Posts for 'Formula One Events ' Category

Kasey Kahne gave himself a huge boost in the Chase for the Championship with a victory Sunday night at Atlanta Motor Speedway.

Kahne leaped five spots in the Sprint Cup standings — from a tenuous 11th to more comfortable sixth — with his victory in the Pep Boys Auto 500. He'll be able to breathe a little easier going into next weekend's race at Richmond that will set the 12-driver field for the season-ending playoff.

Kevin Harvick, who won the Nationwide race Saturday night, was in position for a weekend double until teammate Clint Bowyer spun with 15 laps to go, bringing out the final caution of the night. Kahne got Harvick on the restart and pulled away to an easy 1.766-second win.

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A total of 128,000 fans made the case for the retention of the oldest grand prix on the roster. No need to populate the stands with cardboard cut-outs here. No need for atmosphere adjuncts in the rose of the shires to make the place look busy. Most in attendance could name the corners in sequence and talk ride-heights and diffusers with the society of boffins on the pit wall.
Over on the red carpet in the F1 paddock, Silverstone attracted its OK! quota of royals, celebrities and sporting galacticos. Those looking for Eric would have found him at Renault – ooh ah Cantona. Michael Ballack compared Ferraris. KP (also known as Kevin Pietersen) turned up, making best use of the helicopter slot afforded by his Bangalore Royals boss and Force India owner Vijay Mallya. And the enfant terrible of radio, Chris Moyles, rubbed cravats with the Duke of Gloucester.

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Roma, 17 Giugno - Button favorito in casa: per il Gp di gran Bretagna il pilota inglese è in testa ai pronostici dei bookie sia nelle offerte sulla gara che in quelle sulle qualifiche. Jenson primo davanti alla bandiera a scacchi si gioca a 1,80, leggermente più alta l'offerta sul primato nelle prove bancato a 2,50. Vettel si candida ancora una volta come l'anti Button: il tedesco della Red Bull è il primo rivale nelle quote sulla gara e si gioca a 5,50, maggiori le chance di conquistare la pole, ipotesi a 3,50. Terzo posto nelle griglia dei quotisti per Barrichello, il brasiliano davanti a tutti è bancato a 8,00. Quote nere per i ferraristi, Massa e Raikkonen si trovano nelle retrovie della lavagna e il loro successo è offerto a 20 contro 1.

When the FIA’s planned budget cap was announced it quickly became a lightning rod for controversy amongst the established teams. For others, however, the cost cuts meant some long-held Formula One dreams were given a potential green light. The FIA is due to release the 2010 entry list on Friday and it could include up to 13 names. We run down the main contenders hoping to join (or in some cases, rejoin) the Formula One paddock next season…

Long before the entry period opened, F1 veterans Peter Windsor and Ken Anderson made public their plans to launch a US-based Formula One team, to prove ‘that American technology, American drivers and the American competitive spirit can compete and win on the F1 global stage’. The pair are ambitious and experienced. British-born Windsor is a former Williams team manager and is best known as an F1 commentator on US television, while American engineer Anderson, recently responsible for the Windshear wind tunnel facility, reprises the technical director role he held with the Ligier F1 team back in the ‘80s. They have already moved into a base in Charlotte, North Carolina, and have started to hire key personnel ahead of a bigger recruitment push in the autumn. They have also begun drawing up a shortlist of prospective American drivers.

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Cellular service provider Vodafone Essar showcased the replica of the Vodafone McLaren Mercedes Formula One car here on Thursday.

The replica of the car driven by Lewis Hamilton was unveiled by chief guest N. Ram, Editor-in-Chief, The Hindu, who spoke on the popularity of Formula One.

Kumar Ramanathan, Operations Director, Vodafone Essar South, was also present.The car was later on display at the Tidel Park and will be showcased at Sathyam Cinemas on Friday.

Final destination Chennai was the tour’s final destination, with Delhi, Chandigarh, Ahmedabad, Surat, Mumbai, Pune, Hyderabad, Bangalore and Kolkata the other cities.  

Gary Bursey is easily one of Metro Moncton's biggest NASCAR fans. The semi-retired construction worker and manager goes to six races a year on his way to and from Florida, where he and his wife Rhonda spend their winters.

