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With a strong performance from start to finish in the 2022 Dakar Rally, Qatar’s Nasser Al-Attiyah is now tied with Ari Vatanen for the second most wins in the Car category with four. Many other stories throughout the thirteen stages in Saudi Arabia included Sam Sunderland scoring his second Bikes victory by slim margin, Austin Jones winning one for the Americans in even closer fashion, and Seth Quintero wrapping up what was nearly a perfect Rally.

Driving a Toyota Hilux T1+ for Toyota Gazoo Racing alongside navigator Matthieu Baumel, Al-Attiyah recorded a total time of 38 hours, 33 minutes, and 3 seconds. Al-Attiyah started off strong by winning A and B of Stage #1, as well as Stage #4; although fewer than his five from 2021, his overall time was twenty-seven minutes and forty-six seconds faster than that of Bahrain Raid Xtreme‘s Sébastien Loeb. Loeb, the nine-time World Rally Champion, falls short by finishing second for the second time with two stage wins in #2 and 7.

“Me, Mathieu and the team all did a great job from beginning until the end,” said Al-Attiyah, who is the only Middle Easterner to have multiple Dakar victories with previous triumphs in 2011, 2015, and 2019. “It was very important for me to win because now the Rally is in our region.”

DTM and World Rallycross star Mattias Ekström finished ninth overall after scoring his maiden stage win in the eighth. The victory was also a high point for his Audi Sport team, which deployed a fleet of hybrid RS Q e-trons for Ekström, Carlos Sainz, and reigning champion Stéphane Peterhansel. Peterhansel’s Rally unravelled almost immediately after a rear axle broke during the opening stage while he was running second.

In the Bikes, Sunderland won just Stage #8, but was consistent throughout and nabbed his second win after 2017 in dramatically close fashion; his time of 38:47:30 barely trumped Pablo Quintanilla by just three minutes and twenty-seven seconds. The Briton’s victory is also the first in the Rally for Spanish motorcycle make GasGas, which is owned by Sunderland’s former factory employer KTM. Nevertheless, as KTM has its own programme, Sunderland became the first rider to win the Dakar for different brands since Richard Sainct won in 1999/2000 for BMW and 2003 for KTM.

If Cody Ware has not caught up on Demon Slayer, he has a month to do so before the 2022 NASCAR Cup Series season begins. On Friday, Ware announced via SiriusXM that he will return to the #51 Rick Ware Racing machine for the upcoming campaign.

The 2021 Cup Series marked Ware’s first full season of NASCAR competition after part-time racing across the three national divisions. While he was ineligible for Rookie of the Year as he ran for Xfinity Series points, he ran all but four Cup rounds with a best finish of twenty-first in the season-opening Daytona 500. He missed the races at Nashville and Watkins Glen as he was dabbling in the NTT IndyCar Series for the first time, while he was forced to sit out Richmond and Bristol in the fall due to carbon monoxide poisoning.

Ware made three IndyCar starts during 2021 for Dale Coyne Racing, who has an alliance with RWR, as he respectively finished nineteenth, twentieth, and twenty-fifth at Road America, the Music City Grand Prix, and the Big Machine Spiked Coolers Grand Prix in Indianapolis. He had also planned to run the Indianapolis 500 and completed rookie orientation, but a lack of sponsorship prevented the opportunity from arising.

His 2021 also included seven starts in the Xfinity Series for SS-Green Light Racing, also an RWR partner, with two top-twenty finishes and a best run of fifteenth at Mid-Ohio. Prior to the NASCAR season, he débuted in the Rolex 24 Hours of Daytona for RWR Eurasia alongside fellow Cup driver Austin Dillon, Sven Müller, and Salih Yoluç; the entry finished fourth in the LMP2 class. While Ware’s racing portfolio spans multiple disciplines, the Rolex 24 seeing his strongest performance of the year is perhaps unsurprising as much of his career had been spent in sports cars, which included being named Lamborghini Super Trofeo North America Rookie of the Year in 2014 and winning the Asian Le Mans Series LMP2 Am championship in 2019/20.

