Motorsports Racing News & Blog Articles

Otmar Szafnauer says the battle for fourth place in the Constructors’ Championship is far from over despite his BWT Alpine F1 Team drawing clear of the McLaren F1 Team after last weekend’s São Paulo Grand Prix.

Fernando Alonso and Esteban Ocon finished fifth and eighth respectively at the Autódromo José Carlos Pace while McLaren’s two drivers, Lando Norris and Daniel Ricciardo, both retired.  This means Alpine head into the season finale in Abu Dhabi this weekend with a nineteen-point advantage.

However, Szafnauer, the Team Principal at Alpine, says the objectives remain the same despite the advantage they have over McLaren, and they will be pushing to end the year on a high at the Yas Marina Circuit.

“We still have a job on our hands this weekend with the objective to finish the season with both cars scoring points,” said Szafnauer.  “The Championship is still close and, while last weekend’s race put us in a strong position, it ain’t over till it’s over!

“We will, therefore, remain focused on the task and that is preparing well on Friday, reaching Q3 on Saturday and then race well with both cars on Sunday.”

Fernando Alonso will once again say goodbye to ‘Team Enstone’ this weekend, with the Spaniard departing the BWT Alpine F1 Team after two years there to join the Aston Martin Aramco Cognizant F1 Team in 2023.

The Spaniard has enjoyed immense success during his time with the team, particularly when it was known as the Renault F1 Team, with back-to-back World Championships coming his way in 2005 and 2006.

His current spell has been less successful but has still had its highlights, none better than a podium finish in the 2021 Qatar Grand Prix.  He also comes into the season finale in 2022 on the back of equalling his best result of the year last weekend in Brazil when he took fifth despite starting towards the back of the pack.

“I’ve enjoyed racing for Alpine and being back in Enstone and Viry,” said Alonso.  “I have very fond memories of my past with Renault and now Alpine at both factories and the team will always have a special place in my heart.

“When I returned to Formula 1 for the start of the 2021 season, the team welcomed me and made me feel immediately comfortable. Since then, we’ve gone on to achieve some strong results. The podium in Qatar was a personal highlight for me and something we achieved on merit that weekend.

Sebastian Vettel says he wants to end his FIA Formula 1 World Championship career on a high this weekend as he says goodbye to the sport after Sunday’s Abu Dhabi Grand Prix.

The German will compete in his two hundred and ninety-ninth race on Sunday, and he is looking to do so with a top ten finish and a result that could help the Aston Martin Aramco Cognizant F1 Team overhaul Alfa Romeo F1 Team ORLEN for sixth place in the Constructors’ Championship.

Vettel, who clinched his maiden Formula 1 World Championship at the Yas Marina Circuit back in 2010, says he will be fighting hard all the way to the chequered flag on Sunday evening to bring home the best result possible.

“This is obviously going to be a very emotional weekend as my Grand Prix career draws to a close,” said Vettel.  “I am sure that this race will bring back plenty of happy memories from the last fifteen years, and I want to enjoy my last race with the team and with everyone I have met during my time in the sport.

“It has been a fantastic two years with Aston Martin F1, with lots of fun moments and some great memories.

Toto Wolff says the one-two finish for the Mercedes-AMG Petronas Formula One Team in last weekend’s São Paulo Grand Prix was just reward for the hard work the team has put in this year to overcome the difficulties they’ve faced with their W13 challenger.

George Russell led home Lewis Hamilton last Sunday at the Autódromo José Carlos Pace, with Wolff, the Team Principal at Mercedes, saying it proved that the team were never prepared to stop believing or pushing to return to winning ways.

“To score a 1-2 finish in Brazil was an incredible result for the team, but it’s been made more special by the challenges we have faced this season and how we have overcome them,” said Wolff.

“Securing our first victory of the season is the result of so much hard work, dedication and determination from everyone involved. Our team never stopped believing and never stopped pushing. I couldn’t be prouder of them, and it shows just how strong our values are.”

Wolff was also full of praise for his drivers, with Russell taking a deserving first FIA Formula 1 World Championship victory and Hamilton overcoming a difficult start that involved contact with Max Verstappen to recover to second place.

Just moments after it was announced that Mick Schumacher would be leaving the Haas F1 Team, his successor within the American team was announced as Nico Hülkenberg was confirmed to be making his full-time return racing and partnering Kevin Magnussen at Haas for the 2023 FIA Formula 1 World Championship season.

Hülkenberg, who since his departure from the Renault F1 Team at the end of the 2019 season, has been officially operating as the Aston Martin Aramco Cognizant Formula One Team reserve driver since the beginning of the 2021 season and despite his three year break from full-time racing, the German has still since official Grand Prix action as he was called upon by the Silverstone-based team numerous times across the last three years.

The thirty-five year old German made quite the impression on his reserve duties when he qualified third at the 70th Anniversary Grand Prix, where he would come home for a eventual seventh-place finish after having to pit from fourth-place late on due to a high level of tyre wear. Also when called upon on the Saturday of the Eifel Grand Prix, Hülkenberg was able to claim an eight-place finish despite starting last on the grid, a drive that netted him the honour of being crowned the driver of the day.

His last track action in Formula 1 was at the beginning of the 2022 season when, without any preparation, Hülkenberg was called to replace the COVID-19 hit Sebastian Vettel for the Bahrain and Saudi Arabian Grand Prix.

The German driver will bring a wealth of experience to the Haas F1 Team in 2023, with one-hundred and eighty-one race starts in Formula One and over five-hundred career points to his name. When talking about the signing of Hülkenberg, Haas Team Principal Guenther Steiner was keen to draw on the levels of “experience and knowledge” that the German will bring to the team in 2023.

With no official calendar for the 2023 FIA World Rally Championship being announced yet, many rallies have already confirmed they will be hosting next year with Rally Mexico being the latest to announce this week.

It is already known the season-opener will happen at the annual Rallye Monte-Carlo on 19-22 January followed by the full-winter rally of Rally Sweden on 9-12 February, which was announced their schedule two weeks ago.

Now the third race organizer of the season has also announced the date for next season. The third round will be held in Mexico on the 16-19 March. Mexico appeared last time on the schedule in 2020 right when the COVID-19 pandemic broke out in the world and caused the rally to be stopped after Saturday stages. WRC has been held in Mexico between 2004 to 2020 but was dropped out last year and this year.

FIA and the WRC Promoter have been planning the calendar throughout the autumn and originally the calendar was supposed to be announced in October at the latest, but the plans have been delayed with the final calendar to probably be confirmed at the FIA World Motor Sport Council Meeting in December.

The rally championship in the Canary Islands is coming to an end for this season with one round remaining when Rally Isla de Los Volcanes will play host as the season-finale on 2/3 December.

Throughout the rally, there will be a total of 10 stages with five of them being run twice and will feature a total of 85 kilometers of test on Saturday, with Friday being only used for recce and a shakedown.

The rally was postponed earlier this year, with the original date to be in April but during the Friday recce, the Lanzarote government refused the permit because of environment protection with teams and drivers already on site when the news came. Instead, the organizer had to make new attempts and moved the rally to December with permission being successful this time.

The full entry list for the rally has not yet been announced but two names appeared on the ewrc-results.com website this week. First out was the Frenchman Eric Camilli known from WRC2, who will drive a Citroen C3 Rally2 for Sports&You.

The second driver out driving for the same team with the same model is the Norwegian Henning Solberg, who will be making a comeback in the international rally scene and is joined by Giovanni Bernacchini as the co-driver. The Italian is mostly known for being the guy who invites famous rally drivers to the competing in the Canary Islands.

Hyundai Shell Mobis WRT has operated the entire 2022 FIA World Rally Championship season without an actual leader in the team as Julien Moncet was selected to handle the duties as deputy team principal from the first round of the season until last weekend, but is set to step away for 2023.

Moncet has announced that he would like to have a permanent contract but it seems like Hyundai is coming to a different solution. The Belgian news publication La Derniere Heure says in an article that it has received information from inside the team that Moncet will be replaced by a new team principal ahead of the 2023 season start.

According to the article, the new team principal will be Cyril Abiteboul, who is known from Formula 1. He would be a surprise bet as the Frenchman has no rally background whatsoever. He has previously worked in F1 as a team manager for Caterham and Renault.

Hyundai is expected to announce the driver line-up later this week with the news about the team principal to follow, Hyundai has so far only confirmed Thierry Neuville for next year.

On Thursday M-Sport Ford World Rally Team announced that Craig Breen will not continue to drive for them next season and will terminate the contract a year earlier.

At the end of last year, M-Sport signed Breen as the number one driver with a two-year contract, Breen´s season with the Ford Puma Rally1 car was underestimated. The Irishman finished third in the season-opener in Rallye Monte-Carlo in January and took a second-place finish in Rally Italia Sardegna.

Breen had many retirements this season and has not been quite up there as expected from his great performance in the beginning, with the latest being at the season-finale in Rally Japan last weekend. He did only finish seventh in the driver´s championship, which was disappointing for both the driver and the team.

