Latest / He's Hot but Something's Off... / HHBSO 102: Sacking One Rookie for Another

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HHBSO 102: Sacking One Rookie for Another · He's Hot but Something's Off...

0:02
Hello, welcome to he's hop. But something is off.
0:08
And instantly the moment after I hit record, I'm like, I need to
0:13
grab my glass of water. It's OK, I'll be fine.
0:17
There's going to be a fast recording because in 40 minutes
0:21
I have a meeting. But I was like, oh, 40 minutes.
0:24
I can I can record this week's podcast because I've never
0:28
talked too much and I never run over.
0:31
Anyways, happy Thursday to all of you.
0:34
As you're listening to this, I will probably be in my car
0:39
driving from Los Angeles to Las Vegas for EDC.
0:44
I talked a little bit more about EDC and how it compares to, you
0:49
know, how about music festival compares to circuit party
0:52
compares to a gay cruise on this week's episode of the Gay Cruise
0:58
and Travel Podcast, which was released this past Monday.
1:02
Go feel free to check it out if you have time to kill or you
1:05
have trouble falling asleep. Today though, I'm going to talk
1:09
a little bit about Formula One and don't tune out yet.
1:12
Don't tune out, Don't tune out because there was recently, 2
1:16
weekends ago, Formula One came to Miami in the form of the
1:21
Miami Grand Prix, a street circuit around the Hard Rock
1:26
Stadium down in Miami. And I'm not specifically going
1:30
to talk about the racing itself, but we're going to talk about
1:34
some tea, some drama. Even if you have no idea what
1:38
Formula One is and you're not into sports, I'm not really a
1:41
sports person. I just want to talk about
1:44
something that I think most people can appreciate within the
1:47
sports world. It's it's drama, it's juicy tea.
1:51
So I thought I'd try this bit of material out and yeah, see, I
1:56
want to see what you, what the three of you that are listening,
1:59
what your comments are about this.
2:00
OK, so Formula One is racing. They have a bunch of different
2:04
teams and every team has two drivers.
2:06
And obviously, like every other sport in every profession, in
2:09
every career, you have people that are more junior, more up
2:12
and coming. They're new to the sport.
2:14
They just got that big promotion.
2:15
They're fresh out of college, whatever here it is.
2:18
And then you also have the more senior folk, the people have
2:20
been there for a while, the people that are, you know,
2:23
higher positions, higher ranked, you know, more experience, more
2:27
skill, more money, all that kind of stuff.
2:30
So it's the same with every career, pretty much the same
2:32
with every sport and the same with Formula One.
2:35
You have junior drivers that have been working their whole
2:39
nearly their whole lives trying to make it into Formula One.
2:43
It's like now that I've given before is think of any kind of
2:46
sport, you know, people that are like basketball or football or
2:50
soccer or golf or anything, right?
2:54
A lot of professional athletes, they have been training to make
2:59
it into the big leagues in their teens, maybe since they were
3:02
like 10 or 12 years old. And then they've been, you know,
3:05
doing sports, doing school. Then they get into like high
3:08
school and then they get to like maybe like a sports scholarship
3:12
because they made it to like that level.
3:14
Then they play like Farsi level sports and then they get drafted
3:18
or whatever. And then they get into like the
3:20
NBA or NFL or whatever professional sports league in,
3:24
you know, after, after college, right?
3:26
Very typical, at least here in the US scene 4 Formula One
3:30
drivers a lot. They start when go karts when
3:33
they're like 6 or 8. They start really young.
3:36
Some of them, a lot of them, they start just doing go Kart
3:39
racing when they when they're not even in their teens yet.
3:43
And then they keep doing racing and progress to like bigger and
3:47
faster cars. And then a lot of new rookie
3:51
Formula One drivers, they are 18 to like 2122.
3:57
You know, like the youngest drivers that make it into
4:00
Formula One to debut in Formula One is 18.
4:03
So we do have some who's 18 on the grid right now.
4:05
His name is Kimmy Antonelli. It's his first season in Formula
4:09
One. And we also have some other
4:11
rookies as well. Another one of these rookies,
4:14
his name is Jack Doohan. He's Kiwi from New Zealand.
4:19
I might have to like double check my facts, but I'm pretty
4:21
sure that's right. And that drama about this part
4:23
is over the winter break with the Formula One season ends in
4:27
like early December and it doesn't start up again until
4:31
March. So there's like a winter break.
4:34
So over the winter break or just before actually at very end of
4:38
last season, there's a team called Alpine and they signed a
4:43
new rookie driver called Jack Dewan.
4:46
OK, so Jack doing just like all the other rookies, everyone else
4:49
that's trying to make it into F1 and now this is the big break.
