Motorsports Racing News & Blog Articles

In addition to his new NASCAR Xfinity Series ride with Our Motorsports, Anthony Alfredo will return to the Cup Series for a quartet of superspeedway races, driving the #62 Chevrolet Camaro ZL1 for Beard Motorsports. His first race will be the Daytona 500 on 18 February, followed by the first Talladega Superspeedway event on 21 April, the second Daytona International Speedway race on 24 August, and the Talladega playoff event on 6 October.

Alfredo raced the full Cup season in 2021 for Front Row Motorsports, finishing thirtieth in points with a top ten at Talladega. He left the team after one year and committed to the Xfinity Series, where he had raced part-time in 2020, and placed fifteenth in the standings with Our. For 2023, he was twentieth in points in his lone season with B.J. McLeod Motorsports before rejoining Our.

During his one-year stint at BJMM, he returned to the Cup Series with their Cup partner Live Fast Motorsports, respectively finishing thirty-third and thirty-fifth at Richmond and Martinsville.

He retired from his Daytona 500 début in 2021 and was classified thirty-second.

“I’m so thankful for this opportunity,” Alfredo stated. “Every driver that runs stock cars wants to race in the NASCAR Cup Series and the Daytona 500. I’ve been blessed to race at this level against drivers that are childhood heroes of mine. This opportunity with the Beard family is very exciting. They have always fielded great cars in these superspeedway races, so I’m thrilled to get behind the wheel of their #62 Chevrolet.”

With the 2024 season fast approaching, the FIA published the official Cross-Country Rally Sporting Regulations last Thursday, codifying a swath of rule changes that have been in the works since summer along with introducing new ones granted by the FIA’s World Motor Sport Council in October.

Administrative changes

Most changes are for administrative and scorekeeping purposes like requiring all competitors to sign and present a Driver Declaration and Undertakings form, which affirms they have read and understood the rules outlined by both the FIA and the national sporting federation hosting the rally.

For consistency, Articles 19 and 20 were updated to provide uniform number decal placement across all series, with everyone now expected to follow the Dakar Rally’s own policy. These numbers must also have a colour background depending on the vehicle’s class: Ultimate (formerly T1) entries use the Pantone 1255 C shade of brown, Challenger (T3) gets the yellow Pantone 3514 C, SSV (T4) has Pantone 3559 C purple, Stock (T2) competitors rock with grey Pantone 402 C, and Trucks use black.

Prologue and Stage #1 start order

The Prologue stage will no longer count towards the overall results due to their short length between five and thirty kilometres. They do hold some value nonetheless as they set the top ten start order for Stage #1; if a Prologue is not held, the top ten in the championship will be used to determine the grid.

The regulations have added Article 34.1.3, which states the Prologue starting interval between cars within the same class must be uniform and at least one minute apart, though the first starter must wait three minutes before beginning.

Vadim Pritulyak is keen on providing more racing opportunities for wounded Ukrainian troops in 2024 by bringing his SKARLAT-XTRM Team to the FIA World Baja Cup and other rallies in Europe.

The team made their début in October at the Spanish Cross-Country Rally Championship’s Rallye TT Cuenca on invitation from the inclusivity committee of the Real Federación Española de Automovilismo, who wanted to support Ukrainians injured in their defence from Russian invasion by having them become co-drivers. Pritulyak, a former Dakar Rally competitor, enlisted Sergey Romanovsky and Olexandr Gonzul for the role; Romanovsky lost his right leg fighting in the Donbas in 2014, while Gonzul’s left arm and right leg were destroyed in the battle for Dementiivka in 2022. Both have since had prostheses attached that enable them to walk and train again.

Romanovsky served as the navigator for Pritulyak in their SKARLAT 1000, a Ukrainian side-by-side vehicle designed to help evacuate the wounded from the frontlines, while Gonzul called the shots for the Spaniard Ivan Barbero in a Toyota FJ. The SKARLAT set the fastest time in the ParaBaja category for competitors with limited mobility, though the spirit of the class means everyone is celebrated regardless of their performance. Pritulyak hopes increasing the team’s presence in 2024 will further raise foreign interest in the car, and has started a foundation under his name to raise funds for building more.

