Motorsports Racing News & Blog Articles

The officially itinerary for the 11th round of the 2022 FIA World Rally Championship has now been presented as the legendary Repco Rally New Zealand will be making a comeback at over one month for now, the rally which takes place between 29 September – 2 October will see some old classics returning.

The rally will start with the usual shakedown Thursday morning around the Auckland area, the rally ceremony takes place at the Pukekawa Auckland Domain before a super special stage of 1.4 kilometres in the city centre park. The rally´s first full-day on the Friday sees the first of the classic stages when the crews are heading up to the North Island town of Raglan where the world famous stage at the Whaanga Coast as well as two stages nearby Te Akau.

The stages will be ran twice over the day with no service meanwhile they are up there, the Whaanga Coast stage is 29.07 kilometres long, Te Akau South is 31.02 kilometres and Te Akau North is 18.20 kilometres, which will put both men and the machine to the ultimate test, however, the crews are alllowed to stop at the Reglan for a tyre change.

The rally continues on the second full-day of Saturday with more classic stages being ran twice where the 15.83 kilometres Kaipara Hills will open the loops followed by the 22.63 kilometres long Puhoi and ending the loop with the shorted 5.6 kilometres Komokoriki before a mid-day service in Auckland.

The final day of the rally sees a new stage being added at Whitford Forest Te Maraunga Waiho which will be 8.75 kilometres long before the purpose-built 6.42 kilometres test of Jack´s Ridge, also these two will ran twice and the Wolf Power Stage will be rouding-up the rally at Jack´s Ridge. A total of 17 stages are presented in the announcement with a combined stage mileage of 276.44 kilometres.

The 2023 Best In The Desert season will be contested over seven races. The new calendar comes as the crown jewel Vegas to Reno looms on the horizon, with the 2023 edition set as the fifth round of the schedule.

BITD traditionally opens its season in Arizona with the Parker 250 and Parker 425 a week later, with the shorter-distance race being for motorcycles and UTVs while larger four-wheelers contest the later. For 2023, however, both will take place on the same weekend on 4–8 January to help draw more entries who otherwise might not want to make multiple trips to Parker.

A month later, the UTV Legends Championship is scheduled for 17–20 February.

After taking March off, BITD resumes with the Silver State 300 on 20–22 April, the first of three rounds to award double points. 2022 saw a surprise winner when the UTV of Cole Barbieri scored the overall victory for four-wheelers with fellow UTV racer Mitch Guthrie right behind.

18–20 May will see a new double points-paying UTV event, the location and name of which were not immediately disclosed. It can perhaps be viewed as a substitute for the Adelanto Grand Prix, which was cancelled due to financial issues.

Mike Rockenfeller has done it all in endurance and touring car racing with overall wins in the 24 Hours of Le Mans, Rolex 24 Hours of Daytona, and Nürburgring 24 Hours, class wins in the Spa 24 Hours and 12 Hours of Sebring, and champions in the Le Mans Series LMP1 and Deutsche Tourenwagen Masters. On 21 August, he will add NASCAR to his decorated résumé as he runs the Cup Series race at Watkins Glen International for Spire Motorsports in the #77 Chevrolet Camaro ZL1. He is also contracted to race at the Charlotte Motor Speedway Roval on 9 October.

“Attracting world-class talent like Mike Rockenfeller is such an honor for Spire Motorsports,” said Spire Motorsports president Bill Anthony. “Mike is a talented, globally accomplished driver and we’re thrilled to introduce him to NASCAR. We’ve invested in getting Mike up to speed quickly through the Driver Familiarisation Test and our partners at Chevrolet have generously offered simulation time for him. Everyone at Spire Motorsports is motivated and committed to providing Mike with a great effort for Watkins Glen and the Charlotte Roval.

