NEW CORVETTES JOIN THE AUSSIE GT PARTY

Chevrolet will join the field for the steadily improving Australian GT championship with the news that both Neil  Bryson & Paul Freestone will be running Corvette's at Sandown in November. Bryson's car is the ex Ken James yellow machine imported from the Speed GT challenge in the USA but never run down under, the car will be prepared by Melbourne sportscar specialists Jocaro.  The car will run in the GT challenge class as it is not fully compliant with the series FIA GT3 specs. Freestone, who competed regularly in production car racing in the 90's in a Lotus and at the Calder Park Thunderdome will run his Corvette in the Production class.

MEGA MEGANE DEBUTS AT PARIS MOTORSHOW

The World Series by Renault's premier saloon car championship the Mégane Trophy has undergone a raft of radical modifications in readiness for the 2009 campaign. The most visible change concerns its new body design which takes its inspiration from the lines of the new Mégane Coupe revealed at the Paris Motorshow. Under the bonnet, a fresh look has also been taken at the Renault-Nissan Alliance's V6 3.5 24V powerplant which now delivers 360hp. At the same time, Renault Sport Technologies has carried over many of the acclaimed features of the current Mégane Trophy to produce a reliable, competitive and affordable racing car.

A McLAREN MERCEDES FOR YOU AT HOME

The latest collaboration between Mercedes and their F1 Partners at McLaren has just been released, but for those of you down under don't get too excited, You can't have one.  Named the SLR Roadster 722 S, the new car pays tribute to the historic victory at the Mille Miglia long-distance race in 1955 by British motor-racing legend Stirling Moss and his co-driver Dennis Jenkinson, in a Mercedes-Benz 300 SLR with the starting number 722. Powering the SLR Roadster 722 S is a supercharged 5.5-litre V8 engine hand-built by the Mercedes-AMG engine shop. With an output of 478 kW and 820 Nm of torque, power is put to the road by a five-speed automatic transmission developed by Mercedes-Benz. It is specially configured for a very high torque, and allows the driver to choose between two sets of shift characteristics. As a result the roadster powers from zero to 100 km/h in  just 3.7 seconds, with 200 km/h in 10.6 seconds.

NEW VIPER TO BITE DOWN UNDER

The Australian GT Championship has received a major boost with the news that regular competitor Ross Lilley will debut a brand new Dodge Viper at the final round of the series at Melbourne's Sandown Raceway in late November. The new V10 will replace Lilly's ex John Bowe Lamborhini Gallardo  which has been sold to former Porsche driver Dean Grant. Grant, is a veteran of  the Carrera Cup Championship (2003-2006) and was that Series Tag Heuer Champion in both 2004 and 2005.

YEAH, I WOULD

Would you drive a car called a Gumbert? Well if it accelerated from 0-100 in three seconds and levelled out at a top speed of 360 Km/h, then yeah, I probably would. Actually the car is called the Apollo which brings to mind sleazy discos of the 1980's where the music pumped all night, the drinks were cheap and you got blowjobs on the dance floor, but that's another story.

ANDRETTI- GREEN’S ACURA PARK PARTY

Acura celebrated their announcement of a P1 entry in 2009 with an outright win at Detroit's Belle Isle Park as James Rossiter and Frank Montagny took the chequered flag for Andretti Green Racing. Rossiter and Montagny took the lead in pitlane with 69 minutes left with Montagny holding on to beat Patrón Highcroft Racing's David Brabham across the line by 3.985 seconds.

ACURA TO P1, HYBRID FOR PETITE LE MANS

The announcement just about everybody was expecting has come at the ALMS round at Detroit with the news that Acura will move up to the LMP1 class for 2009. DeFerran Motorsports and Paton Highcroft Racing will each field cars next season in a big boost to the class which is currently dominated by Audi. The two teams will each field an Acura ARX-02a prototype sports cars, currently being developed by Honda Performance Development (HPD), in the most advanced and technically challenging class of the American Le Mans Series.

BRISCOE BACK TO PORSCHE

Australian IRL racer Ryan Briscoe will compete in the remaining three rounds of the American Le Mans Series (ALMS) in the LMP2 Penske Porsche RS Spyder. He will replace Sascha Maassen. Briscoe was scheduled to compete only in the two endurance rounds of the ALMS, but was told overnight that he was required to add the sprint ALMS rounds in Detroit this weekend and Laguna Seca on October 18 to his schedule.

AUDI TO JOIN GT3, COULD WE SEE IT DOWN UNDER?

The move by the Australian GT Championship to align themselves with FIA GT specs could pay off in the appearance of one of the world's newest and most spectacular sportcars the new Audi R8 GT3.For the first time, Audi Sport will offer a racing sports car specifically developed for customer use in the form of the powerful 500 hp plus GT3 version of the Audi R8 which will be available from late 2009. The logistics and factory space required for the AUDI AG customer programme will be created over the next few months in Ingolstadt, Neckarsulm and Györ.

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