Motorsports Racing News & Blog Articles

In Greek mythology, crossing the River Styx takes the dead to the underworld. In Roman history and idioms, crossing the Rubicon River was to go past a point of no return. In the 2023 Dakar Rally, crossing the storm-generated river on the way to Ha’il will make racers very wet, if not stuck entirely. Mother Nature has enjoyed stranding rally raiders in bodies of water over the past six months…

Stage #3 was originally a 477-kilometre run from Al-‘Ula to Ha’il, but increasing rain made it impossible for helicopters to tend to competitors. Multiple racers were also snagged by a riverbed that filled to extraordinary lengths. Consequently, the final 100 kilometres were lopped off and the leg ended after 377 km for the FIA classes, while FIM riders had their times recorded between said point and the second checkpoint at KM 35. Only forty-three riders reached the new finish while nine cars did so. The Dakar Classic was also halted due to the weather.

After a disastrous Stage #2 for the Prodrive Hunters, Guerlain Chicherit and Orlando Terranova rebounded by finishing 1–2 in T1. Chicherit scored his first stage victory since Stage #8 in 2013 as his time of 3:22:59 at the moment of stoppage was five minutes and four seconds ahead of Terranova.

“This victory is good because our morale was down,” said Chicherit. “We are so far away (in the overall) that, without blaming them, we can just hope that the others also have their troubles. If it’s like this every day, why can’t we get back into the top ten? In the top five?”

Although Chicherit and Terranova will be more than pleased with their results, fellow Hunter and Terranova’s Bahrain Raid Xtreme team-mate Sébastien Loeb suffered yet another failure after twenty-six kilometres and was relegated to thirty-second. Vaidotas Žala, a customer Hunter like Chicherit, had a better day in thirteenth.

Shortly before the Christmas break, Scuderia Ferrari hit the track at Vallelunga with their final test session of 2022 with the Ferrari 499P, the prototype that will take on the FIA World Endurance Championship in 2023.

Over the two days, the team focused on improving the reliability of the car to make sure it is ready for the gruelling endurance races that it faces this season.

The car has completed over 16,000 kilometres since making its on-track debut back in July 2022; this distance included a recent endurance test that took place at Aragon.

“The team’s work in 2022 was definitely intense, but we are still at the start of the development process,” said Ferdinando Cannizzo, Head of Ferrari GT Track Car Development.

“As is expected at this stage, we are making progress but also experiencing setbacks that slow down the programme. We are collecting valuable data and ideas to help us improve the car in terms of performance and reliability. We still need to do a lot of work to ensure we are ready for the debut at Sebring, but we are following our planned step

American rally legend Ken Block died Monday in a snowmobile accident in Utah, his Hoonigan Racing Division announced. He was 55.

“It’s with our deepest regrets that we can confirm that Ken Block passed away in a snowmobile accident today,” reads a statement from Hoonigan. “Ken was a visionary, a pioneer, and an icon. And most importantly, a father and husband. He will be incredibly missed. Please respect the family’s privacy at this time while they grieve.”

Block is one of the most iconic names in action sports, competing in a variety of off-road disciplines like rallying, rallycross, and desert racing. He was a regular in Rally America and the American Rally Association, while also making select starts in the top-level World Rally Championship between 2007 and 2020. A three-time X Games medalist in rallycross, he also raced in the Global Rallycross and FIA World Rallycross Championships, scoring six wins in the former.

He has also challenged legendary events like the SCORE International Baja 1000 and Pikes Peak International Hill Climb. In 2020, he débuted Extreme E’s Spark ODYSSEY 21 at the Dakar Rally ahead of its inaugural season the following year, and also contributed to World RX’s Projekt E as it prepared to shift to electric racing.

“The entire motorsport industry will never be the same. Ken Block was a great man and I am so thankful that I was able to be apart of his team,” posted Block’s 2021 Baja 1000 team-mate Jax Redline.

The 2023 Dakar Rally promised to be one of the toughest in recent memory, and it’s certainly living up to expectations so far. Stage #2, 431 kilometres in Special Stages from the Sea Camp to Al-‘Ula, brought plenty of rain to the rocky course and attrition across all classes.

