F1Weekly Podcast # 1106

Norris takes victory over Piastri with a one stopper! Aston Martin on fire with fifth and sixth. The agony and the ecstasy at Ferrari and Max says Red Bull will not win another race this season. This week’s Nasir Hameed corner…Mika Häkkinen Laguna Seca 2019

Lando:

“I’m dead, I’m dead,” Norris smiled when giving his initial reaction to the fight and race as a whole before the podium ceremony.
“We weren’t really planning on the one-stop at the beginning, but after the first lap it was kind of our only option to get back into things. It was tough.

“The final stint with Oscar catching, I was pushing flat-out. My voice has gone a little bit! But good, rewarding even more because of that – the perfect result today.”

“I knew our pace was good. Even in the first stint behind George, I couldn’t get past but the pace was strong, so I knew if I just had some clean air and I could push, I could maybe make things work. That’s what we did.
“It’s always a bit of a gamble, these kind of things, but it also requires no mistakes, good laps, good strategy, all these things. That’s what we had today, so I’m very happy.”
“We’re fighting hard, I think both of us… It’s tough, but fun racing against Oscar.
“It’s great for us as a team, another 1-2, our 200th win actually in F1. Credit to Oscar, he put up a good charge and I just about held on. I look forward to plenty more of these.”

George:

It’s great to be back on the podium. We’ve taken a step forward with the car this weekend, so it is a deserved reward for the hard work of everyone at Brackley and Brixworth. It looked like we were on for a lonely P4, but we closed on Leclerc in the closing stages. The overtake itself was a little dicey; I committed to the corner, and he clearly moved under braking, for which he was given a penalty. Thankfully there was no harm done and we were able to take P3.

This result gives us encouragement heading into the summer break and we can look forward to the final 10 races of the year now with more confidence. We can’t get carried away as we didn’t expect to be in the top three this weekend. We know the competitive order behind McLaren is tight and we will need to be at our best to fight for podiums consistently in the second half of the season.

Charles:

This is not the outcome we hoped for but there was nothing we could have done to control it considering the issue we had. I got some more insight into what was happening after getting out of the car and it turns out that we had an issue on the chassis that started just about when I began to feel a difference in how the car behaved. It’s frustrating, because I think we could have won today, but we will return after the summer break and give it our all to come back stronger.

Lewis:

It’s been a challenging weekend and one to move on from. We weren’t able to make the progress we hoped for but I’m grateful for the effort everyone in the team put in throughout the weekend. Now we head into the break. I’ll be using the time to reset, recharge and come back stronger. I’m not where I want to be yet, but the fight’s not over – don’t count me out.

Max:

“Unfortunately, the whole weekend wasn’t good for us and we need to understand why that was. It has been quite tough as we got stuck in between cars during the race and struggled for grip. Although the high speed was okay, the low and medium speed wasn’t good. There are a lot of things to understand as the car has been difficult all weekend and we couldn’t turn things around unfortunately.

Like we always do, we will analyse everything and take learnings from the weekend to find more performance as we go into Zandvoort. Ultimately, this weekend hasn’t gone to our liking, but it is now summer break and I can enjoy time with family and friends and not think too much about the racing side of things. There are many more races left and we can look to do better after the break. We want to aim to be more consistent and always try and even though it was a disappointing result we will keep our head up.”

BUDAPEST, HUNGARY – JULY 20: Third placed qualifier Max Verstappen of the Netherlands and Oracle Red Bull Racing attends the press conference after qualifying ahead of the F1 Grand Prix of Hungary at Hungaroring on July 20, 2024 in Budapest, Hungary. (Photo by Bryn Lennon/Getty Images)

Fernando:

“Today’s race went to plan for us and we maximised the performance of the car this weekend. It was a good job by everyone in the team and we are happy to have scored 16 points. We had some threats to deal with in the race, but we managed to keep them behind.

The performance we’ve shown here has been a nice surprise, but we need to analyse everything from Spa and Budapest so we can better understand why we were much faster here in Hungary. I will enjoy the short break now and I look forward to racing again in Zandvoort.

