Motorsports Racing News & Blog Articles

Romain Bouzigon has watched his friend Benjamin Melot race the Dakar Rally and World Rally-Raid Championship, and now wants a piece of the action himself. On Thursday, Bouzigon announced his plans of competing at the 2025 Dakar Rally, and his first step towards earning a spot there will be the Rallye du Maroc in October.

“CRAZY, you have to be CRAZY to pursue your dreams! Well crazy, we are, and not just half,” began Bouzigon on social media. “Thanks to you, thanks to the strength and determination that you have awakened in us on the Dakar 2023, we will make these dreams come true! I am very proud to announce that I am embarking on the DAKAR 2025 motorcycle adventure! A childhood dream that would come true!

“I found out last week that all the planets were aligning for me to participate. There is only one thing missing today, and that is to URGENTLY complete the budget that would allow me to get started. So today I am looking for patrons, companies or private individuals, and I am selling boxes of wine to help me finance this rally, the first step on the road to DAKAR 2025. Friends, family, colleagues, acquaintances, enthusiasts, fake accounts, etc., if you want to follow me on this adventure, you are welcome.”

Bouzigon has competed in motocross for over fifteen years. In 2017, he and French Motocross Championship competitor Gaëtan Cadot co-founded the MX Performance Academy in Franche-Comté to train young motocross competitors. Melot, who has raced at Dakar since 2019, is an instructor at the school; Bouzigon accompanied Melot to Saudi Arabia for the 2023 Rally as a physical trainer, where Melot finished thirteenth in Rally2.

Outside of racing, he is the director of COPS 25, a facility focusing on cryotherapy and athletic recovery. A doctor in sports science from the University of Franche-Comté, he has published various academic journals such as an April 2020 piece discussing the potential use of cryotherapy for motocross riders between heat races.

In 2022, the Race of Champions decided to break from the usual pavement courses by racing on the snowy and icy surfaces of Pite Havsbad in Sweden. Although the new terrain proved to be a hit among competitors, the experiment has come to a rather abrupt end after just two years. On Friday, ROC announced that disputes pertaining to the land on which the event is held are preventing a return for 2024.

Located in Piteå near the Arctic Circle, Pite Havsbad is a resort often used for conferences and family activities. It sits by the Pitsundet strait, with beaches lining the coast, and ROC was held along this strip that is now under debate.

“Due to recent uncertainties regarding how the land area by the beach and the sea can be used, Pite Havsbad is unable to host the Race of Champions in 2024,” reads an ROC statement. “These unexpected challenges come after two hugely successful ROC events on Snow and Ice in Pite Havsbad.

“The 2023 Race Of Champions event at Pite Havsbad was watched by 21.5% of all viewers in Sweden on SVT1, and independent specialist agency Nielsen measured the Global TV exposure in 100+ countries to a value of over 44 million Euros.”

In a testament to their rally prowesses, Sébastien Loeb and Mattias Ekström won the two individual Races of Champions on the snow/ice while Petter and Oliver Solberg claimed the Nations Cup in both years for Team Norway.

George Russell felt the Mercedes-AMG Petronas Formula One Team made a ‘very positive’ start to the Singapore Grand Prix weekend, with the Briton ending the day third fastest overall behind the two Scuderia Ferrari drivers.

Russell says there are reasons to be optimistic this weekend at the Marina Bay Street Circuit, with the former FIA Formula 2 champion believing a number of teams are very equally matched towards the front of the field.

The W14 was handling well throughout the day, and Russell says there is hope that Mercedes can make the breakthrough and become the first non-Oracle Red Bull Racing driver to win a race during the 2023 FIA Formula 1 World Championship season.

“It was a very positive Friday for us overall,” said Russell.  “The car is feeling really good around the circuit.

“It definitely improved in the cooler temperatures of FP2 but equally, it still felt decent in the slightly unrepresentative conditions of FP1. The times were very tight between several cars.

In 2019, Daniel Hemric raced for NASCAR Cup Series Rookie of the Year but was released by Richard Childress Racing at the end of the year. Over four years and an Xfinity Series championship later, he is back at the top level of stock car racing.

On Friday, Kaulig Racing announced Hemric will run the full Cup schedule in 2024 in the #31 Chevrolet Camaro ZL1. The seat is currently filled by Justin Haley, who will vacate it as he heads to Rick Ware Racing at the end of 2023.

