2 Soft Compounds
2 Soft Compounds is a weekly podcast focusing on Formula 1, hosted by UK radio broadcaster and F1 fan, Rick Houghton.
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
Mexican GP: Norris Dominates, Verstappen Twarted and FIA Blunders
This week on 2 Soft Compounds, Rick and F1 journalist, Damien Reed, break down a controversial Mexican Grand Prix - from Lando Norris’s flawless win to another FIA meltdown that robbed fans of a dramatic final-lap showdown.
Together they debate whether McLaren’s setup changes are secretly favouring Norris over Piastri, unpack Ferrari’s latest communication chaos and call out the baffling late-race virtual safety car that may have altered the title fight.
Plus: Max Verstappen’s coded radio messages, Mercedes’ team-order drama, and Ollie Bearman’s breakout drive that’s got everyone talking.
All that and more, right here on 2 Soft Compounds.
Production Credits:
Presented by: Rick Houghton
Studio Engineer & Editor: Roy D'Monte
Executive Producer: Ian Carless
Produced by: W4 Podcast Studio
I don't make mistakes, I make prophecies that immediately turn out to be wrong. Anything can happen in Formula One, and it usually does. Hey, welcome to another edition of Two Soft Compounds with me, Rick, and Damien Reed, my good friend, who is a motoring journalist and former F1 commentator. As am I, actually, I forgot that I commentated on Formula One. Uh Damo, how are you?
SPEAKER_01:I'm alright, I'm alright. I'm um yeah, I thought it was a good race, but in two minds for various reasons that we'll get into.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, it was um it was good and it was strange and it was slightly disappointing to be ruined by the FIA on a number of occasions. We'll get onto that in a minute. We're talking about, of course, the Mexican Grand Prix. Uh, an outstanding weekend from Lando Norris, who put it on pole, who didn't put a foot wrong in the race, who finished 30 seconds above everyone else. I just think that there's a perception among fans and the media that Lando Norris can either be on it or completely off it. And I suppose there's a point there. I mean he can demonstrate on weekends like Mexico that he has this raw talent that that comes out and he's just superb. And then, you know, you could go back to Baku five weeks ago, and it's the same Lando Norris who limped to a distant seventh place, even though Oscar Piastri had crashed out, he could have maximized points there, but just didn't seem to perform very well. I just hope he can keep it turned on like this for the rest of the season. It's hot and cold.
SPEAKER_01:And I'm wondering, and I'm I'm not trying to build up any conspiracy theories or anything like that by any means, but it was a comment that Oscar said in the pen afterwards, and I'm wondering whether they've made some changes to the cars in the last couple of weeks that suits Lando's driving style more than Oscar's, because Oscar in the pen afterwards, he says, We have some evidence of where the pace is and what to do, but he says, I've got to drive the car very differently these last couple of weekends because when it's been working well for me for the previous 19 races, it's now a little bit more difficult to wrap my head around the way the car is now. So in my mind, I was thinking, oh, okay, have they made some changes to the car that makes it a different way to drive the car that is suiting Lando? I don't know. I mean, certainly nothing has come out from McLaren about that, but I just thought it was an interesting comment that he made in the pen saying that the car has now become harder for him to drive in the last couple of weeks and he's got to adapt. And which also backs up something that Andrea Stella was saying after last weekend, he says we've got to have a chat with Oscar about a few ways he can fine-tune himself a little bit. And then yesterday, after the race, he says, Yeah, he listened to what we were saying and he's adapted a little bit to the car, which I find at 19 races into the season, you should know how to drive the car by now.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, it's it's baffling to me. Obviously, you know, qualified in seventh in America and then did the same thing in in Mexico. He's clearly not happy with the car. But, you know, those two were so evenly matched in the early part of the season, you think, well, hang on, I don't really I don't really get how they haven't brought any upgrades, McLaren, for at least the last three races. Other teams still are. I was amazed at how many upgrades the Red Bull had, for instance, in Mexico. I think it was four different elements of the car they'd upgraded. But McLaren haven't done that. So the only way that the car can be different is that they've, like you say, they've changed the setup, which means that it suits Lando and not Oscar. Why would you do that? Are McLaren trying to play this game where they want the the two drivers to be neck and neck going into the last four races? Surely that can't be the case. I mean, Norris, after the victory yesterday, is now one point ahead of his teammate in the world championship with four races to go and a couple of sprints. So I don't understand the thinking that McLaren were criticised in the past for for maybe favouring one driver over the other. And that just seems to be the case for Lando Norris now. I mean, I like the lad, but I he he can't have the unfair advantage, can he? I mean, now that the points are almost level, are they going to tweak the car back to the way it was that they can both drive as smoothly?
