Piastri Stuns Verstappen! F1 2025 Saudi Arabia GP Winners & LosersBuckle up for the ultimate breakdown of the 2025 Saudi Arabian Grand Prix! Oscar Piastri shocks Max Verstappen with a lap one move, snagging his third win and the Drivers’ Championship lead! Charles Leclerc brings Ferrari back to the podium, while Lando Norris fights from P10 to P4. But it wasn’t all smooth sailing—Verstappen’s penalty and a lap 1 crash for Gasly and Tsunoda shook things up! Join us as we dive into the winners (Piastri, Leclerc, Williams) and losers (Verstappen, Russell, Tsunoda) of this wild Jeddah race. Perfect for new F1 fans in the USA wanting to catch up on the action!

NASCAR is gearing up for the second season of its Netflix docuseries “Full Speed,” with the motorsport series hitting New York City’s Times Square to promote the upcoming release. Netflix will release “Full Speed” season 2 on May 7. The series will follow the 2024 campaign’s races, drama, and highlights, ending with Team Penske driver Joey Logano winning a third Cup Series championship last November.

However, NASCAR fans were already less enthused about Netflix’s upcoming release, with the series dropping 11 races into the 2025 Cup Series season and new storylines already developing. Nonetheless, NASCAR and Netflix have continued to ramp up their promotion by displaying a digital billboard in the Big Apple’s famed Times Square.

The move comes after Netflix briefly teased the release date for the highly anticipated second season of NASCAR: Full Speed before bizarrely scrubbing the series trailer from the internet. However, fans have continued to point out that Season 1 was released in January 2024 before the 2024 season, whereas Season 2 will be released in May 2025.

“Imagine how well it would have gone over had it been released the week prior to the season starting. Who cares what happened last fall in May?” one replied on X. “Why bother.. Last season was 7 months ago. It’s like watching an NFL Super Bowl special in week 5 of next season,” another tweeted. “Nothing like getting hyped for the season 3 months after it starts. Why not do it like Drive to Survive and release before the first race?” a third questioned.

“About god damn time… don’t get why this doesn’t come out a week before Daytona… do the same as F1 and build some hype right before the season starts,” a fourth said. “This has been so mismanaged,” a fifth declared.

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Netflix’s fly-on-the-wall docuseries was a big hit with some NASCAR drivers. The 2023 Cup Series champion, Ryan Blaney, praised Season 1’s release. “I thought they did a good job of mixing the racing side with the personality side and showing what goes into it — the ups and the downs. It’s a lot of emotions positive and negative depending on how you’re doing in it, and I thought they did a good job with that,” said Blaney last year.

“It was good to give access to those folks and just show the personal side and then the racing side, whether it’s your diehard NASCAR fan or someone who doesn’t know anything about the sport,” Blaney added. “I especially enjoyed the ending, so that part was good.”

Denny Hamlin was the protagonist of “Full Speed” Season 1, with the 56-time Cup Series race winner yet to win the Cup Series championship. Season 2 could follow Hamlin again, who was confident that 2024 would finally be his year, only to come up short again.

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“Obviously, my quest for this Cup (Series championship) has been 18 years in the making, so they thought that was a compelling story,” Hamlin said at the time. “I feel like it has been really positive for the sport and certainly, I hope we bring it to some new eyes and that is what it is all about,” Hamlin added.

Meanwhile, Christopher Bell says he doesn’t like watching back his own interviews, so “Full Speed” would be a hard pass. “I can’t watch interviews of myself, so I can’t watch it,” Bell said.

MIAMI GARDENS, Fla. (AP) — Four-time reigning Formula 1 world champion Max Verstappen skipped Thursday activities at the Miami Grand Prix to be with his partner as she awaits the birth of their first child.

It is not clear when Kelly Piquet is due and Red Bull only announced Thursday morning that Verstappen would not attend media activities. The team said no further details would be released and that Verstappen is expected in Miami in time for Friday on-track action.

Piquet’s sister, Julia, last week at Talladega Superspeedway said Kelly was too far along in her pregnancy to travel to Miami for Sunday’s race.

Verstappen and Piquet, the daughter of three-time F1 champion Nelson Piquet, went public with their relationship in 2021. She has a daughter, Penelope, with driver Daniil Kvyat that Verstappen is very close with but her current pregnancy will be the first child for the Dutchman.

Verstappen, who has 64 career victories, has won the last four F1 titles. He’s won just once this season as McLaren has shown an early edge over Red Bull headed into Sunday’s race, the sixth of the season. He is third in the series standings.

Verstappen won the first two Miami Grand Prix races, while Lando Norris of McLaren scored the first F1 victory of his career at this race last year.

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AP auto racing: https://apnews.com/hub/auto-racing

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© 2025 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, written or redistributed.

Sounds weird, but it’s true.

Former NASCAR team BK Racing was officially ordered to pay Front Row Motorsports $2.5 million in a federal court ruling regarding the sale of a NASCAR Cup Series charter spot.

The judgment required former team owner Ronald Devine and his partner, Michael DiSeveria, to pay Front Row Motorsports $2.1 million in settlement fees. The duo also had to pay nearly $400,000 in attorney fees, as well as additional expenses.

The US Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit reviewed the case and determined that settling for $2.1 million was reasonable under the circumstances. In Dec. 2016, Front Row Motorsports agreed to purchase a NASCAR charter from BK Racing for $2 million, on the understanding that the charter would be conveyed free and clear of any liens or encumbrances.

