KLM

That Jeremy Clarkson has to be the most whiny, condescending, self-righteous bastard on TV. He really thinks he is the dog's bollocks, and is quite annoying. I get free copies of TG Magazine from time to time and his columns and the whole attitude of the show/team is quite self-congratulatory. I know this will be an unpopular viewpoint, but flame away. It was far better and more balanced back in it's earlier iteration with Tiff, Vicki, Quentin and him. I miss those days.

What were the lucky circumstances? All 20 drivers qualified in the identical conditions in Q1, Q2 and Q3, and he took a clean pole. He then beat the fastest McLaren on the day (Heikki) on pace. Wet races are part and parcel of F1 and he wasn't presented with any lucky circumstances because he earned the pole before winning the race. He never put a wheel wrong and didn't have to rely on somebody falling off the road to win. This again is nothing to take away from the other guys. Fox example, If not for Heikki's engine failure yesterday, he was looking good for the win because he was fueled heavier and was already matching Alonso's and Kubica's pace. What goes around comes around so you take what you get.

The penalty for Bourdais is by far the stupidest decision the FIA stewards have ever taken, considering the fact that Seb stayed within the pit-exit lane, as far over as possible, and Massa just drove straight into him. Good job Alonso, but if Hamilton hadn't destroyed his, Kimi's, Heikki's and Felipe's races at the start it is unlikely that Alonso would have made it onto the podium. So far this year, apart from Massa, Hamilton and Raikonnen, the only guy to properly race to a win was Vettel in Monza. Heikki, Kubica and Alonso (twice now) have just been at the right place at the right time. No disrespect, winning is winning and they had to drive well, but of the 7 winners this year only 4 of them have fully deserved their wins. We've had a super run of races though and F1 is at its most competitive - the top 18 qualifiers yesterday were only covered by 1.2 seconds, which is mind-boggling to think about. It's a shame that the FIA stewards have to be such douchebags. I'll lose a lot of faith in them if this penalty is allowed to stand.

Epic burn alright, but Nissan still has a lot of questions to answer about the strength of the GTR's gearbox.

That's a bit harsh on Ferrari, don't you think? Teams make mistakes with drivers often - McLaren probably cost Lewis the championship in China last year by leaving him out too long on those wet tires, causing him to go off, for example. If not for Piquet's off (which some cynics suggest was orchestrated by Renault ), Massa would surely have held onto his comfortable lead and remember, Kimi was catching Lewis at the rate of knots. It was only a matter of time before he got right under his gearbox (and maybe nudged him down an escape road ). The deployment of the SC immediately compromised Kimi's race, because irrespective of whether Massa pitted cleanly or not, he HAD to come in behind him and wait parked in line, losing everything he had; after that he was driving hard, probably very frustrated, trying to recover track position. If they had kept him out until the next lap to come in, he would have fallen even further behind on the leaderboard. Full course cautions affect F1 races big-time, which is why the FIA rarely deploys them, unlike in oval series like NASCAR, where they'll send out the pace car for a 'competition yellow' or if somebody spins out on the backstretch or if a Dale Earnhardt Junior fan tosses a beer can in Turn 2. True enough, Kimi has been out of form in the latter half of the year (apart from Spa), but still, I think he'll come back strongly in 2009 and contend again.

Awesome shots Dilesh. Phenomenal. Please do post the link to wherever you upload the rest of your photographs. I'm looking for a nice shot of the STR-Ferrari, which IMO has a fantastic livery.

Singapore did good. What an awesome show. Elvis_Pil we should definitely go next year.

www.grandprix.com reports: "One felt desperate for poor Sebastien Bourdais. He's had a pretty bad year with the team but when things finally went well for him and he was sitting fourth on the grid, it was a bitter blow that the car stalled on the grid. Despite that he drove a super race, with no hope at all of getting even close to the points. He ended the afternoon leaving the paddock with little fanfare, but he set the second fastest lap of the race, which compared rather well to Vettel's, who was the author of only the 14th fastest lap."

