Crossdrilled

What is Dover? part 1

2011-10-18T10:26:00.000-05:00

Jamaican motorsports, this thing has always intrigued me.... There's a story m father told me, The Dover Race Track in Brown's Town, St. Ann was opened in the Easter of 1989, I was born the May of that year and by August I visited my first race.

Since then trips to Dover have been irregular, my interest peaked right after turning 16, I was regularly following up on all of Jamaica's car events and Dover was just one of those things I really couldn't get to even if I wanted to. There were 4 events per year: Easter Monday, Labor Day [May 23], Independence Day/Emancipation Day [August 1 & 6] and Heroes' Day [3rd Monday in October]. School essentially blocks me from going to them all with the exception to the Independence Day meet which either I participate in the Classic Car Club's Independence Day partakings or my father complains of being tired. Since getting my licence I've found myself driving there on my own and this year same thing happened only exception I managed to sneak in some time to get to go to the Heroes' Day meet.

The following blog highlights on my journey to both the 2011 Independence Day meet as well as the 2011 Heroes Day meet.

The Independence Day meet was the first meet I can say I paid for fully, from gas, to tickets, to food [as well as for my cousin]... all out of my pockets [still hurts now]. All the pre race chatter focused around the continuous rivalry between David Summerbell Jr. and Doug Gore. The rivalry between them has been back and forth and up until this year Summerbell dominated the track with his AMS prepared Evolution 8 [aka TA1] Gore's Evolution 6 was modified to the point where it couldn't go any further and reveled a bit in a slightly tuned Evolution 10 but still couldn't match the record breaking performance of the TA1. This year however a new sponsor with the name of ATL Autohaus [A new Audi dealership] took up Gore and handed him a DTM Spec Audi TT tuned and ballasted to compete in the almost unrestricted class of Thundersport

Gore [silver Evolution] and Summerbell [yellow Evolution] in the early days.

Gore and Summerbell part 2, this time Summerbell gets new paint and a new sponsor while Gore takes it easy in a new car.

Gore and Summerbell today, rivalry still hot as ever

The first 2 races of the season the Audi TT lacked the pace of the TA1 as the team blamed a lack of tuning to be the problem. I myself stated that the naturally aspirated 2 wheel drive machine would not catch on to the 4WD turbocharged beast that is TA1.

But I was worng

The practice and qualifying sessions showed that the DTM TT caught up to the pace of TA1 and indeed had the pace to break the record, something I was looking forward to witness on race day.

By the time I reached Dover I had already missed one thundersport race, Gore and Summerbell were neck and neck until they crashed before the end of the lap [a really bad quality video of that race is here] Upon hearing this I was told that I had no need to worry as both cars were repaired in time for the rest of the races. Because of an international quality pit facility, Dover accommodates for 3 series of sprint races each lasting 5-7 laps depending on class. Most classes are bracket racers with B37 [1:37] and B45 [1:45] each split into naturally aspirated and turbocharged classes. These races are essentially road cars prepped by everyday civilians just to have fun. The other classes, MP [modified production] are as the name suggests, cars built for racing only each with their own rules which I won't get into the detail of. The final class is Thundersport which is almost unrestricted, in most events the MP class as well as Thundersport are on the track at the same time where as B37 and B45 are run at separate times. The following pictures show a lot of the cars in and out of the pits during my time there.

Onwards to Thundersport race #2. Both cars were prepared and the race was off. Both cars were literally nose to tail [this was a reverse grid btw] and quickly bopped and weaved their way throughout the pack and continued their two horse race. [another low quality vid of the race is here] Essentially Gore's much lighter DTM car had the corners on lock while the 4WD and turbocharged motivation made Summerbell a real threat on the exit of corners. After a while it just became evident that Gore was driving defensively for the whole race and managed to keep off Summerbell till the end.

Thundersport Race #3, the final race of the day. What started out as a one lap battle for the lead eventually turned into Doug Gore giving the race track a good piece of rape lapping everyone in sight. From memory before the race was over, Gore pulled out a 6 second gap ahead of Summerbell and looked like he was on a Sunday cruise. Unknown to me at the time, Gore broke Summerbell's track record of 1:18.4 [set in 2009] with an impressive 1:18.114 set in the 3rd lap of the race. With that, Dover was done and on to the next meet......

Destroy your city, build a racetrack

2011-09-09T19:58:00.002-05:00

Time to revive this old girl I call my blog.

Today [well actually Friday to be precise], I was on my way to school to pick up my brother and low and behold there was traffic. Despite going in the general opposite direction of most of Jamaica at that time the rain gods said let there be traffic and so said so done. I never understood as to why rain always made traffic that much more intense. Is the reduced visibility causing drivers to slow down for safety reasons? Are they slowing down because they don't want to slide and crash? Or is it that the drivers do not wish to encounter any newly developed potholes? To me it seems to be none of the above because it really wasn't raining today, in fact it was at the point where F1 drivers would consider switching from inters to drys. So I came to the conclusion that it had to be one of thing, no one knows how to drive. I really can't stand these bastards driving at 10km/h just to tiptoe across the water as if slowing down is going to make you seem responsible. NO YOU ARE AN ANNOYANCE PULL OVER NOW SO I CAN GO AROUND YOU AND DRIVE AT A LESS ANNOYING 40KM/H. I think anyone who drives below a certain speed should either be ticketed, nuked or sold into slavery depending on the government in power.

So anyways the trauma of being stuck behind a 10km/h RunX gave me the wonderful idea of just throwing away all road systems and starting a new. But first, just so I don't sound like a douche, we really need to upgrade the public transportation system. The better the public transport [whether trains, buses or boats I don't care just do it] the less cars on the road. What is more economic than a hybrid? Public transportation that's what. So all ya'll hippies with ya'll Priussies, go to the back of the bus. A world with less hybrids means that the government can stop wasting money on subsidizing them and pedestrians are less likely to get hit by ghost machines that just 'snuck up on me.' So we got greenpeace off our roads who next? The Douchebags. The thing is, not much needs to be done to get rid of them. After awhile they will realize that all the hot girls are being eco friendly (all eco mentalist women are hot btw) and not taking public transport looks as douchey as wearing a shirt that makes reference to ones penis size. Of course if there are douchebags that are too douchey to be phased by this, evolution will take of you guys as your suv's roll down a hill while you pray to your based gods.

With this new found emptiness, imagine the road being littered with the sounds of blow-off valves, waste gates and a high pitched wailing ferrari reverberating off the city walls instead of horns (real race cars don't use horns) and shouting. At last, people who love to drive own the roads. Traffic lights would be changed to stage trees and just watch as traffic launches off the line as soon as the light goes green. Anyone caught with slow reaction times must get a ticket. And as for all seeing eyes maintaining these rules, hire track marshalls to maintain the streets [they're all volunteers looking for a real job anyways] and stewards to decide insurance issues [because drive thru penalties are cheaper than insurance premiums, but just as effective in terms of lessons learnt] Roads would be cleared in a matter of minutes after accidents and justice would follow almost immediately after. Putting a pace car in front should ensure traffic moves smoothly instead of grinding to a halt around accident sites. So what about pedestrians? Let them all be rally fans. Imagine scores of drunk British people cheering you on as you commute to work, with that kind of joy suicide rates would drop. Rally fans are also the most helpful fans, they will always notify you when an accident is up ahead and will help you roll back over your car when you do crash. Speaking of crashes, I'm sure making everyone a racing driver wouldn't be safe? Fuck that, give everyone a fucking rollcage, a 6 point harness and a fire extinguishing system and not only will traffic related deaths drop but drivers will be made more aware of how dangerous racing is. Also, speed limits, revise them, as a matter of fact, get rid of them all together. Want to keep people driving safely and happily at the same time? Give them average speeds like what they do in those classic rallies, drivers will always make an extra effort to ensure that they travel at the rate at which they should. It may not sound safer but trust me it's always better to be speeding and be aware of your speed than to be driving casually and not care about speed unless you see a traffic cop. And what about roads not fit for normal driving speeds? Fuck repaving them and turn them into a dirt stage, I'm sure the money saved would be enough to do more important stuff like sorting out education and paying nurses. With less paved roads means less water run off, more trees and more happy polar bears. As for the roads we don't use, pedestrianize it. Tourists love that shit, just look at times square. Look at how packed Monaco gets when they have F1 there and those rich niggas be paying millions to get front row seats on the harbour. Suppose we could establish a Panama Canal style lock system into our gully systems and have boat races through the city. Gymkhana competitions in parking lots, soft roading competitions on golf courses, Blue Mountain hill climbs etc. The possibilities are endless and I'm sure it will be cheaper and more exciting than Ferrari World in Abu Dhabi. With this I end my rant and campaign for minister of transportation under LA Lewis' government. Good night Jamaica

A long drawn out history of some important Japanese classic cars

2011-05-22T13:22:00.015-05:00

So as a part of my father's challenge in creating articles for the Auto section of the Gleaner, here is the first attempt [a topic he forced me to write on] expect more soon [hopefully at a faster rate than this long assed one]

There has been a long debate whether anything from the Japanese car industry can be considered a classic. This has been received with mostly negative comments as the Japanese are fairly new to making cars and have been primarily focused on building economy cars especially within their own market. The few performance cars that do exist however have beenWhile these facts have made it difficult to identify a Japanese classic, the fact is that they do exist. What I plan to do in this article is to highlight a select few Japanese cars that could be considered classic at present as well as those that may be collectible in the future with a heavy emphasis being placed on vehicles already present in Jamaica

Nissan

The Z series

Nissan formed the Z series as the Japanese answer to Europe's best sports cars at the time especially those coming from Porsche and BMW. The first model, the 240Z, was favored for its styling, affordability, handling and reliability. The 260Z and 280Z built on the 240Z's already good role with bigger engines. Its popularity amongst the international crowd helped to build the image of the Datsun brand. The Z31 chassis 300ZX replaced the S30 chassis Z's and brought turbocharging into the Japanese sports car era with its race car derived V6. Just like the Z's before it entered sports car racing and had its success but the newer model was focused on being more luxurious, so a bit of its handling was sacrificed for more luxury options. The Z32 300ZX was even more luxurious than its previous incarnation which led it to win many awards for its styling and performance. So admired is its design that Lamborghini decided to use 300ZX headlights in it's redesign of the Diablo. Today the Z series is continued by the 350Z and 370Z which goes back to the 240Z style of being performance oriented. It can be easily claimed that the 240Z up to the Z31 300ZX are classics while the newer Z32 300ZX up to the 370Z are classics in the making.

The GTR series

Designed to be more upscale than the Z series, the first GTR badges appeared on racing homologations of the Nissan Skyline sports car. In 1989, Nissan brought back the GTR badge on to the Skyline range with 4WD and turbocharging giving it an advantage over European sports cars at the time. Despite being limited to the mandatory 276hp for Japanese engines at the time, Nissan built an engine capable of handling twice as much horsepower with little modifications (in fact most GTRs left the factory with more horsepower than advertised.) This left the GTR as the king amongst the growing tuner craze. Despite its potential for tuning, in stock trim it is a very potent car besting models from Porsche and Ferrari in head to head race battles as well as being crowned as the King of the Nurburgring (a very long and difficult German track whose times have become a measuring stick to determine the all around performance of a car. Today, while few stock GTRs exist, they are highly coveted and can be considered future classics while the first generation 70's models are even more coveted and placed as instant classics. In 2007, Nissan split the Skyline and the GTR badge making them separate models, the present day iteration continues to shame Porsche and Ferrari in all aspects.

Honda NSX

Highly regarded as Japan's first supercar, this Ferrari competitor was designed from the ground up to be the best all around supercar available. Although Honda had the experience of building strong and reliable cars, they had to hire Ayrton Senna (three time F1 champion and driver for the McLaren-Honda team) to help with the sports aspect of it. The end result gave the NSX highly positive reviews for its all around performance despite its supercar styling and fairly modest 276hp V6. A lot of this was attributed to its all aluminium chassis (the first for any car) which made it lightweight but still strong. Through its 15 year life, it received only minor updates while it's competition gained larger engines and became more advanced. Plans to replace the NSX have been on and off with a lot of pressure coming from a push to build greener automobiles. As a result, despite being fairly new, the NSX can easily be interpreted as a modern day classic.

Toyota AE86 Corolla

The AE86 became famous for being the last rear wheel drive Corolla and ultimately the best. Unlike previous Corolla's the AE86 featured independent rear suspension and a limited slip differential to improve handling and a twin camshaft 16 valve 4 cylinder to increase power. While its straight line performance is mediocre, its handling had created a cult following as it became one of the few affordable rear wheel drive cars. It being featured in the Japanese series Intial D as well as being a favorite car for Keiichi Tsuchiya (Japan's most popular racing driver) has elevated it to collector car status. Because of Tsuchiya's and Intial D's background, the AE86 became the "official" car for drifting. The AE86 is to drifting as what Ferrari is to F1. Lightly modified models have become the most collectable with models going for as high as $1 million on today's Jamaican market.

Toyota MR2

What started out as a failed Lotus project was taken up by Toyota and finished to become the MR-2. Based on the principles of producing a lightweight sport car that returned good fuel economy and was reliable enough to drive daily, the MR2 went straight for the Miata but used a mid mounted engine to help aid in handling. The mid mounted and it's low price made it popular among enthusiasts as it was significantly cheaper than any other mid engined car available at the time. Each incarnation of the MR2 targeted a different audience with the first and second generations being light weight and nimble, the second generation was a lot more race oriented with its turbocharged option. With production ending, the MR2 has become a collectable piece of Japanese sports car history.

Mazda RX series

After it's first Rotary car, the Cosmo, Mazda quickly went on to create a series of cars to further develop the compact and potent engine. Thus the Rotary Experiment series was born. The RX2 was nothing more than an engine option for Mazda's midsize car while the RX3 was a sportier version of the RX-2 that went racing. The RX-4 became a luxurious rotary engined model and the Cosmo continued under the RX-5 name, by this time even pick up trucks featured rotary engines. This mass spread of the rotary engine calmed down after the fuel crisis nearly killed sales altogether forcing Mazda to focus primarily on the RX-7, the sportier replacement to the RX-3. The RX7 became a spring board for Mazda's sports car racing success until most racing series banned rotary engines all together. Even on the road the mix up of light weight and high output engine has but the RX7 at the top of the Japanese sports car race for a long time. Today, the RX-8, a more usable sports car than the RX-7, continues on in using the RX principles to create a unique sports car.

Mazda Miata

With the unfortunate death of the British sports car industry, a huge gap was left in the sports car market that needed to be filled. Mazda used basic British sports car styling and principles to create a small lightweight and nimble sports car to be used on the track. The simplicity and nimbleness of the Miata has made it the best selling convertible sports car ever. It is also one of the most popular track day cars ever elevating it to cult like status especially amongst amateur American racers. The Miata is still built today under the MX-5 name and even with numerous safety requirements pushing up the weight, Mazda has still managed to making the Miata one of the lowest weighed car today.

[yes i know certain cars missin so don't loud me up]

Top 10 Cars for Jamaican Douchebags

2011-05-15T20:30:00.005-05:00

Have you ever sat in traffic and see someone running HID lights at midday? How about the one who drives like he is Zeus himself while all other vehicles are mere mortals? Loud obnoxious music playing? Checking out 15 year olds at high school bar-be-ques? Bragging about why their car is special when it's just meh?

If you have seen someone matching these descriptions, chances are you have met a douchebag. Of course the reason I am writing this is because a doucebag pissed me off today and I am now convinced that they are the biggest cocks in the world.

So here is a list of what douchebags drive and why you should not assosciate yourself with one.

10) n00b evo/impreza owners

These are the dudes who buy evos/imprezas not because of the performance or it fits their needs, nope they just following the hype. Of course it becomes easier to spot them the newer the model is and the fact that modifications are made first to the body and then the engine. They pretty much brag about cutting everything under the sun yet never appear at a vernam/jamwest meet.

Telltale signs: always in oakley sunglasses and seated way back in their bucket seats as if they are constantly feeling boost whiplash

9)Altezza owners

At first Altezza's were cool because they were compact little RWD sedans that had high potential engines, but then the douchebags saw them for their style. To this day, the words Altezza lights leaves a bad taste in tuner's mouths as douchebags quickly wanted that style copied on to their civics. Now that these douchebags can actually afford Altezza's now, they are taking it to their girlfriend's high school prom with their HID lights spoiling the image for the non-douchebag Altezza owners out there. To make it even worse, it's now in high demand and douchebags are senselessly buying them for ridiculous prices essentially cock blocking the enthusiasts out of the market.

Telltale signs: "It's a Lexus not a Toyota dude."

8) Cadillac Escalade/Chevrolet Avalanche

Essentially the same car just one has more leather than the other. The Escalade became the douche car when I was growing up and to this day still has some douche value to it. Of course these douche's have progressed on to other cars but the image is forever damaged thanks to numerous rap songs of the time associating them with 20" rims that weren't quite stationary [it was so bad in fact that Cadillac actually started making them with 20" chrome rims from factory] But alas, even douchebags think spinning rims look douchey and as a result has moved on to spread the disease far and wide making it harder to spot douches easily.

Telltale signs: usually blazing a hip hop tune behind heavily tinted windows

7) Daddy's car

Nothing says douche more than driving your father's car and posing on it like you jus bought it upfront with cash. To me, driving my father's car means hiding it so that no random nigga scrapes it and I die, while the random douche hides the car, but lets it be seen by all. Almost always a Prado, Pajero, BMW, Audi or a Benz [or if u live in the states a Porsche is fine too]

Telltale signs: Always checking out the window/blasting stock radio to ensure he is seen before quickly accelerating into the distance.

6) Chrysler 300, Dodge Charger, Dodge Magnum

I loved these cars not only for their styling but also for their V8s and RWD ness, but of course one douchebag had to mess it up for the rest of us. Despite there being only a few of each of these in the island, they have all been douchified, complete with rims and ghey trims. Now I can't help but feeling like a douche for owning a 1:24 scale model of them -_-

Telltale signs: fake DUB badges

5) Civic Coupe/Accord Coupe/Scion tC/Inifinity G35

Do you know what these 3 all have in common, apart from mostly being LHD? They all are sporty looking cars with little or no sport actually attached to it. These douches always roll in packs and always on the prowl for 18 year olds instead of the traditional 16 year olds [cause they fancy like that] Although the G35 is the sportiest, you can almost guarantee that they drive the slowest.

Telltale signs: They are always black and LHD and have their windows wound down fully to see their pretty boy haircut.

4) Toyota Tundra

Nothing says "hey look at my small penis behind this big 5.7L V8 badge" more than a Tundra. To me gasoline V8s in pickups are a waste [unless u live in the US and you have no choice] so obviously persons who buy this want a big car just for owning something for big's sake. I swear the Tundra has no purpose other than being big, and the few utility it has left in it is used for carrying more douches.

Telltale signs: slight exhaust work to evoke the V8 sound some more

3) Honda Ridgline

Like the Tundra but crappier and cheaper hence more douches can buy it. Even when you look at it from an engineering point of view, the structure of it does not say pick-up. It's boxy shape is bound to attract douches like all boxy cars do [think Hummer, 300C etc]. Its rare that you see these dirty, mainly because douches want you to know the car is black but also because it does not leave the city.

Telltale signs: They're all black with even blacker tint.

2) BMW X6

The X6 is a waste of a vehicle that costs more to be less practical. It holds 4 but a 335i holds more and is faster/cheaper. It's own brother, the x5 is better than it in EVERY WAY. So why would one buy an X6? Because it's a perfect mixture of all things douche: HID headlights, sports car shape, SUV bigness, space for massive rims and wild 14 year olds, throw in an extra dash of nonsense and you have the perfect douche mobile. But alas not everyone can afford an X6 so what do normal douche's do?

1) Public passenger vehicles

Coasters, taxis and Hiaces just look at my initial list and see how these fassies have perfectly matched it. No care for road users, no care for passengers and no care for police. There is nothing more douche than a coaste blaring loud music, blowing you to move, overtaking you then stopping in the middle of the road to pick up a passenger. Although then again thats just being a fassy and in my rage I may have mixed up the two, o well. SCREW THEM ALL!

A Racing Series I Only Just Discovered: Superleague Formula

2011-05-14T14:20:00.002-05:00

Like racing and football and wished there was a mix? Well you can:

a) watch Schumacher play for his football team FC Echichens
b) wait for the annual F1 driver's charity football match
c) watch Superleague Formula

Superleague Formula is a new open wheeled single spec-ed racing series aimed at giving racing a World Cup feel. The last event to try that was the A1GP and that has had mixed results. The difference with Superleague is the big names supporting it. Essentially all the teams are owned by various football clubs from all over the world with top teams such as Corinthians, AC Milan and Liverpool mixing it with some no name Chinese teams. Unlike A1GP, this isn't so much World Cup but more Champions League as you can have Dutch drivers participating in Italian teams etc.

How It Works

Ok like most racing series there is qualifying on Saturday and race on Sunday, there after it just gets football like. Now of course because it is so complex I'm jus gonna cut and paste the process from Superleague's website.

Qualification process
Phase 1: First up is a draw to establish two groups of 8/9 cars for separate, individual 15 minute Qualifying sessions. Drivers will select a letter which will determine whether they are in Group A or Group B: Group A will qualify first followed by Group B (both for 15 minutes duration). Groups A & B Qualifying will normally be separated by five minutes. The four fastest cars of each session (A and B) qualify to the next stage.
Quarter finals: These eight finalists compete in a head-to-head format. They will queue in the pit lane and the first two cars will be sent off as a pair. A pre-determined gap will be maintained on the warm-up lap - close enough to entertain the crowds, far away enough so the following car is not impacted by aerodynamic factor. First car will be released one behind the other and they must maintain that formation/position until they pass the start finish line for a single flying/timed lap.
The cars will complete a single flying lap, the fastest of the pair going on to the semi-final. This is repeated three more times with four cars qualifying for the semis.
Semi finals: Two semi-final shoot-outs then take place using the same head-to-head system to decide the final two cars, which will then do battle for pole position.
Final: The two semi-final winners then go head-to-head with the fastest claiming pole position for the first of Sunday's two races.
No refueling or tyre changing can take place during the session.

Got It? Cause I didn't.

Racing is a bit more simple. There are 3 races. The first race uses the qualifying positions to form the grid. This race lasts 45 mins [sounds familiar] and allows one pitstop. Everyone gets points with the winner getting 50 points. The second race reverses the grid while everything stays the same. The final race which is only 5 laps, takes the top 6 drivers in terms of points and pit them against each for a max of 6 points. Theoretically a perfect score is 106 points. Another feature in racing is a 50hp overboost button [which is similar to A1GP's] which can be activated for overtaking at a maximum of 8 times per race.

Result

I'm gonna keep tracks, probably follow a team [dunno which one cause I don't follow football and Robert Doornbos is the only driver I know] I feel with the inclusion of live internet feeds this should be an interesting watch to pass some time and with 8 races this season, it should be a sufficient filler series.

Teams that participate [and have participated] in the series

AC Milan

AS Roma

Atletico Madrid

Beijing Guoan

CR Flamengo

FC Basel 1893

FC Porto

Galatasaray S.K.

GD Bordeaux

Liverpool FC

Olympiacos CFP

Olympique Lyonnais

PSV Eindhoven

RSC Anderlecht

SC Corinthians

Sevilla FC

Sporting CP

Tottenham Hotspur

no longer participating

Al Ain

Borussia Dortmund

FC Midtjylland

Rangers FC

Team China

Hot Sauce Committee Part 2: THE REVIEW

2011-05-06T19:52:00.007-05:00

intro

There are times when I feel like I'm the biggest Beastie Boys fan on the island and this fact is confirmed every time they launch a new album. Now of course because I wasn't even born when their 2nd album was launched [Paul's Boutique] I can only remember the launch of two of their albums, To The 5 Boroughs and The Mix-Up.

Now despite seeing these I have never, ever, ever seen an album launched in such a manner. As you may have noticed there is no Hot Sauce Committee Part 1 [at least not yet] The album was shelved as one of their members, MCA, had to undergo cancer treatment. Fast forward 3 year later, MCA is better and the Beastie Boys have the album almost done but the tracks are kinda stale. They hire some French dude to spice it up and add some pizazz, the result is such a reshaped album that the Beastie Boys decided to name it Hot Sauce Committee Part 2. Upon launching the album the Beastie Boys underwent various launch methods, first they previewed every track, then they released one song, then they released a short film based on the first song, then they played the entire album on a boombox in the middle of Madison Square Garden and streamed it, then they made the whole album available to listen on their website [which u can listen to hear] So without further ado, the album.

1) make some noise

The first song of the album and by far my favorite. The track is unique to any other Beastie Boy song I've heard before, the closest I could think of was a cleaner, more updated version of Super Disco Breaking. The opening synthesizers just wow you and the only word to describe it is dope. The rapping is typical Beastie Boys with each member taking about 4 bars and then swapping with another member, this method ensures the rhymes are not story like but more entertaining almost like a freestyle. The best part of the whole song however is the 8 second cowbell solo. Confused, here's the video:

2) nonstop disco powerpack

This song is even more freestyling than make some noise. The track makes it sound as if the Beastie Boys were in an alley just spitting some rhymes. It really is a cool song that reminds me a lot of 3 MC's and 1 DJ in terms of rawness. Even down to the instruments being played by the Beasties on the track shows how organic this is. Really lovely rap record.

3) ok

This is the only [wait for it] ok track on the whole album. The beat is kinda catchy but not as addictive as other tracks. I really don't have much else to say about it other than it's listenable.

4) too many rappers [new reactionaries version] ft nas

This was the first track to be released from the album unofficially and pretty much started the hype surrounding the first hot sauce committee. When part 2 came along this was one of the few songs that were remixed and re-released. The remixing on the track gives it some more bass and a slight dubstep background to the track to accompany the blaring drum background. This track is evidence as to how fine tuning and extra time has helped this album for the better. Nas' position on the track blends him in easily with the other Beasties almost making you have to stop and wondering if that really is him on it.

5) say it

"to the heart of the matter, the mic i shatter, so cold on the mic i make your teeth chatter" these lines throw deep rooted dope rap lines in a sort of punk rock styled beat. This track seems to be one of the fan favorites primarily because I feel it attracts the fans who like the "Sabotage" style of things. The outro is dope btw

6) the bill harper collection

its a filler track

7) dont play no game that i cant win ft santigold

Quite possibly the track I anticipated the most, I was kinda disappointed though [i guess cause i was expecting something along the lines of "My Drive Thru" but instead this track [a very indie sound with a dub/reggae like start] actually should be titled as santigold ft the beastie boys not only due to her voice covering most of the album but also due to the fact that it would fit better on her albums. However I really do love the dub references.

8) long burn the fire

Similar in sound to say it but a bit lesser on the finesse side. The rhymes are however more entertaining and less serious. The beat is quite dope but spoiled heavily the intro. It has potential to be a better track but it is a good attempt so for.

9) funky donkey

As the name suggests, this is one of their more goofier tracks. "go shave a sheep and itch yourself a sweater" you cant help but laugh at rhymes like that. The purpose of this track is to raise spirits and give the Beastie's space to goof off.

10) the larry routine

Coninuing aalong the lines of funky donkey, the larry routine would be best suited as its outro to help match it funkiness.

11) taldock's glasses

The name used is actually the original title of the album but was changed later. The song features a very opium den type feel that would feel right at home on their To the 5 Boroughs album

12) lee major's come again

Another punk rock track that has quickly overtaken Sabotage as my favorite rock style song from the Beasties. The high pace is matched with well timed lyrics as a opposed to shouting. When Run DMC had to rap on an Aerosmith to walk this way they complained of how difficult it was, I'm sure the task the Beastie's set upon themselves for this track was even harder and could have possibly been a big flop. But it worked well.

13) multilateral nuclear disarmament

Pretty much a funk/jazz instrumental track typically found on most Beastie Boys albums. I think an accurate term for this is lounge music. Loved it, brought back memories of The Mix-Up and would be a perfect candidate if there was a re-issue of The In Sound of Way Out

14) here's a little something for ya'

I first heard this track as a remix used in the DJ Hero video game. I must admit, DJ Shadow's remix of it [which you can hear here]. There is a beat break in the middle with a very funky beat that I feel would have fit the rest of the track better. It in essence is a track that feels lacking but swap at least there's a remix which fixes it.

15) crazy ass shit

A short little vibing hit with a cool head bobbing beat. The mixing of the song brings back memories of Paul's Boutique in terms of the random samples which occur every now and then [especially in the hook] I would have loved to hear a longer version

16) the lisa lisa / full force routine

THIS SONG SHOULD BE LONGER IT IS SO DOPE. Just like Flute Loop , the Beasties have created a song which I love to be longer. I MEAN IT IS SO COOL. In fact the name is longer than the whole song -_-

bonus tracks

17) pop your balloon

Another song I heard with the early release group, never too fancied it from the beginning, still don't like it now. Its not that its bad or anything is just that whole Indian feel to it, I don't feel it. [you can listen to this one here]

18) b-boys in the cut

Another one of those pre album tracks that I only recently found out made it [wait for it] in the cut. This track is up there as one of my favorites on the album. Between the lyrics, the beat and addition 0f the Larry Routine as an outro makes this just plain awesome. By far the best set of lyrics on the entire album with every bar filled with cool stories. [you can listen to this one here]

the video

x) fight for your right-revisited

[watch it here] and make your own comments, really lovely. [you might want to watch the original fight for your right here]

assuming you've watched it already, the references are awesome with an insanely packed star studded cast playing the beastie boys and just everyday average citizens all set to the instrumentals of Make Some Noise. Around the 6:19 mark you'll see a random dude get out of the back of a cab, that random dude is a reference to a random dude seen in the Ch-Check It Out video. Around the 8:00 mark it gets all star studded and crazy when they enter a restaurant run by Ted Danson [a reference is made in the song about him and Mike D opening a restaurant] a random dude outside this restaurant at one point accompanied the other random dude mentioned earlier in the video in the same Ch-Check It Out video. Afterwards around the 10:40 mark a long cowbell loop is played in the back of the limo while Ad -Rock gets stabbed. A minute later, Will Ferrel plays the most epic cowbell solo EVAR.

The song continues with the beasties high as hell and eventually ending up having a break dancing contest with the beaties from the future and in the end they get arrested by the real Beastie Boys. In these closing parts, clips from Too Many Rappers and Say It can be heard.

Result: pure lols

Conclusion

Without saying anymore, it is already my second favorite Beastie album right behind Paul's Boutique. I've already said all that has to be said about this album track by track and I really can't wait for the release of part 1

A company lost in the pages of history: Lancia

2011-03-09T20:23:00.012-06:00

2 Seasons ago on Top Gear, they asked the question "What's the coolest car company ever?" Most people [as well as myself] answered Ford especially since they were the first company to bring power to the people, but Top Gear being Top Gear disagreed and stated that Lancia was the coolest of all time. Now Top Gear has some interesting logic as to why it's the coolest [of which I disagree] but I must admit that Lancia is the greatest car company that barely anyone will remember.

Lancia is one of the oldest car companies [unfortunately it was too broke to celebrate its 100th anniversary in 2006 properly like how Alfa does] They specialized in making quirky, yet advanced cars. The first monocoque, 5 speed manual, V6 and V4 can be attributed to Lancia. In racing, Lancia had 2 victories in the early days of F1 as a full manufacturer but went bust soon after. Lancia attempted to go into sports car racing in later years but just sucked at it. However after making an attempt into rallying its Fulvia and winning the championship in '72, Lancia got addicted and went full force into getting more wins.

The riptide all began with the little car that could, the Stratos......

image from C. Le Tellier

In the late 60's to early 70's car companies were just getting into the groove of building race cars that would could be declared legal [barely] In order to take advantage of this, the company would build a race car then build a small amount for the road. By the time the 1972 racing seasons came around, this practice was prevalent in all forms of racing except for rallying. The reason being that in order to enter a rally, you had to sell at least 500 examples of that car in order to qualify. Lancia, being the brave souls they are [and would continue to be] took up the challenge.

image from C. Le Tellier

The Stratos was a short wheelbase car, a really short wheelbase car.

Note:short wheelbase improves cornering dynamics, which is good for rallying as it encourages powerslides but it does have a tendency to get wobbly at high speeds

Also unusual was a mid-engined layout [something that would aggravate the tail happiness of the little car even more] It was chosen because it needed weight over the rear tyres in order to maximize traction, and boy did it need traction because packed within that tiny wheelbase was a Ferrari V6. 192hp may sound like a little but its light weight gave it performance figures that would put Ferrari's 20 years ahead of it to shame. The little car that could was reluctantly declared legal to go rallying and it achieved what Lancia wanted, domination of the World Rally Championship, which it did 3 times. The car was so far ahead that 9 years after its introduction it still managed to win a race.

image from spiriteddrive

After the Stratos most people think "hmmmm a yes the Delta" and that's it,

but before the Delta there was another snippet of rallying legend, its name was Montecarlo......

The Lancia Montecarlo wasn't really intended to be a replacement for the Stratos but most people saw it as that especially since they both had that quirky mid ship engine. But thats where the similarities ended, instead of the Ferrari V6 it now used a Fiat based 4 cylinder and unlike the Stratos, it was built as a road car first, in fact it didn't choose to race, racing chose it. Because of the Stratos' domination run, the FIA [the ppl in charge of most racing series] decided to make a special group for specail cars like the Stratos, this was dubbed Group B. Now between Group B and the Stratos, Audi entered the ring with their Quattro, the first 4WD Rally Car, it took over the dominating role the Stratos had and pushed Lancia to develop their Group B monster, the 037.

The 037 was based on the Montecarlo [ever so slightly] among the modifications made to upgrade it to a rally car, Lancia slapped on a fat supercharger to get back on the power ball and get ready to kick some Audi arse. The 1982 season was used as practice runs and reliability test, all signs showed it had promise, and by 1983, the 037 dominated the WRC. Being the first Group B car, Lancia was essentially in a class by themselves as no manufacturer dared step foot in the ring off such a new and dangerous class, but after the 037 win, everyone entered. Despite not being able to fulfill another win for the team, the 037 can proudly bearing the badge of being a) the last 2WD car to win the WRC and the only 2WD car to beat the Audi Quattro.

In order to stay competitive, Lancia had to follow the Quattros and go 4WD,

however, that wasn't the only trick Lancia brought with the Delta S4........

The Delta was a small family hatchback built by Lancia, the Delta S4 however, had little in common with that hatchback [apart from the silhouette, nothing really]. Continuing with their mid ship layout, the Delta S4 was Lancia's first attempt into the world of 4WD as well as turbocharging. But one turbocharger was not enough for Lancia, hence why they added a supercharger as well. This ended up being the first car to be supercharged and turbocharged. As before the technology was so far ahead that it took another 20 years later for the world to see a mass produced twin-charged engine.

It took on the entire Group B field, this time flooded with Peugeots, Renaults, Fords and Audis running up top. In the 1985 season in what was intended to be a test, Lancia replaced the aging 037 with the Delta S4 at the last race of the season, the Delta S4 came first and second. The 1986 season seemed even brighter. At the end of the '86 season Lancia had won it bringing their tally up to 5 championship wins, but at the last minute, the FIA decided to cancel the results for the Sanremo rally nullifying all points gained in that race, this brought down Lancia and gave Peugeot the title.

Even darker than their loss was the loss that lead up to the death of a legend.

During the 1986 Tour de Corse rally in France, Lancia driver Henri Toivonnen was blasting through the hills dominating time slots one by one, however when he did not show up for one time slot, everyone got worried. It was later discovered that Henri's car crashed and burned trapping him and his co-driver in a ball of flames, only the car's tube frame survived the ordeal.

As a result of this crash, Group B was declared over as the cars were deemed too fast to race. Ironically, the company that was responsible for the start of Group B was also behind its demise.

But from the ashes shun brighter days for Lancia, the Delta HF

After the end of Group B, Lancia had to halt the S4's replacement and come up quick with a competitor for the next season, the result was a modified version of the road going Delta dubbed the HF Integrale. This was Lancia building an average car up to race-worthiness and long story short the HF Integrale continued in the Lancia tradition of winning right off the bat winning in 1987 straight up until 1992 when Lancia decided to give up on rallying. In total it won 6 straight titles, more than any other car before or after it as well as racking up the total to 10 overall wins for Lancia, more than any other car company before and after it. As a result it became natural for the Delta HF to become an instant classic.

But with all stories there is an end, Lancia today.....

Now sometime in the 80s Lancia lost its reputation after it had problems with cars rusting constantly, this almost lead them bankrupt and forced them to go low key, but after a recent merger of the Fiat and Chrysler nameplates, Lancia is back.... sorta.

The first car brought back was the Delta name, which is nothing like the epic ones mentioned before. Instead of the hardcore hot hatchback the Delta is now a big family sedan [a good looking one] but not as sporty as the original will ever be. To add insult to injury, Lancia's aren't even making cars, most of them are now degraded to rebadged Chrysler's [which is nothing near what Lancia deserves].

But in a hill far away, a rich man is bringing back the first proper Lancia legend in a proper manner, the Stratos is back. Just like the last one, its low, short, wedgey, powered by Ferrari [this time a V8] and unfortunately, produced in tiny numbers. It was decided to be built by an independent investor who pretty much just chopped 8 inches out of a Ferrari F430 and put on a better looking body. The resurrection of the Stratos name is what is needed for the company, as Ford would say, to be a pace car, even it is for a bag of Lancia badged American cars.

So will Lancia be remembered for its past or its bland present [sans the Stratos] only time will tell as the most successful rallying constructor steps into new clothes and a new persona hopefully to make enough profit to stand on its own 4 wheels.

How the 2011 F1 season works

2011-02-25T21:32:00.009-06:00

So a part of my original blog plan for the year was to release a blog post per weekend in anticipation of the start of the 2011 season but that hasn't been going as planned. Anyways there are those who do not know how F1 works and probably is planning on keeping track this season, so to help them here is a summarized understanding of how it works broken down into chapters depending on what interests you.

Important names of people that aren't drivers:

First off an introduction to the people working behind the scenes.

Bernie Ecclestone- head of the Formula 1 group of companies [if you want to call it that] basically he sets the rules in the sport. Super rich, think of him as the British Donald Trump except with a Beatles hair cut. Quite possibly the only person that can be robbed and still make money.

Jean Todt- head of the FIA, the organisation that is in charge of F1. Former head of the Ferrari team back when they dominated almost every race

Max Mosley- immediate past head of the FIA, made famous for his Nazi themed sex tape.

Flavio Briatore- former head of the Renault F1 team, currently in exile due to the great crashgate scandal on 2008. Not really interested in F1 at all, just in it to make money. Milestones: giving Schumacher and Alonso 2 driver's championships each, impregnating Heidi Klum and marrying her

Sir Jackie Stewart- the typical annoying Scotsman mandatory in all sporting disciplines. His role is to ensure that driver's don't die. F1 has been death free since 1994, apparently he is doing job quite well. Also 3 time driver's champ.

Before the season starts......

A Formula 1 season, like most sporting seasons, take place annually with a break between the end and beginning to help rest the athletes [in most cases its time for them to get drunk]. Like other racing disciplines, F1 usually takes it's break in the winter season [usually 3-4 months] and a short 3 week one in the summer. In the winter break teams reshuffle: dropping drivers that sucked, buying drivers that suck even more, developing cars to new rules that change yearly and preparing themselves to better their performance over last year [Williams doesn't believe in this last one]. 3 weekends are reserved for cars to be tested, to ensure an equal amount of research among teams. All other tests are done via use of computers or scale models. Despite this, the really smart teams take their cars for "publicity runs" to add on practice hours [remember that time Red Bull Racing came to Jamaica, yeahish].

The race......

Each F1 race takes place on a different track on an average of an every other week basis. Races usually take around 90 minutes to complete but in the case of rain or accidents, if a race passes the 2 hour mark, one more lap is allowed to be completed and then the race ends. If a certain percentage of the race isn't complete, half points are alloted. There are 19 races this season, the list of which can be seen here. My personal favorites have to be the Monaco GP and the Singapore GP.

The drivers.....

Each driver needs to have an S class racing licence, only the best of the best racers can get one. F1 is so strict in fact that even the driver of the pace car needs an S licence as well. Drivers collect points through the season, the driver with the most points wins the season, if there is the case of a tie, it is decided by who has the most 1st place finishes, if that is a tie as well it's decided by who has the most 2nd place finishes etc etc. The are 24 drivers on the field and points are only alloted to those that finish in the top 10. The points are given as 25, 18, 15, 12, 10, 8, 6, 4, 2, 1 from 1st to tenth. The drivers are listed here.

The teams......

Each team wishing to participate in F1 must meet stringent requirements before they are even allowed into the sport. At present, 12 teams participate in the sport and even though there is space for 1 more team on the grid, Bernie hasn't seen anyone else as being fit for racing. In addition to the 12 teams there are 4 engine manufacturers and teams are required to either bring their own engine [way too expensive] or use one that's already available. Teams are allowed 2 drivers as well as a set of test drivers that can be used for back up as well as in pre race practice sessions. The team listing can be seen here. Teams receive points based on the sum of the amount of points their drivers get, for example if a team has their driver finish 1st and 2nd the teams gets 25+18 = 43 points.

The cars.....

Each team is allowed to race 2 cars at a time, the teams must construct these cars themselves. F1 cars are specialized machines, the only thing they share in common with traditional cars is that they have 4 wheels. In the 2011 season it is mandatory for all cars to run KERS, a sorta racing/hybrid system that uses an electric motor [or a flywheel] to give an extra boost of power. To put things in perspective here is a random 2011 F1 car vs a fellow hybrid.

Name: Toyota Prius/Red Bull-Renault Racing RB7

Engine: 1.8L 4 cylinder with electric motor assist / 2.4L V-8 with a KERS flywheel

Horsepower: 134hp [inclusive of electric motor] /730hp engine alone, 160hp KERS alone

Weight: 1379kg /640kg

Gears: 1 planetary gear /7 speed sequential

0-60: 9.8s /0-100-0: 5s

MPG: 50 / 3

Most of the things mentioned are figures similar to all F1 cars as they are very constrained in design but yet very different in speed.

The Race Weekend......

Race weekends start on a Wednesday where all teams have to reach the stated venue. On Friday, 2 practice sessions are held to give a preview of who is doing well on the track [Monaco is the only track that has its practice sessions on Thursday] On Saturday, another practice session is held followed by qualifying. Qualifying determines the order in which the cars start [and on a typical boring race weekend, will determine the winner] Qualifying is split into 3 stages, at the first 2 stages the slowest 7 are knocked out giving the rest another chance to qualify. The first two stages are 20 minutes long while the final stage is 10 minutes. The driver's position is dependent on the fastest time they post in the final session they partake in. For example if a driver gets the 10th fastest time in Q1 but only manages to get the 12th fastest time in Q2, they are placed 12th. On Sunday the race begins,the drivers go around the track at top speed, they can't refuel and they have to change their tyres, here is Red Bull doing some pitstop practice.

