Finally, another race weekend. I mean, listen, I've been buzzing. I've been looking forward to it all week. And Free Practice One starts at 9:30 Eastern Standard Time, which is perfect for me. Tim, are you staying up till one o'clock to watch Free Practice Two in Australia.

Yeah, I'm staying up for the whole thing, man. I love it. Probably get to bed around 4 AM or whatever, and then get up at probably about 9 because I struggle to sleep through this, dude. It's hard. I know it's like I shouldn't be complaining at all, but my sleep schedule when they go to Australia, Japan, China, it is really hard for me to get consistent sleep. But that's what coffee is for, man.

Yeah, absolutely. And you know what, man? There's just something awesome about seeing like that. Maybe this just makes me such a fan, but seeing the Formula One account on Instagram line up with all the drivers walking into the grid for their media day on the Wednesday, there's just something about that every single week that there's a race that it just It's like, Let's go. Let's get excited. And there's a lot to talk about. And I think the first thing, obviously, I want to talk Susie Wolf because that's a pretty major thing. But I want to talk quickly first about something else that's also extremely surprising and a little bit inspiring is Carlos Sainz. This is a guy that just had surgery, appendicitis, a couple of weeks ago, walks out of hospital and back to the track while Oliver Beermann finishes seventh in the Grand Prix, which is pretty amazing. Or sorry, the Saudi Arabia Grand Prix in Jetta. Frankly, blows a lot of people away. We were expecting him to be racing a Formula One car this weekend. Now Carlos signs through just grit and determination, is going to be racing for Ferrari. Tim, I wanted to ask you this.

Him coming in, is this a sign of how important this season is to him?

Oh, yeah, 100 %. You and I have touched about it a lot on this show already, is the fact that you can't take a race off. And if you do take a race off, that just really devalues how much you're actually worth in terms as a driver. And so for Carlos, it's extremely important. He doesn't have a contract with any other team at the moment. Obviously, Lewis Hamilton is coming over, taking a spot next season. And so for Carlos, he has to make himself look very attractive to other teams. So he had a really strong race in Bahrain. Maybe not the best qualifying, but his race performance was really solid. And I think it's just trying to get back that momentum, Adam, and not losing that feeling as a driver, because the thing with racing drivers is that sometimes once you hit this downward spiral, it just things get compounded and things get worse.

And it could be everything from confidence to physicality, right?

A hundred %. And it's like it's so important for him to be back in the car as soon as possible. But listening to what he had to go through was incredible. He talked a lot about all of it today during media day and what had to go down. So he started to feel pretty ill. He thought he had food poisoning at one point during during the Saudi Arabia Grand Prix lead-up. And he had taken a bit of medication to help with coping for FP1 and FP2. And he said, Look, if I'm not feeling any better by the next day, so to speak, then I'm going to have to go to the hospital. Essentially, he ended up going to the hospital, diagnosed him with appendicitis, and then he had the surgery done. And the way they basically put it to him was Look, it's going to be 14 days before you're back in the car for the next round. It's going to be really close. And so you've got to really prioritize recovery. Now, the issue with Carlos having to prioritize recovery at him is that you lose so much fitness. Like your body, and I know this from all the training that I used to do for racing, is that as soon as you take, let's say, two or three days off from training, your body starts to detrain.

And so you start to lose all the fitness that you've already your body built up and ramped up and gotten yourself ready, your body starts to detrain itself. And so you have to ride that threshold of overtraining and undertraining and trying to get into that sweet spot, into that middle. And that's where you start your season from. And you try to maintain that throughout the year. It's really hard to do that with motorsports, but that's where you want to set your level. The problem is that Carlos was in bed for all last week, flew out to Australia for this. He's got his work cut out for him this weekend, Adam. It's not physically, he may not just be there 100 %, and that's going to be an issue for him because going through a Grand Prix, obviously, it's just so much force going through your body. And if you're not physically ready and built up for that, he did admit it. He basically said, look, I'm going to give FP1, FP2 a go, and we'll see where I'm at.

Yeah. And Let's talk about your guts while you're in a race car. Not guts as in mental guts. Let's talk about your real guts. Let's talk about your bodily organs. What happens to them when you're taking a corner at full speed?

Well, they shift.

So you're talking about a guy that's had stitches and had damage to his internal organs, right? I mean, that's what any surgery is. There is going to be damage to internal organs that has to heal, and he's just going to get in there and shake it up like it's a milkshake. First off, there's some real mental guts to that, but there's a real risk to that, too.

