3 contenders. 1 winner. Who will it be? - 2025 Abu Dhabi GP Preview with Jolyon Palmer + James Hinchcliffe

16:54Just don't do any laps at all. Just do installs. Just do installs. A couple of error runs and that's it. Yeah, that's a deep dive into the McLaren drivers. There's one last thing I wanted to discuss, which is something Zac Brown said on our sister podcast, Beyond the Grid, a few weeks back. He said, I want to make sure if we don't win, Max beats us and we don't beat ourselves. That is important. Well, Zac, I've got some news. The last couple of weekends have not gone well for McLaren. There was the double disqualification in Vegas, obviously, and then the strategic error, I think we could call it, in Qatar last weekend.

17:32Are they in danger of beating themselves?

17:35Jolyon Palmer:100%. So I already mentioned if Max wins, who beats Lando? And you're thinking, OK, the Mercedes, the Ferraris will be better this weekend. They could do it. But more likely is something else happens to Lando. Reliability has only been a problem for him in Zandvoort, but it was costly. they've had some slow pit stops the dq the strategy these are things that are more likely going to affect him i think than him just genuinely being beaten by mercedes or ferraris it's a problem and the team the whole team will know it as well so back to the top of the pod they've got to try and put you know all of the jitters and and the questions out of their mind but it's difficult when you're just off the back of a double dq you're off the back of a sort of laughing stock strategy to then reset because if something goes wrong and max wins and mclaren themselves have imploded here the fallout will be will be really bad for them i mean it's insane to think that a team that has a 300 points advantage over the second team in the constructors championship might not win the drivers championship i can't get my head around they'll never live it down if if something goes wrong from here i think so if it all goes south and max wins

18:52James Hinchcliffe:is this going to be remembered as the greatest comeback in formula one history or the greatest choke in formula one history it'll be it'll be both but i think we'll remember it more for the for the choke for the oh for the choke do you think i was going to say more for the win from max i think it one of the greatest comebacks in formula one history but also sporting history Absolutely. I didn't want to be as wide in the net.

19:14Jolyon Palmer:Yeah, completely agree. But it's both, isn't it? It's both. How has he managed to come back? Yeah. One only happens with the other. And he's more than 100 points away. Max had given up on the title at Budapest. He said, I won't win another race this year. Yes, they've stepped up. The Red Bull comeback has been amazing. We know how good Max is when things are working. And they have been working much better for him. And he's executing to put the pressure on. But all of the things that have gone against both McLaren drivers in the run in, You've got, let's not forget Baku, really bad on both sides of the garage.

19:46Jolyon Palmer:Austin in the sprint, the contact between the two of them, the double DQ, the strategy in Qatar, the penalty that Oscar got in Brazil, the crash that Oscar had in Brazil in the sprint where he just caught the curb and put it in the wall. All of these moments have just allowed Max to creep into a championship fight that he has had no right to be in, in terms of car pace and performance. Well, in his own words, he's taken advantage of other people's failures. That was his line in Qatar. And he re-emphasized that after the race as well. And also, I still think you've got this thing that if Lando doesn't win it from here, I would really struggle to sleep because he's come over the line in Vegas with a 42-point lead in the championship over Max.

20:32Jolyon Palmer:So as he crossed the line in Vegas, he has one hand on the title and what has happened since has opened the door for this genuine pressure now for this weekend and he's still very capable of doing it we saw him handle like a level of pressure last year in this race and he won but this is another level and if he if he does if he does it this weekend he wins it that'll be absolutely fair play to um to deliver under the pressure because also the last two weekends it's not really been his doing that's cost him all these points well in terms of what Max needs to become a five-time world champion on Sunday.

21:06He has to at least finish on the podium. Anything less will not be enough to win the title wherever Lando and Oscar finish. Max's clearest route to the title on Sunday is to win the race and for Lando to finish fourth or lower. And Red Bull does have a history of flourishing in high-pressure situations, hasn't it? Look at all the championship showdowns over the last 20 years that they've been in Formula One. Look at individual races like Qatar last weekend. They were the first to make that call to pit. And I think a lot of people followed them.

