Motorsports Racing News & Blog Articles

Barring surprises, the 2025 Dakar Rally could be a Yamaha-less race in the Rally2 class. Javi Vega announced Sunday that he has ended his partnership with the Japanese marque after six Dakars together.

Vega had raced a Yamaha WR450F Rally at the Dakar Rally since his début in 2019. His entries were overseen by Pont Grup, a Spanish motorcycle racing programme that covers a variety of disciplines and manufacturers albeit with focus on Yamaha.

However, Vega explained in a social media post that “Yamaha’s priorities changed” in 2022 when they shuttered their rally raid team after that year’s Dakar Rally. Yamaha continues to maintain a rally bike division, though for non-FIM rallies with focus on the Yamaha Ténéré 700, which is too powerful for current FIM standards. António Maio was the only other person on a Yamaha motorcycle at the 2024 Dakar, competing in the premier RallyGP class with support from Yamaha Portugal.

“I can only say thank you,” wrote Vega. “I’ve been very fortunate and have had unforgettable experiences that anyone would wish for, but now our paths are diverging.

“Four Dakars with a dream project, followed by two more solo, where you gave me a chance and believed in me.

In 2023, Bryce Menzies won the Baja 1000 and the SCORE International World Desert Championship in Trophy Truck with the help of Tavo Vildósola. One year later, they are rivals looking to walk away with the title.

After three of four rounds, Menzies and Vildósola are separated by just five points in the 2024 SCORE TT standings with the former having 353 points to the latter’s 348. Vildósola is not Menzies’ only threat, however, as Alan Ampudia also has 353 points.

Menzies enters the Baja 1000 with some momentum as the defending winner and victor of the most recent round, the Baja 400 in September, while Ampudia claimed the season-opening San Felipe 250. Vildósola did not win any of the three races (Toby Price won the Baja 500, but is tenth in the standings) but has consistency on his side with a third in San Felipe, second at the 500, and fifth at the 400.

In simple terms, whoever of the three finishes higher than the other two will win the championship. To better their chances of success, Menzies and Vildósola have respectively enlisted Christopher Polvoorde and Jason McNeil to share their #1 and #21 Trophy Trucks, while Ampudia will continue with his brothers Aaron and Rodrigo.

Only 24 years old, Polvoorde is one of the brightest young stars in off-road racing. 2024 is his first full TT season after impressing in Trophy Truck Spec, and currently sits fourth in points with a third at the 500. At the 2023 Baja 1000, he moved up to Trophy Truck but remained in his Spec truck, yet still impressed with a tenth overall and eighth in class.

Kuldar Sikk‘s status for the 2025 Dakar Rally is up in the air after he suffered a broken spine in an accident during last weekend’s Central European Rally.

Sikk had been working with the gravel crew for fellow Estonian Ott Tänak when the accident occurred. The Central European Rally, the penultimate round of the 2024 World Rally Championship, was on the Czech leg at the time, so he was brought to University Hospital Pilsen for emergency surgery before he could be flown back to Estonia. He arrived by plane at Tallinn Airport on Tuesday.

“Early morning on last Friday, my Route Note Car crew had an accident on the road section on the way to SS3,” wrote Tänak, who went on to win the race. “Due to the accident, Kuldar got a serious back injury and was taken to the hospital.

“Our team has been working hard on the background to get Kuldar back home as fast and as safe as possible to continue his treatment at his home country. Big thanks to Fakultní Nemocnice Plzeň hospital personnel for the support and help over these past few days.

“I am glad that he is safely home now and handed over to Estonian doctors who will provide him the best possible care and Kuldar can stay close to his family. Get well soon, Kuldar!”

Frenchman Franck Lagorce never got to race the Paris–Dakar Rally due to his other commitments, but in January will get to follow its original route. On Tuesday, the Africa Eco Race announced Lagorce has joined the organisation as an observer, where he will accompany organisers Jean-Louis Schlesser and Anthony Schlesser to see how the race is held.

