Motor Sport

The Specialty Equipment Market Association trade show is home to some of the most outlandish concept and one-off vehicles of any given year, but the latest creation out of VizualTech’s design studio is both way out there and a car that we’d like to see not just built, but raced, as it’s intended as an American Le Mans Series GT car. Though not designed specifically for the SEMA show, its timing at just a week before the Las Vegas tuner market event is anything but coincidental. Far from the aesthetically questionable and functionally crippled cars that constitute many of the entries in that show’s appearance list, however, the rendered ALMS Camaro looks every inch the real-deal racer. Continue

Giancarlo Fisichella had an uncompetitive weekend at Monza 2 weeks ago after replacing the hapless Luca Badoer, but had expected a step forward on the Singapore streets. “Unfortunately the improvement has not come,” Fisichella is quoted as saying by Auto Motor und Sport. “The track is very bumpy, the walls are extremely close and I am missing the confidence when I am braking,” he explained. Fisichella said he is losing most of the lap time compared with his teammate Kimi Raikkonen under braking. “Every time I come to a braking point I think, ‘This is a Ferrari, not a Force India’. You have to brake differently and change down the gears later. Continue

See the Lotus Evora 124 Racecar, a FIA-spec version of the Evora made for long-distance race events. The mid-engined racer uses a Toyota V6 that produces only under 400 horsepower, depending on the rules of every specific race. The engine will be paired to a sequential six-speed racing gearbox with paddle shifters mounted to the direction wheel.  To reign in that power, a set of six-piston caliper brakes from AP Racing was put in with an ABS from Bosch. Continue

Making a automobile greater than the original F1 was always going to be a hard challenge, and maybe that is why for McLaren’s next supercar the company isn’t setting its sights too high. The MP4-12C is a little, wedge-shaped two-seater with a high-revving V8 engine, a seven-speed gear box, a carbon-fibre chassis and “gullwing” doors that open upwards, non outwards. While the original F1 competed with the best supercars of its time-cars like the Ferrari F40, Jaguar XK220, and Porsche 959–McLaren’s newest example will be competing with more entry-level models. Continue

Lamborghini Blancpain Super Trofeo series set the pace at Silverstone, UK, with the Italian marque providing the fastest sportscar race action. One-make series contested its 10th, 11th and 12th rounds on British circuit, welcoming Reiter Engineering’s Peter Kox and Marc A. Hayek as well as Autovitesse’s Jonathan Cochet and Alexander Frei onto the top step of podium for their maiden Super Trofeo victories.

Having completed four of this season’s six race weekends, the Super Trofeo series has seen 23 drivers of seven different nationalities secure podium finishes.

Corvette Racing will try and produce the latest Corvette C6.R in the GT2 class in the last five rounds of the 2009 American Le Mans Series. With the future move to a unified GT class, the twin Compuware Corvette C6.R race machines will compete against competitors representing Ferrari, Porsche, BMW, Aston Martin, Jaguar, Viper, Panoz, and Ford. Set on the Corvette ZR1 supercar, the next-generation Corvette C6.R has even better links to the product version of America’s performance icon than its predecessors. The GT2 principles require the use of many production-based parts, expanding the opportunities for the two-way transfer of engineering between the race course and the showroom. Continue

The McLaren Mercedes scheme is seen by many to be the better and almost reliable KERS system on the power grid. The Vodafone McLaren-Mercedes squad hit their best 2009 season grand prix victory with the KERS-equipped MP4-24, when Lewis Hamilton won the Hungarian Grand Prix. Hamilton got qualified fourth, but made a great start thanks to the extra power supplied by the KERS system which enabled him to point down to the first turn to get second position and continuing a perfect drive to win his best grand prix of the season. The British higher engineering company Zytek Automotive has been producing the KERS nervous motor and power electronics in silent expert partnership with Mercedes-Benz High Performance Engines. The KERS device enables the MP4-24 to regain vitality under braking, store the zip for a lap and free it when the driver pushes a button on the steering wheel. With a full optimised KERS device’s production capped at 400kJ (discharging 80bhp boost for 6.7s per lap), there is a future 0.3 – 0.5s gain per lap. Zytek owns a full heritage in motorsport conception and is also one of the world’s lead specialists in hybrid and electric vehicle engineerings for road autos. The company gained fast credit for supplying the best fully electronic engine control scheme in Formula 1 when the hot technology facilitated put Ayrton Senna’s Toleman-Hart a really close second to Alain Prost in the torrential rainfall of the 1984 Monaco GP. In 1989 Zytek engines powered Jean Alesi to triumph in the 1989 Formula 3000 championship and were subsequently produced to become amongst the most reliable units ever to speed, providing a ideal reliability record in both Formula 3000 and A1 GP. Today Zytek is the world leader in hybrid powertrains for motorsport and one of the public leaders in hybrids for road machines and light commercial vehicles, applying its expertise in the design, manufacture and integrating of high performance rotating electrics to support makers across the globe.

Michael Schumacher is back to take the position of Felipe Massa, while he is recovering from the terrible accident last week. Schumacher will take start in the future GP at Valencia on 23rd of August. This will be his first official speed since he left F1 in October 2006. The future days will be really important for the World Champion, because he has to reach quality physical training. This will be his first run in one team with Kimi Raikkonen. Millions of fans all over the world are really happy that their star is back.