Villeneuve has spent Tuesday and Wednesday at Daytona International Speedway driving the #27 Ford in the Next Gen test for Team Hezeberg, a new Cup team this season formed between racing legend Toine Hezemans and Dutch entrepreneur Ernst Berg. Loris Hezemans, the 2019 NASCAR Euro champion, plans to compete in all the road course events

The two-time Daytona 500 winner hasn’t raced a Cup car since his retirement following the 2017 season, but is participating in a two-day test at Daytona International Speedway with his former Hendrick Motorsports team while reigning Cup champion Kyle Larson is competing in the Chili Bowl, an important short track midget racing event. Speaking following

Just over two hours into the first of a two-day test, NASCAR asked teams to run a 10-lap drafting test on the 2.5-mile superspeedway. In the test, the cars utilised an aero package featuring 510 horsepower with a seven-inch spoiler. While NASCAR didn’t immediately release timing and scoring data from the session, officials said the

With reigning Cup Series champion Kyle Larson competing this week at the Chili Bowl Nationals, Hendrick Motorsports announced Monday that Earnhardt will test Larson’s #5 Chevrolet today (Tuesday) and tomorrow at Daytona International Speedway test. The 47-year-old, who currently works as a NASCAR TV analyst for NBC, retired from the Cup Series at the end of

Almirola, 37, will complete the 2022 season driving the No. 10 Ford for Stewart-Haas Racing with longtime sponsor Smithfield Foods and then step away following the No. 6 season finale at Phoenix. “I truly enjoy driving race cars and I’m excited to race my heart out in 2022 for Smithfield and Stewart-Haas Racing,” Almirola said.

NASCAR has made a revolutionary change to its premier stock car class this season, with teams no longer fabricating their own cars from scratch but assembling them from a common supply chain to dramatically cut costs. In the video (above) NASCAR’s managing director of vehicle systems Brandon Thomas explains how the chassis has been broken

After news broke last week that the RPM team’s storied #43 would be under new majority ownership next year, the rebranded organisation officially revealed its new name during a news conference on Tuesday, in which it was revealed that the team will run two Chevrolets for Erik Jones and Ty Dillon. Jones, who recently signed

Airline entrepreneur Maury Gallagher, the owner of the GMS squad that claimed Truck titles in 2016 and 2020 with Johnny Sauter and Sheldon Creed, has also acquired two charters in the agreement and will run two cars during the 2022 season. Erik Jones signed a contract extension with RPM in August and should remain in

Having contested 24 Formula 1 grand prix for McLaren and Stewart during the 1990s, Jan Magnussen is no stranger to the motorsport limelight. But the Dane admits that he tried to go under the radar for a one-off NASCAR Cup Series appearance at Sonoma in 2010, which he describes as a “fantastic experience”. Despite an

Due to COVID-19 pandemic protocols and for cost-saving, the vast majority of NASCAR race weekends have gone without practice or qualifying since early 2020. In a statement, NASCAR’s senior vice president of competition Scott Miller said: “NASCAR is excited to return practice and qualifying to its race weekends. “We missed seeing cars and trucks on track all

The first day of a group test at the Charlotte Motor Speedway oval on Wednesday proved eventful, with Austin Dillon crashing his Richard Childress Chevrolet, while newly-crowned 2021 champion Kyle Larson and veteran Denny Hamlin had spins. Hendrick Motorsports driver Alex Bowman reported that the new car was “real edgy and hard to feel”, saying

Four-time NASCAR Cup champion Jeff Gordon says that 2021 series winner Kyle Larson has done “amazing things” in his first season with Hendrick Motorsports. After a brief stint as a TV analyst with Fox Sports following his racing career, Gordon returned to Hendrick in an official role in June of this year as vice-chairman of

The Joe Gibbs Racing driver, who finished second in 2018 with Furniture Row Racing and again in 2019 with JGR, led for 72 laps on Sunday and hit the front in stage three after undercutting his title rivals at what should have been the final stop of the race and cycling him back to the

Having won out in the ‘regular season’, Hendrick Motorsports’ Larson continued his impressive form throughout the playoffs, and capped off an excellent season with a strong defensive drive from Martin Truex Jr, who was looking to claim his second Cup Series title. Larson led the most laps at Phoenix, but had fallen out of lead

Truex has won four races this season – second-most among the title contenders – and won the spring race at Phoenix Raceway, the venue of Sunday’s title race. Yet Truex seems to have flown under the radar because three of his victories came early in the season. While he had to fight and claw for

