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Nico Hülkenberg was disappointed with the tyre degradation the MoneyGram Haas F1 Team suffered with throughout the Spanish Grand Prix as he slipped from seventh on the grid to finish only fifteenth.

Whereas the majority of their rivals were able to get through the race at the Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya by pitting only twice, the tyre degradation Haas suffered with meant Hülkenberg was forced to make three stops, meaning he dropped out of contention for a top ten finish.

Hülkenberg says the pace of the VF-23 appears to be strong over one lap, but it is important now for the team to convert that kind of pace into race day if they want to become regular contenders for points.

“It was tough. Unfortunately, the degradation was really high for us and we had to three-stop whereas the competition didn’t,” said Hülkenberg.  

“It looks at first glance that over one lap we’re competitive but in the long runs we still have some homework to do and some pace to find.”

Andrea Stella says Sunday at the Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya was a ‘more realistic showing’ for the McLaren F1 Team than Saturday had been as they left the Spanish Grand Prix without scoring points.

Lando Norris had started third and Oscar Piastri ninth, but first lap contact with Lewis Hamilton ruined the day for the former, while the latter struggled for pace throughout the day.  Piastri ended the best of the duo in thirteenth, while the delayed Norris ended seventeenth.

Stella, the Team Principal of McLaren, was still able to praise the team for their efforts throughout the race as they did not stop pushing until the end of the day even if points were never likely.

“Following a very positive qualifying session, today’s Spanish Grand Prix was a more realistic showing of our current competitiveness,” said Stella. “We knew it would be more difficult to perform at the top of the field on race pace today given the hotter conditions.

“The situation was compounded by contact on the first lap between Lando and Lewis Hamilton, which resulted in Lando pitting for a new front wing and falling thirty seconds behind the field.  

Oscar Piastri lamented the pace of the McLaren F1 Team during the Spanish Grand Prix, with the Australian unable to capitalise on a top ten start to bring home points.

Piastri had started ninth on the grid at the Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya only to fall back through the pack under racing conditions, with the rookie finishing only thirteenth at the chequered flag.

Despite the lack of points, Piastri says there were still positives to take away from Spain, particularly after their Qualifying display, but it is important for the Woking-based outfit to solve the problems they faced on race day if they are to contend for points in the Canadian Grand Prix.

“It was a disappointing afternoon,” said Piastri.  “Our pace in quali didn’t translate to the race, so it was tough.

“But it’s important we focus on taking the positives from Saturday’s quali result where our one-lap pace looked very strong. We now just need to work on the race pace as we head to Canada in two weeks’ time.”

Guillaume Dezoteux feels the Spanish Grand Prix weekend was a ‘missed opportuntity’ for Scuderia AlphaTauri, with the Faenza-based team leaving the Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya without a point.

Yuki Tsunoda looked as though he was going to double his points haul as he ran ninth for much of the second half of the race, only for the Japanese driver to earn himself a penalty for forcing Zhou Guanyu off track at turn one that relegated him to twelfth at the chequered flag.

Nyck de Vries finished fourteenth having found himself stuck in a train of cars for much of the afternoon, with his race seemingly coming alive when in free air in the final stint that saw him close the gap rapidly to Oscar Piastri ahead of him.

Dezoteux, the Head of Vehicle Performance at AlphaTauri, felt the team had a strong enough package to score points in Spain, the team having scored only two points in the opening seven races.

“Until the very last moments on the grid, we monitored the weather closely as it was raining a few kilometres away,” said Dezoteux.  “Surprisingly, it never arrived and we ended with a two-stop race, close to our predictions.

Yuki Tsunoda lost out on a top ten finish in the Spanish Grand Prix after the stewards handed him a time penalty for forcing Zhou Guanyu off track, something the Japanese driver disagrees with.

The Scuderia AlphaTauri driver was defending from the Alfa Romeo F1 Team Stake driver heading down the main straight, with Zhou pulling out to attack around the outside of turn one.  Zhou went through the run-off zone at the turn as a result of the two coming close together, with the stewards deeming that Tsunoda had forced the Chinese driver off the circuit.

Tsunoda was left frustrated by the decision that relegated him from ninth to twelfth in the final results, and he felt he had left enough space on his left side to allow Zhou to run alongside him through the turn.

“I am super disappointed and frustrated,” said Tsunoda.  “I think the penalty I was given for forcing another driver off the track was very harsh but it’s something I have to accept.

“There was little space but still I thought it was enough.”

