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Fast cars, lightning reflexes, and the unknown future-- this is Blind Corners. News and chatting about the latest topics around the Formula 1 World Championship. Hosted by Bryce Castillo. Putting the 'theory' in critical racing theory since 2023.
[This transcript has been generated.]
[0:00] Coming up, Audi's team leader departs immediately. Plus, thoughts on that great Chinese Grand Prix, how to actually use F1 TV Premium, it's not as easy as you
[0:09] think, and storylines to watch out for in the upcoming Japanese Grand Prix. I'm blind, Bryce Castillo, this is Blind Corners. I'm on my way to you. Good at what I do. I'm OMW.
[0:26] We are a week past the Chinese Grand Prix. It's been really fascinating to watch everyone's reactions to the race because I think Australia left a lot of people feeling kind of like cautiously optimistic that the racing might be good. And I feel like the Chinese Grand Prix was a total humdinger. Like Mercedes got their one, two. They got their cars into the position around lap 30 or so. And I was still hooked into the race past lap 41 out of like 50 some laps. I was like still super duper. And it was only really the last five laps or so that were actually like dead air where like kind of nothing was going on. And even in like the Hamilton domination days, you couldn't always ask for a lame duck period of the race to be that short. You know, I thought that there was actually a really, really strong fight between the Ferraris with George and Kimi having having a look.
[1:36] But it also wasn't just like it wasn't just like when Max won every race that season and just just flew off into the sunset. Like it was actually there actually was a race even for like having two really dominant cars in the mix. And that leads me to like another thought. I know last time on this podcast, I did a whole segment on how to unruin Formula One. Thinking about having spent a week to think about the Chinese Grand Prix, I actually feel like the current regulations that they've got, the new formula. Kind of fixed a big foundational problem of the previous regs here in the turbo hybrid area both of them where they did have a battery unit because i mean how many times was it where someone made a pass you either using their electrical deploy or with like drs and then you couldn't quite get a lot of back and forth battling right because either the battery took a while to charge or Or then you have DRS problems, DRS trains, things like that. And I feel like by making the battery more effective, more responsive.
[2:48] Recharging quicker, I think you actually cut off that problem of he used his battery to make the move, but now he's got no more battery for like a whole lap. I think by at least letting the drivers recharge that battery faster and deploy it faster more often, i think makes it a little more skillful to actually have to use that battery a lot and tactically rather than just like it takes me a lap but i have to recharge the battery and then of course like it that all depends on like the track right we'll talk about a little bit with with the japanese grand prix coming up but the chinese uh circuit it was fantastic for this race there were lots of braking zones um which meant that there was a lot of recharging um and And so that there was there was a lot of battery usage. And ever since I got into that perspective of like, oh, this actually like fixes like a fundamental issue with the turbo hybrid and battery unit specifically. I'm still like one bad race away from getting getting back, hopping back onto the fence. But I feel like I start I'm seeing and I'm seeing the pieces. I'm seeing the mathematics happening around me. And I'm cautiously optimistic. I'm cautiously optimistic now, which is a huge, huge progress. Yes.
[4:04] Some of the team storylines from China, starting off with McLaren, a surprise did not start yet again, especially for Oscar Piastri, hasn't done one racing lap yet.
[4:19] And McLaren said that there was an issue on both cars, the same part on both cars.
[4:26] Obviously, like gremlins can happen and all, but I think we are starting to see like the recoil of McLaren really investing heavily into the 2025 fight that that the same part could have the same issue on two sides of the garage at the same time like that's not even a gremlin that kind of sounds like maybe the eyes were not on the ball on this one speaking of hard luck hard luck for max who did not finish the race a good crop of points though for Isaac Hadjar how many do you it four points look at that kind of hard luck for max he got a dnf in china but uh isaac got a good position he's p8 uh he got four points which again is like the red bull second seat like goalpost removing the goalpost just for isaac and p8 is pretty good i i feel like red bull are going to have a real tough time fighting at the front pack but again like we can't know that it's actually deliver uh fully properly in a race but speaking of delivering properly at a race but big ggs to kimmy antonelli uh he took his maiden win that makes him the second youngest winner here in formula one after max verstappen uh he's the first italian winner in quite a long time i want to say it's a couple decades george had a bit of a time uh trying to catch up with kimmy did george have like a bad start or something.
