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Well the money doesn't hurt, and the arrangement could have been made with no pay driver too. Since he is a pay driver, it seems like that was a requirement. I mean, if it wasn't, I'd expect them to hold on to that cash and not decide to gift it to Williams. But it doesn't matter much, I won't hold it against him. I just think Vowles is being a little disingenuous.

I think they wanted Lawson, and Vowles said something about how it couldn't work contractually. I would take that to mean Red Bull wanted to be able to recall him if they needed him to sit in, and Williams didn't want to have that possibility hanging over them. Colapinto didn't look out of place today, but that could have been Logan in the car. Same result. But it's only day one. Will be interesting to see how he does.

Of maybe more interest is Antonelli's short day. A lot of people seem to be astonished at his pace, and at a glance it is eye opening. he carried more speed trough Lesmos for example than Verstappen did on his sheet-topping lap in FP1. But I think it is so interesting to analyze. And I think it shows how veteran and experienced F1 drivers manage their laps. Verstappen could match or exceed Antonelli's speed I think, but he knows that wrecks the tires, and sure enough, by the time Antonelli got to parabolica, they were toasted and just let go and he hit the wall. I saw it said it was 45G impact. Didn't look that bad, like Verstappen at Silverstone looked worse and that was about his impact Gs if I recall. Anyway, I thought it was all very interesting, revealing how top drivers manage their laps and see the long view. Young Kimi learned a lot today I reckon. Like Toto said it's way better to have to slow a driver down than try to speed him up, which is nearly impossible.

Four teams are in this thing. The season is really hotting up. Hoping for a good race full of chaos and drama

FP3 shows RB is stuggling a lot, will be a heck of a late season !

Fez looking OK, I'd be so happy if they get a good result at home.

Farewell to Logan:

Red Bull looked fine until it counted. I need some wrecks tomorrow morning

I took Max in my line up, I 'm fearsome he screws up starting 7th, but hope he's smart enough to not lose points uselessly.

I almost did too. He looked fast in just about every session except for Q3. That was unexpected, and the only one that counts!


Graining will be an issue tomorrow so we will see who is on top of it and who struggles the most.

Haha I just looked at your team and see you have Jimmy Clark, Prost, Senna, Schumi and Nigel Mansell in your team this week

Two players left Sargeant in the their teams. No one has an obligation to actually participate in our league, but that should be the minimum expectation. At least make it look like you are playing along. Only rollnloop and me seem to care, and probably Wigean, but can't be sure. Haven't heard a peep out of Wango Tango since we started. I work with Sintax, but he only cares when he is doing well.

Thankfully I wasn't working this week, i could have missed it too.

Yups tomorrow is my money gamble, let's hope it pays off.

Still have yours ?

I do indeed. I've only used one chip so far this season and limitless will be saved for one of the final sprint races, or that is the plan.

Oh I failed to save if for the right opportunity then.

Let's hope at least it pays off.

So happy for Charles, that I can accept not optimizing my fantasy results with Piastri's overtake.

Forzaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa !!!!!!

Congrats to Leclerc. I'm always happy for him when he wins. Seems like a good guy.

I haven't looked at fantasy as I had to have been murdered. The Haas cars ran in to two of my cars, and when Yuki was speared I was like, that will probably knock him out and sure enough he was out two laps later. Decent race, but we need more chaos in F1 than we have seen over the past few months.

KMag's antic have finally caught up with him. He will now be banned at Baku, and Bearman is expected to get the seat.

Was about time. I generally like Kmag, but he went beyond unacceptable this year.

Newey to Aston Martin.

It was kind of expected, even if it was all still a bit of a mystery. But I thought he'd either hang it up and go fishing, or whatever aerodynamicist savants do in their free time -- or -- he would go to Fez or Aston Martin. And then when Ferrari said a few days ago that they were no longer in the running, it was pretty clear where he was going. That's a massive coup for the team. Newey cars have won like 12 constructor's down the years. But at the same time, you need a team which can take advantage. Newey is an ideas guy, a concept illustrator, he isn't putting time in the shop machining parts. So it will be interesting how it plays out with Larry and his band of misfits. How quickly they show signs of improvement. Getting him on board now to design the 2026 car is quite a shot in the arm. But they have to execute the vision. Stroll isn't afraid to throw money at whatever is in the way, so it should prove a success but we will see.

