The Goodwood Festival of Speed is coming up this week, if
you haven't already guessed by our coverage here, here and here.
However, many of us haven't seen a full lap of the course, at least since last
year's event.
Enter F1 driver David Coulthard and a Mercedes
SLS AMG Black Series. Coulthard gives us the breakdown before going up the
hill in earnest, if not in anger. A helpful graphic in the corner aids in
visualization.
This year's event starts Thursday, and we'll have some boots
on the ground along with a live feed of events during the festival -- check
back often!
A Ferrari Enzo was spotted on Interstate 95 this morning.
Emergency vehicles were recovering the car after it hit the central reservation
in rush hour traffic. The damage isn’t entirely clear from the images Jalopnik have managed to gather from the accident
scene. Apparently the car’s passenger side and rear clamshell were damaged.
The damage is clearly enough that the car couldn’t be driven
away from the scene of the accident. Apparently skid marks were spotted which
stretch across the road from the on-ramp to the central reservation. It isn’t
clear whether any other cars were involved in the accident and we haven’t heard
news of any injuries.
The Ferrari Enzo gets a 6.0 litre V12 powerplant
with 660 hp and 657 Nm. All that power is routed to the back wheels so which
explains why the car is believed to have lost traction. This isn’t the worst
Enzo crash we have seen though. We are all but certain that it will get fixed
and will be back on the road straight after source: gtspirit.com by Lawrence http://www.fzrestoration.com
It’s always a sad time seeing a beautiful car treated
horribly.
We all know a lot of money can buy you the car of your
dreams, but this guy forgot to buy a set of skills to go with his beautiful red Ferrari 360 Modena. Try not to
cringe as you watch this driver encounter some over-steer then plummet the
$150,000 Ferrari over a steep embankment. When the car hits the tree line, you
hear the sound of glass shattering and the body crumpling as the Ferrari
tumbles, coming to a stop on its roof. After the crash we see the car winched
over onto its wheels and shamefully dragged onto a flatbed.
The horrible noises made as the car lands on its wheels will
make you quiver. The driver only suffered from cuts on his head and the
passenger was unharmed. The car, however, was completely totaled.
source; http://www.carbuzz.com/news/2014/6/24/Upturned-Ferrari-Modena-Will-Probably-Never-Be-Street-Worthy-Again-7721046/ by Garrett Mitchell
I recently had the opportunity to drive my Ferrari in a
highly competitive, precisely timed, serious automotive racing event. It was a
quarter mile drag strip located in the kind of place where fishin' is
an acceptable destination for a honeymoon.
Yes, ladies and gentlemen, you read that right:
I took a Ferrari 360 Modena – known for its direct handling, excellent
cornering, and precise steering – to a race track thatforbids turning. I
realize this was an unusual decision, but in my defense, turning can get very
tiresome, what with all the moving your hands.
To be clear, I didn't go to just any drag strip.
The drag strip I chose is located in the rural Southeast town of Commerce,
Georgia (motto: "World's Largest Selection of Calvin Peeing
Decals!"), home to approximately 6,500 residents and 47,000 cans of Skoal.
Seriously: this is the kind of place where the most popular items at the local
Wal-Mart are hunting rifles and pregnancy tests.
In other words: it was a very interesting night.
The evening started off around 8 p.m., when we arrived at
the drag strip for "tech inspection." If you're familiar with an
autocross, you know all about tech inspection: it involves a guy with a
clipboard – who is an automotive expert in that he also drives a
vehicle equipped with an engine – carefully perusing each car for
"violations." He pokes around your car for about 20 minutes,
examining highly important automotive qualities such as brake light sturdiness,
before announcing that your emergency flashlight battery is out. "I'm
going to let it slide this time," he says sternly. "But you
should really get it changed if you ever plan on competing at a national
level."
Well, it wasn't quite like that in Commerce. In Commerce,
the tech inspector was a middle-aged woman whose examination consisted entirely
of a) asking if I had modified the car, and b) asking if I would take a picture
of her standing next to the car. She also insisted that my helmet was out of
date, and told me that I should really get a new one. That was the real low
point of the entire evening, because I found my helmet years ago in the trunk
of a car I bought off a guy who was being deported, and I don't expect that
situation to present itself again anytime soon.
So anyway: after tech inspection, we drove into the staging
area, where I – and I use this term as a serious member of the drag racing
community – staged.
Ha ha! I'm just kidding! I have no idea what
"staging" is, or why anyone does it. But I do know, from careful
observation, that "staging" appears to be what happens when several
middle-aged men stand around a stripped-out Camaro with a roll cage and drink
beer.
What I did, instead, was wonder why the hell there weren't
any cars racing on the track. There were no noises. There was no action. What
was going on?!?
As it turned out, there was a vehicle on the
track: a medium-sized farm tractor moving up and down the quarter mile with
approximately the same urgency as a union plumber. I later learned from fellow
participants that it was there to dry the track, although no explanation
was given as to why this was needed. It hadn't rained. It hadn't even sprinkled.
