Interview Podcast with Julia Sasso

I spoke with Julia Sas­so, a cam­pus cor­re­spon­dent at The Dai­ly Cam­pus and mem­ber of UCTV Sports who is a mas­sive fan of For­mu­la 1. She has writ­ten arti­cles on For­mu­la 1 with a ton of passion.

As some­one who is not famil­iar with the sport, I want­ed to learn about it as it is con­tin­u­ing to rise in popularity.

Help­ful links:

For­mu­la 1 website

ESPN F1

Tran­script:

Sam: And we are live! Hi, this is Sam Cal­houn. This is the pod­cast where I go around to dif­fer­ent sports that I don’t know much about and learn about them and see if I could get myself into them. So there’s no real title for it, but for the first episode, I’m here with the love­ly Julia Sas­so. How are you, Julia?

Julia: I’m good, how are you?

Sam: I’m doing good. So for con­text, Julia is a mas­sive motor­sport rac­ing fan, espe­cial­ly in For­mu­la 1. For me, I’ve tried like NASCAR and like all that stuff. Like the clos­est I’ve gone to watch­ing some­thing with cars going “vroom vroom” is like the “Cars” movie. So, for some­one who does­n’t watch a lot of this, I want to know what got you into For­mu­la 1 in the first place? I know you’re friends with me and you lived in Brazil. Did it start there or did it come when you were in the U.S.? How did this, I won’t say obses­sion, but fan­dom start?

Julia: So, F1 just kind of always been present in my life in one way or anoth­er. When I was real­ly young, my dad used to watch it because there were Brazil­ian dri­vers rac­ing at that point. I hat­ed it because it was tak­ing up car­toon time on Sun­day morn­ing. I was like, “Please, just let me watch car­toons,” and my dad was like, “No, I got­ta watch the race.” But what real­ly start­ed for me was, dur­ing COVID, I loved watch­ing sports doc­u­men­taries. And I start­ed watch­ing “Dri­ve to Sur­vive”, which is the For­mu­la 1 doc­u­men­tary on Net­flix, which, now that I am a fan, is kind of unre­al­is­tic. Look­ing back, it’s very dif­fer­ent from the actu­al sport, but like that real­ly got me into it. And then I start­ed watch­ing races in 2023, so two years ago. And, yeah, it’s just I’ve been unable to stop since.

Sam: I mean, that’s great, just know­ing how you make it, not your entire per­son­al­i­ty, but a big part of it. I fig­ured it would be like a very long rela­tion­ship- you and For­mu­la 1. I’m sur­prised that it’s only been real­ly two years of being this, this into it before, before that time, did you watch any oth­er sports? Or was this kind of like your “wel­come to the sports world?”

Julia: No, before that, I watched soc­cer. Like I said, I grew up in Brazil, and that’s just a huge part of the cul­ture. So in Brazil, there’s a soc­cer game every Wednes­day night, and usu­al­ly on Sun­days or Sat­ur­days too. So that’s what we do as a fam­i­ly. Like that was just such a big part. And also, I used to watch hock­ey before that. I got into hock­ey a cou­ple years ago, like two or three years before I got into For­mu­la One. So that’s yeah, sports have always just kind of been part of my life.

Sam: Hock­ey in Brazil. How’d that work.

Julia: No, I got into hock­ey when I was already liv­ing in the U.S.

Sam: Gotcha now. So how dif­fer­ent is “Dri­ve to Sur­vive” from the actu­al races? You said it was dras­ti­cal­ly different.

Julia: Yeah, it’s real­ly, real­ly dif­fer­ent because it real­ly, like, over-dra­ma­tizes every­thing. Like, yes, there is a lot of dra­ma in For­mu­la 1. It’s a sport where, if you like watch­ing real­i­ty TV, that’s the sport for you, because every turn there’s dra­ma every inter­view, it’s like, yeah, they like to be sassy with each oth­er. It’s real­ly fun­ny to watch, but like, “Dri­ve to Sur­vive” just kind of makes dra­ma where there isn’t and does­n’t real­ly use the actu­al dra­ma of the sea­son, like they cut out a lot of like, real­ly, like dra­mat­ic stuff and like dri­vers argu­ing with each oth­er, and then kind of cre­ate prob­lems where there isn’t any. They also will occa­sion­al­ly use radio mes­sages from dif­fer­ent like, they’ll have the shot of one race, but then use the radio mes­sage from anoth­er one to make it seem like things were like, more like a dri­ver was mad at anoth­er one for some­thing, when, like, in real­i­ty, in that race, he was like, “Yeah, whatever.”

