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Seven-figure cars highlight day one of RM's Monterey auction

RM Auctions is one of several houses holding auctions during the Monterey weekend, and Friday night's festivities got quite pricey. Seven-figure vehicles were not at all uncommon during the first day of the two-day event, with the 1953 Ferrari 375 MM Spider, seen above, crossing the block for $9,075,000.
Other big earners included a pair of rare Ferraris, a 1950 166 MM Barchetta and a 1955 750 Monza Spider, which took $3,080,000 and $4,070,000, respectively. Outside of the red Italians, a 1939 Mercedes-Benz 540K Special captured $7,480,000 while a stunning, color-appropriate 1955 Jaguar D-Type took $3,850,000. We've got images of these vehicles, and a few other stunning examples of last night's auction, in the gallery above.
Thought it seems impossible, tonight's auction is expected to see even more high-dollar action. The winner of the 2012 Pebble Beach Concours, a 1928 Mercedes-Benz 680S Torpedo Roadster is expected to command over $10 million. Also crossing the block will be a car we reported on a few weeks back - a supremely rare 1967 Ferrari 275 GTB/4 NART Spyder. One of only 10 in the world, it's expected to take anywhere from $14 to $17 million when it hits the stage tonight.

LaFerrari XX may have lapped N?rburgring in 6:35

Enthusiasts around the world - ourselves included - have been anxiously awaiting the ultimate supercar showdown. After all, we seldom see three of the world's preeminent exotic automakers come out with such closely matched machinery in such close proximity as we have with the Porsche 918 Spyder, McLaren P1 and Ferrari LaFerrari. That showdown could occur on no better a playing field than the Nürburgring, but the automakers haven't exactly been playing ball.
Porsche set down a lap time of 6:57, staking its claim as the fastest street-legal production car ever to lap the vaunted Nordschleife. Rather than challenge Zuffenhausen head-on, though, McLaren has only said that the P1 has clocked a time of under seven minutes, and though Ferrari has been testing the new LaFerrari at the Ring, it hasn't released any official time at all. Maranello may, however, be preparing to announce an even faster time.
According to word we're receiving from across the pond, Ferrari has clocked a lap time of 6:35 - only it wasn't achieved in the road-going LaFerrari, but in the upcoming track-bound LaFerrari XX. That model, which was just confirmed and spied last week, will follow in the footsteps of the Enzo-based FXX and the 599XX, which itself recorded a lap time of 6:58 in 2010. Because it's not street-legal, it didn't contend for the same honors, and within a couple of months was pipped on the leaderboard for non-street-legal vehicles by the Pagani Zonda R by over ten seconds.

Recap: 2013 Australian Formula One Grand Prix is all about the rubber [w/spoilers]

A pre-season full of talking points was swapped for a brand-new set of talking points after the running of the opening grand prix of the 2013 Formula One season. The consistency of the regulations from last year to this year and the triplicate dominance of Infiniti Red Bull Racing meant that no one would have been that surprised if the relative order of things remained the same. But teams found so many ways to switch things up that, in typical pre-season fashion, no one was ready to make any bets on in-season performance, and a couple of surprising players suffered the ignominy of getting it really wrong: McLaren knew it was in trouble from the very first test, while Williams drivers applauded their car as the best in years, only to have Pastor Maldonado call it "undriveable" on the very first day of practice in Melbourne.
And then there were those Pirellis, the Italian company talking up the fact that its super soft tires would only go off so quickly that it would force teams to pit at least twice during the race.
Even then, no one could have seen the first round of pit stops beginning on Lap 5.