2026 Grand Prix of St. Petersburg set for March 1
The IndyCar race week will be Feb. 27 to March 1, with the temporary circuit a 1.8-mile, 14-turn configuration through the streets of St. Petersburg. The dates are the same calendar week as this year's race, which opened IndyCar's season.
"The 2025 event was another tremendous success with record crowds across the three days," said Kim Green, co-owner, chairman and CEO of event organizers Green Savoree Racing Promotions. "After consulting with the City of St. Petersburg staff and multiple stakeholders, IndyCar and our Green Savoree Racing Promotions teams agree continuing this great downtown tradition on similar dates is optimal. We look forward to planning for and hosting the Grand Prix on the same weekend in 2026."
Spain's Alex Palou, a three-time IndyCar Series champion including in 2023 and 2024, won in St. Petersburg for the first time on March 2. His Chip Ganassi Racing teammate Scott Dixon of New Zealand was second and Team Penske's Josef Newgarden took third place.
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Scottish Sun
a day ago
- Scottish Sun
Battle of the F1 superyachts from Max Verstappen's ‘Bond villain' beast to $200m ‘floating mansion' with helipads
Click to share on X/Twitter (Opens in new window) Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window) NOTHING screams luxury like a top-notch yacht, so it's no wonder Mercedes boss Toto Wolff has been hosting Max Verstappen on his boat in a bid to woo the popular driver away from Red Bull. The Formula One World Champion, 27, has been spotted sunning himself topless on the vessel just off the coast of Sardinia. Sign up for Scottish Sun newsletter Sign up 20 Toto and his wife Susie regularly use the yacht Credit: Instagram 20 Max owns his own yacht that could rival Toto's Credit: Getty 20 Toto's yacht is 50 meters in length and has a Jacuzzi on the forward deck Credit: Mangusta yachts In photos that emerged last week, he was seen enjoying the heat as he laughed with Toto, 53, who was dressed all in white. The luxurious yacht, named Mangusta 165, is believed to have cost the racing boss £20million and spends most of the time moored in Monaco when not in use. F1 is currently on its summer break, with the next race not until August 31 in Zandvoort. Max's break with the Mercedes boss has refuelled rumours that he might move to the team when his contract with Red Bull is up. The four-time world champion told RacingNews365: "I'm in the middle. Maybe it'll be good, maybe it'll be bad – we'll see. "I'm very open-minded, honestly. I don't even think about it too much – I'm just enjoying the moment. "When I sit in the car next year, we'll figure it out. I'm not making the rules anyway." Toto has owned his yacht, which is 50m in length and has a top speed of 25 knots, since 2023. It boasts five bedrooms and can host 12 guests, who can also enjoy use of the jet skis and a hot tub. The Mercedes boss isn't the only F1 star to own a fancy yacht. Here we look at battle of the boats. Lando Norris kisses girlfriend Margarida Corceiro after winning Max Verstappen 20 Max is reported to have bought a 33m yacht that he's named Unleash the Lion Credit: 20 It boasts a huge living dining area inside the ship Credit: 20 And the large master bedroom boasts a king-sized bed Credit: He might have spent the beginning of his summer break on Toto's yacht, but the F1 driver has his own boat - which has been described as a 'Bond villain's weekend getaway'. He owns 33million yacht Unleash the Lion, which is thought to be worth £11million. It can hold up to 12 guests alongside five crew, meaning Max and partner Kelly Piquet have ample space for entertaining as well as room for their daughter, Lily, born in May. It has an open deck to the rear which is fitted with white couches and is thought to have an area to store a speed boat. He also has a large stateroom inside, but little else is known about the pricey vessel's interior. Max moored the yacht in Monaco this year when he was competing in the principality's Grand Prix but he hasn't posted photos since its purchase earlier this year. George Russell 20 George and girlfriend Carmen Mundt spend a lot of time on his yacht Credit: instagram/carmenmmundt 20 The yacht boasts a lounging deck for sunbathing and enjoying the waves Credit: pershing yacht 20 It has four cabins that can accommodate up to eight guests Credit: pershing yacht British F1 ace George, 27, is the latest driver to join the yacht owner's club