SPEAKER_01:It's an interesting one the way that's come out. But having said that, what it also showed is that clear track and no dirty air is what you need in Mexico. And Lando had nothing around him, you know, no dirty air, and the car was fast. And to be fair, when we were looking at Oscar behind the two Mercedes, he was faster than both the Mercedes, both Kimmy and George. But because of the nature of Mexico with the high altitude where the DRS doesn't really work that well, he just didn't have what he needed to get past and he got caught up in that dirty air. And even George was saying that on the radio, saying, look, that McLaren behind me is faster. So I think if Oscar had some clear air and didn't have to deal with so much traffic that he just kept getting thrown into, then yeah, he would have been significantly faster. But it was just one of those things. And that that brings me to the other point. For the life of me, I can't work out why McLaren put both those cars on the same strategy when they're miles apart on the grid. I I would have thought, you know, you've really got nothing to lose down there in P7. Maybe roll the dice, go on to a different strategy with the medium softs or, you know, do what Max did, for instance, rather than copy what Lando's doing up there on the front, because you're not going to get anything different if you don't try something different when you're caught up with a whole lot of people down the back. It could have an opportunity to get him out of all that traffic and then get that clear air that that car loves.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, it's uh it's very strange. So uh starting the Mexico Grand Prix from pole is a dangerous place, they say, and Lando Norris definitely did not get the memo because he managed to avoid all of the first corner uh chaos that came. I noticed at one point I was watching the live feed, I was thinking, hang on a minute, how come Charles Leclerc's ahead of Lando? And then I realised that um Leclerc had cut the corner, no penalty for Charles Leclerc, and then Verstappen, of course, makes a massive lawnmower moment going into turn one, no penalty for Max Verstappen. And the stewards tend to be more kind to cars in in the in the first lap and the first turn, don't they? But obviously there was the controversy when Lewis Hamilton got that 10-second penalty, which I thought was ridiculous. But basically, they didn't give him the penalty for leaving the track, they gave him the penalty for the way he rejoined the track. And I thought 10 seconds was very, very harsh.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, there's a couple of things to unpack out of that one. Turn one, yeah, there is a bit more leniency from the stewards going into it. But when you look at the way that they ran into it, so LeClerc passed off the track, uh, let Hamilton back. Max slotted you know back into where he was before it all happened. So when George was on the radio saying, look, you know, Max has left the track and he's come back on, it didn't really impact George at all. Max got a great star. He beat George, he pulled up alongside both Ferraris. So you could argue that he was effectively two places ahead of George and ceded those two places to Ferrari to step back into line. So, you know, there was there was no advantage gained by Max by going off the track. He he filtered back into where he was when he went off the track. But then going on to the second situation where Lewis got penalized, I can see why, because there was an addendum to the rules given out on Saturday to the teams to tell them about that corner and to remind them that that runoff road is the road they need to take. It's a little bit like going around the bollards in Saudi. So that if you put two wheels off the track, you can rejoin on the track. If you put four wheels off the track, you must then follow that road and rejoin. And what Lewis obviously did was he was going in too quick and then he got on the grass and rejoined on the grass. Now, I'm looking at Ferrari's engineers on the radio to him. They should have told him to ease up a bit and let the pack close up on him because he gained two and a half seconds by cutting that corner. So that's the difference between that and what happened to Max. He you know, he went from a 6.4 second gap to a 9.1 second gap from 9.1 down to 6.4 behind Lando. So what he should have done and what he guys on the radio should have told him to do was like, Lewis, back off, let them close up on you. Don't let them pass because you're all in a bunch anyway. But just don't make it look so obvious. And and unfortunately the rule book is it's black and white. There's no subjectivity. If you leave the track and gain an advantage, whether it be two tenths or ten seconds, you'll get a ten second penalty. And that's unfortunately what they threw at him.
