Speaker 1: Ready, Ready, cool, Michael, what do you know about Formula
Speaker 1: one racing? Um? I do know the name Michael Schumacher.
Speaker 1: Oh that's more than I knew. Yeah, because when I
Speaker 1: was a kid, there was the trivia of who's the
Speaker 1: highest paid athlete in the world, and it was a
Speaker 1: trap to get you to say, like Michael Jordan's and
Speaker 1: it was this guy never heard of named Michael Schumacher,
Speaker 1: a different Michael. I know it's a car race. So
Speaker 1: I do feel a little bit like Bill Hayter's iconic
Speaker 1: Saturday Night Live sketch Stefen. The sport really has everything.
Speaker 1: So you've got people who are willingly hurdling themselves in
Speaker 1: carbon fiber death traps at over two break five, literal
Speaker 1: and actual Nigerian Prince scams. Maybe we don't look the
Speaker 1: gift horse in the mouth and we just accept what
Speaker 1: they've given us. An angry Italian team boss who's resorted
Speaker 1: to posing with children's playground toys to get money for
Speaker 1: his team, He's like, this is not a fucking kindergarten.
Speaker 1: You have got tragedy stuck. It makes incredible dramas. This
Speaker 1: fucking you have name calling, mudslinging, sometimes literally punch throwing,
Speaker 1: you have triumph, you a fashion. It is like watching
Speaker 1: Real Housewives if the real housewives were driving at three
Speaker 1: an hour and occasionally catching on fire, and you have
Speaker 1: everything in between the high is it very high? The
Speaker 1: lawyers feel so incredibly bad? Okay, Lily, thank you. Spicy sounds,
Speaker 1: zesty sounds, exciting sounds, high speed. I have no connection.
Speaker 1: I have no reason to support some Swiss millionaire who's
Speaker 1: driving this car. You know what I mean? There isn't
Speaker 1: I need some ownership over somebody, a team, a car,
Speaker 1: and that's missing. Maybe if I can connect with some
Speaker 1: team or a person or there's a store, worry that
Speaker 1: I resonates with me? Now I'm rooting for these people?
Speaker 1: Does that make sense? Well? Have I got a podcast
Speaker 1: for you from my Heart Radio and Sports Illustrated Studios.
Speaker 1: This is Choosing Sides one. Wow, w Hi, welcome to
Speaker 1: Choosing Sides f one, a podcast about, um, what what
Speaker 1: are we doing here? Lily? So? Um, congrats on signing
Speaker 1: a very fancy contract for sports podcast where you know
Speaker 1: nothing about the sport. This is this is awesome. That's
Speaker 1: a good pitch. Ye Okay, So obviously to care about anything,
Speaker 1: you've got to have skin in the game. That's what
Speaker 1: we're talking about here. So over the next many weeks, I,
Speaker 1: along with a ton of F one insiders and journalists, fans,
Speaker 1: all sorts of people, are going to be taking you
Speaker 1: on a bit of a journey to understand Formula one,
Speaker 1: and we're going to be getting into the inner workings
Speaker 1: of every single team, every single driver. By the end,
Speaker 1: are going to make a choice as to which team
Speaker 1: and driver your support. Um, but you'll soon find that
Speaker 1: this is not a straightforward is just choosing the fastest guy,
Speaker 1: right or the best team? Um? You know, every single driver,
Speaker 1: every single team you know, has their own their own scandals,
Speaker 1: their own rivalries, resentments, daddy issues. The number one rule
Speaker 1: of F one off the bat, everybody's got daddy issues.
Speaker 1: If you don't have one, you can't be in that
Speaker 1: seems to be a daddy the team owner. Maybe maybe
Speaker 1: we'll actually the first team we talked about, We'll get
Speaker 1: into the guy who's who's known as a daddy on
Speaker 1: the grid. So, okay, they really got it all. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm certain I'm gonna I like. I like people competing
Speaker 1: under pressure, and it feels like there's a lot of
Speaker 1: pressure and steaks when you're moving at that speed for millions,
Speaker 1: hundred millions of dollars is that? Sure, money is great,
Speaker 1: but death is the ultimate motivator. Then home speed, spills, thrills,
Speaker 1: crowding miles in two minutes on the streaming tomic, they
Speaker 1: ride with life as the passenger and death on that
Speaker 1: tail catra lift. So obviously with sports, yeah, it depends
Speaker 1: on where you grew up, depends whence you grew up
Speaker 1: watching what your family ended up liking. Obviously a lot
Speaker 1: of Americans did not grow up with F one. Um.
Speaker 1: But yeah, there is a show on Netflix called Drive
Speaker 1: to Survive started coming out I believe in twenty nineteen,
Speaker 1: where it's basically a very highly audited, uh and very
Speaker 1: dramatic docuseries. I am someone who got very into Formula
Speaker 1: one after for no reason at all, clicking on Drive
Speaker 1: to Survive on Netflix. What made it interesting was so
Speaker 1: Formula one, as we will get into shortly, it's a
Speaker 1: very secretive sport. They're very tight lipped. As I said,
Speaker 1: there's millions and millions, even billions of dollars at stake,
Speaker 1: so there everyone's really close to the vest in the sports.
