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Mattias Ekstr?m unleashes bonkers 600-hp Audi S1 Supercar on World RX

Mattias Ekström doesn't need to prove anything. He's won the DTM title twice and before that the Swedish Touring Car Championship. But being a racing driver as he is, Ekström has been looking for new challenges. He's contested the Swedish Rally six times, the German Rally twice, he's driven in V8 Supercars and in NASCAR. He's even won the Race of Champions. Twice. Heck, we're surprised his long-time sponsor Red Bull hasn't let him try out one of its F1 cars. But this season it's on to a new challenge: the inaugural FIA World Rallycross Championship.
Ekström drove a Volkswagen Polo fielded by Marklund Motorsport in the Swedish rallycross round last season and came in second, but this year he's diving in head-first with his own team and his own car. His outfit EKS is hard at work preparing the new Audi S1 for competition in the World RX Championship, and will field two of them this season: one for Ekström and another for JWRC champion Pontus Tidemand.
Built to compete in the top category of the championship, the EKS Audi S1 Supercar will pack a 2.0-liter turbo four with 600 horsepower, all-wheel drive and a 0-60 time of 1.9 seconds. It's expected to make its debut late in May at the World RX of Great Britain where it will have to tangle with specially prepared versions of the Citroën DS3, Ford Fiesta ST and Peugeot 208 driven by the likes of Tanner Foust, Ken Block, Jacques Villeneuve and Petter Solberg. The sole North American round will be held in Trois-Rivières, Quebec, in early August, on the same circuit that once hosted Indy Lights, ALMS, Grand-Am, Can-Am and Trans-Am races.

Audi debuts all-new R18 E-Tron Quattro with novel secondary hybrid system

This is the new Audi R18. It looks like the Bond villain of race cars (it has red running lamps), and if Audi's past is any indication, it'll prove difficult to beat in the LMP1 class of the 2014 World Endurance Championship.
The car's full name is the Audi R18 E-Tron Quattro, just like last year's car. Also like last year's car, the new R18 draws its power from a V6 turbodiesel, which powers its rear wheels, and Audi's E-Tron hybrid system, which runs its front axle. Unlike last year's car, though, this R18 has a secondary hybrid system. Audi has fitted the V6 with an electric turbocharger and figured out how to capture waste heat generated when the engine reaches its boost limit. That power can then be stored and fed back into either the turbo or the front axle's hybrid system under acceleration.
There are a number of changes to the body on the new car, forced in large part by series regulation changes. The car is narrower, particularly at the front, but it's also taller. The front end is set off by a new wing, as part of a new WEC regulation. Audi seems quite pleased about this, citing an improvement in front-end downforce and a reduction in cost. Like Formula One, the WEC contenders now have to contend with a ban on the so-called blown diffuser, which forced exhaust gases over the diffuser, creating downforce. That's necessitated some changes from Audi, although as we have no rear shots of the car, we can't tell you what it looks like.

Trump reportedly says he wants to wipe German cars off the U.S. map

BERLIN/FRANKFURT — A report that U.S. President Donald Trump has threatened to pursue German carmakers until there are no Mercedes-Benz rolling down New York's Fifth Avenue dented shares in the luxury car manufacturers on Thursday. An excerpt from German magazine Wirtschaftswoche's article, which cited several unnamed European and U.S. diplomats but did not include any direct quotes, could not be independently verified, while a U.S. Embassy spokesman in Berlin referred questions to Washington. The news and current affairs magazine said Trump had told French President Emmanuel Macron in April that he aimed to push German carmakers out of the United States altogether. Macron's administration in Paris declined to comment on the report. The Trump administration last week opened a so-called Section 232 trade investigation into vehicle imports, which could result in a 25 percent tariff on cars on the same "national security" grounds Washington used to impose metals duties in March. This could destroy exports by German carmakers, which control 90 percent of the U.S. premium market and are the biggest European Union exporters of cars to the United States. BMW owns Rolls-Royce, while Daimler has Mercedes-Benz, and Volkswagen controls Bentley, Bugatti, Porsche and Audi. Daimler, BMW and Audi declined comment. Porsche was not immediately available for comment. BMW shares were trading 0.5 percent lower at 0939 GMT, while Daimler and VW's shares were down 1 percent and 1.6 percent respectively, underperforming Germany's blue-chip DAX. Trump has railed against German carmakers before. And in early 2017, in an interview with German newspaper Bild, he said he would impose 35 percent tariffs on imported cars. At the time, the president called Germany a great car producer but said that the business relationship with the United States was an unfair one-way street. Germany's auto industry association VDA says its members exported 657,000 vehicles to North America last year, with total exports of vehicle components, cars, engines, as well as second-hand vehicles totaling 31.2 billion euros in 2016. Imports from the United States to Germany amounted to 7.4 billion euros, meaning a trade deficit of 23.8 billion euros the VDA's latest available figures show. However, German brands also have huge factories in the United States, where they built 804,000 cars last year, VDA said, providing jobs for U.S. workers. Berlin has reacted angrily to the U.S.