Motorsports Racing News & Blog Articles

Germany has been a perennial favourite at the Race of Champions for much of the race’s history. Sebastian Vettel and Mick Schumacher look to keep that run going when they join forces again for the 2025 edition.

The Germans are the most successful country at the Nations Cup with eight titles (for comparison, the only other multi-time winners have just two), including a six-year win streak from 2007 to 2012 courtesy of Vettel and Schumacher’s father Michael. Vettel then added the eighth victory alongside Pascal Wehrlein in 2017, two years after winning the individual tournament in 2015.

Schumacher first appeared at ROC in 2019 as Vettel’s team-mate and has worked alongside his mentor since. Their first Nations Cup together ended with them losing in the final to Team Nordic. After ROC returned in 2022 on the snowy banks of Sweden after a three-year hiatus, Vettel and Schumacher finished runner-up in the main ROC in back to back years despite neither having off-road experience.

At the 2022 Nations Cup, the two fell to Team USA. A year later, they were eliminated by Felipe Drugovich and Thierry Neuville of the All Stars, an unexpectedly early exit.

After losing his Formula One seat, Schumacher currently races in the FIA World Endurance Championship for Alpine. He also works as a reserve driver for Mercedes.

After competing in the FIA World and European Baja Cups and national championships close to home, Maria Luís Gameiro will enter the Dakar Rally for the first time in 2025. She will race in the Challenger category under the Team Motivo JCB banner, driving a Yamaha YXZ1000R Turbo Prototype from X-raid Team with José Marques as navigator.

Gameiro usually races a Mini JCW Rally Plus from X-raid in the Ultimate class, primarily in the Baja Cups and in the Portuguese and Spanish Cross-Country Rally Championships. Her 2024 itinerary primarily based around races on the Iberian Peninsula such as the European Cup’s Baja TT Dehesa Extremadura and World Cup’s Baja Aragón, finishing third in class in the former and eighth at the latter.

When the World Rally-Raid Championship came to her native Portugal for the first time in April for the BP Ultimate Rally-Raid, Gameiro scored a tenth-place finish in Ultimate with her Mini. In early October, she débuted in Challenger with a Yamaha but retired due to engine problems; the start came shortly after being the first woman to race the Baja Morocco, where she placed sixteenth in her maiden desert rally.

“We’ve been working hard to be sure we’ll be at Dakar 2025,” said Gameiro. “Being able to confirm it is a big responsibility, and also a source of enormous joy and pride. Everything happened very quickly in the last two years. I feel that the dedication of the team is now bearing its best fruits. There is still a lot to be outlined and we have many details to sort out, but the most important thing is confirmed: we are heading to Saudi Arabia to compete in Dakar 2025.”

Gameiro will be the first Portuguese woman to race the Dakar since Elisabete Jacinto, who made multiple starts on a bike and eventually a car between 1998 and 2009. Coincidentally, Marques was her co-driver at the Africa Eco Race, which follows the Dakar’s original route that Jacinto ran on and which they won in a truck in 2019.

With the Stadium Super Trucks set to race in Australia once more when they support the Adelaide 500 in November, Shae Davies will also make his return in the #88 truck. CodeFish Studio and Refuel Creative will back his entry as CodeFish Racing.

Davies’s SST début came in the 2020 season opener at Adelaide, where he finished fourth and tenth in the first two races before winning the third. It was the only round in Australia that year due to COVID-19.

The Boost Mobile Super Trucks, formed in late 2019 as SST’s Australian championship, ran its lone multi-race season to date the following year. Davies scored two victories in Tasmania and Darwin, along with podium finishes in all but two races. He was ultimately second in the championship after losing a tiebreaker to Paul Morris, who had four wins.

Fallout between series leadership and Supercars resulted in the trucks being sent back to America and the death of the Australian division after 2021. For 2022, Davies competed in the S5000 Australian Drivers’ Championship, winning once in Melbourne and finishing tenth in points.

After taking 2023 off, the 34-year-old returned to action at the 24H Series’ 12 Hours of Spa-Francorchamps in April. Sharing a Porsche 911 GT3 with Adrian D’Silva and Martin Rump for Earl Bamber Motorsport, the team finished fourteenth overall and sixth in the GT3 Pro/Am class in the first race but retired from the second.

João Ferreira would have certainly preferred for the FIA World Baja Cup‘s return to his native Portugal at the Baja Portalegre 500 to go a little cleaner, but at least he made it home with points and a class win even if not entirely in one piece.

