#that Ferrari rear wing really stands out

[mysteriouslyjovialcolor]

I really like this shot for some reason

[vettelsdarling]

Ive seen alot of quote requests and I rly want a Leclerc x fem reader smut where they start out as enemies (example is like Ferrari and Mercedes or Ferrari and Redbull) pls and include these two quotes

“Youre so full of shit Ferrari boy”

“but you keep coming back”

Id be rly grateful if u could write this haha

Touch my rear wing, I dare you

➪I like the idea! Hope you enjoy what I came up with :)

➪(I’m assuming you mean Charles and not Arthur btw)

➪Also, this both follows and doesn't really follow a specific timeline. I’m just using my creative freedom for this. Some people are cut out of the story because of the reader insert!

Pairing: Charles Leclerc x Fem!Driver!Reader

Warnings: (18+ content) smut, oral (both receiving), swearing

Word count: 5.6k+

Backstory

You had always loved racing. Your father was a retired Formula 1 driver and had always taught you and your brother the basics of it. You used to go watch him speed around for Ferrari, which shaped your dream to become just like him. Your brother and yourself were both determined to make it as great drivers. Your mother was a stay-at-home mom with a lot of time on her hands. Therefore, convincing her to take you and your brother karting was no big feat. Especially seeing as your father was a driver himself.

You rose through the ranks faster than your brother, despite having started later than him. Your mother was hesitant to let you race at first, but eventually allowed it. You were called a star and a prodigy. Seeing as you were the only girl there, it made sense. Especially because you hit every apex just right and your overtakes were near-perfect every time.

After karting, you moved further up the ranks, eventually being crowned regional champion in Formula 3 (regional) and moving on to Formula 3.

It was there you met him; Charles Leclerc. He was the only one who seemed to be faster than you. Not only that but the idea of it had gotten to his head. You never actually spoke to him, but you'd see a smirk creep up on his face once in a while after beating you. You wanted nothing more than to wipe it off with the sole of your shoe. You weren't superstitious, but there was sure to be karma coming his way sooner or later.

Luckily that karma came in the form of one George Russel and one Alex Albon. The two of them were just as competitive as you and Charles, eventually making the four of you gain a lot of attraction in the media. You were great friends with George. He always showed a tremendous amount of sportsmanship towards you. One time, he even helped you by letting you pass him, having you win the race. All the whilst Charles was left in the dust. You relished in it.

When Formula 2 came around, you were stuck, yet again, with Charles. That was also when you had your first real interaction. He went up to you before the last race and struck up a rather puzzling conversation. Puzzling in the sense that you had no idea why he was talking to you, or why he even wanted to.

“Hey, you're not a bad driver, but I would suggest you try to maybe stop sulking. People notice.” Infuriating. Absolutely infuriating.

“Maybe you should check up on that girlfriend of yours. I don't think she's into assholes. Maybe stop being one.” Even though you were in your own garage, you walked away. You couldn't stand being in his presence for a moment longer.

You were unlucky because Charles beat you and moved on to Formula 1 before you. You and he had been tied for the championship, but somehow he found his way around to beat you. It was then you realized you had to do something— anything to get into Formula 1.

Your luck seemed to only build after Charles left Formula 2, and you easily won the following championship, signing a deal with Alfa Romeo, which, to your surprise, was the worst thing to ever happen to you.

You'd somehow managed to place yourself in the same team as Charles, making him the only thing you couldn't destroy on the grid. You had to be a fair teammate to even be considered by your dream team, Red Bull. You'd seen Sebastian Vettel in his glory days, and you wanted the same for yourself. However, being in Formula 1 proved to be much harder than 2. You didn't really know what you had expected, because so many stars were competing for the championship.

It wasn't all that bad, though, because he never really said much and the two of you were somehow able to make it work. It was mainly due to the pressure of having to look good. You knew about the media and their swirling rumours. Many speculated that you were Charles’ side piece. It didn't matter to you, as long as you knew just how far from the truth that was.

After the 2018 season, you somehow managed to sign yourself with Red Bull for 2019, driving alongside Max Verstappen. He went on to become your best friend on the grid, as nobody really liked Red Bull and you had to stick together. Sebastian Vettel became a “father figure”, following the death of your father earlier in 2018. It hit you harder than any barrier had ever hit you, but you were able to get through it with the help of Vettel.

It was in 2019, that you finally started rising to the top and watching Charles start to lag behind. The feeling of watching him struggle was like a euphoric punch. Nothing made you happier. You and Max were a powerhouse of a team. He helped you, you helped him. He was more than happy with it, and so were you.

Everything led up to the 2022 season, where you started casually hooking up with none other than Charles Leclerc. It started at a party that Lando threw after the 2021 season had ended.

-Flashback-

You were dancing out on the floor. Your dress barely covered your assets and you'd had more shots than you could count on your fingers. Completely wasted. That's what you were. What made matters worse was that you continued to do increasingly risky things like doing a handstand, which almost made your dress pull down with gravity. Everyone seemed to cheer you on, as they were just as drunk as you, if not more. Well, all but one. Charles lurked in the corner of the room. He didn't drink. You weren't sure why, nor did you care. But his eyes had been on you all night. The increasingly provocative behaviours you exhibited fueled something carnal within himself. Something he wasn't so sure he could control. He hated you, but at the same time… he hated the thought of someone getting their hands on you. He couldn't understand his line of reasoning. He didn't even think he had one.

The line was crossed when you came down to do a split on the floor, which ripped your dress; putting your panties on full display. Nobody but Charles paid attention to the severity of the move, so he pushed through the crowd and picked you up like you were nothing. He wasn't in control anymore. His brain had just switched to auto-pilot. Nobody realized he took you. Nobody realized the two of you were gone.

The next morning, you found yourself in a fluffy white bed, which horrified you. Your sheets were deep green and silk. Nothing like the bed you were lying in. On top of that, your clothes were gone and you were lying in your underwear. Groggy, you pulled yourself up and realized you were alone. Next to you was a bedtable with a glass of orange juice with a pill next to it. There was a card too and it was addressed to you.

“I bet you had a nice time last night. I had to leave early for a meeting, but I left you some things for your hangover. Call me if you need anything and leave whenever you want to.

– Charles”

You were beyond shocked. You were at a loss for words. Had you really slept with Charles? Charles Leclerc? The one person you hated on the grid? You could barely believe the two of you had a friendly interaction, let alone slept together. You quickly chugged the juice with the pill and got out of bed. You couldn't find your dress anywhere, so you decided to go find Charles’ closet. Everything was too big for you, but after some digging, you found a shirt and a pair of pants that you were able to adjust to your own size. You didn't care about your messy hair. You just had to get out of that house. When trying to remember what had happened the night before, you only added to the already existing headache. The conclusion then was; you slept with Charles after getting drunk and you would never ever tell a soul or do it again.

You debated whether to ask Max to come and get you, or call an Uber. You knew Max would pick you up and not ask questions… well if it didn’t involve Charles. You ended up paying for an Uber to not let the secret spill. Max was a trusted friend but you didn’t even want him to know. Vettel would likely just give you any advice a dad usually would, which was why you decided not to bother him either. Besides, everyone would probably be too hungover to care about anyone and anything but their bowel movements.

“Miss, where to?” Asked the driver. You told him the address and he started driving. Unlike other Ubers you’d taken before, this guy was chatty. He told you about his dog, a golden retriever that he named Lila. He talked about everything and nothing at the same time. You had to be careful not to accidentally tune his talking out like white noise.

After a while, you were finally dropped off and you were left alone to soak in the painful false memory of sleeping with Charles.

- End of flashback-

*Still not present. First race of the 2022 season

You walked around your car, gliding your hand around it, feeling the smooth metal against your gloves. That’s when your peace was disturbed by a voice you hated all too much.

“Are you ready for 22?” You turned your head to see Charles with a smug look on his face. You hadn’t seen him or heard from him since the day you walked out of his apartment. It was simply too embarrassing for you.

“Don’t talk to me. Go bother someone else,” you huffed. Max was talking to Horner in the back of the garage. You had nobody to save you from having to talk to Charles.

“After the night we had? I don’t think so,” he said whilst walking closer and almost touching your rear wing.

“Touch my rear wing, I dare you.” The two of you shared a brief look after you said that. Charles then took the liberty of walking closer to you.

“You know what? I have a bet. If I win this race, you come home with me. I just want to talk, okay? If you win… you can ignore me and treat me like trash. Deal?” You contemplated for a while but realized it was in his favour.

“Hey, that’s not fair. I don’t want to go with you and I certainly don’t want the Bahrain curse looming over my head. What kind of deal is this?” You spat. He only seemed to be amused by that.

“Slipped my mind. Okay, then let’s do it like this; whoever places the highest— wins.” You immediately shook his hand harshly and started prepping for the race.

You ended up in P2 with Charles taking the risk of the Bahrain curse. You couldn’t wrap your head around why he would risk the championship just to sit and talk with you. It didn’t make any sense. You didn’t want to talk about that night. Why would he want to? It wasn’t like the outcome ended in a pregnancy. There was nothing to talk about.

After the race, an interviewer came up to you after having talked to Charles.

“—And hello, P2! You were amazing out there! Even avoiding pole position! How do you feel?” You felt like you’d lost everything. It was miserable. You hated losing in races, but you certainly also hated losing bets.

“I mean, I feel great! I was able to stay on top; and to me, it still feels like a 1-2 for Red Bull.” You lied straight through your teeth. It was a strike of sheer luck that you were born with such an amazing PR ability.

“Charles said that you might be upset for placing behind him, care to comment?” You looked at the interviewer with a puzzled look on your face.

“Uhhh, I’m not sure what that’s about. Maybe he doesn’t know about the Bahrain curse?” You chuckled and quickly tried to make your way away from her. She waved and you waved back with a short smile.

Upon arriving at the Red Bull motorhome, you saw Max sitting on a couch with Kelly. He looked satisfied with the win for Red Bull.

“Hey, congrats on P2. Max was telling me about it,” said Kelly. You never really liked Kelly all that much, but she was nice to Max so you didn’t bother her. Penelope, her daughter, was cute and you’d sometimes offer to babysit her for them.

“Yeah, it was a nice race.” You grabbed a juice box from the fridge and let yourself slump down in a chair.

“Why do you look so defeated? This is basically a 1-2 for us.” Max and Kelly made sure to look concerned. You didn’t want to talk about it, nor did you want to think about it. You had to meet up with Charles anyway, so you decided to give a short and vague response, before leaving,

“I guess I’m just tired. I have to go now, actually.”

You waited by Charles’ car, knowing that the paparazzi were taking pictures of you doing so. You tried your best to remain anonymous though, wearing a thick hoodie with no print along with a cap, sunglasses, and a mask. Your hair was tucked inside the hood of the hoodie. Nobody could really tell who you were, but they’d certainly speculate.

“You look like a serial killer; waiting by my car with that outfit,” said a voice coming up behind you. You saw the many fans screaming and the paparazzi wanting statements. Charles ignored them and opened the door for you. Still not wanting to actually converse with him, you decided to sit in the backseat instead. The Ferrari driver rolled his eyes, sighed, shut the shotgun seat door and got in himself. You were not going to sit next to him. You knew that only bad things would come of it.

“So, I’m your taxi driver now? Why didn’t you just get in when I opened the door for you?” He sounded a bit pissy and it was in all honesty pretty entertaining to sit and ignore.

“Hmm. Okay. So you’re only talking when it’s absolutely necessary?” You ignored him yet again. It was a mystery how the drunk version of you got to talking with him— even going as far as sleeping with him. Ever since that night, you’d had dreams about it. You believed they were fragments of memories coming back to you. It was haunting to relive. All those dreams about him; about Charles, they were just like any adult movie you’d seen before. It was embarrassingly detailed.

Luckily, the awkward car ride was short. The two of you arrived at his hotel and quickly got inside. The fact that the two of you were going to be alone in his suite was daunting to you.

“Make yourself at home, I’ll get you something to drink.” You took off your sunglasses, cap, and mask, and sat by the table in the room. Charles served your drinks before sitting across from you. It was like a fever dream; being in a hotel suite with your one true rival.

“I know you might not want to talk about what happened four months ago… but I think we should,” Charles began. You dreaded the atmosphere. It felt heavy. Too heavy.

“Look, I have dreams about what happened and I just— I don’t really know what to say,” you shot in before he could say anything else.

“You remember? I didn’t think you would. You were so drunk, you know?”

“I remember alright. I’ve dreamt about that night so many times now, I think I’m going to go crazy soon.” You buried your face in your hands whilst sighing.

“Yeah… I think I would be embarrassed too…” you looked up in confusion.

“Embarrassed…? I know we’re not exactly mates, but embarrassing?” At the very least, he could’ve tried to be more sympathetic. You’d been extremely drunk that night.

“Yeah, you were so loud. I got complaints from my neighbours.” Mortifying. Absolutely mortifying. He wasn’t talking about your body. He was talking about your moaning. You weren’t sure how you’d recover from that one.

“Shit… but you were technically also a part of it. You’re making it sound like it’s all me.” You scowled at him.

“How was I a part of that?”

“Well, for starters, you’re the one who fucked me. I told you. I keep dreaming that… so much of it… I want to throw up.” It was probably a bad idea to have admitted that, but you didn’t want to lose the dispute.

“Fucked? You think we fucked?” He sounded genuinely surprised. His face also matched the tone of his voice, with his eyes wide open.

“Yeah, against the headboard… as I remember it, we went at it hard. On top of that, I was drunk… so can you blame me for being loud?” His shocked face suddenly melted into a smirk and his signature smug face after rubbing a victory in yours.

“So you’re telling me… you’ve dreamt about me taking you against the headboard in my apartment? Going at it hard?” Was he toying with you? You couldn’t tell.

“You know… that’s not what happened. You were so drunk I had to take you to my apartment. You were yelling and crying the entire time for some reason. I had to change you out of your dress because you threw up on it and you also threw up on the floor. You passed out minutes after you did so…” when you came to that realization, you were beyond embarrassed. The most embarrassing thing was the dreams that you admitted to having. Dreams that weren’t actual memories, but just your imagination. Did you want to fuck him? Was that it? You couldn’t bring yourself to think about it,

“If I’m correct… you were having wet dreams about… me?” You didn’t answer him. You simply got up from your seat and made your way to the front door. You had to leave. However, before you could open it, Charles pinned you to it, trapping you between his arms.

