Last month Robert Wickens became a race winner again, defying his paralysis by using hand controls to score victory at Watkins Glen’s IMSA Michelin Pilot Challenge event with Hyundai. On the same day at Goodwood’s Festival of Speed, disabled MotoGP world champion Wayne Rainey rode his Yamaha YZR500 again and quadriplegic Sam Schmidt – Robert’s

This writer has lamented many times about how, in motorsport, silly-season gossip about the future tends to distract from the here and now. In the case of, say, the top class in WEC over the past four years and the interminable internecine Toyota battle, it would be understandable if the focus was pulled away from

It was announced on Tuesday that Ganassi had taken up his option on its 2021 IndyCar champion to retain him through the end of the 2023 season. The release included a quote from Ganassi, who has seen his drivers score 14 championships since 1996, and also supposedly from Palou – a fact that the Spaniard

Palou, in only his second season in IndyCar and his first with Chip Ganassi Racing, won the title with three wins and five other podium finishes. This year, he is putting up a stout defense of that crown, sitting fourth in the championship, just 35 points behind teammate and Indy 500 winner Marcus Ericsson. Despite

Herta, who has racked up seven wins and eight pole positions since joining the IndyCar Series full-time in 2019, tested last year’s McLaren MCL35M under the TPC [testing previous car] rules, running 162 laps of the 2.891-mile Autodromo Internacional do Algarve across two days. Although running the car on a track at which McLaren had

Michael Andretti was left fuming after the Mid-Ohio IndyCar race. All four of his drivers were involved in intra-team scraps that cost them three top-10 finishes and left some serious questions to be answered. Following a restart, Alexander Rossi and Romain Grosjean were duelling over 10th place on lap 59 of the 80-lap race when

In May McLaren announced that Andretti Autosport driver Herta, a seven-time race winner in the IndyCar Series, will be part of the team’s testing programme with the 2021 MCL35M car. The team has now revealed the 22-year-old American will test at Portimao’s Algarve International Circuit on Monday and Tuesday, with McLaren’s simulator driver Will Stevens

It’s hard to pick a star of the 2022 IndyCar Series over its first nine rounds, because of the closeness of the competition. The pacesetter at the previous round can so easily be an also-ran at the next. For that reason, one has to salute Josef Newgarden, who has accumulated wins on an oval, a

After scoring a win in the season-opener at St. Petersburg, and a very close runner-up finish at Texas, the 29-year-old New Zealand had not scored a top five over the next five rounds.   However, at Mid-Ohio he started second, tracked early leader Pato O’Ward very closely over the first stint, so that he was

With a potential pole-winning car Power had his fastest two laps deleted in qualifying, after impeding Helio Castronevess when the team failed to warn him of the rapid approach of his former team-mate. That relegated the #12 Verizon Team Penske-Chevrolet to 21st on the grid. A spin on the opening lap was a result of

McLaughlin took advantage of a full course caution caused by Kyle Kirkwood to leap from second to lead 45 of the 80 laps. The three-time Supercars champion came under pressure from Palou in the closing stages but was able to hold off the Spaniard to claim his second career IndyCar win. Penske team-mate Will Power charged

Pato O’Ward was the first driver to set a representative time on used reds in the Fast Six shootout, a 67.0852s, before pitting immediately to grab another set of worn reds. His time withstood the first efforts by Scott McLaughlin of Team Penske-Chevrolet and his own team-mate Felix Rosenqvist. Then he lowered the mark still

Devlin DeFrancesco caused a red flag in the opening minutes of the session with an off-course excursion, before ten drivers soon set laptimes under 1m08s. Alexander Rossi sent his Andretti Autosport-Honda to the top with a 1m07.872s lap, before he was swiftly replaced in P1 by Felix Rosenqvist of Arrow McLaren SP-Chevrolet. However, the Swede

David Malukas was the first driver to turn a 70-second lap, turning a 70.3589s for Dale Coyne Racing with HMD, before improving to a 68.4831s, an average of 118.698mph around the 2.238-mile course in Lexington, OH. His fellow rookies were out on track with him at this early stage, taking advantage of the extra set

Autosport understands Dixon’s current contract with Ganassi is through to the end of 2023, and that it is IndyCar-specific, whereby he can’t be moved sideways into CGR’s Cadillac sportscar operation full-time – although he’ll likely remain as one of the extras for endurance races. However, there are rumours that when his contract is up, he

