Road & Track put together this video that takes a closer look at the hybrid cars competing in this year’s 24 hours of Le Mans, the Audi E-Tron Ultra and Toyota TS030. They talk about how each car has different engines, energy storage and even electric motor power delivery.
Sometimes when you take a perfectly good motorsport and you pick it up and plop it down on a low friction surface, you get a new sport that’s a lot more fun to watch. For example, trying to do road racing on gravel and snow resulted in rally racing which has produced some of the world’s best drivers and is my favorite kind of racing to watch. This video proves that the same thing can happen when you drag race on dirt. These guys built insane 4×4 drag machines with paddle tires to get the job down on the unpaved quarter mile. It makes for some very entertaining and gratuitous displays of horsepower. I have a feeling these guys would get along very well with the folks who compete in the World Power Wheelstand Championship.
**BAD WORD WARNING** The cameraman drops the F-bomb in the middle of the video when he gets pelted in the head with a rock coming off the paddle tires on the 2000 horsepower alcohol powered dragster. You probably would, too.
Have you ever wondered what it takes to build a world class time attack car? This is a bit of a peak into the a Subaru Impreza STi built in 2009 by Japanese aftermarket tuners Tomei, Cusco and Voltex. The entire body has been prepped with a carbon fiber wide body aero package and the suspension is made up of custom adjustable pieces that the teams fabricated. The car competed in several events in the then young American Time Attack scene piloted by Tarzan Yamada. They were shooting for some of the lap records set by the HKS CT2032R Evo, but I don’t think they were ever able to beat them. Tarzan also piloted this car at the first World Time Attack Challenge that year in Australia for a third place finish behind the Cyber Evo (which he also drove) and the Sierra Sierra Enterprises Evo from the US.
Toyota Motorsports GmbH (GmbH is the German equivalent to a LLC Limited Liability Company here in the US) has announced that it will take its P002 electric race car to this year’s Pikes Peak Hill Climb. Here’s some footage of them doing some testing at the Paul Ricard Circuit:
This year was a significant one for the Isle of Man TT Zero electric motorcycle time trial. It was the first year an electric motorcycle broke the 100 mph average lap speed otherwise known as the “ton lap.” In fact, all three riders on the podium were able to achieve ton laps. The all new MotoCzysz Ep1c took first and third and the Mugen Shinden placed second at it’s debut race.