Formula Pod

A 20-year-old is Formula 1 world champion, and Ferrari still managed to make the weekend about themselves.

Lewis puts it on pole in Mexico City, Ferrari locks out the front row, and by Turn 4 it’s an intra-team fight while Max Verstappen strolls past to take the win. Arjun is joined by friends of the pod Naila (now officially UK-based) and Uttara to unpack it all: Leclerc’s lap-one move, why a five-second penalty did nothing, and why Ferrari badly needs some “Scarlet Rules” of engagement.

We also get into:

• Kimi Antonelli’s title, three generations of champions on one podium, and Bono collecting his eighth world title as a race engineer
• George Russell’s nightmare season, and whether he’s quietly being turned into Checo to Kimi’s Max
• Leclerc bagging second in the “Destructors’ Championship” with over $2 million in damage
• The Haas reserve who scored points on debut and is now ahead of Lance Stroll
• Bottas’s terrifying Cadillac crash, red flags, and whether F1 is putting the show ahead of driver safety
• Aston Martin having Adrian Newey, Lawrence Stroll’s money, and still no answers

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Chapters 
00:00 Intro: Mexico City recap
01:50 Qualifying and Lewis’s pole
03:00 Leclerc vs Hamilton and Ferrari’s rules of engagement
22:15 The #LeclercFiles and Arrivabene weighs in
29:50 The Destructors’ Championship
36:55 Haas chaos and a debut points finish
39:10 Bottas’s crash, red flags and driver safety
44:15 What’s going on at Aston Martin?
47:00 Kimi Antonelli, world champion
51:20 George Russell’s season
1:02:45 The Bono “champion’s seat” theory
1:10:25 Wrap-up

Bahrain in Malaysia. Slick tyres in the wet. Software glitches. Mercedes engine drama. Ferrari doing Ferrari things. Somehow, this race had it all… and still managed to be boring.

We break down the chaos from Sepang — from Mercedes’ engine reliability woes to Lewis Hamilton and Fernando Alonso proving that when conditions get messy, experience still matters. We talk Ferrari… because, well, Ferrari. And of course, we unload on the FIA after a software glitch threw another layer of absolute madness into the weekend.

Was it a race worth watching? Maybe. Was it chaos? Absolutely.

Welcome to Formula 1 in 2026. 😂

Baku did Baku things again! 🇦🇿

Arjun and Mihir are back to break down a chaotic Azerbaijan Grand Prix that had a bit of everything — Safety Cars, tyre strategy, crashes, a ridiculously close finish and plenty to argue about.

George Russell held off Max Verstappen by just two tenths to take his first career Grand Slam, while Isack Hadjar delivered another huge performance to claim his second podium of the season and give Red Bull a 1–2–3 finish.

We also get into Kimi Antonelli’s impressive recovery from P16, the surprisingly strong performance of the soft tyres, Haas capitalising on the chaos, Carlos Sainz grabbing a point for Williams and, of course, McLaren’s disastrous weekend.

Plus, we discuss Lando Norris’ post-race comments, the Baku incidents and whether the Safety Cars completely changed the shape of the race.

In this episode:
🏆 Russell’s first career Grand Slam
🔥 Verstappen pushes him right to the line
🚀 Hadjar’s second podium of 2026
🔄 Antonelli’s P16 → P5 recovery
🛞 Why were the soft tyres so good?
🚨 Safety Cars and restart chaos
💥 McLaren’s nightmare weekend
🗣️ Norris’ controversial post-race comments
🏎️ Haas and Sainz capitalise on the chaos

Another wild one from Baku. And somehow, the championship fight just got even more interesting.

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The first-ever Spanish Grand Prix at the Madring is done — but did it actually live up to the hype?

Kimi Antonelli made history with the inaugural win, but the conversation quickly turns to how McLaren let a potential Lando Norris victory slip away after the VSC shook up the race. Ferrari had their own strategy gamble with Charles Leclerc, Lewis Hamilton suffered his first DNF since Brazil 2025, and the Madring itself left us questioning whether this circuit can actually deliver good racing.