Although the #51 was a Chevrolet in 2021, it will be a Ford Mustang for 2022 as RWR has joined forces with Stewart-Haas Racing. The partnership means new SHR reserve driver Ryan Preece will serve as a team-mate to Ware in the #15 for two races; David Ragan will drive the car in the Daytona 500.

For the past two years, Conor Daly has been competing on a full-time basis in the NTT IndyCar Series, though with the caveat of it being split between Ed Carpenter Racing and Carlin. For 2022, however, he will finally commit to just one team for every race as he will permanently pilot the #20 Chevrolet for ECR. Cryptocurrency holdings company BitNile Holdings will sponsor his car and the team on a multi-year deal.

“To be able to come back to Ed Carpenter Racing for the full season is incredible,” said Daly. “I haven’t had the chance to be with one team for the entire year since 2017, so this is something I am very, very thankful for. I have a lot of faith in ECR and each year we continue to get better together.”

While Daly has competed in IndyCar since 2013, only two of his seasons have seen him race with just one team. He finished eighteenth in points in 2016 for Dale Coyne Racing, followed by placing there again the following year with A.J. Foyt Enterprises. After two years of bouncing between various teams including Carlin, he joined ECR in 2020 for the road courses and street circuits while running the ovals for Carlin. The same arrangement was kept in 2021, during which he once again recorded an eighteenth-place championship finish with a best run of eleventh in the Big Machine Spiked Coolers Grand Prix at Indianapolis and Bommarito Automotive Group 500 at Gateway.

Since 2020, Daly has also made one-off starts in the NASCAR Camping World Truck Series for Niece Motorsports. While a deal to continue his stock car exploits has not been revealed, Racing America’s Matt Weaver reported he could run two races in addition to his full-time IndyCar slate.

Team owner Ed Carpenter will continue running the ovals, including the Indianapolis 500. With Daly in the #20, Carpenter is obviously unable to use that number, meaning he will have to utilise a different one for the first time since he raced with #67 for Sarah Fisher Racing in 2011. Rinus VeeKay returns to the #21 for a third season, making ECR a three-car operation.

After over three years of speculation, Robert Wickens is officially back in a race car.

On Friday, Wickens announced he will make his racing return by competing in the IMSA Michelin Pilot Challenge for Bryan Herta Autosport. He will drive the #33 Hyundai Elantra N TCR alongside fellow Canadian Mark Wilkins.

“I’ve spent a lot of nights thinking and dreaming of this moment, and with the support from Bryan Herta and Hyundai it is all becoming a reality,” Wickens stated. “I am hungrier now than I was before my accident to compete for wins again. I’m really looking forward to incorporating myself with the entire Bryan Herta Autosport team and finally get my first taste of the Hyundai Elantra N TCR.”

The news caps off what has been a difficult and emotional saga for Wickens. In 2018, he was poised to become one of the NTT IndyCar Series‘ next big things when he scored four podium finishes as a rookie. However, his promising career came to a grinding halt when he was involved in a major crash at Pocono that sent him into the catchfence, resulting in massive injuries such as fractures to his spine, spinal cord, neck, and limbs. He was paralysed from the waist down, forcing him into a wheelchair.

Wickens documented his recovery over the next three years, posting videos of him moving his legs with and without assistance and even dancing with his wife Karli during their wedding in 2019. That year also saw him drive the pace car at Honda Indy Toronto with hand controls. By 2020, he was partaking in sim racing events such as the IndyCar iRacing Challenge.

The Dakar Rally ended Friday with victory for many, but also tragedy. In the morning of the race’s final day, mechanic Quentin Lavalée died of injuries sustained in an accident involving the support vehicle he was driving and a civilian truck. He was twenty years old.

“This morning at 11:30, on the assistance liaison route, an accident involving an assistance vehicle and a local truck, according to local police authorities, occurred at kilometre 234,” read a statement from race organiser Amaury Sport Organisation. “The driver of the car belonging to the team PH Sport, Quentin Lavalée, of France, very sadly passed away in the accident. He was 20 years of age. His passenger, the Belgian Maxime Frere. was injured and was transported to the National Guards Hospital in Jeddah. He was conscious and a full analysis is underway.”

