The Rolex Monterey Historic Automobile Races is one of the best events that takes place during the Concours weekend on the Monterey Peninsula. Sure the Tour D’Elegance allows the classics to putter around the country side and stop for lunch in Carmel and the Concorso Italiano allows you to look cool standing next to your Lamborghini with a drink that matches the paint scheme, but only the Historic Races allows these classic cars the ability to stretch their legs and do what they were made to do. On the third weekend in August, Mazda Raceway Laguna Seca fills with the smells of burnt rubber and spent gasses while the surrounding hills are filled with a symphony from bygone eras of racing history. The sponsor, Rolex, ensures that fans come back time and time again for their Moment in Time dispay, which honors six different historic racing cars and highlights their most significant achievements.
While last year’s star of the show was the infamous black and gold John Player’s Special, Mario Andretti’s Lotus built Formula 1 Championship winning race car that introduced ground effects and revolutionized racing forever. This year the museum quality exhibit will be displaying some of the greatest endurance racing sports cars from the 1960s and 1970s. Like the 1977 Le Mans winning 1976 Porsche 936/81, which also took a second place in 1978 and 12th in 1981 at the race twice around the clock at Le Sarthe. This very rare racecar is only noe of three Porsche 936 cars that were built and is the only one to compete in five of the famous 24 Hour races by notable Porsche racing driver Hurley Haywood amongst many others.
Celebrating the legendary Porsche 917’s 40th anniversary, the exhibit featured a 550+ HP example from 1970 wearing the fashionable Gulf livery that was made popular by the actor Steve McQueen. The Porsche is lined up alongside the Ferrari 512S that challenged it that season. This particular blue and orange 917K was driven by Mexican driver Pedro Rodriguez in the 1970 1000 km race at Spa, Belgium, and is the sister car to Brian Redman and Jo Siffert’s race winning Gulf. The Ferrari 512S was once piloted by Jacky Ickx during the opening round of the World Championship season at Daytona and then went on to race at Monza and in the Targa Florio where it finished 2nd and 3rd, respectively.
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After suffering serious head injuries due to a rogue spring that came off of fellow Brazilian Rubens Barichello’s Brawn GP racecar during qualifying, it appears that Felipe Massa will be back in time for the most important race on Ferrari’s calendar, September 13, the Italian Grand Prix. Back at the Hungaroring, Massa suffered a fracture at the base of his skull and was immediately airlifted to a nearby hospital to undergo surgery and then put into an induced coma in order to speed up the healing process, and it looks like it worked.
This news comes right after the Maestro, Michael Schumacher announced that he will not be stepping back behind the wheel. This report has not yet been confirmed by the Scuderia, but team members have said that Massa is making remarkable progress with his recovery and should he make a return in Italy. Ferrari team principal Stefano Domenicali visited the Brazilian last week: "Felipe is in excellent form and his recovery is going very well!... I’m very happy about Felipe’s state,... The medical checks which have been carried out over the last two weeks continue to be very encouraging...Now it’s important to be patient and take one step at a time, without any hurry."
If Massa does return, Formula One’s governing body would require him to undergo a full examination by the sport’s doctors before he can compete at speed once again. Ferrari’s test driver Luca Badoer will stand in for Massa in next weekend’s European Grand Prix at Valencia after the sad news from the Maestro being forced to cancel his comeback due to the lingering neck injury.
If the Porsche racing drivers Joerg Bergmeister and Patrick Long can take home the checkered flag this Sunday at the upcoming round of the American Le Mans Series at Road America in Elkhart Lake, the pair will have won their sixth straight GT2 win in their Porsche 911 GT3 RSR. The German Joerg Bergmeister said that: “Of course it would be great to continue our winning streak, … but it’s even more important for us to bring home as many points towards the championship as possible.”
