The Formula SAE World Championships concluded on Saturday at Michigan International Speedway. 93 teams from around the world competed in a variety of events (for our prior background on this click here). With Endurance and Fuel Economy events counting for the most points, Saturday’s events can be decisive.
In the end, though, front runner Graz University of Technology (TU Graz) had enough to maintain their lead. TU Graz’ third place score in Endurance/Fuel Economy was just enough to keep them on top of the overall rankings ahead of second place Endurance/Fuel finishers Rochester Institute of Technology.

Final top 10 were as follows:

1.      Graz University of Technology
2.      Rochester Institute of Technology
3.      Ecole De Technologie Superieure
4.      Purdue University
5.      University of Applied Sciences – Graz
6.      Missouri University of Science and Technology
7.      University of Michigan – Ann Arbor
8.      Georgia Tech
9.      University of Michigan – Dearborn
10.    Centro Universitario Da FEI

This event is a bit like the Olympics – a huge amount of preparation (a car could easily involve 30,000 hours of work) and then the event comes down to a few seconds or minutes with some random elements (Did it rain while you were on track? Did a car break in front of you, killing critical seconds? Did a $1 part fail?). For the amazing effort and perseverance shown before the events, and for the spirit of competition and cooperation at the events, our hats are off to all the teams.

http://www.sub5zero.com/auto-news/1957-ferrari-testa-rossa-sets-auction-world-re...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NRjF6O7wTAw

Formula SAE dynamic events started in earnest yesterday at Michigan International Speedway (click here for background on this university competition).
 
The first event of the day is a set of acceleration runs. The unofficial top five finishers (out of 93 teams) were:
 
1. TU Graz
2. UAS Graz
3. RIT
4. Penn State
5. Auburn
 
The second event is a set of skid pad runs done on a figure 8 course. Top five in skid pad were:
 
1. TU Graz
2. North Carolina State
3. Michigan
4. RPI
5. University of Evansville
 
Autocross was the final event of the day. This is a long and very twisty course. The first teams ran it in the dry, with teams running later in a downpour on rain tires. Unofficially the best time in the dry came from TU Graz, with the best wet time from Duke. We'll report back on how they adjust for this and on other scoring tomorrow. We'll also cover the final and critical endurance battle.

Every year since the early 1980's, the Society of Automotive Engineers organizes a worldwide competition among universities. Each school fields a team that designs, builds, develops and races a car in a set of events.

Yesterday marked the beginning of this year's competition. 93 teams gathered at Michigan International Speedway, to compete in design, cost, marketing, acceleration, skid pad, autocross and endurance events. Teams from far-flung places like Austria, Venezuela, and Korea go up against teams from Canada and the U.S. And just as in the NCAA basketball tourney, powerhouse teams (TU Graz, Wisconsin, Cornell) go up against young upstarts (Northwestern), sometimes with unpredictable results.

(scroll down to read on.)

http://edition.cnn.com/2009/SPORT/05/12/motor.ferrari/index.html

Renault and Ferrari are threatening to withdraw from the 2010 F1 season, if the FIA proceeds with their two-tier rules. To attract new teams, the FIA wants teams operating within a budget cap of $60 million to be free of technical restrictions.

F1 without Ferrari is hard to imagine.

Read Top Gear Blog about Richard Hammond: Ford Mustang - Top Gear US

This article by Richard Hammond (Top Gear) about his old Mustang suggested a question:

How do you decide when to "let go" of a car that you love?

We’re quite excited about rolling out the Winding Road Driver’s Club recently, and in addition to preparing for the first ever official DC events, our preparation will include answering any and all questions that our readers may have about the club. Click through the link below to join in the DC discussion in our Forums section and we’ll do our best to answer any questions you have, straight away.

+ NextAutos Forums: Ask It: Winding Road Driver’s Club

http://mecum.com/auctions/lot_detail.cfm?LOT_ID=SC0509-79207