The end result is the person who completes the given amount of laps in the shortest amount of time wins, there are other rules some are higlighted in this post on racing flags just in case.

2011 list of F1 teams and which ones to follow [update]

2011-02-24T20:24:00.006-06:00

The 2011 F1 season ~~is a month away~~ IS HERE and already there has been a big Huayra over it. With the Bahrain riots and Robert Kubica's crash, the season isn't starting off smoothly. Anyways on to the top 5 contenders.

Red Bull Racing - Renault

Car name: RB7

Position last year: 1st

Drivers [Driver name/country/Car #/position last season] :

Strengths: The greatest aerodynamic engineer EVER [Adrian Newey], The fastest driver on the field [Vettel], fastest of the experienced drivers [Webber] strong on tracks with a lot of twisty bits

Weaknesses: plagued last year with reliability issues, Vettel can be a bit wreckless, poor performance on faster tracks, no fully functioning KERS system as yet [but they've been disregarding it nonetheless and still acquiring wins]

Summary: The team that rose from nothing to the top has now become the prey with now 5 teams entering the top rankings. Suggested team for those who like underdogs [not really underdogs now but u get the point] and teams named after energy drinks

McLaren-Mercedes

Car name: MP4-26

Position last year: 2nd

Drivers [Driver name/country/Car #/position last season] :

Strengths: The only team with 2 former driver's champs, fairly reliable car, fastest on the straights last season, radically designed sidepods and exhausts [they're back to boring exhausts now] A very aggressive overtaker [Hamilton] and a man that can drive a fragile car fast [Button]

Weaknesses: They haven't won a constructor's title since 1998, slower than the Red Bulls around corners. Button has a tendency to fall asleep at the wheel

Summary: One of the Top Four teams struggling to claw its way back up to the top step, after having to recover from a poor season in 2009, 2010 showed how quickly they can turn around a car

Scuderia Ferrari Marlboro

Car name: F150th Italia

Position last year: 3rd

Drivers [Driver name/country/Car #/position last season] :

Strengths: The most consistently fast team EVAR, most constructors wins EVAR, oldest team in F1, Alonso is a damn good driver and Massa can be an excellent pawn especially with team orders being introduced this season.

Weaknesses: They tend to have a lot of slow spells and due to the constant pawning of Massa, although Alonso may well and be world champ, there's a low possibility that they will win the constructors title.

Summary: One of the Top Four teams that has long been the favorite among many, recommended team for band waggonists or ppl that like Marlboro cigarettes

Mercedes GP Petronas

Car name: MGP W02

Position last year: 4th

Drivers [Driver name/country/Car #/position last season] :

Strengths: A good mix of experience [Schumacher] and young talent [Rosberg], the legendary team principal that is Ross Brawn, lots of development work went into this car from the middle of last season

Weaknesses: Still a big 'if' surrounding Schumacher's place in the sport

Summary: One of the teams that should be winning but isn't, for ppl that believe in teams like Liverpool and the Chicago Cubs

Lotus - Renault GP [not to be confused with Team Lotus]

Car name: R31

Position last year: 5th

Drivers [Driver name/country/Car #/position last season] :

Nick Heidfeld/Germany/9/18 [replacing Robert Kubica]
Vitaly Petrov/Russia/10/13

Strengths: The most radically designed car and for awhile the fastest car in pre season practice, lots of development time last season, so far they've got 2 3rd place spots and have been mixing it with the top tier

Weaknesses: No Kubica, may never win a race

Summary: A team that has a car that quite possibly outclasses it drivers. [which is the first this has happened ironically] For people that like black and yellow and Soviet Russians

SauberF1 Team-Ferrari

Car name: C30

Position last year: 8th

Drivers [Driver name/country/Car #/position last season] :

Strengths: Two men that do not know the meaning of brake points.

Weaknesses: Don't expect a win from them, not exactly the prettiest car

Summary: By far the most entertaining team, usually spends their time buzzing around the Mercedes team. For people that love vigilant overtaking and Claro

5 Random facts about Robert 'Bob' Kubica

2011-02-07T22:27:00.003-06:00

In 2007, while everyone was following the hype of Hamilton I chose to follow a young Polish lad called Robert. Kubica was a constant up setter in races with a handful of bad luck spells preventing him from winning. The fact he could drive meh cars and reach the podium was commendable. After rumors of making a switch to Ferrari, his future looked even brighter however, Massa retained his contract leaving Kubica stuck at Renault. Nevertheless this season seemed promising as his R30 Renault was a top runner in pre season testing and looked to cause a stir in the chase for the constructors championship. Recently however a major accident has sidelined him for the 2011 season and maybe forever. Along with a broken leg and arm, the major injury came from a partial amputation of his hand. Here are just some snippets of info about Kubica that I thought I'd share.

1) He's the first Polish F1 driver

2) He's the 99th person to win an F1 race [Kovalainen is #100]

3) His only win @ the 08 Canadian GP is the only win on record for BMW Sauber

4) At the 07 Canadian GP he was involved in one of the worst crashes ever in modern F1 history [his absence due to injuries lead to Vettel getting a race seat]

5) His height and weight has been a constant disadvantage in racing and has lead to F1 cars having higher minimum weights in order to level the playing field for tall drivers like Kubica [and his teammate Petrov

Get well soon man.

My Racetrack Wishlist for F1

2011-01-15T19:10:00.018-06:00

10 Tracks that I would like to see make a return to F1

10) Brands Hatch

A long but simple track with a funny name, Brands Hatch is one of Britain's most famous and busiest tracks. The British Grand Prix has been hosted here a couple time but unfortunately the much larger [capacity wise] Silverstone has been on the top podium for selection of the British Grand Prix for most of the 90s up until now. The highlight of this track to me is the fast downhill right hander that takes place right after the start/finish straight, expect a lot of crashes in a more exciting manner than other GPs

One Lap of Brands Hatch

9) Detroit Street Circuit

Who doesn't love a street circuit? [except for Valencia] Street Circuits are the ultimate test of driver precision and consistency, one bump off the line and your gone. For this reason alone the Detroit Street Circuit [which hosted the American GP] would be one of the most challenging street circuits. Apart from its sheer difficulty, Detroit is America's motor haven and nothing is more special than hosting a race in the middle of the "Motor City." To add emphasis to this, the circuit passes by GM's HQ [Renaissance Centre] and the home of the Detroit Auto Show, the COBO Arena.

The start of the '87 race

8) AVUS

If you've heard of Auto Union chances are you've seen a picture of a V16 type C going around some crazy concrete banking. In most cases, most of these pics may have been taken at AVUS, a high speed test track that is now a section of the Autobahn. It played host primarily to Germans trying to go fast and when they weren't fighting a war, it held a grand prix or two. The absolute craziness that took place on this track should be continued [even if it's not F1 doing it] on the replacement Lausitzring. With todays safety standards, chances are that if race cars were to race there they will probably still be doing the speeds that Auto Unions reached in the 30s [200mph] only in safety cells and not magnesium coffins.

AVUS GP in 1937

7) Circuit de Nevers Magny-Cours

Magny-Cours was just an amazing piece of flowing fast chicanes that was sadly just at the wrong place at the wrong time. Even though overtaking was minimum there just admiring the cars take corners flat out was enough entertainment for me.

2008 French Grand Prix

6) Indianapolis Motor Speedway

Indy has had a bittersweet relationship with F1, it became the home of F1 in America by making the Indy 500 an F1 event, after the 500 was dropped from F1, it returned using the infield circuit which became known for the end of F1 in America. After coming off of the final corner, the high cornering forces caused tyre failure on Rolf Schumacher's car in 05. As a result Michelin called all cars to have a mandatory tyre recall leaving cars that didn't have Michelins [Ferrari and some of the crap teams] to lead the race. In the end only 6 cars finished and American F1 fans everywhere had a sad. The result of this was a reintroduction to tyre changes in pitstops [which was banned that season] and the switch to a sole tyre supplier [which eventually became Bridgestone] I hope that in the future, Indy and Bernie settle there differences and we'll see a return to one of America's greatest circuits to F1.

2000 US GP

5) Circuit Paul Ricard

The Paul Ricard Circuit was built to be the most technologically superior race track in the world. Instead of gravel traps, it had abrasive run off strips [those red and blue stripes] and it ditched tyre walls in favor of Tecpro Barriers. Despite this, big crashes took place here and the long 'Mistral' straight didn't help a bit. For a quite a while it served as the home as the French Grand Prix but instead it is now one of the most popular test circuits. I myself just find those red and blue stripes a thing of beauty and would easily serve as one of the best looking circuits on the calendar. I propose that this becomes one of the official test tracks for the season.

A lap of Paul Ricard [b4 they put on the cool colors]

4) Watkins Glen International

Said to be the adopted home of F1 racing in America after the 500 was dropped, the New York based track, known simply as 'The Glen' has been home not only to F1s US Grand Prix, but almost ever form of top tier road racing available. Just watching NASCAR races, the track just screams old school. Although the cambers are too steep, the surface too uneven and the elevation too tricky, I feel The Glen in nothing more than a scaled down Nurburgring. The simply layout might bore most people but I feel the challenges on the track construction itself would be where all the entertainment is at. Sadly if this were to be included in the present day F1 calendar, a full track overhaul would be needed.

1970 US GP

3) Imola

Autodromo Enzo e Dino Ferrari [if you want to get anal] will forever be known as the place where Roland Ratzenburger and Ayrton Senna lost their lives. The ever dangerous high speed track has constantly over the year been neutered in one way or another in the name of safety. The high speed corners had a bad habit of sling-shooting cars off the track [which is what happened to Senna] Apart from the impending death looming around each corner, just judging from the name, Imola is the home of the Tifosi. The Tifosi is a group of die hard Ferrari fans that will kill and maim if a Ferrari does not win [the lap record is still held by a Ferrari btw] The mix of passion, danger and history have all made Imola an important track but unfortunately, with all the neutering in the world, the F1 gurus still cannot claim it as legal just yet.

One Lap of Imola

2) The Bugatti Circuit

Most people don't know this track, but most, if not all, know the track its attached to, Circuit de la Sarthe. The Sarthe, for most of the year, is a highway and as such cannot be raced on 24/7 so The Bugatti Circuit served as a permanent race fixture to keep the residents busy. The only part this track shares with the monstrous 8 mile course is the section from the Ford Chicane up to the S's. The shortened track has been used for F1 briefly as it forms a more reasonable solution than using the full 'Sarthe' layout. Despite being a baby Sarthe, the twisty bits do get interesting and you sort of have to be respectful that you are in fact racing on history, a track older than F1 itself. Because there is no French Grand Prix, why not just use this?

Some laps of the Bugatti Circuit

1) The Nurburgring Nordschleife

Was there any doubt that this wouldn't be #1? 13 miles of death and ruin twisting around the scenic German hills as well as 3-4 villages. The 'Ring' is a legend in its own right and is widely accepted as the only F1 track NEVER to return to host an F1 event. To ensure a link is made, the much shorter Nurburgring track, built specifically for F1 use, shares only the start finish straight with the old Norschleife [granted you're goin in the opposite direction] Because of the lame Valencia Circuit, the Nurburgring has been demoted from European GP to German GP, a title it has to rotate with Hockenheimring. The good news is the Nurburgring returns this season.

One Lap Around the Ring

5 tracks I wish would make an appearance in F1

5) Infineon Raceway

Quite possibly one of the few tracks with such a high elevation change, a drop from one end to the other might certainly guarantee death. Infineon is one of America's few none oval tracks and its also home to a stage of NASCAR. The track is known specifically for placing all of its corners either goin uphill, downhill or both with special attention given to putting apexes at the peak of the hills making corners blind. Its a great track with favorable run off and NASCAR spec seating capacity so it should be good enough for F1.

Suggested name: They turn right in America too GP

One Lap of Infineon

4) Tsukuba Circuit

This is famous for being completely opposite in size to the Nordschleife. At 1.2 miles, its smaller than some F1 straights. The track may pose a difficulty in holding the full field of F1 cars, but that action should be continuous. The main purpose of having an F1 event here would just to see how it would work.

Suggested name: Japanese GP mini

The Drift King himself [not drifting] around Tsukuba

3) Mazda Raceway Laguna Seca

By far America's greatest racing track. The corkscrew alone would cause drivers to wet themselves without even mentioning the blind corners and drastic elevation changes. The track is nothing short of amazing and has made several attempts to make it on the F1 calendar. The problem however lies now only with the danger of its signature curve, but it also lacks the seating capacity that the F1 guys want. [Keep in mind most people who watch a race at Laguna Seca camp out there]

Suggested name: The Corkscrew GP

The Greatest Race Finish EVAR

2) Circuit de la Sarthe

Circuit de la Sarthe is pretty much the longer version of The Bugatti circuit taking up an astonishing 8 miles, nearly 4 miles of it is the ridiculously long Mulsanne straight. This high speed track has been the home of the 24 hours of Le Mans for almost 90 years. The world's longest race on one of the longest tracks always spews out some drama, seeing F1 cars on the track would have been a perfect test for durability especially since the FIA is pushing towards more reliable cars that last longer

Suggested name: 24 Laps of Le Mans

The start of the '07 race

1) Bathurst [Mount Panorama Circuit]

Quite possibly the closest track in comparison to the Nurburgring. The 3.8 mile circuit is Australia's automotive mecca where the two big names of Ford and Holden duke it out along the twisty streets of Mount Panorama. The challenge of the narrow roads, elevations changes, no run off and fast downhill back straight ensure drama and excitement [and no FIA certification] How many tracks have the authority to name their first corner Hell?

Suggested name: Bathurst GP

One lap of the circuit

10 Reasons why the Audi RS2 is cool

2011-01-12T20:28:00.011-06:00

The station wagon is a dying breed quickly being replaced by SUVs and cross overs. Its no surprise then that petrol heads around the world rejoice at the sound of a company releasing a new station wagon [especially a fast one] But before the Cadillac CTS-V Wagon, BMW M5 Estate and Mercedes E63 AMG Estate, there was the Audi RS2 Avant, the first real sports car worrying station wagon from Europe.

10) It had a 6 speed manual

During the time it was being built, 5 speed manuals were still the top of the line transmissions with only a few elite hypercars running 6 speeds. To proove this wagon was no fluke, Audi dropped in their 6 gears and watched the fans drool. Even now 6 speed manuals are rare [for all the wrong reasons] and traditional cars are going all sissy with their automatic only options [evil eye at Mercedes and Ferrari] But because you are a man, you'll want a 6 speed.

9) It had quattro

Audi's proven 4WD "quattro" system was taken straight out of the rally ready Quattro sports car and plopped in this car for maximum fun. 4WD turns this heavy wagon into a fling-able grip machine. Expect the children in the backseat to magically get thinner due to constant nausea.

8) It had a 5 banger Turbo

And not just any 5 banger but a tuned version of the engine from the Audi Quattro sport car. Because of the engines Group B background tech, the engine was sturdy and able to digest power figures as high as 800hp. But from a 2.2L, 315hp stock isn't bad either.

7) 162MPH [limited] top speed

Already you're faster than most BMWs, Benzes and a couple of Porsches. Imagine if you were to remove that limiter [NOOOeeeeeessssssss]. The acceleration was epic, 0-60 in 4.8s

Compared to sports cars of its time [94-95]

Ferrari F355: 4.6s

Porsche Carrera RS: 4.7s

Aston Martin DB7: 4.9s

The most amazing thing however was its 0-30 time: 1.5s [that's F1 territory]

6) It's GERMAN

No, it will not invade Poland [but it would be helpful] Germans make good cars, as in they really make good cars. You can feel safe knowing that the springs are made from materials that springs are supposed to be from [which is handy knowing especially with a car this age] Unfortunately being German means that when things go wrong, expect to earn a doctorate in mechanics before you can attempt fixing something [which can work for you if you like a challenge]

5)It was the first Audi with an RS badge

Audi's RS range is a prestigious range, its Audi's answer to the AMG's, V's, F's and M's flying around the place, of course to launch the brand new badge they had to do it with a bang. Only the Audi Quattro would have been more appropriate.

4) It's a WAGON

Wagons are the coolest forms of transportation EVER, no argument necessary. As Clarkson said when describing the M5 Estate "This is one of the most exciting cars made to date, but because its also an estate, your dog can come too." Nothing warms the heart of an auto enthusiast of knowing that they can have a fun car + a car to take the family out in + a ton of space all in one package.

3) It's a Sleeper

Because its a wagon, no one would expect you to blow their doors off, even though you easily could. Expect to give other cars that flaunt their speed problems [Evolutions and Imprezas are made to look obviously fast due to their spoilers and scoops and such, which is the opposite of sleeper mentality.]

2) It Was Built By Porsche

When I saw built by Porsche I mean it, the brakes, the suspension, the wheels and even the rear view mirrors are all by Porsche. Engine tuning was also done by them. To date, Porsche has not helped to build another car alongside other manufacturers [Before this they did the Benz 500E and the VW 914] Of course if you want to keep it a sleeper, just hold on to this piece of information.

1) It's Cheap [Relatively]

I've seen RS2 prices vary from 10,000 pounds all the way up to 38k and the fact is present owners don't want to let go. But face it, you are getting a car more powerful, faster, more practical and rarer than the Audi Quattro for [roughly] the same price. [This one's for sale]

Twin Engined Part 2

2011-01-06T21:03:00.006-06:00

After my last blog about twin engined vehicles, quite a handful of persons made some more suggestions to add to the list. Here it goes.

Pikes Peak edition twin engined Cultus

Long before Nobuhiro "Monster" Tajima rocketed his Escudos and XL7s up Pikes Peak, he started out with a twin engined Suzuki Cultus powered by two heavily modified and turbocharged G16s each pushing out 400hp leading to an 800hp 4WD monster in an 873kg package. After his run was over with this car he went on to running with twin engined Escudos and then on to his usual lot of single engined Escudos and XL7s. Now VW also did a couple twin engined experiments for the same hill climb using Sciroccos and Golfs, but of course VW exited the sport after lacking success, unlike Suzuki who continuously tried up to the point where it's a one horse race now.

Mini Moke Twin

The Mini Moke was to be Britain's answer to the successful Jeep CJ's they had running around in the war. Of course unlike the CJ [which was originally designed to go offroad] the Moke was built using parts from the Mini, which was a city car, which wasn't built to go offroad. Unfortunately no military wanted a Moke [as golf carts were cheaper and safer] so they sold them to the public and they were relatively successful [which is weird] Anyways, while they experimented with the Moke they tried out 4WD which was, in these days, still in the witchcraft stage of development. The biggest problem they faced immediately with putting 4WD on this was the ground clearance, because this was essentially an offroad Mini, ground clearance was limited and putting on 4WD equipment under the car would make things worse. The solution, instead of linking the front wheels and back wheels to one engine and transmission, they gave the back wheels its own engine and transmission. So you're here thinking, "a Mini, with twice the engine, thats ridiculous!" and in fact it was too good to be true. Because the Moke used the 800cc and smtn engines [dunno why] instead of the top of the line 1275cc engines, power really was non existent. And of course because, the heaviest part of any car will always be the engine followed by the transmission, and this had two of each, it was bloated. The idea was scrapped and they figured the little benefit from 4WD is negligible compared to loss incurred by the extra weight. But look at it offroad [this is a FF one though]

Citroen Sahara

The Citroen 2CV, one of the only cars in the world that was as slow as it was cool. Of course I may be the only person who think's they are cool but never mind that. In the original design brief for the 2CV they said "it must be able to carry peasants across the rough countryside" The solution to that, give it suspension as soft as teddy bears. Of course because it was so slow, they could have made it even softer seeing that it wouldn't reach the high speeds associated with body roll. After the success of the 2CV soldiered on, someone thought it was a great idea to give those peasants 4WD so they could rally them. Surely enough the french decided it was time for them to make a 4WD car but unfortunately they didn't know how [especially since the French created Front wheel drive] So they did it the Mini Moke way. Take another asthmatic flat 2 cylinder engine from another 2CV and put it around the back. Now with 2 flat 2 cylinders you might think it would be 2/3 as fast as 911, but it was just as slow as before, only with a new name, "The Sahara" and a big noisy hot box where the trunk used to be.

Exit Through the Gift Shop: The Review

2011-01-02T18:54:00.007-06:00

Ok, so by now all 3 of my die hard followers [who maybe the same person] may have read my summary of the movie 'Exit Through the Gift Shop', so now the easy part, the review/critique. Ok, who am I kidding there are no negative critiques so far about the movie and it is nothing short of brilliantly accurate without a spot of boredom [well I just like documentaries naturally so that last phrase may be biased].

As mentioned in the summary the movie surrounds the life of Thierry Guetta who becomes an overnight celebrity in the art world, of course Guetta's purpose in the film is to show just how ridiculously low the standards of art has fallen. To highlight the point even further, aspects of Guetta's life are selectively chosen specifically his clumsy behavior. Apart from tripping and falling over frequently, during the entire duration of the film he is described as being crazy, insane or dumb, yet very determined in performing what he had to do. As a result this gives Guetta a double edged reputation, some see him as an over hyped sensation made famous only by the fact that he was mindlessly endorsed by the rich and famous while others see him as an example of how far hard work, determination and hope can carry you. Unfortunately the movie focuses on the former and is not the first time Banksy places focus on this theme. In 2006 Banksy manages to swap out the cover art and CDs of Paris Hilton's album [titled Paris] and replace it with content questioning the acclaim to her fame [an example is the picture posted above]. The full story can be read here. Like Paris, the film shows how Guetta's lack of any defining talent or originality is simply substituted by heavy endorsements. This mockery of how the public perceives art peaks when Thierry gust applies a light film of spray paint over his prints to create "special editions". His work pretty much follows this theme, a slight alteration on popular icons to create "art".

