Motorsports Racing News & Blog Articles

Atlanta Motor Speedway‘s conversion into a superspeedway-like track may have been too extreme for the youngsters of the NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series as crashes resulted in eleven yellow flags, the most for the division there, including a last-lap wreck to end Saturday’s Fr8 208 under caution. Said accident came just moments after another caution to set up overtime, which Christian Eckes capitalised upon to score his seond career victory and first in just his third start for McAnally-Hilgemann Racing and Chevrolet.

Eckes had received a speeding penalty after leading every lap in Stage #1 and spent much of the race trying to regain ground. The cautions worked in his favour as they bunched up the field for ensuing restarts multiple times: he sat outside the top ten as the lap counter crossed triple digits, but found himself in second by overtime. After clearing Nick Sanchez for the lead on the final lap, a three-truck wreck involving Tyler Ankrum, Stewart Friesen, and Zane Smith ended the race.

The win is also MHR’s first in the Truck Series. Eckes has scored top tens in all three of his races for the team so far.

John Hunter Nemechek led a race-high fifty-three laps but fell back after an attempted draft with Jack Wood resulted in contact.

“I was trying to push him away from everybody else so that we could get clear and just race, but that’s part of speedway racing and that’s what they turned Atlanta into,” Nemechek commented.

Kove Moto had the Dakar Rally début of their dreams when all three factory riders Deng Liansong, Fang Mingji, and Sunier Sunier reached the finish. In April, the Chinese manufacturer hopes to continue their momentum as they enter their second World Rally-Raid Championship event at the Sonora Rally in Mexico.

The Kove 450 Rally bikes returned to China on Wednesday, where the #81 piloted by Deng was donated by Kove’s director Zhang Xue to wheel manufacturer and team sponsor Zhengxing Wheel Group. While the #81 will permanently be on display at a museum run by the company to celebrate the feat, the other two will continue to be used.

“When we started or even finished the race, I was thinking about what to do with our three bikes when they would be sent back,” Zhang stated. “Then I thought about one of them that needed to be sealed permanently and then it’s going to become an Excelle (Automobile, another name for Kove) story as the first generation of race bike and then the second-generation race bike, until the entire process of winning the championship is written in Excelle history, and will also be written in the history of Chinese racing. It proves that Chinese manufacturing can complete this kind of top international race.”

All three riders were new to Dakar, with Deng previously winning the Chinese national quad championship and competing in the FIM Motocross World Championship while Fang is a retired police officer and multi-time winner of the Taklimakan Rally in Xinjiang. Two-time World Enduro Champion and Dakar veteran Thierry Charbonnier was appointed team manager, and the trio also collaborated with DUUST Rally Team prior to the race.

Sunier recorded the best overall finish of the three of forty-sixth in the Rally2 category; he was also the only Kove rider to score top-twenty stage runs in the class with a twentieth in the fifth, thirteenth in the tenth, and nineteenth in the thirteenth. Deng was forty-fourth with his best stage finish being twenty-fourth in Stage #5, whereas Fang retired from the first and fourth legs but reached the finish classified in fifty-fourth.

The Porsche 959 is one of the most iconic vehicles to come out of the Dakar Rally‘s first decade, notably finishing 1–2 in 1986 with René Metge and Jacky Ickx. For the 2024 Dakar Classic, defending champion Juan Morera will pay tribute to that programme by driving a modified Porsche 959 for Momabikes Raid Team.

Morera raced a Toyota Land Cruiser HDJ80 alongside his wife Lidia Ruba Cuartero for the 2023 Classic, marking their second try at the race after piloting a Fiat Panda to a 106th overall finish in their début in 2022. Land Cruisers went on to dominate the Classic, with seven ultimately comprising the top ten and sweeping the podium; Morera won Stages #2 and #8 and recorded 428 total points, over 100 fewer than runner-up Carlos Santaolalla.

For 2024, Morera and Momabikes turned to Jérémy Athimon and his French Porsche restoration company Nantes Prestige Autos to put together a Porsche 959. Rather than using an already available year-accurate Porsche 959, the team will build the relevant parts on the base of a Porsche 964 C4.

Athimon competed in the 2023 Classic as the co-driver to Julien Texier in a Porsche 911 Martini, where they finished eighth overall. The 911 won the 1984 Dakar Rally with Metge and is such a renowned rally car from the 1970s and 1980s that Porsche has introduced a limited edition “911 Dakar” model for consumers.