After clearing Francisco Barreto by over two and a half minutes to be the fastest Ultimate car (second overall) on Friday, a myriad of mechanical issues plagued his Mini John Cooper Works Rally Plus the following day. He had to stop to change a broken engine belt during the first Selective Section of Saturday, which cost him five minutes, then SS3 saw a flat tyre and malfunctioning killswitch that lost him even more time. By the time he arrived at the finish, his Mini was missing much of its front panelling and bonnet.

Despite the chaos, Ferreira managed to finish third, 3:36 behind winner Alexandre Franco and José Luis García. While he still cleared Franco by four minutes for the overall Ultimate victory, he was fifth among FIA entrants behind three Challenger cars and an SSV.

Although certainly not the outing he would have liked, Ferreira could at least be happy to make some headway in the World Baja Cup’s all-class standings. The four who finished ahead of him are not competing for the WBC, thereby earning Ferreira maximum points in the overall trophy. Fernando Álvarez, who entered the race leading him by twenty-eight points, missed the WBC with a fourth (twenty-first among all drivers) and second for in SSV. Unofficially, their contrasting outings have allowed Ferreira to slice the gap down to nineteen points with three races to go.

“Not the race that we expected but racing is like this,” said Ferreira. “We had a lot of problems today: we had the killswitch problem, the bonnet, in the morning we had the belt. It’s part of racing. We scored good points for the championship.”

Sir Chris Hoy, one of Britain’s greatest Olympians who went on to enjoy a solid career in motorsport, has a terminal cancer that doctors say gives him just two to four years left to live. He went public about his diagnosis on Saturday in a feature with The Sunday Times.

Hoy was diagnosed with Stage IV prostate cancer in September 2023, which he learned after going to a hospital to check on shoulder pain that turned out to be a tumour. Follow-up scans then determined the cancer had spread to his bones and created additional tumours across his body such as his spine and rib. He began chemotherapy in November, then revealed his battle on social media in February.

Shortly after the story’s publication, Hoy posted on his Instagram page, “You may see in the news this weekend some articles about my health, so I just wanted to reassure you all that I’m feeling fit, strong and positive, and overwhelmed by all the love and support shown to my family and me. Onwards!”

British Prime Minister Keir Starmer described the report as “[s]uch sad news. Chris is a British sporting legend. To face his diagnosis with such positivity is inspiring. The whole country is behind him and his family.”

Until Sir Jason Kenny broke his records in 2021, Hoy had been the most accomplished British Olympic athlete of all time. From his début in 2000 until 2012, he scored six gold medals in track cycling including a trifecta at the 2008 Games, as well as a silver at the 2000 edition in team sprint. He is also a seventeen-time World Champion, and has two Commonwealth Games golds while representing Scotland.

After a dominant outing at the Rallye du Maroc, Ali Oubassidi hopes to see if his achievements can translate to the Saudi deserts by making his Dakar Rally début in 2026. Should things go as planned, he would be taking part in the SSV category in his Can-Am Maverick X3.

Competing in the Open SSV class for Africa Rallye Team (a programme created by rally organisers to promote African rally raiders), Oubassidi won four of five stages and recorded a total time of 22:29:39, nearly two and a half hours faster than runner-up Marian Andreev. While he was far and away the top car in the class, it was far from smooth sailing as he and co-driver Hanane Amraoui had to deal with a plethora of mechanical issues.

A Merzouga native, Oubassidi is the first Moroccan to win the Rallye du Maroc in a four-wheel class. Fellow countryman Souleymane Addahri was also a class winner on a bike in Rally3.

“I am so happy to win the Open SSV category in this twenty-fifth edition of the prestigious Rallye du Maroc, which has a great history,” said Oubassidi. “It was not easy for me nor my co-driver. We crossed 2,468 kilometres, including 1,512 km of special stages, to reach Marrakech and Mengoub–Bouârfa via Zagora.
There were a lot of ups and downs throughout this run. The navigation was much more demanding than usual and much tighter.

“I remained focused until the last kilometre, determined not to rest on my laurels, and hamdulillah we were able to win the first Moroccan title in the rally raid.”

Are you bored of watching the legendary McLaren F1 GTR only turn laps in demos? Miss seeing Colin McRae‘s Subaru Impreza 555 rip through forests for the win? Want a Benetton B195 to duke it out with a Williams FW18 for real instead of simply riding together?

You’re finally in luck.

The FIA World Motor Sport Council approved changes on Thursday to the historic motorsport regulations for 2025, allowing vehicles built between 1991 and 2000 to officially run FIA-sanctioned vintage races. Previously, those produced after 1990 were limited to doing demonstrations or had to go to races outside the sanctioning body’s jurisdiction if they wished to be used in competition.

“These changes to Appendix K of the International Sporting Code mean that, from 2025, racing cars built between the years 1991 and 2000 will be able to carry the Historic Technical Passports that allow them to compete in FIA championships and international motor sport events,” reads an FIA statement, which called the rule change a “rare and significant upgrade”.

“This update will bring many of the world’s most iconic race and rally cars back into the crucible of motor sport, allowing fans and enthusiasts to enjoy the sights and sounds of what was a remarkable decade of technological advancement.”

Larry Trim and his Trailready team entered the NORRA 500 with heavy hearts, five months after his co-driver Brent Yeadon passed away from a heart attack during the Mexican 1000. After two days of racing, he was able to pay tribute to his late friend by winning the Vintage Short Wheelbase 4×4 category.

With Colton Gruber as navigator, Trim set the fifth fastest time among those in the Classic division. Like he did in May, he was driving a 1993 Jeep Grand Cherokee that was previously driven by Curt Leduc to the 1993 Baja 1000 victory in the Stock Mini class.

“All ups. Ran clean all day. Didn’t stop for anything except a little bit of fuel. No problems at all. We had a blast,” said Trim after the first day. Gubler also called it a “good time” and save for a “little tricky” final sector on the third Selective Section, “was a good day all overall.”

Kyle Murray set the fastest outright time in his 2016 Geiser Trophy Truck Spec. Bill Zemak was runner-up in a Jackal, a buggy developed by Rhys Millen with inspiration from rally raid cars and Trophy Trucks, ahead of 2023 NORRA 500 overall winner Dave Mason Jr.

“The truck worked flawlessly,” said Murray. “The goal this weekend was consistency and that’s what we did. The truck was perfect. We’ve had no issues, no flat tyres, it was an easy weekend. We’re ready to go for another.”

Lando Norris will start the 2024 United States Grand Prix on pole position after George Russell’s crash brought a premature end to the session.

Norrisis McLaren F1 Team’s first pole sitter in America since Lewis Hamilton at Indianapolis in 2007. Verstappen – who has improving on his final attempt – will line up alongside his Championship challenger while the two Ferrari’s will share the second row. 

Hamilton’s Q1 exit was undoubtedly the biggest shock of the day and he’ll start ahead of only Zhou Guanyu and Liam Lawson, who takes a grid penalty.

Q1

Q1 started with a wait to see if Valtteri Bottas would make it out after his Sprint ended in flames due to issues with his rear brakes but the team did a great job to get his Sauber ready for action.

After the first runs, Verstappen went quickest by three tenths of a second but the surprise was Pierre Gasly, who was sitting top of the times for a while before getting knocked down by Verstappen and Leclerc into third.

Max Verstappen converted his impressive Friday performance into a Sprint race victory to return to winning ways at the 2024 United States Grand Prix.

Verstappen made a strong start, getting off the line well alongside George Russell. Lando Norris had a good launch, getting ahead of both Scuderia Ferrari drivers and then Russell to get into second. Despite Norris looking like he could’ve reeled Verstappen in at points, the Oracle Red Bull Racing driver wasn’t challenged throughout 19 laps. 

Nico Hulkenberg slipped back from sixth into ninth, while Lewis Hamilton gained a position on the start. Charles Leclerc and Carlos Sainz Jr. delighted the fans in Austin with a thrilling intra-team battle for fourth, with both swapping around and even almost making contact with each other. 

Fernando Alonso and Liam Lawson engaged in a battle, with the former frustrated on the radio with the newly promoted Visa Cash App RB driver.

Sergio Pérez didn’t make an impression on the point positions, spending a frustrating amount of time behind Yuki Tsunoda, who may be a threat to the Mexican’s position at Red Bull in 2025.

Amid concerns about competitor retention, the FIA and FIM have expanded their points allocations for the 2025 World Rally-Raid Championship.

On the FIM side, riders registering for any of the five W2RC rounds in the Rally2, Rally3, or Quad categories will automatically be signed up for their respective class championship as well. Previously, Rally2 and Quad registrants had to pay both the race’s entry fee as well as the season-long €2,500 fee if they wished to compete for the title. Consequently, while Rally2 is consistently the largest class since it is for amateurs and aspiring rally raiders, only eighteen riders earned points in 2024.

RallyGP, which is for factory riders, will continue to charge €11,000 for standings eligibility.

Meanwhile, the FIA plans to award points to all competitors even if they finish poorly or don’t finish at all. Until 2024, only the top fifteen earned points with fifteenth getting two in standard rallies while marathons like the Dakar Rally provided four.