Homage to the past

Before the days of Banksy and Fairey, 2 artists paved the way for what is now known as street art, Andy Warhol and Blek Le Rat. Warhol was more of a traditional mainstream artist who partook in the introduction of pop art, a system of emphasizing the icons of contemporary culture. Apart from a short snippet of Shepard dressed as Warhol, Banksy clearly shows this when he states that Guetta followed Warhol by the use of repeating cultural icons with the exception that Guetta repeated these themes until they made no sense.

After watching the movie for a third or 4th time I came to notice that the title of Guetta's first show "Life is Beautiful" is sort of a hommage to Blek's show which translated to English pretty much says "The Sky is blue and Life is Beautiful." This can be taken as Banksy's tribute to Blek [who many consider to be the source of inspiration for most of his works]

As short as this review is, the fact is, after going through this and other graffiti documentaries and books, I possibly could not in one blog post possibly attempt to summarize the graffiti world as a) its so diverse and complex and b) its still an active art movement. My conclusion, watch the movie, watch Bomb It as well and read some interviews with Banksy and Blek as well. toodles pplz

Exit Through the Gift Shop: The Summary

2011-01-01T18:45:00.008-06:00

Exit Through The Gift Shop is a documentary film directed by the famous, yet anonymous, street artist only known as Banksy. The film focuses around the efforts of Thierry Guetta and his attempt to create a documentary about the Street Art movement [aka Graffiti, as its known to most persons] The film later turns the cameras on him as he moves on to create a career in the world of street art in an attempt to please his peers. It is exposed later on in the film that both attempts go on different paths than which was originally intended yet at the same time turn out to be a success [in a sort of ironic way as we shall soon see].

Thierry Guetta [MBW]

The story starts off with the introduction of Thierry Guetta, an L.A. based clothes retailer who migrated there from France. Guetta lived a successful and steady life making huge profits from overpriced goods in addition, he is shown to be a family man living with his wife and 3 children. In what seems so far to be a normal man living the "American Dream" turns out to be a man with a chronic addiction to document his entire life on film. Later on in the film it is discovered that this addiction to documentation originated from the events surrounding the loss of his mother at a young age, because he missed this critical period of his life, he felt that all of his memories should be able to be recorded and watched at a later date [he later on revealed that although he has kept all of his tapes in storage, he has not yet watched a single tape].

After his addiction is accepted by his family and close companions, a family trip to France puts his video taping addiction to use, primarily from being in the right place at the right time. He discovers that his cousin, 'Invader' is a member of the ever expanding street art movement taking place around the world. 'Invader' introduces his cousin to other artists such as Monsieur Andre, Samo and Zeus. Guetta's introduction to the movement lead to him becoming an unofficial, offical videographer to the graffiti artists. After heading back to L.A. with Invader he met with one of America's most famous street artist, Shepard Fairey.

Shepard Fairey [as most ppl know him]

His journey with Fairey brought Guetta into the global arena of Street Art. Guetta tagged alongside Fairey as an assistant to him for years meeting other artists along the way such as Buffmonster, Neckface, Swoon, Borf, Sweet Toof & Cyclops. This journey assisting other artists exposed the darker side of street art such as run ins with the police and injuries from scaling walls. The experience overall pushed Guetta to continue filming the artists until he felt he filmed all the major artists, except Banksy.

Guetta felt as if Banksy would be the final piece in his collection of film and was persistent to get him on film. As fate would have it, he finally encountered Banksy by chance and eventually tagged alongside him wherever he went. After showing the inner workings of Banksy, Guetta was encouraged to finally stop filming and compile his documentary [which of course Guetta was not prepared for] on what Street Art really was. From seeing a preliminary showing of the 'documentary', Banksy realized that Guetta had no experience in making a documentary. As a result, Banksy took over Guetta's collection of tapes while Banksy told him to stop videoing. With so much excess free time, Guetta started his own graffiti campaign until it exploded into a large scale art exhibition under which he undertook the name of Mr. Brainwash [MBW]. The story ends with MBW hosting his own art exhibition which transforms him into a successful name in the art industry.

To conclude: Invader, Fairey and Banksy all feel responsible for creating MBW all of whom had mixed feelings about his rapid progress as an artist. A full conclusion will be posted tmrw when I'm awake but for those who can't see the vid, hopefully this summary will give some insight and a clearer view into the concept of the film.

Banksy, as shown in the film

The BEEeeeeeaaaaasssstiiiieeeeee BOOOOoooooyyyzzzz

2010-12-29T13:57:00.006-06:00

^You're supposed to sound like this when you read the title

I think somewhere around the time of 2004 right around the release of their 6th album, To The 5 Boroughs, I remember there being countless Beastie Boys marathons on MTV2. These marathons were aimed at promoting them as well as giving people insight as to where they are coming from, this marathon opened up my ears to a new sound, "The Sounds of Science."

L-R Mike D, King Ad-Rock, MCA

Like most people the first song that hit me was "Intergalactic" [which is still my favorite]. The song featured something I never knew I liked before, sampling. Despite being a hip hop track, Intergalactic used samples from jazz and classical music to produce a very complex beat that just seemed to flow on forever. The song Intergalactic won them a grammy while the video won them a VMA, apparently, I had good taste in music. Even though by now Intergalactic was old, the impact stuck and I found myself searching for more Beastie Boys music.

As mentioned before, this was during the release of the album To The 5 Boroughs and it seemed only natural to look for songs from this album. "Ch-Check it Out" was the most popular track off that album and the video for it played regularly. This song was a bit less interesting than Intergalactic but the video was pure lolwut and I couldn't stop watching. The next video to debut was "Triple Trouble" which sampled the Sugar Hill Gang's 'Rapper's Delight'. Yet again this video was pure lolwut but this in particular put more focus on the fourth member of the group Mix Master Mike. Mix Master Mike was the newest member of the group who came on right before the release of the 'Hello Nasty' album, of course looking for more stuff from him lead me to this song "3 MCs and 1 DJ" OMG that was the most epic piece of DJing I have ever seen in my life.

L-R MCA, Mix Master Mike, Ad-Rock and Mike D

After discovering Mix Master Mike, I went off on a tangent looking for other DJs which is where I discovered people like Fatboy Slim, DJ Qbert and DJ Shadow. He also released some albums for himself most recently the two available for download on him website 'Napalm Rockets' and 'Live Beatdown Vol 1' opened my ears into world of dubstep, which brought me into discovering grime, house and other electronic based genres that now populate most of my music. Anyways to read up more on Mix Master Mike click here.

Back to the Beastie Boys, another song that pulled up was their track, "Fight for Your Right To Party" I didn't fancy that song but the rest of the album, Licensed To Ill [their 1st album btw] was soooo awesome. That album was produced by Rick Rubin [he also produced both Run-DMC's and LL Cool J's first album] the beats were simple and in some cases only had a simple drum beat. By far my favorite song on that album was "Paul Revere" followed by "Hold It Now Hit It"

The Beastie Boys and Run-DMC

If you were paying attention to the video's you would have noticed the huge gap between how they looked then and now. Licensed To Ill was released in 1986 and between then and Hello Nasty they had 3 other albums 'Paul's Boutique', 'Check Your Head' and 'Ill Communication'. These 3 albums grew on me slowly as there was such a large genre gap between these 3 albums and the previous 3 albums I was listening to.

'Check Your Head' was their 3rd album and featured songs composed entirely by them with their own instruments. I like the numerous instrumental tracks on this album but failed to really grasp the other songs until I listened to them one at a time slowly taking in more and more songs. "Gratitude" was my favorite song for a while and eventually songs like "So What'cha Want" and "Skills to Pay the Bills" [dope beat btw] followed.

'Ill Communication' was just as hard to like but featured two of my all time favorite songs [Sabotage and Flute Loop] as well as some more instrumentals [who doesn't like instrumentals]

'Paul's Boutique' is by far my favorite Beastie album. It featured samples from almost every single song and for me describe its awesomeness will not do it justice, so I suggest you listen to the entire album yourself [with an open mind] and take note of how complex the beats are. I leave you with, what I think is the greatest music video ever, "Shadrach".

After 'To The 5 Boroughs' I was delighted to hear that the Beastie Boys were still making albums, 'The Mix-Up' [they won a grammy for that as well] and 'The Hot Sauce Committee Parts 1&2'. The Mix-Up is purely instrumental and it takes another departure from their typical hip hop genre by venturing into the world of jazz. The song "Off the Grid" is just a sample of what to expect from the album. As for the 'Hot Sauce Committee' both parts 1&2 have been put on hold primarily due to the recent illness of MCA. This album however looks promising and is definately worth the wait. "B-Boys in the Cut", "Too Many Rappers" ft Nas and "Lee Majors Come Again" have all met my Beastie Boys approval standards. Definately looking forward to hearing both albums in full, but until then, get better soon MCA.

2010 awards [for the other racing series]

2010-12-28T19:26:00.005-06:00

Apart from F1 I occasionally catch snipets of racing from LMS, Moto GP, DTM and NASCAR [in order of frequency] So here is a collection of my favorite moments [from the races I've watched] outside of F1

Best Overtake: Anthony Davidson @ 24 Hours of Le Mans [LMP1 Class]

The typical story of Le Mans for the past 3 races was the Peugeots were fast but the Audi more reliable. Around this point, Anthony Davidson [former F1 driver and quite a fast person] was driving the last Peugeot 908 HDi FAP [as the rest of them spontaneously combusted] his job was to push the car as hard as possible to pass the Audis and bring back the Le Mans crown to the French constructor, this is just one of his many daring maneuvers to take back the crown.

Crash of the Year: Luke Hines @ Mosport [ALMS GTC Class]

The impact into the gaurdrail from this crash completely destroyed it leading the race to be red flagged due to safety concerns. Just watch it for yourself

Golden Cock: Anthony Davidson

As mentioned before, Anthony Davidson was on a charge to chase down the Audis, his commitment to the race line lead to the loss of Corvette's hope for winning their debut in the GT2 class. The accident was bad enough but the interview made it worse.

Rivalry of the year: The entire GT2 field

ALMS is a wonderful little racing series packed with excitement stemming from 4 main classes, like with all endurance racing, the typical end result is a winner some lap or 2 ahead of 2nd place, not in the GT2 class. With competition coming from the Flying Lizard Porsche, the Risi Competizione Ferrari F430, the Rahal Letterman M3 and the Pratt & Miller Corvette. What was once a toss up between which Porsche shall win, is now a 4 way dog fight at each track. Although the BMWs took the constructor title by one point from the Lizards, Flying Lizard took the driver's title and each of the 4 won at least one race of the season. I just can't wait till the 2011 24hrs of Le Mans. So unfortunately although the racing was close, I don't have any footage of some of the close racing [including some footage of all four of them trailing each other at Mosport] but I do have clips from what makes GT2 so awesome from previous seasons.

Porsche vs Corvette @ Laguna Seca

Porsche vs Ferrari @ Sebring

Catastropic Failure: Peugeot 908 HDi FAP @ Le Mans

As mentioned before the Peugeots at Le Mans just exploded one by one, the last Peugeot [a 2009 spec car] was the last hope for Peugeot to gain some glory, but with just 1 hour and 15 mins to go the inevitable happened.

Moment of the Year: Top Gear Season 15 Episode 5

The greatest episode of Top Gear aired this year featuring their biggest stars ever [Tom Cruise and Cameron Diaz], the most beautiful race they ever had [some swedish youths vs a VW Touareg], the fastest car ever [the Bugatti Veyron SS] and a tribute to the greatest F1 driver ever [Ayrton Senna]. Watch here.

Lolz Moment: Potholes @ Daytona 500

So, I watched my first ever NASCAR race this year only to watch it get delayed because of potholes on the track. As the great Dale Jr said "Just put a cone on it and lets go back to racing"

Race of the Year: 24 Hrs of Le Mans

Epic race was epic, the only way to watch it is to watch it next year. There are no reruns or highlights of this race [in English at least], if you want a torrent, good luck.

Rookie of the Year: Kimi Raikkonen

The man with absolutely nothing to say made his full season debut in the WRC for the Citroen Junior team. Despite a couple crashes and only one stage win, Raikkonnen managed to win the non WRC Rallye Vosgien which lead to some promise for next season. I still want to see if he is able knock Loeb off of his crown in a works Citroen. Will that happen however? The world may never know.

Driver of the Year: Valentino Rossi

The biggest news for Rossi this year was a switch to Ducati for 2011, this alone is good news for Rossi, but the fact he was able to pull off a third place in the driver's championship season is the highlight for me. Despite missing out 3 races from an injury attained in practice, Rossi showed his dominance by managing to hold on and a couple more races before the season was over.

Music Highlight: what's left of it

2010-12-27T18:06:00.005-06:00

So, its the holidays and the racing season is over, so I shall talk about my second love, music. Because I'm still in an electro-house phase I might as well dish out the rest of my favorite artists from that genre.

Swedish House Mafia

The Swedes are cool, they gave us Ikea, Saab, Koenigsegg and Stig Blomqvist, so why haven't I heard of their music? I dunno but anyways, the Swedish House Mafia [cool name I must add] have pretty much defined what I think Swedish music should sound like; cool, steady, good typography and interesting in a weird way.

One feat. Pharrell

Miami 2 Ibiza feat Tinie Tempah

MSTRKRFT

I've mentioned in my previous post that deadmau5 was my favorite Canadian musician, so here's #2 MSTRKRFT [pronounced master craft] They sound alot like Justice primarily because they both have a similar deformed bastardized set of strings that I can never identify but if you listen, you may be able to hear what I'm talking about.

Bounce ft Nore & Isis

D.A.N.C.E. [MSTRKRFT rmx] - Justice

Vuvuvu [i promise vuvuzelas are not involved]

Neon Knights [personal favorite]

Street Justice

Paris

Mark Ronson

Back when Amy Winehouse was not in rehab and she had talent I paid attention to her songs and found her cover for Valerie, it was amazing but I couldn't help noticing the producer, Mark Ronson. Eventually I forgot about him until my official music advisor reminded me of him. The advisor notified me of his new album, Record Collection. His music is all clean and happy and stuff, but listen to him for yourself.

Valerie ft Amy Winehouse

Bang Bang Bang ft MNDR & Q-Tip

Ooh Wee ft Ghost Face Killah & Nate Dogg

Oh My God ft Lily Allen

Lose It ft Ghostface Killah & Alex Greenwald

Lycantropii

Lycantropii is a group [with no information] that specialize in mash-ups. It is the greatest collection of mash-ups that I have ever heard. You can get the entire album here. The music is a mix of mellow grooves and hard beats hit against some popular tracks.

Tiesto

The Dutch, the most interesting group of people in the world; Spyker, Rembrandt, Piet Mondrian, Gerrit Rietveld and Van Gogh are perfect examples. So now music! Tiesto is one of the greatest DJs in the world but I'm now tired so here are the videos.

Elements of Life

Speed Rail

Bad Behaviour ft Dizzee Rascal

Bright Morningstar

Carpe Noctum

Music Highlight: deadmau5

2010-12-25T13:50:00.003-06:00

Joel Zimmerman [aka deadmau5] is quite possibly now my favorite Canadian musician [tied between him and MSTRKRFT but i'll give deadmau5 the advantage due to the cool mask/helmet]

Like most people, the first song I heard was Ghosts N' Stuff and up to this day, was the only song I really enjoyed from his first two albums [For Lack of a Better Name & Random Album Title] there are other albums but I really haven't gotten around to listening, primarily because I'm hung up on his most recent one 4x4=12

no better way to describe an artist than for you to listen to him yourself

personal favorites from the album 4x4=12

Some Chords

Bad Selection

Animal Rights [this song is good but the good part starts really late]

Cthulhu Sleeps [btw his live performances are kinda awesome]

despite this listing I suggest you look up for more songs [especially from the other 2 albums cause they're still good]

2010 F1 awards w00t! by crossdrilled

2010-12-25T13:25:00.004-06:00

First a summary of the 2010 season

Best Overtake: Kamui Kobayashi @ Suzuka Circuit's Hairpin [Japanese Grand Prix]

Rumor has it that in effect for the 2011 season Kamui Kobayashi is limited to four ambitious overtaking moves per season. This race [as well as others] is the primary reason for this "suggested" rule change. In this race Kamui performed 5 overtakes in one corner. Overall Kamui jumped from 14th to 7th which is amazing considering how horrible his car is. Also add in the mix that he did all of this in front of his Japanese home crowd adds to the wonder of these overtakes.

Crash of the year: Mark Webber @ Valencia [European Grand Prix]

How could any other crash beat this head over heels rear end collision between Mark Webber's Red Bull and Heikki Kovalainnen's Lotus. Keep in mind, Webber walked away from the wreckage with no injuries.

Golden Cock: Michael Schumacher @ Hungaroring [Hungarian GP]

The biggest news of this season was the return of 7 time F1 champ Michael Schumacher and as expected Schumacher went back to his days of treating his former teammate, Rubens Barichello, like a bitch. In this video it shows just how close [and how fast] Schumacher was to squeezing the life out of Rubens. [I should probably rename this the Michael Schumacher prize]

Rivalry of the Year: Vettel vs Webber

When teams are performing well and have drivers performing just as well, it should be no surprise that both drivers would want to duke it out for the top spot. Just like Prost vs Senna and Alonso vs Hamilton when they were all at McLaren, the top tier team at the time, tension between them for the title called for some risky moves, this year was no different. The first hint of tension was after the Turkish Gran Prix were Vettel's overtake on Webber for first nearly knocked both out of the race. Webber dropped down to 3rd given McLaren a 1-2 finish while Vettel stalled his car and couldn't go any further. Everything seemed calm again until the British GP where after Webber's crash at Valencia, Webber was given the spare car while Vettel continued with his original car... the story continues in this video here. [pay attention to Webber's expressions] after this though it calmed as Webber won the race and went on to lead for most of the season. It wasn't until Abu Dhabi at the end of the season was their relationship discussed again, this time to benefit Webber. After dominating the last set of races for the season as well as Abu Dhabi qualifying, it looked as if Vettel was in a prime spot to win the race. Of course him winning the championship was unlikely as Alonso needed to place 5th but he qualified 3rd. Eventually team orders were not needed [and Red Bull already said they weren't gonna use them] as pitstop strategy mixed with a pesky little Russian in a Renault prevented Alonso from passing 7th giving Vettel the win and the world championship.

Catastrophic Failures: Sebastian Beumi @ Chinese GP Practice

I thought it was epic when Raikonnen's entire spoiler separated from his car, but for your two front wheels to detach simultaneously under braking, that is truly epic.

Moment of the Year: Heikki Kovalainnen @ Singapore GP [last lap]

Normally when a driver is involved in an accident, they get out of the car, check if their in one piece, then leave the track marshall's to take care of the rest. Heikki [aka the iceman, seeing that Kimi is no longer in F1] pretty much extinguishes the fire of his own car as it spontaneously combusts on the last lap. His efforts in keeping the fire out of the pitlane [where all the fuel pumps are] should also be applauded as he stayed in the car until he was in a safe spot, despite the raging flames going on behind him.

Lolz moment: Pharell vs the Lotus T127's engine @ Brazilian GP

Before performing for F1 Rocks in Brazil, Pharrell decided to visit some of the teams during the practice sessions. Most of his time was spent around the Lotus pits who showed him around [seeing that they are one of the more open teams on the grid] the result can be seen here [fast forward to 5:03]

Race of the Year: Korean Grand Prix [aka the mud race aka the race of the safety car]

The Korean GP was the newest race on the calendar, so new in fact that the pavement was still fresh. This freshness made the track super slippery and few cars could manage to find enough grip to stay on the track much less race on it. By the time race day came along, rain prevented the race from beginning under normal conditions as the track was like ice. This video pretty much sums up the entire race [btw this is the first time I stayed up late to watch an Asian race, never again] The result of both Red Bull's crashing put Fernando Alonso at a HUGE advantage towards the driver's championship and with 3 races to go, it looked like he would eventually take it.

Rookie of the Year: Kamui Kobayashi

Kamui Kobayashi, evidently one of the most talented drivers on the grid especially seeing how good he can be with a bad car. Of the 19 races of the season, the car failed Kamui 8 times and for the other 11 times where the car was working, he finished in the top ten 9 times. This display ensured he finished the highest among the rookies [although he entered F1 in 2009 for 2 races, 2010 is his first complete season.] In terms of rookies that started completely new for 2010, my choice would be Nico Hulkenberg especially after scoring his maiden pole position.

Driver of the Year: Fernando Alonso

Call him whatever you want, a cheater, a sly devil or a con artist despite his tainted record, it is no denying that his previous two championships were not a fluke. He is nearly impossible to overtake yet he doesn't block too much, he is plainly fast and has attributed his success to keeping calm and carrying on which has caused him to benefit greatly during the failures of Red Bull. Despite winning the first race of the season, no one expected him to lead frog so far and so fast especially so near to the end of the season. As much as I am a Vettel fan, Alonso is worthy of winning the award of driver of the year, however, I'm not jumping on his bandwagon again [yes I was an Alonso fan during 05-06 but that was it] especially after this.

