Inside Red Bull dynasty & Why we should take Verstappen exit talk seriously? | Calum Nicholas

0:02This is a global production. Formula One is not the same as when I joined. You were part of that golden generation. Now I've come to Red Bull, am I a bad omen? Max Verstappen, do you believe him when he says he's going to walk away? What's the worst thing you ever screwed up in a race? Oh man.

0:26Up to speed.

0:31it's will it's just will welcome to up to speed um don't worry it's not actually me on my lonesome today because as it's austrian grand prix week we thought we'd invite to the podcast somebody who knows only too well um what it is to race at this track to compete at the highest level and with it being red bull's home track what it is to be part of one of the most successful teams in formula one history he is the author of life in the pit lane co-host of the talking bull podcast ambassador for red bull racing and of course former red bull mechanic calum nicholas welcome to the show oh thank you mate what a lovely intro appreciate that a lot how are you mate i'm really good man i'm at home in my office i've got i've got the week off um from the track this week um so that's quite nice for me to get some time at home i see you're in another hotel room another hotel yeah Yeah, yeah, yeah.

1:26Always hotels at 5am doing these. But you know how it is, mate. You know how it is. Talk to us about when you arrived at Red Bull. Did you arrive there at a time where the success was already kind of happening? Or were you very much part of that build up towards the success? well it's kind of weird i so i joined at the beginning of 2015 right so you could have like forgiven me for thinking oh this is great i'm gonna go and win championships straight away everything's gonna be wonderful um and then you know 15 was 2015 was one of our worst seasons in the sport right like we didn't even get a bonus that year and i was like what have i done you know i've come from marussia everything's collapsed there and now i've come to red bull am i you know i was like am i a bad omen like you know is this something that's gonna follow me around but you know from that point on it was it was very much like a building you know like a building process you know and all of those years and i say this every time i sort of talk about it i spent years with mercedes just kicking our ass week in week out it was so good and that whole process i think you know from then on the all the way up to sort of 2021 that was like a building stretch right it was just learning and doing things better and it was it was even the things like off track right not off track but things that weren't necessarily you know you can only make the car so fast you can only do this and that there's only so many things that are within our control as the race team so that's when we started going after things like you know pit stop world records and you know consecutive pit stop championships we you know you try and find the wins anywhere but it was like a building it was a building time how important was that when the success started to come that you'd kind of been through the trenches and you'd been through the difficult years and kind of building that um the relationships but the the kind of the strength to to really maximize it in the end yeah look i think like very much so on a personal level it's always important like when you're with a group of people that have been through like the worst bits you sort of a you appreciate the great years even more but then also like you you know the work that's done together but i think you know as a as a business not just as a team but as a business we saw you know mercedes were doing things so well that's why they were that's why they were such a tough team to beat it wasn't just that the the car was fast it was fast it wasn't just that lewis and valtteri and nico were all like brilliant even though they were but it was that outside of that mercedes do everything really really well they're so well organized like you know all that down to their logistics and and all of these things like this they're a really hard outfit to beat so all of those years those were things that we were learning right those are things that we were improving to try and beat our competitors and that's what all comes together to have a year like 2023 you know though that's what you have to do you have to bring all of those things together but for us as a team it was amazing to sort of go through the rough and then get to all of that glory because f1 teams always say they don't look at their competitors they're always focused on themselves and improving their own processes and their own working practices is that a lie do you actually spend time looking at other teams and not maybe not necessarily looking at like what do they do that we can take on board but kind of looking at it and taking that as inspiration yeah look i think i think it'd be silly to say that you never look at what your competitors are doing right like if someone's