F1 Explains: Monaco mastery, pole positioning + 'more power' - with Alex Jacques

0:00This 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 One have helped shape the performance and efficiency you see in Honda's road cars today.

0:44And 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. Say big on your landscaping project now at Menards. Whether you're installing a patio or a new retaining wall, Menards has the blocks you need to get the job done right. We carry the largest in-stock selection, ready to take home today.

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1:49Hello everybody, welcome to F1 Explains, the official Formula 1 podcast that is here to explain the sports we all love so much. My name is Christian Hugill and it is about time we rounded up a few of the more random questions that have come into our inbox in recent weeks. They are on all sorts of topics, so we need an all-round F1 expert to answer them. We call these episodes our quickfire episodes. And as for our guest this week, if you looked at his Instagram over the Canadian Grand Prix weekend, you'd think he was a restaurant critic. He's actually F1 TV, Channel 4 and Apple TV commentator Alex Jakes.

2:25Alex, in Canada, did you enjoy some fine cuisine? I did indeed. Yeah, one of the things that sometimes happens when you go to a week of Formula One is that you find yourself going to an exciting place. and then you don't see any of it because it can be, especially a sprint weekend, very, very busy. So I made it a mission of mine to go and try the local food, which included a smoked meat sandwich with lots of mustard and poutine, that Canadian classic. So thoroughly enjoyable, wonderful city. Yeah, glad I finally got to see it properly. We'll talk about some Formula One in a moment, what with it being an official Formula One podcast.

3:04But before that, I'm not sure. Listen, forgive my naivety here. I might be about to be roundly mocked. I'm not sure I fully understand the difference between poutine and chicken. Poutine and chicken? Yeah. Okay. Let's get into it. So, yeah. So, poutine is essentially chips and gravy with cheese curds. Oh, I thought poutine was one of the, like, it was a chicken. No, you're thinking poulet, aren't you? You're thinking poulé. See, I'm not a very cultured man. I am thinking poulé. But poutine is different, is it? So poutine is chips, gravy, cheese curds. So not cheesy chips in the sense that we'd have it in the UK, but close, sort of a distant cousin.

3:49And there are different standards of it. So I went in search of some, I went to Little Portugal, actually, and found a very highly rated poutine place that was very intimidating to order from. So yeah, there you go. All looks fun on Instagram, but I was more nervous about ordering from that place than I was for doing the Grand Prix. So yeah, lots of fun, great city. And yeah, there's just a couple of places that I've only been to a few times because of the way the calendars worked out through the years. And Montreal, I'd never seen properly. So I decided to put that right. End of story. Excellent.

4:21No, it's a great city. I've done the Canadian Grand Prix twice. The previous two years, this was my first not on the ground in Canada for a while. It's a wonderful city. I really do like Montreal. And Alex, we got a great race as well, didn't we? Lots of fun. I feel slightly, I feel like a spoilt child at Christmas who unwrapped a bike, but was hoping for a bike and a drum kit because I really did like the race and enjoyed it. But I also feel a bit robbed that George's battery went and therefore we were robbed of more laps of that brilliant battle between Kimmy and George. That must have been a lot of fun to commentate on.

4:58It's unbelievable. It's the sort of race you dream of. I have to admit, halfway through I was thinking, is this really going to go to the end? Because if it had gone to the end with those two scrapping all the way through, it would have been one of the greatest Grand Prix of all time. I think it would have been, yes. It was fairly astounding to see battling like that for the Grand Prix win anyway. But the fact that they were pushing each other so much, it was so easy to make a mistake. And then the fact that we got to, it was just, I love it when you see a driver having to access something new.