“This is a big day, and it means so much to my family and me,” said Hemric. “It’s truly special to have an opportunity to do something big with a group of people that want it just as bad as you. It takes heart, and each and every person at Kaulig Racing has it. I’m looking forward to finishing out this season strong and getting right back to work in the off season with everyone at Kaulig Racing.”

Hemric finished twenty-fifth in points in his lone season as a Cup driver with a best finish of fifth at Talladega. The season came after spending two years at the Xfinity level for RCR and making the Championship Round both years, while also running two Cup races in 2018. He entered eight Cup races for Kaulig in 2022 including the Daytona 500 in the multi-driver #16, scoring a ninth at Fontana, along with the season finale at Phoenix for 23XI Racing in relief for Ty Gibbs.

After his departure from RCR, he returned to the Xfinity Series as a part-timer for JR Motorsports before latching on with Joe Gibbs Racing in 2021, with whom he simultaneously scored his maiden NASCAR victory and that year’s championship. Hemric signed with Kaulig for 2022 onwards and finished ninth in points in his first year with them.

Carlos Sainz Jr. was left feeling positive after the opening day of the Singapore Grand Prix weekend, with the Spaniard setting the fastest time of the day under the floodlights on Friday evening.

Scuderia Ferrari appeared to back up the strong pace they showed two weeks ago during the Italian Grand Prix, with Sainz finishing just behind team-mate Charles Leclerc in first practice before jumping ahead of him in the second.

Sainz felt Ferrari started the day with a car that felt good, and it was just a case of fine tuning it for the rest of the day.  However, he knows Saturday will be a completely different day, and he knows the team will still need to improve if they are to fight for pole position.

“A positive Friday,” admitted Sainz.  “The car seemed to be in the right window from the very first lap in FP1 so we kept focused on fine tuning the set-up during the second session.

“I expect the track to improve for tomorrow, so we should have higher grip and then we’ll see how much our competitors and ourselves can improve for qualifying.”

Bristol Motor Speedway had the honour of hosting the NASCAR Cup Series‘ first event on a dirt surface since before the modern era, but is ending that experiment after three races. On Friday, a day before the Bass Pro Shops NRA Night Race, the track announced the Food City Dirt Race will revert back to being held on the concrete course and return to being called the Food City 500.

“As the motorsports world focuses on ‘America’s Night Race’ tomorrow, we are thrilled to announce Bristol Motor Speedway will host the return of the Food City 500 on the concrete high-banks of the World’s Fastest Half Mile in the spring of 2024,” said track president Jerry Caldwell. “We will revive a logo reminiscent of the first Food City 500s in the early ’90s and resurrect the track’s vintage trademark look and feel of the era. We’re looking forward to a great weekend of racing and what’s to come in 2024.”

Bristol introduced the dirt race for the Cup and Craftsman Truck Series in 2021; while the Trucks have had dirt dates since 2013, Cup’s last dirt race was in 1970 at the North Carolina State Fairgrounds Speedway. The change came in a hope to stimulate attendance as the Food City 500 had struggled to draw fans compared to the Bass Pro NRA Night Race. The short track had also previously hosted dirt racing for the World of Outlaws in 2000 and 2001, and the Bristol Dirt Nationals for late models and other dirt cars was conducted in support of the Food City Dirt Race weekend.

The switch has garnered mixed reception. Supporters viewed it as a welcome change for a race with attendance problems, while common criticisms included arguing that NASCAR should visit dedicated dirt tracks instead or not pursue dirt racing whatsoever.

The inaugural weekend in 2021 was plagued by rain and flash flooding, followed by on-track concerns such as dust that forced restarts to take place single file for the first time since 2009 out of safety. Such issues were rectified for 2022, only for rain to return again while the Cup race was overshadowed by scoring confusion and mud accumulating.

