Quantum Leap

Mercedes-Benz SL Maritime by Graf Weckerle

Tue, 04 Sep 2012 08:00:26 -0400

When you say Graf Weckerle you automatically images some very cool, yet individual and exclusive tuning packages. And of course that this latest one, offered for the Mercedes SL500 is no exception. The package features a maritime inspiration through both the exterior and interior of the car, while the interior features pure 750 white gold elements.

For the exterior the most important changes are of course the wheels This time the tuner opted for a new set of 20” Collection Sport forged performance wheels made out of a special rotation-forged titanium-aluminum alloy. The wheels are featuring a very cool aluminum effect combined with a special white coating on the disc and a Graf Weckerle brand logo on the center cap. This new set of wheels has been combined with a very cool Graf Weckerle navy blue exterior paint.

The interior continues with the same maritime theme thanks to its Graf Weckerle navy blue leather contrasting with white stitching and piping. But the most amazing features are the Graf Weckerle brand emblems integrated into the original seat design and made of pure 750 white gold.

No changes have been made under the hood at this point, but the tuner announced that an optimized and remapped ECU in combination with a stainless steel sports exhaust system is currently being developed.

Mercedes-Benz SL Maritime by Graf Weckerle originally appeared on topspeed.com on Monday, 3 September 2012 17:00 EST.

Source: http://www.topspeed.com/cars/mercedes/2013-mercedes-benz-sl-maritime-by-graf-weckerle-ar134485.html

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Feature Flick: Watch the World’s Largest Gathering of LFAs, Ever

Tue, 04 Sep 2012 03:00:29 -0400

L stands for both Lexus and for LFA. It also stands for Laguna Seca, and the video below shows all three in what has been dubbed the world’s largest gathering of Lexus LFA supercars. The 48-second video below was shot at Mazda Raceway Laguna Seca in California, where Lexus staged what it eventually called the […]

Source: http://rumors.automobilemag.com/feature-flick-watch-the-worlds-largest-gathering-of-lfas-ever-166389.html

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Grosjean is first banned driver since Schumacher | 2012 Belgian Grand Prix stats and facts

Mon, 03 Sep 2012 22:00:28 -0400

Grosjean is first banned driver since Schumacher is an original article from F1 Fanatic. If this article has been published anywhere other than F1 Fanatic it is an infringement of copyright.

Romain Grosjean’s ban for causing a crash on the first lap in Belgium puts him in the company of several drivers who went on to become champions.

Grosjean is first banned driver since Schumacher is an original article from F1 Fanatic. If this article has been published anywhere other than F1 Fanatic it is an infringement of copyright.

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/f1fanatic/~3/Bp-LD1bY4_U/

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First Look: 2012 Hyundai I-oniq Concept

Mon, 03 Sep 2012 17:00:28 -0400

First Look: 2012 Hyundai I-oniq Concept

An electric sports hatchback.

You’ve already seen the teaser sketch, but this is the first official photo of the actual Hyundai I-oniq: a small, extended-range electric concept car that will formally debut next week at the 2012 Geneva Motor Show.

Photo Gallery: First Look: 2012 Hyundai I-oniq Concept - Automobile Magazine

Photo Gallery: First Look: 2012 Hyundai I-oniq Concept - Automobile Magazine

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Source: http://www.automobilemag.com/auto_shows/geneva/2012/1202_2012_hyundai_i_oniq_concept/index.html

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Old Racers resurface with push for Natural Gas...

Mon, 03 Sep 2012 12:00:36 -0400

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/nofenders/zbjv/~3/vuL18ZTr4bE/old-racers-resurface-with-push-for.html

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2008 Mitsubishi Galant Ralliart

Mon, 03 Sep 2012 07:00:26 -0400

2008 Mitsubishi Galant Ralliart

The Ralliart’s eighteen-inch wheels give the Galant more dignity than a typical mid-size rental, but don’t expect the neighborhood kids to follow you home on their bicycles.

Ann Arbor - In the mid-size sedan market, where the Toyota Camry and the Honda Accord are the 800-pound gorillas in the room, many smaller nameplates try to position themselves as sportier, more flavorful alternatives. With its new Ralliart model, the Mitsubishi Galant tries to do the same, but it’s just another example of how minor that degree of sportiness often is.

Photo Gallery: 2008 Mitsubishi Galant Ralliart - New Car, Truck, and SUV Drivens and Reviews - Automobile Magazine

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Source: http://www.automobilemag.com/reviews/sedans/0703_2008_mitsubishi_galant_ralliart/index.html

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Photo’s now available for Sauber F1 Cutaway Car...

