The Late Braking F1 Podcast - 2026 Bahrain GP in Malaysia Race Review

Episode Date: October 4, 2026

From the farcical starting procedure to Verstappen's return to the top step, Ben and Sam cover all the talking points from a chaotic Sunday at Sepang. Want more Late Braking? Support the show on ⁠��⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Patreon⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ and get:Ad-free listeningFull-length bonus episodesPower Rankings after every raceHistorical race reviews& more exclusive extras!Don't forget! You can also gift a Late Braking Patreon subscription—perfect for loved ones or your own wish list. Choose anything from 1 month up to a full year of top-notch F1 content: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.patreon.com/latebrakingf1/gift⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Connect with Late Braking:You can find us on ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠YouTube⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Instagram⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠X (Twitter)⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ and ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠TikTok⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Come hang out with us and thousands of fellow F1 fans in our ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Discord⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ server and get involved in lively everyday & race weekend chats!Join our ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠F1 Fantasy League⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ and see if you can beat us! LEAGUE CODE: C6Y6R4ZUY02Get in touch any time at [e-mail] Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Thank you for listening to the Late Breaking F1 podcast. Make sure to check out new episodes every Wednesday and every Sunday. Welcome to the Late Breaking F1 podcast presented by Sam Sage and me, Ben Hocking, reviewing today the Bahrain Grand Prix in Malaysia. And to be honest, we could have had both the Bahrain Grand Prix and the Malaysian Grand Prix, and we would have covered the same amount of time. We are here slightly later than what we thought we were going to be, Sam, with, I don't know, a top three that looked very similar

to how we started in the end. Yeah, I took a photo on lap 15 of the running order and I thought, I'm going to look at how different it is when we get to the end of the Grand Prix and the fact that it ending up basically being the same top eight, bar, a few, that we were normally getting. A normal race is quite frustrating. Lots of dig into, lots of get onto,

but that's going to be a great pub quiz question about 10 years' time of, you know, how many wet Grand Prix have we hang at the Bahrain GP? Now one, I suppose, is the answer. It was the technicality. But fascinating. Some interesting choices from the FIA and the stewards. Some great racing.

Some chaos. So a lot to talk about. I, for one, knew that we were going to have our first wet race of 2026 at the Bahrain Grand Prix. And then when someone said to me, wow, really, rain in Bahrain in April. It's like, no, no, it's going to be in October. Of course it is. What's a silly thing to assume? Yeah.

So quite a delay. but a lot to talk about. So we'll get into it all. Moment of the race coming up later on. Our driver of the day, worst driver of the day, our big brain strategy. We'll get into everything that happened

in McLaren and Ferrari's rather eventful days. But let's start out front with Max Verstappen, not only claiming his first win of the season, claiming Red Bull Power trains, I guess you could say, first win as a proper engine manufacturer.

Ultimately, converting the pole position. A little bit of jeopardy early on as he had to overtake both Mercedes on track to retake that lead. But from there, plain sailing, which feels like an appropriate phrase for today's well. Yeah, enough water that you could have gone sailing in the early parts of this race day. What a race from Max Westappen. He's once again demonstrated why he has picked up 72 race wings, you know, now equalling Michael Schumacher's record for the second most wings with one constructor, drawing in Ferrari, of course. And what a performance from him. the way that he recovered from what felt like an uncomfortable start,

making the right choice to go on to the intermediates, of course, when we had the race kickoff. And then he had the Mercedes guys flying past him into turn one, and you think, oh, no, all that effort, all that hard work that I put into qualifying lap, and my car isn't going anywhere off the line. And the guy who started in seventh is now ahead of me. Yeah, and the guy that I've also been trying to be all season out of everyone

is that guy back in front of me immediately. But calm composure has prevailed. and brilliant work ethic to kind of find the right spaces on the track that weren't too wet, also weren't too drying, get the cars, grip, sourcing out nice and easily, kept the revs high, which we heard a lot of conversation about in the early part of this day as well, when we were talking about if we're ever going to get racing again. It was all about keeping that turbo rev high, the spoiling high. And he did.

And the moves that he put on the Mercedes guys as well were really strong, clean, brilliant, efficient moves. And once he was clear, he was clear. The pace was a little. electric from Max Verstapping and that Red Bull. We say in the preview that they seem to always go well round here, and they had buck the train once again, their first week of the season, as you mentioned, and Ford's first F1 victory for over 20 years.

I believe the last other four branded, whether it's Ford or Cosworth engine, was a 2003 Brazilian GP with Jordan. Go on Fizzy. With Fisickella, of course. Forstaffin's managed to join a steamed company in Giancarlo Fizzikela. Those two. I've always put on the same pegastil. So yeah, it's a bringing monumental day for Ford

and a really interesting day for the championship, not because I think the Stappen's now got a title charging his books, but more because I think we've seen a slight turning up the tide with the overall pace of how Mercedes are stacking up against their competition. There were definitely areas where not just Red Bull, but even Ferrari seemingly had faster moments throughout the Grand Prix, a really fascinating race, and Max Verstappen has prevailed excellently.

He has, and I think he had a very good opportunity, to win this race in any conditions. Certainly if it was a fully dry race from the start, I think he would have been, at the very least, in the mix, I think he probably still would have been favorite. But if you had said before the start of this Grand Prix, sort of just laid out the conditions, it's going to start with some rain.

It's then going to dry up. There's going to be a crossover point at some point. There's going to be a virtual safety car. There's going to be a full course safety car. There's going to need to be strategic calls from the pit wall. you'd be like, yeah, that's a race that's tailor made for Vastappen and for the Red Bull team. And it played out exactly like that. Certainly, Vastappen, the way in which he got back by the Mercedes duo,

and it was a poor start, not the first we've seen from Red Bull this year, it has to be said. As soon as he managed to make those overtakes happen, he was off into the distance. And I think at that point, it would have taken something very special from someone else to compete with him. even when, because initially he was clear of George Russell, of course, and he was sort of extending that advantage, and Antonelli was almost stuck behind George Russell, and you think, well, if Antonelli gets clear of Russell, are we going to see Antonelli starts to catch back up to Vestappen?

Are we going to see their pace very similar, maybe? Even when Antonelli got by, it was still Vestappan, who was extending that advantage for the point where we were into double figures before the safety card made an appearance. So this will be one that in a few years' time, we'll look back at the winning margin and go, not a bad day for Vastappan. Doesn't tell the full story.

