Motorsports Racing News & Blog Articles

Bruton Smith was a man of big dreams for stock car racing, having been involved with NASCAR as both a friend and a rival since its inception in 1949. Over the next seven decades, he helped the sport reach new heights as the leader of Speedway Motorsports, Inc. and was inducted into the NASCAR Hall of Fame in 2016. On Wednesday, SMI announced his passing from natural causes at the age of 95.

While Smith’s career as a driver was brief, he became one of the most influential promoters in all of motorsport. After starting his promotional life as a competitor to NASCAR with the National Stock Car Racing Association, he built the Charlotte Motor Speedway in 1959, on which NASCAR began racing with what is now the Coca-Cola 600 a year later. Speedway Motorsports, founded in 1994, owns nine tracks currently on the Cup Series schedule (Charlotte, Atlanta Motor Speedway, Bristol Motor Speedway, Dover Motor Speedway, Las Vegas Motor Speedway, Nashville Superspeedway, New Hampshire Motor Speedway, Sonoma Raceway, Texas Motor Speedway; North Wilkesboro Speedway and Kentucky Speedway are also SMI properties), along with subsidiaries like the Performance Racing Network and Motorsports Authentics.

The great Richard Petty recalled in a statement offering condolences, “I remember first meeting Bruton in the fifties at a dirt race where dad (Lee Petty) was racing and Bruton was the promoter at the time. Since then, Bruton became so much more than a track owner and promoter. He was a pioneer of our sport and instrumental in building it to what it is today. His vision and passion to make the sport better was seen and felt across many decades and generations of fans. From race tracks to Speedway Children’s Charities, Bruton touched the lives of everyone he met.”

Beyond owning tracks, Smith was a prominent figure in the industry who spearheaded ideas like adding lights to his tracks for night racing and transforming Bristol Motor Speedway into its stadium design. While some of his proposals or ideas proved controversial or never got off the ground like the influx of 1.5-mile “cookie cutter” tri-oval tracks, the downfalls of North Wilkesboro and Rockingham Speedway, and even suggesting to split the Cup Series into two divisions in the 1990s, one cannot deny his love for racing and his hopes of sharing that love, whether it be turning races into events to attract more fans or getting involved with other series like IndyCar and NHRA.

A NASCAR Hall of Fame Class of 2016 inductee, Smith has also been enshrined in the International Motorsports Hall of Fame, North Carolina Business Hall of Fame, and Stock Car Racing Hall of Fame.

The GB3 Championship reaches half-distance at Snetterton this weekend (25/26 June), with intriguing fights up and down the order in both the Drivers’ and Teams’ Championships.

The Checkered Flag takes a short view back to the past, and looks forward to another chapter in the developing title battle in Norfolk.

Last time at Snetterton

Though the fifth round of the 2021 season, the last visit to Snetterton was the first competitive action in the newly-rebranded GB3 Championship.

The FIA’s directive meaning only its own FIA Formula 3 Championship could use the Formula 3 name, meant domestic F3-level series’ such as the BRDC British Formula 3 Championship had to forge a new identity for themselves.

The GB3 name stuck quite quickly, though, and part-time entrant Oliver Bearman won the first race of the ‘new’ era on the Saturday.

Frédéric Vasseur says he cannot fault the performance of either Valtteri Bottas or Zhou Guanyu during Sunday’s Canadian Grand Prix, with the team scoring a seventh and eighth place finish at the Circuit Gilles Villeneuve.

Bottas took advantage of the safety car for Yuki Tsunoda’s crash to make his one and only pit stop to jump up the order, and although he finished eighth on the road, he was promoted to seventh after Fernando Alonso was handed a five-second time penalty for weaving when defending against the Finn.

Zhou was a top ten contender all afternoon long and was also able to gain a place thanks to Alonso’s penalty, with the Chinese driver ending a run of bad luck with his best result of his FIA Formula 1 World Championship career to date.

Vasseur, the Team Principal at Alfa Romeo F1 Team ORLEN, says the team can be happy with the performance they showed throughout the weekend in Canada, and to score points with both drivers was a good result heading into the British Grand Prix next month.

“We achieved a really good result as a team and we can be really pleased with our performance,” said Vasseur.  

The Goodwood Festival of Speed on 23–26 June will see a trio of off-road teams showing off their vehicles as Extreme E operations Andretti United XE and Veloce Racing go head-to-head in their Spark ODYSSEY 21s while XITE Energy Racing brings a pair of Nitro Rallycross FC1-X cars.

