June 28, 2022 • 40 mins
Let's get this party started! On this inaugural episode of Choosing Sides: F1, comedian Michael Kosta (of Daily Show fame) and walking pop-culture encyclopedia Lily Herman start a hilarious, engrossing journey into the world of Formula One. Our resident-F1-expert Lily takes our resident-F1-novice Michael through the basics of what makes F1 just so dramatic and obsession-worthy. They’ll dive into big questions such as, why does everyone in this sport have a massive ego? Why are there only 10 teams and 20 drivers? And why are Americans suddenly invested in F1 en masse?
Special thanks to our guests: Tatiana Calderon, Hazel Southwell, and Toni Cowan Brown
This episode was produced by Lily Herman and Senior Producer Yochai Maital. Sound Design by Yochai Maital. Mastering by Sela Waisblum. Recording at The Cutting Room Studios by Rob O'Leary II. At SI Studios, Max Miller is Executive Producer and Brannan Goetschius is Head of Audio. At iHeartRadio, Sean Titone is Executive Producer.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Ready, Ready, cool, Michael, what do you know about Formula
one racing? Um? I do know the name Michael Schumacher.
Oh that's more than I knew. Yeah, because when I
was a kid, there was the trivia of who's the
highest paid athlete in the world, and it was a
trap to get you to say, like Michael Jordan's and
(00:21):
it was this guy never heard of named Michael Schumacher,
a different Michael. I know it's a car race. So
I do feel a little bit like Bill Hayter's iconic
Saturday Night Live sketch Stefen. The sport really has everything.
So you've got people who are willingly hurdling themselves in
carbon fiber death traps at over two break five, literal
(00:46):
and actual Nigerian Prince scams. Maybe we don't look the
gift horse in the mouth and we just accept what
they've given us. An angry Italian team boss who's resorted
to posing with children's playground toys to get money for
his team, He's like, this is not a fucking kindergarten.
You have got tragedy stuck. It makes incredible dramas. This
(01:08):
fucking you have name calling, mudslinging, sometimes literally punch throwing,
you have triumph, you a fashion. It is like watching
Real Housewives if the real housewives were driving at three
an hour and occasionally catching on fire, and you have
everything in between the high is it very high? The
(01:29):
lawyers feel so incredibly bad? Okay, Lily, thank you. Spicy sounds,
zesty sounds, exciting sounds, high speed. I have no connection.
I have no reason to support some Swiss millionaire who's
driving this car. You know what I mean? There isn't
(01:50):
I need some ownership over somebody, a team, a car,
and that's missing. Maybe if I can connect with some
team or a person or there's a store, worry that
I resonates with me? Now I'm rooting for these people?
Does that make sense? Well? Have I got a podcast
for you from my Heart Radio and Sports Illustrated Studios.
(02:12):
This is Choosing Sides one. Wow, w Hi, welcome to
Choosing Sides f one, a podcast about, um, what what
are we doing here? Lily? So? Um, congrats on signing
(02:34):
a very fancy contract for sports podcast where you know
nothing about the sport. This is this is awesome. That's
a good pitch. Ye Okay, So obviously to care about anything,
you've got to have skin in the game. That's what
we're talking about here. So over the next many weeks, I,
along with a ton of F one insiders and journalists, fans,
(02:55):
all sorts of people, are going to be taking you
on a bit of a journey to understand Formula one,
and we're going to be getting into the inner workings
of every single team, every single driver. By the end,
are going to make a choice as to which team
and driver your support. Um, but you'll soon find that
this is not a straightforward is just choosing the fastest guy,
right or the best team? Um? You know, every single driver,
(03:16):
every single team you know, has their own their own scandals,
their own rivalries, resentments, daddy issues. The number one rule
of F one off the bat, everybody's got daddy issues.
If you don't have one, you can't be in that
seems to be a daddy the team owner. Maybe maybe
we'll actually the first team we talked about, We'll get
(03:37):
into the guy who's who's known as a daddy on
the grid. So, okay, they really got it all. Yeah,
I'm certain I'm gonna I like. I like people competing
under pressure, and it feels like there's a lot of
pressure and steaks when you're moving at that speed for millions,
hundred millions of dollars is that? Sure, money is great,
but death is the ultimate motivator. Then home speed, spills, thrills,
(04:02):
crowding miles in two minutes on the streaming tomic, they
ride with life as the passenger and death on that
tail catra lift. So obviously with sports, yeah, it depends
on where you grew up, depends whence you grew up
watching what your family ended up liking. Obviously a lot
of Americans did not grow up with F one. Um.
But yeah, there is a show on Netflix called Drive
(04:23):
to Survive started coming out I believe in twenty nineteen,
where it's basically a very highly audited, uh and very
dramatic docuseries. I am someone who got very into Formula
one after for no reason at all, clicking on Drive
to Survive on Netflix. What made it interesting was so
Formula one, as we will get into shortly, it's a
very secretive sport. They're very tight lipped. As I said,
(04:45):
there's millions and millions, even billions of dollars at stake,
so there everyone's really close to the vest in the sports.
So it made the show very different was the fact
that it kind of gave you this inside look into
the different garages, into the what's called the paddock, which
is where you know, all of the action takes place,
the cars, all of the commentators, all this stuff. You know,
there are clips of for instance, you know, one driver
(05:06):
crashed into another and went up to that guy during
you know, post race interviews and told him to go
fuck himself, and the guy looked at him on camera
and said, yes, Yes, that's what we got to see
from driver yourself. Suck my Ball's Mate, which is now
on T shirts. You can get it on decorat decorative
mugs that your suck my Ball's Mate mug can be
(05:28):
kept right next to the keep my Wife's Name at
your fucking mouth exactly exactly similar energy and applies. I
had skillfully avoiding another skidding opponent. Okay, so, Tony, what
would someone like my co host Michael Costa or anyone
else who's just brand new to f one need to
(05:48):
know to understand the sport lately? That is like the
hardest question to answer. What do you need to know?
I love it? So that's Formula one Journalist Tony Cowen
Brown I'm a firm believer that the more you know
about something, the more you get more you can enjoy
the actual sport. So Tony literally wrote the Beginner's Guide
(06:09):
to f one with Formula one like the organization, so
she is obviously the perfect person to help us go
on this journey. This this like weird paradox in Formula
one is at the cusp of innovation. The R and
D research behind closed doors inside a Formula one is
like no other. But at the same time, sport has
been around for seventy plus years, is very arcaic, is
(06:31):
deeply rooted in the end of World War Two. Race
car driving in general has been around since the beginning
of of you know, invention of vehicles, right, so in
the early nineteen hundreds you've just got people informally racing
each other. There started to be a little more organization
around race car driving, particularly in Europe in the nineteen
thirties before World War Two. Isn't it say something about
(06:53):
humanity that we invent this amazing combustion engine and then
immediately are like, who can max it out the fastest
to the potentially their personal peril? Exactly, Yeah, we'll crashing
how fast can you get love? Yeah, yeah, I love that.
Good job. Good job humanity for always wanting to push it.
Lucky escape drives back into the race. England produced during
(07:17):
World War Two a lot of airplanes for their military specifically,
and after the war ended. So after World War Two ended,
there was this surplus of aerospace engineers that essentially needed jobs. Simultaneously,
you were also seeing the appearance of compre racing, Grand
Prix racing, which became increasingly popular with the gentleman's who
(07:37):
might have still had that feeling of that hero mentality
that we saw a lot in World War Two. They
were also out of a job, potentially board and keeping busy.
Another interesting thing is that a lot of Europe, and
in particular the United Kingdom, where it's kind of it's
kind of considered the one of the real birthplaces of
Formula one, but the Kingdom had a ton of abandoned
(07:59):
air fields and strips from the war, and so as
a result of all of that, engineers got really creative
and started building these essentially really lightweight cars to race
on these airfields that later became actual tracks. It's round
out a round and drills with kids fast and frequently
(08:21):
that sounds awesome. Yeah, Like, if you can get an
hour away from the family, you and the buddies, grab
some pints and go drive super souped up cars on
an abandoned airfield. Count me in. Yeah. Of course people
got injured and died, but like it's you know, a
couple hours away from the family, it's worth the risk.
So something to note about this time is, first of all,
(08:42):
there were there were no there was an organization to
speak of, right, these are just dudes out there gentlemen's sport. Uh.
The whole idea of safety regulations. Um, we don't know
her at this time, right, Like they're just kind of
doing whatever. There's no helmets, there's no seatbelts, there's nothing
to kind of strap anyone in. You have spectators that
are literally just next to these tracks being protected by
(09:03):
maybe a hay bale or two at the time. Uh
So obviously I'm sure you're yeah, you're wondering when does
this quaint little gentleman's sports become a billion dollar juggernaut.
