Motorsports Racing News & Blog Articles

With the 2023 season looming, NASCAR has made various changes to its competition department. Most notably, former driver Elton Sawyer will assume the role of Senior Vice President of Competition, which entails overseeing all on-track activities, inspection, and officiating across the Cup, Xfinity, and Craftsman Truck Series.

Sawyer was a longtime veteran of the Xfinity Series, racing from 1983 to 2002 with two wins and multiple top-five points finishes. After ending his driving career, he remained involved in racing as the competition director of Team Red Bull and Evernham Motorsports. He was hired by NASCAR in 2015 as the Truck Series’ managing director before taking over as the head of technical inspection.

“I have been a proud member of this extraordinary team for eight years, and I look forward to continuing to help grow the outstanding competition we’ve seen over the last several seasons,” Sawyer stated. “NASCAR racing has been my life for decades. I have a deep passion for the sport, and am honored to be in a position to help shepherd the competition team during these exciting times.”

Sawyer replaces Scott Miller, who has worked for NASCAR since 2015. Miller will remain involved as Competition Strategist, focusing on developing major events.

NASCAR also promoted John Probst to Chief Racing Development Officer and a trio of Eric Jacuzzi, John Patalak, and Brandon Thomas to Vice President roles within the competition team. Jacuzzi will be the Vice President of Vehicle Performance, while Patalak and Thomas are the VP of Safety Engineering and VP of Vehicle Design, respectively.

Chandler Smith is still preparing for his rookie year in the NASCAR Xfinity Series, but his Kaulig Racing team wants him to get some action in NASCAR’s highest level too. On Wednesday, the team announced he will attempt to make his Cup Series début in the season-opening Daytona 500, driving a newly opened #13 Chevrolet Camaro ZL1 with sponsorship from Quick Tie.

He will also enter the Cup race at Richmond Raceway (2 April), the NASCAR All-Star Race at North Wilkesboro Speedway (21 May), the fall Talladega Superspeedway event (1 October), and the season finale at Phoenix Raceway (5 November). As the #13 does not have a charter, he will need to make every race on qualifying if the entry list exceeds forty, while he can also lock himself into the 500 grid via Duel performance.

“This is a dream come true for me,” said Smith. “As a kid, you always have the goal of one day racing in the Cup Series. I’m hoping that comes true in this year’s Daytona 500. I’m thankful for Harvel Crumley and Quick Tie for the opportunity to run in multiple Cup races this year, and I’m beyond appreciative in the belief that Matt Kaulig and Chris Rice have in me.”

A former Toyota development driver, Smith moved to Kaulig for 2023 after two strong seasons in the Truck Series for Kyle Busch Motorsports, who has also switched to Chevrolet. After winning two races and Rookie of the Year in 2021, he scored three victories and qualified for the 2022 Championship Round where he placed third in points. He also won the 2022 regular season championship.

“Chris and I knew who we had in Chandler when we brought him into our team fold at the end of last year,” commented Kaulig. “He made such an splash on the Craftsman Truck Series in the last couple years. We have the utmost confidence in his full-time Xfinity Series run this year, and with Quick Tie, we think he will turn some heads in his Cup Series starts.”

A day after Kevin Harvick committed to the Superstar Racing Experience, the series announced a pair of his NASCAR Cup Series peers will also make their débuts. Clint Bowyer will race against him at Stafford Motor Speedway on 13 July, followed by separate starts at Motor Mile Speedway on 27 July and Lucas Oil Speedway on 17 August. Kyle Busch will also run Motor Mile before taking on Harvick at Berlin Raceway on 3 August.

Bowyer and Harvick were team-mates at Stewart-Haas Racing, co-owned by SRX founder Tony Stewart, from 2017 to 2020. While Bowyer has not raced at a major level since, he remained involved with the Cup Series as a commentator for FOX Sports.

Busch, the 2015 and 2019 Cup champion, departed Joe Gibbs Racing after a decorated tenure for Richard Childress Racing, incidentally the same team with whom Harvick began his Cup career. He and Harvick will run the Berlin round three days before the Cup race at Michigan International Speedway. Motor Mile is the same weekend as the Cup Series at Richmond Raceway, both located in Virginia.

