Speaker 1: Michael, Tony, Chris Brother outside today. You know what I
Speaker 1: miss about New York and big cities, of being able
Speaker 1: to walk from one place to the other and feel
Speaker 1: the weather forecast.
Speaker 2: You always do this, what the Brits always do this?
Speaker 2: Every British person always has to somehow talk about the weather.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's what we do.
Speaker 2: I noticed even the F one commentators, many of them
Speaker 2: are from the UK, and even during a broadcast, during
Speaker 2: an actual race, they'll divert to talking about the weather.
Speaker 2: There's a race happening right now. Talk about the race.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but you know the way the clouds move and
Speaker 1: the sun peaks through, and you know impending doom of rain.
Speaker 1: How can you not be fascinated by it?
Speaker 2: From My Heart Podcast one on one Studios and Sports
Speaker 2: Illustrated Studios, this is choosing sides, Yes one, Wow, Tony,
Speaker 2: will you tell me the truth for fucking once in
Speaker 2: this thing? Okay, this episode has nothing to do with
Speaker 2: F one. It's just a British thing, isn't it. Regardless
Speaker 2: of the subject matter. You always will sneak in the weather.
Speaker 1: Well, that is true. We will always find an excuse
Speaker 1: to sneak in the weather. You will hopefully find off
Speaker 1: to this episode that the weather has absolutely everything to
Speaker 1: do with Formula One.
Speaker 2: Actually, how so it has.
Speaker 3: It has a pretty massive effect. Actually so, I'm Bernie Collins.
Speaker 3: I am an ex head of race strategy for the
Speaker 3: Aston Martin Formula one team. Before that, I was a
Speaker 3: performance engineer with Jensen Button in twenty fourteen, so I've
Speaker 3: been trackside in F one for around eight and a
Speaker 3: half years.
Speaker 4: I always been a fan of Whether my whole life,
Speaker 4: so I'm just ecstatic to be on here.
Speaker 1: This is Elizabeth Olmacha. She is a meteorologist specializing in
Speaker 1: race and motor racing predictions, cool and in her free time. Michael,
Speaker 1: she actually chases storms storm chaser. It has bed time.
Speaker 4: I would say it would be more like a freelance
Speaker 4: storm chaser. I do it on my free time, but
Speaker 4: I highly don't recommend people doing it if they don't
Speaker 4: understand what they're getting themselves into, because it can be
Speaker 4: a very dangerous situation.
Speaker 1: Just like driving a Formula one car. Leave it to
Speaker 1: the experts. This is doctor Aaron Studwell.
Speaker 5: President founder of race Weather.
Speaker 1: A meteorologist specializing in motor sports, and a huge petrol
Speaker 1: head himself.
Speaker 5: Love the sport, love the racing, love racing in general,
Speaker 5: and happy to provide a service to fans, teams media.
Speaker 6: Are you also a storm chaser like Elizabeth?
Speaker 5: When I lived in Oklahoma?
Speaker 2: I did.
Speaker 5: I've seen tornadoes in person, but yeah, I live on
Speaker 5: the East coast of the US now, so it's not real.
Speaker 5: If I'm here, I'm generally tropical storm chasing or hurricane chasing.
Speaker 6: I didn't realize there were like different categories of storm chasers.
Speaker 1: If there is one thing that fans love and hopeful
Speaker 1: and drivers are terrified of is the unpredictable last minute
Speaker 1: weather change. The effects of the weather on a circuit,
Speaker 1: on the driver, on their performance, on the performance of
Speaker 1: the car cannot be understated. It basically changes the whole game.
Speaker 3: You're asking a driver to drive as close to the limit,
Speaker 3: and we talk about the limit being the limit of grip.
Speaker 3: So if you think of taking a corner really slowly,
Speaker 3: that's easy. Anyone can do that. And then if you
Speaker 3: go up in like ten kilometers an hour, you know
Speaker 3: every time you do the corner, there will be a
Speaker 3: point where the car no longer makes the corner. The
Speaker 3: drivers are working out where that point is, Like how
Speaker 3: fast can you go around that corner before the car
Speaker 3: starts to slide? And if you get a gust of
Speaker 3: wind one lap to the next, the car will be
Speaker 3: theoretically able to do that corner at a slightly different speed.
Speaker 3: If the temperature is a bit different, then the tires
Speaker 3: will have a slightly different level of grip. So what
Speaker 3: you're asking the driver do is predict that maximum limit
Speaker 3: lap one lap, one lap. And I heard a really
Speaker 3: interesting thing recent from Alonzo who said that every lap
Speaker 3: of the reis the track is improven, and every lap
Speaker 3: of the riis the car is getting lighter. So every
Speaker 3: lap of the rest, the grip in that corner is
Speaker 3: different than the weather plays a part in that. So
Speaker 3: if you get a driver, you know, and that's where
Speaker 3: we see drivers having a little off because there's been
Speaker 3: a gust or whatever the case may be. And that's
Speaker 3: why we hear so much of the READLYO where the
Speaker 3: teams are telling them the winds picked up, or we
Speaker 3: hear the driver asking the question because they can feel
Speaker 3: the effect on the car and we're trying to keep
Speaker 3: them ahead of the gear.
Speaker 2: If we can any examples of.
Speaker 1: That, Yeah, there's a very well known historical example of this,
Speaker 1: which is the story of Nikki Lauda's accident. The late
Speaker 1: Nikki Lauder's accident during the nineteen seventy six German compree.
Speaker 7: All the top drivers are here at Novo Gring for
Speaker 7: the European Grand Prix.