And that's it, I ensured to ignore the come back of the year [which was performed by Vettel] as I've spoken quite a bit too much about him already.

Top 10 greatest female racing drivers [IMHO]

2010-12-11T06:41:00.006-06:00

Milka Duno, Sarah Fisher, Lyn St. James, Susie Stoddart and the 5 females of F1 all could have qualified for my list but these 10 were chosen for not making women look like snails on the race track and at the same time humiliating some males.

10) Natacha Gachnang [Swiss]

The first I heard of her, she was racing one of the sexy new Matech Ford GTs that were racing in the GT1 series, unfortunately none of the Ford GTs that qualified for the race finished. Despite her entire team being female, she was chosen as she was the first [and still only] female to be entered into Formula 2. She is also cousin of F1 Toro Rosso driver Sebastien Beumi.

9) Vanina Ickx [Belgian]

Everyone knows her as being the daughter of 6 times Le Mans winner Jacky Ickx as well as her bleh 9 year on and off attempt at Le Mans herself. But little do people realize that being invited to the 24 hours of Le Mans itself is a title and the fact she has been involved in Le Mans more than any other female says something.

8) Katherine Legge [British]

Vanina Ickx at one point in her career raced in DTM but after two seasons, Audi sacked her and replaced her for Katherine Legge. Legge has also raced in the Champ Car Series where her spoiler flew off and suffered a huge crash, she walked it off like a boss. She has also made a few testing appearances for the Minardi F1 team as well as the British A1 GP team.

7) Vicki Butler-Henderson (British)

It is no secret that the only thing 5th Gear has over Top Gear is Vicki. Although she has not raced in ages, Vicki is a constant reminder to the world that females can drive well. Vicki doing what she does best.

6) Danica Patrick [American]

I remember back when I just started watching Speed and Spike on Saturday mornings Danica was the host for one of those shows. Before all the sex symbol status and part time placement in NASCAR, Danica raced in the Toyota Atlantic Series [where a lot of the females on this list started out] After success she was promoted to IRL in 2005 and has constantly maintained a top ten overall finish except for her debut season where she finished 12th. She is also the only female to win a race in the IRL [2007 Twin Rings Motegi] and the only female to score a podium at the Indy 500. Despite all the hype, she really is a good driver underneath.

5) Jutta Kleinschmidt [German]

By far, the Dakar Rally is the most dangerous race ever, with on average at least one death per event. In the 2008 event, four tourists were killed by terrorist which prompted them to cancel and move the Dakar to South America [and sure enough the deaths continued]. Despite all the gloom Jutta's milestone run in 2001 lead her to become the only female to win the Dakar. It should be noted that most of these deaths occur in the motorcycle class, while Jutta experienced most of her success in the car class, she entered her first event in the motorcycle class.

4) Pat Moss [British]

Sir Stirling Moss is constantly known as the greatest driver never to have won the F1 WDC, his sister Pat however, was making noise in the forests of Europe. Pat Moss is known to be one of the greatest female rally drivers ever. Despite not entering the WRC, Pat won the Female Rally Championship 5 times. The fact she was one of the first females to really stand out in the worl of rallying puts her on the list, mainly because she more than likely inspired #1

3) Ashley Force-Hood [American]

Being daughter of NHRA legend John Force, its no surprise that she and her sister would follow suit. Now I fear drag racing and I personally think anyone who has the balls to race in this series is either really brave or crazy. The fact that she has been in it for 3 full season, beating her father on 2 occasions, says she is rather brave. It's an ongoing joke that the biggest difference between Ashley Force and Danica Patrick is that she actually wins race [and she looks better]

2) Sabine Schmitz [German]

The queen of the ring. Sabine is not only the greatest female to have graced the famed Nurburgring, but she would easily be considered entry into the class of ring masters. As a result of numerous successful stints at the ring Sabine is one of the Nurburgring's elite "taxi" drivers, you pay a fee and Sabine takes you around the track at high speed. This video says it all.

1) Michele Mouton [French]

Just because she was.

A Tale of 2 [or 3] Lotuses [or Lotii]

2010-12-08T13:58:00.005-06:00

R-L: Graham Hill [62 & 68 champ], Jim Clark [63 & 65 champ], Colin Chapman [genius] and an Unkown Guy circle the Lotus Cosworth 49 [68 constructor champ]

The story starts with a man called Colin Chapman who founded Lotus Cars in 1952. In 1954 he formed Team Lotus, a separate [yet closely related] entity to Lotus Cars. Team Lotus' focus was set solely on the development of race cars. Over time the two companies featured both defeat and success in their respective fields with Team Lotus having won the F1 Constructors Championship 7 times [4th overall in total wins]. Unfortunately after Colin's death in 1982 both Lotuses [or Lotii] faced economic woes which lead to Lotus cars being sold and bought by nearly every company on the planet while Team Lotus suffered a slow yet sudden death in 1994 after years of uncompetitive action.

Lotus 72 [2 driver's champs and 3 constructor's champs]

Lotus 49 [68 driver's and constructor's champ]

Fast forward to 2009

Lotus the car company is just getting back on its feet thanks to Malaysian money and pocket money from helping out Toyota. Along with Lotus' plans of pushing out more cars than it has ever done before, it was also considering re-entering motorsports, first on the list was the series that made it famous in the first place, Formula 1. The team that would step up to the plate would be Litespeed which registered to race under the name Lotus Racing on behalf of them [after being unable to get clearance from using the original Team Lotus name]

Now take a break and notice that there is Lotus Cars, Lotus Racing and Team Lotus, all coming from the same roots yet currently independent.

Back to Lotus Racing..... seeing that Lotus Cars is owned by Malaysians, the biggest sponsor to Lotus Racing is of course the Malaysians [as in it actually has 1Malaysia as a registered sponsor]. As a matter of fact Lotus Racing races under the Malaysian flag with a Malaysian team principal and test driver. Because of this cultural gap, there is a discontinuation between Lotus Racing and Lotus cars [evident in the fact that the Malaysians cannot use the official Lotus logo] Despite this they named the car T127, as a continuation in the number scheme Team Lotus and Lotus cars use and even stated that if they won, it would add to Lotus' overall records. To blur the line even more, Lotus Racing has chosen to choose the British Racing Green and yellow outline used by the Lotus 49 as well as using Cosworth engines which were used by both the 72 and 49.

Lotus T127 [tied for last place in 2010 but voted as best of the new teams]

To continue its quest for official status, Lotus Racing announced that as of 2011 they will be called Team Lotus after acquiring the name legally [aka a lot of money] from David Hunt [James Hunt's brother] As to why he had the rights to the Team Lotus name and not Lotus cars, I dunno. In addition to switching to the Team Lotus name for 2011 they also announced a switch to Renault engines after they suffered problems with the transmissions attached to the Cosworth engines. To distance themselves even further from the Lotus Racing moniker they also announced a return to the Black and Gold livery first used on the Lotus 72 which would be designed by the fans. Of course all these changes seem fine and dandy until another company decides they want a slice of the Lotus pie.

First rendering of the Renault derived Lotus R31

After rumors and speculation Group Lotus [aka the Lotus that makes the road cars] decided that they would enter F1 officially by buying out the current Renault team [which is officially the most successful dead broke company on the grid] Of course this just seems to be more coincidence than deliberate. After losing big money sponsor ING, Renault has been in big money problems and this sellout to Group Lotus is no surprise, what is a surprise is the timing. Group Lotus has decided to enter the 2011 season as Lotus Renault GP [remember that Lotus Racing is also using Renault engines so their names should be Team Lotus Renault].

Confused yet???? But wait there's more.

Because Lotus Racing runs their F1 factory in England near to the Lotus Cars factory and has used the T127 naming scheme as well as bought the Team Lotus name, Group Lotus, being the real Lotus F1 team, now cannot be 100% the Lotus it wants but instead more Renault than Lotus. As a result the chassis will be called the R31 [continuing Renault's naming scheme] Fortunately, Renault was based in England anyways. To make their own unique link to the past [as well as not to differ too much from the Renault car] Group Lotus has decided to choose the same black and gold livery used by the old Lotus 72s [and the 2011 Team Lotus team]. So not only will we F1 fans be stuck with 2 Lotus teams going by the same name, but they will also be using the same color scheme. One can think, "o but didn't Red Bull do something similar with Torro Rosso?" yes and no. Yes in that they are two separate teams with similar paint schemes and names and no in the sense that they are actually in a dispute rather than one being a step up to the next.

So in other words, what will happen next season? Will one rename? Will one change color scheme? Will both be forced to do both? From what I'm seeing, both are stand strong on their decision with Lotus Racing [aka Team Lotus] debating that they were here first and Group Lotus debating that they're the real deal. Only God knows what will happen but all I hope is that Hulkenberg gets that empty seat at Lotus Renault GP beside Kubica.

Update: Team Lotus [the Malaysian one] will stick to their old green and yellow paint scheme while Lotus Renault will have Petrov alongside Kubica and Team Lotus will have the same old Trulli, Kovalainnen line up.

Why I follow Vettel [the update]

2010-12-04T21:01:00.004-06:00

Well lets get the spoilers out first, Vettel is now the 2010 Formula 1 champion, in a move that not even I expected. This season has been pretty much up and down but first let me start off where I left off.

In my last post "Why I follow Vettel" I made mention of his record breaking success in his previous seasons. There are some details I had forgot to mention however:

He is also the youngest WDC runner-up
He has been in F1 before Hamilton, primarily because he by-passed having to go through GP2 [if F1 is a doctorate think of GP2 as a masters]
His leading of a lap at Fuji in 07 was made sour by a collision with now teammate Mark Webber
He overtook Hamilton in Brazil 08 on the last lap nearly allowing Massa to win the WDC [no wonder Hamilton supporters don't like him]
He is also the youngest winner of the DHL Fast Lap award [most fastest lap in an F1 season] 3 in 2009
He won the 2010 Nations Cup at the Race of Champions along with Michael Schumacher for the 4th time in a row

Ok, enough showcasing, back to the season.

As I mentioned before in "F1: whose bandwagon to jump on and why" there were 8 drivers who could have realistically taken the WDC..... after a while that list trickled down to 5 then 4 [the first time where the WDC could have went any of 4 ways in the final race] and then 1.

In my last Vettel / F1 update I left off at the end of the Spanish GP where the order in the WDC chase was Button, Alonso, Vettel, Webber and Rosberg. The next race was Monaco. But before that a quick recap

Bahrain: Vettel starts in the top spot, Vettel falls down to 4th due to spark plug issues. Alonso wins.

Australia: same as before except Vettel crashes due to brake problems. Button wins

Malaysia: Vettel fianlly wins

China: Vettel starts on pole, everyone overtakes him, ends up 6th

Spain: more brake problems push Vettel down from 2nd to 4th

Anyways back to the show.

Monaco GP

Pretty much RBR lead from start to finish with Mark Webber taking top honors here and Vettel 2nd. Both jumped to the top of the leaderboard tied for 1st place [statistically Vettel was in 2nd spot due to Webber having more wins] RBR also moved to the top of the constructors tables and gave the entire team a motivational head start going into Turkey.

Turkish GP

After a perfect weekend at Monaco and a Red Bull P1 and P2, all was looking well for RBR until. Vettel made a move that would change how people viewed him forever. While they were both leading comfortably ahead of the McLarens, Vettel decided to overtake Webber. In normal F1 teams either a) Vettel would have been told to calm down or b) Webber would have been told to move aside and let him through. Neither of these happened and the results show the rest. Vettel's collision with Webber sent him out of the race permanently while Webber was forced to finished 3rd behind the two McLaren's and from here on, Vettel was considered a hampering to Webber's success.

Canadian GP

The Red Bull ass whopping continued as the high downforce RBRs could not keep up with the Ferraris or McLarens on the long straights of Canada, it was like all of a sudden, there was a chink in Red Bull's armor.

European GP [at Valencia]

A bit bitter sweet for RedBull. Despite getting a P1 and P2, only one driver finished the race [Vettel finishing first] Webber's race was cut short after a collision with Kovalainen's Lotus. Which I find quite similar to a crash he had 11 years ago .

The win promoted Vettel from 5th to 3rd while Webber was demoted from 3rd to 4th, it still looked like a long way to go before they overtook those McLarens especially since they reached the midpoint of the season.

Midpoint Recap: Brake failures, collisions and undesirable racing set up have made Red Bull and Vettel slip behind McLaren who looked to be 2010 champions, but as I kept on saying, the season isn't over yet.

British GP

After Webber's crash at Valencia, Red Bull was short one car and Vettel really wasn't liking the set up on his. This left Red Bull to make a controversial move and make Webber and Vettel switch cars. On the outside, Webber seemed to not have minded the change especially since he went on to win the race, but inside there was a rift between the team and Webber continued to prove RBR that he indeed was their #1 driver [even though Vettel really was their #1 driver due to last years points finish]

German GP

What started out as a pole for Vettel ended as a 1-2 for Ferrari with Massa leading most of the race [up until this happened]. Getting a podium helped to tie Vettel and Webber again in the points this time for 3rd. Massa was looked down upon and thought to have no hope to reach the top of the WDC board again

Hungarian GP

Yet again there was a Red Bull 1-2 for the start but due to a delay in moving off from the safety car, Vettel was penalized with a Drive thru penalty, as you can expect he wasn't pleased. Webber went on to win the race with Vettel finishing 3rd. This pushed Webber back to the top of the leader board with Hamilton between him and Vettel.

Belgian GP

Another high speed track spelled woe for RBR. Despite getting a pole, Webber was beaten at the start [due to a near stall] and held off by Lewis Hamilton for the entire race. He went on to take over the top spot on the WDC board from him as well. The always wet conditions at Spa troubled Vettel who collided with Button, then Liuzzi. These collisions not only slowed him down but the pitstop to repair the wing after the first collision, a drive thru penalty and a one lap limp on a punctured tire ensured he stayed far away from the points. At this point most people questioned whether Vettel was in fact too young and immature to be in F1, but he continued onwards.

Italian GP

Another high speed track, in fact, the fastest track in F1. No one expected the RBRs to do well here and their absence from anywhere near pole proved everyone right. Most people were wondering would Vettel repeat the miracle he performed here in 2008 or will it be a Red Bull flop out like 2009. The race started out with a bang as Lewis was out in the 3rd corner and the Ferraris took the lead. Nothing much changed during the race except for the fact that Vettel withheld his pitstop until the last lap. Fortunately for him, the quick hands of his mechanics ensured he held on to the third spot, easily elevating him back up the WDC board. At this point, it was official that only 5 were left in the title chase with only 5 races left to go. BTW Vettel makes a good mock up of Ferrari's team order to ensure Webber gets a better position, even though Vettel beat Webber in the end.

Singapore GP

The return to a high downforce layout soothed RBR and gave them confidence especially since they knew they had an upper hand over McLaren, unfortunately they weren't paying attention to Ferrari. Alonso took the pole away from Vettel and held him off for the entire race despite endless laps of tail to wing racing, Vettel held on to second, a move that gave him slight hope for the WDC. BTW Kovalainen provided the fireworks

Japanese GP

Long story short, Vettel dominated from start to finish. The victory secured his relevance in the WDC making it a 4 horse race.

Korean GP

The newest track on the calendar with a roadway as slippery as a greased spoon. Not much cars found a groove on this track, not much cars except for Red Bull who easily grasped P1 and P2 with Vettel up front. The race itself was chaos, slippery track plus rain = safety car. For people like me that stayed awake until 2am just to watch 45 mins of safety car, this race was a disappointment, up until it started. After a couple of laps, cars went left right and centre. Cars pitted for new tires, tried them and then pitted again for moar tires. The track was a mess. This showed when Webber eventually spun off and shunted his car taking him out of the race and the points. Nearer to the end of the race, Vettel was seen as a shoe-in for the winner, up until it all went boom. After making it pass the 46th lap, Vettel's engine went pop and he had to go all Kovalainen on that fire.

Brazilian GP

After the mayhem of Korea, both Red Bulls needed a strong finish to keep their hopes alive, and did they deliver. Despite starting P2 and P3 [due to an unexpected pole from Hulkenberg] The Red Bulls finished 1-2 with the only thing slowing them down being lapped traffic. The 1-2 easily set them on top to win the constructors title. Of course, that was the easy part, the hard part resided in the season finisher at Abu Dhabi.

Abu Dhabi GP

Ahhhh, the final race of the season. Four drivers were up to get the WDC, Hamilton [who needed to win as well as watch every one else crash and burn. Vettel [who needed to win or come second once Alonso scored less than 5th or smtn and some other technical stuff. Fact is, Vettel needed to win and go hard in order to get WDC. However, on a more realistic approach, Webber's points position meant that he had a better chance at WDC, unfortunately for Vettel, this meant that is push come to shove, Vettel may need to move to one side in order for Webber to win WDC. It was bitter sweet, Vettel looked the most likely to win the race yet the least likely to win the WDC.

After qualifying, Vettel was on pole with Alonso in a very comfy 3rd while Webber was in 5th, at this point, Alonso was looking to be the champ. The race started and went on as such up until pitstops, the slower traffic ended up holding both Alonso and Webber behind the 6th place Petrov. This move prevented either from advancing up the tables handing Vettel the WDC as well as the win. 2009 and 2008 Champions finished 2nd and 3rd to him.

On the 14th of November 2010, Sebastian Vettel became the youngset World Driver's Champion at the age of 23 years and 134 days, 166 days younger than previous record holder Lewis Hamilton. He also became the second German to win the WDC after the legend himself Schumacher. Fact is Vettel's hard edged speed, stiff determination and outright ignoring of critics helped to push him to this task and complete his collection of world's youngest titles. The only thing left is for him to get the youngest double champ [or triple or quadruple], but who knows, he still has at least 10 more years in the business.

Know yur definishunz: Hybrid

2010-11-09T21:58:00.004-06:00

The term hybrid by itself means a mix or combination of two elements, in the automotive world it generally is reserved for vehicles with a gasoline-electric engine hybrid. Gasoline-electric hybrid engines come in different configurations, some more efficient than others. As a result the hybrid label has been slapped on a wide range of cars which have essentially lead to a big mix up that most people aren't even aware of exist. So let me go through them one by one to clarify whats up with hybrids.

Mild Hybrid

A very simple set-up which shuts the engine off while it is idling in order to conserve on fuel. The system also can serve to recover kinetic energy through braking in order to power the electrical supplies. A part from a larger alternator/improved starter motor there are not a lot of physical changes between it and a conventional engine set up

Vehicles that use it: All vehicles that have a start-stop option e.g. BMW 1 series, Porsche Panamera [pictured]

Parallel Hybrid

This is the most common hybrid set up. It consists of the electric and gasoline engine working together and at the same time sharing the transmission.

Vehicles that use it: Most Honda Hybrids, Porsche Cayenne Hybrid [pictured]

Series Hybrid

This is essentially an electric car with a gasoline generator. This set up is ironically the first hybrid set up ever used. [which even more ironically was a Porsche]

Vehicles that use it: none in production, Lotus 414E, Hammerhead Eagle iThrust [aka Geoff], Lohner-Porsche Mixte Hybrid [pictured]

Two Mode Hybrid

A mix between series and parallel hybrids, its too complexed and too detailed for me to get but all I know is that this is the system the Prius uses.

KERS

KERS is one of those systems that originate from hybrids but don't deserve the hybrid name. It uses regenerative braking [rotation captured from the wheel while it is decelerating] to capture energy and use it at another time. Although it is common for these systems to use batteries to store the energy, most race applications use flywheels to store the momentum which can then be released at the push of a button

Vehicles that use it: Porsche GT3 R Hybrid [pictured], all 2011 Formula 1 cars, Ferrari 599 HY-KERS

PHEV

PHEV [Plug-In Hybrid Vehicle] acts a lot like an electric car where the batteries are charged at home and the gasoline motor is only used when the battery supply is depleted.

Vehicles that use it: Chevrolet Volt, Porsche 918 [pictured]

Auto meme of the day: "Can you confirm you understood that message?"

2010-10-24T11:38:00.004-05:00

weirdly enough, most F1 drivers have their own meme attached to them, today is a look on 2008 runner up and Ferrari #2 driver, Felipe Massa

"Can you confirm you understood that message"

History:

In Formula 1, a team order is a strategy in which one teammate is ordered to slow down to allow another to pass. Up until the 2000s it was legal but now that teams have taken it to such a level that teammates will crash to benefit the other driver, it was banned. But as time goes by, teams have gotten creative in hiding team orders, instead referring to them as team suggestions, but not all teams aren't exactly good at masking these orders. In the case of the 2010 German Grand Prix, while Felipe Massa was leading the race he received a radio message from his team stating this.

Massa's picture taken after the race

Ever since then, the combination of Ferrari's team order history, Fernando Alonso's dislike of teammates and Felipe Massa's perception of being a bitch, has made the term a staple for comments regarding someone to give up in order to make someone else look better. Rubens Barichello and Nelson Piquet Jr. have both been in Massa's shoes and can be used as alternatives [wait i just noticed they're all Brazilians]

Doing it right:

"Massa, Alonso's car just broke down and he needs a new one, confirm you understood that message"
"Massa, my homework is not done, confirm you understood that message"
"Massa, my taxes need to be done, confirm you understood that message"

The new sound from way out: NEW MUZAK!

2010-10-04T22:13:00.003-05:00

For the past week or two, I've been stuffing my hard drive with new music from no specific genre. Here is a short listing of awesome I found:

Justice

Genre: French House

First Heard: A clip of Genesis in a Need for Speed Undercover and on Top Gear

Songs added to HDD: D.A.N.C.E., Genesis, Stress and Let There Be Light

Description: really cool, random house beatz, very electronica with a hint of disco

Lily Allen

Genre: Pop

First Heard: Oh My God listening to Mark Ronson's album Version

Songs added to HDD: Oh My God, LDN, Alfie, The Fear, Littlest Things and Guess What Batman [aka Fuck You]

Descritpion: blunt, sarcastic and vulgar lyrics that just sound weird coming from a pop singer of her talent [note yes she does own an awesome Ford Focus RS]

Thomas Bangalter

Genre: French House

First Heard: Extra Dry

Songs added to HDD: Extra Dry, Outrun and Turbo

Decription: half of the great group Daft Punk, Bangalter did these projects for the Midnight Club 2 soundtrack

Wiley

Genre: Grime

First Heard: Grime Kid on the NaPalm Rockets album

Songs added to HDD: Wot Do You Call It, Never Be Your Woman, Electric Boogaloo, Summertime, Wearing My Rolex and Grime Kid.

Description: Like heavy bass, fast rhyming and interesting beats?

Sex, Breakfast of Champions [hopeful title of a James Hunt movie]

2010-09-20T22:01:00.008-05:00

F1 has had a slew of good drivers, most of them remembered for their epic driving skills, but only one was remembered for his attitude, James "The Shunt" Hunt.

Quick facts: rich, drunk, smoked, smart, was good at every sport especially racing. Dominated F3 and was brought into F1 by Hesketh Racing. Ever heard of Hesketh racing? Well they weren't really an orthodox F1 team. Wholly sponsored by Lord Hesketh, the team ran without sponsors, a teddy bear for a logo, half naked ladies painted on the cars, an ex used car sales man named bubbles for a crew chief and a habit for celebrating till they're piss faced drunk even if they lost. Hesketh was a team who entered just to have fun, hence their appointment of James Hunt. Hunt was an ambassador for the Hesketh lifestyle, a prime example being the attachment to his de-sponsored fire suit a badge that proudly read "Sex, Breakfast of Champions." In terms of race records, Hunt was famous for crashing, hence the nickname "Shunt". Of course a reckless train-wreck of a combination like this was more for entertainment than serious race contention, so it came as a surprise to all when Hunt won for them at Silverstone in 74. Another win followed in 75 at the Dutch GP but before Hesketh could celebrate, the funds ran low and Hunt was seatless for 76.

L-R: Lord Hesketh, Hunt, Bubbles and some random dude

In 76, McLaren had a seat available after Fittipaldi went racing for his brother's team and a reluctant McLaren eventually hired Hunt for little to no money. After a couple strings of success, McLaren soon realised that Hunt was a good decision as he was hot on the heels of '75 champion Ferrari driver, Niki "Rat Man" Lauda. It was neck and neck between the two until Lauda had a near death crash at the Nurburgring. The crash which took away Lauda's eyelids, right ear and then sent him into a coma, also gave Hunt a chance for the title. Unfortunately Hunt suffered car failure or poor performances, to make things even worse, Lauda woke up out of the coma and returned to racing in 6 weeks. Lauda, still recovering from burns to his face, brought the title chase to the end where Hunt was a mere 3 points behind. Hunt eventually won by 1 point, but not the way most people wanted to see it end, Niki Lauda had to quit the race on lap 3 do to his eyelids malfunctioning.

James talking to teh rat man

After his close call in 76, Hunt's career went downhill and left F1 in 79. Hunt eventually found his way back into F1 but as a commentator, which he still did in James Hunt style. He eventually died in 1993 from a heart attack at the age of 45, despite quiting from his earlier lifestyles of drinking, partying and smoking.

An Ode to the V8

2010-09-18T21:16:00.005-05:00

The Ferrari 360 CS will go down in history as being the first V8 engined car I ever liked, soon the GT40 followed and the list of V8 engined vehicles I like kept on growing. I think the key thing that pushed my V8 love even further was an issue of Motor Trend wholly dedicated to the V8, it opened my eyes to the Corvette, the Saleen S7 and the Mossler MT900. There is some logic attached to my V8 addiction:

The V8 is flexible: I have seen a V8 stuffed into any and everything imaginable from racing cars to bar stools. V8s come in a wide range of sizes and characteristics from the tiny 3.6L high compression Ferrari 360 V8 up to the torquey 7.0L V8 found in the Saleen S7, and the sizes don't stop there, if you're pockets are deep enough, companies such as Radical offer custom built 2.8L V8s based on 2 motorcycle engines where as GM can sell you a 9.4L V8 and then you can go smaller or larger than that if needs be.

Racing: The V8 is the number one engine configuration used in racing and [unofficially] the most successful. F1, Indy Car, NASCAR, NHRA and DTM all hail the V8 as their engines of choice. V8s have also seen success in 24 Hours of Le Mans, JGTC and F1 [back in the days when engine layouts were open]. The fastest cars in the world, Koenigsegg and SSC both use V8s where as Bugatti [the fastest] uses a unique twin V8 layout.

Affordable: The greatest thing the Americans ever brought to the automobile world aside from mass produced vehicles, was produced V8s. This brought power to the modern man, a tradition American car companies still continue today. Want a lot of horsepower but little money? Instead of tuning the daylights out of your 4 cylinder, buy a V8

The sound: Fact: almost every time a magazine or a show tries to declare what is the best sounding engine, 90% of the time it will be a V8. The Ferrari 360, Aston Martin V8 Vantage and many others contribute to that listing. Some vids of V8 sounds [Ford GT40] [Ferrari 360 CS] [an F1 car] and a [NHRA Top Fuel Dragster]

So onwards to the meat of the matter, my favorite V8 engines:

10. Rover 3.5L V8 [found in the MGB GTV8]: mainly because it was one of the first aluminium V8s, it was significantly lighter than its 4 cylinder counterpart making the already featherweight MG even lighter

9. Chevrolet 572 [can only be purchased by itself from GM]: The biggest commercially available V8 ever. 720hp stock with a limit of probably 11ty billion.

8. Ferrari Dino Engine [found in the 360, 355, 308, 388 GTO and F40]: This extremely flexible engine is responsible for carrying road cars to 200mph.

7. BMW S63B48 [found in the X6M and X5M] BMWs quirky little V8 found in their quirkiest cars is actually quite innovative. By mounting the turbochargers inside the V of the engine, the engine is more compact.

6. Chevrolet LS [found in the Corvette C6]: The replacement for the #3 engine in GMs mainstream line up. The entire LS line-up is good but the LS3 shines with 420hp and 30mpg, the best of both worlds.

5. Ford Modular Engine 5.0L "Coyote" [Found in the Ford Mustang 5.0]: The greatest engine for sale now, best bang for buck. Taking muscle cars to the 21st century with DOHC and Aluminium construction.

4. Rolls-Royce/Bentley 6.75L V8 [found in the Bentley Brooklands]: The second oldest V8 in the world. Even the rich needed V8 grunt.

3. Chevrolet 350ci Small Block [found in everything]: The engine that made the V8 famous. Quite possible the #1 selling V8 in the world and longest running.

2. Whatever magical V8 is powering the Porsche 918 Spyder: a 3.4L 500hp V8 sounds improbable for production, but the real powerplant shouldn't be far off

1. Cosworth DFV [found in the Lotus 72, 49 and eventually most F1 cars]: this was an engine full of win. It defined all the principles of a V8 I loved: cheap, flexible, powerful, nice sounding and reliable.

Future???

The V8 is a dying breed with most being replaced by twin turbo V6s, eventually we may reach a point where crate retailers will be the only place where one can purchase a V8, that's unless the Porsche 918 fixes everything

Bruno Senna: The protege/prodigy to end all proteges/prodigies [for now at least]

2010-09-16T19:39:00.006-05:00

Ok I kinda don't know the specific title to adorn on young Senna but seeing someone follow in the footsteps of an elder family member is nothing new to F1.

Michael Andretti entered F1 for 1 season with hopes of following in the footsteps of his father, Mario ['78 Champion] but fell out due to not really being able to fully familiarize himself with the sport. Jaques Villeneuve was able to fill and surpass his father's and uncle's legacy by becoming 97 world champion in only his 2nd season, his results went downhill from there. Nelson Piquet Jr. wasn't as lucky as his father was [81, 83 & 87 champion] his 2 year stint at Renault saw him play as Alonso's bridesmaid, he left to a career in NASCAR. Ralf Schumacher didn't even come close to his brother, Michael's 7 world championships [94, 95, 00-04] but so far they are the only brother's to win an F1 race. So far Damon [1996] and Graham Hill [62 and 68 champion] are the only father/son team to win the Driver's championship. For the 2010 season only 2 of these prodigies/proteges remain, Nico Rosberg [son of 82 champion Keke Rosberg] and Bruno Senna [nephew of 88, 90 and 91 champion Ayrton Senna]. Although Nico is still young and doing quite well in F1, there is a whole lot more pressure on Bruno.

I started watching F1 in 2003 going on into 2004 and around this time the peak of Ayrton's legendary status shone the most. At the 2004 San Marino GP, to memorize the 10th anniversary of Ayrton's death, Bruno was given Ayrton's old Lotus 98T, which he drove around the track in memory of him. Despite only being 20 at the time, many long awaited and speculated of the return of the Senna name to the world of F1. Just like his uncle he adopted his mother's maiden name to compete with, he looks like him and even has a similar helmet design as him, but is as fast as him?

[didn't want to post a shirtless pic of them, but this is the only good pic I could find of both Sennas]

Bruno's first call to fame was when his own uncle, Ayrton, bragged about how good and how promising he was. Ironically Ayrton's own death caused Bruno's family to put his racing on hold. . In 2004 he returned to racing world with an entry into the Formula BMW series. 2005-2006 saw him one step closer to F1 by moving into the British F3 series where he saw ok success. 2007-2008 saw make another jump closer to F1 with an upgrade to GP2 where he placed as runner up in 08. 2009 he was almost a guaranteed a seat at Honda, but unfortunately lost it when Honda dropped out of F1 and was replaced by Brawn GP. Even though Brawn could have hired him they chose to opt for the more experienced Rubens Barichello. This left him seat less for the 09 season except with a few spots in the Le Mans Series. Outside of official racing Senna also busied himself with spots on British programmes 5th Gear and Vroom Vroom

2010 saw an entry of more F1 teams meaning seats for him to pick choose and refuse. Of the new teams, Lotus seemed to be the likely choice, but he declined instead opting for HRT. Now HRT is the worst of the worst teams in F1 currently, not only are they the slowest cars but also the least reliable. So far, Bruno has failed to score a point and has only finished 5 of the 13 races he entered in.

With more seats being available in 2011, the usual F1 musical chairs might see him move up to a team with a fighting chance where his skill can be accurately compared with the best. So far 8 drivers slots are available, 2 are at HRT [which I doubt he will return to] 1 for Virgin Racing [which I also doubt he shall end up at] 1 at Renault [which is being tossed up between Petrov and Raikkonnen] 1 at Force India [which may have a reserved spot for Karun Chandok] and 1 at Sauber [who are still sorting out this year's drivers line up]. So out of elimination his likely choices may be at Mercedes GP [replacing Nico Rosberg, which I highly doubt] and Williams [alongside fellow Brazilian, Rubens Barichello]. Will Senna live up to the name? Only time will tell, and at only 26, he still has a lot of time.

Why it's not exactly good to be a German F1 driver.

2010-09-01T19:51:00.005-05:00

Germany, home to some of the most successful race cars, the most daunting race tracks and the greatest highway ever. So in a country that essentially created the motor car why is it that there has only been one German F1 champion, the great Michael Schumacher? One by one there has been a string of bad luck when it comes to Germans and F1, so lets start where it begun.

1961: Wolfgang von Trips

On of F1's wealthier entrants, Trips was primarily known for being really fast or being involved in epic crashes. In 1961, Trips was on his way to becoming Germany's first F1 world champion. With 6 races completed [2 wins, 2 2nd places a 4th place and a DNF] a 3rd place in the Italian GP would guarantee him as world champion even without needing to score points at the final race in America. Unfortunately his race was cut short, after a slight collision with Jim Clark, his car spun violently and collided with a wall, he was thrown for the car and died on the spot. 15 spectators also lost their lives in the aftermath. His teammate Phil Hill won the race and ultimately won the Driver's Championship. Hill refused to race at his home Grand Prix in the US partly because he didn't need to but mainly because he was in such shock of Trip's death.

1970: Jochen Rindt

Ok let's get this straight, Jochen Rindt was born in Germany but moved to Austria to live with his grandparents after his parents died. Despite this he never received Austrian citizenship but because he raced under an Austrian licence, his nationality was claimed as being Austrian. Just like Wolfgang von Trips, Rindt was as fast as he was reckless. In 1969 he moved to Lotus as a full time replacement for Jim Clark, he either went fast or broke. By 1970 the car got reliable and Rindt still was going faster than ever. In practice for the 1970 Italian GP, Rindt's car had a failure in the right braking system causing him to crash. He died on the spot from a seatbelt incident. Despite his death and 4 races left in the season, due to his 5 previous wins, he had a dominant lead in the points race and became the first and only posthumous F1 driver's champion.

1975: Jochen Mass

Jochen's career was covered with DNSs, DNFs and mediocre finishes, his one win however came at the 1975 Spanish Grand Prix which in itself was a high profile race. It was primarily known for a high fall out rate from the top drivers, one of the DNFs included Rolf Stommelen [another German] who's car crashed and killed 4 spectators after slipping in oil. Jochen's name would not be mentioned again until 1982 when he was involved in the incident that killed Gilles Villeneuve. Mass finally retired from F1 that year after his car flew into the spectator stands upside down and on fire [luckily no deaths]

1985: Stefan Bellof

Stefan Bellof is said by some to have been as great as Senna had he lived out his life. In 1984 during the Monaco GP, now known as Senna's magic moment, few know that right behind Senna was Bellof [well Bellof's team was disqualified after they discovered they were cheating hence as to why his 3rd spot is not recorded]. Despite his relatively good performance as a rookie, Bellof is known primarily for holding the overall Nurburgring lap records [qualifying: 6:11.13 & race: 6:25.91] during the 1000km of Nurburgring in a Porsche 956. Up to now neither time has been beat by any form of vehicle. He was killed later that year in the same car at the 1000km of Spa.

2005: Ralf Schumacher

Not exactly as successful as his older brother, but without a doubt Rolf was never a bad driver. He managed to collect a hand full of wins and podiums in his career but still couldn't match his brother's record list. At the United States GP he showed a bit of German luck. In the 2004 edition his car experienced a severe tyre failure on corner 13 which flung his car into the wall so hard he experienced severe spinal damage which sidelined him for most of the season. In 2005 he crashed in similar fashion but this time during practice. Although not as bad as the previous year's crash, it lead into an investigation into Michellin's tyres. All cars using Michellin tyre eventually pulled out of the race leaving only 6 people to race. The rest of the drivers were upset, the crowd was upset and the FIA signed Bridgestone as the sole tyre manufacturer.

2008 Adrian Sutil

Currently racing for Force India, a team that has risen from back marker to mid points placing positions. It is still to early to tell of how great Adrian Sutil is but his greatest drive has had to be the 2008 Monaco GP where he reached as far as fourth. In the closing stages of the races, a rear end shunt by Kimi Raikkonnen ended his race. In the 2009 Monaco GP, Sutil was up to 2nd when Raikkonnen crashed into his car again this time as he was exiting the pics, although he could still race he ended up 15th after repairs to the car.

When you check your facts even further you'll notice that German F1 drivers usually end up with mediocre results or as the ones mentioned above, close to becoming great. Michael Schumacher however seems to have taken up the burden of the entire German race by being statistically the greatest F1 driver ever. The primary reason however for this is that I've noticed that Sebastian Vettel could up a normal German driver or a Schumacher.

10 things the racing world made possible

2010-08-29T19:39:00.013-05:00

Every Sunday, somewhere around the world, a race is going on. Racing is one of those sports that a lot of people wonder still exists especially given its polluting factor, but aside from entertainment, racing has long been a source of technological advancements most of which have trickled down to the average man's car in order to make the road car better. Here is a top 10 list showing the most important contributions racing has made to the average car.

10) Transmission Technology

It is well known that manual transmissions are a lot more efficient than automatic transmissions hence why they are used in racing. As cars have gotten faster, racing engineers wanted a way to shift gears faster, and hence the sequential gearbox was born, a manual gearbox which changed gears with the flick of a pedal. In the 80's Audi used a Porsche developed sequential gearbox system which used two clutches to change gears in its Quattro race car. Although more complex and heavier, this system was just as fast as traditional sequential boxes but much easier to use and easier to control via computer [which could enable it to be fully automatic]. Eventually VW brought in this system as an alternative to the automatic transmission in its road cars. Now more and more cars are offering this system to increase the efficiency of its automatic models.

9) Tyre Development

In racing, because of the heavy load put on tyres, they usually need changing during long races. Companies heavily involved in racing have been experimenting with different compounds of rubber to ensure their tyres last longer yet they still go faster.

Going fast in the rain was also something needed in racing, as development for racing tyres advanced in terms of shape and tread profile, so has road tyres. Now road tyres are better in every aspect to a racing tyre from the 40s or 50s.

8) More Efficient Combustion of Fuel

In the past gas was cheap and the term miles per gallon wasn't invented yet, racers were trying to figure out how to get the most out of a full tank of gas especially since the more gas you stuff into a gas tank is the more it weighs and the slower it goes. Three of the biggest technologies that found its way from racing to the street car to help fuel consumption was fuel injection, turbocharging and direct injection. All 3 have been used in racing to achieve improvements in fuel consumption and performance and are slowly being phased in to road vehicles to do the same. [NB: Fuel Injection is the oldest of the 3 and first saw light on the 1955 300SL which was built as a platform to the race car the 300SLR. Nowadays almost every car has fuel injection]

7) Lightweight Materials

As more and more airbags and computer get stuffed into vehicles, cars are getting heavier thus needing more fuel to operate. Because race cars have wanted to go lighter to be faster from day one, a wide range of lightweight materials can be used for the average car as race engineers have gone through most of the materials known to man to find the strongest/lightest materials best for use in car construction. Aluminium, Carbon Fibre and Fibreglass all have roots in racing and are being used in more and more cars to help offset the obesity of the computers.

6) More Durable Parts

Race cars are highly strained machines operating at speeds that at minimum break most speed limits and at maximum can go as high as 3x that figure. G forces also twist the car around and knock it up a bit more than any daily drive around the block can push it. Especially in endurance races, cars are being built using more durable methods such as varying materials in engines to better suit the load of each part.

5) Brakes

In the 50s as speeds got higher, both Mercedes-Benz and Jaguar were in the race for brake development to slow down their vehicles better. Jaguar developed the superior disk brake, which is standard on almost all cars now, while Mercedes-Benz had the 'air' brake. This 'air' brake was a flap that increased aerodynamic resistance to help slow down the car and take pressure off the brakes. This system is getting more and more popular in traditional cars.

4) Aerodynamics

In the 30s the Germans were experimenting with how fast humans could go on their autobahns. Races held in Germany on tracks such as AVUS lead competitors to develop more aerodynamic cars. Ever since then racing has been the place to go for aerodynamic technology. This aerodynamic technology has made cars more stable at high speeds as well as be able to attain these speeds more efficiently.

3) Safety

Safety plays a big part in racing with race cars being significantly safer in accidents than almost any other mode of transport. Both seat belts and rear view mirrors saw their way into racing long before they did in the consumer car. Recently, technology such as stability control, traction control and ABS are making the transition from being race car only to consumer car only.

2) Forced Technology Development

After noticing that racing is the way to go in terms of technological advancements, numerous racing series have set up rules designed specifically to help speed up the development of current technology. Examples of this are seen in the use of hybrid cars in racing as well as the use of alternative fuel sources. Although this technique is relatively new, already diesel technology has benefited from this strategy.

1) Why stuff goes wrong.

During the Pikes Peak Hillclimb, racers found out that at high altitudes, brake fluid was prone to boiling. During races it is also discovered that fluids such as fuel and oil slush around during high speed maneuvers which could starve the engine. At high engine speeds, engineers found out that valves run by camshafts would "float" causing the engine to loose significant power. All of these lessons learnt as well as others have been taken from racing and applied to the consumer car as a 'just in case' feature.

Co-op City

2010-08-28T15:05:00.006-05:00

Without a doubt New York is a rapidly growing city with more people than land space. New York's solution has always been to build upwards. This solution is primarily used for its office spaces and rarely with housing, but fortunately for me I visited the largest example of mass housing in the world, Co-op City [grandma's house], for 2 weeks. It's around 40 years old, covers 320 acres [only 20% is built up] and holds 55,000 people. Despite stuffing so much people in one spot, everything feels natural and un-packed, one thing that contributes to this is the fact that most people here either work on varying shifts or work in co-op city ensuring there is little or no peak hour.