Scuderia Ferrari continued to lead the way at the Marina Bay Street Circuit on Friday, with Carlos Sainz Jr. edging out team-mate Charles Leclerc in free practice two by just 0.018 seconds.Sainz, who took pole position two weeks ago for the Italian Grand Prix, set a best time of 1:32.120 to set the outright pace on Friday evening under the floodlights in Singapore, and although Leclerc set better times in the first two sectors, it was the Spaniard’s final sector pace that appeared to make the difference.But perhaps the bigger talking point on Friday was the seemingly lack of pace and performance coming from Oracle Red Bull Racing, with their two drivers, Sergio Pérez and Max Verstappen, only seventh and eighth respectively as they look to make it fifteen wins out of fifteen this season.Both drivers were complaining about their RB19 during the session, and neither were able to make much of an impact at the front of the field, something that has not been seen all season long to date.George Russell ended up third fastest for the Mercedes-AMG Petronas Formula One Team, although he was more than two-tenths of a second back on Sainz’s best time, while team-mate Lewis Hamilton ended up fifth, the team-mates being separated by Aston Martin Aramco Cognizant Formula 1 Team’s Fernando Alonso.McLaren F1 Team’s Lando Norris, running with an updated car and livery this weekend in Singapore, placed sixth ahead of the two Red Bulls, while there will be encouragement in both the MoneyGram Haas F1 Team and Alfa Romeo F1 Team Stake camps as Kevin Magnussen and Valtteri Bottas were able to put the respective teams into the top ten.Nico Hülkenberg made it a good session for Haas in eleventh, while, perhaps even more encouraging, was the pace of Liam Lawson, the Scuderia AlphaTauri stand-in doing a good job to place twelfth, four places ahead of his more experienced team-mate Yuki Tsunoda.Esteban Ocon was a lowly thirteenth in the leading of the BWT Alpine F1 Team cars just ahead of the second Aston Martin of Lance Stroll, while Oscar Piastri, not running with the updates that team-mate Norris has this weekend, was down in fifteenth, just ahead of Tsunoda.Zhou Guanyu, who’s future at Alfa Romeo was confirmed earlier this week, was only seventeenth on Friday evening ahead of Alpine’s Pierre Gasly, with Logan Sargeant and Alexander Albon bringing up the rear for Williams Racing.Albon, who has scored points in both the previous two races in the Netherlands and Italy, was restricted to just five laps on Friday evening as mechanical issues saw him set his best time on the hard compound, meaning he will go into the weekend on the back foot.

Christian Eckes was looking to earn a spot in the NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series‘ Championship Round, but Corey Heim ended up stealing it from him in the end. Eckes led 150 of 200 laps but was overtaken by Heim in the final six laps, securing the regular season champion’s third win of the season.

With the help of lapped traffic, which is especially easy to encounter at short tracks like Bristol Motor Speedway, Heim caught Eckes with six laps to go. He went to Eckes’ inside as they lapped Heim’s TRICON Garage team-mate Tanner Gray before clearing him exiting turn four for the lead.

“This is insane. I feel like I’ve given so many away this year and to win one at the end like that is so special,” said Heim. “To win one like that is unreal. I feel like I’ve given so many away, but I feel like I’ve got one back.

“I was in the zone. I was thinking about all of the races that we gave away, and didn’t give away, and I just focused forward and set my pass up right where I needed to. Tony Hirschman, my spotter, did an awesome job getting me through there. I’m out of breath. It’s just so awesome to know we are in Phoenix. It’s awesome.”

Eckes was unable to catch up as both tried to navigate through laps-down trucks. He settled for second, spoiling an otherwise dominant night as he won the first two stages from the pole.

Charles Leclerc led a Scuderia Ferrari one-two in the opening free practice session for the Singapore Grand Prix, a session that was heavily interrupted by lizards on track.

Three times the session had to be halted or yellow flagged as large reptiles were removed from the Marina Bay Street Circuit, but Leclerc came out on top at the end of the hour, his 1:33.350 just 0.078 seconds ahead of team-mate Carlos Sainz Jr.

All twenty drivers were experiencing the updated final sector for the first time during the session, and lap times were significantly faster this year, thanks to the removal of four corners from the track.

Initial runs were done on the harder compounds, and it was around a third of the way through the running when the soft tyre was first seen, Pierre Gasly taking his BWT Alpine F1 Team car on the track with the softest rubber first.

Drivers were able to find time even on used soft tyres thanks to the track evolution in Singapore, with Leclerc setting his best time around two-thirds of the way through the session.

