Motorsports Racing News & Blog Articles

The new Tatra FF7 from Fesh Fesh will have to wait until the 2025 Dakar Rally for its first action in the World Rally-Raid Championship. On Thursday, the team announced that due to severe flooding in the Czech Republic, Tomáš Vrátný and the FF7 will not enter the Rallye du Maroc in October. Fesh Fesh will still send a crew to Morocco to support their bike racer Adam Peschel.

Central Europe has been hit by record floods over the past week, caused by unusually high rainfall from Storm Boris. At least twenty-six people have died from the flooding, including five in the Czech Republic, and damages are estimated to be over one billion euros. Austria, Italy, Greece, Poland, Romania, and Slovakia have also reported deaths.

“Unfortunately, the floods have affected the entire OSTRA Group (team sponsor) and our employees, so we now have to focus on this work,” said Vrátný. “Adam Peschel will represent the Fesh Fesh team at the Rallye du Maroc, so keep your fingers crossed for him. It’s a very important race for him!”

The FF7 made its début at the Baja Poland in August, where it finished third among trucks competing in the Polish Cross-Country Rally Championship. It is a departure from Fesh Fesh’s Ford Cargo and Tatra Jamal trucks due to its cab-over design based on the Tatra 815 Puma, while also sporting a six-cylinder Volvo D13 engine with 1,100 horsepower. The truck was revealed in July.

Vrátný was supposed to race the truck at the Rallye du Maroc with Bartłomiej Boba as co-driver and Jaromir Martinec as mechanic. He finished third in the Truck class with a stage win at the 2023 race. With Morocco off the slate, the FF7’s first W2RC start will instead be the 2025 season-opening Dakar Rally on 3–17 January; Vrátný placed fifth in his most recent Dakar in 2023, where he drove the Jamal.

Saood Variawa will have to skip the Rallye du Maroc due to a concussion he sustained in an accident while preparing for the Phakisa 400.

Variawa had been riding with Toyota Gazoo Racing South Africa team-mate Giniel de Villiers when their Toyota Hilux IMT EVO crashed in shakedown. De Villiers only sustained minor injuries and went on to finish third in the Phakisa 400 in his own Hilux, while Variawa’s injury and his truck’s damage kept him on the sidelines. Held at Phakisa Freeway, the race was the second-to-last round of the South African Rally-Raid Championship where Variawa was seventh in the standings going in.

The concussion will also prevent Variawa from competing in this weekend’s South African Touring Car Championship round at Killarney Raceway. He sits fifth in points with two races to go.

“Unfortunately I will not take part in this weekend’s SATC Race meeting as well as Rallye Du Maroc which is the final round of the World Rally Raid Championship,” reads a post from Variawa on Wednesday. “Last week Thursday I was sitting as passenger with @therealginiel and unfortunately we had an incident in shakedown. I’m thankful that we both got out of the car with minor injuries, however I have been booked off for 20 days due to a concussion!”

Variawa, who made his cross-country rally début at the 2023 TGR 1000 Desert Race, was signed up to run the 2024 World Rally-Raid Championship for TGRSA. He finished sixteenth in the Dakar Rally to begin the season followed by a sixth in the Abu Dhabi Desert Challenge. The BP Ultimate Rally-Raid in April, his most recent start in the series, ended after he opted to withdraw following Stage #4 due to a myriad of speeding penalties that took him out of contention while also protecting his Hilux for the SARRC.

The last time Justin Gerlach had a one-on-one conversation with The Checkered Flag, he was hoping to make his Dakar Rally début in 2024. However, the Amaury Sport Organisation told him soon after that his application had been rejected.

Fourteen months later, Gerlach sat down with TCF again for another chat. This time, he had his acceptance letter for the 2025 race in hand.

The Thumbs Up

The ASO started approving—or denying—2025 Dakar hopefuls in late July. Gerlach was among those fortunate enough to be in the first camp.

“When I got the email, I expected it to come one day later,” Gerlach began. “I was in a car together with my father and we were just chatting about some things. I went on my phone, I saw there’s an email, but I didn’t really think about that at this moment, and then it surprised me. I didn’t know what to say. It took me a moment. My dad was talking about whatever, I can’t even remember, and then suddenly I was quiet and he said, ‘What is it? What is it?’ We both realised, ‘We are going to Dakar.’

“It has sunk in a bit, but sometimes I’m still surprised. I’m just busy doing my all day work, and at some point I think about, ‘Well, it’s only, let me check… 112 days until Dakar.’

A decade after his last Dakar Rally, Piotr Beaupre will once again be at the start. He plans to enter the 2025 race in Saudi Arabia, competing in the SSV category with DUUST Rally Team providing support.

