RACE WRAP: MONDAY, APRIL 26
MORE POWER TO PENSKE
Australian Indy 500 winner and IndyCar champion Will Power said he would like to finish his racing career at Team Penske after signing a fresh extension with the powerhouse squad.
Power, now 40, has been part of Penske since 2009 and has extended his driving contract until at least the end of the 2023 season.
The early renewal of his deal during the St. Petersburg race weekend came as a surprise, as Team Penske is fielding four cars in this year’s single-seater series, for rookie Scott McLaughlin, Power, Josef Newgarden and Simon Panenaud.
OGIER SURVIVES LATE CRASH
A collision on a road stage and emergency repair work almost cost Sebastian Ogier victory for Toyota on Rally Croatia.
But a win on the Power Stage was enough to give the Toyota Yaris driver a tiny 0.6 second win over his team mate Elfyn Evans and promote him to the lead of his final season in the World Rally Championship.
Theirry Neuville was third and best of the Hyundai team as the South Korean team struggles to match the pace of the dominant Yaris WRC heading to the next event in Portugal
MCLAREN FORCED TO LEASE HOME
The award winning McLaren Technology Centre at Woking in England has been sold to raise money for the troubled supercar maker.
The building was sold for more than $300 million to Global Net Lease, a New York-based real estate investment company, with a 20-year lease back to McLaren.
“Why should we have all of our money in real estate? We are a racing team and automotive company. There is a lot of money in this building and it’s not a productive advantage when we want to invest in our business,” said McLaren’s CEO, Zak Brown.
BENZ ON TOP FOR E-PRIX IN
Mercedes-Benz drivers Nick De Vries and Stoffel Vandoorne sit at the top of the Formula E standings after the latest double-header at Valencia in Spain.
De Vries won the Saturday race as the Benz boys went 1-2, before Jake Dennis scored a breakthrough win for BMW that lifted him to eighth in the standings.
Formule E will next race for the first time in Monaco on May 8.
TOYOTA PRIMED FOR LE MANS
A massive revamp of the rules has not shaken Toyota’s commitment to Le Mans.
The Japanese carmaker was left alone when its major rivals, Porsche and Audi, withdrew from the sports car classic but has pushed ahead with an all-new hybrid Hypercar.
The GR010 will have its racing debut when the World Endurance Championship resumes with the 6-Hours of Spa on May 1 in preparation for the Covid-delayed running of Le Mans.
TRAGIC TARGA TASMANIA
The Chrysler Viper crew of Eddie Maguire and Zak Brakey won a tragic 2021 running of TARGA Tasmania.
The event was marred by the deaths of three competitors in two crashes.
Maguire and Brakey had a 1 minute 57-second margin at the finish of the six-day road race, winning 12 of the 37 stages, to finish ahead of Angus Kennard and Ian Wheeler in a Nissan GT-R.
Motorsport Australia has begun an inquiry into the deaths and the overall running of the event.
