The Ferrari FF

Driving the Ferrari FF

The latest car to roll out of Ferrari's Maranello factory is the Ferrari FF. This video is very exciting in that it gives the closest simulation to driving a Ferrari that any of us will feel. It is kind of a goofy looking car regarding the shape. It has great headlights that trail up the body and look phenomenal. They have a little row of LED's going up the headlights, made famous by Audi. The grill makes the car look like it is smiling and the teeth display a nice Ferrari logo. I don't know what the big deal is about this car. It's a Ferrari, but a name doesn't make something look good. The back is what I have the most trouble with. It is a sort of hatchback-like-look. However, it looks like a hatchback that was just stretched out, with its long nose.

I love the video. It shows off the textbook lavish interior that Italians can put together. Ferrari might just have the sexiest air conditioning vents. The steering wheel is also beautiful. Those red lights that flicker on the top of the wheel tell the driver of the car, when the optimum time to shift the car is. Ferrari's haven't had the traditional "stick" to shift with for a few years. Instead, they have paddle shifters located right behind the wheel. One side shifts up, the other shifts down. It is a piece of technology that they took from their Formula 1 cars. The color is standard Ferrari livery and it looks beautiful. I once saw a documentary on the Ferrari factory and they showed how they have an expert able to pick out the smallest imperfection in the paint of the car and draws little circles all over the car where there are imperfections. It's that type of attention to detail that people look for when they spend this kind of money.

The video also shows off the textbook mountainous European roads. Its roads like this that is why European cars focus a lot more on having as tight suspension as opposed to American car companies.

Pointless Video of the Week

This video is sheer entertainment value. There is almost nothing that can be said about the video in terms of the vehicle being used because it is an Italian cart that I know nothing about. However, I have seen the cart before. It appears in The American and probably other American movies that take place in Italy. It is just a little motorized cart that is used to zip up and down the tight streets that are found in Italy.

People always find ways to create something low tiered in complexity and then sup it up so that it can do a lot more than the cart was originally intended to do. This is seen all the time with cars as they are constantly tuned to get enormous horsepower and be quick. People do this a lot to lower end cars like the Honda Civic. Here the driver has tuned his little cart and also has tuned his skills. He has figured out the speed to go into the corners and then how hard he needs to turn the car so that it rolls, but just enough so that it goes up on two wheels and then stays like that. It's almost a twist on the blog post that I made with the Secret Service vehicles doing the J-turn.

It is just a video that is entertaining and that's the reason that it was put online. It shows something unusual being done that doesn't happen every day. There are times when in movies a car will go on two wheels but that'll only be for a few seconds and it is usually shown as an accident. This driver figured out how to do it both on purpose and for long durations of time while still maintaining control. Could you do it? No. That is what people like to see, other people doing things that they themselves are unable to.

Isle of Man TT

You don't have to watch the whole thing because it is kind of redundant.

This is one of the more classic car videos that is out there because of great the quality of the video is and what it offers the viewer. For starters it shows the precision that goes into driving one of these rally courses. The speeds are so great that turns are almost always done blind. The driver can't tell what it around each corner or how tight the corner will be. Usually race car drivers, overcome approaching corners very quickly by just memorizing the track and its turns. The Isle of Man is too long and complicated for the drivers to this, so they have a navigator who reads what is coming up. I'm uncertain what is going on with all the "maybe's" however, I'm sure it means that the navigators words are just general statements. It shows how much thought is going into the driving of the car. Each word tells him an amount to turn the wheel and there is a lot of thought process going on to get the car around a corner. This is how not just this race, but most rally type races are done. There are two people in the car instead of one and the race becomes more a team even that is based not just on the driver skill but the degree of how the two work together.

On another note about the video is The Isle of Man racetrack which is one of the most famous courses in the world. Even most car enthusiasts are unaware of the race. The Isle of Man is a strange country that is an island between Ireland and the UK. However, it is most famous for its road course that drives through the countryside. The race is predominantly motorcycles, but they have added cars to the race. It is not the glamorous racing that takes place on professional courses that cost millions of dollars, but instead takes place on the standard roads that the country has to offer.

