Motorsports Racing News & Blog Articles

Sheldon Creed‘s ascent through the stock car racing ladder has been tumultuous, but he has finally reached the top rung. On Wednesday, Live Fast Motorsports announced he will run his maiden NASCAR Cup Series race at Kansas Speedway on 10 September, driving the #78 Chevrolet Camaro ZL1 with Whelen Engineering sponsorship.

“I’m excited to race a Cup race for the first time as that’s been the dream for a long time,” said Creed. “Whelen is a great company and I’m appreciative for their support in allowing us to do this with Live Fast Motorsports. We hope to have a good day at Kansas Speedway come September.”

Creed is currently in his second full season of Xfinity Series competition for LFR ally Richard Childress Racing. He sits tenth in points after seventeen races in a sophomore campaign fraught with misfortune, having shown speed throughout the first half of the year only to be caught up in accidents or other troubles—some of his own doing such as a 25-point penalty for on-track conduct—as evidenced by his average start of 7.4 versus average finish at 16.4. This was also the case during his rookie year, missing the playoffs after barely losing a chaotic scramble in the regular season finale.

Despite his ongoing Xfinity difficulties, Creed has displayed impressive pace in his career. After being a rising star in short course off-road racing, he won two Stadium Super Trucks championships before breaking into stock cars. Creed scored the 2018 ARCA Menards Series and 2020 Truck Series titles before graduating to NASCAR’s second tier.

Creed will be the thirteenth driver with SST experience to compete at the Cup level, company that includes his mentor and SST founder Robby Gordon. Stanton Barrett, Greg Biffle, Ryan Eversley, P.J. Jones, Casey Mears, Max Papis, Travis Pastrana, Boris Said, Zane Smith, and Kenny and Rusty Wallace have also done the same, with Pastrana, Eversley, and Zane Smith making their Cup débuts after racing in SST as well.

Norihiko Katsuta who is the father of the current Toyota Gazoo Racing works rally driver Takamato Katsuta. Claimed the first victory for Toyota’s new Rally2 machine as he won the ARK Rally Kamuy in Hokkaido, Japan over the weekend.

The win for the 54-year-old Japanese rally legend was significant for the automotive manufacturer Toyota. This year, Norihiko is testing the new Toyota GR Yaris Rally2 car with a full-time program in the Japanese Rally Championship. The car is set to make its world debut somewhere around Spring 2024 following approval from the homologation made by the FIA.

Toyota has invested significantly in its new project since last year. The car has been developed at the Toyota Gazoo Racing WRT team’s base in Finland and the team’s test driver Juho Hänninen has driven thousands of kilometers with the car in Finland and around Europe.

Katsuta’s task is to test the car under competitive conditions in Japan. In addition to his victory this weekend, he has taken two-second places behind the former Formula 1 driver Heikki Kovalainen from Finland but as Kovalainen had issues earlier on this time, Katsuta could finish the rally ahead of the Finn to claim the first victory for the new car.

Johan Kristoffersson, currently leading the FIA World Rallycross Championship points standing and is a five-time world rallycross champion, will be one of the strong names to enter a local Rallysprint event in Sweden this Friday where he will face some hot names from the Nordic countries.

The Hästkraftshelgen event will take place in Årjäng, Southwest Sweden in the Värmland region very close to the Royal Rally of Scandinavia that took place last weekend and it will feature a short sprint course that goes up the hill of Årjäng. The rally sprint will be run several times on the mixed surface of gravel and tarmac, where the best time after all runs will be counted towards victory.

Kristoffersson who just came home after a double win in Extreme E in Sardinia, Italy last weekend, will be entering in a Volkswagen Polo GTi R5 run by the family team Kristoffersson Motorsport and joining alongside him will be his World RX colleague Ole Christian Veiby, also entered in a Volkswagen – same car Veiby used in the FIA European Rally Championship over the weekend.

Årjäng born star Per-Gunnar Andersson will also be taking part in the event, running in a Team Skåab Ford Fiesta Rally2 machine. Isak Reiersen who won the ERC Junior class last weekend will be stepping up to a four-wheel-drive car this time but the car is yet to be announced and same with the former Skoda Motorsport driver Eyvind Brynildsen.

