Motorsports Racing News & Blog Articles

Mike Krack admitted that the Aston Martin Aramco Cognizant F1 Team were hoping to bring home some points from the Austrian Grand Prix on Sunday, but it was not to be as Lance Stroll and Sebastian Vettel missed out on finishing inside the top ten.

Stroll ran as high as fifth early on as he managed his opening set of tyres but opting on a different strategy to many of his rivals meant he was vulnerable to attack late on, and he ultimately fell to thirteenth by the chequered flag.

Vettel was climbing through the field and was homing in on the top ten, only for the German to be spun into the gravel trap after contact with Scuderia AlphaTauri’s Pierre Gasly.  Gasly earned a five-second time penalty for the contact, but Vettel’s race was heavily compromised, and he finished the day seventeenth and last after also taking a five-second penalty for excessive track limit violations.

Krack, the Team Principal at Aston Martin, says the team were lacking some performance at the Red Bull Ring on Sunday, but he hopes they can return to the points in the next couple of races, starting with the French Grand Prix at the Circuit Paul Ricard later this month.

“With Lance starting twelfth, we felt there was a reasonable chance to score points this afternoon,” said Krack.  “He drove well today, despite our car struggling a little for performance.

Sebastian Vettel joked that there must have been a target on his car during the Austrian Grand Prix weekend after being spun off track in both the Sprint and main race at the Red Bull Ring.

The Aston Martin Aramco Cognizant F1 Team driver was spun into the gravel by Williams Racing’s Alexander Albon during Saturday’s Sprint and was then pushed into the gravel at turn four on Sunday by Scuderia AlphaTauri’s Pierre Gasly.

The spin and damage to the car meant it was a tough day after that for the four-time World Champion, with Vettel ending seventeenth and last of the classified finishers having dropped behind Yuki Tsunoda after being handed a five-second time penalty for exceeding track limits.

“It is disappointing to be pushed into the gravel again [after the contact with Alex Albon yesterday],” said Vettel on Sunday.  “This time it was [Pierre] Gasly and it almost feels that there is a target on my car!

“I had made a good move on the outside and was ahead leaving plenty of space. I think he was just a bit too keen, ran into me, and I was off in the gravel. The car was not in the best shape after that and my race was pretty much done.

Now in its forty-fourth year of operation, the Off-Road Motorsports Hall of Fame has revealed the nine-person Class of 2022 that will be enshrined at the awards gala on 30 October in Las Vegas. The soon-to-be inductees come from all aspects of off-roading including being a driver, mechanic, owner, executive, and even media personality.

“We look forward to welcoming the Class of 2022 to the Hall of Fame,” commented Hall of Fame Chairman Mark McMillin, who was himself inducted in 2018 and whose family is one of the biggest in off-road racing. “The ORMHOF Gala is off-road’s biggest night of the year, attended by the who’s who in off-road. It’s going to be quite a party.”

Excerpts sorted alphabetically by last name

Randy Anderson: Walker Evans is a 2004 inductee into the ORMHOF, having enjoyed tremendous success in both desert and short course racing. However, he could not have done it without his top lieutenant Anderson, who joined Evans’ team as a teenager before moving up the ladder to become his crew chief. The Anderson/Evans duo would win 122 races and sixteen championships together, while Anderson later became the president of Walker Evans Racing.

Lance Clifford: Clifford is one of the spearheads who helped bring off-road racing to the Internet age. In the 1990s, he created Pirate4x4.com as one of the early off-road and rock crawling forums. The website was also used to provide live coverage of races and other events, as a precursor to many series doing online streaming for their races today.

Bobby East, a United States Auto Club (USAC) great who won three national championships in the Silver Crown and Midget divisions and also had experience in NASCAR, died on Tuesday in a stabbing attack in Westminster, California. He was 37.

According to a press release by the Westminster Police Department, West was at a 76 gas station on Tuesday at 5:51 PM when he was stabbed in the chest. Paramedics and police attempted to save his life before moving him to a local hospital, where he was pronounced dead.

WPD named 27-year-old Trent William Millsap as the suspect, having escaped the scene prior to police arrival. Millsap, described as a transient who travels between motels in Southern California, is charged with murder, has a parole warrant, and is considered armed and dangerous.

“On July 13, 2022, at about 5:51 pm, WPD officers responded to the 76 gas station, located at 6322 Westminster Blvd., reference a stabbing,” began the WPD release. “The victim was found on the ground suffering from a serious stab wound to the chest area. Officers attempted life saving measures until OCFA paramedics arrived and transported the victim to a local trauma center, where the victim succumbed to his injury. The victim’s identity is being withheld pending notification to next of kin.

