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Despite the team’s struggles in Bahrain, McLaren F1 Team’s driver lineup of Daniel Ricciardo and Lando Norris believe they have made some progress on Friday in Saudi Arabia, though there is still more work to do in order to compete for points.

Completing a total of 47 laps on Friday’s testing day, Ricciardo would finish Free Practice 1 in eleventh place, and Free Practice 2 in fifteenth place while gathering vital data for McLaren.

“Today was a fairly productive day. I think we hit the ground running and we haven’t needed to adjust the car too much, we’re just learning a bit more about it. For our relative competitiveness, I think it was a productive day,” the Australian claimed.

“It’s a good circuit to drive on, you get a good feeling around here, which is enjoyable. We’ve got some small changes to work on overnight, but all in all it’s been a good day and I think we’re in a little better shape than Bahrain.” 

Norris – “We’re feeling a little bit more confident, but it’s all very close“

Norris was able to place a little higher in the standings on Friday, finishing thirteenth in Free Practice 1 and seventh in Free Practice 2; completing 50 laps for the papaya-coloured team. Despite feeling more confident, the Briton pointed out that there are still issues with the MCL-36 that the team need be able to solve in order to be more competitive:

McLaren F1 Team’s executive director, Andrea Stella, has labelled the two Friday practice sessions for the Saudi Arabian Grand Prix as “productive” as the team looks to make up for the bad start to the year at the opening race of the FIA Formula 1 World Championship.

The 2022 season opener in Bahrain was not what fans expected of McLaren, who were only able to finish fourteenth and fifteenth (with the aid of some retirements) and almost a minute behind the leaders in what was essentially a bonus practice session for the papaya-coloured outfit.

Despite the knock-back that was the Bahrain Grand Prix, the number four driver of Lando Norris insisted that McLaren would enter the Saudi Arabian Grand Prix weekend with their ‘heads held high‘ – and the signs seem promising for McLaren so far.

“We’ve had two productive sessions here in Jeddah and were able to work through the programme that we planned. There were no real issues with the car, and in this sense it’s a more normal weekend than the one we had in Bahrain,” Stella states.

“The car seems to be performing better here, which is encouraging. Now, we have to do our due diligence overnight, in order to extract the maximum from the package, qualify well and be in contention for some points on Sunday – which we are very much looking forward to,” the racing director claimed.

After coming off a dream return to the FIA Formula 1 World Championship with a fifth place finish at Bahrain, Kevin Magnussen had a disappointing start to the first two practice sessions in Jeddah for the upcoming Saudi Arabia Grand Prix on Sunday.

Round two of the Formula 1 season commenced with practice on Friday at the Jeddah Corniche Circuit as teams prepare for Sunday’s 50 lap race. This is the second ever visit to the street circuit for the series and the first for Kevin Magnussen, who couldn’t have got off to a more challenging start.

Magnussen was limited to just two laps in practice one before a hydraulic leak resulted in his VF-22 remaining in the garage for repairs.

It went from bad to worse for Magnussen and the Haas F1 team at practice two, set under the lights in Jeddah as the Dane was forced to retire his car on track with further mechanical issues. He had yet to clock a flying lap on his fresh Red soft tires with his previous best lap of 1:32.344 coming on his starting medium set and in doing so, put him right at the bottom of the pack.

After practice, Magnussen summed up how both sessions went for him with a positive attitude as he now looks ahead to Saturday with confidence.

For the first time in the 2022 FIA World Endurance Championship the competitive order was revealed, Balance of Performance (BoP) weightings were put under scrutiny and the class favourites were highlighted. The WEC 1,000 Miles of Sebring showed it all, albeit coming to an anticlimactic end due to an electric storm, and TheCheckeredFlag looks at what that might mean for the upcoming season.

LMP1 On Top of the Hypercars

In a twist that will not please Hypercar runners, the grandfather LMP1 car raced by Alpine Elf Team took victory competitively. The Toyota Gazoo Racing cars were suffering with a change to their BoP and the speed at which they were allowed to deploy their hybrid power in the pre-season Prologue, but it seemed the #8 crew had got on top of this come the race.

The French team took a clean sweep of points, taking class/overall pole and victory, but this is not dominance that is expected to continue. Brendon Hartley had looked to be on a charge when the red flag flew to bring a premature end to the race, and with the lost half an hour of racing it was odds on he would have made an attempt of the lead of the race.

The #7 team may be struggling with the new power output of the Toyota GR010 Hybrid, but the sister crew certainly look like the ones who will keep Alpine honest throughout the season at this early stage. The hybrid power output regulation is unlikely to change between now and the rest of the season, but with the #8 car looking to already be on top of this it isn’t expected to take long for the #7 to catch up. The real question will be how many points the reigning champions lose in the interim and whether by time they’re on the same page as the #8 they still have a realistic chance at the championship.

