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The pre-race and first in-race report from Le Mans

The 2013, 90th anniversary edition of the 24 Hours of Le Mans has begun, tragedy marking the opening laps with the death of Allan Simonsen. We're at the track now as a guest of Audi and plan to stay through the evening, and even we haven't been able to find out what caused the accident - the only video is from just after the incident, and beyond the statement from ACO there's been no more news. The Aston Martin in the LM GTE Am class and its all-Danish drivers had taken pole in its class and was one of the favorites to win.
The pre-race report will come first, and even thought we can't spoil the race because we're only five hours into it at the time of writing, we'll put all of the news at the end in case you don't even want the updates.
Or you can go straight to the high-res galleries above.

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.

Finali Mondiali 2016 was an incredible celebration of all things Ferrari

For the first time ever, Ferrari held its Finali Mondiali event in North America, and we were there to soak it all in. This event is a four-day celebration of everything Ferrari, but the main event is the world final championship for the Ferrari Challenge series drivers, who normally compete in European, American, and Asia Pacific regional series. While they were racing 458 Challenge EVO models, we also saw the debut of the 488 Challenge – which, needless to say, was stunning. There were also demonstrations of past F1 cars, and a running of the incredible FXX Program vehicles, which simply looked (and sounded) amazing. In addition, the last Ferrari LaFerrari built was auctioned off to help victims of the Italian earthquakes, and predictably it raised a lot of money. That's great. In fact, it also set a record at a whopping $7 million – the most for a car from this century, period. Probably didn't hurt things any that it was also a one-off with a special paint job. Enjoy the photos above from our time at this fantastic event at Daytona International Speedway. Related Video: