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The FIA Formula 1 World Championship makes its return from its summer break this weekend at the legendary Spa-Francorchamps, and despite some big changes to certain corner profiles, Pirelli’s Mario Isola says it will still be a big challenge.

Following a number of high-profile big crashes at the Eau Rouge/Raidillon section in recent years, the corner has seen major changes to its run-off zones, while other parts of the track have also seen some changes.

Isola, the Motorsport Director at Pirelli, says the challenge of racing at Spa-Francorchamps is still going to be extreme, and with several additional gravel traps beside the track, it give drivers an even bigger challenge to stay within track limits.

“New changes bring new challenges, but the epic nature of Spa is still the same,” said Isola.  “This year, Spa has undergone some of the biggest changes we have seen since we started going there in the modern era of Formula 1.

“But we know something of what to expect thanks to the 24-hour race last month – our biggest event of the year in terms of people and tyres – as well as some asphalt samples that we have taken.

Antonio Giovinazzi will take part in two free practice sessions later this year with the Haas F1 Team, with the Italian being linked with a full-time return to the FIA Formula 1 World Championship with the team next season.

Giovinazzi lost his seat with Alfa Romeo F1 Team ORLEN at the end of the 2021 season after three seasons, and he has been racing this year in the ABB FIA Formula E World Championship with Dragon/Penske Autosport, albeit with very limited success.

However, he has previously hoped that his time in Formula 1 was not over, and he will get the chance to jump in the VF-22 for Haas in both the Italian and United States Grand Prix.

It is a return to Haas for Giovinazzi, who spent the 2017 season acting as their reserve driver and participating in seven free practice sessions across the year.  And the return to the team this year could potentially see him replace Mick Schumacher within Haas in 2023.

“I’m so glad to have the chance to drive again in official F1 sessions,” said Giovinazzi, who will replace Schumacher in one of the free practice session and Kevin Magnussen the other. “Besides simulator driving it is important to test a true car and I can’t wait to put my suit and helmet back on.

Chase Elliott might have secured the NASCAR Cup Series regular season championship during Sunday’s Watkins Glen International event, but he was not in a celebratory mood by the end when Hendrick Motorsports team-mate Kyle Larson moved him aside on the final restart with five laps remaining for the win.

A caution for Loris Hezemans‘ beached car on lap 84 set up a late restart with Elliott in front of Larson. However, Larson made an aggressive move on the inside as they approached the first corner that resulted in contact. Elliott was shuffled behind Larson and A.J. Allmendinger and ultimately had to settle for fourth.

Larson also won Saturday’s Xfinity Series race to mark his first career weekend sweep. Allmendinger finished second in both events, making the pair the first 1–2 finishers in a given weekend’s Cup and Xfinity races in those exact positions since Brad Keselowski and Kyle Busch at New Hampshire in 2014.

“I had the restart before, I kind of got put in a bad spot because he had the dominant position on me with the nose ahead,” Larson explained in his post-race press conference. “Every time I was in the right lane yesterday in Xfinity, I was in the same spot, I would always get pinched into the kerb. A lot of times I got passed by the time we got to turn two.

“I figured it was probably going to be the last restart of the weekend. I told myself if I had a nose ahead of him before we got to the braking zone, I was going to have to try my best to maintain that, not let him get a nose ahead of me, pinch my corner off, end my chance of winning. I had a good restart. I got in there hot. Did what I had to do to win. Again, I’m not necessarily proud of it, especially with a teammate, but I feel like I had to execute that way to get the win.”

Kimi Räikkönen‘s first NASCAR Cup Series race began with plenty of fanfare, but ended in disappointment when he was involved in a crash that ended his day after forty-four laps. Despite the retirement, he remained upbeat about the experience and what is currently a one-off could become more starts in the future.

The 2007 Formula One World Champion qualified twenty-seventh for Sunday’s race at Watkins Glen International, and was able to gain eleven spots by the end of the first stage. Pit strategy and an overall strong performance enabled him to enter the top ten, where he battled with the likes of pole winner and Cup regular season champion Chase Elliott before pitting prior to Stage #2’s conclusion to finish it twenty-fifth.

