This last week saw the second race of the season take place in China.

It was a sprint weekend so we got more racing action than a regular weekend although it’s fair to say the Sunday race was not the most thrilling race ever seen.

It was a weekend full of McLaren joy, Ferrari joy then woe, George in witness protection again, and Sauber returning to tractor form.

Oh, and Pitlane Paul may have had a special guest help him out with his race review.

These are the main stories we covered this week but obviously you need to listen to the episode to hear what our thoughts were on them all

Eddie Jordan passed away and was remembered with much fondness across the paddock

Thailand looking at a race in Bangkok…yup, another street track

Flexi-wings being talked about again as new directives issued ahead of Chinese GP

Ferrari launch a new hat. Oh Ferrari, what have you done? Picture below in the marbles section

What’s in the vault this week?

Diving into the marbles that make up the dirty side of the track is where you’ll find some subscriber only content!

First off let’s get that Ferrari cap out of the way! Will put the image here in case you’ve not seen it but will then leave it to your imagination.

After all the excitement of F1 being back we have to now wait a whole two weeks before F1 heads off to Japan.

We love the Suzuka circuit here at the Dirty Side and cannot wait for this race to come around.

However, something else will now capture attention on that race weekend and is a reason behind the newsletter being delayed while we waited for official confirmation that Liam Lawson will be dropped back down to the Racing Bulls team while Yuki Tsunoda goes the opposite way and takes up the main Red Bull seat next to Max.

It was a move that we didn’t think would happen and we defended Liam big time on the last episode.

There was much outcry on social media that it just isn’t fair to Liam and that if they wanted Yuki why didn’t they do it at the start of the season.

These were all sentiments shared by us so Rob donned his detective hat and set about trying to piece together the various moving parts and even called on Terry from CoffeeCornerMotorsport to validate our findings.

So, here is how we think it went down going all the way back to where it started:

1 - Checo is let go due to not being able to correct his downward trajectory of form

2 - Yuki is the fans favorite to take the seat but stories emerge that he does not stand a chance due to being a Honda driver from whom Red Bull will part ways at the end of the season as Honda head to Aston

3 - Liam Lawson is promoted instead to take the second Red Bull seat alongside Max

4 - Liam has a truly awful start to life in the Red Bull

5 - Rumors start to swirl around clauses in Max’s contract that allows him to walk away from Red Bull due to certain performance criteria around the car in terms of giving him a car to fight for the WDC and also for the WCC

6 - Sensing an opportunity it is reported that Honda offered a lot of money to get a Japanese driver in the Red Bull ahead of the Japanese Grand Prix.

7 - Seeing a way to recoup some of the Checo buyout money + hope that Yuki is more likely to get the WCC assault back on track, Red Bull leadership make the call to drop Liam and promote Yuki

Not sure how much of the above is 100% true but after sifting through multiple articles this seems to hold water but we may never know the true sequence of events.

However it came about, it’s fair to say that there is a whole new sub-plot in the Japanese race for us to keep an eye on!

Pretty sure you’ll hear us talk about the subject on this weeks episode!