Hello, and welcome to Pit Talk, brought to you by Shannon's.

On today's episode, Oscar Piastre scores a decisive victory over Lando Norris at the Belgian Grand Prix, but it took eighty minutes to get the race going.

With maxistaff and railing against race controls, conservatism in the West.

My name is Michael Lomonato.

It's great to have your company and the company of my co host.

He's just come back from the therapist after suffering from Belgium twenty twenty one flashbacks at around about one am on Monday.

It's Matt Clayton.

Michael, it's good to join you.

It wasn't great to be conversing with you on Sunday night where you can see this sort of unfolding horror story coming out in front of you.

But yes, I've managed to emerge from underneath my easy up and I'm ready to go for enjoyable podcast fun this morning.

More Easy Up commentary coming up later.

Do they go easy down?

Though?

Does one is?

Do you have to use easy whenever you use the verb association.

There's never any mention of the descent, is there.

It's always about the assembly.

It's easy to go up.

Clearly easy up does what it says on the tip, but the whole down bit never discussed.

Better not talk about it.

I think let's talk instead about Oscar Piastre, who did not have an easy way up to the top post step of the podium.

What it depends on that you look at it.

It looks dominant on Friday Matt I thought on Friday that this was going to be a really emphatic result and it wasn't the end, but in quite a different way to what I expected, because he took quite a securitus throute to get there, didn't get a he got sprint polled, did not win the sprint, did not get pole position, but did have a pretty decisive victory in the end of Orlando Norris after that pass on the first lap of racing like five anyway, and I felt, and then after that obviously had to manage his way to the end one stop on a set of tize that Parali didn't think was going to make it to the end competitive that he managed to do it.

And I think this race really demonstrated maybe all of the reasons he's become such a formidable title contender.

There is the execution in the past, there is the race management after the fact, and even dare I say, Matt a tiny bit, a small bit of emotion after winning the race.

Just a small bit.

You want to get too carried away here when you've won the most races by it Australia to Formula One season ever, so you know the we'll see what happens if he gets to seven, eight nine or more than that.

But I like what you said there.

This was if you were playing pistre dominance bingo here.

This ticked a lot of boxes for him because it's the decisiveness in will to will battle early in races that's been a feature of a lot of his victories this year.

He has made that move where he's had the one opportunity to do it and.

Made it stick.

The interesting part for me was he was clearly on what was probably not an ideal tire to do the rest of that race after that, I think it was lap ten pit stop, but clearly was managing it to a point where he had so much in reserve that he set his fastest lap of the race I believe on.

The second last lap of the race.

And so while it was being built up as being the you know Norris's coming, He's on the hard at tires, them more durable, he can push.

And there's a narrative that's being pushed in the commentary that will probably get to at some point in the rest of this podcast.

But I don't know about you, but watching it with a just completely cold analytical view, it never felt like it was in danger once we got out of the end of the pit stops.

And look, I mean, could McLaren have double stacked their drivers to perhaps reduce the disadvantage that Norris had by coming in a lap later?

Look, possibly, And Norris threw the hail Mary roll the dice heavy you want to describe it, by going with the tire that nobody else chose to use the remainder of the race.

But there was an inevitability to the way that Piastre won this race.

And it's interesting, isn't it, And that if you look at Piastre's victories this season last season, that win that he had in Azerbaijan was one of the more exciting Grand Prix we've seen in a while because he made a fantastic pass and him was clearly hanging on for dear life, but did a fantastic job against Charla Clair in that race.

That was one of the most tense and consistently tense races that we've seen for a very long time.

A lot of the races he's won this year are a little bit dull, but that's fine because it is a means to an end here.

He gets his work done early and then things from there, and it's that push pull of the when to be aggressive, how to be decisively aggressive, and then change tack and not nurse the car home, but driver in a certain way that you don't stress the pit wall, you don't stress the machinery, and you don't stress yourself, and there's an inevitability to these victories once he gets out there.

It ticked every box and it was just another reason why this championship is going to be won by McLaren driver this year.

But I don't think we can say that it's a fifty to fifty championship fight right now.

It's close enough that it's not decisively one way's Piastre's, but I would say it's fifty seven forty three if we're going to put a number, or sixty forty somewhere in that sort of range, because yes, Piastre has a points advantage, we can see that, but it's how he's achieved it as much as what he's achieved that to me makes him a slight favorite for this world title.

Yeah.

I like the specific numbers.

I appreciate That's what this podcast is about, the details.

I like that.

You're right, though dominant victories are really the thrilling ones, they do tend to be dull.

There was a little bit maybe manufactured excitement in this.

It was remarkable how many times Lando Norris took half a second out of Oscar Piastre without the gap changing from about eight and a half seconds.

You noticed that as well until I think the last ten laps and the gap did close.

But like you say, second last lap, it actually reminded me a little bit of Daniel Ricardo's victory Italy was a twenty three one two twenty three one?

Wasn't it twenty one over Lando norris s where there was there's a bit of Lando was the faster driver, they should have let him through whatever, But then on was a last lap I think in his case, wasn't it where he said coreational best and the fastest lap of the race, I think as well to just emphasize that the pace was in hand and he was managing.

Coincidentally enough, this is also the win with which Oscar Piastre equaled Daniel Riccardo's total victories of eight.

Some stats up on the Fox Sports website and social media pages he might have seen.

This was, I say, his eighth career victory.

That's one short now of Mark Webber's career total of nine, not that far away from the all time records for Australians at Jack Bradmont fourteen Alan Jones on twelve.