Speaker 2: The Nuva rings what my girlfriend used to wear in
Speaker 2: college so she wouldn't get pregnant.
Speaker 6: I'm sorry, what what to quote?
Speaker 7: Tony moving swiftly on the most dangerous of Grand Prix courses,
Speaker 7: notorious among drivers.
Speaker 6: It's a giant, giant circuit and Niki Lauda, one of
Speaker 6: the greats. Before the race, he basically raised the flag
Speaker 6: and he said, listen, I'm looking at this circuit and
Speaker 6: safety measures are not in place. There's a crash on
Speaker 6: the other side of the ring. It's gonna take you
Speaker 6: too much time to get to those people like, this
Speaker 6: is just not safe. And people people basically like laughed
Speaker 6: him off, and the other drivers, yeah, we're like, uh,
Speaker 6: we're good to race. Stop stopp being a scaredy cat.
Speaker 6: There's even a vote among the drivers, and the drivers
Speaker 6: voted him down. They voted to keep going in the race.
Speaker 2: I know where this is going.
Speaker 6: Then race day comes and it's raining.
Speaker 2: Right. Do they ever stop for any type of weather? Yeah,
Speaker 2: they do.
Speaker 4: If it's too heavy in the downpour, then it will
Speaker 4: affect their visibility, and that's usually when they away.
Speaker 6: Even I think now they're like a little bit too
Speaker 6: safe about it sometimes.
Speaker 1: Yeah, some would argue, why do we have rain tires
Speaker 1: and wet tires if we don't go racing when.
Speaker 6: It's wet, right, They hardly, They hardly use the wet
Speaker 6: tires because usually when it's when it's raining hard enough
Speaker 6: to them use wet tires, they they don't let the
Speaker 6: drivers race.
Speaker 8: Which I will argue that I think now that we've
Speaker 8: got the helmet coms and the driver's view, we might
Speaker 8: understand what the drivers see and absolutely don't see, and
Speaker 8: we might have more empathy of like, oh, yeah, you
Speaker 8: actually can't go racing.
Speaker 5: We see videos from the seventies and eighties and these
Speaker 5: rooster tails and they're still out there racing in this
Speaker 5: torrential rain. But we've lost so many drivers in these
Speaker 5: kind of incidents. Were bad accidents that really just didn't
Speaker 5: need to happen. So I think now there's an abundance
Speaker 5: of caution where we're going to say and that's not
Speaker 5: a negative or we're gonna say if you can't see
Speaker 5: the car ahead of you, even when they're the red
Speaker 5: the red light's blinking and they're regenerating the energy that
Speaker 5: you know, it's not good for the driver, it's not
Speaker 5: good for the sport.
Speaker 6: So the terrible irony here, of course, is that on
Speaker 6: race that Nicko Lauda didn't want.
Speaker 2: A tempted to arrange a boycott of the race.
Speaker 7: Exactly right, Niki Lauder lost control of his Ferrari on
Speaker 7: a one hundred and fifty mile an hour curve.
Speaker 6: He crashed horribly and was chopped in a burning car.
Speaker 7: The race was restarted, but for Louder it was a
Speaker 7: race for life. Almost died while his fellow drivers jockeyed
Speaker 7: for position. He was being rushed to an intensive care
Speaker 7: unit with severe burns, fractures and lung damage. Surgeons pronounced
Speaker 7: he was near to death and last rites were administered.
Speaker 6: Six weeks later, with bandages all over his body.
Speaker 7: Crowds of sightseers and hosts of newsmen gathered at the
Speaker 7: Ferrari factory in Marnllo, Italy to welcome Nicki Lauder back
Speaker 7: from the dead.
Speaker 6: He's back in a racing car.
Speaker 2: What the fuck?
Speaker 7: Just forty days after doctors had given up hope and
Speaker 7: a priest had knelted his bedside, the Austrian Ace climbed
Speaker 7: back into the cockpit of his glaring red Ferrari.
Speaker 2: I'm looking at images of the accident right here. And
Speaker 2: it's tricky because he might have put in his head
Speaker 2: that this was a dangerous place to ride. But also
Speaker 2: that could have nothing to do with this is a
Speaker 2: professional race car driver who's very good. That's too bad.
Speaker 6: It does also bring us back a little bit too
Speaker 6: manifesting destiny.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and I don't want to buy into that, because
Speaker 2: therefore you would never speak up out of a safety
Speaker 2: concern because you'd be afraid.
Speaker 1: And it's yeah, oh, it was just like he knew
Speaker 1: what he was talking about.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, or it's just absolutely I like that. That's
Speaker 2: very pragmatic. And I like that that he said, this
Speaker 2: is a big circuit. People go fast here, You're not
Speaker 2: gonnably to help me out.
Speaker 1: There's a sentence that you might hear, which is rain
Speaker 1: is the great equalizer Formula one. It shows the priss
Speaker 1: of a lot of these drivers.
Speaker 5: They're going to call it a great equalizer, but I
Speaker 5: think some are more equal than others. There are drivers
Speaker 5: who are better in the rain than others. I'm not
Speaker 5: going to specifically name drivers, but I know there are
Speaker 5: drivers who kind of dread driving in the rain, and
Speaker 5: they're drivers who grew up driving in the rain.
