Motorsports Racing News & Blog Articles

The NASCAR Cup Series‘ YellaWood 500 at Talladega Superspeedway saw drivers race against not only each other, but against Mother Nature. Originally scheduled for Sunday, the race was pushed to Monday before being marred by further interference from the rain. When the weather returned yet again, it cut the race short after 117 laps. Bubba Wallace was the leader at the time of the delay and was declared the winner for his maiden Cup victory.

A Joe Gibbs Racing front row of Denny Hamlin and Kyle Busch led the field to green, while Quin Houff and Joey Gase were ordered to the rear for failing pre-race inspection twice and James Davison did so for a driver change from David Starr (though all three were already starting at the back). Attempts to start the race on Sunday failed as rain resulted in just a handful of pace laps before being pushed to Monday.

Stage #1

Upon finally getting underway a day later, the lead traded hands multiple times as expected from a superspeedway: by the lap 25 competition caution, there were nine lead changes between eight drivers with Cole Custer as the last. Kevin Harvick led the field to the restart on lap 30. Hamlin, Kurt Busch, and Brad Keselowski also led laps.
Chris Buescher took the lead on lap 54 shortly before Justin Allgaier was spun in the middle lane of a pack and slammed into Kyle Larson on the outside. The ensuing caution ended the opening stage with Buescher leading Joey Logano, Keselowski, Harvick, Ryan Blaney, Tyler Reddick, Chase Elliott, Alex Bowman, Ross Chastain, and Busch. Buescher, Reddick, Chastain, and Busch were non-playoff drivers.

Stage #2

Larson’s woes continued into Stage #2 when his right-front tyre went down and sent him into the turn two wall, though his team was able to keep the car within minimum speed and avoid retirement. Cody Ware elected to stay out during the resulting yellow flag and thus became the new leader when rain returned and forced another red flag. Ware, a self-professed fan of anime and goth girls, certainly enjoyed his first lap led since Darlington in May as he quipped the experience was “mega poggers, very poggers.”

The red flag lasted eighteen minutes and twenty seconds before being lifted. Ware pitted and Justin Haley became the new leader for the restart. Christopher Bell and JGR team-mate Hamlin would take over the inside line while Bowman led the outside as the race crossed the halfway point.

John Wes Townley, a former NASCAR Xfinity and Camping World Truck Series driver, was killed in a shooting in Athens, Georgia, on Saturday. The Athens Banner-Herald reported the news the next day. He was 31.

According to Athens-Clarke County Police Department spokesperson Lt. Shaun Barnett, police responded to a home shooting in the Five Points neighbourhood on Saturday night. Townley and a 30-year-old woman were shot, with the former dying from his injuries at hospital while the latter suffered “serious” wounds. A 32-year-old man who has ties to Townley is suspected to be the perpetrator, and police has since been in contact and he was not immediately charged. Barnett also added the case may have stemmed from a domestic violence dispute. The investigation is ongoing as of this article’s publishing.

Townley is the son of Tony Townley, the founder of the Zaxby’s chicken fast-food franchise chain; Zaxby’s frequently sponsored the younger Townley, and his race cars were painted a bright yellow that certainly caught one’s eye on track. He began racing in NASCAR’s national series in 2008 with starts in both the Truck and now-Xfinity Series before running much of the 2009 Xfinity schedule with RAB Racing. Throughout his early career, he developed a reputation for aggressive driving and his involvement in wrecks, resulting in the dubious moniker of “John Wrecks Weekly”. Such matters were amplified in 2012 when he wrecked in practice for his Cup Series début at Pocono, which was ultimately aborted.

Despite his struggles, he eventually found his footing in the Truck Series and began competing on a full-time basis with RAB in 2012. In 2014, the Townley family formed Athenian Motorsports and his Truck campaign the following year produced great results as he scored a career-high nine top tens, three top fives, and his maiden NASCAR victory at Las Vegas. Incidentally, the win came six years prior to Sunday’s news.

He retired from racing after the 2016 season to attend college. In 110 career Truck starts, he notched twenty-four top tens, five top fives, two poles, the Vegas win, and a best points finish of eighth in 2015. He also scored two wins in what is now the ARCA Menards Series at Daytona in 2013 and 2016.

John Wes Townley: 31 December 1989 – 2 October 2021

The NASCAR Cup Series‘ YellaWood 500 at Talladega Superspeedway has been postponed to Monday. Sunday’s events only included pre-race ceremonies and a handful of laps behind the pace car before rain forced the delay.