Peter Hedström is also seen on the start list for 4WD cars. The rallycross icon from Sweden will be probably coming to start with one of the Hedström Motorsport Skoda Fabia Rally2 evos. Other strong names included but entered in the 2WD class are Andreas Levin and Andreas Israelsson in a pair of Nissan Sunnys.

Kaden Honeycutt will race for his third different NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series team of 2023 at Pocono Raceway on 22 July when he joins Niece Motorsports‘ #44 Chevrolet Camaro RST.

“I’m excited to get back behind the wheel and am extremely thankful to Al Niece and everyone at Niece Motorsports for the opportunity,” said Honeycutt. “We’re hopeful that we can get some more partners to come on board and make some more starts this season. I’ve been working at the shop the last few months, so I know how hard this organisation is working to field fast trucks. I’m looking forward to Pocono.”

He began 2023 entering the first seven races for Roper Racing, scoring a ninth on the dirt at Bristol in what remains the #04’s best finish of the year to date. A two-race stint with Young’s Motorsports bore more fruit when he finished tenth at Darlington followed by seventeenth at North Wilkesboro in his seventh and latest start.

In April, Honeycutt made his Xfinity début for CHK Racing at Martinsville. An engine failure took him out after eighty-three laps.

“Kaden has really impressed a lot of people in the Truck Series this season, so we are happy to have him behind the wheel of one of our Chevrolets,” commented Niece Motorsports general manager Cody Efaw. “Our team is working hard to build the fastest trucks we can. We visited Victory Lane at Pocono in 2019 and we’re looking for more of the same next weekend.”

In June, NASCAR shook the world when a Cup Series Next Gen car started and finished the 24 Hours of Le Mans as a Garage 56 entry. This weekend, the programme will be “revived” for the Goodwood Festival of Speed‘s Hillclimb as Jenson Button and Mike Rockenfeller pilot its backup car.

The Le Mans car, a Chevrolet Camaro ZL1, is relatively the same as the standard competition counterpart in the Cup Series save for differences in aspects like size and paddle shift sequential as well as headlights to meet the gruelling demands of 24-hour endurance racing. While Garage 56 cars are not expected to be competitive, Button, Rockenfeller, and Jimmie Johnson set times comparable to the LMGTE class and finished thirty-ninth overall.

“The Garage 56 programme has been an overwhelming success for us in further introducing motorsports fans from around the world to NASCAR,” said IMSA president and Garage 56 manager John Doonan. “Taking the Garage 56 car to the Goodwood Festival of Speed gives us another chance to bring the world of stock cars to fans of a wide variety of motorsports.”

Rockenfeller will first run the Hillclimb in the car on Thursday, 13 July at 2:30 PM BST, followed by stints on Friday at 3:10 PM, Saturday at 8:30 AM, and Sunday at 9:15 AM. Button will do so on Friday at 9:10 AM, Saturday at 2:55 PM, and Sunday at 3:50 PM.

The car will be part of NASCAR’s 75-year celebration at Goodwood, with many other vehicles throughout the sanctioning body’s history also present. Ed Berrier, who raced in the Cup Series in the late 1990s, set the sixteenth fastest time in the 2022 Hillclimb in a 2016 Cup Camaro. Button finished eighth driving the Nitrocross FC1-X.

After much anticipation, M-Sport and Neil Woolridge Motorsport‘s Ford Ranger T1+ joint project will finally make its racing début on 21/22 July at the Baja España Aragón. Nani Roma and Gareth Woolridge will each pilot a truck with Alex Haro and Boyd Dreyer as their co-drivers, respectively.

The programme recently concluded testing, which primarily took place in Morocco, Dubai, and South Africa. The truck covered over 10,000 kilometres in its tests, while the setup has also been employed by NWM for their independent T1+ entries in the South African Rally-Raid Championship.

Now fully recovered from his cancer battle that sidelined him for much of 2022 and the 2023 Dakar Rally, Roma has been testing the Ranger since spring. The twice Dakar champion will be going for his fifth Baja Aragón victory on four wheels, the last coming in 2009, and tenth overall.

“This has been a really nice process developing the Ranger T1+,” said Roma. “The car has changed a lot since first time I tested it compared to the last test we recently completed in Morocco. All the mechanics and engineers have done a super job in stabilising the car while improving reliability and increasing its performance capability. We have been working together in a good direction, the Ranger is a strong car, we still have some points to work on but it’s in a great position right now.”

