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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.

Infiniti brand will finally make its debut in Japan, but not the name

Nissan left the automotive media scratching its collective head when it announced that its Infiniti luxury brand would be renaming all of its vehicles, with cars wearing the Q designation and CUVs/SUVs wearing the QX badge. So the G Sedan became the Q50, and the G Coupe became the Q60. The QX56, meanwhile, became the QX80, and the FX crossover became the QX70. It is still thoroughly confusing nearly a year later.
Not content to confuse its US customers alone, Nissan will be fiddling with the name of one of its most revered Japanese-market models - the Skyline. Rebadged for the US as the Q50, and before that as the G Sedan/Coupe, the new Skyline will wear an Infiniti badge. What makes this truly confusing, though, is that the car won't be called the Infiniti Skyline, despite its badging. It won't even be called the Nissan Skyline, anymore. It's now just the Skyline. Apparently, Nissan thinks it can capitalize on the Skyline's link to the Japanese royal family (the Skyline was originally a product of Prince Motors, which provided vehicles for the Emperor and his family), by ditching any brand names and referring to it as its own model, according to Automotive News.
Now, confusion aside, there are things about Infiniti badging in Japan that make sense. Badging all the Nissans that eventually become Infinitis as Infinitis in the first place goes a long way to make the brand seem separate and distinct from its parent company. Speaking to AN, Infiniti's executive vice president of global product planning, Andy Palmer, puts it this way, "We have to treat Infiniti, if you will, in the same [way] that Volkswagen treats Audi. It's not a Nissan-plus. Infiniti has to stand head-to-head with any of those German competitors."

Poor headlights cause 40 cars to miss IIHS Top Safety Pick rating

Over the past few months, we've noticed a number of cars and SUVs that have come incredibly close to earning one of the IIHS's highest accolades, the Top Safety Pick rating. They have great crash test scores and solid automatic emergency braking and forward collision warning systems. What trips them up is headlights. That got us wondering, how many vehicles are there that are coming up short because they don't have headlights that meet the organization's criteria for an "Acceptable" or "Good" rating. This is a revision made after 2017, a year in which headlights weren't factored in for this specific award. This is also why why some vehicles, such as the Ford F-150, might have had the award last year, but have lost it for this year. We reached out to someone at IIHS to find out. He responded with the following car models. Depending on how you count, a whopping 40 models crash well enough to receive the rating, but don't get it because their headlights are either "Poor" or "Marginal." We say depending on how you count because the IIHS actual counts truck body styles differently, and the Infiniti Q70 is a special case. Apparently the version of the Q70 that has good headlights doesn't have adequate forward collision prevention technology. And the one that has good forward collision tech doesn't have good enough headlights. We've provided the entire list of vehicles below in alphabetical order. Interestingly, it seems the Volkswagen Group is having the most difficulty providing good headlights with its otherwise safe cars. It had the most models on the list at 9 split between Audi and Volkswagen. GM is next in line with 7 models. It is worth noting again that though these vehicles have subpar headlights and don't quite earn Top Safety Pick awards, that doesn't mean they're unsafe. They all score well enough in crash testing and forward collision prevention that they would get the coveted award if the lights were better.