While Lagorce has no Dakar Rally or Africa Eco Race experience, he is no stranger to rally raid. In 2001, he entered the FIA World Cup for Cross-Country Rallies (predecessor to the current World Rally-Raid Championship) in a Protruck. He and Schlesser are also good friends, the latter lending support to his Protruck when he competed in races after wards like the Rallye du Maroc.

Otherwise, his other obligations like racing the Andros Trophy prevented him from a Dakar pursuiit. A chance meeting with Jean-Louis at the Karting Jules Bianchi Marathon at Circuit Paul Ricard in September led to an opportunity.

“I had enriching relationships with my friends Hubert Auriol and René Metge, who spoke to me for years with great passion about this race. Unfortunately, my commitments to the Trophée Andros prevented me from experiencing the legendary rally-raid tracks,” Lagorce explained. “This year, I crossed paths with Jean-Louis Schlesser at the Jules Bianchi Marathon at Le Castellet, and he invited me to discover the Africa Eco Race. I couldn’t resist the offer.

“I participated in the World Cup for Cross-Country Rallies with a pro truck in 2001, and I really enjoyed this discipline, so demanding and yet so human. I can’t wait to sleep in my sleeping bag under the tent, enjoy these simple moments, and take in the landscapes all the way to Lac Rose in Dakar.”

Toby Price and Sam Sunderland have both won the Dakar Rally twice on two wheels. In 2025, they will make the switch to four wheels when they share a Toyota Hilux Overdrive from Overdrive Racing with Price as driver and Sunderland as navigator.

Price, the 2016 and 2019 bike winner, has been more than open about racing the Dakar in a car. He is a thrice victor of the Finke Desert Race in a truck and currently drives a Trophy Truck in SCORE International, where he and Paul Weel have been among the fastest four-wheelers. He has also competed in the Stadium Super Trucks and recently made his traditional rally début at the Working Dog Rally.

Last October, he ended his factory partnership with Mitsubishi to prepare for a potential Dakar pursuit in a car. Price continued in the World Rally-Raid Championship with Red Bull KTM Factory Racing, finishing second in the 2023 standings. He finished fifth at the 2024 Dakar Rally among bikes before leaving KTM in March to commit to SCORE and prepare for a jump to car racing.

It is not uncommon for bike racers to switch to cars to prolong their careers. In an October 2023 interview with Motorsport.com to discuss his Mitsubishi departure, Price explained racing four wheels would allow him to continue racing the Dakar until he turned sixty.

“It’s been a huge amount of work since March putting this all together, and it feels surreal to be finally happening,” said Price. “I’ll be teaming up with my mate Sam Sunderland: four-time Dakar winners in one car is a cool story, and we’re looking to give it a good crack.”

Since grandstands are usually not a thing at off-road races, spectators typically stand along the course or bring their own seating if they need to sit down. The Portuguese Army brought out some seats during last weekend’s Baja Portalegre 500, though they are a bit different from chairs and bleachers: a Leopard 2A6 tank, an M109 howitzer, and an M113 armoured personnel carrier.

The second Selective Section, the first of two timed legs on Saturday, passed by Campo Militar de Santa Margarida with a righthand turn. Although it did not go through the camp itself, the Army set up an exhibition of armoured fighting vehicles from the Brigada Mecanizada (Mechanised Brigade) directly next to the course. Fans and military personnel were present, the latter sitting atop the vehicles to record video or take photos of the race when not presenting them to attendees.

“While waiting for the Baja vehicles to pass by, the public will have the chance to observe different types of military vehicles up close,” reads a statement from the Brigada Mecanizada. “It will be an excellent opportunity for car lovers and curious fans in general to learn more about the Portuguese Army’s fleet.

“The event organisers invite everyone to visit the site to enjoy both the showcase of speed and the military exhibition, making this viewing point one of the must-see attractions of this Baja edition.”

Campo Militar de Santa Margarida is one of the largest military bases and training areas used by the Portuguese Army. It was built in 1952 for conventional and nuclear warfare training before switching to counter-insurgency during the Portuguese Colonial War, after which the main unit stationed there was reorganised into the 1st Independent Mixed Brigade. The brigade became fully mechanised in 1993 before being formally renamed to the current Brigada Mecanizada in 2006.

