News

This DSC tribute to Mooncraft is a great repository of racing lore. The firm was established in 1975 by Takuya Yura, a driver and designer, and it built one iconic racing chassis after another for decades. It became a subsidiary of Toray Carbon Magic in 2018 but continued making race cars. It’s now dissolving, being fully absorbed into its parent company, but the facility will remain operational for “future projects.” Yura is also planning to start a new company that will continue working with TCM.

MX-5 fans — a.k.a. everybody alive — will be relieved to read this characterization of the NE-series MX-5, which the press expects in 2027. Mazda won’t comment on the timeline, but they will comment on rumors that it will be in some way an electric vehicle: It will not. They know full well that a Miata is no Miata if it isn’t lightweight, and they don’t believe that can be done with an electric powertrain. They do say this will be the last MX-5 to follow its current formula, but we don’t know what that means, really, and who knows how long this one will last?

The Mercedes-AMG GT3 is one of the most venerable cars in the category, and after its long tenure, it will soon have a successor. Mercedes-AMG has rolled out a new GT3 race car and Black Series homologation car, complete with new brand colors and a whole photo shoot in development camo. It describes the current level of progress as “intensive development,” and there’s no timeline announced, but I expect we’ll start seeing these turning laps on an increasingly regular basis.

Apparently the FIA has been hard at work developing comprehensive training programs for officiating racing at all levels, and it has released those programs today.

One wonders why this was kept under wraps instead of being loudly communicated, especially during F1’s whole “ahead at the apex” Max Verstappen dive-bombing era of the past couple years. Those controversies frequently ignited discourses about officiating standards and stewarding experience and that sort of thing. You’d think the FIA would have wanted to get out ahead of that by crowing about this upcoming program. It might even have headed off that shouty letter from Formula E drivers last week.

Not content to be undefeated in the top class of IMSA so far this year, Porsche factory driver Laurin Heinrich will stay fresh in the 911 GT3 R Evo by joining High Class Racing in the European Le Mans Series alongside Anders Fjordbach and Dennis Andersen. High Class last contested the ELMS in 2020 in LMP2 machinery.

Luke Baldwin is a young driver I follow with interest for multiple reasons. He is a third-generation NASCAR racer, which is interesting in and of itself, but the lineage flows through the Modified Tour, which is a category I believe deserves higher stature. Those race cars are crazy. They may not have anything to do with O’Reilly Series stock cars, but at least they present a sheer difficulty level that ought to calibrate expectations correctly. Ryan Preece would be the best contemporary example of a modified driver making it in Cup, and he’s no slouch. I’d love to see Luke Baldwin make at least as big an impact.

We will shortly find out what it has taught Baldwin, as he will make his O’Reilly Series debut at Martinsville this weekend.

Alpine’s vice president of motorsport, Bruno Famin, stepped down from his position last week just ahead of what will turn out to be Alpine’s last season in the FIA World Endurance Championship for the foreseeable future. It would be an understandable move anyway, but it turns out to have been because he has landed a big job with the ACO itself. As deputy director in charge of competition, it will be Famin’s job to implement the ACO’s technical and competitive roadmap. Leaving a team and company who could not hang under the current rule set, I am sure Famin is full of new ideas.

The on-track story of NASCAR in 2026, if you ask me, continues to be that the series is finally getting the package dialed in. Aero, tires, and engine are all in the right place to revive the racing at many of NASCAR’s most beloved tracks. They may not race exactly like they did in whatever your personal nostalgic favorite NASCAR era was, but they’re starting to race analogously to the old days, defining their own era.

The NASCAR media scene did itself and the few people who pay this much attention a disservice by overhyping the potential impact of the new high-falloff tires and higher horsepower package at Darlington. They created some expectation that the Cup race would be an all-timer. It wasn’t, but it may have been something better in the long-term, which is a regular old race at Darlington.

In fact, all three series had good Darlington races. Corey Heim stole the Truck Series race from Ross Chastain in a very exciting finish, and Justin Allgaier stole the O’Reilly race from Kyle Larson, which one always loves to see.

What was great about the Cup race was that the best car won. It was no lottery, but it was certainly a trial. The cars were a handful for everybody, but Reddick suffered electrical problems and had to go and win the hottest race of the year so far with no way to cool off. Mike Joy called the win in a pretty funny way, saying Reddick had returned to winning “after a two-race losing streak.” That’s four on the year, if you’ve lost count.

It was an exciting day for RFK — Keselowski, Buscher, and Preece were all top-five runners throughout the day, they combined to lead 183 laps, and Brad won stage two — but they couldn’t hang on. You’ve been able to see them coming for a couple races at this point, though, so I think there’s more to come from RFK this year.

