Australian GP: Has F1 Turned Into Mario Kart?!

Formula 1’s new era exploded into life in Melbourne with active aero replacing DRS, boost buttons rewriting overtakes, and drivers juggling energy modes like software engineers at 300 km/h.

On this episode of 2 Soft Compounds, host's Rick and Damien unpack a race weekend packed with drama: Antonelli’s massive crash and rebuild, Verstappen’s bizarre rear-axle lockup, and Oscar Piastri’s heartbreaking home-race exit after a rogue power surge.

We dive into Aston Martin’s violent chassis vibrations, Mercedes’ clever engine interpretation, Ferrari’s rocket starts and why overtaking numbers might not tell the whole story.

And with China and the first sprint weekend looming, the guys look at the strategy battles ahead and ask the big question: are we watching F1 or Mario Kart?! 

Production Credits:

Presented by: Rick Houghton
Studio Engineer & Editor: Manny Penamora
Executive Producer: Ian Carless
Produced by: W4 Podcast Studio 

Transcript

Global Kickoff And New F1 Era

SPEAKER_01 0:02

I don't make mistakes, I make processes that immediately turn out to be wrong. Anything can happen in Formula One, and it usually does.

Damien Reid 0:14

Hey everyone, welcome to a brand new series of Two Soft Compounds, the Formula One podcast, with me, Rick and him, Damien Reed. And it is a truly international podcast for our first episode, simply because Damien is stuck in Sydney, Australia. I'm in the greatest city in the world, Liverpool, England. Our executive producer is in Kuala Lumpa, and our producer is sat in Dubai. So you can imagine the time difference craziness that's going on on this podcast at the moment. But welcome and welcome, Damien.

SPEAKER_01 0:44

Good afternoon, good evening, and good night wherever you are. Yes. Good to have you, good to be back with you guys.

Testing Shock: Aston, Honda, Mercedes

Damien Reid 0:50

Yeah, it's great to be back. And of course, we've got so much to talk about. We'll move on to the actual Grand Prix itself shortly, but we've started a brand new season in Formula One with new rules, new cars, different design theories, no more DRS. We've got active error, we've got boost buttons, we've got all kinds of things. I think if we start the story by talking a little bit about testing, we all had so much hope for the Aston Martin team and then realised that they hadn't turned up at the Barcelona shakedown. We started thinking the worst. And then it turned out that they've got real, real issues with the Honda Power Unit and Adrian Newhee almost admitting defeat before they got to the Bahrain test, which didn't go particularly well for them. And we had a similar situation with Williams, which is another team that we thought were going to start uh the season really brightly, but it hasn't really worked out for them either. So, what did you make of the stuff that was coming out from the Barcelona shakedown and then the Bahrain test, Damien?

Drivers Vs Computers: Mode Management

SPEAKER_01 1:43

Yeah, I mean I thought it was very interesting, and uh you're right. I mean, Aston Martin at the moment it shows that you know we all know how single-minded and determined Adrian Newey is with his design, and likewise Honda with their engine manufacturing, and and it wasn't until they came together for the first time that they realized this massive vibration issue in the Aston Martin. You know, Adrian had designed, as he always does, like a very uncompromising car. The engineers at Williams and McLaren know how difficult it. I mean, Adrian designs a car, he says, this is how I design it, and you work your power unit around it, and you if you're not comfortable as a driver, that's not my problem. And so this is such a radical chassis that he's designed, it's incredibly stiff. So when the Honda Power Unit went in, which was also vibrating too much just as a standalone unit, the vibrations were transferring through this stiff chassis, and it was physically destroying the battery, it was tearing it apart. So the battery was breaking down, which meant they couldn't use full power, therefore they had to sort of wind back. So we never really saw we we still don't know the full potential of that Honda power unit, and it was having the impact on the driver's physical, you know, uh ability to drive the car themselves. So, you know, I think if they find if they find a a compromise and soften up that chassis a little bit and then also take out the the harmonic balance in the chassis, then we might see Aston Martin really come on. I don't think it's completely lost for them yet because they're just simply not running that that power unit at 100%. So there was that not surprised with with the the way Mercedes were going. I I don't know, Rick. I don't believe that there was any sandbagging going on during testing because how can you sandbag when you're developing everything so new? That means you're not learning anything yourself. So I think it was just genuine, you know, development progress from the Mercedes Power Unit.