doing something better than you it doesn't mean necessarily that you're going to look at what they're doing and say well we're just going to do that i think especially you know red bull we've kind of always tried to chart our own path and not sort of follow follow the sort of the general consensus on things but it's it's one of those things you've got to look at your competitors and say well why are they better than us here and you might say okay well actually yeah they've got a good way of doing it what if we did it this way it could even it could be even better right it's not necessarily looking at your competitors and saying oh we'll just copy them because you know you can't really beat people by copying them you have to find that next marginal gain on them um but yeah you of course you look at you look at the other teams around you and what they're doing and how it works for them and what could work for you how do you how do you pick which team to go to and how like how does a team approach you and what do they promise you because you know mercedes red bull at the time right at the top and you'd think quite a difficult choice of which one of those you might want to go to so similarly today with like you know a mclaren um but there's certain things that red bull had as perks that that came as a result of taking the job was it just the culture um of the place that found itself very different to other other teams yeah i mean i think that that is true but i look for me when i first joined it was a very different sport right and also like i'll be i'll be completely honest when marussia collapsed i applied at every single f1 team i wrote to them i emailed them and it was red ball you know actually i mean it's not true ferrari were the first i you know i flew out to to italy for the day and i interviewed there and i've got some old friends at ferrari um ultimately i didn't really want to live in italy at that point in my life um and then it was red bull were the first team to give me the opportunity like and i said this in my book i said any team that had given me that opportunity they you know it would have been i was in 100 right um i think maybe just by sheer fortune i think the nature of red bull as a company suited me right in that like i i i i quite like a lack of structure and whilst red bull are structured i think to the outsider it looks just like sometimes i call it a comfortable chaos right that's where we live right and that's and that's where we're comfortable and we were happy to chart a different path and that's really suited me as a personality a in that i i'm very much someone who suits being left to just do things on my own and do them well and that's sort of a staple of the red bull culture and that we don't really do like micromanagement things like that right now in terms of what teams promise you it's kind of changed like the the nature of of the game has changed right in the when i joined the sport and i was looking for jobs in f1 there was no there were no financial regulations right and the the landscape for teams has kind of changed because when you think about when the regulations came into place in 2021 you've got like some of the biggest teams mercedes ferrari red bull at the time in terms of the amount of people they employed you don't want to make you don't want to make people redundant because we we don't want that for the sport or for the industry but then what you find is that when those regulations came into place because salaries are a part of it the teams who have smaller numbers and at the time it was it was aston right so at the time it was aston who were building and they're poaching staff from all of the big teams left right and center as you because they could because it's a competitive nature but when you have a really small staff what you can do is you can offer people big you know big pay rises and better money and then just sort of slimline your operation to keep the numbers down but offer you know real talent you know real money yeah um and obviously for the bigger teams it's a lot more restrictive when you already employ 1200 1500 people you're you're you're a lot more contained in that manner and then we're sourcing the same with cadillac you know cadillac have come in as a brand new build operation graham loudon they're you know and they're taking this opportunity to say well look if we're really clever and we streamline our operation and have like no sort of redundancies anywhere within the business we can poach some of the best talent by offering them bigger money yeah obviously you had so many years of success at red bull what was it that made the the difference was it that feeling of of harmony of being a part of the team was it how well regimented you were under someone like Jonathan Wheatley who I know you know his objective was always on the pit stops get them under two seconds you know get it perfect right and then get it under two seconds but he was he felt to me like such a a strong kind of general in that in that role.