Speaker 1: Drivers who grew up and were born in countries like Belgium,
Speaker 1: Austria and the UK where it rains a lot definitely
Speaker 1: have an advantage. Some of the best in the rain
Speaker 1: are the likes of Maxwistappan UIs, Hamilton, Lando Norris. What
Speaker 1: do they all have in common? They all lived for
Speaker 1: a long time, so there's pictures and videos of them
Speaker 1: in go karts in the absolute right like aqua planning
Speaker 1: to your heart's content. And I think we see this
Speaker 1: on road cars as well. You can see when people
Speaker 1: are used to driving in the rain. California rains for
Speaker 1: a minute and it's a standstill in the city.
Speaker 2: People know how to drive, Yeah, no idea. Go down
Speaker 2: to the south and there's a little bit of a
Speaker 2: frost and everyone's cars crashing all over the place.
Speaker 9: Yeah.
Speaker 1: And the absolute king of this skill is the legendary
Speaker 1: Late Art and Center, also known as the rainmaster.
Speaker 2: Cool, absolutely marvelous. Vella went round the outside of Louder
Speaker 2: into the rough.
Speaker 10: Ga and that was brave and skillful.
Speaker 6: Just just to put that into numbers for you, because
Speaker 6: that name is actually backed by by statistics. His overall
Speaker 6: win rate in Formula one at Donsenna is twenty five
Speaker 6: point three percent. That means he won about a quarter
Speaker 6: of the races he started. But of those races, the
Speaker 6: ones that were in the rain, he won more than
Speaker 6: half of them fifty five percent.
Speaker 2: Wow. Okay.
Speaker 3: Wet conditions are often used as an example of when
Speaker 3: actually the car is less important than the driver. So
Speaker 3: actually the driver coming can make quite a big difference
Speaker 3: because of his ability, let's say, to work in this
Speaker 3: very changeable condition. But there are still some teams that
Speaker 3: are better at management of those situations. So people always
Speaker 3: think there's more risk and reward in those situations as well.
Speaker 3: So some people really delight in the chaos of it all.
Speaker 3: I always thought it was a bit panicked. So I
Speaker 3: wasn't that sure that Reian was good for.
Speaker 6: Us, because you were you were the one in the
Speaker 6: chaos having to make the decisions. Yeah, exactly, give you
Speaker 6: some order.
Speaker 3: It's like, oh, Yeah, exactly, it's it's you know, but
Speaker 3: for a for a lower team, a team lower down
Speaker 3: the order, it is more likely to bring this avharc
Speaker 3: result that doesn't otherwise happen. So that's why I think
Speaker 3: it's a bit more of an equalizer.
Speaker 2: So tell me about driving in the rain, what is okay?
Speaker 2: How is that different?
Speaker 1: Hey, it's going to affect the grip of the car
Speaker 1: and how it goes round the track. To complicate things,
Speaker 1: these f one circuits and tracks, as we've spoken about,
Speaker 1: are massive, which means that there are massive areas where
Speaker 1: puddles of water can start compiling together, which means you
Speaker 1: can start ending up with aqua planning as well. It
Speaker 1: also means that certain aspects of the track are going
Speaker 1: to drive faster or slower. So when they start switching
Speaker 1: out to the tires, you will hear them saying I
Speaker 1: can see the sun on the second part of the track,
Speaker 1: but it's still raining on the first part of the
Speaker 1: track where you use the wet tires the dry tires.
Speaker 1: That adds a layer of strategy, but also just complicated
Speaker 1: to drive on the right tires, wrong tires, right track.
Speaker 5: Even just where you have more peaks and valleys, not
Speaker 5: a flat track, but say more in Europe where you're
Speaker 5: going up a hill and you may have worked us
Speaker 5: your winds at the top of the hill. It can
Speaker 5: be across wind, it could be provide more downforce, it
Speaker 5: could be a tailwind. Going down the street. You're gonna
Speaker 5: the driver's gonna need to know that, both from a
Speaker 5: handling condition, in from a speed condition.
Speaker 1: And it also just affects visibility. Again when you think
Speaker 1: about it, they're lying down in these cars. They're very
Speaker 1: close to the ground. If you are in front, you
Speaker 1: are in a great position. If you are in the back,
Speaker 1: you're getting everyone's rain and water and backspash in your face. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: whitch go.
Speaker 6: This is the start of the nineteen ninety eight Belgian GP.
Speaker 5: Oh, this is kind of pulling.
Speaker 10: This is the worst start for aprol rate.
Speaker 5: But I have ever seen in the whole of my life.
Speaker 2: I'm looking at this video and if you mean every
Speaker 2: place crashed, I mean, first of all, there's one car
Speaker 2: in the front who has good visibility, and then every
Speaker 2: other car is just toe you can't see anything.
Speaker 1: And we're laughing.
Speaker 2: I know, it's not funny.
Speaker 1: The danger on like, yeah, none of these cars have
Speaker 1: wheels left. It's just it's a wheel race.
Speaker 2: That's not funny. It's you know, in between my laughing,
Speaker 2: I want to say, it's not funny, it's very entertaining.
Speaker 2: I'm gonna look at the second one spree coming off
Speaker 2: the front axle. The any visibility you have is just canceled.
Speaker 2: This just doesn't look feasible. It doesn't look feasible, it
Speaker 2: doesn't look possible.
Speaker 1: This is where the gut instinct and driving right.
Speaker 2: I would encourage anybody who's listening right now to just
Speaker 2: go watch a helmet cam of any one of these
Speaker 2: F one drivers on a dry situation. It seems chaotic
Speaker 2: and unreasonable. And now in the rain, it's uh it certainly.
Speaker 2: I mean, are they going slower in the rain? Absolutely
Speaker 2: not me. When it rains in New York, I'm going faster.
