Motorsports Racing News & Blog Articles

Cole Custer is having a pretty good three days. After winning the NASCAR Xfinity Series‘ weather-shortened Chicago Street Race that technically lasted two days despite not racing on Sunday, Monday brought the news that Rick Ware Racing has signed him for the next three Cup Series races. He will drive the #51 Ford Mustang at Atlanta Motor Speedway, New Hampshire Motor Speedway, and Pocono Raceway.

“It’s great to be getting back into a Cup car again,” said Custer. “I can’t thank Rick Ware Racing enough for this opportunity. RWR is building a solid programme and I’m happy to help keep it growing in the right direction. It’s fun to be part of their group and hopefully we’ll have some solid runs together.”

Custer made his Cup debut with RWR in 2018 on a three-race schedule, impressing in his third race when he qualified tenth. He graduated to the top level full-time in 2020 with Stewart-Haas Racing and scored a surprise win at Kentucky en route to a playoff appearance and Rookie of the Year honours. However, he struggled over the next two years and was demoted back to the Xfinity level for 2023.

Despite a slow start to the Xfinity season, he is riding a ten-race streak of top tens that began at the start of April. This included winning at Portland followed by Chicago, and he currently sits third in points.

He also worked with RWR’s Xfinity programme in 2021, which was fielded in conjunction with SS-Green Light Racing.

In January, Nasser Al-Attiyah dominated the Dakar Rally in his Toyota GR DKR Hilux T1+ to win by over an hour on his closest competition and seal his second consecutive victory in the legendary event. Since then, he and the Hilux have become the points leader in both the World Rally-Raid Championship and FIA World Cup for Cross-Country Bajas.

On 13–16 January, Al-Attiyah will bring the Hilux with him back to England to participate in the Goodwood Festival of Speed.

Al-Attiyah and the Hilux conducted an unprecedented triple performance at the 2022 festival, running the Hillclimb and Forest Rally Stage in addition to the Off-Road Arena. Al-Attiyah set a time of 108.02 seconds in the Hillclimb, which ranked sixty-first of sixty-two finishers. The Hilux was among five vehicles primarily used for off-road competition to attempt the hillclimb alongside the Nitrocross FC1-X with Jenson Button, a World Rally Championship-spec Ford Focus driven by Seb Perez, and a pair of Extreme E Spark ODYSSEY 21 cars courtesy of Andretti United XE and Veloce Racing.

For 2023, the Off-Road Arena will feature a large ramp dubbed “Nasser’s Jump” designed by Al-Attiyah and his co-driver Mathieu Baumel.

The Toyota Hilux T1+ is regarded as the best rally raid vehicle today, with Toyota Gazoo Racing‘s model having won three Dakar Rallies, the inaugural W2RC, and three of its preceding FIA World Cups for Cross-Country Rallies all with Al-Attiyah. A Hilux Overdrive driven by Yazeed Al-Rajhi has also won the two latest Cross-Country Bajas World Cups. While the Hilux Overdrive is built by Imperial in partnership with Overdrive Racing, TGR and SVR Hallspeed produce the GR DKR Hilux; a privateer-friendly Hilux designed by WCT Engineering débuted in 2023. 2009 Dakar winner Giniel de Villiers participated in the 2014 Goodwood Forest Stage in a Hilux Overdrive.

Trey Hernquist had so much fun in his Stadium Super Trucks début that he is back for more. On Monday, he confirmed he will make his series return at the Music City Grand Prix on 4–6 August.

He posted on Instagram, “Hyped to be back at it early next month on streets Nashville, TN for the @musiccitygp with the @stadiumsupertrucks crew!”

Hernquist drove the #50 Gravel Kings/Continental Tire truck at the season-opening Acura Grand Prix of Long Beach in April, where he finished eighth and seventh in two races after qualifying eighth. He was the highest finishing newcomer in both, one of four such drivers alongside Bruce Binnquist, David Bernstein, and Joshua Thomas. Like Hernquist, Binnquist hails from a desert racing background and the two competed against each other in the Mint 400 Limited Race the month prior.

In his main trade, Hernquist races a yellow Baja Bug in SCORE International’s Class 5 category. He won the Baja 500 and Class 5 championship in 2020 before focusing on the premier Baja 1000 since. At the Mint 400, he won the Class 5 Unlimited division.

Besides Hernquist and series regulars Robby and Max Gordon, Gavin Harlien, Bill Hynes, and Robert Stout, Bernstein and Ryan Beat have also stated their intention to run Nashville. Beat, who recently won a Championship Off-Road Pro 2 race at Crandon, also competed at Long Beach as well as Nashville in 2022.

