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It may be long overdue, but Toyota is about to field the coolest GT3 car, if you ask me. Execs have said the GR GT should be on the grid in Daytona in 2027, and the Lexus factory program will be rebranded Gazoo Racing.

When I talked to the Vasser Sullivan Lexus drivers at the Daytona 24 last week, they all seemed rather ready to dispense with the Lexus RC F GT3, which is a platform nearly as old as the DW12 Indy car. I don’t blame them. The success of GT3 as a category is almost impossible to exaggerate, and that has led to a long reign for some of its most glorious examples, as well as compounding gains through multiple evolutions from several OEMs. But it’s time for some new race cars, and we’ll see if it’s Toyota or Lamborghini that kicks off the avalanche.

After finally and blessedly winning the F1 Academy championship, we were still left to wonder all over again what would happen to Doriane Pin. Well, Mercedes-AMG has given her a development driver job, and that’s wonderful, but what happens after that?

You could argue this is the same kind of slightly creepy individualized attention Mercedes gave to Kimi Antonelli as they groomed him into a Formula 1 driver, but the circumstances are pretty different, and also they don’t have a 40-year-old driver to replace anymore. But hey, there are a lot of Mercedes customers on the F1 grid. I think she’s gonna make it.

Should-be FIA president Tim Mayer is traveling to Daytona today where he says he will meet with NASCAR CEO/chairman and IMSA team owner Jim France during the Rolex 24 weekend. Mayer is looking for his next move after his doomed but symbolically important FIA presidential campaign, and he says it would be nice to find a “paying gig.”

Mayer was catching up with an old friend — Julie Bentley, president of the International GT racing series — at the gate for a Wednesday afternoon flight from Atlanta to Daytona Beach. I was, uh, well, eavesdropping, and now we are all on the flight to Daytona together. I am sitting next to a guy who spots for Graham Rahal in IndyCar. He used to spot for the RLL BMW prototypes at IMSA races, but that working relationship did not survive BMW’s transition of that program to the European W Racing Team that runs the cars in the World Endurance Championship. He wasn’t going to be working the Rolex at all, but he got a last-minute call from a friend to spot for the Era Motorsport #18 LMP2 running Jacob Abel, Ferdinand Habsburg, Naveen Rao, and Logan Sargeant.

Anyway, that’s all completely irrelevant. Mayer gave a fascinating account of the FIA presidential campaign and how self-appointed-president-for-life Mohammed bin Sulayem recruited select regional leaders to lock out the ballot for him. No new scandals or anything were revealed, but Mayer figures one will bring down MBS sooner or later.

“Mohammed is one of those guys where you’re either an enemy or you’re a future enemy,” Mayer told Bentley, and this paranoid style of motorsport governance will surely fail, as motor racing runs on friendships, and MBS will eventually have none.

Mayer was seated in first class. I intended to say “Thank you for trying” to him as I passed in the aisle, but he was extremely conspicuousky fake-listening to his phone while looking out the window.

I’m pretty excited for the portfolio Racing America has put together as a streaming service this year. They’re becoming a one-stop shop for grassroots American pavement racing, which is something I very much want to have. Trans Am is the headlining series, and I’m already in love with its current revival movement now that I’ve been to a race. Getting a heavy hitter to do the broadcasts is going to make a big difference to the product. No shade to what they had before, but it was pretty shoestring last year.

Everybody got very excited when Toyota upped its involvement with Haas F1 this year by becoming its title sponsor, but I think it was clear from the jump that this was going to be a confusing development when the branding in the team name was obscured as “TGR Haas F1 Team.”

Things got much worse, of course, when Toyota revealed at an absurd launch event that it would be splitting its motorsports operations into two. Toyota Racing is now the name of the central factory-run racing operations run out of the Cologne facility where the WEC team is, where the engine programs are, and where the people working with Haas are, too. Gazoo Racing is now for more customer-ish-flavored programs, such as the rally program, which is “supported by Toyota Racing.” I guess that’s what NASCAR and Supercars cars are going to be badged as, too? Anyway, you can see why it would be confusing, then, for Toyota to announce “TGR” branding for its F1 partnership the same year.

