How pressure and expectation is changing for Kimi + George – Barcelona-Catalunya GP Preview

0:01James Hinchcliffe:Now, I really do think the pressure is on Kimmy in a different way. The expectations on Kimmy in a different way. He can play with that margin. You talk about pressure, but to me, it looks the opposite. Can he bounce back from the demons of last year at these races? That's going to be the defining thing of these next few rounds. Is the pressure completely off George? It's easier to do the hunting, isn't it, than be the hunted? George isn't out of the fight, but to not be out of the fight, he has to start performing. There's a pressure to maintain that grasp of the championship. Lewis, I feel he's got his mojo back.

0:37James Hinchcliffe:And if not going on the sim is what gets the best out of Lewis, forget the sim. Lando said in Monaco that he was looking forward to this weekend. They need some reliability though, don't they? Yeah, that's probably been one of the biggest shocks of the year. Welcome everybody to F1 Nation with me Tom Clarkson. I'm at the circuit of Barcelona, Catalunya and alongside me is James Hinchcliffe. And we're going to look ahead to this weekend's newly named Barcelona, Catalunya Grand Prix. Hinch, it is great to see you at a race again. How are you? I'm well, I'm well. It's great to be back on the ground.

1:12James Hinchcliffe:And again, not just doing this through the Brady Bunch screen of a Zoom call. It's always nice to be back. We're sat on top of one of the motorhomes as well. That's a different vibe to the flyaways, isn't it? It really is. You were just chatting about this. I don't do a lot of the European rounds, and every time I come to a paddock in one of the European races, I am blown away by these structures that each team builds and brings to the track. So, so impressive. And I've got to say, not terrible. I don't hate it. Tom, I've got to guess. I don't hate it. Hinch, three days ago, they were in Monaco as well.

1:45I know. The logistics is extraordinary. But let's talk all things Spain now. This is a circuit that the teams know incredibly well, all 4.6 kilometers of it. What kind of a challenge is it for the car and the driver?

1:59James Hinchcliffe:Well, I think, you know, it's interesting from the driver's standpoint. I think there's a lot of comfort coming from the fact that most of these drivers have more laps around this track than maybe any other one on the calendar. Just even coming up through the junior categories, there's lots of used to be lots of testing done here. From a driver's standpoint, long, fast corners. You know, it's physical in that sense, tough on the neck, and it's got a really nice flow to it. I think especially since they've kind of cleaned up the last sector, it's something that the drivers really enjoy coming to.

2:26James Hinchcliffe:From the car standpoint, again, this is kind of the track that was always the baseline for ultimate downforce performance, right? This is the one, especially with the tracks that we've seen so far in the year, and extra especially because we lost the two Middle Eastern rounds in Bahrain and Saudi. Proper circuit, long, fast corners. This is where downforce is king. and this is where I think a lot of teams are getting a sense of the pecking order in terms of who has been able to bring the most downforce to their car over the course of this new reg set. And because it's actually the first place that these cars ever hit the racetrack, even though those times weren't published, we know roughly what the order was.

3:04James Hinchcliffe:The teams at least will truly know how much performance they've added to the car since January, which is I think going to be pretty fascinating for all of them. Sure, Will. Well, let's talk Mercedes. and Kimi Antonelli. Actually, can we get your thoughts on his performance at the Monaco Grand Prix last weekend? I feel like we've said this three weeks in a row now. Best performance I think we've seen out of him. I know we said that after Miami. I know we said it after Japan. We keep saying this because he keeps outdoing himself. What impressed you so much about Monaco? It wasn't supposed to be a Mercedes-dominant track.

3:41James Hinchcliffe:Throughout practice, it wasn't. Come qualifying when everything is on the line, I think if there was going to be a track where this youthful exuberance we see in his driving style and his racing style was maybe going to bite him, it was going to be Monaco. And he was faultless all weekend when it came to qualifying, which is the most important qualifying session of the year. Not only did he find the performance in the car, he found it himself, didn't make any mistakes. And then in the Grand Prix, he absolutely walked away from the field. And that's before you put the pressure on of a second start after a red flag and a 12-lap shootout, whatever it was, to the finish with a seven-time champion on your gearbox.