with his Pershing 6X. He splashed out £2.2million on the luxurious vessel following his success on the track. The boat might be smaller than grid rival Max's, but it's not tiny either. It has four bedrooms, four bathrooms, a kitchen and a spacious upper deck living area. And he's been showing the yacht off on his social media with girlfriend Carmen Mundt, 26, and a host of friends on board. They also have a stash of pricey water toys and the racer has posted videos of him and others on a hydrofoil skimming across the sea. Like rival Max, George is also spending his summer break from the circuit on the boat off the coast of Sardinia. Fernando Alonso 20 Fernando has made sure his yacht is as eco-friendly as possible Credit: Sunreef Yachts 20 The catamaran features 68.6 square metres of solar panels Credit: Sunreef Yachts 20 He claims he loves the peace he gets from being on the ocean Credit: Sunreef Yachts Spanish driver Fernando, 44, has owned a Sunreef Power Eco 60 since 2023 after signing an order for it back in 2021. Each yacht from the brand is a bespoke creation for the buyer. The 18.3m long vessel is solar-powered, giving the boat eco-friendly credentials that most yachts don't have. 'I think [Sunreef] is the only company that takes sustainability to a very serious level,' said Alonso during an interview with BOAT International. 'To have a fully electric catamaran powered by solar panels made perfect sense to me.' The solar panels cover 68.6m squared across the yacht, including the roof and hull sides. It's equipped with two 360kw electric motors and a set of 990kwh batteries which are solar powered - making the yacht essentially silent when moving. One of the smaller yachts owned by an F1 star, it can accommodate up to six guests and four crew. But, for Fernando, size doesn't matter. Alonso said: 'On board, all that matters is peace of mind, fresh air, and good company. Yachting should not be about ego. 'For me, it's about sharing good moments and being respectful towards the environment.' Lawrence Stroll 20 The Aston Martin F1 boss has traded his huge yacht for a slightly smaller one Credit: Getty 20 Faith isn't a small vessel at 262ft long and repotedly has a swimming pool on board Credit: Feadship Billionaire Lawrence, 65, has splashed some of his enormous fortune on a 262-foot long floating mansion for a cool £184.5million. The Aston Martin F1 team owner downsized from his original yacht, Faith, to Project 714 in March - and has now also renamed it Faith. The upper decks, enclosed in glass, contain a swimming pool, a games deck and a helicopter landing pad with a hangar below, according to Luxury Launches. Inside, there are seven guest cabins which can hold up to 14 people as well as space for 20 crew members. It's thought the large vessel, which has a top speed of 17knots, has annual running costs of up to £20million. Lawrence's previous boat could host up to 18 people across nine cabins and had a crew of 34. It also boasted a private cinema, nine-meter swimming pool plus a spa and plunge pool. He sold it to business tycoon Michael Latifi when he decided to downsize to a slightly smaller vessel. Lewis Hamilton 20 Back in 2017 Lewis entertained model Bella Hadid on a yacht Credit: BackGrid 20 Lewis has his own gigantic yacht which featured in a music video Credit: Instagram @lewishamilton 20 He also charters yachts when entertaining family and friends on the water Credit: Splash British driver Lewis, 40, is also a member of the F1 yacht club with Sunseeker 90, which he is thought to have bought in 2009 for around £2.9million. And when he's not feeling like being on his own boat, he charters other vessels that boast a bigger range of rooms and activities. Sunseeker 90 is 91.9feet and can sleep up to eight guests. It boasts a top speed of 30 knots meaning it's a speedy boat. The yacht is normally moored in Monaco, where Lewis resides during the off season. It features American walnut carpentry, air-conditioning, a huge kitchen and an entertainment area with a shower where guests can rinse off after a dip in the sea. He was seen entertaining model Bella Hadid, 28, on a yacht back in 2017, but it's not clear if he used his own boat or rented one for entertaining. Lewis has also been spotted entertaining pals over the years, including former teammate Nico Rosberg and his own family. Charles Leclerc 20 Charles owns not one, but two yachts so he can do different things with each Credit: 20 His Riva yacht, named Sedici, can reach speeds of up to 37 