Six lessons from the Australian Grand Prix

Hello and welcome to Pit Talk, brought to you by Shannon's.

On today's episode, the 2026 Formula One season is underway, with George Russell leading

a Mercedes-Benz 1-2 to victory in Melbourne, but not every driver was thrilled by their first

experience of the new rules.

How come and what can be done about us?

My name's Michael Lovardato, it's great to have your company and the company of Bike

Co-host.

He was typing so hard and so fast in the media centre on Sunday he gave himself permanent

nerve damage.

It's Matt Clayton.

Who would have thought that writing stories about Formula One Michael would be almost as dangerous

as driving a Formula One car in 2026 but there you go, but I probably had a better and

more fulfilling weekend than Fernando Alonso or Lachstral, but let's just say that he's

the lowest possible bar that even in my fatigued Monday post AGP state, I can probably fall

over at this time of the afternoon, so yeah, not great if you're an Aston Martin fan

or I don't know if you'd say you have an Aston Martin team, probably not so good, but

better for you and I.

Definitely not.

If you own the team, you're not having a great day, you're not having a one-ink.

You are not.

We had a really interesting weekend in Melbourne plenty to talk about as, of course, we predicted

given this was the first race weekend under all these new regulations, both chassis and

engine, even some new sporting rules in there, a new team in Cadillac, a new driver in

Harvard, Lynn Blad, lots of new stuff, not a new pit building though, that's going to

wait for another year.

It can be about next year's podcast.

Yes.

And so I thought Matt, we'd go through what lessons we learned from this weekend, acknowledging

of course that this coming weekend is the Chinese Grand Prix, we're going to learn a lot

more.

And well, as I can say, the races flow thick and fast, but they may well not give them the

stage of the Middle East at the moment and the Bahrain and Saudi Arabia and Grand Prix

that could be coming up a little bit later, another story for another day.

But why do I kick us off with the most, why it might be the biggest lesson that we've

learned because the big news was, of course, the rule change is going into this weekend.

That was what we were all eager to see, clearly proved controversial among many drivers,

they're not all drivers, but we got two very different, let's say, glimpses into the

potential of these rules between qualifying and the race.

My lesson, I think, and please feel free to disagree with me, is that things are not as

bad as many of the drivers were saying.

We've heard some pretty dire commentary from Orlando, Norris, even claiming last year's

cars were better, even though if you rewind to last December, I think every single driver

was happy to get out of those cars that were causing the back damage, never mind the

nerve damage with the asses and mutton, and Max Verstappen say, essentially, he sounds

actually quite defeated on Sunday, there's essentially saying things like there's no hope

for these regulations.

We've stuck with him for a long time, George Russell was more optimistic, but of course

he would be winning from pole position, but I think it's not as bad as all that negative

activity.

What did you think?

I would agree with that statement simply because I was braced for the worst, and I also

think that after qualifying on Saturday, I think we got the order of the grid was probably

the correct order of the grid.

I don't think we got any crazy outliers, but the actual spectacle of qualifying was so

unedifying.

You always talk about Albert Park, and the signature turn there, and it has been for

years, is the turn 910 chicane.

It's one of the highlights of that circuit, it's a very flat, featureless track, it's

very quick these days because of the redevelopment done in 22, but there are better race tracks

in Formula One, but that sequence of corners was always an absolute highlight on the calendar,

every time Formula One came to Australia.

The cars just looked, frankly, a bit pathetic through there.

They were so much slower than they had been previously.

You knew the drivers weren't pushing the challenge wasn't there.

By, I guess, pessimism about things wasn't helped by Saturday being, yeah, we got the

correct grid, no silly outliers, but I'm not really enjoying this spectacle of this.

Conversely, Sunday with the race, I thought, it depends what business we're in here,

right?

We're sort of having this discussion in the media center last night.

If Formula One is in the entertainment business, and you can decide whether it's a sporting

spectacle or an entertainment business or an amalgam of the two, the opening 10 to 12

laps of the 2026 Australian Grand Prix, we're really, really good TV.

And I likened at the analogy I'll use here is like, this is like me watching a Marvel

film, frankly, because like, I'm enjoying what I'm watching to a degree, but I'm not

100% sure what's going on.

This is a chat that I was having with my daughter offline today in that I'll sit and watch

her and go, that was fine.

Don't tell me actually what happened or how we got here, because I don't really know.

And that was the confusing apart about the race in that because the way to drive these

cars is so different to anything we've seen previously.

The fight at the front on its face was really fun.

It was really dramatic.

There were lots of really big overtakes and people getting their elbows out.

It was really, really good TV.

I'm not quite sure we are 100% understood what it was that we're watching because of the

energy deployment of these cars.

What's more, I'm not quite sure the participants in the race completely understood what was going

on either, because I think we'll look back at the AGP as being this first step into the

voyage of the unknown.

And as the rules set and the year gets more mature, there'll be just this sheer amount

of data that Formula One produces, right?

There'll be more things known than this weekend.

This felt like a bit of a sucker and see weekend and no one really quite knew how it was

going to play out.

You mentioned George Russell being happier than most with the rules, a bit like Lado Doris

was happier than most with last year's cars.

So there's always going to be vested interests.

