Motorsports Racing News & Blog Articles

In 2020, John Hunter Nemechek ran the full NASCAR Cup Series season for Front Row Motorsports before departing for the Truck Series and the Toyota family. Four years later, his decision has brought him back into the top level of stock car racing.

On Wednesday, Legacy Motor Club announced he will drive the #42 Toyota Camry for the 2024 Cup season as the team switches from Chevrolet to Toyota.

“To be able to announce my plans for next season so early and officially say I will be competing full-time in the NASCAR Cup Series relieves a lot of pressure,” said Nemechek. “There is so much to be done for next year, and this gives us the opportunity to get the news out there and move forward. Also, driving for Maury (Gallagher), Jimmie (Johnson), and Richard Petty is a dream come true for me.”

Nemechek first appeared in the Cup Series in late 2019 as a substitute driver for Matt Tifft at Front Row Motorsports while competing full-time in the Xfinity Series. He graduated to the top level the following year, finishing twenty-seventh in points with three top tens.

However, he elected to move back down to the Truck Series for 2021 and signed with Toyota. He quickly made an impact as he won that year’s regular season championship for Kyle Busch Motorsports. After seven wins with KBM, he returned to Xfinity with Joe Gibbs Racing. Nemechek currently leads the standings with five victories.

After nearly two years in office and being one of his country’s lead figures in the face of Russian invasion, Oleksii Reznikov formally stepped down from his position as Ukraine’s Minister of Defence on Tuesday. State Property Fund head Rustem Umerov has been named his successor.

Doubt about Reznikov’s future was cast amid an ongoing federal anti-corruption investigation. While the now-former minister has not received any specific accusations himself, various scandals concerning military equipment procurement have overshadowed the ministry’s operations, prompting President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to begin making changes to further ensure corruption in the government is stamped out. Ukraine has long struggled with corruption, which Zelenskyy pledged to overturn when he was elected in 2019 while actions to do so have become stronger since Russia’s full-scale invasion began last year. With his dismissal imminent, Reznikov tendered his resignation to the Verkhovna Rada.

Despite his departure, Reznikov has become a popular individual domestically and overseas as arguably the second largest spokesperson for Ukrainian defence behind the President. Since his appointment to the post in 2021 and especially after the invasion, he has frequently met his opposite defence ministers and other major leaders from supporting countries and spearheaded the Armed Forces of Ukraine’s development into a more Western-style military. Some outlets have suggested Reznikov could remain in politics as Ukraine’s ambassador to London, though he nor the Zelenskyy administration have confirmed his future plans.

“Today I completed my tenure as the Minister of Defense of Ukraine,” he wrote on Tuesday. “I’m grateful to President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, who proposed my candidacy for this office, and to our Parliament, Verkhovna Rada which confirmed it 22 months ago. I’m grateful to my colleagues in the Government of Ukraine and Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal. I appreciate the support from the defense ministers of our partner states, as well from as my colleagues in the EU and NATO. I want to thank the team at the Ministry of Defense of Ukraine for our joint achievements. I’m proud to have worked with Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of Ukraine Valerii Zaluzhnyi. It was an honor to work for the Ukrainian Armed Forces, which are defending all of us.”

In a follow-up post on Wednesday, he issued his “heartfelt congratulations to my colleague Rustem Umerov on his appointment as the Minister of Defense of Ukraine. I’ve known Rustem for a long time and I believe he is a great fit for this position. The challenges are many, but such are the times in which we live. Through our strength and determination we will win this war. Unity is the key to our victory. Glory to Ukraine!”

The Subaru Impreza WRX, often simply referred to as the Subaru WRX, is a high-performance compact car known for its rally-inspired design and impressive all-wheel-drive capabilities. Here are some key features and facts about the Subaru Impreza WRX:

History:

• The Subaru WRX made its debut in 1992 as a high-performance variant of the Subaru Impreza compact car.
• It gained fame in the world of motorsport, particularly in the World Rally Championship (WRC), where it achieved multiple championships.

All-Wheel Drive (AWD):

• One of the standout features of the WRX is its symmetrical all-wheel-drive system, which provides excellent traction and handling in various road conditions, including snow and gravel.
• The AWD system is a key reason for the car's success in rally racing.

Turbocharged Engines:

• The WRX is known for its turbocharged engines that deliver impressive power and acceleration. Over the years, various engine configurations and power outputs have been offered.
• The WRX STI (Subaru Tecnica International) is the high-performance variant of the WRX, featuring an even more powerful engine and performance-tuned suspension.

Rally Heritage:

Drivers with backing from companies with whom they’re affiliated is not a new phenomenon, as showcased with the so-called “pay driver”. While Stephen Mallozzi‘s #22 AM Racing Ford F-150 will be sponsored by his employer Outback Steakhouse for the NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series race at Bristol Motor Speedway on 14 September, it is far from the same scenario and is actually quite a unique case. If anything, being a pay driver would have meant he didn’t need to make the sacrifices that he has to get to this point in his career.

