On paper, this doesn’t sound like a fair fight; a Nissan GT-R taking on a pair of Scion TC drift cars. While we’re the first ones to admit that the GT-R is capable of many things, drifting surely isn’t one of them, and especially if you pit it against a pair of Scion TCs that’s sole purpose in life is to drift.
Without going into speculation mode on whether or not the GT-R can hold its own against these Scion TC drift cars, Motor Trend decided unleash all three cars around the El Toro airfield. In a flat-out run that had both long straights and drifting corners, all three cars showed their strong suits and as the narrator says, “it’s not about the time, it’s about the experience of being behind the wheel in one of these cars.”
Check out the video to see how the Nissan GT-R did against the two Scion TC drift cars.
As far back as one can remember, Porsche has always been one of the most visible manufacturers to compete at Daytona. From Vic Elford’s historic victory of the Rolex 24 back in 1968 on-board a Porsche 907 – the event was Porsche’s first of many 24-hour endurance race triumphs – to David Donohue’s triumph last year, Daytona and Porsche have been synonymous with each other that mentioning one without the other is somewhat tantamount to heresy.
There’s no question that the Stuttgart-based manufacturer has had a long history at Daytona and this video highlights the seemingly intertwined kinship between Porsche and Daytona. Both Donohue and Elford narrate their own Daytona stories with Elford, who has been named Grand Marshal for this year’s Rolex 24 endurance race, recounting his monumental victory for Porsche some four decades ago.
Although the Brumos Porsche wasn’t able to follow up last year’s performance with a back to back win, their sister car wearing the Action Express nameplate took home the victory.
As we were perusing the Internet the other day, for car related reasons of course, we came across a very interesting post on Craig’s List that proves the second coming of the muscle car is still going strong. Chrysler’s in house high performance specialists will sell racers a Hemi powered Mopar Drag Pack Challenger that is good for 10 second quarter mile runs and the blue oval has brought back a purpose built Ford Racing Boss 302RMustang ready for Grand-Am road racing with a 21st century 5.0 Liter V8 under the hood that promises to deliver some pretty fast laps. However bowtie enthusiasts will be happy to hear that GM Performance Parts is offering the 2010 Chevrolet Camaro as an off highway body in white blank canvas for race teams to drape over the chassis of their choice before packing up the trailer and heading out for whatever series they want to compete in, starting at only $7,000.
The benefit of this approach is that not only will racers be able to practice whatever discipline they desire, but also the bare metal body shell is a much better start for a purpose built racecar. The special order GM Performance Part means that crews will not have to waste any time tearing down the vehicle in order to strip as much weight as possible, in fact the only way to make a steel bodied 2010 Camaro weigh less would be to Swiss cheese one of these things. Offering the perfect start for anyone who is serious about going racing, the bare body means that the car can be custom built to whatever specifications are necessary, with everything from the engine and suspension to the rear end being up to the builder. Luckily GM also offers every conceivable component to fill those empty bolt holes from big blocks ready for drag racing to high performance trannys built to take the abuse. It’s the little things like these that our dreams are made of and makes us proud to be in America.
The F40 is surely the favorite special edition Ferrari for any fan of forced induction. Celebrating the Italian super car maker’s 40th anniversary, the 288 GTO’s twin turbocharged V8 was fitted in between the wheelbase of wedge shaped rocket ship made from kevlar and carbon fiber. Not only did the F40 pave the way for future greats like the F50 and Enzo both ten and twenty years later. Although the men from Maranello never intended to compete with the F40, the special edition super car made its race car debut in 1989 at Laguna Seca competing in the GTO category of IMSA competition with Jean Alesi behind the wheel.
Fast forward a couple of decades and the question then becomes, what do you do with a twenty year old super car? Sure you could restore it to what it was like when new, but even then modern super sports cars like the BMW M5 will leave you in their slipstream on the street. One particular Ferrarista decided to take his aging F40 and give it a new lease on life as an LM racing recreation. The car was rebuilt from the ground up and has everything the old race car came with, except that it was built with the knowledge of how to make an F40 go. The LM spec race car has everything from a fully adjustable suspension and Motec gauges to the original LM computer and turbochargers, albeit being fed from a fresh set of pipes. The owner has yet to turn a wheel on the track with the car and he is staring the bidding war at $200,000. So far there haven’t been any bidders and we have a feeling that in this climate, two hundred grand is quite a lot to pay for a 20 year old car, even if it is a red Ferrari.
