F1 Manager 24 [Cadillac – modded series]: S01/R02 – China 2026
Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat. Hello again. I am Jim Bob and welcome back to F1 Manager 24 Creat. It is the second round of the 2026 season and tonight we are heading to the shop. And we’re coming off the back of a really shock result. Uh we were just half a second away from a podium uh last night after a bit of a crazy race. Um very very early safety car changed almost the entire field strategy. They all dived straight in for hard tires by just like two other cars apart from us. And then we had another late safety car and that kind of changed strategies a little bit as well with the uncertainty of the entire wear model that we’re running. Uh and the uncertainty about where exactly everybody is in terms of pace. It made for a very very interesting result. These are the current standings. As you can see, Landlow took the win max for second. Albon finished in third in the Williams, but we ended up just 6/10 of a second behind with Valkyrie. uh being able to push quite hard at the very very end just not quite having enough pace in our car to overcome Albon in the last lap or two. Uh then it was Hajar from Hulenberg, Llair, Cenoda, Gazzley and Anteneelli ninth and 10th there. And unfortunately, uh ignore these two. They should not be there on the grid at all. Perez Science and Pastry all failing to finish. They all DNFed. Uh there’s a huge huge impact for Perez which has already uh pretty much totaled a powertrain. So um that is not good at all. We lost a chassis. We lost uh a rear wing and a suspension. And that is the current state of his engine. We’re already on the second gearbox cuz the first one was completely destroyed. Uh so uh yeah, it’s going to be a case of engine penalties for Sergio Perez at some point in the season. Uh that’s pretty much a given as we only have three engines, two ERS, and four gearboxes. And now we’re effectively down one of each of those on that car. So not an amazing start for one side of the garage, a phenomenal start for the other side of the garage. Um, I get the feeling we are um not going to see the same today, but who knows? Who knows? Uh, how you doing, Wally? How you doing, Dino? Army, uh, Comet Cat, it’s good to see you guys. Welcome. Welcome. Is this a sprint weekend? It is. This is the first sprint of the season. Uh, there you can see sprint weekend up here in the uh top corner. We have uh pretty good weather all the way across the weekend. So, uh it is the beginning of the race day, uh or the race weekend. Uh so, we’re going to jump straight in. In fact, actually, oh, it’s too late now. Uh there is a way around this. Uh let me reload the save. There we go. Uh let’s actually take a a look now that everyone is uh prepped for the race weekend and any damage parts will have been replaced. Let’s actually take a look at the uh the current grid order in terms of performance. So uh we have Red Bull who won the Grand Prix. Uh they are actually not looking like an amazing car it would seem. Uh the numbers there very much average although they’re very strong in dirty air. Uh decent speed, not great acceleration, average DRS. Let’s see if we can figure out who the best car is. We think it’s the Mercedes. Uh it looks pretty much like it is going to be the Mercedes. So let’s take a look at the difference between the two in terms of numbers. So, not a massive amount of speed difference, but some speed difference there. Uh, what 7 km an hour? That’s actually a nice little amount. They’ve got a definite edge in acceleration. They’re up in DRS by what, 8%. Uh, and then in terms of downforce, uh, we know that Mercedes pretty much the best on the grid for the downforce across all areas. Uh, and Red Bull’s pretty much bang in the a bang average in the middle, but the gap between the low speed here, it’s not that big. Same for medium speed, it’s a little bit bigger. Uh, and then it’s quite a big bit actually for the high speed downforce. Uh, they’re only up by a couple of percentage points in the dirty air, one and a half percentage points. Uh, they have a lot less tire wear um preservation compared to Red Bull. So, Red Bull definitely have that in their in their toolkit to be able to stretch tire performances. We might see uh something very very different uh in terms of uh performance out of these two teams today. Uh Williams had pace at times, but Max was never really in real jeopardy uh until the very end when he was pimp pipped by Lando. Uh but the McLaren’s uh sorry the the Mercedes was never really in contention for the win at all. So um I don’t know if we’ll see something different. It’s a bit of a different characteristic of circuit going into China. If we take a look at the uh overview here, you can see the sections by speed. It’s a real interesting mix of corner types. A lot of uh uh medium speed corners. There’s a good smattering of high-speed corners and a few key low- speed corners as well. Um, in particular, we have uh this little tight lefthander here, which leads into a DRS detection point about here, which then determines all the way down to this hairpin, which exits out to another DRS detection point about here. So, again, those two uh low speed corners in particular are absolutely crucial. getting a good exit through here with some DRS, uh, not with some DRS, sorry, with an ERS, some battery deployment can set you up for a really good run through this section and even overtakes through this section. So, again, that’s an important corner to get a really good launch out of. Um, unfortunately, our car is not great in any of those areas. So, uh, I don’t know what to expect from us, but, uh, we will give it as good a go as we can. It’s annoying that you need to load the save to get out of the weekend golf screen. It is. Yeah, I wish if you clicked on the race targets that you had the option to go back to the main screen, but unfortunately once you go here, you’re kind of screwed. You have to complete it through or reload. So, uh, what do I think we can do? I think we’ll go 18th with both and see if we can actually make some some money today. We’re just getting settled here in Shanghai ahead of the Chinese Grand Prix. A visit to Shanghai International Circuit can only mean it’s time for the Chinese Grand Prix. This state-of-the-art track combines high geforce corners with one of the longest straits on the calendar. And with space for up to 200,000 spectators, not a minute of action will be missed. Don’t forget the schedule this weekend sees the drivers take to the track for an allout sprint race. A good opportunity to clinch some crucial championship points. Now, let’s get the weekend underway. Once again, we’re going to have to uh approach practice sessions in a very different way. We’ve seen uh what goes on with the tires and uh yeah, doing what we used to do just won’t work because of the uh the tires will destroy themselves if we run them too hot or too cold. Got to keep them in the sweet spot. uh which does mean short running especially with the new um sort of durations on those tires as well. So, we’re going to go with a set of soft tires. Probably going to have to use two sets of softs. Uh so, no one run uh through the whole session. Um actually, you know what? I’m going to go with hard tires on here. This circuit in the past, we’ve gone two stop soft medium soft or soft soft medium something like that. But um maybe if tire wear is bad, a soft medium medium. Uh I think we’re going to be looking at a medium hard medium. So as long as we keep a set of mediums available um and a set of hards available or two sets of mediums, sorry, and a set of hards available, I think that will be optimal. So let’s use the hard tires and we will try and run the entire session. And then we can’t obviously touch the other set. Uh, so it’s about 16 17 laps. I think 16 laps around here. So, double plus a couple would mean let’s put 36 laps of fuel in. That should run us all the way to the end. Uh, not much point messing with the fuel loads. Uh, we are going to protect the ERS. We’re not going to mess around with the tire pace because they’ll just drop into uh too cool a level and then they’ll start to blister and they’ll degrade quicker anyway. So yeah, tires will stay at normal pace. So 36 laps and again ERS will be protected. We’re going to run uh the same engine and power and uh ERS unit for uh Perez through practice and then we’re going to switch them out to the new ones for um everything else. Uh but we have to run the new gearbox cuz the other one is completely totaled. Evening hashtag evening uh safety clark. Good to see you guys. Uh let’s jump into practice. Let me quickly double check. I don’t think we have the replacement suspension yet. No, we don’t. I think we’ve got to wait one more day. So, um we’re locked into this suspension here, uh the original suspension for Perez for um practice sprint qualifying and then the sprint and then we’ll be able to put it back on after after the sprint for main qualifying. 5 4 3 2 1 Green light. So made a couple of updates in the mods. have been able to fix the issue with Limblad and Lawson running the same helmet. So, Lawson now has his helmet back, which is excellent for him. And uh the driver regression uh mod has been activated. That’s part of the uh mentality and others in the mod list. And I’ve also um added in, which again I thought I’d already put in there, um the mod that limits the driver um mentality during Grand Prix, you know, their confidence. Uh so, uh instead of getting like plus sevens and plus eights, they should now get a, you know, a fair bit less than that. We won’t be able to see that until we get into the sprint itself. But, uh I have put that in cuz I thought that was already in in there and for some reason it wasn’t. So, uh that’s been added back in. full list of mods I believe is in the video description. I don’t think I’ve missed any out. Uh there are a few more that are payw wall than I thought. Uh but you you can find good alternatives um for free on Overtake if you don’t want to get a subscription for some of the liveries. Uh so you can find some plenty of Ferrari liveries on Overtake. You can find an Aston Martin Honda and a Red Bull Ford on Overtake. you know, and those are going to be free. Uh, but the specific liveries that I’m running that are uh part of Mr. Only’s Patreon are listed uh below the original bulk of mods. Right, let’s get them uh doing that and see if the tire temps will Yep. be okay. Again, we might have to just stop doing this as well. Try to reduce curb use and it’s unsettling the car. All right, Lawson’s on track, actually. So, this is a perfect opportunity to just check that his helmet is actually showing. That looks like Lawson’s helmet to me. And try to work on your front tires. There we go. Moving. So yeah, there is Liam Lawson and Limblad should still have his helmet and he goes excellent stuff. Now just waiting for a uh a Red Bull variant for Isaac Hajar to make his way onto Overtake cuz he is still running a generic helmet at the moment. Marcel How’s the auction going there? Might need to retype that one. Anything we can set. Oh, I didn’t put a setup on the cars. Just couldn’t go any faster. God damn it. Copy that. I didn’t put a setup on either car, so they’re just running the basic um everything in the middle. Uh that’s not good. That’s really not good. I’m going to have to call him in, which means I’m going to need to do the same with Czecho as well. Uh we’ll leave him out for an extra lap or two. you know, because he’s only just going to be hitting that period. So, it makes sense to just call him in now as well. Can’t believe I forgot to put a setup on. Watch your speed in the pit lane. Just stop on the marks. So, we’re going to be needing to put a a low front wing setup on. Um, rear wing 11 11 12 be and focus beam in the middle. Something like a 28 on the uh on the roll bar. Uh, and then quite low on the uh camber, quite high on the toe. So, let’s go with 11 and 12. I think that needs to be down to about here. Let’s go with a 37. Uh, I’m going to drop that down to there. That’s not enough on the front wing. Or it’s too much here. Combination of both, maybe. Let’s go with that. Uh, this needs to go up somewhere to probably somewhere around here. I’m going to go to the 28, which is what I initially said. I’m actually going to drop the front wing down just a touch. Going to give that a go. See if that works. Let’s take a look at Perez and see if we can maybe vary that slightly. Let’s maybe go with a 3.5. Let’s go all the way up to a nine on that. Still too close here, but that will change when we move the camber. Let’s drop that all the way down to there. Let’s push that all the way up. That gap looks good. Everything else is either not giving us a reading or just terrible. So, we’ll try that. Cannot believe I forgot to put setups on. Let’s have a look. See if we can see some of the generic helmets. Uh so we’ve got Cash Stuker who’s in the garage. Damn it. Uh Tim Tramlets, Bobby Schwarzman. Uh so he is using a default generic helmet for Audi, which I think looks pretty good. It’s even got Revolute branding on the side of it. Uh, who else do we have? Ugo is out there in a McLaren default helmet. Oh, actually looks quite nice. Yeah, that looks pretty good, doesn’t it? I like that. Actually looks like a genuine racing helmet. Is there anyone else out there? No, no one else is out there at the moment. Almost double our reconfigures. Do wish I had alternate helmets for this mod. Might have to message Mr. Oni and see if we can get a second helmet added. All right, let’s uh keep an eye on Cashba. See if he comes back out. Yes, there he is. So, now we can have a look at the default helmet, which I think is the same one that Yuki’s going to be running. It does kind of look like it. Yeah, that’s the same helmet that Yuki is running by the look of it, which kind of makes sense. Uh, no default, no custom helmet for Yuki Senota that doesn’t have Red Bull branding