Ahead of the two Supercars rounds in New Zealand, Walkinshaw TWG Racing has announced a new Kiwi co-owner, Scott O’Donnell. He’s a racer himself, which is always a good sign. O’Donnell picked up some of the shares sold by Zak Brown when United left the ownership group. Now O’Donnell wants to work on strengthening support for the team in New Zealand, which he has a fair shot at doing with three rising-star Kiwi drivers on staff.

Why must Formula E be like this? It will never beat the allegations of being a gimmicky circus, even though the racing is actually great now, and next year they’re getting a race car that’s actually fast. Yes, the drivers are largely Formula 1 also-rans, but looking at that another way, they are very good race car drivers. They are also, by and large, very well paid race car drivers. But apparently things are going badly enough for them that they’ve decided to make a Whole Thing out of it.

The letter is, well, sweeping. It criticizes the stewarding, the race direction, the rules, and even the leadership’s understanding of what the racing product is. They want an overhaul that puts people who understand Formula E racing specifically in charge, as well as better feedback and decision-making mechanisms.

And, like, fair enough. But it doesn’t seem like team management had much of a view into this move, and drivers going rogue doesn’t seem like the most likely route to professionalizing the series. What it’s gotten them so far is another round of “Formula E is a shit show” headlines.

After spluttering through just two rounds last year, organizers of the TCR Australia series wanted to get a fresh start in 2026, but ahead of the opening round planned for The Bend this weekend, they’ve decided to call the whole thing off. TCR is just not a beefy enough category for Australia. No country loves its touring car racing more, but they put V8 engines in them. These little things just don’t move the needle.

If a racing series is going to enter the 21st century and provide its broadcasts via the internet, and it’s not going to do it as a YouTube subscription and let Google handle all the hard parts, the next best thing is for it to provide its own comprehensive streaming channel without any geographical restrictions like the FIA World Endurance Championship is now going to do. FIAWEC+ launched today (web only, iOS/Android coming soon, apparently), and you can watch the entire championship — including the 24 Hours of Le Mans — plus European Le Mans Series and Michelin Le Mans Cup, original documentaries and stuff, and get live timing, all for 49.99€ a year.

Thank goodness IMSA is back this weekend. Starting the year off with the Daytona 24 is a tradition that should never be questioned, but it does leave the paddock with a bit of a hangover. After the gap, though, Sebring is like another first race of the year, and some programs do treat it as such since it’s such good testing environment (in that it is constantly trying to break your car). The Aston Martin Valkyrie debuted there last year, for example, rather than at Daytona. And with this race’s long history, most teams still like to bring a little extra flair to the second round.

Good examples to look out for this year: Pfaff Motorsports will introduce the Lamborghini Temerario GT3 to the world after having one last crack in the Huracán in Daytona, and yes, it will be dressed in plaid. AO Racing will bring Roxy — the pink one — to her first endurance race. And Porsche Penske Motorsport has bedecked its Porsche 963s in Mobil 1 liveries harkening back to the swirly livery of the Porsche 911 GT1 in 1996 — not the most attractive livery to my eye, but a pretty famous one nonetheless.

One other, less heralded debut at Sebring this week is the new Porsche 911 Cup car. Porsche Carrera Cup North America will run its first two 40-minute races with the Type 992.2 car, which also has a brand new Pirelli tire. There are 27 entries for Sebring. I know a lot of people don’t watch single-make series, but this is a pretty big upgrade for the Cup car, and c’mon, you gotta watch a new race car at least once.

Overall, IndyCar is doing pretty great right now, but if there’s one element of the sport that I’d say is still lacking in the Penske Era, it’s Indy 500 entries. This is the greatest race in the world, and it used to be worth it to people to come from all over the world just to attempt to make it, and half of them wouldn’t. Last year, we wound up with one extra entry, and even though that gave us an exciting, tense Bump Day, it ended up just being sad that Jacob Abel didn’t get to race. This year, it’s not even clear we’ll get to 33 entries.

Engine leases are a chokepoint. We don’t know what’s going on with Prema Racing, and therefore we don’t know whether one or both of their leases will be available. There seems to be some momentum on still running one Prema car with Callum Ilott, which would be nice. Katherine Legge and her devoted sponsors are wrangling for the other one, but there’s also the minor detail of a Chevy team who would be willing to run it.