4:52
OK, so he got signed at the end of last year to be one of the
4:57
two drivers on the outing team. Like you know, this is like a
5:00
lot of people's dreams in Motorsports to get into Formula
5:04
One, so-called the pinnacle motorsport so-called because
5:07
it's kind of their own brand determined industry.
5:11
It's not my turn for it. Over the winter break, this same
5:14
outing team also signed someone called Franco Colapinto, OK, as
5:22
a reserve driver. So every team, they've got the
5:24
two main drivers that go out every weekend.
5:26
But they also have reserve or backup drivers.
5:29
Just like when you have, you know, basketball teams have
5:32
that. Football teams have that where,
5:33
yeah, you have like the the main players, if you will.
5:36
But they, you know, if somebody has like an injury or like
5:39
someone is not there for whatever reason, then they have
5:42
like, you know, maybe like X number of backups or reserves,
5:45
people that are on the bench. So in Formula One, these are
5:47
called reserve drivers. Alpine already has like a couple
5:51
of reserve drivers. But then over the winter break,
5:54
they signed someone called Franco Colapinto, who's an
5:57
Argentinian. Franco had actually substituted
6:00
in for a different team for quite a few races near the end
6:05
of last year. OK.
6:07
And he's proven to be like a promising down talent.
6:10
Frank called Pinto, also a rookie trying to get a
6:13
permanency in Formula One but doesn't have one.
6:16
But you know, near the end of last year for like, I don't know
6:19
how many races, like 6 or 7 races, something like that.
6:22
A different team that he was a reserve driver for.
6:25
He had. It was a mixed performance.
6:27
He scored for some points, but he also had some adventures and
6:32
adventures in furlong means crashes, which is not good to
6:35
see. But he he showed a lot of
6:38
promise and he was on a lot of teams radars for the future.
6:41
Alpine was one of those teams and decided to sign Franco
6:45
called Pinto, who's done a few races by now as a reserve
6:49
driver. Now, we all thought this was
6:51
weird because he was signed for a reserve driver for five years.
6:58
That's a extremely long contract you don't keep.
7:02
You don't sign a rookie to be a reserve for five years.
7:05
There's no rookie wants that. Hey, when was the last time you
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Surf Labs. You know, there's some more
7:56
senior drivers that maybe they're a bit closer to
7:59
retirement age where for the lack of better term, they're
8:04
kind of past their peak, but they still have a lot to offer.
8:07
So one of those more senior drivers who's like past the peak
8:12
and maybe looking at retirement in the not too distant future,
8:16
it makes a little more sense for them to maybe be a reserve
8:18
driver because being a reserve driver does mean that you just
8:21
sitting on the bench the whole time.
8:22
You do other things for the team, you do testing for the
8:24
team, you do simulator work for the team, you give the team
8:27
feedback. You know, there's a lot of ways
8:29
that reserve drivers can contribute.
8:31
But when you are a reserve driver that is like very
8:34
experienced, have done like 8 or 10 years of racing to have done
8:37
hundreds of races, then your experience is a lot more
8:41
valuable in a reserve driver role for a team.
8:45
But you can do all these things for the team kind of behind the
8:47
scenes when you know, off the track.
8:49
But to do a real rookie as a reserve driver, they are not.
8:54
They don't have that bunch of experience and not as much skill
8:58
to provide in that reserve driver role.
9:01
And you would never sign. It's just you just wouldn't sign
9:03
a rookie for five years as a reserve driver.
9:06
And because of all the potential and promise that he showed in
9:09
the few races that he did at the end of last year, the rumors
9:13
were all about, oh, Alpine wants to get Franco Colapinto in.
9:18
Not really to keep him on for five years as reserve driver,
9:21
but basically to try to secure him to be one of the permanent
9:27
drivers, not a reserve in 2026. You know, it's kind of sort of
9:32
like a little musical chairs with the drivers.
9:35
It's kind of like you have to snap up drivers wherever you
9:38
can. If you think that you want them,
9:40
you can't wait till the last minute, but someone else is
9:42
going to snap them up. OK.
9:43
It's competitive driver market. But you know, from a rookie's
9:48
point of view, they don't want to be.
9:49
They want to drive. They want to have a permanent
9:51
seat. They don't want to just be there
9:52
for a reserve for five years. So all the speculation was on
9:56
Jack Doohan's seat. He hasn't even started yet.
9:59
You know, he only was just confirmed as one of the two
10:02
permanent drivers. And now there's this younger,
10:06
hotter, whatever guy talk about. You know, there's always like a
10:09
younger, hotter, sexier person around the block, right?