F1 and Aditz Couries, the most selfish sport on the planet because everyone likes things

when they're going well for them, don't they?

But my thought was entertaining enough race didn't 100% understand why, because I don't

think the participants do either.

And maybe less pessimism than I thought.

But then how you feel about this, I still think there's something a little bit missing

with these cars and the way they need to be driven that's not quite Formula One.

I think qualifying definitely demonstrated that.

I don't think anyone, even George Russell who was happy to take pole position, even he

wasn't particularly effusive about the cars afterwards, he wasn't too negative about

them, but of course again he wouldn't be, he took pole position.

But you've got no means was praising them because the challenge, you only have to look

at the on board of his pole lap and I went just out of curiosity to compare to the on board

of Lando Norris' pole lap last year at very different spectacles, I'd be debatable whether

or not this year's pole lap was even a spectacle.

That's not to diminish either challenge of driving a Formula One car in general, be

clearly this challenge that is poorly understood by anyone who's not in the car of getting the

lap right, the balance between deploying your energy and all that kind of stuff.

But it doesn't mean it looks great or it's what we want from a, from what until now,

and through pretty much every regulation change, okay, we'll have some random wacky ones,

probably dating back all the way to when you had to qualify with race fuel.

Well, maybe when you had to, you know, the tyres you want to start on, the qualifying

spectacle has always remained, like I hesitate to use this word, but pure because it's

always just been, just go as fast as you can, as your tyres, just go as fast as you possibly

can and that's diluted this year and I think that that is a problem.

But I also, I just, I think we should caution that this is one of the worst tracks Albert

Park for these engines is what the teams are going to say exactly that, yes.

So I think your average in inverters, in commas, considering it's a 24 race schedule, your

average track will look much more normal.

You certainly won't have, I mean, the backstreet at Albert Park is deceptively long because

it's not straight, but it's taken flat out.

Much longer than we think, I think the average track is not going to look like that.

The average track is going to look much more normal, which I think then goes on to the

second L model, which is the race was very interesting.

Some drivers said it was artificial the way the overtaking was happening because of the

essentially the push to pass button, the boost button, as we should call it, and that

it was a little bit unpredictable and sometimes hard to follow or sometimes hard to understand,

maybe not hard to follow.

But again, I think that your average track, it will be, it will look more normal.

But I think the thing I really want to drill down into is that I'm not convinced that

what we saw on Sunday should be described as artificial.

I was thinking about this today, there's a piece on the Fox Sports website as well.

I wrote up why go into this a little bit, but I'm not convinced actually what we're

seeing is any worse than a driver getting DRS, pressing the button, breezing past before

the braking zone and just overtaking.

If anything, I actually prefer this as much as it's a little bit chaotic because you have

to use something to make your overtake.

You know you've got that battery charge, you've got to get the overtake down.

If you don't, then you're vulnerable to the guy behind.

The other driver can also fight back, which I likewise with DRS, you're leading by a second

and you're at the wrong track where the DRS is too effective.

You have no hope.

In the same way, Belgium sometimes is the best place to start his second because you know

your DRS passed and then the other guy will have no hope of catching up.

So I actually kind of think that what we saw on Sunday was strange and new and as Charlotte

Claire said, a little bit different and some ways not necessarily positively different,

but I'm willing to give the benefit of the doubt and say it could, in an overall sense

when we get to the end of the season, could be a positive difference on Sundays.

Yeah, you mentioned before the two worst words put together in Formula One, DRS train.

Yeah, you know, at least we don't have to talk about those anymore.

I'm going to take, I'm going to take slight issue with you here.

This is controversial for you and I know, but there's something about DRS in,

yes, it was inherently, you know, a bit false and a bit fake and all of that.

The thing I didn't mind about it relative to what we saw on the weekend is I felt that

with the RS, the operator of the car was in charge of when it was deployed, right?

So how you used it tactically, whereas I think the way these cars store and get rid of the energy

they have stored, if it was like the cars were controlling the driver a lot of the time,

the drivers restricted very much by the capability of their machinery.

As opposed to with the RS, you could deploy that strategically, but it was the driver that was

making the decision not the car. I know this is a very, very thin delineation here.

And this will make more sense, as you said, for starters, the fact that

the Albert Park Revised Layout, ironically, the old Albert Park Layout might have been better

for these cars who would have thought that, bring back the chicade across the pack.

That might have been part of this, but also because no one, you know,

we had not been in a live race situation yet. So you can simulate these things as much as you like.

There were 22 pioneers out there on Sunday trying to make sense of what exactly was going on,

but I think with more data, with more time, and perhaps some more, and I'll use air quotes here,

which is useful on an audio podcast, normal tracks, then we will probably see a bit of a

pattern emerge. At the moment, we have a sample set of precisely one. It's way too early to come

up with any conclusions about how the racing went, but I don't miss the RS. No one's ever

going to miss the RS, but there was an element of when that was operated that felt like it was

much more in control of the driver than some of the stuff that we were seeing on the weekend.

