Pit Lane Perspectives

Prathik Gunturu 0:03
Hello and welcome back to pit lane perspectives. I am your host, Prathik Gunturu and Oh, my God, where do I begin? It's been a few weeks since our last interaction and the Formula One World seemingly in flames. Within the span of a few races, we have seen so much on and off track action. Welcome to my first episode of reporting news, and I hope you enjoy it, because I sure am. Let's begin, and I want to discuss the situation surrounding Carlos Sainz and his driver's seat for the 2025 season. And as we all know now, he is committed to Williams for the next season, in a shock move as he leaves the position of Mercedes. Right now, the position of Mercedes is still open. Lewis Hamilton has left to go and join Ferrari and Mercedes. Well, they have, they had a few options, but Paris or Carlos Sainz is off the charts right now, early during the year, Hamilton signed to race for Ferrari in a super early prison season. Hamilton has been with his current team, Mercedes for over 10 seasons, and they came together to win seven drivers championships and eight constructor championships during that period, it was the most dominant era in Formula One history. But while driving from Mercedes, Hamilton was able to equal the world record of seven championship titles, sharing that stat with the great Michael Schumacher. But what does this decision mean for Ferrari's other driver? Well, Carlos signs he joined for Formula one in 2015 has raced for many high profile teams, like Toro Rosso when it was Toro Rosso, let's not get back to that. McLaren and now Ferrari. He also did race for Renault in the middle. Well, at the start of the season, Carlos had many options for choosing teams, and he had decided to play the long game and wait for other options. For example, it went from science and Audi being a sure shot to present day, where there are only a few seats that too in lower tier teams, Williams would have been the best option right now, considering their upward trajectory in the last few years. And I mean, this has now given James Vowles, the team principal for Williams, one of the strongest driving pairings in Alex Albon and Carlos Sainz. Alex Albon has been ripping the wheels off that Williams throughout the season, but now they're trying to get rid of Logan Sargeant and bring in Carlos Saniz, which I'm all for. I want Williams to come to the front, but there's also Red Bull on other side of the carriage. And you may ask, why? Well, now that we know that Perez is keeping a seat for at least until after the summer break, we know that the options for Red Bull are probably from within the team, but I must add out as well. Carlos' dad and Verstappen's dad did not get along and with all the politics happening at Red Bull right now, I don't think they need that. It seemed like Red Bull was gearing up to get rid of Perez only a few weeks after he signed a two year contract extension with them, but behind closed doors, Helmut Marko and Christian Horner had a meeting, and they came to the decision of keeping him until the summer break with Liam Lawson's upcoming test and Ricardo being asked to up his game. It could only mean one thing, and there were already discussions between Carlos and Red Bull, but I may say that I personally believe that Red Bull is on a downward trajectory right now. We'll get to Red Bull's headache in a little bit, but the fact that their sporting director is also leaving is not going to help them. But what I really want to talk about today would be the very well known incident that took place the Red Bull rank in Austria between Verstappen and Norris during the latter end of the Grand Prix. If you haven't. Watch the highlights, I highly urge you to do so. It was an action packed race, and this was action packed just this second half of the race, the versapen Norris event started a couple of laps behind when Verstappen pitted in lap 52 and it was four seconds slow on the stop, it was 6.5 seconds. The slow stop helped Norris is he was fault. He was following Verstappen into the pits and at the exit, they were merely 1.7 seconds apart. Additionally, with Verstappen locking up into turn four, the really famous turn. That meant that his new tires were also hard to get into the working window, and that was with Norris gaining. Norris ended up catching up to Verstappen and they had battled out for a few laps along the back straight, and in turned three. The turn three, I need to remind you guys that Leclerc and Verstappen also had a little tussle in Austria a few years ago. And well, I feel like versatppens has made the turn his home now. But loads of late breaking and heated team discussions on the radio later, it happened like a few years a few laps later, Verstappen and Norris had come together, and it was so ugly, Norris and Verstappen took for their respective team radios, and they were heated conversations with Norris, claiming that it would affect their friendship in a post race interview. Now, vershapen and Norris are great buddies off of the circuit by streaming and taking part in sim racing over that weekend, we could have seen another great rivalry begin, where we saw both parties come together to talk it out, and it was a different ending from what we were expecting. And now Norris and vershapen are back to being good buddies and racing just like before, but hey, other side of the pits, George Russell walked away ecstatic as he was able to pick up the pieces and win the race by fending off Oscar Piastri. Piastri was unlucky, is he not qualified in the right position that weekend, but that's a part of the game. Piastri does have to work on his game a little bit, but in the last few races, he's definitely been picking up the pieces. McLaren also does need to pick up its strategy game now, as the car has become competitive and it's showing that their strategy hasn't been keeping up to speed, especially in a few races ago, when they pit pretty happy yesterday at the wrong position. I believe that was still Silverstone. Now coming to Mercedes is recent upward trajectory. I must say that I am really impressed. His team seemed to be in shambles for yet another season. However, with James Allison returning to the team last year, definitely helped to clean up the team. They had been bringing upgrades to their car for a while now, but something really clicked and hungry, where their pace started to show a win by Hamilton and Silverstone really set everything ablaze when coming into the Hungarian Grand Prix weekend, it was impressive to see that the cars were performing at such a high level, although the McLaren seemed to be severely far ahead. Hungary showed promise that the Mercedes base was not a one time performance, but wow, that race and spa was amazing for the Mercedes. It was not a flashy race in general, but it's good to see that the car has been working. And now one must wonder whether Hamilton is kicking himself now that the Ferraris have fallen off yet again, might I add.

But I will also say that I want to give Mercedes a little bit more time before flocking around and giving them all of the credit. After all, f1 is a fast paced game, and we can see that as Red Bull has now seemingly lost their car advantage. They have had issues with platform control and more over the last few years, they which have just not shown up simply because their car was so dominant. It did show in Singapore last year when the road was. Circuit was bumpy and they weren't able to even qualify well. But yeah, that's that. And I have to say, if you have not been following the sport, get back into it. It's been an amazing season so far, and bristling and Norris and Red Bull and McLaren and Mercedes now are all getting into the mix. So I'm in my head. I'm thinking, where's Ferrari? Where are they going to start playing up with Adrian Newey leaving the team and, Well joining Ferrari next year, I'm interested in seeing and seeing how they do soon. Thank you for tuning into this episode of pit lane perspectives, and for sure, we'll get back to it soon. Thank you. Bye.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai