2 Soft Compounds
2 Soft Compounds is a weekly podcast focusing on Formula 1, hosted by radio broadcaster Rick Houghton and motorsport journalist and GrandPrix247 founder, Paul Velasco.
With a focus on unfiltered analysis, behind-the-scenes insights and expert commentary, the podcast offers fans an entertaining and informative take on the fastest sport in the world.
2 Soft Compounds
Dutch GP: The Fast & The Frustrated!
This week on 2 Soft Compounds, the Dutch Grand Prix delivered a script Hollywood wouldn’t dare write and Oscar Piastri nailed the lead role!
Plenty of stuff for Rick and Paul to dive into this week including the part of the script no-one saw coming as Lando Norris’ engine gave up the ghost, leaving him sitting trackside with a thousand-yard stare and a 34-point hole in the standings.
Elsewhere, the home favorite Max Verstappen acknowledged they were lucky to get second place. And the real shocker? Rookie Isaac Hadjar brought it home for his first F1 podium! Plus Alex Albon pulled off a stunning P15 to P5 comeback and Oliver Bearman basically said “undercut this” with a 53-lap opening stint from the pit lane to P6.
The guys also disect the disaster otherwise know as Ferrari! And Rick has a minor thrombi over Aston Martins Lance Stroll. No sitting on the fence in this podcast! And as as we barrel toward the high-speed theatre of Monza, engine reliability and team harmony might still shake up this title fight for McLaren.
Subscribe now and don’t miss a moment - this championship script is still being written and anything can happen.
Production Credits:
Presented by: Rick Houghton & Paul Velasco
Studio Engineer & Editor: Roy D'Monte
Executive Producer: Ian Carless
Produced by: W4 Podcast Studio & GrandPrix247
I don't make mistakes. I make prophecies that immediately turn out to be wrong.
Speaker 2:Anything can happen in Formula One, and it usually does. Hey, welcome to another episode of Two Soft Compounds and me, rick, and Paul Velasco, the founder and editor-in-chief of GrandPrix247.com. It's on the back of the Dutch Grand Prix which, on the face of it, could have been a box standard and fairly mundane race. But it wasn't Three safety cars, world champions or former world champions crashing out and a world champion in waiting, also having a disastrous afternoon which could have ended his world championship hopes. But we can get into that as we start talking about Zenvo. Paul, your overall view of the race.
Speaker 1:Yeah, pretty much. You summed it up in a nutshell there. It was actually, you know, for a track you can't overtake. I didn't believe that hype. Anyway, that track's got so many. Those bank corners give guys quite a lot of options to do stuff, and we saw a lot of action happen there because there's alternative lines into that corner. So yeah, all in all, though, I think, a big, big, big boost to Piastri's world title chances. I'm starting to see the O already being engraved on the trophy, but there's still nine races to go.
Speaker 1:He needs his share of bad luck because, let's be honest, this was not a mistake by Norris. This was pure bad luck. The engine gave up on him. But the reality is they leave Netherlands after 15 rounds and he's trailing by 34 points. I don't think that's a golf that cannot be closed. But if you look at it, two DNFs and the worst Piastri's done. He's scored in every race, whereas in Australia we got two points, but since then everything's been in the double digits. He's been just super consistent. Canada Norris' fault In Holland. I think it's fate. So I think fate probably owes Oscar one, but as it stands right now he's in a very strong position.
Speaker 2:So we saw, when Norris pulled up with the engine issue and he climbed out of the car, we saw him sitting on the sand, tunes with his head in his hands, still wearing a helmet, and I thought, oh no. And on the group that me and you participate in during Formula One races, there was a lot of our esteemed colleagues who were saying, well, that's it, he could be finished now. Mentally he could be wiped out. This could be, you know, the turning point, simply because he won't be able to get his head together.
Speaker 2:However, um, I read some really encouraging stuff after the race that norris was talking about. He said well, listen, he said the pressure's off. Now he said I don't have that massive weight on my shoulders of of trying to. You know, come neck and neck with with oscar. You know, whatever happens will happen, but the the pressure's off a little bit. I can kind of just drive my races the way I see fit. I can try. I can try my very best, but with 34 point difference. If it happens, it happens. If it doesn't, it doesn't, the pressure is a little bit off. And someone else mentioned in our WhatsApp group as well. They said you know, this means that Norris is going to have a brand new power unit for Monza, which is the sort of circuit which breaks power units, because it's virtually flat out for the whole lap and Oscar's going to have the old one. So if something goes wrong in Oscar's car, just as it has for Lando Norris, then Monza could be the track that it breaks on. So it's not all doom and gloom for Lando Norris.