Larson, 28, was indefinitely suspended from NASCAR and fired from Chip Ganassi Racing in March 2020 for using a racial slur over the radio during a public iRacing event. He sat out the remainder of the 2020 season, with a return to NASCAR never a certainty. After fulfilling the requirements by NASCAR to lift his

Wally Brown, JGR’s competition director, certainly believes the Hendrick Motorsports duo of Larson and reigning series champion Elliott have an advantage heading into the Phoenix finale. “Usually a lot of times, JGR might be the favourite going into a championship race. I think we’re definitely the underdogs. We have to beat the guy – Kyle

Busch, a two-time series champion, finished second in Sunday’s race at Martinsville Speedway, but was still eliminated from further contention for the 2021 series championship. In an interview caught on video by NBC Sports, Busch said a slur commonly used to refer to those with intellectual and developmental disabilities while describing his last-lap tangle with

In the closing 25 of 501 laps, Bowman’s Hendrick Motorsport Chevrolet and title contender Hamlin (Joe Gibbs Racing Toyota) battled side-by-side multiple times for the lead until Bowman got loose and knocked Hamlin into a spin on lap 494. As Hamlin dropped to an eventual 24th position, Bowman – who had dropped out of playoff

The two drivers were battling for the lead when they made contact on lap 494 of 501, sending Hamlin’s #11 Joe Gibbs Racing Toyota spinning. Bowman went on to win the race while Hamlin finished 24th, but the veteran still progressed to next week’s Championship 4 title decider at Phoenix on points along with Chase

Hamlin said his new-found interest in F1 has come from several of his friends paying attention to it and by watching Drive to Survive a popular documentary series produced in a collaboration between Netflix and Formula 1 to give a behind-the-scenes look at the series. “I think this year I’ve probably watched more [F1] races than

Larson had to hold off multiple contenders over six restarts in the final 60 laps – and just edged his Hendrick Motorsports teammate William Byron by 0.459 seconds at the finish to earn his series-leading eighth win of the 2021 season. After winning Stage 2, Larson continued to lead into the final part of the

Logano’s Penske Racing team was one of 21 that participated in the two-day Charlotte test – the most teams to take part in a Next Gen test so far after an earlier eight-car test at Daytona International Speedway. During the test this week, NASCAR came up with multiple possible solutions for teams to try to

Late in Sunday’s NASCAR Cup Series race on the Charlotte Roval, the rear bumper cover of Chase Elliott’s #9 Hendrick Motorsports Chevrolet dislodged and began dangling from behind his car. Elliott had wrecked on lap 55 of 109 after being hit by Kevin Harvick, which left the reigning Cup champion with severe rear-end damage. In

John Probst, NASCAR’s senior vice president of innovation and racing, said the updates to the Next Gen chassis that will be introduced to the Cup Series in 2022 will be primarily made to its front and rear clips – all of which can be retrofitted into an existing clip. There will also be changes to

The latest coming together between the pair came three weeks after a fiery post-race confrontation at Bristol, when a delayed Elliott – who had suffered a puncture in contact from Harvick while battling for the lead – deliberately held up the 2014 champion and helped his Hendrick Motorsports team-mate Kyle Larson to steal victory. Stewart-Haas

Larson first noticed an electrical problem on his car early in Stage 2 and when he pitted under caution on lap 34, his team discovered he had lost an alternator belt. Changing the battery provided a quick fix but the team formulated a plan to change the belt under additional stops. Once the work was

Keselowski watched race winner Wallace use a block to protect his lead, and felt he had a way to get around the 23XI driver before running out of time. Instead, a four-car wreck on Lap 117 of the scheduled 188 laps at Talladega brought out a caution, locking Keselowski into second place. Soon after the

Hamlin and NBA legend Michael Jordan co-own 23XI Racing, which fields Wallace’s #23 Toyota, so both also became first-time winning owners. When NASCAR called Monday’s rain-delayed Cup race at Talladega Superspeedway early for rain – again – Bubba Wallace was the leader. Although only 117 of the scheduled 188 laps were completed, the race had

It was also the first win for the 23XI team co-founded by NBA legend Michael Jordan and Joe Gibbs Racing driver Denny Hamlin for this season, while Wallace’s crew chief Bootie Barker scored the first win of his career after nearly 500 races atop the box. The 188-lap race was postponed from Sunday due to