B-Side Sports: The Stories Behind The Game.

Amita

Every record has a B-side. The deeper cut. The one that tells you something the hit single never could. B-Side Sports is a narrative podcast about what's really going on behind the games we watch — the business, the science, the history, the culture. Flip it over. There's always more.

Episodes

  1. May 19

    The Greatest Rivalry: Senna vs. Prost

    Ayrton Senna and Alain Prost drove for the same team, in the same cars, in what became one of the most intense and controversial rivalries in sporting history. This episode is about what happens when two people are so evenly matched, so psychologically incompatible, and so completely defined by winning that competition stops being a sport and becomes the entire architecture of an identity. It's about the rival effect, which is the documented phenomenon that we perform at a different level entirely when the person across from us isn't just an opponent, but the opponent. And it's about the myth that formed around this rivalry after 1994, and what that myth got wrong. In this episode, I cover: Alain Prost and Ayrton Senna: who they were before they met, and why the collision between them was probably inevitableThe 1988 McLaren season — the most dominant car in Formula 1 history, and the partnership that was already a war by the second raceThe detail everyone drops from the 1988 championship: Prost actually outscored Senna, 105 points to 94. Suzuka 1989: the crash, the disqualification, and the political interference that turned a grey-area racing incident into a full-blown scandalSuzuka 1990: the crash Senna admitted, years later, was deliberate.Gavin Kilduff's research on rivalry: the three conditions that create it, the performance effects, and the dark side that leads people to cross lines they wouldn't otherwise crossWhat Senna's death did to the historical recordAlain Prost: the driver that history turned into a villain, and why the record doesn't support itAbout the show Every record has a B-side. The deeper cut. The one that tells you something the hit single never could. B-Side Sports is a narrative podcast about what's really going on behind the games we watch — the business, the science, the history, the culture. Flip it over. There's always more. New here? Start with Episode 1: The Deal — the business story of how Formula 1 went from a sport in decline to a $20 billion global entertainment property. Next season: Soccer Season 2 is all about soccer (or football). With the World Cup coming in June, the timing felt right. I'll be dropping new episodes in a few weeks. Subscribe now so you don't miss a thing.

    29 min

  2. May 12

    Blood Money: The Politics of F1's Calendar

    Formula 1 has spent years defending its presence in the Gulf. The host fees run into the tens of millions of dollars. The sport says it's a force for engagement and openness. The critics say it's providing cover for governments with serious human rights records. But in the spring of 2026, a war cancelled two of those races overnight — not because anyone drew a moral line, but because the airspace closed. In this episode, I try to hold all of it honestly. The concerns about Saudi Arabia and Bahrain are real and documented. But so is the double standard in how those concerns get applied. The countries that attract the loudest criticism tend to be the ones furthest from where the criticism is produced.  In this episode, I cover: What a Formula 1 hosting fee actually buys and why the Gulf states are paying the mostThe double standard in sportswashingLIV Golf, the Premier League, and the Qatar World CupWhy the pressure on drivers to speak out is less straightforward than it appearsWhat the 2026 cancellations actually revealed about how Formula 1 relates to geopoliticsThe question the sport has never been willing to answer directlyAbout the show  Every record has a B-side. The deeper cut. The one that tells you something the hit single never could. B-Side Sports is a narrative podcast about what's really going on behind the games we watch — the business, the science, the history, the culture. Flip it over. There's always more. New here? Start with Episode 1: The Deal — the business story of how Formula 1 went from a sport in decline to a $20 billion global entertainment property. Next episode: The Greatest Rivalry Ayrton Senna and Alain Prost drove for the same team, in the same cars, and ended up crashing into each other twice to decide world championships. This isn't really a story about racing. It's about two men who were psychologically incapable of sharing a world — and what happens when obsession meets obsession at 300 kilometres an hour.

    26 min

  3. May 5

    Enzo Ferrari: The Man, the Myth, and the Empire He Built

    Enzo Ferrari is one of the most mythologised figures in the history of sport. The red cars, the prancing horse, the tyrant of Maranello; most people know the legend. Far fewer know the man underneath it: the boy who fell in love with racing at ten years old and never stopped chasing it, the father carrying secrets that shaped every decision he made, the obsessive who built a global empire without ever really wanting to be a businessman. In this episode, I’ll explore the life of Enzo. What drove him, what he lost, what he hid, and what it cost him to build something that outlasted everything. In this episode, I cover: The 1908 Bologna race that changed everything and the calling a ten-year-old boy never got overThe founding of Scuderia Ferrari and the bitter split from Alfa RomeoThe prancing horse: a fighter pilot, a grieving countess, and why Ferrari's official colour is yellowThe two operations that defined Ferrari: the racing team he lived for, and the road cars that paid for itThe Ford deal that collapsed in 1963 and the Le Mans revenge it triggeredPiero Ferrari: the secret son hidden for decadesNiki Lauda and Gilles Villeneuve, the last two great chapters of Enzo's Formula 1 storyThe F40 (the last car Enzo approved)About the show  Every record has a B-side. The deeper cut. The one that tells you something the hit single never could. B-Side Sports is a narrative podcast about what's really going on behind the games we watch -- the business, the science, the history, the culture. Flip it over. There's always more. New here? Start with Episode 1: The Deal -- the business story of how Formula 1 went from a sport in decline to a $20 billion global entertainment property. Next episode: Blood Money Formula 1 races in Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, and Azerbaijan. The host fees run into the hundreds of millions of dollars. The sport says it is promoting change from within. The critics say it is providing cover for governments that would rather the world look at a race than at a human rights record. Both sides have a case. That's what I’ll explore next time.

    26 min

  4. Apr 27

    Downforce: How Invisible Air Became the Most Powerful Weapon in Formula 1

    At high enough speed, a Formula 1 car generates so much aerodynamic downforce that it could, in theory, drive upside down on the ceiling of a tunnel.  This episode is about the invisible force behind this theory, how engineers learned to weaponise air, how the shape of a car’s underside changed the sport forever, and why the person who understands airflow best has, for fifty years, been the person who wins. In this episode we cover: The physics of downforce and why an F1 car is essentially an upside-down aeroplaneThe first wings in Formula 1 and the 1969 Spanish Grand Prix crash that forced the sport to actHow Colin Chapman and Peter Wright discovered that the floor of a car could generate more downforce than any wingWhy ground effect was banned in 1983, and the danger that made it necessaryAdrian Newey: the most successful designer in F1 history, and why his move to Aston Martin sent shockwaves through the paddockThe return of ground effect in 2022, the porpoising crisis, and what it cost Mercedes a seasonThe 2026 regulations and the end of DRSAbout the show Every record has a B-side. The deeper cut. The one that tells you something the hit single never could. B-Side Sports is a narrative podcast about what's really going on behind the games we watch — the business, the science, the history, the culture. Flip it over. There's always more. New here? Start with Episode 1: The Deal — the business story of how Formula 1 went from a sport in decline to a $20 billion global entertainment property. Next episode: Enzo. Enzo Ferrari didn’t want to build road cars. He wanted to race. He built one of the most recognisable brands on earth almost by accident — not because he was a businessman, but because selling cars to wealthy clients was the only way to fund the thing he actually cared about. The story of a man whose obsession shaped a company, a mythology, and a sport.

    28 min

  5. Apr 20

    The Millisecond War: Where the Science of Time Meets the Sport of Speed

    In 1969, a Swiss watchmaker put its logo on a Formula 1 car. No luxury brand had ever done it before. The driver was Jo Siffert. The brand was Heuer.  This episode is about what came before and what followed.  In this episode, we cover: The very first timed motorsport race and why officials couldn't agree on a winnerHow timing technology evolved from stopwatches to transponder systems accurate to 0.0001 secondsJack Heuer's deal with Jo Siffert and the negotiation with Enzo Ferrari that made Heuer the sport's first team sponsorHow modern F1 timing actually works: transponders, loops buried in the tarmac, and measurement to within the width of a golf ballThe 1971 Italian Grand Prix — still the closest finish in F1 historyThe 1.80-second pit stop and why a single second in the pit lane can decide a raceThe watch landscape in the paddock: TAG Heuer, IWC, Richard Mille, and where Rolex sits nowThe TAG Heuer Monaco, Steve McQueen, Senna's Series 6000, and the collector marketLVMH's ten-year global partnership with Formula 1 and what a decade-long commitment signalsAbout the show Every record has a B-side. The deeper cut. The one that tells you something the hit single never could. B-Side Sports is a narrative podcast about what's really going on behind the games we watch — the business, the science, the history, the culture. Flip it over. There's always more. New here? Start with Episode 1: The Deal, the business story of how Formula 1 went from a sport in decline to a $20 billion global entertainment property. Next episode: Downforce. An F1 car generates so much aerodynamic downforce that at high speed, it could theoretically drive on the ceiling. I’ll explore how aerodynamics became the defining engineering battleground in Formula 1 and what happens when engineers push physics to the absolute limit.

