'Do you think he can do it?' - 2025 Mexico City GP Preview with Ollie Bearman

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2:57Visit walmart.com to learn more. We have a three-way battle for the championship. Three drivers within 40 points. It feels that Max's attitude is he's got nothing to lose. That's always been Max's attitude, right? He's shown many times that pressure is something that doesn't faze him. Do you think he can do it?

3:21The air is thin here in Mexico City, but the plot is thickening in the F1 World Championship. Welcome to the highest altitude F1 Nation podcast recording of the season. I've been training for this four months. I'm Tom Clarkson, and alongside me, I'm delighted to say is Haas driver Oli Behrman. I've been training for months. Have you? I've been training all year for this one. No, it's really nice to be back in Mexico. This place has a bit of a special meaning for me. It was the site of my first ever F1 session back in 2023. So always a pleasure to return here. I like the track. The city is incredible as well.

4:01The altitude adds another layer of complexity, you know, for the engineers, for the cars, but also for us as drivers. How does it affect you as drivers? it's honestly i i've only done three practice ones which are obviously less pressure less grip so the cars are going slower as well um but generally i find you know despite the fact this is not a very physical track and duty altitude you know we have the same downforce as what we have in monza it is still a challenge uh physically you know so i i think if this was a track like layout like qatar or austin we'd be really really struggling luckily it's it's a bit more of a low speed circuit here And the irony, Oli, is that you've only done FP1s here in the past, and you're missing FP1 now that you're actually racing here.

4:45I've done enough FP1s here, I decided, so I decided to miss it. No, we have, like, I think nine drivers, nine rookie drivers in FP1, so I think this is one of the ones which is a clear pass over to the rookie drivers for FP1, just because the track Evo is huge, so it means that FP1 isn't super representative, and it's actually one of the only races towards the end of the season that isn't a sprint. How hard is it for you to give up your car all the same? I hate it. I hate it. But I know what it's like to be on the other side because, you know, back last year, but even in 23, I was so happy and over the moon to get to drive the car.

5:26So it's great to give rookies the opportunity. I was going to say young drivers, but I'm also a young driver still. So it's great to give rookies the opportunity to get miles in the car. and although it's obviously a bit damaging to the weekend I'm working as hard as I can to make it the less damaging possible. Oli, you're also on a roll. You're going for three points finishes in a row this weekend. Do you feel you're building some momentum? Yeah, I really do. I feel like since the summer break the results have been better. I've improved my process, I would say. What do you mean by that? How I go about the weekend basically.

6:05And before the summer break, I was really focusing on car setup and everything, but not spending any time focusing on myself and my mindset and where I was before getting in the car. And that's really what I've been aiming on and trying to improve on this second half of the year, trying to add a bit of process and structure, just like we do the engineering meetings and spend hours looking at that. I also wanted to spend a bit of time driver meetings with my coach and my team, to make sure that I'm prepared as well to drive. Well, what about this racetrack? We've got 17 corners. We've got the Foro Sol Stadium, which is unreal.

6:44It's a sellout again this year. Can you even begin to imagine what that's going to be like on race day? I mean, it's crazy in FP1. So you can imagine what it's going to be like on Sunday. For one, I'm super excited to see how it goes. The track is a good one. Hopefully it suits our car. and obviously the altitude poses a lot of challenges so it's going to be a really interesting weekend. A couple of other things about the track and about performance. I mean, first up, it's the longest run to turn one of the season, 830 metres from pole to the breaking point. So much can happen in those 10 seconds.

7:21How do you prepare for that? Yeah, it is a very long run down to turn one and we've just come from races with particularly short runs down to turn one. We've been to Baku, we've been to Singapore and we've been to Austin where the run to turn one is not really that long. So now we go from basically one extreme to the other. That means that the start is, of course, incredibly important, but also to qualify well is important. You need to be up there, and people are definitely going to be very aggressive into turn one, so you need to hit that one perfectly. Oli, can we talk about that run? I mean, you obviously watch previous starts here to see what people do.

