Sky Sports F1 Podcast: Alonso's podium fiasco and will Red Bull win every race?

Under the lights in Saudi Arabia, no one could stop Sergio Perez, not even Max Verstappen.

The drama, though, for this race was after the chequered flag.

Alonso was on the podium, then he was off the podium, then he was on the podium again.

Was the right decision reached?

This is the Sky Sports F1 podcast.

Hello all, how are you?

Well, welcome to this week's podcast where I'm joined by David Croft, fresh off the

flight.

Hello from London Heathrow to Sky Studios, and that's Leapingham, hello.

Hello, you're looking very fresh, Crofty.

I think on a scale of 1 to 10, I'm not doing too bad for a 75-year-old man, who just...

Is that how you feel?

I do feel a little bit like that.

It's weird, I'm very good at sleeping, but I didn't sleep a lot last night at all.

There was a lot of noise on the plane.

Bernadette Collins, travel with Bernadette Collins any time, she just keeps herself to

herself, no noise whatsoever.

Simon Lazenby, slightly different, a snoring Simon Lazenby.

He does sometimes, not last night, but he does occasionally, rather loud child, that's

three rows behind me, and two people having a conversation at a level where it kept me

awake, but I couldn't quite decipher all the words that were being said, but they were

kind of shouting at each other across the aisle.

So you're kind of like either speak up or down, but not at that level because that's

really annoying.

So he's like, speak up a bit and I'll join in, keep it a bit quiet and I'll go back to

sleep again, but don't keep it as it is.

But do you know what, Matt?

It doesn't matter how little sleep I've got, the mere fact that you also travelled back

from Saudi last night.

Well, yes, I didn't want to mention it, you know, I didn't want to mention it.

And look, 10 times better than I do, and Pinkham had the weekend off, you know, makes me feel

even better.

You've had more sleep than both of us put together last night.

Which makes a nice change, doesn't it?

Happy Mother's Day for you yesterday.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Did you watch the race?

Absolutely.

We had eight children staying over the weekend.

Eight children.

Yep.

Blimey.

Not all my own.

I love how you have children.

Probably goes without saying.

Goes without saying.

All right, well, there's an awful lot to get into, but I want to try something different

for the start this week.

Excellent.

I want us to do our one word race reviews.

Okay.

So I'll have a brief to you because otherwise this would be nice.

That's impossible.

You have briefed us.

Yeah.

I mean, why would you let that?

I mean, we want to sort of spontaneous and...

Straight off the bat.

Yeah.

Okay, fine.

Okay.

Bullish.

Bullish.

Like it.

Yeah.

I'm going bullish because I feel there is a sense of authority growing in the paddock

with Red Bull.

They're owning it this season, but I also sense maybe an air of foreboding about the relationship

between Checo and Max, and both of them are trying to assert themselves over one another.

There's one point separating them in the jump.

I'm going to change my word because I was going to go for expected because the result

was exactly what I expected Perez to be Alonso, but I'm going to go swan-like because you

think it's serene at Red Bull at the moment, and I think under the water there's a lot

of legs kicking and I'm not quite sure everything is exactly how Christian Horner would like

it and how the team would like it for a smooth domination.

They are dominating Formula One on the track at the moment, but they came very close to

not having that 1-2 in Bahrain.

They had issues in the race yesterday.

I think if you look in the cooldown room after the race, there is still friction between

the two drivers and Checo was not a happy man being asked to do target lap times that

was slower than his teammate, and as for his teammate's dad, all is clearly not well in

Joss Verstappen's mind when his son finishes second, leads the world championship, and

he can barely break a smile.

But being front and centre, you know, not rather than taking a step back, he was front

and centre.

He knew the cameras were going to be right there and he looked quite grumpy, didn't he?

He looked very grumpy, twice.

As did Max's manager, Raymond as well.

So if they're listening to the podcast, guys, come on, smile, crack a smile.

For heaven's sake, you're about half a postcode clear of the rest of the field.

It could be worse.

And when you think about how impressive that recovery drive was from Max, now he said it

will be at three gritted teeth that he was delighted to have secured a P2, that's what

he was aiming for.

But the dominance with which he did that, had he not been starting P15 and perhaps slightly

unnerved by those drive shaft issues, he could have won the race.

But I just do predict, and I think we're actually agreeing with each other, that Christian's

going to have his work cut out to manage those two this year.

I think technically it's worth pointing out that transmission is the problem for Red Bull.

Maybe a bit of overheating at times as well.

