Welcome to major Championship flashpoint #4 and this one, got really ugly. It’s the Corniche Clash, at the new Saudi Arabian Grand Prix, and we had a lot to talk about here.

We had Max Verstappen blow a golden chance to take pole position on Saturday before a mistake had him hit the wall on the final corner, gift-wrapping pole to Lewis Hamilton. We had a ridiculous F2 weekend with cars heading to the grid BACKWARDS, and poor Theo Pourchaire and Enzo Fittipaldi sent to hospital after a 72G impact in a 9 minute feature race. And it barely made the Top 5 in ridiculous dialogue to come from this race.

Nope, it was all going to plan until Mick Schumacher put it in the wall early on. 2 Red Flags, 2 Standing Restarts, 3 Virtual Safety Cars and 3 debatable incidents from Max Verstappen later… God help us all. We had Max cut Turn 1 twice to keep position. Michael Masi cutting a PLEA DEAL to balance the books, only for Max to do it again and then get accused of brake checking Hamilton into the final corner in a desperation move to keep the DRS advantage.

We try to make sense of it all on the show, including questions as to whether it was an intentional brake check at all. The role the stewards played in the messy weekend, including Masi’s plea deal, and the 10-second penalty Max took after the flag. We also talk the circuit, a surprising factor in the imported marshals and some of the tracks obvious slapdash design errors that played a role in how this race was managed.

We also talk Mercedes’ grand opening and grand closing of the Kingspan partnership they announced during the weekend, with obvious controversy given their association with the Grenfell Tower fire of 2017, and Lewis Hamilton being an innocent bystander as many within the media held him accountable for something that had next to nothing to do with him.

And finally, we guess who wins the 2021 World Championship as we head to the newly redesigned Abu Dhabi for the season finale, as well as play tribute to the late great, Sir Frank Williams. Rest easy, you legend. See you next week for the finale.

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What is it with F1 and heading to deserts for GP’s? In this episode, we break down what happened when the sport took a page out of MotoGP’s book and headed to the Losail International Circuit for the first ever Qatar Grand Prix.

We talk about the controversy over Mercedes’ right to appeal the Brazil clash being rejected and why Dre always thought it was going to go down that way, even if the sides of the divide saw it differently. We also talk about the stewarding itself being quite time consuming to the point of “Hollywood” as that appeal announcement landed right in the middle of a Toto Wolff/Christian Horner joint press conference. With Netflix breaking COVID protocol to be in the room to film it.

We also talk the race itself, as Verstappen and Bottas took grid penalties for ignoring yellow flags, Lewis Hamilton took off for an easy win for #102, and Fernando Alonso activated “El Plan”, singing to his 1-stopping tyres en route to his first podium since Hungary 2014. So of course, we had some fun and talked about some of the fun (and not so) things that have happened to the world since that 2014 podium. Remember the Ebola Virus? Or a time before Verstappen debuted? Yeesh.

We also talk about Losail itself and how… it actually wasn’t anywhere near as bad as we thought it was going to be. Gotta take these wins where you can get them you know? All that and more on Episode 333 of Motorsport101!

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