knots Credit: Instagram 20 His second yacht, named Monza, is named after the circuit where he placed 1st in 2019 Credit: Instagram @charles_leclerc Ferrari driver Charles, 27, appears to be a big fan of spending time on both his yachts - because who would have one when you could have two? He owns a Riva 66 Ribelle named Sedici, which is Italian for sixteen - his race number - and a Riva Dolceriva open cruiser. Sedici is a 20m sports yacht that can reach speeds of up to 37 knots and has three cabins inside. He brought it to the Monaco Grand Prix this year, like many of his fellow drivers. It seems to be his favourite of the two boats, as he often shares snaps from holidays on it, many with it in the background while he swims. His second vessel is named Monza after the world-famous racing circuit - and is a speedy boat. Charles paid approximately £1.5million for it back in 2020 and reportedly bought it to commemorate winning the Grand Prix at Monza the year before. It's 48ft long and can accommodate up to four guests across two cabins. The lower deck has an L-shaped sofa with a coffee table in the centre. The master cabin has a huge king-sized bed as well as an ensuite.
The Herald Scotland
4 days ago
- The Herald Scotland
'Cinderella story' at Ashfield has Glasgow Tigers roaring
His legacy is preserved through the twin passions nurtured and pursued by his younger brother with the energy of a man who thinks retirement is something other people do. Allied Vehicles is the family garage the brothers built into a thriving accessible vehicles and taxi business with 900 employees and an anticipated turnover of £360million this year. Allied Vehicle Tigers is the speedway team defying the sport's fight for relevance in modern Britain. Between the Second World War and 1985 speedway was a fixture on ITV's World of Sport on a Saturday afternoon. Dickie Davies would introduce meetings from Wembley where crowds of 90,000 watched the Duke of Edinburgh present trophies to the winning teams. In Glasgow the local team bounced between Hampden, White City, Blantyre and Shawfield before a move to Ashfield peeled away the wrapper and found a golden ticket underneath. Born and raised in Possil and Arrochar Gerry Facenna responded to an SOS in 2014, clearing the club debts and spending £3million to turn Ashfield into one of the safest, best equipped speedway tracks in the country. In Poland the sport remains big news, routinely drawing crowds of 40,000 or more. Freelance riders spend their week flitting between the UK, Sweden and Poland's biggest cities to make a living, riding for different teams in each country. The very best, like five-time world champion Bartosz Zmarzlik and Britain's Robert Lambert, feature in the Speedway Grand Prix, a series of races held annually to decide the World Champion. Staged in Germany, Poland, Czech Republic, Sweden, Latvia and Denmark, the 2025 British Grand Prix is scheduled for Manchester and if Facenna and his son Peter have their way they'll soon be hosting it in the north of Glasgow in a state of the art 7000 capacity stadium recently recognised as a centre of global sporting excellence by Tripadvisor. 'At the moment the stadium holds 4000,' Gerry tells Herald Sport. 'And we are getting between 1500 and 2000 for meetings. 'One of my ambitions before I pop my clogs is go build a new grandstand and get a Grand Prix. 'With a Grand Prix you attract the best riders in the world. The top riders race in seven or eight countries and they're the best on the planet. 'That's what I would love to do. That and build a wee museum with all the bits and pieces collected over the years.' Speedway rarely features much in the mainstream media these days. While TNT Sports cover the Grand Prix series and Premiership fixtures, terrestrial broadcasters prefer to spend their money on other sports. Newspapers and websites, meanwhile, focus on football, rugby and golf, ignoring a sport so old school people under 40 have no idea that four motorbikes race four laps around an oval circuit at speeds of up to 70 miles per hour with no brakes. The noise is ear splitting, the smell of methanol is overpowering, the skill and bravery on show is thrilling. Spectators are so close to the bends they spend a minute long heat ducking clear of the grit and shale thrown up by spinning wheels. 'Talk to people about speedway here and they'll ask 'is speedway still going?' says Facenna with a light shake of the head. 