Motorsports Racing News & Blog Articles

As the 2023 Dakar Rally looms, the Amaury Sport Organisation provided Thursday the number bibs for 144 bike and quad riders. Each bib is of a different colour to signify their status or class: elite riders have yellow bibs, quads and amateur bike racers use white, and those in the Malle Moto category have red.

Twenty-seven riders comprise the yellow numbers. These racers have factory support and usually compete at the top level of rally competition, which in the case of Dakar and the overarching World Rally-Raid Championship is the RallyGP class. 2022 Dakar winner and W2RC RallyGP champion Sam Sunderland gets #1 after spending the previous year with #3.

White numbers fall under Rally2 and include amateur riders, rookies, among others. Seventy-three such riders are competing on bikes while seventeen are on quads. Alexandre Giroud will defend his Quad title as #151.

The Malle Moto, also known as Original by Motul, features twenty-seven competitors. The class is arguably the toughest of any at Dakar as riders may not receive any support whatsoever including crews. The only help Malle Moto racers get are a trunk from the ASO for storage of personal belongings and tools and free use of generators and toolboxes in the bivouac. Category sponsor Motul also provides some supplies like a backpack, sleeping bag, tent, and headline.

David Pearson, who is making his Dakar Rally début in Malle Moto alongside American Rally Originals team-mates Morrison Hart, David and Jim Pearson, and Kyle McCoy, described the class at being like “choosing to run the Iditarod (on foot) rather than taking a dog sled.”

Coming off a missed opportunity for a win at the Mexican Grand Prix, Mercedes-AMG Petronas F1 Team Principal Toto Wolff said that they achieved a solid result last time out and that the team will be aiming to build off of their recent progress at the Brazilian Grand Prix.

“We didn’t optimise every opportunity in Mexico, but we still managed to score good points with Lewis’s great drive to the podium and George’s P4 finish.

“It was encouraging to be in the fight for the win, showing how far we’ve come since the start of the year. While we’re always aiming for the top spot, we should be proud of that progress and we’re aiming to keep it going through the end of the year and into 2023.”

Wolff looks forward to returning to Interlagos after the team’s memorable weekend in Brazil last year, when Lewis Hamilton made a powerful charge to the win from out of position in tenth place. Since then, Brazil has bestowed honourary citizenship upon the influential British driver. 

“Brazil kicks off the final double-header of the season. Interlagos is an iconic track and the scene of so many special F1 moments, including Lewis’s spectacular performance last year in the Sprint and the Race.”

It was a good first day for the native Toyota Gazoo Racing WRT outfit as the eight-time world rally champion Sébastien Ogier together with his new co-driver Vincent Landais posted the fastest stage time on the opening stage of Rally Japan.

The short Kuragaike Park stage is one of the few stages during this year´s schedule that has been run in full darkness and Ogier came out best of the pack on the slippery condition, the Frenchmen are contesting their first rally together as a duo after Ogier parted ways with Benjamin Veillas after taking the win in Spain last time out.

It was quite tight in the top five with just five-tenth of a second separating the drivers with M-Sport´s Craig Breen just coming short by a single tenth, the Irishman also has a new co-driver for Rally Japan as James Fulton is replacing the retired Paul Nagle.

Ott Tänak who is contesting his final rally for Hyundai Shell Mobis WRT took the third fastest time, putting all three manufacturers in the top three. The Estonian trailed the Frenchman by two-tenths with teammate Thierry Neuville only one-tenth behind.

The 2022 WRC champion Kalle Rovanperä completes the tightened top places in fifth followed up by Toyota colleague Elfyn Evans in sixth with six-tenths of a second down on the Finn. Local home hero Takamoto Katsuta finished in seventh with 1.9 seconds down on Ogier and edged Gus Greensmith with three-tenths. Dani Sordo managed to only take a ninth-place finish and was 3.1 seconds slower than Ogier and the 2022 WRC2 title contender Emil Lindholm completes the top 10 with an impressive time of being just 4 seconds slower than the top runners.

Thierry Neuville and Elfyn Evans both posted a similar time on the Thursday morning Shakedown of Kuragaike Park Reverse in Rally Japan with a time of 2:04.6 on the fourth attempt through the stage.

The pair posted identical times on the 2.8 kilometers warm-up, a stage which is also quite technical same as the afternoon stage that following up on the schedule for the day. Neuville was really on good form in his Hyundai i20 N Rally1 early on the morning as the Belgian went fastest through on the first run and was bettering his time over the next passes but the Toyota GR Yaris Rally1 driver responded late on the session and matched the time on the last run.

The Spain winner and eight-time world rally champion Sébastien Ogier claimed third fastest with just five-tenths further back. The two M-Sport cars of Craig Breen and Gus Greensmith locked out the fourth and fifth place also with identical times followed by the 2022 WRC champion Kalle Rovanperä in sixth.

The current championship runner-up Ott Tänak, who will be leaving Hyundai after Sunday clinched seventh over his Spanish teammate Dani Sordo while the local home hero Takamoto Katsuta also posted a similar time as Sordo and the 2022 WRC2 title contender Emil Lindholm rounded up the top ten.

Shakedown result (top 10)

Pierre Gasly is approaching the end of his six-year journey with Scuderia AlphaTauri, as the Frenchman approaches the last two races of his time with the Faenza-based team.

The BWT Alpine F1 Team-bound driver goes into this weekend’s São Paulo Grand Prix on the back of a messy race at the Mexican City Grand Prix, where the driver as awarded his tenth penalty point of the season. Should he claim two more miss this weekend, then he will miss the season finale at the Yas Marina Circuit.

Gasly enters the weekend positive, with the performance of the AT03 having improved across the last couple of rounds.

“I can look ahead to the final two races of the season taking some encouragement from the fact our performance level in Austin and Mexico was pretty good. Sure, I had penalties both times which meant there were no points, but in both places we were fighting for the top ten and I hope that will also be the case in Brazil.” 

This weekend’s race at the Autódromo José Carlos Pace is, of course, a very special one for Gasly. The AlphaTauri driver claimed his first-ever F1 podium at the circuit in Interlagos back in 2019, where he claimed second.

As the São Paulo Grand Prix, the penultimate race in the 2022 calendar approaches, Team Principal Guenther Steiner has hinted that the Haas F1 Team is already turning their attention to the upcoming 2023 season. Entering round twenty-one of the current season, Haas sits on thirty-six points in eighth position, just one point ahead of Scuderia AlphaTauri.

After a disappointing weekend at the Autódromo Hermanos Rodríguez, neither Haas drivers made it into the top ten to score points with Kevin Magnussen narrowly avoiding the last position.

During Formula 1’s last visit to Autódromo José Carlos Pace, Haas managed to hang on and finish in the seventeenth and eighteenth position after starting the race on the back row in eighteenth and nineteenth with both drivers at the time, Nikita Mazepin and Mick Schumacher, struggling to find pace to climb up the grid.

Despite the disappointing performance at last year’s Brazilian Grand Prix, Steiner has stated that the venue is “one of those classic tracks” and is looking forward to what he hopes to be a good race.

The Brazilian Grand Prix debuts the third and final sprint race of the season which means that Haas Formula 1 reserve driver, Miami-born Brazilian Pietro Fittipaldi, is unable to participate over the weekend. Steiner commented that Haas “always welcome back Pietro driving” but the sprint race has made it difficult for the reserve driver to take a seat in the VF-22 this coming weekend.

Kevin Magnussen has stated that he’s excited to return back to the Autódromo José Carlos Pace as the FIA Formula 1 World Championship returns for the São Paulo Grand Prix. Magnussen noted that the circuit’s resemblance to a go-karting track and the rich history surrounding racing legend Ayrton Senna makes Brazil a “pretty special place”.

