Episodit
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We’ve just returned from Bahrain, where the F1 teams did their only test last week ahead of the new F1 season kick-off in Melbourne.
People say testing is boring but if you know what to look for, it’s anything but. The laps are on track, and the body language of the cars needs to be analysed. But there is also the body language of the people – the teams, engineers and of course the drivers.
Will Ferrari compete with McLaren? What is Max Verstappen’s state of mind? Which of the five rookie drivers will shine? And does Aston Martin need to break glass and call in Adrian Newey to sort out their 2025 car?
James joins up with some of our colleagues from around the world to go under the skin of F1 testing and look at how some of the big stories of the season are shaping up. Our man in Italy Roberto Chinchero has the inside line, Ronald Vording gives a Dutch perspective and there is analysis from Jake Boxall-Legge.
Remember to take part in the Global F1 Fan Survey which we are running together with F1. Make your voice heard about F1, what you like and what you’d like to change and who your favourite teams and drivers are. Go to https://fansurvey2025-formula1.motorsportnetwork.com/
Send your comments or questions to: @jamesallenonf1 on X/Twitter or [email protected].
Producer: Dre Harrison
A Motorsport Studios production for Autosport -
This week as we digest the F175 launch and head off for pre-season testing, we speak to one of F1’s top race promoters to find out what goes on behind the scenes to stage an event for almost 300,000 people.
This year is Miami’s fourth as an F1 host venue, part of Liberty Media’s drive to expand F1 in the US market and engage new fans.
Miami does things a bit differently and they do it with a sense of humour, which is in short supply in F1, which can take itself too seriously at times.
So how do they juggle the conflicting demands of NFL, the FIFA World Cup, the Miami Open Tennis and F1 events in the same season?
What does it take logistically to put on a Grand Prix at this scale? And what sort of tickets give the fans the best deal? James sits down with Tyler Epp, President of the Miami Grand Prix to discuss how the race has gone from "fake" marina, to fan favourite.
Global Editorial Director Rebecca Clancy and Autosport F1 Business Correspondent Mark Mann-Bryans join James in the studio. They also preview the F1 testing in Bahrain.
Remember to take part in the Global F1 Fan Survey, which we are running together with F1. Make your voice heard about F1; what you like, what you’d like to change and who your favourite teams and drivers are. Go to https://fansurvey2025-formula1.motorsportnetwork.com/
Send your comments or questions to: @jamesallenonf1 on X/Twitter or [email protected].
Producers: Dre Harrison, Ben Holmes
Executive Producer: Jason Swales
A Motorsport Studios production for Autosport -
Puuttuva jakso?
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This week F1 held its spectacular season launch event at the O2 Arena in London in a ceremony that was all about entertaining the fans, particularly F1’s new fans.
Hot on its heels F1 is launching the latest Global Fan Survey, which is being conducted by Motorsport Network, Autosport’s parent company, in partnership with F1.
This is where F1 fans around the world have a chance to make their voices heard. There will be many useful learnings for F1, the teams, sponsors and promoters. The 2021 survey had 167,000 responses from 185 countries, with Nielsen certifying it as the largest sports survey ever conducted.
We have been conducting these surveys for many years. The 2017 survey came just after Liberty Media’s takeover of F1 and by 2021 we could clearly see the changes in attitudes and demographics among fans, who were younger and more female. So what will this new survey show?
Autosport Editor-in-Chief Rebecca Clancy and Chief Motorsport writer Ben Hunt join James in the studio and we hear from an influential voice from the US on F1’s new audiences, Toni Cowan-Brown.
If you'd like to participate in the 2025 F1 Global Fan Survey, you can do so by clicking this link: https://fansurvey2025-formula1.motorsportnetwork.com
Send your comments or questions to: @jamesallenonf1 on X/Twitter or [email protected].
Producer: Dre Harrison
A Motorsport Studios production for Autosport -
Motor racing has a long tradition as an incubator of technology. AI is the latest example as tech companies flood into the sport as partners, helping teams harness AI to improve performance. F1 increasingly uses AI in its TV and online coverage to provide insights and content tailored for fans.
