Red Bull’s new era + Ferrari’s ‘silver bullet’? – 2025 Belgian GP Preview with Jolyon Palmer

0:00This episode is sponsored by Indeed. Building a great team is never easy. If you're a small business, hoping the right people see your job posting isn't the best growth strategy. When the pressure's on and you need the right hire, this is a job for sponsored jobs. Indeed Sponsored Jobs gets you quality candidates when you need them most. Because when you're hiring, you don't just want more applicants, you want the right applicants. Sponsored jobs posted directly on Indeed are 95 % more likely to report a hire than non-sponsored jobs. That's because it helps you reach candidates that meet your specific criteria, such as skills, certifications, or location from the word go, boosting your job post in search results so you can reach the people that help your business thrive.

0:45So spend less time searching and more time actually interviewing candidates who check all of your boxes. Less stress, less time, more results. When you need the right person to cut through the chaos, this is a job for Indeed-sponsored jobs. And listeners of this show will get a$75 sponsored job credit to help get your job the premium status it deserves at Indeed.com slash podcast. Just go to Indeed.com slash podcast right now and support our show by saying you heard about Indeed on this podcast. Indeed.com slash podcast. Terms and conditions apply. Need to hire? This is a job for Indeed Sponsored Jobs.

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2:10And if you're wondering if law enforcement can tell you're driving high, well, everyone else can. Friends? I can tell you drove high. Parents? I can tell when you drive high. Relatives. I can tell. You drove here high, didn't you? So what makes you think law enforcement can't?

2:26Jolyon Palmer:I can tell. If you feel different, you drive different. Drive high, get a DUI. Paid for by NHTSA.

2:37Jolyon Palmer:The whole team was very unsettled. And this is the chance now for the rest of the team to re-galvanise and put their support behind Laurent. He's a very different personality to Christian Horner. So I'm going to be fascinated to see how the team reacts to him. It will be a bit more of a pragmatic race team, maybe, and not necessarily all guns blazing attack. How do you think Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri will fare, JP? It's not been one of Lando's better tracks. Oscar will be thinking, this is my chance to bounce back for the last couple of weekends. I think the fact that it's a sprint weekend again brings that jeopardy really quickly into the weekend.

3:15Is this the silver bullet for Ferrari? They've got this new rear suspension. Are we now going to see them challenging regularly at the front?

3:22Jolyon Palmer:It would be fascinating to see. It could be. I just see it as a Verstappen wins and it's going to be Red Bull redemption.

3:35Two teammates at the top of the standings, two new team principals and two chances to score points. The second half of the season starts with an F1 sprint weekend at Spa. and there's lots to talk about before we head to Belgium. This is F1 Nation, I'm Tom Clarkson and with me is former Renault driver turned F1 TV commentator Jolian Palmer. Jolian, great to have you on the show again. How are things? Are you enjoying this little mini break we're having?

4:04Jolyon Palmer:Yeah, I have to say I am. My five-week-old baby has had a little bit of me time so I think he's enjoyed it a little bit more as well. But it's strange, isn't it? Because we've now got back-to-back races and then the summer break So I have to say, I didn't quite pencil in this mini break. It feels like it's been an absolute chasm of F1 at the moment. Nothing for a couple of weeks and so much to talk about. Well, so much to talk about. And let's get straight into it, JP. It's the dawning of a new era for Red Bull Racing this weekend as new team principal and CEO Laurent Mechiez takes his seat on the pit bull for the first time since replacing Christian Horner after Silverstone.

4:44The spotlight's going to be on him, on the team, on Max Verstappen and Yuki Tsunoda after a very challenging first half of the season. JP, what will Laurent be hoping to achieve in this first weekend in charge?

4:58Jolyon Palmer:I imagine he's obviously going to be set for the lion's den of the media scrum in Belgium. And it's going to be a really intense first weekend for him, you know, going into a championship winning team. Now he's at the helm from his experience of racing bulls, which is so different in terms of how the team operates and what they expect. But, you know, I still think Red Bull have the ingredients for a really strong weekend. I still think they've got a great race team that they, you know, they know how to execute races. They've got a driver that can massively perform even when his back's against the wall in Max Verstappen.

