Motorsports Racing News & Blog Articles

IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship driver Bill Auberlen will make his five-hundredth race start in a BMW next weekend at the 70th Twelve Hours of Sebring.

The American driver first signed with BMW in 1996, and since then has taken 45 Pole positions and 64 victories in BMW machinery over the last 25 years.

The 53-year-old is also set to be inducted in to the Motorsports Walk of Fame on 7 April, the day before the practice begins at the Grand Prix of Long Beach weekend.

“When I look back on 500 races with BMW, I am humbled and proud,” said Auberlen. “When I look to what the next seasons may bring, I say bring on race number 600! It feels appropriate that my 500th for BMW comes at Sebring as the 12 Hour is a special race for me.

“In 1985, I was the truck driver and crew for my father’s win there. Ten years later I scored my first win at the 12 Hour. My induction to the Motorsports Walk of Fame in Long Beach feels almost surreal. It’s kind of a “local kid makes good” thing and I am truly honoured.”

Sauber Group have announced the appointment of Alessandro Alunni Bravi as their new Managing Director, effective as of March 1st.

Alunni Bravi, who holds a decades-long experience in motorsports and has been Sauber Group’s General Counsel and Board Member since 2017, will see his focus change onto marketing, communications, sales, legal, IT and finance, reporting directly to CEO, Frédéric Vasseur, as part of his new role as Managing Director.

Frédéric Vasseur, CEO of Sauber Group believes Alunni Bravi is the perfect person for the job, due to his wealth of experience.

“Alessandro has been an integral part of the growth of our company, on and off the track, in the last few years and I am excited about the contribution he will make in his new position. Few can match his knowledge of motorsports with that of business and the complex legal landscape in which we operate, and this makes Alessandro the right person for this challenge.”

Alessandro Alunni Bravi, Managing Director of Sauber Group is very proud to have taken the step up to Managing Director, Alunni Bravi is also acutely aware of the responsibilities his new job possesses.

The Alfa Romeo F1 Team ORLEN have arguably been the busiest over the winter break when it comes to announcing brand-new partnerships, they aren’t done yet! The Swiss-based team announced a new partnership on Tuesday with Belgium-based resilience centre, Curam Domi.

Curam Domi offer a safe and secure healing environment for training, rehabilitation and prevention. The Private company aim to get clients back into perfect shape, providing an optimum quality of life in all daily activities.

A key aspect to all that Curam Domi offer is sensory experiences, these experiences use a combination of value-based measurements, safety, serious gaming, virtual reality but without forgoing the human approach.

Frédéric Vasseur, Team Principal Alfa Romeo F1 Team ORLEN recognises how important healing is as well as putting people first, he is excited to discover more about the work Curam Domi do, during their partnership.

“We are a team and we take part in a team sport: the value of the individual is paramount for our activities and it is something in which we have invested confidently in recent years. Curam Domi shares our values and principles, putting the person first and developing a human-centric, holistic approach to healing. We are looking forward to discovering more about this approach with them during our partnership.”

After announcing that they would be competing in the 2022 Porsche Carrera Cup North America last month, MDK Motorsports have unveiled their seven driver line-up for the Carrera Cup and the Porsche Sprint Challenge North America series.

“We are proud of the drivers racing under the MDK flag this year and honored to welcome their families and guests for a one-of-a-kind experience,” said team CEO Megan Kvamme.

“This endeavor required a fast and furious year of preparation, and we knew from the outset that we needed to have a diversity in experience and perspective among our drivers in order to be the dynamic team that we set out to be.”

Trenton Estep looks set to be a front-runner for the season ahead, already topping the timesheets in the two-day test at Sebring ahead of the season-opener next week. Estep comes from a Karting background, including competitions such as SKUSA Pro Tour, Florida Winter Tour, US Open, and Rotax Grand Finals in Portugal.

Following his karting career he moved to single seaters where he secured the Formula Ford title twice and then in to sports cars where he took the 2018 Porsche GT3 Cup Challege USA title.

2021 F4 British Championship runner-up Matías Zagazeta will make the jump up to Formula Regional European Championship by Alpine in 2022 after signing with Swiss outfit G4 Racing.

The Peruvian racer will be joined at the team by Frenchman Owen Tangavelou, who also makes the leap from Formula 4, the seventeen-year-old having spent the past two years racing in French F4.

Zagazeta was a four-time winner in British F4 last year and only lost out on the title to British racer Matthew Rees by twenty-six points.  And the eighteen-year-old says he is eager to get going with his new team in 2022.

“I’m very excited to be joining forces with G4 Racing, a team full of potential and ambition, and I am very happy to be part of their project this season,” said Zagazeta.

“I can’t wait to get the season started and chase after some really good results like they had last year and to develop even more together in 2022!”

