The honor of being the final round of the Formula 1 Grand Prix has been held in Brazil recently, But next year’s calendar shifts Brazil to the penultimate round, and puts the last race of the season in Abu Dhabi at their brand new track. F1 officials and some lucky drivers got a chance to see the track where next year’s championship will be decided, and as one might expect from something out of the Middle East, it’s got everything you could want and then some.
Designed by the very same man who created the Bahrain, Sepang and Valencia race circuits, the Abu Dhabi track gets a course that: 1)runs through a hotel, 2) has a pit lane that runs under the track, 3)boasts 20 turns. Around the track will also be Ferrari World, the Yas Island Marina, a water park and sports facilities. As amazing as all that sounds, the one thing that remains to be seen is if we’ll get the one thing we didn’t get in Valencia and Singapore – passing. Check out the galley of both high-res CGI images of what the track will look like and the recent real images of what the track does look like below and let us know if you think that enormous back straight will do the trick.

Abu Dhabi Formula 1 Track

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Now that Lewis Hamilton has secured the Formula One championship, supercar fans around the world are asking when he’ll get his hands on that rare McLaren F1 LM. The incredibly valuable supercar – initially reported at $4 million but now apparently worth closer to 8 – was promised to the budding young driver if he won the title. However, the condition was that he win both the drivers title and, together with team-mate Heikki Kovalainen, lock up the constructors’ title for the team, as well. Although he won the drivers’ championship, the constructors’ crown went to arch-rivals Ferrari, but since McLaren chief Ron Dennis is such a good sport, he’s renegotiated the terms.

If Hamilton manages to repeat his title victory with a hat-trick – that is, take another two championships – he’ll get his hands on the bright orange supercar. That’s quite a challenge, but Dennis called it a “small price to pay for three world championships.” Indeed, but by then McLaren will have a whole slew of supercars on the market for Lewis to choose from. In the meantime, he’d better keep his head down and focus on the prize.

McLaren F1 LM

When we first heard that The Dark Knight was taking on Toyota’s F1 car, it sounded like an argument that started on the playground. “What’s faster, Batman’s Tumbler, or an F1 car?”Well, it would have remained a purely theoretical question if it wasn’t for the bosses at Toyota and Batman – The Dark Knight movie crew. We suppose after the questions that have been posed and answered like “What’s faster, a Lamborghini or a fighter jet?”, Toyota decided to have a go at it and brought the Batmobile to Silverstone for some run-ups to this past weekend’s British Grand Prix.

We’ve got the video footage above and some high-resolution photos to below… Hit the jump for the photos.

Admittedly the video isn’t as cool as we were hoping for. I guess the Tumbler would have just embarrassed the F1 car too much for a head-to-head race, so they just created the promo video. But still, its great to see such a movie prop from The Dark Knight CAN actually hit the race track and not seem too bad.

Imagine this: As you sit in your office going over last month’s sales you get a phone call. It’s your son. “Dad, I’ve totaled the car.”

Chances are that even if you’ve been lucky enough not to need to use that phrase, you know someone who has. Well here’s an interesting twist, instead of the son telling the father he’s cracked up the car, the father might be making that sheepish call to his son this morning. Anthony Hamilton, Formula 1 superstar Lewis Hamilton’s dad, has taken someone’s Porsche Carrera GT through a hedge just a couple of hundred meters from the family home in the village of Tewin, just north of London.

Hamilton’s not saying who the Porsche belongs to, but it appears to have German license plates, which unfortunately makes it unlikely that the car belongs to new Swiss immigrant Lewis. How much sweeter would the story have been then?
Hit the link for The Daily Mail’s version of events, but we take the assertation that Mr. Hamilton “somehow lost control on a straight road,” with a grain of salt. The road is a sweeping right hander and was greasy at the time of the accident. Given the proximity to the Hamilton home and the GT’s reputation for snap over steer, it’s pretty easy to imagine what happened.

And in case the brain is on auto pilot, here’s a couple of pics to help tell the story.

And if you’re the best of the best in Formula 1 and in Los Angeles, you’re certainly can’t go hit up Avis to rent a Ford Focus. Well Claus Ettensberger, owner of the So. Cal. tuning shop CEC, to the rescue. Ettensberger was kind enough to provide Lewis Hamilton with a fully-kitted Techart Porsche 997 911 during his stay in L.A.