Lavalée was the chief mechanic of the #726 Peugeot 205 T16 fielded by 205 Africa Raid in the Dakar Classic with support from Lavalée’s employer PH Sport. Piloted by Rudy Jacquot, the #726 finished twenty-fourth in the class, two spots behind team-mate and uncle François‘ #728 Peugeot 404. The T16 is a restoration of the vehicle driven by Ari Vatanen to victory in the 1987 Rally. Rudy’s cousin Christophe finished thirteenth in 205 Africa Raid’s #902 MAN TGE 280.

“It is with immense sorrow that we mourn today the loss of Quentin, our chief engineer on the 205 Turbo 16,” read a translated social media post from PH Sport. “We extend our heartfelt condolences to Quentin’s family and loved ones.

“Many of us have known the Chalindrey native since he was born and have seen him grow up to join our team. His passion, kindness, simplicity and radiant personality will be sorely missed.”

The fallout from the end of the 2021 Abu Dhabi Grand Prix is still nothing short of spectacular a month on. Social media (especially Twitter) has been full of posts and discussions calling for serious action to be taken, including the sacking of race director Michael Masi. It was known that the FIA would launch a full investigation into what happened on that fateful Sunday and, on January 13, a statement was released that outlined the details of what’s going to happen with that.

“Following the decision of the World Motor Sport Council in Paris on 15 December 2021, the FIA administration, under the leadership of Mohammed Ben Sulayem, has started the detailed analysis of the events of the last Formula 1 Abu Dhabi Grand Prix,” the statement read. “The FIA President launched a consultation with all F1 teams on various issues, including this one.“

“On January 18, an item on the agenda of the Sporting Advisory Committee will be dedicated to the use of the Safety Car,” the statement continued. “The following stage will be a shared discussion with all F1 drivers.“

“The outcome of the detailed analysis will be presented to the F1 Commission in February and final decisions will be announced at the World Motor Sport Council in Bahrain on 18 March.”

Jeffrey Earnhardt has rejoined the Toyota stable for the 2022 NASCAR Xfinity Series. After two years at JD Motorsports, he announced Friday that he has signed with Sam Hunt Racing for “multiple races” in the upcoming season. He will drive the #26 Toyota Supra, though specific dates were not immediately revealed. ForeverLawn, Inc., who was a sponsor at JDM, follows him to SHR.

“Welcome home, Jeffrey Earnhardt,” posted the team on social media. “We are thrilled to have you and ForeverLawn, Inc. on board with us for multiple races this season. Gearing up to be an exciting year!”

The fourth-generation driver spent the last two seasons at JDM as a full-timer. Despite not running the first four races in 2020 and initially signing on as a part-time driver, he enjoyed a solid campaign with twelve top-twenty finishes and a points placement of twenty-third. However, 2021 only had six such runs as he attempted all but one race, failed to qualify for three, and placed three spots lower in the standings. Earnhardt has not run every race in a national series season since the 2014 Xfinity slate with JDM, where he finished sixteenth.

His first experience with Toyota came during the second half of 2018 when he ran much of the Cup Series events for Gaunt Brothers Racing. The following year, he joined Joe Gibbs Racing (an SHR ally) which entailed sporadic starts for the team’s Xfinity programme and driving for the newly formed XCI Racing there and in Cup. Despite aspirations of going full-time Cup racing with XCI, he departed the team in the summer and XCI has since disappeared.

Earnhardt is the second announced driver in SHR’s #26 after Ryan Truex was hired for the season opener and more on Thursday. The #26 finished twenty-third in the 2021 owner standings with the likes of Grant Enfinger, Santino Ferrucci, Colin Garrett, Brandon Gdovic, Dylan Lupton, John Hunter Nemechek, Will Rodgers, and Kris Wright.

The season of car launches is looming upon us more and more as we get closer to the start of the 2022 Formula 1 season. The teams are starting to finish off their cars for the 2022 season and it’s only a matter of time before we see them all in the flesh for the first time. As well as the hiring of new Team Principal Mike Krack, the Aston Martin Cognizant Formula One Team announced to the public today that the Aston Martin AMR22 will be revealed to the world on February 10, 2022. This makes Aston Martin the first of the F1 teams to announce a set date for the launch of their new car; Scuderia Ferrari has announced a rough time window of February 16-18, but is yet to lock in a concrete date like Aston Martin has.

The unveiling of the AMR22 will be held at Aston Martin’s headquarters in Gaydon, Warwickshire. The team’s two drivers Sebastian Vettel and Lance Stroll will be at the launch event, as will key members of the team’s staff. This will no doubt include new Team Principal Mike Krack, as well as other major figures including Lawrence Stroll and Martin Whitmarsh. The AMR22 will be the first Aston Martin F1 car designed under the new technical regulations and, like the AMR21, will be powered by a Mercedes power unit.

Aston Martin (which rebranded from Racing Point after the 2020 season) finished 7th in the constructors’ championship in 2021, scoring a combined total of 77 points. The team also managed one podium finish that year, courtesy of Sebastian Vettel finishing second during the Azerbaijan Grand Prix in Baku.

With the announcement that Mike Krack will be joining the Aston Martin Cognizant Formula One team with immediate effect, BMW M Motorsport have announced that Andreas Roos will be taking over responsibility for motor sport activities of BMW M GmbH as of 1 February.

“We would like to thank Mike Krack for his passion and dedication across the motor sport portfolio of BMW and BMW M,” said Franciscus van Meel, CEO of BMW M GmbH. “He has demonstrated his wholehearted commitment to motor sport in various roles within our company. As Head of BMW M Motorsport, he took some important decisions over the past year aimed at securing a successful future for our motor sport projects. He has now been given the chance to fulfil a career dream and we do not want to stand in his way. We would like to wish Mike every success in his future endeavours.”

“At the same time, we are delighted to welcome Andreas Roos as our new Head of BMW M Motorsport,” continued van Meel. “He has also held senior management positions in international motor sport for many years and his vast experience makes him the ideal appointment at the helm of our racing involvement. With Andreas on board we are in the best possible shape to enjoy an exciting future pursuing ambitious goals with our new BMW M4 GT3 and LMDh project. We are looking forward to enjoying great success together.”

While Formula 1 is seen as the pinnacle of motor sport, it wasn’t a clear cut decision for Krack to leave his role at BMW after being part of the German manufacturer for some time.

“This was not an easy decision for me,” says Krack. “I have spent a large portion of my professional life at BMW, and have grown incredibly fond of the brand and my colleagues over all these great years. I would like to say thank you for everything we have achieved together through the many different projects.

It was only a few days ago when the Aston Martin Cognizant Formula 1 Team announced that its long-serving Team Principal Otmar Szafnauer would be stepping down. This came amid rumours that Szafnauer would be moving to the Alpine F1 Team to take on a senior role there. Now today Aston Martin has announced the signing of a new Team Principal in the form of Mike Krack.

Krack previously led BMW’s global motorsport operation, a position he had held at the company since 2014. In this role, he’d been in charge of BMW’s Formula E, GT and IMSA programmes as well as being a part of the brand’s planned expansion into the new LMDh formula for IMSA and the World Endurance Championship. Prior to that, Krack had a senior role at Porsche and also has a decade of previous Formula 1 experience with Sauber.

Krack will report to the team’s owner Lawrence Stroll and the team’s CEO Martin Whitmarsh. He will also be reunited with Sebastian Vettel, who he worked with at BMW-Sauber from 2006-2007.

“It is a thrill and an honour to have been appointed to the position of Team Principal of Aston Martin Cognizant Formula One Team, and I am very grateful to Lawrence [Stroll] and Martin [Whitmarsh] for giving me such a fantastic opportunity,” Krack said in an official statement. “Aston Martin is one of the greatest automotive brands in the world, and to have been asked to play a leading role in delivering the on-track Formula One success that such an illustrious name so richly deserves is a challenge that I plan to embrace with energy and enthusiasm.”

