Motorsports Racing News & Blog Articles

Joaquim Rodrigues is walking away from racing after over three decades of racing in series ranging from motocross to rally raid. He announced his exit from motorsport in a statement posted Saturday.

“For thirty-five years, I dedicated myself, heart and soul, to motocross, supercross, enduro, and, more recently, to rallies,” began Rodrigues. “I always did it intensely and passionately. It wouldn’t have made sense any other way.

“The dedication that led me to the Motocross World Championship and then to the coveted AMA Supercross in the United States accompanied me throughout my entire career. The same dedication and enthusiasm with which I devoted myself to rally raids.

“It wasn’t easy, it never is. Leaving home, still a kid, to join an official team in the Motocross World Championship, alongside the two-time World champion, is a dream of any young rider, packing up and heading to the United States, alone, not knowing what to expect from the fiercest Supercross championship in the world. It reached a point where, more than the lack of motivation, I felt it was time to stop, to change course. The enthusiasm wasn’t the same, and I always respected the teams, the sponsors, and everyone around me.

“It was the same in rally raids. Attracted by the great marathons, I fell in love with the desert. We started in the Dakar adventures with success, defeats, joys, good days, and not-so-good days, but I never gave up on what I set out to do, because giving up is not part of me.”

The upcoming BP Ultimate Rally-Raid will be a special event for João Ferreira as it marks the first World Rally-Raid Championship round in his home country of Portugal. With a homecoming looming, it only makes sense for him to try something different, and that shakeup is in the form of racing the Mini John Cooper Works Rally Plus for X-raid Team.

It will be Ferreira’s second time competing in the W2RC’s Ultimate category after making his series début in the Mini at the 2022 Andalucía Rally in neighbouring Spain. He will hope Portugal goes better than that start, where he only completed Stage #1A before crashing out in the following leg.

Since then, Ferreira’s W2RC action has come in the Challenger and SSV categories. He ran much of the 2023 calendar in the former, driving a Yamaha for X-raid, before switching to a Can-Am Maverick for South Racing in the latter class at the season-ending Rallye du Maroc and winning. Ferreira began the 2024 season with a fifth in SSV (third among points-eligible drivers) at the Dakar Rally, and won the opening stage at the Abu Dhabi Desert Challenge before getting disqualified halfway through for having his crew come onto the racing surface to help him with repairs. After two rounds, he sits fourth in SSV points but will drop in position after Portugal as he moves into Ultimate, which does not have its own class-specific standings, on a one-off. He is expected to return to South Racing for the rest of the season afterwards.

Although his W2RC focus has been in side-by-sides, Ferreira continues to race the Mini in regional competition. In 2022, he won both the Portuguese Cross-Country Championship and FIA European Cup for Cross-Country Bajas (now FIA European Baja Cup). The following year, he upgraded his Mini to comply with T1+ regulations and finished fourth in European Cup points and third in what is now the World Baja Cup. A month after Dakar, he narrowly lost the 2024 World Cup opener at the Saudi Baja by thirty-eight seconds to Yazeed Al-Rajhi.

The BP Ultimate Rally-Raid, set to begin on 3 August, predominantly takes place in Portugal save for a stage that extends into Spain. Both countries will be represented on X-raid Team as Ferreira teams up with the Spaniard Pau Navarro.

The opening two free practice sessions took place on Friday around the Albert Park circuit in Melbourne as the Australian Grand Prix weekend of the 2024 FIA Formula 1 World Championship season commenced with Lando Norris and Charles Leclerc setting the pace.

However, there was drama for Williams Racing as Alexander Albon crashed heavily, which destroyed his chassis significantly that the team were forced to make a difficult decision to field only one car for the rest of the weekend, with Logan Sargeant missing out.

Oracle Red Bull Racing go into the weekend having finished first and second in both the Bahrain and Saudi Arabian Grand Prix, but based on what happened on Friday, Australia might present them a more difficult weekend going for the triple.

