Jimmie Johnson blamed his first-ever failure to qualify for NASCAR’s playoffs on ’25 bad races’ rather than the Indianapolis crash that ended his chance of being a Cup title contender. The seven-time champion has not won a championship race since Dover in June 2017, and his hopes of making it into the playoffs via his
Petronas Yamaha MotoGP rider Franco Morbidelli will contest the inaugural running of the Sepang 8 Hours in December this year. Morbidelli will ride a Yamaha YZF-R1 entered by the Sepang Racing team, which has received backing from full-season Endurance World Championship squad YART for its home event. He will race alongside Yamaha World Superbike rider
Hyundai has added two test events to its October schedule, creating a run of four rallies in four weekends, as the debate over World Rally Championship testing continues. The manufacturer has filled the two weekends between Rally GB and Rally Spain with Rallylegend for Thierry Neuville, and the Spanish Gravel Championship qualifier Rally Ciudad de
Brad Keselowski hit out at the “atrocious angle” of the Indianapolis barrier that he hit in his massive NASCAR Cup crash. Penske Ford driver Keselowski tangled with Joe Gibbs Racing’s Erik Jones just before one-third distance in Sunday’s race. Both cars were sent into the outside wall at the exit of Turn 2 before Keselowski’s
Stewart-Haas Racing driver Kevin Harvick dominated to win at Indianapolis, the final race before the start of the 2019 NASCAR Cup playoffs. Seven-time Cup champion Jimmie Johnson failed to qualify for the playoffs for the first time in his career, after being pitched into a spin and hitting the wall on lap 105 of the
FFF Racing’s Andrea Caldarelli and Marco Mapelli claimed the Blancpain GT World Challenge Europe title on countback after finishing tied on points with Black Falcon Mercedes at the Hungaroring. The Lamborghini duo beat the pairing of Maro Engel and Luca Stolz to the championship after recording two wins to Engel/Stolz’s one. Raffaele Marciello and Vincent
Chris van der Drift and Evan Chen moved to within two points of the Lamborghini Super Trofeo Asia points lead after recording a fifth win of the year in Shanghai. The Gama Racing pair came into the weekend four points adrift of FFF Racing’s Juuso Puhakka and Takashi Kasai, a gap which stretched to seven
SARD Lexus duo Heikki Kovalainen and Yuichi Nakayama took an unlikely SUPER GT victory at Autopolis after gambling on wet tyres just before the midpoint of the race. Koudai Tsukakoshi had led by the best part of 10 seconds in the polesitting Real Racing Honda ahead of the Kondo Nissan of Jann Mardenborough in the
The 2019 SUPER GT season is being broadcast live and for free by Motorsport.tv, and you can watch this weekend’s Autopolis round live on Autosport too. Honda swept the front row of the grid after a dominant showing in qualifying, but a first victory since the Okayama opener in April is anything but guaranteed due
Honda locked out the front row at Autopolis for the second year running as Real Racing led last year’s polesitting ARTA team in SUPER GT qualifying. Koudai Tsukakoshi underlined the chart-topping pace shown by Real Racing in both practice and Q1, clocking a time of 1m33.262s in the #17 NSX he shares with Bertrand Baguette.
Erik Jones has signed a new deal with his Joe Gibbs Racing NASCAR Cup Series team, with Autosport sources suggesting his new contract is a one-year extension. Jones earned his first win of the 2019 season last time out at Darlington, and he is in his second season with the team after a debut campaign
The M-Sport Ford World Rally Championship team will field a third Fiesta WRC for Pontus Tidemand on Rally GB. Tidemand, 28, is already returning to M-Sport for next week’s Rally Turkey, having tackled the first two rallies of the season in one of its factory Fords. The WRC 2 and Asia Pacific Rally champion has
Hayden Paddon will return to the M-Sport Ford team for two more World Rally Championship appearances later in the 2019 season. The former Hyundai driver will compete in a Ford Fiesta R5 at next month’s Rally GB before stepping up to a Fiesta WRC for the season-closing Rally Australia. Paddon’s new deal comes after he
The reprofiled backstretch chicane at the Charlotte Roval will be 30mph slower, but more challenging and better for racing – reckons the first NASCAR Cup driver to try the layout. Leavine Family Racing driver Matt DiBenedetto, who has become a frontrunner this year following his team’s technical tie-up with Joe Gibbs Racing, drove a pace
Johann Zarco says he has no fears he could get stuck in a MotoGP test role for multiple seasons, after hinting he is leaning towards that over a Moto2 return. Last month, KTM rider Zarco opted to terminate his two-year deal with the Austrian manufacturer one season early, leaving him without a place on the