Thanks to his American teammate Patrick Long, Bergmeister has already won as many races after just six rounds of competition than he did in the entire 2005 season when he won the championship behind the wheel of a Porsche. Jorg has already racked up 26 wins in the ALMS GT2 class, easily making him the most successful driver in the category. The fact that four of those wins came at Road America, more than any other driver, doesn’t hurt their chances at success. The German Porsche pilot Bergmeister has a very special relationship with the 14 turn 6.5 kilometer racing circuit. “This is my favorite track – it’s very fast, very hilly and very demanding,” and facing stiff competition from the likes of BMW, Chevrolet and Ferrari; he also said that: “If we want to do well here we have to give everything we’ve got.”
The ALMS race at Elkhart Lake will start on Sunday, August 16 at 3PM Eastern, but check your local listings for times, and will run for over 2:45 hours.
Michael Schumacher’s return to Formula One is over.
Much to the dismay of F1 fans all over the world, the seven-time World Champion has decided to drop his intended return to the sport after lingering neck pains stemming from a motorcycle accident back in February forced him to abandon all efforts in his comeback attempt.
The news is a bitter blow to Schumacher, Ferrari, and Formula One, which was drawing major news time after Schumacher decided to return in place of the injured Felipe Massa. But due to his neck injury, Schumi’s planned comeback is now officially on the shelf.
For now, Kimi Raikkonen will be joined by long-time test drive Luca Badoer, according to Ferrari President Luca di Montezemolo.
It seems that every time the Ford Mustang and the Dodge Challenger are muttered under the same sentence, the Chevrolet Camaro is not too far behind inside of consumer’s minds.
Well, those eager to see another round of racing among these three US sports cars are going to have to catch the KONI Sports Car Challenge race series. With the Mustang and Challenger already in the series, the Momentum Race Group, a Dallas-based racing team, wasted little signing up, and the two cars the team will be using for the competition are no less than two 2010 Chevrolet Camaros.
The 2010 Camaro’s entry to the series – which, incidentally was prepped up by Riley Technologies – adds another level of intrigue to the racing series, considering that it’s two greatest adversaries – the Challenger and the Mustang – already have teams using their models.
If you missed the 2009 X Games, then you missed all of the dirt jumping, pavement drifting and bumper dropping action that took place at the Home Depot Center and the surrounding parking lot. In short, Indy 500 Champion Kenny Brack took home the win in an 800 HP Ford Fiesta, beating names like Pastrana and ACP in rally prepped Subaru ImprezaSTIs and Mitsubishi LancerEvolutions.
After checking out the championship round have a look at the videos of the 70 foot jump and the rest of the fun you missed after the jump.
Hold on to your horses; Michael Schumacher’s return to Formula One is still not set in stone – at least not yet.
While the entire sporting world is waiting in breathless anticipation for the 7-time World Champion’s return to Formula One, there’s one thing that could potentially derail all of that: Schumi’s neck.
Not a lot of people know that before the German decided to fill the seat vacated by the injured Felipe Massa, he sustained an injured neck while testing a German Superbike last February.
As a result of the accident, Schumacher had to be hospitalized for a few days and it was more than three months later before he saddled back up on a racing bike. While it seems like the injury occurred ages ago, Schumacher still has to get clearance from a group of doctors that will perform a series of intense training and medical checks.
With the new Ford Fiesta enjoying all sorts of motor sport success be it at Pikes Peak or a made for TV special stage it looks like the little all wheel drive rally car will have a tremendous amount of success in the U.S. market. As for their latest achievement bringing home the gold at X-Games 15, the blue oval campaigned a trio of Fiesta’s hedging their bets with the Indy 500 winner Kenny Brack, previous X-Games Rally gold medalist Tanner Foust and a very fast rookie with X-Games freestyle motocross veteran Brian Deegan as their latest Fiesta Movement efforts.
