Tag Archives: Motorsport

For $600,000, This Ford V10-Powered 1998 Minardi F1 Is Your Ticket To Track Happiness

A Minardi Formula 1 car is currently up for sale in the UK and while it’s not the most remarkable F1 car to hit the market in recent months, any F1 car is cool enough in our books.

This car is chassis M198-01 and was the first M198 model built for the 1998 Formula 1 season. It made its competitive debut at the Australian Grand Prix with Shinji Nakano behind the wheel. The Japanese driver qualified in 22nd position for the race but had to retire on lap 8 following a driveshaft failure.

Watch Also: Every F1 Car In Zak Brown’s Collection Has Won A Race And Was Driven By A World Champion

Minardi M198-01 was next used at the Brazilian Grand Prix where Nakano qualified 18th but retired yet again after spinning out into turn one after just three laps. The car made its final appearance during the 1998 season at the Argentine Grand Prix. It started 19th on the grid and Nakano finished in a respectable 13th place.

After the 1998 season, the RM Sotheby’s listing reveals the car was used as a show car by Fondmetal Minardi and the livery was updated to match the 1999 Minardi F1 car. The team kept the car until 2001 when it was sold to a production company and used as a film prop.

Fast forward to 2011 and M198-01 was purchased by Graham North who sent it to Tour-De-Force-Engineering (TDF) to be restored. TDF got in contact with the Minardi team and was able to purchase many spare parts from the racing outfit. Over a period of 18 months, the racer was re-built from the ground up and has subsequently been driven at a number famed tracks, including Brands Hatch, Blyton, and the Spa-Francorchamps F1 track.

Power is provided by a Ford V10 engine and the car has an asking price of £425,000 ($580,000).

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Photo credits: Tom Gidden for RM Sotheby’s

Lordstown Motors Unveils The Rugged Endurance Pickup That Will Race In The San Felipe 250

Of the 350 purpose-built vehicles that compete in the San Felipe 250 in Baja California, less than half cross the finish line. Lordstown will use the grueling event to showcase its technology.

Not only is Lordstown aiming to make its Endurance pickup truck the first electric vehicle to ever finish the race, it wants to use the race to prove the superiority of its in-hub motor technology. The tech puts motors in each of the wheels for all-wheel-drive performance in the most literal sense possible.

That does mean, though, that the motors will be taking the brunt of impacts, with little more than the rubber tires and the wheels to protect them. If they can stand the impacts of high-speed desert racing, though, Lordstown Motors hopes that you will be convinced the Endurance is more than capable to tackle everything the customers can throw at it. In fact, the company is convinced that the design will prove to be an advantage.

Read Also: Lordstown Motors Probed By SEC After Damning Short-Seller Report

“With the superior traction, weight balance, and advanced software control of our hub motor-based Endurance, we are confident that we will be the first EV to finish the San Felipe 250″, said CEO Steve Burns in February.

As we’ve seen before (though never in this livery), the Endurance has been lifted for the event so that it will be more capable of dealing with the harsh, Baja California landscape.

The race is set to take place on April 17 and will see entrants race a 290-mile desert loop that starts in San Felipe. Along with making sure that the truck can stand up to the punishment of the race, Lordstown will have to find a way to charge it, since its range is limited to 250 miles.

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Bentley Is Going For A Third Record At Pikes Peak With A Continental GT3

Bentley has announced that it will return to the Pikes Peak International Hill Climb for the final time. This will be the British brand’s third run in as many years up the legendary Colorado mountain.

Bentley has not yet fully revealed what record it intends to shoot for, but it has said that it will run a Continental GT3 with customer team FastR.

The Continental GT3 is powered by a 4.0-liter twin-turbo V8 with Cosworth engine management. Derestricted, Bentley reckons it’s good for more than 550 bhp that’s sent to the rear wheels via a Ricardo six-speed sequential gearbox with an AP racing clutch. The driveshaft is made of carbon fiber and the car it features double-wishbone suspension front and rear with four-way adjustable race dampers.

Read More: Bentley Continental GT Breaks Pikes Peak World Record For Production Cars

A carbon fiber front splitter and rear wing increase downforce, though those will likely be enlarged quite a bit for the high-altitudes of Pikes Peak.

Bentley has been building up to this run, setting records in 2019 and in 2020. In its first year, it set the production SUV record with the Bentayga with a time of 10:49.9, making it faster than a Tesla Model 3 Performance that ran in 2020.

It then set the outright production car record in 2020 with a Continental GT. Like the Bentayga, the Continental GT was driven by Rhys Millen and the W12-powered coupe made it to the top of the mountain in 10:18.488.

Although Bentley has not revealed what record it will attempt to beat with the Continental GT3, the Pikes Peak Time Attack division’s 9:36.559 record is currently held by a 2019 Porsche GT2 RS Clubsport and seems like a good target.

The overall record is held by the purpose-built Volkswagen ID.R electric racer, which in 2018 set a time of 7:57.148.

