Motorsports Racing News & Blog Articles

Williams Racing endured a highly challenging start to the new Formula 1 season at the Bahrain Grand Prix, with Alex Albon finishing thirteenth and Nicholas Latifi bringing the car home in sixteenth.

It was not the start to the season that Williams had been hoping for, both cars did at times though demonstrate strong pace and were capable of battling with not only the McLaren F1 Team, but also the Aston Martin Aramco Cognizant Formula One Team. Other than that though it wasn’t the strongest of Grand Prix’s for the British team.

For the majority of the race both Albon and Latifi struggled for pace, Albon to his credit performed much better than his Canadian team-mate, despite it being only his first race for the team. Albon also surprisingly made it to Qualifying 2 unlike Latifi who started last, the Thai driver at least managed to prove that there is some performance to be found in the FW44.

Williams Racing’s Head of Vehicle Performance, Dave Robson, highlighted after the race the positives which could be taken away from the opening round, as well as areas which need working on.

“It has been a tough evening in Bahrain, but we got both cars to the end, and at times showed some reasonable pace. Alex made a good start and made some places early in the race. Unfortunately, today we didn’t have the pace to hold on. However, we were able to race competitively with both the McLarens and the Aston Martins, which was an improvement from what we saw at the test last week.

Ginetta GT Academy Rookie champion Angus Whiteside will be stepping up to the Porsche Carrera Cup GB series with the newest team on the grid, Toro Verde GT.

As many driver do, Whiteside started his racing career in karts, which included a win at Norfolk’s Ellough Park in the snow. For 2021 the 25-year-old move in to Ginetta’s entry-level GT Academy series.

Whiteside had an impressive debut year in the series, talking 12 wins in the Rookie class after finishing second in his first race. He would go on to take 12 wins on his way to the title.

“I won the Rookie championship in Ginetta GTA last year and it was either between Carrera Cup or Ginetta this year, and Porsche offers multiple products, so that’s why we made this choice. It’s the biggest and fastest single-make championship in the UK, so if you’re going to make a name for yourself it’s probably the place to do it,” explained Whiteside.

“I haven’t got any bad habits as its only my second year of car racing, so I am still forming my style, but initially it feels like a bit of a tank! It sings, it’s an absolute riot to drive, and I am slowly getting used to it.

In 2014, Sheldon Creed raced with the Stadium Super Trucks in the X Games at Circuit of the Americas and was a top contender before finishing second. A year later, he won the gold.

In 2021, Creed ran the NASCAR Camping World Truck Series race at COTA and was a favourite to win but settled for a top five. A year later, he hopes truck-sized lightning can strike twice.

Young’s Motorsports has signed Creed to run the Truck Series’ XPEL 225 at the Austin track on Saturday, driving the #20 Chevrolet Silverado RST. It will be his first Truck start of 2022 after spending the last three seasons competing in the series full-time and winning the championship in 2020.

The Truck race is intended to give Creed more track time ahead of the the Xfinity Series‘ Pit Boss 250, scheduled to take place a few hours later. Creed graduated to the Xfinity Series for 2022 with Richard Childress Racing, and is currently eleventh in points with three top tens in five races.

Road courses are perhaps where Creed shines the most as a stock car racer. His extensive off-road background has translated exceptionally well to such tracks, with top-five finishes in all five of his Truck road races and a win on the Daytona Road Course in 2020. At the inaugural COTA Truck race in 2021, he qualified third and led a race-high fourteen laps, but a late slide dropped him to fifth. His Xfinity Series début in 2017 also came as a road course ringer as he ran two races at Mid-Ohio and Road America.

In the second IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship round, attrition and the ability to stay in the race was the name of the game.

Within the first 10 minutes, we would see both the DPi and GTD pole sitters head into the pits with mechanical issues. The #1 Cadillac DPi and the #16 Porsche would both go on to finish the race however they would be 44 and 16 laps down.

Following in the pole position curse, LMP3 leader and pole-sitter, Gar Robinson, would spin his #74 Riley Motorsports Ligier going into turn 17 just under 20 minutes into the race. In an apparent lapse of judgment, he would pull back out and narrowly avoid being collected by a fellow prototype car. To round off the bad luck, in GTD Pro, pole-sitter Daniel Serra would allow Mirko Bortolotti to breeze by him just under one hour into the race.

Following a superb IMSA debut, 16-year-old Sebastian Montoya and his father Juan Pablo would have their race ended just under three hours in when the #6 Muehlner Motorsports America LMP3 car spun going into turn one. The spin resulted in Juan Pablo being left nowhere to go and colliding with a GTD car, ending the #81 DragonSpeed USA LMP2 car’s race.

