Motorsports Racing News & Blog Articles

Bubba “Redneck Jesus” Pollard did not win either of the PepperJack Kennels Twins at Five Flags Speedway on Saturday, but he was consistent enough to be rewarded with a Superstar Racing Experience ride. He finished fourth and second in the two races for an average finish of 3.0, the best of anyone who ran both races to secure a spot in 18 June’s SRX race at Five Flags.

Pollard is one of the top drivers in late model racing with major victories like the All American 400 in 2016 and Slinger Nationals in 2017; the former is held at the Nashville Fairgrounds Speedway, which welcomes SRX on 9 July, while Slinger Super Speedway had an SRX date in 2021. Despite his successes at the regional level, the grassroots nature of the short track world is more than enough for him that he does not have any interest in moving into NASCAR. Nevertheless, he has occasionally dabbled in higher regional championships like the ARCA Menards Series, where he has five career starts between 2005 and 2015.

As SRX is televised nationally and features a bevy of big names like NASCAR champions and Hall of Fame inductees, the start will give Pollard a chance to showcase himself on a much bigger stage than usual. This was the case with six-time NASCAR Whelen Modified Tour champion Doug Coby, who won the inaugural SRX race in 2021 which he parlayed into a Camping World Truck Series one-off later in the year.

“Excited to have earned a spot in the SRX Racing series,” Pollard posted on social media. “It’ll be fun to compete against the legends of our sport at one of my favorite tracks. See y’all back here at Five Flags Speedway in June.”

Derek Thorn won Race #1 but finished eighteenth in the second, while Stephen Nasse scored the win in Race #2 but was dragged down by an eighth in the first event. Despite falling short of making the Five Flags SRX field, he still has a chance to run a race in the series if he wins the fan vote for the Fairgrounds race. To do that, however, he would need to beat out five other drivers including Pollard, who is presumably still eligible despite already having an SRX slot; voting ends on 7 May.

Crandon International Raceway in Crandon, Wisconsin is one of, if not the premier short course off-road circuit in the world. After a few rocky years regarding its ownership, track president Cliff Flannery is stepping in himself and has purchased the facility.

Flannery’s family is long involved with the short course scene, with his late brother Jack being one of the sport’s pioneers in the Midwest. Nephew Jamey, who races a Pro 4 in Championship Off-Road, attempted to buy Crandon in 2020 but the deal fell due to what Cliff called “several unforeseen reasons.” Cliff, a 2017 inductee into the Off-Road Motorsports Hall of Fame, has been involved with Crandon since its founding in 1968; under his head, Crandon has evolved into a 425-acre facility that includes non-motorsport activities like camping and ATV riding trails.

The track long ran under a non-profit structure where ownership and all operations are split between its board of directors. With Flannery’s acquisition, the raceway’s owner is formally transferred to a company called Crandon Off-Road Entertainment LCC. Another agency, Crandon Motorsports LLC, was established to oversee and promote races and other events.

Despite the ownership change, the track’s lead staff like manager Tina Kulaf and promoter Marty Fiolka will remain intact. Fiolka, a longtime media guru in the off-road world, leads Crandon’s promotions and marketing arm via his firm The Rennsport Group; TRG joined the Crandon team in 2015.

“The road to today’s announcement has been a long one that required us to overcome some bumps along the way,” Flannery stated on Friday. “This small but very faithful community, and our hard-working staff, have spent the better part of our collective lives building Crandon International literally by hand. After fifty-three years, it was time to make a change on how we operate and do business. I am proud of where we have come, and also what we have achieved. Considering the success of the past six or seven years, our future looks better than ever.”

Arden Motorsport joined the GB3 Championship for 2021, having competed in the F4 British Championship, FIA Formula 2 Championship and GP3 in previous years.

The Banbury-based team also compete in Formula Regional European Championship by Alpine, but had never competed in Britain’s premier single-seater series until last year.

They brought impressive pedigree into GB3, and there was plenty of excitement as such a successful team joined the grid.

The ‘Red Arrows’ have brought some impressive talent through British F4 alone in recent years, including Dan Ticktum, Ayrton Simmons, Sandy Mitchell, Olli Caldwell and the two most recent FIA F3 champions in Dennis Hauger and Oscar Piastri.

They also won the 2018 British F4 Teams’ Championship with Sebastian Priaulx, Hauger and Jack Doohan, despite the trio only finishing seventh, fourth and fifth in the Drivers’ Championship respectively.

Martinsville Speedway is a much beloved circuit on the NASCAR Cup Series schedule, but Saturday’s race was generally considered a letdown. Due to factors like colder track and tyre temperatures, rain washing away rubber accumulated on the racing surface, and perhaps the Next Gen car itself, the Blue-Emu Maximum Pain Relief 400 was a very tame event with just five lead changes, all of which came during cautions or pit cycles. Hendrick Motorsports team-mates Chase Elliott and William Byron led all but six of the 403 laps, with the latter doing so for 212 circuits en route to his first win at Martinsville and second of 2022.

