Autoblog

You've just dropped several hundred on a pair of tickets to a grand prix, and hundreds more on flights, a hotel room and team paraphernalia. You're not about to watch the race through any ordinary binoculars, are you? William Optics (no relation to Williams F1) is betting that you wouldn't, and has teamed up with Ferrari to produce the latest piece of Prancing Horse merchandise: the Ferrari Visio binoculars.

The high-gloss red and carbon-fiber casing houses 8x25 lenses in a compact and lightweight 290g folding package, and comes complete with neck strap and cordura nylon carrying case. All yours for $100.

This isn't the first time Ferrari has licensed binoculars, which seems like a more fitting exercise than Ferrari skis or computers. A previous arrangement with Olympus also produced binoculars as well as a digital camera.

[Source: Luxurylaunches]

Finally, someone's fighting back against the fleecing of the general populace. Famous for liking things big, Texas lawmakers have laid the smackdown on red light and speed cameras in a large manner. HB.922 states "A municipality may not implement or operate an automated traffic control system with respect to a highway under its jurisdiction," which means that cameras, automated radar or laser, or anything else designed to snag an image of a car, driver, or license plate and record its speed is now forbidden. The even larger racket of red-light cameras have had the brakes applied by HB.1052, which requires giving motorists notice of the devices at least 100 feet out.

These bills have passed through the legislature and are awaiting Governor Rick Perry's inscription. If the measures do make it into law, we hope that other states follow suit. Ticketing egregious speeders and actual red-light scofflaws is one thing, but the systems have been calibrated in a cynical manner to generate loads of revenue (and kickbacks) for the companies that sell and administrate the systems for municipalities. Rather than keeping people safe, random ticketing amounts to a tax, and that really sticks in our craw. We're pleased beyond words that Texas has taken up the motorists' cause, and we hope that the new legislation can stand as a precedent.

Thanks for the tip, Dylan!

[Source: caradvice]

As if Ferrari needed any help promoting its brand, they've gone and hired Dany Bahar. During his tenure at Red Bull, the intrepid Turk transformed the energy drink company from a simple sponsor into team owners, first acquiring Red Bull Racing from Ford when Jaguar's F1 team went bust, then going in on an unprecedented second team – Scuderia Toro Rosso – and even spearheading Toyota's entry into NASCAR in a team owned by... you guessed it, Red Bull. Bahar also orchestrated the deal that brought Ferrari power to Red Bull last season and to STR for 2007.

Bahar left Red Bull way back in February, and it didn't take long before the rumors of his defection to Maranello started flying around like a club-going teenager jacked up on taurine. Although the speculation initially indicated that Bahar would assume a role at the Scuderia, Ferrari announced that he'd be put in charge of a new department that will operate alongside the racing team and road-car divisions, and report directly to the CEO.

With the construction of the Ferrari World theme park already under way, the company's merchandizing efforts already seem to be at full tilt. It'll be interesting, therefore, to see what new direction Bahar takes the brand.

[Source: Italiaspeed]

Whoa, they built a highway through a cranberry bog? Uh, no. Lowell Massachusetts is in the north central part of the state, miles removed from the bogs of the Cape. The orange hue that coated route 495's northbound lane did make for a colorful nighttime drive, however messy it ended up being. A tractor trailer carrying dye intended for mulch deposited some of its cargo on the highway after the load shifted.

The dye, colored with iron oxide, is generally considered harmless, and a local car wash ended up doing a booming business cleaning the orange schmutz from afflicted cars. The only danger from the spill seemed to be some obscuring of lane markings over the heaviest stretch of the roughly three miles the spill eventually occupied. Not that lane markings mean much to drivers here in Massachusetts, anyway, so that's a non-hazard. Nobody has been cited in the incident, which seems to have been mainly harmless. Some cars got messy, 495 now has a splash of color, and nobody got hurt. There is an insurance hotline to call for drivers affected, though we wonder how many car washes they're willing to pay for. Any residual dye will be gone after Thursday's forecast snow, we're sure.


[Source: Lowell Sun via Carscoop]

The last racing seat has finally been confirmed for the 2007 Formual One season, as Scott Speed stays on with Scuderia Toro Rosso, Red Bull's back-marker B-team once known as Minardi. Lead by former F1 driver Gerhard Berger, Toro Rosso seemed to have been playing a twisted little game of waiting as long as possible to make the announcement, finally tipping their hand at the bottom of a testing session press release to ensure it gets the least attention possible.

