Motorsports Racing News & Blog Articles

Sheldon Creed hopes his new home Joe Gibbs Racing will be a friendlier place than his last stop as he will pilot the #18 Toyota GR Supra for the 2024 NASCAR Xfinity Series season. Chandler Smith returns to Toyota as his partner in the #81, while JGR will also field a pair of multi-driver cars.

Creed spent the last two years at Richard Childress Racing. Despite not winning a race, he barely missed out on the 2023 Championship Round following an entanglement with his team-mate Austin Hill that virtually assured him a messy divorce from the team. In heading to Toyota, he returns to the manufacturer with whom he won the 2018 ARCA Menards Series championship.

Smith was a Toyota development driver who finished third in the 2022 Truck Series championship before defecting to Chevrolet’s Kaulig Racing for his Xfinity rookie season. He finished ninth in points with a win at Richmond, but elected to return to Toyota amidst a reshuffling at Kaulig.

The team will also field the #20 for Aric Almirola and John Hunter Nemechek and the #19 for the quartet of Joe Graf Jr., Taylor Gray, William Sawalich, and Ryan Truex.

Almirola stepped away from full-time Cup Series racing after 2023, rejoining the organisation with whom he began his national series career in the 2000s. He raced part-time for JGR from 2005 to 2007, scoring just one win in controversial fashion, before moving to the Cup Series with Chevrolet. While a Cup full-timer, he made sporadic Xfinity starts that included winning at Sonoma in June.

After a tumultuous rookie season cut short by suspension, Noah Gragson has landed back on his feet at Stewart-Haas Racing. On Wednesday, the team announced he will drive the #10 Ford Mustang Dark Horse for the 2024 NASCAR Cup Series onwards.

Gragson was indefinitely suspended halfway into his Cup rookie campaign in 2023, and eventually departed Legacy Motor Club. NASCAR reinstated him in September and he returned to action in late models and even raced the Pinty’s Series season finale in Canada, finishing tenth at Delaware Speedway in the latter.

“I’m grateful for this opportunity with Stewart-Haas Racing and while most people in the industry are happy that the offseason is here, I want to get started on 2024 and go racing as soon as I can,” said Gragson. “Stewart-Haas is filled with racers and I saw that and felt it as soon as I walked onto the shop floor. There are high expectations here and a strong desire to compete and win races. I have high expectations for myself and I want to deliver for Tony (Stewart) and Gene (Haas) and everyone at Stewart-Haas.

“I race to win and winning at the Cup level is what I’ve been working toward since I started racing Bandoleros as a thirteen-year-old at the Bullring in Las Vegas. To be with an established team with a history of winning is what every driver wants. I’ve got exactly that here at Stewart-Haas and I aim to make the most of it.”

He failed to qualify for his Cup début at the 2021 Daytona 500, but was able to make the show the following year as part of a part-time schedule with Beard Motorsports and Kaulig Racing followed by five rounds in substitute duty for the injured Alex Bowman. During this stretch in 2022, he scored a fifth-place run at Daytona.

Seth Quintero and Lucas Moraes will pursue the 2024 World Rally-Raid Championship for Toyota Gazoo Racing in an upgraded model of the Hilux dubbed the Toyota GR DKR Hilux EVO T1U.

T1.U is a designation that is used to describe upgraded 4×4 electric and hybrid vehicles, most notably those fielded by Team Audi Sport. The Hilux T1U, on the other hand, is technically expected to remain in the T1+ subcategory as it still uses fuel and internal combustion, though Repsol is supplying a special biofuel with seventy percent renewable material like used cooking oil.

The EVO T1U, the successor to the GR DKR Hilux T1+, is 100 millimetres wider and heavier by ten kilograms to comply with new FIA weight regulations on T1+ cars but otherwise retains similar dimensions. Other differences include the air conditioning unit being moved elsewhere and the addition of a new cooling package.

Testing for the car took place in the Kalahari and Namib Deserts.

While Quintero and Moraes race under the main TGR banner, their South African division will field three Hiluxes at Dakar for Giniel de Villiers, Guy Botterill, and Saood Variawa. De Villiers won the 2022 South African Rally-Raid Championship while Botterill finished runner-up in the 2023 points battle; 18-year-old Variawa is the son of Dakar veteran Shameer Variawa, who owns Hilux builder SVR Hallspeed.