Speaker 10: Today, on the exit ramp from the Queensboro Bridge, comedian
Speaker 10: Michael Costa, recklessly driving his Volvo station Wagon causes a
Speaker 10: multi car pile up. Thankfully no one was injured, but
Speaker 10: drivers stuck in the ensuing traffic We're not happy.
Speaker 9: Do I like it?
Speaker 5: No?
Speaker 6: It's a lack of respective rules.
Speaker 2: What are you gonna do?
Speaker 10: Is. I'm Danielle Waxman for Fake NYC News quick Break
Speaker 10: for ads and we'll be back before you can say aquaplaning.
Speaker 2: So when you're talking about whether you're really just talking
Speaker 2: about if it's raining or not wet or dry.
Speaker 4: A lot of people think it's just rain and that
Speaker 4: will affect the tracks, but it's not just rain.
Speaker 1: For most of us. Minimal changes in temperature and small
Speaker 1: shifts will mostly go unnoticed, like we don't know if
Speaker 1: it's dropping temperatures, But in Formula one, even these smaller
Speaker 1: increases or decreases, even if we're talking one or two
Speaker 1: degree changes, actually has a pretty big impact on how
Speaker 1: the different teams are going to approach a race or
Speaker 1: a different session. When we're talking weather forecasting, we're not
Speaker 1: talking what we see on the TV or even my
Speaker 1: little British chit chat about the weather. It's actually we're
Speaker 1: talking about all the different layers. So air temperature, track temperature,
Speaker 1: even sometimes like the driver's temperature, how are you doing
Speaker 1: inside of the cockpit? Are you okay?
Speaker 4: It can be twenty to thirty degrees hotter inside the
Speaker 4: cockpit than it is outside on a track. So if
Speaker 4: it's stay it's ninety degrees. It can be like one
Speaker 4: hundred and twenty inside and there is no air ventilation
Speaker 4: or like ac you know that you can just crank up.
Speaker 4: These drivers, they have to adapt to these different conditions.
Speaker 1: The temperature inside of Formula one car during an actual
Speaker 1: race will average to about one hundred and twenty two
Speaker 1: degrees fanheight.
Speaker 2: Wow, that's an average, and that's just inside the car.
Speaker 2: That's yeah, inside the car. Wow. Okay.
Speaker 5: For as much as weight as they lose any normal race,
Speaker 5: they'd probably lose even more if it's you know you
Speaker 5: talk about widely erase Jetta at night, Well, it's going
Speaker 5: to be ninety five degrees during the day. Jet is
Speaker 5: actually a humid environment because it's right next to the water.
Speaker 5: So that's going to be both of the crew and
Speaker 5: the driver. It's going to be just depleting and you're
Speaker 5: going to have We've seen races where drivers have just
Speaker 5: got got out of the car and just kind of
Speaker 5: flopped against the car, their helmet at their side, just
Speaker 5: drinking water or having water poured down their neck. They're
Speaker 5: so busy it's dark here, fading with.
Speaker 6: Flow blood pressure and just passing out in the car.
Speaker 1: So for example, during this year is Qatar Grand Prix.
Speaker 1: We had a combination of heat and humidity, which meant
Speaker 1: that it was absolutely unbearable for the drivers.
Speaker 9: Honestly, yeah, I fell ill by fifteen sixteen.
Speaker 1: One driver is the band Okon who said that he
Speaker 1: felt like he was vomiting in his helmet.
Speaker 9: You know, I was throwing up in the car. And
Speaker 9: I've managed to come down afterwards, tried to really focus
Speaker 9: on what I had to do, and I've managed to
Speaker 9: get down the control.
Speaker 1: But got so bad that many fans but also people
Speaker 1: within the industry and the ecosystem were saying, this is
Speaker 1: probably a bad time to be racing in such a rouson.
Speaker 2: Once again, Michael Karsta brings it back to tennis. I mean,
Speaker 2: humidity affects a tennis ball tremendously. I can only imagine
Speaker 2: a fire burning machine with four wheels on it.
Speaker 1: And fire burning machine in really incredible temperatures like we
Speaker 1: had this year. I think it was like the Katar GP.
Speaker 1: When we're talking about safety. The drivers were cracking open
Speaker 1: their helmet visors so they could get air coming in.
Speaker 9: That air that we get into the cockpit is just horrible,
Speaker 9: you know, it's like I don't know a fire, you know,
Speaker 9: going through the through the helmet.
Speaker 1: One of the drivers describe cracking open their helmets so
Speaker 1: they could get air. By the way, really dangerous. The
Speaker 1: last thing you want to do with a helmet is
Speaker 1: crack it open, because that's where something can go fly
Speaker 1: right into your eye. But that was my only solution
Speaker 1: to try and call down, which, by the way, it
Speaker 1: did bring up a whole conversation which if we go
Speaker 1: back to the logistics of Formula one, it did bring
Speaker 1: back a conversation about the racing calendar and why are
Speaker 1: we racing in Qatar at the time of the year
Speaker 1: where it's actually really hot, which goes back to actually
Speaker 1: the logistics of pulling off that F one race calendar
Speaker 1: is really really really tricky.
Speaker 9: Yeah, let's let's come back here in this humber, please
Speaker 9: not October. Yeah, that was definitely a tough one.
Speaker 2: Air temperature. How does that affect a car? My Volvo
Speaker 2: runs like a tank no matter what temperature is.
Speaker 11: Well, the cold is kind of the enemy of Formula
Speaker 11: one cars because frankly, they don't often run in the cold.
Speaker 1: This is Scott Mansel, and he's not only an X
Speaker 1: racing driver, but he's also the founder of an immensely
Speaker 1: popular Formula one YouTube channel called driver sixty one.
