Press releases from the BMW World Superbike team and the Marc VDS Racing MotoGP team, in which Marc VDS rave about the Kalex, and BMW emphasize that it is their own electronics they have been working on:
Source: http://joesaward.wordpress.com/2011/12/01/meanwhile-in-india/
But the fates had other ideas, as did Tony Stewart. And so while Stewart celebrated in victory lane, confetti and fireworks lighting up the South Florida sky, Edwards stood by his car, eyes red-rimmed, quietly but firmly answering every question put his way.
As devastating as this is, though, Edwards can take heart in one fact: he's set up well for a lot of future success. Although the whole "if there were no Chase" argument is as tired as they come, Edwards would have two Cups now without the Chase (this year and 2008). While other drivers come and go, Edwards has been around and at the front of the pack for half a decade now.
And here's the thing: as wickedly consistent as Edwards was this year, this is just a continuation of what he'd begun last year. He closed off 2010 with two first-place finishes and 13 top 10s in the last 19 races. The guy is absolutely dialed in right now. Hot streaks come and go, but consistency ... that's the kind of thing you can rely on for years upon end.
Edwards is, without question, the star of the Roush Fenway firmament right now. He'll get the best equipment, the best engineers, the best sponsor support ? what's he up to now, eight? Ten? the guy collects sponsors like baseball cards ?�the best options for future success.
You know who he resembles right now? A guy who, in 2004 and 2005, was oh-so-close but couldn't quite get up over the hill. A guy who was in second place at the end of 2004 and second place with one race left in the 2005 season.
A guy who would go on to win five straight Cups starting the very next year.
Look, it's too soon to compare Edwards and Jimmie Johnson, but we're just saying that the foundations are similar, the parallels are there. They're roughly the same age (Johnson was 30 when he won his first Cup; Edwards is 31) and they both have a strong, close relationship with both their team and their crew chief. And for both drivers, there are no limits in sight.
"He's going to be up here one day," Tony Stewart said of Edwards, motioning to the championship stage around him. "And I hope we're the ones he beats."
It didn't happen on Sunday ... but it could happen sooner than we think.
Eugenio Castellotti Johnny Cecotto Andrea de Cesaris Francois Cevert
Source: http://adamcooperf1.com/2011/11/28/bernie-ecclestone-on-austin-qa-they-never-had-the-money/
As recently as July, Brad Keselowski was looking like a talented but undistinguished member of the Sprint Cup field, running in the 20s and performing weakly enough that Kurt Busch complained of having no teammate assistance.
Things change in a hurry. Keselowski won three races, very nearly vaulting himself into the Chase on rank. (Side note: if he had, he would have bumped out eventual champ Tony Stewart.) He snagged a wild card, and would go on to finish fifth in the standings, ahead of Jimmie Johnson, Jeff Gordon and both Busch brothers. Not a bad turnaround, huh?
As a result of his performance, Keselowski and crew chief Paul Wolfe have received contract extensions from Penske. While Penske didn't disclose exact terms, both deals were "multiple-year" arrangements. Wolfe had previously crewed Keselowski to the 2010 Nationwide championship.
Keselowski has, as yet, not made a public comment on the issue, though he is in Vegas for Champions Week. On an unrelated note, he disclosed at the "NASCAR Newlywed Game" that he gets drunk very easily. He's certainly got enough to celebrate these days.
TheNASCARInsiders.com
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Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/TheNascarInsiders/~3/ZZh23Z9gx8s/
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The sleek and sexy Hennessey Venom GT became a successful model in a very short time and Hennessey is hoping to repeat that success with an open top version of the same sports car. The new Hennessey Venom GT Spyder will be offered with a removable top and will only be produced in a limited run of five units, two of which have already been spoken for. Deliveries will begin in Summer 2012 and prices will start from $1.1 million, about $150,000 more than the Coupe’s top version.