“I’ve been working with everyone at SRX trying to get one of their races on my schedule the last couple seasons and things didn’t work out, so when they announced they were having weeknight races in close proximity to a couple races on the Cup schedule, SRX and I immediately got together to plan something for this year,” Busch told the Associated Press.

The series also announced Wednesday the return of Hélio Castroneves, who finished fifth in the 2021 standings and won the 2022 season opener at Five Flags. Castroneves, a four-time Indianapolis 500 winner, is placing most of his emphasis on the 2023 NTT IndyCar Series.

Otmar Szafnauer has revealed that he talked with Colton Herta about a potential move to the FIA Formula 1 World Championship in a bid to get Scuderia AlphaTauri to release Pierre Gasly from his contract.

When Fernando Alonso opted to leave the BWT Alpine F1 Team to replace the retiring Sebastian Vettel at the Aston Martin Aramco Cognizant Formula 1 Team, Oscar Piastri was expected to join Esteban Ocon at the Enstone-based squad.  However, the Australian decided to join the McLaren F1 Team instead, leaving a vacancy at Alpine for the 2023 season.

After being pushed back by AlphaTauri Team Principal Franz Tost, talks with Red Bull advisor Helmut Marko opened Szafnauer’s eyes that Gasly was a possibility should they find a suitable replacement for the Frenchman, and he made contact with Herta and his father Bryan about possibly leaving the NTT IndyCar Series.

Herta was heavily linked with a move to Formula 1 for the 2023 season only to be denied by the lack of a Superlicence, with the seat alongside Yuki Tsunoda ultimately going to Nyck de Vries.  But Szafnauer’s talks with Marko eventually led to Gasly joining Alpine.

“I called Franz [Tost] to say can you release him? And Franz said no. And so I said, ‘well, great. I’m glad you said that’,” Szafnauer is quoted as saying by Motorsport.com.  

Pat Symonds believes Fernando Alonso still has the ability to win races in the FIA Formula 1 World Championship despite the Spaniard going almost ten years without standing on the top step of the podium.

Alonso’s last victory came whilst driving for Scuderia Ferrari in the 2013 Spanish Grand Prix, with his career since then having taken him to a lacklustre McLaren Honda team as well as the BWT Alpine F1 Team, either side of a two-year spell away from Formula 1 where he raced in the FIA World Endurance Championship with Toyota Gazoo Racing.

For 2023, Alonso will make the switch to the Aston Martin Aramco Cognizant Formula 1 Team, but Symonds, the current Chief Technical Officer of Formula 1 and part of the Renault F1 Team that helped the Spaniard win two consecutive Drivers’ Championships in 2005 and 2006, believes he still has what it takes to return to winning ways if given the car to do so.

“Yeah, in the right car, I think he is,” Symonds is quoted as saying by PlanetF1.com at the Autosport International show.  “You know, he is in his early 40s, [but] we’ve got such a spectrum now.

“An 18-year-old could get in the car and drive as [Lance] Stroll did, as indeed [Max] Verstappen did, right through into the 40s.  Because the cars are not terribly physical to drive in terms of upper body strength and things, you still need a reasonable amount, but you know, [there is] power steering. You need to be able to resist the G forces, but if you keep training, you can do that.

The battle for the 2023 Dakar Rally‘s T4 was a tale of two drivers with different backgrounds. In one corner was Rokas Baciuška, the reigning World Rally-Raid Champion now receiving support from SSV powerhouses Red Bull and Can-Am. He faced off against Eryk Goczał, an eighteen-year-old Polish drifting champion with limited cross-country rally experience who just received his driving licence in October. Despite his youth, Goczał proved age matters little as he became the youngest stage and overall winner in Dakar Rally history.

Their duel came down to the fourteenth and final stage, when Baciuška entered with a lead of three minutes and twenty-four seconds over Goczał. However, a broken driveshaft in the closing stretch killed Baciuška’s chances for good as Goczał drove off to win by sixteen minutes.

“I just wanted to be at the finish line in this début start, and we’ve won the rally,” posted Goczał on social media. “It’s been an incredibly difficult rally. Two days ago we’ve made very difficult decision about our strategy. I’m so grateful to my family – to my dad and uncle – about how they helped us. They just put us in the first place and done everything that we could win. And it payed off.”

Baciuška seemed to draw first blood by winning the Prologue and Stage #1, but a fifteen-minute penalty in the latter promoted Goczał to the top spot. Fellow teenager Pau Navarro finished second ahead of Goczał’s uncle Michal Goczał, who is nearly twice his age.