slapped all over it. So that’s why I’m running a default helmet for Yuki as well. # got form manager 24 mods yesterday and customized calendar. Uh what a mod that specifically customizes the calendar. I mean you can do that uh with the online database editor. You can uh add and remove races. You can set the weather. You can determine whether it’s a sprint or not. Don’t need to install anything for that. How does the car feel so far? Pretty good. Copy that. All right. So, we have something uh 77%. There’s definitely a lot of room for improvement there, but we’re not going to call him back in because we’ve already limited their run time by a bit and 76. So also no uh all feel fine. Copy. Plenty of room for improvement there as well. Tie attempts not ideal, but they’re not too far away. Still got enough rubber to get through the whole session, so that’s fine. And this is cuz I’m telling them to avoid curbs. I’m doing that primarily. Oh, there steak for Perez at turn one, two, something like that. It says turn 16, but then along the Oh, no. It was turn 16. And that won’t help their chances. And they might want to take a look at the floor of the car there because that won’t do it any good. Yeah, if we were telling them not to avoid high-risisk curbs, their temperatures would be a bit higher, but it also does more damage to the uh components if they are hitting the curb. So, I’ll make that sacrifice just to give our cars a little bit more prolonged durability. How are we looking? There’s a yellow flag now. Spin for Kimmy. This is at the hair pin, I think. Yes, it is. I lost the re Okay, that’s the checkered flag. Just saw some ghosting that I wasn’t expecting. Let me uh Yeah, that’s turned itself back on again. I don’t know why. There we go. Session is done. We’ve got to make some uh blind changes to the setups and then send them into sprint qual. So uh let’s get ready for that. But first, a word from uh whatever YouTube decides to throw at you. Welcome everyone. Qualifying for the sprint awaits us and we’re raring to get going. Okay, let’s take a look then. What can we improve? Oh, okay. So, that’s going to be an 11. Then, let’s get back to a a 37. Dial the front wing down a touch. Let’s go like that. Let’s push that out. That’s going up a bit too much. Let’s go all the way up there. So, this is either going to be a 37 or it’s going to be a 1 N. It could be either. I’m going to go with the 37 on this car. Let’s uh before I forget, change out the engine and ERS unit. How bad’s the ERS? 34%. for the sprint. I think I’ll keep that in. Uh, right. Let’s take a look at this setup. So, we’re going to want a bit more rear wing on this one. Uh, so that can’t be a one nine. There’s not enough wiggle room over here. So, let’s go to a 28. Let’s bring this down a bit. and let’s try. Let’s try that. Yeah, try that. Let’s see how that works. Uh we have to use medium tires for the uh qualifying. Apart from that, we are good to go. 4 seconds. 3 2 1 green light. All right. We’re not going to be the first ones on track. I expect the track to ramp up pretty quickly. Uh well, not in this session, it would seem. Uh so, let’s let a couple of cars go out. We’ve only really got the ability to do two runs before the tires will be completely useless. We only have this one set of tires for this session. I’m hoping that we’ve managed to stay out of the way of most people. Coming through now. Ah, damn it. We did kind of get in the way of George a little bit. Perez out of the way of the Ferrari in the bent. Do I have first lap crash mod on? Uh, which mod is that? I’ve got um the realistic racing mod, which does, I think, increase the chances of an incident on the first lap, but not massively increase the chance. So, I mean, we don’t want to see smashes at the start of every Grand Prix. That just takes away the specialness of something actually happening. All right. So, the McLaren has set the pace. 1340 for Norris. Pastry in second. There goes Max. Okay. Cap is good. Moscow now. Perez very close and track is clear. Track clear. It will be corner. Max P5. And is he going to be in the way a little bit? 25 is not great, but it’s on par with Lawson Perez. also a 25. These low speed, high downforce sections are going to be brutal for us, I think. 288 again on par with Lawson. So, we’re looking around midpack on this run. 290 for Perez. his car not quite as good because he’s got that uh damaged DRS that he’s running and he’s on a mark one suspension will have a brand new ERS and a brand new suspension for the race itself. Antonyelli’s crossed the line. He’s 19. He was up by a couple of tenths, but we had a much better final sector. So, we do slot in with an identical time to Liam Lawson in 14th place. Mode in please mode in. What about Perez? Yes. Up to the line and he’s only 19th. So, I don’t think Perez is going to get out of this session. Well, maybe we’ll see what happens in the next run. There’s still time for one more run. We should have a little bit of tire life left. Let’s see what the uh tires are looking like. We’re at 90%. So, how hot the rear tires are starting to cool down now. That’s good. So, we’ll get back to the garage. We’ll send them straight back out again or pretty much straight back out again and do uh a second run and then there’s all sorts of opportunity for traffic to play a factor. So, we may yet get through, but on on the face of it, it’s not looking good. All right, who has gone out early? Avid Lindlad has gone out early in the RB Ford. Hulenberg is out there on the Audi. Can’t change their uh base color, unfortunately. So, they still shows green. Hawkenberg using a default helmet by the look of it. Why is he his helmet not working? Uh, that’s annoying. Poor Fleta going to be broken as well. I might have to fix that. I did move uh some files around a little bit and I might have broken them. Check everybody now actually. I think so. Pastri looks like he’s running his garment. Yes, he is. is running his Gazz’s running his Russell Colinto. Hulenberg is broken. Okon is fine. We know Lawson’s fixed portal. Oh, I need to reconfigure and send out, don’t I? before I forget. Yeah, portal is broken as well. So, I’ve broken Salva. I need to fix that. Uh, evening Johnny. Uh, Limblabino’s fine. Science is wearing his helmet. Hajar’s wearing the uh, racing bull default or the Red Bull default, sorry. Uh Bman is running his helmet. Antonelli is running his running his Hamilton’s still in the garage. Says Norris. Wonder if these guys aren’t coming back out again. The time is ticking away. I think they’re staying in the garage. I mean, they’re through. Same with Alba. You’re in a good position. Alonso is not out either. Maybe he’s already run. Uh Limblad’s coming up to finish his lap. Let’s see if he can improve. Currently in danger. and he improves to 11th. Found a good chunk of time as well. Uh who is going to be next up across the line? Hulenberg has crossed the line. He’s up to 12th. So he’s currently through. We got Science, Okon, and Bareman. There is Science and uh there is Bareman. Okay, you’re good to go. So, let’s follow B. Track is clear. Track is clear. There will be mode push for last corner. Mode push. Looks like we’re going to get some clear track. We might have some traffic to fight through, but we’re through the spiral at the beginning without any delays. That’s good. Gash has set a personal best in the middle. Hajar’s just gone purple in the first. Science improves to seventh. Oon is fifth. Bman now goes seventh. We are both drivers in the drop zone. Antonelli now goes purple in the final sector. Thelair purple in the middle. I don’t think we’ve got enough pace to get through. We’re definitely fighting Lawson. And if anyone’s going to get through, it’s going to be Valkyrie. Perez I don’t think is going to be able to do it. It’s not improved in the middle sector. This temperature of the tires is screaming. Look. We’re up a 10th on Liam Lawson, but we’re both going out at the moment. Have we got enough pace to knock out Hulenberg. Hulenberg’s out. So now it’s Limblad. Limblad’s out. Colinto in the drop zone or in the danger zone. No improvement for Valtry. No improvement for Perez. We are out in 20th and 21st. And that I think is a more reflective pace of where our car actually is. At least in one lap pace. Thelair has gone quickest. He has set the pace. Antonelli is out. That is a That is a shock. That is a big shock. He had a terrible final sector. Look, 28 uh 420 who was down half a second to Very slow than Perez bottom in that final sector. So he hit traffic and that has done him. All right, let’s see who sticks it on pole for the sprint then. It’s George. That Mercedes coming good. uh Max in second. Then it’s Norris in third, Llair fourth, Hamilton fifth, Pastry sixth, and it’s Science and Albon. Bortilto and Bman rounding out the top 10. That’s a very interesting starting lineup for the sprint. Uh we may yet start from the pit lane if we can make some tweaks to our setup seeing as we’re already starting at the back of the grid. The sprint is next. Hello and welcome as our Grand Prix weekend continues and the sprint will soon be upon us. Of course, this is the first sprint of the season, adding an extra challenge for the drivers and their teams, but as ever in Formula 1, an extra challenge is an extra opportunity. The big draw today is the opportunity to grab some extra championship points. After all, they could make the difference when the season comes to a close. Well, it’s not too long now until the sprint around Shanghai, where we’ll see who comes out on top. All right, let’s take a look at those setups then. Uh 87% for Valkyrie. Uh yeah, we did get it wrong here. That is a nine. Okay, we’re at the back of the grid, so we may as well make that change now and finetune it before qualifying. Uh this needs to change. Bring that back up a little bit more. I’m going to drop that down a touch more. Hopefully that will fix that and that. Not so sure about the uh the cornering value, but we’ll definitely fix the traction. Uh let’s take a look at Perez. It’s just a front wing change. Going to drop that down to there. It’s going to break a few things, but we’re actually we may as well. I say we’re we’re at the back of the grid, so we may as well. Let’s leave it there. Uh, and see as we’ve uh uh gone for the pit lane start, let’s put the ERS in now as well. Uh, right. What do I want to do with tires? Uh don’t really want to go with the softs. Normally in this um sprint I would have gone softs and then just nursed them and protected them. But we know that if we go too cold on the tires it will um blister them and destroy them. So I guess mediums and check what compounds we’ve got available. Yeah, that’ll still leave us two sets of mediums for the race. set of hards and then whatever softs we don’t use in main qualifying. So, let’s go with that. Here we go. The sprint in Shanghai. And it’s lights out and away we go. It’s a monster start from Russell. There we go. We are leaving the pit lane. The car in front of me is Niko. Gap is 4.2 seconds ahead of you now. Car behind is Perez. And there we go. We’re on to the back of the field really quickly because there’s a lot of slow corners with a lot of bunching in the braking zones. Okay, in front is everybody running the medium tires. A reminder, we cannot at any point see the wear rate on our opponent’s tires. Russell is trying to sprint away. Look, he’s got the gap just over a second to max. Are we really going to see some uh strong signs of pace from Mercedes in this Grand Prix for reference? Antony down in 17th. Let’s see if he can move up the order a little bit. DRS will activate when we get around to the uh back straight. Behind you have Perez. He’s having a little look at the outside of Alonso there. Straight line speed is the problem. Well, it’s one of the problems. Not going to push for another lap or so yet. I am going to make sure that Very doesn’t drop though. Yeah, copy. See if we can uh drag Perez along a bit. We see Alonzo now making the move on Colapinto up the inside and he gets through. So Aston’s now running uh 14th and 15th. Quotes has got himself back into the train range. Perez struggling to stay with Valtry. Okay, remember mode push. Copy. Charge on. Copy. Neither RB having a particularly uh strong weekend at the moment. 