Motorsports Racing News & Blog Articles

Hillspeed have announced their first signing for the 2022 GB3 Championship, with Canadian F1600 champion Nick Gilkes stepping up.

Also winning the Ontario F1600 Championship last year, Gilkes tested with the Derbyshire outfit at Silverstone in November, impressing in the outgoing Tatuus BF3-020, an evolution of the F4-016.

That was his first taste of slicks-and-wings machinery, with GB3 introducing an upgraded power and aero package for 2022 with the MSV-022.

He started racing in Barbados, before entering the karting scene in Canada once his family returned there.

The impressive performances began to pile up, winning the 2016 Goodwood Kartways Novice Club title and the Pfaff Kartsport Cup in 2018.

When the Acura Grand Prix of Long Beach‘s newest contract is set to expire, the city will be gearing up for the 2028 Summer Olympics. On Tuesday, the Long Beach City Council unanimously voted in favour of a five-year extension that will retain the beloved NTT IndyCar Series street race through the 2028 season. Prior to the vote, the contract—signed between the city and the Grand Prix Association of Long Beach (GPALB)—was last approved in December 2017 and ran through 2023.

“The Grand Prix has always been a very strong community event and this agreement just amplifies the unique relationship with the City of Long Beach going forward,” stated GPALB president Jim Michaelian.

As part of the deal, the Grand Prix Association will have a say in the street circuit’s development. For example, if the city or an interested company wishes to build upon a location that is part of the race course during the Grand Prix weekend, the GPALB would need to be notified. One particular area of note is the “Elephant Lot”, a portion of land that is mainly used for grandstands and additional paddocks on race day, but has been entertained for development such as sports stadiums. While the California Coastal Commission holds the final say on what to do with the lot as it is in the CCC’s designated coastal zones, the GPALB will also be involved in any dialogue.

The association is also on the hook for any damage to the streets used as the racing surface, as well as any fees related to organising the event. Due to the 2020 race being cancelled by COVID-19, the Press-Telegram reported the GPALB will pay $94,749 over five years with zero interest.

“We’ll be consulted from the very beginning of any project, which is important, because in the past without that requirement a developer could have come with a plan that didn’t afford us an opportunity for discussion or input or anything,” Michaelian told the Long Beach Post in December.

Formula 1 CEO Stefano Domenicali says he is disappointed that there is very little interest in bringing a Grand Prix back to Germany, despite the presence of the likes of Sebastian Vettel, Mick Schumacher and the Mercedes-AMG Petronas Formula One Team on the grid.

There was not a race on the calendar in 2021, nor is there one planned for 2022, with the last race to be held in Germany the Eifel Grand Prix at the Nürburgring in 2020, a race that was added late in the day as Formula 1 pushed for more races in a heavily COVID-19 affected season.

Formula 1 was extremely popular in Germany back in the 1990s when Michael Schumacher was dominating, and between 1999 and 2007, the country held two races, one at the Nürburgring and the other at the Hockenheimring.

The two circuits also alternated hosting a race between 2008 and 2014 before the Nürburgring dropped out, while the Hockenheimring hosted races in 2016 and 2018 before it too stopped.

Domenicali says it is important for the traditional Grand Prix countries to maintain their prescence on the Formula 1 calendar, and he says he will be happy to see Germany resume its place on the schedule should a venue become interested again in playing host.

Pierre Gasly feels Yuki Tsunoda did not expect to struggle as much as he did during his rookie season in Formula 1, but the depth of talent and ability in the sport would have made it hard for any driver coming in.

Tsunoda endured a tough baptism of fire in 2021, scoring only thirty-two points compared to the one hundred and ten of his Scuderia AlphaTauri Honda team-mate Gasly, although he ended the season with his best finish with fourth in the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix.

Gasly believes Tsunoda did learn some things just be observing what he did behind the wheel and adapted his approach as a result, but going against the likes of Sebastian Vettel, Fernando Alonso and Kimi Räikkönen was always going to be tricky for the Japanese racer.

“It’s difficult because it takes so much energy focusing on your own thing,” Gasly is quoted as saying by GPFans.  “I think listening from what Yuki says, he learned quite a lot from looking at the data, seeing the way I work with the team, and just seeing my approach.

“I think he probably didn’t expect to struggle that much, from what he says, coming into Formula 1.  The level in F1 at the moment in the midfield, it’s really hard.

