Motorsports Racing News & Blog Articles

On Friday, NASCAR formally unveiled the Next Gen Chevrolet Camaro ZL1 that will contest the 24 Hours of Le Mans in June as a Garage 56 entry driven by Jenson Button, Jimmie Johnson, and Mike Rockenfeller. While it boasts many similarities to the standard competition version, partly aided by the seventh-generation Cup Series vehicle already being more fit for road racing than its predecessors, there are still a variety of differences that sets it apart.

“From the beginning of this project, it was important to us that the car we bring to Le Mans is a true NASCAR stock car,” stated NASCAR head Jim France. “While there have been some adjustments to allow the car to compete in a 24-hour endurance race, fans in Le Mans will be treated to the full NASCAR experience.”

The Garage 56 Camaro is slightly longer at 4,961 mm versus the regular’s 4,912.36, but is also lighter at 1,342 kg to 1,580. Also increasing in size is the fuel cell, which can hold 127 litres compared to the standard car’s 75 L, in order to accommodate the race length.

While the Next Gen’s rear spoiler sits at four inches (10.16 cm), the Garage 56’s is two inches larger at 15.24 cm. NASCAR has experimented with varying spoiler lengths throughout the later years of the Gen-6 car, with popular opinion swaying towards shorter wings; a six-inch spoiler was originally planned for 2022 before dropping to the current four inches to increase horsepower.

Inside the cockpit, the car operates on a five-speed paddle shift sequential rather than the usual manual sequential. Sequential transmissions are a new feature of the Next Gen as the sport has long utilised H-shaped gearboxes, though drivers are still required to take their hands off the steering wheel to shift.

Renault appears to be looking to get back into rally raid. On Friday, a report from France Info revealed the company is planning to enter the 2025 Dakar Rally under its Dacia brand, likely a prototype hybrid version of the Dacia Duster.

The French make was one of the original manufacturers at the Dakar Rally, winning the overall in just the race’s third edition in 1982 with Claude Marreau piloting a Renault 20. Over a decade later, Renault prepared a buggy for Jean-Louis Schlesser, who won back-to-back in 1999 and 2000. Renault’s activities went silent at the turn of the millennium before Dacia made its Dakar début with Emiliano Spataro in 2013. Spataro’s Duster received limited support from Renault and the programme lasted through 2018, with his best finish being fourteenth in 2014. Today, Riwald Dakar Team fields modified Renault C460 trucks in the T5 category.

According to France Info’s story, Renault had hoped to race Dakar with Lada until fallout from the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022 led to Renault selling its majority stake back to the Russian government. While Lada has not seen an entrant at the Dakar Rally proper since the 1980s, its cars from that era like the Niva are used in the adjacent Dakar Classic for historic vehicles.

Renault CEO Luca de Meo has long been open about pursuing programmes in rally raid and the World Rally Championship if conditions were right, while Davide Brivio, the racing director for Renault’s Alpine F1 Team, attended multiple stops on the 2022 World Rally-Raid Championship calendar including the Rallye du Maroc and Andalucía Rally. Brivio had also reportedly planned to head to the 2023 Dakar Rally during the rest day but backed out at the last minute. Further adding to the company’s seemingly growing Dakar pedigree, Alpine’s executive director Bruno Famin won the 2016 through 2018 Rallies as Peugeot Sport’s boss.

Zane Smith won the final race—and championship—of the NASCAR Camping World Truck Series in 2022, and on Friday he won the first race of the new NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series by being the leader when the NextEra Energy 250 was cut short due to rain. It was his second straight win at Daytona International Speedway, with the first coming in his maiden start for Front Row Motorsports.

The race was plagued by three rain delays, including two within the first ten laps. The third struck after seventy-nine laps, at which point Smith was leading with Tanner Gray in tow. Although Smith had started fifteenth, his prowess at Daytona as the defending winner and making the Daytona 500 via his Duel the previous night coupled with a plethora of wrecks lifted him to the top spot.

“Fortunately they don’t ask how (I won), they ask how many,” said Smith. “Obviously, I wanted to win it how I did last year, and it was a little bit more exciting, but any time you have the opportunity to win and stand in Victory Lane at Daytona, I don’t think anyone is going to turn that down.”

