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• Assault with Batteries: EV West BMW M3 Pummels the Pavement [Video]

  In Fast Forward / By Tom Anderson / 24 May 2013

  

  When most of us hear the phrase “electric car conversion,” we picture an aging econobox with an overwhelmed golf cart motor under the hood and a trunk full of batteries. Oh, and a plethora of stickers telling the populace that this is an electric vehicle. Not exactly the stuff of hoon dreams.

  This E36-chassis BMW M3, however, is different. It was put together by the crew at EV West, and it is not intended for commuting or saving the planet. Instead, it’s a race car, built to tackle the Pikes Peak International Hill Climb. And while host Matt Farah is torn about whether or not he likes the idea of a heavy, noiseless BMW race car, we don’t think there’s any disputing 850 lb.-ft of torque to the wheels at 600 rpm is a wonderful thing.

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• VIDEO: The Top 10 Greatest Indianapolis 500 Finishes…So Far

  In Featured / By Tom Anderson / 23 May 2013

  

  While it’s painfully easy to pile onto the Indianapolis 500 in its current form thanks to things like shrinking entry lists, spec tires, a spec chassis, two engine suppliers and increasing apathy from the public at-large, it’s still an incredible event. There’s likely not a single race on earth that can lay claim to as much history, pageantry and – many still maintain – prestige as this Memorial Day Weekend motorsports classic. The 500, together with Formula 1’s Monaco Grand Prix and NASCAR’s Coca Cola (nee World) 600, comprises the racing fan’s highest of high holy days.

  And the cathedral of speed that is the Indianapolis Motor Speedway has witnessed some truly thrilling finishes over the past 102 years. Naturally, some of these have been more thrilling than the rest, with the truly awe-inspiring ones being talked about with off-the-charts reverence by die-hard fans. Here, then, presented in chronological order in honor of Sunday’s 97^th Indianapolis 500, are the 10 conclusions to the Greatest Spectacle in Racing that will live forever in motorsports lore.

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• Come (Climb) Dancing: Sebastien Loeb Tests His New Pikes Peak Peugeot 208 T16 [Video]

  In Fast Forward / By Tom Anderson / 10 May 2013

  

  Having won the World Rally Championship for drivers in each of the last nine years, France’s Sebastien Loeb has retired from full-time WRC competition (to the unending relief of his competitors). But instead of spending his many weekends away from that tour perched in a lawn chair in his driveway yelling at the neighborhood kids to get off his pelouse, he’s keeping busy with other forms of motorsport. In addition to being an owner/driver in the FIA GT Series with a pair of McLaren MP4-12C GT3s, the most decorated rally driver in history is also taking on a new challenge at the end of next month: The Pikes Peak International Hill Climb.

  Seb’s weapon of choice for this American adventure? That would be a specially-built number from Peugeot (corporate cousin of Loeb’s longtime rally steed provider, Citroen) called the 208 T16. Like the conceptually similar 205 T16 and 405 T16 that attacked the Colorado mountain in the 1980s, this dedicated racing Peugeot features an obscenely powerful mid-mounted engine (in this case a 3.2L twin-turbo V6 generating 875hp) that drives all four wheels. So it’s fast? Well, we reckon 0-62 mph in 1.8 seconds and 0-150 mph in 7.0 seconds counts as fast. While this video of shakedown testing is neat, we’re anxious to see how man and machine do in the actual event.

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• Mountain Slide: “Mad Mike” Whiddett Drifts His Mazda RX7 through the Crown Range [Video]

  In Fast Forward / By Tom Anderson / 9 May 2013

  

  Despite the dizzying variety of cars competing in the uppermost echelons of drifting, it seems like more and more of them are starting to rely on GM LS-series V8s for power. And while we love the LS engines and their ability to make whack-a-doodle power figures despite having just one camshaft and two valves per cylinder, we’d love to see more European and Japanese drift cars vying for high scores with the smaller-displacement, fewer-cylinder engines with which they were born (or at least ones from the same company).

  Consequently, you can imagine how giddy we were when we heard the distinctive bud-bud-bud-bud-BLAAAAAAAAAAAAAAATTTTTTTTT of a rotary engine emanating from Kiwi “Mad Mike” Whiddett’s Red Bull sponsored FD-chassis Mazda RX7. Of course, the massive orange backfires coming from the Mazda’s tush made us even more giddy. Throw in the fact that Whiddett and his roughly 750hp four-rotor Wankel weapon are sliding their way along one of New Zealand’s most scenic byways and you have one honey of a tire snuff film.

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• Flat Chat Fever: Audi R18 e-tron quattro Longtail Testing Sounds Amazing [Video]

  In Fast Forward / By Tom Anderson / 2 May 2013

  

  It used to be that racecar builders like Alfa Romeo, Porsche and Ferrari would construct special low-drag “longtail” versions of their sport prototypes for high speed tracks like Le Mans, Daytona and Monza. But as those tracks were reconfigured to reduce vehicle speeds, the need for such extended-rump specials disappeared; the last one we can think of is the McLaren F1 GTR Longtail of the late 1990s. This makes us sad.

  However, the fact that Audi has created a longtail version of its R18 e-tron quattro diesel-electric hybrid (set to debut at this weekend’s 6 Hours of Spa-Francorchamps) has turned our frown upside down. And this video taken by Italian racing paparazzo 19Bozzy92 makes our smile even bigger. It shows Audi’s latest LMP racer blasting right past Monza’s tight first chicane and hauling the mail through the long, sweeping Curva Grande at a speed our cameraman estimates to be above 211 mph. And that sound? Just plain incredible! If we close our eyes we can almost picture that 3.7L V6 turbodiesel is wooshing its way through turn 1 at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway in the back of a Dallara DW12. Oh well, maybe it is in some parallel universe (maybe the one where we’re behind the wheel of it).