SPEAKER_00:I'm just trying to scratch my head here. Ferrari with communication issues between the pit wall and the driver. Yeah, never happens, does it? I mean, uh which uh just out of interest, um, this is a fairly international podcast. This I'm in the UK, I'm in Liverpool in the UK, and Damien's in Dubai, and we know each other because we both used to work in Dubai. In fact, I used to work with Damien at the auto uh autosport magazine. So and very kindly asked me to host the autosport awards with the great Murray Walker one time, and it was just amazing. Anyway, I digress. Um what feed do you watch your Formula One on there? What do you have the Sky Sports F1 output or is it something different? No, I w these days I watch uh F1 TV. So I watch Sky Sports F1, which has always been really good coverage in my opinion. But when they got in touch with Hamilton after the penalty had been announced, and I think Hamilton sort of complained on the radio and they went, Yeah, yeah, we think it's wrong, we think it's wrong. What they should have done though, because they had um uh Chandok was basically on the commentary team at Mexico, and he said, Well, that's what they've done there is they just riled up the driver by not telling him the truth. They they it they took if they told him the truth and said you re-enter the track at the wrong point, and by the way, you gained an advantage, then Lewis would have gone with his experience. Okay, I messed up there, that's fair enough. But they didn't, they didn't tell him that at all, they just wound him up even more by saying, We disagree, this is terrible, you know, we're with you, Lewis. And and that didn't make any sense at all to me. Absolutely.
SPEAKER_01:And and when I heard that comment from Ferrari over the radio, I'm going, you're giving the guy exactly what he doesn't want to hear, you're just winding him up. You know, when you hear the communications between the McLaren guys and their drivers and the Red Bull guys and their drivers, it's clear and it's concise. It's it's it's really good intel. The Ferrari guys are just, you know, it's a whole lot of coded messages and giving you sort of three-tenths of what you need to know. If they had it just said, listen, Lewis, you know, you've cut across the grass. I mean, you know, to be fair, Lewis should know the rule book too, after the amount of years he's been in there and read the same suck regs that I read on Saturday. Um, there's available to the media as well as every driver and every team owner. But even with that, the engineer should have said, Lewis, they clarified the rule yesterday, just wind it back a bit, let them close up and then go for it. But don't keep your foot on it through the grass, and then bang, you've got the penalty. I mean, the communication problems at Ferrari just keep persisting, don't they?
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, it certainly does. And whilst we talked about communication, I thought it was very, uh, very interesting. Um, I'm sorry, I'm guessing you got this on your feed as well, but uh, the communication between Max Verstappen and his engineer when he clearly left the radio switched on. Um, and he says something to Max like, Are you happy with uh with plan A or whatever? And Max, I think, says yes, and then he turns to the strategist next to him on the pit wall, not realizing his radio's still on. And I thought it was fascinating because he's the engineer, he's the race engineer, and he says, By the way, are we on the one-stop or the two-stop at the moment? And then Max says, I can hear everything you're saying. I'm thinking if anyone apart from the strategist doesn't know what strategy they're on, then he shouldn't be engineering the race, should he?
SPEAKER_01:I love that because that shows the unpredictability of that race. The fact that Max effectively gave him a coded message saying, Hey, the whole world can hear what you're saying, um, which is pretty much what he was saying. So, you know, everyone else down in Pit Lane are listening to you right now, be quiet. I think that's to be fair, give Prelli a bit of kudos out of that because um it means that they were still deciding whether to go a one-stop or a two-stop, depending on on how the tires were going to last or not. And so through this question mark about his tires, I think it's great that the fact the engineers are uh confused about you know, to be fair, it's it's probably really up to the strategist to to sort of you know write that down in concrete and and then put it to the team engineer and say, look, you're the mouthpiece to the driver. You tell him that this is what we'll do. But I just thought it was a really nice little bit of intel into the fact that everything is not you know down on a spreadsheet from for every microsector from the start of the race to the end of the race, that there's a there are question marks all the way through the race.
