As promised here is the very wet photo gallery from the 2011 Canadian Grand Prix. The amount of water shown in some of the pics is amazing; it really must have been treacherous.
Despite his final lap cock-up Sebastian Vettel’s tally of 161 points gives him a 60 point lead in the drivers’ title race, ahead of Jenson Button (101pts) and Mark Webber (94pts). Red Bull is well on the way to another constructors’ title, holding a 69 point lead over McLaren.
The Ferrari FF isn’t scheduled for market release in Australia until early next year. However, in a bid to assist sales the FF is currently touring select locations. Brisbane, Sydney and Melbourne were the chosen destinations for the first ever all-wheel drive Fezza.
A short while ago local pricing was announced, too, and at a cool $625,000 plus delivery and on road costs you probably would like an up close look before signing on the bottom line. But, just in case you can’t make it the FF we’ve assembled a photo gallery for you to admire the 660PS V12 supercar.
As for us, if we had $600 large burning a hole in our pockets, we’d go for a Mercedes SLS AMG for pose value (and the noise), a BMW 1M for fun and games and a Golf R for daily duties. You can assemble a decent list cars for $600K! Let us know below if you’d go for the Ferrari FF, or an assortment of other riches.
We figured you have probably seen enough of Sebastian Vettel on the victory dais, so we’ve given the Red Bull Racing images a miss from Monaco. Actually, that’s not true, it looks like the Red Bull media site is having a few technical issues so, for now, we’re missing photos from them and Toro Rosso. It’s shame, because, as usual, there’s some great pics in there. Hopefully we’ll have them for you shortly.
In the meantime, there’s another 62 pics from the Monaco Grand Prix for you after the break. We’d love to hear which one is you think is best. So take your time, have a good look and leave your comment below.
UPDATE 1 June: New pics from RBR and STR have now been added.
Sebastian Vettel has made it back-to-back wins for Red Bull Racing at the Monaco Grand Prix by claiming victory in a dramatic race overnight. His fifth win of the year, and his first on the famous street circuit, has given him a seemingly unassailable 58 point lead in the drivers’ standings. Fernando Alonso achieved Ferrari’s best result for the season to date by finishing second, ahead of McLaren’s Jenson Button.
As always, Monaco provided plenty of action and gave us the first Safety Car laps of the year. The race was heading for a thrilling climax with Vettel, Alonso and Button all nose-to-tail with six laps remaining. All drivers were on different tyre strategies with Vettel, having only stopped once on lap 16, hoping to hold his track position by running 62 laps on the Prime tyres.
Vettel was somewhat forced into a one-stop strategy after the usually lightening quick Red Bull crew made a hash of his first pit stop (9.6 seconds) and followed that immediately after with a worse stop for Webber (15.5 seconds); all but ruining the Australian’s race, who did well to fight back to fourth place.
Meanwhile, in the closing stages Alonso’s tyres were fresher than Vettel’s, but still 20-odd laps old, while Button’s three-stop race meant he had the cleanest and quickest rubber of the top three.
On lap 72, while fast approaching slower traffic, the leading trio were lucky to miss a bit of kerfuffle immediately ahead of them involving Vitaly Petrov (Lotus Renault GP) and Jaime Alguersuari (Toro Rosso). The pair crashed into the barriers and caused the second Safety Car period of the race, which quickly turned into a red flag after initial concerns over the well being of Petrov. With just six laps left to race it was first thought the race would end and Vettel would be declared the winner. Petrov was safely removed from his car and it subsequently appears he will be okay.
While Petrov was being attended to the cars formed up on the grid and under red flag conditions were able to make the most of a relatively lengthy delay by making minor adjustments to their cars if required. Crucially, this also gave teams the chance to fit fresh rubber if available to them. Ultimately, this handed Vettel the race who, after the restart, was able to hold off Alonso and Button for what looked like a comfortable win. Although, at various times all three men on the podium would have felt like they were best placed to win.
You can read what they had to say after the break. Video highlights are available at the One website.
[Pic: Ferrari]
The winners of the International Engine of the Year Awards have been announced and its a little engine that could from Fiat that has taken out the top prize. Punching well above its weight the 875cc TwinAir motor has modest power outputs, ranging from 65–105hp. It’s currently not available in Australia, but can be found in the Fiat 500 in overseas markets.
A jury of 76 judges from across the globe voted on the awards and here’s what John Carey, from Wheels magazine, had to say about the TwinAir donk, “This is proof that aggressive downsizing need not spell timid performance. Surprisingly torquey, impressively and affordably efficient, this tiny twin also has plenty of character.”
Not content with overall honours, the Fiat TwinAir also won the Sub 1-litre, Best New Engine and Green Engine categories.
