What makes an ideal Supercars season opener?
If you chose a narrow, high-speed street circuit lined by walls, oppressed by a high ambient temperature and threatened by thunderstorms, then you might be about to get exactly what youâre after.
This weekendâs season-opening Newcastle 500 will feature all the above, and as a bonus, no-one will really have driven the all-new cars in anger before they hit the track.
Continue reading on FOX SPORTSTriple Eight managing director Jamie Whincup has blamed Ford for needlessly delaying the Gen3 rules sign-off until just hours before the first round of the season.
Supercars has been preparing for years for the introduction of an all-new car design that the series hopes will improve the quality of racing, but it took until 7pm last night for the Chevrolet Camaro and Ford Mustang to be homologated, less than 24 hours before scrutineering was due to begin for this weekendâs Newcastle 500 at midday today.
Homologation, which seals the design and performance characteristics of the two cars, was delayed by months of arguments about whether the two models of car had achieved performance parity.
Continue reading on FOX SPORTSIf imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, then Red Bull Racing must be absolutely blushing for the number of compliments itâs getting this year.
Last yearâs championship-winning team appears to have penned the defining aerodynamic package of this rules era, with most teams gravitating towards its approach over the off-season.
Learning, copying â whatever you want to call it â is the natural way of things in Formula 1.
Continue reading on FOX SPORTSIf you were designing an all-new racing car with barely a few days of testing and with plenty of reliability niggles still to be ironed out, youâd choose a nice, smooth, wide-open permanent circuit with lots of run off and few obstacles as your first cautious outing.
You would never in 100 years choose Newcastle as your first race. But thatâs where weâre going this weekend.
The Gen3 Supercars machine has had a difficult gestation. In part thatâs an echo of the COVID pandemic, which disrupted development. But itâs also just how all-new rules tend to go.
Continue reading on FOX SPORTSWe often talk about the truism of motor racing that the first person every driver must beat is their teammate.
Less talked about is the constructor-equivalent maxim: never be beaten by your customer teams.
Itâs the golden rule of running a race team, and Mercedes broke it in Bahrain, where it was trounced by Aston Martin.
Continue reading on FOX SPORTSThere arenât many Formula 1-MotoGP crossover opportunities out there, but Lance Stroll found one in Spain as he faced the prospect of sitting out months of the season with broken bones.
The connection was Dr Xavier Mir, the renowned trauma surgeon famous in part for his work on the constantly troubled forearms and wrists of motorcycle riders.
Stroll put his banged-up hands in Mirâs golden ones, and lo and behold he found his way to sixth in the first race of the season â and, in what will come as no surprise to any MotoGP fan, he did so months ahead of when conventional medical wisdom assumed heâd be back.
Continue reading on FOX SPORTSMax Verstappen starts 2023 with a dominant victory at the Bahrain Grand Prix to strike fear into the hearts of would-be rivals Ferrari and Mercedes Featuring former F1 driver turned pundit Alex Yoong.
Michael and Rob are back for another episode to tell you to listen past the five-minute mark of the podcast and please don’t unsubscribe.
Thereâs a cruel irony to the fact that Oscar Piastri has sacrificed and grafted for nine years to earn a Formula 1 debut that lasted just 13 laps.
Itâs safe to say it wasnât the maiden outing as a Formula 1 driver the 21-year-old was hoping for.
The tone of a career is rarely set by the first race, certainly not for drivers of Piastriâs calibre, but the character of season sometimes is, and for the second year running McLaren, one of the greatest teams in Formula 1 history, embarrassed itself at the season-opening Bahrain Grand Prix.
Continue reading on FOX SPORTSMax Verstappen crushes the field with a concerning level of dominance, but the Fernando Alonso hype train pulls onto the podium for a well-deserved third place.
Max Verstappen has dominated the season-opening Bahrain Grand Prix ahead of Red Bull Racing teammate Sergio Perez, but Fernando Alonso stole the show with a thrilling third for the newly competitive Aston Martin team.
If you thought Max Verstappen and Red Bull Racing were vulnerable at the start of the new season, think again.
There was no moment on Sunday at the Bahrain Grand Prix that the reigning champion was in anything other than complete control of the race. The extent of his dominion was so great that it was difficult not to see it extending all the way from here to the end of the season.
There were challengers, but none came close. Ferrari succumbed to old foibles, including yet another alarming power unit failure. Mercedes is still well off the pace after an off-season looked back upon as increasingly dissatisfying.
Continue reading on FOX SPORTSMax Verstappen dominated the season-opening Bahrain Grand Prix in a foreboding Red Bull Racing one-two, while a superbly on form Fernando Alonso completed the podium for Aston Martin.
Verstappen aced his launch and never looked back, building an almost second-per-lap advantage early in the race that ensured he never meaningfully lost the lead of the race on his way to a cruisy 12-second victory and a 38-second advantage over the closest non-Red Bull Racing driver.
âIt was a very, very good first stint where I basically made my gap,â he said. âFrom there it was all about looking after the tires.
âI think we have a good race package. Of course it will depend a bit race to race, but we can definitely fight with this.â
Continue reading on RACERMax Verstappen rises to the top to take pole, but Ferrari is surprisingly competitive â and, yes, Fernando Alonso is very much in the mix.
After all the hype and bluster of preseason testing and practice, at the end of qualifying for the Bahrain Grand Prix reigning champion Max Verstappen led the Red Bull Racing front-row lockout the F1 paddock was expecting deep down.
Thatâs not to say it was straightforward for last yearâs title-winning team.
This was one of the tightest qualifying sessions the sport has seen in a very long time, and with several teams clearly having held back a great deal of pace in the lead-up to the pole shootout, no-one was sure exactly how the chips would fall.
Continue reading on FOX SPORTSMax Verstappen has led a Red Bull Racing front-row lockout ahead of teammate Sergio Perez for the season-opening Bahrain Grand Prix.
Max Verstappen took the first pole position of the season at the Bahrain Grand Prix after Charles Leclerc abandoned his shot at a final lap.
Verstappen led Leclerc by 0.103s after their first laps, but Ferrari opted to save Leclercâs set of soft tires for the race rather than burn them in a pole attempt, handing the Dutchman an open goal.
The reigning champion didnât need to be asked twice, improving his time to cement top spot for the first pole of the year ahead of teammate Sergio Perez.
Continue reading on RACERFernando Alonso beat Max Verstappen to top spot in final practice at the Bahrain Grand Prix to set up an intriguing qualifying hour.
Alonso and Verstappen traded fastest sectors in the final 10 minutes of the session, with both unwrapping a new set of soft tires at roughly the same time, facilitating a direct comparison.
Verstappen had the upper hand in the first two sectors, but a snap of oversteer in the final corner ceded the advantage to Alonso, who snatched top spot by just 0.005s.
Continue reading on RACER