I’ll attack the question in two parts. First, with a history of Liberty Media. Liberty, and its Chairman John Malone have had a long, impressive, but extremely confusing journey through the corporate landscape with a series of spring-off corporations and ownership swings. However, as of today Liberty Media owns stakes in many companies, most notably the Atlanta Braves (100% ownership), SiriusXM (65%) , and LiveNation(34%). Aside from these holdings there are smaller stakes in companies such as Viacom, who owns multiple TV brands such as MTV. A portfolio that includes the Braves and Formula One would make it an interesting player in sports media management.

So why would anyone buy Formula One? As a fan, its a no-brainer. As a business manager it looks a lot less intelligent of an investment. For years Bernie Ecclestone has been leaching money out of hosting venues, butting heads with teams on revenue sharing and expanding media rights to the farthest reaches of the globe. He’s opened up pay-per-view services around the globe. How many avenues for revenue are left to return what looks to be a huge investment? As a consumer and a fan I might pay a couple bucks more for an expanded “F1 Access” application but that would only hurt the network carriers like NBC Sports. On top of this, Formula One and FIA government structure seem like a headache.

So what would you do if your bought Formula One? Bring back in-season testing? Get rid of the engine token penalty system? Allow teams to bring back v12’s if they wanted?

His First win…

The day won the championship… for 39 seconds…

And one of the scariest of accidents..

That record was set in 2004 by Juan Pablo Montoya, currently racing in Indycar, while driving for Williams. His lap record speed of 162.9 mph still stands after 14 years and is a testament to how powerful and sophisticated the F1 machines of that era were. Enjoy watching this lap, and especially enjoy the delightful banshee scream of a V10 engine, one of the last we’d hear until the v8 engine regulations came in 2006.

By means of comparison, let’s watch Lewis Hamilton’s pole lap from 2015. The engine sounds like a glorified vacuum cleaner and the lap is about 3 seconds slower than Montoya’s.

Last year, Lewis Hamilton won pole position, then continued to school the entire field and eventually won by 25 seconds over his teammate, Nico Rosberg.

“I feel this weekend is the best I’ve ever driven” Lewis Hamilton – 2015 Italian Grand prix

In the current field there’s only 3 previous winners at Monza. Given Lewis’s recent form and the luxury of fresh engines, he should be considered a strong favorite to win this weekend.

Wins from Current Drivers:

1. Lewis Hamilton – 2012, 2014, 2015
2. Sebastian Vettel – 2008, 2011, 2013
3. Fernando Alonso – 2007, 2010

“I’m not going to say: ‘come on through’. But all that happened after Turn 1. If Turn 1 hadn’t happened, I wouldn’t have been so aggressive and pushed Raikkonen out like that.” – Max Verstappen

If someone blames you for aggressive driving,  driving aggressively in retaliation is basically proving their point. Max will grow up, and he’s going to be great when he does. Remember how erratic Lewis Hamilton was in his first year?

Lewis Hamilton now has 3 fresh engines for the rest of the season (link)

While Nico Rosberg did a fantastic job of winning in Belgium, Lewis’s side of the garage did a masterful job of capitalizing on the engine upgrade rules. By taking 3 new Turbo/MGU-H units (45 grid spot penalty) and a new Internal Combustion Engine (5 grid spots) and a new MGU-K unit(5 more grid spots) he essentially is left with 3 brand new power units for the remainder of the season and gives him an advantage for the rest of the season over Nico Rosberg. BBC does a decent job of explaining this in the link above.

Then he spent the rest of the day reminding us that he was still a teenager.

When the lights went out at the start, Nico Rosberg rushed ahead from Pole and Max balked with wheelspin allowing the dual Ferraris of Kimi Raikkonen and Sebastian Vettel to overtake him. Reflexively, Max ducked across the rear of Kimi to dive down the inside of the turn and not only hit Raikkonen at the apex, but also force a collision between the two Ferraris. All 3 cars would  have to pit at the end of the lap for repairs, but all 3 continued.

” I don’t think what Max was trying to do would have worked. Obviously he didn’t allow Kimi to move into the inside, and that prevented both of them from clearing Turn One in a normal way. ” – Sebastian Vettel

Benefiting from these first lap shenanigans were the pair of World Champions starting on the last row due to engine penalties – Fernando Alonso and Lewis Hamilton. Both of them picked up multiple places on the first lap and they would continue to pick off the field throughout the rest of the race.

On the 6th lap, the race was abruptly halted with a Red Flag due to a massive accident from Kevin Magnussen’s Renault. Coming out of EauRouge and cresting the hill he lost the back end of his car and crashed hard into the barrier. Thankfully, he is ok with only an ankle injury and some obvious soreness.

The safety card period and subsequent red flag would provide a boost to the charging pair of Hamilton and Alonso since they were running in 4th and 5th when the race resumed.

Also greatly benefiting from all of the carnage was Daniel Riccardo, who would settle into Rosberg in 2nd place and drive a brilliantly managed race until the end.

Lewis continued to have great race pace, setting the fastest lap of the race late on Lap 40, but couldn’t quite catch up to Ricciardo, leaving him to finish and impressive 3rd place.

Nico Hulkenberg drove a notably tremendous race, at one point running in 2nd but just finished off the podium in 4th. One day Hulkenberg will get the car, and the championships that he deserves as a driver.

Vettel rounded out the top 5 with a masterful return from the turn one incident with his teammate.

Fernando Alonso’s McLaren with a newly fitted engined looked notably faster, with his lap times steadily on par with Williams through the race. He would finish an impressive 7th place after starting on the last row with Hamilton. His Teammate, Jenson Button was taken out on the first lap by Pascal Wehrlein.

Getting back to Max Verstappen – he had multiple run-ins and questionably aggressive blocking moves on both Kimi Raikkonen and Sebastian Vettel later in the race, and also made contact with Sergio Perez while battling for position. He would finish a disappointing 11th place and watch his teammate(Ricciardo) stand on the 2nd step of the podium in the position where Max started the race.

“I’ve never had that with any other driver, if I hadn’t braked hard I would have hit him at full speed and it would have ended up in a massive accident.” – Kimi Raikkonen

Max, notably, didn’t seem to care about Raikkonen’s complaints:

“I was defending my position – if someone doesn’t like it that’s their problem” – Max Verstappen

In the end it would be a  tremendously driven race by the top 3 finishers for different reason. Rosberg would get off the line first and never take a wrong step for the remainder of the race. Daniel Ricciardo would take advantage of some early chaos and stay ahead of the charging Lewis Hamilton and Lewis would once again drag his car into a points-scoring position  to maintain his lead in the championship points despite starting from the back of the grid.

” I think before, even on Thursday there was an engine swap, warming one up, then warming another one up. A change after practice one, a change after practice two, so I had three new engines this weekend. So to come away with the points that we have today, I’m extremely proud of everyone.” – Lewis Hamilton

“Yeah, I mean, you can always do a better job. But also I think also Nico could have done a better lap” – Max Verstappen

The Ferraris also look fast as well as Spa-specialist Kimi Raikkonen finished only .017 seconds behind Verstappen and his teammate Sebastian Vettel just behind him in 4th. Rounding out the top 5 is other Red Bull of Daniel Ricciardo.

Rosberg was the lone Mercedes in Q3 as Lewis Hamilton choose not to set a fast time due to his massive grid penalty for changing this engine before the race. Lewis will be joined at the back of the path by Fernando Alonso, how also sustained a grid penalty for an engine change.

It was more bad news for Alonso however, as he once again suffered a mechanical failure in Q1. Since he’s suffered a huge penalty anyway it will not be a big deal if he changes out more components, but surely he’s yet to see the planned upgraded power that Jenson Button has been enjoying in his McLaren.

“On the dyno it is better and on Jenson’s side it is delivering the power. On my side too but I had 4 laps today. ” – Fernando Alonso

Full Qualifying Results here

Max Verstappen and Daniel Riccardo led Free Practice 2 in Belgium today with the benefit of Super Soft tires while Mercedes concentrated on longer runs with harder tires. Regardless of leading the closest Force India by over half of a second, Daniel Ricciardo believes they still have some unleashed speed in the car.

