Archive for Motorsports

The Proton Satria Neo Super 2000 rally car will be entering the Intercontinental Rally Challenge full-time after its first competition debut late last year. Proton will be the 7th manufacturer in the IRC series, joining the likes of Abarth, Honda, Mitsubishi, Peugeot, Skoda and Volkswagen.

“We are absolutely delighted to welcome Proton into the IRC family. The new Satria Neo S2000 has already attracted a lot of praise in its short career to date. I have no doubt that Proton will quickly find success with competitive rally customers on IRC events, as well as on national and regional championships that are based on S2000 technical regulations,” said IRC GM Marcello Lotti.

“The IRC provides the ideal format for manufacturers to showcase their products around the world. We are very excited to register for the IRC this year, alongside many of the leading manufacturers in motorsport. Although we are still developing the Proton, the IRC will provide the perfect opportunity to gauge the competitiveness of the car, and ultimately to take the project forward,” said Proton’s MD Datuk Syed Zainal.

The Satria Neo S2000 made its first rally debut piloted by Bryan Bouffier and co-driver Xavier Panseri in the Rallye Antibes Cote d’Azur leg of the 2008 European Rally Championship in the South of France. In full rally trim, the hatch has the smallest front and the lowest roof height (heh I am not surprised really) of any homologated S2000 car. It’s 2.0 liter engine is derived from Renault’s 1.8 liter unit from the Waja 1.8X and puts out 278 horsepower at 7,600rpm.

The Neo is no doubt one of the most “visible” Proton cars internationally, at least in terms of how much appearances it makes here and there. The Neo is even used in Top Gear Australia as the car used in the “Star in a Bog Standard Car” segment.

Related Stories:
More MEM Proton Satria Neo S2000 videos
MEM Proton Satria Neo Super 2000
Proton Satria Neo Super 2000 Touring Car
VIDEO: MEM Proton Satria Neo Super 2000

After much speculation, Honda has finally sold their F1 team to someone quite close to home – Ross Brawn. Brawn has been in F1 for quite some time now, having worked in various F1 teams including Benetton and Ferrari.

After a 1 year break in 2007 he returned as the Team Principal of the Honda F1 team for the 2008 race year, and now owns the team, which has been renamed Brawn GP. From milling machine operator in 1976 to F1 team owner in 2009, that’s really quite a long way to have gone. The new Brawn GP team will use Mercedes-Benz engines and will be piloted by Jenson Button and Rubens Barrichello. The team’s new colours are white, fluorescent yellow and black, and its BGP 001 conducted its first test at the Circuit de Catalunya in Barcelona recently.

The car was pretty fast, in fact piloted by Button it was one of the fastest cars in the pre-season group test, despite being what Ed Gorman called “a Honda chassis and suspension bolted together with a Mercedes-Benz engine it was not designed for.”

So I guess we’ll see Brawn GP here in Malaysia then!

Alpina has launched its FIA European GT3 contender, the 530HP and 725Nm of torque Alpina B6 GT3 after 20 years standing in the grand stands. Up against 12 other competitors such as Aston Martin and Porsche, the Alpina B6 is expected to put up a good fight with its 4.4 liter V8 under the hood.

Recently, the B6 GT3 performed its first 300 kilometers track test in freezing temperatures which went through trouble-free. Alpina will field two race cars in the FIA GT3 European Championship while negotiations to confirm driver lineup is underway. Alpina also plans to participate in the endurance race in Nurburgring with the B6 GT3.

Alpina also revealed that the Alpina B6 GT3 will also be made available for other racing teams and will compete in additional circuits including national GT3 races in Germany, Britain, France, Italy, Belgium and Brazil. Continue reading to view an image gallery.

Click here to read the rest of Geneva 2009: Alpina B6 GT3

Formula One is a seriously expensive sport but it’s really hard to visualize how expensive it really is by just looking at the race cars battling it out on the circuits. There’s a tremendous amount of hard work, time and money put into the development of Formula One cars, and to even begin to grasp the idea of how much equipment and etc it takes, you will have to take a stroll behind the scenes to check out the development and manufacturing of the car. Look after the jump for a series of videos released by the BMW Sauber F1 Team called “Understanding Formula 1″. It looks like there are plenty more to come but these are the few released so far, so please enjoy!

