Motorsport101

Welcome back to the circus. It's time for the big one, the 2023 Motorsport101 F1 Season Preview! And we're not going to lie folks, we're not going to pretend like there's a huge amount to be excited for besides just seeing cars go round. Red Bull were expected to defend their title, cost cap breach be damned. Then they beat the brakes off the field in testing and they're odds on for Verstappen and Red Bull to repeat. Welp. We've got Ferrari, who have hired Fred Vasseur to try and solve their problems, and while they look fast, they still have tyre wear problems. And Mercedes are a bit of a wildcard and have the best driver line-up, but even Hamilton hopped in the W14 and thought: "We're not ready yet." Aston Martin was the story of testing, an injured Stroll and a genuinely quick car with startling gains, while Alpine kept it very quiet, and McLaren's car was melting itself in Bahrain testing, while their bosses openly admitted they missed their development targets. Reassuring huh? Haas have plodded along

Welcome back to #SeasonPreviewSeason on the Motorsport101 Podcast, and were start up with IndyCar as their 2023 Seasons kicks off this weekend in St. Petersburg! In this feature length edition of the show (110 minutes), we break down all of the runners and riders of the 2023 season in detail. Why AJ Foty entered the season in such a problematic way. Does Meyer Shank have a plan for the future? Is Juncos got a surprise package in Canapino? Did Rahal Letterman Lanigan expand too quickly? Is McLaren now a part of the sport's Big 3? What will Andretti Autosport do after such an embarrassing 2022? And can Chip Ganassi use their final season of Alex Palou to mount a challenge at Penske's three-headed monster? And was it a good thing the series scrapped the Indy 500 being worth double points? All that and more discussed on an epic Motorsport101!

So you mean to tell me that Ryan King only came back on the show because Dan Ticktum got caught speeding at 115mph?! Yes, yes we did! In this episode of Motorsport101, we catch up with more FIA politics as the sport's governing body clarified its stance on political activism during their weekends... and yeah, the Internet flipped out on this one. But was it justified. King helps Dre and Cam explain why it just isn't as simple as saying they're putting the clamps on the drivers. We also talk about Formula E in Hyderabad and it was a classic case of F-E chaos reigning supreme. Jean-Eric Vergne survived a late onslaught from Nick Cassidy despite the latter having nearly 4% more usable energy in a sprint finish. Sam Bird took out himself and his teammate after missing his braking point, and ruined Max Gunther and Sasha Fenestraz's races at the same time. Jake Hughes crashed after his mirror fell off his car and jammed his steering wheel. And Rene Rast altered the title after doing the right thing and avoiding

Sorry this one was a little later than planned, we've been a bit spread out over the last week or so, normal service will resume soon! But here's our review on the Rolex 24 Hours of Daytona, and all within it as a new chapter in sportscar racing began! And yet, some things didn't change! Meyers Shank retained the crown in a 1-2 for Acura, with the #10 of Wayne Taylor Racing close behind as a 24 hour race became a 24 minute sprint at the bell! We also talk LMP2, a crazy class where the "Bus Bros" clashed with overall winner Simon Pagenaud and the class victory was determined by... 0.016 seconds in an incredible comeback for James Allen (No, not that one!) We also talk about Porsche's struggles with their new prototype, Maro Engel committing more violence enroute to another class win, the battles in GTD, the baptism of fire for the BMW's, and the new Porsche 911's getting BOP'ed into oblivion. Enjoy!

A Podcast of two halves on this one. In the first half of the show, we discuss a bit of F1 catchup, with Red Bull announcing a tie-up with Ford with their 2026 power-units as Red Bull Ford Powertrains was born. But also FIA President Mohammed Ben Sulayem's pretty awful month. In 3 weeks the man was called out for sexist comments from 2001, alienated the current teams further with comments about protecting the sport itself if the Saudi's truly bid "$20bn" for it, and pushing for Andretti to get into F1 as early as 2025... and now he's stepping back from the day-to-day running of the sport. What does it mean, and where do we sit on it? In the second half, we get into the Double header of Formula E races in Diriyah as Porsche continued their run of dominance. Only this time it was Wehrlein at the front as he dominated both races to flip the script on Mexico City, with Jake Dennis following him home both times to make it three Wehrlein-Dennis 1-2's since the season began. We also discuss Sam Bird's up and down

