Latest / Rusty's Garage / The Motorsport Brief: Sky Sports F1 commentator Karun Chandhok on Daniel Ricciardo

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The Motorsport Brief: Sky Sports F1 commentator Karun Chandhok on Daniel Ricciardo · Rusty's Garage

• 0:02
  A listener production.
• 0:05
  Welcome to the Motorsport Brief.
• 0:06
  It's Thursday, the 27th of July, 2023.
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  Big weekend of racing coming up with the Sydney Super Night at Sydney Motorsport Park for supercars.
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  Formula One is at the legendary Spa, Francois Sharp, in Belgium, ahead of the summer or mid-season break.
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  And the Formula E crown will be decided in London.
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  We will talk about all that and more on this edition.
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  G'day everybody, Greg Rust with you for this ep of the Rusty's Garage Shortcast.
• 0:35
  Firstly, a big thanks for the overwhelming reaction to our feature episode, our 100th feature ep, which dropped on Tuesday.
• 0:45
  For the milestone, we gave my friend and colleague, Mark Howard, from the global hit, the Howie Games podcast, the keys to the garage.
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  And to help celebrate, listener and my brilliant producer, Tom Dullard, decided it might be a bit of fun to turn the tables.
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  So, bit of a walk down memory lane there with lots of laughs from my time working with Barry Sheen, Daryl Beattie, Lee Diffie and more, the odd impersonation and some life lessons too from over 20 years broadcasting in motorsport.
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  I hope you enjoy that.
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  The interview segment of The Brief today focuses on F1 and a little on Formula E and the decider coming up there this weekend.
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  We have tracked down someone for the convo with a connection to both.
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  Karun Chandok does a great job with the analysis and pit reporting in the Sky F1 coverage, where many of you will know him from.
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  He raced for Mahindra in Formula E as well as Hispania in Formula One back in 2010 and Team Lotus in 2011.
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  There are wins on his CV in GP2, top 10 finishes at Le Mans and more.
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  He's also part of the FIA Drivers' Commission and I was more than a little envious of his weekend at the recent Goodwood Festival of Speed where he got to drive some seriously cool cars.
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  Karun, welcome.
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  It is great to get you on the podcast at a really busy time of year.
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  And we'll talk about a couple of things here from Formula One to Formula E and more.
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  As we get ready for Spa this weekend, it'll be, in this part of the world, remiss of us not to get your observations of Daniel Ricciardo's return to Formula One.
• 2:24
  What did you think of his performance in Hungary?
• 2:26
  Yeah.
• 2:26
  I thought it was good.
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  I think, you know, he should be pleased with that, really.
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  You know, having not been in that car at all, you know, he didn't even get a chance to do a shakedown or, you know, any testing, obviously.
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  And he's really only driven a Grand Prix car once this year after, you know, a pretty torrid couple of seasons at McLaren.
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  And I thought he did exactly what he needed to do.
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  He got in there, out-qualified Tsunoda,
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  beat him in the race and just did a really solid weekend to re-establish himself on the grid.
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  So, no, I think he should be really pleased with that.
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  If we were having this conversation in January or February, would you have thought back then that we would see Dan in a Formula One car in action again realistically at that stage?
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  Honestly, no, I don't, I did think so.
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  But then you have to caveat that with, you know, the way that Red Bull works and they are aggressive in terms of, of, you know, shuffling through the driver program.
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  And if you don't deliver, you're out and, um,
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  You know, it's tough.
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  I get it.
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  And I feel sympathy for Nick.
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  But the reality is that rookies such as Lewis and Max, to some extent, George, Lando, they've all raised the bar in terms of the expectations of a rookie.
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  And you, you know, unfortunately for someone like Nick...
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  He's come up against Tsunoda, who himself is not an established A-lister, right?
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  You know, he's a driver still at the early stage of his career.
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  And Nick wasn't delivering against him.
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  Whereas I think you look at what Oskar's done, for example, and he is delivering superbly against Lando.
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  And, you know, as a rookie, unfortunately now you have to make an impact pretty quickly.
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  And you could make a...
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  Nick had had a run of errors, a run of difficult races.
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  I personally didn't think we would see Daniel in there.
• 4:21
  I thought we'd see Liam Lawson in there is where I thought that seat was going to go.
• 4:27
  I thought they'd have Liam in the car, you know, after the August break for the rest of the season.
• 4:33
  But yeah, it looks like Daniel is...