But more interestingly, I suppose they're all interesting.

I won't drank them.

But sixth victory for this season, which is more than any Australian has ever had in one Formula One season ever.

And it's funny like this is a stat that we've you know, we talked about this months ago, given that you could sort of see the way the season and the circumstances of this season based on what's going to happen next season, where we've got this hard reset and a whole new formula.

The last season of an existing rule set tends to weed out a dominant team fairly early and then it tends to be fairly plain sailing for that team, and you just hope that team has two drivers that are capable of winning races or motivated to win races.

In twenty thirteen we didn't see that because Mark Webber was about to retire and Sebastian vast one of the last nine Grand Prix of that year.

I'm looking at this now with eleven rounds to go, it's very hard to see unless there's an exceptual circumstance anyone beating m McLaren on pace for victory, and there's probably going to be I think as the fourth, one two in the last five, or the third in the last four.

I can't remember the start off the top of my head.

But with eleven rounds to go, we're going to get a lot more races like this.

So, in context of the Piastre win total eight career wins, now Weeber with nine is next up the road.

Alan Jones has twelve.

I would imagine, based on the fact that there's eleven rounds to go, I can see Piastre winning four more races to at least equal Alan Jones over the remainder of the season.

There's one that's in play now that has really stuck up on us and I still can't quite believe.

So Jack Brabham had fourteen career Formula One wins.

Piastre would need to win six of the last eleven Grand Prix to tie to Jack Brabham, and that seems completely doable based on the pace advantage that McLaren hasn't.

Yes, there's going to be some outlives and there'll be a weird weekend, or there'll be a Maxistap and Red Bull weekend where he is just absolutely mega and transcends the cart.

That's going to happen.

You would think that record is absolutely in play.

And that's a sentence I can't believe that.

I'm saying in July twenty twenty five.

Yeah, in his third season in Formula One, and I hope people will say, obviously, there were many fewer races in the days of Brabhaman and Joe, and certainly in Jack Bravam's days in the year in which he won five Grand Prix in a season, so we were talking about that record that was fifty percent of the races.

It was a ten round season.

Those are the days, but he can also equal it one percentage terms, you say he needs six to equal his career title.

If you win seven more times this year, he'll have won more than half the races this season and then he will have that record outright, if you want to talk web percentage tens, he only needs a couple more race wins to do it for Alan Joe As I think it's three times, which I think is going to happen, and surely three more races for the end of the year season if he doesn't, yes, so I think outright those records will fall and suddenly we're talking about, you know, all time great numbers for an Australian, which is really remarkable again to think about this is only his third season and that he's up against a driver like Lando Norris, who while we're going to be exposing each of drivers weaknesses and strengths in this championship battle, as it comes down to it, a lot more of them will be exposed as well.

We're going to know them in great detail by the time we get to Abu Dhabi.

He's no slouch.

He's very fast, he's a race winner.

He was a race winner before this season and he's been in Formula One for a long time, so there's nothing to take away from that.

But I do want to talk about norrisse for a second, because he struck.

We've talked a couple of people about it, and it's not just me that it struck.

It wasn't just my like one am brain thinking oh this unusual.

But his responses this weekend I found very interesting.

Obviously, Friday, he started very much on the back foot.

He was six tenths down in sprint qualifying, but it was only sprint qualifying, but nonetheless that was the first competitive session of the weekend.

Finished behind Pastre, obviously in the sprint because it was a lot of passing, as he wasn't for the whole weekend.

But then even after pipping Piastre to poll and he didn't beat that track record Piastre he said on Friday, and Piastre had made some mistakes so there was a reason for it, seemed very defensive.

And then after the race, obviously he was defeated, so there's no reason to expect he's going to be happy about it.

But his response even then just seemed a little bit flat, and I couldn't help but wonder whether coming back from the mini break, which would have probably felt like a mid season break for a lot of them, and taking Stock and Max with staff and now very far behind and it's a one on one title five.

Whether this was maybe a little bit of a maybe demoralizing is now too judgmental because we don't know what he's thinking, but almost like a little bit of a reality check that actually, just getting ahead of Piastre after winning two in the row and feeling like you had a bit of momentum is not going to be maybe as easy as he thought or not straightforward.

He was a little bit muted, and I can understand that because this car now has been proven to have such a significant advantage that quite frankly, finishing second is a little bit disappointing because if you've finished second, you've probably been beaten by the other guy in the same car, and that's going to be the way the rest of this season plays out.

I do wonder there's so much of this in that we know that Norris is very much an open book in the way that he runs his Formula one.

You know, he rides the emotional rollercoaster, at least publicly a lot more than Piastre.

Does Piastre will A give you nothing and B be more robotic when he has these days that are good and bad, And that's just a product of his character and perhaps the way he's being managed.

In a whole bunch of other things.

Norris is much more of an open book, so there's never any ambiguity over how Norris is feeling about something.

And I wondered if this was almost I wouldn't say deliberate or rehearsed, but perhaps the way this championship is going to be won from here is not getting too high or too low.

And I think that applies for both drivers when you are in a fight where there's probably only two cars in it.

I wonder if this is going to be the way he frames the not so good days for the rest of the season.

I mean, look, guys still qualified on pole and finished second.

It's a pretty good weekend.

It's a better weekend than eighteen other people had.

And so I wonder if that's almost a deliberate ploy here, because we are playing the long game.

It is a long long way to the end of the season.

You mentioned the ten round season before you be on holidays.

Now, if it was not six, you go.

But I do wonder if this is a way that he's going to manage the back end of this season, particularly because you know, as we're about to hit August here, we've still got eleven rounds until the first week of December.

It comes really thick and fast.

There's a lot of doubleheaders.

It's very compact after we get back from the not quite mid season break.

So I wonder if there's almost like a disappointment management exercise going on here, because you can live to fight another day.

The margins are very small and the opposition is very far in the review, So I wonder if that's one of those ones that, particularly on the eve of back to back with Hungary this weekend, you sort of dust yourself off and go again.

But he was a little bit muted.

Perhaps that was also It wasn't one of those races where you could say, oh, look, this could have happened.

That could have happened.

He was comprehensively beaten when it mattered.

But I'm going to go slightly off running order here, assuming we actually have a running order.

We have a thirty second discussion before we start this podcast.

Can we have three minutes here indulge me what on earth was going on with the coverage on Sunday night, because you mentioned this earlier.

There was a time after the pit stops had shaken out.

Pstre was on the mediums, Norris was on the hard tires, and we kept getting told by the common that he was taking half a second off here and six tenths off here.

And I kept looking at the timing tower and kept seeing the same margin between first and second, to the point where I actually started looking at the F one timing appt to see if was there something wrong with the coverage?

Am I not seeing this?

I'm looking at the driver tracker and the two orange dots are kind of circulating in the same space.

And something that really bothered me, and I'm sure a lot of our listeners over the course of the weekend, particularly on Sunday, was that I understand that we take a British commentary feed and they're going to be it's in their interests and it's completely explainable.

They are going to be more excited when a British driver does something than a non British driver does something.

There's one thing to have some enthusiasm for one driver over the other.

If you are going to blatantly misrepresent the facts, because this is a data driven sport.

If you are going to tell basically an incorrect narrative to suit your viewers or yourself, you are doing the viewing public a disservice and you are not being genuine in the way that you are presenting this to the world like a global audience.

I'll leave that with.

You, because there was something there was something about it that really felt off to me in that yes, you can cheer inverted commas for the chief of the Chief of the Flag rather than the driver, but when you're blatantly misrepresenting facts in order to build up a false narrative, then I've got a problem with it.

Your thoughts, yes, not the only one I think has brought it up this weekend, and I do have at least a small amount of concern that now it's boiled down to it is just Norris and Fiastro as much as McLaren's still weary of Estaffa, and I understand why because it's Max with Staffan.

But this is the situation for the rest of the season, and like you say, whatever, it is three from last four to four, from the last five to one to two is there's going to be a lot of direct battles between these drivers, and some people with certain passports may have vested interest in a particular outcome.

Look, I mean if I want to if I want to play Devil's advocate, let's say you.

Want to play Devil's advocate, that'll be I like you.

Yeah.

I don't envy commentators who can see a ninety minute racer of them where there's clearly going to be almost no overtaking.

You've got to try and it's like a football commentator in the last quarter as a big margin, I would know this is Melbourne supporter, and you've got to try and pretend there's something at stake, and then actually sometimes there's something can stake, you know, to make it.

You know, I thought I was telling her at the end of the race.

I think when David Croft finally conceded that Norris wasn't going to get him, that mart ruddles of where he never was going to anyway, almost saying the quiet bit out loud.

Maybe there was a bit of that, but you know, the post race coverage there was a lot of questions to McLaren people about why Norris couldn't win rather than White Piastrick did win.

Yeah, I think that as some people might be wondering what the rest of the season is going to look and sound like, but can't argue with the results.

At the end of the day, Oscar Piastre not only the winner, but a sixteen point championship leader.

You can't you can't fudge those ones.

You can't fudge those numbers, regardless of how you might like to.

Before we move on, Matt, I do want to touch briefly on the rain delay.

A lot of people about talking about the rain delay.

I'm surprised actually, because it's just a lot of people were up quite like to watch this race, and I don't know what kind of state they were in on Monday to.

Go to work.

But I salute you.

You watched a great Oscar Pias Street victory, even if it's about one or two overtakes, with the entirety of the race.

But it was mildly controversial, at least for Max for Staffan who said he would have got the race started immediately.

Lewis Hamdon also said there were probably too many safety car laps.

After the resumptions, there are two different complaints but they seem to really be the only complaints, and I think we probably can't take competitive interests out of this one.

But I mean, other than the fact that it was late for us and we had flashbacks to twenty twenty one, I had a real concern when I heard that the race clock had not started after the formation map, that we're in for it again.

I mean, what was your take on the way this was handled.

Yeah, I'm going to give a quick shout out here to Hannah Kennely at the Age colleague of mine who was assigned to do a live blog for the Belgium Grand Prix on Sunday night, and then when things were delayed by eighty minutes, I said to her my commiserations and said, let's hope this doesn't end up like twenty twenty one when you were not doing a life blog on this particular Grand Prix.

But look, I there's not a one size fits all answer to this, and there's a few things to take into account here.

We had a wet race at Silveston last time out where we had an accident where Isaac Hadja and Kimi Antonelli came together with absolutely no visibility in the rain.

After a restart, and that was particularly bad.

There's something about SPA and that low lying mist and where the water gets thrown up because of the undulation of this particular track, and it's always along the camel straight after they've gone through rouge and radion, the water hangs in the trees and you cannot see a thing.

I also think, whether this was overt or not, we've seen accidents at SPA in the not too recent pass where we've had fatalities in different categories.