But as I say, Bahrain, and more audibly in terms of the driver's concerns, Saudi, there

are concerns there.

But it's often thus for the nature of a new inspired car, and it's not just Adrian, of

course, that's designed this car, but it's all, let's go for maximum performance and

sometimes a little bit fragile in that respect.

So reliability could be a key, is to a lot of other teams at the moment as well.

That fractures nature between Perez and Verstappen, and Perez is in the last year of his deal

at Red Bull.

So if there's no signs of another deal coming, what's in it for Sergio to start helping his

teammate in the way that Red Bull were quite like?

But they have got a huge amount of pace.

They've done a superb job with this car, which should be applauded, and not seen as a negative.

We all applauded McLaren back in the day when Prost and Senna were winning everything.

We applauded Mercedes for the job they did at the start of the turbo hybrid era.

We should applaud Red Bull for this too, because excellence is what we want to see in sport.

But yeah, I think there are a few banana skins down the road.

I think it was the radio message that was quite telling.

Cheko asking, you know, where is Max, how far away is Max, and what was it?

He said four point, he's doing 130.

32, 6 plus 4, yeah, basically, Max was there, safe in the knowledge that he could put that

fastest lap in on the last lap, and Cheko wouldn't be able to respond, and he'd saved everything

up for that, because he knew with four laps to go, there was no way he was going to catch

his teammate.

And look, he got a bit lucky in the race.

The safety car helped him yesterday, because he hadn't pitted at that stage when it came

out.

But you know, you need a bit of luck to slice your way through the field from 15th.

It was a super drive, once he got going and realized that the Red Bull's a difficult car

to handle in traffic, and he was going to have to put up with a bit of understeer from

time to time.

But when you're alone in the cockpit, and we don't know this, that's because we're

not racing drivers, but you know, you can empathize with the paranoia that must go on

in Cheko's brain, where he's had this perfect weekend, but he knows that at some stage his

teammate is going to be scheming to get as much out of it as he possibly can, because

that's what Max does, and that's why any racing driver does.

We haven't heard Max's word yet.

Go on.

I'm pretty proud of this one, but I can't take credit for it, because it's from Twitter.

It's from Mr Bridget.

So you plagiarized, is what you were saying.

Yeah, well, I'm going to credit Mr Bridget on Twitter.

FIA Asco.

Fiasco.

No.

Oh.

You mean FIA Sco?

FIA Sco.

Yeah.

Fiasco.

Fiasco.

Which I think leads us quite nicely into our next.

Well, it's clever.

It's very clever.

Well, don't.

It's Max not, hasn't been clever.

Nicked it.

Nicked it off Twitter.

So who did you get that from?

Mr Bridget.

Mr Bridget.

Mr Bridget.

What?

Mr Bridget.

From the Italian job.

Noel Coward, striding down the stairs.

I'm very grateful for that, but yeah, maybe next week I'll try and get the original one.

I wouldn't, Matt.

No, I like it.

I like it.

If it's good, plagiarise it.

Highest on the flattery and all that.

There we go.

Exactly.

Right.

And so I think what would be sensible would be to try and explain this chronologically.

Yes.

Crofty.

I don't know if you were there.

I was there to try.

I can try and explain it in terms of timings.

Okay.

But I think that's quite key.

I'll do my best on this one.

Are we allowed to interject between each?

Yes, please do.

So Fernando puts his car on the grid and he is quite significantly out of position.

Okay.

So here's my first question.

I love this.

Why doesn't it happen more?

Why doesn't it happen more?

You know, this is the most technologically advanced sport in the world and it's been

called into question with paint on the grid.

Why doesn't that happen more and surely there's a way of safeguarding against it?

Yeah, they can and did last year extend the yellow line from the side of the box because

drivers were complaining about visibility.

It's happened twice already this season.

I think they might need to extend it a bit more.

And the wheel brows, I think, are causing drivers some issues on that one.

Saying that, you know, Fernando's parked his car.

He's either done it by chance and he's made a mistake or he's trying to get a little bit

further down the inside to try and get past Sergio because he's got that inside line going

for the first time.

Can you presume the latter surely?

It's someone of his experience.

Nothing happens accidentally.

Especially not with Fernando.

I think the key question though is does he gain an advantage?

Well, that's the thing.

If he is...

By being on the...

Essentially on the left, because I guess...

He's a bit more down the inside, isn't he?

It's working centimetres, aren't we?

We're talking thousands of a second.

Little matters.

Look, it could be an absolute genuine mistake on this one.

But if it is a mistake, they should guard against that because look at the ramifications

of it.

As we'll get onto in a moment, there's a meeting of the Sporting Advisory Council on Thursday

and I'm sure that sort of thing is going to be discussed between the sporting directors

and the team managers and the FIA.

But it's a hard and fast rule, isn't it?

You've got to be within your pit box and he wasn't.

So therefore, it's a slam dunk five second penalty on that one.

But that isn't the issue.

The issue here is that he came in to serve his penalty and this is what, lap 18 from memory

and the rear jackman pushed the rear jack in and touched the car.

Now, it is easier to touch the car with a rear jack this year because the rear ride height

is lower, certainly on that Aston Martin.

And it's not as easy to get the jack underneath without touching the car.

Now, you can argue to the cows come home, does that give you an advantage or not if you're

touching it?

But in a sport where thousands of a second are often the difference between success and

failure, to be as close as possible in position to get going on the five seconds, you can't

work on the car until the five seconds is over, must be seen as an advantage.

But the crux of the matter after that was, with the wording saying you can't work on

the car, does touching the car constitute as working on the car?

So we can have that debate now.

What do you say, Nat?

I mean, you would have to argue it's an advantage, but, and I don't want to sort of preempt what

you're going to say later, they were able to prove there were seven other occasions

when the front jack had touched and that wasn't deemed an advantage.

I think as a fan of the sport, I speak for other fans when I say you just want clarity

and consistency.

That's the key.

And you don't want to be finding out the result after the checkered flag.

I know I'm jumping forward a bit here, but this is my, you know, I had the pleasure of

watching back home, a house full of 25 people and mothering Sunday.

Couldn't really hear any of it.

But it was so interesting to watch it and actually think, this isn't right.

We can't have the decision to check.

What other sport changes that, unless you're being stripped of an Olympic medal, I can't

think of other examples where the results changed after the end of the event.

So it happens in, we always compare things to football.

The result might not change in football, but red cards get rescinded all the time.

I guess though with football, yeah, it doesn't affect the fundamental end of 90 minute result.

But, but, so I'll ask you this question.

What do you want?

Do you want a sport that makes an instant decision that might be wrong?

What do you want?

But it wasn't instant.

It wasn't instant.

That's our point though, is it?

Alonso said you could have made that decision in the race and I'd have had 37 laps to make

up that difference.

Right, let's go on.

It made afterwards.

Let's get on to the chronology.

Okay.

I can't even say it.

You can't get over excited.

Chronological order.

Lap 49, the last lap of the race.

The race director asks the remote operations centre to have a look at it again.

And this is like VAR.

Yeah.

This is a room full of screens in Geneva.

Yeah.

Well, the inference is that somebody has alerted the race director to there being a possibility

that something was wrong.

Alonso's pit stop.

Well, who would do that?

Who would gain an advantage?

Yeah, who would benefit at all from that?

I'm not going to name names.

There's names flying around all over the place.

But, you know, the inference is another team would have alerted the race director to this.

And whilst team principals can't talk to the race director, the sporting director team

manager still can.

And don't forget the teams have a whole load of people back at base that are watching and

scrutinizing footage and looking for, you know, possible misdemeanors that they can turn

into their favour.

So the argument, this could have been cleared up 20 laps previous, doesn't really wash with

the timeline, because the remote operation centre weren't looking at it, the race director

wasn't looking at it, the stewards hadn't been asked to look at it.

Everything had been done and dusted until it was brought up again by an outside party.

OK, but much like football, you can refer to VAR, but it has to be instantly.

Why isn't the same rule applied to Formula One?

But this is the line.

Why can you not have a rule that says if it's not reported within X amount of laps or X amount

of time?

Yeah.

And from my knowledge, I think you've got 30 laps and I think it came in right on the

30 laps.

Oh, really?

Because, but you would do, if you were another team wanting to, wanting to get it reexamined,

you're not going to give Aston Martin the chance to make up a 10 second gap.

True.

Yeah?

I mean, God.

Now, obviously, obviously we hear a chatter on the radio, you know, from Mercedes and from

Aston Martin about the possibility of this five second penalty.

And I said in commentary, well, it won't be five seconds, it'll be 10, because that's

what Esteban Ocon got.

And the Ocon thing was a completely separate.

They did actually start taking the front wing off after 4.6 seconds.

So they did break the rules on that one.

