Motorsports Racing News & Blog Articles

Mitch Evans is looking to fight at the front of the field this weekend as the ABB FIA Formula E World Championship heads to Indonesia for the first time for the Jakarta E-Prix.

The Jaguar TCS Racing driver missed out on the podium in both the of races of the Berlin E-Prix, finishing fifth in race one and tenth in race two, and he currently sits fourth in the Drivers’ standings, twenty-eight points behind championship leader Stoffel Vandoorne.

However, Evans is excited to race in Jakarta for the first time and is expecting a challenging weekend as he adapts to the new track.  However, he is hopeful it will be a competitive weekend for Jaguar.

“I’m really excited to race in Jakarta for the first time, a new track is always a challenge for myself and the team,” said Evans.  

“We’ve seen how competitive we can be with some incredible performances so far this season but with the championship fight well and truly on, I know I need to stay focussed and hopefully reach the podium again.”

The month of May has come to a thrilling conclusion, as the Indianapolis 500 has now come and gone, and teams must immediately re-focus on the Raceway at Belle Isle Park for the Chevrolet Detroit Grand Prix.

Marcus Ericsson etched his name into the history books by winning his first Borg-Warner Trophy. Thanks to the double-points payout, the Swede gained the points standings lead as well, jumping all the way up from eighth to first on 226 points. Indy 500 runner up Pato O’Ward also sits in the runner-up seat in the points on 213 points, overtaking Alex Palou for the spot by one point. The Spaniard now sits third with 212 points. Fourth place belongs to Will Power, who saw his streak of top four finishes finally break at the Indy 500, with 202 points, with Josef Newgarden rounding out the top five on 174 points.

This will be the final race on the Belle Isle Street Circuit before the race is moved to downtown Detroit, and will not be a doubleheader event this year as it traditionally is. Who will take home the win in the final race at Belle Isle? Will Ericsson be able to keep up the momentum he has coming off of an Indianapolis 500 victory? Will those that had lackluster performances at the Brickyard be able to rebound quickly? Here’s everything you need to know ahead of the Chevrolet Detroit Grand Prix.

WHAT HAPPENED LAST YEAR?

Ericsson picked up his first career IndyCar victory at Belle Isle last year, winning after a chaotic finish to the first race of the doubleheader weekend.

With five laps to go, a red flag was displayed for a crash by Romain Grosjean, forcing all cars to come down pit lane. On a scorching hot day in the Motor City, race leader Will Power was unable to get his car cooled and his engine did not re-fire when the red flag was lifted, handing the race lead to second-placed Ericsson. When the race resumed with three laps to go, the Swede streaked away to get the win. Rinus Veekay and Pato O’Ward finished second and third respectively, each making quick work of Takuma Sato at the restart.

Hendrick Motorsports is one of the premier organisations in the NASCAR Cup Series, but does not run an Xfinity Series arm as JR Motorsports—whom HMS owner Rick Hendrick co-operates—fills that responsibility. Although not a major slate, HMS will revitalise its Xfinity programme for three road course races and entrust the #17 HendrickCars.com Chevrolet Camaro with three members of its Cup roster. Kevin Meendering will serve as crew chief.

The #17 will début with Kyle Larson at Road America on 2 July before Alex Bowman takes over at Indianapolis Motor Speedway on 30 July. Nearly a month later, on 20 August, William Byron will pilot the car at Watkins Glen International. All three Xfinity races support the Cup Series, and the starts are intended to provide the trio with more familiarity with the tracks ahead of their main events.

“Our drivers are always looking for more opportunities to compete,” commented team president Jeff Andrews. “We believe the additional road-course experience on Saturdays will translate well to Sundays. It will be exciting to see the #17 return to the racetrack for Hendrick Motorsports, and we’ll do everything we can to take it back to victory lane.”