Over half the race was run under caution thanks to the weather and three massive wrecks. Among the victims of the first crash on lap 30 were Dean Thompson and Hailie Deegan in their first races for their respective teams, while GMS Racing‘s Rookie of the Year contenders Rajah Caruth and Daniel Dye were taken out in the third on lap 59.

Christian Eckes, who finished third, quipped that Smith’s win was a “Mickey Mouse” victory due to the circumstances under which it occurred, to which Smith said it was “nothing new to me. I’m always carrying him in beer pong and everything in between, so call me Mickey Mouse as much as he wants.”

Over a month after the season began at the Dakar Rally, the World Rally-Raid Championship heads to Abu Dhabi for the thirty-second Abu Dhabi Desert Challenge. After registration closed Saturday, fifty-five comprise the pre-inspection W2RC grid. Thirty are competing in FIA classes while twenty-five are on bikes and quads.

As the Dakar Rally is the largest rally raid of the year, it comes with little surprise that Abu Dhabi would feature a much smaller field. Still, there are plenty of major absentees like T1’s Team Audi Sport, whose next start will be the season-ending Rallye du Maroc especially after a disastrous Dakar that resulted in Carlos Sainz and Stéphane Peterhansel‘s co-driver Édouard Boulanger suffering injuries in crashes. Although Peterhansel is the reigning ADDC overall winner, he is not among those on the entry list.

Mattias Ekström, the only Audi member to finish the Dakar, is also the lone driver of the three to enter Abu Dhabi albeit in a T3 for South Racing. Audi had an arrangement with X-raid Team to field Mini John Cooper Works for the Audi drivers outside of Dakar and Morocco if they wished, though it appears Sainz and Peterhansel did not take up the offer pending a belated or non-championship entry.

Despite Audi electing not to defend their victory, the W2RC T1 title battle continues between Sébastien Loeb and Nasser Al-Attiyah, the latter being both the defending Dakar and W2RC champion as well as the 2021 ADDC winner; Al-Attiyah had also won the Desert Challenge in 2016. However, Loeb’s nine Dakar stage victories and runner-up finish means he has a two-point edge over Al-Attiyah in the T1 standings.

In the Bikes, Sam Sunderland will hope to go back-to-back now that he has recovered from his injuries sustained at Dakar, as has Ricky Brabec. On the other hand, Sunderland’s team-mate Daniel Sanders will miss the rally due to injury.

The Toyota Hilux DKR T1+ developed by Hallspeed is perhaps the top rally raid vehicle today, having won back-to-back Dakar Rallies and the 2022 World Rally-Raid Championship with Nasser Al-Attiyah. However, T1+ cars are also expensive and entries therefore typically come from teams with factory support such as Al-Attiyah’s Toyota Gazoo Racing and Overdrive Racing.

On Wednesday, TreasuryONE Motorsport and WCT Engineering revealed a new version of the Hilux T1+ that is intended to be more affordable and easier to grasp for privateers. Hennie de Klerk and co-driver Adriaan Roets will début the vehicle during the 2023 TIORC Inland Off Road Championship in South Africa before taking it to the 2024 Dakar Rally.

While the WCT/TreasuryONE Hilux shares much of the same anatomy as its Hallspeed counterpart, it is built to be more durable so that less extensive maintenance is required. This increased rudimentary nature also makes it easier for privateers, who would have less expertise than professional factory teams, to make repairs and necessary adjustments during races.

The WCT Hilux operates on a V8 engine versus the Hallspeed’s turbocharged V6, which is faster than the standard V8 but WCT Engineering director Stuart Thompson noted is “more complex and difficult to tune and run for a privateer.” WCT’s model also uses twin damper suspensions, which are more reliable than the single damper system of the Hallspeed truck.

“The rest of our Hilux is much the same as the Hallspeed car, albeit a fairly major development of our existing T1 small wheel car,” continued Thompson. “We hope that the WCT Hilux T1+ will prove reliable and relatively easy for a small team to run.”

Last Friday, Conor Daly told The Checkered Flag that his “perfect scenario” would be to race alongside friends Jimmie Johnson and Travis Pastrana in the Daytona 500. Despite a disastrous qualifying session in which he never turned a lap and being plagued by mechanical trouble in his Duel on Thursday, he capitalised on a late wreck that took out fellow non-chartered driver Austin Hill to clinch his spot in the Great American Race.

