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After winning the 2022 Dakar Rally in the T4 category, Austin Jones made the jump to T3 for the 2023 race. It did not take long for him to get accustomed to his new environment as he kept fellow American Red Bull driver Seth Quintero at bay en route to the overall win.

Jones is the sixth racer to win an overall in at least two different classes and the second to achieve it in T4 and T3, which are both SSV/UTV classes but the latter are racing-specific while T4s are production models. Defending World Rally-Raid Champion Francisco López Contardo, who finished fifth, won the 2019 and 2021 T4 crowns followed by T3 in 2022. Other multi-class winners include Hubert Auriol (twice on Bikes, 1992 in Cars), Nani Roma (2004 on Bikes, 2014 in Cars), Josef Macháček (2009 on Quads, 2021 in T3), and Stéphane Peterhansel (six on Bikes, eight in Cars).

T3 and T4 are typically dominated by Red Bull, who has a new factory programme courtesy of Can-Am, and this remained the case in 2023 as the Red Bull Can-Am Factory Team and Red Bull Off-Road Junior Team won all but four stages. The American-only Junior Team, which consists of Jones and Quintero plus Mitch Guthrie in an MCE-5 T3M, combined for eight victories; although Guthrie led the way with five wins, mechanical problems during Stage #5 while being the overall leader eliminated him from contention and relegated him to twenty-third.

Red Bull drivers nearly occupied the entire top five, with former Red Bull Factory member (though still affiliated with the brand) Guillaume de Mévius spoiling the party by finishing third with a stage win. De Mévius had led much of the Rally since taking the top spot from Guthrie before vehicle trouble in Stage #11 enabled Jones to surpass him. The Junior Team drivers and de Mévius finished ahead of the Factory Team’s Cristina Gutiérrez and López.

After winning a Dakar record twelve stages in 2022, Quintero only claimed two in 2023, though factors like a disastrous Stage #4 in which he lost power steering and ran out of fuel twice hampered him. By the end, he finished runner-up to Jones by nearly an hour but is satisfied with second as “to finally drive through every stage of the Dakar feels amazing.” His twenty career T3 stage wins still have him in a league of his own as Guthrie holds the second most in the class with just five.

Guenther Steiner has praised the way that the FIA Formula 1 World Championship has become more transparent since Liberty Media took over and Stefano Domenicali became CEO.

Liberty Media took over the control of Formula 1 ahead of the 2017 season after buying out long-term owner Bernie Ecclestone, and they have introduced widespread changes to the sport to try and make it more open and available to everyone.

Domenicali’s appointment as CEO has also received a lot of positive feedback, and Steiner, the Team Principal of the MoneyGram Haas F1 Team, says the sport feels a lot more inclusive now than in the past with everyone being more informed of what’s going on behind the scenes.

“I think they are different. Definitely, they are different,” said Steiner to the Beyond the Grid podcast. “Everybody’s included.

“Before with Bernie, the big teams always had a little bit of an advantage, but it’s for a good reason. They’re putting more into the sport that they are supplying power units and stuff like this.

Kevin Harvick‘s retirement tour will take him to a series that detractors like to call a retirement tour. On Tuesday, the Superstar Racing Experience announced Harvick will make his debut in the 2023 season opener at Stafford Motor Speedway on 13 July. He will also run the Berlin Raceway round on 3 August.

“NEWS: We’re happy,” begins SRX’s social media announcement. “Kevin Harvick will join SRX for the season opener at Stafford Speedway on July 13th and Berlin Raceway on August 3rd.”

Harvick is set for his twenty-fourth and final season as a full-time NASCAR Cup Series driver. The 2014 series champion has raced for Stewart-Haas Racing since said year; the team is co-owned by SRX operator and inaugural champion Tony Stewart.

The Stafford round takes place three days before the Cup race at New Hampshire Motor Speedway approximately 225.308 kilometres away. Berlin and Michigan International Speedway are also roughly the same distance apart. Making scheduling easier is SRX’s move to Thursday nights as part of the series’ new broadcasting deal with ESPN, giving Harvick plenty of time to prepare for his main championship afterwards.

“I’ve watched the SRX Series the last couple of years and it looked like a lot of fun,” Harvick told ESPN’s Ryan McGee. “With the way the schedule worked out, it wasn’t very convenient with my schedule, but this year with it being on Thursdays it was easy to coordinate.