Nikita Mazepin feels ready to fight amongst the midfield pack in 2022 after an often-frustrating 2021 Formula 1 season left him floundering at the back of the pack without any real chance of scoring points.

The Uralkali Haas F1 Team driver was one of only two full-time drivers not to break into the top ten last year, with the other being team-mate Mick Schumacher.

But Haas put all their focus into the development of their 2022 challenger rather than any effort into the 2021 machine, meaning Mazepin was always destined for struggles. 

But despite this, he enjoyed a few good on-track battles during the year, and he hopes for more on a more frequent basis this year, should his team give him the car to do so.

“Of course I am. I feel 100% ready,” Mazepin is quoted as saying by Motorsport.com.  “I had a few good battles this year with some faster cars and I felt comfortable.  For me, mainly fighting with people, I need to know exactly where my rear wing ends and where the front wing ends, so I know exactly how to position my car next to them.

Laurent Mekies says it would be ‘naïve’ of Scuderia Ferrari to assume they will close the gap to the leading teams in 2022 despite the introduction of new aerodynamic and tyre regulations aimed at closing up the field.

The 2022 season will see cars looking significantly different compared to what was seen on track in 2021, whilst the tyres will switch from the traditional thirteen inch to eighteen inch.

No one knows how close the field will be this year, with teams yet to have revealed their 2022 machines, but the drastic change in aerodynamic regulations meant teams switched their attention to them earlier than normal, meaning very little development was done on the 2021 cars.

Mekies, the Sporting Director at Ferrari, says that whilst his team have focused their efforts on their 2022 car early, it is no guarantee that they will be any closer to the Mercedes-AMG Petronas Formula One Team or Red Bull Racing, even if their rivals were forced to focus more on the 2021 cars than they would have liked to.

Third placed Ferrari finished two hundred and sixty two points behind Red Bull and two hundred and ninety points behind Mercedes in 2021, and whilst Mekies says the aim is to close the gap and return the Maranello-based team to the front of the grid, he is not taking anything for granted.

The 2022 Dakar Rally is off and running, though a scary incident preceded the historic desert race when on Thursday, 29 December, buggy driver Philippe Boutron and five others were caught in an explosion that destroyed their vehicle. Although the others were unharmed, Boutron suffered serious leg injuries that resulted in surgery.

The vehicle was a support truck owned by French outfit Sodicars Racing, for whom Boutron was scheduled to drive the #260 buggy in his ninth Rally. Boutron was driving the truck at the time, and he was accompanied by his navigator Mayuel Barbet, Philippe Raud and his son Maxime, Thierry Richard, and Joël Pailly. The Rauds are pilots of the #294 car while Richard is in the #276, both entries also fielded by Sodicars. Pailly is a crew member and friend of Boutron.

The explosion occurred outside the Hotel Donatello in Jeddah, where the team was staying ahead of the race, while the truck was on its way to scrutineering; Dakar Rally director David Castera told France Télévisions that a hole was blown through the driver’s seat where Boutron had been sitting. Its cause is currently unknown, though the Makkah regional police released a statement saying “preliminary investigations revealed that there was no criminal suspicion in the accident.”

Barbet argues otherwise, claiming it was a bomb attack. In his testimony, Barbet explains the blast happened after the truck had travelled 500 metres from its starting point at the hotel. Once the vehicle caught fire, Boutron asked him to pull him from his seat as he could not feel his legs; upon extracting his driver, Barbet applied a tourniquet to stymie blood loss until medical services arrived approximately twenty minutes later. The French Ministry of Foreign Affairs also did not rule out the possibility of terrorism, and urged French citizens in Saudi Arabia to exercise “maximum vigilance.”

Boutron underwent surgery at a local military hospital, and will eventually be repatriated back to France and continue further treatment at the Hôpital d’instruction des armées Percy in Clamart. Barbet and Pailly departed Saudi Arabia on Monday to head back to Paris.

Antonio Giovinazzi expects the start of his career in the ABB FIA Formula E World Championship to be difficult as he adjusts to life in the all-electric series after leaving Formula 1 at the end of 2021.

The Italian lost his ride with Alfa Romeo Racing ORLEN after three years with the Hinwil-based squad and will race for Dragon/Penske Autosport in Formula 2 in 2022.

Giovinazzi feels Formula E will be a very different challenge to what he has been used to, with 2022 the first time he has raced in an all-electric championship in a career where he has raced in various single seater categories as well as sportscars.