Scuderia Ferrari came away from the Austrian Grand Prix with solid points and increased confidence in the potential of their upgraded SF-23, with Charles Leclerc securing second place and Carlos Sainz crossing the line fourth before being hit with a post-race track limits penalty that brought him down to sixth. 

Ferrari Team Principal Frédéric Vasseur said that the team’s strong successive performances at Circuit Gilles Villeneuve and the Red Bull Ring suggest that the team’s development efforts are having a positive effect– though he admits that there is still some way to go to compete with Red Bull Racing.

“Today’s strong result for the team, added to yesterday’s podium with Carlos, proves we are working in the right direction. If we look back, we had a good race in Canada and today we confirmed the progress made on a completely different track layout with a different surface. We still need to make another step forward if we want to fight with Red Bull and we are working hard to achieve that.”

Leclerc was able to hold onto his starting position of second place in part due to Sainz’s stellar defence, which held the Red Bull back for a couple extra laps. Vasseur said, however, that Leclerc would have most likely kept his place without the cushion provided by his team-mate.

“Charles drove very well today and I think he would have been probably safe from the attacks from Perez towards the end. However Carlos also played his part, fighting Checo, making him lose time.”

Andrea Stella admitted that whilst the result of the Austrian Grand Prix was good for the McLaren F1 Team and their fans, seeing Lando Norris able to battle at the sharp end of the grid gave everyone within the team a good feeling.

Norris was running updated aerodynamic components for the first time at the Red Bull Ring and was able to convert his fourth place on the grid to a fifth-place finish, which became fourth after Carlos Sainz Jr. was hit with a ten-second time penalty post-race for multiple track limit offences.

Stella, the Team Principal at McLaren, praised the team for their ‘colossal amount of work’ to ready the updates for the Austrian weekend, and to get such a good result as they did with Norris behind the wheel will give everyone confidence.

“It’s been a positive result here in Spielberg,” said Stella ahead of Sainz being handed the penalty.  “Not just the valuable points from Lando’s P5 but also seeing the MCL60 fighting at the front. That’s good for the team and good for our fans.

“We know this track is a bit of a ‘Lando-Special’, and he was excellent again today, but certainly some of this result is down to the upgraded aerodynamic package fitted to his car. It’s been a colossal amount of work at the factory to get this upgrade here, and a good effort at the track to get the performance out of it.

Lando Norris continued his good form around the Red Bull Ring on Sunday, with the British racer finishing fifth in the Austrian Grand Prix, which became fourth once Carlos Sainz Jr. was handed a post-race time penalty.

The McLaren F1 Team driver, who secured his maiden podium finish at the track back in 2020 and has never finished outside the top seven, was again in good form in 2023 and was able to keep up with Sainz despite the Scuderia Ferrari driver having found a way ahead of him early on.

Norris was running with McLaren’s updates on the MCL60 for the first time this weekend and secured the best result of the season so far to move into the top ten of the Drivers’ Championship standings.

“A very good day!” said Norris.  “I was a little bit surprised we had the race pace that we did, and it was great to be fighting the Ferraris and Red Bulls. More importantly, we beat both the Astons and Mercedes, which was our main goal today. Overall, a good day and good points.

“It’s one of those tracks which is easy to get punished on. We kept it on track and didn’t really make any big mistakes, with some good racing at times. The team has done a great job again.

Having taken his first podium since Baku, Scuderia Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc was pleased by his finish at the Austrian Grand Prix, converting his front row start to a second place finish. The Monegasque driver felt that the upgrades brought to SF-23 played a role in the result, and hopes that they can continue their trajectory. 

“It’s good to be back on the podium. Friday and today we maximised what we have and the upgrades we introduced this weekend worked well. The team has done an excellent job and we will keep pushing in this direction.”

Leclerc thanked his team-mate Carlos Sainz for his excellent defending against Sergio Pérez, which may have prevented the Red Bull from overtaking second place in the race’s closing stages and made for one of the most thrilling battles of the Grand Prix. 

“I also want to thank Carlos as he made my life a bit easier by putting up a great defence against Checo. I was watching on the big screen, it was very exciting!”

Moving into the next part of the double header, the British Grand Prix, Leclerc hopes to come even closer to the frontrunners at Red Bull Racing and extract the maximum from their newly developed SF-23. 

Between the 1980s and 2000s, Mitsubishi was one of the top manufacturers in rally and rally raid, scoring twelve Dakar Rally overall wins and four driver’s World Rally Championships thanks to Ralliart. After a decade of relative dormancy, Ralliart made their triumphant return in 2022 by winning the Asia Cross Country Rally (AXCR).

