Motorsports Racing News & Blog Articles

2024 has been a year to remember for Botswana. In August, Letsile Tebogo won the country’s maiden gold medal at the Summer Olympics in the men’s 200-metre sprint. Two months later, Ross Branch claimed the World Rally-Raid Championship in the RallyGP category.

Despite not winning a race and being the only rider in the class to attempt all five W2RC rounds, Branch was consistent and avoided serious mistakes throughout the season. His rivals from Monster Energy Honda Rally Team dominated the races they entered, winning three of the first four rounds, enabling them to quickly close the gap on the leader. Entering the season-ending Rallye du Maroc, Branch led Honda’s Ricky Brabec by just nine points and Adrien Van Beveren by sixteen.

Branch drew first blood when he finished runner-up to Honda’s Tosha Schareina in the Prologue but ahead of Brabec by three seconds. That ended up being the only strike he needed as Brabec hurt his tibia on a hard landing in Stage #1, ending his title hopes, while Branch scored the stage win.

Van Beveren was the only other rider with a mathematical chance at the championship, but needed Branch to retire as well while he placed second or won. He technically achieved this goal by finishing fourth overall but runner-up among points-earning riders behind Schareina, though the Branch exit never occurred.

“It’s important for me to finish with a good feeling like that just in time for Dakar,” said Van Beveren. “It’s the fourth year in a row that I’m on the podium of the World Rally-Raid Championship: I’ve been runner up twice, in third twice, so I want to keep my dream alive and take that top spot. Ross did a really good job, he’s been consistent so he deserved the title.”

The highly anticipated Dacia Sandrider had a début for the ages when Nasser Al-Attiyah and Sébastien Loeb finished 1–2 at the Rallye du Maroc, the former clinching his third consecutive World Rally-Raid Championship in the process.

Al-Attiyah entered the season finale with a 25-point advantage over Yazeed Al-Rajhi. He ran every round prior to Morocco in the Prodrive Hunter before switching to the Sandrider, Prodrive’s newest rally project and Renault’s return to the discipline (a Hunter was still present in Morocco with Marcos Baumgart, who narrowly missed the top ten by two and a half minutes).

While Al-Attiyah led the charge in his title pursuit, there were growing pains among his fellow Sandriders. Disaster almost struck Loeb from the start when the former crashed into a ditch in the Prologue. Cristina Gutiérrez narrowly avoided the same fate, but a mechanical failure in Stage #3 knocked her out of contention.

Fortunately for Loeb, Prologue times do not count towards the final result for FIA categories, and he eventually regained his footing with two stage wins. At the front, Al-Attiyah claimed Stage #1 and never lost the overall lead as he finished on the stage podium in four of five days, with a sixth on the last day to cap off his title.

Al-Rajhi won the penultimate leg, but had to make up over twenty-one minutes on the last day to have a shot. Obviously an impossible task unless Al-Attiyah retired, he ended up finishing fifteenth in Stage #5 to settle for second in points as he did in 2023.

Despite being a newcomer to the race and not having been on Corsica in two decades, Julien Saunier claimed the Tour de Corse Historique in dominant fashion.

Driving a Porsche 911 with Frédéric Vauclare as co-driver, Saunier took the early lead after the first day. He battled with Tom Pieri‘s BMW X3 throughout the race, the two comprising the top positions for all seventeen Selective Sections. Saunier ultimately took the upper hand in each of the final four legs to pull away with a total time of 3:59:26. Pieri settled for second and less than a minute back at 4:00:11.

“I didn’t know the car or the rally, and I hadn’t returned to the island since competing in the 2005 Corte Rally, but we prepared well with meticulous reconnaissance,” said Saunier. “The secret of our victory lies largely in Frédéric’s incredibly precise notes. He even identified where water might flow in case of rain, and that’s exactly what happened. He coached me on when to push or hold back. Our victory is sixty percent his.

“It’s extraordinary because I’ve dreamed of participating in the Tour de Corse Historique for a long time. It’s a legendary rally.”

Jos Verstappen finished twentieth in his historic rally début. The former F1 driver ran as high as eighth, but an oil leak in his Porsche during Stage #3 dropped him down the order. While a sour note, Verstappen has expressed interest in returning for the 2025 edition.

The 2024 United States Grand Prix kicks off the final quarter of the Formula 1 season with plenty of drama surrounding the sport.

Following Lando Norris‘ impressive triumph at the 2024 Singapore Grand Prix, the sport has taken almost a month’s break and return for the final stretch of an exciting and thrilling season. Norris’ win at Marina Bay closed the gap to Championship leader Max Verstappen even further leaving the margin at just 52 points for the final six rounds.