19th and 20th just ahead of us. Po’s almost now in range. Copy it. Still, I don’t think it’s going to get the DRS. And Lawson is dropping away from Limblat. Limblat’s looking to try and make a move on Hulenberg and gets that move done. He’s up to 18th. Can he hold it? Trying to go around the outside as Botas tries to go to the inside. Botas yields, but Limblad is through. Perez is still not able to keep pace. I think this is going to be a very, very painful weekend for Jo. Again, let’s not forget for this race and the next one as well, he will have a slightly worse performance than expected because he is doing some sponsor work for us. We won’t see the true kind of performance out of Czecho until we get to round four, assuming we don’t have to put him back into sponsor work again. And there we go. Now we’ve got him in range. So now we can start to work on moving Botas up a little bit. Mode push. Copy. And Russell’s now 3 seconds ahead of Max. He’s just galloping off into the distance. Question remains though is how hard is he pushing his tires to achieve that pace. Is Max playing it a little bit more careful? He has got better tire preservation on his Red Bull than that Mercedes of George. So that may play a factor towards the end. Norris is sniffing around the back of Max again just like he did in Australia. He chased for Stafen all the way through the race and then took the lead from him on the start of the final lap. Charge on. Okay, 15 laps to go. We’re still rooted very much to the back of the field with the RBs just in front of us and one of the Audi’s. Antonelli still stuck down in 17th, but Colinto is just about being dropped by Alonso. So, expect Anteneelli to move forward on this lap. Per being dropped again. I think we’re just going to have to ignore Perez unfortunately. Let’s try and keep him close. Use the energy. Copy. Mode push now. Copy. Oh, we got an opportunity here. Lawson has made a move to try and go around the outside and that’s going to allow us to get a slipstream. He does have DRS on you from the Audi. Just couldn’t get it done under braking though. And we have a yellow flag. Portalto is locked up. Run a little wide. Here we go. Heading into turn one. Struggling with the car now. They did leave it very late. Managed to get going pretty quickly. That has cost him uh four places and we need charge button on. Okay, copy. Charge on, please. Nothing. Still no way through. How are our tires looking? Slightly below prediction, but only slightly. Hulenberg and Limblat fighting again. He has Diorus. And this is a chance for Valkyrie. We give Lawson a little bit of a squeeze and we are through. You’re doing a really good job. Now we can see what happened. Now this was Valkyrie Botas. The opportunity begging to be taken. There was that little squeeze. And now Botas moves up the field. It didn’t push him off. Just made it uncomfortable for him. And that was enough to get us through. So boat push. Copy. And now let’s see if we can make a move on Nico Hawkenberg. Very happy with tire management. Yes. Yes. just don’t have enough oomph out of that corner to line him up. But Hawkenberg is just just hanging on to the back of Limblad. If he doesn’t get the DRS, he will be vulnerable to a move from Valkyrie into the hairpin. And it does look like he’s been dropped. Oh, it’s very close. It’s very close, but I think we’ve got him. Russell now nearly 5 seconds clear of a snap and that’s it’s his sprint to lose now how’s TRS we’re going to go up the inside can we complete the move not this time we can have another bite at the cherry into turn one and Borilleta is into the pits that lock up has really hurt his tires then again. Nico able to hold back Valkyrie suggests that you can reduce the amount of lift in coast at turn one. It’s got a little bit better chance to outbreak Nico. Let’s try and put a little bit of pressure on Lawson as well. And you can use all the boost bar. Copy. Soto has gone for a set of soft tires. They should go the distance. They have a predicted life of 10 to 15 laps circuit dependent. Hawkenberg did get DRS, but we have got an opportunity to try and get him up the inside in the breaking zone here. Side by side on the exit and this time we can out drag him. Bman’s into the pits and so is Hulenberg. So, we are seeing the AI really pushing their tires. Going for a set of soft. They will have strong pace on those tires. Charge on. Charge on. Less worried about uh the Audi’s but a little bit more concerned about Bareman. Are we going to see other pit stops in this sprint as well? Both RBs about to be put a bit of pressure from our drivers. Lawson’s just about keeping the DRS to Valter. If he drops it, Perez will have an opportunity. Limblad’s just outside of Colipinto’s DRS. So, there’s enough opportunity here for Valkyrie. 10 laps to go. Russell now 5 seconds clear from Vstafen. Norris nearly 3 seconds further back. Thelair’s got in front of Past Street. Nor has TRS one second behind the two Williams drivers seventh and eighth keeping Hamilton. Well, science is keeping Hamilton uh on his toes. Seventh and eight the last points positions in the sprint. So, Okon in ninth, not in the points at the moment. And here is a chance for Valtry. Limblat trying to fight him off. and uh successfully does so. And that’s going to compromise our exit speed here for Valkyrie. Back to doing lifting coast now. Copy. And some lift off if you can. Copy. This is getting frustrating. There’s progress to be made. would not be at all surprised to see some four stops in the uh full race given that the AI has been boxing on mediums here in the sprint. Whether that was a tactical decision just to try and get some clear air and some pace or whether it’s just because they burnt their tires out. Portalto I think was certainly more hampered in that choice because of that big lock up. Yeah, copy. We are keeping our tires healthy enough. We’ll have a little bit of uh wiggle room to play with. Need to start thinking about rebuilding Valkyrie battery a little bit, but Limblad is so close to getting back into Colipinto’s DRS. I do do not want to let him do that and us drop out and then he’s gone. Currently P7. So, I’m going to have to really try and pick my opportunities to do that. Car behind it is Lawson. He’s 0.5 behind. Once again, we’re just about in a position to drop Lawson. At least I thought we were. He might have just closed right back up again in the corners. He has All right, let’s try and get clear. Let’s give him that extra little bit of tire just for this move. Bman’s now just uh under 4 seconds behind and closing quickly. It did a 1360 on that last lap. There he is. We can see him. Got the move up the inside. Can we complete the move? Yes, we can. Now we have to keep pushing just to try and get back to Colinto. I am wondering how much extra pace we’ve got if we’ve got clean air. I I again not knowing the state of the tires for the opposition means are we just losing time being stuck in dirty air or Oh, whoa. There goes there goes Arid Limblad. It’s a uh safety car there. We need to do the full management on this set. That was a big spin out of control there for the young rookie. Only a second Grand Prix. And that’s the moment the car plows into the wall. And that’s one shorefire way to put a dampener on your weekend. And he is out. And clearly then, not what everyone in the garage would have wanted to see. VSC VSC batteries refilled. Get a little bit of spare fuel. And we need to There is the broken remains of that racing ball. I wonder if we’ll see anyone box. It’s a big one to put on a set of soft tires under this VSC. Get a slightly quicker pit stop than normal for debris on the circuit. We are P16 lost behind you. He’s 1.3 seconds behind. The leaders are staying out. Laps to go, including the one you’re on. If we’re going to see anybody box, it’s going to be sort of this part of the field. I think Clark working from home in this one. All right, tires are cooling down a bit too much. We don’t think we need any lift and co. No lift off needed. You are doing a good job. Yeah, copy. So, within the next few corners, I’m expecting us to go back to green flag. I would certainly expect it to happen before the end of the lap. Or maybe, maybe I’m just completely misreading it. Maybe it will go a bit longer. The titans are definitely uh still dropping this reduced pace. Energies are good. Perez’s battery is fully charged. That’s good. That’ll allow him to go on an immediate attack against Lawson. Valkyrie is not quite there yet. Oh, yeah. Oh, and there we go. Back to full running. Yeah. And more energy available. Okay. Copy. Get these tires back up to temperature. And we got a chance here for Jacko. Charge on. Copy. A spin for Gabriel Bortlete. We should be able to take a look here. Nothing wrong so far. And then the car just goes, “Oh, dear me.” Not a good race for him today. Lawson’s going to get DRS, I think. Yes, he did. Titans are still falling. continue. Keep going. Push. Okay. Now they’re going back up. That’s good. Botas is closing the gap to Colinto. Perez starting to put some pressure on Lawson. Bman’s just 2 seconds behind us. And tire temperatures are good. Copy. Look after the tires, please. Yeah, copy. Slow down now. Almost in DRS range and Bman’s right with us. Look, he’s flying up to the back of us. Pair edge with a look. Not close enough. Raise his lung. Yeah. And charge button on. Charge button on. Copy. Right. Come on. Valkyrie. Now where’s mate really try and close up through this sector here. Get that DRS for the back straight. Maybe, maybe not. Copy. Oh, Bman is trying to get us. What about tires? Starting to struggle with just concentrate getting your tire temps down. Right, we have a 1 second gap or less than 1 second gap. Can we uh keep that up to the line here? Charge on. We can We got the DRS. Perez is in trouble. The temperatures here going up in the dirty air. Continue like this. Antonelli still has not really made the progress I was expecting him to make. A long way to go. He’s kind of stuck at the back of a threec car train behind the two Aston at the moment. Lack of downforce is just killing us through the corners. Look, we’re losing. That’s where we’re losing all of our time. Dropped off the back of Lawson again as well despite using battery. Yeah, we definitely need to keep pumping more into developing this car. It is uh a long way from where it needs to be right now. Three laps to go and I think this might be uh the peak performance we’ve got. 16th and 18th. Don’t know if we’re going to have enough to actually get past Lawson. I don’t think we’re going to have enough to get past Colipinto. Three laps to go. Copy. And charge button on. Charge on. Copy. Battery. Stay with him. Just do your best. mode push. It’s still very early in the season, so I still don’t really know whether that our lack of performance in the corners is mainly down to the downforce or, you know, is being heavily affected by the dirty air, which is also a really bad stat for us. It’s given everything for the last two laps in terms of tires. Well, I say everything. This is pretty much everything. Good to push. You can’t go full push on the tires now for very long at all before they just disintegrate. One lap to go at the end of this one. Copy on the penultimate lap of the sprint. Both drivers within half a second of the car in front. Threat from Bareman hasn’t gone away completely. It’s still lurking in the background. This is about as close as Valtry has been to getting Colinto. Focus is a long race. heaping on the pressure now. Charge on and Lawson has dropped Perez. So Perez is going to have to just sit in 18th and try and keep Bareman behind. Very happy with your tire use. We have definitely got a chance now to get past Colinto here. Okay, mate. It’s a long run down to the hairpin. We have the slipstream. We have the DRS. I’m guessing we have a little bit of extra tire against him as well. Up the inside and the move is done. That is 15th place for Valkyrie, which is about as good as we could expect today. Good job, mate. You’re currently P5. Now we have enough battery, I hope, to defend on the final lap. Is three and a half seconds in front. Perez trying to keep at bay. The Audi’s have not closed the gap at all. And we are pulling away from Colinto. So I do think maybe if we’ve been able to get past him earlier, we might have had a chance of potentially going a little higher. You can see Anthony has split the two Aston now. He’s leaving Yuki behind trying to go after Alonzo. There’s not enough time left. We are closing in on Cenoda mode push. Now we can just burn out whatever’s left in the tire. If you are able to increase pace, it would be a good time to do it. Bman’s dropped away. I think we’ve just about been able to hold him back. But we’re not going to get Lawson. Russell wins. George Russell did so well today. He really deserves an amazing launch off the line and never looked under threat and their hard work is rewarded with maximum points. And is that going to be a regular sight this season? George taking the the win. It’s only a sprint, so it’s only eight points. battery will come home in 15th place. Czecho is going to be able to hold on to 18th. That’s the check flag. And if we can replicate that in the Grand Prix, then that is maximum sponsor payout of about $900,000. It’s not a lot, but it is some extra cash that we are absolutely going to need this year to try and kickstart investment in our car. And Valtry Botas misses out on the points in today’s sprint. At the end of that, it’s a 15th place finish. So, confirmation of the sprint results. It is a win for George. Max in second, Lando third, which means he should stay top of the drivers. Llair fourth, Oscar in fifth. He did get past Hamilton. Uh then in uh seventh, it’s Science. Albon in eighth gets the final sprint point. Aon up two places to take ninth. Hajar up into the top 10, but no points for him today in the sprint. Then it was Gazzley. Antelli gaining five places in the end uh up to 13th place. Botas up six to take 15th behind Yuki Snoda ahead of Colinto, Lawson, Perez, Bman, Bortalto, Hulenberg and Arvid failing to finish. Qualifying is coming up and the drivers will be ready and raring to go. The Shangghai International Circuit is notoriously tough on tires, so expect to see that factor into the team strategies as they deal with this busy schedule. There’s Red Bull’s driver there getting ready for today’s session. What have you made of them recently, Karu? They set a great lap in practice, so you can only imagine how good they’re feeling going into qualifying. But the big question is, will they be able to keep this performance up? Strap yourselves in. This is Formula 1. All right. So, we got pretty close with the setups. 