German tuning firm Lumma Design has already prepared a tuning package for the new Porsche 911 Carrera S designated as CLR 9 S. The 991 generation Porsche will debut at the Geneva Motor Show next week.
Tom Bridger Tony Brise Chris Bristow Peter Broeker Tony Brooks
Lotus have been speaking about Kimi Rakkonen’s successful return to Formula 1. The former World Champion took part in his first test for the team this week following two years away from the sport. Speaking about how it went, Trackside operations director Alan Permane said: “From the first run he was pretty much there.” “It’s very [...]
Sebastien Bourdais Thierry Boutsen Johnny Boyd David Brabham Gary Brabham
I have a 55 Pontiac Star-Chief and a 55 Vette. I will combine the two to make one…..
More on it's way……………………………..
Source: http://cs.scaleautomag.com/SCACS/forums/thread/1004004.aspx
George Abecassis Kenny Acheson Andrea de Adamich Philippe Adams Walt Ader
To some, the decision of Red Bull and Ferrari to pull out of the Formula 1 Teams’ Association, the umbrella group that represents the teams’ interests, could look innocuous enough. In reality it could have far-reaching consequences.
The F1 teams have put a brave public face on it, but behind the scenes there are serious concerns that it could lead to a period of Red Bull domination about which their rivals can do little.
The move by two of F1′s most powerful teams was provoked by continuing distrust about whether all of the competitors were adhering to the terms of a document called the Resource Restriction Agreement.
The RRA sets out limits on the amount of staff, external spend and aerodynamic research teams can employ and covers work on the design of the car – with drivers’ salaries, marketing and engines excluded.
World Champion Sebastian Vettel’s (left) team Red Bull and Michael Schumacher’s (right) former team Ferrari announced that they have quit the Formula One Teams Association (Fota). PHOTO: Getty
It is not a budget cap per se, but it does have the effect of keeping costs under control, to the point that the biggest budgets have dropped from in the region of £300m in 2008 to an estimated £150-200m in 2011.
To cite just one example, the RRA limits the amount of hours a team can dedicate to wind-tunnel testing – a key way of honing an F1 car’s aerodynamics, the single biggest performance differentiator.
And the more wind-tunnel hours you do, the less simulation of aerodynamics on a computer is allowed (and vice versa).
Because there is only so much of this work that a team can do, there is only so much money they can spend.
The problem that has arisen is that some of the teams – led by Ferrari and Mercedes – believe Red Bull have been exceeding these limits since 2010, the first of their two consecutive title-winning years.
Red Bull insist they have always operated within the RRA – and they counter their rivals’ accusations by pointing out that it is easier for an F1 team allied to a car company (as Ferrari, Mercedes and McLaren all are) to hide extra work than it is for one that operates in isolation.
A year’s worth of talks to try to reach a compromise agreement with which everyone is happy have come to nothing, leading to a situation where Ferrari and Red Bull have run out of patience. They signalled their intention to quit Fota late on Friday – although they have to give two months’ notice.
Ferrari’s statement was long and detailed, talking about their reluctance at a “difficult decision”, their ongoing commitment to cost-reduction and other changes in F1, and emphasising their own central role in Fota since it was set up in 2008.
Red Bull’s ran to only two sentences: “Red Bull Racing can confirm it has served notice to withdraw from Fota. The team will remain committed to finding a solution regarding cost saving in Formula 1.”
This in itself has led to more suspicion.
It is clear, more than one insider has said, why Ferrari pulled out of Fota – if the organisation could not sort out an RRA, what was the point of it? – but Red Bull’s reasoning was very different.
The implication being that the world champions did not like the RRA because they had no intention of adhering to it. Fota had become an inconvenience.
Red Bull were not available for comment.
This suspicion has been poisoning the atmosphere within F1 all year, despite attempts to reduce it.
As well as the endless meetings aimed at bringing the two warring sides together, there was an investigation in the summer by external consultants into the way the teams were detailing their use of resources.
But while Red Bull believe this effectively cleared them of wrongdoing, their accusers disagree. “The analysis showed more than one concern about what Red Bull were doing,” one insider told me.
The next step, as laid out by the RRA, was for a full audit of the accounts of the team about which there were suspicions – if a certain number of teams wanted this to happen, the accused team had to agree.
But this point was never reached, and after further meetings at the season-closing Brazilian Grand Prix, Ferrari and Red Bull ran out of patience.
So what happens next? Is this the death knell for Fota? Will the departure of Ferrari and Red Bull lead to a domino effect of teams leaving the organisation?
Alternatively, will a rump stick together, recognising that there can still be strength in numbers, not least in the forthcoming negotiations with F1 boss Bernie Ecclestone over a new Concorde Agreement, the document which binds the teams, the commercial rights holder and governing body the FIA together?