SPEAKER_00:Okay, uh let's touch on Ferrari then. Charles Leclerc, he was one of those drivers requiring the runoff at the start, caught in a bit of a Hamilton and Max Verstappen sandwich. Uh so he was uh banging wheels with his sister Ferrari and cut turn two, which is why he briefly looked as though he was ahead of Norris, but obviously uh returned to the track and handed that place back as he should have done. Uh settled back into uh a decent race after that. I mean, obviously Norris had a massive gap out in front, which was just building lap by lap. Uh, but he came under real pressure at the end of the race from Max Verstappen. And if the FIA hadn't have intervened, we would have had one of the best closing laps in recent Formula One history, I think. So obviously, if you were watching the race, you know what happened. Carlos Sainz, who had a nightmare of a race from start to finish, he had two penalties, speeding in the pit lane, there was something wrong with his car, and basically retired uh the penultimate lap in the stadium section. Now, Carlos Sainz is an experienced driver, he knows what he's doing. He knows that if he's gonna pull the car up, he's gonna do it in a safe place, which he did. And the Marshalls very quickly he pulled up right next to the Marshall gap, and the Marshalls very quickly uh wheeled him in to a completely safe area behind concrete barriers. The FIA decided to throw the virtual safety car, and this was at a time when Verstappen almost certainly was gonna have DRS at the end of that lap and would have passed Leclerc. Um that didn't happen because the virtual safety car was out for far too long. They could have literally put out the virtual safety cart because it's a press of a button. They could have done, they could have then checked, okay, cars out of the way, press a button again, remove the virtual safety cart. There's no you know minimum or maximum time limit for a VSC, but they seem to think there was one. And that spoiled everyone from the final lap um commotion that could have been caused. You know, Verstappen could have uh could have narrowed his points deficit to the leaders. Uh we also had Oscar Piastri, who's desperate for points at the moment, who could have closed the gap and overtaken Ali Berman. You know, it was just chaos.
SPEAKER_01:It was absolute, I could not believe that when I saw them put the VSC out again. What are you guys doing? As you say, Carlos says, you know, he knows what he's doing, what he does. He parked the car. And for the life now, I looked at replay replays, I couldn't see even parked the car. It wasn't in any camera shot anywhere on the world feed. And those cameras pretty much cover every ounce of what you need to see on the track. And apparently someone said there was Debris out there somewhere as well. But the thing is that the yellow flag was went out two laps before. I think it was lap seventy or seventy-one or something like that. And then the VSC came out on that lap as well a bit later on. You're right. I mean, this could be a situation where we can look back maybe in in Abu Dhabi from Abu Dhabi saying did this VSC alter the World Championship. Max Restack, which was six tenths of a second or so of course. Oscar was nine-tenths of Holy Bearman when it came out. But the thing is, is by the time they pulled the VSC in, um it was gone through all the DRS terms, haven't they? No, they were taking spots left. So if they had of if they had a stopped the uh the the VSC probably even 15 seconds earlier, Max would have still had a chance. Uh obviously Max's points to get more points. It's also impacted Oscar's points to get more to get more points as well. So it's impacted both of them. Both of them. And they're both fighting for a world championship. And for for no reason whatsoever, anyone could think why it needed a VSC.
SPEAKER_00:It just it worries me because you know the championship is so tight, we could get to Abu Dhabi and have, you know, three drivers all with the possibility of winning the world championship at the final race of the season. And you just think back to well, you think back to what happened to Abu Dhabi between Lewis and Max. You think, is this going to be decided by a screw-up in the uh in the race directors' room? Because that's the worry now. And I think for every of the remaining four races, you think you do they have got to be squeaky clean. You know, the stewards normally do a do a decent job. But the race directorship this year has been shared by three or four different people, isn't it? Utterly crap.
SPEAKER_01:It's been it's been absolute, it's it's been you know, what was happening there. And there's and going back to what you're saying about turn one, is it there's there's always been this unwritten agreement where you you allow them a bit more flexibility to make a mistake and get back on for the sake of the sport and for the sake of the fans and for the drivers. It's the same on the last lap with every major category of motorsport on the planet. Where if there's a situation, you do everything you can to not bring out a safety car on the last lap or in this case a virtual safety car. You let them dupe it out. Now that dupe it out, now that's it. The entire field had already been past Carlos Sainz, they had the message on the radio, they've got the yellow light on the steering wheel, they've got the flags that they look at, they've got the digi panels that they see as well. They all knew what it was and they worked their way around it. So there was no surprise to anyone. And it's the last lap, you should never bring the VSC or a safety car out unless it's absolutely a track blocking situation. I just thought it was just a disgusting situation.