I like to look at Formula one as there are
two eras in Formula One. There's pre Bernie and then
this post Bernie. So there's a guy who's pretty controversial
enough one Bernie Ecclestone. Bernie ecclestone. Yeah, Bernie, we'll call
(09:27):
him Bernie for great controversial billionaire name. Yeah, he sounds
like a billionaire, he does. And pre Bernie, this was
just like a gentleman's agreement. It was these you know,
like a hobby. But Bernie was very forward thinking and
how he looked at Formula one and he truly turned
Formula one from a hobby into a business. And I
(09:48):
believe it's ninety eight one. He convinced basically the teams
to sign a contract called the Concorde Agreement, asking the teams,
the Formula one teams to commit to racing for a
couple of years. This agreement is still in place today.
And what he did was this contract, which was extremely smart,
is he took this agreement to TV companies and he
would guarantee them coverage. He would basically guarantee that this
(10:10):
race was taking place with all of these incredible manufacturers,
the like of Williams, the like of Ferrari, McLaren, et cetera.
And he would guarantee the teams would get coverage, which
was great for the sponsor, so that they could be
seen worldwide. This was very much cutting edge in the
eighties for him to do disagreement. So there's no question
again whether you like him or not. Polarizing figure. There
(10:31):
is no doubt that what Bernie did Bernie Kinson did
was turned this from a hobby into a money making
machine with huge commercial success. And okay, what makes him
so controversial? I know, like, how much time do we have?
How much time do you have? And also bear in
mind that I look at him through the lens of
(10:53):
a young woman who believes in certain things like equality
and representation under need for diversity. I want to see
what he looks like. Yes, of course the first pictures
him with like a twenty two year old model chick.
She looks like a tall supermodel. He looks like a
villain in a Disney movie. White hair, wrinkly face, wealth
(11:19):
flies private. He looks down at first class. That's what
he calls coaches for his first class. A lot of
the pictures are him with his wife, so he's smart
enough to, oh, here's a picture of him chatting with
Vladimir Putin. In your view, you don't think that Putin
has done anything wrong as a person. I've found him,
very straightforward, honorable, did exactly what he said. Who's going
(11:44):
to do putout in the argument. There are a lot
of people who disagree with you, Bernie eccleston, But thank
you so much for for for coming on the program
and putting that view out there. Bernie eccleston, their former
chief executive of the Formula one group. He's very old school.
He he currently has much said he doesn't like new
or younger F one fans. He still thinks F one
(12:04):
should be uh sort of advertising to you know, old
guys with tons of money. Um. But obviously his system
wasn't really working because until recently, you know, viewership of
F one was going down. But Nixon is no longer
part of Formula one. He actually sold his steak in
Formula one to Liberty Media that now owns this whole venture.
We got drive to survive. We got a lot more
(12:25):
social media from them. Before then, it was very secretive. Yeah,
he's and he's really old at this point. I say,
I mean, old people notoriously are always saying the wrong thing.
But if you're old in nineteen sixty, you're really old.
I always respect anyone who is taking action and doing
something The problem is a lot of those people then
(12:48):
say really stupid shit all the time. But it takes
effort and energy and enthusiasm and balls to like make
shit happen. Right, Yeah, put that on a mug. I
think it'll take a little too much space on the
bug unless it's like a very large bug. But it
can go next to my suck suck my balls mate. Yeah,
(13:10):
I love that. I love that. That was that suck
my ball's mate. Yeah, because you hey, we're racing, yeah,
we're so. Yeah, I will say that guy is back
on the grid and we will get to him later
on this time. And also I'm excited to learn what
the fuck the grid means, yes, because that word is
thrown around a lot. The grid. Yeah, it's an easy way.
It also sound like you know what you're talking about.
It's just the grid the paddock. Yeah. Yeah, I learned
(13:32):
the word kit, you know, relatively recently in my F
one journey. It's I sound infinitely smarter now. It's like
what you wear team, that's that's isn't that British? That
British tennis players would say that. Let me just say
this podcast, the amount of like Brits we've interviewed where
they say motor sport like singular when talking about the plural,
and that I feel but I look at sound ridiculous
(13:53):
as an American saying you know, oh, you know in
the world of motor sports, it's like there's an s
lily and you're like, yeah, next thing, you know, you're
going to say that you had to go to hospital. Yeah.
I feel like I'm like like one one interview a
way everywhere from switching into hospital. Plus they also think,
just like we think, they're also smart because they sound
that way. They just automatically think we're dumb and usually
(14:16):
they're right. But there's also dumb Brits. I want to
be very clear and please put this in the podcast.
There are really dumb British people. Okay, got it. It's
round out to roundo thrills with skids fast and frequently
these cars they all look the same to me on
(14:37):
the outside. But what is I mean, what are these cars?
A good A good question. So I'm sure you know
what NASCAR is. You probably heard of indie car in
the Indie Fire and uh, what's interesting is those those
cars are what's called they're usually Spec series is what
it's called I get another term that will make you
sound instantly smarter. More often than not, everyone's kind of
(14:58):
driving the same things. The idea is that there's a
pretty even playing field in terms of the machinery. But
Formula one is a completely different beast. Formula one is
a rules based car racing category. So this is F
one journalist Hazel Southwell. She specializes in the design and
technical aspects of the sport. The design of cars is
(15:19):
largely free, except for the technical regulations that guide teams
to create similar vehicles within some parameters. It's called formula one.
Part of that quote unquote formula is the fact that, yeah,
there are regulations, there are rules, and everyone's just trying
to kind of tiptoe around them, you know, get us
(15:40):
close to the edge of the cliff and hope they
don't fall in. That means it's very technically driven. It's
something which has huge amounts of research and development behind it,
so that you might see one guy standing on the podium,
it's actually thousands of people in or hundreds of people
where a minimum teams that contribute to those victories. F
(16:04):
one is as much almost like an engineering competition on
steroids as it is a driving championship. Cheating in Formula
one is a fundamental part of the way the Formula
One is kind of played as a sport because in
creative interpretation of the rules is basically how you get
(16:24):
an advantage over your opponents. If everyone just interpreted the
rules to their letter, then you'd have twenty identical cars
and it wouldn't be very interesting for anyone. But as
soon as somebody sees perhaps a loophole or a gap
or a way that they can be interpreted differently, then
(16:45):
you have a possibility to gain an advantage or to
make a truly terrible car. You see teams in previous
decades have, for instance, put more wheels on the car
to see if they would make them run faster. They've
put weird stuff on the back of the car. They've
tried everything in their power, and of course, you know,
every once in a while a team just completely nails
it right out of the blue and suddenly they are
(17:05):
just lapping people because they figured out some key thing
within the regulations, usually barely in the regulations to do that.
Can I say something about that every sport at the
highest level is the finest line between being innovative and
cheating every every sport. I mean, from Tom Brady and
(17:27):
the deflated football's to a hockey player retaping the top
of their stick, or could the cur every sport you
need an edge? That's how good your competition is cheating
the art of skillful cheating. Um, it's pretty murky. There's
been a lot of interesting scandals involving cars that were
(17:49):
deemed illegal. Quite famously, in Lewis Hamilton's first year, McLaren
lost the World Championship was stripped of absolutely all its points,
uh because it was discovered that they had been involved
in spying on Ferrari. So the other thing that I
do love though, about the fact that everyone's barely trying
(18:09):
to barely not cheat, means that everyone else complains about
folks barely not cheating. So so a lot of the
ongoing drama, for instance, in Formula one, is these various
team bosses either very loudly whining or very casually mildly
suggesting that their competitors have done something not kosher. It's
like when your parents set a rule and you kind
(18:30):
of like you really you sort of push it right
up until the final interpretation of that rule. Um, but
with you know, tens of millions of pounds of financial consequence.
If you are cool, they're not getting around. They have
rules where if you're a competitor and you touch another
team's car, like let's say, even bump it, they'll find you,
you know, fifty pounds like there. You know, And you've
(18:51):
also had teams get upset when drivers even kind of
looked at their car, which is not illegal. So they're
allowed to do that, right, stop looking at my car.
I as a sports fan, I appreciate them doing that,
trying to keep the sport fair. I also cannot imagine
the intelligence, the money, and there are so many moving
(19:12):
parts literally on a race car. Jesus, that's a huge undertaking.