On top of the 25 regular-season drivers, Helio Castroneves is back with MSR to continue attempting to win a fifth 500, and Takuma Sato is back with RLL. Arrow McLaren has confirmed Ryan Hunter-Reay in its fourth car, and Ed Carpenter will drive his team’s third car as per usual. Andretti usually runs a fourth car, and Marshall Pruett reports that people contacting the team with interest have been told the seat is taken. We can presume that’s for Colton Herta. Dreyer & Reinbold Racing intend to run Conor Daly, and Abel Motorsports hope Jacob will actually get to start this year. That would be 32, some of which are not confirmed.

Will we get to 33 with Callum or Katherine — or better yet 34 with both? Stefan Wilson and Devlin DeFrancesco are also reportedly seeking rides. The problem is the rides don’t exist. The best case seems to be 34 if Prema gets its act together and some Chevy steps up to prepare Katherine’s car.

The first Grand Prix of Arlington was a home run. It was great as a viewer, and I had many friends and sources on the ground telling me how first-rate it was. It was not without its hiccups — Will Power came around a blind corner and hit a turned around Scott Dixon in practice while a marshal lackadaisically waved a green flag, and then a catering crew walked onto a hot track — but by race day, everything was humming along.

It’s just an awesome circuit. It’s wide enough to make moves but challenging enough to make mistakes. There are rises and dips and bumps and all the obstacles a street circuit is good for. It’s in a multi-sport complex, so it seems great for access and spectators. I’m already looking forward to the next one.

And as for the racing, well, it was an utter clean-up for Andretti. Max Taylor made an excellent show of himself to win the IndyNXT race, Marcus Ericsson got his first IndyCar pole position, Kyle Kirkwood won, absolutely pouncing on Álex Palou and then driving away, Will Power got his first Andretti podium, and Ericsson finished fourth. This is all despite having an all-time classic Andretti pit stop nightmare day on every car. They really need to get that figured out.

So, we’re three races in, the championship is not already over like last year, and the first new race was fantastic. Markham will hopefully be at least close to the same level. Somehow, though, I don’t think the other one is going to meet the standard.

I’d be lying if I didn’t admit to a slight worry that my rapturous praise of the 2026 Formula 1 regulations was a bit premature, but after two races, it is obvious. The Shanghai round certainly turned up the new-car chaos with lots of cars missing sessions or even failing to start the race — including BOTH MCLARENS!!! — due to various gremlins. But the racing was superb throughout once again — even the sprint was good — and Kimi Antonelli gave us all the joy of seeing someone win his first grand prix for the first time in a while, which he did by passing his teammate as Formula 1’s youngest ever polesitter.

(Unfortunately, Bob Constanduros on the PA tried to ruin the greatest moment of Kimi’s life by announcing him as “Kimi Raikkonen”.)

This is a guess, but I’m guessing we saw teams take a bit more risk in round 2, and the increase in problems was the consequence. You just want to have a complete weekend at round 1 of a new car, and Melbourne was a particularly extreme track to start with due to its energy demands. With a little more confidence in China, teams f’d around more, and they consequently found out more.

Obviously the trophy for worst weekend goes to McLaren. Oscar Piastri hasn’t gotten a single lap in a grand prix after two of them, and this time, defending world champion Lando Norris didn’t get any, either.

Aston Martin promises they’re making behind-the-scenes progress, but we’re still getting onboard video of Fernando Alonso taking his hands off the wheel to try to shake life back into them.

Williams’ car is a total mess, which is hugely disappointing given how much they hyped up their own 2026 program, but Carlos Sainz did bag a couple points in the race.

Clearly the most famously bad weekend is that of Red Bull, even though it masks the fact that Isack Hadjar picked up four points for P8, and Liam Lawson beat him in the Racing Bulls. Max Verstappen had to retire the car with 11 laps to go, and now he hates the car and the sport and you and me and everyone.

Cadillac also showed more growing pains this weekend — including Checo crashing into Valtteri slightly on lap 1, for which he apologized — but they both finished the race, so we’ll take that!