Mon, 03 Sep 2012 02:00:24 -0400

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/nofenders/zbjv/~3/Q5TsTC2ywRA/photos-now-available-for-sauber-f1.html

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2007 Hyundai Elantra

Sun, 02 Sep 2012 21:00:28 -0400

2007 Hyundai Elantra

In a single stroke, the new Hyundai Elantra has leapt ahead, and now it’s right in the mix with small sedans such as the Honda Civic and the Toyota Corolla.

Generation by generation, a car usually evolves slowly as the technology under the nameplate gradually improves. But in a single stroke, the new Hyundai Elantra has leapt ahead, and now it’s right in the mix with small sedans such as the Honda Civic and the Toyota Corolla.

Photo Gallery: 2007 Hyundai Elantra - New Car, Truck, and SUV Road Tests and Driven - Automobile Magazine

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Source: http://www.automobilemag.com/reviews/compact/0701_2007_hyundai_elantra/index.html

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First Look: 2013 Lincoln MKZ

Sun, 02 Sep 2012 16:00:29 -0400

First Look: 2013 Lincoln MKZ

Reinventing the American luxury sedan.

Lincoln is striving hard to reinvent itself and once again gain credence as an American luxury brand. Having refreshed the MKS sedan MKT crossover last fall, Lincoln is now rolling out the all-new 2013 MKZ sedan at the 2012 New York auto show. Although the car is essentially based on the 2013 Ford Fusion, there are few obvious similarities between the cars. The new MKZ has a striking, elegant design, as well as a laundry list of upmarket features, that demonstrate Lincoln’s commitment to revamping its image.

Photo Gallery: First Look: 2013 Lincoln MKZ - Automobile Magazine

Photo Gallery: First Look: 2013 Lincoln MKZ - Automobile Magazine

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Source: http://www.automobilemag.com/auto_shows/new_york/2012/1204_2013_lincoln_mkz/index.html

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Feature Flick: Watch the World’s Largest Gathering of LFAs, Ever

Sun, 02 Sep 2012 11:00:29 -0400

Source: http://rumors.automobilemag.com/feature-flick-watch-the-worlds-largest-gathering-of-lfas-ever-166389.html

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Last Chance to see A Stoner Pound the Bricks...

Sun, 02 Sep 2012 06:00:32 -0400

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/nofenders/zbjv/~3/OPuoURJzBOE/last-chance-to-see-stoner-pound-bricks.html

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2010 Lexus HS250h

Sun, 02 Sep 2012 01:00:31 -0400

2010 Lexus HS250h

The 2010 Lexus HS250h is the brand’s first distinct hybrid model, it slots between the IS and the ES.

Lexus hybrids have traditionally been more about no-compromise performance than pure fuel economy. That looks like it’s about to change with the 2010 HS250h, the brand’s first distinct hybrid model.

Photo Gallery: 2010 Lexus HS250h - 2009 Detroit Auto Show Coverage, New Car Reviews, Concept Cars - Automobile Magazine

Photo Gallery: 2010 Lexus HS250h - 2009 Detroit Auto Show Coverage, New Car Reviews, Concept Cars - Automobile Magazine

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Source: http://www.automobilemag.com/green/news/0901_2010_lexus_hs250h/index.html

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2007 Hyundai Elantra

Sat, 01 Sep 2012 20:00:34 -0400

2007 Hyundai Elantra

In a single stroke, the new Hyundai Elantra has leapt ahead, and now it’s right in the mix with small sedans such as the Honda Civic and the Toyota Corolla.

Photo Gallery: 2007 Hyundai Elantra - New Car, Truck, and SUV Road Tests and Driven - Automobile Magazine

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Source: http://www.automobilemag.com/reviews/compact/0701_2007_hyundai_elantra/index.html

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Alonso quickest in dry final practice session | 2012 Belgian Grand Prix third practice

Sat, 01 Sep 2012 15:00:24 -0400

Alonso quickest in dry final practice session is an original article from F1 Fanatic. If this article has been published anywhere other than F1 Fanatic it is an infringement of copyright.

Fernando Alonso put Ferrari on top as Spa finally saw dry running in the final practice session. Kimi Raikkonen was second for Lotus.

Alonso quickest in dry final practice session is an original article from F1 Fanatic. If this article has been published anywhere other than F1 Fanatic it is an infringement of copyright.

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/f1fanatic/~3/aI3G9xdqCrE/

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2007 Audi RS4

Sat, 01 Sep 2012 10:00:26 -0400

2007 Audi RS4

Among the RS4’s key ingredients: A normally aspirated, 8250-rpm, 420-hp V-8 that shares only water and steering pumps with the S4’s V-8.