On lap 44, Trackhouse Racing team-mate Ross Chastain collided with Austin Dillon as they exited the Bus Stop chicane, sending Dillon into a spin. Räikkönen was running on Chastain’s left when he and Loris Hezemans were sent off course, with Räikkönen hitting the wall. With front damage terminal, he retired and was classified thirty-seventh.

“I had a good line there but everybody came from the left and unfortunately, I had no time to react,” Räikkönen told NBC Sports’ Parker Kligerman. “The impact was small, but the first thing was somebody hit the tyre or the wheel directly and the wheel spun and something went wrong with the race, but that’s how it goes.”

Despite the disappointing finish, he described the race as “good fun. I felt more confidence all the time and had some good battles and it’s a shame. I think the car felt like it had a lot of speed in there, but that’s how it goes some day.”

Kyle Larson is one of the NASCAR Cup Series‘ top road course racers today with three wins on such tracks. He finally added an Xfinity Series version on Saturday at Watkins Glen International, even if he had basically been gifted the victory after Cup team-mate William Byron spun while battling Ty Gibbs for the lead with five laps remaining.

Larson was doing a one-off with JR Motorsports as part of a road course-only slate in the Xfinity Series, his first starts in NASCAR’s second tier since 2018; he won the pole and finished runner-up to Gibbs with his Cup employer Hendrick Motorsports at Road America in July. He started third behind Byron and Gibbs, and those two were the class of the field as they combined to lead sixty of eighty-two laps with Byron also winning Stage #2.

However, the Byron/Gibbs Show got physical on lap 75 as they ran next to each other through the Bus Stop chicane. Gibbs, who was on Byron’s left, collided with him and sent the two into a spin across the racing surface. Larson and A.J. Allmendinger slipped across as the caution came out.

“We had a good start and [Byron] kind of washed up a little bit, but we had a good start,” explained Gibbs. “I stayed side-by-side with him and I felt like I had a good side draft going with him heading into the Bus Stop to where it helped me get position, and I remember coming to however many laps to go, so I felt like if I just let him by, it was game over. I had good position, I just didn’t put myself in a good spot on the kerbs and and it just got me loose, I washed up into him and wrecked us both.

“It was my fault, but I was going for the win. I didn’t just want to pull over and let him go. Sorry to the #17 guys and to William. We put on a great show and I feel like he raced me well and I raced him well until I wrecked him. It was a good battle.”

The 2022 FIA Formula 2 campaign has been a rollercoaster and a half for the rookie ART Grand Prix driver Frederik Vesti.

A proven race winner from his time in FIA Formula 3 where he appeared on the podium nine times including four trips to the top step over the course of two seasons more than earned himself a promotion to the second tier of single-seater racing for 2022.

The Checkered Flag sat down with Vesti on the evening before he headed to Belgium for round eleven of the F2 championship to talk through his thoughts about his rookie campaign in Formula 2 and his hopes for the future of his racing career.

The Mercedes junior spoke of “one of the biggest moments of my career” as well as a period of the season where he feels like “struggled so much”.

Vesti looks relaxed and composed as we speak, coming off the back of a weeks holiday in Italy with family and friends and straight back into hard physical training in preparation for the upcoming triple header.

After a two hour and ten minute rain delay, Josef Newgarden took home his fifth win of the season in the Bommarito Automotive Group 500 and third straight win at World Wide Technology Raceway, closing Will Power‘s championship lead down to only three points.

After losing the lead in pit lane before the weather delay, Newgarden took the lead back from teammate Scott McLaughlin as the race restarted with 37 laps to go. He held the lead from there, even through lap traffic, to take his fourth career win at Gateway. Rookie David Malukas stunned the IndyCar world with his first career podium finish in second, with McLaughlin finishing third.

“We just had to have a good start,” Newgarden said post-race of the final restart. “I knew Scott was going to be good at the end there and he had a great restart, I just tried to work the high lane. The high lane worked earlier for me and I tried to do it again at the finish there and we just had enough to get by him.”

“[McLaughlin] was no slouch this weekend, he was very very good. Scott’s done an amazing job, he could have easily won this race himself so you’ve got to give him credit, but I’m glad we were able to come back out on top. We’re gonna have a lot more races together, that guy and I.”

Understanding that rain was in the area, IndyCar moved the race start up to try and get to at least halfway for an official race. Power led the field to green after tying Mario Andretti for the all time IndyCar pole record Friday at 67, with the top seven drivers in the points occupying the top seven spots on the grid.