Free Practice One – Norris Fastest, Albon Crashes

McLaren F1 Team’s Norris set the pace in the opening session, his lap of 1:18.564 just 0.018 seconds clear of Red Bull’s Max Verstappen, while the top six were separated by less than a tenth of a second. 

Verstappen, who is looking to equal his record of ten consecutive race victories this weekend, was only 0.015 seconds clear of Mercedes-AMG Petronas Formula One Team’s George Russell, with Scuderia Ferrari’s Leclerc a further 0.002 seconds back.

Dan McMillin acquired a swanky new livery for the 2024 SCORE International season as Monster Energy’s The Beast Unleashed came onboard to sponsor his #23. He ended up finishing San Felipe 250 qualifying on Thursday with what resembled a rat rod with a duct taped #23 on the doors.

McMillin flipped his truck during the reconnaissance lap, navigating through a series of esses before hitting a lump in the ground leading into a lefthand turn and doing two rolls before landing on his roof. The McMillin Racing team removed the body, applied a blank backup shell that left the engine and rear fully exposed save, used duct tape to apply the numbers along the doors, and sent him out. Despite this, he managed to get back on track and complete a lap.

“There was a small mound and I didnt see it,” said McMillin. “I wasn’t going very fast but it just spit me over one or two times. The guys and Roger (Rogelio Pereira Jr.) got it back to the pits and got the truck running again and we went out there and put down a pretty conservative but good lap. The truck seems fine. We will take a good look at it and get ready to race on Saturday.”

Alan Ampudia narrowly edged out defending SCORE Trophy Truck champion Bryce Menzies and Toby Price for pole. Price had swept both qualifying sessions of the 2023 season at San Felipe and the Baja 400, but opted for a more conservative strategy this time around due to the course’s challenging terrain. Defending winner Luke McMillin, Dan’s brother, qualified fourth ahead of Christopher Polvoorde, the latter racing a new Mason all-wheel drive truck.

Mint 400 winner Adam Householder was twentieth in TT.

IndyCar is racing this weekend, but not for points.

That’s a sentence that hasn’t been written since 2008. But this weekend, the series heads to The Thermal Club, a unique motorsports “country club” in California’s Coachella Valley for a combined open test and exhibition race dubbed the “$1 Million Challenge”. The first two days of the weekend will feature over nine hours of testing, with Sunday featuring two heat races followed by an “All-Star Race” on Sunday night.

But there is one big reason why this exhibition is happening: Texas Motor Speedway’s annual date was removed from the calendar, leaving what would have been a six-week gap between of the opening race of the season in St. Petersburg and the following event in Long Beach.

Mark Miles, President and CEO of Penske Entertainment, has his ears open for fan feedback for the series’ first major exhibition event in over a decade:

“I think we’ll see how fans react. And you know, because you do it all the time, that you’ll have a good sense from social media on the fan reaction to the racing… People really enjoyed being there [for testing in 2023]. Maybe raised some of the questions you asked about racing. I hope we’ve addressed them, and we expect to have a really good weekend that people enjoy.”

As ParaBaja Step by Step prepares for their ten-year anniversary in 2024, they will embark on their biggest schedule yet when they support all six Spanish Cross-Country Rally Championship as well as the World Rally-Raid Championship for the first time.

ParaBaja appears at cross-country rallies as a separate class designed for competitors with reduced mobility or other disabilities. Although times are recorded, results are not published as organisers stress it is a non-competition category that celebrates racers regardless of performance. Thus, identical trophies are handed out to everyone at the end of each rally.

The W2RC will be ParaBaja’s first race of the year when the series returns to the Iberian Peninsula in early April with the BP Ultimate Rally-Raid; while it mainly takes place in Portugal, the third stage will finish in Badajoz, Extremadura. Bajadoz will then host the start of Stage #4, which brings the rally back across the Portuguese/Spanish border to Grândola.

A week later, the CERTT season begins with the Rally TT Jaén Mar de Olivos. Returning to the Spanish championship in 2023 after a three-year hiatus, the race is held in Jaén, a province located in Andalucía. Andalucía previously welcomed the W2RC during its inaugural season in 2022 with the Andalucía Rally.

