Is Carlos Sainz right about F1 & Why Mercedes backed down over Monaco?

0:02This is a global production. What is the incentive for performing well if you're going to just be punished for it? This is slightly controversial. Realistically, is that ever going to happen? They're coming in hot. Red hot. Pardon the pun. The ADO. Is this unsporting?

0:28It's Naomi. me. It's Jolie. Welcome to Up to Speed. So Jolie, it's just the two of us today. We have a very special guest interview coming later this week. So today you and I are going to be looking forward to Austria and also answering some of your questions at home. And one of them that we keep getting is with regards to Carlos Sainz's special vision for what Formula One should or could be. So is that a great place for us to start today, Jolie? I think it is. I mean, probably before I jump in I'm going to explain if there's noise distraction around me I'm currently in an airport it's I'm on what we call Will Buxton time which is silly o 'clock in the morning but as you can see back with my England hat on but Carlos basically came out and has said that he would like to see a world in which drivers would rotate between all teams spending two races with each because he thinks although it would never happen it would create a true driver's championship are unique constructors now I've seen so many different variations of what science has come out and said over the course of my time loving F1 you know all drivers should have the same car being one and there's loads of things I feel like we could discuss but this is such a great discussion point because it's quite rare that we see a driver come out and actually speak up on you know wanting to twist things up and shake things up and there's so many pros and cons to this.

1:56You know, I feel like I'm before I jump into the pros and cons, I want to get your initial thoughts. What do you think of this? Well, listen, I think obviously, you know, this is in a in a dream world that something like this would happen in terms of what Carlos is suggesting. And I think that like to add a little bit to what he was suggesting was that all of these drivers would theoretically be employed by Formula One and then basically freelanced out to the team spending at least two events with each team and that each driver would basically drive each car throughout the season in that way, they'd be like a legitimate driver's championship and somewhat of a legitimate constructors championship because the teams would have to develop a car that suits every driver in that sense.

2:35From a driver's perspective, I can completely understand why he would suggest or dream up something like this because, you know, as young kids, most of the drivers start out in karting. And even though there are nuances between different chassis and, you know, engine suppliers and all that kind of stuff. And, you know, people are rebuilding their own engines. At the end of the day, it really does come down mostly to the best driver. Then, you know, you climb up the ranks. And of course, once you get to F3 and F2, it's mostly one make series, right? The cars are theoretically the same. Yes, the teams have different engineers who maybe are able to extract more out of the car and set up and all that good stuff, but it comes down to the driver.

3:15Then you get to F1 and there is a huge disparity between the competitiveness of one team to the other. And you can understand why there's some drivers, you know, like Carlos, who left a championship potentially winning team or at least a race winning team at Ferrari and going to Williams, why that would generate frustration because he's an incredible driver, but who knows how long it'll be until he wins another race. Of course, you know, you have other drivers like Nico Hülkenberg. I think he's a great example of an immensely talented driver who was never at the right place at the right time. And therefore, who knows what his career could have looked like in Formula One had he been in the right car.

3:53So, you know, just on that topic, as a driver, I understand why he would love to suggest this. But the reality of it is that Formula One has never been that, right? It is a manufacturer's sport. These brands, you know, besides maybe Red Bull, who's just an energy drink, you know, are going out there to show that they're able to build the best car. and they build a lot of their identity as race teams around the drivers that they have. And, you know, that kind of gives them their vibe. It would be weird to have to share engineers and share information and, you know, it would be all a happy, nice world.

4:28But realistically, that kind of goes against the spirit of like competitiveness and having rivals. And I don't know how that would work. But yeah, I get the idea. But realistically, is that ever going to happen? I mean, yeah, I don't think it is. But I think, I mean, there's two things to look at that I found really interesting here. when I was deep in thought about signs as idea. I mean, there's one that I'm quite confident when I say this, and I know that this is slightly controversial. For me, of all the sports that I cover and love as a fan, Formula One is the least team decisive for me. And from what I see online, people follow their favourite drivers.

5:03Whereas I'm England till I die, I'm Chelsea till I die on a football level. So it doesn't matter if my favourite player left Chelsea, I'm not going to change and you know god forbid support Arsenal that's never going to happen whereas if my favorite drop you know if we all know I love Kimi if Kimi moved I would be cheering Kimi on elsewhere and you know and so on and so forth so there's that argument that could be quite nice to see other teams getting more support as well and and going through that route but then there's also like the more practical route of the fact exactly what you said engineers or the support that comes with it, the cost, like, you know, small things like actually having to fit some, I say small things, massive things, but maybe that we don't think of, to the top of our head, fitting into the car, race suits, helmets.

5:50And then you think of all of the sponsors and the costs that are associated, you know. If we look at Honda, arguably you could say that Yuki Snowda was kept on at Red Bull for such a long period because they didn't want to lose specific Asian sponsors. And if a driver is going and changing teams every two weeks. How does that work? A lot of, you know, brands will say that they sponsor a team, one team, one dream. But, you know, you'll have brands that are specifically sponsoring because they want Lewis Hamilton, they want Charles Leclerc, they want Lennon Norris, whoever it may be. So I think on a practical level, a monetary level, a economic level, it's an absolute no.

6:30From a fun fan perspective, I'd love to see it. You know, I think that one thing is for sure is that it exposes the fact that, you know, an F1 driver's championship is never really that separate from a constructor's championship. And the two very much go hand in hand. That's something we've always known about F1. You know, a driver can only be so good. You can't always make a wheelbarrow go quickly. Some drivers, you know, can make slightly less competitive cars go quicker, but often the car plays such a big role. So I get that he would want to suggest that. Well, I'm going to throw out one before we move on.

7:02I'm going to put you on the spot. But if you could add in or create your own F1 weekend, just like one crazy rule, like each team has three drivers or, you know, a mechanic has to get in and do a lap. What would yours be? So, you know, it kind of goes on Carlos's idea, because I think that so often we do on a race weekend wonder like, oh, well, how would Lewis have done if he was in that car? Or how would Max have done if he was in that car? And how would they do if they were in the same car? So there is definitely there is this intrigue around what could these drivers extract out of themselves if they were in the right car or if they were not in a great car?

7:40And how would they compare to their competitors? So I think maybe doing race day on like a Saturday or whatever, like run your run your typical race weekend, cut FP1 and FP2, go sprint style, less practice time, one practice session, qualifying race. And then on the Sunday, you know drivers pick a team out of a bowl and then they just move to another team and then we see what that the result looks like on the next day I think that would be fun yeah but obviously again like never gonna happen what would you do what would I do I would love to see everyone in the same car just you know every I race weekend where literally everyone has the everyone does this is on the same strategy everyone is in the same car and it's literally who is the best driver um i would love to see that and i think that would settle a lot of you know goat debates but i think that leads us nicely we're talking a lot of what could if should what that either what about what's actually going to happen and obviously that leads us up to austria this weekend and we know that ferrari are going to be bringing new fuel and engine upgrades so they're coming in hot red hot pardon the pun but another race weekend we just can't get enough in I love this season.

9:00I know we have what four races in five weeks. It's a very, very busy time in the season. Intense for the teams, intense for the drivers, intense for the whole F1 ecosystem, especially with this heat wave that we're having. I'm not looking forward to it, but it's exciting to go back racing. And yes, on Ferrari, they had great updates in Barcelona that clearly proved to be competitive and had great correlation and brought them extra performance. So I'm very curious to see what these engine upgrades are and what impact it will have. Because remember, we've got ADUO going on, right? Yes. And that leads us perfectly on to our first question by James Kirkbride, who says, Are ADUOs anti-sport?

9:43If a team gets far enough ahead, should they be pegged back by regulators? Is it leveling the playing field for the sake of entertainment? James, I love it. Okay, well, let's just recap on what the ADUO is for listeners and viewers who maybe haven't heard the term yet this season. So the ADUO is additional development and upgrade opportunities, which are based on what a lot of people believe is power unit performance, but it's not actually power unit performance. It's the ICE performance and output, which is the internal combustion engine element of the power unit. Now, Ferrari, Audi and Honda were determined to be 4 % behind the benchmark, which is Red Bull, and therefore they've been given two upgrades this season, whereas Mercedes was having a 2 % deficit to the benchmark, which is Red Bull again, and therefore they have one upgrade.