Speaker 1: So it made the show very different was the fact
Speaker 1: that it kind of gave you this inside look into
Speaker 1: the different garages, into the what's called the paddock, which
Speaker 1: is where you know, all of the action takes place,
Speaker 1: the cars, all of the commentators, all this stuff. You know,
Speaker 1: there are clips of for instance, you know, one driver
Speaker 1: crashed into another and went up to that guy during
Speaker 1: you know, post race interviews and told him to go
Speaker 1: fuck himself, and the guy looked at him on camera
Speaker 1: and said, yes, Yes, that's what we got to see
Speaker 1: from driver yourself. Suck my Ball's Mate, which is now
Speaker 1: on T shirts. You can get it on decorat decorative
Speaker 1: mugs that your suck my Ball's Mate mug can be
Speaker 1: kept right next to the keep my Wife's Name at
Speaker 1: your fucking mouth exactly exactly similar energy and applies. I
Speaker 1: had skillfully avoiding another skidding opponent. Okay, so, Tony, what
Speaker 1: would someone like my co host Michael Costa or anyone
Speaker 1: else who's just brand new to f one need to
Speaker 1: know to understand the sport lately? That is like the
Speaker 1: hardest question to answer. What do you need to know?
Speaker 1: I love it? So that's Formula one Journalist Tony Cowen
Speaker 1: Brown I'm a firm believer that the more you know
Speaker 1: about something, the more you get more you can enjoy
Speaker 1: the actual sport. So Tony literally wrote the Beginner's Guide
Speaker 1: to f one with Formula one like the organization, so
Speaker 1: she is obviously the perfect person to help us go
Speaker 1: on this journey. This this like weird paradox in Formula
Speaker 1: one is at the cusp of innovation. The R and
Speaker 1: D research behind closed doors inside a Formula one is
Speaker 1: like no other. But at the same time, sport has
Speaker 1: been around for seventy plus years, is very arcaic, is
Speaker 1: deeply rooted in the end of World War Two. Race
Speaker 1: car driving in general has been around since the beginning
Speaker 1: of of you know, invention of vehicles, right, so in
Speaker 1: the early nineteen hundreds you've just got people informally racing
Speaker 1: each other. There started to be a little more organization
Speaker 1: around race car driving, particularly in Europe in the nineteen
Speaker 1: thirties before World War Two. Isn't it say something about
Speaker 1: humanity that we invent this amazing combustion engine and then
Speaker 1: immediately are like, who can max it out the fastest
Speaker 1: to the potentially their personal peril? Exactly, Yeah, we'll crashing
Speaker 1: how fast can you get love? Yeah, yeah, I love that.
Speaker 1: Good job. Good job humanity for always wanting to push it.
Speaker 1: Lucky escape drives back into the race. England produced during
Speaker 1: World War Two a lot of airplanes for their military specifically,
Speaker 1: and after the war ended. So after World War Two ended,
Speaker 1: there was this surplus of aerospace engineers that essentially needed jobs. Simultaneously,
Speaker 1: you were also seeing the appearance of compre racing, Grand
Speaker 1: Prix racing, which became increasingly popular with the gentleman's who
Speaker 1: might have still had that feeling of that hero mentality
Speaker 1: that we saw a lot in World War Two. They
Speaker 1: were also out of a job, potentially board and keeping busy.
Speaker 1: Another interesting thing is that a lot of Europe, and
Speaker 1: in particular the United Kingdom, where it's kind of it's
Speaker 1: kind of considered the one of the real birthplaces of
Speaker 1: Formula one, but the Kingdom had a ton of abandoned
Speaker 1: air fields and strips from the war, and so as
Speaker 1: a result of all of that, engineers got really creative
Speaker 1: and started building these essentially really lightweight cars to race
Speaker 1: on these airfields that later became actual tracks. It's round
Speaker 1: out a round and drills with kids fast and frequently
Speaker 1: that sounds awesome. Yeah, Like, if you can get an
Speaker 1: hour away from the family, you and the buddies, grab
Speaker 1: some pints and go drive super souped up cars on
Speaker 1: an abandoned airfield. Count me in. Yeah. Of course people
Speaker 1: got injured and died, but like it's you know, a
Speaker 1: couple hours away from the family, it's worth the risk.
Speaker 1: So something to note about this time is, first of all,
Speaker 1: there were there were no there was an organization to
Speaker 1: speak of, right, these are just dudes out there gentlemen's sport. Uh.
Speaker 1: The whole idea of safety regulations. Um, we don't know
Speaker 1: her at this time, right, Like they're just kind of
Speaker 1: doing whatever. There's no helmets, there's no seatbelts, there's nothing
Speaker 1: to kind of strap anyone in. You have spectators that
Speaker 1: are literally just next to these tracks being protected by
Speaker 1: maybe a hay bale or two at the time. Uh
Speaker 1: So obviously I'm sure you're yeah, you're wondering when does
Speaker 1: this quaint little gentleman's sports become a billion dollar juggernaut.
Speaker 1: I like to look at Formula one as there are
Speaker 1: two eras in Formula One. There's pre Bernie and then
Speaker 1: this post Bernie. So there's a guy who's pretty controversial
Speaker 1: enough one Bernie Ecclestone. Bernie ecclestone. Yeah, Bernie, we'll call
Speaker 1: him Bernie for great controversial billionaire name. Yeah, he sounds
Speaker 1: like a billionaire, he does. And pre Bernie, this was
Speaker 1: just like a gentleman's agreement. It was these you know,
Speaker 1: like a hobby. But Bernie was very forward thinking and
Speaker 1: how he looked at Formula one and he truly turned
Speaker 1: Formula one from a hobby into a business. And I
Speaker 1: believe it's ninety eight one. He convinced basically the teams
Speaker 1: to sign a contract called the Concorde Agreement, asking the teams,
Speaker 1: the Formula one teams to commit to racing for a
Speaker 1: couple of years. This agreement is still in place today.
Speaker 1: And what he did was this contract, which was extremely smart,
Speaker 1: is he took this agreement to TV companies and he
Speaker 1: would guarantee them coverage. He would basically guarantee that this
Speaker 1: race was taking place with all of these incredible manufacturers,
Speaker 1: the like of Williams, the like of Ferrari, McLaren, et cetera.
