F1 European Preview

Key takeaways

• New Madrid is ranked last or near-last by both hosts, and the concerns run deeper than the circuit layout. Carlos Sainz completed a promotional lap meant to inspire confidence, but the footage showed a construction site with dirt, loose cones, and unfinished grandstands. The first-corner chicane is reportedly tighter and slower than Miami's, and the layout has been squeezed between convention centers and highways. The biggest structural worry is contractual: Madrid holds a 10-season deal running from 2026 through 2035, meaning a dull or half-finished circuit cannot simply be dropped. Silverstone has reportedly floated stepping in as a backup if the track isn't ready by September.

• Both hosts rank Monaco 9th or 10th, and Spanners argues that F1 media has run a decades-long campaign to oversell it. The race itself offers almost no real overtaking. The delta required to pass at Monaco is effectively infinite, because a defending driver doesn't need to be faster — just wide. Spanners cites the 2013 season, when Mercedes qualified a full second clear of the field but simply parked the bus at Monaco and held position all afternoon while Sebastian Vettel fumed behind them. Spanners credits broadcasters with commercial ties to the race for turning up the volume on Saturday qualifying to compensate for Sunday's processional nature, and calls that a "business need" rather than honest coverage.

• Baku sits 8th for both hosts — acknowledged as the least bad street circuit but still reliant on chaos. Its back straight runs 1.36 miles and is the longest in F1, and the circuit alternates between wide-open sections and Monaco-level tightness through the castle walls. The problem is that its most memorable moments tend to arrive through crashes rather than racing. Both hosts are uncomfortable cheering for accidents as the entertainment delivery mechanism. Spanners raises one 2026-specific wrinkle: Audi's powerful turbo unit could make the car nearly impossible to pass on the straight, which might push the team to strip all its downforce and gamble everything on qualifying.

• The biggest disagreement of the episode is between the Hungaroring and Austria. Megan ranks Hungary 6th and Austria 2nd; Spanners effectively reverses those placements, putting Hungary 3rd and Austria 5th. Spanners concedes mid-conversation that nostalgia is distorting his Hungary ranking — in earlier decades he didn't need overtaking to feel satisfied, but he admits modern F1 conditions require it, and Hungary doesn't reliably deliver. Austria, by contrast, generates exciting racing with unusual consistency. The Red Bull Ring's short layout packs in multiple error-generating corners, elevation changes that confuse braking points, and enough room at turn four for side-by-side battles. Megan admits openly that the rolling alpine scenery may have pushed Austria all the way to second on her list.

• Spa is treated as the purest racing circuit in Europe but gets bumped by the tracks above it. Megan puts it third; Spanners puts it second. The argument for Spa is that there is no place to hide anywhere on the lap: La Source, Eau Rouge, Kemmel Straight, La Combe, Pouhon, Blanchimont, and the Bus Stop chicane all produce racing opportunities in sequence. Being on pole is a genuine disadvantage because the pole-sitter punches a hole in the air for the entire field down the long straights. Both hosts find losing Spa as a regular calendar fixture genuinely painful — starting next season it will alternate annually with Barcelona to make room for Madrid.

• Silverstone is a unanimous number one, and neither host feels the need to justify it at length. Built on a former RAF airfield and on the calendar since 1950, it holds what Spanners calls the best sequence of racing corners in grand prix history: Brooklands, Luffield, and Copse feeding into Maggots and Becketts and the Hanger Straight. Cars can run side by side through multiple consecutive bends, which is rare at any circuit. Spanners volunteers that even if Silverstone were in France — the highest possible insult he can imagine — he would still be forced to call it the best circuit in the world.

Notable moments

• Spanners declares Monaco "should be 11 on a list of 10" and says F1 journalists with commercial ties to the sport have spent decades telling viewers they're watching it wrong.
• Spanners calls Monaco "basically France," arguing it's a principality in name only. Megan immediately threatens to tell Charles Leclerc.
• The 2013 silver bus: Mercedes qualified a second faster than the entire field but refused to race at Monaco, holding position all afternoon while Vettel was powerless behind them.
• Carlos Sainz's Madrid promotional lap, shot on what looked like a dirt track with cones and unfinished concrete, prompted Spanners to ask why anyone would release that footage if the goal was instilling confidence.
• On the overtaking delta at Monaco: "I think at Monaco, the delta you need is infinite, because no one ever overtakes."
• At the 2021 Hungaroring, Valtteri Bottas lost control in damp conditions on lap one and collected Norris, Perez, and Verstappen in a single incident, handing Hamilton a comfortable afternoon.
• Spanners recalls the Schumacher-Hakkinen battle at Spa where both drivers had to split around backmarker Ricardo Zonta through the Kemmel Straight while simultaneously racing each other, a moment he describes as one of the greatest in the sport's history.
• Megan reveals she grew up with The Sound of Music as her favorite film and describes watching Austria's race as her "two worlds colliding." Spanners ends the episode by breaking into "So Long, Farewell," prompting Megan to say it is the greatest thing that has ever happened on the podcast.
• On Monza's chicane controversies: Spanners argues the turn-one chicane is "horrible for racing" and walks through why the 2021 Verstappen-Hamilton collision there was almost geometrically inevitable.

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