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New models by Ford, Toyota and Hyundai are expected to help boost Turkish automotive production to a record this year as a recovery in European demand drives up exports.

New models from Ford, Toyota and Hyundai are expected to help boost Turkish automotive production to a record this year as a recovery in European demand drives up exports.

A software change that makes a continuously variable transmission sound and feel less like a CVT will go into every CVT-equipped Nissan model.

The redesigned 2015 Subaru Outback has more interior room, technology and comfort features than its predecessor. But it's still a conservatively styled Subaru.

Internet bots, nefarious software code masquerading as human Web users, are invading online car shopping sites and skewing traffic and other user data.

BMW's U.S. factory in South Carolina -- its first test of full-scale auto production outside of Germany -- has become a bona fide success. The plant is integral to the luxury brand's efforts to protect profit margins and remain ahead of rivals.

From press release

Albatec Racing's Jacques Villeneuve lies just outside the top 12 qualifying positions ahead of today's sixth round of the FIA World Rallycross Championship presented by Monster Energy in Belgium.

The former F1 World Champion powered his two litre 16v Albatec Peugeot 208 to second and third places in Saturday morning's opening heats to place 13th overall in the overnight intermediate standings.

A first corner incident in heat two badly affected the former Indycar World Series Champion's chances of a strong result, when after making a good start, he was held up by the collision, which cost the French-Canadian a certain top ten position.

Jacques Villeneuve, Albatec Racing Peugeot 208 (Photo: Albatec Racing)

A determined drive allowed him to push hard over the remaining three laps, but left him frustrated with the 16th fastest heat two time.

“I struggled to get off the line in both races which is very frustrating, and the team is looking to see if there's a problem with the turbo. The day hasn't gone as I'd planned, I'd hoped the track would suit my driving style and offer a more level playing field, however it's pretty rough out there, and we're struggling in the rutted area particularly.

“It's very frustrating to have lost all that time in the second heat too, as we were on for a quick time if I hadn't got caught up in someone else's accident. It's not over yet.”

Making a welcome return to World RX action at the new Circuit Jules Tacheny, was Team Principal Andy Scott.

The 2011 British Rallycross Vice-Champion is currently 20th of the 32 runners and knows that two strong results today are necessary to elevate him in the points standings and allow him to return to the form that netted semi-final slots in the opening two rounds.

Mercedes F1 Team driver Nico Rosberg is now married.

The German celebrated his wedding with his girlfriend of 11 years, Viviane Sibold, on Friday in Monaco during a civil ceremony.

Rosberg tweeted: "We are over the Moon. It was very special to share our weeding with our closest friend and family."

Nico Rosberg and Viviane Sibold during their weeding in Monaco (Photo: Twitter)

His wife Viviane is an interior designer, who also owns an ice cream parlour in Ibiza.

Rosberg, who leads the drivers' championship by four points over his teammate Lewis Hamilton, has six victories so far in his career, three this season.

His best season so far was 2013, where he finished sixth in the drivers' standings.

The new 18-inch tire seen for the first time earlier this week at Silverstone would be a "huge challenge", according to Lotus technical director Nick Chester.

Lotus test driver Charles Pic completed 14 laps with the new tire fitted to his Lotus E22, and he aggrees.

"The bigger size meant we had to trim the floor and change the ride height to adapt to the different loaded radius of the tires," Chester is quoted saying by NBC Sports.

"Some of the suspension set up also had to be modified, such as the cambers. These were very basic revisions to enable Pirelli to evaluate the concept for the future and see what the bigger wheels look like on the car.

Charles Pic, Lotus E22 with 18-inch tires (Photo: WRi2)

"Having 18-inch tires would have a big impact on design," he added. "We would want to be testing in the wind tunnel for at least a year ahead of their introduction.

"The ride height and suspension packages would have to be changed and the tire profile itself would be very different. It would be an interesting challenge

All 11 teams must agree before the 18-inch tire can be introduced, which cannot be before 2016.

F1 race director Charlie Whiting was impressed by the progress he saw on his last visit to Sochi ahead of the first Russian Grand Prix.

The last time Whiting was Russia, it was a year ago. All he could see was a building site.

"It looks so much better!" he said. "The track itself is going to be really fast and the drivers will love it. I'm sure of that."

A bit like the Circuit Gilles-Villeneuve, the Sochi Autodrom is located in an Olympic park, which should create an interesting backdrop for the race.


As far as the track itself is concerned, Whiting confirmed there will be two DRS zones, between corners 1 and 2, and between 8 and 10. He also thinks turn 3 to 8 will be something to watch.

