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Great TV. The rate that the figures were increasing on the speedo in the Veyron was just awe inspiring. 4 sec to 100mph? Our car hits 60mph in about 11secs!! Thats awesome.
And some of the drivers view of Senna's driving, sooo impressive.
Senna at Monaco was a frightening sight. He said at the time he just kept going faster and faster and he eventually realised he could keep going faster until he had an enormous firey crash and backed off. 1.5 sec a lap quicker than Prost in the same car? Astonishing. Precision versus flair.
Yeah the rate the numbers went up was just staggering and wide shots from the camera as it appeared and vanish in seconds. What a amazing piece of engineering.
In that whole piece about Senna, my favourite bit of driving was Piquet overtaking him sideways.
The front shot from the veyron just made it feel like a video game
When trying to view Top Gear BBCi Player is stating "Not available in your area" ?
I mean I know Portsmouth isn't exactly London but what's going on??
Just watched the first part of it - only caught the end of it on Sunday.
I am not usually one for fast cars, but that Veyron looks good. Not sure what it's really for though.
There must be something else cool we can do with cars that doesn't involve simply making them go fast?
Just watched it and agree with the comments about Clarkson and his ability to some really excellent documentary work.
The piece on Senna was right up there with his Victoria Cross documentary. Well worth checking out if you haven't seen it.
Yeah, was a great episode. The Veyron was amazing. The straight on that track was 5.5 miles long? Cant remember what the top final speed was, but at 240 mph thats covering a mile every 15 seconds! so that straight would of taken aound 1.25 minutes ... wow!
The bit on Senna was also very entertaining.
Senna bit was good, the rest was just the usual, only getting slowly more tedious.
The piece on Senna was right up there with his Victoria Cross documentary. Well worth checking out if you haven't seen it.
Was the one about the original Commandos pretending to be German to sneak up a heavily armoured waterway to blow up the submarine docks? If so, that was just one awe inspiring documentary.
No, it focused on [url= http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Henry_Cain ]Major Robert Cain[/url] and his VC winning escapades at the Battle of Arnhem.
Other VC winners were also covered.
Robert Cain being his father in law, and none of them knew.
The commandos one was good too.
Senna at Monaco was a frightening sight.
The in car footage of him driving round Monaco in his MP4/4, wrestling with the steering wheel with his left hand (as it constantly grabs and trys to throw the car off line over the cambers) whilst keeping his right on the gear lever, sliding the car round seemingly every corner, all the while balancing what can only be described as a time bomb of an engine to extract a qualifying lap of 1.5sec quicker than even the great Alain Prost!
He was a controversial figure that's for sure, and I remember really not liking Senna that much as a kid (combination of always being faster than Mansell and other British drivers and forcing Prost off at Suzuka), but when I witnessed first hand the race at Donnington in 93 in what can only be described as probably the least competitive F1 car McLaren ever produced, well...
Whatever you think of him, he was a genius!
There was only one repeat of that episode then that's it. It will not be shown again because of the price of showing old F1 footage. If you missed it the second time you've had it I'm afraid. Top gear producer Andy Wilman was on Evan's show on Monday morning and said the cost of showing the footage is prohibitive and it's heading to the BBC archives never to be seen again.
I think the other factory veyron test driver got the average up to 266mph!
For those of you who have missed the repeats, or are 'outside' of iPlayer's area....
[cough]torrents[/cough]
Thing is though, late on in the race, Prost gained a huge amount of time over Senna after overtaking Berger in the Ferrari, and Senna crashed after panicking and losing concentration. So all that work down the drain...
1988 was the year that McLaren won all but one race. Senna won the drivers because he had more wins (in those days only best 11 races counted), although Prost had more points...
The Senna piece was brilliant. I was equally pleased however, with a stunning return to form in the direction/camerawork. Some of the Touraeg shots and of Hamilton on the track were beautiful!
As someone mentioned earlier, i too wondered about the fact that two massive Holywood stars could come in and set two new fastest laps?!?