It’s not only the Drivers Championship that is a big topic of conversation, McLaren F1 Team took the lead of the Constructors Championship at the 2024 Azerbaijan Grand Prix and now have a 41 point buffer to Oracle Red Bull Racing in second and with the Milton Keynes based squad struggling to find performance in their car, it could be another big points haul for Norris and McLaren.

One of the big storylines going into the weekend is Red Bull’s upgrade, which may see them correct their wrong development direction, although it’s not guarantee that it’ll fix the issues that Verstappen and Sergio Pérez have been facing since Miami. It may bring them closer to McLaren, which is a boost for Verstappen’s Championship hopes, especially after Daniel Ricciardo’s fastest lap on the last lap ensured that the Dutchman could beat Norris to the Championship by finishing second to the Brit in every remaining race. Red Bull will have less time to test their upgrade with just the one practice session in Texas as the Sprint format returns for the first time since the Austrian Grand Prix.

Another big storyline is Ricciardo leaving Formula 1 for Liam Lawson. The 35-year-old was performing admirably for Visa Cash App RB, beating teammate Yuki Tsunoda in comfortable fashion since the 2024 Canadian Grand Prix but Red Bull have looked at the bigger picture, bringing in Lawson to evaluate him against Tsunoda for a seat alongside Verstappen. Lawson did well when he came in for Ricciardo after a wrist injury kept the latter out of action for a prolonged period but the pressure wasn’t as high then as it will be now with a 2025 contract on the line. It’s certainly something to keep an eye on, not just in Austin but for the rest of the season.

Although no longer sanctioned by the European Union, Nikita Mazepin will not be returning to Formula One anytime soon.

The sanctions were imposed in March 2022, shortly after the Russian invasion of Ukraine, as his father Dmitry Mazepin is an oligarch with close ties to President Vladimir Putin. Haas F1 Team, who had title sponsorship from the older Mazepin’s Uralkali during his son’s one-year stint in the series, fired him nine days into the full-scale war.

In March, the General Court overturned the penalties after ruling there was little reason to keep him sanctioned since he was no longer employed by Haas. Although Mazepin was considered a “natural person associated with a leading businessperson (his father) involved in economic sectors providing a substantial source of revenue to the Government of the Russian Federation, which is responsible for the annexation of Crimea and the destabilisation of Ukraine,” the Court also determined that simply being related to someone within Putin’s inner circle was insufficient reasoning to justify the sanctions.

Mazepin confirmed his removal from the EU’s sanctions on Wednesday. In a post to his social media, he expressed his relief at being cleared but added it is too late to consider an F1 return.

“It has been more than two long years, and the courts have rendered their decision in my favor,” he wrote. “Of course, I am elated. At the same time, I ask myself what was it all for – to be sanctioned at a vital point in my career, only to have the European court decide that it was all a giant mistake.  

A week after clinching the World Rally-Raid Championship in the Challenger class, Rokas Baciuška returned to Lithuania with a surprising rumour he overheard about the 2025 Dakar Rally:

“It’s interesting to see what will happen because I’ve heard that it might not take place due to the war, but these are just rumours. I believe the organisers will do everything to make it happen.”

Baciuška’s comment, which came after landing at Vilnius Airport on Tuesday, quickly sent the Lithuanian rally raid community into a frenzy. Delfi, a Baltic news outlet, got to work on approaching his fellow compatriots for their remarks. Generally, those they asked were taken aback but sceptical.

“This is the first time I’ve heard such a rumour, and I haven’t come across anything like it,” said Vaidotas Žala, who plans to enter the 2025 race in a truck. “There are probably such rumours every year, but I have no information on this. Our plans remain unchanged unless we receive some official information. Since I haven’t heard anything, either on the rumour level or officially, I have no reason to consider such a scenario.”

The Dakar Rally currently takes place in Saudi Arabia, which is a relatively stable country and unlikely to devolve into wars or be marred by security concerns, the latter of which was the main reason why the race no longer follows the original route through Africa. However, fighting in the Middle East has continued to boil over since October 2023 with the war between Israel and Hamas, which recently escalated to include a theatre in Lebanon. The Jordan Baja, part of the FIA World and Middle East Baja Cups, was cancelled in 2023 due to Jordan’s proximity to Israel and Palestine; the 2024 race is currently scheduled to proceed as usual on 28–30 November.