This was very dominant. And for a first win of the season, really impressive. And you're right. I don't know what this could mean for the championship. Certainly Vastappen has made up some ground to some of his rivals, and we're not expecting a similar 2025-esque comeback from Stappan. Yeah, that's got to be off the cards at this point, surely. But it does raise questions about what he could do the rest of the year.

how many other race tracks, how many other Grand Prix he could feature in the conversation for a victory. Because I said this midweek, this is a fairly all-round track. Like you need a bit of everything to succeed here. And Vastappan and Red Bull had that. Yeah, suddenly the development of the car has skyrocketed. It felt like they had that slow start to the season, much like McLaren, actually. And they both, like a snowball going down a hill. They really started to pick up momentum over the last four or five races.

with McLaren, of course, the win at Hungary and at Sanford, and suddenly they looked like they were becoming a real challenger. And I think I even said at one point, Norris is going to be a challenge in this championship. If they can keep that momentum up. And Red Bull have almost done the same thing, but a couple of races behind. And suddenly with Baku, even Monsa,

that was slightly on the cards. It felt like for a moment they had the pace. Baku turns around. They almost win there. Now Sapang rolls interview, and they do get the victory finally, making it wings for four different teams across the season. Red Bull could play.

a feature here. Now, I don't think they all disrupt Antingami. I don't think they all disrupt Mercedes. But is there a chance they catch McLaren? Is there a chance that right? Is there a chance that right? Is there a chance that Max catches Hamilton maybe for third in this in this title fight? I think there's only about 30 or 40 points between them. If he gets another couple of wins this season and don't pull it past Max for Staffen, there is a real chance that they will play a big part in those kind of upper echelons of the championship yet. I'm, I don't think it's beyond possibility that he could end up second. I don't think it's likely, but I'm not ruling that out. I am ruling out the possibility of him winning the championship. I think that's too far. But yeah, it depends

how everything goes from here, obviously. But yeah, on today's evidence, things looking pretty good for Red Bull at a time where they have, you know, quite clearly said, like we're stripping back development on this year's car. And yet they have improved what they've already got. it's pretty good going and should at least make them optimistic going into next year. Kimmy Antonelli's got to be one of, apart from Vestappen, maybe,

one of the happiest people around because if you look at the way this season has unfolded, you had the two, you know, the two wins back to back for Lando Norris, and you had the two wins back to back for Ferrari

at Silverstone and the Circuit of Catalonia, yeah. And now you've got Vestappan, who's basically, basically gone second, first from Baku to Malaysia. If one team had been able to string together those results, we'd have a championship challenge right now, but to Mercedes and Antonelli's advantage,

not one of these teams has managed to sustain success for out of the year. Yeah, one singular challenger would have maybe caused some disruption, but like you said, sharing it four ways across four different teams. It just dilutes the pressure that he has to deal with. And it's races like this where, all right, he's got a little lucky with the fact that Russell was having engine failure, but he was fast to than George anyway. He'll be eating all of his actual rivals in the championship.

Right, Hamilton wasn't there, despite his immense pace, and we'll get on to Hamilton later. Russell, again, not able to match him, overtaker by him comfortably. And for stopping, it's too little too late, really, for a championship charge at least. So he can sit comfortably in second place, all he wants. It's all he needs to do. What do you make of Mercedes today? Because we've been waiting for this upgrade since Canada,

so a long time now. they introduce it this weekend and they're not winning. First proper chinking the armour, I think this is. It shows you that they are not as invincible as maybe we would have thought through the first eight or nine Grand Prix where, sure, they didn't win absolutely everything. You know, Hamilton comes along wings in Spain, as you mentioned, and the clare wings of Silverstone.

But other than that, they look pretty bulletproof. we were seeing they were getting over the technical issues. They were moving past the reliability. It was starting to get easier for them to pick up these wings. And it's an all-round car. They look at the more recent results, basically from when Norris wings in Zangvort, that actually they barely won a race in comparison to what they did

at the start of this Grand Prix. I think they picked up, what was it, three victories in the last eight races now, something like that, which is, which is the difference between the first seven in a row, I think it was, is a massive change. And now what they needed was this upgrade to turn up and to kick them back down the road to go, right, cool. We've reestablished that three, four, tenth gap

that we had to our competition behind. And it didn't. It gave them nothing. So they were holding back as a dual upgrade. They were unsure whether to bring car upgrades. And now they have, like it hasn't given them anything. And I'm fascinated, but we'll now go to somewhere like Singapore. And that's very air, very chassis important.

And if this has caused them to be on the back foot in the course, are they now at a deficit for tracks that they should have been very dominant at previously? Yeah, it does raise a few questions. And yeah, certainly here, those upgrades not proving effective really whatsoever in that you can still say they were strong, yes, but they were strong anyway. And the whole point of an upgrade is to go faster. Get that in the book. Yeah, I think in terms of, in terms of Kimmy Antonelli's day, I think it proved that whilst

he is, then this is a controversial statement, he's a very, very good driver. He's not yet complete. And that's scary. That's a compliment because he's still got room to grow. You ain't growing prezing a season and you're still got complete. That's pretty immense. Yeah. But we saw today certainly a couple of instances. And I'm not talking about his overall pace because he had the pace to overtake his teammate, which shows that he was quick. But we saw, I think, the safety car restart, the way in which he felt from first to third. Bit of inexperience, maybe, in that department. I don't think that happens to Vestappen or maybe a couple of other drivers.

I think certainly the way Vostappen handled his own safety car restart later on proved that you could get it done. And I don't think Antonelli did as good of a job with that. But also, when he had managed to overtake George Russell, and we turn our attention to, okay, can he catch Vastappen? Can he match Vastappen? He makes an error almost immediately where he, of course, takes out the bollard of the pit lane entry.

I sure like he got quite lucky with that one as well. Maybe so. But even if he didn't get lucky, I think it shows the... Yeah, and you can hear it in his voice, even when Bogo comes over and says, oh, two strikes now. Oh, my God.

Oh, Staphn's got them. Okay. Not relevant. Well, he's talking about, like, yeah, what did he say? Like, I'm racing Vastapen. It's like, yeah, the stewards won't go. Okay, we won't give you a penalty because you were racing for the lead.

Someone needs to get it, because this is an ongoing thing. Someone needs to get it through his head about, like, they will penalise you. He had it in qualifying as well, right? He had an issue in Q1, runs off the track. What do you mean? You're in Thailand. You're in a whole other country. You're so far off the track.

Like, track the limits are a serious problem for Anting Allen. It will cost him something one day. Yeah. And honestly, it might take that for him to learn. Like, it might be one of those. in terms of George Russell, another frustrating DNF. I know he was behind his teammate anyway, so we're not talking necessarily championship aspirations here,

but this look on course for another podium, at least, for him. Yeah, I thought he had a good day, George Russell. He did not have the pace of his teammate. And whilst I do think Antigani outscores him, three points is very different to 18 points. And the gap was already a gulf. It was already a canyon between the two of them. And this was such a cliche expression, the final round in the coughing.

