Motorsports Racing News & Blog Articles

On Friday afternoon, McLaren F1 Team confirmed that 2021 FIA Formula 2 World Championship winner, Oscar Piastri, will be racing for the team in 2023. The release of this news puts an end to a one-month controversy after BWT Alpine F1 Team incorrectly announced Piastri to be racing for them in 2023.

The French team has now put out a statement on Twitter, thanking the Contract Recognition Board for making the decision, as the team look ahead to this weekend’s Dutch Grand Prix.

“BWT Alpine F1 Team thanks the Contract Recognition Board (CRB) for convening on Monday and we acknowledge the decision they have made. We consider the matter closed on our side and will announce our full 2023 driver line-up in due course. Our immediate focus is the Dutch Grand Prix and securing points in our fight for fourth in the Constructors’ Championship.”

Alpine also explained in the statement that they will be announcing their full driver line-up for next year “in due course” – with many theorising that Daniel Ricciardo may return to the team, or that Mick Schumacher could make the jump from Haas F1 Team. Alpine already have Esteban Ocon confirmed to be racing with them until the end of the 2024 season.

2021 FIA Formula 2 World Championship winner, Oscar Piastri, has been confirmed to be racing for McLaren F1 Team next year, alongside Lando Norris. The news comes exactly a month after a controversial post on Twitter was posted by the Australian, explaining that he would not be racing for BWT Alpine F1 Team – who had incorrectly Tweeted an announcement that Piastri would be racing for the team in 2023, earlier in the day.

The reigning Formula 2 champion has developed quite a name for himself in recent years, winning three consecutive Drivers’ Championships in lower Formula categories. Piastri will be replacing Daniel Ricciardo (whose contract has been cut short by a year after an agreement with McLaren) at the papaya-coloured outfit, after a month of theorising from Formula 1 fans.

Piastri says that he is “extremely excited” to be racing at McLaren in the 2023 FIA Formula 1 World Championship season, where he will be making his debut:

“I’m extremely excited to be making my F1 debut with such a prestigious team as McLaren and I’m very grateful for the opportunity that’s been offered to me.

“The team has a long tradition of giving young talent a chance, and I’m looking forward to working hard alongside Lando to push the team towards the front of the grid. I’m focused on preparing for my F1 debut in 2023 and starting my F1 career in papaya.”

As the drivers rushed out on track for the penultimate qualifying session of the 2022 FIA Formula 3 season, the stakes were at an all time high due to the nature of the Zandvoort track, where starting position is so important, thanks to the lack of overtaking opportunities on track.

On his opening flying lap, championship leader Isack Hadjar, almost spun but miraculously managed to keep hold of the rear and went fastest.

However, as the whole grid started to set their first fast laps, MP Motorsport briefly held a 1-2-3, before practice time topper Victor Martins stormed into provisional pole with a 1:25.152.

After their first flying laps, most drivers headed back to the pits for a new set of tyres.

When the drivers re-appeared on track and began to set flying laps again, Caio Collet went second, just 0.020 seconds off provisional pole. Martins then briefly took top spot again, before Zane Maloney usurped the Frenchman, going top of the times. 

George Russell led teammate Lewis Hamilton and Ferrari’s Carlos Sainz Jr. in the first free practice session of the weekend at the FIA Formula 1 World Championship Dutch GP.

Russell finished 0.240s ahead of Hamilton with a time of 1:12.455, while Sainz was a further 0.150s behind the British leader.

It was an impressive session for Mercedes, with Russell and Hamilton running a 1-2 finish. However, it wasn’t without controversy. Seven time FIA Formula 1 World Champion Hamilton was seen to impede a number of cars around the circuit with him reporting issues of a loss of radio throughout his practice runs.

Max Verstappen set the pace early on the hard tyre but his session was cut short just ten minutes in after an issue with his gearbox that forced him to stop on track and bring out the red flag.

McLaren were impressive throughout the session and both drivers were setting the pace early on and setting good times throughout the session. Lando Norris ended the session in a respectable fourth place with a time of 1:12:929 on the soft compound tyre, while teammate Daniel Ricciardo put in a strong showing in fifth place with a time of 1:13:077, which was set on the hard tyre.

The FIA Formula 3 Dutch Grand Prix practice session began with sand blowing across the track, thanks to the setting of the Zandvoort track.

Many drivers were struggling in the conditions, but with ten minutes gone in the session, Francesco Pizzi topped the time sheets with 1:28.014 in the Charouz Racing System car, followed by his teammate, the returning David Schumacher, in second. 

However, as the drivers began to get to grips with the track, purple sectors were being set all over the grid.

It would be Victor Martins who would go top, setting a 1:26.105, 0.604 seconds clear of Franco Colapinto who sat second, with Oliver Bearman down in third.

Later on in the session, a virtual safety car was deployed as Brad Benavides went off at turn eight and was unable to get his Carlin car out of the gravel.  

Popular video calling platform, Zoom Video Communications, Inc., has formed a partnership with Oracle Red Bull Racing ahead of this weekend’s Dutch Grand Prix. In a press release, the current Constructors’ Championship leaders explain the importance of communication within an FIA Formula 1 World Championship team, and how Zoom will be incorporated “into all areas of Oracle Red Bull Racing to advance performance and engage with their fans.”

The Milton Keynes based outfit will run Zoom’s logo on their 2022 car – the RB18 – starting from the upcoming event at Circuit Zandvoort, round fifteen of the calendar.

Team Principal of Red Bull Racing, Christian Horner, compared the communication companies work ethic to the likes of his own team, praising their “forward thinking” approach:

“We are very excited about partnering with Zoom. Their forward-thinking approach to communications mirrors our attitude to racing on track. They are fast, secure and reliable in everything they deliver.”

“Zoom’s proven track record of innovation will enhance our communication capabilities and provide us with a cohesive platform that will continue to bind the entire team together.” 

This weekend, the ARCA Menards Series will return to the second dirt track on the 2022 schedule, the DuQuoin State Fairgrounds Racetrack, which is located on the property of the DuQuoin State Fair in Illinois.

The 2022 ARCA season has been known for an incredible points battle between three drivers: Rev Racing teammates, Nick Sanchez and Rajah Caruth, along with GMS Racing driver, Daniel Dye. All three drivers are currently separated by 16 points, with just five more races left in the season.

The battle for the top five in points is also at hand. Greg Van Alst and Toni Breidinger are currently sitting 4th and 5th in the standings, only being separated by 8 points. Sammy Smith is expected to join this battle too. Smith is currently 48 points behind Alst in the 7th position, and it won’t be a surprise if he surpasses Alst after the final race of the season, due to his consistent runs.

Jesse Love is considered as a big contender for the win, since he won the first dirt race of the season at The Springfield Mile. Other notable entries for the race include Ken Schrader, Ryan Unzicker, and Kelly Kovski.

Joe Cooksey, who made his last ARCA start in 2018, will return this weekend, driving for Andy Hillenburg’s team, Fast Track Racing.

For the second time this year, the ARCA Menards Series West returns to Portland International Raceway, for the eighth and final road course race of the season. Sunrise Ford Racing driver, Jake Drew, enters the race as the points leader and the most recent winner of the track, after taking the checkered flag earlier in the year after the race was shortened by inclement weather. Drew’s teammate, Tanner Reif, currently sits second in the standings, 44 points back.

Sunrise Ford continues their hot streak in the West Series, winning the last four events in a row. They will be contending for their fifth win of the year, but will face pressure from Bill McAnally Racing driver, Cole Moore, as he will be looking for his first win of the season. Todd Souza, a veteran in the ARCA West series, is also a contender for the race, after finishing 3rd in the spring race.

Davey Magras, a veteran in the Sports Car Club of America (SCCA), and a current employee for Jerry Pitts Racing, will be making his ARCA West debut this Saturday, driving for his own team.

“My goal is to learn the track, find competitive speed and bring home a hotrod that still rolls in the trailer! Huge thanks to two people. Jerry Pitts for technical support and the opportunity to know ‘what it takes’ to field an ARCA car. And my son Zach for his huge efforts in the entire process. He will also be working toward an ARCA start.” said Magras during a press release.

Virtuosi Racing’s Jack Doohan topped the timesheets in a disrupted session as the FIA Formula 2 championship headed out onto the Zandvoort Park circuit for the first time in the modern history of the series.

The setting for the Dutch Grand Prix is a contrast to the humid Ardennes forest that played host to the Belgian Grand Prix. The proximity to the coast means that sand from the local beach coats the circuit overnight, making the track dusty for the opening sessions.

Amaury Cordeel set the benchmark for the session with a time of 1:25.210, shortly before his Van Amersfoort Racing teammate David Beckmann spun heading into Turn Thirteen. The dirt and dust on the entry of the corner caught the German out, leaving him on the edge of the gravel trap. Despite managing to reverse back onto the circuit and get going again, the session was red-flagged as the track was cleared of gravel.

The session would resume with 26 minutes left on the clock with Cordeel leading the way ahead of Dennis Hauger and Logan Sargeant.

It wouldn’t be long before the times started to drop as Spa-Francorchamps Feature race winner Doohan set a time of 1:24.268 to go fastest ahead of Roy Nissany by 0.029 seconds.

Ever wondered what a Dakar Rally vehicle would look like if it went on a diet?

Audi seemed to bring this pondrance to reality with the unveiling of the Audi RS Q e-tron E2, a thinner and lighter version of the RS Q e-tron that will enter October’s Rallye du Maroc ahead of the 2023 Dakar Rally.

“We have combined all the important lessons in a very short time. The result of our ideas is the E2 evolution,” said Audi Sport Head of Vehicle Operations Uwe Breuling. “Our development team’s determined and cost-efficient work has prepared us perfectly for our second Dakar Rally.”

The E2 is a stark departure from its predecessor, being much lighter to comply with new regulations for the T1U category that mandates a 2,100-kg weight limit; this consequently also lowers the car’s centre of gravity. The lighter weight also comes from using easier-to-remove body parts, which helps crews change tyres.

The cockpit is much wider to accommodate new designs for the roof and both hoods, though drag is still reduced due to the new body. Inside the cockpit, the driver and co-driver’s tools generally remain the same save for certain changes like the introduction of four “system areas” that can be be toggled by either pilot: “Stage” to open functions for racing like a speed limiter, “Road” for turn signals and the rear-view camera, “Error” to diagnose problems with the car, and “Settings” for mechanics.

Jessica Hawkins is not only an Aston Martin Aramco Cognizant Formula One Team Driver ambassador, W Series and TCR UK driver, she is also a role model and inspiration to thousands of women around the world. The twenty-seven-year-old hasn’t had life the easy way by far, with the Brit having fought tirelessly for every seat she’s ever had in motorsport.

She’s paving the way for a brighter future for females in racing, with the Brit being a key voice in getting a female driver back into Formula 1. 2022 has been an impressive year for Hawkins on the track, after claiming her first ever W Series podium at the season opening weekend in Miami, where she claimed a brilliant second place. Hawkins even won her first race in the TCR UK championship, by claiming Race Two victory at the season opening weekend at Oulton Park. In doing so she became the first female to win a touring car race in the United Kingdom.

When she’s not driving for Click2Drive Bristol Street Motors in W Series, or for Area Motorsport with FASTR in TCR UK, she’s travelling the world with the Aston Martin F1 Team, proving to women around the globe from all backgrounds that they do have a place in motorsport.

She also finds time to be a stunt driver, having worked on the most recent James Bond film ‘No Time to Die’.

She is back with the team at this weekend’s Dutch Grand Prix, where she spoke exclusively to The Checkered Flag. The British side are aiming for their fourth consecutive points finish, after Sebastian Vettel claimed a solid eighth-place finish at last weekend’s Belgian Grand Prix, demonstrating that the team are “making steps in the right direction”. Given how the team were often found towards the back of the grid at the start of the year, it’s been a resounding few months for the team as they’ve made substantial progress into the points places.

With Extreme E‘s Copper X Prix still four weeks away, Tanner Foust will give short course off-road racing another go this weekend as he enters Championship Off-Road‘s Polaris World Championship Off-Road Races at Crandon International Raceway. He will compete in the Pro 2 class once again, driving the #34 truck owned by fellow Yokohama Tire athlete Andrew Carlson.

Although Foust has competed in a variety of racing codes from rallycross to hillclimbing, his short course experience is limited by comparison. He first ran the discipline in 2014, driving a Pro 2 at Lake Elsinore with the now defunct Lucas Oil Off Road Racing Series alongside fellow motorsport star Travis Pastrana.

Seven years later, Foust and Pastrana joined forces again as they entered their maiden Crandon World Championship with backing from Yokohama, though Pastrana ran the Pro 4 race while Foust stayed in Pro 2. Foust would finish seventh in the World Championship followed by fifth in the next day’s Red Bull Crandon World Cup.

Being the most prestigious event in short course racing, the World Championship frequently attracts special one-offs like Foust, Pastrana, and Bryce Menzies. However, Menzies has opted not to run the 2022 edition as he wants to spend time with his family following his son’s birth while Pastrana is in St. Petersburg with the American Power Boat Association Offshore National Championship Series.