Sharing his Hyundai Elantra N with fellow Canadian Mark Wilkins in a two-hour race at Watkins Glen, Wickens won the TCR class of the Michelin Pilot Challenge event for Bryan Herta Autosport. His last race victory was in September 2017, at the Nurburgring for Mercedes in the DTM. Due to his spinal cord injury, Wickens

After a “very encouraging” test on the Indianapolis Motor Speedway’s road course on Thursday, the 2016 Indy 500 champion told Autosport that he was continuing to work productively together with his team-mates and that their dedication to winning had not shifted. “Everyone’s been very understanding with regard to my move,” said Rossi, who has been

Aurally, the change was welcome. The normally-aspirated V8s of the Indy Racing League/IndyCar 1997-2011 era, at high revs, tended to sound as if 20-plus Canada geese were locked in one’s tympanic cavities and never needed to draw breath. This could have a near nausea-inducing effect when the sound was bouncing off the concrete walls and

Rosenqvist’s future at the team has been subject to speculation following the signing of Alexander Rossi to Arrow McLaren SP to partner Pato O’Ward, although the IndyCar team is currently planning a third entry for the 2023 season. McLaren is also expanding its racing portfolio for next season, as it takes over Mercedes’ Formula E

De Silvestro, who raced the 2021 Indianapolis 500 for Paretta, opened her 2022 account on a road course – the first time she had raced an IndyCar on a road course in seven years. Her return to the notoriously challenging Road America circuit was a tough refresher course, and Beth Paretta’s team is this year

Walker Racing – Team Australia as it was rebranded with Aussie Vineyards backing – had only ditched its Reynard 02Is at the end of 2004, one of the last two Champ Car teams to do so, and so 2005 was very much a learning year for Derrick Walker’s team with the ageing Lola B2K. It

Chip Ganassi Racing-Honda It’s hard to knock a team that has started the 2022 season in roughly the same way as it ended the last, with three of its drivers in the top six in the championship, one of them leading. The down side is that they have scored only one win so far: the

At Road America, Newgarden delivered his third win from the opening eight races of the season, and moved up to third in the championship, 32 points away from leader Chip Ganassi Racing’s Marcus Ericsson. Newgarden is the only driver to score more than one victory this year to date. But the 2017 and ’19 title

After Palou and Ericsson qualified third and fourth respectively – Ericsson’s best grid position of the year – the pair had retained those positions from the start. Following the long run down to Turn 5 on lap 4, Palou appeared to brake slightly early in response to being so close behind the second-placed car of Josef Newgarden,

Chip Ganassi Racing’s Palou started the eighth round of the season at Elkhart Lake fourth in points, with Ericsson two spots ahead of him after his Indy 500 triumph. Palou was running third in Sunday’s race on Lap 4 when Ericsson lunged to his inside at Turn 5. Ericsson was more than halfway alongside when

Newgarden, who had been burned in 2021 following a late caution and hit gearbox trouble with two laps left as the race restarted, suffered no such trouble to beat Indianapolis 500 winner Marcus Ericsson home – as the Swede dispatched polesitter Alexander Rossi late on. Rossi had been assured in the opening part of the

Rossi clocked a 1m44.8656s to snatch pole position by 0.0715s from Newgarden to become the eighth different polesitter from as many races in the 2022 IndyCar season to date. Four drivers elected to go with primary tyres rather than used reds at the start of the Firestone Fast Six, and Andretti Autosport-Honda’s Rossi took two

In cool conditions, and with no alternate-compound tyres available in FP2, after they were used in yesterday’s first practice session, Conor Daly held top spot for Ed Carpenter Racing after 15 minutes, with a 1m46.5240s. But then defending race-winner Alex Palou delivered a third lap in his Chip Ganassi Racing was over a second quicker.

Despite a guaranteed 75 minutes of track time, most drivers remained on pitlane after their installation laps since they were yearning for another set of tyres. The teams were granted their practice Firestone alternates for this session, rather than second practice, but the drivers wanted rubber laid down to be most representative of the expected

Last Sunday’s Detroit Grand Prix was an epic way for the 2.35-mile track to sign off its time on the IndyCar schedule. Will Power’s triumph by one second over Alexander Rossi meant the Team Penske ace landed Chevrolet’s 100th win since it returned to IndyCar at the start of the 2.2-litre V6 twin-turbo era in 2012,