Motorsports Racing News & Blog Articles

The Superstar Racing Experience‘s Thunder Road Speedbowl date on 20 July just got a little nicer. On Friday, the series announced Greg Biffle will return to the series for the race, where he is expected to bring back his “iconic” #69.

“I am so excited to return to the SRX series for a third season,” said Biffle. “What I look forward to the most is getting to compete with twelve of the best drivers in the world and see new race tracks. I can’t wait to experience Thunder Road for the first time.”

Biffle has competed in SRX since the inaugural season in 2021, including the full 2022 schedule. While he has yet to win a race, he has been consistently competitive with three heat wins and a pair of runner-up finishes in the inaugural race at Stafford in 2021 and at South Boston the following year. He finished fifth in the 2022 standings.

Recently named one of NASCAR’s 75 Greatest Drivers, he has a combined fifty-six wins across the three NASCAR national tiers and a pair of championships in the Xfinity and Craftsman Truck Series. His most recent action came in the Cup Series in 2022 when he ran five races for NY Racing Team including the Daytona 500.

The 53-year-old’s motorsport experience also includes IROC, sports cars, Stadium Super Trucks, and UTV racing.

The Sonora Rally came to a close Friday with a 139-km run from Puerto Peñasco to San Luis Río Colorado. Some classes saw upheavals in the World Rally-Raid Championship while others were tales of utter domination.

Rally2 and T3 were cases of the latter as Romain Dumontier and Rokas Baciuška won their respective classes in every stage. Dumontier’s closest rival Jacob Argubright tailed him until the final stage but could only finish over seventeen seconds back, while Prologue winner Bradley Cox was plagued by mechanical troubles.

Unlike Dumontier, Baciuška completed a clean sweep by claiming all six days including the Prologue. He iced the win in Stage #5 by beating Rebecca Busi by over thirteen minutes; Eduard Pons had finished nine minutes back of Baciuška but received fifteen minutes of penalties.

On the other hand, the “three-numbered” categories of Rally3 and T3 saw David Zille and Ardit Kurtaj score their first stage wins to end the rally. Zille had been in the top five overall before a broken wheel hub in Stage #4 tumbled him down the order, but he rebounded on the final day when he edged out overall winner Mitch Guthrie by just twenty-one seconds.

Kurtaj’s win denied Massimo Camurri a chance to go six-for-six as he had won every leg. Nevertheless, Camurri’s domination and his rivals’ various troubles enabled him to take the overall with nearly one and a half hours on Kurtaj.

Rally raid can be described as a marriage of off-road racing and orienteering as competitors find their ways around checkpoints with the help of a roadbook. Should the roadbook have an error, however…

Stage #4 of the Sonora Rally took a bizarre turn (literally) when multiple riders got lost due to a typo in the FIM roadbook that stated “CAP 298” at KM 76.84 instead of the intended CAP 233. In layman’s terms, CAP is the compass heading that indicates which degree that a competitor should head; for example, CAP 0 would mean 0° on a compass and straight north. In this predicament’s case, CAP 298 means 298° or west-north-west, when riders should have gone southwest at 223°.

Such a mistake was spotted by some riders when they realised the path ahead of them on what was written did not match the drawings in the roadbook. Among those who overruled the book’s content were Toby Price, who took the lead at the fourth checkpoint and held off Tosha Schareina to win by twenty-three seconds.

“I didn’t have any problems, but I know a few did, so it’ll be a bit of a messy day results-wise,” wrote Price. “Still, my day has gone well, and I was pushing the whole way, just trying to do my best for the championship standings. One day to go, so I’ll keep things safe and try and stay on two wheels.”

“I was opening the road again for the lads and came across a few tricky and interesting notes that didn’t really make sense,” overall leader Daniel Sanders recalled. He finished the stage in fourth after a late error caused him to lose time, but he still leads Schareina in the overall by 5:42 with one leg to go. “One note we followed had a different degree to what matched the drawing, I took a risk and trusted the drawing over the cap and it made sense 10km later down that track. It was a sickening feeling today out front as things didn’t quite match sometimes for me, I rode pretty cautiously as I have everything to lose right now.”

The Ford Ranger Raptor passed its racing début with flying colours when Brad Lovell piloted the truck to the finish of the SCORE International Baja 1000, the toughest off-road race in North America, in November. On 9–12 June, the truck will cross the Pacific Ocean to try its hand at Australia’s equivalent event, the Tatts Finke Desert Race. Lovell will compete in the Production 4WD category.