Also highly worth mentioning is the fifth place performance of Ollie Bearman and Haas. Alpine is also apparently back in the game. Both cars finished in the points, Colapinto in P10 and Gasly in P6. Haas and Alpine — power unit customers of Ferrari and Mercedes, respectively — are the examples of customer teams who seem to have gotten it right this year.

Which brings us to Ferrari! Recall that Lewis’ only meaningful achievement in his debut season with Ferrari last year was winning the China sprint race. Well, this year in China, he finally stood on the podium of a grand prix again, and it was a seriously lovely moment with Kimi, Bono, and Lewis all up there together. George Russell was also present.

Yes, Mercedes obviously has a power advantage, but it’s no longer clear that they’re going to keep that advantage over Ferrari for long. In both grands prix and the Shanghai sprint, both Ferraris have troubled Mercedes, and while George and Kimi certainly seem happy to be driving the fastest car, both Lewis and Charles report that they’re having a blast driving the Ferrari, which is what it should be like to drive Ferraris, don’t you think?

Shanghai — in my view the most consistently underrated track on the F1 calendar — demonstrates more of what F1 cars can do than Melbourne did, and that also means the cars spend less time doing any particular thing, so there were no meaningful energy starvation problems, and everybody seemed to have plenty of juice to make dicey racing moves. I really do recommend watching both the sprint and the grand prix. Formula 1 racing is really fun again, I can’t wait for more, and it really sucks that we’re losing two races this spring due to the tragic stupidity of warfare.

Antonio Fuoco. Tony Fire. Driver of Ferraris. Gotta love him.

Well, Ferraris are no longer enough for Tony Fire. Last year he needed to go demonstrate that he can also win in ORECA LMP2s, which he did in the Asian Le Mans Series twice, finishing P2 in the drivers’ championship. Now the Ferrari-affiliated AF Corse team, who ran the Cetilar Racing-entered LMP2 Fuoco drove last year, is putting him in the ELMS car. You see, AF Corse won the ELMS LMP2 Pro/Am titles in 2023 and 2024, but last year they slipped to a lowly fourth (though they did win the season opener). I guess they just need a little more Tony Fire to get back to the top.

NASCAR Truck Series driver Daniel Dye just did something so dumb that it’s actually frustrating, because motorsport is such a high-level, professional, competitive industry these days that I want to believe it doesn’t employ anyone dumb enough to hire someone this dumb. Apparently, that is not the case.

Dye was on some bootleg streaming app for people who like to open packs of baseball cards or something, and he started bragging about having no idea who David Malukas — driver of the Team Penske #12 Verizon Chevrolet in the IndyCar Series — was when they met at the St. Petersburg race weekend IndyCar and the Truck Series shared. Dye then went on to perform a homophobic caricature — apparently intended to be of Malukas — for an excruciatingly long time.

Dye has been suspended by NASCAR and his team and will be required to complete sensitivity training in order to return to racing. He posted an extremely bad Instagram apology. He will be replaced in this weekend’s Truck Series race at Darlington by A.J. Allmendinger.

Hendrick Motorsports #48 driver Alex Bowman continues to experience persistent vertigo that started to affect him in the third race of the season at Circuit of the Americas. He had to be relieved mid-race, and then he missed the next two races, replaced by Anthony Alfredo in Phoenix and Justin Allgaier in Las Vegas. Allgaier will continue driving the #48 at Darlington, Martinsville, and Bristol.

Bowman’s condition has still not been publicly attributed to any particular cause.

Last weekend’s Safari Rally Kenya, round three of the FIA World Rally Championship, was an incredible display of motoring in a way that was borderline painful to watch.

From a results perspective, it was gripping, with the lead swinging back and forth from stage to stage, eventually ending up in the hands of Takamoto Katsuta, his long-awaited first win in WRC. Everybody liked that (even though it was still a Toyota ass-whooping).

But the course was a real mess. Many tires were destroyed, many corners were destroyed by destroyed tires, whole suspensions were destroyed, whole teams had all their engines overheat because of intakes clogged with mud… and that was on the stages that weren’t canceled for being too treacherous!