“It was a real victory. Each of us was welcomed and applauded with the words ‘Slava Ukraini!’,” Pritulyak recalled. “During the second stage, on the second special, we were overtaking one team after another, then we started passing the main group. On the third special, we started at the back and didn’t overtake anyone; it happened that the Spaniards stopped and showed us to go ahead because they couldn’t keep up with the pace we set. We told them to go ahead, and we finished as everyone started. We were the only foreigners participating in the Spanish Championship, and we were greeted and applauded. It was really interesting.”

The FIA Baja World Cup, formerly the World Cup for Cross-Country Bajas, will be eight rounds long in 2024. Four are in Europe, including another Spanish date at the Baja España Aragón in July and the Baja Poland—geographically the closest to Ukraine—in August; while the other half of the schedule is in the Middle East, Pritulyak and SKARLAT are based in the United Arab Emirates which will host the penultimate Dubai International Baja in November. The FIA also has the five-race European Baja Cup that stays on the continent.

World Rally Championship veteran Kris Meeke is back for more rally raid in 2024 as he will race an Overdrive OT3 for GRallyTeam at the Dakar Rally, competing in the Challenger (formerly T3) category. Wouter Rosegaar will once again serve as his co-driver after originally being set to race with Kees Koolen.

Meeke entered his first and only Dakar to date in 2021, racing a PH Sport Zephyr in T3 with Rosegaar by his side. The start came after he attended the 2020 race and hoped to enter some rallies like the Abu Dhabi Desert Challenge and Dubai International Baja before the COVID-19 pandemic shelved those plans. Consequently, he arrived at Dakar with virtually no competitive rally raid experience, but quickly set the pace when he topped his class in the Prologue stage.

However, a spare tyre caught fire in his car and burned out its electronics the next day, one in a line of mechanical issues that prevented him from contending for the overall victory. Nonetheless, Meeke still claimed three more stages afterwards including podium finishes and two wins in the final three legs.

For 2022, he was entrusted with reserve duties after Toyota Gazoo Racing’s Giniel de Villiers tested positive for COVID-19. While de Villiers was ultimately cleared for the race, Meeke was able to gain some seat time in a premier Toyota GR DKR Hilux T1+ and has been open about wanting to race in the Ultimate (T1) class someday. Since then, the Irishman continued to dabble in various rally and rallycross events such as competing in Nitrocross and returning to the WRC at the 2023 Rally de Portugal in honour of his late fellow Irishman Craig Breen.

Meeke has over two decades of experience in the WRC, including being a full-timer between 2014 and 2019 with five race wins and a best points finish of fifth in 2015. He won the Intercontinental Rally Challenge in 2009.

146 bikes and quads will challenge the 2024 Dakar Rally in the three FIM categories.

Luciano Benavides headlines the twenty-three riders in the top RallyGP class. As the reigning World Rally-Raid Champion, he has switched from #77 to #1 though the former will remain on his bike in the corner of the number bib. He is the only Husqvarna factory rider in the class and surrounded by a swarm of marques like six Monster Energy Hondas, which includes Tosha Schareina whose impressive 2023 as a Honda ally has earned him a place on the factory team. Benavides’ brother Kevin will try to go back to back, but he and championship runner-up Toby Price will be without their Red Bull KTM team-mate Matthias Walkner due to injury.

Former Honda rider Joan Barreda will make his début with Hero MotoSports. Skyler Howes, Benavides’ old Husqvarna partner, enters his first Dakar with Honda and hopes to rebound after crashing out of his first start at the Rallye du Maroc.

While RallyGP is for factory riders, some are not part of works teams such as 2023 FIM Bajas World Cup winner Mohammed Al-Balooshi and Mason Klein. The latter is a privateer competing for his family team, but has a factory-level partnership with Kove Moto; the manufacturer will run their maiden Dakar in RallyGP, with Klein on the new 2024 Kove 450 Rally EX while the factory riders race the 2023 model in Rally2.