“WPD detectives responded to the scene and took over the investigation. Trent William Millsap, who fled the area prior to police arrival, is suspected of stabbing the victim. Millsap also has an outstanding parole warrant. He should be considered armed and dangerous. Millsap is transient and known to frequent Westminster, Garden Grove, and Anaheim motels.

Williams Racing Head of Vehicle Performance Dave Robson was pleased to see a great race and recovery for Alex Albon after losing positions in Saturday’s sprint, though Nicholas Latifi had to retire as a result of floor damage.

Robson said that Albon’s battle for the final points position with Valtteri Bottas was a close one, and that he was disappointed that he ultimately missed out on a top ten finish. 

“Today was a good recovery after the result yesterday. Alex drove well and the strategy worked well. Having got into the top 10 with only 10 laps to go, it was disappointing to miss out on a point. However, we had been battling with Bottas since the first pitstop and it was a tight race that could’ve gone either way. At least we got a full race completed with the updated car, which gives some data to go through before we run again in France.”

Robson said that the team decided to retire Latifi’s car on lap 48 in order to protect the car, as the floor damage done to the car greatly affected the it’s performance and was worsening as the race went on. 

“Nicholas suffered with some floor damage early in the race, which cost him a lot of downforce and made the car very difficult to drive. As the damage worsened, we elected to retire him before more significant damage occurred.”

Ty Dillon has gone from being the inaugural NASCAR Cup Series driver for GMS Racing to leaving the merged Petty GMS Motorsports after just one year. On Friday, the two parties announced they have mutually agreed to part ways at the end of the 2022 season.

“Petty GMS and Ty Dillon have mutually agreed to part ways following the 2022 NASCAR Cup Series season,” said the team. “We are appreciative of what Ty has done this year to help grow Petty GMS. As we continue the season, we remain focused on strong runs and getting the #42 Chevy Camaro to Victory Lane. We wish Ty all the best in the future.”

After spending 2021 as a journeyman following Germain Racing‘s shutdown, Dillon signed with GMS for the Camping World Truck Series outfit’s maiden Cup season in the #94, which was renumbered to #42 after merging with Richard Petty Motorsports. Nineteen races into the season, he is twenty-seventh in the standings with a single top ten in the Bristol Dirt Race in April as he placed tenth. Although he finished around this points range during his four-year tenure with Germain, he is ten positions behind team-mate Erik Jones, who despite also being winless has six top tens and two top fives.

Since making his Cup début in 2014, Dillon has seven career top tens and a best finish of third at the 2020 fall Talladega race with Germain.

“I am grateful for the opportunity to drive the #42 for Petty GMS this year. However, at the conclusion of the 2022 Cup Series season, we have mutually agreed to go our separate ways,” read a statement from Dillon. “I’m looking forward to what is next in the future.”

Williams Racing’s Alex Albon was on the verge of points at the Austrian Grand Prix, ending up taking twelfth place after starting in fifteenth. In his battle to fight for the final points position, Albon said that he was too hard on his tyres– leading him to losing crucial positions. 

“It was a fun race. We took risks, we were bold and I had to push a little bit too hard on the tyres to keep up with Valtteri as he was a little bit quicker than us, so I knew what I was doing wasn’t kind to the tyres but I was trying to stay close to him.”

Overall, Albon was happy with the race in spite of missing out on points, as he said the car advanced in Austria and was performing about on par with the likes of McLaren F1 Team. 

Albon retired after the first lap incident last time out at the British Grand Prix, which meant that it was essentially the first time the team’s new aerodynamics package was tested under race conditions, and he said that they gained a lot of knowledge to use moving forward. 

“You risk and you push to fight for points and today it didn’t quite work out for us, but I still feel it was a good race. The whole race we were more or less matching the McLarens, we hit a bit of traffic here and there but I was really happy with our pace and we’ve definitely made a step forward this weekend. 

In rally raid, drivers and riders are expected to overcome a variety of environmental challenges from the deserts of Dakar to the forests of Europe. Truck competitors in the Silk Way Rally faced a more wet obstacle during Friday’s stage. No, it was not rain, which had muddied the previous day’s leg to the point where the Moto and Quad categories had to cancel their races.

The Friday leg, the ninth of ten in the rally and a 773-km run from Volgograd to Lipetsk, featured a ford shortly after the second waypoint that Truck entries were required to clear before advancing. By comparison, those in other classes like the Cars and Moto/Quad could go around it. River crossings are far from a new phenomenon in any form of rally, but many drivers found themselves either suffering damage to their vehicles or even getting stuck entirely.

