Toyota Wins at Sao Paulo

Yesterday was a sad day indeed, Audi, still in first with 26 points though, lost their first race this season to the ever-getting-better-er Toyota Denso team.

The Prius managed a first place win at the 6 Hours of Sao Paulo with a nearly 10 second gap! At Le Mans the worried Audi before having two fatal crashes, at Silverstone they scared Audi with a short gappped win, and at Sao Paulo they beat Audi. There's ordinarily a learning curve to racing, but after a decade out of racing, the third race of their newly ordained career and Toyota has already found their niche.


Well done to the men from Japan, but we'll see what happens in Bahrain.

Audi in F1 (part 2)

F1 is a sport designed specifically by rich, posh gentlemen, for rich, posh gentlemen. It's a rich man's sport, designed to go faster and harder and push the limits of what we're capable of building under a certain set of rules.

Don't be lulled or fooled, this is not a sport that breeds a message "to the people". Quite the opposite. The two best things we've gotten out of F1 research is hybrid systems and variable timing. The hybrid system barely counts because while they used KERS to produce acceleration through the corners, we got an electric motor to keep the engine idling, not to mention it went in to production cars a decade after F1 adopted the practice. It is only now that we see electric motors being used in this way on production cars, and the ones I speak of, e-tron and 918 spyder, are far out of anyone's price range.

So what do I think of Audi stepping in to F1? Cultural suicide. This is a company bred in sport, literally pouring money in to destroyed cars and drivers simply to build a better car for the average customer, entering F1 is the opposite of this.

100 years for 100 miles of battery charge. Yay F1?

Quattro, FSI, TDI, manufacturing innovations, LED lighting, and now the e-tron and even the cameras that work as mirrors. All tech developed through Audi Sport that hit "shelves" within a couple of years of their testing on the track. Innovations that have broken records, taken trophies, and lasted decades in the form of "your families 20 year old sedan". All to be thrown away, cast in to the shadows, and for what? A running against Ferrari?

Please. Let Lamborghini take care of that, in the production race.

My View on Le Mans 2012Let's be

The track, barren. Tire smoke, cleared. Pits, empty.

This years Le Mans 24 Hours was unprecedented with two huge records being set.

 The first is obvious, for the first time in 80 runs of this race a hybrid car won, the Audi R18 e-tron. In competition was the Toyota TS030 (LMP1 class) which suffered some unfortunate turns of events. The first car was a wash, a few hours in to the race it had a massive crash with a Ferrari 458 (GTE class) that destroyed the car, even it's driver, Anthony Davidson, came out injured. A fractured spine sent him in to the hospital and ended the teams run in Le Mans. The second TS030 suffered some damage in touching with another car and never was in full functioning order, it's run ended about halfway through the race.

Let's be honest, these were the only ones we cared about.

The second record set was by the DeltaWing. This amazing and marvelous machine set insane lap times considering is potentially a motor driven tricycle with a batman theme. Something sold in the "Hell" department at Toys R' Us. The car "competed" by itself in its own class established specifically for it. The car acted as a super expensive experiment for Nissan and for the automotive world. They proved that a car can turn on a pivot, it can consume less, weigh less, do everything less and even come out on top.

Except for when the TS030 clipped it and ruined it's rear suspension.



Damn Toyota.



Below is some links for everyone to read and a really interesting video from Baretzky, the inventor of the reigning engines for Audi Sport.

Baretzky Video:  http://tiny.cc/1s7kgw

TS030 Video:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A8jJB6viADM

DeltaWing Video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FJAiZVuC3YI

Le Mans stats: http://www.lemanslive.com/Lemanslive/Evenements/2012-Le-Mans-24-Hours/Live

6 Hrs of Spa

On Board Telemetry of the e-tron from Spa

This past week Audi returned triumphant from their WEC race at Spa. The 6 hour long venture ended in a 1-2-3-4 place win for Team Joest, lead by one of their new super weapons, the R18 e-tron quattro.
This new car uses a hybrid system to recover energy from the brakes while slowing through corners, and then pushes that power to electric motors for cornering through, and out once power is applied at the apex. This gives the car more grip and a higher linear velocity when coming out.

In all this new fangled car should be ripe by Le Mans; a lot of data was taken and experience learned for tweaks on the new cars. Afterall, the Delta Wing and TS030 are waiting to challenge Audi's authority.

Here's a video from onboard the car with it's telemetry at Spa: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5OREUhlcK28


See you all around the corner!