Eryk’s father Marek Goczał, who had the 2022 T4 championship slip away after crashing in the final round in Andalucía, took the second stage. All three family members would win a leg with Eryk notching four, Marek two, and Michal one. By the end, Marek was third behind his son and Baciuška while Michal placed seventh.

Jaguar TCS Racing Team Principal James Barclay has confirmed that the side will “address” the technical issues they experienced at the season-opening Mexico City E-Prix, after the team endured a challenging start to the 2022/23 ABB FIA Formula E World Championship.

The Gen3 era certainly didn’t start how the British team would’ve liked it to at the Autódromo Hermanos Rodríguez, after Sam Bird‘s weekend was ridiculed by technical issues. The Formula E veteran missed the vast majority of Free Practice Two after his Jaguar I-TYPE 6 grinded to a halt. His weekend didn’t get much better from there, after qualifying in twenty-first before retiring from the race on the fifth-lap, after suffering an outbound drive shaft failure. Overall, it was a weekend to forget for the British driver.

For Mitch Evans, it was a better weekend; however, it still wasn’t what the New Zealander would’ve been hoping for. Evans missed out on the duels by the finest of margins, before going on to make up two places in the race from where he started. It meant the Season Eight Vice Champion finished in eighth-place, meaning he at least got some points to get his and the team’s tally’s underway.

Reflecting on the weekend, Barclay believes there are “some positives” which can be taken away from it, with the main one being that the car’s overall performance looked promising. Jaguar’s Team Principal recognises, though, that they do have some issues to fix quickly, with the Diriyah E-Prix being next weekend.

“It’s been a mixed race for us here in Mexico City with some positives but also some areas we need to address. The Jaguar I-TYPE 6 has demonstrated it has strong performance both in one lap, race pace and efficiency. This was evident with three Jaguar powered cars in the top ten points scoring positions. We experienced some issues which we will work hard to address ahead of the next race in Saudi Arabia to keep making progress.”

It certainly wasn’t the start to Season Nine nor Gen3 that Mitch Evans would’ve been hoping for, after Jaguar TCS Racing struggled at the season-opening race of the 2022/23 ABB FIA Formula E World Championship.

It was a weekend of surprises at the Mexico City E-Prix, as all the powertrain suppliers bar the TAG Heuer Porsche Formula E Team struggled at the Autódromo Hermanos Rodríguez. Evans never looked truly comfortable during Free Practice, something that was highlighted in qualifying after the Season Eight Vice Champion failed to make it to the duels.

Evans started the first race of the Gen3 era in tenth place, after missing out on the duels by just five hundredths of a second. The race itself certainly wasn’t an eventful one by the all-electric series standards, with Evans having battled from tenth to claim eighth at the season opener, securing at least some points. Scoring points consistently is likely to be a huge factor this season, meaning his eighth-place finish could end up coming in handy come the end of the season.

Understandably, the New Zealander was “hoping for a little more” from the race, after being impressed by the Jaguar I-TYPE 6’s “great efficiency”.

I was hoping for a little more today as my Jaguar I-TYPE 6 had great efficiency which is really promising. I lacked a little balance which meant I couldn’t do as much with the energy advantage as I would have liked. I made some positions and scored some points today and we needed that as a team. We’ll come back stronger over the next few races.”

Sébastian Buemi made a strong start to life as an Envision Racing driver, after the Swiss driver finished sixth at the season-opening race of the 2022/23 ABB FIA Formula E World Championship.

The former Formula E Champion showed promising pace throughout the Mexico City E-Prix, which resulted in the former Nissan Formula E Team driver making it safely into the duels. He was unfortunately knocked out in the Quarter-Finals after being beaten by eventual polesitter Lucas di Grassi, resulting in a fourth-row start for the experienced driver.

Buemi lost a place early on in the race at the Autódromo Hermanos Rodríguez, but shortly regained seventh after overtaking rookie Sacha Fenestraz. The Swiss driver was soon back behind Fenestraz and António Félix da Costa, though, after activating his Attack Mode, before battling back past the two drivers. This moved Buemi into sixth rather than seventh, after Dan Ticktum dropped from fifth to last after serving a penalty. Buemi pushed hard to reduce the gap to the top five, something he brilliantly did.

