KLM

That one rolled in Saturday practice. It was a bad weekend for the 3 GCs.

Kimi definitely lucked out with his package when he signed with Ferrari but he did deliver them a title, even though he completely lost focus afterwards. The problem is that he is a proper good-times boy, with a love for cars, bikes and boats - he never had the teutonic desire to dominate everyone that Michael still has. Recenly in a R*D B*LL interview Kimi claimed that the most fun he'd had in the last few years was mucking around in snowmobiles with friends in Finland. Still, I'd say pound for pound he is the only driver on par with Michael in terms of lap times, when his head is in the right place. According to James Allen, Ferrari insiders still cant believe how he made so many podiums and won at Spa late in 2009 because they had stopped developing the car in the middle of the year.

Dinesh, what are your thoughts on mass-start gravel racing? I don't know if this is the appropriate forum for this discussion but I'm sure people want to know what the drivers think.

Are you serious? I'm a huge KR fan but he really lost focus in the last 2 years. Massa just outperformed him, plain and simple. Stefano Domenicalli led Ferrari to the drivers title with Kimi in 2007 and the manufacturer's title in 2008 so I'd hardly call him incompetent. Not to mention of course years of fabulous service alongside Todt, Brawn, Byrne and Schumacher. Do you really really think Ferrari are racist because they promoted from within and a driver with a purported Italian bloodline outperformed a Scandinavian????

I wonder if Sigiriya 2010 will bring about sea changes in Sri Lankan motorsport. I'm just glad that the drivers involved in the pile-up in SL 'GT' race 2 are still alive.

With all due respect, it's silly to say that Ferrari are racist because they don't believe that the new teams belong. While I do support the addition of the new teams, I do see their point because the new guys are so woefully under prepared and so far off the pace of the established teams. The FIA really did a terrible job in the vetting process and also with the time-frames they gave these guys to prepare. They picked USF1 over Prodrive and Lola for God's sake! Prodrive has been running top class manufacturer programs for years and had been trying to break into F1 before this plan for 4 new teams came about. I guess Peter Windsor and Ken Anderson did a better job with their PowerPoint presentation than David Richards could manage. And Lola are one of the world's leading single-seater constructors and they had a chassis ready before these new teams did. I think the Ferrari vs FIA war last year put to bed the theory that the Scuderia were favoured sons. We read the English-language media which is dominated by the Brits so it's pretty obvious that these theories are promoted and they're absolute bullshit IMO. They are the senior team and they carry a certain weight but thinking that they run FOTA or can influence the FIA into doing anything is a bit far fetched.

No machan, I'm not. The acid test would be to see if this was a 2-seater or a 2+2. The 240 was a true 2-seater whereas the 260 got the displacement bump and a slightly longer chassis to accommodate the two rear seats. That rear quarter window in the pictured 6 sri car indicated that it's probably a 240.

I'm willing to bet that the 6 Sri car is a 240Z and not a 260Z. Very odd that it should have 260 badging. The rear quarter window is a dead give-away.

LOL, I think Madhawa (and Duncan) runs that site too.

Well since nobody has ever seen the mythical second DB9 and since this story was originally carried in the Sunday Leader, I think it's fair to say that its true.

I think it was established that it never existed and was just a lot of innuendo regarding the other car and a similar car in the UK.

I don't know if anybody else has noticed, but a guy by the name of Shane Seneviratne is quite a successful open-wheel team owner in the US. His team US RaceTronics is currently called 'Team Stargate Worlds' because of their current sponsor and in 2009 they also ran Franki Muniz (Malcolm, from Malcolm In The Middle) in Formula Atlantics this year. http://www.usracetronics.com/content/history I've been following his career for a while now and it looks like he'll make the step-up to IndyCars next year with Simona De Silvestro, a female racer who has actually had a lot of success in the junior formulae (unlike the lovely Danica Patrick). http://www.autosport.com/news/report.php/id/80515 Hopefully, it happens and eventually USRT can become a fully-fledged team in IndyCar. US open-wheel is on it's way back to relevance and is only second to Formula One in terms of perception. Anyways, its cool to see another Sri Lankan guy making it in pro-motorsport.

I knew you'd get the M3. You're still way too young for the Mercedes.

The issue was contact between the two at the second SL 'H' 1600 race at Sigiriya. Nishan filed a complaint against Pasindu's driving and the points at stake will decide the champion. I wasn't there so I don't know what happened, what the nature of the penalty was or what'll happen next. If somebody can enlighten us it would be appreciated.

BMW for sure! You're still too young to rock an automatic.

