Ford v Ferrari

A new blockbuster is coming the 15th November, it's called "Ford v Ferrari". It represents the Hollywood's reprise of the famous story about the failed acquisition of Ferrari company by Ford and what happened after.

In the mid 60 Ford Motor Company wanted to be more competitive and successful in racing, mainly for advertising reasons. Their first idea was to acquire someone already successful in that field and the most successful car manufacturer in that period was, Ferrari. Negotiations went well until the very end when, Enzo Ferrari, with his distinctive violet ink pen wrote this famous note on the final contract "No, non ci siamo!" ("no, that's not right!"). Key point was the control of the racing operations, that Ford wanted to keep in their hands. After this abrupt end, Henry Ford II decided to have his "revenge" on Ferrari, beating him on the track and in particular in the most famous race at that time, the 24 hour of Le Mans. To do that, they decided to develop from scratch a new car that will then become an icon, the Ford GT40. The film tells the story of the development and the success of the car through the main characters involved, Carroll Shelby (interpreted by Matt Damon) and engineer/driver Ken Miles (interpreted by Christian Bale).

If you want to know something more about this chapter in the history of motorsport you can also watch the documentary "The 24 Hour War". If you have Amazon Prime Video you can stream it or you can also buy it from the producer website.

Motorsport Easter wrap up.

Today was Easter, but it was also a Sunday full of motorsport. Mixed feelings on my side as Ferrari finally came back to the podium in China but both the Audi R18 went out in the opening race of WEC.

About the F1 race we saw another demonstration of how much Mercedes in this moment has another pace. Even a very bad start of Rosberg didn't prevent the Silver Arrows to complete another 1-2. It looks like the 1988 season when McLaren took all the races but one (the famous Ferrari's win in Monza after Enzo's death). Apart that worth to mention are a revitalized Alonso with a very aggressive start and another race where Ricciardo was in front of his three-time-crowned teammate. For the first time in a lot of years we can see Vettel against a teammate with no restriction and the results are not encouraging for the German.

If the today's F1 race was not so exciting you for sure were entertained watching Easter's touring cars races. FIA WEC (World Endurance Championship) 6h of Silverstone and Blancpain Sprint Series at Nogaro were for sure very nice to watch (unfortunately not so easy, in Italy at least).

Weather was a key factor in both events but if we had a domination by the Audis in the Sprint Series (1-2-3 by Audi R8) we cannot say the same for the endurance one.

It was the first time the three big Le Mans contenders (Audi, Porsche, Toyota) could fight in an official race.

Things went delightful well for the japanese as their 1000hp monster gained the first two places at the end of the race. The TS040 also gained the pole position on Saturday. As the first race of the season is very promising.

A mixed feeling instead for the Porsche team. A solid third place with one car (the one driven also by Mark Webber) and a lot of problems on the other one that in the end was retired. They are a very young team and as first approach to the endurance after 15 years is not so bad.

An horrible weekend for Audi. Both cars crashed out and they were not able to came back. But the pace was good until they were in so probably was just one of those days.

Next event will be the 6 Hours of Spa-Francorchamps. That should be something.

Bonus: in the links below you can find also a channel with the last races from BTCC (British Touring Car Championship).

Some useful links:

http://www.fiawec.com/

http://blancpain-gt-series.com/

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC_KT-Lo3FujYnxo9IqLBz-w

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCypG1lOzpJc6SA18LytoYFg

Racing Legends

Another very good piece of automotive television from BBC. Racing Legends is a small series of three episodes where a famous Englishman (and a petrolhead) interview an icon of English motorsport.

In the first episode well-known actor Patrick Stewart meets an hero of his youth: Sir Stirling Moss. In the second top chef James Martin share the life of another icon of Formula 1, three times world champion Jackie Stewart. The last episode is a little bit different. Chris Hoy, six times Olympic champion, try to re-live the story of the most successful English rally driver, Colin McRae, that died in 2007 in an helicopter accident.

In all episodes great cars from the stories of these legends come back in life through the hands of the "interviewers". All of them are truly inspiring and very worth of watching.

You can find all the episodes on the "torrent network" or at these link on youtube (until they will be removed by BBC): Stirling Moss, Jackie Stewart, Colin Mcrae.

LaFerrari.

It cannot be any other post today.

Here you can find an interesting comparison between LaFerrari and the other queen of Geneva, the McLaren P1.

Dedicated website for the new Maranello's beast http://www.laferrari.com/.

The first car in Antarctica

Nice story: the first car in Antarctic region was...a beetle!

Read the full story here. Thanks to Jalopnik.

Sad year.

What a crazy town...

Traffic in Ho Chi Minh City.