“Bringing the Ranger Raptor to the Finke Desert Race is the next stage of Ford Performance’s strategic global racing plan,” Ford Performance Motorsports global director Mark Rushbrook stated. “Ranger is our flagship platform for global off-road racing, and after conquering the Baja 1000 in the Stock Mid-Size class, we decided the next stop should be back to Australia, where the production truck was developed, to tackle the toughest off-road race down under.

“We know this truck has all the requirements to be successful at this event, but we’re not going to be resting on our laurels. This will be a full Ford Performance effort to ensure we are putting our best foot forward for this event.”

The Ranger Raptor is a collaborative project between Ford Performance, Lovell’s eponymous team, former Supercars team Kelly Racing, and Australian automotive parts supplier ARB 4×4 Accessories. The involvement of Australian parties is based on the Ranger Raptor being produced in the country rather than in America. Lovell, a 2022 Off-Road Motorsports Hall of Fame inductee, races a traditional Ford Bronco in Ultra4.

Kelly built the truck before it was brought to the Americas for testing and eventual racing at the Baja 1000. While the only entry in the Stock Mid-Size class class for production pickup trucks, Lovell and his team-mates Jason Hutter and Australian Off Road Racing Championship regulars Andy and Danny Brown successfully completed the race. Their time was good for eighty-third overall of 136 total finishers.

Scuderia Ferrari Team Principal Frédéric Vasseur outlined the team’s efforts since the last race weekend at the Australian Grand Prix, where the team came away empty-handed with zero points, with Charles Leclerc retiring due to a first lap spin and Carlos Sainz receiving a highly-influential penalty for causing a collision.

In the several weeks since Melbourne, Vasseur said that the team has been focused heavily on developing the car and planning for upgrades that will be introduced as the season moves forward. 

“It’s been almost a month since the last Grand Prix and in that time we have been working hard in Maranello on the development of the SF-23, both in terms of improving the current car package as well as moving forward with the planned updates that will be gradually introduced over the course of the coming races.”

In spite of their unfortunate result at Albert Park Circuit, Vasseur was encouraged by their pace. Though his controversial penalty saw him fall out of the points, Sainz was able to work his way through the grid after an unlucky strategy call and end up challenging for a podium finish in the race’s final stages.

Vasseur believes that the team will continue to improve on the performance front at the Azerbaijan Grand Prix, having seen the progress made last time out. 

Kasey Kahne has not done much pavement racing since retiring from NASCAR at the end of 2018, but that will change on 3 August when he makes his Superstar Racing Experience début at Berlin Raceway.

“I am looking forward to racing on pavement again and being a part of the SRX series,” Kahne stated.

Kahne is an eighteen-time NASCAR Cup Series race winner and is one of forty-one drivers with victories in all three national divisions (Xfinity and Truck). Although he only has six Truck starts to his name, he also possesses one of the most dominant win rates there as he won five times while the lone non-victory was a runner-up finish.

He retired from NASCAR after a 2018 season shortened by medical problems. In the five years since, he returned to his roots in sprint car racing and currently competes full-time in the World of Outlaws, where he sits twelfth in points.

In early April, he was named one of NASCAR’s 75 Greatest Drivers.

The Morocco Desert Challenge was marred by tragedy for the second day in a row as bike racer Bram van der Wouden passed away during Thursday’s stage after suffering from heat stroke and exhaustion. He was 48 years old.

Van der Wouden, competing solo as a Malle Moto rider, was spotted by other competitors lying on the ground next to his Sherco bike. Medical assistance arrived to treat him, but he had already succumbed to his ailments. He was coming off a stage finish of twenty-seventh.

He grew up in motocross before trying out amateur rally raids in RBI Sport’s Fenix Rally and Balkan Offroad Rallye. In 2020, he competed in the Africa Eco Race with plans of later running the Dakar Rally for the first time but pushed the effort to 2022 while undergoing hand surgery. Competing in the Malle Moto (formally Original by Motul) category, he broke a rib and bruised three more in a Stage #2 crash before retiring with mechanical failure after seven legs.

The Dutchman had hoped to return to Dakar in 2023 but called it off upon noticing the smaller field of bikes as the field was capped at 100. He intended to run events like the MDC to prepare for Dakar 2024.

He is survived by two daughters.

Spire Motorsports will push back their maiden NASCAR Xfinity Series race by a week to 13 May at Darlington Raceway, where they will field the #77 Chevrolet Camaro for Carson Hocevar.

The postponement was spurred by weather concerns as rain is forecast at Dover Motor Speedway through the weekend.

