KLM

This has been discussed before but is always fun. Plus, we might learn of new roads that have been added. Agreed, although uphill is just as crazy. But the wildest (and one of the smoothest because its new) stretches is the Ginigathena-Nawalapitiya stretch. It's 12 kms long and is amazing.

You'll be like Itsuki then. If you enjoyed the movie you really should watch the entire Initial D anime series. I never thought I'd enjoy something like that but I really did. +1 to this project. Go for it! The hachiroku is a great all-round car and I can't understand why the AE85 and AE86 chassis would be different. I'm sure they would have come off the same production line and the naming convention only differs because Toyota bases its chassis numbers on the engines destined for them. If you're still concerned about chassis flex, a nice Tokimo welded-in cage will help you a little bit.

Agreed, Ripper & Kaushama. Whenever they lie or mislead buyers with regard to actual ownership, 'market price', car repair history etc, they are crooks. But if a guy puts a car for sale and says 'look, this is my price', he cannot be considered a crook even if his price is double what the car next door is going for. Then he is just delusional, and will be the world's greatest salesman or a lucky SOB if he managed to actually make a sale at that price.

Ok, this might be an unpopular view, but if the 'market price' of a car is say 2.0 million and a seller/trader/broker quotes you 2.7 million, isn't he well within his rights to do that? I agree that lying about prior accidents/repairs/maintenance/reversing speedometer mileage or misleading a buyer is completely unacceptable but if an individual values his goods/services above the market rate I think that is his prerogative. It is then the responsibility of the buyer to do his or her own homework, assess what is at sale and put his/her own valuation on the table. In the end market forces will bring the average price down to a certain level but in the rare case where a seller quotes a high amount and wins (for whatever reason), I don't think that person has done anything wrong. If a buyer trusts a seller's price at face value and buys it, there is no way that the seller can be caller a cheater later. He quoted a price and somebody bought it and its as simple as that, however over-priced it was. Of course, if a friend does that to you then there is something wrong somewhere, but I hardly think its fair to say that somebody cheated you because you bought a car at 25% above the market price. Thoughts, guys?

A complete breakdown of the Michael/Alonso incident by Ross Brawn. It is clear that Damon Hill and his team of stewards made a serious mistake.

Outstanding photos, guys. Please share more.

You're right, the Merc engine is by far the strongest one in the field but I read somewhere recently that sales of MB cars had fallen and in the luxury segment, they were third behind BMW and Audi. Lets hope F1 somehow improves Mercedes sales in the next quarter at least.

Its alright, I guess. Apparently its an older ad that Mercedes shot, but when they signed Michael, they added him at the end. The red car is a dig at Ferrari.

Hi Gunat, Michael won races through various periods, the height of electronic aids in the early nineties, then without, then again with, then without. He won on slick tires, grooved tires and cars less dependent and cars more dependent on aero than the current generation ones. He seems to be struggling with the new generation of tires and he quite clearly had corner exit problems in China, as he said after qualifying. If you listened to the in-car footage, he was getting a lot of wheelspin at the exit of the slower corners compared to Nico and this really hampered him in the battles with Lewis and the Red Bulls. Ross Brawn is changing his chassis for BCN because sometimes there are inherent manufacturing flaws in certain components that engineers cant locate. It's nothing new - I remember Ross doing the same for Eddie Irvine in 1999 when his Ferrari was unusually slower than Mika Salo's car for no apparent reason (Ferrari later destroyed that chassis). Hopefully this works, or else as Adrian Sutil says, Michael will have to re-learn to drive these cars all over again. The guys at Mercedes think that he is still as fit as the fittest guys on the grid (Webber and Button) but he seems to be a few kilograms heavier (Sutil says 10 kg is worth only a tenth). Still, it's great to see a guy who is out there with only the will to compete, despite having no shortage or money and nothing left to prove in the sport. He is still a few tenths off Nico, but I believe the tables will turn shortly. Either way, he doesn't care about his 'legacy' so maybe we shouldn't either. I can't believe we have to wait 3 weeks before the next GP!

They both got reprimanded, but no penalties. Good call by the stewards, IMO. It was un-necessary but not worthy of any penalties. Great racing all around, huh guys?

You're right CP, I got confused between the two. I wonder if Udesh will be driving the same E2 that Sajith ran at Fox Hill a few years ago.

