A Leslie Wong Blog

I drove my Alfetta Sprint Veloce to the Alfa Romeo Association of California’s 2011 All Italian Car and Motorcycle Show last Sunday.

I took the photo (left) of my car and started thinking, was Sports Car Market correct? In an Affordable Classics article from the September, 2007, the author used the phrase, “Along with wretched refuse like the Alfa Romeo Alfetta GT…” The photograph seems to bear that out; it appears that nobody wanted to park next to my Alfetta. The reality was that it was late in the afternoon and the cars that had been parked next to the Alfetta earlier in the morning had left.

My Sprint Veloce was the only coupe present that represented the Alfa Romeo Alfetta family but there was an Alfetta sedan too (plus several GTV-6s). There were plenty of Alfa Romeos, Ferraris, Fiats, a few Panteras, a few Lancias, a few Maseratis, and a lot of motorcycles – everything was interesting to me.

Before the 2011 Italian Grand Prix (Gran Premio d’Italia), the BBC’s Jake Humphrey did a nice story comparing the cars and driving styles of 1964 F1 World Champion John Surtees and 2005 & 2006 F1 Champion and current Ferrari driver Fernando Alonso. The comparison between the number of team members in 1964 compared to 2011 is astounding.

The 2011 Formula 1 Shell Belgian Grand Prix at Circuit de Spa-Francorchamps is coming up on August 28, 2011. Peter Windsor, back working for SPEED (channel), interviewed the 1964 Formula 1 World Champion John Surtees, the winner of the 1966 Belgian Grand Prix in a Ferrari.

According to Wikipedia, John Frankenheimer used race footage from the 1966 Belgian Grand Prix in his film, Grand Prix. “The live footage shows Surtees, Bonnier, Bandini, Ligier, Clark & Gurney in action. Surtees doubles in the scene for the fictional Sarti while Bandini doubles for the fictional Barlini.”

One of my first “scratch-built” slot cars used a Dynamic Dynaflex motor mount with a brass tubing/piano wire front end and a Dubro Ferrari 312 body that was based on the Ferrari 312 F1-66.

Researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics, in Tübingen, Germany, transformed an industrial robot arm into a Formula 1 simulator.

Engineers Turn Robot Arm into Formula 1 Simulator (IEEE Spectrum)

kianet over at Digg writes about a Wired story: “The go-fast gurus at Ferrari are working on a successor to the jaw-dropping Enzo that could be the lightest, quickest two-seater ever to roll out of Maranello.Ferrari sees lighter cars as the best way to reach its goal of increasing fuel economy 40 percent and reducing emissions 25 percent without compromising its reputation for performance.”

My Alfetta’s curb weight is around 2700 lbs (1227 kg) and has about 110 hp (82 kW). I wonder what a 2200 lb (1000 kg) car that has 600 hp (447 kW) would be like.

(photo courtesy Stéphane Duquesne)

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Mark Seal, over at Wired, wrote a nice piece from a general interest point of view, Inside the Scandal That Rocked the Formula One Racing World.

He gives a brief overview of the sport and details the industrial espionage, dubbed Stepnygate (after the name of the Ferrari mechanic that passed the information), that took place last year between two Formula One teams, Ferrari and McLaren.

Shell filmed a variety of historic Ferrari Formula 1 cars blasting through the streets of some of the world’s greatest cities. The crew visited Rome, Monaco, Rio, Sydney, New York and Hong Kong during the month-long shoot. Called “Circuit,” the two-minute ad celebrates 60 years of Shell and Ferrari working together.

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