5:26Russell's been so good for so long and yet Kimi's taken such a leap forward this year that he's having to push to the to the you know the 99th percent in a way that he hasn't in the past and he's fallen on career it's just just delirious and yeah it's like a great film wasn't it that went off a cliff halfway through yes it's such a shame the battery but this is motorsport it was like oh that was that was nearly an all-timer and instead it was a it was a glorious 30-lap battle but yeah thoroughly enjoyed it yeah absolutely uh lovely to see the two teammates battling in a similar way to, of course, Oscar and Lando pushing each other last year.

5:59But it already feels like there's more on track battling between Kimi and George this year, which is lovely. A great Grand Prix. And our first question this week is, well, certainly linked to the last race in Canada. Hi, my name is Kylie from Brisbane, Australia. My question today is, what is the point of the formation lap? A good question. These are my favourite F1 Explains questions, because if you're new to Formula One, you can just think oh this just happens and sometimes we never question why I should just say before Alex answers the question this is the second time we've used one of Kylie's voice notes proof that if you send us a voice note ladies and gentlemen you're far more likely to get on we've still had no confirmation as to whether it is actually Kylie Minogue which we which we speculated on last time Kylie sent us a voice note regardless either way Kylie you're very welcome so a timely question Alex because Formation Lab fans it was a great race for you we had three of them at the canadian grand prix firstly alex explain why and then secondly explain as kylie asks why on earth do we need them in the first place okay we had three formation that's because poor old arvid linblad he's had a great weekend uh couldn't get off the grid so there's a variety of different uh routes the race director can take in that situation they can do a classic 10 minute reset and bring everyone all the mechanics back onto the grid uh and then count down as if we'd gone back in time to 10 to 4 and just reset it that way or you can just send the cars around multiple times and then take those laps off the total of the Grand Prix that's what Rui Marquez decided to do why do we have a formation lap in the first place well is to allow the mechanics that I mentioned to clear from the grid in a safe manner that's something that's very very important but mainly the reason that we have it is for the operational temperatures the The cars simply don't work if the tires don't have temperature and the brakes don't have temperature.

7:52So we have a lap to get everyone into a workable range, a workable window, where the car can operate in a thrilling first lap fashion that we know and love. But without the formation lap, it would look all kinds of wrong, and we wouldn't get anywhere near the aggressive overtaking drama that we get on a first lap. So it's purely so that the cars work how they're meant to temperature-wise with the tires and the brakes. And just to pick up on something you said there, Alex, I mentioned earlier I wasn't at the Grand Prix, which meant I got the pleasure of watching with my dad and my fiance, which was very nice.

8:26I very rarely get to sit and watch the race with family nowadays. So that was absolutely lovely. It did mean I felt like I was doing an episode of F1 Explains as we went along. There were lots of questions. And one of them was from David, my fiance, who stopped himself initially asking the question. And he went, because he saw all these extra formation laps, he went, with the fuel? Then he went, no, no, don't worry about it. Don't worry about it. And I went, what? Go on, go on. He'd got there. He'd write it out. And I said to him, well, he hadn't. He thought it was a stupid question. But I said, no, go on, ask the question.

8:56He went, well, I was just wondering, do they have the fuel for these laps when there's extra formation laps? And I said to him, no, actually, you thought you were being silly. And he thought, oh, a couple of laps won't make a difference here or there. But it does, doesn't it, Alex? And that's why you mentioned there that they take those extra formation laps off the race distance. Yeah. So you fuel the car to the duration of the Grand Prix, sometimes a little bit under. And if you carry more fuel, you carry more weight. Your car is slower. So as a result, you are constantly fueling for the exact amount that you need and no more.

9:31So when we get extra formation, that's like we've just described, because everyone has already preset the amount of fuel in the car. we're not allowed to refuel mid-race, you just have to take the laps off. Otherwise, you would get cars conking out before the end. And it's the precision of Formula One. There's David who, by his own admission, isn't a Formula One fan. And listen, that's fine. Not everyone is. You know, we don't judge you here. I mean, we do a bit. It's an official F1 podcast. But still, David's thinking, oh, the extra few laps aren't going to make a difference. But it does. Such is the precision in Formula One.

