2023 Qatar Grand Prix Race Review | P1 Podcast 

Yakking in your helmet on lap 15 of a 57 lap race and continuing to the end is pretty fucking savage.

Redbull cant risk 2024 championship with Perez. Lando/Oscar, Lewis/George and Charles/Carlos -with improving cars; cant risk it.

Oscar is on fire. Honestly, winning a sprint and getting two podiums in a row on his rookie season.

McLaren breaking the world record pit stop with the larger tires is definitely a highlight of the race for me, a McLaren fan!

Perez and Stroll’s performances this season make me genuinely question how much they underperformed in the 2020 Racing Point

Absolutely elated for Alfa Romeo. Zhou from last on grid to p9 in shitbox Perez in best car, p10😂

Glad you’re calling the conditions out. Wish more fans understood the seriousness. This is NOT a case of “get good” and try harder, this is what top athletes do. This was a dangerous situation that shouldn’t be repeated.

guys I don't understand why it's pirelli's fault when the track was finished two weeks before raceweek, the surface was new, F1 decided to race in the desert, with the track full covered of sand with 31° degrees at 11 P.M. Also Matt said that Pirelli should have taken softer tyres than C1, C2 and C3 when the softs literally had 9 laps of life in the sprint race

Qatar was LITERALLY Drive To Survive

💫time stamps💫 0:00 intro & tyre rule 2:43 Matt’s most memorable moment (Mercedes crash) 4:55 question about Mercedes crash 8:41 question about Hamilton’s racecraft 12:27 Tommy’s most memorable moment (about driver health & safety) 20:12 question on how to improve the GP 23:45 track limit violations 32:25 questions about pit stop 37:20 Lando winning the race? 41:54 biggest winners 43:47 biggest losers 46:08 Wednesday predictions 51:10 final thoughts

Hamilton didn't cause the crash. I saw Nico run on the track and push him into George.

The reason why track limits became a thing is because many tracks started removing grass and gravel around corners to improve safety. A car going off slows down more on a track surface than it does on grass/gravel. It was discussed in one of the driver meetings they recorded some years ago about track limits. That is when they needed to start enforcing track limits as the surface no longer enforced it.

Have y'all seen the cockpit footage of Stroll at the end of the race? He was pretty much stumbling out of his car, barely holding himself up and then basically smashed his body into the ambulance that was standing next to him. They never should have gone through with the race, not like that. Having like half the grid passing out, some throwing up mid race and having to go to the medic afterwards due to heat exposure and dehydration is just not okay. At least they moved the race to December for next year. We'll see how that goes.

You gotta feel for Logan, man. He just can’t catch a break. I still think Williams should give him a second season. Watching him in F2, he’s 100% capable of so much more.

Just wanted to leave this here: The portuguese broadcast did mention Matt and Tommy at one point of the transmission, and called you two journalists. They mention your talk with Sainz about the whole reverse grid for the sprint. "Sainz mentioned in a talk with 2 journalists..." They didn't mention your names but i knew the reference 😂

I think some of the drivers had stopped giving a damn about track limit near the end of the race. They didn't care anymore and just want the race to be over with.

The reason Hamilton went a ways without incidents was because he was almost always up front (same as Max right now). It's easier to avoid incidents when you're up front and even when you're behind, you have such an advantage in points/performance that you know you don't have to force the issue cause you'll take a P2 today, because you know most likely you will get P1 easily next race (or can wait for the other person's tyres to fall off). When you're being raced close, these things go away so all of a sudden it seems like they're "crash happy"

Speaking of MotoGP tracks. The MotoGP Indian Grand Prix 2 weeks ago, the rider who finished second fainted in parc ferme. Yep it's the Buddh International F1 circuit which was very physical for the riders especially in the fast flowing second sector. And again combined with 30+ degrees and insane humidity...not a surprise this is happening.

This is the first year that 18” tyres were used at this track. Pirelli are going to have to formulate a tyre just for this circuit.

Lando will get a win. I love the Lando/ Oscar pairing

The 3 stop madness wasn't what bugged me, it was knowing how many laps the drivers were going to do before they came in. Knowing when something is going to happen takes all the fun out of it. I think a rule where all drivers must use each compound would create much more excitement and unpredictability. But like you said, this wasn't for entertainment, it was for safety.