I think that's also got a player factor aspart from the mild inconvenience of people working in this part of the world and anyone who was digesting their Sunday Roast City on the couch watching the sky coverage in the UK.

I thought it was the correct decision to delay it, and I didn't think there was too much of a controversy about it that purely because of this circuit and historical precedence at this circuit.

I didn't have a massive problem with it.

But I don't think it's a one size fits all for every circuit.

I think it should be taken a case by case basis.

Yes, the people who wanted to go racing were the people who had the most to gain and the least to lose, and Max Pastappen's always going to Watchford I would like to race because he knows he's a genius in the wet and he's proven that in the past.

There is a competitive advantage for him and his car in a situation like that.

I didn't have a massive problem with it, despite the inconvenience.

There is an argument that, you know, should they have gone out and at least run behind the safety car for a bit at the original race time, start to at least try and disperse some of the water, because there's nothing better to clean a wet Formula one track than twenty Formula one cars going around hoovering up all the water.

Copyright button bundle, there's an argument for that.

But then about half an hour into that delay, it really chucked it down and we would have had red flag anyway.

Quite frankly, so I didn't have had that much of an issue with it, but I was a bit like you.

It became much more of a talking point in this part of the world than I expected it to be on the Monday after the race, which I guess is good because it means lots of people are watching Formula One because well we.

Know why, yes exactly now.

I think that's right, and I've found it actually a little bit frustrating that there was some commentary afterwards saying that, well, they don't race in the wet anymore, when literally the previous race was a wet race, and arguably race controls should have intervened a little bit more in that race, considering there were crashes there due to visibility they had Jant and another crazy thing as you mentioned, and perhaps some others were due to that as well.

So you can't argue that when literally the previous race was a fully wet race at Silverstone, but really different circuits, like you say, Silverston is wide and flat and there's a lot of run off.

Even though it's a high speed circuit that is dangerous.

Spa is much more dangerous, like you said, we've learned that to devastating effect recently.

So I think that's perfectly fine that they called that, And I think there's also a bit of a I associate this with Michael Massey, but I and I think it was him that sort of brought this print, which is that it's better to try and manage a racer that you get the maximum number of racing laps, and if that means delaying the start a bit or a lot in this case, that's better because the alternative was, yes, you lose five laps circulating behind the safety guard to get some water off.

Maybe you would have got three laps free, and then the rain would have arrived and you would have red flagged, and then by the time you restarted another couple of laps behind the safety card, you've lost a quarter of the race distance effectively, And then what's the point of that?

May as well, wait, we got well, it wasn't quite forty four laps because we spent four behind the safety car.

Maybe that could have been short of.

But we've got forty laps, let's say, of racing, which is a better outcome.

I think a better outcome.

For the sport as well, considering we are now in that championship mindset where every point is going to count.

For those two tidal leaders, it would have been frustrating, certainly if they'd walked away with half points or something else some other silly results.

So I think actually the result for the sport was better, which is maybe I was a little bit surprised in the end that we got such a straightforward sporting spectacle.

I suppose, not the overtaking per se, but just that we've got a pretty standard race rather than one that was interrupted a lot and had some kind of silly outcome of no reason.

And we're probably a little bit jumpy still with this venue in twenty twenty one, which we were laughing about it before was an absolute nonsense because there was no way that anything was going to go around that day, and they basically did two laps and corded a race so that the promoters were told, well, you had a car race, and you if anyone's asking for refunds, then you have to deal with that and we don't have to.

So it was declared a Formula one race even though that it two laps.

Information behind the safety car, so confluence of circumstances, circuit history, a whole bunch of things.

But I think in the end of the day, like you said, we got a race away at the end, it was a little bit delayed.

The last thing you want here is for there to be some outlier of a result or half points or something that doesn't make this pure championship fight, and the good news is we have eleven rounds of that.

Still to go.

Let's move down map to Move of the Week, brought to you by Shannon's.

Not heaps of moves this week, but there were some moves.

I suspect it's gonna be one that probably at the top of the table, but I'm going to give you the chance to give me your move of the week.

First.

Well, I've just called up our good friends at forexx here.

I've just had a look at there were twenty five overtakes apparently in the Grand Prix on Sunday, which is more than I thought.

I remember about three of them.

I'm going to go moves of the week plural here because the move of the week is qualifying second, because we know how that we know how that works out.

Because Oscar Piastre had pole for the sprint race, Max Tostaff and was second, overtook Piastre on the first racing lap, went off to win the race, and in the Grand Prix, Norris on pole, Piastre second.

Piastre over took Norris on the first racing lap of the race, lap five, I think you said, and then went on to win the race, and it's the way this track is configured that starting second and having the toe all the way up the hill from Orouge through Radion down the camel straight, that is your chance.

And it becomes more heightened with the fact that these cars spar is so fast and so narrow and places where you could overtake in the past and no longer overtaking places anymore, like the bus do used to be the spot there used to be a lot of people going down as a La Saurce or turn one if you like, if you were to Michael Labonatto Courner numbers rather than names.

But there's not too many places you can pass on this track now.

And we were discussing golf there before, how SPA has kind of become still a fantastic race track, a real driver's track, but not a track that encourages great races anymore.

And its cousin in this sense of modern day Formula one is Suzuka and they were two of the races that you would always look forward to back in the day because they were such unreal layouts with fantastic places to pass.

These aren't passing tracks anymore, so you've got to take your chance, so moves plural of the week.