And I'm not shedding its ear for the RS, and I do not want it to return. And I'm hoping

that I'll get a little bit more satisfaction, and perhaps understanding of what's going on

once we have a series of races at a different set of sequence of tracks coming up, you know,

obviously got China and Japan coming up, both very different to each other, and both very,

very different to our park. So I think it'll be interesting to see which races that sometimes

you look at the calendar and go, that might not be great TV, might end up actually becoming more

compelling. And for the first time in many years, I'm actually quite looking forward to watching

Bona Cogues. I think the cars are going to look super alive around there, which is not something

I've said for a long time, but I am concerned about when you mentioned the turn six to turn

nine ten chicane in our park now, and it's a straight, but it's not a straight. I just kept

thinking of Baku, coming out of those last couple of quarters, where the cars are completely

running out of breath for 25 seconds on what used to be full throttle. That's going to be super

interesting, but yeah, I didn't mind it, but I need to see more if you know where I'm coming from.

I think that's good. I think I think funnily enough not to heighten the former E comparisons,

because no one needs that, but I do think these cars could actually be great at straight tracks,

I think it could be a speed of a good news for the calendar that does increasing numbers of

street tracks on them, I guess, but yeah, Baku will be very interesting. Some interesting comments

where I think George Russell who suggested that any track essentially that isn't just a bunch of

long straights, so Bona Cogues obviously not going to be great, will be fine, even if you run

out of battery down the long straights and it's probably going to look silly as you run out of

power towards them. The rest of the track will look much more normal, whereas most of the Melbourne

track just looked a bit compromised, but we'll wait and see as you see, and also development will

change these things, but what lesson did you take away from our weekend in unusually stable,

climate, Melbourne and Albert Park? Yeah, Melbourne in order where it didn't actually rain over

the course of the race weekend, that's pretty bizarre, isn't it? What lesson did I learn?

I learned the value of being a full works team is higher than perhaps I would have thought,

and the context of this is Mercedes going one, two on the grid of ones who in the race, but I'm

more thinking about this from McLaren's point of view, and I'm not suggesting this is

this is evidence of McLaren might have dropped the ball here, or they haven't got things right,

I just think these regulations and these engines are just so different and so new.

If you are a works team, you are starting so much more on the front foot than a customer team,

and the secrets in the naming of it right. If you're a works team, you have built your chassis

with this engine in mind as opposed to buying it from someone else, and McLaren of the top four

teams, and there is a clear delineation between the top four and everybody else, McLaren's the only

one of those four teams that is not a works team, because Red Bull now designs his own engine in house.

I thought that was really indicative of how both teams performed in qualifying,

in that if you do a bit of a deep dive into where the deficit was between your dross along pole

and where the McLaren's were in fifth and sixth with Piaestry and Norris. It was mostly about

how Mercedes deployed what it had, and perhaps McLaren searching a little bit to try and find

the ideal way to do that. I wouldn't go as far as saying that McLaren's got a turkey

but chassis and they're going to be no good. I don't think that's going to be the case. We've seen

evidence of them being able to develop over the last couple of years as we've talked about,

but wasn't it interesting that the customer teams felt like they were on their back foot and had

more to learn, simply because they just don't have the laps and the hours and the miles in these

machines than the works teams do. I thought as an interesting connected point to this,

it seemed like it was really only the Mercedes teams that seemed to be raising this. Now there's

some context there. One is Mercedes, obviously ultimately dominated the weekend, so the gap looks

bigger. The other is that the other brands all have pretty unusual or more different connections.

Ferrari has has actually had quite a good weekend. They did. The other customer is Cadillac,

which no one's wondering about engine performance there, and then Red Bull, and it's the sister team,

which also performed quite strongly actually in relevant to Red Bull racing,

did racing bulls, but you're not going to hear racing bulls criticizing Red Bull racing for

anything if that were even the case. The situation Mercedes is particular, but I did think that was

interesting. Elpin didn't criticize because they said they don't know what Mercedes normally

likes is the first time they've taken them. I think that's fair enough, but both James Vowels and

Andreas Stella, the Williams and McLaren bosses respectively, both suggesting in different ways

that they're not getting as much information as they would have liked from Mercedes. Now they've

both said that's pretty normal because information now relates directly to performance in a way

it didn't under the old Frozen rules, where it was pretty much as long as the engine set up

correctly, it'll be reliable. They should all perform the same. There's so much in, let's say the

software or the inputs into the software about understanding how the engine works and then choosing

how to harvest and do all that kind of stuff that does make a difference, and so the works team

suddenly not going to give you all of that. I don't think it'd be fair to say it's complacency

that's crept in. I just think it's almost like a muscle that's never had to be flexed because

the engine is now a different kind of performance part, I think, because it's just so all encompassing

in lap time, and in Lando Norris, I think you said it after qualifying, that it's not just,

you have a bit more combustion power because the electrical energy is all the same in every car.

You have a little bit more combustion power, which means you can roll off a little bit more

earlier into the corners, which means you charge your battery a bit more, which you've got a

bit more electrical power at the start of the straights, which means your car's faster by the time

you get to the corner, which means you can roll off even more, and it's this virtual circle.

