Alt+F1: 81 - Spanish GP 2016

*waves*

Nyoooom!

That Max kid, eh?

Such a good race.

Excited to find out what went down and how! Waiting to hear next year Torro Rosso puts a 15 year old cart racer in the seat since this has worked out so well

Rubbing is the Dark Souls of racing.

Happy they managed to get this one in before Drews vacation

Edit: @dannyodwyer sorry dude, I wasn't actually mad, just disappointed just being a snarky A-hole

Neoooowwwww

@beanswater: EVERYTHING! it all happened!

Kvyat didn't made in Q3, guys. Because he was out of fresh tyres. That was he's main complain.

This was the BEST race I've ever seen! Remove Mercedes from the race = F1 return to glory!

EDIT: Or at least for 2016 season. :D

A tuna-chewingly good race.

And to think all it took was removing Mercedes.

Pretty much!

Mercedes OP, pls nerf.

"hardly any irregular verbs in Italian": shockingly! :D, Danny is wrong

Hopefully Rosberg keeps telling Lewis to fuck off on the track and Lewis keeps trying to be Chocolate Senna (I HATE saying that) by going for a hopeless gap every race. Maybe Mercedes will finally implode and the rest of this season won't be like what Joe Gibbs Racing is doing in NASCAR.

It's amazing how hopeful everyone is for this season's outlook after the Mercedes wipeout. Sadly, it took an unprecedented amount of human error for it to happen. If Rosberg and Hamilton finish 1-2 in Monaco, it will be so crushing to face reality again.

I didn't ever really like Kvyat but I feel sorry for him - pressure, Red Bull and the Gods of chance were absolutely brutal to him. He hasn't tweeted anything since just before the Russian GP.

Who's hottie in the pool?

Caccoon's Steve Guttenberg

Drew is smooth even when he is messing up.

CAMPING WORLD TRUCK!!!!!!!!!!

Song makes me hungry every time now...

@azural said:

It must sting even more for Kvyat knowing that two races ago he got on the podium while Mercedes were in the race but when they're finally removed from the equation, he's not able to capitalise on it. I'm not saying he would have won like Verstappen did, but he'd definitely be up there.

On the Channel 4 feed, Christian Horner (Team Principle of Red Bull) even said that he thought Daniil did well to get points considering his starting position and that he expected him to have trouble in this weekend. He thinks it's significantly more difficult having to go from a Red Bull car to a Toro Rosso one than the other way around (essentially, anything Max was used to in the TR would be possible in the RB but the TR might not be capable of things Daniil would be used to in the RB).

Life can be brutal sometimes.

On the other side of the coin, did you know that the same day of the race when Red Bull did so well also happened to be the anniversary of Christian Horner's marriage with Geri Halliwell and his step daughter's (Halliwell's daughter's) birthday. So he'd brought them along to this race to celebrate together. So life seems pretty great for him.

Excellent podcast, guys. Really enjoyed this one. As a general motorsports fan more than an F1 devotee, I'm super excited to hear ya'll are branching out and trying on other sports, too (even if danny's experience was more sobering than anything else). Stick with indycar for sure, @drewbert! Rossi's continuing to impress, all things considered. A 10th place finish last weekend in the gran prix, and he's shown consistent good pace in 500 practice this whole week, too. He was 4th quickest on opening day. Considering how new he is to his team, and having a whopping one oval race under his belt at this point, thats awfully impressive.

And yes. NASCAR does have a playoff system with set cutoff dates that takes people out of contention for the drivers championship. Nobody understands how it works anymore, and its a bunch of bullshit. Which is pretty much the state of the union in NASCAR right now, unfortunately.

Really well handled segment by Danny on motorcycle racing. I am all for grass roots racing; i autocross at every possible chance i get. But grass roots street course racing, like the TT? That is pure insanity. Their safety equipment is literally 1950's F1 spec. Hay bails is about the best you can hope for to soften your impact if you have to ditch your bike. Worst case? You're off a cliff, and instantly dead. Certainly walking the line between sport, and blood sport. Yet, im not sure I feel strongly enough that races like this should be banned outright either. I don't know.