Damien Reid 3:27

Yeah, I I would agree with you. I mean, I I think it what the thing that frightens me really about the Honda thing is that they said they were coming out of Formula One, which was most recently with Red Bull, and they kind of uh backed out of Formula One, closed down their power unit factories in the UK, and then suddenly got convinced by Lance Stroll's dad to basically take part in this new project with Adrian Newhead, and Honda went, Yeah, okay, we'll have a bit of that. Sounds great. And they've designed this power unit, which, like you say, is full of vibration, destroys the battery packs. I just don't understand why they've got it so wrong in the time they've had to develop that power unit, despite the fact that they had to shoehorn it into this uh Adrian Newy chassis. I mean, they still have a power unit factory that's pumping out engines for indie cars. So why why the big issue with this?

Melbourne Weekend Chaos Begins

SPEAKER_01 4:16

I think I found part of the answer on Friday or Thursday, I think it was, or Friday, but it came out saying that Honda hadn't informed Aston Martin when they re-signed to when they signed with him to to get back into Formula One that 70% of their staff had already left. So they're only going in with 30% carry over intellectual property in in the Formula One world. There's a whole lot of new people joining, you know, the part of the the Honda Racing Corporation that never worked on F1 before. So, you know, the the team that gave that gave four world championships is not the team that's building this unit right now. And I really feel that Fernando Alonso is going back into his next GP2 era with with power units. He just seems to be cursed with Honda at the moment. And likewise going back to the Mercedes issue, I think they just got it right. And and you know, we know we're gonna see the rules change later this year because of this variable combustion ratio setting that they've that they've that they've uh implemented and and used, which I think is really disappointing because you know they didn't they didn't break the rule, they found a loophole and and they used it through clever engineering, 3D printing of pistons that allow expandable technology in the in the in the top in the crisp piston crown to give you more compression. And that was all actually within inside the rules. So yeah, it's I I feel that that they've been a knobbled a little bit for being clever.

Damien Reid 5:36

Yeah, and we could have a rule change as early as just after the Chinese Grand Prix this weekend, according to some sources in the FIA. Back to um the pre-season testing, then I I thought I thought it was a bit all over the place. You had cars, the rear light clusters on on most of the cars wasn't functioning prop properly. The FIA said that was a problem they needed to iron out. And then I noticed in the Australian Grand Prix just gone that that same problem was continuing. Uh, we've had all kinds of weirdness happening with individual cars, which we'll come to in a minute because that relates directly to the Australian race. I get the impression the drivers weren't that impressed after the test. There was many of them being critical. Lando Norris came out with a quote and said it's a little bit driving like Mario Kart. He said, one, he said every three seconds you have to check the steering wheel to make sure you're in the right mode, and I'm not really driving the thing.

SPEAKER_01 6:22

Yeah, it really, it really is a totally, totally different way to drive the car, and it's uh I I understand, I can totally get that the drivers are not happy with it because it's not a matter of putting your foot on the fr on the throttle anymore and just going for it. In fact, when you hear the onboard cameras of the uh of the engine at full power and then winding down even at the middle of the street, it's nothing to do with the driver. That's part of the that's the that's the that's the onboard computer in the car doing the job for them, saying, look, we've you know, you've had enough of full power, we need to put something back in. And that's not really what you want as a racing driver, and it's not really what you want to hear as a spectator. So yeah, you know, and you're constantly looking at ways at how you can how you can save a little bit of fuel for want of a better word, in terms of battery power here and there on this corner. And you know, it reminds me a little bit going back to the mid-1980s when we were when when when F1 it was in the turbo era with no refueling and no rain. It was a fuel consumption era. If you remember, you know, there's the scenes of Alan Price undoing his seat belts, rolling across the line, jumping up and down inside his car to sort of help an empty car across the line and and and other people getting out and pushing their cars in the middle of the race because they'd run out of fuel. I think this is probably just as farcical.

