The day-to-day motorsports news we find most pertinent from around the world. Mostly links and commentary, occasional scoops and announcements. Absolutely any form of motorized vehicle racing is eligible, but we do have our favorites.
See the Pit Wall for more info, resources, and oddities.
Click the instant online racing community button
The day-to-day motorsports news we find most pertinent from around the world. Mostly links and commentary, occasional scoops and announcements. Absolutely any form of motorized vehicle racing is eligible, but we do have our favorites.
See the Pit Wall for more info, resources, and oddities.
As expected, Alpine is ending its Hypercar program after this year, although it is still making noises about staying in Formula 1 and not closing the Viry-Châtillon facility. I do not rule out the likelihood that they’re just sprucing it up to sell, though.
I would be sad about this, but Renault just seems to suck too much at management of motorsports programs, so I’ll get over their absence.
Marshall Pruett was all over this story, and I’d say it’s the biggest story in IndyCar since Roger Penske bought the series. It’s the first development that really seems like it augurs growth and success, like a much bigger version of the news last year that FOX would buy a stake in the series. Incentives rule everything around us. It is very important to have mission-critical partners like broadcasters and engine manufacturers with skin in the game, so IndyCar’s success is their success.
The push for the first new IndyCar since 2012 has been excruciating, but clearly satisfying the engine manufacturers was the central issue. They’ve finally done it. The new formula is good, but giving them charters to field factory-backed cars is even better. That will let Honda and GM (and hopefully some more, eventually??) have their own engineers work directly on race cars. Honda is already talking to Meyer Shank about entering the factory car with them, which is a beautiful parallel to how the MSR Acura GTP program is run in IMSA. I love this. It’s all upside.
Early in the Bahrain test, journalists noticed Max Verstappen shifting all the way down to first gear when rolling through corners, evidently to charge his battery with the extra revs. This is exactly the sort of thing pundits imagined people doing under these new electric-heavy regulations, and Max is the best at doing weird stuff with race cars, so clearly he tried it. The back of the car squirmed around a lot, but, again, Max is the best. He can handle it. The other drivers started to copy him, but I have no doubt Max will dominate this year if that sort of trickery is necessary.
The problem is, he absolutely hated doing it. He was miserable. He called it “anti-racing.” He also called it “Formula E on steroids,” which sounds amazing, but clearly he meant it disparagingly. He doesn’t think driving a Formula 1 car should involve this much systems management. Lando Norris, who is the reigning Formula 1 world champion, later gave a rather champion-ly rebuttal, saying he’s perfectly willing to deal with the new car given that he gets to be a Formula 1 driver for a living.
Look, I want Max to quit and go sports car racing — and I’m sure Lando does, too — so we’re obviously biased, but I’m actually glad Max is unhappy. There tends to be an inverse correlation between how much fun drivers are having and how much fun it is to watch them.
Look, I like hybrids, and I like hybrid racing. I like energy management and regeneration as competitive and strategic elements. But it’s starting to sound like the 2026 Formula 1 regs have created a bit of a procedural clusterfuck with standing starts, and that’s not exactly a minor problem. First of all, the outcome of like half of F1 races are decided by the start. But more importantly, even one car having a bad launch can cause a huge wreck.
The problem is that drivers now have to rev for around 10 seconds in order to spool up the turbo to prevent lag on the getaway, since they no longer have an MGU-H to spin it up. But they also have to avoid over-charging their batteries while doing that, in addition to managing heat, dropping the clutch cleanly, and all the other usual difficulties of standing starts. Drivers are reportedly messing up one in 20 of their practice starts, which means that statistically someone will do it in a race every time. That’s not just a competitive problem; that’s a safety issue.
The thing is, there are rules changes that could mitigate the problem. I think the most promising would be allowing some battery energy deployment on the start to compensate for turbo lag, which is currently not allowed, but what the heck are electric car motors for if not accelerating!? A less invasive change would be increasing the time between the cars parking in formation and the start lights coming on. Ferrari, mysteriously, is blocking the rules changes, which suggests they’ve got a good PU solution to the turbo lag issue, and that’s fair enough, but we can’t be having crashes on the start in every race.
