Rusty's Garage Dec 8, 2025

The Motorsport Brief | The F1 title decider in Abu Dhabi

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Concept

Formula One

Formula One is a top-level car racing series where teams compete in races called Grands Prix. It's known for fast cars and exciting races held on tracks worldwide.

Brand

McLaren

McLaren is a famous car company from the UK that makes fast sports cars and has a successful racing team in Formula One. They are known for their innovative designs and technology.

Car

The Opel Senator is a type of car that was made in Germany and is known for being comfortable and spacious. It was popular among people who wanted a nice car to drive for work or family trips, and it represents a time when cars were built with a focus on luxury.

Concept

Max Verstappen

Max Verstappen is a famous race car driver in Formula 1. He has won several championships and is known for being very skilled and competitive.

Concept

Lando Norris

Lando Norris is another well-known Formula 1 driver who races for the McLaren team. He is popular among fans for his skills on the track.

Car

Plymouth Cricket

The Plymouth Cricket is a small car that was made in the early 1970s and was meant to be affordable and easy to drive. It was part of a trend where car companies were making smaller cars for people who wanted something practical and economical.

Term

championship

A championship is a competition where drivers race against each other to earn points. The one with the most points at the end wins the title.

Term

number one driver

A number one driver is the main driver for a racing team. This driver usually gets the best support and resources to win races.

Concept

Red Bull

Red Bull is a famous racing team in Formula 1. They have won many championships and are known for having fast cars and skilled drivers.

Company

Liberty Mutual

Liberty Mutual is a company that sells insurance, including car insurance. They help people find the best coverage for their needs and often help them save money.

Car

Skoda Rapid

The Skoda Rapid is a compact car that is designed to be practical and affordable. It offers a lot of space inside for passengers and luggage, making it a good choice for families or anyone who needs a reliable car without spending too much money.

Term

hard charger

A 'hard charger' is a driver who tries really hard and does well in races, even if they aren't winning the championship. They often make impressive moves during the race.

Brand

Fernando Alonso

Fernando Alonso is a famous race car driver from Spain who has won championships in Formula 1. He's known for being very skilled and competitive.

Brand

Carlos Sainz

Carlos Sainz is another well-known race car driver from Spain who races in Formula 1. He drives for a team called Ferrari and is known for doing well in races.

Term

new engine

A new engine in racing means that a team has made changes or improvements to the part of the car that makes it go. This can help the car go faster and perform better in races.

Brand

Ford

Ford is a well-known car company that makes many types of vehicles, including popular trucks and cars.

Concept

power plant

A power plant is basically the engine and related parts that make a car go. It's what provides the power needed to drive the vehicle.

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A listen up production.

Welcome to the Motorsport Brief after an intense F1

title decider in Abu Dhabi.

Good day, everybody. Rusty here.

Matt Hickey from Codesports has been

an absolute champion this year.

He's been with us several times across the season

and he's kindly agreed to come back on

and wrap it all up today and we will cross to him

in Brisfagus in just a moment.

The feature app that we've been promising with Colin Bond.

Been talking about it for ages.

It is out now recorded just after Bathurst

with the Hall of Famer, whether you're into rally,

maybe you might like to reminisce about some of the legends

in the open wheeler scene, not just in Australia

but globally in that 70s period.

Or perhaps you've got a passion for touring cars

and some of the golden eras of touring car racing.

Well, you know what?

Bondy talks about all of that and more.

Two parts that you can find,

both of them are available in our library right now

for you to enjoy at Chalicia.

One of the first Bathurst calls that I ever did

when I first started out on this broadcasting journey

back in the mid 90s was on an AM radio station

with David Tapp and Colin, I've just realised

was the expert commentator back then.

So it's nice to talk about his career

in a bit more detail and celebrate a brand new book

that is out too called Full Tilt.

You might be able to grab yourself a copy

in time for Christmas.

Lando Norris is the new Formula One world champion

completing an unbelievable story,

an incredible turnaround in recent years for McLaren.