Anomalies: Lockups, Power Surges

Damien Reid 7:36

Yeah, I mean, uh let's turn our attention to the opening Grand Prix of the season, then Australia. Thought Melbourne looked fantastic. They did a really good job with the track and the infrastructure as they do every year. Uh, the teams rock up. Uh Aston Martin uh issue a press release that says that they think they can only complete the first 15 laps of the race, so we already started a weekend for them on a downer. Fernando Alonso thought he might be able to do 25 laps before his hands dropped off. You know, so they were on the back foot to start with. Williams made an announcement that they weren't entirely happy with the way they were they were maximizing the power from either the engine or the battery unit. And uh, we also heard that uh Aston Martin, when when they were asked a question about if the motor shakes the battery pack that much that it breaks it, have you got any spares? And they went, oh no, we haven't got any spares, there are no spares. I'm like, wow, okay. So we get into uh FP1, which goes okay, I think, for most people. I was quite surprised at how competitive the Audi seemed to be straight off the blocks, which is something we'll talk about a little bit later on. We know that in FP3, Antonelli had a massive shunt into the wall after turn two. It looked as though that was going to be his uh race weekend ruin because he wouldn't rebuild the car in time for qualifying, but those Mercedes mechanics did an absolutely superb job. Phenomenal job.

SPEAKER_01 8:52

You know, within about three hours of that that car hitting the wall, it's out on the track and and you know doing the business. Yeah, it was incredible. But you know, the like again, this this sort of show is going back to Aston Martin saying they don't have any power units, uh any spares to go. I guess everyone's in the same boat at the moment because they're all low. Oh, except for except for Mercedes. I think they brought what was the number, 22 power units uh to Melbourne. So yeah, but you know, yeah, I I mean when you're seeing people like you know uh Kimmy Antonelli having having the accident, uh Max Vistaffin, big lockups going off the track and had having their the rear end lockup in the car and spinning, you know, it it's showing that these drivers still have a long way to go in terms of learning how to drive the drive these cars and get their head around it. So I found Free Practice One to be really interesting. And the big takeaway from me from that is that I think Jonathan Wheatley has quietly got away with it with Audi and has developed something that, you know, already is is is looking better than the other you guys that are coming into the sport.

Damien Reid 9:51

Yeah, without a doubt. I mean we'll we'll talk about Audi in a little bit more depth uh later on in the podcast today. But I think one thing I noticed as well, when Antonelli had his off, I noticed Toto Wolf in the garage. He was almost in tears, Antonelli. Toto Wolf gave him a big hug, put his arm around him and said, right, just concentrate on the positives, have a look at the data, and keep your confidence up. And the the two things, one, the amazing rebuild that Mercedes Mechanics did in time for him to get out to qu qualify, albeit helped by the red flag in in Q1, which was Max Verstappen going off. But secondly, the way Antonelli got back into that car and was literally a few tenths off George Russell's time in Q1, I just thought was amazing to have that confidence at that young age. Oh, for sure.

Overtakes Or Battery Games

SPEAKER_01 10:35

I mean the guy, you know, bounced back and and we we thought that for a moment that you know uh it might be a little bit of the case of the Isaac Hadjars in Melbourne, where where you know it it it uh it hurts uh internally to to sort of you know rebuild and get back in there and get the strength back in your self-confidence. But he did. He jumped back into it, gave it a gave it a shot, and gave George Russell a real run for it. And again, the the interesting thing that when several times across the course of the weekend, cars spearing off into the wall or end up in the gravel trap or doing whatever, and just the sheer cluelessness of the on the look on the faces of those inside the garage or the drivers getting out, like Antonelli, you know, the first thing he did before he even took his helmet off and talked to anyone was show me the data, show me what happened. And we saw that a couple of times with other guys who went off and during the course of the race as well, just going, you know, looking at this, I was going, how did that happen? What happened? These these these cars are sort of doing things that no one expects in their, you know, even after six days of testing and three practice sessions and a qualifying, even into the and even into leading into the race, they're still delivering up surprises on the on track that they just don't know how to get around yet. It's uh it's it was quite bizarre to see teams sort of second guessing at this point after spending so much time building the car and developing the car and even testing the car.

