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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 is F1 Ruined, plus the Aussie GP review and my surefire plan to unruin Formula One. I'm Blind Bryce Castillo and this is Blind Corners. We are on the other side of the Australian Grand Prix, and I thought that it was an interesting race. I think that's probably the most PC way I can put that. I mean, the start of the race was thrilling, right? We actually had some jockeying for position. A lot of the front row teams were not fully charged up with their battery at the start of the race. So it led to a lot of back and forth, which was great. There was a certain amount of thrill to watch that opening act of the race. A lot of going back and forth.
[1:04] The yo-yoing at some point started to lose its shine. It started to become very obvious like, okay, well, there's like an overtake. But now the overtakes don't mean as much.
[1:15] We don't even need to get into the whole social media graphic. But to suffice it to say, like there were a lot more overtakes in the Australian Grand Prix this year, but I don't know that many, many fans would say that any of those overtakes were like as decisive as they would have been last year. But i did appreciate that this wasn't a race where the fastest car got off the line and then we just spent 90 minutes watching the fastest car build a bunch of distance to second and third place we definitely saw plenty of lewis hamilton years with that and we played we saw max verstappen got plenty of drive off into the sunset races under his belt too so i i think like there is a I think genuinely.
[2:00] The change of the formula is meant to make good racing. And I think on paper, it... Got all of the KPIs that Formula One was looking for. The question now is going to be like, will the teams figure out the new way to drive these cars to make these overtakes stick a little better? I would say that this Australian Grand Prix was not my favorite. I would like to see what this race looks like after the teams have had a better chance to figure out the methodologies and just the actual way to drive these cars. Because clearly there are a lot of completely new elements to the entire procedure that the teams haven't had to focus on as heavily. All the talk of super clipping, the downshifting into the long straights. These are solvable problems. These are solvable problems. We just don't have them solved yet.
[2:59] And for the Formula One actual broadcast, the actual television product, I feel like they were also caught a little flat-footed with the new regulations. Like, they did have some new graphics on screen. You know, they updated the Halo overlay with a little bit more battery meters. There were some interesting, like, when there would be a dual kind of between two cars. Then they would put the battery charge of those cars up. And I actually thought it was really informative to see just how fast the batteries recharge and then
[3:35] fully, you know, deploy. I don't think that the TV product necessarily gave us.
[3:41] Much more than that when it came to understanding the new cars like the commentators i thought were doing their very best and also it did kind of feel like all weekend all of the sessions this weekend were just about just talking about the battery and how you have to deploy it across the track but then you have to recharge it very strategically i don't see the chess game yet it's tough for me to follow it i would love to see i would love to see those rechargeable battery gauges somewhere on screen more prominently or more semi-permanently and not necessarily in the way that formula e does it or with the goal of becoming formula e like i don't think it's very helpful to watch a 100 number start ticking down all the way to zero at the end of the race i don't think that's necessarily helpful either but we need some i know that like the teams don't apparently like having that that battery um gauge on screen all the time but clearly the broadcast team have access to to that data but i i think that's a.
[4:43] Part of the tv product that just like they weren't ready for it feels like they weren't ready for it or didn't didn't even consider that they might need to change the way that they broadcast the race fundamentally is that the whole story of this formula just that fundamentally everyone was not ready for the fundamental change i mean i think they just weren't ready for the question of do we need to fundamentally change how we display this information to people do we fundamentally change how we drive and build a car and it just seems like.
[5:16] A lot of teams both racing teams and maybe some of the f1 actual crew just were not fully prepared for it yet also okay i don't have a lot of bad stuff to talk about the Apple TV Formula One broadcast deal, except to say that.
[5:34] When I fell asleep before the race started, because it was at fucking 10 p.m. Here in Texas, that I woke up exactly one lap away from the finish, and my intelligent phone lock screen told me, hello, this is the information that you were requesting, which is the spoilers for the race that you are not watching now. Here you go. Good morning. It's 1130. Good morning. Some of the other stories out of the Aussie GP, one of the big ones here is the Australian GP curse strikes again, Oscar Piastri crashed. He didn't even crash on, like, the warm-up lap or the it's the recon lap. It's the lap that all the cars do before they even turn on the broadcast. Like, it happened in such a specific no-man's land of the schedule, right before everything starts that they didn't even have the footage of him crashing for the live broadcast. It is in the race in 30, but it was not in the live broadcast, which made my, like, groggy ass really confused.