Also of note was Carson Hocevar, who got his best Cup finish ever in his best livery ever, a very well done Chili’s-sponsored Dale Earnhardt Wrangler car throwback. Hocevar finished fourth, and teammate Daniel Suárez finished seventh. So look out for Spire, too.

Suddenly, one of the racing seasons to which I was most looking forward this year has been called off at the last minute. Two-time World Rally champion Kalle Rovanperä has withdrawn from the 2026 Super Formula season citing worsening health issues, indefinitely pausing his quest to make it to Formula 1. This not only leaves the KCMG team in the lurch with a replacement who missed out on testing, it deprives the top Japanese open-wheel series of its second high-profile rookie this year after Jack Doohan’s plans to compete fell through.

Rovanperä’s overall open-wheel trajectory has been sensible, but it has gone a little strangely. He got started in the well regarded Formula Regional Oceania championship over the winter, though he didn’t achieve many notable results, and he had to miss the final round due to — yes — illness. The plan was always then to enter Super Formula, but he has told reporters that this was the requirement of his minders at Toyota rather than his own initiative.

Super Formula is a very high-level series, of course — both Pierre Gasly and Liam Lawson had strong showings there prior to getting their Formula 1 rides, and Álex Palou did a turn there as well — but it’s certainly a bit more out-there of a choice for a Formula 1 aspirant than, say, Formula 2. It makes sense if you’re Toyota, though. But the latest development is the weirdest of all: The announcement of Rovanperä’s withdrawal was issued by Toyota chairman Akio Toyoda himself. It’s understandable that Toyota would take on Kalle’s career as a bit of a project given the prowess he showed in WRC, but one gets the impression that he is not entirely in control of his own destiny here.

Rovanperä’s winter testing in the Super Formula car was disrupted by issues that were reported as “vertigo,” but the vague statements imply that the current issue is a bit more significant than that. These developments have not been terribly well received by the race-viewing public, to the point that Rovanperä’s WRC stablemate, Takamoto Katsuta, felt the need to publicly defend him and continue to back him as a Formula 1 prospect.

EuroNASCAR has decided to change the name of its pro division from “PRO” — i.e. the division in which the drivers are pros — to V8GP. The syllables have gone from one to four, and the meaning has gone from one to zero.

The press release announcing this truly is a marvelous thing. It claims the new branding represents the series’ “Grand Prix intensity and global ambition.” I can translate that for you right now: “NASCAR makes people think of America, and (we believe) that dissuades Europeans from buying tickets.” Even better, they frame the decade-old category as the “ultimate stage for professional drivers in European touring car racing.”

Touring car racing?

Oh, I see. This is V8 “touring car” racing. That is, don’t think of NASCAR, the American organization that actually sanctions this. Think of Supercars, the Australian organization that doesn’t sanction this. I wonder how long the NASCAR relationship will carry on?

EuroNASCAR is already rolling out driver news with this catchy “NASCAR Euro Series V8GP” moniker, and I will give them this: If it were called the V8GP European Championship, it would be the thing they think it is. It isn’t, though. It’s the NASCAR European Series.

I can’t say watching Jules Gounon, Dani Juncadella, and Max Verstappen race a Mercedes-AMG GT3 in a minor round of the Nürburgring Langstrecken-Serie was that fun. I mean, it would be fun to watch these guys lap the Nordschleife with no one else out there, and it was more fun than that to watch them dodge cars going so much slower than they were that it looked like they were placed there intentionally to challenge them, but they didn’t actually race after the first stint of the four-hour race.

This event made Max very happy, of course, because instead of losing like he is in Formula 1, he got to win a race by over a minute with no competition, which is apparently very fun for him.

Unfortunately, the team won’t get to book the result because they used an extra set of tires in qualifying and exceeded their weekend limit, so the win goes to the Rowe Racing BMW of Dan Harper and Jordan Pepper. By blaming qualifying procedures, I guess Mercedes means to convey that they miscounted at that point, so they didn’t know they were short in the race. That, of course, would be publicly indistinguishable from knowing they were short and going, “Who cares? This is a test.”

Max proved his point, though: Everyone else racing in this year’s N24 should be scared of him.

The 2026 12 Hours of Sebring gave us just what we needed on so many levels. It cleansed the palette of that niggling feeling about losing seven hours of the Daytona 24 to fog. It provoked some crazy driving — some of it heroic, some of it stupid — all of which made for great entertainment. And, my favorite part: Just as people who prefer European-style endurance racing rules were becoming fed up with all the yeehaw wave-arounds and restarts and starting to use the dreaded A-word (“artificial”), we got exactly the kind of late-race yellow they were sure was coming, and everybody kept their heads. The restart happened, everybody raced, and we got a completely satisfying finish. Well, unless you hate Penske or Porsche or both.

