Motorsports Racing News & Blog Articles

The Nissan Formula E Team‘s journey as an official Gen3 powertrain supplier will properly begin this weekend at the Mexico City E-Prix, with this weekend’s event at the Autódromo Hermanos Rodríguez being the season-opening race of the ABB FIA Formula E World Championship.

Nissan enter the new era of Formula E full of optimism, with the end of Gen2 having been somewhat disappointing for the Japanese manufacturer. Nissan claimed just two victories in the Gen2 era, something they likely won’t be pleased with given the size and pedigree of the company. Gen3, though, is clearly being treated as a fresh start by the team, who’ve introduced a completely new and relatively inexperienced driver line-up.

Pairing up at Nissan this season is the returning Formula E race winner Norman Nato, who’s last full season in the series was Season Seven, in which the Frenchman claimed victory at the finale in Berlin, Germany. His last actual appearance, though, was the Seoul E-Prix last year, after being brought in to replace Sam Bird, who was ruled out through injury.

Alongside Nato is rookie Sacha Fenestraz, who is highly rated as a potential star of the future. Fenestraz also featured at the season finale last year, after replacing Antonio Giovinazzi, who was also ruled out through injury. This weekend’s event, though, will be his first full Formula E weekend, with the Frenchman presumably aiming to gain as much experience as possible.

Gathering data for Nissan should be somewhat easier this year, given that they are supplying powertrains to the championship’s newest side, the NEOM McLaren Formula E Team. If McLaren’s pace in pre-season testing is anything to go by, then Nissan could be in for a strong start to the season; however, Team Principal Tommaso Volpe is aware that this weekend will see every team “starting from scratch”.

After spending Season Eight out of the ABB FIA Formula E World Championship (excluding an appearance at the Seoul E-Prix to replace Sam Bird), Norman Nato is preparing to make his comeback to the all-electric series this weekend at the Mexico City E-Prix, with the Nissan Formula E Team.

The Frenchman is, of course, a Formula E race winner, with the thirty year-old having won the Season Seven finale in Berlin, Germany. Had he not replaced Bird at the final race last season, then his race win would’ve been his most recent race in the series; instead, his most recent result in the series is fourteenth.

Nato looked good during pre-season testing at the Circuit Ricardo Tormo, Valencia, and astonishingly ended the week with the seventh-fastest time, suggesting that the Japanese manufacturer have some solid potential with their powertrain the Nissan e-4ORCE 04. Looking ahead to his returning campaign, the Frenchman is “really excited” to get the new era of Formula E underway and believes he is as “prepared and confident” as he could be.

“I’m really excited to get Season 9 underway! It’s going to be an interesting one, with the new cars, my first race for the team and at a new track for me. However, I’m feeling prepared and confident in the work we’ve done in the off-season and at testing in Valencia. I’ve seen and heard about the amazing atmosphere in Mexico City, so I can’t wait to race through the stadium in front of so many passionate fans.”

“I don’t think anybody knows what to expect” – Sacha Fenestraz

On the other side of the completely new Nissan driver line-up is rookie Sacha Fenestraz, who, like Nato, stepped in for an injured driver at the Seoul E-Prix. The 2022 Super Formula runner-up replaced Antonio Giovinazzi at Dragon/Penske Autosport for the final race of last season, and finished sixteenth.

Entering the Empty Quarter Marathon, Toby Price was third in the Bike overall classification and trailing leader Kevin Benavides by 2:10. After the first half of the Marathon, he sat second behind Skyler Howes by just twenty-eight seconds. By the end, he had the advantage over Howes by that same margin.

Price finished Stage #12 third in the Bikes behind José Ignacio Cornejo and Daniel Sanders, and his time of 1:59:25 gave him 40:47:36, ahead of Howes’ 40:48:04. Despite Howes having led the overall for half the Rally, he finished sixth and fifty-six seconds back of Price. The latter also benefitted from the one minute and eighteen seconds chopped from his final time via the Automatic Bonus as the third bike to depart the leg.

