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NEWS: Hell Yeah! Should Supercars follow NASCAR’s lead? · Full Credit to the Noise

• Speedcafe Team: Hello and welcome to Full Credit to the News brought to you by Authentic Collectibles. My name is Andrew Van Loren and I'm joined by Speed Cafe's managing editor, Stefan Bartholomew. Stefan, it's Friday. It's AFL Grand Final Weekend. My hometown of Fremantle is absolutely buzzing. The countdown to the Bathus 1000 is on. Obviously the Frio part doesn't really resonate with you, but there's a lot to feel good about. How are you? I'm great. Grand final week is always exciting. So ⁓ definitely it's got me up and about. But ⁓ maybe not as much as you. Is it true that you've canned an opportunity to race a car on Saturday in order to drink beers and watch a football game? I have done that and ⁓ I canvassed a few opinions about what ⁓ what I should do. But ⁓ you were very much on the go race the car ⁓ sort of side of the equation. But most of the feedback I've got is that who knows when the Dockers will be in another grand final. So maybe a ⁓ Maybe a day in Freo will be worth savouring because ⁓ you might find this hard to believe, but I've done a few laps of wanneroo before in my time. My answer was what it was because you were clearly fishing for the answer that you wanted in order to excuse your own behaviors. ⁓ you're a good friend. You're a good friend to to know to ⁓ to just cut me down a peg or two in that exact moment. But ⁓ Anyway, as well as being a grand final weekend, it's also a Grand Prix weekend. Action is already underway on the streets of Baku and Azerbaijan because of this bizarre kind of Thursday to Saturday timetable they've got going on there. ⁓ it feels like a timely moment to chat a bit about Oscar Piastri, Stefan, because this was the race last year where he started to lose a firm grip on the title. You know, he crashed out of that race. His momentum hit the skids and he just never got it back. And as we know, he ended up third in the standings by the end of the season. It's a very different situation this year because there are no title hopes for Oscar, I don't think. He's had a difficult season by any measure, but in particular in comparison to the reigning world champion, his teammate Lando Norris. Perhaps this year Baku will go the other way and spark a bit of life into Oscar's season. He was a winner there in 2024, so he can perform there, but I don't know, there were some interesting comments from from Oscar in the lead up to this weekend. He said that things that have worked for him in the past just aren't working with these new spec cars. McLaren has dedicated a bit more resource to try and help him get on top of the car, but ⁓ it's like crunch time feels like it has to be coming to some ex extent because he just doesn't look like the driver that really challenged to win a world championship last year, right? Yeah, there's no shying away from that part of it. There's been races recently where he's been smoked by Lando. And like the qualifying he's probably not been quite so far away, but some of the race performances really risk him just defaulting into this de facto number two driver sort of scenario. And that's not a political thing, that's just like speed on the racetrack, right? It's not a conspiracy from McLaren. So as you point out, Oscar has been talking about the fact that the 2026 cars are quite different to drive. Just even ignoring the energy management side that's dominated so much of the conversation around them externally. They're they're different for the drivers to handle. And he's in the situation now where he's trying to problem solve his way out of out of what he's in. But everything in his pedigree says he's better than what he's been running lately. And there have been some high points this year as well. So ⁓ he did talk about the fact that progression on this is not linear. ⁓ there's gonna be some steps forward and some steps back, but ⁓ it does come back to the fact that the modern F1 is about the ability to adapt. And this is the sort of thing that killed Daniel Ricardo's career. He was clearly better than what he was able to show in the generation of McLaren that ⁓ that he ended up in there. And even if you look at right now, it's seriously hurting George Russell's career, the inability to adapt to what he's got at the moment. It's a funny thing because I I always felt like that Oscar was kind of this academic driver. Like it you know, he might he someone like Orlando could probably edge him out on just that raw natural ability, but he was just this thinking driver that could get the best out of the car in situations where those more intuitive drivers couldn't. And you would think with the complexities of this car that it would really I really felt like it was going to suit Oscar this year, but it's just gone completely the other way. Like Lando has flourished and actually looked like the world champion or a deserving world champion. Whereas Oscar's just, yeah, just fallen off the boil. And I I really wouldn't have predicted that preseason. No, when you look at Oscar's career and the fact that he did win in each of those junior formula straight up, like that adaptability to jump in a car and get speed out of it. ⁓ pretty quickly was always there. So it is a bit of a surprise. ⁓ again, y you look at the fact that Oscar's what, like three and a half seasons into his career, Lando's got more experience. Do you give Oscar any sort of discount on that? Definitely. And I think probably last year to a large extent, kind of I don't know exactly how to phrase it, but ⁓ we we probably expect more from him given the infancy of his career because of the first, let's say, two thirds of the twenty twenty-five season, where he really should Lando should have smoked him last year as well, to be honest. If you really look at their respective ⁓ experience and all that sort of stuff. And Oscar made a good fight of it. And it probably has meant that we do put a lot more expectation on him. Because we expect him to be able to match Lando because he did for so much of last season when they had an incredibly quick car. And I guess Maybe maybe we do need to be a little more forgiving because now we're just seeing that that scenario where almost like the Max Verstappen scenario where the car can be fast, but it's tricky to drive, its window is narrow, and Lando just has the experience to get it in the window and to be up there contending for race wins at times when Oscar's just mired at the back of the front group or even sort of at the head of the of the midfield. So it's not a bad point that that you make. We probably we probably should be bit kinder. And that's ⁓ where it comes back to like George Russell was this week also talking about ⁓ his situation and sort of comparing it to to Oscar's as well. But the difference there is he's in what season eight of his F one career and he's getting smoked by a teammate who's in season two. So ⁓ that is where you get to the to the real serious conversations. Yeah, definitely. Although he was quickest by about half a second in practice two last night, even though Kimmy only did ⁓ only did half the session because they did an engine change because his ⁓ engine got full of fire extinguisher powder ⁓ after the hydraulic issue in practice. So ⁓ anyway, things are gonna move fairly quickly this weekend in terms of the on-track action because like I say, it's all over by Saturday night. So by the time we listen to this, there may well be practice three on already. But while we're on the topic of F1, let's have a brief chat about the silly season. And I say brief because I think the silly season is gonna happen pretty quickly. ⁓ Red Bull Racing has now locked in. Isaac Hadjar for the 2027 season alongside Max Verstappen. So that was one of the very few question marks out there that's now been ⁓ been answered. Racing Bulls, no formal confirmation, but continuing with Arvid Lindblad and Liam Lawson does seem likely at this point. And that means the only change we're likely to see is the seat at Haas alongside Ollie Behrman. There's been an expectation for a while that Esteban Ocon will depart the team, and it's all come to a head in Azerbaijan. ⁓ Ocon told media during the week that he's a free agent, which is about as good a confirmation as we need. We did have a listener question from Tilly Willy13, one of our Discord members, on this. He asked, How realistic is it to be excited for our lad Jack? We do know that Jack Dewan is in the mix for that half seat. He tested with the team this week, but unfortunately, reports from Europe are suggesting that Ferrari Jr., Raphael Camera is the front runner for that Ocon seat, Stefan. Yeah, it's when you look at someone like Camera who's twenty one, he's in the Ferrari Academy, reigning F three champion, currently second in F two, it's hard to line up Jack Dewan's C V and think that he would be a better option. Obviously he does have a bit of F one experience. Yeah. But you know, that the pedigree of his junior career was a little bit patchy. So it wasn't like everything was absolutely ⁓ rock solid before he got to f1. So it's it's good that he's driven the car, it's good that he's in the program, but ⁓ it would be a surprise if he gets the gig. Yeah, I I do agree with that. I would be surprised if that's the way that it did play out. Obviously some when you're talking about a small team like Haas, there's other factors that come into