Furthermore, Whiting is satisfied with the safety of the track: "It's absolutely first class, I could not describe it any better than that," he said.

"It's going to be a spectacular race and I'm really looking forward to it."

From press release

Maxime Martin is the buoyant winner of the fifth DTM season round in Moscow. After his maiden pole position, the Belgian drove his BMW M4 DTM to his first ever victory in the most popular international touring car series.

Maxime Martin, BMW M4 DTM, crosses the finish line at the Moscow Raceway (Photo: DTM.com)

From the start of the race, the 28-year-old pulled clear from the opposition and took the chequered flag after 46 laps with a margin of 4.259 seconds from Bruno Spengler (BMW).

“A perfect day for me. After a good start, I was able to pull away continuously with the soft tyres. There were two safety car phases in the race and I was really worried that I could lose my leading position because of that. Nevertheless, I managed and I am now overjoyed. First pole, then this victory - just fantastic,” the BMW driver enthused.

The field heads into turn 1 (Photo: DTM.com)

“I am totally happy with Maxime Martin's victory and the overall result,” added Jens Marquardt, BMW Motorsport Director. “The young boy drove victory home in a very cool way. That was great. Another important factor was that Marco Wittmann achieved a decent point score.”

BMW driver Marco Wittmann showed his competitive spirit and was classified fourth. With 70 points, the German is the ‘half-time champion' in the DTM. His main rival in the battle for the title is Mattias Ekström, who is 20 points down.

Mattias Ekström leads teammate Mike Rockenfeller (Photo: DTM.com)

Mike Rockenfeller had to accept a huge setback in the battle for the title. The Audi driver, who scored points in every round so far, now had to park his Audi RS 5 DTM following a collision.

After Moscow, the DTM is heading to Austria for its third race of the year outside of Germany. The sixth round of the season takes place at the Red Bull Ring in Spielberg, August 3.

Maxime Martin leads teammate Bruno Spengler (Photo: DTM.com)

Race results - Moscow Raceway
1 - Maxime Martin (BMW M4) - RMG - 46 laps 1.15'09"422
2 - Bruno Spengler (BMW M4) - Schnitzer - 4"259
3 - Mattias Ekstrom (Audi RS5) - Abt - 9"454
4 - Marco Wittmann (BMW M4) - RMG - 9"591
5 - Nico Muller (Audi RS5) - Rosberg - 10"740
6 - Timo Glock (BMW M4) - MTEK - 15"632
7 - Christian Vietoris (Mercedes C-Coupe) - HWA - 16"553
8 - Pascal Wehrlein (Mercedes C-Coupe) - HWA - 19"300
9 - Edoardo Mortara (Audi RS5) - Abt - 20"987
10 - Augusto Farfus (BMW M4) - RBM - 21"110
11 - Antonio Felix Da Costa (BMW M4) - MTEK - 21"636
12 - Miguel Molina (Audi RS5) - Abt - 21"668
13 - Martin Tomczyk (BMW M4) - Schnitzer - 27"181
14 - Robert Wickens (Mercedes C-Coupe) - HWA - 28"109
15 - Daniel Juncadella (Mercedes C-Coupe) - HWA - 28"625
16 - Gary Paffett (Mercedes C-Coupe) - HWA - 29"039
17 - Joey Hand (BMW M4) - RBM - 29"759
18 - Vitaly Petrov (Mercedes C-Coupe) - Mucke - 39"933

Retirements
Adrien Tambay
Mike Rockenfeller
Timo Scheider
Paul di Resta
Jamie Green

From press release

Teen Jesse Lazare made history on Saturday by being the second youngest driver ever to win in the Porsche GT3 Cup Challenge USA. Lazare went flag to flag to win a at the Canadian Tire Motorsport Park.

"It's great to win," Lazare said. "The fact that it is here at the Canadian round is even more special. It was a tough race, but worked out in the end."

Lazare, who was on the pole for both Canadian rounds led early in round 9 but the car started to go off mid race. "Yesterday, I was just hanging on, today it was perfect. We made such a small change and it made such a big difference today," Lazare added.

As for the pressure to win at home, Lazare said that is something that had been weighing on him all week. "We had been close in speed before at the track I had never been to. But, here at Mosport, a track I knew, I hoped that would make the difference and it did.

Jesse Lazare is a 17-year-old racer from Montreal, Quebec. For 2014, Lazare competes with Moorespeed in the 2014 Porsche GT3 Cup Series in the USA and select races in Canada.