Daly and Hill simply needed to finish ahead of the other in Duel #2 to make the Daytona 500, a task that seemed to grow taller for the former when his car started to vibrate. Despite being off the pace and ultimately finishing a lap down, Hill was collected in a lap 40 crash that began when Daniel Suárez pushed leader Kyle Busch too hard and shot him into the backstretch wall, and Hill was spun upon contact with Riley Herbst. Pastrana, who qualified for the 500 on Wednesday alongside Johnson, was also involved.

While it may be a stroke of luck, Daly was more than happy to take it after a difficult week. He will be the sixty-second different driver to have competed in both the Daytona 500 and Indianapolis 500, a stat that also includes Johnson.

“We were inherently unlucky for the last thirty-six hours, but we got lucky,” said Daly. “I wish I could have said that I drove it in on pure pace, but it was just crazy.

“When we went out there, the car was bouncing around. I had no idea what was going on. I thought the drivetrain was broken, and Tony (Eury Jr., crew chief) just made it better every time. We got lucky with the yellows to try to get some experience, but it is pretty crazy.

Trackhouse Racing Team‘s drivers are not going anywhere. A day after Daniel Suárez signed a contract extension, team-mate Ross Chastain did the same, with both being locked into the #99 and #1 Chevrolet Camaro ZL1s through at least 2025.

Chastain joined Trackhouse in 2022 as they expanded to a two-car operation after absorbing his employer Chip Ganassi Racing. After finishing twentieth in the 2021 standings, he broke out in 2022 with wins at Circuit of the Americas and Talladega, setting the sports world on fire with a since-banned wallride to make the Championship Round, and finishing second in points. He concluded the year with fifteen top fives and twenty-one top tens.

“It’s taken a lot of years, a lot of hard work and sacrifice plus a lot of help from a lot of people, but I can safely say I have found a home at Trackhouse Racing,” said Chastain. “There is nowhere in the world I would rather be and nothing I would rather do than race the #1 Chevrolet in NASCAR for Justin (Marks) and the people at Trackhouse Racing.”

Once nicknamed the “Busiest Driver in NASCAR”, Chastain reached Trackhouse after spending the 2010s competing across all three national series for smaller teams and part-time operations. In 2019, he ran all but one race in the Cup Series and the first half of the Xfinity slate alongside the entire Truck Series calendar, the lattermost of which ended with a runner-up championship run despite switching points midseason.

“Ross Chastain is the type of driver and type of person we want representing Trackhouse Racing, our employees and our corporate partners,” commented Marks, who owns the team. “You saw what Ross did with us in just our first year together and we think the future is even brighter. He brings a determination, dedication and commitment to his job on and off the track that uplifts everyone in our shop. I’m proud he is part of our organisation.”

Mattias Ekström is set to make his Abu Dhabi Desert Challenge début, though not in the T1 category like at the Dakar Rally. Instead, he has joined South Racing and will pilot a Can-Am Maverick in T3 alongside his Dakar co-driver Emil Bergkvist.

“Sitting on sofa is not my thing, so see you at Abu Dhabi Desert Challenge next week. This time in T3 class with Can-Am from South Racing,” Ekström posted on social media Thursday.

Ekström began the 2023 World Rally-Raid Championship on a high note when he won the Dakar Rally’s Prologue. However, he and his Team Audi Sport‘s high hopes were then upended as team-mates Carlos Sainz and Stéphane Peterhansel both crashed out while Ekström endured suspension problems. Ekström was the team’s lone finisher, albeit in fourteenth overall with no other stage wins.

In the month between Dakar and Abu Dhabi, Ekström competed in the Race of Champions and won the individual tournament for a record-tying fourth time. In early February, he was appointed Sporting Director of the FIA World Rallycross Championship, which he won in 2016.

Audi claimed the 2022 Abu Dhabi Desert Challenge with Peterhansel, the first overall international rally raid victory for an electric vehicle, but the team appears to not have any intent of defending their win as they regroup and continue development of their RS Q e-tron E2 post-Dakar.

Despite finishing runner-up in the T5 category at the season-opening Dakar Rally, Martin Macík Jr. will not take part in the upcoming World Rally-Raid Championship round, the Abu Dhabi Desert Challenge, as he and his MM Technology team continue to develop their trucks. He intends to return for the next race at the Rallye du Maroc.

