Tag Archives: racing

Championship-leading plaid Porsche grabs last-minute victory in VIR IMSA round

Photo: Motul Oil

The 2021 IMSA season is coming to a close, and it’s looking increasingly like the Pfaff Motorsports Porsche 911 GT3 R has what it takes to secure the GTD championship this year. With three wins from the last four races, the team of Zacharie Robichon and Laurens Vanthoor has pushed its championship bid to a huge gap with just one race remaining in the season, the 10-hour Petit Le Mans race at Road Atlanta, going down in mid-November. It looked like the No. 16 Wright Motorsports Porsche would join the Pfaff team on the GTD podium, but were pushed down to fourth with a final lap hip-check from the Vasser-Sullivan Lexus team.

The Pfaff team had their work cut out for them on Saturday, as they had qualified fairly well, but were relegated down to 13th on the grid with a penalty for the crew between sessions. With a stout GT-only field to work through, nobody would have expected them to make the massive charge that they did. Robichon had a monster first stint and got the car up to fifth before passing off to Vanthoor. Around 11 minutes remaining in the race, the leading Turner Motorsports BMW was tipped into a spin by a GTLM-class Corvette, and the result was a flat tire and loss of a lap for the title contenders. By that point in the race, the Pfaff team had worked its way up to second on the road, and was gifted the win with the BMW’s poor luck. Vanthoor took the checkered flag by 2.755 seconds over the Paul Miller Racing Lamborghini with the Lexus rounding out the GTD podium.

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#9: Pfaff Motorsports Porsche 911 GT3R, GTD: Zacharie Robichon, Laurens Vanthoor

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Photo: IMSA

“I still don’t believe it,” Vanthoor admitted in victory lane. “This is one I’m probably happiest about because yesterday was just our mistake. A stupid mistake, but we win and lose together. Today, the guys made up for it with triple the (effort) because what got us in front was the pit stops – amazing what they did. And Zach, the overtakes (he completed) at the start and how quickly he got by and got up to the front, that’s probably those two things that gave us the race. I’m sorry what happened to [the BMW]. We were catching them, and I would’ve liked to see a battle at the end, but it went the way it went.”

Over in GTLM the WeatherTech racing Porsche 911 RSR of Kevin Estre and Cooper MacNeil could do no better than third in a three-car class, despite being easily the fastest car on the track. The factory-prepped Corvettes started the race from first and second, while MacNeil started the race in third and was mobbed at the start by the leading GTD cars. He managed to keep the car on the lead lap before handing off to Porsche factory ace Estre, who clawed the car back into contention with speed and consistency. Several bouts of contact with the grey number 4 Corvette, however, pushed the Porsche back.

Estre’s former teammate Nick Tandy, now driving for Corvette Racing, had this to say about the contact:

“Honestly, the Porsche should have won the race. But honestly, when you kind of lose your brain and start driving stupid, stuff happens. Luckily with our Corvettes, we kept them on the track and didn’t do too much damage to them.”

Harsh words from someone who should probably know what it’s like to drive a 911 RSR.

Photo: IMSA

Introducing Sir Lewis Hamilton

Illustration for article titled Introducing Sir Lewis Hamilton

Image: Mercedes-AMG F1

Following his record-equaling seventh Formula 1 world championship title taken by a huge margin across the 2020 season, UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson has pulled a few strings to get Lewis Hamilton’s name included in this year’s list of knights of the British Kingdom. Because Hamilton doesn’t count the United Kingdom as his country of residence anymore there were some concerns that he wouldn’t be eligible for a knighthood, but that was bypassed by adding him to the “Diplomatic and Overseas list”. Job done.

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According to the Daily Mail, a source told the paper that Boris had made it unequivocally clear that he wanted Lewis to be knighted this year, and a few exceptions had to be made in order to make that happen. Hamilton has been an incredibly visible sports hero in 2020 with outspoken support for Black Lives Matter, and becoming the face of the FIA’s We Race As One campaign. And that’s to say nothing of his environmental activism campaigns. Or, you know, dominating the competition.

Hamilton will be just the fourth F1 driver to be knighted, following Sir Jack Brabham, Sir Jackie Stewart, and Sir Stirling Moss. Two further F1 paddock alumnus have been knighted, however, as both Sir Frank Williams and Sir Patrick Head have received the honorary. Lewis, however, will be the first contemporary racer to be on the grid with the title to his name. Hamilton received his MBE after winning his first championship in 2008.

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This means he gets to fight crime with Excalibur, right? Does he have to live at Camelot? Does he have to fight the queen? I don’t know, I’m not British. Someone clarify this for me, please.

Anyway, congratulations to Lewis. I know this is a great honor, even if I don’t exactly know what it means to be a knight. He’ll always be my hero.