So it was a pretty instantaneous decision as far as these things go, albeit it was done

after the podium presentation.

Fernando is on the podium celebrating massive grin, smile on his face, trophy in the air,

the penalty comes.

And he has the trophy wrenched off him.

Yeah.

I mean, imagine the scenes.

Unbelievable.

Who would also, who would be the person to take it off him?

Was it George Russell?

Only if George Russell was still wearing his crash helmet to be fair, I wouldn't want to

be the person to wrench it for Fernando.

What I was so impressed with, the fact that Aston Martin were able to draw upon seven

examples of when the jack had touched the car in a pit stop previously.

I mean, how do they even go about doing that?

It's such a small period of time.

Well, they'll build up a file of various instances at races.

They'll go back many, many years on this one, but I doubt they had to go back this far.

We'll literally type into a search engine incident where Jack touched.

Yeah.

Well, we have stuff locked here at Sky all the time, don't we?

We have a system where we can pull up things on the track and off the track.

And they will look at areas where they will need this cache to use in defense should a

problem ever arise.

Teams, for instance, will practice pit stops serving a five-second penalty during the course

of a weekend.

They'll look at how many times on average they get a five-second penalty, and then they'll

work out the percentage of how many times they need to practice it during the course

of the weekend.

So they're always looking at whatever eventualities that need to be practiced or taken into account

for.

But Andy Stevenson, who is the sporting director at Aston Martin, basically your rules and

regs, man.

He sits on the pit wall.

He's a very clever man.

Very clever man.

Come from Northampton.

There you go.

Says it all.

Just like Nats, you see.

Just to prove there's two people from Northampton that have excelled in their life.

Apologies to everyone for Northampton for that one.

Alan Carr and Graham Swan, because I was in a list once.

You can't deny it.

It's quite a good list.

Four people out of the millions that have come from Northampton.

I was listed as the third most famous person to come from Northampton.

I'm like, I will take that after Alan Carr and Graham Swan.

Seriously.

I'm the best Formula One driver from Steven.

I've had three laps.

I'll take it.

Anyway, back to Andy Stevenson, the fifth most famous person to come from Northampton.

So Andy is your rules and regs, man, and he will basically be on the phone to the team

back at their mission control at Silverstone to say, right, okay, I think we've got instances

that we can call upon.

I need this.

This isn't this.

Now, I did see Andy after the race.

He was on the phone a lot.

He was looking very stressed, but he was, he has like an hour, an hour's timeframe.

Once a document is published to decide what they're going to do.

What I think happened was Aston Martin knew there was no appeal process because it was

a time penalty and you can't appeal a time penalty.

But they did ask for a right to review and they're very different things.

The right to review is where you go to the, to the FIA and to the stewards and you say,

we've got new evidence that you didn't have when you made your decision.

And because of that new evidence, we think you might want to change your mind because

we think we were in the right.

You think we were in the wrong, but this new evidence might actually back up our case

more than yours rather than an appeal that just says, oh, you can't do that.

That wasn't fair.

You have to have new evidence for the stewards to, to hear that review.

My argument is that if touching the car is deemed to be working on the car or it's not,

then why are there seven examples beforehand where it's happened and being let go?

And we also don't know how, because it wasn't picked up at the time, but we don't know how

long these examples go back.

They could only go back to the middle of last season, for example.

So it might, it might not be a huge bang for evidence.

But it's enough.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I want to get into fan questions here because there's understand to be a lot of confusion

amongst fans and I think this kind of sums up quite well.

So this is from a tweet from P's TV.

Do you think that the silly penalties and the time taken by the FIA to make decisions

may turn off some of the newer fans?

We've got a lot of new fans who've come to our sport and those are, there are people

at home who'll be watching this who might go to sleep Sunday evening having had their

Sunday dinner going, oh great, you know, Alonso's on the podium.

That's when I, that's when the last thing I saw.

They come in on Monday and they start reading Twitter and they see all this other stuff has

blown up as well.

And the thing is he's still on the podium.

He's still.

Yeah, he is now.

He still can turn the decision was still, yeah, right.

I think you're right.

If you don't understand all the nuances, it can be quite off-putting, but you can't,

you can't simplify everything all the time in life.

And that's why we love the sport.

Let's be honest.

Sometimes things have to be done properly and processes have to be put in place.

Now, what I would say on this is I do think the rule book, the sporting regulations are

getting very complex and the technical regulations too, and are getting ever elongated.