Bentley will unveil its full plan for the hill climb on Friday, April 9 and has revealed that this will be its last attempt for the foreseeable future. The 2021 Pikes Peak International Hill Climb will take place on June 27.

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NASCAR Testing Rain Tires On Short Oval To See If It Could Run In The Wet

Martinsville Speedway is hosting an important test today to see if NASCAR can run on short ovals in damp conditions.

Although NASCAR is willing to run in many conditions, wet is not one of them. Not on ovals anyway. Brendan Gaughan, told NBC Sports why in 2014.

“You can’t on [a wet] oval, period. That’d be asinine and dumb,” Gaughan said. “You just can’t do it. There’s no rain line on an oval course.”

Ovals simply don’t operate the same way as road courses. From drainage issues to rubber issues, to the danger of sliding into the wall, NASCAR does not run on ovals in the rain. And although that’s not set to change, the strength of its hydrophobia may ease.

NASCAR’s wet weather test will seek to find out if races can be run in drying or damp conditions, rather than in the rain, according to Steve O’Donnell, the sport’s chief racing development officer.

Read Also: NASCAR Cup Series Racing On Dirt For First Time In 50 Years And No One Knows What To Expect

“I think the overall goal is anything we can do to speed up the drying process, regardless of the technology, to allow us to get back to racing more quickly is a benefit to the fans,” O’Donnell said. “We’re always trying to innovate, and you saw that with what we’ve done around the track-drying system and that’s worked out well. We’ve always looked at what’s the next iteration.”

Despite running on a wet oval being “asinine and dumb,” NASCAR has run in wet conditions since 2008. Rain tires made their competition debut in Montreal that year in the Xfinity series, but the top-flight Cup Series didn’t run wet tires until last season.

These have strictly been for road courses, but the existence of wet tires will be useful for this test.

“We want this to be safe, so that will be part of this test — talking to the drivers, what are they comfortable with — then obviously talking to Goodyear and (director of racing) Greg Stucker and his team about how they feel and how the tire performs, what if any tweaks we could make to that tire coming out of Martinsville, so there’s a lot that we’re hoping to learn here in terms of grip levels,” said O’Donnell.

The test will be driven by Kyle Larson and Chris Buescher at the 0.526-mile track. It will require a lot of analysis, but if the results are good, O’Donnell says it’s something the sport would like to implement as quickly as possible.

And although the timing of this test coincides with April Fools, O’Donnell is insistent that this is no prank.

“It just happens to fall on April Fools’ Day. You can’t make that up,” O’Donnell says with a laugh. “But no, this is a real thing and a real test, and we’ll be happy to report back April 2nd on how it went.”

Based on how insistent officials have been about selling pranks, though, we might wait until after the results are in to be fully 100% certain that this wasn’t a joke.

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This Lamborghini Diablo SV-R Race Car Will Make Other Supercars Go Look For Their Mommy

Some Lamborghinis are cooler than others, and this Diablo SV-R definitely goes to the sub-zero section of the Raging Bull’s back catalog.

The Diablo SV-R is the first Lamborghini race car straight from the Sant’Agata Bolognese factory, with the carmaker building just 31 examples to compete in their Supertrophy series.

Based on the Diablo SV, the SV-R came with all the motorsport-related goodies you can imagine, including a stripped interior, fixed Plexiglass side windows, a more aggressive aero kit with a carbon rear wing and air ducts in the place of the pop-up headlights, and a racing suspension, among other.

Read More: Lamborghini Diablo – The Story Of The Iconic Supercar On Its 30th Birthday

The first factory racing version of the Lamborghini Diablo was 421 lbs (191 kg) lighter than the SV model, tipping the scales at 3,053 lbs (1,385 kg). The naturally aspirated 5.7-liter V12 engine was tuned to produce 533 HP (540 PS) in this application and was bolted to a five-speed manual transmission.

This particular Lamborghini Diablo SV-R is the 16th example and comes with a pretty rich racing history that includes campaigns both in Europe and Australia. Its racing career includes the 1998 Lamborghini Super Sport Trophy Championship at the hands of Fabio Santaniello and no less than 18 race wins over two competition seasons in the Australian Nations Cup.

One of the many highlights of the Diablo SV-R #16 while racing in Australia came at its debut race in Adelaide with Paul Stokell behind the wheel, where it won the race and also set a new lap record despite a 100 kg weight ballast.

In addition, the car wears its #666 Australian Nations Cup livery, complete with all the period-correct sponsors. The angry bull is located in Australia and is currently offered in an online auction over at Trading Garage.

The racing Lambo recently came out of a $125k restoration from Lamborghini Melbourne, using brand new original parts to bring it back to its race specification. It can now compete in the EU/US International GT Legends series, which includes the Le Mans Classic event, but the new owner can also easily convert it for driving on public roads. Let’s face it, putting a set of number plates on this beast with the #666 on the scissor doors will probably be the best thing you ever did.

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