And then if you have an efficient car, which is always the challenge to perform on, efficient

aerodynamics, which Mercedes clearly also has, there is a car effect here, not just an engine effect,

then it all just compounds, and suddenly you look pretty dominant. And so I think Andreas Stella

was sort of suggesting maybe half his team's deficit, and it was a second, wasn't it, or just

under a second, just over a second in qualifying. I tense, yeah. Maybe half of it is engine,

and then you wonder, well, if you could get that half back because the telemetry suggest McLaren

is getting nowhere near, like you were saying, what Mercedes was getting out of the corners down

the straights. Does that compound into the chassis? Like how good or bad is the McLaren chassis?

It's sort of difficult to say. So it's become very intriguing, but I think you're absolutely right,

because it means no question or no surprise, I guess we should say, that the top two teams,

obviously competing for victory were works teams. Maybe the top three in the race,

you know, I had to obviously retire with an engine problem early, but he was there about,

I guess, and he's also from obviously a works team now. I think it is talent.

The intrigue for me is, I think we can take what you just described there as a given,

given that we've got 20, let's say we've got 20, you want one rounds left, we're just going to

cancel a couple here. How long is it going to take McLaren to be able to get to a point where

they feel that they are completely understanding what's propelling their car? And then as you said

before, if they're just trying to figure out they're saying half the deficit could be chassis,

half of it could be engine, is that actually the case? Like how long does it take them to be able

to get a decent approximation of what Mercedes is doing out of the works engine? And then

and only then will we know where it's chassis stacks up. And I think that something that we

probably should discuss is that I think there was this feeling that Mercedes advantage was all

engine or you know, that very vast majority engine. It's pretty clear that chassis is very good.

And they've obviously had eggs in this basket for a really long time because they haven't fought

for anything meaningful for a while. I think it would be incorrect to purely put what they did down

or a vast majority of what they did at Albert Park down to, well, they've got this great engine

and it's in house and they put everything around it. Clearly the chassis is really, really good.

And we discussed this in the pre-season. George Russell has often been in advantageous situations,

but just not at the best time. And we got our first demonstration as like, all right,

this guy can do something. He just looked, he never looked like he was going to lose the weekend

off his own bat, right? And I think if you put him in a car that's this sharp and it's this good,

he's already proven that he's more than ready to take up the task there. And it sets the season up

really nicely because we've had these couple of championship fights of, you know, two teams going

ahead to head. We still have a two team head to head fight this year. It might just be two different

ones. Yes, I think that is a good call. That leads me nicely onto what I'm going to call the third

lesson, which is that I think actually the summary of Ferrari's weekend is more positive than

negative. I think there's a lot of pessimism after qualifying when the gap seemed pretty large,

much larger than anyone had hoped for. But I think it is also fair to say is the track cooled down

on Saturday evening, both McLaren and Ferrari, in fact, just didn't seem to kick on in Q3.

Both, let's talk about LeClear and PS3 anyway, said pretty much the same lap times. They didn't

Q2, whereas George Russell did find more time. So I think that accounts for some of the gap.

Okay, in race conditions, it's clear that Mercedes was the quicker car, but not by that much.

And okay, there's probably a degree of Mercedes backing off at the end of the race. But I think

Ferrari probably did as well because they didn't really gain at all in that second half in any way.

I think it was clear the race had been cooked by the time they got into the second half of the race.

But I actually think Ferrari is enough in the ballpark that I'm willing to be hopeful perhaps.

That as we go to some different tracks where characteristics are going to play to different

different cars, particularly when we go to more street style tracks or tracks just with more corners

probably, where that Ferrari engine is so good out of the corners, thanks to that small turbo,

great on tracks, that's also just a recent historical trait of Ferrari cars to be honest.

That I think Ferrari, with a little bit of a development push as well because so much of this

season is going to be bad development, can say that they're in the mix. I think Ferrari, I'm not so

dispirited to say that this is Mercedes season. I think Ferrari can actually still have a good crack at

this. This is where we've got to with Ferrari. It's not as bad as we thought. As opposed to just

giving the actual praise less bad. So that's all good. But you're right about I think I don't

think anyone was surprised to see Mercedes at the front. I think the fact that Ferrari made them

work for it and perhaps exceeded our expectations is a good sign for what's to come. And you mentioned

the fact that that car was the most predictable thing that happened in the Grand Prix on Sunday

was that Charlotte Clio was in the lead at turn one. And we were talking about this three or four days

beforehand. If the for the sake of the spectacle, we're actually hoping that a Ferrari wouldn't

qualify on the front row. They'd be second third row because we know that thing is an absolute

rocket ship off the line. And we're not for Charlotte Clio getting to turn one in front. Then

the whole narrative of the race probably up to the point where there's the hadjar safety car,

lap 11, I think it was. The opening 10 laps of the race were made by the first 270 meters

because the Ferrari got to turn one in front. And that's going to be, I don't think that's a

trait that's going away necessarily. I think they may suffer in race trim because of it. But you

get the feeling this could be a season where Ferrari are more dictating things from the front of

races early than perhaps we've seen in previous years. And then what that does for we know Charlotte

Clio's quality. We also know Lewis Hamilton can get a bit of a peppety step when things are

looking pretty good. He's got something to be optimistic about. It was nice to see optimistic

Lewis this week. And we haven't seen that for a while. It's all a bit of a doom and gloom.