“I want to extend a big thank you to M-Sport and the whole team for everything they’ve done for me this year, it has been an important season as my first full-time drive, and to complete that in a Puma has been fantastic. It has been a great experience for me to be part of the team, but ultimately, it’s time to move on. I’m looking forward to the future and continuing to build my partnership with James (Fulton, co-driver).” Breen said.

“Craig is a very talented driver and I have no doubt that he has more yet to achieve in his career, but the team feels we need a new approach for 2023. We wish Craig and James the very best of luck for the future, and we now turn our attentions towards next season and securing a competitive line-up for the Puma Hybrid Rally1.”Richard Millener, M-Sport Ford Team Principal, said.

Haas F1 Team have announced that Mick Schumacher will part ways with the team at the end of the current 2022 FIA Formula 1 World Championship season.

After months of speculation, it has been confirmed that Schumacher will leave Haas due to the team wanting to go in a different direction.

The son of the legendary Michael Schumacher joined Haas in December 2020 after winning the Formula 2 Championship that year. His first season alongside Nikita Mazepin saw him not finish with any points, mostly due to the team not being able to provide a car that was capable of evening challenging for the last points position.

Schumacher stayed with the team in 2022 but his teammate was not so lucky as Mazepin was axed due to political reasons. 2022 saw a car with much more potential and that showed with Kevin Magnussen scoring some good points early on in the season. Schumacher however struggled early on in the season and had a few costly crashes including one in Jeddah.

He did score his first points in Formula 1 however and that was at the action packed British Grand Prix, where he finished eighth after battling on the last lap with Max Verstappen. Schumacher’s short run of form continued in Austria, where he recorded a sixth-place finish for the team.

NASCAR is a very American sport, which is why it only makes sense to race in both Americas. On Wednesday, NASCAR announced a partnership with Brazil’s GT Sprint Race to reform the latter into the NASCAR Brasil Sprint Race.

“Brazil is a vibrant country, rich in motorsports culture and community, and the perfect location for our first series in South America,” said NASCAR International Vice President Chad Seigler. “NASCAR Brasil Sprint Race will allow us to showcase the exciting side-by-side racing that defines NASCAR while giving Brazilian race fans a series to which they feel connected. It is our hope and intention that this series also opens more pathways for the country’s best drivers, mechanics and engineers to advance to NASCAR’s national series in the United States, the worldwide pinnacle of stock car racing.”

GT Sprint Race was founded in 2012 by Thiago Marques, who has competed in the Stock Car Pro Series. His brother Tarso was due to race in the NASCAR Cup Series in 2022 with Team Stange Racing though starts never materialised, but the team has continued to compete in the GT Sprint Race with 2020 champion Ricardo Sperafico.

While the Stock Car Pro Series, formerly known as Stock Car Brasil, has existed in the country since 1979, it is closer to touring cars than stock cars. Like its North American counterparts, Brasil Sprint Race intends to race on ovals in the future though the 2023 calendar is expected to focus strictly on road courses due to a lack of ovals in the country.

Brasil Sprint Race is NASCAR’s fourth international championship after the Mexico Series, the Pinty’s Series in Canada, and the Whelen Euro Series. The other three divisions were also originally separate from NASCAR before their organisers partnered with the sanctioning body. NASCAR has envisioned a shared vehicle style between the four tiers that would allow for crossovers or even a global championship.

In October, two months before the 2023 Dakar Rally, Sergei Kariakin made a last-ditch plea to FIA President Mohammed Ben Sulayem to lift the sanctioning body’s policy that Russian competitors denounce the invasion of Ukraine, a prerequisite that allows them to take part in FIA-overseen races. After not receiving a response for the next month, Kariakin has called it quits.

Kariakin argued the “emergency measures” violate Article 3 of the FIA Code of Ethics, which stipulates the FIA maintain friendly relations with state governments and private bodies. While Russia invading Ukraine has drawn international condemnation, Kariakin and various Russian racers have refused to speak out against it such as fellow SSV driver Anastasiya Nifontova. KAMAZ-master, a nineteen-time winner of the Dakar’s Truck category, is also skipping the 2023 Rally; the team’s parent company is directly involved in the war by providing vehicles to the Russian military.

His SNAG Racing team-mate Nikita Mazepin formally declared he would stay neutral about the topic, though the sentiment is hindered by his family’s relationship with President Vladimir Putin and Western sanctions. The fallout from the invasion had ousted Mazepin from his Formula One ride, leading him to Kariakin and rally raid.

“The FIA ​​is ignoring my letter, and I am not going to sign the paper for participation,” Kariakin told Match TV. “Certainly, this is a difficult decision. But this is the reality in which we live.”