By the end, defending winner Nasser Al-Attiyah was able to rebound from his difficult start to lead the T1 category. Fellow Toyota Hilux drivers Lionel Baud, Giniel de Villiers, and Erik van Loon battled for the lead for much of Monday before Al-Attiyah closed the gap and surpassed them with a time of 5:00:26, fourteen seconds quicker than van Loon. Stage #1 winner Carlos Sainz continued Audi’s successful Dakar by joining them on the podium five minutes back. Baud and de Villiers were fifth and sixth, respectively. Another Hilux of Yazeed Al-Rajhi was twelfth after dealing with a broken steering arm and running the final 155 kilometres without brakes.

While the Hiluxes got to celebrate, the Prodrive Hunters had to go back to the drawing board. All four drivers recorded uncharacteristically poor results due to tyre punctures that plagued them throughout the stage. Vaidotas Žala was especially unlucky as he lost three tyres after just 100 kilometres and a three-hour wait for the assistance truck to arrive revealed it did not bring enough tyres for him and fellow Hunter Guerlain Chicherit, who came to a stop nearby. Once more arrived in another truck, Chicherit went to provide help for Sébastien Loeb, also the victim of three blown tyres, while Žala was subsequently plagued by front differential and driveshaft failures that forced him to call it a day. While not involved in the debacle, Orlando Terranova lost his spares too in the early stages and finished a paltry thirtieth.

Red Bull continued their T3 sweep as Factory Team member Francisco López Contardo led much of the leg before being passed by Mitch Guthrie of the Junior Team and beat him by one minute, twenty-five seconds. Junior Team colleague Austin Jones looked strong throughout the day but fell to fifth while team-mate Seth Quintero rounded out the podium.

Eryk Goczał, the 18-year-old who surpassed Quintero to become the youngest Dakar stage winner when he claimed T4 in Stage #1, struggled early and had to settle for fifth. Nevertheless, the family was atop the T4 podium as his father Marek Goczał won ahead of Jeremías González Ferioli with a time of 5:45:31 to 5:54:39. Pau Navarro, another teenager who finished second to the younger Goczał the previous stage, had a rough day as he placed twenty-sixth.

Formula One driver Carlos Sainz Jr. made make the trip to Saudi Arabia to watch his father race in the Dakar Rally, and Dad quickly delivered. Despite suffering an early tyre puncture, Carlos Sainz Sr. made up lost ground to top the Cars in Stage #1.

Audi team-mate Mattias Ekström, who won the Prologue, continued his strong performance by leading much the 600-kilometre opening stage but fell back in the later portion to Sainz and Sébastien Loeb. Ekström eventually received a fifteen-minute time penalty for missing a waypoint that dropped him to thirteenth. Sainz held off Loeb by just ten seconds for the T1 win.

Nasser Al-Attiyah finished third, ensuring the T1 podium would fully consist of different manufacturers as his Toyota Hilux joined Sainz’s Audi and Loeb’s Prodrive Hunter.

“We had one puncture at the beginning so after that we proceeded with caution over the stones,” said Sainz. “Then we were able to up the speed towards the end of the stage.”

Red Bulls dominated the T3 class as defending World Rally-Raid Champion Francisco López Contardo topped the class with American Junior Team racers Seth Quintero, Austin Jones, and Mitch Guthrie respectively placing third, fourth, and sixth. Guillaume de Mevius, a former Red Bull member, broke up the party by finishing second, one minute and forty-nine seconds back of López.

Jerett Brooks has been a mainstay of the short course off-road racing scene since his childhood and establishing himself as a teenage sensation. After all that he has accomplished, the now-25-year-old father is hanging up his helmet. He announced his retirement on Saturday.

Brooks ends his career on a high note, having won the Championship Off-Road Pro 2 title as consistency rewarded an otherwise winless 2022. It was his sixth professional class championship after the TORC Pro Lite crown in 2014, back-to-back Lucas Oil Off Road Racing Series Pro Lite titles in 2015 and 2016, and the LOORRS Pro 2 in 2019 and 2020. The lattermost made him the final champion of that class under the LOORRS banner before its demise.

He had alluded to his exit on occasion during the 2022 COR season. At the finale in Crandon in September, he noted he was looking into wrapping up his full-time career now that he had secured the Pro 2 title.

“I would be lying if I didn’t say I shed a tear or two,” stated Brooks. “14 years, 54 wins, 110 podiums. 6 pro title championships. It’s been one hell of a run. Racing has taught me so much in life. Racing has brought me to meet people who I would have never. Including meeting my wife and racing against her at a young age! My goal from day one was to win a pro championship, open up a race shop and have a team to build race cars. At 16 years old I won my first prolite title. I kept the ball rolling with more and more championships and accomplished all the goals I had in short course. With no new goals in short course I felt stuck in a rut. It’s time to focus on my new goals and focus on my family. We will be back soon in a different form.”

The Californian began his career in Junior Karts before ascending through the ranks. In 2013, the 16-year-old Brooks entered the newly formed Stadium Super Trucks. He has competed sporadically in the series in the decade since, winning at Crandon in 2013 and the streets of Long Beach in 2021, along with eight podiums. In 2017, he ran the final round at Lake Elsinore as a substitute for Paul Morris, scoring a runner-up finish in the last race to secure him the championship.

The 2023 Dakar Rally began Saturday with a Prologue stage that looped around the Sea Camp along the east coast of Saudi Arabia. With the stage being what Quad rider Pablo Copetti called a “very fast and technical” thirteen kilometres, the margins between each competitor were mere seconds for many but it provided an early glimpse into who will have momentum entering the first main, 600-km stage.

Team Audi Sport‘s Audi RS Q e-tron E2, now eligible for the World Rally-Raid Championship, began its T1 title quest strong as Mattias Ekström edged out 2022 W2RC runner-up Sébastien Loeb for the Prologue win by just one second. Last year’s winner and T1 champion Nasser Al-Attiyah was fourth with a time of eight minutes and twelve seconds, just a second off third-placed Audi driver Stéphane Peterhansel.

“It’s always nice to start in a good way, but of course the day is long and the rally is even longer,” said Ekström. “A good end to 2022, but tomorrow is the real start.”

Red Bull‘s new factory partnership with Can-Am quickly bore fruit as Cristina Gutiérrez and team newcomer Rokas Baciuška respectively topped the T3 and T4 classes, both by two minutes. Gutiérrez beat Red Bull Off-Road Junior Team driver Seth Quintero to end his streak of winning every Dakar stage he finished at eleven (he won all but one of the twelve T4 legs in 2022, with the exception ending in retirement).

Baciuška, the reigning T4 W2RC winner, held off his former South Racing colleagues Cristiano Batista and Gerard Farrés. 18-year-old Eryk Goczał was fourth in his maiden Dakar start ahead of his uncle Michal and father Marek.

With the help of Spanish automaker CUPRA, ABT Sportsline have returned to the ABB FIA Formula E World Championship, with one of their drivers believing they have a “point to prove”, with ABT having gone for a duo they know incredibly well.

For Season Nine of the all-electric series and the start of Gen3, the ABT CUPRA Formula E Team have signed their old DTM line-up of Robin Frijns and Nico Mueller, marking somewhat of a reunion.

For Mueller, it’s not only a reunion with ABT but a reunion with Formula E, after competing in the championship for the entirety of Season Six and the first half of Season Seven. In the COVID-19 affected Season Six, the Swiss driver raced for GEOX Dragon, whilst in Season Seven he competed for Dragon/Penske Autosport. His best result in the series to-date is a second place finish at the Season Seven Valencia E-Prix, proving he knows what it takes to perform in the championship.

Mueller is pleased to be back in the championship after taking a “short break” in 2022, and believes that Season Nine is the “right time for a comeback”. Looking ahead to the season, Mueller is expecting his team to be the “underdog”, with the side prepared to “play that role to the maximum extent possible”.