Since retiring from DTM following the 2021 season, the 2013 series champion has committed more to sports car racing by contesting IMSA’s Michelin Endurance Cup with Ally Cadillac Racing, a programme that began that year. Sharing the #48 Cadillac DPi with fellow Le Mans winners Kamui Kobayashi and José María López and seven-time Cup Series champion Jimmie Johnson, Rockenfeller and the team’s best finish is fifth at Daytona followed by a sixth at Watkins Glen.

In 2021, the #48 finished second overall at the Rolex 24. Rockenfeller won the 2010 overall as a member of Action Express Racing, who prepares the Ally Racing #48 and assisted NASCAR in developing the Next Gen Cup car.

“Since starting my professional racing career back in the early 2000s, I’ve always kept a close eye on NASCAR,” Rockenfeller commented. “What’s more, after teaming up with Jimmie Johnson, one of the heroes of the sport, my respect and appreciation for NASCAR has grown. It’s an immensely competitive series with some of the world’s greatest drivers racing wheel-to-wheel, merely centimeters apart. Room for error is minimal, at best. Watkins Glen is a difficult track in any car but given how sensitive and big a NASCAR Cup Series car is, I think this will be an even bigger challenge.”

This weekend the long awaited debut of the new all-electric FIA World Rallycross Championship RX1e class will be making its debut, a new era that replaces the old internal combustion engine Supercars in the world level of rallycross, but this will also not be the only thing that is new for the sport this weekend.

Ramudden World RX of Norway will also become the first-ever rallycross race meeting that is not allowing the drivers to use the joker lap on the first lap of each race due to new regulations made by the Rallycross Promoter GmbH and the FIA.

Why you might ask? The new regulations says if a track do have a joker lap placed at the first corner of the venue, it cannot simply be used. So the drivers needs to battle through the first lap before they can split up the tactics on the following lap, however, with the new regulations of the Progression Race format and the new Heats format, the laps are now five instead of the old format of four.

If a driver happens to be taking the joker lap on the first lap, it will not be counted as a valid joker so the driver has complete it one more time during the remaining laps of the race and the regulations are also supplemented for the FIA European Rallycross Championship´s RX1 and RX3 classes as well as the all-electric FIA RX2e Championship support class.

The entry list of eight drivers for the weekend should produce some good action anyway, featuring high-calibre names such as the four-time World RX champion Johan Kristoffersson, 2019 World RX champion Timmy Hansen and his brother, the 2016 Euro RX champion Kevin Hansen, the 2022 RallyX Nordic champion Niclas Grönholm as well as World RX returneer Ole-Christian Veiby and championship regular Rene Munnich, also the debutant Gustav Bergström and first full-time female driver Klara Andersson.

The remaining spot on the calendar is now filled up as the season-finale for the 2022 FIA European Rally Championship has been confirmed last week, the rally will be hosted on the same weekend as the FIA World Rally Championship during 2022 RallyRACC Catalunya-Costa Daurada, seeing the two largest rally series in the world sharing same stages and will become an ultimate spectacle for all rally fans.

The asphalt round is scheduled to be hosted on 20-22 October on the hills of Costa Daurada nearby the city of Barcelona. Even if the ERC series will be sharing the same stages as the WRC series, it will be a bit cifferent and be run under its own regulations. The rally starts with a qualifying stage on Thursday morning before continuing on Friday and ends on Saturday meanwhile WRC will continue on to Sunday.

Spain is set to become the longest rally of the year, the two days will be featuring a total of 14 special stages that includes a total of 240.60 kilometres of test and the 24.40 kilometres long El Montmell Power Stage will conclude the rally, where hopefully many champions will be crowned their hard fought titles. The WRC Promoter which owns the rights for ERC and WRC broadcasting, will provide bespoke highlights, TV and social media content throughout the weekend.

“We are hugely excited to announce the event as the final round of this year’s championship, the ERC is committed to developing and raising the profile of young talent. Many of our drivers have aspirations to reach the highs of the WRC and the inclusion of Spain as the final round will give them the perfect opportunity to showcase their abilities.” Iain Campbell, manager of ERC, said.

