CONTENT WARNING: The following Podcast contains transphobic rhetoric you may find upsetting. If you don’t want to listen to that segment, we recommend stopping after the segment about the Driver Intros around the 50 minute mark. Thanks for listening.

An extended edition of the M101 Podcast this week with the travelling circus heading to Miami. Within it, a deflating race if you’re a fan of the Mexican side of the Red Bull garage as Sergio Perez got a gift to start from pole in a red-flag affected Q3, with teammate Max Verstappen starting P9. In a tyre-saving race, Perez’s speciality, he was out-classed by Max, eventually finished 2nd as Max went the long way round at Turn 1. Is this the first big counter-shot of the 2023 title race?

We also got a lot of blowback and vitriol over the Drivers getting intros in a return of the 2018 Michael Buffer one-off. Was this the sport missing our mark, a clash of European sensibility vs American pagentry, or have we all gone a little bit mad?

And finally, there’s an emotionally charged segment at the end over our very own double standards. A Miami GP happening in a state where it’s governor is passing bills to take away the human rights of many within the black and LGBT+ community. Ron DeSanctis, who described gender-affirming care as “Chemical Castration” resided over this race. If this was going down in Saudi Arabia or Qatar, we’d be all over calling this shit out. But in Miami, virtually crickets. Why?

It’s a difficult but necessary conversation, and we fear Motorsport101 might be one of the few places we’ll get it. Listen in.

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Hey gang, sorry this came up a bit late, lot of juggling to get through, but we had to get this one out about IndyCar at Barber and the intense Romain Grosjean and Scott McLaughlin fight!

We genuinely thought that this was finally going to be the race that Grosjean put it altogether and take that elusive first IndyCar win… only for a failure of his Push-To-Pass system when he had 100 seconds of extra power still to use, cost him dearly. Running wide at the Spider’s Web hairpin sealed his fate as Scott McLaughlin would take the win and get himself back in the title picture. Is that first win ever going to happen for Romain? And is he a big Month of May away from being a genuine title contender? We break it all down on M101 Episode 439!

We also start discussing Marshall Pruett’s first big silly season update, with a huge amount of rumours centred around the 10 seat at Chip Ganassi Racing with Alex Palou heading to McLaren, the series worst kept secret. But it might not be a straight up replacement for Felix Rosenqvist? Could McLaren be going to four cars? Can Chip hang on to Marcus Ericsson? Or even move him to the 10 car? Is Callum Illot on the move? What about Christian Lundgaard? And could Graham Rahal leave his own team? All that and more on M101 on IndyCar in Barber!

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Well, well, well… nice quiet round in Spain wasn’t it?

It’s a shame that the best MotoGP race of 2023 so far was marred by controversy, but we have to mention first that brilliant fight for the win between Francesco Bagnaia and Brad Binder, that went all the way to the final corner, with Bagania keeping it upright and taking home another GP win, in what would also be KTM’s best ever weekend in MotoGP! Including the Sprint, 4 bikes on the podium and a wonderful comeback from Dani Pedrosa, who wildcard’d to a hero’s welcome!

But we also had stewarding rear it’s head again. Four separate incidents that left bitter tastes in the mouths of fans, two long lap penalties for Lap 1 incidents, and position drop calls and non-calls over Bagnaia and Jack Miller. We try to break down the colossal mess the sports stewarding is in and wonder… is Freddie Spencer ruining everything? The answer may surprise you!

Plus, news dropped last week that the FIM are implementing a Women’s World Championship for 2024. We break down the details and ponder if it’s really the right way to have a “Final Destination” Championship be your best path for diversity.

All that on another Motorsport101!

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Baku stunk. I know it, you know it. It wasn’t a good time for anyone involved. So we largely decided to ignore it and took about everything else bar the result itself!

We talk in-depth about the Sprint Shootout, the changes from the F1 commission designed to improve the format and get more aggression out of the teams. Did it work? Well, yes and no. We breakdown in detail why it won’t solve the problems the sport are currently in.

We talk about George Russell and Max Verstappen’s incidents in the Sprint, with the World Champion getting a hole punched in his sidepod. It seems people were more enamoured with Max’s reputation for hard racing than the incident itself, we break all of that down!

And arguably the most dialogue of the weekend was on the F1 Academy. It had its first weekend of the year at the Red Bull Ring in Spielberg, and while there was a crew and highlights shown, there’d be no live coverage. Dre breaks down a little bit behind the scenes as to what led to this and whether we think this was the right idea for the series that claims it wants to improve participation but not be fully committed to that in practise.

An in-depth edition of Motorsport101, listen in now!

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