play as well. But generally anyone who's coming through that pathway has pretty good backing behind them and can can continue that backing to get them into Formula One. If this is the end of the F1 road for Esteban Ocon, how do you rate his career? Well, I guess he's ended up with the journeyman career, really. When you look at he's going to get to 200 races, he had that one brilliant win at Hungary back in 2021. Yeah. But ⁓ yeah, I think from what we saw at the start when he sort of arrived on the scene in the mid-2010s and he was a Mercedes Junior when Mercedes were were dominating and he was sort of placed at Force India and it felt like a sort of ⁓ the stepping stones were there for him to go on and have an amazing career. But it just hasn't turned out that way and there was obviously a fork in the road where Mercedes let him sort of go out of their program to go to Renault. And whenever something like that happens, it is a little bit of a red flag of is there something something missing here? Otherwise Mercedes would have done everything to to try to keep him. So Yeah, he's he's also sort of had that reputation of being a bit difficult to deal with inside the teams at times. Whether that's fair or not, it's hard to really see from this far away. But certainly the the split with Alpine was a bit messy ⁓ at the end of twenty four. Yeah. Yeah, when you don't even make the very end of the season. That's ⁓ generally something's not going too well there. Yeah, look, I I totally agree. I feel realistically that he's under promised in in Formula One. ⁓ I have a bit of personal insight because I was covering DTM in twenty fourteen and European F three was an important part of the F one ladder system at that time and mostly raised on the DTM bill. So I saw that that F three season up close and and Esteban beat Max Verstappen that year and he was very highly rated by Mercedes and it felt like he had this incredible F one career ahead of him. And as you say, it's been solid, he's won a Grand Prix. But if you look at the comparison to Max Verstappen, it's pretty startling. You know, and they went on to and it does show something about, you know, whether outright success in junior categories is you know, always the best indicator or whether other people involved in junior programs look beyond outright results and and and look for other qualities and drivers because by twenty fifteen Max was in F one and he's a full time world champion and Esteban Ocon is is not, so ⁓ yeah, I I fully agree with your ⁓ with your summary of it. I think that it it really has under pro ⁓ underdelivered, really. Yeah, obviously the the question around that then is like did he not get into the right teams at the right time or did we actually see the see the best of him? Well, there was a bit of opportunistic work from the Verstappen camp even right back then, because Mercedes was sniffing around Max at that time when he came into European F three and was obviously very good. He was very young compared to even to compared to Ocon and and Tom Blomquist and the other guys racing in that category, Felix Rosenquist, guys like that. ⁓ but Mercedes were interested. Red Bull came along and said, Well, we'll stick you straight in Formula One car. Like, don't worry about F two. Like, we'll just put you in an F one car. And the Verstappen camp jumped at it and and, you know, we know what we know now. It's all gone pretty well. So That's the ⁓ the little forks in the road that do happen with these young drivers and the the decisions made either by them or for them by their teams on their way up through the ranks. Now for some news from our dear friends at Authentic Collectibles, Trackstar Collectors, something very special has arrived just in time for the great race, and that is the brand new 2025 Bathus 1000 Podium triple set in 164 scale. The set includes three models, the Penwright Racing Ford Mustang, driven by Matt Payne and Garth Tander, to win the Bathus 1000. Team 18's Gaday Grape Camaro, driven by David Reynolds and Lee Holdsworth to second place, and the Premier Racing Camaro driven by James Golding and David Russell, which crossed the line first but was classified third. The triple set is available now through authorised stockers across Australia, New Zealand, select Repco stores and on the Trackstars website while stock lasts. Collect the set, chase the rare. Remember, the race never ends. That is a ⁓ fun, ⁓ fun triple set. You can decide what order you want to display them in. That's a clear. I reckon Jimmy Golding would have his car at the front. That's a very good point. Yep, I hadn't thought about that. Maybe we need to let Jimmy know he needs to ⁓ needs to give our mate Will Hall a call and get hold of that set and he can ⁓ he can revise history, which is always fun. All right, let's revisit a bit of NASCAR news this week, Steph. And of course I'm talking about the pit road fight between Ryan Blaney and Carson Hosevar. No sanctions from NASCAR. And I had my say on the matter to some extent on the FCTTN pod early in this week, but I'm very keen to get your thoughts on this whole thing, Stefan. Well, I guess the thing that's happened since ⁓ your Tuesday pod is the fact that ⁓ NASCAR said there's going to be no no sanctions for this to either Ryan Blaney or Carson Hosevar, ⁓ which was in some way surprising because they have tended to to find drivers in the past when there's been an actual punch involved. Like famously ⁓ Marcus Ambrose all those years ago when he ⁓ when he clocked Casey Mears and even in in more recent ones with Ricky Stenhouse and and Kyle Bush only a couple of years ago, that was a seventy five thousand dollar fine for Stenhouse. So I think it's ⁓ I think it's sort of in the context of NASCAR being in this sort of rebuilding phase at the moment. Like the ratings have been down in recent years. And yeah, part of that has been identified as the drivers are just sort of too vanilla. It's become all too corporate. They lost lost a lot of the big stars retiring and that sort of thing. So part of the strategy now is to let these guys loose a bit more. And when NASCAR's CEO Steve O'Donnell was talking about this this week, he said They're not going to encourage fighting, but we're allowing the drivers to be passionate. So clearly they know it's good for business, it's good for ratings and all of that sort of thing. So I think they essentially wanted this to happen, but now they're just walking the fine line in terms of the perception in terms of they can't outright condone it or have it happen every week because it is a bit out of step with other sports and sort of society in general. But ⁓ it's good for the bottom line. But what do you think about it? That's the bit you didn't answer. What's your take on it? Well, I think it's it's one of those things that it's it's just so different the culture in the US versus Australia. And this is something you guys did touch on on Tuesday, that there's just more runway there for NASCAR to to sort of lean into this than than what would ever be acceptable in in supercars, basically. Because NASCAR was built on fights the modern success of NASCAR like is sort of traced back to that nineteen seventy nine Daytona five hundred where Carl Yabra and Donny Allison got into it on the last lap of that race and that was the first ⁓ Daytona that was that was broadcast in full live on TV. So it was such a iconic flashpoint moment and the the culture of it's just different to here and there's other differences too in terms of NASCAR being the series promoter and the sanctioning body all in one. Where it's just Supercars has to ⁓ be beholden to the FIA's principles and all of that under under ⁓ A. So ⁓ yeah, that's where a lot of the discussion has gone locally is to is this what Supercars needs to to really spike its ratings. But it's just a bit of a different landscape. ⁓ it definitely is. I mean if you look at the news cycle this week it's been all about whether Lockheed deal can play in the grand final after a like gut punch, you know, in a footy match, whereas you got NASCAR sitting there saying, No, we're pretty comfortable with these two guys actually punching each other in the face. And I mean, when you listen to to ⁓ Steve O'Donnell's wider sort of take on it, like I he does sort of talk about the fact that if it had been a wild brawl with all of the pit crew involved, and remember these are big dudes who are like the like ⁓ big athletes who could really inflict some damage on each other and anyone else who happened to get in the way of a Of a fist that's flying around, then a dimmer view would have been taken, but they kind of just saw it as a fair fight, man on man, and they're okay with it. So that's that's the NASCAR way, I suppose. So yeah, anyway. Yeah, they're playing in the margins when they're they're talking about why it was okay. Right. Yeah, true. And then there was the separate conversation about Ty Gibbs throwing the water bottle into the mix, ⁓ where there was ⁓ Yeah, some suggestion. He could he was at least being dragged in for a conversation with NASCAR where the other drivers weren't. Yeah. And there were other drivers that were making hand gestures and that sort of stuff. Innoc reasonably innocent stuff to Hosevar and that, which again, if you did that at your local go-kart club in Australia, you could get a three month ban for the wrong hand gesture. Like it's ⁓ it's yeah, like you say, it it is very difficult for us to really get our heads around 'cause