There’s no sense in holding out. The truth is so important, it needs to see daylight right here and now: The 2006 RS4 is the purest driver’s car from Audi in the past two decades. Although Audis have always been sporty machines, the company’s reputation for harder-edged performance dates back to the 1982-86 Coupe Quattro. That car used the first iteration of Audi’s Quattro all-wheel-drive system and housed a 160-hp turbo five-cylinder under its long hood. The flared-fender coupe was underpowered and expensive ($35,000) in U.S. trim, but it was nothing short of iconic. It was astonishingly easy to drive fast in the dry, and its wet-road grip bordered on the sublime. Between 1982 and 1984, Audi Quattros effectively dominated the World Rally Championship. They also single-handedly ended the two-wheel-drive rally-car era.

Photo Gallery: 2007 Audi RS4 - Car Review & Road Test - Automobile Magazine

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Source: http://www.automobilemag.com/reviews/sedans/0608_2007_audi_rs4/index.html

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Codemasters release first F1 2012 gameplay video

Sat, 01 Sep 2012 05:00:26 -0400

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/F1InsightAFormula1Blog/~3/NgtWIYR6_lM/codemasters-release-first-f1-2012.html

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2007 Chrysler 300C CRD

Sat, 01 Sep 2012 00:00:27 -0400

2007 Chrysler 300C CRD

A diesel car Americans could learn to love.

Saint-Genis, France - It’s always nice to get a gift from your rich German uncle. Mercedes-Benz has handed off a 215-hp, turbocharged and intercooled, 3.0-liter diesel V-6 to the Chrysler Group, which has stuffed it under the hood of the 300 sedan. With 376 lb-ft of torque, just 11 lb-ft less than the 5.7-liter Hemi V-8, this engine propels the 300 to 62 mph in 7.6 seconds, only 1.2 seconds slower than the Hemi. And it returns an average of 29 mpg when cruising at 80 mph. Unfortunately, the 300C CRD (common-rail diesel) isn’t offered in America.

Photo Gallery: 2007 Chrysler 300C CRD - New Car, Truck, and SUV Road Tests and Drivens - Automobile Magazine

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Source: http://www.automobilemag.com/reviews/sedans/0611_2007_chrysler_300c_crd/index.html

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Millionaire man Maldonado answers critics

Fri, 31 Aug 2012 19:00:27 -0400

At the Circuit de Catalunya

The smile on Pastor Maldonado’s face dropped in the immediate aftermath of the frightening fire that broke out in the Williams garage after the Spanish Grand Prix, but it soon came back again once he was told nobody had been seriously hurt. You can bet it will stay for quite some time.

Maldonado started this season as a man who owed his place in Formula 1 to the millions provided to his Williams team by the Venezuelan government.

After yet another bizarre and unexpected twist in this most unpredictable of seasons, he leaves Barcelona as a grand prix winner and talking about a possible championship challenge.

Maldonado drove a superb race at the Circuit de Catalunya, mature and controlled in a way of which few in the paddock believed him capable.

He came into F1 with a reputation for being quick but fiery and a bit accident-prone. In his first season last year he fitted the mould.

This season started in the same way - Williams’s upturn in form had him battling with some unfamiliar rivals close to the front. But he started the season wrecking what would have been a strong points finish in the first race of the season when he crashed chasing Ferrari’s Fernando Alonso for fifth place on the final lap.

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Since then, though, Maldonado has turned a corner with some strong performances. But no-one - not even Williams - expected what happened in Spain.

The Mugello test before this race went well, and Williams knew they had improved their car. They thought they had made a step forward, Friday practice confirmed it, but not in their wildest dreams did they imagine they would qualify on the front row.

Second place, half a second behind Lewis Hamilton, was impressive enough, but it became pole position after the McLaren driver’s penalty and, despite losing the lead to Alonso at the start, Maldonado always looked in contention for victory.

Alonso is the most formidable of rivals, but Maldonado kept him in sight in the first and second stints, before Williams succeeded in ‘undercutting’ the Ferrari at the second stops.

Ferrari almost certainly made a mistake in leaving the Spaniard out for two laps before his stop - nearly all of which he spent behind Marussia’s Charles Pic, who was subsequently penalised for not letting Alonso by.

But Maldonado’s pace on his first lap out of the pits suggested he might well have taken the lead anyway.

The pressure never relented, though. After the final stops, Alonso came back at Maldonado, but the Williams driver raced like a veteran and always looked in control of the situation.

The win does not change the reality of why Maldonado has his drive - but it certainly proves beyond all doubt that he deserves his place in F1, even if one inevitably has to wonder what the Williams would be capable of with Alonso or Hamilton behind the wheel.

To his credit, Maldonado does not seek to hide the financial support he is given, nor the fact that he is basically a state-sponsored driver who has the personal backing of his President, Hugo Chavez. In fact, he embraces it.

“I’m very lucky to have a country behind me, pushing so hard, to see me here in Formula 1 and especially to be here, between these guys,” he said in the post-race news conference, as he sat between Alonso and another world champion, Kimi Raikkonen.

“I’m pretty happy for Venezuela, I’m happy for Williams as well. They did a wonderful job to give me a great car for this race. We are getting better and better, race after race.”

There has been no magic in Williams’s revival this year after several seasons in which they seemed to be inexorable decline.

There have been changes at the top of the engineering team, and a focus on fixing obvious, major operational and technical problems.

“We made big changes in the factory,” Maldonado said. “We have new staff in some of the departments and completely changed the approach to building the car.
“I need to say that this year’s car has great performance, great potential to become even stronger than it is and, for sure, this is great for motivation, to motivate the team, the factory, to keep pushing like that. I think this is the way. We are motivated and we need to keep pushing.”

Whether Williams can maintain this form remains an open question - but the same goes for every other team in this incredibly topsy-turvy season.

There have been five different winners from five different teams in the first five races. It is the first time that has happened since 1983, when Williams were reigning world champions and were also, incidentally, the fifth winner.

Monaco could easily provide the sixth winner in six races, as Raikkonen’s Lotus team also seem on the verge of a victory.

The 1983 season eventually settled down into a title fight between three teams. This one may well go the same way, but you wouldn’t count on it right now.

The new tyres created by Pirelli this year have left all the teams scratching their heads.

One weekend you can be winning, the next you can be nowhere and not know why, as world champions Red Bull found out in Spain, following Sebastian Vettel’s victory in Bahrain last time out.

As Alonso put it after the race: “We were 57 seconds behind Vettel in Bahrain, and we were lapping (his team-mate Mark) Webber here. No one understands probably. Not us either.”

There is a recognition throughout the sport that this unpredictability is adding to the superficial appeal of F1, especially as the years of Michael Schumacher’s domination with Ferrari are not so very long ago.

Nevertheless, there is also a growing sense of unease - largely unspoken publicly until now, apart from Schumacher’s comments after Bahrain - that it’s somehow not quite real.

The tyres, some feel, are introducing too much of a random element that demeans the sport in some ways. That F1, whisper it, may have gone too far the other way.

Fun, though, isn’t it?

Source: http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/andrewbenson/2012/05/maldonados_maiden_victory_over.html

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Hunter-Reay still angry over Tagliani incident

Fri, 31 Aug 2012 14:00:28 -0400

Source: http://www.newsobserver.com/2012/08/29/2301905/hunter-reay-still-angry-over-tagliani.html

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All great drivers need luck, but Alonso makes his own

Fri, 31 Aug 2012 09:00:27 -0400

It’s not often Fernando Alonso is overcome with emotion, but he only just managed to hold it together as he stood on the podium after a quite stunning victory in the European Grand Prix.

His voice had already cracked as he giggled his delight on the team radio on his slowing-down lap - and in the pits Ferrari team boss Stefano Domenicali was in the same state as he praised a “fantastic” drive by the Spaniard.

But listening to the Spanish and Italian national anthems, the magnitude of the moment almost got the better of Alonso. He choked a bit, grinned, almost cried, gritted his teeth and then collected himself.

No wonder he was so emotional - in the previous half an hour or so, it had all come together to create a perfect weekend for him.

Fernando Alonso (centre) celebrates winning the European GP with second place Kimi Raikkonen (left) and third place Michael Schumacher (right). Photo: Getty

Alonso has driven some outstanding races in his career - he is generally regarded within F1 as the finest driver in the world - but this one has to be right up there with the very best.

Fighting up from 11th place on the grid, he pulled off some quite brilliant overtaking moves to make his way up into contention, the opportunism and skill never better than when he separated Lotus’s Romain Grosjean from second place immediately after a restart following a safety car period.

That move meant Alonso inherited the lead when Sebastian Vettel’s dominant Red Bull retired further around the same lap. Then, as he completed a spectacular victory, his day was made perfect when the man he regards as his main title rival, Lewis Hamilton, retired with two laps to go.