'They'll tell you 'my granddad used to go there.' Or, 'I used to go with my dad when I was five and you raced at Blantyre or Shawfield.' 'A lot of clubs in this country have to break even just to survive. But we want to reinvent this club and raise the profile to something more than that. 'We got a director in and made a half hour documentary called 'In the Red' which tells the whole story of our 2019 season, buying the stadium, doing it up and the characters we found here. Read more: 'We put five big billboards on all the motorways showing pictures of the speedway. 'I've been outside Partick Thistle, Ibrox and Parkhead handing out free tickets. 'None of that worked, the only thing that worked was when I said to all the fans, 'we need your help here. For this sport to survive we need you all to bring one person.' 'We just needed them to bring someone along and explain how it works. 'And now we keep seeing lots of new faces. Nothing works better than word of mouth.' Former Glasgow Warriors rugby star Aaron Collins, son of All Blacks great John, now runs a hospitality business in the city. A larger than life regular who raced stock cars as a kid he describes the club's renaissance under the Facennas as a 'cinderella story.' Word of mouth also attracted former Motherwell, Partick Thistle and Northern Ireland defender Stephen Craigan into the Tigers' den. Speaking to Herald Sport during last Friday's gutsy win over Workington Comets Craigan credited former Fir Park and Firhill General Manager Alan Dick – a Tigers promoter – with turning his family into petrol heads. 'My late dad was always into motorsport, my older brother used to ride scrambling bikes. 'So we always had that, if not in our blood, then certainly as one of our interests. 'So Alan brought me along one Sunday and I loved it. 'In the latter years when my dad was still with us he would come over here on a Saturday, we would come here on a Sunday and then he would fly home on the Sunday night. 'We enjoyed it. The speed, the smell, the crowd, the atmosphere.' As he speaks his 15-year-old daughter Chloe is scribbling the results of the latest heat in to a Tigers programme with a biro. 'Chloe was six or seven when I wanted to go and brought her along with me for the first time. 'At first she was humming and hawing a bit. As she got older she started to understand it and she started to fill in the programme with race results and so on. 'Now she sends me text messages with team movements. It's never football, it's speedway. It's all 'he's left, he's not riding and he's hurt his arm.' She follows them all on Instagram. 'On a Friday afternoon we get home, get changed and come to the speedway. We wouldn't miss it.' A good team helps. Second behind Poole Pirates in the Cab Direct Championship – the second tier of British speedway – Tigers have an outstanding chance of recapturing a title last won in 2023. At the age of 42 captain and talisman Chris 'Bomber' Harris made his 100th appearance as the team…. In a city obsessed with Celtic and Rangers, he could walk down Buchanan Street on a Saturday afternoon completely unmolested 'I was talking to Partick Thistle about this the other day,' admits Gerry. 'It's a struggle for Thistle to attract people to go there as well sometimes. We were building up the fanbase at the Tigers and then covid came. But in the last two years we see our crowds getting bigger and bigger..' By 2014 Tigers crowds had dropped as low as a few hundred, the club losing money hand over fist. While they've yet to turn a profit the Facennas never bought the club to line their pockets of build houses on the land. They planned to give something back to a Possil community which, in turn, gave them everything. 'Basically the club was going bust,' Gerry recalls. 'We sponsored them in 2012 and 2013 and when we took customers round there were no toilets. You had to walk over a plank of wood to get over the puddles to enter the stadium. So we stopped taking customers round. 'Eventually they came back for more money and I gave them £7000 with a promise of another £7000 in six months.' Asking for a look at the accounts Facenna decided to make a more permanent commitment in the name of community engagement. 'We bought the club, did up the stadium and worked with North Glasgow Homes and Glasgow City Council. 'We re-roofed everything. Some of the stands were sinking because there was no drainage and all the water was going underneath. 'There was a whole new track, new fencing, new pits. There was one toilet with no door on it and no light so I said, 'look, we're going to have toilets like the Hilton.' 