It’s the most, wonderful time of the year. The time were we all gather round in a circle and get our (Golden) cocks out.

I kid, but it is award season again! The 7th Motorsport101 Awards is here for 2022, and it is a bit of a down year for Motorsport in general to be honest. But we still made the best of it and gave some awards to celebrate the best, and worst of the sport this year!

From renaming a beloved award to “The Golden Melon” for Ross Chastain’s Martinsville heroics, to IndyCar’s marketing department getting a participation trophy for just… being there.

Does Ferrari or Zak Brown win the infamous Golden Cock for services in harming Motorsport? And who wins a surprisingly hotly contested rider of the year award? All that and so much more broken down in a 100 minute special edition of Motorsport101!

PS: Merry Christmas and a Happy Holidays from all of us here on the show, we got one more show to go before we wrap up 2022, so check back next week. I hear a certain Top 50 just got released…

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Welcome to the 2-hour long season review special! Cam, RJ and Dre look back on a genuinely interesting 2022 season and go team by team and evaluate their seasons and their future going into 2023.

For Williams, Alex Albon was basically George Russell this season. And that’s definitely a good thing. Goodbye Nicolas Latifi, you were genuinely a lovely bloke, it just didn’t work out. And how will LS2 now hold up?!

Haas is… interesting. In a bad way. You abandon the youth plan and the best young driver you’ve ever had… for Nico Hulkenberg. Not exactly inspiring for a team that’s struggled to crack the Top 10 all season. Is Haas’ experience just making up for lack of ambition?!

AlphaTauri… fell off. Hard. Braking issues, poor reliability and it seemed to have an effect on their drivers, with Pierre Gasly jumping ship and Yuki Tsunoda still with something to prove. Will Nyck De Vries fill that void, or is he another stop-gap?

Aston Martin started dreadful, got the “Green Bull” going and definitely improved. Vettel had a solid final season, Lance Stroll… not so much. Pissed some dudes off on the way too. Can this man ever get some spacial awareness? And can he and Fernando co-exist?

Alfa Romeo scored 4 points all-season after Canada. Oooft. Bottas was still pretty good. More from Zhou needed?

McLaren were just sort of there. Lando Norris carried them to a great individual season, but Daniel Ricciardo didn’t exactly leave in a blaze of glory. Then you have Alpine, who went for the aggressive development plan with their power units… and it actually worked. Worked so well, Fernando left!

Mercedes… had a disaster. Performance advantage that wasn’t locked in for years after all. The porpoising did them in and sinking to third wasn’t ideal. But, they still gained one bright spark in the rise of George Russell!

Oh, and keep an eye out for Cam, the tearing apart of Ferrari’s season is highlight reel listening. Stick around for the Motorsport101 Awards Show next week!

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Let’s be honest with each other here. We know what this is. This was the Sebastian Vettel retirement weekend, and we totally embrace that at the top of the show as we talk about the most emotional, pagentry-styled retirement the sport has ever given out, for one of its greatest drivers. Danke, Seb.

Oh, and we got a Grand Prix too. Max Verstappen took a ridiculous 15th Grand Prix win of the season in dominant fashion over Charles Leclerc who held on from a last minute charge from Sergio Perez in the fight for 2nd in the Championship!

We also discuss the completed 2023 grid as Mick Schumacher was confirmed to be given the boot at Haas for Nico Hulkenberg and Logan Sargeant survived the chaos of F2 to take his Superlicense and his seat at Williams!

All that and more on the season finale of Motorsport101!

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It’s Brazil. It’s always Brazil when the shit hits the fan. And of course, this year was no exception.

George Russell completely dominated the 2nd half of the weekend after crashing and parking his Mercedes in qualifying. No, seriously. Of course he took full advantage of the Sprint, to take down a surprisingly curtailed Max Verstappen who had to start on the medium tyre, the only man to do so. But George was untouchable in the race itself, only a late Safety Car giving Lewis Hamilton any sort of chance at the W.

Speaking of, Red Bull just can’t help themselves. Two major incidents involving their team. The first, another chapter in the book of Max vs Lewis, with Max trying to pass Lewis on the outside of Turn 1… only for them to collide at Turn 2 putting Max down the back with a 5-second time penalty to boot. Who’s fault? Bad stewarding again? We discuss it.

But the real gem here is Max Verstappen refusing to give Sergio Perez 6th place back on a team orders call… just because he could. And of course, if there’s one thing mostly everyone in F1 hates, it’s a team orders call. And of course, the drama and spill over since then. Note: We recorded this before Red Bull’s… lying apology, but the sentiment still rings true about how silly this can be, and the warped power dynamics behind team orders in F1.

…Oh, and did we mention Kevin Magnussen qualified on pole? Because Kevin Magnussen qualified on pole! Alpine came back from a literal meltdown and may have 4th wrapped up! All that and more on a heaped Motorsport101!

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Welcome to the Decider! MotoGP’s first decider in 5 years had us head to Valencia for the final round! And look, we know Francesco Bagnaia had a 23 point lead with just 25 points available, and that it was going to be nothing sort of a miracle situation for Fabio Quartararo to win the title, but hey, God loves a tryer!

It was a weekend of aggression and tentativeness, Fabio was trying everything to try and get that win, the only thing that could give him a chance of the title. Bobbling the front in Quali, and some hyper aggressive moves to try and get to the front. Meanwhile, Francesco Bagnaia was struggling with the front all weekend, and even lost his front wing aero early on! But Bagnaia survived and would go onto become Italy’s first MotoGP World Champion since Valentino Rossi in 2009!

We break down all the decider energy down, including Alex Rins actually winning the race. What a message that’s sending out to Suzuki on the way out by the way!

We also talk Ducati’s place at the front of the sport. Is it their sport now? Has Japan faded to the point where Europe are now pushing the envelope in MotoGP? We discuss that, as well as some of our favourites in our penultimate MotoGP episode of 2022, on Motorsport101!

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Can F1 please just have a quiet week? No? Fine. Red Bull had to go and be the main characters again…

But first, we had to dedicate 10 minutes to NASCAR’s Ross Chastain and the greatest overtaking move ever witnessed. No seriously, we’re renaming The Scotty Award to The Golden Melon. Listen to us talk about the ridiculousness of the move, the dialogue on it, and Ross going viral for a series badly in need of positive headlines.

Speaking of which, you won’t be getting that with Red Bull. Yes, they had a record-breaking 14th win on the year with Max Verstappen in a reasonably boring fashion. But this concerns all of their antics off the track. First of all, the cost cap punishment came down – $7,000,000 and a 10% deduction on their wind tunnel allowance for next season. A significant enough penalty, or too light given the context?

Then the aftermath as Christian Horner scrambled to explain himself, and then boycotted Sky from the rest of the weekend after Ted Kravitz said that Lewis Hamilton was robbed of the 2021 title and implied that Adrian Newey was the only reason they were winning at all. A narrative drum that Sky has absolutely beaten before. Fair? Should Red Bull have boycotted the biggest F1 broadcaster of all, and fire up other places in the British Media? It’s a complicated discussion, but we try it.

All of that and a Mariacha band playing the F1 theme, on Mexico’s Motorsport101.

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The title race for MotoGP is heading down the stretch and it was time for the final flyaway round of the Gauntlet as Sepang welcomed the sport back for the first time in three years.

And with it, the trilogy fight with Francesco Bagnaia and Enea Bastianini came to pass. Another intense fight for the win with Bagnaia coming out on top to take an absolutely critical win. His first in 5 races and giving him an almost certain Championship win, 23 points in front of Fabio Quartararo with only 5 left. We talk Fabio’s 3rd, and that fight over the course of the show!

We also had to talk about Ai Ogura in Moto2, who had one hand on the title following Tony Arbolino in 2nd, but went for the glory pass for the win and crashed out. Cam absolutely goes in on the young Japanese rider!

All that and more (with Ryan King), on Motorsport101!

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Another complicated week in the F1 circus as the sport headed to North America and the Circuit of the Americas in Austin, Texas. And we even got a special guest, Ryan Erik King from Jalopnik is here for the next two episodes!