“Obviously, ABT is back as a team and I’m also back after a short break as a driver,” Mueller told fiaformulae.com.

The start of McLaren’s adventure in the ABB FIA Formula E World Championship is just two weeks away, with the NEOM McLaren Formula E Team having enjoyed a solid week of pre-season testing at the Circuit Ricardo Tormo, Valencia.

McLaren are continuing to widen their presence in the world of motorsport, with Formula E being the latest championship that the British manufacturer has decided to join. The side have entered the all-electric series at the start of Gen3, with McLaren Racing CEO Zak Brown seeing the start of the new era of the sport as a “bit of a reset”.

Gen3 is certainly the perfect time for McLaren to have joined the sport, given that all the teams have gone back to square-one in the championship. McLaren will be a Nissan customer side for 2023, with the outfit using powertrains from the Japanese manufacturer, which looked very much up-to-standard in Valencia.

There will be a real sense of optimism around the new team, with their driver line-up of rookie Jake Hughes and the returning René Rast being one to watch. McLaren’s FE outfit also have a great team behind them, with the side having taken the vast majority of employees from the Mercedes-EQ Formula E Team, that left the sport at the end of Season Eight. McLaren have effectively taken Mercedes-EQ’s place in the sport, as well as Mercedes-EQ Team Principal Ian James.

With all that in mind, Brown sees Formula E as a “great opportunity” for McLaren, with the American hopeful that the team can “hit the ground running”.

Pat Fry admitted it was frustrating that the FIA allowed extra floor stays ahead of the 2022 FIA Formula 1 World Championship in an attempt to reduce porpoising, feeling it compromised the BWT Alpine F1 Team as they had designed a stiffer floor that did not suffer as badly with it as their rivals.

Fry, the Chief Technical Officer at the Enstone-based team, felt the rule change aided a lot of Alpine’s rivals, calling it a ‘let-off’ as other teams complained about their floors offering too much flexing.

Heading into the season opener in Bahrain, only Alpine, Oracle Red Bull Racing, Williams Racing and the Aston Martin Aramco Cognizant Formula One Team ran without the floor stays, although the last two teams had them in place by the time of the second race in Saudi Arabia.

Alpine had gone a different way with their floor design and perhaps started the season with one that was too rigid, according to Fry, but the rule change enabled them to develop a lighter floor later in the season.

“We were worried about some of the flow structures,” said Fry to The Race. “But, if anything, we were a little bit too cautious, maybe.

Sergio Pérez admitted it was pleasing to get back on track after early season reliability concerns during the 2022 FIA Formula 1 World Championship season, although a mid-season slump saw him fall drastically away from team-mate Max Verstappen in the Drivers’ Championship.

Pérez was on course for a top three finish in the season opening Bahrain Grand Prix only for his engine to seize at the start of the final lap, forcing into a spin at turn one.  However, he recovered superbly by securing his maiden Formula 1 pole position in the next race in Saudi Arabia, although he was denied victory by an ill-timed safety car when he appeared to have the race in his pocket.

The Mexican would take his first victory of the season in Monaco but would only win once more in 2022 as he took the chequered flag first in Singapore, with Oracle Red Bull Racing team-mate Verstappen taking a remarkable fifteen victories on his way to the title.

Updates to the RB18 saw his performance drop around mid-season, with Pérez admitting that he was far less comfortable in the car then than at the start of the year. 

However, he clawed his way back towards the end, with podium finishes in Japan, Mexico City and Abu Dhabi on top of his Singapore win, and he was only denied second in the Drivers’ Championship by Charles Leclerc by three points.

Guenther Steiner says the lack of testing ahead of drivers debut in the FIA Formula 1 World Championship makes it difficult to gamble on bringing in a rookie driver, particularly with how Mick Schumacher struggled when making the step up from FIA Formula 2.

Schumacher himself admitted it was difficult to adapt to Formula 1 with so little time behind the wheel of a car ahead of his debut, and after two seasons in the sport, he will be replaced at the Haas F1 Team by Nico Hülkenberg, a veteran of one hundred and eighty-one race starts, in 2023.