7:57How much do you plan, and how much are you just reacting to what's going on around you? Yeah, there's only so much planning you can do, right? I try and look at all of the starts from previous years, where, you know, what side of the grid generally gets a better start. Is it better to be on the outside into one or the inside? And how does that affect two, three, and eventually four and five as well? Because usually you find yourself, you know, with two trains heading into those corners. But then you put all of that hard work and homework, and then you get to turn one in real life, and it pretty much all goes out the window.

8:31and you're reacting to what's going on live. What about the tyres? Pirelli are skipping a compound again. They've got their C2, C4, C5, so kind of the softest compounds at one end. But how do you feel about them skipping the compound? Is it going to spice things up? What are your expectations for tyre wear? Yeah, obviously that's the target to spice things up. I guess from Pirelli's side, it's to make the one stop with the hard and the medium slower than the two-stop with two softs and a medium. But we've seen, for example, in Austin, that we just do a one-stop with a medium and a soft. This year, the tires have been really good.

9:12The overheating has been lower. The graining has been much less. But basically, it's meant that we are able to do more aggressive races, more aggressive strategies, and one-stop races. So I think despite their efforts, I think the race is still going to be pretty clear strategically. but there's still a lot of challenges that that kind of tyre you know skipping the compound that definitely poses a lot of different challenges not just the strategy. Can I talk to you about qualifying and it's sort of just extrapolating this topic a bit further one thing we've seen in recent races particularly is that you guys there's so little performance difference now between the cars in the races that overtaking is quite challenging the onus then becomes more on quality which ollie behrman seems to be bloody good at um but is there more to come from you still do you feel in quality definitely there's always more air i think for example in austin um i put a 99 qualifying together but still on my final lap i i didn't improve my lap time and That was for me due to the tires not being 100 % ready, but that kind of feeling of putting the tires in the right window more often comes from experience.

10:31You know, the more new sets of soft tire I have in different tracks, because they always behave differently depending on what compound it is and the track roughness and all of these different factors, that's going to enable me to get more out of it more often. so I still go into qualifying with a lot of question marks about how the tie is going to perform how quick should my warm-up lap be you know should I slow down in sector three to cool them down a little bit should I keep pushing through sector three to make sure they're ready in turn one but then am I sacrificing sector three with my ties being too hot so there's so many things so it's all in the tire prep is that for me it's all in the tire prep and having that feeling underneath you because that is when when the margins are this tight you know when you're looking at half attempts to progress into key three pretty much all the time.

11:15The difference is only made really by tires in my opinion because when we get it right we can do it but it's about getting it right more often and that's really where I'm improving but still we saw in Austin on my final lap I didn't improve on a new set of tires I did a better lap on my U set so there's a lot in it and I'm still gaining confidence with this car as well you know we just put a new package on last weekend so there's so many things adding up to make qualifying very difficult and you're never fully over the moon with a good qualifying. That was going to be my last question to you about the new package that you put on in Austin.

11:49You're straight away in the points. Where does the car feel different now? So we've gained overall load, more downforce with this car which was the target. Can you feel that when you're in the cockpit? You can feel that in just that the car is giving you more. It's giving you more grip in high speed corners before the rear steps out or before it starts to wash out with the front so you can take a little bit more speed into the corner. The front is also a little bit stronger in the low speed so you can release the brake and lean on the front tires a little bit more before they break away from you.

12:22But with that extra performance also comes a bit more sensitivity so we found the car to be a little bit more difficult now in high speed with the balance. You know the car is touching a little bit more in high speed as well so it's not all positive but definitely the car has made a step forward and and the upgrade has done what we what we hoped and what we expected okay so it's done what you hoped and expected the team has always gone pretty well here i don't know if we can talk about the dna of various cars but the halt was quick here last year so how confident do you feel coming into the weekend yeah i'm looking forward to it uh you know i have experience on this track which is definitely important um of course i'm missing fp1 but that is not a super representative session so I'm going to do my very best to catch up.

13:05Of course, Austin was a good example of a difficult weekend for me with a sprint format so I still get two free practice sessions which is double what I had in Austin and I feel like with the momentum we have, with the new upgrade we have more time to put this car in the window this weekend so I think all of those things shape up to what can hopefully be a competitive weekend. Very good luck with that. Can I just ask you about what's going on at the front? I know you've got your own battles to worry about But F1 fans around the world are now excited, right? It feels like we have a three-way battle for the championship.

