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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

If you read this website, your brain is probably like mine in that race car sounds is the one thing preferable to silence, which is preferable to everything else. I am so grateful to IMSA that they keep releasing many-hour ambient recordings of the Rolex 24 at Daytona, especially since I was at the last two, so the ambience of each has very particular significance to me. I’ve added it to my Race Car Therapy YouTube playlist, which you can always find on the Pit Wall in the News section if you misplace it.

“Ambassador” is only a meaningful F1 team job in one sense I can understand, which is as an indication of which team is willing to spend the most money to attach a particular name to themselves. I find it no more surprising that Aston Martin wants to spend the most to parade Button around than I do that Williams has realized it might need to concentrate its venture capital dollars on more mission-critical things.

Michael Shin, 21, and Kyuho Lee, 17, will have Genesis Magma Racing branding on their cars and race suits in FIA Formula 3 and GB3 in 2026. Team principal Cyril Abiteboul says that one of GMR’s explicit aims “has always been to raise the profile of motorsport in South Korea,” which is something I have wondered about. Hyundai is already a force in world-championship-level motorsports; it’s not like the Genesis hypercar program is the first attempt. Why isn’t racing a bigger deal in Korea? Why have the big race events held there so far failed?

It is no secret that Porsche and the other brands in its group are in dire financial straits, and that in Porsche’s case it is affecting motorsports activities rather severely. But I question the underlying intelligence behind this event.

It is an awesome idea to have a World Cup-format racing event for the all-stars of the various regional one-make Porsche championships. One wonders why the idea has taken 15 years to revive since the 2011 Nürburgring event. But to plan it as a last hurrah for the old generation of Cup car in a year when the new one is already debuting in Supercup, as well as Carrera Cup Germany, North America, and Asia? You think those teams just have their out-of-service race cars lying around waiting for the chance to race again?

Due to insane winter weather, NASCAR already canceled the non-Cup events at the second Clash at Bowman Gray of the modern era, and now they have pushed the Cup race to Monday. According to the forecast — if the race happens at all — it will be the coldest race in NASCAR history. That ought to be fun.

UPDATE 3:27 PM: The Clash has been pushed to Wednesday, and while it could still be the coldest NASCAR race ever, it is now less likely.