Whilst it is not mathematically impossible for Russell to pull that back now, it is nigh on impossible. I cannot see him overturning. What is it, an over 70 point gap there, give him or take for seven races left in the calendar? Yeah. It's just not going to happen with how good Antigelli's being and how bulletproof that was saying has been. More so, of course, on Antigelli's side, who had the one proper reliability problem and then had that issue with the front left in Silverstone,

Russell does just seem to be getting a little bit of bad luck. Plus, he's not pairing it with immense pace. If Russell was winging every Grand Prix, he actually finished, but was having 3DNFs the season because of reliability, you go, damn, that guy's lost the title because of poor luck, but he hasn't got either at the moment. He's not beating Antigelli on pace, and he's getting worse luck. So that's just how it goes sometimes.

Sometimes people want a definitive answer as to why things have gone a certain way. And in this case, it's just in years to come, people will look back at this season and go, well, George Russell was really unlucky. Yeah, he has been. And other people will go, he wasn't quick enough. And yeah, that's right as well. Two things can be right at the same time.

He wouldn't, I think with equal luck throughout this year, he wouldn't have won the title. He's still, it might be closer, but he's still maybe 40 points difference right now. Yeah, I'm fairly confident of that. Isaac Hadjar, just to cover off the other Red Bull driver, of course, qualified very well but had a five-place grid penalty, so went from third back down to eighth. Had opportunities, I think you could say, to be up in and amongst the top three.

Didn't quite have it. It started really well for him. And I thought, all right, he's maybe bedding in these tyres early. He's just watching the battle between the Mercedes and Bastapung, play out, getting his tyres brought in. Hey, look, Lewis Hamilton showed that actually having some ties that have had some time to just coming slowly could be a really effective strategy. Turns out that isn't what he was doing. He just wasn't as fast as the three in front of him.

And we had a definitive answer today that whilst he had a brilliant Grand Prix and Baku, there is still a lot to come between the pace of Max Verstappen and what the second driver could do. Still a good performance from Hager overall. Still very solid, better than what we've seen still from many second drivers at Red Bull. But still also not there, not there enough. And the defining moment, which I think shows that Hajar has still got so much to learn, is when his engineer comes over about Lewis Hamilton on the older soft tires behind him, saying, Hamilton is faster than you everywhere, and he's one second a lap faster than you across the whole lap.

And he goes, no, that's impossible. How's he doing that? I'm done. I'm done. And that shows you the difference between the elite of the elite and Hajar, who is a very, very good driver, got a lot to go. We'll be in F-1 for a long time. But, yeah, big steps to go for a hacker. I love that.

I don't think I've ever seen a response of just like, I'm not having it. No, it's not possible. No, not having it. You've got all your data, but you're wrong. He's making it out. Yeah, I think there is more to come from Hajal, but this wasn't. I don't want to be overly critical because I think given the conditions

and given what Red Bull kind of need, like, it's still a very good result. Like, it's absolutely fine. But in terms of pace, like if he had it, he would have been up there with the other three of them, and he wasn't. So, yeah, the Russell problem at the end may get a little bit more complimentary with very finished. Yes. You know, he gained a spot there. But nonetheless, I think this was just good.

Yeah. And that's fine. Yeah. Before we go to a first break, let's review our bold predictions. Now, you and Harry had the same bold prediction. We did. We said that it would be a Red Bull one too. And we were definitely on the right path, right?

the car was there. We called it correctly that Red Bull had something here. Vastaping definitely showed it. Padger, I think the car showed that it had the pace. He was just unable to materialise that, which is a shame.

What about you, Ben? I was just going to say with both your ball predictions very quickly. I think it was a good one. It had... It had... It had the potential. I think you were on the right tracks

and on another day it might have come true. My bowl prediction was very heavily invested on the weather that was, at the time of our recording, meant to be... worse on Saturday than it was on Sunday. Of course, what did we get? Bone dry Saturday and then rain on the Sunday. So I said that Sergio Perez, no, I didn't say Perez. I think, I thought it was more likely to be Perez, but I said a Cadillac would make it through to Q3 and they did not.

They were also slower than I thought they were going to be. Yeah, if you could flip it to Ashton Martin, and the fact they had had a double Q2 appearance, even that, I'd go, wow, yeah, fair play. That's a big shout around here, but you know what, all wrong, nothing changes, we move on. Back to normal, we like it. Nevertheless, we'll have bold predictions ready for you midweek as we preview the Singapore Grand Prix. But we'll take our first break on the other side. We're going to get into the 90-ish minute delay for this Grand Prix.

And because of that, we'll give you a 90-minute delay between the next part of the show. Be mad of ads, man. We're boarding now, folks. Welcome back, everyone. Not quite an hour and 30 minute delay, I hope, for all of you listening back at home, between segment one and segment two. But it was, again, about 90 minutes after the scheduled start time that we finally got going. In the middle of that, of course, we had an attempted formation lap. I don't even know what the question is here, Sam. How do you react to all of that? I was actually quite angry at what was going on at the start because I'm going to, let's talk about the whole day so far. We're a belter of a Grand Prix.

We're a really good Grand Prix, right? And yet there is a bit of me that sits here today, recording this, and I think it was still spoiled for me. It was still difficult to enjoy because we may have had something even more chaotic, even more fun and weird and random. And F1 needs that, right? Formula One requires. those days where you go, I don't know what's going on.

And don't get me wrong, when we were sat there on that formation lap and the Staples lost all his power, and then Hamilton suddenly doesn't move, and they've got to do a control, alt delete to get cars going. And suddenly you're thinking, this is chaos. This is absolute chaos. It still isn't the chaos I wanted when the track had been drying for half an hour. And there were helicopters flying around and there were cars going about. This is what makes Formula One in the modern era with these new regulations embarrassing. And it was a farce and it was frustrating.

And there are a lot of doubters of Formula One right now who go, it's not what it was. And we don't get the same action and we hate what's going on with the development. And this will not help. This will deter new fans. This will put off fans that have been around a few years ago, well, I really enjoyed what it was

and now I don't get that anymore. And it just makes a mockery of the sport because every time that something different and exciting comes up in Formula One, the stewards create a situation where it just becomes embarrassing and we don't know what's going on, and the communication is unclear.

And that was what happened today again, once again proven that maybe we're not the elite sport we think we are, because we can't seem to do it 50% at the time if there's even a threat of something that isn't the norm. And that is so frustrating in Formula One right now. Yeah. You know what?

One thing I was okay enough with, I was okay enough with not starting on the hour. It was at that point, I think, pretty, and I was fine with it being delayed. But the formation lap, if I remember correctly, got going at 840 UK times, 40 minutes after we were due to start, which I think was too late. I think we could have got going around half past or even maybe slightly before that. And we know that there is this, and I understand why it's in place,

but we have this 10 minute procedure where essentially as soon as the FIA decides on a start time, it has to be 10 minutes in the future to allow for everything to get ready. I think that should have been triggered at about 20 past to go racing at 30 minutes past. And then we get the formation lap, which honestly might be the biggest mockery I've seen in a long time. And unfortunately, is an indictment of where these regulations are right now. and we haven't seen any wet weather racing really up until this point in the season. And this made me think, thank goodness for that, because there would probably have been multiple instances of just utter nonsense.

