The Bloke and A Bird Show Episode 116

First off, a big congratulations to Allan McNish on his new role as Team Principal for the Audi Sport ABT Schaeffler Formula E Team. NBCSN has announced that they did not renew their broadcast deal with Formula 1 for 2018, followed a few hours later by an announcement from ESPN that they are the sport's new broadcast partner for 2018.  Before you go celebrating - we're not sure this means that we'll get better F1 coverage in the US, and its possible that things may get worse. It's been confirmed that Renault has hired the former head of the FIA's technical department, and Renault has agreed to further delay his start date - we'll see if that eases the concerns over their new employee. The grid penalties started coming in for this weekend's race long before the race weekend started. The Formula 1 Vietnamese Grand Prix? Yeah we're not sure about that either. And there's a change coming to F1 next year that sounds simple but is actually pretty neat.