Germany has been a perennial favourite at the Race of Champions for much of the race’s history. Sebastian Vettel and Mick Schumacher look to keep that run going when they join forces again for the 2025 edition.

The Germans are the most successful country at the Nations Cup with eight titles (for comparison, the only other multi-time winners have just two), including a six-year win streak from 2007 to 2012 courtesy of Vettel and Schumacher’s father Michael. Vettel then added the eighth victory alongside Pascal Wehrlein in 2017, two years after winning the individual tournament in 2015.

Schumacher first appeared at ROC in 2019 as Vettel’s team-mate and has worked alongside his mentor since. Their first Nations Cup together ended with them losing in the final to Team Nordic. After ROC returned in 2022 on the snowy banks of Sweden after a three-year hiatus, Vettel and Schumacher finished runner-up in the main ROC in back to back years despite neither having off-road experience.

At the 2022 Nations Cup, the two fell to Team USA. A year later, they were eliminated by Felipe Drugovich and Thierry Neuville of the All Stars, an unexpectedly early exit.

After losing his Formula One seat, Schumacher currently races in the FIA World Endurance Championship for Alpine. He also works as a reserve driver for Mercedes.

After competing in the FIA World and European Baja Cups and national championships close to home, Maria Luís Gameiro will enter the Dakar Rally for the first time in 2025. She will race in the Challenger category under the Team Motivo JCB banner, driving a Yamaha YXZ1000R Turbo Prototype from X-raid Team with José Marques as navigator.

Gameiro usually races a Mini JCW Rally Plus from X-raid in the Ultimate class, primarily in the Baja Cups and in the Portuguese and Spanish Cross-Country Rally Championships. Her 2024 itinerary primarily based around races on the Iberian Peninsula such as the European Cup’s Baja TT Dehesa Extremadura and World Cup’s Baja Aragón, finishing third in class in the former and eighth at the latter.

When the World Rally-Raid Championship came to her native Portugal for the first time in April for the BP Ultimate Rally-Raid, Gameiro scored a tenth-place finish in Ultimate with her Mini. In early October, she débuted in Challenger with a Yamaha but retired due to engine problems; the start came shortly after being the first woman to race the Baja Morocco, where she placed sixteenth in her maiden desert rally.

“We’ve been working hard to be sure we’ll be at Dakar 2025,” said Gameiro. “Being able to confirm it is a big responsibility, and also a source of enormous joy and pride. Everything happened very quickly in the last two years. I feel that the dedication of the team is now bearing its best fruits. There is still a lot to be outlined and we have many details to sort out, but the most important thing is confirmed: we are heading to Saudi Arabia to compete in Dakar 2025.”

Gameiro will be the first Portuguese woman to race the Dakar since Elisabete Jacinto, who made multiple starts on a bike and eventually a car between 1998 and 2009. Coincidentally, Marques was her co-driver at the Africa Eco Race, which follows the Dakar’s original route that Jacinto ran on and which they won in a truck in 2019.

With the Stadium Super Trucks set to race in Australia once more when they support the Adelaide 500 in November, Shae Davies will also make his return in the #88 truck. CodeFish Studio and Refuel Creative will back his entry as CodeFish Racing.

Davies’s SST début came in the 2020 season opener at Adelaide, where he finished fourth and tenth in the first two races before winning the third. It was the only round in Australia that year due to COVID-19.

The Boost Mobile Super Trucks, formed in late 2019 as SST’s Australian championship, ran its lone multi-race season to date the following year. Davies scored two victories in Tasmania and Darwin, along with podium finishes in all but two races. He was ultimately second in the championship after losing a tiebreaker to Paul Morris, who had four wins.

Fallout between series leadership and Supercars resulted in the trucks being sent back to America and the death of the Australian division after 2021. For 2022, Davies competed in the S5000 Australian Drivers’ Championship, winning once in Melbourne and finishing tenth in points.