“I have been working in motorsport for over 20 years, and worked in Formula One with Seb Vettel in 2006 and 2007 when I was a BMW-Sauber engineer and he was the team’s test driver. I have huge respect for his speed and ability, and it will be fantastic to be reunited with him,” Krack continued. “Lance Stroll is a seriously fast and talented driver, too, with 100 Grands Prix starts to his name, and I am very much looking forward to working closely with him.”

Roger Penske and his racing teams have done it all, racing in a multitude of series and achieving reat success. However, he wants another go at the legendary 24 Hours of Le Mans and the accompanying FIA World Endurance Championship.

Team Penske intends to field an Oreca 07 Gibson in the 2022 WEC’s LMP2 class for Dane Cameron, Emmanuel Collard, and Felipe Nasr. All three drivers have enjoyed success in the American sports car realm, with Cameron winning the 2019 IMSA DPi championship for Penske. Collard, a longtime Le Mans racer who won his class in 2003 and 2009, was previously a Penske driver in the American Le Mans Series. Nasr is the defending IMSA DPi champion, his second such title, and he raced at Le Mans in LMP2 in 2018 and 2021.

“Joining Team Penske in a great opportunity and I can’t wait to compete in WEC and return to Le Mans this year,” Nasr stated. “I know we’ll learn a lot as a team as we develop our programme and gain some great experience. I’m really excited to get to work as we begin to build momentum for the future.”

Penske fielded a team in the IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship that was closed after the 2020 season when Acura pulled its support. While this consequently left Penske out of sports cars in 2021, the team eventually allied with Porsche to form Porsche Penske Motorsport, an outfit that will begin competing in the new LMDh class (which replaces DPi) of IMSA and WEC in 2023.

While Penske has won nearly everything in racing, from the NASCAR Cup Series‘ Daytona 500 to the NTT IndyCar Series‘ Indianapolis 500, his Le Mans experience is sporadic by comparison. His team’s last start in the legendary endurance race came in 1971 in alliance with North American Racing Team, where Mark Donohue and David Hobbs ultimately retired due to an engine failure.

The Triple Crown is a popular concept in motorsport: win three certain races, earn bragging rights and occasionally a monetary prize. In the case of the NTT IndyCar Series, such an idea was used during the 1970s and 1980s, followed by 2013 to 2015, for winning major rounds like the Indianapolis 500.

For 2022, IndyCar has revived the triple but in a much different manner; this time, the crown is attained based on versatility. On Thursday, IndyCar announced the formation of the PeopleReady Force for Good Challenge, a partnership between the sanctioning body and industrial staffing company PeopleReady, in which the first driver to win a race on each of the schedule’s three track types—oval, road course, street circuit—can win $1 million for themselves and a charity of their choosing: $500,000 is shared between the driver and their team, while the other half goes to charity.

The 2022 calendar has four ovals—Texas Motor Speedway, Indianapolis Motor Speedway, Iowa Speedway, and World Wide Technology Raceway at Gateway—compared to six road courses and five street circuits. While the latter two categories greatly outweigh the ovals, the likelihood of a driver winning at least once on each of the three is actually higher than one might think. Such a feat has been accomplished every year since 2015 save for 2021, though Josef Newgarden came close with wins on an oval (Gateway) and road course (Mid-Ohio) and three second-place finishes on the streets in St. Petersburg, Detroit, and Long Beach. Had the challenge existed in years past, Newgarden would have achieved this in 2017 and 2020.

Even if nobody completes the sweep, PeopleReady intends to donate $10,000 to each race winner regardless of their progress in the challenge.

“The PeopleReady Force for Good Challenge will help drive home PeopleReady’s mission to connect people and work as a force for good in the communities they serve while highlighting the skill of NTT IndyCar Series teams and drivers and our collective commitment to helping others,” said Penske Entertainment Corporation head Mark Miles. “This programme will keep fans engaged all season and continue to raise vital awareness for a variety of worthy charities.”