The FIA is also getting in on the act; this week it announced that AI will now help the F1 race officials and play a role in sensitive decisions on things like track limits and analysis of race incidents.
So what impact is AI already having on F1? Where might it get involved in the future? And should there be a limit to how far it goes?
We hear from a panel of industry experts: Rob Smedley, CEO of Smedley Group, Former F1 Director of Data Systems; Ferrari and Williams engineer, Joe Carroll, General Manager, Telco, Media, Entertainment, Games and Sport, Amazon Web Services and Stephane Timpano, CEO Aspire, which runs the A2RL autonomous racing league, where the AI coders are the stars.
In the studio with James are Autosport’s F1 Business Correspondent Mark Mann-Bryans and Sam Agini from the Financial Times.
Send your comments or questions to: @jamesallenonf1 on X/Twitter or [email protected].
Producer: Dre Harrison
Executive Producer: Jason Swales
A Motorsport Studios production for Autosport -
This week we have a special interview with newly minted F1 World Champion team boss, Zak Brown.
Zak has been McLaren's CEO since 2018, but it’s taken him several attempts to get the right team structure and management team to bring a first Constructors’ World Championship since the heady days of 1998.
Zak has developed into a strong leader and here he shares some of his management techniques. He used to run sports marketing businesses and was recognised as one of the best sponsorship brokers in the sport for a decade, but an F1 team has many more departments, all of which have to be high-performing.
So what was the secret to finally getting McLaren in shape to deliver the title? Does he regret not being more ruthless at certain races in 2024, which might have given Lando Norris a better shot at winning the drivers’ title? Why does he feel the FIA must make serious changes to the refereeing of the sport in the stewards' room? And do McLaren start the 2025 season as Championship favourites?
In the studio to analyse with James are Autosport’s Editor-in-Chief Rebecca Clancy and Chief Motorsport Writer Ben Hunt.
Send your comments or questions to: @jamesallenonf1 on X/Twitter or [email protected].
Producer: Dre Harrison
A Motorsport Studios production for Autosport -
Hello and welcome to the James Allen on F1 podcast, brought to you by Autosport.
This week we chat to F1’s youngest team principal, Oliver Oakes. The 37-year-old was parachuted into the Alpine team in August last year when they were struggling in 9th place in the Championship. They ended the season 6th.
Oli is the first to admit that there was a slice of luck involved, as the bulk of their points were scored with that amazing double podium in the wet in Brazil. But underneath that was an upward trend in car development and ultimately they deserved their finishing position.
So what happens next and is Oliver a mighty Oak? Is he the stabilising force that Alpine has been crying out for? And with rookie drivers making an astonishing 30% of the F1 field, we get Oliver’s take on why F1 is going for youth.
In the studio with James to discuss this are our International Editor Oleg Karpov and Marc Priestley, BBC Five Live commentator, podcaster and former McLaren F1 mechanic.
Send your comments or questions to: @jamesallenonf1 on X/Twitter or [email protected].
Producer: Dre Harrison
Executive Producer: Jason Swales
A Motorsport Studios production for Autosport -
For the first JA on F1 podcast of 2025, we discuss Lewis Hamilton as he turns 40. The seven-time World Champion is preparing to drive a Ferrari F1 car for the first time this month. In his New Year message to fans, he said “Reinvention is powerful”
So how will this reinvention for Hamilton go? What do we know so far about the 2025 Ferrari car he will be driving? And what does history tell us about F1 champions who make late-career moves; how did it work out for them? Is it possible to win a World Championship beyond 40?
With James in the studio to dive into Lewis Hamilton at Ferrari are Chief Motorsport Writer Ben Hunt and F1 writer Jake Boxall-Legge. We also hear from our colleague Roberto Chinchero on the excitement building in Italy.
Send your comments or questions to: @jamesallenonf1 on X/Twitter or [email protected].
Producer: Dre Harrison
A Motorsport Studios production for Autosport -
Who will win the 2025 F1 Drivers' Championship?
Will Lewis Hamilton score more points than Charles Leclerc?
What impact will the struggles of car manufacturers, especially Europeans, have on F1 next year?
