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.
In the other Roller were the first three on the podium, George Russell, Carlos Sainz and Hamo. Now nothing to see here but Hamo was sitting forward of the other two looking like he had put himself in the naughty corner and he looked and spoke (very little) like he was in the naughty corner.
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. And that’s because 17 drivers have won it multiple times.
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. He did get a bit worried about Hamo but the struggle from 10th on the grid to second meant Russell was seven seconds (or two lifetimes) ahead. 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 but probably should have lost points for trying to enter pit lane then pulling out at the last minute, with a very bolshie Chuck Leclerc fourth (aka nowhere).
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. Peter Gasly’s engine blew up and he had to call the RACV.
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. He paints the city as a neon-lit dystopia, where greed, consumerism, and hedonism collide in an overwhelming assault on the senses. And that was 52 years ago.
Things have gone uphill or downhill (depending on your preferences and lifestyle choices) since then. In November 2024, the drivers were steering through a marijuana smoke haze that permeated their beings at 356km/h. As Franco Colapinto, who came 14th, said: “Yes, there was a smell of weed. If they dope (test) the drivers now, I think we’ll all test positive. When we all test positive, there will be a mess.”
Of course, it’s now all Middle East all the time with the F1 circus hanging out in Doha for the Qatar Grand Prix this weekend, then heading the 599km to Abu Dhabi for the local GP. And Cadillac are believed to have paid $700m to join the grid in 2026. This deal is not as straightforward as it looks. Remember when we all thought it was Andretti Racing that was pushing to get on the grid.
Well, Andretti Global is now owned by Dan Towriss’s TWG Global which is the investment vehicle for Mark Walter’s Guggenheim Capital, a diversified financial services firm with more than $525bn in assets under management. GM/Cadillac are partners in the team which will probably use Ferrari engines for a while and then use Renault F1 technology (contradiction in terms) to build their own.
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. Drivers Fangio, Kling, and Herrmann qualified 1st, 2nd, and 7th, with Herrmann setting the fastest lap and Fangio and Kling securing a dominant 1-2 finish. It was a triumphant comeback for Mercedes-Benz in Formula One.
Driven by future five-time drivers’ champion Juan Manuel Fangio to victory at the 1955 Buenos Aires Grand Prix and Stirling Moss at the 1955 Italian Grand Prix at Monza, this is a steal at MM’s yearly pay check.
Back to our regular section: what’s going wrong in the car industry this week? Well, in the US, Jaguar is buying back almost 3000 I-Pace EVs due to fire risk (Jag still have them on sale in Australia); Japalonik have rated two Jeeps, particularly from Berwick Jeep, as “The Most Embarrassing Cars On Sale Today” and you’re unlucky to be with AAMI, part of the Suncorp insurance conglomerate helmed by Steve Johnston.
We’ll give you the whole story next week but readers Mark and Lyn Waldron are AAMI Diamond Status customers.
We asked Steve’s PR person questions like is it normal for AAMI customers to have to wait five months for their car to be repaired? Do you think it’s reasonable for AAMI customers to wait nearly a month for an assessment? Does AAMI usually not give Diamond Status customers a complimentary rental car when its preferred repairer network has taken so long to repair an ultra-common Subaru Forrester within a reasonable time frame? But we didn’t get a reply.
jc@jcp.com.au
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