Well, I'm not sure about the stitches and stuff. He did explain certain tools that the doctors had to use and how far medicine has come from the last time. His dad had it done to when he's had it done and the advancements in modern day medicine and all of that. And he said it was quite simple. He's like, They take three little tools and they place them inside of you and they snip, snip, and away it goes. And he said it's less invasive than even what it was two years ago, he said. So referring to what Alex's album had to have done. I think for Carlos, that's probably has helped him recover and get back as fast as he has. I just think the The worrying thing is the fitness level and how much of that has he lost. Being in the race car for whatever, 90 minutes, 80, 90 minutes is beating and banging inside of that thing on a street course. It's going to be really tough, man.

Like you said, it's not like Silverstone, smooth meant to be for race cars. This is a street course. It's a great course. It's an awesome course, but it is It's a street course. There are bumps, there are sharp edges. They have changed the Grand Prix a little bit, like the actual track layout. I was seeing you tweet about that. What will that allow? Is that for more top speed?

Yeah. So basically more passing opportunities. And this was done a few years ago, and they had... I want to say they had the first iteration of it last year. I could have gotten this all wrong, I think, but I can't remember. But essentially, it allows them to to pass a little bit more. It opens up the back half of the racetrack and allows there to be another DRS zone for them as well. So you have two DRS zones stacked on each other, which allows there to be more passing into a later section into Sector 3. But it was good racing last year. I went back, Adam, and I rewatched the Australian Grand Prix from last year, and I just forgot I forgot how entertaining it was. You had George Russell in the lead at one point. You had Lewis Hamilton in the lead. You had Max trying to get by Lewis for the lead. That old rivalry started to heat up. You had a couple of crashes, that red flag things. Actually, it was a really good Grand Prix.

Isn't that the race where the Alpines crashed into each other, too?

Yeah, you had Gasly and O'Khan taking each other out. It was good, man. I think sometimes Australia can offer up some snoosers, but sometimes it can offer up some really great racing.

Well, and it seems like the grid is ready for a really great race. Ferrari, at least, forgetting Carlos Sainz's injury, I mean, both drivers came to play this year. The car seems to be far more reliable, at least through the first two races, as much as you can deduce from... Berraine is almost like its own thing. You almost have to take Berraine for what it is and realize that you don't know everything. Jetta is a little bit more smooth, although it is still a street course. I think by this time, you're starting to figure out who's got it together, and Ferrari really seems to. Really, I know everybody thinks, Oh, Max Verstaup, and he's going to win every race, and he might, he might. But it only takes really one mistake, and he won't. I know that Red Bull has finished one, two every race, but we saw last year the struggles that Perez had at certain times. We saw struggle on one track, and guess what? Ferrari won. It feels like, at least with Charles Leclerc, not knowing Carlos signs his health, that he's just going to be sitting and waiting, sitting and waiting for them to screw up.

Yeah, I think another thing Adam, to add on top of that is you're coming into this this weekend, a lot of folks I've spoken to in lead up to, a lot of people feel that Red Bull will always be the favorite coming into every race Race this season, but there is another team that actually could possibly provide us with a little bit more excitement in terms of putting pressure on Red Bull. Some people feel that Ferrari could be the faster team here this weekend. Charles Leclerc himself, he still speaks of them understanding where their weaknesses are, what they need to do to get that back, but knowing that they could potentially fight Red Bull for Race Wins this season, he still has that belief where a lot of the other drivers are pretty open and honest about, Hey, look. I think Louis today was like, Hey, look, Red Bull is a league of their own, and we're not catching up to that. But for Ferrari, Even I think Louis felt that Ferrari could probably catch and put a lot of pressure on Red Bull this season. I feel that way, too, because we still don't exactly know, Adam, where Red Bull's data point is.

We don't know how much their advantage actually is because of the first two races. They're so different. So we don't really know what that advantage is. Leclerc had said three to four-tenths in an interview that he did. That's not as bad as it was last year.

Oh, no question. No question. People forget that there were no guarantees that Max was going to win his second title in a row the way Ferrari looked two years ago. You think about Ferrari in Australia in 2022. Yeah, good point. That team started better. For sure, started better.

Yeah, that's a good point.