21:38Jolyon Palmer:As a rounded team, I think they're amazing. I think they, yes, have the best driver in the field. But the strategy department, Hannah Schmitz, was up on the podium. It was a great coup for them to have pulled that off. The pit stops, they very rarely get it wrong. But they're also punchy. They're not just conservative on the strategy. When they go punchy, 9 out of 10, it comes in for them. and the amount of times where you just think, how have they managed to get themselves into a winning position from here and yet there they are. They're winning races that, again, they haven't deserved to win but because every element of the team is operating at a really high level and making very few mistakes.

22:18Well, we do a prediction every race preview. This is going to be a stunning one, right? Guys, who is going to be world champion on Sunday night here in Abu Dhabi?

22:29Jolyon Palmer:I think Lando will be champion. And do you think it'll be an easy ride for him? No. I think Max will win the race, and I think Max will be putting on the pressure, and I think Lando will get to third to do it. I do not think it's going to be an easy ride. I think we're in for one of those title fights where you never can rest easy until the checker flag goes. But I think Lando will do it. Are you with Lando Hinch?

22:56James Hinchcliffe:I have the exact same thought that with his buffer, with the competitive order of the cars, I think Max will be able to kind of use his psychological advantage and a good car and a good driver and win the race. Lando will be content to finish third. It wraps it up. Again, it's going to be nerve wracking the whole time. But that's what I see happening, too. You have to go with the guy with the points advantage, don't you? It's the best place to be. It always is.

23:20Jolyon Palmer:I also think Lando gets a little bit of a hard time for dealing with pressure as well. and it's been a bit of a narrative that's gone this will be the major test of him that he'll have to live or die by over the winter but when you think back to if he lost the race last year Ferrari are constructors champions and he won from pole he did everything he had to do to win the championship for McLaren single-handedly because Oscar was out of it the title run-in it sees the most pressure that he's ever had in his life and I think we've seen the best form he's ever had in his life as well Qatar was maybe not his absolute finest weekend but up until then he has been ticking every single box really being ahead of oscar nailing it so this would be the biggest test but i i think the narrative that he can't cope with the pressure i think it's going to be it's going to be tested but i i think he can pass it it seems there's going to be a twist in the tail somewhere don't discount ferrari because okay that's interesting in itself so after the debacle of of qatar last weekend for them you think they can pull it back i think I'm not sure about Lewis.

24:23Jolyon Palmer:His head is in a tough place right now. But I do think Charles had a one-off, miserable weekend in Qatar as well. And where he's been in recent races as well, he's got some good form around here. He had an amazing drive last season to haul himself back to the podium, didn't he? And if we're talking about George maybe getting there, Kimi's on better form. Charles is capable of digging out a great qualifying lap. and I don't think on pure merit he'll be quick enough to challenge the McLarens but if anything goes wrong this is not going to be like Qatar I think for Ferrari particularly for McLaren JP I feel I need to ask you again about your prediction for world champion you've said Max is going to win the race now I stand by George could be on the podium I'm teasing more Jeopardy TC that's all I still think Lando will do it but I'm going to say I think I'll chuck in a George's second and Charles is the thorn in the side of the McLarens that never quite punctures the tyre.

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26:04All right, guys, there's one other big news story in the paddock this week, and that's Red Bull's announcement that Isaac Hadjar will race for them alongside Max Verstappen in 2026. Hadjar has been promoted from Racing Bulls, who have confirmed Liam Lawson and 18-year-old F2 driver Arvid Lindblad as their driver pairing for next season. Now, after five seasons on the grid, Yuki Tsunoda has been dropped, but he will continue as Red Bull's test and reserve driver. No big surprise. It's been the sort of paddock rumour for a while, hasn't it? Do you rate how, George, do you think he can take the fight to Verstappen in the same car?

26:41James Hinchcliffe:Only one way to find out. No one else has been able to do it, so they kind of have to. He's shown such good form this year. You know, definitely a candidate for Rookie of the Year. Really, really impressive. I mean, the bounce back from what should have been his first Grand Prix in Melbourne, which he wasn't able to take the start of, you know, two races later, scoring points in Japan, and then throughout the year, just been so consistent, working so hard, has a great reputation within the team. they kind of have to right yuki's not getting it done so they've got to they got to move on to the next one the the bigger question for me is is lin blada safer pair of hands than yuki back in the racing bulls with such a massive regulation change coming for next year they obviously think so they might know something i don't you can argue that you know yuki's had his shot five years couldn't cut it in the top team time to go but if you fast forward to or sorry rewind back to the end of last year, start of this year when he was at Racing Bulls, he was very competitive.

