Motorsports Racing News & Blog Articles

After the cancellation of the Emilia Romagna Grand Prix due to excessive flooding, Pirelli Motorsport Director Mario Isola outlines his expectations for this year’s Monaco Grand Prix. 

“We’re heading to a Monaco Grand Prix that’s somewhat different to what we expected. It should have been the second race of a European triple-header but instead it’s going to be the first due to the cancellation of Imola.”

Isola shared that those affected by the extreme weather in the Emilia Romagna region remain at the front of mind for Pirelli. 

“Those images of devastation are still fresh in our minds and we want to express our solidarity once more with the families of the victims, as well as all those who have suffered such huge losses.” 

As F1 moves onto the next round of the FIA Formula 1 World Championship, Isola said that the unusual features of the historic Monte Carlo circuit often lead to shock results and unexpected incidents– making it a “one-off” fixture of the season.

Rookie Sacha Fenestraz has thankfully escaped injury following a nasty crash last Tuesday, whilst completing a test for the Nissan Formula E Team at the Circuit de Calafat.

It was reported by The Race that Fenestraz had crashed the Japanese manufacturer’s E-4orce 04 test and development car into a barrier at the Spanish venue last Tuesday evening, as a result of having lost control. Due to having complained about back pain, the Frenchman was sent to a local hospital for precautionary checks; however, he was later released having escaped the crash unhurt.

Nissan had planned to complete several days worth of testing but were forced to cancel further running, with the crash having occurred following a technical fault but reportedly not to do with a supplied spec part. Some engineers from customer outfit the NEOM McLaren Formula E Team were also present.

It’s not the first time this season where a technical issue has resulted in the cancellation of a test for Nissan, who were forced to curtail a test a few weeks before the Berlin E-Prix double-header following an unrevealed technical failure.

Fenestraz’s accident happened just a few days after he claimed his and Nissan’s best result of the 2022/23 ABB FIA Formula E World Championship, with the rookie having finished fourth at the Monaco E-Prix. He enjoyed an excellent weekend at the Circuit de Monaco and would’ve claimed pole had it not been for an overuse of power, something which saw his laptime from the Final of the duels deleted.

The Indianapolis 500, also known as the Indy 500, is an iconic annual automobile race held at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway in Speedway, Indiana, United States. Here are some key details about the Indy 500:

1. History: The first Indianapolis 500 race took place in 1911 and has been held annually ever since, except for the years during World War I and World War II.

2. Track: The race takes place on the Indianapolis Motor Speedway, a 2.5-mile (4.0 km) oval-shaped track. It is known as "The Brickyard" due to the original track surface being made of bricks.

3. Distance: The Indy 500 is a 500-mile (805 km) race, hence the name. Drivers complete 200 laps around the track to reach the total distance.

4. Cars: The race features open-wheel, single-seat cars known as Indy cars or Indy race cars. These cars are purpose-built for racing and reach high speeds on the oval track.

Kyle Larson seems to have a knack for winning the NASCAR All-Star Race in odd-numbered years. After winning in 2019 and 2021, he scored his third triumph on Sunday at North Wilkesboro Speedway in complete fashion as he started sixteenth but went on to lead 145 of 200 laps including the last for the victory.

Larson took the lead from pole-sitter and Heat #1 winner Daniel Suárez on lap 55 and held it through the halfway point, leading a Drive for Diversity alumni 1–2–3 with Bubba Wallace and Suárez in tow. Had the race stayed green instead of throwing a caution flag for the midway point, Larson probably would have developed a much bigger gap than the already astounding advantage of nearly thirteen seconds on Wallace by the break.

“Friday, we were really bad,” Larson recounted in his post-race press conference. “Yes, I ran the fast lap in practice, but if you look at the thirty-lap average, I was like second to last; we were really bad on Friday. Saturday, we were really bad in the heat race as well: I was super loose in the heat race, like loose everywhere, no grip. So I had not great expectations for tonight. I just didn’t think there was enough that they could do to make me better. I thought we’d run around fifteenth tonight.

“Being a short race, starting where we did, I was like, ‘You can’t pass here.’ But then we fired off, I dropped anchor, I got stuck in the outside lane, kind of settled into second to last or whatever, and just trying to feel my car out, and I’m like, ‘I think I’m alright here,’ like I’m not bad. I just can’t pass, but I was like, ‘My entry is more stable, I can get through the middle all right, my drive-off seems better than yesterday.’ Never did I think we would drive to the lead.