What a great win by Sebastian Vettel. I really was hoping that my boy, and the in-form man of the moment, Sebastien Bourdais would be able to pull off the surprise but he can't seem to catch a break - this time his STR-Ferrari cut out on the pre-grid and that was that. Me and my cousin used to be huge fans of this team, way back when they were a tiny entity known as Minardi. Giancarlo Minardi was a real racer in every sense, and despite never having the budget to compete with the big boys, had a real eye for talent: He gave F1 debuts to Fernando Alonso, Jarno Trulli, Giancarlo Fisichella, Mark Webber, Tarso Marques and many other notable drivers. Latterly however, economic realities forced Minardi to take a number of pay drivers, including Alex Yoong. In the late nineties especially, their technical director Gustav Brunner used to produce neat and innovative machines that always had Ross Brawn, Patrick Head and other team technical directors checking out the Minardis with extra scrutiny at the season-opening Australian GP. Sadly, they were always hamstrung by a lack of testing, development and second-rate customer engines (like the old Cosworths) and rarely ever competed for points. Despite their lack of success they had lots of fans for their sheer determination, and I know for sure that was what appealed to me. It was quite refreshing to see a tiny outfit come and compete against the massive budgets of Ferrari and McLaren, all for the love of racing. More often than not, they didn't score enough points to get logistics support funds from the FIA, but they always soldiered on cheerfully. It wasn't quite the same when they had to sell out to Paul Stoddart and become European Minardi in 2001 but he, like Scuderia Toro Rosso, ran out of the old factory at Faenza, with many of the same staff. I still remember how Luca Badoer, Ferrari's chief test driver and former Minardi driver was inconsolable at the wet 1999 European Grand Prix at the Nurburgring after his car failed him while running in 4th position with a few laps to go. That would have been Minardi's best ever result and he never scored an F1 point in over 40 races. For that team to finally come through for a win from pole, more than 20 years after they were founded is a fantastically emotional story and they deserve their success. As much as I wanted Bourdais to win, it couldn't have happened to a better guy, as Vettel has proved to be a delightful personality and a fantastic driver all year round. They played the German/Italian national anthem combination for the first time since Michael Schumacher retired, and Vettel is now his heir apparent. Michael also won his first race in his second year under wet conditions, so the comparisons aren't far-fetched. I just hope that Bourdais (and Heidfeld) catch their breaks soon as well.

Super video. Thanks for sharing machan. Too bad Nishan can't bat as well as he drives.

Shit. Imagine a motorcyclist hitting that ditch.

Except I'm sure that Kodi would never leave his current boss, despite the stress he gets from him.

The snorkel looks good. When are you getting tires?

Super day's action. Props to DD for giving the Evolution X it's race debut in sanctioned worldwide competition (Best Motoring shoot-outs don't count ), Janaka Dias for the first Subaru win in GT in at least 6 years, Ashan for his win in SL 'H' after the last minute engine change this morning, Dinesh Jayawardena for advancing 7 places in SL 'H' 1600 Race 1 and then winning Race 2, Visal for dominating every event he ran, and that one Maldivian biker in the GSX-R 1000 K2 for finishing third in the Open event. Almost every event featured some awesome action, and even though most spectators got sun-burnt and drenched, it was definitely worth going for.

Qualifying has been called off because the track is underwater. The grid will be determined by a lottery now; lottery-set grids suck, but at least there are multiple passing opportunities at Katu, unlike a place like Fox Hill. Let's hope that the weather holds up tomorrow.

Awesome pictures, Dimantha! The green LN166 in the pictures used to belong to a friend of mine, and I navigated him in that, on the SLARDAR 1000 4x4 Rally and and Southern Monsoon Rally last year. That was an absolutely bullet-proof truck, but he sold it to get a 70 Series like yours.

The best bit in that video is at the start - Tommi and Risto competing in t-shirts, with their driving suits pulled down and tied around their waists.

From what I hear, SL 'H' Upto 1600 cc will see more than 12 cars. 1. Dinesh Jayawardene 2. Sajaad Zuhair 3. Devinda De Silva 4. Nigel Perera 5. Sedara Senerath 6. Missaka Naween 7. Pasindu Peiris 8. Upulwan Serasinghe 9. Nishan Wasalatantri 10. Abeeth Dangalla 11. Sumanapala Manapperuma 12. Madushan Manapperuma and a couple of others are supposed to have entered. It should be a good day's racing.