Speaker 1: And he would guarantee the teams would get coverage, which
Speaker 1: was great for the sponsor, so that they could be
Speaker 1: seen worldwide. This was very much cutting edge in the
Speaker 1: eighties for him to do disagreement. So there's no question
Speaker 1: again whether you like him or not. Polarizing figure. There
Speaker 1: is no doubt that what Bernie did Bernie Kinson did
Speaker 1: was turned this from a hobby into a money making
Speaker 1: machine with huge commercial success. And okay, what makes him
Speaker 1: so controversial? I know, like, how much time do we have?
Speaker 1: How much time do you have? And also bear in
Speaker 1: mind that I look at him through the lens of
Speaker 1: a young woman who believes in certain things like equality
Speaker 1: and representation under need for diversity. I want to see
Speaker 1: what he looks like. Yes, of course the first pictures
Speaker 1: him with like a twenty two year old model chick.
Speaker 1: She looks like a tall supermodel. He looks like a
Speaker 1: villain in a Disney movie. White hair, wrinkly face, wealth
Speaker 1: flies private. He looks down at first class. That's what
Speaker 1: he calls coaches for his first class. A lot of
Speaker 1: the pictures are him with his wife, so he's smart
Speaker 1: enough to, oh, here's a picture of him chatting with
Speaker 1: Vladimir Putin. In your view, you don't think that Putin
Speaker 1: has done anything wrong as a person. I've found him,
Speaker 1: very straightforward, honorable, did exactly what he said. Who's going
Speaker 1: to do putout in the argument. There are a lot
Speaker 1: of people who disagree with you, Bernie eccleston, But thank
Speaker 1: you so much for for for coming on the program
Speaker 1: and putting that view out there. Bernie eccleston, their former
Speaker 1: chief executive of the Formula one group. He's very old school.
Speaker 1: He he currently has much said he doesn't like new
Speaker 1: or younger F one fans. He still thinks F one
Speaker 1: should be uh sort of advertising to you know, old
Speaker 1: guys with tons of money. Um. But obviously his system
Speaker 1: wasn't really working because until recently, you know, viewership of
Speaker 1: F one was going down. But Nixon is no longer
Speaker 1: part of Formula one. He actually sold his steak in
Speaker 1: Formula one to Liberty Media that now owns this whole venture.
Speaker 1: We got drive to survive. We got a lot more
Speaker 1: social media from them. Before then, it was very secretive. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he's and he's really old at this point. I say,
Speaker 1: I mean, old people notoriously are always saying the wrong thing.
Speaker 1: But if you're old in nineteen sixty, you're really old.
Speaker 1: I always respect anyone who is taking action and doing
Speaker 1: something The problem is a lot of those people then
Speaker 1: say really stupid shit all the time. But it takes
Speaker 1: effort and energy and enthusiasm and balls to like make
Speaker 1: shit happen. Right, Yeah, put that on a mug. I
Speaker 1: think it'll take a little too much space on the
Speaker 1: bug unless it's like a very large bug. But it
Speaker 1: can go next to my suck suck my balls mate. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I love that. I love that. That was that suck
Speaker 1: my ball's mate. Yeah, because you hey, we're racing, yeah,
Speaker 1: we're so. Yeah, I will say that guy is back
Speaker 1: on the grid and we will get to him later
Speaker 1: on this time. And also I'm excited to learn what
Speaker 1: the fuck the grid means, yes, because that word is
Speaker 1: thrown around a lot. The grid. Yeah, it's an easy way.
Speaker 1: It also sound like you know what you're talking about.
Speaker 1: It's just the grid the paddock. Yeah. Yeah, I learned
Speaker 1: the word kit, you know, relatively recently in my F
Speaker 1: one journey. It's I sound infinitely smarter now. It's like
Speaker 1: what you wear team, that's that's isn't that British? That
Speaker 1: British tennis players would say that. Let me just say
Speaker 1: this podcast, the amount of like Brits we've interviewed where
Speaker 1: they say motor sport like singular when talking about the plural,
Speaker 1: and that I feel but I look at sound ridiculous
Speaker 1: as an American saying you know, oh, you know in
Speaker 1: the world of motor sports, it's like there's an s
Speaker 1: lily and you're like, yeah, next thing, you know, you're
Speaker 1: going to say that you had to go to hospital. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I feel like I'm like like one one interview a
Speaker 1: way everywhere from switching into hospital. Plus they also think,
Speaker 1: just like we think, they're also smart because they sound
Speaker 1: that way. They just automatically think we're dumb and usually
Speaker 1: they're right. But there's also dumb Brits. I want to
Speaker 1: be very clear and please put this in the podcast.
Speaker 1: There are really dumb British people. Okay, got it. It's
Speaker 1: round out to roundo thrills with skids fast and frequently
Speaker 1: these cars they all look the same to me on
Speaker 1: the outside. But what is I mean, what are these cars?
Speaker 1: A good A good question. So I'm sure you know
Speaker 1: what NASCAR is. You probably heard of indie car in
Speaker 1: the Indie Fire and uh, what's interesting is those those
Speaker 1: cars are what's called they're usually Spec series is what
Speaker 1: it's called I get another term that will make you
Speaker 1: sound instantly smarter. More often than not, everyone's kind of
Speaker 1: driving the same things. The idea is that there's a
Speaker 1: pretty even playing field in terms of the machinery. But
Speaker 1: Formula one is a completely different beast. Formula one is
Speaker 1: a rules based car racing category. So this is F
Speaker 1: one journalist Hazel Southwell. She specializes in the design and
Speaker 1: technical aspects of the sport. The design of cars is
Speaker 1: largely free, except for the technical regulations that guide teams
Speaker 1: to create similar vehicles within some parameters. It's called formula one.
