F1Weekly Podcast # 1097

Piastri takes control of the championship with another victory over his team mate in Barcelona! Flexiwing clamp down complete waste of time, Will Max Verstappen’s temper tarnish his brilliance? and Fernando scores his first points of the 2025 season.

George Russell accused Max Verstappen of deliberately crashing into him during the Formula 1 Spanish Grand Prix and claimed the move was “totally unnecessary”.
Drama escalated in Barcelona after the lap 61 safety car restart, as third-placed Verstappen was immediately put under pressure from behind following a slide out of the final corner.
Charles Leclerc first overtook him down the start-finish straight but banged wheels with Verstappen in the process, irking the four-time champion who said the Ferrari driver needed penalising.

Russell next pressurised Verstappen having gone down the inside of Turn 1, but the Red Bull driver stayed ahead after being forced to use the escape road.
Three laps later though, Red Bull told Verstappen to hand Russell fourth place and the even angrier Dutchman, who disagreed with the order, slowed down into Turn 5 before speeding up again and into the Mercedes.
Verstappen eventually let Russell overtake but still received a 10s penalty which dropped him from fifth to 10th and the Briton said “it felt very deliberate”.
“It’s something that I’ve seen numerous times in sim racing and on iRacing. Never have I seen it in a Formula 1 race,”

Max:

“It was a shame that the safety car came out and we were unlucky that we had to pit. That is racing though, sometimes it works for you and sometimes it doesn’t. The only fresh tyres that we had at the end were hards, so we made the call to change to these when everyone was on softs. Unfortunately, the hard tyres have very low grip, which was quite frustrating and it made things a lot more difficult. We only had six laps so the others could go flat out and we struggled quite a bit.

There of course was an opportunity to stay out on the soft tyre but that was a call we made and it is easy to look back in hindsight. When we went into the restart, we got into a tricky situation and gave the place back. What happened there happened and we got a ten second penalty. In the race we maximised what we had, did everything we could and didn’t quite have the pace to match the McLarens. Ultimately, we just have to take the positives from today, there are always things that can be improved and we know that the three stop was the right way to go, especially with the tyre degradation.”

Christian:

“From the way the race was panning out, we elected to take a three stop approach and we committed to that pretty early on. The pace advantage and the tyre advantage that the McLarens’ had in a straight fight meant that we took the gamble. We took the first stop early on and McLaren committed to a two stop, and our strategy was looking like it was on track to be the quickest approach. We went for the potential undercut with Max, but he then had used all of his soft and medium compounds. The safety car came out at the worst possible time for our strategy and we decided between staying out on older tyres and be exposed at the restart, or take the gamble with the new set of hard tyres.

Hindsight is always 20/20, but we made the best decision at the time with the information we had. There was then contact with George that the stewards deemed an incident and resulted in a penalty. It’s something we will discuss internally and look at further. It’s a frustrating result as it was looking to be an easy podium for Max today. The safety car hurt Yuki’s race today, he would’ve been very close if not in to the points otherwise if you look at the trajectory he was on with pace and tyre advantage. It was a tough weekend, the results weren’t what he wanted, but he will be busy working with the Team over the next week to make some set-up improvements for Montreal.

Charles:

Yesterday, I knew that I was sacrificing qualifying in order to have a better race on Sunday, but I didn’t expect to find myself standing on the podium, so I’m happy about that.
The first two stints were really positive today, the last stint on the Medium was a bit more tricky, but then we had the Safety Car that gave us the opportunity to fit Soft tyres again and we took advantage of it.
We still have a lot of work to do and are not yet as fast as we want to be, but now we head home to reset and push to come back stronger in the coming races.

Fernando:

“It’s always special racing at home, and it means a lot to score my first points of the season here in Barcelona. The support from the fans was amazing. The pace of the car wasn’t quite where we wanted it to be, especially after feeling strong yesterday.

I struggled to overtake on the straights so I had to get quite creative at Turn Three. I’m happy to take the points in the end, and now we’ll look to keep the momentum going as we head to Canada. We missed Lance today and I wish him a quick recovery.”

Isack:

“I’m really happy with today’s race, it was a strong performance and almost perfect, something the whole team can be proud of. I really enjoyed the first stint, though it’s a shame Nico got us right at the end. Our strategy was perfect, the pace on the Medium tyre was strong, it really helped us clear the midfield and we had some great battles on track. We made the right call to box for Softs when we did. I’m feeling more and more confident in the car and pushing it to the limit at every race. As a team, we’re definitely heading in the right direction. I couldn’t have asked for a better triple-header, scoring points in every race. I’m looking forward to carrying this momentum into Canada.”

Liam:

“From our side, it was a very strong race. Despite spending a lot of it in traffic, we had good speed and were overtaking cars, so it was working out. We ended up in the wrong position and missed the safety car line by half a second because everyone in front of us boxed. To be that close after all the work we did in the race is really unfortunate. As we look ahead to Canada, we’ll take the positives of great race pace. Points are always the goal.”

Indianapolis 500 Purse Reaches New Pinnacle

INDIANAPOLIS (Monday, May 26, 2025) – The Indianapolis 500 purse record was broken for the fourth year in a row for the 109th Running of the Indianapolis 500 presented by Gainbridge, with first-time winner Alex Palou of Chip Ganassi Racing earning $3.8 million from a total purse of $20,283,000.

This is the largest purse in the century-plus history of “The Greatest Spectacle in Racing” on the heels of four consecutive record-breaking years. This year’s average payout for NTT INDYCAR SERIES drivers was $596,500, which also exceeds last year’s average of $543,000.

In 2024, the Indianapolis 500 purse was $18,456,000, and the year’s winner payout was $4.3 million, which included a $440,000 roll-over bonus from BorgWarner for earning back-to-back wins. In 2023, the Indianapolis 500 purse was $17,021,500, and the winner earned $3.7 million. In 2022, the Indianapolis 500 purse was $16,000,200, and the winner earned $3.1 million. Prior to 2022, the largest Indianapolis 500 purse was $14.4 million for the 2008 Indianapolis 500.

“The Indianapolis 500 is the greatest race in the world, and winning this race makes history in more ways than one,” INDYCAR and IMS president J. Douglas Boles said. “The Month of May featured a grandstand sellout crowd and intense on-track action. Alex Palou adds Indianapolis 500 winner to his long list of growing achievements and takes home the largest purse in Indianapolis 500 history. There’s no better way to end an epic month.”

Pole-winner Robert Shwartzman of PREMA Racing earned Indianapolis 500 Rookie of the Year honors for his performance during the Month of May. Shwartzman earned a $50,000 bonus for being named Rookie of the Year, adding to a total take-home prize of $327,300.