You're totally lame, bra. I meant your all-singing all-dancing Amemiya 'Touge Monster' would lose to the stock R35 GT-R on a proper race-track like Fuji, Tsukuba or Suzuka. I really don't give a rat's ass if this Amemiya RX7 beat the old R34. Aren't we talking about the new R35? I only said that the FD was disappointing because after all that development and that much of a weight advantage, it barely managed to eke out a minor advantage over a mostly stock R35. If anything, the R35 ran slightly more boost for that 20 PS advantage. You obviously don't get what I'm saying so I'm not going to bother discussing this with you. For the record though, I love the FC and FD series. In fact, I just went to see an immaculate FD shell being restored from scratch, with lots of bits from an RX7 that was actually raced in Japan. By the way, doesn't the RE Amemiya RX7 run a 3-rotor, 2.0 litre engine from the Mazda Cosmo? If so, that's far from stock, and even you must surely agree with me. Half these races are rigged. Touge racing is quite limited, so pure track racing will always be a better way to gauge a car's race worthiness. Drift 'racing' is good for people who want attention, and nothing else. Even the DK Tsuchiya originally used this technique to his advantage when necessary to go faster, not to go around corners slowly and make a spectacle of himself. You're welcome to have an alternate opinion though bra. Dude I have no intention of playing third-rate name-calling games here, so I won't respond to your 'white-trash' insult, but I will suggest that you try understanding what that means first. Read up on Le Mans 1991, and you'll find that it was a transition year with lots of new cars entered for a new series (World Sportscar Championship) and the serious efforts all had problems with pace and reliability. No doubt, a win is a win, and Mazdaspeed have the only win by a Japanese manufacturer so props to them, but the 787B achieved f**k-all apart from Le Mans '91. Even in the All Japan Sports Prototype Championship, the 787s and 767s were among the slowest cars. Seriously, read that shit you sometimes google and paste here. Your stupid sense of patriotism (or rather, regionism? ) is quite misplaced - the 787 was designed by an Englishman, had a Porsche 5-speed gearbox and was raced to victory by a bunch of Europeans. Again, major props to Mazdaspeed for putting the programme together, but you need to have perspective on these things. A more appropriate 'Asian victory' for you to celebrate would be Honda's class win at Le Mans in 1995, a GT2-spec Honda NSX. The all-Japanese driving team was led by your hero Keichi Tsuchiya. Again, read up on it if you don't believe me. In fact, the overall winning team that year was a Japanese effort, and featured a Japanese driver as well. As for buggers who build 1000-hp show cars or put massively-heavy fibre kits on cars and then claim they're the fastest cars around on their cardomain pages( ), words fail me, so I won't bother replying to this. Honestly though, why are you talking about easy-to-modify JDM cars here? What are you on? Aight, I'm off to smoke some sheesha with Elvis and Shak.

LOL I know you're a fan of Mazdas so no worries there, but Johnny Herbert's lucky win in '91, your 'race' against your brother, what other people said and what the R34 did or didn't do in the past have no bearing on what I was saying - that the Amemiya car was disappointing. It had a favourable drivetrain setup (FR), much lower weight, not much less horsepower and obviously years of development and still barely managed to pull a marginal lead on the R35. Ya my bad about saying an FC should run. I can barely remember which is which. And no, I'm not hurt that the R35 lost. Why would I be?

Haha Velocity, that's Touge Racing, and they get pretty excited about it. If the road is too narrow for passing then the race consists of trying to pull a gap to the car behind. Which is why I wasn't at all impressed by the obviously heavily-modified Amemiya FD, because after all that work, it only managed to pull one extra length on the R35, and that too on the second run. I think on a regular race-track, even the stock MCR R35 may have been able to pass the RX7.

No argument with you here, but it would also be unfair to use such a scenario to claim that the RX7 killed the GT-R and is thereby a better car.

Hahaha I just watched that video and after all the hype (not to mention the amount of effort it would have taken to get a car with 280 PS stock to 430 PS), the RE Amemiya car barely managed to pull a couple of lengths on a pretty stock GT-R, and that too on the third run. Imagine the MCR car with some minor tweaks, or at the very least, a stripped interior. Anyways, like I said before, a good comparison would be to run a stock FC vs. the R35. Otherwise you could take this a step further, build a carbon fibre FD chassis, put an F1 V8 in it (revving to 19K), and keep calling it in the 'terror of all tracks' or whatever. Plus, the power-to-weight equation is unfair. They should allow the Sky to drop some weight and then try running again. Pericles you're right - it IS the Nissan GT-R. Anybody who calls the R35 a Skyline is wrong. I think it's sad they dropped the Sky name, but it is what it is. Takumi Fujiwara is an actor? No ways! I've heard rumors that he is in fact the real deal, and still delivers tofu to the top of Mount Akina, in Gunma prefecture.

If this Amemiya job, with 430 bhp and a 500+ kg advantage, didn't beat the R35 then it would have been embarrassing. Obviously the FD is heavily modified and far from streetable or maybe even street-legal so comparing that with a brand-new street car in stock trim is kinda pointless, even if it is the be-all-you-can-be Nissan GT-R. A stock RX7 vs the R35, both on street tires, would have been more appropriate. Or this modified FD vs Takumi Fujiwara and his AE86, although it's obvious who would win that one.

It's no secret that Fox is run by a bunch of neo-cons. Hyper-conservatives live on this channel.