“What are you doing, Leclerc?” You looked at him with doe eyes. His breathing was ragged and you could tell he had some bad intentions.

“I have a new deal to make. For the rest of the calendar, let’s have it this way: whoever places highest wins.” He took a moment to breathe and stare into your eyes somewhat intensely.

“What about the winner?” You asked. The air felt hot and heavy. A knee was pushed between your legs.

“The winner…” he hesitated,

“The winner decides whether to fuck or not.” You gulped at his words and saw the look in his eyes.

“Deal.” The rest was history.

*Present time

It was the last race of the season and you were more than happy to finally take a well-deserved break. You had placed podium plenty of times and won against Leclerc more times than you could remember. The arrangement the two of you had set up was flawed, however. You both knew it was a bad excuse to hook up with each other, as neither of you ever chose to not fuck.

“Fuck, we need to bring this one home. If you win this, you’re the champion! First ever female champion and it’s for our team! Go out there and drive like your life depends on it, yeah?” Horner’s pep talks always got you into your racing mindset. He was the only person besides Max who was really able to lift your spirits like that.

“I’ll be there to fend off anyone threatening your pole,” said Max, who was getting ready to step in. You smiled and went in for a tight hug,

“Thanks, Max. Let’s bring it home for Red Bull!” The two of you got into your positions with your cars. The lineup was in your favour, as you’d placed pole in the qualifying session. Max was in P4, but you knew he’d have no problem working his way right behind you.

As soon as the race started, you sped off. It was smooth, and you worked most apexes just right. The radio sounded and told you that Max was right behind you, which put your mind at ease. You had nothing to be worried about as long as Max was on defense.

“So uh, Max just took out Sainz along with himself. It’s all up to you now. Leclerc is a little under half a second behind you. Your heart sank. Not just because of Max’s sacrifice, but also because Leclerc was behind you. He had the power to snatch the championship from you and graciously hand it over to another driver. You couldn’t have that happen. You simply couldn’t. You didn’t want to let Horner down, and you couldn’t bear to live with letting Max down after his takedown.

“Fuck, okay. I’ll fend him off as much as possible. We’re in the homestretch anyway, right?”

“Yes, just 5 more laps to go.” You gave it your all. You saw red. Everything was just about winning and keeping the Ferrari car behind you.

In the end, you won, but you actually couldn’t understand how. Even though you gave it your all, you did have tiny lapses of moments where Leclerc could’ve snuck in and gone for the win… but for some reason, he didn’t.

You were met with tight hugs and huge roars from fans. Max immediately lifted you up into the air and brought Christian over to do a group hug. Your interview was breezy and you felt like you’d won at life. All throughout listening to your national anthem and spraying champagne on your fellow drivers, you couldn’t help but think about Charles and why in the world he let you win.

You met up with Charles after everything. You decided to go straight to the Ferrari motorhome. There he was. In all his glory. He was scrolling through his phone, presumably checking his emails and his socials.

“Hey, uh, Charles… could we talk for a minute?” You asked. The look he gave you when he noticed was unreadable. You couldn’t tell what he was thinking or feeling. He followed you outside and to a more secluded area where you were sure nobody would be able to hear you.

“You let me win,” you began.

“I didn’t. All I did was—“

“Shut up, okay? I know you did. I just… I want to know why,” you sighed and put a hand on your hip.

“I think you deserved the win. That’s all,” he smiled and crossed his arms.

“You’re so full of shit, Ferrari boy,” you spat and looked away. There wasn’t much around you, but a brick wall and a fence. Nobody would be able to spot you with Charles. The last thing you wanted was for the media to think the two of you were fraternizing.

“—But you keep coming back,” he replied. You slowly turned your head, only to be shoved into the wall behind you. The brunette had both of your arms locked by his hands. There was no escape for you. You had to confront whatever the two of you had been running around doing for the past season.

“Tell me, why is it such a bad thing for us to just fuck and actually feel things for each other?” He whispered. You wanted to deny it. You wanted to deny everything. He was foul, he was rude, he was reckless, but he was yours… he’d always been yours. Ever since he broke up with Giatti, the two of you had an eerie air around each other. One that couldn’t be explained with your past. One that made your heart beat faster.

“You remember the dreams you had about Lando’s party? That was all you. You must’ve felt something for me to have dreamt something like that,” he continued. Oh gosh, the dreams. He just had to bring up the dreams. You knew, however, that he wasn’t entirely wrong. Your stomach would churn with butterflies whenever you thought back to your dreams.

“Screw just fucking. Why shouldn’t we date? Tell me why we can’t be with each other.” He looked directly into your eyes, desperately searching for an answer.

“I… I just can’t— I mean I… I hate you,” you said,

“I fucking hate you, Charles!” He started backing off, and you started cornering him against the fence behind him.

“I hate how you make me feel all of these things I’m not supposed to feel!” You calmed down, and once again, were shoved against the wall.

“Tell me all about how I make you feel. My place or yours?”

“Yours… my room is further than yours,” you said whilst avoiding eye contact.

Charles immediately took you to his hotel suite. It was right next to Hamilton’s. As soon as the door opened— you threw your arms around his neck and he told you to jump into his arms. Your legs were wrapped around his waist and the two of you made out feverishly. There was no time to bring it to the bedroom. The two of you were used to doing it in all sorts of places. The Ferrari driver placed you on a counter and you started stripping each other. He was impressed by your effort to wear matching lace underwear. Whenever you did so, you always claimed it was for yourself, but he liked to beg to differ.

“Fuck, tell me.” Charles was buried in your neck, you couldn’t make yourself answer.

“Tell me how I make you feel,” he gasped before going in again.

“Good… you make me feel so good,” you sighed. His lips latched onto every part of your neck that made you feel like royalty.

“You know what I mean, baby. Tell me how I make you feel.” his demanding voice was enough to make you pant harder.

“You make my… My heart beat faster,” you moaned.

“—And?”

“I feel fuzzy around you.” He loved hearing your declarations of love, so much that he couldn't take the slow pace anymore.

In a flash, he grabbed you by the hips and helped you to the floor on your knees.

“God, you're divine. Can you be a good girl and suck?” you stared at him as you removed his boxers, letting his dick spring free. It twitched in appreciation for your touch. You traced your fingers against a particularly prominent vein and heard his sounds of pleasure. He groaned and bucked his hips, needing your mouth. You met his wishes; starting by licking from the bottom to the tip. When you wrapped your lips around him, he tangled his fingers in your hair and started bobbing your head on his cock. You couldn't take all of him, but he pressed on, making you gag.

“You take me so well,“ Charles sighed, throwing his head back. With the help of his hand in your hair, you went faster, feeling his tip touch the back of your throat with every bop of your head. He seethed through his teeth and after a few minutes, you could tell he was getting close. He was grunting like crazy and pulling your hair as if his life depended on it. God, when he looked at you— he almost came. Tears stained your face and your mascara was running.

“Fuck, baby, I can't hold it anymore,“ he moaned and rammed into your face a final time, releasing his cum down your throat. You swallowed everything. He was breathless and so were you, but even so— he still had more stamina left. Stamina that he needed to use up.

“I want to taste you.“ He sat you on the counter again, before roughly spreading your legs. His fingertips teased you, grazing your inner thighs; getting closer and closer to your cunt.

“Hurry, I need you,“ you sighed and grabbed his hair.

“Beg.“

“What?“

“I said to beg for it.“ The Ferrari driver had a lustful gaze and his eyes were filled with a certain need. The insatiable hunger for you.

“Please?”

“Not good enough.”

“Please, Charles.”

“Tell me what you want.”

“Please… Eat me out, Leclerc.”

“Good girl,” he said before diving in. With a thumb flicking your clit, he began sucking, his tongue messaged your folds in an unreal way. He slurped as if he hadn't eaten in days and you were his salvation.

“Oh fuck, Charles!” You couldn't help but squeeze his head between your thighs. With one hand, he clenched your thigh tightly, continuing to suck you for all you were worth.

Your moans and gasps motivated him to go faster and thrust his tongue deeper into you. Your vision was blurry with pleasure. He was too good, and you couldn't take it for much longer.

“I'm going to cum,” you half-screamed and pulled him closer. He pulled away for a quick second to get a word in,

“Cum on my tongue, baby. Give it to me,” his words mixed with the pleasure of his tongue pushed you over the edge, and you found yourself releasing all over his mouth. He licked you clean afterwards and cleaned his face with a kitchen towel.

Whilst he was walking back to you, you noticed his dick being fully erect again. How that was possible, was beyond you. Apparently, he saw you staring; because he chuckled before trapping you in a delicious kiss. You tasted a bit of yourself on his tongue. It was so erotic, you couldn't fathom it.

“You taste like heaven, babydoll,” Charles whispered. You wrapped your arms around his neck.

“I'm going in. You're still on the pill, right?” He asked before doing anything. You nodded swiftly and bucked your hips desperately.

“Please, Charles.”

“Please what?“

“Please fuck me stupid, Charles” He was caught off-guard by your bold response. It flipped a switch in him that made him go rogue. You were immediately swept off the counter and bent over it instead. He pinned your hands above your head and rubbed your cunt before stroking himself a few times, and then entering slowly.

“Oh fuck, you're so tight.” You heard him groan. When he reached as far as he could with your current position, you arched your back to help him reach deeper. He rested to let you get used to him. You'd had sex more times than you could count, but somehow, you were always tight. This time wasn't any different.

After a few moments, you told him to move; which he did. He almost pulled all the way out, leaving just the tip in. From there, he slammed into you. Your eyes rolled to the back of your head and your back arched like a cat.

“Fuck!” You couldn't help but scream out. The stretch was beyond amazing. He was doing you just right. With every moan and every call of his name, he gained more confidence. The confidence fed him the energy and stamina to go even faster and harder.

You were an utter mess. Your hair stuck to your forehead due to the amount of sweat that clung to it. You were seeing stars and it felt like you were choking. You repeatedly screamed out his name like a holy mantra. It was unreal.

“Scream my name louder, sugar. Let the entire hotel know who you belong to!” You obliged. Your screams got louder and his thrusts— wilder. You felt your legs going numb, so Charles lifted one and it helped him reach even deeper than before. His hips rutted directly against yours at that point. It was heaven on earth.

“Fuck, I'm so close!” You finally yelled.

“Cum with me, okay?”

You went at it like rabbits for a few more minutes before you felt your knot begin to undo itself. Leclerc’s thrusts became more and more sloppy. It didn't take long before you came all over his dick, which pushed him to fill you to the brim. The mixture of your essence and his dripped down your thighs. You couldn't move. You couldn't feel your legs.

“Let's take a shower and go take a rest.” He lifted you from the counter and swung you over his shoulder, walking into the shower. When he turned it on, you felt the hot drops of water rain down on your skin. He helped clean you, as you couldn't stand on your own.

“I'm sorry if I was too rough,” He said whilst scrubbing your back.

“No, I'm fine. This was amazing, Ferrari boy.” He chuckled at your nickname.

After showering, the two of you headed straight to his bed. You cuddled into him, feeling the rise and fall of his chest. Your legs were entangled with his and his arm was wrapped around you, pulling you almost fully onto himself.

“Did you mean it? Do you really have feelings for me?” He asked, looking at the ceiling.

“Did you let me win?” You asked.

”... Yes, I did,” he replied sheepishly.

“Then you have your answer.” With that, you found it hard to stay awake for a second longer; passing out whilst hearing the sound of his heart beating to yours.

𝗥𝗲𝗾𝘂𝗲𝘀𝘁𝘀 𝗮𝗿𝗲 𝗼𝗽𝗲𝗻...

𝘾𝙝𝙚𝙘𝙠 𝙩𝙝𝙚 𝙧𝙪𝙡𝙚𝙨 𝙖𝙣𝙙 𝙧𝙚𝙜𝙪𝙡𝙖𝙩𝙞𝙤𝙣𝙨 𝙗𝙚𝙛𝙤𝙧𝙚 𝙧𝙚𝙦𝙪𝙚𝙨𝙩𝙞𝙣𝙜 𝙥𝙡𝙚𝙖𝙨𝙚!

𝙃𝙚𝙧𝙚’𝙨 𝙩𝙝𝙚 𝙢𝙖𝙨𝙩𝙚𝙧𝙡𝙞𝙨𝙩

©vettelsdarling

𝗣𝗹𝗲𝗮𝘀𝗲 𝗱𝗼 𝗻𝗼𝘁 𝗿𝗲𝗰𝗿𝗲𝗮𝘁𝗲 𝗼𝗿 𝗮𝗱𝗮𝗽𝘁 𝗺𝘆 𝘄𝗼𝗿𝗸 𝗶𝗻 𝗮𝗻𝘆 𝘄𝗮𝘆, 𝘀𝗵𝗮𝗽𝗲, 𝗼𝗿 𝗳𝗼𝗿𝗺— 𝘄𝗶𝘁𝗵𝗼𝘂𝘁 𝗺𝘆 𝗽𝗲𝗿𝗺𝗶𝘀𝘀𝗶𝗼𝗻.

[charles-leclerc-official]

Bryan, I mean Luci *wink wink* please what are some track characteristics for Monaco that might be an issue? Or what are some things that we should look out for.

I am not Bryan Bozzi, I do not work for Ferrari ajshdlajkfhjhsgfhjagfsjdhghjdk

If I do work for Ferrari they owe me a lot of backpay. I should ask Fred. Not that I am in contact with him in any way.

To answer your question this track is weird. There are more low speed corners, and I think they will play a bigger role in negating any gains Mclaren might make on the straights. Way more than at Imola. Since there are these low speed corners I would expect the Ferrari to have the edge, as well as the Red Bull over Mclaren. The straights will likely be Mclaren, but only if they have the car setup right.

We are also bringing a track specific rear wing to Monaco to get the load correct. So that will also be interesting to see how that helps in free practice.

I think ultimately qualifying is going to be very narrow any way you look at it. There isn't a stand out car for it. It will really come down to the driver, and getting the setup right. And of course this track does not forgive mistakes.