[6:35] It's Oscar and just having to find like the one sentence in the whole pre-race warm up like oh Oscar crashed his car so we didn't get a good sense of how the two McLaren drivers compare to each other but Lando did manage to hold up pretty well in the front pack even though they don't like fully understand that power unit the way Mercedes do I kind of get the sense that Mercedes have got a secret on both sides right like there's the compression ratio stuff which had been a story i mean we talked about a lot last week that maybe it was is that a red herring is that potentially a red herring is there another facet on the ice side that we don't fully get we also kind of got the sense from hearing of the team principals that mercedes have also got.
[7:25] Something figured out about their battery that is putting them a couple clicks above everybody else so there's still some work to go for mclaren mercedes on the other hand i mean since at the end of fp3 george went and did a fucking stonker of a lap like he was starting to do a fast lap and then kimmy kimmy crashed yeah kimmy crashed his car in the end of free practice three ruined a fast lap that George was on. And then George went out again and did another fast lap.
[7:57] And I want to say he was like, I don't know, a half second or more faster than the next teams. Like he, they finally, I can imagine it. I can imagine in like the drive to survive style that George is going up to Toto. Please let me, let me, let me open it up, Toto. Please let me open it up. I want to scare all of our team. I want to scare all the other teams. Toto, please let me open it up. And pretty much since then, Mercedes have they rocked everyone during qualifying and they rocked everyone during the Grand Prix. They rocked it like a hurricane. Speaking of the other top teams, the Tifosi, congratulations, the Tifosi no longer have a standing suicide watch. The Ferraris are doing well this year, everyone. Well, alert, alert. The Ferraris are doing well this year.
[8:44] Charo and Lewis were definitively the second fastest team. And I, look, Ferrari goofed up on those virtual safety cars. They had two chances to get cheap pit stops early in the race when the other teams took it. And the Ferraris didn't. And they never ended up getting an opportunity later in the race to get a cheap pit stop. And so the fact that they were, you know, 10 or 15 seconds behind the Mercedes, depending on how you want to slice it, that's in the margin. I think that's in the margin for a cheap pit stop.
[9:18] And it tells me that Ferrari really should have been in the hunt for a win. And so maybe we have to turn the standing suicide watch back on because none of the Ferrari have a good car, but they still have Ferrari strategists.
[9:32] There's a real chance here for Ferrari. I mean, even outside of like the shock race opening where Charles took the lead and kept fighting back and forth for the lead. Like, they have a really strong car. Charles is obviously like Ferrari's eldest son. And then Lewis Hamilton is showing a lot of that race craft again. While we're on the top teams, Red Bull had an interesting Australian GP as well. Max crashing out in Q1 meant that he started, what, back of the pack? Fully back of the pack, more or less? I think that what happened to Max when he crashed out in qualifying was that I think he had to downshift. Into that turn, the turn where he crashed and he said, my rear axle locked up. I'd never seen that anything happen like that in my career ever. I think it's because he had to downshift there. This is totally hypothetical. I'm not an F1 pilot. I'm not a rocket engineer. I'm not a race engineer. But the exact same thing kept happening to me in a Mazda MX-5 on iRacing over this weekend. I would keep, I would downshift too early. For me, it was because I just like to downshift. And so I downshift too early, like all the time. And so I kept downshifting early and in the wrong part of a turn and maybe in that car, that Mazda that I'm talking about, the shift could be like.
[10:56] The gear that you're in could be related to like the brake balance or fucking who knows. And I wouldn't be surprised if that is the same issue Max Verstappen had. Max Verstappen had an iRacing issue. I can confirm that right now here on this podcast. But that set the stage for the Driver of the Day Award for Max Verstappen. To get a really, really strong recovery drive. Plus, I feel like we did get a good showing from Isaac Hadjar. Obviously, he couldn't finish the race, but it was really good to see him out there and keeping him more or less with the rest of the front pack. But because of all of the circumstances between Max's crash and then Isaac having to retire the car, We also didn't get the best sense of how Red Bull have figured out the formula. I think they were on the back foot on both sides of the garage all weekend. So I feel like it is understandable that he only got P-sex from starting at the back. Moving on to the mid-pack and the back-pack. All I've written down for Williams is honkshu, honkshu, me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me.
