Nissan has announced starting with spring 2013 they will offer a limited warranty on battery capacity loss.Jean Alesi Jaime Alguersuari Philippe Alliot Cliff Allison Fernando Alonso
Sunday, December 30, 2012
Nissan Leaf warranty to cover battery capacity loss
Nissan has announced starting with spring 2013 they will offer a limited warranty on battery capacity loss.
Friday, December 28, 2012
Why Michael Schumacher Could Win The 2011 World Championship
Michael Schumacher?s 2010 comeback was somewhat abortive.� The results, the driving standard and the overtakes were well below par for the former champion.� He even let his team mate beat him for the first time in his career.� So why can Schumacher, the fallen Ferrari hero, win the world championship for an 8th time? It?s [...]
Peter Ashdown Ian Ashley Gerry Ashmore Bill Aston Richard Attwood
Tuesday, December 25, 2012
SPORTS CAR: Top 10 Races Of 2012
SPEED.com looks back at the key races from the domestic and international sports car racing seasons...
Source: http://auto-racing.speedtv.com/article/sports-car-top-10-races-of-2012/
Bob Anderson Conny Andersson Mario Andretti Michael Andretti Keith Andrews
Sunday, December 23, 2012
Hamilton glory cannot hide the hurt
Lewis Hamilton’s victory in the Italian Grand Prix was his second in three races and McLaren’s third in a row, confirming their position as the form team in Formula 1.
They have won nearly twice as many races as any other team this season – their five compare with the three of Ferrari and Red Bull. No-one else has won more than one.
Just as worryingly for their rivals, the last two victories – Hamilton’s on Sunday and Jenson Button’s in Belgium seven days previously – were utterly dominant.
The retirement of Red Bull’s Sebastian Vettel with his second alternator failure in a race this season also helped Hamilton move into second place in the championship.
Lewis Hamilton (centre) celebrates winning the Italian GP on the podium with Sergio Perez (left) and Fernando Alonso (right). Photo: Getty
The 27-year-old may be 37 points behind Ferrari’s Fernando Alonso, but there are 175 still available in the remaining seven races.
Alonso is, by common consent, the stand-out driver of 2012, but Hamilton has also driven a superb season and has almost certainly been second best.
Had it not been for a number of operational problems early in the championship, he may well be leading the championship. Even as it is, he has every chance of making a fight of it to the end of the season.
For a man in such a position, after a strong weekend, Hamilton was in a subdued mood after the race, as indeed he was throughout the four days in Monza.
He insisted that the BBC Sport story in which Eddie Jordan said that Hamilton was on the verge of leaving McLaren and signing for Mercedes had not affected him, but it did not look that way.
Whatever was prompting him to keep his answers short and to the point in his news conferences and television interviews certainly did not affect his driving.
He was in excellent form throughout the three days, tussling with Alonso for the honour of being fastest man at Monza.
And once the Spaniard was put out of the reckoning for victory with a rear anti-roll bar problem that left him in 10th place on the grid, Hamilton always looked odds-on for victory.
His task was made easier when Ferrari’s Felipe Massa beat Button away from the grid and held on to second place, with the McLaren never really hustling as it might have been expected to do, until he made his pit stop on lap 19. By then, Hamilton had the race won.
There was no evidence Button would have been able to challenge his team-mate had he got away in second place.
Button did close a little a few laps after their pit stops, but it was clear Hamilton was measuring his pace, and he let Button get no closer than seven seconds before holding him there until the second McLaren retired with a fuel system problem.
It was a mature, controlled drive, just as were his victories in Canada and Hungary. Alonso, who rates him as his toughest rival, will take the threat from him in the championship very seriously.
All in all, it was a tense weekend at McLaren. The Hamilton/Mercedes story made it a difficult weekend for the team and the relationship between their two drivers is frosty, presumably following Hamilton’s decision to post a picture of confidential team telemetry on the social networking site Twitter on the morning of the Belgian Grand Prix.