Elliott won the pole ahead of Aric Almirola, but Almirola and much of the field were non-factors. Save for a rain delay, the first two stages were completely free of incident as Elliott led every lap to win both. Byron beat Elliott out of the pits on lap 186 to finally mark the first lead change of the race.

Ryan Blaney finally broke the Hendrick stranglehold on the lead when he inherited the lead from a pitting Byron on lap 304. He pitted himself five laps later and Byron reclaimed the lead before Denny Hamlin brought out the caution after falling off pace. Austin Dillon got to lead a lap under yellow before Byron re-assumed the top position.

Almost as if a last-ditch effort by the racing deities to spice up the race, Todd Gilliland slammed into the wall with five laps remaining to set up overtime. Byron and Logano led the field to start the session, and the former had the run on the inside to clear Logano though Logano remained close after Byron briefly ran wide. Despite a shot to Byron’s rear on the final lap, Logano could not get by him.

Byron, who won the Camping World Truck Series race on Thursday, is the first Cup driver of 2022 to win multiple races after triumphing at Atlanta in March. He also continues a decorated legacy for the #24 at Martinsville; current Hendrick vice chairman Jeff Gordon has nine wins at the track with the number.

Max Gordon‘s father Robby founded the Stadium Super Trucks, and it is only fitting that he scored his first career victory in the series with his dad right behind.

The younger Gordon took the lead in the second half of Saturday’s Acura Grand Prix of Long Beach and never looked back as he claimed the win in his thirteenth start. Robby held off Robert Stout to complete the Gordon 1–2 finish.

A full, twelve-driver inversion of Friday’s qualifying results placed Robby Gordon at the rear after he set the fastest time and Bill Hynes on the pole. Hynes, whom announcer Ralph Sheheen remarked would use a strategy of “sneak off and run away” to his advantage, dominated much of the race by leading every lap and building a comfortable gap over the field prior to the first competition caution.

Behind Hynes, series newcomer Ryan Arciero‘s mechanical woes that plagued his Mint 400 and San Felipe 250 struck again as he dropped back, while fellow débutant Cleetus McFarland was running second when he over-used his brakes and overshot turn one on lap three; McFarland later quipped on Instagram that he “couldn’t handle the freedom and totally blew it.” Shaun Richardson spun while racing Gavin Harlien shortly before the caution.

Max Gordon and Stout tailed Hynes by the yellow, and worked in the draft to decrease his lead during the restart. Two laps after the green flag, Gordon and Stout successfully closed the gap before Hynes was swamped by the rest of the pack. Although Stout immediately became the new leader upon passing Hynes, he did not lead the lap as Gordon pushed him wide in the final hairpin for the position. In his post-race interview, Gordon explained the contact occurred after he over-revved his engine from accidentally shifting into first gear, and he capitalised on it to pass Stout on the inside.

Nicolas Latifi believes Lance Stroll was to blame for the incident in Qualifying that brought the red flag out and heavily damaged the Canadian’s Williams F1 Team car on Saturday in Australia.

Stroll, who had damaged his car in Free Practice Three, passed Latifi on track, before being re-overtaken and making contact in the process. Latifi suffered lots of damage to his car, in what will be a very expensive repair under the new budget cap.

“I’ve seen the video so it’s very clear from my side who is at fault,” stated Latifi, after the incident.

“I let Lance [Stroll] pass as I was told he was on a push lap, which he then must have aborted a corner or so before, which is why he was then going slow. I needed to carry on with my cool down lap and pick up the pace again and get my tyre preparation correct. There was a very big gap to overtake him and, when I got alongside, he turned in for whatever reason.”

“The impact itself was a very small but, because of the way of the impact it has big consequences. There’s a lot of damage to the car so we’ll have to see what the guys can do and I know we have one of the best teams for that.”

Saturday was a day to forget for Aston Martin Aramco Cognizant F1 Team, after both cars crashed in Free Practice Three in Australia, and an incident with Nicolas Latifi in Qualifying One saw almost identical damage occur to the other side of Lance Stroll‘s car.

There was a mighty effort from the British team to repair the cars in time for qualifying; and despite Stroll not setting a time, and Sebastian Vettel not being able to make it into the second qualifying stage – the mechanics were praised highly for their efforts.

“Today is about the team: the boys and girls did an amazing job to get both cars out on track for qualifying. They did so well to get Lance’s car ready and it was great to see the team spirit when both sides of the garage came together to help finish getting my car ready. Just getting out to set a lap was a huge achievement,” four-time world champion, Vettel, reflected.