And Steve Nielsen, who's gone from Formula One Liberty to the FIA as their sporting director,

one of the things I think Steve's going to look at is how to simplify the rule book.

But I'm just going to give you a little, for instance, here from last night where, and

I think your point now says, look, why doesn't the rules just say, you can't touch the car?

Right?

That's really simple.

If you've got a penalty to serve in the pit lane, you can't touch the car.

So I put this to a couple of leading team members, a Formula One team.

I went, right, Thursday, sporting advisory council, you're going to get together.

The rules are going to be rewritten.

Well, I wouldn't say that, Crofty.

Well, why not?

Well, it's very technical.

It's very complicated.

I said, no, it's not.

Just make sure you can't touch the car.

You can't have that.

So why can't you have that?

Well, what about the front jack?

What about the front jack?

If the driver comes in and he breaks a bit too late, he doesn't stop on his marks and

he hits the front jack, we're going to get a bigger penalty.

I said, well, yeah, fine.

The front jack doesn't need to be there.

It's not a fast pit stop.

You've got five seconds when the car stopped to get in there.

But the teams will find reasons why it's not very simple.

So maybe I'm going to suggest this right now.

It is time to think once again about how much involvement the teams have in shaping the

rules and regulations of Formula One, because I think one of the cruxes to this argument

and maybe one of the big problems is that the teams have too much influence on the rules

and regulations and in no other sport really do the competitors have that much influence.

So if we want to simplify things and we want to make it easier to understand and not have

quite so many rules and regs for the future, so fan palatable, I like this one.

That's good.

Yeah.

If we want to focus on the fans and we should be doing, helping the fans get the most enjoyment

out of the sport that we all love, then maybe take the team's influence away.

One point I'd like to make is the fact that this sport does have so many subplots, does

make it compelling and the marginal gains and the minuscule room for error is part of

the reason that we watch it.

And so the fact that the rear jack touched the car was enough to scupper a podium actually

is fascinating because you don't get that in any other sport.

I mean, how much time is that saving?

That's like 0.3, 0.4 seconds, but if you add that onto a pit stop, that is the kind of

time difference we're talking about of being a good pit stop to a poor pit stop, right?

Exactly.

And it keeps us on the edge of our seats.

Yeah.

And these pit stops are always going to be quite slow when you're serving a penalty anyway

because the car's stationary and everyone's waiting and then they have to get in there

with a wheel gun.

Exactly.

Normally the car's moving and the wheel gun's attached.

That's how they get it done so fast.

And maybe there's an episode in Drive to Survive where actually we could stop going around

Christian Horner's house and maybe we could go to the FIA Stewards room and we could actually

look at detail, simplified detail of the sport to help people understand.

I personally love seeing Jerry on her horse.

I want to get on to other sports and their governance and their rules because I think

it's fair to say everyone has had some issues with rules and governance, certainly since

Abu Dhabi 21, and I'm sure before that, but also, you know, more recently, I think in

F1 we are going through a bit of a process at the moment of just learning and developing

those rules.

But if you look at other sports, Rugby, for example, this weekend, Freddie Steward's

red card in the England-Island game, you know, a lot of ex-prosers are saying, that is absolutely

outrageous.

That's not how the game is played.

You then look at football, Crofty, I'm sure I don't need to reel off some West Ham

VAR moments from the past season.

Please don't.

They might have come to light.

The guys traumatised enough by his flight.

So don't think of any more than that.

I've gone a whole half an hour without thinking about that.

I like that.

But look, now, I mean, it is, yeah, you can't deny that other sports are having the same

issues as well.

Well, I think we do need to remember we're in the entertainment industry.

We can't pay a lot of money to watch it.

And yes, OK, we want to maintain our credibility and integrity throughout.

But it is important to know what affects the fans and their understanding of the sport.

Now, I married into a Welsh family who are deeply passionate about their rugby and as

much as it pains my father-in-law to tell me, he believed England would have won that

game had it not been for the red card.

So that red card changed the direction of everything.

It also made it incredibly complicated because even if ex-professionals can't explain it,

what chance have the fans got?

And I think we need to be very careful about being too technical with Formula One, because

yes, it's one of the compelling elements of our sport that draws people in.

It's nuanced.

It's layered.

It's got countless subplots.

But you have to be able to take those bite-sized elements and have them explained, which is

why it's great to have Crofty in the comms box.

My husband has always played and loved rugby.

He's over it.

He says it's way too technical.

And if you take out the physicality by red carding someone like Freddie, then what's

the sport got?

