Formula One only has itself to blame
Everyone’s second favourite F1 podcast.
Cheeka, Phill and Terry are back, with a round up of all the summer news, reaction to the Belgian Grand Prix, and plenty of excuses for missing the last episode. We talk halos, musical chairs and how Alonso shafted his own career, and Terry reminds us on occasion that he’s in pain.
There are too many races, and everyone is on holiday. So whilst we await Cheeka, Terry & Phill's verdict on Hungary (due any week now), here's the first ever Hungary episode we ever did - in fact, the first FF1S we ever did - in all its embarrassing 2015 glory. Enjoy.
For an entertaining race, just add water. The German Grand Prix provided slow-burn intrigue and then slippery excitement as Vettel ditched it in front of his home crowd, Hamilton gambled everything and won and Charles Leclerc did a cool 360. Cheeka, Phill and Terry dissect the race with their usual surgeon-like precision, while drinking beer in a pub. And without an audience this time.
It’s FF1S Live! Sure, more people went to Silverstone than came along to watch Cheeka, Phill and Terry dissect the British Grand Prix, but we all know who had the best time. Raikkonen’s cheeky tap, Hamilton’s sulking and Terry’s unusual use of toothpaste all come up for discussion, and there’s a LIVE Cheekaquiz.
— Jack Nicholls (@Jack_Nicholls) July 8, 2018
Barely has the smoke settled over Spielberg, and Cheeka, Phill and Terry are already dissecting the carnage from the Austrian Grand Prix. Mercedes messed up, Verstappen took full advantage, and everyone's engines exploded. Also, Terry sings. Sorry.
After a decade away, Formula 1 returned to France, bringing with it Magic Eye track graphics and travel chaos. Still, at least the race was a bit less tedious than recent outings. Cheeka, Phill and Terry discuss Vettel’s clumsiness and the almost immediate failure of all the French drivers, and there’s still time to get tickets to our live show.
After two dull races, the Canadian Grand Prix spectacularly failed to liven up the season with yet another snoozer, despite the best efforts of Lance Stroll and Brendan Hartley. Cheeka, Phill and Terry despair, but make the best of the situation by analysing the boredom, before Terry heads off to watch Le Mans instead.
Monaco! The glamour! The skill! The unending boredom! Cheeka, Phill and Terry look back on the monotonous race in Monte Carlo and reflect on Verstappen crashing AGAIN, Ricciardo exorcising the demons and Leclerc annihilating Hartley's rear. Plus, Terry went on a plane, Phill met rock royalty and Cheeka toured Colombia in a golf buggy.
You have to feel for Arfur Daley working at the Red Bull factory, he’s concocted a cushy £80k a year salary being the bloke who designs and builds front-wing endplates. At countless meetings, strategy groups and trials he has to fudge the numbers to justify their expense when actually they’re just made of papier mache covering up smushed together fag butts.
And then Max Verstappen ruins it by sniffing Lance Stroll’s behind like a bitch in heat and before we know it Arfurs ruse is scattered all over the track.
But no, we all cry, Max has ruined his race because these cars are so aero dependant there’s no way he can… what? He’s fine?
Cut to Arfur filling his pockets with paperclips and nespresso pods before leaving the factory to be never seen again.
If a chunk of a car can fall off and the car not be affected then surely that chunk of car was not necessary. I thought the point of F1 was efficiency over everything. It’s all a bloody con. I’m starting to wonder if aerodynamics is even a thing, I mean we’re told it is and there are those pretty pictures with a baffling array of colours that out science us like an Aniston hair ad, but no one really gets it.
How do they test aero? They cover cars with fluorescent paint and watch the patterns, and because we as f1 fans have to feel intelligent we stroke our chins and go hmm, yes that makes sense. NO IT DOESN’T - they might as well be reading bloody tea leaves.
Even in Adrian Newey’s book there’s a chapter where he basically goes, look I haven’t got a clue how it works, I just draw lines and then six months later there’s a car, I thought I was designing a boat.