This was a formation lap. And that sentence you said just a minute ago, Sam, like it almost makes me laugh and cry at the same time where you say they have to do a control, or delete to get everything ready. And it's like, you're right. But what a stupid sentence. Like, why is that a thing?

The fact that at one point, there's a radio message that comes over that says we're in a delay because the stewards have had to push an update, a software update, to all of the Formula One cars to change parameters. Like, you may as well go race a video game at that point. You may as well go and turn on your computer or your PlayStation and play a video game because it's the same thing. This is too much not in the hands of drivers anymore. And nearly all of the Ferrari powered unit cars, and obviously they will all share sort of soft They all seem to have an issue.

We have Vestappen slowing down at one point. We have a couple of drivers going off, or I think that was more down to the weather rather than software. But when you have an instance, like you can see the track map. And even before this was red flagged, you can see the safety car and Vastappen. They're like nearly three quarters of a lap ahead of many drivers. And you're like, this is just, they were right to red flag it at that point

because it was such an absolute mess. But the fact that we're even in this spot to begin with is insane. I know, watching that track map where cars were breaking down, left, right and center, again, through no fault of the driver. And I think they were right to put it back to the standard grid, by the way. I've heard some complaints and it should have been, oh, where's the red flag was thrown, that's the grid we should have gone for. This isn't the fault of the drivers.

They're not crashing in wet conditions. They're not having problems where they can't control the car. It was a systematic failure across most of Formula One. and that is something that we shouldn't be punishing drivers for. But also the fact that I've just had to say the sentence that there was a systematic failure across Formula One where we've had to do a software update because cars can't drive in the rain anymore

is just a mess. And this is not what I want the sport to be. It's one of those days where realistically we should have had a rogue podium. We should have had Liam Lawson standing up there with Max Verstappen and Kimmy Antony, for example, because the rain was crazy at the start and that means that someone does something crazy,

when they go on to the wets and then it dries up just enough, they're bold enough to go on to the inters, and they suddenly get a jump and a safety car comes out. And we go, wow, what a drive from ex-Mickfield driver, because they've pulled the rug from everyone else and they've done something special. And yet we end up waiting so long that half the group thinks it's safe enough to go on the drys,

which yes, cause chaos in itself. But is that the kind of chaos that we're looking for here, where it's just a mess after an hour and a half of waiting? I felt sorry for the fans. There's been issues at the track of getting them out there to stand there in the rain, it was just appalling the entire way through the first part of this race. I did actually want to raise a point about the fans in Malaysia, and I didn't know exactly where to include it today,

but this feels like a good opportunity because they were absolutely brilliant. Certainly the 90-minute delay, and also I've seen some of the videos and photos online of cues and some of the disruption about getting in and out of the circuit, and it hasn't been easy for them whatsoever. and yet I can't remember the last time you could hear the crowd as much as you could at a racetrack. They were incredibly noisy. We certainly with like Lewis Hamilton's overtakes and on the podium with the, I mean,

this perfectly summed up the day, but the anthem's not playing straight away and you get Max Verstappen's name being chanted out. And it's brilliant. I think they were brilliant. And that is evidence as if we needed more evidence that we should be here far more often than every 10 years. But yeah, I thought they were brilliant throughout this. I also wanted to say with the formation lap,

because certainly the system issues were embarrassing in their own right. But this next complaint isn't a new one. This certainly goes across multiple years. Sam, if you were to walk outside your front door and it is torrential rain, and you were to wear exactly what you've got on now, which is a black hoodie, and you step outside your front door. front door and you walk back inside the door and you say, Ben, it's too well there. I cannot go out there. The first thing I would say to you is, how can you be certain of that? You're not wearing a coat.

And that's my issue with the intermediate tire. Like, drivers are out there. These conditions, they're not good enough to race. You're not on the wet weather tire. You're not on the tire that is designed for these conditions. Now, I appreciate the wet weather tire might be awful. We haven't actually He raced it this year, so I don't think we can say that definitively. Is it awful in takes it's not quick, or is it awful, then it can't move water out the way? Because they're two different things. But at least try it. No one is out there trying it. So I can't get behind an idea of this race shouldn't go ahead when we are not doing everything possible to at least see if it can or not. You are right. The situation that I came up with, which is very similar to

yours, it's like walking outside in the rain with an umbrella that has holes in it and refusing to try an umbrella that doesn't have holes in it. You're like, I can feel the rain. Weather's bad, isn't it? Yeah, yeah, like maybe use the right equipment

and you'll probably be all right, you know? Honestly. In terms of, in terms of the start, the actual start, rather than the formation lap we had. We did see,

I think I had it about 50% like we're on the dry tires, 50%ish on the internet. 8 to 10, something like that kind of, yeah, yeah, I guess it might 202, but you get the point. It was a mixture.

Two drivers that found themselves on the dry tires were the Ferrari duo, of course, particularly in Lewis Hamilton's case, had a very good starting position. What did you make of that strategy overall? I can't blame them for starting on the slicks because I was sat there watching the telly, looking at the pictures, and whilst I can't be there to run down and put my hand on the racetrack or whatever, I thought it was worth a punt of trying slick tires. And when I saw some of the car, I actually remember looking at Max on the inters and going,

uh-oh, he's going to be going to use those for a lap. He's got to come straight in at the end of this and put them on. And when you start seeing the likes of Perez, kind of questioning it, Norris and stuff, and it was going the other way. And in the cool-down room, we hear Max say, it was the moisture within the tarmac that was the problem, which I thought was very clever,

very smart to understand that part of analysis. You start to understand why it's caught the likes of Ferrari, Alpine, many other teams, completely out of the picture. And yet I don't fault them for it. I'm not sat here saying, oh, Ferrari, you fools. Why are you the only ones that are being idiots again? If it had just been those two. Well, yeah, exactly.

But it wasn't just those two. It was almost 50-50, as you mentioned. And why not take the risk? Right? Hamilton's on the front row. And if it's one lap where he maybe loses, and we've seen it previously, eight, ten seconds even. If they were coming to pit at the end of lap one,

he's in the lead by 14 seconds at that point. And that's worked brilliantly. And we often criticise the likes of Ferrari for not being bold enough, for not trying something different. And they tried it. It didn't work. And yet, fortunately for them,

they've ended up with a three, four. And that's better than what they got in Baku. So, you know. Of course it is. So I hadn't quite realised that, but yeah, you're right. Still better than what they got in Baku. And don't be wrong. Some of it is credit to the likes of Hamilton's drive back through the field,

which I thought was brilliant, genuinely brilliant from him. But equally, that's just the way the cookie crumbles sometimes. You call it right, you call it wrong. It can really change your entire race. They got it wrong. But luckily,

They didn't really pay the price because I don't think he'll won that Grand Prix anyway. I think that Red Bull was just too quick. Honestly, like, it feels like it's appropriate that Ferrari would be the ones on the wrong strategy. It certainly won't be the first time. I'm kind of in a similar spot to you in that this isn't one of those where I go, what a Ferrari blunder. Like, there were other teams and other drivers who clearly felt it was dry enough. And I certainly felt beforehand, this is close.