The Spark ODYSSEY 21 débuted at Goodwood as a prototype in 2019, two years before the inaugural Extreme E season, with current XE points leader Mikaela Åhlin-Kottulinsky as its driver. While Andretti is bringing its usual driver lineup of Timmy Hansen and Catie Munnings to the 2022 Festival, Veloce will recall Jamie Chadwick to its XE programme alongside sim racer and ex-Formula 3 driver Max Fewtrell.

The Andretti duo finished seventh in February’ season-opening Desert X Prix. In the week leading up to Goodwood, they tested their ODYSSEY 21 in Wales to prepare for the next round in Sardinia in July. Both drivers will drive on Thursday and Friday before Munnings specifically tackles qualifying on Saturday and Hansen the final a day later.

“I’m so excited to be back at Goodwood this year,” said Munnings, who previously worked the Festival as a television presenter and judge for the Style et Luxe car show. “We can’t wait to show off the car to all the fans and have some fun doing it.”

“It’s fantastic that we can showcase our electric car at such an iconic event, sharing the road with so many other iconic cars,” Hansen offered.

Valtteri Bottas was lucky with the timing of the safety car during Sunday’s Canadian Grand Prix, with the Finn securing seventh place as a result.

Yuki Tsunoda’s crash at turn two as he exited the pits on cold tyres brought out the safety car, with the timing falling in line with the Alfa Romeo F1 Team ORLEN driver’s solitary pit stop to switch from the Hard to Medium Pirelli tyre.

Bottas has now scored points in seven of the opening nine races of the 2022 FIA Formula 1 World Championship season, but he was happy that he was back showing the kind of pace he had earlier in the season at the Circuit Gilles Villeneuve after struggling in both the Monaco and Azerbaijan Grand Prix weekends.

“We can be pleased with today’s race, especially with the pace we have shown throughout the afternoon,” said Bottas.  

“It’s always good to get double points, particularly after a couple of difficult races, but the most important thing was to see that we could fight the cars around us and that we are back at the level we had at the start of the season.

Mahindra Racing will show the Gen3 Formula E car at this weekend’s Goodwood Festival of Speed, the first time the new era of car will be exposed to the public in a competitive nature.

Former FIA Formula 1 World Championship and ABB FIA Formula E World Championship driver Nick Heidfeld will be responsible for the outing, with the car sixty kilograms lighter than its predecessor and with more power as well, the M9Electro will be significantly faster than the current Gen2 car.

Add in the fact that it will be the most efficient racing car ever produced thanks to the power regenerated through braking, the expectations are high about its potential.  The car will make its on-track race debut in season eight of the championship next year.

Mahindra also began the Gen2 era with a trip to Goodwood, and Dilbagh Gill, the Team Principal at the team, says it will be another proud moment for them as they represent Formula E and show the new car for the first time to the public.

“It’s a proud moment for us to take this car to Goodwood just a week after its first test,” said Gill.  “This is testament to the hard work, determination and passion of the team to always push to achieve what others see as unachievable.

My second season is going well and I have been within touching distance of a podium on quite a few occasions.  

Some things haven’t gone my way, but we just have to be patient because as long as I keep myself up there, it’s all going to plan. I am extracting the most out of the opportunity I have been given and it feels good. We had a lean pre-season testing budget but I progressed every time and was looking forward to qualifying in the top third at the first round at Donington. However the new three lap qualifying format meant I caught and was tripping over another car for my three flying laps and qualified ninth for race one and eleventh for race two.

My first race of the new season had a scruffy start, getting squeezed onto the grass and by the time I had resisted that, turn one was compromised and I lost a lot of places which I made back up to finish eleventh. Race two I was fired off the circuit by another car whilst going down a straight, which beached me in the gravel for a non-finish.

The worst part about it is that your finishing position for race two is your starting position for race three on the Sunday race live on TV. Starting twenty-fourth and having reset myself overnight, I made many overtakes to finish fifteen places higher in ninth. This got me noticed and my season underway and I was ready to show more improvement at Brands Hatch.

Donington was also a big weekend as my sponsor Graham Marginson of Integrated Air Systems  enjoyed an insightful Saturday with his team as they learned first hand what I go through as a racing driver. Tom White of Trustic Motors  enjoyed visiting on the Sunday and we look forward to hosting his guests at Silverstone.

The BWT Alpine F1 Team left the Circuit Gilles Villeneuve with ten points towards the FIA Formula 1 World Championship Constructors’ title, and Otmar Szafnauer says they can be proud of what they achieved across the weekend in Canada.

Esteban Ocon finished sixth and Fernando Alonso seventh on the road, although the latter took a five-second time penalty for weaving on the back straight whilst defending from Valtteri Bottas that relegated him to ninth. 

This was as the Spaniard was struggling with an engine issue that was costing him time down the straights, and only clever use of Ocon and the Drag Reduction System (DRS) ahead of him prevented him from sliding down the order.

