Motorsports Racing News & Blog Articles

In a class generally dominated by the Yamaha Raptor, CFMOTO Thunder Racing Team closed out their maiden World Rally-Raid Championship season with a Quad victory at the Rallye du Maroc courtesy of Antanas Kanopkinas.

Kanopkinas, the only non-Yamaha rider, battled with Kamil Wiśniewski throughout the race. The former set the early pace by winning the Prologue, but a string of odd problems struck his CFORCE 1000 the next day: the power steering went out shortly before he started the stage, then the lambda sensor—which is used to measure the amount of oxygen inside the exhaust’s gas—also malfunctioned.

“In order to understand what this means, I suggest to those who have a quad bike, pull out the fuse responsible for this system and try to drive a short course somewhere in a gravel pit,” Kanopkinas explained about the power steering loss. Although he lost twenty-nine minutes to Wiśniewski as a result, he was perhaps lucky that the stage was shortened due to flooding, mitigating some of the damage.

Once the mechanical gremlins were dealt with, Kanopkinas got to work on erasing his deficit with back-to-back stage wins ahead of Wiśniewski. This came even after another misadventure in Stage #2 when he yelped tow another rider who ran out of fuel, only for the cable to snap and get stuck in the CFORCE’s half-axle. A dominant third day, where he beat Wiśniewski by thirty-four minutes, propelled Kanopkinas into the overall lead.

The two spoke after Stage #3, where Wiśniewski revealed to Kanopkinas that his strategy had been to follow him and other riders. This strategy ultimately blew up when “several bike riders squeezed in between us.”

John Medina plans to move back up to Rally2 in 2025, and will do so with a World Rally-Raid Championship in hand.

He secured the 2024 Rally3 title simply by starting the season-ending Rallye du Maroc, the only rider to enter all three races that the category appeared at. Being a class for enduro bikes, which are ill-equipped for desert marathons like the Dakar Rally, Rally3 only showed up to the BP Ultimate Rally-Raid and Desafío Ruta 40 prior to Morocco. Medina had run the Dakar in Rally2, where he finished sixty-eighth, before winning the DR 40.

With the championship sealed, Medina turned his focus to the race ahead. It ended up being mainly him and the five other Rally3 competitors pursuing Souleymane Addahri, a Morocco native who finished third in class at the 2023 edition.

Addahri was the fastest Rally3 bike in every leg except for Stage #3, which Medina claimed after a roadbook malfunction on Addahri’s bike. Even then, it barely made a dent in the gap as he still trailed Addahri by over an hour. Nonetheless, with an hour of his own on third-place Mauricio Cueva, a runner-up was assured provided he completed the last two stages without issue.

Stages #4 and #5 were more of the same as he finished second behind Addahri in those like he did across the first two days.

Carlos Sainz Jr. topped Free Practice One as Formula 1 returned from a three-week break for the 2024 United States Grand Prix.

Scuderia Ferrari came flying out the blocks, with Charles Leclerc just behind his teammate in second and with just the one practice session, they’ll be hoping to take this momentum into Sprint Qualifying later today.

Pierre Gasly had a moment at Turn 1, coming up the hill before losing his Alpine under braking. The Frenchman kept it out the wall and got going again. It was then Lewis Hamilton’s turn to spin, losing the rear after hitting a bump on the circuit.

Hamilton’s teammate, George Russell, then spun his W15 at Turn 1. The Mercedes–AMG Petronas F1 Team car looked difficult to handle throughout the first practice session in Austin and with just one session before Sprint Qualifying, that’ll be a worry for the Brackley squad.

Liam Lawson was getting his first full-time F1 laps under his belt and was sitting 12th after 25 minutes of the session, although half a second away from Yuki Tsunoda in the other Visa Cash App RB.

After just two rounds, the 2024/25 Nitrocross season has been put on hold.

Firebird Motorsports Park in Phoenix was supposed to host a round on 15/16 November before Nitrocross visited Miami on 11/12 January 2025. The season would then end at Las Vegas on 28 February to 1 March.

The 2024/25 schedule had undergone various changes prior to the opener, with Miami replacing Glen Helen due to the windy weather at the latter. Calgary Stampede also had a points date planned in late January that was turned into an exhibition before being dropped entirely. 

“We want to extend a heartfelt thank you for your incredible support and enthusiasm throughout the season. You’ve been an integral part of everything we’ve built and will continue to build at Nitrocross,” begins a series letter to fans.

