Rick Kelly has been kind enough to share a driver’s eye view of a lap around Mount Panorama. Recorded with a GoPro camera mounted to his helmet you can see and hear what it’s like inside the Nissan GTR Nismo GT as he posts a very tidy 2:04.8s lap. Check it out after the break.
Keen for some more onboard action to get you ready for tomorrow’s Bathurst 12 Hour race. Here’s a couple of laps from inside the #23 Lamborghini Gallardo with David Russell posting what was a GT lap record (2:05.9s) and also Laurens Vanthoor driving the #3 Phoenix Racing Audi R8 LMS.
Factory Porsche driver Patrick Long, who is racing in the Class B entered #12 911 Carrera Cup car, drops in to give his impressions after his first visit to Bathurst.
While we’re firmly in Bathurst 12 Hour mode, put up your hand if you’d like to see LMP1 cars competing in a 12 Hours of Bathurst race?! Of course, that would be truly magnificent and the sight of Mark Webber lapping Mount Panorama in his Porsche 919 would surely attract a crowd to rival the V8 Supercars. Not to mention increased international coverage.
Alas any such suggestions of that becoming a reality are well in the distance and, for now, we’ll just have to make do with Porsche’s latest update showing us some behind the scenes action of their preparations for its return to LMP1 endurance racing.
The #32 Nissan GTR Nismo GT3 has just set the fastest time in Practice 3 at the Bathurst 12 Hour. At the wheel for this afternoon’s flying lap was Bathurst rookie Alex Buncombe who set a time of 2:06.5958. That’s a bit off this morning’s pace when David Russell set a GT3 practice record with his 2:05.9397 lap during Practice 2 in the #23 Lamborghini Gallardo.
From that morning session here is an onboard video with V8 Supercar ace Rick Kelly driving the GTR. He lapped in the low 2:07s and said it was his second fastest-lap ever around the 6.2km Mount Panorama circuit.
The normally aspirated V8 engine found in the C63 was first launched back in 2007. Since then it has powered AMG-enhanced C Class coupes, saloons and estates to the top of many people’s wish lists. The M156 V8 has been AMG’s stock-in-trade in recent years, beating away in plenty of other models too.
Approaching the end of its life, and for the great benefit of us all, Chris Harris takes a brief moment to say goodbye to the one of the world’s great V8 engines. The arrival of a new C Class will usher in a new turbocharged more fuel efficient era. Mercedes promises the C63 badge will remain, but it won’t really be the same.
The Racer’s Edge (aka Peter Windsor) YouTube channel brings us video of the steering wheel display from the McLaren Electronics PCU-8D. It forms part of the the standard ECU used across all teams. There’s no commentary, but it’s still worth watching the display scroll through a series of demonstrations.
Suffering through those Super Bowl commercials reminded us we’d not made the time to watch Steve Sutcliffe’s video review of the very desirable Jaguar F-Type R Coupé. We’ve watched it now, and you can too if you haven’t already.
Sutcliffe was at the press launch held at the Circuit de Catalunya and had a merry old time testing the limits of adhesion and wear rate of the R Coupé’s rear tyres.
Half his luck!
In case you’ve missed it there’s a big game of football on tonight. And we don’t mean the Man City v Chelsea game either. It’s American football and, of course, it’s the Super Bowl.
That means all the big wig advertising agencies have been locked away in rooms for months trying to come up with something clever and memorable. We’ve taken a look at the motoring-related TVCs and we’re sorry to say the standards from the big auto makers has slipped.
Most of these ads are pretty lame. Subaru should just be embarrassed. Audi, Kia and Volkswagen can perhaps keep their heads above water for producing moderately entertaining ads, but the rest are just shit.
In November last year we got the latest installment of the Ken Block Gymkhana franchise. Now we’re being given another look at Gymkhana 6 through the eyes of GoPro cameras. And not just one camera, but dozens of the damn things.
There must have been 10 or more fitted to Block’s Ford Fiesta alone, and it would be too hard to calculate how many were capturing the action around the course.
It all adds up to another entertaining spin around the Block.
Here’s the video from Steve Sutcliffe’s review of the McLaren P1 we shared with you last week. We’d like to say it was worth the wait, but we’re afraid to say we were a little disappointed with this video review. Let us know what you think.
The Mercedes AMG F1 Team has completed a filming day with its new 2014 F1 car, the W05, at Silverstone. While we heave to wait a few more days to see official photos the actual car itself they did release this brief video of the car driving at full noise.
So what will this brand new 1.6 litre V6 turbo “power unit” era sound like? Not as bad as most people were expecting.
You can hear a bit of turbo whine as the W05 flashes past and then plenty of energy recovery gubbins as the car exits stage right and brakes going into Copse corner.
Chris Harris is a lucky man. This we know. But he’s further proved this point by being given the keys and the pit crew to an Audi R8 V10 road car and an R8 LMS Ultra GT3 racecar and an empty Nürburgring grand prix track.
The aim of this exercise was to see how closely related the street car and track car are, if at all. You may be surprised by Harris’ discovery.