The "J-Turn" as Demonstrated by the Secret Service

Start watching at about 2:20

This is an extremely interesting video because of what it shows. The Secret Service performs an almost "ballet of cars" as they whip around. The J-turn is seen in movies every once in a while, but rarely is it shown in a format like this one where three cars are doing the turn so closely together and with such a high degree of precision. Something like this does not have much real world practical use for any of us as we will never do something like this, either because we never have the need to or do not have the courage to try. It is extremely risky to try since there is a clear opportunity for damage to occur to the car. That being said it is a very niche type of thing that only certain people can/should do.

It is more a video just for entertainment and there isn't too much that can be said to about it. The video speaks for itself. The feat is basically accomplished solely through the skill and training of the driver and there doesn't really seem to be much the car contributes. The car basically just needs to suspension to handle the turn. Also, the tires need to be able to momentarily lose traction, but that gain it back later when the time is right. There is a necessary balance that needs to be there between the driver and the car. You would also need to have a familiarity between the car that is being driven because so many cars have different suspensions and different driving feels that could easily cause the quick turn to fail. That is what makes the turn of limo even that much crazier. Instead of dealing with normal car dimensions and handling there is an extra 10 feet or so that he has to deal with, along with that added wait. It is just wild to watch and see what these expertly trained drivers are able to do.

KERS

 

KERS is a very new technology that is starting to be in use in race cars and now, some street cars. The video explains how it works pretty much. It stores energy that is expelled through the natural process of driving, in this braking and then when there is enough power stored, that can be expelled to give the car a burst of speed. In Formula 1, they save the power so that it can be used to give the car power so that it can speed up at a higher rate above the cars potential. This does not translate very well to the consumer car market except for a very few cars at the top where that extra little power makes their car faster than their competitors for fast street going cars. Instead, this KERS technology, or Kinetic Energy Recovery System, will be used as a sort of hybrid instead. The car will store natural energy expelled from the car and then it will be used to power the engine instead of fuel at times. It is truly a revolutionary way to go forward with a hybrid because there is no need for a special fuel or anything like that and the cars would be able to be similar to the way that they are today.

It is a strong example which demonstrates the transition from race cars to the street. A lot of technology that is in modern cars was first put into practice to make cars go faster on racetracks. Things like transmissions and traction control were taken from race cars. Racing teams are always looking for advantages and this spurs a lot of new, innovative technologies. Formula 1 teams have budgets in the hundreds of millions. This affords them a lot of money for research and development because they only have produce two cars to go out on the racetrack. This fosters research and the technology gets tested on the tracks by the cars and the companies and then it is a lot easier for it to transition to street cars as the technology has already been tested.

Porsche Carrera GT

Featured this week is another one of my favorite cars, the Porsche Carrera GT. My love of this car comes from two main points. One is that it is a beautiful Porsche. The other part is the sound created by the engine. The exterior is very agressive and it just looks like car that is very fast. The noise created by the engine is high pitched and almost the complete opposite of the growl from an Aston Martin DBS.

The Carrera GT was built between 2004 and 2006 and was meant to be the peak of Porsche technology. The engine sits right behind the two seats. It has a 612 hp engine which is more than three times the horsepower of a Honda Civic. The engine is based on a Porsche race car that was never put on the racetrack because of new rule changes. This power has allowed the Carrera GT to be clocked in the 3.5 second range for going from 0-60. This is obviously a very serious car which why if you would like to buy it, you'd have to pay about a half million dollars when it was new.

Personally, I believe one of the most amazing things about cars, that never comes up in stats is the exhaust note that is put out. When you are paying that much, I want something that sounds beautiful every time the engine is opened up. There is such diversity for sounds that are out there. Muscle cars from the 60's sound much different than the Carrera GT. That is what is amazing to follow through the years, which is see how with regards to exhaust note, there has been such an evolution. Companies put a lot of effort into making beautiful sounds from their cars and that comes from having their exhausts tune by music companies like Yamaha so that the engine sounds as best as possible.