10:01Kylie, thank you. We just can't get your voice notes out of our heads. We appreciate your contributions to F1 Explains. let's move on Ben Thomas from Dayton in Ohio and Nina from Table Rock Lake in Missouri both have the same question when a driver asks for more power during a race what can the team do for them brilliant question Alex Jakes yeah it is and it was it was pertinent for what we heard in the Grand Prix as well it's become even more of a thing this year so you have to lock yourself into the engine mode that you run for the Grand Prix. In previous years, you used to be able to turn the engine up.

10:39Nice and simple. Everyone understands that as a concept. More power, but risk of the thing blowing up. Easy. Now, this year, with the energy deployment that they've got, your engine mapping might stay in one mode, but you can choose to deploy your electrical energy in different ways. So when we'll hear a driver on the radio asking for more power, they're asking their engineer to look at where they are deploying the energy across the course of the lap so say you've got a massive headwind in one place that might not be the case at the start of the race might the wind direction might have changed halfway through you would then want to deploy more power to combat the headwind you would also know that the car in front was punching a bigger hole in the air more drag for them so you would change where you hammered the battery essentially uh you would also change where you recharged uh that is what you can alter and then uh you can you can change uh the fuel we were talking about the fuel before you can you can change how much fuel you consume uh throughout the race that the rate is consumed but you can consume a little bit more so realistically it's this year more than anything else when you hear a driver asking about power it is purely where can I deploy more of the energy and where can you help me recharge by a certain point yeah and of course if the engine gets thirsty and uses more fuel it might give you more power but that's up to the race engineer to say yeah but mate problem is you might not get to the end of the race on that which is which is a negative which is a net negative not finishing the race is not what they aim for and Alex we should clarify shouldn't we these are things that the drivers are changing on the steering wheel right yeah so the this is all done and they're hugely complex and they have menus upon menus upon menus that they're tabbing across uh usually on a on a rotary switch you'll see the circular switches uh on the steering wheel uh and it's not a simple thing it's not a simple thing uh to to be able to get more power uh and driver and engineer has to work in conjunction this is the sort of thing they have to learn at the start of the year especially if you switch teams it can be a totally different steering wheel layout in front of you so yeah a lot of homework has to be done over the winter but yeah uh getting more power is possible uh you're just going to have to give it up at another part of the lap on that you raise a really good point alex i mean the steering wheels baffle me in formula one because i don't know about you i struggle to change the digital radio on the car if i'm driving it's just so much more complicated than when it used to just be one two three four five and six like so that's my level of multitasking skill but you mentioned drivers changing teams um if you'll allow me a little anecdote uh i mean we're on a podcast why not uh when pierre gasly had just changed teams he'd left whatever red bull's b team was called at the time and he'd gone to alpine i was given a little tour of the alpine facilities at Silverstone and the drivers for those that don't know have little rooms within the motorhomes that are in the paddock over the course of a race weekend and it's quite literally it's not the cool down room but it's a little cool down room it's a place to change it's a place to just be for a bit and get out of the way it's just my space and in that there was a model steering wheel and the person giving us the little tour around had said that such was the difference between Pierre's steering wheel at Toro Rosso, I think at the time, to moving to Alpine.

14:14He'd requested two model steering wheels, one he had at his home and one he had in his little room because he just, at all points while he had five minutes, was just playing with it to get the adjustments because it was such a big change. These are the things we don't even think about with sort of driving a Formula One car that these guys have to contend with. Yeah, that is, there you go. but there are different classes of homework, aren't there? Let's be honest. This is luxury homework to have, learning a Formula One steering wheel. So I won't take any complaints. Oh, no. It's better than maths or chemistry, isn't it?