Porsche Suffers Disaster In IMSA Charlotte Roval Sprint Race

It’s been said before, but it bears repeating; 2020 is just a horrible year to be a Porsche fan when it comes to racing. Whether it be the balance of performance jerking the team around, or just a long and frustrating series of bad luck and mistakes, the team is having its worst sports car racing year in a long damn time. That unlucky streak continued on Saturday night as the IMSA series GTLM class headlined a late night rain race at Charlotte Motor Speedway, running on the road-course configuration known as the NASCAR Roval. Both Porsche 911 RSRs had crashed badly enough to seek retirement in the first 20 minutes of the waterlogged race.

The bowl of a circuit saw rain fall all day, and the NASCAR race which had run earlier in the day was equally difficult to navigate, with cars spinning and crashing all up and down the field. Porsche saw both the #911 and the #912 car crash out before either of them pitted for a driver change in the relatively short 2-hour sprint race.

Qualifying was an up and down affair for Porsche on Friday, with Fred Makowiecki putting the car on the outside pole in second place. The Prototype classes were absent from this weekend’s running, giving Porsche the second overall starting position. Laurens Vanthoor, however, crashed his 911 RSR in qualifying with 10 minutes remaining in the wet session, tearing up the car’s rear suspension without setting a quick time. He was therefore forced to start the race from sixth in the six-car GTLM field after the team worked tirelessly to get the car repaired for race day.

Within minutes of each other, Vanthoor lost control of his #912 Porsche as he made contact with the barrier in the track’s infield section, and Fred Mako suffered a similar fate. Both cars limped back to pit lane, and both were ultimately retired with damage. Vanthoor was retired immediately after his lap-four incident, but Mako was sent back out to turn a few more laps under caution before he made the call that the car was too difficult to drive in its damaged state and it was pulled from the race after eight laps of running.

Corvette ended up winning the race, the team’s sixth race win of the 2020 season. The yellow and black team from Bowling Green, Kentucky holds a substantial points lead going into next weekend’s Petit Le Mans, and it is very likely that it will take the championship. Porsche, meanwhile, doesn’t have a snowball’s chance in hell of recovering enough points to mount any kind of recovery effort. All Porsche can hope for is to string together enough luck to win a race before the IMSA team effort is disbanded at the end of this season.

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TikTok Is Sponsoring The Coolest Looking Car In The NASCAR Xfinity Field

Illustration for article titled TikTok Is Sponsoring The Coolest Looking Car In The NASCAR Xfinity Field

Image: TikTok

Beginning at the Talladega race on Oct. 3, 2020, TikTok will be officially sponsoring a NASCAR Xfinity Series team. Driver Ryan Vargas will pilot the No. 6 machine for the final six races of the year, and even if he doesn’t finish at the front of the field, he does have one big advantage: His car looks damn good.

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TikTok has been at the forefront of international news lately, as the US Justice Department looks to ban the program from app stores. Basically, TikTok is a platform for amateur video sharing popular among teens and younger audiences. It’s become a hot topic lately because TikTok is owned by Chinese company ByteDance, which has sparked the fear that the app is farming data on its users.

Whatever your feelings on the TikTok debate, the app filled the short video market left by the demise of Vine, and it’s become a popular social media site with an estimated 800 million users (that’s about 500 million more than Twitter). Securing it as a sponsor is a pretty big deal for NASCAR, which has struggled to attract younger audiences.

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And it’s a big deal for 20-year-old driver Ryan Vargas. He’s a graduate of both the Drive for Diversity and NASCAR Next programs, but he’s he hasn’t had much luck trying to cobble together a stock car racing program despite a successful 2018 season in the NASCAR K&N Pro Series East (now known as the ARCA Menards Series East). But he was only able to secure three of 2019’s 33 Xfinity Series races.

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With three races already under his belt in 2020, Vargas will have a great opportunity to showcase his skills in a well-sponsored car. He has a best finish of 13th despite only racing sporadically, so he has what it takes to race. He’s just needed a consistent platform on which to show what he can do.

The sponsorship is part of TikTok’s Latinx Heritage Month celebrations, which looks to highlight its content creators that are able to trace their roots back to Latin America. Vargas, who has a 40,000 user following on the site, qualifies as one of those creators. TikTok is also seeking to use its platform to highlight Vargas’ story.

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Vargas was born with craniosynostosis, a condition in which a baby’s skull fuses together too quickly, before the brain has had an opportunity to fully develop. According to Vargas, TikTok has allowed him to open up on social media and tell his story.

“If you can take a moment to joke about yourself or joke about what you do, it brings you down to earth a little more and helps you relate with those who are watching,” he said.

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Vargas will contest races at Talladega, the Charlotte ROVAL, Kansas, Texas, Martinsville, and Phoenix.