The Pole has recently been in Morocco, driving a Can-Am Maverick with DUUST co-owner Jacek Czachor as his navigator as part of the team’s Rally Training Center and Morocco Training Camp. DUUST is primarily a bike team but offers training and support for SSV drivers.

Beaupre previously raced the Dakar Rally when it ran through South America from 2012 to 2015, driving a BMW X5 under the Poland National Team (2012 and 2013) and NeoRaid Rally Team (2014 and 2015) banners. He finished fifty-second in his début before improving to thirty-seventh the following year. After retiring from the 2014 edition, he rebounded with a career-best thirty-third in 2015.

The NeoRaid Rally Team name stemmed from his company Neo Energy Group, which he founded in 2004. Beaupre initially began his entrepreneurial career in marketing before expanding to other fields like marketing and green energy. He helped co-found Call Center Poland, the largest call centre operator in Central Europe, in 1997 followed by the multinational EBS SA shopping centre chain. Outside of Neo Energy, he also created wind farm developer EcoWind and agricultural firm Fundusz Areał.

Outside of business, Beaupre has been interested in off-road racing sicne his youth, originally developing an interest in Land Rovers after watching the Camel Trophy. He raced a Ford MUTT and Mitsubishi Pajero in the Polish Cross-Country Rally Championship during the 1990s before expanding to rallies elsewhere in Europe such as Slovakia and Berlin. Beaupre has also competed in races like the Baja Aragón, Italian Baja, and Baja Portalegre 500, all currently part of the FIA World and European Baja Cups, in a Bowler Wildcat.

Barring a miracle, Fidel Castillo Ruiz‘s hopes of winning the 2024 FIA European Baja Cup seem to be over. On Tuesday, he confirmed that due to the broken collarbone he suffered at the Hungarian Baja, he will not be able to run this weekend’s Baja TT Sharish Gin.

Castillo suffered a proximal collarbone fracture and pulmonary contusion when his Can-Am Maverick X3 rolled during the third Selective Section of last month’s Hungarian Baja. František Brutovský broke his vertebra in a separate rollover that same leg, which prompted Martin Koloc to withdraw out of safety concern. The pulmonary contusion, initially diagnosed as a collapsed lung, prevented him from being flown back to Spain, and he had to be taken back via ground ambulance. Castillo underwent treatment at Clínica Cemtro in Madrid.

Although his health improved in the month since, he was not cleared by doctors to take part in the Baja TT Sharish Gin in neighbouring Portugal. His chances at the European Baja Cup’s outright title were dashed by his Hungary retirement, which dropped him from second to sixth in points with 75 points to João Ferreira‘s 128. He remains mathematically eligible for the SSV championship as he sits third there and trails Miquel Prat by twenty-five points. However, with Prat and second-placed Tomasz Białkowski both racing at Reguengos, it is unlikely Castillo will catch up unless both of them retire.

“Due to my recovery from the accident in Hungary and not having medical clearance yet, I won’t be able to participate in this year’s Baja TT Sharish Gin,” begins a statement from Castillo. “Fortunately, everything is going as expected, and I’ll be back on the Can-Am soon.

“It’s a shame, as I was competing for the European Championship title, but now I need to focus on my health and put all my energy into an exciting new project that I’ll be announcing soon.

Bryce Menzies must be feeling some déjà vu. In 2023, he won the Baja 400 to close the gap on his rival and bring the SCORE International World Desert Championship fight to the season-ending Baja 1000. One year later, he won the Baja 400 yet again and now has a chance to clinch his second straight title at the 1000.

After qualifying third, Menzies quickly passed Christopher Polvoorde and began to pursue pole-sitters Toby Price and Paul Weel for the win. The Australians’ #46 was quick, but as the race progressed, Weel noted the “steering was bad, the gearbox was bad, everything was gone. We really pushed the truck today. When you have a guy like Bryce Menzies behind you, you’ve got to push the truck.”

Menzies ultimately got by the Australians and pulled away to win by by three-and-a-half minutes, which was later increased to five minutes due to a speeding penalty on Price. It is his fourth straight Baja 400 win, and he has won all but one edition save for the inaugural race in 2019.

Price’s penalty bumped him down to third and Alan Ampudia up to the runner-up spot. Tavo Vildósola and Ampudia had respectively been ahead of Menzies in the points by ten and six points, but the latter’s win puts him in a drag race with both with one race left. The margin is so close that whoever finishes ahead of the other will be the champion.

