Here’s Your Daniel Ricciardo Friday-In-Texas Update
“That accent cycled through so many different accents,” our own North Carolina native Collin Woodard messaged in Slack after watching the clip. Yes, Danny Ric’s Texan still needs some work, but damn if the guy doesn’t get an A+ for effort. And for dropping a “hell boogedy” in there — he’s definitely got the vocabulary down, at least to this Pennsylvanian who’s spent all of four days in Austin over the course of his life.
Anyway, Ricciardo is entering the weekend in the appropriate attire, too. Here’s the helmet he’ll be wearing, courtesy of Jens Munser Designs:
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I need a windbreaker with “McLaren Service Plus” embroidered on the breast and the back, like, yesterday. Ricciardo will of course lap COTA in The Intimidator’s 1984 No. 3 Chevy before Sunday’s race — the culmination of his bet with McLaren boss Zak Brown for nabbing a podium (ahem, race win) this year — so it all checks out.
Oh, and yesterday, this happened:
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Ricciardo ended Friday’s Free Practice 1 session in 16th, 2.5 seconds off Valtteri Bottas’ lead time. His teammate Lando Norris fell eighth on the timing boards. The Aussie’s last race in Turkey was nothing to celebrate, as he finished 13th after stopping for new tires too early and lost two spots in the last two laps of the race.
I’d like to think his spiritual homefield advantage will work in his favor this weekend. After all, I’ve heard he draws his power from the clay under the track.
Red Bull Bids Honda A Fond Farewell With Special White Livery
The tribute includes a one-off special livery in throwback Honda Championship White with red accent, paying tribute to the rising sun livery the company wore when it first joined F1 in the 1960s. The cars also carry the characters for the Japanese word ‘arigato’ with a hearty and heart-felt thank you to the powerplant manufacturer. The Alpha Tauri cars will also carry the thank you message.
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Image: Red Bull
Rather than switching to a new powertrain supplier in 2022, Red Bull will take over the intellectual property and production of Honda’s V6 hybrid power units later this year ahead of the revised chassis requirements next season. It would likely be too much of a pain in the ass for Red Bull to have to build a brand new chassis to new regulations and build a relationship with a new powerplant manufacturer at the same time. As a result the fizzy energy drinks company will start its own engine division called Red Bull Powertrains.
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Image: Red Bull
RBR’s Max Verstappen currently sits 2 points behind championship leader Lewis Hamilton with seven rounds remaining in the championship. Perhaps this special livery will be enough to push him to his eighth victory this season, or perhaps it will go about as well as the last time Mercedes decided to run a special one-off tribute livery. We’ll see when the Turkish Grand Prix goes off this Sunday.
Barrett-Jackson hit a resounding record result for its Las Vegas Auction, scoring a total of more than $48 million and a 100 percent sell-through for collector vehicles, automobilia, charity sales, even a few NFTs, during a hot weekend in Sin City.
The three-day auction, held June 17-19 as the launch for the new West Hall of the Las Vegas Convention Center, is Barrett-Jackson’s first summer auction in Vegas, where for the first 12 consecutive years sales were held during the fall. The auction was canceled for 2020 due to the pandemic and rescheduled for 2021 as the company shook up its annual lineup of events.
Heading the auction was the sale of a rare 2015 McLaren P1, a 903-horsepower hybrid hypercar originally owned by popular electronic-music producer Deadmau5 (pronounced “dead mouse”) and driven just 180 miles. The car sold for a spectacular $1,567,500 (all results include auction fees).
A 1963 Corvette split-window coupe was one of the top-selling cars
The results breakdown came to about 700 all-no-reserve vehicles reaching more than $46 million, 284 pieces of automobilia sold for $884,000, and $775,000 raised through the sale of four charity vehicles. Barrett-Jackson also became the first collector car company to auction non-fungible tokens (NFTs), representing past sales of 001 serial-number vehicles, which brought in an addition $65,000.
“We arrived in Las Vegas riding on the tremendous momentum of our record-setting Scottsdale Auction in March,” Craig Jackson, chief executive of Barrett-Jackson, said in a news release. “We’ve accelerated that success with a 100-percent no reserve docket, more world-auction records, a ground-breaking sale of NFTs, and making history as the first public event in the fabulous new West Hall of the Convention Center.
“It’s absolutely clear that the collector car market is stronger than ever, and Barrett-Jackson is fueling that enthusiasm.”
A 1957 Mercedes 300SL roadster scored a million-dollar-plus sale
Besides the McLaren, two other auction cars sold for seven figures, a 1957 Mercedes-Benz 300SL roadster that hit $1,045,000 and a 2019 Ford GT for $1,023,000.