....words to those spoken to Mansell by the late Brazilian champion Ayrton Senna in 1992 when the Briton finally secured the title. "He put his arm around me, hugged me and said: 'Well done, Nigel. It's such a good feeling, isn't it? Now you know why I'm such a bastard. I don't ever want to lose the feeling or let anybody else experience it,'" Mansell recalled. http://dalje.com/en-sports/hamilton-title-...f-mansell/90633

And based on the fact that despite being away for 3 years and only 3 races into the new-gen cars, he is only an average of 2 tenths of a second off a much younger team-mate, I think he more than deserves a place in the team. It takes 3 tenths of a second to blink an eye! Google MGP CEO Nick Fry's assessment of Michael's car development skills and technical feedback. Super stuff. Great drivers and athletes who un-retire, like Jordan, Schumacher and Lance Armstrong don't really care if the great unwashed masses or the media think that their legacies or 'reputations' will be sullied. They have no fear of failing, or losing - they love to compete and they will gladly do so as long as they have a fighting chance of being successful. Personally I think this hating on one driver crap is very immature and belongs more in 'pro' wrestling. If you're at the top in Formula One, the chances are you will kill to stay there and there are no exceptions. Almost all world champions are/were selfish bastards and they've connived and manipulated their way to get one up on their team-mates and opposition because that's just what you have to do. When you have 10 drivers covered from maybe 6 teams covered by less than a second, being slightly faster on track is sometimes not enough. Michael, Lewis and Alonso have all crossed the line at times, but that is what World Champions do in an attempt to win. It's ugly, but sometimes its the only way to win.

You're right. I believe all the Wedisinghe brothers (Ananda, Udesh and Sajith) competed in bikes at some point or the other.

You're probably thinking of the King of Fox Hill, the legendary Ananda Wedisinghe. This is his brother.

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Yes Peri, Rizvi has 2 entries because you're allowed to enter 2 cars in SLARDAR championship events although you have to pick one to qualify and race. Janaka should be running the new car because Sanjeewa will run the GC WRX. Missaka did in fact have an IX before, DD's old one. Have an eye out for Udesh Wedisinghe in the Evo II - the guy is all action.

17 1600s as well. SLARDAR tried to arrange a system of heat races with qualification towards a final but apparently the GT drivers hadn't been in favour of it. As huge as the grids are, it's almost impossible to pass at Fox Hill so GT and 1600 might not be great races per se. They'll still be bloody spectacular though.

S_N I really don't mean to hijack this thread over this, but the fate of a hunk of metal really does not reflect upon a nation or region's values. Plus, referring to Arabs as "bed-sheet wearing ex-camel jockeys" and hoping for oil/natural gas to run out so that "the bastards can go back to their camels" is akin to calling a black man the n-word. Judging by your previous posts on Autolanka I wouldn't have thought you'd be the type to resort to unfair, offensive and derogatory stereotypes but I guess I was wrong. And over what? An abandoned car? Feel free to be judgmental about the owner, but racial epithets are best avoided.

Hi S_N, I'm not Arab and am not taking personal offense to what you've said here, but your comments are way out of line.

Lewis was lucky to not get a drive through penalty for the atrocious weaving across the track. You're allowed 1 move in defense of a position and he made about 4. He got the black/white flag for dangerous driving but many of his peers seem to think that it wasn't enough. Even Michael at his worst never did anything as stupid as that. I didn't see Button crying or whining at all, he did a reasonable job like the professional that he is. I don't think Adrian Newey has anything to prove in F1 after designing so many title-winning cars with Williams and McLaren. Michael is still only a couple of tenths off Rosberg, so I'm hopeful that his rustiness wears off soon. Sadly, with the way the soft tire is refusing to degrade, we are in for some boring races in unless it rains in qualifying.

The Evo IX and X and the new-shape STI are still the stars of the P-WRC championship. Neither manufacturer runs a works WRC-class team so it's difficult to say that "both cars are no longer competitive compared to the the leads". The WRC-spec cars are anyway so removed from their production counterparts that even the performance of the last of the Impreza and Lancer WRCs against the Focus WRC and the Xsara/C4 WRC are in no way an indication of their performance as road-based sedans. If at all, the STI and the Evo should only be compared against each other, or other road-going cars.

Pasindu's cage held up fine, considering the fact that there are only very basic cage guidelines from SLAS. If you watch the video and you see him in the car upside down, you can clearly see that the cage didn't collapse and he was fine inside. However, from the picture when the car is upright it seems that the roof deformed because the cage wasn't flush with the roofline.

+1 The GT battles at the Sebring 12 Hours this year were especially amazing. Even though it was an endurance race, the top 6 GT cars were dicing nose to nail like it was a sprint race. The prototypes weren't bad either although Audi didn't have a car ready to give the diesel Peugeots a fair fight.

That's the second Spec C Type RA and yes, it makes its home in Ratnapura.