With their sole Hypercar, Glickenhaus Racing have started the season strong, seeming in a better position than they were this time last year. Having matched their best performance to date with a third in class (and bettered it by also taking third overall), the team have come a long way since the 2021. No longer stuck in the LMP2 field, Glickenhaus are now perfectly positioned to pick up places if other cars in their class have issues, alike the #7 at Sebring. It’s only a matter of time before they can really bring the fight to the front, but whether that will happen in 2022 remains to be seen.

Max Verstappen has said that the Jeddah circuit does not feel very different to last year, despite the new regulations, following the first two practice sessions in Saudi Arabia. The reigning world champion finished second in both practice sessions, while teammate Sergio Perez would take seventh and fourth places in the first and second sessions respectively.

Oracle Red Bull Racing clocked 96 total laps total on Friday, in what will have been a crucial day of data collection in order to catch up to a fast-looking Ferrari team, and both drivers were content with their progress:

Verstappen happy with circuit changes

“The sessions ran quite smoothly today, we completed our programme and tried out lots of different tyre sets,” Verstappen explained.

“It seems like Ferrari were quite competitive again, we still have a little bit of work to do to catch up with them and there’s plenty of room for improvement.

“The track feels pretty much the same as last year, the barriers have moved slightly and in terms of visibility, it hasn’t made a noticeable impact.”

BWT Alpine F1 Team had a productive Friday ahead of the Saudi Arabian Grand Prix, closing off the day’s practice with Esteban Ocon eighth on the time sheets for both sessions and Fernando Alonso filling in tenth in Free Practice 1 and eleventh in Free Practice 2. 

Ocon was pleased with Friday’s running, as the team was able to run through their programme free of complications. The team used the track time to learn more about the car and how it reacts to varied conditions at the high-speed street circuit. 

“We completed our planned Friday programme and did not encounter any issues. The more we spend time on track the more we understand the balance, the different compounds and we were able to see how the car behaves in the evening, as the track is much quicker in those conditions. It was a good day of learning in that respect and the key will be to get the car in that sweet spot for the night race. Overall, I’m happy and aiming to continue the momentum.”

Alonso suggested that the A522 has more pace than what was seen during their race-focused Friday practice programme– a positive sign for the team’s performance going into Saturday qualifying. 

“We have mainly focused on the race preparation so far this weekend and it has gone relatively smoothly for us on track. There is also more performance in the car than we showed today, so that’s encouraging for tomorrow.”

Following a productive day of free practice, Alan Permane, Sporting Director of BWT Alpine F1 Team, said that Jeddah Corniche Circuit will test the abilities of both drivers and team members this weekend. 

“Today, we ran through a normal Friday programme. Jeddah is a very challenging circuit. Not only is it tough for the drivers, who have to be absolutely focused for the entire lap as there’s no room for any lapse in concentration at the wheel, but it’s also a good challenge for the engineers in setting the car up, managing things like traffic and communicating quickly to the drivers.”

Permane said that tyre degradation will be an important factor to understand ahead of race day, as the circuit has been particularly demanding of the front tyres through the practice sessions.

“A lot of our focus today has been on the tyres and assessing how they are operating. There was some front tyre degradation, so that’s something for us to take a look at in preparation for Sunday’s race.”

Permane emphasized the importance of their performance during Saturday Qualifying in order to be as close to the front as possible in light of a competitive, tight grid. Based on Friday’s running, he feels as though the car is in a better position than it was in Bahrain. 

After coming off of a great race result for the Haas F1 Team at the Bahrain Grand Prix, picking up 10 points through Kevin Magnussen, their weekend in Saudi Arabia for the Jeddah Grand Prix could not have got off to a worse start.

In free practice one, Magnussen completed just two installation laps before realising that he had an issue with his car which he brought back to the pits. It was later revealed that the VF-22 had suffered a hydraulic leak which resulted in the vehicle remaining in the garage for the rest of the session.

Practice two got underway with the team having fixed the issue. However, the second session of the day brought more heartbreak for Magnussen and the team as his car was forced to retire due to further mechanical issues. This left the Dane in twentieth as the day was brought to a close.

On the other hand, Mick Schumacher who had a difficult practice one like his team-mate, improved by the end of practice two. In the first session, Mick recorded 22 laps and his best time of 1:34.429 on the Yellow medium compound tyre could only put him one place above Magnussen in nineteenth.

In practice two however, Schumacher was able to improve on his first practice and he was able to complete 27 laps within the hour which left him and his team in a respectable thirteenth at the end of the session with a fastest lap time of 1:31.169.