Yes, it was another Porsche Penske Motorsport 1–2 with the 7 ahead of the 6, and the GTP pecking order was more or less unchanged from Daytona, but it was a bit more of a dogfight this time. Both cars had their incidents — including the 6 breaking its nose on the back of the 31 Cadillac under safety car, which would have amused me if I didn’t always want the 31 to win — but they recovered through typically flawless Penske execution. Intriguingly, what decided the finishing order was actually a rather brazen on-track pass.

With just over an hour remaining in the race, the team called in a position swap because the 6 car, with Kevin Estre driving, was on fresher tires. Seven minutes later, Felipe Nasr in the 7 pounced on him in the G-loaded last corner and took the lead back, which Estre said happened because he was dutifully following team orders and Nasr was not. That is amusing to me. Good on you, Felipe. Way to get Porsche its 20th overall win at Sebring.

Porsche’s only serious challenge in GTP was again from Cadillac, with the 31 starting on pole and having the pace (and the Jack Aitken) to stay a threat, but in a heartening development for Caddy fans, the Wayne Taylor cars were finally in contention this time as well. There was a Cadillac three-ship running together late in the race that looked pretty dangerous. In fact, the 10 finished on the podium, but it was taken away in post-race tech for excess camber, which gave P3 to the 31. It is great to see WTR up there, though. They hadn’t really been pulling their weight.

There are no Porsches in LMP2, of course, but the equivalents last weekend were the United Autosports cars, who also finished 1-2. They did get a race from Spike, who was back in purple, but the AO Racing dragon-car got caught out by the timing of a full-course yellow. Tower had a pretty good race, too — which isn’t the greatest of looks for Sébastien Bourdais, who recently quit the team — but they got outdone by United on a restart. There was also some spectacularly bad driving in LMP2, most of it well within LMP2 stupidity norms, but Parker Thompson, driving the #52 in his second-ever LMP2 race, brutally murdered the DragonSpeed Corvette for absolutely no reason.

In GTD Pro, it was more Porsche, but not at all in a boring way. The winner was the Manthey #911, a truly remarkable showing even for Manthey. To swoop down upon U.S. racing like they did and then win their first Sebring is an incredible display of execution, but to do it with Nick Tandy hounding you all day in the AO Racing #77 — the People’s Porsche in this country — is all the more unlikely. So that was the other class with a Porsche 1–2. The GTD Porsches were not as dominant — particularly the Manthey #912 — but the Wright Motorsports #120 did make the podium with two overtakes in the last two laps. All that plus a superb debut of the new Carrera Cup car? Pretty good weekend for Porsche.

As for the other debutante, the Lamborghini Temerario GT3, it didn’t instantly turn around Pfaff’s fortunes, but it did finish the race! I can’t wait to see how they go on a less turbulent track.

But. The legendary GT3 drive of the weekend was that of the #21 AF Corse Ferrari. That Tony Fire cannot be stopped. After taking their lumps in drive-through penalties for racing… you know, hard, Antonio Fuoco absolutely tore the field apart to win the #21’s second IMSA race of the last three. Lilou Wadoux drove in both of those races, of course, and she was unstoppable as well. I have a new favorite Ferrari 296.

Even so, there is another GTD car upon which I urge readers not to sleep. The #27 Heart of Racing Aston Martin Vantage of Zacharie Robichon, Tom Gamble, and pole winner and Formula 1 offspring Eduardo Barrichello just went back-to-back on the podium, taking P2 in class at Sebring. “Dudu,” as Barrichello insists on being called, now leads the drivers’ championship.

In summary, IMSA racing rules.

My impression of watching Formula E at Jarama is that, at this point, Formula E absolutely can hang at a normal race track — and that’s before they get the 200-mph car next year. This race was scintillating, and I think it shows why electric racing is such a good idea when it can get the energy levels exactly right.

The level of energy deployment necessary for a good race on a proper road course is made possible by Formula E’s still relatively new Pit Boost fast-charging, which I think is one of the most underrated technical developments in racing recently. Not only does it reduce the amount of in-race management, increase the strategic options, and create great mid-race jeopardy, this level of fast-charging seems among the most likely of all current technologies in motorsports to have massive consumer benefits.

Rico Abreu is one of racing’s truest hustlers, to the point that there was almost a sense of relief last year when he struck a deal with an outfit no less reputable than Tony Stewart/Curb-Agajanian Racing. Such a pairing would have to show out quickly, though, and sure enough it has. Rico won their fourth race together at the season opener for Central Arizona Raceway. I can’t even guess how many more they’ll get this season.

IMSA has announced the drivers and cars inducted into its Hall of Fame this year, and while sports car racing is sort of the motorsports hall of fame in and of itself, the IMSA class of 2026 is stacked.