Both his main rivals out of the race, a momentous win in his home grand prix and less than 24 hours after Spain’s football team made it into the semi-finals of Euro 2012. No wonder he was close to tears.

Of course, luck was involved in Alonso’s win. He was not going to beat Vettel before the German’s retirement - no one was - and he would not have been in a position to challenge Grosjean at the re-start had it not been for yet another pit-stop problem for McLaren.

But Alonso put himself in the position to gain from others’ misfortune, and all the other positions he gained he worked for and won in a style befitting one of the greatest racing drivers the world has seen.

Ferrari’s superbly quick pit crew played a part, too - one rival engineer said this weekend that they had moved the goalposts for pit stops this year.

But the fact remains that Alonso would not have had to do what he did had Ferrari’s strategists not made the error that left him down in 11th on the grid - a decision for which the driver must share some blame.

Ferrari failed to realise that Alonso would need to fit a second set of the ‘soft’ tyres in second qualifying to be sure of progressing into the top 10 shoot-out.

Lotus had also planned to follow Ferrari’s strategy of running a set of ‘medium’ tyres in Q2 followed by a set of ‘softs’.

But when the English team saw how close it was in Q1, they realised they could not afford to take the risk, and switched to running two sets of ‘softs’ in Q2 and only one in the top 10 shoot-out.

It’s impossible to know where Alonso would have ended up on the grid had he made it through.

Fortunately for Ferrari, their blushes were spared by his stellar performance on Sunday - on a track where it had previously been almost impossible to overtake but which came alive this year with the combination of degrading tyres and a DRS overtaking zone judged exactly right.

Ferrari took a fair bit of stick for the decision - and rightly so. It would be dangerous of them not to learn from it for this is not the first time this season that their strategy has been found wanting.

Alonso might have won in Barcelona had Ferrari not allowed Williams to get Pastor Maldonado ahead of him by making their second stop earlier.

As Alonso admitted himself, a win was also on the cards in Monaco had Ferrari reacted more quickly to his blistering pace on his in-lap and left him out to do a couple more.

And in Canada, where he fell back to fifth, he should have finished at least second - and could possibly have won - but the team failed to react to his tyres losing grip dramatically in the closing stages.

Had Ferrari got those calls right, Alonso could have been heading into the Valencia weekend on the back of two wins and a second place, rather than a second, a third and a fifth.

That’s 27 points thrown away even before the error in qualifying this weekend. In a season as close as this, even if Alonso wins the title it is unlikely to be by that much.

In each case, the error has been a result of apparently not being reactive enough - being either too fixed on a specific, pre-ordained strategy, and/or too focused on one specific rival and not looking at the bigger picture.

That was exactly what happened in Abu Dhabi in 2010, when another strategy error handed the title on a plate to Vettel.

Ferrari have now got back many of those points thanks to the problems suffered by Vettel and Hamilton.

Despite Vettel’s retirement, the Red Bull showed frightening pace in Valencia following the introduction of a major upgrade, as BBC F1 technical analyst Gary Anderson detailed on Friday.

Vettel would have walked the race had his alternator not failed on lap 34 and the pace shown by Red Bull this weekend will have set alarm bells ringing in Maranello and McLaren’s factory in Woking.

At McLaren, though, they have other things to worry about after yet another pit-stop problem for Hamilton.

This time it was a failure of one of the new Ferrari-style angled jacks the team designed as part of a wholesale restructure of their pit-stop operation following problems in Malaysia, China and Bahrain earlier this year.

It lost Hamilton a place to Alonso when the leaders pitted during the mid-race safety-car period - and that of course would have meant he was leading following the retirements of Vettel and Lotus’s Grosjean.

Given the tyre problems Hamilton found himself in during the closing laps, it seems unlikely that he would have been able to hold off Alonso for the victory, but it would have meant he was clear of Pastor Maldonado, and therefore the incident that took him out of the race, for which Hamilton was blameless.

Interestingly, if you look back at how many points Hamilton had lost to various operational issues at McLaren this year before Valencia, it was 27 - exactly the same number as Alonso.

Add the 18 or 15 he would have got for either second or third place in Valencia (depending on whether Kimi Raikkonen would have caught him) and that is more than 40.

After Valencia, he is now 23 points behind Alonso. The McLaren has been on balance the fastest car this year, but Ferrari’s form is getting better and better and, after Valencia, Red Bull look more formidable than at any time this year.

There are still 12 races to go in an already extraordinary season that clearly has many more twists and turns to come. But Hamilton should be comfortably leading the championship. Have McLaren already thrown it away?

Source: http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/andrewbenson/2012/06/alonso.html

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