“I don’t know what it is about this race, but it’s just good to us,” said Menzies. “We got around Polvoorde early and we just chased Toby down and sat right behind him and he had a tyre go down. We got around him right before we got into the the fuel pit and Toby put his guy in, and then from there we kind of just cruised.

Past-Racing has signed Pau Navarro to drive the Ford Ranger T1+ at the Rallye du Maroc and 2025 Dakar Rally. The latter will be his second Dakar in the Ultimate category and fifth overall.

Navarro made his Ultimate début at the 2023 Rallye du Maroc in a Toyota Hilux T1.1, with which he finished twenty-sixth after suffering a broken driveshaft. He stepped up into a Mini John Cooper Works Rally Plus from X-raid Team for the 2024 Dakar, only to retire three stages in when he rolled the car and broke his wrist. The Abu Dhabi Desert Challenge saw improvement when he finished fifth outright.

Although registered for the 2024 World Rally-Raid Championship, he has not run a race since Abu Dhabi. Instead, he returned to the Challenger and SSV categories to compete in the Spanish Cross-Country Rally Championship and FIA European Baja Cup for junior formula outfit GRS Team. Driving the Demon Car DT3 (a Challenger vehicle with a Can-Am engine), he placed fourth in GRS’ first European Baja race in Extremadura.

“I’m grateful to Daniel Alonso for this opportunity, which represents the biggest step forward in my sports career,” said Navarro. “Being part of Past on a 100% Spanish team is an honour. Everyone here strives for excellence in what they do; they invest in young drivers and they have an impressive track record in rallies. Being on this team is also a great responsibility for me, which I take on with full commitment because Past wants to break into the world of rally raids and I want to give my best during this expansion phase of the team.”

Past-Racing is primarily a rally team and close partner of World Rally Championship operation M-Sport, who co-designed the Ranger with Neil Woolridge Motorsport. Last November, Alonso (the team owner) entered the South African Rally-Raid Championship’s Waterberg 400 in collaboration with NWM. In December, Past launched a rental programme for those wishing to do W2RC or FIA Baja races in the Ranger.

Children are often taught by their parents to “leave things the way you found them.” Unfortunately, some people just don’t get the memo.

Secção de Motorismo, organiser of the upcoming Baja TT Sharish Gin, released a statement on Saturday that called out drivers doing unauthorised pre-running and damaging local property in the process. Scheduled for this weekend, race is the penultimate round of the FIA European Baja Cup and fifth on the Portuguese Cross-Country Championship.

Pre-running is typically done for desert racing like SCORE International to help competitors familiarise themselves with the course weeks ahead of time. Cross-country rallies, on the other hand, typically only allow private testing the day before technical inspection while independent sessions must be far away from where the race is taking place. In the Sharish Gin’s case, shakedowns will be on Thursday.

At the request of an affected property owner, the race route has been shortened by thirty kilometres. SAR Motorismo added the length could be reduced even more if other landowners file complaints.

“SAR Motorismo hereby repudiates and condemns the incidents caused by illegal training and reconnaissance that have occurred in recent days by participants in the event,” begins the statement. “The situation is even more serious when fences are being cut, locks destroyed, and gates knocked down, a clear crime of trespassing and property destruction. Earlier in the week, based on a report from an affected landowner, the course was shortened by thirty kilometres, and with what happened this Saturday, there is a serious risk that passage permissions will be revoked, which will further reduce the length of the event.

Valentino Rossi spoke for the whole BMW M Team WRT family when he summed up the mood following the 6 Hours of Fuji by saying “we are so happy!”

The penultimate round of the 2024 FIA World Endurance Championship (WEC) was a fantastic weekend for the German-Belgian team. The Hypercar division secured their maiden podium with the #15 car in their debut year racing in WEC, while in LMGT3, the #46 car, featuring star driver Rossi, finished 3rd and the #31 car finished 10th despite competing for the podium for the bulk of the race.

The weekend started strongly for the team. Dries Vanthoor was ultra-competitive in qualifying, slotting the #15 BMW M Hybrid V8 into 3rd on the grid, the best qualifying result of their season so far, meaning they were just far enough ahead to avoid a multi-car collision at the first corner of the second lap. The #20 car was not so lucky. René Rast, who was at the wheel at the time, managed to escape the carnage but picked up damage curtesy of debris on the track, forcing him to pit and putting them out of contention for the rest of the race. Meanwhile, the #15 car put on a storming display, challenging for victory and putting on a great show between themselves and titans of WEC such as Toyota Gazoo Racing, maintaining superb pace and coming home second behind championship leaders #6 Porsche Penske Motorsport.

