You can tell a lot about a person by what they do in the back of a Rolls Royce Phantom ($1.1m in Kangaville) in Las Vegas.

For instance, 2024 F1 world champion driver Mad Max Verstappen, 27, of chocolate and dentist land, could buy 80 Rolls Royce Phantoms a year with his annual salary but spent his time last Sunday night on the drive from the finish line to the presentation place playing with the Roller's gadgets and chatting to his race engineer, GianPiero Lambiase, 44, of Bedford, SDL, about the aforesaid gadgets.

So, what did all this mean? Nothing really, like life itself, but a few minutes before the Roller Ride, Max and Leaping Lando were racing for the biggest prize in the sport: the world drivers' championship. Winning the F1 World Drivers' Championship is a big deal. Since 1950 there have been 75 world drivers' titles up for grabs but only 34 drivers have been world champions.

Both Schumacher and Hamo have won it seven times. Apart from Hamo, in the current field Mad Max (4) and Fernando Alonso (2) have been multiple winners. Hamo wasn't all that happy because he drove the race of a lifetime and except for an unlucky qualifying would have won the Sin City race.

Why did the Merc company do so well on the weekend? Georgie really wasn't challenged for most of the race's 309km. Forget the detailed technical explanations, the real difference was the tyres on the Mercs but even the Mercsters don't fully understand why they made the cars so good.

As Mad Max said: "The issue for us is definitely tyre related as we have no grip and it feels like driving on ice."

For trivia lovers, Georgie is 13 years younger than Hamo. Carl Sainz came in third for the Fezzer team. In one of the quotes of the year Chuck told everyone over his team radio: "Yeah, I did my job, but being nice fudges me over all the fudging time."

Max's tyres were basically bald at the finish but Max drove so well that Leaping Lando was so far behind in fifth he could have been in a different race. McLaren and Ferrari's strategies were crook and LL is still showing signs of immaturity.

Look, the whole scene on the weekend was weird. In Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, Hunter S Thompson describes Las Vegas as a surreal, excessive, and grotesque manifestation of the American Dream. And that was 52 years ago. In November 2024, the drivers were steering through a marijuana smoke haze that permeated their beings at 356km/h.

Talking of Mercedes Benz, why not pick up the $80m-plus 1954 Mercedes-Benz W 196 R Stromlinienwagen coming up for auction. In July 1954, Mercedes-Benz made a stunning return to racing at the French Grand Prix in Reims with the debut of their revolutionary and incredibly beautiful W 196 R Streamliners.

jc@jcp.com.au