It's their first drivers world title

since Lewis Hamilton back in 2008

and they add to back to back constructors titles.

Now, there is so much to talk about

in the wake of this season.

It has been tailor made in many ways

for the next series of drive to survive for Netflix.

Do papaya rules work?

Will they continue into 2026?

Was Oscar Piestri treated fairly?

And how come an Australian senator ended up

discussing things in relation to this championship

that Zach Brown spoke about over the weekend there

in the Middle East?

Now, a two debrief all of it.

Hello, Matt, welcome.

Hey, Ross, yeah, you know when it hits Parliament,

it's big time stuff, isn't it?

The caravan.

Senator Matt Canavan, let's talk about that first.

So he felt that Oscar was a bit hard done by.

Zach's retort to that was, well,

it's a little bit uneducated in the, you know,

what really happens within the bounds of a team in Formula One.

What was your takeaway from all of that?

Look, I think the senator may have achieved

what he was out to do and that was to potentially grab

a few headlines and get his name in a newspaper or two.

So he can tick that box.

That is for certain.

Look, I mean, we can have the debate for eons.

I think there are elements that are certainly

from our standpoint from the outside looking in

that would seem that Oscar was a little hard done by.

That is, of course, with our green and gold colored glasses

on at the same time.

But in the end, Lando Norris is your world champion.

Yep, and I think you'll be a good champion too.

No matter what we think, you know, the patriotism

that you just talked about is a very natural thing,

a natural byproduct.

But, you know, this is the story of a kid

who has passionately pursued it through his karting career.

It wasn't all that long ago that he was across the ditch

in New Zealand, kind of starting his open-wheeler journey

and making a name for himself.

A successful stint across the ditch there over one summer.

And now he's been a part of the resurgence of this team.

He's had an amazing chapter with them.

He's been with them through their lows.

So no matter how we feel about Oscar,

we can talk about that in a moment.

I do feel like his star, the Lando star, if you will,

and there's many great things.

He rebounded this year from a difficult mental patch

and to come back as strong as he did,

I think shows what an athlete is.

And I think that longevity that you touched on

with McLaren is my favorite part of the story.

In modern day sport, not even just in F1,

but across many different sports out of motor racing,

we see that a lot of the time, whether it's individual players,

whether it be in a sport like basketball or drivers,

in this instance, are very happy to jump ship

if they think they can get a better result somewhere else.

Not often do you see that great story

of somebody sticking with the one team

and then eventually going on to win a World Championship.

We've seen it with Max Verstappen,

but now Lando Norris kind of joins that nine years

with McLaren, very impressive.

And I tell you what, I had a thought last night

as I was watching, he's come a long way

since I think it was 2021 in Russia

when he threw away that first win

when the rain started coming down

on that Russian circuit, made a decision

and had some interesting radio messages

with his team in that race as well.

And it got away from him.

And it thought that first win was,

he was never going to get it.

And now we come four years on in his World Champion.

So it is a very nice story,

regardless of where you land on it all.

Most definitely.

That was quite a sting that day for him at Sochi.

Does it sting for Oscar Piastri in the final analysis?

Some fans have said, look, there have been moments

where he'll probably navel gaze

and look at Azerbaijan, for example,

and stuff that he can tidy up.

I still feel like his tally for the year,

the way that he's continued to grow as a racer this year,

he will come back stronger from this.

The World title may have slipped from his grasp,

but I think you'll get another level of Oscar Piastri

in 2026.

Yeah, I think whenever you are less than one race win

in points away from a World title,

you can chalk that down as a pretty good year.

Now, of course, the disappointment will sting.

And it'll sting probably for a little while

as he makes his way back to Australia to catch some rays.

And probably we will see him at a test match or two.

We know his connection with the Australian cricket team.

It will sting for him,

but I think you have to chalk this down

as another really impressive year for Oscar.

