www.youtube.com/watch?v=q5T9GxmSvjU

Motorsport throws up many emotions for spectators; we certainly don’t want racing drivers to roll their Ford rally cars at over 100mph, but my goodness it’s hard to not to revel in this spectacular footage. This particular piece of film is quite special in that it features frames from a spectator’s camera moments before it is annihalited by the green Ford, then in car footage of the crash, and then finally outside footage of the huge roll.

Mikko Hirvonen was leading Rally Finland when he crashed out yesterday, destroying the Abu Dhabi sponsored Ford but leaving both himself and co-driver, Jarmo Lehtinen, unharmed. In the open-chequebook days of the WRC these sorts of spills were a bit more common, one gets the sense that drivers are forced to dance a fine line between looking after the team’s budget and shaving milliseconds off the clock. This in a sport that recently saw stalwarts Subaru retire amid financial meltdown, amongst others.

Interestingly, Mini this week announced it will return to world rallying, with it’s much anticipated Countryman model. More on that later.

Ciro De Siena

Tesla Motors is a company that’s quite close to our hearts. Not least because they’re leading the way in ensuring that electric cars are fun, fast, and quite attractive, but mostly because the founder is a South African: Elon Musk. Anyway, he would have been woken up with pretty awful news this morning, as three of his mid level engineers were killed in a small aircraft accident yesterday. As Musk says: “Tesla is a small, tightly-knit company, and this is a tragic day for us.”

Reuters article and link to images after the jump.

Full article here: http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE61G4QP20100217

A Cessna 310 struck an electrical tower after taking off on Wednesday morning, crashed into a residential neighborhood and killed all three people on board, according to local police. Tesla confirmed all had worked at the car company.

Tesla is withholding the employees’ names while it works with authorities to notify their families, Chief Executive Elon Musk said.

“Tesla is a small, tightly-knit company, and this is a tragic day for us,” Musk said.

Tesla, a six-year-old start-up, is one of the best-known companies in the emerging electric car industry, which is growing as more people seek “clean energy” alternatives in their daily lives.

Hollywood stars drive its stylish sports cars, and investors are eager to cash in on its Silicon Valley cachet.

Tesla filed for an initial public offering of up to $100 million last month. The company was co-founded by and is currently run by Musk, an entrepreneur who made his fortune as co-founder of online payments service provider PayPal.

Musk frequently travels in a private jet on Tesla business.

The three employees were mid-level engineers, said a person familiar with the matter, who was not authorized to give out details about the fatalities.

The plane was registered to Air Unique Inc in Santa Clara, California. Air Unique was registered with Tesla engineer Doug Bourn.

The plane left the Palo Alto Airport at about 7 a.m. PST (1500 GMT), bound for Hawthorne Municipal Airport in Southern California. It lost power before striking the tower, breaking off a wing, East Palo Alto Police Department Captain John Chalmers said.

The wing hit a house, causing a fire. The rest of the aircraft struck parked vehicles, Chalmers said. There were no reports of injuries on the ground, Chalmers said.

(Reporting by Jim Christie and Poornima Gupta in San Francisco. Additional reporting by Kevin Krolicki in Detroit; Editing by Philip Barbara and Robert MacMillan)

Button. Probably supports Chelsea.

But I guess we should grudgingly give Jenson Button some measure of kudos for wrapping up the world title.  However it spoke volumes for me about the man’s character when he was stuck behind Kamui Kobayashi for lap after excruciating lap.  Button got on the team radio and complained about  Kobayashi weaving and blocking him.  Please.  It was his Grand Prix debut and as a World Champion elect it’s your job to get past him. Kobayashi drove defensively and legally, although his honour was called into question later on when he swerved dangerously in front of Kazuki Nakajima sending him on a murder ride into the barriers.

I loved the typically stoic response to Button’s petulant rant at Kobayashi from the pitwall.  “Understood Jenson” was all Andrew Shovlin had to say.  Even he knew JB was a man panicked and on the edge. But he got past the rookie’s Toyota eventually and made some daring moves earlier in the race to fight his way into contention. The Brits like their champions plucky and “bulldoggish” -remember how Mansell used to always affect a knackered swoon on the podium?- and Button certainly was that.

When he crossed the line as World Champion however and sang “We are the champions” over the radio he was bitching on earlier, I cringed. In fact, I don’t think I’ve cringed like that since David Brent did “some MC Hammer shit” in his notorious dance off in The Office. At least Ricky Gervais was only acting like a clueless egoist in a corporate vacuum.

Gavin Williams

So that's how many races you won before this season. Button.

And just in case you really have to watch that dance:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=8kry53iHR7w

And as for Jarno Trulli…more on him tomorrow.

That's Serge trying to get his mate's valuables out of the car.

Don’t you just love the interwebs? Yesterday we published the sad story of the wrecked Aston Martin in Sandton JHB, and today, thanks to couple hundred twitterers, we’ve got in touch with someone who was involved in the whole sorry saga.

His name is Serge, and he was lucky enough not to be in the crunched green Chevrolet Spark. He’s written a full account of the incident on his blog.

For more images see our other article here.

Thanks Serge!

Aren’t test drives with dealership blokes awkward enough? This has to be one of our worst nightmares. Taking a car out for a test drive and absolutely destroying it. In this case, all R3.5million worth of shiny new DBS. The collision took place on the Grayston offramp, involving six other luckless motor vehicles. We hope the poor sod was just in the wrong place at the wrong time and Aston’s insurance covers the damage. And if the poor guy was only a potential customer, we reckon he’s probably going to take a nice little Aston home with him after all this.

Click through for more images of the cringeworthy incident.

Astons: numberplateless.

Carbon fibre cracks like that.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=5CU-k0XmLUk

To celebrate 50 years of smashing cars to bits and pieces, the American Insurance Institute for Highway safety tracked down an old (but roadworthy) 1959 Chevy Bel Air and threw it in the direction of an oncoming 2009 Chevy Malibu. Now you’d expect the steel-and-girders Bel-Air to tear through the aluminium and plastic ‘mid-size sedan’…but, you’d be wrong. Very wrong.

Look carefully at the A-pillar of the Bel Air (that’s the pillar holding the windscreen). It collapses completely, as does the rest of the driver’s footwell. Compare that to the rigidity of the Malibu’s passenger cell, which as far as we can tell remains barely affected.

Obviously in the 1950′s an ‘airbag’ would have referred to a politician, so there are none of those to benefit passengers in the Bel Air. Seatbelts weren’t even standard until 1964.

We’re pretty chuffed we live in the era of crumple zones and all that.

F1 mogul Flavio Braitore has quit the Renault F1 team amid startling allegations of cheating at 2008’s Singapore Grand Prix. Pat Symonds, the team’s director of engineering, has also resigned.

Renault said in a short statement that Briatore and Pat Symonds, the director of engineering, had both left the team ahead of a meeting Monday with the sport’s world ruling body the FIA to explain recent allegations of race-fixing.

Renault wil appear in front of the FIA’s International Motor Sport Council in Paris on September 21 to respond to allegations that Nelson Piquet Jr was asked to crash deliberately, giving a race-winning advantage to team mate Fernando Alonso.

Piquet: Crashing

Renault face being expelled from the sport altogether. The team has denied all of the claims made against them by Piquet junior, who was dismissed by the team in July after being told he had failed to perform to expectations.

But on Wednesday Renault appeared to partly admit some role in the controversy by saying in the statement they “would not contest the FIA’s recent allegations concerning the Singapore Grand Prix”.

Piquet: Junior