99%. I did Oman about moving that and decided against it. We should have done and it would have been 100, but we can do it now for free before we go into main qualifying. Uh we are 4% away here. So my guess is that that needs to go to 3%. We’ll leave that where it is. We will push that up to there. Get that back to optimal. Hopefully that’s not going to break. I’m a little wary of that breaking actually. Let’s Let’s see. Do I go down or do I go up? I’m going to go up to 2.9. Now, I can’t guarantee that that’s going to be where it needs to be. Choices, choices. I think I am going to go with a front wing. Let’s go three on the front wing and just hope that that works. I’m not convinced. I think I might have broken it a little bit more. But if we just move the front wing, we can always move it back and go settle for 96% if worst comes to worst. All right, first round of qualifying. So now we have green light. Not going to see huge changes in track condition, but there will be some. Let’s get a clean lap in if we can. Balletto has already hit the track. We need a good warm up on front brakes. So Valkyrie starting confidence is actually going to be in high confidence. That’s nice. Perez just just below. It’s so tiny in the gap. He’s pretty much there. So, you’re in a good position. Antonelli leaving the garage. We also have Okon on track now as well. And here comes Lando. And we have a yellow flag. That is a spin for Antonyelli out of the pits. Single yellow. That’s not going to do those tires any favors whatsoever. controls lost and that certainly wouldn’t have been in their plans today. What a shocker. We’re looking good. Oh, wrong button. Good to go. There we go. That’s what I meant to do. So, not a good first sector for Perez. I’m guessing he got held up by that McLaren. Strong first sector for Valkyrie. Couple of tents up for Valkyrie there in the middle. Perez might yet have more traffic to deal with at the end of the lap here. Aron’s gone quicker in the first sector. And in the middle sector, she’s up by a few tents now. Perez is second at the moment. That’s about to change. Valkyrie goes top with a 134.2 is a second quicker than Borletto, but AON is going to go faster than us. Question is by how much. Perez lost 1.3 seconds in the first sector to Very. The rest of it made up across the rest of the lap. And Oon two and a half ticker than Valkyrie there. Here’s the reigning world champion Lando Norris. Max looking pretty quick at the moment as well. He’s gone purple in the first sector. That’s Hamilton ahead just about to start his flying lap I believe. Antinelli getting out of the way having finished his lap. He’s gone top. Norris is second. So, uh that is a mighty difference in pace for Antelli over Norris there in the second half of the lap. Hamilton’s helmet’s broken. Oh man, I’ve broken everyone’s helmets. Speed limiter on. Stop in front of the garage. That’s a default Ferrari helmet. I think kind of looks a little bit like Hamilton’s helmet, but please stop at the marks in uh in red colors. Clair has got his helmet. So yeah, we’ve broken Hamilton’s helmet. I am going to have to fix that. later tonight. That’s a good looking default Ferrari helmet though. So, Max is third. Antonelli really did put in a strong lap there. George is starting his lap. We’ll cut to him in just a second. And he’s had a terrible first sector. Look at that. 1.2 seconds down on Hamilton’s time. Hamilton’s only good enough for seventh. 8/10 of a second behind Anteneelli. Starting to think that Antony may have got a boosted lap time with some slip streaming somewhere. Let’s see uh what Russell can do at the end of the lap. There’s a fair bit of traffic in front. All fighting for position here. Oh, it’s a mess. Yeah, this is going to be a terrible time for George. Cenoda pops up into third. Colipinto into fourth. We’re going to run again on these same tires and then put a new set on for the end of the session. Alonso in 13th is 7 seconds off the pace. George nearly 2 seconds off the pace. So, watch out for the next car. Look how much time Alonso lost an an eternity in the final sector. They lost 6 and 12 seconds just to rush in that final sector. Here comes Hulenberg. He’s good enough for P six. Quicker than Pastry Clair on his flying lap. I got him. This is a pretty decent lap time. It’s being matched right behind him by Carlos Science. up to the line for Charlotte Clair and he’s only good enough for ninth. That lap time for Antonelli can’t be can’t be indicative of his true pace. Science in 12th. You should have no traffic issues. Here’s Valtry with returning to the pits. Alonso behind him for traffic off for last corner and we have uh Bman starting his flying lap right behind us with here with Perez. So, Perez is potentially going to be compromised here, having to defend at points from Bareman or even getting overtaken by Bman. Either way, it’s not going to be a stellar lap time for either of them. No improvement for Valtry this time around in the first sector. Perez has improved, but he got held up quite badly, I think, in his first run. still down 3/10. Gazzley’s just pumped in a mighty first sector. And there goes Bareman swooping around. That actually happened in a position that won’t have had too much of an impact on our lap time. It won’t be great, but it will certainly help Perez here at the end if he can keep the slipstream down the back straight. Look how much time he was down on Bearman in the middle sector. 1.3 seconds. sights I think getting out of the way. Botas hasn’t improved at all. Got a Red Bull keeping as tight to the inside as he can. currently peak. We’re still 10th. We’re splitting the Ferraris, which is lap. Weird. Understood. Did not expect that kind of pace out of altery. But you can see here even with really really strong confidence now only seeing plus twos as opposed to what it would have been like plus four plus fives maybe even plus sixes now that we’ve got the uh driver confidence limiter back in play. Gazzley in second. We could be in for a really, really strange grid in this Grand Prix. We’re going to have time for one more run on brand new tires. Let’s hope we can get clean runs. See if we can achieve something. pre-race favorite George now starting his second flying run. I’m going to assume that they are new tires, but uh they could be scrubs. Again, that information is locked out. We will never be able to see the condition of the enemy tires. Make sure your limiter is on. Okay, just stop at the box. And we need 3 mm on and then stopping in in front of the garage. Surface condition of the tires looks pretty good though. No, he’s run wide at the start. Oh, what a shame. George has scuffed this first sector. 248. Yeah, it’s down 410 on Alonso’s first set there. He’s going to get a clean lap boat. Barring his little lock up at the start. That’s a mighty middle center. Careful. Very tense up on the lock. Alon goes up to P3. Russell’s going to be there or thereabouts. He’s down a tenth at the moment. It’s all dependent on this final sector to 40.8. That puts him ahead into third place. If he’d had a good first sector, he’d have been top. So that Mercedes pace is scary right now. And track is clear. Track clear. Both Ferraris edging their way down into the danger zone. Last corner. Gap is currently good at go. See what we can achieve here. Scientists cross the line popped up into peak four. That’s knocked Lawson into the drop zone and the Ferrari of Hamilton right into the danger zone. Perez has had a really good first sector at 24.7 compared to his previous run. 24.4 Very. That’s on par with Alonso. Albon goes top in the mighty final sector. Limblad has got himself up into 10th place. Ferrari about to start their flying laps. They both lead at a time up to the hair pin. Potential traffic at the end of the lap here. Perez improves, but it’s only good enough for 19th. He just fell away in the final sector. Valkyrie improves to 15th. And now it is down to the racing gods. Hamilton has gone blisteringly quick in the first sector here. Clair in behind is in the dirty air. It’s affected his first sector, but he should get a really strong closing of the lap. It’s a purple middle sector for Hamilton. Hamilton’s definitely getting out. I don’t know aboutlair. I would imagine he’s got enough pace to get out. Bman could yet knock uh someone out as well. Up the line for Bman. He stays in 22nd. Hamilton goes top. Llair gets up for 13th. And we have been eliminated in Q1. 17th place for Valtry. 19th place for Perez. But Haja is out along with Bortalto, Lawson and Bman. So Hajar the big casualty here in Q1. All right, let’s see who sticks it on pole. It’s George. Max is second. Antonelli in third. Then Albon fourth. Fifth and a penalty for Oscar. Not sure what that’s for. Sixth is Sha declair. Seventh is Hamilton. Eighth Lando Norris. Then it’s two Aston. Bringing up row five Yuki Senoda and Fernando Alonso. Then it is Sykes from Hulenberg. Okon from Gazzley. Colipinto. Limblat. Where? Oh, there he is. I say there’s Alex Albon in fourth. I was wondering where he’d got to. Right, let’s get prepped, shall we? For the Grand Prix. The 56 laps of the Shanghai International Circuit await our drivers here in China. Shanghai has seen its fair share of clashes over the years. One of which happened even before the 2005 race had begun when Michael Schumacker collided with Christian Alers on the way to the grid, sending Albers into the air. Shanghai International Circuit is a complicated low-speed track that demands high downforce. The series of rapid turns from 1 to four demands high grip, but the more the drivers warm their tires, the more degradation they’ll have to deal with. Here we are, folks. We’re back for another day of scintillating F1 action. It’s race day. All right, let’s see if we can uh take a look at the amended grid after that penalty. So, it was a three place penalty for Oscar. Is that a 5-second penalty that wasn’t served in Australia? It might have been, but h it’s dropped him down to eighth place behind his teammate Lando Norris. So, that’s promoted up the two Ferraris and Lando. Uh so it’s uh row three now is all Ferrari, row four all McLaren, row five still all Aston. Let’s take a look at strategy. So we could potentially try and go soft, medium, medium, or soft, medium, hard. I want to try and bake in some wiggle room like we had last time. What if we go soft, medium, hard, baking the ability to run in the dirty air a little bit if we go maybe 14 laps? Uh, no. I think undercutting slightly is the way to go. If we go with this and then we’ll have the option to maybe stretch and go with a set of mediums if race circumstances go our way. and we can kind of play it by ear and see what we need to do. But we will go with this strategy. I think having the ability to push and uh maybe get an undercut and then go on to a set of medium to some decent pace uh before settling on the hardest to finish might be the way to go. Although that is quicker, 4 seconds quicker. What about I’m really really wary of actually putting any tire on a prolonged push. But if we were to go with something like that, that’s even quicker still. And that still has room for those tires to degrade faster than normal. I think we’ll try that with Valkyrie. And probably just leave Perez like this. Oh. Ah, it’s too late. I forgot to put the uh new suspension part on. We’re in park fair. We are 19th. Yeah, we’ll save it. We’ll put it on for the next race. We’ll stick to this, I think, for Perez. Or maybe maybe we’ll give him a set of softs. Yeah, we’ll give him a set of softs at the start cuz his tire is not as good. And we’ll see if we can maybe make this work. Uh let’s take uh how much is it? 1.7 laps. Let’s take two laps of fuel out. And with that, we are prepped and ready. Let’s head to the grid for the start of the Chinese Grand Prix. Well, then it’s not long until we get started here and we should be in for a tightly contested race. And the cameras now shift to Sergio Perez concentrating on the race ahead. Not a huge surprise to see them in 19th, but they’ve certainly got the potential to move up from here. Here we go. It’s time to go racing. It’s almost time for the Chinese Grand Prix. And it’s lights out and away we go. Looks like another really good start for George. Can Antinelli get past I think he can. Well, maybe not. He had to back out a bit. Harz has lost a place. He’s lost two places. Most of the grit starting on soft tires. We’re going to see a lot of cars boxing early. So much for getting me under portto starting on the hard tires. Botas P Street and McLair starting on mediums. So we can survive the opening couple laps without getting dropped. Bas is in decent shape this first I think. And if the soft runners go to the second set of softs, that means they’re probably going to be uh three stopping at least, maybe even four stopping. and DRS enabled. Russell looking like he’s trying to stretch away from Max Antonelli almost been dropped as well. In fact, the whole field is starting to spread out to about a second gap at the at least at the front. Colipinto struggling to keep up with his teammate who’s putting pressure on Limblat. You see a lot of Constantinering in braking zones. Perez is struggling already. Use the energy. Yeah, copy. Let’s get him close to back up if we can. Want to try and hang on to Valkyy’s battery for as long as possible here. I think we’ll manage to get Paris back in range. See if his rear wing opens up. It’s good. Oh, that’s a lunge there from Bman on Hajar. Did he get the move done? No, he didn’t. Had holds him off. Bman still having a look though on Char. And Russell has broken Max quite comprehensively. And now Antonelli is going to try and put the pressure on the Dutchman. Hulenberg has moved up past Aon putting some pressure on Carlo Science. and we are nicely tucked up in uh in the train now. In fact, there’s a chance here for Valkyrie. Colinto might have just lost the DRS. Terra is starting to drift again. And you can use all the boost back. Okay. Cop in. Oh, he did get it. He did get the DRS, but we’re still in the position to have an an attack here. Time to turn on Valky’s battery. Push. Try and compromise Colinto out of the hairpin a little bit. He’s still too close. But we’ve dropped Boralto. And here’s an opportunity into turn one. Not yet. Touch button on. Got it. About through here. Having a look around the outside. Colinto covers the inside. lining up for a move through this uh switch back here. Botas gets it done. That’s the way URP16 current make the move on the uh second alpine at the same time and more energy available. Okay, copy. have to keep fighting the urge to be disappointed with Perez’s pace because I have to keep remembering he’s got a slightly inferior car and he’s also doing that sponsor work which is lowering his stats a little bit but it is frustrating. ing knowing that he has the potential to be every bit as quick as Valkyrie, if not maybe even slightly quicker. Definitely open up a gap to Colinto. Now Antonelli, I wasn’t paying attention. He’s dropped all the way down to fifth place. He’s been passed by Mclair and Norris and he’s falling away. So I’m wondering if he’s pushed his tires too hard and uh is suffering as a result. Oh, I’m Paris. gets past Bareman. Good job. See if we can see a replay of that hopefully. Let’s take a closer look. Now, here we are at the final corner. They decide to give it a go. Yeah, just took the uh the inside line there. Got him under braking. Perez completes the overtake. Oh, we have a yellow flag. Limblad’s off somewhere, I think. Yeah, a little lock up for Limblad. So, here we go. Heading into turn one. Well, you can see the lockup, but that’s just the risk you take the later you leave it. dropped a couple of places but kept it going. Charge on. Kind of stuck with Valtry at the moment. Here’s another opportunity for Perez. Sees an opening up the inside. Dive bombs through past Isaac Hajar. That’s him up to 19th. Good job. Excellent job. You see it from the helicam just slotted up the inside there. Beautiful. And with the battery deployment gets the exit and completes that move. And charge button on. Charge button on. Copy. Yeah, Anthony is falling away. Look, he is now 2 and 1/2 seconds behind Norris. Yashri overtakes Albon. 