Button said he was “surprised and disappointed” by his team-mate’s actions, for which read “seriously hacked off”.
“I didn’t concentrate on it too much,” Button said on his arrival at Monza. “I thought it was important to say how I felt. It’s very easy not to say anything; also if you say something you can clear it up quicker. That was the last race. We’ve moved on from that.”
Perhaps, but the body language between the two men was palpably cool throughout the weekend, and they were not troubling to hide it, even in public arenas such as the restaurant at their hotel.
One night, sitting at adjacent tables, they did not even look at or acknowledge each other, let alone exchange a word.
McLaren insiders were relaxed about the situation, though. They like their drivers to race and a bit of edge focuses their minds, one senior figure pointed out.
Hamilton admitted his victory would have been a lot harder had Alonso qualified on the front row, as he looked certain to do before his problem in qualifying.
As it was, Alonso was forced to salvage what he could from 10th on the grid and, typically, he made the most of the situation.
An aggressive and clinical first few laps go him into fifth place by lap seven, but there his progress halted against the back of Sebastian Vettel’s Red Bull.
The world champion was robust in his defence, and Alonso was not able to pass before they made their pit stops together on lap 20.
Ferrari’s slick pit work, consistently among the best this season, almost got him out ahead of Vettel, but the Red Bull edged ahead, forcing Alonso to get past on the track.
When he went for the big move, around the outside of Curva Grande at 180mph on lap 26, Vettel unceremoniously barged him on to the grass, the Ferrari bucking scarily as Alonso wrestled for control.
Understandably, he was furious, although he kept his counsel after the race. It was a sure-fire penalty, in the context of a clarification on acceptable driving which was issued verbally to the drivers at the Spanish Grand Prix and then in written form in Canada.
The assumption was that Vettel was getting Alonso back for a similar situation, with roles reversed, in last year’s Italian Grand Prix. That one, in which Vettel passed Alonso with two wheels on the grass, has rankled with the German ever since.
He has brought it up at every opportunity, and this looked very much like revenge.
The difference was that, then, Alonso left Vettel just enough room, and Vettel took to the grass when he could – just – have stayed on the track. This time, Vettel left no room, and his behaviour was clearly unacceptable.
Vettel has the arrogance and self-belief that is required of all great drivers but there is also sometimes a sense of entitlement about him which is less than appealing.
He got this one wrong, and one hopes that when he watches a video of the incident, he will recognise that himself.
Source: http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/andrewbenson/2012/09/lewis_hamiltons_victory_in_the.html
Zsolt Baumgartner Elie Bayol Don Beauman Karl Gunther Bechem Jean Behra
Saturday, December 22, 2012
Life in the pit lane
 The Mercedes pit crew prepare for Michael Schumacher in Singapore |
These are not select millionaires but up to 16 ordinary, yet gifted, guys; team mechanics who have worked their way up the system and often migrate from team to team, are paid real-world wages of between �30,000 and �50,000 a year, are drilled to perfection ? and whose split-second synchronisation brings their teams huge rewards.
Source: http://blogs.espnf1.com/paperroundf1/archives/2010/09/life_in_the_pit_lane.php
Lorenzo Bandini Henry Banks Fabrizio Barbazza Mercedes Benz John Barber
Thursday, December 20, 2012
Sutil above law?
It is nice to see that Adrian Sutil is pitching hard for a Force India drive in 2013. There is nothing wrong with a young man having ambition, and we are all entitled to a few mistakes in life, although sticking a broken champagne flute into someone else’s neck is perhaps rather less easy to [...]
Source: http://joesaward.wordpress.com/2012/12/17/sutil-above-law/
Philippe Alliot Cliff Allison Fernando Alonso Giovanna Amati George Amick
Monday, December 17, 2012
Sunday, December 16, 2012
Singapore swing hands Vettel the initiative
Lewis Hamilton cut a remarkably phlegmatic figure after the Singapore Grand Prix, considering his retirement from what seemed a victory for the taking left his championship hopes in tatters.