“Unfortunately, we must announce that upcoming events in Phoenix, Miami, and Las Vegas, have been paused and will not continue as scheduled. Any further news on the 2024/2025 season will be communicated at the appropriate time.

While no secret that the Stock category has been a Team Land Cruiser Toyota Auto Body playground for the past decade, it was probably an unusual experience for Ronald Basso to only see his name on the class leaderboard during the Rallye du Maroc.

The team normally enters Basso and Akira Miura in the class at the Dakar Rally and Rallye du Maroc, where they would often be the only Stock cars present save for the occasional one-off as was the case at this year’s Dakar. However, Toyota Auto Body opted to have Miura drive a modified Toyota Land Cruiser 300 GR Sport that was not yet homologated by the FIA, which consigned him to the Open class instead of Stock.

With nobody to compete against, Basso’s main goal was to complete the race and see how his Land Cruiser fared in the desert conditions. Any snags he encountered would then be addressed in the months leading up to the 2025 Dakar Rally in January.

He had a clean Prologue and Stage #1 in which he respectively finished eightieth and sixty-seventh among all FIA cars. However, problems started to mount in the second day when electrical issues struck and he and co-driver Jean-Pierre Garcin detected oddities with the air intake; they briefly stopped to identify the problem and finished ninety-first. After replacing the damaged parts, they were seventieth in a drama-free Stage #3.

Stage #4 the #500 finish an impressive thirty-third in FIA. A sixty-sixth on the last day closed out the race with a final time of 21:34:10, fifty-eighth fastest.

The 2024 World Rally-Raid Championship was a renaissance campaign for the Taurus T3 Max. After finishing 1–2 at the Dakar Rally in the Challenger category to kick off the year, Tauruses went a whopping 1–2–3–4–5 in class at the Rallye du Maroc to cap off the season.

The newly formed EnergyLandia Taurus Factory Team led the way with Eryk Goczał scoring his maiden W2RC Challenger victory ahead of his father and defending winner Marek Goczał. Eryk and his uncle Michał Goczał won all six legs including the Prologue, though the latter was unable to compete for the overall after his onboard fire extinguisher discharged before the start of Stage #4 and could not be replaced in time.

“The goal was to get 1–2–3 Goczal on the podium. Unfortunately, we just barely missed Michał on the podium but I think it’s a good step towards Dakar and we’re going to push more,” Eryk said.

Behind the Goczałs, their fellow Tauruses kept pace in every stage and none of their rivals from Can-Am or OT3 ever cracked the top five. Taurus drivers locked out top six in Stage #1 followed by eight in Stage #2, seven in Stage #3, and five in Stage #4. The MCE-5 Development and Wevers Sport joint project recorded a second 1–2–3–4–5–6–7–8 to end the day.

Rui Carneiro‘s G Rally OT3 scored the highest stage finish for a non-Taurus of sixth in Stage #4, narrowly losing out to Khalifa Al-Attiyah by twenty-two seconds. Naturally, Carneiro was also the best performing Challenger driver outside of Taurus overall as he was sixth behind Eryk and Marek Goczał, Dania Akeel, Nicolás Cavigliasso, and Mitch Guthrie.

2024 has been a year to remember for Botswana. In August, Letsile Tebogo won the country’s maiden gold medal at the Summer Olympics in the men’s 200-metre sprint. Two months later, Ross Branch claimed the World Rally-Raid Championship in the RallyGP category.

Despite not winning a race and being the only rider in the class to attempt all five W2RC rounds, Branch was consistent and avoided serious mistakes throughout the season. His rivals from Monster Energy Honda Rally Team dominated the races they entered, winning three of the first four rounds, enabling them to quickly close the gap on the leader. Entering the season-ending Rallye du Maroc, Branch led Honda’s Ricky Brabec by just nine points and Adrien Van Beveren by sixteen.

Branch drew first blood when he finished runner-up to Honda’s Tosha Schareina in the Prologue but ahead of Brabec by three seconds. That ended up being the only strike he needed as Brabec hurt his tibia on a hard landing in Stage #1, ending his title hopes, while Branch scored the stage win.

Van Beveren was the only other rider with a mathematical chance at the championship, but needed Branch to retire as well while he placed second or won. He technically achieved this goal by finishing fourth overall but runner-up among points-earning riders behind Schareina, though the Branch exit never occurred.

