Carbon Ceramic Brakes, 20" Diamond Finish Sport Wheels-carbon Fiber Driving Zone on 2040-cars

Auto blog

2015 Italian Grand Prix is smoke, mirrors, stalls, and stewards

For the first day-and-a-half of the Italian Formula One Grand Prix weekend, everything went to blueprint: Mercedes in front, Ferrari lurking, everyone else scrambling in their usual orders behind. Then qualifying came, and someone stirred the pot. About the only thing we expected was for Lewis Hamilton to put his Mercedes-AMG Petronas on pole position, the 11th time he's done it this year. He did it with a brand-new specification engine, one that represents not only an evolution in components, but also in power unit philosophy. Kimi Raikkonen lines up in second. It's been a long time since we read those words; the Iceman hasn't been on the first row since the 2013 Chinese Grand Prix, when he put his Lotus second on the grid behind... Lewis Hamilton. Raikkonen lined up just ahead of a Ferrari at that China race, then driven by Fernando Alonso. In Italy this weekend, he lined up in front of the Ferrari driven by his teammate, Sebastian Vettel, who qualified third. Both Ferraris benefitted from an upgraded power unit, ending a front-row drought for the scuderia that goes all the way back to Monaco in 2009 Germany in 2012. Nico Rosberg has a lot of work to do from fourth in the second Mercedes-AMG Petronas. Mercedes discovered a problem with Rosberg's engine but couldn't figure out the cause, so he reverted to the previous-spec engine he used in Belgium, one that's six races old. The lack of power hurt. Williams teammates Felipe Massa and Valtteri Bottas took fifth and sixth, with Massa seemingly given a team-ordered helping hand. Williams told Bottas to tow Massa down the front straight, giving Massa a blistering time in the first sector. Then Bottas did it again, ensuring he would line up behind Massa. The first Sahara Force India of Sergio Perez nabbed seventh, three places ahead of teammate Nico Hulkenberg in tenth, with Romain Grosjean in the Lotus behind Perez in eighth. Marcus Ericsson in the Sauber qualified ninth, but some clumsy driving saw him impede Hulkenberg twice. The stewards penalized Ericsson with a three-place grid penalty and two points on his superlicense, so Hulkenberg inherited ninth and Pastor Maldonado in the second Lotus inherited tenth. We hardly saw Hamilton during the race, because he led from the start, worked up a larger gap to second place on every lap, and didn't give up the lead for the whole event.

Ferrari Speciale and Porsche GT3 make the trip to Le Mans

Call it a pilgrimage. Call it a right of passage. The bottom line is that every racing fan should make the trip to Le Mans at some point. All the better if you can do it in style, as Evo has for this latest video. Instead of taking any old car through the Chunnel and along the French countryside to the famous Circuit de la Sarthe, Evo made the trip in the Ferrari 458 Speciale and Porsche 911 GT3. Both are more extreme versions of the already capable sports cars. They're still naturally aspirated, drive the rear wheels through seven-speed dual-clutch transmissions, and both won top honors in Evo's car of the year awards upon their release. And we could hardly imagine better vehicles for the journey. Along the way, the convoy-of-two stopped by the side of the old Rouen-Les-Essarts circuit. Back in the 1950s and 60s it was regarded as one of Europe's finest street circuits, hosting the French Grand Prix five times. It was closed down and paved over in the decades that followed, and is today part of a public thoroughfare – but you can still drive around it and see some of the relics of its former self peering through. Related Video: News Source: Evo via YouTube Ferrari Porsche Supercars Videos viral video porsche 911 gt3 evo circuit de la sarthe

Ares Design turns the Ferrari GTC4Lusso into a 412 revival

Ares Design has a second project on the go for this year, after its beautiful Ares Design Coupe for the Bentley Mulsanne. The Modena, Italy, coachbuilder released renderings of its Project Pony — Ares gives "Project" codenames to cars in development — that turns a Ferrari GTC4Lusso into a modern 412. The conversion is the next in the firm's Reborn Legends group, coming after the reimagined Ferrari 250 GTO based on the 812 Superfast. This particular writer is ambivalent about the GTC4Lusso and a huge fan of the 412, so I think Project Pony an outstanding way to turn a shrug into "Buy with One-Click." For those unfamiliar, the 412 was a passionately unloved four-seat Ferrari from the 1980s, the last in a series of front-engined V12 grand tourers that began with the 1972 365 GT4 2+2. Named for the displacement of a single cylinder, the engines got larger and more advanced, through to the 412 that ended production in 1989. The 1985 model introduced the brand's first automatic transmission, a General Motors unit just as derided as the rest of the car, but which sold better than the manual. This was the era when Tom Selleck's Magnum P.I. made the 308 a must-have poster, when Don Johnson's Testarossa made every boy question the payroll policies of the Miami Police Department, when the 288 GTO showed what a car would look like if it were half "The Godfather" and half Sophia Loren, and the F40 generated gravitational waves. The 412, meanwhile, lived in a damp hut on marsala dregs and stale polenta. Ares Design retained the GTC4Lusso's side vents but without the strakes, the door handle, and taillight arrangement. Every other exterior line got redrawn. New carbon fiber body panels include pop-up headlights in front and transverse vents on the hood. The bread-van profile gives way to a sharply raked C-pillar that falls into a gently sloped trunk just long enough to balance the front end. The rear diffuser shoots up to mimic the original coupe. Chrome frames the side glass and B-pillar for an authentic '80s look, with the retro 412 wheels the finishing touch. The reupholstered 2+2 interior replaces the rounded forms on the instrument panel with squared-off angles, down to the square vents instead of the original round units. There's a round steering wheel, too, as opposed to the flat-bottomed GTC4Lusso wheel.