Sam: “Okay, so I don’t know Jack malarkey about For­mu­la 1, so for some­one that does­n’t know any­thing, and that could be both me and maybe some­one who’s lis­ten­ing this, give me the basics for F1 and how is it dif­fer­ent from NASCAR and IndyCar?”

Julia: Okay so I’d say the major dif­fer­ence from those two, well, from NASCAR, F1 is a sin­gle seater, so like NASCAR, like, like, nor­mal cars kind of F1 is not, it’s just one seat they have. It’s not a cab­in, the—I for­got the name of the thing they sit in, but yeah. And then from Indy­Car. Indy­Car is a spec series, which means every sin­gle team has the exact same car, and then they just have to be the fastest with like lit­tle adjust­ments that they can make in For­mu­la 1. It’s not only a rac­ing com­pe­ti­tion, it’s an engi­neer­ing com­pe­ti­tion. Each team makes their own car. They from scratch, like they build it. They have the basic reg­u­la­tions they have to meet. But oth­er than that, like they are free to do what­ev­er they want and try what­ev­er con­cepts they want. That’s why there’s, like, a much big­ger gap, usu­al­ly in For­mu­la One, between teams than in sports like Indy­Car, NASCAR because those are spec series. So like, every sin­gle team has the exact same car in those series, but For­mu­la 1, each car is, like, com­plete­ly different.

Sam: Got you. So, like, you kind of say a lit­tle bit the basics. But could you elab­o­rate on that, like, just sole­ly on For­mu­la 1, because you did note high­light the dif­fer­ences. But could you elab­o­rate on just like the basics of For­mu­la 1 itself?

Julia: Yeah, so For­mu­la 1, it’s like, there’s usu­al­ly two com­pe­ti­tions going on at once dur­ing the sea­son; there’s the dri­vers’ com­pe­ti­tion, and then there’s the con­struc­tors, which are the teams. So, each team builds their own car from scratch, and they do test­ing over the win­ter break, and the sea­son usu­al­ly starts late Feb­ru­ary, ear­ly March. And so each team has two dri­vers, and each dri­ver is com­pet­ing for the win, and each spot up to 10th place gets points. And so the dri­ver with the most points at the end of the sea­son wins the Dri­vers Cham­pi­onship. That’s all the dri­vers. The dri­vers are essen­tial­ly like each fight­ing for their for their own, like they don’t like the oth­er dri­vers don’t mat­ter for the team. How­ev­er, it’s the sum of points between the two dri­vers that count. There’s only two. There’s only two dri­vers per team, where that’s anoth­er dif­fer­ence from Indy­Car. Indy­Car has three to four dri­vers per team, and they have, like, sin­gle entries in some races, but For­mu­la One, there’s only 20 dri­vers, two dri­vers per team, 10 teams, and those dri­vers are rac­ing full year, unless they get switched mid sea­son, which is one of the many dra­mas of For­mu­la One. So they’re com­pet­ing. So the sum of points between two dri­vers goes to the team, and then the team with the most points at the end of the sea­son wins the con­struc­tors. And for that they get a real­ly, real­ly, real­ly large sum of mon­ey, like upwards of 50-some­thing mil­lion dol­lars per year.

Sam: Like that all goes to them, or do they get split?

Julia: No, that goes to the team that wins it. And then as they go down, they get, like, a lit­tle less mon­ey, but the team that gets last gets more test­ing time in wind tun­nels, so they get to more test­ing time for their aero­dy­nam­ics than next year. And also, each team has, like, a cost gap, how much they can spend on the car and on the team through­out the year. And if you sur­pass that, you get a fine and, yeah.

Sam: Okay, that’s a lot to take in.

Julia: Yeah.

Sam: But I’m sure that was the same for you when you got into this. So you talked about the many sto­ry­lines that were com­ing into the sea­son, like dri­ver switch­es and what­not. So the sea­son just began—what was it, last weekend?

Julia: Two week­ends ago.

Sam: Two week­ends ago. Thank you. So going into the sea­son, it’s still ear­ly on. What sto­ry­lines are com­ing into this For­mu­la 1 sea­son? Because we’re both jour­nal­ism majors, you can kind of go into detail on this.

Julia: Okay, so the main sto­ry­lines are the six rook­ies last year. [The pre­vi­ous sea­son of] For­mu­la 1 was one of the first years in, I think, like over a decade that For­mu­la 1 went into the sea­son with­out any rook­ies. This year, they have six new dri­vers, and the rook­ies are in teams that are like, do or die. There’s a say­ing in For­mu­la 1, which is: “You’re only as good as your last race,” which shows just how short-term mem­o­ry this sport is. If you mess up in one race, you’re essen­tial­ly like a—

Sam: A lit­tle bit like March Mad­ness, where if you don’t win it all, your team gets viewed poorly.