Damien Reid 11:57

Yeah, and these these things seem like anomalies as well, because Max Verstappen crashing out in Q1 was nothing to do with him. It was the fact that the real axle locked up as he went into the breaking zone at the end of the straight. Now that didn't happen to anyone else, as far as I can gather over the weekend. It just happened to Max. And we'll we'll come to it. Well, we may as well cover it now, but poor old Oscar Piastri's home Grand Prix, you know, he crashes on the way to the grid, and that gets blamed on a power surge that no one was expecting from the battery pack that gave him a hundred kilowatts when he uh lightly touched the throttle, which threw him into the wall. So there's anomalies here. There's not it's not like everyone's suffering with the same problem. It's like certain teams had no problems at all, other teams had massive deployment problems with the battery pack, including Max Verstappen in the race, which we'll get to. So it all seems a little bit chaotic, and as Max Verstappen's engineer said on the radio, this is chaos, mate.

Starts, Safety, And Ferrari Launches

SPEAKER_01 12:51

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, you know, on those two points, with Oscar's situation, you could see when he left Pitt Exit that he was he was having trouble sinking the gears. And that's what they normally do on the Outlap. They spend about a third, the first sector, syncing the gearbox to match the revs of the engine, and you can see his head sort of jolting back and forth as trying to get those gears to sync with the engine. That was interfering with the uh with the telemetry and the ECU as to how much power to give the car. So he was driving full throttle out of the turns two and three, um, driving at about you know five kilometres per hour. And he's like, guys, I don't have any power. Uh then they said, hang on, let's push control alt delete and see what happens. And then right on the exit that turn, it gave him a hundred kilowatts more than he's ever had across the weekend on a quarter throttle. Now you have to remember, too, the full throttle travel on the full throttle travel on an F1 car is about an inch and a half. So, you know, you got incredibly precise. And then add to that was the the driver error component, which was Oscar putting the wheel on the painted curves right when that extra 100 kW came into the came in. So, you know, then he was a passenger. The thing with Red Bull with with Max was in preseason testing we noted that in order to get power into the into the uh the the energy into the power unit, you've got to almost compression lock up the rear end of the car. And people were noticing that that Max and Isaac were banging it through the gears in the corners, you know, six, five, four, three, two, you know, it won even sometimes others using second gear. And so Ford had developed a very strong gearbox to handle that situation, which is why they were looking strong in the testing, that they had the strength to do that. Now, when he tried to do that going into turn one, something went wrong, and it did what it should have done in testing, and it just locked the rear end up and threw him in. And again, that's why Red Bull had no idea as to why it did that, because they've been doing it for six days.

Damien Reid 14:42

Yeah, really interesting stuff, really is. I mean, I think, you know, if you're a if you're a casual Formula One watcher and you've maybe watched the latest season of Drive to Survive, I think you probably overall would have enjoyed the Australian Grand Prix because just looking as an outsider looking in, there were overtakes. You know, the FIA were clear to point out there was 120 overtakes, but actually, the actual fact, and all the drivers echoed this, they weren't really overtakes. Well, they were, obviously, but it they weren't caused by driver skill, they were caused by how much charge you had in your battery pack. So we saw a lot of early overtaking in the first few opening laps. There was a squabble between uh Mercedes and Ferrari, and it looked pretty good, and I thought, oh, okay, maybe this is promising. And then after lap 19, it it just it it it appeared as though they were just driving computers, basically, which really quite saddened me. So I think for the purists like me and you, Damo, I think when you watch these new rules and these regulations and the fact that, yes, you're having to lift and coast on straights just to make sure you've got enough battery charge for the next corner sequence, it's just all a bit dull. And I just it seems to be a wokeness that's come through of this drive to sustainability. You know, if you want to use biofuels, great, use them, but just stick the biofuel in a V8 and bolt it onto the car like we used to have. And then it would be about the drivers and the driver's skill, and it just doesn't seem as though it is now. It's about a driver managing a computer.