Far be it from me to doubt Adrian Newey knows what he’s doing, but I did have a feeling people were going a little gaga about the possibility that the Great Wizard would be able to pull a perfect Formula 1 car out of his hat that he designed by hand with a pencil after reading the most complex motor racing regulations ever devised.
As it turns out, the 2026 Aston Martin has been an absolute handful in testing, and a slow one at that. Sure, I half-believe the kinds of things the team says about starting off behind but having a powerful development pipeline in place. I believe Adrian Newey knows how to do those kinds of things. But I think this team might just be fundamentally dysfunctional.
I will not tolerate hipsterism regarding F1, the movie. Here’s why: I enjoyed the movie. My wife — who hates motorsports — watched the movie on a plane and enjoyed it. And, most importantly, I am sure there are millions of such cases. If you don’t think a worldwide blockbuster movie about racing is good for racing, I don’t know what to tell you.
The tides are turning against Mercedes as the various powers that be in Formula 1 begin to game out the consequences of the possible scenarios. Frankly, while I am in favor of teams who figured out how to do it exploiting the loophole, it’s also obvious that the FIA has to figure out how to measure compression ratio at racing temperature if they’re going to set a mandatory limit to it that must be met at all times.
And you know what? If Mercedes didn’t figure out what it was going to do in case it got caught, that’s their own fault, much as the other PU manufacturers not figuring out how to do this was their own fault. And the regulatory mess is the FIA’s own fault! This is automobile racing in its purest form.
Stewart Friesen getting hurt was a tough one last year, but not only is he back, he won. Also he was on pole. Guess he’s doing okay!
The 410 sprint car scene is a little awkward right now, with World of Outlaws pretending to be all the world needs and High Limit Racing making its incursion with elite racing ownership and an unfathomably better streaming package, and this deal takes things up a notch. To me, Interstate Batteries is one of the most iconic racing sponsors ever, and I always love seeing their livery on a sprint car, usually one driven by Christopher Bell. Apparently they like what they see, because now it’s Interstate Batteries High Limit Racing — they’re sponsoring the whole series.
I am so proud of NASCAR. They are fucking around to a degree I’ve never seen, and they’re staying on point for both NASCAR culture and 21st-century-relevant media culture.
Oh, what happened? They pretended they were going to reveal a Dodge Cup car or something, and then it turned out to be made of stacked beer cans, and Ross Chastain drove around on a little beer scooter and revved the world’s loudest billboard.
Everybody is always dying for St. Pete by the time it comes around because we spend so much of the year with no IndyCar, but this year is different. For one thing, it’s the first of two race weekends where IndyCar and NASCAR will split the bill; the Craftsman Truck Series will run at St. Pete, and IndyCar will run at NASCAR’s March Phoenix weekend. It’s almost as though things are starting to gel in 21st-century American motor racing finally.
But have you seen who is driving at St. Pete?
This all makes me wonder: Who will the guest star crossovers be at Phoenix?
I am not one of these Gen Z softboy racing fans, okay? I believe that race car drivers should be tough motherfuckers, and that if they physically can drive, they should. But I have been watching Brad Keselowski lurch his way back from slipping on ice and breaking his femur, and I am not convinced he can physically drive.
He did qualify for the Daytona 500 last night, and he was only two tenths behind the other rapid cars on his team. Honestly, RFK looks like the Ford team with the Daytona package to beat. That’s exciting. But Mr. K is walking with a sponsor-branded cane, and this injury has caused him the worst pain of his life. I hope we don’t see something sad happen.
Though it seems like it has actually been going on under the radar for a while Marshall Pruett recently discovered that a Brownsburg, Indiana company called MKR Racing has acquired a bunch of Will Power’s favorite race car — the Panoz DP-01 that ran for the final 2007 season of the Champ Car World Series — allowing current and prospective IndyCar drivers to gain relevant testing and experience in these absolute beasts without falling foul of IndyCar’s testing restrictions.