Speaker 1: Part of that quote unquote formula is the fact that, yeah,
Speaker 1: there are regulations, there are rules, and everyone's just trying
Speaker 1: to kind of tiptoe around them, you know, get us
Speaker 1: close to the edge of the cliff and hope they
Speaker 1: don't fall in. That means it's very technically driven. It's
Speaker 1: something which has huge amounts of research and development behind it,
Speaker 1: so that you might see one guy standing on the podium,
Speaker 1: it's actually thousands of people in or hundreds of people
Speaker 1: where a minimum teams that contribute to those victories. F
Speaker 1: one is as much almost like an engineering competition on
Speaker 1: steroids as it is a driving championship. Cheating in Formula
Speaker 1: one is a fundamental part of the way the Formula
Speaker 1: One is kind of played as a sport because in
Speaker 1: creative interpretation of the rules is basically how you get
Speaker 1: an advantage over your opponents. If everyone just interpreted the
Speaker 1: rules to their letter, then you'd have twenty identical cars
Speaker 1: and it wouldn't be very interesting for anyone. But as
Speaker 1: soon as somebody sees perhaps a loophole or a gap
Speaker 1: or a way that they can be interpreted differently, then
Speaker 1: you have a possibility to gain an advantage or to
Speaker 1: make a truly terrible car. You see teams in previous
Speaker 1: decades have, for instance, put more wheels on the car
Speaker 1: to see if they would make them run faster. They've
Speaker 1: put weird stuff on the back of the car. They've
Speaker 1: tried everything in their power, and of course, you know,
Speaker 1: every once in a while a team just completely nails
Speaker 1: it right out of the blue and suddenly they are
Speaker 1: just lapping people because they figured out some key thing
Speaker 1: within the regulations, usually barely in the regulations to do that.
Speaker 1: Can I say something about that every sport at the
Speaker 1: highest level is the finest line between being innovative and
Speaker 1: cheating every every sport. I mean, from Tom Brady and
Speaker 1: the deflated football's to a hockey player retaping the top
Speaker 1: of their stick, or could the cur every sport you
Speaker 1: need an edge? That's how good your competition is cheating
Speaker 1: the art of skillful cheating. Um, it's pretty murky. There's
Speaker 1: been a lot of interesting scandals involving cars that were
Speaker 1: deemed illegal. Quite famously, in Lewis Hamilton's first year, McLaren
Speaker 1: lost the World Championship was stripped of absolutely all its points,
Speaker 1: uh because it was discovered that they had been involved
Speaker 1: in spying on Ferrari. So the other thing that I
Speaker 1: do love though, about the fact that everyone's barely trying
Speaker 1: to barely not cheat, means that everyone else complains about
Speaker 1: folks barely not cheating. So so a lot of the
Speaker 1: ongoing drama, for instance, in Formula one, is these various
Speaker 1: team bosses either very loudly whining or very casually mildly
Speaker 1: suggesting that their competitors have done something not kosher. It's
Speaker 1: like when your parents set a rule and you kind
Speaker 1: of like you really you sort of push it right
Speaker 1: up until the final interpretation of that rule. Um, but
Speaker 1: with you know, tens of millions of pounds of financial consequence.
Speaker 1: If you are cool, they're not getting around. They have
Speaker 1: rules where if you're a competitor and you touch another
Speaker 1: team's car, like let's say, even bump it, they'll find you,
Speaker 1: you know, fifty pounds like there. You know, And you've
Speaker 1: also had teams get upset when drivers even kind of
Speaker 1: looked at their car, which is not illegal. So they're
Speaker 1: allowed to do that, right, stop looking at my car.
Speaker 1: I as a sports fan, I appreciate them doing that,
Speaker 1: trying to keep the sport fair. I also cannot imagine
Speaker 1: the intelligence, the money, and there are so many moving
Speaker 1: parts literally on a race car. Jesus, that's a huge undertaking.
Speaker 1: There is a lot of people, technology all mixed into
Speaker 1: this competition. Arrival no mean feet on the greasy track
Speaker 1: much a ticklish moment when Noma Tradi six pycraft in
Speaker 1: his Emerson car. So the f I A and like
Speaker 1: I said, this governing body, um, they do come out
Speaker 1: with smaller regulations and other changes and things, you know,
Speaker 1: year to year, even sometimes race to race if something
Speaker 1: really bad has happened, but every few years and there's
Speaker 1: no real set time for this to happen, they will
Speaker 1: put out a whole new list of regulations. Two Fumula
Speaker 1: one regulations were brought in to address had been an
Speaker 1: issue for going back well over a decade, with the
Speaker 1: fact that the aerodynamics, which are brilliant and incredibly clever,
Speaker 1: don't work very well when they get close to other cars.
Speaker 1: So as a consequence, there hasn't always been very good
Speaker 1: overtaking um. There have been some pretty dismal Grand Prix
Speaker 1: with single digit or even no overtakes UM and that
Speaker 1: is not what people tune into most sport to watch.