I was probably leaning based on what I could see. towards slick tires as well. Because we do normally see at Malaysia when it rains, it does dry up fairly quickly. But I think the difference in track temperature, it was quite a bit cooler, just meant that that's stuck around for a little bit longer than was expected.

I was fully expecting, sort of within a few laps, okay, dry tires are probably good now. And instead it was maybe 10 laps or so, really, until we started to see something of a crossover. So, no, I don't really blame. Ferrari too much for this. I understood what they were at least trying to do. And there was, it did lead to this very funny moment that almost made my moment of the race where I think it was about 28 laps in and Hamilton had not come into the pits yet. And Perez had pitted five times.

Yeah, I mean, it was all over the place. Yeah, it was. What do you make, though, of the conversation between Ferrari and Hamilton? They just pit LeCler to go into the inters. And Hamilton was very out of and it's been like, we're taking the pain. We just go and stick it out and make sure that we get on with it. Do you think, obviously, I think it turned out to be the right call, but really interesting that Ferrari was so willing to pull the plug. He was probably right. I think the safety car makes it difficult to analyze

because that certainly helped all of those drivers to at least catch back up. And I'm not sure what would have happened because there were some considerable gaps back from those intermediate runners at that stage. But equally, I think a safety car was always very possible around this track. I think Hamilton was probably right. And the decision to leave him out on those soft tires for as long as they did and not bring him in straight away, I think has paid dividends. But I don't want to just put emphasis on the Ferrari strategy side of this. Hamilton was utterly sensational today.

Like, he was brilliant. I think this was, it's difficult to compare this drive to his Barcelona one because he was kind of... The stand head and shoulders above everything else, though. Oh, yes. And the biggest compliment I can give Lewis Hamilton is that this felt like a Mercedes drive. Yeah, yeah, yeah. He was brilliant. And I think you're probably right in that if he had stayed out front and had the same strategy as Vastappen,

I think Vestappen had too much. He's the only driver. I'm not certain that's the case. I know Antonelli and Russell couldn't compete with Vestappen, and I'm pretty certain across the board that the likes of the McLaren's and LeCler couldn't either. I don't know about Hamilton for certain because he was, he had the fastest lap of the race at one point at the same time he was complaining about his tires, which feels very Hamilton. He had serious pace. Like the way in which he, his overtaking over the last few years hasn't been

brilliant. And it's something we've brought up quite a few times that sometimes he's not quite decisive enough. He was today. He was everywhere. He was like every part of the racetrack. That turn one, turn two is great, by the way, for overtaking. Even like Alonso, for example, that was such a lovely little switch back on Limbaugh, I think it was. But Hamilton was doing that every other lap at one point. And the way he's going inside the final corner, right to go shallow, to get the bigger leap onto the back of the car. The way he's following through kind of five, six, seven, eight to get the jump down into turn nine. He was brilliant around here.

And it might be better than his wing at Barcelona. It's hard to know, but it might be. It was very impressive, nonetheless. What about McLaren? Because they had a similar sort of day. of trying to recover and maybe not quite being able to execute that as well as the Ferraris did Piastri finishes P6, very close to overtaking Hajar at the end, but P6 for him. And Norris, with that incident under the safety car, manages to recover somewhat, but only

P9. Yeah, let's start Piascri then. He comes in on to the intermediates after that bad choice initially. I felt a bit sorry for him, because I think that was actually the right call. I think they lost barely anything, right? he was up into the points very quickly, making strong progress. It gets caught then behind that kind of Lawson train

that was going on. But it looked like the McLaren wasn't particularly fast around here anyway. It never looked like they were getting a challenge for a podium. It never looked like they were going to be able to take on the likes of Hajar and Russell and Tinelli who was sat in their way. So it felt like Piashri was having a solid race. And then it just kind of gets away from him.

Norris, on the other hand. Great job initially on the mediums. I thought he did a really good job of clearing the likes of the Ferraris, who he was obviously right with. he got past them, did well to maintain that. And almost unlike Piastri, it was he that was the problem later on in the Grand Prix, because what are you doing behind the safety car, not paying attention into a heavy braking zone, maybe the heaviest breaking zone on the entire racetrack, under safety car conditions. When I know you're not fully aware, there's a car putting off to one side,

the traffic's building up in front of you. And you can see he's got looking at the breaking zone, and they've all backed up in, and he flies straight past him, and we are so lucky that he goes. when he did and they have the reactions that they do because that one could have been him out his teammate out who was the car directly in front of him and also someone could have really being hurt so i thought that was poor the same as when he was trying to get past he alongside so messy nearly hitting him really really bad performance from norris i think he's lucky to recover to a couple of points this was i don't know this feels like a very mcclaren of the last few races kind of drive from both of them really in that it feels like there's something there and

and sometimes they can extract it. And other times it feels like they somewhat shoot themselves in the foot because, yeah, certainly in terms of Piastri's strategy, he was initially set to start on the dry tires like everyone else, goes over to the hard tires after being on the inters. And it was, I wasn't particularly impressed with his early progress. And I think McLaren got caught in this trap, that a lot of the midfield cars did as well,

that in theory the hard tires should have been pretty good around a track where tire wear is quite high, but because of the amount of sliding as the race unfolded, it was actually the softer end of the compounds that were more effective and Vastappan didn't use any tire

other than the soft in terms of dry tires. Russell and Antonelli didn't use the hard tires either. And I think Piastri struggled a lot earlier on. somewhat made it work when he got onto the softs. But yeah, it was just a bit messy, and you're right about Lando Norris. There was a time I felt that he was maybe the best, I don't know, most likely to finish second in the championship,

or at least most likely to challenge George Russell for finishing second in the championship. And I think there are some tracks that could suit McLaren coming up. Yeah, Qatar, South Powerlowe, maybe. Yes, maybe next time out of Singapore as well. But that is two races in a row that have been quite messy for McLaren. Oh, yeah, yeah. I mean, they didn't score any in Baku, and they haven't scored too much here today.

You know, 10 points in total. It's not great for McLaren. As they were on that charge, catching Ferrari and the like really recently. That's a real slip. And you're right, Red Bull. Over the shoulder now. There you go. I mean, they scored 35 points again.

That's a big hole. Yeah, indeed. Let's take our second break. On the other side, we'll get into Fernando Alonzo's eighth place finish, as well as giving out our driver of the day. Worst driver of the day and big brain stroke. What's he doing there then? What are you doing, B?

