Bittersweet Infamy - #126 - Spin-Out in the Fast Lane

Episode Date: June 15, 2025

Taylor tells Josie about the cheating conspiracy behind Brazilian auto racer Nelson Piquet Jr.’s deliberate crash at the 2008 Formula One Singapore Grand Prix. Plus: a few notes on the reclusive Q Lazzarus, the mysterious voice behind the cult favourite song "Goodbye Horses."

Welcome to Bitter Sweet and Food. I'm Taylor Basso. And I'm Josie Mitchell. On this podcast, we share the stories that live on in NPA. The strange and the familiar. The tragic and the comic. The bitter. And the sweet.

Josie, it's a beautiful and balmy day in Houston, I'm sure. You're right. How balmy day in Houston, I'm sure. You're right. How balmy are we talking? So it's almost 8 p.m. and it's 88 degrees Fahrenheit. Damn. If you're playing the Celsius game. 31 degrees.

Holy fuck. What's wrong with the? Well, we know what's wrong with the environment. Folks, welcome to Bitter Sweet Infamy episode 126. We're happy to have you. 126 of these fucking things we've done at least. They just keep piling up. At least.

And there's two stories per episode at least. Sometimes there's one really big one. Sometimes there's 12 really small ones. You just never know what you're gonna get. So true. And we bring that spirit of excitement that makes us ratchet up our nerves, ratchet up our energy and sweat like a hot Houston eight o'clock evening.

Yeah. It's a sweaty one. It's nice here in BC. Oh, I bet. Hot though. Hot here too. I couldn't say to what degree, figurative and literal, but hot. Okay.

But I had a nice little walk around my block before we started taping today. There's a very nice, it was a fairy tree with like all of these painted rocks and dangling ornaments hanging off it and like a river and a door. And it has, as I walked today, I saw that it has expanded to a second tree. Oh. As well as like, as what appears to be like a rock nativity. There's fairy lights, really, really pretty. Aw, that's really nice. They set up a little camping chair there for you to sit down and look at the rocks. Take it all in. I like it because it appeals to a real caveman thing,

which is our instinct to sit and look at a pretty rock. Yeah. You know, that's a technology that is there. That technology has been there for millennia. And will continue to be there long after Hopin all the other technology they have a little section where you can take a rock and paint it And so I have taken rocks and painted them and brought them back at least one I made like a little lady who was like holding a bouquet

Wow, somebody is really putting in the time and work for this guy. This is so sweet Community baby, this is. This is so sweet. Community baby. This is what community is. And when I was there, there was a lady in like a dress with some flowers on it and she was just kind of like looking around at the things and I was like, see, okay, maybe sometimes there are some good things in the world, even though the world is mostly bad. And I think we all know it.

Yeah. To end that on a cheery note. Yeah. On the fairy cheery note. Yeah, on the fairy cheery note, yes. I don't know, do you have anything cool like that in your neighborhood that's sort of like a community thing that everyone contributes to or a community space that's very well loved or anything like that? We live pretty close to a big punk venue called White Swan.

Oh, wow. Yeah, White Swan Live. Mila Kunis. No, well, Natalie Portman was the white swan. Mila Kunis was the Oh, wow. Yeah. White Swan. No, well, Natalie Portman was the white swan. Mila Kunis was the black swan. Yeah. It was about Natalie Portman's journey to becoming black swan. Fucking great movie.

Top five all time, maybe for me. But go on. Yeah. White Swan always has like people hanging out out front, drinking beer, smoking cigarettes. It's not a very like fairy community vibe, but there is like people, you know. Fairies come in all shapes and sizes. It's true. Don't let those little British girls with their black and white camera deceive you. The Cottingley fairies.

They weren't even real. Episode 49, folks. Episode 49. You heard it from Josie first. Yeah. The real fairies are at White Swan. The real fairies are at White Swan. The real fairies are at White Swan putting zins under their lips and fucking talking about their divorces. Yeah. Wow. Have you been?

I was going to say, I might have partaken in a discussion like this before. Yeah, no, we had a nice little summer day. We went to see our buddies with their three yearyear-old daughter, soon to be four. Where does the time go? Oh my gosh. We busted out the little inflatable pools and had like a little kiddie pool day. It was really fun. A very Americana, a very Americana view.

Thank you. A Norman Rockwell painting, truly. I guess so, yeah. Mitchell's got a hint of a sunburn on his shoulders and, you know, it works. Before we dive into our infamous, which is our mini infamous story to start every episode, we always do a little bit of prattle to give some love to our subscribers over at our coffee account. Josie, what is the URL for our coffee account?

www.coffee.com. No, no, no. You already fucked you fucked up the part that's a part of every website. It's www. It's Father's Day. You take this one off, OK? I'll handle it from here. Visit us at www.bittersweet.

Oh, fuck, I fucked it up. No, man. OK, let's bring this back home one last time. Visit us at coffee dot com k o hyphen f i dot com slash bittersweet infamy. I'm a monthly subscriber. You become a member of the Bittersweet Film Club. You get to hear our 15 episodes of the Bittersweet Film Club,

and you get to suggest films for us to watch, as in the style of friend of the podcast and former guest host, Erica Jo Brown, who gave us the 2015 revenge dramedy, The Dressmaker, The Dressmaker. The Dressmaker. The Dressmaker. If you wanna hear more of these fake Australian accents.

More in that vein. Yeah. And worse. Well, join us over at coffee.com slash bittersweetandme. A really interesting pic, great for the Bittersweet Film Club because it truly encapsulates the idea of infamy. A woman comes back to a town where she's suspected

of murder and faces all the stigma of infamy, all the small mindedness and rumors and reputation smearing that comes with infamy. And she needs to design her way out of it, if you believe it. It's a really interesting film. We had a very heated discussion about it that you can enjoy over the coffee account. And to become a monthly subscriber, you don't have to give a whole lot. It's like a minimum of $3 a month.

$3, $3 dues. $3 just do the reviews. Yep. They're getting worse. The more we do them, it's crazy. I know. Yeah, yeah. You'd think practice would make perfect, but.

No, but no, somehow the opposite. Yeah. Practice makes exhaustion, apparently. We're getting sloppy. And then if that's not enough of a draw, we are going to be covering next month at the suggestion of long-time supporter Lizzy D. The... Lizzy D! I love when Josie says the name of the person I just said.

It's like, I was waiting for it there. If anything, I thought you were a little slow on it. The 2017 sports biopic, Battle of the Sexes starring Emma Stone and Steve Carell as Billie Jean King and Bobby Riggs having a very infamous man v woman tennis match. I have yet to watch it but I'm excited. Emma Stone as Billie Jean King. That's very cool. This is not a saga I actually know all that much about Big Picture. Like I've never done

the wiki hole on Billie Jean and Bobby Riggs. So it should be fun. I watched a lot of I Heart the 80s as a child. It came across my radar then. So do you hurt the 80s? You know, I was born in the 80s. So I guess in a way. Yeah. 88. You and Whitesnake, baby. Yeah, that's going to be fun. In the meantime, Josefina, miff me. I'll miff you, baby. Oh, but first I got to tell you this last week, I was called in for jury duty and Ja girl was selected.

I am Ja girl was selected. Tell me more. I'm an alternate, which is very you, which is perfect for Josie to be an alternate at works. Altie at heart. Alt girl. It's in Harris County Court System, which is the county that I live in. It's the county that encompasses

Houston. Texas, folks. Houston, Texas. Houston, Texas. Yes. It's a criminal case. Someone has had charges pressed against them as opposed to somebody suing somebody. Exactly. Yes.

So the prosecution is the state of Texas. And then the defendant is an individual who has violated the law in one way or another. Wow. Yeah, it's very interesting. What are you allowed to say? What are you even allowed to say? I think all I can say is what was shared in the jury selection, because all of those,

you know, there were 64 people and 14 were selected. All the non-14 people left and got to share whatever they wanted with the world. How the fuck did you get yourself selected for the jury? They don't tell you, and I wish they did. I wish there was some like- You want the feedback form. Yes. You want to see what the judge's note said.

As an alternate, the way that it works is if somebody gets sick or cannot attend the trial, then I take their spot. You're the understudy. Yeah. And there's another alternate as well. But when it comes time to deliberation, it takes 12 jurors and only 12 jurors. You can't have more people.

So if I don't need to step up, then I don't. It's not 13 angry men. I don't have a vote. Yeah. How does that feel, I guess, to know that you're gonna have this experience and ultimately most likely not cast a vote? Oh, there's a lot of relief. You might have to cast a vote.

Don't get too comfy. Yeah, no, no, I'm paying attention. I know how to do that. I've established I can keep an eye out. But you're relieved a little bit. So far, as long as I'm not called, but I think there's a little bit of like, now I'm just like fly on the wall. I get to like be my little writer self and boop boop boop. You watch

this. Another experience for the quiver. Yes. Yes. Sponge it up. Yeah. And another thing that is so fascinating about it and is feels very relevant to what we do is when these lawyers are selecting a jury and I assume when the trial starts, as they talk to the jury in the jury box as the trial goes on, all of it is just storytelling. How can you convey X, Y, Z in such a way that it is clear to a wide and diverse group of people who have different backgrounds, different cultural touch points, backgrounds and education and all of it. Like how do you do that?

And you do it through storytelling and the best storyteller wins, gets that information across, essentially wins, yeah. And I will say already in the jury selection, my cousin Vinny was referenced not once, but twice. And why not? And why not? And why not? It is a seminal, legitimately a fabulous film.

Yeah. Fabulously constructed film. There's everything in this film is like beautifully constructed. So go watch my cousin Vinnie. Truly do. Utes. Utes, he says. It's fabulous stuff.

But it's also just like, you know, cinema, films, movies. That's the cultural touch point. 12 Angry Men. I already said it. And that one was referenced as well. Yeah. That's the classic, right? 12 Angry Men, My Cousin Vinny, A Few Good Men. Runaway Jury. You think it's called it's pronounced Runaway Bride, actually.

Sorry, excuse me. You know I'm bad at pronunciation. Yeah, names are hard. Names are hard. I'm starting my summer off with a bang. My summer vibes will be sparkling water, lime flavored in the kiddie pool. My jury days, jur-jocieie as I will be known from henceforth. Yeah. Jur number 13. Exactly. And my other summer vibe, Scorts to summer of a skort. Josie, every summer I feel for you is the summer of the skort. No. Well, I just got a new skort.

You're a skort given life. You're a skort given form as a person. It's not a drag. It's your score given life. Your score given form as a person. It's not a drag. It's just an observation. I feel it as such. I feel it as an observation. I feel very seeing. Okay. Taylor, what are your what are your three summer vibes that you're bringing? Vitamin D. Oh, yeah. Vitamin D. Vitamin C. Okay. The graduation song specifically. Yeah. You know those like I'm really good orange triangular Vicks cough drops that are just candy?

Those are fucking good. Yeah, yeah, that's nice. That's a meal right there. I bought those. And then. What's your vitamin B baby? And love, how about just love? Love in general.

Love, happy outside love ideally. Love where I'm getting like vitamin D and C. Yeah. And then vitamin L for love. It's gonna be vitamin D and C. Yeah. Oh, that's- And then vitamin L for love. It's gonna be my summer of vitamins. It's gonna be my Vitamix summer. Pop them in the blender, let's go.

Every summer vibe needs a good soundtrack, too. And I feel like- Vitamin C graduation. Exactly. You've already named yours. Mine is this song that I cannot get out of my head. Okay. Mi bebito fiu fiu.