441 last time around. Let’s see what he does across the line this time. And Perez gets past Boralto. Perez starting to make some moves. Good job, Czecho. Colopinto’s into the pits already. Wow. Just six laps completed. He’s getting off those soft tires. Let’s go for another set of soft. You could be looking at uh the first one stop there. Pretty quick stop. Let’s see what kind of pace he gets in clear air on fresh tires as Hulkenberg is starting to look a little vulnerable here for Valkyrie. Perez in 17th place now putting all sorts of pressure on Limblad. Let’s not forget his tires will be scuffed after that lockup. Charge on. I cannot keep this pace. Continue like this. Oh, he gets swallowed up. We were supposed to continue. Keep going. just trying to refill Perez’s battery while he has that opportunity. Hawenberg has dived into the pits. That’s freed up Valtry. And there goes Limblad. I had a feeling Limblad was about to pit. I didn’t think we would get overtaken in the process by Borletto. Charge button on. Copy. A good stop there for Lindlad. Hulenberg out on a set of mediums and gets overtaken by Colipinto. Limblad has gone for another set of softs. Once again, it looks like we’re going to be uh sort of out of order at least with Valtry with some of the cars we’re fighting with. I think Perez is probably going to be making at least one stop less than some of the cars around him as well. So, it’s going to be interesting to see how the uh the tires fare. across this race. We don’t really have a great sample size of data yet. We have a very much safety car influenced race from Australia and a sprint and that’s it. And by blocking the visuals of what the AI’s tires are like as we’ve got Hamilton into the pits. What about tires? Eight laps on his tires before he decided to bail. Yeah. Without seeing their tire wear rates, we can’t really see what’s going on with the AI, which really limits our data as well. Lawson’s in the science has picked up a fault. A lot of battery issues for Carlos. How comfortably clear of Colipinto and the other guys have already stopped. More soft tires for Lawson. What size did Hamilton put on? I can’t remember. Ah, he’s put on another set of softs as well. So again, he’s going to be very quick but potentially very fragile. You can see Valkyrie took over a second out of Okon on that last lap. Porto’s tires looking pretty good. Perez just a little bit quicker than Hajar, but Hajar in the DRS, so that might be artificially inflating Hajar’s pace. He’s still got a fair bit of battery, so let’s use that so we can drop him. Close back in on Balletto. Yeah, drop it. down to 56% comparison of tires. He’s only a few laps away from making his stop. Alban’s in We believe it will be soon. Okay. Evening NGL. So Alban will come out behind Hamilton again comfortably clear of those guys who stopped very very early. Can I do a tutorial for the mods to use? Uh, they’re all listed in the video description. Uh, so some of them are locked behind Patreon from Mr. Only’s Patreon. So, if you wanted to do a Cadillac Mine with this particular livery set that I’m using, you would need that. Plus, um the face pack mod that I’m using to add in faces for Boralto and Antelli, Colinto, uh Lindlat, and who is the other one? Bman. uh then you would need uh again to be part of his Patreon to get that particular mod. Uh some of the liveries I’m using uh you can find uh alternate variants by different modders on uh overtake. There are plenty of Alpine pink mods or you know variations of the pink mod on uh overtake which I think this maybe this one came from as well and a whole flurry of activity in the pits. Max Antonelli Alonso Gazzley Cenoda both Aston boxing at the same time. Just going to cause a bit of a a queue here. Pop on in as well. He is having to wait for maybe a second. He’s g to a set of hard tires by the look of it. I want gone mediums and he gets out just before the compto. Uh what does the maximum graphics do? um just sharpens things up. I’m running um the non- rate tracing variant. The uh final version 4.2 I think it is 4.2.2 is a full raid tracing variant. Uh my graphics card doesn’t like the full version with uh gameplay and streaming at the same time. That’s why I’m running like the 3.3 version. I think the last of the non rate tracing variants, but it just tightens the graphics up a little bit. Just tries to make the most of the game engine. And just a reminder on garage. Copy. So, Botas currently running in sixth place now. Copy. Not many cars still to stop. Bman hasn’t stopped yet on his softs. Science dies into the pits just in front of Bautas. That’ll promote him up to P5. Perez will probably get promoted up a place as well. Hamilton has caught past Haja. and he will slot out just behind Alonso crucially ahead of the uh train of Colinto and co. Is there a tutorial on how to add Cadillac in in what way? Um, and what’s that? I have stop issue. If you want to do I mean if you’re are you on PC? Are you on console? I’m guessing you’re on PC. Um, but you know, if you want to design your own team emblem. Uh, I do have a a step-by-step tutorial showing every step of the uh the layers to create the Cadillac logo on my channel. And then, you know, you can create your own livery using the in-game options. There are sponsor packs that you can download from Overtake that have Cadillac specific sponsor options as well to replace the in-game sponsors. But if you wanted a fully rendered version like this, say this is the Mr. Only uh Cadillac my team pack, which is locked on his Patreon. Looks like we’ve been caught pass by Hamilton. He’ll be 3.5 seconds behind. We are very close to stopping now. So, we can just squeeze touch of battery here. Max has set the fastest lap as he’s closing in on Valkyrie. Okay. So, we’re going to go with the hard tires. Box now. Box. Yeah. Charge button on. Okay. As far as installing everything, I just follow the instructions on each of the mods. So, you know, they’re pretty straightforward. Heat. Heat. Max should breeze past us here. The staff has DRS cover off the inside, but he’s got a much better car than us. We have held him off so far. Let’s use that battery remote push. I don’t think we’ll hold him up for too much longer. Antonelli is in front of us. Down to 10th place now. Here we come into the pitsley. And Hajar boxes behind us as well. Still a few cars yet to stop. Work with the McLaren with players Ferrari, Russell’s Mercedes, Porto going into yet. Decent stop 2.4 seconds. And watch a wide line on exit. And still Valkyrie is ahead of Max. Let’s get these tires up to temperature so they don’t blister. As far as starting in 2026 goes, I mean, I just loaded up the 2025 DLC and simmed through the first season to get to 2026. There’s no shortcut. There’s no sort of little calendar trick you can do or that I can do. Anyway, I don’t know if there’s someone out there who knows how to do it. But yeah, I just simmed the result of the first season. Red. There we go. Vry has finally been overtaken. Car behind is Hamilton. We’ll see if we can stay with him a little bit. Lando is in. He’s gone 15 laps. about 14 laps on his saw and put on a set of medium tires. Again, this is a Mr. Only Monster variant from his Patreon, but there is uh a different variant by a different modder of Monster McLaren on Overtake, which is free. We were first half. All right, Bman has has jumped us. We got Hajar right behind. Still bringing these tires up into the window. Copy. Charge on. Copy. Don’t think I’m going to be able to stay in DRS range this lap, which means we’re going to be under pressure from Isaac. Doing a good job with the tires. Hey, copy. I really struggled just couldn’t go any faster. Remember, long way to go in this race. Car behind is Norris. We will get it here though as Colinto is boxed. And we need charge button on. Charge button on. Some mediums going on there. Evening, Victor. Not too far away from Valtry’s first stop. And we have a yellow flag. Someone has had a whoopsy punishment on these tires. I think it’s Colinto spinning out of the pits. Russell boxes flag here. It was the replay. Now, this was at turn one. Oh, no. That’s not how to do it. That’s a big spin. Just managed to keep it out the barriers, but that won’t do those tires any favors. So, in from the lead is George Russell. Comfortable winner of the sprint. Has he got the pace to be comfortable in the race? Get off those soft onto a set of medium tires. He’s done 16 laps on those tires. That’s really good going. He comes out behind Vstappen. Norris setting a new fastest lap behind us. 3.3 seconds quicker. Perez still fighting with Haja. Haven’t been able to keep pace with Bareman. We’re on hard tires, so they’re not quick, but they are very durable. And Bareman’s tires will wear out a long time before ours do. So hopefully that pace will come back to us. Okay, go. Hajar goes around the outside again. He’s got more grip at the moment, more pace than us at the moment, but that won’t last for very long on those soft tires. Continue like this. Is there a way to manage the mods or are they all copy paste? Um, there are mod managers out there. I haven’t really played about with them. So for me, I just um download the ones I want and then copy the bits, the relevant bits into the pack file folder. See if we can at least try and stay with Haja. Copy. All right, Charlotte Clair is in and so is Oscar Pastry. Cla’s gone for a set of mediums, I think. Oh, he’s gone hard. And so is Oscar. Oscar’s gone hard as well. Oscar coming out behind Bortalto. He’s yet to stop. There is Charlotte Clair just got Lando breathing down our next and Antelli behind him. Hulenberg into the pits in the Audi. He’s going for a set of soft tires. Decent stop. A still pulling away from us. Let’s save the battery now. And charge button on. Copy. Norris breezes past us. No surprise there. We still haven’t made our first stop with Valkyrie. Correct. Okay, let’s get on it. Still everything’s played for Russell now setting a new fastest lap. He’s right on the tail of Max Stafen. Going to box Valtry a lap early. Let’s get after these cars in front. Boxing this lap. Got it. Box. And we are going to have to look at doing some fuel saving. Surprised we haven’t had at least a VSC yet. George lining up a look at the back of that red goes to the inside and gets that loop done. New fastest lap for Charlotte Clair and Valtry’s in his tires struggling to stay in the temperature window. Oh, bad release. I had to wait for Borletto who’s made his first stop. Limb black’s in as well. You are P5. Soft tires again for Limblap. 4.8 seconds behind you. I think that’s his third. 37 laps to go at the end of this one. It is. That’s his third tot. So we are think looking at a uh a bonafide for stop for aid. All right. Vtory out behind Lawson at the moment. Paris’s tires are not liking running on that basic level of push. Russell sets a blisteringly quick fastest lap. 136.7 firing safety cars or red flags. I think this is his race to lose. mode push. Copy. You are 15. Now we got those tires nicely back in the window. Closing back in on Bman again. He’s 1.3 seconds behind. Hamilton putting the stappen under pressure. Going to have a look at the inside at the hairpin. Tight temps are good. Yeah, copy. Side by side into the final corner. Hamilton will have DRS and gets it done. Hamilton up into second place now. Back to Very about to make the move on Liam Lawson. and try to cool down the tires as much as possible. Couldn’t get alongside. Have another crack into turn one though. And again, we’re covered off by Liam Lawson there. Let’s uh turn the battery off. Charge on. Yep. Bought a letter on those softs steaming up to the back of us. So, we’re a long way back from the race lead. George starting lap 23 and Max is into the pits for his second stop. Hard tires for Max snappen. He’s going to come under immediate pressure from Yuca Cenoda. Keep at it. So your P14 car ahead is Gazzley. And we got the move done on Lawson. This is what happened. Now we’re through the last turn here. The gas we could get the move done up the inside and up into 14th they go. We’ll go straight on the attack against Pierre Gazzley here. Mode push. Yep. All right. Hopefully we can get the move done here on Pierre into the hairpin. Paris still not quite really able to stay with Bman. Let’s give him some battery as well. I do want to think about doing some fuel saving. I think we’re going to get lapped by George. At least Perez might. Valkyrie might stay on the lead lap again up the inside. Lovely move under braking. A chance for Valtry to try and push on. Aon’s already 6 seconds up the road from us now. Gazzley into the pit. Is Okon for his second stop. So, we got that overtake done just in time. And we need to increase lift and coast by 30%. Charge a little bit of a gap back to fetto. So do some fuel saving. Turn the battery back up again. Soft tires going on for Pierre Gazzley. Bman into the pits. He’s going for another set of softs. Pretty good stop. Hawkenberg bearing down now on Perez. And tire face update when you can. Yeah, they’re holding on. Just need to get a bit more temperature back into those tires again. Pushing status. So, the hard tires have really not behaved how I was expecting. I thought they would be nice and comfortable in the window, but they keep dropping out of the window. Thought with the increased temperature they would be actually a pretty good tire, but hasn’t been the case. At least not for Perez. Anyway, Albon in. He will come up behind Valtry. Going to be tight on exit. Hajar goes through. Perez not close enough to do the same. There is Jacko just popping into the shot. Heat. Heat. I think we just missed the DRS zone and now we’re out of battery. So, uh, any chance we had a clinging on to Albon’s gone? Just a reminder on guys. Yeah. I’m going to get down to about 2 kilos under fuel and then we’ll go back to normal push levels again. Another stop for both Lawson and Hajar. tires going on. Another set of soft velocity. I think we are closing in on estimon. Yeah, we were what 7/10 of a second quicker with Valkyrie that last lap. Perez has Hulenberg all over the back of him. Let’s turn the tire wear down again. Now they’re back up to look after the uh front 120°. Copy me. Oh, Valtry is tired. Holding on. Hulk behind with the RS very nicely. Very nicely. Actually, I am kind of tempted to maybe up the pace a little bit on uh Perez’s tires more permanently, but still got a way to go on this stint. I don’t want to burn him out too soon. Another second taken out the best of our knock on. Botas is definitely in a better condition tirewise the knock on right now. Where is George? There’s George. That’s the gap now. A minute to Perez. 