Julia: Yeah, exact­ly. So there are two main rook­ies who, it’s only the sec­ond sea­son, but their seat is already on the line. So mid-sea­son swaps were not a huge thing in For­mu­la 1 three or four years ago. How­ev­er, Red Bull has a ten­den­cy. Red Bull is known as the most cut­throat team. They were at the top for the last four years. Max Ver­stap­pen is now a four-time con­sec­u­tive World Cham­pi­on. And Red Bull won three con­sec­u­tive years, lost last year, just by a very small mar­gin to McLaren. They have had, I believe, five or so dri­vers in their seat, in their sec­ond Red Bull seat for over the last six years.

Sam: So it’s like a revolv­ing door.

Julia: Yeah, exact­ly. And the cur­rent dri­ver is Liam Law­son, who’s a rook­ie. He’s replac­ing Checo Perez, who was next to Max Ver­stap­pen last year, and he was under­per­form­ing a lot, so then he got replaced by the end of the year by Liam Law­son, who had replaced for­mer Red Bull dri­ver Daniel Ricar­do in Red Bul­l’s sis­ter team Rac­ing Bulls

Sam: Is that the F2 thing?

Julia: No. So Red Bull is the only team on the grid that has tech­ni­cal­ly kind of two teams. They have their main team and then they have a small­er sis­ter team.

Sam: Sounds a lit­tle unfair.

Julia: Which is run—yeah, yeah, it is. And it brings up a lot of con­tro­ver­sy, espe­cial­ly when they’re switch­ing dri­vers back and forth between the teams. So what’s hap­pen­ing is Liam Law­son is now not per­form­ing like he was sup­posed to, which when you’re being com­pared to four times, once in a gen­er­a­tion, tal­ent, Max Ver­stap­pen, there’s no com­par­i­son. The car is not real­ly good, which is some­thing their for­mer dri­ver had been say­ing for a long time, but nobody was lis­ten­ing to him, because his coun­ter­part is Max Ver­stap­pen, who could win in a trac­tor. Like Max Ver­stap­pen can win races that you’re like he should not have won. How did he do that? He won Brazil in the rain start­ing from 16th. Wow. Like he can put in dri­ves that are unbe­liev­able. And so his dri­ver, because in For­mu­la 1, your biggest rival is your team­mate, because that’s the only guy that has the exact same car as you. So with Max, his team­mates haven’t been com­par­ing over the last five, six years. I mean, yeah, because he is the best in the world. So what Red Bull will do is they’ll con­stant­ly change dri­vers, hop­ing to find some­one who will meet Max even, like halfway through. But Max is not at 100 he’s at like 5000 so meet­ing him halfway through is near impos­si­ble in a car that’s real­ly, real­ly strug­gling. So that’s one of the main head­lines. Is, Will Liam Law­son make it to the end of the sea­son after the last race, the last two races, which were the first two of the sea­son, he has qual­i­fied in dead last both races, and he has he did put a pret­ty good race last race on Chi­na, how­ev­er, he was still out­side of the points. He has yet to score any points, and there are already rumors of him get­ting replaced by anoth­er dri­ver. The issue is, who would that dri­ver be? We don’t know because anoth­er prob­lem with Red Bull is their refusal to pro­mote Yuki Tsun­o­da, who has been rac­ing with their sis­ter team for, I believe, five years now, and he has put up real­ly good per­for­mances. He has been the one con­stant in that team, how­ev­er, they still will not give him a chance at the Red Bull seat, and nobody knows why. Nobody knows why they choose to do that, why they won’t pro­mote him, even though he’s putting up real­ly, real­ly good per­for­mance in a car that is way sub­par with the main Red Bull car. So it would be inter­est­ing to see if they choose to replace him, who they choose to replace him with, the team prin­ci­pal Chris­t­ian Horner, at the begin­ning of this week­end, was say­ing, “You know, we’re going to give him time. We’re going to see how he goes.” By the end of the week­end, it was already a dif­fer­ent sto­ry. He was already giv­ing quotes more to the terms of you can see that he will prob­a­bly get replaced. We don’t know when. We don’t know by who, but if he does­n’t start per­form­ing soon, it will like­ly happen.

BREAKING: Yuki Tsun­o­da will replace Liam Law­son at Red Bull from the Japan­ese Grand Prix#F1 pic.twitter.com/FCXUOyoBBZ

— For­mu­la 1 (@F1) March 27, 2025

Sam: Inter­est­ing. All right, so that’s all the time we have. Thank you so much. I learned so much, and maybe. Be maybe I’ll actu­al­ly watch a race or half. So thank you so much. And, yeah, thank you so much for lis­ten­ing, and we’ll see you. See you whenever.