Serhii Malyk plans to make his return to the Dakar Classic in 2025, marking his second start in the race after débuting in 2022. He will drive a 1998 Renault Kerax D-50 truck under the team name Spirit of Ukraine.

Malyk is a land speed record holder with over forty world and national records to his name. In 2013, he became the first person to ride a motorbike along the entire border of Ukraine, piloting a KTM 950 over thirteen days. Many of his exploits came in his Formula 1600 car such as summiting Crimea’s Gora Ay Petri mountain in 2004, setting the country’s speed record for a formula car of 112 km/h on Sonyachne Lake in 2014, and even outrunning an L-29 Delfín plane in 2006.

Many of his world records were set at the Bonneville Salt Flats in Utah with vehicles from Ukraine. Malyk went 116.86 km/h on a KMZ Dneper motorcycle in 2017, which he followed up a year later with a 167.36-km/h run with a Dneper Electric bike. The latter was eventually used for a cross-country expedition in 2020 from the easternmost part of Ukraine in Rannia Zoria to Solomonovo on the opposite extreme nearly 1,700 kilometres away, then returned to Bonneville in 2021 to set the A Omega category’s world record of 172.55 km/h.

For 2019, the Kyiv Automoto Club (KMAMK) developed the Spirit of Ukraine, an electric bike that produces 300 kW of power on ninety-kilogram lithium/ion batteries, though inclement weather scrapped any potential runs. Spirit of Ukraine achieved a top speed of 201 km/h during a speed record test at Hostomel Airport in 2020.

In 2022, Malyk entered the Dakar Classic with the Renault Kerax. With fellow Ukrainians Lyubomyr Shumakov and Serhii Martovenko as navigator and mechanic, respectively, the team finished seventy-seventh overall and eleventh in the H1T class. Although the 2022 Classic was Malyk’s first Dakar, he had entered the 2008 Dakar Rally in a KrAZ-5233 VE assistance truck before it was cancelled; had the race taken place, he would have been among the first Ukrainians to participate in the Dakar alongside bike rider Vadim Pritulyak. Malyk and Pritulyak are good friends: the former has donated to buy stretchers for the SKARLAT 1000 side-by-side vehicle, which is used by Ukrainian troops for medevacking the wounded and for which Pritulyak is an ambassador, and bought merchandise to support his SKARLAT-XTRM Team that competed at the 2023 Rallye TT Cuenca with disabled war veterans.

On Thursday, the Fédération Internationale de Motocyclisme opened its new headquarters in Mies, Switzerland, located just across from the previous confines. Besides containing the sanctioning body’s day-to-day operations, the building also includes a museum and an “FIM Tech Lab”.

The opening of the new building coincides with the FIM’s 120th anniversary and the 40th of being based in Mies. The federation was founded in 1904 in France before moving to Switzerland in 1959, then heading to the canton of Vaud in 1994. The previous headquarters opened in 2016.

“The FIM is a living body made up of 121 National Federations, six Continental Unions and nearly 400 people who, every week, bring what I consider the best spectacle in the world to the millions of supporters globally,” said FIM president Jorge Viegas at the reveal. “I tried to have dreams, but achievable ones: dreams that give all those who are part of the FIM a positive vision for the future, and goals to attain that will give them a better experience of motorcycling as a project that attracts and motivates them.

“The new headquarters is just that: it’s a dream come true, but above all, it’s a project that allows all those working at FIM or for motorcycling around the world to benefit from a worthy home that meets their needs. The architecture is as dynamic and vibrant as the experience of riding a motorbike. It is full of transparency in line with my wishes for the FIM, it’s a building that breathes and makes us want to stay between its walls; finally, it’s a space where more dreams can come true in the future.”

According to FIM CEO Françoise Emery, the headquarters was first proposed by Viega “a little over three years ago” to account for the federation’s increasing size over the years. Since the turn of the millennium, FIM staff has grown by twenty-five percent, making a new, expanded building a sensible option.

Janey Lee and Kylie Walton will go from Monster Energy Girls to desert racers when they enter this weekend’s NORRA 500. They will race a Can-Am Maverick R in the Evolution Production Turbo UTV category.

Monster Energy Girls serve as promotional representatives for the energy drink, meaning they are present at virtually every sporting event sponsored by Monster in a capacity similar to race queens. Their responsibilities typically have them working a variety of roles, though there is some specialisation based on their interests. For example, Lee is primarily assigned to Professional Fighters League matches as an octagon girl while Walton does so for motocross and Monster Energy AMA Supercross Championship races, though there is overlap.