With Naila back on the pod and Uttara making her Formula Pod debut, we break down the race, the lack of overtaking, McLaren's operational mess, Ferrari's strategy, and whether Madrid deserves all the hype it received.

Was the Madring actually any good, or did we just watch glorified Monaco?

The summer break is here, and before we go, we're breaking down everything from Hungary. Norris takes McLaren's 14th win at the Hungaroring — but not without a bit of intra-team needle along the way. Verstappen grinds out P2 on a bold 32-lap tire gamble, while Antonelli's P3 blows the championship gap out to 50 points over Hamilton and 59 over his own teammate, Russell, whose race was over before it started thanks to an anti-stall. Speaking of Hamilton — we dig into his third straight race with an FIA penalty, this time for speeding in the pit lane by an almost impossibly small margin. Plus: Racing Bulls' double points, Aston Martin quietly out-finishing half the grid on their 16th upgrade of the season, a brutal weekend for Piastri, and the biggest story off the track — F1's surprise move of the Bahrain GP to Sepang, a circuit that hasn't hosted a race since 2017. We close out the first half of the season with our superlatives before we go on break. See you on the other side.

Charles Leclerc finally ends a 624-day wait for a win — and delivers Ferrari's landmark 250th Grand Prix victory in the process — at a chaotic British Grand Prix. In this solo episode (apologies for the delay, folks — scheduling got the better of us this time), we break down Kimi Antonelli's heartbreaking late collapse from a likely race win, George Russell's brutally honest take on a podium he didn't feel he deserved, Lewis Hamilton's rollercoaster afternoon of penalties and reprieves, Max Verstappen's worrying recurring reliability issue, and Carlos Sainz's genuinely unprecedented penalty. Plus, Toto Wolff's cheeky Abu Dhabi 2021 dig at the FIA, the LEGO drivers' parade, and a look ahead at why Spa's Eau Rouge could be a nightmare for these energy-hungry 2026 cars.

A race which happened above sea level and with that a heatwave, it was a double whammy from the environment challenging the teams in tempers how their cars performed. Clearly Red Bull's effort finally paid off, but the prancing horse came with upgrades but they remembered who they were and that totally went south. We also discuss what happened to Ferrari's performance and what's with the camera man.

The wait is over. After 41 races, Lewis Hamilton stands on the top step again — but this time, he’s wearing red.In this episode of Formula Pod, Arjun, Mihir, Nathan and Naila break down one of the most historic race wins in recent memory. Hamilton’s maiden Ferrari victory at the Circuit de Catalunya wasn’t just a win, it was a statement. A record-breaking seventh triumph in Barcelona, a seat at the table with Fangio, and a championship fight that just got very, very real.We also get into the chaos behind him — Charles Leclerc’s DNF streak and the Brembo blame game, Kimi Antonelli’s first major stumble in the championship lead, Russell’s rise, McLaren’s quiet consistency, and what on earth happened to Hulkenberg’s engine.Plus — the first all-British podium since 1968. Yeah, we’re going there.Silver Soul, Red Glory. This is Formula Pod.

The trio is back for Monaco. Kimi Antonelli extends his championship lead while Lewis Hamilton emerges as Ferrari's lead title contender. But the real story? The same 0.1km/h infringement that haunted Canada has followed the grid to the streets of Monte Carlo. Meanwhile, Isack Hadjar takes his first podium with Red Bull — is the second seat curse finally broken?

The Canadian Grand Prix delivered chaos from lights out, and we're breaking all of it down. Arjun, Mihir, and Nathan are joined by Naila from F1 Club UAE to talk the Russell-Antonelli intra-team battle that never got its ending, McLaren's catastrophic tyre gamble, and Hamilton's stunning late move on Verstappen. We also get into Hadjar's penalty-fuelled fifth, Alpine's best result of the season, a reliability crisis that took out six cars, the most absurd penalty in recent memory (looking at you, Bottas), and why the world feed director needs a word with himself. Oh, and Ferrari built a saloon car. Canada, everyone.