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Hm. I had been tracking Otmar lately because he’d been getting a bit more public, most notably with a podcast at The Race, and talking a pretty big game about how things should be run in Formula 1. This had stimulated some rumors that he may have been looking to get back in the big game. But a little while ago, the podcast went quiet, and now he’s taken a job in the little game. I wonder if Christian Horner sucked all the air out of the room?

Gridlife is, in concept, something I really like. Given my background, you probably wouldn’t be surprised that my immediate reaction when I first set foot upon the grounds of a race track was, “I’m getting real TRanSFoRMAtiONal fEstivAL vibes from this!” It did not boggle my mind to learn that some race promoters take that to its logical conclusion and have full-weekend EDM lineups playing in the infield, but it also heartened me enormously to learn that Gridlife’s take on the motorsports part of that was an inclusive club-racing model. I doubt I’ll ever go to one of these unless my kids want to take me someday, but I am glad it exists.

Of course, as a motorsports writer, Racer is also, in concept, something I really like. I wouldn’t say it’s my favorite motorsports publication across all categories, but it’s the go-to for IndyCar, and it is comprehensive, so it’s always worth sticking around. When that group acquired MAVTV last year and created the Racer Network, I thought, “That’s a good idea. Give us some racing to watch with our subscription, and hell, I’ll gladly also take your magazine.” Unfortunately, the first year of the service did not fill me with optimism about the second, and there is currently no form of racing I follow that requires me to subscribe to it, so I no longer do.

Now more pieces are starting to fall into place. An umbrella organization has been created called F=ma. It’s no DXDT, but it is at least an engineering reference that applies to motorsports, and that is the signal they would like to send. It is led by Chris Dyson, son of Rob, so, racers. Racer is now part of F=ma’s portfolio, along with PR firm The ID Agency, which represents the likes of Porsche, Bridgestone, and Hot Wheels. F=ma has now also acquired Gridlife.

This all makes sense. You can see a coherent portfolio here. But so far to me it sounds like a closed loop that will live or die on its own, rather than part of the broader racing world.

If you have any doubts about whether NASCAR remains in contact with its essential soul, I give you the case of Myatt Snider.

Snider drives part time in the O’Reilly series, but at the Cup race at Circuit of the Americas, he was working the lane as an assistant pit reporter for FOX Sports when he was asked to put on a fire suit and helmet, get into Alex Bowman’s car, and drive it for the final stage of the race. Bowman was succumbing to some sort of health issue — which weirdly has not been disclosed even though we assume it was just your normal cool suit problems — and he had to pull in. Snider texted a little about breaking points with friend and fellow ringer Brad Perez, jumped into the #48, and finished the race without incident.

The NASCAR world mourns the passing of Chase Pistone, 10-time competitor in NASCAR’s national series and Legends car driver and team owner.He was a four-time champion of the Summer Shootout in Legends, credited with over 80 feature wins across short-track categories. He was also the grandson of “Tiger Tom” Pistone, a two-time NASCAR Cup Series race winner. Chase was 42 years old.

His brother, Nick, has asked outlets to promote the Suicide & Crisis Lifeline, which anyone can call or text any time at 988.

The racing public doesn’t know much more than that, but we don’t have to in order to hold one of our own — and his family, friends, colleagues, and competitors — in our hearts.

I have reasons for not participating in the intensely politicized version of online discourse about motorsports (as well as everything else). I have some experience in both capital-P politics and other forms of movement building, and what all that taught me is actually part of what drew me into motorsports in the first place. When you’ve got something good going — something that draws human beings into collective activity with one another that transcends all manner of differences in demographics, backgrounds, and belief systems — you need to do everything you can to throw the doors to it open and usher everyone in, because that very thing is what creates peace in the world.

Motor racing is one of those things. Yes, I know that fascist dictators throughout modern history have loved motor racing, too, but you know what? They lost. The periods of world war that canceled international motor racing sucked, and when they were over, societies rushed to turn their airfields into race tracks and turn the race car factories that turned into bomber factories back into race car factories. And nowadays, racing is so big, high tech, and inextricably international that I am not exaggerating when I say that I believe it could hold the world together as it tries to fall apart.

