McLaren seems fully ready for a new year of IndyCar. Their new 86,000 sq-ft shop is now open for business, and their three liveries managed to become distinguishable from one another.

I want to be very clear that I am almost entirely indifferent to this news, but there is one reason I’m glad to see it.

It seems to me that the people responsible for the almost-entirely-bad media decisions in motorsports have been slow-walking the actual test of the widespread conventional wisdom that people whose primary value is large audiences who watch their videos on social media can be taught to drive race cars and thereby benefit the sport. If I were using this theory to justify my salary as the cHiEf iNnoVAtiOn ofFicER at some racing series headquarters, I would be hesitant to test it, too, because if the influencers suck at driving, it would all fall apart.

Given that, I applaud the courage in letting these guys race in a NASCAR event on NASCAR’s biggest weekend, which is at the beginning of the year. It rips the band-aid off, and if they’re actually good, fine, they can do another race or two this year, and if they aren’t, now we will all finally know.

I feel obligated to follow up on my recent criticisms by reporting that Williams did indeed build a Formula 1 car this year, and it has indeed driven around on a race track, and it will indeed be on the grid in Australia.

FloRacing is possibly the only good deal in motorsports streaming, but surely that is a growth strategy that will not last forever. It is big news, therefore, that Flo has bulked up enough to expand into the Free Ad-Supported Streaming Television (FAST) market, which I’m actually beginning to believe might someday break the dam and liberate us from legacy broadcasting models. The FloRacing 24/7 channel — which is already available on the streaming service and is a good option when there’s nothing on live — will now be available on Prime Video and Fubo, i.e. on ways to watch streaming TV that a meaningful number of people already use.

NASCAR has already been an important partner with Flo, with lots of NASCAR Regional racing (including the Whelen Modified Tour) streaming there, and in related news, Flo will now simulcast some big races with NASCAR’s own FAST channel, which is really good, and which is now available right in the NASCAR mobile app in advance of this season. It’s finally almost easy to watch racing!

It is hard to win the title of worst streaming service in motorsports. The competition is so fierce. But to date, the fiawec.tv offering was definitely up there. Geoblocking in countries with TV agreements was the least of its worries; the app was terrible and the stream was unreliable. It wasn’t good at anything it was supposed to do, and it was too expensive. Today, though, that service is gone, and an info page explains that there will be a new FIA WEC+ streaming service this year with global rights. No geoblocks! What a concept!

Denny Hamlin is really going through a Dark Night of the Soul in the classical sense. My desire grows ever stronger for him to get the happy ending of finally winning a championship, but spending the season in pain doesn’t seem like the easiest way to go about it.

Every Formula 1 team has to have an AI sponsor now, so that’s not especially weird. Not every F1 team’s AI sponsor is one owned by the team’s ownership group, but that kind of self dealing is hardly unprecedented, either. What’s concerning is that TWG AI is the sponsor that brought us the horrendous livery we’ve seen so far on Andretti Global’s Formula E team and Will Power’s IndyCar.

Everything we’ve seen from Cadillac F1 so far has this nice, understated, black/white/silver thing going, but their test livery did not suggest impeccable taste. Are they going to sully the car with neon booger green? Will Cadillac be the new Kick Sauber?

The FIA European Truck Racing Championship is a fun enough series that I may eventually decide to cover it race by race on Turning Fortune, but I mostly consider it a pleasant diversion, and the FIA probably does as well. It is certainly interesting that the FIA wants to take over soup-to-nuts management of the series rather than just sanctioning it. This suggests that it’s not the most commercially successful racing series out there, and the FIA doesn’t want to lose it altogether.

This isn’t the federation’s first move of this kind, though; last year it took ownership of the FIA World Rallycross Championship, too. Now, it has enlisted the World Rally Championship promoter group to help with that, and they’re getting close to finding a new commercial rights holder for WRC that may take rallycross over as well. Maybe the truck racing thing is a similar sort of transitional stewardship arrangement. But if not, and the Ben Sulayem administration is trying to diversify its revenue streams away from Formula 1 dependency by getting commercially involved in racing, it’s surely going to run back into the legal trouble that explains why, for example, Formula 1’s commercial rights are held independently from its sanctioning rights.