Speaker 1: You want to see some friction exactly. So the rule
Speaker 1: book was radically rewritten to readdress the way that aerodynamics
Speaker 1: work on formul among cars in order to ensure that
Speaker 1: when they get close to another car, they're not going
Speaker 1: to dramatically lose all of the features that let them
Speaker 1: grip to the track, that let them take corners as
Speaker 1: fast as they do, that let them have the cars
Speaker 1: stability for the drivers to be able to go at
Speaker 1: the speeds that they do. So you know, this is
Speaker 1: the perfect time for you to join up one because
Speaker 1: new regulations mean utter chaos, right because you can see
Speaker 1: teams that have dominated just completely funk up the regulations, right,
Speaker 1: they take certain gambles in certain risks and they do
Speaker 1: not pay off. And on the flip side, you'll see
Speaker 1: teams that we're just doing okay or maybe even horrifically
Speaker 1: completely nail those regulations and all of a sudden they
Speaker 1: go from being you know, back of the pack to hey,
Speaker 1: like they they're actually in it with the points and
Speaker 1: they're they're kind of moving and grooving. So so yes,
Speaker 1: that's like the fun part right now is we've seen
Speaker 1: some chaotic races where you know, the You've got the
Speaker 1: current reigning world champion in the first three races of
Speaker 1: two he hasn't finished two of those races because of
Speaker 1: issues with his car. So obviously a talented driver completely
Speaker 1: undone by faulty issues with the car under new regulations.
Speaker 1: I'm I'm surprised and very interested that it feels like
Speaker 1: the driver, the athlete superstar has an important role, but
Speaker 1: it feels like it's almost a fifty fifty importance to
Speaker 1: the team science maybe less. I don't know. Funny you
Speaker 1: should mentioned drivers because that's actually a great segue. Yeah,
Speaker 1: could you could really get in a Formula one car
Speaker 1: and move forward. I have trouble driving my Subaru Forester
Speaker 1: when I'm back at home, let alone, and there's not Also,
Speaker 1: that's not a fair question to ask a New Yorker
Speaker 1: because nobody here knows how to drive. I would even
Speaker 1: know how to get in, Like it's a whole endeavor
Speaker 1: just to kind of wiggle your way into one of
Speaker 1: these things. So to get back to our slightly more
Speaker 1: professional drivers, I am not one of those. Interestingly enough,
Speaker 1: many people do not view Formula One drivers as actual
Speaker 1: real athletes. People underestimate how physical this board is just
Speaker 1: because you know, it looks easy when you look at
Speaker 1: the onboard cameras. You know, they look like the cars
Speaker 1: are perfect and it's just you steering. But um, it's
Speaker 1: very demanding. So that was Tatiana Calderone. She was actually
Speaker 1: the last female to drive in F one car for
Speaker 1: a team called Alfa Romeo. We'll hear more about Alfa
Speaker 1: Romeo and we'll hear more from Tatiana later in the season.
Speaker 1: I had asked her to describe what it's like to
Speaker 1: drive enough one car when you're going more than three
Speaker 1: hundred kilometers an hour and you have to turn in
Speaker 1: flat to a corner to turn the weed. It's is
Speaker 1: very heavy and you have to do that eighteen or
Speaker 1: nineteen times per lap, you know, so it's for one
Speaker 1: an hour, one hour and thirty minutes. Two hours is
Speaker 1: stressful for for your body and for your mind. Your
Speaker 1: heart rate goes up, so you're always and at around
Speaker 1: one sixty or one fifty bibs per minute in the
Speaker 1: heat with very little air is unbelievably hot in race cars.
Speaker 1: Reporter Hazel Southwell, again, it can easily be sustainedly over
Speaker 1: sixty centigrade. I'm not sure what that is in fahrenheit.
Speaker 1: That's a hundred and forty degrees fahrenheit Jesus. Secondly, they're
Speaker 1: undergoing enormous amounts of g fours, so every time they
Speaker 1: take a corner, instead of breaking like we would and
Speaker 1: maybe coming almost to a standstill to take a right
Speaker 1: angle corner, they just carry through as much speed as possible,
Speaker 1: so they will be going through a right angle corner
Speaker 1: over a hundred and fifty miles per hour. If you
Speaker 1: think about pulling like five or six G through a corner,
Speaker 1: then everything weighs five or six times more than it does,
Speaker 1: so basically it tries to rip their head off. F
Speaker 1: one driver's up. They've got very big necks because they
Speaker 1: actually have to train their next is like a separate
Speaker 1: portion of their like physio, because the head is swapping
Speaker 1: her out. They had to do so many hours of
Speaker 1: training in the neck to just even be able to
Speaker 1: drive the car, let alone push it. You know, I
Speaker 1: felt like a robot at times. I had to change
Speaker 1: my shirt sides. The G forces that go through your
Speaker 1: body are incredible. There was an inty car driver who
Speaker 1: got the chance a couple of months ago to test
Speaker 1: out enough one car, and he's straight upset. He's like,
Speaker 1: I could almost not complete the last couple of apps
Speaker 1: because my head would not stay up. And this is
Speaker 1: still into car guy, right, so he still does this
Speaker 1: in his own sport, but he's like, it is a
Speaker 1: million times more intense enough one Over the course of
Speaker 1: a Grand Prix weekend, they're doing hundreds of laps, so um,
Speaker 1: they have to be able to do that and for
Speaker 1: the physical demands of driving to be completely irrelevant because
Speaker 1: the mental concentration on what they're doing is so complete
Speaker 1: that you have to be fit enough that all of
Speaker 1: those factors, the heat, the G force are all like
Speaker 1: just background noise. It's about finding that balance and that rhedom.