113 bikes comprise the Rally2 class for amateurs. Romain Dumontier will seek to defend his Dakar and W2RC titles while Paolo Lucci and Bradley Cox hare among those hoping to prevent a repeat. Konrad Dąbrowski makes his Dakar return after missing the 2023 race with appendicitis. The Rally3 class will not appear at Dakar, meaning its 2023 champion Ardit Kurtaj graduates to Rally2.

James Allison says it is important for the Mercedes-AMG Petronas Formula One Team to not dwell on the past and think negatively about how they slipped well behind Oracle Red Bull Racing in recent years.

Mercedes were the dominant force within the FIA Formula 1 World Championship during the hybrid era, but since the aerodynamic regulations were altered ahead of the 2022 season, they have only taken one race victory in that time, courtesy of George Russell in the 2022 Sao Paulo Grand Prix.

Red Bull, on the other hand, have been dominant, with twenty-one victories in twenty-two races in 2023 as they swept to both championship titles, with Max Verstappen claiming his third consecutive drivers crown with nineteen of those wins.

Allison, the technical director at Mercedes, says there two ways of dealing with their apparent fall from grace, but it is important not to think negatively and instead work towards finding a way to return to winning ways.

“I think that as an organization if you have been at the top and you start to fall, there’s two ways of looking at that,” said Allison to the Performance People podcast, as quoted by RACER.com. “There’s a backwards-looking way of lamenting what you once were and sort of going ‘how could this have happened to us?’ … as a keening lament of ‘oh my God, this is all so terrible’ and ‘how could we have fallen so low when we were once so great?!’

Robert Shwartzman will remain with Scuderia Ferrari as their reserve driver for the 2024 FIA Formula 1 World Championship season, but the young Russian-Israeli is likely to add a drive within the FIA World Endurance Championship alongside his Maranello commitments.

Shwartzman has been a part of the Ferrari Driver Academy since 2017 but last raced in single seaters back in 2021 when he competed in FIA Formula 2, and only raced sporadically in the GT World Challenge Europe Endurance Cup last year having sat out racing completely in 2022.

The twenty-four-year-old has tested in various categories in recent times, including in the NTT IndyCar Series with Chip Ganassi Racing, the ABB FIA Formula E World Championship with DS Penske and the World Endurance Championship (WEC), the latter in the Ferrari 499P Hypercar in Bahrain.

He has been Ferrari’s go-to driver for their young driver free practice sessions across the past two years, and he is expecting this to continue in 2024, although he hopes this also includes more running in Formula 1 machinery in private testing sessions, as well as a possible drive with AF Corse in WEC.

“Anything could happen — at the moment, it’s nothing defined as 100%,” said Shwartzman to RACER.com. “I just know that I’m staying with Ferrari for next year doing reserve and FP1s.

Aston Martin Racing is poised for an exhilarating 2024 GT racing season, unveiling a powerhouse lineup that combines seasoned champions and promising newcomers. The British luxury sportscar brand is set to redefine excellence in GT racing, showcasing its unwavering commitment to success.

Headlining the works driver roster are Danish multiple world champions Marco Sørensen and Nicki Thiim, both signing multi-year contracts to continue their longstanding association with Aston Martin. Sørensen, a triple FIA World Endurance GT champion and winner of the 2022 24 Hours of Le Mans LM GTE class, expressed his excitement, stating, “This is a very exciting time to be a works Aston Martin driver.”

Thiim, entering his 12th consecutive season with Aston Martin, echoed the sentiment, saying, “It’s always an honour to represent Aston Martin, and I’m looking forward to being able to fight for championships again at the top level of GT racing with Vantage.”

