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GRAND-AM, IMSA announce deal to bring DTM racing to US

It won't be until 2015 at the earliest, but the International Motor Sports Association (IMSA), Grand-Am and the Internationale Tourenwagen-Rennen have agreed to a licensing and cooperation deal that could bring a version of Germany's DTM series to the US.
When the American Le Mans Series and Grand-Am are officially combined next year, the resulting body will be called United SportsCar Racing (USCR). IMSA will be the sanctioning body for that series, and DTM races could be run as support events. It was also suggested by an ALMS chief that DTM races could be standalone or join NASCAR and IndyCar weekends.
With the so-called DTM America finally agreed to, there is now a way for manufacturers to run the same DTM-type cars in Europe, the US and Japan - last year Japan's Super GT series agreed to adopt "the basic technical regulations" of DTM for the GT500 class, the top class in the series. That already puts six manufacturers in play: Mercedes-Benz, Audi and BMW that run in Germany's DTM and Honda, Nissan and Lexus that run in Super GT. The DTM oversight body has invited American brands to Germany for the opening round of the 2013 season, and will begin actively courting their participation in the US series. Check out the press release from Audi with comments on the deal below.

Adam Carolla is world's the least helpful test drive co-pilot

If you were going to test drive a new car, who would you want to take with you? Your spouse? A friend? Maybe an automotive journalist? Well take it from us: there's one of us riding shotgun just about every time we go to drive anything, and we're not all we're cracked up to be.
How about a celebrity comedian? Well, that largely depends on which comedian we're talking about here. Some - say, Jerry Seinfeld or Jay Leno, for example - might be more helpful than others, being more or less schooled in the finer points of the modern automobile. Adam Carolla might seem like he belongs on that list too, but in this latest video for a friends at Edmunds.com, the one-time host of The Car Show on Speed TV seems bent on being as comedically intrusive as possible. Which may be funny, but helpful? Not so much. See what we mean in the video below, and the next time you go to test drive a new car, you just might find the world's most popular podcast host climbing in with you.

Highlights from the Goodwood Festival of Speed, including the McLaren P1 and a Ford Transit running the hill

The sole purpose of this post is as a time-waster, and since you shouldn't have to work to waste time, we've done it for you. In the numerous videos below you'll find cars that have lately been in the news tramping all over the grounds of Lord March's estate in Goodwood, England.
There's the McLaren P1 heading up the hill, the Jaguar Project 7, then a casually-driven Porsche 917 followed by an even-more-casually-driven Porsche 956, topped off by a Porsche 936 that is anything but casually driven. The next round is the flame-spitting Peugeot 405 T16 Pikes Peak from Climb Dance, a camera mounted on the Peugeot RCZ R after it showing you what the whole, uninterrupted run up the hill looks like. For a real head-turner, we couldn't embed it but there's Andy Reid blasting up the hill in a Ford Transit Supervan with a Cosworth 3000 V6 engine.
The modern racing contingent has Allan McNish doing the hill in the Audi R18 e-tron quattro he used to win Le Mans and Lewis Hamilton making lots of tire smoke in the Mercedes-AMG Petronas MGP-W02. For comparison, that's followed by Nick Heidfeld's record-setting run up the hill in 1999 in the McLaren MP4/14 . The classic racing contingent is headlined by 71-year-old Giacomo Agostini on an MV Agusta.