Woolridge, the son of NWM’s eponymous owner, currently leads the SARRC in a Ranger T1+ after finishing third in the 2022 standings. In June, he and his brother Lance Woolridge finished 1–2 in the SARRC’s premier TGR 1000 Desert Race. He also works as the lead technician at NWM, overseeing the development of the Ranger T1 before working on the T1+ project.

Supercars Championship great Shane van Gisbergen took the NASCAR world by storm when he won in his stock car début at Chicago in July. Current Supercars title contender Brodie Kostecki hopes to replicate the feat next month.

On Wednesday, Auto Action‘s Andrew Clarke reported Kostecki is “set to announce” that he will run the Cup Series race at Indianapolis Motor Speedway on 13 August.

A team was not suggested beyond the fact that it “looks certain” to be a Chevrolet, which Erebus Motorsport fields for him in Supercars. Erebus is close with Cup team Richard Childress Racing as the former’s ex-engineer Andrew Dickinson currently works on RCR driver Kyle Busch‘s #8 crew; in June, Erebus personnel including Kostecki watched Busch win in person at Gateway. RCR also owns a former VF Commodore Supercar for testing purposes and has occasionally fielded a part-time #33 car, most recently in 2022 for Austin Hill.

Unlike van Gisbergen, Kostecki is no stranger to NASCAR. As a teenager in 2013 and 2014, he competed in what is now the ARCA Menards Series West, finishing eighteenth in the latter’s standings with four top tens, two poles at Iowa and Watkins Glen, and a best run of fifth in the finale at Dover.

In June 2022, he told Speedcafe about hoping to run a Cup race in 2023 on the heels of attending that year’s Gateway event, explaining he hoped to “spread [his] wings a bit and just try to race as much as possible.” A report from V8 Sleuth in May suggested Kostecki has also been in talks with RCR and Joe Gibbs Racing about possibly racing in the Xfinity Series. By June, his manager Nathan Cayzer said a deal was all but signed.

Guillaume de Mévius is looking forward to running the Dakar Rally for the third time in 2024. Speaking with Cross-Country Rally News during the Rally Greece Offroad, he expects the race to be a challenge but still one to enjoy.

Despite staying in Saudi Arabia for the fifth year in a row, sixty percent of the 2024 Rally’s routes are new. The biggest pitch for the race is the 48-hour Chrono Stage, which replaces the Empty Quarter Marathon with a two-day, 600-kilometre run; at the end of the first day at 4 PM, all teams are to stop at one of eight base camps before resuming the next morning.

“I like what the (Amaury Sport) Organisation presented to us,” began de Mévius. “For sure, it will be, I think, a hard year next year. I don’t have a lot of experience, I only have two Dakars in my hands, but what I heard after the discussion with everybody, I think it would be a nice one—difficult, but nice. I like that.

“The new 48-hour stage, I think it’s a very good idea. I don’t know exactly how it will work and with the strategy, we will see when we’ll be there, but I think it’s a good idea.”

De Mévius made his Dakar début in 2022 with Red Bull Factory Racing, winning a stage but retiring after five stages. Since then, he has been heavily involved with the OT3 project, which is built by fellow Belgian outfit Overdrive for T3 competition.

Jaume Betriu, one of the top enduro riders in Spain and a twice Dakar Rally competitor, will trade in his bike seat for the passenger’s seat of a Can-Am Maverick. On Monday, Pons Rallysport announced Betriu will serve as Eduard Pons‘ navigator starting for the Baja España Aragón on 21/22 July.

“As the main novelty in the team, the experienced moto rider Jaume Betriu will sit on the right to perform the duties of co-driver,” reads a team post. “The first training sessions we did a few weeks ago in Portugal gave good results, so we will continue to get to know each other to improve our pace.”

Betriu is an eight-time Spanish Enduro Champion, scoring a title each year between 2015 and 2022 in either the Enduro 2 or Enduro 3 classes. Prior to this stretch, he was a motocross rider who won the 2012 Spanish Cross-Country Championship.

In 2020, he began racing regularly in the FIM Enduro World Championship, finishing second in E3. Another runner-up came the following year with podiums in every race, while his 2022 campaign was affected by a preseason injury.

