By Speedhunters

Car Culture At Large

I’ve just stumbled upon this trailer for the upcoming movie about the life of Ayrton Senna. The movie which is due to be released later this year promises an unprecedented look at Senna’s life. It has the full backing of Senna’s family and F1 management.

Senna, a three time F1 world champion was killed during the third round of the 1994 Formula One World championship at Imola. His legacy still lives on.

By Paddy

By Jen Dunnaway

Editor

As groan-worthy motorsports-themed kitchen appliances go, the Racepresso is right up there with the NASCAR Crock Pot. Couldn’t you totally see Jean Girard from Talladega Nights with one of these in his motor coach kitchen? Via BornRich.

By Katherine Helmetag

Atomicalex

F1 scandals have been free-flowing this year, and my employer has gotten snared in the latest one. This time, Brawn GP have charged that a mid-level Henkel employee entered into a promise of sponsorship prior to the sale of Brawn GP to Daimler. I’m working off an internal release here, but even the limited details are pretty gnarly. The value of the claimed sponsorship package exceeded what Henkel has put into all of F1 in better years. Even wilder, the person named as the intermediary between Brawn and Henkel is the proud owner of a fraud conviction, and Brawn GP appear to have ignored all of this. Both Daimler and Henkel appear to have been unaware of the situation with Brawn until this past October, when a check was demanded. The case is now in the hands of the German courts, which no doubt will be friendly to both Henkel and to Daimler. Will we see Nick Fry handed his team back and told to return Daimler’s investment? Strange days, indeed, but certainly not by F1 standards!

By John Coyle

Deputy Editor

Sometimes it can take a little while for these race comps to get uploaded to StreetFire, so I wasn’t surprised when I started seeing multiple version of all the action from the F1 race in Brazil in the approval que this morning. But even though it’s not exactly breaking news, there’s some seriously scary contact between the cars, and there’s at least one corner dude that could have been seriously injured. The battles were heated enough that drivers Jarno Trulli and Adrian Sutil actually got into each up in each others grills, but it turned out to be a total sissy fight. Enjoy.

By Speedhunters

Car Culture At Large

Fuji Speedway is the place to be this time of the year as two of the biggest events of the calendar are hosted at the international circuit. I am of course talking about the Toyota Motorsports Festival and the Nismo Festival, which this year are held within two weeks of each other. This past weekend was Toyota’s turn, which managed to attract a pretty impressive 28,000 people to the freezing race track in order to celebrate the past year’s achievements in motorsport. Continue reading over at Speedhunters.

—By Dino Dalle Carbonare

By Rob Einaudi

Editor-in-Chief

Think the guy took it through the drive-thru? Via Jason Thorgalsen Photography

By John Coyle

Deputy Editor

There isn’t any really any racing in this clip, but the camera man had some great access to the pits, and just getting to see the FXX and some vintage Ferrari F1 machines up close makes it worth watching. Towards the end, one of the techs gives some explanation of the FXX’s diagnostic computer, which I thought was kind of cool. Apparently, if you’re lucky enough to own one of Enzo’s old racing machines, you also wind up stuck with whatever vintage computer they were using back in the day, as they were basically hard-wired into the car. But hey, if getting to drive a Ferrari race car means having to use an ancient DOS machine, I think I could get used to it…

By Rob Einaudi

Editor-in-Chief

This happened yesterday in Santa Rosa, California. $2 million down the drain… Full story at pressdemocrat.com

By Steve Neill

Steve Neill

A fellow in Poland has decided to build his dream car in his garage. And so far, it looks like he’s doing a pretty good job. He managed to capture quite a few key parts of the original design, such as the center seating, the gullwing/scissor doors, and the angled suspension. He states in this forum thread that there have been other F1 molds, but he says no one has ever made a full exact reproduction. He’s even using a BMW V12! Check the forum thread for all the pics!

By Rob Einaudi

Editor-in-Chief

Formula One has made some of the most sweeping rule changes in the sport’s history. In this video from Red Bull Racing, Sebastian Vettel explains how the differences in aerodynamics, tires and technology will help bring down the cost of racing and increase the racing excitement. I’m really looking forward to seeing these changes in action!