The Japanese automaker Honda didn’t become the world’s best selling engine manufacturer by resting on their laurels, in fact ever since the 1960s Soichiro Honda’s baby has been competing in the top tier of open wheel motor sports, Formula One. Despite withdrawing from competition last year, the current champion Brawn GP was born from the defunct Honda team. On this side of the pond we are more familiar with a different kind of high speed open wheel racing, the IRL, and Honda had quite a display set up at the largest specialty car show in the world, SEMA.
Honda had a few variations of open wheel competitors at the show in Las Vegas ranging from professional to grassroots efforts and even added a look into the future. Even though the Dallara Indy Racing League chassis is a non working show car, it was hard imagine anything other than the red and white winged wonder screaming as it climbs the high banked turns of a super speedway before rolling back into the throttle and rocketing down the back straight at 200 MPH. The other full sized single seater on display is the prototype Honda Formula F race car, intended for up and coming cash strapped SCCA racers, the Formula F is based around Honda’s 1.5 Liter four cylinder from the Fit as a cost effective racing solution.
Despite being trapped inside a glass case, the 2012 Indy Car Chassis Concept offered quite a view into the shape of things to come. Looking more like a stealth fighter then an Indy car, Honda promises to keep making things interesting well into the future. Aside from the cars, Honda had a few of their race engines on display as well, and the only way to get this good a look at the exotic power plants would be against the wishes of an angry pit mechanic. The display included a trio of championship winning CART V8s engines in both boosted and naturally aspirated forms as well as one very special IRL spec Indy V8. Having all these engines on display like this makes us laugh and think back to when we were nearly chased out of the paddock for snapping a few photos of the inside of an Indy car. Oh how the times have changed.
If you ever have the opportunity to attend a high quality racing school, you will find that the experience is worth more then its weight in gold. While the amount spent could easily buy a few more horse power for your daily driver, in the long run you will be better off being able to squeeze the most out of any vehicle you climb into. Programs like Skip Barber’s allow individuals to push their own limits as well as those of their vehicles in a safe and controlled environment. Skip Barber allows their alumni to hone their skills in everything from “fender cars” like the Lotus Elise and Mazda Miata to a much more visceral open wheel Formula machine. The school usually uses a wingless single seater with a traditional H pattern gearbox to instruct their students, however on the day that we showed up for class we were pleasantly surprised to see that we would be driving the cars that compete in their regional racing series, the Formula 2000.
Like a true racecar, the Formula Skip Barber 2000 is based around a steel space frame chassis much like that of the old Formula Ford racecar, a proven cost effective rigid body that has been lapping track around the world since before most of us were born. Despite the Mazda logos on the winged Reynard designed fiberglass body work and side pods, the engines are carried over from the school’s involvement with Chrysler, so the Formula Skip Barber 2000 is powered by a 2.0 Liter 16 valve four banger that has been modified to withstand the constant full throttle abuse of the track. The oil system has been converted to a hybrid dry sump, the ECU has been retuned to advance the ignition timing a bit in order to get the most out of the old Neon motor while a conical K&N air filter and custom racing headers allow the motor to breathe much easier. Providing a genuine racecar feel, the power plant is mated to a Ricardo 5 speed sequential gearbox meaning that in order to shift up all you have to do is quickly lift off the throttle and pull back on the billet shifter, while downshifts require a bit more heel toe expertise.
The Japanese automaker Honda recently announced that their SuperGT NSX succeeding HSV-10 GT will be making its competition debut on March 20 at the beginning of the 2010 season. It is now apparent that Honda isn’t taking any chances in front of their home audience when the green flag drops and in doing so have been spotted at the Suzuka Circuit stretching their legs around the automaker’s own testing facility. It appears that unlike the Lexus LF-A, the Honda Sports Velocity has no plans of becming a production vehicle, instead of homologating the new car, Honda has found a place in the Japanese GT racing series’ rule book stating that possible production vehicles are allowed to compete.