IT’s a scam, a conspiracy, it’s the MSM and the deep state elites holding back F1 from what it used to be, a sport for the masses, back in the day when anyone with a peerage, a rich dad or an oil field underneath their country could take part, now it’s just greedy manufacturers with a vested interest in keeping the little people down. After the flat earthers comes us, the aero-deniers.
I’ve conducted some tests in the garden I don’t have and have proved that aerodynamics don’t exist. I will be building a rocket that will fail to take off thereby showing, beyond any doubt that F1 is a fake thing filmed for cameras and doesn’t really happen.
After my shocking revelations which you can read in my badly spelled ebook I hope that F1 will get rid of all aero and we can have some decent racing. Like in that historic Monaco race where all the cars were driven at about a mile an hour for insurance reasons
With Cheeka away on a Colombian drug binge, reserve presenter Ollie Peart joins Phill and Terry to peer through the smoke at the Spainish Grand Prix. Grosjean blots his copy book, Hamilton gets his groove back and Ferrari throw it away again. Plus there’s news on an exciting new FF1S venture, and Terry reveals his favourite Instagram filter.
Who would have thought Azerbaijan would turn out to be a future classic Grand Prix venue? Cheeka, Phill and Terry pick through the bits of carbon fibre as they attempt to analyse the Baku race. Bottas hits a rogue shard, the Red Bulls hit each other and Grosjean hits the ghost of Marcus Ericsson in an entertainingly chaotic race that makes for entertainingly defamatory debate.
For the last few years F1 has been positively wetting itself over how young the drivers are, Max is 20, Alonso was 20 when he started and there’s a guy in Formula Renault who is into wearing nappies, he’s 37.
Anyway, if you add up Max Verstappen and Lance Stroll you get a really ugly baby, but still one that is only a year younger than me. And I still harbour distant dreams of being an F1 driver.
But today's impetuousness by Max Verstappen was all about youth, he was on better tyres and had time on his hands to easily overtake the mercedes and Ferrari and win the race. He fucked up because he couldn’t wait. And I get that, when I was 20 I hated waiting for things: girls, boys, beard hair, buses, pubes.
The problem is, as all old codgers will tell you, with age comes wisdom, and a wiser driver (cough, Daniel Ricciardo) would have won that race today.
We need to stop these young whippersnappers coming in with all their inexperience and being fucking kids, fucking it up for everybody else.
But how? We aren’t going to have any kind of age limit shenanigans, we are going to have to think laterally
Which is why I propose artificially aging all the drivers, not physically of course, that would be crazy. Instead I think we should mentally age them. How do we do this? Well we use state of the art F1 technology and utilise the simulators! Every morning when they are not racing the young drivers go into the simulator and are given a real time second by second simulation of a boring job, imagine, tomorrow morning Max Verstappen gets in the Red Bull factory at Milton Keynes and has to deal with a HR department who have spelt his name wrong and Carol who has eaten his yoghurt. Then he has to endure nine soul crushing hours of taking calls from idiots enquiring about insurance plans and Raymond organising Emily’s leaving lunch but don’t forget Craig is gluten intolerant. By the imte he gets out of the simulator his soul will be so crushed he’ll have no desire to crash into anyone. And he’ll drink more
Copy books were blotted, stacks were doubled and easy wins were thrown away. It could only have been the Chinese Grand Prix, or perhaps quite a few other races. Cheeka, Phill and Terry talk about the inevitable disasters that befell most of the grid, apart from Daniel Riccardo, and there’s a very sweaty quiz. F*ck yeah.
What the hell is going on? Honda engine cars are in the top four, Verstappen is rubbish, Bahrain is exciting, up is down, black is white. Cheeka, Phill and Terry discuss the Bahrain Grand Prix and consider horrific injuries, unlikely heroes and the Red Bulls throwing away their better-than-usual early season advantage. Also, grid girls are back. Yay?
Liberty have come up with their plan to fix F1, it’s a vague plan, very vague. It’s a bullet pointed list,. Or rather, bullshit points. If any of you listening have ever been in a meeting where stuff has to be agreed in writing but no one has the balls to take any responsibility for it then it will feel very familiar.
Here are some highlights:
The PU must be cheaper, simpler, louder, have more power and reduce the necessity of grid penalties.
Simple, make it an engine.