Max Verstappen says the results of 2022 FIA Formula 1 World Championship season proved that if a team can get their interpretations of the technical regulations correct then success will come, and those that did not will always be playing catch up.

The Oracle Red Bull Racing team were one of the few teams to get their car right during the 2022 season, and they were rewarded by taking seventeen of the twenty-two victories available, fifteen of which went the way of the Dutchman as he claimed his second World Drivers’ Championship.

Verstappen says the time it took Red Bull to catch up with the Mercedes-AMG Petronas Formula One Team in the years up to the regulation change of last year highlights the need to be on top of their game quickly, but those teams that struggled in 2022 are still likely to be trying to catch up with their development in 2023.

“You see this when the regulations change and some teams hit it spot on,” said Verstappen to Viaplay, as quoted by RacingNews365.com.  “Once you hit it spot on and you know what you are doing, you more or less work from there and you make small steps [forward].

“But when you get it wrong, you really have to reinvent and try again and you’re always behind and then you have to try and catch up. You saw that with us in that it took a few years [to challenge Mercedes].

After running the full 2022 season, Timmy Hill will share a truck with his younger brother Tyler for the 2023 NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series. On Tuesday, Hill Motorsports announced the #5 Toyota Tundra TRD Pro has been shuttered and they will exclusively focus on the #56 split between the brothers.

The team opened the #5 for Tyler to run part-time in 2022. He failed to qualify at Circuit of the Americas and RIchmond, but made seven races with a best finish of twenty-first at Kansas.

Meanwhile, Timmy contested the full calendar in the #56. Created in 2019, the truck ran the entire 2020 and 2021 schedules with a rotation of drivers before Timmy became its permanent driver for 2022. However, the truck took a step back in all statistical categories as it did not record a single top ten. The older Hill finished twentieth in points with his highest run being fourteenth in the opener at Daytona.

“It’s exciting to finally have our plans set for 2023 in the NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series,” said Timmy. “After a year of running two trucks we felt it was best to return to one truck and focus on getting our competitiveness where we expect it to be. I have high hopes for the season and what we can accomplish.”

Timmy will pilot the #56 at Daytona on 17 February.

NASCAR Cup Series fans have quickly taken a liking to Trackhouse Racing Team‘s PROJECT91, a programme intended to bring international racing stars to the sport, especially after a generally successful début with Kimi Räikkönen in 2022. However, they will have to wait a little longer to see the #91 Chevrolet Camaro ZL1 in action.

Despite initial hope of the #91 entering the season-opening Daytona 500, Marks tweeted Tuesday that it will not take place and the car will instead continue to run road course races. Consequently, only full-timers Ross Chastain (#1) and Daniel Suárez (#99) will represent the team in the 500.

“We took a hard look at the Daytona 500 with @THProject91 but at the end of the day decided to focus on the road courses and the 1/99 @ Daytona,” said Marks. “We have some exciting P91 stuff being finalized.”

The #91’s first race at Watkins Glen International came with much fanfare as Räikkönen is one of the most popular drivers in racing today. Although the race ended in a crash, the 2007 Formula One World Champion did not rule out a return in the future, and Marks backed him up in November by saying he “operate(s) under the assumption that it’s kind of [Kimi’s] ride until he tells me otherwise.”

While Räikkönen has not confirmed any starts for 2023, three-time and reigning Supercars Champion Shane van Gisbergen revealed in September that he had talked with Marks about potentially racing the #91 if there is no schedule clash. There are six road races on the upcoming Cup schedule: Circuit of the Americas on 26 March, Sonoma Raceway on 11 June, the Chicago Street Race on 2 July, Indianapolis Motor Speedway on 13 August, Watkins Glen on 20 August, and the Charlotte Motor Speedway Roval on 8 October.

George Russell says Lewis Hamilton does things ‘so differently’ to other people, but despite this, his fellow Briton has been so successful during his career so far, including winning seven World Drivers’ Championships.

Russell will be Hamilton’s team-mate for a second FIA Formula 1 World Championship season in 2023 at the Mercedes-AMG Petronas Formula One Team, and he will go into the year on the back of beating his countryman in the standings.

