Mailbag: Is Norris '27 title favourite + Why does F1 keep adding soulless street tracks?
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What is the premise of the new post‑race mailbag show?
The Athletic. The race is on. And in today's mailbag, we answer questions about whether F1 should consider allowing no-stop strategies, if McLaren needs a pit-stop rethink, and how much quicker Antonelli is than Russell. I'm Ed Straw, and joining me to tackle these and many more is Ben Anderson. Welcome to the Race F1 podcast, presented by Atlassian, and welcome to the very first of our new regular mailbag shows. Now, we've been doing these for the Race Members Club for quite some time, but we're going to be doing them regularly for all. So, get your questions in, and Ben, you have the privilege of being the first guest to presumably set a low bar.
Yeah, what an honour for me. Why did you choose me, Ed? Availability, as always. Right, okay, good. Standard. Standard. Exactly. You're a utility plier. That's what we like to think of you. Well, you can have a very good career as a utility player, so I guess I'll
take it. Exactly. Enough football metaphors. We've got a wide range of questions today, all sent in by the Race Members Club. If you'd like to submit a question for our consideration, join the Race Members Club. So hit the link in the episode description or head to Patreon and search for the race. So, Ben, the first question from Brian Mortensen. With Charles Leclerc staying out as long as possible in Madrid before taking his required pitfalls, pit stop is there ever a world where f1 gets rid of the tire change requirements so that we get more gambles on no-stop races or would it just be too unrealistic for this generation of tires and or open the possibility for even more processional races at some tracks
yeah it's a good question i've I think it would ultimately end up making races more processional. I do also think this generation of tyres wouldn't be able to take it. If you said to Pirelli, we're going to do no-stop races, I think they'd all have a collective heart attack and then be working very hard on making the tyres more robust and harder. And also, I think the teams would just focus so much on the tyre management, even more so than they do now. And then you just end up in this situation where everybody will be calculating, well, is it faster to do the race without a pit stop? Or is it faster to do this particular race in these circumstances with a stop? just one and then the chase and everyone would just normalise around the same strategy.
So it always happens. You kind of want, as ever, it to be an unknown going in. If people can't predict how much degradation there's going to be, they can't really predict how the tyres are going to behave and the strategy is random or more random than they anticipate, then you get a mixed up race. And if going no stop was part of that equation, I think that would be fun. But really, you can't have this prescriptive method of you must do this and you must do that because the teams just then circle around that problem and end up inevitably on the best solution
yeah well ultimately the effective rule forcing a pit stop technically speaking it's phrased as you have to use two compounds which usually forces a pit stop but in red flag races obviously it doesn't but it's there to try and make things more interesting as well so You kind of end up in this circle in F1, don't you? Oh, maybe we should make sure there are pit stops. And you say, well, what if it was interesting if you could go without pit stops? And I think the concerns you raised get to the bottom of it. And I think it probably points to the fact that perhaps we can't solve absolutely every problem with tyres. Again, five tyre compounds and dry tyre compounds. to cover all the circuits and all the track conditions.
So it's always going to be difficult. And then you ideally want it on the cusp of, say, a one or a two stopper, or you'd want it on the cusp of a nought or a one stopper. But then you get a track like Madring, where if you're on the cusp of a one or two, you actually need to be beyond the cusp because... it will always be better to do one less stop because overtaking is so difficult and all those factors.
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Chapters
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