5:36Jolyon Palmer:And he's always good at Spa as well. And the team are good at Spa. so I think if you're Lauren heading into his first weekend I think you're going to absorb life the top line F1 team it's going to be very different for him just personally with the media pressures and the scrutinies the questions but then get the cars on track it's a sprint weekend so there'll be talking points on track immediately and you're just hoping that Red Bull can find the find the ground running and and Max can do a good job he's a very different personality to Christian Horner. So I'm going to be fascinated to see how the team reacts to him.

6:13I think he's more gentle than Christian Horner. You know, Horner's only line of defence was always attack, wasn't it? Whereas I think he's a little bit more guarded. Laurent's a little bit more guarded. I mean, how do teams react to a change at the top? Do you think he'll have the backing of the team? Do you think Max will be motivated to deliver a top performance for Laurent?

6:36Jolyon Palmer:You know what? I think they will all be really gearing up behind him at the moment because this is after the fallout of everything in the last year and a half and the key personnel that have left Red Bull. And there's a lot of people within the team that are looking around and thinking, who's going to go next? You know, the whole team was very unsettled. And this is the chance now for the rest of the team, who are still very good at what they do, to regalvanise, put their support behind Laurent. and as I said I don't think you know one week to the next week the team principal role is going to change a huge amount they are not hands-on on the pit wall they're not driving the car they're not implementing strategies so really it's up to the race team to still put together the best weekend they can and it's all about just then the communication channels with Laurent making sure that he's fed back and he's in the loop as quickly as possible he understands where the team Morat what needs to change and I wonder with the different personalities between Christian and Laurent if there's going to be a bit of a culture change at Red Bull because of exactly what you said actually the the attacking nature of Christian Horner you know he was always bullish always wanting to to hit back if he was ever on the back foot well do you remember all those bits of paper that we saw whenever there was a Stewart's decision that went against him or Verstappen so I wonder if that will change and it will be a bit more of a pragmatic race team maybe and not necessarily all guns blazing attack in favor of Max but we will see because we really don't know what Laurent Meckies is going to be like in this situation.

8:10Well and Laurent is an engineer by trade he studied at the same engineering university in Paris as Fred Vasseur the boss of Ferrari do Do you think that'll help somehow? I mean, might it? Everyone's talking about the second Red Bull, right? We've had Liam Lawson have a couple of races. Yuki Tsunoda's fared no better since he's been in the car, since Suzuka. Do you think Laurent, because he's worked with Yuki, can have an immediate impact on that side of the garage?

8:39Jolyon Palmer:I think that's probably the best use of him in the immediacy is to work out where, because if you've got two cars that are the same, you have to understand why one driver is so good and the other one isn't. And even Red Bull as a team are scratching their heads thinking, how can no one get near Max? So when you've got now a team principal that hasn't worked with Max in this capacity, as Christian had sort of developed Max into the champion that he is, always coming through with Red Bull and they won their titles together. Laurent has actually come from working with Yuki Tsunoda and with Liam Lawson in the past.