Speaker 1:Of course not. You know, if you think about it again, lando owned practice. Okay, he was untouchable. He was finding lap times that no one could think of. And Piaget was obviously. He wasn't struggling, he was shadowing him all the time and when it mattered he delivered a very, very good lap. Lando didn't mess up. That's for the best Lando had.
Speaker 1:I think Oscar delivered the best he had and it was just enough for Paul. I think he controlled the race extremely well from Paul, the three restarts, as you said, and with Max Verstappen behind you, because he was there, I think, for two restarts, right it so it's. You know, max will ambush you at any given opportunity. So we've seen that in the past. But he kept his head, he controlled the race, he was never flustered. And Lando Norris, by his own admission, said look, you know, in the dirty air, the car's pretty much the same. There was just no way he was going to get past unless Oscar made a mistake. But that mistake didn't come. Instead, something happened to the engine on Norris' car and that means no points scored. When he sits in he looks at 25 points to Piastri. It's got to hurt. You know what I mean.
Speaker 1:But I don't think it's over for him. I mean, I like Norris' attitude. I don't think he's that cut up. I think he's dealt with that psychology. Look, I'm going to explain this to you. Look, he got ambushed by Max at the start but let's be honest, that move he pulled on Max a few laps later. Oh, it was great, that was out of top draw. And you know what, had it been three, four months earlier, he would have taken six, seven laps to get past Max, correct? So you know, I think he's definitely he's upped his game. Race in the game, like I said, norris owned practice and then Piastri now has upper hand. This is after Norris had this very good run of scoring points and actually put the gap down to nine points before this race, but now it's 34, and that's got to hurt.
Speaker 2:Yeah, definitely. I mean, I think the overall thing for me was when they arrived in Holland, just seeing the pace of the McLarens, the two McLarens you know, in practice half a second faster than anything else on track, I mean that's almost unheard of Forget the place how they're planted.
Speaker 1:They're just planted to that track, like nothing else. I mean, it's just absolutely. You can see it, especially on a track like that where you know there's quite a variety of corners, there's that little chicane that's very awkward. But yeah, absolutely you hit the nail on the head there. That car's on another level.
Speaker 2:There was a bit of a tyre gamble at the start, with Max Verstappen taking the softs. I think the thinking there was that Max thought he could make some progress off the start line, and of course he did. He got past Lando Norris. The gamble, though, with putting him on the softs was that rain was in the forecast. So if he'd have stayed on the softs which work working window the softs supposed to be about 14 or 15 laps. In actual fact they started going off after lap 12, which meant that he was not going to challenge anyone in front of him from lap 12 onwards, and then he was kind of waiting for the rain before they made the tire change.
Speaker 1:Yeah, sorry I'm going to interrupt you there quickly. The rain that never came. It didn't. No, it didn't. Carry on carry on.
Speaker 2:So obviously the rain didn't happen. But then, uh, then obviously we had the first of our safety cars, which you know I thought was was timed well for many, many teams, including some teams further down the order, like ollie b, for instance, who went out and did 53 laps on one set of tyres. Wow, that was amazing, yeah. And then the safety car happened, or the third safety car happened at a time that was really useful for him. We'll get to some of the lower teams first later, but Max Verstappen, I think, drove the best race he could have driven. There was nothing else he could have done. He stayed in a firm third place and then, of course, brought it home in second in the end.
Speaker 1:Yeah, beautiful. Like you know, Max just did not have the firepower. You know he did everything he could with the car. Again, he destroyed Tornado. Tornado was nowhere. Yeah, and absolutely you know. You just know one thing whatever car you give to Max, he's going to bring out the maximum. You know that's what he did on the day. He harried the McLarens but when both were up front there was no way he could hang with them. There's just no way. He was just going to lose. You know, the fact that the gap was only 1.2 in across the line is because it would have been a safety car, but I reckon they'd easily like you said had about half a second on the field.
Speaker 2:I want to talk about the podium debut for Isaac Hadja.
