Sox and Martin 1969 Plymouth 'The Boss' Phantom WIP- Done!!

Well, before i take off for the weekend I started a build that I haven't tried in forever - a drag car. Thanks to Snake45 I have ordered the Slixx decals for this build. But i am probably going to need a lot of help because I really don't know all the NHRA rules for this period and i can't find good pictures of this particular model.  I did go to the NHRA Nationals in Indpls. where i grew up but i was paying more attention to the girls instead of the cars!  For example:

  1. Should these cars have front and rear lenses? I have seen some pictures both ways.
  2. I would think I should put a roll bar in and may borrow one from the 68 Dodge Dart Hemi as well as the crossram dual carb setup. Can't find a picture of the actual engine in this one.

In the meantime, I am sanding down the chrome strip on the sides, the GTX emblem, and will fill the marker lamp recesses. Thanks for looking! Cool

Source: http://cs.scaleautomag.com/SCACS/forums/thread/960792.aspx

Les Leston Pierre Levegh Bayliss Levrett Jackie Lewis Stuart LewisEvans

Classic Porsche Throwdown: 993 RS and 964 RS take off their gloves

What do you get when you have two iconic Porsche sports cars, miles of empty road ahead of you, a camera crew, and soundtrack music courtesy of Moby?

We’ll spare you the answer: you get a pretty awesome three-and-a-half minute video, that’s what!

Arguably two of the most famous Porsche 911 models in history - the 993 RS and the 964 RS - are the subjects in this video, and by asking us, we’ll tell you that they play the roles of protagonists very, very well.

It’s a scenic video comprising the two classic 911s blazing their rubber on a vast expanse of open land with a cargo plane serving as a noteworthy extra. There’s plenty to like about this video, including the soundtrack music courtesy of Moby that provides the feeling of buoyant serenity while watching the two Porsches in their natural habitat.

As a reminder to those that have forgotten, the 993 RS was a lightweight version of the 993 Carrera - 100 kg lighter, in fact - and was the first Porsche to ever use a 3.8-liter engine that produced 300 horsepower. On the flip side, the 964 RS was notable, not just because it was a lightweight rear-wheel-drive 911, but because it was sold in the US on a limited basis only. It came with a six-cylinder engine that had an output of 260 horsepower and 230 lb/ft of torque.

Two classic 911s getting their own video with Moby in the background. Good morning, indeed.

Classic Porsche Throwdown: 993 RS and 964 RS take off their gloves originally appeared on topspeed.com on Sunday, 19 June 2011 06:00 EST.

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Source: http://www.topspeed.com/cars/car-news/classic-porsche-throwdown-993-rs-and-964-rs-take-off-their-gloves-ar111418.html

Bobby Ball Marcel Balsa Lorenzo Bandini Henry Banks Fabrizio Barbazza

Lewis Hamilton outburst overshadows Monaco thriller

As if the Monaco Grand Prix had not already been dramatic enough, Lewis Hamilton's controversial comments afterwards will ensure it makes even bigger headlines across the world.

The McLaren driver quoted Ali G, the original spoof character dreamt up by Borat creator Sacha Baron Cohen, as he railed against the decision by race stewards to call him to explain his part in two separate incidents during Sunday's event.

Hamilton pointed out to BBC F1 pit-lane reporter Lee McKenzie that it was the fifth time in six races this year he had been called to account for his actions, and she asked him why he thought that was.

"Maybe it's because I'm black," he said, laughing. "That's what Ali G said. I dunno."

"People want to see overtaking and racing and you get done for trying to put on a show and make a move," he continued. "Fair play. If I really feel I've gone too late and hit someone, I'll put my hand up and say I've caused the incident and been the stupid one."

Hamilton described his being called to account for incidents for which he felt was blameless as "a joke", and described the rivals in question - Ferrari's Felipe Massa and Williams novice Pastor Maldonado - as "stupid".

What was he going to do about the situation? "I'll just try and keep my mouth shut," he said.

It is too late for that, though, even though McLaren went into damage-limitation mode after the race.

"Immediately after the race he was very down," team principal Martin Whitmarsh said, "and during a post-race TV interview he made a poor joke about his penalties that referenced Ali G. However, I'm pleased to say that he chose to return to the track a little while later to speak to the stewards about the joke. They accepted his explanation."

Hamilton's remarks came at the end of a weekend when nothing seemed to go right for him.

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A wrong call to do only one run in qualifying led to him starting the race from ninth place, after he made a mistake and cut a chicane on his flying lap.

Trying to make up ground in the race, a brilliant early pass on Michael Schumacher was followed by the two collisions with Massa and Maldonado.

