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There aren’t a lot of things that will get an automotive journalist out of bed before dawn. But nearly all of them have four wheels, which is about the only thing a formula racing car shares in common with the kind of ordinary automobiles you and I drive regularly. The chance to drive one stands out as one of those few luring precipitators. So when the invite came to join a local racing team for a test session at a remote desert airstrip, we broke with tradition and raced the sunrise just to see if it would prove worthwhile. Follow the jump to read what we discovered.As you’ve likely already ascertained, it wasn’t a Formula One racing car we headed into the desert to test drive. For one thing, they don’t test those on abandoned airstrips; they book track time at a first-rate racing circuit for that, or in some cases use their own private test tracks. For another, though teams have been known, upon occasion, to invite the odd journalist to drive their multi-million-dollar grand prix cars, odd as we are, we’re still waiting for such an invitation. But while F1 may be the only formula of motor racing known to the casual observer, at the risk of hiding behind an old cliché, that’s just the tip of the iceberg. Formula One is the top tier of an entire world of open-wheel, single-seater motorsports that consists of dozens of lower racing formulae around the world.

Logically enough, under Formula One have historically been a number of junior classes like Formula 2, which is now in the process of being revived, and Formula 3, which is run in separate regional competitions around the world. Some formula racing series use different nomenclature, like GP2 and A1GP, not to mention IndyCars, America’s own version of open-wheel racing. Below them, however, are all even more different racing formulae, some based on mechanicals borrowed from, or even organized by, specific automakers like Formula BMW, Formula Ford and Formula Palmer Audi. Way down the pecking order, just above karting, lies Formula Vee.

The idea behind Formula Vee is to keep costs down so as to allow aspiring racing drivers to take part without the backing of sponsors, automakers or racing outfits. The mechanicals underpinning the cars could hardly be more basic: take the engine, transmission, front suspension, brakes and wheels from an old VW Beetle (hence the Formula Vee designation) and built a tube-frame chassis with a fiberglass body around it and you’ve got a race car. Sounds simple enough, but bear in mind that the bulk of ambitious Formula Vee competitors build their own cars in their garages at home. That’s exactly what our host did, with an eye towards competing in the British Formula Vee championship. But more on that in an upcoming post.

Although the UK series is one of the most popular, similar competitions are organized around the world, including ones in Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, Germany, Ireland and Canada. Here in the United States, Formula Vee competitions are run under the auspices of the Sports Car Club of America, the same sanctioning body that organizes amateur and professional races across the country through its myriad chapters and divisions.

With its elementary mechanics and homegrown simplicity, Formula Vee is motor racing boiled down to its essence. The cars weigh little over 1000 lbs, and the best ones can top 120 mph. Maybe that doesn’t sound like much, especially compared to the speeds reached by higher-level formula racing cars, but sitting precious few inches above the ground with the wind rushing by, it feels plenty fast. The skinny tires and old-school brakes give the novice driver an ideal training ground for learning the dynamics of single-seat racing before (hopefully) graduating to a higher class where the speeds increase drastically, and along with them the risks and demands.

After waiting for the aspiring pilots to complete their practice laps – including a few for your photographic enjoyment – it was finally our turn behind the wheel. But with the sun dropping almost as fast as our fuel supply, we would only have time for a few laps. Of course the single-seat set-up meant there would be no hands-on tutorial, but the brief was short. Steering wheel, gas, brakes, clutch, four-speed H-gate shifter…that’s about it.

Our course ran through a long line of pylons placed strategically down one side of the runway, through the roundabout at the far end and back down the straight towards the tower and dilapidated terminal. The sand-swept air strip looked like it hadn’t been used in years, so aside from sporadic through-fare from local residents, the odd teenager on a joy-ride, and a family of wild dogs that seemed to consider the site their home turf, the coast was clear.

The car has an ignition system, but more often than not a simple push-start seemed just as convenient. Lift the clutch, drop it into second, pump the gas and away we go. Right off the line, the experience seems familiar. All the controls are where you’d expect them to be, but something’s different. More direct. More intuitive. Driving ordinary, even extraordinary automobiles, you grow accustomed to the inevitable – though increasingly minimized – delay from when you turn the wheel or press a pedal before the heft of the car does what you’ve instructed with your limbs. With a simple lightweight frame and circa-1963 mechanicals, the Formula Vee car exhibits no such hesitation. If you’ve ever gone karting and then gotten back into your car to drive home, chances are you know exactly what we mean.