We believe how you spend the money must be more decisive and important than how much money you spend.
Is this an initiative or an inspirational quote?
While there will be some standardised elements, car differentiation must remain a core value
I’m no legal mind, but this could just mean different bloody colours?
F1's unique, historical franchise and value must and will still be recognised.
Was anyone suggesting anything else - was that Brian being that guy in the meeting, saying - what if people think we are trying to kill F1 - best put something in, just in case thats what people think?
Engineering technology must remain a cornerstone but driver's skill must be the predominant factor in the performance of the car.
How do you legislate for this? Have a little survey pop up on the steering wheel screen - can we take a moment of your time to ask how you’re feeling about your skill being a predominant factor - it’ll only take two minutes and you could win an amazon voucher?
Look, it’s laudable that they’ve gotten this far - the teams are not in F1 to make the sport look good, they are there to win, then make money for their parent companies or shareholders and then, if there’s any time left at the end of the week there might be twenty minutes to think about the good of F1. Mercedes and Ferrari have already vetoed a set of rules to change the cars for next year. The red team aren’t going to give up their extra money and veto for everything, you think Kimi’s pit stop was an accident - “Just look at what we’ll do if we’re angry, and he was one of our own”
The only real way to fix the sport is to stop letting the teams have any say at all. Just look at how Christian Horner has changed his tune on everything from cost caps to aero regs now that Red Bull isn’t Renault’s baby and they’re no longer winning. They cannot be trusted.
But despite all of this, what's’ the bloody point. The main problem with F1 is the engineers and aerodynamicists are too bloody clever.
When they tried to cut the aero the other year the cheeky sods and won almost all of it back by mid season - no matter what they come up with with simplified wings and reductions in vortexes the main fact is that it’s working group of a few people versus the might and genius of hundreds in the all the teams.
It’s a bit like gardening leave. If you’re in a competitive job you can be forced to not work your notice when you quit, but also not be allowed to start in a new job for a set period of time. These people are still clever, but their skills cannot be used.
Which is why I propose… Lobotomies!
Every new member of technical staff has a lobotomy from a dodgy Ukrainian doctor. After they’re over the surgery there is little chance they are going to come up with any genius loopholes to flout the rules. They’ll be lucky if they can even make a sandwich.
But I’m a sporting kind of guy, hence the dodgy doctor, sometimes he’ll get it wrong and there’ll be a chance that the lobotomy won’t take. That way some teams will have an advantage.
New rules, fat tyres, low wings, most of the penis noses and Bernie gone. It's a new dawn for f1 hallelujah. What? Don't mention that the race was pretty dull? But it can't be! Only it was. Despite everything, the Australian GP was a snooze fest of cars stuck behind other cars and unable to overtake. A problem that is so uniquely f1. Imagine a football match where the players can't actually shoot at the goal. It's all down to aerodynamics, a purposefully confusing technology that you can't see but makes f1 shit.
Now I know that sounds like an astute summary of the 2018 Australian Grand Prix but that is actually word for word the start of my State of F1 after last years race. And if I, a professional idiot can so brilliantly summarise what’s wrong with F1 why isn’t it fixed yet?
But Terry wait (not the hostage) they added a 3rd DRS zone this year - that must have done something? They may as well have had a bloke with a megaphone seconded from a peddalo pond screaming ‘come on number 5, let him through’
Ross Brawn has this week said that overtaking needs fixing and it’ll probably happen in 2021 if teams agree to it and, you know, as long as everyone is happy and it doesn’t cost too much and FUCK THIS
83 Likes, 1 Comments - 💁🏻♂️ (@naokiiiiiiiiiiiiiiing) on Instagram: "#Ferrari640 #FerrariF189 #NigelMansell #GerhardBerger #FerrariF1 #FormulaOne #Formula1 #F1..."
STOP BEING SO COMPLICATED. F1 is the pinnacle of everything except making sense. The other day some old F1 themed instagram account posted a picture of a Ferrari F1 car from 1989. The front wing was a straight line. Then I saw a picture of the 2008 McLaren which looked as if Optimus Prime had had tepid water sprayed into his mouth for so long he threw up aerodynamic flicks everywhere. This years cars are closer to 2008 that 1989. When they launched my heart sank, aerodynamicists will put their crap everywhere if you let them. They don’t see in colour they see in vortexes and flo-viz.