There's always something, right? There's always something like that. Yeah. It got logged in the brain because a friend of the podcast, the wonderful, the ever so talented Erica Jo Brown. I knew it was going to be Erica Jo. I should have called it. I should have proven my psychic link by saying it, but that's okay.

Next time. She suggested actually this as a Mimphemous. So I'm taking an Erica Jo suggestion for our Mimphemous today and it comes with this earworm of a song. Taylor, have you heard this song? I'm flying over you With my horses I'm flying over you With my horses I'm flying, flying, flying over you Yeah, a classic. I associate it particularly with a scene involving the villain from The Silence of the Lambs in sort of cinematic history.

And I have had some friends who really like this song. That's kind of it. I know it to be a little bit of like a cult sleeper song that is quite well known for this particular scene in cinematic history. Yeah. And the scene is the serial killer in Silence of the Lambs named Buffalo Bill. Buffalo Bill. So you're back at it. Named after, subject of episode, Taylor, take it away, episode number. Fuck, episode 118, How the West was Sold.

There we go. You could tell his legacy has kind of done a few little somersaults so that in 1991, he's serial killer's name rather than Western hero. But the scene is Buffalo Bill putting on makeup, dancing, it's kind of this controversial scene within queer and trans. Oh yeah, because it's a dude tucking his dick between his legs and prancing around and being like, would you fuck me? And it's sort of like the way that this movie kind of sets up this character is that he thinks he's trans, but he isn't, which is such a bizarre needle to thread with this

character. I think they're trying to have their cake of having this, like, kind of wildly outrageous, like, transgender serial killer. But being like, but this isn't, he's not actually trans, everyone. He just thinks he is. Shalom. I'm like, I kind of feel like you're just trying to have your cake there and eat it too. But yes, as you say, very controversial, especially coming out in the early 90s, when AIDS was still very, very much in the conversation about gay men specifically,

but queer people generally. Yeah. I think it's this technique of using a trans identity as vilification, which is like, especially in 1991, where as you mentioned, yeah, the representation has not done anything but do this for trans people in cinema. So problematic. But great song. But the great song. It problematic. But great song. But the great song. It's a really good song. Goodbye, horses. Where are they going? No one knows.

Bye. So do you know the story of the woman who wrote this song, wrote and sang and played this song? Is she a horse? Otherwise, no. Okay. Then you don't know because she is not a horse. She's a lady. Her performance name is Q Lazarus. L-A-Z-Z-A-R-U-S. Her birth certificate name, her non-performance name, is Diane Lucky.

She was born in Neptune, New Jersey, December 12th, 1960. And she was the second youngest of seven siblings. And like most people who have a illustrious singing career, she started singing in her church choir as a young kid. Mm hmm. Church choirs are little talent incubators under the right circumstances. They really can be. Yeah, they really can be. I bet they crush a lot of dreams too too though. A lot of hopes and dreams. That might be the case as well. A lot of drama, a lot of drama at the church choir. She doesn't stay there too long.

At 18 she moves to nearby New York city and she starts pursuing music. She knows from an early age, this is what I want to do. I want to write, I want to sing, I want to play music. I want to produce music. She knows from an early age, this is what I want to do. I want to write, I want to sing, I want to play music, I want to produce music. I just want anything and everything to do with music. She, like most of us who get started in creative endeavors, has to take a lot of weird jobs to make things happen. Four times she works as a nanny, as an au pair for an English businessman who goes by the name of Swan. He allows her and her bandmates to use his in-house recording studio which is a boon because remember this is like the late 70s early 80s the ability to record your own music on maybe a personal laptop,

like how we record our podcast is not available, right? You need professional high tech equipment in order to just make a demo. So she has access to that. She works also at Sigma sounds studio, kind of doing little little gopher jobs for them. But she makes her most money driving a hired car. So it's essentially a taxi, like a black car taxi, black sedan taxi. And I mentioned her band, her bandmates. She quickly meets up with a producer and songwriter, William Garvey, Gloriana Galicia, Janis Bernstein, Mark Barrett. And

then of course, she's the lead vocalist and she goes by Q. And her band, the band is called Q Lazarus and The Resurrection, which is a great name, fantastic name. Yeah. And they play music that, mean, goodbye horses is something that they write, play and produce pretty early on. And you can tell from the little clip you got it's this 80s heavy synth kind of new wave. Very extremely 80s. Extremely 80s, but kind of this darker like think of the cure. of like soft cell or something. Yeah, yeah talking heads is in this era too so there's a lot of like heavy synth but it's not necessarily like

it's not big hair metal or anything. No it's very chill synth. It's very yeah it's very chill. I like the sound I like the sound a lot. Oh and it's aged really well too. I agree. Like it's emblematic of a time. It had its little like revival I think of five to ten years back now, which I found an enjoyable revival. Our girl Q gets her quote unquote lucky break. She's driving her car, her hired car. She is designated to pick up this man in the middle of a fucking blizzard. So she's a good driver. She likes driving in New York city and she picks this guy up. The snow is blowing and going.

He bustles in and knocks off the snow in the backseat and she Santa Claus. It's not that's her lucky break. She picks up Santa Claus. Oh, is there a luckier break to be had? My sleigh broke down. That's Santa. I know too much. I'm telling too much. You are. Let me tell the story, Taylor. Gosh. Please, please, please. Go, go. So this part of the story, there's kind of different accounts. One is that Q would always play her music in the car for her passengers just to be like,

hey, I make this music. Are you in the music business? Nudge nudge, wink wink. The other way the story goes is that she had a gig that she was playing later that night. And so she wanted to listen to her tapes to like prepare, get ready, get in the mood, get in the vibe. So either way, her song, Goodbye Horses is playing on the radio when her backseat passenger says, Hey, who's singing right now? Who's playing? What song is this? This is really good. And Q replies, Well, thank you. That's me. I'm playing my demo. And it turns out that the guy

in the backseat knocking snow off his coat is not Santa Claus. But it's Jonathan Demme, who later becomes an Oscar winning movie director. John Jonathan, he says, you know, this is so, so good. I would really love to feature this in one of my films, if that's possible. That shit does not happen in real life. Come on. The song, Goodbye Horses, first appears in Jonathan Demme's movie, Married to the Mob in 1988, which is Michelle Pfeiffer and, you know, a few other folks. In his earlier film, Married to the Mob,

which is very different, the song has a really, really tiny feature. It's playing in the background as if the radio is going and it's very small, dialogue is happening over it. But the key to it is that it does appear on the film's soundtrack. So in that way, Q Lazarus and the resurrection have a song produced that is out there in the world for the masses to purchase that soundtrack for DJs to play that cassette, play that record at the clubs. It starts to like take over. People are fucking in love with this song. People are letting their horses run out of the paddock into the field, into the meadow,

just to so they can see them off. Yeah. And play this song while they do it. Isn't it like bopping in every high school? No, it's kind of underground. It's still like a cool thing that, you know, the most underground New York clubs are playing. It's losing you by Solange. Yes, exactly. But then Jonathan Demme uses it again in Silence of the Lambs. Right. As you note, Taylor, like this is a boom. You automatically know the song because of the scene. Very infamous scene.

It's an infamous scene. And the song is playing and Buffalo Bill is dancing and singing to it. It is not like a, like whatever throwaway song. Oh, friend center. It is meant to be in the scene and be part of it. And like you, you cannot leave the movie without having heard that song. Well, like a mad man yells about wanting to fuck himself. Cut to a woman in a deep pit yelling at a small, fluffy dog.

Yeah. Whose skin this person is trying to steal. You hear the song. Yeah, you do. Certainly. It's a good song. You certainly hear the song. You hear the song. Yeah. Jonathan Demme obviously really likes Q Lazarus,

and she actually appears in a cameo in his next film, Philadelphia. She is singing a cover of a talking head song. That's a cheery fucking back to back pair of films. There's a lot going on there. I know, like hearing his filmography is like, wait, what the fuck? This is wild. Yeah. How do you go from Silence of the Lamps to Philadelphia, which is this like incredibly

sad melodrama about a lawyer with AIDS starring Tom Hanks. Yeah, it's really sad. And she appears in it and there's like a dancing scene. She's singing a cover of a talking head song, Heaven, and you know, her face is on screen in this like award-winning director's film. So you would think, damn, she made it. Cue Lazarus. She's there. It's done. Like she hit the what a lucky break. What a fucking lucky break. And yet. We have this phenomenon or we think we do in music, pop culture called the one hit wonder. Right. Is that too? Now, riding this small wave of notoriety, she moves to the UK of notoriety, she moves to the UK and she gets started with a band that plays like American rock and roll Aerosmith type music. They go on tours, they you know do

their thing, they play sellout clubs. Still with this notoriety in the UK and major motion film soundtrack production, she cannot get signed in the music industry. So this is the late 80s, 90s, right? Silence of the Lambs comes out in 91. So that's when it really like rockets her. But the state of the industry at this time is like the very old school, like you have to be signed or you're not, you're never going to make it. The radio has to play your songs. Right.

You're never going to make it. Yeah. No, yeah. The hoops, the hurdles, the hoops, the hurdles, which is very different from today. Right. Because if you get enough, like likes, yeah, SoundCloud, if you're YouTube or whatever it is, so Tik Tok uses you as a sound. Someone makes a new Minecraft video whatever it is. TikTok uses you as a sound. Someone makes a new Minecraft video

that uses your song as a sound. Yeah, and then boom, you've made it. You'll be signed and everything's different. Now all of a sudden you're a billionaire and you live in LA. Yeah, yeah. And that is not the case. There's like a very defined gatekeeping

that is happening in the music industry. Yeah. Now her music that she's most popular for is that new wave 80s sound, like 80s into the 90s. And it's predominantly white and male artists who are making that sound. And English, I'll throw in English. English as well. And I think that was that fueled her decision to move to the UK.

She's like, I like this sound and I'd like to be known for this sound and let's see what I can do. But in that world, even just being a woman was kind of like pushing the envelope. So for her to be a black woman making this sound was just kind of a music industry. And they told her point blank, we don't know how to market you. Q Lazarus was a woman, she was black, she was also a big woman. She was like six feet tall and like skoogum. A skoogum gal, yeah, a skoogum gal as we say, physically, emotionally skoogum gal. Yeah, and they just said, we don't know how, we don't know where to fit you in and what category. And she kept telling them, like, listen, I market myself.

And this is a quote. I'm a big boned African-American woman who wears dreads, sings American rock and roll. Again, I market myself. You don't have to do anything. rock and roll. Again, I mark it myself. You don't have to do anything. But they and all this harsh gatekeeping and short-sighted understanding of what people would listen to, they never signed her. Goodbye Horses is the only released single that she ever has in her career. And it's because it was produced and published on the Married to the Mob soundtrack. Even though that song has since been covered by all these different types of artists, it's been used in all these different movies, it's been spoofed, especially the Buffalo Bill scene.

That scene gets spoofed. And the way that you know it's the Buffalo Bill scene is because Goodbye Horses is playing in the background. Oh, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I never thought about it, but I just I just never thought about who made this song and that I just assumed like, oh, it's some band that had like four other songs just like this. It's soft sell or something. You know what I mean? Right. Yeah. Yeah. It's Duran Duran.

But of course not. This is really interesting. Yeah. So. Doors kept getting shut in her face, slammed in her face. She had some personal family stuff going on too. So eventually she moves back to New York. She lives back in Staten Island. She gets married. She has two kids. She starts driving hired cars again, hired cars, and she becomes a bus driver. And it's not only

that she just kind of says, you know, I'm not, this is not for me. It's that she does a hard vanish from public life. Eww. Who can, I understand it. I understand it. It's actually like a hard line in the sand. Like her bandmates from the UK don't know where she is. There's speculation among her friends that she might be dead. There's really no hide nor hair. Goodbye horses. Yes, indeed.