9:29Look I think that in in in some ways Jonathan like he was he was a great leader right and i always say look i got on with jonathan really well when i always say that having jonathan in your corner is like a really really you know great tool to have at your disposal right depending it doesn't matter what you're doing in the paddock he's been in the paddock for so long um his relationships throughout it are vast um so he's always he's always great to have on your side but look jonathan is one of the most competitive people i've ever met in my life oh yeah right and and this is the thing right these are the personalities that you want in a winning team right and i'm and i'm and i'm the same i always joke like i still race my daughter up the stairs to bed every night and it's a proper race man like she can cry because she didn't win i don't care man we were racing i don't care that you're seven right but this is my this is the nature of me is that i'm a competitor and this this was the the nature of the personalities that we had within the team throughout those years right in that we we drive each other forward even to the point where we can we're in the same team we're still competing on another i speak about this in pit stops of you know the corners of each corner of the car becoming like our own little crew me and the two people that are changing this wheel we want to be the fastest wheel on the car right so this is the nature of having these competitive um personalities all around the team when you started winning um obviously you know 21 was was was absolutely huge and and i know you've talked a lot about you know about abu dhabi in the end of that but after such a massive slog in 21 when the success almost kind of became the norm how did that affect the way in which you had to go and approach weekends where you know before you had not saying you didn't have to work for it from 22 23 but it became almost a kind of a convey about of victories was it was it almost harder in those years um to keep that that that level it's it's um it's one of those things right so like for me in 2021 like i say it was one of the most like stressful seasons right it was the one where you took the work home with you and you never really switched off you were stressed about it at home as well as when you got back to the track you know you never you know you didn't really get the the time to appreciate until the end right you know the end i remember sitting on the pit wall for like 10 minutes on my own just trying to take it all in and what had happened and that was like the first time i felt like my shoulders actually just dropped for a moment and i had a moment of peace and then in 2023 you're right it's a very different thing but firstly the thing about 23 is we weren't expecting to have a season like that right so bear in mind in 2022 for the first half of 22 we were in a battle with ferrari right so for all of us in the garage in our mind is that you know ferrari dropped off towards the end of that season but they're going to be back at the beginning of the season it's probably going to be tighter than it was right so then after like four or five races in 2023 we're kind of like what's what's going on what's going on here right and then it was and it's quite funny you always get like there's like two sides of things right so like i think for the mechanics once we get to that point we're going to be a little bit in our minds we're going to be like yeah we got this no worries we'll rock up to the track this week max will go out there he'll smash it whatever nice nice and easy win and then in the engineering office they're always the opposite right they're always like pessimists yeah yeah so you'll go you're like and i'd see i'd see pn this was must be like i don't know maybe halfway through the year like maybe just after the august break and i and i saw pierre and i said to him how are we looking this week and it would be like the same thing and he'd be like well you know it's all right you know i'm not sure we have to that's but that's yeah and then uh and then so when we got to singapore and i said the same thing to him and he's like well you know it's not it's not all great and i was like oh no he's just lying and then we got like halfway through the weekend i was like oh no he wasn't lying well yeah this time this time he was right this one he's actually real but i don't know i think it's an action it doesn't really change what you're doing i think in some ways 2023 like it adds its own little pressure in that you didn't want to be the person that made a mistake to screw things up i say this like i said i was talking about monaco recently and i feel like as a mechanic in monaco there's very little you can do to help things go right but there's loads you can not screw up there's loads you can do to ruin it and that's that's the kind of what you got to in 2023 i don't want to be the person that ruins this run oh man what's the worst thing you ever screwed up in a race oh man it's you know what it's weird i i had some screw-ups early on in my career um that i mostly got away with like the one that i always remember and it was the one that i i've probably learn from the most about like double triple checking everything you do right so years ago i was at a gp3 race in spa and alex sims was the driver and he started the race somewhere around 13th right and he he battled his way up to third and as he went to overtake for second he made a bit of contact with the other driver and it bent the track rod but it bent it so severely there was no way he was going to be able to continue this race not on a track like spa where you're like dragging the wheels down the straight so he was on his way back to the pit lane and the car ran out of fuel on its way back to the pit lane right and it was me i'd fueled that car right as a number two mechanic it's one of the many jobs that you do and i'd fueled that car and i always remember it thinking to myself like and afterwards we discovered that you know basically it had been under fueled because there was a problem with one of the fuel bousers but it's about you know double trick triple checking your work and you know i got away with that one because that car was retiring anyway but i always remember thinking to myself like imagine oh man that would like his pace he was looking at trying to win this race with his pace could you imagine if a lap later he'd like been leading this race and no wonder he was so fast mate he was no one he was so fast he was no wonder he was so classy exactly that right so um you should probably thank you after the race you made me look like a rock star mate exactly so there was there was that one that was really early on in my career i learned from that and then the only to be fair the only other like really like severe mistakes i ever made were like pit stop ones right and i say severe but you know the nature of pit stops and what you're trying to achieve like it takes something really small for it to go wrong right you know and i and i spoke about it and there's been plenty of pit stop ones but i i always say i only remember the bad pit stops i never remember the good ones so so that's just how it is um but yeah no thankfully especially once i was in formula one i feel like i'd i'd learned all the lessons i needed to to just sort of make sure i wasn't making any silly errors You were part of that great generation, that golden generation, and it always has to end, right?

16:49But could you imagine that the team would have sort of disbanded as rapidly as it has? And that really, you know, okay, there are some guys behind the scenes, you know, Pedals and Pierre and, you know, and Max, obviously. but when you look at kind of top line management and you look at the the faces the real faces jonathan you know adrian they've all gone i think one of the things i always like to remind people as well because you people say this about the garage goes oh there's so many new faces in the garage and i get to to sort of like an outside viewer yeah these are new faces um but they're not really new faces to the garage and what you have to remember is that those people that you see at the circuit they are such a tiny snapshot of formula one teams you know your 60 operational personnel in teams of like you know with red bull powertrains i think topping 2 000 people now right so what yeah and what i and what i've got to see and actually the thing that i love about this is that i those faces that i see in the garage now i've watched them come through sort of the red bull ranks on their way there same way that i did in the same way that you know the same way that red bull have this incredible sort of talent pipeline for drivers you know we do exactly the same thing at the factory for mechanics engineers technicians designers you know we've got a talent academy full of graduates and the whole point is for those people to get to to go to where they want to go to eventually right so for me one of the joys that i get is the person that now does my job building engines is ollie and you know ollie joined us as an apprentice right and i got to train him so it's going to see him now doing that job is it's great for me and so whilst i get that to an outsider it looks like there's lots of new faces to the business actually these are people that have been coming through the pathways that we've set out for them to be in those positions so those are the ones rising but the ones at the top who many would argue with the architects of the success they've got is the culture at red bull strong enough to survive those kind of big departures you know did that culture very much stem from the top or from your experience is the culture at the place actually its own its own being and so somebody can take over at the top and everything will remain relatively you know unruffled well i think a large part of the culture obviously originally you know it came from dietrich it came from austria it came from red bull as a brand right and that you know and that is and that's this unchangeable right the red bull way of life and a way of doing things in the lifestyle that we we sort of we sort of embrace as part of the brand that doesn't really change one thing about the culture at red bull that i always loved was and i always remember um when we'd be getting ready to go on air on sundays on f1 tv and we'd be prepping and you guys would all come out the garage and you just all have a moment and you'd sit on the pit wall and it was never really captured on tv nobody ever really i think i've still got some photos i need to send you at some point of you all of you all sitting there but you as a team you all just had this pre-race routine of just taking a moment and i loved that and you were the only team that ever did that um you know and i i i thought that spoke so much about you guys as a unit and i tell you what as an example obviously as you said you know a lot of us are now off and doing different things and that team from that era is is largely spread around the paddock but the team the i was in barcelona and i watched them on sunday before the race when i was out there about to do the pre-race show with hinge and i watched them and they still do it you know and everybody was out there with our you know our sunday can of red bull before the race and and that so so this is what i mean about sort of the culture and the traditions and these things sort of living on that's great man that's great um formula one's always had like quite a lad culture right you know lads on tour all that kind of thing but then it changes right because we grow up and we get and we find our partners and we we have families and we have kids when was the point for you where it it really changed and um you know being away started to bear heavier um and the the joy of being at the track kind of no longer assuaged the the joy that you had and how much you missed being at home no i'll be honest with you it wasn't necessarily that my joy of being at the track changed because that hasn't really changed right yeah like you know i'd do anything to sort of be involved with some racing at any point but it's it was one of those things in that like i i knew once we had once we had bella and isabella was born i recognized that my partner was making huge sacrifices for me to still be away and that was fine right that wasn't a problem in that phoebe you know phoebe we met in the paddock she understood that i had these goals i wanted to win championships right and at the time we hadn't done that yet so phoebe was fine she was amazing allowing me to continue go racing all of these things but then i