He started looking towards rally at the end of 2018, and a runner-up among rookie riders at the 2019 Merzouga Rally pushed him to pursue the legendary Dakar Rally. Riding solo in the Malle Moto class with support from FN Speed Team, he finished fourteenth overall as the best performing newcomer. Betriu returned in 2021 and improved to twelfth.

After three years, Team Audi Sport is pulling the plug on their Dakar Rally effort. On Tuesday, Audi Motorsport head Rolf Michl confirmed to Motorsport-Magazin.com that as the German manufacturer prepares to enter Formula One in 2026 as an engine supplier for Sauber, they will cut back multiple racing divisions including the rally raid programme and factory support for customer teams in DTM and GT3.

2024 was already set to be Audi’s final Dakar on their current three-year deal, which includes a partnership with Q Motorsport run by X-raid Team boss Sven Quandt. At the team’s début in 2022, Mattias Ekström, Stéphane Peterhansel, and Carlos Sainz each won a stage and Ekström notched a top ten in the overall. Audi built upon this by winning the Abu Dhabi Desert Challenge with Peterhansel, followed by Sainz setting the fastest total time among all cars at the Rallye du Maroc despite not being eligible for the traditional T1 category.

The successes of 2022 led to an upgraded car, the RS Q e-tron E2, being introduced for 2023 and competing in the T1.U “Ultimate” subcategory for electric T1 vehicles. However, despite much fanfare and Sainz winning Stage #1 at Dakar, the team struggled to keep pace with the T1+ entries of Prodrive and Toyota even after a power increase from the FIA’s Equivalence of Technology. Sainz and Peterhansel subsequently crashed out while Ekström finished a distant fourteenth.

Save for a demo at the Race of Champions, the e-tron E2 has not raced since the Dakar debacle. In May, the team regrouped for testing to determine what went wrong at Dakar. Although there was initial hesitation to return for 2024, the team has since committed to entering the event, which appears to be their last pending a surprise renewal.

Audi’s Board of Management came to the decision on Monday. Teams that race Audis in DTM and the Fanatec GT World Challenge will continue to do so beyond 2024, albeit with less support from the marque such as engineering assistance.

Scoring six points during Sundays British Grand Prix was a case of damage limitation for the Aston Martin Aramco Cognizant Formula 1 Team, according to Team Principal Mike Krack.

Unlike in other races so far during the 2023 FIA Formula 1 World Championship season, Aston Martin were not able to compete further up the field to fight for podiums, but Fernando Alonso brought the AMR23 home in seventh place to score six points.

Team-mate Lance Stroll was less fortunate as he ended on the road outside the points in eleventh, which unfortunately for the Canadian quickly turned to fourteenth after stewards handed him a five-second time penalty for causing a collision with BWT Alpine F1 Team’s Pierre Gasly.

Krack says the team were lacking pace throughout the weekend, but to still be able to score some good points was a reasonable return for Aston Martin.

“To come away from our home race at Silverstone with six points is a reasonable return from a weekend where we were lacking the pace to compete at the front,” said Krack.  “Fernando’s race was pretty straightforward, and we optimised the timing of his switch to the Soft tyres under the Safety Car. 

Fernando Alonso believed he was able to extract the maximum performance from his AMR23 during the British Grand Prix as the veteran Spaniard was forced to settle for seventh place in Sunday’s race.

The Aston Martin Aramco Cognizant Formula 1 Team driver admitted the weekend at Silverstone was a difficult one for the team, but when it mattered, they got everything right on Sunday afternoon, even if the pace of the car was not as strong as they have been at times so far this season.

“We maximised the race today and took seventh place in a difficult weekend for the team,” said Alonso.  “I think we managed our strategy well and made the right calls during the race.

“We need to analyse the weekend as a whole, but we aren’t worried about this result.”

Alonso is expecting more ups and downs throughout the remainder of the 2023 FIA Formula 1 World Championship season, with the hope that they can be fighting higher up the order next time out in Hungary.

The Ferrari 250 GTO is one of the most iconic and coveted racecars ever produced. Here are some key details about the Ferrari 250 GTO:

1. Production and Rarity: The Ferrari 250 GTO was built by Ferrari from 1962 to 1964. Only 39 units of the 250 GTO were ever produced, making it an extremely rare and valuable collector's item.