The sprint race this weekend will be the third and final of the season which provides the team with the opportunity to score points before the main race on Sunday. Magnussen reflected on the past sprint races which seem to be a strength for the team as they’ve scored points at every sprint race event of the 2022 season.

“I think we’ve done well, we’ve scored points at every Sprint so far and I actually quite like those weekends where you get into serious business, quickly. Three practice sessions are actually a lot, and these weekends show that you can get ready for qualifying with one practice.

“It’s the same for everyone, you deal with it, and it becomes normal. I think six next year is good but of course, the workload for the team in the garage during these weekends is very high. From a driving perspective, it’s very cool.”

On his hopes for the weekend, Magnussen stated his favourite aspects of the circuit: “Probably the first three corners, the Senna ‘esses’, but I also think it’s one of those [circuits] where it’s very hard to replicate – you need the exact right camber and elevation, it’s unique.

Sheldon Van der Linde becomes the first-ever South African DTM champion after finishing third in race two at Hockenheim in the season finale, beating nearest contender Lucas Auer by 11 points. As two-time champion, Marco Wittmann won the race from fourth on the grid.

After winning a shocking and chaotic race one at Hockenheim from pole, Lucas Auer looked in prime position to steal the championship from under Sheldon Van der Linde’s nose heading into the final day of the season.

But a disappointing qualifying session that saw Auer only manage eleventh on the grid, 25kg of success ballast, and 5kg in balance of performance saw the title fall from the Austrian’s grasp.

The race start saw Marco Wittmann capitalise from Fourth on the grid to take a surprising lead into the first corner ahead of championship contender René Rast, who needed to win the race to stand any chance of taking his third DTM title.

Rast did his best to get through Wittmann, but the Walkenhorst Motorsport driver held strong. Producing the most memorable racing of the afternoon, at one point seeing the two make contact with Rast coming out ahead. However, a rare mistake from Rast saw Wittmann regain a lead he would not relinquish.

This weekend’s Nitro Rallycross doubleheader at Wild Horse Pass Motorsports Park will feature double (or triple if you include Travis Pastrana‘s brief tenure) the NASCAR flavour. While Chase Elliott prepares for his second foray into rallycross, Austin Cindric will make his return to the discipline after last competing there as a teenager, competing against Pastrana and Elliott in Group E.

“Delaying the off-season another week,” Cindric tweeted. “Looking forward to knocking off the rust and getting back to my rallycross roots.”

Cindric débuted in the Global Rallycross Championship Lites class as a 15-year-old in 2014, where he finished fifth in points and won a bronze medal at the X Games. He pursued the 2015 championship and won four times but finished runner-up to team-mate Oliver Eriksson.

From 2016 onwards, he began focusing on stock cars. In 2017, while racing full-time in the NASCAR Truck Series, he returned to rallycross for the GRC Supercar round at Evergreen Speedway, finishing eighth—with some controversy for spinning NASCAR alumnus Scott Speed a week after doing the same to Kaz Grala for his lone career Truck win—and fourth in two races for Bryan Herta Rallysport. His most recent rallycross entry was the 2018 RallyX on Ice in Höljes, Sweden, where he finished thirteenth.

While he did not run another rallycross race since, he has become one of the hottest young stars in NASCAR. After dominating the Xfinity Series from 2019 to 2021, during which he won the 2020 championship, the Team Penske driver claimed 2022 Cup Series Rookie of the Year honours in a year that began with victory at the Daytona 500. He finished 2022 with a twelfth-place points finish, nine top tens, five top fives, the 500 win, and a pole.

Ottavio Missoni Jr. comes from a legendary family in the fashion world as his grandfather Ottavio Sr. founded the Missoni line. Missoni Jr. was heavily involved in the family business as president and sales director of its American division, but has also gone out to pursue his own interests like rally raid. In 2023, he will head to the Dakar Rally for the first time when he competes in the Bike category.

Racing a Honda 450 as a privateer, Missoni secured his entry at the Andalucía Rally in October, finishing twelfth overall in the Rally2 class. The Andalucía Rally is a Road to Dakar event, which rewards top performing racers with free admission to the Dakar Rally if they have no prior experience. Others to earn spots at Dakar via this programme include Stefano Caimi, Ruben Saldaña Goñi, and Toomas Triisa at the Rallye du Maroc, Luis Diaz Soza at the Atacama Rally, and David Pearson at the Sonora Rally.

While he grew up in a fashion-focused family, Missoni’s interest in racing also developed from an early age. In a Wednesday Instagram post, Missoni explained his interest in the Dakar Rally began in his youth when the event’s opening leg was in France. His father Vittorio, CEO of Missoni and a rally bike rider in the 1980s, encouraged him to take up the sport and the two had aspired to race together before the older Missoni died in a 2013 plane crash.

Since then, he has participated in events like the Merzouga Rally in Morocco and Swank Rally di Sardegna. His motorsport also extends to four wheels, racing a Fiat Panda 4×4 at the Mongol Rally and attending the Lamborghini Winter Academy in 2018.

“Since I was a kid my biggest dream was to be able to take part in this race, when as a young fantastic rider I was watching Lucky Explorer vehicles starting from the Cagiva plants of Paris on a huge adventure,” wrote Missoni. “It’s my adventurous spirit that drives me to challenge myself in new ways, always raising the bar. My father was the first person to put me on a motorcycle, my partner of many kilometres riding, and with him one day we would have wanted to do something like this together; unfortunately fate wanted otherwise. But he was also the person who taught me to chase my dreams and here, fate can’t do anything about it… So I decided to give it a shot!

Porsche might be known for their luxury cars and pavement racing, but they have also won on other surfaces like the legendary Dakar Rally twice in the 1980s. While the German make does not have a rally raid factory programme today, they will celebrate said accomplishments with the launch of the Porsche 911 Dakar, the first two-door sports car designed with off-roading in mind.

The company first competed at what was then known as the Paris–Dakar Rally in 1984 at the behest of Jacky Ickx, whose team formally entered Porsche’s cars. In their début, 1981 winner René Metge drove a Porsche 953, a heavily modified version of the 911 with four-wheel drive and an upgraded suspension, to victory. Metge then went on to repeat in 1986 in a 959. Although Porsche no longer enters factory efforts at the rally, Agostino Rizzardi races a 964 as a privateer while The Checkered Flag interviewee Amy Lerner competes in the Dakar Classic in a 911.

Oveeseen by Achim Lamparter, the 911 Dakar underwent testing in various environments including the rocky rally-style Château de Lastours in France, on ice in Arjeplog, Sweden, and the sand of Dubai and Morocco. Should Porsche consider entering the car into rally raid competition, the lattermost situation provides the best opportunity to hone the vehicle as the Dakar Rally currently takes place in the deserts of Saudi Arabia, while Dubai and Morocco both host international rally raids.

“I knew what a 911 could do on the road, but I was absolutely stunned by how well the car performed here on the loose,” said Romain Dumas after testing the car in France. A Porsche factory driver, Dumas is more renowned for his sports car success but regularly dabbles in off-road, including racing a Toyota Hilux at the 2022 Dakar Rally.

1980 and 1982 World Rally Champion Walter Röhrl got the nod for the Sweden test. He described it as “incredibly fun to drive” as “everything works so precisely and calmly. No Porsche customer will believe all the things you can do with this car before they’ve driven it themselves.”

The ABB FIA Formula E World Championship is truly an example to the world of what can be achieved in regard to sustainable and alternative energy, making the series fit perfectly at COP27 amongst a discussion on the world’s transition to zero emission mobility.

COP27 is an abbreviation of the 27th Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, which is currently taking place in Egypt to discuss urgent matters regarding climate change. 2022 has truly been a year like no other, with record-breaking temperatures and droughts having hit the majority of Central and Western Europe, whilst the likes of Pakistan has suffered from devastating flooding.