[i]As someone mentioned earlier, i too wondered about the fact that two massive Holywood stars could come in and set two new fastest laps?!? [/i]
Dont forget its:
a) a new reasonably priced car, with very few drivers on the board
b) Cruise (and probably Diaz) will have driven a fair few fast cars during there careers, probably with professional tuition too.
Cruise rides bikes and planes, so I dont think taking a mechanical object to its limit lark is new to him!
I wasn't that surprised.
In all fairness, like has been mentioned above, they have both probably had a great deal of training in fast driving, tom especially so. Also they just looked like they were going fast, we've all seen other celebs turn the car early into the final corner and do a small jump buy never end up on two wheels for a good 20m . Also what does anyone gain from them being at the top
The Veyron piece was predictable and the car is barge. Throw 8 liters and four turbos at it and it ends up just 28 mph faster than a normally aspirated Mclaren F1 launched over 10 years ago. Senna's MP4/4 had nearly 700hp from 1.5 liters in 1988. Now that is impressive.
I really have my doubts it'd beat a Gumpert or R500 around that particular track too. I'm sure keeping Mr Volkswagon happy had something to do with the time.
Said this on a different thread, Hamilton as always shows his utter passion for racing. Away from the Corporate-speak when he lets his hair down he just shows that hes in racing for the kicks/fun and not the job. Even on relatively bad performances have you ever heard him bitching?!!!!
I bet even if he was driving a taxi round Stevenage for a living he'd manage to get kicks out of it!
[i]Throw 8 liters and four turbos at it and it ends up just 28 mph faster than a normally aspirated Mclaren F1 launched over 10 years ago[/i]
Which tells you how difficult the drag is to overcome...
....and its a horrible bulbous two-tone coloured car. Having seen one in the flesh I'm curious as to why it costs soo much?
They could have made a more evocative bugatti.
. Even on relatively bad performances have you ever heard him bitching?!!!!
Yup - many times
Yes, we all know you don't like Hamilton, TJ - racist 😉 (kidding, seriously!)
He does moan sometimes but frankly who wouldn't - I'd say he's actually less of a moaner than most.
Anyway, back on topic, I recorded it - fast forwarded through the Toerag stuff, watched the TC/CD stuff and thought that while the do genuinely seem to like fast cars/etc that they were playing very hard at the 'we're good mates' thing which was pretty excruciating though I don't have any issue believing their lap times.
The Senna bit was good though a bit blinkered - he wasn't perfect and he wasn't always the best driver though he was consistently excellent and sometimes just stunning. I loved the footage of Mansell trying to get past him at Monaco in 92 though - brought the memories back and I know that getting past was near impossible for Mansell but it was still brilliant TV.
What saying 'we have to go away and do some work on the car'
'the upgrades didnt work so we had to revert back'?
Comes across as descriptive rather than moan.
Even when he didnt reach the podium- as recently he says 'it felt like the drive of my life'.
Remember a year back he qualified well down the field in the rain (c.14th?)- fought through but dropped back again and at the end described his race and enjoyable.
Clubber - He moans precisely because he is so passionate about things - I just wanted to correct Hora who said he doesn't bitch - when he clearly does.
Hoar - no - moaning when things go wrong - he does it many times - I don't think its wrong or bad that he does it.
Gordon Murray has ripped chunks out of the Veyron a few times. He reckons they dropped a massive clanger when they said "We're going to built a car that does 400kph and it'll look like this".
There's a reason why almost all really fast road cars share their shape with things like the McLaren F1 & LeMans prototypes. It's the best shape for the job.
I reckon it's pretty easy to see how the Veyron costs 5 million to make. Almost every other supercar manufacturer has either a fairly standard configuration of engine, or buys one in and hots it up. The Veyron has an engine which is unique to the car - not just different heads, but a different block. The thing's not aerodynamically brilliant, so it needs lots of radiators. And there's an astonishing amount of technology involved in keeping it on the ground. But ultimately, the big problem with making a Veyron is that it's scratch built. Almost everything had to be developed for that car, so all the set up costs are pushed into the price.
That said, get something like a McLaren F1 or an Ultima, and you'd get it going as fast with considerably less horses.
Its clearly a car for the wealthy rather than a real rich petrolhead.
