03/11/2012
03/10/2012
Porsche Panamera RXL by RUF
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Anytime a tuning company decides to mess with a car’s overall dimensions, there’s bound to be a lot of split reaction on what the finished product is going to look like. German tuner, RUF, is treading that water with the new Porsche Panamera RXL.
The car, which is currently being showcased at the 2012 Geneva Motor Show is, by all effects, a longer version of the standard Panamera. Obviously, the whole point was to turn the German saloon into a limousine, but as far as we’re concerned, some cars are just not meant to be, shall we say, "elongated."
Not only did RUF do that, but they did it very generously. Overall, the Panamera is longer by 400mm - 250mm on the B-pillar and 150mm at the back - which is pretty ridiculous on its own. If there was ever any saving grace for the Panamera RXL, it’s that RUF was kind enough to provide a modified front bumper that puts a more aggressive profile on the Panamera while also fitting in some nice 22" RUF five-spoke alloy wheels.
As far as performance enhancements are concerned, the Panamera RXL’s 4.8-liter V8 engine gets a bump in output to 420 horsepower at 6,500 rpm and 383 lb/ft of torque at 4,000 rpm.
All that said, RUF has already put a price tag on the Panamera RXL. If you’re interested in a Panamera limousine, you’re going to have to shell out ?200,000, which is around $262,000 based on current exchange rates.
Porsche Panamera RXL by RUF originally appeared on topspeed.com on Friday, 9 March 2012 16:00 EST.
Denny Hamlin holds off Kevin Harvick for Phoenix win, rebirth
The voice came over the radio, cheery and relaxed:
"Could somebody please point me to victory lane?"
You could forgive Denny Hamlin for being a bit confused. After all, it had been awhile since he'd visited the winners' circle ? just once last year after an astonishing eight-win season in 2010 ? and even longer since he'd been a factor in the Sprint Cup series. But with a sterling performance the final half of the Subway Fresh Fit 500 in Phoenix, Hamlin wiped away the last vestiges of his forgettable 2011.
You average out the Daytona and the Phoenix races, and you'd have two pretty darn good stories. Problem is, Daytona was one of the great stories of NASCAR history, which means Phoenix was ... well, a race. Long green-flag runs, relatively little passing ... yes, there was a record set for most leaders with 15, but most of those lead changes came during pit-stop switchovers. Hamlin, Kevin Harvick and Jimmie Johnson ? the Warriors Three of the 2010 championship ? handed the lead back and forth for most of the afternoon.
And so it's somewhat fitting that Hamlin's rebirth -- like a phoenix, if you will -- comes at the exact location where his championship hopes faded in 2010. Questionable pit strategy at Phoenix in the 35th race of 2010 wrecked Hamlin's psyche and eliminated most of his lead; Johnson would go on to defeat him and yank the championship out of his hands. Not this time, though.
"I don't know much, but I think we got us one!" Hamlin exulted as he crossed the finish line. "Man, it feels good to be competitive again! Thank you so much!"
The race also served as a bit of justification for crew chief Darian Grubb, unceremoniously booted from Tony Stewart's team after Stewart won the championship last year. For those of you keeping count, that's two Grubb wins in the last three races. And it puts Hamlin atop the points standings for the first time since late 2010.
"Huge momentum," Hamlin said afterward. "We've never been in this position this early in the season."
Taking nothing away from Hamlin, but several of the series' biggest names took themselves out of the race one way or another. Harvick appeared ready to run Hamlin down, but ran out of gas on the penultimate lap to fall off the pace. Johnson, early on the best car in the field, had trouble with a loose wheel. Carl Edwards never could overcome a poor qualifying effort. Stewart couldn't refire his car after shutting it off to save fuel. And Kasey Kahne, whom many picked before the race as the best car of the bunch, hit the wall early and was never a factor.
It's early yet, but Hamlin has already locked up a huge edge for the rest of the season. He's got plenty of standings room to play with, and his one win was good enough to take the wild card last year. (Barely, but still.)
So, no, it wasn't the most exciting race of the year. But for the 11 team, it'll fit just fine.
Justin Allgaier Verizon Wireless Dodge Ryan Truex NAPA Toyota
03/09/2012
Barrichello back in Williams frame
Formula 1 always goes a little quiet over Christmas, but one team that has been making waves - both publicly and behind the scenes - are Williams.
