Motorsports Racing News & Blog Articles

Barring a sudden development on the frontlines in the coming months, 2025 will be the third year that the Dakar Rally does not feature Russian or Belarusian teams. Although Truck powerhouse KAMAZ-master is still barred from contending for a twentieth Dakar victory, team boss Eduard Nikolaev believes sentiment in Europe is leaning towards letting them back.

“We are not against returning (to Dakar),” Nikolaev told state-owned media outlet RIA Novosti. “The Europeans really want us to return. We are constantly in communication and talking with them. The team is in shape and ready to fight for the title.”

The FIA implemented restrictions on Russian teams following the invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, a month after Dmitry Sotnikov led a KAMAZ podium sweep of the Truck class at Dakar. Under the policy, Russian and Belarusian racers must agree to condemn the invasion and to not sport their respective nation’s insignia; KAMAZ, whose parent company is partly owned by the Russian government and provides vehicles for the Russian military, unsurprisingly rejected the terms.

The team lost many of their foreign backers in the wake of the invasion, most notably Red Bull, prompting the switch to domestic suppliers. Since then, KAMAZ has focused exclusively on the Russian Rally-Raid Championship.

Earlier in July, Sotnikov won the Silk Way Rally, the premier rally raid in the country, in a 1–2 finish for KAMAZ with Nikolaev in tow. The latter held off 2023 winner Siarhei Viazovich of rival MAZ-SPORTauto, a Belarusian outfit also prohibited from racing the Dakar; the two had nearly collided head-on during the third stage. Nikolaev won four stages.

Esteban Ocon is delighted to be joining MoneyGram Haas F1 Team from the start of the 2025 FIA Formula 1 World Championship season after the news was confirmed on Thursday morning.

Ocon’s departure from BWT Alpine F1 Team was announced earlier in the season, and the announcement came after an incident with his teammate, Pierre Gasly, at the 2024 Monaco Grand Prix, which left team principal Bruno Famin unhappy with the Frenchman. 

Ocon will now move onto a new chapter in his Formula 1 career with Haas in a completely new lineup alongside Ollie Bearman. 

After confirmation of the move, Ocon said: “I am thrilled to embark on this new chapter in my Formula 1 career and join MoneyGram Haas F1 Team from the start of the 2025 season.” 

“I’ll be joining a very ambitious racing team, whose spirit, work ethic, and undeniable upward trajectory has really impressed me. I’d like to thank Gene Haas and Ayao Komatsu for their trust and support, and for our honest and fruitful discussions these last few months. 

Zhou Guanyu thinks the updates introduced by Stake F1 Team Kick Sauber are a step in the right direction despite the team still not getting off the mark in the Constructors Championship. 

Despite Valtteri Bottas being the only drive at Sauber to receive the upgrades, Zhou is pleased with the progress that the team have made after they introduced a new set of updates at the 2024 Hungarian Grand Prix. Heading into the 2024 Belgian Grand Prix Sauber are set to introduce more upgrades and despite not receiving them, Zhou is hoping it’ll be another step in the right direction. 

Speaking to F1TV, Zhou said: “It was only Valtteri’s car [that had the upgrades] so I’ve had the same car from Silverstone. 

“He’s making another further upgrade this weekend, and we need to see if that makes another step because clearly it was a step in the right direction as we can see some gain throughout the entire weekend with everything in place.”

Zhou is under pressure to keep his place in Formula 1 with options on the 2025 grid continuing to fall away from him. Despite neither driver scoring points, Bottas has certainly got the better of the Chinese driver, and that’s the reason that its unlikely he’ll be kept on at Sauber in 2025 alongside Nico Hülkenberg.

Much like Nasser Al-Attiyah, Yasir Seaidan will race in the Challenger category for the first time at this weekend’s Baja España Aragón. In fact, Al-Attiyah’s crew will be with Seaidan every step of the way as his #357 Taurus T3 Max will be prepared by Nasser Racing Camp.

Seaidan is currently second in the World Rally-Raid Championship’s SSV standings with one race to go. He had led the points for much of the season before a Stage #1 retirement at the Desafío Ruta 40 in June dropped him behind Sebastián Guayasamín by six. The top three, with DR 40 winner Ricardo Ramilo in third, are separated by just twenty points.