The Venom GT Spyder will be powered by the same Chevrolet sourced V8 engine found in the Coupe with an output of 1,200 HP at 6,500 rpm and 1,155 lb-ft of torque at 4,200 rpm. Because of the added weight from the removable roof, performance numbers should be a tad bit slower than the Coupe, which sprints from 0-60 mph in 2.5 seconds and to 200 mph in 15.9 seconds, on its way up to a top speed of 275 mph. The engine will more than likely send its power to the rear wheels via a Ricardo 6-speed gearbox and handling will be facilitated by a KW variant three-adjustable coilover suspension.
As far as its design goes, the Venom GT Spyder will start off with the Lotus Elise base and will follow along the same extreme design lines as its Coupe sibling. We imagine it will also feature the same active aero system with adjustable rear wing that will deploy under varying conditions on both the road and racetrack.
"With the hardtop in place, the Venom GT offers a very visceral, raw, driving experience," said Hennessey CEO, Don Goldman. "With the hardtop removed, the wind and the growl of the twin turbo V8 will offer our clients an even greater driving sensation."
The 1,200 HP will make the Venom GT Spyder the most powerful convertible in the world. Will it also be the fastest? We believe it will, but Hennessey will have to keep that 275 mph top speed intact.
Hennessey Venom GT Spyder originally appeared on topspeed.com on Wednesday, 30 November 2011 20:00 EST.
Source: http://www.topspeed.com/cars/hennessey/2013-hennessey-venom-gt-spyder-ar120803.html
Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Formula1Fancast/~3/5L2hXwGZSXc/kubica-hit-with-injury-setback
Michael Bleekemolen Alex Blignaut Trevor Blokdyk Mark Blundell
Time for our latest round of Power Rankings. Each week throughout the season, we'll size up who's rising and who's falling, based on current standings, behind-the-scenes changes, expected staying power, recent history and general gut feelings. And it's all down to this...
5. Matt Kenseth. The best part about this Chase, and indeed this season in general, is the way we're seeing a total turnover at the top of the NASCAR pyramid. Sure, we'll have a new champion; more on that in a moment. But we've seen the rise of a bona fide star in Matt Kenseth. Sure, he's been around for awhile, but this was the year everybody started realizing that he might just be the go-to guy for all opinions NASCAR.� Last week's ranking: 3.
6. Brad Keselowski. And here's the other breakout star of the 2011 season. While it's way too early to say if Keselowski can sustain this momentum, he's certainly become a media darling and seems to have the foundation now in place for a long, strong career.� Last week's ranking: 5.
11. Jeff Gordon. The sooner this Chase is over, the better for Jeff Gordon. He just hasn't done anything worth writing home about. (Or IM'ing/Skyping/Twittering home; nobody writes home anymore. And your mom is sad about that.) Anyway, enough with 2011. If I was Jeff Gordon, I'd start, park and drink away the pain of this year at the Fontainebleaue on South Beach.� Last week's ranking: 8.
Dropping out of the rankings: Dale Earnhardt Jr., Greg Biffle.
Lucky Dog: Jeff Burton. Carl Edwards won't be buying The Senator any beers anytime soon after being unable to keep Stewart from getting to third, but in and of itself, Burton's fourth-place finish is pretty darn impressive.
DNF: Geoffrey Bodine, who spun three times in this race. Best part of that: his brother Todd protesting on Twitter that he (Todd) wasn't the one causing all these problems, as if people thought he would be checking Twitter during the race.
Charging upward: David Reutimann, who got a 7th-place finish at a really tough track. Yep, he sucks. Cut him loose.
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Next up: Homestead! It's the end of the season, so get ready and send comments to us via Twitter at @jaybusbee, via email by clicking here, and via Facebook at The Marbles page.
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The saga of Formula 1's 2012 visit to the Circuit of the Americas in Austin, Texas has yet another chapter.
Will it be the final one? Possibly. But probably not.
While the series was in Abu Dhabi over the weekend, F1 chief Bernie Ecclestone said that he wouldn't want to put his money down on the race happening next year at Austin.
Strong words. But is it just a power play? Or the real deal?