From 2025 onwards, everyone who placed sixteenth or lower will receive two points while those who fail to finish get a single point. Both numbers are doubled for marathons.

After competing in a wide variety of cross-country rallies, Souad Mouktadiri will get to finally add the Dakar Rally to her portfolio in 2025. She will be the first Moroccan driver to compete in the SSV category at the Dakar.

Naturally, much of Mouktadiri’s rally experience has come in races held in her home country including the Morocco Desert Challenge, the M’Hamid Express, and the Rallye du Maroc. The lattermost, which she has entered five times, is part of the World Rally-Raid Championship with her latest entry in 2023.

In 2021, she ran her first European rally at the Andalucía Rally in Spain (a former W2RC round), driving a Nissan Patrol as an Open entry.

Mouktadiri returned to Europe for the starting leg of the Africa Eco Race in January, a race that runs through Morocco and neighbouring countries before ending in Senegal along the original Dakar Rally route. Racing a Can-Am Maverick with Frederic Villers d’Arbouet as co-driver, she finished thirteenth overall and second in the T4 class.

“Thank you to those who shared the information today, very moved by your comments and messages on the announcement,” wrote Mouktadiri on Rally Raid Spirit‘s report about her début. “I hope to live up to it and go all the way, onto the podium of Dakar Rally and raise our flag high.”

Yes, Sarge, a puma is a real animal. It’s a big cat, like a lion.

A red puma will grace the side of Juan Cruz Yacopini‘s Toyota Hilux at the 2025 Dakar Rally after acquiring backing from Puma Energy Rally Team. He announced his move on Wednesday.

“I am very happy to join this great team,” said Yacopini. “For me, it’s a dream come true to be part of such an important and prestigious structure. This will be my fifth Dakar, and I feel like I have the tools and experience to make it a great race. I am immensely grateful to Puma Energy for trusting me to represent their brand.

“This news is a huge motivation to keep working at 100% and give everything I have to make it a great Dakar and an excellent 2025 season. I will continue working hard with my team to achieve the results we are aiming for.

“With the support of Puma Energy, I’m sure we will achieve great things together. I hope more brands join us in continuing along this exciting Dakar journey, which has brought us so much joy over the years.”

Sanjay Takale has partnered with Compagnie Saharienne to race a Toyota Land Cruiser HZJ78 at the 2025 Dakar Classic. He will be the first Indian to race the Dakar, Classic or Rally, as a car driver.

After growing up in motocross, Takale has competed in rallies since 2009 with focus on various national series in Asia like the Indiana and Malaysian championships. A regular in the Asia-Pacific Rally Championship, he won the Production class title in 2013. In 2018, he made his World Rally Championship-3 début at Rally Finland, finishing fourteenth in class and eventually repeating it at the 2019 edition. In 2022, he represented India at the FIA Motorsport Games and finished eighth in his first tarmac rally.

Takale is also a regular at the Asia Cross-Country Rally, winning the T2 category in an Isuzu D-Max in 2011. At the latest edition in August, he drove a Toyota Hilux Revo to a twenty-third overall and thirteenth in the T1D class.

Outside of racing, he is the chief advisory officer of aerpace, an Indian transportation company.

Maxime Raud will serve as his co-driver in the Land Cruiser.

Hedda Hosås will be the latest Extreme E driver to try her hand at cross-country rally when she races an SSV at the Dubai International Baja in November.

“My first ever rally raid. I still can’t believe it’s happening,” said Hosås. “This is something I’ve dreamed about for years and it hasn’t been easy but every single step has been worth it. I’m so grateful to everyone who helped make this dream a reality.”

The Norwegian has been involved with Extreme E since the inaugural season in 2021, originally as a reserve driver for Veloce Racing before taking the same role for the series as a whole the following year. After being called up by Veloce for the season opener in injury relief for Christine GZ (also a rally raider), she ended up running the full season with JBXE and scored a third-place finish at the first Island X Prix.

Hosås continued with JBXE for much of the 2023 season, scoring a best finish of fifth in the Sunday races of both Island X Prix events. She moved to McLaren XE for that year’s season finale at the Copper X Prix as a substitute for the injured Emma Gilmour, where she and Tanner Foust won a heat and qualified for the Grand Final on both days. She finished ninth in the driver’s championship.

McLaren opted to sign two more rally raiders in Mattias Ekström and 2024 Dakar Rally Challenger winner Cristina Gutiérrez for the 2024 XE season. Hosås remained with the series, albeit as the test driver for their successor Extreme H’s new hydrogen-powered Pioneer 25, which is set to début in 2025.