The Xfinity and Camping World Truck Series held their races on Saturday without any weather concerns, though the former—who raced after the latter—had its event shortened due to darkness as Talladega does not have lights. Mother Nature was not as friendly for the Cup Series as rain fell on the track throughout Sunday morning.

Although NASCAR attempted to get pre-race festivities and some laps in, they could only turn two pace laps before calling it a day. The race will now start on Monday at 1 PM Eastern (6 PM/1800 BST). However, many have raised concerns about the weather later in the week as rain is expected to continue falling until Thursday, including the threat of thunderstorms.

While NASCAR has raced as late as Wednesday in the past (most infamously with the 2020 fall Texas race that was planned for Sunday before ending on Wednesday), the sanctioning body cannot push a race too far without potentially interfering with the next date. Next Sunday’s race is at the Charlotte Motor Speedway Roval, where many teams are already headquartered which could provide some breathing room, though NASCAR would obviously prefer to avoid such a contingency plan.

Unlike the slew of delays in 2020, this is only the fourth postponement in the Cup Series in 2021. After the season-opening Daytona 500, other instances came at Bristol Dirt in March and Martinsville in April. Curiously, every postponed race this season have come at either a superspeedway or a short track (though Bristol could be classified as a dirt track in this case).

Austin Hill will be in a new ride for 2022. Shortly before Saturday’s NASCAR Camping World Truck Series race at Talladega Superspeedway, FOX Sports reported Hill will not return to Hattori Racing Enterprises next season as he hopes to move up to the Xfinity Series. A ride in said series and a new driver in HRE’s #16 Toyota Tundra were not immediately disclosed.

Hill is currently in his third full season with HRE, and the duo have proven to be one of the best in the Truck Series. Since joining the team, he has won eight races, including two in 2021 (the inaugural NASCAR race at Knoxville and the first Truck race at Watkins Glen in two decades), with a best points finish of fifth in 2019. He was eliminated from the 2021 playoffs after a crash in the final race of the opening round, but he had otherwise been running in the top three in points for much of the year.

Since 2019, he has also run a part-time Xfinity schedule with HRE in alliance with MBM Motorsports. In thirteen career starts, he has four top tens with a best finish of fifth at Kansas in 2020. His six-race slate for 2021 began with a ninth at Nashville in June, followed by twenty-fifth at Pocono and a retirement at the Indianapolis Road Course.

After exiting Saturday’s Talladega race due to a crash that resulted in a thirty-second-place finish, Hill further elaborated on his plans.

“We’re searching around, just trying to look around at other possibilities, other opportunities,” Hill told FOX. “Don’t know what the future holds yet, but it’s starting to look pretty good. That’s about all I could say. Excited for things to come.”

Saturday’s NASCAR action at Talladega Superspeedway proved to be a special day for hopeful race winners. Hours after Tate Fogleman secured his maiden Camping World Truck Series victory in wild fashion, Brandon Brown did the same in the Xfinity Series in a race that did not even go the full 300 miles.

The Sparks Energy 300 was shortened from its original 113-lap distance to 107 as darkness hit the track, which does not have lights, a consequence of start times and delays. By the end, Brown led a Brandon 1–2 finish ahead of Brandon Jones as the race ended under caution following a multi-driver wreck. Despite falling short of the playoffs, the win enables him to be the second straight playoff spoiler after Josh Berry did the same at Las Vegas last week.

Justin Allgaier started on the pole, but Austin Cindric had the early advantage and traded the lead with Berry throughout the opening laps. John Hunter Nemechek, who nearly won the Truck race earlier in the day, led until A.J. Allmendinger and Sam Mayer wrecked together on lap 26. The incident resulted in Stage #1 ending under caution and Nemechek scoring the stage win, though he did not receive points as he is a Truck regular. Jeb Burton, Riley Herbst, Cindric, Harrison Burton, Myatt Snider, Allgaier, Jones, Blaine Perkins, and Daniel Hemric rounded out the top ten.

The second stage ran entirely green. As expected out of a superspeedway, the lead was exchanged multiple times with unconventional names included like Joe Graf Jr., who led his first lap since the second race of 2020 and would score his maiden top ten by finishing tenth, and Herbst who dominated the segment. However, it was Perkins who scored his first career stage win ahead of Our Motorsports team-mate Brett Moffitt, Nemechek, Herbst, Allgaier, Jeb and Harrison Burton, Justin Haley, Cindric, and Noah Gragson.