It was the strategic screw-ups that cost Mattia Banotto his job. But frankly, that was a really good car and a really good team. I'm looking at the race, and I obviously get so hyped up for this. There is a really good fight for third place already. If Red Bull is going to be one, the excitement around Red Bull being one is when they're not number one, is when Ferrari comes in and steals a race. The fight between Mercedes and McLaren, which uses a Mercedes engine, is also really exciting. There's a two-point separation between them already. Mclaren passed Mercedes last week. It's only two races in. Lando, as honest as he always is, was saying that there's some things that they wish they'd progressed a little further on with the car. Obviously, we know there's some rear wing stuff that they got to work on. But that battle If you're a real Formula One fan, that's going to be a really exciting one from two pretty epic teams.

Yeah. I think I was sitting... When was it? It might have been yesterday. I was thinking about it. I'm like, the same thing as last year. If you just remove Red Bull from the equation, that battle for the remaining spots is very interesting and very entertaining as well. I just think with this year, We have two teams that are out front of it, and then we've got a stack of three teams.

Yeah, which would be McLaren, Mercedes, and Aston Martin.

And then we got a stack of a whole bunch of other teams just completely together. And then you got Alpine just hanging on at the back end. And obviously, their issues are minuscule, but all that adds up. And that's where we're at right now. But by the time we get to the European leg and we get to round seven, eight, nine, 10, we're going to start to see these cars upgraded, come to life. And that's going to close things up even more. If you look at the RBE, they have a huge upgrade, I'm told, that's coming in race this time, a huge one that's going to make a ton of difference. We've seen already teams do this in this regulation. We've seen two of them. We've seen Aston Martin in 2022. We've seen McLaren in 2023, McLaren plus others. You saw Ferrari start to catch up to Red Bull last season. You saw Mercedes take, I don't know how they did it with the car that they had, Close that gap and then get a P2 in the constructors. It will happen with upgrades that start to come. Teams just need to figure out where they're at.

Right. I mean, that's going to be the fun part about this course is I feel like this is where... And I know it used to be the start of the season, so there's a little bit of that going on, but this is where I feel like you can really start to track the data. We start to really see how the first... If you divide the seasons into thirds, how the first third of the season is going to look before all the upgrades come in, Race 7, Race 8, that thing. And on the Racing Bulls thing, since you brought it up, I wasn't going to bring it up until later. Obviously, we talked about in the last episode how Daniel Ricardo is really like, he hasn't had great results in Australia. He had one with McLaren and one DNF with Renault. He's had a couple of good ones, never got a podium. There's going to be a lot of pressure. There's going to be a lot of media. Probably helps the P. Astries on the grid to even some of that out. But he's Daniel Ricardo. This Racing Bulls team, they can't be thrilled with the start, I wouldn't think.

I think that they would probably see themselves at the top. Do you think that they're going to be able to compete with Haas and Williams before that upgrade comes?

It'll be close. I'll say that. It's going to be tight. That battle there between that Williams Haas. I can't believe I'm saying that. I know. In Rv, that's an interesting one. And then you've got the Sauber just underneath trying to close that gap as well. And then you've got Alpine below them. It is extremely tight through those teams, extremely close. I think that R&B may have been expecting to be a little bit more competitive than what they started off with. And I think a lot of that has to do with understanding what they have in terms of the new car. And then also on top of that, getting all of their... Because they have a lot of new people who have joined the team, getting them integrated and comfortable in their positions to understand, this is my job, this is your job, this is this, this is this, this is that. And all that stuff bleeds through to the car. It just does. That's the way it works. And so I think as they start to understand what they've got, they start to unlock more potential. We heard Dan and Ricardo talk about that at the end of the Saudi Arabian Grand Prix, where he was like, Hey, we went in a wrong direction this way, it affected me this way.

So we understand what we need to do for the next race. Yuki did something that was a little different and et cetera, et cetera. And you get more experimentation with drivers and cars. And so, yeah, Adam, I think eventually, like R. B. Expects to be a lot more competitive than what they are, but But then again, you've got those other two teams that could possibly, with upgrades, keep pace.

Right. So this is going to be... I mean, this is the fun thing about Formula One is you're looking at the battles throughout the grid. It's like who's going to finish where. Every place does matter. I'm not going to mention Alpine right now because I just feel bad about it. It feels like you're punching down. They're a mess. And there are rumors, again, of like, well, maybe that's the way Andretti Cadillac gets into the sport. I have a hard time with that one, by the way, Tim, because from the business perspective, it still makes sense for Renault, who own Alpine, the brand, to maintain not only being an engine supplier, but We also use this as a marketing vehicle, but they got to get it together.

