click above to view more high-res images of the BMW Sauber F1.08
While BMW was busy taking the wraps off the production X6 and 3-liter twin-turbo-diesel in Detroit, its Formula One team unveiled its latest race car at their headquarters in Munich, Germany. For those of you who missed the event, which was broadcast live over the internet, we've got the details for you here.
A "radical evolution" is what star designer Willy Rampf calls his latest creation, the BMW Sauber F1.08. Based on last year's successful F1.07, which took the team to second place overall in the constructors' championship (following McLaren's disqualification), the F1.08 adapts to the new regulations – loss of traction control, standardized ECU and longer-lasting transmission – while the bodywork narrows in width, coupled with an improved aerodynamic package.
BMW is hoping to compete with Ferrari and McLaren next season for checkered flags, and given its progress since taking over the Sauber team in 2006, it just might get there. Both Nick Heidfeld and Robert Kubica are staying on for a third consecutive season with the team, lending stability when many teams are switching it up for 2008.
Check out the gallery below for high-resolution images of the F1.08 launch, and pertinent excerpts from the 108-page press release after the jump.
Kimi Raikkonen and the boys at Ferrari can breathe a sigh of relief, as their championship has been formally confirmed by the FIA. The title was appealed by the incredibly sore losers at McLaren, who insisted that because of a temperature irregularity in the fuel in BMW's and Williams' cars at the season closer in Brazil, those four cars should have been disqualified, thereby catapulting McLaren's Lewis Hamilton to the championship. (Yeah, they were serious.)
Hamilton, it should be noted, stated that he didn't want to win the championship that way. And nobody else wanted him too, either. Even F1 supremo Bernie Ecclestone threatened to quit the sport if the FIA took the title away from Raikkonen and awarded it to Hamilton over the technicality.
The ruling was issued by a specially-convened panel of the FIA's International Court of Appeal, presided over by a Czech motorsport judge and three others from the United States, Greece and Portugal. The court, which heard testimonies from BMW, Williams and McLaren, convened in London instead of the FIA's headquarters in Paris due to traffic issues in the French capital.
Our take: Rules are rules, but if the FIA had stripped Raikkonen of his title, it would have been bad for him, bad for Hamilton, bad for F1 and bad for motorsports. We'll be waiting for Ron Dennis to find a way to blame us for this, too.
Go to any restaurant in Los Angeles and you're likely to find a few waiters looking for an opportunity to make it in Hollywood. Head to a major racetrack in Europe - and many other parts of the world - and you'll find dozens of aspiring drivers hoping for a shot at F1. But whereas Formula 3 used to be the one way in, various single-seat racing series have popped up in the last few years, giving more drivers the opportunity to compete, to win, and to ultimately demonstrate their aptitude behind the wheel.
Recent cases like Lewis Hamilton's notwithstanding, most drivers enter the circus with a test seat, maybe for a team further down the field in the hope of moving their way up to a competitive race seat. Since taking over Sauber, BMW's Formula One team has been performing admirably, and though its talented race drivers Robert Kubica and Nick Heidfeld, who both made their way up the ranks themselves, are staying in their seats for next season, BMW's test driver Timo Glock, fresh from his title win on the GP2 circuit, is all but signed to move to a race seat for Toyota (or possibly Williams, which gets its engines from the Japanese giant). So team principal Mario Theisen has drawn up a short list to make the leap up from the bush leagues. While it may not be as exciting as speculating on McLaren's replacement for Alonso or where he'll go next season, these selections tend to be fairly secretive - that's why we speculate - but for this seat we've got a rare glimpse into the process.
Aside from title winner Glock, GP2 gave good exposure to several other competitive drivers this season, and Theisen is considering several, including Adam Carroll, won two GP2 races this season, 2007 British F3 champ Marko Asmer, and 2006 German Formula BMW champion Christian Vietoris. Joining them on the shortlist is Nico Hulkenberg, who is managed by Schumacher's agent Wili Weber - which already tells you he's a hot shoe - and has worked his way up through A1GP where he took the title for Team Germany this year. BMW Sauber is a team known to have an eye for talent, so whoever they pick, pay attention, because you're likely to see him dicing it up for podiums and championship points in a few years from now.
With plans on the drawing board to potentially move the defunct USGP from Indianapolis to Las Vegas, BMW is ostensibly testing the waters by staging one of its popular Pit Lane Park demonstrations in Sin City this coming January.
BMW stages the public demonstrations at various grands prix and events around the world. The park features demonstrations of the team's F1 cars, a live pit lane display and a variety of hands-on experiences for racing fans. At the recent event staged at the British Grand Prix, the team brought in Nigel Mansell and Johnny Herbert who returned to the wheel of an F1 car for the fans' enjoyment.