She's horses. Yes. Goodbye. Wow. In 2019, a woman named Eva Arrhegis-Fuentes, She hires a car to come and pick her up and take her from Manhattan to Brooklyn. She gets in and the driver is this beautiful, stately African-American woman. Six feet tall.

Six feet tall, yeah. No horses in sight. None. She's listening to Neil Young's Harvest album. And they kind of get chatting. Eva likes music. She's a filmmaker herself. She's a creative and they get to talking and, you know, at some points kind of singing the songs together.

And Eva's like, I, gosh, I wonder, I wonder. She starts to think like, could this be Q? Because there's been talk about like, wouldn't that be so cool if she could be found? There was a recent article published in Dazed magazine where somebody had speculated that they had heard that she was in Staten Island, all this stuff. The driver, this woman who's driving, she doesn't have a GPS.

It's 2019, still doesn't have a GPS. And she takes the wrong turn. She has the knowledge. She has the knowledge. But then she takes the wrong turn on Flatbush Avenue. Well, the knowledge goes out of date. They're always changing. It's always changing. And she tells Eva, sorry, I, you know, the same, my town, I don't know.

Can you tell me where you want me to go? And she does. And Ava then asks, like, where, where are you from? Where do you live? And the driver says Staten Island. And he was like, okay, okay. And at a certain point she like, she asks, like, have you ever heard if your name were a high scoring Scrabble letter,

what letter would it be? Yeah. Yeah. At a certain point she does try and be like, do you know the song Goodbye Horses? Do you know the band Q Lazarus? And the driver says, nah, I've never heard of them. This is the part where Krusty is still

pretending to be the old sailor. He's, I've never heard of him. Get out of here, kid. You know, yeah. So they stop. The driver drops a off. And as she's saying goodbye, she accidentally says goodbye horses and she gives herself away. Fuck goodbye, whores. Oh, man.

No, she goes ahead and says, you know, my friends call me Q. You can call me Q. Oh, wow. So now we're friends too. This is even this is big. Yeah. So they exchange information. Cars are beeping behind him. So they quickly exchange information. And the next day, Eva gets a call from her and she says, I am Q Lazarus. I am the singer of Goodbye Horses and I had a dream about you last night. I had a good dream. And I think, wow, what a call. I want to talk more and I feel like I'm like ready to kind of come back into my music.

What would you do if you got that call? Like, hello, it's me, Q Lazarus, singer of Goodbye Horses, and I want you to know that I had a good dream about you just now. Like, I would be like, this is so pregnant with meaning, what's happening? I know, right? Yeah.

I'd be like, okay, well, there's my life taken. It's the like, the left turn. The turn. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Decidedly. And at that point too, like Eva doesn't share that she's a documentary filmmaker. They go to breakfast, they talk more and Q becomes convinced more and more. You know,

I, yeah, this, my youngest son is in his last year at FIT at Fashion Institute. Oh, fun. I, I feel like I'm done raising my kids. I'm looking for something new and I still love music and I still can see myself doing it. So let's give it a shot. So even her work for three years together, putting together a documentary where Q gets to tell her own story about her experiences in, you know, up and coming New York, her experiences getting slammed in the face by the music industry and her experience of disappearing, like what that was like, why she chose to do it. It becomes the basis for the documentary, for the film.

According to the plan of the documentary, it was going to end with a concert. It was going to end with, hasn. It was going to end with like, you know, has it been heard for 20 plus years? Q Lazarus and like, you know, the club would be sold out and be gnarly. Was going to, the club would be sold out. There's a lot of, you know, conditionals here.

You're making it sound like this isn't how this documentary ends. Well, you'll remember when they're sweet, there's also bitter. Yeah. July 19th, 2022, Q suffered a fatal infection of sepsis that was... Lord. ...a complication with a broken leg. She had sustained a broken leg and...

Oh, love. Yeah. Bear with it for the grace of God. We're all susceptible, huh? Yeah. Pretty sad, very. Yeah. Bear with it for the grace of God. We're all susceptible, huh? Yeah. Pretty sad. Very preventable. She died at the age of 61. Poor thing. RIP. And Eva was, of course, like at that time, they were kind of talking almost every day

and working on this film together. Yeah. Oh, she'll be gutted, of course. Yeah. And she understands that what she has to do, she has to finish this film and she has to release this film. And of course, it would be different now because it wouldn't end with a concert, but it would end with the complete story of her life. Life doesn't end with concerts all the time.

No. Sometimes we're just there to depict, right? So the movie that is out there, it's had limited release. So it's been kind of doing the film festival circuit. It is called Goodbye Horses, the many lives of Q Lazarus. And I didn't get to see it because it's limited release. Boo. But this is a plug.

Okay, well you watch it and report back. You'll have to watch it and report back at some point. Yeah. It seems like it's really a good movie. The interviews that I read and watched with Ava, the filmmaker, she seems very down to earth and genuine and just kind of like Q has seemed as well. But I think maybe what's most important about this film is that in the strange circular way that life can be sometimes, the film going into production and being released means that there's a soundtrack.

And the soundtrack is Q's first ever full length album. That's very bittersweet, isn't it? That's very bittersweet. Yeah. So you can go and listen to the soundtrack of Goodbye Horses, The Many Lives of Q Lazarus, and hear Q sing original songs that have never been heard before. But she also does some really wonderful covers. She does a cover of Summertime. Do you know that? Summertime. Living is Easy, yeah.

Yeah, she covers that and it sounds so great. Fabulous, dude. Yeah. Nice. Does it share that sort of like 80s synthy instrumentation, not specifically the summertime cover, but in general, does the work hue to the same kind of aesthetic or is it different? It does. It does.

She keeps a pretty like devoted aesthetic, I'd say. Great. A coherent album, baby. Yeah. You know, her contribution to the film was not only her own stories and sharing her experiences on film, but putting together a tracklist, putting together the soundtrack. So even though it is a soundtrack, it does function as an album in and of itself because, you know, the movie was built that way. A soundtrack of the summer, certainly.

Josie, I would say that the link between our stories today is maybe the idea of drives of destiny. So there were multiple times. Yeah, it's niche, but go with me because it actually fits. It does. No, I'm in. I like it. Yeah. There were multiple times during your story where Q Lazarus sort of we saw the course of her life change

based on who was the passenger in the car and what was playing on the radio when she was driving. Multiple times this happens to her. Look at those listening comprehension skills. You were like, that was good. We need to recover that. I know themes. I know themes. But like, it is, I'm okay.

So similarly, I'm going to tell you today a story about a drive of destiny. A time where we get behind the wheel and much happens behind the wheel and we come out of the other side of having been behind the wheel very much changed. The whole arc of our destiny has changed. Ooh, are we in a car because it's Father's Day and Dan loves cars? Yeah, and that also is really important. So yes, this episode is coming out on Father's Day. And so I figured I do my dad outreach in June a lot of the time.

I say, you know, it's an important thing that we do the dad outreach. Yes, yes. So yeah, I thought that I would do a car one it's an important thing that we do the dad outreach. Yes, yes. So yeah, I thought that I would do a car one because my dad's a car guy, right? Yeah. It also taps into like a childhood love, a childhood interest of mine that as so often we absorb our parents' interests just by like being in the room

with them very much. Yeah. The story is also like down my own alley, down my own well of knowledge. Aw. Josie, I want to invite you to a glamorous world of jet setting intrigue. Full to bursting with Debonair Playboys. Full to bursting.

Damn. Sorry. Yeah. No, it's OK. You got excited. You were bursting. You were full to bursting. Just got me. Yeah. You freaked out. It's OK. It's all good. Against a backdrop of exotic and beautiful locations

from around the globe, from Miami to Monte Carlo, Melbourne to the Middle East. This is a world where money talks and it talks in the hundreds of millions and the only thing faster than the cash is the cars. This is a world whose heroes are globally celebrated and whose villains go down in international infamy. Josie, welcome to the fast-paced world

of Formula One auto racing. Oh my goodness. Cool. Any knowledge on the subject going in? I went to an engagement party a few weeks ago and met the to-be- brides mom's friend who really likes Formula One. So she was sharing her experience of she lives outside of Austin and Austin has a Formula One track

and she went on a date with some guy. I don't think she liked the guy, but she liked the Formula One. And she was telling us about like being in the car and how... In the car? She was driving on the track. Like... Damn!

He paid for this experience where like you're in the car with a professional driver. Money, money, money, money. Yeah. And the driver is just coaching you verbally. She said that he yanked the wheel out of her hands and stuff, but she has full control of the gas and the brake. And she was driving this car. She kept saying they have to get so close to the wall.

And her coach, the helping driver kept saying, like, you have to get closer. You have to get closer. And she's like, I'm close enough. So get off the track, leave it for the ones who want it. We really, really kiss that concrete barrier. She loved it. Going fucking 300 kilometers an hour. She had the best time.

She's like, I want to go back as soon as I can. Not with that guy, but as soon as I can. I bet it's a rash. I bet it's a real rash. Yeah, she said, she said that. It's like, it's just so exciting to go that fucking fast. Yeah. I grew up watching a lot of auto racing due to my own interests. I mean, like when you're a little kid, Cargo Fast, that you can't beat it. Even as an adult, Cargo Fast is still pretty good.

I had a lot of like really cool like little versions of these cars that were like the ones that like the drivers drove and I would like play with them. I was very car focused. Hot wheels kind of like? Yeah, like hot wheels, but like also like nicer than like sometimes like the diecast like nice like that had good heft to them. Oh, okay. Yeah. Really nice cars and I was all about like I had a road map, racetrack. It was, these were good times. These were great times. Good. So yeah, very much something I'm like happily returning to in this context. Okay. I liked all the stats that came with it.

There was so much stats in this shit and I was a kid who loved stats. Like I just like stats. Cute. So anyway, there have been many infamous incidents in the checkered history of Formula One, too many for me to even begin naming. Checkered flag, okay.

Yeah, you got it, you got it. If you find the subject matter of today's episode interesting, I encourage you to go to the Wikipedia category page for Formula One controversies and lose yourself among the 75 articles on offer. Oh my goodness, wow. Yes, you could, you can eat for days on this shit if you're interested. For our purposes though, I want to take a somewhat tight focus on one particular memorable and controversial Formula One race come right up close, close to the barrier, right?

The 2008 Singapore Grand Prix. Okay. Singapore, a land of fragrant breezes, rich flavors, soaring skyscrapers, that lion statue that vomits water like, and, the 2008 Singapore Grand Prix. This race is notable for a few reasons. It is the 15th race in the 2008 Formula One season, and it is the 800th race in Formula One history. Ooh, ah.

That's not what I'm here to talk to you about. Come on. It's the first time a Formula One event has taken place in Singapore on a beautiful bespoke raceetrack commissioned by the Singaporean government to refer back to the deep knowledge of auto racing that I retained from my childhood and simply never talk about because no one triggers the dialogue option. There are three types of racing track, road, street, and hybrid. Okay, okay. Road tracks are specifically built to be auto racing tracks.

Anytime you see a big oval with stands all around it, that's a road track. Okay, road track. Indianapolis Motor Speedway where the Indy 500 takes place, that's a road track. Okay, and that's this woman that I met, that's what she was on. She was on a road track. Yeah, like a circuit. Yeah, a closed circuit, yeah. Street tracks, which I find much cooler visually, are carved out of the public roads of actual cities.

