Hello everybody and welcome to F1 Nation with me Tom Clarkson and me Damon Hill.

It's great to have you back for what is Damon our preview of the United States Grand Prix in Austin.

Coming up on the show, we're going to be joined by Mercedes technical director James

Allison to chat all things Merck, including that unfortunate little tap

between teammates in Qatar and what the team has in store technically for the

remainder of the season and we're also going to hear from Bobby Epstein, the Grand Prix race promoter in Austin.

But Damon, how are you? As you say, it's been a while since you were last on the show.

Yeah, Tom, I've been up the Nile, so while you were in Qatar, everyone was in cooking in Qatar, I was cooking on the Nile, I was on a Nile barge trip, a holiday with my wife and some friends of us, and we went saw the pyramids and the Sphinx and the tombs and it's either a tomb or a temple

basically I worked out generally the gist of it yeah we all went out the night went it ended up in

as one and I swam in the Nile. There are no crocodiles that I'm reassured. They kept telling me in the part of the Nile that we were swimming in.

Well, Damon, for a man who I know hates sharks, I'm very surprised to hear you swimming in the Nile

with the potential risk of a crocodile. I think you've got more risk from other things that are in the water,

but they assume me it was all right to swim.

I just kept my mouth shut you know.

Did you watch the Kattau Grumpri? I did watch it obviously when I got back I had to watch it all.

I was actually on a plane when it's happened now this is the most amazing thing. I could watch, I couldn't watch, but I was on a

my BA flight back from Cairo and I had my F1 app and I was listening to the

commentary and I only worked out that I could do this when I was already

halfway through so I was actually working out from halfway through what was going on.

Well we're off to Texas this weekend another sprint two on the bounce you excited about this one yeah

I'm not actually I'm going to be going so I'm going to be a a interested

spectator because I'm going to go in and just have a watch. I like Austin I think it's a good venue. So I'm excited to go and see the cars and take it all in and of course you get two for the price of one don't you with a sprint so that's that's good you get an extra bit but the thing that is interesting was the weak point the Achilles heel if you if you can call it that at all with this Red Bull and Max is when drivers on their flat-out pace and it

...