Welcome back, everyone. New contract boost for Fernando Alonso. Like new manager boost. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That recovery, because he hasn't been in the points very regularly so far this year. He had 10th at Monaco and 9th at Zambort. But he's done even better here.

He's got 8th in an Aston Barton, given he was one of those drivers that started on the dry tires and was languishing down in about 18th, 19th, around that point. He's managed to recover to some points. When we get a race day like this, I look to three drivers to excel. Two of them are on the podium in Hamilton and Bastappen. The other one has somehow found himself in eighth place. Because whilst that Aston Martin was definitely better than it has been,

and that's evidenced by Lance Stroll being in P12, and actually maybe because I've gone to also score some points, he really wasn't far behind that battle either. Fernando Alonso has done it again. is somehow found a way to pull off incredible overtakes, as we saw with that switch back in turn two, but also to make tyres last in a brilliant way to execute pace, to keep cars aligned with him down straights where we know that Honda is the slower engine. I thought he was superb. And like you mentioned, he was one of those drivers that started on the dry compound tire.

And you look at some of the others that started on that, both the Alpins behind both the Ashton Martins, right? Both the Ferraris, of course, you expect to be further ahead. But he's also finish in front of Norris, who he was behind right at the start of his score on and pre as well. And whilst that's come from a Norris mistake, Alonso doesn't make one, it genuinely has been the best performance from Alonso that I've seen in a long time. And I'm really glad it's resulting in a points finish for him because that was superb. Yeah, I didn't see this coming because certainly throughout practice and qualifying, I was like, Alonzo's got some all right pace here.

Like, he could, he could maybe feature in the back end of the points. That wouldn't shock me. And then he goes on to the wrong strategy. I'm like, it's a real shame. I felt he could do something here. It serves me right for ruling out Fernando Alonzo at that stage of a Grand Prix because, yeah, the way in which he recovered was excellent. And we'll do driver of the day in a minute,

but certainly those drivers that you're looking for on a day like this, they're probably all going to feature in that conversation because Alonzo did do such a brilliant job, even early on when he was on that wrong strategy call. he wasn't letting the top drivers get too far away, I say top drivers, top cars, I should say, get away from him. Like, he was staying in touch. And ultimately he's been rewarded for that because as soon as, yeah, the safety car brings everything together.

And he gets lucky in that regard, he is able to take advantage of that and overtake his teammate and indeed quite a few others. And we know from Zanvall, and it looks quite similar here, because that Honda engine is running at such a deficit, he is having to be quite creative with these overtakes and he is having to, you know, not just blast past someone down a straight and then see where they are as soon as you get into the breaking zone. He is going side by side

with most of these drivers into the breaking zone and figuring out how to get by. Really excellent work from him. Elsewhere in the midfield, racing balls, they walk away with a double points finish, which on a day where Alpine haven't scored anything, it's pretty good work. Liam Lawson was spectacular today.

The way he restarted this Grand Prix on those intimate tires. They're very intimate ties. They're very close intimate ties. Also intermediate, if you're interesting folks. The way he was fighting with Verstappen, even right at the start, and then was kind of there in that group

with Hajjar and the like for a good few laps before drifting into this no man's lang for a while and holding that queue up for such a long time, essentially till Hamilton worked his way all the way through. the likes of Piastri, Lecler, Norris, I can't believe him saying this, Ockon, Holkenberg, no one gets past him for a very, very long time, brings it home to P7. Unfortunately, there are some other spectacular performances along this list that mean I think he's going to end up being slightly further down an incredible set of ratings

that we're going to seeing our power rankings, which we'll do on Patreon tomorrow night. But this has been one of his best performances, and it's only allotted P7 for him, which is a real shame because I genuinely believe he deserves more from this. I think his pace was okay. I don't think his pace was majorly impressive and he was having to defend a lot more than he was attacking. But a large part of that is because he did a really good job on that start and he got ahead of everyone other than the two Mercedes and Max Verstappen

and very nearly got by Max Verstappen as well. But he was at that point sort of holding down this fourth place. We knew that if things returned to normal, it was unlikely he was going to stay there. But he did do a very good defensive job against the likes of certainly Esteban Ockon early on. Ockon had some very good pace, I thought, on the intermediate tires, but Lawson did a very good job defending against him. And then even, yeah, late on where he's got Alonzo, Norris, Limbluder, Holkenberg, all behind him, he's the one that's able to certainly use that Red Ball straight line speed quite effectively.

I think this has been a trait of racing ball so far this year has been being very difficult to overtake, but you still need the driver skill to pull that strategy off and Lawson displayed that today. What did you make of Bortoletto's penalty? Ten second. It deserved, entirely deserved. He just drove straight into him.

It was so bad. What do you mean? He didn't leave him the space. Oh, he doesn't leave him the space. What am I going to do? Carlos Sites, like I left him all the space. the world. He did leave a more than the place in the world.

There's so much room on the inside. Entirely because a shocker from Bortoletto. This is a real opportunity for someone like Williams to jump up and find some points or an Audi to be in the points. And yet both drivers from both teams do not feature in the points anywhere. But an Aston Martin does. Racing balls get two. This is where it's costly for teams like this.

We need to take a bandage of the chaos. And Bortoletto has cost himself and Carlos Sainz. a real opportunity here. I'm not saying they either would have finished in the points, but you're definitely not going to with a move like that. It's entirely on Gabby. I certainly think the Audi had the pace to contend, and indeed Holkenberg was battling with Lindblard for that final spot.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. If that Audi had just a little bit more grunt in a straight line, he probably would have got it. So Portoletto, I think, would have featured in the conversation for points. I'm not sure about the Williams, because that pace, particularly in Albin's hands, but it was a bit smelly, I thought. Whiffy.

Yeah. But yeah, Carlos Seines no fault of his whatsoever. This is 100% on Bortoletto and it was the right penalty. The logic of or the argument of giving space kind of falls down when you are maybe at the widest track that we have on the calendar. It's out there. It's really wide, particularly like around turn one, sort of going into turn two and turn three. To the point where, not saying this would be advised, you could probably go three

wide through there quite comfortably. I think so. As long as you're all aware to say to each other, we're going three wide, give space. You could do it. I think so. And signs very comfortably left enough room, Portoletto. I don't think he locks up. We saw so many cars go side by side through that corner. We did. One of them had proper contact. Yeah, we did indeed. Anything else from the, from the midfield that caught your eye out of interest? Early in the Grand Prix, Lecler, straight into the back of Holkenberg. I'd completely forgotten about that. That's a penalty.

Yeah, of course it is. He's just driven straight into him. He's lost his front wing. He's done well to recover from a front wing change all the way up to finishing by Hagenstein, mate. But that each of him been peeing in lines for that. Holcombberg did absolutely nothing wrong. Yeah.

And I think I get why it happened. Like at that point, the conditions were difficult and he's on dry tires, but it's still a penalty. Like, yeah, I was... I was really surprised as to how he got away with that. Yeah, I don't know. It just felt like it immediately got forgotten. There were so many things going on.

