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Jules Bianchi was supposed to replace Raikkonen at Ferrari

Formula One lost one of its budding talents when Jules Bianchi sadly succumbed to his injuries just days ago. But few knew just how promising his future looked prior to the crash that ultimately took his life. Luca di Montezemolo did, though. In a tribute written for Italy's Gazzetto dello Sport, the former Ferrari chairman revealed that Bianchi had been earmarked to eventually replace Kimi Raikkonen. "Jules Bianchi was one of us," wrote Montezemolo. "He was a member of the Ferrari family and was the racing driver we had chosen for the future, once the collaboration with Kimi Raikkonen came to an end." The news may come as something of a surprise, but doesn't come entirely out of left field. Bianchi had been part of the Ferrari Driver Academy development program. He rose up through the ranks of the feeder formulae largely with ART Grand Prix, the team run by Nicholas Todt, son of the former Ferrari chief and FIA president. He served as a test driver for the Scuderia in 2011, and scored his first and only F1 championship points driving a Ferrari-powered Marussia at the 2014 Monaco Grand Prix. He stood in for Kimi at Ferrari during a test session at Silverstone (where he was pictured above), but tragically crashed during the Japanese Grand Prix, and finally succumbing over this past weekend to the injuries he sustained in the collision nine months prior. Bianchi "would be the one driving for Ferrari after the experience in GP2 and after some fine performances in F1 and in some tests that had our technicians very impressed," wrote Montezemolo. "A bitter destiny has instead taken him away from us, leaving an indelible mark and a great pain inside us." Bianchi is scheduled to be interred on Tuesday in the French Riviera city of Nice, just down the coast from where he made his mark last year. And, in a touching tribute, the FIA has said it will retire the number 17 from the F1 World Championship. The tragic loss leaves Ferrari searching for another driver to replace Raikkonen. The Finnish driver won the championship for Maranello in 2007, was shown the door in 2010, returned to F1 with Lotus in 2012, but has struggled to find his form again. Last season he finished a lamentable twelfth, but has shown better form this season with a second-place finish in Bahrain to sit fifth in the standings. Now 35 years old, Kimi is one of the older drivers on the grid.

Ferrari patents a fancy and fascinating electric turbocharger

While turbocharging has improved vastly over the years, and it has enabled cars to become both more powerful and more efficient, there's always room for improvement. Turbochargers scavenge exhaust gas pressure and use it to turn a compressor that forces intake air into the cylinders. However, as the patent points out, this means the intake compressor and the exhaust turbine are physically coupled, and have to spin at the same rate. Ferrari's design divorces the two, and it's a happy breakup. The key is hooking up the two components of the turbo to their own individual electric motors, with an energy storage device in between. It's different than the electric supercharger systems you have seen on certain Audi products, for example. Those systems recover energy like a hybrid, store it, and then use it to drive an intake compressor. It supplements conventional turbochargers that harvest energy from the exhaust. In systems like Audi's, the electric supercharger is supplementing the sequential conventional turbochargers when they're not operating efficiently, at very low RPM in particular. It works well, but it's complicated, and it is a workaround for the limitations of a conventional turbocharger. See below for an animation of the Audi system. This content is hosted by a third party. To view it, please update your privacy preferences. Manage Settings. Usually, optimizing a turbo is a compromise between figuring out what RPM is ideal for each side to spin at to generate power. A smaller compressor generates boost more quickly, but loses efficiency at higher RPM. But there's way more energy in high-RPM exhaust gasses. By hooking up the turbine to an electric motor instead, you can harvest energy from the exhaust throughout the rev range, and particularly when the engine is pushing lots of gasses through. And you can store that energy in a battery if it's not needed at that moment. The intake-side compressor also has a reversible electric motor attached. It is not physically connected to the turbine, so it can operate at any time the computers decide it's beneficial. As engine RPM increases, the compressor doesn't have to increase its speed beyond its optimal range, so there's less energy wasted. And at low RPM situations, when a conventional turbocharger wouldn't have enough exhaust gas passing through its turbine side to generate useful boost in the compressor side, the electric motor can spin up Ferrari's divorced compressor to provide some boost.

Ken Block's Gymkhana 8 to feature Dubai Police cars?

Yesterday we showed you the shiny Ford Fiesta that Ken Block will slide, spin, and hoon through the next Gymkhana video. In case the image above isn't clear, that video will drop at midnight EST on February 30th on the Ford Performance YouTube channel. We don't know all the entire premise of the video yet, but this Tweet from the man himself reveals that the video will be set in Dubai. Block is standing on the Fiesta we saw yesterday, and arrayed behind him are a handful of those famous Dubai Police cars you're probably familiar with. The force has a fleet of sportscars and supercars, and the purpose is outreach and goodwill among its citizenry, not necessarily the pursuit of criminals. This content is hosted by a third party. To view it, please update your privacy preferences. Manage Settings. From left to right, we can see a Maserati GranTurismo, Porsche 911, what looks to be a Nissan GT-R obscured by Block's Fiesta, a McLaren (likely a 650S), Ford Mustang, and a Ferrari 599 of some ilk. Will they take part? Maybe Block will try and run from what might be the most horsepower-intensive police fleet in the world. We'll have answers (and a few minutes of pure Block hooniganism) in a few days. Related Video: