The Month of May is here, and it’s time to get through the half way point of IndyCar’s biggest month of the year. In this episode, Dre Harrison and RJ O’Connell break down both the GMR Grand Prix on the Indy Road Course, and Qualifying for this weekend’s 107th Running of the Indianapolis 500.

And so far, Alex Palou is one step away from doing what Simon Pagenaud did in 2019 and sweeping the entire month! He dominated the GMR Grand Prix and then broke Scott Dixon’s new record of the fastest pole run in Indy 500 history, with the entire front row cracking 234mph. Is Palou the greatest #10 car driver since Dario Franchitti? And should he really be considering a McLaren switch if the 2024 rumours are true?

And we swing the pendulum on a rollercoaster month for Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing. Christian Lundgaard had another incredible race at the road course finishing 4th, only to nearly get bumped in a disastrous qualifying session for the 500 where all of their cars were stuck in 30th or lower, and only Katherine Legge making the show automatically. Jack Harvey bumping out his own teammate, another Bump Day shock for the ages… or so we thought at the time…

…All that and some of the incredible stories that made up the grid, like RC Enerson, Callum Illot, Agustin Canapino and more mentioned in a Month of May Indianapolis special!

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A special occasion for MotoGP as Le Mans came down with a record weekend attendance of 278,000 to witness the 1,000th MotoGP race. And with it, we saw another dominant weekend from the VR46 Academy’s own, Marco Bezzecchi, who survived the chaos around him as Championship Leader Francesco Bagnaia crashed into the Aprilia of Maverick Vinales, and teammate Luca Marini and Alex Marquez collided at the Dunlop Chicane. Through it all, he dominated and we ask… “Why Not Bez?”

We also talk deeply on the return of Marc Marquez, and once again, the man is box office. He almost sent his new Kalex chassis to the moon in practise, but it survived, he qualified 2nd, finished 5th in the Sprint and then was challenging Jorge Martin for second until an unfortunate crash with just a lap and a half to go split the room on the man’s approach. Has he got it right? Is Kalex giving the Honda camp hope?

And we also talk some of our favourite MotoGP Memories as the sport celebrates 1,000 GP’s. All that and more on Imola’s F1 Cancellation, on a new Motorsport101!

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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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It was a good weekend to have a Jaguar powertrain as Envision and Jaguar both split wins as Formula E returned to Tempelhof Airport in Berlin!

Mitch Evans led a Jaguar 1-2 finish (Their first ever) in Race 1, with Nick Cassidy taking Race 2 by the scruff of the neck in Race 2, in two fantastic races, with record-breaking numbers. 362 overtakes across the weekend, with 9 different leaders and 22 lead changes across that first Race!

And that doesn’t include ABT Cupra somehow locking out the front row in Race 2 in a soaking wet qualifying session, or Nick Cassidy getting into a bizarre beef with his own teammate, Sebastien Buemi.

AND we had an environmental protest too! And Dre kinda flips out at the lack of emapthy in the whole ordeal! All that and more on a loaded Formula E edition of Motorsport101

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We tried to tell you that Kyle Kirkwood was special. And proven right we were…

In this episode of Motorsport101, we also feature a special guest, Ruby Acosta, Sim Racer for Queens Design eSports and an important ambassador for the LGBT+ community. As we’ve always said on this network, this show is made by all walks of life, FOR all walks of life, and we want to platform those beyond our usual scope. There’s an extended interview with Ruby that goes into detail about her sim racing background and the direction the sport is going in.

She was also at Long Beach this weekend and got to see Kyle Kirkwood take his first IndyCar series win, as well as an intense fight between himself and Romain Grosjean as Andretti Autosport had their best weekend in the series in nearly three years after finishing 1–2 and 4. We also discuss the collision between Pato O’Ward and Scott Dixon, with the Mexican refusing to apologise in what many were split on as to whether it was a racing incident or something more cynical.

All that and more on Motorsport101!

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We start the podcast with a sombre tribute to the tragic passing of Craig Breen, who died in a rallying accent last week. He was a wonderful ambassador to the sport, and to Irish representation in global sport in general, and he’ll be sadly, sadly missed.

In our MotoGP Episode, we talk about Alex Rins, who had a near perfect weekend, with a 2nd place in the Sprint, and a win in the GP itself after taking advantage of another huge Francesco Bagnaia crash, his 7th DNF since the start of last season. Dre, Cam and RJ breakdown the brilliance of Rins performance as well as another crash where we question the discipline of the reigning World Champion. Just how big a problem is this?!

We also breakdown a lot of short stories to come out of the weekend – Such as Jack Miller crashing SIX times in a single race weekend. Why 10 riders crashed on race day, a brilliant Moto2 showdown between Pedro Acosta and Tony Arbolino, and why the hell the sport are hiring transphobes to sing the national anthem.

All that and more on Motorsport101. Rest peacefully, Craig.

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IndyCar is back on the dockett for Round 2 of the series in Texas, and we got a genuine all-time classic for the PPG 375. No seriously, Texas came through for the first time since… 2016?!

Josef Newgarden and Pato O’Ward led nearly 90% of the racing laps as they went back and forth relentlessly, with overtakes, two wide running, and even Pato trying to lap the field at one point. And at the end, we have an intense decider as Alex Palou on older tyres got in the mix, as did David Malukas and Romain Grosjean, even if the latter ended the race with 2 laps to go after hitting the wall!

But despite one of the series best races in years, we still left Texas with a sad feeling in our stomachs as it was revealed that Pato comped hundreds of tickets for essentially his home race, the TV ratings were down a good 10% and general bad vibes were around the series, as it struggles to look for genuine growth. Dre, RJ and Cam got into a pretty heated discussion about the future of the series!

It’s a wild edition of Motorsport101!

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