Aragón will be his first FIA World Baja Cup start since 2021 when he finished second in the championship to fellow Saudi driver Yazeed Al-Rajhi. Afterwards, Seaidan turned his focus to the FIA’s Middle East Baja Cup, placing fourth in the 2023 standings, as well as the national Saudi Toyota Rally Championship. In January, he finished third in SSV at the Dakar Rally.

Seaidan will be one of twelve Taurus T3 Max cars entered at Aragón, including Al-Attiyah, and among fifty-eight Challengers; a Challenger car is a race-spec version of an SSV. By entering the class, Seaidan will have experience in four of five FIA categories as he previously competed in the premier Ultimate class (then T1) and Stock (T2). His 2021 vice-champion run came in a Mini JCW Rally T1.

Omar Allahim will be his co-driver. The two first worked together at the 2020 Andalucía Rally, also in Spain, where their Mini finished tenth.

For a group of college kids, the students at Chuoh Technical School sure know how to create a rally raid winner. The school has long been a partner of the Asia Cross Country Rally, which allows students to build vehicles for interested competitors as well as being crew members. For the 2024 edition, CTS General Automobile Maintenance Department students designed a Suzuki Jimny Sierra that Roslyn Shen and Nada Simaraks will pilot.

Although the Jimny Sierra is a legitimate SUV, the CTS version is instead a pickup-style truck created by taking a standard Sierra then modifying it. The body was cut at the B-pillar while the body-on-frame was sliced at the centre, allowing the creation of a “truck bed” that extended the vehicle length by thirty centimetres. The “bed” will be used to store spare tyres and tools; a bar was implemented to keep the parts inside when in motion. Over fenders have also been installed so that the Yokohama Geolandar M/T G003 tyres could be fitted on, while two hooks are attached at the rear fender. At the front is a new automatic transmission oil cooler.

Other aspects like the width and engine have been left untouched. The latter stems from the Sierra being a two-year development process, so CTS would like to gauge the stock engine’s capabilities in 2024 before making changes for 2025.

The car complies with T1 (Ultimate) regulation and will compete in the T1G subcategory. Satoshi Takeno and Tadamune Nakai are also racing Sierras in T1G, though theirs are still the production models.

Fourth-year students Ue Sugawara, Keigo Tanimoto, and Shun Yamamoto will work as mechanics for the Sierra. Sugawara was responsible for building the body-on-frame, Tanimoto previously worked at Rally Hokkaido. Yamamoto, who did not have much interest in cars prior to CTS, described the build as a “trial and error period” that was “intense.”

The 2024 FIA World Rallycross Championship heads to Hungary for the first time on 27/28 July. The third and fourth rounds of the “Battle of Technologies” will take place at the Nyirád Racing Centre, with the usual suspects competing for glory against a Hungarian home hero.

Nicknamed the “Red Cauldron” due do the distinctive colour of the unsealed surface sections of the track, Nyirád is often referred to as one of the most “old-school” circuits on the calendar. The technical curves and turns combined with dramatic elevation changes present an enticing challenge for drivers and guarantee a great spectacle for the fans.

The first weekend of world rallycross action in the new “Battle of Technologies” era saw victory head the way of internal combustion engine (ICE) cars. Indeed, six-time world rallycross champion Johan Kristoffersson asserted his dominance early on, throwing down the gauntlet by winning both events in Sweden. However, team principal Tommy Kristoffersson will not be easing off any time soon. “We know what we are good at, and I think the double victory was well-deserved” Kristoffersson Sr explained, before adding “there are still areas for improvement and it will get tougher. We will come to tracks where we cannot dominate, so we must continue to work on our development potential. We should celebrate this success, absolutely, but we must also stay humble.”

Kristoffersson may have been untouchable in the wet, but in the dry conditions on Saturday he was put under pressure by the chasing pack. Meanwhile teammate Ole Christian Veiby struggled with launching his car off the line, denying him the potential to attack at the very top.