Jost Capito, the Team Principal of Williams Racing, says Jamie Chadwick will need to make the step up to FIA Formula 3 ‘at some point’ if she still has Formula 1 as her ultimate career goal.

Chadwick recently confirmed that she would remain in W Series for the 2022 season to defend her title with Caitlyn Jenner’s eponymous team, with the British racer citing financial restrictions prevented her from making the step up that she was hoping for.

“I think the most important factor is the funding and to be quite honest, we were not able to raise the necessary funds in the short time that we had,” said Chadwick on social media.

The twenty-three-year-old remains a part of Williams Development Driver line-up for this year, and whilst supporting her decision to remain in W Series for a third year, Capito says it is imperative that the British racer does make the step up if her ambitions to race in Formula 1 are genuine.

He insists to reach Formula 1, Chadwick will need to race in Formula 3 and FIA Formula 2, and it will be important for her to make that jump sooner rather than later in order to have a chance to become the first female Formula 1 driver to race in the sport since Lella Lombardi back in 1976, and the first female to attempt to qualify for a race since Giovanna Amati in 1992.

Gene Haas says the external pressure and criticism was too much for his Haas F1 Team to keep Nikita Mazepin and major sponsors Uralkali in the team for the 2022 Formula 1 season on the back of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

Many sanctions have been put in place on Russia following the invasion, including the removal of the Russian Grand Prix from the calendar, while drivers were prohibited from running under their national flag as part of the FIA’s quickly sanctioned regulations.

However, Uralkali’s Dmitri Mazepin’s close relationship with the Russian President saw the team come under fire, with criticism coming from many angles as they sought to get the team to sever ties with their Russian driver and Russian sponsor.

Haas, the Founder of the team that made its Formula 1 debut in 2016, says the criticism was getting ‘overwhelming’ and it was difficult for the team and its sponsors to deal with, and it meant a split with both driver and sponsor was inevitable.

“There was a lot of intense criticism about the Ukrainian invasion, and it was just getting overwhelming,” Haas is quoted as saying to Associated Press.  “We can’t deal with all that, our other sponsors can’t deal with all that.”

Tarso Marques is perhaps best known as Fernando Alonso‘s first team-mate in Formula One when they raced for Minardi in 2001. Over two decades later, he will try his hand at the NASCAR Cup Series.

On Tuesday, Team Stange Racing announced it will field the #79 Ford Mustang in the Cup Series with an eight-race schedule beginning at Road America on 3 July. Later runs will come at Indianapolis Motor Speedway (31 July), Watkins Glen International (21 August), Daytona International Speedway (27 August), Charlotte Motor Speedway Roval (9 October), Las Vegas Motor Speedway (16 October), Homestead-Miami Speedway (23 October), and Phoenix Raceway (6 November). Fitting with Marques’ résumé, four of the starts will come at road courses. Dignity Gold, LLC, a blockchain security company, will sponsor the car. According to a team release, the sponsorship was fully paid using the firm’s DIGau security token.

Marques raced in F1 for Minardi at the turn of the millennium, which included the final ten rounds of the 1997 season and first fourteen of 2001. The latter saw him record the team’s best finish of the season with a pair of ninths in his native Brazil and Canada, though he was consistently outpaced by his rookie team-mate Alonso. With the team being one of the smallest and frequently plagued by funding issues, Marques lost his seat ahead of the last three races.

Between his two F1 stints, he went to the United States in 1999 to compete in CART (later Champ Car) for Team Penske as an injury replacement for Al Unser Jr. A year later, he joined Dale Coyne Racing for all but the first three races in 2000 for the latter. His best finish was seventh in the season finale at Fontana. Marques returned to Champ Car in 2004 and 2005 for four races with DCR, finishing outside the top ten in each.

While NASCAR is a different code from open-wheel, Marques has prior stock car experience. Since 2006, he has competed in Stock Car Brasil with two wins. Off the track, he runs Tarso Marques Concept, an automotive customisation and design business.

With the second round of pre-season testing coming up in just a couple of days, all the drivers are definitely raring to go and see what their cars for this year will be like in Bahrain. Two who are probably more excited than most are Alex Albon and Nicholas Latifi of Williams Racing. The FW44’s somewhat radical design seemed to work well in Barcelona and, with Williams being a team with aspirations to leap back up the grid, there’s a lot of positivity within the camp.

“I’m super excited to get to Bahrain for testing,” said Latifi. “After sampling the FW44 in Barcelona last week, I’m curious to see it on a track that is going to have more representative conditions. It’ll be a good opportunity to see what we can do and build upon the progress and learning we currently have. The additional running will also be much more relevant for the team as we’re racing there a week later, so I’m really looking forward to it.”

