I have wondered since it was announced what an Official Pasta of Formula 1® was. Is it served in the Paddock Club™? Maybe. I’ll never know. But even if you aren’t a global elite, you can still eat the Fastest Pasta on Earth. You can get it at Walmart, in fact. It’s called “Racing Wheels,” and it’s shaped like something sort of resembling a wheel-like object. Will I feed this to my children? I guess, probably? But I can’t right now because it’s sold out.

It’s weird that IndyCar is still staffing up its competition side in the middle of the season, but at least the hires appear well qualified. The new vice president of competition and race engineering at IndyCar is Mike O’Gara, an Indiana native who has been an executive at Chip Ganassi Racing for 12 years. He established Ganassi’s Cadillac IMSA program, in addition to helping make Ganassi as unassailable as it currently is in IndyCar. Seems like the right guy to be in charge of, among other things, rolling out the new race car.

The many headlines generated this year by dire safety incidents on the Mount Panorama Circuit seem to have gotten through to the Bathurst Regional Council. They have approved meaningful funding for improvements to barriers, debris fencing, access roads, and fiber-optic cables for communication. They’ve also applied to the federal government for funding for resurfacing and other big-time facility improvements.

Aston Martin factory driver Mattia Drudi just got the call he’s probably been dreaming of — or at least the call prior to that call. He has been tapped as reserve driver for both the WEC and IMSA Valkyrie programs.

Drudi drives the Vantage GT3 in both WEC and GTWC Europe, but his outing in the Valkyrie in last year’s WEC Bahrain rookie test apparently went well, and now he’s going to be the guy waiting by the Batphone.

United Autosports is not a small race team. It is exceedingly well financed, effectively run, and successful. But the step up in complexity and precision called for to operate the upcoming McLaren LMDh is such that United had to abandon its plans to upgrade its current 60,000-square-foot facility and find a new one. That’s what it takes to run at the front of the World Endurance Championship these days.

A 10-year-old company called Revolution Race Cars just unveiled a fairly unique and rather quick-looking track-only car it calls the HyperSport. It’s light, fairly powerful for the weight, has lots of prototype-ish aero surfaces and an IndyCar-style aero screen, but it comes in at a GT-ish price. It looks like a fun choice for track days, but they’re also planning to enter various European and North American prototype racing series as a class in 2027.

The European Le Mans Series 4 Hours of Barcelona was won by the Forestier Racing by Panis #29 ORECA, driven by Esteban Masson, Oliver Gray, and Louis Rousset. They bounced back from penalties and snatched the lead with under 10 minutes to go. Fantastic race.

As usual in the ELMS, there are a lot of well known young hopefuls trying to stand out, and a few of them did. Doriane Pin — much to her fans’ delight — returned to sports cars, and she, Richard Verschoor, and Giorgio Roda ran up front all race long and landed on the LMP2 ProAm class podium for Duqueine Team. Jamie Chadwick, still stuck in ELMS while her coworkers go on to warm up her Genesis Hypercar seat for her, finished fourth outright for IDEC Sport with Laurents Hörr and Valerio Rinicella.

The big bummer of the race, I’m sorry to say, was the fate of Jack Doohan. This was his first race since all that messy Super Formula stuff fell through, and when he got in, he brought the car into the top five and briefly led the race. The fight was on for second place all the way to the end, but after light contact making the pass for P2, something went wrong with the right rear with one minute to go, and Jack limped across the line in sixth. The team got a 10-second penalty post-race for speeding under full-course yellow, demoting them to P7.

Chin up, Jack. There’s more racing to go.

At last, the awkwardness of Chevrolet-badged stock cars the world over being named after a car that has ceased to exist will be properly resolved. There will be a 2028 Camaro, it will resume more or less the same place in the GM platform, and the body style is quite cool.

IndyCar qualifying on ovals is some of the most exciting motorsports on Earth. Qualifying, I’m saying. The racing is, too, but there is such incredible tension in watching one car cannonball all the way around an oval and watching the speed delta tick green and red. Is he gonna make it??? It’s absolute cinema.