14:50It really is. Right, we'll squeeze in one more question before we take a break. So as you're listening to this, the Monaco Grand Prix weekend will be underway. Of course, you can watch that on F1 TV with Alex and the gang in selected countries and Apple TV in the US. And Peter from the US, from Scottsdale in Arizona, to be precise. That's a question on the Monaco Grand Prix. Hi, Peter. Peter says, I once walked the Monaco F1 track. Look at you. I was shocked to find the hills steeper, the corners tighter, and the track narrower than I imagined. I thought the same when I walked Zanvoort, but yeah, absolutely.

15:26I kept asking myself, how do those guys possibly get the cars around this track? Alex it's such a good question isn't it because we we take for granted I think Monaco nowadays there's the age-old question of what you think of the Monaco Grand Prix nowadays considering it is difficult to overtake I've come to really love it it's a different we take one race out of the 24 or 22 this season to do something completely different and it is a test of endurance because Alex we shouldn't underestimate just what that test of endurance is should we no not at all uh I think the thing with Monaco I'm not surprised that it felt different on site um all of our images for a long time of the Monaco Grand Prix uh were defined by quite historic camera places and Formula One's brilliant TV department have only taken it over in in recent years uh trying to show some of the some of the inclines trying to get the helicopter shots out there um so there can be sometimes across the world a disparity of uh what the camera does which always flattens it always shortens the shot and the incline that run up the hill to casino square you wouldn't want to run it christian would you it is uh it is a very very extreme climb up the hill uh i don't really know how the drivers do what they do around Monaco.

16:53The barriers are very, very close and they are barriers throughout. There's no, there's no, you know, there's one part of the track where you can bail out. But the best way to describe Monaco for some of our, our newer fans, there is no way that we would start this event from scratch. Now, if Monaco had never hosted a motor race and applied to the Formula One calendar, they would be laughed out of the meeting. And yet that in practicality the thinness of the track the inclines the historic nature of it is why every driver wants to win because you are performing with no margin for error lap after lap after lap and i think these new cars slightly thinner slightly lighter slightly shorter they are going to fly around monaco the previous ones were a bit cumbersome for a street circuit like a singapore or Monaco these cars are going to be magic to watch trackside and if you ever get fortunate enough and I know not everyone can be but if you ever get fortunate enough to go trackside at Monaco you will not believe your eyes it's one of the coolest experiences in sport.

18:01I couldn't agree more with Alex it was my first experience of it last year and I absolutely loved it um and Alex you and I sit and watch practice sessions you talk during practice sessions more than I do I I tend to be sat on my own watching them. You're broadcasting them to the world. But we see the drivers throughout those practice sessions get up to speed. They are working out where they can break half a tenth of a second later into a corner. They're getting up to speed. And sometimes if they get that wrong, they lock up and go wide. And on a track like Bahrain, it's not a problem where there's lots of tarmac runoff.

18:34Even on other old-fashioned circuits, older circuits, I should say, like Australia, you might just trundle along the grass and be fine. But in Monaco, those, I think I only actually fully appreciated this talking to Oscar Piastri after free practice last year. So Oscar struggled in Monaco last year. And I interviewed Oscar Strait after free practice too. And he was saying he was just struggling to get the feel of the car, to get the confidence in it, but also trying to get quicker and quicker because he knew his teammates was faster than him. That balance at Monaco is insane, isn't it? because if you're having one of those weekends where your car is slightly tricky to dial in, and yet you're trying to eke out performance because you know your teammate or your rival, whoever is quicker than you, if you get even fractionally wrong in Monaco, sometimes your weekends can be done.

19:25And that balance between pushing and pushing too much, which is non-existent, there are very few other sporting tests like that, isn't there, Alex? Yeah, in terms of the narrow nature of the track And in terms of you get three hours to find the absolute limit, and the limit is on the edge, confident driving. And we've seen some astounding laps. I think back to Max Verstappen's pole position effort a couple of years ago where he was literally bouncing off the walls. He was using the barriers, and he knew where the compliance in some barriers would be and where you couldn't. to get to the point where you are literally bending the circuit you need total confidence in the car so exactly as you said Christian if you're not in a place where you feel confident and you're chasing it and you're waiting you're just never going to be quick at Monaco Lovely Ernesto Lyndon and Jonah we are answering your questions in just a couple of minutes time on F1 Explains

20:33Since 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.

