Race Cars

Although you’d never guess it from Bentley’s current product line, the luxury automaker has a long history of motorsports glory. From 1927 through 1930, Bentley dominated the competition at the 24 Hours of Le Mans, taking first place in four consecutive years (and capturing first...

Sometimes, street racing is a good thing, as is the case with the Verva Street Racing spectacular, held annually in Warsaw, Poland. Visitors gets to see some of the world’s best known historic race cars, dicing wheel to wheel on the (disturbingly narrow) streets of Poland’s largest...

If you think the days of the gentleman driver / racer in an Italian sports car are dead and gone, Maserati has some news for you. Its GranTurismo MC Trofeo World Series pits drivers of the Maserati coupe against one another in a single marque series, ensuring close competition on circuits around...

The legend of the Silver Arrow grand prix race cars built by Mercedes-Benz and the Auto Union (now Audi) during the 1930s is well documented here at Motor Authority, so regular readers will be keen to know that some of the surviving cars will be on show, and taking to the track, this weekend at the...

Electric race cars may not yet offer the same range as their internal-combustion counterparts, but the differential in lap times continues to get smaller. For a baseline reference, Marco Werner set a Sonoma full-lap record of 1:21.69 behind the wheel of the fearsome Audi R8 Le Mans Prototype in...

Just last week we told you about a 1.0-liter EcoBoost-powered Formula Ford that managed to lap Germany’s Nürburgring Nordschleife in just 7:22, making it faster around the ‘Ring than cars like the Ferrari Enzo and the Pagani Zonda. At the time, few took it as more than a Ford...

If you still think that electric automobile racing is the stuff of science fiction, think again: the Federation Internationale de l’Automobile (FIA) has granted the commercial rights to the Formula E series to Formula E Holdings. That means the proposed 2014 debut of the series is...

Developing a world-class supercar like the Lexus LFA from a clean sheet of paper is no easy task, and turning that supercar (or supercar prototype) into a competitive endurance racer is an order of magnitude more difficult. Taking that race car to compete with long-dominant German automakers, in...

Toyota Motorsport GmbH (TMG), the German motorsports company formerly responsible for Toyota’s Formula 1 program and now contracted to developing racing versions of its production cars, has rolled out a new racing version of the Scion FR-S’ cousin sold overseas, the Toyota GT 86 sports...

Nobuhiro "Monster" Tajima remains a legend on Pikes Peak despite Rhys Millen's record run this year--after all, Millen went just five seconds faster than Tajima's 2011 run despite an additional two-plus miles of pavement in place of dirt. But this year, Tajima's run for the record was cut short...

Under the best of circumstances, rallying is among the most extreme forms of motorsport on the planet. Drivers spend an entire stage running on the very edge of control, piloting cars on surfaces ranging from gravel to snow to sand to mud to pavement (or any combination of these). Mistakes can be...

The futuristic DeltaWing racer, originally proposed as a new chassis for Indy Car, last saw action at this year’s running of the 24 Hours of Le Mans. A fan favorite (because everyone loves an underdog), the Nissan-powered DeltaWing was retired by a crash early in the event. Despite an epic...

The beauty of a barn find is this: sometimes you don’t even know what you have until you start the process of disassembly. Take the case of a 1965 Shelby DragonSnake Cobra for example: when purchased by a collector last year, he believed it to be one of six built. As it turns out, the car was...

Well advanced compared to their competition, the Grand Prix cars launched in the early 1930s by Mercedes-Benz and Auto Union, nicknamed the “Silver Arrows” because of their unpainted aluminum bodies, are the stuff of legend. The cars were considerably faster than other Grand Prix racers...

Porsche’s original factory museum, opened in 1976, was modest in both location and scope. Situated on a side street in Stuttgart, the facility was only large enough to display some 20 cars at any given time. In 2009, Porsche opened a new museum in Zuffenhausen, adjacent to its corporate...

The 2013 Chevrolet Camaro NASCAR Nationwide race car will make its race debut in 2013 at Daytona.

Lotus has unveiled its new Evora based race car that will compete in the newly established GX experimental class in the Grand-Am Rolex series. Based loosely on the Evora GTC racer that competes in the regular GT class, the new Evora GX gets its own unique touches including an aggressive bodykit, a...

The 2012 running of the Pikes Peak International Hill Climb was delayed from its original July date due to the severe forest fires plaguing the area surrounding Colorado Springs, Colorado. Rescheduled for August 12, the event is shaping up to be a memorable one. Purists will cry “foul,”...

Track days are growing in popularity worldwide, and there’s no shortage of track-only cars to choose from. If your budget is modest, a used-but-serviceable SCCA racer may suit your needs. If you’ve got more money to spend, cars like the Caterham 7, Ariel Atom or KTM X-Bow will provide...

When the new Viper was unveiled at this year’s New York Auto Show, SRT revealed both road and race versions of its performance icon simultaneously. Since the racing pedigree of the original Viper was so impressive, SRT felt it was necessary to launch a race version of the car even before the...