[formula-one-thoughts]

Styrian Grand Prix Race Weekend Review

Whilst I think we can agree any racing is good racing, there is an argument to be made that qualifying for the Styrian Grand Prix was more exciting than the race itself. One of the most rain-drenched sessions I’ve ever seen, all of the drivers exhibited incredible skill. I honestly expected far more chaos and crashes than we saw, but was grateful that we were treated to some spectacular displays of driving with only one red flag punctuating the session.  The Racing Points did NOT seem to enjoy the rain, but someone who did was George Russell, who managed to pull off a spectacular P12, and then was promoted to P11 following Charles Leclerc’s grid penalty. It was Williams’ first appearance in Q2 since Brazil 2018, and it was wonderful to see George display the talent he so clearly has (despite his race not going quite so well). The Uno reverse card came out at Ferrari, with this time Vettel pushing Leclerc out of Q3, the German only able to manage P10 at the end of the day. The battle for pole was primarily between the two drivers who have gained the strongest reputations for commanding a rainy track: Hamilton and Verstappen. But while Max put in a brilliant performance, demonstrating great control as he saved his car from a nasty accident after sliding through the final corner (the kind of thing we first saw in Brazil 2016), it was Lewis’s day. He put in a completely commanding final lap that cemented him as back in the game after a disappointing last weekend, the gap between him and Verstappen a mind-blowing and unheard of 1.2 seconds! Sainz, Ocon and Gasly also impressed, qualifying P3, P5 and P7 respectively.

Due to the wet qualifying, everyone had a free choice of tyres come race day, with most drivers electing to begin on the softs. Almost instantly it was all over for Ferrari, an ill-judged move from Leclerc taking their weekend from bad to worse. It goes back to the saying that you can’t win a race on the first lap, but you can easily lose one. His attempt to go down the inside of Vettel was completely unnecessary, and both drivers paid the price (Leclerc did apologise profusely and accept all the blame). With their car not even looking ‘best of the rest’ and this being their second race ending collision in four races, you get the feeling Sainz might be feeling a little less than happy about his upcoming move to the Scuderia. The incident necessitated a safety car for a couple of laps whilst the remains of Vettel’s rear wing were cleared off the track.

The majority of the race was not super eventful, with only one further retirement – Esteban Ocon. Hamilton pulled away from Verstappen and the trio of Hamilton, Verstappen and Bottas in turn pulled away from those behind them. The midfield was closely bunched together for much of the race with lots of good battles, Perez in particular making his mark with a remarkable drive where he was up to 5thfrom 17thby lap 49 (having also pitted), pulling out fastest laps all over the place. Stroll was not able to make quite the same impact, struggling to pass Ricciardo for most of the race. Sainz’s race was rather ruined by a botched pit stop that put him out at the back of the group that included Norris, Ricciardo and Stroll, but he did manage to set fastest lap (and set a new lap record), giving McLaren their first consecutive fastest laps since 2011.

It really started to heat up on lap 67, with Bottas finally catching Verstappen, who was struggling with older tyres and some front wing damage. It looked like the Finn had got him, but Verstappen pulled off an insane move to regain the position, if only for 1 lap. It really showed Max’s passion that despite knowing Valterri was in the faster car and would eventually pass him he still put up an amazing fight, providing the fans with the entertainment we wanted. In my opinion, this drive, fight, and unwillingness to give up are the qualities of a future world champion. Perez finally caught Albon, but suffered damage that seriously compromised his speed, causing him to drop back. Lando Norris has come alive at the end of both races so far, and it’s great to see. Over the final 2 laps he went from 8thto 5th, capitalising upon Stroll and Ricciardo’s battle that saw both cars go off-track, and then passing the ailing car of Perez on the penultimate corner. The Mexican was soon caught by his teammate and the Renault, and the trio crossed the line three abreast, Perez just clinging on to 6thwith only a second separating Norris in 5thand Ricciardo in 8th. It was a Mercedes 1-2, with Hamilton putting in a totally dominant performance to win the race.

One of the most powerful moments of the weekend came during the podium celebration, when Stephanie Travers, Mercedes’ Trackside Fluid Engineer, accepted their constructor’s trophy. She is one of only NINE women ever to stand on an F1 podium, and the only woman of colour. I want to talk about gender diversity in the sport more in another post, but the importance of Stephanie standing up there alongside the drivers cannot be understated. Representation is so important, and the fact that women and young people of colour could see someone who looked like them on that podium says there is a place for them in the sport. I would read Lewis’s Instagram post if you want to find out more about Stephanie, and I think he was certainly instrumental in selecting her to join him for the champagne. Other teams should take note; although this is only a start, it was a display of genuine (rather than just performative) allyship.

Ferrari need to get their act together for Hungary this weekend; if they don’t show any improvement then I can’t see them having much of a chance of success for the rest of the year. Apart from Sainz’s pit stop it was a great weekend for McLaren, who stand 3rdin the constructors championship, with Norris maintaining 3rdin the drivers (with over half the points he managed to get all of last year). Toto Wolff has said he expects Red Bull to be a threat at the Hungaroring, but he has been known to make these kind of comments only for the Mercedes to appear stronger than ever, so we shall have to wait and see. Verstappen was narrowly beaten by Hamilton for the win last year, but managed to secure his first pole position, and has performed steadily there over the years. However, this is arguably the track where Hamilton has seen the most success – he has won 7 out of his 13 races there, and could be set to equal Michael Schumacher’s record of most race wins at the same circuit. Whatever happens, I can’t wait for more racing.

[f1]

Hamilton and Russell encouraged by cars pace despite horrible COTA bumps | 2022 United States Grand Prix

Lewis Hamilton and George Russell were encouraged by the performance of their Mercedes after the team brought its latest upgrade package for this weekend’s race. Although it remains to be seen whether Mercedes will continue to run all of the new parts they brought to the Circuit of the Americas after practice, Russell is confident they will be within range of pace-setters Ferrari and Red Bull in qualifying. “I think we’ll be okay,” he said after second practice today. “We should hopefully be in Q3 and fighting for those top six positions. “I’d like to think that we’ll be ahead of the midfield cars this weekend. But I’ve learnt in this sport to take nothing for granted. So we’re going to work as hard as we can overnight, try and make sure we’ve got a fast car. Pole is always a stretch for us but the race is on Sunday so I think we’ve got a half chance.” Hamilton thanked the team for bringing its final upgrade of the year to the race, including changes to the front and rear wings as well as the floor. Only two other teams have brought new parts for their cars at this late stage in the season. “Everything went to plan,” Hamilton said after Friday’s practice sessions. “I’m super-grateful to everyone back to the factory for working so hard and bringing us an upgrade this weekend. “It’s been a tough year for everyone at the factory and for them to continuously be pushing and keeping their heads down and really putting out these new pieces, I’m super-grateful.” Advert | Become a RaceFans supporter and go ad-free The latest upgrades for the W13 have paid off, said Hamilton, although the team’s opportunity to test it was limited by the mandatory tyre testing being conducted in Friday’s second session. “I kept the car in one piece today, which is good, and definitely felt improvements in the car,” he said. “Obviously this was a bit of a waste of a session in terms of performance but P1 was feeling quite good. “I’m hoping we make some changes tonight and we’ll find out tomorrow exactly where we stand. But it doesn’t feel like we’re too far away from everyone.” However he admitted the bumpy Circuit of the Americas exacerbated the worst quality of the W13 – its punishing ride. He described the track’s bumps as “horrible”. “I came here after Montreal and I drove last year’s car and it was so good,” he said. “I remember getting out and just beaming from ear to ear because it was so smooth and had good downforce, good power – this year obviously we lost a bit of power with the [switch to E10] biofuels. “The car is so stiff now. Coming and driving the car, luckily I don’t actually have many fillings because if I did they would have all come out this year, for sure. It’s just so, so bumpy. I’m really praying for a non-bumpy car next year.” Advert | Become a RaceFans supporter and go ad-free 2022 United States Grand Prix Browse all 2022 United States Grand Prix articles via RaceFans - Independent Motorsport Coverage https://www.racefans.net/

[privateplates4u]

Porsche 911 Turbo S: 3rd Place – 2017 Motor Trend Best Driver’s Car

Long the performance flagship of the Porsche 911 line, the Turbo S adds a healthy dose of crazy. Rather than mess with success, this 991.2 iteration tackles the only criticism of the previous Turbo S: It wasn’t wild enough. Some will feel even this version is too sterile; they’re nuts. Porsche fitted two new variable-geometry turbos to the 3.8-liter flat-six engine, which now conjures 580 hp and 516 lb-ft of torque—or 553 lb-ft in temporary overboost. An anti-lag system keeps the throttle open but cuts the fuel during shifts to keep air flowing. Porsche’s PDK dual-clutch automatic transaxle remains, as do the all-wheel-drive system, electronically adjustable shock absorbers, carbon-ceramic brakes, front splitter, and rear wing. A new Sport Response button gives you 20 seconds of on-demand sharper throttle response, and a new rear-wheel steering system sharpens the handling. It’s Best Driver’s Car week! Don’t miss the incredible story of how we chose the 2017 Best Driver’s Car right here, and stay tuned for the World’s Greatest Drag Race, coming soon. The result is the hardest-launching car we’ve ever tested, at 1.26 g of horizontal force. Tesla? Nope. Demon? Nuh-uh. From a stop, this 911 will dust a Bugatti Veyron to 60 mph—just 2.5 seconds. The quarter mile flashes past in a stunning 10.6 seconds, at which point you’ll be traveling at 129.6 mph and pulling hard. It pulls hard in corners, too, registering 1.05 average g on the skidpad and 0.95 average g during a brief 22.9-second figure-eight lap. Stopping the 3,557-pound missile from 60 mph takes only 92 feet. We Say “My litmus test for whether a car has a shot at taking the BDC crown is what I’m doing with my head and shoulders when driving. If I’m cocking my head and leaning into the turns along with the vehicle, I am in sync with my steed. We are one; the man-machine interface is engaged, the singularity has occurred. It happened with the winning McLaren 570S last year. “I’m doing that head tilting, lean in thing whilst carving the canyons in the Turbo S. It is nearly the complete package. So fast and completely unflappable. It’s really hard to find a flaw here. Just so fast. Smooth. Lovely to hear the wastegates dump as you lift throttle and the beats of silence between gearshifts. But yes, a more thrilling sound from the back would be appreciated. Unbelievably fast. It is really a focused tool intended for one purpose: going very fast.” – Ed Loh Read about other 2017 Best Driver’s Car contenders: Ferrari 488 GTB Chevrolet Camaro ZL1 1LE Porsche 718 Cayman S Lexus LC 500 Mercedes-AMG GT R Alfa Romeo Giulia Quadrifoglio Chevrolet Corvette Grand Sport Aston Martin DB11 Nissan GT-R NISMO Mazda MX-5 Miata RF McLaren 570GT “Goose bumps—it’s so easy to handle. Steering is stiff, but it gives you exactly the kind of feedback that you want to feel on a road like this. The sound coming from the engine is superb. Suspension is rigid but comfortable. I felt the confidence to go faster on the corners and push for more. The 911 stands out not only for its handsome looks, but also for that great feeling of confidence that it delivers when you drive on windy roads.” – Miguel Cortina “So, so, so capable on 198. But the trade-off of having such a highly capable car is that it’s quite a bore to drive in normal situations, which is likely how the 911 Turbo will be driven 91.1 percent of the time. It’s really boring on the road. But again, great car to drive hard.” – Erick Ayapana “To me, this is the perfect driver’s car, in that you can do it all: drive for hours and hours on an interstate, then suddenly twist a dial to sport plus, put the hammer down, and the 911 leaps to life, assured, forceful, and pragmatically intense. It is so composed, so nailed down, so very fast, and so full of grip. There is never a hint that something might go awry. It squirts out of the apex and fills you with so much confidence. If you carry too much speed into a corner, lay into the brakes through that entry portion of the curve, and the 911 just tucks in and says, ‘Yeah sure, we got this.’” – Mark Rechtin “My god it’s so capable and so easy. The engine almost feels lazy while piling on the speed. It’s really deceptive how powerful it truly is even at low rpm. It’s amazing how much confidence this car gives a driver. Not just the brakes, but the steering and the stability. The car shrinks around you and becomes an extension of you. I’m looking for a complaint, and I can’t find one.” – Chris Walton “There’s a reason this car is at the top of the rankings in any competition. The 911 Turbo S is so amazingly competent on every level—without having any visible compromises—that it’s easy to forget how high its limits are. Right out of the box, the 911 Turbo S lets you drive as fast as you dare, brake as hard as you can, and turn as much as you wish. It doesn’t just inspire confidence … it inspires a relationship with the driver.” – Derek Powell Randy Says “Yeah, the 911 Turbo S was super great, but it almost seemed a little bit unsatisfying. Somehow? This 991.2 has so much more torque than the last GT3s, any GT3 I ever drove. And it’s just so satisfying to drive. The balance under power is amazing to me. Knowing how little weight is on those tires especially when you’re under about 0.9 g acceleration in second gear, and it doesn’t push under power. This car seems more rewarding to drive to me, and it really … it blows away some great cars. I guess ‘cause it’s easy? But it’s rewardingly easy. It’s not boring; it’s satisfying. It just makes me feel like I could drive better than I really can. I literally said that to myself, driving off of turn 11. “In the slower corners, when the revs are down, there’s no sense of lag whatsoever. I love the way it’ll dig off the corner without understeer. I could go to the power really early, and I’d just know that a lot of cars would want to understeer under this condition. And it doesn’t, it just comes on. Just fascinatingly, thrillingly good. “You have to be just a wee bit careful about entry oversteer. Don’t leave that weight on the nose for too long on a high speed corner. It takes a real specific combination of great on-the-nose, aggressive turn-in, and off throttle to bring the tail out. A couple of times when it came out it still was not scary. It was a pleasant experience. Back to the power, and there you go. I’m just really, really impressed. “With PDKs you’re just wasting your time shifting manually. It might be fun just to do it for the fun of it, but it’s completely unnecessary to shift yourself. The brakes held up completely; even the tires held up. I mean, the loads, what they’re going through is mind-bending. The amount of speed, the amount of braking, and how hard those tires are worked—they still hold up. The car retains its balance. I just seem to be able to repeat my braking performance. I was in so deep a couple times halfway through the brakes I thought maybe I wouldn’t make this. But then it would slow down enough and ride into the apex, and away we’d go. It’s a nice, firm pedal, and that means the braking performance is repeatable. It also made me push it harder. “I don’t feel the rear-steer except that, maybe, it’s my guess that it’s one of the ways they keep the front traction in the middle of the corner when it really shouldn’t have any, but the car responds to the steering wheel in the middle of the corner. Low-speed, high-speed, anything you want. I think I set my speed record over the corkscrew. “It’s a real testament to what’s possible with modern technology when you are creating a sports car and you know what you’re doing. It’s an amazing piece of machinery. A living testament to how good a car can be with the stability control off.” 2017 Porsche 911 Turbo S POWERTRAIN/CHASSIS DRIVETRAIN LAYOUT Rear-engine, AWD ENGINE TYPE Twin-turbo flat-6, alum block/heads VALVETRAIN DOHC, 4 valves/cyl DISPLACEMENT 231.9 cu in/3,800 cc COMPRESSION RATIO 9.8:1 POWER (SAE NET) 580 hp @ 6,750 rpm TORQUE (SAE NET) 516 lb-ft @ 2,100 rpm* REDLINE 7,200 rpm WEIGHT TO POWER 6.1 lb/hp TRANSMISSION 7-speed twin-clutch auto. AXLE/FINAL-DRIVE RATIO 3.44:1(f) 3.33:1(r)/2.06:1 SUSPENSION, FRONT; REAR Struts, coil springs, adj shocks, anti-roll bar; multilink, coil springs, adj shocks, anti-roll bar STEERING RATIO 12.5-15.0:1 TURNS LOCK-TO-LOCK 2.5 BRAKES, F; R 16.1-in vented, drilled, carbon-ceramic disc; 15.4-in vented, drilled, carbon-ceramic disc, ABS WHEELS 9.0 x 20-in; 11.5 x 20-in forged aluminum TIRES 245/35ZR20 91Y; 305/30ZR20 103Y Pirelli P Zero Corsa N0 DIMENSIONS WHEELBASE 96.5 in TRACK, F/R 60.7/62.6 in LENGTH x WIDTH x HEIGHT 177.4 x 74.0 x 51.0 in TURNING CIRCLE 60.7/62.6 in CURB WEIGHT 3,557 lb WEIGHT DIST, F/R 39/61% SEATING CAPACITY 2+2 HEADROOM, F/R 37.7/32.2 in LEGROOM, F/R 42.2/27.1 in SHOULDER ROOM, F/R 51.3/47.9 in CARGO VOLUME 4.1 cu ft (+9.2 cu ft beh fr seats) TEST DATA ACCELERATION TO MPH 0-30 0.9 sec 0-40 1.4 0-50 1.9 0-60 2.5 0-70 3.3 0-80 4.1 0-90 5.1 0-100 6.2 0-100-0 9.7 PASSING, 45-65 MPH 1.3 QUARTER MILE 10.6 sec @ 129.6 mph BRAKING, 60-0 MPH 92 ft LATERAL ACCELERATION 1.05 g (avg) MT FIGURE EIGHT 22.9 sec @ 0.95 g (avg) 2.2-MI ROAD COURSE LAP 1:33.21 sec TOP-GEAR REVS @ 60 MPH 1,500 rpm CONSUMER INFO BASE PRICE $189,150 PRICE AS TESTED $196,360 STABILITY/TRACTION CONTROL Yes/Yes AIRBAGS 8: Dual front, fr side, fr curtain, fr knee BASIC WARRANTY 4 yrs/50,000 miles POWERTRAIN WARRANTY 4 yrs/50,000 miles ROADSIDE ASSISTANCE 4 yrs/50,000 miles FUEL CAPACITY 17.9 gal EPA CITY/HWY/COMB ECON 19/24/21 mpg ENERGY CONS, CITY/HWY 177/140 kW-hrs/100 miles CO2 EMISSIONS, COMB 0.93 lb/mile RECOMMENDED FUEL Unleaded premium The post Porsche 911 Turbo S: 3rd Place – 2017 Motor Trend Best Driver’s Car appeared first on Motor Trend.