Until 2014, the NASCAR Cup Series typically conducted a test session at Daytona International Speedway to prepare for the upcoming season nicknamed “Preseason Thunder”. Eight years later, it returned… sort of.

On Tuesday and Wednesday, seventeen cars took to the high banking of Daytona to practice drafting in the Next Gen car set to début in 2022. Both sessions were topped by Fords as rookie Harrison Burton was the fastest each time ahead of Team Penske ally and fellow Cup newcomer Austin Cindric, as well as another Penske entry driven by Joey Logano in the first and Ryan Blaney in the second.

With Kyle Larson in Oklahoma for the Chili Bowl Nationals, Hendrick Motorsports entrusted his #5 to Dale Earnhardt Jr., a two-time Daytona 500 winner who last raced in Cup in 2017. Earnhardt, who tested the Next Gen at Bowman Gray Stadium in October, was twelfth and fifth in two sessions.

Some teams with multiple drivers rotated for the second test day. For example, the Spire Motorsports #7 was shared by regular driver Corey LaJoie and Landon Cassill, who will run the Busch Light Clash in the team’s #77. Denny Hamlin skipped Day 2 after blowing an engine while in the draft in the first.

“It’s been a long two days and I would say that we were really happy with where we netted out here,” said NASCAR Senior Vice President for Innovation and Racing Development John Probst. “I feel like this was a pretty good extension of the test that we did in Atlanta about a week ago. We were able to dial in the package a little bit more than when we were here in late 2021.”

When Seth Quintero won the tenth stage of the Dakar Rally on Wednesday to tie Pierre Lartigue‘s 1994 record for the most stage wins in the event’s history, he wrote on Instagram, “Today we shook hands with history, tommorow we try to break it.”

A day later, he broke it.

Quintero, aided by navigator Dennis Zenz, set the fastest time in the Light Prototype class in Stage #11 on Thursday of three hours, fifty-seven minutes, and fifty-three seconds to win his eleventh stage. Even more impressive is that Quintero accomplished it in twelve stages (the first stage is divided into 1A and 1B), while Lartigue reached his mark of ten when the 1994 Rally had seventeen. He also won the Prologue prior to the main Rally.

The Red Bull Off-Road Junior Team USA duo have won every stage so far except for Stage #2, which saw them leading by five minutes before a differential failure doomed their hopes of a clean sweep. Fellow Red Bull driver Guillaume De Mevius won that stage, but retired from the Rally three stages later due to critical rollcage damage.

The 19-year-old Quintero was more than eager to celebrate his historic achievement while also calling out those critical of the feat.

In a development that’s come as rather a shock to the world of Formula 1, the Alpine F1 Team has announced that as of 13th January 2022 its Executive Director Marcin Budkowski will be stepping away from his role. According to a statement by the team, CEO Laurent Rossi “will temporarily ensure the team’s management to allow everyone to focus on the next season’s preparation.”

Budkowski had originally joined the team (then under the Renault brand) in October 2017, after a stint as the head of Formula 1’s technical department. His signing attracted a lot of controversy at the time, as he was very close to the FIA and Formula 1 Management due to his previous position and therefore had access to critical details surrounding the 2018 cars.

He was responsible for the day-to-day running and operations of the team and remained there through its transition from Renault to Alpine. Before this, Budkowski had been an aerodynamicist at the Prost Grand Prix team in 2001. He later worked for Ferrari from 2002-2007, McLaren from 2007-2014 (where he ended up becoming the head of the aerodynamics department) and then for Formula 1 from 2014 until leaving to join Renault.

“I would like to thank Marcin Budkowski for his commitment and contribution to the team’s results over the last four years,” Rossi said in the team’s official statement. “The team is fully focused on getting the car ready for the first race in Bahrain and deliver a step beyond in performance.”

“I truly enjoyed being part of the leadership team of Renault then Alpine F1 Team, working with such a talented and dedicated group of people,” said Budkowski. “I will be watching the Teams’ progress fondly in the seasons to come.”