It was every child gets a prize day last weekend at the Miami International Autodrome, a circuit around Hard Rock Stadium where 20 Rich Male Drivers of Miami and another 22 locations drove 57 laps in 90 minutes.
It was 110th time lucky for McLaren’s Lando Norris who came first, it was 191st time unlucky for Mad Max Verstappen who came first of the losers and 129th time even more unlucky for the blue-suited Chuck Leclerc who was two seconds behind Max.
Prize for the only driver to not finish the Hard Rock went to septic Logan Sargeant he collided with Kevvie Magnussen triggering the safety car which gave Lando the lead from Maxie.
Maxie was already in a spot of bother after he hit a bollard, damaging the bottom of the Red Bull.
Kevie was in more bother after collecting time penalties for protecting teammate Nico Hulkenberg by not letting Hamo and other RMDs past in the sprint, then the F1 police found Kevie wholly to blame for prang with Logan. Next points loss and no more F1 for the Great Dane.
Trivia note: Mad Max is the sixth tallest driver in F1 (180cm and 72kg) while Lando Norris is the second shortest (170cm and 68kg). Clearly the tallest driver, Esteban Ocon (186cm) has been on the Ozempics or is on a wedshred because he weighs in at only 66kg.
Not to take anything away from young Lando (even though he is a soap dodger) but his Mercedes-AMG-powered MCL38 had more upgrades for Miami than EVs have had price cuts this week.
Look, there were a lot of changes to the Norrismobile but as Macca’s team principal, Andrea Stella, told us by physic internet: “In understanding aerodynamics you do have to think from front to the rear.
“The front has to speak to the floor and the floor has to speak to the diffuser and the diffuser has to speak to the rear wing, etc.”
Now you know.
It has to be said that the Hard Rock Stadium track is weird.
Not just because of the fake marina, the newly laid fake bitumen and the fact that the King of Weird, the Trumpster, was there in the McLaren garage (and as many unkind journos wrote: “in fairness the former president was a good colour match for the papaya-coloured McLaren team”) but because the track did do funny things to some tyres.
Now I know all 20 of you understand that when you take delivery of your new car, the tyres can actually be up to two years old.
Do you think anyone wants to do anything about that and the fact that the mark-up of most “genuine” spare parts is around 400 per cent?
No wonder Morgan Stanley boss Richard Wagner does click and collect at the local Total Tools store in his old, virginal white, Porker 911.
The old bloke (who has had a crook tooth from demonstrating his ability to open a bottle of Coopers Sparkling with his teeth) and I spotted Taylor Swift, Shakira, Serena Williams, OnlyFans model Veronika Rajek (a highlight at the McLaren tent), Eddie Sheeran, A$AP Rocky, Ludacris, Flavor Flav, Mick Schumacher, Blackpink’s Lisa and Kendall Jenner (294 million followers on Instagram) at or around the Hard Rock.
Lou Hamilton backed up on Monday for the Met Ball wearing a custom Burberry suit with an excerpt from Alex Wharton’s The Gardener poem embroidered into the inside of his suit jacket. (You know how it goes: “Why birds sing. My thoughts drift – wrap and climb like clematis.” No wonder we’re not paid the big bucks.) Readers, this celeb gossip is the way to go. Much better than real content.
And, unlike the motoring caper, you get lots of free stuff.
Talking of the FIA, Natalie Robyn, its first female CEO, walked out of global HQ in the Hotel de Crillon, 8 Place de la Concorde, in Paris after 18 months.
Robyn is the fourth senior employee and the second woman to leave the FIA in the past four months. Meanwhile at the F1 of beer, Coopers has appointed its first female chairperson, Melanie Cooper. No details on Mel’s height and weight.
This week’s EV watch
Nissan has slashed the price of its Nissan Leaf by $10k, Peugeot has slashed the price of its EV by over $25k, Elon Musk has slashed the market cap of his company by 43 per cent, his comp package has plummeted from $85bn to $71bn, he has shut down his Tesla supercharging network and Muskie is offering a free Tesla with every Space- X flight. Another exclusive, this week Space-X added Mars and the moon to its tourist brochure (https://www.spacex.com/humanspaceflight). In other good news for range anxiety sufferers, EV charging companies Freewire and Tritium have gone belly up.
This week’s consumer watch
It appears Hyundai is looking after reader five, Travis Morgan, whose Santa Fe was the Guinness vibration record holder. In some ways this is a pity because Bravo Resource Solutions, the world’s leading vibration monitoring company which normally services the mining industry, offered to peer into the Santa Fe and identify Travis’s problem for free.
And over at Isuzu and Mazda, law firm Chamberlains is thinking over mounting a class action over alleged suspension defects which cause the tyres to go bald prematurely. Shame I can’t mount an action over having the same problem.
In this week’s new-car report we can tell you that Ferrari launched the V12 Cilindri at the Miami F1 circus.
No EV, no hybrid just 12 cilindri putting out 6510KW which is good for 340km/h and a green traffic light to 200km/h in 7.9 seconds. Maybe $800k here with not much warranty.
Car of the week
The 1973 Porsche 911 Turbo concept car is one of the most historically significant Porsches of all Porkers. It was the first road-going 911 to wear the Turbo badge. It will be on show at The Concours of Elegance at Hampton Court Palace from August 30 to September 1 (the same weekend as the Monza F1). Released at the Frankfurt auto show, the RSR bodied car appeared at motor shows in Paris, Tokyo and Melbourne.
In 1975 Alan Hamilton, racing driver and Porsche importer for Australia, spotted the 911 hiding in a corner at the Stuttgart. Of course he bought it, raced it and in 2017 was sold to a septic.
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