http://www.motortrend.com/news/porsche-911-turbo-s-3rd-place-2017-best-drivers-car/

[crystalracing]

Formula 1 has changed almost beyond recognition since March pitched up to the 1970 South African Grand Prix with five Robin Herd-penned 701s. Each cost £6000 - later upped to £9k after a friendly word of advice from Ford's Walter Hayes - and the car claimed pole and a podium on its debut, a mere matter of months after the company had been set up with just £10,000 put in by its four founding members.

Despite frequent attempts to cut costs by implementing test bans, along with ever-tighter restrictions on CFD and windtunnel usage, there remains a gulf between the haves and have-nots in F1. This inequality appears desperately unlikely to change anytime soon, despite Liberty Media's best intentions.

The oft-mooted cost cap is no nearer to fruition than it was a decade ago, when the possibility of a £40million limit being imposed on teams prompted political chaos, including the possibility of a breakaway championship. While Mercedes spent over £300m - not including its engine division at Brixworth - to win the 2017 world title, fourth-placed Force India required a mid-season buy-out in '18 to survive the campaign.

In the face of this, the way F1 teams approach their car design is changing. Contrary to the old model of designing everything in-house - ancillary components such as brake pedals included - Haas pioneered a new agreement with Ferrari in 2016, which has subsequently been copied by Red Bull junior team Toro Rosso, to purchase as many non-listed parts as are permitted by the regulations.

Haas then sub-contracts to Dallara the manufacturing of the monocoque, roll structures and major bodywork - which includes the wings, floor and diffuser - to further reduce overheads.

But amid this shift, the engineering challenge of producing the best car possible within financial restraints remains fundamentally the same. As Toyota discovered, success in F1 can't simply be bought. No amount of financial muscle is likely to turn McLaren's recent fortunes around overnight.

At heart, it remains an ideas game in which the team's budget simply dictates the extent to which these ideas are turned into reality - as former Prost technical director Henri Durand explains.

"The bottom line is the budget determines the number of people you have and the equipment you have," he says.

"You have a certain amount of time between starting the development of the car and freezing the design for production, and the budget determines how much you can cram into that time because of the number of people.

"At that time [when he joined Prost], people were starting to do two shifts in the tunnel. Essentially the difference between a small budget and a big budget was the number of shifts in the tunnel, the number of designers in the aero group and in the composite group who produced the design in the minimum amount of time. It's determined by the [number of] people, multiplied by the skills of the people."

Durand arrived at Prost from McLaren in January 2001, too late to impact the design of Jean-Paul Gousset's AP04, which had a Ferrari engine, transmission and rear suspension (optimised for Bridgestone tyres, not the Michelins Prost was using).

Durand prioritised work on the rear end and underfloor, introducing a "fairly drastic" development package for round seven in Monaco. This brought Prost's best results of the year, with Jean Alesi taking sixth and then a fifth in the next race in Canada, although it wasn't enough to save the team from bankruptcy.

"That was something that we started right away, although it took us a few races to put it on the track," says Durand, who now works in NASCAR with Toyota Racing Development.

"With a bigger budget, it would have taken us less time to put it on the car. We looked at it from a perspective where you have a certain number of tools in your toolbox and your opponent has more tools. If everyone had the same, it would be a lot of fun."

Strong management

Although the quality of research facilities such as the windtunnel is inevitably a contributing factor to the prospects of an F1 car, it's how these tools are managed that can make the bigger difference.

Racing Point team principal Otmar Szafnauer has said as much himself, identifying the technical group led by Andy Green - and not an infrastructure he deemed "substandard compared with our competitors" - as the team's formerly known as Force India's core strength.

In 2018, the team finished seventh in the constructors' standings despite cashflow problems that meant it started the year with carry-over parts, was unable to build upgrades and, as a consequence of the mid-season buy-out, lost all the points it had accrued prior to Spa.

For George Ryton, who left Ferrari to head up the Basingstoke HQ of the tiny EuroBrun team in 1989, working on a shoestring budget could be a "thankless task" that required a "taskmaster" to get things done. Although Roberto Moreno miraculously qualified for two early season races with Ryton's ER189B in '90, he was unable to get it into the points and the team was closed at season's end.

Ryton would go on to hold key roles at Tyrrell, Forti, Prost and Minardi, where the importance of effective management became clearer still.

"At Ferrari, you could delegate lots of things so you could move onto more conceptual elements," he says.

"The quality of what you could do and the time you could do it in was accelerated. With other teams, you had to do almost all of it yourself - from layout to drawings to organising the manufacturing.

"You've really got to be strong and control what you're trying to achieve. Part of getting things done quickly and cheaply is to have people do what they're supposed to do and not waste their time."

But a design team can't do anything without first knowing what budget it has to work with. That means being involved in discussions at an early stage, agreeing a figure and sticking to it.

Sergio Rinland, who counts spells at Williams, RAM, Brabham, Scuderia Italia, Fondmetal, Benetton, Sauber and Arrows on his lengthy CV, says the most crucial elements when working with limited funds are transparency and planning.

"You decide your budget, know how much money you have and what technology you can use - those are your limitations," he says.

"You don't start building the car and see how much money you spend. You've got to know beforehand how much it'll all cost."

Low-hanging fruit

As Rinland explains, this requires a healthy dose of pragmatism to decide how to get the best return on money spent.

When he landed the job of chief designer at the new BMS Scuderia Italia team for 1988, the Argentinian plumped for a long wheelbase design on the team's single F188 to accommodate the long radiators of the customer Ford V8. Although Alex Caffi failed to score points, Rinland (below, left) maintains that it hit the key criteria given the funds available.

"When you're working for a small team, you have to say 'Where do we want to perform?'" he says.

"You can't perform everywhere with a small team, you have to say, 'I want to perform well at Monza or Monaco, or Spa', and if you can perform well at Spa, you can do well at Silverstone or Barcelona as well.

"You have to make those decisions because you don't have three or four variations of bodywork, you have maybe two front and rear wings, so you have to decide where to put those efforts.

"You need to look at the car holistically. You have an engine, you have a cooling requirement from the engine as well as a power requirement and a torque requirement from the gearbox, so everything in the design has to be homogeneous with what you have - the resources and the power you have."

But it's not every designer who is willing to make the necessary compromises to fall within the budget. Former Zakspeed, Larrousse and Team Lotus pensmith Chris Murphy fondly recalls working with Gustav Brunner at cash-strapped Leyton House in 1991 - "talk about confidence" - but found working with the gifted Austrian wasn't always plain sailing.

"He could lift [small teams] with a great design, the question was always, 'Could they afford to build it?'" says Murphy.

"That's the difference that a designer who is prepared to compromise and adapt to the circumstances can make. It wouldn't be any good putting somebody in from Williams or McLaren because they would probably design a car that the team wasn't capable of building."

Murphy joined Leyton House after a spell at Lola as chief designer and project leader for Larrousse. There he called upon his experience working as one of seven employees at the Formula 2 constructor Maurer - "I was race mechanic, composite laminator, I ran the stores, I was car assembler, draughtsman and workshop coordinator, all simultaneously" - to utilise pre-existing parts and free up design capacity to focus on the aero surfaces.

Parts-bin special it may have been, but Murphy sees no problem in that - especially when Aguri Suzuki became the first Japanese driver ever to score a podium at Suzuka in 1990.

"There was no point in machining a new part that does the same job as something that already exists," he says.

"I'd always be able to come up with solutions that fitted the circumstances, and that's not just design criteria, that's budget, resource - how many people we've got to design this and build it - and timeframe, which is invariably shorter with a little team because you're doing everything at the last minute."

He had discovered the limits and perils of lotfy aspiration the hard way at the "super-ambitious" Zakspeed outfit, which bit off more than it could chew when it joined Ferrari and Renault in attempting to build its own chassis and engine in 1985.

The Norbert Kreyer-designed four-cylinder turbo was heavy, unreliable and a drain on the budget, although Martin Brundle managed a fifth at Imola in 1987.

"I couldn't say that we got that right at the time," admits Murphy.

"We were up against it because it was a massive project for the number of people we had, but we did alright. Not surprisingly we were nearer the back than the front."

Maximising key assets

Having a bigger budget and more skilled staff to utilise doesn't make teams immune to problems, as Rinland discovered at Benetton when attempts to introduce a front-mounted differential in 1999 proved disastrous. But it does mean that those teams have a greater capacity to recover from such missteps.

Without the same financial safety net, it could be easy for budget teams to fall into the trap of following convention. But Ryton (below) argues that this should be avoided, even if the risks involved are higher.

Pursuing an edge doesn't have to be contradictory to pragmatism, especially when there is an in-house asset available.

"Without spending a lot of money and with the right ideas, you can make huge gains by looking at things laterally," Ryton says.

"Don't copy what people have done before, look at the basic problem and see if there is a more state-of-the-art solution."

That's not to say that this path will always be rewarded, with the failure of Team Lotus's active suspension programme a case in point. After finishing fifth in the constructors' standings in 1992, the squad looked to utilise the expertise of Peter Wright and his group at Lotus Engineering to introduce fully predictive active suspension for '93.

But it only worked intermittently and the FIA banned the technology at the end of the season, leaving Lotus in a financial hole from which it never escaped.

Yet this was an entirely understandable course of development. The team's customer Ford V8 engine was lacking grunt relative to the works unit powering the Benetton, it was still reliant on a quarter-scale windtunnel for its aerodynamics and, as Murphy points out, Lotus didn't have the benefit of hindsight.

"We didn't know that at the time and it's easy to look clever in retrospect. We thought it was going to be a fairly big launchpad for us," he says.

"We would be able to run and run with it - we didn't know it was going to get banned. That was a major setback for us because we had put a lot of resource into it, and that set us back on other aspects of the car, on normal mechanical design."

Rinland's Sauber C20 showed how it could be done. Although he had left the Hinwil team to join Arrows by the time it saw daylight in 2001, his twin-keel suspension dramatically improved airflow under the car, while the introduction of full carbon suspension and titanium uprights contributed to the C20 being 60kg lighter than its predecessor.

This in turn allowed the team to direct ballast forwards to optimise the front tyres and elevated Sauber to the giddy height of fourth in the constructors' table. Its haul of 21 points, including a podium for Nick Heidfeld in Brazil, equalled the sum of its previous three seasons combined.

"The regulations today are a lot more restrictive to those kinds of ideas," he says.

"The rules tell you where you can and can't put components, so it's more difficult, but you still have people like Force India who are punching above their weight. They created a car that has good ideas in it."

"When you're copying everybody else, you will never be able to beat them," says Ryton.

"You have to be able to lead to win. And you don't have to have a lot of money to lead, you can come up with things that make cars faster that don't cost a lot of money if you go back to the raw principles of stiffness and lightness."

Lotus founder Colin Chapman is revered for championing those principles, but he didn't get everything right. In his book, Inspired to Design, Nigel Bennett reveals that Chapman once summarily fired 10 Lotus employees when he discovered that Tyrrell only had 35 staff. All this served to accomplish was to leave the fabrication department overworked and understaffed.

