Hey everyone, hope you’re having a lovely loaded weekend of Motorsport, as well as May Day’s bank holiday if you’re in Blighty like me. Time for another edition of Ask Dre, where you the wonderful Motorsport101 audience, ask me your questions about F1, MotoGP, IndyCar or… whatever else tickles your fancy!
In this edition, McLaren’s politics are mentioned, Audi and Cadillac’s team profiles are up for debate, and has aerodynamics been good or bad for MotoGP? All that and more here AND on our Instagram page “Motorsport101Pod“, where the question of the month will be answered on video by me! Enjoy!
Although we’re only five rounds in, with Oscar Piastri now taking the championship lead and winning three races to Lando Norris’s one, is there an argument to make that the Australian could be becoming McLaren’s lead driver? – GalarianMike (Question of the Month)
It’d never be like the F1 audience to go for the long-term takes because of short term opinions, right? Right?
In all seriousness though – This is what the early wagon Piastri wagon-hitchers always thought could happen, no? I joked a little while ago that Piastri is basically the Cell Saga’s version of Gohan from Dragonball Z. It was more a passing of the torch vibe in the anime, but the point was, we saw from the time he was a rookie that Piastri had incredible upside, just like Goku seeing the first glimpses of his son tapping into Super Saiyan 2 while in the Hyperbolic Time Chamber and thinking he could manipulate that into beating Cell. Father of the year.
You get the point. It’s a little more complicated than that, mind. First of all, I’ve said from the start of the season that the McLaren in 2025 seems to be a fair bit twitchier at the limit, and that seems to have brought out the best in Piastri, and the worst in Norris.
Across the garage, Norris has spoken out consistently that he doesn’t like the MCL39, and that he told McLaren’s engineers to just make the fastest car out of the box, and that he’d just adapt his style to it. I don’t think he’s forgotten how to drive, I just think his margin for error is a lot smaller, and that’s led to more mistakes. Of course, there’s an easy argument to just call Lando the Tottenham Hotspur of F1 drivers, but that admittance of a shift in development philosophy would explain a lot as to how we got here.
Oscar Piastri’s biggest fallacies have been his lack of consistency and his poor qualifying in 2024. So far, he’s solved those problems. Piastri has been on the front of the grid in every race weekend this season and never more than a tenth off pole if he wasn’t on it. No-one else has done it more than twice in 2025. He’s won three races out of five and only in Saudi Arabia was he really ran close for the duration. Norris… is refusing to beat the allegations.
McLaren’s clearly been reluctant since Day 1 of using the #1 and #2 driver system, because it wants to keep its dream team happy. It’s the only team on the elite side of the grid that has two #1, championship quality drivers at the moment, and part of me understands why it’s trying to keep them sweet. The problem is, when two drivers of similar skill start competing for a title, rarely do both sides remain jovial for long. Zak Brown knows that labelling either one of these two as a lead driver is asking for trouble that McLaren clearly wasn’t prepared for last year and the problems it brewed. Reminiscent of Lewis Hamilton when fighting with Jenson Button, Fernando Alonso and Nico Rosberg.
There’s definitely a case that Piastri could be growing into that role, but as McLaren’s proven with last year, a lot of cans are going to have to be kicked down the road before they make that an official stance.
Are you cautiously optimistic about Audi and Cadillac, or are you expecting them to struggle a bit before catching up? – Geoff
Cautiously optimistic about one team, not so much about the other.
With Cadillac and General Motors, they were clever enough to keep operations running like they were always going to make the grid eventually, even when they were initially rejected by Formula One Management from entering the grid. We’ve seen the public moves they’ve made – A base in the UK as well as Andretti building a new headquarters in Indianapolis.
Hundreds of people have already been hired. There’s some big names like Pat Symonds formerly of Williams and the FIA, Graeme Lowdon from his days running Manor/Marussia, Rob White, former Renault F1 engine chief, and Nick Chester who was Technical Director at Lotus during their prime days when they were winning races. They’ve got a three-year customer deal with Ferrari and General Motors throwing their full-weight behind a hybrid power-unit for 2029.
It’s easy to look at that above paragraph and feel good about what’s coming. Across the aisle at Audi and you have to remember… This is still Sauber, and they’re not in good shape right now.
They’re finally expanding into having a UK engineering base. But this is still Team Hinwil, and they’ve been at best stagnant for three years or so, and are now fighting to avoid F1’s wooden spoon for the second straight year. I remember being told by a prominent journalist at my previous gig that when Andreas Seidl was CEO of the team, he walked in, saw the facilities and immediately told Audi to up their investment. He saw what McLaren had and was about to be, he knows what a Championship team looks like, and Sauber is far off the path.