How might geopolitics impact on F1, for example in the Middle East and Asia ?
For our final podcast of the year, we thought that rather than looking backwards with yet another Season Review – we would immediately throw it forwards and Superforecast F1 in 2025.
Joining James to look into the future are Jon Noble, Ben Hunt and Jake Boxall-Legge.
Send your comments or questions to: @jamesallenonf1 on X/Twitter or [email protected].
A Motorsport Studios production for Autosport -
The F1 season is almost over. Max Verstappen has joined Alain Prost and Sebastian Vettel as a four-time world champion. But there is one very important matter still to resolve.
The Formula 1 Constructors’ Championship may not have the same caché with fans, but it matters a lot to the teams; it dictates how much F1 prize money they earn.
But this year it means even more; for the first time in 16 years, the two teams fighting it out are McLaren and Ferrari. This has echoes of the great years of Schumacher and Hakkinen of Hamilton, Alonso, Raikkonen and Massa.
Ferrari hasn’t won the title since 2008 and McLaren hasn’t won it since 1998. Whoever wins, it’s going to be epic!
Which of these great names will prevail? Who has the stronger drivers?
And how did we get here, when the season started with a series of Red Bull 1-2 finishes?
With James to discuss this are; Rob Smedley, former race engineer to Felipe Massa at Ferrari, BBC Commentator and former McLaren mechanic Marc Priestly and Autosport’s own Jake Boxall-Legge.
Send your comments or questions to @jamesallenonf1 on X/Twitter or [email protected].
A Motorsport Studios production for Autosport -
This week we are doing something a little different. We explore how F1 teams make key decisions on areas like driver recruitment, development and race strategy and compare it with how things are done at a top Premier League football club.
F1 is a sport built around technology, whereas in football the smartest teams have began only in the last decade to use it for recruitment, for strategy, in-game tactical decisions and so much more.
With James to compare how Mercedes recruited Kimi Antonelli with how Liverpool FC discovered Mo Salah, we have two experts in their fields.
Rob Smedley, former race engineer to Felipe Massa, head of track engineering at Williams and who now runs Smedley Group which advises across the F1 spectrum on data and AI.
And Dr Ian Graham, of Ludonautics and most famously head of the data department at Liverpool FC for 11 years. His data analysis played a key role in building the Jurgen Klopp team that won the Premier League and Champions league. His book How to win the Premier League is a brilliant guide to the way decisions get taken in an elite sport.
Send your comments or questions to: @jamesallenonf1 on X/Twitter or [email protected].
A Motorsport Studios production for Autosport -
This week we are looking at how you get an F1 team to the next level. In a super competitive environment like F1, where no-one stands still, how do you go from 8th in the championship to the top of the standings using technology and people?
We welcome another F1 team principal James Vowles, who is 18 months into his programme to take Williams, F1’s second most successful team, back to the winner’s circle. It’s been 11 years since Williams last won a Grand Prix. James doesn’t want that to reach 15 years.
We’ll talk to James about how he’s empowering youth, as he’s done with Franco Colapinto, why plenty of F2 drivers are now getting into F1 but it’s not the series champions and what AI is already doing in F1 and what role it will play in the future.
With James in the studio to fill in the picture is Autosport F1 writer, Jake Boxall-Legge.
Send your comments or questions to: @jamesallenonf1 on X/Twitter or [email protected].
A Motorsport Studios production for Autosport -
This week we delve into the curious case of Daniel Ricciardo. He once rode a horse into the paddock at Austin, but will not be lining up there in at this year’s US Grand Prix - or any other Grands Prix - after being dropped by Red Bull.
Daniel was one of F1’s biggest fan favourites and an 8-time Grand Prix winner. But he’s not been the same driver for a few years now. As always with F1, a sport all about technology and hardware, at the heart of this is a very human story.
On this podcast we drill down into that story - what made Ricciardo special? And what went wrong? We hear from a Chief Engineer whose job was to develop Ricciardo for his big-time 2014 move to Red Bull Racing and from the Australian F1 TV host, who’s known Daniel since his early days.