Also what does anyone gain from them (CD/TC) being at the top
Top Gear getting more Hollywood A-listers to come on a pokey British motor show.
Agent: "Why the goddamn hell would Sylvester/Russell/Harrison wanna come on your hokey Brit show man?"
TG booker: "Well, dear boy, Tom Cruise and Cameron Diaz set the fastest laps earlier this year when they came to promote their new film to our 6 million strong viewing audience...."
Agent: "When do ya wan' em?"
edit: this is TG Booker by the way....
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its clearly a car saying 'look what we can do! up your mum!'
as an advertisement for VW engineering skills it does its job amazingly.
loved last sundays episode
one of the best ever
Hold on people - nobody has yet pointed out that MotoGP in Sennas period was soooo much better than F1. The world is going to end........
Elfinsafety will be along soon to talk about how he pi$$ed himself in the pub and how exciting Moto GP is compared to F1 as he seems to think that most F1 drivers don't watch any other form of motorsport at all.
WTF are you talking about? Because I haven't a clue mate. I hardly ever watch Moto GP, as I find bikes pretty boring, and have probably watched most F1 GPs since the late 80s. I think you've got me confused with someone else.
Couldn't stand Senna, but he was brilliant. Especially in the wet. Dirty driver though; deliberately crashed at least twice to gain an advantage. At F1 speeds, that's incredibly dangerous. The sport has never really recovered from his death though, I don't think. F1 is more exciting than it has been for ages, but it lacks something, really. Needs a Senna or a James Hunt to come in and liven it up again.
When did Senna crash more than once to gain an advantage ?
My mistake; [i]Schumacher[/i] did it twice in F1, but that crash into Brundle in the TG piece was hardly an 'accident'. I thought Senna and Prost had 'crashed' more than once but I may be wrong. Senna pulled many, many moves that could potentially have resulted in accidents. Overtaking's one thing; deliberately putting your opponent at risk is another. Still, I suppose that's motor racing. He was certainly fearless.
EDIT: Senna and Prost crashed in Suzuka in '89, and in '90. In '89 he was disqualified from the race, which meant he missed out on the WC. The following year, he deliberately crashed into Prost in retaliation. At 170mph. Yet he won the WC.
Best top gear I can remember, I've been a fan for years but the silly stunts have been getting beyond stupid
89 was either a race incident or Prost turned in on Senna when he was nearly parallel. 1990, Senna was on pole and Ballestre (who hated Senna) moved pole after qualifying to the dirty side of the track. Senna knew he wouldn't beat Prost to the first corner, as he definitely would have if pole had been left on the outside, so he said he would go for the corner at at his maximum speed regardless of where Prost was. The rest as they say, is history.
People say Senna was a dirty driver etc but there was a bigger picture behind the events in Suzuka. Unfortunately the same can't be said for Schumacher.
Oh and BTW I'm a Prost fan.
jcl is bang on right. the suzuka thing was in retaliation against balastre, not prost
Elfinsafety - Member
I'll do this again because I'm proud of it.You know how much this matters?
Imagine: You're in a pub/bar/club. You need a wee. You go to the bogs, do the biz, zip up. But then you get the 'dribbles'. You go back to the group you pretend to yourself your friends. At first, you are mortally paranoid someone will notice; Will there be staining, wet patches, a smell? After a while however, you've forgotten about it completely and it worries you no longer.
That's how much it matters.
POSTED 3 DAYS AGO # REPORT-POST
Ring any bells?
thekingisdead - Member
jcl is bang on right. the suzuka thing was in retaliation against balastre, not pros
wasn't it that Balestre refused to move pole to the clean side, rather than that he had it moved to the dirty side?
Yeah, F1 needs to be made more dangerous again... 🙄
I think it's amazing Kubica walked away from this and only missed a handful of races.
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=3250358019013026485#
I loved this episode. I remember watching Senna as a kid, TBH I was always a Prost / Mansell fan but the genius of Senna is undeniable.
As for current F1, I actually think the current crop of drivers is probably as good as its been for the last 20 years.
And given how the regualtions have changed and how predictable and reliable the cars have become the current racing (snide manipulation by the boys in red nothwithstanding) is still pretty entertaining