9:15Jolyon Palmer:And that was his first foray into being a team principal. So he's kind of the underdog mentality so I think he's going to be definitely arm around Yuki and thinking come on you were great when you drove with me you were qualifying up in the in the front three rows what is going on here and trying to understand the second driver role a bit more which I think will be will be helpful whether or not he'll be able to actually find the performance there is obviously the bigger head scratcher for the team tell us a little bit about Spa Jolian because I mean I'm looking back at last year and Perez qualified third right so he was suffering the same fate as Yuki Tsunoda is suffering now and couldn't hold a flame to Max Verstappen yet at Spa that car was working for both drivers last year do you think Yuki can take some confidence from that but also at Spa do you remember last year it was the the wet qualifying and Max was clear of the field and then had his penalty that dropped him down and then when it dried up Checo then slipped back through the field so Spa is about a perfect track for Max as you get I think the the classic nature of it the fast corners the sweeping flowing flowing nature still I would expect Red Bull to be good and I think Max can be riding contention for a victory in Spa would Yuki take confidence from that I just don't know how he would find confidence from anything at the moment because of how performance is going so it's just a reset and maybe if you're Yuki the confidence is having a boss that you know and like who is just going to be a lot more in your camp than I would say Christian was and the old guard of Red Bull so having someone that's there to understand what's going on with that second car and then yeah hopefully the car performance is good because we've seen if Max is on the front row then the second driver can be in the top 10 if max is sixth the second driver is struggling to get out of q1 so it's all it's all relative there where are you finding time at spa i mean sector one is easy flat doesn't matter who you are right and then sector two is those fast flowing corners i'm thinking of puhan the double double left-hander is that where you dial your car in for so spa is the classic downforce trade-off which we're getting more and more of actually now but even at Silverstone Red Bull had their great downforce trade-off that gave Max the pole but the difficult Sunday so they can run the car in that low downforce configuration which they'll probably do again which will make them really quick in the first and the third sector and then you're trying your best to keep it glued through Pouin and the middle sector.

11:50Jolyon Palmer:Really the middle sector is is the tricky bit in terms of the corners because the first sector is it's uh la source a tight right hand hairpin it's kind of fine blast flat out whatever the downforce level through a rouge and then you're at the top of the hill so it's simply what wing do you have on the car the last sector is kind of the same the bus stop the middle sector is where all the driving skills going to come out and especially if you are trimming out the downforce which everyone will do to an extent but Red Bull maybe a little bit more, then that's where the driver magic's got to come in and where you've got to find it.

12:26Jolyon Palmer:I always think Lecombe coming through those three park corners, down the hill, is it Malmody? Rivaje. Rivaje. There's too many great corner names. Where's Malmody? The one before it. The right hander after Lecombe. It's the little right at the end of Lecombe, isn't it? I think around that section is where you can lose a load of time because it's sort of lower speed, a bit more fiddly. And actually you've got Poo on, which is a brilliant corner. It's like the breathtaking corner now with Spa. But all of these fast corners, like Cops and Maggots at Silverstone, there's actually not so much lap time that you can win there.

13:02Jolyon Palmer:It's just kudos for being fast and trying to do it flat out. Well, can you imagine if Max Verstappen won the Belgian Grand Prix, Mechies' first race in charge? I mean, you couldn't make it up, but you definitely are giving me the impression that it is possible. I think it could be. But also remember Max won his first Grand Prix at Red Bull. So it would be the full lineage coming back in for Laurent now getting his first win. And I don't think it necessarily would be like an indictment of where the team are at. I don't think they'd suddenly be fixed. But I do think they have a good race team. And I think they will have a good car at Spa.

13:40Jolyon Palmer:And I think with Max driving it, I'm not saying that there'll be favourites, but I would be surprised if they're out of contention and yeah, they've got a decent shot. The one thing that might throw a spanner in the works is the fact it's a sprint weekend and Red Bull often would take a little bit more time to get the car into a good window. Well, at the top of this show, I mentioned that there are two new team principals at the Belgian Grand Prix this weekend. The other being the new TP at Racing Bulls, Alan Permain. He stepped up from being racing director. You worked with him actually for a couple of years, JP.

14:15I mean, how different is Alan's challenge compared to the one facing Mechies?

14:20Jolyon Palmer:Oh, I think it's completely different. Racing Bulls is much more of a race team. And this is what Alan Perman is. He is brilliant at being so straightforward as an operator. He knows the inner workings of the engineering team. So when I was at Renault, he was the sporting director. and he basically just ruled all of the sporting side of Renault and Lotus before that. So I think he'll be pretty good at racing bulls because they're really, you know, it's the race team, how to execute the most on the race weekend. And I don't think the team principal role will be anywhere near as dynamic there as it is at Red Bull.