There is a lot of people, technology all mixed into
this competition. Arrival no mean feet on the greasy track
much a ticklish moment when Noma Tradi six pycraft in
his Emerson car. So the f I A and like
(19:35):
I said, this governing body, um, they do come out
with smaller regulations and other changes and things, you know,
year to year, even sometimes race to race if something
really bad has happened, but every few years and there's
no real set time for this to happen, they will
put out a whole new list of regulations. Two Fumula
one regulations were brought in to address had been an
(19:58):
issue for going back well over a decade, with the
fact that the aerodynamics, which are brilliant and incredibly clever,
don't work very well when they get close to other cars.
So as a consequence, there hasn't always been very good
overtaking um. There have been some pretty dismal Grand Prix
with single digit or even no overtakes UM and that
(20:22):
is not what people tune into most sport to watch.
You want to see some friction exactly. So the rule
book was radically rewritten to readdress the way that aerodynamics
work on formul among cars in order to ensure that
when they get close to another car, they're not going
to dramatically lose all of the features that let them
(20:45):
grip to the track, that let them take corners as
fast as they do, that let them have the cars
stability for the drivers to be able to go at
the speeds that they do. So you know, this is
the perfect time for you to join up one because
new regulations mean utter chaos, right because you can see
teams that have dominated just completely funk up the regulations, right,
they take certain gambles in certain risks and they do
(21:06):
not pay off. And on the flip side, you'll see
teams that we're just doing okay or maybe even horrifically
completely nail those regulations and all of a sudden they
go from being you know, back of the pack to hey,
like they they're actually in it with the points and
they're they're kind of moving and grooving. So so yes,
that's like the fun part right now is we've seen
some chaotic races where you know, the You've got the
(21:27):
current reigning world champion in the first three races of
two he hasn't finished two of those races because of
issues with his car. So obviously a talented driver completely
undone by faulty issues with the car under new regulations.
I'm I'm surprised and very interested that it feels like
the driver, the athlete superstar has an important role, but
(21:52):
it feels like it's almost a fifty fifty importance to
the team science maybe less. I don't know. Funny you
should mentioned drivers because that's actually a great segue. Yeah,
could you could really get in a Formula one car
and move forward. I have trouble driving my Subaru Forester
when I'm back at home, let alone, and there's not Also,
(22:13):
that's not a fair question to ask a New Yorker
because nobody here knows how to drive. I would even
know how to get in, Like it's a whole endeavor
just to kind of wiggle your way into one of
these things. So to get back to our slightly more
professional drivers, I am not one of those. Interestingly enough,
many people do not view Formula One drivers as actual
real athletes. People underestimate how physical this board is just
(22:37):
because you know, it looks easy when you look at
the onboard cameras. You know, they look like the cars
are perfect and it's just you steering. But um, it's
very demanding. So that was Tatiana Calderone. She was actually
the last female to drive in F one car for
a team called Alfa Romeo. We'll hear more about Alfa
Romeo and we'll hear more from Tatiana later in the season.
(23:00):
I had asked her to describe what it's like to
drive enough one car when you're going more than three
hundred kilometers an hour and you have to turn in
flat to a corner to turn the weed. It's is
very heavy and you have to do that eighteen or
nineteen times per lap, you know, so it's for one
an hour, one hour and thirty minutes. Two hours is
(23:23):
stressful for for your body and for your mind. Your
heart rate goes up, so you're always and at around
one sixty or one fifty bibs per minute in the
heat with very little air is unbelievably hot in race cars.
Reporter Hazel Southwell, again, it can easily be sustainedly over
(23:44):
sixty centigrade. I'm not sure what that is in fahrenheit.
That's a hundred and forty degrees fahrenheit Jesus. Secondly, they're
undergoing enormous amounts of g fours, so every time they
take a corner, instead of breaking like we would and
maybe coming almost to a standstill to take a right
angle corner, they just carry through as much speed as possible,
(24:08):
so they will be going through a right angle corner
over a hundred and fifty miles per hour. If you
think about pulling like five or six G through a corner,
then everything weighs five or six times more than it does,
so basically it tries to rip their head off. F
one driver's up. They've got very big necks because they
actually have to train their next is like a separate
(24:29):
portion of their like physio, because the head is swapping
her out. They had to do so many hours of
training in the neck to just even be able to
drive the car, let alone push it. You know, I
felt like a robot at times. I had to change
my shirt sides. The G forces that go through your
body are incredible. There was an inty car driver who
(24:51):
got the chance a couple of months ago to test
out enough one car, and he's straight upset. He's like,
I could almost not complete the last couple of apps
because my head would not stay up. And this is
still into car guy, right, so he still does this
in his own sport, but he's like, it is a
million times more intense enough one Over the course of
a Grand Prix weekend, they're doing hundreds of laps, so um,
(25:12):
they have to be able to do that and for
the physical demands of driving to be completely irrelevant because
the mental concentration on what they're doing is so complete
that you have to be fit enough that all of
those factors, the heat, the G force are all like
just background noise. It's about finding that balance and that rhedom.
(25:35):
It's like playing music. You know. You you drive with
your hands as well as with your feet, and it
has to be in a harmony. And that's what I love,
trying to find harmony. I love that she's operating this
car on a totally different level. I'm very interested in
the steering wheel, and I'm very interested in shifting if
they shift, yeah, I don't know. They are making hundreds
(26:01):
of adjustments per lap. Formerly one drivers change gear eighty
times roughly around a lot. So that's just a lot
of gear changes if you think about the fact that
that will be taking place over the course of say
eighty seconds. And that's actually, to be honest, the most
basic thing they're doing. Um they're then constantly adjusting settings,
(26:21):
so they'll be changing things like the break balance, things
like engine modes, like modes for the hybrid system. Driver
default Charlie eighty five. When you can drive a default
C eighty five. When you can that's on the m
F A rotary to ten o'clock position, I cannot go it.
I cannot go it. Shop it up mass. If you
(26:42):
can move m F A to positions see and then
select eighty five on the dot if it nowhere again
eighty five. If you see a poso of the Formula
one steering wheel, they'll have like at least eight dials
which will all have sort of like twenty settings, and
all of those settings interact with each other us. So
if you think about how many permutations you could have
(27:04):
of something, and then they have various other buttons that
are just for like, um, quick deployment of something, or
for the radio or to show that they've heard a message.
You'll hear times where drivers can get kind of frustrated
and be like I just need a minute, Like I
just seed a minute. Let me just take a deep
breath and figure out what fucking button to push right now?
(27:25):
Is pitted if we can get in proNT of ghastly,
we get some prayer and it's good for us. I
just stop sucking talking. And they have to remember where
all of that is, not touch it at the wrong time,
and they have to be able to do all of
that whilst they're flying around a track at hundreds and
hundreds of an hour, being flung around what's basically you know,
(27:46):
a little tub, and they're trying to win and not
just die. Listen to the plan, stay hydrated, press the
right button, deal with g force. And also this isn't
even factoring in weather, right, so sometimes it's your interrrential downpour.
Trying to just see physically where you're at. Sounds fun,
as if there wasn't enough complexity to this. The other
thing to note on kind of a larger competitive scale
(28:09):
is that the stakes for these right now men, uh,
it isn't just life or death and winning. It's also
that in Formula one there's this old saying that you're
only as good as your last race. If you're really underperforming,
you know they will pull you out. The stakes are
fucking high. That's awesome. Yeah, yeah, it's cool. All right?
So who are these men? Who are these drivers? Rich kids?
(28:33):
How do you become a driver? Is there a is
there a qualifying tournament? In tennis? I can sign up
for qualifying and work my way up the ladder. Can
I do that in Formula one? Somebody these guys start
racing as kids. You've got guys in here who started
racing it three years old. In in karting, you will
his stories from the Australian Daniel Acada about what it
means to leave your family at the age of fourteen
(28:54):
fifteen and to dedicate your whole life into that. That's
Tony Cowen Brown again. I think for me to eyes
one of the reasons why you get these drivers who
are solely dedicated on one spot on one spot alone,
because they've had to leave a lot behind and give
up a lot to do the thing that they love. So,
if you're an elementary school kid who's trying to to
have like a serious carding career, that can cost upwards
I know it sounds very funny to say, uh, that
(29:15):
can cost upwards of a hundred thousand dollars a year.
You need some sort of lifeline too. I don't get
the sense that Formula one gives too many ships about
like the helping the underprivileged kids learning about Formula one.
They do not, and there is a push from certain
drivers to be better. There's a lot of very vague
sort of um girl bossy like you know, like wait, wait,
(29:37):
everyone should know that, you know, they can do whatever
they want. If you want to be a driver, you
can do it. And you're like, I'm sorry, with what
checker you're gonna help me? Do that. There's a lot
of that kind of speak, especially in the current day
h F one's trying to pretend that they really care
about things other than money. But on the other flip
side of this, money is a huge part of it.