Speaker 2:I thought he did a brilliant, brilliant job All weekend. Qualifying was great and then to really be mature amongst some of the finest drivers in the world who were literally around him, maintain that position through the race. Didn't put a foot wrong. Pit stops were perfect. The team did a blinding job. I was so made up for Hadja and, as we've discussed in the past, I just hope he has a manager who can be tough enough to say no to Helmut Marko, because if they try and put him in the Red Bull team next to Max Verstappen, it should be a flat no and he should be talking to other teams about jobs next season perhaps.
Speaker 1:I'm going to. I'll tell you what. I'm going to disagree with you on a couple of levels because, first of all, I've heard what Hajar said about being promoted. He said, look, maybe he's not ready, but if the call comes he'll do it. And I'm with you 110%, up to one point I will. I would put stay in this car, because this car's undrivable, and you can correct me if I'm wrong, rick, I don't want to bully you.
Speaker 1:Anyway so you put Hadja in the car next year and that's the levelest playing field. He's going to get to max because the car, no one knows, it's exactly the same for everybody. So you know what I keep him. I would keep Hadja because, end of the day, that's who you want to beat. If you're in Formula 1 and your racing's in your blood and you want to be the world champion, you want to beat the best guy in the car next to him. I don't believe Hadja has the kind of big head that Tsunoda has saying well, I'm going to beat Max. But I think if he goes there and keeps on improving like he's improving, he still has to get his temperament a bit under control. But if he has more races like this, which I'm sure he has inside himself, I don't see why he should look anywhere else. I think he's a Red Bull developed driver and I think he's the next in line. But put him in a car that he can kind of start from scratch, that's what I think they would do.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and I suppose the reset in 2026 is the perfect time to do that, isn't it? I would agree with you about Snowden. Just let him sort of dry up, and I was going to say something really quite harsh. Then. Let his career just sort of dry up. In the current position at Red Bull, he's just not doing anything.
Speaker 1:Well, it is. I mean, who's going to hire Tenor? Exactly? Who's going to hire Tenor? I'll tell you who could hire Tenor, because there is a driver that's worse than him on the grid and that's Lance. So they could fire Lance and put Tenor there. But we'll get to Lance later, because he didn't have such a bad race.
Speaker 2:So next, yeah now George Russell did quite a lot of moaning on the radio about overtaking manoeuvres.
Speaker 2:And you know I thought George loves to get on the radio to make a point, knowing that the race director is listening to all of the radio feeds. But they all do, they all do, they do. But George is a master at it, though the slightest thing that he notices gets mentioned on the radio. He thought at one point during the race that he was being unfairly overtaken, and it was actually just. In my eyes it was just pretty good wheel-to-wheel racing. You should just be.
Speaker 1:You should actually be sort of like a you know, you know, when you have in soccer you have that, uh player manager yeah he should be like a driver stewart.
Speaker 1:He can call the shots, because he was calling all the shots from the car. You know what I'm saying. Yeah, but I love that about george because you know he's a character in that. He's that way, you know. I mean, I imagine he's a sort of graham hill type of guy. You know what I mean. So, look, I think he drove a good race. I think he's again. He owned antonelli, who didn't have a very good weekend. Again, he didn't finish in the points and actually we'll talk about the punt later, but but, yeah, I think George is in a good place. The Mercedes wasn't good this weekend. The car was not in a good spot. I think he actually flattered them by putting it where he didn't on the grid. And yeah, I think P4 was a result that they would have taken, especially after qualifying and especially after practice.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and the overtaking maneuver I'm talking about, of course, is between him and Charlesles leclerc. So mercedes and george russell were kind of saying, well, I had no choice to, uh, to keep my track position, and they were arguing that the clerk overtook because he took an advantage by going off the track. And obviously leclerc and ferrari said something different. No, that was where was charles going there?
Speaker 1:something different. No, that was where was Charles going. There's no track there, mate, that was sand. Yeah, no, seriously, I felt that, yeah, I don't know, I felt Charles wasn't in the right there. You know what I mean? I think there was no gap there. I mean, what do you think I?
Speaker 2:would agree. He definitely. He left the track. So leaving the track and gaining an advantage is always an offense in Formula One. But he did that momentarily before squeezing Russell down the inside. So he rejoined the track, but he'd already had he just slightly got it wrong and he would have speared.
Speaker 1:I don't think there was a gap there. But you know what Carmel was watching? Because a few laps later Antonetti said hey, don't do that to my number one driver. And boom.
