Why was the Las Vegas Grand Prix the best race of this season or maybe any season for a very long time? Weirdness, is the answer. Well, there were loose man/woman/person hole covers that nearly destroyed Carlos Sainz's Ferrari and caused practice to be no more, expired and finished. F1 owner Liberty Media incompetence and FIA's stupidity also caused Sainz to lose 10 places on the grid in Sunday's race, because he found the person hole cover at 320km/h.
You know how corporates work: "Despite spending $500m on the track we left a few loose manhole covers. Finding one and nearly killing yourself was your fault and we'll penalise you. That's why we get the big bucks and never apologise."
Then they decided practice would start again at 2.30am but, despite fans having tickets, F1 said you can't watch. $560 for nine minutes of car-to-car action does seem a bit on the light side.
No sooner had the real race begun than McLaren's Lando Norris hit a "bump" on the track and had to go to hospital. But this is America where the class-action lawyer is king – so cue Steve Dimopoulos, personal injury and wrongful death lawyer who has filed a "massive" class action against Las Vegas Grand Prix and its owner, Liberty Media, in Nevada state court on behalf of the dudded ticket holders.
So how surprised was everyone when the race itself was really a race. In fact, this was the race that had it all. Two safety cars, Mad Max actually battling to win, the best third place battle in sporting history, lots of prangs, lots of penalties including five seconds for Maxie; Chuck Leclerc looking like he was going to win but his team put a stop to that with another bad call; Oscar driving an aggressive, brilliant race, but coming 10th; Dan and Alpha Tauri never being in it and lots of nearly has-been celebs.
With one race to go in Abu Dhabi, Mad Max is so far ahead on the drivers' championship he can't see Perez, Hamo, Sainz and Alonso behind him. While Red Bull will kill the constructors' championship, Ferrari has at last shown it has a car that can match them.
The other big event of last weekend, the Adelaide Rally, was even more exciting than Las Vegas. Yes, for the first time in world history three days of tarmac rallying ended in a tie. Oscar Matthews/Naomi Tillet and Matthew Selley/Hamish McKendrick couldn't be separated by a second and shared the winners' sparkling wine.
Your very own Weekend Australian Rally Team (WART) didn't get off to a great start. Co-driver Michael McMichael, 600 years old of Stepney, South Australia, lost his glasses. As Mick said, this wasn't a problem unless he needed to see. Then there was the small problem of your correspondent's inability to discern left from right. A small issue when coming over a crest at 200km/h, not being able to see where the road goes and being told to go left. In the time it takes to shake each arm to see which one is the left one, disaster is not far away. Cruelly, Mick took to drawing a big R in Texta on the front window driver's side with an arrow indicating right.