He ended looking behind rather than forwards, though, as Da Costa tried to force a move on Envision’s newest signing. In the end, Buemi had to settle for sixth, leaving the driver with mixed emotions. Whilst Buemi was “really happy” to score some solid points, he left the weekend believing that the result could’ve been “slightly better”.

“My first weekend with Envision Racing and the GEN3 era, and I am really happy with sixth place. I think we actually could have achieved a slightly better result, and we finished the race with a lot of energy remaining, and we had good pace.

After winning the 2022 Dakar Rally in the T4 category, Austin Jones made the jump to T3 for the 2023 race. It did not take long for him to get accustomed to his new environment as he kept fellow American Red Bull driver Seth Quintero at bay en route to the overall win.

Jones is the sixth racer to win an overall in at least two different classes and the second to achieve it in T4 and T3, which are both SSV/UTV classes but the latter are racing-specific while T4s are production models. Defending World Rally-Raid Champion Francisco López Contardo, who finished fifth, won the 2019 and 2021 T4 crowns followed by T3 in 2022. Other multi-class winners include Hubert Auriol (twice on Bikes, 1992 in Cars), Nani Roma (2004 on Bikes, 2014 in Cars), Josef Macháček (2009 on Quads, 2021 in T3), and Stéphane Peterhansel (six on Bikes, eight in Cars).

T3 and T4 are typically dominated by Red Bull, who has a new factory programme courtesy of Can-Am, and this remained the case in 2023 as the Red Bull Can-Am Factory Team and Red Bull Off-Road Junior Team won all but four stages. The American-only Junior Team, which consists of Jones and Quintero plus Mitch Guthrie in an MCE-5 T3M, combined for eight victories; although Guthrie led the way with five wins, mechanical problems during Stage #5 while being the overall leader eliminated him from contention and relegated him to twenty-third.

Red Bull drivers nearly occupied the entire top five, with former Red Bull Factory member (though still affiliated with the brand) Guillaume de Mévius spoiling the party by finishing third with a stage win. De Mévius had led much of the Rally since taking the top spot from Guthrie before vehicle trouble in Stage #11 enabled Jones to surpass him. The Junior Team drivers and de Mévius finished ahead of the Factory Team’s Cristina Gutiérrez and López.

After winning a Dakar record twelve stages in 2022, Quintero only claimed two in 2023, though factors like a disastrous Stage #4 in which he lost power steering and ran out of fuel twice hampered him. By the end, he finished runner-up to Jones by nearly an hour but is satisfied with second as “to finally drive through every stage of the Dakar feels amazing.” His twenty career T3 stage wins still have him in a league of his own as Guthrie holds the second most in the class with just five.

Guenther Steiner has praised the way that the FIA Formula 1 World Championship has become more transparent since Liberty Media took over and Stefano Domenicali became CEO.

Liberty Media took over the control of Formula 1 ahead of the 2017 season after buying out long-term owner Bernie Ecclestone, and they have introduced widespread changes to the sport to try and make it more open and available to everyone.

Domenicali’s appointment as CEO has also received a lot of positive feedback, and Steiner, the Team Principal of the MoneyGram Haas F1 Team, says the sport feels a lot more inclusive now than in the past with everyone being more informed of what’s going on behind the scenes.

“I think they are different. Definitely, they are different,” said Steiner to the Beyond the Grid podcast. “Everybody’s included.

“Before with Bernie, the big teams always had a little bit of an advantage, but it’s for a good reason. They’re putting more into the sport that they are supplying power units and stuff like this.

Kevin Harvick‘s retirement tour will take him to a series that detractors like to call a retirement tour. On Tuesday, the Superstar Racing Experience announced Harvick will make his debut in the 2023 season opener at Stafford Motor Speedway on 13 July. He will also run the Berlin Raceway round on 3 August.

“NEWS: We’re happy,” begins SRX’s social media announcement. “Kevin Harvick will join SRX for the season opener at Stafford Speedway on July 13th and Berlin Raceway on August 3rd.”

Harvick is set for his twenty-fourth and final season as a full-time NASCAR Cup Series driver. The 2014 series champion has raced for Stewart-Haas Racing since said year; the team is co-owned by SRX operator and inaugural champion Tony Stewart.