4:19James Hinchcliffe:It drove away from Lewis then as well. It was exceptional. Setting fastest laps when the team's telling him to calm down and breaks the age record of a Grand Slam holder by years. I mean, it was truly an unbelievable performance at a time where maybe we weren't expecting it. What has impressed you the most, the way he's driving on track or the way he's dealing with the level of expectation and the pressure off track? I'm going to go with the former because there was still less pressure and expectation coming into this first part of the season than there was on George, right? So how he's been able to match and exceed George in a lot of ways at a lot of tracks, that's been what's super impressive.

5:02James Hinchcliffe:Now we're to a point with a, I mean, he's got more than a two Grand Prix lead in the points. Now the expectation is there. Five Grand Prix wins in a row. Now that pressure and that expectation changes. George said it. It's now his championship to lose. Kimmy, you know, bites back. No, I'm still the underdog. He's not. He is, but he's not anymore. Julian and I, we've had this, right? We were still betting the house on George until two weeks ago. Now I really do think the pressure is on Kimmy in a different way. The expectation, I should say, is on Kimi in a different way because every new situation that he's been put in, he is delivered and delivered exceptionally.

5:42I mean, he's 66 points ahead of Lewis Hamilton in P2, 68 points ahead of George Russell. I mean, he can play with that margin. I mean, you talk about pressure, but to me, it looks the opposite. He can afford to take the occasional P2 to George or Lewis, play the percentage game now.

6:01James Hinchcliffe:Yes, that's why I change it from pressure to expectation, because they are slightly different, and you are right. The pressure in some ways is off because there's a pretty nice buffer there. But the expectation now is that he's going to show up to every racetrack and win. Whether or not he's able to execute when that is the overwhelming expectation, that's going to be kind of the defining thing of these next few rounds. Everyone's going to go back to, oh, his European season last year is when his season really fell apart. So can he bounce back from the demons of last year at these races? Based on everything we've seen, yes, he can.

6:36James Hinchcliffe:But he still has to do it. So again, the expectation's higher, but the pressure has put himself in a really good position. Okay, so conversely, let's talk about pressure and George Russell now. Two races in a row where he scored zero points. What have we got? Just 16 races to go now. Is the pressure completely off George? it's easier to do to do the hunting isn't it than be the hunted it is but the expectation is still also there and he has the pressure of if it gets any bigger being the gap then you know because everybody's still pointing to last year right it's well you know leno had a 34 point gap to overcome miles further into the season than we are currently max 108 points and he got all but two of them back whatever it was turn four whatever it was so they're going to keep defaulting to to last year's gaps as no no george isn't out of the fight but to not be out of the fight he has to start performing so there's a pressure to maintain that you know grasp of the championship uh and and if he doesn't perform then yeah i mean the expectations there the pressure is still there i think until he's kind of mathematically out of it i do still think there's a fair amount of pressure on them now we've spoken quite a lot about how some tracks suit drivers better than others uh particularly George Russell when he you know he went into the Miami Grand Prix saying this isn't my racetrack and it so it proved over the weekend Montreal was his racetrack and okay he was he was going well until the retirement right though I mean he was so it proved but what about race cars because he's now saying this car doesn't suit me and that's that's more of a fundamental problem because he's got to turn up every weekend in this race car just as a driver how do you negotiate that problem the problem of not suiting a car so it's it's very doable but it is very challenging because drivers get to this level by doing a certain thing in a race car driving a car a certain way and in the junior categories everyone's in the same equipment and so you have to learn how to make that car go fast, right?