The issues, I think, one of them in particular is the car is just way too heavy, way too heavy. And it's like, well, how the hell? You already know that with this regulation, you're going to have a heavy car. And so you need to take steps to honor that. You need to understand that, Hey, we can't build certain things a certain way because of weight restrictions. We're going to be overweight. And the more you put weight on the car, the slower you go. And so I think once they get a handle on that, I don't know how they're going to get weight off of it, to be perfectly honest. They have to put it on a diet or something. But I honestly don't know. And so they are facing an uphill challenge this season. Big time, man. Like, big time.

Now, moving off of F1 for a second and on to the FIA. It's hard to take either Susie or Toto Wolf, talk about them and not talk about Formula One. But Susie Wolf has issued this statement on her Instagram yesterday after reports came out. She said, I can confirm that I personally filed a criminal complaint in French courts on the fourth of March in relation to the statements made about me by the FIA last December. There has still not been any transparency or accountability in relation to the conduct of the FIA and its personnel in this matter. I feel more than ever it is important to stand up, call out improper behavior, and make sure people are held to account. While some may think silence absolves them from responsibility, it does not. Now, if you're needing to catch up on this, the background essentially is that there was a complaint filed and a statement made by the FIA about the relationship between Susie and Toto Wolf and potential information sharing that would be inappropriate because there's things that Susie, who heads up the Formula Women's program.

F1 Academy.

F1 Academy, that's right, which has entries from all the major teams and is a very exciting circuit, actually. It's been a really good start.

Yeah, it has been.

A really fun. And by the way, long overdue. Yeah. Long overdue. She's the head of this. She's the most important person in the organization. They hadn't even raced yet, and There's an accusation that her and Toto are sharing information that's improper. We were never told, because it's the FIA, and they're never going to tell us, what that information might be, but you can speculate on it. Tim, this seems to be Susie Wolf going not only not only was I exonerated, but I need in the future to not have this accusation leveled at me or anybody like me. It's almost like we're drawing a line in the sand. That's what it feels like from the outside. What do you see when you see something like this? What does this mean to you? And not knowing much about how the FIA works, myself, personally, how does the FIA work?

It's essentially the governing body of of Formula One, and They have to police certain things. And I think in this particular case, it was a conflict. If I remember correctly, it was like a conflict of interest inquiry that was done done with her and husband, Toto Wolf. And information sharing, I wasn't sure if it was between teams or team principals. But essentially, at the end of all of this, you had all nine teams, 10, including Mercedes, come out and issue statements that basically them saying they've never once heard of any of this. They're all very confused. Like everyone else was really confused with it when we got it. I believe it was in December when we had received the messages from the FIA. She is within her rights to do this. I think at the end of the day, it's like, Look, enough is enough. Let's take this to court, and we'll get some answers, and you're going to answer for what you did. That's That's just the way it's going to be. And fair game. If the governing body isn't, I guess, willing to really come out and acknowledge a mistake or acknowledge something that's been done wrong, then, I mean, yeah, for sure.

You have to make them answer for certain things, for sure. I would think that goes hand in hand with any business or sport, et cetera.

I know that it's for the courts always, too. I mean, this is a FIA, essentially, it's a corporate investigation, so it's a little bit different. But one of the reasons we have innocent until proven guilty is because once an accusation is leveled, no matter what the evidence is, before people have seen the evidence, they look on the accused with suspicion. Whether or not they had any information at all to make those statements, and this is the problem, is we don't know, and it seems like neither does Susie, The fact of the matter is, when you make that allegation, the allegation sticks to the person it was made against. For the FIA to put that out there on social media and to make a public statement about it, and then not to offer any thing other than, Oh, it's been cleared, and there's nothing there, it does... I can understand from her perspective why it's like, You know what? We're going to go to court, and you're going to come out with what you had. Because I think I think no matter what the outcome was, it was always going to affect her reputation. For sure.

And in a sport where reputation is so important, specifically, it's such a... I hate to put it this way, but it's an advertising-driven sport. You need those sponsors. You need legitimacy. We're just launching the F1 Academy after the women's series last year went into receiver-ship. It's extremely important that she have a sparkling reputation reputation, and that nobody take that down. And I feel like this is her going, Hey, just so you know, I do have a sparkling reputation. I am not doing anything wrong. And let's not go down this road again.