Don’t get me wrong, it was a great watch, but I would not be pleased if I were a WRC team’s comptroller.

There are high-level discussions going on about the future of the event; they weren’t triggered by the craziness of this year’s rally, but that couldn’t be helping. This will be the last year the event has direct government involvement, and organizers and the series are trying to hash out what its future will look like. I hope they come up with something.

I was deeply bummed not to have NLS1 to watch this weekend, but there was plenty of good news about the series to dull the pain. That epic Mercedes DTM car rebuild I covered a couple weeks ago is being driven in the N24 by none other than Renger van der Zande. And even cooler: Anybody remember last April Fools’ Day when BMW dressed up an M3 Touring wagon like a race car? Well guess what — they’re racing it at the Nürburgring 24.

With the new, more accessible car regulations coming next year, 2027 promises to be a big moment for the FIA World Rally Championship, and the series is backing that up by pushing for some exciting new events. Rally is huge in Scotland, and it’s one of the most gorgeous places for it on Earth, so a full-blown world championship event sounds like a great idea.

Despite some sort of team error causing the Joe Gibbs Racing cars to repeatedly speed on pit lane and get sent to the back, Denny Hamlin charged back through the field to win his first race of the season in Las Vegas. This win put him ahead of Kevin Harvick on the all-time list, and his family was there to celebrate with him after the extremely difficult year they had last year both on and off the track.

Another storyline emerged in Vegas to watch this year: Tensions between former teammates Ross Chastain and Daniel Suárez have boiled over into a face-to-face confrontation. Their on-track encounters were not terribly severe, so whatever came up clearly goes back in their history.

It was quite sad for me to miss this year’s Road Atlanta Trans Am weekend — especially with our man Ray working in the pits for Nitro Motorsports — given how good of a time I had last year. I have been in love with the CUBE 3 Architecture TA2 Series ever since. It’s pretty chaotic — there are a lot of cars, they’re very powerful, and the drivers are generally quite young — but its standout talents tend to go on to do great things (the name Connor Zilisch may ring a bell).

Well TA2 has a new name to put on your bell-ringing list: Helio Meza. He’s won the first three races this year, and he won from pole at Road Atlanta leading every lap. Watch him whenever you can. His team also has him racing in the NASCAR Mexico Series this year.

The war in the Middle East has wreaked havoc on the motorsport world from day one, and now it has come for Formula 1. The April rounds in Bahrain and Saudi Arabia have been canceled, and it’s far too late to replace them. Industry sources estimate the overall financial hit to the industry to be north of $100 million.

I have said my piece on the overall significance of this war as pertains to motorsports, so let’s just concentrate on the specifics of each development. There is a possibility that this unexpected break early in the season could ultimately benefit the season. The new regulations and the cars they have produced — objectively awesome though they are — need a lot of work, and this will buy everyone time. The financial hits from lost race revenue are considerable, but they aren’t game-changing, and some of the savings teams will get running two fewer races might well be.

It’s just such a tragedy that this planet is so frequently prevented from being peaceful.

After its postponement on March 3 due to war in the region, the typically season-opening Qatar 1812km has been rescheduled as the penultimate round of the FIA World Endurance Championship and will be held October 22–24. The Prologue testing event prior to that race has been moved to Imola on April 14, three days before the six-hour race there that will now be the season opener.

My favorite Porsche 963 livery is back! Well, mostly back. I can’t lie, I far preferred the styling when Mustang Sampling sponsored the Proton Competition Porsche in the 2024 IMSA season, but this will do. We’re about to see it roll out for the 12 Hours of Sebring next weekend.

What makes up for it is that Mustang Sampling is back with JDC-Miller MotorSports, who ran the Mustang Sampling Cadillac DPi-V.R that won the 12 Hours of Sebring in 2021. This will be the livery for the rest of the season (bye bye, banana boat), and they have switched the number from 85 to 5, the classic Mustang Sampling IMSA number.

Whispers of a Days of Thunder sequel have burbled for years, but reporters are finding concrete signs that it’s actually underway now and that writer Will Staples is involved. Given how the F1 movie did, this definitely feels worth taking a swing at.