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Hello and a very warm welcome to the late breaking F1 podcast presented by Harry Eid, Sam Sage, and me, Ben Hocking, reviewing the second qualifying session of the year, qualifying for the Saudi

Arabian Grand Prix, where Max Verstappen, I believe

his name is, some up-and-comer, has got pole position and he's done so by three times of a

second. Not too bad from him at all. No, it's so good to see this level of performance from a

youngster. He's clearly new to the game, but maybe he's got a bright future in front of him. We're yet to see, but a tricky track, and he's absolutely nailed it. Not got a poll here before, because, of course, a youngster up and coming in the game. I'm sort of I'm basing my hope on is that he got poll, so race is going to go badly for him. That's obviously, that's how it's going to, right? Because all the other times, he doesn't get pole. He does well. Yes. Okay. We'll go with that logic for any form of optimism. Sure. Let's go with that. Naturally, we will be talking about Max Verstappen and the, I was going to say, fight out front. Fight might not be the right word. the people that were behind Vastappen and the, I was going to say fight out front, fight might not be the right

word, the people that were behind Vestappen, but quite comfortably. But we're going to start

with an actual rookie, an actual up-and-comer, something we didn't think we'd be talking about

at the beginning of today, which was the second Ferrari driver, Charles LeClair and Olly Bairman,

in the seat today, because Carlos Sins appendicitis ruled him out of this Grand Prix weekend. Firstly, most importantly,

Forts with Carlos Sines as he goes for his recovery. I believe he has had his surgery now and

all went okay, which is great news. For this weekend, Olly Berman standing in. So a bit of an

outstanding question as to how he might do, given he only had FP3 earlier today. And then,

of course, the qualifying sessions made it through Q1, almost made it through Q2, agonizingly

missing out on a Q3 spot by less than a tenth of a second,

ending up in 11th place. Sam, it's tough to know exactly what the expectations are for a

driver coming in fresh, but what do you think he did in terms of what you expected him to do?

I think he ticked pretty much every box that he could. He got one practice session in the car and, you know, out of all the tracks that you think, oh, I'm going to get thrown into a circuit here that, you know, I'm going to get a good go on. Jedder, of all of them, is one of the most horrifying circuits that you could have been throwing in on for your very first attempt with only one practice session in one of the fastest cars ever made for mankind for racing is a sensational challenge.

And I think he rose pretty well to it.

You know, he finished in Q11, as you mentioned.

At that point, he was only 0.0.36 away from Lewis Hamilton, which, you know, you argue that the Mercedes and the

Ferrari are somewhat close. And so when a rookie who is never driven that car before is that close

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