MP Motorsport’s Felipe Drugovich took pole position under the floodlights at the Jeddah Corniche Circuit in a qualifying session which saw three red flags.

The Brazilian driver drove “the lap of my life” in the closing moments of the thirty-minute session and will be starting alongside Trident’s Richard Verschoor in Sunday’s Feature Race.

Virtuosi Racing’s Jack Doohan followed up his pole position in Bahrain the week before by setting the third fastest time of the session.

Last year’s Sprint Race 1 winner, Marcus Armstrong was at the top of the timing boards when the final red flag of the session came out with five minutes remaining. The Kiwi decided not to go back out once the session was restarted and dropped down to fourth place.

Campos Racing’s Ralph Boschung ended the session is frustration after looking like the fastest driver on the circuit by far.

When Joey Logano‘s NASCAR Cup Series rookie season took place in 2009, he only had half a year of Xfinity Series experience and a single Camping World Truck Series start to his name, a deviation from the traditional ladder ascendance of Trucks followed by Xfinity and Cup. On 16 April, he will return to the lowest national division as he enters the Bristol Motor Speedway Dirt event for David Gilliland Racing.

Logano confirmed the news on Friday evening with a video of him driving a production Ford F-150 around a makeshift dirt oval before making a phone call to enter the race. The video ends with him remarking, “Uh oh.”

Such a phrase is right for the rest of the Truck Series. Cup drivers have unsurprisingly seen much success in lower tiers, and Logano will arrive as the defending Cup Series winner on Bristol’s dirt configuration. Said win was the Cup Series’ first race on dirt since 1970, and Logano also scored another inaugural victory when he won the first-ever Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum NASCAR race via the Busch Light Clash in February.

Although Logano has seen much success at the Cup and Xfinity levels, he only has seven career Truck starts. After a twenty-sixth in his series debut at Talladega in 2008 for HT Motorsports, he made sporadic starts for Brad Keselowski Racing —an operation owned by his then-Team Penske team-mate—from 2013 to 2015. The last of his BKR starts, at Martinsville, saw him win the pole and lead 150 laps en route to the victory. He is one of thirty-eight drivers to win a race in the Cup, Xfinity, and Truck Series.

A number was not revealed, though he is expected to pilot the #17 for DGR as it is the team’s multi-driver truck. The #17 has been split between Riley Herbst, Ryan Preece, and Taylor Gray in 2022. After three races, the truck is seventh in owner points with Preece holding its best finish of fourth at Las Vegas.

After a three-year absence, Davey “D.J.” Hamilton Jr. will contend for the Stadium Super Trucks championship. On Friday, SST announced Hamilton will run the full 2022 season in the #14 truck with sponsorship from GO FAST TAKE CHANCES, The Skyline Agency, and Thin Energy Complete. The season begins with the Acura Grand Prix of Long Beach on 8–10 April.

Hamilton made his SST début in 2017 at St. Petersburg and would run six races that year. When the series visited China for the first time with a round at Beijing National Stadium, he led the most laps and won but was disqualified after not taking the Joker Lap. He returned to the series for the Long Beach and Race of Champions weekends, scoring his best career finish of fifth in Race #1 of the former. His father Davey Sr., who raced in IndyCar throughout the 1990s and 2000s, also has six SST starts to his name from 2013 to 2016.

He intiailly revealed his return to the series while speaking with Speed Sport in early January and teased his plans later in the month on Instagram, though an itinerary was not confirmed until Friday.

Outside of stadium trucks, he mainly competes in asphalt sprint cars. For 2022, he is running at least twenty-eight such events for Kirk Morgan‘s team in divisions like the USAC Silver Crown and Southern Sprint Car Shootout Series. Hamilton has also raced on dirt in quarter midgets, which included entering the prestigious Chili Bowl Nationals in 2017. He won the King of the Wing championship in 2016 and started on the pole for the Little 500 two years later; King of the Wing was founded by Hamilton’s father, and one of his team-mates was current SST driver Robert Stout.

Hamilton made three starts in Indy Lights in 2016 and 2018, the latter of which saw him finish seventh in the series’ former flagship event Freedom 100 at Indianapolis Motor Speedway. Between those years, he did a stock car one-off in the now-ARCA Menards Series West where he finished fifteenth of twenty-seven at Kern County.

Charles Leclerc went fastest for the second session in a row. Max Verstappen and Carlos Sainz were in second and third positions.

Verstappen and Sainz could not get their flying laps in on the soft compound tyres.

The second free practice session of the Saudi Arabian Grand Prix  took place at the Jeddah Corniche Circuit in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia.