“After a really average sleep last night in the [tent] we felt reasonably good coming into Stage 12, which we finished 3rd and now have the outright lead with a couple more stages to go,” wrote Price. “It’s safe to say it’s a really close race right now, as we all know anything can happen, a tiny little mistake or getting stuck in the dunes can really cost you the race so we’ll see how we go, let’s keep fighting.”

Although Howes is now the chaser, the margin is still less than half a minute with two stages remaining. Benavides is also within striking distance at just 2:40 behind Price.

“The Empty Quarter really does live up to its name, just an endless sea of dunes,” said Howes. “It’s really exciting to go into the last couple of days with the race so close. Both halves of the marathon stage went well. I think I was able to ride both days at a good, consistent pace. I was able to preserve myself and the bike without any issues, which is super important. So now I’m looking ahead at the last two stages of the race. Neither of them are very long, so with things so tight on the leaderboard, I really think this battle is going to run right up to the finish line.”

“Double Duty” is a term used to describe a driver competing in both the NTT IndyCar Series‘ Indianapolis 500 and NASCAR Cup Series‘ Coca-Cola 600 on the same day. Due to tight scheduling and the nature of both races as among the most famous rounds of their respective calendars, Double Duty has only been attempted ten times by five drivers with the last try coming in 2014 with Kurt Busch.

A decade later, Kyle Larson will be the sixth man to try his hand as the 2021 Cup Series champion will enter the 2024 Indy 500 in a car co-prepared by Arrow McLaren and his NASCAR team Hendrick Motorsports.

Much like his childhood idol and current boss Jeff Gordon, Larson grew up with dreams of competing in the Indy 500 before instead making the jump to stock cars. Since débuting in NASCAR’s top level in 2014, he has become a star with nineteen wins and the 2021 title, the latter coming in his first year with Hendrick. In 2022, he won thrice and finished seventh in points.

Larson is regarded as one of the top drivers in motorsport today. Besides his achievements in NASCAR, he is a dirt track ace and even has a Rolex 24 Hours of Daytona overall victory in 2015.

“Competing at the Indianapolis 500 is a dream of mine and something I’ve wanted to do for a very long time, since I was a child before I ever began competing in sprint cars,” said Larson. “To do it with McLaren Racing and Mr. (Rick) Hendrick especially is a dream come true. I’m grateful for the opportunity and am really looking forward to it even though it’s still about a year-and-a-half away. I’m really looking forward to competing in both the Indianapolis 500 and the Coca-Cola 600 and maybe even get a win or two that day.”

Carlos Sainz Jr. believes Max Verstappen and Oracle Red Bull Racing can be beaten during the 2023 FIA Formula 1 World Championship season if Scuderia Ferrari can have a ‘perfect year’.

Ferrari started the 2022 season strongly, with Charles Leclerc taking victory in two of the opening three races.  Unfortunately, they would only win twice more, Leclerc taking his third win of the year in Austria and Sainz taking his maiden Grand Prix victory in Great Britain.

Sainz feels that whilst Red Bull appeared to dominate the season – they took seventeen victories across the year, fifteen of which went the way of Verstappen – Ferrari were not that far away, and with some improvements across the board, they can take the momentum away from their rivals in 2023.

The Spaniard says they will need to find some additional power and downforce as well as remove the errors they made in strategy in order to get on top of Red Bull and fight for the titles.

“Unfortunately we couldn’t keep up with them (Red Bull),” said Sainz to Spanish publication Mundo Deportivo.  “They had a better package and the driver at the moment was better.

Valtteri Bottas says he feels more relaxed racing for Alfa Romeo F1 Team ORLEN than he did during his five years with the Mercedes-AMG Petronas Formula One Team, particularly when it comes to doing ‘fun stuff’ between races.

Bottas made the move to Alfa Romeo ahead of the 2022 season after Mercedes opted to replace him with George Russell, and the Finn enjoyed a strong season with the Hinwil-based team as he ended tenth in the Drivers’ Championship.

However, it is the smaller things away from the race track that Bottas has enjoyed doing once more, with the Finn admitting he felt bad doing anything fun whilst at Mercedes.  He did not think that he would have been allowed such a free rein with his former employers as he does now at Alfa Romeo.

Bottas feels he has been allowed to do more with Alfa Romeo, such as a trip to Argentina in between the Mexico City and São Paulo Grand Prix, a trip that saw him arrive in Brazil mentally ready to go.

“Once COVID kind of went away, traveling got even easier now again, but I can say I’ve been living fully between the races as well!” said Bottas to RACER.com.  “Of course I still work with the team — we do all the meetings and I go to the factory often — but then when I’m off I do lots of cool things.

Jost Capito, the former Team Principal of Williams Racing, believes the introduction of the budget cap into the FIA Formula 1 World Championship possibly prevented the Grove-based outfit from dropping off the grid.

Williams are one of the smallest teams on the grid with a lower budget to that of other teams but having a cap on what teams can spend means that they will not be hindered by this shortfall as much as they would be if they were allowed to spend an unlimited amount of money each year.

Capito says that Dorilton Capital would not have invested so heavily into the team without the budget cap being introduced, and it potentially prevented Formula 1 from losing one of its legendary teams.

“The budget cap is good for Formula 1 and for everybody,” said Capito to GPFans.com prior to his departure from the team.  “Without the budget cap, Dorilton wouldn’t have invested in Formula 1.

“It’s quite possible that without the budget cap, Williams wouldn’t exist anymore, so in that view, it’s vital for Williams.”

DGM Racing might begin the 2023 NASCAR Xfinity Series season with two drivers named Josh, but they aren’t just joshing around. On Thursday, the team announced Josh Bilicki will drive the #91 Chevrolet in select races in 2023 beginning with the season opener at Daytona International Speedway on 18 February.

Other confirmed dates are the Chicago Street Race on 1 July and Road America on 29 July, while additional starts were not immediately revealed.

Bilicki did a one-off for DGM at the 2022 Daytona opener, where he finished ninth for his second NASCAR national series top ten. He spent the rest of the year making six starts for Alpha Prime Racing with a best finish of thirteenth at Road America, while also running sixteen Cup Series races for Spire Motorsports with a sixteenth at Atlanta.

“Driving for DGM Racing and the Gosselin family at the season opener at Daytona in 2022 and scoring a top-ten finish was a highlight of my year,” Bilicki stated. “The entire team welcomed me with open arms, and we stayed in touch throughout the 2022 season, even when we were competitors. This felt like a very natural fit for me and my sponsors, and I am hoping to mirror our results next month at Daytona.”

For 2023, he will split between his Xfinity schedule for DGM and a part-time Cup slate for Live Fast Motorsports.

The Empty Quarter Marathon, a two-day run through the eponymous and massive Saudi desert where racers may not receive assistance from their crews, began on Thursday and has already produced a handful of surprises. While some things remained constant in Stage #11 like Sébastien Loeb recording his fourth straight stage win, changes of pace came in areas like T3 where a trio of YXZ1000R Turbo Prototypes fielded by X-raid Team swept the podium.

After coming to life in the second half of the stage, Ricardo Porém led the Yamaha podium ahead of João Ferreira and Ignacio Casale. The trio finished within twenty-two seconds of each other, with Ferreira and Casale separated by just two seconds. The next closest Prototypes were the Red Bull Can-Ams of Seth Quintero and new overall leader Austin Jones, both over six minutes behind. Guillaume de Mevius lost the top spot overall after experiencing mechanical problems as the leg began.

The win is Yamaha’s second in T3 since the category’s introduction in 2021 after Ferreira, the reigning FIA European Cup for Cross-Country Bajas champion, claimed Stage #8 four days ago; both were major upsets as the other nine legs have been dominated by Can-Ams or Red Bulls (or both). All of the Japanese manufacturer’s Dakar wins have come in the FIM classes, which is especially reinforced in the Quad category where everyone is riding a Yamaha Raptor.

“Actually, our main goal was to get through the first day of the marathon stage without any problems. The victory is like a gift we received to compensate for the hard days,” Porém remarked.

While Yamaha got to enjoy double stage wins in T3 and Quad as Marcelo Medeiros claimed the latter, the same could not be said for twice stage victor Manuel Andújar as he was forced to exit with trouble to his Raptor.