Liam:

“I’m very happy with today’s result. It was a tough race and trying to find a window for boxing was tricky with all the traffic. The speed was really good as well as the degradation on the tyres, so everything was well executed by the team. It’s never easy keeping a driver like Max behind you, but our strategy meant that we could keep position until the end. It’s obviously great to have more consistency over the most recent races, but the key thing is for us to keep the momentum going following the much-deserved summer break.”

Formula 3

Câmara seals 2025 title with commanding Budapest win!

Rafael Câmara claimed the 2025 Formula 3 Drivers’ Championship in style, taking his fourth win
of the season in dominant fashion, converting pole into the top step and the title.
Mari Boya finished P2 for Campos Racing ahead of Tuukka Taponen of ART Grand Prix in third.

The race got underway with a rolling start and Câmara retained the lead comfortably from pole
ahead of Boya and Taponen in second and third places.
Tim Tramnitz’s slender hopes of remaining in title contention took a blow early on as he spun at
Turn 7 to fall down the order having started P16.
Ugo Ugochukwu was making quick progress having gone from seventh on the grid, and he
claimed P5 on Lap 2 with a pass around the outside of Théophile Nael at the second corner.
While the conditions remained damp, DRS was enabled on Lap 3 and Boya remained within a
second of the race leader and his title rival, as the top two began to pull away from the rest of
the pack.

The Campos driver piled the pressure on with the fastest lap of the race, and he attempted a
move into Turn 2 but couldn’t’ find the traction to make it stick.
The Safety Car was deployed on Lap 4 with AIX Racing driver Brad Benavides in the tyre wall at
the exit of Turn 13 following contact with Rodin Motorsport’s Roman Bilinski.
Racing got back underway entering Lap 7, and Câmara retained the advantage out in front while
teammate Charlie Wurz moved himself up to P6 at Turn 1 with a pass on Nael.
Ugochukwu looked set to complete an overtake on Gerrard Xie for P4 at Turn 5 but was tagged
into a spin by the Hitech TGR driver. It brought out the Safety Car once again with both suffering
race-ending damage and stopping on track.
The Safety Car was in at the end of Lap 10, and once again Câmara got a clean restart to head
the field.
Nikola Tsolov was on a charge, going from P13 to P10 on the first racing lap back to green. He
got the switchback out of Turn 1 on Noah Stromsted to improve to P9 on Lap 12, and then
passed James Wharton to take eighth position.

The Australian then slipped back to 10th on Lap 13, as a wide moment at Turn 13 allowed
teammate Laurens van Hoepen by.
Up ahead, Tsolov was on the move once again and he improved to P7 into Turn 1 with a pass on
Alessandro Giusti. Before the end of the lap, he passed Brando Badoer at Turn 14 to secure P6.
The Bulgarian closed the gap down to Nael ahead and by Lap 20, he was within a second of the
Van Amersfoort Racing driver in the fight for P5.
They soon caught up to the podium battle as they joined Wurz in harrying Taponen for third
position, as the clock ticked into two minutes remaining of the Feature Race following the earlier
Safety Car periods.
In front of them though, nobody could prevent Câmara taking a crowning victory and the 2025
Drivers’ Championship with it.
Boya finished second while Taponen held onto third place ahead of Wurz, Nael and a charging
Tsolov.
Badoer was P7 for PREMA Racing followed by van Hoepen in eighth, Giusti in P9 and Tasanapol
Inthraphuvasak 10th for Campos.

CHAMPION’S QUOTE:

“Just finished the Feature Race, also closing the Championship. Just very happy how we
managed the whole season, I think we have been very strong since the beginning. Now we can
relax a bit before Monza, enjoy the moment a bit, because during the Championship, it’s always
difficult to enjoy moments because you always need to keep your focus, so just enjoy the
moment. Thank you to everyone for the support, for cheering for me, and just going to enjoy it
now. Thank you!”