Speaker 1: It's like playing music. You know. You you drive with
Speaker 1: your hands as well as with your feet, and it
Speaker 1: has to be in a harmony. And that's what I love,
Speaker 1: trying to find harmony. I love that she's operating this
Speaker 1: car on a totally different level. I'm very interested in
Speaker 1: the steering wheel, and I'm very interested in shifting if
Speaker 1: they shift, yeah, I don't know. They are making hundreds
Speaker 1: of adjustments per lap. Formerly one drivers change gear eighty
Speaker 1: times roughly around a lot. So that's just a lot
Speaker 1: of gear changes if you think about the fact that
Speaker 1: that will be taking place over the course of say
Speaker 1: eighty seconds. And that's actually, to be honest, the most
Speaker 1: basic thing they're doing. Um they're then constantly adjusting settings,
Speaker 1: so they'll be changing things like the break balance, things
Speaker 1: like engine modes, like modes for the hybrid system. Driver
Speaker 1: default Charlie eighty five. When you can drive a default
Speaker 1: C eighty five. When you can that's on the m
Speaker 1: F A rotary to ten o'clock position, I cannot go it.
Speaker 1: I cannot go it. Shop it up mass. If you
Speaker 1: can move m F A to positions see and then
Speaker 1: select eighty five on the dot if it nowhere again
Speaker 1: eighty five. If you see a poso of the Formula
Speaker 1: one steering wheel, they'll have like at least eight dials
Speaker 1: which will all have sort of like twenty settings, and
Speaker 1: all of those settings interact with each other us. So
Speaker 1: if you think about how many permutations you could have
Speaker 1: of something, and then they have various other buttons that
Speaker 1: are just for like, um, quick deployment of something, or
Speaker 1: for the radio or to show that they've heard a message.
Speaker 1: You'll hear times where drivers can get kind of frustrated
Speaker 1: and be like I just need a minute, Like I
Speaker 1: just seed a minute. Let me just take a deep
Speaker 1: breath and figure out what fucking button to push right now?
Speaker 1: Is pitted if we can get in proNT of ghastly,
Speaker 1: we get some prayer and it's good for us. I
Speaker 1: just stop sucking talking. And they have to remember where
Speaker 1: all of that is, not touch it at the wrong time,
Speaker 1: and they have to be able to do all of
Speaker 1: that whilst they're flying around a track at hundreds and
Speaker 1: hundreds of an hour, being flung around what's basically you know,
Speaker 1: a little tub, and they're trying to win and not
Speaker 1: just die. Listen to the plan, stay hydrated, press the
Speaker 1: right button, deal with g force. And also this isn't
Speaker 1: even factoring in weather, right, so sometimes it's your interrrential downpour.
Speaker 1: Trying to just see physically where you're at. Sounds fun,
Speaker 1: as if there wasn't enough complexity to this. The other
Speaker 1: thing to note on kind of a larger competitive scale
Speaker 1: is that the stakes for these right now men, uh,
Speaker 1: it isn't just life or death and winning. It's also
Speaker 1: that in Formula one there's this old saying that you're
Speaker 1: only as good as your last race. If you're really underperforming,
Speaker 1: you know they will pull you out. The stakes are
Speaker 1: fucking high. That's awesome. Yeah, yeah, it's cool. All right?
Speaker 1: So who are these men? Who are these drivers? Rich kids?
Speaker 1: How do you become a driver? Is there a is
Speaker 1: there a qualifying tournament? In tennis? I can sign up
Speaker 1: for qualifying and work my way up the ladder. Can
Speaker 1: I do that in Formula one? Somebody these guys start
Speaker 1: racing as kids. You've got guys in here who started
Speaker 1: racing it three years old. In in karting, you will
Speaker 1: his stories from the Australian Daniel Acada about what it
Speaker 1: means to leave your family at the age of fourteen
Speaker 1: fifteen and to dedicate your whole life into that. That's
Speaker 1: Tony Cowen Brown again. I think for me to eyes
Speaker 1: one of the reasons why you get these drivers who
Speaker 1: are solely dedicated on one spot on one spot alone,
Speaker 1: because they've had to leave a lot behind and give
Speaker 1: up a lot to do the thing that they love. So,
Speaker 1: if you're an elementary school kid who's trying to to
Speaker 1: have like a serious carding career, that can cost upwards
Speaker 1: I know it sounds very funny to say, uh, that
Speaker 1: can cost upwards of a hundred thousand dollars a year.
Speaker 1: You need some sort of lifeline too. I don't get
Speaker 1: the sense that Formula one gives too many ships about
Speaker 1: like the helping the underprivileged kids learning about Formula one.
Speaker 1: They do not, and there is a push from certain
Speaker 1: drivers to be better. There's a lot of very vague
Speaker 1: sort of um girl bossy like you know, like wait, wait,
Speaker 1: everyone should know that, you know, they can do whatever
Speaker 1: they want. If you want to be a driver, you
Speaker 1: can do it. And you're like, I'm sorry, with what
Speaker 1: checker you're gonna help me? Do that. There's a lot
Speaker 1: of that kind of speak, especially in the current day
Speaker 1: h F one's trying to pretend that they really care
Speaker 1: about things other than money. But on the other flip
Speaker 1: side of this, money is a huge part of it.
Speaker 1: But there are still, thanks to regulations, there's still a
Speaker 1: lot of other barriers to keep bad drivers or kind
Speaker 1: of hobby ritchie riches out of the sport. The f
Speaker 1: i A has like certain criteria that you need to
Speaker 1: hit to become a Formula one driver. One of that
Speaker 1: is getting a super license. I know it's not a
Speaker 1: very original name super license, but me it means that
Speaker 1: you've you've participated in a certain number of junior racing categories,
Speaker 1: uh and you've earned a certain number if I believe
Speaker 1: the now requisite number of points is forty quote unquote
Speaker 1: you know, super license points, and you need to do
Speaker 1: that within three years. Obviously need your road license, and
Speaker 1: now you need to be eighteen or above. And fun fact,
Speaker 1: the fact that Max for Stappen got into F one
Speaker 1: as early as he did wouldn't have been possible if
Speaker 1: he was trying today because he would have had to
Speaker 1: be a minimum age of eighteen. So we'll get it
Speaker 1: all into Max Verstappen, the current world champion, who is
Speaker 1: incredibly controversial. When we talk about red bull racing in
Speaker 1: a few episodes. Um, this may be a dumb question,
Speaker 1: but when you say red bull racing, you're referring to
Speaker 1: a team, right, correct? What is the Formula one team?