8:46James Hinchcliffe:Not every F4, F3, F2 design is going to naturally suit every driver's style. So to be consistent across all those championships, which George was, you had to learn what made that particular car tick. It's kind of what we've seen kind of going the other way with Lewis Hamilton. And the last regulation set, it was not conducive to his style, to being quick. For George, it was a little more his natural style suited that car better. Now we've changed. Lewis is doing better. George is struggling more, relatively speaking. Lewis never quite cracked it with the last one, because I think the older you are, the further you get into your career, the harder it is to make those changes, especially because Lewis was with one organization for so long, and the car characteristics were the same for so long.

9:29James Hinchcliffe:He didn't have to adapt. George is kind of getting to that tenure where it's going to be harder to change, but it's still very doable. The information's all there. You can see exactly what Kimi's doing. A lot of this is coming down to the tire prep. That's one of the talking points that George has had, right? It's harder with his style to get the heat into these tires the right way and to prep them properly. Kimmy's natural style is a bit more aggressive. He can get there in qualifying a bit easier. Okay, fine. If we've identified that as the issue, you've got to now just go out and fix it. It's hard to do because it's obviously going against his natural style, the way he's naturally inclined to find speed out of a race car.

10:08James Hinchcliffe:But if that's what has to be done, you just have to figure it out. You have to learn it. Aren't your fastest laps in a race car the ones when you're not having to think? 100%. And so the work is making it second nature, right? The work is not just looking at the data and then going out and doing it once. It's getting to the point where that is now your default position. So that way the tires are where they need to be without you even thinking about it. And then you can just carry on with the job of driving the lap. Right. And it's hours in the simulator because there's no testing now. God, wouldn't George have loved Formula One 20 years ago when after every Grand Prix you could go testing on track?

10:47Could you imagine?

10:48James Hinchcliffe:Yeah. Imagine having your own test facility outside the back of the factory like they do at Ferrari. I mean, that would have been incredible. That's part of what made Schumacher so good, right? It was just like the relentless amount of laps he did in a race car during that period. Whereas now it's all sim work, right? It's all sim work. And tire prep is much harder to mimic in the sim than just a lap. right i mean the the way these tire models are built and the way the track models are built you can get it all very close but the intricacies of of tire prep and you know normally in a sim your lap just sort of starts right i mean you just you just go and your first time into the first corner everything is whatever they set it as whether it's new tires or midlife tire whatever but you just go it's just there the hard part what he's struggling with is getting it to that point And I don't know if you can even accurately replicate that and practice that in the sim.

11:39Hinch, I don't know where you were 10 years ago. The Spanish Grand Prix. I think you were probably at Indy.

11:45James Hinchcliffe:I was sitting in a hospital bed. Oh, no, 2016. No, no. I was, yeah, we were doing fresh off probably Detroit race or something. Oh, prepping because it was back in May, the Spanish Grand Prix back then. But I think you might know where I'm going with this. Hamilton's up to the grass. And Hamilton's had a massive crash. And he's crashed into his teammate. The two Mercedes come together as Hamilton trying to pass on the inside and he can cover his hands over his eyes and he won't want to see that again. And there will be a big, big inquiry behind closed doors into that. Lewis Hamilton, Nico Rosberg collide on lap one.

12:22And of course, that sort of ends up giving Max Verstappen his first win for Red Bull. But what I actually wanted to ask you about is just how Mercedes managed the Kimi-George intra-team rivalry this year. Because it got out of hand, didn't it, between Hamilton and Rosberg. And eventually, Toto Wolff was having to fine the drivers and share the accident damage costs and all those sorts of things. Do you see the same problems arising for Toto Wolff with these two?

12:50James Hinchcliffe:I would say the potential is much higher than I thought it was when we first had this chat at the start of the season. I think the way that Kimi has approached the year, the way he's approached Racing George, personally, I'm a little surprised. Not at all disappointed. In fact, pretty impressed. But he's going for it. He understands at a very young age that this opportunity could be a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. for as impressive as he's been and how many years he has ahead of him, if he wants. This could still be the only time that he's in a championship-winning car against a teammate that he is level or better than.