we live in a very different society than than seemingly how things work. Over there. Do you think that that supercars does need this level of off track action to sort of take it to the next level? no. I like again, yeah. I'm I I'm not a I'm not a combat sports fan. I'm not gonna sit here and say that I wanna see supercar drivers punching each other's lights out. I'm just not overly sensitive to it either. And I think that sometimes some of the and I this is a point I did make on the Monday pod as well, sorry, on the Tuesday pod as well, is that ⁓ there's a reason why every time we rock up at Bathurst, we're watching footage from twenty years ago of Marcus Ambrose and Greg Murphy pointing, you know, by pointing at each other's chests because no one will do that now because you'll go to Motorsport Australia jail for so long with any sort of physical altercation or anything like that. So we still actually thrive off these moments from a marketing point of view, but we've created an environment as we saw with Frosty and Barry Ryan. ⁓ even Mark Dutton and and Tommy Randall on that where like we can't actually create those moments anymore, but we still thrive off them and live off them from a marketing perspective. And at what point can we not do that anymore because it was so long ago that it starts to lose its relevance. Does that make sense? Yeah, it's it's about sort of where you draw the line and ⁓ I think ⁓ NASCAR is beyond where it should go here. But ⁓ yeah, in in the supercar's MA world it's probably too far the other way. And it's also just a little bit unclear where it is. I mean, supercar's drivers are afraid to even say anything interesting on the whole these days, let alone do anything in the heat of the moment. So ⁓ I I think ⁓ in terms of that, like we still suffer from in two thousand and four, Rick Kelly made some comments after being fenced by Russell Engle and got a massive fine for it. And it's that had sort of set the tone for no matter how many times they've said since that like ⁓ drivers can can say what they want. It's never really properly recovered from that. Yep. So I I totally I totally agree. And that's that's just really, yeah. That's where we're at. We've sort of with and and by doing things like the the reprimands even though they're kind of meaningless on on Barry Ryan for that thing in New Zealand and that like you just you set a precedent that's so difficult to get out of. And drivers aren't going to show their emotion and they're not going to do that publicly because they really feel like they can't. So like you're right, maybe there's probably the NASCAR approach is one step too far. I also think that and and I have this exact same opinion about on track incidents that you can't just You can't have a box and everything has to fit inside that box in terms of what's acceptable and what's not. Like context is so important to everything that happens in our lives. So like in this case, like I didn't find that fight between Blaney and Hosevard like massively offensive because again, it was a pretty fair fight. And you look at the Lockie Neal thing, you well, he did run up behind him and deck him in the guts. Like there is actually a bit of a difference there in terms of like what was going on. And even Ryan Blaney's comments afterwards about the fact that Yeah, I went over there to talk to him and I provoked him by pushing him and he punched me the face. So like fair play. Like that's that's the risk you run when you when you put yourself in that situation. So I think even the reaction from those involved in it sort of said that it wasn't it was a fair fight. So yeah. But we've sort of again in this in the world of Australian bureaucracy and all that sort of stuff, it's like, well, there's that's happened, so You know, there was a reprimand for that, so there has to be a reprimand for everything that even remotely resembles that, regardless of any context that's wrapped around it. So anyway, we could probably talk about this for another hour, but it's like it's But the way that the way that Blaney handled it and spoke about it certainly helped NASCAR from a perception point of view. A hundred percent. And I do wonder whether there was a conversation had before he went sort of as hard as he did publicly on just owning it. ⁓ that was that was good. Well, I I made the comment to you having you know, you wrote the story of ⁓ O'Donnell's comments and Blaney's comments of saying this feels so backwards. Like you had the series saying, No, it's fine. Did you see it? It was funny as. Did you watch it? It's great. And then you had the driver actually taking the really mature response to it, which feels like the opposite of how it would generally play out in in any sense, to be honest. You know, usually you'd have the driver defending themselves for for for their lives and you'd have the The promoter slash sanctioning body trying to pour cold water on it. And it was just the complete other way around. It's amazing. Anyway, let's ⁓ let's move on to another NASCAR thing, ⁓ which is the swear jar. And I only clock this during the week. I guess probably paying a bit more attention to NASCAR than I generally do. But instead of fining drivers for swearing on the radio during the chase, NASCAR is putting five US dollars into a swear jar. And if fans can guess how many swear words there will be, they can win the cash. What actually is this sport, Stefan? Like they're posting graphics with the most used swear words on them. I always thought the Americans were c ⁓ more sensitive to swearing than we were, but this is this is outrageous. Yeah, again, it's backwards land that we're trying to get our heads around from a a long way away from it. But ⁓ this does go back towards that ⁓ that reinvention of NASCAR piece that they're they're undertaking. And at the end of last year they did engage a creative marketing agency to to create a campaign that they've titled Hell Yeah, which is sort of the the catch cry for for everything under this banner of making NASCAR popular again, basically. Yeah. And and the the real thesis of that is embracing the sort of loud, rebellious roots of the sport. So it's it's trying to go away from that overly corporate ⁓ NASCAR that it had become and leaned back into that working class Americana. And clearly this is a ⁓ an eye catching piece out of that. But yeah, like like you sort of ⁓ allude to there, it is a two-sided coin because there's a really conservative side of the Heartland fan base as well. That there would be NASCAR fans who consider hell as a as a swear word. So Yeah, well you'll notice there's one word that will definitely never make it on that list and it starts with a seed. It's a word that it's much more comfortably used in Australia than it is in the US. Like it is un unacceptable. So and that's where it's why I just have this in my in my mind that they're very conservative on this and then to see NASCAR doing it. And like you say, particularly in some parts of of that country that are considered heartland for NASCAR that can be deeply conservative as well. It is ⁓ Yeah, it's look, I I rate it, it's cool. It's I I the the creativity is incredible, but yeah, it's just been one of those weeks where you're like, What on earth is actually going on over there? Yeah, well I mean it was like twenty something years ago, like Dale Earnhardt Jr. was fined and docked twenty five points for saying the word shit in victory lane. Yeah. ⁓ like I think it was in the context of like his amount of wins versus his dad saying this doesn't mean shit because he's won ten times here or something like that. Yeah. And it was so stringently policed at that point that he actually lost championship points. So it's it's swung a long way in twenty odd years. It definitely has. All right, let's finish up by running through a few listener questions from our Discord members. The first one comes from Josh Harris, who asked about the chatter starting to develop around Max Verstappen at the Bathus twelve hour. With the Red Bull Ford tie up, do we see Significant increase in Ford spending in GT racing in Australia, even outside of the 12 hour. What does this mean for GT racing in Australia in general? I think there's a bit of water to go under the bridge in terms of Max doing it. He did make some comments about not doing Lamon and highlighting. I think it was Spa and Nurberg Ring as events that he will do next year. ⁓ I do think we'll see a stronger involvement from Ford in GT racing in Australia. They do own a GT3 car that was initially purchased by Tony Quinn and never raced. But ultimately this is customer racing. So Ford isn't about to field a factory GT World Challenge Australia team. ⁓ because the point of these programs is to make money, not spend it. Yeah, there's probably two conversations here, the Max Verstappen Bathis twelve hour piece and then the Ford Bathus twelve hour piece, which don't necessarily coincide. Yeah. But ⁓ yeah, w we've known for a while that the twelve hour organizers are ⁓ reaching out to Max's people and desperately want him to come, which is just natural that they would want that. ⁓ but it w did feel a bit telling that Max didn't mention Bathurst when he was talking about which GT races he might do and which ones he might not do. Yep. Yep. I thought exactly the same thing. ⁓ next question from Fro Sport. He asked what are the odds of the last two F one races happening in the Middle East with WEC and WRC cancelling surely other plans have to be