As the week ended we had this week's show fully planned out, everything was all planned out and we were going to have a in depth conversation about the tactics in play last weekend in Abu Dhabi - and then a certain newly minted World Champion destroyed all of our plans.
We're pretty sure that Mercedes was left saying something similar this past week as Nico Rosberg's sudden announcement that he was retiring from Formula 1 pretty much trashed their plans for the entire offseason and into the 2018 season. However, if you watched their Twitter feed from the last 3 days, the team is certainly having as much fun as possible with the announcement.
The Strategy Group met this week and sorted out next year's calendar, 20 races instead of 21, which means that teams have to get through the season on just 4 engines. Monza will be returning in 2017, and Bernie says that France will be back in 2018 and after learning who owns the circuit we really don't understand why it didn't come back sooner...
Finally, McLaren looses yet another long time sponsor and partner, somebody is already lined up to take their place, but still...