[5:51] But it was a SureShot P2 for George and that Mercedes looks...
[5:59] It looks fast, folks. And I don't think it's just engine compression. There's got to be like a battery trick or something that they're doing. I feel like they got to have a battery trick. We got to check these cars. Check these cars. Check these cars. Ferrari, Hamilton podium, his first podium with Ferrari. It took him a long time. Did I see the stat that it took the longest time for a Ferrari driver to get a podium? I don't know if that's quite right. That battle with Leclerc where George was just gutted on by in his way. Was amazing. That was some of the most sophisticated driving, like very clean driving. I was so, so scared watching Lewis and Charles race together because they were this close. Just one bad move. And it's not like, it's more than just bumping into another car. It's bumping to your teammate on your team, ruining everybody's team. It could have been so bad. Granted, you know, Lewis Hamilton, who has a ton of race craft. Charlotte Claire, who has a ton of race craft. They're some of the best driver, maybe the best drivers on the grid. But I had my haunches up. I was ready. I was ready for the despair.
[7:16] But they held on, but they held on, and that was so good. Going into the mid and backpacks here, Williams had an okay showing at the end of the race. Cola Pinto securing P10 away from Nico Hulkenberg. They could be in the mix, but it's still a lot of talk. They still have a lot of development to go with their car. And on the Audi side, that P11 for Hulk was not great. I mean, it's no points. P11 is no points. but it was like a pretty good showing and there was a good gap to Lindblad behind. So I think Audi are showing that they at least are in the mid-pack. Of course, that's not going to do anything if they don't get both of their cars to start the race. Gabriel having to sit this one out. Haas with an incredible crop, P5 for Ollie Bearman. What happened at Ocon?
[8:05] Estaban Ocon, P14, a lap down. So, but Haas are showing that they deserve to be in the mid-pack mix. I don't know that they have even gotten necessarily to the level of top of the mid-pack. I think racing bulls are showing a lot of chutzpah there. I think the Alpine Pierre Gasly getting P6 is like a shock, a pretty big shock. In fact, I'm going to say this, the double points for Alpine. We got to check the cars. We need to check the cars. Flavia, we need to check your cars. We were talking about racing bulls. It's P7 for Lawson, which is a pretty good result. Lindblad showed a lot of promise. He finished P12 in this race, but he had a lot of, he just had mistakes. And ultimately in F1 and like at this level of racing where it's very like perfection-based, mistakes cost the most. They cost you the most out of anything because it's just wasted time. And so if he locks up, he goes wide, whatever, like those seconds add up and like that, well... Was close. The gap was pretty close for Lindblad. I mean, P12, but he was in the mix. And if he can get those mistakes cleaned up, that racing bull is also like going to show up in the mid-pack. Some backpack stories, a double race finish for Cadillac.
[9:29] Again, like it's not infantilizing. You actually really, again, Aston Martin, McLaren, Red Bull, and Audi have not had both of their cars finish either of these two Grands Prix. So like that's another gold medal for Cadillac. Take the gold medal away, though, from from Sergio Perez for touching Valtteri Bottas. You guys, that's that's really Valtteri and Sergio. God, Valtteri and Sergio at the very start of the race running into each other in the same race where Lewis Hamilton and Charles Leclerc did like a master class of racing each other it's like it's like dramatic irony it's delicious you can't do that no metal for you perez not today and another big one for cadillac is p13 for valtteri botas beating out esteban okan that's not okan's year that's that's a crazy showing p13 granted.
[10:30] That's out of 15 people who finished. Get fucked, Esteban O'Conn.
[10:36] That's all I got. And speaking of getting fucked, finally, we're going to talk about Aston Martin. Completely, completely boned. Completely boned. DNF for both Fernando and Lance. They got to get this thing working. They got to get this thing together. And it's starting to become troubling because there are the clips of Fernando from the race. And there's one clip where he is like he takes Santa's wheel to kind of like wave at I want to say it's Perez and the Cadillac going by it's like kind of a cute moment but then there are other clips of Fernando like having to take his hands off the wheel because the vibrations this vibration problem that they're having is like still a problem I mean he made it long he made it longer than you know 25 laps I think did he how many laps did he make we don't know have that information in front of us. This ship is on fire. And the problem with the ship being on fire, the ship being Aston Martin Formula One team, is that all of the other teams are not on fire. So every second that you're on fire is two seconds you're losing because the other teams are not spending a second dealing with the fire and then spending a second doing the thing that they want to do.
