Kimi Raikkonen will be rallying in Finland and championship leader Jenson Button competing in a triathlon this weekend while their Formula One teams shut up shop for two weeks.
Tired mechanics and team staff will be enjoying the extended break before the next race in Valencia on August 23 but not everyone is delighted.
“I’d like to signal right now that we have no intention of ever doing it again. It’s a complete waste of time,” said Williams chief executive Adam Parr of a two-week factory shutdown agreed as part of cost-saving measures…Â Details
Smoke is everywhere. It bursts into the cabin through the STI’s windows, the roof vent and the hole around the shift lever. It finds its way between imperceptibly small gaps in the floor and it bellows from the holes in the carbon-fiber dashboard like fumes from the nostrils of a turbocharged dragon.
There’s no escape. It wafts up your pants, down your shirt, soaks in your sinuses and bores ruthlessly through the Nomex in your fireproof Piloti driving shoes. And it has brutal staying power. Even when it’s gone, it still stinks — a sour, pungent stink that’s unmistakably burning rubber… Details, Pictures & Video
Competing in the 87th running of the historic Pikes Peak International Hill Climb in Colorado; Rhys Millen drove his RMR Hyundai Genesis Coupe equipped with Toyo Proxes R1R extreme performance tires to a Time Attack 2WD division win. Millen also set a new world record of 12:09:397 on the 156-turn mountain course, beating his own personal best by 22 seconds, and finished one minute and 23 seconds ahead of the next fastest car in his division. Notorious for extreme changes in weather, the race course begins at a 9,390-foot elevation, and then climbs to the summit at 14,110-feet.Â
“I chose to run on the Toyo Proxes R1R on race day knowing that its high grip level would get us to the 10 mile mark in record time,†said Millen. “During the 12.5 mile run I experienced slippery pavement with rain and hail at the start line, 95-degree weather in the middle and an abrasive upper two miles of crushed granite. A large contributor to the huge time reduction of this year’s record breaking run was due to the tires.â€Â
Millen’s heavily modified Genesis Coupe used off-the-shelf 245/40ZR18 Proxes R1R tires in … Details
Japan’s Nobuhiro Tajima won his fourth consecutive Pikes Peak International Hill Climb on Sunday, but a loose track kept him from achieving his goal of breaking the 10-minute mark.
Tajima finished with a time of 10:15.368—a few seconds faster than his winning time from a year ago. But it was well short of the record of 10:01.408 he set in 2007.
A trio of European rally car champions were expected to challenge Tajima and the elusive 10-minute barrier at this years 87th running of the “Race to the Clouds,†the nation’s second-oldest race behind the Indianapolis 500.
Two-time world rally champion Marcus Gronholm had engine trouble and finished second at 11:28.963. He finished the race with the right rear tire of his Ford Rallycross Fiesta in flames…Â Details