How to Watch F1 . . . and Learn Its Secrets

It's Not the Car

Formula 1 can be so boring. The King Mother-Humper of dull TV, with so much unknown: Why is Danny Ric slow now? Are those cars battling, or does it just look that way? How many different hairstyles can Lando Norris possibly have, and why does every single one make him look like a dapper little cutie patootie?

Here’s the catch: Every broadcast holds answers. And when you know how to find them, F1 gets *way* better.

INTC co-host Ross Bentley is a professional driver coach. He gets paid to watch racing, and he sees things in F1 that you don’t. Here now, he shares his methods!

This show’s format rotates weekly, because squirrel. We call this format “Instant Expert.”

Related Trivia: Jeff had commitments at tape time, so this one is just Ross and Sam. For the record, Sam needs a haircut. Sam’s wife says he should stop telling the barber to “cut it like Lando,” and that he looks nothing like that kid no matter what they tell him at the local Curl Up and Dye, but she is wrong, you see, even if Sam is middle-aged and balding and his body is basically just a sad quilt of farmer’s tan and coffee stains, and well, er, LOOK, TINY WHITE LIES ARE ALL THAT GET SOME OF US THROUGH THE NIGHT, OKAY? PLEASE JUST LET ME HAVE THIS

This episode was produced by Mike Perlman.

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ABOUT THE SHOW:

It’s Not the Car is a podcast about people and speed. We tell racing stories and leave out the boring parts.

Ross Bentley is a former IndyCar driver and an internationally renowned performance coach and author. Jeff Braun is a championship-winning race engineer. Sam Smith is an award-winning journalist and a former executive editor of Road & Track magazine. Together, we explore the emotion at the heart of the machine.

We don’t love racing for the nuts and bolts—we love it for what it asks of the bag of meat at the wheel.

New episodes every Tuesday.