14:59Jolyon Palmer:It's still the B team. You've got Peter Bayer there still as the CEO. So I think Alan Permain, the title is there now as team principal. he's worked a lot of years to get to this point and it's great for him I would still be surprised if he's not really hands-on in terms of the race team getting everything right and he's got so much experience that he will be the sort of guy that oversees a little bit of the strategy wants to dive in on all of these technical points this episode is sponsored by indeed building a great team is never easy if you're a small business hoping the right people see your job posting isn't the best growth strategy.

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16:13So spend less time searching and more time actually interviewing candidates who check all of your boxes. Less stress, less time, more results. When you need the right person to cut through the chaos, this is a job for Indeed Sponsored Jobs. And listeners of this show will get a$75 sponsored job credit to help get your job the premium status it deserves at indeed.com slash podcast. Just go to indeed.com slash podcast right now and support our show by saying you heard about Indeed on this podcast. Indeed.com slash podcast. Terms and conditions apply. Need to hire? This is a job for Indeed-sponsored jobs.

16:53This episode is sponsored by Indeed. Building a great team is never easy. If you're a small business, hoping the right people see your job posting isn't the best growth strategy. When the pressure's on and you need the right hire, this is a job for sponsored jobs. Indeed Sponsored Jobs gets you quality candidates when you need them most. Because when you're hiring, you don't just want more applicants, you want the right applicants. Sponsored jobs posted directly on Indeed are 95 % more likely to report a hire than non-sponsored jobs. That's because it helps you reach candidates that meet your specific criteria, such as skills, certifications, or location from the word go, boosting your job post in search results so you can reach the people that help your business thrive.

17:39So spend less time searching and more time actually interviewing candidates who check all of your boxes. Less stress, less time, more results. When you need the right person to cut through the chaos, this is a job for Indeed Sponsored Jobs. And listeners of this show will get a$75 sponsored job credit to help get your job the premium status it deserves at Indeed.com slash podcast. Just go to Indeed.com slash podcast right now and support our show by saying you heard about Indeed on this podcast. Indeed.com slash podcast. Terms and conditions apply. Need to hire? This is a job for Indeed-sponsored jobs.

18:26Let's now turn our attention to the top of the championship. Oscar Piastri leads his McLaren teammate Lando Norris by eight points. And with a maximum of 33 available across the F1 Sprint and the Grand Prix, it's a huge opportunity for both drivers to make a statement. We've talked about Spa the racetrack. How do you think Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri will fare, JP? Do you think the track layout favours one ahead of the other?

18:54Jolyon Palmer:I would say Oscar's always been really good at Spa. I think there's various tracks and you're trying to pinpoint. We've done this for a few weeks now and I think I've got a 100 % record of getting it wrong. So this probably means not very much. But on track record, Oscar has got good pace around this place. He had his sprint pole, didn't he, in his first season. he had the podium last year that was he was closing in on those duo the two mercedes at the front and it's not been one of lando's better tracks but again with those two it's really tough to go i think on paper oscar will be thinking this is my chance to bounce back for the last couple of weekends but lando's got the momentum from the last couple of weekends and i think the fact that it's a sprint weekend again brings that jeopardy really quickly into the weekend because you get the momentum on a Friday and even if it's just a couple of points swing then that's going to be so big when it's an eight point difference.

19:52There's one thing about Oscar that I've noticed this year is that he builds over the course of the weekend and you don't get time to build during a sprint do you because you're straight into qualifying after after one practice session I wonder whether that might play against him in the battle with Lando?