Emma Gilmour will miss the Island X Prix after suffering a fractured rib in a massive crash during Free Practice 1 on Friday. Extreme E‘s Championship Driver Tamara Molinaro will replace her as Tanner Foust‘s team-mate in the #58 McLaren XE car.

“The NEOM McLaren Extreme E Team can confirm that Emma has undergone additional tests at Cagliari Hospital following her incident earlier this morning, where further examination showed she has a small rib fracture,” reads a team statement. “As per standard procedure, Emma will be under observation in the hospital for the next 24 hours. She is naturally disappointed, but in good spirits. As a result, Emma won’t be able to compete for the remainder of the Island X Prix II this weekend.

“Extreme E’s Championship Driver, Tamara Molinaro, will compete alongside Tanner for the team in place of Emma – as per championship protocol.

“Get well soon, Emma.”

The accident forced the team to switch to the series’ spare test car for the weekend’s races, for which they will receive a thirty-second time penalty for the first heat race on Saturday. Although the team had hoped to run Free Practice 2 later on Friday, the car was deemed too light by nine kilograms to take part.

Team Australia‘s Toby Price and Paul Weel have proven they can be fast through the deserts of Baja California, but they don’t have the results to show for it as they have retired from nearly every SCORE International race for mechanical reasons. The duo hope to finally turn their luck around for Saturday’s Baja 400, and their weekend is off to a good start as Price set the fastest time in qualifying on Thursday.

While Weel is the Driver of Record, Price piloted the #46 Trophy Truck on Thursday through the 5.29-mile (8.51 km) qualifying course in convincing fashion as he beat Tavo Vildósola by over eight seconds. The margin perhaps could have been even larger had it not been for Price overshooting a corner.

As the top qualifier, the #46 will be the first Four-Wheeler to start the Baja 400. The team will hope to find some good fortune for once: after finishing fifth in their SCORE début at last year’s Baja 400, Price and Weel lost their truck to a massive fire at the Baja 1000. The manifold absolute pressure sensor broke while they were leading the early stages of the 2023 season-opening San Felipe 250, ruining a pole-winning qualifying effort, followed by a power steering box failure at the Baja 500.

Price is also keen on turning things around in September after losing the World Rally-Raid Championship RallyGP lead to a mechanical issue at the Desafío Ruta 40. Perhaps his co-driver Kellon Walch will be his golden horseshoe as Walch won the DR 40’s T3 class with Mitch Guthrie.

“Wasn’t clean that’s for sure but got it on pole,” wrote Price. “I blew a sharp left and had to 180 the truck around and back on track so lost around five seconds there but happy to see this. […]

Alexander Gonsul will join Sergey Romanovsky in becoming cross-country rally navigators when they take part in the Rallye TT Cuenca on 20/21 October. Over a year removed from losing his left arm and right leg defending Ukraine from invasion, Gonsul will be the co-driver on a SKARLAT XTRM driven by Ivan Barbero in the ParaBaja category.

Gonsul joined Ukraine’s Territorial Defence Forces in March 2022 shortly after Russia launched its full-scale invasion, while his wife and then-five-year-old son were brought to safety in Germany. After serving in an air defence capacity in Kyiv, his 242nd Territorial Defence Brigade began operating in Kharkiv Oblast with particular emphasis on Dementiivka; located north of Kharkiv city, Dementiivka is a small village along the road from Russia’s Belgorod region to Kharkiv, making it a crucial point to hold. Russian forces had taken control of the village in the early days of the invasion before Ukraine recaptured it, triggering a see-saw battle through the summer before Ukraine finally pushed the occupiers out of the oblast by October.

In July, during his third day in the battle for Dementiivka, Gonsul and a nearby comrade were hit by a land mine, killing the latter. The explosion blew off Gonsul’s right leg while his left arm sustained severe injuries as he was thrown into a nearby trench. Suffering from blood loss, a left forearm barely connected to the rest of the limb, and major shrapnel wounds that punctured his lungs, he received first aid under fire before he could be evacuated four to five hours later to Kharkiv. By the time he reached the hospital, the left arm could not be saved and was amputated. Gonsul spent five days in intensive care, during which he endured blood poisoning that nearly caused his intestines to fail, before being moved to Kyiv in August for further treatment. In an April 2023 interview with the Daily Express, he described the six months that followed as “living in pain full time.”