With James in the studio are two top F1 journalists who covered Ricciardo’s entire career, Autosport’s F1 Editor Jon Noble and Chief motorsport writer Ben Hunt.
Send your comments or questions to @jamesallenonf1 on X/Twitter or [email protected].
Guests: Phil Charles, former Chief Race Engineer, Toro Rosso F1 team (now RB) Greg Rust, former Network 10 F1 Presenter
A Motorsport Studios production for Autosport -
F1 runs on money and this week James is in Singapore to dig into how F1 is now raking in around $2.5 billion a year in sponsorship.
Since Liberty Media took over in 2017, sponsors have flocked to the sport and its 10 teams and there are now over 300 active sponsors for the first time in F1 history.
One of the most effective operators in this space is Jefferson Slack, who heads up Aston Martin’s commercial team. In just five years he has taken their sponsor income from around $30 million a year to closer to $300m.
How have they done it, how important is having world champions like Sebastian Vettel and Fernando Alonso in the car? And how much of a difference will it make to prospective sponsors having the GOAT racing car designer Adrian Newey in the team from 2025?
In the studio to analyse all of this, James is joined by Autosport F1 Business Correspondent Mark Mann-Bryans and Matthew Marsh, an F1 sponsorship broker, who covers the Asian market, based in Singapore.
Send your comments or questions to: @jamesallenonf1 on X/Twitter or [email protected].
A Motorsport Studios Production for Autosport -
This week we look at why it is so tricky to build a winning team in F1 and why success is never guaranteed.
We go behind the scenes of Adrian Newey’s big-money move to Aston Martin and ask what this means for the competitive picture in F1 over the next five years. And we hear from celebrated manager David Richards, who took BAR Honda to second place in the World Championship 20 years ago against Michael Schumacher’s dominant Ferrari team.
Joining James in the studio are Autosport F1 Editor Jon Noble and Chief Writer Ben Hunt, who were both at Aston Martin’s swanky new HQ for the Newey announcement.
There is no doubting Lawrence Stroll’s bold vision, nor his willingness to back his instincts with hard cash to buy the world-class facilities and people Newey will work with. But success in F1 is never guaranteed.
How will this change the competitive picture in F1 over the next five years?
And what can David Richards’ many years of success at the top of motorsport tell us about how winning teams are built?
Send your comments or questions to: @jamesallenonf1 on X/Twitter or email [email protected]
A Motorsport Studios production for Autosport -
This week James looks into the future and asks what F1’s move to zero emission fuels from 2026 actually means.
If the cars are zero emission, you don’t need hybrid technology anymore, so will it open the door for the return of the lighter, great sounding V8 and V10 engines of the past? Or is hybrid tech the only thing keeping the manufacturers in F1?
And what exactly are these magical fuels? Former Mercedes F1 technical chief Paddy Lowe tells us synthetic fuels that cost a fortune today will be cheaper to buy than normal fuels in 10 years and therefore affordable for owners of the billion-plus cars on the road.
Here to help demystify all of this are Autosport F1 Editor Jon Noble and special guest Joe Brown, former Executive Editor of Wired and founder of One5C, a platform dedicated to sustainable solutions to real world problems.
Send your comments or questions to: @jamesallenonf1 on X/Twitter.
A Motorsport Studios production for Autosport -
This week we meet top F1 race strategist Bernie Collins, who has made a successful switch to TV, becoming a hugely popular presenter on Sky Sports coverage of F1. Bernie gives viewers the inside track on crucial decisions on the pitwall, bringing a new level of enjoyment to the fan experience.
Bernie grew up in Northern Ireland and started as an F1 performance engineer with McLaren, before switching to Force India and latterly Aston Martin as chief race strategist.
Bernie explains how she could make split second decisions under intense pressure during races and why we see teams like McLaren and Ferrari sometimes get key decisions wrong. We also explore why many women can reach the top ranks as strategists, but not yet in race engineering and other senior team roles. She also reveals which driver has the best understanding of race strategy and who is the hardest working.
James is joined in the studio for chat and analysis of this fascinating topic by Autosport Editor-in-Chief Rebecca Clancy and F1 Writer Jake Boxall-Legge.