Back at it this week boys. Baku is the track, and it's a track that at first, I didn't like. But now I do. It's one of the most difficult tracks on the calendar to negotiate. And maybe its best quality is how diverse it is, one of the few tracks in F1 where lap time can be derived from a wide range of setup approaches. You need a Monza car and a Monaco car here, and how each team finds the right blend is always interesting, creating tire deg offsets and in some cases blowouts as we've seen recently. Ferrari have looked strong here in the past few years, and they should be a threat. Leclerc has sat on pole here the last two or three right? But then, each week is a guessing game when it comes to predicting who will be fast, although the trend right now is McLaren will be fast, Red Bull will not and Fez and Merc swap ends.

I keep mentioning how I want more chaos in F1 than we've been seeing the past two years. If there's a track on the calendar to bring it, Baku is the one. F1 has been fooling around a bit too much with DRS lines, and I hope they do nothing to shorten the pit straight DRS zone this year.

I finally looked at Monza fantasy and yeah, I got murdered. Good week rollnloop. Opened a big lead again.

Had a plan to change my team and start cutting in to rollnloop's massive lead, but got caught out by the early start to qualifying, and by the time I got in front of a PC this morning Q1 had begun so I made no changes at all.

Lando out in Q1 is a surprise. Max needs to be sure to get the best result he can get. I thought he would be in for pole today, but again they just didn't get it done in Q3.

Congrats to Leclerc for a stellar lap. The alternative team I was going to run after checking FP3 results would have had both Red Bull and Fez as constructors, and I'd be looking good, but Azerbaijan is a long way to the east and I got caught out by the start time.. But it also would have removed Piastri who sits second on the grid, so yeah, we will just have to see how it shakes out tomorrow.

Two players in our league still have Sargeant in their team and one is running KMag this week. Good grief. Just you and me rollnloop.

Man until last lap , Sainz and Perez WTF !!!!

GJ by Oscar, finally a full taste victory..

Great battle at the front in Baku. Piastri was magnificent, a very assured drive. Looks like a seasoned veteran already. Perfect placement on entries to keep Leclerc behind, yet retain enough of an angle to get a good run out of the corner and prevent the switcheroo.

Gutted for Checo, who was having his best race in months and was in the mix for the win until the final couple of laps. They showed the incident a couple times and I'm still not sure who is to blame, but my gut said Sainz. Need a different angle on this one. Maybe they showed it after the race more, but my dog was insistent he go outside lol.

The fantasy plan that I was unable to activate would have swapped Oscar for Max, so that worked out. I was still going to be murdered by rollnloop because he had Ferrari, and then one was out so it probably turned that homicide in to involuntary manslaughter. Could have been worse if not for those cars taking each other out. I'm not Checo's biggest fan, but that was hard to watch. He was excellent today.

I actually picked up 11 points, if the tallies shown now are final. That crash at the end really worked out for me. I was heading for a drubbing until then, since rollnloop had Fez as constructor and that crash cost him. I need to gain more than 11 points, but it could have been way worse. I dodged a bullet too because I would have scored fewer points with my plan to shake up my team because I would have had both Red Bull and Ferrari and that crash would have hurt me even more. Got lucky, but need to make a bigger move in the coming races if I hope to catch the frontrunner.

The Indy Car finale was good. That's a great oval for these cars. I'm not a huge fan of oval racing if I'm honest, but I don't hate it either. Some ovals Indy runs on are borderline for these cars. Bu Nashville is really good. Great racing here.

Congrats to Alex Palou, he did it again. And to Herta, his first oval win, which is hard to believe.

That was a good finale to the IndyCar season and I’m a fan of hosting it on the oval. I got nothing against road and street courses but the ovals do offer some unique opportunities as well as risks I think. Colton Herta seems to have prioritised consistency over the win our bust mentality he previously exhibited, coming home in the Championship second to Palou. Some pretty close dicing with Pato splitting either side of a lapped driver and Colton’s right tire coming very close to the rear of the other car so Colton was also a bit lucky I think. And MacLaughlin had a big moment right alongside Newgarden. It was quite scary the issues Will Power had with the seat belt coming apart. In the interview after the race he quite rightly pointed out his concern that even if tightened, would it stay safe in the event of a crash?

I’m just down that there will be no IndyCar racing the next six months.

I didn’t watch any F1 this weekend. Not even any highlights. I’m starting to become a bit tired of screaming commentators.