In a hair-raising moment, Kyffin Simpson in the #66 GTD Acura NSX GT3 would experience tire blowouts after a brake lockup and stop in the middle of a blind corner. After nearly being rammed into by several prototypes, a full course caution was thrown around the three-and-a-half-hour mark. Less than 30 minutes later, a similar level of inexperience would nearly cause another serious wreck.

On his return to Formula 1, Alex Albon left the season opening Bahrain Grand Prix having finished in thirteenth place, Williams Racing team-mate Nicholas Latifi finished sixteenth at the Bahrain International Circuit.

It was an overall solid weekend for Albon, who after making it to Qualifying 2 qualified in fourteenth place. The Thai driver enjoyed some battling during the race but was unfortunately unable to do anything about the faster cars behind. In the end the best Albon could salvage was thirteenth place, which in the weakest car on the grid is a good result to start the year with.

Albon was happy with how the weekend went, he’s especially happy to have made it to the end of the race without any reliability problems.

“My first Formula One race with Williams went pretty well; it felt like we did a good job and really maximised what we had. I had a good start and managed to make up a few positions, so I was pushing hard. Inevitably, a few faster cars overtook and we slipped back down a couple of places, but it’s a step forward considering the struggles we had last week. We knew it was going to be a difficult weekend, so to come out P13 with no reliability issues is something we should be pleased with.”

“We’re not starting off as strong as we would have liked” – Nicholas Latifi

On the other side of the garage, Nicholas Latifi had a difficult Grand Prix, after starting from last on the grid. Both Williams drivers pitted three times during the race, tyre degradation was especially high around the Bahrain International Circuit. By the end of the race sixteenth place was the best Latifi could manage, on what was a difficult weekend for the Canadian.

The season-opening 2022 Bahrain Grand Prix really wasn’t a good day for the Aston Martin Aramco Cognizant Formula One Team. Chief among those problems that plagued Team Silverstone was a car that had numerous technical issues. Drivers Lance Stroll and Nico Hulkenberg (deputising for Sebastian Vettel, who had to sit on the sidelines after a positive COVID test) had to work around those issues and, whilst they both finished near the back of the grid, the team is still taking some positives out of the weekend.

Team Principal Mike Krack, who replaced the departing Otmar Szafnauer just before the start of the season, explained the difficulties his drivers had. “Both our drivers were required to lift and coast at various points during today’s race, but they did it proficiently and we were therefore able to bring both cars to the finish.“

“A P12/P17 result is not what we wanted, of course not, but it was always going to be hard to achieve a strong finish from our starting positions,” he continued. “Nonetheless, Lance drove well to convert his P19 grid slot to P12 at flag-fall, and, having not raced in Formula One since November 2020 [the Eifel Grand Prix at Nürburgring], Nico also did a good job today.”

Whilst Aston Martin’s Bahrain outing was dismal and Krack is willing to admit that, he is hopeful that things will be better as the season goes on. “Our car currently lacks pace – clearly – but we will endeavour to put up a better show in Saudi Arabia in a few days’ time.” That “better show” is something that the team, drivers and fans will be hoping arrives sooner rather than later.

It was certainly not the sort of weekend that McLaren F1 Team’s, Daniel Ricciardo and Lando Norris would’ve hoped for, after both drivers finished well outside the points at the Bahrain Grand Prix.

Ricciardo who despite being knocked out in Qualifying 1, managed to finish above his team-mate at the Bahrain International Circuit. Having missed the pre-season test at Bahrain due to testing positive for Covid-19, Ricciardo used the race to test all the different tyre compounds available, with the main goal being to get to the finish and collect as much data as possible.

Ricciardo mentioned this after the race where he finished fourteenth, the Australian is fairly confident though that he knows how the team can improve the car.

“It sounds very simple, but the first objective today was to do the race distance and just build some knowledge in the car. I think even just for myself, especially after the last week, just to get that kind of fitness in, was good. We tried all three compounds of tyres, so there is plenty to feedback. I’m pretty clear where our weaknesses lay in the race, so we’ll try to understand that and work on those. I think we had some strengths in some corners as well.

“So, we’ll just feedback everything we can to the team and obviously, we knew it was going to be a tricky day, but we got both cars home and have lots to look at. We will now look ahead to a completely different track in Saudi Arabia to see what that brings.”

