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
Now that the soap opera that has embroiled Formula One’s off track energies seems to be finally calming down, one, potentially sad casualty is that Ferrari will not me making any factory based stabs at winning the 24 Hours of Le Mans, the greatest endurance race on the planet.
For a while there, it looked like Grand Prix racing, thanks to ham-handed abysmally awful management of Max Mosley was going to simultaneously explode and implode, leaving a multi-billion dollar smoking crater where the most popular form of motorosports in the world once stood.
Luckily, cooler head prevailed …Â Details
…Â “It’s hard to know whether a dual-clutch automated manual transmission is a high-performance gearbox or just a more fuel-efficient automatic. And even after the introduction in the last year of dual-clutch transmissions from BMW, Mitsubishi and Porsche, there’s still no resolution of the question.” We have found ourselves asking this question on the long-term blog before.
When the continuously variable transmission (CVT) first reached volume production, we questioned its durability. Surely it must be a fad, we thought. Just an example of a fancy automatic geared toward fuel conservation. But the CVT not …Â Details
Audi has started shipping its 2010 R8 models to U.S. dealers this week and says the all-new R8 V10 will be priced at $147,200 with the manual transmission, including tax and destination. The version with R tronic automatic transmission is priced at $156,300, including tax and destination. The base R8 4.1 FSI Quattro is priced at $115,400 for the manual and $124,500 for the R tronic, including tax and destination, the same as the 2009 model.
The top Audi R8 5.2 FSI quattro is equipped with the V10 from Audi’s R8 LMS GT3 racing car, making … Details