Sir Jackie Stewart talks about the importance of ridding yourself of emotion before stepping into a grand prix car, but it looked as if Hamilton had not taken the great man's advice on Sunday.

Hamilton has made himself one of global sport's highest profile figures thanks to his inspirational driving, and cool, youthful image. And he has established himself in the four and a half years of his career as unquestionably the greatest overtaker in F1, as well as arguably its out-and-out fastest driver.

But he did not earn that reputation with performances like that in Monaco on Sunday. BBC F1 commentator Martin Brundle described his late lunge down the inside of Massa as "clumsy" and his attempt to pass Maldonado later on was similarly optimistic.

When Hamilton watches the incidents back, I suspect he might agree, as he may well regret his post-race comments when he calms down after what was admittedly an intensely frustrating weekend. It remains to be seen whether they will get him into hot water with governing body the FIA.

In the days of the former president Max Mosley, there is no question Hamilton would have been called up to answer a charge of bringing the sport into disrepute. His successor Jean Todt has taken a less antagonistic approach, but has not yet had to deal with a similar incident.

Brundle said he thought Hamilton had let frustration creep into his driving, and it certainly looked that way.

He entered Monaco expecting to fight for victory and was quick throughout practice on a circuit he adores and on which he excels, only for it all to slip agonisingly through his fingers.

That frustration will be heightened by the fact that Vettel is now in what has to be considered a virtually unassailable position in the championship.

Hamilton is well aware of how good he is. He aches to add more crowns to the one he won in 2008, and even before Monaco it was obvious that the fact this season is likely to be another barren year was already bubbling provocatively inside him.

But the sooner he realises that his quest to win the multiple titles he feels he deserves will not be helped by this sort of reaction, the better it will be for him.

While luck appeared to desert Hamilton in Monaco, the angels are truly smiling on Vettel this season. And it is not even as if he needs them.

Time after time, circumstance has intervened to make the German's path to victory easier than it should have been, and Vettel has taken full advantage.

Vettel's victory in Monaco on Sunday, his first in the principality, was his fifth in six grands prix so far this season. Only Jim Clark, Nigel Mansell, Schumacher and Jenson Button have achieved that and all of them ended the season in question as champions.

Vettel now leads the championship by 58 points - that means Hamilton, his closest pursuer, would have to take two wins and a sixth place with the Red Bull driver not scoring just to draw level.

It is the sort of margin that can be closed only by a driver in the best car. The problem is that it is Vettel himself who enjoys that luxury and, boy, is he capitalising on it.

His and Red Bull's domination is being founded on their blistering superiority in qualifying. In races, as Sunday demonstrated yet again, the Red Bull is far more vulnerable.

This time, a mix-up at Vettel's first pit stop meant he rejoined on the harder of the two tyre choices, the softs, when Red Bull had been intending to put him on the super-softs, which his closest pursuer Button chose to fit at his first stop.

The mistake made, Red Bull altered their strategy, in light of a mid-race safety car period, and decided to try to make it to the end of the race on those tyres.

That meant Vettel entered the final 30 laps of the race with tyres that were already 32 laps old and with two of F1's finest drivers closing in fast on fresher rubber.

The tyres on Fernando Alonso's Ferrari were 17 laps younger than Vettel's, Button's a full 31; and with a little less than 20 laps to go the three of them were running nose to tail.

Vettel, driving brilliantly as he has all year, had held them off relatively comfortably until a big crash involving Hamilton, Vitaly Petrov, Jaime Alguersuari and Adrian Sutil brought out the safety car again and subsequently the red flag.

The 20-minute stoppage before the race was resumed robbed millions of viewers around the world of what promised to be a spectacular climax to the race - it meant all the drivers could fit fresh tyres and Vettel survived the last eight laps of the re-started race without incident.

It will never be known whether he could have held off Alonso and Button had the race not been stopped.

But McLaren managing director Jonathan Neale told BBC pit-lane reporter Ted Kravitz that by their calculations Vettel's tyres had no more than three more laps before they "dropped off the cliff", as F1 teams have taken to describing the moment the Pirellis that have done so much for the racing this year finally lose all their grip.

If Neale was right, even at Monaco Vettel would surely not have been able to hold Alonso and Button back.

Even Red Bull team principal Christian Horner admitted luck had shone on his team, saying the red flag was a "reprieve".

It was just the latest example of a recurring phenomenon this year. For all Vettel's searing qualifying pace, he is vulnerable in races, but events are transpiring to give him the breathing space he needs to keep winning.

Monaco followed Australia, Malaysia and Turkey this year as a race in which he might have faced a more serious challenge but didn't.

The championship may already appear to be a formality but the races themselves are making up for it with a combination of action and unpredictability that F1 has never seen before.

