Motorsports Racing News & Blog Articles

The winter break finally came to an end on Thursday at the Bahrain international Circuit as the 2024 FIA Formula 1 World Championship season began with two free practice sessions that created more questions than answers.

Heading into the day, many were expecting the gap between Oracle Red Bull Racing and the rest of the pack to be big, but both Max Verstappen and team-mate Sergio Perez appeared to struggle for pace and were unable to break into the top five in either session.

The running in the opening session was far from representative of what could be expected across the remainder of the weekend, taking place as it did in the afternoon sunshine whereas the important Qualifying session on Friday and the race on Saturday will both take place at twilight and into darkness.

Ricciardo Tops the Opening Session after Soft Tyre Run

Daniel Ricciardo was the surprise pacesetter for the opening session on Thursday, the Australian utilising Pirelli’s soft tyre to give the newly renamed Visa CashApp RB Team an early season boost.

The majority of the runs across the field were performed on the medium C4 tyre, but the top four places were locked out by drivers using the softest rubber, and Ricciardos’ 1:32.869 just 0.032 seconds ahead of McLaren F1 Team’s Lando Norris.

Juan Cruz Yacopini was vying for the Abu Dhabi Desert Challenge overall lead on Wednesday when his hopes were dashed by a bizarre crash with Martin Prokop. To twist the knife, the FIA announced Thursday that he has been disqualified because his crew was on site to help.

Under Article 49.2.1 of the FIA Cross-Country Rally Sporting Regulations, crews cannot come within one kilometre of their vehicle while it is still in the Selective Section.

Yacopini entered Wednesday’s Stage #3 third overall, trailing leader Nasser Al-Attiyah by 9:38 and fellow Toyota Hilux driver Lucas Moraes by 8:31. He took the stage lead 100 kilometres into the leg when Al-Attiyah was forced to stop for twenty minutes with a mechanical issue, and probably would have ended the day with the outright lead as well had things gone to plan as Moraes retired after his car caught fire at the finish.

Unfortunately, fate did not have that in store for him as he missed a drop and rolled, losing twenty-five minutes. As he crossed the 200-km mark, he was going a dune but was unable to avoid Prokop, whose Ford Raptor was stuck in the sand with a damaged rear wheel after tangling with Denis Krotov moments prior. Yacopini t-boned Prokop in the driver’s side and narrowly grazed Prokop’s co-driver Viktor Chytka in the leg, leaving both cars ensnared with each other and Prokop stuck inside the cockpit.

The damage left the Hilux unable to proceed further, and Yacopini’s Overdrive Racing team came to the scene to provide help. One of his relatives was also present and provided “minor assistance but did not provide any tool or spare part,” as stated by the team in a hearing with the FIA. Yacopini eventually reached the finish twelfth in the Ultimate class and nearly three hours behind winner Seth Quintero, dropping him to tenth in the general ranking.

Seth Quintero caught fire on Thursday en route to his maiden stage win in the Ultimate category. His Toyota Gazoo Racing team-mate Lucas Moraes literally caught fire en route to being eliminated from Abu Dhabi Desert Challenge contention.

Moraes and Quintero battled for the lead for much of Stage #3, being separated by just five seconds with forty kilometres remaining. However, Moraes got stuck on a dune with five km to go which Quintero took advantage of to pass him for the win. After getting out of the jam, Moraes continued to the end of the Selective Section when the sand ladders on the back of his Toyota Hilux came loose and were ignited by the vehicle’s exhaust, triggering a massive blaze that neither he nor co-driver Armand Monleón noticed until they overheard spectators shouting at them. Both were able to escape without injury and before the Hilux was fully engulfed by the flames.

“Never got out of a rally car so fast,” Moraes remarked.

If not for the fire, he would have finished the stage in fourth behind Quintero, Yazeed Al-Rajhi, and Wednesday’s winner Guerlain Chicherit. Despite the retirement, a new rule for 2024 allows Moraes to retain the six stage points he picked up during the first two days of the race, giving him some consolation in the World Rally-Raid Championship. Ordinarily, the car would need to also be in parc fermé at the end of the rally to receive the points, though the FIA deemed it unnecessary in this case for obvious reasons.

Quintero beat Al-Rajhi, the defending ADDC champion, by one-and-a-half minutes. The two and Chicherit’s finishes marked a podium sweep for the Hilux, with Al-Rajhi and Chicherit representing Overdrive Racing. Besides scoring his maiden Ultimate win, Quintero also moves from fourth into the overall lead, holding a 1:10 advantage on Nasser Al-Attiyah who finished Thursday in fourth after being stuck for twenty minutes with a mechanical issue.

