Reigning champion Shane van Gisbergen says he’ll wait to see what the Gen3 era of Supercars looks like before deciding on how long he’ll continue racing in the category.
The freshly minted 2022 champion has dominated the season on the way to his third title, winning an unprecedented 21 races so far.
It’s an especially impressive record given the 15-season veteran has been increasingly experimental off track. This year he made debut entries in the 24 Hours of Le Mans (fifth in class), the Australian Rally Championship (second place) and the World Rally Championship (third in class, ninth overall) as well finishing third at the Bathurst 12 Hour.
Continue reading on FOX SPORTSFrancesco Bagnaia and Fabio Quartararo started the season as the two championship favourites, but if you’d attempted to plot out the campaign during pre-season testing, there’s no way you’d have come close to predicting the year we ended up getting.
Far from a titanic duel from the outset, both started the year way off the pace and downcast about their chances. They then took it on turns dominating the field in long stints until we got our three-race shootout to end the season.
But really campaigns can’t be segmented as neatly as that. They may have started the final stanza almost level on points, but the momentum that had waxed and waned between them had already set up an almost inevitable conclusion.
Continue reading on FOX SPORTSFew drivers yet to drive a modern Formula 1 car have had their movements as heavily scrutinised as Oscar Piastri, whose sensational disruption to this year’s driver market as one of the biggest stories of the season.
The Melburnian will move to McLaren next season as Daniel Ricciardo’s replacement, but the timing of his switch from Alpine has been the subject of much speculation given the needle between the two teams and the controversy around his intended split.
But a French magazine has spotted Piastri in a private test for McLaren — albeit with some notable differences to tests set up for other drivers.
Continue reading on FOX SPORTS‘Greatest spectacle in the world’: Vegas F1 tickets sell out in minutes despite insane price tag
The Las Vegas Grand Prix won’t be like any other race.
Formula 1 is perpetually in the business of walking the line between spectacle and sport, and its third concurrent race in the United States will be the biggest test of its resolve.
Next November F1 cars will zip past the city’s New World wonders — the Bellagio fountain, the Venetian hotel with its replica Venice landmarks, the pretend Eiffel Tower — turn left about a block north of the USA’s eighth busiest airport, snake back north past a giant spherical concert venue and then south of the obligatory golf course before rejoining the Strip.
Continue reading on FOX SPORTSThe odds were heavily stacked in his favour, but rather than them lightening his load, Bagnaia felt their full weight for three days at the Circuit Ricardo Tormo.
There wasn’t a single moment of the Valencia Grand Prix weekend at which the presumptive world champion looked truly comfortable. He did his best to maintain an air of calm, but his on-track performance was a glimpse of the roiling turmoil beneath the surface.
He only just scraped through free practice 0.059 ahead of the Q2 cut-off time.
Continue reading on FOX SPORTSLewis Hamilton has a long and deep history with Brazil. Now it’s been formalised with citizenship.
The Briton has long identified Ayrton Senna as his racing hero and driving force, and it was a dream come true to win his first championship in Sao Paulo in 2008.
In that race he was the villain, defeating home hero Felipe Massa, but his passion was undimmed, and it’s a testament to his affinity for the country that he’s since won over the enthusiastic local crowd to the point that he’s now welcomed back to the circuit as a local favourite.
Continue reading on FOX SPORTSFabio Quartararo has praised title leader Francesco Bagnaia for closing the 91-point gap between them despite lamenting his Yamaha’s lack of pace leaving him fighting with one hand behind his back.
Quartararo starts the title-deciding Valencia Grand Prix this weekend with a 23-point deficit and an extremely narrow path to a second world championship.
The Frenchman has been vociferous about Yamaha’s shortcomings this year despite a bright start to the season that propelled him to an early points lead.
Continue reading on FOX SPORTSIt all comes down to this.
After 19 races, four changes to the championship lead and an unprecedented fightback, just Francesco Bagnaia and Fabio Quartararo remain in contention for the 2022 MotoGP title with one race remaining.
Either winner will write an improbable chapter in motorcycling history.
Continue reading on FOX SPORTSFrancesco Bagnaia was so close to the MotoGP championship trophy that he could have seen his own reflection in the solid silver plaques bearing the names of the riders he hopes to emulate at this weekend’s Valencia Grand Prix.
He had been placed alongside the glittering prize in a photo shoot with title rival Fabio Quartararo, who he leads in the standings by an almost unassailable 23 points.