Despite handicaps and setbacks, Lexus appears to be swinging into recovery mode with growing sales and younger buyers, thanks to a slew of new, bolder products.

The sale of 5 Long Island dealerships to a Miami lawyer and entrepreneur has touched off a legal fight involving Jaguar Land Rover and an Illinois dealership group that tried unsuccessfully to buy the stores.

BMW's first test of full-scale auto production outside of Germany has become a bona fide success after initial hiccups. The factory in Spartanburg, S.C.

From IMSA.com

Race car fans need only to look at a list of the past winners at Canadian Tire Motorsport Park to appreciate the heritage of Canada's classic road racing facility: Jackie Stewart, Stirling Moss, Dan Gurney, A.J. Foyt and Mario Andretti.

That list includes a total of 16 F1 world champions and 10 winners of the Indianapolis 500.

The circuit started out as Mosport Park and opened up with the Player's 200, which brought sports car drivers from around the world to race in rural Ontario. Moss won the race in a Lotus 19, and made a suggestion to change a proposed hairpin to two distinct turns to make it more challenging, and the resulting Moss Corner was named in his honour.

Three-time winner Denny Hulme, Gurney and Bruce McLaren were among the winners in the original SCCA Can-Am Challenge that debuted when Mark Donohue won the inaugural race in 1966.

The circuit was also the unofficial home of the second-generation Can-Am, with Patrick Tambay, Alan Jones, Jacky Ickx, Al Unser Jr. and Jacques Villeneuve (brother of F1 driver Gilles Villeneuve) winning prior to Paul Tracy taking the final race in 1986.

Photo: Canadian Tire Motorsport Park

Stewart was a two-time winner when F1 competed in the Canadian Grand Prix eight times from 1967 through 1977. He was joined in victory by Jack Brabham, Ickx, Peter Revson, Emerson Fittipaldi and James Hunt before Jody Scheckter won the final race in a car owned by Canadian Walter Wolf.

The World Sportscar Championship raced twice at CTMP, won by Ickx/Mass and Hans Stuck/Derek Bell, while Gurney, Bobby Unser, Foyt and Danny Ongais won the four USAC Indy Car races held between 1967 and 1978 - before the open-wheeled cars regularly raced on road circuits in the United States.

Formula 5000 - a series combining drivers SCCA road racing with USAC Indy Cars - raced between 1968-1976, with winners including Donohue, Andretti, David Hobbs and Jones. The circuit hosted 15 Formula Atlantic races, with victors including Elliott Forbes-Robinson, Bobby Rahal, Calvin Fish and David Empringham.

The ALMS raced at CTMP every year in its existence from 1999 through 2013. Rinaldo Capello set the track's all-time record of 1:04.094 (138.116 mph) in 2008 in an Audi R10 TDI. Johnny O'Connell was the leading ALMS winner with seven victories, followed by Jan Magnussen and Lucas Luhr with five each.

And this weekend, it is the United SportsCar Championship's turn to race around the 3.9-kilometre track, Sunday, in a 165-minute race.

Former American Le Mans Series champion Ron Fellows says he is "missing the driving", now that he limits his racing schedule to a few sprint races a year.

The Windsor native has not lost his touch, apparently. Earlier this year, he celebrated his 100th career win during a Trans-Am race at the Canadian Tire Motorsport Park. But he doesn't drive as much as he used to.

"As you get older, it gets more difficult, particularly with the long-distance stuff with night vision," Fellows explains.

Ron Fellows at the 2005 24 Hours of Le Mans (Photo: Richard Prince/Corvette Racing)

"I still enjoy doing one or two sprint races, but it's getting more and more difficult with all the business ventures," he adds, referring amongst other things to his involvement with CTMP.

As a co-owner, he is overseeing many upgrades to the Bowmanville track.

"I grew up learning how to race (at CTMP). I attended my first car race there as a kid, and I lived most of my life less than 90 minutes from the track. But I never thought I'd be involved with the ownership part of it, never!" he admits.

Fellows is also an ambassador for Corvette, and runs a high performance driving school near Las Vegas.

From press release

Andrew Ranger has plenty of mastery on road-courses. The two-time champion of the NASCAR Canadian Tire Series proved once again he can figure it out on an oval, too.

He showed that Friday night as he picked up the win in the Alberta Has Energy 300 in the inaugural event at Edmonton International Raceway.

Ranger tied the series' all-time record with his 19th career win, and won back-to-back races for the first time since August 2009 following his victory on the road course at Circuit ICAR in Quebec last week. It was also his first oval win since 2009, and fourth overall.