10:16
Always, always. And this was kind of like, oh,
10:18
from Jack Doone's point of view, there's a younger, hotter,
10:21
sexier driver on the team now. And there's so many rumors in
10:25
the media. Jack was always constantly
10:27
getting asked by the media, like, oh, the team just signed
10:31
Franco Carlo Pinto. Are you threatened by him?
10:34
Like, do you think he's going to take your seat?
10:36
What is it going to take for you to keep your seat so that it's
10:40
not given to Franco Carlo Pinto? Imagine you just signed for the
10:44
team to be a permanent driver for the for the upcoming season.
10:48
It's exciting. And the only thing people ask
10:50
you about is when are you going to get sacked?
10:53
We're now 7 races into the season.
10:55
This season has 24 races after Miami.
10:58
That was the seventh race this season.
11:01
And right after Miami was done, Jack got sacked and guess who is
11:08
replacing him? It's Franco Carlapinta.
11:10
So six or seven races is not a lot of time to prove yourself in
11:17
Formula One. There's a lot of debate among
11:19
fans as to, oh, like six or seven races.
11:24
It's like not long enough. Jack was put in this compromised
11:27
position because Alpine, the team decided to hire Franco Cola
11:31
Pinto, who basically has like a voodoo doll of Jack and it's
11:35
just working at every single race.
11:38
And it's just like standing there behind Jack in the garage
11:41
every race weekend just waiting for him to like crash or bar
11:45
mode to like free up the seat. And then there's other people
11:48
that said, well, Jack was one of the worst performing rookies
11:51
this year on the grid. They're about, there are 5
11:53
rookies on the grid this year. That's a permanent seat.
11:55
The other people are saying, oh, Jack didn't do enough to keep
11:58
his seat. He didn't show very good
12:00
performance. He's one of the worst performing
12:02
rookies so far this year. Look at some of the other
12:04
rookies have like way outperformed him.
12:06
He crashes too much. He wasn't scoring points, being
12:09
outperformed by his teammate, so on and so forth.
12:11
All this kind of stuff that in itself is kind of sort of juicy,
12:15
but it's fairly rare. In more recent years.
12:19
It's a It's a little bit less uncommon to see drivers being
12:24
replaced in the middle of the season, but it used to be that
12:28
not too long ago in Formula One's history that it'd be rare
12:32
to swap a driver in the middle of the season.
12:35
But that's a slightly other kind of Formula One worms we're not
12:39
gonna get into today. So that in itself is pretty big
12:42
news. And the other thing with Franco
12:45
Jalapinto is there's a lot of Argentinian money or Latin
12:50
America money, it's Argentina, Latin America.
12:54
If it is, that part will make the edit.
12:56
If not, it's not going to make the edit.
12:59
But he brings a lot of sponsorship money with him.
13:04
And there was actually a big company that actually signed
13:07
with Alpine during the winter break because Franco Calapinto
13:11
had signed on as a reserve driver with that team.
13:15
So he brings money. There was a Mexican driver,
13:18
Sergio Perez, that was on the grid for quite a while.
13:22
He was racing last year. He got sacked over the winter
13:26
break for a different for someone else.
13:28
That's a whole other set of drama.
13:31
But Sergio Perez, he brought a lot of Mexican sponsorship
13:34
money. So commercially it was great for
13:36
the team and it was also great for the sport because you know,
13:39
at the Mexican grumpy, there's a grumpy in Mexico.
13:41
Every year people would turn up to see Sergio.
13:45
They'll actually go to the races, they'll buy tickets,
13:47
they'll spend money on merchandise, you know, like it.
13:49
F1 is like commercial thing. It's there to make money, just
13:51
like a lot of professional sports is there to entertain,
13:53
but it's also there to make money, so for profit.
13:56
So there's a lot of Argentinian slash Latin American money that
14:01
Franco brings and that's very lucrative for a lot of teams.
14:05
But you know, like some, there's some big teams have like deep
14:08
pockets and there's some smaller teams that don't have such deep
14:11
pockets and you know, no one's going to turn that more money.
14:14
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14:59
filled thing. The thing I find the most like,
15:03
Oh my God, I can't believe this is happening.
15:05
We're going to have to have another quick history lesson.
15:08
Alpine, the same team. How about Alpine just like a day
15:12
or two after Jack got sacked and was replaced by Franco?
15:17
The team principal is kind of sort of like the head coach,
15:21
actually, no, I think A-Team principal kind of sort of runs
15:24
the whole team. I don't think the head coach
15:25
actually runs the team. The team principal isn't like
15:28
the team owner, but the team principal is kind of like the
15:32
sort of sort of like, I want to say CEO.