After a strong start to the Abu Dhabi Desert Challenge when he won the opening stage in the SSV class, João Ferreira was forced to retire from the race on Wednesday. To add insult to injury, the FIA has disqualified him as well for two rule violations while getting help from his team.

While running fifth in class, Ferreira’s Can-Am Maverick got stuck on a dune with a mechanical issue eighty kilometres into Stage #2. Unable to repair the vehicle, his co-driver Filipe Palmeiro called their Can-Am Factory Team to come to the scene and help them. However, Palmeiro used their satellite phone while still inside the car, which broke Article 9.1.3 of the FIA’s Cross-Country Sporting Regulations that states “telephones may only be used from outside the vehicle (while in a Selective Section) and must be switched off at other times.”

The crew eventually arrived to diagnose the problem, which they succeeded using parts that Ferreira and Palmeiro already had in storage on their car. Their presence alone was a violation of Article 49.2.1 stipulating teams cannot be within one kilometre of their race vehicle while it is still in the Selective Section.

Had the technical snag been resolved enough for Ferreira to rejoin the race on Thursday, he would have simply received a time penalty. Since this was not the case and he exited the rally altogether, the FIA deemed disqualification was suitable.

“Unfortunately, the Abu Dhabi Desert Challenge has come to an end for us,” wrote Ferreira. “Yesterday I said that this was a tricky race… today we fall from a dune and lost a lot of time repairing the car.”

Stage #1 of the Abu Dhabi Desert Challenge was supposed to be the toughest of the five legs, but Stage #2 on Wednesday ended up being the gauntlet that claimed many contenders.

It did not take long for competitors to fall when Michael Docherty, the first Rally2 rider to win a World Rally-Raid Championship bike stage outright since 2021 under its predecessor, crashed just five kilometres after the start and fractured his pelvis. Aaron Marè and Konrad Dąbrowski stopped to provide assistance, respectively earning them 29:48 and 24:39 in time credits. This came in handy for both as they locked out the top two positions, with Marè leapfrogging from sixth to first.

“One of my best friends Michael Docherty suffered a big crash and I stopped to help him out along the medics and the helicopter support. It was quite tough for me to continue the day as my mind was heavy and worried about him,” Marè, a fellow South African who finished behind Docherty in Stage #1, commented. “However, I tried my best to focus on the roadbook and getting back into a good rhythm, avoiding any mistakes. Thankfully the stage went well, and I’m happy with my result.”

Marè’s team-mate Ross Branch set the fastest time but officially finished fourth due to a fifteen-minute penalty for changing engines between stages.

Dąbrowski’s runner-up and Docherty’s exit also moves the former into the Rally2 overall lead. Tobias Ebster, another Rally2 favourite, also retired from the race after hurting his right arm in a crash on Tuesday; while initial evaluations did not indicate any breaks, he struggled to hold the throttle handle while on the Stage #3 liaison section.

The first round of the highly anticipated 2024 FIA World Endurance Championship (WEC) is almost upon us. The 2024 Qatar Airways Qatar 1812km takes place on Saturday 2 March. With an astonishing 19 Hypercars, 18 LMGT3 cars, and a record breaking 14 manufacturers taking part, it promises to be a spectacular opener to the new golden age of endurance sportscar racing.

The Lusail International Circuit in Qatar hosted the season Prologue event on 26/27 February. This gave the teams their first chance to test their 2024 machinery against each other around the 5.4km long track. Featuring 16 corners and a start/finish straight over a kilometre in length, the circuit is a fine venue for the opening of such a spectacular series.

Hypercar – Returning Teams

Toyota Gazoo Racing are back for 2024, aiming to continue their extraordinary run of success in 2024. The undisputed Hypercar champions since the category’s inception in 2021, the team’s striking new black livery is designed to encapsulate their mantra of “speed” and their hatred of losing. The Japanese team won six out of seven rounds of the 2023 season, missing out only at Le Mans.

The line-up of the championship-winning #8 car remains the same, with Sébastian Buemi, Brendon Hartley and Ryo Hirakawa back to defend their title. In the #7 car, Mike Conway and team principal Kamui Kobayashi are joined by ex-F1 driver and WEC newcomer Nyck de Vries.