Powered by a low displacement 3.4 Liter V8 with a maximum output of over 500 HP, Honda will campaign four different HSVs at the Suzuka race while the high output engine is mated to a Ricardo sequential manual gearbox, the same unit used by Nissan and Toyota in their SuperGT machines, ensuring that the Honda drivers will be hard pressed to miss a shift. Thanks to the video we can hear that while Toyota engineered their latest super car to sound like a screaming Formula One machine, the pair of Hondas on track could easily be mistaken for some of the automaker’s classic F1 machines.
It was almost 40 years ago when the American racing legend Parnelli Jones captured the 1970 Trans-Am title in a very special yellow Mustang. What made the yellow and black number 15 so special is that it was based on the best handling Mustang of all time, the Boss 302. Complete with hockey stripes and all, the blue oval will offer a special order Ford Racing Boss 302R, a 5.0 Liter thoroughbred with a blacked out deck lid and a familiar paint scheme that will continue the modern Mustang’s road racing efforts that was revitalized back in 2005 with the FR500C.
We were privied to see the new car in person a few weeks ago, however we weren’t allowed to tall you about it until now. As soon as they fired up the all new fuel injected 302 cubic inch V8 we could smell the spent race gas all the way in the back of the room and we knew that this was going to be something special. Starting where the rubber meets the road, the all new Boss 302R wears a set of 275/35 Hoosier racing slicks wrapped around a set of slick BBS 18x10 inch racing wheels. Housed inside the lightweight mesh alloys are a set of Brembo four piston brake calipers up front clamping down onto a set of two piece rotors, because the Ford was designed to be raced in the Koni Challenge series, the Ford Racing Mustang has a set of fully adjustable dampeners from the Netherlands based suspension manufacturer.
A 20 gallon cell resides in the trunk complete with racecar style fuel fillers for fast pit stops and an FIA sanctioned roll cage and fire suppression system inside to safeguard the driver in the even of a worst case scenario. The pilots resides in the sole Recaro race bucket, strapped in with a Sabelt harness and directing the front wheels with a special Sparco/Ford Racing small diameter steering wheel while a Stack type racing gauge cluster provides all the necessary information about the 21st century 5.0 Liter power plant. Perhaps it was an oversight, or it might just be a testament to the 302R’s production car roots, but the Grand-Am spec racecar even has power locks.
Ferrari’s long and illustrious history in Formula One would never have happened if it didn’t have a slew of excellent drivers racing their cars. From Juan Manuel Fangio to Michael Schumacher, the Scuderia has, without question, fielded some of the sports’ best drivers.
Now, the Italian supercar makers are taking their scouting and talent development to a new level as it formally launched the Ferrari Driver Academy.
Meant to find those young diamonds-in-the-rough and hone their skills in the art of race driving, the Ferrari Driver Academy will allow young drivers with an enormous amount of potential to train under the wings of the best in the business. From the initial steps of kart racing, these drivers will be given a thorough course by Luca Baldisserri all the way to the top step of the program, Formula One.
While the selection process regarding which driver receives a formal invitation to the academy remains undisclosed, Ferrari already has announced its first driver in the fold: Jules Bianchi, the talented hot shot who bagged the Drivers’ and Teams’ championship in the recently-concluded Formula 3 Euroseries.
The Ferrari Driver Academy certainly speaks volumes on the Scuderia’s deep-rooted mission to remain a force in the world of auto racing and it figures that finding young upstarts and improving their skills will go a long way in keeping Ferrari a player in auto racing, whatever league or class it may be.
Its the ultimate battle between an Italian thoroughbred and an American powerhouse.
On one corner, you have the Ferrari Enzo and on the other corner is the LMC Super Cuda. There are no lightweights here gentlemen.
Ok, it wasn’t so much a race between the two as it was a demonstration as to just how fast and powerful these two bad boys are. In the quick instance where they did put the pedal to the metal, the Super Cuda easily pulled away from the Enzo before a technical malfunction which came as a result of going too fast - forced the Super Cuda to a grounding halt.
As soon as it was fixed, the two then decided to see which car could post the higher topspeed and this time, the Enzo outgunned the the Super Cuda 218 to 208 mph.
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