“It’s important for me to finish with a good feeling like that just in time for Dakar,” said Van Beveren. “It’s the fourth year in a row that I’m on the podium of the World Rally-Raid Championship: I’ve been runner up twice, in third twice, so I want to keep my dream alive and take that top spot. Ross did a really good job, he’s been consistent so he deserved the title.”

The highly anticipated Dacia Sandrider had a début for the ages when Nasser Al-Attiyah and Sébastien Loeb finished 1–2 at the Rallye du Maroc, the former clinching his third consecutive World Rally-Raid Championship in the process.

Al-Attiyah entered the season finale with a 25-point advantage over Yazeed Al-Rajhi. He ran every round prior to Morocco in the Prodrive Hunter before switching to the Sandrider, Prodrive’s newest rally project and Renault’s return to the discipline (a Hunter was still present in Morocco with Marcos Baumgart, who narrowly missed the top ten by two and a half minutes).

While Al-Attiyah led the charge in his title pursuit, there were growing pains among his fellow Sandriders. Disaster almost struck Loeb from the start when the former crashed into a ditch in the Prologue. Cristina Gutiérrez narrowly avoided the same fate, but a mechanical failure in Stage #3 knocked her out of contention.

Fortunately for Loeb, Prologue times do not count towards the final result for FIA categories, and he eventually regained his footing with two stage wins. At the front, Al-Attiyah claimed Stage #1 and never lost the overall lead as he finished on the stage podium in four of five days, with a sixth on the last day to cap off his title.

Al-Rajhi won the penultimate leg, but had to make up over twenty-one minutes on the last day to have a shot. Obviously an impossible task unless Al-Attiyah retired, he ended up finishing fifteenth in Stage #5 to settle for second in points as he did in 2023.

Despite being a newcomer to the race and not having been on Corsica in two decades, Julien Saunier claimed the Tour de Corse Historique in dominant fashion.

Driving a Porsche 911 with Frédéric Vauclare as co-driver, Saunier took the early lead after the first day. He battled with Tom Pieri‘s BMW X3 throughout the race, the two comprising the top positions for all seventeen Selective Sections. Saunier ultimately took the upper hand in each of the final four legs to pull away with a total time of 3:59:26. Pieri settled for second and less than a minute back at 4:00:11.

“I didn’t know the car or the rally, and I hadn’t returned to the island since competing in the 2005 Corte Rally, but we prepared well with meticulous reconnaissance,” said Saunier. “The secret of our victory lies largely in Frédéric’s incredibly precise notes. He even identified where water might flow in case of rain, and that’s exactly what happened. He coached me on when to push or hold back. Our victory is sixty percent his.

“It’s extraordinary because I’ve dreamed of participating in the Tour de Corse Historique for a long time. It’s a legendary rally.”

Jos Verstappen finished twentieth in his historic rally début. The former F1 driver ran as high as eighth, but an oil leak in his Porsche during Stage #3 dropped him down the order. While a sour note, Verstappen has expressed interest in returning for the 2025 edition.

The 2024 United States Grand Prix kicks off the final quarter of the Formula 1 season with plenty of drama surrounding the sport.

Following Lando Norris‘ impressive triumph at the 2024 Singapore Grand Prix, the sport has taken almost a month’s break and return for the final stretch of an exciting and thrilling season. Norris’ win at Marina Bay closed the gap to Championship leader Max Verstappen even further leaving the margin at just 52 points for the final six rounds.

It’s not only the Drivers Championship that is a big topic of conversation, McLaren F1 Team took the lead of the Constructors Championship at the 2024 Azerbaijan Grand Prix and now have a 41 point buffer to Oracle Red Bull Racing in second and with the Milton Keynes based squad struggling to find performance in their car, it could be another big points haul for Norris and McLaren.

One of the big storylines going into the weekend is Red Bull’s upgrade, which may see them correct their wrong development direction, although it’s not guarantee that it’ll fix the issues that Verstappen and Sergio Pérez have been facing since Miami. It may bring them closer to McLaren, which is a boost for Verstappen’s Championship hopes, especially after Daniel Ricciardo’s fastest lap on the last lap ensured that the Dutchman could beat Norris to the Championship by finishing second to the Brit in every remaining race. Red Bull will have less time to test their upgrade with just the one practice session in Texas as the Sprint format returns for the first time since the Austrian Grand Prix.

