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Porsche Supercup racer dies in crash in Australia

Even with great strides made towards increasing the safety of motor racing, fundamentally it's still a dangerous sport. And now it has claimed another life.
That life belonged to one Sean Edwards, an accomplished GT racing driver. Edwards was killed at Queensland Raceway in Australia, riding shotgun in a Porsche 996 GT3 while acting as instructor. The driver was airlifted to hospital with critical injuries. Sean Edwards was 26.
The son of former F1 driver Guy Edwards (whose car he drove in the filming of Rush), Sean won the European GT3 Championship in a Porsche 911 GT3 Cup and drove a Mercedes-Benz SLS AMG GT3 to repeat victories at the 24 Hours of Dubai as well as this year's Nürburgring 24 Hours. Edwards had been competing in the Porsche Supercup, whose standings he currently leads with just two rounds to go, and could be crowned champion posthumously.

Audi spearheads development of an ultra-luxurious EV code-named Landjet

The rumors claiming Audi wants to release a model positioned above the A8, and the reports of an ongoing electric car development program called Artemis internally, have seemingly converged. Citing sources inside the carmaker, a German media outlet reported the firm is busily creating a super-luxurious EV code-named Landjet. Audi is leading the development process, but sister companies Bentley and Porsche will reportedly receive their own version of the Landjet. All three models will likely take the form of three-row SUVs with generous dimensions. They'll be so big that none of Audi's production facilities will be able to manufacture them, according to an anonymous insider who spoke with German newspaper Handelsblatt. Luckily, Volkswagen makes vans, too. It's too early to tell what will power the Landjets. Audi assigned some of its most brilliant engineers to Project Artemis, and the technology they develop will permeate the three EVs before trickling down into cheaper models in the group. Expect high performance, a high driving range, and semi-automated driving technology. If the report is accurate, the Landjet vehicles will enter production in Hanover, Germany, by the end of 2024. The facility currently makes the Volkswagen Transporter, which is a direct descendant of the rear-engined Bus sold for decades, and it will start manufacturing the production version of the ID.Buzz concept in the coming years. Volkswagen hasn't commented on the report, and car companies rarely address speculation, but its Commercial Vehicles division released a statement in November 2020 that confirms the Hanover site will begin building SUVs about halfway through the 2020s. It's a major shift for a factory normally tasked with manufacturing vans. "Our main plant in Hanover is becoming the production site for three completely new premium electric vehicles in the Group. These D-SUVs are genuine flagship projects: premium, 100% electric, and highly automated," said Carsten Intra, the head of Volkswagen's Commercial Vehicles division, in a statement. He added the firm will invest about 680 million euros (about $807 million) to build a new assembly line, among other upgrades.

Are you the next Porsche 911 GT3 RS or GT2?

Porsche typically keeps to a suitably fast schedule when it comes to rolling out increasingly hard-core performance versions of the 911. After the 997 Carrera debuted in 2004, the GT3 version followed in 2006, and by the end of the 2007, Porsche had rolled out both the GT3 RS and GT2 versions. Then the facelifted 997.5 came out in 2008 and it was back to the start: the GT3 came in 2009, the GT3 RS and GT2 RS in 2010, and the GT3 RS 4.0 in 2011. But things have slowed down some with the latest 991 generation.
The new Carrera came in 2011 and the GT3 followed in 2012. By recent history's example, we should have at least two more hardcore models by now, but we don't. Maybe the engineers in Zuffenhausen have had their hands full fixing the spontaneous-combustion issues with the existing GT3, or maybe their attentions have been focused elsewhere altogether. But if these spy shots are anything to go by, it seems like they're back on the job.
Now we don't know if this prototype foreshadows a new GT3 RS or a GT2, but it sure looks more hard-core than the existing GT3 that many purists have derided as too soft, what with its automatic transmission and four-wheel steering.