The arrangement is a little bit shady now, but I think it could stand to be legitimized. IndyCar severely limits testing — just like Formula 1 does — to keep the cost of competition at a level that is manageable for small teams; otherwise, the teams with the most money could do the most testing and maintain an unsurpassable advantage as was essentially the case in bygone eras. However, Formula 1 provides a formal way for teams to run Testing of Previous Cars (TPC) programs running cars that have aged out of present-day specifications, and customer teams without old cars of their own can even borrow them from their works team, as Cadillac did before its first season.
IndyCar could conceivably allow this formally with cars like the Panoz. It also remains to be seen what will happen to all the DW12s in a couple years when the new IndyCar finally arrives. There is a balance to be struck between ensuring drivers have enough relevant seat time to be in fighting shape and keeping teams on a level playing field for testing current-spec race cars.
I often hear a take that NASCAR superspeedway racing is so much of a crapshoot that qualifying doesn’t matter, and I get it, but I don’t agree. I mean, I agree that it’s a crapshoot, but to me the point of watching stock car racing at Daytona or Talladega is to see who has the best car and — if they don’t win — compare it to the one who overcomes the circumstances. I did not have it on my bingo card that Richard Childress Racing would prepare the #8 as the fastest car, or that — in his 21st attempt — Kyle Busch would drive it to pole. My rooting for him feels super rewarded.
In other good news, Corey Heim’s #67 23XI entry was blazingly fast, and both he and my main man Justin Allgaier in the JR Motorsports #40 locked into the 500. JRM is now two for two on making the race, and after their great run last year, I would be overjoyed to see a strong result.
Also, in an amusing twist, Noah Gragson had his qualifying lap deleted because he did the hand-in-the-window aero trick that was literally just banned.
The race sold out for the 11th straight year, the purse is bigger than ever — I’d say the omens are good. As long as the weather doesn’t completely sap the event of joy like last year.
I’m still in the process of warming to Carson Hocevar, and I don’t think I’m alone in that. I really love listening to him be himself off track. On track, I’d say I love watching him 50% of the time, which is not quite enough. But there is nothing a racing driver can do to get in my good graces like driving all the time in as many different cars as possible, and doing Trucks, O’Reilly, and the Daytona 500 is admirable. I do hope he has something left for Sunday from the 50% I like, though.
“For years, achieving a true gold look in motorsports has required compromises — limitations in depth, tone, reflectivity, and durability. ‘LEGACY Gold’ changes that equation entirely, delivering a finish that captures the richness, warmth, and dimensionality of real gold while meeting the demands of high-performance racing environments.”
You know I love a livery, and I equally love any innovation in the cool-looking-ness of race cars.
Five-year deals at Hendrick Motorsports are sort of NASCAR’s grand prize, at least as far as job security for race car drivers. I’m not going to put Larson in the Jeff Gordon/Jimmie Johnson category yet, but he could get there. Certainly he’s in the Dale Jr. category.
I try to keep my cool around Corvettes, but I do a very bad job, as anyone aware of my thing for AWA/13 Autosport is aware. I think that one has just been outdone, though. The two-car TF Sport Corvette attack on the FIA World Endurance Championship this year will feature a red one and a yellow one. They’re not wrapped, they’re candy-painted. Hnnnnnnnnngggggggg
Five days ago, Mercedes posted an Instagram photo of F1 sophomore Kimi Antonelli taking receipt of a 1-of-200 Mercedes-AMG GT 63 Pro Motorsports Collectors Edition handsomely decorated in Mercedes-AMG Petronas Formula 1 Team colors. Two nights later, the car was in the fence near Kimi’s home in San Marino. Kimi was fine, and he called the police himself. We don’t know whether he was driving.
To me, this is an indication that Formula 1 remains emphatically Formula 1, and all is well in the world. I’m looking forward to seeing Kimi on track.
It seems only right that Scott Dixon’s sole classmate in the IMS Museum Hall of Fame is the guy who made the car.
Click the instant online racing community button