10:35So the million dollar question, is this unsporting? Well, look, we had a debate on the podcast a couple of episodes ago where Will seemed to think that this was fair and it was part of the rules that had been written and everybody knew what they were signing up to. I still always feel a bit weird about these sort of like punish, these punishments for good performance or good development. And I know Will was saying, well, it's the same as the car upgrades. you know the teams can continue to upgrade their cars yes but all of them can upgrade their cars whereas in this case because Red Bull are the benchmark they cannot bring upgrades to their to their ICE now personally I do understand why it needs to exist because just as we were saying a little minute ago about Carlos Sainz fancy sea world of Formula One do we want to see one team or one driver run away with everything not necessarily like it's not in the interest of competitiveness of the sport and keeping things close and tight.

11:36So we get why it exists. Because imagine, in this case, Red Bull obviously have the quickest engine. Imagine they run away with it. People would not be happy with that. We had that, you know, a little while ago and Red Bull were dominating everything and people were bored of the sport because they were like, okay, why are we tuning in? We know who's going to win. We know how much they're going to win by. What are we turning up for? It's much more interesting when the teams are super close together and competitive. So I understand why it exists. But at the same time, what is the incentive for performing well if you're going to just be punished for it?

12:07Like Red Bull right now are probably going, damn, I mean, yes, great. Our first ever power unit that we build ourselves is Red Bull powertrains is really quick, although it has reliability issues. Should we have not had a better engine? we could have probably made additional upgrades, especially because now the teams are understanding how these cars, how these engines perform on track in the real world scenario. Maybe there's things they would have done differently or would have liked to change that they, you know, their hands are tied, whereas others have opportunity to make those changes. So I wonder how much of a swing that then puts into the championship.

12:43I 100 % agree with you. And I mean, just to throw in a little bit, I feel like got my spoon out and I'm mixing. I mean, let's talk about Ferrari. and their upgrades, do we think it's a coincidence that they win straight after the regulators make their findings public? And like, were they hiding their power? I mean, does this happen? Has this happened before where they, you know, they hold things back because they want to get the benefits of it? Or do you think no, like, you know, this is just a pure coincidence? I think it's a coincidence. I mean, we've talked about this again. It's like the FIA and Formula One have access to so much data with these cars.

13:18And I don't think in this particular case, it would be easy for the teams to hide that kind of performance. Obviously, there's like a gray area in the engine performance that isn't just about one number, you know? Like there's a lot of different elements that go into the final output of the engine, right? Temperatures, cooling, turbo choices, exhaust layout, like lots of different things can have an impact on that. But at the same time, we're going racing. These teams want to win. Like it's in their DNA to do that. It's not in their DNA to hide. Obviously, we see sandbagging at the beginning of the season prior to the season, I should say, where teams don't want to show their full hand.

13:56But once racing gets going, like we say that this is a long championship, but it's very, very short. And if you want to give up opportunities to win races and collect precious points and also data, because you're not doing yourself a favor, slowing yourself down and not getting an idea of maybe where the limit of your power unit is and where the reliability issues will show up if you do run it at 100%. So I don't believe that. I mean, obviously, maybe from the outside, it's difficult for viewers and even maybe in the beginning, you know, for all of us to understand exactly how this is going to be regulated.

14:29Is it a little bit too simple? How can we follow this? And therefore, maybe people feel like it's not a system that they can trust. But in my experience with the FIA and F1, like they don't leave a stone unturned. And I don't think that the teams are trying to play the system either. I mean, it would cause too much reputational damage if they were found out to have done that. Yeah, that's got like Ferrari gate titled all over it and a good old Netflix documentary. Moving on to our next question. Gwint from South Africa, Johannesburg, sent us this video message. And do remember, guys, you can send us in any questions you have to uptospeed at global.com or you can DM us on our social channels at uptospeedshow.

15:09So don't be shy. We love answering your questions. So let's take a listen. Up to speed team. Hi this is Gwens from Johannesburg, South Africa. I've got a power question and my question is when the driver gets on the radio and speaks to his engineer screaming out I'm losing power, I'm losing power, do something and the engineer replies we're checking we'll be back. At that point what is the team in the garage doing for the driver to actually get some power? Huge fan. Oh, brilliant question. I love it. And I love the enthusiasm, the reenacting. You could be up for a drive to survive, Nominik. Also, personally, I am here for the representation of South Africa and Joburg.