20:10Jolyon Palmer:Yeah possibly but he's also been really good in the sprints remember in uh in china this year and he was straight on it and it was lando that was having the lockups at the hairpin and i'm looking at the the bus stop in spa is exactly that sort of corner where you've done 95 of the lap and you've got one big stop to get it right and oscar delivered it was the hairpin of his life in uh in china to get that right so i agree generally if you look at on paper the weekends that they go through you will often see lando ahead through practice and then by q2 they're very close in q3 it's anyone's game but is that because oscar's just being methodical is he being calm and then he's just building up to it and i guess the question is can he build up to it straight away if he has to build up to it straight away and i'd be surprised if the answer is not yes and do you think that 10 second penalty at silverstone has been bubbling away under his skin for the last two weeks and you know do you think anything bubbles away under Oscar's skin TC I think you're probably right it's tough to imagine it isn't it yeah but I I thought the Silverstone one was was I've said it before I think it's a harsh penalty that he obviously didn't take well because it's a Grand Prix win that's gone but maybe he's enjoyed the the two weeks off and can come back and you you can't let that bubble away for two weeks you'd be you'd be really struggling with life wouldn't you for two weeks of the peak of summer off racing and you're still just being being bogged down by that so he's got to be fully thinking about this and putting it right jp tell us more about that double left puchon because the team are very open in telling you that oscar is very good through fast corners yet when you were giving your description of the lap of spa earlier eau rouge is no longer a corner you were talking about puchon and then of course blanchement that that left back towards the bus stop at the end of the lap is easy flat as well so if oscar's big strength is fast corners are there actually enough at spa for him to make the difference well this is the thing with where we're at in formula one at the moment because you could say the same thing at silverstone you think oh the great strength is fast corners brilliant let's go to silverstone where you've got carps you've got abby and they're all just flat out even on low downforce so we are with the the generation of cars that we've got the fast corners are becoming flat out or fewer but I you know the corner that I really like I'm always a fan of a niche corner but the Fania chicane some people call it the piff path what a what a chicane that is so you're you're blasting through Pooon down the hill load of orange cladden fans right in front of you occasionally a flare and you're blasting through with sometimes a lift sometimes you might be able to do it pinned as well it's so quick Pouin but it's still uh it's not like Blanchement's flat out in the wet A Rouge can be flat out in the drizzle it's a proper corner but then very quickly so you take that first apex the second part is flat but you're immediately bringing it back to the left hand side for the for the Fania Chicane which you can barrel in so much speed there you bring it back to the right for the left hand side and yeah I quite like that as well it's a nice flowing part of the circuit and then you're into the next corner is not quite so fun Stavolo.

23:32Pierre Gasly organizes a run around the track every Thursday evening in recent years in memory of Antoine Hubert. Have you done it? I have done it and I'm going to be doing it again next Thursday and do you know what when I get to the Fania chicane I'm always slightly taken aback at the height of the curbs there it feels quite old school the curbs are quite high do you have to respect them in in one of these cars yeah yeah

23:56Jolyon Palmer:can you use them you can i mean drivers get greedier and greedier on the entry curbs so on the way in you'll find someone leaning on it but occasionally you've seen i've seen someone drop a wheel on the grass there and find their way towards the barriers i think it was valtrice bottas and a mercedes a few years ago um so then through the actual apexes you've got to be very very polite because it's high speed you don't want to unload the car with those curbs and then you've got that bit of gravel on the exit as well which is it's a nice little thread through there i imagine it's a very pleasant run once you get to the top of the the camel straight that is mate it's downhill at that point are you going this week yeah so i've got no excuse now for a lap on thursday mate i'll see you on thursday evening i'm i'm way too unfit these days tc look when you were talking about your sort of favorite bits of the track and you came up with the piff path um i thought you might say stavelo because that's the next corner which is so important isn't it because it spits you out onto that long run back to the bus stop chicane but how challenging is that it's another tricky corner because you're you're approaching it with loads of g coming through this this second part of of fangir piff path you're a piff path guy obviously um and then and so you've got to bring the car back very quickly and then it's a really short stab of the brakes very short radius corner so as you're you're chucking it in it's not like pretty much the rest of the corners at spa are very a very long loaded corners um and then as you say the exit's critical the second part is now flat out when it rains that's tricky and then and then you're just glued to the to the road all the way up to the bus stop but getting that traction is is pretty important you can lose so much time by making a mistake on the entry or the mid corner there and then you have to wait to get on the throttle and you lose all the way to the bus stop right given everything we've just said about the track do you think McLaren are still favorites this weekend uh yeah I reckon it's just a combination of corners that when you have a lot of high speed some low speed is difficult for other teams to find their their best operating window so I you have to say McLaren are going to be the favorites almost for any given weekend at the moment but I think Max will be there and the team I'm really interested to see is Ferrari this weekend TC upgrades are due and they went really well at Silverstone I think they really under delivered at Silverstone well they were looking good in Q2 at Silverstone I mean they've got this new rear suspension it's all about getting the car to perform at a lower ride height JP is this the silver bullet for Ferrari are we now going to see them challenging regularly at the front it would be fascinating to see it could be we have seen so far with Ferrari if they can run the ride height low they can be competitive the problem is doing that legally and that was the Lewis Hamilton disqualification in China you know what it's a sprint weekend it's spa so trying to find that ride height on a sprint weekend is going to be tricky as well for them and they're obviously going to be playing with it to get it as low as possible and gain the most lap time but when you've got eau rouge and the compression there it's everyone's really really on the on the limit of ride height and you don't know about it necessarily until you do the 40 laps of the grand prix so in many ways tough one to bring this upgrade and try and get that car lower and working better but i think in terms of performance this could be a big a big break for them they bought their upgrade package to Austria which worked really well in giving them downforce and a better platform in the high speed of Silverstone but also through that first sector and then the idea of this is to try and find that low speed performance and get that that ride height down the lower you run it the quicker you go I've got high hopes for them here.