I was really impressed again by how he spoke yesterday

after the race and, in fact, in the lead-up,

in the days leading up to it,

there was a lot of attempts to try and drum it up

a little bit, try and get an answer out of him

to say that he wasn't going to let Lando pass

if a situation like that presented itself.

But he was very diplomatic,

like we've seen all season, very level-headed.

And then even after the race,

he was asked, how are you feeling?

And he's like, I'm pretty good

because I knew I needed things to go my way.

It was going to take something pretty extraordinary

for me to win the title just based off this race.

So I really appreciated and liked that honesty from Oscar.

And I think, as we've said before on this podcast,

Rusty, I mean, this guy is still so young.

So this career is going to be massive.

And of course, next year we go into some reg changes.

We'll see what happens with McLaren there.

But a good 2025, no deny,

for Oscar Piestu, regardless of the fact

he missed out on that title,

he probably thinks he should have.

We'll come to the reg changes a little later

in this short cast.

I thought he was brilliant with Lando's parents

and Lando's group generally,

a very gracious conclusion to the championship

in the way that he went and spoke with him

after the race wrapped up.

And as you rightly pointed out,

I think he's still so young

and lots of great things to come in his career.

To papaya rules work, I said that in the introduction.

I feel like this vindicates things

from Andrea Stella's standpoint here.

It is very difficult to manage.

We've seen it happen before in other race teams.

It's very difficult to manage two very strong personalities.

If there's not a clear number one,

let's go Red Bull, Max Verstappen,

and then Yuki Snowder has struggled throughout the year.

So did Liam Lawson for that matter by comparison to Max.

So you automatically had that clear definition

between those guys.

Very different story at McLaren.

It's had its moments where it wasn't easy to manage.

They steadfastly stuck by that.

Can they continue to do that in your mind

or will it need some refinement?

I think it needs refinement.

When the championship comes down to the final race

and just two points,

now we go back and think about all the different moments

across the season, two points that,

yes, of course, it's a fantastic season

that McLaren has put together,

but when it only comes down to two points,

there is a little bit of an element of luck

in some instances that does come into it.

Now, if you're a professional racing team,

you never want luck to play a factor

in you winning a championship.

You want to dominate that thing from start to finish.

So I think it does need refinement.

What surprised me the most about the Papyrus,

I can understand it for the first half of the season

when as you put, you don't really have a number one driver.

So next season, Red Bull will head in

and Max Verstappen remains clearly the number one driver.

But when you head into a season

where both drivers come across as real championship threats,

normally what we've seen in the past is

we wait until about the midway part of the season

and if one has advantage over the other,

then if team order has come into place,

it is normally to favor the person who has done the work,

got the results to put themselves in front

in the championship.

Now that's the part of it that we didn't see,

which I think is what drew the eye

of a lot of people looking out from the outside,

looking in who had some issues with that.

Now has that come back to bite them?

They will say no because Lando Norris is world champion,

but when it only comes down to two points

and it's not your second driver

who's the one who's two points behind,

I dare say that's a little too close for comfort.

We're gonna take a break here

on this edition of the MotorSport Brief.

Matt, can you hang around with us?

We've got a couple more questions.

To come your way as we debrief

what has been a superb season in Formula One.

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You're listening to the Motorsport Brief

with Matt Hickey from Code Sports

in the hours after the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix,

the final round of the 2025 World Championship.

It wasn't the most exciting race, Matt.

It had its intensity.

There's no two ways about that.

I think many of us went into it thinking,

well, we're gonna get something a little crazy,

a little wild here.

That didn't necessarily eventuate,

but there were some different strategies

and a few things that kept us on our toes

into the early hours of the morning.

I think you've been a bit kind there, Rusty.

It was boring.

It was a boring motor race.

Let's be very frank.

With about 10 laps ago,

I was sitting in my hotel room up here in Brisbane going,

yeah, it could have been in bed about an hour ago,

but no, you love the sports.

So you hang around and watch it.

Of course you can, but yeah.

I mean, there needed to be an element of a safety car,

I think, to really throw something different into the mix.