Even when he didn't finish on the podium, he was still very positive about things. But

I think the hierarchy of the teams is not a surprise. But maybe the fact that Ferrari seems to be

more in the ballpark than we thought as a starting point, I think is really good for the narrative

of the season because we know there's no issue there in terms of the driver quality. And I like

these two lineups in a head-to-head with each other. That's what it turns into because they're so

different. You've got the Antonelli experience and youth and the Russell. It's like, well, we think

he can do this, but we're not entirely sure. Lecler to me has been a world champion hiding in

plain sight for years. He just hasn't had the equipment to do it in. And we know Lewis Hamilton's

CV. So if that's what it ends up becoming, it's actually a really good narrative for Formula 1

to see the two biggest, probably strongest teams going head-to-head in a battle coming at it

from really different directions. Yes, I did enjoy Lewis Hamilton. The return of the old

Lewis Hamilton. It's back this weekend. Lewis is back. Fairly close in face to Charles,

which is fine this weekend when everyone's learning a lot. I think Lecler is a little bit.

He's adaptability is maybe a little bit underestimated. I think he's just very good at getting

the most from the car. And I think maybe that's just not appreciated because it's been honest.

It never been a position to really show it off. So like that, I mean, of course, we have to

ask for a school of this was it's clearly the same people making the strategy decisions on the pit

wall. I understood in I understood to some extent the gamble they took not stopping at that first

VSC. And then the second one, unfortunately, the pit lane was closed. I mean, there's some debate

about whether or not Hamilton could have entered pit lane. They just weren't ready for it.

But it just feels like that we already know what the handicap on Ferrari season is and it may not

be the card probably the pit wall. But let's see how they go in the next couple of races.

But I think reason if you're a Ferrari fan to at least be a little bit cautiously optimistic

that this year is still on the track. The team would have hoped for last year.

Now, before I ask you what your next lesson is, let's go to move of the week brought to you by

Shannon's. A lot of a formal one boasted of the amount of overtaking this weekend. I think they

said it was 120 up from 40 or 40 odds. Last year, the Australian Grand Prix. So, well,

obviously the rules are working. No asterisks required. But what caught your eye?

What caught my eye was something that I didn't realize that had happened until probably two

hours actually after the race. So to peel the curtain back here, Michael and I are standing in the

as per tradition, standing in the Albert Park media center. We know watching the cars

file out for their practice starts on the reconnaissance laps. And then I see the medical cargo

barreling out. And obviously because Oscar Piastry's been on the way there. But what I didn't see

off the actual start of the race because I was too busy pecking words into my laps off at the time

that Oscar Piastry was the move of the week is Franco Collapinto not completely rear-ending Leon

Lawson off the start line. And when you saw the replay of that, you knew it was close by watching

the reaction of the podium finishes in the cool down room afterwards where it's obviously the first

time they had seen it as well. And Leon Lawson's car just did not move off the line. How

Franco Collapinto missed Lawson, missed anyone else and didn't hit the pit wall on the inside. There's

good fortune, good judgment, whatever you want to describe it as. We avoided a very, very nasty

accident through a bit of a stroke of like the move of the week to me is Franco Collapinto's reflexes

on very limited evidence. Very, very well suited to driving you before we law one because when

you saw that back on the replay from multiple angles, I still can't believe those two cars didn't

make contact. It is remarkable, isn't it? And I think, I'm probably guilty of this as well. I was

always thinking, we've been talking about the risk of the starts for quite a few weeks. Andrea

Stella was one of the few to really say, we need to think about this, but several others did.

But a lot of it was talked about because the cars at the very back of the grid wouldn't have the

time to make their, I mean, I was comical here in real life at the first time when the cars

rev up to maximum screaming for 10 seconds or getting away. That because they'd arrive last,

they wouldn't have the time to do that. They'd probably get worse starts. But Lawson, I think,

was eighth on the grid thereabouts in the middle, let's say pretty much in the middle, which means that

by the time those guys who did start at the back got going, they're already up to speed by the time

they get to Lawson. Like it wasn't as if it was a rear-ending in your local shopping car park.

This would have been an enormous highway style accident. And I think that suddenly, maybe we're

fortunate that that's happened in that way because it feels like the lesson to be learned there is,

we've got to take it seriously because we got quite lucky to have missed something that could

have been more significant. So I think that is a good call. I'm very happy with that one. I'm going

to go maybe even slightly more left field than that has moved over the week. I was going to give it

to Charlotte Claire for his great off the start line threading of the needle because as good as the

Ferrari car was, he also, I think, didn't have very much battery power. So they're all affected by

not a lot of battery, but just slicing between Isaac Hadger and George Russell needed a little bit of

cooperation or not silliness from those ahead and did a good job. But I'm going to go and give my

move over the week. I think to the whole Aston Martin team, at least at least Fernando Alonzo,

with a whole Aston Martin team, for effortlessly, I think, shifting 100% of the blame for their

problems on to Honda. A weekend long campaign. Now let's not let's look. Let's not be around the

bush. Clearly, the Honda engine's unreliability is the first order problem of this car. I'm not sure

I believe what Adrian Yui and Fernando Alonzo are saying, which is if it had any other engine,

essentially, it would be leading the race, it would be right at the front. But we don't know,

to be fair with him, we don't know exactly how good it is because the engine keeps breaking down.