That may become clearer after a Fota meeting on Tuesday.
More importantly, does this mean the end for resource restrictions in F1 – and will the sport therefore revert to the ‘arms race’ spending that led to the RRA in the first place?
On the face of it, the answer to that is no. The RRA is still technically in force. It is a legally binding document which lasts until at least 2012, or perhaps even 2017 – depending on whom you believe, and which version of the document you are talking about.
In theory, if Red Bull’s rivals feel that they are breaking the RRA, they can sue them. If that sounds unlikely, one insider I spoke to for this article raised it as a possibility.
Equally, though, Red Bull and Ferrari are due to meet the other members of F1′s big four – McLaren and Mercedes – next week to discuss resource restriction and how to move forward on it.
That hardly sounds like the actions of a group of people on the verge of legal action.
In public, everyone in F1 says they want to avoid a return to unrestricted spending.
One of the main reasons for this is that (effectively) unrestricted money is no longer available to top F1 teams – the effects of the credit crunch have reached even this notoriously expensive sport’s rarefied climes.
Many of the smaller teams are living hand-to-mouth to a degree, with only the top four existing in relative comfort.
But even they have limitations on what they can spend.
McLaren are a private team who have to live within the budget they can raise from sponsorship and other commercial partnerships.
Mercedes, huge car company though it may be, has set clear limits on the amount of money its team can spend.
Even Ferrari, who 10 years ago could effectively spend what they wanted, now have to be careful with money.
But Red Bull are different, or so their rivals believe.
Team principal Christian Horner insists they have far from the biggest budget in F1 – he ranks them about third or fourth.
But his rivals raise their eyebrows at that, pointing out that Red Bull is worth billions and that the soft-drinks company is weathering the global economic downturn well by comparison with car companies and traditional corporate giants. In that sense, their rivals say, they really can spend what they want.
So whether founded on reality or not, and whether the accusation at its heart contains any truth, the fear at the heart of F1 is quite simple.
If Red Bull, despite the RRA, are prepared to spend what they want, as well as having the best designer in Adrian Newey and arguably the best driver in Sebastian Vettel, who can stop them dominating for years to come?
Source: http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/andrewbenson/2011/12/red_bull_set_to_dominate.html
The annual Formula 1 phoney war was in full swing at the second pre-season test at Barcelona’s Circuit de Catalunya this week.
Fernando Alonso was talking down Ferrari’s form, Lewis Hamilton was talking up McLaren’s – as, intriguingly, was Red Bull’s Sebastian Vettel. And the unlikely combination of Kamui Kobayashi and Sauber set the fastest time of the week.
As ever, the headline lap times were a poor guide to the order of the grid that can be expected in Melbourne at the first race in just three weeks’ time.
But look behind the fastest laps, and there is usually a way of gleaning at least some sense of form ahead of the season.
Fernando Alonso’s Ferrari could yet to turn out to be a dark horse. Photo: Getty
I’ll preface what follows with a major caveat – this has been one of the most difficult tests to read for some time. But here goes.
Red Bull, as ever, looked especially strong. Vettel was fastest of all on the first day of the test, and throughout the four days he and team-mate Mark Webber set consistently formidable-looking times.
On Wednesday afternoon, Vettel and Hamilton set out to do race-distance runs at more or less the same time. Both did 66 laps – the length of the Spanish Grand Prix, which will be held at the track in May.
Vettel did five pit stops; Hamilton four. Discount laps on which they went in and out of the pits and they both managed 55 flying laps. Vettel completed his more than two minutes faster than Hamilton.
If that was repeated in a race, Hamilton would be lapped by the end.
And the pattern was repeated on Thursday with Mark Webber and Jenson Button, although the margin was reduced to about half a minute.
Of course, this is very far from an exact scientific comparison.
They didn’t use the same tyres as each other – although they don’t necessarily have to in the race either.
We don’t know what they were doing with fuel loads – although it would be counter-intuitive to start putting fuel in at pit stops because it would provide the team with data that was never going to be relevant to competition.
And it’s an especially confusing situation because only the day before Vettel was saying how impressed he had been with the McLaren’s pace on the longer runs.
But there was more – none of it especially happy ready for those hoping for a close season.
On the Wednesday, Vettel’s fastest time of all was nearly a second faster than Hamilton’s on the same type of tyres. Although both were set on very short runs – suggesting a qualifying-type simulation – that’s still potentially meaningless as there is no way of knowing the level of fuel on board at the time.
Nevertheless, if you then look at the lap times both were doing at the start of their race-distance runs, they were about the same margin slower than each driver’s fastest laps as you would expect given a full race fuel load.
That suggests that the headline lap times of those two drivers could be a reasonably accurate indicator of form – again worrying for McLaren.