“After a strong few days in Barcelona, the focus now turns to the pre-season test in Bahrain,” said Albon. “It’s a very different track with incredibly different temperatures, so it will be interesting to see how the FW44 performs, and we’ll have a lot to learn ahead of the first race. Our main goals will be to fine tune the set-up of the car and work on maximising performance; I’m looking forward to it!“

Williams will start its running in Bahrain on 10 March. Alex Albon will run all day on the first day and Nicholas Latifi will run all day on the second day. The third day of testing will be split between both drivers; Latifi will be driving during the morning and Albon will be driving during the afternoon.

The second round of this year’s pre-season testing starts in Bahrain this weekend and Williams Racing is definitely looking forward to it. After some initially promising running in Barcelona, Williams’ Head of Vehicle Design Dave Robson is looking towards Bahrain with a positive mindset.

“The main objective of the test this week is to build on the learning from the track session in Barcelona and to start to increase the performance of the car,” said Robson. “We got a useful preview of the FW44 in Barcelona and although the cars were only back in Grove for a few days before being transported to Bahrain, we were able to do quite a lot of work on them, which should help us to exploit the best performance this week.“

With Williams looking to jump up the results table this year thanks to its somewhat radical car design, getting things nailed in Bahrain will be especially important. That’s something that Robson is acutely aware of, especially considering the big difference in conditions between Sakhir and Barcelona. “Conditions in Bahrain will be more demanding than they were in Spain, with the hotter track temperatures affecting the tyre performance and the stronger wind gusts challenging the aero characteristics much harder,” he explained. “This will be an excellent opportunity to test the car in a different environment and to use the data we gather to predict how the car will perform throughout the season ahead.“

“We were reasonably happy with our work in Barcelona, but we are looking to do even better this week as we seek to push the performance of the FW44 forwards as well as ensuring that the car is fully race ready for the season ahead.”

Williams will start its running in Bahrain on Thursday 10 March. Alex Albon will run the full day on the first day of testing, with Nicholas Latifi running the whole of the second day. Both drivers will run on the third and final day of testing (Latifi in the morning and Albon in the afternoon).

The Dallara F2/18 used in the FIA Formula 2 Championship is currently heading into it’s fifth straight season in use for the single-seater championship after it was first commissioned in 2018 for that year’s F2 championship.

As a completely spec racing car, it was designed by Luca Pignacca and manufactured by the Italian outfit Dallara who also make the F3/19 which is used in the precursor to F2, the FIA Formula 3 Championship.

It has been in the hands of some of Formula 1’s brightest talents, including George Russell, Lando Norris, Mick Schumacher and more recently, Oscar Piastri.

The Car

Measuring in at just over five metres in length and just under two metres in width, the F2/18 is made from a number of different materials.

The main survival cell is made from a carbon/aluminium honeycomb structure with anti-intrusion panels that are made by Dallara. The front and rear wings are purely carbon-fibre with the rest of the bodywork being another honeycomb structure of kevlar and carbon. It also features a titanium halo over the monocoque as per the F1 specifications as well as the full 2017 FIA safety standards.

The 2022 Superstar Racing Experience season will end with a duel between father and son. On Monday, the series announced Dave Blaney and son Ryan will race in the final race of the year at Sharon Speedway on 23 July. Dave will be in the #10 while Ryan is the #12’s driver.

The duo are deeply embedded into the dirt and NASCAR world. In the latter, Dave was a Cup Series regular from 2000 to 2014; despite being relegated to start-and-park and backmarker roles for much of his career, he has twenty-eight top tens and a pair of poles. Dave won his lone NASCAR national series race in the now-Xfinity Series at Charlotte in 2006.

While Dave’s NASCAR tenure didn’t result in substantial success, Ryan is one of the Cup Series’ top young guns with seven wins to his name and playoff berths every year since 2017. In 2021, he won three races en route to a seventh-place points finish.

In 2013, the two raced as team-mates at Brad Keselowski Racing for the Camping World Truck Series race at Eldora Speedway, the first NASCAR national series dirt race since 1970. Dave finished ahead of Ryan with a ninth to Ryan’s fifteenth. Eldora is owned by SRX founder and inaugural champion Tony Stewart, though it will not return for the 2022 schedule after Stewart won there the previous year.

A three-eighth-mile dirt oval, Sharon Speedway is co-owned by the older Blaney, who took over operations in 2002 alongside a contingent of local business owners from the Weller and Kirila families. When the Hartford, Ohio circuit was announced as an SRX stop in February, both Blaneys were virtually expected to make guest appearances in the race. Ryan will be in for a busy weekend as the race takes place the day before the Cup Series runs at Pocono; qualifying is on the same day as SRX, but the latter being a night event could buy travel time.

Cambridge-base Frontier Developments plc have unveiled their latest title as they enter in to the annual sports license genre with F1 Manager 2022, set to be released in the summer.