Alonso started the day on the front row of the grid after playing a starring role in Qualifying on Saturday, but Szafnauer, the Team Principal at Alpine, says they were always realistic about their chances of remaining in the podium hunt, particularly with the speed advantage of Scuderia Ferrari and the Mercedes-AMG Petronas Formula One Team.

“The team leaves Canada feeling proud after scoring good points in today’s race with Esteban sixth and Fernando ninth after a post-race penalty,” said Szafnauer.  

After playing a starring role in Qualifying on Saturday, Fernando Alonso was disappointed to leave Canada with only two points to his name after suffering with the timing of the virtual safety cars (VSC) and with an engine issue at the Circuit Gilles Villeneuve.

Alonso had started the day second on the grid after an awesome display in the wet Qualifying session, but his aim of claiming a podium finish was ended when the VSC was called, just as the BWT Alpine F1 Team driver was passing the pits on the main straight.

This, coupled with an engine issue that came from around lap twenty that left him down in power left him unable to fight thereafter for the top three, and he ultimately finished on the road in seventh, only to be penalised post-race with a five-second penalty for weaving on the straight as he defended from Valtteri Bottas that relegated him to ninth.

“I think this weekend we deserved better than ninth position, but it’s still good for both cars to score points in the end,” said Alonso.  “We ultimately lost a big opportunity to fight for a potential podium as I felt like I had the pace to do so.

“We were hit with a badly timed VSC just before our first stop. I was on the main straight when it was deployed, and then missed a pit-stop opportunity before it ended. We then had an engine problem from lap 20, which we were trying to manage.

Nick Leitz‘s rise through the regional levels of stock car racing have brought him to the NASCAR Camping World Truck Series, where he seeks to make his début at Nashville Superspeedway on Friday. The effort will come with Reaume Brothers Racing, who announced the signing on Tuesday.

The Leitz family has a decorated history of racing in their native Virginia. For three generations prior to Leitz, the family competed at Langley Raceway in disciplines like oval track and drag racing. Leitz himself got into motorsport by karting at the circuit before breaking into legends cars and late models.

“I’m so excited about racing the Trucks, especially making my first start at Nashville; that place looks bad fast,” said Leitz. “Also having my family and friends there and many people back home watching it on TV will be a lot of fun as well as a big learning experience. I’m excited what next year holds as well and see if we can continue this momentum and excitement forward.”

He currently competes in the NASCAR Advance Auto Parts Weekly Series at various Virginia speedways, with particular emphasis on Dominion Raceway. He won at the Woodford short track in April and earlier this month. He is currently fifteenth in the Weekly Series Division III national standings and fourth in the Dominion track championship.

“Nick has an extensive resumé with a significant amount of late model experience,” commented team owner Josh Reaume. “We are looking forward to watching him develop in the top tiers of NASCAR for years to come.”

The Toyota Gazoo Racing SA (TGRSA) 1000 Desert Race, the South African Rally-Raid Championship‘s premier event as the only marathon-length round, is only a few days away, as is a chance for the winner to compete in the Dakar Rally if they have never run the legendary race.

Along with events like the World Rally-Raid Championship‘s Andalucía Rally and Rallye du Maroc, the Desert Race is part of the Road to Dakar programme which is among various routes that aspiring competitors can use to qualify for the Dakar Rally. Privateers who have never raced in the rally or whose only Dakar experience came in the simultaneous but separate Dakar Challenge can join, but they have to explicitly register as RtD participants to be eligible. Besides a ticket to Dakar, Desert Race champions receive €8,000 in prize money.

Drivers and navigators who win the Desert Race and meet the Road to Dakar criteria can use their free pass on either the upcoming Dakar Rally or the following year’s. Brian Baragwanath, victor of the Desert Race in 2021, finished fourteenth overall in the Cars category at the 2022 Dakar Rally; had he elected to skip the 2022 Rally, he would be allowed to convert his Desert Race triumph into a 2023 entry. Although Baragwanath ran the 2015 and 2016 races, he did both in the Quads. Of course, even if he repeats the Desert Race win this year, he cannot get unrestricted access to Dakar and would have to sign up through traditional means.

“The Desert Race is one of the key races for us,” commented TGRSA principal Glyn Hall, whose team is the factory operation of race sponsor Toyota South Africa. “Not only is it the longest race on the calendar, but the terrain in which it is run also closely resembles that of the gruelling Dakar Rally, in which we compete each January. There is always extra pressure at the Desert Race, but we are hopeful that we’re well-prepared, and we’re looking forward to the event.”