50 seconds to Valkyrie. And that is Lewis Hamilton into the pits. Hard tires going on that Ferrari. I think Science is going to get him, but he shook it out in front of the Aston. Yeah, there’s Science. Here come the Aston. It’s going to be really tight. Oh, they both sneak through. And I think Sona got the move done on Alonso into turn one as well. Porto boxes from 14th place. That will push Perez up a place and we have a yellow flag. Lawson locking up at the hairpin. Now this I think was at turn 13 trying to get the move done on his teammate. Went late on the brakes. went too late on the brakes and went straight on. Too much damage to the tires. And has he damaged his tires or has he damaged the underfloor? Might have damaged the underfloor with that lock up running over the curb. Oh, there we go. That’s what I meant to do. Check back in with Valkyrie now. Just a second behind Estan. We don’t think lifting is necessary. One lap of fuel short. No lift off needed. You are doing a good job. Yeah. I’m not convinced actually that we are going to get lapped. We need carry on with the fuel saving increase by 10%. We save too much and need to burn some off. We can always do that. It’s very hard to save fuel. And we need lift and when you don’t need to copy. Hulenberg boxes. We got Alonso closing in behind us. One’s just stopped by the look of it for another set of hard tires which means Cenod is probably about to box himself. Evening Adrian. Here’s potentially the opportunity to get Esanok on. Not sure if we’re going to get the DRS. We are a little light on the brakes at the moment while we’re in fuel saving. Getting that lift and coast in. Yeah, we didn’t get the DRS, but we’re going to be in a nice position to uh if we don’t get the move done under braking here, we’ll certainly have a chance into turn one, assuming AON doesn’t box. And he boxed. I knew it. So up into the points for Valtry in 10th place. Charge on. Cars are still holding up really well for Valkyrie. Really, really well. A decent stop there for Rock. Hard tires should take him to the end now. Can we keep Alonzo at bay? We are starting to get towards that stop, that final stop. I don’t think the tires will get where I want them to be. We are dipping below the line. As you can see, this is down to the fact that I forgot to put the suspension on. So, let’s just bring the stop forward a couple of laps and leave him in these uh in this push level now. I think a loss is going to go swooping past us here. Perez shuts the door. We are absolutely frustrating him here. He switches to the inside. Will he swoop on through? entire face update when you can. Once again, we shut that door. Vibration increasing. Just keep into the pits for Liam Lawson and Oliver Bman. Hard tires for Bman to the end. Five times. That should be him for the end. So, it’s not been a good weekend for RB at all. And there are the leaders. Well, actually, no, that’s Pastry and Antelli. So, they have been lapped. Although George still needs to make another stop, as dol Norris, Pastry, and Antonelli. The Stappen might even need to make another stop as well. I’m not sure about that. A big gap back to Lando Norris. It’s not going to be McLaren’s year this year. I don’t think reigning constructor’s champions. Norris reigning world champion. Mercedes are definitely looking strong this season. Absol due for his uh final stop pretty soon as well I think. New fastest lap for Estabban knock on 135.7. That’s quick on a set of hard tires as well. Checking back in with Valtry. Pit window opens up very very soon. We can go a bit more aggressive with these tires for Valtry. Let’s crack on. Copy. I can still keep this pace. Continue. Keep going. So, Alonso finally gets through in that middle sector. There we go. Just around the outside. And we’re into the uh same window for Perez. This pit window opens up next lap as well. He does have DRS on you. Tires are ready. Copy, mate. Paris is going to be sitting duck for Gazzley. Did the PS5 get any update like this? No. There have been no updates to the game since uh January. I don’t even think we got one in January. I know we got one in December and that was the last one I think when they introduced uh the the new livery packs. That was the last update. Yeah, this is very much being kept alive by the uh modding community in terms of uh you know changes that can be made. Antonelli in for his final stop. Let’s see what tires he slaps on. Is he going hard or mediums? Let’s go mediums. New faster lap for Lewis Hamilton. as he moves back up to seventh. Through goes Yuki Cenoda. He’s due to stop again very soon. Here comes Valkyrie. He’s going to be stopping in the next couple of laps. It is a bit sad that uh there’s no updates available um for console, which is why I’ve gone through and made all those different manufacturer and sponsor logos. um and and put them up on YouTube so that people can still get creative and try something new. I do still want to do a couple more. Probably going to move more towards sponsors now rather than manufacturers. Last big one I did was uh Malva, I think. Uh, cannon might be next. Yeah, pace for Vantry is really good at the moment. He’s only 4/10 of a lap a second slower than uh Russell andlair. They both need to stop as well. So uh yeah, definitely continuing to fuel safe was the right call as Yuki know the boxes. Oh, bad. Bad stop there on the front left. That will leave him vulnerable to Fernando. There is Fernando. That also goes through. All right, let’s continue. Perz got overtaken, I think, by Gazzley who immediately boxed. We’ve got Aon all over the back of us. Let’s uh go two more laps with Perez if we can. Might even go three more laps with Valtry here. This tire is hanging on really nicely despite the full push. Russell is in from the lead. Set a hard tires, so he’s easily going to make it to the end. through goes Lando. Here comes Oscar. Get out in front of Max. There is Max. So, Max will not be a threat to George. It’s now a question of uh whether anyone can try and get close to him. Given the fact that he’s got the undercut on everyone, I think George is home and hosed here. Antonelli sets the new fastest lap 135.6. Medium tires going on for sight. That’s a nice smooth stop there for Williams. Aon gets through. Continue like this. Given the limitations that Perez has got this uh in these opening races, I think he’s done all right Fox. Yeah, copy. Very impressed with Ver’s pace this weekend. up in eighth place. Although we are going to drop out of the points as soon as we make that stop. Might have the opportunity to sneak back in and grab a point. Got at least another lap, if not two laps in Valky’s car here before we need to stop him. Try and keep them out as long as we can to give them more to play about with on those mediums at the end. Could probably get another lap out of Czecho here. Actually, let’s uh let’s stop him on the next lap. Let’s go one more lap with Czecho again. Give him a little bit more medium to play with. Yeah, copy. A bit of a disappointing weekend for Hajar after a good performance in Australia out in Q1. had to try and work his way back up the order. Gap to him 1.8 race is long. I am wondering actually could I maybe get away with a set of softs here at the end for Valtry. Let’s have a look. Really, it’s a little bit too much to ask. We’ll stick to the mediums. McLair and Norris still out there. There’s Gazzley and then Colinto behind. So he’s lapped everybody up to and including 18th. is going to need to stop again. Same for Lando. He’s probably going to stop a little sooner, I would imagine. He’s on mediums. They can’t be in as good a shape as Llair’s hards. Russell is steaming up to the back of him. 1359. 2 seconds a lap quicker that last lap. New fastest lap for Sykes. So 1351 Brussels almost a complete pit stop ahead of Norris now. Excuse me. All right, Perez is in. No more lift and coast. Okay, go the mediums. We are now a lap down, but track will be clear. Only tolllair. Oh, and Russell. Russell’s just gone through. No, Russell just crossed the line. So, we are still ahead of Russell on track. Not by a lot. He still may get lapped here, but got a chance of staying on the lead lap. Norris is in. What’s he put on? I think he’s put on a set of softs. Yes, he has. Norris has put on a set of soft. He’s going to be aggressive here at the end. He’s going to get out ahead of Antelli behind Lewis Hamilton and more energy available. Yeah. into the pits for Valkyrie. This is his final stop also for a set of mediums. We come out just behind Isaac Kaja for reference. You are currently but we’re going to have much better tires. The players in 18 laps to go. Can he get away with a set of softs here? He can. Can he’s go for it? That looks like a new set or at least a very very close to new set if not completely new. So, we’re back on the lead lap, but only just as he gets out just behind Max for Stafford and a back marker behind. Who is that? That is Limblat, I think. It might be Lawson. Can’t really tell. Let’s have a look. Is it Lawson? Yeah, it’s Lawson. It’s quite awesome to watch this battle between uh Max and SH. And we need to take care of these tires. Copy. course behind you. There’s progress to be made. There goes SH going to get the move done into the uh into the hair. Yes, she can. Magazine back up onto the podium. Still waiting. Oh, there goes Max. Max is making another stop. So, this is going to be for a set of soft tires. Pastry still needs to make another stop as well. Go. Soft tires going on. Where’s that going to bring him out? Ahead of the two Williams drivers of Alb and Science who are locked in battle here. Car behind is Lawson. No worries, mate. Up the inside of Isaac Hajar. That is Valtry through and into 13th place. Now the chase to get some points or a point is on. Charge on please. Copy. Perez has been lapped so we can start to burn some extra fuel. Let’s see if we can actually stay close enough to George to maybe get dragged up a bit. I don’t think we’ll be able to stay with him. But we might have an opportunity here on Limblat. So deployed. Deployed. Copy. George got through. Can we do the same? No, there’s the answer. All right, let’s uh protect the tires. Protect the battery. Easy on the front tires. Still might get the launch through here. And charge button on. Charge button on. He holds us back. a long way to go if we want to try and get points. AON is 5 and a half seconds ahead of us, but then it’s another 11 and a half seconds to Cenod and are good. So, that’s a lot of time to make up with 15 laps to go, but we do have fresher tires. your eyes. Copy. See if we cut back to the inside. No, we’re going to go around the outside. We’ll try to. We first continue. Keep going. Charge on. Copy. Right. One and a half seconds out of Aon on that last lap. We can certainly catch Aon. Beyond that, maybe not. We’re going to miss out on points, I think. Let’s keep our attention here with Jacko. All right, let’s concentrate. late stop for Isaac. So this is going to be for a set of soft surely. Yeah, soft tires. We’ve got the move done here on Limblap. We’re through. Colinto dies into the pits in front of us as well. So that immediately promotes us up. And Liblap from behind us. So a lot of these guys who went for a two stop haven’t been able to make their tires last. And they are having to go for an emergency three stop. And charge on. I say emergency. It’s not technically an emergency with 12 laps to go. In comes Oscar Pastry. Soft tires for Oscar. Can he get out in front of Max? Max coming onto the start finish straight now. This is going to be close into turn one. It’s going to be very close. Max might have the momentum. Oh, he gets through before the corner. There goes Max. But fresher tires for Oscar means that he could well close that gap back up again. Meanwhile, Valtry is now very close to Okon. Less than 3 seconds, 2 and 1/2 seconds of gap. We took another one and a half seconds out of him on that lap. There is Russell Hajar behind him on track. There