Motorsports Racing News & Blog Articles

Kamui Kobayashi is taking his legendary sports car résumé to the stock car world. On Wednesday, at a press conference leading up to the 24 Hours of Le Mans, Toyota announced he will make his NASCAR Cup Series début at Indianapolis Motor Speedway on 13 August, driving the #67 Toyota Camry for 23XI Racing.

Kobayashi is regarded as one of the best sports car racers today, having won the 24 Hours of Le Mans in 2021 and a pair of FIA World Endurance Championships for Toyota Gazoo Racing, whom he also runs as team principal. He and his team currently sit second in the WEC’s Hypercar standings, with two wins at Sebring and Spa, and is coming off a runner-up finish in the 2022 edition of Le Mans. He also has a pair of 24 Hours of Daytona overall victories to his name with Cadillac; his two latest runs in 2021 and 2022 came alongside fellow Le Mans winner Mike Rockenfeller and NASCAR great Jimmie Johnson, both of whom are racing a Cup car at Le Mans as part of the Garage 56 programme.

Outside of sports cars, he was a veteran in open-wheel cars and competed in Formula One for Toyota, Sauber, and Caterham from 2009 to 2014. He scored his lone podium at his home race in the 2012 Japanese Grand Prix. The 36-year-old has raced full-time in Super Formula since 2022, finishing seventeenth in the 2022 championship and running thirteenth four races into 2023.

The Amagasaki native will be the second Japanese native to compete in the Cup Series after Hideo Fukuyama did four races in 2002 and 2003, and the seventh in any national division joining Shigeaki Hattori, Kenji Momota, Kenkō Miura, Akinori Ogata, and Toshio Suzuki. However, Kobayashi is the first to do so for Toyota at the Cup level; Ogata and Miura raced Toyotas in the Xfinity and Craftsman Truck Series, while the American-born Ryan Ellis is the first of Japanese descent to race a Toyota in Cup.

“NASCAR is something different in the culture of motorsports compared to Japan and Europe. As a driver, it’s the American dream,” Kobayashi stated. “I was lucky to be able to race in IMSA the last couple of years. It’s a different form of racing, but I think the racing technology is at a high level.”

Thomas Biermaier, Team Principal of the ABT CUPRA Formula E Team is aware that his side have a “lot of work” to do in order to become a midfield side, with the Germans currently requiring the “perfect lap” to get amongst those ahead of them.

ABT CUPRA endured a mixed Jakarta E-Prix double-header, with Saturday having been a significantly better day than Sunday. On Saturday, ahead of the tenth round of the 2022/23 ABB FIA Formula E World Championship, Robin Frijns made it into the duels and claimed seventh on the grid, whilst Nico Müller qualified ninth. Frijns went on to claim his first top ten of the season after finishing ninth, with Müller just missing out on the points in eleventh. It was nevertheless a “strong” day for team.

Sunday was significantly more difficult, with the longer race having worked very much against them. Müller qualified seventeenth with Frijns in twenty-second, as ABT CUPRA returned to reality. Müller went on to finish the eleventh round in twelfth, with Frijns in thirteenth.

The main positive for the team is that they scored more points; however, they remain comfortably at the bottom of the Constructors’ Championship. Biermaier is aware that his side aren’t yet capable of “consistently” fighting the midfield teams, something they’re targeting going into Portland.

“Many thanks for the efforts of the whole team, who worked hard under difficult conditions and always kept a cool head. Saturday we made it through to the duels in qualifying and scored points from our own steam in the race – that was strong! But for us to achieve something like that, it takes a perfect lap in qualifying and also a perfect day in other respects, which we weren’t able to repeat on Sunday.

Robin Frijns successfully secured his first top ten result of the season last weekend at the Jakarta E-Prix, as the Dutchman endured a mixed double-header in the Indonesian capital.

Saturday was a considerably better day for Frijns than Sunday, as the ABT CUPRA Formula E Team driver seventh in qualifying into a ninth place finish. It was an excellent day for Frijns who claimed his first points of the season which weren’t from his pole position in Berlin. Sunday though, was considerably more challenging, as he could only salvage thirteenth in the eleventh round of the 2022/23 ABB FIA Formula E World Championship. Given that he started last, thirteenth marked a solid recovery.

Frijns was pleased to see the team take further “steps forward” in Jakarta following a positive few rounds, with the aim now being to keep pushing as the season moves towards its climax.

“These were two very tough races physically, where we had to go to our physical limits. We made small steps forward here as well, even if you can hardly see them in the results. We are moving in the right direction and will not let up in the final third of the season. Portland is completely new territory for all the teams and drivers, so we’re all starting with a blank sheet of paper.”