Strategy Misfires And Mercedes Pace

SPEAKER_01 16:07

Yeah, absolutely. And I and I think you know, we saw the drivers learn during the course of the race on how best how to get the best out of that situation because when it all started, as you say, there was there was you know passing, I use that inverted commas everywhere. And if you if you're a casual viewer wandering past the TV at the time and you see it and you go, wow, this is great, they're passing each other everywhere. But then, as you say, by about a third of the way through the race, lapse 16, 17, the drivers knew where was the best place to deploy the energy, where's the best place to hang on, to get a to get a slip, to uh and so there's therefore by the second half of the race, it kind of fell into this this pattern, and there was that that that initial excitement had disappeared because no one knew what to do then. And you know what it should have showed to me is that you can no longer be a spectator in the grandstand and just watch it for the sake of watching it. You need to be tuned into something now. You can't just sit there in the in the grandstand and and uh enjoy the battles because you don't know who's doing what. You need the graphics to show the deployment, you need the commentators, you need the data screens now. That's the reality of watching Formula One. So, yeah, I I don't know, it's the old saying, horse by committee is a camel. It's not what anyone really wanted at the end of this. You're right. I think leave Formula E to to develop the electrification side of things and and leave Formula One to be you know clean, clean combustible engines. They they knew sustainable fuel was was going to be on the way at some point and go down that path. But this is probably the end result of what began in 2014 with the initial hybrid era. We shouldn't have gone down that path back then.

Hadjar’s Promise And New Teams

Damien Reid 17:44

Yeah, I think you I think you're dead right. Um let's talk about some of the individual uh uh performances then. We've already touched on Audi, we'll come back to them in just a sec. First of all, the the race start. Now we knew the race starts were going to be vastly different in this new era of Formula One, basically because um they're having to spin up the turbos by revving the cars really quite heavily on the grid before the lights go out, so that they've got a little bit of spool in the turbo, which gives them a decent launch. So they've been practicing and repracticing the starting procedures. Max Restappen said at the start that he had no power, he said his battery completely lost charge on the parade lap. So when it came to uh getting it off the line, even though he was in last place, he found that was a real problem. And we saw what I thought was one of the most frightening things I've ever seen in the f in the start of a Formula One race, which is Colapinto lightning reactions avoiding a slower car that was trying to pull away on the grid. This is going to happen. They warned us that this was going to happen, but if it continues, I could see us having a serious accident at the start of these races, Damo.

SPEAKER_01 18:44

Yeah, I know. I mean full credit to Colapinto with his reflexes, and also um I think it was Sergio Perez behind him in the Cadillac, too, because he chopped his nose off in order to get past that stranded car of Liam Wilson's just sort of crawling away and didn't have any issues, thank goodness. But uh, yeah, I mean this is a this is an issue, and I and you know I was keen to see how Ferrari were going. I said to someone last week, I said, you know, either Lewis or Charles could could get to the lead from the third row based on their starts that they did in the in the last day of testing, if you remember in Bahrain when they did the standing starts. The Ferrari guys had that thing hooked up, they got the numbers right, they knew when to hit the go button, and that's exactly how it played out. But yeah, I mean George Russell rolled up to the grid as well. He was quoted in the cooldown room afterwards saying he had no battery power at the start. He didn't know what was to expect either. I can see a situation where they're probably gonna have to give two grid places and space them out to uh to, you know, to for in order to avoid this situation next time for a future race.

Damien Reid 19:45

Yeah, that's uh that's definitely something to consider. I think Ferrari have got the uh the battle one when it comes to uh standing starts, though. I mean, we heard there were gonna be rocket ships, and they certainly were, and that's gonna play into their hands until the other teams play catch-up with their starting procedures. So we know that uh Mercedes dominated the race once it's settled down. I thought Antonelli did really well to hang on to the uh rear wing of George Russell for most of the race. Can I just say welcome back to Ferrari's useless tactics, folks? It's it hasn't taken them long. They had a virtual safety car and decided to leave both cars out. Lewis Hamilton on the radio complaining that they should have brought at least one of them in. So Ferrari have started as they mean to go on. Uh they got a better power unit this year, but the tactics are exactly the same. It it seems Red Bull were not as fast as we thought they might be. I mean, Max starting in last place or 20th and then bringing it back to finish in sixth is typical Max. Uh, but he was complaining on the radio, he was saying that he he wasn't able to uh to get close. The only cars he really were overtaking were cars that had problems or backmarkers. It wasn't really made once he got into the top ten, he was finding it struggling to make an impact on the cars ahead of him. So obviously, even though Ford and Red Bull powertrains have developed this uh pretty decent uh power unit, they've still got a long way to go with that development. Yeah, definitely.