We were kept on our toes.

Of course, Oscar got off to that fantastic start

on the hard tyre, which was a little bit of a surprise,

but it did seem on a race pace

that the hard tyre was the better choice out of the two.

His long strategy didn't really work out

the way that they had hoped and planned it to.

Charlotte Claire gave it a few moments

of nervousness for Lando Norris.

We saw, of course, Yuki Sonoda doing what we,

everyone expected him to do, yet still some commentators

and some people from McLaren were so shocked

by the fact that he was maybe gonna put a couple of moves

under braking to try and block Lando Norris.

I mean, of course he was going to.

I was a little bit surprised by how shocked

the reaction to was that, of course,

that was going to happen.

But you know, Lando does what he needs to do.

We don't get the team orders

that everyone had speculated about

what was going to happen if it happens.

Max rides off into the distance

and another race in the books.

Yeah, headline chasing across the weekend.

You talked before about trying to kind of crack them

in some respects.

Firstly, I think there was concern maybe

at News Limited or Code Sports End

about whether Oscar was being shut down

from conversations with the Australian press.

Kim Ilman, the photographer

who follows the sport and was based over there,

I think tried to hose that down

and said, you know, was that necessarily

as much as it was cracked up to be?

And then this morning, some stuff around, you know,

is Lando Superman?

It doesn't sort of change him and things like that.

Yeah, Julian Linden doing some fantastic reporting

on the ground over there.

He's done a great job on so many sports

across so many years, no doubt about that.

Yeah, I mean, he spoke to some insiders

that have been in the Cape for a very, very long time.

They certainly raised their eyebrows

at the treatment of Oscar as somebody

who was leading a world championship

and a genuine championship contender.

And, you know, I guess now post-race

that kind of all falls to the wayside a little bit

now that we have our champion

and all of a sudden everyone's eyes turned to 2026.

But yeah, comments after, I mean,

Oscar did such a fantastic job

and I think his answer, when you look at it,

it was quite an honest answer.

He was pressed about, you know,

what it means now moving forward

that Lando has the number one on the car

and whether that might change what happens

inside the four walls in McLaren

and, you know, as they're constantly going

about their business.

He said, look, he's still Lando Norris.

He hasn't overnight turned into Superman.

He's still Lando Norris.

Essentially pointing to the fact that for a big chunk

of the season, Oscar was beating him.

So it's not all of a sudden that this is a guy

who is absolutely going to dominate every single race

and they have to 100% get behind

without any chance of Oscar proving himself next year.

Let's go rapid fire to the finish of this podcast.

What did you make of Charlotte Claire,

the Lewis Hamilton in 2025

with Charlotte, you know, significantly upstaging him?

I thought Lewis and his drive back this morning was,

you know, still showed that he's got the fire

in the belly, but it's been a tough year

by comparison to his teammate, hasn't it?

Yeah, the back end of the year's been really, really tough

for Lewis and your right, Shale, has been very solid

across the entire season, but the last few races,

especially in qualifying, it's just that's where it's gone

wrong for Lewis Hamilton.

But I see that as an outlier.

I don't think you can take that as something consistent

moving forward because we have seen time and time again.

And as you mentioned Rusty in the race,

he still managed to secure a spot coming from essentially

the back of the grid.

So a great start for Shale Leclerc,

I think in terms of that partnership,

because of course, when somebody of the caliber

of Lewis Hamilton comes into town,

you're wanting to prove yourself immediately

and he has done that here.

But again, it's so hard moving into next season

because we just don't know what the pecking order

in terms of the teams will be

with all these regulation changes.

Tell me about the, let's call it a hard charger.

Motorsport often has little awards

that it gives out along those lines,

perhaps for someone who's not a champion,

but starred at different points during the year.

I think at 44 years of age,

there was some glimpses of that from one Fernando Alonso.

But for me, it really has to be Carlos Sainz's performance

at Williams this year, I think.

Yeah, fantastic coming into a new car, a new team.