“We want to pay tribute to the legendary PORSCHE 959 with which @jackyickxofficial competed in 1986,” posted Momabikes. “To do this we will start with the base of a 964 c4 and the project will be carried out at @nantesprestigeautos by Jérémy Athimon and his team. We will keep you posted on the progress of the project.”

The Toyota Hilux is one of the top vehicles in rally raid, having won the last two Dakar Rallies (plus a third in 2019), three FIA Cross-Country Rally World Cups, and the inaugural World Rally-Raid Championship with Nasser Al-Attiyah. The vehicle was the magnum opus of the South African company Hallspeed, founded and long operated by Glyn Hall as Toyota’s rally raid works team under the Toyota Gazoo Racing banner.

From March 2023 onwards, however, Hallspeed has begun a new era under the leadership of Shameer Variawa who recently purchased the company. According to a story by Metalworking News, Hall remains involved in development and vehicle design.

Variawa is a veteran of the South African Rally-Raid Championship, having won the 2000 title as well as the premier TGRSA 1000 Desert Race three times in a row from 2008 to 2010. He has also competed at the Dakar Rally from 2019 to 2022, with his most recent endeavour being a fifteenth-place overall finish in a Hilux.

Hallspeed was founded in 1996 by Hall, who was then the general manager for Nissan Motorsport, to support Nissan’s racing activities before switching to Toyota. The company designed the Hilux for the 2012 Dakar Rally with 2009 winner Giniel de Villiers as one of its pilots; de Villiers still races a Hilux today, recently winning the 2022 SARRC championship.

The Hilux’s successes have made it a very appealing truck for those hoping to compete in the top-level T1 category and the T1+ subdivision. Sixteen drivers raced a Hilux at the 2023 Dakar Rally, and six of the top ten overall finishers were in one. A more rudimentary Hilux T1+, developed by fellow South African outfits TreasuryONE Motorsport and WCT Engineering with the hope of making the vehicle more affordable for privateers, won in its racing début last weekend at The Inland Off Road Championship.

When the NASCAR Cup Series heads to North Wilkesboro Speedway for the NASCAR All-Star Race on 21 May, Christopher Bell hopes to use the previous day’s NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series event to gain extra track time. On Friday, Hattori Racing Enterprises announced Bell will drive the #61 Toyota Tundra TRD Pro, marking the team’s return to two trucks albeit for a one-off.

Bell was the 2017 Truck Series champion in a dominant campaign in which he scored five wins and top tens in all but two races. He moved up to the Xfinity Series the following year, but did a single Truck start at Bristol with Kyle Busch Motorsports where he won the pole but finished twenty-eighth. The entry was his last Truck run to date. In fifty-four career Truck starts, he has seven wins and forty-one top tens as well as six poles.

Now in the Cup Series for Joe Gibbs Racing, Bell is considered a burgeoning star after a three-win 2022 campaign in which he made the Championship Round. Four races into the 2023 season, he sits third in the standings.

HRE fields the #16 for Tyler Ankrum as the flagship truck. They opened a second truck, the #61, for Chase Purdy in 2022 but he left the team for KBM at season’s end. The #61 finished seventeenth in owner points with two top tens. Ankrum is in his second year with the team after placing twelfth in the 2022 standings.

Bell does not have prior experience at North Wilkesboro, which closed in 1996 before re-opening in 2022 with NASCAR returning the following year. Fellow Cup driver William Byron is also using the Truck support race to prepare himself for the All-Star, driving for KBM; Bell and Byron were KBM team-mates in 2016.

Eduard Pons aspires to compete at the Dakar Rally in 2024. To prepare him for the endeavour, he intends to run the full 2023 World Rally-Raid Championship schedule, driving a Can-Am Maverick X3 in the T3 category alongside co-driver Mónica Plaza for his PONS Rallysport team in partnership with South Racing Can-Am.

The first race of his 2023 W2RC calendar was the Abu Dhabi Desert Challenge in late February to March, where he was marred by fuel issues throughout the rally but managed to finish twelfth overall in class and the fifth-best team not competing for points. Despite not running for the W2RC, he plans to race the remaining three rounds at the Sonora Rally in April, the Desafío Ruta 40 in late August, and the Rallye du Maroc in October.

