Cricket
India W Tour of Bangladesh, 1st - 2nd T20Is
Super-dominant wins in both T20s. Either Bangladesh isn't the force in Women's cricket that it is in Men's cricket, or India is even better in Women's cricket than in Men's.
IPL 2024
I know runfests are what most fans want but it's just not for me. I want to see some dot balls!
Formula 1
Japanese Grand Prix
Red Bull domination continues.
Ricciardo and Albon had a crash on the opening lap in the S Curves, making things worse for both sides. Daniel has not been performing and there is talk of replacing him. Williams, after their Australia fiasco, have lost MORE parts.
As for the crash itself, it was clearly a first-lap incident, but I'd be blaming Ricciardo if it was not lap 1. Most fans would disagree with me. I feel the current standards are not conducive to overtakes.
Charles Leclerc went from 8th to 4th on an amazing 1-stop strategy, with predictions showing he would've finished 7th had he gone with the "optimal" 2-stop. When you start around cars that are much slower than you, alternative strategies become more effective.
Yuki Tsunoda scores points in his home grand prix, so that's good for him.
Chinese Grand Prix
More Max domination, it's getting disheartening to think about the next few seasons already.
In the sprint, Lando qualified ahead of Hamilton, but lost the place in turn 1. Lewis led the sprint for a while before Max made his way past with no effort. Alonso also got a penalty for causing a collision with Carlos Sainz, much to the chagrin of fans - will discuss this later.
For the main qualifying, Carlos Sainz caused a red flag, stuck trackside for 77 seconds. The car had stalled, but he eventually managed to get it restarted and continued taking part in qualifying. Aston Martin lodged a protest of the results, because stopped cars must not be allowed to continue. The agreement between the teams and FIA, however, has been that "stopped car" in this context means a car that cannot continue moving under its own power, which Sainz did, even if very late.
There was a safety car during the race, and Alonso locked up at the restart. The resulting chain reaction caught out Stroll, who drove into the back of Ricciardo (who could've finished in the points if not for this incident), pushing him into the back of Piastri. Stroll got a penalty here.
What angers us fans is that Alonso got 3 penalty points for causing a collision while racing, and Stroll got only 2 penalty points for causing a collision under Full Course Yellow conditions, which is much worse.
Formula E
Misano E-Prix
Da Costa won the first race of this double header, but was disqualified for an illegal throttle damper. Feels unfair, because that's no performance gain, but an illegal part is an illegal part. This handed the win to Rowland.
In the second race, Rowland was leading quite convincingly until it fell apart on the last lap. It began at the race start, when he crossed the start/finish line (control line) as he took off from the grid. That first control line crossing should be ignored for the lap count, but it was not, causing the energy targets to be off by 1 lap for the entire race, hitting 0% energy as the penultimate lap ended. Rowland even told his team that the energy targets were looking suspicious but they did not catch the error - he could've fixed it from his steering wheel had they understood what was going on. Heartbreaking but what can you do?
Monaco E-Prix
Sam Bird injured his hand in a crash during practice, handing the car to Taylor Barnard for the rest of the weekend. He qualified dead last but made up 8 places to finish 14th.
Evans and Cassidy, Jaguar teammates, coordinated the whole race to help each other and took a commanding 1-2. Strategy!
Monaco in Formula E always sees plenty of overtakes 😌