But I just thought it was remarkable how quickly, how quickly it went straight to us.

Honda's done it. Adrian Yui claiming that they didn't know Honda was behind until visiting the factory

last November, despite, I think, literally years of reporting rumors that Honda was behind,

despite him working for the previous Honda works team at Red Bull Racing and seeing them dissolve

and reform. And then I'm just going to try and find the quote from Fernando Alonzo after practice

when he, I think he completed a grand total of 18 months, something like that, to run an FP1.

Not much learning, to be honest, he said, unfortunately, and I'm adding a little bit of emphasis

here, but if you listen to the audio, his emphasis is also there. Unfortunately, the Honda issue

in FP1 and some Honda issues as well in FP2, a little bit limited our number of laps today,

and that was not needed because we need to recover. And then asked about his prospects for

the rest of the weekend, which actually, you can find more laps in the race than I expected,

must be nerve damage. I don't know, I just drive the car. It's more of a question for Honda.

And then said it was disappointed that despite Honda supplying only one team,

they've run out of parts already at around one. So move for the week. The blame goes to Honda.

Yes, they didn't so much to throw Honda under the bus. They reversed the bus back over Honda

several times on the way up, but, man, the comedy, the unintentional comedy moment of the entire

weekend was Adrian Newey's press conference to talk about how bad things were asked to Martin and

Honda. And the microphone that he was using just basically wouldn't work and just get falling

over. It was an absolute joke of a press conference. And yeah, we made the very,

very unkind analogy on, I think it was Thursday, whatever day that was, where the press conference

worked for 20 minutes, which was probably more laps. So we actually figured that Aston Martin

would go to do over the course of the Grand Prix. Lance Stroll had, it was, Lance Stroll was

playing a bit of cricket on the weekend that he did a few laps. He came in, had a cup of tea

jumped out. He fixed a few things on the car that he went back out again. So we've now got to

manage, mandatory beverage breaks in Formula One. It is an absolute embarrassment for everything

that's going on there. No matter whether you want to point the blame at Aston Martin or Honda,

it all falls in the embarrassment basket. It is pretty worthful.

It is grim, but things can only, well, I say things can only get better. Sometimes things

get worse before they get better. Sometimes things get worse before they get worse. So we'll have to

wait and see how it goes in Aston Martin. But let's get back to our lessons from the Australian

Grand Prix map. What else did you learn this weekend? Let's go a little left field here.

I wasn't 100% convinced about the whole Avidlin Black thing. I've got to be honest.

Very good. Not necessarily because I thought that he was worthy of being in Formula One, but

sometimes you see these guys in F2 and you're like, you know, like there's something there,

but it's not super consistent. He was incredibly impressive with what he did on track. He was also

incredibly impressive with just how he handled the entire thing. You have to remember he's 18 years

old, right? And I mean, I know the grid skews younger and these guys come in so ready now. You're

not worried that they're going to be some sort of risk to their rivals or what have you. But I thought,

you know, even obviously Lawson had the compromise start. We never really got to see how he was going

to race. But I thought Limbler was incredibly impressive given the complexity of driving these cars.

Yes, a track that he'd been on in F2 before, but still, it's a completely different challenge.

I wasn't expecting him to be terrible by any means, but he was really, really quite

impressive given the stakes his age, his experience. And that car looked half way decent, didn't it?

Yeah, it did. I think as we mentioned, whether or not that's all power unit or the car actually,

just looks a bit better put together than it certainly did in testing. Like in testing, it was

hard to place, I suppose. So maybe it's just a somewhat obscure, but it looked arguably

near the head of the midfield. I think half's probably emerged front of the midfield by the

end of the weekend, but racing bulls are right there. Obviously point, well, points contender.

I thought you'd do well. I thought also I've been a little bit skeptical of Lindblad's

rapid elevation to form it. I thought his F2 season last year was pretty ordinary.

There is this vibe now in F1 that it's not F2 results anymore. It's about you. Get him in for

practice. You see how they go in a testing of a previous car and you read into that because F2

become a bit random, I guess, or that we're usually good teams and not necessarily there anymore,

or whatever the case, that seems to be it. But nonetheless, it seems like, or we know now there

was some reporting, wasn't it? This was sort of Helmut Marko's last action was to unilaterally

promote him when no one else at Red Bull thought he was ready. And then Helmut Marko was, he left

in red commas. So I was a little bit skeptical. And I thought actually that meant there was a bit

of pressure on him to prove his elevation, but on the evidence of the first weekend.

