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Ferrari, BMW lend expertise to Olympic bobsled, skeleton, luge

LONDON — There are plenty of reasons why the sport of bobsleigh is sometimes referred to as Formula One on ice, but few as obvious as Italy's World Cup sleds. Resplendent in Ferrari red, and with a set of team sponsor Pirelli's P-Zero tyres painted on the sides, they are even liveried to look like racing cars. Ferrari, Formula One's most glamorous and successful team, have worked with the Italian federation, whose sleds run without sponsor branding at the Olympics, since 2010 and in the run-up to next month's Pyeongchang Winter Games. Former rival BMW, title sponsor of the World Cup, has long partnered the U.S. bobsleigh team, while McLaren teamed up with Britain's bob and skeleton athletes for the 2014 Sochi Games in Russia. "There's always the link between the Formula One companies, or any motor company, and skeleton and bobsleigh," says Rachel Blackburn, the engineer who has been involved in Britain's skeleton program since 2006 and who used to work for McLaren. "There's the Ferrari sleds and the BMW sleds ... when we were at McLaren it kind of made a good story," she told Reuters by telephone from her home in Dubai. That somewhat manufactured rivalry has died down in the years since Sochi, with McLaren no longer involved and Ferrari's presence low key. But the worlds of grand prix motor racing and sliding sports still have plenty in common. Bobsled, luge and skeleton are among the fastest of Olympic sports, with bobsleds reaching speeds over 90 mph. Drivers are subjected to gut-wrenching G-forces, and crashes can be fatal. And then there is the ongoing debate about cost controls, the direction of future rules, preserving a level playing field and obsessive secrecy — all endlessly recurring themes in Formula One. 80 mph on a tea tray Blackburn said skeleton, where riders hit 80 mph on what has glibly been compared to an oversized tea-tray, sits somewhere between Americas Cup yachts and Formula One cars in terms of speed and aerodynamics. "Applied engineering is far more interesting than the pure stuff, so when its applied to something that's fun and exciting it does make it a lot easier to solve problems," she said. "There is the Americas Cup, sailing, Formula One and the high speed ice sports as well. It's the same concept.

VW CEO Winterkorn happy with rebounding Seat, Skoda

Martin Winterkorn is a happy man: Volkswagen is putting up big numbers in North America, its latest field of dreams, Audi, is breaking records every month, there are exciting cars in the pipeline - from Bugatti down to the XL1, Porsche's digestion continues, and now Skoda and especially Seat are turning in no-questions performance.
It seems Skoda has been on the ups for years, making the most of keen pricing and modern redesigns of the chassis and tech it gets handed down from big brothers VW and Audi. Winterkorn predicts the Czech brand will just about double its 2010 sales by 2018, going from 762,000 to 1.5 million.
Seat, on the other hand, wasn't just on the hotseat a year-and-a-half ago, phrases like "uncertain future" - code for "possible demise" - were rumbling in the background. A new CEO was brought in, new money and new models were thrown against the wall, and the efforts have stuck. The Spanish brand has hit three strong chords with Winterkorn, with increased sales, strong performance in China and anticipated models due. If this keeps up there won't be much left for him to do but, a la Alexander the Great, break down and cry with no worlds left to conquer.

McLaren's new hybrid sports car caught in fresh spy photos

Our spies caught McLaren testing its upcoming hybrid sports car on the street, catching it from just about every angle. Unofficially dubbed the HPH (for High Performance Hybrid), the Unfortunately, it didn't tell us anything we hadn't heard before. Earlier this month, McLaren released a couple of photos of a lightly camouflaged test car that gave us our best look to date at the new hybrid undergoing development, but the photos provided Monday are far more numerous and detailed.  Despite using a new carbon fiber passenger cell and a hybrid V6 engine, the new sports car looks a whole lot like the outgoing McLaren Sports Series models (570S, 620R, et al). The headlights are a very similar shape, particularly with the similar headlights, radiator intake locations and roofline. The roof almost looks unchanged, down to its flying buttress sections. There are differences, though. It looks like a lot of the lower grille area at the front has been blocked off. The headlights look more sunken in, a bit like on the Super Series 720S. The radiator intakes are more open. And at the back, the exhaust now juts out high up in the grille between the taillights. Those taillights have much less of an arc to them, and a different illumination pattern. The new hybrid McLaren will be revealed in the first half of 2021. It will have a V6 engine, reportedly twin-turbocharged, and McLaren's CEO says it will have "an all-electric range capable of covering most urban journeys." Reports suggest a range of 21 miles. This of course suggests it will be a plug-in hybrid. It's expected to make more than 570 horsepower combined, too. As for the Sports Series the hybrid is replacing, the last examples will be the 620R special edition cars. Related Video: