Hello and welcome to the WTF One podcast. I'm your host James Coker along with Luke

Francis. Hi, Luke. Hi, James. Today we are going to be previewing the Formula One

MSC Cruises United States Grand Prix 2025, which is happening in Austin, Texas at the Circuit of the Americas,

a.k.a. Cota. Before we get into that, we have some Formula One headlines to talk about,

don't we? We do. Yeah, a few headlines since the last race. Nothing sort of huge, no, no big

driver transfers, but a few bits of news or developments in the

F1 world that I think everyone should know about.

First up, there was a court case happening in the UK between McLean Racing and Alex

Palo.

It tangentially has to do with F1, not directly has to do with F1, but mainly

has to do with Alex Pillow's contract to join Arrow McLaren in IndyCar, which he then

walked back on and decided to stay with Chip Canassie Racing.

Essentially, McLaren is claiming that there were a number of sponsors lined up

and investments that were lined up that were tied to Alex Palo joining the IndyCar team.

Alex Palo was then experiencing a lot of success with Chip Canassie Racing.

I think he got cold feet. He didn't want to leave what was essentially a good situation at CGR and decided to go back on his contract and McLaren in turn decided to sue him.

Yeah, there's a few elements at play here. I mean, as always, with court cases, they can be quite complicated with a lot of different perspectives and different sort of, yeah, views on what the situation was.

But essentially, as you say, McLaren are claiming $20 million, essentially because Alex Palo reneged on his offer and his agreement.

Essentially, Pallow, the reason for that, he felt he was sort of missold a dream, I guess, by

Zach Brown.

Obviously, the agreement came for the indie car seat and the drive.

But there were also certain sort of Formula One opportunities, whether that be reserve

...