Mallozzi is not a higher-up at Outback nor does his family have any involvement with it. Instead, he is a rank-and-file employee like any of his colleagues, working as a server at various locations to earn a living when he isn’t racing. While motorsport is obviously an expensive endeavour, Mallozzi still lacks the funding that his peers typically have, even reaching the point where he had to sell his personal car to afford racing at Gateway in June.

After the Martinsville Truck event in April, he drew attention on social media for a post highlighting how he arrived at the track in the morning, competed in the race, then returned home early the next day for his shift. An Outback executive eventually reached out to Mallozzi to arrange a sponsorship deal for Bristol.

“To have worked for a company that supports its employees like this is pretty awesome,” said Mallozzi. “I’ve always had a great relationship with all of my bosses, and to finally get a deal done is an incredible feeling. I’m also very excited to return to AM Racing because I expect us to keep improving our relationship. I can’t thank all the guys at AM Racing, Outback Steakhouse, and Josh Reaume enough for putting this opportunity together for me.”

Bristol will be his third start for AM Racing after Martinsville and Pocono. He raced for Reaume Brothers Racing at Gateway, and made his Truck Series début with them at Mid-Ohio in 2022 where he scored his best finish to date of twenty-second. AM and RBR are technical allies.

Twenty years after Travis Kvapil won the NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series championship, his son Carson will make his series début. Spire Motorsports announced Tuesday that he will drive the #7 Chevrolet Silverado RST at Bristol Motor Speedway on 14 September.

The younger Kvapil races for JR Motorsports in the CARS Late Model Stock Tour, where he leads the standings and is the only driver with multiple wins at five. He won the championship in 2022, a year after claiming the CARS Super Late Model Tour title.

“Bono (Manion), (Mike) Greci, and all the guys are awesome to work with and I can’t wait to work with them at the track,” said Kvapil. “Fortunately, I am getting some simulator time in with Bono and Andrew (Overstreet) to get ready for the race. Huge thanks to Jeff (Dickerson), T.J. (Puchyr), Mr. (Rick) Hendrick and everyone who helped me get to this point. I’m ready to hit the track for my first start in the NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series.”

Other successes include winning the Racetrack Revival at the newly reopened North Wilkesboro Speedway in 2022, and even on dirt at the 2021 Carolina Micro Showdown.

Spire’s #7 truck races part-time with most of its drivers doing one-offs including Marco Andretti, Alex Bowman, Jonathan Davenport, Austin Hill, Derek Kraus, Corey LaJoie, and Kyle Larson; Larson won at North Wilkesboro in May. Layne Riggs, a CARS colleague of Kvapil and a fellow second-generation driver, has also piloted it.

Dave Robson admitted that the Williams Racing team came to the Autodromo Nazionale Monza believing they could score points, and they were able to achieve that thanks to the excellent drive put in by Alexander Albon.

Logan Sargeant may have missed out on the top ten as he finished down in thirteenth, but Albon was one of the stars of the weekend in Italy, the Thai driver qualifying sixth before putting on a strong defensive drive to ensure seventh on Sunday, equalling his best result so far this season.

He lost only one position during the race to Lewis Hamilton, with the Mercedes-AMG Petronas Formula One Team driver running a different strategy to do so, but Albon was able to withstand race-long pressure from the two McLaren F1 Team drivers until the chequered flag.

Robson, the Head of Vehicle Performance at Williams, admitted that the hot conditions at Monza were not helpful for the team, but to put in such a strong performance despite this and the high degradation to the tyres was good news for everyone within the Grove-based team.

“We came to Monza thinking that we could score points on merit and we achieved that today,” said Robson.  “The hot conditions were not ideal for us, but we know that this is an area that we need to work on, and we are working hard to improve the situation.

Alexander Albon says he was very proud of his performance during the Italian Grand Prix as he secured a seventh-place finish at the Autodromo Nazionale Monza, his second top ten finish in just seven days.

The Williams Racing driver started sixth on the grid and put in a superb defensive drive throughout, only losing out on his starting position by Mercedes-AMG Petronas Formula One Team’s Lewis Hamilton, who was running a different strategy.

He was able to withstand almost race long pressure from McLaren F1 Team’s Lando Norris, who Albon joked would not have liked staring at the back of the FW45 for as long as he did.  He knew early on it would be a tough race to manage his tyres, but he was able to do so to equal his best result of the 2023 FIA Formula 1 World Championship season.

“That was probably my toughest but my most proud race I’ve done, so I’m very happy,” said Albon.  “I’m sure Lando didn’t enjoy that one too much, but I did!