He will also enter cross-country rally events like the Baja Aragón España in June. He has competed in the discipline since 2019, finishing fourth in the 2022 FIA World Cup for Cross-Country Bajas T4 standings.

Pons primarily competes in the Spanish Gravel Rally Championship, winning the senior trophy in 2018 and 2019 while placing second in the 2021 standings; he has also claimed four straight Catalan Rally Championships since 2019. He was to compete in last weekend’s Rally Serras de Fafe e Felgueiras, a European Rally Championship round, but broke his wrist in Abu Dhabi.

The Spaniard joins a growing list of crossovers between rally raid and rally, including Dakar 2024 hopefuls Armindo Araújo and Petter Solberg.

The eleventh Desafío Ruta 40 will be the fourth and penultimate round of the 2023 World Rally-Raid Championship, marking the first time the Argentinian race is on the calendar. The route was revealed on Friday.

The rally begins on 28 August in La Rioja, where a loop will take place for the opening stage before heading to Belén for Stage #2. Belén, located in Catamarca province, will conduct two loops for the third and fourth legs. The fifth and final stage will be a run northwards to Salta, the capital of the province by the same name.

Stage #1 will be approximately 400 kilometres in Special Stages and mostly consists of gravel before travelling on sand and dunes for 315 SS km to Belén. Stage #3 and #4 are a mixture of the three surfaces before being a gravel dash to Salta. In all, the race will comprise 2,440 kilometres including SS and liaison sections, with the former totalling 1,515 km.

All three cities have visited by the W2RC’s crown jewel Dakar Rally during its South America stretch in the 2010s. La Rioja hosted legs between 2009 through 2013 and again in 2016, while Belén did so in 2016 and 2018. Salta did so from 2014 through 2018, and was also used as the rest day site in 2014 and 2016. The trio were connected in 2016 when racers went from Uyuni in Bolivia to Salta for Stage #9, followed by a day off before going to Belén for Stages #8 and #9 and hitting La Rioja in the tenth.

Desafío Ruta 40, one of two W2RC legs in the Americas alongside the Sonora Rally in Mexico, was previously part of the Dakar Series in 2013 and 2015 and also appeared on the 2017 FIM Cross-Country Rallies World Championship (the predecessor to the W2RC). 2018, won by Sebastián Halpern (Cars) and the late Paulo Gonçalves (Bikes), was the most recent edition.

2023 Desafio Ruta 40 route

A teaser promotional video for the upcoming original anime HIGHSPEED Étoile was released Friday. As a collaboration between the Super Formula Championship and HSE creators King Amusement, Good Smile Company, and Yostar various entities including series partners will appear in the show as sponsors on cars and driver firesuits.

While a staff has not been named, the PV reveals the show will be in full 3D CGI. Much of the video contains racing action alongside grid shots of the characters, the lead cast having been introduced in February. The trailer takes place at a futuristic Fuji Speedway, as indicated by the grandstock/paddock setup on the front straight—previously featured on the initial key visual released with the project’s announcement in July—and even a restoration of the thirty-degree “Daiichi” turn used in the track’s original layout.

At the end of the PV, twenty-nine brands were depicted alongside the HSE and Super Formula logos, with the most notable being Honda Racing Corporation and Toyota Gazoo Racing. Honda and Toyota are the series’ two engine manufacturers, both providing motors for six teams apiece with Honda as the reigning champion.

While the anime is the only aspect announced to date, HSE intends to be a multimedia project. Some companies shown may gleam some details on what other media the franchise intends to pursue, such as gaming giant SEGA, printing company Dai Nippon Printing, and toymaker Takara Tomy. Arcade chain GiGO, formerly owned by SEGA, is also listed.

“HIGHSPEED Étoile will collaborate with various companies like in actual motorsports, and will carry out initiatives with supporting companies such as corporate logos appearing in the main story,” reads a statement from the project. “Finally, the supporting company information is announced. Here are the supporting companies whose logos are printed on each character’s racing suit and machine. Please look forward to what kind of design will appear.”

In a perfect world, Davey Hamilton Jr. would be preparing to race for the Stadium Super Trucks championship as the 2023 season approaches. Unfortunately, spinal injuries have made even a return of any sort impossible.

Hamilton was the featured guest in the latest episode of the ThrillCast, a podcast hosted by SST veteran Bill Hynes, that went live Thursday. When asked about potentially coming back, Hamilton quickly shot down any possibility due to a history of injuries directly related to the impacts that the trucks record upon landing after ramps.

