Motorsports Racing News & Blog Articles

The Aston Martin Aramco Cognizant Formula 1 Team’s new Silverstone factory will be a ‘game changer’ according to Team Principal Mike Krack.

Aston Martin are still using the same factory that the Jordan F1 Team first used during their debut season in Formula 1 back in 1991.  And the factory has seen all of the subsequent teams between Jordan and Aston Martin, including the Midland F1 Team, Spyker F1 Team, Sahara Force India F1 Team and BWT Racing Point F1 Team.

The current factory is undersized for Aston Martin’s needs, with a temporary stack of cabins being used as office space alongside the main building, while they currently use the Mercedes-AMG Petronas Formula One Team’s wind tunnel.

The new factory, which is due to open in May, will enable everyone to work under one roof without the need of using remote locations, while their own wind tunnel should be ready to use in 2024.

“The fact that you can talk to people without having to arrange meetings, it facilitates the dialogue massively,” Krack is quoted as saying by Motorsport.com. 

Franz Tost insists that he cannot be happy with how the 2022 FIA Formula 1 World Championship season unfolded for his Scuderia AlphaTauri team, with the Faenza-based outfit slipping to a lowly ninth place in the Constructors’ Championship.

After a strong 2021 season that saw them end the year sixth, hopes were high that Pierre Gasly and Yuki Tsunoda would continue their form in 2022 and perhaps even fight higher up the order than before.

However, AlphaTauri did not seem to get on top of the new aerodynamic regulations, and after scoring one hundred and forty-two points in 2021, they could only muster thirty-five in 2022, with a best finish of fifth coming courtesy of Gasly in the Azerbaijan Grand Prix.

They finished two points behind the Haas F1 Team in eighth, although they were still able to outscore Williams Racing, another team that endured a tough year in the first year of the new regulations.

Tost, the Team Principal at AlphaTauri, hopes that the engineers at Faenza will be able to rectify the problems they faced in 2022 with their AT03 in the design of the 2023 AT04, which will be driven by Tsunoda and new signing Nyck de Vries after Gasly’s departure to the BWT Alpine F1 Team.

Nyck de Vries does not worry about how he is perceived by the outside world despite his arrival as a full-time driver in the FIA Formula 1 World Championship seeing receive the kind of attention that he does not agree with.

The Dutch driver made his Formula 1 race debut in the Italian Grand Prix of 2022 when he replaced an unwell Alexander Albon at Williams Racing, and he finished in an incredible ninth place, one of only five times throughout the season that the team broke into the top ten. 

He also participated in free practice sessions for the Mercedes-AMG Petronas Formula One Team and the Aston Martin Aramco Cognizant Formula 1 Team during 2022.

His performance opened up opportunities for the 2020/21 ABB FIA Formula E World Championship winner, and he will join Scuderia AlphaTauri alongside Yuki Tsunoda for the 2023 Formula 1 season.  He will replace the BWT Alpine F1 Team-bound Pierre Gasly and will run with the #21.

De Vries says people that he had not heard from in a long time attempted to get back in touch with him after his debut, but he insists he will not change the way he is and will do everything he can to shield himself away from those he does not wish to interact with.

Otmar Szafnauer believes the BWT Alpine F1 Team suffered less with porpoising than other teams did during the 2022 FIA Formula 1 World Championship season, and the team do not have any concerns about it happening in 2023.

The A522 was one of the few cars during 2022 not to need floor stays to reduce any bouncing down the straights, with a pre-season regulation change allowing for these stays, which Chief Technical Officer Pat Fry has already said prevented Alpine from having a better start to the season than they eventually did.

Szafnauer, the Team Principal of the Enstone-based team, says that whilst significant changes have been made to the A523, Alpine are not expecting porpoising to have any real effect on the team, even with the new floor regulations mandated by the FIA coming into effect.

“We’ve made some significant changes for next year on the car,” said Szafnauer to PlanetF1.com.  “The porpoising, I think we were able to tune out so to speak, but we tuned it out at the expense of performance. Others could have tuned it out as well, I think they didn’t want to lose that performance.

“So they did other things like lobby the FIA, get rule changes, all sorts of stuff, but not to have to remove porpoising through performance loss.