And I think we have to learn lessons from that.

Always draw upon parallels with other sports and learn potentially from their mistakes.

We are in the entertainment business and Formula One has done very well to make that quite

a key focal part of its mission statement going forward.

But we're not WWE, you know, we're not about trying to engineer results just to make it

a spectacle.

Well, unless you're burning, you're bringing in fake rain.

Well, that was his idea, wasn't it, sprinklers by the side of the track, which wasn't a stupid

idea to be fair, because as we know, when it gets wet, it gets exciting.

But you do have to maintain credibility and the integrity of the sport, I do accept.

You absolutely do.

It has got complicated.

The technical breaks are very complicated.

Are we at a stage now with Formula One, where the best thing to do is to say, right, we're

going to police your accounts here.

We are going to absolutely police your accounts like there's no, like you've never seen before.

You've got $200 million a year, go and do what you want.

That is your budget.

Because at the moment, the budget caps $140 million, something like that.

But the top three owners and the drivers' salaries aren't part of that, marketing isn't

part of that, blah, blah, blah.

Here's $200 million, do what you want to design your car.

I'd love to be told that.

It's a very exciting prospect, isn't it?

Cool.

I'll knock yourself out.

Did you build the car?

But the thing is, does that then?

Does that then satisfy the huge amount of fans who have been with Formula One for many,

many years, who like the complexities, like the technical nuances, you know, deeply involved

and invested their passion, whilst at the same time, not alienating any of the new fans

that have come in, you know, during the, what should we call it, the drive to survive era,

you know, which I think, you know, has brought.

We know that because whenever we have conversations, you know, with people who are new to the sport,

you know, I've been watching Drive to Survive, it's been brilliant, you know.

Ultimately, we've had this discussion, was the right decision made?

Yes.

With Alonso.

Yes.

And I think even George Russell accepts that.

Yeah.

I mean, he said it even before he was given, well, when he was given the trophy, he said

I sort of feel a bit guilty for taking this, because also, I guess as drivers, you know

that if the rules are being applied to Fernando, the next week, you're going to be subject

to them as well.

And I do hope that on Thursday of this week, as we recall this on a Monday, the rules are

rewritten to say you can't touch the car.

And however, some teams might think that's not a very good idea.

It is a much clearer way.

Don't touch the car.

And then at the end of five seconds, you know, when a stopwatch says five or your team manager's

counted to five, however the teams do it.

One banana, two banana, three.

Some teams do that.

How do they count?

Some teams do that.

One Mississippi.

One banana.

Yeah.

Then one banana.

But that's building in a buffer.

So it's okay.

I mean, genuinely.

How do teams count?

They're five seconds.

Well, some do.

They really, they count.

Some do a verbal count.

Some do a stopwatch.

And is it being checked by the FIA?

Yeah.

The FIA, the FIA will have their own stopwatch on it.

I do it when the kids are naughty.

I'll go, I'm going to give you five seconds.

Four.

We do hang about quite a long time.

One, three.

So you're too patient.

Two and a half.

Not sure that would work in Formula One.

You can imagine the race director coming down on the radio doing that.

But yeah, so just rewrite it so that no one touches the car.

Yeah.

Everyone's in the same boat.

They can all hover millimeters away and then get to work and get out.

I wonder as well if you, I don't know how you actually enforce no one touching the car.

You know, like the game operation.

Do you have to like put some sensors on the car?

You get electrocuted if you touch it.

You get electrocuted if you go back.

So I'll go back.

So put some sensors on the car.

That's logical, isn't it?

Yeah, yeah.

But sensors of weight.

And that's extra weight.

And the teams don't want extra weight.

Are you right to the rules?

The teams.

See how complicated it gets.

Yeah.

Well, teams and the FIA.

Very good.

All right.

Well, look, I think we can agree the right decision was reached, even if it took.

Four.

Three, four hours?

Five hours?

It took, it took a bit.

It took a bit.

But I go back to, I want to see the right decision being made, not quick snappy decisions

that could still be wrong.

I want to get into some fan questions now because we put out a little post.

Thank you for your comments on Twitter and Instagram about the race and to get your thoughts

on it.

So Alex on Instagram wants to know, we're going to completely change tact here from

Alonso and Anastah Martin, can Red Bull win 100% of the races in 2023?

Can they?

Yes.

Will they know?

Yes, I think reliability will become into play.

Yeah.

I mean, they had three DNFs in the first three races last year.