probably got to like you know it was probably sometime at the end of 2023 when you know i've won constructors championships drivers championships pit stop awards hellwell records and i'd come home and i'd see like the strain that this was taking on bella right because she needed her dad to be around and not gone for two three weeks at a time and I'd come home and it was like she was a completely different person um and you know that's her Thebes needed the opportunity to get back to like living more normally and having you know some opportunity for her to go and do the things that she needed to do and work and spend time with friends because that's the other toll you forget it's not just the toll it takes on you traveling it's the toll it takes on everyone else back home that's sort of picking up the pieces right yeah that's so true once I'd done all of those things I kind of got into 2024 and I was sort of like am I being a little bit selfish here like I've done all the things I've done you know and especially you know I knew that the book was being released in 25 I'd been doing the social media I've been doing like things like podcasts and I had this idea of going and doing broadcasting so it's not that I fell out of love with racing not at all it was that I kind of fell in love with doing other stuff right and I wanted to sort of find that balance in life people look at 24 races but They don't realize that it's everything around the periphery of the 24 races.

23:27And it's not just 24 weeks away. It's not half a year away. You know, it is almost a constant from from Feb to December. It's pretty much a constant other than those three weeks in August when you get a shared moment with your family where you can be present and at home. Like it's it's it's bloody hard. But to have that recognition is it's massive, mate. It's absolutely massive. when we talk about watching things grow you uh saw every second of max verstappen's development at that team from his first win to his first world championship and then becoming one of in you know inarguably the greatest of his of his generation the greatest of his generation do you believe him when he says he's going to walk away

24:15um it's an interesting question look i think max is one of those people that he's the same guy monday through sunday and like he he is honest right i think that's what a lot of us kind of appreciate max about you know is that he he won't just do what someone tells him to say and this and that and the other so i think for the most part i say that i listen to what max says in these things and i don't i don't think it's one of those things and max saying oh well i'll walk away i think he's saying that you know i want this sport to be the formula one that that we love i love yeah right that i love that we love um you know and i think him saying look you know and this has always been true right he is the only other driver that's allowed to go out there and race other motorsports at his leisure right fair um and he does that because he loves racing so when he says you know there's a lot of racing that i love and also you know these are these are the things that i love about formula one but i need it to stay the formula one that i love i think he's just being honest i totally totally agree with you but you have you know you have an insight into him that yeah that we that we don't because you spent so much time with me is that it is it just all about just about the joy for him just about the passion just about about racing yeah that and look and i think i think you know it's it's odd for us in that we you know so many other drivers we they they have other passions outside of racing this and the other their hobbies and this that max love that's his hobby right yeah he does what he loves for a living right and that's that's not that's not going to change so you know you also have to remember that it's you know and i talk a lot about the stress that these 24 racing seasons take out on mechanics and and the other people that travel with the team and it is huge yeah it is still 24 and i know the drivers they they do travel in luxury and all these other things but it is still they are they are compensated fairly well they are compensated well actually one of the things that we say about compensation right and we we talk about this now with the the grueling seasons is all very well saying that you can earn more money money doesn't doesn't stop professional burnout for a start no you know you can pay people as you know it's the same with mechanics you can pay them as much as you like that won't prevent professional burnout right but the you know this is this is the thing like for for for the drivers it's still 24 weeks away racing but then all of their other commitments like formula one it's not the same as when i joined in you know in 2012 2013 where you know for the last for the most part other than the sports absolute superstars the media duties for for a lot in the for a lot of the drivers were were minimal yeah you might do a couple of commercials a year for one of your big sponsors like the demands on the drivers now from you know the media and commercial perspective are are