15:36
The team principal basically overseas the like a COO like
15:40
it's like the operations person. It's like overseas kind of sort
15:43
of like the running and operations and the performance
15:45
of the whole team. You can have someone who's like
15:47
the CEO of a Formula One team that's more on like the
15:51
business, see, and like the the spokesperson side and the
15:55
politics side of it. And you can also have a team
15:59
where like the owners are like the technical legal owners, but
16:03
they're not really involved in like the actual day-to-day
16:05
operations of things. OK, so the team principle is
16:08
kind of sort of more like the COO kind of a thing.
16:12
You know, they don't do as much of like the businesses stuff,
16:15
the politics, but like actual like daily operations and
16:19
runnings of the team is like the team principle and every team
16:21
has one. So the team principal and Alpine
16:24
just a day after Jack got kicked out for Franco, apparently quote
16:29
UN quote resigned due to personal reasons or whatever,
16:33
which is complete bullshit because no team principal just
16:37
up and resigned in the middle of a season.
16:40
Like no team principal does that.
16:42
That means he was forced out or he was fired.
16:45
And to spin it nicely, PR had to say resigned, which is like the
16:49
oldest trick in the PR rule book.
16:51
That in itself is not like, my God, it is very newsworthy.
16:56
The big bombshell related to that is there's a person called
17:00
Fabio Briatore, OK, He used to be team principal for this
17:06
Alpine team back in like the 2000s, like 20 odd years ago
17:13
when the team used to be called Renault.
17:14
And Renault and Alpine are the same company.
17:16
This slight rebranding, But back in the 2000s, there was a big
17:22
scandal called Crash Gate, of which Fabio Briatore got a
17:28
lifetime ban for from Formula One from the sport.
17:33
And I don't think they've ever issued a lifetime ban for anyone
17:36
before Crash Gate. What happened was they had a
17:40
driver, his name is Fernando Alonso, and that they had their
17:43
second driver because every team I see drivers, the second
17:46
driver, Nelson, PK Junior, OK Fabio Biatori orchestrated that
17:51
Nelson was going to deliberately crash so that Alonso would have
17:57
a advantage in the race and also in the championship.
18:01
So huge to scandal Crash Gate and Fabio Beatori was the
18:06
mastermind behind all of that. And that's how they went to
18:09
trial. And then he got banned for like
18:10
a little bit later. That lifetime ban was lifted.
18:16
And last year, Fabio Beatori was hired on as a advisor for the
18:23
Alpine Formula One team. So he's like returned to Formula
18:26
One, which was controversial enough, OK, but he wasn't a team
18:30
principal. He wasn't like running the team.
18:32
He wasn't like during the day-to-day.
18:34
He was just some sort of executive advisor.
18:37
And it was the CEO of the Renault company, which is the
18:42
parent company of Alpine. And Renault is actually a big
18:45
car manufacturer over in Europe. They don't sell any of the cars
18:48
anymore in the US. That's how you might have heard
18:49
of them, but they're actually like a very large a car
18:52
manufacturer. They make like millions of cars
18:55
every single year. A French company as the CEO of
18:58
that parent company that chose to bring Briatore back as an
19:03
advisor now that they had this like Jack and Franco swap that
19:09
was apparently or orchestrated behind the scenes by Briatore.
19:14
Briatore apparently didn't like Jack that much.
19:16
The ticker is he's Jack's manager because every driver has
19:19
like a manager, like an agent, which is hilarious enough.
19:23
And apparently Bria Torre wanted call a Pinto in the seat and
19:27
didn't want Jack in the seat. So apparently it was Bria Torre
19:31
behind the scenes that that set up for Franco to be signed on as
19:37
the reserve driver for five years.
19:39
A nonsensical term for either party.
19:42
But that deal was done and it's basically his fault indirectly
19:47
that Jack doing got all these rumors, all these questions
19:50
about how long are you going to last for a team, you know, when
19:52
like, are you afraid that Franco jalapenos is going to replace
19:55
you, like all that kind of stuff?
19:57
So that's already giving Jack not a great environment to start
20:01
from. You know, starting Formula One
20:03
for the first time is already high pressure enough.
20:05
And then with this team principle of Alpine quote, UN
20:11
quote, resigning, you know, it's pretty clear it's all but.
20:15
Explicitly written out and announced out loud on a
20:18
microphone that Bria Torre effectively forced out the team
20:23
principal. The final kicker here is I said
20:26
before, Bria Torre is a executive advisor and not
20:30
involved with the operations of the team.
20:32
Well, when the news broke that the team principal had quote UN
20:36
quote resigned, it was also announced by the PR team that
20:41
Bria Torre would take over the team principal's duties.
