Reigning Supercars champion Shane van Gisbergen is likely to extend his stay in the series thanks to the new Gen3 rules, according to Triple Eight team principal Jamie Whincup.
Three-time champion Van Gisbergen is embarking on his 16th full-time campaign in the main game but is out of contract at the end of the season.
The Kiwi has tied his longevity in the sport to the success of the Gen3 rules in improving the quality of the racing after years of increasing downforce made wheel-to-wheel combat more difficult.
Continue reading on FOX SPORTSWhat 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 you’re after.
This weekend’s 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 weekend’s 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 it’s getting this year.
Last year’s 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 — whatever you want to call it — 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, you’d 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 that’s where we’re going this weekend.
The Gen3 Supercars machine has had a difficult gestation. In part that’s an echo of the COVID pandemic, which disrupted development. But it’s 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.
It’s 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 aren’t 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 Mir’s golden ones, and lo and behold he found his way to sixth in the first race of the season — and, in what will come as no surprise to any MotoGP fan, he did so months ahead of when conventional medical wisdom assumed he’d be back.
Continue reading on FOX SPORTSThere’s 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.
It’s safe to say it wasn’t 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 Piastri’s 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 SPORTSIf 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 SPORTSAfter 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.
That’s not to say it was straightforward for last year’s 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 SPORTSThe Aston Martin hype train is gathering an alarming amount of speed just one day into the season proper.
The speculation began during the off-season with whispers of powerful numbers emanating from the wind tunnel.
Fernando Alonso’s performance during pre-season testing got the paddock’s attention with some remarkable long-run demonstrations.
Continue reading on FOX SPORTSMartin Brundle says Max Verstappen could be the greatest driver in Formula 1 history and has likened the Dutchman to Brazilian icon Ayrton Senna.
Verstappen is preparing for his second world title defence, and claiming category honours again this season would see him draw level with Senna on three championships.
And at just 25 years old — barely older than Senna was in his first grand prix in 1984 — but in his eighth campaign, Verstappen’s powers are continuing to grow along with the improving form of his Red Bull Racing team.
There’s a lot to look out for in Formula 1’s longest ever season. With 23 races ahead of us running all the way to the end of November, the pressure on teams and drivers to maintain a high level of performance will be immense.
And it’ll be doubly hard when new challenges emerge. Will Aston Martin upset the equilibrium between the top three teams, and how might Mercedes handle falling into the midfield? How much influence can Fernando Alonso have on the podium make-up?
Lando Norris is dealing with his third teammate in four years, but for the first time in his career he’ll be the senior driver, not the up-and-coming young gun. Will that throw him off his game or make him only more ferocious?
Continue reading on FOX SPORTSThe only way for Daniel Ricciardo to get back onto the Formula 1 grid in 2024 is to hope Sergio Perez falls on his sword, according to Sky Sports F1 commentator David Croft.
Ricciardo was ousted from McLaren last season and has sought refuge at old team Red Bull Racing as a third driver for 2023 while he decides whether he has the enthusiasm to continue in F1.
The eight-time race winner had options to race in the bottom half of the field this year but said he doesn’t want to stay in the sport just to make up the numbers.
Continue reading on FOX SPORTSEveryone is optimistic at the start of a Formula 1 season until the lights go out on Sunday.
F1’s 10 teams will have nowhere to hide this weekend. Unlike the gamesmanship of pre-season testing, which requires some heavy interpretation to make any sense of the times, the stopwatch won’t lie during the Bahrain Grand Prix.
But it’s not just championship points and race wins against which teams will measure success — indeed not every team is capable of winning races, and one or two might not even score points.
Continue reading on FOX SPORTSAussie rising star Oscar Piastri will get just six months to prove that he belongs in Formula 1 before he risks being turfed out, according to Sky Sports F1 commentator Martin Brundle.
Piastri has enjoyed an illustrious junior career on his way to the premier class, with three successive championships, including rookie titles in Formula 3 and Formula 2.
Despite spending a year on the sidelines as an Alpine reserve driver, he remains one of the most highly anticipated rookies in recent years thanks to his sparkling CV.
Continue reading on FOX SPORTSMichael Andretti is having a terrible time attempting to break back into the world of Formula 1.
Andretti, the 1991 CART champion son of 1978 F1 world champion Mario, has been trying to prise his way into the sport for more than a year but has been perpetually rebuffed.
First his attempt to buy Sauber fell flat. Then the sport offered him a lukewarm response to a request to enter as a new constructor.
Continue reading on FOX SPORTSIt’s been a long 12 months in the life of Oscar Piastri.
From the highs of winning his junior titles to the purgatory of a year on the sidelines and the low of being painted as a Formula 1 villain, the 21-year-old Melburnian has borne much weight on his shoulders on the way to finally signing up with the historic McLaren team for his long-awaited F1 debut.
It means he arrives in the top tier of the sport already well seasoned by its cruel and unpredictable twists and turns — and with the reputational baggage that comes with that too.
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