There’s so much that’s in the dark with Audi. They’ve bought the full team, and Jonathan Wheatley is an outstanding pick for team principal, but beyond that, so much of them is up in the air until we see what their power-unit can do for 2026. And even then, the Sauber chassis is arguably the worst in F1, and needs a lot of work to get up to speed with its competition.
Of course, Cadillac could be building a donkey and we just don’t know it yet, but sometimes seeing that progress psychologically, helps you. I ultimately agree with you Geoff, that like most new teams, they’ll struggle to start off with before getting better over time, but it wouldn’t surprise me if Cadillac’s hires have them hit the ground running to start 2026 on a brighter note in the short-term.
Who are your “streets never forget” motorsport athletes/figures? – Narendra
This is a hard one because Motorsport is already a niche sport, so digging even deeper into it to find genuinely under-appreciated people is hard! Here’s a few that I can dig up:
Chris Vermeulen – The original MotoGP rain god. He was always a really solid rider in the top flight and could podium on a good day, but always came alive whenever it rained. Fun Fact: He won the first ever MotoGP flag-to-flag race at the French GP in 2007. But his smoothness and confidence in those conditions was jaw-dropping to watch.
Toni Elias – Estoril 2006. Need I say more? Toni Elias was never a consistently great rider, but man was he fun. An absolute nutter, even by bike racing standards, that legendary performance, bailing Honda out when Dani Pedrosa wiped out Nicky Hayden and himself to take 5 critical points away from Valentino Rossi’s title campaign was ridiculous. Still arguably the most important race in the history of the series. Fun Fact: He moved down and became Moto2’s first ever World Champion in 2010. Buschwacking, but on two wheels!
Felipe Nasr – I feel bad for Nasr. He was really solid in his rookie season with Sauber and thought he could have stuck around for a little while in F1, but it just didn’t work out there. But if you know your Sportscars, you now know that he’s since won 4 IMSA Sportscar Championships between the Prototypes, DPi’s and GTP classes, as well as back-to-back Daytona wins. Seeing Nasr become one of the best prototype drivers on the planet today with Porsche has been awesome to see.
Has the extremely fast and exotic aero development been good or bad for MotoGP? – Jonty’s Corner
Bad. Bad. Bad. Dorna had a chance to put the genie back in the bottle back in 2016 when Ducati came into Qatar looking like a Hammerhead shark and they let it go as long as it was attached to the chassis. There was no going back at that point. MotoGP had for the first time become a sport of aerodynamics, and it objectively hurt the racing.
It looks sexy on a timesheet and in PR statements to say these are the fastest bikes we’ve ever had, but it comes with a detriment that looks very similar to all of F1’s current problems. We now have ride-height devices that you could make an argument for that they’re genuinely dangerous when they’re not working properly. If you get caught in the dirty air of a bike under heavy braking, you risk locking a brake and either running wide, or ploughing into the back of another rider.
We now have ground effect and rear blown diffusers that generate so much dirty air, they overheat the front tyres that Michelin weren’t prepared to deal with all the extra forces hitting their front tyre when following another rider. You risk crashing by going for an overly aggressive overtake, otherwise you can’t follow, just like Pecco Bagnaia struggled with Fabio Quartararo in Jerez.
It’s spilled over into World Superbikes too, but thankfully not to the same degree. But it has reduced the series into producing $40,000 homologation specials and veering away from the “Wins on Sunday, sells on Monday” mentality the series was built on. But because the effect isn’t as strong, it still gives us incredible racing. I wish I had more time to cover it here, but World Superbikes is in a golden age of racing quality and has been for half a decade now. Toprak, Jonathan Rea, Alvaro Bautista and recent addition Nicolo Bulega have been incredible.
MotoGP let aero development get out of control and they know it because the 2027 regulation shift has been specifically made to cut costs and limit aero. The ride-height devices have been banned too. I’m glad we’re slowing the bikes down because the series risked outgrowing many smaller trackers like Jerez last week, the Sachsenring or Valencia.
I’m all for technology being pushed in Motorsport. But you have to realise that first and foremost, you’re a sport. If your sport isn’t entertaining, it dies. You need to balance those scales for the good of your product, and the series has had 10 years where the racing has gotten steadily worse, more dangerous and more political in trying to mitigate it.
It’s all bad and 2027 can’t come sooner.
If you could replace one modern day F1 circuit with a vintage one, what would it be? – Misha
Before I start, do check out MishasWriting here. Only fair I try to pay it forward to another up and comer who’s doing some really solid work in the space as a relative newcomer. Check them out after you’re done here.