My own guess is they have to drive the track every few hours because the
spectators spit out so much Skoal that it becomes dangerous for participants.
If you're one of those people who wants to skip over all the
background information and just get the facts, you're in the right place. I
mean, you missed a couple of excellent Skoal jokes. But you're in the right
place.
Here's what happened: after about an hour (an hour!), they
had finished drying the track and I got a few passes in. You'd know this if you followed me on
Twitter, where I posted one picture of the
Ferrari racing a Miata – a race I easily won due to my brilliant
driving abilities – and a second picture of the
Ferrari racing a CTS-V Wagon, a race I lost due to a combination of factors
completely beyond my control.
For those of you who dispute this claim, here's what I've
learned from other drag racers: when you do well, it's because of your own
excellent driving. But when you do poorly, it's because of the car, the
weather, the track, the tires, the fact that it didn't "hook up," the
lights, the crowd, the war in Afghanistan, asbestos, Hurricane Andrew (which
destroyed your father-in-law's swimming pool in 1992), the dot-com bubble and,
of course, President Obama, who takes the blame for a lot of things
in Commerce, Georgia.
In my case, I lost to the CTS-V because of a missed shift: I
went for third and got fifth instead. Naturally, I blame this occurrence on my
burnt-out emergency flashlight battery.
In the end, my very best time came on my first run: 13.751
seconds at 103.12 miles per hour. Interestingly, my best trap speed came at the
end of the night, on my last run, when I ran a 14.03-second quarter at 106.04
miles per hour. The variation here suggests that a) I have absolutely no idea
what the hell I'm doing, and b) I should probably never return to the
dragstrip, especially with my woefully outdated helmet.
More interesting was the local reaction to the Ferrari. Oh,
sure, there were a few people who gave it angry looks, and the announcer
referred to it as – this is true – "some sort of Italian stallion."
But most people were genuinely nice to me and eager to check out the car. One
guy in a sport bike outfit even came up to me, shook my hand, and said "You've
got balls." That was a sign of ultimate respect, especially since he
later ran a 9-second quarter mile on two wheels.
This is the dramatic aftermath of a crash involving a
£180,000 Ferrari which ploughed into parked cars with such force its wheels
fell off.
The shiny red Ferrari 458 Italia came to a stop on a kerb
after colliding with four parked cars and a house.
Miraculously, neither the young driver or any pedestrians
were hurt in the rush hour crash in Winchmore Hill, north London, but the
vehicle lost its two offside wheels.
Witness Laura Sorrell, 51, said: "The young man, I
would say he was in his 20s, clambered out through the window, and just stood
there looking at the damage.
"He was fine though - I can't believe that nobody was
hurt.
"It was such a nice day, there's no telling how many
people could have been just standing around on the street.
"Once we realised nobody was hurt, everyone was stood
around in shock."
The 202mph car, which is capable of 0-60mph in a blistering
3.4 seconds, left the road and hit a parked car before smashing into a pillar
outside a mock Tudor home.
It then knocked into two more parked cars before finally
coming to rest, without its passenger-side wheels, against a fourth.
Police and paramedics attended the scene last Friday
afternoon, but nobody was injured and the driver was not found to have
committed any offences.
Linda, who runs Sorrells Naturally beauty company, said:
"The driver was so shocked. He just stood there in disbelief.
"I hope the car wasn't his dad's, otherwise he'd be in
big trouble.
We really hope this guy opted for additional insurance.
It seems we have recently been reporting more and more
accidents involving rare classic cars and beautiful supercars. While we often
see the aftermath of these tragic crashes, we rarely get to see them unfold as
they happen. But in this video, coming directly from Canada, a camera captures
the exact moment when this beautiful Ferrari F430 – a rental from
Exotic Car Tours – swerves off the twisty road and meets the guardrail across
the highway.
Fortunately, no injuries were reported, but the Ferrari’s
front bumper looks awfully unhappy:
source: http://www.carbuzz.com/news/2014/6/17/Rental-Ferrari-Crash-Caught-on-Camera-in-Canada-7720914/
by Shali Kleinhaus
If the Ferrari 458 Italia is definitely one of the most
crashed supercars these days, than its predecessor, the F430, has to be right
after it. The Italian supercar in question has been involved in an incident in
Canada recently. The rented vehicle has been crashed into the guardrail after
its driver lost control of the wheel. The guys from Wrecked
Exotics are saying that the guy behind the wheel has sustained minor
injuries. The incident took place in Burlington, Canada.
The Ferrari F430 has been assembled in Maranello between
2004 and 2009 and it was offered, just like its successor, in two body styles,
two-seat coupe and two-seat roadster, having also a rear mid-engine and
rear-wheel drive layout. Ferrari has equipped this supercar with a 4.3 liter V8
engine which is producing a total output of 483 HP (360 kW) and 465 Nm (343
lb-ft) of torque. The 0 to 100 km/h (62 mph) sprint takes 4.4 seconds and top
speed stands at 315 km/h (196 mph). The unit can be connected to a 6-speed
manual or a 6-speed electrohydraulic manual transmission.