The session was delayed by fifteen minutes with concerns about an explosion at an oil refinery in the city of Jeddah. The session started at 20:15 hours local time under the lights.

The sixty-minute long second free practice session started at the Jeddah Corniche Circuit with air temperatures at 22 degrees C and track temperatures at 23 degrees C..

The Xpel 375 was one of the most entertaining NTT IndyCar Series races at Texas Motor Speedway in quite some time. Josef Newgarden narrowly beat his teammate Scott McLaughlin to the line by a margin of .067 seconds with a last lap, last corner move to claim his first win of the young season.

For the five rookies in the field (Tatiana Calderon is only running a road and street course program), this was their first race on an oval. It was a major learning experience, regardless of background, that put all on level playing field. So, who came out on top? What lessons did these rookies learn? Let’s take a closer look in this week’s IndyCar Series Rookie Report.

DAVID MALUKAS – DALE COYNE RACING WITH HMD MOTORSPORTS

QUALIFYING: NINETEENTH – RACE: ELEVENTH (+8)

After crashing in the season-opening Firestone Grand Prix of St. Petersburg, David Malukas bounced back to finish best of all rookies in the Xpel 375 with an eleventh place finish.

Malukas was quick all race long, and found himself in tenth place before the first pit stops of the day. During his first pit stop on lap 60, he stalled leaving his pit box that saw him fall as far down as twenty-sixth place. Malukas spent the rest of his race climbing back through the field and did so successfully, even leading the first three laps of his IndyCar career late in the race.

Malukas fell back down the order, and rejoined the race in sixteenth after his final pit stop. Once again, he collected five positions as he climbed all the way back up to eleventh, just shy of his first IndyCar top-ten finish. The American cited his ability to fight through adversity as one of the best parts about the sport.

Charles Leclerc continued his winning ways as he topped the first practice ahead of Max Verstappen and Valtteri Bottas.

Leclerc was faster than Verstappen by 0.116 seconds. Leclerc set the fastest lap of 1m30.772s on the soft compound tyres in the dying minutes of the session. Verstappen set his fastest time on the hard compound tyres, an ominous sign for the competition.

The first free practice session of the second race of the 2022 FIA Formula 1 World Championship took place at the Jeddah Corniche Circuit in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia.

Formula 1 returned to this track for the Saudi Arabian Grand Prix in less than four months. This race debuted on the Formula 1 calendar as the penultimate race of last season.

The track has 27 corners and is a superfast flowing track. It is a temporary street circuit with the barriers close to the track. The drivers negotiated the first session without any major incidents.

Any NASCAR Cup Series owner/driver aspires to be like among the likes of Alan Kulwicki and Tony Stewart, but Brad Keselowski‘s tenure as one instead has him feeling like Michael Waltrip.

On Thursday, NASCAR handed down one of the largest points penalties in recent memory when it gave Keselowski’s #6 RFK Racing Ford Mustang an L2 level penalty. The car was found after Sunday’s race at Atlanta Motor Speedway to have violated Sections 14.1 and 14.5 of the rulebook, which respectively concern vehicle assembly and body, in regards to the modification of a single-vendor part. Keselowski and the #6 have been docked 100 points in the driver and owner standings, respectively, as well as ten playoff points. Crew chief Matt McCall has been fined $100,000 and suspended for the next four races; engineer Josh Sell will fill in.

The Next Gen car, currently in its first season of action, stands out from its predecessors in that it relies on parts supplied to all teams from single suppliers; for example, every Next Gen car has radiator ducts made by Dallara, while all driveshafts are produced by Xtrac Inc. This is intended to reduce costs for teams as they would not have to manufacturer the parts themselves. To discourage them from tampering with such components, NASCAR introduced a new penalty system that targets infractions with stiffer punishments, which can go as far as to disqualify teams from making the playoffs in extreme circumstances. Disqualification is reserved for L3 level penalties, which are for egregious cases like counterfeiting or swapping out single-vendor parts with outside components rather than simply modifying them.

NASCAR did not specify which part of Keselowski’s #6, though the sanctioning body publicised that it broke clauses C and D of Section 14.1 as well as clauses A and D of 14.5; 14.5.d reads that “external surfaces of body panels may be wrapped or wrapped with paint applied to the wrap. Any external wrap or coating must be removable. Textured paint or vinyl will not be permitted.”

The 100-point penalty drastically drops Keselowski from sixteenth in the standings to thirty-fifth, the worst of all full-time drivers and trailing David Ragan and Garrett Smithley who have run two and three of five races, respectively. In order to make the playoffs, he would need to reach the top thirty in points and likely rely on a win. Even if he qualifies for the playoffs, he would already be in a hole due to his negative playoff points.