M-Sport Ford World Rally Championship team boss Malcolm Wilson feels it would be “crazy” to let Elfyn Evans or Teemu Suninen go, despite his pursuit of Ott Tanak for 2020. Evans and Suninen have been M-Sport’s main line-up this year after Sebastien Ogier’s exit for Citroen, though Evans will end up missing three WRC rounds
IndyCar leader Josef Newgarden says he is not “very comfortable” heading into the final round with a 41-point margin over prime rival Alexander Rossi given the series’ double points system. Usually an IndyCar race win awards 50 points, but the bigger score available for Laguna Seca later this month means Andretti Autosport driver Rossi can
Toyota World Rally Championship team boss Tommi Makinen has played down talks that he could attempt to lure Dani Sordo to his squad for 2020. Makinen spoke positively about Hyundai driver Sordo during the recent Rally Germany, amid speculation linking the 36-year-old to a deal with Toyota. Sordo has not completed a full WRC season
After clinching victory in a stunning British Grand Prix by just 0.013s, the Tank Slapper’s podcast discusses if Suzuki and Alex Rins are now genuine title contenders in MotoGP again. Global MotoGP Editor for Motorsport.com Oriol Puigdemont shares his insight from key figures from Suzuki’s past and present to explain how the relatively small manufacturer
Dale Earnhardt Jr says he was relieved with how good his form was in his annual one-off NASCAR racing comeback in the Darlington Xfinity race. Though he has mainly focused on television punditry since retiring from full-time competition at the end of 2017, the 44-year-old has maintained an annual tradition of making one start in
M-Sport believes its current driver Teemu Suninen can mature into as strong a World Rally Championship contender as points leader Ott Tanak. Malcolm Wilson’s team famously dropped Tanak from its lead line-up twice during his erratic early years with the team, before he blossomed into a winner in 2017. He then left for Toyota, where
Ducati’s Danilo Petrucci says the recent two-day Misano MotoGP test “removed many doubts” over his performance, having suffered a difficult run of races since the summer break. Petrucci secured his maiden win at Mugello in June, and scored a brace of third-place finishes either side of that race to put himself within range of Ducati
IndyCar team boss Sam Schmidt was disappointed Marcus Ericsson was an unused substitute by Alfa Romeo at Formula 1’s Belgian Grand Prix, and reckons his driver is “pretty pissed” too. Ericsson missed the penultimate round of the IndyCar season at Portland after being released by his Arrow Schmidt Peterson Motorsport team to fulfil his reserve
Joe Gibbs Racing’s Kyle Busch has explained how he “lost control” of the NASCAR Cup Series race at Darlington, which was eventually won by Erik Jones after a late showdown. Busch chased down Jones in the final laps of the race but was managing wear on his right-front tyre after coming out behind his Stewart-Haas
Hyundai has confirmed Craig Breen will get another shot in its factory World Rally Championship line-up for Rally GB next month. Breen made his debut with Hyundai at Rally Finland in August, and ran in the top five for much of the event before dropping to seventh at the finish to promote his championship challenging
Erik Jones survived late pressure from Joe Gibbs Racing Toyota team-mate Kyle Busch at Darlington to clinch his first win of the 2019 NASCAR Cup season in his 100th start. While stage two winner Busch had controlled the early part of the final stage of the rain-delayed 367-lap race, he lost ground in the penultimate
Penske’s Will Power took victory in IndyCar’s Portland race, while team-mate Josef Newgarden’s fifth place finish ensures he heads to the Laguna Seca season finale with a commanding championship lead. Polesitter Colton Herta comfortably headed the chasing pack, with Chip Ganassi Racing’s Scott Dixon and Power in close contention in what became a two-stop race
IndyCar’s 2020 calendar includes a return to Richmond for the first time since 2009, replacing Pocono after its seven-year run on the schedule. Richmond hosted IndyCar racing from 2001 to ’09 but fell off the calendar due to the costs of putting on the event and a lack of sponsorship. Pocono had come under fire
Ricky Collard and Marvin Kirchhofer claimed victory in the second Blancpain GT World Challenge race at the Nurburgring for R-Motorsport after the leading WRT Audi team-mates took each other out. Dries Vanthoor had led the majority of the race from pole in the #1 Audi R8 and the car maintained that place after the mandatory
Jimmie Johnson says he is determined to silence his critics by improving his NASCAR Cup Series form regardless of whether he makes it into the 2019 championship playoffs. Johnson is only 18th in the points with two races to go before the top 16 are locked into the series’ title fight, and faces the prospect