27:35James Hinchcliffe:He's getting into Q3s, he was scoring points. He only had two races against Hadjar, so there's not really a fair comparison there, but he was ahead at the time. It begs the question, what is the role of Racing Bulls in Formula 1? And I thought Alan Permain, their team principal, sort of emphasized again that it's about young drivers. He said, we are an incubator for talent, was his quote. Therefore, Yuki doesn't fit that bill anymore, does he? Fair. And that's fair. If that's their position, that's fair. I feel like two years ago they were saying, nope, we're not the little team anymore. We're going to really try and be our own center, our own two feet and do our own thing.

28:12James Hinchcliffe:And that's why Ricardo was brought back. So I think they kind of need to make up their mind. If they are going back with the incubator role, then yes, fine. That makes sense. Lindblad's the right pair of hands. If it's let's try to get this team as far up in the constructors championship as possible. I don't know if a rookie in a massive rule set is better than Yuki. It just, you know what you're getting with Yuki, which at times might not be enough for them. But when there's so many question marks and you don't know so much going into 26, is at least having a known quantity behind the wheel an advantage?

28:46James Hinchcliffe:Obviously, they don't think so, but...

28:48Jolyon Palmer:How good do you reckon any of these guys are if you put them up against someone that's not in the Red Bull Young Driver program in Formula One? Because that's the thing, we've never seen. So Hadjar has come in, objectively, done a great job. podium in Sandville. You don't do that if you're not a really top driver. But he's beaten Lawson. So Lawson's come in and only been beaten by Sonoda. Sonoda has come in and beaten Lawson last year. He's had Gasly beat him a couple of years ago. We're all saying he's stepped up because he did a good job against Nick De Vries, did a good job against Daniel Ricciardo, but Ricciardo was smashed by Norris.

29:23Jolyon Palmer:They've all then been smashed by Verstappen. And it's like they're in this whirlpool of red bull red bull young drivers i'd be fascinated to see what happens if you put a carlos science goes to racing bulls how good is that racing bulls car if you put in someone that we know we have more of a metric for on the on the side of how good they are because whenever anyone steps in to go alongside max they get trounced fair dues max is a you know maybe the greatest driver ever but if i was coming into formula one and i was being promoted alongside other young drivers that were coming into Formula 1. What a great chance for me that is, to prove myself.

30:00Jolyon Palmer:If I'm coming into Formula 1, but I'm coming in alongside Carlos Sainz, Nico Hülkenberg, Esteban Ocon, seasoned campaigners that have got results on the board, that's a tougher job. And if Hadjar gets promoted to be alongside Max and gets trounced next year, you've then got Lindblad and Lawson. How do you judge Lindblad and Lawson when you've got really no benchmark for how good either of them are? I also think the Racing Bulls car this year is really good and underrated. I think the team have done a good job. it's a funny situation going on there have you felt this for the last 20 years that the red bull and now i'm airing it tc have you actually felt for the duration of red bull's young driver program uh well i think you've had you've had metrics that have sort of proven themselves as well so you had you know going back back in the day you had sebastian vettel uh did a great job won the race for Toro Rosso, completely dispatched of Sebastian Bordet, went to Red Bull, beat Mark Webber.

30:55Jolyon Palmer:Wow. OK, the young driver programme is good. This guy's a generational talent. Daniel Ricciardo is up against John Eric Verne. But these guys also, I think the difference is they had outstanding results at the junior level. So John Eric Verne was an obvious protege coming through. Daniel Ricciardo was an F3 champ. World Series by Renault could have been champion. Demonstrated of what he could do went to went to the top seat max verstappen and carlos science a bit of a wild card two rookies have proven that they were very good choices but in that rookie season you don't completely know now when i look through the junior record yuki sunoda was third after what two or three seasons of f2 i think he's equipped himself pretty solidly but he's not come in if it was a charlotte claire or a george russell or a bortoletta or someone that has won in the junior series you know more what to expect.