The X is an all-new chassis and features an all-new engine so some teething problems are to be expected. The VII had similar problems when it was launched and even internationally, only now are teams getting to grips with the new car. The evolution of the species has to continue and I'm sure that once these reliability issues are sorted out, DD will be able to show the car's true pace. Mind you, until this problem he was faster than all the other GT cars entered. Next year should be good and I cannot wait for the MRA Pelwatte Rally 2010 in January.

Grand_Civic that's an epic shot and I'm impatiently waiting for all the albums to appear on FB. Javidh Wahab also damaged his radiator on this jump, incidentally, and caused him to retire.

I wasn't at the event but Rizvi Farouk won, with Ashan Silva second, Shafraz Junaid third, Dinesh Jayawardene fourth and Dinesh Deheragoda fifth after what I heard were mechanical issues. Maybe mivec.turbo himself can give us a solid report on what happened. I heard he was leading the rally going into Sunday but something obviously went wrong. Unfortunately for DD, his fifth place finish put him in a points tie for the lead of the championship with Rizvi but since Rizvi won more rallies, he won the 2009 National Rally Championship. I believe that this is the first time Dinesh has not won the national title since the inception of special-stage rallying in 2002.

Very uncalled for, but that's the gutter British press for you. I can't wait to see them take sides and tear each other apart when Jenson and Lewis start whinging about favouritism and other shenanigans. Kimi was one of only maybe 3 drivers to genuinely challenge Michael in his peak (the others being Mika Hakkinen and Fernando Alonso) and he even finished second twice in the world championship in the middle part of this decade - he was only denied because of the abysmal reliability of the Mercedes-Benz engines of the era. He shouldn't be considered lucky just because his rivals dropped the ball.

SN I couldn't agree with you less. Brawn got a factory team, with a car developed by the combined resources of 2 teams (Super Aguri AND Honda) FOC and also, about $200 mil to run the 2009 season. With the resources they had they were far from a small, independent, privateer British team. And as for these romantic old-British feelings that Brawn evoked in you, it must be said that F1 is a very international sport these days and just because the team was based in Brackley didn't mean that they were representative of the classic Brit teams like Cooper and Lotus. However, 'scrappy' is a correct way to describe their shambolic efforts in the second half of the season. They had an edge over the rest in the early season but didn't have the resources and/or budget to keep developing the car and if Ross Brawn hadn't sold the team, they would have returned to the dog days of BAR and Honda in 2010. By selling, we now have 3 legitimate powers in F1 with R*D B*LL not far behind and the possibility that Renault up their game in the next couple of years.

Interesting link, but that refers to E10, which would refer to commercial-grade fuel with 10% bio-ethanol. Interestingly, F1 moved to a bio-fuel blend this year, as did IndyCars 2 years ago. I think even the GT1 Corvettes in the American Le Mans Series used to run E85 until they moved down a class to GT2. Would anybody know if the fuel in Sri Lanka is blended with ethanol or any other bio fuel? I do know, however, that you are advised to store Avgas in a cool, dry location away from direct sunlight, or else the octane value of the fuel drops. I know of guys who store barrels of Avgas in their warehouses for months without it going bad. As per that link, if the petrol in Sri Lanka is free of ethanol, then it can be stored for months on end.

A 3-hour drive might be too much for most of you but last weekend on the Southern Monsoon Rally, the organizers gave us a 5 km stretch of the new Southern Highway. It was wider than Ekala, dead straight, very smooth and not in a built-up area.

Natacha is Toro Rosso F1 driver Sebastien Buemi's cousin. Don't forget Lella Lombardi who is the only woman to have scored points in F1, albeit half a point because the race was red-flagged before the scheduled finish. She was in 6th place at the time. Danica never missed an opportunity to attack Milka Duno and in the past has severely pissed Sarah Fisher off too with her comments. It's always nice to see Danica throwing a tantrum and marching upto the male drivers to read them the riot act. It's even funnier to see the pitlane security guys trying to stop her. Great stuff.

It's a conversion.

Machan I think that the new teams ARE in fact all going with Cosworth. Even your beloved Williams has signed up with them. In fact if you remember, when the 3 original teams were announced, there were allegations that the FIA had told all the contenders that only those that tied up with Cosworth would be entertained and a couple of lawsuits are still pending. The mystery part was that the best of the contenders, Prodrive, were omitted. The suggestion was that it happened because they were going to be Mercedes-powered. Cosworth get to build their V8 to a 'current' spec as they are not bound by the freeze. This loophole should allow them to build a strong engine, which is probably why Williams went with them. However, by the start of next season they'll have to fall in line with the other teams and will only be able to modify engines to 'improve reliability.' Last year Renault were believed to have made a number of performance mods in the guise of improving mechanical reliability. F1 is all fun and games..............