FRM had Crew Chiefs Bob Osborne and Bonnie Wingo in 2016, with two chartered drivers in Landon Cassill and the rookie season of Chris Buescher. But BK Racing had an outstanding loan from Union Bank and Trust on that very charter.

Nobody at Front Row was aware of the original debt when they closed the deal, paying one million dollars at signing and promising another million six weeks later. When Front Row learned of Union Bank’s claim, the team refused to pay the second million until BK Racing’s principals agreed to defend against any claims by the bank.

DiSeveria and Devine signed the agreement, and a third major player declined. Yet, Front Row accepted it and paid the remaining million. Union Bank then sued to collect a debt exceeding nine million dollars and to foreclose its lien on the charter.

Front Row settled that action for $2.1 million, but DiSeveria and Devine refused to honor their obligation. They then sued them in federal court in North Carolina, as DiSeveria and Devine argued that because the third BK principal hadn’t signed, no valid contract existed.

The district court rejected each of those defenses on summary judgment. The court found that the figure was both reasonable and made in good faith, noting that Front Row faced a potential liability of over nine million, and that Devine had previously proposed even higher settlement figures.

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Devine was previously indicted on four federal charges for failing to disburse payroll taxes amounting to nearly $ 400,000, which he also attempted to appeal. He was ordered to pay $31 million following the BK’s bankruptcy in 2018, broken down into $11 million in debt, $6 million for the money Devine paid to company affiliates, and more.

Devine also failed to disclose his finances during the case, which led the judge to impose the full penalty. He testified by calling himself an “honest” person, but to no beneficial result in court.

FRM has three chartered 2025 Cup Series season drivers in Noah Gragson, Todd Gilliland, and Zane Smith. The team ranks No. 23 in NASCAR’s Owner standings out of 47 slots.

Cue the Justin Timberlake meme, because once the clock strikes midnight Wednesday night, we’ve hit a mystical fifth season that only passes through Indiana.

It brings rain – often times in the form of torrential downpours – as well as steamy 90-degree temps. Smells of burning rubber, tenderloins in the fryer and ethanol mix with the road of engines, the screams of 350,000 people and the faint but ever-present base of EDM music. Black-and-white checkered patterns is the unofficial outfit of choice – bandana, t-shirt, shorts, socks, hat, shoes…you name it.

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Eleven months out of the year, I say I’m the motorsports reporter for IndyStar, but from May 1-31, my beat is the Indianapolis 500 – the world’s largest single-day sporting event in the world long dubbed the Greatest Spectacle in Racing, hosted at the Racing Capital of the World. It’s a beat that grows from trying to capture a sport to covering both the cars on-track as well as the way in which a city reverberates around a sporting event with more than 100 years of history that has withstood two world wars, four ownership groups and started with the first rear-view mirror and now this year will feature hybrid technology for the first time.

Hybrid, crashes, what’s next?: 5 takeaways from Indianapolis 500 open test week

And this year, we’ve got Kyle Larson’s second attempt at ‘The Double’, Josef Newgarden’s quest to go back-to-back-to-back, Helio Castroneves’ drive for five and efforts from IndyCar’s world-famous star Pato O’Ward, its two-time defending champ Alex Palou and possibly a Formula 1-bound Colton Herta to hoist the Borg-Warner Trophy for the very first time. It’s Fox’s first 500 broadcast, likely the Indianapolis Motor Speedway’s first grandstand sellout in nine years and a sporting event so captivating, it may for the first time attract a race-day visit from a sitting U.S. president.

For a sport that has felt as it’s been waiting to launch for several years now, this May’s Indy 500 sits in a position where it could serve as that proverbial match.

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So let’s talk about it. I’m Nathan Brown, IndyStar’s motorsports reporter who’s been on the ground traveling with and covering the IndyCar series since the fall of 2019 – just weeks before Roger Penske took control of a sport his Team Penske dynasty had dominated at times for half a century. I’m hosting a Reddit ‘Ask Me Anything’ at 1 p.m. on Thursday, May 1 to answer your questions about the state of IndyCar and the leadup to the 2025 Indy 500.

Don’t have Indy 500 tickets yet?: Better hurry as sellout nears, IMS president Doug Boles says

I’ve attended a dozen 500s, both as a fan first in the early 2000s growing up in central Indiana with 500-obsessed parents and then a reporter when my wife and I moved to Indianapolis nearly six years ago. And during my time in the media center, I’m hard pressed to say I’ve had what you’d consider to be a ‘normal’ 500 experience, from the fan-less August edition in 2020, to Helio’s history in 2021, the return of full fan attendance in 2022, the never-before-seen late-race red flag in 2023 and Josef’s last-lap magic in 2024 that followed a four-hour rain delay and a checkered flag falling at the beginnings of dusk.

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In some ways, that’s why I love this sport – and more specifically, this month and this race – is the 500’s unpredictability, its drama, the emotions it all elicits and the culture that envelopes everything ‘Indy 500’ each May. The successes of the Colts, Pacers and Fever can ebb and flow as Super Bowls and Final Fours come and go, but there’s only one Indy 500, and I’m looking forward to diving into your questions about it from each and every angle on Thursday at 1 p.m.

In the meantime, sign up to get the IndyStar’s motorsports newsletter delivered straight to your inbox every week so you don’t miss out on any of our award-winning Indy 500 coverage this month. And if you don’t already, please consider subscribing to IndyStar for just $1 for your first month.

This article originally appeared on Indianapolis Star: Motorsports reporter Nathan Brown on Reddit AMA, Indy 500 questions