The Athletic

The Races

The Races on and Mercedes pairing

Kemi Antonelli and George Russell ended up with a one-two on the timesheets at the end

of the Bahrain test.

But with the top teams falling over themselves to declare each other the frontrunner, who's reallyheets at the end of the Bahrain test. But with the top teams falling over

themselves to declare each other the front runner who's really on top at the conclusion

of three days of running. And how seriously should F1 take Andrea Estella's safety warnings?

I'm Ed's draw and joining me to untangle it all, us Scott Mitchell Malm and John Noble.

Where to start? So many talking points, but I think it's got to be John,

Andrea Stellars, what would you call it? Bombshell, his barb, his broadside. Should we tabloid up the

terminology? I don't know. I'm not sure it's a broadside, but I definitely have the impression

that has kind of gathered momentum over the week.

And it's kind of, I think, finally now reached a crescendo that the cracks that potentially were there in the 26th regulations,

the little fault lines that everyone had talked about, everyone was concerned about, have now been

massively exposed. I thought it's chatting to Oscar Pastery tonight in the paddock where he

backed up Andrea Stella about, you know, the dangers of race starts with these cars, talked

about the complexity of the rules, the difficulties of overtaking, the problems of energy management,

all these different aspects. I think beyond the kind of viewpoint of Max Verstappen, he doesn't

find these cars fun to drive. A lot of drivers do find them fun to drive, but the weaknesses

with energy management, the problems with harvesting and deployment, the compromises that have

been made to racing, the difficulties of overtaking, throw everything together. I think F1's got a

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