Sebastian Vettel says the FIA Formula 1 World Championship should do more to help promoters reduce their carbon footprint if they are to fulfil their ambitions of being a carbon-neutral sport by the end of the decade.

Back in 2019, Formula 1 announced ambitious plans to run to a net-zero carbon footprint by 2030, and they are looking into what they can do to reduce their carbon usage when it comes to logistics, renewable fuels and the reduction of waste.

The current hybrid power units are amongst the most efficient engines in the world, and the sport are turning to renewable fuels from 2026, which will help the reduction of their carbon usage.

However, Vettel says the sport needs to go even further, perhaps giving some of their profits to promoters to help reduce their carbon footprints, particularly when it comes to getting to and from the event and reducing wastage whilst there.

“Any type of event that attracts a big crowd has to live up to the responsibilities that come with our times,” Vettel is quoted as saying by Motorsport.com at a summit hosted by World eX.

Pierre Gasly believes his Scuderia AlphaTauri team have paid the price for inconsistency during the opening half of the 2022 FIA Formula 1 World Championship season, which has seen the team slip to eighth place in the Constructors’ standings.

After a super 2021 season for the Faenza-based team that saw them finish sixth in the Constructors’ Championship, hopes were high they could kick on this season and maybe challenge for the top five.

But it has not materialised the way they had hoped, and the team have failed to score points in any of the past five Grand Prix, with Gasly’s fifth place in the Azerbaijan Grand Prix the last time that either he or team-mate Yuki Tsunoda broke into the top ten.

The midfield battle in 2022 appears to be tighter than ever, and unlike in recent years, there are no teams that are at the back of the pack, such as Williams Racing or the Haas F1 Team, both of whom have improved their race pace this season.

And Gasly says it is this and the lack of consistency shown by AlphaTauri that has seen them slip so far back in the championship, the team having scored fifty-seven points less in the opening thirteen races of this season compared to at the same point last year.

Daniel Ticktum hopes to remain in the ABB FIA Formula E World Championship next year after admitting he enjoyed the series more than he was expecting to in season eight.

Despite racing with the NIO 333 FE Team that struggled to fight for regular top ten finishes, Ticktum still had his moments, scoring his one and only point of the year in Rome and making it into the Qualifying duels for the first time in Seoul.

Admittedly, Ticktum says he would have preferred to be in a car that was capable of battling for points every weekend, but it was an enjoyable season for the Briton, and he hopes he can find himself back on the grid in season nine.

“I’ve enjoyed the championship more than I thought I would, I like the tracks, the events, everything like that,” said Ticktum to Motorsport.com.

“The car itself been better to drive than I expected in terms of just the Gen2 Formula E car but I mean, I’ve got to be brutally honest, I haven’t enjoyed where the team has been this year.

Florian Modlinger, the Director Factory of the Tag Heuer Porsche FE Team’s Formula E Motorsport department, says season eight was a rollercoaster for the team, and they will need to find more consistency in season nine if they are to contend for the championships.

It looked as though Porsche had found themselves a strong car early on in season eight, with Pascal Wehrlein leading home André Lotterer in a one-two finish in the Mexico City E-Prix in commanding fashion.

However, that was as good as it got for Porsche, with Wehrlein ending tenth in the Drivers’ Championship and Lotterer – in his final year with the team – twelfth, while the team finished only seventh in the Teams’ Championship, one hundred and eighty-five points behind the champion Mercedes-EQ Formula E Team.

Modlinger says the team will be working hard to solve the weaknesses they faced throughout season eight ahead of season nine, which will be the first year of the Gen3 cars, if they want to contend at the front of the field in every event.

“This last race in Seoul was definitely not our day,” said Modlinger after both drivers retired from the final race of the season in South Korea.  “Both of our drivers became entangled in other competitors’ accidents and were thrown out of contention.  After just a couple of laps, Pascal had fought his way into the top 10. He was certainly on track for something more.

André Lotterer has thanked the Tag Heuer Porsche FE Team for their efforts during his three years with the outfit as he leaves the ABB FIA Formula E World Championship after the end of the 2021-22 season.

Despite failing to take a victory in his time in the championship – he took second place on four occasions – Lotterer felt it was ‘three great years’ with Porsche, although the end of his final season was not the way he would have wanted to depart.