Juan Nimo will be a unique face when the World Rally-Raid Championship visits his native Argentina for the Desafío Ruta 40 in August as he will pilot a Honda Tornado with a special setup to accommodate him due to his paraplegia.

Nimo is paralysed from the waist down, the result of a spinal cord injury and five vertebra fractures sustained in a 2006 motocross crash. The accident ended a burgeoning career in the discipline, having become a professional rider just two years prior at the age of sixteen, and has left him in a wheelchair since.

Although unable to use his legs, he eventually resumed to extreme sports and racing after a lengthy rehabilitation process, competing in TC Pista Mouras with hand controls; such a tactic is also employed by drivers with similar injuries such as Robert Wickens in IMSA. He finished seventeenth in the 2022 TCPM standings.

Of course, piloting an off-road bike with paraplegia is a different challenge from pavement touring cars. As bikes are already powered using hands cranking the handlebars, Nimo does not need to rely on his legs as much as one typically would in a car. As such, when he made his return to enduro and sand racing, his bike did not feature heavy modifications.

On the other hand, his rally bike features a metal frame-like rig that is connected from front to back, the latter also doubling as a backboard to keep him steady. He brought the bike with him to the Rally de la Scaloneta and Rally Santafesino Pujato in early June, a month after unveiling the vehicle and his plans to run the Desafío Ruta 40.

Paul Spierings‘ sixth Dakar Rally will take place in tandem with Roger Grouwels‘ second. On Thursday, the former’s Dakar Team Spierings announced a new partnership with Grouwels’ Team RaceArt to field Can-Am Mavericks for their owners in the T4 category at the 2024 edition in January.

“Roger and I have different backgrounds in motorcycles and motorsport, but by sharing each other’s knowledge and experience we can both move forward,” said Spierings. “We complement each other perfectly and the collaboration with RaceArt is a great boost for the entire team.”

After three years on bikes, a stint that notably saw him save fellow rider CS Santosh after a near-fatal accident in 2021, Spierings made the switch to SSVs in 2022 and finished twenty-first in class overall. He improved to fourteenth in 2023 with a best daily finish of seventh in Stage #12; it was one of four top-ten stage finishes alongside an eighth in Stage #8 and a pair of ninths in Stages #10 and #13.

In contrast to the 36-year-old Spierings, Grouwels is nearly twice as old at 58 and made his Dakar début in 2023. Competing in the T3 class, his race ended after nine stages with his highest placement being twenty-second in Stage #6.

Grouwels hails from the world of pavement racing, primarily competing in the Ferrari Challenge and GT series. He won the Supercar Challenge’s Super GT championship in 2014 and 2015, along with the Ferrari Challenge Europe’s Coppa Shell Pro Am title in 2020; he also secured the world championship in the latter campaign. In 2022, he finished second in the Supercar Challenge GT standings with a weekend sweep at Zolder.

After last appearing at a NASCAR Xfinity Series race weekend in April, Jesse Iwuji Motorsports will return in July at the Chicago Street Race with Andre Castro, a graduate of the College of the University of Chicago and open-wheel driver. He will race the #34 Chevrolet Camaro.

Castro, who graduated in 2022, won the Team USA Scholarship the year before which allowed him to complete overseas in the Formula Ford Festival, where he finished third in the Grand Final.

While much of his career has been in open-wheel racing, he is no stranger to stock cars. In 2019, Castro raced in the NASCAR Whelen Euro Series Elite 2 (now EuroNASCAR 2) division and finished eighteenth in points with four podiums including three runner-ups. While he only entered the first four races in 2020, notching a fourth in his last start at Zolder, he helped give DF1 Racing an early advantage during the COVID-impacted season by winning the EuroNASCAR Esports Series title to provide a forty-point boost in the real-life team championship.

Since earning the Scholarship, Castro focused almost exclusively on the open-wheel ladder by racing in the USF2000 National Championship and USF Juniors. In the latter’s inaugural season in 2022, he placed fifth in the standings with a best finish of second at Barber. Castro graduated to USF2000 for 2023, but only ran the season opener in St. Petersburg before being sidelined by a lack of funding.

In May, the Colombian-American was named one of ten candidates for the 2024/25 IMSA Diverse Driver Development Scholarship.

Grant Enfinger will make his NASCAR Cup Series début on Sunday at Sonoma Raceway, though not in the circumstances that anyone would have wished as he will replace the injured Noah Gragson in the #42 Chevrolet Camaro ZL1 for Legacy Motor Club. The team announced the driver substitution on Thursday.