Eduard Nikolaev of KAMAZ-master was leading when he crossed the ford and suffered severe damage to his gearbox that left his KAMAZ-435091 stuck in fourth gear. Nikolaev was looking to rebound after missing the podium in Stage #8 as the worst-finishing KAMAZ driver, but instead watched as his five-minute advantage over team-mate Dmitry Sotnikov was erased. He salvaged a third-place finish behind allies Sotnikov and Sergey Kupriyanov but trails the former in the overall by nearly an hour. Barring disaster for Sotnikov or a miraculous comeback by Nikolaev, Sotnikov will likely win his fourth Silk Way Rally and second in a row.

Another KAMAZ driver Andrey Karginov traversed the river at a slower pace than he felt, though it still resulted in misfortune when he began experiencing vibrations shortly after reaching dry land. As it turned out, the fan in his 43509’s radiator had broken while the radiator itself was punctured, resulting in antifreeze leaking. Karginov was able to bring the truck to the finish in fourth.

Alexey Vishnevsky was perhaps the biggest loser at the ford as he got stuck, forcing him to sit and wait until MAZ-Sportauto team-mate Sergey Vyazovich arrived to pull him out. He ultimately had to retire as water delivered terminal damage to his engine, and he was classified last of the Trucks.

For the first time in three years, the NTT IndyCar Series returns to the Great White North and the Exhibition Place Street Circuit for the Honda Indy Toronto. Thanks to the COVID-19 pandemic the 11-turn, 2.874 km circuit hasn’t been on the calendar, but now many members of the grid will make their first trip to the track this weekend.

Marcus Ericsson still sits at the top of the points standings on 321 points, with a 20 point gap to Will Power in second. Josef Newgarden maintains third place with 287 points, one point ahead of Chip Ganassi Racing (soon to be McLaren Racing) driver Alex Palou. Pato O’Ward rounds out the top five with 256 points.

Toronto kicks off a crucial stretch of four races in three weeks with a plethora of points up for grabs, 270 to be exact. Only 10 drivers on the grid were a part of the last race in 2019, with five of those drivers switching teams. This will also be the first time at Exhibition Place with the aeroscreen.

Will the majority of the field be able to catch up to those with experience at the track? Who can build momentum going into this pivotal points stretch? Here’s everything you need to know ahead of the Honda Indy Toronto.

WHAT HAPPENED LAST YEAR?

Simon Pagenaud took his third win of the 2019 season with a win at Toronto after starting on the pole and holding off Scott Dixon late.

Emerling-Gase Motorsports will become a weekly two-car team for the 2023 NASCAR Xfinity Series. On Thursday, the organisation announced plans to expand from a single full-time car—the #35—to two beginning next year as the part-time #53 is elevated to run every race.

EGM was founded in 2022 as a joint venture between Joey Gase and Patrick Emerling, both of whom also drive the two cars alongside Shane Lee, who provided equipment he acquired from his previous team H2 Motorsports. Gase and Lee débuted the two-car effort in the season opener at Daytona, where Gase finished twenty-sixth in the #53 while Lee crashed out in the #35.

The #35 has run all seventeen races so far with the trio, though one-offs have also been made by Jeffrey Earnhardt (Phoenix), Parker Kligerman (COTA), and Chris Dyson (Road America). The entry sits twenty-eighth in owner points with five top-twenty finishes; Kligerman’s twelfth at COTA is the team’s highest placement so far.

Meanwhile, the #53 has only run two superspeedway races at Daytona and Talladega with Gase, who finished fourteenth at the latter.

“I am extremely proud of our Emerling-Gase Motorsports team,” said Gase. “There are
not too many start-up teams or small teams this season that can say they have made every race they have entered and only have two DNFs plus be in the top thirty in owner points. I have been racing in the sport since 2011 and can say without a doubt this is the toughest the Xfinity Series field has been in the last ten years. We could not do this without our tremendous employees we have at EGM and of course all our sponsors like Donate Life, Kitty Kat Coin, Eternal Fan, Captain Pips, and many more.

Mario Isola was delighted with the performance of all three compounds of tyre during the Austrian Grand Prix weekend, with all three playing vital parts in certain times of the Sprint race event.

The soft was the favoured tyre during Qualifying and was used by a handful of drivers in the Sprint race on Saturday, while the medium and hard compounds were the preferred tyres during Sunday’s main race at the Red Bull Ring.

One stop strategies were expected prior to the weekend, but Charles Leclerc and Max Verstappen both made three pit stops as tyre degradation was more than expected, although fellow podium finisher Lewis Hamilton made only two trips to the pit lane on his way to third.