[11:52] That's not how time works. First of all, that's not how time works. So that's the Chinese Grand Prix. Let me know how you thought about it. I think it's a good, I thought it was a good race. I am maybe even a tick higher than cautiously optimistic that Japan will be good. But only one click, and I'll talk about why in a minute.
[12:11] So this year was a big change to the broadcast deal for Formula One. In America, Apple TV now has the rights to the live stream, the live broadcast of Formula One. And I kind of want to talk about some of the differences, because I felt like I needed to kind of do an exploration on what features are available where, especially because I ran into a lot of problems that made me think, shouldn't I be having this feature? To me, this is all about the multi-view, because I know that there is a multi-view feature on F1 TV. They've had it for a long time. I've never been able to use it, partly because it's a premium thing. And I didn't have premium until the Apple TV deal. So the Apple TV deal means now that everyone who gets F1 through Apple also just gets F1 TV premium. And so if you were used to using F1 TV, the Apple TV deal kind of doesn't change anything other than probably bumping you up into that premium tier. So with F1, there's always kind of been two products, right? There's the broadcast product and the F1 TV product. And so last year, it was pretty traditional. ESPN and ABC and all took the TV broadcast rights and then F1 TV to stream over the internet. But because Apple TV is a streaming service now, that broadcast TV product is also a streaming product. Now, the Apple TV product is still pretty similar to the ESPN one. You can see the archive of broadcasts. The broadcasts have ads in them.
[13:39] You have kind of limited access to the archives, the audio feeds. You should still get 4K HDR on the Apple product. And Apple TV as an app is like available on more things than the F1 TV app is. Like I have an Apple TV app on my PlayStation, but F1 TV does not have a native app for the PlayStation. But there are some bummers about the Apple TV product. You do get the archives of the broadcast, and you can watch the Sky, the British feed, of F1 live, but they don't keep an archive of that feed, and they don't let you watch the actual broadcast with the Sky audio feed like you can do on the F1 TV app. Also, just like the Apple TV app is still undercooked. I was doing this experiment, and every time I would want to...
[14:29] Pull up the chinese grand prix the full broadcast archive it would always start me at the very beginning of the broadcast which means the first thing you see is like a 60 second aws ad but it also like pops up the race in 30 when you do this so if you just want to watch the race real quick in 30 minutes then they kind of put like the apple tv app feels like a minimum viable product almost but also like in the apple-y sort of way like they don't want to give you too many options they just want you to you just want these things most likely so here are most of them especially because for casual viewers i think this is all they need they want to watch it live they may want to watch it live with crofty's voice they may want to watch the archive that wanted to be in high def and you're going to want as many devices as you can but the i think giving people f1 tv premium as a part of the apple tv deal i think is is a really major thing and i hope that that continues to be part of the broadcast deal for years to come because the F1 TV product is really sophisticated and is really mature. The F1 TV app also has 4K and HDR for premium. It also has its own multi-viewer feature so you can pop up the live feed and then like the map, the track map, and then, you know, maybe the drivers that you want to keep an eye on.
[15:50] Some versions of this will probably come to Apple TV, but I don't think that they have it yet. It also lets you watch with all of the audio feeds, so you can watch the full-length archive with, say, the Sky feed and any of the international broadcaster audio.
[16:05] Plus, that world feed, they don't inject ads into it. You're not going to get interrupted in the middle of qualifying Apple to watch four minutes of AWS ads. Excuse me. but then it has access to the whole f1 archive so all the previous races they've got lots of documentaries they also do like a lot of commentary shows jolene palmer's analysis tech talk but the other great thing about f1 tv premium is that it should uh give you full access to multi-viewer which is a an app made by a fan for a computer pc and mac uh where you you log in with your F1 credentials and it lets you take all of the feeds and put them exactly where you want, make them the right size. You can get the team radios, the different driver cams, the trackers, the timing data, and you can put it. There's like those videos of the man cave and it's got screens everywhere and the screen's got different.