“We came back to the hard ground of reality” – Nico Müller

Nico Müller also looked much stronger on Saturday than he did on Sunday, with the shorter race distance in race one having seemingly suited ABT CUPRA. Müller just missed out on the points Saturday after finishing eleventh, whilst he also came close to the top ten on Sunday after finishing twelfth.

James Key has been announced as the new Technical Director of Alfa Romeo F1 Team Stake, and he will join his new team from 1 September 2023.

Key will link up again with his former Team Principal at the McLaren F1 Team, Andreas Seidl, who became the CEO of the Sauber Group earlier this year. Key will take over the role from current Technical Director Jan Monchaux.

Key left McLaren earlier this year after an underwhelming start to the 2023 FIA Formula 1 World Championship season, and his appointment sees him return to the team where he acted as Technical Director between 2010 and 2012 when they were known as the Sauber F1 Team.

2023 will be the last year of the Alfa Romeo-Sauber link-up, with the team set to revert back to the Sauber name in 2024.  However, in 2026 they will become the works Audi Sport team in Formula 1, something Key is eager to build up to.

“I am delighted to be returning to Hinwil to work with old, and new, colleagues at Sauber; I have very fond memories of my time there before,” said Key.  “I am looking forward to leading the technical side of the team at one of the most critical junctures of its long history as we head towards a new and exciting future.

Alessandro Alunni Bravi says the outcome of the Spanish Grand Prix showed that Alfa Romeo F1 Team Stake are ready to fight from lights out to chequered flag and for every single tenth of a second as Zhou Guanyu scored only their third top ten finish of the 2023 FIA Formula 1 World Championship season.

Zhou finished on the road in tenth but was promoted to ninth courtesy of a time penalty handed out to Scuderia AlphaTauri’s Yuki Tsunoda for forcing the Chinese driver off the track at turn one as the two battled for position.

It was not as good a result for Valtteri Bottas as the Finn struggled to nineteenth after taking early damage to his floor, perhaps after running over debris on the opening lap.

However, Alunni Bravi, the Team Representative at Alfa Romeo, says the team had a solid race overall, with good calls from the pit wall complementing strong drives on track.

“Today, we showed that we’re ready to fight for every single lap, every single tenth of a second on track,” said Alunni Bravi.  “We have shown that, working together with determination and as a team, we can deliver the result we all, and our drivers, deserve.

Zhou Guanyu equalled his best finish of the 2023 FIA Formula 1 World Championship season on Sunday when he took ninth place in the Spanish Grand Prix in what he felt was one of his more complete weekends of the year so far.

The Chinese driver had a strong afternoon at the Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya and was a top ten contender all day long, and although he finished on the road in tenth, a time penalty for Scuderia AlphaTauri’s Yuki Tsunoda for forcing the Alfa Romeo F1 Team Stake driver off the road at turn one as the two battled it out handed him ninth.

Zhou felt his performances on both Saturday and Sunday were amongst his best of his Formula 1 career to date, with good qualifying being followed by a well-executed and well-managed race.

“I really enjoyed today, it was a well-executed race from my side: I think these have been some of the best two days for me in Formula 1, in terms of performance,” said Zhou.  “I had a good first lap, and that was crucial to give us the opportunity to get something out of this race: our pace was strong, although there were times in which we had to manage our tyres wisely.

“I knew I had to keep the pressure on the others to bring home a result and, when the opportunity was there, I tried to force them to make a mistake.

RSS Racing will be a four-car stable for this weekend’s NASCAR Xfinity Series event at Sonoma Raceway as they have created the #29 Ford Mustang, which Alex Labbé will pilot.

Kyle Sieg was originally scheduled to drive the car prior to the team adding Labbé. While Sieg was running the full schedule in the #28, Aric Almirola is set to pilot that at Sonoma. With older brother Ryan Sieg in the #39 and Joe Graf Jr. in the #38, the younger Sieg will have to drop his full-time plans pending a last-minute ride and instead focus on the ARCA Menards Series West race that day.

“We registered the #29 and will race that at Aonoma with @AlexLabbe36,” the team explained on Twitter Tuesday. “He will be a great addition to the team on a road course. @KyleSieg39 will get his laps in running the #46 in the ARCA race.”

After being a series regular for five years, Labbé scaled back to a part-time slate with just seven starts to date in 2023 for RSS and DGM Racing due to a lack of sponsorship. His best run is eleventh at Richmond and last Saturday at Portland. The latter was the second road course race of 2023 after COTA, where he finished fifteenth.

Kyle Sieg was twenty-fourth in points entering Sonoma with eleventh also being his highest finish of the season at Charlotte.

BWT Alpine F1 Team Principal Otmar Szafnauer described the Spanish Grand Prix as a “tough” campaign where strategy played a major role. The team ended up with five points on the board between Esteban Ocon and Pierre Gasly, both earning top ten results for the third round in a row. 

“We come away from the Spanish Grand Prix with five points after Esteban finished eighth and Pierre tenth. It was a tough race with varying strategies and gameplans.”

Ocon had a strong qualifying to start in sixth, though he wasn’t quite able to hang onto the position on race day– Szafnauer said that there are some improvements that they’ll aim be looking to make for the Canadian Grand Prix. 

“For Esteban he did a good job to be in the mix for the top six, just missing out in the end and there are certainly a couple of aspects from his race to be improved for next time.”

On the other side of the garage, Szafnauer praised Gasly’s ability to recover from his grid penalty– which saw him drop from an impressive fourth place down to tenth– as well as a rough start to the race that lost him four positions.

Apache Automotive plans to be the next manufacturer competing in the World Rally-Raid Championship‘s T3 category for Light Prototypes, and will do so with what the Belgian company calls “the most advanced T3 prototype ever designed.” Known as the Apache APH-01, the car was revealed on Saturday.

According to French journalist Gael Robic, the APH-01 will have an electric motor on the front axle as well as a three-cylinder Peugeot internal combustion engine at the rear. It will also operate on second-generation biofuels, which can be derived from non-food biomass and waste and involves breaking down cellulose into fuel. The Peugeot motor can produce 150 kW of power while the motor generator unit adds 50 kW.

The car is 3,850 cm long, 1,850 cm wide, and 1,950 cm tall. Its bodywork comes from flax fibre while the dashboard is manufactured using recycled carbon. Intended to be a substitute for traditional carbon fibre, flax fibre is a composite material made from flax plant and is lighter, which allows for more weight reduction while still maintaining strength.

It is intended to meet the FIA’s T3.U regulations for hybrid Light Prototypes. T3.U, the U standing for “Ultimate”, will make its formal competition début in 2024; Ultimate subcategories were introduced starting at the top T1 division with vehicles like Audi’s RS Q e-tron.

As a hybrid, it also uses regenerative braking technology and plans to reduce fuel consumption by twenty percent.

NEOM McLaren Formula E Team endured a very disappointing weekend at the Jakarta E-Prix double-header, as the Woking-based side slipped to seventh in the 2022/23 ABB FIA Formula E World Championship.

McLaren left the Indonesian capital with just a point, which came courtesy of Jake Hughes finishing tenth on Saturday. The rookie actually did remarkably well to finish tenth, given that he started the race in twentieth. René Rast on the other hand, finished Saturday’s race in fifteenth, despite having made it to the duels in qualifying.

Sunday is where everything went wrong for the British team though, as Hughes retired and Rast finished fifteenth once again. Both drivers suffered from some sort of issue during the second race of the weekend, with Team Principal Ian James admitting that clearly “something was fundamentally wrong”. The aim now is to “understand what exactly happened”, with the bad weekend having seen McLaren slip outside the top six in the standings for the first time this season.

“Today was clearly a massive disappointment for the team,” James said after Sunday’s race.

“It’s one thing to come away from an event knowing you were in the fight but, to be frank, we were never really in the race today at all. We’re still trying to understand what actually happened, but the fact that Jake started to fall back early on and René towards the latter stages of the race indicates that something was fundamentally wrong.

The last time Brent Sherman raced in the NASCAR Xfinity Series was two title sponsors ago and in his early thirties. Now approaching fifty years old, he is set to make his return when he runs the Chicago Street Race on 1 July in the #28 Ford Mustang for RSS Racing.

Sherman, who is from the Chicago area, raced in the Xfinity Series when it was known as the Busch Series from 2004 to 2007, doing part-time schedules until the final year when he ran all but three races and finished twenty-third in points. His best career finish was ninth at Talladega in 2005.

He also made sporadic Cup starts in 2006, which included running the Daytona 500, while his last national series action was in the Craftsman Truck Series in 2009 at Chicagoland Speedway, finishing sixteenth in his final start.

His career eventually went dormant since as he focused on family and business as the owner of a laundromat and commercial building. Sherman’s most recent start in any major stock car series was a one-off at Chicagoland in the now-ARCA Menards Series in 2016, where he placed ninth.

“I’m excited for this opportunity to race in front of so many family and friends in Chicago,” said Sherman. “When I started racing, I was 24, a little late to be embarking on a racing career. I moved quickly through the ranks, but sponsorship became harder to acquire. The last time I competed full time was in 2008, my kids were young, and I ultimately made the decision to step away to focus on raising my family and building my business.