That's insane. That they take place in through route planning, road closures, etc. That is insane. That is GTA. Yeah. Okay. Like you have to figure out how to make like Vancouver. Vancouver had one of these. My dad took us when we were younger to... It wasn't a Formula One race. I think it was like a kart race, but they're very kind of similar vehicles aesthetically to look at them. I'm sure there are differences that someone who knows the subject matter much better than me could point out, but we got to see like the Vancouver Grand Prix and it's like really cool to like see how they make

a city which is not built to accommodate cars whipping around at like 200 plus MPH. Yeah. You know what I mean? Yeah. You know what I mean? Yeah. How do we make that viable and also like showcase the beauty of like Monaco at the same time. Right, yeah, yeah. Oh wow. With some nice vistas

in the background, some nice seaports and shit. Get the mountains, get the beach. Mm-hmm. Whoa. And then hybrid tracks combine the two. So some mix of both. Okay, okay. Singapore is a street track, so its length winds through downtown Singapore, past hotels and the shopping district and all the other things the Singaporean government would love to show you, a potential tourist in what is effectively a

bajillion dollar ad for their city. Yeah. And I must say, Singapore quits itself well in terms of beauty during the race, especially because the 2008 Singapore Grand Prix happens to be the first ever nighttime race in Formula One history. Whoa. Right? Little innovations. We've got the cameras, right? We've got the lighting, right? With the drivers, we've tested with the drivers. It works fine. Oh my gosh. That must change the game a little bit too, because I would imagine the glare. See, you wanna watch this, right? You're like, ooh, nighttime Singapore, what's going on?

Yeah, twinkling city lights, yeah. Much is made of this during the race broadcast, which opens with the words, a short time ago, the sun went down on Formula One, as it used to be. Oh, that's good, that's good. That's good. Whoever's doing your copy, pay him, pay him.

Give them a raise. Give them a big raise. That's good. Yeah. The brake discs glow and the sparks fly off the concrete as the cars whip around the track at top speeds of 372.5 kilometers per hour or 231.4 miles per hour. That's disgusting. Fastest speed recorded, I believe, comes in and when I say I believe, I mean I have a very specific

number I'm about to read to you, is 397.36 kilometers per hour, which is 246.9 miles per hour. That's too fast. So always remember too that I don't go into any of the physics of like weight and like aerodynamics and displacement and fuel and like out. But this is like a lot of physics has gone into this, right? Are those high speeds on a city track? Street tracks tend to have like more unforgiving corners and layouts and like hairpin turns and weird shit like that.

So I would say the average speed on those probably tends to be slower, whereas courses that are designed to be raced on are places that are designed for you to be able to pick up a little speed too, you know? Yeah, yeah. So I would assume that it probably they go quicker on a road track broadly, but you know. Okay.

I'm just getting back into this after like a 30 year break. You know what I mean? True, okay, fair, fair, fair. But I will say broadly, I cherry picked those stats to like be impressive to set the scene. Probably they're going a little bit slower than that generally. Yeah. But like not that much. So like easing in like the 100s and 200s of kilometers and miles per hour, right? Yeah. Wow. For the next 61 laps, the drivers will endure tropical heat of over 100 degrees Fahrenheit, 37 degrees Celsius. The glare of 1800, 2000 watt lights surrounding the track for visibility and what commentators James Allen and Martin Brendel specifically call out as a very bumpy track. With a high possibility for a safety car. Do you know what a safety car, Josie, is? Nope. Tell me everything.

A safety car is the special car that comes out to prevent disaster when, as often happens when a fast car go round and round, somebody crashes. Oh no. And right as they mention this concern in the broadcast, who should wander into frame, prepping for the race in the pit lane, but Spanish driver Fernando Alonso.

Okay. Alonso is a two-time former Formula One champion, having won the 2005-2006 seasons back to back. But as of September 8th, 2008, driving for the Renault Formula One team, he has not won a race in a full year. He's not washed up, per se. Per se. but he's getting a bit of a stink to him. Okay. And his terrible qualifying performance has him starting the race in 15th place. Okay.

Lucky number 15. Noah has... Yeah, as they say. Yeah, as the unlucky ones say. Yeah. As you say when you're given the number 15 and that's what you have to work with. Exactly. Well, lucky number 15. He starts on the grid next to his teammate, the Brazilian Nelson Pique Jr. who's starting in 16th. Okay. The commentators note that this was a disappointing, even devastating placement for Alonso, who

will have to fight his way from the back of the pack to even stand a chance. Or so it seems. That's what I like. I want the sun to go down on the history of Formula One and I want- As we know it. And so it seems. Yeah, as we know it. Yes.

You see, true to the predictions of our announcers, 14 laps into the race, we do get our crash, and we do get our safety car. Fernando Alonso's partner, Nelson Piquet Jr., pulls in to turn 17 of the track and spins out. The rear of his car collides with the barricade. Piquet is thankfully physically unharmed, but unable to complete the race and the safety car is deployed. And as this episode of Bittersweet Infamy proceeds, I will get into the finer details of how this all plays out, I promise. But all you need to know for now is that the timing of

this accident creates serious problems for everyone in the race who has not stopped for a refueling pit stop by lap 14. Almost everyone on the track has not pitted yet, except for Fernando Alonso, PK's teammate, who made an unusually early pit stop in lap 12. Now all of a sudden, Alonso's competitors are forced to pit at times that are inconvenient at best and illegal at worst, earning them serious time penalties. Okay, in this situation where a safety car is on the track, you are forced to pit. Is that the situation? No, it's the you are not allowed to pit, but everyone was planning on pitting this turn.

Oh, so your two options are to either basically white knuckle it and hope you don't run out of fuel and pile in with absolutely everyone to pit all at the same time later. Or else you can just go in and pit, but you'll have to come back later and serve a penalty. And I'll tell you about how the penalties work. Oh, okay. Okay. But basically, unless you happen to be the one person who already pitted Fernando Alonso, this was extremely bad timing. Okay. From his 15th place qualifying start, Alonso pulls into an unlikely lead and goes on to win the Grand Prix, his first race victory of the 2008 championship.

He wins the whole thing? He ends up winning the whole thing, yeah. Wow. The win is seen as a master drive by one of the F1 greats, an exercise in unconventional strategy and opportunism that paid massive dividends for Alonso, due entirely to the unlikely coincidence of his own teammate crashing out in lap 14. Do we know why Alonso decides to pit in lap 12? Or he was just kind of like, let's go.

The way that the team frames it is that this was basically an unusual shake it up, hail Mary strategy in an attempt to just kind of do something to snap him out of like, we're in 15th, we've got nothing to lose, basically. OK. In very short, it's not something you'd usually do from 15th, because the way that the timing works out is that you end up having to pit one more time than you would otherwise in the whole race. And every time you pit your is time that you could be racing, but you're not. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, interesting. You said he had a stink on him.

So he was like, better get back into the pit sooner. Let's wash off the stink, right? not. Yeah, yeah. Oh, interesting. You said he had a stink on him. So he was like, better get back into the pit sooner. Let's wash off the stink, right? Yeah. Yeah. And as always happens, Josie, when coincidences seem a bit too lucky, skeptics begin to emerge from the woodwork. Says Formula One journalist Joe Sowerd in a write up of Alonzo's victory in the event's aftermath. There were some cynics, there always are, who reckoned that the team's strategy was to have Nelson crash soon after Fernando had completed his stop and thus create a situation in which Fernando gained an advantage over the rest of the field. It was all planned!

One can see this argument, but one likes to believe that no team would ever be so desperate as to have a driver throw his car at a wall. That seems like a very unsafe gamble for a lot of different people, including that said driver. That driver, yes. In August of 2009, nearly a year after the 2008 Singapore Grand Prix, Nelson Piquet Jr. is released from the Renault Formula One team. The departure is acrimonious and the fallout, as with all things F1, is offered up for global consumption. And it perhaps comes as no surprise when, on August 30th, 2009, Nelson Piquet Jr. publicly states that he was ordered by the Renault Formula One team to crash his car on purpose in Singapore in

order to hand Alonso the win. Oh, oopsie, oopsie. 12th lap pit. The yeah, yeah. That series of like perfect circumstances that seemed to play out like almost to the letter may in fact have been engineered. It's what we're now hearing. But you are saying it was an acrimonious split,

so perhaps he took the opportunity to... Throw us all over for stuff that I was part of too, or whatever. Yeah, get a little revenge, a little revenge mix in there. The incident is turned over to Formula One's governing body, the Federacion Internacional de l'Automobile, aka the FIA, and from there, the disqualifications and bans flow.

As for the 2008 Singapore Grand Prix, the much-fetted, innovative debut of nighttime driving becomes a mere footnote to the incident that will go down in infamy as crash gate. Whoa. So it's a gate suffix, which I think is a little pired, but it is also like, when you see that something is a gate, you sort of do come to it with a little bit of extra respect, right? Like, cause you're a gate, you know,

based on the water gate scandal. Mm-hmm, mm-hmm. I'm trying to think of other gates. What are other, what are other gates? Colgate, the toothpaste. Yeah, that one. Golden Gate, the bridge. Yeah. that one. Colgate, the bridge? Yeah.

All of them, right? Yeah, pretty much all of them, yeah. Do you have any sense, I guess this is a good time to cut in, of the drama of these fast cars in general, but maybe Formula One specifically, I think because now on Netflix, there's a show called Formula One Drive to Survive that's very much a reality show about this kind of soap opera of these like, that has the best things do. Yeah.

It's sort of about this soap opera of like, who are these people and what are their interactions with each other. And supposedly it's drawn not only like a new young audience, but specifically a new young female audience to this sport. Oh, wow. This docu-series. I have not come across it, no. To be a Formula One athlete,

you need to be an athlete, right? So you're in good shape and you're probably like 20 and you're from like San Marino or something and you say like, you know, I have to beat Fernando today because of my father. He put so much into my education as a driver. You're so invested in these characters. It's just good stuff. Yeah. I have not seen a lot. I have not been exposed to a lot. So this is a an education

for me. And I suppose you would have said, but you've never been to an event like this or any kind of like a motor sports event. No, not really. Uh-uh. It's not bad. My dad, I remember when he took us, we were right at like the finish line. It was just cool to sit there and it was cool in the way that a baseball game is cool. You know what I mean?

Yeah. Stuff happens or stuff doesn't. Yeah, that makes sense. But you're just kind of there shooting the piss with your friends or whatever. Mitchell watched a lot of like NASCAR as a kid. His dad worked for DuPont and DuPont. DuPont sponsored. It was Jeff Gordon. It was Jeff Gordon. It was Jeff Gordon. OK.

Yeah. The bright rainbow DuPont car. Yeah. Yes. Yeah. And it's because DuPont manufacturers paint. And so it's like, oh, like, that's the paint they put on the car. I love that shit. I love that shit. I had all those stock cars, too. Yeah. And Mitchell's dad worked as a chemist. So he was like, I helped produce that paint. Like, I know how to make that shit. I love that shit. I had all those stock cars too. Yeah, and Mitchell's dad worked as a chemist, so he was like, I helped produce that paint.

