Nissan gets on board the Red Bull F1 bandwagon

Typically when an automaker gets involved with a Formula One team, it picks one of its divisions to promote through the partnership. You won't see Smart branding on a Mercedes AMG F1 car, for example, or Proton on a Lotus. Scuderia Ferrari does put the Fiat logo on its F1 cars, but when it comes to Red Bull Racing – the team that has dominated grand prix racing the past couple of years – the entire Renault-Nissan Alliance has been getting on board.

The cars Sebastian Vettel and Mark Webber drive are, of course, powered by Renault engines. And recently the Infiniti brand started sponsoring both the team and its star driver, slapping its cleft oval badge on the race cars and putting the champ's name on a hot-rod crossover. Now Nissan is getting in on the action by providing the team with a whole fleet of vans to get itself around from race to race.

The deal was announced during the Canadian Grand Prix, but was apparently photographed at the Catalunya circuit in Spain. All told, Nissan has furnished Red Bull with over 30 vehicles, including the NV200 and NV400 vans pictured at the margins above. Considering that the Mercedes team probably has all the Sprinter vans it could ever need and Ferrari all the Fiat Ducatos, it seems only fair.

Via: Nissan

Read More

Watch Travis Pastrana hoon the world's only Dodge Dart rally car

If you had one evening to record a promotional video and photo shoot, a full camera crew and the only Dodge Dart rally car in existence, what would you do with it? If you're Travis Pastrana, you bring your buddies from Red Bull with you to Chrysler's Chelsea Proving Grounds and you film them filming you hooning the bejeezus out of it.

By now, you've probably already seen the video Dodge released showing Pastrana's exploits in the race-spec Dart, full of slow-motion scenes and plenty of full-throttle drifting on tarmac and off. If not, click here. Since two minutes and 44 seconds of said footage is good, eight minutes of it can only be better, right? Right.

via: YouTube

Read More

Vettel flies to Canadian GP pole

Sebastian Vettel will start the Canadian Grand Prix from pole position. The reigning world champion's final lap was three-tenths of a second quicker than Lewis Hamilton, who starts second.

The FIA had forced Red Bull to remove holes from the floor of the car last week, but this didn't stop Vettel from dominating the session. His first lap of Q3 was fast enough for pole position and he was the only driver to score a time under 1 minute 14 seconds.

Fernando Alonso and Mark Webber share the second row of the grid. Nico Rosberg will start fifth - a strong result considering he had very little running in final practice due to a fuel connector problem.

He starts ahead of Felipe Massa and Romain Grosjean for Lotus. Paul di Resta's one and only lap of Q3 was good enough for eighth. Michael Schumacher and Jenson Button complete the top 10.

Pastor Maldonado clipped the Wall of Champions on the final flying lap of Q2. He spun, damaging the suspension at the back of his Williams, which then had to be pushed back to the garage.

Maldonado's mistake means that Jenson Button made it into the final 10. The McLaren driver's weekend has been filled with problems so far, including a gearbox change on Friday.

The other casualty of the day was Jean-Eric Vergne, who had very little running in the final practice session following a minor accident. He made a mistake on the final lap of Q1 and was out-qualified by both Caterhams.

All drivers qualified within the 107 per cent time, which means that all 24 cars will start tomorrow's race.

2012 Canadian Grand Prix grid

Position	Driver		Team	Time
1	Sebastian Vettel		Red Bull Racing-Renault	1'13.784
2	Lewis Hamilton		McLaren-Mercedes	1'14.087
3	Fernando Alonso		Ferrari	1'14.151
4	Mark Webber		Red Bull Racing-Renault	1'14.346
5	Nico Rosberg		Mercedes	1'14.411
6	Felipe Massa		Ferrari	1'14.465
7	Romain Grosjean		Lotus-Renault	1'14.645
8	Paul di Resta		Force India-Mercedes	1'14.705
9	Michael Schumacher		Mercedes	1'14.812
10	Jenson Button		McLaren-Mercedes	1'15.182
11	Kamui Kobayashi		Sauber-Ferrari	1'14.688
12	Kimi Raikkonen		Lotus-Renault	1'14.734
13	Nico Hulkenberg		Force India-Mercedes	1'14.748
14	Daniel Ricciardo		STR-Ferrari	1'15.078
15	Sergio Perez		Sauber-Ferrari	1'15.156
16	Bruno Senna		Williams-Renault	1'15.170
17	Pastor Maldonado		Williams-Renault	1'15.231
18	Heikki Kovalainen		Caterham-Renault	1'16.263
19	Vitaly Petrov		Caterham-Renault	1'16.482
20	Jean-Eric Vergne		STR-Ferrari	1'16.602
21	Pedro de la Rosa		HRT-Cosworth	1'17.492
22	Timo Glock		Marussia-Cosworth	1'17.901
23	Charles Pic		Marussia-Cosworth	1'18.255
24	Narain Karthikeyan		HRT-Cosworth	1'18.330

Read More