So if you want to develop new wings, that's a, as Mark outlined, a big resource drain, but it's also true of time and allowance. So if you think you can get more out of doing things on the floor and it's a choice between doing floors or wings, in Red Bull's case, you've got to make a tougher choice than maybe teams who've got a bit more wriggle room and can do dual programmes because they've got more allowance. 53 points behind McLaren. Red Bull are

now down in third in the Constructors' Championship. Mathematically, still in it, but they were a long shot before it and now they're a vanishingly long shot for that even if Sergio Perez who had another tough weekend and finished 10th was to suddenly catapult back to form for Qatar and Abu Dhabi I don't think Red Bull would be able to get it over the line anyway but yeah the Drivers' Championship was a big enough celebration for them. Scott let's talk about McLaren now because this was always likely to be the weakest race of this triple header that ends the season for mclaren but how surprised were you to see lando norris and oscar piastri six and seven yeah

i think that was the main surprise not that they didn't win because i think we all thought that ferrari had the edge for this track and versus mclaren it certainly did no one expected obviously mer to come in and be the interloper for everybody so the extent of the trouble and the fact that Verstappen managed to beat both of them as well will be the big disappointment for for McLaren this is a car that in we've seen a few times this year they've addressed the issue they had last season where they didn't have a good enough family of rear wings at low downforce so when they go low drag the car can actually be quite good but it doesn't work at low drag in cold conditions like this one and Norris said actually post-race that this has been a weakness that he's been banging on about basically for six years at McLaren and still hasn't been addressed so it just wasn't it just wasn't one that brought the best out of the car they struggled like everybody with the the warm-up of the tyres in in qualifying but then the problem in the race was they just again like pretty much everybody that wasn't driving a Mercedes just couldn't stop the graining and then Andrea Stella said that it was only in the final stint when they seemed to make quite a few changes extreme changes i think he described them as to the tools that are available to the driver within the car and then also some driving style stuff that norris suddenly didn't have any graining anymore and was at the pace of the leaders the only caveat to that you obviously have to add is by the end of the race is when the track's usually grippiest and warmest and graining should be less of an issue the cars are also the lightest that they are the whole race so there's just sort of less sliding about all over the place in general so it's hard to judge um how much McLaren actually got on top of that because Stella said that there'd be useful learnings for the team how much better it was in that final stint the upshot was just a big disappointment I mean they're really lucky that Mercedes got in the way of Ferrari otherwise this could have been a massive loss if Ferrari posted a 1-2 here and the McLarens had been not even on the podium that'd have been an even bigger loss in the Constructors Championship so they've kind of got away lightly here. And now, obviously, they go to two circuits at the end of the season, Qatar in particular, where they should be a lot stronger. There

was definitely a sense that McLaren thought they might be a bit weak here because of those conditions and that particular long-term weakness in the car that Norris identified. And Stella was quite punchy in terms of it being a clear message to the men and women of McLaren, as he put it, to really utilise the learning to improve the car in the future. But he was also quite specific about Norris having a weakness with the front limitation and when graining is the problem, being a bit too aggressive with the car. And I think it was Monza we saw that evident, actually, in the battle with Ferrari. And it was clearly going to be a problem here. And he talked on Saturday after qualifying about it being a struggle for Lando. So if he's made a driving-style breakthrough in combination with some of those other learnings they did with the tools in that final stint, then that's going to be quite a big deal for Norris, I think. And it's sort of indicative of something we were talking about on another episode of the podcast, about how quickly he learns. And Stella was pointing that out post-race as well, in terms of referencing him against Max Verstappen as the benchmark. Lando's learned very quickly this season, and that's maybe another area that he's tidied up in what was otherwise quite a difficult weekend for McLaren. We should note as well that Oscar

Piastri did a little bit of bad parking at the start wasn't quite in his grid slot I did ask him about that after the race he didn't have any particular reason why it happened just a slight misjudgment it's hard to line these cars up it wasn't quite as extreme as the the Perez one a few races ago but yeah just I don't think that made much difference to his race it's just a five second penalty but yeah I think McLaren will be glad to be leaving Vegas and heading to Qatar, where the car should be good, and Abu Dhabi as well. You have to say McLaren still in a decent position to get that Constructors' Championship. Ben, let's get into the midfield. Now, Nico Hülkenberg won the midfield battle ahead of Yuki Tsunoda and Sergio Perez. Although he scored points in four of the last five events, his form did have a little bit of a wobble. So how good was this weekend from Nico Hülkenberg?