The team, along with other Dakar competitors, recently received their vehicles in Marseilles following impounding by race organisers before they could be shipped back to their original owners. MM had two IVECO PowerStar trucks nicknamed “Charles” and “Cenda”, with Macík running the Rally in the latter. Macík led the T5 competitors in stage wins with four (Stages #1, #4, #8, #13, plus the Prologue) but brake failures in Stage #2 ruined his chances at the overall victory and he finished second to Janus van Kasteren by 1:14:34.

Charles will be used at the Morocco Desert Challenge, a non-W2RC event scheduled for 21–30 April, while Cenda will be disassembled for R&D purposes. Charles was previously driven by Macík to three stage victories at the 2021 Dakar Rally.

“All vehicles are back from the port, this year it didn’t take long, and we are already preparing plans for the upcoming season,” Macík stated in a video posted Thursday. “Charles will go to the Morocco Desert Challenge with his new team and MM Technology and provide support. Cenda will be taken apart. We will do some upgrades that we came up with during the Dakar, we want to start testing as soon as possible, and then we will have testing in Africa. We won’t participate in the Abu Dhabi Desert Challenge, the second round of W2RC, but we will do the third round at Rallye du Maroc. We will be quite often in Morcco.

“These are our plans for the year. We will also go to Spain, we will practice, we will organise Dakar Obsessed Open Air, but now we have Dakar Obsessed talk shows. There is plenty to look forward.”

After mainly competing in enduro and amateur rallies, Justin Gerlach will run a World Rally-Raid Championship leg for the first time as he announced Tuesday his plans to enter the Abu Dhabi Desert Challenge. He will compete in the Rally2 category.

Gerlach races in amateur events like the Rallye Breslau in Poland which he has attempted every year since 2018. He was last among the Enduro class riders in the first race but reached the finish in twenty-first overall among the bikes, followed by thirteenth in Enduro in 2019. His best performance came in 2020 when he finished sixth overall and fifth in class, slightly under four minutes off of class victor and eventual Dakar Rally competitor Tiziano Internó. After crashing out on the final day of the 2021 edition, Gerlach was fifteenth in class (thirty-second overall) in 2022 while riding a new Husky FE 501 bike.

A recent graduate from Baden-Württemberg Cooperative State University with a degree in industrial engineering, he works is a real estate property manager in Berlin.

For Abu Dhabi, his KTM 450 EXC-F bike will be prepared by fellow German rider Maki Rees-Stavros, who is coming off his Dakar Rally début in which he finished seventh in Malle Moto. Tony Schattat, owner of rally navigation system provier RNS Electronics, is also involved with the effort.

“I’m super excited to take place in my first FIM Cross-Country Rallies World Cup Event,” Gerlach posted on social media.

After setting a strong enough lap time in Wednesday’s NASCAR Cup Series qualifying, Travis Pastrana will race in the Daytona 500 for the first time on Sunday. It was more than just a time of celebration for him and his 23XI Racing team as he got to embrace and cherish the moment with those like Jimmie Johnson, a seven-time Cup Series champion who also clinched a spot in the race, and the family of his late friend Ken Block.

Although Block never raced in NASCAR, his impact on motorsport and close friendship with Pastrana could not be understated. The two competed together in rallying and rallycross, and Pastrana paid tribute to Block with a special livery in at the Nitro Rallycross round in Circuit Trois-Rivières; Nitro Rallycross, which Pastrana oversees, also retired Block’s #43 as did the World Rally Championship. Block’s wife Lucy and daughter Lia are both also rally racers in the American Rally Association, while the latter has competed in Nitro RX’s SxS class.

“Ken’s wife Lucy and two of his kids came down. They watched their first NASCAR qualifying. They came out, flew out this morning. They’re flying back tomorrow morning. They just wanted to be here to support,” Pastrana said in his post-qualifying press conference.

“For me, I was pretty emotional at the end of this, just that they came out for me. Everything that I’m able to do right now, the pavement experience, is because Ken Block was able to build a sport around having fun, sliding cars, to allow me to be part of that series, to build rally the way it is, I’m forever thankful.

“Could not be more thankful and happy that his family’s here. I can’t wait to help do anything that I can to get Lia and his other kids, but she’s a phenomenal driver, I bet she’ll be here racing the 500 at some point. She’s definitely going to be one of the top rally drivers of all time in the U.S. here.”