very very different you know they are really time consuming and then when you couple that with the training with the the racing and all these other things there is a lot of other racing that will require less of you and you can have a lot of fun and i say the same thing i say the same thing about mechanics right i think what a lot of people i've worked with have discovered is that you can go and earn pretty much the same money going and doing WEC or going over to the US and doing IndyCar and having a six-month season there's a lot of other great racing out there one of the joys of the growth of Formula One for the rest of the motorsport world is that they've seen you know they've seen growth that goes along with it and then when Max goes and does the 24 hours of Nürburgring you see the growth of that series and and all of the others so so I think that where where we're speaking my language yeah man i think this is this is where we need to just make sure that what what we what we ask from the sport is the thing that a the best drivers in the world want right yeah you you know if you want the best drivers and the best personnel in the world to come and to come and race in formula one then you have to make it attractive love it um right we'll be back um but still to come we're going to get calum's thoughts on this season lewis hamilton's revival and of course uh we will preview uh this weekend's race in austria uh we of course want to hear from you as we always do so get in touch at up to speed show on our socials and do subscribe on youtube

28:32before we get on to talking about this year um well i think what were you proudest of not necessarily from from the red bull years i guess from from from everything that you you've done on the team side what's the what's the one thing that you take away from it that you look back and go bloody proud of that actually um oh man that is a that is a tough that's a tough question i guess it kind of i guess look i think i i i was always like a micro goal setter right you know so for me at first it was just that i wanted to work in formula one and say that i'd done it and then it was i wanted to be on a pit crew then it was i wanted to be on the the best pit crew right and those little micro goals just grew and grew so i'm proud of like the fact that i achieved so many of those um you know the one for me was actually and we always talk about 2023 season actually 2022 was probably the one that meant more to me because that was my first constructors championship right that was the first yeah yeah so like actually that was that was that was the one that probably like means more to me regardless of all the things we did in 23 i think if i had to say though the thing that i'm most proud of is probably not probably not racing related um i i get the pleasure now having done so much about sort of careers in formula one and trying to engage with people who sort of felt that the sport wasn't necessarily for them um and and all of the work that i've done around that is probably what i'm most proud of and i had i had um i had a guy come up to me um two people come up to me from another team at the end of 2024 and uh caught me in the paddock and said oh look cal we just wanted to introduce ourselves say hello you know you're a big part of why we aspired to go and work in formula one and that's great man i think that is probably the stuff that i'm i'm sort of most proud of that's beautiful man very cool very cool um right austria this weekend um was it was it a fun one for you guys to do that race um was it big pressure um were you kind of welcomed with open arms and uh free lederhosen when you arrived at your hotel like how how was it i mean it's it's i guess it's quite nice when you when you're in austria and people in the town it's not it's not the biggest town right as you know so like when you do go out to like little bars and restaurants and people recognize you and you might you know enjoy the odd free beer that was always great but in terms of in terms of like the the atmosphere is great in austria like especially there are always these the moments on the grid just before sort of you you leave the cars for the formation lap and there's there's sort of two places where you that really gets me austria is one of them zanvort's the other right like the the way they get the crowd going like sometimes you get goosebumps on the grid so austria is always really nice um i think it's also i like the place and it's the kind of place where you can have like very different weeks if you choose to um like i love the golf courses in austria um the golf course they're beautiful aren't they oh my god so beautiful and honestly like so affordable yeah yeah and at the same time you know you can also have like a if you want you can go to the campsites outside the circuit and have a pretty wild night if you fancy it so it can provide you with everything austria it's always good what is max what is max like out of the car like how how does he manage to just affect this place yeah look i it's it's i don't i like i feel like as a track there have been years where we've gone to austria sort of being like oh maybe this isn't going to