Major Racing News: V8 Supercars, F1 AND IndyCar with major news!

There has been a large amount of news from the world of motorsport following this weekend. There has even been some news in Formula One despite the current summer break! I'll begin with the smallest news, which is V8 Supercars news, then F1 and IndyCar news, and finish with two smaller news items. Note: some of these are HUGE!

In V8 Supercars, the Tickford Racing team has unveiled Thomas Randle's Mustang wildcard entry for the upcoming round at the Bend Motorsport Park. And it's a stunner. It looks very similar to both Cameron Waters' existing Supercars livery (Monster Energy, green on black) and Randle's Super2 livery (Skye Sands, gold on black), but it features main sponsorship from Scandia and therefore is orange on black. The actual chassis Randle will drive is brand new, as it is the spare chassis of sister team 23Red Racing. Jack Smith is also expected to appear at The Bend, taking the field to 26 cars, the same amount as the regular season last year.

Meanwhile in Formula One, the expected Red Bull driver change has happened, but maybe earlier than anticipated. It was expected that Helmut Marko, Dietrich Mateschitz and Christian Horner would eventually lose patience with the underperforming Pierre Gasly, but not as soon as this. While both Toro Rosso drivers have been excellent this year, with Daniil Kvyat taking a podium in the bizarre race in Germany, it is rookie Alex Albon who will become Max Verstappen's teammate for the remainder of the year. This is apparently a driver evaluation as they consider whether either Albon, Gasly or Kvyat will earn the call to the second RBR seat in 2020.

And in IndyCar, McLaren, as rumoured, has bought into Arrow Schmidt Peterson Motorsports for a full-time assault on 2020, proving my theory that the fourth Andretti car would become Andretti-McLaren wrong. It also removes the other speculation of Carlin becoming the team involved in the partnership. It is widely expected that they will keep James Hinchcliffe, given his talent and speed, but the second seat (currently #7) is up in the air, as to whether Marcus Ericsson gets a seat or another driver. The IndyCar silly season is now fully underway with drivers such as Helio Castroneves, Oliver Askew and Rinus VK on the driver market as free agents, and several teams considering making moves. Two teams that almost certainly won’t are the two big teams, Andretti and Penske who have two of the strongest lineups in the series.

Meanwhile in MotoGP, a star of last year in Johann Zarco has parted ways with KTM. His future direction is unclear, whether it is a customer team in MotoGP or a return to Moto2. And in DTM, R-Motorsport have commented that they are pleased with their results and pace at Brands Hatch as the Class One regulations are proving to be competitive prior to the Super GT/DTM tie-up in 2020.