For those who say a Porsche 911 Carrera S, GTS, Turbo or Turbo S are simply not enough, there are the GT2 and GT3 models. They’re insane, overpowered, meant for the race track and come with the six-figure price tags to match. And the 2019 Porsche 911 GT3 RS, somehow, is on a whole other level.
The idea seemed simple: we find a Toyota 86 that damaged in Hurricane Harvey, and then do whatever it takes to transform it into an endurance race car for a charity event aimed at helping the city’s residents get back on their feet after last fall’s devastating floods. But as with all my ideas, the execution itself…
Long after the news cycle moved to Russian Facebook meddling or debates on whether we should arm day care workers with rocket launchers, people from the Gulf Coast are still recovering from the effects of last fall’s devastating Hurricane Harvey. That kind of comeback doesn’t happen overnight. Fortunately, a lot of…
Winter in Canada makes you think pond hockey, hot chocolate or maybe... not going outside at all. But if you have a 2018 Porsche 911 C4S and a frozen skidpad to yourself, trust me, it’s worth braving the cold.
I may be a professional race car driver, but my writing gig for Jalopnik doesn’t suck either. (Just don’t tell Patrick that or he’ll take away the peanuts he’s currently paying me.) Case in point: a snowy, hoon-filled test of the new Acura NSX. Is it good to blast a $150,000 hybrid supercar around an empty winter…
You won’t be shocked to learn that the 2018 BMW M5 is fast, comfortable and expensive. But the big M sedan’s switch to all-wheel drive has raised some eyebrows. Rest assured, BMW’s done it well. And they’ve done it much differently than you might expect.
I’ve been racing cars professionally for almost 15 years now, and as soon as people find out what I do, the questions start coming in hard and fast. Questions like “What’s the fastest you’ve ever gone?” and “Have you ever had a bad crash?” and so on. But the two I get asked the most often are these: “So you race…
“That escalated quickly.” I know it’s a cliché, albeit a fitting one for a hill climb race. But it’s all I could think about after our car—a salvage-title C7 Chevrolet Corvette Z06 street car transformed into a race car in just a few desperate weeks—not only survived the Pikes Peak Hill Climb but finished just one…
I have spent most of my career helping to develop racecars. I have helped develop racecars for several manufacturers and top race teams. This, by far, has been the hardest, most stressful project I have ever done. The first challenge is the insanely short timeline to complete the build before the race. The second is…
My plan for this series was to break down the build of a Pikes Peak race car and make it nice and orderly. It’d start with buying a salvage donor car, designing a roll cage, then go through making carbon fiber parts and finish up with engine and performance upgrades before the race. Well, any plans of nice and orderly…
Last time you saw me, I had just picked up a brand new, salvage-titled Corvette Z06 and had less than three months to turn it into a Pikes Peak Hill Climb contender. I know you are all chomping at the bit to hear about all kinds of engine mods that will make 80 gazillion horsepower, but I have something more crushing…
If you’re a petrolhead like me, then at some point in life you’ve driven past some clapped-out heap at the side of the road and dreamed of turning it into the most badass car on the planet. I’ve been there. Now that dream is real.
I’ve always had a love hate relationship with the Porsche 911. Long before I was old enough to start a 911, let alone drive one, I had dreams about racing them, the monster 935 slant nose turbo ones being my favorite. Years later, driving license in hand, I got a chance to take a neighbor’s water-cooled 911 out for a…
I’m conflicted. A few months ago my good friend and fellow Nürburgring resident Dale Lomas wrote a review of the all-new 2017 Porsche Panamera. He said, and I quote, “The truth is that there’s a certain proportion of us who will never, ever, consider buying one. Because it’s not a ‘real’ Porsche, and it’s just not…
I have a soft spot for the Audi TT RS. And by “soft spot,” I mean I’ve had some of the best race results of my career in the last-generation motorsports version of the car, including nailing the front-wheel drive Pikes Peak record earlier this year. But the racing version of the TT RS had about as much to do with the…
You don’t mix cars and bicycles. If you break this rule, bad shit will happen. Word on the street is Karl Benz only started working on the automobile in 1886 after he saw someone ride by on a bicycle and decided he needed to invent something to run it over with. There is, however, one place where bikes and cars…
Two weeks after redefining my standard for batshit crazy at the Isle of Man TT, I found myself sitting at the foot of Pikes Peak, about to blast off up the hill to try to best the record for front-wheel-drive vehicles. And not kill myself in the process.
Throughout my career I have raced on what, until very recently, I had considered some of the most batshit crazy public roads in the world: Mt Panorama. Macau. The Nürburgring.
Subaru’s factory-backed driver and madman Mark Higgins broke the Isle of Man record this year for four-wheeled vehicles not once but twice in one week. The lovely folks over at Subaru had me out to the Isle of Man to take a close look at the car. I can tell you they didn’t just build a car—they built a weapon.
Let’s be honest: Mini probably isn’t aiming the 2016 Cooper S Convertible at the super-tall, Nürburgring-based professional touring car driver demographic. I tested this car because BMW, Mini’s parent company, combined the launch of this car with the M2 and made us drive it first. That’s how I found myself in Southern…