The Vegas event, which will be located on the Gold Lot by the corner of Paradise Road and Convention Center Drive, will be held during the Consumer Electronics Show, held from January 7 to 10, 2008. At the same time as CES, Vegas is also usually host to a pornographers' convention, which, notwithstanding the wealth of electronic technology packed into a modern F1 car, may actually come closer to the obscenely ecstatic sight of the formula race cars pulling donuts and smokey burn-outs at close range.
The branded luxury trend gets even bigger and much, much younger with the BMW Sauber F1 baby seat. And what would such a baby seat be without some BMW engineering? The side bolsters move in relation to the seat height, which means the seat "grows" with the child. If only your kid's shoes did the same. It doesn't have side airbags, but it does have a belt carrier, and it's good for from 33 to 79 pounds, or 3.5 to 12 years old. Thankfully, it looks way more comfortable than an actual F1 bucket, and imagine being able to tell your friends that you got your first F1 seat when you were three.
Spectators, commentators and fans all feared the worst when BMW Sauber's star driver Robert Kubica hit the wall at the end of the hairpin at the Circuit Gilles Villeneuve on St. Helen's Island in Montreal during this year's Canadian Grand Prix. But as we all know, the Polish driver suffered only a concussion and a sprained ankle, despite the high speeds, high G's and hard impact of the crash. Now he's back in the cockpit, sticking it to everyone this side of Ferrari and McLaren, defending champions Renault included. (Thank God for carbon fiber, eh Robbie?)
The techies over at RTL, the German network that broadcasts the Formula One events, put together this three-dimensional re-creation of the crash, complete with some Matrix-style viewing-angle sweeps. The action is slowed down so you can better see what happened, which makes it all too easy to forget the enormous speeds at which the crash occurred.
Unfortunately, whoever posted it up on YouTube decided to mix in a typically poor soundtrack, but since the original was without sound anyway, offended parties can feel free to turn down the volume completely.
While its cars charge towards the head of the pack on the F1 racing circuit, BMW-Sauber has been positioning itself as the champion of demonstrations off-track. Following such shenanigans as driving on ice, and the return to the old Nurburgring Nordschleife, the team brought a couple of veterans back for demonstration drives at Silverstone.
Three-time world champion Nigel Mansell, more recently a fixture of the Grand Prix Masters series, drove Sauber's latest at the team's Pit Lane Park set up at Silverstone to coincide with this past weekend's British Grand Prix. Fellow retired driver Johnny Herbert, who won at Silverstone in '95, also had a go in the Bimmer single-seater. The drivers pulled donuts and smoky burnouts to the delight of the fans.
As you may recall, the team also gave former F1 driver Alex Zanardi another drive behind the wheel of an F1 car, and the handicapped car driver pulled off some impressive lap times, despite a minimum of preparation.
The boffins have broken down the data from BMW Sauber F1 driver Robert Kubica's crash at the Montreal Grand Prix. If the shunt itself wasn't eye-popping enough, it turns out that Kubica hit the wall nearly head on at 142.6 mph and endured a 75 G impact. And he made it out with nothing more than a slight concussion and a sprained ankle. That's what a survival cell, crash box, HANS system, helmet, and 1,000 pieces of carbon fiber, Kevlar, metal, and honeycomb can do for you when they work perfectly. In a burst of German understatement, the BMW Sauber technical director said they were "very content about the behavior of the chassis as survival cell." Throttle-by-wire is great, but we need a whole lot more of that kind of tech to trickle down ASAP.
Fun though it may be, racing is still an applied science. Perhaps this is most evident in the tech heavy F1 cars. BMW uses a very trick wind tunnel to test their Sauber F1 car in virtually all dynamic conditions to ensure that the aerodynamics give the desired result. This video has a bit of a Kubrick/2001 feel to it, but it's fascinating watching the car "drive" on this gigantic treadmill. As usual, the video does a much better job than a whole bagful of words, so check it out after the jump.
We recently made a visit to the Mercedes-Benz Classic Car Center in Irvine, California, to check out this restoration and retail facility. Located adjacent to a cluster of auto showrooms, it looks like just another modern dealership. But the cars inside are anything but modern. For starters, there's a 1954 220 Coupe out front. Once inside the building, you'll be greeted by some of the most desirable models from Mercedes' glorious past. Gullwings and Patent-Motorwagens, SLRs and Pullmen.
(Follow the jump for the rest of the story and a gallery of wallpaper-sized pics.)
A "radical evolution" is what star designer Willy Rampf calls his latest creation, the BMW Sauber F1.08. Based on last year's successful F1.07, which took the team to second place overall in the constructors' championship (following McLaren's disqualification), the F1.08 adapts to the new regulations – loss of traction control, standardized ECU and longer-lasting transmission – while the bodywork narrows in width, coupled with an improved aerodynamic package.
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