Seat Leon Eurocup driver Francisco Carvalho takes the direct route into the marshal area at Brands Hatch during a Seat Leon Eurocup in July… and walked away with bruises. To top it all, the race was red flagged, and drivers given half-points based on their positions at the beginning of that lap, so he remains on the results sheet in fourth place.
Ooops!!!
Rule number one of winning a race?
Make the finish line…
Dynamite!
To celebrate the Cinquecento’s third birthday, Fiat has announced a new motor for one of the more recreations on the road today. Where the Beetle failed dismally to capture the essence of its ancestor, the Cinquecento has got it spot on. A tad pricey, maybe, in South Africa, but it is a fine, fun little car, with plenty of attitude.
Now, it will be chugging under African skies with an all-new two-cylinder 900cc motor, with an output of 63kW. Which doesn’t sound like much, but this is a light city car, not a boy-racer, so it will, no doubt, do the job just fine. Fiat claims a top speed of 173kph, which sounds a bit scary, even if the car has all the safety gumpf needed to garner a five-star NCAP rating. What will be interesting will be to see if it lives up to its promised 4.1l/100km in combined urban and extra-urban urban cycles…
SLS is here!
So we have seen it - and heard it - rumbling ahead of the F1 field, whenever the safety car is deployed (Fernando Alonso will be able to tell us exactly how many times that has been this season.), and now it is finally coming to South Africa.
The first cars should be on the roads by the end of July, but we are not expecting to see too many at a base price of two and a half million bucks! For that, you get “an aluminium spaceframe body with Gullwing doors, AMG 6.3-litre V8 front-mid-engine developing 420 kW peak output, 650 Nm of torque and dry sump lubrication, seven-speed double-declutch transmission in a transaxle configuration, sports suspension with aluminium double wishbones and a kerb weight of 1 620 kilograms based on the DIN standard – this superlative combination guarantees driving dynamics of the highest order. The front/rear weight distribution of 47 to 53 percent and the vehicle’s low centre of gravity are testimony to the uncompromising sports car concept. The SLS AMG accelerates from 0 to 100 km/h in 3.8 seconds, before going on to a top speed of 317 km/h (electronically limited).”, according to Mercedes. You also get some considerable street-cred points, which double if you can pigeon-pair it with an original 300Sl, the car that inspired the SLS.