Allgaier kicked off the final segment in the lead, which once again changed hands numerous times as drivers jockeyed for position in their respective lines. On lap 76, Bayley Currey—who had led a lap a few moments prior—stalled on the track for the second race-related caution of the day. A larger incident took place ten laps later when Moffitt was turned and sent down into Gragson, triggering a seven-car accident that also collected Jones, Nemechek, Snider, Caesar Bacarella, and Jeb Burton.

Delivering your post-race interview when you win your first NASCAR Camping World Truck Series race is a special feeling. Doing so from the infield medical centre is still special, but also very bizarre.

Tate Fogleman did not quite get to celebrate his maiden Truck Series win in Victory Lane in traditional fashion after being involved in a chaotic finish that saw him spin leader John Hunter Nemechek before beating Tyler Hill to the line. The top two alone make for an unusual duo as Fogleman had never scored a top ten on a paved track (his lone top ten was a ninth at the Knoxville dirt track in July) while Hill had zero top tens entering Saturday’s Chevrolet Silverado 250. But Talladega Superspeedway is infamous for its crazy wrecks and surprise winners, and Saturday was no different.

Ben Rhodes, winner of the other superspeedway race at Daytona in February, started on the pole while Fogleman and Hill were mid-pack. Rhodes dominated the opening stage ahead of Austin Hill, Matt Crafton, Stewart Friesen, Johnny Sauter, Nemechek, Drew Dollar, Sheldon Creed, Todd Gilliland, and Austin Wayne Self.

Bryan Dauzat brought out the first caution on lap 33, which also turned out to be the only yellow flag of Stage #2. Although Toyotas led much of the segment, Creed took the win. Sauter, Zane Smith, Crafton, Hill, Chandler Smith, Tanner Gray, Nemechek, Friesen, and Bret Holmes rounded out the top ten.

Ten laps into Stage #3 marked the largest wreck of the day when Hill was clipped on the backstretch and sent up into Zane Smith, triggering a massive crash that officially dragged in nineteen other drivers. Both Smiths, Dollar, Fogleman, Gilliland, Gray, Sauter, Self, Lawless Alan, Willie Allen, Tyler Ankrum, Jennifer Jo Cobb, Hailie Deegan, Clay Greenfield, Parker Kligerman, Derek Kraus, Dylan Lupton, Cory Roper, Jason White, and Kris Wright all suffered some form of damage in the carnage that resulted in a red flag for cleanup.

In 2020, James Davison‘s NASCAR Cup Series début at Talladega Superspeedway was aborted due to NASCAR not approving him for such a formidable track. One year and thirty-four starts later, he will finally get his chance with MBM Motorsports when he runs Sunday’s Talladega event in the #66 Ford Mustang.

The race will be Davison’s first with MBM. Excluding his first two career starts with Spire Motorsports, all of his Cup runs have come with Rick Ware Racing. In 2021, he has run nineteen races with a best finish of twenty-second at Martinsville.

Davison has no prior superspeedway experience in any national series. All five of his Xfinity Series starts have been on road courses, including an eighteenth on the Indianapolis Road Course in August in his first Xfinity race since 2018.

Rich Mar Florist will sponsor his #66. The car’s hood features Hawaiian hibiscus flowers to honour the eighty-year anniversary of the Pearl Harbor attack in December. Davison previously paid tribute to the Second World War in the eNASCAR iRacing Pro Invitational Series, where he won the final race on the Chicago Street Circuit with sponsorship from The Greatest Generations Foundation, which resulted in his livery having an image of Supreme Allied Commander Dwight D. Eisenhower speaking with Allied paratroopers prior to D-Day.

“Teaming up with @RichMarFlorist and @MBMMotorsports for the TALLADEGA 500 this weekend! The Hawaiian Hibiscus pays tribute to the 80th Anniversary of Pearl Harbor this December,” tweeted Davison.

Guenther Steiner admits there are very few positives to take away from the 2021 Formula 1 season as the Uralkali Haas F1 Team look set to end the year without a point to their name.

Ahead of the 2021 campaign, Haas admitted that they would be focusing on developing their 2022 challenger rather than any updates for the VF-21, and as such they have been struggling at the back of the pack all season long.

Neither Mick Schumacher nor Nikita Mazepin have troubled the top ten, with Haas only securing one Q2 appearance in the opening fifteen races, courtesy of Schumacher in the French Grand Prix at the Circuit Paul Ricard in June.  Aside from Robert Kubica, who only competed in two Grand Prix in place of Kimi Räikkönen at Alfa Romeo Racing ORLEN, the two Haas drivers are the only two yet to break into the top ten this year.