“We’re happy with today’s race,” said Isola. “All three compounds showed versatility and performance on different cars and set-ups throughout the three days of this very specific sprint weekend, on a unique circuit like Spielberg.

“This comes one week after Silverstone: two circuits that couldn’t be more different, but where the combination of cars and tyres both guaranteed a great show.”

Frédéric Vasseur admitted the Austrian Grand Prix was a difficult weekend for the Alfa Romeo F1 Team ORLEN as they failed to register a points finish with either Valtteri Bottas or Zhou Guanyu.

Bottas started from the pit lane but was in points contention until the final lap, only to miss out on tenth to BWT Alpine F1 Team’s Fernando Alonso, with the Finn ending eleventh.  A time penalty for Zhou also ruined his race and left him with too much to do to contend for points, ultimately ending fourteenth.

Vasseur, the Team Principal at Alfa Romeo, said the team knew it would always be difficult to score points on Sunday, but the fact they came as close as they did under difficult circumstances gives them hope heading into the next double header later this month, which starts with the French Grand Prix at the Circuit Paul Ricard.

“It’s been a difficult weekend for us, and to nearly come away with a point despite all that happened shows the attitude of this team,” said Vasseur.  “With Valtteri starting from the Pit Lane and Zhou in P13, we knew we had a tough job ahead of us if we wanted to come away with a good result, and we very nearly did.

“It was a hectic race, with lots of battling and action – a great advertisement for our sport: for the team, we had nearly delivered a great comeback, but the tyre advantage Alonso had on the final lap was too much for Valtteri to overcome, and Zhou’s penalty really put an end to his hopes of points.

Valtteri Bottas admitted to being disappointed to miss out on points in Sunday’s Austrian Grand Prix, with the Finn losing out on the final point to BWT Alpine F1 Team’s Fernando Alonso.

The Alfa Romeo F1 Team ORLEN driver had moved into points contention despite starting from the pit lane following a change of rear wing – he would have started at the back of the field anyway because of multiple penalties for unscheduled engine changes.

Bottas was running tenth only for Alonso, on fresher tyres, to come through and deny him that point, but climbing from the back gives him hope of a more confident French Grand Prix later this month.

“I was hoping for points today, that was the target, and it’s a bit disappointing to be finishing just outside the top ten,” said Bottas.  “In the last lap, Fernando was closing the gap pretty fast with a new set of tyres, and ultimately got me.

“Besides that, I think it was a good race, also strategy-wise, and we did everything we could given where we started: we just lacked a bit of pace, especially through the corners. At least, I managed to climb up the grid from a pitlane start, so that’s a positive to keep.

Andreas Seidl says it was a good recovery by the McLaren F1 Team to score points with both cars during Sunday’s Austrian Grand Prix, particularly from where they were, performance-wise, on Friday.

Lando Norris finished seventh and Daniel Ricciardo in ninth at the Red Bull Ring, both having failed to finish inside the top ten in Saturday’s Sprint race.  Both were able to make progress and capitalise on the misfortune of others to break into the points.

Seidl, the Team Principal of the Woking-based squad, was thankful for the fighting spirit of both drivers and they whole team trackside for never giving up and fighting for the best result possible as they continue their battle with the BWT Alpine F1 Team for fourth place in the FIA Formula 1 World Championship Constructors’ standings.

And now he says everyone needs to have a rest and reset ahead of the next double header, which starts at the Circuit Paul Ricard in France later this month.

“Scoring with both cars is a good outcome from a tough Sprint weekend here in Spielberg,” said Seidl.  “Starting P10 and P11 after a good recovery yesterday, the objective today was simply to move further forward.

Lando Norris believed he should have finished sixth in Sunday’s Austrian Grand Prix, but a time penalty for exceeding track limits too many times meant he was forced to settle for seventh.

The McLaren F1 Team driver was handed a five-second time penalty for the track limit offence at the Red Bull Ring, and after serving his penalty in his pit stop, he found himself behind Haas F1 Team’s Mick Schumacher.

Norris felt he had the pace that deserved sixth, but the penalty hurt him and cost him the place to Schumacher.  However, he reckoned the pace of the car was solid and to get some decent points after a tough weekend was good for the team.

“A positive day, we went forward a good few positions and scored some decent points,” said Norris. “I made a couple of mistakes with the track limits and ended-up with a five-second penalty, which probably hurt us.

“I should have been P6 but, apart from that, a solid day. The pace in the car was reasonable and we got the points that we wanted, so happy in the end.