    28 min

  6. Apr 13

    Crashgate: How F1 Fixed a Race

    On the 28th of September, 2008, a Formula 1 car drove into a wall in Singapore. The driver climbed out. He said it was a mistake. It wasn't. This episode is about one of the most audacious acts of deliberate cheating in the history of sport. It’s about what was planned, who planned it, and how it worked. It’s about the nine months of silence that followed, what finally broke it, and what a sport does when the truth it's been avoiding becomes impossible to ignore. And it’s about a world championship that may have been decided not by racing, but by a meeting in a team principal’s office before the race had even begun.  In this episode we cover The pressure inside the Renault team in 2008, and the people at the centre of the conspiracy: Flavio Briatore, Pat Symonds, and Nelson Piquet Jr.How the safety car rules at Singapore’s first ever night race made the plan possible, and how it was drawn up on a circuit map in advanceThe race itself, told in real time: the early pit stop, the crash on lap fourteen, and how Fernando Alonso ended up winningThe nine months of silence — who knew, why they stayed quiet, and what finally made Piquet Jr. talkThe FIA investigation, the leaked transcript, and the moment Symonds was asked directly whether he knew a crash was coming on lap fourteen — and what he saidThe verdict, the legal challenge that overturned it, and the careers both men went on to have inside the sport that banned themFelipe Massa, the driver who was leading that race, the championship he may have lost as a result, and the legal case that is still ongoing About the show Every record has a B-side. The deeper cut. The one that tells you something the hit single never could. B-Side Sports is a narrative podcast about what's really going on behind the games we watch — the business, the science, the history, the culture. Flip it over. There's always more. New here? Start with Episode 1: The Deal, the business story of how Formula 1 went from a sport in decline to a massive global entertainment property. Next episode: The Millisecond War. In 1969, a Swiss watchmaker put its logo on a Formula 1 car for the first time. No luxury brand had ever done it before. What followed was a fifty-year relationship between two industries built from exactly the same obsession.

    25 min

  7. Apr 6

    50 Gs: The Science of Surviving an F1 Crash

    On November 29th, 2020, a Formula 1 car hit a metal barrier in Bahrain at 192 kilometres per hour. The car split in half. The driver was on fire for twenty-eight seconds. Then he climbed out. This episode is about how that is possible. It's about what a crash actually does to the human body, the forces involved, the weakest points, and why drivers historically died not from fire or impact, but from a single catastrophic failure at the base of the skull. It's about the decades of deaths that preceded the safety revolution, and the engineers, doctors, and stubborn campaigners who forced a sport that didn't want to change, to change anyway. And it's about the specific devices and clothing that turned one of the most violent-looking events in sport into something a person walked away from. In this episode we cover: The biomechanics of a high-speed crash, and why fifty times the force of gravity is survivable Jackie Stewart, the driver who campaigned for safety in an era that treated caution as cowardice, and what it cost himThe Imola weekend of 1994: three crashes in three days, and the event that finally made safety impossible to ignoreThe engineering of the survival cell, the HANS device, and the Halo, and the resistance each one faced before it was made mandatoryThe FIA Medical Car, the infrastructure built almost from scratch by one man, and why the response after a crash matters as much as the engineering before itThe car is designed to destroy itself so the driver doesn't have to. This is the story of how that idea came to be. About the show: Every record has a B-side. The deeper cut. The one that tells you something the hit single never could. B-Side Sports is a narrative podcast about what's really going on behind the games we watch — the business, the science, the history, the culture. Flip it over. There's always more. New here? Start with Episode 1: The Deal, the business story of how Formula 1 went from a sport in decline to a massive global entertainment property. Next episode: Crashgate. In 2008, a Formula 1 driver was ordered by his own team to deliberately crash his car, to hand victory to his teammate. It worked. And for a year, nobody knew.

    36 min

  8. Mar 30

    The Deal: How Formula 1 Became the World's Most Valuable Motorsport

    In the autumn of 2016, the most valuable private sports contract in the world changed hands. The buyer paid 4.4 billion dollars for a sport with no marketing department, a shrinking audience, and a CEO who thought social media was nonsense. Most people in the paddock thought they'd lost their minds. They hadn't. This is the story of how Formula 1 went from a cash machine being quietly run into the ground by a London private equity firm, to one of the fastest-growing sports properties on the planet. It involves a fisherman's son from Suffolk who built an empire through sheer nerve, a private equity firm that extracted billions while the sport slowly ate its own future, and an American media company from Denver that saw a golden opportunity. In this episode we cover: Who Bernie Ecclestone was, how he built Formula 1, and why his empire had a fatal flawWhat CVC Capital Partners did to Formula 1 during their ownership and what "extraction" really meansHow Liberty Media came to buy the sport, what they found when they got inside the books, and what their plan wasThe resistance from Ferrari, Mercedes, and the paddock establishmentDrive to Survive, the Las Vegas Grand Prix, the Brad Pitt movie, and what all of it adds up toThe racing is just the beginning. The real story is what happens off the track. About the show: Every record has a B-side. The deeper cut. The one that tells you something the hit single never could. B-Side Sports is a narrative podcast about what's really going on behind the games we watch — the business, the science, the history, the culture. Flip it over. There's always more.

    31 min
  • 8 Episodes

About

Every record has a B-side. The deeper cut. The one that tells you something the hit single never could. B-Side Sports is a narrative podcast about what's really going on behind the games we watch — the business, the science, the history, the culture. Flip it over. There's always more.

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