Motorsports Racing News & Blog Articles

GB3 Championship race-winner Reece Ushijima has graduated to the FIA Formula 3 Championship with Van Amersfoort Racing.

The American driver spent two seasons in GB3, formerly BRDC British Formula 3, taking on Britain’s premier single-seater championship in his first full season out of a karting career which only started when Ushijima was 13.

Prior to joining the 2020 grid with Hitech GP for the team’s debut season in the championship alongside eventual title contender Kush Maini, he contested India’s MRF Challenge and took podiums in the BRSCC Formula Ford Winter Series.

He was tight-lipped on his plans for 2022 when TCF spoke to him after finishing second from pole in Race 2 at Donington Park in October, one of his seven podiums with Hitech in a season which also brought two wins in the second round at Silverstone, Oliver Oakes’ team’s home circuit.

Ushijima also finished second in Race 1 in Leicestershire, after going wheel to wheel with early-season title rival Zak O’Sullivan on the first lap.

Mike Harmon Racing will still be in a hole to start the 2022 NASCAR Xfinity Series season, but at least it is only in the standings. On Thursday, the National Motorsports Appeal Board announced it has rescinded a $50,000 fine and six-race suspension of crew chief Ryan Bell for a testing violation that occurred in November. However, the team’s #74 Chevrolet Camaro still has a seventy-five-point penalty.

In November, MHR and owner Mike Harmon participated in a charity event at Rockingham Speedway, where they brought the #74 Camaro. However, NASCAR slapped the team with an L2 penalty, citing Section 5.1.a.c.d of the rulebook which prohibits the use of current race cars in unsanctioned test sessions. MHR asserted such a penalty was unnecessary as a charity event and launched an appeal that was heard by the NMAB.

Final Appeal Officer Roger Werner elected to uphold the points penalty but withdrew the fine and suspension on the grounds of the 2022 rulebook, which allows penalties to be what FOX Sports’ Bob Pockrass described as being “applied on an ‘and/or’ basis.”

“We respect the final decisions of the National Motorsports Appeal Officer and look forward to moving past this and prepare for the 2022 season,” read a statement from MHR. “We respect all aspects of rules and regulations in NASCAR and will continue to work with NASCAR and their partners to ensure the series is successful. MHR crew is working at the shop to prepare our cars to compete in the season opener. Beef It’s What’s for Dinner 300 on Saturday February 19, 2022 at Daytona International Speedway. We want to thank our amazing fans, supporters, and great partners as we enter the 2022 season.”

Harmon and his team will begin the season with negative points. While the #74 car could dig out of the hole, Harmon himself will likely remain in it as he has downscaled his driving schedule in recent years in favour of hiring permanent drivers. Since 2020, he has only run five races with a combined seventy-four points across two seasons.

Carlin became the first team to complete their 2022 GB3 Championship line-up on Thursday, announcing that Javier Sagrera will join them for his second season racing in the UK.

A product of the Mexican Seven Grand Prix driver programme, Sagrera moved to GB3 from the Spanish F4 Championship for 2021.

Taking a second-place finish at Brands Hatch in Race 3 set the scene for a largely-consistent debut season which saw the Spaniard end the season in tenth place, just behind team-mate Tom Lebbon, who also stays in GB3 for 2022.

He joins Callum Voisin and Roberto Faria at Teams’ Champions Carlin, the latter also returning to the championship for 2022.

“I’m really excited to join Carlin for my second year in the GB3 Championship,” said Sagrera, who started testing with the team in November, shortly after ending the 2021 season with fellow GB3 debutants Elite Motorsport.

Joey Hand is back for more stock car action. On Thursday, Rick Ware Racing announced Hand will drive the #15 Ford Mustang in all six NASCAR Cup Series road course races in 2022. The initerary begins at Circuit of the Americas on 27 March, followed by Sonoma Raceway (12 June), Road America (3 July), Indianapolis Motor Speedway (31 July), Watkins Glen International (21 August), and Charlotte Motor Speedway Roval (9 October).

Hand made his NASCAR début last October at the Charlotte Roval, where he finished twenty-seventh in the #52 for RWR.

“I am thrilled to have Joey Hand back with the RWR family for 2022,” commented team owner Rick Ware. “Joey did a great job for us this past year at the Roval, and I can’t wait to see what he will do this year with the Next Gen cars and our Ford partnership.”

Much of Hand’s racing background is in sports cars, and is highlighted by successes such as winning the 24 Hours of Le Mans‘ GTE Pro class in 2016 and the Rolex 24 Hours of Daytona GTLM in 2017. Since 2015, he has been a factory driver for Ford Performance, who has a technical alliance with RWR beginning with the 2022 season. Hand won at COTA in 2015, Road America in 2017, and Watkins Glen the following year.