After twenty-three years of being one of the NASCAR Cup Series‘ most successful names, Kevin Harvick will hang up his helmet. On Thursday, the 47-year-old announced he will retire from full-time competition at the end of the 2023 season. He is the last driver still competing on a regular basis to have also done so during the Winston Cup Series era, which ended in 2003 as did the top level’s season-long points format.

“There is absolutely nothing else in the world that I enjoy doing more than going to the race track, and I’m genuinely looking forward to this season,” said Harvick. “But as I’ve gone through the years, I knew there would come a day where I had to make a decision. When would it be time to step away from the car?

“I’ve sought out people and picked their brains. When I asked them when they knew it was the right time, they said it’ll just happen, and you’ll realise that’s the right moment. You’ll make a plan and decide when it’s your last year.

“It’s definitely been hard to understand when that right moment is because we’ve been so fortunate to run well. But sometimes there are just other things going on that become more important and, for me, that time has come.”

Harvick’s Cup début came under difficult circumstances in 2001 when he took over for the late Dale Earnhardt at Richard Childress Racing, but he made an impact almost immediately when he edged out eventual champion Jeff Gordon for the win at Atlanta in just his third career start. In thirteen years with RCR, he scored twenty-three wins including the 2007 Daytona 500 as he turned #29—which was selected by RCR as the lowest available number in 2001 after Earnhardt’s passing—into a household number.

NIO 333 Racing‘s exciting journey as an official Gen3 powertrain supplier for the ABB FIA Formula E World Championship is about to get underway, with this weekend’s Mexico City E-Prix marking the start of the Gen3 era of Formula E.

NIO enter the third era of the sport following an unsuccessful four-year spell in Gen2, where the Chinese team failed to claim a single podium. The start of a new era, though, presents NIO with a chance to start over and move off the foot of the grid, a slot they held for the vast majority of Gen2. The Silverstone-based team enter the new era as the only powertrain supplier without a customer team, something which might harm them in regard to gathering data.

This might work against Dan Ticktum and new signing Sérgio Sette Câmara, who both suffered from “some issues” during pre-season testing, In fairness to NIO, though, everyone suffered from technical issues, with so much being unknown with the most advanced electric race cars ever seen. Despite the issues they faced and the fact that they were still the slowest team on the timesheets during testing, there is a real sense of optimism surrounding the side, who more than anything else deserve to move off the bottom.

This weekend at the Autódromo Hermanos Rodríguez will be the moment when the team discover “where we are” in the pecking order, according to Deputy Team Principal Russell O’Hagan.

No matter what happens this weekend for NIO, O’Hagan is incredibly proud of the “hard work” that the team has put into their Gen3 challenger, the NIO 333 ER9.

Dan Ticktum is ready to “hit the ground running” in his second season in the ABB FIA Formula E World Championship, starting this weekend at the season-opening race of both Season Nine, and the incredibly exciting third generation of the series.

The Mexico City E-Prix will host this weekend’s season-opening race, where nothing can seemingly be predicted, given that it is the start of a new era for the all-electric series. Ticktum goes into the year, though, feeling more prepared than he was in his rookie campaign in 2022, given that he “now knows all the circuits”.

The new machinery will also see the British driver back on more of a level playing field, given that he joined Formula E in the final season of Gen2. NIO 333 Racing also appear to be better prepared this year, with the side having arguably posted more social media footage of their Gen3 challenger than any other team. Demonstrating a sense of confidence.

There is no hiding the fact that Gen2 was really tough for NIO, given that they were a regular backmarker; however, Ticktum is hopeful that Gen3 will be the fresh start that the team needs, with the belief being that they can “take the fight to quite a few teams”.

“I’m really looking forward to the start of the season. Obviously I’m not a rookie anymore, so my aim is to hit the ground running. I now know all the circuits, and I think the team’s made good progress in terms of where we’re going to be and I believe we can take the fight to quite a few teams.

The former Hyundai Shell Mobis WRT driver Ole Christian Veiby from Norway has now confirmed that he will be on the start line for the second round of the FIA World Rally Championship in Sweden next month.

