wow

um so it's about half a second every two months something like that so that's that's really really steep and and we we did everything in our power to launch a car at the start of the year that was going to be strong and you know Thank goodness it was a fair effort.

But one of the things about our development strategy was we took a decision internally on the aerodynamic side and on the, on the body work side of the car, that we were going to leave it later than we've ever left a car before by, by several weeks.

And, uh, and that we were going to do a plan that, that had less than no contingency in it.

and uh and and as a result of that plan we got as much that very very steep development slope we got as much of that steep development slope in the first car at the first race as i think was humanly possible to get in there and and we we emptied everything out to do that other teams maybe didn't arrive with quite the sort of you know, quite such a late breaking as close to the wire result.

And as a consequence, they updated their car sooner because they fixed their car earlier in time.

they then were developing the first upgrade to arrive sooner in the season.

What do you envisage happening? Like we said before, you can never underestimate the competition.

What was it that kind of unlocked that mechanical compliance that allowed for Kimi to navigate the streets of Monaco, the famously tight, twisty circuit, so, so easily and secure that victory?

I think you have to give a lot of credit mostly to the way Kimi drove it.

Um, but we did bring a bit of extra weaponry for the car to this year's Monaco, weaponry we'd been missing for the last several seasons there.

Um, Monaco presents lots of challenges.

It's very slow, very twisty, but it's also surprisingly, uh, up and down-y, and there's a lot of, uh, change of gradient in the corners themselves, and that can leave a car very easily trying to sort of hobble its way around the corner on three wheels, lifting either, um, an inside front or sometimes even an inside rear tire.

And what you would ideally like is a suspension system that is supple enough that the inside wheel will droop down and touch the ground, keep all four of the tires in contact with the ground even when it's being provoked by some fairly aggressive terrain [laughs] in the case of Monaco.

And, uh, and we have, uh, we have come to Monaco for several years just bringing the sort of classical springs and bars that, that go fine at, at flat racing tracks, but are not great on the street circuit of Monaco.

Mm-hmm