The right balance

A little film by Swedish shock masters Öhlins, featuring our friend Ron Simons from RSR Nürburg. Ron makes it clear why car companies test on that track, the perfect place to work out a very difficult compromise for chassis engineers. Have a look.



(those struts and shocks look fantastic, don't they?)

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Dakar 2010 Video Gallery

We'll leave it up to other sites to bring you the stunning pictures from this year's Dakar Rally (Don't miss Boston.com's Big picture, amazing stuff), we thought we would gather some video for you.

I have to say, after my initial skepticism over a Dakar run in South America, I am totally won over. The scenery in the high deserts of Chile and Argentina is breathtaking and the terrain as challenging as anything in Africa and with the added bonus of not having to deal with terrorists and kidnappers.

There are a few videos here and many more after the jump, enough to keep you busy for a while including recaps of the latest stage, have fun.

World Record Drift: 2 Hours, 29 Minutes, 27 Seconds!

Uwe Nittel said his hands and feet were falling asleep at times during his five hours going around in circles.

Five hours? That's right, a first attempt ended just shy of the record when sensors failed on his Mitsubishi Evo X. Not one to be denied, Nittel jumped back into the car once it was fixed and went back out for the record on a new set of Kumhos.
45.63 km sideways later, Uwe did admit being a tad queasy but presumably, happy.

The record was achieved on an irrigated skid pad at the Sachsenring, Germany.

(sport Auto thanks to la capra andreadebi!)
Shop for KUMHO tires

And here is the rest of it.

More Monster

We had this car on before but a new slightly longer edit of the same clip popped up and it would have been just wrong to keep it from the world!

It is, of course, the Roger Clark Motorsport 850 bhp Gobstopper driven by one Olly Clark, winner of the UK's Time Attack PRO series.

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Bonus clip after the jump!


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Hot Evo for sale

Another Piece of Axis history for Sale!! This sucker pulls, I remember when we loaded up Adil's car with people for a track day lunch run and were all just amazed at the kind of torque that little turbo 4 could produce.

No wonder, it's not exactly stock.

In fact the car is well set up for both track days and SCCA STU (Street Touring Unlimited) autoX. Why do all the work to be competitive? Buy a sorted car, get a head start!

All the juicy mods and price details after the jump.
Shop for KUMHO tires at Tire Rack.



STU Class prepared 2006 Mitsubishi Evo 9 for Sale. 36k miles. .

Contact Adil via e-mail at adilabd@gmail.com. The car is in New York.

• Vishnu Ohlin suspension
• Vishnu/Perrin TBE, high flow cat + custom
• STU tuned personally by Shiv Pathak
• Hotchkiss adjustable rear swaybar
• Works rear strut tower bar
• Performance Friction floating two piece Front Brake rotors + new pads, both with AMS front brake cooling ducts.
• New OEM clutch with less than 2000 miles.
• All underbody plastic panels replaced July 2008.
• Blaupunkt Bremen Head unit with steering wheel mounted remote control.
• Stock wheels with Nokian winter tires good for at least one more season.

Extras available:

• Volk RE030 17x9 black wheels with Advan Neova AD07 tires with less than 4000 street miles and never Autocrossed. $2600.
• Volk CE28N 18x9.5 bronze wheels with UNUSED 285/30/18 Kumho V710 mounted and balanced $3500.

This week's Top Gear Moment of Zen

Top Gear tries to determine if there is any difference at all between the Impreza STi vs the Evo X in their own, rigorously scientific way....

Clarkson hated the STi and loved the Evo X but later on the Stig gets the same lap time out of each car. In another unrelated bit of trivia, the Stig communicated that the Mercedes CLK Black is the most entertaining car he has driven in years.

Axis trophies at TireRack National tour

Our own Mr. Vishnu Evo Adil staged a nice comeback on the second day of the Tire Rack SCCA NAtional Tour in Devens MA. Adil was running his Evo IX in Street Touring Unlimited.

Results here

Great performances by John Winchester and the fastest man you can lend your car to: Mr. GJ Dixon who in Chris Travis's Street Mod Civic went faster than "the Alien" himself, Mark Daddio by a huge 4/10ths Sunday almost making up his deficit from the first day. GJ was 2 whole seconds faster than the car owner even if to my knowledge this is his first time in the car! Awesome.



Adil's emails:

Saturday "...STU was rain in the beginning and drying out later. Ideal for evo but I could not fnd good setup. Corey 1st with 61.7, dan 2n4 63.3 nd me 3rd wth 64.3.
Notable event was John Winchester running his BSP Evo beating Daddio's SM EVO by 0.3 second. Daddio was shocked!"

Sunday "...really interesting event. ... I think STS and FS were faster than STU on Sunday when the whole day was dry and consistent.
The course had only two mild break zones and no straightaways but high speed sweepers and slaloms the whole way. Ultimate cornering grip and gearing was the key. Power did not help as speed was restricted but probably higher than 50 thru the entire thing except for two corners. ...
...The first day every run was on radically different surface...going super wet to almost dry. Had to change shock settings between each run and was on tires, wheels that I never drove efore. Corey was running same and helped.

Sunday had a course element that was amazing..visually and to drive..will have to diagram for u guys "

Read up more on Evos, autocross and all things rally car on holunfie .

First round of the American HPDE championship

The usual group of track-tards ran the hotly contested first round of the NA-HPDE Championship at Pocono East on Cinco de Mayo 2007.
An international group was vying for the top prize: India, Venezuela Italy Colombia and the USA all after that most elusive of prizes, a good time....ok and bragging rights.

We'll post Traqmate data files and individual videos later, but suffice it to say that the GT3 Rad eS was unbeatable.
OK, we got to kick Rad's ass when analyzing the data we found he left at least 1 second on the table by being too lazy to downshift, but there was no denying the 3000lbs 400hp car with giant tires. Rad had a 1:11.3, AC a 1:12.0 and CG 1:12.2.
Stee in the Spexster for the first time ever almost got to 1:14 and Adil... he is still in transcendental meditation mode and has not yet shared his data!

The Data analysis is going to be interesting, each one of us was faster in a different section, even Stee with a slower lap time had the fastest apex speed of all in one fast turn showing the handling potential of the Spoxster.













Below is a VERY LARGE Cinerama extravaganza: from left to right, in CG's 997s, from the rear bumper of AC's MCoupe and finally inside with AC, the sound is only from the MCoupe. CG and I had fun for a few laps until I left the braking too late and decided to do the smart thing rather than risk eating hay bales and armco for lunch.

As I said large but I think well worth the wait. On a Mac it will stream, on PC I'm not sure. Click on the window to see it online or the link below to save on you computer.


download

Even MORE Rally Madness!

OK, so perhaps this "awesome rally vidclip" thing has started something. Today's clip was sent in by a good friend of the Axis, we'll call him "Steve The Hurricane" (not related to The Stee). This Steve, like our own Adil, is a trained expert in the art of rally driving, having attended rally school in Ireland, among other venues. Ride with him in an autocross and you'll be impressed, but turn him loose (pun intended) on snow or dirt and he'll simply amaze you. Rumor has it that Steve is close to inking a deal for an xDrive sponsorship.

So let's get to the clip. Steve enjoyed our banter about Redefining Early Turn-in last week, so here is his contribution, but you must watch to the end to see the earliest of turn-ins. The clip is originally from www.gigigalli.com. So enjoy. And, if the embedded teaser clip isn't enough, you can get a whole 2:40min "best of" clip of Gigi's work here.