Today Haas revealed the car — which looks very good, I might add — and it has “GR” all over it. Nary a “Toyota” in sight. What are we to make of this? Well, surely this is more of a customer relationship; Toyota is giving Haas people, expertise, and facilities, but it’s not building them a chassis (Dallara) or a power unit (Ferrari). I guess we have to think about the GR branding as a sort of essence of going racing with Toyota in spirit, and a race car can’t say “Toyota” on it unless Toyota itself is going racing.

MX-5 was already the best, but now I think absolutely everyone realizes it. In a year that is kicking off at Daytona with Westin Workman cleaning up in a GT4 car and Connor Zilisch driving a damn Cadillac, Whelen Mazda MX-5 has more entries than it has ever had.

All my adult life, I have struggled mightily — probably way too much, really — with the question, “What do you do?” I have always just been so resistant to answering it in the careerist, class-conscious terms in which it is so typically meant.

I have so many answers to that question that I find delightful — even in those rare intervals when my answer has described my J-O-B — but it’s so frequently perplexing or embarrassing to give those answers. Because honestly, my answer-of-answers to that question is, “Whatever keeps me up all night with furious passion, no matter what anyone else thinks of it,” and for whatever constellation of reasons, it seems like most people don’t want to hear that answer.

That furious passion has led me all over the place, reading and writing and wandering around various realms, trying to get to the bottom of them. Finally, as I entered that male-midlife phase where everybody says this exact thing will happen, it led me to motorsport. And that was the place where I first felt surrounded by people who do whatever their furious passion keeps them up at night doing, no matter what anyone else thinks of it, because it keeps all of them — and now also me — up all night doing this.

Practically, “what I do” is some form of journalism. Always has been. That is the methodology by which I participate in the ecosystems of the things that inspire my furious passion. By now, I have learned how to get up to speed quite quickly on new things using journalistic tools. Even so, I immediately clocked the incredible vastness of motor racing, despite it all having taken place in barely 100 years. This is part of what drew me in; I love an intellectual challenge.

My moment of drawing into motorsport was in the spring of 2024. Finally, all the near-miss interests I’ve had — cars, planes and trains as a kid, rock music as a youth, technology, politics, massive festivals (and their operations and logistics, including countless drives of hundreds of miles across flat tarmac with no one else in sight), and most of all just the creative and spiritual urge that drives human beings to do crazy things together — coalesced into one blinding moment of inspiration, and I asked my internet friend, Luke, if he would be so kind as to “pill me” — in the vernacular of the sewers where we hung out online in those days — on motorsports.

And pill me he did.

As I spent month after month drawing ever deeper into the caverns of motor racing lore in which Luke had — through the influence of his father — spent his whole life, Luke was my continual guide. He showed me the parts he loved, explained why, had me watch race after race, encouraging me when I did get it and redirecting me when I didn’t. As my confidence grew along with my situational awareness, as I watched races both in real-time and from history, I checked in with Luke constantly, making sure I was taking away what I was meant to.

After a while, I developed opinions, particular passions, favorite cars and drivers and tracks and engine configurations, and I began to spread my wings a little bit. Luke and I met on social media, in scenes convened around very different subjects, and together we sought out places where we could grow our sphere of motorsports connections online, meet more people like us. We first struck gold on Bluesky, and by now quite a little scene has formed. However long that app lasts, it no longer matters so much, because we’ve met enough of the people — who probably comprise all of the people reading this on the day of its publication — that this familial love of racing has crossed the bridge into the real world.

Naturally, we had to go racing. Once again, I let Luke be my guide, and we settled on the 63rd running of the Rolex 24 at Daytona in 2025 as our first in-person race meeting. In fact, it was the first time Luke and I had met in person, let alone met the online racing friends we had just gathered around us in the preceding year. And now we go to races together all the time, making ever more motorsports culture and collective memory.

From very early on in our shared racing life, Luke and I knew we wanted to do some kind of project together. In my case, a project almost always means a website, but I needed that time to dig in and learn what kind of website the racing world would want from me. As the 2025 racing year went on, I realized more and more clearly that the story of me learning the story of racing from Luke might make for an ideal meta-story about how racing — lineage-driven thing that it is — is sustained and passed on through the twists, turns, and tight corners of — if we’re being honest here — the heart of modern economic, geographic, and political history. And, ideally, that will make Turning Fortune an ideal vehicle — pun flagrantly intended — for motor racing’s continued transmission into the future.