ParaBaja returns to Extremadura in May for the Baja TT Dehesa Extremadura, which is also part of the FIA European Baja Cup. Later in the month, the Murcian city of Lorca welcomes CERTT with the Baja Lorca Ciudad del Sol.

The 2024 FIA Formula 1 World Championship rolls into Albert Park for the Australian Grand Prix this weekend, and everyone will be looking to end the remarkable winning streak of Max Verstappen, who has won nine races in a row including the opening two Grand Prix of the year.

Oracle Red Bull Racing have secured one-two finishes in both the Bahrain and Saudi Arabian Grand Prix, and only the fastest lap point eluded them last time out. 

Heading into the weekend, hear what those from the MoneyGram Haas F1 Team, Williams Racing, the Kick Sauber F1 Team, Visa CashApp RB and the BWT Alpine F1 Team have to say.

#27 – Nico Hülkenberg – MoneyGram Haas F1 Team

“We‘re happy about scoring our first point of the season in Saudi Arabia. Everyone saw how much effort it takes for midfield teams to fight for a top 10 result and teamwork was definitely the key.

The 2024 FIA Formula 1 World Championship rolls into Albert Park for the Australian Grand Prix this weekend, and everyone will be looking to end the remarkable winning streak of Max Verstappen, who has won nine races in a row including the opening two Grand Prix of the year.

Oracle Red Bull Racing have secured one-two finishes in both the Bahrain and Saudi Arabian Grand Prix, and only the fastest lap point eluded them last time out. 

Heading into the weekend, hear what those from Scuderia Ferrari, the McLaren F1 Team, the Mercedes-AMG Petronas Formula One Team and the Aston Martin Aramco Formula 1 Team have to say.

#55 – Carlos Sainz Jr. – Scuderia Ferrari

“Since I’ve been in Australia, I’ve made excellent progress, feeling better day by day and I’m ready to get in the car. I also spoke to Alex (Albon) who went through a similar situation two years ago and, although I’m not 100%, I expect to be able to drive.

Season 2 of the Red Bull Scramble kicked off Saturday in the dunes of Glamis. Although many faces ranging from World Rally-Raid Championship stars Seth Quintero and Austin Jones to the great Robby Gordon and his son Max Gordon headlined the card, newly minted Red Bull athlete and real estate agent Corbin Leaverton came out on top.

Leaverton, who won the Red Bull High Desert Scramble and the Best In The Desert Trophy Unlimited title alongside Cody Bradbury in 2023, continued his momentum into 2024 by winning the Pro class final ahead of pole-sitter Chase Carr and Shawn Saxton. Carr had dominated the race by leading the first four laps before Leaverton passed him on the final circuit to score the win.

Jones, two weeks removed from winning the Challenger class at the W2RC’s Abu Dhabi Desert Challenge, placed fifth. He narrowly edged out Michael McFayden for the top-five finish, the latter a new Honda Factory Off-Road Racing Talon driver; McFayden’s colleague Ethan Ebert, who races the team’s Honda Ridgeline in SCORE International competition, retired from the final.

“I’m super familiar with this area because I do a lot for Dakar and Abu Dhabi out here in these dunes,” said Jones. “I’ve been here a lot but I’ve never done a race here. The course that they set up was absolutely insane. It was the perfect mix of really fast and fun and a little bit of sketchy to keep everyone honest.”

The Gordon family, entering their first Scramble Series race, had mixed results. Robby finished third in his heat race while Max was forced to retire from his when the belt came off his SPEED UTV. The younger Gordon’s final then ended on the opening lap when his rear tyre clipped a dune and sent him into a roll. Robby stopped to check on Max and another driver who crashed the same lap, costing him approximately forty-five seconds. Max avoided injury while the car remained in relatively good condition with most of the damage being to the trailing arm.

Bruno Famin, the Team Principal of the BWT Alpine F1 Team, says the shock of starting the 2024 FIA Formula 1 World Championship season at the back of the pack has confirmed that the decision to overhaul their technical department was the right move.

