well get an exciting race and plenty to chat through. Catch us for that one. And then all three of us, including Harry, will be back on Monday. So we'll be doing our power rankings episode for this race. We'll rate every single driver out of 10 and explain our reasons why.

That is a Patreon exclusive. So if you'd like to subscribe, if you're not already, the link is in the description. All the details you need are there. And we're excited to have you there. But I will now leave you. Keep breaking late. This podcast is part of the Sports Social Podcast Network.