I think he did very well. Like you say, we are missing that comparison with Lawson a little bit

this weekend. He was at qualified by Lawson, but not by much. And Lawson will be a good bar. He's

a tough racer and he's pretty quick as well. But I thought considering he's also the only rookie,

it's not like last year we had six and it was all, you know, I think we were sort of anticipating

a tough ride for all of them and they could be compared and whatever. I think he fit in pretty

well as a new guy on the grid. He did. I was also pleased to know that we had lots of

its Sussex versus Chelmsford in the commentary outside of the top six. So that he'd been

going hard for every coverage this year. He enjoyed that, not. But he was impressive. I wasn't

expecting him to be terrible by any means, but a victory lap for Helmut Marko. He might have to come

back. Yes, remarkable. First race in probably 20 years without Helmut Marko at the racetrack,

considering I don't think he ever missed one during this time. No, it was really one with him,

not sure. Well, a few journalists where he was giving you an unscripted soundbites. He

wasn't supposed to be giving the journals, but we missed that a little bit. But Red Bull 2026,

it's just odd when they turn up to Melbourne and there's no Christian order and there's no Helmut

Marko and there's no, I mean, there's another new teammate for Max Verstappen, but that's not

exactly you, but it felt very, very different. Yes. Well, let me give you one other lesson of mine

when I thought felt very different, in a not-unrelated note, that the guy who's in the same car as

Max Verstappen did okay, which is real shock. Isaac Hadja from the beginning over the weekend,

in fact, looked like he had a good handle on the car. And this is important to say, not just

in the context of the previous, how many were there, three teammates in the last 25 weekends

that Max Verstappen had, three previous drivers, occupants of that car struggling. But also,

even in preseason testing, well, there was no obvious signs of struggle other than that crash

in the rain in Barcelona, what feels like a hundred years ago, but didn't ever really look

like he was on Verstappen's pace throughout testing. Perhaps he wasn't, because of course Verstappen

dropped the car in Q1, so there was no direct comparison by the time Hadja got to Q3. But he got to

Q3, which was very impressive. He qualified right up the front on the second row. How to shot at

leading the race, but ran out of batteries, everyone seemed to, and down the run to the first turn.

And was really right there in the opening stage of the race. I don't know, he probably wouldn't

have finished on the podium, I suppose. That seemed really locked down by Ferrari the last opportunity

there, but probably would have finished a pretty comfortable fifth by the end of the race,

would have been a really good start. I wrote it after qualifying on the Fox Sports website.

That's the first time any red bull racing driver's qualified so well, that isn't Max Verstappen,

obviously, since the Azerbaijan Grand Prix of 2024, I think it is. He got really back all the way

to Sergio Perez. I wish I had it open for me now, so I could get these stats correct, because

there was some real, that's crazy, real good drought breakers that he achieved over the course of

qualifying. And important as well, just in the context of we shouldn't forget what red bull racing

is doing there, which is supporting Max Verstappen at all costs. And the reason they have a second

driver, yes, it is because they're obliged to under the rules, but they just want someone there to

pick up the pieces that Max might very occasionally drop. This week, Andy dropped a lot of pieces,

he crashed. And Isaac Hadjar did what Red Bull Racing probably, probably the maximum, let's be

honest for Red Bull Racing by qualifying that car on the second row. Yeah, there's not a lot of

requirements in that position description, you know, if you're putting a job out there really,

it's just, you know, just be there with your dustpan and brush, or just sweep up if Max Verstappen

drops any crumbs. And Isaac Hadjar did that qualified third, as you said, probably look like a nailed

on top five, but for the unreliability, really good sign. Also, can't say I'm super surprised with

him, because there's something something I really enjoy about him is that he is his own harshest

critic, and he holds himself incredibly accountable. And I've felt how to say this diplomatically,

oh, let's just, you can re-throw my diplomacy. The previous occupants of that seat,

shall we say, going back to back year 24, or whatever you were talking about, it always seemed

to be something or somebody else's fault most of the time. And I think that Isaac can probably

beat himself up a fair bit when things, his fault. And he probably also will do that when they're

not. But yeah, really good sign for him. And yeah, I already have already rippled what

have two competent drivers in its car, imagine. Yes, imagine, I mean, we over the course of this

sort of review, it feels like we almost have all top four teams with fully competent line-ups

this year, which is really remarkable. I've pulled up those statistics for you, Higa, you're

likely to like this. I know you like it with Stapp. Isaac Hadjar is the first red bull racing driver

to qualify inside the top 10 on their debut since Max Verstappen in 2016 at the Spanish

Grand Prix. The third on the grid is the best starting position for the second red bull racing

car since Sergio Perez at the 2024 Belgian Grand Prix nearly 600 days prior. And it was the first

time Verstappen had been qualified by his teammates since the 2024 Azerbaijan Grand Prix. That's

the one I was thinking of. So some long old droughts broken by Isaac Hadjar, which I think is

can only be a good sign. I mean, touch wood if there's any new right now. Shame if you're in the car.

But it seems like a good sign for the start of his red bull racing career, which is a good

use for that team as well as attempts to build itself up under these rules. Matt, last lesson from

you for the weekend. We're 38 minutes into this. I don't know whether this is a lesson or a

lament, Michael. Do we have the Oscar Piazdry conversation at this point? We probably showed 38

minutes in and we've not really mentioned him yet because of, yeah, it was, I don't think I've

ever heard 135,000 people gasp and then be completely silenced or whatever the crowd was on

Sunday. I can't remember. At the same time, it was astonishing what happened before the race. It

would have been a terrible set of circumstances at any race track, but to do it in the first race

of the season when you've just come off a season where you've led for two thirds of it and

the amount that the color palette of Albert Park last weekend was so interesting and it was this

mixture of green and gold and orange. And then in an absolute instant half an hour before the race,

it felt like everybody was inappropriately dressed. They should have been in black because Albert