And it was always going to be tough for Carlos

because he thought he should have still had that seat

at Ferrari, but he comes out and has a fantastic season.

In fact, Williams as a team has a really fantastic season,

two drivers that finish inside the top 10 of the standings.

I mean, you think three or four years ago where they were,

would we have thought they'd be in this position?

Probably not.

So that's a credit to that team

and how well they have been doing.

The other one I'd really love to point out

is Nico Holkenberg.

What a season he's had as well,

had a really fantastic year,

finishes 11th in the driver's standings,

a long, long way in front of his rookie teammate,

Gabriel Bottoletto.

So he's had a really, really good year

coming back into the sport

and I've been very impressed by Nico.

I think it was a tally of like 51 points in the end for him.

So it was a really good job that you've shown a light on.

Quickly, below par, and I mean, well below par,

Alpine seriously disappointing.

I mean, where they have ended up,

I think Gasly boxes hard with what he's got,

but Colopinto fundamentally fared no better

than Jack Doolin if we're brutally honest.

And I feel for Jack

because I think he deserved another shot at least

given that we've ended up in the same result.

Yeah, it's quite remarkable when you think about that change

and how everyone expected Franco Colopinto

to far outperform Jack Doolin.

And in the end, even though Doolin took part

in probably close to 20 races less,

they've both ended up on the same amount of points,

which for those keeping track at home was zero.

So, yeah, I think it would have been a very, very frustrating

season from the sidelines, at least from when he was

on the sidelines for Jack Doolin.

And it's quite remarkable to think that when all of the

business that went down with Oscar Piacere

at the start of his F1 career,

we were unsure about whether Alpine or McLaren

was the right choice for him moving forward.

And by crikey, him and his team have made that

correct choice when we look back at it.

And of course, Hansard is 20-20,

but there's vastly different teams at the moment.

Most definitely.

Okay, before we go, lots of unknowns in the 20-26 regulations.

So much hype and excitement around that

and what the cars will be like from a performance point of view.

All this talk of porpoising this year should disappear.

We, in theory, won't have that next season.

Do you feel like McLaren can maintain its grip at the moment

now that they're the constructors champions

now that they're going to get that boost of,

call it psychological strength from having won

their first driver's title in nearly 20 years?

It is a very big reg change, though, Matt, isn't it?

Yeah, it's massive.

And a moment to recognise the passing of the word porpoising.

I hope we never have to talk about porpoising ever again.

Bike, crikey, RIP, I tell you what, those first few races

when that came into play, porpoising,

I've never had to try and figure out how to spell that word

About this episode

The Motorsport Brief wraps up an intense F1 season with Lando Norris crowned world champion after a dramatic title decider in Abu Dhabi. Hosts Rusty and Matt Hickey discuss the implications of Norris's victory for McLaren and the controversies surrounding teammate Oscar Piastri. The episode dives into the dynamics of team orders, the performance of key drivers like Charles Leclerc and Lewis Hamilton, and the challenges ahead with upcoming regulation changes. The conversation also touches on the broader impact of social media on motorsport culture.

Carlos Sainz championship Fernando Alonso Ford Formula One hard charger Lando Norris Liberty Mutual Max Verstappen McLaren

Opel Senator Plymouth Cricket Skoda Rapid

Original notes

With Lando Norris celebrating his first driver’s championship we debrief the final round of a very memorable season.

Rusty is joined by Matt Hickey from Codesports for their best post race convo yet!

Why Papaya Rules need a tune up if McLaren persists with them & the champion qualities Oscar Piastri showed despite missing out on F1’s biggest prize.

A couple of standouts of the season beyond the big four teams and a year Alpine would probably prefer to forget.

Plus Senator Matt Canavan misses Zak Brown’s Christmas list and the countdown to the start of the 2026 season. How many sleeps to go?

Head to Rusty's Facebook, Twitter or Instagram and give us your feedback and let us know who you want to hear from on Rusty's Garage

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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