Although our time was limited, it didn’t take long to familiarize ourselves with the car and its dynamics. The skinny tires mean there isn’t a lot of traction. In the corners you’ll find the limit of adhesion rather quickly if you’re daring enough. The small air-cooled flat-four engine doesn’t challenge the rear tires with too much torque, but coming out of a corner early enough on the throttle will generate just enough wheel-spin to keep it interesting. With the engine out back and little more than the weight of the front suspension and fiberglass nosecone keeping the front end planted, we were warned that the tail is prone to slide around, and so it did. But a quick correction, steering into the skid, and a judicious application of throttle pulled the rear end back into place and the car pointed straight ahead. Even steering wide of the edge of the tarmac and into the dirt, the chassis wasn’t upset and slid back onto the pavement with no fuss.

Of course the ultimate test of any driving experience can’t be measured or calibrated with any instruments, but can be judged only by how hesitant we were to step out of the car and give back the keys. In this case, there were no keys to return, just a crash helmet and our impressions. And if you haven’t guessed by now, after just a couple of laps around the air strip, we didn’t want to leave, but were out-voted by the setting sun and empty fuel tank.

The LA Auto Show is once again hosting its annual Design Challenge in which automakers are asked to let their minds wander and think freely about what future vehicles might actually be like. Last year’s theme was green, but this year designers are being asked to imagine what motorsports will be like in 2025.
Mitsubishi’s answer will be the MMR25 Rally Racer, a way out there concept that draws upon the automaker’s long lineage of successful rally racing to create a sand crawler like we’ve never seen before. We’ve only got a sneak peek for now, so there’s no telling what exotic or outright fictional engine powers the MMR25, but expect it to be just as crazy as those multidirectional wheels.

While we knew Formula 1 racing was an expensive venture, leave it to the 2008/2009 edition of Formula Money to spell-out the jaw-dropping finances for us. According to their latest guide, the supporting cast will shell out over $3 billion this year in team resources — with Toyota dropping more than $445 million of it alone. McLaren is a close second at $433 million, while Ferrari rounds out the top three with $414 million coming out of pocket. If you take a look at team resources divided by points scored, each point cost Ferrari $1.9 million in 2007 (while each point cost Honda a staggering $57.2 million during the same period!). With the financial markets around the world roiled in turmoil, many are wondering when the F1 budgets are going to feel the pinch… Thanks for the tip, Keith!

Lewis Hamilton does not have good luck in France. Of all the races he’s won in these past two seasons, he’s yet to take the checkered flag at the French Grand Prix, has had his license revoked by the French gendarmes, and has now had his appeal thrown out of court in Paris.

Following the Belgian Grand Prix earlier this month, Hamilton was penalized by the race stewards with a 25-second penalty (in lieu of a pit-lane drive-through penalty) that bumped him down from first place to third, and allowed Ferrari’s Felipe Massa to close the lead down to one single point. The penalty was given to Hamilton for having cut through a chicane on the Spa-Francorchamps track called the “bus stop”, which race officials ruled gave him an illegal advantage. Hamilton’s team McLaren decided to appeal the penalty in the FIA’s court in Paris, however the court threw out the case as inadmissible, quoting sporting regulations that stipulate that drive-through penalties cannot be appealed. McLaren presented precedent from a repealed penalty handed to Toro Rosso in Japan last year, however the court of appeal was adamant in their refusal to hear the case.

In these tight economic times, the project car budget typically gets left on the cutting room floor. Fortunately for addicted enthusiasts there are resources, such as Grassroots Motorsports Magazine, to prove that it is still possible to put together a prize winning ride for only a few bills. Just in time to save the wavering automotive habit of frugal individuals comes the Kumho Tires Grassroots Motorsports $2008 Challenge. For the past nine years, the magazine crew dedicated to amateur motorsports has organized an annual competition of cars built around a budget equal to the current year in dollars. It may sound impossibly restrictive, but some competitors even come in under the cap. The 2007 champion, a Chevrolet Corvette sucker-car, managed to top the field for less than two grand. The monetary limitation forces creative and innovative back-yard engineering amongst the entrants.

The $2008 Challenge will take place October 3 – 4 at Gainesville Raceway in Gainesville, FL. The cars will spend a grueling two days dueling it out on the autocross course, drag strip and even the parking lot for a car show. Competitors should also be brushed up on their accounting skills since they are required to keep an itemized list of all their expenses. This detail keeps the event fair and also offers the magazine’s readership inspiration to create their own budget racers.

A little over two years ago we had the chance to spend some time at the track with Steve Millen and his race-prepped Ford GT before the team embarked on its fifth excursion to New Zealand to run in the Targa Rally.

Last year, the team wasn’t able to compete due to health issues with a member of the Stillen consortium, but this year they’re back and the orange GT is meaner than ever.

