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Kimi Raikkonen fastest in first Belgian Grand Prix practice

SPA-FRANCORCHAMPS, Belgium — Ferrari's Kimi Raikkonen lapped fastest in first practice for the Belgian Grand Prix on Friday but Mercedes, and title contender Lewis Hamilton, still looked every bit the team to beat. A four-time winner at Spa, and with a contract extension for 2018 announced earlier in the week, Raikkonen lapped the longest track on the calendar with a best time of 1 minute 45.502 seconds. The 37-year-old Finn's time was set on the quickest ultra-soft tires, however, while Hamilton — preparing for his 200th race start — was second-fastest and only 0.053 slower on the soft compound. Hamilton was 0.092 faster than Ferrari's world championship leader Sebastian Vettel, with the German third on the timesheets and also setting his time on the quickest but least durable tire. Vettel leads Hamilton by 14 points with nine races remaining. Red Bull's Dutch teenager Max Verstappen, Belgian-born and attracting a huge traveling support of orange-capped fans, was fourth fastest with Australian team mate Daniel Ricciardo fifth. Hamilton's teammate Valtteri Bottas, who bumped into the tire barrier after going off across the gravel and damaged his front wing, was sixth fastest. The session was halted after 15 minutes when Brazilian Felipe Massa, who missed the previous race in Hungary after feeling dizzy in practice, crashed heavily into the tire barrier at turn seven out of Les Combes. He was taken to the medical center for checks, before returning to the pitlane, with his team facing a long job rebuilding the car. The session resumed after a 10 minute stoppage. Williams said the chassis would have to be changed and the team still hoped to get the car back out on track for some of the day's second session, even if that looked like being optimistic. Fernando Alonso suffered a lack of power in his McLaren, but still ended up 13th fastest. Belgian team mate Stoffel Vandoorne, who will start his home race last on Sunday thanks to a 35 place penalty due to a power unit change, was 10th. Reporting by Alan BaldwinRelated Video: Image Credit: Reuters Motorsports Ferrari McLaren Mercedes-Benz F1 Lewis Hamilton Sebastian Vettel Kimi Raikkonen Max Verstappen Valtteri Bottas belgian grand prix

World Car Of The Year down to its final four

Judges for the World Car of the Year Award have narrowed down the finalists to just four vehicles. Out of a total of 42 entries, only the Mercedes-Benz A-Class, Porsche Boxster/Cayman, Scion FR-S/Subaru BRZ/Toyota GT-86 and Volkswagen Golf remain standing. For Volkswagen, this marks the second consecutive year the company has had an entry among the finalists, and the fourth time since 2009. In order to qualify, a vehicle must be on sale on two continents during the span of time between January 1, 2013 and May 30, 2013. A panel of 66 journalists from 23 countries then vote on the finalists.
Three vehicles have made the cut for the last round of voting on the 2013 World Performance Car as well, with the Cayman/Boxster and FR-S/BRZ/GT-86 running against the Ferrari F12 Berlinetta. Meanwhile, the Renault Zoe, Tesla Model S and Volvo V60 Plug-In Hybrid are duking it out for the World Green Car Award. Finally, the World Car Design of the Year Award is up for grabs between the Aston Martin Vanquish, Jaguar F-Type, and the Mazda6. Check out the full press release below. Overall winners will be presented at the 2013 New York Auto Show.

Drive visits a Mercedes Pagoda collector in Bangkok

The term "icon" gets thrown around a lot, but if there was ever an automobile that deserved the honorific, certainly the Mercedes SL is one of them. Now in its sixth generation, the SL has been the prototypical German roadster since the 1950s. A sports car with that long a history will inevitably attract a great many collectors, but with values of first-generation 300 SLs and 190 SLs skyrocketing, those enthusiasts without bottomless pockets are turning in growing numbers to the second generation. Known as the Pagoda due to the design of its removable hardtop, the W113-generation SL arrived in 1963 and stayed in production until 1971. By that point Mercedes had built nearly 50,000 of them, selling over 19,000 of those in the United States alone. Through three engine variants – dubbed 230, 250 and 250 SL – and numerous body-styles, all featured an inline-six, transmitting to the road through manual or automatic transmissions with four or five gears. More of a cruiser, then, that an outright sports car, but one that warrants its place in the history of the automobile. In this latest episode, Drive travels to Bangkok to profile a local enthusiast and collector. That's a rather difficult undertaking in Thailand, where it's illegal to import old cars, but Sittisan Quan Sundaravej rises to the challenge, locating classics together with like-minded local enthusiasts. The heart of his collection, though, isn't one he acquired, but rather inherited from his late father. That's the kind of provenance you can't buy.