Like, I know how to make that paint. That's good. Feel ownership over the product, baby. No, lots of fun. My friend Caleb Kirkland was there when Dale Earnhardt Jr. crashed and died. Whoa. Holy schmoll. Which is the other side of this, which is that sometimes when there are crashes, and this really brings it back around to what we were saying, like when I was a kid, I remember I loved the crashes. I loved the crashes because you're looking at these like beautiful multi bajillion dollar

machines coming apart in these like spectacular ways. Of course you love the crashes. Everybody loves the crashes. Everybody loves the crashes. And when even when I was playing with them as a little kid, I would make them crash and I would have the tires. Yeah. But then you were also like, I remember we were watching once when this, like a young local dude named Greg Moore

grew up in the area. He was like 23, 24. He was, I think, driving for cart and just this awful violent accident and died, right? And I remember being very sobering and just being like, damn, okay, maybe the crashes aren't good, man. Like, know your limit crash within it,

but not all crashes are fucking good because I don't want to see someone die in front of me. That's horrifying. I think it made me like take it more seriously. But very depressing, my God. Poor guy. I know there's not a lot of sports where you would, where the potential for seeing somebody die is as high with race car driving.

You got like tightrope walking. Yeah. I mean, if you're watching a football game, you could see somebody like have their 12th concussion and then like, OK, well, that's it. But you're not like seeing them like carried off dead on a stretcher necessarily. So yeah, dire stuff. Caleb's dad whisked him right out, by the way. Caleb's dad was like, oh, we're going for ice cream. Good, good. Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha.

The Formula One car to look at it looks something like an airplane, I think. Yeah, that's a good, yeah. It's got a nose cone with two fins horizontally sticking off the sides. It's got like a tail. It's very sleek and jet-like in its construction. It's got an open cockpit. Yeah. And it's low to the sides. It's got like a tail. It's very sleek and jet-like in its construction. It's got an open cockpit.

Yeah. And it's low to the ground. You can see that a lot of care has been put into making this thing very aerodynamic. Yeah, yeah. Like the extra stuff of a car is kind of stripped. So you just have engine, wheels, seat, that's it. And then a very glossy, pretty,

probably fiberglass looking, I don't know what it's actually made of, some sort of space age composite that cost a billion dollars, I'm sure, brightly colored and covered in the logo of whatever the sponsor of that given team is. And there is money to be made and money to be lost very much in these deals, right? Yeah. I can see that. So quick crash course on Formula One, pun very much in these deals, right? Yeah, I can see that. So, quick crash course on Formula One, pun very much very prestigious, the Ferrero Rocher of car racing, you know. F1 is a team sport with each team consisting of two drivers, countless pit crew and technicians,

engineers, designers, managers, and team principals overseeing the lot. However, it's a team sport where as a driver you're in direct competition with your own teammate, which can be known to create bad blood and ruffled feathers in situations where one driver is seen to get preferential treatment over another. Yes, yes, yes. And specifically I saw when I was reading the Formula One forums to see what true fans thought about these guys when they were just beacons on the internet. Yeah.

Fernando Alonso, the Spanish dude, apparently has a reputation as a partner killer, whatever that means. So yeah, doesn't play nice with others. Maybe plays out in certain ways in this story, but maybe not. We'll see. 2025 as in right now. Right. Yeah.

Here today. Unless you're listening in 2026, in which case we're a little out of date. And if you're listening in 2024, how? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. 2025 marks the 75th FIA Formula One World Championship, which features 24 Grand Prix races. The better a driver places in any given race, the more points they get. And the driver with the most points at the end of the series is the champion.

Okay. Okay. So it's like accumulating. Yeah. Yes. Okay. The champion earns money for their team, as well as prestige, brand deals, et cetera. I cannot emphasize enough how much fucking money moves around as a result of Formula One racing. Is that just like inside of the gambling? Like, I imagine there's a lot of money that's being made on... Corporate sponsorships, ad spots, tourism spend, prize allowance. And in terms of the investment into engineering these cars to within an inch of their lives. Okay, that makes sense.

According to one 2019 estimate, if a team wants their car to win the championship, they can expect to invest 1.4 billion US dollars in research, development, and execution, all to save crucial tenths of seconds in a sport where even the milliseconds matter. Oh my gosh, that's a lot of money. Well, all these big name engineers got paychecks and all this research and all this stuff and all this espionage as we're about to find out and all of this intrigue intrigue. There's a lot of payroll. Yeah. OK. OK. I'm in the wrong business. Apparently nonprofit is not really doing it. You should have designed a really good nose cone and then schemed against Italian millionaires

for the rest of your life. That's what you should have done. I'm not dead yet, Taylor. Yeah, that's true. That's true. The future is bright. The investment in a Formula One champion comes in the form of not just money, but time.

A lifetime of training goes into the development of a Formula One driver. Take our boy Fernando Alonso, the Spaniard, who began kart racing at the age of three years old and had won his first championship before he was 10. How do you do this without a driver's license? Like, what? Well, his dad made his sister a go kart,

but the sister wasn't interested, so he gave it to the three-year-old instead. These are elite, conditioned athletes with standing G-forces and turbulent conditions with highly refined knowledge of highly technical machines. All this to say between the billions of dollars invested by a championship team and the years of experience behind a championship driver, the stakes of a Formula One race are extremely high. And when the stakes are high, well, people tend to cheat. Yes. Well, when there's billions of dollars behind it, I get it.

Yeah. Yes, well when there's billions of dollars behind it, I get it, yeah. Now I said we were coming in tight on Singapore 2008, but you know I can't resist playing around in this space, especially because I don't know when we'll be back in the world of Formula One. Took us 126 episodes to get here. True enough, true enough. Let me treat you to a quick lap around the 1994 Formula One Championship season, which acts as a helpful microcosm when it comes to discussing cheating in F1.

As well as establishing why it's an extremely bad idea to crash a car that runs over 250 kilometers per hour. I, knowing how much money goes into those cars, that's insane that they would willingly crash but we don't know that yet. That's a line item to some billionaire, you know? That's true. That's the disgusting thing. That car is a line item.

That someone's like tax haven that car. Yeah, fair. Fair. Fair. What were you doing in 1994? It's been a while. I was chilling in my kindergarten class, stacking blocks on the little rug and watching Muzzy. Probably was watching a lot of Muzzy. How about you? Honestly, probably starting to watch Formula One race in about, like really. Hey! Like yeah, playing NHL 94 with my brother. In Formula One, no sign of Muzzy, I'm afraid.

But cheating allegations flew fast and furious as a Formula One racer, and while multiple teams came under scrutiny, the main culprit was Benetton, the team owned by the Italian Benetton family, the Italian chain of retail stores. They were interesting because I remember they did a lot of like really bizarre and controversial ads where one was like about a family gathering around the bedside of a dying AIDS patient, which is like, oh, it was a really, wow. Yeah, really striking image that had nothing to do with clothing, right? Very interesting stuff. Yeah.

The Benetton Formula One racing team was at the time overseen by a guy named Flavio Briatore. Briatore is an Italian businessman who brushed off a couple of pesky fraud convictions in the 80s when we were all doing fraud. Oh my gosh. To rise up through... Guys, come on. I was frauding left and right. Take me in, boss, whatever.

He rose up through the ranks of the Benetton retail empire and eventually found his way to become the Benetton formula boss. He's jowly and extremely tan with slicked back white hair, tinted glasses, and a playboy reputation. You're welcome. The type of guy who exclusively dates much younger models like Heidi Klum and Naomi Campbell. Oh my god, Heidi, Naomi, get out of there.

I think Heidi has a kid with him. I think Heidi has a kid with him. Her oldest daughter, Lenny, is her daughter with Flavio Briatore. We all learn in different ways. Yeah, went to SEAL and you know. Yeah. So what sort of cheating was Briatore's Benetton allegedly doing? Yeah, what was that looking like? It was announced ahead of the season that electronic aids like power brakes and traction control systems had been banned as were anti-lock

brake systems and active suspensions. Basically doodads and gizmos to make cargo faster or more intuitive or better turning or whatever. Oh, okay. okay. Flavio Briatore was among those vocally critical of the limitations, calling them, quote, ill-advised snap decisions. So it may not be surprising that Benetton did not strictly partake of these new rules. Benetton was accused of using illegal traction control software,

although that wasn't confirmed until William Tote, a Benetton engineer, admitted it on LinkedIn in 2015, nearly two decades later. LinkedIn. This guy just like cracked it open on like, yeah, in those weird like one sentence cadence things that's like today I learned a lesson period and it's going to blow your mind wide open period. You know what I mean? That they're like one line at a time. Probably one of those. The stunted drama of LinkedIn, my dog, wow.

In weird places in weird ways. So we gotta give it to LinkedIn here, very funny place to break open the 1994 Benetton traction control thing. Yeah. Additionally, a pitfire at the 1994 German Grand Prix sparked an investigation that proved Benetton was using a fuel valve without a filter, which allowed the fuel to go into the car

12.5% faster than a regulation valve. Oh my gosh, and start a fire. And start a huge fucking fire because there's no fuel filter. But yeah, you pull in and glug, glug, glug, glug, glug, glug, and you're 12.5% faster than the next guy. That's the difference between the Cheerios box and no in this world, right? Seconds matter, yeah.

And even finer than that. And finally, an investigation after the 1994 San Marino Grand Prix, more on which shortly, revealed that Benetton had installed a software in its cars that would allow for perfect starts, which was explicitly outlawed. Oh, okay. I don't even fucking know, but it was there. But the investigation could not prove that the software had been used,

so Benetton got away with a $100,000 fine. We caught you with the gun, but we can't prove that you ever shot it. Right, yeah, that's lunch money, that's whatever. Doesn't matter. That's a rounding error. Yeah, oh my gosh, oh my goodness. Benetton driver Michael Schumacher would go on to win the 1994 championship. So this team that's being accused of cheating up

and down that Flavio Briatore is running would go on to win the championship in the end. Okay. They're all wearing boat necks. That's all that I can really picture. But yeah. Everyone in this story is like, they're all the most like flamboyant heterosexual Italian men you've ever seen. You know what I mean? That's what's in here. Definitely in the brain. Yeah. Yeah. That genre of flamboyant heterosexual Italian men you've ever seen, you know what I mean? That's what's in here. Definitely in the brain, yeah. That genre of flamboyant heterosexual, underserved, under-marketed too, but very much out there. And like this guy Flavio, very much in the convo, right?

The era of conspiracy around automatic aids rankled many drivers, including three-time champion Ayrton Senna, who predicted many accidents in the 1994 season as a side effect of the aides being banned without the speed of the cars being decreased. And on May 1st, 1994, while leading the San Marino Grand Prix on Italy's Imola circuit, Ayrton Senna lost control of his car and slammed into a concrete barrier. He died of his injuries later that day. Seen as one of the shining stars of F1, Senna was grieved the world over. His state funeral was attended by over 5 million mourners and remains the largest funeral in the No, no, no, no. That is, wow, that is intense.

RIP. He was in his early 30s, he was seen as like one of like, the Playboy faces, one of these people who dates the most famous woman in your country, you know? 33-year-old Austrian driver Roland Ratzenberger was also killed in a crash at Imola during qualifying. Oof. Which had rattled everyone and apparently Senna had a little Austrian flag in his car that he was going to raise for Ratzenberger if he won,

which is extra sad. And the deaths of Senna and Ratzenberger contributed to a bunch of safety improvements and new protocols and in general resulted in crashes and crash safety being taken extremely seriously within F1 from that point forward. Well, I'm sorry to hear that it took two dead people to do it, but I think to some

degree it must be a weird balance of like knowing that but for whatever the safety implementations are in God, you could die at any moment. Yeah. Convincing yourself that that's not the case. That must be like the eternal tightrope of very fast car driver, right? Yeah. That's the mental work that you have to do. Finding the right amount of appropriateness in gaslighting yourself about these things. Yeah, yeah. Oof, damn.