Gragson suffered a concussion in the most recent race at Gateway when his brake rotor failed—an unusually common trend that day—and sent him barrelling into the turn one wall. The impact resulted in fluid leaking from his car that necessitated a red flag for track cleanup, while Gragson was evaluated and eventually released from the infield care centre. He began to experience concussion-like symptoms after returning home to North Carolina, though some observed his behaviour was already affected during his interview after leaving the medical centre.

He is almost certain to receive a waiver to take part in the playoffs should he be eligible. Fifteen races into the 2023 season, the rookie is thirty-second in points with a best finish of twelfth at Atlanta, meaning he will likely need to win to qualify.

The injury adds to a difficult year for Legacy Motor Club, who has struggled mightily on track, and is another knife twist as it comes a day after team-mate Erik Jones was docked sixty points for a greenhouse violation. Many have also raised concerns about yet another concussion suffered in a Next Gen car accident, with Alex Bowman and Kurt Busch getting hurt in 2022, and the latter has stepped away from full-time competition since due to his injury; ironically, NASCAR had announced safety upgrades to the car earlier on Thursday

“Noah’s health is the highest of priorities and we commend him for making the decision to sit out this weekend,” reads a joint statement from Legacy co-owners Maury Gallagher and Jimmie Johnson. “We are appreciative that Grant was available and willing to step in since the Truck Series is off this weekend.”

The World Rally-Raid Championship‘s 2024 schedule will not be released until July, but one known round following the season-opening Dakar Rally is the introduction of a race on the Iberian Peninsula that goes through Portugal and Spain. David Castera, director of the Dakar Rally, revealed the new calendar slot at the Dakar Tour in Prague on Thursday.

The inaugural W2RC in 2022 concluded with the Andalucía Rally in southern Spain, having moved to the final race of the season from its original June date due to a heat wave in the region. It was removed from the 2023 calendar, ending a three-year run for the rally.

On the Portuguese side, the Pax Rally was part of the first Dakar Series in 2008, a “mini championship” to replace that year’s Dakar Rally following cancellation. In 2021, Portugal was supposed to welcome the FIA World Cup for Cross-Country Rallies (predecessor to the W2RC) with the BP Ultimate Portugal Cross-Country Rally, but COVID-19 travel restrictions resulted in its cancellation.

Both countries sanction cross-country rally championships with Spain’s Campeonato Español de Rallies Todo Terreno (CERTT) and Portugal’s Campeonato Portugal de Todo-o-terreno (CPTT). The 2023 CERTT season began in March and is currently three rounds in, while the CPTT’s is in its summer break after four races. Each championship also hosts rounds in conjunction with the World Cup for Cross-Country Bajas with the Baja España Aragón and Baja Portalegre, and the Portuguese Baja TT Sharish Reguengos Mourão is on the European Cup schedule as well.

While Andalucía and the Pax Rally were exclusively held in their respective countries, the Transibérico Rally ran through both in the 2000s and was part of the World Cup for Cross-Country Rallies. Carlos Sainz won his maiden rally raid in the 2007 edition before going on to enjoy a decorated career at the Dakar Rally with three victories.

At the NASCAR Cup Series‘ Talladega Superspeedway round in April, Kyle Larson‘s day ended in wild fashion when his car slid up the track amid a multi-driver crash and was T-boned by Ryan Preece at such high speed that his door bar broke off its original location while the passenger’s side door was partially torn off.

In response to such a destructive wreck, NASCAR announced Thursday the introduction of various safety changes to the Next Gen car that will first be rolled out at Atlanta Motor Speedway on 9 July. Atlanta is a 1.5-mile track but its current configuration promotes superspeedway-style racing akin to what is seen at Talladega.

The front clip and strut of the car have been softened through means like adding slots and holes to the front ballast box, which must remain empty at all times. The cross brace is also different.

On the right-side door, a steel plate approximately .060 inches thick has been added and is now required for all cars. The opposite side has two plate gussets and the driver’s side of the cage is also supported by additional tubing.

“We’ve taken a lot of the steel structural members and removed material from key elements to make this structure less stiff,” commented NASCAR vice president of safety engineering Dr. John Patalak. “We have slots on both sides, we have deleted some cross members between the upright mounts and we’ve treated some of the areas down low that are some of the first to contact the wall on the front clip. We’ve also added slots to this ballast container as well as some holes, and it’s all an effort to increase the amount of displacement we’re getting out of the car and to reduce the accelerations that the driver is experiencing.

Christian Rose will make his NASCAR début in the Craftsman Truck Series at Richmond Raceway, driving the #22 Ford F-150 for AM Racing.