The Stafford round takes place three days before the Cup race at New Hampshire Motor Speedway approximately 225.308 kilometres away. Berlin and Michigan International Speedway are also roughly the same distance apart. Making scheduling easier is SRX’s move to Thursday nights as part of the series’ new broadcasting deal with ESPN, giving Harvick plenty of time to prepare for his main championship afterwards.

“I’ve watched the SRX Series the last couple of years and it looked like a lot of fun,” Harvick told ESPN’s Ryan McGee. “With the way the schedule worked out, it wasn’t very convenient with my schedule, but this year with it being on Thursdays it was easy to coordinate.

Max Verstappen says the results of 2022 FIA Formula 1 World Championship season proved that if a team can get their interpretations of the technical regulations correct then success will come, and those that did not will always be playing catch up.

The Oracle Red Bull Racing team were one of the few teams to get their car right during the 2022 season, and they were rewarded by taking seventeen of the twenty-two victories available, fifteen of which went the way of the Dutchman as he claimed his second World Drivers’ Championship.

Verstappen says the time it took Red Bull to catch up with the Mercedes-AMG Petronas Formula One Team in the years up to the regulation change of last year highlights the need to be on top of their game quickly, but those teams that struggled in 2022 are still likely to be trying to catch up with their development in 2023.

“You see this when the regulations change and some teams hit it spot on,” said Verstappen to Viaplay, as quoted by RacingNews365.com.  “Once you hit it spot on and you know what you are doing, you more or less work from there and you make small steps [forward].

“But when you get it wrong, you really have to reinvent and try again and you’re always behind and then you have to try and catch up. You saw that with us in that it took a few years [to challenge Mercedes].

After running the full 2022 season, Timmy Hill will share a truck with his younger brother Tyler for the 2023 NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series. On Tuesday, Hill Motorsports announced the #5 Toyota Tundra TRD Pro has been shuttered and they will exclusively focus on the #56 split between the brothers.

The team opened the #5 for Tyler to run part-time in 2022. He failed to qualify at Circuit of the Americas and RIchmond, but made seven races with a best finish of twenty-first at Kansas.

Meanwhile, Timmy contested the full calendar in the #56. Created in 2019, the truck ran the entire 2020 and 2021 schedules with a rotation of drivers before Timmy became its permanent driver for 2022. However, the truck took a step back in all statistical categories as it did not record a single top ten. The older Hill finished twentieth in points with his highest run being fourteenth in the opener at Daytona.

“It’s exciting to finally have our plans set for 2023 in the NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series,” said Timmy. “After a year of running two trucks we felt it was best to return to one truck and focus on getting our competitiveness where we expect it to be. I have high hopes for the season and what we can accomplish.”

Timmy will pilot the #56 at Daytona on 17 February.

NASCAR Cup Series fans have quickly taken a liking to Trackhouse Racing Team‘s PROJECT91, a programme intended to bring international racing stars to the sport, especially after a generally successful début with Kimi Räikkönen in 2022. However, they will have to wait a little longer to see the #91 Chevrolet Camaro ZL1 in action.

Despite initial hope of the #91 entering the season-opening Daytona 500, Marks tweeted Tuesday that it will not take place and the car will instead continue to run road course races. Consequently, only full-timers Ross Chastain (#1) and Daniel Suárez (#99) will represent the team in the 500.

“We took a hard look at the Daytona 500 with @THProject91 but at the end of the day decided to focus on the road courses and the 1/99 @ Daytona,” said Marks. “We have some exciting P91 stuff being finalized.”

The #91’s first race at Watkins Glen International came with much fanfare as Räikkönen is one of the most popular drivers in racing today. Although the race ended in a crash, the 2007 Formula One World Champion did not rule out a return in the future, and Marks backed him up in November by saying he “operate(s) under the assumption that it’s kind of [Kimi’s] ride until he tells me otherwise.”

While Räikkönen has not confirmed any starts for 2023, three-time and reigning Supercars Champion Shane van Gisbergen revealed in September that he had talked with Marks about potentially racing the #91 if there is no schedule clash. There are six road races on the upcoming Cup schedule: Circuit of the Americas on 26 March, Sonoma Raceway on 11 June, the Chicago Street Race on 2 July, Indianapolis Motor Speedway on 13 August, Watkins Glen on 20 August, and the Charlotte Motor Speedway Roval on 8 October.