Speaker 1: What does that even mean? That is an excellent question.
Speaker 1: We will get into all of the teams after their
Speaker 1: short break. So okay, So at its core, F one
Speaker 1: is kind of team based in this interesting way. When
Speaker 1: you think of football, you've got I don't even know
Speaker 1: what is it over fifty players on a team. It's
Speaker 1: a lot, right. This is the cool thing about Formula one.
Speaker 1: There are essentially twenty drivers, ten teams, ten team principles.
Speaker 1: There's a couple of reserve drivers here and there, but
Speaker 1: essentially does not that many people that you need to
Speaker 1: start to get to know, which is really cool. That's
Speaker 1: clear and simple. I like, very easy barrier to entry,
Speaker 1: you know. So if someone ever tries to be like, oh,
Speaker 1: you can't be a real fan unless you name all
Speaker 1: the drivers, I'm like, bitch, I can do that because
Speaker 1: it's really not that hard. So within Formula one, this
Speaker 1: is funky there's actually two simultaneous championships going on. Why
Speaker 1: not add to the complexity exactly as if there wasn't
Speaker 1: enough going on between, like the drivers frying in their
Speaker 1: cars and like the engineering and the crashes and the explosions.
Speaker 1: We have two different championships. You remember one thing, remember
Speaker 1: the Informula One that was both the driver Championship and
Speaker 1: there was the Team Constructor Championship. So the Constructors Championship
Speaker 1: is interesting because F one dolls out prize money depending
Speaker 1: on where you place, so it actually really matters that
Speaker 1: you end up in fifth place over sixth place. You
Speaker 1: know that you're looking at hundreds of millions of dollars
Speaker 1: based on just finishing a couple of places up. You know,
Speaker 1: you beat a team by one point. By the end
Speaker 1: of the season, you're looking at a much bigger windfall
Speaker 1: than you would have been otherwise. They dole out the
Speaker 1: money at the end of the season. Yeah. Yeah, So
Speaker 1: like last year Mercedes, which won the Constructors Championship, Uh,
Speaker 1: they walked away with sixty three million in prize money
Speaker 1: just for getting that placement in the season. Williams got eighth,
Speaker 1: they ended up with thirteen million. It's almost like like
Speaker 1: a reverse draft. Like you know, if you do terribly,
Speaker 1: you don't get first pick, and you're still in fact
Speaker 1: end up the loser at the bottom. Here, there's two ways,
Speaker 1: in my opinion, like bucketing the teams. If you will,
Speaker 1: you could divide the twenty cars and the twenty drivers
Speaker 1: into roughly three categories. You've got the best of the
Speaker 1: best that are fighting for the championship. That's generally the
Speaker 1: top three to top four right now. Those are you know,
Speaker 1: the likes of Mercedes, render Bull, Ferrari McLaren. Then you've
Speaker 1: got what we call the best of the rest, and
Speaker 1: then you have the rest of the rest um and
Speaker 1: the best of the rest and the rest is essentially
Speaker 1: what we call the midfield in Formula one. This is
Speaker 1: where essentially the fun happens. Anything can happen in the midfield.
Speaker 1: In American culture, in general politics, whatever we love, we
Speaker 1: love a first past the post moment. Right we watched
Speaker 1: wonder who got there first, who won the thing, etcetera.
Speaker 1: N F one. Uh, you have a lot of people
Speaker 1: who for teams that are not the championship winning team.
Speaker 1: You're you get excited when like I just want my
Speaker 1: favorite team if they score just two points at this race,
Speaker 1: they will go from being ten out of ten to
Speaker 1: eighth out of ten. You know, like can they just
Speaker 1: like you know, get it? Um? I will say too,
Speaker 1: because I'm sure you're wondering what are point? How many points?
Speaker 1: So you get points and it's a descending amount for
Speaker 1: first through tenth place, so if you get eleven through twenty,
Speaker 1: you get nada. And what's more important the team championship
Speaker 1: or the individual driver? I mean, if you are an
Speaker 1: individual driver, you're just trying to win always. Right. Here's
Speaker 1: actually where a lot of the drama and if one
Speaker 1: comes in. So obviously we all think to ourselves, well,
Speaker 1: they're competing against other teams, they're all fighting against each other.
Speaker 1: But the thing to think about is, as we've talked about,
Speaker 1: all of these cars are radically different from one another.
Speaker 1: So if there's two drivers on a team, if you're
Speaker 1: a driver, there's only one other person on the grid
Speaker 1: who's going to have the same car to you, and
Speaker 1: that is your teammate. And so your biggest competitor on
Speaker 1: the grid is going to be your teammate. Yeah, because
Speaker 1: you that's really who's the best driver. You're both driving
Speaker 1: the same car. Exactly, and so there's a lot of
Speaker 1: drama around. You know, there's almost there's drama around if
Speaker 1: one teammate is completely clabboring the other teammate and points.
Speaker 1: There's also a ton of drama if you have really
Speaker 1: evenly matched drivers who are just trying to eke out
Speaker 1: that extra point over their teammate. You know, there's been
Speaker 1: times where teammates have crashed into each other, multiple endless
Speaker 1: occasions of this. You know. You also, though, have times
Speaker 1: where a team will prefer one driver over the other,
Speaker 1: and especially if they're you know, they're, hey, this person
Speaker 1: is doing much better than the championship, especially if they're
Speaker 1: contending for the driver's title, So they'll kind of ask
Speaker 1: one driver to to almost like sacrifice their race or
Speaker 1: their placement to help the other driver. And obviously these
Speaker 1: are big, ego driven guys, they are not happy about that.
