Alt+F1: 69 - Abu Dhabi GP Prerace 2015

Speedy race cars are my favorite kind of race cars! Nnnnyyeeeoowwww

Yay! :D

VRRRROOOOM!

Kim Milton Nielsen!

مرحبا

Milton!!!

Awww yeah!

مرحباااااااا 

Marhaba means to be wide, open, spacious, and therefore also welcoming. As-salaamu alaykum means peace be upon you. Salaam is also used as a means to say bye. Now it's time to Vrooooooooooooooom.

I knew I would be corrected by my arabic I looked up on google

But why is David Beckham on the cover?

This should have been the cover.

Oh boy, cue sports!

What an awesome image to use.

I need to know what the title of the closing musical track is.

Holy shit, Räikkönen actually spelled as Räikkönen! I'm impressed.

Snooker can be best explained in a three minute song. It was incredibly popular in the 80s when most of the top players were household names. The 1985 world championship final (it's a world championship in the way that most American sports are world championships, a 'home' player wins practically every year) was so dramatic that it had 18 million people watching when it finished after midnight on a Sunday. 18 million might not sound a lot but the population of the UK was only 55 million at the time, so it's a ridiculously high share of the population.

Just so I can say that I told you and pacify my pet peeve.The 'V' in Vettel is pronounced like an 'F' in my native tongue (German). So it's pronounced 'Fettel', not 'Wettel'. I realize no one cares but I needed to say it. ;)

Yay! They read my question!! And while a cable/satellite subscription is not out of my mean, I have no desire to pay comcast 140 a month for like 5 channels. However I'd gladly pay dollar amount similar to Extra innings or Center Ice for access to the full F1 season every year. Come on Bernie!!!

Does anyone know the name of the music at the end? I'm assuming it's from Audio Network?

It's called Dead Man Dancing. Another excellently titled track from Audio Network.

So does anybody know why Kim Milton and Beckham is on the cover??

Aren't all speedos tricky?

@drewbert: Thank you very much Drew!

We talked about red and yellow cards on the podcast, and when looking for an image, I could not get over this guy's face. I don't know who the other soccer people are!

Small correction on alonso never losing to a teammate. In 07 when he was teammates with Lewis they tied for second in points, but Lewis I think won more races so Alonso was ultimately demoted to third behind lewis

@drewbert:Ah okay. It's danish referee Kim Milton Nielsen sending of David Beckham off after he tried to sneakily kick an argentinan player who had just tackled him it in the 1998 World Cup.
It was a controversial red card and a pretty deal at the time, since England and Argentine are bitter soccer rivals.

Pierluigi Collina aka Kojak still has the best soccer referee face of all time though:

Snooker talk reminds me of The Increasingly Poor Decisions of Todd Margaret:

Hearing Danny talking about Dubai, the Mall of the Emirates and the ski slope reminded me of a strange moment from my trip there back in 2009.

I'd spent maybe three or four hours walking around the Mall of Emirates with a friend of mine. The mall has somewhere around 700 different shops, services and restaurants so it's really easy to spend an entire day there. Anyhow I was getting physically tired from all the shopping and walking. Having spent the morning dehydrating at the beach didn't help my situation much.

I decided to stop at a cafe for a cup of tea and a nibble. Again, I was tired to the point where I was ready to pretty much pass out on the spot. While sitting down I looked out the window and saw a beautiful calm snowfall, with people in winter coats whizzing around on skis. It took me a few seconds until I thought to myself "holy shit I'm actually hallucinating from the exhaustion". I was absolutely sure that my mind was creating this snowy scene to replicate the Finnish landscape I'd left just a few days before.

After a couple of minutes of questioning my sanity I finally started to put the pieces together. People lining up to a booth a few meters away, signs advertising a skiing experience, the metal walls behind the ski slope.

It turned out it wasn't me who was insane, but the damn Emiratis who'd decided to build a bleedin' ski complex inside a shopping mall. Needless to say I felt quite relieved, headed back to the shops and found a nice pair of Adidas shoes on the cheap which I still use from time to time.

@mtfikhan: that still is from England vs Argentina at the 1998 World Cup. It was a classic game that England lost on penalties agonisingly. Beckham became a hate figure because he was sent off for a flicking a leg out at an opponent. I have zero idea why that's the pic they used. I'm only weighing in because I was at that game and its still the best sporting event I ever attended, even if we lost.