SPEAKER_00:And and those drivers on the on the lead lap, the uh the the Oscar Piastri chasing Berman and Verstappen chasing Leclerc, they know I mean, first of all, where science pulled over, it was a safe place anyway. It's also the slowest place on the circuit. No one's ever spun out on those on those two corners through the stadium. So there wasn't there was no danger there. Uh but because they threw the VSC when they did, they threw it, you know, if it had just been double waved yellows, then they would have been required to lift off. Well, that's fine in that section because you have to lift off immensely anyway. But then they would have had the DRS detection point and had DRS down the main straight and DRS in the second uh straight as well. But because they threw that VSC, it meant that the DRS was completely irrelevant. And when they lifted it, there was no more DRS zones left. So I'm in total agreement with you. They absolutely screwed it up. And I hope nothing else like that decides the title.
SPEAKER_01:No, look at it it it makes a mockery of of of the the rules and and and the flags. You look at the instructions on the flags going whether you're in Formula One or going back to carding and what you and I used to do down at the car track. You know, the you know the the rules say that a single waved yellow means back off, back off, double waved yellow means be prepared to stop. That's literally what it says. Now they had double waved yellows yellow. That should be plenty. That should be fine if you be prepared to stop. That's all that needs to be done. It doesn't need a safety tower to come out to alter the result of potential result of a race in the championship, maybe.
SPEAKER_00:I think I've got the answer. I think I need to be race director for the rest of the season, and I tell you why. This is an amazing thing. Um, only in the UAE, perhaps, I'm not sure. Um, but I used to be race director of the 24-hour cart races that they did in Dubai, and they were always on temporary um tracks, normally street circuits that were built specially for the events. And for year after year I was race director, and I love doing that. And towards the very end of those 24-hour races, um when when they no longer continued, um the motorsports club in in the UA decided they needed to get involved, and they said, Right, if you're gonna be a race director, you need to be uh licensed by the FIA. And I and and we kind of went backwards and forwards. I was like, this is completely unnecessary. It's a it's a basic, it's an amateur carting event. And they went, no, no, this this has to be in play. Now, because they had to rush this application through, uh, they didn't I didn't do any kind of test really. I think someone with a clipboard came down to inspect the track and make sure I knew where the Marshall's points were going to be, something like that. And they issued an FIA license. Now I've still got the license, got my photo on it. I'm admittedly much older now, but all it says is FIA uh uh what was it, Clark of Course and Race Director. It doesn't specify a formula, so it it doesn't say CIK carting license, it's just an FIA license that says race director. So I'm like, and I don't think it had an end date on it either. I could just rock up uh in Brazil. You can do that and apply into Brazil, I tell you. Yeah, and say there's my license, get me in the box. Yeah, you never know. Uh we've got to mention uh Max Verstappen um clinging on to uh World Championship hopes 36 points behind Norris, who is the new leader by one point, so mathematically he can still do it. And if he has a dominating weekend in Brazil, which includes a sprint race, by the way, uh we know how dominant he's been at that circuit in the past. Um, you know, still gonna be on the edge of your seat for the for the next Grand Prix, aren't we? Yeah, for sure. You know, Max you know Max.
SPEAKER_01:He played that beautifully on the Sunday and uh and uh You know you know he's thinking one race at a time, but boy's doing it well. I mean well indeed. If you think back to uh to Saturday, he was the only driver who did a full run in the front practice session on heavy fuel. And he also did it on both medium and soft with full fuel on the car on Friday as well. So he had that information that no other driver had, which I'm sure helped him get it get through those early laps and also helping to give him the information that he needed to make him realize that those tires could last so long to get there. And again, going back to the radio calls, I love the calls that JP gave him saying to see the cart there, Max, go for it. He's like setting it onto a club. And that's the kind of that that's the kind of uh enthusiasm that you need. You know, you don't need this you know, uh Lewis, we are checking plan B, plan A. You need someone with a with a with a with a bit of spirit to say, yeah, go get him, boy. You know, chase him.
SPEAKER_00:Loved it. There's what one one thing about uh race engineers uh that I should bring up at this point is the relationship that Norris has with his engineer. I noticed this in the American Grand Prix. When his engineer tells him to cool the tires, he does just that straight away. And in Mexico, he said, You need to open up the gap between Charlie Clerk and yourself now, and he went off and did just that. It's like he listens to everything his engineer says, gets on with it, and the relationship they have just seems to work really well. Yeah, for sure. And and uh I've been noticing this too.
SPEAKER_01:And you know, Tom Stellard, his engineer, his um uh is is is he guides him through it more than I hear other dri other drivers getting getting coaching. And and you know, and then there was a bit of criticism about it early in the year saying that should a person of Lando's experience need someone to do that. And then I'm thinking back to where Tom Stellard came from. He's a silver medalist Olympian in rowing, in rowing. Um in a team's in athletics. And I find that in itself really interesting as well. He's also I mean he's also a great engineer, but he's bringing in psychology from a different at an Olympic level to literally guide and coach a fellow athlete um uh corner by corner almost as to how to get the best out of them. And in this case, it's motor racing and I racing. I think that's really interesting though, the way that Lando listens to him as well. Almost like a like a coach on a field saying, okay, we need to do this. And I I just think that's really fascinating.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, uh, we're running out of time. There's still plenty to talk about. Uh Oliver Berman uh take about fourth place finish, and you know, I one thing I think this exposes, by the way, is um his teammate. Uh because Oliver Berman ensured that he was perfectly placed to capitalise in his has uh swooping into fourth place, and then when Hamilton was later penalised, that became third. Um, and then of course finished in fourth, which is his best ever finish in Formula One. He's making Occon look amateur. Yeah, I mean Achon's been around a while now.
SPEAKER_01:And uh you know he did do well to hold off Oscar for a while there, but uh but uh Ollie is Oli is is you know what I mean Ferrari should be looking at him because he's still on their Ferrari books on that's when he got out of the car. He could be a situation, he could be a player to take Lewis's seat when he comes to retire in a year or two's time, or even Charles. But uh but yeah, but also what it shows is this new floor that harsh uh brought in when was it in Texas. Uh it's you know it's it's that update is really working because the car was really good in Texas as well. And uh and Ollie got the most out of it. You know, you wouldn't have even dreamed or contemplated at the start of the year that Oli Beerman rookie in a harse would be would be finishing in front of someone like Oscar Piastri and chasing Max Verstappen and and looking at a podium at this point of the season. It was it was a uh an amazing result from those guys.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, it was well done, Oli Berman. Of course, you remember that you first jumped in the Ferrari deputising for Carlos Sainz when he did the Saudi Grand Prix and just did so brilliantly well at a track which he's never driven on before. I just thought, yeah, an amazing talent. Um we we are running out of time, but I want to talk about the uh the two Mercedes drivers. Kim Kimmy Antonelli uh benefited from what happened to Hamilton and uh Verstappen and Russell going at it. Uh he found himself as the lead Mercedes driver from uh from the pit stops onwards, and uh no, just before the pit stops, I should say. Uh and George Russell, never uh never wants to sit quietly, uh, was on the radio to the team saying, Look, this is ridiculous. I can chase down for a podium here, I can uh I can get Beerman. Um you've got to let me switch positions with Antonelli because I'm I'm much faster than him. And they left it so so uh you know they came back to George and said, Well, if you can pass him, pass him. And George was like, Come on, guys. Um and he had a he had a brilliant point because he was stuck behind him for five or six laps, which meant he completely obliterated his tires, and then they finally made a decision to switch, very unlike Mercedes. Um and it may be telling that Toto Wolf was not at Mexico. Um, so perhaps if he'd have been there, he'd have gone, yeah, swap him round and given George a real chance to attack Berman. By the time they did switch, his tires are gone and he couldn't make any inroads on Berman anyway.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, and his brakes were cooked and and everything else. But I thought it was a it was really good uh really good sort of instructions from George. Uh that guy needs to be a real estate salesman because you know he he did everything except come into the garage and get out of the country and give them a PowerPoint presentation. I mean he sold them the pit beautifully. Beautifully and uh they very quickly sort of realize yes, George, you're right because he was just losing ground massively. And again, you know, I like the fact that there was very quickly to redress the situation. I was waiting for that to happen, I think. When George gets passed, let's see if there's gonna be any back and forth between these two guys uh to see if that's like what Lando did with Oscar. Was it last year or saying he wasn't gonna give the position back? I thought, well, uh is it gonna be the same this time? He swept it, he swatched it and swapped it around, straight away and put Kimmy back in front back in front. But uh, you know he he you know he he put a very good case forward. And uh and did it did it beautifully.
SPEAKER_00:Okay, uh we're almost at the end now. I'm just gonna touch on a couple of other drivers. Uh obviously we mentioned Lewis Hamilton. It's a pity because it looked as though he could be on for his first podium this season in a Ferrari, um, not not including, of course, the sprint in China. Um so the penalty, the ten-second time penalty, uh really kind of screwed up that potential. So that was another thing that was stolen from us as viewers. Um Gabriel Bortoletto, strong drive, finished in P10, not bad from him. Yuki Sonoda in the first part of the race held off Piastri quite well in the early stages and then just faded as his medium tires got a bit older. Alex Alban, uh, well, he wasn't happy. He said the worst strategy ever uh after being told to swap positions with his teammate into turn one. And Isaac Hadger, I think, was disappointing. Um not not Isaac himself, but he started eighth on medium tires. But when he switched to the softs, he just couldn't make them work and basically was dropping a position nearly every lap towards the finish, so he finished 13th in the end.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, yeah, it was a bit of a bit of an odd one for him in that regard, but uh but you're right. I mean, you know, uh Gabby to Gabby get 10th with that salvage was good, considering that again another retirement for Holtenberg. Um this is the temperature, this is the environment of that place, so it's hard on engines and everything else. And uh and we've said you know he got a five-place grid penalty, he got five-second penalties, then he got two pit lane speed limits penalties because pit lane speed limits wasn't working. Uh and then eventually he parked it. So um, yeah, tough one. But what I what I liked out of the end of it. Nearly half the field now has been on the podium. We've had nine different drivers standing on the podium before this year, which are really I mean it shows that the the Okay, McLaren have run away with the structure, but it's it's it's it's it's a really open field in effect. In effect. Uh maybe not for the championship, but it shows a competitiveness and how close the field is.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, it certainly does. And we moved to Brazil, which includes a sprint race. Now, the weather in Brazil, well, it normally pours down at some stage, so that always puts the cat among The pigeons. Uh it is a track that Max Verstappen has previously dominated at. Just give me a little bit of a prediction for your thoughts in the uh the the Brazilian Grand Prix next time up.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, it's gonna be an interesting one. I think Max you have to keep an eye on him as he said he's dominated his dominant. He's just on a roll. Uh it might the faster corners going into the final corner coming out, the the big bowl coming onto the straight might suit the McLaren. So that that should give them a bit of a run under DRS down across the line. Uh but then they might get crossed up into turn one and cook it down there as well because that that tight and twisty section doesn't really suit them. Um that that'll be a tricky one. Let's see how the the weather is going to be play a big part on whether Mercedes do well or not up there or not. Um I think that if it's uh again, if there's probably wet weather would be a good thing. But yeah, I mean I have to look at Max for this weekend for the next round. I think he I think he's looking good.
SPEAKER_00:Brilliant. Uh Damo, thank you so much. We'll be back again uh in a week's time to discuss the uh upcoming Brazilian Grand Prix for now. Thanks for listening to Two Soft Compounds. Have yourself a great week and we'll speak to you soon. See you then. Two Soft Compounds was presented by myself, Rick Horton, alongside Damien Reed. The studio engineer and editor was Roy Damonte, the executive producer was Ian Carlos. Don't forget, if you want to join in the conversation, leave a comment on our Instagram page at TwoSoft Compounds. And if you haven't done so already, please do click that follow or subscribe button. See you next time.