Every nominee for the NASCAR Hall of Fame Class of 2027 is deserving, but I’m ready to predict right now that the Modern Era inductees will be Greg Biffle and Kevin Harvick.

The greatest racing championship on Earth is putting over 400 races from 1997 to 2025 up on its already extensive YouTube channel in an initiative it’s calling Supercars Throwback. It is not possible for me to exaggerate how much I revere this championship. You should watch all 400+ races.

Formula 1 remains as Formula 1 as ever before, and I will never hesitate to report on that. A shipment of 12 “tonnes” (whatever those are) of The Official Chocolate Bar of Formula 1® — F1-car-shaped KitKat bars — was intercepted somewhere between Italy and Poland and has apparently been stolen.

Honestly, this probably accomplishes the brand objectives of this partnership better than selling the chocolate ever possibly could, and the PR statements are all too knowing about it. Maybe it was staged.

I wholeheartedly agree with Peter Posavac: One BMW Z4 GT3 at the 24H Nurburgring is not enough.

Posavac posted on social media that he would enter a Z4 in the N24 this year if the post got 5,000 likes, and I salute the internet for making it happen.

Last year, I was at the Grand Prix of Alabama, and I had no patience for everybody’s whining about how uninteresting it was to watch an Álex Palou beatdown there. This time was different, and not just because I (sadly) wasn’t there. This wouldn’t have been a beatdown if Arrow McLaren hadn’t absolutely gagged on Christian Lundgaard’s last pitstop. I said it on the skyline, and I’ll say it again here:

There is too much choking in the pits in this championship

— Jon 🛞 (@jon.turningfortune.com) Mar29, 2026 at 2:46 PM

I was glad to see Graham Rahal get a good result because it gives me hope for the RLL resurgence; the series needs another competitive team, and Mick Schumacher needs a competitive car. Mick is clearly taking some time to bed into IndyCar, but I continue to believe he can get his sea legs.

I am beginning to worry about Will Power, but I will keep the faith.

This seems like a cautionary tale for U.S. communities who are letting their race tracks close. There’s only one thing a giant, available plot of land in this country gets turned into these days, and that’s a big ol’ creepy-sounding AI data center. The racist-ly named Wampum I, LLC, a Delaware shell company with the same address as a developer called Provident Data Centers, has just paid $130,000 per acre for the beloved Pitt Race International complex, and you can practically hear the self-driving bulldozers already.

Staff reserve drivers have not really been a thing IndyCar like they are in F1 for reasons that are surely financial as well as cultural, but that’s starting to change. Hunter McElrea only has one IndyCar start, and it didn’t go great, but he was runner up in the 2023 IndyNXT championship and a heavily decorated IMSA sports car driver, so it definitely seems like a good idea to have him around the paddock.

Mirco Schultis is picking out GT America races in which to give this beloved C7 Corvette GT3 its last hurrah, as 2026 is the car’s last year of FIA homologation for active GT3 competition. It may not be the end of the road if there are classic races where it makes sense to take this thing, but it won’t be able to race with its younger siblings anymore. The first appearance of the year will be at this weekend’s SRO America opener at Sonoma.

Man, I am going to miss looking at this thing. I guess I should see if any diecasts are available.

Can I have it when you’re done

[imageor embed]

— Jon 🛞 (@jon.turningfortune.com) March27, 2026 at 10:24 AM

Lionspeed GP will return to the Pro class of the Nürburgring 24 Hours for the first time since 2023, and they are bringing a serious driver lineup to pilot their Porsche 911. Laurens Vanthoor and Ricardo Feller — the past two years’ winners, respectively — will be joined by former Rexy driver and current Porsche Penske 963 driver Laurin Heinrich for his second crack at this race; the first was also in 2023.

I don’t want to give Max Verstappen credit for everything, but there sure are a lot of teams bringing cars to the N24 this year to try and beat him.

Lamborghini factory driver Marco Mapelli, whom IMSA fans will know from the Pfaff #9, will contest the DTM for the first time this year to introduce the new Temerario GT3. He will drive alongside Luca Engstler for ABT Sportsline.

I am all in favor of this trend of giving Max Verstappen different race cars to drive in an effort to lure him out of Formula 1. During his Japanese Grand Prix trip, Verstappen stopped by Fuji Speedway for a Red Bull-sponsored test of the Nissan Z NISMO GT500 car, a top-class contender in Japan’s tragically under-appreciated SUPER GT series.

If there’s a driver you’ve never heard of in a GT World Challenge Series who is getting decent results, you know that’s someone to keep an eye on. That’s because every continent’s GTWC championship also serves as the year-long seat time booster for the star drivers from that continent’s more headline-grabbing series. Australia really is on another level, though; The Phillip Island opener for GTWC Australia will feature Broc Feeney, Jayden Ojeda, Ryan Wood, and Thomas Randle, as well as three Supercars enduro drivers.

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.