So that, in essence, is what Turning Fortune is. Thank you for joining us. Please have a wander about the News, Lore, and Journals sections and get a sense of what they are, and if you want a little more biography on us, visit About.

You can subscribe to our posts via RSS (primary feed links in the footer, and all topics have feeds as well), and we will also send a monthly-ish newsletter that will not simply duplicate or summarize website content but will be an actual letter, from me, maybe sometimes from Luke, about random stuff, like an email should be.

We are @jon.turningfortune.com and @luke.turningfortune.com on Bluesky, and we hang out there and post with people about cars and racing all day. At least I do; Luke seems to be a lot more virtuous than I am in the paying-attention-to-mundane-life department. You can also follow @turningfortune.com, which will be more or less a summary of website contents for those who will not use RSS for some reason.

Our Instagram and Threads accounts are pretty much obligatory and will hopefully someday be totally unnecessary, but they do exist. YouTube, however, will absolutely be a creative outlet meriting serious effort from us. We have a little bit of low-grade experimentation up there already, and we will gradually be figuring out how to do more, so do please very much subscribe to the Turning Fortune YouTube channel.

And if you’ll be in Daytona for the 64th Rolex 24, we’ll be there for the whole event. If you see us, please flag us down, because we have tons of little race cars and Turning Fortune stickers to disgorge into your backpack.

I should hasten to add, this website is the handiwork of my colleagues, design partner Ashley McQuaid and engineering partner Phil Giammattei, at the Tiger Pajamas Web Site Company, where We’ll Make a Good Web Site for You™. It says so right in our jingle.

You see, I am their publishing partner (a.k.a. test and development driver), and so to an extent there actually is a straightforward answer to “what do I do?”, it’s “make websites like the one you are reading now.” If you are interested in one, please let us know.

I confess to having a pretty hard time following the Chili Bowl. It’s just so long and grueling, and the lower brackets put on such bad racing. But that’s because there are HUNDREDS of cars in this thing, and when the cream is finally done rising to the top, it’s usually hardworking aspirant dirt racers versus active top-tier NASCAR Cup Series drivers and the who’s-who of full-time sponsored sprint car drivers and USAC midget champions, not to mention people who have been slogging to win this specific event year after year after year.

One of those aspirants won it this time. I had already tired out by the time the final came on, but I think I’ll go back and watch to get to know Emerson Axsom better. If you win the Chili Bowl, you are special by definition.

Ugo Ugochukwu is the driver after this year’s Castrol Toyota Formula Regional Oceania Trophy (CTFROT, which, upsettingly, they pronounce as an acronym) who raised eyebrows the highest in their four-race event at Taupo this weekend. He has never stood out that much in Formula 3, but he showed some people up at the beginning of this race meeting. But by the end, Supercars star Ryan Wood was up to speed, and he got to hoist a trophy in front of his home crowd. It must feel pretty good to be him lately.

This is also the series where Kalle Rovanperä is beginning his single-seater odyssey, and he did not do so well. I wonder if things are going to pick up for him before the Super Formula season starts.

As I hoped, the entry-level IMSA series is looking fire this year. There are dominant figures in both the LMP3 and GSX classes, but one must observe how Oscar Tunjo and Westin Workman swept both races. The first one was straightforward, but the second one was a slithery wet race, and Workman had significant car problems at the start. There is serious talent coming up the ranks.

When I look at the Roar results, I see some into which I can put some stock. The way Will Power and Chaz Mostert drove in this test, when I see Kenny Habul within a couple tenths of the fastest time across GTD and GTD Pro, I reckon the 75 is going to be quick. But when the Porsche 963s are bunched up like that, and the Banana Boat is right there despite running last year’s car, I just figure nobody in GTP is showing what they’ve got.

The internet loves to hate, but the Michelin 24H Dubai is not a joke race. Okay, there are some joke cars, but racing GT3 cars competitively for 24 hours is never a joke. The M4 clearly has an edge here, and WRT is one of the highest-level outfits that shows up for this thing, but they still deserve full credit for execution in this race. You’d expect WRT to be spread a bit thin right now, given that they’re about to run the prototypes in IMSA for the first time, but it sure didn’t show in Dubai.