“Event organisers RACC know exactly what it takes to run a successful rally at this level and they jumped at the chance to have us on board.”

The local hero Lauri Joona won the WRC3 single-make class during the Secto Rally Finland over the weekend and ending the last stage with a 4 minutes and 23.8 seconds lead over the rivals and also did a nearly clean-sweep across the four days by winning almost all except one of the stages.

The FIA Junior WRC regular however did not have the perfect weekend, he faced some power steering issues in his M-Sport Poland built all-wheel-drive Ford Fiesta Rally3 car but despite that he managed to take all stage wins. Before the final day of the rally he had a lead of 3 minutes and 34.7 seconds over the Rally Estonia winner Jan Cerny.

The class win is seeing him moving closer to his fellow countryman and championship rival Sami Pajari, who swithced class for the weekend as he was entered in a Skoda Fabia Rally2 evo fielded by Toksport WRT in the WRC2 class. Joona is now only one point short of snatching the championship lead.

Cerny finished the rally in second place meanwhile class debutant Henri Timonen ended up further 17 minutes behind in third place, the FIA European Rally Championship regular Toni Herranen completes the leaderboard in fourth and Tommi Heino had to retire on Friday after he went off the road.

Official rally results for WRC3:

It has been over a decade since a Dane competed on two wheels at the Dakar Rally. As acceptance letters continue to make their way to those hoping for a shot at the 2023 edition, Thomas Kongshøj will break his country’s dry spell.

Assuming no change of plans, Kongshøj is slated to be the first Danish rider to race at Dakar since Jes Munk in 2011. Munk, the first Dakar competitor from Denmark in general, switched to four-wheel racing following a severe wreck in a 2013 motorcycle accident that left him comatose for fifteen days, and his 2015 Dakar entry came in a buggy.

Kongshøj is a ten-time motocross and enduro champion in his home country, winning the 2007 national motocross title before scoring nine total enduro crowns from 2013 to 2018. Outside of Denmark, he won the Swedish national enduro championship in 2014 followed by the Sea to Sky enduro race in a year later. When not racing, he runs Thomas Kongshøj Adventure for adventure riding and motorcyclist development.

In 2021, he expanded his playing field to cross-country rallying by débuting in the FIM Cross-Country Rallies World Championship at the season-ending Abu Dhabi Desert Challenge, which is currently a leg on the World Rally-Raid Championship like the Dakar Rally. Piloting a KTM with DUUST Rally Team, he finished fourth in the Rally2 class and eighth overall. In March, Kongshøj entered the FIM Bajas World Cup‘s Qatar International Baja and finished eleventh overall; he had physically placed fourth but suffered a time penalty for a malfunctioning GPS and lost additional ground while helping a fellow rider.

“Holy shit. This is insane. I cannot believe it. I am a proud man,” began a post by Kongshøj on social media. “I have now received a response from my team and Saudi Arabia that I have just been enrolled and qualified to drive Dakar Rally 2023! A dream that I have had since I was very young is now coming true. I’m SO happy and SO proud of my team and the journey we’re going on in the next three years.

Joey Gase is busy running a NASCAR Xfinity Series team, but he has time to dabble in the Camping World Truck Series. On Monday, Young’s Motorsports announced Gase will drive the #20 Chevrolet Silverado in Saturday’s Truck race at Richmond Raceway.

It will be his second Truck start of 2022 after finishing twenty-fourth at Knoxville for On Point Motorsports. That race was his first in the Trucks since 2019, when he was a start-and-park entry for Jennifer Jo Cobb’s team over the previous two seasons.

