McLaren reveals "very different looking" MP4-26

When Lewis Hamilton was asked this week at Valencia earlier what he thought of all the freshly unveiled cars he said "Our car looks very different from all of these". He was right, very right.  

With a great crowd of McLaren fans, Mercedes-McLaren-Vodafone unveiled their new MP4-26 in Berlin on Friday morning in a rather unorthodox fashion as mechanics assembled the car in front of the crowd.

Check after the break for some better images.

Burned!

What happens when a Ford GT and a Maserati MC-12 start going at in the FIA GT1?

Someone's gonna get burned.

Renault reveals its "Brave new design" in the R31

Title says it all really, Renault popped out it's interesting take on a 2011 Formula One contender. This has been quite anticipated by myself as Renault has been sneaking us the idea with their "brave new design" claim. Honestly, at first glance, it's not too "brave" but with closer examination, this claim may have some merit to it. 

I'll just let the pictures speak for themselves:

The Howmet TX

Since I was talking about it in my Daytona 24 Hours post, I figured a car as cool as the Howmet TX really deserves more then just one line in a blog post. I am after all a nerdy engineering student and this is what engineers would refer to as a "technical wet dream"

enjoy

What the 24 Hours of Daytona is now, and what it means for American road racing

As I am sure you all know, today will be the start of the Rolex 24 at Daytona. 

Since 1962, the 24 Hours of Daytona has been arguably one of the greatest American road races and one of the greatest on the planet as well. If you have the ability, go into your living room and flip on the TV and catch some of this glory, if you don't then you are like me and your life currently sucks.

All that is beside the point though, as my title suggests, I'm going to talk about what road racing is and what the Daytona 24 Hour means to endurance racing.

In its past, the Daytona 24 used to spawn some amazing racing and even more spectacular cars. Cars like the ingenious Howmet TX turbine powered racer, Porsche 917's, 962's, Ford GT40's and Jaguar XJ9's. Today it's all spec cars like Daytona Prototypes, GT car's which aren't even real cars. There was once a time when real sports car's, such as the Ferrari Daytona (good name, I know) and Corvette driven by Dale Earnhardt rubbed paint for 24 hours. And yes, Corvette won in 2001, OVERALL

Nowadays though, Grand-Am has taken over Daytona. Grand-Am is closely tied to NASCAR and that should really explain it all. What that has done is taken it's responsibility to cut costs and control competition (sound familiar FIA?). What that gives us it cheapo Daytona Prototypes, and tube-framed GT cars. They've lit the track, destroying the purpose of night-racing.

Also with the coming of Grand-Am marked the end of IMSA and prior to that, World Sports car Championships, this cleared all interests from the international crowd and consequently, international drivers.

In it's effort to cut cost's, Grand-AM also allowed for car's to be built out tent-poles. Car's like the Turner BMW M6 and the Mazda RX8's are spaceframe chassis with carbon-fiber body panels bolted on. In fact, the M6 is actually a Pontiac GTO. Now which would you rather watch, the great Sports cars of the past or go-karts with body panels on them?

Don't get me wrong though, you should still watch the Daytona 24 Hour's. Sure it's not what it used to be, but it's a hell of a lot better then NASCAR and its still real road racing. It's still a 24 hour race and everyone knows, there isn't anything much better then a 24 hour race. 

Audi R18 spotted testing at Sebring

on top all these pics, if you want some awesome car pics, check out this awesome photo stream.

Source: RacerEVO

Ferrari's new pickup truck, nose job, grand prix racer

Yep, there it is, Ferrari's new F150 F1 car is named after 150 years of Italy being united or something . Not after the best selling american pickup.

There's not much to say besides it's got a huge schnoz and appears to lack a rear undertray diffuser.

Ferrari has said though that the actual car set to race at Bahrain isn't going to look anything like this, lets hope so.

More pics  & video after the break

Source: Ferrari

Pagani Huayra just as ugly as anticipated

Just as we all were not hoping for; the leaked pics of the "Paganini HYAA" (Pagani Huayra) were all too accurate. The new Zonda Successor is almost painful to look at. I mean, come on; the damn thing looks like a fish. I guess it's not all bad though. I suppose if you just put your hand over the front of it, the rest of the car looks alright.

It's got all kinds of weird flaps and wings and crap, it's even gullwing doors. Sounds complicated.

Performance wise, this new car kick ass. It's sporting a twin-turbo'd 6.0 liter 12-cylinder AMG powerplant, set to chuck out a good 700  brake HP and 740 pound-feet of torque. All that will be sent to the ground through a seven-speed dual-clutch gearbox. Couple that with a weight of just under 3,000 pounds – aided by copious amounts of carbon fiber – and you have the makings of a 21st century rear-wheel drive rocket ship.


Click after the break to see some photos of this beast.

Another F1 circuit bites the dust

It's official, after 2015, the Australian Grand Prix at Melbourne will cease to exist. 

To me, it comes as no surprise. The mayor of Melbourne: Lord Robert Doyle has said it's just not cost effective anymore. On top of that the state of Victoria's new premier Ted Baillieu admitted that the millions of dollarts per on the year taxpayer's bill for the race will need to be reduced.

Basically, it's another case of good ol Bernie Ecclestone effing things up again.

With all that, lets tally up what we've got so far.

Melbourne--done
Spa-Francorchamps--more then likely to be done
Singapore GP--in danger
Turkish GP -- also in danger

So what does that mean? Is it really just getting too expensive for everyone? Are we going to have an F1 calender of 18 races at Yas Marina and Monaco?

Source: SpeedTV

Why Lancia is the greatest Rally team ever.

Oh Group B, how awesome you were, till the FIA had to totally go an F**k you too. With the demise of Group B, came the demise of the greatest rally team ever: Lancia. This italian car-manufacturer carried 10 Championships in rallying, 6 of those were consecutive.