'We did everything we said we would do and we spent over £3million on that stadium to get it to where it is today. 'This year we have a good team, we have spent a lot of money on the track and we want to try to get the kids off the street and get an academy and a training school going to bring Scottish riders through.' Projected to make £20million profit this year Allied Vehicles – the Tigers' parent firm - plans to move into Spain, Italy and Australia but remains, at heart, a company rooted in the north of Glasgow. They plough £20,000 a month into local community groups and more money still into a speedway operation bringing pride and purpose back to an area consistently ranked one of the most deprived in Scotland since the closure of the Saracen Foundry in the late 1960s. Allied has filled the void and, sometimes, the rewards come in unexpected ways. 'We received a communication from the president of Trip Advisor saying that we are now in the top 10 per cent in the world for sports attractions,' reports a chuffed Facenna. 'I was over the moon about that, delighted. 'We are not far away from breaking even with the Tigers now. 'There are maybe a hundred kids who come and race the Tiger mascot around the training pitch between heats. 'Those kids are up at the pits before racing to get autographs and a shot on the bikes. 'The future lies with these kids. They are the future of speedway. 'And if it's anything to do with me, speedway in Glasgow has a bright future ahead.'
Auto Blog
4 days ago
- Auto Blog
McLaren to Auction 2026 F1 Car at Abu Dhabi GP — Before It Races
In a motorsport first, McLaren will auction its yet-to-be-raced 2026 Formula 1 car during the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix weekend on December 5, alongside its upcoming IndyCar entry and 2027 WEC hypercar. The winning bidder will not only get their car — but also they will get VIP paddock access, behind-the-scenes involvement in development, and a leased 2025 display car to show off until the real thing arrives in 2028. McLaren is approaching this event as if it were its own personal Monterey Car Week — a stage for prestige, spectacle, and the kind of high-profile moments that cement a brand's legacy. It recalls the time a McLaren F1, once owned by tech titan Larry Ellison, dominated headlines. That was a celebration of the past, a moment steeped in nostalgia and reverence for an icon. This, however, is something different. A Radical Play in a Year of Radical Changes The 2026 McLaren — likely to be badged MCL40 — will be the team's first chassis built to the FIA's sweeping new regulations, bringing active aerodynamics, revised hybrid power units, and tighter energy deployment rules. In other words, it's an entirely different beast from today's car. While collectors usually wait decades for such machines to hit auction, McLaren is making its future hardware available now. It's part marketing move, part funding strategy — the same kind of brand-savvy play that sees McLaren Special Operations eyeing wild ideas like the possible comeback of the McLaren 12C to re-engage loyalists. Source: RM Sotheby's The Company McLaren Keeps at Auction This won't be a lone star under the gavel. RM Sotheby's will also showcase McLaren's 2026 IndyCar, its Le Mans-bound hypercar, and several road-going unicorns. It's the sort of ultra-exclusive catalogue where you'd also find things like the McLaren Speedtail with $250K in bespoke upgrades that stunned bidders earlier this month. Some might think McLaren's racing program and its exclusive road cars are separate worlds, but they're anything but. The link is intentional — every victory on the track fuels the mystique in the showroom. McLaren are selling an identity, a chance to wear the same badge as the cars that chase glory at 200 miles an hour. Why It Matters for Fans and Collectors For well-heeled collectors, this is the equivalent of buying the Mona Lisa while da Vinci's still mixing the paint. The winning bidder becomes part of the car's story from day one, gaining insights into how the team works, how the car evolves, and potentially watching it win — or lose — in real time. It's a shrewd way to bind a collector's ego to McLaren's competitive fortunes, and it might set a precedent. If the sale smashes estimates, expect other teams to follow. Just don't expect Ferrari to sell you next year's SF-26 before Charles Leclerc's even put his helmet on. About the Author Max Taylor View Profile