Speaker 2:We're going to talk about Alex Albon, who had a pretty decent race in the end in just a bit, but before we do that we're going to talk. Talk about the two dnfs for the ferrari boys. Uh, disastrous weekend for lewis hamilton in more ways than one. Obviously, he lost it on turn three, which is very unlike hamilton to lose a car in that manner, uh, but he we, I think he went on the paint just after there'd been a bit of drizzle at the top of the corner and that made him lose the back end. He put it into the wall. Uh, that was game over. And then we find out that earlier on in the weekend he was speeding as he was approaching the pit lane on the yellow flags and that's given him a five place grid penalty for the next race, which is the Italian Grand Prix in Monza, which is a Ferrari fan favorite. So really, for Hamilton it hasn't been a great weekend. After he came back from the summer break and said you know what I'm going to try, my, I'm gonna dig my heels in. This is gonna be okay, we can make this work. And then, sadly, it didn't work, uh.
Speaker 2:The other thing worth mentioning is charles leclerc. Uh, if he'd have finished the race. He would have, uh, you know, scored some points. Fine, uh. But ferrari, make this bizarre strategy call when they bring him in for soft tires for no apparent reason. I just didn't get it, and neither did he. He was on the radio just before he crashed by saying what was that? This again keeps happening. I don't understand it. They put him on the soft tire. It didn't make any sense, it really didn't. What were your views on that, mate?
Speaker 1:Charles has got to start. He's becoming like a genre lazy. Do you know what I'm saying? Charles has got to start. He's becoming like a genre lazy. Do you know what I'm saying? He's becoming the kind of driver that he seems to just enjoy being in Formula 1 and Ferrari and giving it his best shot. But I don't think he's a hung guy. I don't see this guy. He's the faster guy in the team. I don't see him pulling the team. I don't know. His shares have dropped as far as I'm concerned. Yes, it was no fault of his own, the issue with Kimi but at the same time, I don't know. I've never really rated him as a Max Verstappen-level driver, so I'm just going to rest my case there with Charles. I'd like to see him start delivering. But again, it's a bit of a catch-22, because if you deliver and then they do the kind of stuff that you say, pull him in and he shouldn't be pulled in Ferrari, mate, welcome to Ferrari you want to be a.
Speaker 1:Ferrari driver, you go with. Got it, you go with it. You can't say, listen, I'm going to marry a blonde, and then 20 years later you say I'm man, sorry, since blonde I can't you know what I mean.
Speaker 1:It's like it's that's your gig, you ferrari driver, you just it's not like you weren't warned, and not that there haven't been stories about it. But now, lewis, you know, I I love Lewis, but I'm really I'm just seeing a horrible downfall. Yeah, I'm seeing Seth Vettel, I'm seeing Dan Ricciardo, I'm seeing guys I don't know. I mean, you know, that's just not the kind of mistake Lewis made, and there's some stats that I think Lewis is the driver who's not scored a podium for Ferrari the worst ever, or something.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah. 15 races without a podium makes him the worst Ferrari driver ever in terms of not getting a podium within that timeframe.
Speaker 1:Well, he did. Technically, he did in China On the sprint. Yeah, yeah, so, but you know, again, that was a bit of an anomaly, as it's proven to be, because, yeah, I think you know you can be as motivated. I used to remember Seb coming every weekend after, you know, after being pummeled one week, he comes back. I know everything's good. You know, I remember he had his little band around his head and he was like all pumped. Yeah, I know, this is it Boom.
Speaker 1:And every time, I think you know you hit a certain age or a certain point, because, I mean, dan wasn't that old and neither was Seb. But there comes a certain point where you just don't have it anymore. You know, and it's normally these guys that have been in the game for like after 10 to 12 years, which is a very long time in careers, you just don't see the same consistency, and I speak of Nico Hulkenberg, I speak of all those guys that have been in the sport for a decade or longer. They just don't have the Piastri hunger or the Norris hunger or the Verstappen hunger. Verstappen's been there forever, but Verstappen's a different animal. He's a guy who doesn't socialize. His whole life is dedicated to racing. When he finishes racing, he's going to run racing teams. He's going to drive Le Mans. He's going to drive Le Mans. He's going to race until he's 90. You know what I mean, whereas these other guys, they're burnt out. I think they get burnt out at Formula 1. Look at Nico Rosberg Never set a foot in the car.