(29:57):
But there are still, thanks to regulations, there's still a
lot of other barriers to keep bad drivers or kind
of hobby ritchie riches out of the sport. The f
i A has like certain criteria that you need to
hit to become a Formula one driver. One of that
is getting a super license. I know it's not a
very original name super license, but me it means that
you've you've participated in a certain number of junior racing categories,
(30:23):
uh and you've earned a certain number if I believe
the now requisite number of points is forty quote unquote
you know, super license points, and you need to do
that within three years. Obviously need your road license, and
now you need to be eighteen or above. And fun fact,
the fact that Max for Stappen got into F one
as early as he did wouldn't have been possible if
he was trying today because he would have had to
be a minimum age of eighteen. So we'll get it
(30:45):
all into Max Verstappen, the current world champion, who is
incredibly controversial. When we talk about red bull racing in
a few episodes. Um, this may be a dumb question,
but when you say red bull racing, you're referring to
a team, right, correct? What is the Formula one team?
What does that even mean? That is an excellent question.
We will get into all of the teams after their
(31:07):
short break. So okay, So at its core, F one
is kind of team based in this interesting way. When
you think of football, you've got I don't even know
what is it over fifty players on a team. It's
a lot, right. This is the cool thing about Formula one.
There are essentially twenty drivers, ten teams, ten team principles.
There's a couple of reserve drivers here and there, but
(31:28):
essentially does not that many people that you need to
start to get to know, which is really cool. That's
clear and simple. I like, very easy barrier to entry,
you know. So if someone ever tries to be like, oh,
you can't be a real fan unless you name all
the drivers, I'm like, bitch, I can do that because
it's really not that hard. So within Formula one, this
is funky there's actually two simultaneous championships going on. Why
(31:50):
not add to the complexity exactly as if there wasn't
enough going on between, like the drivers frying in their
cars and like the engineering and the crashes and the explosions.
We have two different championships. You remember one thing, remember
the Informula One that was both the driver Championship and
there was the Team Constructor Championship. So the Constructors Championship
(32:11):
is interesting because F one dolls out prize money depending
on where you place, so it actually really matters that
you end up in fifth place over sixth place. You
know that you're looking at hundreds of millions of dollars
based on just finishing a couple of places up. You know,
you beat a team by one point. By the end
of the season, you're looking at a much bigger windfall
(32:31):
than you would have been otherwise. They dole out the
money at the end of the season. Yeah. Yeah, So
like last year Mercedes, which won the Constructors Championship, Uh,
they walked away with sixty three million in prize money
just for getting that placement in the season. Williams got eighth,
they ended up with thirteen million. It's almost like like
a reverse draft. Like you know, if you do terribly,
(32:53):
you don't get first pick, and you're still in fact
end up the loser at the bottom. Here, there's two ways,
in my opinion, like bucketing the teams. If you will,
you could divide the twenty cars and the twenty drivers
into roughly three categories. You've got the best of the
best that are fighting for the championship. That's generally the
top three to top four right now. Those are you know,
(33:13):
the likes of Mercedes, render Bull, Ferrari McLaren. Then you've
got what we call the best of the rest, and
then you have the rest of the rest um and
the best of the rest and the rest is essentially
what we call the midfield in Formula one. This is
where essentially the fun happens. Anything can happen in the midfield.
In American culture, in general politics, whatever we love, we
(33:35):
love a first past the post moment. Right we watched
wonder who got there first, who won the thing, etcetera.
N F one. Uh, you have a lot of people
who for teams that are not the championship winning team.
You're you get excited when like I just want my
favorite team if they score just two points at this race,
they will go from being ten out of ten to
eighth out of ten. You know, like can they just
(33:56):
like you know, get it? Um? I will say too,
because I'm sure you're wondering what are point? How many points?
So you get points and it's a descending amount for
first through tenth place, so if you get eleven through twenty,
you get nada. And what's more important the team championship
or the individual driver? I mean, if you are an
individual driver, you're just trying to win always. Right. Here's
(34:18):
actually where a lot of the drama and if one
comes in. So obviously we all think to ourselves, well,
they're competing against other teams, they're all fighting against each other.
But the thing to think about is, as we've talked about,
all of these cars are radically different from one another.
So if there's two drivers on a team, if you're
a driver, there's only one other person on the grid
who's going to have the same car to you, and
(34:39):
that is your teammate. And so your biggest competitor on
the grid is going to be your teammate. Yeah, because
you that's really who's the best driver. You're both driving
the same car. Exactly, and so there's a lot of
drama around. You know, there's almost there's drama around if
one teammate is completely clabboring the other teammate and points.
There's also a ton of drama if you have really
(35:00):
evenly matched drivers who are just trying to eke out
that extra point over their teammate. You know, there's been
times where teammates have crashed into each other, multiple endless
occasions of this. You know. You also, though, have times
where a team will prefer one driver over the other,
and especially if they're you know, they're, hey, this person
(35:20):
is doing much better than the championship, especially if they're
contending for the driver's title, So they'll kind of ask
one driver to to almost like sacrifice their race or
their placement to help the other driver. And obviously these
are big, ego driven guys, they are not happy about that.
So that that also the whole team competition almost seems
to funk with the essence of being number one. Yeah,
(35:44):
I mean, everyone's competitive. These drivers don't get to this
position if they're not some of the most hyper competitive,
intense people we've ever met. And now they're now you're
adding another competition within the competition, which is even more
it's like a family sibling dynamic. Two vcieties come together.
That's Hamilton trying to pass on the inside and he
(36:05):
can cover his hands over his eyes. Hamilton's takes out
his teammates and there will be a big, big inquiry
behind closed doors into that if that all was insaney enough.
You have times where the team will kind of give
what what are what are called quote unquoteam orders. What
will kind of say, you know, hey, move, moved to
the side. You know so and so is passing, Okay,
let let Nico pass the slack Please let Nico passed
(36:27):
on the main stop in the stry and they won't listen.
You don't even get to be that successful if you
always accept all orders exactly exactly. You want your driver
to be a little bit like that. Yeah, if both
people crash out, you get no points. And so can
you imagine if let's say your drivers were one and
two and the guy in second place just couldn't couldn't
(36:49):
help himself and crashes into number one, you're out, like
you just you just lost, you know, a huge haul
of points for no reason other than ego, what the
fund did I say, what did I a fuck me?
It's unnecessary? Is he? Okay, Michael, how are you feeling
having just become an expert in F one in the
span of thirty minutes. There's a lot. It sounds really cool.
(37:13):
I'm excited to watch. I think I have even more
respect for the driver, right, even though so much of
this is science and innovation and tech. When you went
through the list of what they have to deal with
while not dying, while trying to win, while going two
(37:34):
hundred miles an hour, it's fascinating. I also can understand
why it doesn't have like necessarily a mass appeal. The sport.
It seems so wealthy and the but the money, the
money that needs to go into this is so high.
But in a in a beautiful way. It's like fun
that they're just so rich and like this is what
(37:55):
it is, and uh, you know we're not. There's no
pick up Formula one races at the playground, you know
what I mean? Yeah, I was gonna say, you really
don't get like ether rich vibes from F one annything.
They're like hug the rich. Definitely don't get ether rich
in our world today where everyone's so carefully crafting their
image and brand, which I'm sure Formula one is as well.
(38:16):
It's kind of fun to have someone there's some world
just lean into. Look, we're rich as fun and we're
trying to race as fast as we can. Like this
sport is entirely unnecessary, but like we're doing it anyway,
and we're richer than you, by the way, Like it's
it's fine. Yeah. So we've talked very generally about the
endless numbers of rules and regulations within Formula one and
(38:37):
how it works, but I'm really excited to actually dive
into you know, the teams, the drivers, the rivalries, the scandals,
the thirst traps. There's lots of thirst traps so so
state tuned, but daddy issues galore. So basically, how this
will work is will dedicate roughly an episode sometimes two
(38:58):
to each team and it's drivers, so you can get
a sense of how the team operates, how it came
through the ranks, and what those drivers are like now.
So hopefully by the end you'll be able to figure out,
you know, which team you want to support going forward
and which driver you really like the most. I'm open.
Let's put it this way. There's a lot of motion
(39:19):
and movement trying to get me and others into formula one.
I am willing to be convinced. I'm willing to to
become a fan of the sport. But if I don't,
just give that away. Yeah okay, yeah, okay, okay, yeah,
no pressure on me. Just gotta get you. Whenever I'm
listening into a bunch of yeah, like angry men on
(39:39):
a racetrack, It's great. This has been Choosing Sides F one,
a production of Sports Illustrated Studios and I Heart Radio.
Check in next week to learn all about the Mercedes team.
The show was hosted by Michael Costa and Lily Herman.