Standout Drives And Missed Chances

SPEAKER_01 21:04

They still they still have to. And yeah, going back to your Ferrari issue there, I mean, yeah, I couldn't I couldn't believe their their strategy that they fact that you know I thought Andreas Stella had moved back to Ferrari for a moment there with his with his strategy call. If you remember McLaren were the only guys who didn't box last year in one of the races, and it was almost copybook of that. It's like, guys, you've got you've got it, I mean it was a VSC, not a full safety car, but guys, you've got a free 10 seconds there that everyone has taken, and you've elected to stay out and instantly force them into a into a one-stop strategy and make those tires last longer. And then, you know, I mean, the Lewis Hamilton and and Charles did an amazing job with the ability to to keep those cars running, but you're fighting with one hand behind your back, and I I noticed too, very different attitude from Lewis Hamilton so far this season compared to last year. He said that he's taking a different mental approach to this season. I was totally, totally expecting him to sort of, you know, get out of the car and go to the pen and say, hey. Listen, this is not what we, you know, this is not what we should have done. And I was telling him on the radio, as he would have said last year. But uh this year he's very much towing the company line, which I found quite interesting.

Damien Reid 22:09

Yeah, I think he I think he's had a pretty decent decent winter. I think he's uh taken a lot of reflection and uh probably had some decent advice from some decent people because his head uh is definitely screwed on a little bit differently this year, which is nice to see. Now let's talk about Hadjar in the uh sister Red Bull, of course. Uh Max was kind of out of it, but I thought Isaac Hadjar did a pretty good job. He's proving, certainly from race race one, that he's not going to be just another Red Bull teammate that doesn't perform. Would you agree?

China Sprint And Long Straight Fears

SPEAKER_01 22:36

Yeah, for sure. And it was something that I kind of said last year in the leading up, and and you know, I I I I had managed to speak to Isaac earlier in the year. He could be the first Red Bull teammate to Max Verstappen, who is not necessarily the the the sacrificial lamb, if you want to put it that way, because with these brand new regulations, even Max doesn't know how to drive these cars. So this could be an opportunity where people are saying, well, it's a bit of a poison chalice being uh being teammate to Max Verstappen. Look at what everyone else has done. The only teammate to Max Verstappen that's actually outperformed him at Red Bull, we're going right back to Daniel Ricardo, so it's been a long, long time. And and that was Max's debut year in F1 as a as a young fella. So I think with these new regulations, yeah, this you know, if if Isaac gets his head around this technology a little quicker than Max, he could definitely be a strong challenger for Max for for number one at Red Bull. I I don't see that as being too big a call at all.

Damien Reid 23:32

Yeah, and it's been announced that uh that Max is racing the Nurberg ring 24 hours in his uh his supercar for Red Bull. So um he's gonna have his eye off the Formula One bull for certainly a little bit later on this season. Hadjar didn't finish, of course, but uh nothing to do with it being his fault. We also had uh no finish from Cadillac with Valtteri Bottas. They went they weren't not the fastest across the weekend at all. So Cadillac have got a lot a lot of work to do. But you'd expect that a brand new team, brand new car, brand new everything. So you would expect that. We talked about the Aston Martins earlier. Fernando Alonso in the end was down as a DNF. But he, if you remember, he came out, he started the race and did quite well in the opening laps, overtaking a number of cars, did 15 laps, came in, parked a car, had a cocktail, sat around reading the newspaper for a bit in his deck chair, as we've seen before, and then decided he was getting back in the car to complete some more laps, which he did, but he didn't finish in the end. Similar situation for Lance Stroll, who was basically uh finished the race but 15 laps off the leaders. And of course, uh we touched on Audi earlier on. I was really disappointed for Nico Hulkenberg that he didn't get to even make the grid in his Audi. But of course, uh we've got a top 10 finish and a points finish for uh the other Audi of Gabriel Bortoletto, who finished ninth and picked up two points. Just an amazing result for them.