Speaker 1:So I think for some of these drivers there comes a point where there's a point of no return. You don't get any better. And I think Lewis Peake two years ago, to be honest, you know he did get mullered by George at Mercedes. We always tend to sort of forget that. So there's no surprise, because I think Charles is a George Russell level driver. So there's no surprise that he's beating Lewis on a regular basis. Lewis had him a few times this weekend and he was a lot closer and everything. But no, no matter what, it all came pear-shaped, especially that mistake. It kind of reminded me a bit of Lance Stroll. We will get you later.
Speaker 2:Yeah, crash Stroll yeah, and I suppose the rule should be if you're a former world champion in Formula 1, don't go to Ferrari. Whatever you do, don't go to Ferrari.
Speaker 1:Well, that's not fair to say because look what happened to Michael.
Speaker 2:Well, Michael, yeah, that's the exception, I guess. But he was still relatively young when he won his first world championship with Benetton when he joined Ferrari. But if you look at Alonso and Seb and Hamilton, they were all towards the end of their careers when they joined Ferrari, hoping for a last hurrah, which never happened.
Speaker 1:Look, it's like this. My theory is this is you do it the Ferrari way, you're going to struggle. You do it the Michael Schumacher way, which was basically to tore up the Ferrari playbook and said this is how we're going to do it. So you had a German race driver, you had a French leader, you had a South African, you had a Brit in Ross Brawn South African Rory, you had a couple of the Italians, you had this multinational unit that came there. So, basically, what happened? Ferrari changed to suit Michael. Yeah, okay, in the long run, in 1999, around then, they changed the whole team to suit Michael. Yeah, I agree. When Alonso went there, yeah, they didn't change the whole team for Alonso. When Kimi Räikkönen went there, they didn't change the whole team for Kimi. Kimi was lucky to win that 2007 world title. I'm telling you that was actually Lewis' title, but anyway, let's not go there. And then you go further on the same with Seb and Charles.
Speaker 2:Do you know what I'm saying? Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:So Seb did not change the team, charles did not change the team. Charles did not change the team to suit him. Lewis has not changed the team to suit him. Lewis should have come in and said listen, we're not speaking Italian, we're only speaking English and this is how the team is going to run. But he can only do that if you're murdering Charles and you know we're beating Charles. Unless you're beating Charles, then no one's going to say yeah, lewis, we'll change the team for you. Beat Charles first, then we'll do it. You know what I'm saying and I think that's what happens. That's the fundamental difference. Ferrari will be successful when it designs the team around the needs of the driver, and that's why I firmly believe there's only one driver that can actually convince them to do that, and that's Max Verstappen.
Speaker 2:Yeah, simple as that. You're not going to get.
Speaker 1:Alex Albon going to Ferrari and say, hey, listen, I want the team to change like this for me, you know what I mean. And I say listen, alex, that guy and I think this is what happened with Charles Leclerc he can't change that team, it's done. He's the nice, like I said, I call it the Jean Alassie syndrome. Great guy, fast driver on his day, but became too complacent. That's my argument. Maybe he could change, maybe he changed teams. It would change something.
Speaker 2:I don't know Some very good points that you make. Back to the finishing order. Alex Albon had a nightmare in qualifying. He was really not happy when he got out of the car, but he started in 15th and finished in fifth and that is probably one of the biggest uh rises of the day in terms of positions gained. He had a brilliant first lap. I think he overtook four cars in the first.
Speaker 2:Yeah yeah, I don't think you can't overtake on yeah so we proved that was uh nonsense and uh carlos science in the in the sister williams is having a similar nightmare this season to lewis hamilton the Ferrari. He just can't pull it together. I thought, personally I thought that the 10 second penalty for Sainz was harsh.
Speaker 2:Oh, that was harsh, that was super harsh, very harsh and I felt a little bit sorry for him when he made the radio, when the radio was used to let him know, he sounded as though he was going to burst into tears. Yeah.
Speaker 1:And I think Lawson was. It was Lawson's fault. Lawson turned into him basically, yeah, he did.
Speaker 2:So I thought that was very harsh. But yeah, scientists having an absolute mare Look the thing about.