I honestly do.

So. One thing we know about Formula 1 racing is that it has lately and not-subtly become a plaything of the oil barons of the Middle East. All of the political neutrality touted by windbags at regulatory bodies can’t change the fact that the entities controlling Formula 1 — including the American company that owns it — are most definitely on A Side. I see people complain about this every day, and I get it.

But now look what’s happening.

I don’t think it’s a stretch to say that the governments of the United States and Israel are prioritizing things other than motorsports in their decision to decapitate the Iranian regime and kick off a whole conflagration that exceeds their most troubled nightmares. And their actions are now beginning to interrupt the activities of an American-owned publicly traded company that operates a sport with hundreds of millions of fans worldwide — including millions of Americans who are just getting to the party — that puts on three massive events in America, that has an exclusive broadcast deal with an American technology company that is one of the most profitable and powerful entities in the entire world (that being Apple), and whose Gulf State owners and financiers (and fuel providers) are getting actively bombed as payback for these strikes.

Which side of that do you think Formula 1 is on? Even if there are people in Formula 1 who are consciously on the other side ideologically, it is indisputable that the interest of the massive planetary industrial enterprise that is motor racing is for big international wars not to happen.

So I stand on the side of motor racing. It’s a much better use of international industry, technology, real estate, commerce, and oil refineries than warfare.

UPDATE Mar 3, 2026, 2:16 PM: The FIA World Endurance Championship has postponed its opening round, the Qatar 1812km, due to the violence in the region. The first WEC round will now be at Imola from April 17–19, and the plan is to run Qatar later in the year.

Ford is designing aerodynamic devices for cars that ionize air currents funneled over strips of electrodes and then pull them toward an oppositely polarized terminal, creating an “ionic wind” as they collide with regularly charged molecules, directing air precisely onto aerodynamic surfaces. The patent includes mention of high- and low-downforce modes that redirect the air accordingly. HOW UTTERLY COOL IS THAT?

GT3 racing is so great right now that it feels like we’re still just getting started, but what’s amazing is that there have already been enough generations of GT3 to have a full grid of historic ones with their own racing series. The GT3 Revival Series is participating in the annual Peter Auto Test Days at Circuit Paul Ricard this week. It’s not an official test, so the whole grid won’t be there, but a bunch of cars will. If the cars themselves aren’t enough of a headline for you, how’s this: The VDS Racing BMW Z4 will be driven by 2024 WRC champion and 22-time rally winner Thierry Neuville.

I feel that the plan to open the Asian Le Mans Series (which runs over the winter) to the hypercar class this year has been underrated so far, but I don’t think that will be the case anymore. After unveiling the 2026 car for the World Endurance Championship, Ferrari global head of endurance racing Antonello Coletta said they intend to enter the Ferrari 499P — likely candidate for “best race car in the world” right now — in the 2026–2027 Asian Le Mans Series, too.

So far, the Peugeot 9X8 has been the only hypercar about which moves are being made, and don’t get me wrong, that’s a badass race car. But the Ferrari wears the crown.

Alongside her Super2 campaign, Alice Buckley will run another full season of TA2 in Australia. The two cars will share many sponsors, but the TA2 Camaro will mainly be imposingly branded as a factory Chevrolet Performance car. Watch out for this one.

Is there anyone who still thinks NASCAR shouldn’t race road courses? There shouldn’t be. After what we saw this weekend — especially in St. Petersburg with the Truck Series — it should be obvious that turning right from time to time has made the entire field better in all three series.

Well, that said, the O’Reilly series still has some work to do. No, Connor Zilisch didn’t win, but he did beat Shane van Gisbergen to pole. That is to say, Shane van Gisbergen was in this race, and yes, he won. At one point, he passed five cars at once and flashed them the deuce as he left.

On Sunday, though, things changed.

Now, Connor was in it. He drove a great race, he just didn’t get anything to show for it because of misfortunes. He is having the rough entry to the Cup Series that everyone should have expected because he is racing with people at a much higher level than the people he humiliated in Xfinity last year.