HMS last fielded an Xfinity car in 2009 for Tony Stewart, who won his one-off at Daytona. The team regularly ran an Xfinity side from its founding in 1984 to 1990 and again from 2000 to 2007; the latter came after HMS absorbed current Vice Chairman Jeff Gordon‘s JG Motorsports. The Xfinity operation typically raced with Hendrick’s Cup and development drivers, and Brian Vickers would win the 2003 championship before graduating to Cup. Hendrick has twenty-six total wins at the Xfinity level.

The #17 was last used by SS-Green Light Racing with Rick Ware Racing in 2021, but SSGLR shuttered the number to focus on the #07 and #08. While HMS did not have the number during its Xfinity run, it was used by Darrell Waltrip from 1987 to 1990, during which he won the 1989 Daytona 500, while Hendrick’s late son Ricky did so in the Truck Series in 2000 and 2001. HendrickCars.com also models its livery for Larson’s Cup car and the #17 after Ricky’s truck.

Parker Kligerman‘s NASCAR Cup Series career is fairly limited with just twenty-nine starts since 2019, all of which were with part-time or smaller Toyota teams. On Sunday, he will pilot a Next Gen Ford Mustang for the first time as he takes over the #15 Rick Ware Racing machine at World Wide Technology Raceway at Gateway.

“Funny enough this probably started w/ Rick & I having a convo at an IMSA race,” Kligerman quipped on Twitter. He currently works as an IMSA analyst for NBC, while RWR fields an Acura in IMSA’s WeatherTech Sprint Cup. “Really pumped to finally get some Next Gen experience & hopefully have a successful weekend for the 15 guys”.

Kligerman competes part-time in the Camping World Truck Series for Henderson Motorsports, for whom he has raced since 2016. He is running a thirteen-race schedule with the team in 2022, which includes all three road course events and four playoff dates, and his best race finish to date is fourth at Bristol Dirt. He won the 2017 Talladega race for Henderson.

The 31-year-old also did a one-off in the Xfinity Series as a road course ringer for Emerling-Gase Motorsports, finishing twelfth at Circuit of the Americas.

After an aborted 2014 rookie campaign with Swan Racing upon its closure, Kligerman did not return to the Cup Series until 2018 with part-time operation Gaunt Brothers Racing. His best career finish is fifteenth at the Daytona 500 and Talladega in 2019. Kligerman returned to GBR for the 2021 fall Kansas date, placing twentieth.

Unlike in stick-and-ball sports, racing typically does not see teams exchanging drivers. As such, when a driver signs with a team and another driver joins the other’s original operation, it is usually more a coincidence or for another context rather than a true trade.

This is especially the case for Saturday’s NASCAR Xfinity Series race at Portland International Raceway as JD Motorsports and Mike Harmon Racing have respectively picked up Gray Gaulding and Ryan Vargas, who mainly drives for the other organisation, in one-off starts. While Gaulding takes over Vargas’ #6 JD Motorsports car for Portland, Vargas will move to the #47 MHR vehicle that Gaulding has shared with others.

Despite a solid 2019 Xfinity campaign with SS-Green Light Racing in which he nearly won at Talladega, Gaulding has been forced into journeyman status since for smaller operations like MHR and Jimmy Means Racing. After making three starts with MHR in 2020 and 2021 (the latter after his full-time season with Means was abandoned), he returned to the team and the #47 for Daytona and Talladega. He failed to qualify for the former and placed twenty-first at the latter, and further starts have not been revealed as Brennan Poole has run most of the schedule in the #47.

Meanwhile, Vargas had been running the full Xfinity schedule in the #6 and currently sits twenty-fifth in the standings. He has three top twenties, all of which came at superspeedways with a best finish of twelfth at Atlanta.

He ran for Rookie of the Year honours in 2021 but the effort was called off due to performance and he was replaced for four road course races by ringers.

Mario Isola said the Monaco Grand Prix was made unpredictable by the changeable weather at the Circuit de Monaco, and getting the strategies right defined just where drivers finished.