10 Likes, 2 Comments - David Quinn (@davidquinn101) on Instagram: "The McLaren MP4-23, still 🔥 #McLaren #F1 #F12008 #MP423"
The solution is obviously simple, tone down the aero, reduce the reliance on clean air and F1 will get better. But this has been known for years and is impossible to fix, so the next simplest option is clearly to change the laws of physics. Make gravity go sideways, bin all that equal and opposite reaction shit and make it really funky. Why did Stephen Hawking have to die?
G'day cobbers, it's the Australian Grand Prix, fair dinkum Bouncer from Neighbours. Cheeka, Phill and Terry get stuck into the lack of overtaking, Haas messing everything up and Ferrari spawning a win. Plus we take a look at the hottest new rookies on the grid - the Lastname brothers - and consider how Sainz's car waterboarded him to the point of vomiting.
F1 is back and it’s just as catastrophic and hilarious as always. Cheeka, Phill and Terry get the 2018 Formula 1 season underway by looking back at the off-season. Halos, testing and the dearly departed grid girls are all expertly assessed and analysed through the medium of poorly-researched, judgemental rants and no small amount of swearing. Listen, why don’t you? Thanks.
State of F1
Podium by... Never mind
We’ve had to put up with an utter ton of bullshit from McLaren in recent years, from the evocative reunion with both Honda and Alonso to promises of podiums, whining about engines and yet also bragging about chassis’ whilst never quite learning how to underpromise and overdeliver anything except grid penalties.
But this year is different, this year they have the third of four best engines in F1 - they have no excuse, nowhere to hide - and it seems after testing, no chance.
The bravest thing McLaren have done in recent years isn’t ditching Honda for Renault but releasing a documentary shitting on honda over the winter and then coming to Barcelona with such a comedy or errors and failures whilst Toro Rosso hammers in the laps again and again and again with that quote awful Honda in the back.
The documentary, which mainly consisted of awkward meetings where people were scared to say anything because there was a camera crew in the room or the charming B-Plot of trying to get Stoffel Vandoorne, a human shell with his charisma entirely removed to save weight, fit enough to drive a car that wouldn’t go. He’d have been better off eating cheeseburgers and getting a small tray installed on the car to eat whilst stuck in the gravel.
The documentary showed not only McLaren’s frustrations with Honda but also their heavy leaning on their own history and basic belief that they are great and if it wasn’t for this pesky engine then we’d be world champions again, honest.
“But the undercooked dauphinoise doesn’t really get noticed because the chef let his Alsatian do a shit on top of it.”
Except testing has shown that they won’t be. This is a team that has gotten flabby and soft since their heyday. Day one of testing and a wheel nut falls off, then their new engine overheats (whilst doing fine in the Red Bull and Renault) then they have to cut holes in the car because its burning the metal, a hydraulic leak and who knows what else causing stoppages and none of this quite rings true to the image of the squeaky clean McLaren branded perfection.
When it goes the car looks good, but it’s not going much - all of these problems can be fixed, but they’re problems that shouldn’t have been there and clearly this sloppiness have been masked by honda. As if the McLaren team is a gourmet meal with some minor niggles, but the undercooked dauphinoise doesn’t really get noticed because the chef let his Alsatian do a shit on top of it.
For the fourth year running I hope McLaren will do better than testing implies, but like Williams, I’m ceasing to truly believe it ever will.
I actually don’t, if this year is rubbish then they’ll lose alonso and the exodus of engineers will accelerate until they are a truly midfield team with no chance of being at the top of their game. Ron Dennis was right, they need to be a works team, but with Honda it never worked
So my solution is this - McLaren, please please please please please please please please please please please please please please please please please please please please please please please please be less shit. Thanks!
Oh, are you still here? Well, you’d better listen to the second half of our chat about the 2017 Formula 1 season, then. If you haven’t already, listen to the first half, and then come back for FACTS. And SWEARING. And A BLOKE FROM THE RADIO.