All three competitors fought hard, and all three had their fair share of difficulties, however they worked as a team until the very end and when the dust settled in the Home Depot Center in Los Angeles it was a red, white and blue Fiesta that took home the championship. So with all the success of the 800 HP all wheel drive rally car, does that mean we will see a few specially developed wide body Ford Racing Parts or even a turbocharged Ford Fiesta Rally Sport model. With the almost uncertainty of seeing the beloved Focus RS on this side of the pond anytime soon, perhaps the smaller more efficient member of the fun to drive Ford family can add some excitement into their upcoming lineup.
There were a few interesting match-ups competing in the fourth ever X-Games rally competition earlier today. Aside from introducing America’s television watching public to the all terrain form of production car based racing and injecting a much-needed boost of exposure for the Rally America series, the story was not just about manufacturers competing for a gold medal, but the diversity of extreme athletes competing in the turbocharged all wheel drive rally cars which ranged from an Indy 500 champion to the leader of the freestyle motocross faction, the Metal Mulisha along with the other rookie and BMX X-Games gold medalist Dave Mirra.
Ever since a few of the manufacturer backed teams dropped out of World Rally Championship competition, Ford has been the only major car builder to campaign an entrant and the experience showed, leaving a trio of Fiestas to take on the sole Subaru of last year’s X-Games Rally Champion Travis Pastrana. For a moment there was hope that it would be a classic battle of Subaru vs. Mitsubishi, however Tanner Foust’s Rockstar Fiesta made quick work of Andi Mancin’s clean EVO IX and it was #199 Travis Pastrana who took out the last EVO hopeful, Andrew Comrie-Picard, despite the EVO VIII driver finally figuring out the 70 foot dirt jump. The Swedish ex-Indy Racing League driver Kenny Brack then flew past the BMX legend Dave Mirra’s STI, what was amazing was the amount of speed that the little Fiesta had going down the straight, unfortunately Mirra came off the jump with an extra hop and never quite recovered. He continued to fight the course for the rest of the run and proved once again that smooth equals speed and it was Brack who had it that run.
The last round of the quarterfinals pitted the amateur filmmaker Ken Block against the previous generation Ford Fiesta of Brian Deegan, Block had put the car on its lid in practice and Deegan had experienced a loose charge pipe that was supposed to be delivering boost from the turbocharger to the engine. The pair looked to be evenly matched, Deegan after all qualified fourth amongst a field of rally racing veterans, at least until the gremlins showed back up. However Ken Block hit a barrier before the big jump that he wasn’t able to carry enough speed to bridge the 70 foot gap. He instead decided to go around and was immediately disqualified, sending the slower Fiesta straight into the semifinals.
The X-Games has always been an action sports spectacle, ushering in new extreme athletes and introducing the television watching public to never before seen feats of human achievement. One of the more recent additions to ESPN’s X-Games is rally car racing, an event that has created such memorable moments as Collin McRae rolling his golden Suabru on the final jump before going on to finish in second.
For the X-Games 15 competitors will compete on a 2 mile special stage setup that runs through a dirt filled stadium and the surrounding parking lot just like last year. Except this year the drivers will be riding solo, the television experts at ESPN have decided that the co-driver’s seat would be better occupied by two individuals that have ridden shotgun in a rally car before, but this time Chrissie Beavis and Jen Horsey will be going along strictly as ESPN analysts. X-Games producer Phil Orlins suggests, "they’ll be the ultimate firsthand observers.”
Some things to keep in mind when watching these rally prepped machines fly through the air and slide around the tarmac is that while the Rally America series requires a 34 mm turbo inlet restrictor, the X-Games allows a larger 40 mm unit. This means that the rally cars will be making more horsepower and torque allowing even higher speeds around the made for TV course. Even though most of the racing surface is on tarmac, the X-Games requires the cars to run on gravel tires, meaning that the cars will be sliding around a lot more than necessary, but that just makes for better television which can be seen on Sunday, August 2 from 3 PM to 6 PM Eastern on ABC.
Continued after the jump with Collin McRae roll video.
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