The Monday Morning rundown has gone high tech. We now have this fancy banner to let everyone know that this is the Monday Morning Rundown. I also added two, that’s right, two pictures to this weeks post.
Let’s begin………..
Gardella Racing already campaigns a driver in the Formula D series that has roots in Canada, kinda. While Ryan Tuerck, an American, honed his skills in the DMCC out east in 2005 before making the jump. Now Gardella Racing is looking for another driver for a second seat on the team this upcoming season. They are holding a driver search of sorts and our friend and fellow Canadian Pat Cyr from Ontario is in the mix.
What you can do, if you haven’t already, is help Pat out by voting for him at Wrecked Magazine. He currently has a pretty sizeable lead but you never know what can happen with online voting.
Vote here!! – http://www.wreckedmagazine.com/blog/2011/01/12/who-should-the-second-gardella-racing-driver-be-for-2011/
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The Dakar Rally is over and done with for another year and Carlos Sainz didn’t make a repeat performance of his last years win. However VW teammate Nasser Al-Attiyah made sure that Volkswagen would walk away with their third straight Dakar victory. Not only that, the VW Tourag captured all three spots on top of the podium at the races end.
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Ten lucky people will be able to brag to their Honda friends that they own a Mugen Tuned Ariel Atom. Upgraded from 245 horsepower this limited run Atom will now make 270HP out of the 2-liter Honda K-series engine.
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I’ll be honest. I have never really heard of the 24 Hours of Dubai until this year. Now I know all about it thanks to being bombarded with photos and status updates on Facebook and articles on Speedhunters. It took the The Need for Speed Team 594 laps and 3201km’s to finish on top of the podium with the GT3 classed BMW Z4 coupe.
I did some math and figured that the average speed of the race was around 133km/h. I’ve made road trips to Calgary with a faster average speed than that. Pfffft.
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Travis Pastrana announced on his Facebook page this past week that he is launching his new car for this year’s NASCAR season this coming Friday. Not really sure what he means by that. I am assuming he just means that they are unveiling it and not actually ‘launching’ it.
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Tanner Foust is known to most for his drifting. Not only does he drift but he is a television host, stunt driver, circuit racer, X-Games rally champion, Race of Champions competitior, Gymkhana Grid Champion, blah blah blah blah. The guy is extremely talented and is exploiting every second of it.
Little do people know though Tanner competed in the American and European Rallycross Championships last year. He podiumed in all four of the American events and made the final ‘A’ race in two of the five European rounds that he competed in.
Tanner was in England this past weekend attending the Autosport International Show in Birmingham. He was there to unveil his 2011 car and livery that he will be campaigning in the European championship this year. The Ford Fiesta was built by and will be supported by Andréas Eriksson’s Olsbergs/MSE team, the same people that take care of Ken Block’s needs while he is out and about in his Gymkhana car.
Don’t listen to me but I have a funny feeling Rallycross just might be the next big thing in North America.
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Formula D has invited 10 drivers to partake in an exhibition of sorts in Abu Dhabi in the UAE. The cars are loaded into containers and are on a ship bound for the middle east. The event takes place at the Yas Marina Circuit which is home to Formula One’s Abu Dhabi Grand Prix. Because of the close proximity to the start of the 2011 Formula D season many of the drivers will be using their demo/backup cars or cars that were prepped (thrown together) for them since their competition cars are being built and set up for the up coming season.
DODOlogic will provide live streaming of the Formula D Abu Dhabi Invitational on February 25th.
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That is it for this week. Like I mentioned last week if you have any suggestions please feel free to post a comment or email me – dave@dodo-logic.ca