Drivers

• Bill Auberlen
• Butch Leitzinger
• Roger Mandeville
• Brian Redman
• Lyn St. James
• Hans-Joachim Stuck

Cars

• Audi 90 Quattro GTO
• Riley Daytona Prototype
• Greenwood Corvettes
• Mazda RX-3

UPDATE March 20, 1:30 PM: Things have gotten pretty spicy in this one.

After issuing a terse non-denial yesterday that was enough for me to decide the story was at least half-true, Audi today announced a new management structure in which Jonathan Wheatley is leaving effective immediately for “personal reasons” and Mattia Binotto will add team principal — a job at which he performed not-excellently at Ferrari before joining this team — to his list of titles. There has been additional reporting to suggest Binotto and Wheatley didn’t get along, which I guess is obvious given what’s happening. Again, this sucks for Audi.

Not to be outdone, Lawrence Stroll released a goofball statement as an Aston Martin press release where he “set[s] the record straight” that Adrian Newey is his “partner and an important shareholder,” and that he’s not going anywhere, which we knew. Stroll reminds us that Aston does not adhere to “traditional” conceptions of the role of team principal (again, we know), but all this chaos and ambiguity is apparently “by design.” Then he drops the real banger, which I will quote in full:

“We are regularly approached by senior executives of other teams who wish to join Aston Martin Aramco, but in keeping with our policy, we do not comment on rumour and speculation.”

Absolutely hilarious framing. It’s not out of the question that this is all Wheatley’s idea, but what is out of the question is that Wheatley would quit his job running the Audi F1 team if his next move weren’t a done deal, so for Stroll to make it sound like people are beating down the door is silly. I did see a report that Stroll took another meeting with Christian Horner this week, but at this point I’m starting to think that’s all Stroll trying to recruit him, and he’s saying no. Never mind the fact that, to all appearances, Newey hates Horner.

Anyway, can’t wait to see how this one lands. Another enticing tidbit is that Mercedes has — magically, coincidentally, just today — promoted Bradley Lord to deputy team principal and Toto Wolff’s formal number two. I’m sure that has nothing to do with TP vacancies suddenly appearing at any brand new F1 teams.

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Original post, March 19, 2:09 PM:

There is nothing surprising about Adrian Newey stepping down as big-picture boss after four months on the job. I think the Formula 1 world was too polite about that appointment. Newey is renowned for wanting to be left alone by businesspeople to concentrate on hand-drawing aerodynamic diagrams. He doesn’t want any part of the big picture. On the other hand, Aston Martin’s actual race car is such a dumpster fire that perhaps there was no one else in the organization who knew enough about race cars to fix it. There probably still isn’t.

What’s surprising is that Jonathan Wheatley is leaving Audi to do the job. The speculation is that Newey recommended Wheatley to Lawrence Stroll himself, and that makes sense. Wheatley is the man, and Stroll seemingly does not care how much of his fortune is left at the end of his time in racing. But this sucks for Audi. They are just getting their legs under them, and Wheatley seemed to be central to the project.

Nobody in racing does calendars like IMSA does. They treat it as a point of pride that they publish their calendars so early and keep them so consistent year after year. As far as fans are concerned, the only meaningful change in the 2027 calendar is that the Roar and the Rolex are moved one week later, so the race weekend is now January 28–31.

After swapping Maserati for Citroën in Formula E this year, the Stellantis Blob of Automotive Brands will swap DS Automobiles for Opel for the 2026–2027 season. Does anyone know what that means? What is the difference? Do any of these things resonate with consumers? No, I’m really asking. I guess I need a European to let me know, but I have my doubts.

Ahead of the two Supercars rounds in New Zealand, Walkinshaw TWG Racing has announced a new Kiwi co-owner, Scott O’Donnell. He’s a racer himself, which is always a good sign. O’Donnell picked up some of the shares sold by Zak Brown when United left the ownership group. Now O’Donnell wants to work on strengthening support for the team in New Zealand, which he has a fair shot at doing with three rising-star Kiwi drivers on staff.

Why must Formula E be like this? It will never beat the allegations of being a gimmicky circus, even though the racing is actually great now, and next year they’re getting a race car that’s actually fast. Yes, the drivers are largely Formula 1 also-rans, but looking at that another way, they are very good race car drivers. They are also, by and large, very well paid race car drivers. But apparently things are going badly enough for them that they’ve decided to make a Whole Thing out of it.

The letter is, well, sweeping. It criticizes the stewarding, the race direction, the rules, and even the leadership’s understanding of what the racing product is. They want an overhaul that puts people who understand Formula E racing specifically in charge, as well as better feedback and decision-making mechanisms.

And, like, fair enough. But it doesn’t seem like team management had much of a view into this move, and drivers going rogue doesn’t seem like the most likely route to professionalizing the series. What it’s gotten them so far is another round of “Formula E is a shit show” headlines.