Tavo Hellmund's promotional company has the rights to the race at Austin. Bobby Epstein is helping fund construction of the track, which is estimated at $300 million. Apparently they're not getting along. And add in the fact that the state of Texas is involved to the tune of a $25 million major events fund, and yeah, this is getting messy.
By all accounts the meeting did not go well. Sources in Europe and the United States suggest that Epstein was offered a new contract but he has not signed it, presumably because he doesn't like the terms. Ecclestone hasn't been paid, and the state of Texas hasn't disbursed the $25 million from the trust fund. The rules say it can't until after Nov. 18, less than one year before the scheduled event. Even so, online inquires suggest that all of the applications, paperwork and meetings required to apply for the money have not been completed.
Circuit of the Americas president Steve Sexton downplayed Ecclestone's comments about the race's future in a statement, saying that funding for the race has been secured.
Maybe it's not all conjecture from Ecclestone at this point, especially given the fact that the series doesn't have to have all of its eggs in the Austin basket after the announcement of the race in New Jersey starting in 2013. At this point, it's almost a minor miracle that the race still has a future given all of the hurdles that it's had to clear And that's why it wouldn't be so surprising to see it actually happen.
Or not.
It's one of the truisms of NASCAR that every major story has about a six-and-a-half-day lifespan: the time between the checkered flag of one race and the green flag of the next. With little to do between races but wait and debate, every story gets chewed into a fine paste over the course of the working week. And then, like the changing of the seasons, each new race brings a whole fresh crop of storylines to fascinate and titillate the fans and the media.
If the story is "these two drivers just plain don't like each other," that's one thing. But in a case where you've got a driver who's put himself at a career crossroads, as we had with Kyle Busch last weekend in Texas, everyone involved owes it to the driver and the sport to get the matter resolved as soon as possible.
NASCAR acted swiftly. Joe Gibbs Racing and M&M/Mars did not. They left Busch twisting in the wind for an entire week, exposing him to escalating levels of criticism that far outweighed the original act. And when the press conference did come, Busch fidgeted in a plain white JGR dress shirt as Gibbs, with disappointed-father demeanor, laid out exactly how much Busch had let down everyone around him.
It's going to take a long time for Busch's image to recover from this past week, and perhaps that was the point of all this. But in a world where news cycles are defined by minutes, not days, Busch has just gone through the 21st-century equivalent of a tarring and feathering, with his critics getting ever bolder in their top-this declarations of what his punishment should be. Out of the car for a race? Forget that, he should be out of the car for the season! He should be fired from JGR! He should be kicked out of NASCAR! He should be prosecuted for assault!
Come on. Enough.
What Busch did was stupid and thoughtless. He deserved parking, and he deserved a public denunciation. What he didn't deserve was to be treated like a misbehaving five-year-old told to wait until his father came home, with the entire NASCAR nation looking on and ticking off the hours.
Put it another way: when Busch plowed his truck into that of Ron Hornaday Jr., Joe Paterno was still happily esconced as coach at Penn State, enjoying an off-weekend and readying for this week's Nebraska game. That's how fast things can change. And yet it took until Thursday for M&M's to make up its mind about penalties, and until Friday for JGR to lay out its perspective on the whole matter.
"Sometimes we think we are bigger than the sponsors, and we are not," Jeff Gordon said Friday, and nowhere was this more demonstrably clear than when M&M's decided to yank its logo off Busch's car. You can agree or disagree with that sentiment, and with the possibility that sponsors have too much influence on what happens on the track. Clearly, they want value for their dollar, but where that value ends and influence begins is another matter entirely.
But if sponsors want the cachet of riding with one of the sport's most successful drivers (in the regular season, anyway), why not step up with some more definitive action earlier in the week? Why not send out a spokesperson, rather than communicating through press release? This was a defining moment, not just for Kyle Busch but for NASCAR as a whole, and all sides should have handled this with more speed and authority.
Busch deserved every bit of the punishment he's received; for the good of the sport's image, hopefully this will scare him straight. But he also deserved better than the drawn-out circus that, even now, may not be over.