Speaker 11: Most of the temperatures across the year and the season
Speaker 11: are within a kind of fairly warm range, right, and
Speaker 11: so the engineers and the teams are just designing the
Speaker 11: cars to run in these temperatures. Of course, if they
Speaker 11: wanted to, they wouldn't be as quick, but they could
Speaker 11: get them to run at colder temperatures, but they're just
Speaker 11: not typically designed to do that. So they have issues
Speaker 11: with the engine temperatures, with blanking the radiator ducts off
Speaker 11: so you don't have as much cold air rushing through
Speaker 11: over the engine and through the radiators. But as you
Speaker 11: say that, the main problem is the tires, and it's
Speaker 11: as simple as the rubber just doesn't get warm enough
Speaker 11: to then have that chemical reaction that bite into the
Speaker 11: racing circuit, and so you just have less grip overall.
Speaker 11: And typically when you have less grip, it's just more
Speaker 11: difficult to drive, Like you know, if it was if
Speaker 11: it rained and there were wet conditions on track, it's
Speaker 11: more difficult for the drivers, and so that means you
Speaker 11: have to be more careful on the brakes. The breaking
Speaker 11: distances will be longer, the risk of locking a tire
Speaker 11: rup will be will be higher, the cornering spears will
Speaker 11: be lower, and you'll have to be more gentle and
Speaker 11: more sensitive on the accelerator. But where it's really difficult,
Speaker 11: and I think we saw this with Lando in Vegas,
Speaker 11: is in the quicker corners, because when you're in like
Speaker 11: a slower corner, the tire is gonna scrub across the
Speaker 11: Circuit's gonna slide across the circuit in a fairly predictable way.
Speaker 11: This is what you're looking for as a driver. You
Speaker 11: want predictability. You want to be able to not be
Speaker 11: reacting to the car, but predicting what about to happen.
Speaker 1: So one of the paradoxes of Formula one cars is
Speaker 1: they're both some parts of the car built to resist
Speaker 1: just about anything and the other part if you're just
Speaker 1: like bang it a little bit it or falls apart,
Speaker 1: don't sneeze in it. And so the air temperature is
Speaker 1: going to affect the performance of a Formula one engine,
Speaker 1: for example, on tracks like the hotter Middle Eastern circuits.
Speaker 1: This is actually a pretty big issue. In addition to
Speaker 1: managing your tires, for example, the driver also needs to
Speaker 1: manage the engine temperature because the last thing you want
Speaker 1: is an engine that's overheated.
Speaker 3: Engine failure.
Speaker 2: Okay, engine radia.
Speaker 1: So that was air temperature. Then let's talk a bit
Speaker 1: about track temperature, because this is also where it gets
Speaker 1: really interesting. So track temp can have a huge effect,
Speaker 1: and mostly on the tires because obviously it's the tires
Speaker 1: that are hitting the track. And so, as we discussed
Speaker 1: in that tire episode, these Formula one tires are extremely picky,
Speaker 1: meaning that they have a very very narrow window of
Speaker 1: what is called the optimum performance of these tires.
Speaker 5: It's almost like a Goldilocks saying, if it's too hot,
Speaker 5: it's not great. If it's too cold, it's not great.
Speaker 5: You get right in there eighteen to twenty three celsius.
Speaker 5: Say you know sixty five to seventy five seventy seven
Speaker 5: fahrenheit range, you're gonna have great tire performance because if
Speaker 5: it's too cold, I always grip. If it's too hot,
Speaker 5: I was grip to.
Speaker 11: Go back with cold tires on a race circuit, not
Speaker 11: too bad aside from the low grip in slow corners,
Speaker 11: but in the quick corners where the cars loaded up
Speaker 11: with quite a lot of air row it feels like
Speaker 11: there's a lot of grip, and when the car slides,
Speaker 11: when the tire just gives up and starts to slide
Speaker 11: across the surface of the track, it happens very quickly,
Speaker 11: and it's difficult for the drivers to predict that, and
Speaker 11: so you remove some of that predictability. So if you
Speaker 11: look at Lando from Vegas, the car looked all right
Speaker 11: and then all of a sudden it let go, And
Speaker 11: it doesn't matter how quick his reactions are, he's not
Speaker 11: going to you know, catch that in his head into
Speaker 11: the wall. A similar thing happened to me. I mean,
Speaker 11: I've driven thirty something f one cars over my career,
Speaker 11: and a lot of them actually have been in the UK.
Speaker 11: As you know, it's pretty cold over here, and we
Speaker 11: did some testing at a circuit called Donnington over here,
Speaker 11: probably in autumn or early winter one year, and it was,
Speaker 11: you know, it's five or six degrees, not too far
Speaker 11: from the temperatures that we saw in Vegas. And I
Speaker 11: experienced that and I went off as well. You know,
Speaker 11: I didn't crash, but I went off as well. And
Speaker 11: when it happens, it happens. Incredibly quickly.
Speaker 1: It just goes too cold there get slippery and they
Speaker 1: go all over the place. I know, grip on the
Speaker 1: tires too hot and the degradation of the tires greatly accelerated.
Speaker 1: It also means that the time might be sticking too
Speaker 1: much and they can't go as fast as they want to.
Speaker 5: And then there's something I've been around the sport for
Speaker 5: twenty twenty five years. They from people I've talked to
Speaker 5: both on the AI and the modeling and the track
Speaker 5: people side, they don't have a good model.
Speaker 3: The track temperature is actually pretty difficult to predect.
