Monday Pit Stop #16

It was a great weekend for Italian motorsport. Not only did Charles Leclerc become the first Ferrari driver to stand on the Imola podium since Michael Schumacher, but Valentino Rossi triumphed at the latest round of the GT World Challenge Europe at Misano, leading a BMW one-two together with Maxime Martin.

This was actually Rossi's second win at Misano, having triumphed there last year as well, but the BMW crew was made to work hard for it: crossing the line just 0.275 seconds ahead of their team mates Dries Vanthoor and Charles Weerts.

Vanthoor and Weerts went on to claim victory in Race 2, which was held on Saturday night under the lights at Misano – moving themselves to the top of the Sprint Cup standings.

Weerts led from pole, fending off the Mercedes of Maro Engel and Lucas Auer, despite a safety car intervention. Rossi and Martin finished third, to cap off almost a perfect weekend for BMW.

In GT4, Mercedes won the first race with Lluc Ibanez and Alexandre Papadopulos, while BMW triumphed in Race 2 courtesy of Benjamin Lessennes and Ricardo van der Ende.

In GT2, the Maserati crew of Benjamin Lessennes and Ricardo van der Ende claimed Race 1 from third on the grid, while the Team MZR duo of Reinhard Kofler and Martin Koch won Race 2 for X-Bow.

Irish driver Martin McCormack – who won the historic R.A.C. Rally with Pirelli last year  – made it three different winners from the opening three rounds of the 2024 FIA European Historic Rally Championship after he topped a thrilling battle for victory on the rain-affected stages of Historic Rally of Asturias in Spain.

Driving a BMW M3, McCormack was just 1.5 seconds faster than the Audi Quattro of Italy's Andrea Zivian over the course of nine demanding asphalt stages. The Toyota Celica GT-Four of Czech driver Vojtech Stajf was third.

Over in America, there's a new pole record with New Zealander Scott McLaughlin leading a Team Penske front row sweep for the 108th Indianapolis 500, thanks to a new record four-lap pole speed of 234.220mph. He heads his team mate Will Power in the epic race, which will take place next Sunday.

This was McLaughlin's first-ever Indy 500 pole: his best qualifying result previously was 14^th. “Indy hasn't been kind to me recently, so there's so much pride in being able to do this now,” he said. “We're coming!”

The average speed for the 33-car field in this year's Indy 500 qualifying was 231.943mph (just over 373kph): the second-fastest in history, having fallen just short of the record set last year.

In NASCAR, the All-Star Race at North Wilkesboro ended with some off-track entertainment as Ricky Stenhouse sorted out his differences with Kyle Busch in a fight after the chequered flag, captured on TV.

However, America is always a trendsetter when it comes to thinking about motorsport promotion. “I don't have anything else for him,” said Stenhouse, after the altercation. “If he wants to do a charity match, we could do that, raise some money…”

Expect round two shortly.