MotoGP

Start watching the video at 3:10. The video is in Italian, but you'll still get the point.

MotoGP is a sport that the United States does not get very much exposure to. However, the best riders are world superstars. The rider with the yellow all over him is Valentino Rossi. He only made $35 million dollars last year, so he does all right. This particular race was controversial because the two riders are teammates and they are going at each other very hard. Yamaha, their sponsor, would have been very upset if they had taken each other out.

MotoGP is a highly lucrative sport where bike makers try and outdo each other to earn bragging rights when it comes to selling their bikes. The bike makers use their motorcycle racing teams as forms of research and development where they can develop the technology and gear that will be in their motorcycles in a few years. Yamaha basically owned MotoGP while Valentino Rossi was on their team, but he has since left to return to Italian bike maker, Ducati.

I think that this video has multiple benefits to watching. It shows something that is different than what most people have seen, which is cars racing. These bikes are much more agile and can easily be thrown around the track from side-to-side. It makes these races much more entertaining, since the bikes are much easier to handle and positioning matters less so than in car races. In the video, there is plenty of passing and even a double pass. The video almost compresses the excitement of a normal MotoGP race into a few minutes to demonstrate how their races differ from the more often seen car races.

MotoGP also has an elegance that is unique to it. The riders don't sit straight on their bike, they throw their body around and place it at dangerous angles so that the power of the bike can be put to the pavement in the best way. It is a physical sport, not in the way that people think when physical sports come to mind. It is about making your body work the machine for incredible results.

The Aston Martin DBS

It is about time that I say a thing or two about my favorite car. It is pictured at the top of my blog with what I believe to be Paris in the background. This behemoth of a machine is a car that most of you have probably seen, but may not know much about, and this car is the British Aston Martin DBS. The styling of the car, is completely unique and it has a plethora of luxury tied into the engineering. Its stylish decide allowed it to be the car of choice for the most recent James Bond flicks, a throwback to the early days when Sean Connery drove an Aston Martin DB5. However, you may recognize the DBS from here:

It's so beautiful. There are many more things to love about this car than its raw sexiness. It has a low growling V12, which I much appreciate since a lot of prestigious cars are attempting to make their cars sound higher pitched and more like a race car.

High end cars are always the best cars to read about since they have so much technology that goes into them and sometimes you hear a feature and go, "Wow, I didn't know they could do that." For instance the DBS has an Adaptive Damping System which allows the suspension to adjust its stiffness to weather and road conditions as well as the manner in which the driver is driving at. Also, the car is made of mostly aluminum and carbon fiber. The floor mats even contain carbon fiber just so the driver can say the floor mats have carbon fiber. Also, it has carbon ceramic breaks (those really strong/brakes I talked about earlier) and a 13 speaker sound system from Bang and Olufsen. The car is more built for practical driving than a lot of Ferrari's which are built to be street legal race cars. I find the Aston Martin DBS to be the best of all world, and thus, the greatest vehicle ever.

The Famous Nurburgring

Nurburgring 24 Hour Race HD

The Nurburgring is the most famous race track in the world. While you may have never heard of it, it famous and is the focus of most high end car engineers. The Nurburgring is used as the place where car companies test out their latest cars built for speed. The track is used because it has straight aways that test a cars high end speeds as well as the handling and suspension in those cars. Car companies put a lot of effort into the race technology that they will use so that they can get quick times when their car is tested on "The Ring." This video shows various parts of the Nurburgring as well as great cinematography. You can get the gist of the Nurburgring and all that happens there through the video.

