Nissan put together this video highlighting the experience of all of the teams that ran Nissan GT-R’s at the 24 hours of Nurburgring. Interviews include the head of the GT-R project, professional race drivers and a couple of drivers who made it to the professional level from the Gran Turismo Academy. They also talk a lot about how the things they learned during the brutal conditions of racing go into building a better road car for their customers.
The hardcore diesel performance guys are a uniquely awesome bunch. Torque and black smoke give their rides a certain attitude and swagger. Case in point is this amazing Powerstroke powered dually hot rod. Everything about it is wonderfully done.
This is in-car footage of Ayrton Senna as he qualified for the the Formula 1 Monaco Grand Prix in 1986. The car he’s driving has a turbocharged engine making 1400 horsepower and is rolling on qualifying tires that provided crazy grip for a few laps before they had to be replaced.
Between Top Gear, Chris Harris and this guy from Car and Driver, the British are cranking out some excellent car reviewers. It’s a good thing for Car and Driver, too. The rest of their videos on YouTube are pretty much garbage. Here they are testing the latest iteration of the Ariel Atom with the supercharged Honda Type-R engine. I really liked the shots from different points of the car where you can see the components working as it drives. It might just be me, but it looks like they’ve made the suspension setup a lot more progressive. He’s able to do a lot of gratuitous sliding where it used to be more of a grip-grip-snap car. Just more proof that a fast lap time doesn’t necessarily mean the car’s a lot of fun.
The Global Rally Cross is a new American rally cross series that is running 5 events this year that coincide with NASCAR races and X-Games in LA. The competitors run 4 at a time around a technical course with jumps, hairpins and wet sections. Check out full coverage of the first two races here. They are definitely on to a good formula for an exciting sport. A few weeks ago, Travis Pastrana invited 8 time world rally champion, Sebastien Loeb, to come join them. Loeb accepted. I think it has to do with the fact that Loeb’s former WRC rival, Marcus Gronholm, is currently dominating the series. Citroen released this video of Loeb testing the new DS3 that they’re building him for the GRC. He says it has more power and different tires from his WRC car so it requires a different driving style.