Jon Noble

So it may have a more difficult situation.

Yeah, it's a fascinating one, both competitive-wise and politically-wise.

On the competitive side, it's been interesting that you go back to Australia and McLaren was shell-shocked by how far advanced Mercedes was in its...

understanding deployment.

I think you and I spoke to, oh no, you weren't there.

I spoke to Andrea Estella on Saturday in Melbourne, just talking about deployment factors and all the elements they hadn't understood heading into that weekend.

The difference of battery going into a corner at 98% versus 100% was six tenths of a second.

So all these tiny elements that they hadn't comprehended.

to be then turned around by Miami and they're unleashing deployment tactics that Mercedes hadn't considered and then have to shift to in terms of using energy on short straights rather than long straights and the benefits that can bring.

So there's some smart thinking there.

And politically wise, it's fascinating because we know that Mercedes wants to cut back on its customer teams for the next rule set, which means losing one of the current partners worldwide.

Williams, we know how close JV and the team is and Toto, and it's a very happy thing there.

Alpine is in the background, new partner and potentially could be.

Mercedes could buy into that team, take a shareholding, have financial interest there.

Then in which case, McLaren's the one that would fall by the wayside.

And this may be why, intriguingly, Zach's talked about we shouldn't allow these AB teams, all these kind of links and cooperation between squads, which I'm sure hasn't gone down very well with Toto.

There was obviously...

mclaren spoke earlier in the year about they weren't mercedes weren't hiding information but that that the lines of communication hadn't been as perhaps open as they'd anticipated so there's all these things going on in the background so i think that that fight if it comes down to a mclaren versus mercedes which guns for the championship but you remember mclaren coming from a long way back because i had terrible start to the year in terms of scoring points and

I think it would be fascinating on track and off it.

I think this is a critical one, not because of any point swing and it's...