The collective artistic skill of the Autoblog staff would hardly equal the pinky toe of Picasso, which is why we are duly impressed with Rob Ijbema's website called Car-A-Day. Rob began the site about a year and a half ago painting and publishing one work per day of cars in various forms of motorsport. He continued at this pace for over a year, but has since slowed down a bit, but the sheer size of his catalogue is still staggeringly impressive. As you can see in our gallery of favorites below, Rob has pretty much all of the well known brands of motorsports covered with paintings of race cars from LeMans, Formula One, the WRC, DTM, vintage racers and even NASCAR! His style might best be described as Impressionist with, as he explains, a focus on movement and atmosphere rather than detail, which would take much longer to reproduce on canvas. Most of Rob's work could go for hundreds if not thousands of dollars in a gallery somewhere, but for him they're all in a single day's work. Each one is for sale, just email Rob for a price. Check out our faves in the gallery below, and be sure to visit Car-A-Day yourself and peruse his archives, as well as subscribe to Rob's RSS feed for updates on when he publishes a new painting.
If you are a motorhead looking for a final resting spot, there's a place just outside Barcelona, Spain that may be your ticket. It's the Circuit de Catalunya, host to both MotoGP and Formula 1 races. The track is now permitting human remains to be scattered across the course. While the circuit isn't allowing whole bodies (or even partial ones, for that matter) to be buried, an initial fee of €1,500 (about $1,950 at today's exchange) will get your cremated remains distributed at some of your favorite turns. Before you sell your loved ones on the idea, make sure to tell them that there is also a €50 ($65) annual maintenance fee to ensure what's left of you stays off the racing surface and in the gravel traps. Although spending eternity at a track may appeal to you, keep in mind you won't be watching any races.
Formula One is fast, and fast is dangerous. That's the assumption formed on the basis of decades of fatal crashes in the sport when the slow advancement of safety measures couldn't keep up with the ever-increasing speeds of grand prix racing. But those assumptions and those safety measures were again put to the test this weekend in Spain, where McLaren's Heikki Kovalainen crashed at 220 km/h (137mph) into a wall of tires, resulting in an estimated impact force of 26 Gs. The crash, which occurred on the 22nd lap of the race, was attributed to a wheel/tire malfunction, and Kovalainen is expected to return in two weeks to race in Turkey.
As jarring as it was, Heikki's crash was only one of the many times the safety car was deployed in a race that was dominated by the color yellow of the caution flag. The next most dominant color at Catalunya, however, was surely red, as Ferrari dominated the race virtually from start to finish, with Kimi Raikkonen sailing to an easy checkered flag with his team mate Felipe Massa close behind. Towards the end of the race, Kovalainen's teammate Lewis Hamilton was closing in on Massa, but ended up taking the third step on the podium, giving defending champion Raikkonen a commanding nine point lead over Hamilton. The perfect finish for Ferrari likewise gave the team a commanding lead in the constructors' championship, leading 47 to BMW Sauber's 35 and McLaren's 34. BMW, which entered the race with the lead for the constructors' title, didn't fair as well as hoped, with Kubica finishing an admirable fourth while his teammate Heidfeld came in outside the points in 9th after suffering a drive-through penalty. However, that wasn't nearly as bad as second-tier rival Renault did under the Spanish sun, with neither local hero Fernando Alonso nor his teammate Nelsinho Piquet completing the race. All in all, a shocking nine drivers retired before the last lap, including Nico Rosberg (Williams), Rubens Barrichello (Honda), Adrian Sutil (Force India), Anthony Davidson (Super Aguri), both the Toro Rosso drivers (Bourdais and Vettel) in addition to the Renaults and the aforementioned Kovalainen.
The latest in the string of car launches ahead of the 2008 Formula One World Championship is the Red Bull-Renault RB4, which was quietly unveiled – rather contrary to typical Red Bull glitz – while undergoing testing at the Jerez track in Spain.
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