Bob Pockrass

FOX NASCAR Insider

Hendrick Motorsports opted not to appeal the Alex Bowman disqualification from the Charlotte road course, an admission that there didn’t appear to be such an extenuating circumstance that they could convince an appeal hearing officer that it didn’t violate the intent of the rule.

HMS thought Sunday it had all four of its cars advance to the Round of 8 until Bowman’s car failed post-race weight requirements. Instead of earning 29 points, the disqualified Bowman earned one point for the event, putting him below the playoff cutline and Joey Logano into the playoffs.

All cars go through pre-race tech and must weigh 3,400-3,500 pounds depending on the weight of the driver (drivers are weighed periodically throughout the year). The top-5 cars, and then in the playoffs, the playoff cars, are weighed post-race. There is a tolerance of 0.5 percent, about 17 pounds, in the post-race inspection to allow for any natural loss of weight from the competition as parts and pieces break and fluid levels can fluctuate.

“Hendrick Motorsports will not appeal the disqualification of the No. 48 car following Sunday’s race at the Charlotte Roval,” the team said in a statement. “NASCAR allows a clear margin to account for the difference in pre- and post-race weight.

“After a thorough review by our team and the sanctioning body, we simply did not give ourselves enough margin to meet the post-race requirement. Although unintentional, the infraction was avoidable. We are extremely disappointed to lose a playoff spot under these circumstances and apologize to our fans and partners.”

Whether Hendrick did something uncouth or just is a victim of circumstance can be debated. The sport has a history of ingenious ways to take weight out of the car (and maybe even put it back near the end of the race). Wherever there is a tolerance, teams potentially will do things to get closer to the tolerance level. On pit road, drivers push their speed to the 5 mph tolerance above the speed limit.

There likely are ways to slyly remove weight or change a piece sometime between pre-race tech and the end of the race. Teams have put weight in a helmet bag. Teams have put different air in tires for tech in order to make the car heavier. It’s part of the game. It’s not that no one tries to get the car lighter after they go through tech, it’s just how far they want to get to the line where if something unintended happens, they fail the weight requirement.

NASCAR hasn’t said how much off the Bowman car was in tech, so there’s no way to definitively know how close they were. But the team was allowed to top off fuel and purge and replace its water system. That didn’t help the car make weight, and likely was key to the decision not to appeal as it appeared NASCAR gave Bowman’s team every opportunity to make weight.

It’s unfortunate for Bowman and hard to say how much it helped him, whether the weight of the car was worth the nine points he needed to advance to the next round.  But it’s obvious Hendrick folks didn’t see a way where they could— pardon the pun — tip the scales in their favor. So they have paid the price.

Bob Pockrass covers NASCAR for FOX Sports. He has spent decades covering motorsports, including over 30 Daytona 500s, with stints at ESPN, Sporting News, NASCAR Scene magazine and The (Daytona Beach) News-Journal. Follow him on Twitter @bobpockrass.

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Renger van der Zande and Nick Yelloly have joined Acura for its 2025 IMSA SportsCar Championship GTP campaign with Meyer Shank Racing after leaving Cadillac and BMW. 

Two-time Daytona 24 Hours winner van der Zande has switched to the Honda brand after seven seasons with Cadillac, first with the Wayne Taylor Racing team with which he won the IMSA blue riband enduro in 2019 and ’20 and then Chip Ganassi Racing. 

Yelloly has made the move from BMW, which announced his departure on Monday, after six years as a factory driver, in which time he won the Nurburgring and Spa GT3 24-hour enduros and took a first IMSA win for the German marque’s M Hybrid V8 LMDh in IMSA last year. 

He and Van der Zande will be the full-season drivers in one of the pair of Acura ARX-06 LMDhs fielded in the GTP class by MSR, which is returning to IMSA after a one-year break. 

The other car will be shared by former MSR Indycar driver Tom Blomqvist and Colin Braun, who will reprise their partnership of 2023 that yielded a controversial victory at Daytona. 

MSR was subsequently found to have manipulated information from its tyre pressure sensors, and was fined and given a points deduction but retained the win. 

The team, which was out of contract with Acura at the end of the season, was not retained as Wayne Taylor Racing with Andretti undertook a planned expansion to two cars.