In LMGT3, the situation was more complicated. Neither of the BMW M4 LMGT3 cars qualified well, but both put on a great show to climb the order. The Doctor, Valentino Rossi, had his best performance of the season, climbing a scarcely believable five places in just two laps. This performance, combined with superb efforts from teammates Ahmed Al Harthy and Maxime Martin in their stints, put the #46 car on the podium for the second time in 2024.

“We are so happy” enthused Rossi. “It feels very good after our DNF in Austin two weeks ago. This race was hard but Ahmad, Maxime and I did a fantastic job in our stints and our team made once again the perfect strategy and the perfect pitstops. It is our second podium this season and we are very happy!“

After thirty-three years of racing, Jan Brabec will call it a career following the 2025 Dakar Rally. The 41-year-old plans to stay involved with the sport afterwards by turning his Strojrent Racing into a rider development and support programme.

“For me, this is pretty big news, and those who know me know that I don’t usually record videos,” began Brabec in a video posted to his social media on Sunday. “But now, I wanted to put this out there a little bit.

“With this eighth Dakar, I plan to end my racing career, which has lasted 33 years. Let’s move on and leave racing to the younger guys.

“But as for me, I don’t want to completely step away from the world of racing—I just won’t be physically holding the handlebars anymore. Instead, I want to run my own rally support team.

“Strojrent Racing will be a team supporting riders who want to make it to the Dakar Rally, whether they’re qualified or not. I’ll be taking care of their training, both on the bike and in navigation, that’s how it will be.

Porsche Penske Motorsport have securing their second victory of the 2024 FIA World Endurance Championship (WEC) with a masterful drive at the 6 Hours Of Fuji. The Porsche led home a 1-2 for German manufacturers, with the #15 BMW M Team WRT car finishing in a spectacular second in only their first year of WEC racing. In the final 7 minutes of the race, the #36 Alpine Endurance Team snatched a podium position, meaning that both BMW and Alpine secure their first Hypercar podium of the year.

The #6 Porsche now has a firm grasp on the championship following a disastrous race for their rivals. The #7 Toyota Gazoo Racing team did not finish the race following heavy contact with the #5 Porsche in the penultimate hour. The other title contender, the #50 Ferrari AF Corse, did manage to finish but fell back down the order to 9th during the final stint of the race.

In LMGT3, however, the title has been secured in fine form by Manthey PureRxcing. The #92 car qualified down in 14th but did everything right during the race to secure a podium result, finishing second. The race was won by the #54 Vista AF Corse Ferrari with a hard-earned victory, the first LMGT3 win of the season for Ferrari. The #92 Porsche came second, with the #46 Team WRT BMW coming home third, not least thanks to superb stints by the Doctor himself, Valentino Rossi.

Driver Reaction

Porsche driver Laurens Vanthoor, who was watching his brother Dries Vanthoor in his BMW chase down the Porsche, joked “I was a bit stressed because I know my brother well. I texted my Dad and said I hope he stays calm! It’s great for us to win and great for me to have my brother next to me on the podium. It’s a pretty special weekend which I’ll remember for a long time.”

Andre Lotterer, who lived and raced in Japan for many years, was naturally delighted. “It was an amazing team effort” he enthused. “It’s been a fantastic weekend here to race in front of this crowd. There’s so much support and so much energy coming from the fans. For me, it’s one race that was missing. I wanted to win this one because it’s a sort of home race for me, so I’m very, very happy.”

Eurol Rally Sport will race slightly different IVECO trucks from what they’re used to at the 2025 Dakar Rally. On Saturday, Martin van den Brink and his son Mitchel van den Brink announced they have formed an alliance with MM Technology, switching away from Team de Rooy after three years together. Both will be in identically prepared IVECO PowerStars.

MM Technology is led by Martin Macík Jr., who won the latest Dakar in the Truck category. Since then, Macík has been busy expanding his team’s operations by selling the Dakar-winning IVECO to Firemen Dakarteam (a Dutch outfit like Eurol) and now building two trucks for the van den Brinks. Eurol Rally Sport will prepare the vehicles in-house once delivered from MM’s shop in the Czech Republic.

Although MM and de Rooy both field the PowerStar, Martin noted they are “otherwise incomparable. MM Technology’s concepts are completely different from De Rooy’s.” For example, according to Mitchel, the Macík truck is “1000 kilograms lighter but also highly reliable.

“MM proved last year that they have a winning truck. Martin Macík won the rally, and due to his much better truck, he was clearly a class above us. It was clear that we needed to adjust our strategy in order to compete for victory.”

