Sky Sports F1 Podcast: Ted's Audiobook | Looking ahead to the season-opening Bahrain GP

Hello, everybody. Welcome to Bahrain, where we are gearing up for the opening round of

F1 2023. Join us back at the hotel. We've had an interesting day at the track, an interesting

drive back from the circuit, actually, where they've been advertising the entertainments

for the crowd this weekend. It's DJ Snake and Craig David. So I know Craig David's

going to be talking about seven days, and certainly nobody's thinking about chilling

on Sunday. We're all gearing up for Sunday because that is where we're going to find

out who is in the best shape leading into this longest ever F1 season. But while in

the mood for song titles, how about Midnight at the Oasis? It's not exactly at Oasis. It's

the hotel pool, but certainly a nice place to be. We have the hotel singer doing her

set in the background, so maybe you'll get some ambience of where we are. And it was

an interesting day at the track today. First day back, even with testing, there's always

a bit of tension in the air, there's a bit of first day back at school feeling. I did

miss Sebastian Vettel and Daniel Ricciardo, actually. I thought that was the first time

in an awful long time that we hadn't seen Seb's smiley face or Daniel Ricciardo full

of the joys of spring around the paddock. So a really different feel. I know, you know,

we've seen champions and race winners come and go, but something about the presence of

Seb and Daniel Ricciardo that I really missed in the paddock today. But otherwise, it was

a good day, an interesting day, lots going on. And, well, where should we start? Well,

the surprise really of the morning was from Aston Martin that Lance Stroll would indeed

be driving the AMR 23 that he'd recovered from his injury to his wrists and his hands

after what we got some more information that he'd hit a pothole while riding his bike training.

And effectively, we believe had gone over the over the handlebars and had stopped himself

using his hands and his wrists. I think all those stories about breaking both wrists were

obviously completely wider of the market exaggerated because he certainly hadn't broken both wrists.

He had a bandage on one of his wrists. The other one looked pretty much fine, but he

said it had been an intense few days while he got back into shape and he knew he'd be

able to do the Bahrain Grand Prix, not only this one, but Saudi in a couple of weeks time

as well. So he cut a bit of a apprehensive figure. He obviously doesn't know how it's

going to go. He's in the simulator and everything seems fine so far and clearly doesn't want

to let his team down and doesn't want to miss any time in this car that's obviously better

than any Aston Martin he's had before. So Lance was up and ready to go, albeit a bit

apprehensive I felt for the season, for the race weekend to come. Max Verstappen in good

form, seemed happy to be there, was wearing his long, his trademark long jeans. Well,

not trademark, he just tends to wear long jeans. He doesn't wear shorts like most of

the other drivers were today. Actually, come think of it, Lewis wasn't in, was in long

trousers as well. Anyway, I don't know why I mentioned it, just one of those things that

more or less everyone was in shorts, cooling off nicely by the way. We are expecting 25-26

degrees throughout the weekend, not the sort of heat that we've seen in Bahrain in the

past but certainly hot enough to challenge the cars as well as the sandy conditions and

the track conditions with the tyre degradation which we'll get on to in a minute. But Max

looked good, he looked really relaxed, was starting to sort of play down Red Bull's perceived

advantage coming here. We're saying, look, we haven't seen, as was Checo Perez actually,

we haven't seen any of the engine modes from anybody else. We think we know the fuel loads

because you can more or less figure them out on the long runs. But we don't know engine

modes, we don't know what anybody else was doing and it's all up in the air still. I

did then say to Max, okay, but is the car better than last year? And he says, yes, it's

better everywhere in every department than last year. So I think we can take it that

they're in good shape going into the weekend certainly. Carlos Sainz as well, Charlotte

Claire and Carlos Sainz were talking today. Carlos Sainz actually came out with something

interesting. He said that he's potentially looking for wasn't really looking for a quote

in terms of, you know, I'm going into this weekend, the best prepared I've ever been.

But that's effectively what Sainz said. And the reason why was because he's concentrated

on preseason testing, trying different things more than usual. He said that's why he feels

he's going into into the season, particularly well prepared. As for the Mercedes duo, well

Lewis Hamilton said, look, there is no plan B if this car and the upgrades that we've got

to it from race six doesn't work. There is no plan B largely because they can't do one

under the cost cap, which I thought was a very good point. But Lewis was talking about

his how he's been gearing himself up for the championship as usual in the way that he would

normally do. So no change there. Still at Mercedes, George Russell was talking as well.

He's saying he's looking forward to his second full season at Mercedes. And he says we're

in much better position. We're in a much better position at Mercedes than people think. Red

Bull are clearly ahead, but we and we won't be challenging them for race wins this weekend.