13:29James Hinchcliffe:So I kind of respect the fact that he's not like, oh yeah, at 19, I'm already winning this much. I'll get my championship if this one doesn't work out. He's approaching this one the same way that Lando and Oscar did last year. This might be the only shot you've got. And it's pretty admirable that at 19 he's understood that. And are Merc favorites this weekend? Yes. I do believe so. I do believe so. I mean, we know the car's good. We know the power unit's good. They haven't lost a race yet, so you'd have to think of the favorites. And this is a very abrasive circuit with fast corners. Do you think that will help George in his tire prep?

14:03James Hinchcliffe:If the argument at places like Miami were that it's low grip and it's hard to get the heat in, then 100%. This should be, again, another one that George is very strong at. Not to say Kimi won't be, but hopefully George is a little more in the fight.

14:20Let's look at the chasing pack now. Ferrari. Should we start talking about Lewis? I mean, it's back-to-back P2s for him. Six wins at this track. He's now P2 in the World Championship for the first time since 2021. I feel he's got his mojo back.

14:35James Hinchcliffe:It certainly looks that way. You know, it's funny. we had the two best results before Monaco, right, were China and Canada, and the two races that he hadn't used, the sim. I'm a numbers guy. You know, two data points is not a, two's a coincidence, three's a trend, right? So after Canada, I'm like, I could argue that countries that have races that the country starts with the letter C is the reason that he's running well, right? The sim thing I didn't entirely buy after Canada, if I'm completely honest. Monaco, all right. Now, three's a trend. So it's trending that he's figured something out. And whether it's in the car, whether it's just in the prep, sim, no sim, whatever, he seems to be in a good mindset.

15:19James Hinchcliffe:And that's always when Lewis drives his best. So it's going to be interesting to see. I think a lot of people have mistaken him not doing the sim for him not doing any prep. I think just because he's not in the sim, he's still looking at the data going through everything apart from the sim bit in in the same way that i remember last year we had the conversation about lando norris and his sometimes kind of self-deprecating comments in in the pen post session post race whatever and some people thought it was you know not not the thing a champion does right and and i always took the position of i think that i think that lando had figured out what worked best for Lando and lying to yourself and thus the media and in public putting out something that wasn't true and you knew that when you went to bed didn't sit well with him and he didn't get the best out of himself in those situations he did the best when he was the one that confronted the problem before anyone in the media could right I think it's a similar kind of trend Lewis has found what works for him and if not going on the sim is what gets the best out of Lewis forget the sim he's doing a ton of prep with data analysis how he's always done it he said he's never been a big sim person he was going above and beyond with ferrari to try to get up to speed faster but clearly it's just not working for him yeah and i think carlo santi used to work with kimmy raikkonen at ferrari kimmy raikkonen was not a big sim guy as well so i think he's obviously got experience of how to extract the best from his driver without using the sim lewis has even described carlo as his italian bono right so but let's look at the other side of the garage so if everything seems to be to be well set for Lewis I feel Charles Leclerc is he's reaching a difficult moment and the irony of him having just committed long term to Ferrari while he's going through this little bit of a dip I mean let's look at the last three races he lost the podium in Miami with that late spin he had the worst weekend of his Formula One career his quote not mine in Canada and then of course he lost the podium in Monaco when he crashed at Anthony Noakes late in the race I mean And I suppose I'm saying him and George could both do with a decent result this weekend, couldn't they?

17:31For sure.

17:31James Hinchcliffe:I think it's a pretty big one for both of those guys. Maybe a little less so for Charles just because, you know, he's a driver that's always been a little more sensitive to set up and car balance. You know, I remember there were times when Science was his teammate and the car had a little bit more of a natural understeer balance. and Carlos was out-qualifying him, out-racing him, and this is a guy who we kind of hail as one of the best over a single lap especially. And then they got the front end to feel the way he wanted it to feel, and all of a sudden Saturdays he was gone again. He's a little bit particular.