“[…] Once I was picking people off, I was like, ‘Is my car this good or is the tyre disparity the reason why I’m driving through the field?’ So I asked, ‘Is anybody else passing like I am that were on new tyres?’ And they didn’t really say that anybody was. I was like, ‘Wow, shoot, our car is really good here.’

Despite battling illness all weekend, Tom Ingram has still produced when it matters most to cut the lead of Ash Sutton to six points heading out of Snetterton with Race Three honors heading the way of the defending BTCC champion.

It was a BMW heavy contingent that started the race up the front, but will be ruing their tire strategy somewhat with all running together just inside the top 10 by the end of the race. But it was the displays of Dan Cammish and Josh Cook that caught the eye.

Cammish after his qualifying crash finished in second to salvage a poor weekend which saw him enter as the championship leader and end in third place.

Similar to the opener, a lap or two was needed for Cammish to pass Ingram in the end with the latter just having enough after initially passing the NAPA Racing UK Ford Focus of Rowbottom who finished in fourth place behind Rory Butcher. Josh Cook came from 26th to sixth in an absolute demon display after poor start to the season.

Ash Sutton also kept his car in fifth place despite being on the hard tyre ahead of the BMW’s who offered no resistance allowing the former to ease home despite being on the inferior rubber.

It’s a bit ironic that heat races were inundated with rain.

The two heats for the NASCAR All-Star Race brought some wet racing to North Wilkesboro Speedway, but weather did not rain on the parade for Daniel Suárez and Chris Buescher as they won both to make up the front row for Sunday’s All-Star.

While the weather did not hit the Craftsman Truck Series race earlier in the day, it did so for the first heat and forced the entire sixty-lap event to be run using the wet tyre package. Rain racing is difficult to impossible to achieve on larger ovals due to their high banking, but shorter tracks like the .625-mile North Wilkesboro Speedway—which has thirteen degrees of banking in the turns—are more viable options. The Trucks at Martinsville in April marked the first time they were used in a points race.

Save for a break for rain at the midway point, the first race ran completely green. Chase Elliott led the first third before Suárez, the fastest qualifier in the Pit Crew Challenge on Friday of those already locked into the All-Star, did so the rest of the way (winner Ty Gibbs must run the All-Star Open on Sunday to qualify).

Multiple drivers observed that the wet tyres helped them set faster times than the usual dry set.

Ash Sutton continues to dominate this year’s British Touring Car Championship since his poor start at Donington Park with a fourth race win of the season for the three-time BTCC champion with a lights to flag victory for the NAPA Racing UK driver at Snetterton.

Sutton sealed Race One honours with Jake Hill offering some resolve. But with the slick shot soft tyres on his car, the win was almost Sutton’s when his car hit the grid for Race Two as he had a nearly five-second gap throughout the race to the BMW pack in second and third as Colin Turkington finished on the podium.

Albeit, with pressure from Dan Rowbottom in fourth who gained three places also on the soft rubber, as Tom Ingram finished seventh spot with many factors in having the hard tyre and being really under the weather hampering the defending champion.

Adam Morgan and Stephen Jelley finished in between, with the likes of Dan Cammish and from further back, Ricky Collard and Tom Chilton unable to make masses of progress

It is now a 16-point gap to Ingram in second and 22 to Turkington in third, with Cammish 24 points back from his teammate after heading into the weekend leading the pack. The dominance continues for Sutton.

After a poor start to the season at Donington Park, Ash Sutton is firmly back in business and now leads the Drivers Championship after his third win of the 2023 BTCC season and his 30th overall at Snetterton on Sunday afternoon.

Sutton started on pole and despite being on a perceived lesser tyre compared to the quick softs as well as a finite hybrid allocation, he surged into a three second gap to Colin Turkington who was the best of the rest for most of the race ahead of fellow contenders in Jake Hill and Tom Ingram.

The latter fell away to start the race but managed to tag back onto the leading quartet with an entertaining battle pursuing in particular with Hill.

On Lap 9, Hill made the move on Turkington using the grass and the hybrid to find his way through and continued to carve the gap to Sutton ending only +0.270secs in the end in favour of the NAPA Racing UK driver.

It was very much what could’ve been with Hill passing Turkington a lap or two earlier likely providing an opportunity to attack Sutton. But it is the three-time champion that proves his brilliance again.