21:14And 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.

21:47Hello, welcome back to F1 Explains. I'm Christian Hugill. We are doing a quick fire special this week, putting random potted questions that have popped into our inbox over the course of the season to F1 TV and Apple TV commentator Alex Jakes. Alex, we're now going to Ernesto, who is Spanish but lives in Munich in Germany. And we wish him well. Ernesto says, I've been following the show since episode number one and you guys do an incredible job of breaking down the technical side of the sport, making the show a must listen for me every week. Ernesto, if you'd like a job in F1's marketing department, I would strongly suggest you apply because that's a lovely write-up.

22:22I'd like to thank you for it. Ernesto says, My question is, how do they decide which side of the track pole position is on? Lovely question. F1 explains gold question that the things you'd never thought of. Love it. Alex Jakes. I do love that question because that's one where I had to. I do like the questions where I have to think for a moment and access access the the old archive in my head. And I'm like, the reason for that is that traditionally, traditionally they would place it on the racing line. now there are some exceptions to the rule if you get uh if it's more beneficial to have the inside line for a corner sometimes they would place it away uh from the racing line but uh the hard and fast rule is it is traditionally on the grippier racing line that has been used and rubbed in across the course of the weekend that is your advantage of taking pole position and yet it's not uniformly that around the world but it is traditionally where you would place pole position is the part of the racetrack cleaned up by the cars using the racing line all weekend.

23:29I believe, and I've been trying to just double check this, I've accessed my own archive and I'm not as confident in my archive as I am in your archive, Alex. Yeah. Suzuka, is that one of them where it's on the other side? Let's think where I'm trying to, okay, Oscar was in third and then he went into the lead. No, I think it's on the racing line. Of course, historically, this caused a massive argument in days gone by because Ayrton Senna wanted it changed. Did he? I didn't know this. Yeah. Go on. Why did he want it changed? Why Japan gets mentioned in relation to pole position is that Ayrton Senna once advocated that pole position should be on the racing line.

24:10He was very, very unhappy that it wasn't on the racing line. And just traditionally, some circuits used to put pole position on the inside line because you go in the inside turn one better. Anyway, the grip on the racing line was traditionally in the early 90s where you wanted to be. Senna asked for pole position to be moved. It wasn't moved. It was left on what he perceived to be the dirty side of the grid, leading to one of the most dramatic first corners in Formula One history, where he was like, if you're going to play political games and I'm the fastest car and I'm not starting in the fastest place, I am going to crash into Alain Prost.

24:44Senna is trying to go through on the inside and it's happened immediately. This is amazing. Senna goes off at the first corner but what has happened to Prost? He has gone off too. Well, that is amazing but I fear absolutely predictable. One of the most dramatic first turns in the history of Formula 1 and it won him the World Championship and it was all Christian Hugel over a dispute of which side of the grid pole position should be on. Didn't know that. I was aware of the famous first corner. I was aware of the ramifications in the Championship but I didn't know it was about around which side of the grid pole position should be on.

25:23Hello, producer Chris here, just popping in if that's okay, because there's something I'd like to add to Christian and Alex's excellent explanation of which side of the track pole position is on. If turn one is a right-hand corner, pole position will usually be on the left side of the track. And if turn one's a left-hander, pole will usually be on the right side. And that means the driver on pole can have a better, faster entry to the first corner because they're turning in from the opposite edge of the track. That is the racing line that Christian and Alex have mentioned. One exception is Monaco, where turn one goes to the right, but pole position is also on the right.