This race had the same problem for me that Indycar has: It all has a feeling of being manufactured and confusing at the same time. These many pit stops are taking away the important management and strategy that are part of F1. And if there was a safety car near the end of the race, so many cars would have been fkd with their tyre situations without it being their fault.

Not a Georgie63 fan, but he truly deserved DOTD... last (after lap 1) to 4th once Toto finally told him to shut up and drive😂, no mistakes and a string of really brilliant overtakes. Worth the ride-along if you have a subscription to F1TV. You'll get a good view of Checo's dirty driving and also a really nice defensive move by Lawson (if he's not driving next year, it'll be a sin).

1. You had a just finished resurfaced track filled with sand 2. Humidity you could swallow and oven on broil heat 3. Cars that could not cool down themselves dissipating even more heat into the cockpits 4. Having to drive at Quali pace for 57 laps straight 5. Drivers wearing their three layers + helmet 6. Drinks bags that contained water was hot as boiled tea This was awful. To open your helmet during the race to try and get a breeze and be pelted with sand and more heat just relentlessly...I agree, they are so lucky that no driver went off after passing out. I actually wondered for a bit if that is what maybe had happened to Alonso just trying to keep it together in the car. Next year though, the race should be later, so maybe okay. However, I think the FIA needs to sit down with the drivers and call a limit to how hot outside temps + humidity can be for a race before you call it as undrivable. We have that for rain weather, need it for heat.

The fact people are STILL blaming George for the collision at start is INSANE!!!

I partly said this during the Watchalong on Twitch. When MotoGP first started the Qatar GP they raced it during the day and they were just the same. They were collapsing on the cooldown lap they were that dehydrated and needed medical attention. They did that for about 4 years before they made it a night race. Another bad one is always the Suzuka 8 Hours, they always say that is worser than any 24 hour race as the heat is that overbearing.

Verstappen's fastest lap showed that Red Bull still had some 0.5 seconds per lap in the pocket. He did have to push a bit more than he wanted, but it didn't look like they were in any danger this race, it was fully managed, except for the pitstop.

Track limits started being a thing when gravel traps were replaced with tarmc run off. Obviously safety should not be compromised but there is not enough consequence for going wide. More cars are trying overtakes on the outside because they can always go straight on if they are unable to get in front.

Zhou defended Perez for 10 laps on an Alfa Romeo with old intermediate tyre and finished ahead of perez whatsoever. Crazy😂

According to one rumor at least this wasn't a perrelli issue. It's said they warned the FIA earlier this year that these curbs weren't appropriate for their tires, but nothing was done.

I was in Lusail for 6 weeks last November for the world cup and a lot of my work was quite physical, there are now rods for how oppressive the heat can be. Without air conditioning in the stadium and in our cabins we would have all become very sick. A lot of us got very sick anyway, one of my colleagues actually passed away during the job - I can't imagine what it would be like in full race gear in a hot car. Absolutely unbelievable.

BTW next year Qatar and Abu Dhabi will be the last two races of the season and Qatar will be December 1, so the weather shouldn't be an issue like it was yesterday.

Make it mandatory that all race locations must have a maximum temperature limit. Until then, F1 is just putting the drivers at severe health risk.

Hamilton ruined Piastri's race in Italy. He did to George in Suzuka what Max did to him in Brazil but there was no uproar about it. Now this. Hamilton is P2 in the second best car while Alonso is neck and neck with him. And the only reason those two are in the mix for P2 is because Checo has been destroyed by Max in half a season. It's not like I am saying Hamilton is a bad driver, but he is allowed a lot of free passes. I can only imagine the "his spatial awareness is awful" if Verstappen or Vettel did this. This is one of my fav podcasts, but it's crazy how nobody seems to acknowledge that Hamilton makes as many mistakes as any of the other top drivers. 2021 was a prime example. The Abu Dhabi fiasco is often used to cover up the fact that Hamilton made a lot of mistakes that year!