This format does work on road and street courses, too, in certain series and situations. Supercars does it for some events, and the highlights belong up there with the race finishes. IndyCar suspects it might have some more cinema available by doing single-car, single-lap qualifying for the Fast 6 on street courses, and I’m glad they’re going to take the rest of the year’s street races to dial it in. But if it’s going to work, my god, someone at Fox has to figure out how to get a freaking sector time onto the screen.

Not to be outdone by his teammate, Julien Andlauer, currently underemployed Porsche factory driver Kévin Estre will be hustling an LMP2 in the Pro/Am class at the 24 Hours of Le Mans. Estre is joining TDS Racing in the #14 with Mathias Beche and Tobias Lütke. It will be epic to see Estre and Andlauer race each other in cars they could drive with their eyes closed.

There are many countries where rumors of a new Formula 1 race are always rumbling, and India is one of them. The thing is, they still have some bills to pay from last time, and they claim they aren’t paying them because, actually, F1 owes them a ton of tax revenue, and so anyway, things are a bit touchy.

But suddenly the Indian sports minister is saying to the media, “There will be an F1 race in India in 2027. This is 100% happening,” despite the fact that it is 100% not happening. It turns out that he simply had a meeting with some FIA member person, who obviously has no say whatsoever about where F1 races. F1 has had to respond — gently, but firmly. To whatever extent there actually are any plans to bring back the Indian Grand Prix, doesn’t this sort of thing hurt the case?

Due to the two Middle East F1 weekends canceled for stupid war, F2 teams were no longer getting their money’s worth, so the championship rightly found a way to get on the bill for the Miami and Canadian grands prix. The bummer is that Canada is famously on the same day as the Indy 500, which means that Colton Herta will have to miss the greatest race in the world to race teenagers in Formula 2. He says it “hurts,” but — justifiably — he has to stay committed to his new FIA-sanctioned direction.

Andretti Global never actually committed to running its fourth car this year, as Marco has hung up his helmet, but it was widely understood that they were keeping it warm for Colton should he be available, which he was supposed to be. Now that he isn’t, Andretti has decided to concentrate on its full-season entries.

For a rally that wasn’t through 10 feet of snow or knee-deep mud like earlier this WRC season, Croatia sure was rough. Oliver Solberg, who looked about ready to run away with the championship at the beginning, crashed into a tree three miles into the event. Elfyn Evans crashed out of the lead, Jon Armstrong took terminal damage Adrien Formaux totaled his car on a freaking telephone pole, and Thierry Neuville was about to deliver a shock first win of the year for Hyundai until — yep — he crashed into a concrete block on the powerstage. At least the chaos had that sweet rally flavor; after his wreck, Adrien Formaux sat down with some fans for lunch.

The last car standing was the Toyota of Taka Katsuta, so that’s two in a row for him. We love that for Taka. But don’t let that obscure the fact that Hyundai is getting its act together.

I know many race fans out there are as desperate as I was to know how Lance Stroll did in his GT3 debut in the GT World Challenge Europe round at Paul Ricard. It was a great race for Aston Martin. They won! But not Lance’s car. Lance’s car finished 12 laps down.

Ty Gibbs catches a lot of flack for reasons that are rife in motorsports culture. What it comes down to is, not a lot of Cup drivers get 131 starts to prove they are capable of winning a race unless their last name is Gibbs. But Ty finally got it done this weekend, and at Bristol no less. He got it done by staying out on a tire that was well regarded. No way around it, he earned his win, and it’s not like it was a fluke this season, either. He has been running well enough the whole time that all but the most cynical considered it a matter of “when” not “if.”

Also of note in the Cup race was the return of Alex Bowman from his multi-race recuperation from vertigo. While it sounds like he was as worried as I was that he was toast, he was cleared to race and did so without incident.