Depends on what you count as vintage, but I’ve always wanted the Nurburgring back on the calendar. I think if you gave it three DRS zones, you could get some half decent racing around it, and it’s a great drivers track too, and the 2021 race there was pretty decent. Which track to replace it for though? There’s a few candidates, but I think I’d have to say… Jeddah.
Never been a fan. It seems like it was made with gimmicks in mind. A circuit with a 155mph average speed, but also ridiculous close walls, some of them concrete, meaning a wreck can be catastrophic like we saw with Mick Schumacher a couple of years ago. It’s main overtaking spot at Turn 1 is awful for going two-wide in, and the only other spot really is the final corner, which encourages DR-Chess matches, and some ugly racecraft, like the “brake-test” of 2021. And that’s before I mention Sportswashing. Swap it out.
Will the Spain Technical Directives have a big effect on the rest of the season? – Viandra
Impossible to say for sure, but there is a chance it could alter the running order. For those who don’t know, the Spanish GP in June is the first that’s affected by a new technical directive, where the amount of “flex” in front wings allowed is being reduced from 15 to 10 millimeters, a big 33% reduction. It’s in response to the flexible rear wings that McLaren were using in 2024 which drew concern from fans and teams alike. McLaren had a handshake deal with the FIA after Baku where they made some adjustments, and that led to the rear wing deflection test changing to start 2025.
McLaren insist their flexible wings aren’t the secret sauce that’s made them as quick as they are, but it is a huge part of their development philosophy that had them slay Red Bull last year. Both McLaren and Mercedes allegedly are big on the flexi-wings and this directive will likely affect them the most, with Red Bull and Ferrari generally steering clear of them. Especially the Italians, whose latest car was a 90% overhaul on last year.
I have to go with my gut here, because we just don’t know how it’ll affect the running order until we see it for real. But if we’re being reasonable and say, it costs McLaren a tenth to two tenths of a second a lap… they’ll probably be fine, but it’ll be dependent on the track. What 2025 has said to me so far, is that I think McLaren has the best overall car by maybe .2-.3 of a second, but if it’s a track with little tyre wear, like Suzuka or Saudi Arabia, Max’s ultimate pace in the Red Bull is enough where he can match, maybe even beat McLaren by a fraction. Norris couldn’t get close enough in Japan, they were very evenly matched early on in the rain in Australia, and in Saudi, Max was the faster man as the race went on, but the penalty was enough to swing the outcome.
Two tenths net loss on McLaren, and I think they’re in a big battle with Max’s Red Bull. Again, I don’t know how it’ll actually shake out when we get there. But I don’t think it would take much for there to be huge consequences in the field.
How’s the Indy 500 shaping up? Any early favourites for bump day and pole? – Alexander Pitt
If this is in regards to the open test last week – Don’t read too much into things, even the crashes from Takuma Sato (Which he was damn lucky to walk away from, a 94G impact), and Kyle Larson. They’ll have enough time to rebuild a brand new car to 500-spec for the actual two weeks running heading into the race, it won’t be like Marcus Ericsson or Nolan Siegel last year, where having to repair a car during the running crippled their efforts.
If we want to take some clues from 2024, expect Team Penske to be up the front again. One of the big elements of last year’s race that went completely under the radar was a rule change that meant everyone had to run. Here’s me from the last year’s Qualifying review…*activates Doctor Who TARDIS effect*…
“Will Power might have given even more of the game away on Thursday when he and teammate Josef Newgarden admitted that an off-season rule change on the spec of pushrods used by the field was changed. Penske was using a newer spec but that newer spec was draggier and harming them relative to the field.
Claims from the Indianapolis Star suggest this was on safety grounds as some of the older specs were 10-12 years old, but it would explain how the rest of the field, including rivals Chip Ganassi (Who have had two 234mph pole runs since 2022), relatively struggled by comparison. The murmurs I saw say it may have been worth half a mile per hour. At the 500, that’s a chasm.”
Hopefully the extra running and adaptation means the field has caught up a bit. If not, it could be a fortnight of inevitability, even without famed track whisperer Michael Cannon on the grid at the moment.
That reason alone is why I’m worried about Prema’s Robert Schwartzman given the lack of experience from the team, their poor start to the season, and the fact Rob’s never raced an oval. RLL I fear will be down the bottom again, still unable to shift their poor reputation when it comes to oval races, and Dale Coyne will always worry me given how bad they were in 2024’s ovals, even if Rinus Veekay will definitely help. At the front… Penske vs McLaren 4?