Hoping to capitalise on this are the two CE Dealer Team drivers, Niclas Grönholm and Klara Andersson, who are tied on points in second in the championship. Both could have taken at least one victory in Sweden, with Grönholm showing excellent pace in his electric PWR RX1e before events out of his control snatched those chances away from him. Andersson came within a whisker of taking victory from Kristoffersson on the first day of action, and will be hoping to go one better than second in Hungary.

Mykolas Paulavičius‘ effort to make the Dakar Rally is one step closer to completion. On Wednesday, he confirmed he has received his acceptance letter from the Amaury Sport Organisation to take part in the 2025 race.

While 2025 will be his first time competing at Dakar, he previously ran the 2022 edition as a crew member for the SSV of fellow Lithuanian Tomas Jančys who finished sixteenth in class. The experience inspired Paulavičius to set racing it on a bike as his next goal, already well established on two wheels as a three-time Lithuanian Enduro Champion who has competed in events like the Red Bull Erzbergrodeo and Red Bull Romaniacs.

Paulavičius made his rally raid début at the 2022 Fenix Rally in Tunisia, where he finished sixth. The following year, he entered the World Rally-Raid Championship‘s Rallye du Maroc and finished forty-third in Rally2 (twenty-third among Road to Dakar registrants) with a best stage run of thirty-fourth on the opening leg; he fell twice during the second stage and unknowingly ran the full distance with COVID-19, which a team member also tested positive for though neither realised until after their return to Lithuania.

He effectivel yclinched his Dakar ticket with a sixteenth in class at the W2RC’s Abu Dhabi Desert Challenge in February and March. Riding for DUUST Rally Team, he notched three top-twenty stage finishes including a fifteenth on the final day despite a malfunctioning gearbox.

In early July, shortly before the ASO began accepting Dakar riders, Paulavičius was the co-driver for Ignas Udra at the Rallye Breslau in Poland. The duo finished twelfth in SSV.

Andrew Houlihan is set to make his return to the Dakar Rally in 2025 after three years away from the race. He received his acceptance letter from the Amaury Sport Organisation last week.

Houlihan intends to compete in the Original by Motul class, a subcategory of Rally2 for riders without assistance from teams.

He made his Dakar début in 2021, where he finished fiftieth overall. He returned in 2022 following a tumultuous year in which many of his scheduled races and even his trip to Saudi Arabia for the race were impacted by COVID-19; however, his second attempt ended halfway.

Despite hopes to run the Dakar for five straight years, Houlihan did not take part in the 2023 edition. Nevertheless, he remained involved by competing in the FIM Bajas World Cup where he finished sixth in points and runner-up for the Veterans Trophy; he had led the latter, reserved for riders over the age of 45, before a ruptured quadricep tendon sidelined him for the final two races which allowed Pedro Bianchi Prata to leapfrog him for the title.

He began the 2024 season by finishing ninth at the Saudi Baja; Houlihan elected to enter the race at the last minute after being cleared by doctors. This was followed by a seventeenth at the Baja TT Dehesa Extremadura.

The AG Dakar School in Lithuania has produced another Dakar Rally-bound graduate. On Wednesday, Gediminas Satkus confirmed he has been accepted for the 2025 edition, marking his first foray into the legendary race.

Satkus qualified with a nineteenth in Rally2 at the Abu Dhabi Desert Challenge in March, where he overcame a battery failure at the midway point to notch a best run of sixteenth in Stage #4. It was his second time running the ADDC after an eighteenth in class in the 2023 edition.

Between ADDCs, he entered the fellow World Rally-Raid Championship round Rallye du Maroc but retired after crashing in Stage #3. 2023 also saw him compete in the Rallye Breslau in Poland, where fell off his bike early on yet managed to reach the finish.

Outside of rally raid, Satkus competes in enduro including the Red Bull Romaniacs in 2022 He also works as a managing director for mineral supplier Minterra FZE in the United Arab Emirates.

AG Dakar School is run by Arūnas Gelažninkas, a two-time winner of the Dakar’s Original by Motul (Malle Moto) subcategory. At the 2024 Dakar in January, he was the co-driver for his wife Emilija Gelažninkienė in the SSV category. The school also prepared a bike for Modestas Siliunas in the race, but his maiden Dakar ended after eight legs.