 “I think we can still be quicker than what we showed today, but I feel like we definitely got into the right rhythm.” – Daniel Ricciardo

Hulkenberg and Perez show strong pace with 3rd and 5th best times 

Force India has a history of being surprisingly quick at Spa and they continued that tradition today. Force India driver Nico Hulkenberg led Sebastian Vettel by .366 seconds with Sergio Perez only trailing Vettel by only .077 seconds. Could we see another Force India spoiler in Qualifying?

“I wasn’t too happy with the balance in the morning, but we were able to improve it for the afternoon: it’s still not perfect, so there’s a bit of work to do overnight, trying to use the information we got today, but it’s a decent starting point.” – Nico Hulkenberg

Hamilton takes an entirely new engine, drops 30 grid spots

As expected, Mercedes bit the bullet and replaced the entire engine on Lewis Hamilton’s car. With these upgrades he’ll be penalized a whopping 30 grid positions (there are only 22 cars on the grid). If these grid penalties aren’t getting ridiculous for all of us yet, I don’t know when they will.

Lewis focused primarily on long race practice today given that he will certainly be starting from the back of the grid.

Rosberg tests Halo in FP1 – Ugly is fast

Nico Rosberg not only set the fastest times in FP1, he also tested the Halo protection system in this Mercedes. Nico loved it as he was able to set the fastest time of the Free Practice 1 session with it fitted.

“The team have done a great job on the halo. It doesn’t disturb me when driving. I could go fast straight away and even set the best time of the session with it this morning” – Nico Rosberg

Alonso sites out FP1 and will incur another mind-boggling grid penalty

And….. The McLaren Honda of Fernando Alonso is once again hit with an egregious grid penalty of 15 places. For a team that is doing everything it can to break the monotony of Mercedes domination, Formula One is certainly not helping with these penalties. Fernando is looking at the bright side however, as his former teammate Lewis Hamilton will likely be next to him in a faster car at the back of the grid.

“We’ll be starting Sunday’s race from the back of the grid, but we’ll be trying our best to recover positions from there. I expect Lewis [Hamilton], who’ll be starting next to me, will be quicker than me, so I’ll try to hang on to his tail, put a rope around his car and get him to pull me through the field! ” – Fernando Alonso

By the Formula One Rules and Regulations, drivers may only use a limited amount of engines components through the season. Due to a string of unreliability early in the season, Lewis has used all 5 of his limit for MGU-H and turbo units. The penalties for using more than the allotted components is a grid spot demotion, dependent on the number of units being switched.

As of today’s press conference, neither Mercedes nor Lewis could confirm the number of components being switched or the resulting penalty.

“As far as I am aware we will be taking a penalty here this weekend, yes… I have no engines left.” – Lewis Hamilton

This should welcome news to the whole grid, but most importantly Nico Rosberg who could use all the help he can get in closing the points gap to Hamilton, his Mercedes teammate. While Lewis has won twice at Spa, Nico Rosberg has never won. However, Spa can be a surprising place and the speed from the rest of the competitors will factor as well.

“it’s still going to be a challenge because if we remember just four weeks ago I finished behind two Red Bulls in the race. So I still need to beat all the opposition – and even Lewis.” – Nico Rosberg

One of the classic rivalries in our sport was between Michael Schumacher and Mika Hakkinen, and that rivalry intensified in 2000. Schumacher, already a 2-time world champion with Bennetton, had been nursing Ferrari back to health for 5 years without a world championship. Mika Hakkinen was the 2-time defending world champion with McLaren and was showing no signs of slowing down.

Coming into this race Mika held a solid points lead and was looking to expand on that lead and clinch a 3rd straight title. He scored the pole position but fell back behind Michael later in the race after pit stop cycles. A chase ensued and it culminated in this moment, giving Hakkinen the lead and undoubtedly scaring the Bejeezus out of Ricardo Zonta.

Mika would go on to win the race, but Michael would dominate each race for the rest of the season, giving him his 3rd championship and this first of five straight championships with Ferrari. Just one of many epic moments between two of our sport’s best.