Yeah, a lot of the legal case really does I mean, her legal case really does revolve around that inquiry that we spoke about a few minutes ago that was launched by the FIA. I think it was like there was a magazine. Their claim was that I think it was competitors thought that her relationship with Toto was a conflict of interest with inside the sport.

Every F1 team came out and said, We didn't make that claim.

Exactly.

It was a pretty crazy story, too. It's so funny. It's so many crazy stories ago now. When you think about all the craziness that's happened since, you almost forget, but it was a wild story.

Then it comes down to, I guess, something we talked about quite a bit is transparency. We need more information on things, especially lately, with the stuff that was happening down at Red Bull, Christian Horner, everything that's going on there. The transparency is just so crucial with all of this stuff. I think even when you look at the media side, the journalist side, I haven't really been getting that.

No, no, no. It's very, very true, Tim. Back to the race for a second. I want to talk about Nico Halkenberg and a comment he made about Oliver Beermann. Now, obviously, Ollie had a great race in Jetta, and everybody was really excited. But Nico Halkenberg made a comment, and I think people took it the wrong way. I think he's bang on the money when he made the comment, but it sounds harsh. And what he said was, Listen, if this guy doesn't have a good season in F2, then whatever he did in Jetta is going to be forgotten. And it sounds harsh, but it does speak to how harsh racing is. Does it not?

A hundred %. Do you disagree? No, I think it's that old saying, Adam, you're only as good as your last race. That still rings true today. It's still rang true when I was racing years ago and years before that with other drivers. If you have a bad race, the next one needs to be a good race, or else things, like I'd mentioned at the start of the pod, start to downward spiral for you in more ways than one. And Hulkenberg does have a point here. I think it is important, and I'd said it on SportsCenter after the Saudi Arabian Grand Prix, essentially, look, he missed that pole position during that F2 race. It's going to cost him points. Can he now win the Championship? And basically, it's essentially what I had said is it's important that he is in contention for it or he wins it, but missing out at the Saudi Arabian Grand Prix is not going to help him. I think for him, he has to have a strong weekend this weekend. Whether that's with Ferrari or with...

I think it's Prima, right?

Either one. It has to be a good weekend for him. He has to keep this positive momentum going because I think your career really does hang in the balance with every single race weekend you do. If you want to be taken seriously in Formula One, if you're going to finish first, second, third, and at F2 Championship, you will be taken seriously.

Right. I noticed that Kimi Antenelli had a much better weekend for Premo in his second race. But that's a heck of a driver lineup, by the way. Beermann and Antenelli?

Yeah, it's strong. I think with Antonelli, he needs more experience, needs more reasoning. Learning from a driver like Ollie Beermann is going to be good for him. I'm not expecting huge things from Kimmy Antonelli this this season, but next season is a different story. I think people forget how difficult Formula 2 is in trying to win the Formula 2 Championship and just be competitive in Formula 2. I'm going to sit here and say there's probably 16, 17 drivers on that grid who are legit great talent. And it's like, you got to fight through that, man, to try and show up and put on a great performance. And so, yeah, for Kimmy, I think it's, again, I just think it's going to take time.

And for Ollie, whether he races an F1 or F2 this week. And by the way, can you imagine you're 18 years old and you're not finished high school and you may race an F1 this weekend, but maybe F2. What a world. Think about that, right?

That's a lot. There's some pressure. You're juggling as you're going around. Hey, what's going to happen this weekend?

And if you're racing in F1, you're going to miss free practice one and two while the other driver sorts out their health.

Yeah. Man, you can't make it up. It'd be impossible. I don't know, Adam. Is there any equivalent to... Let's use the NHL as an example.

Is there-The NHL, you got to be out of high school. You can make it at 18, but you got to be out of high school. You cannot join until you're done high school. It cannot happen.

So if you're in the OHL, you're basically... You're probably in high school, I'm assuming.

