Ben Hocking

speaker

4,984 appearances 8 recordings 1 series first heard Jun 2026 last heard 5 Aug

Ben Hocking’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.

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recordings per month · last 12 months

Recordings per month over the last 12 months — 8 in all, peaking in Jul 2026 with 5.

Appearances

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The Late Braking F1 Podcast · Malaysia is hosting the 2026 Bahrain GP?! Our reaction · 29 Jul 2026 podcast

And obviously a lot of those, he's had the pace to win it as well.

But again, no one else can claim that.

George Russell's had some bad luck, but he hasn't had the pace to be on the podium every Grand Prix.

So it's incredibly impressive what he's doing.

I thought what I would do is go back to some of the other leaders of the championship going into the summer break.

I went back through the last 10 years, excluding 2020, because we didn't really have a summer break that year, thanks to COVID-19 and how the calendar worked out.

What's interesting is if you look at the advantage of the championship leader in those nine remaining years, including this one, Antonelli's 50 points advantage is bang in the middle.

It's fifth place of those nine.

And if you look at the four that have had bigger leads at this point than 50, you're looking at Lewis Hamilton in 2019 and then Verstappen's championships in 22, 23 and 24.

In 2019, Lewis Hamilton had a 62-point advantage going into the summer break.

He won the title by 87 points.

2024 is the next one, so that's where Verstappen has a 78-point lead.

He wins the title by a slightly reduced number of 63.

And then 2022 Verstappen leads by 80 points going into the summer break, wins by 146.

And then 2023 is ridiculous.

Verstappen leads by 125 points at the summer break and wins by 290.

Point being, I guess, if you look at anyone who's had over a 50 point margin going into the summer break in the last 10 years, in all four instances, they've gone on to win the title.

And in all four instances, quite comfortably.

To give some hope to those of you that are supporting drivers and teams that aren't Antonelli, there were three instances in the last 10 years where the championship leader hasn't gone on to win the title by the end of the year.

Oscar Piastri last year.

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