All drivers started on the full wet compound behind the safety car, and the first-choice drivers had was to either make the switch to either the intermediate compound early or wait to switch to the dry weather slick tyre, with drivers making different decisions up and down the grid.

Isola, the Motorsport Director at Pirelli, said a lot of factors across the race, such as the red flag for Mick Schumacher’s crash in the Swimming Pool complex, made for difficult decisions for team and drivers around which tyre to use.

“This was one of those unpredictable Monaco races where strategy was dictated by who reacted best to changing circumstances, with those who took a chance sometimes rewarded,” said Isola.

“The changing weather after two days of sunshine added a number of complications to what should otherwise have been a reasonably straightforward race strategy, with the decision about when to get off the full wet tyre and which tyre to put on next being absolutely critical, on very slippery street asphalt that clearly affected the crossover point, rather than temperatures.

Guenther Steiner reflected on a disappointing Monaco Grand Prix for his Haas F1 Team, with both Kevin Magnussen and Mick Schumacher ending their days in retirement.

Magnussen was battling for a potential points finish at the Circuit de Monaco before a water leak within his Energy Recovery System (ERS) ended that chance, with the Dane running behind Alfa Romeo F1 Team ORLEN’s Valtteri Bottas, who ended up finishing ninth, when the issue occurred.

Steiner, the Team Principal at Haas, felt Magnussen could have passed Bottas during the pit stop cycle, but ultimately something out of their control finished their day.

“It was a disappointing day today,” said Steiner. “Kevin’s car was really fast, we were just waiting for our opportunity to pass Bottas at the pit stop, either under or over cutting to get by him and chase the field.

“He could easily follow him. He then had an issue with a water leak on his ERS system.”

Mick Schumacher called his race-ending crash during the Monaco Grand Prix as ‘annoying’, with the German feeling running wide by around ten centimetres had big consequences.

The Haas F1 Team driver lost all grip coming through the Swimming Pool complex on the twenty-seventh lap and hit the barriers hard, with the gearbox and rear wing structure detaching itself from the rest of his VF-22.

Schumacher was unharmed in the accident, but it was another day of frustration for the German, who is still aiming for his first point in the FIA Formula 1 World Championship.

“I’m feeling alright, it’s very annoying,” said Schumacher.  “In terms of pace, we were definitely there and it’s just a matter of keeping it on track – unfortunately I wasn’t able to do that.

“The pace felt strong and it felt like we were able to attack and push. Unfortunately, I went a bit too wide, probably about 10 centimetres at the end, and that’s enough to lose all grip that you thought you had and the result is what happened.”

Dave Robson felt Williams Racing played the strategy game well during Sunday’s Monaco Grand Prix, but circumstances went against them that prevented them being in the fight for points.

The team left Alexander Albon on the full-wet tyre until the track was dry enough for slicks, meaning they eliminated the need to use the intermediate tyre, and this propelled him up a number of places as others around him were forced into second stops.

However, a puncture soon after relegated him to the back of the field, and ultimately his afternoon was over after his FW44 started to unexpectedly bounce down the straight, with the team calling him into the pits on safety grounds.

“It was a long race today with the delayed start and then a red flag interruption,” said Robson, the Head of Vehicle Performance at Williams. “With Alex we opted to play the long game on the Full Wet tyres and run it until the track was ready for slicks.

“We timed the transition pretty well and he found some good pace on Prime until he went straight on at T1 and then punctured the tyre. His pace on the Option after the red flag was again strong, but as he was now out of position, he couldn’t make any places.

Nicholas Latifi admitted that Sunday’s Monaco Grand Prix was ‘very challenging’, with the Canadian finishing down in fifteenth after an early collision with the wall at the Grand Hotel Hairpin.

The Williams Racing driver nudged the barrier at the hairpin when the track was at its wettest, but despite this, he made an early call to switch to the intermediate tyre, a move that enabled him to move up a couple of places.