After taking 2023 off, the 34-year-old returned to action at the 24H Series’ 12 Hours of Spa-Francorchamps in April. Sharing a Porsche 911 GT3 with Adrian D’Silva and Martin Rump for Earl Bamber Motorsport, the team finished fourteenth overall and sixth in the GT3 Pro/Am class in the first race but retired from the second.

João Ferreira would have certainly preferred for the FIA World Baja Cup‘s return to his native Portugal at the Baja Portalegre 500 to go a little cleaner, but at least he made it home with points and a class win even if not entirely in one piece.

After clearing Francisco Barreto by over two and a half minutes to be the fastest Ultimate car (second overall) on Friday, a myriad of mechanical issues plagued his Mini John Cooper Works Rally Plus the following day. He had to stop to change a broken engine belt during the first Selective Section of Saturday, which cost him five minutes, then SS3 saw a flat tyre and malfunctioning killswitch that lost him even more time. By the time he arrived at the finish, his Mini was missing much of its front panelling and bonnet.

Despite the chaos, Ferreira managed to finish third, 3:36 behind winner Alexandre Franco and José Luis García. While he still cleared Franco by four minutes for the overall Ultimate victory, he was fifth among FIA entrants behind three Challenger cars and an SSV.

Although certainly not the outing he would have liked, Ferreira could at least be happy to make some headway in the World Baja Cup’s all-class standings. The four who finished ahead of him are not competing for the WBC, thereby earning Ferreira maximum points in the overall trophy. Fernando Álvarez, who entered the race leading him by twenty-eight points, missed the WBC with a fourth (twenty-first among all drivers) and second for in SSV. Unofficially, their contrasting outings have allowed Ferreira to slice the gap down to nineteen points with three races to go.

“Not the race that we expected but racing is like this,” said Ferreira. “We had a lot of problems today: we had the killswitch problem, the bonnet, in the morning we had the belt. It’s part of racing. We scored good points for the championship.”

Sir Chris Hoy, one of Britain’s greatest Olympians who went on to enjoy a solid career in motorsport, has a terminal cancer that doctors say gives him just two to four years left to live. He went public about his diagnosis on Saturday in a feature with The Sunday Times.

Hoy was diagnosed with Stage IV prostate cancer in September 2023, which he learned after going to a hospital to check on shoulder pain that turned out to be a tumour. Follow-up scans then determined the cancer had spread to his bones and created additional tumours across his body such as his spine and rib. He began chemotherapy in November, then revealed his battle on social media in February.

Shortly after the story’s publication, Hoy posted on his Instagram page, “You may see in the news this weekend some articles about my health, so I just wanted to reassure you all that I’m feeling fit, strong and positive, and overwhelmed by all the love and support shown to my family and me. Onwards!”

British Prime Minister Keir Starmer described the report as “[s]uch sad news. Chris is a British sporting legend. To face his diagnosis with such positivity is inspiring. The whole country is behind him and his family.”

Until Sir Jason Kenny broke his records in 2021, Hoy had been the most accomplished British Olympic athlete of all time. From his début in 2000 until 2012, he scored six gold medals in track cycling including a trifecta at the 2008 Games, as well as a silver at the 2000 edition in team sprint. He is also a seventeen-time World Champion, and has two Commonwealth Games golds while representing Scotland.

After a dominant outing at the Rallye du Maroc, Ali Oubassidi hopes to see if his achievements can translate to the Saudi deserts by making his Dakar Rally début in 2026. Should things go as planned, he would be taking part in the SSV category in his Can-Am Maverick X3.

Competing in the Open SSV class for Africa Rallye Team (a programme created by rally organisers to promote African rally raiders), Oubassidi won four of five stages and recorded a total time of 22:29:39, nearly two and a half hours faster than runner-up Marian Andreev. While he was far and away the top car in the class, it was far from smooth sailing as he and co-driver Hanane Amraoui had to deal with a plethora of mechanical issues.