• 4:35
  Yeah, mainly because I did think Daniel would have the hunger, you know, to come and drive in AlphaTauri.
• 4:40
  You know, for him, having won races and raced for the big teams, I wondered whether he'd have the motivation to drive for AlphaTauri.
• 4:49
  But clearly...
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  he sees that as a stepping stone to get back into the Red Bull, which is obviously his main objective, is to get that seat that Chekhov's got at the moment.
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  And fair play to him.
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  You know, he's putting in the hard graft, driving the Alpha Tauri, and maybe he'll end up in the Red Bull.
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  You're immersed in it, so you know that this can be a brutal game.
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  And it's very tough, obviously, what happened to Nick.
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  Were you surprised that happened?
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  I mean, we were so excited about what he did last year and the potential, so to speak.
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  I just, you know, I can't help but wonder why it didn't work out.
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  I was never one to get overly excited by what happened last year.
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  And I said it then as well, you know, what swallow doesn't a summer make.
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  And, you know, the set of circumstances, he got in the car at Monza, a track that he knows very well.
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  It's a track that the Williams was very competitive at because it's low drag.
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  Yeah.
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  Listen, don't get me wrong, he drove a great race and he's a very good driver.
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  You know, he's got great pedigree in junior formula racing and all the rest of it.
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  But, you know, I think everyone got really excited by that one race at Monza, which is a pretty unique track.
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  And it was very hard, I think, to make a judgment based on that one weekend.
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  So, yeah, a little bit surprised because, as I said, I would have expected Nick to be...
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  at least an equally if not ahead of Tsunoda, given his junior Formula career.
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  So, yeah, I would say I am a bit surprised with the fact that he wasn't ahead of Tsunoda, and maybe we're all doing Tsunoda a bit of a disservice.
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  We were worried at the beginning of the year about the McLaren and its performance.
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  Aussies are now on the bandwagon.
• 6:22
  They're excited about Oscar's potential and the potential for him to perhaps be on the podium, given the car's performance at two very different tracks recently.
• 6:32
  Yeah, listen, I think he's doing a super job, really, really super job.
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  And McLaren as well.
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  What a turnaround.
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  You know, I think in this day and age, we're not used to seeing teams have a big turnaround mid-season.
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  You know, normally we see them arrive with a package and that's kind of where you are for the year.
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  But, I mean, fair play to the design team.
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  They recognized very early on, even before the first race, even when we got to pre-season testing,
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  they sort of recognized they were in trouble and the car wasn't delivering the numbers that they expected to see.
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  So I think they knuckled down quite early on and planned this sort of three-step update package, which came Austria, Silverstone, and I think the next one.
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  They're hoping to get it in before the summer break, but it looks like it might be in Zandvoort.
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  And it's an incredible turnaround.
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  There was a point earlier in the year where they had the slowest car
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  in terms of race pace.
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  And now, you know, two podiums on the bounce.
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  They've had both cars in the top three in qualifying in Silverstone and top four in Budapest.
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  And the drivers are driving superbly.
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  You know, both of them are doing a great job.
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  Lando, of course, we know is pretty much established as your
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  should I say A-lister, if I call Lewis, Fernando, Max, the A-plus guys.
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  I think Lando's in that group with George and Charles and Carlos and, you know, people like that as the next rung down.
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  So for Oscar to arrive in a team which has been really, you know, been geared around Lando for a few seasons, the car clearly suits his driving style, and Oscar... And Daniel showed, right, that it's not an easy car to drive.
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  You know, he arrived there...
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  and Lando really put him away for two seasons.
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  So for Oscar to arrive there in a car which is clearly not a typical driving style and to still get within a tenth of Lando qualifying the last few races is bloody impressive.
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  What sort of observation have you made about him as an athlete, as a Grand Prix driver out of that car?
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  And should we get excited about his future potential?
• 8:39
  I think we should.
• 8:40
  I think you guys have a lot to be cheerful about, right?
• 8:42
  If you've got a re-motivated, recharged, rejuvenated Daniel Ricciardo and a young hotshot in Oscar Piastri, I think you've got a lot to be excited about in Australia.
• 8:51
  I think, you know, he's very, very calm.
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  I was listening to his radio at the British Grand Prix.
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  You know, I had both him and Lando up, and there was a lot of conversation back and forth between Lando and...
• 9:03
  Jose Manuel Lopez, his race engineer, and there's a lot of, you know, information back and forth, and they're talking about this and that, and the strategy and tyres and all this sort of stuff.