Of course, this is only testing, and teams have updates to put on their cars before the first race – as Button pointed out. And everyone expects McLaren to be a close to challenger at the front come Melbourne. Nevertheless, few are under any illusions about Red Bull’s strength.
“You’re old enough, Andrew,” one senior insider said to me during the test, “to know that Red Bull look very strong. McLaren and Ferrari are a bit behind. Force India look like they have a quick car, too.”
He might have added that the new Mercedes looks quite decent as well.
But few teams are as difficult to understand right now as Ferrari – who have not done any race simulations to compare with their main rivals.
The messages coming out of the team have all seemed pretty negative.
There has been a lot of attention put on technical director Pat Fry’s remark at the first test in Jerez that Ferrari were “not happy” with their understanding of the car.
Start raking through the time sheets, though, and you begin wonder what’s behind all the negativity.
On headline lap times, Alonso was less than 0.3secs behind Vettel. And on both his days he started 10-lap runs with a lap in the region of one minute 24.1 seconds.
If you take 10 laps’ worth of fuel off that time, you are left with a lap in the low 1:23sec bracket – again, not far off what Vettel managed. And you can bet the Ferrari was running with more than just 10 laps of fuel anyway; most top teams routinely test with 60-80kg of fuel on board.
In other words, the Ferrari actually looks reasonably fast, and an insider did admit: “The car is not as bad as a lot of people think.”
If – and it’s a big if – Ferrari can start to extract that potential before the first race of the season, Red Bull might just have a serious fight on their hands. And that’s without even considering what McLaren might be able to achieve.
Source: http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/andrewbenson/2012/02/reading_between_the_lines_in_a.html
Piers Courage Chris Craft Jim Crawford Ray Crawford Alberto Crespo
So, after four days of testing and nearly 3,500 laps of running at Jerez in sunny southern Spain, what has the first Formula 1 pre-season test revealed about the season to come?
The simplest answer – as ever – is “not much”. Testing – or the “winter world championship”, as McLaren chairman Ron Dennis famously described it – is a notoriously poor guide to form.
Or at least it is if you look only at the headline lap times. At the end of last year’s test in Jerez, the fastest man was Williams driver Rubens Barrichello – and his team were about to embark on the worst season in their once-illustrious history.
Likewise, if anyone thinks Lotus driver Romain Grosjean is going to win this year’s world championship after setting the pace in Jerez this week, they will be waiting a long time for those pigs to fly in front of that blue moon.
Ferrari’s Fernando Alonso set the fastest time on the final day of the first Formula 1 pre-season testing in Jerez, in Spain with a time of 1.18.877. Photo: Getty
Nevertheless, it would be wrong to say that Jerez has revealed nothing.
First of all, it has become clear the teams dislike the look of the new cars as much as anyone.
For them, the ugly step on top of the noses of all cars apart from the McLaren is an unfortunate necessity in the pursuit of the best possible aerodynamics, following a rule change requiring lower front noses.
“Performance comes before aesthetics,” as Red Bull design chief Adrian Newey put it.
The teams head back to their factories with a mountain of data, on which decisions will be based about the direction in which to take the development of their new cars.
These gleaming machines are prototypes for their entire lives, but in terms of maturity right now they are still in the post-natal stage.
Nowhere, it seems, is that more true than at Ferrari, whose decision to start with a clean sheet of paper after a chastening year in 2011 has left them with a lot of work to do.
Fernando Alonso may have left Jerez with the fastest time from the final day – and the second fastest overall – but no-one was fooled by that.
Ferrari were clearly struggling to understand their new F2012 and spent most of the four days doing aerodynamic assessment tests.
The car, they said, was behaving inconsistently in the corners, and so far fixing its behaviour at one stage – the entry, say – messes it up at either the mid-corner or exit, or both.
This is not an especially encouraging sign for a team whose 2011 season came off the rails at the final pre-season test, when new parts that they expected to bring a chunk of speed actually made the car worse.
It turned out this was a result of a lack of correlation between the results that were being created in the wind tunnel and the actual performance of the car out on the track – a major problem in a sport where aerodynamics are critical to performance.
Ferrari spent most of last season trying to get on top of this, and by late summer they insisted they had. Yet when they introduced an update to the car at the Belgian Grand Prix in August, that too did not work.
Were they not concerned about this, I asked an insider a little later in the season. No, he said, they knew why it had happened – the wind tunnel correlation was fine.
Yet on Thursday this week, there was technical director Pat Fry admitting that there was still a small problem in this area. “There’s reasonable correlation,” Fry said. “I certainly wouldn’t say it was perfect.”
Despite that eye-catching lap time from Alonso, then, Ferrari’s potential remains unclear.