View outside the apartment

First thing you notice about Co-op city from the highway is an endless sea of 30 story brick apartments. Up to now I’m unsure of how many apartments there are but they primarily follow 1 of 3 footprints. The H footprint which is 26 stories high, X footprint which is 33 stories high and the I footprint which [I think] has 23 stories. My grandmother lives in an H footprint apartment while I had a cousin who was staying in an I footprint apartment. Despite the difference in heights and footprints, the layouts were basically the same. Each apartment had more than one lobbies to enter the apartment, this essentially divided the apartment into different blocks. To segregate them even more, there is no way to travel from one block to another inside the building. Each block is also assigned a different street number [For example my grandmother’s block was 120 Carver Loop while the other blocks where 110 and 130 Carver Loop] Entrance to the lobby is limited to residents with a designated key or visitors who have been “buzzed” in. The key for this front door also opens fire doors at the side of the building and the door to the staircase [only the lobby staircase door is locked, however for safety reasons, this door can be opened from the staircase side]. The lobby also holds mailboxes for each resident.

X footprint apartment

H footprint apartment

I footprint apartment

Getting up to your floor is made possible by 2 elevators and 2 staircases per block. To conserve on space, the staircases are layered upon each other [I.e. the steps of one staircase forms the roof of the other staircase.] To conserve on energy, the stairs are lit by a pair of fluorescent tubes, one of which remains permanently lit while the other is turned on by motion detectors. Also during times when the electrical load on the apartments are high [such as really hot summers when air conditioners are in high use] only one elevator cab be made operational. One elevator can also be reserved if a tenant is moving in or out of their apartment to help with the transport of their belongings. Once on your floor, you are greeted by a windowless hallway that leads to your apartment as well as about 6-8 other apartments and a chute for dropping your garbage in.

Immediately outside each apartment is a set of unreserved parking spots that anyone can use, because these are usually full, parking is also available along the street side. There is also a 6 story sheltered parking lot reserved for residents and visitors willing to pay a one day fee. For residents using this lot, the fee is added to their rent. Residents entering the lots are given a pass card which automatically opens the barrier for them, I’m unsure of accommodations made for visitors as they mostly park on the sidewalk. The first floor is strictly reserved lots unlike the other 5 floors. Accommodation is also available for handicapped users on each floor with their parking spots placed near to the elevators. Staircases are also available but, like the apartments, can only be opened from the outdoors by key.

An H footprint apartment with a parking lot in the foreground

The format of Co-op City continues outwards where numerous malls serve different apartments with stores varying from electronics, barbers, clothing, banks and restaurants. There is one mall with a cinema. Walking around Co-op city is in itself a form of recreation, between the buildings are nicely maintained green areas with areas for sitting, playing board games, basketball, baseball and a playground for children.

In Jamaica, the layout of Co-op city and its mass housing/all in one city theme bears a strong resemblance to Oaklands. Although only 6 stories in height, a lot of the services of Co-op city is seen in Oaklands such as:

· having washrooms on only one floor [in Co-op city it’s in the basement while in Oaklands it’s on the 3^rd floor, immediately above on the 4^th floor is an area reserved for drying clothes.]

· the garbage chute on each floor

· mailboxes on the first floor

· malls, parks and playgrounds in between the buildings [Oaklands only had one mall at the main entrance and a large park area in the centre.]

· A mix of townhouses and apartments as well as diversity among each [In Oaklands, townhouses took up a larger footprint than the apartments where as in Co-op city, townhouses were scarce.]

· A consistent theme [Oaklands had plain concrete walls with a little Spanish tile overhang while Co-op City was full brick.]

· Churches, Schools and Bus Stops beside or nearby the complex.

This well thought out layout of Oaklands only just occurred to me this summer despite the fact that I’ve spent nearly half my life living there. Both Oaklands and Co-op City follow a good template than can be used over and over, and as shown, can also be scaled differently.

Auto tip of the day: Toyota Chassis codes

2010-08-25T22:45:00.004-05:00

simple stuff really

Toyota uses a simple system that can be broken down in 4 parts

1) First set of letter[s] = Engine family : this code symbolizes the engine family used in the car. e.g. AE86 and AW10 both use engines from the A family. ZZT231 uses an engine from the ZZ family, JZA80 uses a JZ engine etc.

2) Second letter = Chassis family : this symbolizes the chassis on which the car is based. e.g. AE111 and ZZE120 both use the E chassis [aka the corolla chassis] SW20 and ZZW30 both use the W chassis [aka the MR2 chassis]

3) First set of Numbers = Generation : this number represents the nth generation of the chassis e.g. AE86 is the 8th generation of the E chassis while AE92 is the 9th generation etc

4) Second number = Chassis variation : this number denotes a difference in the chassis e.g. the AE85 has a lower spec engine, lower spec transmission and lower spec suspension than the AE86. Same for the ZZT230 and ZZT231

Best designed German Cars

2010-08-17T13:14:00.005-05:00

Germans are known for making some of the most boring, ugliest and dullest cars, yet through it all they have made a couple of pretty ones [even though some of them were designed by Italians] Here is my top ten list of the best looking German built road cars

10) Mercedes-Benz CLS

Built to be a 4 door coupe. As it was built; BMW, Audi and VW pulled up their own interpretations of the 4 door coupe. This is the first picture [just released today] of the 2011 CLS.

9) VW Scirocco [Mk3]

Based on the Golf Mk5, this was built to be an upscale, less practical and more expensive Golf. Built to be sold on good looks alone, Jeremy Clarkson justified buying one by saying "you didn't marry your wife because she was easy to wipe down?" It is by far one of the best designed hatchbacks of all time.

8) BMW Z4 [E89]

BMWs have always had a controversial look to them especially the Z series. When BMW finally brought out the redesigned Z4 I went all gasp and awe. It also gets a hard top, first in the Z series, which made it look good top up or down.

7) DKW Monza

DKW is one of the 4 companies that formed the 4 rings of Auto Union [now Audi]. This was built as a high speed aerodynamic runner hence its name [Monza is a high speed track in Italy]. It broke some speed records at Monza btw, I don't know the specifics either, but I know its pretty.

6) Porsche 550 Spyder

Another race car built for the road [it was road legal but not intentional]. Really simple design and built for lightweight and aerodynamics. Most famous for being the last car that James Dean drove.

5) Veritas RS3

The design is similar to #4 although this was released first. The engine is from a BMW M3, the handling is a bit off and its named after a German F1 team.

4) Mercedes-Benz SLR McLaren Stirling Moss

The SLR was released as a homage to the 50s gullwing racers and Benz were releasing back to back "special editions" for them. None really stood out that much, except for the last one, the Stirling Moss, which went all out. Named after the 1955 Mille Miglia winner [yup thats him] its a wonder how something so extreme looking is road legal.

3) VW Karmann Ghia [Type 14]

Italian design and German build quality was a winning formula for this. Most people were distracted from the underpowered Beetle engine by its gorgeous looks. It looked good in both convertible and coupe.

2) BMW 507

Built to be a competitor to the #1 car, it was a honestly good car but had an insane price tag. Despite being owned by people like Elvis, it really was a financial blow to BMW.

1) Mercedes-Benz 300SL "Gullwing"

Built first as a race car then modified for the road, even the doors were a result of this. Despite its function follows form shape, it has been mimicked, copied and lent inspiration to numerous cars from all over the world. It was the first to receive fuel injection and the fastest car in the world.

Gran Turismo [4] PSP

2010-08-10T05:11:00.004-05:00

Ups: improved handling physics, more realistic sounds, new car brands, I can now run the nurburgring anywhere, neat menu and game layout, nice HUD, same old Gran Turismo

Downs: Driving Missions annoy me when it comes to adjusting vehicles, only some cars are available for purchase on some days, 11ty billion skylines and evolutions yet only 1 Lamborghini, same old Gran Turismo

a demo vid

Michael and the Motorcycle Part 1: Ducati

2010-07-30T11:31:00.008-05:00

I was never always an avid motorcycle follower, I never had a favorite nor was I interested in finding one. I think what deterred me the most was that they all followed one of a select few basic design patterns. To me all superbikes looked the same, so did all cruisers and dirtbikes etc. And then to make it worse they all had the same engine layout, size and transmission. For example; all superbikes have a transversely mounted 4 cylinder engine [that comes in 600c, 750cc and 1000cc] with a 6 speed sequential transmission that then turns a chain to power the wheels. That just seemed like a bore, so I stayed away.

Ducati 998

Then I discovered Ducati. Ducati is an Italian motorcycle company and is said to be the Ferrari of motorcycles, in fact at one point their logo's were the same. I always knew of Ducati particularly their 916, 996 and 998 bikes and I found it cool that they named their bikes based on exact displacement [just like Ferrari] because saying you own a Ducati 916 sounds a lot classier than Honda CBR1000RR. But I really didn't like the design of the 916/996/998, it just looked blah.

Ducati 999

Then the 999 came out, I loved it and wondered why someone didn't try design like this all along, then I discovered the 999 was at least 2 years old upon discovering it. Anyways that didn't stop me from liking it. I also noticed design features seen before on the 916/996/998 that I didn't notice before like rerouting the exhaust to run under the exhaust, although it meant less power, the bike was more aerodynamic and stylish. Something I also didn't notice before was that Ducati used a V twin setup as opposed to an inline 4. Just like the conventional bike, Ducati's layout was less powerful but it provided smoother delivery, which meant the Ducati's could accelerate a whole lot earlier through corners than its conventional Japanese competitors. The icing on the cake however was using carbon fibre on every body panel except for the gas tank, that just seemed extreme for a bike, especially since carbon fibre is very expensive and bikes are prone to fall over.

Ducati 1098s Tricolore

The glory of the 999 soon died down as so far no motorcycle was able to match its uniqueness, until Ducati created its replacement, the 1098. It is sex on two wheels. Now I was expecting the 1098 to be a step forward on the design of the 999, but no, Ducati took up the old 916/996/998 template and worked on it. It regained the traditional Ducati twin headlights, just more detailed, as well as the use of a single swing-arm, which was heavier than using 2 lightweight swing-arms but exposed the stylish rims. Sometime later Ducati upped the engine size to 1198 to add more oomph.

Ducati Desmosedici RR

Ducati didn't stop there to please me, I soon after discovered they created a special homologated version of their race bike called the Desmosedici RR. Now Desmodedici [a very sexy name btw] is Ducati's very unique valvetrain system. Almost all cars use the camshafts to open the valves while springs close them back. It was discovered that as engined speeds increased, valves had a tendency to "float" under vibrations and hence not close back the valves. Ducati's solution to this is simple, remove the springs and let the camshafts open and close the valves. The Desmosedici's uniqueness didn't stop there, instead of Ducati's trademark V twin, it used a V4 engine, which is one of the rarest engine layouts of all time.

Ducati Monster

Ducati's finale piece was much slower though but still agressively designed. The Ducati Monster had a typical Ducati V twin with Desmosedici but this was for a class called the 'Naked Bike.' In this class, most motorcycles remove some of the body panels to reveal the inner workings of the bike, leave it to Ducati to turn it into art. Most motorcycles use a slab o' metal for the fram and expose that slab, Ducati uses a beautifully woven trellis that forms a cage around the engine.

Ducati 1198R Corse

Ducati therefore is my favorite motorcycle manufacturer: they win races, they're unique and they're beautiful, unfortunately they're also expensive [A base model 1198 costs US$3k more than a top of the line Kawasaki ZX14] Is it worth the price..... yep

A Girl My Age, 88-89 Merkur XR4Ti "Selena"

2010-07-29T17:45:00.004-05:00

What you are looking at is genesis, well not really. If you look at Jamaica's two most prominent sport cars, the Mitsubishi Evolution series and the Subaru WRX STi series, one often asks, whos the chicken and who's the egg? The answer is at Ford. There is a saying that Ford brought racing to the average man and when you look at it in depth, it couldn't be any truer. In America Ford brought the V8 to the average man and in Europe they made cars built to run in the WRC and sold them to the public [sorta what Subaru and Mitsubishi are doing now] These rally vehicles were also petted by Cosworth this resulted weirdly in them being better road cars than rally machines. Some prime examples include the Escort RS2000, Sierra Cosworth RS, Sapphire Cosworth RS, Escort Cosworth RS, RS200 and Focus RS.

The vehicle pictured here is a Merkur XR4Ti, which is a detuned Sierra Cosworth shipped to the USofA. I first got wind of this vehicle from a friend who said I should expect to see it running this summer. I didn't get to see any pics of it until I went to my mechanic [as you'd say a mutual friend among us] and saw this sitting here. At first my mechanic thought it was a Sierra [so did I] and told me it used an engine, not seen before in a Sierra, which is true, so he assumed it was a modified Cosworth BDA turbo. I went back today to visit him when I decided to take pics especially since it was the first I saw it there with the engine bay open. After inspection I noticed it wasn't a BDA, my mechanic then suggested it was a Cosworth Mercedes engine [they both were around the same displacement], it wasn't that either. After playing guess the engine for a while ding ding ding, the Merkur name popped back in my head.

Now after the success of Sierra sales in Europe wanted to spread the love to the Americas. In order to make it to America some things needed to be changed. The name was changed from Sierra [so as to not mix it up with a car made by rivals GM] to Merkur, back then a division of Ford. It also lacked the Sierra's Cosworth 200hp 2.0L YB turbo engine [which couldn't digest America's watered down gas] instead it got a 2.3L turbo 4. Despite the increase in size it was 25hp less than the Cossie. This engine swap also downgraded it to a single overhead camshaft [SOHC] as opposed to the YBs dual over head camshafts [DOHC]. It lacked an intercooler, which is something that is unheard of in todays turbocharged engines [which is a direct result of a very tiny turbo and low boost levels]. Another thing missing was the Sierra Cosworth's 4WD system which was dropped in favor of a lighter and less complexed RWD layout. The most important thing it lacked however was the big whale tail spoiler. This is a Sierra Cosworth with its trademark spoiler and as you would have noticed, the Merkur's aint exactly all that big. Now I am informed that they did come with them but in 88-89 they were replaced by the small wing seen here [mainly for issues of taste]

I really do like this car, its like a Sierra Cosworth except fanboys won't hunt me down if I modify it a bit. It also has RWD which I prefer to 4WD and its MANUAL [5 speeds too] It also has that classic unsuspecting 80s shape which looks boring yet it could give Type-Rs trouble. Its also sturdy, right now it needs a new clutch and my mechanic pointed me to a huge piece of metal shrouding covering the transmission, sort of like a protective shield design left over from the rally car engineers. Seeing that it is a rally car for the road, the ride is soft yet won't roll too much, just how I like it. I seem to have a liking for cars my age.....weird

[It would also be much more economical than Zoe but much slower]

Kimi Raikkonen: the [unluckiest] of the Flying Finns

2010-07-27T21:55:00.009-05:00

Finland, home of world famous architect Alvar Aalto and some of his works..... and thats it, outside of motorsport. In the autoworld Finland is home to the 1000 Lakes Rally, the most gifted set of drivers, a collective set of men called the Flying Finns.

The listing includes:

Marcus Gronholm [2 times WRC champion and still racing]

Hannu Mikkola [1 WRC championship]

Tommi Makinen [4 WRC championships as well as having a car named after him]

Keke Rosberg [1 F1 championship and establisher of future Flying Finn Mika Hakkinen]

Juha Kankkunen [4 WRC championships]

Ari Vatanen [1 WRC championship, 4 Paris Dakar wins and 1 Pikes Peak win]

Mika Hakkinen [2 F1 championships and eternal respect from Michael Schumacher]

Kimi Raikkonen [1 F1 championship]

Markku Alen [1 WRC championship]

Timo Salonen [1 WRC championship]

this list can go on forever to include people like Henri Toivonen [the Race of Champions was established in his memory] and Heikki Kovalainen [the only finn currently in F1] but for purposes of coolness I shall only feature Kimi.

The start

I started watching F1 near the end of the 2003 season, as such I really didn't have a knowledgeable base as to which team or driver to cheer for. Fortunately I had a lot of reading material, specifically Autocar magazines. During 2003-2004 a lot of emphasis was based around the 10 year anniversary of the death of Ayrton Senna as well as [seeing that Autocar is British] up and coming star, Jenson Button. So naturally for the 2004 season, I'd follow Jenson Button, but I needed a secondary driver to follow, just in case. Looking back at the Senna articles, I had to narrow down my criteria for the next person I should follow.

1) He was Brazilian [the only Brazilian racing competitively in F1 at that time was Barichello, and he was racing for the dominant Ferrari's so that was too easy of a choice]

2) He raced for McLaren, Williams, Toleman and Lotus [seeing that Williams and McLaren were still active and competitive I chose I driver from each team, Kimi Raikkonen from McLaren and Juan Pablo Montoya from Williams]

So I had 3 drivers to watch for going into 2004.

Kimi Raikkonen had a lot going for him, he was young and instantly put into a good seat at McLaren replacing fellow Finnish legend, and arc nemesis of Michael Schumacher, Mika Hakkinen. Just like Mika, Kimi was quiet and had an even funnier accent, he was also to the point, sorta emotionless and just plain chill. This attitude earned him the nickname "iceman"

McLaren

Back to the 2003 season and Kimi Raikkonen was right on the tail of then 5 time world champion, Michael Schumacher, unfortunately he finished 2 points behind him to take the second spot. Ever since then I always felt this heavily accented Finn deserved a championship.

In 2004 despite a win or two, his season was scarred with McLaren reliability issues causing him to end up a disappointing 7th in the driver's championship. The most famous of these failures was during the German GP when while in 3rd, his spoiler just magically departed causing to lose grip and crash.

2005 was no better, although his driving was much more impressive, considering how crappy his car was, the McLaren still let him down. Despite qualifying well, his McLaren often exploded causing him causing him to go to the back of the grid and drive his balls off to get a proper spot. The most painful of these to watch was the German grand prix. After leading the entire race, he got a flat spot on his tire with 15 laps to go, which slowed him down slightly, Raikkonen decided to risk it out and on the first corner of the last lap his entire right suspension went kaboom and sent him straight into the wall. Despite all the failures and kabooms, Raikkonen either went fast or broke, this lead him to an impressive 2nd in the driver's championship.

2006 just saw no hope, no wins, numerous DNFs and the rise of Ferrari vs Renault saw Kimi in the dark. Despite this the future looked bright, Michael Schumacher was retiring and there was an empty seat at Ferrari. Kimi signed a 3 year contract and hopes of success was bright. At the last race of the season in Brazil, when asked about his presence during Pele's speech to Schumacher [the man he was replacing] he calmly/mockingly answered "I was having a shit." This statement went on to define Kimi's attitude for the rest of his F1 career

2007-2009 Ferrari

Kimi's stroke of luck went the other way, despite all the media attention going towards his replacement at McLaren, Lewis Hamilton, he started off 07 with a win at Australia. The season continued with him receiving only 2 DNFs. At the final race of the season, he was 3rd in points by an a significant 7 points, the championship seemed all but certain for either McLaren teammates, Lewis Hamilton or Fernando Alonso, Kimi showed them how skilled he was by winning the race, while the technical goblins at McLaren haunted Hamiltons gearbox. Irony at best, one of the most successful racers never to win a championship, finally wins by one point, and the whole racing community is shocked.

2008 saw a stronger running from McLaren and a slow but still impressive run from Kimi. This season, Kimi became known for other stuff, such as chucking off photographers, knocking over little children, flipping the bird at other drivers and getting drunk enough to fall of a boat. He did finish 3rd overall but his teammate, Felipe Massa, got most of the glory losing to Lewis Hamilton on the last corner of the last lap of the last race by 1 point. 2009 saw Kimi just get closer and closer to laziness, the Brawns were dominating and the Red Bulls were cleaning up. The 2009 season saw Kimi get a serious amount of fast laps of the race [which accumulated to nothing] At the end of 09 he went to WRC to take a break from a series that has been cruel to him.

2010: Citroen WRC

2010 is his first season in the WRC where he races for the Citroen Junior team. Reports claim he'll be racing in WRC in 2011 as well with no return to F1 in sight. His results in WRC are impressive but still not significant, it should be noted that he is the only Flying Finn to score points in both WRC and F1. Whether he achieves success or not in WRC is up to him and if Citroen plans on bringing him to the senior team.

Is he a Flying Finn? Hell yes! Can he be mentioned in the same breath a Keke and Mika? IMHO, I think he has surpassed them. Good luck in the WRC Kimi, and don't hit down any spectators.

Finally a Lotus on my blog!

2010-07-24T20:22:00.004-05:00

This October at the Paris auto show, Lotus is planning a big unveiling to commemorate the 35th anniversary of the debut of the Lotus Esprit. Now Lotus can either choose this event to launch a brand new Esprit or just do something completely random. The Esprit really is an interesting car for various reasons [of which I shall list] and after this hopefully you'll get why [apart from the 7] this is the longest running model Lotus has produced.

Design

The Esprit all started with the Europa, which was Lotus' first mid-engined car. The Europa was pretty much the leftovers from a proposed design Lotus had for the GT40 project. The Europa was a success being hailed as the F1 car for the road, a lot having to do with its very low, Lotus like weight. To ensure that its replacement lived up to the hype of the Europa, Lotus thought it through properly. First thing was to hire legendary car designer Giorgetto Giugiaro. Giugiaro has designed numerous wedge shaped cars that gave the 80s a futuristic look in car design, but the Esprit was the first vehicle he designed to follow this theme. For all 30 years of production, the Esprit retained its iconic wedge shape despite going through 3 different designers.

Construction

Just like other Lotus' of the era, it utilized various parts from different manufacturers. Most of the generic stuff was taken from the British Leyland parts bin. After General Motors bought Lotus the GM generic parts bin was then raided. Citroen, Peugeot, Renault, Fiat, Toyota and Ford parts bins were also raided. The only thing original was the engine, which usually is the first thing Lotus borrows. This collection of mismatched parts still stayed within the typical Lotus lightweight limit. This really was a car greater than the sum of its parts.