[17:00] They're usually using Multiviewer for something like that. And so it feels a little confusing now because both of the products available in the US are streaming products and there's a good amount of overlap. What's interesting, This is the very first time I've seen a streamer that doesn't have feature parity across the Apple TV devices. So I have an Apple TV HD at home. So it's the one with the touchscreen remote, but it's not the 4K version of that one. I found out that the reason the F1 TV app on my Apple TV doesn't do multi-angle is because that's a premium feature only for the Apple TV 4K device. And then because I'm like an Apple fanboy, I watch F1 TV and the Safari browser. And even though Safari is a supported browser, it does not support fucking Multiview.
[17:51] It will, if you do, if you spoof your user agent to tell it that you're a Chrome browser, it will kind of work for a minute, but it's not. It's not a good work. So that's a little bit of a watching guide to F1 TV.
[18:03] One of the new things that I think everyone should check out is one of the camera angles that they give you on F1 TV is the driver tracker and or the data tracker. They've upgraded what's on that screen this year. So you get tire information, timing information, but you also get like an event feed. It'll tell you like uh botas is catching on perez or you know uh george russell has taken the lead of the race this effect this changes the standing in the world championship like kind of like hey watch out for this um but then also it has a feed of the team radios which is a similar thing that you used to only be able to get in the multi-viewer app but it'll show just text it won't play the audio of the drivers and the pit engineers communicating to each other. So you have a little feed on that. And so these are pretty big changes that are also really quiet and haven't really talked about. But I think those are really cool things to see during the race. I feel like they give you really like boots on the ground information on how
[19:06] the drivers and the cars are feeling and about what everyone is kind of planning to do next. And speaking of planning on what to do next, hit the sounder. Breaking news in the F1 circle, Jonathan Wheatley has resigned, effective immediately, from the Audi F1 team. This unfolded in a really interesting way because before Audi announced it, there was a very loud rumor going around that.
[19:33] Adrian Newey would be replaced or would step down from the team principal role in Aston Martin for Jonathan Wheatley to come in and take that spot. And this is a pretty big shock.
[19:45] Wheatley was attached to this Audi F1 project from early on, even when it was supposed to be Andreas Seidel, who was going to be the team principal. And after two races where Audi, again, have shown really, really good potential, especially for being a new works team with a new a power unit manufacturer and so this will leave Mattia Bonato as the team principal but at the very least this will impact morale over at the Audi team because they I don't think I'm overstating that they have had a really strong start of a year for what used to be like the middling Sauber team like now they are like a less middling Audi team. But the only team that needs that sort of reclamation arc more than Audi is Aston Martin. This kind of feels like a bravado, like, we've got a problem, just spend the money to fix it. And I think that really just signals, like, Aston Martin are not, maybe not ready for this. It's not the team principal's fault if the engine is shaking, right? It's not necessarily Adrian Newey's fault. If anything, it's Lawrence Stroll's fault for taking the Honda team, which was not ready to make an F1 engine, clearly, and paid out.
[21:08] Majorly out of the ass for them to make this like B-grade engine. Not to mention like Jonathan Wheatley has been a part of this Audi project. He's been talking up how good this project is. And so that just screams to me that like they are putting more good money after even more bad money. And I think like the shame of it all is going to be that they're going to get away with telling people it's because Jonathan Wheatley wanted to live in the UK more. Because I think he has to live in Switzerland, where the Sauber team's headquarters was. When really, this is like a desperation move from Lawrence Stroll. Like the only more desperate move they could have done would have been to hire Christian Horner to run the Aston Martin team. And obviously that would have been its own headache. But I don't know why Nui was there in the first place. Nothing against him, but he's a card designer. He's not necessarily like a manager, a leader of a team. And maybe there's an argument to be made that like the team principal is kind of a figurehead and, you know, should be, you know, recognizable even. But by the same token, where other F1 teams are like expanding their leadership roles, like McLaren does have a team principal, but then also Zac Brown is also all around. But then also in McLaren, under the team principal role, they have different heads of different departments.
[22:36] Which makes me question, like, is Aston Martin not organizationally mature enough to have a structure like that where you can have someone be kind of a figurehead who also spends his time over in this little part of the pie?