And taking safety seriously, which doesn't behoove throwing yourself ass first into a wall to cause a deliberate safety car. So to sum up, lots of very innovative cheating in Formula One and a huge stigma around crashes. That's our warmup drive done back to Singapore, To sum up, lots of very innovative cheating in Formula One and a huge stigma around crashes. That's our warm-up drive done back to Singapore. But first, let's reintroduce our roster of relevant characters in a bit more detail.

Ooh. So here are our players. The beneficiary, Fernando Alonso. Okay, Spanish. Spanish. Born of humble beginnings in Oviedo in the northern Spanish principality of Asturias, Alonso started off at three years old on a go-kart that his father, mineshaft, explosives factory mechanic and amateur kart driver Jose Luis Alonso designed himself.

In a sport where you meet a lot of rich boys with silver spoons and important last names, working class Alonso stands out, and we get the sense that he's gotten as far as he has, back to back championships included, not only through his skill on the track, but in playing the game behind the scenes. We tend to find Alonso as a background character in a lot of these cheating type controversies of the mid-2000s, but despite fingers pointing at him, he always seems to deny culpability or knowledge, and there's never any proof. For example, in 2007, the year before the Singapore incident, there's a big multi-team

espionage scandal where Nigel Stepney, the chief mechanic of the Ferrari team, gets caught passing confidential design documents to the McLaren team where Alonso is one of the drivers. Alonso gets blamed for leaking McLaren's possessions of the documents to the FIA, but he denies all knowledge and we're never able to prove anything conclusively. The same is true for Singapore 2008. Despite being the beneficiary of the scheme, Fernando Alonso denies all knowledge

of the deliberate crash at Formula One's first ever nighttime Grand Prix. Checkered past. Checkered flags and checkered past. But a clean checkered flag, if you will. That's the thing. There's a real facility. Lisa Vanderpump from Real Housewives of Beverly Hills taught me this. There's a real beauty in the facility of just like ruthlessly keeping your fingerprints off of things.

I think that's a good skill. Yeah. Just means you've always got to have your guard up. You can never slip, but if you never slip, then you just keep your fingerprints off of things and people can say what they want. But if there's no proof, there's no proof. Always have a small bottle of Purell in your purse. Fuck yeah, sanitize baby said if the pandemic taught us nothing.

But if there's no proof, maybe he's just, maybe it's just smoke and no fire too. Could be unfairly maligned. Happens all the time on this show. That is true as well. So I leave you with those questions about this guy as we move to our next character in the ensemble. The fall guy, Nelson P.K. Jr. Brazilian right? Brazilian. Very much the number two driver on the reno team, Nelson P.K. Jr. is a rookie whose 2008 season is riddled with mistakes and non-notable finishes. This may come as a surprise given that his father, Nelson P.K. Senior, is a three-time

Formula One world champion. Oh, so he definitely is driving with that silver spoon in his mouth. Oh, his name is Nelson P.K. Junior. Yeah, okay, I hear it now. The Junior, yes. P.K. Senior is regarded as one of the bad boys of F1, well known for popping off with any old homophobic or racist slur during an interview, and was briefly banned from Formula One paddocks from 2022 to 2024 for slandering beloved 7 time world champion Lewis Hamilton. Oh man, slander.

Okay, cool cool. Yeah slander, you got the slander van. Yeah, not just like talking under his breath or just being like, not very nice. Slander. We went straight for slander. Like for legal reasons, we can't have you around. Yeah, yeah, that's pretty bad. By contrast, I get the sense that Nelson P.K. Jr. is best known for this incident in Singapore.

He doesn't seem to be an especially colorful or charismatic personality from the interviews I saw. He's gotten accolades in other types of racing, but his Formula One career pretty much consists of being Renault's test driver in 2007, getting promoted to the main team in 2008, crashing into a well in Singapore, getting fired in 2009, and whistleblowing the crash. Okay, on LinkedIn, right? That's where it happened. Yes, that's where his LinkedIn says.

That's, yeah. Took initiative in group project. Yeah. Yeah. Without diminishing Nelsino and his own achievements, my read on him is that he sort of exists in the long shadow of his more accomplished and flamboyant father and in the even longer shadow of this controversy, which makes him

a bit of a tragic character in my mind. Why was he racing at all? Just don't go be a lawyer, you know, figure out your dad's slander case, like do something else. Go be a lawyer and figure out your dad's slander. That'll make you happy. Fair. All right, here comes our third character in the ensemble. lawyer and figure out your dad's slap. That'll make you happy. Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha Remember Flavio Briatore, the supermodel fucking megatan Italian fraudster who is responsible for Benetton's 1994 cheater season? Oh yeah, yeah I do remember Flavio, that's right.

He seemingly is the brains behind the deliberate crash at the 2008 Singapore Grand Prix. Ohhhh. After leaving Benetton, Briatore ends up running Renault and is actually the person who brought Fernando Alonso onto the team back in 2002. Known as one of the anti-establishment iconoclasts of the sport, Briatori is a messy diva with a sweet tooth for Shenandigas. He loves a plot, a scheme, a scam, and here on Bittersweet Infamy, we love him for that. Oh man, yeah.

Welcome in! Take a seat! And while I'm highlighting Briatori as the mastermind, I should stress that he is the alleged mastermind as he denies all involvement. For legal purposes. Alleged. Yes. Oh.

And because it's the truth, Josie, this is a legitimate businessman. He has not done fraud in at least 40 years. Oh, okay. Yeah. Pat Simmons, Renault's executive director of engineering, is the one who directly communicates with Nelson P.K. Jr. about throwing the race, thereby getting his fingerprints all over the scheme and being heavily implicated in the subsequent investigation.

Vanderpump rules, don't get your fingerprints on the shit. You are absolutely right. Vanderpump does rule in that regard. While Flavio would suffer his own consequences, he was seemingly much better at keeping his prints off the incident, allegedly. And one more player, the fifth card in the hand that I've been hiding from you this whole time. The victim, Felipe Massa.

New name. New person. As of the 2008 Singapore Grand Prix, Italian driver Felipe Massa of Team Ferrari is within striking distance of his first ever world championship. The way the broadcast of the Singapore Grand Prix sets it up, Massa is driving to quote, prove he deserves a seat at Formula One's head table. Okay. Singapore is a crucial race for Massa's championship hopes, which is all the better as Massa qualifies in a first place pole position.

Oh my goodness. Okay, so this is gonna, even if he doesn't win, if he runs a good race, this is gonna set him up. Is that kind of the vibe? Very well, very well. Okay, no presh, whatever. No presh, never any presh when we're whipping cars around at 300 kmph for billions of dollars.

Yeah. Uh-uh. To advertise nasal strips and come to Dubai. Never any pressure. As the race begins in the championship standings, Masse is one point behind Lewis Hamilton, 23-year-old rookie who's vying for the very first of the seven championships he'll go on to notch. Wow. So in the present day, Sir Lewis Hamilton

is like one of the longest tenured, most beloved, most decorated, first black, every accolade in the world, world champion, still even to this day, has gone on to be a massive, massive, massive success. In this point in the story, this is like Lewis Hamilton vying for his first ever title. Okay, wow.

Yeah, so this is like the baby steps of his long and- The baby steps of his big thing. While this Renault crash scam doesn't directly target Felipe Massa, it ends up affecting him and his championship dreams in a way that he remains aggrieved about to this day. Ooh. Bad blood.

All right, Josie, rev up your engines and get ready for the green flag, because now that we know all the background, we're headed back to Singapore to revisit the incident. Ah! In his official statement to the FIA, PK Jr. said, the proposal to deliberately cause an accident was made to me shortly before the race took place.

Oh, wow. When I was summoned by Mr. Briatore and Mr. Simmons, the chief engineering tech, into Mr. Briatore's office. Mr. Simmons, in the presence of Mr. Briatore, asked me if I would be willing to sacrifice my race for the team by causing a safety car. Oh. Now note that Mr. Simmons said it. Mr. Briatore, he just, uh, he was just there. He just fly on the wall. He stood whoop whoop. Huh? I always have some throw away sock puppets, folks.

If you're scamming on this scale, make sure that you have like a Pat Simmons there to like do the talking for you. Fair. Fair fair fair. And a little bottle of Purell. And a little bottle of Purell in your hand sanitizer bag that you, your bum bag, right? Your front pouch. Oof. That's oof. in your hand sanitizer bag that you, your bum bag right? Your front poach.

At the time of this conversation, I was in a very fragile and emotional state of mind. This state of mind was brought about by intense stress due to the fact that Mr. Briatore had refused to inform me of whether or not my driver's contract would be renewed for the next racing year, 2009, as is customarily the case in the middle of the year around July or August. Instead, Mr. Briatore repeatedly requested me to sign an option, which meant that I was not allowed to negotiate with any other teams in the meantime. So we were airing, and he fucking looked at me funny on Tuesday. He would repeatedly put pressure on me to prolong the option I had signed, and he would regularly summon me into his office to discuss these renewals, even on racing days, a moment,

which should be a moment of concentration and relaxation before the race. Yeah, at least you shouldn't have to be thinking about your next year's contract. You should be thinking about turn seven and what happens. Am I gonna throw this? Yeah, yeah. You should be thinking about turn 17, bitch. Eyes on the prize. Yeah, uh-huh, exactly. This stress was accentuated by the fact that during the Formula One Grand Prix of Singapore,

I had qualified 16th on the grid, so I was very insecure about my future at the Renault team. When I was asked to crash my car and cause a safety car incident in order to help the team, I accepted because I hoped that it could improve my position within the team at this critical time in the race season. At no point was I told by anyone that by agreeing to cause an incident, I would be guaranteed a renewal of my contract or any other advantage." So he's confirming that it was not a stated quid pro quo. It was vibes. It was vibes. Yeah. See that's to me. I'm like, oh, listen, let's implicate us all here. What do I get for this?

Yeah. Yeah. Give me a reason not to rat on you. That is rough, though. Oh, would you do it? Well, I've probably crashed the car anyway Well, I don't drive cars that well, so probably I shouldn't be there to begin with so yeah, I That would be That would be I don't think I would do it put yourself in his position lifetime of expectations. Less interesting, sorry Nelson Jr. son of a very big and interesting big big name in auto racing. You're here in Formula One, the sport that he made his own and you have not really made anything your own. You're the second guy on a second-rate team.

And Flavio comes to you and is like, listen, we need, for whatever reason, maybe we need another digit in the win column this season so our sponsors don't pull out. Fernando needs to win. Fernando's the guy. You're not the guy. Can you crash into the wall? You're pretty sure you could pull it off

based on experience. And in fact, I should say, before the race in the little practice lap, you can see him sort of rehearse this crash. He kind of spins out on that same corner in the way that he will. He just doesn't hit the wall. But it seems like he's kind of gauging how the crash will go.

How far he can go. Oh, interesting. Assuming that you will 99 percent pull it off, what would you do? I mean, of course, I would love to say I would never. My standards, my values are so strong and sturdy, but I'd probably do it. You know, like, you can't shame on? No, Josie, you can't. Shame on you, because Flavio's, you can't trust Flavio. No. Well, OK.

He won't even talk. He won't even put his fingerprints on this. That's sussy. That's sussy wussy. It's also sussy wussy. But also, like, he's a young kid. This is the only world he's known to. I feel like there's so much that you still have to learn.

I don't know. I don't know. That's rough. You can't guarantee the safe crash is why I wouldn't do it. There's no, there's no world in which you can a hundred percent guarantee. Yeah. If that's not the guarantee, then I'm not doing it. Hell no.

