He, he never got close.

Can I ask you a question, Sam? Because there's something I don't understand about what's going on in Mercedes at the moment.

Just very quickly looking at Ferrari, at the start of the year, Lewis Hamilton came out, he was brilliant, and Charles Leclerc came out and said, "I don't understand what's going wrong.

The setup isn't working for me on this side of the carro- garage." So he nestled himself into Lewis Hamilton's side of the garage, had a look at his data, had a look at his setup, learnt from Lewis Hamilton, and we've seen the effects of that.

He went on to win at Silverstone.

He had a brilliant race here in Belgium, finishing second, nearly winning it.

Why isn't George Russell looking closer at the other side of the garage? Because he was speaking to the media during the...

[laughs]

I mean, kind of, how have they managed to be so much more consistent than the rest of the competitors and have solidified themselves firmly as the best of the rest at the top of the midfield?

Yeah, I mean, they've obviously got that Mercedes engine in the back, which we know is the most powerful, which is very helpful.

They've obviously got their interpretation of the aero regs right as well.

I think with Colapinto, it's his first full season as an F1 driver now.

And it's funny, isn't it? Because it's such a fickle old world Formula One.

At the start of the year, people were writing off Colapinto and asking at which race was he going to get dropped.

But then he was seventh in Miami.

It's going to be an interesting one to watch as the regulations settle and we see the driver market kind of expand, surely.

At least for myself, I don't get the impression he'd be coming out this strongly if he was winning.

I mean, I do agree with you.

So I find this one a bit tricky because watching qualifying in Suzuka on Saturday gave me the chills.

It was deeply, deeply unenjoyable.

So I can only imagine what it's like for the racing drivers who have spent their entire lives pushing as hard as they possibly can to now know that they have to lift through the high speed corners and then they'll go faster.

This is absolutely the pinnacle of motorsport, or at least it should be.

And they should be driving flat out and pushing as hard as they can, man and machine working perfectly together.

Or you have the likes of Nico Rosberg who after the kind of mammoth championship battle that he had just very quickly bowed out from the sport both of those drivers very similar again as you mentioned had young families one chose to stay in the sport but to switch teams and one chose just to leave altogether do you see Max Verstappen is more likely to leave completely or is more likely to kind of take the plunge and move away from the team that he's been with for his whole life

Is that sort of what you're expecting to see coming into Australia this weekend?

Yeah, I mean, I would definitely err on the side of cynical when it comes to testing.

Everyone's favorite word is sandbagging, meaning, you know, we don't really know.

We don't know anything, actually.

We don't know what engine modes they're running.

We don't know what fuel they're running.

We don't know what programs they're running.

Do you think that he's raring to go? Or do you think he's kind of just letting, you know, getting swallowed up by all the momentum towards the likes of Mercedes Ferrari? Or do you think he, again, he's one that we obviously have to watch?

Rebecca, first of all, give us that sense of what the atmosphere is like in the F1 paddock, in the pit lane, in the garages, when we've got drivers up for a world title.

It is extremely tense.

As you say, there are three races to go.

It's a triple header.

They're going to come thick and fast, and this season has been very intense.

It is a three-way fight.

Well, maybe not so much a three-way fight anymore, I would probably say, but certainly it has been a three-way fight during the season between the two McLaren drivers of Norris and Piastri and Max Verstappen in the Red Bull right up there.

But in a way, has he been able to use that honesty, that self-criticalness to really improve and to do it within the team as well? That's a different dynamic, isn't it, when you're battling someone for a title, but it happens to also be your team-mate?