“Due to the poor forecast scheduled for Dover this weekend, that will likely cancel qualifying, Spire Motorsports has decided to withdraw Carson Hocevar and its #77 car from Saturday’s Xfinity Series race,” reads a team statement. “We look forward to having Carson in the #77 Premier Security Chevy at Darlington Raceway on May 13th.”

Spire fields two Cup Series Camaros and a part-time Craftsman Truck Series Silverado, with one win in each series. The Xfinity programme was formed in March with plans of running six races with Hocevar, who would have made his series début at Dover but ended up doing so sooner than expected at COTA in place of the replaced Blaine Perkins at SS-Green Light Racing. He finished thirty-eighth after suffering a transmission failure just seven laps in.

Hocevar is in his third full season of Truck racing with Niece Motorsports, and currently sits thirteenth in points with his first career win coming at Texas. In three Truck starts at Darlington, he has a pair of top fives including a runner-up in 2022.

Despite a pointless start to the 2023 FIA Formula 1 World Championship for Nyck de Vries, Jody Egginton believes his feedback and development promise are already helping Scuderia AlphaTauri improve their AT04 car.

The Dutchman joined AlphaTauri to replace BWT Alpine F1 Team bound Pierre Gasly after leaving his role as test and reserve driver with the Mercedes-AMG Petronas Formula One Team. De Vries made his Formula 1 race debut in the 2022 Italian Grand Prix for Williams Racing as a stand-in for an unwell Alexander Albon and secured a ninth-place finish, the equal best result for the team across last season.

De Vries is one of only two drivers yet to score points in 2023 alongside Williams’ Logan Sargeant, but despite this, Egginton, the Technical Director at AlphaTauri, says he has been contributing ideas on how to bring improvements to the car as they bid to improve on their ninth place standing in the Constructors’ Championship.

Egginton says it is important to remember that de Vries had only one race in Formula 1 before joining AlphaTauri in 2023, but his technical knowledge has been vital and his experience of racing in other formulae has helped him and therefore aided the team as well.

“Nyck has got a lot of experience,” said Egginton to Motorsport.com. “He’s only done one race in Formula 1 before joining us, but he’s got an awful lot of experience in other formulas and also experience testing and driving other people’s F1 cars.

This weekend will mark Nyck de Vries’ first sprint race in the FIA Formula 1 World Championship, but it will not be the Dutchman’s first taste of the Baku City Circuit.

The Scuderia AlphaTauri driver finished on the podium on three occasions in Azerbaijan during his time in FIA Formula 2, and he will be bidding to use that experience to get up to speed quickly during the one and only free practice session on Friday.

De Vries says there is excitement to get back to racing after a four-week break, and he is eager to break into the top ten for the first time this season and score points for his new team.

“Baku will be my very first Sprint weekend and that will be particularly challenging with just one hour of free practice before qualifying, but I’ve been to the track before, with three second place finishes in Formula 2,” said de Vries. “We’re all excited to go racing again after this long break.

“The track is quite unique in the sense that, usually on street tracks, overtaking is very challenging, but the extremely long straight produces opportunities, which is why the races at Baku have often been quite eventful, so hopefully things will go our way and we’ll have something to cheer about come the end of it.”

Whilst admitting the result in Australia at the beginning of April was positive for the McLaren F1 Team, Team Principal Andrea Stella knows the team still has a long way to go with its pace and performance of its MCL60 as they turn their attention to this weekend’s Azerbaijan Grand Prix.

Both Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri scored their first points of the 2023 FIA Formula 1 World Championship season at Albert Park by finishing sixth and eighth, but the result was mainly down to staying out of trouble rather than having the outright pace to score.

Stella says the team have been using the break since Australia to work on developing the MCL60 in a bid to close the gap to those towards the front of the field, and they will be bringing some updates to the Baku City Circuit, the first step of many planned across the upcoming events.

“We come to Baku following a solid result in Australia, a short period away from track to refocus and with good spirits in the team so we’re ready to go again for the first double-header of the season,” said Stella.  

“Whilst the result in Australia was positive, we know we’ve still got a lot of work to do and this time away from the track has actually been very busy at the factory.

Oscar Piastri arrives at the Baku City Circuit looking to build on his positive Australian Grand Prix weekend where he secured his first top ten finish of his FIA Formula 1 World Championship career.

The McLaren F1 Team driver stayed out of trouble and avoided the chaos around him to finish eighth to score four important points having missed out on the top ten in both Bahrain and Saudi Arabia.

Piastri says he feels rested after the enforced break after the race at Albert Park, and having previous experience around the Azerbaijan Grand Prix circuit should help him, even if there is only one free practice before Qualifying gets underway on Friday afternoon.

“I’m excited to go racing in Baku and I feel rested and ready after the three-week break,” said Piastri.  “I’ve raced here previously in Formula 2 and it’s a cool circuit with the backdrop of the city and the castle.

“It’s a tricky circuit to get right from a car set-up perspective, given the long straight at the end of the lap, combined with the tighter sections of the track. We’ve been doing a lot of work in the simulator to ensure we hit the ground running on Friday, especially given the Sprint format, which I’m looking forward to taking on for the first time in Formula 1.

Ian James, Team Principal of the NEOM McLaren Formula E Team was left understandably disappointed following last weekend’s Berlin E-Prix double-header, as the Woking-based team failed to scored a single point.

The seventh and eighth round of the 2022/23 ABB FIA Formula E World Championship are two that the team won’t be remembering anytime soon, with it having been nothing short of a disaster. On Saturday, rookie Jake Hughes and home hero René Rast qualified twelfth and fourteenth, before both hitting a NIO 333 Racing driver during the race.

Hughes unfortunately went into the back of Dan Ticktum after the NIO driver hit Stoffel Vandoorne, leaving Hughes with nowhere to go. The damage he sustained forced him into an early retirement, whilst Rast could only salvage seventeenth after being awarded a five-second time penalty for hitting Sérgio Sette Câmara.

“It’s been a tough day for the team here in Berlin,” James said after Saturday’s race. “We struggled to unlock the necessary pace throughout the practice sessions, and this trend continued into qualifying where we weren’t able to progress beyond the group stages, with Jake starting in P12 and René in P14. 

“As we have seen before, starting in the midfield of a Formula E race puts you at a higher risk of being involved in an incident. This was especially true today, where the racing itself was about as chaotic as we have experienced. This resulted in both René and Jake being involved in crashes which effectively ended both their respective races. 

BWT Alpine F1 Team are set to introduce upgrades to A523 for the Azerbaijan Grand Prix as part of a larger development programme that will continue into coming races. Alpine Technical Director Matt Harman expects that the development items scheduled for the coming months will result in “reasonable” progress for the team. 

“We are bringing a new floor to Baku amongst some other aerodynamic and mechanical items. We then have a further development at the following race in Miami and something further for Imola after that.”

Harman explained that the team will be implementing constant updates with the expectation that they’ll make a significant step by the Imola Grand Prix. He added that keeping on top of their “aggressive” development strategy throughout the season will be key to achieving their objectives for pace and results. 

“This consistent thread will continue throughout the season with more upgrades planned at most events.

“In the short term, what we have for Baku, Miami and Imola is a reasonable step – though not as significant as some media speculation in recent weeks – and it’s important we keep this aggressive rate of development up if we are to keep moving forwards towards our performance expectations.”

Frédéric Chesneau is the next driver to enter the world of T1 rally raid as he will pilot a Century Racing CR6 in the 2024 Dakar Rally. His Team FS outfit announced the news on Wednesday, while also revealing a name change to Skybox Rally-Raid.

Chesneau and his older brother Stéphane Chesneau have competed at the Dakar Rally since 2021, racing a Can-Am Maverick XRS Turbo in the T4 category. After finishing twenty-fifth overall in their début, they improved to twenty-second in 2022. The siblings were twenty-fourth in the 2023 edition and scored a tenth-place finish in class in the rain-shortened Stage #3; while not classified as a finisher due to retiring from Stage #5, they were able to bring their car to the finish line as part of the Dakar Experience.

The younger Chesneau was previously an aerobatic pilot, winning the FAI World Advanced Aerobatic Championships in 2002. He also claimed the 2002 and 2004 WAAC Team crowns with the French national team, with whom he was a member from 1997 through 2008. Stéphane, who runs a construction company on the island of Réunion, has competed in enduro.

The CR6 is Century’s current primary rally raid model, with ten appearing at the 2023 Dakar Rally under the Century Racing Factory Team, Astara Team, Coronel Racing, and Off Road Concept banners. The factory team, which had Brian Baragwanath and Mathieu Serradori as drivers, fielded an upgraded version of the CR6 dubbed the CR6-T with a turbo engine. Following Dakar, Century has started development of the Century CR7 for competition in the higher T1+ subcategory.

Century is a fairly common and affordable option for those hoping to race in the top-flight T1 class but do not want to spend too much on premier vehicles like the Toyota Hilux. The CR6 is placed in the T1.2 subdivision for diesel four-wheel-drive modified cars.