Speaker 1: So that that also the whole team competition almost seems
Speaker 1: to funk with the essence of being number one. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, everyone's competitive. These drivers don't get to this
Speaker 1: position if they're not some of the most hyper competitive,
Speaker 1: intense people we've ever met. And now they're now you're
Speaker 1: adding another competition within the competition, which is even more
Speaker 1: it's like a family sibling dynamic. Two vcieties come together.
Speaker 1: That's Hamilton trying to pass on the inside and he
Speaker 1: can cover his hands over his eyes. Hamilton's takes out
Speaker 1: his teammates and there will be a big, big inquiry
Speaker 1: behind closed doors into that if that all was insaney enough.
Speaker 1: You have times where the team will kind of give
Speaker 1: what what are what are called quote unquoteam orders. What
Speaker 1: will kind of say, you know, hey, move, moved to
Speaker 1: the side. You know so and so is passing, Okay,
Speaker 1: let let Nico pass the slack Please let Nico passed
Speaker 1: on the main stop in the stry and they won't listen.
Speaker 1: You don't even get to be that successful if you
Speaker 1: always accept all orders exactly exactly. You want your driver
Speaker 1: to be a little bit like that. Yeah, if both
Speaker 1: people crash out, you get no points. And so can
Speaker 1: you imagine if let's say your drivers were one and
Speaker 1: two and the guy in second place just couldn't couldn't
Speaker 1: help himself and crashes into number one, you're out, like
Speaker 1: you just you just lost, you know, a huge haul
Speaker 1: of points for no reason other than ego, what the
Speaker 1: fund did I say, what did I a fuck me?
Speaker 1: It's unnecessary? Is he? Okay, Michael, how are you feeling
Speaker 1: having just become an expert in F one in the
Speaker 1: span of thirty minutes. There's a lot. It sounds really cool.
Speaker 1: I'm excited to watch. I think I have even more
Speaker 1: respect for the driver, right, even though so much of
Speaker 1: this is science and innovation and tech. When you went
Speaker 1: through the list of what they have to deal with
Speaker 1: while not dying, while trying to win, while going two
Speaker 1: hundred miles an hour, it's fascinating. I also can understand
Speaker 1: why it doesn't have like necessarily a mass appeal. The sport.
Speaker 1: It seems so wealthy and the but the money, the
Speaker 1: money that needs to go into this is so high.
Speaker 1: But in a in a beautiful way. It's like fun
Speaker 1: that they're just so rich and like this is what
Speaker 1: it is, and uh, you know we're not. There's no
Speaker 1: pick up Formula one races at the playground, you know
Speaker 1: what I mean? Yeah, I was gonna say, you really
Speaker 1: don't get like ether rich vibes from F one annything.
Speaker 1: They're like hug the rich. Definitely don't get ether rich
Speaker 1: in our world today where everyone's so carefully crafting their
Speaker 1: image and brand, which I'm sure Formula one is as well.
Speaker 1: It's kind of fun to have someone there's some world
Speaker 1: just lean into. Look, we're rich as fun and we're
Speaker 1: trying to race as fast as we can. Like this
Speaker 1: sport is entirely unnecessary, but like we're doing it anyway,
Speaker 1: and we're richer than you, by the way, Like it's
Speaker 1: it's fine. Yeah. So we've talked very generally about the
Speaker 1: endless numbers of rules and regulations within Formula one and
Speaker 1: how it works, but I'm really excited to actually dive
Speaker 1: into you know, the teams, the drivers, the rivalries, the scandals,
Speaker 1: the thirst traps. There's lots of thirst traps so so
Speaker 1: state tuned, but daddy issues galore. So basically, how this
Speaker 1: will work is will dedicate roughly an episode sometimes two
Speaker 1: to each team and it's drivers, so you can get
Speaker 1: a sense of how the team operates, how it came
Speaker 1: through the ranks, and what those drivers are like now.
Speaker 1: So hopefully by the end you'll be able to figure out,
Speaker 1: you know, which team you want to support going forward
Speaker 1: and which driver you really like the most. I'm open.
Speaker 1: Let's put it this way. There's a lot of motion
Speaker 1: and movement trying to get me and others into formula one.
Speaker 1: I am willing to be convinced. I'm willing to to
Speaker 1: become a fan of the sport. But if I don't,
Speaker 1: just give that away. Yeah okay, yeah, okay, okay, yeah,
Speaker 1: no pressure on me. Just gotta get you. Whenever I'm
Speaker 1: listening into a bunch of yeah, like angry men on
Speaker 1: a racetrack, It's great. This has been Choosing Sides F one,
Speaker 1: a production of Sports Illustrated Studios and I Heart Radio.
Speaker 1: Check in next week to learn all about the Mercedes team.
Speaker 1: The show was hosted by Michael Costa and Lily Herman.
Speaker 1: This episode was produced by Lily Herman and our senior produce,
Speaker 1: Sir Johai Mittal, who also did the sound design at
Speaker 1: the cutting room. Studios were recorded by engineer Robot Leary,
Speaker 1: mastering by Cello Ice Blue. Max Miller is the executive
Speaker 1: producer and Brennan get Just his head of audio at
Speaker 1: s I Studios. At I Heart Radio, Sean Titone is
Speaker 1: our executive producer. For more podcasts from my Heart Radio,
Speaker 1: visit the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever
Speaker 1: you get your podcasts and don't forget to rate us
Speaker 1: and tell your friends. It'll mean a lot