You are in high school, yeah. And a lot of the guys, let's say you're from Toronto and you get drafted by the Sudbury Wolves or Sault Ste. Marie, you get put up in a Billet family, right? I think you get some a little bit of a stipend to pay for meals and things like that. But you're literally moving to a new city, living with a family you've never met before, and trying to play hockey and go to school. It's a lot of pressure, but it's not quite... And a comparable with ice hockey in Formula One, as much as ice hockey is a bigger money revenue thing because they've got a bigger overall business in North America. Revenue for the NHL is like 6.2 billion. I think for Formula One, it's three and a half billion, but that's just Formula One, the body. That doesn't mean the teams. Formula One is a bigger sport. It's got a international eye. Frankly, when you're a team Ferrari driver like Beermann is, you're also dealing with the history of Ferrari. It's Ferrari. What did Binotto say in Drive To Survive is you ask a kid to drive to draw a car and they'll draw a Ferrari.

Yeah. Yeah, he's not wrong, right? It's not like Adam, it's like the AHL equivalent, like F2. It's not like that. It's like F2 It would be that OHL point where you then make it to the big league. That's right. That is what F2 would be. If you were allowed to do it, you would simply pluck the top talent out of the OHL to fill in for Evgeny Malkin for a game and then send them back down. You can't do that. That's what essentially for Ferrari is asking of here.

Oh, it's crazy. It's a crazy ask. But I mean, that is the sport. It is like, if you're going to get in, you better perform. It doesn't matter what preparation you have. You have to be as ready as you can.

You have to be ready, yeah.

Now, speaking, one of the places that if Beermann has a good year, he's been speculated already to go to is Haas. Haas is obviously very closely linked to Ferrari. They drive a Ferrari engine. And in the past, were supposed to act like, and no one wants to say it out loud, but they're supposed to act like they can season some of the younger Ferrari drivers before they join Ferrari. It hasn't quite worked out that way. Mick Schumacher was one of the guys that people were like, Well, maybe But with a guy like Beermann joining a team like Haas, I think it's been interesting because the Halkinberg comments one thing, and I think he's right. The second thing I want to talk about is Ayo Komatsu, and the changes he's already brought to team. They're faster than what we thought they would be. They have to be scrappy because Jean Haas is not going to spend big money, although they are spending close to the cap, I think. Tim, the one thing I wanted to talk about is there was some accusations leveled and nobody would come out and put their name on it as far as I could see, that Haas were unsportsmanlike when Magnuson...

I think it was actually Alex Albon. Unsportsmanlike.

It would have been with It would have been with Magnuson at the Saudi Arabian Grand Prix.

Yeah, and Magnuson, who basically took a bunch of darts the whole game, had all those penalties, everything, to make sure that Nico Halkinberg got into the points. He really held up the rest of the field. Alex Albon, in particular, played great defense on him.

And Yuki Sonoda, too. He played good defense on him, too.

Yuki's a good passer. He's really quick. Obviously, they probably weren't thrilled with Magnuson's penalties, but that's all negated by the fact that the team got points, and Magnuson made sure that they did. So great teamwork between Nico Halkenberg and Magnuson. But people called that unsportsmanlike. What do you think?

Total BS, man. They played the game and they got the point. That's just the way it is. Look, if you're given the penalty, you can serve it any way you want unless the FIA dictates how they want you to serve it. If it's a drive-through penalty, there's nothing you can do about it. It is a drive-through penalty, and you're doing that. If you're going to get 10-second penalty, you can serve it in a pit stop, you can serve it after the race. Guys fighting for points, teams fighting for points. I don't know. I don't have a problem with it. I really don't. Magnuson did a great job playing defense, and that's not easy to do. I really sacrificed a lot of his race to do that. And he's playing the team game, right? He knew he'd screwed up and gotten the penalties, but he knew he also had to play a team game as well. And so, yeah, that's how I feel about it. I don't know. How do you see it?

Well, I look at Kevin Magnuson's career status. If he's one of the guys, one of the 15 or 17 or whoever is out of contract next year. And Beermann is having this great race. Nico Halkenberg has been really good in qualifying, which sets Haas up for a better result because the opportunities for them to be fast over a sustained period of time, they've started fast like they did a couple of years ago. But their upgrades have tended not to work in the last couple of years. So this might be the chance to harvest as many points as you can. I look at it and I go, Okay, so there are going to be teams next year on the grid that are rebuilding. And maybe you a veteran driver who will play ball, who will play team. This is a guy who I think... I don't think Magnuson's career has gone the way that he would have hoped when he came in with McLaren. He was really a highly touted rookie, and I think people wanted... I think he would have expected to be more successful than he has been. But at this stage in his career, he can't look at it like world titles.