Ultimately though, the Canadian struggled throughout the race at the Circuit de Monaco, and he ended up in a battle with Alfa Romeo F1 Team’s Zhou Guanyu and Scuderia AlphaTauri’s Yuki Tsunoda in the final stint.

“Wet conditions are always tricky and even more so on a street track like Monaco!” said Latifi.  “It was a very challenging race and after pitting early on, we were detached from the back of the pack but we did have good pace on the intermediate tyre to catch the field back up.

“The last stint on the medium tyre proved quite tricky as I didn’t feel completely comfortable with the balance.

Nearly three years since his last start, Joey Gase will race in the NASCAR Camping World Truck Series, this time on dirt. On Wednesday, Gase announced he will drive the #31 Toyota Tundra TRD Pro for On Point Motorsports at Knoxville Raceway on 18 June.

Gase does not have much of a background on dirt, having grown up on pavement short track racing before entering NASCAR. Although his four career Truck starts came in 2018 and 2019 when the series raced at Eldora Speedway, all of his races came on 1.5-mile asphalt ovals (save for Talladega 2018 where he failed to qualify). The Xfinity Series, where he has raced since 2011 and co-owns Emerling-Gase Motorsports, does not have a dirt track on the schedule. Gase also did not run the Cup Series’ Bristol Motor Speedway Dirt event in 2021 nor 2022.

Despite his lack of dirt experience, the start gives him a chance to return to his home state of Iowa; Knoxville is located approximately two hours away from Gase’s native Cedar Rapids. Iowa Speedway in Newton was a frequent stop for Gase and the Xfinity Series before its removal from the calendar in 2020.

“Ever since Xfinity stopped going to Iowa Speedway, it has been a huge disappointment to me,” said Gase. “Now thanks to the Camping World Truck Series, the great people at Sparks Energy and On Point Motorsports I get to race in front of my friends and family again in the great state of Iowa.”

The #31 will be On Point Motorsports’ first time fielding a second entry. The team currently fields the #30 full-time for Tate Fogleman, who sits twenty-second in points after ten races. Danny Bohn scored a top ten in the #30 at the inaugural Knoxville event last year.

Jody Egginton says the biggest lesson Scuderia AlphaTauri can take away from the Monaco Grand Prix weekend was to have a ‘tidier’ Saturday after seeing Pierre Gasly’s obvious pace go to waste after the Frenchman was caught out in Qualifying.

Gasly missed out on setting a final lap time in Qualifying at the Circuit de Monaco after being caught out by people ahead backing up the pack, with the Frenchman mere metres away from starting his lap when the chequered flag fell.  This meant he started down in seventeenth when he had shown top seven pace all through practice.

On race day, Gasly made the immediate decision to switch to the intermediate tyre despite many runners staying on the full wets, and it enabled him to make up a handful of places.  He finished on the road in twelfth, having lost some time and ground to Sebastian Vettel during the pit stops, so when Esteban Ocon’s penalty for colliding with Lewis Hamilton was applied, he was only promoted to eleventh and not into the final points-paying position.

Yuki Tsunoda went the other way, starting eleventh and ending down in seventeenth, with the Japanese racer not being able to find the same kind of performance on the intermediate tyre that Gasly was able to achieve.

Egginton says the team needed a better Saturday if they were to have a chance of points in Monaco, and the pace that the recovering Gasly showed during the race despite the difficult conditions showed the Frenchman should have been a contender within the top ten on Sunday.

Pierre Gasly made up six places from his grid slot in Sunday’s Monaco Grand Prix, with his immediate switch to the intermediate Pirelli paying early dividends.

The Scuderia AlphaTauri driver started seventeenth after missing out on advancing out of Q1 due to a failure to get a final lap in after the red flag for debris, ironically caused by team-mate Yuki Tsunoda.

However, he was able to make early gains thanks to his pit stop for intermediate tyres at the Circuit de Monaco, although a delay on the switch to dry tyres prevented him from moving into the points-paying positions.