But the couple used to dedicate the better part of their summers to following NASCAR around the United States in their RV.

"We did 12 or 13 races (a year) for a couple of years in a row," Gary says. "But now that the fuel's more expensive we just do the ones on the way to Florida and the ones on the way back."

Though ticket prices vary depending on the raceway and seat, on average each seat costs between $75 and $175.

Social circles in and around Metro are noticing more and more people headed to the races these days. The trend is something that doesn't surprise Gary, though for him, it's nothing new either.

Gary grew up reading magazines about the National Association for Stock Car Auto Racing and went to see his first race, the Daytona 500, in 1964.

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ITV Sport commentator Martin Brundle said he "thoroughly enjoyed" his return to racing in the junior single-seater series Formula Palmer Audi at Spa-Francorchamps last weekend.

Martin decided to make this one-off FPA appearance so he could race against his 17-year-old son Alex, who is a front-runner in the championship.

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It probably isn't fun being Ron Dennis right now. Five races into the 2008 season, we have had four Ferrari wins, two Ferrari one-two's and one Ferrari one-three finish McLaren has managed at best one driver on the podium at a time giving the red team 63 out of a maximum 90 points possible.

Trailing by 21 points in the constructor's championship, it is high time McLaren staged their comeback. There is talk of just that, as Dennis remains cautiously optimistic about the next two races Monaco and Canada.

And with reason both races went well for McLaren last season, and the silver arrows have undoubtedly the best team record in Monaco, winning five. of the last 10 races there. Meanwhile, Ferrari have not won on the streets of the Principato since 2001.

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Of the nearly 200 pictures using motor racing as a backdrop, only a handful are considered classics. Why is that?

One of the reasons is that age-old delicate balance challenge for any genre, where the filmmakers not only capture that specific world but do so with a riveting story. It is the same for motor racing cinema; some capture the speed and danger of the competition but the story is weak, while others provide compelling characters but their efforts on the track are the pits. 

Renny Harlin, director of the 2001 racing drama, “Driven,” points to a couple other reasons, such as financing and a surprisingly tight demographic that prevent more motor racing movies from getting made.
“I don’t think a race car movie is any more expensive to make than other action films, but so few of these movies have worked that studios are hesitant to make them. The audience is also so specific that you can’t count on the same kind of cross over popularity like with other sports movies like baseball or basketball,” notes the filmmaker, who adds, “The irony is that Formula One racing is the second biggest sport in the world, after soccer, but in the U.S. no one watches it. NASCAR, on the other hand, is virtually unknown in the rest of the world, hence financing is a problem.”

But what NASCAR does have is a huge and fanatical domestic following. So where are the motor sport films servicing that free-spending crowd?

Certainly there have been notable stock car films through the years that have provided a different glimpse of that world such as: “The Richard Petty Story,” “Days of Thunder” and “3-The Dale Earnhardt Story,” still nothing has approached classic status in that category of racing.

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As a technical sport motor racing demands of its participants a close understanding of the technologies that can help them. F1 motor racing is probably second only to the aerospace industry in the application of aerodynamic simulation and wind tunnel technology. It is a testament to the rapid advance of Linux in high performance computing that most teams in Formula 1 have been using Linux systems in their aerodynamic and engine workshops for a number of years.

"Formula One is a product excellence business that's all about innovation and technology," says Jonathan Neale, the managing director of McLaren Racing. "We're competing for first place in an environment where the difference between first and tenth is about 0.6 seconds, so we're constantly seeking fractions of a second in performance improvement. On average we'll make a change to the car every 20 minutes during the course of a season, and to do that, simulation is vital in making efficient changes to the car." Back in the factory, McLaren uses computational fluid dynamics (CFD) analysis running on Linux on SGI Altix high performance computers to simulate and predict the car's behaviour.

Motor racing wasn't always like this. Once upon a time those daring young men diced with death and each other in their flying machines, with little more than grease blown overalls, a loose flying-helmet, oil-splattered goggles and a V8 engine between them and the oncoming road. The skill of the driver was everything.

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