Piero Carini Duane Carter Eugenio Castellotti Johnny Cecotto
In all, NASCAR waved checkered flags 95 times over points-paying national series races this season ? leaving plenty of hits and misses to remember from the season that was. Here's a look back at what made the 2011 NASCAR season tick:
HOT: Tony Stewart won five races in the Chase and Carl Edwards had a better average finish than anyone, ever. And then? Stewart wins the Sprint Cup title on a walk-off win. Need we say more?
NEUTRAL: New pavement at Daytona, the bane of any race track's existence, allowed drivers to add a new trick to the restrictor plate handbook this year in the form of two-car tandem drafting.
It was a novelty during the Daytona 500, still new for Talladega in April and finally started to lose sizable luster when NASCAR returned to Daytona in July. The racing was different, yes, but NASCAR's sizable steps to remove tandem drafting should be bold ? and effective.
HOT: What would you say the best fight to the finish line this season was? My top-three are simple: Stewart-Edwards at Homestead, Jeff Gordon and Jimmie Johnson at Atlanta and Gordon and Kyle Busch at Phoenix.
Honorable mention goes to Kevin Harvick versus Dale Earnhardt Jr. at Martinsville in the spring.
NOT: The incessant complaints about the high number of fuel-mileage races this season may top my list of gripes. Should we really fault 1) NASCAR for not throwing as many perceived phantom cautions, 2) drivers who learned to manage their fuel the greatest and 3) teams who technically were the fastest to the finish line?
No. I'll take the uncontrived finishes with plenty of dramatic potential.
HOT: NASCAR's far-reaching embrace of social media was a major positive for this season. The best? I'll hand that award to NASCAR's Steve O'Donnell (@odsteve), vice president of racing operations, who provided fans with direct information, insider views, trivia and more.
NASCAR has long lacked transparency in how they operate, but O'Donnell (and others) have changed that, 140 characters at a time.
NOT: What happened to Joe Gibbs Racing this year? Denny Hamlin fell from the face of the Sprint Cup world sometime around the middle of September, while Kyle Busch floundered midway through the Chase before his Texas meltdown.
Also: did Joey Logano really only reel in six top 10s in the Cup series? Yikes.
HOT: Once considered by racing purists with scorn, NASCAR racing on road courses continued it's rapid ascent this year as some of the most enjoyable left-and-right action available in the U.S. Scenic, action-packed and dripping with strategy ? it's borderline idiocy that the Sprint Cup Series only flips the steering wheel right twice a year.
NOT: NASCAR officially has their own version of the present-day San Diego Chargers in Earnhardt Ganassi Racing. Every so often, they bubble toward the top with notable names and inclinations of consistent success, before falling back to mediocrity.
A year removed from Jamie McMurray's keystone wins at Daytona and Indianapolis, both he and Juan Pablo Montoya were outside the top 20 in points. What goes up for that team seems to always come back down.
NEUTRAL: The simplicity and ease of NASCAR's new point structure was a major positive. The artificially-close gaps should help keep future interest, as well.
However, NASCAR does need to make a slight adjustment to make winning count a bit more. If nothing else, picking up several wins should go a long way in erasing a single bad finish.
HOT: We saw the ignition of a long and successful career amidst the most unlikely of odds. With Kurt Busch playing top dog at Penske Racing, seeing Brad Keselowski score three wins ? while badly hurt for one, nonetheless ? and a fifth-place finish in the final standings was the biggest eye-opener of 2011.
NOT: Consider this personal resentment due to local love, but I'm very sad that the 2012 NASCAR calendars won't include the once-named Indianapolis Raceway Park. There's no doubt about it: tracks like Indy's half-mile should have been NASCAR's cookie cutter template in the late 1990s.
It's sad to see another go.
FINAL: There's no doubt that 2011 did a lot of good for NASCAR's brand. They made reasonable steps to better accommodate fan reaction, new and old contenders surfaced, real dramas unfolded and ? for the first time in a long time ? young drivers in the Nationwide and Camping World Truck Series seemed to grab more attention.