Formally competing under the Team Mitsubishi Ralliart banner, the programme seeks to defend their title in 2023. Last week, the team unveiled the Mitsubishi Triton that will compete in the 2023 AXCR. Chayapon Yotha and Rifat Sungkar return as drivers while Katsuhiko Taguchi reunites with Mitsubishi in a third truck.

Yotha, a Thailand Super Series and RAAT Thailand Endurance International Championship veteran, won the 2022 AXCR. Sanger was a three-time Indonesian Rally Champion from 2000 through 2002 before becoming a brand ambassador for Mitsubishi’s Indonesian sales division. Taguchi competed in the WRC for Mitsubishi Ralliart between 1995 and 2008; in 2007, he won the Group N category at Rally Japan for his lone career WRC points, and also boasts a pair of Asia-Pacific Rally Championships.

Peerapong Sombutwong will serve as Yotha’s navigator, while Chupong Chaiwan and Takahiro Yasui respectively do so for Sungkar and Taguchi.

Initial testing took place over three days and 840 kilometres in late April across various types of roads. A larger, thirteen-day test focused on vehicle durability was held in June at Khao Yai National Park in Thailand. With the AXCR being moved from November back to its traditional August slot, heavy rain is expected in the forecast and thus makes gauging vehicle endurance in such conditions a high priority.

In 2020, Ken Block became the first driver to pilot Extreme E‘s Spark ODYSSEY 21. Three years later, his daughter Lia Block will follow in his footsteps as she makes her series début, joining Carl Cox Motorsport for this weekend’s Island X Prix and the remainder of the 2023 season. She will partner up with Timo Scheider in the #8.

“It is a huge opportunity to race for Carl Cox Motorsport and I cannot wait to get behind the wheel and out on the course,” said Block. “I am eager to do my best for the team and score some good results.

“I am really looking forward to working alongside Timo, who I have known for years, and the rest of the team. It is going to be my first race outside of the USA, and up against so many big names in the sport, but I am looking forward to the challenge and keen to get started.”

Although only sixteen years old, Block is a rising star in the American rally scene. She is currently sixth in the American Rally Association overall standings and leads the National Open 2WD points. The Oregon Trail Rally in May saw a particularly impressing outing as she won her class and kept pace with imminent two-time champion Brandon Semenuk despite her youth and being in an inferior category.

Block is also racing in the Nitrocross NEXT class, winning Race #1 of the season opener at MidAmerica Outdoors in June before being disqualified. She raced a limited schedule in the series’ SxS support class in 2022. Later in the month, she took part in the Pikes Peak International Hill Climb, racing her father’s iconic “Hoonipigasus” Porsche 911.

Renault is heading back to the Dakar Rally for the first time since 2018, though under a different brand. On Monday, Dacia announced it will compete at the 2025 Dakar Rally with Sébastien Loeb and Cristina Gutiérrez in T1+ cars, making their début at the 2024 Rallye du Maroc before heading to Saudi Arabia for the main race. Prodrive will provide technical support.

Dacia formerly raced at Dakar from 2013 to 2018 as Emiliano Spataro drove a Dacia Duster with a best overall finish of fourteenth in 2014. Although Renault’s backing for Spataro was relatively limited, it marked the French manufacturer’s first involvement with the race in over a decade after winning back-to-back titles with Jean-Louis Schlesser in a buggy in 1999 and 2000. Renault’s first Dakar win was in 1982 with Claude Marreau driving a Renault 20.

Renault originally intended to race with Lada but dropped those plans after selling its stake in the marque following the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Ladas are still present at Dakar via the Dakar Classic, though their last action in the main rally was in the 1980s.

“Not only is this a test of Dacia’s true robustness, it is a showing of our commitment to low-carbon mobility,” said Dacia CEO Denis Le Vot. “We are very excited to take part in Dakar with synthetic fuel technology. Dacia, alongside the best team and drivers in the game, are serious contenders for the rally.”

While Dacia did not immediately announce which specific vehicle will take part, reports have indicated they are considering the Dacia Manifesto. The Manifesto is an AWD electric SUV unveiled in 2022, featuring an open-air design such as a lack of windows and doors to better “connect” the occupants with nature. While it is a concept vehicle with no intention of selling for customer use, the company and Dakar organiser Amaury Sport Organisation’s mutual interest in environmental friendliness aligns with the car’s intended purpose. The car will also rely on a synthetic test fuel produced by Aramco.

Jari-Matti Latvala, currently the Toyota Gazoo Racing WRT team principal, will be putting his leading role on pause as he will be entering his home round of Rally Finland on 3-6 August in a fourth Toyota GR Yaris Rally1.

Latvala competed last time in the FIA World Rally Championship in 2020 at the Rally Sweden round in a privately entered Toyota Yaris WRC but he had to withdraw from the rally quite early on due to a technical issue on stage five and now he will make a one-off appearance in a Rally1 car for the first time, he has hinted a long time that he wanted to try one in competition.