Speaker 1: So the track temperature also evolves over a race as
Speaker 1: the cars are heating that track up because the track
Speaker 1: is bare and then you're throwing twenty cars on it
Speaker 1: going really really fast, it's obviously going to effect the track.
Speaker 1: And not only that, As we said previously, the tracks
Speaker 1: are really wide, so the temperature of the track isn't
Speaker 1: the same at all. Elements are all parts of the track,
Speaker 1: so that's what's so a component. And if the track
Speaker 1: temperature changes considerably during a race, the drivers have several
Speaker 1: ways to actually deal with this. So one way is
Speaker 1: thinking about how hard they want to push their tires.
Speaker 1: They can alter their driving lines to suit the balance
Speaker 1: of the car. They can adjust the differentials that that's
Speaker 1: the amount of talk that transfers between the rear wheels
Speaker 1: or the brake balance to the front aurea of the car.
Speaker 1: So there's a bunch of things that they can play
Speaker 1: around with as Formula One drivers. In addition to the drivers,
Speaker 1: the mechanics can also play around with the different calling
Speaker 1: configurations across a race. They can adjust the car set
Speaker 1: up for different weather conditions. So all of that is
Speaker 1: thought about in advance, and all of that is kind
Speaker 1: of planned with all the different options available.
Speaker 5: Atmospheric pressure barometric pressure can definitely impact engine performance, same
Speaker 5: with humidity. Race performance can change your degrade based on
Speaker 5: in handling crosswinds, tailwinds.
Speaker 3: The wind has a massive effect. So when we think of,
Speaker 3: you know, our description of the car in the wind tunnel,
Speaker 3: the wind is common in the most ideal situation, like
Speaker 3: straight out of the car, and that is how the
Speaker 3: car is predominantly designed to work in terms of the
Speaker 3: loading on the car. Now, obviously a lot of that
Speaker 3: wind is generated by the car driving out two hundred
Speaker 3: kilometers an hour, that is you know, the headwind, but
Speaker 3: if the ambient condition goes against you, you've got the
Speaker 3: wind of the car and the wind of ambience. You've
Speaker 3: got like this additive effect. If you've got a tailwind,
Speaker 3: you've got a subtraction. You've got the head wind of
Speaker 3: the car minus the effect from the ambient wind. So
Speaker 3: that's obviously less wind to work the car. And that's
Speaker 3: why the wind is really important in terms of how
Speaker 3: the car is operating. And you know, a side wind,
Speaker 3: every you know, you can do the physics on it,
Speaker 3: but like every you know, angle is then taken or
Speaker 3: add into the perfect wind condition of the car.
Speaker 5: Yeah, rain or dry, do you make a difference. But
Speaker 5: even cloudy versus sunny with the same temperature and track temperatures.
Speaker 5: So it's more than just one component. It's really the
Speaker 5: full fledged what is the forecast from sun cover and
Speaker 5: we'll call that incoming solar radiation and get real kind
Speaker 5: of technical on that, to humidity, to bear measure pressure,
Speaker 5: to you know, temperature, track temperature.
Speaker 1: But there's a butt.
Speaker 2: There's always a butt.
Speaker 1: There's always about.
Speaker 2: There is always but to.
Speaker 1: Make things even more complicated, they are actually not allowed
Speaker 1: to adjust the car settings between the qualifying that happens
Speaker 1: on Saturday and the actual race.
Speaker 2: That happens so interesting.
Speaker 1: So if the forecasts shifts completely and drastically from the
Speaker 1: Saturday to the Sunday, you are kind of stuck with
Speaker 1: what you set up on the car on the Saturday
Speaker 1: for the Sunday race. Maybe one of the things to
Speaker 1: say about Formula one is it's always a game of compromise. Yeah,
Speaker 1: all of this to say, and we can ponder about
Speaker 1: the strategy behind this or that if we wanted to.
Speaker 1: Being able to predict the weather during a Grand Prix
Speaker 1: race is absolutely crucial to inform the strategy and inform
Speaker 1: the drive on how to drive. But the reality is
Speaker 1: it's really hard to predict because anything can happen.
Speaker 2: I mean, is it that hard to predict? Like I
Speaker 2: have an app on my phone that just tells me
Speaker 2: what's going to be tomorrow at four pm. I can't
Speaker 2: the team, principal whatever, just download it and then punch
Speaker 2: in boom. Problem solved.
Speaker 5: Well, I will believe me. I get enough screenshots of
Speaker 5: apps during the week that I know people download the raps.
Speaker 5: But when we start getting into finer tuned forecasts, if
Speaker 5: you're in a commercial business, like where an app's gonna
Speaker 5: come from. You're either taking direct model output and just
Speaker 5: plugging it in. Maybe you're averaging it together, which you
Speaker 5: average them together, you get a little better performance, but
Speaker 5: you don't know the rain timing. If if I could
Speaker 5: have average four of them together, models together, and then
Speaker 5: once said the rain is gonna start at five, one
Speaker 5: it's going to say it's gonna start at nine. One
Speaker 5: says it's gonna start at one, and then once the
Speaker 5: other one's gonna start at five pm, you average them
Speaker 5: all together, it's going to rain all day. And that's
Speaker 5: probably not the case. So when you have a meteorologist
Speaker 5: on site, like f one does, they're looking at all
Speaker 5: the models. They're probably running their own high resolution models
Speaker 5: on their own in house. I want to watch the
Speaker 5: radar come in. I know the geography in the area,
Speaker 5: say something like the Red Bull Red Bull Ring and
Speaker 5: where there are a lot of mountains in the area
Speaker 5: that you can have rain coming to the area, but
Speaker 5: the mountains break them up. Versus someplace like Austin, where
Speaker 5: it's just flat. You could stand and see thirty miles
Speaker 5: away that there's a storm over there. There's nothing to
Speaker 5: break it up. But you're still going to want to
Speaker 5: know the timing, how fast that storm's moving, Is it
Speaker 5: getting weaker, is it getting stronger.