20:44
That departed team principal's duties.
20:47
So basically we've come full circle.
20:48
Someone who was running the Formula One team as team
20:52
principal and basically was the mastermind of this crash grade
20:56
and had a lifetime ban at one point is now back in effectively
21:01
the team principal position for the same team that he got the
21:05
ban from 20 some odd years ago. You can't make this up.
21:10
I don't think that's like it. Oh, I, I, I don't like it.
21:15
I think you can argue on and off about like, oh, was Jack given a
21:19
fair shake during his first seven races without peeing?
21:22
Was that enough time? Was the team providing him the
21:26
environment that he needed to succeed?
21:28
It's actually like it. There's no clear cut answer.
21:30
It's very subjective and there's a lot of commentators on both
21:33
sides. Essays Jack didn't perform well.
21:35
He should be replacing other people.
21:37
That's like, no, Jack should not have been replaced.
21:39
There aren't any. There aren't too many question
21:41
marks or debate about Carla Pinto, but it's not actually
21:44
about Franco, Carla Pinto and whether he should be racing.
21:47
People generally think, OK, it looks like you're promising,
21:49
looks like you would be a good driver.
21:51
But it was more about like Jack's position and not Franco's
21:55
position. And it definitely the the news
21:59
superseding that basically is be a Tory now coming back to
22:04
effectively be the team principal again.
22:07
I don't think he wants to be team principal.
22:09
The rumor is that yes, he's going to be team principal for
22:12
the time being, but we don't think that's his MO.
22:15
We don't think that's that's something he wants to do.
22:18
He just wants to like move the chess pieces behind the scenes.
22:21
He wants to be the puppet master and he wants the other people to
22:25
like be the scapegoats, if you will, like this team principal
22:28
that just quote UN quote resigned.
22:30
It's a scapegoat for beat Tory's desire for Franco Jalapento to
22:35
be in the car instead of Jack doing so.
22:39
Oh yeah. So even though we didn't really
22:42
talk about like actual racing in Formula One, we just talked
22:45
about the politics of it. I feel like any sport, even if
22:49
you don't really know about how the sport, what the rules are,
22:53
the sport, you're not into watching that sport.
22:54
You don't know really how that sport works in terms of the
22:57
actual game itself. There's always like politics and
23:00
drama, like with the teams, the players, the management
23:05
surrounding that sport. So I thought I'd bring that to
23:08
you because I'm into Formula One.
23:10
I do watch it. I actually watch the actual
23:12
racing, and I do care about the action on the track itself.
23:16
But yeah, I just thought this is something probably like people
23:18
can kind of sort of appreciate even if they were not into
23:22
Formula One. Well, I was gonna talk a little
23:27
bit about RuPaul's Drag Race All Stars 10 because we just had the
23:32
premiere, but I think I would save that for maybe a later
23:38
episode. The original plan is I was gonna
23:42
go to EDC, and then after I come back from EDC, then I will
23:46
record next week's episode because I'll come back on like a
23:49
Monday night and the episodes don't go on Thursday.
23:51
So we'll see what I talk about next week.
23:54
I'm sure I have some EDC stories, just a few.
23:56
I'm going to save the juiciest EDC stories for my Patreon
24:00
subscribers because they get a extra episode every week of the
24:03
podcast. The Uncut edition of he thought
24:07
that something is off and they get it every single weekend and
24:11
this weekend is going to be no exception.
24:13
So if you're interested in the Patreon, go check it out.
24:15
You can actually sign up as a free member and kind of sort of
24:18
get a little bit of like a preview of all the things I post
24:21
on it. I should try to run a sale on my
24:23
Patreon. Actually, I've never done a sale
24:25
on the Patreon before. If you want me to run a sale on
24:27
Patreon, just comment in the YouTube section of any of my
24:32
YouTube videos. And by the way, the video
24:34
version of this podcast is available on my YouTube channel.
24:37
Just Joey T also plug. I just released my Allure blog,
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my YouTube blog for the Allure Atlantis cruise this past
24:45
February. It just went up last Friday or
24:50
last Saturday not even a week ago.
24:52
Go check that out. Yeah.
24:53
Especially for those of you who were on a lure, want to relive
24:56
that experience a little bit or if you just a little bit curious
24:59
to see what Atlanta cruise is like vlog style or just want to
25:03
see what my vlog experience or my cruise experience was like on
25:07
that particular cruise. But yeah, I'll be at EDC this
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weekend. Hope you all have fun this
25:12
weekend as well. And we'll be back next Thursday
25:15
for another episode. Until then, bye y'all.