Whoever qualified second at SPA Verstappan in the spread, Piastre in the Grand Prix, hats off to you because that was probably the major fact of you won on Saturday and Sunday.

Yes, I think so, well, look at me, just compliment that and say, because my backup was going to be back to Staffen's pass and past in the s taking both of them.

But that's two we only need to give away too.

We don't need to be overly generous, but both in a different way.

V Stappan's more conventional by starting on the grid and just doing the job well.

I thought.

Piastres, though, as we sort of talked about, was more impressive for the way that he had to deal with a rolling start and in the wet so much harder to judge the circumstances.

The way he tackled o' rouge as well, for the first time at racing speed with racing fuel in wet conditions really guts it, really brave, you can go and find so there's some publications of the telemetry as well, just to see what he did to.

Manage that gap.

Awesome really and managed the speed even out of the first turnal the source, if you will, to make sure that he didn't catch Norris too quickly and then lose his momentum.

It was just so well judged, even the way that he kind of I'm not even sure one hundred percent certain how intentional it was, but kind of dummied into that first corner to force Norris to kind of cover him, compromise the exit.

Everything about that, because it's a long run up to where the pass was, was so well managed and judged.

And I think that goes back to the point we started with, which was that he really showed everything he's got this weekend and emerge with the victory as the result.

And this is one thing to know that this is going to be your opportunity.

But as you said, dealing with a rolling start and dealing with the wet, he actually did it so well that I almost thought that he'd overtaken him too early, because it wasn't luck he got him.

He didn't get Norris in the breaking one at the end of the Kemel straight there.

He got it well before that, and I thought, oh, if you showed your hand a little bit too early there.

But this is part of what we're talking about before.

There's this clarity of determining where to take your advantage and then coolly executing that that you know you mentioned it before.

The guy still in his third Formula One season, it's not like he's been around for ten years and he's got heaps of experience doing this at particular tracks, and this is such a particular track.

Yet the execution of something he made something that was very difficult look very easy, and if you go back and watch the onboards or look at the telemetry, as you said, that was far from an easy overtake.

So yeah, hats off.

Now let's be on to a couple of other matters from the week, and I feel very embarrassed mat that we haven't even talked about the sprint, which is obviously an integral part of Felt and Grop.

Pre weekend there was a sprint on was it?

Yeah?

There was, I believe so ironically it was actually really quite a convenient time and was not delayed by the rain, which must to be very exciting for people watching it.

Can I tell you a story about the sprint before you can go any further, please, let's take the Let's take the listeners behind the curtain here.

So Saturday night convenient time, as you said, also convenient time for living, like doing other things under than formula one, which I was doing at the which I was doing at the time.

And my plan was to get home a little late and then watch the sprint without knowing the result, which in modern day social media is basically impossible.

And I saw the results, and I sent you a message and said, let me guess for stappan overtook Piastri at the end of Kemel straight on lap one, and then everyone else read around in order for the remaining eleventh laps, and you came back to me and said, yeah, pretty much, So hand up here.

I have not watched the sprint, and I will not watch the sprint because that's twenty five minutes of my life.

That I can have back.

And I just think it shows the general apathy to the very inconsistent nature of having sprints on the calendar these days.

Because you mentioned this afterwards, all three podium finishes in the sprint, they were asked about the sprint and they basically came out and said, oh, yeah, but it was only the sprint.

No one really cares.

And it was just so yes, it was a car race that it was five, but it was a little bit flat and I can't say that I shed too many tears from missing it in the moment and have had no desire to watch since.

But perhaps that's a little bit harsh.

But this is where we are with sprints in twenty twenty five, and it's not even to me the number of sprints that we have over the course of the season.

It's where we have them.

And we know that the six best tracks for sprints are ever going to be the six that are chosen, because that's not why the sprints get chosen, is it.

Yes, Well, I think I've seen I'm not sure there's been confirmed, but I think the Dutch Grand Prix organizers potentially have accidentally announced they've got one next to you for their last race.

And that's not a tracking.

Additionally, not at all of a high.

But I actually I was thinking about this during this sprint, in which not a lot happened.

There's a bit of tension you ask of Pastory obvious had the quicker car, but Max was just too good out of that first turn, and there was no strategy obviously in the sprint, but almost you almost want to give them to where racing is more difficult because the race is not long enough for you get too frustrated by it.

You know, had there been had this been the race and that had been for stapping the lead and been the dry, we know McLaren would have got ahead eventually through strategy because that had the fast race car either would have undercut or overcut and it would have merged the lead either way, and then it would have been over and you'd be like, all right, that's what it is.

But at least in a short race, you know, the only way is for him to make a move on track.

The problem, of course, is that with stapp and not in the championship fight, there wasn't that much motivation to take that much risk.

You know, he had to go.

I'm not saying that he didn't.

As long as you've injured ahead of Norris, that's all that really mattered.

Let's be honest.

Even if he was behind him, it would have.

Been one point loss.

It wouldn't have mattered that much.

So we talked a lot about the sprint last week.

If you want any more about opinions, you can go and listen to last week's episode.

I think the format is fine, but it's just so inconsequential it's not even worth talking about it any further.

Let's talk about some other methods.

They need to ask us to pick the six circuits that we have sprints and scanning up and down the calendar.

I'm saying we should have won at Azerbaijan.

Yes, well, I'm surprised that they started it there, didn't they Well, that was one of the first or in the first season, and I don't remember it was good or not, but it's one that would be good, you would think.