Team Stange Racing plans to début its NASCAR Cup Series side with Tarso Marques, a Brazilian driver who previously competed in Formula One. Now, the team hopes to do the same for other drivers outside the United States.

On Tuesday, the team announced the formation of a driver development programme with the explicit goal of helping international drivers break into the world of NASCAR and stock car racing. It will be led by team vice president Doug Knight.

The programme’s first member is Matteo Nannini, who will run a part-time ARCA Menards Series schedule in the team’s #46 Ford Mustang starting at Mid-Ohio Sports Car Course on 8 July. Nannini makes the jump to stock cars after climbing through the European formula ladder. The 2019 Formula 4 UAE champion spent the last two years competing in the FIA Formula 3 Championship, which included scoring his lone series win at the Hungaroring in 2021 and a podium as he finished fourteenth in points. The Italian-Argentinian also ran nine races in Formula 2 and scored a point in the Bahrain feature round.

Nannini did not return to F3 for 2022 as employer HWA Racelab was bought out by Van Amersfoort Racing who signed different drivers. However, he had already been eyeing a move to America; in October, he participated in Indy Lights‘ Chris Griffis Memorial Open Test at Indianapolis Motor Speedway with Juncos Hollinger Racing and set the second-fastest time in three of six sessions.

“I’m very excited to make my NASCAR début and race for championships in the United States,” commented Nannini. “I look forward to gaining more experience and developing my racing skills in a new car that will make me a more diverse driver.”

Esteban Ocon left the Bahrain International Circuit with confidence after moving up from eleventh on the grid to claim a seventh-place finish under the floodlights on Sunday evening.

The BWT Alpine F1 Team driver bemoaned contact with Haas F1 Team’s Mick Schumacher on the opening lap that left the Frenchman with a five-second time penalty to serve in his first pit stop, but he was able to put that behind him and drive strongly to score six points.

Ocon says there are plenty of positives to build on from Bahrain, and he hopes to put the knowledge the team gained this weekend to good use in next weekend’s Saudi Arabian Grand Prix.

“I’m very pleased with today and it’s a great start to the season with double points secured for the team,” said Ocon.  “Our pace today was strong, there were some good overtakes and the team made the right calls on strategy.

“I’d like to say a special shoutout to the pit crew as well who were excellent with so many pit-stops today. Other than the incident with Mick, which I hold my hands up and apologise for, I was pretty pleased with my race.

Valtteri Bottas was pleased he was able to recover to score points in Sunday’s Bahrain Grand Prix after a poor start left him floundering outside the top ten.

The Alfa Romeo F1 Team ORLEN driver had started seventh on the grid after a strong performance in Qualifying, but he was slow off the line and dropped well down the order on the opening lap.

However, Bottas was able to recover well, driving strongly to bring the car home in sixth, with the Finn executing a good strategy as well as making some impressive on-track overtakes in a car he knew was competitive enough to be inside the top ten.

“I am very happy about tonight’s result: for me, but most importantly for the team, with two cars in the points, and for Zhou who got points in his first race,” said Bottas.  “The race went really well, with the exception of the start: I got a lot of wheelspin and was basically a sitting duck for the first lap, just trying to avoid contact.

“When that stabilised, however, we had really good pace: we didn’t give up, executed a really good strategy and, in the end, completed a good recovery. We took it lap by lap as we knew we had the car to get back in the top 10.

The 2022 Bahrain Grand Prix didn’t go the way the Aston Martin Aramco Cognizant Formula One Team may have wanted.

With Sebastian Vettel having to sit on the sidelines due to a positive COVID test, reserve driver Nico Hulkenberg being almost thrown into the lions’ den due to not having driven the car outside of a simulator before last weekend and technical challenges negatively affecting the performance of the AMR22, the opening round of the 2022 Formula 1 season was a trial by fire for Aston Martin.

That hasn’t stopped Hulkenberg and Lance Stroll from feeling at least some positivity from the results of this difficult weekend.

“It is a shame we were not able to fight for points today, but we will benefit from completing our first race and understanding more about these new regulations,” said Stroll.

“It is early days and there is lots to learn about how we can extract more performance in time for the race in Saudi Arabia next weekend.”

Want to race in the Superstar Racing Experience‘s 9 July event at the Nashville Fairgrounds Speedway? Better hope the fans love you.

On Tuesday, the track announced the launch of a vote in which fans pick from a pool of six late model stars who they want to see in the SRX event. Dylan Fetcho, Michael House, Stephen Nasse, Bubba Pollard, Cole Williams, and Brittney Zamora are on the ballot. Voting begins on 3 April, and the winner will be announced at the track’s ARCA Menards Series East race on 7 May.