After spending sixteen years competing for a Supercars Championship (achieving it thrice), Shane van Gisbergen will pursue a NASCAR Xfinity Series title. On Wednesday, Trackhouse Racing Team and Kaulig Racing announced van Gisbergen will run at least forty races in 2024; he will be in Kaulig’s #97 Chevrolet Camaro for the full Xfinity calendar, along with returning to Trackhouse’s #91 Camaro for seven Cup Series dates.

“After winning in Chicago, I could not stop thinking about racing full time in NASCAR,” said van Gisbergen. “I am still stunned at how quickly this has all come together. I must thank the NASCAR industry and fans for embracing me and allowing me to chase this dream. I respect every driver who has put in the work to make it to the Cup Series, and I am ready to put in that same effort. I am anxious to get started.”

Van Gisbergen did not need long to get used to driving a stock car when he won in his maiden NASCAR race at the inaugural Chicago Street Race in July, becoming the first Cup driver to win on début since 1963. He followed it up with a top ten in his second Cup start at Indianapolis the following month, while also scoring a nineteenth in his oval début in the Craftsman Truck Series at IRP two days prior.

Shortly after Indianapolis, his Supercars team Triple Eight Race Engineering permitted him to pursue NASCAR on a full-time basis in 2024. His final Supercars season ended with five wins and a runner-up championship finish to Brodie Kostecki, who also raced the Cup Indianapolis event. He ends his Supercars career with eighty-one wins and titles in 2016, 2021, and 2022.

For 2024, his Cup schedule consists of Circuit of the Americas (24 March), Talladega Superspeedway (21 April), Charlotte Motor Speedway (26 May), Chicago (7 July), Watkins Glen International (15 September), and Las Vegas Motor Speedway (20 October). COTA, Chicago, and Watkins Glen are road courses, Talladega is a superspeedway, and Charlotte and Las Vegas are intermediate tracks. Trackhouse also hopes to let him enter late model and Truck Series races during the year before he permanently moves up to the Cup Series.

In 2021, CR7 Motorsports brought on Grant Enfinger to help him remain a full-time driver after his sponsorship at ThorSport Racing dried up. Three years later, with GMS Racing now shuttered, he has joined the team for the full 2024 NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series season, driving the #9 Chevrolet Silverado RST.

“I am extremely excited about this opportunity,” said Enfinger. “I have known Codie (Rohrbaugh) and his family for a long time and they have become like family to me.”

Enfinger was one position short of winning the 2023 Truck Series championship when he finished sixth and a spot behind Ben Rhodes. He ended the season with three wins at Kansas, Gateway, and Milwaukee along with thirteen top tens.

He ran nine races for CR7 in 2021 after his full-time ride in ThorSport’s #98 was relegated to splitting with Christian Eckes. Enfinger scored three top tens with a fourth at COTA.

CR7 hopes Enfinger’s commitment will provide good fortune. Since Enfinger’s seventh in 2021, the #9 only has one other top ten in the two seasons since, a fourth by Colby Howard in the 2023 season opener.

Cody Ware has been reinstated by NASCAR eight months after being indefinitely suspended in the wake of his arrest in April. This allows him to return to competition in time for the 2024 season.

Ware was suspended on 10 April a week after he was arrested and charged with felony assault by strangulation with serious bodily injury inflicted and misdemeanour assault, stemming from an argument with his then-girlfriend. According to lawsuits and arrest warrants for both individuals, the incident began with an argument over Ware not wearing a promise ring on the right finger; Ware’s arrest warrant stated he pushed her to the floor, slapped her in the face, and attempted to strangle her, while his girlfriend’s warrant mentioned she hit him in the head, breaking her right hand.

The suspension came seven races into the 2023 Cup Series season, his third as a full-time driver in the series, and forced his family’s Rick Ware Racing to field a revolving door in his #51 Ford Mustang. Seven drivers—Matt Crafton, Cole Custer, Todd Gilliland, Andy Lally, Ryan Newman, Zane Smith, and J.J. Yeley—ultimately drove the #51, which lost $3.5 million in sponsorship in the suspension’s fallout while the septet of drivers cost over $300,000 to hire. RWR filed suit against the girlfriend, seeking damages for both, which was dropped.

The charges were dropped last Thursday by the Iredell County district attorney’s office, who explained prosecutors were unable to continue the case as both parties elected not to cooperate with the investigation. Another civil filed by Ware’s family against the girlfriend was also dismissed.