Since Verstappen is now the next big thing, I demand that you pronounce the 'a' in Verstappen like the 'a' in the British pronunciation of 'bath', because that is how his name should be pronounced. Show a little respect, dammit.

Some people in Britain pronounce 'bath' with a long 'a' (barth), and some with a short 'a' (bath), so that's maybe not the most helpful comparison.

I want to love NASCAR again, I really do. But, the championship they've built has gotten so bad that I just can't get invested any more. It's like the races have no stakes.

The on track product suffered for years, with aero issues making passing the lead car near impossible (basically the same problem F1 encounters with dirty air, but with no DRS assist to mitigate it).

The lower downforce package improved racing, but the point system just got worse.Combined with a megalomaniac leader who fines the drivers if they have the gall to make even reasonable public statements pointing out problems with the sport (including safety issues) leaves a bad taste in my mouth.

Well, that's just silly. Everybody should just stick to speaking that fancy British like the people in the movies. Like this. I'm taking a fancy bath. Just lovely. Absolutely smashing. Yes.

Enjoyable podcast once again! With regard to motorcycle road racing, it's a tricky one. I've been to the TT three times and the Ulster Grand Prix once. The atmosphere at these events is one of utter admiration and camaraderie between riders and fans, it's electric. I know that some parts of the pro bike racing community would prefer it to be banned, as they think it exploits the riders. The thing is, it's the riders choice at the end of the day. The TT races don't form part of a series, no one is obliged to race there. They do it because they love it, one of the purest challenges in all of motorsport. While I was last there in 2014 we lost two riders, it was very, very sad, but the guys died doing what they loved, and everyone knows the risks. While I agree that it is awful seeing people killed and injured it's this danger that raises the riders up to be something truly special.

If anyone is interested, Closer To The Edge is a fantastic film (as the guys said), but also "Road" is tremendous. It's the story of road racing's most famous family, the Dunlops and is utterly spellbinding.

@christoph84:

Excellent points, well made. In the end, I agree entirely. If any of these races were star events of championships, their safety standards would be unacceptable. Sure, publicity is good, and competing well in the TT will gain you that, but it won't get you into a moto3 ride or anything like that. Period. As events entirely divorced of any greater progression, I think allowing the drivers to make the choice of participating or not is totally sufficient.

Still doesn't mean Danny's reaction wasn't valid, of course. Anyone who's been around the sport long enough will know instantly when a crash is serious enough to hurt someone...and the feeling you get when you know the driver isn't going to just walk this one off? It's terrible.

Numbers are hard.

Also I think I'm becoming one of them, as I recognized why it would be a good thing that both Mercedes would be out in the first lap; and feel happy about it (not if anyone was seriously hurt, of course).

@mr_bones: Totally agree, I get the impression from the local communities in Ireland & the Isle of Man that it's a pain that they just have to deal with simply thanks to where they live. They don't want to see young guys coming over and killing themselves and I'm sure that for every person who loves the sport, many more don't.

I get a horrible feeling in my gut when I see any crash on TV or live, car or bike. I worked for Aston Martin Racing in 2013 when one of our drivers Allan Simonson was killed at Le Mans. The grief and shock that went through the team was profound, I wouldn't wish that on anyone.

Anyway, enough crash talk. Really loving the podcast and I'm enjoying the discussion here too.

Monaco next...

Dude...why say that at all man

On a lighter note I made a thing that was sure would already have been done but I didn't find one

Editing is an interesting first experience, even though it's something very simple!

I was watching live on Sky and even before Antony Davidson start talking I knew he would try to find a way to blame Rosberg for the incident, man I was right. Typical british press...

Huge crash yesterday on the F3 at Red Bull Ring.

So I recently upgraded my cable package and now I have NBC Sports so I'll be trying out F1 this week. Excited to see it and listen to the podcast after really enjoying the trackwalk videos.