KAOHSIUNG, Taiwan — The water skiing competition opened at the World Games Wednesday at the picturesque Lotus Pond in Kaohsiung, with traditional water ski powerhouse the United States leading in five of the seven events contested.Â
Elaine Heller had a remarkable run to take the lead in the women’s barefoot slalom, while Raimi Merritt and Dallas Friday topped the first round of the women’s wakeboard and Caroline Hensley was leading in the women’s ski tricks event.
In the men’s preliminary round events, American Andrew Adkison held the lead at  … 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
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