The floods experienced in Pakistan this year are the worse on record in the nation, with an area of land the size of Great Britain having been under water. It’s not just Pakistan that has suffered from flooding, with the majority of Asia having also suffered from relentless rainfall. Only recently, the United States recorded one of the worst hurricanes on record in October, with Hurricane Ian having battered Florida and South Carolina, as well as parts of the Caribbean.

These concerning weather events are no longer a phenomena, but instead the realistic expectation of what is going to take place year on year, should nothing be done to fight climate change by the world’s leaders.

An exciting motorsport-based panel full of experts will be taking to the stage on Thursday, with the discussion being titled as ‘Race Against Climate Change: Accelerating the transition to zero emission mobility’.

Aston Martin Aramco Cognizant F1 Team’s Sebastian Vettel looks forward to racing at his final Brazilian Grand Prix, a venue that holds special memories for him for being the setting of his third consecutive world championship title in 2012. 

Vettel said that he is confident in Aston Martin’s ability to come back from an underwhelming performance in Mexico, where he finished in fourteenth place and team-mate Lance Stroll finished fifteenth. 

“I have some incredible memories of Brazil, including winning the World Championship there in a very dramatic way back in 2012. It will be amazing to race around this iconic venue for one last time. While we did not perform in Mexico, our form in general has been strong recently.”

Vettel is focused on the team’s battle in the constructors standings, with Aston Martin looking to overtake Alfa Romeo Racing for sixth place. Just four points behind, the team will need to maximise any and all points scoring opportunities in the final two races of the season.

“We are firmly in a battle with Alfa Romeo in the Constructors’ Championship and we will do everything to maximise the car’s potential in these last two races. It is a tough mission, but we are up for it.”

TAG Heuer Porsche FE Team are more than ready for the start of a new ABB FIA Formula E season, following the launch of their first-ever Gen3 challenger, the 99X Electric.

The team officially launched the car on Monday in the Porsche Experience Center in Franciacorta, Italy, in what was an action-packed unveiling. The German manufacturer already have one-up on their closest rivals, after becoming the first manufacturer to launch their Gen3 car, with the series set to see the lightest, fastest and most powerful cars yet.

The smaller, more efficient cars should on paper produce more overtaking and better racing, with Porsche presumably hoping that their striking new livery (based off the team’s brand purpose “Driven by Dreams”) will be at the front of the pack. Pascal Wehrlein remains with the team for another year, whilst he is joined for Season Nine by a new team-mate, Antonio Felix da Costa who, of course, is replacing Andre Lotterer after moving to Porsche from DS Techeetah.

In an official release by the German outfit, Da Costa revealed that the new, more “powerful” cars “bring a smile” to his face, with the Portuguese driver targeting victories “as quickly as possible”; is a second title on the cards?.

“Our new car is a big step forward. It’s lighter and more powerful than its predecessor – that alone brings a smile to a racing driver’s face. As a newcomer to the TAG Heuer Porsche Formula E Team, I’ve used the last few weeks to get to know the engineers and mechanics and to find my place in the squad.

Grégoire Saucy will line up for the ART Grand Prix FIA Formula 3 team once again for the 2023 season, as the team announce he will return for his second season in Formula 3.

The Swiss driver has been with the team for the last three years, a three years that has seen Saucy claim first place in the 2021 Formula Regional European Championship and then finish fifteenth in his first year in Formula 3.

Saucy commented on his experience with ART and his sexcitement ahead of the new season as he said:

“In 2023, I will celebrate my 4th anniversary with ART Grand Prix, a milestone I am very proud of. Knowing the team for this long is a plus because we know each other’s strengths and we know how to work on our weaknesses. I have already started on my mental and physical preparation so I can be ready for the first laps of 2023.

“I learnt a great deal in the first season of F3 and I will be using that to bring ART Grand Prix a second title, following the one in FRECA back in 2021. The Championship will be long and exciting, with new dates, and one of the keys will be to be consistent right from the onset.