He's got to look at it like, How do I maintain this seat and play ball and stay here? And I think that that's what What a great ringing endorsement. Here's the thing, Tim. Nico Halkenberg, to me, is the better driver of that team, at least right now, based on performance. But if he gets poached and they bring in Beermann, Magnuson seems like a really good guy to work with him. If If Halkinberg stays and then Beermann goes and they move on from Magnuson, there's drives open. If you're a now... I mean, you can't even call them Sauber anymore. Audi-owned, Stake or is William's looking for somebody because Albon moved on or Logan Sargent moved on? There's so many opportunities there, and I think he's maximizing his potential for a job, not just at Haas, but next year with somebody else.

Yeah, 100 %. You're absolutely right. I think I definitely agree with you on all that. Moving, he does give himself a lot of or some opportunity to move by playing the team game. And then the performance side of things that will need to be elevated for Kevin. It's hard for me to see him at another team in the future.

Yeah.

Only because of where the performance has been lately. And we're going back to last season as well. Yeah.

Where Halkinberg just outperformed him.

Yeah, that too. And trying just trying to get the grips with the race car and figure out what he needs to extract the performance from it. I think he's a great racing driver. Don't get me wrong here. So it's like the more he can show that he has a lot of value left in him, playing the team game is important, scoring a point is important, and beating your teammate is important. If he can start checking two of those other things off that list, he may find himself being able to convince a team that's further down the grid to keep them around in Formula One.

I think for me, Tim, the thing with Kevin Magnuson, and this goes in for Daniel Ricardo, too, the unforced errors, the brain farts per race. It's got to come down. There are mistakes that sometimes... And nobody's denying the talent of either of them. They're the top 20 drivers in the world. But if you make mistakes like Magnus had made, if you make mistakes like Ricardo made, and I know that you said, they were trying to figure out some issues with the Ricardo car. I get it. Totally understand. If those guys can bring those mistakes down, just that will gain them two or three more positions every race. All right. Yep. Right?

Yeah, 100 %.

And I'm sure Haas Loved Nico Halkenberg getting points, but what if they could have had both drivers challenging for points? They would have liked that a lot more.

That would have been huge for them. It's such a log jam trying to get that final point right now. I mean, you've got five teams, all of those drivers capable of scoring points. And so if you're going to be that one team, it's just sniffing at that 10th spot in case a mistake happens from the other 10 drivers, then you want to be in position to capitalize on that. And that's pretty much what Haas did on two Saturdays ago.

I'm looking at it, too. If I'm Ayo Komatsu, race strategist extraordinaire before and now Team Principal. Williams, to me, their big weakness is, and it's not because he's a bad driver, he's Logan Sargent. It's because he's a newer driver, and it's because he's figuring it out. I'm not saying that his pace is bad. His results haven't been there in the way that Williams needs, especially with the performance of that car. Haas could beat Williams this year just based the fact that they were stingier with the points because a lot of the strategy, a lot of the upgrades, a lot of everything in Williams goes through Alex Albon. So even if Albon scores double the points of the other two drivers, But the cost could still beat them in the drivers, and that's worth tens of millions of dollars.

Yeah, constructors for sure. I think for Williams, it's trying to understand this new arrow direction they've gone in, this new platform that they developed for this year, because it is such a big turn from what they've been working with for the past two seasons. To make a drastic change like that takes time to figure out what it needs, what does the driver need to do with it to get that performance out of it. I think the car may be a little bit overweight. Again, another one of those cars that is just a little bit overweight. I think it's overweight, and I think that costs you time for sure. And so trying to sort that out is important. For Logan, it's learning, right? This is a brand new car. This is a brand new concept. You got to do different things with this thing than you did with that thing. And for Alex, he's got that experience of having to adjust every single season.

Yeah. Well, Tim, it's going to be an exciting race in Australia. Really looking forward to it. And listen, when we reconnect, there's going to be bags our eyes, but that's going to be okay. Oh, yeah.

Looking forward to it.

Me too, buddy. Obviously, be on the look out. Follow Tim Horeani at Tim Horeani. I love saying his name because it is a great, strong name, Tim Horeani. It just feels like it's just like, And now your host, Tim Horeani. It feels strong. I appreciate it. Tim, I hope you have a great race weekend. I know we're going to be texting back and forth the entire time. Thanks, buddy. But it's going to be really exciting. Let's have a good one. We'll do a show this weekend to recap it all.

Cool. Thanks, man. I appreciate it.