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Here Are the Final Eight Rows of the 2020 Indy 500 Starting Grid

Illustration for article titled Here Are the Final Eight Rows of the 2020 Indy 500 Starting Grid
Photo: Chris Graythen (Getty Images)

Today marked the first day of qualifying for the 2020 Indianapolis 500. If you’ve been following along, Saturday qualifying determines the starting position of most of the grid—the final eight rows, or starting positions 10 through 33. On Sunday, we’ll see positions one through nine settled. Here’s what we can expect from the starting grid so far.

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The Andretti team absolutely dominated in qualifying, with four of its six drivers securing the top four positions on their first qualifying attempts. Chevrolet cars—including, surprisingly, the historically dominant Team Penske—struggled more than their Honda counterparts, with several of the Indy 500’s past champions unable to pull themselves out of the 20s.

Drivers in Fast Nine Shootout

Tomorrow, the nine fastest drivers from Saturday’s session will hit the track from 3-5pm Eastern to determine their starting lineup. Here’s the qualifying order, which is determined by Saturday’s speeds (from slowest to fastest):

1. Takuma Sato – 230.792 mph
2. Graham Rahal – 230.822 mph
3. Alex Palou – 231.034 mph
4. Rinus Veekay – 231.115 mph
5. Scott Dixon – 231.155 mph
6. James Hinchcliffe – 231.195 mph
7. Alexander Rossi – 231.268 mph
8. Ryan Hunter-Reay – 231.330 mph
9. Marco Andretti – 231.351 mph

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Starting Grid So Far

Row 4: Colton Herta, Marcus Ericsson, Spencer Pigot
Row 5: Josef Newgarden, Felix Rosenqvist, Patricio O’Ward
Row 6: Ed Carpenter, Zach Veach, Conor Daly
Row 7: Santino Ferrucci, Jack Harvey, Oliver Askew
Row 8: Will Power, Tony Kanaan, Dalton Kellett
Row 9: Simon Pagenaud, Fernando Alonso, James Davison
Row 10: Helio Castroneves, Charlie Kimball, Max Chilton
Row 11: Sage Karam, J.R. Hildebrand, Ben Hanley

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The Indy 500 Will Allow In 117,000 Spectators—Almost As Many Americans Killed By Coronavirus

Illustration for article titled The Indy 500 Will Allow In 117,000 Spectators—Almost As Many Americans Killed By Coronavirus

Image: Indianapolis Motor Speedway

On August 23, the delayed 104th running of the Indy 500 will finally happen. The Indianapolis Motor Speedway has decided that it will allow race fans to buy tickets and attend the race, but will limit entrance to half of the track’s 235,000 person capacity. How fitting that the track will allow 117,500 people in the gates to hang out with each other in the same place for the whole day when we’re in the middle of a pandemic that has taken the lives of only slightly more Americans.

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The track hasn’t yet detailed its plan to allegedly keep race fans safe when they attend this huge mass gathering, but I can bet that it’s going to be meaningless horseshit. Sure, the track can likely cover its ass with “safety measures” like requiring masks and social distancing. If you think any of the people attending this race in Indianapolis on a hot August day are going to wear face coverings all day, you’re fooling yourself. And social distancing is literally going to be impossible at this track, even at half capacity.

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I have, in the past, attended racing events at IMS, sitting both in the “tower terrace” infield grandstands along the main straight, as well as the turn 2 “G” grandstands. In either instance, I was seated shoulder to shoulder with my fellow race-goers, packed in like sardines in a can. The metal bleacher seats are delineated only by a number on the seatback, approximately two to two and a half feet apart. If capacity is halved, you would be lucky to have a couple of feet of “social distance” between you and the person sitting next to you. Even less if someone is sitting directly in front or directly behind you.

Illustration for article titled The Indy 500 Will Allow In 117,000 Spectators—Almost As Many Americans Killed By Coronavirus

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This Horrifying Fortnite Speaker Will Haunt Your Dreams for $12

Fortnite Bitty Boomers Beef Boss Wireless Bluetooth Speaker

And that’s to say nothing of the viral mess that public restrooms, concessions stands, and narrow corridors will become with a hundred and seventeen fucking thousand people in the Speedway.

As of this writing, Indiana has seen just over 42,000 cases of COVID-19 within its borders, and a mere 2553 deaths. But imagine what six-figure attendance to Speedway, Ind. might do to those figures. All of the travel involved, all of the people coming into contact with each other, and all of the asymptomatic virus carriers that may be in the crowd.

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Singing Back Home Again. Shouting to each other. Drinking. Wolfing down a famous tenderloin sandwich. Cheering. For several hours.

If the last few days and a new record high of infected Americans haven’t made it clear, we aren’t over the hump on this horrifying disease yet. States that had re-opened everything are shutting back down, my state of Nevada just pushed a blanket No Shirt, No Shoes, No Mask, No Service requirement into effect for everyone in a public space, and Florida just broke its case record by thousands with 8,942 new diagnoses on Thursday. It’s not over. Please don’t risk your life, or countless others, with stupidity.