“I’ve maintained my innocence from the very beginning, even as there was a rush to judgment by others,” stated Ware. “I’m glad this entire matter is behind me because it’s been an incredibly difficult eight months. With all of the allegations being dismissed, I’m thankful to have my life back.”

Robin Larsson began the 2023 calendar year on a high note when he scored the inaugural Nitrocross Group E championship. On Sunday, he ended 2023 by winning the final Group E race of the year at Glen Helen Raceway.

He finished third in the first Group E race on Saturday behind Oliver Eriksson and Conner Martell. Eriksson held off a hard charge from Martell to notch his first win of the year, while Martell still bagged his second career Group E podium and first since Phoenix last season.

Larsson dominated Sunday’s event from the start with Fraser McConnell behind him. Save for a disappointing sixth in Utah, he finished on the podium in six of the other races in 2023 and holds a 23-point edge over Eriksson in the standings.

“I had a bad race in Utah, then it’s been consistent, and Kevin’s been also really consistent so it’s really hard,” said Larsson. “It’s lot of points now with the new qualification system so you need to be bang on it in the morning and really win that and go to the [Top Qualifier] so that’s the most stressful moment of the weekend because you really need to win that, if Kevin and the top guys win. You can give anything away, it’s a lot of points there but I like it.

“It’s really tight in the championship, to have Kevin up there is really fun also, we’ve been racing against each other for a long time and he couldn’t do the long run last year so it’s really nice to see him going for the championship this year. But it feels really good to have a bigger lead now than we had this morning.”

Dacia‘s return to the Dakar Rally in 2025 will come with a talented trio as Sébastien Loeb and Cristina Gutiérrez will be joined by Nasser Al-Attiyah.

The move, announced Tuesday, is more a formality as Al-Attiyah has already entered the Prodrive programme for the 2024 World Rally-Raid Championship onwards. Prodrive currently fields the Hunter via Bahrain Raid Xtreme before linking up with Dacia to provide technical support. Loeb and Gutiérrez won the 2022 Extreme E championship with X44, which had a partnership with Prodrive for two seasons; they were announced as Dacia drivers in July.

Al-Attiyah and Loeb were rivals and two of the top drivers in the W2RC, finishing first and second in the inaugural championship in 2022. The former repeated the feat in 2023 while also claiming his fifth Dakar Rally victory before departing Toyota Gazoo Racing at season’s end. He joined Prodrive in October and won for the first time in a Hunter at the FIA World Cup for Cross-Country Bajas’ season finale in Dubai.

“I’m really so happy to be a part of the Dacia family,” said Al-Attiyah. “It really is a nice brand. I see this brand everywhere in the world and I want to work for this brand in my region and in the Middle East. I think we have a good brand and I will try to do my best. It’s a good idea to compete in Dakar with a nice brand like Dacia. I think it will be a really good team and strong and will try to win from first year.

“It is a dream team, a lot of respect for Sébastien Loeb and Christina. I have a good relation with both drivers and we are very strong. Our aim is to win with this beautiful brand Dacia.”

Hertz Team JOTA has announced that British driver Callum Ilott will join their team for the 2024 FIA World Endurance Championship season, driving the Porsche 963 Hypercar.

With a racing career encompassing over 230 races, Ilott has primarily focused on single-seaters, achieving notable successes such as a third-place finish in the 2018 GP3 Championship and a second-place result in the 2020 FIA Formula 2 Championship. Ilott, a former member of the Red Bull Junior Team (2015) and the Ferrari Driver Academy (2017-21), served as a test driver for Scuderia Ferrari in 2021 and as a reserve driver for the Alfa Romeo Racing Orlen F1 team.

Ilott expanded his horizons by participating in the IndyCar series from 2021 to 2023, securing two top-five finishes and twelfth place in the Indy 500 earlier this year. In 2021, he also competed in the GT World Challenge Europe Endurance Cup and made his Le Mans 24 Hour race debut, finishing third in the LMGTE Am category.

The next chapter for the Cambridgeshire racer involves piloting the 640bhp, 4.6-litre, twin-turbo V8 hybrid Porsche during a recent two-day test in Qatar, the venue for the opening race of the 2024 WEC season.

Despite missing the first two races of the 2023 season, Hertz Team JOTA secured the FIA World Cup for Hypercar Teams. Ilott expressed his excitement for the upcoming season, emphasizing the team’s professionalism and the Porsche’s performance during testing.

After two seasons, Tanner Foust and Emma Gilmour will not return to NEOM McLaren XE for the 2024 Extreme E season, the team announced Tuesday.

“It has been an honour to drive for a team with such a great motorsport lineage as NEOM McLaren,” said Foust. “It has been a privilege to compete for the NEOM McLaren Extreme E Team for the last two years, in addition to other opportunities with the Heritage programme. I have had the opportunity to drive cars that I never thought I’d drive in my life, and the podiums in Uruguay and Scotland were a big highlight. I wish everyone at the team all the best, and I would like to thank them for the incredible support they’ve provided for me during the past two years.”

Gilmour and Foust débuted the team in 2022, and they placed fifth in the championship in their first season with a runner-up finish in the Energy X Prix. They repeated the finish at the second Hydro X Prix in May.

Hedda Hosås took over for Gilmour at the 2023 season-ending Copper X Prix due to a broken rib at the Island X Prix II. Foust’s final race with the team was a fourth and fifth in Chile with Hosås. McLaren finished eighth in the points standings.

“As a Kiwi, it has been unbelievably special to have driven for the NEOM McLaren Extreme E Team for the past two years, and to make history as McLaren Racing’s first ever female driver,” Gilmour commented. “It was amazing to race in some of the most extreme locations in the world, including Saudi Arabia, Chile, and Uruguay, and to come through to secure those hard-fought podiums. I’m grateful for the team’s incredible support and for the unforgettable highlights we enjoyed together. I wish everyone at McLaren Racing all the best.”

A near two centuries of cars, side-by-side vehicles, and trucks will race the 2024 Dakar Rally when it begins on 5 January, and under a new identity.

Shortly after the 2023 World Rally-Raid Championship concluded, the FIA announced all five categories will receive new names that deviate from their traditional numbering system. This change, after a surprisingly painstaking process, was intended to provide more clarity on what each category entails.

Of the 199 FIA entries, seventy are in the top-level Ultimate class. While its T1 name has been dropped, the convention remains for subcategories. There are forty T1+ entries, the top subclass for upgraded prototype cars, while its electric counterpart T1.U is represented by the trio of Team Audi Sport. Silvio Totani and Magdalena Zajac comprise the two T1.1 4×4 cars, significantly outnumbered by their twenty-five 4×2 counterparts in T1.2. Nasser Al-Attiyah, the twice reigning victor, will try to carry his momentum into his new ride at Prodrive.

Team Land Cruiser Toyota Auto Body, who has won the Stock (T2) class every year since 2014, will try to make it eleven in a row. Ibrahim Almuhna, the FIA Middle East Cup for Cross-Country Bajas champion in T2, will try to spoil the party after retiring from the 2023 edition. Ronald Basso is the defending winner.

Forty-three upgraded SSVs are in the Challenger (T3) class, where Rokas Baciuška and Eryk Goczał have moved up a class from T4. Goczał won the 2023 Dakar Rally in T4 ahead of Baciuška, who claimed the W2RC. Cristina Gutiérrez, although still a Red Bull driver, is now part of the American Red Bull Off-Road Junior Team despite being a Spaniard as she transitions from Can-Am to the Taurus T3 Max. T3 champion Seth Quintero has moved up to Ultimate, while Austin Jones seeks to score his second consecutive Dakar in Challenger.

Julien Jagu‘s plans of running his third Dakar Rally in 2024 were upended as he continues to recover from a broken elbow he sustained at the Rallye du Maroc in October, explaining none of his “lights are green, be it physical, material, or mental.”

The accident occurred during the fourth and penultimate stage of the rally. Jagu and a group of his fellow riders, including eventual World Rally-Raid Championship runner-up Paolo Lucci, got lost on a plateau where the tracks “all looked alike” and did not have a proper CAP compass reading to lead them in the right direction. Noticing that he had deviated from the course, he turned around and tried to advance even though he was riding into his own dust. Shortly after, Neels Theric crashed into him head-on at nearly 100 kilometres an hour. Lucci sounded the distress signal and both were airlifted to hospital, where Jagu was diagnosed with a broken elbow and Theric broke his hand.