But as we talked about already, they've had some close calls in the last two races.

No car is bulletproof.

23 races is a big ask to win every single race.

I'm going to have a couple of Crofty DNFs if we're not careful.

If you bring him into this podcast without any kip again, I'll pack my sleeping bag next

time.

Yes, did not sleep.

They won't.

But the other thing, of course, is that as the season goes on, they get less wind tunnel

CFD time than certainly Aston Martin.

This is the fact that we've got an Aston Martin Red Bull battle at the moment is brilliant

because Aston Martin under the wind tunnel and CFD restrictions get 100% of the time

because they finished seventh in the Constructors' Championship last year.

Red Bull gets 70% at the time, but because they were naughty boys and girls and overspending

on the cost cap reduced by another 10%, so they only get 63%.

So Aston Martin have 37% more wind tunnel CFD time.

That equates to about 120 wind tunnel runs in the course of an eight-week period.

That's a lot.

And how long is a wind tunnel run?

It's kind of every time it's turned on.

Right, right, right.

But how long does that last?

How long does one last?

It can last as long as it wants, and that's the bit from turning on to turning off when

you've gathered the data.

Because obviously you...

As far as I know, I am not a wind tunnel expert.

You sounded pretty good to me.

Yeah, just take a deep breath and go for it.

Okay, I think conclusively then we can say that we don't think Red Bull are going to

win every race this year.

I think we certainly, probably in the interests of the sport, hope they don't.

I think it'd be great to see some other people win this year, and I certainly think fans

would say that too.

But you know what?

If they do win every single race...

What an achievement.

I mean, what an achievement.

What a brilliant achievement.

And we should celebrate that.

I agree.

You know?

I'm not into variety for variety's sake.

I want competition out there, but if one team have excelled...

But I go back to our original point whereby the battle will not be with others.

It will be internally.

Okay, that brings me on to my next question.

Clark on Instagram.

Why didn't Max park his car in the second position at the end of the race?

Anyone else would have got a penalty.

He parked it on the...

Wait, where did he come into the pit, though, didn't he?

Yeah, just didn't put it on the, by the way, the one, two, three car positions are.

Clark, I'll take you back to Monaco 2009 and the shot of Jensen Button running down the

main straight because he parked his brawn car after winning in the pit lane and forgotten

that he was meant to park it on the grid in front of the raw box.

So Clark, stop looking for conspiracy theories here, anyone else would get a penalty.

I would imagine Max just brought it in to where he normally brings it in and had forgotten

and wasn't told that he was meant to park it on the grid.

No.

Really?

Yes.

Do you think?

But, I mean, Max is quite used to winning Formula One races.

Yeah, but how often...

He knows where to park.

Yeah.

You know, fair enough if it's your first race.

And also, Jensen would have been overwhelmed with emotion having won the Monaco Grand Prix.

Okay.

He can be forgiven for forgetting.

Where did Max park his car in Bahrain?

I've no idea.

And this is why I don't think he...

On the ramp, under the podium in Park Fermet, where do cars normally pull into at the end

of a race?

Not Fermet.

They don't normally go on the grid.

Oh, I see.

So it's a bit...

It's not a one-off.

No, no, no, okay.

It does go in with that.

It does go in with that.

Final question from the fans.

Jack on Twitter, should Ferrari be worried with their lack of pace?

Yes.

I think yes.

I mean, I couldn't believe when we looked at the driver's championship that Charles has

six points.

Yeah.

Six.

Unthinkable.

Well, he didn't finish the opening race, first time in his career, that he's not finished

the opening race of the season.

I'm really sorry about this, Ferrari fans, but I'm going to give you a little story from

the way back.

Who did some of this?

Yeah.

Well, I had a chat with someone from Ferrari and I said, did you turn your engines down

in the second part of the race?

Because you're okay in the first then.

And Charles was coming through quite nicely.

You know, the safety car caught you out a little bit because they pitted before the

safety car.

But did you turn your engines down after that?

And they said, no.

So I went, ooh, and they went, yes.

So that is all that you say?

That was their pace on the hard tire.

And that is where I would worry if I'm Ferrari at the moment.

If they were turning the engines down for reliability, then you assume that reliability

gets fixed.

But if that was their pace at the end, they thought they'd do it okay.

I don't get it.

I think they were suffering tire wear.

I think teams are finding out that actually it's not as easy to follow the cars this year

as it was last year.

They're going faster.

There's a bit more downforce being created, a bit more turbulent air, tire construction

is different.