Designing F1 cars on a budget demands the careful shepherding of human resources as well as innovative ideas.

[cdrforea]

Falcon Northwest Talon Review: Built Like a Tank, Drives Like a Ferrari

New Post has been published on https://bestedevices.com/falcon-northwest-talon-review-built-like-a-tank-drives-like-a-ferrari.html

Falcon Northwest Talon Review: Built Like a Tank, Drives Like a Ferrari

20th anniversary of Falcon Northwest Talon

"The unstoppable performance of Falcon Northwest's Talon 20th Anniversary Edition makes this gaming PC worth every penny."

Unsurpassed build quality

Best in class

Breathtaking, tasteful LED lighting

Dual GPU option

Generous guarantee

Improved configurations are expensive

No flash 3

20th anniversary. Yes, you read that correctly.

Long before there were mainstream brands like Alienware, Omen, Legion and Razer, there was Falcon Northwest. The boutique company, founded in the early 1990s, was not only recognized as the first manufacturer of gaming PCs, but also has a cult following for its impressive attention to detail.

Falcon has spent most of the past two years refining the case of the medium-sized desktop and modernizing its design to achieve this. The 20th anniversary edition of the Talon. From the insanely powerful chip selection to the design of the fans and ventilation slots, Falcon's curation of meaningful technologies for the Talon made to order proves that the company still meets the requirements of the players today.

The best Anti-Mac Pro on this side of Windows

Given its history of gaming heritage, you may expect Talon competitors to be products from other boutique brands like Corsair's Origin PC or Digital Storm. However, this desktop has an even better rival in mind: Apple's Mac Pro. The Talon's unstoppable performance makes it a great workstation for professionals working on large files and large amounts of data. The build quality of this desktop makes comparisons with Apple only natural.

In contrast to the molded plastic constructions from Alienware, the Talon is milled from solid aluminum blocks, which gives it a long service life that has not come across our desks in the PC area. The use of plastics is kept to a minimum. In contrast to other metal-coated gaming desktops, which are based on thinner metal sheets, the 4 mm thick aluminum plates help to protect the expensive silicon components inside.

You really have to feel the metal doors to appreciate the armor-like build quality of the Talon. The generous use of metal adds to the Talon's 40 pound weight and makes it more than twice the weight of the similar size Origin PC Neuron. Apple's aluminum-machined Mac Pro weighs a comparable 39.2 pounds.

For the redesign for the 20th anniversary, you can either choose a more restrained aesthetic with solid metal doors for a workplace-like aesthetic or opt for transparent side walls made of tempered glass, which present the new tasteful LED lighting system from Falcon. Although LED trimmings make the Talon look more like a modern gaming system, Falcon's implementation of this feature is rather subtle.

With a dual GPU setup behind the suicide style doors, the Talon has Ferrari power behind its lobster-like aesthetic.

Even with the glass panel options, the Talon's design wouldn't feel out of place in an upscale office. Make no mistake, with a dual GPU setup behind the suicide style doors, the Talon has Ferrari power behind its lobster-like aesthetic.

The thick metal panels are wrapped in a matte, pearl-blasted finish and give our test device the illusion of a larger presence on our desk than you would expect from the dimensions 8.75 x 15.5 x 17.25 inches. Even if you don't find a cheese grater here, an angled facade with chunky side ventilation cutouts gives the Talon its Art Deco-like stature, similar to that of the Empire State Building.

Although there are no expensive steering wheels to roll the Talon around – like the Mac Pro – the thick metal stand on the bottom not only adds to the Talon's aesthetic appeal, but also helps with airflow. A multitude of ventilation slots, filters and fans inside keep the system cool, and according to Falcon's credit for having selected the ideal cooling components, the system ran largely quietly.

Surprisingly, the fan noise was loudest when the system was turned on for the first time. The talon calmed down immediately afterwards to a low hum and worked at this level even under heavy workload.

The Falcon is characterized by attention to detail.

Rear wing doors, which remain closed with exactly the right magnetic force, make the inner parts more accessible than the competing Origin PC, which has a similar design, but is hampered by a too strong magnetic lock. It is this thoughtful attention to details that distinguishes the Falcon. Omitting Thunderbolt 3 ports is a letdown, but you'll find USB-C and a selection of USB-A and other ports on the back and top of the case for easy access.

Falcon Northwest's attention to detail goes far beyond the thick glass and aluminum side walls. Unlike other PC vendors, the Talon 20th Anniversary Edition was immaculately packaged. Doors, hinges and moving parts were taped to avoid scratches and scratches during transport.

In addition to being able to choose from the carefully selected range of Falcon internal PC components for your build, there are a variety of customization options that make the Talon feel like a tailor-made PC. Housing colors, custom logo orders and UV printing give the Talon a very personal feeling. Our test device comes with a metal badge under the right side door, on which the name and serial number of Digital Trends are engraved.

To the core

With a starting price of $ 2,432, the Talon isn't the cheapest gaming PC on the market – even in the basic configuration. The premium you pay for the Talon depends on the quality materials, rigorous testing and craftsmanship.

The price of our test device, worth $ 6,488, can raise some eyebrows.

And if you look at Falcon Northwest, chances are you won't buy the basic configuration. In fact, if you go through the configuration tool on the Falcon website, it will be tempting to load the system with the latest options, and upgrades will quickly increase system costs.

Our $ 6,488 review device may raise a few eyebrows, but Falcon's prices are competitive compared to other boutique PC manufacturers.

For this price, you get a liquid-cooled 12-core AMD Ryzen 3900X processor, two Nvidia RTX 2080 Ti graphics cards that are connected via NV Link, two Samsung TB 970 EVO Plus solid-state drives with 1 TB that are in configured in a RAID 0 array. Premium cable management system CableMod and 64 GB G.Skill DDR4 memory as well as glass and solid aluminum doors included.

Unstoppable performance

The twelve CPU cores in conjunction with the 4,352 CUDA cores on each of the Nvidia RTX graphics cards offer unstoppable performance at the gaming and workstation level. The Talon is by far one of the fastest systems we've tested, and even beats larger rivals like Digital Storm's Aventum X, especially on multithreaded workloads.

Given that the Ryzen 9 3900X processor supports 12 cores and 24 threads, it clearly outperforms the competing Intel Core i9-9900K found in competing premium gaming desktop configurations. The talon scored 48,814 points on Geekbench 4's multithreaded benchmark compared to approximately 30,000 points. On Geekbench 5, the Talon scored 13,129 points on a similar benchmark, more than 4,300 points ahead of systems configured with the Core i9-9900K.

The Ryzen processor in our Talon configuration also displaced a competing system when testing in Cinebench R20, which was equipped with the Intel Core i9-9900K processor. The larger number of cores in the AMD design means that our talon with its performance of 7,100 points was more than 2,500 points ahead of the i9-9900K. Video editors and content creators will thrive with this type of multi-core power.

The gap in single-core performance was much larger: The Ryzen scored 492 points compared to the 500 points on the Intel gaming chipset. Since the single-core performance of games flows much more into the frame rates, this processor is an overkill for most players.

Given the strong results of AMD silicon, the Talon was among the top 1 percentiles of gaming desktops in 3DMark and PCMark tests. The Talon is able to juggle video export while working on large Photoshop files and easily opening large Microsoft Office Excel files. This is a system that cannot be slowed down no matter what you throw at it.

Support for the 7nm CPU for PCIe 4.0 also helps files, games, and applications get started extremely quickly. When benchmarking with the Crystal DiskMark 6 tool, our Samsung 970 EVO drive averaged 2,151 MB per second in the read test and almost 1,900 MB in the write test. This is one of the fastest speeds we have encountered.

Thanks to the dual GPU setup, gaming performance was not a problem. The Talon consistently showed a performance of well over 155 FPS on Fortnite, even in 4K with Epic mode activated. This is the highest score we have seen by far. The performance was similarly outstanding in Civilization VI.

The Talon was also a strong performer in more demanding titles like Assassins Creed Odyssey and Battlefield V. Where other high-end gaming rigs we tested started to stutter in higher game settings with a resolution of 1440p, the Talon kept a constant performance up to 4K at medium performance with settings for both games. In Assassin's Creed Odyssey, the game ran in 1440p with no delays or ghosting in all modes, and choppy frames were only seen in high mode with 4K resolution. Few systems are as 4K capable as the Talon.

guarantee

In addition to a 30-day money back guarantee, Falcon Northwest offers a very generous three-year limited warranty that covers parts and labor. During the first of the three years, Falcon also pays overnight shipping costs if problems arise to ensure as little downtime as possible. After the first year, you will have to pay to have the device shipped to the company's repair center, but Falcon will return it to you. The three-year term is longer than that of most gaming companies and more typical of business systems.

Business users who want to use the Talon for data analysis and use on workstations may be disappointed that Falcon does not offer warranty upgrade options. Mainstream PC manufacturers such as HP, Dell and Lenovo offer optional extended warranty upgrades to extend the expected life of a system.

Our opinion

With the redesign of one of the most successful gaming desktops twenty years later, Falcon Northwest's Talon 20th Anniversary Edition has created a unique, customized gaming PC with unmatched performance and build quality. The Talon milled from solid metal is probably the best idea of ​​what a Mac Pro could be if MacOS were not running on the Apple desktop.

But beauty isn't just up close, and the Talon is equipped with the best processors and up to a dual graphics card setup in its armor-like craftsmanship. These PC components give this powerful desktop agile performance. The Talon is really a Ferrari disguised as a tank, and players who have the money to pamper themselves and keep an eye on the design will certainly not be disappointed with this desktop, even if it means part of it Work on building your own rig in favor of sacrificing Falcon's custom configurations.

Is there a better alternative?

Dell's Alienware Aurora R8 and Aurora R9 desktops can also be configured with a dual GPU design. Although Alienware's Aurora R9 starts at a modest $ 799, upgrades can also be expensive. A more comparable configuration with an Intel Core i9-9900K processor and two RTX 2080 super graphics costs up to $ 4,675. Compared to Talon, worth $ 6,488, the $ 2,000 premium for Falcon's design is due to Talon relying on more metal parts than Dell's acceptance of molded plastics.

One of our top recommendations for gaming PCs this year is the Originon Neuron, a boutique gaming desktop that offers similar configurations to the Talon with a similar design to the rear-hinged glass door. Like the Talon, the Neuron also offers high performance – as expected since Origin PC's high-end configuration is $ 13,000 – but if you're interested in the finer details, Falcon Northwest offers unmatched attention to detail in its construction. Similar to how we configured our updated Talon tester, the Neuron would cost $ 4,000 or $ 2,500 less. The lower price, however, is due to Origin's use of a more compact micro-ATX board, which could limit the upgrade potential for serious modders.

How long it will take?

With its performance, the Talon is designed so that you can enjoy playing for years. Even if the technology wears down inside, the rear gullwing doors offer enough access to do your own upgrades. And if you choose the Talon model with solid 4mm aluminum doors, the case of this rig is likely to survive.

Should you buy it

Yes. Though not the cheapest PC on the market, the Talon's solid performance and design details make this PC a versatile PC that will delight gamers and creatives alike.

Editor's recommendations

[f1]

Hamilton super grateful to Mercedes for delivering upgrades to US Grand Prix

Mercedes brought their final upgrade package of the season to the 2022 United States Grand Prix, with the updates leaving Lewis Hamilton feeling “super grateful” and George Russell quietly optimistic about the W13’s performance at Austin. Among the visible upgrades on Mercedes’ W13 this weekend was a new front wing, while the team also implemented floor updates and a new rear wing endplate in Texas. Hamilton, who finished third in FP1 and eighth in FP2 – which was extended for drivers to carry out Pirelli’s 2023 tyre testing programme – was all smiles on Friday evening. READ MORE: FP1 debutants reflect on 'amazing' first session in Texas “Everything went to plan, and firstly I’m super grateful to everyone back at the factory for working so hard and bringing us an upgrade this weekend,” he said. “It’s been a tough year for everyone at the factory, and for them to continuously be pushing and keeping their heads out and pulling out these new pieces, I’m super grateful. “And I kept the car in one piece today, which is good, just about. And just about felt some improvements in the car… [FP1] was feeling quite good and I’m hoping we make some changes tonight and tomorrow we’ll see where we stand. But it doesn’t feel like we’re too far from everybody.” Mercedes have brought a host of upgrades to Texas The seven-time champion also enjoyed the Pirelli test in FP2. “It’s quite like a fun experiment to be honest just to get out there, you don’t know what to expect, and there’s always just a different balance – the tyres reacting in so many different ways each time you go out, when you’re trying something new. “It’s interesting, so as you’re just trying to get into the groove and trying to feel it and trying to feel what the difference is and trying to store what the differences are, so when you’re coming in you have to try and jot them all down,” said Hamilton. READ MORE: Verstappen hails positive start for Red Bull at COTA as Perez eyes damage limitation in qualifying George Russell doesn't 'know what the pecking order is' at United States GP Team mate Russell, who was seventh in FP1 and 13th in FP2, said that Mercedes were on the path to having a solid weekend in the United States. READ MORE: Perez and Zhou receive 5-place grid penalties for US Grand Prix “I think it worked okay, to be honest,” said Russell. “FP1 was a bit of an odd session for everybody as well. There were a few teams who were looking very fast, a little bit unexpectedly. Some other teams who probably weren’t as quick as we probably would have thought. And obviously having semi-missed FP2 because we were all running our own programmes, we don’t really know what the pecking order is. “So far the car’s feeling quite strong, which is promising. I think you always get an inkling very early on in the day if it’s going to be a good weekend or a tough weekend – we’re midway. It feels like it’s definitely not the worst the car has been, but we don’t know what Red Bull and Ferrari are going to do when they turn up tomorrow.” via Formula 1 News https://www.formula1.com

[grandpxnews-blog]

Not "enough space" between Vettel and Hamilton

New Post has been published on https://grandpx.news/not-enough-space-between-vettel-and-hamilton/

Not "enough space" between Vettel and Hamilton

Sebastian Vettel says his championship rival Lewis Hamilton did not leave “enough space” in the opening lap and thus he had a contact and spun in the Italian Grand Prix.

The British driver started from the third place on Sunday behind both the Ferraris and was in the same position after the first corner.

Hamilton moved ahead of Vettel at the Variante Della Roggia from the outside and the pair clashed at the entry. The clash sent Vettel into a spin, allow Hamilton to move forward and attack Kimi Raikkonen. The Brit ultimately won the race.