26:03And that's so the driver on pole has the best chance of leaping off the line, making that short run to the first corner, getting to the apex first, blocking their rival and keeping the lead. It's not so much about corner speed at the start in Monaco. It's just about getting there first and keeping everybody else behind you. So that's a way of working it out. Look at which way Turn 1 goes. Pole is usually the opposite. Just wanted to add that to the words of wisdom. Lovely stuff. An excellent question, Ernesto. Thank you very much. Lyndon from Dallas in Texas says, I've heard the F1 TV gang mention graining in reference to the tyres.

26:39What is graining? Alex, this is always good to remind ourselves. Yeah. So graining is the tearing of the tire tread into tiny little rubber balls. So the surface of the tire shreds and it doesn't discard the rubber on the surface of the tire. So you get tiny rubber balls on the surface of the tire. And as a result, that massively affects your grip. The tires don't perform in the way that they're intended. it tends to generate understeer, but it can clean up because the surface becomes a almost a living thing, a movable thing. And the rubber balls can get discarded. So graining often happens in the cool temperatures like we had in the Canadian Grand Prix.

27:25It shreds the tire surface, creates little rubber balls on the surface. The tire then doesn't perform as it's meant to, but then you can effectively go through that surface and then it can clean up and then your tyres work perfectly again but it is something the drivers hate and it is best avoided at all costs because it does cost you performance and what we often then hear is the term marbles because then what happens is those little balls of rubber that Alex mentions get discarded by the tyre thrown off to the side of the track away from the racing line and you do but you can sometimes see it on the television coverage you can certainly see it when you're in the grandstands you can see off the racing line all these little discarded bits of round rubber and if the drivers run wide of course that affects their grip rather than getting the sticky hot track they're getting these messy discarded balls of rubber and that's why you'll often hear commentators like mr jakes say getting out on the marbles uh lovely stuff linden thank you very much for your question we're going to rhode island now in east greenwich uh to jonah uh jonah says what's unique about the rear wing that makes it impossible to be replaced during a race yeah we've said this on f1 explains a lot actually this is a really good point that if you break your front wing in a race you can have that change you're going to lose some time but it's not race ending whereas if a rear wing goes 99.9 percent of the time your race is done uh jonah asked does the angle of the wing create more downforce that requires a more rigid or permanent attachment to the chassis or is the thinking that if the rear wing is damaged enough to warrant replacing then the gearbox is also damaged he then says in brackets i've no idea where the gearbox is on an f1 car by the way but f1 commentators often say he's right on his gearbox which makes me think it's at the rear of the car jonah's doing some good speculating there alex but yeah why does a rear wing braking mean probably the end of a race because it can't be replaced yeah first of all gearbox is at the back of the car it's uh it's out it's out the back it's attached to the rear of the car um the rear wing is because the amount of load it is taking uh aerodynamically means exactly as you've guessed jonah that it has to be uh far firmer than just a couple of bolts that we can unfix at the front of a formula one car for the front wing because it is simply taking so much load and it is so important and mandated by the regulations that it is firmly in place because obviously if you lose the rear wing through a high speed corner it's very dangerous for the driver and while safety standards are lofty and brilliant and very very strong in 2026 it wasn't always the case so you would get designers try and fix the rear wing in the past as lightly as possible if you lost a rear wing in the 70s you're you were at risk of having a fatal accident so how the rear wing is attached and uh the strength of attachment is absolutely mandated in the safety regulations and it means that if you damage it it is game over because it's no easy fix just purely because of that attachment uh just down to the amount of performance that generates at the back of the car Yeah, we very rarely do see people able to damage the rear wing, but carry on.