Veiby will be doing four winter rallies during the FIA World Rallycross Championship off-season. He will attend three local rallies in Sweden and Norway before rounding up with Rally Sweden. He will enter Rally Sigdal, Rally Elverum, Rally Lima with the 2022 World RX team´s champion Kristoffersson Motorsport in a Volkswagen Polo GTi R5, same car he used last year in Rally Sweden where he finished second in the WRC2 class behind his fellow countryman Andreas Mikkelsen.

During the week Veiby has tested in Anttila, Sweden and next Saturday Veiby’s rally season begins with Rally Sigdal northwest of the Norwegian capital Oslo. Then Rally Elverum, which is the premiere of the Norwegian Rally Championship, awaits next weekend and Rally Lima the weekend before Rally Sweden.

I really feel at home in the Polo. We have a good feeling and had a really good winter last year. It was just a bit of bad luck that meant we didn’t win in Rally Sweden. It is important to have good people around you and in this team I feel really safe.” Veiby said.

The five-time World RX champion Johan Kristoffersson has also tested the car over the winter, he used to do some rally outtings but he is only focusing on rallycross now. He finished third in the WRC3 class in the 2020 Rally Sweden.

Hyundai Motorsport has been without a team principal since the beginning of 2022 when the Italian Andrea Adamo left the team. However, today Hyundai announced that Cyril Abiteboul, known from Formula 1, he will take over the leading role of the FIA World Rally Championship team.

Abiteboul has worked in F1 as a team principal for both Caterham F1 Team and Renault Sport F1 Team, he has also spent over 15 years in motorsport. The 45-year-old Frenchman is still a rookie when it comes to rallying as he is replacing the deputy team principal Julien Moncet from this season onwards.

“I am relishing the opportunity to join Hyundai Motorsport as Team Principal from 2023. In motorsport, like in the rest of their activities, the Hyundai brand is cautiously building its leadership. I am excited at the prospect of being part of it, managing the WRC and Customer Racing programs, where the team has already proven to be strong competitors.” Abiteboul said.

“I am looking forward to immersing myself into the rallying community and discovering more about this spectacular sport. Hyundai has given me its full support to make the transition into this role a smooth one. I can’t wait to get started.”

He will also assume responsibility for the company’s customer racing programs in rallying. Thierry Neuville and Esapekka Lappi will drive in the WRC team for a full season in 2023 while the Spaniard Dani Sordo and Irishman Craig Breen sharing the third Hyundai i20 N Rally1 car.

The first season of NASCAR’s Brazilian operations will see an eight-round calendar. On Wednesday, the NASCAR Brasil Sprint Race revealed its schedule beginning in March and running through November.

The Brasil Sprint Race is a reformation of the pre-existing GT Sprint Race after forging a partnership with NASCAR in November. The move was intended to help NASCAR—primarily based on the United States—begin expanding into South America. NASCAR also has three international championships in Europe, Canada, and Mexico respectively with the Whelen Euro Series, Pinty’s Series, and Mexico Series.

Although NASCAR eventually hopes to have a common chassis across all four global series, the Sprint Race is generally closer to touring cars than stock cars as run in America. The Sprint Race and the adjacent Stock Car Pro Series both also compete exclusively on road courses, though ovals are envisioned for the former in the future as NASCAR increases its influence in Brazil.

Until then, all eight tracks are circuits for the most part. The Autódromo Internacional Ayrton Senna in Goiânia, which is hosting the season opener and finale on 19 March and 11 November, will use different layouts for both: the first round will be conducted on the traditional 3.8-km Grand Prix circuit while the latter is on the 1.9-km external course. The external layout is the closest to an oval with six turns and nary a righthand corner.

The only other track with repeat dates is Autódromo José Carlos Pace with races on 30 April and 6 August. The fifteen-corner, 4.3-km track is most notably the host of Formula One’s São Paulo Grand Prix. The August race is classified as a “Special Edition”, one of two races with the designation alongside the Autódromo Velo Città on 10 September. Special Edition races are longer by a lap while the weekend is longer as it contains a qualifying race.