Andrew Ranger celebrates his 19th career win, at the Edmonton oval (Photo: Matthew Murnaghan, Getty Images for NASCAR)

“At the beginning of the day we didn't have a really good car, so we improved lap after lap,” Ranger said “During the race my car was really fantastic.”

The race was stretched to 316 laps around the quarter-mile bullring following a late caution that involved early race leader Alex Tagliani, and required Ranger, who took the lead on Lap 269, to hold off LP Dumoulin and Jason Hathaway on the final restart.

“The pass with Alex [Tagliani] was a little bit tough because it was almost one [racing] line here,” Ranger said. “He did a little mistake and I was able to take him in [Turn] 3.”

Dumoulin and Hathaway waged a battle throughout the last two laps of the race for second and Dumoulin came out ahead, followed by Hathaway, J.R. Fitzpatrick and D.J. Kennington.

Joey McColm, Larry Jackson, Scott Steckly, rookie Stefan Rzadzinski and Noel Dowler completed the top 10.

Fitzpatrick, Kennington and Steckly were all two laps down at different points during the race and rallied back for top-10 finishes.

Tagliani, who won the pole position for the race earlier in the day, finished 13th. He led a career-high 268 laps.

From press release

Former Belgian Rallycross Champion Koen Pauwels not only races in FIA World Rallycross Championship events, but has also also been an integral part of bringing rallycross back to Belgium and creating the track that will host round six of World RX this weekend at the Circuit Jules Tacheny in Mettet.

Pauwels first approached the club that runs the circuit and it's manager Philippe Dujardin at the start of last 2013 about hosting rallycross, and after a 18 months of planning the first event at the venue is held this weekend.

“Everything is looking good. Of course, the rallycross track is new so we have had some small issues, but I think we have managed to sort them all out now,” says Pauwels. “The goal was to have rallycross back in Belgium, and now we have the World championship and the European championship this weekend, so that's very exciting.”

While helping to run the event, Pauwels will also be trying to concentrate on making it to the semi finals in his home round of the series in his Ford Focus Supercar, having already make it to the final at round one in Portugal, back in May.

“I have had such little time to think about the racing, my engineers are very good and they have taken care of everything. I hope that on Friday evening I can put my organizers badge down and get ready to put my racing suit on before practice, but I don't have any expectations of results this weekend.

“ Making the final in Portugal was a great start to the season, but in England we had bad luck and didn't make the semi finals, and in Norway the turbo broke in the third heat, we didn't fix the car because we knew we were out then. I hope for better luck here.”

From IndyCar

Andretti Autosport has won five of the seven IndyCar Series races at Iowa Speedway, including the past four. James Hinchcliffe, part-owner of the streak, leads a four-entry effort to extend it July 12 in the Iowa Corn Indy 300.

Hinchcliffe led 228 of the 250 laps on the .894-mile, variably-banked oval in June 2013 en route to his third victory of the season. In his previous two seasons, Hinchcliffe led a total of 33 laps on ovals.

“The cars that the team has had at Iowa have been really competitive since they started going there,” said Hinchcliffe, who started second last year through the three heat race format.

“That gives the team a lot of confidence, but at the same time you can't rest on your laurels because you know everybody will have improved on their packages from last year and many teams tested there (in mid-June).

“Last year we had to race some really strong cars during parts of the race and we know everybody will go back with a stronger package and we have to do the same.”

In 2013, the Iowa Corn Indy 300 followed another short-track race - at the Milwaukee Mile - before the series headed to the 2.5-mile Pocono Raceway tri-oval. Iowa and Pocono are reversed this year, with the ABC Supply Wisconsin 250 at Milwaukee IndyFest on Aug. 17.

James Hinchcliffe, Andretti Autosport (Photo: Chris Jones/IndyCar.com)

“Now you're going from one of the biggest places to the smallest,” said Hinchcliffe, whose No. 27 United Fiber & Data car finished 12th in the Pocono INDYCAR 500 on July 6. “It's a huge shift in mind-set when you get there. The first couple of laps will be tough just to get your head around how quick everything happens.”

Hinchcliffe also has a personal streak - starting in the top 10 the past seven races - and has an average starting position of 6.1 through the 11 rounds of the 18-race season. Strong race results haven't been as forthcoming; he has an average finish of 12.0 in the seven races and 13.9 for the season.

Fifth place at Belle Isle 2 and Houston 1 are season highs.

“Going back after my performance last year is something I'm looking forward to, but again you go with these raised expectations because we did have such a good race and historically the team has had such good cars there,” he said. “I have confidence in the guys that we can sort it out on Saturday night and repeat.”