18:05James Hinchcliffe:I think Jensen Button was kind of the same way. He really needed a certain car balance. He couldn't drive around things the way that some other guys could. Not a criticism, just sort of an observation. So I think if Charles can keep working on getting the car back to the feeling he needs, I think he can be you know very strong and him and Lewis can have a great little battle so we'll see if this track and the setup they bring here is going to give him that feeling the brakes are obviously a question again after after Monaco it'll be interesting to see if they have made a swap for for Leclerc or not but it'd be important for him to have a good weekend just interesting a couple of years ago they changed the layout of this track from having the chicanes in sector three to just having those two fast corners so there's a couple of big breaking points here but the rest of it less so so maybe the brakes what even if he keeps what he what he's had at the last two races may not be as big a factor for him yeah it's a good point it's not a high braking energy track in comparison to many others so yeah this one's just much more about kind of high speed balance right and corner balance you know throughout the consistency i mean you look at turn three here you can have three different balances in that corner because it's so long but uh yeah i mean it's it's high speed corners or what ferrari's saying isn't necessarily a strength of theirs right now so it will be interesting to see kind of where really where everybody stacks up here because it's just kind of different from what we've been racing on the last few weeks red bull and mclaren who do you fancy out of those two to finish ahead this weekend i would have said mclaren but i would have said mclaren last week as well and that certainly wasn't the case you know red bull claimed to be bad at bumpy tracks and curbs and they weren't you know mclaren with a shorter gear stack and a mercedes power unit you would have thought would have been quite strong at monaco and they weren't i think that's what's kind of fun about 2026 is we're still learning as the cars develop every week who is strong in what areas is going to change as well so yeah my gut still says mclaren will will be the quicker car but i could very well be wrong what's your take on red bull because they've actually finished on the podium at the last two races different drivers but are they starting to find a way for i mean the power unit is clearly strong are they starting to find a path with that car tough to tell um max's qualifying lap of monaco was just unbelievable but it was very max right that was that was the max effect i think to a certain extent uh hadjar's podium impressive and amazing and great for him took a lot of help.

20:31James Hinchcliffe:That was not a pure pace podium. Even Max in Montreal, you know, if George doesn't have a mechanical problem, they're not on the podium there either. Again, there's a lot of caveats of both those podiums. Two is a coincidence, three is a trend. There's still, for me, as the numbers guy, there's still a bit of a gap there. I think directionally they're getting better. Certainly whatever they did in Miami helped Max get the feeling back in the front of the car and they're going to keep making it better. but I'm not sure they've actually made as big a step as the last two races have made it look.

21:02And back to McLaren, Lando said in Monaco that he was looking forward to this weekend, because you've mentioned it already, but this is a benchmark racetrack. And I think, you know, they've been putting new parts on the car, taking them off. First time we've seen that at McLaren for a few years. And I think to come to this racetrack, see what the front wing is doing. They've tried it at both of the last two races and taken it off. I think, you know, they've got so much data, historical data at this track that I think it's come at a really good time for McLaren. And they were really quick here last year.

21:32They need some reliability, though, don't they?

21:34James Hinchcliffe:Yeah, that's probably been one of the biggest shocks of the year is just, you know, how many issues and different issues. It's not like it's one consistent thing that they're struggling to get on top of. It is a bunch of different things that have taken them out. But, no, I agree that this is going to be an interesting one for them. The track layout in theory should suit the car if, because we finally have, you know, it's a good high downforce track, but not like in the way Monaco is. And you've actually, we're not a sprint weekend, right? They can actually do a little bit of assessment and analysis over the weekend.

