#Motorsports

As part of a plan to spot future motor racing talent, Group Lotus has been the first car manufacturer to truly feature a presence in that most grassroots form of racing, karts.

Recently, California based BMW tuning company, Dinan Cars, revealed a video of its latest engine project. Beginning with the V10 BMW S85 engine found in the E60 BMW M5, which remains one of the most sophisticated power plants engineered to date, Dinan bored and stroked the displacement from 5-liters to 5.8-liters, and then installed performance cams, a dry sump oil system, and finished it off with a racing exhaust. Custom ECU tuning software allowed the engine to run on 98 octane race gas in order to produce a stratospheric 720-hp at 8300 RPM. You read that correctly. That’s 124-hp per liter from a naturally aspirated V10 engine!

Designed to be used in the Riley Technologies 2011 mkXXV track car, check out Dinan’s engine demonstration video after the jump. More than anything, it’s the blazing plum purple glow emitting from the headers that got people talking. Do not touch!

Barber Motorsports Park’s Leeds, Alabama test track (about 2 hours from Atlanta, Georgia) has now become certified as an approved site for Formula 1 teams to test their cars, but it’s unlikely that Barber will host an F1 race any time soon.

This coming Sunday, October 9th, a very special event will air on Versus at 3 pm Eastern Time. It’s the Duel in the Desert, a special edition of the Viper Cup race series, where a talented collection of drivers and motorsports heros, from all different forms of the genre, race against each other at Miller Motorsports Park, in Toole, Utah.

The viral success of Ken Block’s Gymkhana videos gave rise to the Gymkhana GRID competition, which is basically a bunch of fancy driving stunts masquerading was a real motorsport. The first one achieved commercial success, and a second event was planned for the end of October in Hollywood, Ca. Now, the event has been cancelled due to a pending legal dispute.

With ambitions to control a larger slice of the American market, Volkswagen has confirmed its intention to participate in American motorsports despite earlier dismissing any immediate plans for NASCAR.

After a 71 year absence from Le Mans, Bentley returned in 2001, but with little success and in-house competition with Audi the decision was made to drop the Speed 8 LMP1 program in 2003. The team did go out with a bang, however, taking the checked flag at the 24 Hours of Le Mans – due in part to a lack of participation by Audi.

They’ve only been racing two seasons, but Kia Motors America’s motorsports program has now achieved championship greatness, thanks to Nic Jönsson wining the driver’s title and solidifying Kia in the Team Championship in the Street Tuner class of the Continental Tire Sports Car Challenge.

Audi‘s LMP team is coming back to the United States, debuting the R18 TDI in American soil for the first time and challenging for victory at the Petit Le Mans race at Road Atlanta.

A special one-off Ford Mustang Boss 302 Laguna Seca will be auctioned for charity for the benefit of the Henry Ford Health Systems. Painted in a gorgeous, attention grabbing coat of “School Bus Yellow,” this Boss will also sport the personal signature of famous racing driver and Indy 500 winner, Parnelli Jones.

Nothing can test a truck’s true mettle quite like thousands of miles of sand. For the 2012 Dakar Rally, the British Excite Rally Raid Team plans to enter the most brutal competition on Earth using three specially modified versions of Land Rover‘s new Evoque.

As part of Cadillac‘s continued rebranding efforts the Cadillac Racing team has been releasing “ride along” videos from each of its races this season in the SCCA World Challenge series. The latest comes to use from the glass-smooth and world-famous Laguna Seca, where pilots Johnny O’Connell and Andy Pilgrim take us through all 11 turns of the circuit, displaying some incredible driving.

Debuting alongside the new Focus ST, Ford‘s Focus ST-R hopes to give buyers of the hot hatch something else to brag about. There is, after all, not better way to instantly give a car some serious credibility than to know it shares its underpinnings with a race car. It does, however, help if the race car is successful.

Ask someone from Volkswagen what their most important reveal is at the Frankfurt Auto Show and the answer will be simple: the Up!, the diminutive city car with a 1.0-liter 3-cylinder engine. That’s all well and good, but what about a car (another small car we might add) that’s just awesome. We are, of course, talking about the Polo R WRC, the VW brand’s entry into the World Rally Championship.

Alongside a new Exige S street car, Lotus has unveiled its proposed entry into rally racing, the Exige R-GT, today at the Frankfurt Auto Show. Weighing in at around 2,600 lbs this race car trades the old Exige’s 4-cylinder for something close to what can be found out back in the Evora S – a supercharged 3.5L V6. Power makes it to the rear wheels using a sequential 6-speed transmission with paddle shifters.