30:52There might be a little bit of a rear wing piece of carbon fibre that has broken away, but actually its structural integrity is fine, so the drivers can carry on with the race. But also in that situation, what you often see is drivers behind saying, this person in front of me has got a flailing little bit of rear wing. That needs to be fixed. And a lesser spotted flag in Formula One. Welcome to niche flags on F1 Explains is the black flag with an orange disc, which means it's a great flag, isn't it? One of the great flags. One of the great lesser. Sorry, I just dawned on me how sad we are. one of the great lesser spotted flags by motorsport geeks for motorsport geeks it's like we got an email in the other week Alex I can't remember the listener's name I really would like to apologise who emailed us just to say I never thought I'd find myself as a 40 odd year old mother of two listening to a whole episode about tyres but I really enjoyed it yeah the black flag with an orange disc if that's shown to you that means your car is dangerously damaged you need to come into the pits for further assessment so you'll sometimes get that but yeah rear wing if it's completely broken your race is over good question there Jonah we've never actually explained why so really good question by the way f1explains at f1.com do pick us up on things if there's anything that you think we've not explained well enough we take constructive criticism very well I mean producer Chris doesn't he gets quite angry but you know the rest of us he's notably angry yeah angry man angry man but you know anything we've not explained well enough don't hesitate to email us and finally this week final question from Dean in Australia, who's one of my favourite listeners of the week, simply because he started his email with, Hi, F1 Explains Legends.

32:35I like that. Thanks, Dean. What a man. He's doing like producer Chris again, isn't he? Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Hi, F1 Explains Legends. We hear about the teams doing upgrades to their cars. Is there a maximum amount of upgrades they can perform in a season? Is there a certain time of the year, for example, race four, that they need to be completed by? can they upgrade any part of the car or is some parts off limits again a very good question from dean yes uh so the chassis you can do what you want you can do as much as little as you like uh when it comes to upgrading the chassis uh some parts off limits the part that's off limits and you have to wait for permission to change would be the power unit for example um and that has been much discussed in 2026 you can upgrade that with permission of the fia but they have a very very complex formula of who's allowed to upgrade their engines and who has to freeze their engines at that stage but in terms of the bits on the car we'll always talk about the front wing and the rear wing and the barge boards and the turning veins of the floor all of that can be updated throughout you've got to do it in a cost cap era though so gone are the days where you can just try any part throw money at the problem you've got to be inventive and you've got to make sure that every dollar that you spend on an update works for performance on the car in the past you could bring an update it would fail you could effectively do a b-spec car uh you can't do that anymore and it takes a long time if you go down the wrong direction so you can update it as much or as little as you like but you must comply with the cost cap and that is the defining factor of how much you can update a car in the modern era beautifully explained alex jakes that's why we book you for F1 Explains.

34:24You have explained beautifully throughout and you can hear Alex's commentary on F1 TV in selected countries around the world, on Apple TV in the US and on the F1 YouTube channel. You'll also hear him sometimes on our sister podcast, F1 Nation. But not yet, alas, on Beyond the Grid, the podcast Triple Crown still eludes him. And I for one... Tom Glutzen can't afford me for Beyond the Grid. No, that must be it. One more thing before we go we'd love to know what you think of all three of our official f1 podcasts of course f1 beyond the grid f1 nation and f1 explains you can tell us in a survey we're running at the moment go to f1 fanvoice.com look for where it says f1 podcasts and answer a few questions and as a thank you you'll you'll be entered into a draw to win a charl leclerc poster pretty good pretty good yeah it's a generous offer isn't it I think that if you write nice things about F1 Explains you should be featured if you send a voice note in so I agree you know be people listening go and write nice things about F1 Explains thank you thank you Alex I appreciate that so yes go to F1 fan voice dot com to do the survey and find the all important terms and conditions and you wouldn't want to miss those Alex thank you this has been a pleasure as ever thank you for having me.

35:45Do check out, of course, F1 TV's coverage of the Monaco Grand Prix this weekend. I'm very much looking forward to that. Keep your questions coming to F1explains at F1.com. We've got new episodes every Friday. Thanks for listening. Enjoy Monaco. Speak to you next week. Bye for now.

36:04This 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 One have helped shape the performance and efficiency you see in Honda's road cars today.