Things have changed a little bit in terms of how easy it is to follow.

But Ferrari were suffering tire day and that is their main, I will say again, because it's

my favorite gag of the year so far, Achilles wheel is tire degradation.

But it has been for so long, it begs the question why they haven't got on top of it.

Well, I think they're trying.

And reliability as well.

Because if you look at the state of the engines, I mean, you look at Charles, he's on another

controlled electronic system as well.

It's...

Yeah, that's one part.

Yeah.

And it's not looking good.

Yeah.

And we're only two races in.

But while we're trying to demystify F1 a little bit, I did get a tweet last week to say,

control electronics, how can Ferrari get penalized for that?

Because it's all the same, isn't it?

It's not, the control electronics refer to part of the power unit, which is spec to all

teams or to all power unit manufacturers.

But there is an ECU that all the teams run that is standard and that collects all the

data and basically makes sure that the FIA can monitor the car so that the teams aren't

cheating or doing anything they shouldn't.

So don't confuse control electronics with ECU, because some people were last week.

For enough, I think Ferrari, if I was a Ferrari fan, I'd be a little bit worried, this should

be their year.

Yeah.

I said that last year.

I was just going to say, you said it last year.

That's the...

Yeah.

It feels like they've taken a step back rather than gone forward.

Well, I think Red Bull have taken a massive step forward, Aston Martin have taken a massive

step forward and Ferrari are somewhere within the Aston Martin Mercedes Ferrari battle.

They've had a little shuffle forward, but not quite a full step.

And you know, you may think that you have confidence in what you've achieved over the

winter break.

Well, it means nothing if everyone else has moved further ahead of you.

Look, the Schaffini 7th, and that was Ferrari's target, P5 to P7 for a man starting...

Given his penalty.

Given his penalty.

Yeah.

The worry is that they just weren't making any impression in that final stage and Carlos

had a target of a podium and they didn't look like they were going to get that.

Yeah.

And when you see how Max carved his way through the field to finish P2.

See, there's another thing.

This worries me a little bit because going into that race yesterday, talking to the people

that we do in the paddock before a race, nobody was saying they're going to fight Max if he

comes up behind them.

Yeah.

Because everyone's saying, well, they're not our race.

Red Bull aren't our race at the moment.

We're not going to make it easy for him, but we're not going to lose too much time holding

him up and ruining our own race.

That does worry me a little bit because the whole point of Cascap, and then the wind tunnel

and the CFD restrictions as well, was to close up the competition so that you weren't going

to get a team blasting by as Max did with Lewis.

And I said, like an F2 car, trying to defend against an F1 car.

You at least want to see some kind of fight, don't you?

Yeah.

I mean, there was no breeze past another car.

There was no fighting.

I mean, Lewis almost moved out the way.

Imagine how it feels for the driver that hasn't defended.

Yeah.

Goodness me.

If you're dispirited.

Yeah.

Imagine how they feel.

Dispirited.

Yes.

I can imagine.

Right.

I think that's all we've got time for.

Really?

I was only just getting going.

Where were you?

That was what's worrying him.

I think we're going to send you off to a long sleep.

Let's get into bed.

Yeah.

Go to sleep.

Go home.

Thank you.

You're welcome if you like.

If you want to keep talking.

All right.

Do you know what?

I've got a car waiting for me.

I will be asleep within about 20 seconds.

The best thing in able to cope with what we do for a living is to learn the ability to

sleep wherever.

Yeah.

At any stage.

Planes, trains and automobiles.

Do you remember when I fell asleep, standing up on the...

Yes.

My head broke.

I actually did.

I was standing up and I thought...

Oh!

Oh!

We've got a fallout.

He literally caught me.

She's great.

That sort of thing.

It's staying asleep.

That's your problem.

Yeah.

That's a whole other podcast.

Yeah.

Honestly, if ever I'm not driving, I will sleep in a car.

I sleep on a train.

I get on at Milton Keynes and my body clock wakes me up just as we're pulling into Houston.

How it happens, I really do not know.

The marvels.

I fell at that one and planes, yeah, I'm asleep before takeoff.

Unless there's a baby sitting next to him.

Unless there's a baby.

Which was a loud...

But it was a baby.

It was a very loud child on the flight.

Called Simon Laysenby.

On that note, we will end it there.

Thank you very much for your company.

We will be back next Tuesday to look ahead to the Australian Grand Prix.

We will see you then.

Machine-generated transcript that may contain inaccuracies.