AUSTRALIA
FREE PRACTICE THREE
Coming soon…
QUALIFYING
“It’ll be like road runner jumping off the face of a cliff.”
“9, it’s kind of an “arrive and drive” now.”
“It’s like pulling the handbrake on.”
“Some drivers believe you should, some drivers believe you absolutely shouldn’t, and I’m one of those, and I have seen drivers with broken thumbs who hang onto the steering wheel.”
“I believe anyone who finishes this race tomorrow will be in the points.”
“That’s world class from Antonelli. That reminds me of Michael Schumacher and others who shunt a car and go out and just start delivering straight away, that sort of inner confidence, that’s super impressive.”
“Brand new tyres, you’ll love them, although about 8 to 10 kilometres from now you’ll hate them.”
“These cars are difficult to drive […] can you imagine on a half wet, half dry day on inters!?”
“Harry flatters if you can through Turn 12.”
George Russell: “Merci. Thank you.”
Crofty: “French, now!”
Martin: “From an Englishman talking to an Austrian.”
“Total domination by Mercedes Benz… 2014?”
RACE
“To finish first, first you must finish.”
“Lando should get a toothpaste sponsor or something, because I’ve not seen him with anything other than a big grin since Abu Dhabi.”
(Piastri crashes going to the grid)
“I’m going to cry – look at the crowd there, that incredible crowd, I had a tear in my eye.”
Martin: “Kimi, everything good?”
Kimi Antonelli: “Feeling good.”
Martin: “Yeah, that’s all you need to say, isn’t it?”
“They [Ferrari] haven’t got the rear wing that does the somersault.”
“Terry Crews, he’s not a man you normally tap on the shoulder, but I’m going to.”
(to Pat Cummins)
“Thanks for thrashing our cricketers this year.”
“This is going to be a day of attrition. This is going to be a day to survive.”
“These cars collect 8 megajoules per lap. Every 16 laps, they could run your house for the day.”
“If he [Russell] had fillings in his teeth, they’d be rattling out.”
(Hadjar’s engine detonates)
“The oily bits met each other, I’m afraid.”
“I’m hearing their [Ferrari’s] lead strategist, also known as Lewis Hamilton, is not at all happy.”
(re Russell)
“King’s Lynn’s fastest Formula 1 driver. Sadly.”
“Ominous for the rest of the field.”
CHINA
Martin did not commentate in China; Anthony Davidson commentated instead.
JAPAN
Martin did not commentate in Japan; Jenson Button commentated instead.
BAHRAIN
The Bahrain Grand Prix was cancelled.
SAUDI ARABIA
The Saudi Arabian Grand Prix was cancelled.
MIAMI
SPRINT QUALIFYING
“It’s a magical mystery tour as soon as they head out the pits.”
“The front tyre like a 50 pence piece, if you know what a 50 pence piece looks like in the UK.”
“Don’t know who does Racing Bulls’ livery, but I like this one.”
(Verstappen squeezes past Gasly in the pit lane)
“Not a prayer on a New York or London taxi driver to be honest, they’d be much more brutal than that.”
“That hop, skip, and a jump of a chicane I told you about, he [Norris] missed the “skip” out.”
SPRINT
Coming soon…
QUALIFYING
“Those who were happy with their cars will just tickle them a little bit.”
“The perfect lap doesn’t really exist, there’s always something you can improve.”
Martin: “It’s amazing they’ve got that much pressure, isn’t it, in the intake, 4.8 bar, I mean, 1 bar is atmospheric pressure, 1,012 millibars.”
[…]
Crofty: “1,012 bars? Sounds like a good night out to me.”
Martin: “International standard atmosphere is 1,012 millibars, but of course 1 bar must be 1,000 bars, I’m going to assume.”
Crofty: “Thank you, professor. I like it.”
Martin: “Captain, I think you mean.”
Crofty: “Aye-aye, skipper.”
Crofty: “Now, it’s a weird one, this, Martin: every Grand Prix in 2026 has been won from pole, but nobody has ever won from pole or indeed the front row here in Miami, so something has got to give this weekend.”
Martin: “Something will go wrong, then, won’t it? You’re in big trouble, there – you’ve got a conflict of stats, there!”
“This is standard distance to be off Max as his teammate, but Hadjar’s normally been a lot closer than that.”
“Sweet as a nut on the apex kerb there.”