Park was in complete morning at this point. There's a part of me that still can't quite believe it,

but I mean, where do we unpick this? Because it's not a matter of simply putting the finger at the

car in this situation or the driver. It was unfortunately a bit of column A and a bit of column B,

wasn't it? Yeah, I think it was, which feels very uncharacteristic. Yes, you know, you had such an

uncharacteristic crash and qualifying for a max and then backed it up with usually the rock solid

dependable oscarpia street spinning out on the reconnaissance lamp. Yes, said there was a little bit

of unexpected engine behavior, but also admittedly just got on the curves and ultimately that's

down to him. If you wasn't on the curve, you wouldn't have crashed. I'm notwithstanding a

moving use of the curve for pretty much every lap that he undertook in Albert Park. Very unfortunate,

very awkward. I was sure, because if he's helmet for this weekend and there's a lot of bright yellow

or something on there, I'm sure it was nourished. I did this too. Possibly the oscar. Of course,

it was. I don't know if that was just a little bit of me preparing to cover my home race speaking

there, but that's what I looked like because of that helmet to me anyway. I wonder if the lesson

here, though, is yet to be learned? I mean, oscar certainly learned some kind of lesson out of

all of this down the curves, maybe, but is that he will, or well, let's find out. This is the lesson

bounce back from this because it's remarkable. Isn't that that much like last year, he's going to

start the season around two with practically no points last year. Exactly where I was going.

Yeah, correct. This year, it's zero points. He's only, I think he's at 10 points behind

Lando and I think he's got 10 points this weekend. Correct. You did. But still, of course,

25 points behind tidally to a drustle. That's the gap that we want to keep an eye on, at least

for now until it becomes clear whether or not the clarin is in the title fight or will be in the

title fight. But the lesson may be that he's got a dig deep again. Last year, he took the lead by

after the fifth round in Saudi Arabia. So it took him four weekends to overhaul that 23 point

deficit. It's obviously a very different context this year, but funny that he should be engaging in

the exact same sort of comeback two years in a row. Well, and the fact that we're going to

shanghai a week after Melbourne, what we did last year, he won there last year. All of these

analogous things you can look at from 2025 to 2026. But the difference for me this time is that

last year, he and McLaren were in a comfortable one to last year and they were clearly the class

of the field. And at the end of towards the end of the race, Norris survived a rain shower and

P. Astrid didn't necessarily and dropped down the order. But McLaren, it was pretty clear they had

a significant advantage. So it looked like it was going to be a race between the two of the, we can't

say that about the McLaren right now for reasons that we've discussed earlier in this podcast,

there's certainly not in that position of ascendancy yet. And yet might be the key word in that,

because there's a big story to unfold here. But I don't think it's all, look, he was the better

of the two McLaren drivers the entire weekend until we got to race day. He was faster in every

single practice session. All the elements of qualifying qualified higher on the grid. Norris just

seemed Norris wasn't quite and for staff at level Grumpy, but he was certainly Grumpy

the most about the cars. And obviously when you come off a world championship, you've got the

most to lose if the exact going your way. But it's not all doom and gloom, but man of all the racist

to do that in given the expectation and the build up. And I mean, you know, you've been doing this

event for a million years, same with me. I don't think I've ever seen, you know, Daniel Riccardo

was incredibly popular. Mark Weber was popular for what FYI was back in 2010 to 12 or 13 when

every finished. There was something just different about the way that felt this weekend. And to

just see the air come out of the balloon before the race even began, we didn't actually get

to see it play out was pretty dispiriting. Yeah, he's clearly collected a pretty broad

constituency of fans. I think Oscar Piastry, there's nothing really popularising about him.

So I think everyone, not that there really was any about Daniel Riccardo either, and even Mark

Weber, I guess, but I guess generally the constituency of the sports audiences change. And as a result,

as you say, I know, you know, I've got to admit, the orange and green caps, they kind of worked

really. Those colours in my head don't work, but I thought they look good. So it's a shame that they

were all for nothing. And the Australia curse continues. We get to rock it out of the game.

Next year, Matt, but still no home podium at a world championship, Grand Prix,

sad state affairs, also still no victories for Oscar Piastry since that burger deal he did

late last year to give away free burgers. Well, that maybe, maybe there's a real curse.

Maybe there's a story in that he might need to go through to territory or something.

Well, let us know what you took away from the season opening, Australian, Grand Prix,

at Fox Motorsport and all your social media channels or on YouTube if it's up on YouTube by now,

wherever you like. Since someone in email, if you like, just mention the podcast,

but that's all the time we have for Fit Talk this week. You can subscribe to Fit Talk wherever

you get your favourite podcast and you can leave us a rating and a review as well. This weekend,

Formula One continues with the Chinese Grand Prix at 6 p.m. on Sunday, Easter, daylight time as

it still is. There's also a sprint on Saturday at 2 p.m. if you want extra racing. And who knows,

how that's going to go under these new rules. You can catch every minute of Formula One and

MotoGP and Supercars on Fox Sports and KO. And you can keep up to date with all the latest F1

Supercars and MotoGP news from FoxPorts.com.au. From Matt Clayton and me, Michael Arminato,

thanks very much for your company. We'll catch you next week.