2010 Ferrari California~daytona Seats~red Calipers~20 Inch Wheels~sensors~ 2011 on 2040-cars

Auto blog

$80M Ferrari deal would make Vettel world's highest-paid sportsman

Formula One is in for a big shakeup next season, as the only two multiple World Champions on the grid are kicking off a game of musical chairs. Just who will end up where has yet to be figured out, but the overwhelmingly prevailing wisdom has Sebastian Vettel, who has already announced his departure from Red Bull, inking a contract with Ferrari worth 150 million pounds sterling for three years - that works out to over $80 million per year.
If the reports are true, that would make Vettel (pictured above with his assumed new teammate Kimi Raikkonen) the highest-salaried sportsman in the world. Compared to Vettel's rumored $80 million/year, soccer player Cristiano Ronaldo was paid $52 million last year and NFL quarterback Matt Ryan got $42 million, just ahead of soccer player Lionel Messi at $41.7 million. Boxer Floyd Mayweather was reportedly paid a whopping $100 million last year, but that's based on how many fights he fights and wins, putting him on a different earnings spectrum.
Those figures are also just for salaries, and do not include sponsorship and endorsement deals - and therein may lie part of the reason for Vettel's reportedly stratospheric salary. In addition to his salary from the Red Bull team with which he's won four World Championships, Vettel also pulls in a large retainer from Infiniti, which sponsors both the team and himself personally. In departing Red Bull, he'd undoubtedly have to sever the tie with Infiniti as well.

Race Recap: 2014 Singapore Grand Prix is back-to-front

To paraphrase Guy Fawkes, 'Remember, remember the twenty-first of September.' That's the day the 2014 Formula One Championship took another big turn - and at one of the year's least interesting races, traditionally - putting Lewis Hamilton back at the top of the standings. Not only that, it did so by borrowing the template from the British Grand Prix this year: put Hamilton in front, retire Nico Rosberg.
It was close until then, though, Hamilton lining up on pole for Mercedes AMG Petronas just seven thousandths of a second ahead of Rosberg. Daniel Ricciardo, the year's greatest opportunist, took third ahead of his teammate Sebastian Vettel in the Infiniti Red Bull Racing, followed by Fernando Alonso in fifth for Ferrari. The Williams' looked like they'd be in trouble on Friday, but as usual they dredged up some pace on Saturday, Felipe Massa taking sixth ahead of Kimi Räikkönen in the second Ferrari, the second Williams of Valtteri Bottas in eighth. Kevin Magnussen saved a little bit of face for McLaren in ninth, and Daniil Kvyat did another solid job to line up tenth in his Toro Rosso.
Before it even started, the race wouldn't look the same.

This electric Ferrari 308 GTS would do Magnum PI proud

We've seen Lancias, Alfas, Maseratis, and assorted F1 cars over the years packing Ferrari engine. But seeing a Ferrari running under different power is something else entirely – let alone one packing a fully electric powertrain. Yet that's what one company in Southern California has done with this 1978 Ferrari 308 GTS, swapping out its V8 engine for an array of electric motors and battery packs. Rather than tearing apart a perfectly good Italian sports car, Eric Hutchison of San Diego-based Electric GT found the Magnum PI-spec Prancing Horse for salvage after it had burned out from an unfortunate fuel leak. One man's loss being another's gain, he bought it for $10,000 and, together with his friend Michael Bream at EV West, set about converting it to electric power. The cavallo elettrico produces an impressive 465 horsepower and 330 pound-feet of torque. With three AC51 HPEVS electric motors and 48 batteries installed, the cavallo elettrico produces an impressive 465 horsepower and 330 pound-feet of torque. That's a heck of a lot more than the 2.9-liter V8 in the original 308 ever produced: before later versions introduced fuel injection and four-valve cylinder heads, the 308 packed about 200 horsepower and 181 lb-ft. Not one of the most powerful models ever to leave the factory in Maranello, in other words. To handle the extra muscle, Hutchison, Bream, and company fitted a new clutch, flywheel, pressure plate, and (perhaps the oddest part) a Porsche transaxle, mounted upside down. Though most EVs do away with a conventional transmission, Hutchison points to the original (though ultimately unfulfilled) Tesla Roadster plans and the Formula E setup as evidence of the combo's ideal blend of efficiency and performance. "The massive torque transferring through the transmission engages the driver in a clutch-dropping, gear-pounding Ferrari experience," he said. To offset the added weight of the four dozen 3.3-volt lithium-ion batteries, they stripped out anything they could, and found new homes for many of the jettisoned components through fora like Ferrari Chat, whose members enthusiastically followed the conversion process. The result is a vehicle just 150 pounds heavier than stock that can travel 100 miles on a single charge. That's more than most OEM EVs can go these days, and (arguably) in better style, too. We've been following the project's development for nearly two years now, and took it for a spin on Translogic.