Alexander Albon says Williams Racing need to find a solution to the inconsistences they’ve had with recent cars in the FIA Formula 1 World Championship if they are to make progress in 2023.

The Thai driver scored half of Williams’ eight points in 2022, with his best finish of ninth coming in the Miami Grand Prix.  He also scored tenth place finishes in both the Australian and Belgian Grand Prix, while the other four points scored by the team were for ninth place finishes for Nyck de Vries in Italy (as Albon sat out the race with appendicitis) and Nicholas Latifi in Japan.

The performance of the FW44 was very up and down, with Albon feeling it suited certain tracks better than others, and it is important that they can find more consistency with the FW45 if they want to be scoring points on a more regular basis.

“It feels like we’ve had a very similar year to what George [Russell] had been doing previously,” Albon is quoted as saying by Motorsport.com. “I haven’t been quick in all circuits.

“Our car is quite unique. It seems to suit a certain characteristic of track. And when those moments happen, we seem to be able to make the most of it.

Audi Sport will look to bring in a development driver midway through the 2023 FIA Formula 1 World Championship season that will help them begin preparations for its arrival in the championship in 2026.

Audi will become Formula 1’s newest factory team in 2026 when it joins forces with the Sauber F1 Team, with the German marque also developing their own power units ahead of their debut season.

Adam Baker, the CEO of Audi’s racing operations, says that whilst it is too early to be considering drivers who could race for the team in 2026, it is important that they acquire a driver to help develop the team prior to their arrival.

“Too far away,” Baker said to German publication Deutsche Presse-Agentur.  “We’re not even talking about the drivers for 2024 yet, so it’s very difficult to say how the driver market will develop for 2026.

“[We will] bring a development driver on board in the third quarter [of 2023], who will be particularly important for our power unit development in the driving simulator in Neuburg”.

Team advisor Helmut Marko believes Oracle Red Bull Racing should fear the Mercedes-AMG Petronas Formula One team more than Scuderia Ferrari this season in the title race. The Austrian consultant mentions Mercedes’ advantage in terms of strategy and reliability for the upcoming season in the FIA Formula 1 World Championship.

Red Bull and Max Verstappen had a dominant season in 2022. Ferrari could still compete with the team at the start of the year, but it soon became clear that the Italians were making too many mistakes and lacked reliability. As a result, Verstappen managed to take home his second world title, wrapping it up in the Japanese Grand Prix in October.

Ferrari hopes to come back stronger this season, but Red Bull must also take Mercedes into account. After a mediocre season with just one win, the German team is working hard on the W14 to compete in 2023. Mercedes has always been good at further developing the car, something that was also evident last season. Lewis Hamilton and George Russell managed to get some strong results at the end of the year.

“I would say that we should fear Mercedes more, mainly because they have an advantage over Ferrari in terms of strategy and reliability,” Marko told Motorsport.com.

“Our situation is certainly not like that of Mercedes at the beginning of the hybrid era, we don’t have an immense lead with the engine right now. So that is very different. Mercedes had at least 50bhp margin over all the others back then and we shouldn’t forget: 2022 has been the first year under this new set of regulations.

Pietro Fittipaldi’s career in Formula 1 looks set to be limited to only two Grands Prix as the Haas F1 Team reserve driver had hoped for a permanent place in the most prominent racing series in the world, but has now once again had to settle for another series when he joins the reigning LMP2 class champion JOTA for the 2023 FIA World Endurance Championship.

Fittipaldi has raced in the WEC before, but not regularly. He competed in the 2022 Le Mans 24 Hours with Inter Europol and had a limited program with the DragonSpeed ​​LMP1 team in the 2018-19 series. He broke his leg during training for the opening race at Spa-Francorchamps.

Driving temporarily is disappearing. The JOTA team which is currently the reigning LMP2 champions has signed the Brazilian for the upcoming season. Fittipaldi will compete in all of seven rounds throughout the season, starting with 1000 Miles of Sebring in March.

However, it is still unknown whether the Brazilian will remain as Haas test and reserve driver with a confirmation on this expected shortly.

Zak Brown has revealed the reasons why NTT IndyCar Series stars Pato O’Ward and Álex Palou are a part of the McLaren F1 Team’s test driver line-up.

Mexican racer O’Ward is currently racing to the Arrow McLaren IndyCar Team and has been a championship contender in both 2021 and 2022, while Spaniard Palou was the 2021 IndyCar champion with Chip Ganassi Racing and will be going for a second title with the same team in 2023.

McLaren’s Formula 1 line-up looks set for at least the next two or three years as Lando Norris at twenty-three will be joined by twenty-one-year-old Oscar Piastri in 2023 after the departure of Daniel Ricciardo.

Both O’Ward and Palou participated in running in McLaren’s MCL35M at various times during the 2022 FIA Formula 1 World Championship season, and each then debuted in a free practice session for the team in the MCL36.  Palou took the reigns in the opening session of the United States Grand Prix, while O’Ward did likewise in Abu Dhabi.

Brown, the CEO at McLaren, says bringing they have invested in bringing the likes of O’Ward and Palou into their Formula 1 programme as it is important to have the calibre of driver with potential to race in the sport as back up should one of their main drivers be unavailable for any reason.

Any team wishing to join the FIA Formula 1 World Championship grid in the next couple of years will require the full backing of both Formula 1 and the FIA, which includes the recently announced Andretti Cadillac team.

Michael Andretti has been pushing to join the Formula 1 grid in recent years and the announcement that the FIA are opening up an expression of interest for potential new teams has reinvigorated their desire to make that a reality under his Andretti Global outfit.

However, the FIA insist that despite the project looking credible, they are likely not to be the only manufacturer to be considered as Formula 1’s eleventh team.

“There is great interest in the F1 project at this time with a number of conversations continuing that are not as visible as others,” read a statement from Formula 1.

“We all want to ensure the championship remains credible and stable and any new entrant request will be assessed on criteria to meet those objectives by all the relevant stakeholders.

Team Audi Sport has been the centre of controversy since Stage #5 of the 2023 Dakar Rally when their cars received an eight-kW boost as part of the FIA’s Equivalence of Technology rule. Toyota driver and current overall leader Nasser Al-Attiyah was among the most vocal critics of the boost, but ironically has only strengthened his own advantage over the field in the two legs since while the Audis have all but lost their chances at victory.

Al-Attiyah notched his third T1 stage win on Friday with three minutes and twenty-nine seconds on Sébastien Loeb. Audi’s Carlos Sainz and Stéphane Peterhansel chased Al-Attiyah for much of the leg, but disaster struck after 261 kilometres when they both crashed in the same location. Peterhansel’s co-driver Édouard Boulanger was airlifted to hospital due to a lower back injury which knocked them out of the stage, while Sainz and Lucas Cruz retired after attempts to repair their car failed. The former entry’s exit and Al-Attiyah’s win has boosted the latter to an overall lead of over one hour with 1:06:50 on second-placed Toyota Gazoo Racing ally Henk Lategan; entering Stage #6, Peterhansel had been second in the ranking to Al-Attiyah with only a 22:36 deficit.

Mattias Ekström was the only Audi to not suffer serious problems and finished sixth. With Peterhansel and Sainz’s retirements, he is now the highest running Audi and non-Toyota Hilux in the overall in fifth but is 1:46:55 back. On the other hand, Hilux driver Yazeed Al-Rajhi suffered a broken wheel hub that sank him from third in the general classification to twenty-eighth.

While certainly a thrill to reinforce his lead, Al-Attiyah also recanted his comments on the Audi/EOT situation by writing on social media, “In the heat of the moment, I reacted harshly to the FIA’s EOT decision. I like to defend my title fairly, and at the first instant, the decision did not seem fair. I now understand the situation better, and would like to apologise for my earlier post.”

20-year-old Mitchel van den Brink scored his maiden Dakar stage win in T5 ahead of fellow Team de Rooy driver Janus van Kasteren by thirty-five seconds. His father Martin van den Brink placed fourth and two spots ahead of Aleš Loprais to leapfrog him for the overall, though with only a thirty-six-second edge. The younger van den Brink’s victory continues a string of youth success at Dakar, joining 18-year-old Eryk Goczał‘s two T4 stage victories.

With the rain continuing to flood the Dakar Rally, the ASO has been forced to make changes to the stages as they take place. After Stage #6 on Thursday was shortened by 100 kilometres, the next two legs were also impacted as the bivouac in Dawadmi could not be built in time.

Stage #7, running between Dawadmi and Riyadh, was originally intended to use the same Special Stage layout that Stage #8 did. However, the ASO’s revisions mean the two will trade routes for good. The new seventh stage will be a 333-kilometre-long run from Riyadh to Dawadmi, effectively making it a marathon stage. At the end of the leg, a special assistance area will be established that competitors can access via a 94-km link route.

A 240-km liaison route will then take the Rally back to Dawadmi to prepare for Stage #8. This will go back to Riyadh but has been shortened from its original 473-km distance to 345 km.

As weather conditions continue to provide difficulties and the Rally takes its toll on riders, the ASO eventually decided to cancel the seventh stage for the FIM classes. The 2023 Rally has noticeably been more challenging than previous editions with multiple riders suffering injuries or experiencing other problems. With the Bikes and Quads not taking part, they will head directly to Dawadmi for Stage #8. The FIA categories and Dakar Classic will proceed with Stage #7 as scheduled.

The 24-year-old Irish rising talent Eamonn Kelly is the latest driver to confirm a go in the 2023 FIA Junior World Rally Championship which starts with Rally Sweden in February.

Kelly who is born in the famous Donegal area has been a fast learner in his rally career. Just 18 months ago he made his gravel debut and finished in the runner-up spot in the 2021 British Junior Rally Championship and last season he became better as he managed to clinch the title in a very tough competition throughout the year.

His success on both gravel and asphalt has earned him Billy Coleman Award which is presented each year at the Motorsport Ireland gala for those youngsters who are rising through the ranks.

Now he will take another step up in his career as he will be taking on the 2023 Junior WRC title facing some of the world´s best junior rally drivers. He will also continue his partnership with the co-driver Conor Mohan and next weekend the duo will take part in the Finnish round of the Arctic Lapland Rally to gain some snow experience ahead of Sweden a month later.

“I believe it is the best place for me to go to further myself and my rallying career, it is a hugely exciting challenge with a lot of firsts – I can’t wait. The past two years of my rally career have been very positive with good success, so I feel the time is right to make a jump like this.” Kelly said.

The FIA World Rallycross Championship driver Niclas Grönholm who is the son of the 2000 and 2002 WRC champion Marcus Grönholm, has now announced he will do six round program in the 2023 Finnish Rally Championship in a newly acquired Citroen C3 Rally2 with support from Citroen Racing.

Grönholm and co-driver Antti Linnaketo will already start the season with the annually Arctic Lapland Rally in Rovaniemi next weekend. This will be a long-time dream come true for Grönholm who normally competes at the highest level of rallycross but will switch focus over to rally a bit more this year as he will compete six out of the seven rounds in the Ralli SM series.

He is also forming a brand new team for his campaign, the goal for the GRX-Sontek Team was to accquire an own rally car which they have now achieved through Citroen Racing. The Citroen C3 Rally2 will also become the first car of that kind to be used in the Ralli SM.

At the moment it is still unkown if Grönholm will continue to race in the World RX for this season, he finished third overall in the first all-electric RX1e season for CE Dealer Team last year.

The Belgian Tom Rensonnet has now confirmed that he will be taking a step up to the one-make FIA Junior World Rally Championship in 2023 after just three seasons in rallying, which started with an investment of 10 euros.

Rensonnet started his career in 2019 when he won the Belgian RACB National Team Challenge, which only costs 10 euros to enter. Before doing so, he has never driven a rally car before but since then he has become a rising star in the local championship.

By winning that, new opportunities opened up for the 24-year-old as he received a prize drive in a Peugeot 208 Rally4 for a full season in 2020 but as COVID-19 restrictions came, he had to miss out the chance and later after the restrictions got lifted he then in 2022 became the Belgian Junior Champion.

This year, which will become his fourth, he has announced his plans to enter the JWRC for full-season driving in an M-Sport Poland built Ford Fiesta Rally3, starting in Rally Sweden in February which will become a new challenge for him as he has never driven on snow before.

“I think I will be the least experienced out of all the Junior WRC drivers, I have always competed on Tarmac but this year we will also drive on snow and gravel, so that’s going to be more difficult for me.” Rensonnet said.