[12:08] Racing Bulls, points for Arvid Lindblad, P8. That is pretty strong. I think that makes him, what, the third or fourth youngest person to get points in Formula One. They were rolling this stat out all weekend. But it's great to see a rookie come in into a sister team, the junior team and get points even when like the sharp half of the there were like a lot of retirements from this race but other than Isaac and Piastri it didn't affect the top 10 too too much which makes me think like Arvid and Liam have a have a shot it won't help if Liam keeps getting P13 that's not really going to get you there but but it's good to know that the racing bull car isn't a complete shit job as expected aston martin uh were only able to do a few laps before they had to retire both cars we talked about this last week that they have a shortage of parts i think primarily the batteries uh they only had none they have no spare parts the team very it was very funny that the team like quietly did send the cars out in the later half of the race to do you know, testing and all.
[13:23] It was a little goofy to see, to see the, was it Stroll? Was it Stroll that went, that kept going back out? To see that name keep popping up and still like being under another DNF race car. Next up, points for Haas. Oliver Behrman got P7 to get some points on the opening race. A near miss for Ocon, Esteban Ocon. P10 went to Pierre Gasly. That meant Ocon had to get P11. This is not exactly the mid-pack leader we thought coming out of testing. I mean, it's a great showing for Behrman, but Ocon has a little bit of potential to eke out. And also, I think Haas are on the bubble where, because of the retirements, I think Ali ended up getting probably more points than he would have otherwise.
[14:10] Speaking of the younglings, Gabriel Bortoletto also getting points here on the first race. Nico had a DNS, did not start. There was some sort of engine gremlin or something that they couldn't figure out. So Nico didn't end up starting the Australian Grand Prix. But Bortoletto taking the checkered flag, getting some points is a really, really good showing. Again, this is the Audi engine. So, like, the expectations on the team are still pretty good because it's not a totally brand new team. I mean, they were the Sauber team. But a completely new engine getting points on its first race, I think it's really solid. And at the back of the pack, yes, they were the last car to take the checkered flag. But it was still a very good showing for Cadillac. P16 for Sergio Perez. Valtteri had to retire the car I think the commentators suggested it was a hydraulics issue because the engine was still running when he got out of the car Now Chekhov took the checkered flag plus three laps off the lead which is, I mean, yes, it was still last place. But again, this is a completely fresh-faced team. They're whole new from scratch. And honestly, one of the two cars finishing a race distance is completely in the green zone. That is a total success for Cadillac. Both of their cars could have retired and we could still be doing this segment talking about how Cadillac have a success. That's the Australian GP. Not the worst race in the world. Definitely not the best race in the world. Let's fix this shit.
[15:37] All right, so I've got some ideas to possibly, potentially, unruin Formula One. I kind of have broken these up into time periods. I think the quickest fixes, I don't even know that these will necessarily even solve all of the teething problems. But I think a quick fix, I'm going to bang this drum, reverse grids. I think reverse grids, maybe not even the full grid, maybe reverse the first half of the grid or bisect the grid, reverse the two halves or something. I'm not saying that this is a direct fix for the problems. I think what reverse grids would do is create upside, right? I don't think they will fix the problem, but I think they will create a new competitive wrinkle that applies to everyone. We don't need to change the mechanicals. We can continue to have like a competitive challenge in this sports league and we can do it quickly. I think that's a doable thing. Another potential. This is another super wild card. I think it could benefit all of the teams. It should benefit all the teams.
[16:41] Unlimited tires and get rid of the compound requirements. Again, this is not a solution to the problem of the new formula is kind of a weird race to watch. It's a total wild card. But I think it would benefit or certainly affect all of the teams equally. And again, I think it opens up a potential for strategy, a strategy zone where the teams can all kind of walk their own path to get to where we want to go. Those are not even going to fix any of the quote unquote problems. But I think these are relatively fair things that they could do to make the current season more interesting. It does not affect. no these are not actually even fixes these are just let's just put some upside if there's some upside here maybe the hardcores won't kill it now things that would take you know a whole year another season to kind of implement would be actually changing the power units right do we shrink the battery do we increase how how fast the teams can recharge the battery there was i saw a good, um, the race video, um.
[17:51] Over this past week talking about this. In the current formula, the cars only use the rear axle, the rear wheels, to recharge the battery. And to make a sort of long story short, you could increase the amount that the teams could recharge if they also could recharge from the front axle. But there's kind of a circuitous route that you can take here that leads to quasi-traction control. Like you could have the power unit recognized when you are putting too much power through all of the wheels, and then just immediately divert that into powering the battery. You would have both traction control and like automated super clipping, all of which is like driver assists, basically like traction control is like a total no, no. Like we're talking about overtakes and batteries and stuff like that, but no one wants traction control. I would like traction control because if I was driving a Formula One car, I would need traction control. You could also make changes on the ICE side, right? You could, hey, maybe turn those compression ratios back up. There was some talk about a quick fix of potentially allowing a higher fuel flow rate to the ICE, but it seemed like the teams were not really into doing that mid-season. But that could be something that happens in the next season.
[19:04] I mean, frankly, it is a foregone conclusion to me that next season, this 50-50 electric and ICE balance of power is going to go more into the ICE side. I 70 30 75 25 like I think that is I think that is in the background of all of this talk about changing the rules it's like next year we'll we'll we'll reel it back in a little bit but we kind of can't do that now and then for long-term fixes more conceptual high-level things I think realistically the formula is going to stay as a hybrid turbo engine I think that the car makers care enough about hybrids and enough about turbos that they would rather.
[19:47] Continue to go down this path than to see further electrification if it's going to make the product this rough. I know a big part of the formula right now was to increase electrification, but I don't think we'll get past this 50-50 that they've got now for electric, partly because it is making the product a little weird. But also Formula E, I think, has the exclusive rights to be the all-electric racing league for like 85 more years or something like that. And no, they are not going to go back to V10s. I don't think that they're going to go back to V8s. I think that's where the car makers would like to stay in the V6 sort of area. And i don't think that the v8s or the v10s would necessarily an immediate solution that will solve everybody's problems and that's just realistic i mean would it be cool to go to v10 or v8s and naturally aspirated and have them be real loud and shit like that would be cool that would be neat but i also think that there's an element of modernity that that ignores i mean part of the reason they're doing the hybrid and the electric is because that's what car makers are most interested in. If they can make innovations in the Formula One space, then those could potentially trickle down to road vehicles.
[21:03] Speaking of, I think long term, I think liquid fuels should stay. There's always been liquid fuel and gas, but this is the year where they're starting to talk about, you know, sustainable fuels, potentially as a way to lead to, you know, fuel, can we make one that is safe to refuel with? Because the reason Formula 1 doesn't do refueling is because it was really unsafe. There were a lot of fires. The cars would drive and they'd rip the fuel hose off of them. And it's super dangerous, especially when there are batteries around. If you puncture or pierce a battery, then that's a completely different type of fire. But if it was a safer fuel, something that.
[21:50] Well, I don't know. I mean, the whole point of fuel is to combust. To suggest one that won't combust in open air is kind of a specific challenge.
[21:59] But liquid fuels are also like not dead. I mean, there's talk of hydrogen. I don't know anything about hydrogen fuel, but I feel like hydrogen would be is probably in the conversation. I have no fucking idea what the future of fuel
[22:14] is. I also think active aero is a good thing. I would keep active aero in the long term. And even like being open to automating the active aero. Like right now the drivers are doing, you know, straight line mode and cornering mode. But I wouldn't be surprised if the next formula of cars that was allowed to be a little more autonomous. Same with like the recharging. okay okay last one and i think this is a big one sprints we all tolerate the sprints there's this there's nothing wrong with the sprints other than like they're not good the only the only problem with them is that they're boring as shit what if and this is a real long-term again fundamental changes it would be cool if sprint races were more proprietary right there They're lesser distance by choice. So what if they could run the cars at a higher intensity? And I don't know how, there's so many problems with this, right? Like, do you give them more battery power? Do you give them more fuel flow? Do you, what is the freedom that you give teams? And then how do you also square that with park ferme rules where.
[23:23] You know, we're talking about race sessions and the cars should be pretty similar across those sessions. So those are some of my ideas of ways to maybe.
[23:34] The ship to kind of unfuck that bell if you want to mix metaphors with it. If you've got ideas for how to unruin F1, please leave it in the comments and let me know what you think.
[23:46] And we are a week away from the China Grand Prix. Here are some of the storylines going into this weekend. Like I told you, it's a sprint weekend and it couldn't happen at a worse motherfucking time.
[23:59] I don't imagine any of the teams want to be doing a sprint weekend right now. The other thing to kind of keep an eye out before we go into the teams is that FIA, the governing body, Formula One, the commercial entity, and all of the teams have basically said that they are going to have a wait-and-see approach to the current formula and the current rules and regulations. And they're going to wait until after the Chinese Grand Prix, because Albert Park for the Australian Grand Prix is apparently really low on the ranking of tracks that have good energy management. There's a lot of high-speed, fast turns in Albert Park, so there's not as many chances to fully properly recharge the battery every lap. But China should be better, so the teams are kind of willing to wait and see before they rush out any rule changes. But this year is giving Formula One a pretty unique chance to make the changes. It seems very, very likely that round four and round five of the Formula One season this year, that would be Bahrain and Saudi Arabia, both to take place in early April, will likely not happen given all the fancy, shiny new wars in the Middle East, which would leave a gap between round three in Japan and round six in Miami, which would be the first of May. And so that gives the teams a unique like month of downtime where they could potentially.
[25:28] Make tweaks to the rules we just went over a bunch of tweaks that they could do and none of those seemed good and i promise i tried to come up with a lot of very good ideas so um hopefully uh i am not as smart as the geniuses at the fia the other thing for china is we're gonna have to see how long.
[25:48] It takes for the reliability to get back up. It was very, very high last season. And obviously, this Australian race had, what, six people who did not finish the race. And while the reliability is still pretty low, it gives the mid-pack teams a chance to earn some points and start to tell their story a little bit. I think once Red Bull and McLaren are allowed to have all of their drivers in the race, I think it's going to squeeze out that top 10 pretty quickly. Some of the other storylines going into the Chinese Grand Prix this weekend, for McLaren and Red Bull, we haven't really seen a good representation of both of the cars on those teams duking it out with each other. I mean, there's qualifying, but even Red Bull didn't necessarily get a chance to do a comparative qualifying. So we could get a chance to see how those teams are faring kind of on their own. The story for Mercedes is an old one now, but how long, if at all, will it take for the other customer teams and really just all the other teams to match Mercedes?
[26:54] They got some juice. They got some secret sauce. They got some juice in there that they're not in a hurry to tell other people about. It was great seeing Ferrari do well in Australia. The only thing I could kind
[27:04] of ask more from for Ferrari, actually, it could be a couple of things. One, make the fucking pit calls better. Okay. Australia was really good for Ferrari. I think the only thing that would be better was if they had a rear wing that rotated about 270 degrees and could lift. I want that. I want that rotating rear wing. It must have been a stinker, right? that rear wing must have not been good because it was cool. It must have not been good because it was cool. Again, for Williams, I just have honk, shoe, honk, shoe written down. So I think we'll move on past them.
[27:34] Arvid Lindblad at the Racing Bulls, he obviously showed he's got speed in Australia, but it's going to be up to Liam Lawson to wedge that car up at the sharp end. This is going to be a competitive season for these two. Liam has a lot of proving to do and Arvid as a rookie also has a lot of proving to do. If it was a better, like, managed junior program, this would be like the perfect opportunity to try to train these drivers. But I kind of get the sense that Liam is more of chum in the water. I mean, I wouldn't like to say that Liam's like strongest contribution to the team would be to push Arvid to have a better rookie season. But for me to think anything else, Liam would have to drive faster. So unfortunately, speaking of driving faster, Aston Martin, it is certainly all hands on deck at Honda in their sakura factor i believe to fix their shit box i would say of a power unit um they said that they found some developments some tweaks uh for the australian grand prix that alleviated the shaking issue the issue for the honda at australia was that the engine was just shaking so much that alonso and lance, had like limits to as many laps as they could do continuously before there was concern that they would have permanent nerve damage in their hands because for 90 minutes. So there's still a huge hill for Aston Martin to climb, and I don't think that there will be any miracles in the one week between races.
[29:03] Further down the list, Audi, they have that reliability gremlin that they need to solve. So it's another team where we didn't get a full sense of how the two cars in the garage compare against each other. And then for Cadillac, you know, if I can shift the goalpost here a little bit, I think the gold standard for Cadillac this week would be for both of the cars to take the checkered flag. And I mean, even if they only get one, again, to take the checkered flag, I think it's still going to be all gravy, baby.
[29:30] So those are your stories from China, from Australia, from unfucking the Formula One fuckbox. Thank you for listening. Of course, if you want to support this, go subscribe over on Patreon. Patreon.com slash LFGX for little letters. Helps you support this, Helps you support the Two Tusks podcast. LFG Marbles. Marbles has got to come back. We're still working on it. We've got some tech gremlins. We have to figure out. One more time. Patreon.com slash LFGX. We will be back after the Chinese Grand Prix for the Japanese Grand Prix starting March 27th. But if there's some hot news that drops in the meantime, we might have another episode between them. That's going to do it. I've been Blind. Bryce Castillo. This has been Blind Corners. Meow. .