Test Drive: Lexus IS-F

With stringent CAFE regulations forcing auto manufacturers to produce cars that are more efficient and deliver greater fuel economy, sport sedans powered by normally aspirated V8 engines are being shown the door in favor of smaller displacement turbocharged engines. You’re starting to run out of choices if you really want a stonking four-door sports sedan with a naturally aspirated V8, but there are a couple of them still around, including the Lexus IS-F.

Lexus is not exactly the brand that comes first to mind when you think sports sedan, but there areplenty of engineers at Toyota that are performance-minded enthusiasts and enjoy nothing better than taking the fight to BMW, Mercedes and Audi in the premium sports sedan market. The IS-F is largely the creation of engineer Yukihiko Yaguchi, a 30-year Toyota veteran who was involved in the creation of the first two generations of the Lexus LS sedan, as well as the Toyota Supra and the first Lexus GS sedan. Yaguchi created his own small team to develop and build the IS-F, which put in plenty of testing and development time at tracks like the Nürburgring Nordschleife, Circuit Paul Ricard, Laguna Seca and its home track, Fuji Speedway.

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2012 Race-a-Palooza at Long Beach

Maybe I’m grouchy… maybe I’m a curmudgeon. Regardless, I am a fan of the American Le Mans Series. At last count I believe I’ve attended over 100 consecutive American Le Mans Series events… including the winter tests. After last week’s gathering at Long Beach, I wish my event count was 99.

Sorry Mr. Atherton. You know I’m a HUGE ALMS supporter. But Long Beach is not special. It’s a side show and the American Le Mans Series gets teated like a second class citizen. And frankly, why Indy Car (NASCAR’s ugly step sister) is the headliner is beyond me.

Sure, I understand the SoCal market attraction. But at what cost? We lower the standard of our product, our racing format, we lower the standard of our fan’s access and we lower the standard of the on-track show. In short, we lower our standards.

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A Club for Speed

As driving enthusiasts, it’s a safe assumption that many of us have similar daydreams when it comes to our automotive passions. We may dream that we someday have enough skill to make it as a driver in a pro racing series, or find a classic Ferrari in good shape sitting in a barn with an owner that would be happy to get rid of it for $500. Another could be the dream of owning a great sports car that we could take to the track whenever we feel like it. Thanks to the Monticello Motor Club, that last dream can be reality for well-heeled car enthusiasts in the New York metropolitan area. 

Private motorsport and track-day facilities have been cropping up over the last few years as tracks look to expand their business opportunities beyond pro racing or renting to public track-day organizations. Circuits such as Lime Rock Park, VIR and New Jersey Motorsports Park all offer private clubs that give members special track access and privileges that go beyond what you can get through local club chapters or track-day organizations. Problem is, the private clubs at these tracks have to work around the schedules for pro racing and track rentals. Monticello Motor Club (MMC) is one of the relatively few private clubs where members can show up and drive nearly any time they want, except when it’s closed in the winter.  

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The smell of politics wafts over Sebring.

SEE THE FULL GALLERYThe closing lap of this year’s 60^th running of the Sebring 12 Hours was a showcase for some of the most exciting wheel to wheel racing ever seen on our shores. Sure, Audi’s legendary trio of Allan McNish, Tom Kristensen, and Dindo Capello had already wrapped up the overall and LMP1 win with time to spare and little competition outside of their Joest Racing teammates, but the battle in GT was once again the knock-down street brawl we’ve come to expect from the production-based class.

So, who won?

The answer to that would seem to depend on where you’re counting from, how you score it, and possibly where you watched the race. The No. 16 Dyson Racing Lola B12/66-Mazda, which finished outside the top 3 overall, still took the ALMS P1 win. The American Le Mans Series GT win went to Joey Hand, piloting the No. 155 BMW Team RLL E92 M3, with the No. 03 Corvette Racing C6-ZR1 some six seconds back, followed by Olivier Beretta’s No. 71 AF Corse Ferrari F458 Italia in third. At least, that’s what we saw on our web browsers or internet-connected TVs, right?