A car is simply just a compilation of data and tests before it has something to compare it to. Horsepower may seem good, but in a big car, the horsepower may have less effect since it is moving a car. Its 0-60 time may tell you how fast the car is in a straight line, but when a turn comes, what happens? The Nurburgring is phenomenal in that it tests many aspects of a car. As each part is tested, the final score of the car is the time that the car takes to complete one lap. A question that is always asked is what a car's time was on the Nurburgring because there are thresholds based on the times and if your car goes as fast or faster than a car famous for its speed, then you get a lot of respect as a car company. One of the best examples of this was the Corvette ZR1. Everyone knew that it was a fast car but when it posted one of the fastest times for a production car, the ZR1 became a lot more prestigious. It was faster than any Porsche ever built and was almost as fast as the Ferrari Enzo which costs about $1.3 million. The ZR1 only costed about $100,000. The ZR1 got its fame through exemplifying how great the car was built when it was all put together. This is the type of fame that a single lap on the Nurburgring can bring and is a must know place in the car world.

At Least He Lives in Russia

This is a little different of a video from last week since it is from the camera of an amateur and is also about motorcycles. The point however, is still kind of the same with that "wow, these people are somehow dumb and at the same time talented." I think that this video is thoroughly nauseating and spectacular. Simply put, the Yamaha R1 is a street legal racing motorcycle. It took most of its technology from its racing motorcycles and was built based on input from the hugely famous motorcycle racer, Valentino Rossi.

However, this video isn't so much about what the motorcycle is capable of as much as it is regarding the balls that this rider has. It starts out in a not-so-dramatic manner with him driving the motorcycle at a pretty standard pace for someone with a motorcycle, but then as he approaches traffic the video goes from another motorcycle video on YouTube to a hit for people who love adrenaline. This is a phenomenal video in that it strongly attracts the viewer to physical emotion from watching. I kind of have this feeling to sneak in to an IMAX theatre and play the video on the screen. Someone needs to do that as soon as possible. This is more entertaining and takes advantage of the true IMAX qualities, instead of those normal movies that they take and put on IMAX to charge more.

I think that it can be safely said that everyone is glad that this motorcycle rider is a whole ocean away so that we don't have to worry about driving on the roads with him. If one car had done a lane change, the video would end drastically different. That is also the main part of this video that makes it so entertaining to watch, and how it is able to excite a viewer. Apparently the rider hits 50 mph while going tightly between those cars and this is another moment where you ask, "Did he really do that?" Yes, he just did.

-I'm assuming he's male, sorry.

Gymkhana Driving, with Ken Block

This video is straight up bananas. Ken Block exhibits whip game that isn't anything but vicious. The video demonstrates a mash up of car technology and driving expertise. It is probably my favorite car video of all time as a result.

The car is far from a stock vehicle that would be found on the road. It was clearly assembled for the sole purpose of being thrown around. The stock version of Ken Block's car looks like this:

However, when you have companies like Monster Energy and DC Shoes willing to pay for you to do dumb shit, the car becomes what is seen in the video. It has an incredibly powerful engine that is simply needed to make the video even possible. It has 660 lb-ft of torque, which is unimaginably violent. Torque is the twisting motion in the car, which is pretty hard to explain, but basically that says how hard you get pushed against your seat when accelerating.

Along with the feisty engine, there are some pretty wicked brakes on this Fiesta. At 6:50 in the video you get to see the breaks, and they're pretty much on fire. This leads to the belief that those are probably carbon ceramic breaks that are found on cars like Ferrari and other elite cars. Carbon ceramic breaks are lighter, stronger, and can keep up with high temperatures created through strong breaking at high speeds. To put things in perspective, the carbon ceramic breaks on a Porsche are an $8,840 option.

The video is amazing and simply makes me feel suddenly hyper and ecstatic. It shows what is possible with car technology and with a driver at the top of their game. When all those things, and a shit ton of money, are put together, it can make a video that is beautiful and violent at the same time. The most amazing thing about this is that even if a person knows nothing about cars, they can watch the video and be amazed by it. Everyone knows what it is like to drive a car and what the car they drive can do. They also know what they are capable of doing as a driver (if you can't parallel park, Ken Block probably blew you're mind even more). So this video is able to be appreciated and exciting to everyone that watches it.