Foust tested at Crandon in August to prepare for his entry. He was twelfth of sixteen drivers in Thursday’s practice session and qualified in the same position with a lap time of 1:31.134, over four-and-a-half seconds behind pole winner Ryan Beat.

As the Stadium Super Trucks prepare to support YouTube personality Cleetus McFarland‘s Bristol 1000 at Bristol Motor Speedway, joining the grid are a pair of reality TV stars as “Diesel Dave” Kiley and Dave “Heavy D” Sparks, co-hosts of the Discovery Channel reality show Diesel Brothers, make their maiden starts. The duo spent Thursday testing at SST headquarters.

Kiley and Sparks, who are not actually related but close friends, originally began their media breakthrough with websites to sell diesel truck parts before starting a YouTube channel to showcase truck antics. Their popularity grew from their videos, which led to an appearance on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno before Discovery picked them up for their own show—continuing the premise of their YouTube videos—in 2016. Diesel Brothers is currently in its seventh season.

While most of their show and Youtube channel’s content focuses on building and driving various heavy vehicles, the duo has also dabbled competitively. In 2017, they ran the Mint 400 in the Trick Truck class, an effort that was featured in Season 3 of Diesel Brothers. They also competed in Monster Jam with the BroDozer and BroCamino monster trucks from 2018 to 2020, and the former participated in the 2019 Monster Jam World Finals with Sparks.

Sparks was initially scheduled to be the only one of the two running the SST weekend before Kiley confirmed his entry. The former’s stadium truck will sport a livery emulating the BroDozer.

“What I love about [SST] is it’s got plenty of power, it’s got plenty of suspension, and you’re not using it all,” said Sparks during testing. “It’s all about what the driver’s doing and I’m shaving little bits off of each lap by making dumb little changes, not big wide open pulls. That’s impressive. That’s definitely going to make not only me but everybody who gets a chance to do this a better driver.

Fernando Alonso has apologised to Lewis Hamilton for his comment made over the radio during the Belgian Grand Prix following their first lap tangle at Les Combes.

The BWT Alpine F1 Team driver was defending from the Mercedes-AMG Petronas Formula One Team racer going down the Kemmel Straight only for the two to make contact at the chicane, with Hamilton being launched into the air as a result.

Hamilton was forced to retire from the race as a result – his first retirement of the 2022 FIA Formula 1 World Championship season – while Alonso was able to keep going to take fifth.

In a spur of the moment radio outburst, Alonso was heavily critical of Hamilton, saying that his former team-mate only knows how to drive at the front.

“What an idiot closing the door from the outside,” said Alonso’s radio message.  “I mean, we had a mega start but this guy only knows how to drive and start in first.”

The Stadium Super Trucks‘ maiden trip to Bristol Motor Speedway will be a unique one. Held in conjunction with Cleetus McFarland‘s Bristol 1000, five of the thirteen drivers entered are media personalities like McFarland and have never raced in SST.

Netflix Hyperdrive star Fielding Shredder and DemolitionRanch’s Matt Carriker will respectively drive the #007 and #0.5, and both are the first in SST history to have numbers in which the first digit is a 0. With his decimal point, Carriker also joins a rare group of drivers whose numberplates contain other characters, a company that includes Jeff Hoffman/Travis Milburn’s #50:1 in 2017, Jett Noland’s #66x in 2020, and Stanton Barrett‘s #F26 at Nashville last month. Shredder, who has shifted to running his YouTube channel since his contract with Netflix ended, will be in the Continental Tire truck.

Derek Bieri of Vice Grip Garage will pilot the #52 with sponsorship from PEAK Performance and BlueDEF. The Diesel Brothers, “Diesel Dave” Kiley and Dave “Heavy D” Sparks, run an automotive channel but are perhaps more known for their Discovery Channel television series of the same name.

Carriker’s DemolitionRanch has the most YouTube subscribers of the sextet’s main channels by a wide margin with eleven million, followed by McFarland’s three million. McFarland will hope to turn around his luck after crashing out in both of his SST weekends at Long Beach and Nashville.

The remaining seven drivers are all series regulars led by Robby Gordon, who returns to SST after skipping Mid-Ohio and Nashville due to overseas business obligations with SPEED UTV. He is the only driver in the field to have prior racing experience at Bristol, having competed on the traditional oval layout twice annually from 2000 to 2011 as a full-time NASCAR Cup Series driver with a best finish of twelfth in 2004.