Speaker 1: They want to know exactly what minute it's going to
Speaker 1: stop raining, what part of the track the rain is
Speaker 1: going to start, when it's going to stop, Is it
Speaker 1: going to get worse or better? So to that end,
Speaker 1: which is why I like this question or this pushback
Speaker 1: to that end. Formula one has its own traveling weather service.
Speaker 2: Of course they do.
Speaker 1: Rather than looking at the big picture, it focuses on
Speaker 1: the very very narrow patch of sky tracking storms, even
Speaker 1: individual clouds when they're approaching the circuit.
Speaker 2: You see what this is going to be boring cloud.
Speaker 1: See where it's going. It's separated from its group.
Speaker 3: The least reliable. It is protecting cloud cover, and the
Speaker 3: cover has a massive effect on track temperature.
Speaker 2: We do have more for you on this, but first
Speaker 2: we've got to take a short break and we'll come back.
Speaker 2: Mike check one.
Speaker 5: Two.
Speaker 2: Hey, we're back.
Speaker 5: I could have scattered clouds or shadows coming across the
Speaker 5: region across the track. Mons is probably the best example
Speaker 5: where you start see shadows come across in areas and
Speaker 5: now that track area is cooler by a couple of
Speaker 5: degrees than anywhere else on the track. So you not
Speaker 5: only have to mentally I think the drivers kind of
Speaker 5: mentally know that. But yeah, you're going from a cool
Speaker 5: to a hot to a cool. It could be up
Speaker 5: in the you're going up in the mountains a little bit.
Speaker 5: It's even at small elevation changes it can be marginally cooler.
Speaker 5: And I'm talking you know, we talk about you know,
Speaker 5: tens of a pounds of a psi here for tire pressure,
Speaker 5: but we're talking tensive degree of temperature on the elevation
Speaker 5: changes on high elevation change areas.
Speaker 1: To that effect, they go around their own weather radar,
Speaker 1: which they then assemble on site every single week. Back
Speaker 1: to that logistics episode that we have. Nothing is just brought.
Speaker 1: That's too easy.
Speaker 5: Yeah, on the race weekend, they'll probably send two meteorologists
Speaker 5: out want to kind of run and set up the radar.
Speaker 5: They have what's called a field mill as well, which
Speaker 5: will measure electrical charge in the air for a lighting potential.
Speaker 1: So we've got the tools and the equipment and the
Speaker 1: strategy around it. And here's the key thing. Each team
Speaker 1: has their own people assigned to this. They're assigned to
Speaker 1: track this specific data and make the strategic calls in
Speaker 1: real time. But would you be surprised that, despite all
Speaker 1: of this technology, how often the weatherman gets it wrong.
Speaker 2: It's one of the best jobs weather man. You can
Speaker 2: just be wrong all the time.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and no one will bat and I live. Oh
Speaker 1: it's difficult.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's like being a podcast host. Nobody really is
Speaker 2: listening to you in the first place. You're fuld and laundry.
Speaker 2: You're driving a truck where no one cares. No one cares.
Speaker 1: I'm sure you've heard this where they will say to
Speaker 1: the drive I think it's going to start raining, and
Speaker 1: the drivers to talking about it's already raining, raining, or
Speaker 1: you just say, hey, just stick your head out to
Speaker 1: the pitwall for a second and see if it's actually
Speaker 1: dry away outside. Especially when we go and race in
Speaker 1: tropical destinations think Singapore, Malaysia, where the weather changes like
Speaker 1: absolutely constantly.
Speaker 4: I would say that the tracks I like to look
Speaker 4: at are forecast for more the ones close to the coast,
Speaker 4: because the weather can just change so rapidly, so it's
Speaker 4: interesting to see what could happen, especially during hurricane season.
Speaker 1: They've just got to be ready for any circumstance possible
Speaker 1: and imaginement.
Speaker 7: And look at the rain pouring down and when it
Speaker 7: rains in Malaysia, believe me, it comes down not by
Speaker 7: the bucket fall, but by the ocean full.
Speaker 1: I know we've had a whole episode dedicated to the
Speaker 1: high tech of Formula one and how it's always forward
Speaker 1: thinking and pushing the boundaries. But once in a while
Speaker 1: they will deploy some very low tech methods to track
Speaker 1: the weather. One of them could be having scouts along
Speaker 1: the racetrack with talkies to just let them know when
Speaker 1: it's starting.
Speaker 2: To rae I wet it's happening.
Speaker 1: The other one is even funnier than this, which is
Speaker 1: just looking at the crowds and the fans and figuring
Speaker 1: out when they start putting up their umbrellas.
Speaker 2: That's a great one.
Speaker 1: Easy.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Another you know, not a source of data.
Speaker 2: Someone's hat just flew off their head. It must be wind.
Speaker 2: It's getting wind.
Speaker 6: Yeah, I'm wondering. You're you're in your personal life. Where
Speaker 6: where do you get your weather report? Do you just
Speaker 6: go to like the weather channel or a weather app,
Speaker 6: or do you like do you predict your own way?
Speaker 4: I personally like to use my radar. I find that
Speaker 4: one very more accurate than other weather app.
Speaker 6: Do a lot of your like friends and family, Like,
Speaker 6: do they.