Although he and his Palestinian compatriots did not repeat the domination of the season opener in February, Hussein Sheiokhi was still more than happy to secure a third-place overall finish in the second round of the Jordan 4×4 Championship. The race was held Friday at Wasfi Al-Tal Forest in Amman.

He and co-driver Mohammed Baghdadi piloted a Jeep Wrangler, finishing third outright and in the Pro category behind Thabet and Mohammed Mheirat and Raad Azmaf and Islam Al-Dawaimeh. The Mheirats and Azmaf/Al-Dawaimeh raced Toyota Hiluxes, making Sheiokhi the best performing non-Hilux and one of two non-Toyotas to score a podium that day alongside the Jeep Grand Cherokee of Amateur class winner Khaled Sowan.

The twenty-eight teams were naturally heavily Jordanian, with Sheiokhi and Baghdadi representing Palestine alongside the Kia Sorento of Amjad and Imad Hanneh, Mohammed Hananah and Mohammed Abu Al-Asal (Toyota Land Cruiser), and Yousef and Samer Qaraira (Jeep Wrangler). Kuwait also had a team courtesy of Suleiman Al-Khudairi and Rakan Hammad.

Palestinians swept the top four at the championship’s first race in February when Emad Khabeis led Hazem Foudeh, Wisam Khalileh, and Hananah. Sheyoukhi finished eighth in that race.

“Alhamdulillah (‘Praise be to God’), we got third place in the race in the second round of the 4×4 Challenge,” said Sheiokhi. “It was more than a wonderful race.

Wyatt Miller will try a slightly different form of dirt racing from what he’s used to this weekend when he makes his short course off-road début at the Dirt City Off-Road National at Dirt City Motorplex. He will drive the #73 for Ryan Beat Motorsports in the Pro SPEC class.

Miller is a fourth-generation racer from the legendary Earnhardt family, the son of L.W. Miller and Kelley Earnhardt Miller and the nephew of Dale Earnhardt Jr. Despite only being twelve years old, he has already established himself as a rising star in dirt track racing as a two-time champion at Millbridge Speedway. He mainly competes in micro sprint cars as well as in Legends cars and outlaw karts.

In December, Miller won the Restricted Micro A-Class feature at the Tulsa Shootout, capping off a year that saw him win twenty times across seven stages. His car is prepared by Chad Boat, a former NASCAR driver and dirt racer, and under the family-run JR Motorsports banner.

R/BM currently fields a Pro 2 truck for owner Ryan Beat, Pro Lite trucks for Carson Brown and Carson Parrish, and a Pro SPEC for Christopher Parrish. The team won the 2022 Pro SPEC title with Gray Leadbetter, while Christopher Parrish—who also competes in the Ligier JS F4 Series—currently sits fourth in Pro SPEC points with three wins.

Dirt City is the fifth round of the 2024 Championship Off-Round season.

With the Hungarian Baja set to celebrate its twenty-first year in August, race organiser Zoltán Garamvölgyi wants to make something more “varied and special”. Much of the race takes place in the town of Várpalota, particularly at the Hungarian Defence Forces Bakony Combat Training Centre.

Located right by the Bakony mountain range, Bakony CTC is used by the HDF and Hungary’s NATO allies who frequently partake in joint exercises that include armoured warfare and paratrooper operations. It boasts the largest military shooting range and training area in Central Europe, spanning 251 square kilometres across three fields dubbed “A”, “B”, and “C”. “A” field, which is 87 km2 in size, is typically used for non-live fire exercises while “B” (100 km2) and “C” (64 km2) are both for battalion- and company-level practices and artillery impact areas. These elements mean competitors race across hard and rocky, yet technical, terrain that is burnt out from artillery strikes and past destroyed vehicles like tanks.

Garamvölgyi hopes to put those 251 km2 to good use. The 2024 route spans 550 kilometres, 410 of which are timed Selective Sections with 250 km on the first stage and 160 km the next. The bulk of it consists of a loop that was last used in 2009. Thury Castle in Várpalota serves as the rally’s main hub.