“Eighteenth may not look great on paper, but today it was the result of a little bit of magic. Things are not easy at the moment, but we know that the car has more potential and we are working very hard as a team to make progress.”

“I have not had much running this weekend so hopefully we can have a clean race tomorrow and learn more about the car,” concluded the German, in his first weekend of the season after missing rounds one and two due to COVID-19.

Haas F1 Team have looked very strong in the opening rounds of the 2022 FIA Formula 1 World Championship season; but unfortunately, performance seems to have dropped off for the American outfit in the Australian Grand Prix weekend so far – with qualifying yielding a disappointing fifteenth and seventeenth-place finish for the team.

Kevin Magnussen, who failed to leave Qualifying One for the first time this year, will start the race in seventeenth place and believes the team haven’t found the “sweet spot” on track:

“It hasn’t really been our weekend so far – we haven’t found the sweet spot on this track. We’ve made some improvements but in qualifying it was a little bit messy with the red flag,” stated the number twenty driver.

Despite the unfortunate Saturday afternoon, the Danish driver remains optimistic about his chances in the race on Sunday – “I don’t think the result is representative of what the car can do in the race – there is more to come. We’re not starting in a great position so we’ll see what we can do but I’m optimistic that we’ve got a good car for the race.”

Mick Schumacher hopeful for race as the long-run pace “felt good”

Aside from the lower-than-expected qualifying position for both Haas drivers, there is one thing Mick Schumacher can have a smile on his face for and that he out-qualified his experienced teammate. However, the #47 driver was reflective of the session and quickly set his sights on Sunday’s race.

Colton Herta dominated qualifying for the Acura Grand Prix of Long Beach, winning the pole position with a new track record time of 1:05.309, nine tenths of a second faster than the previous record.

Herta won every segment of qualifying that he was a part of, each time breaking the provisional track record in a dazzling display of speed.

“As a young kid I always dreamed of becoming an IndyCar driver, and that’s because of this race,” Herta said at the end of the session.

“To get the win last year was amazing, and we checked another box off today with the pole. It feels incredible.”

Six of the fastest cars this weekend were in Group One, and Herta topped the group followed by Alexander Rossi, Felix Rosenqvist, Scott McLaughlin and rookie Kyle Kirkwood. Graham Rahal looked like he was going to make it, but missed out by one tenth of a second to Marcus Ericsson. Rahal was impeded by Jimmie Johnson, who received a penalty for being in the way.

Mitch Evans was delighted to take his first victory of the 2021-22 ABB FIA Formula E World Championship season on Saturday as he climbed from ninth on the grid to take the chequered flag first in race one of the Rome E-Prix.

The Jaguar TCS Racing driver had been disappointed to miss out on making the duels in Qualifying earlier in the day after encountering traffic on his final run, but he did not let that put him off as he pulled off overtake after overtake to take the lead by lap eighteen.

Evans was even able to slow towards the end to prevent an additional lap being added to the race distance, with the New Zealander closing out the race over five seconds ahead of closest rival Robin Frijns.

“The overall car and team performance won me the race today,” said Evans.  “The whole team have been working incredibly hard in the gap after Mexico to secure us the win today.

“The car was quick in qualifying today but we made the wrong call which saw us just miss out on the Duels. To win here again in Rome is such a great feeling and I’m so proud of everyone.

Valtteri Bottas’ incredible run of one-hundred-three, Qualifying Three appearances has come to a disappointing end with the Alfa Romeo F1 Team ORLEN driver qualifying twelfth at the Australian Grand Prix.

Bottas’ streak of qualifying three appearances dates back to 2017 but has unfortunately now come to an end. The Finnish driver did all he could to extend the streak but it was to no avail.

Bottas believes he got everything he could’ve done out of the C42, the Finnish driver even found it strange to be watching the final session on the TV!

“Our qualifying went pretty smoothly, and I feel we delivered some good laps: it felt I got everything out of the car and didn’t leave anything on the table, so it’s a disappointment not to be in Q3. We wanted to be in the top ten but we lacked a bit of one-lap pace: we took the decision to prioritise our setup for the race, with a smaller rear wing, so hopefully we can benefit from this decision tomorrow.

“The car felt good, we can see how fine the margins are in the midfield but I am confident we have a fast car, we have a car geared for overtaking and we have a good opportunity to score points. Of course, it’s sad to bring my streak of 103 consecutive Q3s to an end, but it’s good to know I had such a long run. It felt a bit weird watching the session on TV!”

Fernando Alonso was on the verge of the unthinkable at the Australian Grand Prix, after being just a handful of corners away from putting his car on provisional pole, until the Spaniard crashed into the wall ending his hopes of pole.