For the 2006 campaign, Stillen built up the Ford GT in a few months, equipping the mid-engine supercar with a performance exhaust, catalytic converter delete pipes, AP Racing front brakes, Penske shocks, a full cage and MOMO racing seats and harnesses. This year, they’ve tweaked the suspension, upgraded the brakes front and rear, added a set of Nordskog gauges and a GPS speedometer, along with pulling a few more ponies out of the supercharged 5.4-liter V8 and sending the additional grunt through an AP Racing clutch and a lower final drive ratio.

The Stillen Ford GT will battle it with everything from Evos to Porsches over 38 stages run on closed public roads, and according to Millen’s navigator, they’ll be providing updates throughout the race.

Check out the Stillen website for more, and be sure to peruse both our original gallery of the GT testing at Willow Springs and these latest images, courtesy of Stillen.

Porsche has won the Transsyberia Rally that runs 4,400 miles across Russia, Siberia and Mongolia three times in a row using only slightly modified versions of its Cayenne S. Not only that, it swept the podium in 2007 and took the top six places in this year’s rally that ended just a few weeks ago. In celebration of these achievements, the German sportscar and erstwhile SUV maker is offering a special edition Cayenne called the Cayenne S Transsyberia. Scheduled to debut at the Paris Motor Show next month, the Cayenne S Transsyberia features the 405-hp direct-inject 4.8L V8 from the Cayenne GTS mated to Porsche’s six-speed automatic transmission with a final drive ratio shortened 15% to 4.1:1. That scoots the big ute to 60 mph 6.1 seconds, half a sec quicker than a stock Cayenne S.

What really sets the Cayenne S Transsyberia apart, however, are its exterior color combinations, which include Black/Orange, Crystal Silver Metallic/Orange, Black/Meteor Grey and Meteor Grey Metallic/Crystal Silver Metallic. These contrasting color combos are coordinated with the 18-inch wheels, rear spoiler, skid plates, and air intake slats. The large “Cayenne S Transsyberia” model designation graphic that runs across the doors and the roof-mounted light bar are also both no-cost options but really make the package what it is. The interior is adorned with ornamental trim and the exterior color combo is carried through, and there’s also a twelve o’clock mark on the steering as an homage to this truck’s motorsports connection.

Porsche says deliveries will start in Europe in January 2009, while 600 units of the Cayenne S Transsyberia are slated for North American consumption.

First art imitates life and now video games do the same, with Sony Computer Entertainment Europe and Nissan having joined forces to create the GT Academy. Over the course of eight months, the academy culled a group of wannabe racers from a field of entrants who posted the best lap times in GT5 Prologue. Then, for five days at Silverstone, the finalists competed in the game and on the actual track, watched by ex-F1 racer Johnny Herbert and a panel of five judges.

The two winners were just announced, and Top Gun status went to Lars Schlomer and Luis Ordonez. Schlomer is a taxi driver in Bonn, Germany; Ordonez is an MBA student from Spain. Now that they’ve won, they’ll be thrown into boot camp for four months to learn to how to race for real silver: in four months, they’ll have to earn their racing licenses and get ready to drive a factory-backed Nissan 350Z in the 24 Hours of Dubai this coming January.The rest of us will have to be content with GT5 Prologue for now…

The courtship between Audi and GT3-class racing teams has legally commencing amidst the automaker’s announcement overly it has matured a GT3 version of the R8 sports car labeled “R16″ internally by its presume overlords at Audi Sport . The rear-drive racer (GT3 procedures prohibit AWD) parts a six-speed sequential gearbox, often times production-spec suspension components, additonally an updated front end and a larger rear wing calculated to still be it planted to the tarmac. No a good deal more tech specs hold continued revealed at now time. Factory driver Frank Biela was at the wheel for the prototype’s roll-out, and purchaser deliveries are innate to take place imminent fall. Look for the car to see wheel-to-wheel action against the likes of the Aston Martin DBRS9 and Jaguar XKR GT3 over the 2009 European racing season. We patiently await its inclusion in a times ahead Gran Turismo update so the we can try it out, too.

It was an ambitious target to design, develop, shake down and launch an all-new spec car across the series in less than a full year, but that’s what the organizers of the A1GP World Cup of Motorsport set out to do. Unfortunately, the first major setback inevitably meant that the series would have to be postponed, and that’s just what happened.

The new car has been under development with Ferrari for the past ten months or so – based on Ferrari’s Formula One racing car design – and things had been going well. However, when test driver Patrick Friesacher was injured after a vital suspension component failed, it was back to the drawing board. The delay means that the start of the fourth season, which was originally scheduled for September 21 at the Mugello track in Italy, will now be pushed back to Zandvoort, Holland, for October 4, which was initially planned as the second race of the season.