Much of the interview surrounded the risks that come with racing, especially in open-wheel racing where Hamilton’s father and SST alumnus Davey Sr. suffered serious leg injuries in a 2001 crash that halted his career for years. The younger Hamilton also sustained injuries of his own, recalling feeling back pain following his SST debut at the 2017 Grand Prix of St. Petersburg which culminated in a T4 spinal fracture after crashing in the King of the Wing sprint car series at Irwindale Speedway.

Hamilton continued to race in SST and what is now Indy NXT on a part-time basis in 2018 before personal matters put his career on pause. He committed to the full SST schedule in 2022 but had to back out after re-aggravating the spinal injury in the opener at Long Beach, where he finished eighth in both races. Since then, he has continued racing in pavement sprint cars and scored the most wins among all drivers in the discipline in 2022, including the Southern Sprint Car Shootout Series championship and a win streak beginning that October which still continues today.

For 2023, he will part-time in the Must See Racing Sprint Series.

The sun has finally set on Auto Club Speedway in more ways than one. On 15 March, eighteen days after the NASCAR Cup Series‘ final race weekend on its two-mile layout, the track’s naming rights deal with the American Automobile Association (AAA) ended after over fifteen years.

A new name has not been revealed, though the working identity of “Next Gen California” is now used on the track’s social media accounts while a page on NASCAR’s website, to which Auto Club Speedway’s website now redirects, refers to it as a “Next Gen NASCAR short track”.

“Auto Club has been a tremendous, longtime partner with our Fontana facility. Their naming rights agreement expired on March 15, 2023, but we look forward to engaging with them on the proposed Next Gen NASCAR short track,” reads an answer on NASCAR’s new Next Gen California webpage.

Although the two-mile Fontana, California, circuit has become a popular intermediate speedway, NASCAR outlined plans in 2020 to reconfigure it into a half-mile short track by 2023. Said plans were delayed by COVID-19 before being finalised in time to confirm it would be removed from the 2024 schedule for construction. NASCAR had sold 433 of 522 acres of speedway land by the time of the 2023 Pala Casino 400 race weekend, the last under the longer layout.

The renovation process has yet to begin due to, according to NASCAR, “multiple approvals that need to take place before pressing forward” with the track. NASCAR anticipates it will take approximately eighteen months, meaning Fontana would return to the calendar in 2025 at the soonest. The sanctioning body also acknowledged rumours about the short track not materialising at all and stated, “Planning continues for a Next Gen NASCAR short track on a portion of the current property NASCAR retained. Pending approvals, more details on this project will be revealed at the appropriate time.”

As Kevin Harvick embarks on his final NASCAR Cup Series season, it was inevitable that he and his Stewart-Haas Racing team recognise his illustrious career at various points. For the All-Star Race at North Wilkesboro Speedway on 21 May, his #4 Ford Mustang will turn back the clock to his rookie year in 2001 as it is renumbered to #29 and sport a livery resembling his GM Goodwrench scheme from that year.

In particular, the livery is a throwback to the 2001 Cracker Barrel Old County Store 500 at Atlanta Motor Speedway, a fitting announcement as the track is hosting the upcoming Cup race, where Harvick edged out eventual champion Jeff Gordon by just .006 of a second for the second closest victory in NASCAR history. Making just his third Cup start, the win was especially emotional as he had taken over the Richard Childress Racing ride after Dale Earnhardt‘s fatal accident in the Daytona 500.

Earnhardt’s car was changed from a black #3 to a white #29 for Harvick, the colour being an inversion while maintaining the Goodwrench sponsorship. #29 was selected as the lowest available.

Harvick would spend thirteen seasons in the #29 RCR car from 2001 to 2013, winning twenty-two races including the 2007 Daytona 500.

“When I sat in the #29 for the first time, it really wasn’t by choice, but I definitely wouldn’t have done it any differently,” Harvick stated. “Dale’s passing changed our sport forever, and it changed my life forever and the direction it took.

In motorsports, a pit stop is a quick stop made by a race car during a race to refuel, change tires, or make adjustments to the car. Pit stops are an essential part of motorsports, and they can significantly impact the outcome of a race.

