Something happened earlier this year in Formula 1 that David has literally never seen in sports. Formula 1 superstar Lewis Hamilton announced he would be leaving his current team Mercedes Benz to drive for Ferrari. An athlete leaving a team is not new. But Hamilton said he wasn’t leaving until NEXT season (2025), and for THIS entire current year, he would keep driving for Mercedes before jumping ship. As it turned out, Mercedes Benz didn’t know about his announcement until the last minute. Imagine what would happen to a soldier from North Korea who told his government he was going to defect to the South, but not until a year from now? Perhaps that’s an extreme example, but imagine even if Patrick Mahomes said he was leave the Kansas City Chiefs and already signed a contract with the Denver Broncos, but his preference was to plaone more season with the Chiefs before leaving. How would Chiefs head coach Andy Reid react to such news?
In this second half of our discussion about Formula 1 and Drive to Survive, David and Eugene talk about Lewis’s crazy contract announcement and why it somehow worked in his case. We also discuss why F1 cars are so incredibly complicated, how F1 driving is truly nothing like “normal” driving, and Eugene reacts to David’s theory of the “futility” of supercars.
As always, thanks for listening!
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“To drive an F1 car you have to be a little mad.” - Jenson Button