15:56That's where I grew up. So hey, hey. And I'm so glad we have some fans listening in South Africa. Love it. So, OK, so basically the thing is, when you're in the car as a driver, you feel something. But the team on the wall has a much bigger picture of what's actually going on. So whilst you can have an idea in the car of where the issue is coming from, sometimes one feeling can be felt, but it can come from different potential issues, like whether it's a sense of failure or an actual component failure. Sometimes it can give that same feeling. So what the teams are saying when they say we're checking is that they're looking at loads of data that's coming in, loads of telemetry, live telemetry while the drivers are driving, and they're looking at everything to see where this issue might be coming from.

16:40And sometimes, you know, it's something that can't be fixed. And so they'll ask drivers to, let's think of some examples, lift and coast. If there's, you know, maybe a fuel issue or something to that extent or avoiding curbs, all these kinds of things that they can tell the drivers to do if there's an issue that can't be fixed. On the other hand, you know, with these ECUs, which are the electronic control unit that are a part of the engines and the whole car and all the systems basically, is that there can be faults. There can be glitches in the system. There can be a sensor that fails. And so the teams will be able to identify with all the data that they can see back at base, on track, on the pit wall, where the problem is coming from and what the driver then needs to do.

17:24So sometimes you'll hear teams saying to the driver, okay, go to position four or mode nine or strat seven. That's them potentially uploading a new system or rebooting the system or programming a new page or like an engine mode on the steering wheel for the drivers to switch to, you know, almost like reboot things back into ordinary running. So yeah, so that's basically what it is. It's never good news when you hear a driver saying that means that there is probably a genuine concern. But a lot of the times we do see that the teams can find a quick solution. It usually takes half a lap or a lap before they get back to them.

18:03I remember also Isaac in Monaco was complaining throughout the entirety of the race, really, that he was lacking power. And what can we do? And come on, guys, fix it. So there's a lot that the team can do from the pit wall to help these drivers out. I mean, I guess the best analogy to give is, you know, when you don't feel well and you can't put your finger on what's wrong. And you go to the doctor and they run a load of tests and they come out with the answer. Yeah, except this is like lightning quick pit stop at the doctor. Yeah, absolutely. But I mean, I guess for a driver, Naomi, you'll be able to answer this.

18:35Like, how unsettling is it when you're like something's not right? Well, I guess it really depends on the scenario that you're in. If you're fighting for a race victory, then yeah, it can be very stressful. But especially in Formula One, you know that you're dealing with the best of the best of the best. So there is like an element of calm in the sense that you know that your engineers have access to all the information or most of it, at least. Luis, let's put it that way. And they will do everything they can as quickly as possible to give you that answer. Sometimes when you're running in lower categories and maybe you're not running with the most professional team, it can cause a lot more frustration because you might think, damn, if we come across a problem, is the team going to handle this quickly?

19:15Are they going to be able to give me a solution or am I going to have to retire the car? So it kind of really depends on the scenario you're in. But anyway, coming up, we are going to be discussing why Mercedes were granted a right of review after Monaco and then why they basically just went, And actually, you know what? Never mind. Anyway, we want to get you guys involved in the conversation about the development race and also what you think of Carlos Sainz's dream world of F1. What do you suggest? What do you think? And what do you think of Carlos's suggestions? Let us know on our social platforms.

19:45It's at UpToSpeedShow. And please, if you're not yet subscribed to us on YouTube, go and hit that red button right now.

19:57So Mercedes announced late last week that they decided to withdraw their right of review with their request against the penalty in Monaco. And there's been a lot of conversation around it. I mean, in our comment sections, in official F1 socials comment sections, loads of people being like, what is going on? And they came out with a statement that I'll paraphrase here. They said, in the face of this clear determination, we've concluded that further pursuit of our right of review application will not serve our team or the sport and thus we have withdrawn our submission now i find that wording absolutely fascinating it won't serve our team or the sport it feels like someone's knocked on their door and said are you sure we want to do this are you sure you want to you know put this in and go the lengths look i think i don't mercedes isn't the kind of team that are going to get bullied out of a decision like that.