Another big storyline is Ricciardo leaving Formula 1 for Liam Lawson. The 35-year-old was performing admirably for Visa Cash App RB, beating teammate Yuki Tsunoda in comfortable fashion since the 2024 Canadian Grand Prix but Red Bull have looked at the bigger picture, bringing in Lawson to evaluate him against Tsunoda for a seat alongside Verstappen. Lawson did well when he came in for Ricciardo after a wrist injury kept the latter out of action for a prolonged period but the pressure wasn’t as high then as it will be now with a 2025 contract on the line. It’s certainly something to keep an eye on, not just in Austin but for the rest of the season.

Although no longer sanctioned by the European Union, Nikita Mazepin will not be returning to Formula One anytime soon.

The sanctions were imposed in March 2022, shortly after the Russian invasion of Ukraine, as his father Dmitry Mazepin is an oligarch with close ties to President Vladimir Putin. Haas F1 Team, who had title sponsorship from the older Mazepin’s Uralkali during his son’s one-year stint in the series, fired him nine days into the full-scale war.

In March, the General Court overturned the penalties after ruling there was little reason to keep him sanctioned since he was no longer employed by Haas. Although Mazepin was considered a “natural person associated with a leading businessperson (his father) involved in economic sectors providing a substantial source of revenue to the Government of the Russian Federation, which is responsible for the annexation of Crimea and the destabilisation of Ukraine,” the Court also determined that simply being related to someone within Putin’s inner circle was insufficient reasoning to justify the sanctions.

Mazepin confirmed his removal from the EU’s sanctions on Wednesday. In a post to his social media, he expressed his relief at being cleared but added it is too late to consider an F1 return.

“It has been more than two long years, and the courts have rendered their decision in my favor,” he wrote. “Of course, I am elated. At the same time, I ask myself what was it all for – to be sanctioned at a vital point in my career, only to have the European court decide that it was all a giant mistake.  

A week after clinching the World Rally-Raid Championship in the Challenger class, Rokas Baciuška returned to Lithuania with a surprising rumour he overheard about the 2025 Dakar Rally:

“It’s interesting to see what will happen because I’ve heard that it might not take place due to the war, but these are just rumours. I believe the organisers will do everything to make it happen.”

Baciuška’s comment, which came after landing at Vilnius Airport on Tuesday, quickly sent the Lithuanian rally raid community into a frenzy. Delfi, a Baltic news outlet, got to work on approaching his fellow compatriots for their remarks. Generally, those they asked were taken aback but sceptical.

“This is the first time I’ve heard such a rumour, and I haven’t come across anything like it,” said Vaidotas Žala, who plans to enter the 2025 race in a truck. “There are probably such rumours every year, but I have no information on this. Our plans remain unchanged unless we receive some official information. Since I haven’t heard anything, either on the rumour level or officially, I have no reason to consider such a scenario.”

The Dakar Rally currently takes place in Saudi Arabia, which is a relatively stable country and unlikely to devolve into wars or be marred by security concerns, the latter of which was the main reason why the race no longer follows the original route through Africa. However, fighting in the Middle East has continued to boil over since October 2023 with the war between Israel and Hamas, which recently escalated to include a theatre in Lebanon. The Jordan Baja, part of the FIA World and Middle East Baja Cups, was cancelled in 2023 due to Jordan’s proximity to Israel and Palestine; the 2024 race is currently scheduled to proceed as usual on 28–30 November.

Serhii Malyk plans to make his return to the Dakar Classic in 2025, marking his second start in the race after débuting in 2022. He will drive a 1998 Renault Kerax D-50 truck under the team name Spirit of Ukraine.

Malyk is a land speed record holder with over forty world and national records to his name. In 2013, he became the first person to ride a motorbike along the entire border of Ukraine, piloting a KTM 950 over thirteen days. Many of his exploits came in his Formula 1600 car such as summiting Crimea’s Gora Ay Petri mountain in 2004, setting the country’s speed record for a formula car of 112 km/h on Sonyachne Lake in 2014, and even outrunning an L-29 Delfín plane in 2006.

Many of his world records were set at the Bonneville Salt Flats in Utah with vehicles from Ukraine. Malyk went 116.86 km/h on a KMZ Dneper motorcycle in 2017, which he followed up a year later with a 167.36-km/h run with a Dneper Electric bike. The latter was eventually used for a cross-country expedition in 2020 from the easternmost part of Ukraine in Rannia Zoria to Solomonovo on the opposite extreme nearly 1,700 kilometres away, then returned to Bonneville in 2021 to set the A Omega category’s world record of 172.55 km/h.

