The High Performance Podcast
High Performance Racing is here! With Jake, Rob Smedley & Otmar Szafnauer
22 Apr 2026
Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
Hi there, welcome along to another episode of High Performance. I'm here alongside my co-host, Damien Hughes. Hello, Damien. Hi, Jake. How are you, mate? You all right? I am very well, thanks. I've just got back from a few days in Madrid. Before we go any further, though, let's tell everyone that you've just got back from Japan. How was that?
Absolutely amazing. What a culture. What a culture it is. You know, when you see all the things like, it's always the small things, isn't it, that stand out. You know, when you see World Cups where the players tidy the dressing room afterwards and the fans do it on the stadium.
Like nowhere in Japan do they have public bins because you're just expected to take responsibility for your own rubbish, take it home and recycle it. Small things like that stand out to me as a sign of a healthy society.
I remember when I used to go to Japan often for the Formula One, the thing that stood out to me was when you're sitting on the train and the ticket inspector walks into the carriage to check your tickets, the very first thing they do is bow to the carriage and everyone bows back to them.
It's like there's a level of respect in Japan for other human beings that I think we've lost a bit in other parts of the world. Do you know the phrase SONDA and what it stands for, Damien? So Sonder is a neologism coined by a guy called John Koenig in 2012 for a project he was doing called the Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows.
And if I was to define it, I suppose it is this kind of profound realization you have at some point in your life that every random passerby is living a life as vivid, as complex, as chaotic as your own, right? They've all got their own ambitions, their own friends, their own routines, their own worries.
And this understanding that kind of we're just a background character in their story in the same way that they're a background character in our story. And this kind of mindset that we need to stop treating everyone in 2D because they all live a life in 3D. And I think that's something in Japan that still exists.
There's still this respect, care, understanding for each other that I think other parts of the world have lost. Did you sense that?
Yeah, definitely. Like even on the first day we'd landed in Tokyo, we met up with somebody that took us around and sort of introduced us to some of the customs. And it was like when you're on the train or in a lift, you're not expected to be talking. Just respect people's silence. And again, so you see it and, like, how quickly it takes you to adjust to it and then just enjoy it.
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Chapter 2: How did the audience influence the creation of High Performance Racing?
then you get like more horsepower and like it's a different rule set in terms of the aerodynamics and all of this. So like you spend less.
Don't need a wind tunnel.
Yeah. So, but what happened was that never materialized. So all these teams rushed in without the infrastructure to do anything. Who was the team that said they were going to develop the car just on CFD? Yeah, that was Nick Wirth. That became my Russia. No wind tunnel. Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. So all of this stuff, it never materialized. That's why those teams were at the back.
But I think that, yeah, there's loads of examples. So Eddie, who we've all worked with or for in some shape or form, when he came in, yeah, he hit the ground running. So did Stuart. Stuart. Was next, probably. Yes, that got up at speed. British American Racing, you're right. I think it is harder now. It is harder, right? But why?
Cadillac have got so much money, so many people.
They don't have the tools. So there's a few things. There's simulation tools now that teams develop themselves. So even CFD. You might buy a CFD computational fluid dynamics program off the shelf, but that's not what you use. You develop it yourself. Yeah, you develop on top of it. And then when you develop on top of that, No one can buy that. And if you're a new team now, you can't buy that.
Yeah, you might go to Fluent and get the basic program, but that's it. And those tools that those teams have developed over time help them with car development and going quicker, and that's something Cadillac doesn't have. So how can Cadillac ever be competitive in one, two, or three years? That feels impossible. The best way to do it is buy the right people. Right. Shortcut it through people.
Because you can't forget what you know if you bring the knowledge with you. You can't forget what you know. And especially if you're the guy who developed that bit of software that they need. Tire model, give you an example. You don't have a good tire model, your simulator is useless. Can you buy a tire model?
Not a good one. Develop it yourself. All the methods, it's never, like Formula 1, people get a bit confused and say, you know, there's a superstar coming into a team, so that's going to change everything. That's utter bollocks, right? There is no messiah. There is no messiah.
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Chapter 3: How does the F1 community react to technical discussions?
Even Adrian Newey.
No, Adrian can't do it single-handedly. He can't do it all. In the day, right, in 1998, 1999, when British American Racing started and all those teams before that, you could test as much as you want. You'd go to a race and then you'd go testing. We'd have five cars, right? Two test cars, three race cars. You'd be testing more than you were racing.
When you test that much, how much do you need a driver-in-loop simulator? Zero. Yeah, you don't. You don't. But now, no testing. Things have changed. And now you need a driver-in-loop simulator, a good one, that replicates the car. Now you need a good tire model, a good one that replicates the car. You need a good aero model for your driver-in-loop simulator, a good vehicle dynamics model.
And if you don't have that, then you don't do any testing.
And these models are so hard...
to build and get right it takes time yeah and it takes time and it takes a lot of like we're getting like very technical now but it's a lot of correlation it's kind of building so you need really really clever people who understand modeling like high fidelity models a bit of mathematics mathematics physics all of that stuff and then and then you need to then correlate that so you need to match that against what's really going on on the track yeah reality it's a massive amount of work
Honestly, that is a huge amount. That is literally years in the making. So you cannot expect, I don't think... And you've got to correlate CFD to the tunnel.
To the tunnel. Tunnel to the track. Track to CFD. You've got all that going on. This sounds like a big job for Cadillac.
Could they pick up points this season?
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Chapter 4: What makes High Performance Racing unique compared to other F1 podcasts?
We should start a petition on this show to get the Bosco Quinn tree and plaque put back.
Yes.
Plant a new tree.
It should be somewhere.
Yeah. Absolutely.
All right. Well, we're going to investigate that and make it happen.
It should be bring back all the Jordan legends.
into Formula 1 I don't mean like like bring them back to like resurrect them I mean bring them back to Formula 1 what about that yes I'm all for anything involving Eddie Jordan and Formula 1 like I want to keep it going forever I'd like the Jordan team to come back but hey I actually love it when who's driving a yellow DHL car in India at the moment and dominating
Alex Palou.
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Chapter 5: What challenges do teams face during canceled races in F1?
Is it not?
No.
Why have I missed that then? What's going on there?
Because you've got this energy imbalance, right? That you can harvest less than you can use. So you can't use all of, like you can use much less on a lap than you can actually harvest on a lap. So it becomes, so you've got to play all of the, I mean, and it's always been a little bit like this with, like since we brought in the Kurs back in the day, that you're playing all of these games with it.
But this now is like there's a clear energy imbalance. And so the drivers can't drive the cars flat out. They have to do this super clipping on the straight.
And the race, not even the race either. And yes, there are times where, you know, if you ran a little bit less fuel, your lap time was better. So you'd run a little bit left. There was a bit of lifting coast towards the end of the race. But that's nothing compared to what's happening today.
But aren't we, like, just stuck with it? Like, I see all the drivers moaning, worse it's ever been, not enjoying it. Yes, is the answer. Like, this is it. This is how Formula 1 looks for the next few years.
And I actually think the amount of overtaking I've seen in the first few races, as someone that doesn't know the technical details that you know, and I sit and watch every race with Sebastian, my 10-year-old, mate, when we were watching Lewis and Charles in China, lap after lap, having a go at each other, get... My boy was jumping around in front of the telly. I think that's great.
And he's not done that for seasons.
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