Motorsports

The governing body of the 24 Hours of Le Mans, the Automobile Club de l’Ouest (ACO) will shake up next year’s race yet with a new two-stage qualifying format. It replaces the three-session qualifying we’ve seen in recent years, as the top-class LMP1 cars make their final appearance.

It’s almost a Christmas tradition now. In the family downtime during the holidays, someone busts out the board games and a perfectly civil evening becomes a blazing row over landing on a hotel or going to jail. Yes, it’s the Christmas Monopoly argument, during which marriages are broken and in-laws become outlaws.

At the end of 2018, the folks at Hooncorp from Auckland, New Zealand, announced that they would be partnering with GTPlanet. The hope was to put together a racing team made up entirely of members from this fine community. Their goal was simple: to survive the biggest race in grassroots endurance racing, the 24 Hours of Lemons.

Champions of motorsport from across the world will gather tonight at The Louvre in Paris in a celebration of the sport in all its forms. The Federation International de l’Automobile (FIA) will honor everyone who has won an FIA-certified event in any discipline, in its annual Prize-Giving ceremony.

They call it ‘The Split’. In 1996, the burgeoning pinnacle of American open wheel racing, Indy Car, fractured into two rival series: the Indy Racing League; and CART, which stood for Championship Auto Racing Teams.

2018 GT Sport Nations Cup champion Igor Fraga is continuing his real-world motorsports development. To start the 2020 season, he’s heading down to New Zealand to race in the Toyota Racing Series.

Peugeot has confirmed plans to return to the 24 Hours of Le Mans in 2022 with a new hypercar programme. Parent company Groupe PSA revealed the good news on Wednesday morning. The brief statement confirms its intentions to not only compete in Le Mans, but to contest in the 2022 World Endurance Championship (WEC) as a whole.

Defending GT Sport World Champion Igor Fraga put in an impressive showing in Italy over the weekend to round out his Formula Regional Championship season in style.

It’s the sort of story we’ve heard before, yet we’ll never get tired of. An established sim racer will be moving up in the world of real motorsport this weekend. In this case, its Toro Rosso Esports F1 driver Cem Bolukbasi.

It seems like only yesterday that Chevrolet revealed its new, mid-engined Corvette. The “C8” generation (that’s shorthand for Corvette, eighth-generation) of Corvette became the first in the brand’s history to have the engine not only fully behind the front axle, but behind the driver too.

Mazda has revealed an expansion to its global motorsport plans, with a touring car based on the new Mazda 3.

Formula One confirms Mexico City will continue to be the home of the Mexican Grand Prix until the end of 2022.

This weekend marks the 71st running of the 24 Hours of Spa, and those of us with an interest in the virtual world might want to keep an eye on the action.

Formula One has confirmed that Netflix has renewed documentary series F1: Drive to Survive for a second season.

In F1, every second — or, for that matter, every hundredth of a second — counts. Teams spend tens of millions researching new components and new ways of directing air flow to gain a few yards on the track. It’s the difference between pole position and third on the grid on a Saturday, and that can decide the race the next day.

The reigning GT Sport and McLaren Shadow World Champion, Igor Fraga, took his maiden Formula Regional European Championship (FREC) win this weekend.

If you want to experience the most challenging racing around, you need to leave the race track behind. We don’t mean taking to the skies, but getting away from the safety and sterility of the millpond smooth asphalt, catch fencing and gravel traps of circuit and street racing.

In what can only be described as a titanic effort, Team GTPlanet x Hooncorp finished the 2019 24 Hours Of Lemons New Zealand! Not only that, but we finished 22nd despite starting dead last, suffering a high speed crash, and battling some much faster cars.

After 13 months of racing, the showpiece end to the 2018-19 FIA World Endurance Championship is upon us: the 24 Hours of Le Mans.

Aston Martin has become the first manufacturer to reveal its Le Mans “hypercar”, under the new rules for 2020-2021.