2023 Le Mans winners Ferrari AF Corse return with an unchanged driver line-up for the Qatar 1812km. What is new for the Scuderia in 2024, and what has set the pulses of many motorsport fans racing, is the addition of a third car with a stunning new livery. Behind the wheel of the third Ferrari 499P are LMP2 champion Robert Kubica, Robert Schwartzmann and former Porsche driver Yifei Ye. With the 499P proving very competitive in 2023 and with three cars contending this year, Ferrari will be expecting great things from this season.

Team Audi Sport‘s rally raid effort finally achieved their main goal when they won the Dakar Rally in January, but it came at a cost as parts shortages forced them to shut down sooner than expected, unable to race the rest of the World Rally-Raid Championship. To add insult to injury, the FIA announced Tuesday that they have been given a €750,000 fine for not appearing at the ongoing Abu Dhabi Desert Challenge despite being registered for the manufacturer’s championship.

2024 was already going to be Audi’s final year in rally raid before they focus on their new Formula One arm, which will début in 2026, but they still planned to run the entire W2RC season before shuttering. After winning the Dakar with Carlos Sainz, they led the manufacturer’s standings with 76 points, thirteen ahead of Toyota.

In spite of the Dakar victory, heavy attrition over the past two years of racing meant they did not have enough components left to continue the season. As the only electric vehicle in the W2RC’s Ultimate class, the Audi RS Q e-tron E2 uses specialised parts that only a select list of suppliers provide, and some require as long as two years to be produced. Audi consequently folded the division in mid-February and the FIA was informed of the news on 23 February, two days before the start of the ADDC. Sven Quant, who runs Audi’s technical partner Q Motorsport, also told the FIA that Audi AG’s new CEO Gernot Döllner did not wish to continue the programme following Dakar.

Regardless of the circumstances, the FIA deemed their absence a violation of Article 3.4.3 of the Cross-Country Rally Sporting Regulations, which states a marque who has registered for points “undertakes to participate in all the Rallies of the Championship with at least one vehicle of Groups Ultimate, Stock, Challenger or SSV complying with the technical regulations in force.” In 2023, BAIC ORV had all of their points deducted and were fined €10,000 when they entered the manufacturer’s championship but skipped the final two rounds. Competing for points is such a major commitment that FIA manufacturers must pay €55,000 to be eligible.

€562,500 of Audi’s fine is applied on a suspended sentence if they do not repeat it, though the team’s demise obviously renders it pointless unless someone else manages to takes their place. Quandt has expressed interest in acquiring the RS Q e-trons for Q Motorsport, though low parts remains an issue even if Audi approves the transfer.

With only two riders in the premier RallyGP category at the Abu Dhabi Desert Challenge, the lower Rally2 was guaranteed to appear on the overall bike podium at every stage. But Michael Docherty was not content with just being on the podium; he wanted to stand on the top.

Docherty lost to RallyGP rider Ross Branch by just two seconds in the Prologue, and he continued to chase Branch for the first half of Tuesday’s Stage #1. However, mechanical issues including an engine issue struck Branch’s Hero 450 Rally, causing him to drop to fourth through the fourth checkpoint.

Upon inheriting the lead, Docherty simply had to stave off fellow South African and Branch’s Hero team-mate Aaron Marè. Marè admitted he made “a few mistakes towards the end in the soft sand and lost a bit of time,” which Docherty capitalised upon to beat him by two minutes and fifty-two seconds.

He is the first Rally2 rider to win a bike stage outright since the World Rally-Raid Championship‘s formation in 2022, and the first to do so in any international rally raid since Mason Klein beat Daniel Sanders by a minute in Stage #4 of the 2021 Rallye du Maroc. Docherty also set the fastest raw time in the fourth stage of last year’s Desafío Ruta 40, but was classified fourth due to three RallyGP riders getting starter’s bonuses.

“It was quite a difficult stage in the beginning. It was very soft sand and a lot of drop offs that were catching me out quite a bit,” said Docherty. “I just had to try and maintain my fuel as much as I could until halfway, because I was using a lot more than I should have. After refuel, I got into a better flow and managed to put in a little bit more of a charge towards the front. I passed a few riders. I think I got into second for opening the stage.

Nasser Al-Attiyah entered the Abu Dhabi Desert Challenge hoping to find a spark after a frustrating start to 2024. While a Prologue stage usually means little in the big picture as FIA times do not count towards the overall, topping the order should still provide some confidence going into the rest of the week.