The German driver had to restart at 17th and pitted under safety car to change tyres and front wing. He finished fourth after overtaking most of the midfield drivers.

Vettel is now 30 points behind Hamilton in the driver’s standings and blamed the British racer for the contact.

But Hamilton denied he did anything wrong.

“I think we all got to similar starts, and I got wheelspin and went to Turn 1, and I was surprised that Seb went to the left.

“We got to Turn 1 and there was a small touch between us all and powering down to [Turn] 4, again a bit surprised Seb chose the inside and not going to the outside of Kimi.

“And that was my opportunity, I stuck it down the outside and made sure I was far enough alongside, I had the experience a few years ago of being on the inside and it didn’t come off too well.

“I think there was enough space between us. I am guessing he locked up, we touched, it was a brief moment, damaged the car a little bit but I could continue.

“The rear moved around a lot [after that], which made it a little bit more difficult but not impossible.”

Ferrari cars were ahead of their German rivals in every practice session and in the qualifying race, clocking faster laps. So Hamilton was not really certain he could win the race.

“I definitely didn’t expect it,” Hamilton said. “I started third on the grid, looking at the pace of last race and pace here, I didn’t know where we would be here.

“I was to stay within 1.5 [seconds], I thought ‘this will be a serious uphill battle’, and throughout the weekend there was so much pressure on us all to deliver, a lot of pressure from team, sponsors and myself.

“I never expected to win, but I prayed. I went in with a clear goal, but you never know – sometimes they pulled away like the last race [at Spa].”

The British driver said he kept reminding himself not to take too much risk in the race as the priority is his title fight with Vettel rather than a race win.

“Yesterday I was trying to figure out how aggressive you can be because my race is not with Kimi, it is with Sebastian.

“I was trying to get past Kimi at the same time. I was just telling him he did a fantastic race, he drove incredibly fairly and I respect him so much. I really enjoyed racing with him.

“But, yeah, getting past Seb at the beginning was clearly a massive turning point.”

[dragnews]

Motor racing: F1 aero changes will make a difference, says Brawn

LONDON (Reuters) – Formula One’s aerodynamic rule changes for 2019 are a step in the right direction and fans should see better racing as a result, managing director Ross Brawn said on Tuesday.

Formula One F1 – Australian Grand Prix – Melbourne Grand Prix Circuit, Melbourne, Australia – March 25, 2018 Mercedes’ Lewis Hamilton leads FerrariÕs Kimi Raikkonen at the start of the race REUTERS/Brandon Malone

He was speaking after the sport’s governing body announced modifications for next season to cars’ front and rear wings and front brake ducts.

The changes should make it easier for drivers to follow each other, and come after criticism of the lack of overtaking in some races.

“We’ve had some fantastic races this year but actually if you look at them in detail, they’ve often been created by unusual circumstances — safety cars or other factors,” Brawn told Reuters.

“What we want to do is create racing which can stand alone without the need for a safety car or some other event. And I think this moves it in the right direction.

“What I’m really encouraged by is that Formula One came together and recognized it was necessary,” he added, speaking after a lunch at London’s Royal Automobile Club to award the Segrave Trophy to 2017 Dakar winner Sam Sunderland.

Brawn said a collision between Red Bull’s Daniel Ricciardo and Max Verstappen in Sunday’s Azerbaijan Grand Prix showed how hard it was to follow a car and make a move.

Ricciardo ran into the back of Verstappen, with both retiring.

“I think we had a demonstration in a very extreme sense with Ricciardo and Verstappen that the moment Verstappen moved in front of Ricciardo, Ricciardo lost all the downforce and couldn’t stop,” he explained.

“There was no way he was going to stop that car once Verstappen took his air away from him.”

The changes will see a front wing with a larger span, winglets removed from front brake ducts and a wider and deeper rear wing.

Approved and ratified on the last day before unanimous agreement was required, the measures followed research carried out by most teams and backed by commercial rights holders Liberty Media.

Brawn confirmed there had been some dissenters, however.

“I guess it’s a healthy situation that you have debate about these things,” he said. “There were some teams that felt we should have waited until 2021 and done the complete package.

“But certainly enough of the teams felt it was going in the right direction.”

Formula One’s current agreements expire after 2020, and the sport needs to decide what kind of engine and rules should be introduced after that.

Liberty wants a more level playing field, reduced costs and more equal distribution of the revenues.

Only three of the 10 teams — Mercedes, Ferrari and Red Bull — have won races in the V6 turbo hybrid era that started in 2014 and Mercedes have won every championship.

Reporting by Alan Baldwin, editing by Amlan Chakraborty and Toby Davis

The post Motor racing: F1 aero changes will make a difference, says Brawn appeared first on World The News.

from World The News https://ift.tt/2rdJujE via Today News

[party-hard-or-die]

Motor racing: F1 aero changes will make a difference, says Brawn

LONDON (Reuters) – Formula One’s aerodynamic rule changes for 2019 are a step in the right direction and fans should see better racing as a result, managing director Ross Brawn said on Tuesday.

Formula One F1 – Australian Grand Prix – Melbourne Grand Prix Circuit, Melbourne, Australia – March 25, 2018 Mercedes’ Lewis Hamilton leads FerrariÕs Kimi Raikkonen at the start of the race REUTERS/Brandon Malone

He was speaking after the sport’s governing body announced modifications for next season to cars’ front and rear wings and front brake ducts.

The changes should make it easier for drivers to follow each other, and come after criticism of the lack of overtaking in some races.

“We’ve had some fantastic races this year but actually if you look at them in detail, they’ve often been created by unusual circumstances — safety cars or other factors,” Brawn told Reuters.

“What we want to do is create racing which can stand alone without the need for a safety car or some other event. And I think this moves it in the right direction.

“What I’m really encouraged by is that Formula One came together and recognized it was necessary,” he added, speaking after a lunch at London’s Royal Automobile Club to award the Segrave Trophy to 2017 Dakar winner Sam Sunderland.

Brawn said a collision between Red Bull’s Daniel Ricciardo and Max Verstappen in Sunday’s Azerbaijan Grand Prix showed how hard it was to follow a car and make a move.

Ricciardo ran into the back of Verstappen, with both retiring.

“I think we had a demonstration in a very extreme sense with Ricciardo and Verstappen that the moment Verstappen moved in front of Ricciardo, Ricciardo lost all the downforce and couldn’t stop,” he explained.

“There was no way he was going to stop that car once Verstappen took his air away from him.”

The changes will see a front wing with a larger span, winglets removed from front brake ducts and a wider and deeper rear wing.

Approved and ratified on the last day before unanimous agreement was required, the measures followed research carried out by most teams and backed by commercial rights holders Liberty Media.

Brawn confirmed there had been some dissenters, however.

“I guess it’s a healthy situation that you have debate about these things,” he said. “There were some teams that felt we should have waited until 2021 and done the complete package.

“But certainly enough of the teams felt it was going in the right direction.”

Formula One’s current agreements expire after 2020, and the sport needs to decide what kind of engine and rules should be introduced after that.

Liberty wants a more level playing field, reduced costs and more equal distribution of the revenues.

Only three of the 10 teams — Mercedes, Ferrari and Red Bull — have won races in the V6 turbo hybrid era that started in 2014 and Mercedes have won every championship.

Reporting by Alan Baldwin, editing by Amlan Chakraborty and Toby Davis

The post Motor racing: F1 aero changes will make a difference, says Brawn appeared first on World The News.

from World The News https://ift.tt/2rdJujE via Breaking News

[cleopatrarps]

Motor racing: F1 aero changes will make a difference, says Brawn

LONDON (Reuters) – Formula One’s aerodynamic rule changes for 2019 are a step in the right direction and fans should see better racing as a result, managing director Ross Brawn said on Tuesday.

Formula One F1 – Australian Grand Prix – Melbourne Grand Prix Circuit, Melbourne, Australia – March 25, 2018 Mercedes’ Lewis Hamilton leads FerrariÕs Kimi Raikkonen at the start of the race REUTERS/Brandon Malone

He was speaking after the sport’s governing body announced modifications for next season to cars’ front and rear wings and front brake ducts.

The changes should make it easier for drivers to follow each other, and come after criticism of the lack of overtaking in some races.

“We’ve had some fantastic races this year but actually if you look at them in detail, they’ve often been created by unusual circumstances — safety cars or other factors,” Brawn told Reuters.

“What we want to do is create racing which can stand alone without the need for a safety car or some other event. And I think this moves it in the right direction.

“What I’m really encouraged by is that Formula One came together and recognized it was necessary,” he added, speaking after a lunch at London’s Royal Automobile Club to award the Segrave Trophy to 2017 Dakar winner Sam Sunderland.

Brawn said a collision between Red Bull’s Daniel Ricciardo and Max Verstappen in Sunday’s Azerbaijan Grand Prix showed how hard it was to follow a car and make a move.

Ricciardo ran into the back of Verstappen, with both retiring.

“I think we had a demonstration in a very extreme sense with Ricciardo and Verstappen that the moment Verstappen moved in front of Ricciardo, Ricciardo lost all the downforce and couldn’t stop,” he explained.

“There was no way he was going to stop that car once Verstappen took his air away from him.”

The changes will see a front wing with a larger span, winglets removed from front brake ducts and a wider and deeper rear wing.

Approved and ratified on the last day before unanimous agreement was required, the measures followed research carried out by most teams and backed by commercial rights holders Liberty Media.

Brawn confirmed there had been some dissenters, however.

“I guess it’s a healthy situation that you have debate about these things,” he said. “There were some teams that felt we should have waited until 2021 and done the complete package.

“But certainly enough of the teams felt it was going in the right direction.”

Formula One’s current agreements expire after 2020, and the sport needs to decide what kind of engine and rules should be introduced after that.

Liberty wants a more level playing field, reduced costs and more equal distribution of the revenues.

Only three of the 10 teams — Mercedes, Ferrari and Red Bull — have won races in the V6 turbo hybrid era that started in 2014 and Mercedes have won every championship.

Reporting by Alan Baldwin, editing by Amlan Chakraborty and Toby Davis

The post Motor racing: F1 aero changes will make a difference, says Brawn appeared first on World The News.

from World The News https://ift.tt/2rdJujE via News of World

[jesusvasser]

Dreamscape: Running Supercars Up Switzerland’s Gotthard Pass

The rain has stopped, but headlights still glimmer on the road’s slick surface, and fog swirls over the mountainside like lace curtains whipping in the breeze. Immediately ahead, there’s a Ferrari 812 Superfast and a Dodge Viper ACR. Beyond them, Mercedes-Benz CLK GTR and Porsche 911 GT1 road cars queue side by side, homologation specials from 25-unit production runs. In the rearview mirror, a Ferrari FZ93 and Aston Martin Zagato Shooting Brake stand out in the line of exotics that coils down the Tarmac, coach-built rarities normally found in museums. Soon we’ll run with this incredible pack up the Gotthard Pass in Switzerland, closed specially for the occasion. No oncoming traffic, no speed limit.

The event’s organizers claim that the Gotthard Pass has never before been closed for fun, nor has any other street in Switzerland. The road climbs to 6,909 feet over the Saint-Gotthard Massif in the Alps, tying German-speaking Andermatt in the north to Italian-speaking Airolo in the south, a vital link that just so happens to be awesome to drive.

In fact, there are three ways of making it from Andermatt to Airolo. You can drive the original cobblestone route or take the Gotthard Strassentunnel, constructed in 1980 to bypass the altitude and the wiggly bits in an arrow-straight line. The third option is the newer mountain road, built alongside the original cobblestones. What this road lacks in history, it makes up for in driver appeal, geography you’d normally require a parachute to appreciate, and the majestic engineering of its vast tunnels and precipice-spanning bridges. Guess which road we’re taking?

For $3,400, two guests get a night at the Chedi hotel, an evening meal, and the chance to run up the Pass as fast as they like before letting loose on a nearby airfield.

Florian Lemberger, a lawyer specializing in finance, regularly organizes driving events with the Supercar Owners Circle, and he somehow convinced the Swiss authorities to close the Gotthard Pass. In total, 72 supercars are here, the rules dictating that only one example of each may attend, though there’s been some inevitable flex—it’s hard to begrudge a trio of McLaren P1s. There’s definitely only one Maro Engel driving a  race car, though. “It’s a chance to drive the SLS but also a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to drive the Gotthard Pass,” the DTM driver says. “I couldn’t miss that.”

For a pretty reasonable €2,800 (approximately $3,400), two guests get a night at the high-end Chedi hotel in Andermatt (Lemberger’s real estate fund bought the place), an evening meal and presentation, and the chance to run up the Pass as fast as they like before letting loose on a nearby airfield.

Our ride is somewhat modest in this company, but it holds its own: the latest Porsche 911 GT3 with 4.0 liters, 500 horsepower, and a six-speed manual transmission. You’ll pay $144,650, if you can get one. That’s the same as a PDK model, but you get a mechanical—not electronically controlled—locking rear differential and lose 37 pounds, and the 3.8-second 0-60 time is 0.6 second slower.

A day earlier, we collected the car from Stuttgart and were soon driving in pouring rain in one stretch through Germany, touching 160 mph once it dried and traffic thinned on unrestricted autobahns, slowing over the border into Switzerland with its colossal speeding fines, then skirting past Zurich on toward the Alps.

There are detail changes throughout this 991.2-generation GT3: revisions to springs and dampers, a new operating logic for the rear-wheel steering, and a new engine cover and rear wing that sits three-quarters of an inch higher. The latter sounds insignificant, but you notice how much more it impedes rear vision than before. Together with a revised rear diffuser, though, the payback is 20 percent more downforce, Porsche says.

Supercar spotters mobbed the event (left), presumably really hoping we didn’t crash. Or perhaps hoping we would.

Most crucial of all, a new 4.0-liter naturally aspirated flat-six, the one shared with the GT3 Cup, RSR, and GT3 R race cars, replaces the 3.8. Along with that 500 horsepower, it produces 339 lb-ft of torque, increases of 25 hp and 15 lb-ft over the 3.8. And you of course also get to choose manual or dual-clutch auto.

The 4.0-liter in the previous GT3 RS and R is mind-blowing, but there’s even more energy to how this new GT3 revs, an extra kick to a power delivery that feels entirely free of inertia. Push past 5,000 rpm, and the howl gets even wilder, and when you’re screaming to an outrageous 9,000 rpm, it consumes the cabin. This is easily the best-sounding 911 of the present lineup, a hair-raising soundtrack rivaled by few modern performance cars.