Speaker 1:Albon that you mentioned about the first lap, how good he is. You know that of all the guys on the grid Russell, lando, max, all of them they all raced against Albon and they say he was the best carter of all of them. Yes, by the way, yeah, they do. I think Max will argue that, chris, but they're all put it this way. He was super respected. He was the benchmark for karting when he was in karting. So that's no surprise, because karting there's that hustle and bustle in the first lap. So I'd imagine he's good. I'm glad he's matured the way he has. I still feel that I don't know if you could put him in a car next to Max and you hold a candle to him, but who knows? You know what I mean. Right now he's doing a good job. He's owned Carlos Sainz and, let's look at it this way, he's owned Carlos Sainz in a way that Charles never owned car of signs.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think you're right. Olly Berman, we touched on before, but he started from the pit lane and finished in sixth. I mean that was a pretty damn good drive. Good job from Haas.
Speaker 1:I don't know how they did that. I think Ocon was 18th or something like that. It was ridiculous.
Speaker 2:So the first stint that he did was 53 laps long, and then basically got the cheap stop when the safety car came out one of them, I can't remember which, it might have been the second uh so he's able to then use fresh tires to move up the order and that was his joint best result in formula one and that will give him lots of confidence moving towards the back end of the season. And then we'll talk about, um well, as to martin, I'll start by talking about lance stroll, because he was grabbing the headlines more than fern. Fernando Alonso was, until race day, just a terrible weekend uh, crashing in practice, the mechanics staying up all night to rebuild the car, and then he goes out and qualifies and crashes it again. Then, uh, unable to continue in qualifying, the mechanics had another long shift to get it ready for the race and I thought you know we both said, I think, yesterday on our whatsapp chat he's going to bin this on lap one and those mechanics are going to smack him in the face.
Speaker 2:He didn't and he finished ahead of his team mate, fernando Alonso. I'd love to say it was because of his electrifying driving. It wasn't really. He became really quite lucky with strategy and well-timed safety cars. The offset strategy meant that he came in, he was the first driver to come in and change tires and that offset his strategy. So he was able to piggyback on the restarts and the safety cars for the rest of the race to make his pit stops. So finishing P7 was more strategy and more luck than it was driver skill.
Speaker 1:Ah, come on don't give me no, come on, that's hard man. Jeez, you roast a guy. Don't roast him like that. Seriously, he had a good race, he drove a good drive and I'm going to tell you something man, you're horrible when he does well, you must be nice.
Speaker 2:You hate him more than anyone on the planet.
Speaker 1:No, I don't, that's where you're wrong. No, let me tell you my history. You don't know the history of me and Lance Stroll. Okay, I really love the idea of Lawrence Stroll's dream of getting his son. If it was me, if I had a billion dollars, if I had as much money as Lance, I'd have done exactly the same thing. I wouldn't have bought Aston Martin and all that. Honestly, I love that dream. I love the dream that father blew as much money as he wanted. Imagine that dude on his son's passion to go racing. Now my son would kick Lance's ass. There's fucking no doubt about it, as you know. You know.
Speaker 1:But the bottom line is this I loved the story and I did not follow his rise with the kind of focus that I should have, but I saw that this kid, the Formula 3 champion, blah, blah, blah. Only much later did I realize there was a lot of fucking hanky-pankies going on, teammates letting him through all that kind of stuff. But anyway, let's not go there. And he's in Formula 1. And I must be honest, I was initially not not. I thought he deserved that place and you know he did do some good results in 2020. I tell you what, if Lance Stroll of 2020 was in the car today, he would be I'm saying he's gonna you would be ahead of Alonzo. I mean, the guy put the car on pole. You know, I mean in one stage pink Mercedes, the car was good and I always said that with a good car, lance is a good driver and he's a good driver in races of attrition up to that point. But honestly, that was his peak. He has never got better and this is probably one of the worst weekends in terms of bent metal. Never got better and this is probably one of the worst weekends in terms of bent metal. He bent it on on on um friday and fp2 and then he bent it in in a very, very rookie, amateur way in in qualifying and then because you know, as a modern and me have some history, I look at his demeanor and I'm saying, if that is my son and I'm looking at this on TV, I'm saying this kid is not enjoying himself. He is not enjoying himself here. Those nervous twigs. He's got his eyes, like his lips, go all contorted. His eyes start twitching. The dude is like a nervous wreck and, honestly, you see it in his performances. Okay, granted, on race day he delivered, but like like a nervous wreck and honestly, you see it in his performances. Okay, granted, on race day he delivered, but, like I said, it was a tough race, a lot of attrition.
Speaker 1:You got a bit of the old Lance back. It's still in there but he's not delivering it. He's delivering it once or twice a season. He's got to deliver it every session. Do you know what I'm saying? So that's my take on Lance. Don't be hard on him when he does. Well, rick, you've got to give him credit. Like I said, you know what they used to joke.
Speaker 2:They used to call me the president of the Lance Stroll fan club, having done this podcast with you all this year. You've never had a nice word to say about the kid, but he hasn't driven once well until this Sunday.
Speaker 1:This Sunday he drove a good race, sensible, stayed out of trouble. I don't know, it was alonzo, you know. I don't know what happened there. It was kind of weird because he was way ahead of australia I don't know how they engineered him. Look, they might have had great strategy to get the uh bounce up, but they had really shit strategy because alonzo should have finished much higher.
Speaker 2:Yeah, definitely. When they rocked up on Friday for FP1, alonso was third fastest, I think, in FP1. I thought, wow, this is going to be the point where Aston Martin have a chance of a podium here. And then in the race, yeah, they kept putting him out in traffic, so he was just stuck in DRS queues for most of the race. He was pissed off at one stage, right, yeah, he was pissed off.
Speaker 1:He just said hey, you guys just keep being. And yeah, you start wondering. Well you know. But anyway, I don't believe that any Alonso has nothing to prove against Stroll. Really seriously, you know what I mean? It's like. Whatever the case, they've got an issue there and the reality is no one's going to take Aston Martin seriously. Draws in that car. Simple as that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think you're right, you can get Adrian Newey.
Speaker 1:You can get whoever you want. If you've got Lance in the second car, you're not serious.
Speaker 2:Yuki Tsunoda, we've covered again.
Speaker 1:Have we.
Speaker 2:Well, pretty much I mean the race actually the race wasn't too bad from Yuki. He defended from Antonelli for most of it Mate, he got outqualified by both, both, all three.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's what I was going to say, that the problem with Yuki Tsunoda is qualifying pace. He just can't he couldn't put a decent. He hasn't got a handle on that car. No, not at all. No really, he doesn't.
Speaker 2:But you know, in the race he held off Antonelli.
Speaker 1:Do we talk about antonelli? We talked about antonelli I think he's out of his depth.
Speaker 2:You know, when he, when he went for the overtaking to turn three on charles leclerc, that would, to me, was a very naive mistake to make, because he thought he'd take the inside and then he oversteered or understeered, I should say into into the side of Charlotte Clerk. I just thought that was the sort of thing an 18-year-old would do. Do you know what I mean? I'm not being unkind to 18-year-olds.
Speaker 1:He's 19 now, but I actually wrote a piece just about Antonetti during the Grand Prix weekend, basically saying that I think it was a year too soon. If you look at it in retrospect, I'll tell you why I think it was a year too soon. If you look at it in retrospect, I'll tell you why I think it's a year too soon.
Speaker 1:If you put Bottas in that car he would be a lot closer to George and he wouldn't be making so many mistakes. You've got to look at it that way. Granted, toto has come out and said he's a long-term project, but he's no Max Verstappen at the moment I'm not seeing any Max step in here, but at the same time there is a bit of raw speed, but every single Formula One driver that I've ever seen has had a bit of raw speed. Not, he's really slow, but he's a Formula One driver. No, they've all had raw speed. It's just how they harness the raw speed and how they can bring it as consistently as they can.
Speaker 2:So let's see, uh the rest. Uh, much of a muchness really. Liam Lawson, uh, didn't have a brilliant race, francoapinto. He's never finished higher than 13th, so it was an improved showing for him. In Zandvoort I suppose he got past Gasly yeah but let's talk about him.
Speaker 1:There was word I don't know if you heard the press conference. Well, I listened to it and I wrote a report about it too Is Flavio Briatore the gangster. The gangster of Formula 1 was in the the press conference team. Principal's press conference that's right.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I saw it yeah, yeah, and when I deciphered all what he was saying, eventually you sort of need Google translate sort of very bad English into real English when you do his thing. But anyway, to cut a long story short, what I got out of it is that Colapinto hasn't impressed him Next year. Forget about it. He's going and that's yeah. That's pretty much. I can't see that you can keep a driver like that unless he's the father. You know the father owns the team, because Kole Pinscher's just been super disappointing. He's like I didn't believe the hype. At the beginning I was like I said I didn't believe the hype. I was. As always, there was trepidation, I didn't want to just jump on the hype bandwagon and, yes, he had some really amazing moments, but he just bins cars too much and makes too many mistakes yeah, I think you're right.
