The wonderful Danica Patrick made headlines the other day when she outed herself as dating a fellow rookie in the Sprint Cup Series and now she has made headlines again. This time around, it is less gossip-like and more racing related, as she has become the first woman to ever win the pole position in NASCAR Sprint Cup history.
The closest woman to her new record was Janet Guthrie, who won the ninth starting position twice in her racing career. That’s a pretty significant jump in starting slots, so our hats go off to her.
Additionally, Patrick became the first Sprint Cup rookie driver to win the pole at the Daytona 500 since Jimmie Johnson accomplished the task back in the 2002 season. These accolades pile on top of Patrick becoming only the second woman driver to ever win pole position in NASCAR, which she accomplished in the NASCAR Nationwide Series last year.
Click past the jump to read NASCAR’s press release
Just like most hyped-up sports cars and supercars, the first reported crash of said car is always a big deal, as it inevitably shoves the poor driver into supercar in infamy.
The 2014 Chevrolet Corvette Stingray is one such car and as fate would have it, and it didn’t take long for the first reported crash of the Stingray to make the news.
According to the folks over at Digital Corvettes, the crash took place somewhere in Arizona after the driver of the Corvette Stingray lost control of the sports car, sending it careening into a guardrail before "bouncing back to the rocks" as the image shows.
From what people in forum have said, the crash happened in a section of road with tight switchbacks that seems to suggest that the Corvette could’ve been running faster than it should for the driver to lose control. The photo of the Corvette Stingray makes it look like it got dinged up pretty bad, but forum poster, gpetry, said that the car was in worse shape than the photo suggests.
Tough luck for the driver and worse for the not-yet-released Corvette Stingray. We’re just hoping nobody was seriously hurt from this crash.
You only achieve a certain level of respect from the rest of the automotive world when you somehow end up in a precarious situation and, instead of letting a crash get the worst of you, you rise above it and soldier on.
That’s exactly what happened to the people behind the wheel of this Local Motors Rally Fighter. During the recent Parker 425 off-road race in Arizona last week, as the driver of the Rally Fighter somehow performs a memorable front somersault after hitting a bump on the desert trail. The Rally Fighter initially landed on its rear after the 360-degree flip and somehow, thanks to gravity, the racer got back up on all fours and sped away detached hood and all, as if the whole scene was planned all along.
Now, that’s how you turn a potentially horrific crash into an episode people will be talking about for years to come!
Back when we were all kids, a lot of us probably did that thing where we’d take a Bburago auto scale model and proceed to paint over the existing car’s body color in whatever livery we can think of.
It ruined far more models than we would’ve liked, but it was pretty fun.
Fast forward to today and the TRG-Aston Martin Racing North America team is asking us to submit our very own paint scheme creations for its Vantage GT3 racecar. The prize? They’re going to take that livery design of yours and use it to dress up their third race car.
All you need to do is do a preliminary design study using photos of the Vantage GT3 that you can download on TRG’s Facebook page. You can use any photo-editing program you want and you can enter as many times as you want with the deadline for submissions set on February 20. Once you’re done with your work, all you have to do is post the photo on their Facebook page!
It’s pretty easy to do if you’re proficient in any of the aforementioned photo editing software. What might be more difficult is impressing the panel of judges that include Kevin Buckler, CEO of TRG-AMR North America, John Gaw, Managing Director of Aston Martin Racing, and Aston Martin Racing Factory Driver Darren Turner.
But if you can catch the attention of these three individuals, you just might find your livery design on one of the three Vantage GT3s that will be racing in a 2013 Grand-Am event in North America.
Well, what’re you waiting for, guys! Start putting those creative juices to work!
After having been involved in the Gumball 3000 rally for the past years, Team Galag is set to return for their third round this year, except that instead of bringing their respective cars for the 3,000-mile drive, they’ve decided to build their cars.
Not one, but two of them.
One of the cars Team Galag is trying to create before Gumball 3000 starts in the end of May is a one-off concept supercar called the TG1. Yeah, you read that right. These guys are building a one-off concept supercar that they’ll use for a race. Not lacking in resources, are we Team Galag?
So far, the only known details Team Galag has released is that they’re project will be a joint collaboration with the fellas over at SyFy Channel’s Parker Brothers Concepts. On top that, Team Galag promises that the TG1 will be a bespoke build that will carry a 3.8-liter twin-turbocharged 24-valve V-6 engine, tuned and re-tuned to produce an output of 750 horsepower with a top speed in excess of 200 mph.