Next up is the Canadian Grand Prix, on one of the least favourable tracks for Red Bull, the long straights at the Circuit Gilles Villeneuve favouring the extra power of McLaren's Mercedes engine and Ferrari over the Renault in the Red Bull.

Last year, Red Bull could manage only fourth and fifth in Montreal, behind Hamilton, Button and Alonso, in a race that prompted the decision to ask new supplier Pirelli to produce tyres that degraded rapidly.

The unique track surface there made the super-durable Bridgestones used last year behave like the Pirellis are doing at every race this season, and prompted the most exciting grand prix of the year.

If that happened when the racing was sometimes processional, even if the title fight was thrilling, the mind boggles at what could happen there in 2011.

Source: http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/andrewbenson/2011/05/hamilton.html

Giovanni de Riu Richard Robarts Pedro Rodríguez Ricardo Rodríguez Alberto Rodriguez Larreta

Alonso gives Red Bull pause for thought

The 2011 Formula 1 season is not yet a quarter done but it is already difficult to see past Sebastian Vettel ending a second consecutive season as the world champion.

A third victory in four races has given the Red Bull driver a 34-point lead in the standings and the man in second place, Lewis Hamilton, could finish only fourth in Sunday's Turkish Grand Prix.

There is no doubt that the German is now in total control of this season. The word "domination" is being bandied around and it is easy to see why but, in each of the four races so far, the performance gap between Vettel and his pursuers has not been as great as the stark results suggest.

Just as in his wins in Australia and Malaysia, Vettel's afternoon at Istanbul Park was made easier by delays suffered by his rivals.

This time, Nico Rosberg, who started third on the grid behind Vettel and team-mate Mark Webber, was the man responsible for allowing his fellow German to make a break. That ensured he could ease into cruise control as early as lap five, when Webber was finally able to pass the fast-starting Mercedes.

The key to all of Vettel's victories has been his searing pace in qualifying. Turkey was his fourth pole position in a row this season - his seventh in the last eight races if you count the end of last year - and it was one of his most impressive so far.

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Vettel had no dry running on Friday following a hefty crash caused by pushing too hard on intermediate tyres at Turn Eight in the wet conditions on Friday morning. Yet the following day he put his car on pole by nearly half a second from Webber.

Even in the wild and whacky races of 2011, pole position is proving a vital weapon for Vettel. It is allowing him to steer clear of the craziness behind him, and allowing him to run at his own pace, putting him in control of races from very early on.

Would Webber or Ferrari's Fernando Alonso, who finished second and third, have been able to challenge him on Sunday had it not been for Rosberg? Neither man sounded very confident of that after the race.

Webber said it would have been "difficult to beat Sebastian today", while Alonso - the race's big surprise - described Vettel as a "99% favourite".

However, Alonso added that "this 1% (is what) we had lost in the first five laps with Nico because more or less the seven seconds distance to Sebastian was consistent all through the race. Without those five seconds, maybe we could have raced in the pit stop and forced something".

And that's the point. Vettel, as he said himself, is not unbeatable. But his life is being made easier by the frenetic battle behind him, which he is surveying from above for now.

Heading into the Turkey race, few would have predicted that it would be Alonso taking the fight to the Red Bulls - and certainly not the man himself.

The Spaniard arrived in Istanbul talking about Ferrari having taken a "small step". But new front and rear wings and brake ducts added up to a lot more than that.

Alonso has qualified fifth for all four races so far this season, but he and Ferrari reduced their deficit to Vettel from 1.4secs in China three weeks ago to 0.8secs in Turkey. And in the race he went toe-to-toe with Webber and very nearly came out on top.

Alonso drove a superb race, taking advantage of Hamilton's lap one error to slip into fourth place, following Webber past Rosberg and then slugging it out with the Red Bulls for the rest of the afternoon.

He was, then, the deserved winner of our new BBC F1 driver of the day vote, in which he took 18.5% of the support, just ahead of Vettel (17.9%) and Sauber's Kamui Kobayashi, who fought from the back of the grid to 10th place (17.2%).

It was a remarkable turnaround by Ferrari and there is more to come from them after some soul-searching and intense analysis at Maranello following their disappointing start to the season.

It immediately revived memories of last year. Leaving the British Grand Prix last July, nearly two clear wins off the championship lead on points, Alonso famously declared that he was more confident than ever that he could win the championship. And had it not been for some bungled Ferrari strategy in the final race of the season, he would have done.

Alonso might be 52 points - more than two wins - behind Vettel right now, but he has 15 races, or possibly 16 depending on what happens to Bahrain, to recover it and it would be a fool who wrote off now such a formidable fighter. After last year's experience, Red Bull certainly won't be making that mistake.