Click here to read the rest of Understanding Formula 1: a series of videos by the BMW Sauber F1 Team

Picture Source

One of the most iconic cars in Maserati’s history has also been voted the world’s greatest racing car ever by British magazine Octane. This car is the Maserati 250F and it was a Formula One car, which debuted in the 1954 season and used by customer teams until 1960. The name 250F refers to the specs that were instated for F1 in 1954 – a maximum engine capacity of 2.5 liters hence the 250 number, and F refers to Formula One naturally. Those rules also stipulated 750cc supercharged engines but Maserati decided to take the normally aspirated route.

It was built on a simple multi-tubular ladder-like frame which carries the suspension, body panels and engine. The rear used a De Dion axle while the front was of a double wishbone design. Maserati engineers paid their full attention to the engine that powered the car, a 2.5 liter inline-6 with twin spark dual spark ignition and 3 Weber 45 DCO3 Caburattors. It produced 270 horsepower at 8,000rpm. For those that complain about cars coming with rear drum brakes these days, this F1 car used drum brakes all-round!

Click for enlarged image

The 1950s Formula One world were dominated by road-car teams like Maserati together with Alfa Romeo, Ferrari, Mercedes-Benz. The Maserati 250F competed in a total of 46 F1 championships with 277 entries and won 8 times. Its performance in its first two races exceeded Maserati’s expectations where it was driven by Juan-Manuel Fangio to victory before he unfortunately left to the newly-formed Mercedes-Benz team.

VIDEO: Fangio driving the 250F Maserati in Modena, Italy in the 1950s

Thanks to the beauty of the internet you can even check out Fangio driving the 250F from its on-board cam today, recorded all the way back in the 1950s!

“It steered beautifully, and inclined towards stable oversteer which one could exploit by balancing it against power and steering in long sustained drifts through corners. It rode well on the normal type of relatively smooth-surfaced course, although its small coil springs and leaf spring rear-end would use up available suspension movement over the bumps at the Ring,” said a young Stirling Moss who drove it as a private racer.

A couple of hours ago, team principals; Ken Anderson and Peter Windsor officially announced the US F1 Team in an interview with Speed TV. As reported earlier, the US F1 Team intends to take part in the Formula 1 World Championship with its very own chassis and engine, and by hiring American drivers as it plans to join the Formula 1 grid for the 2010 season.

This means that the team has about 1 year to fully develop its contender and assemble its drivers, and rumor has it that the American team is interested to get Scott Speed and Danica Patrick on board.

Nothing much has been revealed during the interview however, apart from the fact that the team will be based in North Caroline which is also the home to the Windshear wind tunnel. The wind tunnel is crucial for the development of the aerodynamic efficiency of a Formula 1 car. The US F1 Team with its “Made in America” tag line will join Force India, as another “country”-based Formula 1 Team.

Both Ken Anderson and Peter Windsor (who is also a motoring journalist) have long resume’s in motor racing such as Formula 1 and Indy Car. Both also revealed that US F1 will reside in North Carolina, America, although most of the other teams are based in Europe. According to the team principals, most of the technology that is utilized in Formula 1 comes from America and that it is cheaper to run a Formula 1 team in America, compared to running one in Europe. But I am pretty sure that logistics might be a problem.

Both also mentioned in the interview that the US F1 Team is privately-owned, as in not a team that is fully owned by a single individual (which should be a millionaire) or an automobile company. Continue reading to watch a 5 minute 23 second-long video of the interview.

Click here to read the rest of Its official: US F1 Team officially announced

Formula One has gone through various changes over the past few years and as a new enthusiast such as myself it may be a little hard to keep up with all the changes such as traction contol, KERS, wing shapes and sizes, and etc. Mark Webber and Sebastian Vettel of Red Bull Racing dissects the new Formula One rulebook for the 2009 race year and simplifies it for us all! The video is also a teaser of sorts for the new Red Bull Renault RB5 Formula One car. It’s a 2 minute and 11 second video so you can probably sneak it in before the boss comes in or during lunch time or something, enjoy watching it!