Al-Attiyah, now with Édouard Boulanger as his co-driver, edged out Guillaume de Mévius by four seconds for the fastest time among FIA entrants in Monday’s Prologue. Martin Prokop, who missed much of private testing when his Ford Raptor RS was stuck in customs between the Saudi-Emirati border (the car stayed in Saudi Arabia following January’s Dakar Rally), was third.

Cristina Gutiérrez, winner of the Dakar in Challenger, led the class while Mansour Al-Helei was the best in the SSV category. Laia Sanz, Gutiérrez’s new colleague at the Red Bull Off-Road Junior Team, was fifth to start her second Challenger start. Rebecca Busi had a moment when she briefly overshot her Can-Am Maverick on a downward slope, briefly coasting along her front wheels before landing safely; she finished ninth in SSV.

Tenth-placed Seth Quintero will kick off Stage #1 as the first car on track. Al-Attiyah opted to start at the back in tenth.

Dakar bike runner-up Ross Branch topped the two-wheelers with just two seconds on Michael Docherty. Reigning ADDC Rally2 winner Tobias Ebster was third and five seconds back of Docherty, and one ahead of the RallyGP of Branch’s new team-mate Aaron Marè. Branch and Marè were the only riders in the top class to race as Mohammed Al-Balooshi‘s bike was not approved in time.

It can be fair to say that Max Verstappen was pretty much unbeatable in 2023, with the Oracle Red Bull Racing driver taking victory in nineteen of the twenty-two races, there is hope that the 2024 FIA Formula 1 World Championship will be more closely contested.  However, pre-season testing and the evolution/revolution of the RB19 into the RB20 may scupper those hopes.

Taking at least some inspiration from the failed aerodynamic package from the Mercedes-AMG Petronas Formula One Team that the Brackley/Banbury based team discarded midway through last year, Red Bull’s design appears to have moved them forward.  Apparently twenty-one wins out of twenty-two is just not enough for Adrian Newey and his design team, and they want to be just as dominant in 2024 than last year.

Verstappen’s imperious form last year had a dramatic effect on his team-mate Sergio Perez, and the Mexican, although he brought Red Bull their first ever one-two championship finish in 2023, will need to get closer to his Dutch team-mate this season if he has any real hope of staying with the team beyond this year.  He has both Daniel Ricciardo and the ever-improving Yuki Tsunoda breathing down his neck in the sister Visa CashApp RB Team, formerly known as Scuderia AlphaTauri.

Taking of VCARB, their new car appears to be a dramatic step forward compared to last year’s AT04, mainly down to a lot of its design appearing to be seemingly copied from the dominant RB19. Of course, it’s not identical, but the team will be hoping that the struggles they had just breaking into the top ten last year have been at least lessened, although it will still be difficult with several other teams appearing to have made significant steps forward themselves.

One of those is Scuderia Ferrari, the only other team aside from Red Bull to win a race last year when Carlos Sainz Jr. won in Singapore.  Sainz already knows 2024 will be his final year at the Maranello-based team after the shock news that Lewis Hamilton will join Charles Leclerc in red next season.

Laia Sanz will be back in a Challenger car starting Monday when she kicks off the Abu Dhabi Desert Challenge, piloting the #311 Taurus T3 Max for Red Bull Off-Road Junior Team with Maurizio Gerini as co-driver.

Sanz usually races in the top Ultimate category, having made the switch to four-wheeled rally from bikes at the 2022 Dakar Rally. At the 2024 edition in January, her third attempt in a car, she finished fifteenth in the Astara 02 Concept (a variant of the Century CR6) for Astara Team with a best daily performance of fourteenth in Stage #4.

She began dabbling in Light Prototypes at the Baja España Aragón last July. Racing a Taurus T3 fielded by Wevers Sport, who co-operates the Taurus project alongside MCE-5 Development, she placed eighth after suffering a gearbox failure twenty kilometres into the final stage.

“It was such a shame because we had very good pace and we adapted very quickly to a car I had never driven before and a class (T3) that was new for me,” Sanz commented after that race. “The best thing was seeing we’re competitive.”

For Abu Dhabi, she will partner up with Cristina Gutiérrez at the Junior Team, formerly an American-only programme that has since become Red Bull’s Taurus division. A fellow Spaniard, Gutiérrez won the Dakar’s Challenger class ahead of Red Bull and Taurus colleague Mitch Guthrie, who is skipping the ADDC; Tauruses dominated the Dakar by winning nine of twelve stages.