Speaker 4: All hit you up for all the time? Yes, all
Speaker 4: the time? Sometimes though even like ask me, like about
Speaker 4: what's the weather going to be like in these months?
Speaker 4: And we can only we can barely see a week
Speaker 4: ahead of us. I'm like, I don't think it's going
Speaker 4: to be that accurate, but I would give it my
Speaker 4: best shot.
Speaker 6: Where where do you see the field of meteorology and
Speaker 6: race weather prediction going? I mean, will you eventually just
Speaker 6: just know what the weather is?
Speaker 4: Hopefully Knox and I'll be out of a job.
Speaker 5: What has been really interesting is the evolution of AI
Speaker 5: in forecast models, where they're going back and taking all
Speaker 5: the previous information and all the ground observations and upper
Speaker 5: ere observations, and we'll say, okay, when have we seen
Speaker 5: this pattern before, and we'll go through how that pattern evolve.
Speaker 6: So you don't like a world in which like the
Speaker 6: AIS and computers get so sophisticated that basically weather prediction
Speaker 6: is solved, Like, that's not a world you envision, not.
Speaker 5: In our lifetime. Now, Yeah, somebody I could write in say, hey,
Speaker 5: write me up some good interview questions from a meteorologists
Speaker 5: on racing. Well, but here you're using your insight and
Speaker 5: your ialition and you're able to adapt your ushians to
Speaker 5: my answers. So there's always going to be a need
Speaker 5: to have humans in the chain.
Speaker 6: Yeah, fair fair point there, and fair point you know
Speaker 6: for the.
Speaker 5: General person going to day to day if I want
Speaker 5: to know whether to grab an umbrella, that's fine for
Speaker 5: high resolution, high performance risks where that I've worked in
Speaker 5: with both racing and commodity trading, both high dollar spends.
Speaker 5: You want that accuracy, you want the human insight. As
Speaker 5: a human, I'm a little biased.
Speaker 6: But no, you know, I find that comforting less in
Speaker 6: the sense of like being you know about your job,
Speaker 6: that your your job security. Sorry, I mean I'm glad
Speaker 6: for that as well, but more in the sense of
Speaker 6: there's something a little like, I don't know if I
Speaker 6: want to live in a world where the weather is predictable,
Speaker 6: is you know, it's sort of like like that's it's
Speaker 6: weird to imagine.
Speaker 5: That is a very holistic. It's a very holistic view
Speaker 5: of it. There's this broader view that takes in not
Speaker 5: only the human element, engineering, pure science and melts them
Speaker 5: all together into something we love.
Speaker 1: To that end, Michael, any thoughts on meteorology, any strong
Speaker 1: feelings about the weather.
Speaker 2: I was surprisingly delighted to hear you talk about the
Speaker 2: weather for so long. And I know that you kind
Speaker 2: of genetically have to because you're British, but to my astonishment,
Speaker 2: it was really interesting.
Speaker 1: I'm glad to hear that. You know what, You've just
Speaker 1: made my day? How to make it brit happy? Tell
Speaker 1: them you enjoy the web.
Speaker 2: I love all the high tech, high tech, high tech.
Speaker 2: And then it's like, hey, stick here, Ralph, go over
Speaker 2: there and are you wet? Debruh? Did your hat fell off? Okay,
Speaker 2: we got a confirmation. And man, visually, when it rains
Speaker 2: on an F one race, it is so fun to
Speaker 2: look at. You can't believe they do it.
Speaker 1: Less fun when you're an F one fun you're standing
Speaker 1: in the crowd.
Speaker 2: That's not me.
Speaker 6: This has been Choosing Signs F one, a production of
Speaker 6: Sports Illustrated Studios, iHeart Podcast and one oh one Studio Podcasts.
Speaker 6: The show is hosted by Michael Costa and Tony Cowan Brown.
Speaker 6: This episode was edited, scored, and sound designed by senior
Speaker 6: producer Jojai may Thaddle. Scott Stone is the executive producer
Speaker 6: and head of Audio, and Daniel Wexman is Director of
Speaker 6: Podcast Development and production Manager at one o one Studios.
Speaker 6: At iHeart Podcasts, Sean Titne is our executive producer, and
Speaker 6: a special thank you to Michelle Newman, David Glasser, and
Speaker 6: David Hootkin from one oh one Studios. For more shows
Speaker 6: from iHeart Podcasts, go visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
Speaker 6: or wherever you get your podcasts. Whatever you do, don't
Speaker 6: forget to rate us and tell your friends it really
Speaker 6: does mean a lot.
Speaker 1: Next week on Choosing Sides F one, we reach our climax.
Speaker 1: So I can't believe I'm saying this. This is the
Speaker 1: moment that you have all been waiting for, Right Michael,
Speaker 1: you are going to reveal to us what kind of
Speaker 1: Formula one fan you fashion yourself to be.
Speaker 2: I can't believe this. I can't believe it's here. I'm
Speaker 2: still reading the regulations manual. Okay, so maybe that's a
Speaker 2: little bit of a hint. I have a lot to contemplate.
Speaker 2: There's so many good episodes here for me to review
Speaker 2: and listen again, and I'll make my decision, and it's
Speaker 2: gonna be. It's not gonna let you down.
Speaker 1: Do you think you're gonna pick one or do you
Speaker 1: think you're fashioned yourself a multi fastening, multi faceted, or
Speaker 1: multi hyphenate.
Speaker 2: I'm gonna pick one because that's the only one I
Speaker 2: give a shit about.
Speaker 1: Okay,