All I remember from that year was that the slogan for the race was the speeds are higher in the land of Fire.

That was all I.

Remember from the very first days of Grand Prix.

Other than that, I couldn't tell you.

But there are six circuits that would be better than Spa to have sprints.

Intel Goss is wide and I'm glad we've got that that's always served up a good sprint, But there's some you can just work your way down the order and go, no, we're not down there, We're not going there.

But when they call us to ask us which six we want, we'll we'll put our claim.

In we'll have the list ready to go.

I'm doing about a couple of other stories from this weekend, first weekend without Christian Horner on the Red Bull Racing pitball.

Don't think anyone noticed after too long.

Things moved pretty quickly.

In Formula one, Laura Meggie has got his career as Red Bull Racing team principle off to the perfect start with Maxi Stafford winning that forgetable sprint.

But it didn't I obviously wasn't able to finish on the podium in the Grand Prix.

Was Maxis stapp and frustrated.

It wasn't irony.

You know.

We talked about the rain earlier on that in Silverston had set up his car as a dry and it turned out to be wet.

In Belgium, he set it up for the wet and most of the race and being dry, but that's sometimes just the luck of things.

But I actually want to talk about Uki Sinodo, who's scored no points again, but actually I think much better weekend from him, certainly qualifying because his best qualifying at Red Bull Racing, both in terms of being seven on the grid and the percentage difference between him and the staffen so in terms of pace, got an upgrade this weekend.

Still not on the same class of upgrades, but there's a little difference there.

But I thought it was actually the way he talked about his feeling after qualifying, of having Lauren on the pit wall, felt like he felt like he was back at racing Bulls where he must have fond memories of his own high level of performance.

That I think is actually something we might see changing relatively quickly, that maybe just this change of manager might activate that second driver a little bit.

Yeah, you mentioned not many people had missed Christian Horne and not being there, including the Red Bull Comms department that still had a Christian's name above Laurel Mickeys's quotes and their post race press release of I forgot the age the template.

There would quotes.

We don't know.

It could have been his quotes.

He's probably on a horse somewhere or doing something.

It shows you.

We've discussed this in the past with Sonoda.

We forget sometimes because this is a mechanical, data driven sport, there is a human element that is less important for some drivers and more important for others and some you know, it's the character stick approach, isn't it.

Sonoda is someone who needs an arm Randy's shoulder to perhaps flatten out some of the emotional peaks and troughs that we've seen him go through.

He clearly responds to a different type of management structure, and as Sir Jeo Buru Is memorably said in an interview just recently, the whole Red Bull set up is the second driver is somewhat of an inconvenience there.

Let's be perfectly honest, because the whole thing is based around for stapit and for some drivers they might take that as a well, you know, I'll show you, I'll make you care about me because I'll get great results and there's a bit of us against the world and you know, fight your own corner.

Maybe Sonoda's not that driver, and that's not a criticism of Sonoda in any way.

Different people need different things to go racing and be the best version of themselves.

And there's a personal touch there with the Mechias stuff, because we know that there is a history between the two of them.

But even little things like coming off the pit wall or out of the garage to sort of give him the thumbs up and the round of applause after a particularly good session.

Sonoda wasn't getting that in the past, and there was absolutely no way and hell he was going to get that in the past.

And whether that is consciously annoying him or not, that's something that's not allowing you to be the best version of yourself.

And so if he feels that there's a little bit more belief and investment in what he's doing, perhaps that contributes to just being a little bit better on track.

He was actually really unlucky, just unfortunate in the race.

I think he got called in the call for him to come into pit came too late and he was already past the pit lane entry point, so he didn't pit when he was supposed to and fell outside.

Of the points.

Pace Wise, it was a lot more convincing.

I don't think there's suddenly going to be this huge transformation and that Red Bull are suddenly going to have two cars in Q three every weekend and they're going to be fighting for something meaningful.

But it was the first time you could actually say since Sonoda has been there that, oh, there is an uptick in his performance.

And there is so much of this season left to go.

We know that Redbell's winning need the championship this year, but it does pose an interesting question for twenty twenty six because we've got a new rule set coming in.

The whole Red Bull thing is very up in the air.

We know that v Stappens likely to stay now, which we'll get into in a bit, but the identity of who drives that second car it still seems to be, well, who's going to be driving at and in the past, does anyone care who's driving it?

Because it didn't really feel like they did.

I wonder if this is the first step to him having a perfectly decent end of the season and doing enough to at least maintain the status quo because there is a fast Formula One driver in there.

We've seen that he's never going to be the most metronomically consistent driver because that's not in his nature.

But he's also someone that can throw a surprise result from time to time if he feels that the team's behind him and he's got some beliefs, So it wouldn't surprise me if at all, if this becomes the rule rather than the exception.

I don't think he's going to be amazing.

I think he's going to be better than he has shown since he's been at Rebull Racing.

Yeah, and we shouldn't forget.

I mean, notwithstanding that maybe policies changed a little bit under a new team Vincible, but really what Red Bull Racing has wanted acknowledging that Max wi stapp and regardless of the folly of potentially building a team exclusively around him, is very good and they've only wanted a driver who can get within about three tenths of him.

That's usually pretty respectable.

Maybe these days it's so much closer at Theront you want a little bit less, but that was essentially where he was this weekend.

So as long as he can be thereabouts, that's good enough.

And I think there's.