Lee’s first exposure to off-road racing came when she appeared in RECOIL, a video series by Monster Energy-sponsored truck racer BJ Baldwin. Since then, she has become an ambassador for Can-Am who assisted in promoting the Maverick R’s launch in 2023. Her husband Eric Lee has competed in races like the Mint 400, and will be an additional driver for Lee and Walton.

She revealed her interest in NORRA on an episode of the High Octane Hustle podcast in April, calling it “a great intro for me. It’s very much my style also.” Much of this stems from its fairly relaxed atmosphere compared to other desert races; its sister event Mexican 1000 is dubbed the “The Happiest Race on Earth” for the same reason.

“[Kylie] and I started as Monster Energy Girls in 2015 and she’s been next to me since the first time I took a ride in a SXS,” wrote Lee. “We’ve spent years starting racers off. Come Saturday, we take off the line together in Baja!”

The fifth leg of the 2024 Rallye du Maroc was the final shot for those contending for World Rally-Raid Championships. For some who trailed entering Friday like Yazeed Al-Rajhi, it was too little, too late. For others like Yasir Seaidan, it was enough to leave Morocco with as champion.

Al-Rajhi entered the final stage with perhaps an impossibly tall order as he needed to make up 21:21 on Nasser Al-Attiyah. Although Al-Attiyah had his worst outing of the rally in eighth, so did Al-Rajhi as he finished fifteenth.

Romain Dumontier‘s Rally2 title defence also came up short. After entering Morocco as the points leader, he had little answer for Bradley Cox and a disastrous Stage #4 doomed his chances. Even beating Cox for third on Friday and the class stage win among points-eligible riders was not enough to make up the gap.

In contrast, Seaidan stepped up his game to officially leapfrog Sebastián Guayasamín for the SSV title. As Fidel Castillo Ruiz won the stage in his return to racing after his broken collarbone in August, Seaidan trailed by thirty-eight seconds to top the W2RC drivers. Guayasamín was seventh outright (second for points drivers) and eleven minutes back of Seaidan.

Rokas Baciuška “celebrated” his Challenger championship, which he clinched after Stage #3, by having a mechanical failure just fifty-three kilometres into the stage. In the meantime, Tauruses concluded a dominant rally with their second 1–2–3–4–5–6–7–8 finish led by Michał and Eryk Goczał. Baciuška’s retirement meant no Can-Am Mavericks finished in the top ten on the last day as João Dias and Lionel Baud rounded out the order in their G Rally OT3s.

Jean-Loup Lepan has been brought home to France after suffering a massive crash in Stage #2 of the Rallye du Maroc, resulting in haemopneumothorax along with various fractures.

The accident occurred 145 kilometres into Tuesday’s leg when he was running sixth in Rally2. In the two days before the crash, he finished eleventh in class in Sunday’s Prologue and eighth in Stage #1.

He was conscious when medical help arrived and was brought to hospital in Casablanca, where he was diagnosed with the haemopneumothorax and fractures. Haemopneumothorax is a condition in which air and blood both fill the pleural space cavity between the chest and lungs, which typically occurs due to injuries.

On Friday, Lepan was transported via ambulance and eventually by air back to Amiens, France.

The retirement ends his 2024 World Rally-Raid Championship season on a downer. He finished fourth in the opening Dakar Rally followed by second behind DUUST Rally team-mate Konrad Dąbrowski at the Abu Dhabi Desert Challenge. After an eighth at the BP Ultimate Rally-Raid, Lepan skipped the Desafío Ruta 40 in June bfore returning for the final round in Morocco.

The owners of the newly formed Rebellion Spierings will race a pair of Taurus T3 Max cars at the 2025 Dakar Rally. Paul Spierings will be making his second start in the Challenger category in one Taurus, while Alexandre Pesci makes his class début in the other.

The Challenger division comes from Dakar Team Spierings‘ side, which fielded two Can-Am Mavericks for himself and Roger Grouwels under the Dakar Team Spierings RaceArt banner. Spierings finished tenth in class at the latest Dakar in January, his sixth start in the event and début in the category.

Pesci has raced the Dakar since 2020, though all five of his entries have come in the Ultimate category. The 2024 Dakar saw him pilot a Toyota Hilux to a fourteenth in class and twenty-seventh overall.

The Hilux will continue to race in 2025. Romain Dumas, a member of Rebellion Racing’s former FIA World Endurance Championship stable, is expected to remain in the seat.