The team that dominated F1 for much of the 1980s and 1990s are one of only two outfits still with an obvious vacancy in their driver line-up - the other being back-of-the-grid HRT.
And it seems that Rubens Barrichello, the veteran who has driven for the team for the last two seasons, is back in with a chance of staying with them for 2012.
Rubens Barrichello had been tipped to vacate his Williams seat. Photo: Getty
Venezuelan Pastor Maldonado is staying on in one of the cars after an up-and-down rookie season in 2011 - his position in the team is secure thanks to a multi-million sponsorship deal with his country's national oil company.
But the second seat is still up for grabs, and while Williams are not the attractive proposition they were in their glory days, they are the only decent choice for a whole host of drivers wishing to continue their F1 careers.
These include Barrichello, German Adrian Sutil, Brazilian Bruno Senna, Toro Rosso rejects Jaime Alguersuari and Sebastien Buemi and Italian Vitantonio Liuzzi.
Sutil, who had an impressive second half of the season for Force India, has been the favourite for some time, but the situation appears to have shifted recently.
My sources tell me that Barrichello, who appeared to be out of the running as his 19th season in F1 drew to a close in November, has come back into the frame and now has a reasonable chance of a Williams drive in 2012.
Barrichello has been arguing for some time that, with the huge ructions going on at Williams through 2011 and over the winter, it would make sense to have a known reference in the drivers.
"With all the changes for next year on the engine side and engineers," he said at the season-ending Brazilian Grand Prix, "it would be clever from the team to keep the drivers and keep on going. I'm not pushing them, I'm just trying to show them that is the way to do it."
You can see his point. The team are changing engine suppliers, replacing Cosworth with Renault, and have undergone a wholesale restructure of the design department, with a new technical director, head of aerodynamics and head of engineering.
New tech boss Mike Coughlan is admired as being very clever, but his last role as a technical director was with the now-defunct Arrows team, who collapsed in 2002. As chief designer of McLaren after that, he was involved in the spy-gate scandal that engulfed the team in 2007 and for which he was sacked.
The technical changes at Williams were made even more seismic when it emerged on New Year's Eve that not only was co-founder Patrick Head stepping down as director of engineering, he was also resigning his position on the F1 team's board, thereby cutting all his ties with the sport.
It had long been known that Head, one of the most respected engineers in the history of the sport, would no longer have an active role in the day-to-day F1 operation, but it was a surprise to hear he was not going to be on the board of directors.
Head has insisted that his decision to end his day-to-day F1 role was based on feeling his relevance in F1 was diminishing.
In Brazil, he said: "I certainly didn't have an ambition to stop my involvement in Formula One with a season like this last one we've had behind us.
"But when I have a look at what specifically I can do to assist Mike Coughlan and (chief operations officer) Mark Gillan and (head of aerodynamics) Jason Somerville, I came to the conclusion that it isn't really enough to justify me carrying on doing the same thing."
He will still be involved at Williams through their subsidiary company Williams Hybrid Power and remains close to team boss Sir Frank Williams, who will doubtless be turning to him for advice on a regular basis.
All the same, many will consider it unwise that a team in such flux, and with such a grave need to improve, will not have on their board the guidance and wisdom of a man who not only co-founded the company but who was directly responsible for seven drivers' championships and nine constructors' titles.
Why will he not be there? Williams and Head were both unavailable for comment on Monday. I'm told, though, that his difficult relationship with chief executive officer Adam Parr was a part of Head's decision to step down.
Ironically, Head's departure may ease Barrichello's path to a return.
Head is forthright character and I'm told he had grown tired of the Brazilian's complaints about the team's difficulties.
With the 65-year-old no longer involved, that on the face of it is one less barrier to Barrichello being in the car again.
It seems, though, that all the driver hopefuls will have to wait. Williams are in the process of sponsorship negotiations with the Gulf state of Qatar, and they take primacy over a final decision on drivers.
With more than a month until the start of pre-season testing on 7 February, there is plenty of time to sort out drivers. After all, it's not as if Williams are struggling for choice.
Daytona is a circus, and that?s not even counting the 500
At first, the shirtless man walking in front of my car was not unlike any other that had crossed International Speedway Boulevard over the weekend.