You asked for it, and you got it! Dre sits down with Cam and RJ, massive sportscar lovers and experts to preview tomorrow's Rolex 24 Hours of Daytona! It's the dawn of a new era in sportscar racing and the new top flight is broken down, including Porsche's headstart in testing with Penske, Acura and where they fit in against Cadillac, and a round-up of the qualifying, that had the shocker of Nick Tandy in a wall! Can Meyer Shank defend the crown from last year?! We also break down LMP2 and the Bus Bros of Josef Newgarden and Scott McLaughlin showing up, and the new GT3 cars in the GTD Pro and Daytona classes as well! Enjoy the bonus episode and see you for a full review next week!

Formula E is back! And there wasn't a struggle to be found as Jake Dennis retained his scintillating form at the end of the 2022 season with one of the most dominant wins in series history as Gen3 got underway in Mexico City! Jake Dennis won by 7 seconds with Porsche's in 1st, 2nd and 4th as Pascal Wehrlein passed some f***ing cars to get to second, and then Andre Lotterer in 4th in the second Andretti. With the pre-season talking hinting about DS Powertrains being at the top, this was an upset! And we gotta give Jake Hughes his flowers for a damn good McLaren debut in the leading group, and Sasha Fenestraz for making the duels at the first time of asking. And Lucas Di Grassi ended up on pole. With Mahindra's at both ends of the grid. Because even when things change in Formula E, chaos still reigns. All of that and more on another, Motorsport101!

The Motion E Podcast: https://t.co/okEdrD3rvH We're back for the new year and we're kicking things off with a Gen3, Season 9 Preview of Formula E! And we got a special guest, and that was Mx S Garlick of the Motion E Podcast. Check them out at the link up above! In this 105-minute special, we break down some of the issues that have plagued the series in their Gen3 crossover, from admin issues and a Eurovision reboot, to the format changes and braking issues that could plague the opening round in Mexico this weekend. We also break down the field team-by-team. It's a very different field from before, down from 12 teams to 11, and some exciting new names. McLaren take over where Mercedes left off with Rene Rast returning. Maserati's first single-seater Motorsport adventure in 60 years, and DS and Penske combining their forces into a superteam with Stoffel Vandoorne and Jean-Eric Vergne becoming quite possibly the strongest driver pairing in series history. Only Jaguar are actually keeping their line-up t

Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays and a Happy New Year from everyone at Motorsport101! To close out 2022, it's another one of our yearly traditions as we sit down with Autosport's Top 50 countdown of their best pound-for-pound drivers in 2022! And as usual, Dre is going in blind as he doesn't know ANYTHING about the list! And to make things even cooler, for Christmas, we brought back Ryan Erik King to join us in Cam's slot to help us run down the list! It was a real fun time and another feature-length special. Will Dre have a heart-attack this time? Will he be mad at the hipster IndyCar driver picks? Or Kevin Magnussen making the Top 50?! All that and more in another Motorsport101! (We'll be back in a week or so's time to breakdown... Formula E's Gen3 debut season. Ooft.)

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...

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

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!

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

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 i

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 t

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!

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 boy

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 seaso

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 t

WARNING: About 35 minutes in is a discussion about assault and the Tom Booth-Amos video that did the rounds last week. You may find discussions on this upsetting. Look after yourselves. - Dre The dentist will see you again. MotoGP has a new #RainGawd and his name is Miguel Oliviera. Not you, Danilo Petrucci! Anyway, we talk about his outstanding 2nd win of the year in Thailand, during a thunderstorm that very nearly got the race abandoned. We also have an even more ridiculous situation. Let's weigh this up: Fabio Quartararo only finishes 17th after getting jitters in the rain. Aleix Espargaro only finishes 11th after they hate the rear tyre and Aleix takes a long lap penalty for bumping into Brad Binder. And with Jack Miller 2nd, Franceso Bagnaia 3rd and Enea Bastianini in the Top 6, we now have all FIVE men within 40 points of the title with only 75 available. We assess all their weaknesses in this game of shithousery and ask once again, does anyone want to win this title?! Also, that warned discussion is