Motorsport Roundup: Huge Title Shakeup At MotoGP Aragon, Red Bull’s 2022 Engine Plans, Formula E Driver Market And More

MotoGP

Suzuki’s late season assault on the MotoGP title continued with Alex Rinz taking top honors closely followed by Honda’s Alex Marquez. Rinz’ teammate Joan Mir just about held off Yamaha’s Maverick Vinales for 3rd. Interestingly enough, the top two finishers had started 10th and 11th for the race. With championship leader Fabio Quartararo having yet another disastrous race from pole position, Joan Mir leads the riders standings by 6 points but has yet to score a race win. It's the first time a Suzuki factory rider leads the MotoGP rider standings since Kenny Roberts Jr in 2000. 

Elsewhere, the factory Yamaha squad was already one rider down with Valentino Rossi testing positive for COVID-19. And it will continue for next week’s race as well, which is another setback for Yamaha’s battle for the teams standings against Ducati, its satellite squad and Suzuki.

F1

With Honda pulling out of Formula 1 at the end of the 2021 season, the hunt for an engine for Red Bull and sister team Alpha Tauri continues. There have been a variety of options that have surfaced including Red Bull taking over the Honda F1 engine project itself. But reports suggest that Red Bull will only do this if the FIA impose an engine development freeze for 2022. 

Formula E 

Another piece of the puzzle for the 2021 Formula E driver market has been put into place as Nissan e.dams has retained its lineup of Sebastien Buemi and Oliver Rowland for the third consecutive season. At Venturi, reserve driver Norman Nato has been promoted into the main lineup to replace Felipe Massa. He’ll be partnering with Edoardo Mortara. 

WRC 

More future plans have taken shape as the FIA has signed off the hybrid system which will be used in the Rally1 category for the 2022 World Rally Championship. The 2022 cars will feature a 100kW plug-in-hybrid system with Compact Dynamics as the exclusive supplier of hybrid kits. Test work is expected to commence by February 2021. 

Indian Motorsport

Last week, FMSCI had announced the calendar for the  2020 Indian National Rally Championship season. And now Yokohama will return to the INRC not only as an official partner, but with a full fledged team. The lineup consists of Chetan Shivram ( INRC 2), Denn Thimmaiya( INRC 1), Lokesh Gowda ( INRC 2), Vaibhav Marathe(INRC 4) and Arjun Rao (INRC 3). The season will kick off on December 16 at Itanagar and will finish off at Bengaluru on January 31, 2021.

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