This episode was produced by Lily Herman and our senior produce,
(40:00):
Sir Johai Mittal, who also did the sound design at
the cutting room. Studios were recorded by engineer Robot Leary,
mastering by Cello Ice Blue. Max Miller is the executive
producer and Brennan get Just his head of audio at
s I Studios. At I Heart Radio, Sean Titone is
our executive producer. For more podcasts from my Heart Radio,
(40:24):
visit the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever
you get your podcasts and don't forget to rate us
and tell your friends. It'll mean a lot
Ready, Ready, cool, Michael, what do you know about Formula
one racing? Um? I do know the name Michael Schumacher.
Oh that's more than I knew. Yeah, because when I
was a kid, there was the trivia of who's the
highest paid athlete in the world, and it was a
trap to get you to say, like Michael Jordan's and
(00:21):
it was this guy never heard of named Michael Schumacher,
a different Michael. I know it's a car race. So
I do feel a little bit like Bill Hayter's iconic
Saturday Night Live sketch Stefen. The sport really has everything.
So you've got people who are willingly hurdling themselves in
carbon fiber death traps at over two break five, literal
(00:46):
and actual Nigerian Prince scams. Maybe we don't look the
gift horse in the mouth and we just accept what
they've given us. An angry Italian team boss who's resorted
to posing with children's playground toys to get money for
his team, He's like, this is not a fucking kindergarten.
You have got tragedy stuck. It makes incredible dramas. This
(01:08):
fucking you have name calling, mudslinging, sometimes literally punch throwing,
you have triumph, you a fashion. It is like watching
Real Housewives if the real housewives were driving at three
an hour and occasionally catching on fire, and you have
everything in between the high is it very high? The
(01:29):
lawyers feel so incredibly bad? Okay, Lily, thank you. Spicy sounds,
zesty sounds, exciting sounds, high speed. I have no connection.
I have no reason to support some Swiss millionaire who's
driving this car. You know what I mean? There isn't
(01:50):
I need some ownership over somebody, a team, a car,
and that's missing. Maybe if I can connect with some
team or a person or there's a store, worry that
I resonates with me? Now I'm rooting for these people?
Does that make sense? Well? Have I got a podcast
for you from my Heart Radio and Sports Illustrated Studios.
(02:12):
This is Choosing Sides one. Wow, w Hi, welcome to
Choosing Sides f one, a podcast about, um, what what
are we doing here? Lily? So? Um, congrats on signing
(02:34):
a very fancy contract for sports podcast where you know
nothing about the sport. This is this is awesome. That's
a good pitch. Ye Okay, So obviously to care about anything,
you've got to have skin in the game. That's what
we're talking about here. So over the next many weeks, I,
along with a ton of F one insiders and journalists, fans,
(02:55):
all sorts of people, are going to be taking you
on a bit of a journey to understand Formula one,
and we're going to be getting into the inner workings
of every single team, every single driver. By the end,
are going to make a choice as to which team
and driver your support. Um, but you'll soon find that
this is not a straightforward is just choosing the fastest guy,
right or the best team? Um? You know, every single driver,
(03:16):
every single team you know, has their own their own scandals,
their own rivalries, resentments, daddy issues. The number one rule
of F one off the bat, everybody's got daddy issues.
If you don't have one, you can't be in that
seems to be a daddy the team owner. Maybe maybe
we'll actually the first team we talked about, We'll get
(03:37):
into the guy who's who's known as a daddy on
the grid. So, okay, they really got it all. Yeah,
I'm certain I'm gonna I like. I like people competing
under pressure, and it feels like there's a lot of
pressure and steaks when you're moving at that speed for millions,
hundred millions of dollars is that? Sure, money is great,
but death is the ultimate motivator. Then home speed, spills, thrills,
(04:02):
crowding miles in two minutes on the streaming tomic, they
ride with life as the passenger and death on that
tail catra lift. So obviously with sports, yeah, it depends
on where you grew up, depends whence you grew up
watching what your family ended up liking. Obviously a lot
of Americans did not grow up with F one. Um.
But yeah, there is a show on Netflix called Drive
(04:23):
to Survive started coming out I believe in twenty nineteen,
where it's basically a very highly audited, uh and very
dramatic docuseries. I am someone who got very into Formula
one after for no reason at all, clicking on Drive
to Survive on Netflix. What made it interesting was so
Formula one, as we will get into shortly, it's a
very secretive sport. They're very tight lipped. As I said,
(04:45):
there's millions and millions, even billions of dollars at stake,
so there everyone's really close to the vest in the sports.
So it made the show very different was the fact
that it kind of gave you this inside look into
the different garages, into the what's called the paddock, which
is where you know, all of the action takes place,
the cars, all of the commentators, all this stuff. You know,
there are clips of for instance, you know, one driver
(05:06):
crashed into another and went up to that guy during
you know, post race interviews and told him to go
fuck himself, and the guy looked at him on camera
and said, yes, Yes, that's what we got to see
from driver yourself. Suck my Ball's Mate, which is now
on T shirts. You can get it on decorat decorative
mugs that your suck my Ball's Mate mug can be
(05:28):
kept right next to the keep my Wife's Name at
your fucking mouth exactly exactly similar energy and applies. I
had skillfully avoiding another skidding opponent. Okay, so, Tony, what
would someone like my co host Michael Costa or anyone
else who's just brand new to f one need to
(05:48):
know to understand the sport lately? That is like the
hardest question to answer. What do you need to know?
I love it? So that's Formula one Journalist Tony Cowen
Brown I'm a firm believer that the more you know
about something, the more you get more you can enjoy
the actual sport. So Tony literally wrote the Beginner's Guide
(06:09):
to f one with Formula one like the organization, so
she is obviously the perfect person to help us go
on this journey. This this like weird paradox in Formula
one is at the cusp of innovation. The R and
D research behind closed doors inside a Formula one is
like no other. But at the same time, sport has
been around for seventy plus years, is very arcaic, is
(06:31):
deeply rooted in the end of World War Two. Race
car driving in general has been around since the beginning
of of you know, invention of vehicles, right, so in
the early nineteen hundreds you've just got people informally racing
each other. There started to be a little more organization
around race car driving, particularly in Europe in the nineteen
thirties before World War Two. Isn't it say something about
(06:53):
humanity that we invent this amazing combustion engine and then
immediately are like, who can max it out the fastest
to the potentially their personal peril? Exactly, Yeah, we'll crashing
how fast can you get love? Yeah, yeah, I love that.
Good job. Good job humanity for always wanting to push it.
Lucky escape drives back into the race. England produced during
(07:17):
World War Two a lot of airplanes for their military specifically,
and after the war ended. So after World War Two ended,
there was this surplus of aerospace engineers that essentially needed jobs. Simultaneously,
you were also seeing the appearance of compre racing, Grand
Prix racing, which became increasingly popular with the gentleman's who
(07:37):
might have still had that feeling of that hero mentality
that we saw a lot in World War Two. They
were also out of a job, potentially board and keeping busy.
Another interesting thing is that a lot of Europe, and
in particular the United Kingdom, where it's kind of it's
kind of considered the one of the real birthplaces of
Formula one, but the Kingdom had a ton of abandoned
(07:59):
air fields and strips from the war, and so as
a result of all of that, engineers got really creative
and started building these essentially really lightweight cars to race
on these airfields that later became actual tracks. It's round
out a round and drills with kids fast and frequently
(08:21):
that sounds awesome. Yeah, Like, if you can get an
hour away from the family, you and the buddies, grab
some pints and go drive super souped up cars on
an abandoned airfield. Count me in. Yeah. Of course people
got injured and died, but like it's you know, a
couple hours away from the family, it's worth the risk.
So something to note about this time is, first of all,
(08:42):
there were there were no there was an organization to
speak of, right, these are just dudes out there gentlemen's sport. Uh.
The whole idea of safety regulations. Um, we don't know
her at this time, right, Like they're just kind of
doing whatever. There's no helmets, there's no seatbelts, there's nothing
to kind of strap anyone in. You have spectators that
are literally just next to these tracks being protected by
(09:03):
maybe a hay bale or two at the time. Uh
So obviously I'm sure you're yeah, you're wondering when does
this quaint little gentleman's sports become a billion dollar juggernaut.
I like to look at Formula one as there are
two eras in Formula One. There's pre Bernie and then
this post Bernie. So there's a guy who's pretty controversial
enough one Bernie Ecclestone. Bernie ecclestone. Yeah, Bernie, we'll call
(09:27):
him Bernie for great controversial billionaire name. Yeah, he sounds
like a billionaire, he does. And pre Bernie, this was
just like a gentleman's agreement. It was these you know,
like a hobby. But Bernie was very forward thinking and
how he looked at Formula one and he truly turned
Formula one from a hobby into a business. And I
(09:48):
believe it's ninety eight one. He convinced basically the teams
to sign a contract called the Concorde Agreement, asking the teams,
the Formula one teams to commit to racing for a
couple of years. This agreement is still in place today.