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  And Oscar's just very calm.
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  There was lots of yes, no, I understand.
• 9:15
  Okay, no problem.
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  You know, just really monotone, calm, controlled.
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  And to me, actually, you listen to a driver's, you know, their breathing as well.
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  In a tough race like Budapest, but it's hot.
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  And it's not like he's...
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  you know, huffing and puffing there.
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  He's clearly, you know, physically prepared for the job.
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  I think Budapest, he was a bit disappointed with the race because in the first stint, he was right there.
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  And then Lando sort of undercut him at the pit stop.
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  And then I think he picked up some damage.
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  And then the pace on the hard tyre just went away for Oscar.
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  The second or third stint, he just wasn't as quick.
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  But...
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  You know, what I like about him is he's very hard on himself.
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  And I think having Mark there in the corner, helping him.
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  You know, Mark was historically that, you know, very hard on himself and really pushed himself and pushed people around him.
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  And I think having Mark in his corner is a massive asset for Oscar.
• 10:11
  A rival podcast down here has sort of debated that whole undercut scenario and how we should perhaps, you know, read into that.
• 10:19
  You know, should it have been Oscar's choice?
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  Was it more about a team game?
• 10:23
  One suggestion from a journalist was that perhaps it was about keeping Lando happy and sort of fenced in at McLaren.
• 10:30
  Is that a theory you subscribe to?
• 10:33
  I don't know.
• 10:34
  I think, honestly, they were trying to protect Lando against the cars behind, and they somewhat underestimated how quick Lando's outlap would be, anyway, on the car tip.
• 10:45
  But in the end, I think with the pace differences they had, Lando would have probably got ahead of anyway.
• 10:51
  So at the time, I even put a tweet out saying I was a bit annoyed about the fact that McLaren had sort of effectively undercut Oscar with Lando.
• 11:00
  But now as you watch the race unfold, you soon realise it wouldn't have actually mattered.
• 11:05
  You know, I think he would have ended up in front anyway.
• 11:07
  Before we wrap up the Formula One chat here, will the budget cap bring Red Bull a bit more back to the pack?
• 11:14
  Do you think that thing looks like a jet this year?
• 11:17
  Yeah, but only in the hands of one driver.
• 11:19
  I think, you know, that's the point that everyone needs to acknowledge.
• 11:24
  I think because Max has had a, should we say, a controversial and divisive start to his F1 career and there's still the remnants of Abu Dhabi 2021 in the minds of a lot of F1 fans, especially Lewis and Mercedes fans, I don't think Max gets the credit he deserves.
• 11:41
  You know, the reality is...
• 11:44
  Yeah, it's a brilliant car, but if you take him out of it, it's not like Perez is dominating the championship, is he?
• 11:53
  Okay, Perez would be leading the championship, I get it, but not in the same way as Max is doing.
• 12:01
  Max at the moment is, what, 110 points ahead of Perez.
• 12:06
  Crazy.
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  Crazy.
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  The gap he's got is four wins and four fastest laps and a bit more ahead.
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  So I think that's where you have to give him credit.
• 12:17
  And will anyone stop him this year?
• 12:19
  No chance.
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  I think we're just looking at how soon he wins the World Championship.
• 12:23
  You know, will it be done before we go to the Americas?
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  So, yeah, we'll see.
• 12:28
  I think the key, I think, is for the likes of McLaren, Mercedes.
• 12:32
  You know, McLaren got the new wind tunnel coming for next year's car.
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  Mercedes, Ferrari, Aston.
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  We need the chasers.
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  to knuckle down, understand where the deficiencies are and try and correct it for next year.
• 12:46
  A quick break on this edition of the Motorsport Brief.
• 12:48
  More from Karun Chandok in just a few moments.
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  You're listening to the Rusty's Garage Motorsport Brief for this edition of the Shortcast.
• 12:59
  Sky F1 commentator Karun Chandok is with us ahead of this weekend's Belgian Grand Prix at Spa and the title decider for Formula E in London.
• 13:10
  You've been great with your time.
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  So we'll do a couple of quick ones to finish if we can.
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  Firstly, in your part of the world, huge support for the Brit, Jake Dennis this weekend, ahead of the decider for Formula E. That's going to be huge.
• 13:23
  In our part of the world, of course, lots of people wanting to know about Nick Cassidy, who's had a great year there, Mitch Evans' chances and so on.
• 13:29
  That final rounds 15 and 16 in London should be great.