Maybe almost a bit of a perverse advantage in these circumstances of him having had such a bad start that the only way he's up for him in a weird way, And yeah, it doesn't matter.

You know, there's a momentum alember.

There's also a you know, everyone loves to say you're only as good as your last result.

But if we get to the end of the year and he's gone from being regularly out in Q one and Q two to being regularly in the top ten and regularly scoring.

That's going to look like, well, it will be real progress, even if it's still down on what he was doing at other teams or at Racing Bulls any other team.

I think that will count for something.

I'd be surprised when we don't know how the second half of the season looks for him.

Maybe it's just as bad as the first, and then we do have more difficult conversations, but wouldn't be surprised with some improved results if they make what I think will be the right decision, short of some much more experienced driver suddenly rocking up on the market, and give him that second year in a new car that, hopefully for the sake of the team as much as the driver doesn't have all those negative traits built into it that make it so undriveable for anyone who isn't max with Staffen, and then he can perform in the way that we know and the way that he proved I think in the last well eighteen months, or let's say the year and a bit before he moved to Red Bull Racing, that he deserves that shot at being a front running driver, But that remains to be seen.

I guess for next year.

We do know now or ninety nine percent certain that Max with Staffann will be staying next year because Helmet Marco, who was told not that long ago to stop talking to the media, has told the media that Max with Staffen is locked in now for next year.

But we kind of knew that Matt, didn't We from what we knew about the contract clauses, the escape clauses that this was always likely going to happen.

Well, if we're understanding the same clause here, I believe that Verstaffen would have had freedom to do whatever he wished or at least break the contract he had if he was outside the top three in the World Championship at the mid season break, and looking at the points table now he cannot be outside the point of the top three and the mid season break which is coming up after Hungary, he is what is that eighteen points ahead of George Russell who is in fourth.

But even if George Russell was to tie him after Hungary, Verstappam would have the tiebreaker by virtue of winning more races.

So maxis staying where he is at least for twenty twenty six.

So I think it takes that out of the equation, and I think you'll probably see a Russell George Russell deal with Mercedes announced in pretty short order now, So it's going to maintain the status quo.

Now, what happens after twenty six comes in and new engines and are red Bull any good and what's going on with the power trains and so on and so forth.

That's a subsequent conversation.

But I think the Max Boltington Mercedes stories, we can probably press pause on those for a while.

Yes, And a hash tip I suppose to Nico Rosberg and think I'd say that too often for trying to get some answers out of yours for stuff about this entire.

Can we talk about Nicoburg for a second here?

There is a loose.

Canned element to him being on the sky f one broadcast, because, let's be honest, Nico Rosberg doesn't need to be there.

Nico Rosberg may even not want to be there all that much.

Nico Rosberg doesn't care what you think and doesn't care about protocols or anything else.

So there is a delightful element of kind of car crash TV going on when he's got a microphone and it's live, and he joined Martin Brundle on the grid walk before the Belgian Grand Prix, and it was probably the most fun I've had watching Nico Rosberg do anything for quite some time, because it was slightly unhinged and you knew that he was just going to wade in there and asking difficult questions because he does not care what you think about you in terms of the response.

I thoroughly enjoyed it and it was quite fun seeing your squirm a little bit, wasn't it.

Yes, it's amazing.

What affected has it a person when they know they're probably wealthier than everyone on the.

Grit they're going to talk to what do you mean?

Probably?

Yes, there was that point where you're not allowed to talk to the drivers anymore because it's close to end them time and you can hear Martin Brundle, please h Rosford not to try to talk to or any drivers because someone will particulably get in trouble for it.

Before we wrap up, I do want to touch very briefly on Lewis Hamilton and Ferrari.

Dreadful weekend for Lewis Hamilton, but a reasonable outcome I suppose in the context, not in the context of what he expected himself.

Seven to the Belgian Grand Prix, not great someone who's wanted so many times, but coming from eighteenth on the grid made many of those twenty odd overtakes that you mentioned all in the wet, though in the dry couldn't overtake anyone, at least of all Alex Elbon, who finished ahead of him, not for the first time this season as well.

So that says a little bit of something, but a little bit of optimism at the end of a weekend in which Ferrari brought that significant suspension change.

Char Leclair, at least, who had a better weekend, was much more positive about them, so he could feel the difference that had worked.

Lewis Hamilton as his way when things aren't going his way, says nothing is good and everything is bad.

But I suspect this week and in hungry he might actually realize the upgrade was okay.

But I thought there's two sizes, isn't there.

On the one hand, Ferrari emerged looking like a competitive for sex and best with red bull racing this weekend and scored more points and red bulls.

But on the other hand, I thought it was very telling how unenthusiastically charlote Cliff finished third on the podium, realizing there's twenty seconds to McLaren in a race with no safety cards.

I think that's sort of that's that tells you everything about Ferrari season.

Really, yeah, it does.

I mean, he was not the happiest buddy on the podium there when he's standing there with a bunch of people wearing orange.

He was in there for the team photos, but not super enthusiastic about it.

But the Hamilton weekend, I think it was what happened on Sunday salvaged a pretty dire weekend for him personally.

But we also know that there's probably plenty of head room with him in that upgrade package for the Ferrari to get better.

The interesting part for me is that yes, we already have one race before the mid season break.

It's a what you might say is he's best historically his best circuit.

He's been amazingly good at Hungary over the years, and I think if we're ever going to see him come to terms with a new package for a new car that he's only intermittently shone with this year, I think this weekend in Budapest, assuming that we get a sensible, dry race weekend where they're clearly not going to be fighting for the top step.