Shane was also, of course, in it. His road racing skills have clearly benefitted the whole team; Shane is now P5 in points, taking second in stage 1 and in the final result (plus another point for P10 in stage 2), but Ross Chastain won the first stage.

Christopher Bell, last year’s winner, placed third. His teammate, Ty Gibbs, showed a compelling fourth. Their teammate, Denny Hamlin — the guy who hates road courses — finished P10, which he said afterward was “like a win” because of how resistant he is to races with right turns. That feeling, however, may have been colored by something else.

Namely that Denny is the co-owner of the car that won the race. And last week’s race at Atlanta. And the Daytona 500.

Yes, the first driver in the history of NASCAR to win the first three races of the season was the driver of the No. 45 23XI racing Chumba Casino Toyota Camry, Tyler Reddick.

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— Victoria Beaver (@toribeav42.bsky.social) March 1, 2026 at 10:51 PM

So, the IndyCar season started. Álex Palou won, wow, no way. Everybody else fumbled the ball. The tires sucked; the soft tire lasted like 30 laps and made no difference. There was racing, don’t get me wrong, just none with Palou. What would have been the most interesting headline — Mick Schumacher’s first IndyCar race — has not even happened yet because Sting Ray Robb and Santino Ferrucci continue to waste space on the IndyCar grid and wrecked Mick out on his first lap. Mick’s takeaway was that he has to qualify better so he can stay away from the idiots. Good learning, Mick. Have fun at Phoenix.

MX-5 Cup also raced, and they were fun as always, but nothing remarkable happened. The conditions were pretty wet for the first race, but it mostly just resulted in crashing rather than standout performances. Bobby Gossett stuck it out and won his first MX-5 Cup race, so congratulations to him. Justin Adakonis also got his first win in race 2, congrats to him as well. Earl Bamber did fine. Sébastien Bourdais did not do fine.

The highlight of the St. Petersburg race weekend was the first ever street race of the NASCAR Truck Series. The star studs in the star-studded lineup did make their appearances. Colin Braun finished best of the guests in P9, but he was the one with meaningful NASCAR experience. James “Jimmy Hinch” Hinchcliffe finished right behind him in P10, which was actually the most impressive drive any guest had because he was turned around by Dario Franchitti early on, then turned himself around a couple times, and he still drove through the pack. But — against what probably anybody in the entire world expected — the star of the first ever NASCAR Truck Series street race was the NASCAR Truck Series.

Yes, the regulars came prepared, and they fought it out lap after lap. It was an honest-to-god street race, and it was won in marvelous fashion by Layne Riggs, whom I used to not like, but that is now completely wiped away. He trained in the Ford Racing simulator with Joey Hand for months for this race, and it showed.

I am so, so happy to see how much the increased emphasis on road and street courses has up-skilled all three NASCAR fields.

The first race of Trans Am’s 60th anniversary season was a good race, just not at the front. Matthew Brabham led the whole thing despite multiple restarts. But elsewhere in the top five, there was a real race on. I was particularly impressed with the TA1 debut of Kaylee Bryson, who got dumped unceremoniously on the first lap and proceeded to drive through the pack. At the end, she was hounding Adam Andretti, fresh from his NASCAR Truck Series race at St. Petersburg, for the fourth spot. Bryson finished P5.

A moment of remembrance for Sandro Munari, a champion of Italian, European, and global rallying. He won the Monte Carlo Rally four times. He also won the freaking Targa Florio in a Ferrari 312. After hanging up the helmet, he was public relations director for Lamborghini, and he also became a driving instructor. What a life.

I wouldn’t go so far as to say I sympathize, but I understand Formula 1’s predicament with the Monaco Grand Prix. Now that F1 cars are the size of Suburbans, Monaco isn’t really a race anymore, it’s more of a parade that is sometimes interrupted by crashes or shuffled by bad pitstops.

Last year, they thought they could Mickey Mouse themselves a solution by requiring all cars to use three sets of tires — i.e. requiring them to stop twice — but as you may recall, midfield teams defeated this rule easily. They used one car to back up the pack so the other one could keep its track position in its pit stop. It sucked, and fortunately F1 realized that.

The 2026 cars are a little smaller, so maybe that will make a difference? They also won’t be suffering from the energy starvation they’ll have at tracks with long straights and few braking zones. That will create leeway to play with the rules around energy deployment, which could actually contribute to on-track passing.

The start of the 2026 Formula 1 season is sure to be chaotic to the point that Mercedes’ alleged exploitation of loopholes in the engine compression ratio regulations might not even matter at first. They might be so far ahead that the bump in horsepower doesn’t even account for it completely. They might be beaten so badly off the line by Ferrari’s low turbo lag that they can’t catch up.

Either way, the FIA has moved to end the saga that dominated preseason headlines by updating the testing regime to measure compression ratio at both cold and hot temperatures, and they’ve moved up the timeline for doing so to June 1.

The teams have unanimously approved the measure. Many of them said as the saga bubbled along that they didn’t care if it was decided one way or the other, they just wanted clarity on what was and was not legal. Now they’ll get it, and we’ll see if Mercedes can get their stuff into the window in time, but they seem to believe they can — if it was ever over the line in the first place.

I am sure we will never find out what the actual deal was between Formula 1 management and Michael Andretti. We know that Michael’s F1 career was a mess, and he probably pissed people off, and it may just be personal. Or it may just have conflicted with F1’s strategic goals to have a team called “Andretti” instead of landing an OEM, which may suck to race fans but make perfect sense to them. Either way, American racing is fortunate that Mario Andretti was able to find a way to remain involved in the project, because he was the 1978 Formula 1 world champion, and he deserves this level of legacy in the sport. Now, in a fitting gesture, Cadillac’s first F1 chassis is named after him.

As Palou has crushed the IndyCar field harder and harder with each passing year, McLaren’s breach-of-contract lawsuit with him has loomed over it like a cloud of shit.

I have little doubt that McLaren strung Palou along about an F1 seat that was never really his. It’s also clear that Palou and his circle flagrantly mismanaged his career at this point, and he only landed on his feet because of Chip Ganassi’s largesse — and being one of the best race car drivers in the world.

Regardless of any of this or how much it cost various parties, McLaren got to be the best Formula 1 team without Palou, and Ganassi got to be the best IndyCar team with him. McLaren’s IndyCar team could certainly use Palou’s services, but I’m sure they’ll figure things out eventually. It is water-under-the-bridge time as 2026 on-track action starts in, oh, 15 minutes as of this writing.

So they have managed to settle. Terms were not disclosed, but clearly one of them is that Palou has to say, “McLaren never misled me, they are a wonderful racing team, this was all my fault — and also there were bad, bad people around me who did not have my best interests at heart.” Even if McLaren did mislead him, it’s in his interest to get over it. That goes for everybody involved. Let’s go IndyCar racing.

Speaking of TCR’s problems, I am sort of counting on the British Touring Car Championship’s expansive new 2027 regulations to inspire a compelling alternative model for the future of touring car racing. Among other broadened permissions, the new rules will allow for the homologation of cars not sold in the UK, and that proviso has been brought forward to this year, allowing NAPA Racing UK to enter the saloon-based Ford Focus Titanium, rather than the hatchback version they ran before. It looks absolutely awesome.

He didn’t even have time to get a handle on his Formula Regional car this winter, and now former WRC star Kalle Rovanperä is testing his Super Formula car, and he’s two seconds off the pace. To be fair, multiple professional open-wheel drivers have horribly wrecked their Super Formula cars in Suzuka testing for this season, one of whom is no longer going to race Super Formula after all, and Rovanperä hasn’t done that yet. But the team around him is starting to make noises that sound like Kalle’s run at Formula 1 might be aborted if things don’t settle in soon.

Meanwhile, it’s about to be March, and we still have no idea how people outside of Japan are supposed to watch Super Formula this year.

Aston Martin F1’s works arrangement with Honda is shaping up to be the greatest “you had one job” of the hybrid era of Formula 1. How much more one-job could you get than to be a factory team whose ICE engine damages its battery?

Fernando Alonso’s life should be made into an opera. How can a driver have his career ruined so many times by one company’s engines and then agree to stay in Formula 1 until he’s 50 years old to run with them again?