Safe to say this wasn’t your standard weekend. F1 returned to the United States this weekend for its first Sprint Weekend and it indirectly led to some madness after the race.

On the track, Max Verstappen tied his own record with his 15th win of 2023, but was pushed to the limit when nursing a braking problem as Lewis Hamilton was chasing him down at the end. All this off the back of a Mercedes team that botched their strategy after not being sure about whether they wanted to run a 1-or-2 stop strategy and it may have cost them their first win…

…Only for them to be disqulaified, alongside Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc for having their floors too low tot nhe ground and losing too much wear from their skid block. This led to a big debate about the FIA’s scrutineering process and whether it’s fair or not that only four cars (Verstappen and Norris’ being the other) got their skid block spot checked. Is this okay? Or does it expose a flaw in the system?

Some of the more under the radar drives like Yuki Tsunoda’s 8th and Logan Saregant’s first points in F1 got brought up, and we talk about the first weekend of F1 Academy being live, Marta Garcia’s title wins, and our hopes for the Academy going forward. (Note: We recorded this a day before the news that Garcia will be in FRECA with Prema in 2024 and the series partners will guarantee a seat in the future for a Top 3 Academy finisher, so good!)

All that and more on another Motorsport101! (PS: MotoGP will be back next week, Cam is under the weather at the moment, get well soon brother)

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And here’s Part 2 of our little catch-up as the MotoGP travelling circus headed to Indonesia for its second GP at Mandalika Bay! And with it, another shocking twist in the title fight!

Jorge Martin dominates the Sprint and was leading the GP by three seconds when going offline at Turn 10 led to him to the ol; Ducati: Death, Taxes, Tuck The Front moment. Ouch. It led to Francesco Bagnaia becoming the first man in 17 years to win a MotoGP race from the 5th row of the grid after qualifying struggles. Does anyone want to win this title?

We also had the rumours out of the Honda camp that Miguel Oliveira may end up at Repsol Honda over Johann Zarco and the ramifications that come with a Honda camp now in full rebuild. And we also talk about an excellent written piece and the rumour that Dorna Sports may be sold by their parent company in the near future. Does the sport have a marketing problem? (Yes.)

All that and more on another Motorsport101!

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Okay, some cleanup to take care of here first! Firstly, massive thanks to Lyla Oakes who let us use her Marc Marquez x Gresini Concept Art, she’s the best and we love her! Also, sincere apologies for the delay on this episode, we had some technical problems cleaning up the audio on the backend, so forgive us – If you’re a MotoGP fan, you’ll be getting a lot of content in the coming days!

In this episode, Dre and Cam make sense of one of the biggest MotoGP rider moves ever as Marc Marquez announced he’d be leaving Honda to head to Gresini and Ducati for 2024. We try to make sense of it from all the possible angles. What does it mean for Marc Marquez after 4 years of hell at Repsol Honda? What about Ducati, do they actually want him long-term or do they still see him as a threat? What about Honda, can they now finally have a rebuild with the lack of pressure behind them? And what about the sport as a whole?

We also talk about Japan, and a race that was shortened by torrential rain. Jorge Martin doubled up and got a little lucky to get full points, but it’s the first of what we think could be multiple twists in a quickly intriguing title fight. More on that next episode…

All that and more on another Motorsport101 episode!

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Qatar, one of the maddest weekends in F1 history for all the wrong reasons.

We had Pirelli discovering that the FIA’s new Pyramid Kerb was harming the construction of the tyre, leading to a gamechanger as the track was reduced in width on the fast Turn 12/13 complex by almost three feet, leading to an insane rise in track limits violations, and a race that was a 3-stop mandated sprint with an 18-lap limit on tyre life, regardless as to if they were used or new. It led to another Max Verstappen win, his 14th of the season, but a close fight with McLaren became the story, despite track limit violations out the ass.

But the race went without a tyre issue, it was another problem that reared its ugly head – Extreme heat. The race was run at 33-degree heat with 77% humidity and it led to health issues everywhere. Stroll and Russell admitted to nearly passing out behind the wheel. Logan Sargeant had to retire due to a mix of dehydration and flu symptoms. Albon had acute heat exposure. Bottas called it torture. Dre speaks passionately about why this race should have been stopped and the insecurity the sport has over hero worship.

We also clean up all the weekend news, like McLaren’s best F1 weekend since 2021 with Oscar Piastri, Max Verstappen’s 3rd straight Championship, Mercedes teammate clash that put Hamilton out of the race on Lap 1, and some of the craftiness of their PR, and Andretti’s bid being approved by the FIA.

All that and even more in Motorsport101!

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