(Bortoleto goes out in his Audi, after Ted declared he would not be going out)
“What do they say, Vorsprung Dorche Technik, or something like that?”
“He’s quick around here, Antonelli. He’s turning out to be quick everywhere else as well.”
“They don’t thank you for bringing an on fire car back to the pit lane.”
“Squeeze the throttle like it’s got an egg underneath it you don’t want to break.”
“Here we go… hop… skip… jump.”
RACE
(to a fan on the grid)
“Do you want to be in the picture as well? It’s alright, I’ll take it for you!”
DJ Khaled: “Shoutout to Team Red Bull…”
[…]
Martin: “Other energy drinks and teams are available.”
(after Jimmy Fallon eats the microphone)
“Do not take my mic sock again!”
Martin: “Nico Hulkenberg, he’s always good for a chat.”
Nico Hulkenberg: “I’m always up for a chat.”
Martin: “Yeah, you are, if I sort of stick my foot out and trip you up.”
Colin Farrell: “I love your shirt!”
Martin: “Yeah, I thought I’d blend in in Miami.”
“I’ve still got my mic sock left. And my voice.”
(Verstappen start replay)
“This is going to be great. Don’t look away from this.”
“83% chance of a safety car around here and it’s 100% in this race.”
“My brain would fry trying to do what the drivers are doing.”
(Verstappen complains that Albon pushed him into the bollard)
“Albon did absolutely nothing wrong there. “Bollard” would be the word.”
“… down there in the marina. The fake marina, that is.”
“Approaching Max will be a bit like approaching a hornet’s nest at the moment.”
“If Piastri wants to be on the podium, he needs to despatch the Red Bull on tyres that wouldn’t pass an MOT test.”
(after the race got moved up by three hours due to a rain threat)
“Well, it didn’t rain, did it?”
“With a damaged suspension we do see him [Leclerc] in some uncharted territory.”
“He got it home, didn’t he, he had all four wheels pointing roughly in the right direction. I’m more in the lines of Nigel Mansell pushing his car over the line in Dallas. […] That’s why I could never be a steward, could I?”
“There’s a lot of Valentino Rossi about him [Antonelli], isn’t there?”
“And on we go to Melbourne. To Montreal, rather.”
CANADA
SPRINT QUALIFYING
Coming soon…
SPRINT
Coming soon…
QUALIFYING
(after interviewing Toto Wolff on the Russell-Antonelli incident)
“To be continued… we’re going to have this conversation a few times this year!”
“Today’s the qualifying show; tomorrow’s about ponchos, I would imagine.”
“It’s fully expected to be wet tomorrow. We’ve heard that before…”
“George feeling the bumps around here, which is good. We don’t want billiard table race tracks.”
(Bernie reports Alonso lost 22km/h at the end of the straight)
“That’s very close to the speed limit in pretty much all of London and Wales. […] On the bicycle I’m worried about getting the points!”
“I don’t think I’d want to do the prep on the dirty side of the back straight.”
“It’s a sort of a hop, skip, and a jump over those kerbs.”
“Lewis really plays dare with that champions’ wall, right up against it.”
RACE
“There’s two ways to go about running a Formula One team: you have a clear number one, a number two; or you get two top-line drivers and just handle the nuclear fallout from there.”
“It’s a real banana down to the first corner.”
“There are 482 points available this season, assuming all the races happen and we don’t add another race back in.”
“Bit of a magical mystery tour.”
“We know how the story ends: it’ll come to blows, it’ll come to running into each other somewhere.”
“Just cuddling these Ferrari tyres here, basically because their blankets are nice and warm.”
Martin: “You seem to have upset the Verstappens.”
Juan Pablo Montoya: “Anything new there?”
Martin: “Lance, what’s it like out there? What sort of grip, the wind conditions and everything?”
Lance Stroll: “No grip.”
Martin: “Well, you got it round, there must be some grip, it came back here!”
Emily Hampshire: “I brought this for you, I came all the way here to bring – it’s a Canadian chocolate coffee crisp.”
Martin: “Thank you! Do you know, I’ve never been given a gift on the grid before! That’s really lovely, thanks very much! Other brands are available, I’m sure.”
Martin: “Lando, all good?”
Lando Norris: “It’s gonna be slidey.”
Martin: “It’s going to be slidey, it’s going to be slippery, let’s see if we can come up with any more words.”
Martin: “Quick word, Max?”