While the BMW team got the trophy for the ALMS GT win, top honors for the FIA World Endurance Championship (WEC) went to Beretta, in a guest drive with the AF Corse team in LMGTE Pro class. So, third place overall can still be considered a win. If you’re feeling a bit lost in the esses, you’re not alone.

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Test Drive: A Pair of Sporty SUV’s

Yea, we know. The name of this website is Sports Car Insider, and these two vehicles are certainly not sports cars. They’re not even sporty cars. Don’t worry – we’ll soon get back to reviewing cars that are at home on a track, but we also know that many of you own an SUV (or a Crossover, whatever you want to call it) as a daily driver or as something to get you through the winter while your sports car is in the garage. I live in northern New Jersey and keep the fast cars off my schedule until at least April, so thought it would be fun to test a couple of the sportier SUV’s from a couple of manufacturers that are involved in road racing. We lined up one model from Germany, the Audi Q5, and one from the USA, the Cadillac SRX. The original idea was to see how good these models are in the snow, but we had one of the mildest winters ever (thank you global warming) with almost no snow at all, so that gave us more of a chance to see if these models are any fun on roads typically reserved for sports cars. First up, the Audi Q5.

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Enduring Appeal

When an overall Le Mans winner, Sebring class winner and double FIA GT champion tells a series organiser “don’t change a thing” about their championship, the series organiser in question had better listen. That’s exactly the message Monaco man Stéphane Ortelli had for the SRO Motorsports Group, organisers of the Blancpain Endurance Series, at the final round of the series’ inaugural season last September.

Unlike Stephane Ratel’s other current venture, the FIA GT1 World Championship, the Blancpain Endurance Series doesn’t aim for manufacturer-blessed teams, international TV deals and a high public profile. Rather, it was created with the competitor in mind. Wealthy European gentleman racers told SRO that they wanted an endurance series, and so SRO obliged, returning to a format of three-hour races on high-profile Grand Prix tracks that the FIA GT championship had gradually moved away from. A driver categorisation system ensures almost everyone has something to shoot for, with a GT3 Pro Cup on offer for all-pro driver pairings, a GT3 Pro-Am Cup for gentleman/professional partnerships and a GT3 Citation cup for all-amateur line-ups. GT4 machinery and ‘Supersport’ cars such as the Lotus 2-11 are also catered for, although there were no entries in the latter category at Silverstone.

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Six Hours Of Power

Silverstone has been a significant name in Grand Prix circles since the inaugural round of the Formula 1 World Championship was held there in July 1950, but its rise to prominence in the sportscar racing arena came later. In 1976, the British round of the World Sportscar Championship moved from its traditional home at Brands Hatch to the Northamptonshire airfield circuit, and an unbroken run of six-hour or 1,000km races was held there until 1988. There then followed a handful of shorter events in the early ’90s, as well as the third round of the American Le Mans Series in 2000, and since 2004, the annual six-hour/1,000km race tradition has been restored, with rounds of the European Le Mans Series and, latterly, the Intercontinental Le Mans Cup (ILMC).

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Test Drive: Porsche 911 GTS Cabriolet

Porsche has constantly improved their venerable 911 over decades of development and for many hardcore car enthusiasts; it’s the only sportscar that really matters. Porsche has also managed to offer a wide range of 911 models to their customers, from the base Carrera coupe to Cabriolet, Targa and all-wheel drive versions, which are all available with the flat-six engine in different states of tune. Porsche also mixes and matches these various iterations, with no less than 18 different 911 models currently available that range from around $82,000 to $172,000 in price and from 350 to 530 horsepower. This is not even considering the hardcore GT3 and GT2 models, which are in-between models and not officially available right now. There’s not a bad one in the bunch, but I grew particularly fond of the GTS version after driving it for a week.

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