It was all lined up. The penultimate race weekend of the season at a track that isn't exactly condusive to overtakes. Lando  just needed to outscore both his rivals by 2 points over the sprint and the Grand Prix to claim his first World Driver's crown, he was starting ahead of Max Verstappen in both races and he's had the measure of Oscar Piastri recently. It's a sure thing isn't it?

This week on the podcast we look back at the race weekend where Lando Norris could well have lost the championship after McLaren took a gamble on strategy straight out the Ferrari playbook and managed to keep the 3 way title fight alive right up to the final race of the season next weekend in Abu Dhabi (and we all know how that's gone before don't we). How did they manage to get everything so wrong and be the only team not to pit under a safety car with 50 laps to go when there were compulsory stops after a maximum of 25 laps on a set of tyres?

At least for the likes of us we've got another season where the finale isn't a dead rubber/lame duck and we're not going to know who the 2025 World Champion is until Sunday afternoon (unless something goes badly wrong in qualifying of course!) So of course we're speculating like nobody's business on that and on what the 2026 RedBull & VCARB lineups are going to be along with which one of the 5 prosepective drivers is going to be left without a seat (spoiler, it's Yuki) until someone messes up and gets demoted/fired! Obviously we've got a good few tangents as well as it wouldn't be an episode of 3L4W without them!

And if you want to join in with the chat during the races (along with practice and qualifying) head over to our ⁠Discord⁠ where there’s always a great crowd of people to watch along with. And on the socials we’ve got our ⁠Facebook⁠, ⁠Instagram⁠, ⁠BlueSky⁠ & ⁠Twitter (or is it X)⁠ and Paul’s attempts at Sim Racing on our ⁠Twitch⁠ channel. And if you want to support us you can donate to our ⁠Patreon⁠ as well from as little as £/$/€ 1 per month

Enjoy