00:00So, Dan, before we get into the fantastic race in the Belgium Grand Prix, I mean, it
00:08just seems like F1, as of recent weeks and months, has sort of had this sort of unpredictable
00:14drama come back into the sport. I mean, it's sort of drawing back the, you know, the real
00:19reason why a lot of fans actually started to love the sport as well. Could you sort
00:23of agree with that?
00:24I certainly can. I think at the moment, you don't really have one car that's massively
00:31faster than the others, which you've had a lot for the past couple of years, with Red
00:34Bull really streets ahead of the rest of all the teams. Right now, though, Red Bull, their
00:39advantage has pretty much been wiped out by the likes of McLaren and Mercedes. Ferrari
00:43maybe just tucked in a little bit behind those as well, then they get to the best of the
00:47rest. But Red Bull's advantage, compared to where it was, is really minute now. Obviously,
00:52you've had McLaren winning races, you've had Mercedes winning three of the last four
00:56races as well, whose aero packages work the best, whose upgrades work the best, at different
01:02circuits. Obviously, we've got the summer break now, a couple of weeks off from Grand
01:07Prix racing after the Belgian Grand Prix, which we'll dissect in a moment. But yes,
01:11there's no real car that's a lot faster than any of the others, which is making for a really
01:16tense competition. Of course, at the start of the year, Red Bull still were the fastest,
01:20hence why Max Verstappen has got that big championship lead at the moment. But given
01:24the fact that he's not really streets ahead anymore, you never know what might happen
01:28come the end of the season if things keep going this way. But I think for fans of the
01:32sport who perhaps want to see a bit more of a battle, that could well be on the cards.
01:38Yeah, obviously about an hour and 10 minutes after the Grand Prix had finished and George
01:43Russell was crowned an F1 winner for, I think, the second or third time in his career so
01:49far. And then it comes out that he's been disqualified. For any sort of fans who might
01:54be getting into the sport, what are the sort of guidelines around his disqualification
01:59and why he wasn't able to go on to win the race?
02:02I think what you need to know first is that the FIA, which is the governing body of motorsport
02:06in Formula One, they're very strict on their regulations and they tend not to be lenient
02:12at all. You can be, whether your car's a couple of millimetres too low to the ground, that's
02:18not good enough, or whether there's a certain angle on the wing that doesn't fit the regulations.
02:22They're very strict like this. And it's the same in terms of that car's weight, because
02:26weight can make a massive difference in the performance of a car. If your car is a lot
02:29lighter than the other cars, it's going to be faster. When George Russell's car was inspected,
02:34as all cars are, after the Grand Prix, it was found to be at the very minimum weight
02:39that is required of a Formula One car at the end of a Grand Prix. And then when fuel was
02:42drained from it, it went below that weight by about 1.5 kilograms. And unfortunately,
02:48that's not really something that an awful lot can be done about it. It's sort of a case
02:52of the strategy that's helped him win the race on track has cost him it off track.
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