The McLaren driver said all the right things after the race about not giving up, but the sad reality is that he is 52 points behind Ferrari's Fernando Alonso with only 150 still available.
To expect Hamilton to be able to make up more than a third of the points still remaining on a man who is driving one of the best seasons in Formula 1 history is ambitious in the extreme, although it's certainly going to be entertaining watching him try.
Hamilton's performance in Singapore confirmed two things about this season - McLaren are the team to beat with the consistently fastest car and the 2008 world champion is driving superlatively well.
A gear box failure caused McLaren driver Lewis Hamilton to retire from the Singapore Grand Prix. Photo: Getty
His pole lap on Saturday was a sight to behold, all controlled aggression and commitment, brushing the walls, judging the balance between risk and reward to perfection to leave his rivals breathless.
Until that point, Red Bull's Sebastian Vettel had appeared to be evenly matched with Hamilton but when it mattered the German found his car's grip had mysteriously disappeared. Hamilton found plenty, though, to go more than half a second clear of anyone else.
It was, as McLaren sporting director Sam Michael put it, a "fantastic" lap and he followed it with a controlled performance in the race, taking only as much as he needed to out of the car and tyres, confident that he had pace in reserve if Vettel upped his pace behind him.
But then the oil started leaking out of his differential, he lost his seamless gearshifts, then third gear and finally all his gears, and he sadly coasted to a halt at Turn Five with more than half the race still remaining.
It was the latest in a series of disappointments for Hamilton this year, without which he would be right up with Alonso in the championship.
For nearly all of them he has been blameless. Only in his collision with Pastor Maldonado in Valencia could you perhaps lay any small fault at his door - of course the Williams man drove into him, but ex-drivers, including Ivan Capelli, have questioned whether Hamilton might have been wiser in the circumstances to leave him a bit more space.
Despite the series of McLaren-related incidents that have cost him his best chance of the title since 2008, Hamilton's mood upon getting back to the paddock was notably different from his subdued bearing after taking pole and victory in Italy two weeks ago.
In Monza, he was downbeat, almost monosyllabic, despite his crushing performance. Here, the speed was the same, but the disposition far sunnier.
It remains to be seen whether that was to do with him making up his mind about his future one way or the other.
But it would take a brave man who gave up the pace of the McLaren for the uncertain and unimpressive form of Mercedes, whatever the difference in remuneration, real or potential, there may be between the offers.
"I think it would have been a nice result for us but we still have more races to go," he said.
"We really couldn't afford today but it is what it is. The good thing is we have good pace. I have to go and win the next races."
On his and McLaren's current form, he could easily win all of them, but if the season continues in its topsy-turvy way, with wins shared about, it is difficult to see him making up so many points on Alonso.
Vettel, though, is a different matter. The low-downforce circuits of Spa and Monza behind them, the Red Bull is likely to be competitive everywhere.
Even if it is not as strong as the McLaren, it is certainly consistently quicker than the Ferrari and in that context a 29-point deficit following the victory he inherited from Hamilton in Singapore is eminently bridgeable.
As Red Bull team boss Christian Horner pointed out, Vettel "was 25 points down with two races to go in 2010, which indicates anything is possible for all the drivers. We need to keep taking points off Fernando, which ideally means getting a few more cars between us and him."
And there's the rub.
Alonso has not won since Germany in July. A potential win escaped him in Italy two weeks ago because of a mechanical problem in qualifying, but Ferrari's poor performance in Singapore, when he had been expecting to fight for pole and victory, was a wake-up call.
On the form of this weekend, Alonso does not look likely to win in normal circumstances unless Ferrari can bring some more speed to the car.
But what he does keep doing is finishing in the points.
In the 10 races since the Spanish Grand Prix in May, Alonso has retired only once - after being hit by the flying Lotus of Romain Grosjean in Belgium three weeks ago. Of the nine he has finished, seven of them resulted in a podium - including two wins - and the other two fifth places.