The road, which serves as the main drag in Daytona Beach, separates the Daytona International Speedway from the shopping mall and restaurants across the street. It's an odd setup -- on a non-race weekend, it'd seem natural to go check out the speedway after stopping at Target for laundry detergent -- but the shops on the north side of ISB serve as the main parking avenue for many fans attending Speedweeks.
But as he got closer to the car, it was evident that he was carrying something. Something large on his shoulder. "What the heck could that be?" Geoffrey Miller and I wondered.
It was a cross. Yes. A wooden cross, approximately 10 feet long. A shirtless man wearing jorts carrying a cross in the middle of Daytona Beach, Fla., where it seemed that we were the only two people who thought this scene was out of the ordinary.
Was it a sign on this unpredictably long race weekend of my first trip to Daytona? The perfect mashup between the calls for divine intervention to stop the rain and start the race and how many -- correctly or not -- view the stereotypical race fan.
Either way, I felt like I had seen everything I thought I'd ever see, and the Daytona 500 still was hours away.
The weekend started off at the Streamline Hotel, the place that has experienced a (r)evolution since Bill France was there in 1947. There was a reason that rooms were so cheap at the Streamline on race weekend while other, just slightly better hotels were charging four times as much -- and no, it wasn't because of the drag show or the signs advertising the amateur hot body contest Saturday night.
But yet, it wasn't the most testosterone-laden place we visited over the weekend.
Just a few blocks down A1A resides the Cruisin' Cafe, a race-themed establishment with plenty of "vintage" racing relics, from firesuits to the 1990s era cars that served as booths for patrons to eat in. At the front of the Cruisin' Cafe was a sign that counted down the days to the Daytona 500. On Saturday night, it read "3 Days until the Daytona 500."
While the sign ended up being only inaccurate by a day, it seemed more oversight than foresight.
Inside the Cruisin' Cafe that night, classic rock and country blared, Dale Earnhardt Jr. apparel outnumbered every other driver three to one and men outnumbered women by two or three times that -- a ratio that could be extrapolated even further if you removed the all-female staff in their faux-sexy spandex outfits.
Tucked away in the side of the joint was a bar game with the sole purpose of hitting a punching bag as hard as possible. It was two parts brilliance and one part stupidity, allowing for weekend "warriors" to unleash their aggression at the cost of dollars and sobriety while saving each others' faces and the Daytona Beach Police's time and notepads. If the staff spent as much time practicing their Coyote Ugly inspired hourly dance routines on the bar as this group of a half-dozen men spent punching the punching bag, they would never have to worry about tips again.
Oh yeah, there was the race too, which itself was solid but not spectacular, except when Juan Pablo Montoya smashed into the jet dryer. On my fourth day in Daytona, I figured that nothing could surprise me at that point. The track catching on fire proved me wrong.
I came to Daytona wanting to see something unexpected and take in the scene of the biggest race in the U.S. Man, were my expectations surpassed. It's the perfect place for a NASCAR festival -- cheap entertainment abound, and people watching opportunities plentiful. If you're a race fan and have never been to Daytona, start to book your reservations now. It's an unmatched experience, and that's not even counting watching a race, as seeing the pack hurtle off turn four at full-speed for the first time is guaranteed to blow your mind. Which, in all honesty, is not unlike some of the things you'll see along the beach.
Kasey Kenneth Kahne Matthew Roy Kenseth Alan Dennis Kulwicki Travis Wade Kvapil
Video: Morgan gives first look at LMP2 Le Mans racer
Filed under: Motorsports, MISC, Racing
Morgan and OAK Racing have put together a video to showcase the car that Morgan will be running at Le Mans this year in a jubilee celebration its GT2 class win in 1962. It's got just about everything you'd want from an LMP2 teaser: engine guts, carbon fiber, track time and roaring.
It might be missing an actual Morgan, though: the car is built by OAK's Onroak Automotive constructor division with a Pescarolo chassis and a Judd engine. When they're finished painting it, though, it will at least say "Morgan."
Even without the stickers, however, the video you'll see below is still totally worth it.
Continue reading Morgan gives first look at LMP2 Le Mans racer
Morgan gives first look at LMP2 Le Mans racer originally appeared on Autoblog on Thu, 08 Mar 2012 15:59:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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03/08/2012
Hamilton decision-making under the microscope
 Lewis Hamilton has come in for criticism |
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