The company was founded in 1994 by David Braben, co-author of the iconic Elite game and has an impressive portfolio to its name, including Planet Coaster, Jurassic World Evolution 1 & 2 and Planet Zoo.

F1 Manager 2022 will launch in summer 2022 on Xbox Series X|S, PlayStation® 5, Xbox One, PlayStation® 4, Steam and the Epic Store, giving Formula 1 fans the chance to harness their inner Toto, and lead their drivers, engineers and fans to glory in the 2022 FIA Formula 1 Drivers’ World Championship and FIA Formula 1 Constructors’ World Championship.

Ross Brawn, Managing Director – Motorsports, Formula 1, said, “It’s great to see F1 Manager 2022 take shape and for people to see this exciting title come to life. I know from personal experience that leading a team can be challenging, but it’s certainly rewarding.

“The F1 Manager franchise is a great opportunity for fans to put themselves in the shoes of a team principal and experience some of that for themselves. I am confident that with their own successful track record in management gaming, Frontier will deliver an enjoyable and engaging experience for fans.”

Fresh from a win at the Rolex 24 at Daytona, Riley Motorsports have secured a contract with Kay van Berlo, who won the race alongside Felipe Fraga, Gar Robinson, and Michael Cooper in the #74 Ligier JS P320 LMP3 car.

The team proved dominant in the opening round of the IMSA Endurance Cup, winning the race by more than a lap over the second-placed LMP3 car. Now Riley Motorsports have made the move to bring van Berlo back for the remaining races of the IMSA Endurance Cup that runs as part of the main championship.

“I’m super excited, especially after Daytona,” said van Berlo. “When I tested for Riley back in 2021, I already knew the team was great, but I wanted to experience it myself. During the Rolex 24 they showed me that they are even better under pressure when it counts.

“From the very first test I’ve been able to get along great with the mechanics, engineers, Gar and Felipe. It feels like home. I’ve been to Sebring with an LMP3 car before and actually got my first pole out of karts there at the 2018 Sebring Encore so it’s a special place. I’m confident we can continue putting great results down.”

The remaining races of the four-race season will be the Mobil 1 Twelve Hours of Sebring Presented by Advance Auto Parts (12 hours), the Sahlen’s Six Hours of The Glen (6 hours), and the Motul Petit Le Mans (10 hours).

The Russian invasion of Ukraine is currently raging on and it seems like there is absolutely nowhere that hasn’t been affected by it. Formula 1 has even been heavily affected by it. The two biggest indicators of that have been the loss of the Russian Grand Prix for the foreseeable future (due to F1 effectively ripping up its contract with the event’s promoter) and the Haas F1 Team severing its connections both with title sponsor Uralkali and Russian driver Nikita Mazepin. This has left Haas without a title sponsor and without a permanent second driver (reserve driver Pietro Fittipaldi will be driving the VF-22 in Bahrain this weekend as part of the second round of pre-season testing, but his promotion to a main driver role is not guaranteed).

According to Jake Kemp, a Sport Analyst at GlobalData, the Haas F1 Team is one of the most impacted teams in motorsport when it comes to Russo-Ukrainian war. “The Russia-Ukraine situation is having seismic consequences on global sport, F1 included,” he said. “One of the most notable changes is around the removal of Russian Grand Prix hosting rights, as the sport was previously expected to visit the resort city of Sochi between 23 and 25 September 2022. Russia is one of the biggest payers for hosting rights, so the loss of the Russian Grand Prix will equate to substantial lost income—reported to be in excess of $50 million this season.“

“The loss of Russia is not the first big hosting rights contract lost in F1 for the 2022 season,” he continued, explaining how it isn’t just the loss of the Russian Grand Prix that has caused a significant financial impact to F1. “Qatar also skipped the new season, representing another big loss for hosting contracts. Qatar too saw losses of over $50 million—although, Qatar is expected to return to the F1 calendar in 2023.”

“One of the most impacted teams is Haas,” Kemp explained. “While the loss of Russian driver Nikita Mazepin will not be too damaging—Mazepin was consistently outperformed by his German teammate in 2021, only out-qualifying Mick Schumacher at two Grand Prix, and losing to him in races on 16 occasions—the team’s termination of a sponsorship partnership with Uralkali will hit hard. This $10-million-a-year deal had a major influence on the team’s ability to compete in 2021, representing a significant chunk of the estimated $43.65 million generated in sponsorship by the team during the 2021 season. The loss also pushes Haas back to 13 major brand partners for the 2022 season, putting them alongside Scuderia Alpha Tauri as the team with the fewest sponsors in the sport.“

“Haas has been fighting at the back of the grid for the past few seasons, so losing a significant financial contributor will hurt its efforts in the sport this year and likely see it fighting at the back of the grid again.“