13:39Three drivers within 40 points. Do you even think about that? Is that even on your radar? Of course. Of course I watch it and I'm an F1 fan just like the rest of us, you know. So I love watching that and it seems like F1's in a great place to be having that rivalry and at this stage of the regulations to be this tight at the end of the championship. to be here sitting here with five races to go and to have three guys in contention well four guys in contention but three guys realistically um for the title it's really good for the sport you know it's good for for us um and may the best man win well come on who is going to be the man who do you feel the momentum is with just as an observation it feels that max's attitude is he's got nothing to lose i'd love to know how that feels as a racing well that's that's always been max's attitude right i think he's the best the best f1 driver we've ever had uh he's the reference in my opinion for for all of us you know for me growing up and aspiring to one day be one of those guys in the in the top three of a championship fighting for the win uh max is the reference and max is the guy that that we need to emulate or try and beat because he is i think he's the best of what we have on the grid he clearly has the momentum at the moment um he's shown many times that pressure is is something that that doesn't faze him he can put those laps uh in qualifying at the at the last minute when all of the eyes are on him he clearly has the momentum in these in these races so you know it's going to be tight and it's an uphill battle for him do you think he can do it i think it's possible i think it's possible um and you know even though it's a long shot you know if anyone could do it it's max would you rather have an intra-team battle as in you against your teammate or would you rather have an inter-team battle you and your team against a driver from a different team how what's going on in the minds of the McLaren guys do you think yeah I mean I would hope to be beating my teammate and uh and in front of him fighting for the world championship if it came down to it um so then you want to be I mean in ideal world you'd be fighting against no one but um i think the realistic one is that you'd have a intra team yeah so just you against your teammate no inter whatever whatever the one is where it's another team uh that that i mean it's more out of your hands then isn't it uh but i think you know your target is to be ahead of your teammates so uh and when you're going for the win would you rather be in a red bull this weekend or a McLaren?

16:16Well, this weekend, given Max's form since the summer break, I think I'd be in a Red Bull right now. Interesting. Or a Haas. Look, one final thing, if I can. One bit of news. Colton Herter has announced that he's going to be doing F2 next year with Hitek. That's still a very recent memory for you. I just wanted your thoughts on how you think Colton will adjust from IndyCar to F2 next year. How big a mountain is that? Yeah, I think it's easy to underestimate how difficult that will be. Of course, the guy's talented and he's been performing well in IndyCar and the level is incredibly high there.

16:57But he's stepping across the pond to a bunch of new tracks, tyres that are notoriously difficult and peaky and tough to get your head around. There's a lot of things that are going to challenge him, but he's shown that he has talent and I wish him the very best. All right. Well, Oli, the very best from us to you this weekend. Let's make it three races in a row in the points. Thank you very much for your time. Thanks a lot.

17:27And you can follow all the action from Mexico City on the F1 app and our social media and F1 Nation will be back to review the race on Monday. Thank you very much for listening. F1 Nation is produced by Formula One and Audioboom Studios.

17:52This episode is sponsored by Honda. Since its first Formula One victory in the 1965 Mexico Grand Prix, Honda has always taken what's learned on the track and used it to build better cars for everyone. From pushing limits in F1 to engineering the next generation of hybrids like the Prelude Hybrid and Civic Sedan Hybrid, Honda proves that racing doesn't just inspire innovation, it drives it. And that idea of taking lessons from the racetrack and applying them to road cars has always been a part of Honda's DNA. Decades of engineering in the demanding world of Formula 1 have helped shape the performance and efficiency you see in Honda's road cars today.

18:37And now that same thinking is shaping the next generation of hybrids as well. Cars like the 2026 Prelude Hybrid and Civic Hybrid show that electrification can be both efficient and genuinely fun to drive. The 2026 Prelude Hybrid and Civic Sedan Hybrid are engineered for fun. From the racetrack to your driveway. Learn more about the Prelude and Civic and the latest innovations at Honda.com.