Australian tin top racing legend Craig Lowndes, 51, has found himself out of a ride for the Bathurst 12 Hour. It seems he only considered two options, and he doesn’t seem too bothered given his full Supercars plate this year (including continuing his wildcard Bathurst 1000 drive with a new team), but it’s still a slightly solemn moment given Lowndesy’s role in making the 12 Hour what it is today.

Nicki Thiim (of being-robbed-of-2026-Daytona-24-class-victory fame) will become the first factory driver of the Aston Martin Vantage GT3 Evo in DTM this year. He’s joining Nicolas Baert to expand the Comtoyou Racing to two cars. Aston hasn’t done great in the GT3 era of DTM so far, but Thiim is an animal, so hopefully that will kick things off. Thiim is also contesting the 2026 GTWC Europe with the same team and car.

Nothing in sports car racing is on a roll like the Mustang. Ford is building out Mustang as a platform so broadly and comprehensively — road cars and race cars alike — that I don’t think it will shock anyone if this year at Le Mans they announce that the prototype will be branded Mustang as well. And meanwhile, they’re making their entry-level racing more competitive with other programs, open to more kinds of cars, and available in more places.

This guy is having a dream start to 2026. It’s going exactly the way a grassroots racer dreams of. He won the Chili Bowl, and that seems to have landed him a full-time ride in the most legendary dirt sprint car series. Let’s keep an eye on him.

Alice Buckley’s inexorable march to Supercars was slowed by injury while kicking everyone’s ass in TA2 cars, but she’s back and more dangerous than ever. Super2 is getting pretty notorious for its barriers to entry, including enormous costs and equipment that is no longer relevant to main game Supercars (although they are quite a hoot on track). That means if it’s worth it to you to race Super2, you mean serious business. And rather than take some premium ride with one of the main game farm teams, the Buckley family team is going to do it themselves.

Just to be clear, this will make Buckley the fourth woman ever to compete full-time in Super2 and the only woman in Super2 or Supercars at all this year. When (not if) she moves up to the main game, she will become the second-ever woman driving full-time in Supercars (Simona de Silvestro being the first), and the first one native to Australia.

I suppose that if the President of the United States — and one not known for his operational excellence, at that — decrees that your racing series race on the streets of the capital immediately during a time of incredibly high political tension, and you’re at least trying not to actively worsen the situation, it would be a good idea to hire the promoter used by all the Washington-area sports teams. Of course, the trade-off is that now there are more people whose job it is to make sure the event actually happens.

If liveries could win championships, it would be over already.

Formula E CEO Jeff Dodds says Phoenix, Atlanta, COTA in Austin, Detroit, and Denver are all in conversation for an additional Formula E race next year, alongside Miami. I will do everything in my power to ensure that Atlanta is selected. I will move Heaven and Earth. And Hell, even. And then I will volunteer to be a corner worker or something.

Yes, this is amazing, yes I am sure the presence of IndyCar will make it all the more amazing, but I have one request now to TWG: Please proffer a Spire truck in this race for Will Power.

After losing a 2026 Super Formula seat that once seemed preordained, Jack Doohan’s Toyota backing has landed him at Haas F1 as a reserve driver. I suppose this could plausibly lead to a 2027 drive; Ollie Bearman is assumed to be the heir to Lewis Hamilton’s Ferrari seat, and Esteban Ocon won’t be around forever, I guess.

While I’m glad Jack found a way to stay in the paddock, it really sucks that he’s not racing this year.

It sounds like it’s a little more complicated than, “He crashed three times in the same corner in testing, so we booted him,” but it’s surely not not about that. There is a European-style/Japanese-style engineering culture clash in Super Formula, and the visiting drivers do not always get their way, setup-wise. Whether that’s actually what led to Jack getting the boot from Kondo Racing or it’s what the Doohan Camp told journalists as an excuse for him crashing three times, hopefully this Haas job will be a more comfortable place for Jack to gather himself.

Well, this ought to be epic. The Shamrock Haulage Rally will be a new special stage of the New South Wales Rally Championship that serves as a pace-noted dress rehearsal for the Australian Rally Championship season opener a month later.

Not good. Not even remotely appealing. At least we’ll know which one is his, unless they all look like this.

I guess we're just gonna have to call Will Power's car "The Snot Rocket", huh #IndyCar

— Cale Putnam (@caleputnam.bsky.social) Feb 2, 2026 at 6:28 PM