Prior to Ford, the California native was a member of BMW’s programme which included racing in DTM and pre-WeatherTech series Grand-Am and American Le Mans Series.

Franz Tost says Yuki Tsunoda has his future within Formula 1 in his own hands as the Japanese driver prepares for his second season in the sport in 2022.

Tsunoda made his debut with Scuderia AlphaTauri Honda in 2021 but endured an up and down season with the team, with the twenty-one-year-old scoring only thirty-two points to his name compared to the one hundred and ten of team-mate Pierre Gasly.

His season was punctuated by crashes in between decent drives as he adapted to life at the highest level of single-seater racing, but he ended the year with his best performance of the season with a fourth place finish in the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix.

And Tost, AlphaTauri’s Team Principal, says that Tsunoda is a ‘fantastic’ driver, and it will now be up to him to prove that he belongs in Formula 1 beyond 2022, particularly with a number of young Red Bull-backed drivers waiting in the wings.

“I can only say that Yuki is a really fantastic driver,” said Tost to Motorsport.com.  “Now, it’s also in his hands what he is making out of this, because to have talent is one story. I know a couple of F1 drivers that were really talented, but they won maybe one race or even no race.

Oliver Rowland ended fastest in the opening practice session of the ABB FIA Formula E World Championship season on Thursday as the eleven teams prepared for the Diriyah E-Prix double header in Saudi Arabia.

Rowland, who has made the switch from Nissan e.dams to Mahindra Racing for the 2021/22 season, set a best time of 1:10.559 at the very end of the session to outpace 2019/20 champion António Félix da Costa of DS Techeetah by 0.158 seconds.

Reigning champion Nyck de Vries had a far from impressive start to his championship defence, with the Mercedes-EQ Formula E Team driver ending in the wall within the first five minutes, with his lack of representative lap time seeing him end up twenty-second and last on the timesheets.

Jake Dennis, one of the surprise packages of the 2020/21 season, was third fastest in the newly renamed Avalanche Andretti Formula E Team following the departure of BMW as a manufacturer entry at the end of last year, while Jean-Éric Vergne was on course to top the session as he set two purple sectors only for the second Techeetah driver to suffer a slide in the final sector to leave him only fourth.

Mitch Evans placed fifth for Jaguar TCS Racing, just over half a second down on Rowland’s best time, while last years championship runner up Edoardo Mortara was sixth for ROKiT Venturi Racing, just ahead of the leading Tag Heuer Porsche FE Team driver Pascal Wehrlein.

The next time the NASCAR Cup Series‘ Next Gen cars drive on a track, it will be in a race. Tuesday and Wednesday saw Phoenix Raceway host the seventh-generation car’s final organisational test ahead of its racing début in the Busch Light Clash at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum.

The test came two weeks after another two-day session was held at Daytona International Speedway, where the first points race with the Next Gen car will take place in the form of the Daytona 500 on 20 February. Conversely, Phoenix is the final race of the season on 6 November.

Reigning champion Kyle Larson was the fastest in the first day of testing, while Ryan Blaney led the way in the second. Much of the cars that tested at Daytona returned for Phoenix with the exception of Spire Motorsports, MBM Motorsports, and Rick Ware Racing. RWR’s ally Stewart-Haas Racing sent two cars of its own driven by Kevin Harvick and Chase Briscoe.

It was not an entirely clean session. On Tuesday, Kyle Busch spun in turn four but avoided hitting the wall. Todd Gilliland was not as fortunate a day later as his spin resulted in contact.

“We may have some general ideas, but there’s nothing concrete yet until we go out there and race,” said Joey Logano. “When you say comfortable, I’m far from comfortable. There’s nothing I really know for certain is coming my way.”

Howie DiSavino III will make his NASCAR Xfinity Series début in 2022, running a six-race schedule for Alpha Prime Racing starting at Phoenix Raceway on 12 March. The other five starts will come at Richmond Raceway (2 April), Charlotte Motor Speedway (28 May), Texas Motor Speedway (24 September), Talladega Superspeedway (1 October), and Martinsville Speedway (29 October).

“I am very excited to race with Alpha Prime Racing. I think we will have a great season together,” said DiSavino. “It has been a dream come true to race in the Xfinity Series. Tommy Joe (Martins, team co-owner) is giving me that shot to make my dream come true.

A former pro late model and ARCA Menards Series driver, DiSavino competed in the Camping World Truck Series in 2021. Running five races for Jordan Anderson Racing, he recorded a best finish of twenty-second at Pocono.