is Perez. We’re not going to catch Hajgera. So, it looks as though 18th is going to be the best we can do with Jo. But that’s Keep it like this. What I was aiming for. Stats have decreased slightly by doing work for the sponsors in the opening three rounds of the Grand Prix. He hasn’t got the new suspension that Valky’s got, which is affecting his tire wear and uh slightly his downforce as well. 18th meets the sponsor requirement, the maximum available sponsor requirement for for Jacko. So, I’m happy with that. And then anything on top of that for Valkyrie is a bonus. His target was to finish in 17th. Well, 18th, but you can’t have both cars reaching 18. So, 17th was my main target for Valkyrie. And then anything above that was nice. We’re in 13th right now. We’ve got the pace, I think, to take 12th. Beyond that. No, we don’t. Oh, Vortileto into the pits. He’s a long way ahead of Perez. So, I don’t think this is going to do Perez any favors cuz even if he does come out behind, he’ll be on brand new tires, brand new softs, probably. So, Perez in front of you. Just do your best. Rob’s getting that right, sorry, that rear left. The Paris is going to get through. As I say, I don’t think he’s going to hold him back and we don’t need to hold him back. Entire phase update. Lawson overtaken by Limblat. That must be under floor damage for Lawson. Seems to be holding okay. Not been a good weekend for RB. Bottom of the grid today. Meanwhile, we will continue to f continue to focus on this chase here between uh Valkyrie and Estban. Gap now just over 1 second and Albon’s in. Ooh, interesting. If anyone else in in front needs to make a stop as well, all of a sudden that does maybe throw us into the into contention for a point. New set of mediums going on for Alan. He will get out close to Hulenberg. Hulenberg might just get him here. Again, expect Alban to have easily have the pace to get through again. Oh, look at that. Side by side, Alban just says no. Just gets his elbows out enough to stop that move. Here we are now inside the 1 second window. mode push. Copy. We’ll have the DRS. Next car is Okon. Remember, long way to go in this race. And given how easily we cruised up to the back of him, we will have more pace than him when we get in front. The dirty air certainly is not helping us. What about tires? So, we’ll be in 11th place praying for someone else to make a stop. First, we actually do need to get this move done. He’s going to have a look at the inside. Backs out of it. Okon has certainly fired the thrusters. And we’ve been overtaken bylair with Perez now. So Norris might get us before the end of the race as well. Not saving fuel with Czecho cuz he’s a lap down. A long way to go. I will be turning the fuel burn off in a in a lap or two, though. It’s about 1.7 kilos for a lap here. And yeah, AON’s definitely firing the thrusters. See how much of a better lap he’s having than us. And we’re using battery. So, he’s doing the same. We’ve got a yellow flag. I think that’s a Mercedes. I think that’s uh Antonelli. It is. Look at the Mercedes. And round they go. And ultimately just unable to bring the car under control. Doesn’t lose a position. A few laped cars get through. Next cut is Okon. Okay, let’s get on it. Back in the DRS, though. Going to need to rebuild that battery again soon. Porto has caught and is about to pass Jacko. Let’s turn that fuel burn off now cuz we’re going to be in dirty air. So it’s going to skyrocket the temps again and we’ll need lift off. Copy. So we can swoop back around using battery into turn one combined with the DRS. continue like this. He does just about muscle his way up the inside and completes the move. So, back to 17th. But I think we’re just fighting a losing battle trying to keep him behind. If we can maybe force Baltto’s tires to overheat. Yep. and degrade quickly. Maybe we can fight him on equal terms. Charge on. Another yellow flag. And this is a VSC. No management required. It’s a crash for Borletto. Wow. He crashed out. He lost it here. Yeah, there we go. Made crash. That’s a That’s a big retirement for Baltto. And just like that, the hopes of the team start to dwindle. So 17th is very much on now for Perez. So there was a crash. Is he okay? At the moment they are okay. And we have debris offline. Keep an eye on these tire temps. Hoping the dirty air will help keep Botas’s tires healthier for longer. or in the right window for longer. But if you can even so we’re still currently 12 dropping car behind is Albon. Eight laps to go including the one you’re on. No management on the tires required. Come on. Stay. Stay in the window. Let’s get after these cars in front. I don’t think we’re going to see an emergency pit stop in front of us. So, I think we’re just fighting for 11th. But if somebody spins out, puts it in the wall like Borletto just did and all of a sudden 11th becomes the fight. The fight for 11th becomes the fight for a point suggest that you can reduce the amount of lift and coast at turn one. Yeah, copy. And push now. Everything you have. Copy. No lift off needed. Attempts have plummeted. Yeah, copy. It’s going to destroy them if we have them on full push when we go back to green flag racing. Copy. Virtual safety car ending. Got it. We need to do full management on this set. Copy that. DRS enabled. Charge on. Copy. And you can use a P to boost back. Copy. Another yellow flag. Charge on. Copy. Is that contact somewhere? No, it’s a lock at Ferrari. Here’s the replay. Now, this is where the RB drivers involved. Things were going smoothly. Very heavy on the brakes. What caused that? He nearly hit the back of that McLaren. That would have been great for us. Next car. Do your best mode push. Here we go. Let’s see if we can get him. He’s got two good launch. Six laps to go. Time come up to temperature before we try and really go for it. might well be burning his battery right now as well, trying to defend from us. You’re currently 12. an album behind you. There we go. Back in the window, there’s progress to be made. Okay, charge on. Yeah, copy that. Have a look. Side by side. We’re going to get the move done. Oh, maybe not. And he got the DRS. Damn it. There are five laps to go at the end of this one. Copy. I think it’s time to make progress here. No worries, mate. Touch on. Yeah, copy. And that is Alex Albon behind looking to close up and get involved as well. And he is closing up. So, we need to get past quickly or else we’re going to get embroiled in a battle that we will lose. Here’s a chance. Next car is Okon covering us off and Alban’s not right there. So, we have to get the move done into the hairpin. We have to get past. We’ve got more pace to knock on. They need to get through. What about tires? Start a spider. And we got another yellow flag. That’s cleared. It was a lock up for the leader. Let’s see what happened there. Here we are going into turn nine and the car just and they ended up overcooked it slightly. I don’t think that’ll hurt his race. No, he’s still 7 seconds ahead. Oh, can’t cover this by keeping the inside line. Just do your best full aggression. You’ve got the pace. Copy. Have to get this move done before we destroy the tires. Laps remaining, including this one. Yes. Copy. No way through. Just cool your tires. Okay. Charge on. Norris is ahead of Perez now. Car behind is Alba. Look how much punishment we issued to our tires just in that uh lap at full push. Aon’s going for it. He’s trying to break away from us. Push at the moment. 7/10 of a second up on us in the middle sector. Can we stay ahead of Albon? I don’t think we can. That Williams is mighty quick this season. And he gets us. I can’t give up with him. Let’s try and get a little bit of battery in. Cool the tires. Hope that Albon is held up by Oon and we can just recharge behind the pair of them and then try and pounce. Just cool down the tires as much as you can. Copy. Yep. That has cost Russell a little bit of time. He’s less than 4 seconds ahead of copy. Charge on. Oh yeah, copy. Overheating’s done massive damage to our tires. Temperature’s coming back under control a little bit more now. We’ve got to turn them back up again so we we don’t lose too much ground. Mode push. Copy. Alvin’s going to try and make the move on a here. Once again, we’ve been did by Williams of Alex Albon in the closing stages. There goes Alban up the inside. He gets the move done. So, next car on. We still have two laps to go. which is why I’m not turning the tires up. Still have a chance to get at least one of these two guys. Well, maybe a think we got the chance on now. Two more time laps. Got it. Final lap though coming up for Jacko. Very happy with the tire use. Here we go. George starts his final lap. The gap’s down to just 3 seconds now. Llair could maybe throw a challenge here. Depends what happened to Russell’s tires after that lockup. Hon has been dropped by Albon. Next car is up on a long way to go. Charge on. Copy. Might need to pick up the pace a little bit. Our last lap shoot out with one for 12th place here. That’s why I’m in harvest here. Want to save a bit of battery for the final lap. We weren’t close enough to make the move this time round. And it’s going to have to be down that back straight. Just enough tire wear left. Perez needs to turn his tires down and try to cool down the tires as much as possible. Yep. Okay, let’s get on it. Still everything to play for. Russell wins it. First over the line. There we go. It is. And there we have backto-back wins here in China for George Russell. Winner of the sprint and winner of the Grand Prix. It’ll be Charlair in second place. I don’t think there was a single second of that race where they didn’t believe they’d win it. Yeah. Nor takes third. The weaknesses in the Red Bull, which was kind of masked a little bit in Australia, have been brought to the bear, brought to the front here, brought to the fourth. Max is going to finish a very distant six. Here’s the one last roll of the dice here for Valkyrie. Alcon’s rear wing stays closed. Ours is open. Closing in. too far back and Alban’s pace has dropped off. So, Aron will get DRS and a slipstream here off of the line. We’re not going to be able to get either of them. 13th place it will be then. That’s a valiant effort though considering the state of our car. I’m happy with 13th. Perez in 17th. It’s better than I was expecting for Czecho this weekend. about as good as I think we could have hoped for really with Valkyrie. Could maybe have had uh 12th or even 11th, but we did not have points pace today. The Mercedes driver leaves the cockpit after a wellforked race. A fifth place finish ensures they’re taking away a fair few points from this one. And right now it’s the British driver who proudly takes his place on the podium. And that’s win number one of the season. And it’s sure to provide them with a real confidence boost. And that’s the podium complete for the Chinese Grand Prix. Well, Karu, how do you think they’ll be feeling in the team garage at the end of that? Well, it was a bit of a mixed bag here. Some things went their way, but others didn’t. I think their main target now will be finding some consistency for sure. Next round will see us head east as F1 prepares for the Japanese Grand Prix. We’ll see you at Suzuka, a firm favorite for the drivers. Confirmation then of the final result. It is George taking the win as well as the sprint win. That could put him well top at the drive at the uh of the championship. Maybe Norris will still be top. We shall see in a moment. Llair in second gets himself a podium. Lando in third trying to hang on to the top spot in the championship. Lewis takes fourth ahead of Antonelli in fifth for snapping down in sixth place. Then it’s Oscar in seventh. Science in eighth. Good points for Williams again. Alonzo gets some points for Aston Martin ahead of his teammate Yuki Cenodo. They finish ninth and 10th. Uh then in 11th place, Albon in the second. Williams Okon in the finishes in 12th just ahead of Valtry who managed to gain four places throughout the the Grand Prix. 13th perhaps tinge with a little disappointment but still a pretty good result I think. Uh I will take that all day long. We beat Audi which is good. They finished in 14th. Gazzley in 15th for Alpine. Then it’s Hajar in 16th. Had a terrible weekend. See if he bounces back in Suzuka. Uh 16th for him. 17th for Jacko. Still struggling with sponsorship duties and uh we forgot to put the suspension on. Uh Bman will finish in 18th, 19th Colinto, 20th for Alvid Limblad, 21st for Liam Lawson, and Bortalto failing to finish with a spectacular retirement. Into the driver standings then, Lando does stay top. George up 10 places to move into second place. 33 points gain this weekend. I forgot he didn’t gain any points at all in Australia. So, uh, that definitely hurt him in the standings, but, uh, big, big progress today. He actually moves ahead of Max. They’re level on points, but that win for George puts him at at the top. Llair in fourth is up three places, moving ahead of Alex Albon. Lewis Hamilton and Very Botas. Hamilton himself up seven places. He gets his first points of the season this weekend. Uh then it is Anteneelli in eighth place. Ninth place for Isaac Hajar. 