Max Verstappen made more history with his 13th win of 2022 making him just the third man ever with a 13 in a year. But he had to earn it after a botched 11-second final pitstop meant he had to chase down Charles Leclerc and a surprising Lewis Hamilton threat, in what turned out to be quite possibly F1’s race of the year. We break down a thriller of a US race.

And within that, we also had a frightening crash. A 185mph clash between Lance Stroll and Fernando Alonso the future teammates as Stroll turning into Alonso, nearly put the Spainard into the catchfence. Amazingly, Alonso was able to keep the car going despite being airborne (Marcus Ericsson, anyone?), and finish in 7th… until a post-race controversy regarding the lack of a meatball flag led to a protest from Haas. Again, the boys take a look at whether Stroll was in the wrong and whether Alonso should have been punished.

We also talk about the diffcult to handle news out of Red Bull that their own Dietrich Mateschitz passed away at the age of 78. He was responsible for so much of the funding and investment that’s made modern day F1 what it is. But he’s also made some horrific comments about the world at large with his platforms. Should you mourn someone like that? M101 debates it.

All that and more on Sebastian Vettel’s epic final lap fight with Kevin Magnussen, on a loaded Motorsport101!

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An emotional rollercoaster of an episode of this one. In a down season for MotoGP in general, Philip Island has always been the go to ropund for us bikers to revel in the sport at its best.

This year was no exception. A MotoGP classic at the Island, with Alex Rins taking one last glorious win for Suzuki before their departure from the sport. Marc Marquez took his 100th MotoGP podium finish in just 153 starts (Jesus), and Francesco Bagnaia put one hand on the title?

Why? Because Fabio Quartararo might have had one crash too many. A fall at the Melbourne Loop, a race he was already running in 15th in, has now had him cough up a former 91 point deficit to Pecco, and is now 14 behind with just two to go. We break down the second major title collapse for Fabio Quartararo in just three years.

And unfortunately, we have to talk about the darker side of the sport too. Victor Steeman, over in the World Supersport 300, died in hospital last Tuesday after being hit in a multi-bike accident in Catalunya, their season finale. This makes him the 4th victim in lightweight class racing in the last 18 months. The boys beat their heads together in frustration and ask if the sport is doing enough with its 2023 rule changes on grid sizes and age limits.

Ride in Peace, Phil Read, Chrissy Rouse and the Steeman family.

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Jesus christ, what a week. You can consider Episode 403 of Motorsport 101 to be the “Red Bull” episode. For better and worse.

Max Verstappen is now the Double Formula 1 World Champion, and it was one more dominant drive from the Dutchman to win a 40-minute race by 27 seconds. But we got a whole-ass mess over just how many points the field was going to get that led to confusion, a World Champion celebration that was dampened, and the fact that almost everyone in F1 read the rule incorrectly. We break all of that mess down.

Then we get to the main sticking point of the race – A horrible near miss where we had a recovery truck live on track. Race control didn’t compensate for Pierre Gasly being so far behind the back after starting from pitlane and taking an extra stop, a Red Flag came out far too late, and we had a barely visible tractor and marshal on a live track was F1 cars passed just metres away from a potentially fatal accident. The track promoters and the FIA have a lot to answer for, and we get into the reasons why.

We also talk about the 24 hours later “Versnacking” scandal as it turns out Red Bull did indeed go over the cost cap, and it seems they might have had too much caviar in their lunch break. The question now remains as the jokes die down… how much should they be punished for doing so? We get into why that isn’t a simple answer. At all.

And finally, silly season. And Fabrizio Romano actually announced that Pierre Gasly was leaving AlphaTauri and heading to Alpine. Nice work on social media there I have to say. But with that move locked in, Nyck De Vries was also announced as heading to AlphaTauri for 2023 to take Gasly’s seat. We talk about the ramifications of those moves, Daniel Ricciardo essentially announcing a sabbatical from the sport, and is Mick Schumacher really on the brink of getting ejected from F1?

All of that and more on the next, Motorsport101!

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