It just felt like it was forgotten. And I get it, right? You can't forget a lot. We forget gasoline going over the grass under the safety car. I don't know how Ockong is ending up there. It's fine for us to forget it. But the stewards arguably, you know, have a job to do. That's true.

You make a very good point there, sir. How did Ockong end up behind Behrman? It wasn't great. So just grabbed my notes here a second about Estaband Ockland. So started very well. obviously, and was well inside the top 10. Then he goes on to the hard tire and he loses a spot. After trying to get by Liam Lawson all race,

loses a spot to the other racing balls of Limbludes as a result of his error on the pit entry. On the pit entry where he wasn't to the grass. So that's very much self-inflicted. And from there, because he looked all right on the soft tire, then went to the hard tire and was far, far worse. I think he got undercut, possibly by Berman, and then certainly, yeah, on that last him, Berman was one of the very few that didn't pit and was on the hard tire with Ocon trying to get by

him and unsuccessfully being able to do so. Yeah, on lap 12, Ockon is in sixth and Bermann's in 20th. Yeah. The fact that Bermann's ending up in front of Ockon, regardless of what's going on there, is just not good enough from Eskabang. And that's kind of the reason why Hars have gone, maybe don't mean you in the team at the moment. Honestly, like, this race might be the full picture as to why, because it's not just a case of Ocon was slow for 50 laps,

and that's the end of the Grand Prix. It's just the perfect, like, Ocon looks very good, and then something wrong happens, and then he gets stuck behind this car, and it all adds together, and you look at the end result, you go, ah, yeah, he's slower than Berman. Yeah. Yeah.

I kind of feel it's like Ocon's life at the moment. Certainly is a year, yeah. Finally, Alpine, pretty Angolome, a Scorn Prix for Alpine. Yeah, I think just strategically not getting much right. Certainly, Gassley stopped four times, if my notes are correct. I made the mistake under the safety car. Yes. Rarely early on, which doesn't help.

And Colopinto was starting at the back anyway, but he also was on the soft tired start things out. But whereas... He was like a minute 20 behind the league. that when he was on that dry tie right at the start. I thought you're going to be a lap down before we even get going in this Grand Prix. Do you think Alburn's going to get penalised, by the way, for, I know he's retired,

so he would have to carry over to the next Grand Prix, but we saw his near miss with Piastri on the pit entry. Yeah, I think it was a bit dodgy, unless he can come out with a reason why he was behaving like that in the pit lane. There was a reason why, but it's not one he can use. Which was? Carlos Seins was pitting in front of him

and he didn't want to double stack. Excellent. Good. That's not going to, you're not going to get away with that. Cainably not a good excuse. So, yes, should get penalised. Won't, but should. Yeah, that's another one that they decided to look at after the Grand Prix, despite the fact that they weren't looking at anything else at that point.

Not that I'm annoyed about that at all. Driver of the day. As a jingle. You're the driver of the day. You're the driver of the day. You're good at your time. I literally just forgot we had jingles. You're just so eager.

I am so eager, yeah. All right, good. We'll actually get into it now before I mess up anything else. It came down to the three drivers I spoke of earlier, which were Vastappen, Hamilton, and the longsso, and I'm going with Lewis Hamilton

because I do think that might be his best performance of the whole season. Yep, those are the three. Take your pick as to which one you want. I'm going to go with the people because I'm a man of the people you see. I'm going to go with Vastappen. Understandable.

It was pretty mega. I was that maybe. at that start. But again, yeah, that was the only thing I was weighing up as to whether I could give it to the other two because of that. But I don't think you lose regardless of which of those three you go for. Worst driver of the day. Get in the bin, bin, bin, bin, bin, bin, worst driver of the day. Ben, bin, bin, been, worst driver of the day.

You suck at driving. Few contenders here. Yeah. And it's whether you're going to go for messy driving or just be a, slow. And, you know, I'm going to list a few because I, in my head, haven't got a full decision right this second, but Bortoletto is obviously one for that crash with science. O'Con, the race just got worse, but I have a very good start to it. I thought Norris was pretty rubbish and made a couple of very key mistakes that need to be accounting for. Gassley

wasn't good either. LeClew is, it was very slow in rather than to Hamilton, pretty much the whole Grand Prix and crashed into the back of Holgerburg. I think I'm going to go Bortelso, just because I do think it was so, so costly. But there were some sinkers out there. Yeah, I've got Bortoleto. There were errors out there outside of this one. Certainly, you know, Valtry Bottas, for example, put himself into the wall. But with Bortoletto's one, he has very directly impacted someone else's Grand Prix

as well as his own. And it all kind of spiraled from there. So Borteletto on a day where he started inside the top 10, I think had a chance for points. He's finished, you know, last but one of those that have finished. only Perez worse off. And Perez, to remind you, did pit seven times in this Grand Prix. When he pitted

and the safety car had to let him all the way through a gang and then he's only at turn four, he's like, come on, Kagalach. He's trying. He's trying to get that car to something useful. Big brain strap. Bob, we're going to need you to box for wets. What?

It's not even raining out. What are you talking about? Yeah. This felt like a day for strategy, so I'm not sure where we're going to go with this one. Mine is the Hamilton strap. I genuinely think whilst it costs them initially, the reversal to make sure you didn't pit under the safety car and kept his older soft ties on, I think, worked an absolute treat. So I thought that moment was worthy of a great redemption strategy call.

But obviously, the soft tie choice at the start was the wrong pick. But so many did it, it's hard to make that an implication on them. Yeah, I was considering that. If I hadn't just mentioned it, I probably would have gone for the Sergio Perez pitting seven times because typically not a great idea, but I don't think it would have mattered much for the Cadillac anyway. I'm going to go with rather a collective big brain strap, which is just the midfield. And I mentioned this earlier. The top teams clearly figured this out that the soft compound is the one you want to go for or maybe the medium tire.

And those are the only two dry compounds that the two Mercedes and Vastappen used. Lewis Hamilton was really good on the soft tire as well. And yet nearly all of the midfield, apart from like Nika Holkenberg, it was just like, stick another hard set on. When they had that late pit stop as suddenly there were more hards going on, I was like, what are you doing?

Yeah, there was just a lot of like, Hasse is another good example. Like, Ockon was fairly all right on the soft tire. And there were other drivers not doing particularly well on the hards. What do you do? Pit in for hard tires. Like there were quite a few instances, where I just felt like there was an opportunity for someone in the midfield.

And Holkenberg did this to an extent, because I think he only used the soft tire, and he benefited from it. I know he had to, he was hit early on, but he was still in the conversation for points because he was able to get a few overtakes done. Agreed. Right, let's take our final break. On the other side, Moment of the Race. Welcome back, everyone.