• 13:33
  Yeah, I think it's going to be fun.
• 13:34
  I'm looking forward to heading down there for the weekend.
• 13:37
  I mean, Mitch and Nick...
• 13:38
  Colliding at the last race in Rome has obviously made a massive dent into both of their championships, especially as Jake won.
• 13:46
  I think Mitch just made a mistake, underbreaking, locked up.
• 13:50
  And it's a shame for Nick because, you know, he's been very good at spending that first one-third of the race just sort of sitting there, fourth, fifth, sixth, something like that, and then making the decisive move to get up front.
• 14:01
  Yeah.
• 14:03
  He's one of those drivers I would have liked to see in F1, if I'm honest.
• 14:06
  In fact, well, both of them, both Mitch and Nick, I think, you know, their junior Formula career was very strong.
• 14:13
  And I was really surprised that Cassidy in particular, after his run in Japan,
• 14:19
  Didn't even get a look in, you know.
• 14:21
  I would have thought, if I was Alfa Tauri, I would have stuck him in the car for a few FP1 sessions, just to see.
• 14:26
  Because I actually think, at that point especially, he had real momentum behind him with top quality junior Formula Racing.
• 14:35
  Yeah, I would have liked to seen him in F1.
• 14:38
  But yeah, coming into London this weekend in terms of championship, it looks like it's Jake Dennis' title to lose.
• 14:44
  But the thing with FE, you just see massive swings in the points.
• 14:50
  It can so easily go from...
• 14:53
  driver qualifying on pole one day to the next day being 14th, 15th on the grid.
• 14:58
  We see it quite often, you know, these massive swings in form.
• 15:02
  So nothing's guaranteed.
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  To finish, we've got lots of passionate listeners to the pod.
• 15:08
  Goodwood Festival of Speed is a must, right, on the bucket list.
• 15:12
  You were there in recent weeks.
• 15:14
  Some great stuff where you were hanging out with Kevin Schwantz, Casey Stoner.
• 15:18
  You got to drive all sorts of cool cars from, I saw a Porsche and a Mazda sports car and so on.
• 15:25
  That must have been sublime, was it?
• 15:28
  Yeah, it was great.
• 15:29
  I mean, it was cool.
• 15:30
  I had dinner with Mick Doohan and Wayne Gardner and Kevin Schwantz on the Wednesday night, which was brilliant.
• 15:36
  You know, I grew up.
• 15:37
  falling in love with motorbike racing in that era of the late 80s, early 90s.
• 15:41
  And they're just such great characters.
• 15:44
  They're great characters.
• 15:45
  And, you know, spent some time with Kenny Roberts.
• 15:49
  And then obviously, as you say, you know, Casey.
• 15:52
  I really enjoy spending time with Casey because he's...
• 15:55
  He's just an open book, right?
• 15:58
  And same as Mick.
• 15:59
  You know, they just tell it like it is.
• 16:01
  You know, they never hide behind diplomacy.
• 16:04
  And I think that's refreshing, this modern day of political correctness.
• 16:10
  And, you know, people like... And Casey's attention to detail is so, so impressive.
• 16:16
  You know, he showed me around his...
• 16:20
  his bike from 2008, the year after he won the championship for Ducati.
• 16:24
  And then we had a look around this year's Ducati as well, just looking at the differences and all the sort of technology they've got now, which actually is probably to the detriment of the sport, frankly, MotoGP.
• 16:36
  And I really love listening to Casey because he's got, you know, I say to him, he should come and do more TV because he's very good at explaining things and breaking things down to someone like myself, who's a fan of MotoGP.
• 16:50
  But I'm not in it.
• 16:51
  I'm not an expert.
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  So I'd like to understand more.
• 16:54
  And I think he's excellent at explaining that sort of stuff.
• 16:56
  He'd probably get in trouble quite a lot.
• 17:01
  But, you know, most importantly, I'm very glad to hear that he's health-wise, he's doing much better.
• 17:05
  But yeah, no, listen, coming back to Thistle Speed, it's an amazing place to go see people, spend time with people, see cars, bikes, you know, future technologies.
• 17:20
  you know, drones and all sorts of things that could be the future.
• 17:23
  Yeah, fantastic nod to the past.
• 17:27
  You see lots of things from the present, but also the future.
• 17:31
  Yeah, a brilliant event.
• 17:32
  I strongly recommend to any motorsport fan.