Steiner, the Team Principal at Haas, admits it has been a tough season for everyone at the team, but he is pleased that both Schumacher and Mazepin are continuing to learn ahead of what is expected to be a much more competitive season for the team in 2022.

“[The performance] shows the guys are learning, which is the most important thing to be ready next year,” Steiner is quoted as saying by PlanetF1.com.

Xevi Pujolar, the Head of Trackside Engineering at Alfa Romeo Racing ORLEN, says the team will do everything they can to overhaul Williams Racing in the battle for eighth place in the Constructors’ Championship in 2021.

Alfa Romeo has seen Williams pull ahead thanks to four points scores in the past five races, with two of those being double points scores for George Russell and Nicholas Latifi.  Both drivers scored points in both the Hungarian and Belgian Grand Prix (although the latter was just for half points after the race was curtailed after just a handful of laps behind the safety car due to heavy rain), while Russell has also scored top ten finishes in both the Italian and Russian races.

Williams currently has twenty-three points to their name while Alfa Romeo have just the seven, although they secured their best result of the season in Russia thanks to Kimi Räikkönen taking an eighth-place finish. Prior to that, the team had only scored three points courtesy of tenth place finishes in the Monaco, Azerbaijan and Hungarian races.

And that result, coupled with some impressive Qualifying displays from Antonio Giovinazzi who started inside the top ten for both the Dutch and Italian Grand Prix, has given Alfa Romeo confidence they can fight back and retake that eighth place away from Williams in the remaining seven races of the season.

“We keep pushing,” Pujolar is quoted as saying by PlanetF1.com. “We do our best every race and we will fight until the end of the season and we will see after Abu Dhabi if we did it [beat Williams] or not.

Piero Ferrari believes his father, Enzo Ferrari, would have approved of Charles Leclerc as a Scuderia Ferrari driver, believing the Monegasque driver has everything needed to be a success with the Maranello-based squad.

Leclerc joined Ferrari at the start of the 2019 season in place of Kimi Räikkönen and immediately showed why they decided to promote him to the team despite having only one full season in Formula 1, where he raced for the Alfa Romeo Sauber F1 Team in 2018.

He won two races in his first year with the team in Belgium and Italy, and although he has not won again since – mainly due to the performance deficits of the machinery he is driving – he has still managed to achieve thirteen podiums and nine pole positions, including two this year in Monaco and Azerbaijan.

And the Vice President of Ferrari says Leclerc is a driver with ‘incredible talent’ and will bring the team a lot of big results if they give him the car to do it in.

“Charles is a driver who would have been very much to my father’s taste,” Ferrari is quoted as saying on German publication Speedweek by PlanetF1.com.  “Comparisons with previous drivers are always difficult.

Alexander Albon says all the stories surrounding pressure racing in the second Red Bull Racing seat alongside Max Verstappen are ‘a myth’, and it was only pressure from within that cost him his seat with the team for 2021.

Albon lost his drive with Red Bull for this season as the team opted to replace him with Mexican Sergio Pérez, with the Anglo-Thai driver dropping down to the role of test and reserve driver.  However, he will find himself back on the Formula 1 grid in 2022 as he replaces Mercedes-AMG Petronas Formula One Team-bound George Russell at Williams Racing.

With Pérez seemingly struggling as did both Albon and Pierre Gasly before him as Verstappen’s team-mate, the role of second driver at the team has again been discussed, with many believing the pressure of being the Dutchman’s team-mate is putting too much on each driver.

However, Albon believes this is not the case, and it is the pressure from within himself that was the defining factor of his success with Red Bull in the second half of 2019 and the whole of the 2020 campaign.

“To be honest, all the stories about pressure are a bit of a myth,” Albon said to Motorsport-Total.com.  “The bottom line is that the driver puts the pressure on himself, that comes from you.”

Christian Horner says there is ‘strength in depth’ in the Red Bull Junior Team as they look to the next future talents that will be in consideration for a promotion to Formula 1.

In 2021, Red Bull’s young driver programme promoted Japanese racer Yuki Tsunoda to the Scuderia AlphaTauri Honda team in place of Daniil Kvyat, meaning six of the current grid have, at some point, been a part of the Junior Team.