A Merzouga native, Oubassidi is the first Moroccan to win the Rallye du Maroc in a four-wheel class. Fellow countryman Souleymane Addahri was also a class winner on a bike in Rally3.

“I am so happy to win the Open SSV category in this twenty-fifth edition of the prestigious Rallye du Maroc, which has a great history,” said Oubassidi. “It was not easy for me nor my co-driver. We crossed 2,468 kilometres, including 1,512 km of special stages, to reach Marrakech and Mengoub–Bouârfa via Zagora.
There were a lot of ups and downs throughout this run. The navigation was much more demanding than usual and much tighter.

“I remained focused until the last kilometre, determined not to rest on my laurels, and hamdulillah we were able to win the first Moroccan title in the rally raid.”

Are you bored of watching the legendary McLaren F1 GTR only turn laps in demos? Miss seeing Colin McRae‘s Subaru Impreza 555 rip through forests for the win? Want a Benetton B195 to duke it out with a Williams FW18 for real instead of simply riding together?

You’re finally in luck.

The FIA World Motor Sport Council approved changes on Thursday to the historic motorsport regulations for 2025, allowing vehicles built between 1991 and 2000 to officially run FIA-sanctioned vintage races. Previously, those produced after 1990 were limited to doing demonstrations or had to go to races outside the sanctioning body’s jurisdiction if they wished to be used in competition.

“These changes to Appendix K of the International Sporting Code mean that, from 2025, racing cars built between the years 1991 and 2000 will be able to carry the Historic Technical Passports that allow them to compete in FIA championships and international motor sport events,” reads an FIA statement, which called the rule change a “rare and significant upgrade”.

“This update will bring many of the world’s most iconic race and rally cars back into the crucible of motor sport, allowing fans and enthusiasts to enjoy the sights and sounds of what was a remarkable decade of technological advancement.”

Larry Trim and his Trailready team entered the NORRA 500 with heavy hearts, five months after his co-driver Brent Yeadon passed away from a heart attack during the Mexican 1000. After two days of racing, he was able to pay tribute to his late friend by winning the Vintage Short Wheelbase 4×4 category.

With Colton Gruber as navigator, Trim set the fifth fastest time among those in the Classic division. Like he did in May, he was driving a 1993 Jeep Grand Cherokee that was previously driven by Curt Leduc to the 1993 Baja 1000 victory in the Stock Mini class.

“All ups. Ran clean all day. Didn’t stop for anything except a little bit of fuel. No problems at all. We had a blast,” said Trim after the first day. Gubler also called it a “good time” and save for a “little tricky” final sector on the third Selective Section, “was a good day all overall.”

Kyle Murray set the fastest outright time in his 2016 Geiser Trophy Truck Spec. Bill Zemak was runner-up in a Jackal, a buggy developed by Rhys Millen with inspiration from rally raid cars and Trophy Trucks, ahead of 2023 NORRA 500 overall winner Dave Mason Jr.

“The truck worked flawlessly,” said Murray. “The goal this weekend was consistency and that’s what we did. The truck was perfect. We’ve had no issues, no flat tyres, it was an easy weekend. We’re ready to go for another.”

Lando Norris will start the 2024 United States Grand Prix on pole position after George Russell’s crash brought a premature end to the session.

Norrisis McLaren F1 Team’s first pole sitter in America since Lewis Hamilton at Indianapolis in 2007. Verstappen – who has improving on his final attempt – will line up alongside his Championship challenger while the two Ferrari’s will share the second row. 

Hamilton’s Q1 exit was undoubtedly the biggest shock of the day and he’ll start ahead of only Zhou Guanyu and Liam Lawson, who takes a grid penalty.

Q1

Q1 started with a wait to see if Valtteri Bottas would make it out after his Sprint ended in flames due to issues with his rear brakes but the team did a great job to get his Sauber ready for action.

After the first runs, Verstappen went quickest by three tenths of a second but the surprise was Pierre Gasly, who was sitting top of the times for a while before getting knocked down by Verstappen and Leclerc into third.