You've explained it away fairly averagely, but Hamilton is crash happy. In the last 3-4 years he's caused a number of crashes with other drivers with often dire consequences for the other driver. Guys like Sainz & Leclerc just don't seem to do that nearly as much. Hamilton just doesn't get the reputation as a dirty or spatially unaware driver because of two reasons; he always apologises for it and Sky sports would never dare mention it

There are 4 races in the calendar in the Middle East...they can all be held with no issue if its between November upto March . Add to that they are near each other in distance. Bahrain and Saudi are at the beginning of the season, Qatar and AD at the very end. If you schedule Austin or Las Vegas in the middle of the summer then you'll have the same problem. It's bad scheduling by F1. Some people make it sound like the country forced this timing/date, and the drivers just to see them suffer 😂.

The tire thing was definitely not confusing especially if you are a avid race watcher. To keep saying it was hard to keep up with is just over drama. The issue like most weekends, is having to watch replay after replay while there us green flag racing going on.

I was in Qatar this weekend. Even in the main grandstand which was facing east and thus had an entire afternoon in the shade to cool down plus obviously the night time, it was insanely hot. Only when the race ended and the adrenaline settled down, combined with all the walking to get to the parking lot, did I truly realize the scope of the appalling heat those drivers had been facing for the past hour and a half. However, as someone who lives in the Middle East, I'm sure many other residents will agree with me in saying that this year the end of summer/beginning of fall has been quite a bit hotter than in previous years. Obviously apart from winter it's hot here no matter what but even we've noticed the difference. I can't really speak for Qatar since I haven't been there since the World Cup and have only been to the UAE and Oman during this time, but perhaps the FIA and organizers weren't expecting quite as much heat as we had, plus obviously the issue with the tires that made the drivers push that much harder

I did wish they had the tire age for every car listed beside the timing tower graphic...

We could drop this motorcycle track from the calendar. That's what could change.

You know I love Formula 1 but since I started watching the 2 of you I don't know how I could ever enjoy F1 as much without listening to your commentary videos and reviews and memes. I really look forward to your videos and points of view and fun. Thank You for being our toppings for our F1 Salad. You make a difference. FYI: I think the FIA listened to your suggestion for 3 tire compound requirements in the race for the Qatar GP. You did it !

Swapping Qatar and Las Vegas could be a solution for the heat issues. It is probably going to be fairly cold in Vegas at night in November so moving it up to October would help that race also

Tommy bringing the comedy to the pod, “Dan Ric driving around Austin with his arm in a sling”.

Never do that again, forced pitstops, it’s not racing And never drive in this heat again, it was irresponsible

When it comes to driver ratings this week, Lewis doesn’t deserve more than 3/10 (1/10 if we’re being consistent with Singapore) and George deserves no less than 8/10 (but a 9/10 or even 10/10 would be well earned). Outqualified twice and what happened at the start, happened. And George had an incredible drive from last to 4th with a damaged car.

The problem I have with the "yeah but he only went a couple of centimeters off the track" is that the rule is already defined very well in favor of the drivers. They could say "your entire car has to be within the white lines" but no, it is only "any part of the car has to be above the white line". It does not even have to touch it, only be above it. Then when you are "only a couple of cm out" you may as well say that he is a full car width (2 meters) too wide. Any driver that fears going outside the limit can just aim 2 meters more towards the track and have no problem.

What George meant to say was: This guy only knows how to drive starting 1st 😂😂😂

This race was almost on the level of risk as the first Bahrain race in 05 that was during the day where the cars and drivers were borderline cooked. Here’s hoping safety gets put forward for next time.

As a McLaren Fan, Hate to say, Oscar may get his first win before Lando…. Can get used to Papaya on the Verstapodium Podcast! Keep up the great work P1

My issue with the track limits implementation we have right now is that in Qatar they treated mistakes as violations, instead of choosing to extend to gain an advantage. If someone stays in it on purpose and they go 4 wheels off the track that is a track limits violation. If the driver has had a moment, with significant change to the steering and/or acceleration and braking and they run wide, but rejoin in good faith, that should not be a violation as there is no intent. This would be nearly impossible to police properly though, so while I may not think this is the best implementation, it is the most achievable with the only requirement being proper investment into infrastructure instead of trying to use the bare minimum

I do hope there is some kind of antagonism between Hamilton and Russell so there is something to talk about for the rest of the season. Angry Toto is great entertainment

Qatar is about 6 weeks later next season, Nov 29-Dec 1, penultimate race and double header with Abu Dhabi. Hopefully, that will help with the temp situation.