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• The Top 25 Homologation Specials of All Time

  In Featured / By Tom Anderson / 18 April 2013

  

  Purpose-built racing cars – be they single seat open wheelers, sports prototypes, dragsters or any other automobile whose sole reason for being is to compete – have always inspired awe and been capable of extraordinary performance. But when it comes to truly connecting with the fans in the stands, these thoroughbreds are no match for production-based (even if it’s just the shape of the body) machinery. The idea of watching a particular car win a race and then walking out to the parking lot and driving home in or driving to the local dealer to check out an identical (save for some safety and performance equipment and a whole heap-o-decals) car holds widespread (if not universal) appeal.

  Of course, to stand a better chance at winning on Sunday so they can sell on Monday, manufacturers load their showroom-bred competition models with go-fast bits. However, many sanctioning bodies used to require (though, sadly, very few still do) that those same upgrades to be fitted to a certain number of the street-legal models Joe Bloe can buy, meaning the factories have to sell what are known as homologation specials in order to race that model. The annals of automotive history are brimming with such four-wheeled entry forms, yet we’ve managed to pare that manifest down to the 25 fastest, coolest and most outrageous ones ever to wear a license plate.

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• 2013 Formula Drift Long Beach: Daijiro Yoshihara Takes the Round 1 Crown

  In Motorsports / By Tom Anderson / 14 April 2013

  

  The 2012 Formula Drift season was as exciting and unpredictable as any in memory, and when the last of the tire smoke settled over the finale at Irwindale Speedway, Formula D newbie Daigo Saito found himself winner of the event and the championship. Not too long after that, Saito grabbed the Formula Drift Asia championship, too. So naturally, most of the Formula Drift community spent the winter trying to figure out how to dethrone the likeable Lexus driver from Japan in 2013.

  And judging by the results of this past weekend’s season opener on the streets of Long Beach, California, it looks like more than a few of Saito’s rivals have stepped up to challenge him. And while some of the names that managed to best the defending champ are familiar, there were a few who weren’t. Make the jump to see who made it the deepest into eliminations.

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• Get Excited: Longer U.S. Trailer for Rush Brings the Awesome [Video]

  In Fast Forward / By Tom Anderson / 12 April 2013

  

  On Monday the international trailer for Ron Howard’s Formula 1 historical docudrama Rush burst onto the internet, and boy howdy, does it make the flick look good. The cars, the costumes, the special effects…it all looks amazing. Of course, with Ron Howard as skipper, you would expect that, wouldn’t you?

  Now a second, longer trailer aimed at U.S. moviegoers is out. And you know what? It’s even more amazing. Example: Check out how well the VFX team managed to replicate the Nürburgring’s old parallel front and back straights and pit complex, all of which were bulldozed in the early ‘80s when the modern Grand Prix circuit was constructed. Plus it does a markedly better job of fleshing out the backstory (kind of a necessity, since so few Americans are familiar with Formula 1 past or present) and, oh yes, more Olivia Wilde. Did we mention September 20^th can’t come soon enough? Because it can’t.

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• Opie’s Open-Wheel Opus: Rush Trailer Hits the Web [Video]

  In Fast Forward / By Tom Anderson / 8 April 2013

  

  When we first got wind that Ron Howard would be making a movie called Rush chronicling the 1976 Formula 1 season – specifically, the rivalry between that season’s top title contenders, Niki Lauda of Ferrari and James Hunt of McLaren – we positively squeed with glee. Yes, pretty much every non-documentary racing movie made after Le Mans has been an over-(and/or under-)acted, Newtonian-physics-flaunting-crash-filled farce, but this project was being helmed by Ron Bleeping Howard. You know, the ginger-maned (or what’s left of it) artist behind such masterworks as Apollo 13, A Beautiful Mind, The Da Vinci Code, and Frost/Nixon. So we had hope.

  Now it looks like our hope was well-placed. After watching the above video, the first international trailer for Rush, we can now say we are officially stoked. The cars, the venues, the fashion…it all looks dead on and lifted straight out of one of F1’s most glamorous (and dangerous) epochs. Even the tobacco sponsor logos on the cars and trackside signage are present and accounted for (though we’re sure they will be blurred out in France, Canada and other revisionist history countries). With this movie and the drag racing epic Snake and Mongoose both set for release in September, we reckon this autumn will be a most bountiful one for motorsports history geeks like us.

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• Beemer Screamer: Roland Sands’ Superb BMW S1000RR Drag Bike [Video]

  In Fast Forward / By Tom Anderson / 5 April 2013

  

  Throughout the 1990s, Roland Sands was one of America’s hottest motorcycle road racing prospects. But despite his on-track successes (including winning the old AMA 250GP national championship in 1998), the hard-charging young Californian never made it to the big leagues. Multiple injuries didn’t help, either. In any case, when Sands retired from racing in 2002, he wasn’t sure what to do with himself at first. But eventually, he found his niche as a designer of both custom bikes and biker gear.

  The latest creation of Roland and his company – Roland Sands Design – is a drag racing prepped BMW S1000RR. And even though the engine is basically unchanged, this bad black BMW still manages to cover the standing eighth-mile in less than six seconds (Figure on quarter-mile ETs in the eight second range.). But if you think Roland is satisfied with that kind of performance, well, watch and listen to the last minute or so of the video…

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