SPEAKER_01 24:51

Oh, incredible stuff, you know, to to for a team to come out of the box. I know it's out of the ashes of the Saldo team, but they've done an awful lot of work to uh to to modify that that team and they've got new people on board as well. Then they come out and uh you know to cross the line in ninth place, you know, it maintains his uh Gabby's record of always scoring points when he's when he's made it into Q3, and that gives Audi two points in their debut as a chassis empower unit manufacturer. So absolutely fantastic stuff for them. Yeah, you know what? I I actually think that knowing Fernando, knowing the way Fernando Alonso thinks, I think Aston Mann probably retired the car. And Fernando was bored. And when Fernando's bored, he bought them. He thought, well, there's a car, give me the keys, I'll go out. He's 15 laps down. What you know, and he'd sort of gone into uh survival mode as if it was a 24-hour race and and decided to put a few laps on the board. Really interesting, you know, to see to see that one come out. And and the other guy that I was really impressed with was Arvard Lindblad, you know. I mean, he came out, yeah, put in a really good effort.

Safety Lights, Recharge Tactics, Spec Talk

Damien Reid 25:52

Finished eighth, got four points in his debut for racing bulls. I thought that was really, really good. Ollie Berman impressed as well in the has finishing in seventh. It was disappointment really for McLaren because we were hoping to see the signs of some real pace that would put them up there with Mercedes and Ferrari. Didn't really happen. Lando Norris finishing in fifth, of course, and Oscar Piastri not even making the start of the race. Um there was some good standout performances, but like I say, I think Williams will be disappointed. I think McLaren will be more disappointed than they were before the the uh the lights out because I think they probably thought they were gonna slightly better on the pecking order. But we go off to China this weekend, so not much recovery time for any of the teams. It's the first sprint race as well, which is gonna knock uh knock some sense into people. And also, I mean, this comment I think was made by Martin Brundle. He said, well, with the recharging of the battery, it's a really long back straight in China. So you're saying, well, they're gonna come off that iggly piggly corner, getting onto that back straight. They're gonna have full throttle and full power for half of it, and then all the power's gonna drain out of the battery.

SPEAKER_01 26:56

Yeah, I've I've been thinking about this one, and and I, you know, I I really have, I don't want to say down thoughts about it, but I'll tell you what, you've got to think about places like China, you've got to think about uh Monza, Spa, you know, those two tracks that we absolutely the historic tracks plus China, you know, with very, very long straights, even Silverston. But for the for the longer tracks like China, we could even see a situation where they recharge the battery twice on the same strait. They'll go and they'll go into the the into the final turn onto the straight with a full battery, deploy it, the thing will die down. They'll probably clip halfway down the the straight to to recharge again and then deploy it before the next corner. And I'll say, yeah, I mean it's again, it's gonna probably look good on TV because you'll probably get three overtakes in that spot, or you could get someone into the gearbox of the car in front, traveling too slowly, bringing out safety cars, which is not good. But this is man, this is not what we asked for.

Big Picture: Dominance, Dread, And Hope

Damien Reid 27:52

No, not at all. I mean, I I think that the possibility of accidents but you know on these longer tracks is far more far more apparent. I mean, the whole rear light situation didn't work in Australia. There were some cars which, you know, only one side of their rear wing was flashing, other cars, both of the sides of the rear wing were flashing. It wasn't really apparent who was recharging and who wasn't in uh in in some instances. I think China's gonna be a real testing point for for the uh the new rules and regs. I think, you know, these dangerous stars that we discussed, I think the long straight on the back of China is gonna cause all kinds of problems. I mean, it might be the fact that people come off that final turn onto the back straight without putting their foot down to discharge the battery until they get halfway down the straight, and that's gonna cause all kinds of confusion because everyone's gonna have a different approach to it.