Alpine started 2024 with a seemingly overweight and underperforming A524, and it was not long before technical director Matt Harman and head of aerodynamics Dirk de Beer both resigned from their posts, and were replaced by a trio of technical directors that were broken up between aerodynamics, engineering and performance.

After two races fighting at or near the back of the pack – they qualified nineteenth and twentieth on the grid in the Bahrain Grand Prix, Famin says the need for change has been proven to be the right move as they bid to drag themselves up the field.

“It was a shock because we were really expecting a difficult start of the season, we knew this, and this is what we said during the launch of our car,” Famin is quoted as saying by Motorsport.com. 

“But to be on the last row in the qualifying was a shock, to be honest. And it just confirmed the need of changing in our team, and we made the change.”

José Ignacio Cornejo has split with Monster Energy Honda Rally Team after six years with the organisation, he announced Wednesday.

After originally withdrawing from the 2018 Dakar Rally due to financial issues, Cornejo was asked by Honda to fill in as a last-second replacement for the injured Paulo Gonçalves. Despite only having one prior Dakar start in 2016 as a privateer, where he failed to finish, he immediately capitalised by finishing tenth overall and earned himself a permanent seat with the outfit for 2019 onwards. Now a factory rider, his performance continued to improve over the next few years, topping out at fourth in 2020 with a pair of stage victories. He had another two-win outing two years later and placed sixth.

Before joining Honda, he was the 2016 FIM Cross-Country Rallies Junior World Champion (predecessor to the current World Rally-Raid Championship). He finished sixth in both the inaugural W2RC RallyGP standings in 2022 and the following year’s slate.

His final start with HRC, January’s season-opening Dakar Rally, saw him finish sixth overall with a career high three stage victories in Stages #2, #4, and #7; the three wins led the RallyGP class as Hondas claimed seven of twelve legs. He and the team did not enter the next W2RC round in Abu Dhabi. Cornejo is currently fifth in the standings, trailing Ross Branch by thirty points.

“I came to this team as a junior with a lot of dreams, being a waterboy in Dakar 2018, and today I say goodbye as an experienced rider, winning stages, and fighting for podiums and wins,” wrote Cornejo. “I want to thank to every teammate, engineers, mechanics, physios and professionals of the team, it has been an honor for me, I met and worked with people and riders that I used to see in the magazines when I was a kid, and most of them today I can call friends. I hope I left a mark and good memories in every person I worked with. I made friendships that will last through the years, and I’ll carry all the memories in my heart and mind, thanks for everything.”

Polaris Factory Racing had a début season for the ages when they won the Pro UTV Open category at all four SCORE International rounds in 2023 and Brock Heger claimed the class championship. With the 2024 season fast approaching, they will defend their titles in a new, second-generation Polaris RZR Pro R Factory.

It is noticeably chunkier than its predecessor as more carbon fibre bodywork has been added to increase the car’s power-to-weight ratio. To cancel out the increased weight, the steel driveshaft has been replaced by one made from carbon fibre and aluminum, which is lighter but has more torque capacity. The muffler is also lighter than the original.

Perhaps its defining feature is a brand new one-piece chassis developed by Technique Inc., who also builds the chassis for the NASCAR Cup Series’ Next Gen car. Made from chromoly steel, the chassis is much larger and stronger than on the previous car, intended to be twice as strong as what is mandated by the FIA. Technique also supplied upgraded front and rear bumpers that better handle contact from other vehicles.

Surrounding the chassis is a redesigned roll cage. The car will rely on brake systems, which includes rotors, opposed-piston calipers, and dual master cylinders, from Alcon USA. The fuel cell, made by Aero Tec Laboratories, has been increased to a range of 200 miles (321.869 kilometres).

Otherwise, it continues to use stock parts like the first-gen RZR such as the same ball joints, front and rear knuckles and drives, power steering rack, trailing arms, and the CVT (continuously variable transmission) system like the belt. The control arms are stock as well, though a newer model that are stiffer and stronger for better handling.