International Engine of the Year Awards 2011
If you had the best Spanish F1 driver of all time on your books, and you had just renegotiated his contract to secure his services for a further five years, the eve of the Spanish Grand Prix would be the ideal time to announce the new deal. Which is exactly what Ferrari has just done. Just a shame, then, that it looks like Fernando has just let one rip.
This is the Ferrari Superamerica 45. It’s a one-off creation built for New York collector Peter Kalikow. The Superamerica 45 will make its public debut tomorrow at the Villa d’Este Concorso d’Eleganza.
At this stage the official Ferrari press material makes no mention of the engine underneath that Blu Antille bonnet. However, it is being listed as a 6.0 litre 12 cylinder on the event website. So it’s just a 599 with custom coachwork, then?
If you’ve been buying Fezzas for 45 years and have a stack of cash you can’t give away then you too can play the Fantasty Ferrari game. If you did, do you reckon you could come up with something better than this?
On the weekend the P4/5 Competizione had its second and final race at the Nürburgring before the 24 hour race in June. James Glickenhaus and his team will continue testing, most likely at the Hungaroring, to finalise their N24 preparations.
Mike Frison, respected Nürburgring blogger, and lately Save the Ring activist, caught up with Glickenhaus at the race and had a good chat. Two of the more notable points to emerge from that discussion were plans to race the P4/5 Competizione at Le Mans and Sebring in future.
Makes sense, really, you put all that money into making a racecar, you probably want to tale it around the world.
However, it was the revelation that Glickenhaus would also like to convert the P4/5 Competizione to run a diesel engine to help improve performance. That’s likely to cause a few disturbances of the force down Ferrari-way.
[Source: Mike Frison | Pic: Facebook]
James Glickenhaus, wealthy American businessman, is not content with his own custom built Ferrari creation, the P4/5 by Pininfarina, so he’s making a racing version. Not just that, his new privately funded creation is designed to tackle the Nürburgring 24 hour race in June. The P4/5 Competizione, based on a Ferrari F430 Scuderia, has been under development for a while now and with the N24 not that far away the team’s preparations are almost complete.
Here’s a few pics of the car in its raw carbon fibre state and racing decals sourced from the team’s Facebook page. Also included below is some video of the car in action in at a recent VLN race at the Ring. The driver lineup is not too bad, either, and includes former F1 drivers Nicola Larini and Mika Salo.
We’ve never been too sure about the look of the P4/5, but we give Glickenhaus his dues for living the dream.
A little later than usual, here’s your hit of Formula One images from the 2011 Turkish Grand Prix. It was a walk in Istanbul Park for Sebastian Vettel. It was also the origin for the latest, and to date, most fervent, rumours suggesting Michael Schumacher will retire at the end of this season. He is contracted with Mercedes GP until the end of next season. We’ll keep an eye on that one and see how it progresses.
For now, sit back and enjoy 82 of the best images from Turkey. The pics of Nico Rosberg in pit lane illustrating the seating position of an F1 driver is quite interesting.
Just four races into the 2011 Formula One season and current world champ Sebastian Vettel is showing the required form to secure a second title. Following his third win of the year at the Turkish Grand Prix the Red Bull Racing driver holds a 34 point lead over his nearest rival in the title race (Lewis Hamilton, McLaren, 59pts). To use football parlance, the young German has dropped only seven points from a possible 100.
It’s been a staggering start to the year that must have his rivals wondering if it’s time to start thinking if second is the best they can hope for.
Vettel’s teammate Mark Webber lost a position at the start to Nico Rosberg (Mercedes GP) but managed to wrest it back and following a early tyre change settled into a four-stop rhythm. The Australian traded places with Fernando Alonso (Ferrari) and a new set of tyres on his last change was enough to help Webber secure second place ahead of Alonso.
Aside from Vettel’s comfortable position in the title race the talking points to emerge from Istanbul centre around the DRS and Michael Schumacher. The Drag Reduction System made overtaking too easy in race conditions and let’s hope that is simply a feature of the Istanbul Park layout.
Meanwhile, Schumacher, who was on the pace all throughout practice could only qualify in eighth. During the race a clumsy move on Petrov forced him to pit early for a new wing and in the laps that followed he looked horribly outclassed in wheel-to-wheel racing. It was almost sad to watch.
After the break you can read the full transcript from the post-race press conference.
[Pic: Red Bull Racing/Getty Images]
Ferrari recently published this instructional video to YouTube for the 458 Italia which explains, “how to absolutely control the car with a maximum of driving pleasure on the track and on the road.” All you need is 3 minutes 42 seconds, some cheesy sound effects and some dramatic music. Hmm, no mention of how to activate the fire extinguisher.