Joe Gibbs Racing’s Kyle Busch took the win at New Hampshire after playoff points leader Martin Truex Jr picked up damage in a pileup. Championship leader and Furniture Row Racing driver Truex dominated the first half of the race after moving past poleman Busch to lead halfway through stage one, and continued to take his
Month: September 2017
Valentino Rossi has shrugged off Dani Pedrosa’s complaints over his defending in the Aragon MotoGP race. Second-place finisher Pedrosa said Rossi had been “unfair” in squeezing him to the left side of the track as they battled on the back straight. “You can go to the left but to go to the line, and make
MotoGP points leader Marc Marquez says he was “fighting against the bike” for the whole Aragon race, despite the Honda rider emerging victorious. The Spaniard failed to get pole position at his home track for the first time in his MotoGP career, due to him crashing in Q2. However, he was in the lead group
Dani Pedrosa has spoken out against the way Valentino Rossi defended his position during the Aragon MotoGP race, claiming he was nearly forced off-track at almost 190mph. Pedrosa was attacking Rossi for fourth place on lap 15 and managed to get ahead of the Italian on the main straight. However, he had to narrowly squeeze
Marc Marquez recovered from a crash in qualifying to take an imperious win in the Aragon Grand Prix, retaking sole ownership of the MotoGP points lead in the process. From fifth on the grid, Marquez suffered a slow start but profited from poleman Maverick Vinales running wide at the end of the first lap to
Renault Formula 1 academy driver Jack Aitken hopes the French manufacturer will organise further F1 outings following his test at Jerez last week, when he “deserves it”. Aitken, who says he is now refocused on his GP3 title campaign with the ART Grand Prix squad, drove Renault’s Lotus-built E20 2012 F1 car at the Spanish
Bradley Smith says his KTM crew chief gave him a “clip round the ear” for his Aragon MotoGP qualifying performance, and knows he cannot afford a repeat in the race. The Briton, who is under pressure to lift his game in order to keep his ride safe, could only manage 13th in Q1 at the
A revised schedule for MotoGP’s Aragon Grand Prix has been issued due to thick fog that prevented the morning warm-up session from starting on time. Moto3 warm-up started after an initial 10-minute delay at around 0850 local time, but was red-flagged after just few a minutes of running due to the poor visibility. Track action
NASCAR Cup playoff favourite Martin Truex Jr’s dominance is down to the driver and not Toyota, says closest challenger Kyle Larson. Toyota’s success has come under increasing scrutiny in recent weeks, with Brad Keselowski slamming NASCAR’s attempts to ensure car equality after Truex, Kyle Busch and Denny Hamlin swept a Toyota 1-2-3 in qualifying at
New IndyCar champion Josef Newgarden says an “absolutely terrible” May in which he crashed out of the Indianapolis 500 made his 2017 title pursuit more difficult. Newgarden headed into the Sonoma double-points finale just three points ahead of nearest rival Scott Dixon, recovering from being as low as eighth in the drivers’ standings after a
Formula 1’s rules have been tweaked to help its new owners pursue their plans to organise more demonstration events similar to July’s F1 Live event in London. The FIA World Motor Sport Council has formally approved a change which will allow teams to run current 2018 machinery, or year-old 2017 cars, in demo events next
The World Motor Sport Council has ratified a 13-round World Rally Championship calendar for the 2018 season, with Turkey returning for the first time since 2010. Thursday’s WMSC meeting confirmed the Marmaris-based Rally Turkey will replace Rally Poland on next year’s schedule, but will be held in September to close up the current five-week gap
Danica Patrick could return to IndyCar after losing her NASCAR Cup seat for 2018, reckons her current team boss Tony Stewart. Patrick announced last week that she had been dropped by the Stewart-Haas NASCAR team Stewart co-owns with Formula 1 team boss Gene Haas. SHR had steered Patrick’s move from IndyCar to stock car racing
Chip Ganassi has confirmed that his IndyCar squad will field just two entries for the 2018 season. The team has taken the decision to reduce its number of cars from four to two for next year. Four-time IndyCar champion Scott Dixon – who ended this season in third place in the championship – will remain
Sebastien Loeb took another step towards a potential World Rally Championship return by testing a Citroen WRC car on gravel for the first time in more than four years today. The potential for Loeb to return to the world championship is understood to hinge on the outcome of today’s loose surface test, which took place
Kalle Rovanpera will contest the final two rounds of this year’s World Rally Championship in an M-Sport-run Ford Fiesta R5. The 16-year-old drove a Peugeot 208 T16 on last weekend’s Rally di Roma Capitale, which looks likely to be his last outing in the car before he switches to a Fiesta R5 for next month’s
Indianapolis 500 winner Takuma Sato will return to Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing for the 2018 IndyCar season. Ex-Formula 1 driver Sato moves across to Rahal after a single season at the Andretti Autosport squad. Sato scored four top-five finishes during the 2017 season, including the first-ever Indy 500 win for a Japanese driver, and ended
Kasey Kahne will remain in the NASCAR Cup Series for 2018 after securing a drive for minnows Leavine Family Racing. The 18-time race winner had hoped his victory at Indianapolis in July would secure his future with Hendrick Motorsports, but the team opted to release him from his contract a year early. Kahne had been
Porsche’s World Endurance Championship leader Brendon Hartley has revealed he is keen on a switch to IndyCar next year after the end of the German manufacturer’s LMP1 programme. The New Zealander confirmed that he is “genuinely looking at IndyCars” after being linked to drives with both Ganassi and Schmidt Peterson Motorsport for next year. “IndyCars
Sebastien Loeb will test Citroen’s 2017 World Rally Car on gravel for the first time on Wednesday. The nine-time WRC champion returned to Citroen last month to try its C3 WRC on asphalt. Now he will spend a day on gravel close to Barcelona as part of Citroen’s pre-Rally of Spain testing. Citroen team principal
Tristan Gommendy says he and former Formula 1 team co-owner Didier Calmels will not be “daredevils” about their surprise 2018 Indianapolis 500 project. Sportscar racer Gommendy will make a shock return to American single-seater racing next May, 11 years after he competed in the final Champ Car season with KV Racing Technology. He will enter
NASCAR Cup playoff leader Martin Truex Jr says the new-for-2017 stages format has created a “safety net” for his championship bid. Truex started the playoff section of the season with a 20-point lead as a reward for winning the ‘regular season’ title, and has benefited from the new points-paying three stage system to win 18
Simon Pagenaud says he planned his surprise four-stop strategy that won the 2017 IndyCar finale at Sonoma over text with his engineer the night before Sunday’s race. Pagenaud entered the weekend as one of five drivers in title contention, and needed to win the race and have Scott Dixon and Josef Newgarden finish lower than
NASCAR Cup minnow Leavine Family Racing says it has held talks with race winner Kasey Kahne and failed in a bid to sign 2004 champion Kurt Busch. Busch and Kahne will be out of contract at the end of the season, with Kahne released one year early from his Hendrick Motorsports ride and Busch’s deal
IndyCar champion Josef Newgarden says he was “steaming” at missing out on race victory in the Sonoma finale, despite winning the title. Newgarden had taken pole for the double-points decider, but lost out to Penske team-mate Simon Pagenaud in the race after the 2016 champion chose an alternate four-stop strategy and took the lead on
Josef Newgarden secured the 2017 IndyCar title in his first season with Penske with second to Simon Pagenaud in the season finale at Sonoma. Newgarden led much of the race but his reigning champion team-mate Pagenaud made the most of an out-of-sequence four-stop pit strategy to move into the lead on lap 65 of the
Martin Truex Jr won the first playoff race of the 2017 NASCAR Cup season as he recovered from two pitstop mistakes for victory at Chicagoland. Regular season winner Truex led 77 of the 267 laps on the way to a win that further consolidates his playoff points lead and books him a place as one
WRT Audi’s Robin Frijns and Stuart Leonard took a surprising Blancpain GT Sprint Cup title after championship favourites Maximilian Buhk/Franck Perera and Dries Vanthoor/Marcel Fassler’s Nurburgring races imploded dramatically. Fellow Audi pair Fassler and Vanthoor looked likely to sneak the title late on, having overcome polesitters and pre-race championship leaders Buhk and Perera in the
IndyCar title contender Scott Dixon admits his Ganassi team and its Honda aerokit have a “deficit” to the Penske Dallara-Chevrolets of his main championship rivals going into Sunday’s Sonoma decider. Points leader Josef Newgarden set a new track record to claim pole and the bonus point, and his three Penske team-mates Will Power, Simon Pagenaud
Josef Newgarden claimed his second career pole position in the final round of the IndyCar season at Sonoma, in doing so claiming a valuable point towards the championship. The Penske driver’s time of 1m15.520s was a new lap record in a session in which the previous benchmark tumbled multiple times. Newgarden was 0.035s quicker than