Rose is a rookie on the ARCA Menards Series circuit with AM, where he sits sixth in points and has a pair of top tens in his most recent races. He ran eight races in 2022 and notched a seventh at Kansas while also doing much of the ARCA Menards Series East schedule, finishing seventh in the latter’s standings.

“This is an unbelievable moment,” said Rose. “Everyone at AM Racing has been incredible not only from the ARCA Menards Series side, but assisting in helping this transition to the NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series. It really is a dream come true.”

Richmond is Rose’s de facto home track on the Truck Series circuit, located approximately three hours away from his hometown of Martinsburg, West Virginia. Other starts are also planned throughout 2023, including in the Xfinity Series.

The #22 is twenty-eighth in owner points with Logan Bearden, Chase Briscoe, Max Gutiérrez, Mason Maggio, Stephen Mallozzi, Josh Reaume, and Josh Williams. Briscoe holds its best run of the season so far with a seventh at Bristol.

Mahindra Racing Team Principal Frederic Bertrand has accepted that the 2022/23 ABB FIA Formula E World Championship has become a season for “learning and rebuilding”, after another couple of challenging races in Jakarta.

The Indian manufacturer again found themselves at the back at the Jakarta E-Prix, as Lucas Di Grassi and debutant Roberto Merhi failed to score a point. Whilst Di Grassi salvaged fourteenth in both races, qualifying was again the side’s biggest downfall.

Qualifying ahead of the bottom two rows seems like an impossible task currently, with Mahindra leaving themselves with too much work to do in the races. Despite their struggles which have seen them fall to tenth in the Constructors’ Championship, Bertrand is convinced that his side will eventually get back towards the front of the field, as a result of the team’s “fighting spirit”.

“What a hot weekend in Jakarta! Of course, we would have hoped for more, but we now know that this season is turning into more of a learning and rebuilding year. Lucas did a great job making up multiple places during both races and Roberto settled into the team and the car more and more each session. It is the first time he has driven a car of this kind and I think he handled it really well.

“Of course, we still have a lot of work to do, and we don’t pretend that it is going to be an easy end to the season results wise, but thankfully our team has a good fighting spirit and we will not give up. We have the support from our partners and crucially, the wider Mahindra Group to make the necessary changes to bring Mahindra Racing back to the front of Formula E.”

2023 has not been kind to Legacy Motor Club and Erik Jones, and it only threw another punch in the gut for him Wednesday as NASCAR has issued an L1-level penalty for a modification to the car’s greenhouse. Jones and his #43 Chevrolet Camaro ZL1 lose sixty points each in the driver’s and owner’s championships, the former also being docked five playoff points, while his crew chief Dave Elenz has been fined USD$75,000 (€70,139.25) and suspended for the next two races.

Jones’ car was taken to the NASCAR’s Research & Development Center following Sunday’s Cup Series race at World Wide Technology Raceway at Gateway, where he finished eighteenth.

The greenhouse is situated above the door and between the front and rear windows. Under Sections 14.1.C and D of the rulebook, as well as 14.1.2.B, the greenhouse “may be modified to accommodate a windshield wiper motor where required” but its dimensions must remain within regulation. Still, some teams have tried to skirt the rules for aerodynamic purposes.

The infraction was the same that befell Alex Bowman and William Byron from fellow Chevrolet team Hendrick Motorsports in April.

“We acknowledge the penalty issued by NASCAR and are working within the team to determine the course of action,” reads a team statement.

Former Formula E Champion Lucas Di Grassi endured another challenging weekend at the Jakarta E-Prix, as his point-less streak extended to ten races.

The Brazilian is certainly trying incredibly hard to get Mahindra Racing back into the points; however, the Indian manufacturer currently just aren’t good enough. Di Grassi finished fourteenth in both races in the Indonesian capital, with him openly admitting that the team will “always struggle” if they keep qualifying towards the back of the grid.

Di Grassi qualified twenty-first on Saturday and nineteenth on Sunday, making a points finish virtually impossible. The Formula E veteran admits that the team are working “very hard day and night” to get back into the points; however, they once again need to “analyse the data” ahead of the next race.

“It was not a good weekend. We tried everything we could and worked very hard day and night to try to score some points but sadly didn’t find that thing we needed to quite get there. It’s very frustrating and we need to go back home and analyse the data to understand what we need to do for the next race. I thought both races were actually alright.

“I pushed hard and didn’t make any major mistakes and overtook some cars, but starting that far back, we will always struggle to make significant progress. We now move on to Portland.”