22:07James Hinchcliffe:So hopefully that front wing and all the effects it has down the car and maybe some other pieces they brought this weekend can make that part of the upgrade package, you know, stick and stay on the car. All right. Well, Hinch, final thing. I'm looking over your shoulder and looking at Alex Albon's Nigel Mansell-inspired helmet design for this weekend. Because Alex is surpassing the 1992 World Champion as the driver with the most race starts for Williams. This will be number 96, assuming he starts. That is a very impressive milestone, particularly for a guy who, let's not forget, in 2020 was dropped by Red Bull.

22:47And he's managed to not only, you know, get back into Formula One, but commitment works both ways, doesn't it? It works from the driver to the team, but also the team to the driver. So he's clearly doing something right.

22:57James Hinchcliffe:Oh, absolutely. And, you know, I think it is fascinating, though. When I first read that, I was kind of blown away because you think about these names, like, you know, whether it is Mansell or whether it was Damon Hill or whether it was, you know, these drivers that felt like they were at Williams forever. And all of a sudden, he's the most tenured guy. I know we have a lot more Grand Prix in a year now than we did back then. So that helps the cause, but, um, you know, it speaks volumes, I think, to what he brings as a driver, what he brings as a leader, the fact that, you know, his career was sort of thrown a bit of a lifeline after getting dropped by Red Bull, but he so quickly established himself as an invaluable part of that team in this very crucial phase of, you know, trying to slowly build itself back up to, uh, to what it was like when Nigel was driving there and when Damon was driving there.

23:43James Hinchcliffe:So for sure, A lot of trust from Albon, who, because of the kind of resurgence he had there, I'm sure had interest from other teams post Red Bull, but also that the team has been loyal to him. Well, Alex is my latest guest on F1 Beyond the Grid, and I asked him about the future and why Williams are on the back foot this year. We're in this position more because we were taking a lot of risks. We want to be thinking outside the box and thinking as far ahead as we can. And I think realistically, we bit off more than we can chew. it's not for the same reasons of we're just slow it was actually more the opposite of we were maybe too ambitious.

24:19James Vowles has said he wants you and Carlos for the future is are you on the same page? I would love to stay I think that for me it's I want to see it through I want to see where we get to I feel like there's unfinished business this year was it was actually tough in many ways even just mentally because you just seeing this forwards momentum going through and now we're there's areas that we realize okay well this is going to take a couple more years than than we would like let's say you know you as much as you you want to immediately get pen to paper you do want to see where and how the team evolve and i think for for me it's 100 % i love the board i love i love jv i think the team is in a great place so i want to see this see this work james has said 2030 is when he wants to to see williams challenging for world championships do you think that date is doable yeah i would have said you know we're previous to the end of last year my eyes were kind of you know 28 29 um 28 really i think from from this year it's it's kind of gone okay you know it's most likely more 2030 i believe it's a good number yeah inch is 2030 realistic for those guys yeah i think i think any sooner might be a challenge

25:32James Hinchcliffe:so yeah let's let's go with that i mean i so much of it and and and you know james vallas has spoken about this at length on numerous occasions it's it's the it's the process it's the facilities it's the resource they have back all that stuff takes so long to build up and then to build all the procedures around all the new equipment all the new facilities again take such a long time while you're simultaneously designing and racing a car and off you go so yeah it's it's not the work of a day for sure but yeah i i think all the parts are in place the pieces are in place that by 2030 they could be there drivers careers are short how difficult is it for a driver to be that patient nearly impossible i mean to tell your driver just give me four more years and we'll be with it within a shout maybe of a championship it's it's tough to hear but you have to have faith in the in the project um you have to have an option to leave if if you know there might not be in a do you want to be in formula one this might be the the best and only option so it's uh it's a it's not what a driver wants to hear certainly but um but again we were just talking about the the loyalty that that each each party has for one another so it would be cool it is cool there is something to say for a driver about being the one or one of the key members in building a team into a championship caliber thing well and i think that's why charl leclerc has has committed to ferrari long time I mean, Schaal will be the driver who starts the most races for Ferrari next year when he surpasses Michael Schumacher.