Forty-seven teams make up the grid for the eighth edition of the Carta Rallye, consisting of nineteen SSVs, fifteen bikes, nine cars, and four trucks.

2023 champions Benoit Fretin (car) and Valentin Serthilanges (bike) will not defend their wins, opening the door for those like Simon Vitse and Amine Echiguer, two major names who are hoping to rebound after being forced to retire from two major rallies in January. Vitse competed in the Dakar Rally that month but exited after the penultimate stage; he is bringing the new MD Optimus EVO 5 with him. The navigating couple of Max and Delphine Delfino also raced the Dakar and will now tackle the Carta with Gilles Lallement and Hugues Lacam, respectively.

Echiguer, the 2022 World Rally-Raid Championship in Rally3, returns after making his Carta Rallye début in 2023. He competed in the Africa Eco Race, held concurrently with the Dakar and following its old route that included legs in Morocco, but did not finish. Carlos Vento headlines the SSV entries after placing third in the AER.

Steff Rowe heads back to Morocco after competing in the W2RC’s Rallye du Maroc in October.

The Dutch Broomans Rally Team will celebrate their tenth anniversary in Morocco after competing in Tunisia. On the truck side, Truck Team Müller enters their maiden desert rally after tearing up the forests of Europe.

Aaron Marè was originally supposed to race the Abu Dhabi Desert Challenge on a KTM 450 Rally Replica, but will instead be on a Hero 450 Rally in a reunion with Hero MotoSports.

Marè previously raced for Hero at the 2022 Dakar Rally, filling in for the injured Franco Caimi. He finished fifteenth overall in his second career Dakar, two years after crashing out of his début as a member of Monster Energy Honda Rally Team. The start was his latest in the World Rally-Raid Championship as he did not take part 2023. Since then, he has mainly overseen and done rally training in his hometown of Dubai.

He finished fourth in the 2021 Abu Dhabi Desert Challenge, then a round on the W2RC’s predecessor FIM Cross-Country Rallies World Championship. Ironically, he narrowly lost to Hero’s Joaquim Rodrigues in the battle for the final podium spot.

“Looking forward to Abu Dhabi Desert Challenge,” Marè commented. “It’s going to be a great honour and really happy to be alongside fellow African Ross Branch. Stay tuned for the rest of the week. Hopefully looking forward to a good race and thanks to Waffi (Wolfgang Fischer, Hero manager) for this opportunity.”

Hailing from South Africa, Marè began his career in motocross and competed in the FIM World Junior Motocross Championship before starting a career in rally.

The three-day pre-season test at the Bahrain International Circuit concluded last week, and the next track action will come at the same track this coming weekend for the first Grand Prix of the 2024 FIA Formula 1 World Championship season.

It was a pretty uneventful test for Formula 1 – aside from a couple of stoppages due to loose drain covers – with the majority of teams getting through their programmes.  Aside from Williams Racing on the opening day and McLaren F1 Team on Day 2, everyone broke the one hundred lap barrier on each day, with the MoneyGram Haas F1 Team the busiest of all.

But what have the drivers made of pre-season testing and their new 2024 machinery.  Who will go into the new season with confidence and who will be feeling they are on the back foot?  Here is part two!

#10 – Pierre Gasly – BWT Alpine F1 Team

“We did a lot of testing this week and now we have an important week coming up where we will go through all the data and continue our understanding of this new car concept. It’s vital to learn all about the entire package and understanding how we can optimise it.

The three-day pre-season test at the Bahrain International Circuit concluded last week, and the next track action will come at the same track this coming weekend for the first Grand Prix of the 2024 FIA Formula 1 World Championship season.

It was a pretty uneventful test for Formula 1 – aside from a couple of stoppages due to loose drain covers – with the majority of teams getting through their programmes.  Aside from Williams Racing on the opening day and McLaren F1 Team on Day 2, everyone broke the one hundred lap barrier on each day, with the MoneyGram Haas F1 Team the busiest of all.

But what have the drivers made of pre-season testing and their new 2024 machinery.  Who will go into the new season with confidence and who will be feeling they are on the back foot?

#1 – Max Verstappen – Oracle Red Bull Racing

“Overall it was a very good Friday. We focused on the long running to get more of an understanding of the car and it was good to see the performance of the car was very strong.