During a pit stop, the race car pulls into the pit area, where a team of mechanics quickly goes to work. The first mechanic removes the wheel nuts, while another mechanic lifts the car using a jack. The tire changer then removes the old tire and replaces it with a new one, while the fuel man refuels the car. Other mechanics may make adjustments to the car, such as changing the wing angle, adding or removing tape from the front grille, or adjusting the suspension.

The duration of a pit stop depends on the type of race and the regulations in place. In some races, such as Formula One, pit stops can last as little as 2-3 seconds, while in other races, such as NASCAR, pit stops typically take around 12-15 seconds.

Pit stops require a high level of skill and coordination from the pit crew, and they can be a dangerous place to work due to the high-speed nature of the sport. However, a well-executed pit stop can make a significant difference in a race and may be the key to winning.

Christian Horner believes, with the benefit of hindsight, that Red Bull Racing promoted both Pierre Gasly and Alexander Albon to the team too early in their FIA Formula 1 World Championship careers.

The Team Principal of the Milton Keynes-based team points to the time it has taken the vastly more experienced Sergio Pérez to settle and be a frontrunner.  The Mexican has often played second fiddle to Max Verstappen, but heading into his third season, his level of performance is now much closer to his two-time World Championship winning team-mate.

When Daniel Ricciardo opted to leave Red Bull ahead of the 2019 season, the team opted to bring in Scuderia Toro Rosso’s Gasly as his replacement.  However, after a disappointing start, the team decided to replace him with Albon mid-season, again a promotion from Toro Rosso, with Gasly moving in the opposite direction.

Albon lasted until the end of the 2020 season before Pérez was brought in to replace him, and the Thai driver is now flourishing at Williams Racing and scored a top ten finish in the season-opening Bahrain Grand Prix in 2023. 

Gasly also excelled back at Toro Rosso and then Scuderia AlphaTauri, with a victory in the 2020 Italian Grand Prix his highlight, and he now plies his trade at the BWT Alpine F1 Team and also scored points for his new team in Bahrain.

Charles Leclerc will take a ten-place grid penalty this weekend in Saudi Arabia after Scuderia Ferrari Team Principal Frédéric Vasseur confirmed a change to a third control electronics, one above the number allowed across a full FIA Formula 1 World Championship season.

Ferrari were forced to change the component before the start of the Bahrain Grand Prix only for Leclerc to suffer a mechanical failure whilst running third, and despite it only being the second round of the season, the Monegasque driver will take a grid drop penalty for Sunday’s race at the Jeddah Corniche Circuit.

Speaking ahead of the Saudi Arabian weekend, Vasseur, the recently appointed Team Principal at the Maranello-based squad, says Ferrari have an understanding after Bahrain of their strengths and weaknesses, and they know they will need to be stronger on Sundays if they are to contend with Oracle Red Bull Racing for race victories in 2023.

However, he is not expecting the same kind of dominance from their rivals on what is a much different track to the Bahrain International Circuit from two weeks ago, and he hopes that Leclerc and team-mate Carlos Sainz Jr. can take the fight to Red Bull in Jeddah.

“We came away from the Grand Prix in Bahrain with a first picture of the strengths and weaknesses of our car and useful pointers for making progress,” said Vasseur.  “Comparing the SF-23’s qualifying and race performance, there’s still some room to improve our Sunday performance.

Fernando Alonso insists everyone at the Aston Martin Aramco Cognizant Formula 1 Team are keeping their feet on the ground despite a stunning season opening Bahrain Grand Prix that saw the Spaniard secure a podium finish.

Alonso was one of the positive surprises to come out of the opening weekend of the season, with the AMR23 showing strong pace throughout.  He qualified inside the top six and made some good late passes on Lewis Hamilton and Carlos Sainz Jr. to join the two Oracle Red Bull Racing drivers on the podium.

Despite this, Alonso says Aston Martin are not yet certain where their performance genuinely is compared to the teams at the front of the field, and it will not be until after this weekend’s Saudi Arabian Grand Prix and the following Australian Grand Prix that they will have a better idea of where they are.

However, the Spaniard says Aston Martin are going to continue to work hard to ensure their momentum from Bahrain continues this weekend at the Jeddah Corniche Circuit.

“The car felt very good in Bahrain, and we enjoyed our weekend scoring our first podium of the season,” said Alonso.  “But we have now shifted all our focus to this weekend and Jeddah.