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Posted: 24 Feb 2014 05:14 AM PST

Jacques Villeneuve tested the Peugeot 208 he will race in this year's FIA World Rallycross championship at Lydden Hill on Saturday.

The 42-year-old 1997 Formula One world champion will drive for Albatec in selected rounds of the new series this year. His turbocharged 208 boasts 600bhp and four-wheel-drive, and boasts F1-like performance in its acceleration to 60mph (96kph).

 Villeneuve described Lydden Hill as "fast, a real fun track with quite high speeds".

"It was great to finally drive on a proper FIA World Rallycross Championship track with a combination of asphalt and gravel," he said. "It's a nice circuit, it's how tracks used to be made as it follows the lay of the land."

Albatec team principal Andy Scott said it was vital to give Villeneuve maximum time to adjust to a world rallycross car.

"We chose Lydden Hill, the home of rallycross in the UK, as it is the perfect circuit for this, providing a good mixture of challenges, requiring very fast and precise lines and braking points."

The inaugural World Rallycross Championship begins in Portugal in May. Lydden Hill will host the second round later than month.

The 12-round championship includes races in Canada and Argentina. The series will also visit Istanbul Park, which held F1 races between 2005 and 2011.

: Jacques Villeneuve, Albatec Peugeot 208, Lydden Hill, 2014

: Jacques Villeneuve, Albatec Peugeot 208, Lydden Hill, 2014

: Jacques Villeneuve, Albatec Peugeot 208, Lydden Hill, 2014

: Jacques Villeneuve, Lydden Hill, 2014

: Jacques Villeneuve, Lydden Hill, 2014

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Aston Martin V8 Vantage N430 and DB9 Carbon ... - Car Magazine

Posted: 19 Feb 2014 03:20 AM PST

By Ollie Kew

First Official Pictures

19 February 2014 11:20

Here we have the Aston Martin V8 Vantage N430 and the Aston Martin DB9 Carbon. The special edition Astons are Gaydonâ€™s headline act for the 2014 Geneva motor show.

While the Carbon White and Carbon Black DB9s are monochrome cosmetic exercises, the race-inspired Vantages enjoy a power hike and token diet to ramp up performance.

Aston Martin Vantage N430: the details

Try to look beyond the race-inspired â€˜lipstickâ€™ paintwork of the Aston N430. The livery is derived from Astonâ€™s NÃ¼rburgring 24-hour racers, hence the â€˜Nâ€™ tacked onto the carâ€™s name. Yes, it looks like a circus clown, but youâ€™ll outrun those jibes with a 430bhp 4.7-litre V8. Thatâ€™s a 10bhp jump over a regular V8 Vantage, bringing the N430â€™s output into line with the hotter Vantage S.

Unlike the auto-only Vantage S, you can (and ought to) spec your Vantage N430 with a six-speed manual transmission, rather than the seven-speed automated paddleshift gearbox.

Plus, the N430 is lighter than a regular Vantage â€" itâ€™s got carbonfibre and Kevlar sports seats and forged alloy wheels. All told, it adds up to a 20kg weight saving. Not as brutal a diet as a Porsche 911 GT3â€™s, but still enough to slash 0.2sec from the stock Vantageâ€™s 4.8sec 0-60mph personal best. The top speed is a Vanquish-beating 190mph.

There are more tweaks for the N430 besides the paint-by-numbers-gone-wrong livery. You get darkened grille mesh and light cluster surrounds, plus graphite wheels and clear taillights.

Magnesium paddleshifters and carbonfibre trim are standard-fit inside the two-seat cockpit, along with the usual array of contrast stitching, Alcantara touch-points, and anodised dashboard controls. And then thereâ€™s the biggest option of all: whether to spec your Vantage N430 as a hard-top or roadster.

Sounds like a cut above the usual special edition fiddling. How much?

Arriving from September 2014, the Vantage N430 will cost from Â£89,995 â€" neatly slotting between the standard Â£86,080 Vantage coupe and the Â£96,080 V8 Vantage S. Bad news for American readers: the N430 wonâ€™t be sold Stateside.

And what about the DB9 Carbon editions?

No prizes for guessing the only colours you can choose for the DB9 Carbon White and DB9 Carbon Black. Strictly for the most ardent carbonfibre fetishists, these price-on-application DB9s use carbonfibre for the side-strake trim, front splitter, mirror casings, and tailpipe surround. Inside, carbon covers the top section of the facia and the door handles.

>> Read CARâ€™s review of the 565bhp Aston Martin V12 Vantage S in the March issue of CAR magazine, on sale now

Hennessey Venom GT is world's fastest car at 270.49 mph [w/video ...

Posted: 24 Feb 2014 09:45 AM PST

Hennessey has done it again, improving the claimed record-holding top speed of its Venom GT to 270.49 miles per hour. The record run was made on February 14 on the 3.22-mile landing runway at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The speed was confirmed by a Racelogic Vbox telemetry system, but for a variety of reasons, it will not make it into the Guinness Book of World Records. However, it narrowly beat out the record-holding top speed of the Bugatti Veyron Super Sport at 267.81 mph.

Amazingly, the 1,244-horsepower Venom GT was still accelerating even as it reached 270 mph, but the length of the runway limited how far the coupe could be pushed. Driver Brian Smith only had about 2.6 miles to complete his run because it took nearly a kilometer (0.62 miles) to slow the car to 70 mph. "It was still pulling. If we could run on an eight-mile oval, we could go faster than that," said Smith to Top Gear.

Even if the hypercar had gone faster, Guinness would not have certified it as a record. To qualify, a car must complete two runs in opposite directions with the average speed serving as the record time. The Venom was only able to complete one because that is all NASA would allow, and even that took two years of negotiations according to founder John Hennessey. It still wouldn't matter, though, because Guinness now stipulates that 30 examples are required to certify a car as a "production vehicle." Hennessey is only building 29 Venoms and has sold 11.

Still, the Venom GT is already Guinness-certified as the world's quickest car to 300 kilometers per hour (186 mph) at 13.63 seconds, and the company says that its next goal is to begin setting lap records with it at tracks around the world. Scroll down to watch in-car video of the Venom GT breaking the record, complete with John F. Kennedy voiceover and flag-waving rah-rah.