work for us here this kind of track wouldn't suit our car and then each time you're like oh actually actually it really really does and i feel like i had this year on year that we'd go back there the next year and i'd be like oh i'm not sure about this one and then i'll be like oh no i've just forgotten i don't know what it is mate i don't know i think to a certain extent maybe it's just that the way that he prefers a car to be designed one that's quite pointy anyway that he can get stuck into a corner and then get and get it out of there and hustle it out of there um i think i think maybe that just suits him a little bit anyway um i think the home support doesn't doesn't hurt at all i think you know when you go there you're in a good mood the fans are there cheering you on i think that has probably has an effect anyway um you know it's a bit like a home football match right the home advantage is a statistical you know phenomenon it's not it's not just placebo it's there in the numbers for for lots of sport teams so for so maybe it's partly that yeah you know um it just becomes that sort of home advantage thing as well but um yeah we like austria it's a good one i want to look back very quickly to barcelona um and we'll look at niko hulkenberg's retirement if i can have you have you ever experienced anything like that where a stone chip pulls the o-ring out sets off the fire extinguisher and kills the electrics like honestly it's like it's like another one of those records that nico really wouldn't have wanted which has got to be most unusual retirement ever and then to see it happen again in in formula e it's like i mean basically what we've got is we've got another one coming because these things come in threes right so we've got another one coming somewhere um but yeah i've i have never ever heard of that before i've heard of plenty of people polishing a car and accidentally pulling them yeah in the garage and things like that but i you know i've never i've never i've never seen that happen on track that is absolutely wild in fact i remember once it happened in the garage building the car on a wednesday um when the electrician was in the cockpit yeah yeah he was fitting the fire extinguisher at the time but basically while he was fitting it he didn't realize that the switch was already pulled out so he'd plumbed it all in and then as soon as he plugged it into the loom it just went off everywhere that's glorious but yeah i've never i've never seen it happen on track man that's crazy that is crazy um um obviously big new regulations this year um how do you as a team respond to you know such a massive change do you get very used to your processes within one set of regulations and then when it changes it's almost like you know you need a new a new a new guidebook yeah a little bit i think one of the things that makes race teams good is is their routine right so your season starts you know you get back to work hopefully as late as mid-january um if you're really really lucky if you're lucky yeah if you're really really lucky you get back in mid-jan and you know as a technician your first job is to sort of collate all the drawings that you'll need for the car this year um red bulls you know historically those drawings are out as late as possible to give the design office as much time as they possibly can so sort of get back in jan collate all your drawings and then you're straight into sort of what will be a dyno build for me always as engines it's one of the first builds you do because of the dyno work that needs doing so you're sort of straight into that but then yeah what you do throughout a season you know pre-season testing is sort of your time to set your routine in terms of the way that you're going to run this car and sort of in between sessions and how you're going to attack maintenance and servicing and logistics is such a huge part of the sport now and then when you go for a big set of regulation changes the car will will be dramatically different there won't be a lot of carryover parts so normally year on year in formula one so sort of you know from 2015-16 all the way up to 2021 there's a lot of those parts share carry over parts parts that from year to year can be reused and you know you'd look at an rb an rb 16b and there would be parts in there bolts fasteners bracketry that will say rb 11 right and you still use that that particular part now when you have a big regulation change that then changes so you have so many more new parts on a car and all of those obviously need attention and planning for servicing and allocations and all of this stuff so it is a big change for teams and you kind of get well basically you get pre-season testing obviously they had an extra they had an extra week in Barcelona as a shakedown um but that is the time that you need to yeah yeah who's impressed you this year mate I think do you know what I think that I think V carb have impressed me as a team um I think Arvid's taking everything like within his stride and what like what a star like what a star I was on a little trip a little while ago I was in Mumbai for a few days and honestly he's going to be a hero in India as well like every piece