No wonder more drivers did not suffer HEAT STROKE. This was crazy. At least IndyCar has a unit that hooks to the Halo the sends air toward the driver. If F1 had the enclosed Halo there might have been some drivers being over come by the heat, passing out, and causing a wreck. This race should be held toward the start or end of the season. I believe the track limit problem was a result of the weathers effect on the drivers.

I think it was a really good idea to mix up the strategy because teams would like to minimize risks. On the other hand, you had the chance to see F1 drivers race flat out, not to manage the circumstances.

I think we learned that anything that puts everyone onto the same or near same strategy is kind of a shame.

Fortunately the hot weather broke in Austin last week. We were easily in the upper 90sF just a week ago.

The track of qatar is not a bad track because there were enough overtakes and enough battles. But the track is just in the wrong country because of the heath

Just a thought. How about repaint the white lines on the exits of some corners. Like make the white line wider on the exit.

oscar

the "high tech sensors blabla" is just a wire loop in the ground and a transponder in the car .... a technology used everywhere for lap time (start/finish strait and every mini sector) .... so the tracks can do it easily if the driver go over the line he can have a bip in his hear or a message on the dash (no surprise). The teams can have this info in real time and maybe us too (AWS ? ^^)

Crazy that Piastri got his first win before Lando. Wonder if Lando would be as hyped if he wasn’t british

The issue with going the IndyCar route on track limits is F1 tracks (mostly) are not prone to automatically policing the limits. They can leave it be in IndyCar because all of their tracks have hard limits that can and will ruin your race if you aren't careful, whether it's grass, sand, or a wall. F1's tracks are predominantly lined with same curbs followed by a further sea of tarmac, while the modern suspension and aero means clobbering the curbs is rarely so big of an issue is it might've been twenty years ago

What about adapting the race suits to incorporate some kind of an active cooling system?

The current rule about track limits is probably the best we can have, because circcuits must accomodate other competitions and the solutions we actually have are race tracks or sausage curbs... For the quality of the race, I don't think three stops was the problem, but instead the 18 laps limit because it heavily reduced the strategy with nearly every one waiting the last minute to pit

If guys in there 20s were struggling in that race shoutout Alonso for being p6

i have a solution if u want to keep track limits. have a drone or camera hanging over the track and calibrated to look straight down at the track lines, similar to the goal line technology in football that determines if a ball has crossed the line or not. implement a similar one on the popular corners for track limits. hang 5 at each corner on the same track boundary line and if 3 of the 5 detect a car has gone over, it can cut the 2 second clip, and flag it for a FIA stwerad’s manual review. the penalties would dish out much quicker

Silver lining for Mercedes is that this crash wasn't when they were fighting for a win or a championship...

I was at the GP and the mixture of heat and humidity was nothing I’ve ever experienced before even though I’ve lived in the Middle East my whole life. The drivers are not exaggerating. I’ve never sweat so much my entire life and I was only standing.

Although Albon was leading for pretty much a complete lap Max still got a grandslam.

The thing with tires this race is that it didn’t really affect strategy much. Everyone was on pretty much one of two strategies, so not much variance there which is what causes tension and more racing imo

FIA should mandate a cool suit that connects to a radiator inside the car for hot races like these.

Got to say, McLaren were really good all weekend. Had pace for pole arugably both days. Did the right decision telling Lando to hold off (even as a mclaren fan, I wanted to see them race), and a quick pitstop.

I think the greed of F1 and liberty media is putting in danger the drivers at this point... they have the attitude that drivers should be happy they are in F1 and shut up and drive... I agree for logistics maybe have it before abuDabi .. casue this track is pretty nice and fun to watch...

The problem with sensors is that every team would be appealing every penalty because of sensors not being perfect. As happened with fuel flow sensors in the past. Higher kerbs would be "dangerous"

imagine the drama if george got understeer as hamilton turned in

What they should have done with the tires and graphics was just put a number for the laps remaining behind the drivers in the color of the tire fitted. Instead of the s/m/h that they normally had, same size, loose the ring (or just use that to indicate the compound).

