Israeli driver Alon Day hopes his historic first appearance in the NASCAR Cup series at Sonoma will help motorsport develop in his home country. The 25-year-old had a one-race call-up for Sonoma with the BK Racing Toyota team last weekend. Day has been a frontrunner in NASCAR’s European series since 2015 – finishing runner-up to
Month: June 2017
Gene Haas has ruled out reducing his four-car Stewart-Haas Racing NASCAR Cup line-up in 2018 even if he has to bankroll it through his own companies. The team Haas co-owns with three-time Cup champion Tony Stewart currently fields four Fords for Kevin Harvick, Clint Bowyer, Kurt Busch and Danica Patrick. While 2015 champion Harvick signed
Le Mans 24 Hours winner Timo Bernhard will enter his factory-supported Porsche outfit Team 75 Motorsport in next month’s Spa 24 Hours. Porsche factory drivers Laurens Vanthoor, Kevin Estre and Michael Christensen will share a 911 GT3 R in the Belgian endurance classic. The German team, founded by two-time Le Mans winner Bernhard and run
Esteban Gutierrez hopes IndyCar can use his presence with Dale Coyne Racing to bring a Mexican race back onto its calendar. The ex-Formula 1 and Formula E driver is standing in for the injured Sebastien Bourdais while the four-time Champ Car champion recovers from his Indianapolis 500 qualifying crash. The Puebla oval has been mooted
Mercedes DTM driver Robert Wickens has underlined that his surprise Road America IndyCar appearance was only a favour to friend James Hinchcliffe and not the precursor to a career change. Hinchcliffe’s regular Schmidt Peterson Motorsport team-mate Mikhail Aleshin encountered visa problems while trying to travel back from France having raced for SMP at the Le
Bentley will field a third factory car in next month’s Spa 24 Hours as it bids for its first victory in the Belgian endurance classic. The British manufacturer has brought in the German Abt team, which led its challenge for Nurburgring 24 Hours honours last month, to run an additional Continental GT3 alongside the two
Hendrick Motorsports has extended Chase Elliott’s contract to the end of the 2022 NASCAR Cup season. The 21-year-old son of 1988 Cup champion Bill Elliott has been a Hendrick protege since his teens and was chosen to replace Jeff Gordon in the team’s #24 Chevrolet when the NASCAR legend retired from full-time racing ahead of
Scott Dixon says the fact Honda could keep its IndyCar engine at full power for longer than Chevrolet was key to his surprise defeat of Penske at Road America. Ganassi driver Dixon qualified 1.6 seconds off the pace in fifth behind an all-Penske top four. But on race day he worked his way forward before
Alexander Rossi has rejected Tony Kanaan’s accusation that he was responsible for Kanaan’s massive crash in the Road America IndyCar race. Kanaan hit the wall hard at the fast kink on the Elkhart Lake track’s back section with nine laps of Sunday’s race to go. He had been rapidly closing on Rossi, who had a
Kevin Harvick took his first win of the 2017 NASCAR Cup season and his first for Ford, beating Stewart-Haas team-mate Clint Bowyer at Sonoma. Harvick managed to make his fuel last until the end of the final 60-lap stage to claim his first win at the Californian track and his first on a road course
Scott Dixon overturned a weekend of Penske dominance to win his and Ganassi’s first IndyCar race of 2017 at Road America. He narrowly fended off Josef Newgarden, who led a quartet of Penske Dallara-Chevrolets in second to fifth. A great restart after the first of two caution periods got Dixon ahead of Newgarden and he
1 A.Soucek, M.Soulet, V.Abril Bentley Team M-Sport Bentley 6h01m17.768s 2 V.Shaytar, M.Molina, D.Rigon SMP Racing Ferrari 29.272s 3 A.Garcia, N.Muller, R.Rast Belgian Audi Club Team WRT Audi 1m19.230s 4 R.van der Zande, F.Serralles, D.Juncadella Akka ASP Mercedes 1m22.658s 5 L.Ordonez, A.Buncombe, K.Chiyo RJN Motorsport Nissan 1m37.964s 6 S.Leonard, J.Dennis, R.Frijns Team WRT Audi 1m55.276s 7
Helio Castroneves led a Team Penske 1-2-3-4 in IndyCar qualifying at Road America, edging team-mate Will Power. Castroneves’s time of 1m41.3007s came in the final moments of the pole shootout and was just 0.0604 seconds faster than Power’s best effort after the four-mile Elkhart Lake track. Josef Newgarden was third, while reigning champion Simon Pagenaud
Mercedes claimed pole position for the Paul Ricard 1000km Endurance Cup round of the Blancpain GT Series with a last-gasp lap from Yelmer Buurman. The Black Falcon Mercedes driver posted a 1m56.442s after the chequered flag had fallen at the end of the final 15-minute qualifying session to take the pole. Buurman had been top
Ford World Endurance Championship GTE racer Billy Johnson will contest this weekend’s Somona NASCAR Cup round with Richard Petty Motorsports. Johnson’s appearance is a one-off in place of Darrell Wallace, who is the team’s main stand-in while Aric Almirola recovers from the back injury he sustained in a crash at Kansas Speedway last month, for
Kyle Larson sealed his second consecutive victory at the Michigan International speedway after surviving a late restart to go top of the NASCAR Cup standings. The first of three restarts in the final 21 of 200 laps allowed Larson to overtake Kyle Busch after running in the top three at the end of the first
Sam Hornish Jr will reunite with Penske, with which he won the 2006 IndyCar title and Indianapolis 500, for a part-time NASCAR return in the Xfinity Series. Hornish drove for Penske from 2004 to ’13, initially in the IndyCar Series before switching to its NASCAR operation from ’08. Though he achieved little success at Cup
The Czech ISR and French Sainteloc teams will join Audi’s roster of factory teams for the first time at the Spa 24 Hours next month. The two newcomers will field factory Audi R8 LMS GT3 cars in the Endurance Cup round of the Blancpain GT Series at Spa on July 29/30 alongside regular works operation
Former Red Bull protege Beitske Visser and Dennis Marschall have been announced as new members of BMW’s junior programme. Visser spent the past three years in Formula Renault/V8 3.5, and is the first female driver invited to the current incarnation of BMW’s young driver scheme. “I am proud to be part of the BMW Motorsport
Porsche is working on putting together a factory-supported entry for the Spa 24 Hours next month. The German manufacturer has revealed that it is busy with a plan to put at least one car with three factory drivers in the Pro class of the blue-riband round of the Blancpain Endurance Series on July 29/30. Frank-Steffen
McLaren is set to terminate its contract with CRS to develop and build its GT3 and GT4 racing machinery. The move has yet to be officially announced, but Autosport has learned that McLaren Automotive began proceedings to bring the relationship with its GT racing partner of the past seven years to an end last month.