“We went into today knowing it was going to be a tough, long race and we knew tyre deg would be high. I think on paper we went into this weekend expecting to be a little bit quicker than we were and four laps into the race I knew it would be long, but we managed to keep everyone behind.

Toto Wolff felt the Mercedes AMG Petronas Formula One Team maximised their points haul during the Italian Grand Prix, even if George Russell and Lewis Hamilton made life difficult for themselves along the way at the Autodromo Nazionale Monza.

Russell ended fifth and Hamilton sixth on Sunday despite both acquiring five-second time penalties, the former for leaving the track and gaining in a battle with Esteban Ocon and the latter as a result of contact with Oscar Piastri, with Wolff feeling both time penalties were fair.

However, the pace of the W14 was good enough to ensure that neither driver lost any positions in the final order once the penalties had been applied, although the team were clearly the third fastest team in Italy behind Oracle Red Bull Racing and Scuderia Ferrari.

“That was a pretty incident-filled race for us and we maximised the points that were in there today,” said Wolff, the Team Principal at Mercedes.  “But like always, we need to be careful not to be too happy about finishing fifth and sixth.

“Looking back at them, I think both penalties for the drivers were fair, but fortunately they both did a great job to make sure they didn’t have any consequence for the finishing positions; they both just took it on the chin, got their heads down and kept on racing.”

The Mercedes AMG Petronas Formula One Team finished fifth and sixth in the Italian Grand Prix last Sunday, with both George Russell and Lewis Hamilton taking five-second time penalties at the Autodromo Nazionale Monza.

Mercedes were the third fastest team at Monza behind Oracle Red Bull Racing and Scuderia Ferrari, so to bring home fifth and sixth was the best result possible, although neither driver made it easy on themselves by making mistakes that gave them penalties.

Russell ran fourth early on and defended well from Red Bull’s Sergio Pérez for the first stint, but once the Mexican was able to pass, he consolidated his fifth place. However, an error as he exited the pits saw him handed a penalty, with the Briton running off track as he ran down the inside of BWT Alpine F1 Team’s Esteban Ocon and was deemed to have gained an advantage in doing so.

“Fifth place was probably the maximum today and I think we’d have taken that result before the weekend,” said Russell.  “We’ve outpaced McLaren and Aston Martin here, but unfortunately Ferrari were just a step ahead of us here – and then Red Bull out front.

“They were so fast in the high-speed corners today, I just couldn’t keep Pérez behind any longer than I did in the early laps.

On Saturday, Denny Hamlin was in Victory Lane at Darlington Raceway while Kyle Larson finished last after struggling with engine problems. On Sunday, Hamlin was dominating before a pit road error dropped him out of contention while Larson delivered the 500th win for Hendrick Motorsports’ engine department.

Hamlin won the NASCAR Xfinity Series race on Saturday in an overtime scramble despite the event being mostly led by his Joe Gibbs Racing team-mate John Hunter Nemechek. The restart was set up by Parker Kligerman getting spun by Sam Mayer in the closing moments, and Hamlin held off Austin Hill and Nemechek for his sixth Xfinity win at Darlington.

He sought to continue his momentum in the Cup Series the next day, and things shaped up in such a manner as he led 177 laps and won the first two stages. However, his day unravelled during green-flag pit stops on lap 270 when his team realised the left-rear tyre had not been fully tightened on his car, forcing him to return to pit road. Hamlin was unable to recover and was eventually caught in a lap 332 wreck with team-mate Christopher Bell and fellow playoff contender Michael McDowell, finishing twenty-fifth.

“It looked like the left rear was still tightening as we were gone,” Hamlin explained. “It’s close enough to where it didn’t matter. What I felt, I was in a crash. I had to bring it in and just turned the day upside down. I didn’t think the damage was that bad, but the car drove significantly worse after that incident. Once you damage the splitter on these cars, they’re no good.”

With Hamlin out of the picture, Larson seized the opportunity to rebound from his Saturday troubles. He spent the final fifty-five laps facing pressure from Tyler Reddick, which was exacerbated by Larson’s driving style that preferred riding along the wall. This approach caused him to lose some time upon scraping the wall, but lapped traffic helped keep Reddick at bay.

Rokas Baciuška and co-driver Oriol Vidal have been so dominant in the World Rally-Raid Championship‘s T4 category that they could skip a race and have the title wrapped up before the season ends. They did just that when they elected not to run last week’s Desafío Ruta 40, and their lead is still unsurmountable going into the Rallye du Maroc in October.

Baciuška chose to sit out the DR 40 in Argentina due to logistical complications and feeling that he is so far in the championship that there was no reason to take part. Prior to Argentina, he was 103 points ahead of Dakar Rally winner Eryk Goczał, who is not running the full season but was mathematically still in contention had he entered the final two races.