“I think if you go from F1 to maybe Indycar or, I don’t know, from LMP1, in the end you feel maybe less speed, less grip but it’s the same style of driving,” Giovinazzi is quoted as saying by GPFans.

“The issue I’ve got in Formula E is that it’s a completely different sport. Obviously it’s the braking, no downforce, no sounds, heavy cars. It will be so different and unfortunately, I got only two days before race one but it’s a challenge.

Guenther Steiner says he was impressed by the way the mechanics and engineers within his Uralkali Haas F1 Team kept going during the 2021 Formula 1 season despite the lack of success that was always on the cards with the poor VF-21.

The VF-21 was lacking in performance right from its track debut, and Haas opted to focus on the development of the 2022 car instead.  Neither Mick Schumacher nor Nikita Mazepin had any realistic shot at the points all season long, with the formers twelfth place in the Hungarian Grand Prix the best result of the year.

However, Steiner, the Team Principal at Haas, was delighted that the team never stopped fighting throughout the year, even if it was obvious early on that they were destined to finish at the bottom of the Constructors’ Championship standings.

“I’m quite impressed how the guys kept on going,” Steiner is quoted as saying by Motorsport.com. “Look at the results, in the end there was never a giving up, we knew where we end up, but we always keep fighting. Even if you are a tenth behind, you try to make it half a tenth and that’s thanks to the guys.

“And they really kept on fighting because also there is, I would say, about 60% of the people which are here from the beginning of the team, so they know we can do it. And everybody wants to come back to go and get points again, fight in the midfield.

Max Verstappen says any future Formula 1 World Championships will just be a bonus after he fulfilled his dream of winning the Drivers’ crown with victory in the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix earlier this month.

The Red Bull Racing driver took the win after passing Lewis Hamilton on the final lap of the race at Yas Marina Circuit, and he was exuberant and ecstatic as he celebrated the triumph after the chequered flag with his team.  It was his tenth win of the season and his eighteenth visit to the podium, with the latter a new record for a single season in Formula 1

But he says his dream of winning the title has come true, and although he says he wants to win again and believes he can, any additional title would be just a bonus.

“After the win, I was relieved because that was always my dream, of course, to win once and everything that comes now is a bonus in the end,” said Verstappen to Austrian TV show Sport und Talk.

“But I think if I’m back in the first race, then of course I want to win again. And when I have the fastest car again, I will do it again.”

Zak Brown says Pato O’Ward’s first time in a Formula 1 car was very strong, with the CEO of the McLaren F1 Team feeling the Mexican did everything the team wanted him to do during his run in the young driver test in Abu Dhabi earlier this month.

O’Ward, a frontrunner in the NTT IndyCar Series in 2021, earned a chance to test a Formula 1 car for the first time as part of a bet with Brown, who offered the chance should he bring his Arrow McLaren SP car to victory lane in 2021. 

And he did just that in just the fourth round of the season at Texas Motor Speedway, and for good measure, he also won the second race of the weekend at the Belle Isle Street Circuit in Detroit later in the year.

With limited running for young drivers in the modern era of Formula 1, it was important for O’Ward to make an impact at the Yas Marina Circuit, and he did just that in front of Brown and the rest of the McLaren set-up.

“I think any time you put a driver in your Formula 1 car, you only get so few test days and so few rookie days that you’re only going to put someone in that makes it a meaningful test,” Brown is quoted as saying by Racer.com.

The JGR jokes lasted a little over a month, but they are now obsolete.

Joey Gase Racing, who shared an abbreviation with fellow NASCAR Xfinity Series team and stock car powerhouse Joe Gibbs Racing, is now Emerling-Gase Motorsports as the eponymous owner has teamed up with Patrick Emerling for the 2022 season. EGM will field the #35 car on a full-time basis as already planned under the original name, though Gase will now share it with Emerling and Shane Lee, as well as a part-time car whose number was not immediately revealed.

“I am very excited to be teaming up with Patrick on this new adventure,” Gase stated. “We both share the same vision and goals for the future, and we are both true racers at heart. The other cool thing is that we will be two of the youngest owners in the sport, but still have a lot of experience and knowledge to go with that.”

Gase enters team ownership after spending the last two seasons as a part-time Xfinity and Cup Series driver. He was an Xfinity regular from 2014 to 2019, during which he scored three top-ten finishes. Off the track, the 28-year-old is a champion of organ donation efforts, which is symbolised in the EGM logo with a green ribbon.