BWT Alpine F1 Team’s Esteban Ocon felt that his eighth place at the Spanish Grand Prix was the maximum they could have achieved. He was content with four points he earned, though he said that the pace of A523 couldn’t quite hold up to the front-runners.

 “We leave Barcelona with double points again so I think we can be satisfied with our work this weekend. We finished eighth in the end and I don’t think there was much more we could have done today, with our race pace perhaps lacking a bit compared to our competitors who finished in front.”

Overall, Ocon was pleased with how the weekend played out, particularly with his Saturday result, qualifying in seventh place before being promoted to sixth on the grid due to his team-mate’s six-place grid penalty for impeding during qualifying. 

The French driver is pleased with the team’s recent streak of performances– with three rounds in succession ending with double-points results– though he concedes that there is still much to be done in order to keep up their form. 

“We’ll definitely take a look to see how we can improve that but, overall, it was a strong Saturday and a decent Sunday for us. We can be proud of the last couple of weeks but we know there is work to do to keep heading in the right direction.”

Jake Hughes somewhat returned to reality last weekend at the Jakarta E-Prix, following on from his sensational performance in Monaco.

The rookie endured a “challenging” weekend at the tenth and eleventh rounds of the 2022/23 ABB FIA Formula E World Championship, as he left Southeast Asia with just a point. That point came in Saturday’s race, where he finished tenth. He did remarkably well to recover from twentieth on the grid, following an error in qualifying.

Hughes boasted good energy management and made excellent progress, something which gave him confidence for Sunday’s race.

“It was a challenging day, but we ended on a positive. I think we had strong pace in Qualifying over one lap – it was just the lap that mattered where we didn’t have the car in the window. Earlier on in the session, we could’ve done a lap that would’ve been good enough for P3, and we boxed that lap, but that was always planned. Maybe we should’ve finished that lap, but that’s easy to say in hindsight.

“We’ll put our learnings from that into practice for the second race here tomorrow. Due to Qualifying, we started the race in P20 and to finish P10 and earn a point is a good result. We were good with our energy management and the car balance was good. We go again tomorrow, and hopefully we can finish in the points again.” 

Two-time Formula E Champion Jean-Éric Vergne admits he has a “lot of work to do” to remain in the fight for the 2022/23 ABB FIA Formula E World Championship, following a complicated two races at the Jakarta E-Prix.

Vergne entered the weekend very much in the fight for the championship; however, he’s somewhat now out of touch with the leading quartet. His weekend started well on Saturday though, as he claimed a solid fifth-place finish. The Frenchman was pleased after Saturday in what was a “challenging” day for everyone, given the heat and humidity.

“Overall, a positive day. Starting on the dirty side of the track made me lose a position that I couldn’t gain back afterwards, so fifth was the best I could do today. They were very tricky conditions, the track was dirty and I had very little grip. So, it was probably one of the toughest races in terms of trying to keep the car on the track. It was challenging. But overall, it was a good number of points for the team so that’s the positive and we keep moving forward.”

Sunday unfortunately, wasn’t a good day for the DS Penske driver, as front wing damage cost him a points finish. Vergne was forced to pit for a new front wing which demoted him to the back of the field, having been in ninth at the time. He ultimately crossed the line in sixteenth, resulting in him losing considerable points to his rivals.

Following Sunday’s race, Vergne is now fifth in the Drivers’ Championship and thirty-seven points behind Pascal Wehrlein, with just five races remaining. Vergne will need a huge end to the season to pullback the points difference, as a result of his “very frustrating” end to the weekend.

Mike Krack believes it was the first stint of the Spanish Grand Prix that left the Aston Martin Aramco Cognizant Formula 1 Team with too much to do to fight for a podium finish on Sunday, but it was still pleasing to see the team score fourteen points.

Lance Stroll ended the race at the Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya in sixth place having run as high as third in the opening laps, just ahead of team-mate Fernando Alonso, and Krack says both drivers were pushing hard all afternoon long to maximise Aston Martin’s points haul.

Krack, the Team Principal of the Silverstone-based outfit, says the team cannot be disappointed with the result, even if they did slip behind the Mercedes-AMG Petronas Formula One Team in the Constructors’ Championship standings.

And Krack feels the pace of the AMR23 after the first stint struggles was strong enough to comfortably see them finish ahead of Esteban Ocon and the BWT Alpine F1 Team in eighth place.

“It was good to have both Aston Martins finish well this afternoon and we come away from Barcelona with 14 points,” said Krack.  “Lance and Fernando pushed hard all afternoon, made some important overtakes, and showed great teamwork.