So it was a cold week and this last couple of days we have been teased with a bit of a warm up. Hopefully the warmth sticks around after this next cold snap that we are expecting this week. Until then, we can look forward to the Formula 1 season, follow the next round of the WRC series in Mexico and dream of the start of the drifting season……..
As I mentioned last Monday, the FIA with the help of Bahrain’s Crown Prince, canceled the opening round of the 2011 Formula 1 season. There have been a lot of rumours flying around about the rescheduling of the race or even possibly holding it at an alternate venue that is already on the circuit such as Yas Marina.
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Don’t expect to see Kimi Raikkonen in the cockpit of an Formula 1 Car anytime soon. It seems that he is quite comfortable guiding his Citroen DS3 through the WRC stages and plans to do so for the foreseeable future. The 2007 F1 Champion event went far enough to say that you shouldn’t even talk to him about Formula 1, just WRC.
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An interesting article popped up on the BBC Sports pages suggesting that Red Bull Racing will be running Infiniti engines in 2011. Well, to be exact, Infiniti branded Renault power-plants. This would make the Red Bull team be the last on the grid to receive free engines from a manufacturer. What does this mean? Red Bull Racing saves 8-million Euros this year. Expect this to be made official at the Geneva Auto show on Tuesday.
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Round Two of this years WRC Championship starts this Friday in Guanajuato and Leon, Mexico. I was reading through a preview of this years event and saw that they have added special street stages in both cities. The one that I found the most interesting was the 1.5km street stage in Guanajuato where they will be racing not only on the cobble stone streets but also through the network of tunnels that run below ground level. Now I can say that I have driven parts of a timed WRC stage since I have navigated through those tunnels on several occasions.
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Travis Pastrana surprised everyone with his last minute entry in this past weekends 100 Acre Wood Rally in Missouri. He had just finished racing in a Regional NASCAR event on Thursday Night in Phoenix and then hopped in a plane Friday morning and flew to Missouri to rally. Even more surprising is that he drove the 2006 Subaru that Colin McRae competed with in the 2006 and 2007 X-Games.
His return to Rally lasted 6 turns before he made an early exit from the competition. I would try and insert a joke here about how he forgot how to turn right but the truth is that he lost control on a lefty. Here is the aftermath:
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It looks like a wealthy Russian banker is helping out with Saab’s possible return to the WRC as early as 2013. This puts SAAB into the mix along with new entries from Mini and Volkswagen. Add the rumours of Toyota trying to find a suitable platform to use (how about the ST-86?) and we could see a pretty diverse field in the years to come.
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Check out Edmonton Spec-D dates on the their new website http://www.spec-D.ca and while you are at it why don’t you ‘like’ Spec-D on Facebook so you can keep up with what is going on with the drifting world in Alberta: http://www.facebook.com/#!/specdca
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Coast drift 2011 – I see that Coast Drift out in BC is suppose to be back in action this year. Anyone have any info on the season?
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Fredric Aasbo took the top spot on the podium at the first ever Formula D UAE invitational this past weekend at Yas Marina Circuit in Abu Dhabi. Chris Forsberg finished second and Tanner Foust was third in quite possibly his last appearance on the drift scene for a while.
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And finally. Does anyone have any extra cash laying around?
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