There's no world in which you can a hundred percent. Like these people got very lucky that this worked out the way it did slash They seem very good. Sorry. I'm engineering this particular scam based on their knowledge slash intricate race strategy Scheme rule type stuff. Yeah cool Honestly, but the part where you crash the car into the wall is a no-go because someone could die if you do that very easily Someone could die if that goes even slightly to the left very easily. Yeah, someone behind you could crash into you and yeah, yeah. You're so freaked out about the fact that Pat and Flavio told you to deliberately crash your car that you forget you don't have your usual wits about yourself.

Yeah, if it's not a guarantee that I would even be able to do this like with 90% certainty then no, no, no, I'm not doing it. I would love to just be like, okay, I just won't race. You don't want me to race? I don't gotta race. If that's what you're saying, you don't want me to win it, then I just won't do it at all. Yeah, play to win, play to win, baby.

That's what I'm here for. That's why I'm the second, the alternate at Renault. Team Formula One Renault Racing. Just hanging back in the dock, eating like a caramel apple. These are good. They're in the gift baskets in the driver's lounge. Never drives. PK says that Simmons lays out the entire plan to him down to the exact corner and lap he is to crash. PK adds, during these discussions, no mention was made of any concerns with respect to the

security implications of this strategy, either for myself, the public or other drivers. And by security here, I think he means safety. Right, yeah. The only comment made in this context was one by Mr. Pat Simmons, who warned me to be careful which I took to mean that I should not injure myself. Whoa, that's pretty deep in the world. Yeah, not much concern about the safety implications about it. That's just like so deep in this world to not even be thinking about the safety concerns

of the initial driver, the other drivers on the track and the public. And the race officials and everybody, right? Like when you deliberately cause a crash, things go into motion. People come out. When PK hit this wall, the back of his car catches fire. Like, people need to put that out. You know, shit like that. You may have noticed that absent in these preamble discussions, seemingly, is Fernando

Alonso. Yeah, he's just like, sitting in his car eating his caramel apple. Yeah, exactly. This falls in line with Alonso's denials of knowing about the plan, but a lot of people question that. In order to pull this off, Alonso would have had to run on a much lighter tank of fuel and take a much earlier pit stop than usual, pitting on lap 12 instead of the usual lap 14, which as we said, extremely weird strategy to take from 15th place unless you've got

a crystal ball that this race is going to play out this exact way. Yeah. to take from 15th place, unless you've got a crystal ball that this race is gonna play out this exact way. Yeah, or I mean, when I asked earlier, your answer was like, hail Mary, let's try something different, shake things up, why not we give this a shot? And that's the explanation that Alonso Reno give, but it's odd enough that a lot of race fans wonder how a two-time world championship winner like Alonso

wouldn't have any suspicions about the strategy. Be like, this is real out of the box. Was this cheaper because it came in an open box? Like what's going on? Yeah, yeah. This fell off a truck somewhere, didn't it? As planned, PK Jr. crashes into the wall at turn 17 on lap 14. This corner has been chosen because it lacks a crane to swiftly carry out the wreckage, which means the safety car will have to be deployed. Other places there are cranes situated by the track that you can just boop boop get a car right out of there, but they deliberately crash in a spot where they would have to like evacuate the

area and because they would need to evacuate the area and clean up the debris, safety car and make sure everyone drives slowly behind the safety car. Oh my gosh, I can't believe they have cranes like that. That is insane. Insane crane. This is cutting edge software technology and shit. They've got cranes. The cranes have cranes. They're just vomiting money on the street.

They're just like, yes, yes. So when the safety car is deployed, this is the fine part. The rules, the rules, Josie, the rules. OK. When the safety car is deployed, not only is no one allowed to pass anyone else, but the pit lane is closed. Okay. We've discussed a little bit of this already. That means that every car stuck out on the course is now running out of gas because most

of them plan to pit in lap 14. Yeah. Non-Alonzo drivers now have two options. They can hope not to run empty and all pit en masse as soon as the safety car exits, at which point Alonzo gets to enjoy a mostly empty track to whip around and make up a whole bunch of ground. Yeah. Or they can illegally pit while the paced car is out, which means each of them will

need to take a penalty where they come back to the pit lane again later and basically just park there. Oh. Burning 30 seconds in a race where every millisecond is life or death. Basically, no matter what they do, it propels Alonso further into the lead. It's a very fine piece of strategy, this, I have to say. In terms of the rules, I'm like, why wouldn't you just force everybody to pit when the safety car is on? Like, why not just do that?

Just like hit like timeout, everybody like everybody park, timeout. Call your kids if you need to vape, contact your childcare. Caramel apples in the driver's room. Yeah, caramel apples. If you need your caramel apple replaced, we can do that. People are watching at home and we watch your fast car go around, baby. Okay, okay, yeah, fair enough, fair enough.

Time out, everybody, everyone just chill. Let's all just bring, No, this is a race. Josie, this is do you know that they're racing to go the fastest? Oh, OK. Yes. Those who wait to pack the pit lane after the safety car departs encounter chaos because everyone's fucking going in at once. Yeah. Including at the Ferrari slip, where both of the team's cars pile in for servicing. The first of these cars belongs to Felipe Massa, our guy who's one point behind Lewis Hamilton for the championship, who started the race in first. In all the mayhem of the mass pit stop, one of

the Ferrari pit crew neglects to remove the fuel hose from Massa's car before Massa is given the green light to exit. No. The results is an almost comedic debacle with Ferrari pit crew in their red jumpsuits, Pratt falling unsafely in front of cars, punching stacks of tires in rage and sprinting down the pit lane to catch up with Massa's Formula One car as it drags this gigantic silver fuel line Danger Wheel Robinson robot arm behind it. Oh my gosh. Oh my gosh.

I'm so impressed with myself. I will share this. I've never done that at a gas station. I've never driven off at the fuel house. Even the best. Even some of the best. When this eventually most likely will happen to me, I will remember this story and be a little more harsh

on myself. Yes, you remember, even Felipe Massa did this. Yeah, that's what I'll tell the gas station attendant. Yeah. You remember the 2008 Formula One Drivers' Cup? Well. Oh no. Massa has to park at the end of the pit lane and wait for his line to be removed.

Oh, shit. He rejoins the race in last place. Well, yeah, and then some, I bet. And ends up finishing third from last, winning no championship points. Meanwhile, his primary rival, Lewis Hamilton, finishes Singapore in a respectable third place, notching six points. Felipe Massa goes on to lose the 2008 Formula One championship to Lewis Hamilton

by a single point. While this would be the first of a record-tying seven championships for Hamilton, Felipe Massa would never win the World Drivers' Championship. Oh, whoa. So this just like knocked him right out. He got butterflied. Yeah. He got butterflied by this other team's Shinandigas a bit. Oh no. Oh.

As for the Singapore Grand Prix, the Renault plan works perfectly better than they could have even planned, honestly. There's some stuff that's out of their control that kind of happens to break their way too as far as like, I cleaned up the plan a bit in the telling there are some people who did happen to pit at a good time and da da da Da, but they get knocked out by shit, you know, oh I see. Okay, we gave it a good edit So like God was truly on Flavio Briatore side that day as he seems to be yeah Alonso takes over the lead about halfway through the race and cruises to and from there earning 10 points for Renault While pk's crash is discounted as the fumble of an amateur who hasn't yet sanded

off the rough edges. In the initial aftermath of the incident, Nelson Piquet Jr. attributes the crash to the heaviness of his car, as he was seemingly running on a very heavy fuel tank as opposed to his partner's conspicuously light one, even though they were both starting from the same position on the grid. He mentions the bumpy track, entire degradation. Alonso, meanwhile, humblebrags his way through a series of press conferences about how his unconventional strategy paid off.

Whoa. PK Jr. claims that after the race, Briatore discreetly thanked him, and the incident was never mentioned between the conspirators again. If we go back to the situation where like, Josie, would you do it? I have to amend here because I'm at the point where I'm realizing he had no confirmation that this was going to be at all to his benefit. He gets fired the next year for underperforming. Yeah.

And understood that this would not be in writing, but there would also be an understanding that I will blow the whistle if need be. And I got to make that very clear to you that if you don't follow through with what I need then I won't be following through. So you're saying blackmail. That's what the whole thing is right? She was like yeah exactly you get it. We're in shady territory so we gotta be shady. Yes I agree.

If he's gonna be shady on you you've gotta have your pre-scheme on his scheme. This is a death bond, right? Like you've gotta have... You know you're gonna need to turn on each other one day if this goes badly. And you have to telegraph that too. You have to say like, I want you to know that I know that you know that I know. He's driver number two and Flavio Briatore is fucking Naomi Campbell, you know? So there's like a power imbalance.

One's boss, one's bossed. Go to law school. Go to law school. Go to fucking law school, bitch. And while you're solving your dad's slander charges, you come back. The world is big. Yes. Why cheat when you could, you know, go to law school, write your novel, sail around

the world. I don't fucking care. Just do something else. Alonzo finishes the championship fifth in the overall standings while PK finishes 12th. There are rumblings and misgivings about Singapore, but everyone gets over the unusual race pretty quickly and moves on until… one year later, August 2009. Nelson PK Jr., having not particularly improved his results over the interceding years, dropped by the Renault Formula One team mid-season, an extremely stupid thing to do to a key accomplice

in a crime you allegedly committed. That's unwise, very unwise, yes. Naturally, PK Jr. goes to the FIA and accuses Flavio Briatore and Pat Simmons of having ordered him to crash at turn 17 of the Singapore GP. In response, the Renault team publicly accuses Nelson PK Jr. and Nelson PK Sr. of fabricating the allegations in

an attempt to blackmail the team into keeping P.K. Jr. on board for the full 2009 season, even though he sucks. And this all happened on LinkedIn, is that right? It was 2009, so maybe like MySpace? Yeah, Friendster. Yeah, okay. Finally, Pat Simmons, figuring out which way the wind is blowing, quickly turns informant and sings like a canary to the FIA, implicating both Piquet and Briatore.

Briatore and Fernando Alonso. Again, deny, deny, deny. Well Fernando might be in a position to deny, right? He might just be like, I don't know. Fernando's very much in the position to deny. Yeah. He might not actually know. We don't know. On September

5th, 2009, the FIA formally charges Renault with race fixing. On September 16th, the Renault Formula One team announces it will not contest the charges and that both Briatori and Simmons have resigned from the team. Says Briatori afterwards, I was just trying to save the team. It's my duty. That's the reason I finished. So he's saying like, I quit out of like no blas oblige. I'm doing this to save the team scandal. I admit nothing.

Yeah. Renault's main sponsors, ING and Mutua Madrileña and their sponsorship agreements. So now the sponsors are, you know, so now money's talking and that's really money, money, money, money. That's, you know, m-m-m. So now money's talking and that's really- Money, money, money, money, that's you know, money. In the end, Team Renault is effectively put on probation, given a stay of execution as long as they keep their noses clean for two years, which they do.

So like, don't rig any more races for two years guys, and they don't. Give yourself two years, come on, 24 months, you got this, you got this. Study for the bar, go for it. Have a caramel apple. Pat Simmons, the engineer, is banned from Formula One for five years. Flavio Briatore is banned for life.

Oh, well, yeah, that's probably good. Briatore and Simmons end up locked in back and forth lawsuits with the FIA that eventually resolve with out of court settlements. The Renault team publicly apologizes to the PKs for their blackmail accusations and pays them a substantial amount in damages. Ohhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh uhhhhh uhhhh uhhhh uhhhh uhhhh uhhhh uhhhh uhhhh uhhhh uhhhh uhhhh uhhhh uhhhh uhhhh uhhhh uhhhh uhhhh uhhhh uhhhh uhhhh uhhhh uhhhh uhhhh uhhhh uhhhh uhhhh uhhhh uhhhh uhhhh uhhhh uhhhh uhhhh uh about the plans to cause a deliberate crash on lap 14. Renault's strategy was aggressive and somewhat unusual, but the stewards do not conclude that individuals at Renault, other than Mr. Piquet, Mr. Simmons, and possibly Mr. Briatore, were aware of any crash plan.

This position appears to be supported by the documentary and radio communications evidence provided by Renault. They turned over their, like, radio chats. Okay. And Fernando Alonso seemed to not know kind of thing. The official conclusion yet again is that Fernando Alonso didn't know anything. As it always seems to be. Does he get to keep his medal? His whatever I guess?

He keeps the win at the race. Even though it's his team who was determined to be conniving. Yep. Wow. There's a little bit of an unmade part of the bed still, even as I'm kind of wrapping was determined to be conniving. Yep. Wow. There's a little bit of an unmade part of the bed still, even as I'm kind of wrapping up the story here, there's one loose end and what you just said

ties very much into that loose end. You guys should go back to the rule book to look at that cause that's not quite right. That doesn't seem quite right to you, the fact that the result of the race stands, that will be a big sticking point. Okay. Okay.

From here, the players of our story scatter to the winds. Nelson PK Jr., who escaped sanction for his role in the affair, goes on to success in other racing ventures, including Formula E, an electric car offshoot of F1, where he's the inaugural champ. So he goes and does well elsewhere. Okay. That's good for the environment. Formula environment, there you go. There you go. Much better for the environment than crashing a car and starting an auto fire.

Yeah. Briatori and Simmons both end up getting their bands revoked and finding their way back into the F1 fold because no exiled warlord ever truly remains in exile. Okay, damn. Lord ever truly remains in exile. Oh, okay. Damn. Felipe Massa, last seen dragging a fuel line in his hopes and dreams down the pit lane, retires from Formula One in 2017, having never won the biggest prize of them all.

2008 was the closest he got. In 2023, former Formula One group chief executive Bernie Ecclestone gives an interview with German website F1 Insider in which he admits that the race results of the 2008 Singapore Grand Prix should have been nullified, but weren't, to protect the sport from scandal. Quote, "...we had enough information and time to investigate the matter. According to the statutes, we should have cancelled the race in Singapore under these conditions. That means it would never have happened for the championship standings and then Felipe Massa would have become world champion and not Lewis Hamilton.

Later that year, former FIA President Jean Tote agrees, there is no doubt that the Singapore Grand Prix was rigged and should have been cancelled. Based on these public remarks by former FIA officials in 2024, 16 years after his disastrous pit stop at the Singapore Grand Prix, Felipe Massa files a lawsuit against the FIA, saying it violated its regulations by overlooking Crashgate. He says this cost him his sole world title and he is seeking compensation in excess of $80 million for lost prize money and opportunities. Joes, you're shaking your head no. I'm shaking my head, fuck yes.

You miss 100% of the shots you don't take. True enough, true enough. He is essentially looking to have the results of the 2008 Singapore Grand Prix Nullified and in so doing overturning the results of the 2008 championship so that he, not Lewis Hamilton, comes out victorious. Taking the record away from the beloved record-tying first ever black champion of Formula One, Sir Lewis Hamilton. Who goes on to win multiple more, is that correct?

Six more, six more. Although notably Lewis Hamilton had his own drama with the FIA after getting screwed out of an eighth championship in 2021 by a rule of regularity involving a safety car, so things do come full circle. Either way, Felipe Massa were to reclaim the 2008 title. Now you get your name next to an asterisk,

even though the rest of the world had like moved on 14 years ago or however long it was. What do you think? I say get the money. Get that settlement. Get the settlement. Get that settlement. I agree. Get the settlement.

And like, I mean, Crashgate is in the books as it is. You know what I mean? Like the asterisk is not official, but it is there. So I think leave that alone. Let Hamilton have his thing and acknowledge too that like, well, and if you feel like you're missing out on endorsements and prize money in this total of 80 million, you should put a dollar amount on the way that you have to endure that the record does not reflect the reality of your talent.

I think add another 80 million. Go ahead. Damn. I sort of feel like, yeah, you gotta for your healing purposes, I don't know how useful it is to like set the record book straight as it were and like get yourself that championship or whatever. Yeah. I also feel like too, like the real devilish part of me is like, you know what? You still could have won that race if your team didn't fuck up the fuel line. That's your problem. You still would have been competitive with Alonzo without that fuel line shit. And yes, he made the crucible for y'all to fuck it up, but you guys fucked that up. Yeah.

So part of me is a little like, Ooh, sour grapes, sour grapes. But it was rigged. And there is that question. Like I asked like how many more championships did Hamilton have? It's like many. Well, like why didn't you have more championships after? You know what I mean? Like I understand the pain and suffering.

But Fernando Alonso is a good example of a guy who is said to like, it sort of sounds like on paper, like he peaked as a driver in 2005, 2006, but apparently he just had a lot of bad luck after this with like being on the wrong team at the wrong time or in the wrong car at the wrong time. So you still can be a very good driver and not win the championship because of circumstances either out of your control or that are in your control but aren't specifically to do with your driving ability,

let's say. That's what prizes are, right? You're the right time at the right place with all the right training and all the money behind you and all the support and love and blah, blah, blah. And then it's luck, you know, so. And then one day your boss calls you into his office and says, we need you to crash on purpose

so that your teammate can win. Oh, gosh. Oh. We think this is gonna be great for the team. Yeah, take one for the team, buddy. Can't see any cracks forming in the team because of this at all. Oh my gosh.

So interestingly, in 2010, Felipe Massa ended up as teammates on Ferrari with none other than Fernando Alonso. So the guy who pulled off the fuel line and the guy who won the race. Rough. He says of the experience, I suffered a lot as Alonso's teammate, not necessarily because the work wasn't fun and

I got on well with him, but within the team, he managed to get everything behind my back, so he always got his way. Ohhhh. So just kind of again in the shadows, things seem to break well for Alonso. And yes confirms Masa, they did discuss Crashgate. Ohhhh. I spoke with Alonso on several occasions when we were teammates, and naturally Fernando always hinted that it wasn't his fault, but he always changed the subject. I never had a clear conversation. When a person accepts and talks about something, it's when that person has clarity about

the situation. When a person doesn't want to talk in the right way, we know that maybe he knew everything. I'm sure he did. Woo. I mean, that is speculative. He could just be like, I don't want to talk about it because I don't want to know anything about it still. I'm incredibly vague and invasive.

That's my whole, that's how I get by here. That worked for me in the past and I ain't going to change that tactic. Yeah. Two time world champion, baby. Woo. Yeah. While it did end up being the case that Fernando Alonso's best results were behind him.

He never reached the highs of his 2005-06 era again. He's still regarded as one of the all-time greats and especially well-known for his longevity. He still races to this day. And he's still as elusive as ever about all his little controversies and escapades. He's appeared on Formula One, Drive to Survive, the seven-season-long Netflix reality show that introduced the soap opera of F1 to a new generation. Says Alonso in the show, In Formula One, there always has to be good characters and bad ones.

Heroes and anti-heroes. I'm on the dark side. And with that, and the wave of the checkered flag, we've reached the finish line of episode 126 of Bittersweet Infamy. Pop the bubbly, enjoy the afters, and remember Josie, if the FIA asks, we never talked about any of this. Thanks for listening. If you want more infamy, we've got plenty more episodes at bittersweetinfamy.com or wherever you listen to podcasts. If you want to support the podcast, shoot us a few bucks via our Ko-fi account at ko-fi.com

forward slash bittersweetinfamy. But no pressure, bittersweet infamy is free, baby. You can always support us by liking, rating, subscribing, leaving a review, following us on Instagram at bittersweetmthme, or just pass the podcast along to a friend who you think would dig it. Stay sweet! The sources that I used for this week's Mimthimus included an interview with Eva Ardijas-Fuentes about her new film Goodbye Horses, The Many Lives of Q Lazarus. The video is entitled Real One Goodbye Horses, The Many Lives of Q Lazarus. It was uploaded to YouTube by OpenStage Media May 20, 2025. I looked at the liner notes from sacredbonesrecords.com for Q Lazarus.

I read an article in Dazed, What Happened to Q who sang Goodbye Horses, which was published April 17, 2018, written by Thomas Gorton and Charlie Graham Dixon. I looked at the website for the film Goodbye Horses, the Many Lives of Q Lazarus, and that's goodbyehorsesmovie.com. I read an article in Pitchfork, Q Lazarus, elusive goodbye horses musician dies at 61, written by Quinn Moreland, published August 18th, 2022. And I read an article from thaterickalper.com,

entitled Five Unknown Facts About Q Lazarus, the mysterious voice behind goodbye horses published March 22, 2025. And the version of the song that you heard excerpted was uploaded to YouTube by Boss Gothara on January 1st, 2009. While preparing this episode, I watched the 2008 Singapore Grand Prix at FullRaces.com. I read Everything You Need to Know About F1, Drivers, Teams, Cars, Circuits and More on FormulaOne.com. I read Revealed, the 1.4 billion cost of developing F1 engines by Christian Seltzer-Forbes, November 10th,

2019. I read Grand Prix Results Singapore GP 2008 on Grand Prix.com written by Joe Sowerd. September 28th, 2008. On YouTube I watched Looking Back at Crashgate hosted by the channel Simply F1 and Crashgate Simplified a detailed account of Formula 1's darkest moment on CY Motorsport. I read the full statement from the FIA released April 12th, 2010 on Autosport. I read leaked transcripts put Alonso in the clear on Singapore crash plot September 16th, 2009 on Motorsport. I read the transcript of Nelson P.K. Jr.'s

statement to the FIA on Crash.net. And on Crash.net, I also read Alonso's surprise by fix allegations. I read Fernando Alonso's Formula One controversies in Dive Bomb written by Alejandra Guajardo Lozano and edited by Valles Panuri, March 26, 2023. Massa suffered as Alonso tried to crack him on Planet F1 by Michelle Foster, May 2020. Felipe Massa believes Fernando Alonso knew about Crashgate, he always changed the subject on Scooteria Fans, published 2024. Felipe Massa's case against FIA FOM Bernie Ecclestone heads to hearing what to know by Yara El-Sabini in Forbes, February 25th, 2025. And lastly, I looked at the Wikipedia articles for allegations of cheating during the 1994 Formula One World Championship, Death of Ayrton Senna, 2007 Formula One espionage controversy,

and Renault Formula One crash controversy, and I read the Wikinews article, Renault Charge with Formula One Race Fixing, September 5th, 2009. If you want to become a member of the Bittersweet Film Club and support the podcast, you should become a monthly subscriber over at ko-fi.com. That's k-o-fi.com slash bittersweet, and for me, your monthly donation lets you access every episode of the Bittersweet Film Club and suggest films to us to pick. Join supporters like Terry Jonathan, Lizzie D, Erica Jo, Soph, Dylan, and Satchel.

Big thanks to our one-time supporter, Dina, as well. You rock. Bittersweet Infamy is a proud member of the 604 Podcast Network. This episode was edited by Alex McCarthy and Alexi Johnson. Cover photo by Luke Bentley. Our interstitial music is by Mitchell Collins.

And the song you are currently listening to is Tea Street by Brian Steele. Thank you.