Race Cars

A new Le Mans ‘Hypercar’ class has been added to the World Endurance Championship starting this year. This has led to the introduction of some pretty sweet builds, like the Toyota GR Super Sport and the Glickenhaus 007. Peugeot has also thrown its hat into the ring with a new hypercar called the 9X8. It looks stunning and comes with a hybrid powertrain. Peugeot has announced that the 9X8 will take part in the 2022 season of the event.

This year’s Pikes Peak International Hill Climb had spectators, but the weather played the spoilsport. That, however, didn’t dampen Randy Pobst’s spirits, who can be seen hooting while expertly carving the corners in his climb. In what was Randy’s eighth Pikes Peak appearance, he went on to win the event and also recorded the best time in the Exhibition Class. His steed for the year was a customized Tesla Model S Plaid sans the Yoke steering.

Thanks to the onboard video, we get to witness the climb from Randy’s point of view!

This 1959 Lister Costin isn’t just special because it’s a real classic. It’s not even special because it’s been crowned as the fastest Lister in Europe. Okay, well these things might make it special, but the real icing on the cake is that it’s certified 100-percent original and it’s the very last Lister Costin to have ever been built. It’s also the only Lister Costin in existence to still have its original bonnet, if you can believe that.

Built in 1959 and featuring the chassis No. BHL159, this Costin is ready to race the minute it’s purchased and even includes an FIA Historic Technical Passport. It has been meticulously maintained for the last three decades by leading Jaguar Lister specialists, and in 2019 it won the 2019 Stirling Moss Trophy by finishing more than a lap ahead of the rest of the field. With Chris Ward behind the wheel, this is the same car that finished its lap a second faster than any other car, winning it the title of “the fastest Lister in Europe.” As far as verification goes, it’s history and originality was verified by CKL Developments Ltd.

Part of the verification process was inspecting the chassis, which does include the correct BHL135 stamp on the off-side. The entire chassis was also determined to be original thanks to inspection and verification of the style of welding between chassis parts. Most powertrain details have been left out, but we do know that it features a manual transmission (obviously). According to the listing on Bell Sport & Classic, this car was originally designed to accept a Maserati 450S V-8 – something that was determined by the modified engine mounts. It was originally shipped to the U.S.A. without an engine, however, and it’s believed that it was fitted with a Chevrolet engine at the time. The car now, features a correct Jaguar 3.8-liter race-spec engine that was installed after the car circulated back around to the UK by John and Gary Pearson, the former of which was actually a Mechanic for the Lister factory in the early 1960s.

The real question right now is how much a true classic like this will actually sell for. There’s no price listed by Bell Sport & Classic, so you’ll have to inquire directly if you’re actually interested and have a small fortune you’re willing to part with.

CarWow is synonymous with holding some pretty spectacular drag races on its channel. But the race that they set up this weekend has to be one of the best ones ever. They just dropped a new video of a Formula 1 Red Bull racing car from 2011 take on one of today’s ultimate road cars, a Bugatti Chiron.

Ken Block startled his followers and the motorsport world by announcing the end of his over-decade-long partnership with Ford at the beginning of 2021. After a decade of living and breathing the vehicles with the blue oval, several of his renowned gymkhana and rallycross vehicles have gone up for sale in the six months following that announcement. Since the year began, Block has been steadily selling several modified Ford cars in his garage.

The most sought-after of his vehicles from his fleet is now up for sale. Yes, the Hoonitruck is for sale. Here’s what you need to know.

A few months back, BMW revealed that its performance arm was dipping its toes in the drifting scene. The automaker was backing the Hountondji brothers who are famously known as the Red Bull Driftbrothers. BMW handed them two pre-production M4 Competitions eight weeks back, and the duo has now revealed the monsters. All the exact specs are yet to be revealed, but we do know that the cars make more than 1,000 ponies! The Hountondji brothers will take these cars to the 2021 season of the Drift Masters European Championship in Greinbach, Austria.

Mercedes is certainly no stranger to motorsports. The German brand has been at it for the better part of the last 100 years. The company was involved in Grand Prix as early as 1923, with their teardrop-shaped Benz Tropfenwagen and then there was LeMans incident from 1955 where a 300 SLR crash-landed into the stands. Mercedes dominated the FIA GT1 class in the 1990s, but that was followed by some interesting developments with their Mercedes CLR, which apparently acted more like an airplane rather than a car. As a result, it managed to flip, and not just once.

Bentley has revealed its new Pikes Peak Continental race car, and it is the epitome of purpose-built performance. This Continental has been thoroughly reworked, and is being billed as the most extreme road-going Bentley ever built. To prepare for the Pikes Peak challenge, Bentley’s engineers built a special aerodynamics kit, reworked the chassis, and pushed the 4.0-liter, twin-turbo, V-8 to an all-new level. Here’s what you really need to know.

We’ve been hearing all sorts of rumors about Bugatti recently, including that it’s working on a new supercar and that it could be sold to Rimac. News about the new hypercar was also unclear. Some claimed it will be all-electric, while others forwarded the idea that it will be just another Chiron-based thing. Well, the new supercar is here, and it’s neither of them. It’s called Bolide, and it’s actually a brand-new idea. It’s a track-only vehicle with a new carbon monocoque and a brand-new design, but how extreme is it? Let’s find out!

Throughout the years, automotive history has recorded many worthy achievements. Some of them praise the car, others praise the driver, and sometimes both. This was exactly the case with British racing driver Andy Wallace and the Toyota TS010, both of which literally share blood…or cracked bones. The most fanatic of car enthusiasts find some romantic aspect about a car that can hurt you, but was it really the car, the racetrack, or a combination of both that resulted in the incident?

BMW Group Classis is a YouTube series where the good people from BMW Classic acquaint us with some of the brand’s most iconic models. As most BMW enthusiasts would point out, there were plenty of epic BMW cars made throughout the brand’s history. Today Benny and Mark are on screen so they can talk about one of the most iconic cars ever made – the BMW 3.0 CSL Batmobile.

The internal combustion engines are on the verge of getting knocked off into oblivion, but that doesn’t mean electrification is the only way to go. A lot of automakers are fighting to keep them alive for as long as possible before euthanizing them. Toyota is one of them, and it recently gave us a preview of the hydrogen-powered version of the GR Yaris’ engine. The automaker plonked it into a Corolla hatch and released a video of how it sounds. If this doesn’t give you the chills, we don’t know what will.

You don’t really see Audi come up with such stuff, but the automaker has revealed a ‘Color Edition’ of its most powerful product - the R8 LMS GT2. But, in all fairness, it deserves to be pampered with such appearance editions, considering it is the German automaker’s flagship race car. Audi is offering it in six different exterior shades, each one looking better than the other. There are no changes made to the cabin or the drivetrain, but you can’t expect much with a premium price increase of just $13,000.

The Monaco Historique, like the Le Mans Classic, is one of those rare transcendental events. It takes you back in time to what many argue was the ’Golden Age’ of motor racing. Over one weekend every couple or so years, some of the world’s most revered F1 and sports cars gather to once again race in anger. In 2021, the gang got back together for more battling on the streets of Monte-Carlo and it all got a little bit too hot, multi-million-dollar metal being bent in the process.

Lamborghini Squadra Corse, the division that handles Lamborghini’s motorsport efforts is teasing what looks to be a new hardcore race car via a short video that leaves us wanting for more. Especially since it’s hard to pinpoint what this car is and where and if it will race.