“That time was on soft tyres,” a source close to the team said. “It was not so special. The feeling is they are waiting for a lot from this car – but they don’t know how to get it. It is impossible to say what will be the future.”
But it is not just Ferrari. Over at McLaren, Lewis Hamilton has said his first impressions of the car were “all positive”. But the more he talked, the more you wondered.
They had not found the best set-up yet, he said – unsurprising, perhaps, so early in testing.
“It feels like an evolution of last year’s car in many ways but also there are some things that are not so good,” he added. “The downforce on the rear for instance, is not as good through the high-speed corners as it was last year, but I’m sure we’ll get that back.”
Again, this was to be expected given the ban on exhaust-blown diffusers, from which all top teams gained huge amounts of rear downforce last year – and Red Bull’s Sebastian Vettel also noticed a similar experience in his car.
But perhaps Hamilton’s most revealing remark was this: “You never know what fuel loads people are on. I think we’ve been quite aggressive with our fuel loads.”
A translation of which seems to be that McLaren are running with less fuel on board than they might normally be expected to – which will make their lap times look more impressive.
Despite that, the car looked as if it was not quite as fast as the Red Bull, which Hamilton effectively admitted. “I think you can see the Red Bull looks quick,” he said.
The Red Bull indeed appeared to do its times with relative ease, both in the hands of Mark Webber and, later in the week, Vettel.
Just as much of a concern for their rivals will be that pictures suggest the car seems to have retained what most believe to be its crucial secret.
That is getting the front wing to run closer to the ground than any other car, a critical aerodynamic advantage.
This is despite design chief Adrian Newey saying they had had to reduce the rake on their car following the ban on exhaust-blown diffusers and despite the introduction of a tougher front-wing deflection test.
And yet even Red Bull clearly have work to do. After three pretty much trouble-free days, an electrical fault appeared on the final morning, and Vettel lost an entire morning’s running while the team fixed it.
In summary, then, Red Bull again look like the team to beat, and there is a mixed picture from McLaren and Ferrari.
Just as it did in 2011 when the team were Renault, the Lotus has left a good initial impression.
Toro Rosso and Williams also appear to have decent cars, while Force India fell back after a promising start, almost certainly because of losing a day to reserve driver Jules Bianchi’s crash on Thursday.
There follows a 10-day break before the teams reconvene at Barcelona on 21 February.
The Circuit de Catalunya’s mix of long corners of varying speeds have long been the ultimate test of an F1 car’s all-round capabilities, so more pieces of the jigsaw should fall into place there.
Source: http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/andrewbenson/2012/02/f1_pre-season_testing_provides.html
Martin Brundle Gianmaria Bruni Jimmy Bryan Clemar Bucci Ronnie Bucknum
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A year after Citroen pulled the covers off of the C3 Red Block Concept at the 2011 Geneva Motor Show, the French automaker is returning to the same event with the production version of the model, appropriately called the “C3 Red Block Special Edition.”
The car will be part of a strong delegation for the Frenchies with the C3 Red Block Special Edition carrying some of the distinctive characteristics that were done on the concept version. The model will be made available in five different paint finishes – Shark Blue with a matching bumper strip, Banquise White, Aluminum Grey, Manitoba Grey, and Obsidian Black with a gloss black bumper strip. On top of the plethora of hues buyers can choose from, the C3 Red Block Special Edition will also sport a modified steering wheel system, a set of new 17″ diamond-effect rims wrapped in 205/40 tires, a modified chassis, and a lowered suspension set-up that drops the car’s ride height by 25mm.
Inside, the C3 Red Block Special Edition gets treated to some fancy make-overs, particularly the gloss black dashboard fascia, which adds a certain panache to the car. There are also aluminum-finished pedals and front door surrounds, a smaller sports steering wheel, and as an option to prospective buyers, red leather upholstery.
Engine options are also part of the offering for the special edition C3. For this bad boy, customers can opt to choose from an e-HDi 90 diesel, an e-HDi 100 diesel, and a VTi 120 petrol engine, with the respective outputs ranging from 90-120 horsepower.
Citroen C3 Red Block Special Edition originally appeared on topspeed.com on Tuesday, 28 February 2012 16:00 EST.
Source: http://www.topspeed.com/cars/citroen/2012-citroen-c3-red-block-special-edition-ar125476.html
Lucien Bianchi Gino Bianco Hans Binder Clemente Biondetti Pablo Birger
Hi guys this is my first post here so i hope you like it comments and criticism are welcome no matter what its about. Color is Midland green left over spray paint that my dads work had left over, the rims are from a diecast that i broke a long time ago. hope you like it
thanks for looking,
Robert
Source: http://cs.scaleautomag.com/SCACS/forums/thread/1004122.aspx
Edgar Barth Giorgio Bassi Erwin Bauer Zsolt Baumgartner Elie Bayol