made and what does this mean for Dakar? I would say the chances of the two Middle Eastern races happening this year are incredibly slim. I think most people in the sport are resigned to the season ending ⁓ at Imala instead of the Middle East. And I even think it's a long shot to think the two races that ⁓ in the Middle East will open the season ⁓ next year, to be honest. ⁓ as for Dakar, that's actually great question, but surely that too is in pretty serious doubt for next January. Yeah, I mean with ⁓ the F one staff, this is just a giant game of chicken. With many tens of millions of dollars on the line that it's whoever sort of calls it first has to pay the bill. Does the promoter fail to deliver on the event or does F one dip out of its contract? So yeah, I wouldn't expect either of those races to happen. It's been a bit weird that F one had said a while ago there's this mid September deadline and then it's been been pushed out further. Mm-hmm. But ⁓ yeah, we've already seen WE C and and WRC cancelling Middle Eastern rounds. And ⁓ there's sounds like there's some work underway to to tee up Imola to run an F one finale ⁓ if they need it. ⁓ and the last question is from Dave Fent, again in the Discord, who says, We know there's a parody box in supercars. Should teams be free to set their cars up? any way they see fit as long as it falls within the box, one team could chase less aero and get more top speed, another could chase more down force and have better cornering ability. There's a couple of issues with this. Firstly, it would turn the sport back into an arms race with a lot of money being spent on CFD and aeroparts manufacturing and so on. And within no time the gap between the big and small teams will be back to Gen 2 levels, if not wider. It'd actually almost turn into Formula One where you'd be rocking up at every round with new aero parts and And this and that. And secondly, it would just be so hard to police because there isn't a physical parody box. It's a convoluted scientific equation. So how you actually scrutine and police it, that would just be an absolute nightmare from what I'm thinking, Stefan. Yeah, I guess it depends how far you want to sort of take the the question, because from a very basic level, I mean they already have a little bit of rear wing angle adjustability that's within the homologation. But people tend to run maximum everywhere because you just want all the downforce on these cars that you can get because it's a very small amount that's available. In general. Yeah. But ⁓ yeah, when you look at it from a slightly bigger picture point of view, it would just open that Pandora's box that you sort of talk about. I mean, the two easiest ways to to change the downforce level on the cars are the like aside from what they've got, would be the rear wing position and also those under tray skid blocks that we saw with the with the Camaro at the bend. And you can change that stuff around to get a different balance. But then there's flow on effects in terms of downforce and drag in various pitch and your states too. So even if you have a combination that's in the box at an arbitrary ride height, you're throwing out parody at every other ride height and your angle. That's all the stuff that they work so hard on in the tunnel as part of the homologation. So yeah. If anything they've learned too much about about the effects of all this sort of stuff and it's become like, yeah, it's a it's almost a burden because they know that like you you you give a little bit here, but under all these other circumstances it actually makes a massive difference. Yeah. So it's ⁓ it's a rolling brawl and ⁓ we know that the four guys are arguing pretty hard that the Chevy should be ⁓ changed again for for Bathis. So we're still waiting to see what happens with that. ⁓ I can't wait for another pre Bathis parody fight. It'll be great fun. We were trying to largely have a week off from that. So we'll get back into that next week. Yeah. Well you're actually trying to have a day off and this has turned into an incredibly long version of the news podcast. So we are going to leave it there. there will be thank you for joining us on your day off as well, Stefan. I I do appreciate it and I'm sure the listeners do as well. ⁓ we will have full coverage from Azerbaijan across the well, I won't say the whole weekend because the race will be done by Saturday night. Perfect little sort of dessert after the AFL Grand Grand Final, actually, with the timing of the ⁓ of that race, and then there'll be plenty of reaction and everything that will be across the website on the Sunday as well. So stay tuned to speakfa.com for all of that. And full credit to the noise will be back in this podcast feed on Tuesday morning.