G'day there, and welcome along to the race, F1 briefing for Friday the 21st of June 2024. Brought to you by the Singapore Grand Prix, the home of Formula One Night Racing. I'm James Baldwin, and this is the podcast that brings you all of the big F1 headlines you need to know in 15 minutes or less. It was practice day in Spain, so let's get into it. We're coming to you after a fascinating and ultra tight tie Friday at the Barcelona circuit, with Mercedes and Louis Hamilton heading second practice for the Spanish Grand Prix, although it was a session in which five different cars were covered by a quarter of a second. Hamilton's lap set slightly further into the hour-long session than the drivers he beat to the top spot, when the track had dropped by three to four degrees Celsius, was more than six-tenths up on the benchmark time in FP2 at Barcelona in 2023, and was the second quicker than either Mercedes managed in last year's equivalent session. His one-minute 13.264 seconds included the fastest final sector of all, and that ultimately dragged him to the fastest time by just 22,000s over Carlos Sines' Ferrari, with Latin Norris and mere 33,000s further back in third, the McLaren driver having set the pace in FP1. Pierre Gasly was an impressive fourth for Alpine, ahead of the championship leader, Maxa Stappen. Stappen, who conducted a test in Red Bull's 2022 car at Imola midweek, which will have a little bit more of an update later, reported at the start of FP2 that the RP20 was producing this weird, understeer mid-corner, and that it doesn't bite. He was ultimately 0.240s of Hamilton's time, although appeared in the mix with McLaren's and Sines' Ferrari on the long-run simulations at the end of the session. The Stappen was running the C2 medium tyres, compared to the softer C3s used by Norris, McLaren teammate Oscar Piaestri, who was seventh fastest behind Charles Leclerc, and Sines. Hamilton was in a similar ballpark, if marginally slower, whilst teammate George Russell ended the session eighth-fastest after his qualifying simulation was spoiled by a big oversteer snap, with brake troubles also compromising his long runs. Alpine's pace was a surprise. Gasly and teammate Esteban Ocon, having expressed some pessimism on Thursday about their prospects, with no upgrades expected until just before the summer break at the earliest. Well, that prediction was shared too by team principal Bruno Famine, even after Ocon had gone eighth in FP1. But Alpine ended the day with both cars inside the top 10, with Gasly's standout effort backed up by Ocon setting the ninth fastest time. He was three-tenths behind his teammate, with a top 10 completed by Salba's Valtteri Bottas. Sergio Perez was only 13th fastest in the second Red Bull, noting after the session that his engineering team did quite a bit of changes, and as a result, we lost track somewhere. He slaughtered in-behind Haas pair Kevin Magnussen and Nico Holkenberg, and was 100th the head of Fernando Alonso as Aston Martin appeared to struggle. Another team that looked underwhelming was RB, Yuki Sonota was marginally faster than teammate Daniel Ricardo as they ended FP2 in 15th and 16th, complaining on his long run that the car's front end under rotation sucks. The Williams cars that were first to switch the softs were also the slowest in FP2. Alex Albon was 19th and four-tenths off the next slowest car, with Williams teammate Logan Sargent two and a half tenths further back at the end of his first day back to running the same specification as Albon. It was an encouraging day on track for Alpene, but it's also been in the headlines off track, as it's announced on Friday morning that it has controversially hired former Benetton and Renault F1 team boss Flavio Breitore as an executive advisor. Breitore ran the team for two spells, first in its Benetton guys in the 1990s, leading it to two championships with Michael Schumacher, and then again when it was under Renault ownership and winning titles with Fernando Alonso. But he exited, amid a scandal following the 2008 Singapore Grand Prix race fixing incident, when Alonso won for his Renault team after teammate Nelson Pique was ordered to deliberately crash and trigger a safety car at an advantageous time for Alonso's strategy. Breitore was initially banned from involvement in FIA motorsport for life, but that sanction was reduced after a legal challenge. He continued to manage racing drivers, and had widespread business involvement around motorsport, and has recently been working with F1 itself on commercial matters, so has been around the paddock again this season. Nevertheless, this is his first high visibility role in F1 since the crashgate scandal came to light in 2009, and is all the more sensational given it is with the team that Renault has since become. A return with Alpene had been heavily rumoured in recent weeks, and was officially announced by the team ahead of its Spanish Grand Prix weekend on Friday morning. Alpene said Breitore had been appointed by Renault Group CEO Luca De Mayo as his executive adviser for the Formula One division. Breitore arrives amid a turbulent period for Alpene, which had substantial management personnel changes in mid-2023, and then started the 2024 season with the slowest car in the field. This week there have been reports it is considering abandoning its work's team status to seek a future customer engine deal. You can read more on what that story is all about on our website with EdStraw asking in a column what Breitore's return says about the culture of the Renault Group. As we suggested a little earlier, there has been a significant test between races, as Max Verstappen has been at the wheel of a two-year-old Red Bull as part of the team's attempts to figure out the key problem with its 2024 F1 car. That test at Imilla, where he won earlier in the year, was all about Red Bull's ongoing work to improve the curb and bump riding troubles that have made recent races, notably the Monaco Grand Prix, quite difficult. It was possible under F1's testing of previous cars rules, which lets teams use their 2020-2022 cars on what are known as demo tires. These are often used by teams to give junior drivers F1 mileage, but a race winner, particularly the current world champion, doing it mid-season is very different. Teams aren't allowed to modify their old cars for these tests at all, so there would have been no sneaky 2024 parts, it would have been full 2022 spec, and that would have given a stappen, who's been vocal about the 2024 Red Bull's ride problems, a proper reminder of how the original ground effect Red Bull behaved for comparison, rather than relying on his distant memory. As Red Bull chief engineer Paul Monahan put it, "In taking that car out, we tried to give Max a reference to judge it, it being the 2024 car, from, and he's been able to give us feedback from that." So was it a secret test? Not really. The Red Bull didn't shout about the run happening, it will have been obliged under the old car testing rules to have notified all teams and the FIA that it was happening. We'll get back to Friday's headlines in just a moment, but first of all, I want to speak to you about the Formula One Singapore Airlines Singapore Grand Prix. This is a race that I unashamedly love, and let's be honest, there are so many reasons to love it. The home of Formula One Night Racing is one of the season's toughest battles, set in grueling humidity and high temperatures, making it a true test for both cars and drivers. Simply put, it's three days of pure, gripping action that is back-dropped against the glistening Singapore skyline, which boasts both iconic heritage buildings and modern architecture. The World Connected Circuit is conveniently located near six train stations and is a stone throw away from hotels, cultural and heritage sites, shopping malls, food and entertainment options. See it for yourself. There are still single and three-day tickets available for the 2024 race, with prices starting at $128 Singapore dollars. Just head to SingaporeGP.sg to make your selection and book your place at one of the sporting events of the year. With a Singapore Grand Prix, nothing else comes close. Toto Wolf has expressed his ire over wild accusations that Ferrari-bound Lewis Hamilton is being deliberately held back by Mercedes, which he says is taking full force in terms of action over one specific accusation. Hamilton, who will move to Ferrari for 2025, has been notably second-best to teammate George Russell in qualifying sessions this year, though by much finer margins than a headline "one eight head-to-head score in Grand Prix qualifying session" suggests, and Hamilton still appears to retain an edge in race trim. The seven-time world champion has been somewhat cryptic about the nature of his qualifying deficit to Russell, but there has been no claims that he is being deprioritized relative to Russell from anyone involved, much less any suggestions that he was being deliberately pegged back. But an email, seemingly purported to be written by a Mercedes insider, or at least easily interpreted in that way, mass sent to F1 media figures but also senior F1 and FIA staff, claimed that that was the case, that there was a "systematic sabotaging of Hamilton by Mercedes" without citing any specific ways this was being allegedly carried out. Wolf could barely conceal his irritation at the subject matter when asked about it on Friday in Barcelona, it's not from a member of the team, it was when we're getting these kinds of emails and we're getting tons of them, it is upsetting, particularly when there is somebody talking about death and all these things, he said, appearing to reference the email's assertion that Hamilton's life could be endangered through strategy. Wolf added, "On this particular one, I have instructed to go in full force, we have the police enquiring into it, we are researching the IP address, we are researching the phone, all of that, because online abuse in that way needs to stop, people can't hide behind their phones or their computers and abuse teams or drivers in a way like this. I don't know what some conspiracy theorists and lunatics think out there, Lewis was part of the team for 12 years, we have a friendship, we trust each other, we're going to end this on a high. We want to celebrate the relationship." And if you don't believe all of that, then you can believe that we want to win the Constructors World Championship and part of the Constructors World Championship is making both cars win. So to all these mad people out there, take a talk to a shrink. In the subsequent answer, Wolf ventured about the anonymous nature of the accusations in particular and indicated there's always a limit after which the joking stops and Mercedes is forced to treat this as a serious matter. He emphasized that in addition to the team and non-driver team personnel, Hamilton himself was being badly abused online as was a russle, and he chastised again the irrationality of claims of Mercedes would put in any way hamper Hamilton. Fred Vasur, team principal at Ferrari where Hamilton would drive next year also chimed in saying "such suggestions that any team would deliberately sabotage a car were completely irrational and that nobody in the paddock could do something like this." Well that's it for this episode, if you'd like to get stuck into more as we make our way closer to race day in Spain, then why not head to our website? For now though, I'm James Baldwin and this has been the race F1 Griefing brought to you by the Singapore Grand Prix, the home of Formula One Night Racing. As you've probably heard by now, we've teamed up with BedMGM this season, we'll be using BedMGM lines to make all of our picks and we'll have special offers for our listeners each week. If you haven't signed up for BedMGM yet, use bonus code "theathletic" and you'll get a 1-year subscription to the athletic plus up to a $1,500 first bet offer on your first wager with BedMGM, here's how it works. Download the BedMGM app and sign up using bonus code "theathletic", make your first deposit of at least $10, place your first bet on any game and claim your voucher for a 1-year subscription to the athletic. If you haven't signed up for BedMGM yet, use bonus code "theathletic" and you'll get a 1-year subscription to the athletic plus up to a $1,500 first bet offer on your first wager. [MUSIC PLAYING]