The Result

The Esprit was a hit, even with its tiny 4 banger, its light weight and turbocharger put this in the realm of supercars [the design also played a big part in this]. It reached its peak of coolness when it appeared in 2 James Bond films, The Spy Who Loved Me [where it transformed into a submarine] and For Your Eyes Only [which had 2 Esprits]. Later models soon grew in size from a turbo 4 pot to a twin turbo [still small] 3.5L V8 and still maintained its mid 70s charm all the way up to 2004 where it was laid to rest. Today the Esprit name is still reserved as their halo model and plans for a 2011/2012 model is currently in the works, we'll have to wait and see if Lotus will bring it back in Paris.

Personal favourite model: S4 V8 models between 1996 and 2002

10 ways the computer made the car better.

2010-07-24T10:34:00.015-05:00

So, I don't understand computers, as far as I'm concerned they're powered by witchcraft. But as ch00kz pointed out they did help with the automobile. Instantly the ECU comes to mind and so did the automatic transmission and I immediately thought negatively. So after a days worth of positive thinking this is the best I could come up with.

10) Stop-Start Systems

These systems started taking serious interest after the dawn of the hybrid movement. Hybrids depend on this technology but more and more non-hybrids are taking on this technology so as to improve fuel mileage without adding super complex hybrid systems. It really is simple and works best with manual transmissions. When a driver comes to a stop for an extended period [traffic], the engine is still running and burning fuel and since it is going no where, the car develops 0 mpg. The simple answer to this is to just switch off your engine and restart when ready; but its not so simple. When your engine shuts off so does a lot of other things, like brake assist, air conditioning and power steering. What companies are doing now is to make these ancillary systems run independent of the engine enabling them to work when the engine is off [this also makes the engine more efficient]. With this switch, the ECU [engine control unit] is programmed to shut off the engine when the car is at 0mph once the driver is in neutral and has released the clutch. Whenever the driver depresses the clutch to take action the ECU starts back the engine. In practice it seems like an annoyance so fortunately most companies offer the ability to turn this system off.

Here is a video showing it in action.

9) Anti-Lock Braking System [ABS] and other driver aids

Now most cars have ABS and fact is most of us will either never experience it or know when its taking place. ABS really is a system that regulates the brakes to ensure people don't go sliding all over the place and killing themselves. The other systems pretty much do the same thing or similar by regulating both the brakes and throttle. ABS started out life on airplanes and then found its way on to cars as they got faster and needed to slow down just as fast. Most cars have the full ABS, stability control and traction control package and sooner or later they will all be mandatory, and just like stop-start systems they can be turned off [except ABS] if they are annoying

Here is a video showing all systems in motion

8) Displacement on Demand

This bit of tech comes from America after being heavily criticized for having huge engines with low fuel economy. To have the best of both worlds Displacement on Demand was implemented in both GMs and Chrysler's V8 engine line-up. It works by the ECU detecting what kind of power is needed from the engine. After calculating this, the ECU decides how much cylinders in the engine are needed for that power requirement and shuts down as much as half of the engine to accommodate the power requirement. Because the cylinders still remain in motion despite being shut off from fuel, transitions between cylinder activations are smooth and unnoticeable. Because it is also such a mechanically complex system, it only makes sense for use on engines with more than 8 cylinders. Also because of its newness, performance engines also ignore this technology due to the high stress levels found in their engines. Both Cadillac and Jeep featured this technology on their 16 cylinder engined concepts, the Cadillac Sixteen [engine pictured] and Jeep Hurricane which could run on 4, 8, or 16 cylinders [Jeep Hurricane could run on 12 also]

7) Computer Simulations

I don't like seeing a really expensive and cool car being crashed, but in reality at least one model needs to be sacrificed to test its safety in a crash. With accurate to the micron computer crash simulations, crashes can be analysed over and over to discover weak points and improve on them without unnecessarily crashing cars repeatedly into a wall. It also saves constructors money seeing that they only need to crash one car to pass each safety test instead of crashing numerous for research.

6) Kinetic Energy Recovery System [KERS]

This is another tech taken from hybrids and manipulated to work in racing. It works by taking energy that is loss under braking [Kinetic Energy] and stores this energy [Recovery] in either a flywheel [a constantly rotating mass] or in batteries [which what hybrids do]. After being stored, this energy can then be released at the push of a button to use as an extra boost. Of course computers control when the loss energy is gathered and stored, and in the case of racing, regulate how many times it can be used. Outside of hybrids only Porsche and Ferrari [whose system is pictured] are developing this for road use.

Here is a description of KERS

5) Active Suspension

This is a not so old technology that has remained hidden for years. What it does is to use computers to automatically adjust the suspension firmness and height. Semi active systems adjust these to predetermined settings while true active suspensions can adjust to an infinite amount of settings based on readings taken from different sensors. By infinitely adjusting suspension settings, the car can ride smoothly and not experience any hops, rolls or bumps which not only increases passenger comfort but also ensures that all 4 wheels keep in contact with the ground. By also adjusting the ride height the car can be lowered to improve aerodynamics and be raised to clear bumps. Williams and Lotus pioneered the technology to such a high degree in Formula 1 that it was soon banned for giving too much of an advantage. Only a select few high end vehicles use this tech for comfort reasons [think big plushy benzs] while other cars use them to clear speed bumps [think Ferrari Enzo]

Here is it in action on the Lotus 99T F1 car

4) Active Aerodynamics

Before I go any further, a spoiler is a flat panel which is tilted to produce downforce, the problem is that too much downforce increases wind resistance and lowers high speed acceleration but at the same time increases road grip and vice-versa. To take advantage of this some cars utilize a computer controlled spoiler that can tilt to either produce alot of or a little downforce. In some cars [Bugatti Veyron and Mercedes Benz SLR] the spoiler can be tilted at such a steep angle that it actually slows down the car and assists braking. Porsche has been noted for including active aerodynamics on almost all of its vehicles, whereas Mercedes is noted for first using it as a brake as far back in the 50s [where driver would pull a big lever to open a huge flap] BMW has however taken active aerodynamics the furthest with its GINA concept which is able to reconfigure the entire shape of the car to the required aerodynamic profile.

Active aerodynamics also affect cooling. Because cooling vents on a car actually cause aerodynamic drag, some cars actually can close off these vents when not needed to improve aerodynamics.

The first half of this video shows the various adjustments the Bugatti Veyron's spoiler is capable of

3) Actuated Valves

This is a really new yet clever piece of tech that is only being used by BMW and Fiat, in their road cars and being researched and developed in others. This takes Variable Valve Timing [VVT] and changes it from a 2 stage system to an almost infinitely adjustable system by controlling the valves that let in air and let out exhaust by electric actuators rather than camshafts [a rotating rod with lobes that push open the valves at regular intervals]. VVT gives the engine 2 characteristics, powerful and economic and in most cars the transition is abrupt and sometimes annoying. With actuated valves, the engine can have various different characteristics depending on the amount of power needed. In concept it is like displacement on demand except it can be used in a wide array of engines.

2) Variable Compression Ratio

This is a top secret new technology that is very promising for the future of the internal combustion engine. By altering the compression ratio of a car's engine, its characteristics can be altered enabling it to be either very fuel efficient, very powerful or to run on different fuels. Only 3 companies are publicly developing this type of engine; Prodrive [VCR Go] Mercedes-Benz [Dies Otto] and Lotus [Omnivore]. Each are unique yet all still very top secret in how they work in detail, but from what I'm getting, only the roof of the engine is altered to vary the compression ratio.

1) Mercedes-Benz S Class

Mercedes-Benz has always had huge shoes to fill especially since they were responsible for the first car. To prove that the first car was not a buck-ups Mercedes-Benz has pretty much been pioneers when it comes to automotive technology ever since. The S class has always been Mercedes's test bed for technology and it is commonly known that the car of the future will have features that the S class has today. Not only has the S class benefited from all the technologies on this in one shape or the other, in some cases it was the first to feature them. I could go on for years about the amount of tech stuffed into an S class, so instead here is a video of some of its stuff.

The Serial Wax Killer: Mix Master Mike

2010-07-22T12:01:00.005-05:00

What is a band without their DJ? Think of Run DMC's Jam Master Jay, Public Enemy's Terminator X and Linkin Park's Mr. Hahn; sometimes behind the scenes but their presence resides in the beats. So on to my favorite group, the Beastie Boys, and their newest [but not all that new] member Mix Master Mike.

Ok skip the boring bio of where he was born what his real name is and his D.O.B., you can google that stuff yourself.... so onwards to his DJ career and where I heard him first. SSX Tricky.

SSX Tricky was a cool and completely unrealistic, but fun snowboarding game. The soundtrack was one of the things that really caught my ear. The main song was a slight remix of Run DMC's Tricky but I was able to look pass that to appreciate the rest of the soundtrack. The soundtrack consisted primarily of heavy bass, almost urban type beats, which grabbed me immediately, the song that stuck out the most however was Board Burner by Mix Master Mike. Of course I became even more interested once I found out he was a playable character. Interest faded a bit when newer and slightly more interesting games came forward.

Moving on to 2004, MTV was having an all day Beastie Boys marathon to celebrate the release of their latest album, To The 5 Boroughs; this marathon introduced me to the Beastie Boys as a whole group, but it was hard to ignore Mix Master Mike's role especially in the song 3 MC's and 1 DJ. That song blew me away as to what the turntable was capable of, I mean, consistently scratching to produce a beat is just cool. The marathon continued and so did my interest when they started showing some vids from some of their live concerts, now I can't find the exact vids that were shown on MTV but this song pretty much sum up the awesomeness that is MMM's super clean transitions. Skills To Pay The Bills and Intergalactic.

So after seeing so much of this awesome scratching mixed with heavy bass and sounds from space, I decided to look for independent work done by Mix Master Mike. This brought me towards the Invisibl Skratch Piklz, the DJ group to top all DJ groups, and his friendly rivalry with DJ Qbert. [Their DJ battle in the 1995 DMC DJ World Championships can be seen here.] But it was not until this year when I finally got a full whiff of a full album from him. After following him on Twitter for a while, he announced the release of his [completely free] new mixtape called Napalm Rockets [which can be downloaded here] The bass is just amazing, the transitions are clean and the selection of songs are epic [from select songs from the Beastie Boys, to an entire remix of Santigold's Creator all the way up to a feature of Ini Kamoke's World-A-Music]. I also found more albums on his site such as Live Beatdown vol 1 and the completely ill Memoirs of a Serial Wax Killer.

I don't know about you but I find his intense use of bass appealing, there are tracks on his albums that just force you to pause and sit back in awe. Some of the songs featured in his albums exposed to other genre's that I've fell in love with [particularly dubstep and grime]. You can probably tell I'm bad at describing music, and to admit it is really hard. So my suggestion is to just download one [or all 3] of his albums available on the site.

Moar LINKS!!

Skullcandy's Bio

His home page

Insanity needs company: 2 engines>1

2010-07-14T20:38:00.010-05:00

There are some insane contraptions in the auto world, most involve putting engines where they don't belong. For example V8 powered Mini's, V8 powered Caterham's, V8 powered RX7's etc etc. The insane factor then gets dialed to 11 when you start putting aircraft engines in Porsches, MR2s and Mustangs. Applications for entrance into the loony bin can be recommending once you start doubling up engines. This blog is just a short one/two sentence on some twin engined vehicles that stood out to me. As for that picture up there, The "Freight Train," none are that awesome.

Cizeta V16T

Cizeta has created only one car, so rare that most people don't know it exists. It's designed is inspired by Lamborghini [mainly as it was designed by ex-Lambo employees] but that's where the similarities between any normal car ends. Apart from those quirky quad flip up headlights it had a quirky engine. Although it says V16, it actually uses 2 V8s with a transmission in the middle. To add to the weirdness, the engine is mounted transversely [as a rule of thumb you don't mount anything longer than a V8 transversly, this is 2 V8s and a bit in length] and the transmission is mounted longitudinally [normally both are mounted transversely or longitudinally] [*tip transverse engines are mounted sideways in a car and are setup with the engine on top of the transmission, longitudinal engines are mounted long ways in a car with the transmission behind the engine.]

Specs: 2x 3.0L V8s / 540hp / 400lbft / 1700kg / insanity level: looney

Tiger Z100

First saw this crackpot vehicle on 5th Gear and thought [expletives]. This video explains the insanity more than I can but let me it up. Two Kawasaki ZX1200 engines, one for the front wheels and one for the back wheels. Despite being heavier than most Lotus 7 derivatives, this is one of the more powerful [and so far the only 4WD one]

Specs: 2x 1.2L Inline 4s / 408hp / 615kg / insanity level: crackpot

VW W engine [W8 / W12 / W16]

In the 80's VW created the VR engine, a bastard mix between the V engine and the inline engine. It was absolute genius and brought forth the super compact Corrados and Golfs VR6 units. It was so loved that even Porsche uses it. It's super compactness then brought forth more experiments. By mating two VR6s together in a V, the W12 was born. The super compact 12 cylinder found its way into top of the line VW and Audi's while it served as the motor for the baby Bentley Continental GT. The W12 went on to hold records for the fastest 4 seater [Bentley Continental GT] and fastest 4 door [Bentley Flying Spur]. VW's newest marque, Bugatti, was up on the rise in search of a new engine. Experiments gave birth to the insane 1000hp [now 1200hp] Bugatti Veyron W16. The Veyron broke the overall top speed record by a huge margin in both 1000hp and 1200hp flavors. Insane video of the Veyron.

Specs: 8.0L W16 quad turbo / 1200hp / 1106lbft / 268mph / 1888kg / insanity level: nutters

Jeep Hurricane

This is the most epic thing to come out of Chrysler since the Superbird. Shortly after the relaunch of their 5.7L Hemi engine, they stuffed it in everything; the 300C, Ram, Magnum and all sorta Jeep models. Their most extreme implant was the Jeep Hurricane Concept. Not only did it have a 5.7L Hemi, it had an extra 5.7L Hemi around the back. Add a carbon fibre tub and the world most complex/epic 4 wheel steer system and you have a winrar. Video of the steering

Specs: 2x 5.7L V8 / 670hp / 740 lbft / 1746kg / insanity level: actually bordering on cool

Audi MTM Bimoto

Ok this is the only aftermarket one but its worth mentioning that this is one of [if not the] fastest modified vehicle on Earth. It used to run on two Audi 1.8L 4 cylinders that made 400hp each. Now it rocks 2.0L 4 cylinders that make 500hp each. Top speed.....242mph. Video of the 800hp one

Specs: 2x 2.0L L4 turbo / 1000hp / 242 mph

F-Duct vs Blown Diffuser

2010-07-11T19:39:00.007-05:00

McLaren and Red Bull are the two top teams for a couple of reasons but their success revolve around their unique rule bending technologies that both introduced at the start of the season. McLaren with their F-Duct [a switch that reduces drag on the spoiler to increase top speed] and Red Bull's Blown Diffuser [a reworked exhaust that helps with downforce and grip]. It is now mid way through the season and both teams have now taken on the other's system with varying results. Before I go any further there is a big hill called downforce that needs to be climbed.

*Before I go on you will see me use the terms wing and spoiler interchangeably

Downforce is one of the effects air has any moving object. Lift is the complete opposite of downforce and it is the force that keeps planes in the air. Even a slight amount of lift on a car is dangerous and unwanted [as seen here]. However downforce is always wanted and you can ask any F1 team and they will literally kill to be able to have a downforce advantage. Downforce affects a car by pushing it down to apply force to the tyres, this adds grip to the tyre and more grip = higher speeds the tyre can take and better lap times. Downforce has one flaw however, it reduces top speed. There are two ways however to get the best of both worlds. [Still lost on downforce, watch this]

Active aerodynamics is the best solution where you can have your cake and eat it. Most sport cars take advantage of this with spoilers that pop up above certain speeds and then lowers when the speeds get higher. This however is banned in F1 [actually it is allowed, still new however but adjustments can only be made on the front spoiler]. This brings us to the F-duct system. The F-duct is McLaren's genius idea of blurring the line between active and passive aerodynamics. Unlike traditional methods of active aerodynamics which use actuators to move the aerodynamic pieces, the F-duct uses a channel of that blows on to the spoiler. The way in which they blow air on the spoiler "stalls" it, which pretty much makes the car act as if the spoiler doesn't exist. Now for the active part...... The drivers control this duct by moving their hands to cover another duct which activates the F-duct. Due to the safety risks assosciated with drivers removing their hands from the steering wheel, the F-duct is now operated by their knees. In a race the driver will only activate the F-duct on a high speed straight to reduce downforce, reduce wind resistance and increase top speed. Almost all of the top runners use the F-duct now with Red Bull being the newest on that list [they still experimenting with it though]

This picture shows McLaren's 2009 car [MP4-24] on top and their 2010 car [MP4-25] at the bottom. The most obvious difference is the extension of the airbox towards the rear spoiler, this extension is the F-duct.

This picture is what the F-duct looks like underneath the skin of the car. This is actually Red Bull's system. The 2 red arrows point to the air exists which "stall" the spoiler

Now on to the second way to get the best of both worlds in the world of aerodynamics, The diffuser. Nothing is new about the diffuser, it's actually older than active aerodynamics and also more prevalent. A diffuser acts like a spoiler but it works through the magical act of suction. Because of this wind resistance is little to nothing and does not affect top speed. In the same way a spoiler pushes down a car, a diffuser sucks it down. The most ideal diffuser will have fans underneath to help the suction. After the dominating Brabham BT46B, which used a fan for suction [to bypass the rules they claimed the fan was used for cooling] fans of this type were immediately banned. The blown diffuser followed shortly after. This used air exiting the exausts [which were now placed underneath the cars] to provide a suction effect. The idea is that the exhaust being pushed out by the engine would cause a pulling effect on the air underneath the car causing a slight suction effect. This was prominent in the 90s but was soon abandoned as cars immediately lost grip when drivers lifted off the throttle. In the 2010 F1 season the blown diffuser was reintroduced by Red Bull who are rumored to be using a system which lessens that loss of grip whenever drivers lift off the throttle. Despite being top secret and almost illegal, its also being used by the top runners [McLaren is the newest to use it but abandoned it for the last race]

Brabham's BT46B fan car. The large fan at the back is quite prominent. Weirdly enough this car was designed by a man known for his days at McLaren, Gordon Murray. In fact the McLaren F1 [the road car] has a similar fan system on its diffuser.

These next images show the difference between the conventional top exiting "periscope" exhausts found on last year's Ferrari F60 [top] and the blown diffuser exhaust found on this year's Red Bull RB6. The blown diffuser's exhaust is found right in front of the rear wheel but not directly into the diffuser. If it was in the diffuser, it would be more efficient with downforce but more disastrous on the engine.

Well, fact is both of these systems will be banned for next year so this may be the last we see them at all. The races so far have shown the advantages and disadvantages of each system and its a matter of time before each team refine and use the other's tech.

The Isle of Man TT and the legend of Joey

2010-07-10T10:49:00.008-05:00

In the world of 4 wheel road racing, there are 3 giants 24hrs of Le Mans, Monaco GP and the Indy 500. In off roading there are only 2, The Baja 1000 and the Dakar Rally. In Motorcycle racing there is only one. The Isle of Man is a small little Island located right between Great Britain and Ireland. It is however a separate country from either although the Queen is still chief. As such the nice government over there is quite lenient in terms of certain rules, one rule is the abolishing of speed limits in certain areas of the island. This has attracted the attention of former F1 champion Nigel Mansell who now lives there. Top Gear's Jeremy Clarkson also has set up a home there.

In 2007 and 2008 Top Gear Magazine set up a sorta supercar holiday retreat over there, where they get a mixture of the 10 fastest road legal cars for sale in England [and a carefully chosen hot hatch] and spend a weekend exploiting them on closed-off roads. This test is a nice read where the articles are composed back to front in such a way that it comes across as a conversation that covers the strengths and weaknesses of each cars. One thing that was consistent among them all was that they were all terrified of the daunting narrow roads, hard cobblestone walls and steep cliffs into the rough ocean as a result only the soft and predictable [aka family cars] went fast. Immediately after the test the magazine went on to an article about the Isle of Man TT's 100th race.

Unlike most races the Isle of Man is a 2 week carnival of speed which consists of motorcycles racing one by one through the streets of Mann and the rider with the highest average speed is declared the winner. In this 2 week event the track caters to both amateurs and professionals. The amateur event has a day called Mad Sunday where the track is open to the public. The writer of Top Gear's article managed to get near to 130mph, he was brought into shock by the current record holder John McGuinness who managed to average 130mph. The track has barely changed over 100 years, only the bikes have gotten faster.

With every race there is a legend. For Monaco, Ayrton Senna's 6 wins are highly unlikely to be beaten any time soon, so are Tom Kristensen's 8 Le Man's wins. Joey Dunlop has won the Isle of Man TT 26 times. Even though these are class wins, it is still alot. In 1985, 1988 and 2000, Dunlop won for three different classes in each of those years. His death in 2000 lead the officials to do everything except name the TT after him.

Mr. Dunlop himself

To summarise the Isle of Man TT is

dangerous [227 deaths in 102 years]
dangerous [most bikers go airborne, and goin airborne in a racing bike lead to an unpredictable landing]
dangerous [did i mention the big walls and steep cliffs @130mph on a motorcycle
fast: to quote Paul Regan from Top Gear Magazine "Watching a works [Honda] Fireblade top 180mph between dry stone walls completely redefines your concept of speed."