But certainly we think we can do that. We've accepted the challenge. We can do that later

on in the season. So I thought that was key. Something George Russell also gave us a little

challenge talking of challenges was to go and have a look at the asphalt. Now, this is

something that's going to be crucial to the outcome of the Bahrain Grand Prix. And well,

if you want to sound clever down the pub, then you can tell your mates that or sound

clever at home over the dinner table. You can tell your family, did they know that the

asphalt here, the grains, the granite in the track was imported by ship all the way from

Wales to Shrewsbury, somewhere near that. Anyway, so it's a very particular kind of

granite. What it means is that you look at your average road, it's covered with sort

of a bit of black gunk is the is the best way to describe it. It's probably a mix between

aggregate tar and bitumen and all the rest of it. But the stones at the Bahrain track

are very exposed. And that what that means, it hasn't been resurfaced over the years laid

very well in the first place. What that means is that not only it gives a very consistent

feel throughout the lap, but it's very abrasive on the rear tires. Last year was a three stop

race because I think they had a safety car where they were able to do that third stop.

But this weekend might actually turn up to be a three stop race on pure tire degradation

alone, even with or without a safety car. But normally has been a two stop race in the past

might well be a three stop race as strategy is definitely going to come into it. As for

that Mercedes, we've done Ferrari as well. And who else Alpine, you had a word with Esteban

Ocon. He also said that while they looked like, you know, nothing particularly impressive

during the test, but I think Alpine had the slowest lap times of all, watch out for them

because what they spent their time doing was just trying different things out that they

would never have the time to do in a test, things that would take ages set up wise that

you wouldn't, you know, in an hour's practice session would be crazy to do because you miss

out on so much time. So they weren't chasing lap time at all. And, you know, they are going

to they think they're in much better shape than they might seem. And conversely, trying

to downplay expectations was Fernando Alonso. And I sort of tried the, I said, agent 0014.

And he said, Ah, yes, the mission. So I wonder whether in all the kind of used to the Aston

Martin 007 link up by now, Fernando is kind of thinking, I wondered if Fernando was kind

of thinking, Hang on, I haven't had my allusion to to James Bond yet, but well, we'll see

if there is. But his mission is to get the car in a place where he's potentially challenging

for the for the for the podium, and maybe even more, he made the good point that while

his race run was ultra consistent, it wasn't in the heat of battle. And once you get contact

with the enemy, once you get pit stops, once you get other people racing and around you,

those race times and those lap times in a race tend not to be as consistent testing, obvious

point, but one worth, one, one, one worth mentioning, I think, actually, while in, in prime conditions

and prime testing conditions, it might be a little bit misleading and their pace might

have looked a little bit better than it turns out to be. But we'll see, because not only

is 95%, this is another point Alonso made, not only is the car 95% new, but he also says

they're going to change two thirds of it over the season. And I'm still to work out how

that's going to work. I assume he means that while it's 95% new, they've still found loads

of stuff that's going to make it improve two thirds of it that's going to improve over

the season. So clearly a lot in the development tank, if you like, for Aston Martin over the

year. And it was the development tank where Lando Norris put his finger on McLaren's what's

looking like a slow start of the season. The reason he said that McLaren are in the state

that they are Lando cut a bit of a down, downhearted figure. What he said was that over the winter,

they realized too late, that was Lando's phrase too late. But the reason they were the route,

the development route they wanted to go down was the one that was going to be optimal for

the season. Now I've been joined by a helicopter. It's just going on. Sorry about that. But

yeah. And by the time they actually got the car together, they realized that they were

going to be effectively undercooked for the start of the season. That's not a problem

because McLaren have lots of good stuff to come. So not now, but later in the season,

we'll see the best of McLaren. Let's have a little bit through, look a briefly through

minute, but for some other things that I thought were interesting. Logan sat down at Williams,

Logan Sergeant came up with an interesting one on his first weekend proper F1 race weekend

as a driver. He said, I'm still trying to figure out how my Thursdays should go. And

I said, Well, you can try the Kimi Raikkonen approach was essentially to devote as little

mental energy as possible to any of this media stuff and just concentrating on your driving.

He looked at me and said, Yeah, I'm not sure how Williams would feel about that. I'm kind

of an ambassador for them and I need to put as good a face forward as I possibly can. Well,

that's way of doing it. But yeah, it's that's certainly one that the more experienced drivers

have figured out and Logan will have to figure out in his own time and how much effort you

put into the media stuff on Thursday, knowing that that's not going to help you and your

car go quicker. Alex Albon was referred to as the captain of the team. He said, Well,

that's possibly true. But in any case, he thinks that they're going to be you're only

going to see the real Williams in six or seven races time when they start putting some developments

on that car as well.

Just rounding everything else up. Battery Bottas looked fit and well and ready to go

for Alfa Romeo Sauber was talking about how it's interesting having Andrea Seidel as

the CEO of the team and the new direction that he can bring and has F1 Kevin Magnuson

saying how nice it is to actually start the season in such good shape given how he was

a late replacement last year for Nikita Mazepin. Right, that is the latest from the track.

We're going to go and seek out somewhere to eat alongside the poolside entertainment

here and just recommend that you join us for all our coverage on Sky F1 over the weekend.

You can find all the details and the times that we're on where you are around the world

on our social channels at Sky Sports F1. Looking forward to seeing you there. Bye-bye.

Machine-generated transcript that may contain inaccuracies.