Episode #332: Hamilton101 (F1 2021 Brazilian Grand Prix)

And just when you thought Red Bull had one hand on the trophy… Lewis Hamilton did THAT.
It was a Brazilian GP (And DRS wing) of epic proportions as we break down one of the most drama-filled race weekends of recent memory. So crazy that Hamilton taking a 5-place grid penalty barely moved the needle. Seriously.
We talk about Lewis Hamilton passing 25 (Yes, 25) cars over the weekend as he turned a controversial Qualifying disqualification into a win from 10th on the grid, and how Mercs screwed the pooch over a rear wing’s DRS flap that was 1/50th of a centimetre too wide. Oh, and Max Verstappen taking a 50,000 dollar fine for stroking the bad boy. Strange times we live in.
We also talk about the third major Hamilton/Verstappen flashpoint of the weekend, the Lap 48 clash as Hamilton tried an audacious outside pass that Max decided to… drift slightly wide for. An incident that the FIA is still sitting down and deliberating as we speak because the onboard footage went missing for it and the stewards decided to leave it alone. Yikes.
And we also talk about the Sprint format after Hamilton passed 15 cars in just 24 laps to take him up to 5th and ponder if that was a gamechanger for the format, of it the outlier effect padded the excitement a tad. (Oh and Dre reminds us of a potential fix too, check it out!)
And finally, we got confirmation of the final seat being filled in Formula 1’s 2022 grid, as Guanyu Zhou makes history to become the sport’s first Chinese Driver… And we didn’t like the response, drifting from classic ignorance over favourites to full blown xenophobia over the country itself that was well worth talking about. Do check it out as we mention why you’ll never get the proper grid you think F1 is worthy of.
All that and more on another Motorsport101, check back on social media soon, as a special episode on Valentino Rossi is coming soon!