2023 Mclaren Artura on 2040-cars

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2015 Spanish F1 Grand Prix makes its Deutsche mark

The first race of the European Formula One season inaugurates the second phase of the Championship. Teams overhaul their cars with the big updates they've been working on since Australia, and at the end of The Battle of Spain we find out how the positions on the field have changed. Mercedes-AMG Petronas driver Nico Rosberg brought a big update to his psychology, straight-up beating teammate Lewis Hamilton to take his first pole position of the season. Mercedes owns the front row and Ferrari maintains its status as primary challenger, Sebastian Vettel lining up in third. Williams proved it's been hitting the books to do better in class, though, Valtteri Bottas slotting into fourth. And Toro Rosso's visit to a track that rewards strong aero rewarded them with the best team grid position since the Italian Grand Prix in 2008: Carlos Sainz secured fifth, ahead of Max Verstappen in sixth. Kimi Raikkonen's bout of Saturday woes – it seems the Finn is always handicapped by lots of tiny issues – continued in Barcelona with one of his sets of prime tires getting cooked by malfunctioning tire warmers. He recovered well enough to take seventh on the grid, but he's got some strong competition ahead of him. He led three other drivers in the Continuous Issues department, Daniil Kvyat unable to wrestle his Infiniti Red Bull Racing higher than eighth, Williams driver Felipe Massa getting it wrong in Turn 3 to fall five places behind his teammate Bottas, and Daniel Ricciardo in the second Red Bull enduring another engine change and sloppy car behavior to get tenth. And while it turned out to be a steady race a little rough around the edges, the positions on the battlefield just might have changed. A little. Of the 66 laps in the race we might have seen Rosberg for three of them – maybe. The German got a smashing start, had a clear lead into Turn 1, and after that we checked in occasionally during his two pit stops and again at the checkered flag. He owned the entire weekend the way we're used to seeing his teammate do, and the cameras left him alone to run his race. No one got within seven seconds of him during the first third, and as the pit stop strategies played out that cushion grew. He finished seventeen seconds ahead of Hamilton, and 45 seconds ahead of third-placed Vettel. Hamilton, on the back foot all three days, stumbled out of the gate.

McLaren previews P1 GTR concept ahead of Pebble Beach debut

McLaren, Ferrari and Porsche have all come out with their hybrid-powered hypercars, vehicles that boast the bleeding edge of what is possible with today's road-car technology. The next step, at least in the case of McLaren and Ferrari, is to push that bleeding edge just a hair further, with even faster, more focused versions of the P1 and LaFerrari. At the 2014 Pebble Beach Concours d'Elegance, McLaren will be the first to give us a glimpse of that boundary-pushing machine. The British automaker has announced that the P1 GTR Design Concept will make its global debut smack dab in the middle of Monterey's legendary car week, with the veil lifting on Friday, August 15 at 6:00 PM EST. McLaren doesn't go into many specifics here, simply calling the P1 GTR a track-focused variant of the P1, which we kind of already knew. Based on what we can see from the lone teaser sketch, the new model will have a much more dramatic aerodynamic presence than the street model, with a massive rear wing and a huge rear diffuser. Sandwiched between those two items are a pair of exhaust tips that wouldn't look out of place on the deck of your average battleship. Carbon fiber should feature prominently, with a few exposed sections of the stuff visible in the teaser image. Production is slated to begin promptly after the final P1 street car rolls off the Woking production line, sometime in June 2015. Of course, we'll have much, much more on the P1 GTR when it makes its debut at Pebble Beach. Keep an eye on this space come August 15. Until then, scroll down for the official press release from McLaren. THE McLAREN P1™ GTR DESIGN CONCEPT PREVIEWED AHEAD OF PEBBLE BEACH GLOBAL DEBUT McLaren will use its presence at the 2014 Pebble Beach Concours d'Elegance to showcase its ultimate track-focused model, the McLaren P1™GTR, in design concept form. Conceived in response to requests from buyers of the road legal McLaren P1™ for a track focused edition of their car, and available for purchase only to this group as a fully comprehensive programme to include driving events, training and vehicle support, the McLaren P1™GTRwill go into production in June 2015 when the 375th and final example of the road car has been completed - two decades on from the famous 24 Hours of Le Mans win by the legendary McLaren F1 GTR. The McLaren P1™GTR is being designed and developed using five decades of race-winning knowledge from the pinnacle of motorsport.

Seat hatches hot little Ibiza Cupra Concept in Beijing [w/video]

Just about every brand under the Volkswagen Group umbrella has its own performance line these days. Marques like Lamborghini, Bugatti and Porsche may not need them, but Volkswagen has the R line, Audi has the RS range, Skoda offers the vRS models, and Seat badges its under the Cupra name.
It's a nameplate that's become synonymous with Latin-flavored hot hatches in markets around the world, and one of those vital markets is China. Little wonder, then, that Seat chose the Beijing Motor Show to launch its latest Cupra model.
Technically billed as a "concept," even Seat admits the vehicle you see here is pretty darn close to the production model that is scheduled to debut later this year. It starts out with the latest Ibiza hatchback (which itself shares its underpinnings with the Volkswagen Polo) and upgrades it with VW's celebrated 1.4 TSI engine that packs a turbocharger, supercharger and direct injection to produce a solid 180 horsepower. All that juice is driven to the front wheels through an electronic differential and seven-speed dual-clutch transmission.