The Iowa native has mainly competed at the Xfinity level since 2011, which included full-time campaigns from 2014 to 2019 with three top tens. After bouncing between multiple rides in 2020 and 2021, he partnered with Patrick Emerling to form Emerling-Gase Motorsports for the 2022 season. EGR’s flagship #35 has been split between the two owners, Chris Dyson, Jeffrey Earnhardt, Parker Kligerman, and Shane Lee, and is currently thirtieth in owner points; Gase has run five races in the car with a best finish of sixteenth at Talladega. He also piloted a part-time #53 in the season opener at Daytona to a twenty-sixth, and the car will be elevated to the full season in 2023.

With Richmond only being added to the Truck schedule in 2020 and Gase’s two-year absence, Saturday will obviously mark his first time competing there in the series. He has seventeen Xfinity starts at Richmond with a best finish of twentieth on three occasions, along with five Cup Series runs with thirty-third being his highest run.

While Spencer Boyd is in the #12 and Kaz Grala and Jesse Little split the #02, the #20 serves as Young’s multi-driver truck. Drivers who have piloted the vehicle in 2022 include Little, Danny Bohn, Trey Burke, Sheldon Creed, Austin Dillon, Matt Mills, Thad Moffitt, Stefan Parsons, Garrett Smithley, and Dillon Steuer. Like ECR’s #35, the #20 is thirtieth in its series’ owner standings.

Peck Motorsports has struggled to make races in the NASCAR Camping World Truck Series since their return as a part-time operation in 2020, failing to qualify for all three attempts with owner Todd Peck. On Friday, the team will hope to turn around their misfortune with Mason Maggio behind the wheel of the #96 Chevrolet Silverado.

“Excited to be heading to Richmond Raceway this weekend for the NASCAR truck series race driving the 96 for Peck Motorsports,” Maggio posted on social media. “Big thank you to Todd Peck, Jason Miller, and all of our partners for making this possible. Grateful for the opportunity and hoping to have a solid weekend!!!”

Maggio made his Truck début at Gateway in June for Reaume Brothers Racing, where he finished twenty-seventh and one lap down. The eighteen-year-old mainly races in late models, winning four races in 2021 and currently competing in the Carolina Pro Late Model Series. After eight races, Maggio sits second in the CPLMS standings with three victories.

After the 2021 late model season, he joined Cup Series team Rick Ware Racing as a development driver.

Peck Motorsports is a family team that first appeared in the Trucks with Todd Peck as driver. Making sporadic starts over the next six years, Peck Motorsports’ best finish was twentieth at the 2014 Chicagoland race with Peck in the #40 Silverado. Peck eventually drove for other teams in 2017 and 2018 before reviving the programme in 2020. However, the team failed to qualify in their lone attempt that year at Daytona, and the same occurred for the 2021 Daytona and Darlington events.

Justin Haley is perhaps one of the top superspeedway racers in NASCAR today with all of his Cup and Xfinity Series victories coming at either Daytona International Speedway or Talladega Superspeedway. He has also won the second Daytona Xfinity race back-to-back since 2020, and will hope for a three-peat as he rejoins Kaulig Racing‘s Xfinity programme in the newly opened #14 Chevrolet Camaro.

“In a way, it feels like this is my bread and butter, especially at Daytona, one of my favorite tracks,” said Haley. “Together, we had three, successful Xfinity Series seasons at Kaulig Racing that transpired into a great first, full season so far in the Cup Series.”

While Kaulig has also enjoyed success on road courses with current Xfinity points leader A.J. Allmendinger, superspeedways have also been a favourite of theirs with three wins each at Daytona and Talladega by Haley, Jeb Burton, and Ross Chastain. Haley contributed four victories to those six, with his most recent win at the 2021 Daytona August race seeing all three Kaulig drivers leading a three-abreast finish.

“Having four of our five wins at superspeedway tracks in the Xfinity Series, there was no question that given an opportunity for a fourth entry, we would bring back Justin Haley,” commented owner Matt Kaulig. “For the past few years, our drivers have meshed so well together, especially on these types of tracks, and Justin Haley has been a huge part of our success as a team.”

