Author Archives: PressBox

August 13, 2026

Cadillac rebuffs Williams talk, backs Perez for 2027

Cadillac’s leadership has moved to shut down talk that Sergio Perez could leave for Williams, with team principal Marcin Budkowski and CEO Dan Towriss both saying keeping him is a priority. Budkowski said the young team needs experience and stability, and that Perez has been helping guide development behind the scenes. Towriss said he was very confident Perez would remain with Cadillac for 2027, even as reports said Perez’s management had held talks with Williams. The team’s driver pairing of Perez and Valtteri Bottas has been described as the most experienced in Formula 1, and Cadillac has no plans to change it while it builds its operation.

The stance comes as Cadillac endures a difficult debut season. After 11 rounds, the team is last in the constructors’ standings and remains the only outfit in Formula 1 without a point. Reliability problems have hurt both drivers, with Perez taking four retirements and Bottas five because of failures and related issues. Brake fires have also been a major problem, and Cadillac’s best result so far is Bottas’s 13th place in China.

Perez has come close to giving Cadillac its first point, only to see that chance slip away. He was classified 15th in Monaco after a post-race penalty dropped him from 10th, and he has said the reliability issues have been frustrating and require patience. Perez added that he remains encouraged by how hard the team is working. Budkowski, who replaced Graeme Lowdon as team principal during the summer break, has made fixing the reliability problems and improving coordination between the race team and the factory his priority.
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August 13, 2026

MotoGP weighs F1-style budget cap to curb rising costs

MotoGP is weighing an F1-style budget cap as part of a wider push to control rising costs, with sporting director Carlos Ezpeleta saying the series “absolutely” wants to introduce one. Ezpeleta said MotoGP needs more rationality in the way teams spend money, and that the sport did not need a cap before but does now as spending has climbed sharply in recent years, especially in aerodynamic research. He also said any cap could fit into a new commercial framework being negotiated for the next five years.

Ezpeleta said the main obstacle is getting manufacturers to agree, because they operate under different industrial and financial realities and are organized in different ways. He said the model would be difficult to apply, but argued that an upper spending limit could benefit both manufacturers and the championship. He pointed to Formula 1’s budget cap as a system that helped control spending, improve profitability and make the series more attractive to manufacturers.

MotoGP does not currently have an on-track competitiveness problem, Ezpeleta said, noting that some lower-budget manufacturers are already outperforming bigger spenders. Motorsport.com reported estimated budgets that included Honda at about €80 million and Aprilia at roughly €20 million, with Aprilia leading the championship and Honda near the bottom. Recent talks also included a proposal to cut testing costs by reducing test bikes from two to one, but that idea was effectively dropped at last Sunday’s Grand Prix Commission meeting in Britain. Former F1 team principal and Tech3 KTM boss Guenther Steiner said he would support a budget cap, calling it an easy way to save money and citing Formula 1’s success with the system.
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August 12, 2026

Promising talks, funding hurdles cloud Berry’s 2027 plans

Josh Berry said he still does not have a 2027 NASCAR Cup Series contract and is actively looking for a new ride, after Wood Brothers Racing declined to pick up his option and brought in Jesse Love, the defending O’Reilly Series champion. Berry said he wants to remain in one of NASCAR’s top three series, but may look at other racing options if that does not happen, with his family’s future part of his thinking.

Berry said he has held multiple conversations with teams about his future, but none has led to a deal. He said some talks have been promising, while others have been complicated by funding demands, including one request for as much as $3 million. Berry has said sponsorship money is a major factor in driver opportunities, and that has made the search difficult for a driver who does not bring significant funding.

The uncertainty follows Berry learning earlier this season that he would not return to Wood Brothers Racing after 2026. He is in the second and final year of his current deal, and he said he feels he is racing for his career while trying to stay focused on Sundays. Berry enters Richmond Raceway with some momentum after back-to-back top-10 finishes, seventh at Indianapolis Motor Speedway and a season-best fourth at Iowa Speedway. He said the No. 21 team has “turned a little bit of a corner,” especially on short tracks, after finishing outside the top 25 in 16 of his first 23 races.
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August 12, 2026

Brazil’s Italo Ferreira Stands By Three Airs on One Wave

Italo Ferreira defended his aerial-heavy surfing strategy after criticism from peers over the three nearly identical air reverses he used on one wave at the inaugural New Zealand Pro Championship Tour event in Raglan. The wave earned him a 9.33 and helped him win the event earlier this year, but the approach drew questions from Ethan Ewing and Morgan Cibilic, who wondered why judges rewarded Ferreira’s style over more traditional rail surfing.

In a podcast interview with Brazilian surf journalist Guilherme Dorini, Ferreira said he understood that viewpoint but saw no reason to avoid airs if they can produce high scores in the limited time of a heat. He said that approach can apply even on waves that favor rail surfing, and that in a 30-minute heat it is smarter to score on closing-out waves than to wait for a perfect one.

Ferreira said he grew up surfing windy, messy waves in northeastern Brazil, where he learned to do airs, and later adapted that style to heavy-wave breaks such as Pipeline, Teahupo’o and Fiji. He said surfers from better-wave regions should also learn to perform in difficult conditions, and argued that the criticism from Ewing and Cibilic reflected self-interest rather than any responsibility on his part to change a winning approach.
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August 12, 2026

North Wilkesboro lands first tripleheader for All-Star weekend

NASCAR is sending its All-Star Race back to North Wilkesboro Speedway in 2027 and turning the weekend into the track’s first tripleheader. The event is set for May 21-23, with the Craftsman Truck Series on Friday, May 21, the NASCAR O’Reilly Auto Parts Series on Saturday, May 22, and the All-Star Race on Sunday, May 23. The race will run in prime time under the lights, marking the 35th anniversary of “One Hot Night,” and Speedway Motorsports said NASCAR is looking at a unique innovation element that could affect the format or car setup. The winner’s purse for the All-Star Race will be $1 million.