George is way better than Bottas. He’s never going to give up to anyone unless the team tells him to. He’s ruthless like Max.

Track Limits ..... Here's an idea: How about doing something similar to the penalty points system whereby the warning gets negated after a set number of laps (say 10 laps) without an infringement. That way drivers won't get penalised for the odd few wobbles over a 50-70 lap race.

If Redbull keep Checo for 2024 they are in big trouble if they want to win the Constructors Championship.

Not enough is being said about the heat exhaustion. Their needs to be a maximum temperature to race in, like when it's too wet to race.

I don't think Russell has the same level of pressure that Lewis was under with Fernando simply because he's already had a season under his belt where he beat Hamilton pretty solidly

- I think Hamilon has always complained that he is seating too much forward in the car, and he has not a good feeling of the rear... This is at least the second time it happened this year. Remember the race when he almost took out Piastri... - When I saw Hamilton on slick, I immediately thought that, Mercedes are somehow scarifying Hamilton, to jump Max, and slow him down, and mix up RB strategy... So I though that Russel would be leaving room to Hamilton, no matter what... but he squeezed left.../ I would have kept the car behind Max, checked my mirrors, specially that my teammate is on slick tires!

I’m looking forward the McLaren story all season on next season’s Drive to Survive

I may be wrong but I think Pirelli did bring up the issue about the tires early on.

It looks to me like Hamilton was meant to get in front of Max & hold him up, giving George a chance later on. Just an accident

Track limits solution: strict for qualy, as that's the test for the driver. For the race, add a greater tolerance to avoid small mm slips translating to penalties which ends up looking like a farce.

Honestly It probably seems like Lewis got a lot more incidents in last 3 years than before because he actually started racing people without an enormous car advantage, back when max was fiting in the top midfield he had some crashes too.

I think the pit stops should have been left to the teams to decide. If a tire explodes, it’s the team/driver’s fault for not managing the tires properly.

Max's fastest lap during the race was almost as fast as Lewis's fastest qualifying lap and you guys still think Lewis might have had a chance? 🤣

Perhaps there should be a mandatory standardized driver cooling vent in the nose of the car that directs air through a hose that interfaces with a port inside a leg of the drivers suit to help keep the driver cool in hot weather. If every car on the grid must run a port with a mimimum cross section at the point of maximum aerodynamic pressure on the nose of the car then there will be an identical loss in performance for every team. Allow teams to plug the port in cool weather and in the rain, but mandate it to be open when the temperature and humidity cross certain thresholds.

Imagine a 25 year old Hamilton without any championship.. Everybody would say he is immature and crash happy.. If Russell had held his line in Suzuka, I wonder

Two things about the track limits issue: 1. If you give them a pass for 2 cms, what happens when it is 4 cms? People will argue it is the same. 2. When they have tried proper curbs on the exits of corners as a deterrent, the drivers scream about how dangerous it is. You can argue about track limits, but Max managed to win with no track limit violations.

Goat F1 Channel! Love the energy guys

I think for track limits you could hire a former quality f1 driver or use one you have on staff and have them highlight the areas on each circuit in which you could gain an advantage by leaving the track and have those areas put out at the briefs and have only those areas policed where the rest of the incidents are allowed minus other rule breaks.

This is what I think about track limits: This is your job, keep it within the lines, we are paying you to drive within the limits and rules. If you can’t we will get someone that can. Buy Perez 😢 good luck out there.

At one point in the race, Russell was behind Perez and yet he finished 4th with 4 stops while perez finished 10th with 3 stops and 2 5 second penalties

Oscar did a fabulous job, go Aussie, not enough hype over Oscar can’t wait for Melbourne 🧡👏🏻😍

Other sports do have the out of bounds issue. American football has rules about leaving the field and re-entering. They have multiple officials that are looking after this stuff the whole time. If you go out, you're out. I don't see this as an issue. Quicker review is what they need. That's the change that "fixes" this.

I wouldn’t say Hamilton has been outstanding this season at all. It’s more he’s been consistent and logged good points. Can’t think of a stand out drive by him this season

If drugovich gets in that AM for at least one race and goes faster than Stroll it would be so funny. Please AM make it happen!