Traction Inc.

Replacing blown struts - the night before a track day.  
Business as usual.

Getting ready to drive the 500 horsepower XFR on the autocross course

WIll a Jag drift? Yes!
Will doing so piss off the driving instructor? Yes!

Sorry about that—it’s hard to resist the urge to overdrive the car when you only get 60 seconds behind the wheel at full throttle

Taking the 550 horsepower Jaguar XKR-S out for a brief acceleration run

Yes, that’s 90 MPH… in a parking lot.

I’m not kidding when I said that I enjoy driving this car more than the BMW M6.  It’s both beautiful and brutal, and not burdened by the over-engineering of its German competition.

Jaguar extended promo video »

Preparing to drive the fastest production Jaguar available.

The 2012 Ford Focus Electric
I can scratch another one from The List. And yes, I wear suits. 

Debate over electric cars has become a cage match between engineering, environmentalism, ethics and politics. But what most people really want to know is what an electric car is like to drive.

Yesterday I had the chance to get behind the wheel of the 2012 Ford Focus Electric. Compared to the gas powered Focus, the Electric focus is pulled by more torque and is eerily silent at speed. The weight of the battery makes the car feel planted and offsets the Focus’ traditional nose-heavy weight bias (distribution is now 49% front and 51% rear).

The Focus Electric gets fancy displays added to its dash cluster. It also has a new grill that echoes the design recent Aston Martins. The battery takes up about a third of the hatch storage, but with no traditional engine and transmission, owners will have much less maintenance to deal with. Range is rated at 76 miles.

Otherwise the car is a pretty standard Ford Focus, so that raises the issue of price.

Without tax incentives, the Focus Electric lists for $40,000. The entry-level Ford Focus lists from only $16,000 and even the badass 252 horsepower Focus ST hot-hatch starts at under $24,000.

Electric power is a compelling technology, but is it really worth a $20,000 premium?

A lap of Atlanta Motorsports Park in a Ferrari

I must say that I was really impressed with this brand new race track. I had been keeping tabs on AMP since before construction started, and I was a bit worried because the track was designed by Tilke & Co.  I feared it could be as bland to drive as a new-generation Tilke F1 track. I could not have been more wrong.

Imagine a racetrack that truly moves with the land - every single brake zone and corner happens during a camber or elevation change, and the main ‘straight’ is only straight at the end. Modern F1 cars could never race there, and that suits me just fine.

(Source: youtube.com)

Taking to the track in a Ferrari F430
First time in this car, first time on this track, so driving fast but not at 10/10ths.

PS - We had been instructed in the driver’s meeting not to bother with shifting the cars because none of us had seen the track before and we would be carrying plenty of speed already.

(Source: youtube.com)

And what better way to learn a new race track than from the cockpit of an F430?

Any day behind the wheel of a Ferrari is a good day.

Good times at the Petit Le Mans