#60 Meyer Shank Racing w/ Curb Agajanian Acura ARX-06: Tom Blomqvist, Colin Braun, Helio Castroneves

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WTR has now returned to Cadillac for 2025, which precipitated the return of MSR in conjunction with the Honda Racing Corporation USA organisation (formerly known as Honda Performance Development) that runs the Acura LMDh programme. 

HRC US will take a deeper role in the running of the cars at the tracks and will be responsible for engineering one of the entries in 2025. 

Van der Zande thanked Cadillac for “everything they have done for me over the past seven seasons”.

“Although it’s hard for me to leave, it’s time for a new chapter that I am really looking forward to,” he said.

“I’ve been racing against Acura for the past seven years and they’ve always been a fierce competitor, but I’m excited to now be on their side and tap into their resources and see what we can do.”

Yelloly also thanked his former employer for which he drove in the GTP ranks in 2023 and ’24 with the Rahal team. 

“They were the first to give me a chance as a works driver back in 2019, and together we celebrated many great successes,” he said.

Yelloly ends a lengthy stint as a BMW works driver to join MSR/Acura

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“I’m really excited to be joining the Acura MSR/HRC project. Clearly the team is very hungry and willing to push flat out, which sits well with me as I have the same type of mentality.”

Team boss Mike Shank said: “Putting Tom and Colin back in the driver’s seat just made sense. The two of them had an incredible season in ’23 and I think that’s just cracking the surface on what they can accomplish together. 

“And then with the addition of Renger and Nick, they both have extensive prototype experience and have shown a lot of strength the past few seasons, so I think they will be a big asset to the team.”

KEVIN HARVICKS HAPPY HOUR

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Ferrari driver coach Jock Clear is adamant Charles Leclerc is ready to deliver a world championship as soon as the team gives him the car to do it.

Leclerc emerged as one of the fastest qualifiers on the grid since joining Ferrari in 2019, racking up 26 poles so far. His number of poles contrasts with winning ‘just’ seven grands prix, which has netted the Monegasque driver a reputation of being a much better qualifier than racer.

But given a large part of Leclerc’s Ferrari career overlaps with the team having been on the back foot in race trim, particularly in 2022 and 2023, his experienced Ferrari coach Clear feels that this reputation is not warranted, certainly not in 2024.

“His reputation in qualifying has certainly been cemented over those years and people tended to say to me two or three years ago he’s nowhere near as good in the race as he is in qualifying,” Clear told the F1 Nation podcast. “Well, that’s not really fair. It’s just that he’s very, very good at qualifying.

“It’s probably true that we’ve shifted our focus slightly to making the car a better race car. Tyre management is, of course, always a hot topic. But we’ve seen Charles do some very good races. I remember back in ’22 in Austria, where Max [Verstappen] really struggled with tyre degradation, and Charles won that race with a really good drive.

“It’s not that Charles historically hasn’t been good on tyres. I think that as a combination we haven’t been focused that well on tyres.

“What we’ve seen this year is the result of us being more focused on getting the car working really well in the race and looking after those tyres, and Charles learning from previous years and honing those skills of tyre and race management. So, I think you’re just seeing a better representation of Charles as a driver and us as a race team.”

Pole man Charles Leclerc, Scuderia Ferrari, Oscar Piastri, McLaren F1 Team, in Parc Ferme after Qualifying

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Clear believes Leclerc “will deliver” once Ferrari has everything it takes to challenge for the world championship, which hasn’t happened yet in his six-year stay at the team. Leclerc and Ferrari came closest in 2022, but were outdeveloped by Red Bull as Verstappen romped home to his second straight title, while also throwing away points through various mistakes of their own.

“He’s got what it takes to be a world champion,” Clear said. “He’s got the qualifying pace. My god, I honestly think he’s the best qualifier we’ve seen. It’s difficult to go back as far as Michael [Schumacher] and Mika [Hakkinen] and people like that, but he is the best qualifier for sure. And his race management, if you look at Monza, it’s just exceptional. When everything’s lined up, he can deliver.

“Charles hasn’t been in that situation yet. Was 2022 genuinely a chance for Ferrari to win a world championship? You have to say it was, because at one point we were 40 points ahead. But we weren’t ready as a team and Red Bull outdeveloped us by the end of the year.

“Certainly, there were things that Charles would say were not at championship level during that year, but that is exactly the point. You’re not going to win a championship until all of you are at that level.