• 17:35
  And you took the family along too, and I would imagine karting for kids is going to be a thing for you.
• 17:40
  But on that basis, there was a lot of smiles from the young ones.
• 17:42
  Oh, wow.
• 17:43
  It's going to be expensive, yeah.
• 17:44
  The older one is already into it.
• 17:46
  But at the Goodwood Revival, they have a race called the Settrington Cup, which is a pedal car race of these JS40 cars from the 1950s.
• 17:56
  So we've been out testing this morning, actually.
• 17:58
  My son is having his first...
• 18:00
  His first go in the pedal car.
• 18:02
  So he's been out testing.
• 18:04
  He had his little shakedown.
• 18:06
  And yeah, so he'll be doing that in September.
• 18:08
  Terrific.
• 18:08
  You've given us more time than we intended here.
• 18:11
  We're grateful for that.
• 18:12
  Thank you so much for talking to us and sharing some insights.
• 18:15
  Have a fabulous weekend and enjoy the rest of the championships, respectively.
• 18:19
  No problem.
• 18:19
  My pleasure, guys.
• 18:21
  Gee, Karoon makes some really good points, doesn't he?
• 18:23
  Some takeaways there for our listeners in New Zealand, two on Liam Lawson, which I wasn't expecting.
• 18:29
  Fingers crossed it's a good weekend at Spa for both Oscar Piastri and Daniel Ricciardo.
• 18:34
  A couple of other headlines before we go.
• 18:36
  The format has been flipped for this weekend's Sydney Super Night.
• 18:41
  The supercars will do a longer night race on the Saturday before engaging sprint mode for the final part of the weekend.
• 18:49
  Race 18 of the season is a 51 lap 200k refuelling race under lights.
• 18:55
  It's a two day race meeting, so no night running either for competitors before the Saturday racing.
• 19:02
  Bit of talk around about the reduced visibility in these new Gen 3 cars and what impact that might have for drivers under lights.
• 19:10
  This round is always a great spectacle, seeing the cars at night, the pyro, the entertainment, and if you can't make it on the Saturday, Sunday, it's sprint mode.
• 19:20
  Both days are on the same compound tyre and there's five championship points up for grabs for fastest lap in each race as well.
• 19:28
  Simona DeSalvestro is coming back for Bathurst with a Dick Johnson Racing wildcard entry that she'll share with impressive rookie Kai Allen, who's currently second in the Super 2 point standings.
• 19:40
  Since wrapping up a three-year stint with Kelly Racing back in 2019, Simona has had a few IndyCar appearances, reserve and test duties for Porsche in Formula E and some GT racing as well.
• 19:53
  The Swiss racer hasn't ruled out the idea of a full-time supercars return either.
• 19:58
  We're going to see if we can track her down and get her on for a chat here on the shortcast before the great race rolls around.
• 20:06
  TCR champion Tony Dalberto has a new set of wheels on the way.
• 20:11
  Currently running the older gen Honda Civic, which was dominant at Queensland Raceway last year.
• 20:17
  And that's the next stop on the calendar for that series in a couple of weeks time.
• 20:22
  TD is set to have a new spec in.
• 20:25
  FL5 Type R for the Sydney Motorsport Park round when the international stars arrive for two huge weekends of racing in the Harbour City and Bathurst in November.
• 20:37
  And while we're on that Shannon Speed Series, the event at Sydney Motorsport Park there in early November will feature two night races.
• 20:45
  That's a really cool addition for the TCR World Tour.
• 20:49
  They are drawing parallels between Kali Rovampere and the great Sebastian Loeb in the World Rally Championship.
• 20:55
  Rovampere racked up the 10th win of his WRC career in Estonia, but it's the way he did it that's got people talking.
• 21:04
  He claimed 15 of the 21 stages, including a run of 13 consecutive fastest times, and he took victory, wait for it, by nearly 53 seconds.
• 21:14
  Wow.
• 21:16
  And finally, congrats to Jack Dewan, who was on the brief with us only a few weeks ago, talking about all the work that has gone into turning his season around.
• 21:25
  And at that stage, the kind of renewed confidence he had to be able to fight for wins in F2.
• 21:31
  The headlines were flawless.
• 21:34
  perfect on another planet as he took his first win of 2023 in the feature race at Hungary well done Jack that is it for this week enjoy a great weekend of racing everybody NASCAR at Richmond as well next week we'll talk about the release of a fantastic new book to celebrate a Bathurst milestone we'll catch you then everybody bye for now