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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.

2014 Mercedes-Benz E63 AMG S 4Matic [w/video]

Maybe you saw our recent blog snippet on a bunch of US journos getting pulled over in the middle of nowhere in Catalunya, Spain for driving a bunch of new 2014 Mercedes-Benz E63 AMG models. By all accounts, they weren't speeding - which makes me softly guffaw. I was there in that group, yet I had taken the more direct route into the mountains from Barcelona so that I could... well, so that I could go faster. No one hassled me and I had the Autovia all to myself. And it was the goodniks - the team players - who got nabbed because Spain had decided to suddenly enforce the never enforced "must carry an international driver's license" clause of the highway code.
The departing E63 AMG with 518 horsepower and 516 pound-feet of torque from its M157 5.5-liter biturbo V8 hasn't exactly been poorly received. It isn't as crisp as, nor as pleasantly evil as its C63 AMG kid brother, but we generally accept that the heavier and larger car will always feel, well, heavier and larger.
As part of the 2014 E-Class mid-cycle redesign, Affalterbach decided to give its E63 AMG more power and torque for the occasion. The base car now gives off 550 hp and 531 lb-ft, while the hotter S version I tested (formerly the AMG Performance Pack) produces 577 hp and 590 lb-ft. The other big novelty is that E63 sedans will be available with both rear- and all-wheel drive, while all US-spec E63 wagons will be 4Matic equipped.

Daimler, BMW partnering up on wireless charging

Plug-in vehicle advocates can get all warm and fuzzy about two Germany heavyweight automakers getting together for the sake of wireless charging. That's because Mercedes-Benz parent Daimler and BMW will work together to speed up development of a wireless charging system. While not a ton of details were divulged, we can still rejoice. Daimler says the system will consist of an on-board coil and another coil that can be placed within the garage floor or someplace similarly stationary. The system will charge at 3.6 kilowatts and with 90 percent efficiency. No details were released about the system's price or when it would be available, but Daimler shouldn't wait too long, since other OEMs are already talking about their own wireless charging systems. Daimler obviously has some skin in the game here, since Mercedes-Benz will start sales of its S500 plug-in hybrid in September. That model, which was first shown off last August at the Frankfurt Auto Show, can go as far as 20 miles on electric power alone and will get fuel economy of about 84 miles per gallon equivalent. And it's easy to imagine an i3 or i8 driver getting a kick out of never needing to touch a cord. This spring, reports sprung up that fellow German automaker Volkswagen was preparing a wireless charging option for its electric vehicles as soon as 2017. You can check out Daimler's press release below. Wireless charging of electric drive and plug-in hybrid vehicles: PLUG IN HYBRID - unplugged One of the next steps on the way to perfect electric drive and plug-in hybrid vehicles is wireless charging. Daimler and BMW have now agreed on jointly developing and implementing one common technology. Wireless charging of the battery will make the handling of electric drive and plug-in hybrid vehicles even easier. Mercedes-Benz will commence fleet testing of this "unplugged" technology with the S 500 Plug in HYBRID soon, in order to develop a real S-Class solution in recharging the high voltage battery in terms of comfort and ease of operating in the near future. The system consists of two components: a secondary coil integrated into the under tray of the car and a primary coil integrated into a floor plate that can be placed on a garage floor for instance. Electrical energy is transmitted contact-free without the need for a cable, at a power rate of 3.6 kW and with a degree of efficiency of 90%.