31:48Jolyon Palmer:Liam Lawson never won in Formula 2. I looked through the record of Arvin Limblad. This year he's sixth in Formula 2. Last year he was fourth in Formula 3. The year before that he was third in F4. What credentials has he got to necessarily jump in and we know that this guy is a generational talent. If he's a generational talent I'd expect him to be winning these series more. JP it's a good point. I suppose the acid test will come in 12 months time if Max Verstappen leaves Red Bull, will they shop for a replacement outside of the Red Bull programme or will they promote from within? Because they've only ever promoted from within.

32:27Like, as you say, Vettel came in, he was the guy, and then after him, Ricciardo, and after him, Verstappen. They haven't had to shop outside. What will they do? That'll be the acid test for the programme. Right.

32:37Jolyon Palmer:And legitimately, if Max wasn't driving for Red Bull this year and you had Yuki Tsunoda plus, let's say, Isaac Hadjar or Liam Lawson, who are the next two, obviously, in line, I think they would be ninth in the championship. Maybe they'd be eighth. That's the gulf that we're trying to deal with here. Max is 396 points. Uki has 30 odd. Sorry, I've missed the second number. 30 odd. 33, not even 35. I was generous with 30 odd. Dealing with Hadjar specifically, quickly um is the regulation change a good time as good a time as ever to go in and be max verstappen's teammate because it's going to take a while even for max to get his head around the new cars

33:23James Hinchcliffe:it is because you know the the whole thing with the red bull car right everyone says this car is built around max and max is the first one to put his hand up and say no no it's built around being the fastest race car i just happen to be able to figure out how to drive it better than other people and I think that's true if you talk to other people that have worked with Adrian Newey in the past I say this with a grain of salt please take it how I mean it he doesn't really care what drivers think he's going to make the fastest car proof's kind of in the pudding this is a very difficult car to extract the maximum out of when you get it there it's obviously phenomenal it's been that case through this entire generation of rules but with a brand new rule set Adrian Newey is no longer part of that program, is there going to be a conscious effort to make something that's a little bit more well-rounded, that's something other drivers can get closer to the maximum potential of?

34:16James Hinchcliffe:Is it good to have Max able to get 99 % and the ceiling of that is the fastest car by X-Tense? Or is it actually better to have a car that two drivers can get to 100 % but that ceiling is maybe a tenth or two less. If you are going into this car, if you're Hajar and these rules are staying next year, you're almost expected to get beat and beat handily. What does that do to your stock? I don't know because he has eliminated everyone that sat beside him. I mean, Checo's the only guy I can think of who got fired mid-contract, took a year off, and his stock went up because of the performance of everyone else that sat in that seat.

34:54James Hinchcliffe:So for Hajar, yes, it's absolutely an advantage that we're going in with a new rule set. It doesn't guarantee that this car is going to be any easier to get the best out of. You do have the opportunity to learn this new rule set against one of the guys that everyone's expecting to get on top of it very quickly because of the extra sort of mental bandwidth that Max seems to have while driving at the limit. It sounds like that's going to be something that's going to come in handy with the way energy management is going to work in this new rule set. So for him, it's a good opportunity and a good situation.

35:23James Hinchcliffe:and I'm just curious how without the newly driven engineering department and philosophy where that car ends up and can someone else actually get close to them yeah and new Red Bull powertrain as well just to complicate things for them all right well guys thank you very much it's gonna be very exciting I can't wait I must say I have to go back to 2021 when I felt this excited about the final race of the season and um i'm sure it will not disappoint so thank you both very much for your thoughts cannot wait for it tc always love a three-way battle in the final race this is going to be fun what a weekend we've got in store in selected countries you can watch all the racing on f1 tv where joelian and hinch will be offering their expert analysis and you can keep across the action at f1.com the official f1 app and at f1 on social media we'll be back to debrief qualifying on Saturday and for reaction to the outcome of this title fight on Monday.

36:24Make sure you follow F1 Nation on your podcast app to hear those shows as soon as they're available. As ever, thanks very much for listening. F1 Nation is produced by Formula One and Audioboom Studios.

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