And what he did was this contract, which was extremely smart,
is he took this agreement to TV companies and he
would guarantee them coverage. He would basically guarantee that this
(10:10):
race was taking place with all of these incredible manufacturers,
the like of Williams, the like of Ferrari, McLaren, et cetera.
And he would guarantee the teams would get coverage, which
was great for the sponsor, so that they could be
seen worldwide. This was very much cutting edge in the
eighties for him to do disagreement. So there's no question
again whether you like him or not. Polarizing figure. There
(10:31):
is no doubt that what Bernie did Bernie Kinson did
was turned this from a hobby into a money making
machine with huge commercial success. And okay, what makes him
so controversial? I know, like, how much time do we have?
How much time do you have? And also bear in
mind that I look at him through the lens of
(10:53):
a young woman who believes in certain things like equality
and representation under need for diversity. I want to see
what he looks like. Yes, of course the first pictures
him with like a twenty two year old model chick.
She looks like a tall supermodel. He looks like a
villain in a Disney movie. White hair, wrinkly face, wealth
(11:19):
flies private. He looks down at first class. That's what
he calls coaches for his first class. A lot of
the pictures are him with his wife, so he's smart
enough to, oh, here's a picture of him chatting with
Vladimir Putin. In your view, you don't think that Putin
has done anything wrong as a person. I've found him,
very straightforward, honorable, did exactly what he said. Who's going
(11:44):
to do putout in the argument. There are a lot
of people who disagree with you, Bernie eccleston, But thank
you so much for for for coming on the program
and putting that view out there. Bernie eccleston, their former
chief executive of the Formula one group. He's very old school.
He he currently has much said he doesn't like new
or younger F one fans. He still thinks F one
(12:04):
should be uh sort of advertising to you know, old
guys with tons of money. Um. But obviously his system
wasn't really working because until recently, you know, viewership of
F one was going down. But Nixon is no longer
part of Formula one. He actually sold his steak in
Formula one to Liberty Media that now owns this whole venture.
We got drive to survive. We got a lot more
(12:25):
social media from them. Before then, it was very secretive. Yeah,
he's and he's really old at this point. I say,
I mean, old people notoriously are always saying the wrong thing.
But if you're old in nineteen sixty, you're really old.
I always respect anyone who is taking action and doing
something The problem is a lot of those people then
(12:48):
say really stupid shit all the time. But it takes
effort and energy and enthusiasm and balls to like make
shit happen. Right, Yeah, put that on a mug. I
think it'll take a little too much space on the
bug unless it's like a very large bug. But it
can go next to my suck suck my balls mate. Yeah,
(13:10):
I love that. I love that. That was that suck
my ball's mate. Yeah, because you hey, we're racing, yeah,
we're so. Yeah, I will say that guy is back
on the grid and we will get to him later
on this time. And also I'm excited to learn what
the fuck the grid means, yes, because that word is
thrown around a lot. The grid. Yeah, it's an easy way.
It also sound like you know what you're talking about.
It's just the grid the paddock. Yeah. Yeah, I learned
(13:32):
the word kit, you know, relatively recently in my F
one journey. It's I sound infinitely smarter now. It's like
what you wear team, that's that's isn't that British? That
British tennis players would say that. Let me just say
this podcast, the amount of like Brits we've interviewed where
they say motor sport like singular when talking about the plural,
and that I feel but I look at sound ridiculous
(13:53):
as an American saying you know, oh, you know in
the world of motor sports, it's like there's an s
lily and you're like, yeah, next thing, you know, you're
going to say that you had to go to hospital. Yeah.
I feel like I'm like like one one interview a
way everywhere from switching into hospital. Plus they also think,
just like we think, they're also smart because they sound
that way. They just automatically think we're dumb and usually
(14:16):
they're right. But there's also dumb Brits. I want to
be very clear and please put this in the podcast.
There are really dumb British people. Okay, got it. It's
round out to roundo thrills with skids fast and frequently
these cars they all look the same to me on
(14:37):
the outside. But what is I mean, what are these cars?
A good A good question. So I'm sure you know
what NASCAR is. You probably heard of indie car in
the Indie Fire and uh, what's interesting is those those
cars are what's called they're usually Spec series is what
it's called I get another term that will make you
sound instantly smarter. More often than not, everyone's kind of
(14:58):
driving the same things. The idea is that there's a
pretty even playing field in terms of the machinery. But
Formula one is a completely different beast. Formula one is
a rules based car racing category. So this is F
one journalist Hazel Southwell. She specializes in the design and
technical aspects of the sport. The design of cars is
(15:19):
largely free, except for the technical regulations that guide teams
to create similar vehicles within some parameters. It's called formula one.
Part of that quote unquote formula is the fact that, yeah,
there are regulations, there are rules, and everyone's just trying
to kind of tiptoe around them, you know, get us
(15:40):
close to the edge of the cliff and hope they
don't fall in. That means it's very technically driven. It's
something which has huge amounts of research and development behind it,
so that you might see one guy standing on the podium,
it's actually thousands of people in or hundreds of people
where a minimum teams that contribute to those victories. F
(16:04):
one is as much almost like an engineering competition on
steroids as it is a driving championship. Cheating in Formula
one is a fundamental part of the way the Formula
One is kind of played as a sport because in
creative interpretation of the rules is basically how you get
(16:24):
an advantage over your opponents. If everyone just interpreted the
rules to their letter, then you'd have twenty identical cars
and it wouldn't be very interesting for anyone. But as
soon as somebody sees perhaps a loophole or a gap
or a way that they can be interpreted differently, then
(16:45):
you have a possibility to gain an advantage or to
make a truly terrible car. You see teams in previous
decades have, for instance, put more wheels on the car
to see if they would make them run faster. They've
put weird stuff on the back of the car. They've
tried everything in their power, and of course, you know,
every once in a while a team just completely nails
it right out of the blue and suddenly they are
(17:05):
just lapping people because they figured out some key thing
within the regulations, usually barely in the regulations to do that.
Can I say something about that every sport at the
highest level is the finest line between being innovative and
cheating every every sport. I mean, from Tom Brady and
(17:27):
the deflated football's to a hockey player retaping the top
of their stick, or could the cur every sport you
need an edge? That's how good your competition is cheating
the art of skillful cheating. Um, it's pretty murky. There's
been a lot of interesting scandals involving cars that were
(17:49):
deemed illegal. Quite famously, in Lewis Hamilton's first year, McLaren
lost the World Championship was stripped of absolutely all its points,
uh because it was discovered that they had been involved
in spying on Ferrari. So the other thing that I
do love though, about the fact that everyone's barely trying
(18:09):
to barely not cheat, means that everyone else complains about
folks barely not cheating. So so a lot of the
ongoing drama, for instance, in Formula one, is these various
team bosses either very loudly whining or very casually mildly
suggesting that their competitors have done something not kosher. It's
like when your parents set a rule and you kind
(18:30):
of like you really you sort of push it right
up until the final interpretation of that rule. Um, but
with you know, tens of millions of pounds of financial consequence.
If you are cool, they're not getting around. They have
rules where if you're a competitor and you touch another
team's car, like let's say, even bump it, they'll find you,
you know, fifty pounds like there. You know, And you've
(18:51):
also had teams get upset when drivers even kind of
looked at their car, which is not illegal. So they're
allowed to do that, right, stop looking at my car.
I as a sports fan, I appreciate them doing that,
trying to keep the sport fair. I also cannot imagine
the intelligence, the money, and there are so many moving
(19:12):
parts literally on a race car. Jesus, that's a huge undertaking.
There is a lot of people, technology all mixed into
this competition. Arrival no mean feet on the greasy track
much a ticklish moment when Noma Tradi six pycraft in
his Emerson car. So the f I A and like
(19:35):
I said, this governing body, um, they do come out
with smaller regulations and other changes and things, you know,
year to year, even sometimes race to race if something
really bad has happened, but every few years and there's
no real set time for this to happen, they will
put out a whole new list of regulations. Two Fumula
one regulations were brought in to address had been an
(19:58):
issue for going back well over a decade, with the
fact that the aerodynamics, which are brilliant and incredibly clever,
don't work very well when they get close to other cars.
So as a consequence, there hasn't always been very good
overtaking um. There have been some pretty dismal Grand Prix
with single digit or even no overtakes UM and that
(20:22):
is not what people tune into most sport to watch.
