WRC

The world’s longest ever WRC rally jump took place during April’s Rally of Turkey, when Sebastien Loeb's Citroen C4 left terra firma for an incredible 85 metres during the ultra-fast Ballica stage. Citroen has now chosen ten of its most spectacular gravity defying jumps ahead of next weekend’s Rally Finland – the home of the big YUMP. A pic of Loeb's world record jump is inside, but look at what he had to beat. Read More

Despite being arguably one of the most well-rounded athletes in history, Michael Jordan's exploits on the baseball diamond didn't go close to matching the heights he achieved on the basketball court. Indeed, it's so uncommon to achieve world competitiveness in more than one sport, there's no word to describe (polysport?) such notables as Jim Thorpe, Lionel Conacher, Babe Didrikson, John Surtees and Denis Compton. World 2007 F1 champ Kimi Raikkonen is the latest to achieve international success in two sports, finishing eighth in the Jordan Round of the World Rally Championship this weekend, scoring world championship points in his second sport and just his third WRC rally. Read More

Citroen will take the wraps of the hot version of its new premium model, the DS3 when it reveals the 147 kW Citroen DS3 Racing at the Geneva International Motor Show on March 2. Developed by Citroën Racing - the dominant team behind five World Rally Championship manufacturer’s titles and six driver’s titles for over the past six years - leaves little doubt that the French car maker has the ability to take its already critically lauded DS3 and turn it into a real performance machine. Planned for the second half of 2010, the exclusive DS3 Racing will be limited to just 1000 production units. Read More

It is interesting to note that the three biggest stories in Formula One right now concern a driver who competed in 2010 but not in 2009 (the Michael Schumacher comeback), a driver who competed in 2009 but not 2010 (Raikkonen loses his drive and goes WRC) and a driver who has never competed in F1 and quite possibly never will – Valentino Rossi. Indeed, Rossi has only ever driven an F1 car six times, but his status as one of motorcycling’s all-time greats and one of the most popular and media-savvy sportspeople of all time make the possibility an incredibly enticing prospect. For Ferrari, Rossi brings a global army of fans and the possibility of a rare Italian driver-car title combination that hasn’t happened since Alberto Ascari in 1953, despite 15 drivers titles and 16 constructors titles for the marque since then. This week Rossi tested in a Ferrari F1 car again, and was so fast that the possibility might now be approaching a probability. Read More

Just two years ago, Finn Kimi Raikkonen was the reigning (2007) World Champion in the world’s most prominent television sport, and the number one driver for the world’s most famous racing marque, Ferrari. Forbes rated him the 26th highest paid celebrity in the world, the fifth highest paid sportsperson and the highest paid driver in the world with a weekly pay cheque of US$1,000,000. Late last year he lost his job in the cutthroat game of musical chairs played by the top half dozen drivers in the world and decided to sit out 2010 by driving rally cars. This weekend he starts his new job in a town made famous by none other than Father Christmas – could there be a belated Christmas Gift in the offing? Read More

With the World Rally Championship (WRC) switching over to S2000-based cars next year, we thought it may be a good time to have a closer look at what has proved to be the fastest S2000 rally car so far, the Mellors Elliott Motorsport (MEM) build Proton Satria Neo Super 2000. In the hands of Irish driver Niall McShea, the Proton caused quite a stir on the first WRC event earlier this year, Rally Ireland, when it stormed into a podium position on day one, ahead of a full field of WRC machinery. Read More

Citroen Racing has started testing its Citroen C4 Hybrid World Rally Car, proving that its technological showcase is much more than just a motor show model and that it is paving the way for low consumption, low emission, low noise motor sport cars of the future. Just hours after winning its fourth World Rally Championship event of the season, Citroen driver Dani Sordo took the new car testing in Portugal. Read More

While World Rally Championship cars travel at incredible speed on ice covered roads using studded tires, something with a little more surface area is needed for an Arctic Off-Road vehicle. Taking cues off four track snowmobiles Norwegian designer Anders Gloslie designed the FROST as a concept proposal for TH!NK, an electric car company based in Norway. The layout of the FROST is a 2-seat sports car platform based on a tubular space frame chassis with double wishbone suspension front and rear teamed with push-rod actuated in-board coil over shock and spring units. The suspension features hydraulic wheel extenders to increase the track when required and the proposed electric drivetrain features All Wheel Drive (AWD), all-wheel-steering and radical tracks instead of conventional wheels that should offer superior traction when driving on snow, ice and slush. Read More

June 3, 2007 The success of tyre mousse, a special compound that expands to replace the air in a punctured tyre, has meant that over the last 20 years flat tyres have ceased to be a factor in World Rally Championship races. The high-tech foam inserts have been so effective that many drivers don't even notice they're running on punctured tyres, and it's not uncommon for race wins and best times to be set after the system is deployed. With new cost-saving FIM regulations being introduced to ban tyre mousse from the 2008 WRC season onwards, teams are searching for ways to minimize the risk and repercussions of the dreaded tyre puncture, which not only knocks cars out of race contention, but can cost upwards of $10,000 in recovery and associated damage costs. One such mitigation strategy is to closely monitor tyre pressure and temperature through a race by using sophisticated sensor systems to detect small leaks and enable the drivers to compensate for them. Read More