While Speed remains the only American driver in F1, other countries are well represented. British fans have four drivers on the grid to support, plus two test drivers. While Takuma Sato remains the only Japanese driver on the grid, Nippon-backed teams Toyota, Williams and Super Aguri (with the notable exception of Honda) have stacked their testing rosters with four more Japanese pilots. Four German testers join four drivers in the post-Schumacher era. Italy has four on the grid and another in the garage. Two drivers and two testers compete for the attention of Brazilian fans. Even the Dutch are back with one driver and two testers.

With the unstartling revelation, the full grid for the 2007 Formula One season is now confirmed, as every other team has already announced its driver line-up (save for Toro Rosso's test drivers).

Follow the jump for the full roster.

[Source: GrandPrix.com]

If you're looking for the ultimate vacation and have the cash to spend, look no further than Red Travel. The stuff-that-dreams-are-made-of tour operator based in Turin specializes in putting together vacation packages that put you behind the wheel of a Ferrari to drive along the Italian countryside, with a variety of options to suit your taste.

Itineraries range from one day to eight, hitting such locations as Rome, Florence, Maranello, Sicily, Venice and Lake Como. You can opt for more countryside or more metropolitan destinations and the packages are completely flexible according to your specifications, even including trips outside Italy to London, Barcelona, Monte Carlo... the open road's the limit. Your own personal concierge will even follow (or forge ahead) by GPS with your bags.

Red Travel's fleet isn't made up of older machinery, either. Their garage is stocked with F430s (coupe and roadster), the brand-new 599 GTB Fiorano and the four-seat 612 Scaglietti. It's by no means a cheap way to travel, but you'd be hard-pressed to find a more memorable one. A four-day trip for two in a Ferrari from Rome to Siena and back runs Є4300 each (approximately $5,700), plus a deposit on the car of Є15,000 which you get back when you return the car intact.

[Source: Red Travel via Luxist]

With the new Saturn Vue crossover utility vehicle due to hit showrooms soon, GM's not wasting a moment: they're hard at work on the Red Line performance version. The intrepid paparazzi at KGP caught this thinly-disguised test mule driving around Detroit.

The shots reveal that the Red Line will get a much more aggressive front end than the standard Vue, with bigger air intakes and integrated fog lamps like on the Saturn Sky roadster, suggesting this could become a new design element for hotter Saturns. You'll also be able to tell the Red Line version from the ordinary Vue by the mesh grille inserts and dual exhaust pipes.

The new Vue Red Line ditches the Honda-sourced engine of its predecessor in favor of GM's latest sophisticated 250-hp VVT DOHC 3.6-liter V6 driving through the General's Hydra-Matic six-speed auto box. A five-speed stick and all-wheel-drive will also be available. That should make for a pretty hot little package from the brand that not long ago was anything but.

[Source: Winding Road]

The world of motorsports was watching when Sebastien Bourdais got back behind the wheel of an F1 car on Thursday at the Jerez test track, and managed to get within spitting distance of Scott Speed's lap times in the same Red Bull car.

The reigning champ of Champ Cars, Sebastien Bourdais is an irrefutably talented driver. He's got three Champ Car titles under his belt, along with the Formula 3000 championship from 2002 and the French Formula 3 title from 1999. Bourdais is a winner, plain and simple. But despite its stature as the pinnacle of motorsports, supposedly flaunting the best drivers in racing, Formula One has been missing out on Bourdais.

Thursday's test was not the French driver's first time behind the wheel of an F1 car. In 2002 he tested for Arrows and for Renault. Arrows didn't pan out, and Renault missed the opportunity when Flavio Briatore insisted that Bourdais sign an additional personal management contract with him if he wanted to join the team. More recently BMW failed to snatch him up as well.

As a French driver who made his name in American racing, Bourdais could bring with him audiences from both countries; convenient for F1, since it's has been lagging in popularity in both France and the US. Several leading teams (McLaren and Renault, we're looking at you) have delved straight into the feeder series to fill race seats for next season, while Bourdais returns to dominate in Champ Cars for yet another season. F1 chief Bernie Ecclestone, being the shrewd operator he is, could do worse than to recognize the talent they're missing out on and make some suggestions to team principals lest a talent like Bourdais go to waste in a dying series.

[Source: GrandPrix.com]