Will Red Bull Racing reveal their decision from the investigation into Christian Horner's alleged misdemeanours at Formula 1's opening race in Bahrain? What's your take, will Horner continue in his role at the World Champion team or will he be asked to go?
Of course, any off-track story of such a nature will take attention from Red Bull Racing's RB20, if it continues to dominate Formula 1. But can it, will it? The narratives at the start of the season could well be different from the middle and the end of the long Formula 1 season. In fact, the pecking order itself might be different in Bahrain given the extensive mileage all teams have had in the last week or so.
The other key question is about Alpine. Are they really as messed up and slow as the experts are predicting? Will McLaren start the season strong? And what about Mercedes and Ferrari? The 2024 Formula 1 season is finally upon us...and remember, the Bahrain Grand Prix is on a Saturday!
Tune in to this episode of the Inside Line F1 Podcast as Soumil Arora and Kunal Shah look forward to the key stories, talking points and predictions for the upcoming 2024 Bahrain Grand Prix.
(Season 2024, Episode 08)
Follow our hosts on Twitter: Soumil Arora and Kunal Shah
Image courtesy: Formula 1
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[00:00:00] Before we begin, I wanted to give a huge shout out to the folks at Amazon Music for partnering
[00:00:07] with us on this episode of the InsideLineF1 Podcast.
[00:00:10] But more on this later, right then.
[00:00:13] Let's get right to a preseason testing. All along we were told we'll know around the first race. Could it be before the first race of the season? There's hardly even a question, right? What's happened winning the RB20 doing well? At this stage it's just a given. And when there are some things in life that are so clear and so visible and evident, you don't even think about them as much, which is why this is interesting because I get a
[00:03:00] feeling Christian Honor is someone who's a bit too big to kick out, right?
[00:03:04] I mean, surely with the theme or the brand of Red Bull who normally just promotes drivers from Alpha Towery or whatever the team is called, racing bulls to Red Bull Racing, will now look for a team principal internally, who's available to be promoted as team principal. So lots of questions entering Bahrain off track, which is great for the sport because
[00:05:42] the sport grows that much more when there are off track stories as well. Because truth and you try to amp it up as if this is the car that will solve all your problems. With Alpine, it's the first year in history where I don't remember anything quite like that and no sentiment or no sort of momentum attached with the team at all in the media. It's like they itself don't want to talk about the car. And that's kind of interesting because every year, even though they change their management
[00:07:02] a couple of times every season, there's always Saturday. But Samuel, here's another thing.
[00:08:23] I don't believe the pecking order in Bahrain reflection of what the pecking order will could be for the first few races of the season? I don't think so. I think Saudi Arabia will be a different one because it's a different track, different whatever, whatever that will happen. So that's going to be interesting to make note of, right? And
[00:11:02] some of the other things I'm looking forward to this weekend, Som But interestingly, in the 20 years that Parang P has been around, five teams, only five teams have won here, Ferrari, Mercedes, Red Bull, Renault and Braun have actually won here. And only three teams have won, or three different teams have actually won in the last three years, right? So I pretty much think this will stay.
[00:11:05] It will still be three different teams where the fun really is and over there, there is a chance for an outside win and the kind of stories that this battle for P2 in the team championship has is just fascinating because look at it this way, Ferrari have openly come out and said that they are trying to solve their deck problem for last year which by the way remember was the reason why they lost their podium to Fernando Alonso. That's something that they've apparently
[00:12:22] worked with on their car. Watch this.5, your best talking point all along given that Formula 1 is dominated heavily by Max Verstappen. But very eager. Will Chekhov Pera still continue to lead the Formula 1.5
[00:13:40] standings? Helmut Marko has laid down the aggressive development cycle the way McLaren did in 2023? So lots of interesting points out there. But Samuel, Mercedes, what do you think of Mercedes?
[00:15:01] James Allison actually said in typical British English,
[00:16:03] the car is not nice because if you remember last year he was constantly coming on the radio and literally begging to Lewis like Lewis I know the
[00:16:06] car is bad please drive it it's kind of like he was indebted Lewis but I wonder
[00:16:12] does that body language change this year does Toto become a lot more harsh a lot
[00:16:17] more direct and also does George Russell now take the lead not literally but in
[00:16:23] terms of the way he manages the entire team the way he's positioned does he now wouldn't be expecting to be invited to those meetings. So I think they will handle it very well. There's a 26-year-old ambassadorship that both of them have enjoyed. So I don't believe this is going to go down that road. But I'll tell you another road that formula. No, but the interesting thing is, also treated Lewis. They were looking, Lewis was expecting, at least that's what the media claims, a longer term contract, but he was given a one plus one year contract. Mercedes was also preparing, and this is typical, you have to prepare for the pipeline.
[00:19:00] The succession plan as they call it,
[00:19:02] whether it's in businesses,
[00:19:04] whether it's in Formula One teams and so on,
[00:19:06] who next will replace your star, would be reduced. Here we are now seeing one whole lap that's going to have DRS, one whole extra lap. Yeah. The hypothetical scenario is kind of fun, right? Because last year, a major problem of the entertainment value of the races was that Max would have a good getaway and by lap two and a half, he would already have a 2.5 second gap, which would mean that he's
[00:20:25] almost impossible to catch in that stage. Maybe this solves it because if you have the seen epic battles out there. OK, we saw in 2023, we had a lawn sower doing all those overtakes, including your favorite driver, Carlos Sainz, who lost podium there. And then 2022 was Leclerc, where Stappen, 2021 was Hamilton, Leclerc, Desert in the Dual,
[00:21:40] as they've been sort of promoting.
[00:21:42] But I think entertainment will be there.
[00:21:44] Also, I'm told that the behaviour of McLaren, Ferrari, Mercedes or hell, even Aston Martin and Large Stone is going to be like. But in terms of qualifying, where do you see it stacking up? I get a feeling. I say Carlos
[00:23:03] signed second, Oscar Piashti third. I really, really feel that this guy could to be there. So I think I'm going to say, I think, I don't think, I think Nico Hulkenberg fine. Let me put that, let's watch him for qualifying antics. He's been the most exciting driver and qualifying in that house. So I'm going to throw a complete, you know, left side view of what everyone should look out for.
[00:24:23] Let's wait and see.
[00:24:24] But folks, whatever your predictions are,
[00:24:25] send them in on our Twitter and Instagram pages