Although not necessarily proclaiming his support for the invasion, Kariakin’s stance has been implied from his opposition to the policy, calling the war a “special operation” (the official term used by the Kremlin and supporters), and running for local political office in 2021 as part of the pro-Putin party United Russia.

Scuderia AlphaTauri’s Pierre Gasly looks ahead to his final race before departing the team to join BWT Alpine F1 Team in 2023. After a disappointing finish outside the points at the Brazilian Grand Prix, he said that he is aiming for the points necessary at the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix to move into eighth place in the constructors standings, with AlphaTauri currently just two points behind Haas F1 Team. 

“Brazil was another weekend where it just didn’t come together for us in the race. Even though I pushed as hard as I could, it was again a frustrating afternoon with no points. Now we come to the final round, which will be important as it’s our final chance to take eighth place in the Constructors’.” 

Gasly said that the season closer will be an “emotional weekend” for him, as he has made meaningful relationships with everyone on the team. Ultimately, Gasly wants to achieve the best result possible for the team that has supported him since his F1 debut in 2017. 

“It’s going to be a very emotional weekend of course. My last one with the team after five years spent together. It means our relationship has been much more than just a working partnership. I know all the engineers and mechanics and the people in the factory personally, having spent time together even in our private lives. It’s the last race of a long history, as I don’t think many drivers have spent five years with a team. 

“There have been so many really great moments that we have shared together and what’s certain, is that whatever happens this weekend I will be trying my very best in the hope we can end with a good race and a nice result. But apart from that, I just want to enjoy the weekend as a whole and to think of all the great times we spent together over the past few years.”

Ryan Preece lost his full-time NASCAR Cup Series ride when JTG Daugherty Racing shut down the #37 car at the end of the 2021 season, and he found his footing at Stewart-Haas Racing as a reserve driver. A handful of starts across all three national divisions and plenty of simulator work later, SHR has rewarded him with another chance at the top level as he will drive the #41 Ford Mustang in 2023. He replaces Cole Custer.

“Ryan Preece has been a real asset to our race team this year as we’ve developed the Next Gen car,” said team co-owner Tony Stewart. “The time and effort he’s put into our program, combined with his real-world racing experience, earned him this opportunity,”

Besides serving as SHR’s backup, Preece ran a limited slate in the Cup, Xfinity, and Truck Series for the team’s allies. He made two Cup starts for Rick Ware Racing at Dover and Charlotte, along with the exhibition Busch Light Clash; three in Xfinity for B.J. McLeod Motorsports at Richmond, Charlotte, and Nashville; and ten in the Trucks for David Gilliland Racing. He scored top tens in all but one of his Truck attempts including a win at Nashville, where he also claimed the victory the previous year with DGR in his series début.

Preece raced full-time in Cup for JTG from 2019 to 2021, notching nine top tens and a best points finish of twenty-sixth in the #47 car.

“This is the opportunity I’ve been working for,” commented Preece. “Nothing was guaranteed at the start of this year, but I felt like if I put in the time, whether it was in a race car or in a simulator, that SHR was the place for me. It’s a company built by racers, for racers, and it’s exactly where I want to be.”

Alfa Romeo Formula One Team ORLEN’s Team Principal Frédéric Vasseur was pleased with the team results from the São Paulo Grand Prix and feels satisfied leaving South America, after extending the lead in the Constructors’ Championship to five-points from Aston Martin Aramco Cognizant Formula One Team.

Vasseur was happy with the pace from the C42 and commented that over the race weekend the team were consistent in its performance much like the team displayed during the previous race in Mexico City. The team were able to run as high as the fifth position at Interlagos with a surprise burst of pace from the car, however, the safety car closed the door on the team being able to maintain and perhaps extend the advantage they so nearly held over other teams. Nonetheless, Vasseur was pleased with the result, and congratulated the team in bagging those important points.

“The team did a really good job today and we were able to turn the weekend around and leave with a good result. Both yesterday and today we have shown good pace and made up a lot of ground and we can be satisfied to leave Brazil with an increased gap over our closest rivals.”

It’s clear that the Team Principal had hoped for more once both drivers, Valtteri Bottas and Zhou Guanyu, broke into the top ten, but ultimately it was the safety car that stole the advantage from the Alfa Romeo drivers, closing the gap between the teams. Yet Vasseur noted that the team strategy was well executed and they were able to fight back for a top-ten position with Bottas securing two points to the tally.

“We had a good start and were able to run as high as fifth during the race: it’s a shame the late Safety Car nullified our advantage and put us within range of other cars, but we still brought home the points we wanted.”