20:49Like if they decide that they want to question something and they want to go for it and put their driver, George, in the best possible position to gain back very valuable points in this title battle that he's in, they're not going to just let that go. I think that the understanding was that obviously the scenarios were very different. Like obviously the set of circumstances was the same in the sense that the original penalties that were given to drivers like Hamilton, like Russell, like Gasly were because of this pit stop penalty issue. And so you can understand why they would fight a tooth and nail.

21:21But the difference is that obviously George didn't serve his penalty originally in his first pit stop. And he then had to do a drive-through penalty. And the drivers who were under investigation for this and were then handed penalties, all of them but Pierre served their penalties in the race. And we discussed this again in the episode after Monaco in saying that, how do you withdraw a penalty like that? How do you rescind a penalty like that? Because what is the knock-on effect it has on everything that happened throughout the race? Now, for Gasly, because he didn't serve the penalty, it was easy to just add that time back onto his finishing.

21:59Because what they did is finish the race third. They then added his 10-second penalty onto that, and then it dropped him back. Whereas to rescind that, you just give him back those 10 seconds that you just gave him. So that was easy to do. But for George, obviously, he served his penalty throughout the race. So things happened after that. And then you go at which point, like which point do you put him back at? Same thing goes for Hamilton. And so it is a mess. It's a massive mess and it should never have happened. But these things do happen. And I think that Mercedes have been reassured in the fact that the FIA and F1 are making sure that this issue doesn't happen again.

22:32So they've been understanding of the fact that their biggest concern is why did this happen? How did this happen? And what are we doing to make sure it never happens again? And because they've agreed to sort that out and they are sorting it out, Mercedes have gone you know what we get that actually we're just going to go down a loophole of never really being able to find a solution for this because then who's the next person who appeals that decision and then the next person because this is going to have a knock-on effect on everyone so I understand why they withdrew it but they had to explore all their options to as we said give George's best possible opportunity to get those points back I mean I think you nailed it on the head there if you know they appealed and were successful more than half the grid got penalties in that race so there would have been so many appeals and again it's the it's the type of news that no one wants to see covering you know following the sport and watching it and becomes all-encompassing and you're not actually you know focusing on the next races and and i think that will be the same within a team as well you know if toto because this will reach us obviously his desk is dealing with an issue like this he's not looking you know forward thinking and he's so intelligent you know it doesn't need me to state he'll know that as well but he needs they they to have all energy focused and there was there was conversations online and the conspiracy theories is such basically saying that like they knocked down to a peg and were basically like if you want to go for this we can go for this or just know that we almost owe you one you know we're looking ahead at the rest of the season and we understand that you're letting us have one here and we'll give you one and i don't know what's more you know beneficial what's more powerful to have i think having an IOU from the FIA is a pretty good place to be.

24:09I'd quite like an IOU. Yeah, the funny thing is whether they'll actually give you that IOU back. But I think, you know, you learn in motorsport that some decisions are worth fighting in the steward's room and others just aren't. You know, it's better to do your fighting on track. But I get why, again, they had to try what they could. And I think that then it was clear that actually this was not a battle that was worth fighting. and they are reassured that F1 is doing whatever they can to make sure it doesn't happen again. So let's see how the rest of the situation plays out because we're not done yet with the subject because as far as I'm concerned, Isaac Hadjar hasn't handed over the trophy yet.

24:45Maybe it's going to happen in Austria, but I don't know if this whole chapter is over just yet. I mean, there's nothing like watching things unfold. I think if Horner was still in the seat, I'm not sure that Red Bull would be dropping this, But I have a feeling that we could see Hadjar, you know. Given soon, you think? I think. Well, I think that that's actually a very good point, because with regards to everything that we've discussed today, I think we can say that F1 has always been about driver, car, team, strategy, and you can't forget the politics. So here we have it. And let's wait to see how this situation plays itself out.

25:21Now, unfortunately, that's all we have time for today on the episode. but we will be back very soon because as always, we have episodes coming out Mondays and Thursdays and you are not going to want to miss this Thursday's episode. We have a very special guest coming on to chat to Will. Now, if you aren't following us on social media, please head over to your social platforms. It's at UpToSpeedShow. If you want to send us an email, it's uptospeedatglobal.com. We will see you on Thursday.

25:53This has been a Global Production. Thank you.