No-one else has consistency anything like that, and it is in that consistency that lies his best hope.
The concern for Alonso is that if both McLarens and Vettel finish races, those podiums will be hard to come by, and in those circumstances that gap would come down quickly indeed.
So well has he been driving this year that Alonso has to still be considered a narrow favourite for the title.
But while McLaren's weaknesses have made the championship a long-shot even for Hamilton, as Alonso leaves Singapore, he will be casting worried glances over his shoulder at Vettel.
Source: http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/andrewbenson/2012/09/in_singapore_lewis_hamilton_cu.html
Cliff Allison Fernando Alonso Giovanna Amati George Amick Red Amick
Friday, December 14, 2012
Massa threatened with jail over team orders
 |
?A public raised on a diet of Emerson Fittipaldi, Nelson Piquet and Ayrton Senna were simply appalled and saddened in equal measure by Massa?s apparent lack of ambition.?
Source: http://blogs.espnf1.com/paperroundf1/archives/2010/11/massa_threatened_with_jail_ove.php
Eric Bernard Ferrari Enrique Bernoldi Enrico Bertaggia Tony Bettenhausen
Wednesday, December 12, 2012
Bottas, Maldonado confirmed at Williams
To no one’s great surprise Williams has confirmed that Valtteri Bottas and Pastor Maldonado will drive for the team in 2013. Bottas has looked like a dead cert for the second seat for some months after impressing in FP1 sessions … Continue reading 
Source: http://adamcooperf1.com/2012/11/28/bottas-maldonado-confirmed-at-williams/
Karl Gunther Bechem Jean Behra Derek Bell Stefan Bellof Paul Belmondo
Sunday, December 9, 2012
AMA SBK: Pegram's Superbike Family Coming To SPEED
The second season of Larry Pegram's 'Superbike Family' reality show will air on SPEED starting on January 5th.
Source: http://moto-racing.speedtv.com/article/ama-sbk-pegrams-superbike-family-coming-to-speed/
Derek Bell Stefan Bellof Paul Belmondo Tom Belso JeanPierre Beltoise
Saturday, December 8, 2012
Massa threatened with jail over team orders
| |
?A public raised on a diet of Emerson Fittipaldi, Nelson Piquet and Ayrton Senna were simply appalled and saddened in equal measure by Massa?s apparent lack of ambition.?
Source: http://blogs.espnf1.com/paperroundf1/archives/2010/11/massa_threatened_with_jail_ove.php
Kurt Adolff Fred Agabashian Kurt Ahrens Jr Christijan Albers Bentley Supersports
Thursday, December 6, 2012
Ferrari Launch Their 2011 Car The F150
Ferrari have become the first team to launch their 2011 Formula One car – named the F150. Thw F150 name comes from the fact it is 150 years since Italian unification, the flag bearer for the nation decided it was important to increase exposure of the major event in the country’s long history. �The cars [...]
Source: http://f1fanatics.wordpress.com/2011/01/31/ferrari-launch-their-2011-car-the-f150/
Enrico Bertaggia Tony Bettenhausen Mike Beuttler Birabongse Bhanubandh Lucien Bianchi
Tuesday, December 4, 2012
F1 2011 Launch Catch Up ? McLaren, Mercedes, Red Bull, Sauber, Toro Rosso, Renault?
Catching up on the launches in one mega post. �Here in you’ll find quick interviews with senior members of the team and photos from the Red Bull, Sauber, Renault Lotus, Toro Rosso, Mercedes and McLaren launches. Apologies for being somewhat late, the whole blog isn’t running at full power until the season starts again. Red [...]
Rene Arnoux Peter Arundell Lamborghini Alberto Ascari Peter Ashdown
Sunday, December 2, 2012
Ram ProMaster announced, will be based on the Fiat Ducato
Ram has announced plans to offer a rebadged version of the Fiat Ducato in North America. It will go on sale in the third quarter of 2013.Mercedes Benz John Barber Skip Barber Paolo Barilla Rubens Barrichello
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