The Outside Line Podcast

This week F1 returned after its long 5 week hiatus with the Miami GP, and it was a good weekend for Mercedes as Kimi Antonelli made F1 history and the Mercedes engine proved its dominance. McLaren, Ferrari, and Red Bull all brought upgrades to Miami which improved the competition, which gives us some hope for the championship, at least until Mercedes bring their upgrades at the next race in Canada. F2 held its first race in North America and didn’t disappoint, while Berlin hosted 2 Formula E races. Sadly, both of these were of the energy-saving variety, but were still plenty of fun to watch as Ollie Rowland got his championship defense back on course. Music provided by Sascha Ende under the CC BY 4.0 license: https://filmmusic.io/standard-license

This week we cover the season-opening races in FREC and GB3 and use this as an excuse to do a deep dive into the whole F1 feeder series ladder, from F2 down to F4. We dig into the main contenders in a few of these series as we review what’s happened in FREC, GB3, GB4, IndyNXT and F3 so far this season, which is mainly safety cars and red flags, but the main takeaway is that it’s a good year to be called Nikita or Nakamura. Music provided by Sascha Ende under the CC BY 4.0 license: https://filmmusic.io/standard-license

This week we cover the Indycar race in Long Beach and the WEC opener in Imola. A Green Day livery for the Meyer Shank #60 car gave the Fox Sports crew liberty to make pun after pun, however since Flavor Flav was also in attendance, it was less Know Your Enemy and more Public Enemy. During the race it was Harder than You Think (to overtake), drivers had to Fight the (Will) Power, and it was a case of Don’t Believe the Hype (of Grosjean, Kirkwood, O’Ward, and Makulas challenging Palou for this race). In WEC, there were decent debuts for Genesis Magma Racing, Logan Sargeant, and Victor Martins, and a debut to forget for Nick Cassidy.  Music provided by Sascha Ende under the CC BY 4.0 license: https://filmmusic.io/standard-license

This week, to cover for the cancellation of the Bahrain Grand Prix, we dipped into sports car endurance racing once again and watched the opening weekend of the European Le Mans Series in Barcelona. There were quite a few familiar names from single seater racing to keep an eye on, which made the 4 hour race pass quickly, apart from the long caution on lap 1, that seems to be obligatory in endurance racing. No exception to this rule was the GT World Challenge Europe race at Paul Ricard where Lance Stroll made his GT3 debut. As well as this we talk about not so inspirational team names, penalties for incorrect underpants, and marvel how Stroll could get blue flag penalties given he usually drives the Aston Martin Honda.  Music provided by Sascha Ende under the CC BY 4.0 license: https://filmmusic.io/standard-license

This week we review Season 8 of Netflix’s Drive to Survive. Some might say we are 5 weeks too late, but, in fact, those weeks have added an extra, often bittersweet, context. More pragmatically, it also gives us something to talk about during this unexpected F1 spring break, due to the cancellation of the Bahrain and Saudi Arabian GPs. We go through each episode and pick out the most interesting or funny bits before asking more general questions of the series, e.g. Just how awkward can the fake conversations get? Is it possible to hate George more? and did they even mention Haas once?Music provided by Sascha Ende under the CC BY 4.0 license: https://filmmusic.io/standard-license

This week we cover the F1 Grand Prix from Suzuka and the Indycar race at Barber. In F1, both Princess Akiko and Princess Peach were in attendance to see if the Mercedes Wolves would continue to lead the pack. However it was Bear that changed the race, as the new regulations claimed their first, but almost certainly not last, crash. In Indycar, Marcus Armstrong keeps threatening a road trip to Vegas if he wins, but it was the teams playing roulette as no one knew if it was a red or black race. Apart from that confusion, we were mostly searching for someone, anyone, to battle Álex Palou, but first any challenger had to defeat Indycar’s greatest foe, pitstops.  Music provided by Sascha Ende under the CC BY 4.0 license: https://filmmusic.io/standard-license

This week we cover the Madrid e-prix in Formula E. A rare visit to a road course in FE gives us a great race but leaves us with many unanswered questions: how does pitboost strategy work, why is Mitch Evans so angry, and why is Google Gemini so bad. We also cover Max’s brief win in NL2, the Penske's domination in IMSA, and how sad we are that Jonathan Wheatley took the cash. Music provided by Sascha Ende under the CC BY 4.0 license: https://filmmusic.io/standard-license

This week we cover the F1 race in China and the Indycar race in Arlington. In F1, the mechanical carnage predicted last week comes true, as only 15 of the 22 cars finish the race. Still, we got to see plenty of leapfrogging, the new term we invent for the ‘artificial’ racing we get with these new regulations. We also cover the opening rounds of F1 Academy, where this year over 66% of the field are rookies. Luckily, we only have to wait 10 more weeks before we see them again! In Indycar, Marcus Ericsson gets his first pole since the Harlem Shake craze, but can he convert it to a win as last years Herta pit stop curse spreads to the whole Andretti team.  Music provided by Sascha Ende under the CC BY 4.0 license: https://filmmusic.io/standard-license