“Nashville Fairgrounds Speedway, Superstar Racing Experience (SRX), and Track Enterprises are giving a special promotion to all grass roots race fans before the SRX race at Nashville Fairgrounds Speedway on Saturday, July 9th. Fans will get a chance to vote one of their favorite late model drivers into the seat of an SRX machine to compete against some of the best in motorsports,” reads a statement from the track. “[…] All six drivers have a rich history at Nashville Fairgrounds Speedway with many of them being past champions and one even making history.”

Fetcho won the Pro Late Model track championship in 2020, and recently claimed the Baby Rattler Pro 125 victory at South Alabama Speedway. House is the defending Nashville PLM champion after holding off House for the crown, and he previously won said title in 2018.

Nasse and Pollard are popular names in the short track community, both of whom having raced against each other and won in multiple divisions including the Southern Super Series, CARS Super Late Model Tour, and World Series of Asphalt. Nasse has three starts in ARCA East, with his most recent being a sixth in the 2020 season opener. Pollard, nicknamed “Redneck Jesus”, has experience in the national ARCA Menards Series. Despite their grassroots successes, neither currently have plans of moving up to NASCAR as they enjoy the homely environment of regional short track racing. Still, SRX would provide them with a national audience, as was the case with NASCAR Whelen Modified Tour legend Doug Coby winning the inaugural SRX event in 2021 to bolster his series’ and his individual image.

Jody Egginton says Scuderia AlphaTauri are ‘looking forward to the challenge’ of getting to the front of the midfield in 2022 after he oversaw a mixed bag of results in the Bahrain Grand Prix on Sunday.

Yuki Tsunoda climbed from sixteenth on the grid to finish eighth to score points for the Faenza-based team, but Pierre Gasly was forced to retire when on course for the top ten due to a sudden catastrophic failure at the back of his AT-03.

Gasly’s retirement also compromised Tsunoda, who had just pitted, with several drivers able to jump ahead of him thanks to getting effectively a free pit stop.  However, the Japanese racer was able to push until the end and claimed four points for the team.

Egginton, the Technical Director at AlphaTauri, was happy that both drivers were able to show good pace at the Bahrain International Circuit on Sunday evening, with both making gains from their starting spots.

And he says the race in the desert has given the team ideas of where they need to focus their development if they are to move up the grid and fight at the front of the midfield battle in 2022.

Yuki Tsunoda was happy with his performance and result in Sunday’s Bahrain Grand Prix as he climbed from sixteenth on the grid to finish eighth.

The Scuderia AlphaTauri driver admitted he was lucky to gain a couple of positions in the final few laps as both Max Verstappen and Sergio Pérez retired whilst running inside the top four, but overall, he believed his had a strong day at the Bahrain International Circuit.

Tsunoda made a good start to gain a few places off the line, and he made no mistakes throughout the fifty-seven-lap event, and he was rewarded with four points and a second consecutive top ten finish in Bahrain having scored a debut ninth place there in 2021.

“I’m quite happy with today, especially with the start as I was able to make up a few places,” said Tsunoda. “I had a little bit of luck near the end, as some cars had failures, but overall I’m pleased with how today went.

“We’ve still got a lot of work to do to be able to fight consistently at the top of the midfield, but we’re confident that we can develop the car to continue to improve our performance.

Alfa Romeo F1 Team opened their 2022 campaign at the Bahrain Grand Prix with an impressive performance that delivered the team a double points finish, with Valtteri Bottas finishing in sixth place ahead of team-mate and the only rookie this season Zhou Guanyu, who finished tenth in his first ever F1 race.

Both drivers had a difficult start to the race but managed to comeback with an attacking performance from the team and converting pace into points. Alfa Romeo acquired a total of nine points and currently sit in fourth place in the Constructors Championship and are ready to continue their great start to the new F1 season.

Alfa Romeo’s Team Principal Frédéric Vasseur talked about how happy he was with the performances of both drivers and how competitive their car can be this season as they prepare for next week’s Jeddah Grand Prix in Saudi Arabia.

“Coming home with two cars in the points in the first race is the perfect way to start the season. The team has demonstrated skill but also resilience as we came back from a poor start, but stuck to our plan and made a lot of progress through the field.

“In a sense, this is an even more promising sign as we were able to mount a comeback, which means our car is genuinely competitive. We are aware the season ahead is going to be a long one and that our rivals will challenge us already next week, but we have a very good result on day one and that’s a big boost for everyone at the team.