In Finland, Latvala will be joined by Juho Hänninen as his co-driver, Hänninen is also a former works driver for Toyota same as Latvala, Hänninen has since retirement only focused on being the test driver for the team but in between that he has also sat beside Latvala on several outings with Latvala´s private Toyota Celicas in historic rallies.

However, Latvala will not be doing a double role in Finland. Akio Toyoda, the chairman of the Toyota Motor Corporation, will stand in for him.

When the World Rally-Raid Championship heads to Argentina for the first time in August, domestic rally raid ace Marcio Yampa will be there. In an interview with BelenInfo, he confirmed he will take part in the Desafío Ruta 40 on a bike.

“It is a great dream for me and God willing I will be participating in this round of the World Cross-Country Rally,” said Yampa. “We’re preparing with a lot of enthusiasm to arrive safely and together with my team we’re analysing all the details in order to achieve a good performance. I want to thank all of the beautiful people of my dear Bethlehem for the support.”

In 2021, Yampa won both the Campeonato Argentino de Rally y Navegación (CaNav) championship and South American Rally Race in the N1 categories. The former, the top navigation-based rally raid series in Argentina, came in dominant fashion with two wins and beating runner-up Dardo Medina by nearly 100 points.

He returned to the SARR in 2023 and finished fifth overall to win the M2 category. Joaquín Debeljuh, who finished a spot ahead of him, and 2022 SARR winner Iván Martín, whose title defence ended with a crash, will also make their W2RC débuts in the Desafío Ruta 40.

Outside of racing, he works as a metallurgist.

Christian Horner was delighted with the ‘incredible’ Sunday for the Oracle Red Bull Racing team at the Austrian Grand Prix, with Max Verstappen dominating to take a seventh victory in nine races and his fifth in a row.

For the first time since the Miami Grand Prix in May, Verstappen found himself behind other drivers due to not pitting behind the virtual safety car, but it was not long before he found himself back where he belonged, and he was even able to afford a last gasp pit stop for fresh soft tyres to go for fastest lap such was the gap behind to Charles Leclerc.

Horner, the Team Principal at Red Bull, said it was fantastic to see Verstappen dominate as he did, the Dutchman topping free practice on Friday and both Qualifying sessions and winning both the Sprint race on Saturday and the main race on Sunday in commanding fashion.

“It has been an incredible day for the Team today and a fantastic weekend as a whole,” said Horner.  “Max is obviously on exceptional form, taking qualifying, the Sprint race and now the Grand Prix is just sensational.

“Obviously we took a different strategy to that of our competitors, meaning he had to make the overtakes on track which led to some fantastic watching and a stunning weekend for him.

Max Verstappen continued his amazing run of form on Sunday with a dominating victory in the Austrian Grand Prix, the Dutchman claiming his seventh win in nine races.

The Oracle Red Bull Racing driver was in a class of his own and was even able to make a late pit stop for fresh tyres in order to set the fastest lap of the race on the final lap to maximise his points tally from the Red Bull Ring.

Verstappen had been fastest in practice, both Qualifying sessions and won both races to score maximum points and extend his advantage in the FIA Formula 1 World Championship Drivers’ standings to eighty-one points.

“It’s been a pretty incredible weekend; it couldn’t have been any better to be honest,” said Verstappen.  “We did everything well as a Team, from the strategy through to the pit stops.

“Heading into the race we all had question marks around the tyres but we were all happy with how they performed compared to our competitors. I felt really comfortable in the car all weekend and we were able to do everything that we had planned.”

Following the conclusion to the Austrian Grand Prix on Sunday, the Aston Martin Aramco Cognizant Formula 1 Team put in an appeal to the stewards that not all track limit offences were significantly punished during the race at the Red Bull Ring, an appeal that was ultimately successful.

There was multiple five- and ten-second penalties handed out during the seventy-one lap race on Sunday afternoon up and down the field, but Aston Martin believed that some drivers got away with more penalties than were given, and the stewards agreed to revisit the race and hand out additional penalties.

The stewards admitted they were unable to keep track of all track limit offences on Sunday, with around 1200 reported breaches, and as a result some drivers had initially got away with taking hits to their race time.

Carlos Sainz Jr. was the driver highest up the order to be handed a penalty, with the Scuderia Ferrari driver being handed a ten-second penalty that relegated him to sixth behind McLaren F1 Team’s Lando Norris and Aston Martin’s Fernando Alonso.

Lewis Hamilton was also handed the same penalty, with the Mercedes-AMG Petronas Formula One Team driver dropping from seventh to eighth in the final result, behind team-mate George Russell.