And Steiner, the Team Principal at Haas, agrees with his former driver about the lack of track time affecting a rookie, and it means teams will look into bringing in experience rather than giving a rookie driver an opportunity.

“I think he’s right,” Steiner is quoted as saying by Motorsport.com. “In racing, two years is a pretty good time, but there’s nothing before.  He jumped straight from F2 to F1 in competition, because there is no testing.

“We reverted back to get an experienced driver that wasn’t in a car for three years, not full-time, because the young drivers, you cannot really evaluate or you take big risks.”

Andrew Shovlin has revealed that the Mercedes-AMG Petronas Formula One Team did not think their W13 was in ‘a bad place’ heading into the 2022 FIA Formula 1 World Championship season, and that the ‘porpoising’ was not as a significant problem as it turned out to be.

Shovlin, the Track Engineering Director at Mercedes, said the team knew that they were not the quickest outfit heading into the season, but they were able to be drawn into a large development programme to try and reduce the effect of the car bouncing down the straights, which came as a result of their interpretation of the new aerodynamic regulations.

Mercedes were unsure what was causing the porpoising, so the early races were a struggle for them as they fell off the pace and away from the front of the field, the place where they had traditionally been since the beginning of the turbo hybrid era in 2014.  The lowest point perhaps came at the Saudi Arabian Grand Prix where Lewis Hamilton was eliminated in Q1 in Qualifying.

And it was not until they brought updates to the car for the Spanish Grand Prix that they begun to understand the problem, although some of the porpoising remained evident on the W13 right through the 2022 season.

“At Silverstone [for the shakedown], we were in the middle of a storm – it was about the worst conditions we’ve ever run a car in,” said Shovlin to Motorsport.com.  “That certainly doesn’t allow for very clear and sensible shakedown running for the filming day.

Pierre Gasly admitted his final FIA Formula 1 World Championship season with Scuderia AlphaTauri was not the season he was hoping or expecting, with the Frenchman scoring only six top ten finishes across the twenty-two races.

After two consecutive seasons finishing inside the top ten in the Drivers’ Championship, Gasly slipped to fourteenth in 2022, with his points tally dropping from one hundred and ten points in 2021 to just twenty-three.

With new aerodynamic regulations coming into force in 2022, AlphaTauri were one of the teams who struggled to get the best out of their car, with the AT03 being a struggle to drive throughout the season.  And those struggles ensured Gasly endured a much tougher season than he was hoping for.

“From my side, what I can feel, it’s more the fact of working and trying to maximise a car which didn’t have the same potential as 2021,” said Gasly to Motorsport.com.  “It’s not easy, also trying to keep the motivation in the engineering room, with the guys trying to keep the focus of everyone to minimise the mistakes.

“Because at the end, even if you do the same sport and the same season, the dynamic is quite different, especially last year was amazing for everyone, and we had the most successful year.

Dan Fallows says everyone within the Aston Martin Aramco Cognizant Formula One Team are using their own methods to add performance to their car, and they are not looking to copy their rivals to make them faster.

Fallows, who joined Aston Martin as Technical Director in 2022 after leaving Red Bull Racing midway through 2021 where he acted as Head of Aerodynamics, says his new team has recruited some ‘very talented’ individuals with a lot of experience, and they are all keen to share their ideas.

As well as Fallows, deputy Technical Director Eric Blandin has been brought in from the Mercedes-AMG Petronas Formula One Team, while Engineering Director Luca Furbatto was moved to Aston Martin from Alfa Romeo F1 Team ORLEN.

And Fallows says that collectively, all the engineers at the Silverstone-based outfit will be working together as a team to develop the next Aston Martin Formula 1 car for 2023 and help them move up from their seventh place in the Constructors’ Championship of 2022.

“We’re keen to learn from what other people do well,” said Fallows to Motorsport.com.  “And it’s something I’ve always found, when you recruit people there is always something you can learn that other teams are doing, but also we’ve been fortunate enough to recruit some very talented and experienced people who have their own ideas about what makes a car go fast.