The Wall Racing Huracan GT3 is, objectively, the most attractive Lamborghini on Earth, much as Mount Panorama is the most attractive race track on Earth, so it’s pretty sweet for Pfaff fans familiar with Marco Mapelli’s work to have this car to root for at the Bathurst 12 Hour.

Brutal development for poor old Jack. Super Formula was the one thread of redemption from which he was dangling after getting dumped by Alpine F1 for not having more money than Franco Colapinto, and it seems budget is still the issue even in Japan. What’s Jack going to do now?

I didn’t realize the world continued to have beat reporters with jobs in it, but sure enough, there is a sharp young motorsports reporter starting at IndyStar. Even better, he says he has been prompted to join Bluesky because it “needs more motorsports reporters,” so if you’re part of the squad, make sure to greet Zion warmly, so he sticks around, unlike so many of his predecessors.

The winter weather has begun to wreak its havoc on the first event of the NASCAR season, which is a significant bummer. Friday activities are still scheduled, and they’re trying to cram all the Cup action into Sunday, so we may still have a race, but it’s not going to be the rowdy Madhouse party we all want.

NASCAR has made a string of popular moves lately, and I would like to suggest one more: Move the Clash back to Daytona permanently, and have the All-Star Race at Bowman Gray.

Tim Cindric, whom you may remember as the former president of Penske Racing who was fired last year after one too many cheating scandals, has been… re-hired by Penske. Now, it’s not in an executive role, so I guess that’s something. He’s going to be on the pit wall doing strategy for Scott McLaughlin. Scotty is stoked, obviously, as this is the guy who pretty much made his racing career happen, and he knows racing at least as cold as anyone else on Earth. I guess this means Penske is really putting its ammo behind the 3 car this year!

I think it’s probably fair to say that Aston Martin F1’s 2026 car is the most anticipated race car of the year, what with the Adrian Newey and the Honda works status of it all. Hyping it up even more, the first test is in Spain, and Fernando Alonso drives that car. So with the eyes of the world on this car, Lance Stroll pulls it out onto a hot track for the first time, drives it around slowly four times, and then on the fifth lap has to pull it over in the runoff and shut it down.

UPDATE FEB 20: More nightmare stories added from later in testing.

This Netflix thing seems to be working pretty well for motor racing. Keep it up, I say.

They’re still racing IROC cars, and all the old greats who can still race are doing so. Jeff Gordon, Mark Martin, Bobby Labonte, so on and so forth. This news just reminds me that NASCAR lost its antitrust suit, and its fear and loathing about racing it doesn’t own made it look particularly bad, even though everybody knows that NASCAR could just be a happy partner with stuff like this and derive nothing but benefit. Maybe it will now.

Can I say something without anybody getting mad?

I found out about Thunder Road Speedbowl in Vermont on FloRacing, and I’m really glad that broadcast is working out for both parties. Great racing, great facility, great announcers, great categories — it’s the total package.

A few days ago, an X account that I guess seems like some kind of official Trump administration communications channel (?) posted an absurdly intellectual-property-stealing AI video about a fictional Washington D.C. IndyCar street race called the “D.C. Grand Prix,” apparently trying to meme the race into being in this very upcoming season. In Washington, D.C. In late August.

Now, clearly, this is right up there with the worst-conceived motorsports events of all time, and the ways for IndyCar to wriggle out of it are myriad. Graham Rahal might think it’s a good idea for all the ✌️ “exposure” ✌️ and whatnot, but, listen, Graham. As someone familiar with putting on insane events in inhospitable environments in late August — aside from literally everything else about this — I assure you this is going to make IndyCar look like a bunch of idiots.

But does it even have a snowball’s chance in hell of actually happening? Coming back from IndyCar media day, it sounds like James Hinchcliffe and Alex Rossi are a little worried it might.

UPDATE 1/30, 12:10 PM: The President has signed an executive order decreeing that this IndyCar race shall happen. Fascinating to consider what, if anything, this changes about the odds of it happening.

Former IndyCar driver Simona de Silvestro has qualified for the 2026 Winter Olympics, representing Italy in bobsleigh. It warms my heart to see a professional fast person make it to the top level of going fast, even if the shark-infested waters of motorsport aren’t where it happens for them.

Slade Stewart, whose children designed the pink, glittery unicorn livery the world knows as Sparklefarts, has moved over to run GT World Challenge America full-time with Riley Motorsports. Andy Lee is co-driver. The car will be a BMW M4 GT3 Evo, which still really suits Sparklefarts, though it’s quite a different vibe from the Lamborghini Super Trofeo car.

No huge shock here. McLaren’s automotive strategy is stagnant on the front end and up-in-the-air on the back end, so there’s no sense marketing cars at that level until that shakes out. The one-make Trophy series is a more integrated business, GT3 is ramping back up a little bit as McLaren prepares to go hypercar racing, they can’t afford to be spread that thin. They shut down their entire Formula E team, too.

I just don’t believe Mohammed Ben Sulayem is smart enough to successfully conceal any hint of paperwork malfeasance or whatever other wrongs he might have done. Either he actually hasn’t done anything wrong in his management of the FIA, or one of these proliferating investigations is going to take him out, as his recent election opponent, Tim Mayer, believes will happen.

We have received the James Vowles follow-up I requested on the problems that led to Williams missing the first extensive testing session of 2026 F1 cars. He obfuscated and dissimulated when asked if the rumors were true about the car failing crash tests or being overweight, but he does consider whatever happened to be a hiccup that will not prevent Williams from making it to the main pre-season test in Bahrain

The one concrete takeaway I have is that the ultimate problem was running out of parts, and that it would have been too disruptive to operations to drop everything, fix the problems, and make the Barcelona test. I am willing to accept that this sounds like the team knows what needs to happen and is just having trouble at the last mile of making it happen, and I will not be surprised if everything is fine by Bahrain.

Christian Horner is no longer being the least bit subtle about plotting his comeback to Formula 1. The team he’s looking to buy into is Alpine, of course. Who else could it be? It’s a match made in Flavio and Christian’s version of Heaven, which I do not recommend visualizing. And lest you think that’s all talk, he’s meeting with MBS about it, and he’s even planning a whole comeback tour in Australia to talk about… himself, I guess? So, yeah, I guess it’s all talk. But he’s buying a lot of plane tickets.

I’m gonna be honest here: I am more or less glad about this. The fundamental belief that fuels my love of motor racing is that it is a karma-laundering pursuit. It is made out of the machinery of human waste and destruction, but it sublimates it into transcendent activity.

I am sure that if I really sat down and concentrated, I could figure out exactly what these new science-y and tech-y things IMSA is doing — including a new program called IMSA Labs — are for, but I’m not quite interested enough, if I’m being honest. All I need to know is, it seems good for motorsports that it’s moving up the tech tree from grease monkeys in garages because that makes it worth continuing to invest in.

The Lola Cars Formula E team has decided it doesn’t need help anymore and will run the team itself. That seems like a show of optimism, both for Formula E itself and for the project of bringing back Lola as a racing car brand, and who doesn’t love that?