If you placed a bet saying anyone besides Hendrick Motorsports would win the Daytona 500 pole, you might be delusional.

Hendrick cars swept the top three in Wednesday night’s qualifying for the second year in a row, with Alex Bowman clearing defending pole-sitter Kyle Larson by over a tenth of a second. Besides being his third career Daytona 500 pole after 2018 and 2021, Bowman has qualified on the front row a record six years in a row.

A Chevrolet has won the race pole every year since 2013, while a Hendrick car or a technical ally has done so for the past nine editions.

“I don’t really feel like I tried to do anything different than the other guys,” Bowman said in his post-qualifying press conference. “Just try to kind of let the race car go where it wants and not bind it up.

“As a driver, really all you can do is get the best launch you can, hit your shift points right, try to run the best you can, not mess it up. Glad I didn’t mess it up. I was kind of just letting the race car go where it wanted to.”

Alex Bowman and Daniel Suárez will continue to represent Chevrolet in the NASCAR Cup Series through 2023 and beyond. Their teams Hendrick Motorsports and Trackhouse Racing Team respectively announced contract extensions on Wednesday, hours before Daytona 500 qualifying.

Bowman is entering his sixth season with Hendrick, where his carrer has bloomed with five wins and playoff appearances every year. Although his 2022 season was marred by a late concussion, he still notched a win early in the year at Las Vegas and has become a popular spokesman for sponsor Ally Financial and the #48 car following in Jimmie Johnson‘s footsteps.

His contract with Hendrick now runs through at least 2026. Ally, who has sponsored the #48 since 2019, also signed an extension until 2028. Bowman took over the #48 from Johnson in 2021 after spending the three years prior in the #88.

“We’re thrilled to extend with Alex, who is one of NASCAR’s most exciting young stars,” said team owner Rick Hendrick. “In addition to being hugely talented, he has incredible passion and commitment that set him apart. He’s a proven winner, and I don’t know of anyone who has worked harder to reach this level. The opportunity to continue our relationships with Alex and everyone at Ally is a great way to kick off 2023. It’s a tremendous combination.”

Like Bowman with Hendrick, Suárez has found stability in his career at Trackhouse. After his first four seasons in the Cup Series were spent with three different teams, Trackhouse signed him as their first driver in 2021 and never looked back. A modest 2021 campaign was followed by a breakthrough for the team as a whole as Suárez and new team-mate Ross Chastain won their first races and made the playoffs, with Suárez’s coming at Sonoma and he would finish tenth in points.

Reliability was of top priority for Scuderia Ferrari’s power unit development over the winter break, with Head of Power Unit Area Enrico Gualtieri explaining that the team focused heavily on finding fixes for the issues they faced last season. 

With power units frozen until the end of 2025 and unable to be upgraded performance-wise, Gualtieri said that reliability is the only area in which they can develop ahead of the 2023 season. 

This will be a key point of improvement for the team nonetheless, with Ferrari’s power unit directly to blame for three of the team’s retirements in the 2022 season, which led to further grid penalties and a significant loss of points. 

“Preparation work for the new season is usually one of the busiest times of the year and this winter was no exception. PUs have been frozen since last year, including fluids, oil and fuel and the only modifications allowed are those related to reliability, which was our Achilles’ heel last season.”

Gualtieri said that the team used knowledge and data they had gathered over the past year to reveal weak points in their power unit, and also modify their assembly. 

Scuderia Ferrari Head of Chassis Area Enrico Cardile describes the team’s newly-launched 2023 FIA Formula 1 World Championship car as an “evolution” of last season’s F1-75, with drastic upgrades made to the body, aerodynamics and suspension of their 2023 contender. 

Cardile said that aerodynamics were a focus, as the team continues to work with the new regulations put in place in 2022. With this, the team was able to achieve greater downforce and improve the balance of the car. 

“Our 2023 car is an evolution of the one we raced last year, but in reality, it has been completely redesigned. On the aerodynamic side, we increased vertical downforce, to adapt further to the new aero regulations and achieve the desired balance characteristics.”

Ferrari doubled down on their unique side-pod design with this year’s iteration, which is more “extreme” than that of last year’s. As well, Cardile said that modifications were made to the car’s front suspension, front wing and nose.

“The suspension has also been redesigned, to support aerodynamics and increase the range of adjustments that can be made to the car at the track.”