The one-time race winner – he took his maiden victory in the 2022 São Paulo Grand Prix – says his champion team-mate has shown himself to be ‘incredibly inspiring’ with what he does off-track as well as on it.

“Lewis is an incredibly unique character,” said Russell to The High Performance Podcast.  “I think he’s incredibly inspiring with all of his activities and projects he has off-circuit.

“When you look at drivers from the past who are just pure racing drivers, [who think] ‘I’m going to wake up living and breathing this sport’, he does things so differently to so many other people, yet has still had so much success along the way.”

NASCAR, and stock car racing as a whole, is a bit different from other forms of racing as it eschews podiums in favour of a Victory Lane for the winner. But the sanctioning body is willing to try something new as the 2023 Busch Light Clash looms. Scheduled for 5 February, it will once again take place at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum, which hosted the 1932 and 1984 Summer Olympics and will do so again in 2028. Owing to the venue’s history as an Olympic site, NASCAR will introduce a podium ceremony along with gold, silver, and bronze medals for the top three finishers in the Clash’s final race.

The medals are produced by Jostens, who produces rings for the Super Bowl champions and related memorabilia for high schools. One face will feature the Busch Light Clash logo while the opposite has a graphic celebrating the Coliseum’s centennial anniversary and NASCAR’s own seventy-fifth celebration. The winner’s medal weighs 4.7 ounces (133.243 grams) and is covered in 24-karat gold.

The podium ceremony will take place underneath the Coliseum’s Olympic cauldron.

“These will be tremendous prizes for our drivers who are competing inside a venue that’s hosted two Olympic Games and is preparing for a third,” said NASCAR senior vice president for racing development and strategy Ben Kennedy. “Not only do the medals honor the rich tradition of this stadium, but they also provide a special element unique to NASCAR’s 75th anniversary.”

It may seem sacrilegious for NASCAR to have podiums and medals, even for an exhibition, but the Clash will not be the first time such as been awarded. In 1995, the top three at the two Atlanta Motor Speedway races received medals to help build up hype for Atlanta following the 1996 Summer Olympics.

Travis Pastrana is known for his rallying exploits, but he likes to dabble in stock cars from time to time even if he abandoned his full-time NASCAR career a decade ago. This continued interest has procured a chance for him to check off another item on his bucket list in February: the Daytona 500.

On Tuesday, 23XI Racing announced Pastrana will attempt to make his Cup Series début in the Daytona 500, driving the #67 Toyota Camry. The news was initially teased on Friday before being reported by Jordan Bianchi of The Athletic, and the team formally confirmed the news four days later.

Pastrana needs little introduction as one of the most iconic names in motorsport, and action sports in general, today. In 2012, the eleven-time X Games gold medalist decided to enter NASCAR by competing in the now-Xfinity Series and Craftsman Truck Series. He eventually ran the full 2013 Xfinity slate for what is now RFK Racing, where he finished fourteenth in points with four top tens and a pole at Daytona’s sister superspeedway Talladega. However, unstable funding and poor performance by his standards prompted his departure at year’s end.

In the decade since, he made one-off returns to the Truck Series at Las Vegas Motor Speedway. His most recent start was a twenty-first in 2020.

“I’m thrilled at the chance to race in the Daytona 500,” said Pastrana. “t’s the one event every year that all my friends and family come together to watch at our buddy Dale’s house and it’s an event I’ve wanted to race my entire life. My first Supercross win came at Daytona when I was sixteen years old, and I qualified third at Daytona for the Xfinity Series in 2013. That race didn’t end up well, but I was able to finish tenth despite the fact I crossed the finish line backward through the infield grass at 180 mph.”

Zak Brown insists no guarantees have been made to either Álex Palou or Pato O’Ward about possible chances to race in the FIA Formula 1 World Championship despite both being a part of the McLaren F1 Team’s driver roster.

Palou has already been confirmed as one of McLaren’s reserve drivers, although a lack of a Superlicence means O’Ward is unable to take up a similar role.  However, the Mexican will still join the Spaniard in being a part of the test driver line-up for the 2023 season.

Both drivers experienced free practice sessions during the 2022 season, Palou participating in the opening session of the United States Grand Prix weekend and O’Ward the same in Abu Dhabi.  Both had also had opportunities to drive the 2021 MCL35M at various times throughout the year.

Brown, the CEO of McLaren, hopes that O’Ward will finally be eligible for a Superlicence of his own by the end of the 2023 NTT IndyCar Series season, but neither he nor Palou are in line for a move to Formula 1 at this moment in time and no assurances of that happening have been given.

“We announced Álex as our reserve driver because he has his Superlicence,” said Brown to RacingNews365.com.  “He’ll continue testing with us and Pato will continue as well once we solidify our testing plans, but he doesn’t have a superlicence.

In 2022, Alexandre Giroud and Francisco Moreno Flores finished first and second in the Dakar Rally‘s Quad category. Fast forward to 2023 and even a tougher course did not change the top two.

The reigning World Rally-Raid Champion, Giroud defeated his fellow Drag’on Rally rider Moreno by forty-three minutes, making it a much closer result than last year when he won by over two hours. Giroud is the first back-to-back Quad winner since Alejandro Patronelli won in 2011 and 2012. The Frenchman kept a clean sheet better than his country in the FIFA World Cup Final as he never surrendered the overall lead across all fourteen stages. Ironically, the football analogy means the Dakar Quad 1–2 was an inverse of said match as Moreno is Argentinian.

It was not a “perfect” sweep as he did not win every stage, but winning the first four legs built up a massive advantage over Moreno. When Moreno broke the streak by taking Stage #5, he was still forty minutes back.

2021 Rally winner Manuel Andújar joined the fight when he bookended the cancelled Stage #7 with two wins, the latter of which saw an uncharacteristically difficult day for Moreno that caused Giroud to pull ahead by over an hour. However, Andújar fell out due to mechanical problems during the Empty Quarter Marathon.

Laisvydas Kancius and Marcelo Medeiros won every leg in the second half, with the former notching two and the latter enjoyed four in a row. Kancius could have had a third victory in Stage #8 but it evapourated when his Quad broke down. However, an early crash for Medeiros and retirement for Kancius respectively relegated them to ninth and seventh in the overall.

Malle Moto, officially known as Original by Motul, might be the hardest class to race at the Dakar Rally as bike riders do not have crews to help them and only some supplies. The difficulty were upped even more for the 2023 Rally due to its longer route, but Charan Moore was up for the challenge.

Moore battled with Javi Vega throughout the fourteen stages. After Moore took the overall lead by winning the first leg, Vega gave chase before losing ground when Mike Wiedemann won Stage #3. Vega finally got by Moore with a Stage #5 victory, though it was short lived as he lost it a day later.

When the Rally resumed following Stage #7’s cancellation for rain, Mário Patrão threw a wrench into Vega’s pursuit by finishing second to Moore in the next two legs and Vega’s deficit grew to over twenty-three minutes, further exacerbated by a Stage #9 fall. Vega, despite nursing rib pain, received a mulligan when Moore respectively suffered gearbox and radiator failures in Stages #10 and #11, enabling Vega to pull ahead.

Moore was able to recover by winning the second half of the Empty Quarter Marathon before delivering the coup de grâce in the fourteenth and final leg. In addition to winning Malle Moto, he finished twenty-eighth overall among all bikes and twelfth in Rally2, which Malle Moto is grouped within but has its own standings.

He described the race as “[a]n incredible journey. A rollercoaster from start to finish. Bike issues, a complete engine change, radiator issues, bush mechanics – all ace out from the comforts of a tent and box of tools and spares but enjoyed every second!

Scuderia Ferrari’s Carlos Sainz reflected on his second season with the outfit, and said that he feels that the team has the potential to battle for the title this season, given they improve upon weak points from 2022 and make further gains in pace. 

According to Formula1.com, Sainz said that the beginning of the year was difficult as he had trouble coming to grips with the new-regulation 2022 car. However, he was able to move forward as the season went on and find good pace, though he suffered several retirements due to technical issues and incidents. 

“Yeah, it’s been a challenging [year], as you guys have seen from the outside. There was a challenging first third of the season where I struggled a bit with the car balance, with the driving style, a car that for some reason didn’t suit me straight out of the box, and I had to fight through it quite a lot.”