Max Verstappen: “Slippery when wet.”
Martin: “Slippery when wet! I’m liking this, we’ve got a bit of a league table here as to who can come up with the slipperiest phrase.”
“I don’t think you can jump a start that hasn’t happened.”
“We had an injury there as we had lights out and you couldn’t say “away we go”.”
(Norris goes off after being told “we’re going very long”)
“”We’re going very long”: he very nearly wasn’t going anywhere at all.”
“Antonelli is all over him like a rash.”
(Russell breaks down)
“Let’s listen… sounds like a bag of spanners.”
“I lost a wheel once and got out of my Zakspeed and threw the steering wheel and said “find that one as well””.
(sadly not caught on camera)
“As the great Murray Walker would say, catching is one thing, getting past is quite another.”
“Such a shame we lost George Russell, I believe they would have been at it until the last corner of the last lap.”
“I think we’re in for a bit of a classic season, aren’t we?”
Crofty: “It’s your birthday between Canada and Monaco, isn’t it?”
Martin: “It is. You stop counting after a while, don’t you?”
“Peak result for Pete Bonnington, isn’t it? You’ve got Antonelli first and his old mate, Lewis Hamilton, second.”
“He [Hamilton] must have a warehouse for those trophies now, mustn’t he?”
MONACO
Coming soon…
BARCELONA-CATALUNYA
Coming soon…
AUSTRIA
Martin did not commentate in Austria; Karun Chandhok commentated instead.
UNITED KINGDOM
SPRINT QUALIFYING
“But here, you can hear… sorry, my Norfolk language doesn’t quite differentiate between those two.”
“We know this place with the back of our hand, and that’s with a glove on.”
“Any racetrack that has all of its corners with names rather than numbers gets my vote.”
“I’m biased, because I’m British, but I don’t believe there’s anywhere better than Great Britain on a sunny summer day, it’s just we don’t have very many of them.”
(a badly-timed camera angle)
“As we head down the Wellington straight, which is… not there.”
“It does tend to be a bit of a noah’s ark here in terms of your car performance.”
“Is Isack Hadjar faster around here than Max Verstappen in a Red Bull!?”
“You can eat your sandwiches and read the newspaper flat out through there.”
“It would feel pretty gutless, I’m imagining, if you’re just leaning on the internal combustion engine while you’re dragging some batteries around that are not helping you.”
“It’s super important to have ear defenders on babies and youngsters when you’re at a racetrack […] not criticising anybody, but just my advice through my tinnitus, basically.”
“These cars are brilliant at 200mph and rubbish at 20mph.”
SPRINT
Coming soon…
QUALIFYING
Coming soon…
RACE
(LEGO kart race)
“Did you see Lewis was on the track thinking he’d got it by miles and three karts appear from stage right?”
“Into the gravel… yeah, that was never going to work. They were all like lemmings, weren’t they?”
“How’s the track out there? Any LEGO bricks flying around?”
(after hugging Lewis Capaldi)
“I’m hopeless at man hugs, but that was a good one, I think. Right, where am I? I’m on a grid walk, I think.”
“It’s sort of a bit like Piccadilly Circus, people are going in all directions.”
(discussing a clay pigeon shooting charity event with Chris Hoy)
“Story of my life, we only finished second, unfortunately.”
“Hannah [Waddingham], how are you? Please don’t bow down in front of me again, I don’t know what to do.”
“It’s normally rain bouncing off the circuit here, let alone a heat haze.”
(Alonso stops on the formation lap and gets going again)
“Like in the F1 movie. Brad Pitt tried that trick, didn’t he? […] He’ll be leading by the end of the lap.”
“It was spinning its wheels left, right and centre, for Lando.”
(Hamilton gets a penalty for jumping the start)
“With a 5-second penalty, if you were P10 on the grid, it would be worth having that if you made up six places.”
Martin: “Maybe Max said the downshifts are good. We only know four asterisks.”
Crofty: “Good doesn’t tend to get bleeped out.”
Martin: “Good point.”
“Max was doing a wall of death around the outside of The Loop.”
“It seems nuts to get a track limits when your car won’t turn.”
“Have you got a beeping machine, Crofty? I’m going to need it shortly.”
Martin: “You know when the lightbulb came on for Charles? In the Sky F1 show with the two-seater kart.”
Crofty: “Who was his partner that day?”
Martin: “Some bloke called Trundle.”