September 24, 2013

Massa Leaves Ferrari, Raikkonen Takes His Place

And so the cards begin to shuffle as they always do when a top driver vacates a seat in Formula One. As Mark Webber prepares to leave the sport and swap his Red Bull for a Porsche at Le Mans, Daniel Ricciardo replaces him. As the dominos tumble along through the top teams, Kimi Raikkonen who was looking for a move to Red Bull from Lotus now will don the prancing horse logo once more. This of course leaves Ferrari’s Massa without a drive.

Filipe Massa said to fans “From 2014 i will no longer be driving for Ferrari. I would like to thank the team for all the victories and incredible moments experienced together. Thank you also to my wife and all of my family, to my fans and all my Sponsors. From each one of you I have always received a great support! Right now I want to push as hard as possible with Ferrari for the remaining 7 races. For next year, I want to find a team that can give me a competitive car to win many more races and challenge for the Championship which remains my greatest objective! Thank you all.”

Kimi returns to Ferrari after having his previous contract with them unceremoniously terminated early. Is this Ferrari admitting they were wrong? The key questions are now who will take Raikkonen’s place at Lotus and where will Felipe Massa end up?

Production Porsche 918 Spyder Smashes Nürburgring Lap Record

Performance cars are not going anywhere. The green party may want them banished, the government them out of their cities and tax man their owners money, but supercars will not die out. They will simply evolve. Making the environmental changes work to its advantage, the hybrid Porsche 918 Spyder has been shown in its full production ready state at Frankfurt for the first time.

Powered by a 4.8 litre V8 and two electric motors the total output for this new breed is 875BHP. Constructed predominately of carbon fibre, the 918 has just become the first road legal car to lap the Nürburgring in under 7 minutes. Clocking in at 6 minutes and 57 seconds it is a full 14 seconds faster than the previous record holder showing the performance benefit of its hybrid system. Couple all of these impressive figures with a 214MPH top speed and 0-62MPH time of just 2.8 seconds and all of a sudden that £657,400 price tag doesn’t seem all that steep.