Comprised of five loops around the Upington Landbou Expo, the race weekend begins with qualifying will on Friday, 24 June. The first three loops will be run on Friday and Saturday, followed by the last two on Sunday.

Mattia Binotto says Scuderia Ferrari are working ‘flat out’ to ensure their reliability issues are a thing of the past, but it was pleasing that in a weekend where they were expecting it to be a case of damage limitation, they were able to slightly close the gap to Oracle Red Bull Racing in the Constructors’ Championship.

Charles Leclerc started the Canadian Grand Prix weekend knowing he would be starting from the back of the field following an engine change after he lost another engine from his pool in the Azerbaijan Grand Prix.  However, he put in a great drive to climb fourteen places from his starting spot to finish fifth.

Carlos Sainz Jr. took second place, with the Spaniard putting intense pressure on Max Verstappen in the closing laps after pitting for fresh tyres behind the safety car.  However, he came up just short, but his bonus point for fastest lap ensured Ferrari edged closer to Red Bull by a single point.

Binotto, the Team Principal and                Managing Director at Ferrari, says the weekend at the Circuit Gilles Villeneuve proved reliability can affect anyone on the grid, with Red Bull’s Sergio Pérez retiring from the race with a suspected gearbox issue being proof.

“We came into this weekend knowing it would be a case of damage limitation, given we would have one car at the back of the grid and we came away from it having closed the gap slightly in the Constructors’ classification, after a race that demonstrated that reliability problems can affect everyone in the current Formula 1,” said Binotto.

Carlos Sainz Jr. felt he did everything he could to take his maiden FIA Formula 1 World Championship race victory in Sunday’s Canadian Grand Prix, but it was not enough as he was unable to find a way passed Max Verstappen in the final laps.

The Scuderia Ferrari driver was in the lead when the safety car was called following a crash by Yuki Tsunoda at turn two, but he opted to pit for fresh tyres, which saw him fall back behind the Oracle Red Bull Racing driver.

Despite the fresher tyres and being in the Drag Reduction System (DRS) window for pretty much the remainder of the race, Sainz was unable to find a way passed, but he was pleased to finish second.

“That was a solid race and an intense battle with Max (Verstappen) to the line,” said Sainz.  “The pace was very good during the entire race, but unfortunately we lost the lead after the last Safety Car. From there, I gave it my all to pass the Red Bull, but to overtake here you need a bit more than two or three extra tenths.

“Even though I’m disappointed at not getting the win, there are many positives to take from Canada. We were the fastest on track today and I felt much better in the car, being able to push constantly throughout the race.”

Christian Horner was full of praise for Max Verstappen after the Dutchman’s stunning Canadian Grand Prix victory on Sunday, despite late race pressure from Carlos Sainz Jr.

Verstappen had been the man to beat all weekend long at the Circuit Gilles Villeneuve and appeared to have the race in his pocket, only for a safety car to bunch up the field after a crash from Yuki Tsunoda at turn two as he exited the pit lane on cold tyres. 

Sainz pitted for fresh tyres and put the Oracle Red Bull Racing driver under pressure until the chequered flag, but Verstappen did not put a foot wrong as he claimed his sixth victory in nine races in 2022.

“Max was amazing today, he was under so much pressure particularly at the end of the race, he’s been superb all weekend – every session through practice, qualifying, and then the race,” said Horner, the Team Principal at Red Bull.

“The Ferrari was very quick today, with the DRS zones the way they are here he couldn’t break it and Carlos was cruising up to the back of him and you could see them recharging their battery to have another go time-after-time, but Max kept his concentration really well and it was absolutely amazing performance.”

Max Verstappen was pleased to have a smooth weekend at the Circuit Gilles Villeneuve, with the Dutchman claiming his sixth victory in nine races to extend his advantage at the top of the Drivers’ Championship standings to forty-six points.

The Oracle Red Bull Racing driver was in control of the race for pretty much the whole afternoon in Canada, although he was forced to defend from Carlos Sainz Jr. in the closing stages after the Spaniard pitted for fresh tyres under the safety car for Yuki Tsunoda’s crash.

Verstappen admits he prefers to attack rather than defend, and he was forced to go flat out across the final laps to prevent the Scuderia Ferrari driver from getting close enough to attack for the lead.

“The weekend went pretty smoothly for me, and we can be happy with that,” said Verstappen.  “Overall the Ferraris were very quick and strong in the race. It was really exciting at the end; the last two laps were a lot of fun, I was flat out racing and I was giving it everything I had.

“The safety car towards the end of the race of course didn’t help, Carlos had fresher tyres so that made it difficult, I would have preferred to attack than defend, but luckily it worked out. Also, this year we seem to be quick on the straights so that helps a lot.”