Speaker 2:Um, we're going to talk now about gabrielle bortoletto, who we both like. As a rookie driver this season, he's been very good. I thought he had a really poor race and then I read afterwards that he actually had a major problem with the clutch on his car, which plummeted it down to about 19th when he started, uh, and then it was sort of damage limitation. He brought it home in 15th, but Nico Hülkenberg, who didn't have any problems technically with the car, only finished one place above him. So I've I've loved Hülkenberg this season. Like you say, he's not that world superstar Max Verstappen class driver. You know, his first podium in Formula One after being in the sport for 12 or 13 years was only a few weeks ago, but I love the fact that he was doing well in races and scoring decent points, hülkenberg, but he seems to have dropped off the cliff now.
Speaker 1:Yeah, because he's got to drive for next year. Whenever he's not going to drive, hülkenberg gets good. Then he gets a two-year drive and he's shit for two years and towards the last half bit like half a year to go, no contract. Suddenly halkenberg's like ah, he's on power.
Speaker 1:Look, I don't never really rate it, nico. I think he's a fantastic driver. When I say I don't rate I'm, I don't rate him level to the best driver that he's on the grid when he is being there. And that was lewis hamilton, it was said Seb, it was Lewis, and now it's Max. And I just don't rate Nico on that level at all, you know, and he's only gone one podium and he's had a hundred thousand races. So, the truth be told, he's getting owned by Bottoletto. And you know, when you say Bottoletto in the race, I'm going to say this Unless you're a big team like Mercedes, ferrari, and that you can't judge the drivers you can judge Antonelli and Russell, but Bottoletto and Halkenberg it's very hard to judge because the cars are so bad and they're never in the limelight. But where you judge them is in qualifying and you know the rookie is basically owning Nico. It's 9-6 in qualifying.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:So you know, Bertoletto's good, but how good is he if he's only beating Nico? Do you know what I mean? Let's see, His shares are high, but I'm gravitating to Isaac Hajar being the rookie of the year.
Speaker 2:Yeah, me too. And you know, if you look at Isaac, from that first race in Australia, where he was in tears because he binned it on the formation, to where he is now, I mean just an amazing transformation and an amazing maturity to him as well. I think that's a good point. To wrap up, paul, we've got Monza coming this weekend. The Italian Grand Prix it's a fan favourite, obviously, for Ferrari, their home race.
Speaker 1:Like we mentioned, lewis Hamilton's got the five-place grid penalty so, like we mentioned, lewis Hamilton's got the five place grid penalty, so he's got to do well in qualifying, and this is the sort of circuit he's going to do well in qualifying, otherwise he'll start in Rome.
Speaker 2:Yeah, exactly, and this is the sort of circuit that can break cars and with this distance into the season, now it you know, there could be some reliability factors that come to the fore in Monza, but it's always a good and entertaining race and it is a track you can overtake on.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I know. Look, monza is going to be amazing. I remember one of the moves that I really remember, always in my mind, is that sneaky move Oscar did on Norris a couple of years ago when they restarted the race into the chicane. That was a fantastic move and that's what's going to happen. It's going to happen.
Speaker 1:There's going to be a lot of that kind of stuff, probably a few safety cars, and I just don't see anyone touching the McLarens at this stage. It's going to be as you said. It's an all-out circuit. It's everything no wing, everything, full power. So it's going to be interesting to see the pecking order there, because one thing we do know is McLaren will be at the top. It be at the top, it's just you don't know if Red Bull is going to be the good Red Bull or it's going to be the sick Red Bull. If it's going to be the good Merc or the bad Merc, yeah Well, the Ferrari will be good, but then it'll be bad, you know. So, anyway, there's a lot to play for and of course, it's Lewis' first race at Monza. I mean he, but now he's Monza. That's the heart of a Formula One. I think he's nowhere to hide for Ferrari. I'm hoping they get a good result. We always need a good, strong Ferrari team. At the same time, norris has work to do.
Speaker 2:Yeah, definitely, and we're going to see that unfold this weekend and we'll be back to talk about it on Two Soft Compounds next time, from Paul and from myself. Thanks very much for listening. Please share and tell people about the podcast, that would be great. And for all the latest Formula 1 news and information, head over to GrandPrix247.com. Paul's staring straight down the barrel of the lens, down his webcam, and it's actually quite frightening.
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