“And the second two-thirds, I have been a lot happier with the car. I’ve been a lot more on the pace, but unfortunately, a lot of DNFs, a lot of reliability issues along the way.”

By the time he became well acclimated with the car, the lead was firmly in the hands of Red Bull, and Mercedes was able to catch up to the frontrunners pace-wise. With this, he felt that he wasn’t able to achieve results representative of his improvement– but hopes that he’ll be able to keep up the momentum into 2023.

Rally2 might not have the same prestige as the top-level RallyGP, but perhaps that adds to its charm as amateurs and those with burgeoning rally raid careers duke it out. Many of the sixty-three Rally2 riders who ultimately made the finish to be classified in the 2023 Dakar Rally came to Saudi Arabia as privateers, riders hoping to make a name for themselves, or boasted little prior experience in the discipline.

Romain Dumontier fell more under the second category. He spent the 2022 Rally—his first time at Dakar—and the World Rally-Raid Championship chasing Mason Klein, but with Klein having since graduated to RallyGP, Dumontier immediately pounced. Riding a Husqvarna with some factory support from HT Rally Raid, the Frenchman dominated the 2023 edition after assuming the overall lead in Stage #5, a day after winning the previous leg, and never relinquished the top spot from there. Dumontier’s other victories came in Stages #5, #6, #9, #11, #12, and the final #14.

“I got stronger after two delicate first days, a second week with three top tens, a top 5, but also seven stage wins in Rally2,” said Dumontier. “I was able to ride throughout these two weeks at my level, never above. I wanted to be in control and not get scared. I was able to follow the rhythm of the stage winners and see the commitment it took to be at the top of the rankings.”

Paolo Lucci set the tone early by winning the first stage but fell behind after crashing in Stage #5. Although Lucci presented the greatest overall challenge to Dumontier, the margin between them grew with even the slightest misstep by Lucci; a waypoint and punctured water pump in Stage #9 was effectively the death blow as he fell from 16:25 back to nearly half an hour. Although he closed the gap at times, it only re-inflated in the final five stages to thirty-two minutes.

Although Michael Docherty was over an hour behind Dumontier, his Dakar début was a memorable run for any Rally2 rider. His performance fluctuated between stage wins and hanging on in the top ten during the first half, but the second saw him step up his game to compete with every bike in general as he even kept pace with RallyGP. He finished third overall in Stage #10 behind factory riders Ross Branch and Adrien van Beveren before finding himself fighting with Luciano Benavides for the Stage #13 overall win. Benavides edged out Docherty but received a speeding penalty that briefly promoted Docherty to the top spot before the former’s brother Kevin ultimately claimed the win en route to the overall Rally victory.

Renault Sport officially launched the all-new four-wheel-drive Renault Clio Rally3 at the Pas de la Casa Circuit in Andorra on Sunday afternoon, becoming the brand´s first four-wheel-drive rally car.

In 2019 the FIA announced the new FIA Rally Pyramid and added a brand new class for more simple four-wheel-drive rally cars. M-Sport Poland was the first manufacturer to have a car ready for the class, and the Ford Fiesta Rally3 has had many great successes in the FIA World Rally Championship. but also in other international and national rally series, they will now face a new competitor.

The new Renault Clio Rally3 is the first all-wheel drive Clio, it was jointly designed by the teams at Viry-Châtillon, the Alpine manufacturing plant in Dieppe Jean Rédélé and the BWT Alpine F1 team in Enstone in the United Kingdom. The rally car was presented on Sunday after completing a development program with almost 5,000 kilometers of tests, the Clio Rally3 continues its homologation process with the FIA. Since the redesign of the Rally Pyramid, Renault has established itself as the front-wheel-drive benchmark, with the successes of the Clio Rally5 and Clio Rally4, launched in 2020 and 2021 respectively.

The car is powered by a 1.3-liter TCe 16-valve turbocharged 4-cylinder engine with direct injection that puts out a total of 260 hp and 415 Nm and it uses a SADEV gearbox with a limited-slip differential. The rear wing has been designed by the BWT Alpine F1 team and is “considered to be simple in appearance, but highly effective”.

The Clio Rally3 is expected to have undergone the homologation process around April so the car will be eligible to be used during the summer, the tarmac and gravel versions of the car are both priced at €122,000 excluding VAT.