But despite being closer to the trophy than he’s ever been before, he refused to touch it.
Continue reading on FOX SPORTSLewis Hamilton says he wants to continue in Formula 1 until at least the end of 2025 as he prepares for contract negotiations to extend his stay at Mercedes.
Hamilton is out of contract at the end of next season, when he’ll be 38 years old. Another two-year deal would take him past his 40th birthday.
But the seven-time champion has showed no signs of slowing down in his 16th season despite the downturn in Mercedes’s competitiveness that’s left him facing the first winless campaign of his career.
Continue reading on FOX SPORTSFrancesco Bagnaia is on the cusp of doing the unthinkable.
Just nine rounds ago the man christened as Bologna’s best hope was watching his bike slide through the gravel at the Sachsenring as reigning champion Fabio Quartararo powered up the road and to eventual victory.
His fourth crash of the year put him a staggering 91 points off the title lead. No rider has ever come back from such a margin.
Continue reading on FOX SPORTSAussie rising star Jack Doohan has his sights firmly set on Formula 1 after getting his first taste of a grand prix weekend in Mexico City.
Doohan took part in first practice at the Mexico City Grand Prix as the most senior member of Alpine’s junior driver academy, standing in for Esteban Ocon.
It was the culmination of his junior program with the team that has so far featured three private tests in last year’s car as well as 100 kilometres in the current Alpine for a filming day.
Continue reading on FOX SPORTSFabio Quartararo has been cursed by his own pre-season prophecy of non-competitiveness on his outgunned Yamaha M1.
Only a brief spell of success in the middle of the year threatened to disprove his prediction from way back during pre-season testing. Since the midseason he’s been forced to helplessly watch on as other riders chipped away at the points lead he’d toiled so hard for.
This weekend comes his final reckoning.
Continue reading on FOX SPORTShe first day of official timed action at the Bahrain Grand Prix is in the books, and Formula 1 is finally getting some answers about the real competitive picture for the season ahead.
The answers are good for Max Verstappen and in particular Ferrari. The reigning champion led the way at the end of the all-important second practice session, the only representative hour of running before qualifying, but there almost nothing to split him from the pursuing Ferrari drivers.
The answers were undoubtedly bad for Mercedes. The team must be sick of saying, ‘I told you so’ this week, but it really did tell us not to expect much from the car in Bahrain, and not much is exactly what it delivered.
Continue reading on FOX SPORTSThe hot and humid Indonesian Grand Prix will test riders and bikes to their limits in just the second round of the MotoGP season, but Jack Miller has a secret weapon inside his leathers.
He’s from Townsville.
The forecast for Mandalika all weekend is for 30 degrees and around 80 per cent humidity, and there’s a permanent risk of thunderstorms throughout. But that’s no big deal for Queenslander Miller.
Continue reading on FOX SPORTSSequels are rarely as good as originals, but in 2022 Formula 1 thinks it might be onto something special.
It’s been almost 100 days since the spectacular but controversial season-ending Abu Dhabi Grand Prix. Max Verstappen and Lewis Hamilton started the race tied on points after 21 rounds of epic racing, but Verstappen emerged a first-time champion after overtaking Hamilton for the lead on the final lap of the race.
Could it possibly get any better than that?
Continue reading on FOX SPORTSYou would never have believed this time last year that we’d be talking about a potential derailment of Daniel Ricciardo’s career.
Just 12 months ago Ricciardo was suiting up for his first race as a McLaren driver. He’d spent two years at Renault, where his podium-getting performances in lacklustre machinery burnished his reputation to new heights, and he was starting at Woking as one of the grid’s most highly-rated drivers.
He’d been brought to McLaren to lead the team into its next title-winning era. A proven race winner, he’d get the most from the car and help direct development under new rules.
Continue reading on FOX SPORTSMotoGP will spend the weekend at an idyllic Lombok resort town, but the first Indonesian Grand Prix in 25 years will be anything but relaxing.
MotoGP doesn’t race around street circuits, but the designers of this brand-new track have penned a metropolitan-style layout to test riders in what will be a unique challenge.
The sport arrives in South-East Asia with a new title leader, Enea Bastianini, but the young Italian will have his work cut out from him to hold his advantage on a circuit that will advantage the Japanese bikes over the grunt of his Ducati.
Continue reading on FOX SPORTS