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The Indianapolis 500 is one of the few remaining events left on my automotive bucket list, and I’d made plans last December to attend the race this year. When it was postponed a few months ago I resigned myself to admitting that this year just wouldn’t be my year, and even though tickets are available for purchase again, there’s no chance in hell I’m going to be buying one. Stay home, stay safe, and for fuck’s sake, wear a mask.

Lemons Is Doing More To Advance Electric Racing Than Le Mans

Illustration for article titled Lemons Is Doing More To Advance Electric Racing Than Le Mans

Screenshot: 24 Hours of Lemons

A little over a year ago the 24 Hours of Lemons introduced a $50,000 prize for the first team to win one of the series’ many races on full electric power. In order to make such a thing even remotely possible, the series exempted the cost of EV powertrains from its series-wide $500 budget cap. Thus far only two teams have even attempted to race EVs in Lemons, but progress is being made and it gives me all kinds of fuzzy feelings inside.

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The better of the two electric lemons is this Plymouth Horizon TC3/Dodge Omni 024-based Jet Electrica 007 operated by Team Duff Beer. The team first ran this car with some deep-cycle RV batteries chucked in the back hatch of the car, hot-swapping batteries during the race.

It worked, but not great. Since then the team has ditched the RV batteries for a set of Chevrolet Volt batteries on custom built swappable racks. Of course, the swap still requires an engine hoist to move one out and move the other in, so it’s not exactly a quick proposition.

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It doesn’t seem like Team Duff Beer is going to be winning that big cash prize any time soon, as it isn’t anywhere close to winning a Lemons race overall. If the team can pump up the power output a bit and make battery swaps quicker and easier than filling up a front running gas car then it might have a chance. Maybe.

I’ve done a little bit of thinking about this and I think I’ve come up with a good solution without resorting to a big dollar build. Get a base car that is cheap, something relatively lightweight and sporty with plenty of aftermarket support and knowhow, like perhaps a Toyota Celica or an early 1990s Honda Civic. Grab the CVT and integral electric motor from a XW20 Toyota Prius from the junkyard for a bill or two. That motor is good for 67 horsepower and 295 lb-ft of torque, which is plenty for a winning Lemons car. Build at least three swappable racks of LiPo batteries generally used for RC planes and the like. Build a swapping mechanism that allows these racks to slide into the car like cartridges and facilitate a sub-30 second refill.

It isn’t going to be easy to rise to the $50,000 challenge, but if anyone is going to figure out how to make an electric racing series work on a grassroots level, it’s going to be the ridiculous geniuses in the Lemons paddock. This is an excellent start. 

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This Early Formula Drift Porsche 993 Is Shredding Tires In My Dreams

I didn’t expect when I went to sleep last night to wake up with a nostalgia for 2008, but somehow—thanks to this incredible Porsche drift car—that’s exactly what happened. Back then I was still in college and was consuming possibly even more automotive media than I do now, and I was absolutely enamored with Formula Drift and Tyler McQuarrie’s JIC-Magic Hankook Porsche 993 GT2 drift car. Last night it was doing delicate pirouettes in my dreams.

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This all started a few days ago when pro-drifter-turned-2019-IMSA-GS-Champion Tyler McQuarrie posted about his old Porsche on Instagram. He was prompted to do so because an account called Porsche Club Russia ripped a Speedhunters video off of YouTube and posted it to IG. It’s weird how the world works, we’re all intertwined. The actions of a Russian content aggregator clickfarm trickled down to affect my dreams last night and inspired this here post.

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McQuarrie never won a round of the Formula D in this car, but he knew from the outset that it could have been a real contender. Unfortunately the turbocharged 3.8-liter flat six slung out back kept eating valve springs through the season. If it didn’t eat its engine, the Porsche was fast and easily dialed, taking a podium at the revered Englishtown round that year. Because it had a ton of weight slung out back the team installed a massive fuel cell which they could fill or empty depending on how McQuarrie wanted the car to handle. That’s genius, if I’m quite honest.

In the Instagram thread Tyler mentions that this video was the first time he’d ever driven the car, and knew it had potential. Allegedly the car was built from a real Porsche 993 GT2. In 2008 that was just a used race car from two generations of 911 ago, and could be had for relatively little money. These days a 993 GT2 can bring close to a million dollars.

Sadly the JIC-Magic car was lost to time and was probably restored back to whatever it was before it began drifting. It’s likely sitting in some private Porsche collection somewhere in a climate controlled bubble, dreaming, just like me, of its former 315mm section width Hankook-melting glory.

It’s a shame that it’s gone, but it will always be remembered.