2010 Mercedes Benz C300 4matic Sport, P1, Multimedia on 2040-cars

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Rain prolongs the Championship battle | 2016 Brazilian Grand Prix recap

Rain and an old-school circuit are the antidotes to Formula 1's constricting technical regulations and Tilke tracks. At Brazil's Autodromo Jose Carlos Pace – otherwise known as Interlagos – rain Saturday night and on race day washed away everyone's careful plans, except for those of the man at the front of the pack. Lewis Hamilton put his Mercedes-AMG Petronas ahead of the field throughout the weekend. On Sunday, a storm-delayed start behind the Safety Car assured Hamilton of a clean path to the lead and a clear track. The Briton didn't waste it, pulling out a gap on teammate Nico Rosberg behind, and Rosberg appeared to have no interest in going hard after Hamilton. Safety Cars and red flags kept resetting the gap to zero, though. After the Mercedes-AMG GT S led the first seven laps, it emerged again on Lap 13 for another six laps when Marcus Ericsson crashed his Sauber. Seconds after racing resumed, Kimi Raikkonen aquaplaned his Ferrari into the wall on the front straight. That caused the first red flag, leading to another eight-lap Safety Car interval, then a second red flag stoppage due to conditions on Lap 28, then three more Safety Car laps, and then, finally, racing again. Hamilton never surrendered his lead. The Briton changed tires once during a stoppage, and drove fast enough to cover the full race distance despite the intermissions. Afterward, he said "it was a very easy race." Rosberg had it harder, defending against the preternatural Max Verstappen in third. Barring misfortune it's already clear the Red Bull pilot has at least one Driver's Championship in his career future. In Brazil the young Dutchman drove like he's worthy of the hardware right now. After Verstappen passed Rosberg for second on Lap 34, the Red Bull driver pitted for intermediate tires on Lap 44 – a huge gamble in the conditions – coming back out in fifth. That tire wager failed, giving Rosberg a safe position in second when Verstappen had to pit for extreme wets on Lap 54 of 71. The teenager re-emerged in 16th. Over the race's final 17 laps Verstappen passed 13 drivers at six different places on track. He ran it close-but-clean a couple of times, especially when getting around Sebastian Vettel and Sergio Perez, but he was simply untouchable. Not only did the Dutchman score an amazing third place, he put in what could be the drive of the season.

Autoblog fan favorite car ads from Super Bowl XLIX

Super Bowl XLIX is in the books, and the New England Patriots emerged victorious. Of course, if you're like us, the big game wasn't so much about the battle between the east coast and west, so much as a fight between the world's automotive advertisers. We collected and collated all of last night's new ads and put them together for you to vote on. And yes, we're limiting this year's contest to last night's new features. That's why you aren't seeing Dodge's epic Wisdom among our collection of commercials, and it's a similar story with Chevrolet's Truck Guy Focus Group series, which highlights the new Colorado. You can still vote for your favorites. We won't be closing the voting on our Super Bowl page, so while the winners and losers are correct as of this writing, it's entirely possible that there could be some changes in the rankings as time goes on. So, without any further ado, here are the winning ads based on your voting. Nissan: With Dad Fiat: Ready For Action Jeep: Beautiful Lands BMW: Newfangled Idea Mercedes-Benz: Fable NASCAR: America Start Your Engines As for those ads that failed to impact you, loyal readers, Toyota was the absolute, undisputed loser. The Japanese brand ran four ads in total – two for Toyota and two for Lexus – and all of them have negative tallies as of this writing. Lexus' Make Some Noise and Lets Play and Toyota's One Bold Choice and My Bold Dad both had very weak showings among the commercials that aired, although they weren't alone. Neither Mazda nor Kia scored particularly well, despite featuring celebrity magic act Penn and Teller and former James Bond, Pierce Brosnan, respectively. Chevrolet was the winner of the losers, as of our writing, recording the fewest downvotes for its audience-punking The Big Game ad. If you want to take a second look at the losing ads, you can head back to our Super Bowl page for the complete collection. But for now, head into Comments and let us know what you think of the results.

Mercedes to roll out S65 AMG Coupe in July

We're still a couple of weeks away from the public debut of the new Mercedes S63 AMG Coupe at the fast-approaching New York Auto Show, but already we're receiving word of an even more powerful version in the works. That, of course, would be the S65 AMG Coupe - the twelve-cylinder version of the latest S-Class Coupe, two-door counterpart to the S65 AMG sedan and replacement for the outgoing CL65 AMG.
Like the four-door version rolled out back in November, the S65 AMG Coupe would be distinguished from less powerful vehicles (which, lets face it, is just about everything) principally by its engine: a massive, 6.0-liter twin-turbo V12 that produces 621 horsepower, 738 pound-feet of torque and cares as much about global warming as an oil-shipping mega-tanker.
Because Merc's 4Matic all-wheel drive system can't handle that much torque, the ne plus ultra coupe would (like the S65 sedan but unlike the S63 coupe) be offered only in rear-drive form. That means it will have that much more trouble getting the power down to the road, but since the Magic Body Control suspension is similarly incompatible with 4Matic, the flagship coupe will get that trick suspension.