Strange as it sounds, but he feels the accident that led to the injury has shaped him for the better. In a letter he wrote and posted on social media Sunday, he revealed much of his racing career had been conducted with an underlying fear of the discipline’s dangers, along with the pressures that come with pursuing it.

Jagu grew up in motocross and enduro, though cross-country rally on a bike is a much different beast as it takes racers through environments that range from vast deserts to forests and mountains. He made his Dakar Rally début in 2022, finishing a strong twelfth in Rally2, though he admitted he had knots in his stomach throughout the race.

“From my early days in rally, I feared high speeds in unknown and hostile places,” he wrote. “It relapsed several times during Dakar 2022. I thought about quitting, but the competitor in me wanted to do better, train, improve the bike, and show that I could be among the best amateurs.

The top three in the 2023 World Rally-Raid Championship, along with the fourteen champions of the other W2RC classes and FIA Cross-Country Bajas, were recognised in Baku at the FIA Prize Giving Ceremony.

On Friday, the W2RC podium finishers each took the stage alongside the champions of other major series including Formula One and the World Rally Championship for the main gala. The Bajas winners were celebrated as part of the Rally and Circuit Prize Giving the following day.

Nasser Al-Attiyah and his co-driver Mathieu Baumel headlined the rally raid trio for the second year in a row, having also claimed the inaugural W2RC in 2022. The pair won three races in 2023 starting with the legendary Dakar Rally, followed by the Sonora Rally and Desafío Ruta 40.

“We are so happy to come back to defend the world title,” said Al-Attiyah. “You know that cross-country is really not easy. We started from Dakar to defend our winning, and then we competed in the four bigger races in the world. In Abu Dhabi, we started with a bad moment, we had a big crash and we were a little bit injured, but then we came back very strong and won all the races. Nice to be here again. We worked very hard and we are so happy.”

Their Toyota GR DKR Hilux T1+ was also on stage to represent Toyota Gazoo Racing winning the manufacturer’s championship; Toyota Motor Europe’s vice president Andrea Carlucci accepted the award. The title was a parting gift from Al-Attiyah and Baumel, who departed TGR after the season for Prodrive.

Thad Moffitt will graduate to the NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series in 2024, driving the #47 Chevrolet Silverado RST for the newly created Faction46 on a full-time basis.

Faction46 is owned by grocer Lane Moore, who runs Venture Food Stores. The team acquired #46 from G2G Racing, who plans to race with a different number in 2024. Niece Motorsports will provide technical support for Faction46.

Moffitt hails from the legendary Petty family, led by grandfather Richard Petty. Despite this, Moffitt typically does not race for any family-owned teams in favour of paving his own path with some Petty support, though he has regularly paid tribute to his background.

For example, his Truck Series début in 2022 came in a #43 truck with STP sponsorship like Petty’s own cars; the truck was fielded by Reaume Brothers Racing in partnership with GMS Racing, whose owner has a working relationship with Petty in the Cup Series. He ran the first three races of the season, with his best finish being eighteenth at Daytona. His last Truck start was a thirty-first at Knoxville that year for Young’s Motorsports.

He did not race in NASCAR in 2023 as he focusd on the Trans-Am Series, competing in the TA2 class. Driving a #43 Chevrolet Camaro for TeamSLR, Moffitt placed seventh in points with a best finish of second at the second Detroit Grand Prix race; he was also runner-up for the TA2 rookie title.

Frédéric Vasseur admits Scuderia Ferrari went into the 2023 FIA Formula 1 World Championship season with expectation levels too high, and they were brought down with a bump very early on.

Having been in contention for the Drivers’ Championship with Charles Leclerc in 2022, hopes had been high that the team could take the fight to Oracle Red Bull Racing in 2023, but the team won only once all year long with Carlos Sainz Jr. in Singapore as their rivals dominated.

Vasseur, who was brought in as Team Principal at Ferrari in place of Mattia Binotto ahead of the 2023 season, said the team needed to readdress their ambitions early when it became clear that they were not in the same league as Red Bull.

“For sure, I think the level of expectation was a bit too high at the beginning of the season and we understood quickly the situation,” Vasseur is quoted as saying by Racer.com. “I think after a couple of laps in Bahrain — and even a couple of laps in the simulator before leaving to go to Bahrain.

“But what I would keep in mind this season is the reaction of the team, that we had tough moments but remember after Jeddah or Miami or Spain or Zandvoort — Zandvoort is not so long ago and we were almost lapped.