Bernie Collins’ book, How to win a Grand Prix is published by Quercus.
Email your comments or questions to: [email protected] -
This week we take the audience into the heart of an F1 team and look at how crucial decisions get made that can push the team up, or down, the grid; from where to spend the budget to get the best results, to hiring and firing drivers.
Otmar Szafnauer is a very experienced F1 team principal of Force India, Racing Point, Aston Martin and Alpine, with strong track record of getting bang for buck. He was fired by Alpine year ago, over a disagreement with Alpine management on what was the right pathway to success.
We discuss what data teams use to choose their drivers, whether hiring a rookie for 2025 is a smart idea and what has made McLaren competitive this year. Plus Otmar gives us a teasing view on new teams coming into the sport.
To break this all down James is joined in the studio by Autosport F1 Editor Jon Noble and Chief Motorsport Writer Ben Hunt.
Email your comments or questions to: [email protected] -
This week we welcome one of F1’s most charismatic figures: Guenther Steiner. His expletive ridden rants on the hit Netflix show Drive to Survive turned him from a cameo role in F1 into one of its most recognizable figures.
Guenther brought Haas into F1 a decade ago with a different model, using as many components from Ferrari as possible. They achieved 5th place in the 2018 Constructors’ Championship, beating legacy teams like McLaren, Williams and Sauber.
But in the 2020s Haas languished in the bottom three and team owner Gene Haas didn’t renew Guenther’s contract for 2024. He is now on the sidelines, with plenty to say.
We discuss the importance of personality in modern F1, what he misses about being a team boss, whether F1 is now a show and what advice Guenther would give to Andretti as they struggle to break into F1 as a new team.
James is joined in the studio for chat and analysis by Autosport Chief Motorsport Writer Ben Hunt and Will Buxton, narrator of Drive to Survive and host of F1TV.
Email your comments or questions to: [email protected] -
This week we have a British GP themed discussion, with special guest Damon Hill, the 1996 F1 World Champion.
Damon knows all about how an F1 driver goes from winning their first Grand Prix to winning multiple races and contending for a championship. We get into that in detail with him, with particular reference to Lando Norris and George Russell.
F1 sparked into life in Austria with a controversial clash as Norris and Max Verstappen fought for the win. Russell was the main beneficiary, taking his second Grand Prix victory. All of which sets us up for a fiercely competitive weekend at Silverstone.
There hasn’t been anything like the animosity between Norris and Verstappen that there was in 2021 between Verstappen and Lewis Hamilton. The pair have been good friends up to now… so what happens next?
In the studio this week to help read between the lines are Autosport Editor-In-Chief Rebecca Clancy and Chief Motorsport writer Ben Hunt.
To find out more about Damon Hill’s fundraising cycle ride and the work of Neuro UK, go to https://www.justgiving.com/page/damon-hill-1718188619747 and if you'd like to see the video version of Damon's interview, you can see it here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TBnS7kYz8p4
Email your comments or questions to: [email protected] -
This week we speak to the man with arguably the hardest job in F1: Ferrari team boss Fred Vasseur.
Fred is bringing Lewis Hamilton to Ferrari next year. We get into that with him, what (or who) else Ferrari still needs to win a world championship and how Fred uses humour to get his way. He talks about managing the fragile confidence of Ferrari team members and how he is pushing them to take more risks. Former Ferrari F1 engineer Rob Smedley of “Fernando is faster than you” fame helps us read between the lines along with Motorport.com Italy’s F1 Editor Roberto Chinchero.
Fred Vasseur, 56, has been in motorsport for 35 years. He had huge success in F3 and GP2 (the forerunner of F2) with ART – making champions of drivers like Hamilton, Nico Rosberg and Nico Hulkenberg. He came into F1 in 2016 as boss of Renault F1 team, (now known as Alpine) he joined Sauber in 2017 and gave Charles Leclerc his F1 break with the team. He transferred to Ferrari for the start of the 2023 season and is now a multiple F1 Grand Prix winner.
Get in touch with the show at [email protected] - Näytä enemmän
