Oct 9, 2026 · 31 min · 14 segments
It's time for the F1 Night Race at the Marina Bay circuit in Singapore! Who's car can get through all of the twisty bits on a street track that will challenge the drivers physically as well as…
All right, well, zooming in on the weekend proper, not a ton of news because obviously we're in the middle of the back-to-back-to-back, so it's been mostly people picking up and moving.
One of the more fun stories, we were talking about this in the pre-show, Valtteri Bottas has made it to the circuit after biking all the way from Sepang to Marina Bay.
He's lucky he didn't get bitten by something very colorful and very poisonous, apparently.
So we're glad that he made it and he's all okay and expects to race just fine this weekend.
Turning a little bit to something more concerning, especially if you're a Mercedes fan, especially if you guys are George Russell supporters, George Russell is going to have a bit of a painful weekend.
At least that's how it looks on paper.
So he's going to probably be starting at the back.
I'm assuming they're going to do a whole big set of changes, expecting him to start at the back.
He's also going to revert back.
to the previous spec of car.
So all those Mercedes updates that we were so terrified of, apparently they haven't gotten their arms around them yet.
They want to do some comparisons across the weekend to figure out what's working and what's not.
you gotta almost think that that's concession on the team that they don't think he's in it for the title at this point, because, uh, that's probably it.
But Cody, what's your thought on all this, uh, interesting Mercedes news of nothing else.
I think the engine penalty was going to be coming no matter what, because, uh, from what I was hearing is, uh, engine that he was using had been used for 6th Grand Prix, and that's pretty much right up against the mileage of what they want to put on these engines.
So he was going to need a new one anyway.
He was going to be taking that penalty.
And with how much Mercedes seemed to underperform in Malaysia, especially with their new upgrade package, it sounds like they want to be able to run each spec at the same track to really crunch the data and see if, you know, if Malaysia was kind of a one-off weird thing that happened or whether their upgrade package just isn't being set up correctly or if it's just not actually going to work as intended.
So, yeah, they want to, I guess, take the opportunity to use George Russell as the guinea pig since he's going to be starting far back because of the engine penalty anyway.
You know, honestly, he's probably more used to the old spec of car anyway, so he might feel a little better driving it.
I don't know.
All right, well, zooming in on the weekend proper, not a ton of news because obviously we're in the middle of the back-to-back-to-back, so it's been mostly people picking up and moving.
One of the more fun stories, we were talking about this in the pre-show, Valtteri Bottas has made it to the circuit after biking all the way from Sepang to Marina Bay.
He's lucky he didn't get bitten by something very colorful and very poisonous, apparently.
So we're glad that he made it and he's all okay and expects to race just fine this weekend.
Turning a little bit to something more concerning, especially if you're a Mercedes fan, especially if you guys are George Russell supporters, George Russell is going to have a bit of a painful weekend.
At least that's how it looks on paper.
So he's going to probably be starting at the back.
I'm assuming they're going to do a whole big set of changes, expecting him to start at the back.
He's also going to revert back.
to the previous spec of car.
So all those Mercedes updates that we were so terrified of, apparently they haven't gotten their arms around them yet.
They want to do some comparisons across the weekend to figure out what's working and what's not.
you gotta almost think that that's concession on the team that they don't think he's in it for the title at this point, because, uh, that's probably it.
But Cody, what's your thought on all this, uh, interesting Mercedes news of nothing else.
I think the engine penalty was going to be coming no matter what, because, uh, from what I was hearing is, uh, engine that he was using had been used for 6th Grand Prix, and that's pretty much right up against the mileage of what they want to put on these engines.
So he was going to need a new one anyway.
He was going to be taking that penalty.
And with how much Mercedes seemed to underperform in Malaysia, especially with their new upgrade package, it sounds like they want to be able to run each spec at the same track to really crunch the data and see if, you know, if Malaysia was kind of a one-off weird thing that happened or whether their upgrade package just isn't being set up correctly or if it's just not actually going to work as intended.
So, yeah, they want to, I guess, take the opportunity to use George Russell as the guinea pig since he's going to be starting far back because of the engine penalty anyway.
You know, honestly, he's probably more used to the old spec of car anyway, so he might feel a little better driving it.
I don't know.
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