“It’s unfair to say that Mercedes only won all those championships because they had the best car. They had the best everything. And it’s the same with Max [and Red Bull] in the last three years. When we deliver a car to consistently challenge for championship, which I think we’re on the brink of now, Charles will deliver.”

M-Sport’s driver line-up for the 2025 World Rally Championship is “totally up in the air” as speculation mounts around the future of its current lead driver Adrien Fourmaux.

The Ford squad often makes its moves in the driver market late into the year and this season is no different as it plans to field two Ford Puma Rally1 cars next year.

The decision to promote Fourmaux back to its Rally1 programme this year after his 2023 season in Rally2 has paid dividends, with the Frenchman reeling off eight top-five finishes including four podiums (Sweden, Kenya, Poland and Finland).

The run has seen the Frenchman amass only six points fewer than Ott Tanak’s 2023 tally at this stage of the campaign, having replaced the 2019 world champion this year.

Fourmaux’s impressive rise has made the 29-year-old a valuable commodity in the service park, with the 2023 British rally champion linked with a move to Hyundai to pilot the Korean marque’s third car for next season.

When asked about his team’s 2025 plans, M-Sport’s team principal Richard Millener maintains that “nothing has been signed with anybody” at the minute.

“It is totally up in the air and nothing is signed with anybody, all options on the table as usual for M-Sport at this point in the year,” Millener told Motorsport.com. “We want the strongest possible team we can get for two cars for next year and that is the goal and what we continue to push on.”

Adrien Fourmaux, M-Sport Ford World Rally Team

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The team wishes to agree a new deal with Fourmaux and has not given up on retaining his services. However, should it need to look elsewhere the squad appears to have a shortlist of options to fill its two seats.

Its other full-time driver Gregoire Munster delivered arguably his best Rally1 performance to date in Chile, where he ran as high as fourth, matching stage times at the top of the leaderboard, before finishing seventh.

The performance arrived after a inconsistent campaign to date which could bode well for his future, although Millener says the Luxembourger should remain focused on the final two rallies of the season.

“He just needs to concentrate on one rally at a time now. He shouldn’t be thinking about how he makes sure he gets a drive next year,” added Millener. “It needs to be a case of just doing the best he can on each rally and see what comes at the end of the year.”

Another driver that M-Sport is keeping an eye on is Martins Sesks following his trio of Rally1 outings with the team. The 25-year-old’s drives to fifth in Poland, followed by a podium challenge in Latvia before a mechanical issue struck, has turned heads.

Sesks admitted after his latest outing in Chile that he was unsure where his future lay.

“Like he says, he doesn’t know what is next and I don’t know what is next, there is a lot up in the air but it was good to give him that opportunity as well and now we need to see what happens in the next few weeks,” said Millener.

Outside of those two drivers, Motorsport.com expects WRC2 title contenders Oliver Solberg and Yohan Rossel to be on the team’s 2025 driver shortlist.

CCTV footage of the alleged attack on an Erebus engineer at the Bathurst 1000 has emerged which indicates the incident involved only a single person.

The team, which won the race through Brodie Kostecki and co-driver Todd Hazelwood, had its headlines taken over by reports of the incident, with details revealed on Monday’s Seven Network breakfast programme Sunrise by the reigning series champion.

“One of our crew members was unfortunately attacked last night. It’s really disappointing and really put a spoil on the evening,” Kostecki said.

“We wish Sam all the best and hopefully he recovers fast, along with his partner, Tameika.”

The engineer that suffered the alleged attack was hospitalised, with three men reported to be the aggressors.

But CCTV footage shown on a Seven News Central West bulletin portrayed a very different story, with a young man seen hitting himself rather than sustaining an attack.

The report explained that a man was walking along hitting himself in the face before falling to the floor, with a woman following in his footsteps.

Brodie Kostecki, Todd Hazelwood, Erebus Motorsport Chevrolet Camaro ZL1

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Police have confirmed the man is out of hospital and that, while the investigation remains ongoing, the force is confident no attack took place.

The incident is the latest in a turbulent year for the Erebus outfit which saw Kostecki miss the commencement of the campaign due to behind-the-scenes drama.

But he had won the Great Race with Hazelwood to give the team a first triumph in the event since 2017, when David Reynolds and Luke Youlden came out on top.