Nevertheless, Gasly was happy with the result in Monaco, although he admits he could and should have been in the points after showing strong pace all through the practice sessions, only to be caught out in Qualifying.

“We started seventeenth and finished eleventh, so considering Monaco and the track layout, I think we can be happy with this today,” said Gasly.  “When I saw the rain on the grid I had a massive smile on my face, as I knew it was our opportunity to try something different and to hopefully move forward.

The second generation of the Toyota 86, called the GR86 to reflect the involvement of Toyota Gazoo Racing, will be the star of a single-make series set to début in 2023. Called the GR Cup, the new championship will be sanctioned by SRO America with fourteen races planned across seven tracks.

The motorsport version of the GR86 will be created by converting a production GR86, fitting the vehicle with the necessary safety equipment and features like a custom body from Stratasys, rear wing made of carbon fibre, a Bosch engine management system, and exhaust from Borla. The car uses a six-speed sequential transmission courtesy of SADEV while its fuel cell can hold twenty-two gallons. Development of the car takes place at Toyota Racing Development‘s facility in Mooresville, North Carolina.

While the GR Cup is specifically focused in America, Toyota Gazoo Racing operates an Australian counterpart called the TGRA 86 Series that supports the Supercars Championship. Formed in 2016, the 86 Series has proven to be popular on the Supercars weekend slate while Toyota intends to provide factory support through 2026. Toyota will also launch a “feeder” level for younger drivers in 2023, with standouts being invited to race in the main 86 Series.

“This new racing series will help reinforce and validate the track inspired engineering bred into every Toyota GR vehicle,” reads a statement from Toyota released Wednesday.

“GR Cup will also offer participants one million dollars in total purse and prizes thanks to several great partners that have teamed with Toyota Gazoo Racing North America in this unique series. While the racing is the most exciting feature, each event will also offer a great environment for comradery among like-minded car enthusiasts. From first class, exclusive hospitality to partner sponsored displays, it’s sure to be a celebration of everything car and racing enthusiasts love, car culture and motorsports.”

It has been an eventful 2022 for Rajah Caruth as he leads the ARCA Menards Series standings after five races and has two NASCAR Xfinity Series starts to his name. On Saturday, he can add the Camping World Truck Series to his résumé as he drives the #7 Confluence Music Festival-sponsored Chevrolet Silverado RST for Spire Motorsports at World Wide Technology Raceway at Gateway.

“Rajah Caruth is a rising star and we’re thrilled the help him take the next logical step in his career this weekend at World Wide Technology Raceway,” commented Spire Motorsports co-owner Jeff Dickerson. “Rajah has a tremendous upside and he’s proven that on multiple occasions in the ARCA Menards Series. He has the kind of talent Spire Motorsports looks for and this type of opportunity is exactly what my partner T.J. Puchyr and I had in mind when we decided to field a NASCAR Camping World Truck Series team.”

After finishing third in the 2021 ARCA Menards Series East standings, Caruth graduated to the national series in 2022. Five races in, he has top tens in all but the season opener at Daytona (where he finished eleventh) and leads the championship by five points over Nick Sanchez. He is also running a part-time schedule in the Xfinity Series for Alpha Prime Racing, finishing twenty-fourth at Richmond in his maiden start.

Caruth is one of five Black drivers to attempt at least one NASCAR national series race in 2022, and he was named to NASCAR’s Drive for Diversity programme in 2020 and 2021. Accounting for this, Gateway is a fitting location for his début as the track’s naming rights holder World Wide Technology is the largest Black-owned company in the United States.

“I’m thrilled to make my NASCAR Camping World Truck Series début this weekend at World Wide Technology Raceway with Spire Motorsports and Chevrolet,” said Caruth. “To drive the Confluence Music Festival Chevrolet Silverado and represent the Steward family and World Wide Technology is truly an honor. I’m grateful to represent them on and off the racetrack. This is the big break I’ve been striving for and I’m going to make it count.”