The Cachanillazo, a meetup and adventure ride for UTVs from Ensenada to San Felipe, was ambushed by a band of armed gunmen on Saturday while on the Mexican Federal Highway 1 (Transpeninsular Highway) near San Vicente. Eleven were reportedly killed with nine wounded.

According to Baja California State Attorney General Ricardo Iván Carpio Sánchez, the attack happened on Saturday at 2:15 PM local time. While Cachanillazo drivers were parked at a gas station in San Vicente, multiple gunmen, hooded and dressed in black, drove a silver van to their spot before getting out and opening fire. Ten men and one woman were reported to have died.

Footage of the shooting surfaced on social media, which showed the gunmen moving in and firing. Passerby videos revealed some of the victims were killed while inside or next to their UTVs. Police at the local, state, and federal levels as well as the fire department and Red Cross assisted in managing the scene.

The AG did not immediately confirm the identities of the attackers, though local news reported they were members of a drug cartel while some of the UTV tour’s participants were part of a rival group. Specifically, the attack stemmed from the ongoing conflict between the Sinaloa Cartel (CDS) and Tijuana Cartel (Arellano Félix Cartel, or CAF); the CDS is one of the largest drug syndicates in the world, whereas the CAF was regarded as a major power in the underworld in the 2000s before diminishing in strength, though they maintain a presence in Baja California and Tijuana.

“The Cachanillazo family joins in this unfortunate tragedy,” reads a statement from organisers. “Unfortunately, what happened during the tour was not in our hands. We are wholeheartedly sorry for those lost and their families. Our sincere condolences. We are as baffled as all of you since we have nothing to do with what happened.”

In 2013, Kyle Larson won the NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series race at Rockingham Speedway in a short-lived revival of the track after a decade-long dormancy. On Saturday, he won the Truck race at North Wilkesboro Speedway in what NASCAR fans hope will be a longer stint back on the schedule.

Racing the #7 for Spire Motorsports in relief of his injured Cup Series team-mate Alex Bowman, Larson led 138 of 252 laps to notch his third career Truck victory. While a dominant outing, matters got dicey at the end as Chase Purdy and Christian Eckes‘ tangle with five laps remaining set up overtime, during which he had to hold off Ty Majeski and fellow Cup driver Bubba Wallace.

The victory is the second for Spire at the Truck level after William Byron, also a Cup colleague of Larson, won at another short track in Martinsville last year. Larson also recorded his third career Truck victory and first since Eldora in 2016, though he had only raced in the series three more times after that.

“It was a really fun track there, especially in the truck where you can use the apron and such at both ends,” Larson stated. “I had a good time. That was a lot of fun on the long runs.

“I wasn’t supposed to run. Unfortunately, Alex got hurt, and I got the opportunity to run this.”

Three-time BTCC champion, Ash Sutton continues to show his incredible pace in the Ford Focus ST for NAPA Racing UK securing pole position at Snetterton with a new qualifying record to boot.

It is a hat-trick of pole positions for the NAPA Racing UK squad with Dan Rowbottom and Dan Cammish sealing them in the last two meetings. But for Sutton, he set a new benchmark in his effort with a 1:54.526s clocking.

It was a disrupted session with Nick Halstead dropping oil onto the track and it fired a number of drivers off, Dan Cammish on the restart added a further red flag with the championship leader making contact with the barrier.

Many had their top efforts scrubbed due to track limits but not Sutton as he fired to the front joined by defending champion, Tom Ingram and Colin Turkington who had contact with the tyre barrier but still returned for a top three spot.

Jake Hill edged out Ricky Collard, while Adam Morgan and Josh Cook finished inside the top seven. Rory Butcher, Dan Rowbottom and Stephen Jelley finalise the top ten ahead of the first race tomorrow.

Ty Gibbs would not be born for another six years when North Wilkesboro Speedway held its final NASCAR Cup Series race. While it was not for a traditional race, Gibbs ended up the first Cup driver to stand in the track’s Victory Lane since 1996 when he and his #54 Joe Gibbs Racing crew won the Pit Crew Challenge, which will place him on the pole for Sunday’s NASCAR All-Star Open.

Gibbs’ team recorded a four-tyre stop in 13.012 seconds, beating Daniel Suárez by less than three-tenths of a second. Via his 2022 Sonoma win, Suárez is already qualified for the NASCAR All-Star Race on Sunday and being the best locked-in car means he will start on the pole for Saturday’s first heat race. As Gibbs has yet to win in the Cup Series, he needs to finish in the top two in the Open or win the Fan Vote to make the All-Star.