10th for Oscar Pashri getting his first points. Up into 10th with 10 points. Then it’s Nikico Hulenberg with eight points. Up nine is Carlos Science getting his first points of the season. Uh he’s on six. Yuki Senoda has five. Two points for Fernando Alonso. Gazzley get has points. He’s down five places on the 15th. Then the non-scorers of Ollie Bman ahead of Okon Collapinto, Boralto, Perez in 20th, Limblad in 20 uh sorry Lawson in 21st, Limblad 22nd. In the constructor standings, McLaren are top with 56 points after the first two rounds. Uh picking up 31 points this weekend. Uh Mercedes strong showing from them. They picked up 43 points this weekend. Uh they had just two points going into today. Now they are second and uh just 11 points behind McLaren. Ferrari up three places as well. Good points all for them. They’re on 44 points, one ahead of Red Bull who dropped down to fourth. Williams in fifth have 22 points. We’re in sixth with those magical 12 points that we managed to steal in Australia. Uh then in seventh place, it’s Audi. Eight points for them. Eighth is Aston. They picked up three this weekend. They’re up to seven now, just one behind Audi. Alpine have a point in ninth. H and Racing Bulls still yet to get off the mark. Let’s see how the pit stops went. Uh strong weekend for McLaren and Racing Bulls picking up a lot of points. McLaren first and and sixth, Racing Ball second and third, Alpine taking fourth, Audi fifth and ninth. Uh there is Max getting some points for Red Bull in seventh place. Ferrari in eighth and 10th. No points for us unfortunately. Uh let’s see what the standings look like. Racing Balls go top with 40 points ahead of Ferrari. They’re on 35. McLaren up six places into third with 33 points. Two ahead of both Red Bull and Alpine tied on 31 points a piece. Audi have 12 points. Uh Mercedes dropped down into seventh with 10. Uh eight points for Aston. We have two points. Uh no points for H and no points for Williams. Uh so our quickest stop of the day was a 2.42 4-2, which I thought might get us on the leaderboard, but we were just a couple of hundreds too slow. Unfortunately, Lewis’s time, the slowest of the point scoring positions at 2.406. Uh we missed out there by uh 21,000 of a second. Unfortunately, uh not again great stops for Valtry’s side of the garage. 2.59 his quickest stop. But uh definitely uh our pick crew will improve as the season progresses. Both drivers do finish today, which is good. And we get our full sponsorship bonus uh for both of them. So we get 945,000 and change added to our bank balance. Let’s head back to HQ. Okay, so our spare side pod is complete, our spare underfloor is complete, and Marco Peroni gains an overall rating point. He’s up to 82. Very nice. So, let’s head over to our cars and let’s fit that suspension before I forget. There we go. Let’s take a quick look at our bank balance. 1.2 mil. Not a staggeringly vast amount. and certainly not enough to get a front or rear wing started. Now, what I could do is start work on a M2 side pod under floor or suspension given that uh tires are likely to be the big issue this season. I’m thinking of a suspension. Let’s see what kind of gains we could make. uh potentially quite good because we dropped um again I don’t want to use these hours. I want to save those for the wings. Let’s see what we could do having done an intense build. We dial some of the focus of Tyware back a little bit. It was all the way up there. Bring it back in a bit. Again, just taking a little bit of life out of the uh durability there. And that will gain us enough to push us push us over into the 319 km an hour top speed. A slight improvement to acceleration. A little bit of extra downforce, not much. And an extra 3% almost enough to get us up to 40 uh 45% there. almost on our tire wear. And these are quite cheap to make as well. They’re only 300k to to build. Uh so let’s go ahead and do that. Just a standard no hours upgrade for a Mark III suspension. We don’t have enough money to get any more parts done yet. We do have sponsor money coming on the 1st of April. Uh it’s going to be uh 6 mil and change. Uh plus the couple of mil we’ll get from the board and you know hopefully another nearly a million from Suzuka. We might be able to get both a front and rear wing project underway after uh after Suzuka. If not, sorry, after April the 1st. If not, we might have to wait until after Bahrain. Uh, let’s take a look at the calendar. So, here’s the Suzuka Grand Prix. There’s where we get our money from the sponsors. And then we’ve got uh another week and a half until we go to Bahrain. We’ll have uh research unlocked when we come back from Bahrain, and the new ATR period won’t start for another couple of weeks after that. So, we’ll have some hours that we can choose to either drop into the wings, which is my preference at the moment, or into research for next season. My preference for this ATR period that we’re currently in is to uh get an intense front wing and an intense rear wing started if we can, but at the very least, a front and rear wing with ours split evenly between the two to try and improve our car performance. And then we’ll see what the regulation changes for next season will be. Let’s advance time of day. Go to our inbox. Wind tunnel data concerned. God damn it. All right. Let’s approve the investigation. We’re not Oh, we are designing something, aren’t we? Designing two parts. We’re designing um a chassis and a suspension. So, that will delay them both by another 8 days. Fantastic. Uh, so 33 days. What’s that going to do to our calendar? Let’s advance a day, a couple of days. Let’s take a look at the new predicted release dates for those updates. So that is going to be our chassis. That’s going to come after Baku, sorry, after Bahrain. And then the following week when we get to Saudi Arabia is when the suspension will be ready. So we’ll be able to start building that uh here on the Monday. Um yeah, not ideal to have those pushed back, but let’s see. It takes what for chassis I think it’s 10 days. So we’ll have 21 days until we get to Miami race. It will be a It’s not. Is it a sprint? I think it might be a sprint weekend in Miami. Let’s have a look. Yes, Miami is a sprint weekend. Uh so I’ll only be able to get one chassis on the car for for the sprint, but we should be able to get the second one on for the race, I think, as long as we don’t have any delays in manufacturing. That’ll be tight, but we might be able to get new chassis on both cars in time for the, you know, for qualifying and the race for Miami. Suspensions will have to wait until, you know, a bit further down the calendar, I think. Uh, so you can see we have lovely purple smiley face for Valtry. That’ll be worth plus two to his stats. Uh, so not looking too bad. Uh, it’ll be plus one for Jacko. There we go. We’re up to okay affinity. The uh little bit of quote unquote pre-season uh training from last year, you know, the uh five or six months that they had um when they joined the team mid-season in the mid-season break after Hungary uh will have certainly helped there. Jav is not happy. He’s not happy with the car or the other staff or the drivers or the facility. He really is a negative Nelly, isn’t he? Um his driver retired in Melbourne which is also not helping. Even Tony, he’s absolutely neutral. No opinions at all on his personal situation. So he’s not miserable about his salary. Uh which is actually pretty good. The salaries are pretty good at the moment. Uh he’s on just 570,000 and he he signed that willingly. I uh I didn’t have to uh cheese the salary at all. I made him an offer at that salary and he snapped it up. So 4-year deal which has three years left on it at that wage. That’s a bargain. And Mark Slade similar kind of wage as well. 580k. Maybe we could up their wages slightly to cheer them up a bit, but we’ll see. Our uh reserves are looking ble they’re doing as they are. We do need to think about maybe throwing them in for a session at some point. Marco Peron also looking uh okay. Let’s see what the ball thought of that result. They were delighted with Shanghai. 13th. A very good result in their eyes. That’s good. Let’s take a quick look at our facilities. Uh so we’re at 90. We should be at 90% on all of these. Uh 87% on the boardroom. That’s fine. Uh 87% on the helipad, which I cannot afford to upgrade yet. Tour center is ticking along very nicely. in its new maximum rate. Memorabilia room is good. Would be nice to get that up another level. That’s going to cost over a million and that’s money we really need to allocate to the car before we jazz up our facilities any further. Likewise with the hospitality area, an upgrade here would be lovely, but just not financially feasible, especially at just under 3 million. All right, 7 days away from Suzuka, so we should have a weather report now. And oh, it’s going to be a wet weekend. We get to see how our car handles the wet. My guess is just as badly as it handles the dry. Uh it’ll be dry on Friday, it’ll be damp on Saturday, uh which could affect qualifying. And then it looks like it’s going to be pretty torrential rain on the Sunday. Uh I’m very very curious to see how the AI treats their tires in the wet. So, we could be seeing uh at minimum one stops, possibly even two stops, you know, assuming that it stays at the same conditions all the way through. Uh if there are changes from inter to full wet condition and back again, that could make things very, very interesting indeed. So, yeah, this is going to be an interesting race for tomorrow as well. Do I rush all my design upgrades and did I win? No, I didn’t win. Finished 13th. Didn’t have any aspirations of winning. Uh, as I say, it was very much an uh anomalous result here in Melbourne. Uh, thanks to that early safety car throwing everyone’s strategy out the window and the entire field boxing for hards on lap two. Um, today was a more realistic uh kind of interpretation of the tires. You know, we saw more stops than were technically necessary because teams ran a lot of soft tires. Uh, again, that might be slightly influenced by it being a sprint weekend. Uh, this will be our first experience with wet weather in Japan tomorrow. Uh, so that’ll be interesting to see how that works. Uh and then after that, after Japan, where do we go? Uh we go to Bahrain, which is almost certainly going to be dry. Uh and that’ll be our first real test of just standard tire weather. No sprint race. Uh unlikely that we’re going to have lots of safety cards. We might have VSC’s here and there, but that’ll be a proper test of what the tires are like. We know that normally you can go very aggressive on a a soft, medium, soft uh and really really hammer those medium tires, you know, without the tire performance mod that we’re running. So to see how the tires react this time will be very interesting because soft tires on a hard push at Sakia probably won’t last more than 10 laps, maybe 12 at most. So uh yeah, very very curious as to how the next couple of races go. Certainly looking forward to seeing what the uh the wet weather conditions are going to be like for tire wear for the rest of the grid. Most of the grid does have better tire wear than us as well. We’re only 18th, so it’s going to be down to how hard they want to push their tires as to how many stops they’re going to make and what the weather’s going to do. Hope you’ll join me for that one. I’ll be uh at the usual time of uh 8:00 p.m. tomorrow here in the UK for uh for tomorrow’s race. If you have enjoyed tonight’s race, a thumbs up would be much appreciated. Uh if you’re not yet subscribed, why not consider subscribing to the channel as well. Be sure to hit that bell as well for notifications as when the live streams start and uh spread the word, you know, uh share amongst your friends. Hopefully, we can get some more eyeballs on the series so that the uh the modders whose mods I’m running will get to see their work uh distributed amongst plenty of eyeballs uh because they are all amazing and uh they definitely deserve that uh sort of acknowledgement and uh yeah, spread that word if you can. Uh to answer your question, Tony, which I forgot to do, uh do I rush all my upgrades? No, I don’t rush any of them. I never ever rush upgrades unless I absolutely have to. Uh I generally try and do intense on the first build, normal, always normal development time and then normal after that. Uh depending on the regulations and the regulation changes that are pending for the following season just to try and improve the car. We have made a little bit of progress so far, but there’s still a long way to go getting this car up to uh, you know, regular points finishing, let alone, you know, fighting consistently for podiums and the and even wins. So, yeah, we’ll see how the rest of this season goes, see what kind of position we’re in after a few more races when we can get a few more upgrades on the car. And uh hopefully we can we can be knocking on the door of points a couple more times this season. We’ve we’ve uh we came close today as Taiwear improves for the rest of the grid. Their strategy should start to calm down a little bit as well. So who knows? Who knows? It’s that thrill of the unknown, I think. So anyway, that’s it from me. Thanks for watching. I am Jim Bob and I’ll be back with some more F1 Manager very soon.
Mods used:
Tyre Suppliers – https://www.overtake.gg/downloads/tyre-suppliers-pack-f1-manager-2024-w1echuz-little0nion.72316
Tyre Performance – https://www.overtake.gg/downloads/tyre-performance-overhaul.78513
Maximal Graphics – https://www.overtake.gg/downloads/maximal-graphic-preset.70886
Realistic Racing 3.1.1 – https://www.overtake.gg/downloads/realistic-racing.76578
New Race Leaderboard 1.3.2 – https://www.overtake.gg/downloads/new-race-leaderboard.77771
Cadillac Sponsors – https://www.overtake.gg/downloads/cadillac-sponsor-mod.79832
2025 DLC 1.3 – https://www.overtake.gg/downloads/2025-season-dlc.75803
Database Editor – https://www.f1dbeditor.com/
Reduced Mentality/Extras 1.0.3 – https://www.overtake.gg/downloads/reduce-mentality-impact-other-add-ons.78464
Colapinto helmet – https://www.overtake.gg/downloads/franco-colapinto-2025-helmet.77169
Lawson Helmet – https://www.overtake.gg/downloads/liam-lawson-2025-helmet.75345
Lindblad Helmet – https://www.overtake.gg/downloads/arvid-lindblad-vcarb-helmet.79978
Alpine livery – https://www.overtake.gg/downloads/alpine-alpink-las-vegas-livery-special-w1echuz.73380
Red Bull livery – https://www.overtake.gg/downloads/red-bull-ford-team-helmet-2-versions.71552
Williams livery – https://www.overtake.gg/downloads/williams-racing.71793
Patreon – Mr Only – https://www.patreon.com/cw/MrOnly
Facepack Mod
Audi Livery
Cadillac Myteam pack
Mclaren Livery
Ferrari Livery
Mercedes Livery
Aston Martin livery
Haas Livery
RB livery