Alonso will start the race from tenth place at the Albert Park Circuit, despite being so close to a potential front-row start. The Spaniard has looked mighty all weekend and was unfortunate to crash during Qualifying Three. Footage shows though that the crash wasn’t his fault, after an issue with his car resulted in it halting mid-corner, leaving Alonso helpless as his A522 crashed into the wall.

The BWT Alpine F1 Team are investigating the issue that Alonso suffered and are hopeful of finding out what the problem was.

Alonso was left begging for some good luck, after suffering a stroke of bad luck at all three rounds now so far this season. Nevertheless, Alonso is confident of a points finish on Sunday.

“It seems we are very unlucky in these three races so far and to have this issue today in qualifying is a real shame. We had the pace for the top three or maybe even the front row today and on my Q3 lap I felt very fast. I’m not surprised to be this close to the leaders because we’ve been working hard as a team.

Pierre Gasly admits it is always disappointing not to make it into Q3 in Qualifying, but the weekend at Albert Park has been a difficult one for Scuderia AlphaTauri and eleventh place was the best result possible for the Frenchman.

Gasly has seen improvements from both the McLaren F1 Team and BWT Alpine F1 Team this weekend in Australia, and he says AlphaTauri have not had the same kind of leap forward, and as a result it was always going to be hard to make it into the top ten shootout purely on pace.

“It’s always disappointing to miss out on Q3, but I think this weekend has been tough for us,” admitted Gasly.  “We saw that McLaren and Alpine have made a step forward, we just didn’t have the pace to do much better.

“We know what we need to work on and we’ve planned some upgrades in the coming races, but to miss Q3 by a tenth of a second is always painful. We’ve managed to improve on some areas, but some issues just remained throughout the weekend, so it’s a bigger picture we need to look at.

“I think we did what we could, I don’t think Q3 was on the cards today.”

Felix Baumgartner did a BASE jump from the stratosphere down to Earth in 2012, followed by making his racing début two years later in sports cars. Larry Connor can say he did the reverse as he goes up into space after accumulating a history of racing successes, especially in the off-road world.

The 72-year-old Connor is a member of Axiom Space‘s Mission 1, the first private space mission to the International Space Station that launched on Friday and is supported by SpaceX. As part of the mission, Connor and crewmen Michael López-Alegría, Mark Pathy, and Eytan Stibbe will spend eight days on the ISS before returning to Earth. Connor serves as the crew’s pilot, meaning he oversees the controls of the Crew Dragon Endeavour.

Private missions and space tourism are topics of major and controversial discourse in the spaceflight community, especially as their passengers are typically wealthy individuals who pay exceptionally high prices to participate; Axiom Mission 1’s passengers paid $55 million each, with all but López-Alegría having no prior experience in space. Connor made much of his fortune founding various businesses such as the Connor Group real estate firm, of which he took sole ownership in 2003 and grew to $3.3 billion in value by 2021.

Save for mission-specific training, the highest Connor had flown prior to Mission 1 was as an aerobatic pilot. On the ground, Connor is more than familiar with getting airbourne when driving a Trophy Truck in desert competition.

The owner of Team C Racing, he dominated the SCORE International World Desert Championship in 2015. Joined by co-drivers Sean Backus and Jason Ruane, Team C won all five races—the San Felipe 250, Baja Sur 400, Baja 500, Imperial Valley 250, and Baja 1000—in the Trophy Truck Spec class to become only the third entry to sweep an entire season in the sanctioning body’s history. Coupled with winning the class in the 2014 Baja 1000 and 2016 Baja 500 (the latter in a limited schedule), Connor scored seven consecutive SCORE victories. His most recent start is the inaugural Baja 400 in 2019, where he shared a Trophy Truck with Ricky Johnson and finished eleventh overall (ninth in class).

Lewis Hamilton says the porpoising in the new era of Formula 1 is the worst he’s experienced during his lengthy career at the top level of motorsport, although he was relatively happy with his performance during Qualifying for the Australian Grand Prix on Saturday.

The Mercedes-AMG Petronas Formula One Team racer will start Sunday’s race at Albert Park from fifth on the grid, a significant improvement compared to his performance in Qualifying in Saudi Arabia where he failed to advance out of Q1.

Hamilton says the porpoising, which he likens to a rattlesnake, makes it difficult to know whether the W13 will go into corners with understeer of oversteer, and as a result it costs them time.  However, he hopes the positions on the grid will give them a chance of fighting for the big points.

“Compared to yesterday and to the last race, today was a good day for me,” said Hamilton.  “I’m really grateful for the work at the factory in turning the car around from yesterday and I almost got P4 which would have been cool but we’ll be fighting for that position tomorrow.

“I’d say this era of car is the worst for porpoising that I’ve ever experienced. For people watching at home, if the ride height is going high/low, high/low, when you turn in you never know which position you’ll catch it in and the car could oversteer or understeer depending where you catch it, so driving it is a real challenge – it’s like a rattlesnake!