You want to see some friction exactly. So the rule
book was radically rewritten to readdress the way that aerodynamics
work on formul among cars in order to ensure that
when they get close to another car, they're not going
to dramatically lose all of the features that let them
(20:45):
grip to the track, that let them take corners as
fast as they do, that let them have the cars
stability for the drivers to be able to go at
the speeds that they do. So you know, this is
the perfect time for you to join up one because
new regulations mean utter chaos, right because you can see
teams that have dominated just completely funk up the regulations, right,
they take certain gambles in certain risks and they do
(21:06):
not pay off. And on the flip side, you'll see
teams that we're just doing okay or maybe even horrifically
completely nail those regulations and all of a sudden they
go from being you know, back of the pack to hey,
like they they're actually in it with the points and
they're they're kind of moving and grooving. So so yes,
that's like the fun part right now is we've seen
some chaotic races where you know, the You've got the
(21:27):
current reigning world champion in the first three races of
two he hasn't finished two of those races because of
issues with his car. So obviously a talented driver completely
undone by faulty issues with the car under new regulations.
I'm I'm surprised and very interested that it feels like
the driver, the athlete superstar has an important role, but
(21:52):
it feels like it's almost a fifty fifty importance to
the team science maybe less. I don't know. Funny you
should mentioned drivers because that's actually a great segue. Yeah,
could you could really get in a Formula one car
and move forward. I have trouble driving my Subaru Forester
when I'm back at home, let alone, and there's not Also,
(22:13):
that's not a fair question to ask a New Yorker
because nobody here knows how to drive. I would even
know how to get in, Like it's a whole endeavor
just to kind of wiggle your way into one of
these things. So to get back to our slightly more
professional drivers, I am not one of those. Interestingly enough,
many people do not view Formula One drivers as actual
real athletes. People underestimate how physical this board is just
(22:37):
because you know, it looks easy when you look at
the onboard cameras. You know, they look like the cars
are perfect and it's just you steering. But um, it's
very demanding. So that was Tatiana Calderone. She was actually
the last female to drive in F one car for
a team called Alfa Romeo. We'll hear more about Alfa
Romeo and we'll hear more from Tatiana later in the season.
(23:00):
I had asked her to describe what it's like to
drive enough one car when you're going more than three
hundred kilometers an hour and you have to turn in
flat to a corner to turn the weed. It's is
very heavy and you have to do that eighteen or
nineteen times per lap, you know, so it's for one
an hour, one hour and thirty minutes. Two hours is
(23:23):
stressful for for your body and for your mind. Your
heart rate goes up, so you're always and at around
one sixty or one fifty bibs per minute in the
heat with very little air is unbelievably hot in race cars.
Reporter Hazel Southwell, again, it can easily be sustainedly over
(23:44):
sixty centigrade. I'm not sure what that is in fahrenheit.
That's a hundred and forty degrees fahrenheit Jesus. Secondly, they're
undergoing enormous amounts of g fours, so every time they
take a corner, instead of breaking like we would and
maybe coming almost to a standstill to take a right
angle corner, they just carry through as much speed as possible,
(24:08):
so they will be going through a right angle corner
over a hundred and fifty miles per hour. If you
think about pulling like five or six G through a corner,
then everything weighs five or six times more than it does,
so basically it tries to rip their head off. F
one driver's up. They've got very big necks because they
actually have to train their next is like a separate
(24:29):
portion of their like physio, because the head is swapping
her out. They had to do so many hours of
training in the neck to just even be able to
drive the car, let alone push it. You know, I
felt like a robot at times. I had to change
my shirt sides. The G forces that go through your
body are incredible. There was an inty car driver who
(24:51):
got the chance a couple of months ago to test
out enough one car, and he's straight upset. He's like,
I could almost not complete the last couple of apps
because my head would not stay up. And this is
still into car guy, right, so he still does this
in his own sport, but he's like, it is a
million times more intense enough one Over the course of
a Grand Prix weekend, they're doing hundreds of laps, so um,
(25:12):
they have to be able to do that and for
the physical demands of driving to be completely irrelevant because
the mental concentration on what they're doing is so complete
that you have to be fit enough that all of
those factors, the heat, the G force are all like
just background noise. It's about finding that balance and that rhedom.
(25:35):
It's like playing music. You know. You you drive with
your hands as well as with your feet, and it
has to be in a harmony. And that's what I love,
trying to find harmony. I love that she's operating this
car on a totally different level. I'm very interested in
the steering wheel, and I'm very interested in shifting if
they shift, yeah, I don't know. They are making hundreds
(26:01):
of adjustments per lap. Formerly one drivers change gear eighty
times roughly around a lot. So that's just a lot
of gear changes if you think about the fact that
that will be taking place over the course of say
eighty seconds. And that's actually, to be honest, the most
basic thing they're doing. Um they're then constantly adjusting settings,
(26:21):
so they'll be changing things like the break balance, things
like engine modes, like modes for the hybrid system. Driver
default Charlie eighty five. When you can drive a default
C eighty five. When you can that's on the m
F A rotary to ten o'clock position, I cannot go it.
I cannot go it. Shop it up mass. If you
(26:42):
can move m F A to positions see and then
select eighty five on the dot if it nowhere again
eighty five. If you see a poso of the Formula
one steering wheel, they'll have like at least eight dials
which will all have sort of like twenty settings, and
all of those settings interact with each other us. So
if you think about how many permutations you could have
(27:04):
of something, and then they have various other buttons that
are just for like, um, quick deployment of something, or
for the radio or to show that they've heard a message.
You'll hear times where drivers can get kind of frustrated
and be like I just need a minute, Like I
just seed a minute. Let me just take a deep
breath and figure out what fucking button to push right now?
(27:25):
Is pitted if we can get in proNT of ghastly,
we get some prayer and it's good for us. I
just stop sucking talking. And they have to remember where
all of that is, not touch it at the wrong time,
and they have to be able to do all of
that whilst they're flying around a track at hundreds and
hundreds of an hour, being flung around what's basically you know,
(27:46):
a little tub, and they're trying to win and not
just die. Listen to the plan, stay hydrated, press the
right button, deal with g force. And also this isn't
even factoring in weather, right, so sometimes it's your interrrential downpour.
Trying to just see physically where you're at. Sounds fun,
as if there wasn't enough complexity to this. The other
thing to note on kind of a larger competitive scale
(28:09):
is that the stakes for these right now men, uh,
it isn't just life or death and winning. It's also
that in Formula one there's this old saying that you're
only as good as your last race. If you're really underperforming,
you know they will pull you out. The stakes are
fucking high. That's awesome. Yeah, yeah, it's cool. All right?
So who are these men? Who are these drivers? Rich kids?
(28:33):
How do you become a driver? Is there a is
there a qualifying tournament? In tennis? I can sign up
for qualifying and work my way up the ladder. Can
I do that in Formula one? Somebody these guys start
racing as kids. You've got guys in here who started
racing it three years old. In in karting, you will
his stories from the Australian Daniel Acada about what it
means to leave your family at the age of fourteen
(28:54):
fifteen and to dedicate your whole life into that. That's
Tony Cowen Brown again. I think for me to eyes
one of the reasons why you get these drivers who
are solely dedicated on one spot on one spot alone,
because they've had to leave a lot behind and give
up a lot to do the thing that they love. So,
if you're an elementary school kid who's trying to to
have like a serious carding career, that can cost upwards
I know it sounds very funny to say, uh, that
(29:15):
can cost upwards of a hundred thousand dollars a year.
You need some sort of lifeline too. I don't get
the sense that Formula one gives too many ships about
like the helping the underprivileged kids learning about Formula one.
They do not, and there is a push from certain
drivers to be better. There's a lot of very vague
sort of um girl bossy like you know, like wait, wait,
(29:37):
everyone should know that, you know, they can do whatever
they want. If you want to be a driver, you
can do it. And you're like, I'm sorry, with what
checker you're gonna help me? Do that. There's a lot
of that kind of speak, especially in the current day
h F one's trying to pretend that they really care
about things other than money. But on the other flip
side of this, money is a huge part of it.
(29:57):
But there are still, thanks to regulations, there's still a
lot of other barriers to keep bad drivers or kind
of hobby ritchie riches out of the sport. The f
i A has like certain criteria that you need to
hit to become a Formula one driver. One of that
is getting a super license. I know it's not a
very original name super license, but me it means that
you've you've participated in a certain number of junior racing categories,
(30:23):
uh and you've earned a certain number if I believe
the now requisite number of points is forty quote unquote
you know, super license points, and you need to do
that within three years. Obviously need your road license, and
now you need to be eighteen or above. And fun fact,
the fact that Max for Stappen got into F one
as early as he did wouldn't have been possible if
he was trying today because he would have had to
be a minimum age of eighteen. So we'll get it
(30:45):
all into Max Verstappen, the current world champion, who is
incredibly controversial. When we talk about red bull racing in
a few episodes. Um, this may be a dumb question,
but when you say red bull racing, you're referring to
a team, right, correct? What is the Formula one team?