For 2019, the Kyiv Automoto Club (KMAMK) developed the Spirit of Ukraine, an electric bike that produces 300 kW of power on ninety-kilogram lithium/ion batteries, though inclement weather scrapped any potential runs. Spirit of Ukraine achieved a top speed of 201 km/h during a speed record test at Hostomel Airport in 2020.

In 2022, Malyk entered the Dakar Classic with the Renault Kerax. With fellow Ukrainians Lyubomyr Shumakov and Serhii Martovenko as navigator and mechanic, respectively, the team finished seventy-seventh overall and eleventh in the H1T class. Although the 2022 Classic was Malyk’s first Dakar, he had entered the 2008 Dakar Rally in a KrAZ-5233 VE assistance truck before it was cancelled; had the race taken place, he would have been among the first Ukrainians to participate in the Dakar alongside bike rider Vadim Pritulyak. Malyk and Pritulyak are good friends: the former has donated to buy stretchers for the SKARLAT 1000 side-by-side vehicle, which is used by Ukrainian troops for medevacking the wounded and for which Pritulyak is an ambassador, and bought merchandise to support his SKARLAT-XTRM Team that competed at the 2023 Rallye TT Cuenca with disabled war veterans.

On Thursday, the Fédération Internationale de Motocyclisme opened its new headquarters in Mies, Switzerland, located just across from the previous confines. Besides containing the sanctioning body’s day-to-day operations, the building also includes a museum and an “FIM Tech Lab”.

The opening of the new building coincides with the FIM’s 120th anniversary and the 40th of being based in Mies. The federation was founded in 1904 in France before moving to Switzerland in 1959, then heading to the canton of Vaud in 1994. The previous headquarters opened in 2016.

“The FIM is a living body made up of 121 National Federations, six Continental Unions and nearly 400 people who, every week, bring what I consider the best spectacle in the world to the millions of supporters globally,” said FIM president Jorge Viegas at the reveal. “I tried to have dreams, but achievable ones: dreams that give all those who are part of the FIM a positive vision for the future, and goals to attain that will give them a better experience of motorcycling as a project that attracts and motivates them.

“The new headquarters is just that: it’s a dream come true, but above all, it’s a project that allows all those working at FIM or for motorcycling around the world to benefit from a worthy home that meets their needs. The architecture is as dynamic and vibrant as the experience of riding a motorbike. It is full of transparency in line with my wishes for the FIM, it’s a building that breathes and makes us want to stay between its walls; finally, it’s a space where more dreams can come true in the future.”

According to FIM CEO Françoise Emery, the headquarters was first proposed by Viega “a little over three years ago” to account for the federation’s increasing size over the years. Since the turn of the millennium, FIM staff has grown by twenty-five percent, making a new, expanded building a sensible option.

Janey Lee and Kylie Walton will go from Monster Energy Girls to desert racers when they enter this weekend’s NORRA 500. They will race a Can-Am Maverick R in the Evolution Production Turbo UTV category.

Monster Energy Girls serve as promotional representatives for the energy drink, meaning they are present at virtually every sporting event sponsored by Monster in a capacity similar to race queens. Their responsibilities typically have them working a variety of roles, though there is some specialisation based on their interests. For example, Lee is primarily assigned to Professional Fighters League matches as an octagon girl while Walton does so for motocross and Monster Energy AMA Supercross Championship races, though there is overlap.

Lee’s first exposure to off-road racing came when she appeared in RECOIL, a video series by Monster Energy-sponsored truck racer BJ Baldwin. Since then, she has become an ambassador for Can-Am who assisted in promoting the Maverick R’s launch in 2023. Her husband Eric Lee has competed in races like the Mint 400, and will be an additional driver for Lee and Walton.

She revealed her interest in NORRA on an episode of the High Octane Hustle podcast in April, calling it “a great intro for me. It’s very much my style also.” Much of this stems from its fairly relaxed atmosphere compared to other desert races; its sister event Mexican 1000 is dubbed the “The Happiest Race on Earth” for the same reason.

“[Kylie] and I started as Monster Energy Girls in 2015 and she’s been next to me since the first time I took a ride in a SXS,” wrote Lee. “We’ve spent years starting racers off. Come Saturday, we take off the line together in Baja!”