Tsunoda joined Max Verstappen, Pierre Gasly, Sebastian Vettel, Carlos Sainz Jr. and Daniel Ricciardo in being brought into Formula 1 by Red Bull, while in 2022, Alexander Albon will re-join the grid and make it a super seven. 

But looking to the future, Red Bull have a number of young drivers coming through the ranks in both FIA Formula 2 and FIA Formula 3, and Horner says there are plenty of options for Red Bull and plenty of decisions to make regarding those making waves in junior formulae.

“We have this group of young talent coming through,” said Horner to Formula1.com. “We have Liam Lawson and Jüri Vips in F2, we have got Dennis Hauger leading the way in F3 and an exciting young American, Jak Crawford.

Christian Horner has revealed that Red Bull Racing would consider welcoming Pierre Gasly back to the team in 2023 as the Frenchman continues to thrive at the sister Scuderia AlphaTauri Honda team.

Gasly was brought into the Red Bull team in 2019 but failed to thrive in the environment alongside Max Verstappen and was replaced by Alexander Albon midway through the campaign.  The Frenchman returned to AlphaTauri (then known as Scuderia Toro Rosso), and since has taken his maiden Grand Prix victory in Italy in 2020 as well as podiums in Brazil 2019 and Azerbaijan this year.

Albon’s tenure at Red Bull only lasted until the end of the 2020 season, with the team opting to bring in Sergio Pérez for 2021, and the Mexican has already been confirmed to remain with the team going into 2022.

In a recent interview with Formula1.com, Horner, the Team Principal at Red Bull, says the team has many options for who could drive for them in 2023, and Gasly’s name remains in the discussions.

“I would never rule anything out,” said Horner. “He’s driving at a very nice standard. He’s still very young, he’s doing a great job. For 2023, we have multiple options available to us, so when you’re in the situation that we are, that’s exactly what we want.

Nikita Mazepin’s first season in Formula 1 may by the end of the year go down as one of the most controversial in Formula 1 history, after the Uralkali Haas F1 Team rookie angered yet another driver at last weekend’s Russian Grand Prix.

Mazepin may well be gaining supporters off the track but on it he certainly isn’t, it’s been a rarity this season for Mazepin to make it through a race weekend without angering an opponent. Sunday’s race at the Sochi Autodrom wasn’t one of these rarities unfortunately, as Yuki Tsunoda had some very strong words for his fellow rookie.

The Russian’s reputation in the paddock isn’t exactly brilliant, the rookie was known to have an aggressive racing style based on his junior career but for the majority of the season he’s managed to stay out of people’s way. The biggest fallout with another driver this season for Mazepin came with his very own team-mate, fellow rookie Mick Schumacher who has completely out-shone Mazepin this season.

Schumacher vented his anger to the team during the Azerbaijan and Dutch Grand Prix’s, after being unhappy with his team-mate’s sudden aggressive blocking whilst attempting to overtake. A very similar incident occurred during the incredible Russian Grand Prix, resulting in Mazepin being awarded a black-and-white flag.

Tsunoda whom had his DRS wide open, tried to overtake the Russian going through Turn 12, Mazepin however suddenly cut across Tsunoda far too late. The Race spoke to FIA Formula One Director Michael Masi who explained why the black-and-white flag was shown to the Russian rookie.

Jason Alder finally made his return to the top step of the podium this past weekend at Virginia International Raceway, winning two of three races at the Andy Scriven Memorial Weekend event, bringing himself up to third in the championship.

Alder won the first race of the weekend after starting third, passing polesitter Noel Leon and second place Nico Christodoulou by the end of the second lap, and took off to win his first race of the year since round 2 of the year at Road Atlanta. Christodoulou finished the race in second place, and though he finished the race provisionally third, Leon was knocked down to eighth and Christian Weir collected his first podium of the season.

Louka St-Jean started race two on the pole as everyone behind jockeyed for position. A three-car battle for the lead ensued with Weir, Christodoulou and Clark, with Weir keeping the title contenders behind for a period of the race. Unfortunately, he ran off-track into the tyre barrier ending his day in heartbreaking fashion. Another two-car incident at the back of the field, bringing out a safety car.

Through the melee, Mac Clark raced his way through the field after starting eighth to win the race, with Christodoulou and Leon once again finishing second and third respectively. Unlike in race one, Leon’s podium was official this time.

Ryan Shehan started the third race on pole, but the trio of Leon, Alder and Clark all raced to the front having started in the top five. The session was marred by cautions, with Clark taking the win over Leon in second and Clark in third.