In ARCA, he has made six starts since 2019 all for Win-Tron Racing and its successor AM Racing. He notched two top tens with a best finish of ninth at IRP in 2020. He also ran the 2020 ARCA Menards Series West season finale at Phoenix, placing eleventh with Win-Tron.

Of the six tracks on his Xfinity itinerary, he has raced at Richmond and Texas in the Trucks. The former, which was in his maiden Truck start, saw him finish thirty-fourth while he was twenty-third at Texas.

NASCAR‘s second tier will have an Earnhardt and a Truex as team-mates at Daytona International Speedway. No, this is not a sentence written in 2004.

Sam Hunt Racing announced Wednesday that the team will have two cars for the Xfinity Series season opener at Daytona. While Ryan Truex is in the #26 Toyota Supra, Jeffrey Earnhardt will pilot the #24.

The Earnhardt and Truex families are certainly no strangers to the other. In the 2000s, Ryan and older brother Martin Jr. were members of Dale Earnhardt, Inc., during which Martin won two Xfinity championships for affiliate Chance 2 Motorsports, which was owned by Jeffrey’s uncle Dale Earnhardt Jr. Dale and Martin were team-mates during the former’s part-time Xfinity competititon in this time period, with the former winning the Daytona opener in 2003 and 2004 for DEI and Chance 2.

Likewise, Ryan and Jeffrey were DEI drivers in what is now the ARCA Menards Series East in 2007 and 2008. The former won the series championship in 2009 and 2010, though for Michael Waltrip Racing.

“Our entire journey has been based around calculated growth,” said SHR owner Sam Hunt. “Running two cars at Daytona next month is another exciting step towards continuing to grow as a company and team. Having both Ryan and Jeffrey in our Toyota GR Supras will make for a fun start to 2022. They were Busch East teammates when their careers started at DEI, so it’s cool to see it come full circle at SHR.”

The GB3 Championship enters a new era in 2022. It’s the first full season since its rebrand from the BRDC British Formula 3 Championship, and a new car will bring the series closer to traditional F3 looks and levels of performance.

Having started life as the BRDC Formula 4 Championship which crowned Jake Hughes, George Russell and Will Palmer, the series rebranded for the first time for 2016 and introduced a new car, the Tatuus F4-016. That would then be adapted for 2020 into the BF3-020, which lasted a further two years. It is this period from 2016 to 2021 we will be diving into here, as Britain’s premier single-seater series waves goodbye to one car and hello to the MSV-022.

2016 – Matheus Leist

The first BRDC British F3 Champion couldn’t have started his career much further from the likes of Silverstone and Donington Park.

Matheus Leist started karting in Brazil, finishing second in the 2013 Petrobras Karting Championship, then third in the 2014 Seletiva de Kart Petrobras.

Also in 2014, he finished second in Formula 3 Brazil Light, before competing in two races in the FIA Formula 3 European Championship.

Pietro Fittipaldi will be called upon to race for the Uralkali Haas F1 Team during the 2022 Formula 1 season should Mick Schumacher be asked to step in at Scuderia Ferrari.

The Brazilian, who raced twice for the team at the end of the 2020 season in the Sakhir and Abu Dhabi Grand Prix in place of the injured Romain Grosjean, has been confirmed as the official reserve driver for Haas again in 2022.

Schumacher, who will be competing in his second season in Formula 1 this year after stepping up last year on the back of winning the FIA Formula 2 championship in 2019, will share the reserve driver duties at Ferrari with former Alfa Romeo Formula 1 Team ORLEN driver Antonio Giovinazzi.

And Schumacher will race for the Scuderia should either Charles Leclerc or Carlos Sainz Jr. be unavailable for any reason on one of those weekends where the German is playing understudy.

Guenther Steiner, the Team Principal at Haas, says he would be happy for Schumacher to drive for Ferrari should he be needed, but that move would make reserve driver Fittipaldi very happy.

Reigning double GB3 Championship Champions Carlin have signed race-winner Roberto Faria for a title challenge in his second full season.

The 18-year-old took his first GB3 win at Circuit de Spa-Francorchamps in 2021, and nine podiums with Fortec Motorsport since joining the team’s GB3 squad late in 2020.

His UK racing career began in 2019 with Fortec, yielding no podiums in the F4 British Championship. 2020 was more positive, as he took two podiums with Fortec before stepping up to the BRDC British F3 Championship and taking second place in the final race at Silverstone.

Last year was an impressive campaign for Faria. Despite three non-finishes, a win and nine podiums helped him to fifth in the standings, and Fortec to third in the inaugural Teams’ Championship.