As we arrive in Andermatt, teenagers with $3,000 cameras spill into the road like some hybrid of Hollywood paparazzi and 1980s Group B rally fans. They move in zombielike packs, stirred by the growl of an approaching V-8 or V-12. They know the GT3 is worthy of a picture, but it’s understandable when the hotel valet asks us to park around the back.

A young guy, Johan Jakobsson, seeks us out. He runs what must be an inordinately successful wholesale coffee business (“and a few other companies”) and will drive his Ferrari 458 Speciale over the Gotthard Pass. “The manual?” he asks, eyeing the GT3. “May I sit inside?” He sets the perfect driving position, grips the wheel, and slices the gear lever back and forth with a satisfied grin. “I’ve ordered one,” he says. “I know someone at Porsche. They got me on the list.”

Beneath the hotel, the parking lot is filled with the most remarkable cars you’ll ever see. There’s a Ferrari FXX K, the track-only version of Maranello’s already insane LaFerrari hypercar. The owner fires up the V-12, the almost painful yelp of every throttle stab intensified by the concrete walls.

The car park of the Chedi hotel in Andermatt, Switzerland, (right) had never seen anything like it. No valet parking today.

Nearby there’s a Ferrari F12 TRS (one of two), its body inspired by the 1957 250 Testa Rossa and its silvery gold paint apparently inspired by C-3PO. The hood leaves the V-12 partly visible, its blood-red plenum covers exposed like a beating heart, and its chopped wraparound glasshouse is more speedboat than supercar. The driver turns out to be a minder because the real owner can’t be here. He also owns the red one.

There’s an Aston Martin One-77, one of the new-old Jaguar E-type Lightweights, a Maserati MC12, a beautiful Ferrari 250 SWB that’ll be voted car of the meet, and a lovely Porsche 930 Turbo with a RUF CTR conversion.

That evening, I attempt to mingle convincingly with the super-rich. There’s the guy who loaned his McLaren P1 to Ferrari for benchmarking ahead of LaFerrari’s launch; an Italian property developer, he would’ve been in his late 20s back then. Elliot Ross looks even younger, and he owns the 911 GT1. He’s from Scotland, says the GT1’s clutch is heavy; you can’t see out of the cockpit, but he loves it. Oh, he’s also got a Ferrari Enzo and an F50.

The Ferrari FXX K made much noise in the underground car park, but it didn’t run up the Gotthard Pass because of the FXXing weather.

Eugenio Amos, 32, owns the CLK GTR, a V-12-powered homologation special made so Mercedes could contest the FIA GT championship of the late 1990s. He says he made money in real estate, has raced in the Blancpain endurance series, and is enjoying the car. “There’s plenty of traction, and even on cold tires or if you drift it, it’s not so bad,” he says. Gah.

More than ever it seems like everyone is building a low-volume sports car. Paolo Garella is here in a Glickenhaus SCG 003 mule; Ameerh Naran runs a private-jet business and has secured an engine deal with BMW for his sports car; the CLK GTR owner plans a “kind of Singer version of a Lancia Delta Integrale” and has created a full-size clay model of the project. There’s even a presentation for the Aston Martin AM37 powerboat.

The next morning, this most extraordinary gathering of supercars fires to life outside the hotel, the constant volleys of revs sounding as though a SWAT team is storming the lobby. With the poor weather, some cars, like the FXX K and TRS, are heading straight to the airfield. The rest roll through Andermatt’s narrow main street, ready to run the Gotthard Pass in small packs at timed intervals. I can hear the first cars leaving, our group edging closer all the time, nerves jangling, the road still disappearing into fog above.

As a flag waves, a Ferrari 360 Challenge Stradale leads us away. There’s the gruff growl of its flat-plane-crank V-8, the yell of the 812 Superfast’s V-12 immediately in front, and the induction suck from the GT3’s flat-six as I release the clutch and get back on the gas after each gear change; that’s a markedly different signature from a GT3 with a PDK. As the rock faces close in to our right, the rush of mechanical noise combines into one swirling din, soaring on the straights, rumbling through the corners.

The GT3 feels sensational. There’s no doubt the PDK shifts faster, but the physicality of the manual definitely adds another dimension of interactivity: The short little shift lever demands you work a bit to pull it home, and the clutch is delectable with its midweighted heft and oily consistency. Some might find the brake is higher than ideal for heel-and-toe downshifts; you might have to roll your foot over excessively to blip the throttle during downchanges. At least the blips come automatically in Sport mode.

The new Gotthard Pass isn’t as twisty as the old cobblestone, but it’s faster, smoother, and a better drive

But the precision of the GT3’s steering—there’s more definition at its top-dead-center, perhaps a side effect of the chassis tweaks—the violent stopping power of its carbon-ceramic brakes, the car’s perfect balance, and the way its feral speed never feels like it’ll overload the chassis unless you demand it are unreal. It is difficult to imagine feeling more at ease in anything else here.

 “What an unbelievable event,” he says as we pull to a stop. “I’ve never experienced anything like it.”

The road flows so smoothly as it rises from the valley that there’s little need to brake hard initially, but the wet, high-speed kinks get me wobbling at the wheel, praying the Porsche’s cold front tires bite. They always do. We climb quickly, and the route becomes more technical, ascending aggressively through hairpins, those kids stepping out into the road again, digging for YouTube gold and—you’ve got to assume—desperate for us to crash.

Someone tries. As we approach the summit, the road enters a tunnel that hugs the mountainside, protecting the road from rock falls and avalanches. I hear the 812 accelerate, presumably the better to hear its raucous V-12 melody. We’re doing probably 80 mph, and as the revs flick up, I watch the Ferrari’s back end snap out of line, the wiggle quickly slapped down by electronics. It’s probably no bad thing that the fog becomes much thicker as we reach the top of the Pass, forcing the pack to slow ahead of the checkered flag.

I park, unable to see more than the road around me, and wait for photographer Richard Pardon to get a ride to meet me as one extraordinary car after another punches like a phantom from the gloom. No one, it seems, balled themselves up.

Writer and photographer reunited, we run with a Lamborghini Aventador S Roadster with Monaco plates toward Airolo, and as the fog lifts, its V-12 battle cry rises, slamming gear changes giving a throaty punctuation to the soundtrack. The GT3 never loses touch.

At the airfield, suddenly it’s a summer day, and we watch as McLaren P1s duel against Porsche 918 Spyders in hypercar drag races. They accelerate off the line like marbles fired from stretched elastic bands, a sonic blur of screeching tires and hybrid-powered fury, the crowd peering into the distance, unable to see whether England or Germany actually won, just two hypercars on fast-forward vanishing in the haze.

[jonathanbelloblog]

Dreamscape: Running Supercars Up Switzerland’s Gotthard Pass

The rain has stopped, but headlights still glimmer on the road’s slick surface, and fog swirls over the mountainside like lace curtains whipping in the breeze. Immediately ahead, there’s a Ferrari 812 Superfast and a Dodge Viper ACR. Beyond them, Mercedes-Benz CLK GTR and Porsche 911 GT1 road cars queue side by side, homologation specials from 25-unit production runs. In the rearview mirror, a Ferrari FZ93 and Aston Martin Zagato Shooting Brake stand out in the line of exotics that coils down the Tarmac, coach-built rarities normally found in museums. Soon we’ll run with this incredible pack up the Gotthard Pass in Switzerland, closed specially for the occasion. No oncoming traffic, no speed limit.

The event’s organizers claim that the Gotthard Pass has never before been closed for fun, nor has any other street in Switzerland. The road climbs to 6,909 feet over the Saint-Gotthard Massif in the Alps, tying German-speaking Andermatt in the north to Italian-speaking Airolo in the south, a vital link that just so happens to be awesome to drive.

In fact, there are three ways of making it from Andermatt to Airolo. You can drive the original cobblestone route or take the Gotthard Strassentunnel, constructed in 1980 to bypass the altitude and the wiggly bits in an arrow-straight line. The third option is the newer mountain road, built alongside the original cobblestones. What this road lacks in history, it makes up for in driver appeal, geography you’d normally require a parachute to appreciate, and the majestic engineering of its vast tunnels and precipice-spanning bridges. Guess which road we’re taking?

For $3,400, two guests get a night at the Chedi hotel, an evening meal, and the chance to run up the Pass as fast as they like before letting loose on a nearby airfield.

Florian Lemberger, a lawyer specializing in finance, regularly organizes driving events with the Supercar Owners Circle, and he somehow convinced the Swiss authorities to close the Gotthard Pass. In total, 72 supercars are here, the rules dictating that only one example of each may attend, though there’s been some inevitable flex—it’s hard to begrudge a trio of McLaren P1s. There’s definitely only one Maro Engel driving a  race car, though. “It’s a chance to drive the SLS but also a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to drive the Gotthard Pass,” the DTM driver says. “I couldn’t miss that.”

For a pretty reasonable €2,800 (approximately $3,400), two guests get a night at the high-end Chedi hotel in Andermatt (Lemberger’s real estate fund bought the place), an evening meal and presentation, and the chance to run up the Pass as fast as they like before letting loose on a nearby airfield.

Our ride is somewhat modest in this company, but it holds its own: the latest Porsche 911 GT3 with 4.0 liters, 500 horsepower, and a six-speed manual transmission. You’ll pay $144,650, if you can get one. That’s the same as a PDK model, but you get a mechanical—not electronically controlled—locking rear differential and lose 37 pounds, and the 3.8-second 0-60 time is 0.6 second slower.

A day earlier, we collected the car from Stuttgart and were soon driving in pouring rain in one stretch through Germany, touching 160 mph once it dried and traffic thinned on unrestricted autobahns, slowing over the border into Switzerland with its colossal speeding fines, then skirting past Zurich on toward the Alps.

There are detail changes throughout this 991.2-generation GT3: revisions to springs and dampers, a new operating logic for the rear-wheel steering, and a new engine cover and rear wing that sits three-quarters of an inch higher. The latter sounds insignificant, but you notice how much more it impedes rear vision than before. Together with a revised rear diffuser, though, the payback is 20 percent more downforce, Porsche says.

Supercar spotters mobbed the event (left), presumably really hoping we didn’t crash. Or perhaps hoping we would.

Most crucial of all, a new 4.0-liter naturally aspirated flat-six, the one shared with the GT3 Cup, RSR, and GT3 R race cars, replaces the 3.8. Along with that 500 horsepower, it produces 339 lb-ft of torque, increases of 25 hp and 15 lb-ft over the 3.8. And you of course also get to choose manual or dual-clutch auto.

The 4.0-liter in the previous GT3 RS and R is mind-blowing, but there’s even more energy to how this new GT3 revs, an extra kick to a power delivery that feels entirely free of inertia. Push past 5,000 rpm, and the howl gets even wilder, and when you’re screaming to an outrageous 9,000 rpm, it consumes the cabin. This is easily the best-sounding 911 of the present lineup, a hair-raising soundtrack rivaled by few modern performance cars.

As we arrive in Andermatt, teenagers with $3,000 cameras spill into the road like some hybrid of Hollywood paparazzi and 1980s Group B rally fans. They move in zombielike packs, stirred by the growl of an approaching V-8 or V-12. They know the GT3 is worthy of a picture, but it’s understandable when the hotel valet asks us to park around the back.

A young guy, Johan Jakobsson, seeks us out. He runs what must be an inordinately successful wholesale coffee business (“and a few other companies”) and will drive his Ferrari 458 Speciale over the Gotthard Pass. “The manual?” he asks, eyeing the GT3. “May I sit inside?” He sets the perfect driving position, grips the wheel, and slices the gear lever back and forth with a satisfied grin. “I’ve ordered one,” he says. “I know someone at Porsche. They got me on the list.”

Beneath the hotel, the parking lot is filled with the most remarkable cars you’ll ever see. There’s a Ferrari FXX K, the track-only version of Maranello’s already insane LaFerrari hypercar. The owner fires up the V-12, the almost painful yelp of every throttle stab intensified by the concrete walls.

The car park of the Chedi hotel in Andermatt, Switzerland, (right) had never seen anything like it. No valet parking today.

Nearby there’s a Ferrari F12 TRS (one of two), its body inspired by the 1957 250 Testa Rossa and its silvery gold paint apparently inspired by C-3PO. The hood leaves the V-12 partly visible, its blood-red plenum covers exposed like a beating heart, and its chopped wraparound glasshouse is more speedboat than supercar. The driver turns out to be a minder because the real owner can’t be here. He also owns the red one.

There’s an Aston Martin One-77, one of the new-old Jaguar E-type Lightweights, a Maserati MC12, a beautiful Ferrari 250 SWB that’ll be voted car of the meet, and a lovely Porsche 930 Turbo with a RUF CTR conversion.

That evening, I attempt to mingle convincingly with the super-rich. There’s the guy who loaned his McLaren P1 to Ferrari for benchmarking ahead of LaFerrari’s launch; an Italian property developer, he would’ve been in his late 20s back then. Elliot Ross looks even younger, and he owns the 911 GT1. He’s from Scotland, says the GT1’s clutch is heavy; you can’t see out of the cockpit, but he loves it. Oh, he’s also got a Ferrari Enzo and an F50.

The Ferrari FXX K made much noise in the underground car park, but it didn’t run up the Gotthard Pass because of the FXXing weather.

Eugenio Amos, 32, owns the CLK GTR, a V-12-powered homologation special made so Mercedes could contest the FIA GT championship of the late 1990s. He says he made money in real estate, has raced in the Blancpain endurance series, and is enjoying the car. “There’s plenty of traction, and even on cold tires or if you drift it, it’s not so bad,” he says. Gah.

More than ever it seems like everyone is building a low-volume sports car. Paolo Garella is here in a Glickenhaus SCG 003 mule; Ameerh Naran runs a private-jet business and has secured an engine deal with BMW for his sports car; the CLK GTR owner plans a “kind of Singer version of a Lancia Delta Integrale” and has created a full-size clay model of the project. There’s even a presentation for the Aston Martin AM37 powerboat.

The next morning, this most extraordinary gathering of supercars fires to life outside the hotel, the constant volleys of revs sounding as though a SWAT team is storming the lobby. With the poor weather, some cars, like the FXX K and TRS, are heading straight to the airfield. The rest roll through Andermatt’s narrow main street, ready to run the Gotthard Pass in small packs at timed intervals. I can hear the first cars leaving, our group edging closer all the time, nerves jangling, the road still disappearing into fog above.