Upon his release, he received a prosthetic for his right leg from Allbionics, a Ukrainian company specialised in providing bionic limbs with AI technology. Gonsul eventually returned to his pre-invasion day job as a software developer in Kyiv before getting his arm prosthesis.

Born in 1985, Gonsul was raised in St. Petersburg, Russia, while his father served in the Soviet Armed Forces. The family moved to Kyiv after the elder Gonsul’s discharge.

Confidence is at a high for Alfa Romeo F1 Team Stake, according to Team Representative Alessandro Alunni Bravi, after the team added a point to the tally at the Italian Grand Prix. The team aims to ride this momentum with a new upgrade package being brought to the Singapore Grand Prix. 

Bravi said that the team needs to be at the top of their game at all times in order to capitalise on opportunities that arise, and that he hopes the upgrade will help them in their “chase” for more top ten results. 

Going into Marina Bay, Bravi emphasised the importance of getting comfortable with the track “right from the start” and improving with every session, considering the relative difficulty of the circuit’s layout and the consistently hot temperatures the drivers must contend with. 

“The European season is behind us, and it is now time to head overseas for the final eight races of the season. 

“We head to Singapore with great motivation: returning to the top ten in Monza gave us a great confidence boost, having executed a flawless race that turned the tide from a challenging start to the weekend. This is how we should approach every race: if we are at the top of our performance, we’ll be able to maximise every opportunity.

As Extreme E heads back to the Capo Teulada military training site in Sardinia for a second Island X Prix this weekend, the series was obviously not going to simply recreate the course used in July. While in the same area, the new design is slightly longer than its summer predecessor at three kilometres and features nuances that make it stand out.

The overall design is relatively the same, but differences are apparent from the very start as cars take off from the same location as the finish line, rather than from the end of the switch bay like in July. This change means the lap begins in the sand section rather than with a series of rocks.

Perhaps the largest change comes in the second half of the Continental Traction Challenge zone, where dust hazards will now be preceded by a pair of water sections.

“If one driver goes through they will have the fresh water splash on their windscreen, but if there is a second driver quite close to them, that will mean dispersed water they are driving through,” explained Championship Driver Patrick O’Donovan. “As a result, the driver behind could carry more speed and perhaps get an overtake on the exit, so I’m excited to see how that all pans out. I’ve been out there in the ODYSSEY 21 and I’ve seen after the second water splash it can be particularly challenging under braking heading to the next Way Point. It’s quite easy to misjudge, lock up, and make a little mistake which will cost time.”

O’Donovan noted one of the prime overtaking opportunities comes at checkpoints 11 and 12. While the water sectors come with risks, he argued that makes it a potential place to make a move as “not many would anticipate it.

As Shane van Gisbergen prepares to cross the Pacific Ocean from the Supercars Championship to NASCAR, Trackhouse Racing Team plans to give him a healthy diet of racing across all three national divisions and even grassroots racing in 2024. On Wednesday, the team announced they have signed van Gisbergen to a driver development deal, which entails part-time competition in the NASCAR Cup, Xfinity, and Craftsman Truck Series along with late model starts.

“This announcement means so many things to me,” said van Gisbergen. “I’m proud of what I have achieved here in Australia, but I’m excited by this new chapter in my career and the opportunities that it brings.”

Van Gisbergen stunned the NASCAR world when he won in his Cup début at Chicago in July, the first driver to achieve the feat in over sixty years. He backed it up by finishing tenth in his second top-level start at Indianapolis, with Terry Labonte in 1978 being the last driver to score top tens in his first two Cup races.

Two days before the Indianapolis start, he entered the Truck Series event at nearby Lucas Oil Indianapolis Raceway Park for Trackhouse ally Niece Motorsports. He finished nineteenth in his maiden oval race.

Five days after the Truck race, van Gisbergen was released from his Supercars contract with Triple Eight Race Engineering, allowing him to pursue a NASCAR career. While he will finish out the year with the team, he departs Supercars as one of the most accomplished drivers in history with three championships and eighty wins to date. With five races remaining, he sits second in points with four wins; championship leader Brodie Kostecki raced alongside van Gisbergen in the Cup Series at Indianapolis.