27:48In terms of teams that haven't quite met expectations this year is Ferrari top of your list the team have actually confessed and said we have under delivered at various points it's hard to disagree with that but how much have

28:03Jolyon Palmer:they underperformed I think massively haven't they you you can't say anything other than it's been disappointing for them but I was looking through the the standings teams and drivers I thought actually we're halfway through if they can find performance now they can salvage a pretty decent year in this they could still easily be second in the in the constructor standings and they can motor clear of uh of red bull and mercedes but even if you look at charles potentially even lewis with the way that the the driver standings has been and you've got george and max missing loads of points recently it's not even out of the question that with a with a car that can give them confidence and consistency those guys could come back in towards a third place battle.

28:45Jolyon Palmer:But that's the point. It's a third place battle, isn't it? Hey, it's not great. I'm clenching at straws for them. But when you look at it at the end of the year, they might be like, actually, for what on paper is a disastrous year, to be best of everyone apart from McLaren, we'd take it. Well, Ferrari, as you say, a P2 in the constructor's standings, just 12 points ahead of Mercedes. Let's have a quick chat about the silver arrows. That car, the W16, has proved it's capable of winning from pole, as it did in Canada, yet it's also very capable of being off the boil, which we've seen on several occasions this year.

29:25What can we expect at Spa? I mean, they crossed the line first and second last year until Russell was disqualified. Do you think they'll go better here? Will this be one of their better weekends?

29:35Jolyon Palmer:Have you checked the forecast for the weekend? We might get wet on our run on Thursday. Oh, no. our run jp yeah i think it's it's sunshine and showers it's typical spa weather i think and it doesn't look that hot which is good news for for mercedes even over one lap it seems like just having a cooler temperature gives them a chance to to get the car working and it's a really long lap as well i remember driving spa in my first time in an fp1 in 2015 and we put on the soft tires and I destroyed them by the time I got to the bus stop I just I had absolutely nothing left I'd given it full beams through all the all the mid sector I was probably hanging on to it over steering around loving life through the classic circuit got to the end of the lap and I had absolutely nothing so when it is hot in Spa it is really difficult to hang on to those tires so if it is a bit drizzly a bit rainy that would be the best thing for Mercedes and this is what will bring them closer to the mix and then any any race weekend really they're close enough to be in striking distance it'll be interesting to see if if Kimi Antonelli can get a little bit closer again this weekend and find more of a rhythm because it still feels like it's just George that's that's going to be challenging and I love that race that he put in last year to overrule your team nail the strategy defensive rear guard for the final few laps I was a bit gutted that he that because I love to see a driver calling a strategy win so I think he'll be out for blood and hopefully Mercedes have a chance with the conditions to get there.