2. Design and Performance: The 250 GTO was designed with a lightweight body, aerodynamic features, and a powerful V12 engine. It was built for competition and excelled in endurance races. The car's sleek and elegant design has become synonymous with Ferrari's racing heritage.

3. Racing Success: The Ferrari 250 GTO achieved remarkable success on the track. It won several prestigious races, including the Tour de France Automobile, Targa Florio, and the 12 Hours of Sebring. The 250 GTO also competed in the World Sportscar Championship and the 24 Hours of Le Mans.

4. Value and Rarity: The Ferrari 250 GTO is widely regarded as one of the most valuable and sought-after classic cars. In recent years, it has fetched record-breaking prices at auctions, with individual units selling for tens of millions of dollars. The combination of its rarity, racing pedigree, and timeless design contributes to its high value.

Oran O’Kelly is eyeing his Dakar Rally début in 2024, where the Dubliner would become the first Irishman to compete there since its move to Saudi Arabia in 2020 and the first rider from his country to run any Dakar since Stan Watt in 2013. He will race a KTM 450 Rally Replica for Vendetta Racing UAE.

O’Kelly began his career in motocross and competed in motocross championships in the United Arab Emirates alongside his brother Conor in the 2000s. He eventually transitioned to rally racing, having spent the last three years training.

After linking up with Vendetta, O’Kelly began entering FIM events in the region such as the Bajas World Cup‘s Dubai International Baja and World Rally-Raid Championship‘s Abu Dhabi Desert Challenge. In March, when both events took place in the same month, he finished eighth in Rally2 at Abu Dhabi followed by fifteenth among all bikes in Dubai. His Abu Dhabi showing, where he consistently finished between eighth and eleventh across the five stages, also placed him third among Road to Dakar participants, a programme in which the best riders with no Dakar experience at each W2RC event earns free admission to the following year’s Dakar Rally.

Vendetta Racing is a Dubai-based operation that has fielded bikes at Dakar for those like David McBride and David Mabbs.

“Rally racing’s probably 50 or 60% navigation. You can have the fastest enduro or motocross bikes in the world, but if you can’t navigate, you’re only going to be able to ride the speed you can navigate at,” O’Kelly told Enduro.ie. “With the roadblock side and everything else and a lot of it is written in French, it can be quite difficult to understand and to navigate at speeds of up to 160 and 170 kilometres an hour, so stuff can get out of hand real quick. It’s quite a skill to be able to find that that sweet spot, that balance between riding the bike quick and fast but more importantly in the right direction and being aware of what’s to come, not just riding flat out.”

Daniel Ricciardo has returned to Formula 1 to replace Nyck de Vries at Scuderia AlphaTauri, it was confirmed this afternoon.

Ricciardo will race for AlphaTauri on loan from Oracle Red Bull Racing from the Hungarian Grand Prix onwards replacing rookie De Vries, who has been dropped after a string of poor performances that have seen him not score a point this season. De Vries joined the team at the start of the season, but the Formula 2 and Formula E winner has not met expectations in the first half of the season, and has been axed with the team struggling at the bottom of the Championship.

Ricciardo took to the track for the first time in 2023 in the RB19 in a Pirelli tyre test following the British Grand Prix at Silverstone today but is now set to make a full return to racing alongside Yuki Tsunoda in the Red Bull junior team.

This gives Ricciardo a lifeline in F1 after being dropped by McLaren F1 Team at the end of the 2022 FIA Formula 1 World Championship season due to poor performances, in comparison to his much younger teammate Lando Norris. The eight-time Grand Prix winner, who most recently won the 2021 Italian Grand Prix for McLaren, leading a 1-2 with Norris behind, returned to the Red Bull family as a third driver for the upcoming season before evaluating his options in 2024, but the Australian has been given a chance to get back on track, and it comes with limited expectations as AlphaTauri sit bottom of the Constructors’ Championship with arguably the worst performing car on the grid.

AlphaTauri Team Principal Franz Tost was pleased to welcome Ricciardo back to the team, who previously raced for the team when it was called Toro Rosso in 2012 and 2013 before replacing Mark Webber at Red Bull. Tost hopes the move is a positive one that can help AlphaTauri move back up the standings.