Click here to read the rest of Red Bull Racing explains new 2009 F1 rules

Here’s more details on the upcoming USF1 team! It seems that Peter Windsor and Ken Anderson have confirmed that they’re up to something and were actually surprised that their plans have been under the wraps for several years now. Well, not exactly completely under the wraps, since there was talk of these guys talking to Honda sometime last year, but still, many details have only just recently surfaced.

There is now talk that the team will be making the Charlotte region its home, where the Concord $40 million Windshear race-car testing tunnel is located, and that details on the new USF1 team might surface on the 24th of February 2009. A secondary base will be located in Europe, likely in northern Spain.

As for the drivers? The rumoured duo is a male and female team comprising of American ex-Toro Rosso driver Scott Speed and everyone’s favorite race car driver turned model Danica Patrick, motorsport’s very own Maria Sharapova. Other potentials include Conor Daly, son of former F1 driver Derek Daly and Josef Newgarden.

Peter Windsor said it has not been easy raising money for the team in a recession such as this but the team will adapt to the changing times much like how FIA is adapting F1 rules. He also added that F1 is primarily an entertainment business so every aspect of USF1 will reflect that, which probably explains the extreme appeal of Danica Patrick as a driver – tons of viewers not even interested in F1 could tune in just to see her strut her self before and after the race! In fact, Ken Anderson says Danica is “great and gets alot of press”.

This GT3 racer marks an old to a 20 year long “draught” in Alpina motorsports history, and while it was first announced last year, the new Alpina B6 GT3 will be making a public appearance at the Geneva Motorshow this March. Quite interesting how Eastern companies are counting their pennies and scrambling to get out of motorsports but companies like Alpina and even the recently unveiled USF1 are getting in.

If you’re familiar with Alpina nomenclature you’ll know that the B6 GT3 is based on the BMW 6-Series. This is a race car that complies with FIA GT3 specifications. The 4.4 liter supercharged V8 (the base is the 4.4 liter V8 from the 645Ci) from the Alpina B6 S powers this car and produces 530 PS and a massive 725Nm of torque. It is mated to a 6-speed X-Trac sequential transmission.

As you can see from the interior (photo after the jump) the car has been stripped down to the core and weighs only 1,350kg. This is a race car complete with racing accessories like quick refuelers. Wheels are thick 18 inch alloys – 12×18 at the front and 13×18 at the rear, wrapped with Michelin rubber. 0 to 100km/h takes only 3.9 seconds and the car was rated to hit a top speed of 285km/h on the Nordschleife.

Alpina’s factory team will use this car as an entry in the 2009 FIA GT3 European Championship and hopefully they will be able to relive some of its past glory, having won the Nurburgring 24 hours race a couple of times. The B6 GT3 will also be sold to private teams and collectors.

The company will also be building a new engineering facility at the cost of 10 million British pounds, which will offer consultancy services and also run in-house R&D engineering. The B6 GT3’s appearance at the Geneva Motorshow will be joined by another car aimed at a different target marketed – the new Alpina B7 based on the F01 BMW 7-Series. Let’s see what kind of magic will they extract from the 750i’s turboed 4.4 liter V8.

Click here to read the rest of BMW Alpina B6 GT3 for the FIA GT3 class

Formula One has generally been a very multi-national motorsports event – teams are run like businesses and you sign up the best drivers and parts you can afford. A1 actually differentiated itself from F1 by having country-based teams, although they may like our A1 Team Malaysia be managed by foreigners. The Force India F1 team is one recent “country”-based team, though it looks like it’s only in ownership as the drivers (German Adrian Sutil and Italian Giancarlo Fisichella) and management team are all foreigners.

Here comes another new F1 team – USF1, with the tagline “Made in America”. They plan to use American drivers and American engines and chassis development. They’ve also reportedly signed up for the new Windshear wind tunnel in North Carolina for R&D. The US doesn’t even have their own F1 race (the US GP ended in 2007). Do Americans even like motorsports that aren’t in run a straight line or an oval?

Not much else is known about the team, but a few key people are said to be associated – Peter Windsor (uh, a sports commentator), and Ken Anderson. Those who follow F1 news may remember this news piece sometime in mid-2008 about Ken Anderson talking to Honda about setting up an American F1 team. Is this a completely new team, or a repackaged and rebranded Honda F1 Team?

Has Honda finally found a buyer for their F1 team?