The move sends North Wilkesboro out of the Cup Series points schedule after it staged a sold-out points race in 2026, the track’s first since 1996. Dover Motor Speedway is slated to return to the Cup points calendar on May 16, 2027, one year after hosting the All-Star Race, with the O’Reilly Auto Parts Series set to race there on May 15. Martinsville Speedway is also scheduled to host Cup and O’Reilly Auto Parts Series races on April 17-18 and championship-weekend races for all three national series on Nov. 5-7.

The 2027 North Wilkesboro weekend will also celebrate the track’s 80th birthday and its revival since reopening for NASCAR in 2023 after a restoration. North Wilkesboro first hosted a NASCAR race in 1947 and was closed in 1996. Speedway Motorsports called the weekend the most historic week in the track’s 80-year history, and NASCAR and track officials said it will reflect the speedway’s return to prominence.
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August 12, 2026

Cadillac names Budkowski team principal in F1 shakeup

Cadillac announced a planned leadership change in its first Formula 1 season, naming former Alpine executive director Marcin Budkowski as its new team principal and replacing Graeme Lowdon. The team said the move was part of a transition from its build phase to a new focus on racing performance and strengthening its leadership team. Budkowski began the role immediately, while Lowdon had led the team from its formation and through the first 11 rounds of Cadillac’s maiden campaign.

Cadillac chief executive Dan Towriss thanked Lowdon for helping establish the organization and build the team from the ground up. He said Budkowski’s Formula 1 experience and technical leadership would help develop the tools and mindset needed for long-term success. The announcement did not include further details.

Budkowski, who left Alpine in 2022 after joining from the FIA in 2018 and later worked as a television pundit in Poland, said his focus would be on maximizing car development within the cost cap and improving decision-making and execution. He said his work leading the team’s on-track efforts would begin at Zandvoort next weekend. Cadillac had not scored a point at the time of the article, though it had started stronger than expected despite reliability issues in races before the summer shutdown.
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August 12, 2026

Colapinto deletes post after backlash over Italy theft joke

Franco Colapinto said thieves stole his suitcases, clothes and mate kit while he was staying near Lake Como during Formula 1’s summer break in northern Italy. The Alpine driver posted photos of the missing items on social media, first joked about the theft, then deleted a more pointed message after backlash online. In one version of the post, he wrote that Italians would steal everything from a Latino before changing the reference to Europeans. He also said the photos were the last ones of the stolen clothes and mate, and the post drew more than 700,000 likes.

Colapinto later said he hoped whoever took the items enjoyed them. He was not confronted during the theft, and the incident involved personal belongings rather than a luxury watch. The burglary came during the Formula 1 summer shutdown, when many drivers are away from the track.

The case fit a pattern of thefts and robberies affecting Formula 1 drivers in recent years. Charles Leclerc had his watch stolen in Viareggio, Carlos Sainz chased down robbers after an attempted watch theft in Milan, and Lando Norris was mugged outside Wembley Stadium in 2023. Colapinto has scored points in six of the first 11 rounds of the 2026 season.
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August 11, 2026

Colapinto posts record 19.6 in Tahiti Pro Day 3

Day 3 of the Tahiti Pro at Teahupo’o produced several standout heats even though the surf was not firing nonstop all day, and Griffin Colapinto delivered the round’s biggest moment. Colapinto posted the top heat of the 2026 season with a 19.6 total, built on a perfect 10 and a 9.60 in his win over Rio Waida. He called it the best heat of his life and said Kelly Slater’s advice to “sit in and under” helped him navigate wind chop, find the sets he needed and take waves under Waida’s priority.

Colapinto said Slater’s performance inspired him and that he had asked the veteran for advice on the lineup and conditions. Colapinto is set to face Miguel Pupo in round three, with a possible matchup against the winner of Slater’s heat with Jack Robinson if he advances.

The day also featured a high-scoring showdown between Gabriel Medina and Kelly Slater, who was competing as a wildcard. Slater said he briefly found himself rooting for a Medina comeback because of the story it would create, and described their heat as highly emotional. In another notable heat, Jack Robinson defeated Callum Robson.
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August 11, 2026

Goodyear Brings Familiar Short-Track Tire Package to Richmond

Goodyear is bringing a familiar short-track tire setup to Richmond Raceway this weekend, giving NASCAR Cup Series teams a compound package they have already seen at Martinsville in the spring and at North Wilkesboro last month. The left-side and right-side Goodyear Racing Eagle tires first debuted in the 2025 Martinsville fall race, and Goodyear said the goal is to increase grip and create more lap-time fall-off over a run.

Goodyear NASCAR product manager Rick Heinrich said teams already have data on the tire setup, but he still expects tire management to be critical at Richmond because of the track’s high tire wear. The right-side tire in the package has also been used this season at Bowman Gray Stadium and Phoenix Raceway.

The NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series will race Friday night with the same tire combinations it used at North Wilkesboro and Lucas Oil Indianapolis Raceway Park. Cup teams will have 11 total tire sets available and Truck Series teams will have 6, with wet-weather tires available for both series if needed.
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