And, my goodness, was the finale at Homestead one to write home to mama about, or what? The countdown to Daytona is moving swiftly, and 2012 will be here before you know it.
I don't know about you, but I'm already excited for it.
Agree with my ramblings? Did I miss something? Hate my guts? The comment section is all yours.
George Abecassis Kenny Acheson Andrea de Adamich Philippe Adams
After a first day of useful testing for the Moto2 class at Valencia, the second day was a complete washout. The day started off wet, the rain getting heavier as the day progressed, severely limiting action on track. Just a handful of riders braved the conditions, including Alessandro Andreozzi, Scott Redding and Johann Zarco. Later in the afternoon, Toni Elias followed suit, the Spaniard taking one of the Aspar Suter's out for a spin as he closed on a deal with the team for 2012. Aspar already has Aleix Espargaro and Nico Terol signed, but Espargaro looks like being promoted to ride a CRT Aprilia in MotoGP for the team, making way for Elias to take the Moto2 ride. Contracts are expected to be signed in the next couple of days.
NASCAR has spoken regarding further penalties for Kyle Busch, and the word is this: a $50,000 fine plus probation until the end of the year. But he will be in the car for Phoenix and Homestead.
This, of course, is in addition to the potential winnings lost by not running in the Nationwide or Sprint series races in Texas over the weekend. And Joe Gibbs Racing has not announced if it will level any in-house penalties on Busch.
Busch lost substantial money for himself and his team by missing two races over the weekend. In the Sprint Cup series, Busch averaged a 12th-place finish this year; at Texas that paid David Ragan $116,625. In Nationwide, Busch averaged a fifth-place finish, which at Texas paid Brad Keselowski $24,225.
NASCAR has also begun the laborious process of drawing definitive lines for behavior, lines that the sport has until now been loath to set down in writing. "If during the remaining NASCAR events in 2011 there is another action by the competitor that is deemed by NASCAR officials as detrimental to stock car racing or to NASCAR, or is disruptive to the orderly conduct of an event, the competitor will be suspended indefinitely from NASCAR." In other words: no more retaliation,�Kyle ... if, of course, you believe the threats.
The major problem with the Kyle Busch suspension isn't that it happened, it's that NASCAR needs to establish precedent rather than pulling a "know it when we see it" approach. Now we know where the line is for any driver retaliating while the race is under caution, and potentially during green-flag runs as well.
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Source: http://adamcooperf1.com/2011/11/28/helmut-mrako-on-2012-at-str-we-are-looking-for-a-top-f1-driver/
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We all know that automakers have slowly begun to pay more attention to consumer goods as a way of branching out their business models, but in the case of Porsche Design - Porsche’s styling arm - they might have taken it to a whole new level by diving into real estate development.
No, they’re not building their own theme park like Ferrari did, but they did build a new condominium project in the heart of Miami Beach.
The building is set to be christened the "Porsche Design Tower" and will be a collaborative project between the company and real estate developer Gil Dezer. The new condominium is expected to rise on 2.2 acres of real estate along Collins Avenue in Miami, making up 132 housing units on the 57-story building. One of the most fascinating features of the Porsche Design Tower is the inclusion of three robotic car elevators that will allow you to actually bring your own car up to your condos without, apparently, needing your own basement parking.
We’re more than interested to see how the whole set-up is going to work, but we have neither the car nor the funds to make a play for one of those units, which, we expect, will sell for more than what our bank accounts can handle.
But hey, the whole idea of bringing your car up to your condo unit is pretty sweet in its own right. At the very least, you won’t have to worry about it being stolen in the basement.
Porsche Design Tower set to be built in Miami originally appeared on topspeed.com on Saturday, 26 November 2011 18:00 EST.
Source: http://www.topspeed.com/cars/car-news/porsche-design-tower-set-to-be-built-in-miami-ar120414.html
Michael Andretti Keith Andrews Elio de Angelis Marco Apicella
