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
Antron Brown is well aware that two months from now his 137-point lead on six-time Top Fuel champion Tony Schumacher will basically amount to zero when the standings are reset for the Countdown to the Championship.
Considering his overall performance in the NHRA Full Throttle Drag Racing Series, that might ignite another hot streak for the second-year dragster driver, who could join an elite group by winning this weekend’s Fram-Autolite NHRA Nationals at Sonoma, Calif. Brown is primed to become the fifth Top Fuel racer to sweep the series’ three-race Western Swing that began this month with wins at Denver and Seattle.
No matter how it ends, Brown’s objective is …Â Details
Defending driver world champion Briton Lewis Hamilton confirmed that McLaren Mercedes are back on form by clocking the fastest time in Friday afternoon’s second free practice for Sunday’s Hungarian Grand Prix.
Earlier, his team-mate Finn Heikki Kovalainen had topped the times in the morning’s opening session. Kovalainen was second fastest in a McLaren one-two in the afternoon.Â
Williams put in another solid practice performance as…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