Emerling is coming off a runner-up championship run in the NASCAR Whelen Modified Tour, a campaign that saw him win three times with top tens in all but three races. He has competed in the series since 2011, and the second-place season marked his fourth career top-ten points finish. He débuted in the Xfinity Series in 2020 for Our Motorsports, and ran three races in the team’s #23 in 2021 with a best finish of twenty-fourth at Kansas. EGM’s #35 acquired the owner points of Our’s #23, which locks the team into the early slate of races as the car was twentieth in the owner’s standings, though it also means the #23 will have to qualify its way into races with Our newcomer Anthony Alfredo unless the team gets points elsewhere.

George Russell hopes the three years of struggles he had racing for the Williams F1 Team will help him when he makes the jump up to the Mercedes-AMG Petronas Formula One Team in 2022.

Russell made his Formula 1 debut with Williams in 2019 but failed to score points with them in the first two seasons, with the Hungarian Grand Prix of 2021 the first time he broke into the top ten with the Grove-based squad. 

He had scored points in a one-off appearance for Mercedes in the 2020 Sakhir Grand Prix after Lewis Hamilton fell ill, but it was midway through 2021 where he finally found the magic touch to get inside the points, which he ultimately did on four occasions last year.

However, Russell hopes the struggles he had with Williams will put him in a good place when he makes his full-time move to Mercedes in 2022 as Hamilton’s newest team-mate.

“I think I’m pretty grateful for the difficulties that I’ve faced on the track throughout these years because quite often when you get in a faster car and a car that is more complete, things just naturally feel easier,” Russell is quoted as saying by GPFans.

WSR (West Surrey Racing) have announced their first driver for the 2022 BTCC season as popular rising championship challenger, Jake Hill will join the outfit with MB Motorsport powered by ROKiT having joining forces with the team.

Hill will make the switch from Ford Focus ST to one of three BMW 330e M Sport, designed, built and ran by the reigning Manufacturers’ Champions with a shift towards the hybrid era starting during this next season.

Having won a record-breaking sixth Manufacturers’ crown for BMW, they will shift towards a title tilt again next season as well in the Drivers’ Championship with Hill finishing a career best fifth last season with a pair of wins to race to Brands Hatch for the title.

Jake Hill said on the announcement: “Thanks to some incredible support and brilliant people around me, the last few seasons in the BTCC have just been getting better and better and I truly believe that working with MB Motorsport powered by ROKiT alongside WSR means that anything is possible again for 2022. I have always loved the underdog and compassionate spirit that runs through The ROKiT Group and am proud to be representing them this year. It has always been a dream of mine to work alongside WSR and BMW and I think I can be honest and say it is for pretty much every driver who aspires to be in the BTCC. To now have made that possible in 2022 thanks to some amazing people, I couldn’t be more grateful. I’ve been presented with an incredible opportunity and it’s now down to me to make the most of it.”

Dick Bennetts, Team Principal, said: “We’re very pleased to welcome Jake and MB Motorsport Powered by ROKiT to WSR for the 2022 BTCC season. Jake is someone we’ve been keeping an eye on for a number seasons, who had a real breakthrough campaign this year and came close to winning the title. Although his BTCC experience has largely been in front-wheel-drive machinery, he’s amassed plenty of wins in rear-wheel-drive cars in both the BTCC support categories and in high-level historic motorsport. We have a long history of working with promising drivers and helping them to become champions and we’re sure that Jake has the potential to be the next in line. We’re very much looking forward to getting him behind the wheel of the Hybrid BMW 3 Series for the first time and to building a really strong relationship with Mark Blundell and his team alongside ROKiT and their loyal partners.”

Christian Horner has called the relationship between Red Bull Racing and engine suppliers Honda ‘phenomenal’ after the conclusion of their official partnership at the end of 2021.

Honda returned to Formula 1 as an engine supplier with the McLaren F1 Team in 2015 and spent three unsuccessful years with the Woking-based team before they switched over to Scuderia Toro Rosso in 2018.  Red Bull then also agreed to run with Honda power, starting from 2019 after falling out with Renault.

Since their partnership began, Red Bull and Honda have combined to win sixteen races and take thirteen pole positions, as well as taking Max Verstappen to his maiden World Drivers’ Championship in 2021.

Red Bull will take over the running of the Honda power units going forward, but the two parties will continue to work together on other projects.

And when asked if the relationship between Red Bull and Honda was the best they’ve had in Formula 1, Team Principal Horner was adamant it was.