"Ferrari," said team principal Christian Horner, "they're back. They pushed us very hard today with Fernando."

Alonso felt confident enough after his third place in Turkey to talk about winning races. For now, though, the only person to do so this year apart from Vettel is Hamilton, for whose McLaren team Sunday was a chastening experience after their driver's breathtaking win in China.

That error on the first lap, running wide at Turn Four challenging Webber, put him on the back foot and a fumbled pit stop, caused by a sticking wheel nut, dropped him down still further. In typical style, Hamilton stuck with the task and he fought back to finish fourth.

Jenson Button was sixth after he and the team erroneously chose a three-stop strategy when four was the way to go.

Team boss Martin Whitmarsh rightly described it as a "fairly average day at the office" but Hamilton talked about battling for second without his problems, and there is no reason to suppose McLaren have lost the ability they have showed in the first three races to keep pace with Red Bull.

The next phase of the season, then, promises to be fascinating, with Mercedes, too, in the mix - even if Rosberg's race pace did not match his superb qualifying performance.

For his team-mate, though, the future looks less bright. Sunday was another difficult day in Michael Schumacher's ill-starred comeback.

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Trounced by Rosberg in qualifying, when he was - just like for much of last year - guilty of over-driving, Schumacher had another poor race, wrecking any hopes of a recovery by completely misjudging his defence against Renault's Vitaly Petrov in the early laps and ripping off his own front wing.

"I don't know why he doesn't know when to give up," David Coulthard said in the commentary. "On the track or in his career?" replied Martin Brundle, sharp as ever.

BBC pundit Eddie Jordan's post-race analogy with an aging and punch-drunk Muhammad Ali when he fought Larry Holmes in 1980 was perhaps a touch harsh, but you could see where he was coming from.

Fascinatingly, Schumacher's mask slipped a little for the first time since making his comeback. He had always insisted that he was enjoying himself, and that the pace and touch would come back. On Sunday, though, he admitted "the big joy is not there right now".

I've known Schumacher for a long time, and he looked and sounded like a man beginning, as Coulthard put it, "to ask himself some questions".

Perhaps it was the immediate post-race emotion talking, perhaps not. But, not for the first time, many in F1 will be asking whether his second career will last the three years for which he signed up.

Source: http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/andrewbenson/2011/05/the_2011_formula_1_season.html

Peter Monteverdi Robin MontgomerieCharrington Juan Pablo Montoya Gianni Morbidelli Roberto Moreno

Jenson Button Celebrates win in Canada (Video)

We don’t know about you, but here at Formula1Fancast cannot get enough of the Candian Grand Prix reaction.

It was incredible viewing from start to finish and celebrating a Grand Prix victory is always a good site as far as we are concerned.

In this , he ...

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Formula1Fancast/~3/QPXPKqrDkJg/jenson-button-celebrates-win-in-canada-video

Alberto Uria Nino Vaccarella Bob Veith Jos Verstappen Sebastian Vettel

Lexus LS 460 Touring Edition


Lexus wants a piece of the younger market pie just as much as the next full size sedan automaker. However, it seems as if the Japanese luxury automaker doesn’t have much in the way of successful options, so they’re left with attaching the words "Touring Edition" to their bland LS 460. The special, limited edition LS 460 Touring Edition will be available on the US market and will be offered in both Rear Wheel Drive and All-Wheel Drive versions. Sales will begin in late June/early July with prices starting at $73,000.

Not much changes for the LS 460 Touring Edition, which falls in nicely with the fact that the standard LS hasn’t changed much with time anyway. What the special edition does get is a Smoky Granite Mica exterior, a sport kit and grille, and 19-inch five-spoke alloy wheels. The interior gets a touch more luxurious with black and tan leather-trimmed sports seats, a wood and leather-trimmed steering wheel and shift knob, matte brown wood trim, and premium floor mats. For a new sport trim, these changes aren’t all that exciting.

Mark Templin, Lexus Division group vice president and general manager said: "The Touring Edition adds excitement to our flagship sedan. The package on this car enhances styling and comfort, allowing us to attract younger buyers to the LS line-up. The LS 460 Touring Edition is a unique package of sporty exterior styling and comfort. With limited units available nationwide they?ll sell out fast to customers who want an all-inclusive luxury package."

Lexus LS 460 Touring Edition originally appeared on topspeed.com on Friday, 17 June 2011 15:00 EST.

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Source: http://www.topspeed.com/cars/lexus/2011-lexus-ls-460-touring-edition-ar111389.html

Masami Kuwashima Robert La Caze Jacques Laffite Franck Lagorce Jan Lammers