While he lost to Goczał at Dakar, Baciuška has since put on a clinic in T4. He edged out Mansour Al-Helei for the Abu Dhabi Desert Challenge overall via penalty, but Pau Navarro was second among W2RC competitors and nearly half an hour back. At the Sonora Rally, he won all five stages and the Prologue to beat Rebecca Busi and Shinsuke Umeda by two hours.

Umeda was the only W2RC T4 driver at the DR 40. Competing in a field of just four entries, he finished fourth overall but received the maximum fifty points for technically being the category’s W2RC winner. While this moved Umeda past Goczał in the standings for second, he is still sixty points back of Baciuška.

Winning the championship in such dominant fashion comes as a breath of fresh air for Baciuška, who barely claimed the 2022 T4 crown by just six points over Goczał’s father Marek.

The FIM E-Xplorer World Cup can be described as a two-wheeled version of Extreme E: both are electric off-road series whose teams consist of one male and female competitor each. The two series will join forces for the first time on 16/17 September as E-Xplorer will end its inaugural season in Sardinia as part of a joint weekend with Extreme E’s penultimate round.

Extreme E founder Alejandro Agag is already close with E-Xplorer’s leadership, having contributed to its development phase before and giving his full blessing to the nascent championship ahead of its début. The first round took place in Barcelona in May, followed by races in Crans-Montana in June and Vollore-Montagne the following month.

“We share the same values as Extreme E, and Alejandro Agag is a strong supporter of the series,” said E-Xplorer boss Valentin Guyonnet. “Both these championships race off road with electric vehicles and field a female and a male rider in each team. Racing at the same event is a great opportunity and I am very grateful for everyone at Extreme E and around the Sardinia event for helping to make this possible.”

While E-Xplorer uses a different race format from Extreme E with head-to-head elimination brackets instead of every rider on track at the same time, it also uses heats to set a Final race. For Sardinia, E-Xplorer will emulate Extreme E by holding a doubleheader on both days of the weekend rather than condensing it into a sunday day like usual.

Both series’ races will take place on the Italian Army’s Capo Teulada training area. E-Xplorer’s course will be 0.6 kilometres in length, while Extreme E has yet to reveal its layout.

The Desafío Ruta 40 was supposed to be a homecoming for Argentina native Sebastián Halpern, who won the last edition in 2018. Unfortunately, his return proved to be a disappointment as mechanical failures and other misfortunes dropped him to the bottom of the order in T1.

After the race, citing concerns with the Mini John Cooper Works Rally Plus, Halpern told Carburando he will not take part in the 2024 Dakar Rally nor the Rallye du Maroc in October.

Halpern had been running the full World Rally-Raid Championship calendar for X-raid Team‘s Mini JCW programme. After finishing ninth overall at Dakar, he improved to fourth and third at the Abu Dhabi Desert Challenge and Sonora Rally, respectively. Although his DR 40 began with a third in Stage #1, a broken alternator and axle across the next two days prevented him from defending his win. He still reached the finish, albeit sixth of six cars in T1 and over twenty and a half hours back of winner Nasser Al-Attiyah.

His decision not to race in Morocco or next year’s Dakar Rally stems from questions surrounding the Mini JCW Rally Plus. New for 2023, the car competes in the T1+ subcategory for upgraded prototype vehicles. Although more powerful and efficient than its standard Mini JCW predecessor, Halpern feels it is not yet capable of contending for overall wins with powerhouses like the Toyota Hilux T1+ or the Prodrive Hunter, and plans to see how it performs with other drivers in the next few events.

His Mini was the only non-Hilux entered in T1 at Argentina. While Denis Krotov typically serves as his team-mate in another Mini, he elected to pilot a Hilux for the race and finished fifth. The Hilux has won all four W2RC races in 2023 as well as already clinching the manufacturer’s championship.

Championship Off-Road driver Cory Podolski died Sunday night in his sleep at Crandon International Raceway, according to family and friends.

He had spent the Crandon weekend competing in the Pro SPEC class, finishing seventh in the Sunday race hours before his passing. The day prior, he scored his maiden class podium in third.

Podolski began his career in sportsman UTVs, winning SXS Sports’ Sportsman class championship in 2019 while concurrently finishing runner-up in the Lucas Oil Midwest Short Course League’s Sportsman Stock SxS standings. He eventually migrated to Lucas Oil’s successor Championship Off-Road and moved into the professional classes, placing thirteenth in the 2021 Pro Lite standings.

For 2023, he débuted in the Pro SPEC class with the #08 truck. He was seventh in points following Crandon, with his Saturday podium marking his first in a pro category.

“It’s always been a dream just to race trucks and then to finally get on the podium after working so hard,” said Podolski after his Saturday podium. “Just feel like I’m the little guy in the class. All these guys are a lot younger. Just awesome. I told my guys that I was coming next weekend and I was just going to send it. It worked.”