Sara Price will have to wait a little longer before she gets another crack at the World Rally-Raid Championship. Rally Raid Spirit told The Checkered Flag Tuesday that after speaking with Price, she will not enter the upcoming BP Ultimate Rally-Raid due to a lack of sponsorship.

Price is seen as one of the top rising stars in rally raid, evidenced from her W2RC debut when she won the National Car/UTV class at the 2023 Sonora Rally to clinch free registration for the 2024 Dakar Rally. To prepare for Dakar, she entered the 2023 season-ending Rallye du Maroc and made an impact from the start as she won two stages and finished second in the SSV class.

At Dakar, she vied for an SSV podium spot before breaking through by winning her class in Stage #10, becoming the third woman to win a Dakar stage. Price finished fourth overall in SSV and second among points-eligible drivers.

Despite being eligible for the W2RC, however, she skipped the Abu Dhabi Desert Challenge. She and many of her fellow American competitors, including boyfriend and Dakar bike winner Ricky Brabec, opted to enter the Mint 400 back home instead, finishing twelfth in the UTV Pro class after being ordered to move from the UTV Stock category for noncompliant parts (a trend that eventually sparked controversy).

While most W2RC competitors who skipped Abu Dhabi have their reasons to do so, Price’s also comes down to not having sufficient backing. Although she is an ambassador for Can-Am and drives for their rally raid factory team South Racing, it is not enough to regularly cover the costs of racing internationally. Brabec has also openly lamented the lack of rally opportunities for Americans due to low factory support.

Jonathan Savel, a police officer on the path to making his Dakar Rally début in 2025, was shot and killed during a raid in Lodelinsart that went awry on Monday morning. He was 36 years old.

Savel was a member of the Federal Police Special Units (DSU), Belgium’s tactical police force. According to Charleroi prosecutor Vincent Fiasse, search warrants were issued for a suspect allegedly involved in criminal conspiracy for trafficking drugs, cars, and weapons. At 6:30 AM on Monday, Savel and his team arrived at the suspect’s house where they encountered and began speaking with a woman.

Moments later, they were ambushed by someone hiding behind a door who, according to Fiasse, “fired several times” and “almost emptied his magazine on the officers.” Savel and two of his peers were hit, forcing the unit to call in reinforcements while they evacuated the trio. The assailant died in the ensuing shootout.

One of the wounded officers avoided life-threatening injuries, while another is in critical condition. Savel was pronounced dead in hospital, and is the first DSU agent in recent memory to die in the line of duty.

“It is a dark day for the Belgian police, the Federal Police, and especially for our special units,” said Federal Police Commissioner-General Eric Snoeck at a press conference later that day. “This morning, like every day, dozens of colleagues, dozens of officers got up early, left their families to do their duty. They left their families with the intention, like every day, of doing their job properly in the service of the law but more broadly in the service of the people.

One of the bigger stories to come out of the Saudi Arabian Grand Prix was the defensive driving by Kevin Magnussen that delayed drivers enough to allow his MoneyGram Haas F1 Team team-mate Nico Hülkenberg to score his first point of the season.

Magnussen slowed his pace in the first sector and was setting lap times upward of a second and a half down on what he was capable of to allow Hülkenberg to scamper away, with Yuki Tsunoda, Alexander Albon, Esteban Ocon and Logan Sargeant all having their evenings compromised as a result.

The Danish driver was already carrying two ten-second time penalties thanks to incidents involving both Albon and Tsunoda, and it was a call from the pit wall to back up the pack that proved key to who took home the final point on offer.

Not everyone was happy with what unfolded, with Visa CashApp RB’s racing director Alan Permane criticising the move that saw Magnussen pass Tsunoda, with the Dane running off track to complete the pass. Permane called the decision to not allow Tsunoda back ahead despite this as ‘unsportsmanlike behaviour’.

“We started him [Tsunoda] on the medium tyre, and when the safety car came out, pitted him for the hard compound,” Permane is quoted as saying by Motorsport.com. “What then happened was a little difficult to take.