Rebellion Spierings was revealed on Sunday as part of a partnership between Pesci’s Rebellion Racing and Dakar Team Spierings. Rebellion Racing was a WEC powerhouse before shuttering after the 2020 24 Hours of Le Mans to focus on Dakar. Pesci is also the head of Rebellion Timepieces, the official watchmaker of the Dakar Rally.

After partnering up as Lucky Explorers in 2023, Ottavio Missoni Jr. and Cesare Zacchetti will be together again for the 2025 Dakar Rally as part of Team Kove Italia. Zacchetti is no stranger to Kove Moto, while Missoni will make his début on the Kove 450 Rally EX.

Both riders will enter the Original by Motul (Malle Moto) subcategory. The deal came together via Cesare Galli, the head of Kove Moto’s Italian distributor Pelpi International.

“Kove is building an exceptional image thanks to the Dakar,” said Galli. “We are very happy to continue contributing to this Chinese company’s project as I strongly believe that competing is the most authentic way to demonstrate one’s skills and win the hearts of enthusiasts. I have a lot of experience in off-road racing myself, which I still like to do and I understand the value of these efforts well. With Cesare and Ottavio, we have two ideal riders for our team to convey to the public messages of passion, truth, and sympathy that we want to share.”

Good friends off the track, Missoni and Zacchetti ran the Dakar in 2023 as Lucky Explorer Gentlemen Team, sponsored by MV Agusta’s adventure motorcycle lifestyle brand. It was the former’s maiden Dakar, finishing forty-seventh in Rally2, and the latter’s fifth, placing eleventh in Original by Motul.

Zacchetti switched from a KTM to a Kove 450 Rally for the 2024 Dakar. Despite unusual incidents ranging from his bike getting stuck in a hole to eventual car winner Carlos Sainz running it over, he managed to reach the finish eighteenth in Malle Moto and sixty-sixth in Rally2. His best career finish is a thirty-eighth in 2021, a year before moving to Malle Moto.

When the Amaury Sport Organisation dropped Quads from the 2025 Dakar Rally programme, Juraj Varga‘s career in rally raid seemed to be in jeopardy. Fortunately, he loves the sport too much to just give up like that.

Since switching to side-by-sides over the summer, Varga hopes to become the first Slovak to race the Dakar Rally in multiple categories.

“For me, the Dakar Rally was the highest peak and at the same time my greatest motivation,” Varga began. “After the Quad category was cancelled at Dakar, I lost that motivation and told myself that if there’s no Dakar, there’s no point in continuing here.

“However, I was still drawn to cross-country rally, so I gradually began preparing for a transition. It came after trying out a buggy. Even though it’s a buggy and has a steering wheel, it has a lot in common with a quad. Like the quad, it has four wheels and the driver isn’t hidden behind glass.”

His Varga Motorsport Team acquired a new Polaris RZR Pro R in June, which he took to the Hungarian Baja two months later. Despite not being classified as it was deemed an experimental car by the FIA, he viewed the race as a learning experience to adjust to his new confines. His competitive debut came at the 4V Rally Raid in Estonia, where he was second quickest in the first stage before severe flooding forced the remainder to be cancelled.

Their intent might not be malicious, but EnergyLandia Taurus Factory Team has a bad track record with the Moroccan environment now. On Thursday, the FIA fined the team €15,000 (€10,000 of which is suspended until the end of 2025 provided no repeat offenses) for dumping waste water into the desert during the Rallye du Maroc.

Mohand Abdelmoula, an assistant to FIA technical delegate Christophe Vely, reported the team to the stewards after noticing two crew members pouring a dark liquid from a barrel into the ground twice. From a distance and in photographs taken of the act, the liquid appeared to be oil.

Upon being summoned along with an interpreter, one of the implicated personnel clarified it was actually waste water from the team’s camper being poured out from old fuel storage barrels. He added he had done so thrice, figuring that it would not be harmful since it was just water.

Despite his defence, the FIA ruled he and his fellow crewman “acted extremely. Even if the barrels in question were previously used to store fuel rather than oil, this does not negate the fact that petroleum products have polluted the environment. The behavior of the team members caused great damage to nature. Of course, it has caused enormous damage to the entire motorsport community, including, but not limited to, the organiser of the event Rally du Maroc, W2RC (World Rally-Raid Championship) promoter and FIA.

“The FIA is making a huge effort to ensure that the motorsport community is as involved as much as possible in the promotion of nature conservation and responsible behavior in order to contribute to the promotion of green policies. The FIA representatives responsible for environmental policy were also present at the Rallye du Maroc 2024. This is further proof of the special attention paid to the environment. Such behavior of the team members showed extreme disrespect for the FIA’s goals.”