Adding fresh vigor to the lineup are three new faces: GT World Challenge Europe Sprint Cup champion Mattia Drudi, 24 Hours of Le Mans class winner Henrique Chaves, and Nürburgring 24 Hours champion David Pittard. Drudi, thrilled to join Aston Martin as a works driver, sees this opportunity as a platform for personal and collective success.

Chaves, whose career zenith was winning Le Mans in 2022 with the Vantage, expressed his joy, saying, “To have the opportunity to represent this iconic brand as a works driver means everything to me.” Pittard, having raced with Aston Martin in 2022, considers becoming a works driver a dream come true, emphasizing the brand’s expertise and technical prowess.

TF Sport is gearing up for the 2024 FIA World Endurance Championship season, introducing a trio set to take on the LMGT3 field in the Corvette Z06 GT3.R #82. The team’s strategic selection of seasoned drivers featuring Hiroshi Koizumi, Sébastien Baud, and Dani Juncadella, each bringing a blend of experience to the racing scene.

Hiroshi Koizumi expresses his pride in joining TF Sport alongside the seasoned drivers Daniel and Sébastien. “I am really proud to work with such experienced drivers like Daniel and Sébastien. I am looking forward to team up with Daniel Juncadella, winner of Macau and a successful DTM driver: it will definitely be a new opportunity for me. We will do our best to be the number one driver package in the GT3 class,” Koizumi remarks.

For Sébastien Baud, joining TF Sport in the FIA WEC is an honour and a childhood dream come true. “I am so excited to know that I am making a childhood dream come true! It is an honour to join a successful team like TF Sport in the WEC. I will be driving a Corvette Z06 GT3.R, a car that marked my inspiration in the 24 Hours of Le Mans! I am looking forward to work with my more experienced teammates, from whom I will be able to learn even more, especially from Dani. Thanks to the team for the trust!” Baud exclaims with excitement.

Spanish driver Dani Juncadella, emphasised the excitement surrounding the 2024 season. “It’s going to be an exciting season: it will be the first opportunity to race in the FIA WEC and to participate in the 24 Hours of Le Mans, which makes it all so special. New team, new brand, new car, new teammates, everything is a new challenge and it’s really exciting. I am stoked to get to know the team well, to get to know Hiroshi during testing at the start of the season and also Seb, who I already know a little bit. I’m very keen to team up with them and get to work from day one: I hope we will have a strong season!” Juncadella shares.

TF Sport Director Tom Ferrier added, “We are very pleased to announce our full line-up for the 2024 season of the FIA World Endurance Championship. Together with the new Corvette Z06 GT3.R, they are a squad capable of achieving great results.” As TF Sport aims for victory, the stage is set for an unforgettable season in the world of endurance racing.

British racing driver Ben Barker is set to embark on a new chapter in the 2024 international sportscar season, signing a factory contract with Ford to drive its brand-new Mustang GT3 contender. Barker, who has had a successful stint with British-based privateer GR Racing in the FIA World Endurance Championship, sees the move to Ford as an “amazing opportunity.”

This deal marks Barker’s first works drive, and he will join forces with the Multimatic Motorsports operation, based in Canada. Multimatic Special Vehicle Operations has been a significant player in motorsports since 1992, maintaining strong ties with the Ford brand through various race programs and notable achievements, including the 2016 Le Mans-winning Ford GT.

The Mustang GT3 project, coinciding with the 60th anniversary of the iconic model, signifies Ford’s return to the global FIA GT3 category. The race car, based on the 2024 Dark Horse variant, features a 5.4-litre naturally-aspirated V8 developed by Ford Performance and UK-based M-Sport. With a unique ‘short-long arm’ suspension set-up and a bespoke aero package, the Mustang GT3 aims to compete with revered marques such as Ferrari, Lamborghini, Porsche, McLaren, and Corvette.

Barker expressed his excitement about the opportunity, stating, “This is an amazing opportunity to race, not just with, but for an internationally-renowned marque. To become a works factory driver is something all racers aspire to, not just as recognition of their results, but for the security that belief in their ability provides. Joining Ford and Multimatic to race the all-new Mustang GT3 is truly a dream come true.

“As well as being a major step in my career, it is also a great honour to join the list of drivers to have represented Ford and worn the Blue Oval in competition.“

World Rally Championship competitor Pierre-Louis Loubet will dip his feet into the world of rally raid for the first time when he enters the Africa Eco Race. He will race the new Apache APH-01 hybrid side-by-side vehicle with François Borsotto as his co-driver.

“[This is] a whole new experience for me, for the whole team,” said Loubet. “I’m super happy to be with the start of this project with lots of highly motivated people with lots of new ideas. The idea of a rally raid hybrid is going to be a whole new challenge. We have plenty of things to prove.

“We hope to have a great first event and that this will allow us to move forward together for a great adventure.”

Loubet won the 2019 WRC-2 championship in a two-win campaign, but had already been competing sporadically in the premier WRC since 2015. He committed to a limited slate in the WRC in 2020 and 2021 with Hyundai before joining M-Sport Ford for the 2022 season onwards.

He ran nearly the entire Rally1 calendar in 2023 for M-Sport before being replaced by Adrien Formeaux for the season finale in Japan, which the team hoped would give him time to re-evaluate and refine himself over the offseason prior to 2024. Loubet ended the season twelfth in points with a best finish of sixth in Sweden and Estonia.

Éric Abel has been involved with the Dakar Rally since 2019, but his streak comes to an end in 2024 as he and his Team Los Amigos will not take part. He would have competed in a Can-Am Maverick in the SSV (formerly T4) category with Christian Manez as co-driver.

Abel finished thirteenth overall in the T4 category at the 2023 edition with Serge Gounon as his navigator, continuing a trend of strong efforts that included an eighth in 2022. While Manez sat out 2023 due to the physical demands, Abel planned to have him back for 2024; he and Manez are best friends who started racing together in 2010.

His team is supported by BBR Motorsport, who is fielding a pair of MCE-5 Taurus T3 Max cars in the Challenger (T3) class for Marcelo Gastaldi and Gunter Hinkelmann as well as Mavericks for Claude Fournier and Rodrigo Varela in SSV at the 2024 Dakar.

“It was with a little pinch of the heart that this decision had to be made, but life sometimes imposes priorities,” said Abel. “2023 did not allow me to plan and prepare myself properly for this tough Dakar challenge. Sometimes, you have to be clear-sighted and make the right decisions. My BBR Motorsport team has always put us in the best conditions to perform and represent our department and the philanthropic actions that we sponsor as best as possible, but the planets did not align this year. This decision was all the more difficult to make when thinking of our associations which still need visibility and fundraising, but we have not forgotten them and will come back quickly to highlight them again.”

Outside of racing, he is an osteopath who has donated funding from his Dakar sponsors to charity. For the 2023 race, he supported foundations like the European Leukodystrophies Association, Onco Parcours to help women with gynecological cancer, Joajoie for sick children, Dans les yeux de Loli to increase research into Rett syndrome, and the Vaincre la Mucoviscidose for cystic fibrosis research.

RSS Racing will have three full-time drivers for the 2024 NASCAR Xfinity Series season. While brothers Ryan and Kyle Sieg are in the #39 and #28, the third car #29 will be piloted by Blaine Perkins, the team announced Monday.

Perkins hopes his new home will provide him with some better fortune. 2023 was supposed to be his Xfinity rookie campaign with SS-Green Light Racing until he was released just five races into the season due to poor performance. He latched on with Our Motorsports, with whom he ran almost every remaining event with a best finish of thirteenth at Martinsville as he placed twenty-ninth in points.

He made his Xfinity début in 2021 on a part-time slate for Our. The following year, he scored his first national series top ten with a tenth at Martinsville. The latter season came during his lone full slate in the Truck Series with CR7 Motorsports, where he was twenty-ninth in the standings with a best run of eighteenth at Nashville.

He entered the national series in 2021 on the heels of three seasons in the ARCA Menards Series West, highlighted by a runner-up championship finish in 2020.

Ryan Sieg finished eighteenth in the 2023 Xfinity standings as the #39’s driver, while Kyle ran all but two races the team’s #28, #38, and #29 en route to a twenty-second. The #28 and #38 served as the team’s full-time multi-driver cars, with Joe Graf Jr. comprising most of the action in the latter. The #29 appeared at seven races with Kyle Sieg, Alex Labbé, and Mason Maggio.

Guerlain Chicherit and Guillaume de Mévius have joined forces on a multi-year partnership that will begin with the 2024 Dakar Rally, racing the World Rally-Raid Championship in Toyota GR DKR Hilux T1+ cars prepared by Overdrive Racing.

In line with Chicherit’s trend of modelling his vehicles after those from films and entertainment, their Hiluxes will sport brown-and-gold liveries based on the GMC pickup truck driven by protagonist Colt Seavers in the 1980s action-adventure television series The Fall Guy. Chicherit debuted the livery at the Rallye du Maroc in October whereas de Mévius had a Red Bull-based scheme there, though the latter will now match with his new team-mate. For 2023, Chicherit’s Prodrive Hunter was inspired by Mad Max.

Chicherit finished ninth in the 2023 World Championship, his only season in a Prodrive. He won two stages at the season-opening Dakar Rally and managed to score a tenth-place overall finish despite the Hunters being plagued by reliability problems but dropped out of the next round in Abu Dhabi after one stage due to illness. More issues marred Prodrive as a whole at Sonora that ruined an otherwise strong performance, and they skipped the penultimate round in Argentina. He moved to Toyota for Morocco, running fifth before rolling in Stage #4.

The switch to a Hilux, his ninth different Dakar machine since his maiden start in 2005, was justified as it is currently the top rally raid vehicle today. The Hilux won all five W2RC rounds in 2023 en route to dominating the manufacturer’s championship, and Toyota drivers swept the top three with Nasser Al-Attiyah and Overdrive’s Yazeed Al-Rajhi and Juan Cruz Yacopini. Ironically, Al-Attiyah, the twice reigning Dakar and World Champion, has joined Prodrive for 2024.

“Endurance is one of the keys to winning the Dakar,” said Chicherit. “That goes for the driver, who sometimes have to be careful, as well as for the car, which has to be reliable. There’s no point in going fast one day if it means breaking down the next. In this regard, our Toyota Hilux is undoubtedly the best T1+. There’s a reason why Nasser has won with it three times. It’s now up to me to make the difference by relying on my experience and my speed. In this quest, I can rely on the support of Guillaume, with whom we are currently crafting a beautiful future project.”

Since being promoted to Oracle Red Bull Racing at the 2016 Spanish Grand Prix, Max Verstappen has had four different team-mates, yet out of the four, it’s Sergio Pérez who has received the most criticism. Considering he claimed second in the 2023 Drivers’ Championship, what more does the Mexican need to do?

Verstappen and Pérez secured Red Bull’s first ever 1-2 in the Drivers’ Championship this year, courtesy of the duo winning twenty-one of the twenty-two races this year. For an outsider, they’d likely be puzzled to hear that Checo has been on the receiving end of criticism based on the first statistic, yet further stats highlight why.

In 2023, Pérez was responsible for only two of the twenty-one victories, whilst he also ended the campaign almost three-hundred points behind Verstappen. Red Bull had by far the best car on the grid; however, Pérez rarely made the most of it. He failed to progress to the final stage of qualifying on more than a handful of occasions, whilst Verstappen started from pole eleven times.

Whilst he recovered well at the likes of the Australian Grand Prix and Spanish GP, he struggled to make any progress in Monaco – this is understandable – or at the returning Qatar Grand Prix. He was also responsible for some embarrassing driver errors, notably in Australia and Monaco where he crashed in the opening minutes of qualifying.

The Japanese Grand Prix was also a weekend to forget for Pérez after he retired from the race twice, the second of which after rejoining the race to serve two five-second time penalties.