“We want to recapture areas that were part of the programme in the early days. The shooting range is one such area that we can join hands to use—a huge thank you to the Ministry of Defence,” Garamvölgyi stated. “We can provide a special route for the riders, but we still can’t compete with the Portuguese and Spanish organisers in terms of lines, but perhaps that’s not our aim. We have been doing it to the best of our ability for more than two decades, and we can be justifiably proud of that, and we will continue to do so.

“It is still very important to draw attention to the fact that the public and the press may only enter the areas and points designated by us, in compliance with the security rules. The competition area is mostly military territory, so anyone who breaks the rules is risking the future of the Hungarian Baja. Breaking the rules can have very serious consequences either for the competition or for those who are caught, whether by the police, the military, or our security people.”

Carl Searles and his brother Craig Searles will have to wait another year before racing the Dakar Rally together. On Saturday, they were informed by the Amaury Sport Organisation that their applications for the 2025 race were rejected due to insufficient desert rally experience. Told they needed just one more start before the organisers were willing to greenlight them, they will now focus on the 2026 rally.

“Unfortunately, they’ve not given us an entry for this year, but the phone call was really positive,” began Craig Searles. “They were happy with our story, happy with our result in the Rally de Maroc. They said our pace was good, so they congratulated us on that one. Unfortunately, we haven’t got in this time, but they said if we could get one more rally done, then our entry is pretty much there for 2026.”

The brothers made their World Rally-Raid Championship débuts at the Rallye du Maroc last October with the goal of qualifying for the 2025 Dakar. Carl finished fifty-third overall in Rally2 while Craig was fifty-eighth, and they were respectively twenty-ninth and thirty-third among Road to Dakar entrants. The Road to Dakar grants free registration to the best performing rider with no prior Dakar experience.

Carl’s race began when the thumb toggle switch for his roadbook malfunctioned sixty kilometres before the end of the opening stage (an issue that prompted an ASO comment to reassure riders that the system was functional) while Craig crashed, forcing them to work until 2 AM the next morning to repair their bikes. The two rode together at first before eventually focusing on their own races for the second half onwards, which paid off for Carl when he scored a best stage finish of fortieth in Stage #3. Craig’s Sentinel alarm button glitched during Stage #4, but he managed to notch his highest placement of fifty-seventh.

Morocco marked their first rally raid. The two are primarily motocross riders and instructors at the BMW Off Road Skills school in Wales, while also working at the family-run Liquitech Ltd water treatment company.

Daniel Ricciardo was left frustrated after the 2024 Hungarian Grand Prix, and called Visa Cash App RB after a strategy call that lost him a chance of fighting in the points.

Ricciardo has been in excellent form all weekend in Budapest, showing pace in practice before reaching Q3 and out-qualifying his teammate to start ninth on the grid. The Australian needs to do well before the summer break, with rumours about his future with RB as well a chance of potentially even returning to Oracle Red Bull Racing in place of Sergio Pérez, who had another messy weekend.

When asked after the race by F1TV what he thought of the strategy calls, Ricciardo didn’t hold back on what he made of the decisions: “You know this isn’t the thing to do but you get the call late and there’s no time to question it because if you miss a lap it’s even worse. 

“As soon as I pulled on, the cars on softs had boxed, we’re on the medium, let’s go and use the clear air we’ve got but then we come out in traffic, in a drs train and all on the same tyre.

“It was one of the worst ones I’ve had in 250 something races. It was a long old frustrating race, where I had a lot of anger.”

Oscar Piastri was delighted to secure his first Formula 1 victory, leading a McLaren F1 Team 1-2 at the 2024 Hungarian Grand Prix.

Piastri was impressive throughout the 70-lap race, taking the lead from his teammate, Lando Norris, on the first lap of the race. The Australian then controlled the race from that point onwards, before some drama at the end that saw team orders come into place between himself and Norris.

McLaren had pitted Norris earlier than Piastri on the second round of pitstops meaning the Brit was ahead of him after the undercut. Norris’ race engineer, Will Joseph made it very clear that they needed to swap positions and after some back-and-forth between the pair, Norris finally followed the team orders to let Piastri through for his first win.

“This is really the day I dreamed of as a kid, standing on the top step of an F1 podium.

“Obviously a bit complicated at the end but I put myself in the right position at the start, and thank you to the team for an amazing effort, and amazing car.