No official numbers have been released yet, but the team is expecting the TG1 to run 0-to-60 mph in 2.68 seconds and 0-to-100 mph in 5.65 seconds.
Rest assured, we’ll have more details about the TG1 when Team Galag officially unveils this one-off concept supercar.
When Universal showed the first trailer of Fast & Furious 6 during the Super Bowl, we noticed that there was a Ferrari FXX in one of the scenes. A closer look, by way of the amazing technology known as "pause," and we noticed that it wasn’t exactly an actual FXX, but a replica of said exotic.
How could this be possible? Well, a few styling cues from the car seems to suggest as such. The most obvious are the headlights, which actually don’t belong in a real FXX, but in Ferrari’s other limited edition supercar, the Enzo.
Also, check out the vents of the car in a photo uploaded by Ludacris in his Instagram account (by the way, we went back to his account and it appears that the photo has since been taken down). We bring this up because we don’t see the vents and the rivets on the car’s fenders. Speaking of rivets, the one on Ludacris’ photo has them just north of the Enzo-like headlights, which a real FXX shouldn’t have in the first place.
And finally, do you see the vents on the side of the replica FXX? By our account, the real FXX doesn’t have that many of ’em.
If you want to compare photos, we’ve included a gallery of the actual FXX. Check it out and let us know what you think!
Joe Flacco won a whole lot more than just a Super Bowl championship after leading the Baltimore Ravens to their second title in team history. Sure, he threw for 287 yards with three touchdowns and also won himself the game’s MVP award.
You could make a case that Ravens receivers Anquan Boldin and Jacoby Jones also deserved the MVP award, but we have no problem with Flacco winning it. The man proved up to the task and showed that he belongs in the elite class of quarterbacks in the NFL.
Seeing as how somebody can apparently win a 2014 Corvette Stingray by playing football and leading his team to the Super Bowl title, then we would’ve signed up to play football a long time ago.
Ok, maybe not.
In any case, congratulations to Joe Flacco and the Baltimore Ravens for winning Super Bowl XLVII. Certainly well deserved!
Leave it to Audi to take advantage of an opportunity to get some digs on a rival automaker.
With the unexpected Super Bowl power outage taking well over 30 minutes to get resolved, the German automaker decided to throw a grenade Mercedes’ way. In case you didn’t know, the Superdome is officially titled as the Mercedes SuperBowl by way of Merc’s sponsorship of the dome.
So with the lights out, Audi went to Twitter to send a hilarious tweet Mercedes’ way. Here’s what it said:
"Sending some LEDs to the @MBUSA Superdome right now..."
Shots fired! Shots fired!
To be fair, the lights did come back on, but it was still another ingenious dig by an automaker that’s fast becoming one of the must-follow Twitter accounts in the industry. Remember their previous shots at Acura and its NSX Concept for "spiking" the design of the 1991 Quattro Spyder?
This Mercedes zing, though, is a lot funnier than that one.
We know Justin Lin (no relation to Jeremy Lin) is directing Fast and Furious 6, but is it at all possible that his body has been taken over by Michael Bay?
See, the first official trailer of Fast and Furious 6 has just gone live and, while we did enjoy the spectacle of seeing Vin Diesel, Paul Walker and the crew back, we couldn’t help but also notice that the trailer probably had more explosions than any of the first five movies combined.
Nevertheless, we also get a preview of what the plot for the movie is going to be, which is kind of a buzz kill in itself. So, the Rock and XXX are tag-team partners now?
Really, where’s the fun in that if you’ve got the two meatiest dudes on one side against, you know, a tank.
With apologies to all weird Super Bowl commercials in the past, Lincoln’s new ad for the big game may have put all else to shame.
First of all, the ad was done in collaboration with Jimmy Fallon, who doesn’t appear on the commercial. From what we’ve been told, people sent tweets to Fallon, who, in turn, wrote a script based on the tweets by the fans. Not exactly the easiest thing to do, even for a world-class comedian like Fallon.
So with the script in hand, Lincoln prepared an MKZ commercial that borders on weird. To be honest, we don’t know what to make of it other than the cameos of some celebrities, including Wil Wheaton, hip hop artist Rev Run, and even retired-NFL-star Emmitt Smith.
Other than that, the whole thing is just a convoluted mash-up that doesn’t do the MKZ any justice. It feels a little too far into twitter world than we would have want to see the new self proclaimed super luxury brand from the Ford group. Let’s hope this isn’t the ad that the "Phoenix" teaser spot was alluding to.