The Daventry outfit finished between fellow single-seater stalwarts Hitech GP and Arden Motorsport, in their second and first GB3 seasons respectively. Over 2021, Faria was joined by two-time Donington Park race-winner Mikkel Grundtvig, Oliver Bearman (at Brands Hatch, Snetterton and Silverstone), Hunter Yeany (at Spa) and Eduardo Coseteng (at Donington).

Danny Bohn will have a ride for the 2022 NASCAR Camping World Truck Series season opener at Daytona International Speedway, and possibly more. On Tuesday, Young’s Motorsports announced Bohn will drive the #20 Chevrolet Silverado at Daytona on what the team described as “a one-race agreement with a vision to increase his schedule in 2022.” North American Motor Car follows him to the team as sponsor.

Bohn ran all but two races in 2021 for On Point Motorsports, a team for whom he had raced since 2019, with a pair of top tens at Knoxville and Talladega en route to a points finish of twenty-second. He did not return to the team for 2022 as Tate Fogleman was signed to take his place. Incidentally, Fogleman was a Young’s driver prior to moving to OPM.

His 2021 also included making his Xfinity Series début in the opener at Daytona for Big Machine Racing Team, whose regular driver Jade Buford was not approved for the superspeedway at the time. Bohn finished nineteenth.

Bohn is a regular in the Whelen Modified Tour, finishing second in the now defunct Whelen Southern Modified Tour as a rookie in 2012.

“I am very excited about joining Young’s Motorsports for Daytona,” commented Bohn. “Time and time again Young’s Motorsports have shown that they build very fast Chevrolet Silverados for the superspeedway races and I am excited to be able to drive one of them next month at Daytona.

Las Vegas is a popular vacation spot, and John Hunter Nemechek likes the area enough to visit its race track twice as a NASCAR Xfinity Series driver in 2022. On Tuesday, Sam Hunt Racing announced Nemechek will run the two Xfinity races at Las Vegas Motor Speedway on 5 March and 15 October. Berry’s Bullets, who has sponsored Nemechek in the past, will appear on his #26 Toyota Supra.

Nemechek is set to enter his second season in the Camping World Truck Series with Kyle Busch Motorsports. His first, a year removed from a Rookie of the Year campaign in the Cup Series, saw him establish himself as the class of the field as he led the series in wins (five), top fives (twelve), and top tens (sixteen, tied with Todd Gilliland). He won the regular season championship and made the Championship Round but early misfortune in the final race resulted in a third-place points finish. Competing in the series since 2013, mainly for his family team NEMCO Motorsports, he has eleven career wins.

In addition to his 2021 Truck schedule, he ran two Xfinity races for SHR at Dover and Richmond, scoring a third at the latter. In the playoffs, he entered three races with SHR ally Joe Gibbs Racing and won at Texas. He previously competed full-time in the series in 2019 for GMS Racing, which followed a limited slate the previous year for Chip Ganassi Racing during which he won his maiden series race at Kansas. He finished second in his first Xfinity event at Las Vegas.

Berry’s Bullets, a firearm ammunication manufacturer, has sponsored Nemechek since he drove for NEMCO.

“Any time we get to go to the track with John Hunter, it’s extremely beneficial for our organisation,” stated SHR owner Sam Hunt. “He’s been a large part of our growth, provides invaluable feedback, and even came close to winning a race for us last year at Richmond, my home track. He comes from a gritty background, and he really embraces our group and how I go about building this team.”

Rinus Veekay says he would be happy staying in the NTT IndyCar Series for a long time and has not seriously considered a move to Formula 1, but he would think about it if he had to chance to fight Max Verstappen on track.

Veekay, whose real name is Rinus van Kalmthout, currently races in IndyCar with Ed Carpenter Racing and took his maiden series victory last year in the GMR Grand Prix around the road course at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway.  Despite his results tailing off towards the end of the year, he had done enough to earn himself a second season with the team for 2022.

The Dutchman says that whilst Formula 1 has never been top of his wish list to race in, he would consider making the switch should be become either team-mates or competitive rivals to his compatriot Verstappen, who won the World Drivers’ Championship for the first time in 2021.

And with the likes of Pato O’Ward and Colton Herta both being linked with moves away from IndyCar to Formula 1 in the near future, Veekay is another to link himself to the sport, although he is definitely content to remain in IndyCar for the long term and would only consider it if in with a chance of battling Verstappen.

“If I get the chance to become Max Verstappen’s team-mate, or maybe Max Verstappen’s competitor at a top team, then I will certainly think about that,” VeeKay said to Dutch publication Ziggo Sport.  “But I’m not working on that at all right now.