A special highlight of the Las Vegas auction was the sale of the custom 1994 Toyota Supra driven by the late Paul Walker in two of the Fast and Furious movies. The distinctive and turbocharged Supra sold for $550,000.
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Among the celebrity cars sold at the auction were three from “Mr. Las Vegas,” singer Wayne Newton, who stood onstage as the bidding commenced. Also, two cars owned by the late big-cat trainers and life partners Siegfried and Roy crossed the auction block.
Another legendary name from Las Vegas entertainment history, Frank Sinatra, was represented in the sale of a 1970 Maserati Ghibli that he previously owned.
The Maserati Ghibli was previously owned by Frank Sinatra
Charity sales, a signature piece of Barrett-Jackson auctions, and which have raised $133 million to date, were:
• A 2021 Ford Bronco 4-door Badlands Raiders Edition, which raised $275,000 for the Grant a Gift Autism Foundation and Raiders Foundation.
• A 2020 Chevrolet Camaro ZL1 Hertz/Hendrick Motorsports Edition, for $250,000 benefitting Jack & Jill Late Stage Cancer Foundation.
• A 2021 Dodge Durango SRT Hellcat AWD, with the $180,000 benefitting Ronald McDonald House of Detroit.
• A 1956 Chevrolet 150, which sold for $70,000 to benefit Honor Flight Network.
The top 10 vehicles sold during the Barrett-Jackson Las Vegas Auction were:
1. 2015 McLaren P1 at $1,567,500
2. 1957 Mercedes-Benz 300SL roadster at $1,045,000
3. 2019 Ford GT at $1,023,000
4. 1965 AC Cobra 289 roadster CSX 2439 at $907,500
5. 1994 Toyota Supra Fast and Furious movie car at $550,000
6. 1963 Chevrolet Corvette split-window custom at $396,000
7. 1970 Chevrolet Camaro custom coupe “The Grinch” at $385,000
8. 2011 Porsche 911 Speedster at $385,000
9. Frank Sinatra’s 1970 Maserati Ghibli at $330,000
10. Henry Ford II’s 1966 Ford Mustang GT K-Code convertible at $330,000
Barrett-Jackson is gearing up for its inaugural Houston Auction, to be held September 16-18, at the NRG Center.
For more information and complete results from Las Vegas, visit the Barrett-Jackson website.
Sorry Charles Leclerc and Carlos Sainz, your car is pretty much only going to get less competitive as the 2021 season drags on, because Scuderia Ferrari says it’s moving “90 to 95 percent” of its focus to developing its 2022 car and the new regulations. It will not risk compromising next year’s car to try and beat McLaren to third in the championship this year.
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2020 was not a good year for Ferrari, as it couldn’t do any better than sixth in the constructors’ championship. After it was forced to rein in its illegal 2019 engine, the car was significantly slower. Imagine that. For 2021, however, the Scuderia has managed to find a way to make its engine more powerful, presumably in a legal fashion this time. The SF21 isn’t as hopeless as 2020’s SF1000 had been.
After the first four races of the season, Ferrari trails behind McLaren by just 5 points, and Charles Leclerc is currently in fifth position in the world drivers’ championship. Clearly the team has found the speed needed to compete at the front of the mid pack. But it wouldn’t take much improvement for Alpine or Alpha Tauri to catch them up.
Laurent Mekies, Ferrari F1 sporting director, has said he has committed to fully focusing on next year’s car. “We are pretty much already in full switch, it’s already the case for us. If you want to put a number to it, if you call it 90 percent, 95 percent, whatever you want to call it, but it’s pretty much where we are.”
“This is very clear to us, we are focused on 2022,” Mekies added. “The fact that the field is tight that you may need a few hundredths or a few tenths to switch from sixth to third will not change our strategy, the focus is on next year. We have switched the large majority of our resources to it already. It doesn’t mean that some details will not change on the car from now onwards, as we all do with what we learn at the racetrack. But the focus is on next year, even if the field is tight. For us it is a clear decision.”
Interestingly, McLaren have taken the opposite tack.
Team boss Andreas Seidl commenting at the Spanish Grand Prix, “If you look since the first test this year onwards we simply tried to continuously bring updates to the car, to make continuously steps forward with the performance We’ve also brought upgrades for example to Portimao, we’ve brought updates for the car also here in free practice. And our plan is to still bring further updates also in the coming races.”
He later added, “It’s obviously a very tight battle, especially with Ferrari, and it’s simply important to make sure we keep bringing upgrades to the car in the next races in order to keep this battle of P3 alive.”
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Mekies seems to be totally fine with Ferrari sinking down to 6th in the championship again this year. It is only the third team (after Haas and Williams) to announce they had no more intention of developing the 2021 chassis. There’s no telling what other teams will do between now and then, but if I were Alpine, I’d be working on some mid-season updates right about now. Good luck with your 2022 car, Ferrari, it sounds like you’re going to need it.
I will always lament the loss of the BWT-sponsored pink Racing Point cars of the last few years, but if that excellent livery had to leave the sport, I can think of no car more fitting to replace it on the grid than the Aston Martin F1 Team AMR21. The blue-green take on BRG with just a kiss of BWT pink is the most exquisite thing I’ve seen grace the grid in my entire lifetime. It’s so good that I actually might have to cheer for Aston Martin this year, despite my well-known feelings about Sebastian Vettel. Even despite the team’s boneheaded move to ditch Sergio Perez.
It’s been over sixty years since Aston Martin was last in Formula One as a constructor. The team spent the off-season developing a new aero package to fit the 2021 rulebook (and presumably ditch the contentious Mercedes-copied brake ducts) and developing the car to work with Mercedes’ 2020-style rear suspension setup. Certain parts, like the rear suspension, can be taken wholesale from supplying manufacturers without using the team’s update tokens, so that was the plan all along.
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Image: Aston Martin F1 Team
The Racing Point team had a banner 2020 season, scoring enough points to finish third in the championship (were it not for the points stripped away due to the brake duct kerfuffle) and scored the team’s first win since it joined the sport. There’s potential for the Mercedes-powered renamed Aston Martin team to pick up where Racing Point left off. Despite my chiding, I’m sure Vettel has some fight left in him for the 2021 season, and Lance Stroll is a competent competitor, in spite of the nepotism at play here.
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Image: Aston Martin F1 Team
Will the team win the championship? No. Will it win a race or two? If it’s lucky. Will it outscore Red Bull in the manufacturer’s standings? Probably not. McLaren? That’ll be closer, but I’m going to say no. Will it beat every team on the grid in a beauty competition? You bet your sweet ass it will. This is a beautiful machine.
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Image: Aston Martin F1 Team
Think back to the best looking F1 livery of the last thirty years. Whatever it is, this is better.
McLaren’s newest supercar, the Artura, is almost set for its world debut.
The reveal will take place February 16 via a livestream kicking off at 7:00 p.m. Eastern Time, which you can watch at this link.
What’s the Artura? It’s only the first ground-up design for McLaren since the 12C a decade ago, with the car’s carbon-fiber tub, V-6 engine and hybrid technology all new. This is major as every previous McLaren has used some variation of the carbon tub that debuted with the 12C. A teaser video provides some glimpses at the car and gives us a good taste of the sound from its V-6.
Teaser for McLaren Artura debuting on February 16, 2021
The Artura isn’t the next instalment in McLaren’s entry-level Sports Series family as previously thought. Instead, it’s a proper supercar expected to sit between the GT and 720S. The Sports Series has reached the end of the road with the limited-production 620R, McLaren has confirmed.
Prototypes for the Artura have been spotted for a while. The design is evolutionary, so don’t expect anything crazy like the recent Speedtail and Sabre special editions. Judging from our spy shots of prototypes, the Artura has taken most of its influences from the GT.
Residing under the body is the new MCLA (McLaren Carbon Lightweight Architecture) monocoque structure. This carbon-fiber tub replaces the MonoCell which debuted in the 12C and has been revised to fit the rest of McLaren’s lineup. The carbon construction sets the Artura apart from rivals at Ferrari and Lamborghini which continue to rely on aluminum construction for their lower-level models.
McLaren Artura spy shots – Photo credit: S. Baldauf/SB-Medien
McLaren Artura spy shots – Photo credit: S. Baldauf/SB-Medien
Teaser for McLaren Artura due in early 2021
The MCLA has been designed from the outset to support hybrid powertrains. In the Artura, there’s a new powertrain referred to as the HPH (High-Performance Hybrid) by McLaren. It consists of a newly developed twin-turbocharged V-6 paired with a single electric motor. The V-6 delivers top-end power similar to McLaren’s V-8 while the electric motor adds low-end torque, according to McLaren. There’s also enough battery capacity to provide what McLaren describes as a “medium” range of electric-only driving, suggesting the HPH is a plug-in hybrid setup. The teaser video shows what looks to be the car’s battery.
We’re now just days out from the reveal, so stay tuned. Sales are expected to start in the first half of 2021.
While the rollout of the Artura appears to be on schedule, McLaren is expected to slow the launch of other models due to the coronavirus pandemic and associated economic fallout.