After finishing sixth in the 2021 Xfinity standings, Haley graduated to the Cup Series with Kaulig in the #31. After twenty-three races, he sits twenty-second in points with a pair of top tens at Darlington and Atlanta, the latter being a 1.5-mile track that races like a superspeedway following its reconfiguration.

Teemu Suninen who became the WRC2 class winner in Secto Rally Finland was disqualified on Sunday evening after the front bumper on his Hyundai i20 N Rally2 was found to be underweighted during the scrutineering which resulted in Toksport WRT´s Emil Lindholm is handed the win.

Suninen who had bad luck over the season in the WRC2 class had it all settled for a first win of the season on the home rally but once again the win got taken away this time by a simple human error, last time it happened he was on route for a win but he crashed on the final stage of Rally Portugal and handed the win to Yohan Rossel.

The stewards’ decision said that in the scrutineering the weight of the front bumper was measured at 3,931g which is below the minimum allowed weight of 4,510g required to comply with homologation and Suninen’s team manager Pablo Marcos and Andrea Cisotti who is the manager at Hyundai Customer Racing agreed the part was underweight as the front bumper was not an original part produced by the team.

The copied part was fitted on to Suninen´s car by the Red Grey team as a human error, the team are also running the WRC2 outfit for the South Korean manufacturer.

This means the disqualification resulted in Lindholm being promoted to rally win, he finished before the steward decision in second place with 7.7 seconds behind Suninen, Estonian´s Egon Kaur was moved up to second place while WRC returneer Hayden Paddon ends with a third place.

Official rally results for WRC2:

With the début of the Next Gen car, the 2022 NASCAR Cup Series has seemingly presented itself as a new opportunity to reach outside the United States, such as Formula One veterans Daniil Kvyat and Kimi Räikkönen entering the sport. Team Hezeberg, who fielded a car for Kvyat, added some European flavour to the grid as the first Dutch operation in NASCAR’s highest level when they began racing this year.

Now, 3F Racing hopes to become the first German-led Cup team. If things go to plan, they will field the #30 Chevrolet Camaro ZL1, with Speedway Digest‘s Ethan Miller reporting they intend to run the final five races of the 2022 season beginning with the Charlotte Roval on 9 October followed by a part-time 2023 slate and going full-time in 2024.

3F stands for “3Friends” in reference to the team being run a triumvirate of, well, friends. The lead owner Dennis Hirtz comes from a European GT racing background, working as the marketing director for Phoenix Racing (no relation to the former NASCAR team) from 2017 to 2020. The 39-year-old is also a minor league ice hockey goaltender, rostering with ESV Bergisch Gladbach (and its junior team) and TuS Wiehl from 2009 to 2013 and FASS Berlin II in 2019/20; in March 2019, Hirtz and his Phoenix Racing colleagues played an exhibition against Eisbären Berlin, the current back-to-back Deutsche Eishockey Liga champions.

“For us it is more than entering a new racing series, it’s making a childhood dream reality,” reads a statement from Hirtz on the team’s website. “And we will succeed with a very strong team, as friends, and with high-class drivers.”

A driver was not announced, though Hirtz’s email to Frontstretch said the team will have a two-time 24 Hours of Le Mans winner for the Roval followed by an experienced NASCAR regular. The former, when coupled with Hirtz pointing out 3F will have a Richard Childress Racing alliance, might suggest 2015 and 2017 Le Mans overall winner Earl Bamber, who ran a NASCAR Xfinity Series race for RCR in 2020. 3F and Xfinity driver Justin Allgaier also follow each other on Instagram.

Ty Gibbs is the only NASCAR Xfinity Series driver with five wins in 2022, with nobody else having more than three. Did we mention he is just nineteen years old?

Despite Noah Gragson winning the first two stages, Gibbs started and finished the final segment in first to win in such dominant fashion that the only time he did not lead was due to green-flag pit stops from laps 100 to 109.