It'd be really interesting to see what difference he can make at a circuit where he's typically been really, really good with a weekend of getting used to this upgrade package under his belt.

I think this conversation that you and I have right now might be very different this time next week, because if he is able to have a strong top five, say in Budapest, and certainly be the equal to or maybe even ahead of Leclaire, I think that's a real step in the right direction.

Yeah, it's worth saying.

In the last or the four races before Belgium, let's say, has been really much closer to Charlott Clair, qualifying ahead of him regularly, in fact more often than not, and in the races he's been reasonable as well.

Yes, Laclire maybe hasn't had the cleanestrun, but it shows that that progress was there.

But there are a couple of things that take him back.

I mean, an upgrade on sprint weekend is always a risk, I think, particularly for a driver who is still adjusting to some of the nuances of this car.

A change in brake material we've learned now as well.

It's probably worth I thought it was an interesting or an important time to remember that his years of Mercedes, everything that happened at that time is essentially iterative.

Once you get used to the car for the first time, everything just changes gradually and you're part of that gradual change.

At Ferrari's had to get used to brand new car and then all these sudden changes sort of throw him out of that process a little bit.

We should make excuses.

He's a seven time world champion.

He would have been expecting to do better than this at this point.

But it all feels explainable, especially when the target is next year anyway, when everyone's going to start from a clean page.

So as long as he's not embarrassing himself out there this season, I think there's still reason to feel like this Ferrari chapter doesn't have to be a Peter out and can at least deliver some high points.

Yeah, and Dan, and I think you mentioned the back end of the season here.

It was a characteristic of all of his championship winning seasons at Mercedes, or even seasons in his career where he's not been fighting for a World Championship.

He's always been a much better second half driver than a first half driver, and a lot of the times he would win his championships with Mercedes is we would get the other side of the mid season break and he would just be absolutely lights out.

For the rest of the season, he would be fantastic, including quite frankly, the season that he didn't win the World Championship in twenty twenty one, where I don't I think that might be the best he's ever driven.

Over the last five or six races of that season, he was absolutely perfect, and we know why he didn't win the World Championship.

But there is a trend there.

He is really really good towards the back end of seasons.

That's when he tends to peak.

When you mentioned before, he's comfortable with the environment and the machinery and the way it's developed, and then he can be the best version of himself.

I think the arrow will point up for him for the rest of the season.

We pretty much used up all of our time him out, but we cannot end without visiting the crystal ball by complete home filtration.

I don't think either of us have much of a record on this this season, we should have been keeping a tally within again, maybe better that we don't.

Boy certainly think whatever I wanted to predict the Hamilton's Sprint, wind of a staff and race win.

Dire I had a Mercedes or the podium.

It's even more dire if we're going to have a competition to see whose crystal ball needs to go in the bin the first.

But yeah, I've managed to plug by crystal ball in this week and actually get some sort of battery in it.

And I'm going to stick with something we discussed before in terms of the Yuki Sindo question at Red Bull Racing.

So, Yuki Sonoda is currently in seventeenth place in the World Championship standings with ten points, and he has not scored since round seven, which is a very very long time ago.

Round seven, he says, hovering his mouse over the table, here was back in the Amelia Romonia Grand Prix.

Lest we forget that one.

I'm going to go out on a limb.

Here my crystal ball says that by the end of the season, Yuki Sonoda is going to score at least thirty points.

So he's going to score twenty points in the remaining eleven rounds of the season.

That's actually not a lot.

But you can get to thirty points if you can get to thirty points, if you have a sixth here and a couple of sevenths there, and I think that's entirely possible.

So we can revisit this one in December if I'm correct, and if I'm not correct, I will never mention it again, and neither will you.

I like that if he scores thirty points, not thirty additional points or thirty in total.

No, thirty total.

I'm not going to give thirty more.

I'm going to get He'll get to the he's going to have to score twenty one more points for the remainder.

Of the season.

I think it's happening.

So he still finishes behind Nikko HOLKENBERGA very probably.

That's I do.

I know he's got thirty seven seven.

It's thirty seven to twenty seven.

I like it.

I like the long range.

I like the simultaneously low but high bars somehow, so I'm very excited to see that.

I'm going to continue I think probably flogging a dead horse with this one.

I've made a lot of Lewis Hamilton predictions that obviously have not come true.

But like you say, this is one of his arguably his best track probably with Silverston, and he's got eight victories here, way more than anybody else, and Hungry is a long standing circling forward on.

It's been around for a long.

Time and he's just consistently been fast here.

I think he's not going to win it, but I think he's going to get onto the podium.

That's as good as any anyone else can aim for this season, obviously, because I think McLaren's gonna have things in pretty straightforward fashion like they did last year with the one two.

I'll be McLaren one to where things with Lewis Hamilton complementing the podium.

I do like this because you're working on the theory that a stopped clock is right twice a day.

So you're just going to keep we Habilton predictions out there and sometime between now in December you're going to go see I got my Habilt one right, and I won't have to remind you that the previous ten were complete rubbish.

Yeah, well, let's see what happens.

But I don't have high homes personally Considay, how often I've been wrong, but that's okay.

That's all the time we have for pit Talk today.

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This weekend is the Formula one Hungarian Grand Prix, with lights out at eleven pm on Sunday.

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Dot are you from Matt Clayton and me Michael Lomanato.

Thanks very much for your company.

We'll catch you next week.