of media I went to do everyone wanted to talk about arvid and yeah i think you know he's he's he's coming to the sport fair amount of pressure on he seems to have taken it in his stride and i think you have to give v carb a little bit of credit for that i think you know i think peter bear and alan permain they've been quite good at letting the drivers sort of focus on what they need to and regardless of the fact that you look at v carb as the team that has a lot of fun does a lot of social media fan interaction probably does more of that kind of stuff than anyone in the paddock um and yet the drivers have managed to sort of soak that all in and they and they've had a really good start to the season and i remember seeing peter just before our on it our sort of enforced break where we cancelled a couple of races and i saw peter during that break and i said oh you know how are you feeling about this time away and he said actually you know we started the season with really good momentum and we would have we wanted to carry it on um so v carb have impressed me um a fair bit this year um actually i think alpine have had a decent start right and i and i said this i've said this about alpine before in that they traditionally i don't think they've been great as a team at developing a car through the year so they needed to have the beast they needed to have a decent start and i think they've had they've had a decent start um so there's been a few i think you know i think i think the the the obvious thing that i've been impressed with so far in 26 has to be red bull ford powertrains man because like yes what a shock four years right and literally four years ago mate when we announced this project it was literally a gravel car park yeah there were porter cabins and temporary toilets and stuff like that you know and four years later to be in this conversation where the fia are apparently saying that you've got the best engine in the paddock is it's almost like hard to explain what that kind of means, right?

39:21You know, I remember speaking to some of them, Ben Hodgkinson and a few others at the end of last year and asking them, you know, how's it going? And they had this quiet confidence then, right? That they'd be in a decent place, right? And, you know, because I remember when this was announced and I've got so many people's tweets saved of, oh, I can't wait to see this blow up every week and this and that, they're going to be nowhere. um so it's been quite satisfying to see him do it but you know like it's honestly like it's it's an amazing project to have watched grown and for them to be in this position in the first season i think it's super impressive yeah it's incredible absolutely incredible um mate who's your who's your tip for the title um oh god that is do you know what it's a difficult question i think oh yeah i feel like it was an easier question before barcelona i feel like it's um certainly lewis has made it a more difficult question to answer right give him a sniff and this is the thing right you you give him an opportunity history shows that he is one of those drivers that will find you know much like max he is one of those drivers that will find every last bit to make something that is possible happen um so i think he's definitely in the conversation i think if i'm if i'm gonna play safe money i think kimmy will hold out and kimmy will win the championship what about you though what's who you calling um i i i think kimmy just looks so good i think he looks so good the mercedes looks great and no one was expecting them to be able to improve their engine under ADUO.

41:09And the fact that they've got that and can improve something which already looked like it was the class of the field is, I think, terrifying for everybody else. Really terrifying. But, you know, look, Kimi already has the measure of George and it's year two for him. And I think if it comes down to it, if it's going to be a Mercedes driver, it's going to be Kimi. yeah I think I think that was the thing for me like you know we talk about Kimi's like misfortune with the DNF in Barcelona but in in his mind Kimi still won he beat George yeah yeah he did and that's why George looked pissed after the race yeah because he knew he got he got bested um anyway uh we've got a great fight on so I'm uh excited for the rest of the year mate thank you so much for being on the show we appreciate it buddy it's great to see all that you do um and just so pleased for you so pleased with with with how well it's going mate um your personality was always going to lend itself to media so um delighted to see you making such a success of it buddy i really appreciate it man you're too kind very very grateful uh folks as always you can keep in touch with us here on the show via social channels at UpToSpeedShow, so give us a follow there.

42:27You can email the show, uptospeedatglobal.com. New episodes every Monday and Thursday. Subscribe, leave a review, and we'll be back on Monday. Callum, mate, thank you so much for being on the show. We appreciate it. Enjoy the Austrian Grand Prix from home. And, folks, we will see you on Monday.

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