Mitchel joined Macík on the class podium when he finished third at the 2024 Dakar in his PowerStar, during which he won Stage #8. It was his fourth Dakar as a driver after making his début in 2021, though he had been involved with the family team since 2019 when he was sixteen. He scored his maiden stage win at the 2023 race en route to a fourth. In May, he won the Morocco Desert Challenge in a Can-Am Maverick X3 for the second year in a row.

The Baja Morocco will not only be Gonçalo Guerreiro‘s first time racing in the desert, but his first in a Challenger-class vehicle. On Friday, he announced he will race a Taurus T3 Max in the event for BBR Motorsport with Enio Bozzano as his navigator.

“I’m super excited to announce this new challenge alongside with BBR structure, driving the Taurus by BBR,” said Guerreiro. “It marks a completely new chapter for me, with a different car than what I’m used to drive but I’m looking forward to adapt my driving to desert and improve day by day.”

Guerreiro is one of the top drivers in the Portuguese Cross-Country Championship (Campeonato Portugal de Todo-o-terreno), winning the T4 (SSV) title in 2022. He is currently second in the standings with 56 points, trailing João Monteiro by thirty with back-to-back wins at the Baja TT de Lagos and Baja TT Norte de Portugal. However, he will skip the upcoming Baja TT Sharish Gin on 19–22 September to focus on Morocco, even at the cost of a second championship.

In April, he made his first World Rally-Raid Championship début when the series came to his home country for the BP Ultimate Rally-Raid. He won the Prologue but was forced to retire after three stages with a mechanical failure.

He crossed over into neighbouring Spain in late July for the Baja España Aragón, part of the FIA World Baja Cup, and won the SSV category. Two weeks prior, he announced his entry for Baja Morocco.

As Morocco is hit by historic levels of rain and flooding, the latter of which has killed at least eleven people, the Baja Morocco is still scheduled to proceed on 23–27 September. Of course, race officials plan to tweak the roadbook to account for the environmental developments.

The race’s main bivouac is located in Merzouga, located by Erg Chebbi in eastern Morocco and a common host site for the World Rally-Raid Championship’s Rallye du Maroc. The village and erg were heavily impacted by flooding from the torrential downpours that began on 6 September, resulting in a very unusual landscape for the region with massive lakes and rivers.

The flooding has been described as some of the worst the country had faced. South of Merzouga, the dry lake at Iriqui National Park was filled with water, a very uncommon occurrence since the Draa River was dammed in the 1970s. At least eleven have been killed by the floods while nine more are missing, and additional deaths have been reported in neighbouring Algeria as well. Much of the flash flooding can be attributed to infrastructure that is not able to withstand the heavy rainfall, mainly because of how rare it is in the desert.

Given the circumstances, Baja Morocco’s leadership has been busy at work to get everything ready in time.

“It has been a very tough, very difficult two days,” said race director Sébastien Delaunay. “I got stuck for almost forty-eight hours, but I’m now back and what I can tell you is that we are already working to reopen everything and the situation is going on the right direction now. Most of the river bed is becoming dry and the government is working to reduce the roads so we are not worried at all for the event. Baja Morocco will be there. I’m in contact also with local authorities, local people to help them.

Jimmie Johnson‘s Goodwood Revival started on the worst possible note when he spun in the rain into the tyre barriers during practice, damaging the rear of his Aston Martin DB4 GT. He proceeded to bounce back in dominant fashion on Saturday when he went from fourth to first on the opening lap and led flag to flag to win the Stirling Moss Memorial Trophy.

Johnson, a seven-time NASCAR Cup Series champion who is down to race basically anything since his retirement from full-time Cup competition, teamed up with IndyCar Series great Dario Franchitti to share the DB4. While Johnson’s luck have been anything but in recent years, he proved he certainly still has gas in the tank. He had been leading even before the practice spin in the wet before sealing it with the win.

“This is very special. I get a cigar too. What an honour,” said Johnson. “This has just been an event that I don’t want to miss. I’ve always dreamed of coming here and competing. My time in the States was quite busy and I was finally able to come in ’22 and it is such an incredible race. Big thanks and credit to this team.

“Kind of scratched the back of it yesterday in the rain and they’ve been able to fix the car and get it back on track. Dario has been such a long time close friend and to be able to share a car with him and to share a win together.”

Franchitti’s nephew Luca and daughter Sofia also got to spend some time behind the wheel when they ran the Settrington Cup, a youth class for Austin J40 pedal cars. Luca won the first race but finished twenty-second in the second, while Sofia was seventeenth and third. Dario’s younger brother Marino Franchitti was also on hand to run the Sussex Trophy in his Lister Flat Iron against the likes of Alex Brundle, André Lotterer, and Tiff Needell.