The most dramatic weekend in motorsport of the year! On the Grid Podcast

Welcome to episode 17 of the Lovecars on the Grid podcast! Tiff Needell and Paul Woodman bring us the news on the motorsport events from around the World, and this week has been a busy one!   We kick off with the dramatic events of Formula 1. We had a Ferrari meltdown at Imola, disappointing the Tifosi after Sainz crashing out in qualifying after a clash with Daniel Ricciardo. Charles LeClerc put his Ferrari into a wall when trying to go for the fastest lap. The Red Bull cars of Max Verstappen and Sergio Perez came through, with Verstappen winning the race. 3rd and 4th wen to two British drivers, Lando Norris and George Russell.   The support races were dramatic, with a win for Théo Pourchaire in F2, and Roman Stanek in Formula 3. We apologise again to Jonny Edgar for forgetting his name last week and we hope he gets well soon.   We had a dramatic weekend in BTCC too, with overtakes involving 3 or 4 cars wide at Donington Park. We also had the Porsches, Ginettas and Minis racing. The highlight of the BTCC for us was Jake Hill, who finished 3rd in the first race, but got thrown out for ride height infringement and put to the back of the grid. He ended up winning the race!   Even more drama in the NASCAR race at the Talladega Superspeedway. With the 200MPH back straight, we were expecting lots of incidents. There was just the one crash on the back straight, where cars were four a breadth, causing a massive crash with up to 20 cars off the track as a result. The lead changed 29 times in the last lap, with Kyle Larsson against Erik Jones.    We had both World Superbikes and Moto GP this weekend. The Superbikes were at their Dutch round. In the final race, Razgatlioglu and Rea clashed and took each other off the track.   Moto GP was very dramatic at the Algarve International Circuit in Portugal. Fabio Quartararo was triumphant on his Yamaha. There was turn 1 drama, with riders out braking each other and taking each other out. The biggest drama on the bikes was in Moto 2, where riders had to flee safety after Zonta Van Den Goorbergh's bike went up in flames. No less than 15 bikes all went down in the same corner, thanks to some rain on the track.    Jake Dixon was on pole for the restart, with 7 laps to go. Unfortunately, the drama continued, where he lost his front wheel and lost the pole position with a crash.  The most dramatic event of the weekend was at World Rally Championship in Croatia. With poor weather, we had a lot of punctures from the gravel and rocks. We started off with drama, with crashes and punctures from the beginning of the race. We had plenty of crashes, and even flames from Oliver Solberg's car.   The drama came down to the last two stages, as Kalle Rovanpera's Toyota was on track for the comfortable win. In the penultimate, 19th stage, we had torrential rain! Rovanpera's ended up losing the lead to Hyundai's Ott Tanak. In the final stage however, Rovanpera managed to claw the win back, a great battle between the two drivers.   Next week, we'll be doing this podcast from America! There's no Formula 1, but we have Indycar in Alabama. IMSA Sports cars at Laguna Seca. We have Moto GP at Barcelona, NASCAR and Formula E in Monaco and we have the Superbikes at Oulton Park!