I am so excited for the good-guy Red Bull era. And the good-guy Ford era, frankly.

To me, these designs reveal a lot about the power dynamics. Jim Farley has obviously given Ford Racing a lot of power at the company. It’s involved in every category on Earth, it got a new brand that makes it more separate from road cars this year, and that brand has an official shade of blue that is utterly unrelated to that of the blue oval on the hood of the car. That’s power. And yet, look at what happened in the Formula 1 deal. It’s like Red Bull said, “Look, we’ll use your blue for the shirt, so that way when your WEC drivers take a picture with Max, it’ll look nice. But do not touch the car.”

This resulted in the nicest looking Red Bull F1 car in a long time. I might even call it a definitive livery; it spans the team’s history. And I think the innards of the car reflect a similar dynamic to what’s happening on a business level. Red Bull did not just become a Ford factory team. Ford became a service provider to the Red Bull factory team.

I am one of the many who found Ferrari’s 2025 season painful to watch. The Lewis part wasn’t really that more painful than the Charles part for me, though, honestly, because they’re both being completely squandered by the team. As to which story will be a darker chapter in Formula 1 history, I don’t think we can tell yet.

Adami is a storied figure in the F1 paddock, but I think it’s been pretty clear for a while that this car needs a new engineer. He and Carlos Sainz had some painful moments, too, though obviously they also had a lot of success once they got used to each other and the car. The difference is, Lewis doesn’t have that kind of time — and, really, Ferrari doesn’t, either. This looks just as bad for the team as it does for Hamilton.

As a Cadillac hat wearer, let me be the first to say that WTR has to do something. Both cars got shellacked by AXR’s sole car last year. The 2026 package has evolved significantly, so maybe that has a whiff of fresh start vibes? But I’m not sure if this drastic and last-minute a transition bodes well for this being the year WTR finishes doing something.

Ford’s LMDh engine, I am pleased to report, is a naturally aspirated 5.4-liter V8, so it will be at least the third-best sounding car on the grid. What is notable, but not surprising, is that the architecture is shared with the Mustang GT3. This really suggests to me that the LMDh car is going to be named Mustang, and I for one would appreciate it being dubbed the new Mustang GTP. Or “Mustang Dark Horse GTP” or whatever they have to do to get past the whiz kids.

As for drivers, I don’t find that announcement very surprising, either, but it is impressive how pitch-perfect it is. They’ve got the Return of the Rocky, they’ve got the second Priaulx, and they’ve got — and I quote — “fresh from the F1 circuit” Logan Sargeant. So I guess that explains why he quit the Genesis program.

Now, Pato has been driving McLaren F1 cars around for a long time, and I’m glad he’s getting a raise. Fornaroli, though, I’m nervous for. He seems pretty damn quick! He’s yet another case of someone graduating from F2 at the top of the class and having nowhere to go except the back of the garage. There are no McLaren F1 seats opening up anytime soon. At least Pato has an IndyCar to drive. There may be one of those opening up at McLaren next year, but the line to get in it is long.

This seems sudden (cars are already in Daytona!!), and Dane has been in this role for just one season and seemingly done an awesome job. Nothing against Hidalgo — her résumé is completely stacked for this — but I would like to know more about why Jess Dane is out of not just this position but General Motors entirely.

This is clearly going to be an awesome Cup car, but what jumps out at me is that there is no question whatsoever which model Ford should style its NASCAR body after. If Dodge is coming back to Cup in a couple years, what will it call its race car? Challenger, obviously. So when the heck is Chevrolet going to announce a new muscle car, or reintroduce the Camaro, or whatever it’s going to do??

Whatever Porsche is doing in Formula E, it’s very intense. Apparently they would rather run two factory teams Red Bull F1-style than forge a long-term relationship with a race team with its own opinions, like Andretti. Nissan is a pretty solid landing pad. The works team won the drivers’ championship in the 2024–2025 season, and then they lost their customer team when McLaren left Formula E. I hope picking up Andretti works out for both organizations.