[22:50] Or did they really think like Adrian Newey would just be like the rock star team principal and roll up and fix everything and drag his pen and the car will flow through the air? So after this news broke, Lauren Stroll put out a comment. I want to read you this quote because it was kind of like a long quote with the current speculation around Adrian Newey's role in her team. I want to set the record straight, controlling shareholder, reaffirm that he's my partner. He's the managing technical partner. We do things differently here. But he ends it with this. we are regularly approached by senior executives of other teams who wish to join Aston Martin Aramco, but in keeping with our policy, we do not comment on rumor or speculation. And that was how they ended their comment on the rumor and speculation.
[23:32] The Japanese Grand Prix will be again taking place at the Suzuka Circuit. This is another high speed flowing track, kind of like Australia. And after this race, I think we'll get a sense of how much track layout is going to dictate how good of a race there is oh my god does this mean that like all of the herman tilka f1 tracks that he designed are going to be like great racing tracks because they all have the same like track pieces i don't have any evidence of that but that's just something that came across my mind that like that the tilka apocalypse is happening suzuka is another fast flowing track there's not a lot of braking zones which means that energy recovery will be lower, kind of on the lower end, potentially like in Australia. Another storyline from all the way in Australia is which of these teams will actually manage to start and finish?
[24:24] The two cars that they have entered the world championship with. Oscar Piastri hasn't done one racing lap yet. Red Bull's got a really bad track record so far. Aston Martin, come on. Even Audi have had some trouble trying to get both of their cars to the end. This probably won't be for Japan, but I think it was Carlos was out there talking for Williams, saying that their recovery charge is going to have to start in Miami in like five weeks' time. They're still like overweight. They just don't like have it all hooked up. They're a team that talks big. We only have these deficits in front of us. Once we solve these, you know, look how fast we could be. You have to prove it. You had such a strong showing last year, you have to prove it again. I don't expect any of the teams will have major upgrades, though we will have to keep an eye out on Ferrari again. In China, Ferrari did briefly use the Macarena rear wing, the rotating rear wing. They used it in practice, but they ended up replacing it for the sprint and the race quality and those sessions. Alongside that, Ferrari was testing a new winglet that they attached to the protective halo device in front of the driver's faces. Now, the FIA have really strict rules about what you can and cannot modify on that halo system. But Ferrari was testing out a new winglet design that is on that main front pillar of the halo.
[25:49] And it is meant to flow air over the driver's head instead of directly into them and creating drag. But Ferrari believed that because these winglets were see-through, that they counted more as a windshield than a wing. They felt confident about that, but not enough to actually use it in any of the competitive sessions. They took it off because there was some grumbling from the FIA and teams about, is that legal? Are you actually allowed to do that? But I love that. That's a great sign. The idea that like Ferrari is like pushing the bounds, pushing the limits, pushing the rules. And kind of taking advantage of the fact that they have this really strong design for race starts with the smaller turbo. We've seen that they are really, really good off the line. And those race start points are really critical. And then between the Macarena wing and this thing, plus like we talked about like they've put a wing on the back exhaust to try to shape the flow of the exhaust air out. And maybe these will like all be for nothing. I think they still have the exhaust winglet, but the Macarena winglet, they don't have that halo winglet they didn't use in a competitive session. But I like seeing Ferrari be innovative. I like seeing them try new things and try to push them right there. And this is a sign that they are not stuck in the same problems everyone else has with battery recharge and race starts and all that. They're able to focus on like performance.
[27:19] And if you are not a Ferrari fan we are at the up part of the Ferrari fan cycle it will go back down it will go back down, believe you me so those are some of the storylines from Japan I'm excited, I think Suzuka is a great circuit, it's a classic track I love driving it on Gran Turismo I'm excited to see how the new cars will fare if they fare.
[27:41] Alright, hit the sound and let's go to the outro thank you so much for listening that's going to be the Blind Corners podcast for you today Subscribe over on patreon.com slash lfgx, four little letters. Support a bunch of great stuff like this, the Two Tusks Music Podcast, and LFG Marbles, which is testing, and it will be back very soon. Thank you, everybody, for your patience on that. We will be back after the Japanese Grand Prix with more news and reactions and all sorts of great stuff. I'm Blind Bryce Castillo, and this has been Blind Corners. Meow. We'll see you next time.