Fairuz Fauzy set the fastest time in practice for round seven of the Formula Renault 3.5 series at Portimao on Friday morning. The Malaysian’s 1m32.166s today was 0.5s faster than Le Mans pole-winner Jon Lancaster, while Oliver Turvey was third for Carlin Motorsport after being forced to change an engine after Thursday’s opening collective test.
While most of the Formula One experts agree that Michael Schumacher’s return will do a great deal for the sport - in terms of attracting the fans to the race track and everything - the others are wondering if the 7-time world champion made the right call when agreeing to replace Felipe Massa in the Ferrari F60 cockpit. Level of fitness aside, Schumacher’s comeback will most likely come with a multitude of questions. Is he still up to the job? Will he help Ferrari improve in the remaining rounds of 2009? If he’ll be successful, will he continue? and so on…
Jul 31
If you’re planning on using your car on the track, you could find that a tyre upgrade is the single best use of your cash. Good tyres will improve lap times, increase levels of safety and make your car lose traction more progressively on the limit.
When braking heavily in a car you get a dramatic forwards weight transfer. The body pivots forward, the front suspension is compressed, and more weight is transferred to the front tyres. More weight acting on the front tyres means more grip is available, and conversely the more lightly laden rear wheels have less grip at their disposal.
If an equal amount of braking force was applied to the front and rear wheels in a heavy braking scenario, the lighter rear wheels would run out of grip first and be much more prone to wheel lock.
Jul 31
Do you remember The Flintstones, the animated television sitcom from the 1960s? Well, that’s exactly what crossed our minds when we found out what a safari park from Oregon thought of in order to beat the credit crunch… and it looks like it’s working. Wildlife Safari is using elephants Tiki, Alice and big male George to wash cars and by that raise funds, consequently offering quite a spectacle for its customers, the Daily Mail reported. Luckily, no incident of an elephant putting his foot wrong when washing a car was reported.
As shown in one of our previous reports, Michael Schumacher and Ferrari have found a way to trick the FIA rules regarding the in-season testing ban. As no driver is allowed to test a 2009 challenger throughout the duration of the ongoing season, the 7-time world champion turned to Ferrari’s “F1 Clienti” department to solve that problem. The aforementioned department deals with operating former grand prix cars for wealthy enthusiasts. Therefore, according to German newspaper Bild Zeitung, Schumacher is expected to take the wheel of a 2007 Ferrari F1 car during the course of this very weekend. Although the place where Schu will drive the car was not disclosed, it is believed the test will get under way at Mugello and the machinery will indeed be fitted with slick tires.
On Sunday, 2nd August, Nissan will reveal its new global electric vehicle to the media at the company’s new headquarters in Yokahama, Japan. We’ve already shown you a couple of teaser shots released by Nissan, but today we found a new rendering of the dedicated EV that was created by the crew over at Japan’s Best Car magazine. Judging by the teaser photos, the CGI shouldn’t be too off from the actual production model.
Right now the crew at General Motors’ pre-production operations center at the Warren Technical Center is in the midst of building 75 Chevy Volt IVER prototypes. IVERs, or integration vehicle engineering release prototypes, are the last stage of prototypes prior to pilot builds. For these IVER builds, pretty much all of the production intent parts and systems are in place and the intent of the build process is to evaluate final assembly processes. The cars are all built by hand, but the technicians and engineers are testing the build sequence as it will be done on the line to make sure everything actually goes together.
As always, the first stage of final assembly is the body shop. The video after the jump shows stampings that for the Volt that are assembled on jigs and then welded by hand before the complete body is painted. GM will apparently be releasing a series of videos documenting the complete build process, so stay tuned. Check out the first one after the jump.
Think texting while driving is dangerous? How about leaning over to the center console to scrawl “NEAREST BATHROOM!!!!!” on your car’s navigation system with a stylus? Audi’s next-gen A8 includes handwriting recognition to make that dangerous dream a dangerous reality.
We don’t know much about the feature, integrated into Audi’s MMI navigation system, partly because the Google translation of the source comes up with hilarious gold like “The switch salad on the center console is passé.” Is it ever!
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Unichip For Subaru Impeza Diesel
Lotus F1 Looking Forward To Bahrain
WTCC Mexico Round Cancelled
Mercedes’ Driving Academy 2010
Vettel’s Car Will Be Called “Luscious Liz”
BMW X1 Made in China
Audi Evolution-Version R8 LMS
Red Bull Pit Stops in 2 Seconds
Kimi is Out
Bye bye Ian Phillips
New Touareg for Safety, Good!
Citroen GQ Concept