As a flag waves, a Ferrari 360 Challenge Stradale leads us away. There’s the gruff growl of its flat-plane-crank V-8, the yell of the 812 Superfast’s V-12 immediately in front, and the induction suck from the GT3’s flat-six as I release the clutch and get back on the gas after each gear change; that’s a markedly different signature from a GT3 with a PDK. As the rock faces close in to our right, the rush of mechanical noise combines into one swirling din, soaring on the straights, rumbling through the corners.

The GT3 feels sensational. There’s no doubt the PDK shifts faster, but the physicality of the manual definitely adds another dimension of interactivity: The short little shift lever demands you work a bit to pull it home, and the clutch is delectable with its midweighted heft and oily consistency. Some might find the brake is higher than ideal for heel-and-toe downshifts; you might have to roll your foot over excessively to blip the throttle during downchanges. At least the blips come automatically in Sport mode.

The new Gotthard Pass isn’t as twisty as the old cobblestone, but it’s faster, smoother, and a better drive

But the precision of the GT3’s steering—there’s more definition at its top-dead-center, perhaps a side effect of the chassis tweaks—the violent stopping power of its carbon-ceramic brakes, the car’s perfect balance, and the way its feral speed never feels like it’ll overload the chassis unless you demand it are unreal. It is difficult to imagine feeling more at ease in anything else here.

 “What an unbelievable event,” he says as we pull to a stop. “I’ve never experienced anything like it.”

The road flows so smoothly as it rises from the valley that there’s little need to brake hard initially, but the wet, high-speed kinks get me wobbling at the wheel, praying the Porsche’s cold front tires bite. They always do. We climb quickly, and the route becomes more technical, ascending aggressively through hairpins, those kids stepping out into the road again, digging for YouTube gold and—you’ve got to assume—desperate for us to crash.

Someone tries. As we approach the summit, the road enters a tunnel that hugs the mountainside, protecting the road from rock falls and avalanches. I hear the 812 accelerate, presumably the better to hear its raucous V-12 melody. We’re doing probably 80 mph, and as the revs flick up, I watch the Ferrari’s back end snap out of line, the wiggle quickly slapped down by electronics. It’s probably no bad thing that the fog becomes much thicker as we reach the top of the Pass, forcing the pack to slow ahead of the checkered flag.

I park, unable to see more than the road around me, and wait for photographer Richard Pardon to get a ride to meet me as one extraordinary car after another punches like a phantom from the gloom. No one, it seems, balled themselves up.

Writer and photographer reunited, we run with a Lamborghini Aventador S Roadster with Monaco plates toward Airolo, and as the fog lifts, its V-12 battle cry rises, slamming gear changes giving a throaty punctuation to the soundtrack. The GT3 never loses touch.

At the airfield, suddenly it’s a summer day, and we watch as McLaren P1s duel against Porsche 918 Spyders in hypercar drag races. They accelerate off the line like marbles fired from stretched elastic bands, a sonic blur of screeching tires and hybrid-powered fury, the crowd peering into the distance, unable to see whether England or Germany actually won, just two hypercars on fast-forward vanishing in the haze.

[itsworn]

This Mustang-Turned-Supercar Packs An 800HP Kaase Ford Hemi!

Jon Darbyshire’s “Archer 520FX” ’69 Fastback melds the best of old and new.

In recent times, the business coupe has changed. Traveling salesmen defined the body style while stuffing their wares in stripped down, rear-seatless coupes. The lack of options and seats meant that the cars were thrifty and traded passengers for inventory. Practicality was the key, allowing for the spread of consumer culture in America before the advent of department store catalogs and the impending takeover from the internet. By the 1960s, the business coupe body style fell out of favor as vans, carry-alls (the proto-SUV), and pick-ups became more prolific for cross-country efforts. So then, what’s a modern business coupe?

For jet-setting entrepreneurs, four wheels can be an escape from the world, even if they’re a little slower than a pair of wings. More and more, we’re seeing the business coupe evolve from what owners needed (like a fleet vehicle), to what fuels childhood memories and passions. Eschewing the sardine-can experiences of airlines, there’s been a return to purposeful customs that seek to impress you more as it storms the highway than in the rolling field of a local car show.

Flush handles and functional vents—nothing was left untouched. The rear quarters were pushed out 2 inches for the massive 20×12 Boze wheels.

“I’m a long-time mustang lover,” said Jon Darbyshire, the owner of this cross-pollinating 1969 Ford Mustang fastback, known as the Archer 520FX. “One of the earliest memories that I had of having a car was the Mustang coupe that I purchased and worked on with my grandfather. It wasn’t anything special, but it’s what I had while learning to work on cars. When he was alive, he was a hard working blue collar guy. He taught me and my brother how to work on cars. Even if I had just a little money, he’d help throw on chrome valve covers or put a carburetor kit in, little things like that.”

Jon eventually went on to start his own software company in the 1990s, carrying his grandfather’s name. As time went on, his son, Dylan, also picked up an early Mustang, and the two began to build it in much the same vein as his own. This is when Bobby, Karen, and Bruce Schumacher (of Vintage Fabrications in Independence, MS) entered the picture.

“During World of Wheels, Jon had walked up to our booth and started talking to my wife and son. At first, it didn’t stand out enough for him to say anything to me. You know, you talk to a lot of people,” Bobby told us. “But at 8:30 the next morning, Jon pulls up in the driveway of the shop!” Jon had brought his son’s Mustang up to finish a few odd and ends in the motor and interior, and it didn’t take long for the two to begin discussing the real motive: Jon’s own plans for a 1969 Mustang. The idea was to build a super car wrapped in unique, vintage steel. To Jon, the idea of another Ferrari or Lamborghini rolling around wasn’t enough, though he looked to the high-end supercar factories for what truly made them different than your plebian transportation.

Any time parts are mixed across eras and models, getting the fixed lines and shapes (such as the 2009 headlamps and grille) to integrate so that the melting pot pours out a smooth, well-proportioned design takes a careful eye. “When we started this project, I went with a guy out of California, but he just couldn’t get the look right. He left too much of the 1969 Mustang-look to the nose,” Bobby felt. “Luckily, I was at World of Wheels. Jason Slover, from Pete and Jake’s, said, ‘Well, why don’t you have Larry Erickson do it? He designed the ’05 Mustang, CadZZillla, and Aluma Coupe for Boyd.’” Larry’s hot rodding carrier might’ve been launched in California, but his work started further back than that as the designer of the 1992 Cadillac Seville and Eldorado before eventually landing with Ford Motor Company to design the 2005-2009 Mustang.

He continued: “We go up to him and tell him the idea, it’s the Mustang Ford should have done. And he got kind of excited, and he goes, ‘I’m not limited to production stuff, I can do stuff we couldn’t do back then.’ That’s where Larry led us. Every body line, every seam was thought about like it was done at the factory.”

“Being a corporate guy, I made a Power Point [laughs] with different pieces of different cars and Mustangs that I really liked,” Jon told us. “Then Larry started doing a number of models for us, showing what it would look like with two different front ends.”

The Archer 520FX’s nose is entirely sheet metal, despite it sharing features with the plastic fascias of its modern brethren.

Two Faces, Two Years

You’d be forgiven for thinking this was a fascia swap at first glance, but in reality it’s a 5,000-hour tour de force of body work. With every square inch in sheet metal, the nose was hand-fabricated with Larry’s design at the helm.

To do this, the innocent ’69 Mustang fastback fell under Vintage Fabrications’ team to bow the front fender 2 inches up and 3 inches out to accommodate the one-off 18×10-inch Boze Wheels shod in 285mm-wide Michelin Pilot Super Sports. The nose was stretched ahead of the front wheel wells, while the hood was pulled tighter against the windshield. At Jon’s desire to reproduce a short run of 520FXs, the nearly 900 pieces of sheet metal were digitized and turned into CAD files for plasma cutting to recreate the intense hand-fabbed metalwork in the Archer 520FX.

“I wish you could have seen it built, one fender at a time and getting it perfect before you do the other side,” Jon mentioned. “They’re like artists—there’s so many curves, bends, and lines, and your time welding on a piece of metal to make it flow. That took a lot of time.”

The rear quarters were pushed out 2 inches for the 20×12-inch Boze hoops and massive 345mm-wide Michelin rollers. The quarters’ brake ducts were even made functional for the Baer brakes. The rockers were dropped 2 inches before turning attention to the rear of the Archer 520FX, which retains the traditional styling cues from the ’69 while sharpening the edges and adding an adjustable spoiler. The shotgun exhaust is flanked by a pair of blades which mimic the uprights of a diffuser.

Things were still contentious as the front end became reality. “We tore it apart a little bit and changed some of the things that he saw on the side of the car, in the lines, that Larry just didn’t feel fit together. We didn’t want it to feel bolted-on, we wanted this to feel more integrated,” Jon emphasized. “Larry went down the car with a fine eye for a day with tape lines to make the front-end and fenders feel like they were coming around without looking bulky. The car looked amazing when it came out of metal, but those little changes just added a lot.”

Larry used later 2009-2014 Mustang headlamps with 2015 Mercedes SL550 driving lamps inside the custom, laser-cut grille. The curbside glance from up front draws into question which era the fastback profile behind it is from. Anytime you meddle with the facial features of an icon, it’s polarizing, but Jon’s vision, Larry’s execution, and Bobby’s fabricators pulled the look together before Carrender Collision sprayed Archer 520FX in Rhodium Silver with Platinsilber Pearl strips (from the Porsche 918 and Boxster, respectively), with Eric Campbell hand-pinstriping the details.

Taking cues from a variety of modern super- and luxury-cars, Jon and Bobby worked on the craftsmanship of dash rather than going to the extreme in exotic materials and styling. There’s even a pass-through door added to the trunk, so golf clubs and other large items will fit.

Outclassing the Upper Crust

If you’re spending hundreds of miles at a time in a machine, its cockpit needs to be fit for the job at hand. Today, custom interiors are more than an exercise in exotic materials, wild stitching, and the sheer number of one-off bits—the tactile feel of the interfaces mean about as much as the comfort in the seats. Jon surfed Ferrari dealerships and poured over photos of the new Ford GT super car. “At the time I owned an Aston Martin; what I really enjoyed about that car was the feel of the interior. It felt like a cockpit,” he remarked. “We were going to pull the switches from a modern Ferrari, but then Bobby came back and said, ‘We’ll just make them custom; we’ll make them fit the car.’”

“He sent me pictures of switches from Lamborghinis, even those start buttons, that’s where all the touchy-feely stuff came from because he wanted the inside of the car to feel like the outside of the car,” Bobby elaborated. “When he picked up the car, the only thing he found wrong was that the A/C controls still said ‘Vintage Air’ on them, so we had that machined out. It’s okay to make a custom car, but he wanted to make it look factory.”

Vintage Fabrications kept the factory eye-brow dash contours, but from there, everything was retooled half-a-century newer with subtle, machined touches around the Classic Instruments gauges, switch gear, starter button, door panels, and center console (pulled from a late-model Mercedes). Ron Wright, of VF, followed through in wiring the modern luxury touches, like the Pioneer head unit and accent lighting, along with the Vintage Air HVAC.

The Roadster Shop Elites Series chassis and suspension gives this ’69 Mustang Fastback the bones to fight exotic cars outside of the valet drive, too.

The Highway Missile’s Airframe

The answer here was simple: “He decided he wanted the best-of-the-best chassis, so we went to Roadster Shop,” says Bobby. A fully-independent Roadster Shop Elite Series chassis was the foundation for this muscular super car, capable of handling the thrust of Kaase’s 520ci reactor, thanks to Penkse double-adjustable shocks.

If you drive a nicely restored Mustang, the front end still sways just a little bit; you hit the brakes, sometimes the car will push left or right,” Jon mentioned. “What’s different about this is that you can get on it and it just flat-out accelerates. It takes off, you hit the brakes, and it stays in its lane. It’s more like a luxury sports car. You turn the steering wheel just a little bit, and it reacts. The suspension is really tight, but not rough.”

The underside of the Archer 520FX reflects its intent: you won’t find polished chrome and candy paint, it’s all business with only select hardware, like the chunky RS billet control arms and 3-inch stainless steel exhaust, standing out with their natural finishes.

The Kaase-built 520ci mill churns 761 hp and 731 lb-ft at the wheels through a Bowler Transmissions 4L80E.

Super Car Arms Race

With the look, feel, and foundation of the Archer 520FX carrying the modern super car touches that Jon wanted, it was time to give them a powerhouse that’d surely send their dime-a-dozen flat-plane-crank V8s and V10s packing. “I kept telling Bob that I wanted this to be a combination of luxury meets NASCAR,” he joked.

In doing so, Bobby called up Jon Kaase Racing Engines for the individual-throttle-body-fed, 520ci Boss engine. With a 4.390 x 4.300 bore and stroke, the Ford Performance block was stuffed with a Lunati rotating assembly and Diamond pistons. The mild 10:1 compression ratio and hydraulic-roller Comp camshaft make for a street-friendly package that’s capable of belting out nearly 800 wheel hp through a Bowler Transmissions 4L80E with Compu-Shift paddles behind the steering wheel. Italy will forever be known for its shrieking V12s, but the 520ci Kaase mill rattles the teeth of those high-strung hellions with brutal torque and the unmistakable chest-drumming of a big-cube V8, which is the effect Jon and Bobby wanted.

Number 001 signifies this is the first of a series of 520FXs that Jon wants to produce. Vintage Fabrications saved the tooling and digitized the components necessary to replicate the unique, Larry Rickman-approved styling.

Looking Back

“The whole experience of building the car with Vintage Fabrications reminded me of working in the garage with my grandfather on Sundays. With a brother, we’d fight after church on whose car he’d work on first. We didn’t have great cars, they were always breaking down, but they were also as cool as we could make them,” Jon reminisced. “We’d always talk while looking in the magazines for the cool things you could do, and this car has all that cool stuff we always talked about, plus a whole lot more that we never knew about back then! Archer is a family name. The company that I founded, Archer Technologies, was named after my grandfather. We sold that company, and started a foundation. It means something to our family to call it ‘Archer.’ The FX was gleamed from Larry and Bobby, because when Ford first designed its cars, they were called ‘Future Experimental’ or FX. And of course, the 520 is the 520ci Kaase motor!”

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