Lotterer believes Porsche have deserved more successes than they achieved since they joined the grid in 2019 – they have only one victory in that time courtesy of Pascal Wehrlein in the Mexico E-Prix in 2022 – but there were too many lows amongst the highs.

“I’d like to thank the team and Porsche for three great years,” said Lotterer.  “During this time, we experienced many highs and lows together.

“We’d hoped for more successes and we surely deserved them. This year began well for us. Our one-two in Mexico was a big highlight. But the second half of the season turned gnarly, and Seoul wasn’t how I’d imagined my farewell either.

Mahindra Racing can look fondly back at the first one hundred races of the ABB FIA Formula E World Championship, but Dilbagh Gill knows more history will be made in the next one hundred races.

The team took their first podium finish of season eight in the penultimate round of the year in Seoul last Saturday as Oliver Rowland took second place, and they ended the final year of Gen2 regulations with eighth place in the Teams’ Championship.  Sunday’s second race in South Korea was also the one hundredth in the history of Formula E.

Mahindra have been an ever-present in Formula E since its inception and have taken five victories in the championship, three for current NTT IndyCar Series star Felix Rosenqvist and one each for Jerome D’Ambrosio and Alex Lynn.

They have also fielded Bruno Senna, Karun Chandhok, Nick Heidfeld, Pascal Wehrlein and Alexander Sims across the opening eight seasons, and will run with Rowland and Brazilian Lucas di Grassi in season nine.

Gill, the Team Principal of the Banbury-based outfit, says there is a lot to be proud of in the opening hundred races of Formula E, but having committed to the Gen3 era which begins next January in Mexico City, he insists there is still history to be made by Mahindra within the all-electric championship.

Alexander Sims waved goodbye to Mahindra Racing and the ABB FIA Formula E World Championship after last weekend’s Seoul E-Prix, although it was not the weekend he was hoping.

The thirty-four-year-old leaves the championship having made fifty-five starts, with one win, three podiums and three pole positions to his name.  Sims will leave Formula E to return to endurance racing, with the British racer being replaced in the Mahindra team by Brazilian racer Lucas di Grassi. 

Sims retired from the opening race in South Korea after crashing out having already been involved in a collision with Antonio Giovinazzi, while multiple penalties for component changes left him at the back for race two, although he was able to fight through to twelfth at the chequered flag.

He ultimately finished a lowly seventeenth in the final standings with just two top-ten finishes to his name across his final season in Formula E, with his last points finish coming in New York City where he finished fourth.

“It wasn’t the way I hoped my final race weekend with the team would go but I would like to thank everyone I have worked with in the last two years – my engineers and crew have worked incredibly hard and are people I’ll consider friends for life,” said Sims.

On 10 March, the fifteenth day of Ukrainian defence from Russian invasion, Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy gave thirteen service members the Hero of Ukraine, the highest possible title in the country with military personnel receiving the Order of the Gold Star. Among those honoured was Lieutenant Colonel Viacheslav Ponomarenko, who was competing in rally raid events before serving on the frontlines.

He was involved in the battle for Hostomel, located in Kyiv Oblast near Ukraine’s capital and therefore a critical early target for Russia. Hostomel’s airport was attacked hours after the invasion began, and it was eventually captured the next day followed by the town itself in early March. Ukraine would launch counter-offensives in the region until Russian retreat a month later.

Ponomarenko led a group of defenders and successfully disabled twenty Russian BMP (“Boevaya Mashina Pehoty”, infantry fighting vehicle) units. Zelenskyy commended his actions in a 10 March address and explained that “thanks to his actions, a significant number of enemy’s equipment and soldiers in the city of Hostomel were destroyed.”

“President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelenskyy awarded the title of Hero of Ukraine to Lt. Col. Viacheslav Ponomarenko for his personal courage and heroism shown in the defence of the state sovereignty and territorial integrity of Ukraine, and loyalty to the military oath,” reads a 9 June statement from the Federation Automobile de l’Ukraine (FAU), an FIA member club who sanctions races in the country.

“Under the leadership of Lt. Col. Viacheslav Ponomarenko, a combined special-purpose group in the suburbs of Kyiv—Hostomel—destroyed twenty BMP units of the occupiers’ armed forces along with their personnel and stopped the further advance of the enemy in the direction of Kyiv.