By finishing third in the Pit Crew Challenge, Chris Buescher starts first for Heat #2.

“We put in a whole lot of work in the other choreography,” said Gibbs’ pit crew coach Brian Haaland. “When it hit perfect, it is still the fastest way to do a pit stop, but the reality of it is when you get to pit road, there is a lot of different obstacles that take place, and everything has to be perfect for you to be able to run as fast as that stop is capable of. I think we also had to take a look in the mirror and say fundamentally, we are not as good as we need to be, so taking a step back and running this traditional pit stop to work on getting a little bit better visually and fundamentally within the pit stop, and maybe when we start to master that on a consistent basis, it is something that we take a look at again.”

Nine drivers were busted for penalties, which added five seconds to their time for each infraction. The biggest loser was perhaps Brad Keselowski, who had a loose wheel that relegated him from second to twenty-sixth.

The Grand Prix National Championship is an annual motorcycle racing series held in various countries around the world. It features multiple classes and disciplines of motorcycle racing, including road racing, motocross, supercross, and more. The championship serves as a platform for professional riders to showcase their skills and compete for the title of national champion.

The specific details of the Grand Prix National Championship vary depending on the country and governing body overseeing the event. Each country typically has its own national championship series, with races held at different circuits or tracks throughout the season.

Here are a few examples of national motorcycle racing championships:

1. MotoGP (FIM Road Racing World Championship Grand Prix): MotoGP is the premier class of road racing organized by the Fédération Internationale de Motocyclisme (FIM). It features highly skilled riders competing on purpose-built racing motorcycles. The championship consists of races held at various renowned circuits worldwide, including the United States, Spain, Italy, and more.

2. AMA Supercross Championship: The AMA Supercross Championship is a premier indoor motocross series held in the United States. It features riders competing on specially designed dirt tracks inside stadiums. The championship consists of multiple rounds held in different cities across the country, culminating in the crowning of the national champion.

It was confirmed on Wednesday by the ABB FIA Formula E World Championship that after four years, CEO Jamie Reigle would be stepping down from his position, with his replacement having already been announced.

Reigle has certainly had to deal with a lot in his four-year spell as CEO, with the Canadian having held the role during the Coronavirus pandemic, a time when motorsport across the world came to a halt. He’s also overseen the start of the Gen3 era as well as the all-electric championship’s new format, whilst working alongside Formula E Founder and Chairman, Alejandro Agag.

Replacing Reigle is Jeff Dodds, who joins Formula E from Virgin Media O2. Dodds has been their Chief Operating Officer for the past two years, whilst before that he was Virgin Media’s COO, Managing Director and Chief Marketing Officer. Dodds has also previously been the CEO of telecoms business Tele2.

To ensure the transition of power is smooth, Reigle will take on an advisory role for the remainder of the 2022/23 season which concludes in London at the end of July. Agag is delighted to welcome Dodds to Formula E in what he labels as an “exciting phase” for the series, whilst he was quick to thank Reigle for his “leadership”.

“I am pleased to welcome Jeff Dodds as Chief Executive Officer ahead of an exciting phase for Formula E as we build upon the success of Season 9,” Agag said, as per Formula E.

It had been all but confirmed for about eight months, but Shane van Gisbergen is officially going NASCAR Cup Series racing. On Thursday, Trackhouse Racing Team announced the three-time and reigning Supercars Championship winner will make his stock car début at the Chicago Street Race on 2 July. He will drive the #91 Chevrolet Camaro ZL1.

Last September, Van Gisbergen revealed he was in talks with Trackhouse owner Justin Marks about racing in NASCAR on a date that did not clash with the Supercars calendar.

“I can honestly say I have dreamed about an opportunity in NASCAR, but really never thought it would become a reality,” van Gisbergen stated. “I can’t wait to get to the States to meet everyone and prepare for Chicago. It’s NASCAR’s first time on the streets of Chicago so in some ways everyone will be a rookie like me, but I don’t underestimate that it’s going to be a huge challenge.”

Van Gisbergen is the top driver in Supercars today with three titles including the last two. Nine races into the 2023 season, he sits third in points with three victories.

While Supercars has been his specialty for much of his career, the Kiwi has also started to dabble in other disciplines. Most notably, he has been competing in rallying in his free time which included the World Rally Championship’s Rally New Zealand in 2022, where he finished third in WRC-2.