What does that even mean? That is an excellent question.
We will get into all of the teams after their
(31:07):
short break. So okay, So at its core, F one
is kind of team based in this interesting way. When
you think of football, you've got I don't even know
what is it over fifty players on a team. It's
a lot, right. This is the cool thing about Formula one.
There are essentially twenty drivers, ten teams, ten team principles.
There's a couple of reserve drivers here and there, but
(31:28):
essentially does not that many people that you need to
start to get to know, which is really cool. That's
clear and simple. I like, very easy barrier to entry,
you know. So if someone ever tries to be like, oh,
you can't be a real fan unless you name all
the drivers, I'm like, bitch, I can do that because
it's really not that hard. So within Formula one, this
is funky there's actually two simultaneous championships going on. Why
(31:50):
not add to the complexity exactly as if there wasn't
enough going on between, like the drivers frying in their
cars and like the engineering and the crashes and the explosions.
We have two different championships. You remember one thing, remember
the Informula One that was both the driver Championship and
there was the Team Constructor Championship. So the Constructors Championship
(32:11):
is interesting because F one dolls out prize money depending
on where you place, so it actually really matters that
you end up in fifth place over sixth place. You
know that you're looking at hundreds of millions of dollars
based on just finishing a couple of places up. You know,
you beat a team by one point. By the end
of the season, you're looking at a much bigger windfall
(32:31):
than you would have been otherwise. They dole out the
money at the end of the season. Yeah. Yeah, So
like last year Mercedes, which won the Constructors Championship, Uh,
they walked away with sixty three million in prize money
just for getting that placement in the season. Williams got eighth,
they ended up with thirteen million. It's almost like like
a reverse draft. Like you know, if you do terribly,
(32:53):
you don't get first pick, and you're still in fact
end up the loser at the bottom. Here, there's two ways,
in my opinion, like bucketing the teams. If you will,
you could divide the twenty cars and the twenty drivers
into roughly three categories. You've got the best of the
best that are fighting for the championship. That's generally the
top three to top four right now. Those are you know,
(33:13):
the likes of Mercedes, render Bull, Ferrari McLaren. Then you've
got what we call the best of the rest, and
then you have the rest of the rest um and
the best of the rest and the rest is essentially
what we call the midfield in Formula one. This is
where essentially the fun happens. Anything can happen in the midfield.
In American culture, in general politics, whatever we love, we
(33:35):
love a first past the post moment. Right we watched
wonder who got there first, who won the thing, etcetera.
N F one. Uh, you have a lot of people
who for teams that are not the championship winning team.
You're you get excited when like I just want my
favorite team if they score just two points at this race,
they will go from being ten out of ten to
eighth out of ten. You know, like can they just
(33:56):
like you know, get it? Um? I will say too,
because I'm sure you're wondering what are point? How many points?
So you get points and it's a descending amount for
first through tenth place, so if you get eleven through twenty,
you get nada. And what's more important the team championship
or the individual driver? I mean, if you are an
individual driver, you're just trying to win always. Right. Here's
(34:18):
actually where a lot of the drama and if one
comes in. So obviously we all think to ourselves, well,
they're competing against other teams, they're all fighting against each other.
But the thing to think about is, as we've talked about,
all of these cars are radically different from one another.
So if there's two drivers on a team, if you're
a driver, there's only one other person on the grid
who's going to have the same car to you, and
(34:39):
that is your teammate. And so your biggest competitor on
the grid is going to be your teammate. Yeah, because
you that's really who's the best driver. You're both driving
the same car. Exactly, and so there's a lot of
drama around. You know, there's almost there's drama around if
one teammate is completely clabboring the other teammate and points.
There's also a ton of drama if you have really
(35:00):
evenly matched drivers who are just trying to eke out
that extra point over their teammate. You know, there's been
times where teammates have crashed into each other, multiple endless
occasions of this. You know. You also, though, have times
where a team will prefer one driver over the other,
and especially if they're you know, they're, hey, this person
(35:20):
is doing much better than the championship, especially if they're
contending for the driver's title, So they'll kind of ask
one driver to to almost like sacrifice their race or
their placement to help the other driver. And obviously these
are big, ego driven guys, they are not happy about that.
So that that also the whole team competition almost seems
to funk with the essence of being number one. Yeah,
(35:44):
I mean, everyone's competitive. These drivers don't get to this
position if they're not some of the most hyper competitive,
intense people we've ever met. And now they're now you're
adding another competition within the competition, which is even more
it's like a family sibling dynamic. Two vcieties come together.
That's Hamilton trying to pass on the inside and he
(36:05):
can cover his hands over his eyes. Hamilton's takes out
his teammates and there will be a big, big inquiry
behind closed doors into that if that all was insaney enough.
You have times where the team will kind of give
what what are what are called quote unquoteam orders. What
will kind of say, you know, hey, move, moved to
the side. You know so and so is passing, Okay,
let let Nico pass the slack Please let Nico passed
(36:27):
on the main stop in the stry and they won't listen.
You don't even get to be that successful if you
always accept all orders exactly exactly. You want your driver
to be a little bit like that. Yeah, if both
people crash out, you get no points. And so can
you imagine if let's say your drivers were one and
two and the guy in second place just couldn't couldn't
(36:49):
help himself and crashes into number one, you're out, like
you just you just lost, you know, a huge haul
of points for no reason other than ego, what the
fund did I say, what did I a fuck me?
It's unnecessary? Is he? Okay, Michael, how are you feeling
having just become an expert in F one in the
span of thirty minutes. There's a lot. It sounds really cool.
(37:13):
I'm excited to watch. I think I have even more
respect for the driver, right, even though so much of
this is science and innovation and tech. When you went
through the list of what they have to deal with
while not dying, while trying to win, while going two
(37:34):
hundred miles an hour, it's fascinating. I also can understand
why it doesn't have like necessarily a mass appeal. The sport.
It seems so wealthy and the but the money, the
money that needs to go into this is so high.
But in a in a beautiful way. It's like fun
that they're just so rich and like this is what
(37:55):
it is, and uh, you know we're not. There's no
pick up Formula one races at the playground, you know
what I mean? Yeah, I was gonna say, you really
don't get like ether rich vibes from F one annything.
They're like hug the rich. Definitely don't get ether rich
in our world today where everyone's so carefully crafting their
image and brand, which I'm sure Formula one is as well.
(38:16):
It's kind of fun to have someone there's some world
just lean into. Look, we're rich as fun and we're
trying to race as fast as we can. Like this
sport is entirely unnecessary, but like we're doing it anyway,
and we're richer than you, by the way, Like it's
it's fine. Yeah. So we've talked very generally about the
endless numbers of rules and regulations within Formula one and
(38:37):
how it works, but I'm really excited to actually dive
into you know, the teams, the drivers, the rivalries, the scandals,
the thirst traps. There's lots of thirst traps so so
state tuned, but daddy issues galore. So basically, how this
will work is will dedicate roughly an episode sometimes two
(38:58):
to each team and it's drivers, so you can get
a sense of how the team operates, how it came
through the ranks, and what those drivers are like now.
So hopefully by the end you'll be able to figure out,
you know, which team you want to support going forward
and which driver you really like the most. I'm open.
Let's put it this way. There's a lot of motion
(39:19):
and movement trying to get me and others into formula one.
I am willing to be convinced. I'm willing to to
become a fan of the sport. But if I don't,
just give that away. Yeah okay, yeah, okay, okay, yeah,
no pressure on me. Just gotta get you. Whenever I'm
listening into a bunch of yeah, like angry men on
(39:39):
a racetrack, It's great. This has been Choosing Sides F one,
a production of Sports Illustrated Studios and I Heart Radio.
Check in next week to learn all about the Mercedes team.
The show was hosted by Michael Costa and Lily Herman.
This episode was produced by Lily Herman and our senior produce,
(40:00):
Sir Johai Mittal, who also did the sound design at
the cutting room. Studios were recorded by engineer Robot Leary,
mastering by Cello Ice Blue. Max Miller is the executive
producer and Brennan get Just his head of audio at
s I Studios. At I Heart Radio, Sean Titone is
our executive producer. For more podcasts from my Heart Radio,
(40:24):
visit the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever
you get your podcasts and don't forget to rate us
and tell your friends. It'll mean a lot
Host
Michael Kosta
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