A time for Moment of the Race. Sam, what was your moment of the race? Mine was Fernando Alonso's overtake on Limblad through turn one and turn two. The fact that the commentary team thought it was an accident and that they were about to make contacts. And actually, it's just Fernando pulling off such a great switchback was unreal. So that takes it. Similar for me, same part of the track. I am going to go with Verstapp and getting the lead back from Kimmy Antonelli on the restart.

I just think he nailed it. Like he read Antonelli like a book. and then through turn one and turn two, really effective. That sort of section of the track got a lot of action. A lot of action. Hamilton was very productive through there as well. Double overtake through there as well. Yeah, it was amazing.

Someone further down the field. You just mentioned it. So I thought you were going to say Hamilton. Yeah, that overtake into the breaking zone past Ocong and Limbaard. It sounds right, yeah. Yeah. Incredible. Didn't get any love at all from the team.

We even see a replay of it. No, no. why would we? That's our moment of the race. What about from our Discord? First up, we have stocks and al-Bons. What up late breakers. My moment of the race is the fact that they devoted an entire minute to talking about how Audi has finished 11th in 9 out of 16 races, which is absolutely ridiculous. It is amazing that Hulk still manage a finish P11 out of all that. It seems about right. It's a point I know I've made a number of times throughout this year is just how consistently Audi finish

between like 11th and 13th. Like they're very rarely down in like 15th or 16th. They were today because of Boteletto, but it's rare that they are retiring or doing really poorly. Ultimately, 11th gets you as many points as a retirement does. Agreed.

Up next we have a visit from the Scuderia donkey. Hi guys, Jesus Christ. That was a lot to really contend with. for three hours and 25 minutes. But my moment of the race is right at the start of the race watching a Malaysian Harry Potter flying along the broom in the rain. Keep breaking lead. Skidariah donkey out.

Yeah. I forgot about that, yeah. Fair play to him. They were doing their best. Shout out to the stewards. In races like that is so hard to keep everything happy and safe. And they did a great job. The Marshall, sorry.

Yeah. Sorry, yes. Yeah. They were excellent and I've already made the point. I think the whole crowd was brilliant. Well done to F1 for not only saying it was sold out. You actually gave us a number to work with. I knew you bring that up.

I'm surprised it wasn't the moment of the race. Honestly, I was considering it. Thank you very much, Scuderia donkey. Mr. Tompsey's up next. My moment of the race was when Russell decided to wait until the back markers were finally getting clear to pull over and pull on the safety car, even a little bit longer. for your job days.

Yeah, I mean, I don't mind you breaking down under the safety car. But when you're only like six laps left of the race, and then you break down, I just thought, just really delaying this action, this Grand Prix, a little longer, George. Russell's decided he can't win the title. It's like, how can I just annoy people at home? How can I have some more attention instead? I'm going to retire here.

Yeah, brutal for him, brutal for him. Up next, we have. a first timey. Yay. And it is the one and only Big Bean. First time, long time. This is Big Bean calling in. I would like to shout out the fact that Bernie Collins said pass

when they were asking about race strategy. And then somehow Lewis came in and proved Bernie wrong. That never happens. Shout out to my husband, who's also going to be listening. I hope it's a nice surprise. Oh, thanks big bean and Mr. Big Bean. Bigger Bean or maybe little a bean. Other bean.

Other bean. Husband bean. A family of beans. Oh, excellent. I had beans for breakfast today, by the way. How was it? It was delightful. Good to hear. Yeah, I'd forgotten about the...

Just because of so much to remember for this race. I also forgot about Bernie Collins'... Pass. I'm not sure what the answer is to this. even my amazingly big brain can't figure it out. Big brain and big bean. That was the lesson from that. Let's go to Rusty Sport next.

Hi guys. Trackside here on our way back from the stand, trying to find a way home now. Moment of the race is when it actually started. Yeah. Took a very long time to start. So, yeah, I can't disagree with that. I don't envy you.

I'm not going to lie. That's why I was going to those Grand Prix that whilst it was very frustrating to deal with at home, I was very grateful that I was just at home and I could watch it all unfold on the telly and go make like a cup of tea when I wanted to. But hopefully you have a great experience. I'm glad you got to go to Sapan

because what a great track to see a Formula One race. Oh, yeah. I think we should go back here at some point, you know, weirdly. Maybe, yeah. Yeah, I think it's pretty done enough to warrant it. But also thank you for taking the time Just saying a message. Also, I saw you in the Discord

in the F1 chat. So again, thank you for making some effort to get involved. It's really appreciated. Yeah, massively appreciated indeed. Another first-timey. This time, it's Bass. Hello, it's Bass.

First time, long time. My moment of the race was Fernando Alonzo getting in the points and his fantastic fight with Limblad and also when the race finally started. I was about falling asleep, waiting for that. Yeah, buttery biscuit bass. That's a really, really good point there,

about the same as mine, the great battle between the two of them. That was a great fight. It was great to see Alonso actually fight with someone properly at the race track. That's what we want to see. It's all we want to see. Yes, thank you very much, Bass, for you,

and your glorious accent. Aaron Richardson 81 is up past. Now then, everyone, my moment of the race absolutely has to be before the race when the cars couldn't even drive. It wasn't even a kid. of computer says no. It was a case of computer thinks it's Harry's microwave. Seriously, the talk about road relevance. I'd travel 25 miles to work. If I can't get to work

because my car doesn't know what it's doing in the wet, I get the sack. Seriously, sort it out. Great references. Great reference and a great point. Very well made. Yeah. Yeah, completely right. Completely right. It was just one of the most farcical things I've ever seen in on 4-1 race. Road relevancy kind of falls down when it doesn't do anything. The car can't work because it rains. The UK is just screwed. Thank you very much for all of your submissions. Massively appreciate as well. The couple of first timies as well, really appreciate you getting in touch. There'll be an opportunity, of course, for a moment of the race in just a week's time when we review the Singapore Grand Prix, the last of this triple header, Sam. But we're not done for

Malaysia slash Bahrain quite yet because we'll have some power rankings coming up very soon. Yeah, find those on our Patreon. If you do all get subscribed to Patreon, you unlock the whole back catalogue, everything's ad-free, there's loads of perks and extras in there. And the best part is we can't say thank you enough because it does support this show and allow us to go on and make great stuff, hopefully. It helps buy these mics. We get our camera because of you. So everything you put into that show, it comes back into the show and we're so, so grateful. So thank you. Join the Discord as well. You heard some first timies on our moment of the race and maybe you could be a first-timey for Singapore for moment of the race,

which we always love. It's great to hear from new people, alongside our kind of category of legends that now appear on this show every week. But we love hearing from the audience and hearing from what you think in the show. It's really great to get that perspective. For us on social media, like breaking effort across all channels and, you know, sick around because there's so much more actions come throughout the season, and we really appreciate the support. In the meantime, I've been Samuel Sage.

And I've been Ben Hocking, and remember, keep breaking late.