The truck race was won by Christopher Bell, his first Truck Series win since 2017. Ben Rhodes could have won it; he won stage 2, and he ran at the front, but an alternator issue cost him some track position in the pits, and he ended up 11th. Corey Heim and Christian Eckes also could have won it, but they got into each other in rather spectacular fashion and wrecked. For the amount of temper that appeared to be involved, they both handled it quite maturely.

The O’Reilly race was won by Connor Zilisch — no huge surprise there — but he had to stay out to race a dominant Kyle Larson for it, which was pretty impressive. Brent Crews also showed some fight at the front, but he couldn’t get into a race of that caliber for the lead and finished 3rd. The headlines were almost stolen by a huge engine fire in Mason Maggio’s #91 Chevrolet, which filled the speedway with smoke and red-flagged the race for a bit.

The New Zealand run that forms chapter 2 of the Supercars season is one of the calendar’s masterstrokes. It breaks up the routine, the weather, and the racing, and like many of the Supercars calendar’s segments, it forms a little mini-championship in itself, particularly for the Kiwi drivers. This year it’s a doubleheader at Taupō (a regular feature) and Christchurch (a new venue), and thanks to the looming Cyclone Vaianu, four of the six New Zealand races will be held at the latter, as Sunday’s race 10 was called off.

Race 8 was a show of force from Brodie Kostecki, who is looking like an early championship favorite to me, as he’s keeping his head and driving off like this in races where other contenders are beating and banging and losing time.

Race 9 was the big story, though. The Kiwi drivers and crew members are extra hungry to win in New Zealand, especially with the trophy being named in memory of great Kiwi Supercars driver Jason Richards, and the healthy crowd placed its faith in their own Ryan Wood this round. He delivered. He delivered the new Toyota Supra’s first pole position and first win, and he came out of Taupō leading the JR Trophy standings.

Meanwhile, the Chevrolets were so far off that it triggered (yet another) parity investigation.

The ACO says their plan to launch the next generation of LMP2 in 2028 is still on. They’ll weigh in at 950 kilograms and 563 horsepower (or 420 kilowatts, for the modern sophisticate), driven by a Gibson 3.4-liter twin turbo V6. Expanding from one OEM to two — ORECA and Ligier — is a big step, as it’ll make them compete on price.

UPDATE 4/21: As friend of the site @putdorianedown.bsky.social reminds me, there are actually technically four OEMs in the current LMP2 regulations, but everyone stopped using the non-ORECAs, so it’s a de facto one-make category. Hopefully this 2028 process will be a bit more competitive.

This category is well established around the world in its current form. It’s at the perfect intersection of being a stepping stone to the top level for both teams and drivers, a competitive place for pros piecing a season together to get more seat time, and at least somewhat insulated from the rich and untalented by LMP3. Now is a great time to push it forward.

I hate this so much. Super GT, Japan’s premier sports car championship and the only series left that races Class One cars, had to cancel its Sepang round because the oil shock caused by the U.S./Israel attack on Iran has pushed Malaysia’s economy into a state of emergency. There will now be only seven Super GT rounds in 2026

I will say it again: Motorsports is pro-peace and anti-war!

I applaud NASCAR for finally drawing any sort of line with this guy. After doing basically nothing but spin in any NASCAR races, Cleetus and his employers at Richard Childress Racing felt it was time for him to begin his assigned program getting on TV at superspeedway races, but NASCAR officials have denied him the opportunity until he accomplishes, you know, something. Maybe they calculated that they would get the same amount of YouTube attention for denying him as they would for running him.

Toyota has made a little bit clearer what was previously only slightly clearer than mud about the decision to pull WRC star and aspiring F1 driver Kalle Rovanperä out of Super Formula right before the season started. The issue may indeed be driven by medical conditions, but the bottom line is that he simply wasn’t ready. His winter competition and testing was so fraught with problems (and crashes) that Toyota couldn’t roll him out as their new open-wheel protégé and let him faceplant in front of the world.

Oh well. Maybe next year.