I’m sure even an after market 997 Porsche 911 is a bit of a demotion from his McLaren Formula One car, but there are definitely worse ways for Hamilton to get around while mixing it up with L.A’s elite.

It also seems that Hamilton got some time in/next to a more appropriate Mercedes Benz CL as well. What’s this? He gets 2 cars?? Its good to be F1 Champ.

Steinmetz, the famous Geneva Switzerland based diamond company, signed a 3 year deal with Vodafone McLaren Formula 1 back in 2005 and to celebrate, they gave a diamond inlaid steering wheel to Kimi ‘Iceman’ Raikkonen. Before that, in 2004, the Jaguar Formula 1 cars raced with a diamond encrusted nosecone thanks to the Steinmetz Group.

Well, this year, the main Mercedes-McLaren drivers, Lewis Hamilton and Heikki Kovalainen, will race with two very special helmets. Both Hamilton’s and Kovalainen’s helmets have a Forevermark diamond encrusted Steinmetz logo and each the drivers signature on top of the helmet are lined with hundreds of handcrafted diamonds.

Lewis remarked: “I really like what Steinmetz has done this year and am looking forward to the Monaco Grand Prix weekend.”

Heikki said: “To be able to race at this prestigious event with Steinmetz diamonds on my helmet will bring something special to the occasion.”

We’d sure hate to be on the receiving end of a head butt from either Hamilton or Kovalainen now.

As the checkered flag dropped in Japan, with it came a new wakeup call for professional motorsports as Danica Patrick wins the Indy Japan 300 — besting her previous highest finish of second place at the Detroit Grand Prix.
The win, an impressive 5.8594 seconds ahead of pole-sitter Helio Castroneves on the 1.5-mile Twin Ring Motegi oval occurring after leader Scott Dixon pitted with five laps left and Dan Wheldon and Tony Kanaan came in a lap later, makes Patrick the 1st woman to ever win an IndyCar race.

Finally, people will be forced to look at Danica Patrick…

…as something other than a piece of meat. Well, with pictures like this from her Sports Illustrated photo shoot, you can still probably look at her like a piece of meat, but now you’ll also have to realize she’s a piece of meat that’s a better driver than you, Helio Castroneves, Scott Dixon, Dan Wheldon, Tony Kanaan and your Miss Daisy’s Driver.

Head on over to ESPN for the full story.

Ron Dennis has categorically denied allegations that he was in any way responsible for setting up the Max Mosley sex video scandal. It has been rumored that Team McLaren might have facilitated the News of the World investigation in response to the incredibly harsh $100 million fine they received from FIA last year.

This latest accusation was made by Radovan Novak, head of the Czech Automobile Association and one of Mosley’s closest friends. During a radio interview he was quoted as saying, “When the FIA, from the proposal of Mosley, fined someone significantly, then it gives you the feeling that it could be like that.”

McLaren Boss Ron Dennis was quick to issue a response:

“I categorically deny that I have anything to do with the News of the World investigation into Mr. Mosley. Neither does anyone connected with the McLaren Group or the Vodafone McLaren Mercedes team, and neither does any agent or any other party acting on my behalf or anyone connected with the McLaren Group or the team. We are writing to Mr. Novak and are currently considering the appropriate route via which the remarks that have been attributed to him may be withdrawn or corrected.”

FIA’s general assembly will meet on June 3rd for a vote of confidence that will decide Mosley’s future with the organization. We’re betting the Pro-Nazi-orgy Party will not make up a voting majority.

Nearly the entire front end of Kovalainen’s car was missing after the crash. What isn’t apparent from this clip was that the car submarined under the tire barrier, and was basically buried all the way up to the cockpit. They actually couldn’t access Heikki directly, as far as I saw. This clip also didn’t show how hard the marshals were trying to move the car and were unable to extract it. It also took a really long time…

Our best wishes to Heikki Kovalainen for a speedy recovery!

Words just can’t do justice to how lucky Stephane Ortelli was to survive such a horrific crash in the Le Mans Series race at Monza yesterday. Same goes for Allan McNish whose Audi R10 was just narrowly missed by the flying ORECA Courage car by mere centimetres.

Ortelli looks to have lost control of his car on his approach to the first chicane and it started flipping into the air. He flew over McNish’s car and rolled several times before coming to a halt in the wall.

Ortelli only suffers from a broken ankle in the smash and was taken to hospital. We’d probably be too busy thinking “There’s no way that car is gonna hit us” to actually get out of the way.