SPEAKER_01 28:41

This this is gonna be the big the big question mark for a lot of these teams uh as to how they approach the laps. China has these corners where they're very high speed corners and and and other tracks such as such as the parabolica at Monza, such as, although we're not using it now, but Hoogenholtz and stuff in in uh in the Netherlands, where they're fast corners that you're going through the corners leading onto a straight. So the question would be then do you deploy your energy during those corners? They're talking about fourth and fifth year corners, or do you hang on to it for the straight, or do you recharge somewhere in the middle of the corner and then upset the balance of the car in order to make sure you're you're fully charged to hit the straight? Yeah, we I think you know, I can see the driver's association getting together instead of saying, okay, look off the record, what are you gonna do? Just so I don't run into the back of you, and off the record, where are you gonna go and and and and get around it that way because you know, again, with the fli the the lights in the back of the cars not working correctly, particularly with the Alpenes, you could see it on the TV. You know, it wasn't it wasn't the frame rate of the TV, it was actually the LEDs not working on the left side and sometimes working on the right side. And I think it was Carlos Sainz.

Damien Reid 29:50

There was a lot of cars that were affected by that demo. There was lots. I mean, I counted six that all had issues with their rear light system, and that something definitely needs to be sorted out on grounds of safety alone.

SPEAKER_01 30:01

Yeah, I think it was I think it was the Carlos Sainz who said in testing, he said I didn't know what the guy in front was doing, whether he was bat lifting off the throttle because his lights were all over the place, and that blew his his fast lap that he was trying to do, simulated uh qualilap in in testing. So, you know, there's so much that needs to be sorted out. Also, I think I wouldn't be surprised if if the Mercedes uh customers have a have a have a conversation with Toto, that being you know Alpine McLaren and Williams, because um, from what I understand, is that they're getting a different spec engine to to what Mercedes are using. They were supposed to be on the same spec. I think they're on the same spec at the first test session, but not at the in Spain, but not in Bahrain, and certainly not in Melbourne. And I think Andreas Stella hinted at that one after Melbourne, but that's what I understand, is that there was an upgrade that went to the uh to the cars of George and Kimmy only that didn't go through to the customers.

Damien Reid 30:51

Yeah, that's very naughty indeed. But it looks like Mercedes are dominating uh the early part of the 2026 season with a convincing uh win in Melbourne, Australia. They finished basically 15, 16 seconds ahead of everyone else, and at some points they were eight tenths per lap quicker than the uh pack that was chasing them. So they've definitely got the advantage there. And then you look down to Aston Martin, who were basically during some parts of the weekend, who were four seconds slower per lap than the leading cars. So there's lots to be done, there's lots to be sorted out, there's loads of conversations to be had amongst the teams and amongst the engine suppliers, like you say, with Mercedes, for instance. China's going to be interesting, hopefully, for all the right reasons, but part of me has a bit of a dread about going to one of these uh longer tracks and hoping that the whole season doesn't pan out in a sort of dull way as they manage buttons and power units and battery packs and everything else. But I think we've made a good start to uh two soft compounds demo. Thank you very much for joining us.

SPEAKER_01 31:53

Thank you, man. I I'm still have confidence in Formula One. I think this is just the first race of the year in a very new series. We've got about four years of these technical regs at least, and I think things are gonna improve very quickly as the year goes on. There'll be several updates from the teams and management meetings across all the teams during the course of the year with the FIA. So uh hold out. This is the first one, and the feedback I'm sure has gone back to everyone, and we're gonna see much better racing as the year progresses.

Damien Reid 32:18

I certainly hope so. I hope I haven't come across as being Mr. Negative on this podcast, but it did shock me just how much the rules have affected what I would call normal Formula One racing. Um, but yeah, let's hope for improvements as we go, started with China, which we'll be reporting on in next week's podcast here at TwoSoft Compounds. For now, from Damo and from me, have yourselves a great week. See you soon. Two Stoft Compounds was presented by myself recording alongside Damien Reed, the executive producer was in colours. Don't forget, if you want to join in the conversation, leave a comment on our Instagram page at TwoStoff Compounds. And if you haven't done so already, please do click that follow or subscribe button. See you next time.