The win is the sixth at Michigan for Joe Gibbs Racing‘s Xfinity programme, breaking a tie for first with what is now RFK Racing.

“I think this style of racing shows the strategy and the pit stops,” said Gibbs. “It’s pretty spread out, but my guys did a great job and the pit crew worked so hard. I work out with them during the week and I see how hard they work, every one of them. They do a great job and my cousin (Jackson) is pitting now too so it’s cool to see my family involved. […]

“I just race week in and week out, but people can get all excited and think they’re making a huge statement and then go into Playoffs and suck. I’m just doing what I do week in and week out.”

The Estonian Ott Tänak became the first Hyundai Motorsport driver to win in Jyväskylä when he won his third Rally Finland over the weekend which also became his second win of the season.

Tänak took over the lead of the rally on Friday morning and held on to the lead over the three days, but also had to face a number of fast approaching drivers behind whom he managed to defend off and finished the rally with a good margin of 6.8 seconds over the current WRC championship leader Kalle Rovanperä. Tänak struggled to be comfortable in his Hyundai i20 N Rally1 from the start due to problems with the settings of the car but was able to achieve top times throughout the rally thanks to good grip on the Finnish dirt roads and determination.

Rovanperä had to open the roads on Friday’s stages and finished the first-full day in fourth place, during the two following days he moved up to two places while to bring home his Toyota GR Yaris Rally1 to a second place meanwhile his teammate Esapekka Lappi kept the third place after a brutal rolling on the penultimate stage, where he lost about 18 seconds, the car was however able to drive to the finish line and Lappi managed to held off teammate Elfyn Evans who finished in fourth place with 16.8 seconds behind.

Thierry Neuville, who has also had problems with his settings in the Hyundai, had to settle for fifth place, while Toyota Gazoo Racing NG driver Takamoto Katsuta did well with a sixth place and Gus Greensmith became the best M-Sport driver with a seventh place.

Emil Lindholm who otherwise finished the rally in second place in the WRC2 class was promoted to become the class winner as Teemu Suninen was disqualified after post-rally inspection, Lindholm finished eighth overall. Jari Huttunen who made his debut for M-Sport in the Rally1 class ended the home rally in ninth place after several problems with the car during the weekend and the Estonian Egon Kaur took tenth place and claimed second place in the WRC2 class.

Official rally results for Rally1 class:

In 2020, Kevin Harvick lit up the NASCAR Cup Series with a nine-win season that included a sweep of a Michigan International Speedway doubleheader. Nearly two years later, he returned to Victory Lane for the first time after an agonising sixty-five-race winless drought.

After Ross Chastain continued to antagonise everyone in the garage by tapping Christopher Bell and sending him into the wall with forty laps remaining, Harvick held off pole winner Bubba Wallace on the ensuing restart after electing to stay out over pitting. He maintained a steady pace over Wallace and would win by nearly three seconds. It is his sixth Cup victory at Michigan.

“The last restart, I had the #5 (Kyle Larson) behind me, and I knew I didn’t need to let the #23 up,” Harvick recalled in his post-race press conference. “I knew I needed to drive it in the corner far enough, but the #5 had given me such a good push. I had a car length, and I think Bubba got about up to my door. I knew that if we could just get off of turn two, we would have a chance.

“Then they were side-by-side, and then we drove down into turn one and two the next lap, and I watched them. I don’t know what happened. They all wound up all goofed up down there and up the racetrack. I was hoping that the #23 didn’t cycle out to be the second car because then we were going to have a pretty constant race on our hands, but the more they race, the further we got away.

“That’s what you want, right? To try to get away so they don’t have a draft and can make up that time quicker. #5 launched good, #5 gave us a good push, and the key was just clearing the #23 off of two and being able to go down the back straight-away by myself and not door to door and in a firestorm. That all went smooth.”